Money

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna News that Italians now enjoy a higher standard of living than the British made me think: my God, life must be truly awful in Britain. Yes, the Italians do have much to feel good about in terms of the quality of their lives thanks to the beauty of their country, the splendour of their history, culture and cuisine, and their impressive defence of the traditional family and way of life from the threats to them of the modern world. When I’m drinking, I buy a superb local Sangiovese for €2.60 a litre dispensed into plastic mineral water bottles from a huge cask in a wine shop in

From Lord Kinnock’s demand for a wealth tax and VAT on private health fees to Gordon Brown pressing for gambling taxes, it is plain that Labour has run out of ideas other than dreaming up new ways to part us from our money. Even so, Kemi Badenoch is ill-advised to go on an all-out attack on council tax reform, as she did in a Mail on Sunday column yesterday. You don’t have to be a socialist or even a Labour supporter to see that council tax is horribly regressive According to the Conservative leader, Rachel Reeves is plotting to do as Labour have done in Wales: to set up an

The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 4 per cent. Threadneedle Street’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted five to four, after a revote, for what is the third cut this year. This takes interest rates back down to levels not seen since the beginning of 2023. Concerns about an increasingly slack labour market seem to have driven the MPC’s decision. A second vote was required – the first since 1998 – because initially four members of the committee voted for a 0.25 per cent cut but one member voted for a larger cut of 0.5 per cent. Markets expect the rate to be cut once more to 3.75 per

The Chancellor’s black hole is getting bigger and tax rises are coming. That’s the judgement of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) whose model of the UK economy has forecast she must find £50 billion of revenue or cuts if she’s to return to the £9.9 billion of fiscal headroom she left herself in the spring.   Some now believe the gap is so large Reeves may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, VAT or employee national insurance Reeves’s self-imposed and ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules require her to abolish the deficit by the end of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) five-year forecast. NIESER’s

Maybe Trump doesn’t always chicken out after all. Rapid trade deals with the UK, Japan, the EU and others in recent weeks may have given the impression that the trade war was essentially over. Today, though, comes Trump’s Ardennes offensive, with immediate tariffs of 35 per cent announced for Canada. Other countries have been given a week to prepare for steep increases: India will be subject to 25 per cent tariffs, Taiwan 20 per cent and Switzerland – far from neutral in this particular conflict – 39 per cent. Those who insist Trump has a very clever strategy and is winning tend also to be people who, in any other

Spectator readers will not need me to tell them the meaning of the Latin ‘cura terrae’. Taking care of the Earth was one of central arguments of last week’s front-page feature against private equity. But Cura Terrae also happens to be the name of a business based in Sheffield. This business is an environmental services provider dedicated to helping preserve the world and the natural resources that we all love and cherish. One of its particular strengths is its water services division, where its team of specialists monitor water flow and quality across the UK. By doing so, they help to protect our rivers from the kind of water pollution

The US-EU trade deal has been given a lukewarm reception in Europe. Although the agreement between US president Donald Trump and the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is merely a framework, rather than a full-trade deal, there are already major concerns on the continent, especially in Germany – a country famously reliant on exports. German chancellor Friedrich Merz did not seem too pleased with the deal, negotiated by his party colleague von der Leyen. ‘I’m not satisfied with the result in the sense that (it was said) this is good as it is,’ Merz stated. ‘Which, in plain terms, means the German economy will suffer significant

In proposing to sell the government’s £5 billion hoard of Bitcoin – accumulated from confiscating the proceeds of crime – Rachel Reeves has earned some keen supporters. But the Chancellor should resist the temptation. It wouldn’t be an error quite on the scale of Gordon Brown’s sale of half of Britain’s gold reserves in 1999 – that occurred right at the bottom of a bear market in gold, while Bitcoin in recent weeks has been trading at record highs. Nevertheless, Reeves would be missing out on the opportunity to build a Strategic Crypto Reserve which could turn out to be many times more valuable in the future. By backing cryptocurrencies rather than disposing

Unemployment has hit 4.7 per cent – its highest level for four years after the Chancellor’s taxes on business caused jobs to slump. The figures, published this morning by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also show payroll jobs down by 178,000 in the 12 months to June and by 41,000 between May and June. The line that Rachel Reeves’ decision – namely her £25 billion employer national insurance tax raid – is hampering the job market is becoming a strong one. Andrew Griffith, shadow business secretary, said: ‘Unemployment is the only thing growing under Labour.’ As Reeves weighs up tax rises likely to fall heavily on businesses to plug

Banning the baguette, perhaps? Or making it compulsory to eat a sandwich at your desk at lunchtime? If you think hard enough, it is possible to imagine reform that would create more anger in France. Even so, prime minister Francois Bayrou’s plan to scrap two public holidays is right up there. Bayrou wants to reduce France’s 11 public holidays in a bid to kick-start France’s economy. Bayrou said Easter Monday had ‘no religious significance’, and the whole nation had to work and produce more. He said that bank holidays had turned the month of May into a gruyère – a Swiss cheese full of holes. He said that bank holidays had turned

Rachel Reeves wants Britain to become a shareholder democracy. In her annual Mansion House speech to the City’s bankers, accountants and financial advisors, she said ‘for too long, we have presented investment in too negative a light’. She’s right. These changes are unlikely to unleash the ‘big bang’ of prosperity and tax revenues the Chancellor badly wants and badly needs The Chancellor meant that regulation – which she called the ‘boot on the neck of business’ – has led to too many scary warnings about the risks of investing and not enough talking up of the benefits. She’s referring to the legally mandated ‘investment carries risk’ type messages you hear

‘We are becoming a welfare state with an economy attached,’ said Kemi Badenoch in a speech on sickness benefits today. She’s right, though anyone who read the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) dire report this week knows we’re past becoming: we already are. The figures are staggering. The bill for sickness benefits is heading towards £100 billion a year. Soon, one in every four income tax pounds will go just to cover these payments. Meanwhile, a million young people are doing nothing at all –not in work, not in education, not in training. Badenoch called this not only ‘unaffordable and unjustifiable, but immoral’. Again, she’s right. In a fiery speech hosted

The public won’t forgive and nor will I, said Health Secretary Wes Streeting of plans by junior doctors to strike over his refusal to cave to demands for 29 per cent pay rises. Speaking to the Times he said: ‘There are no grounds for strike action now. Resident doctors have just received the highest pay award across the entire public sector. The Government can’t afford to offer more and it wouldn’t be fair to other NHS workers either, many of whom are paid less’. He’s completely right.  Just shy of half of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors (they’re now called resident doctors) voted for strike action, but because of low turnout it