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Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown in last week’s Spectator interview – one echoed by lockdown sceptics who claim that Covid policy was a disaster, stoked by fear and based on questionable scientific advice. Worst of all, they cry, the trade-offs were not even discussed. But none of this is true – it is Covid revisionism. I know because I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods. It was not an easy decision for anyone. We locked down because we knew the cost of ‘letting Covid rip’ was far

It is reported this morning that one of Liz Truss’s first acts as prime minister, assuming she wins the Conservative party leadership election, will be to grant new licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction. But will it be enough – and quick enough – to alleviate the energy crisis? There are still substantial known oil and gas reserves in the North Sea left to be exploited. According to a report produced by the Oil and Gas Authority last September, known reserves of oil and gas in the North Sea at the end of 2020 amounted to 4.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). This is just a tenth of

A new poll about the NHS, the Sunday Times tells us, has discovered ‘a decline in support’ for the National Health Service. The story spoke of ‘wide dissatisfaction about the state of the health service’, under the headline: ‘Britain falls out of love with the NHS’. The figures from the poll itself tell a slightly different story. The headline finding was that three people in five are now not confident that they would receive timely treatment were they to fall ill tomorrow. But these three people in five aren’t necessarily saying they’ve ceased to approve of the NHS. It seems to me that they are simply affirming what they’ve read

The confirmation of the huge jump in the Ofgem cap on domestic energy bills in October, and forecasts of even worse to come, have fuelled more calls for prices to be frozen at current levels. This is not a completely daft idea, but it is not a good one either. There is no shortage of suggestions for how to solve the energy crisis. Labour has proposed a six-month bills freeze, financed by higher taxes on energy producers, the redirection of the £400 energy discount, and assumed (but largely mythical) savings on the debt interest bill due to lower RPI inflation. An alternative, being promoted by the energy suppliers, is to

At the peak of the lockdowns, thousands were dying every week. Newspaper front pages demanded action. But in the latest week’s data, covering the week to 12 August, some 1,082 more people than would be expected in a normal year died in the UK. These so-called ‘excess deaths’ have averaged 1,000 for 15 weeks of this year. Yet unlike Covid deaths, they are met with near silence. But it isn’t Covid that’s causing these deaths anymore. In the latest figures, published by the ONS, just 6 per cent of English and Welsh deaths had anything to do with Covid. Of nearly 10,000 weekly deaths in England, just 561 mentioned the virus

That today’s inflation figures would come as an immense shock to anyone who has returned from a year in the wilderness goes without saying. A little over a year ago, in May 2021, the Bank of England was predicting that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) would peak at no higher than its two percent target. CPI is now in double figures for the first time in 40 years, at 10.1 per cent – exceeding even the already-grim expectations of many economists. The Bank of England may yet again have to revise its forecast for the inflationary peak – which just two weeks ago it put at 13 per cent. The

As interest rates hit nearly 2 per cent and inflation tops 9 per cent, many Brits are feeling the pinch. But once again it seems that generation rent is worst off. Last month, my landlord hiked my rent by £450, or nearly 30 per cent. I’m far from alone: rents across the UK have gone up by as much as 17 per cent. Renters in the UK have been overlooked since the cost of living crisis began to grip the country earlier this year. With inflation soaring and the cost of energy, water, food, petrol and other essentials also rocketing, life is suddenly, alarmingly, getting more expensive. The Bank of England’s

Twelve-hour A&E waits are at a record high. Doctors fear that tens of thousands will die because of delays in treatment. Already some 10,000 people have waited more than three months for urgent cancer treatment, a consequence of turning the NHS into the national Covid-but-nothing-else-service during lockdown.  Excess deaths at home, the number of people dying above the five-year average, is nearly 17,000 in England and Wales. Meanwhile, fewer people seem to be dying in hospital. That suggests many patients aren’t even getting proper medical attention. We’re used to hearing about NHS crises in winter, but winter now seems to be all year round. The extra cash pumped in by the tories – a 17

This summer marks a truce. But if, as expected, Liz Truss becomes prime minister, it is almost inevitable that tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol will resurface. Britain has been threatened with trade barriers if it tears up the protocol, with implications for import and export industries. But one possible consequence has been largely overlooked, in spite of the gathering energy crisis: the trade in gas and electricity. Imported power via undersea interconnectors is the forgotten but fast-growing element of our electricity system. In 2019, 6.1 per cent of our electricity was imported. Undersea power interconnectors, which have been a feature of the UK electricity system since 1986 when the first one plugged

In times of crisis in the 20th century, voters called for politicians from opposing parties to put aside their differences and unite in a national government. Such is the collapse of the Conservative party we now must beg Tory politicians to stop fighting and unite in a Tory government. Martin Lewis has said that Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson should be able to agree on a package to cover the expected 70 per cent rise in the domestic energy cap in the autumn (with more to come in January).  ‘You’re all in the same party,’ he cried. ‘You should be able to work out some unifying policy, something

It has been a long time coming, given that shares and bonds have been falling for most of the year, but this morning there are the first signs of a slide in house prices. Don’t get too excited: the Halifax House Price Index fell by just 0.1 per cent month on month, and prices are still up 11.8 per cent year on year.  But it is an indication that things might finally be changing in a market which has seemed to defy logic ever since the arrival of Covid. Yes, the deepest recession in recorded history was accompanied by a boom in house prices. Even when interest rates began to

The Bank of England has warned that Britain will fall into a recession this year. Its Monetary Policy Report, released today, predicts that the economy will shrink from October, with the downturn lasting until the end of 2023. The Bank of England also hiked interest rates from 1.25 per cent to 1.75 per cent, the biggest rise for 27 years. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has never previously raised the base rate by 0.5 per cent in its 25 years of existence. Previously it has only upped rates in quarter-point stages (and there haven’t been many of those, especially in recent years). The rise will, of course, affect

That was quick. Less than 15 hours after pledging a robust reform of public sector pay, Liz Truss has performed a u-turn on plans to bring national pay bargaining to an end. It comes after criticism mounted that slashing pay for new frontline staff was not the most obvious way to handle an escalating cost-of-living crisis. In a sense, it’s a crime of poor timing rather than poor policy. National pay bargaining has long been questioned as a fair way to compensate staff on the government payroll. In part it’s due to the reasons laid out by Truss: there are obvious differences in the cost-of-living throughout the country, which might