Money

Farms will be devastated. The countryside will be ruined. And we will all be forced to eat weird food that will probably kill us. As the government tries to finalise a free trade deal with Australia, there are already reports of fierce rows over the future of agriculture played out against a backdrop of a angry backlash from the farming lobby.  It’s time for the government so face up to these critics. True, farming is not crucial to the future of the British economy, and neither, as it happens, is trade with Australia. But the principle is important – and if the UK doesn’t embrace free trade then leaving the EU

The ONS recorded a sharp recovery in economic growth in March. The Bank of England has already increased its forecast for the growth of the UK economy in 2021. Now comes more evidence of rapid growth. The quarterly CIPD/Adecco Labour Market Outlook, published today, shows a sharp rise in the number of organisations that are hiring extra staff or are expecting to do so over the next few months. The survey, which goes out to 1,000 employers in the private, public, and voluntary sectors, found that 36 per cent of employers are planning to increase staff levels over the next three months. Nine per cent said they are expecting to

National Work from Home Day might not be a calendar highlight but it has undoubtedly taken on increased significance during the pandemic. Remote work is du jour and the big question now is: will it become the new normal? Take headlines at face value and we’re living in both a Zoomshock dystopia and a commute-free Shangri-La. We’re selfishly contributing to the hollowing out of city centres, and we’re righteously boosting the local economy. The same ministers now pushing for hybrid working to become the default unless employers have good reason to forbid it were last summer warning absenteeism risked making people more ‘vulnerable’ to getting sacked. We should probably be

Two months ago The Spectator reported on what was keeping Rishi Sunak awake at night ahead of the Budget: an inflation resurgence that could damage Britain’s economic recovery as it comes out of the pandemic. He deliberately designed his March Budget with inflation in mind, trying to make the UK’s finances ‘Biden-proof’ if inflation or interest rates started to move, and the cost of servicing the country’s debt became remarkably more expensive. At the time, Sunak was a lone voice on the matter. His inflation fears put the decision to raise tax into perspective, but many remained critical of his rather cautious approach. Inflation seemed a strange focus as the conditions

New growth figures were released this morning show that the economy contracted 1.5 per cent in Q1 this year and remains 8.7 per cent smaller than it was in Q4 2019 (the last quarter not to be impacted by the pandemic). Alongside this update, the Office for National Statistics also released its latest set of monthly figures, which saw GDP rise by 2.1 per cent in March — the biggest boost since August last year — taking the economy to 5.9 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. That GDP fell by just 1.5 per cent overall once again illustrates the extent to which businesses have developed a resilience to lockdowns. The first

Queen’s Speech day is one of the set-pieces when the government gets to decide that morning’s headlines. Barring disaster, the stuff you brief to the media the day before the speech will be what leads that morning’s bulletins, and has the best chance of being the thing that punters remember about the speech – if they remember anything at all, since, of course, most people don’t pay any attention to political news. Anyway, the central fact here is that No. 10 chose to lead with skills today, a package of promises about how things will get better for the people who do not do A-levels then got to university for

Last week the Bank of England increased its forecast for economic growth in 2021 from 5 to 7.25 per cent. Now comes more evidence of an economic recovery that is gathering pace, in spite of many lockdown measures still being in place. A UK report on jobs compiled by KPMG and REC, which uses data from 400 recruitment firms, measured in April the sharpest new increase in vacancies since it began in 1997. Contrary to the claims by the Labour party and others that British workers are facing a future of increasingly short-term contracts, the rise was principally down to a rise in vacancies for permanent roles which were at

She handed the vaccine procurement process over to the European Union. She didn’t invest much in new production. And she allowed an American multinational to take control of a brilliant discovery by a small German biotech company. Angela Merkel, the out-going German Chancellor, has not had much success battling the Covid-19 crisis, and her handling of vaccines has been a catastrophe from start to finish. But she has finally got one thing right: she is defending the patents that protect the pharmaceutical industry. In the last week, president Biden has signalled that the United States is ready to back suspending patents on Covid vaccines. The president of the EU commission, Ursula

It’s been a good week for seeing the vaccine factor at work. We’ve had multiple real-world updates on the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness against new variants of Covid-19 (this bodes well for the UK, which was the first country in the world to use the vaccine to protect its most vulnerable residents). And today we’ve had a revised economic forecast from the Bank of England, suggesting the UK’s impressive vaccine rollout could translate into the strongest growth since records began in 1949. The Bank of England now predicts that the economy will expand by more than 7 per cent in 2021, up from its forecast of 5 per cent in February. Its