All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Keir Starmer really padded out his Budget response speech with pre-prepared lines today, to the extent that it was not quite clear what the Labour attack actually is. It’s always the case that replying to the chancellor the moment he finishes speaking is difficult. Occasionally opposition leaders are able to tease out a clear response
The fourth and final debate of the SNP leadership contest aired from Edinburgh last night with a live studio audience ready to pounce on the contenders. So how did the candidates fare in the final debate of the contest, and who came out on top? While Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan are now
It says a lot for the SNP’s commitment to transparency that even its leading lights don’t trust its electoral processes. Ash Regan and Kate Forbes have today written to the party’s chief executive Peter Murrell asking for information about the party’s membership and the leadership ballot. Regan, in a letter which was sent with the
In the Budget we heard plenty about welfare reform and how Conservatives believe in hard work. But in the small print, the OBR reveals it expects just 10,000 to go back to employment because of tighter conditionality on benefits: a tiny sliver of the 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits. A greater number – 75,000 –
The biggest surprise from today’s Budget was not an announcement, but the forecasts that gave Jeremy Hunt room for manoeuvre. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised its forecasts for economic growth and inflation towards the upside. The OBR no longer expects the UK to enter into a technical recession (two consecutive quarters of negative
About halfway through his Budget speech, Jeremy Hunt was making a joke about returning from retirement on the backbenches in his fifties to a new career in finance. ‘How’s it going?’ heckled one opposition MP. The Commons erupted into laughter. ‘It’s going well, thank you!’ Hunt replied merrily. The speech itself did go smoothly: Tory
When your largest single shareholder decides that enough is enough, that it is no longer prepared to throw good money after bad to prop up your finances, you really do have a problem. And that is exactly what has happened to Credit Suisse this morning. The Saudi National Bank, which owns a 10 per cent share
Prime Minister’s Questions was unusually feisty for a pre-Budget session. It covered the two big political rows of the week on the Illegal Migration Bill and Gary Lineker, both of which elicited a tribal response from both Conservative and Labour benches. The session started with a particularly angry question from Labour’s Jess Phillips about a tweet
If you’ve spent any time on Twitter over the past few years you will almost certainly have met the ‘woke toddler’. This is where progressive parents share the super cute and achingly right-on insights of their tiny charges. Over time, potentially genuine anecdotes have given way to up-front political commentary. A classic of the kind
Jeremy Hunt is today unveiling his first Budget. He has told the Commons that his Budget will help deliver on Rishi Sunak’s five priorities that the Prime Minister set out in January: namely halving inflation, reducing the national debt and increasing growth. Hunt has reprised much of his Bloomberg speech from January with championing the
As Gary Lineker resumes his duties as the BBC’s highest-paid employee, it is worth appreciating that one of the Corporation’s greatest strengths is that its own journalists are willing and able to criticise the organisation in their coverage without professional repercussions. The broadcaster’s many critics should recognise this self-flagellation for what it is: a vital
36 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Joe Weisenthal, co-host of the Odd Lots podcast at Bloomberg. On the podcast, Joe talks about the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the moral hazard of state intervention. How gloomy should people be?
The United States and Russia are blaming each other for an incident which led to an American drone crashing into the Black Sea. Yesterday morning, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet collided with a US MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone. The US claimed that Russian aircraft struck the drone’s propellors, so US forces had to bring the
Jeremy Hunt’s most important Budget announcement today won’t be something that’ll take effect in the next few hours or weeks. What Tory MPs are looking for above everything else is a commitment to reducing the tax burden and to the Conservative party going into the next election as a low-tax party. They have largely accepted
The more junior doctors have tried to justify their three-day withdrawal of labour over the past week, the more damage, or so it seems to me, they have done to their cause – whatever that cause may be. On the final day of their strike – in pursuit of a 35 per cent pay rise
Gary Lineker is back in his job as presenter of Match of the Day. He’s also back on Twitter commenting on the activities of Tory MPs. The BBC host has hit out at Tory MP Jonathan Gullis, who accused Lineker of being a member of the ‘Twitterati’. Gullis also said of Lineker: ‘Those are the
They say Spring is a magical time to visit Paris but perhaps not this year. It’s not so much love that is in the air of the French capital but the stench from 7,000 tons of uncollected rubbish. The city’s refuse collectors have been on strike as part of the nationwide protests against the government’s
Jeremy Hunt got the job as Chancellor because he is very different from his predecessor. If Kwasi Kwarteng was rash and unpredictable, Hunt is calm and dependable, if a little dull. Those characteristics will be reflected in Hunt’s Budget, which he will unveil in the Commons this afternoon at 12.30pm. There are unlikely to be
Here we go again. It’s term time but millions of kids across the country are being denied school as the National Education Union (NEU) has called its members out on strike once more. Forget the fact that children have already had three years of their education disrupted by Covid. Ignore the minor issue of school
Rishi Sunak is in a hurry to fulfil his ‘five priorities’, especially on small boats. He’s in a hurry because there isn’t much time before the public use the general election to judge how well the Tories are doing. So legislation that promises to ‘stop the boats’ is moving through parliament swiftly. Most people agree
During Boris Johnson’s tenure, No 10. Downing Street seemed to anthropomorphise into being political actors itself. From partygate to wallpapergate, Britain’s most famous address frequently featured in the headlines amid a myriad of Brexit and Covid dramas. So perhaps it is no surprise then that Rishi Sunak has already begun putting his stamp on the
When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister last October, Joe Biden phoned him to reaffirm the ‘special relationship’. But when the two leaders appeared at a press conference last night to launch the Aukus pact with Australia, Sunak probably wished Biden hadn’t been so chummy. Biden seems to have given the Red Wall, and Sunak’s political opponents, plenty to chew
It is not the first time Fiona Bruce has been slated on social media. She has long been accused of being a Tory sympathiser and denounced for impartiality when it comes to party politics. She has also been accused, since Dimbleby’s departure, of being a dreadful chair of Question Time. I am genuinely impartial when it
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After a tumultuous two weeks, voting is now open for the SNP leadership elections until 27 March. But are members any closer to knowing who they’ll vote for? The deputy first minister of the SNP, John Swinney has backed Humza Yousaf to be SNP leader. What could be seen as an influential endorsement by some, can also
If you believe in the United Kingdom, it’s hard not to revel in the bitter infighting occasioned by the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon. Senior SNP ministers are monstering one another on TV, trashing their government’s record and talking about sacking their rivals if they win. After 16 years of iron discipline, which helped them
The SNP establishment – the Sturgeonites – are trying to give the SNP membership an offer they can’t refuse. Swallow your doubts and just vote as you are told: that is, for Humza Yousaf. If you don’t, beware the consequences: a split in the party, the collapse of the Green coalition, the departure of key
What is it about March? October, the month of the 1929 Wall Street crash and the crash of 1987, is often cited as the most dangerous for investors. Yet in the past three crashes or bear markets it has been March which saw the worst. The FTSE bottomed out in March 2003, shortly before the
10 min listen
MPs voted through the second reading of the Illegal Migration bill last night with a 62-vote majority. There was a handful of Tory MPs that abstained from voting but importantly, despite threats of a rebellion, no Conservative MPs voted against it. Seen as an election-winning issue, is this a rare sign of unity from the
Humza Yousaf, the frontrunner in the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon, says Scotland could ditch the monarchy if it leaves the UK. ‘I’ve been very clear, I’m a republican…Let’s absolutely, within the first five years (of independence), consider whether or not we should move away from having a monarchy into an elected head of state,’ he
Is the UK’s labour market cooling down? While unemployment remains unchanged at 3.7 per cent, according to today’s update from the Office for National Statistics, the number of job vacancies ‘fell on the quarter for the eighth consecutive period’, down 51,000. The overall number of vacancies, however, still remains above a million. But the biggest indicator things
How times change: seven months ago we were eagerly awaiting the Tiggerish Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s fiscal event, replete with much boosterish briefing about Truss’s tax-cutting zeal. Now we await to see what their respective successors will unveil in one of the least anticipated Budgets of modern times. ‘Under promise and over deliver’ is
Voting for the next SNP leader has begun. But who will emerge as the winner is far from clear. Nearly all of the polling to date has been of the general public. Among them, Kate Forbes, Scotland’s finance secretary – whose candidacy got into hot water when she revealed she would have voted against the
America must get tough against the Mexican drug cartels, former US Attorney General, William Barr, declared earlier this month. Likening them to Isis, he backed a joint resolution from two Republican senators, giving the US president authority to deploy the military against the cartels in Mexico. Failure to do so would, he warned, allow the cartels to