All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
How will and how should the Bank of England, and the Treasury, react to this morning’s continued fall in the value of the pound? I’ve been talking to former Bank of England executives and ex-Treasury officials, who make clear that the stakes are incredibly high and that reassuring markets will not be easy. This further
We all needed a laugh, what with the pound tanking and inflation running away, my old pal Kwasi delivering a Budget, probably for a bet, like Milton Friedman’s last cheese-dream, and the threat of nuclear annihilation starting to seem like a welcome turn up for the books. Said laugh has just been obligingly provided by
After a weekend where the markets digested the Kwasi Kwarteng plan for growth, the pound hit $1.03 in early trading in Asia – the lowest rate since the dollar was invented in 1792. The fall was shortlived – it later rebounded to $1.07 – but the fact that it touched such a low at all has
The wine was flowing last night at Labour conference as delegates toasted the fall of Boris Johnson. And before Mr S staggered off to Dawn Butler’s Jamaica night – where ‘Beijing Barry’ Gardiner enlivened the crowd with his dancing on the DJ decks – it was time to go behind enemy lines at the New
Here in Liverpool, at the start of Labour conference, politics feels more familiar than it has for many years, and also quite confusing and not wholly predictable. And the cause, mostly, is Friday’s budget, which very deliberately delivered the bulk of additional income from tax cuts to those on highest earnings. This feels in many
Keir Starmer is having a pretty good Labour conference so far. His decision to kick off the annual meet with a rendition of ‘God Save the King’ went off without hitch. There are few tricky motions or crunch votes heading to the conference floor. A new ComRes poll says the party is on course to
Party conferences offer oppositions space to set out their stall and get far more attention than any other time in the political year. But this year’s Labour conference will see the party being much more reactive than it might have hoped, given this is supposed to be the point where Keir Starmer sets out his
Despite its leading lights having spent more than a decade spent promising us they will bring down immigration we can now say for sure that Conservative party is not going to do that. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are preparing to expand the number of economic sectors to be declared as suffering from labour shortages
As Italians prepare to vote in today’s general election, the European Union has issued a warning – making clear that it stands ready to act. Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, is widely expected to become prime minister at the head of a right-wing coalition. At an event in Princeton University, Ursula
Keir Starmer – Labour would reintroduce 45p tax rate The battle lines for the next election are being drawn. Friday’s ‘mini-Budget’ turned out to be a major event in its own right, with a raft of measures aimed unashamedly at whirring the UK’s economy back to life. The statement has also put a new spring
Labour are very keen these days to be seen as the natural party of government. And it’s in that spirit that Sir Keir and his aides have hit upon a brilliant wheeze: singing the national anthem on the first morning of their annual Party conference. It’s intended to mark the death of Her Majesty and
One of the reasons members of Liz Truss’s team remain upbeat despite the onslaught of criticism towards government’s tax-cutting budget is that they think it pushes Labour into uncomfortable territory. Will Keir Starmer respond to a Tory programme of mass tax cuts with tax rises? This morning, he offered a partial answer. Starmer repeatedly accused
What should judges do with potentially dangerous prisoners waiting for their trial when the barristers’ strike means their cases cannot be heard within a reasonable time? Since April criminal barristers have been involved in a dispute with the government over fees. In a nutshell their case – perhaps I should say ‘our’ case since I
There is a modern superstition that for every terrible experience suffered there is an equal and opposite psychological technique that, like an antibiotic in a case of infection, can overcome or dissolve away the distress it caused or continues to cause. This superstition is not only false and shallow but demeaning and even insulting. It
The rain and the cold in Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, did not deter them. Neither did the floods that ravaged their homes. The families of Balochistan’s missing had been protesting for days outside the provincial government’s headquarters. On August 25, one of the protestors, Seema Baloch, the sister of Shabbir
It’s day one of Labour conference and already there’s demands for Sir Keir Starmer to quit. With his party well ahead in the polls, you might have thought that would buy the Labour leader some respite. Not a bit of it, for over at The World Transformed festival – the breakaway Corbynite tribute act –
Just in case there’s an apocalypse, the super-rich are buying bunkers. Big bunkers. Bunkers with swimming pools, indoor gardens, cinemas, and, in the case of Peter Thiel’s proposed New Zealand hideout, a meditation room — a vital amenity in the advent of a nuclear war. Ever since the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin threatening to
Lost amid much of the commentary on Kwasi Kwarteng’s income tax and stamp duty cuts is that they will not apply to Scotland. Income tax is largely devolved to Holyrood, as is stamp duty, or land and buildings transaction tax as it is now known north of the border. The Barnett formula, the fiscal mechanism
Leicester, the city where I was born, appears to be a melting pot of different cultures. Until recent weeks, its model of multiculturalism seemed to work well. Leicester is a city where the Diwali and Eid lights shine as brightly as the Christmas ones. Hindus, Muslims and Christians live side by side. Events of this
Kwarteng’s £45 billion tax cuts will have given Nicola Sturgeon a headache. She has power over income tax and has indicated that she won’t replicate his cuts (especially for the best paid). Which means that Scots could end up paying hundreds of pounds more in income tax next year. Already, there is talk about Scottish
Are Britain and France at the dawn of a new Entente Cordiale? It’s reported that France will be the destination for the first state visit of King Charles, and in New York this week Liz Truss and Emmanuel Macron took a break from the UN General Assembly for 30 minutes of ‘constructive’ talks. There are
New Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s first ‘fiscal event’ was always going to be quite provocative and exciting. But in the end it went quite a lot further than expected. Far from pulling back when faced with the practicalities of being in office, Truss’s new administration did everything it had signalled, controversial or not, then threw in
Why exactly is it that the journalists and politicians who claim to be most proud of multicultural, multiethnic Britain seem to be the ones most determined to tear it apart? To read the newspapers, you might sometimes think a deep cover cell of white separatists is secretly running the show. Why else would left wing
Massive tax cuts. A huge budget deficit. And a wild dash for growth, stoking a short-lived boom, before it all ends in a spectacular crash. As the new government unveiled the widest ranging tax cuts since the 1980s, along with a huge increase in the budget deficit, City commentators and the wiser sort of newspaper
I was at an end-of-summer party for the Centre for Social Justice last night, with some politicians and others interested in the welfare-to-work agenda. The reaction to the budget was mixed. The various donors there were stunned to have been given the biggest tax cut of their lives – the biggest since Nigel Lawson cut
How are markets responding to Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget? A sharp fall in the pound today has plenty of critics arguing that the tax-slashing announcements have already proved a failure. Sterling fell this afternoon to $1.09, bringing the currency to another 37-year low against the dollar. This is more than a 3 per cent dip in
News that Cambridge University is to commission an art installation to adorn one of its ancient buildings rarely warrants holding the front page. But when higher education is in sway to the cult of decolonisation, we know this will be no ordinary sculpture. Forget beauty, skill or originality. This new installation is not a celebration
The left needs to shake off its ‘bourgeois environmentalism’. It needs to distance itself from the ‘bourgeois environmental lobby’ and make the case for fracking and the building of new nuclear power stations. Who do you think said this? Some contrarian commentator? A right-winger irritated by eco-loons? Nope, it was Gary Smith, the general secretary
The veteran comedian Jack Dee has been applauded and condemned for announcing that he is cancelling his PayPal account. As he tweeted yesterday: ‘Big Tech companies that feel they can bully people for questioning mainstream groupthink don’t deserve anyone’s business.’ PayPal has been in the news for cancelling the account of the Free Speech Union,
As if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had not already presented quite enough dilemmas for other countries, suddenly there is another one. How sympathetic a reception should Russian men trying to avoid call-up in their home country be granted abroad, and specifically in the UK? This quandary has arisen following Vladimir Putin’s announcement of what he
I used to write about bond markets, so I speak with some authority when I say this: bonds are boring. Really, most normal people find talk of gilts and yields extremely tedious. Likewise, terms like debt and deficit are off-puttingly technical and easy to mix up. Basically, the public finances are hard to get excited
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Kwasi Kwarteng has today announced what has been dubbed as his mini-Budget, but looking at the scale of the package it is far from small. The Coffee House Shots team take us through what has been revealed. Who are the winners and who are the losers? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and
Levelling Up secretary Simon Clarke described today’s fiscal event as a ‘game changer’ for Britain’s economy. Was he right? The announcement from Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was not so much an ‘event’ as a major Budget, which ushered in £45 billion worth of tax cuts – the ‘biggest tax cutting event since 1972’, according to the