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Is Jeremy Corbyn really out to help the poor – or just to entice the middle classes into his big socialist tent? I ask because the more you examine the manifesto he keeps waving before the television cameras, the more it seems to be designed around giving benefits to the better-off. These won’t come without cost, of course – the better-off will also be paying for the benefits which Corbyn is dangling before their eyes, in the form of higher income taxes, and possibly new wealth taxes, too. But for the moment, it seems to be the potential handouts which are making Labour headlines rather than the prospect of higher

From Brexit and Grexit to Trump and Scottish (near) independence, the way we think about our place in the world is changing. In the UK and further afield these issues have shone a light on the fact that we live in a global, multicultural melting pot – with ties to friends, family and colleagues around the planet. The way we manage our money is changing, too. Regulation, rebuilding trust, teenage hackers and woefully outdated technology have kept our favourite high street banks busy recently. You probably haven’t ditched your current account yet or tried out a new alternative like Starling or Atom Bank, but you might soon. After no new

Inflation is rising. Real wages are stagnant, and GDP is being revised downwards, putting us down there with the likes of Italy. If Theresa May had a script for the final fortnight of the election campaign it probably didn’t include figures like those. Today’s revision of the quarterly GDP number, down to a sluggish-looking 0.2 percent, from the initial 0.3 percent, will no doubt be seized upon by critics of the government, and by the increasingly battle-weary battalions of hardcore Remainers, as evidence that the wheels are finally coming off the economy, and the impact of a ‘hard Tory Brexit’ is finally being felt. In fact, however, it tells us

Today was not a day that Theresa May will want to repeat anytime soon. In the morning, she had to U-turn on one of the centrepieces of her election manifesto and in the afternoon, she faced the most difficult interview she has had as Prime Minister. Theresa May never really got onto the front foot in her half-hour interview with Andrew Neil. She spent the first ten minutes of the interview claiming that the principles behind the Tories’ social care policy hadn’t changed, while Andrew Neil hammered the point that something has: there is now a cap whereas the manifesto had explicitly rejected one. May was also uncomfortable on the

The Prime Minister says there is no such thing as ‘Mayism’, only ‘good, solid Conservatism’. Fine. But let’s examine just how ‘good’ and ‘Conservative’ her party’s new policy on social care is, unveiled earlier today. The Tory manifesto says, in effect, that people who need care in old age will have to pay for every penny of it – no matter how big the costs – if they have more than £100,000 in assets, which will be protected. Payment can be deferred until after death, but there’s no escaping it. If you have a home worth, say, £216,000 (the national average), own it outright, and need to be looked after for a long

Another day, another tax rise. So far in this campaign, the Labour party has rolled out one hit or another on the wealthy and big business just about every morning. The City is getting a Robin Hood tax on every financial transaction. Companies are getting a one-third increase in corporation tax. Anyone on more than £80,000 will see their income tax go up, and a new levy in high-earners will whack any business paying a star performer more than £330,000. They haven’t slapped a 50pc VAT rate on Range Rovers and Marc Jacobs crocodile handbags – but heck, it is still only Tuesday and there are still three more weeks

Jeremy Corbyn wants to put up income tax only for people who earn more than £80,000 a year, he says. Anyone below that figure is safe. This reminds me of John Smith’s ‘shadow Budget’ in the 1992 general election. Smith said that the top rate of income tax would rise to 50 per cent for everyone earning more than £36,375 a year (which would be just under £72,000 today). Most people earned much less than the sum chosen, but voters decided they did not like such a clear intention to damage the higher earnings they hoped they might one day achieve. The shadow Budget was said to have lost Labour

Nothing better sums up middle-class millennials’ sense of entitlement than their demand that they be paid for interning. ‘Paid internships now!’ has become the rallying cry of young media people and the Twitterati and now the Labour Party, too. Its throwback manifesto, leaked this week, promises to ‘ban unpaid internships’, on the basis that ‘it’s not fair for some to get a leg up when others can’t afford to’. Self-regarding youths will cheer this, as will their sad-eyed supporters in the press, but the rest of us should raise a collective eyebrow. There are many grating things about the call for paid internships. Here are just three of them. First,

Labour is meeting today to finalise its manifesto. The only sticking point? A draft manifesto has already been leaked. The party’s plans to woo voters are splashed across the Daily Telegraph and the Mirror. They’ve also been leaked to the BBC. Make no mistake: this is a huge embarrassment for the party and does nothing to dispel the Tory attack line that Labour would be at the forefront of a coalition of chaos if it wins come June 9th. After all, if it can’t get its manifesto launch right, how can Labour be trusted to govern? So what does the manifesto say? There are few surprises. But for Corbyn’s supporters,