Productivity

Tuesday

James Heale

Migration, the customs union & a £40bn black hole?

14 min listen

There are reports that the OBR will downgrade Britain’s productivity growth forecasts, increasing the size of the black hole facing the Chancellor at the end of the month. This continues the spate of bad news for the Chancellor on the economy – but can we trust the figures? James Heale and Michael Simmons join Patrick Gibbons to talk about what this means ahead of the budget, whether anger over the money wasted on asylum hotels can be linked to the cost-of-living crisis and what Rachel Reeves is doing in Saudi Arabia this week. Plus: is a debate over the customs union really what Britain wants right now? Produced by Patrick

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Why Britain stopped working

50 min listen

Welcome to a slightly new format for the Edition podcast! Each week we will be talking about the magazine – as per usual – but trying to give a little more insight into the process behind putting The Spectator bed each week. On the podcast this week: the cost of Britain’s mass worklessness. According to The Spectator’s calculations, had workforce participation stayed at the same rate as in 2019, the economy would be 1.7 per cent larger now and an end-of-year recession could have been avoided. As things stand, joblessness is coexisting with job vacancies in a way that should be economically impossible, writes Kate Andrews in the cover story. She joins the