Economy

Between news bulletins of the Manchester synagogue attack last week, I popped into my local Co-op for some groceries. When the public address system said something indistinct about ‘solidarity’, I paused to listen: it was an advert for Sun & Stone lager, produced in Scotland in collaboration with Taybeh, a Palestinian microbrewery, and with a slice of any profits going to the Disaster Emergency Committee’s Gaza appeal. The Co-op is a benign beacon of alternative capitalism, owned by its members and valued by millions of customers. At their annual meeting in June, those members voted to ‘cease all trading with Israel’, as the Co-op has also done with the likes

It already faced tariffs in the United States, and it has been struggling to cope with some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world. Now what remains of the British steel industry faces what could well be a terminal blow. The European Union is about to impose tariffs of 50 per cent on steel imported from the UK. Labour ministers will no doubt start cobbling together rescue packages, and trying to devise a new strategy to rescue the industry. But perhaps it would be best just to be honest – and let the industry die.  The EU has set out plans to cut the amount of steel imported

When Linden Kemkaran (formerly of The Spectator) was elected leader of Kent County Council, she presented herself as the poster-child for Reform in power. ‘The electorate,’ she said in June, ‘are looking to judge whether they can put their trust in a Reform government at the next election.’ Her administration set up ‘Dolge’, a ‘department of local government efficiency’, modelled on Elon Musk’s original, and instructed it to cut wasteful spending and find cash-saving efficiencies. After just five months, however, its efforts appear to have faltered. The council is already ‘down to the bare bones’, Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care in Kent, told the Financial Times yesterday. Reform has

The message the Tories want you to leave their conference with is that they are the party of prudence. The party of fiscal responsibility who will make the first ‘serious down payments’ on the size of the state, as shadow chancellor Mel Stride explained at a Spectator drinks reception last night. Today, he will set out his plan to achieve that. Stride will ‘recommit’ his party to ‘fiscal prudence’ by announcing £47 billion in savings for the public purse. Those measures include: Welfare reforms that will include stopping claims from people with ‘low level mental health problems’ and foreigners and reversing any lifting of the two-child benefit cap to bring

We will wage the war in Ukraine for longer and make you pay more for it. That was the message the Kremlin sent its subjects following the Russian government’s presentation of next year’s budget and the accompanying economic outlook. The budget, which reached parliament for rubber-stamping on Monday, outlines the Kremlin’s vision ahead of the war enterring its fifth year next February: the war will continue at the expense of the economy and people’s incomes. Higher taxes are expected to keep the budget deficit at 1.6 per cent of GDP next year. For three years, rising fiscal spending stimulated both economic growth and climbing incomes. The downside of this amphetamine-fuelled

He wasn’t able to announce the £300 off household energy bills that was promised during the election campaign. Nor could he unveil any massive new solar farms or wind turbines. Still, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband did have one message to cheer the party faithful in his conference speech today: he is going to ban shale oil and gas for all time. ‘Let’s ban fracking and send the frackers packing,’ he thundered. But can Miliband really do that and outlaw fracking forever? Only a fool would pretend that he can. Right now, there is a moratorium on extracting shale oil and gas in the UK, which could,

Discussion of Donald Trump’s peace proposal for Gaza revolves around one question: who is for it and who is against it? Israel is for it, though mostly because it is backed into a corner and has no choice. The Arab states are for it, which is to be expected since they wrote it. The European Union is for it, which is to be expected since the Arabs are for it. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis are against it, and Hamas is expected to be too. I don’t know what the UK government has said and, in concert with the rest of the world, I don’t really care. This is

Security, security, security was the message from Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she addressed the Labour party today in Liverpool. A Labour government, she said, would stand for a British economy first. An economy that would put the British worker above all else. That, Reeves proclaimed, was the key difference between a Labour government and a Tory one. In fact, the line ‘don’t let anyone tell you there is no difference between a Labour government and a Conservative government’ was delivered so many times that by the fifth or sixth iteration it received only limp applause. The Conservatives were the main target of Reeves’s speech; they mismanaged the economy and allowed

Donald Trump’s political and legal assault on the Federal Reserve has provoked concern and indignation from the defenders of central banks’ operational independence. Amid the sound and fury, some simple points are being forgotten. Whether or not this distracts central bankers from their main goal of controlling inflation is a matter of debate First, public trust and confidence in central banks is critical if banks are to be operationally independent. That trust was shaken when many central banks lost control of inflation in 2021, erroneously seeing it as ‘transitory’. In the inquest that followed, many central bankers blamed this mistake squarely on their forecasting models. Clearly models had much to answer

Despite having a £30 billion fiscal hole to fill Rachel Reeves might be about to splash the cash. If reports are to be believed, in the coming weeks the lifting of the two-child benefit cap will be announced. The cost is £3bn every year.  The cap was introduced under George Osborne to stop families claiming the child element of UC for three or more children. A committee of ministers and officials are due to make a series of recommendations to tackle child poverty before the November Budget, and it’s now widely expected that this will include scrapping the cap.  But will lifting it do anything to improve child poverty? There