Economy

The cowboys must be licking their lips. Ed Miliband has come up with yet another green homes scheme to chuck public money at subsidised energy improvements. The Warm Homes Plan will allocate £15 billion to grants and low-cost loans for homeowners who want to upgrade their insulation, and fit heat pumps and solar panels. According to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, not only will it make our homes warmer, it will save homeowners £1,000 a year off their bills. Ed Miliband has come up with yet another green homes scheme to chuck public money at subsidised energy improvements Do our leaders never learn? We have had numerous such

Britain’s economy is standing still. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics show GDP grew by just 0.1 per cent in the three months to November. The numbers were dragged down by the construction sector, which saw a contraction of 1.1 per cent – its largest fall in nearly three years. GDP grew by just 0.1 per cent in the three months to November There were much better figures for the month of November alone though, which saw growth of 0.3 per cent following a fall of 0.1 per cent in October. That was thanks to services growth of 0.3 per cent and production growth of 1.1 per

The lexicon of Brexit has a new entry: the ‘Farage clause’. As part of Labour’s ‘reset’ talks with Brussels, EU negotiators have reportedly floated a termination provision that would require compensation if a future UK government walked away from a new deal designed to ease post-Brexit checks on food and agricultural trade. In plain English: if Britain signs up to reduce border friction now and then later blows the arrangement up, Brussels wants someone to pay the bill for putting the border back together again. Like lots of things involving Britain and the EU, however, this ‘Farage clause’ is not what it looks like. It isn’t really about the Reform UK leader. It’s

The worst forecasting error in British government history may be unfolding as we speak. While much attention is given to grand projects, such as HS2, which end up costing tens of billions of pounds more than they were supposed to, these at least have a start and finish date – and something tangible emerges at the end. The same can’t be said for forecasting errors involving even more complex, politically contentious issues – such as what migration might actually be costing Britain. When the full accounting is done, the fiscal impact of migration may well prove to be one of the biggest misestimates of all The notoriously wobbly Covid epidemiological

Of all the heavyweight books I’ve ever been asked to review, one that most influenced my view of how the world works was Why Nations Fail (2012) by two American academics, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Their theory, drawn from a broad sweep of history, is that all state regimes fit patterns that are either ‘extractive’ or ‘inclusive’. To be inclusive is to be egalitarian in access to resources and rewards, and responsive to the will of the people. To be extractive is to rule despotically in the interest of corrupt elites, often profiting from ruthless extraction of natural resources. Inclusive economies are prone to occasional crisis but capable

Rachel Reeves enters 2026 more unpopular than she has ever been before. YouGov polling from December has 71 per cent of Britons saying they have an unfavourable opinion of Britain’s first female chancellor. Reeves was meant to be a competent economist who could restore credibility to the Treasury and, in her words, ‘revive economic growth’. How’s that going? Reeve’s tenure in No. 11 has so far been more slapstick than good governance. Her CV unravelled under scrutiny; she broke manifesto commitments; she unveiled an appalling Budget, vowed never to repeat it, and then promptly did. Am I judging her too harshly? Am I being a misogynist? Reeves would probably say

Forecasting is a mug’s game, as the Bank of England governor Mervyn King once said. But I’ll sketch a few trends for 2026 nevertheless, starting on a positive note in the stock market before moving on to some of the many choices on an à la carte menu of gloom. The FTSE 100 index will have ended 2025 almost 20 per cent higher than it started – slightly better than the US S&P 500 index – and the consensus of fund managers is that (having closed for Christmas at 9,870) it will carry on upwards, perhaps even towards 11,000. Why? In short because many UK blue-chips in traditional sectors such