Money

Expanding London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) may be a bad policy, a regressive tax which will impact on people of modest means while leaving the not-very-much-less-polluting cars of the wealthy untouched. But that doesn’t mean the High Court is wrong to reject the case brought by Conservative councils against the scheme. On the contrary, anyone who values democracy should be pleased that Ulez has been thrown back into the political arena, where it belongs. It is alarming the way that so many matters of public policy now end up being dragged through the courts under the judicial review process. How we impose motorist taxes, whether we build rail lines, runways

The NatWest saga is fast becoming a textbook example of what some consider to be an ‘establishment’ attack on minority (and often right-leaning) viewpoints. The fast U-turn from the NatWest board which now sees Dame Alison Rose out of a job (Mr Steerpike has the details here) confirms that this was not a nuanced or two-sided debate that the bank originally tried to make it out to be. It’s no surprise, then, that the government has been fairly robust in its growing condemnation of NatWest’s actions. No. 10 insisted last night that it had serious concerns about the bank’s actions, and ministers have been saying it was ‘right’ for Rose to

Not for the first time in his colourful life, the perennial rebel Nigel Farage has the establishment on the run. This time it is the financial establishment and its media allies. The former Ukip leader has already garnered apologies over conduct or coverage from NatWest, which owns Coutts bank, the high-profile podcaster and former BBC man Jon Sopel, the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack and the chief executive of BBC News Deborah Turness. Farage is currently circling NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose in the manner of a hungry shark who has scented blood in the water. Not his, but hers. Dame Alison appears to be Farage’s prime suspect in

It will trash the brand. It will alienate its core users. And relaunching and rebranding a failing business almost never works. As Elon Musk drops the Twitter blue bird and swaps it for an X, we will hear plenty of arguments about why the world’s second richest man has made another critical commercial mistake. In fairness, some of them have a point. Yet Musk’s critics are making a mistake by missing the real purpose of the new name. X only exists to kill off Twitter. The rebrand was announced in a typically haphazard way. As of today, Twitter will be known simply as X. It was Musk’s boldest move yet

Earlier in the week, the stock market responded very positively to news that inflation had come out a little lower than expected (even though, at 7.9 per cent, it is still far ahead of where most forecasters, from the vantage point of the beginning of 2023, would have expected it to be by now). Markets have been left largely unmoved, however, by two pieces of positive news this morning: lower than expected public borrowing in June, and higher retail sales, also in June.  The volume of sales was up 0.7 per cent in June compared with May. While that was, in part, due to the extra bank holiday in May, which

Today and tomorrow’s strike by NHS consultants underlines how industrial action has become the preserve of the well-paid. The consultants appealing for public sympathy were, according to NHS figures, paid a mean basic salary of more than £97,000 in the year to March. On top of this they received mean overtime and bonus payments of close to £30,000, bringing their total mean earnings to more than £127,000. Yet not all of these were working full-time. The mean basic salary for full-time staff was more than £105,000. And of course, on top of this they have been offered a pay rise of 6 per cent – which they have rejected. The

Nigel Farage has been cancelled by his bank because their reputation risk committee doesn’t approve of his political views and has branded him a ‘chancer’ and ‘grifter’. This matters to him because, having been cancelled by one bank, it is almost impossible to get an account with another – you are obliged upon opening a new account to reveal if you have ever been turned down or thrown out of a bank before.  Reputation risk has become all the rage in recent years as companies, governments and individuals scramble to protect themselves from the fate suffered by trial by media and powerful regulators. PR firms and management consultancies charge high fees to

It’s been more than two days since Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that Labour would keep the two-child benefit cap, yet the party seems no closer to finding resolution on the issue. The pushback within the party has been intense, with plenty of people (including, reportedly, members of the shadow cabinet) asking how the opposition leader can keep a benefits cap that he once railed against. But Starmer isn’t budging. Speaking on a conference stage with former prime minister Tony Blair this evening, Starmer insisted this wasn’t an issue of changing hearts, but rather a changing set of circumstances. Speaking about spending commitments more generally, Starmer noted that:

I have been playing a game with myself recently: asking just what would it take for me to vote Labour at the next election? The gossip out of No. 10 has answered it for me: if, as rumoured, the Prime Minister toys with the idea of abolishing inheritance tax – at a time when the government has jacked up tax for many millions of workers through fiscal drag and lowering the 45 pence tax threshold – then suddenly Keir Starmer is going to look a relatively attractive option. Yes, I really would rather have a PM who thinks a woman can have a penis, than I would a party that

That Rishi Sunak chose to announce his decision to give public sector workers a 5 to 7 per cent pay rise with a press conference tells you everything you need to know. There is no requirement for him to be anywhere near a pay announcement: indeed, it was chief secretary to the Treasury John Glen who made the statement in the Commons. But Sunak clearly thinks there is a big political win here for him in dealing with the ongoing strikes. Sunak confirmed in his opening statement that ‘we are accepting the headline recommendations of the Pay Review bodies in full but we will not fund them by borrowing more,

Mortgage costs have reached a 15-year high today, with the average two-year fixed deal hitting 6.66 per cent – the highest level since the summer of the 2008 financial crash. But today’s mortgage news is being pegged to far more recent history, as average deals just topped their peak from last autumn, when Liz Truss’s mini-Budget sent interest rate expectations soaring, and mortgage offers along with them. Truss’s premiership came to an end because so many numbers were spiralling upward, including the cost of government borrowing, mortgage repayments, and the number of Tory MPs who – amid all the chaos – were simply not going to take instructions from her

Anyone fancy having a flutter with 5 per cent of their pension fund on unlisted start-ups? It is not necessarily a bad idea – it is only 5 per cent, after all. As part of a portfolio which is balanced by more bread and butter investments it need not be reckless. At best, you might just pick a future Microsoft or Google – and at worst, well, the other 95 per cent of your investments could smother your losses. But it seems that we are not really going to have the choice – at least not those of us who have defined contribution pension funds. The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, used

Are house prices falling? The Halifax house price index, published today, is finally showing a significant year on year fall: average prices are 2.6 per cent down in the 12 months to June. This is the biggest annual fall shown by the index in 12 years. But it is still hard to depict what is happening in the housing market as a bloodbath. The finer print shows that prices are actually up over the last quarter, by 0.3 per cent – with the 12 monthly figure pulled down by what happened by last autumn. As has happens so often in the housing market, predictions of deep gloom (or deep joy, if you

Bridget Phillipson was appointed Labour’s shadow education secretary in November 2021. After 18 months in the role, she has now finally unveiled Labour’s ambitious new idea to help tackle the teacher retention and recruitment crisis: use the tax raid on private school fees to fund a £2,400 welcome bonus to every teacher who has completed their two years of training. This is a classic case of copying someone’s homework, except – no surprises – it wasn’t very good the first time round. The Conservatives have already increased the starting salaries of newly-qualified teachers to £30,000. Teaching unions have already overwhelmingly voted to reject a one-off payment. The government has already tried giving bonuses to maths teachers,

The Bank of England was made independent to take monetary policy away from flighty politicians who are slaves to expediency and fashionable sound bites. Instead, central bankers imbued with objectivity, prudence and, most of all, economic expertise would be in charge. But when it comes to climate change and net zero, the Bank has shown that poor judgment is certainly not exclusive to elected officials. Only a month ago, Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England was touting net zero as a growth elixir. ‘The transition to net zero is a major structural change that needs substantial investment and can over quite a prolonged transition period help to raise

Thames Water appears to be in trouble. The company, which has billions in debt, is in talks with the Treasury about a possible bailout. We may soon be adding the firm, which serves one in four Brits, to the list of victims of rising interest rates. ‘Victim,’ in this case, is perhaps the wrong word. It’s hard to feel sorry for a company that has been relying on ultra-low rates to keep itself afloat, racking up £14 billion worth of debt and now severely struggling to service it. Financial mismanagement is just one of a series of accusations levelled against the company. Its problems have been in the spotlight for years, especially