Matthew Lynn

Our growth rate has been miserable. We have not invested enough. And over thirteen years the Conservatives have cut spending too much, damaged our trading relationships with our major neighbours, and made a mess of the tax system. These were Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's major criticism of Tory economics today in a speech in which he unveiled his latest plans for the economy.  He summed it all up with one damning statistic. We will, he argued, soon be poorer than Poland. Poland! But hold on. Why does Sir Keir imagine the British have some God-given right to be richer than the Poles? And why doesn’t he take a moment to reflect on the policies that have made Poland so successful – because if he were in Warsaw he would oppose all of them.

One of the major exchanges has gone spectacularly bust. Billions of investor’s money has been lost. There have been allegations of widespread fraud, and one of the biggest corporate trials in modern history is set to dominate the business pages over the rest of the year. The collapse of the FTX, and the arrest of its high-profile founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was meant to finish off bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies. And yet, this year digital money is staging a dramatic revival – and making fools of its critics all over again.  When FTX went down, there was no shortage of people telling us, with ill-disguised glee, that bitcoin was finished.

We are not leading the world in deregulation, or in creating new ‘green industries’. We certainly don't lead in tax-cutting, or innovation, or technology. Still, there is one respect in which the British economy can claim to be ahead of everyone else. Rising prices. When the world is caught up in an inflationary spiral, the UK always seems to suffer more than anyone else – and that is turning out to be just as true in the 2020s as it was in the 1970s and 1980s.  When the inflation date was released today, it did at least record a modest fall. The rate at which prices are rising dropped to 10.1 per cent for January – now a whole percentage point below its peak. That is better than nothing. Yet inflation is now falling more significantly elsewhere.

It was self-indulgent, whinging. Dull in places while completely batty in others. All the usual insults will be hurled at former prime minister Liz Truss for her essay defending her short time in Downing Street, published today. Perhaps it would be better for her to retire gracefully from public life and let some ambitious young revisionist historian in the 2060s make the case that she was treated unfairly. Except she still has one key card to play. Events are gradually showing that she was right along: Trussonomics, or whatever it will be called next, is gradually winning the intellectual argument. Her argument has something else going for it: a ring of truth There won’t be many people in the Conservative Party welcoming Truss’s return, and certainly not in the government.

It is 'obscene' and 'an insult to working families', according to the TUC. If there was one thing more predictable than the doubling of profits of the energy giant Shell – given that the stuff it sells has soared in price over the last year – it was the storm of protest that it ran into following the announcement today. 'No company should be making these kind of outrageous profits out of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,' said the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey. Inevitably, there are now calls for higher windfall taxes, and even for state-ownership. But hold on? Shouldn’t we celebrate a major British company making lots of money, rather than condemn it?  There is no question that Shell had a good year.

It will be a charter for fraudsters. It will usher in an open-season mindset for money launderers and criminals. And it will drag down the reputation of the City. There will be plenty of critics of today’s government decision to push forward with a regulated cryptocurrency market in London. In the wake of the FTX scandal, one of the largest in corporate history, many would rather see it banned completely. But crypto is more resilient than that – and the UK, if moves quickly, it can carve out a lucrative space as its leading hub.  No one could accuse Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt of taking any risks with the British economy. Nor have the Prime Minister or Chancellor shown much interest in boldly re-inventing the country’s business model.

Davos was back with a bang this week for the first full-scale winter conference since the pandemic. And yet, the occasion marked something more significant than just a week of power breakfasts and champagne receptions. ‘Davos Man’ is back in charge of the global economy – and for better or worse everyone better get used to it. The Davos consensus is typically smug, self-satisfied and complacent as its many critics never tire of pointing out Sir Keir Starmer flew in to pitch his pro-business plans for the government everyone expects him to lead in a couple of years.

A few vague promises about upgrading skills. And something or other about promoting innovation and raising productivity. Sir Keir Starmer did not exactly set the world alight in his speech to the CBI today. Given that he is twenty points ahead in the opinion polls, and sometimes more depending on the latest Tory implosion, perhaps he felt he didn’t need to. Instead the Labour leader seemed content to confirm a point that was already obvious to anyone: the Prime Minister doesn’t have a plan for growth. And the prime-minister-in-waiting doesn’t have one either.  Rishi Sunak’s talk to the CBI yesterday was not exactly a hard act to follow. Over 40 minutes, the PM waffled his way through some guff about balancing the books.

We might get a new nuclear power station one day, unless the protestors or the Supreme Court find a way to block it. We will plough on with High Speed Rail 2 regardless of its mounting cost. And there will be some re-heated waffle about supporting technology and innovation, complete with misty-eyed homilies to Alexander Fleming and John Logie Baird that could have been lifted word for word from any chancellor’s speech over the last fifty years. And, er, that was about it. In his Autumn Statement today, Jeremy Hunt had nothing to say about growth – because, in reality, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives have become a zero-growth party.

There is plenty for anyone in Paris to feel smug about if they happen to look across to the other side of the English Channel right now. France has been able to watch British prime ministers come and go with almost comical regularity. It can supply everyone else with electricity from its nuclear power stations if they ask nicely enough. And it is about to watch its football team cruise to defending its crown at the Qatar World Cup. But there is one more that will make the French especially pleased. Paris has just overtaken London as Europe’s largest stock market – and the UK has only itself to blame.

Anyone with a mortgage will be in serious trouble. Small businesses will go to the wall. Demand will be hammered. And the cost of government debt will soar. After the Bank of England upped interest rates yesterday to 3 per cent, the highest level in more than a decade, there was one point on which everyone agreed. The Bank might be moving too fast or too slow, but it is imposing steep rises in rates. But hold on: is that right? After all, when you take into consideration rising inflation, the real cost of money has hardly ever been cheaper.  The Bank’s decision to hike rates by 0.75 percentage points was widely expected.

He will control spending, reverse the few remaining tax cuts that are still in the works, and bring in every kind of official body imaginable to check over all the figures. Jeremy Hunt made the best of a very difficult hand of cards in his first outing as Chancellor on Saturday morning. He was calm, rational, sensible, and conciliatory. His strategy was clear enough. To calm the markets, and buy the government some breathing space while it figures out what to do next. There is a catch, however. What if it doesn't work? Hunt’s real problem is that he has no plan for growth Hunt’s plans as Chancellor are clearly very different from his short-lived predecessor. In a nutshell, it is George Osborne Mark II.

Production will be cut. Supplies to the rest of the world will be curbed. And inflation will rise just a little bit higher. No one ever expected the oil-cartel Opec(+), led by Saudi Arabia, to be friendly to the West, or to help out when it was needed. Even so, its decision this week to effectively side with Russia, and to make the energy crisis even worse, may quickly backfire. In reality, Opec was already in long-term decline. Picking a fight with the US will just make that worse. It was certainly the kind of news the energy markets didn’t need.

Well, that went well. Kwasi Kwarteng's decision to axe the 45 per cent top rate of income tax triggered a crash on the financial markets. It then ran into so much opposition from the public and from Conservative MPs fearful for their seats that it had to be scrapped completely. Right now, it seems unlikely that any politician will want to revisit the subject any time in the next two or three millennia. Abolishing Christmas would be less toxic. If they do, however, one point is surely clear: the 45 per cent rate is here to stay. The only way any politician will ever be able to scrap it now is by stealth. For all the hullabaloo around the 45 per cent top rate of tax, it makes little sense for the economy.

Massive tax cuts. A huge budget deficit. And a wild dash for growth, stoking a short-lived boom, before it all ends in a spectacular crash. As the new government unveiled the widest ranging tax cuts since the 1980s, along with a huge increase in the budget deficit, City commentators and the wiser sort of newspaper pundit are already comparing it to the ‘Barber boom’ of 1972 or the ‘Lawson boom’ of 1988. Both of those ended very badly. In their dreams, Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are probably already fantasizing about an ashen-faced Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng calling in the IMF for an emergency bail-out – before getting wiped out at an election. But hold on. In fact, this is not a return to Tory boom n’ bust.