Ross Clark

If we have learned anything from the Makerfield by-election campaign it is what a slippery character Andy Burnham is. Last September, in an interview with the New Statesman, you may remember, he said that 'We've got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets.' The bond markets themselves responded immediately by reminding Burnham that governments spite them at their peril. Yields rose sharply as investors, who were already taking Burnham seriously as a potential prime minister, feared that a government under his control would borrow recklessly and lose control of public finances.     And now? Burnham claims that it was all a horrible mistake; he was misunderstood.

The Mandelson files have produced a truly damning revelation about Keir Starmer's government. But it is one which will be of little interest to many people because it doesn't reflect badly on Lord Mandelson. On the contrary, it shows why we would be a lot better off if the Labour party had more people who occupy the same centre political ground that he does. The revelation comes in the form of a WhatsApp exchange between Mandelson and Pat McFadden in which the latter opines: Every meeting I have is 'Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?'. They're asking the wrong questions. McFadden is the Work and Pensions Secretary. That he thinks Labour is being far too generous on benefits and too gungho on taxes is truly seismic.

Where the Tories failed on controlling Britain's borders, letting net migration surge to an unprecedented 944,000 in the year to March 2023, Labour has succeeded. It shows what can be achieved through hard work and strict adherence to human rights laws rather than heartless gimmicks like the Rwanda scheme.  That, at any rate, is what the government will want us to believe when the latest net migration figures are published this week. They are almost certain to show that they have fallen to less than 200,000, and possibly as low as 160,000. If the latter, it would be the lowest figure for 14 years, outside Covid. Some Labour MPs are planning to use the figures to call for the government's migration reforms to be abandoned on the grounds they are not necessary.

At any other time the GDP figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning would have come as a huge relief for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. They show that the economy grew unexpectedly by 0.3 per cent in March. When February's figures were published a month ago showing impressive monthly growth of 0.5 per cent (revised down to 0.4 per cent in the latest release) it was widely interpreted as looking back on a lost age, prior to the beginning of the Iran war on 28 February. Now, however, it seems as if the uptick in growth has survived the surge in oil prices. In services, growth was 0.3 per cent and in construction, 1.5 per cent. There was a small fall, however, in output in the production sector, to the tune of 0.2 per cent.

The thing about white working-class voters, as Boris Johnson discovered in 2019 and Nigel Farage is finding out now, is that there are a lot of them. They way outnumber the other voting blocs who often grab more attention, such as students, middle class muesli munchers, Muslims and so on. Tap into the white working class and you enter a fast track to power. But having won over such voters, Farage now has the same problem as Johnson had in 2019. His voters have an expectation of high public spending, at a time when fiscal reality is demanding a sharp contraction in the size of the state. On many issues Farage and those surrounding him see absolutely eye to eye with his voters.

Just what were business leaders expecting when so many of them sucked up to Labour before the 2024 general election? Only Keir Starmer's party, 121 of them declared in an open letter, could deliver Britain's full economic potential. They swarmed around Rachel Reeves like drones around a queen bee. Richard Walker of Iceland even turned up to the party's manifesto launch to praise it for its economic plans. They are not cheering now. Only 17 of the 121 who signed the 2024 letter are currently prepared to restate their support for Labour. The rest are moaning – many of them anonymously – that they are being killed off by hikes in employers' National Insurance and business rates, as well as the rise in the minimum wage and the Employment Rights Act.

The worst thing about the government’s plans to force pension providers to invest their money in particular assets is that ministers and MPs themselves don’t have to worry about it. They, of course, are members of a gold-plated pension scheme that is underwritten by the taxpayer. They will receive their index-linked pensions whatever the economic performance of the country or of any particular assets. As for the rest of us, how well we do in retirement very much depends on how investments perform. That is why it is so obnoxious that the government is trying to force pension funds to invest some of their funds in UK assets and in particular public sector ventures.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, as they say. And Rachel Reeves has made it quite clear that she is going to milk the Iran war for all it is worth. It was Iran wot pushed inflation up to 3.3 per cent, she has hinted (ignoring that the Consumer Prices Index was already above 3 per cent, and has been well above the Bank of England's target for most of her time in office). It will be Iran (or rather Donald Trump) which destroys British jobs (ignoring that her hike in employers' National Insurance had already cost tens of thousands of jobs), and it won't be anything to do with her when the economic growth figures turn sour. 'Just look at that thundering growth of 0.5 per cent I created in February,' she will say (ignoring that growth in the year to February was just 0.8 per cent).

Donald Trump's second presidency began with a blaze of executive orders which horrified and impressed in equal measure. It also begged the question: if it really were so easy for a president to circumvent the legal obstacles and assert his will, how come none had behaved in this way before? A year on, we are learning the truth: no, a president can't just do what he likes, and there is a horrible price to pay if he tries. In the case of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs the notional bill is $166 billion. That is the sum that US Customs believes it will have to refund to importers who paid tariffs which were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in February. A computer portal to handle the refunds was set up this week, the administration of which adds more cost.

What have North Sea oil and gas production and grammar school education got in common? Both are subject to a fiddle by which they can be expanded while the government pretends they are not expanding. After David Cameron changed his mind on grammar schools and said he wouldn’t allow new ones to be created, a deal was done whereby existing schools could open a ‘satellite’ on another site in another town. Hence Tunbridge Wells Grammar School opened a new site in Sevenoaks – a separate school in all but name, and yet the government could claim that it had stuck to its promise of no new grammars. The cabinet battle over the energy crisis is still far from resolved Rachel Reeves has suggested that the present government may take the same approach to North Sea oil.