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Keir Starmer’s government appears to have softened its stance on oil and gas. Back in June 2023, the Labour leader told an audience in Edinburgh that there would be no new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. Instead, a Labour government would pursue green energy all the way, slashing our bills (it promised) and taking us ever faster to the nirvana of net zero. But how the responsibilities of government come to bear. A release from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) this morning indicates some notable shuffling of ground.  Far from cheering a recent Supreme Court ruling which quashed planning permission for a small oil

It must be the worst kept secret in the country. At almost every opportunity, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves, keep telling us that the Budget in October will have to be ‘very painful’, that ‘taxes will have to rise’ and that the ‘broadest shoulders will have to bear the heaviest burden’. It now seems inevitable that there will be a big rise in capital gains tax. The trouble is, there is a catch. Almost everyone will have avoided it by then – and all Labour is doing is exposing its hopeless ignorance of how the economy actually works. Neither Starmer nor Reeves have worked

Who would bother to create jobs in modern Britain? Clothing retailer Next has done plenty of job-creation over the past few years – only to be whacked by an equal pay claim brought by 3,500 shop assistants. An employment tribunal has ruled that the company was wrong to pay them less than it paid staff at its warehouses. With back pay it could cost the company £30 million. The cost of this kind of case goes far beyond the potential legal liability itself Equal pay is one thing where it concerns men and women working alongside each other in the same jobs. It is quite another when it is extended

Just how much longer will the government be able to sustain its assertion that the Conservatives left behind a £22 billion hole in the public finances? Confirmation that ministers are continuing to blame their predecessors for out-of-control public finances – and for expected tax rises in October’s budget – was provided this morning by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, who reacted to July’s grim borrowing figures by stating:  ‘Today’s figures are yet more proof of the dire inheritance left to us by the previous government. A £22 billion black hole in the public finances this year, a decade of economic stagnation, and public debt at its highest level

What a joke the government’s promise to concentrate on ‘growth, growth, growth’ is becoming. Since the Prime Minister uttered those words on entering Downing Street, we have had road schemes cancelled and money withdrawn from a supercomputer project at Edinburgh university, that could have given Britain’s AI industry a leg-up. We have had fat pay rises for public sector workers without any requirement for them to adopt more efficient working practices. And we have businesses about to be lumbered with the requirement to offer employees flexible working hours from day one of their employment. Now there is another productivity-destroying proposal on the table. Angela Rayner has drawn up plans for

Is this the first sign of a bounce in the housing market? Property website Rightmove is reporting this morning that enquiries to estate agents so far this month are 19 per cent on August last year. This follows a quarter-point cut in interest rates by the Bank of England (BoE).  Rightmove’s data is forward-looking, in that it represents the first step in the house-buying process: contacting an estate agent for information, or for a viewing. Then again, enquiries are only enquiries – it is a big step from there to securing a mortgage and making an offer, and an even bigger step actually to completing a purchase. The government’s data for completed

So, we were all so impressed with the swashbuckling performance of Gareth Southgate’s team that we all rushed out and bought replica England shirts and packs of lager – to the point that retail sales in July were 0.5 per cent higher than in June. No, I don’t buy that either – even though it has been widely reported today in reaction to the latest statistical release from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). As I have written here before, I don’t really trust the month-on-month figures for retail sales. They are too volatile to be meaningful. Moreover, they depend somewhat on how many weekends fell in the month: some

The UK economy flatlined in June, as uncertainty over the general election and industrial action took their toll on economic growth. It wasn’t expected to be a strong month for the economy, with markets forecasting very little GDP growth, if any. But the small dip in services output – a fall of 0.1 per cent, driven primarily by a fall in retail trade – was disappointing after five months of consecutive growth. Still, June’s figures are the perfect example of why one month of data rarely tells the full story. Businesses reported to the ONS that ‘customers were delaying placing orders until the outcome of the election was known’ which

Growth is slowing down. The property market is wobbling. And the government is tightening its grip on every form of economic activity. Global investors have made a decision about China over the last few months. It may have one of the biggest markets in the world, but the risks are simply too high. Over the second quarter of this year, foreign investors pulled a record amount of money out of China. A total of $15 billion was taken out of the country, and if that continues for the rest of the year it will be the first time the total has turned negative since 1999. There is, however, one exception:

Today’s labour market figures ought to bring good news: they show that growth on earnings has moderated to 5.4 per cent, the lowest level in two years. That should ease fears of inflation – it is growth in pay which has most concerned the Bank of England in recent months – and pave the way for further cuts in interest rates. The trouble is, though, that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has undermined this by granting pay rises of 5.5 per cent to several million public sector workers – threatening to reignite wage growth again. The public sector has become an inflationary engine chugging away in one corner of the economy

Is America about to enter a recession and take the world with it? Yesterday the pound was on track for its longest losing streak in a year as markets once again began to fear a US recession. The week started with what looked like the bursting of a tech bubble. Japan’s Nikkei dropped by 12 per cent in a day – its largest fall since Black Monday nearly four decades ago. But by Tuesday morning, stocks had recovered 10 per cent and markets looked to be steadying while the jittery hands of investors began to hold firm. Are we out of the woods? Not quite. A leading Wall Street Bank

The markets are tumbling. Investors are bailing out. And there are already fears that the plunge in equities is a sign that a recession is just around the corner in America. With a presidential election only a few months away, the Federal Reserve will come under intense pressure to bail out the market with a cut in interest rates as it has done so often over the last quarter of a century. So will central banks in the UK and the Euro-zone. This time around, though, it would be madness to cut rates: it will just make the asset bubble much worse.  The FTSE-100 has fallen sharply again this morning,

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index registered its biggest ever daily fall on Monday, plummeting by over 12 per cent and continuing the extraordinary collapse that began last Friday. Meanwhile, the Yen, which had been slowly eroding in value for months continued its dramatic resurrection moving from 162 to the dollar to under 140. At the time of writing, a technical rebound seems to be underway – but such volatility is alarming. After years of nothing very interesting happening to the Japanese economy, such upheavals have stunned locals and provoked urgent questions about causes and consequences. As to what has caused this, most are pointing to the Bank of Japan’s surprise interest

For a while it looked as if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were going to be lucky: they had walked into an economic recovery. The anaemic growth and market turmoil of the past few years – which Labour liked to blame entirely on ‘Tory chaos’ and absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic or energy crisis which followed the invasion of Ukraine – were going to be replaced by a period of stability and prosperity. Some governments are fortunate in their timing: Tony Blair walked into a decade of non-inflationary growth thanks to globalisation and the emergence of China as a major economy. But Starmer, it now looks, will not

As Kate Andrews argues here, the Bank of England were never going to cut interest rates during an election campaign for fear of being accused of favouring one side or the other. That ruled out a rate cut in June, while in July there was no meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee. But are those five members who voted for a quarter-point cut today really confident that they have not opened themselves to charges of bias, by cutting rates at the earliest opportunity after the election of a Labour government? For months, the MPC was telling us that it was too early for a rate cut – in spite of rapidly falling inflation