Economy

The Bank of England has just announced a rate cut of 0.25 percentage points, reducing the base rate from 5.25 per cent to 5 per cent. The tight decision – voted 5-4 by the Monetary Policy Committee – is the first reduction in rates since March 2020. It starts what is likely to be a slow and steady process of reducing the base rate, and marks the end of the inflation crisis, which saw Threadneedle Street hike rates from the floor to a 16-year high over the course of twenty months. Financial markets were cautiously expecting a rate cut, but the decision was thought to be on a knife-edge. It

Angela Rayner has announced that the government will aim to build 370,000 new homes, up from the 300,000 a year implied in the party’s manifesto. But if the deputy prime minister really thinks that all she needs to do to achieve that target is to take on Nimbys – as Rayner and chancellor Rachel Reeves have suggested in recent weeks – she needs to take a trip to a slice of the ‘grey belt’ in Essex. There, a 206 acre farm at Harold’s Farm near Epping is to be turned over to rewilding. Why is the cost of encouraging rewilding being lumped on new housing? Some locals have announced themselves

The news that McDonald’s sales have fallen by 1 per cent around the world between April and June might not seem, on the face of it, to be vastly significant. After all, surely there will always be a market for cheap and cheerful hamburgers, chicken nuggets and chips that even Michelin-starred chefs rave about? Apparently not. Ever since the pandemic, when there was a considerable rise in prices, the lustre has gone off the golden arches, and profits have declined by 12 per cent. There have been calls for ‘value added’ innovations, such as the current ‘buy three items for £3’ deal, but, as one McDonald’s executive helpfully put it,

There is one over-arching question hanging over Rachel Reeves’s speech today, in which she claimed that a £21.9 billion hole has opened up in the current political spending for this financial year: why, if there is such a large ‘black hole’ in the public finances, is there suddenly money available for £9.4 billion worth of above-inflation pay rises for public sector workers? Preposterously, those pay rises – which Reeves has chosen to make and which were not committed to by the previous government – are included as one of the unfunded spending items (indeed the single biggest spending item) which has contributed to the ‘black hole’. Reeves justifies this leap of

How much can Rachel Reeves be trusted? A Chancellor’s credibility counts for a lot with the markets, who are asked to lend HM Government tens of billions a year. Reeves claims to be serious, straight and candid in a way her Tory predecessors were not. But now she seems to be channeling Liz Truss and coming up with her own assessment of the public finances while dispensing with the service of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). She intends to declare a £20 billion hole, we’re told, and say she is shocked – shocked! – at what a mess the finances are in. Cue an excuse for tax rises, more

It doesn’t buy anything anymore. It is not enough to put into a charity box, and it just takes up space in your pocket or a purse. On one level, it will save us all a lot of trouble when one penny and two penny coins finally become extinct. The Treasury has told the Royal Mint not to make any new ones this year; and although there are plenty behind a sofa somewhere, this means they could eventually vanish completely. We will miss them when they are gone.  Rachel Reeves, the new chancellor, is keener on increasing government budgets than reducing them. One cut that may well be made, however,

Figures out today show a country with levels of surveyed crime still at historic lows (just a quarter of the 1995 peak) but with two big exceptions. Personal theft rose by 40 per cent compared with the year before, and shoplifting is at its highest level since records began in 2003. What’s going on? ‘These figures show the disgraceful dereliction of the last Tory government on law and order,’ said Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary. Is this fair? Today’s figures show total crime at roughly half the level the Conservatives inherited from Labour in 2010. Incidents of theft from the person peaked at 708,000 in 2009 – and hit a