Deficit bias: The chancellor’s fiscal strategy has worrying shades of Gordon Brown November 30, 2015 At the Autumn Statement 2011, the chancellor bore bad news. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had revised down the growth prospects of the UK economy, and revised up how much of the public deficit would not naturally fall as the economy recovered. George Osborne therefore faced a choice: to cut spending or raise [...]
Stamp duty was already a bad tax – the buy-to-let surcharge makes it even more stupid November 30, 2015 Petty, shallow and stupid. That pretty much sums up the government’s new 3 per cent stamp duty surcharge on additional properties, announced by the chancellor in the Autumn Statement last week. Beyond the naked appeal to the public’s envy of second home owners and buy-to-let landlords, there is almost nothing to recommend this measure on [...]
COP21: For all the hype around the climate change summit in Paris, will it actually prove to be a turning point? November 30, 2015 Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, says Yes The Paris summit has already proved to be a turning point because more than 180 countries have submitted national pledges to limit or reduce their annual emissions of greenhouse gases over the next 15 years. [...]
Politicians must exert self-control on sugar tax November 30, 2015 George Osborne promised that last week’s Spending Review would set out “far-reaching changes to what the state does and how it does it”. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have told his colleagues on the Health Select Committee, who look to set to embrace recommendations that sugar be subject to a new tax in order to correct [...]
David Cameron’s case for going to war in Syria is built on sand November 29, 2015 As the 19th century French foreign minister Talleyrand witheringly said of his Bourbon masters, “they forgot nothing and learned nothing”. So it is with Prime Minister David Cameron’s intellectually feeble effort to rally the Commons to go to war in Syria. Cameron has dutifully memorised the vague catechism for going to war – the precise [...]
The Autumn Statement contained some significant wins for business and the City November 29, 2015 George bails himself out” was the front page headline of this very paper last Thursday as businesses up and down the country digested the impact of the Autumn Statement. While the U-turn on tax credits dominated much of the coverage, there was a lot of content announced by the chancellor from the despatch box that [...]
The apprenticeships levy is a bad policy – and not just because it’s a tax on the lowest-skilled November 29, 2015 Real apprenticeships provide skills which workers can take to other employers and obtain a wage higher than they would have earned otherwise. Historically, they were paid for by binding young employees (with legal sanctions for breaking the agreement) to work for a fixed period with very low pay, and often with an upfront payment from [...]
As the ECB’s governing council prepares to meet later this week, is further QE now imperative? November 29, 2015 Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, says Yes. The case for additional policy easing from the European Central Bank at its December policy meeting is extremely compelling. Yes, the full effects of the existing asset purchase programme have not yet been seen. And the recent news on the economy has improved a bit. [...]
Autumn Statement 2015: George Osborne’s gamble relies on unreliable forecasts November 27, 2015 When City A.M. asked Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, how much the OBR’s borrowing forecast depends on its economic growth outlook, he quite rightly pointed out that it is not real GDP, which economists tend to focus on, but nominal GDP that is more important for predicting tax revenues and state [...]
We’ve failed to go beyond lofty rhetoric on cutting off Isis funding November 26, 2015 Ever since the self-styled Islamic State burst into the public consciousness in the summer of 2014, the group’s financing has attracted comment and scrutiny. Former US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel declared that Isil “is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen… They are tremendously well-funded.” It is therefore striking [...]