Week in Business: Non-dom tax U-turn makes sense but what about the rest of us? June 19, 2025 The Chancellor is scrambling to hang on a few non-doms, but what about the tax bomb dropped on the rest of the country?
Labour’s National Wealth Fund a misnomer, MPs told June 18, 2025 Labour’s National Wealth Fund faced renewed calls for clarity on Wednesday as the Treasury Committee continued its inquiry into the government’s new body. The government’s rebrand of the National Wealth Fund (NWF) from the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) in October 2024 has raised questions amid confusion of the two bodies’ remits. Academics and think tank [...]
Labour is locking Britain into a high-tax, low-growth doom loop June 18, 2025 Tax, borrowing, the cost of borrowing, unemployment and inflation are all going up, while growth is going down. Yet in the face of this, Labour’s instinct is to tax more, spend more and centralise more, says Simon Clarke When in a big hole, muddle the figures so nobody can understand them. That’s what Paul Johnson [...]
Welfare, debt and the NHS: Our public finances are on the road to ruin June 17, 2025 Portugal is a fine country with plenty going for it, as an increasing number of Brits seem to be discovering. Just under 50,000 people moved there from the UK in 2023/34, up from 45,000 the previous year. These expats may or may not be aware that the country they’ve moved to (well-functioning, democratic, competitive and [...]
Was Reeves’ Spending Review a fintech endorsement? June 14, 2025 Rachel Reeves has promised to back UK fintech and in Labour’s inaugural Spending Review, she piled billions into the tech sector. The Chancellor handed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) a hefty £16.5bn budget as she took the chop to other departments. DSIT’s expenditure limit is set to grow 7.4 per cent by [...]
Big cities, big potential: The Spending Review rightly prioritises urban growth June 13, 2025 The Spending Review empowers UK city regions with transport and innovation funding to boost productivity and drive national economic growth, says Andrew Carter The Chancellor’s Spending Review rightly puts big cities at the centre of a plan for broad-based, long-term national prosperity. The UK’s big cities’ economies have tended to underperform, costing the country £50bn [...]
Week in Business: Is Rachel Reeves About to Drop a Tax Bombshell on the UK Economy? June 12, 2025 Despite talk of growth and renewal, the economic warning lights are flashing, and experts now predict another £20bn tax raid.
Only roaring growth can save Reeves, and the country June 11, 2025 The Chancellor had been speaking for about five minutes when it dawned on me that she wasn’t going to say anything interesting. By the time she got to discussing the finer points of Southport’s pier and Kirkcaldy’s high street, I’d moved on to other things. That’s not to say that the Spending Review wasn’t interesting, [...]
Global growth to brake to ‘slowest pace’ since financial crash, World Bank says June 10, 2025 The world economy is heading for its worst year since the 2008 financial crash, the World Bank has predicted, as most major economies suffered a growth downgrade due to trade tensions sparked by President Trump’s tariffs. The UN-backed financial institution has predicted that global growth will come down to 2.3 per cent this year as [...]
FCA boss: Buy now, pay later regulation is a trade off June 10, 2025 The chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said the new clamp down on buy now, pay later (BNPL) regulation would be a “trade off” as he faced a grilling from MPs. Nikhil Rathi, who was reappointed as the regulator’s boss in April, told the Treasury Committee the crackdown would have “beneficiaries and downside [...]