Week in Business: Will Starmer sack Rachel Reeves? May 23, 2025 Cracks are appearing in Labour's economic strategy - will Keir Starmer roll the dice and look for a new Chancellor to change course?
OBR ridiculed for ‘joke of a salary’ in analyst job offer May 20, 2025 The UK’s fiscal watchdog has been ridiculed for offering a “joke of a salary” after advertising for new roles. The Office for Budget Responsibility is hiring for three new “fiscal analysts” based in London with a salary range of just £38,430-52,000, despite the jobs being graded a “higher executive officer” function within the organisation. The [...]
Boost for Rachel Reeves as UK economy booms in first quarter May 15, 2025 The UK economy surged by 0.7 per cent in the first three months of the year, official data has shown, suggesting firms boosted production ahead of Rachel Reeves’s tax rises in April and the threat of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Fresh data provided by the Office for National Statistics showed that the UK economy grew [...]
Week in Business: Why Britain needs reform May 8, 2025 In light of current difficulties and long-term challenges, the UK economy needs a dose of radical reform - but who will have that conversation?
Recruitment firms shutting at fastest rate since financial crash April 24, 2025 Recruitment agencies are shutting for business at their fastest rate in fifteen years as companies tear up hiring plans amid rising taxes and global economic uncertainty. As many as 120 recruitment businesses have appointed liquidators in the past six months, a City AM analysis of insolvency disclosures has found, a jump of 17 per cent [...]
Government borrowing in March dwarfs expectations April 23, 2025 Government borrowing overshot expectations as it hit £16.4bn in March, official data has revealed. Ballooning levels of borrowing will likely come as a blow to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is under pressure to keep public finances in balance. Reeves left herself £9.9bn at last month’s Spring Statement as she made around £14bn of cuts, mainly [...]
Probe launched into ONS governance and data quality April 1, 2025 The government has launched an independent investigation into the UK’s beleaguered statistics watchdog to ascertain how its official data and surveys have become so unreliable. The remit of the probe – commissioned by the Cabinet Office and UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) – will span the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) culture, leadership and structure, and [...]
The Spring Statement takes us back to square one March 27, 2025 It might not have been a Budget, but the Chancellor may well wish that it had been. Constrained by her fiscal rules and her own insistence that yesterday’s statement would not constitute a major event, Rachel Reeves was left shuffling the few cards she held in search of a better hand. The search was in [...]
Spring Statement 2025: Rachel Reeves won’t rule out tax hikes at next Budget March 26, 2025 Rachel Reeves has declined to rule out hiking taxes at her next Budget, amid growing pushback from Labour MPs over welfare cuts in the wake of her Spring Statement. The Chancellor told reporters at a press conference that she was focused on growing the economy, despite speculation she will have to find more revenue to [...]
Spring Statement 2025: Workers’ rights bill ‘net negative’ for economy, OBR says March 26, 2025 The government’s workers’ rights bill will “probably [have] net negative economic impacts”, the independent fiscal watchdog has said. Labour unveiled their workers’ rights package – the Employment Rights Bill – last year, and measures were hailed by unions as “common sense” reforms for a “fairer economy”. But according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), [...]