We have to get serious about major spending cuts October 16, 2025 Speculation over the contents of next month’s Budget has reached fever pitch, and it’s only going to ramp up from here. This is not idle curiosity; with businesses still adapting to the confidence-sapping and job-smothering fallout from last year’s Budget, there is now a genuine fear that what remains of our economic resilience could be [...]
Self-inflicted damage makes mockery of government growth pledge October 15, 2025 Back in June, before Donald Trump orchestrated a tentative peace in the Middle East, he reacted with fury to Israel and Iran’s escalating exchange of missile and drone attacks, telling reporters “they don’t know what the f**k they’re doing.” Sometimes undiplomatic language has its place, even in high-stakes diplomacy. I was reminded of this approach [...]
China spying scandal: What the hell is going on? October 9, 2025 The head of MI5 warns that Chinese spying in the UK is taking place on “an epic scale” – yet the government can’t bring itself to describe China as a threat. What the hell is going on? Sir Ken McCallum, the Director General of MI5, doesn’t make many speeches in public. As one of Britain’s [...]
Reeves must reject this finger-wagging, fun-sapping, tax-loving nonsense October 8, 2025 The Chancellor may have felt in need of a stiff drink after absorbing the latest productivity figures handed to her by the Office for Budget Responsibility, and who could blame her? The OBR is widely expected to have significantly downgraded its productivity forecasts while at the same time conceding that it’s been overestimating productivity growth [...]
China spy row reveals a divided Whitehall October 7, 2025 The UK’s relationship with China has swung through various degrees of warmth in recent years, but there have been some recurring themes. When David Cameron and George Osborne hailed the “golden era” of UK-China relations more than a decade ago, critics accused the pair of naivety and even recklessness. Nick Timothy, who would go on [...]
Has the wind shifted on Net Zero? October 2, 2025 Once upon a time the promise of Net Zero enjoyed such universal support that a Tory government signed the UK’s Net Zero pledge into law. Today, the Tories say they’d scrap it – while alarm bells are ringing as the costs of the policy become clearer. In June 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May passed a [...]
There is a way back for the Conservatives October 2, 2025 The Tories have been quiet of late, pushed to the margins of the post-summer political debate and either mocked or ignored by the other parties whose conferences have sucked up the airtime in recent weeks. But this weekend they gather in Manchester and while the event won’t command the nation’s undivided attention it is a [...]
Keir Starmer is dangerously deluded October 1, 2025 The prime minister may have insisted yesterday that wealth creation is “the defining mission of this government” but it certainly wasn’t the defining mission of his speech to the Labour party conference. There were roughly 7,000 words in Keir Starmer’s address to party members in Liverpool, with “business” being uttered just four times – and [...]
Rachel Reeves was overshadowed by her future self September 30, 2025 The Chancellor’s speech yesterday was overshadowed by one she hasn’t yet delivered; that’ll be the Budget, on 26 November. The whole country knows that the November Budget is going to be painful, one way or another, and its inevitable constraints (in fact, just the timing of it) meant that Reeves wasn’t able to say much [...]
Watch: Is the UK at risk of recession? September 25, 2025 We were told this would be the most pro-business government in the history of the country – so why have a gang of top chief executives this week fired warning shots at the Treasury – and why has one of them warned that we’re heading into a recession? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. [...]
