Since the election, we’ve seen several proclamations of the ‘end of austerity’. As TUC post election poll (among others) has showed, there is now a clear majority in favour of ‘Maintaining decent public services even if that means my taxes go up’. This is a far cry from some of the rhetoric during the election…
The government’s unfair public sector pay cap is currently coming under criticism from all sides. Rightly so. Those in the public sector have now faced years of pay freezes and real wage cuts. Vital public sector workers are unfairly receiving less and less money for their hard work. Don’t forget about the private sector And…
Tackling the symptoms of the consumer credit boom without addressing the causes risks exacerbating the living standards crisis. Consumer credit was prominent in the yesterday’s assessment of financial stability by the Bank of England. Up front a chart shows the accelerating growth in various measures of credit (red yellow green) against slowing growth in nominal…
Philip Hammond has been out and about this week looking for praise for deficit reduction. At his Mansion House speech he claimed: “the deficit is down by three-quarters – and below 3% of GDP”. He tweeted the same line in response to Office for National Statistics figures yesterday (my highlighting): But “good progress” is very…
Within hours of the General Election, the government was held to account on the international stage for the failings of the UK welfare system – with worker reps from Sweden, France, Australia, the International Transport Federation all calling on the UK government to bring UK provision into line with international minimum standards. The International Labour…
Inflation is the highest it’s been since June 2013. CPI inflation rose to 2.9% in May, from 2.7% in April. Only a year ago, CPI inflation was as low as 0.3%. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the main contributor to the latest high inflation figure was rising prices for recreational and cultural…
Last week’s General Election has engulfed Westminster in a wave of chaos and uncertainty. The local and mayoral elections held last month might therefore feel like a distant memory. But some parts of England that now have mayors with devolved powers have been getting to work, with unions at the table. The devolution agenda is…
In today’s Economic Outlook the OECD show UK real wages falling by 1.1% in 2018, with nominal earnings growth of 1.5% outstripped by inflation of 2.7%. This is a big change of view on nominal earnings, which were previously expected to rise by 2.5% (in their March interim forecast). This revision must reflect earnings outcomes…
Today the OECD issue their twice yearly Economic Outlook, setting out their view of how the economy will develop, and how governments should respond. Their message for the UK government is clear: they need to invest. The headline on their economic commentary remains the weakening of GDP growth to 1.6% in 2017 and then to…
Devolution has a long history. The election of metro mayor’s across the UK was just the latest milestone in the devolution journey. Successive governments have recognised that the UK is far too centralised and that to unlock the full potential of the UK’s nations and region’s Whitehall needs to ‘let go’. Yet action has been…