UK’s fading business confidence amid Omicron spread needs urgent action

Boris Johnson's cabinet is caught once more between doing the right thing and doing the ideological thing

It's shaping up to be all too familiar. A worsening outlook in the pandemic, a government slow to react, and confidence fading fast among businesses and households.

In many ways Christmas couldn't come soon enough for Boris Johnson's government, amid a storm of bad news as the prime minister's Teflon ability to survive political scandal appears to be deserting him at last. But rather than acting as a distraction, the festive period merely highlights the serious problems facing the British economy that could make matters worse.