The UK rushed out its climate plan just days before Cop26 – and it shows. The planet can’t afford further bluster and delayIn politics, timing is everything. Last week the government set out its strategy for meeting its net zero carbon targets: this came a year later than expected, and less than a fortnight before the UK finds itself front and centre on the global stage as host of the Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow.The long-awaited climate blueprint covered wide-ranging “net zero” ambitions from renewable energy and electric vehicles to carbon capture and electric heat pumps – and yet still offered too little, if not entirely too late. Continue reading...

Retail sales and confidence are falling, and the net effect of the budget will be deflationary. Rate rises will prove unnecessaryNext month the Bank of England might begin the long road back to higher interest rates. Plenty of financial traders believe comments and speeches by the governor Andrew Bailey and some of his colleagues make it a likely possibility.If it doesn’t happen in November, the central bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) will meet again in December to survey the economy. It could be then that the nine-strong group takes on the Grinch’s mantle, stealing Christmas cheer with a hike in the nation’s cost of borrowing. Continue reading...

A chancellor bent on trimming the deficit will face opposition from MPs, business and more this weekFor the past 20 months Rishi Sunak has been fighting to limit the economic damage from Covid-19. This week marks the chancellor’s first real opportunity to set out proposals for the rest of the parliament, and demonstrate to backbench Tory MPs that the Treasury’s tax and spending plans support the ambitions of his neighbour in No 10.There is a danger for Sunak that many of his supporters will turn on him if a harsh, joyless budget is seen as crushing much of the goodwill the Tories are still enjoying from the speedy rollout of vaccines earlier this year. In the summer Boris Johnson threatened to demote his chancellor as punishment for daring to challenge the government’s handling of the pandemic. With no replacement on hand, it was an empty threat, but Liz Truss, newly promoted to foreign secretary, is ready to fill the chancellor’s shoes should he stumble. These are the issues now facing Sunak as he looks forward, and back over his shoulder. Continue reading...

Funding will be used to help ‘level up’ regions including Greater Manchester and West MidlandsAlmost £7bn will be allocated in next week’s budget to “level up” urban transport in cities around England, the government has said.City regions will receive a total of about £5.7bn in sustainable transport cash, while another £1.2bn will go towards improving bus services. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Social geographer Danny Dorling says the cost of buying a home will fall, one day – but what’s harder to predict is whenThe UK, and London especially, is home to Europe’s most expensive housing market after Monaco. For a generation of young people who have watched home ownership slip out of reach, the thought of prices going down significantly is inconceivable.But in a period of inconceivables – a global pandemic, Christmas turkey shortages, Kanye West releasing his album when he said he would – could house prices be next? Continue reading...

MPC ‘finely balanced’ over whether to raise interest rates in November, adds Huw PillInflation in the UK could rise above 5% by early next year, according to the Bank of England’s new chief economist.Huw Pill, who replaced Andy Haldane in September, said that the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee was “finely balanced” over whether to raise interest rates at its next meeting on 4 November and that it would be a “live” decision. Continue reading...

Sales fall unexpectedly for fifth month in a row in September despite removal of most Covid controls

Trade body says higher taxes will discourage necessary investment in high-wage green economyBritain’s foremost business lobby group has warned Rishi Sunak that his tax and spending plans risk undercutting government ambitions for a green, high-wage economy by discouraging the necessary investment.Ahead of the chancellor’s budget next week, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said there were fundamental inconsistencies in the government’s economic strategy that needed urgent attention. Continue reading...

Deal means US will not retaliate against UK for imposing digital services tax, Treasury saysThe UK has agreed to phase out its tax on US tech giants such as Google and Facebook, averting the threat of retaliatory tariffs from the United States.A deal between the two countries will keep the digital services tax in place until 2023, when it will make way for a newly agreed global tax system. Continue reading...

Historian Adam Tooze explains why, despite the pandemic, voters are still being told there is no alternativeWill the market revolution – the predominant ideology of our time – survive the pandemic? Events this week suggest that the UK government certainly hopes so. Ministers’ statements suggest a desire to return to a mode of governance where choices about resource distribution and priorities are dodged by mechanisms that depoliticise decision-making. The messaging from Whitehall is that if the worst of Covid is over, then Britain should return to policies that have failed. Earlier this week, the prime minister extolled the virtues of free market capitalism to tackle the climate emergency; the chancellor wants a “competitive” tax cut for City financiers; the Bank of England signalled a premature interest hike. These are moves to convince voters that, post-pandemic, the state must forfeit economic power to the market. Such a retrograde shift must be resisted.The historian Adam Tooze’s recent book Shutdown explains how difficult it will be to change the course of the river of history. Last year the pandemic revealed that states did have the tools they needed to exercise control over the economy. They could – and did – spend whatever it took to deal with Covid. The UK state forked out £370bn from February 2020 to July 2021. The sky has not fallen in. Prof Tooze writes that the government’s “economic logic confirmed the basic diagnosis of interventionist macroeconomics back to Keynes. They could not but appear as harbingers of a new regime beyond neoliberalism.” Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

CBI survey of businesses reveals concern a week before chancellor delivers budget and spending reviewBritain’s manufacturers are struggling with their worst supply shortages since the mid-1970s, as fears grow in the sector over the economic fallout from rising costs and a lack of key materials.Almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed in the snapshot from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned that shortages of components would hit factory output in the next three months. Continue reading...

Group behind Dove and Domestos ‘steps up’ pricing as packaging, energy and distribution costs surgeUnilever has warned that inflation could worsen next year as raw material and energy costs push up the prices of its food, toiletries and cleaning products.The maker of brands such as Marmite, Dove and Domestos said it had increased prices by 4.1% in the three months to September – the biggest jump since early 2012. Continue reading...

Stronger tax receipts and end to furlough scheme credited with faster than expected fallGovernment borrowing fell at a faster than expected rate in September as the furlough scheme came to an end and tax receipts recovered strongly.Figures published by the Office for National Statistics show borrowing fell to £21.8bn last month, from £28.8bn in the same month a year earlier, as Covid support measures were unwound. It was still the second highest September borrowing since comparable records began in 1993. Continue reading...

Readers on the consequences of leaving the EU, and the need for opposition parties to hold the government to account for its broken promisesJohn Harris’s excellent article (The gap between reckless Brexit promises and reality will soon be too big to ignore, 18 October) was extremely sobering. “What happens,” he asks, “when some watershed is reached, and the fact that people were conned becomes inescapable?”, linking the way public trust was undermined by the Iraq war and by Brexit. Both before war was declared on Iraq, and also before Brexit was enacted, some 1 million people marched through the streets of London in opposition. These people were engaged, informed, enlightened folk from across the country, committed enough to march for policies that to them represented the right way forward, for Britain and the world. The governments of the day ignored them.The consequences of the Iraq war and Brexit are now all too clear. We should not have made war; we should not have left Europe. As John Harris says: “People in the political mainstream – by which I chiefly mean Labour MPs – need to start loudly talking about Brexit … and what life outside Europe is doing to us.” Absolutely. I feel sure there are millions of voters desperate for Keir Starmer, the shadow cabinet and all Labour MPs, at every opportunity, to do exactly that.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Cost of a home climbed in every region in 12 months to August, with prices in London rising to £526,000The average cost of a UK home increased by £25,000 in the 12 months to August, official figures show, with rises recorded in all regions.The annual rate of price inflation hit 10.6% during the month, up from 8.5% in July, the Office for National Statistics said, bringing the average price to £264,000. Continue reading...

Analysis: Covid support schemes have distorted official data and experts fear inflation will resume its ascent

Consumer price index eased to 3.1% in September from 3.2% in August, says ONS

Supply chain chaos, labour shortages and ‘scourge’ of inflation expected to last years, says food and drink chiefRestaurants and hotels are wrestling with “terrifying” inflation running as high as 18%, bosses have warned, as supply chain disruption and labour shortages wreak havoc in the hospitality sector.Ian Wright, chief executive of industry body the Food and Drink Federation, told MPs on the business, energy and industrial strategy committee that the rate bodes ill for the retail industry. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

State’s finances face gathering threats, including potential stranded assets in coal exports, analysts warn

As markets bet on an increase, economists give their view after Andrew Bailey’s mixed messages

Resolution Foundation finds household incomes set to fall by about 2% amid cost of living squeezeBritish households will be £1,000 worse off next year from a cost of living squeeze created by rising energy prices and shortages of workers and supplies caused by Covid and Brexit, a leading thinktank has warned.The Resolution Foundation said higher levels of inflation would weigh down workers’ earnings next year, contributing to a hit to the average household income in Britain at a time when the government is cutting benefits and raising taxes. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Expectations jump after Bank governor says action will have to be taken to curb rising inflationExpectations that the Bank of England will raise interest rates as early as next month jumped in the City on Monday after the governor said it would have to act to curb rising inflation.The yield, or interest rate, on the UK’s two-year government bonds jumped to its highest level since May 2019 as traders anticipated a rate rise. Continue reading...

Economy minister tells of ‘significant challenge’ of retaining and attracting talent to support country’s economyThe Welsh government is launching a drive to persuade more young people to remain in their homeland amid growing concerns that the percentage of working-age citizens is dropping to worryingly low levels.Ministers fear that unless the “brain drain” is stopped – and more talented people can be tempted in – within a few decades the country may struggle to pay the bills to look after its ageing population. Continue reading...

GDP grew 4.9% in the quarter to September, the lowest for a year, as the post-pandemic recovery loses steam and Evergrande problems persistChina’s economy grew slower than expected in the third quarter, official data showed on Monday, thanks to power outages, supply bottlenecks, Covid outbreaks, and concerns about the struggling property sector.Although China’s central bank governor said the country is “doing well”, independent economists predicted that the mounting array of headwinds suggest a “deeper downturn” resulting in the country’s weakest growth for more than a decade next year. Continue reading...

Readers respond to a report revealing the highly predicable consequences of savage public service cuts over many years, and the effects of widening inequalityYou report on a study by the University of York into the first five years of the coalition government’s “age of austerity” (Austerity in England linked to more than 50,000 extra deaths in five years, 14 October). The real scandal is that the results were in general foreseeable, and nothing was done nationally to mitigate them.At a local level, the London borough of Lewisham decided to theme its annual public health report for 2011-12 on the effects of the economic downturn and austerity on the health of its population. Continue reading...

Poorer nations were more fragile before Covid-19, had less scope to stimulate economies, and are on the wrong side of the vaccine divideA global pandemic. Rising inflation. The threat posed by climate change. Global policymakers have enough to keep them occupied without a developing country debt crisis adding to their list of problems.That is a real possibility. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund used their annual meetings to stress the pressure poorer countries were under and the need for urgent, collective action. They are right to be worried because debt is at record levels, defences against a crisis are inadequate and the clock is ticking. Continue reading...

Britain’s two great self-inflicted crises of the postwar era point to a conclusion that voters may soon rediscover for themselvesMany countries are experiencing economic problems associated with the pandemic and supply chain shortages, but none is in such a bad position as the UK.This is entirely because of Brexit. Quite apart from the multiplicity of crises associated with the acute shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers – pigs being culled, but not for eating, farmers pouring milk down the drain, queues for petrol, you name it – the economic self-harm is now showing up in the statistics, with the International Monetary Fund putting the UK bottom of its Group of Seven future growth league. This contrasts with our prime minister’s shallow claims that the UK is currently enjoying the fastest growth in the G7. Continue reading...

From Carlisle Castle to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, study highlights hefty rises since 2016The cost of visiting some of Britain’s best-known visitor attractions has almost doubled over the last five years, according to researchers who named English Heritage sites as the worst offenders.Overall the cost of family days out has risen by a third, according to the Play Like Mum website, which compared the cost of visiting popular sites five years ago with today’s prices. Continue reading...

From China backtracking on coal to Britain’s ‘chicken king’ calling for a rethink of food production, the virus has accelerated nationalist impulses towards autarkyWhen Xi Jinping promised the world’s movers and shakers in January 2017 that China would champion globalisation, it looked as if the baton of global economic leadership was being picked up seamlessly by Beijing as Donald Trump prepared to usher in an era of American isolationism.Almost five years later a new world order has emerged, but it is not the one China’s president and others gathered in Davos that day seemed to have in mind. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Even though the human cost of a cruel policy has been confirmed, expect another turn of the screw next weekDeaths are what can be counted most easily – bodies can’t be hidden from the statisticians or denied by those responsible for the figures. It was predictable, and predicted, that many more would die when the government of David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg applied a brutal tourniquet to public spending in 2010. Warnings at the time were shrugged off as shroud-waving and scaremongering.But new research from University of York’s renowned Centre For Health Economics only confirms the inevitable consequence: an extra 57,550 people in England died in the five years from 2010, a level of deaths beyond the statistically normal. Life expectancy improvement slowed, which was directly “attributable to spending constraints in the healthcare and social care sectors”, according to lead researcher Prof Karl Claxton.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

White House issues 40-page report and sets out steps for action as ‘climate impacts already affecting’ jobs, homes and businessesJoe Biden’s administration on Friday issued a 40-page report warning that the climate crisis “poses serious and systemic risks to the US economy and financial system” and setting out steps for action as “climate impacts are already affecting American jobs, homes, families’ hard-earned savings, and businesses”.Under the new plan, the federal government will weigh up climate risks for employee benefit and retirement plan investments, incorporate climate disasters into lending and budgeting decisions and revise building standards for homes at risk of flooding. Government-backed mortgages for public housing will factor in the risk of calamitous floods, wildfires and other climate impacts. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Unions say if departments are not given funding to raise pay then in effect freeze will remain

Catherine Mann and Silvana Tenreyro speak out against early rate rise amid surging gas prices and materials shortageTwo of the Bank of England’s nine-strong monetary policy committee have said they prefer to wait and see how surging gas prices and shortages of raw materials affect inflation before voting for a rise in borrowing costs.In a message that will be seen as a swipe at more hawkish members of the monetary policy committee (MPC), who have signalled a willingness to raise borrowing costs, the economists said the recovery still remained uncertain. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

‘Bespoke Northern Ireland-specific solution’ includes potential new rules on food, plants and medicinesThe EU’s latest proposals, described as “a new model” for Northern Ireland, are a significant concession from Brussels. Having ruled out renegotiation of the protocol in July, the EU is proposing a “bespoke Northern Ireland-specific solution”. Continue reading...

George Gater, my husband, who has died aged 88 of cardiogenic shock, was an industrial economist, and an amateur art historian. Coming from a privileged background he yet had a determined independence of mind and an egalitarian outlook.The son of Sir George Gater, a civil servant, and Irene (nee Nichols), who ran the National Gallery canteen for Myra Hess’s wartime concerts, he was named Anthony George Richard, and known as Anthony by his family but as George by his friends from boyhood on. Born in London, he was educated at Winchester college and then studied philosophy, politics and economics at New College, Oxford, following national service. Continue reading...

Kristalina Georgieva is likely to survive row over China report but institution’s reputation will sufferIn the past couple of decades managing directors of the International Monetary Fund have fallen into two categories: those that have had personal difficulties and survived and those that have had personal difficulties and stepped down.Kristalina Georgieva, the current IMF boss, is one of the former. The question of whether she instructed for a report to be doctored to put China in a more flattering light when she was vice-president of the World Bank has turned into a saga involving whistleblowers, an external report, lengthy grillings by the IMF board and accusations of a dirty tricks operation mounted by conservative forces in Washington. Continue reading...

Spending in bars, restaurants and festivals rose during first full month without Covid controls in England

Helping low earners is a priority now. And that means reversing the cut to universal credit

Across the country, people are refusing to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage jobsLast Friday’s jobs report from the US Department of Labor elicited a barrage of gloomy headlines. The New York Times emphasized “weak” jobs growth and fretted that “hiring challenges that have bedeviled employers all year won’t be quickly resolved,” and “rising wages could add to concerns about inflation.” For CNN, it was “another disappointment”. For Bloomberg the “September jobs report misses big for a second straight month”.The media failed to report the big story, which is actually a very good one: American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Analysis: social unrest is around the corner without further support such as vaccine waivers and debt reliefBritain’s recovery from the pandemic is slowing. So is the bounceback in Europe and the US, where the Biden administration is trying to piece together another major stimulus package to bridge the gap between pre- and post-pandemic job markets.But the loss of momentum across the G7 is small and governments can afford to offset a spike in fuel prices that will dent business profits and household incomes over the winter months, says the International Monetary Fund. Continue reading...