Economics | The Guardian

Figure of £14.9bn is biggest January surplus since records began in 1993Britain has recorded the biggest-ever monthly surplus in public finances since the early 1990s, putting the government on a strong footing in the run-up to Brexit, now less than 40 days away.In a rare piece of positive economic news for Philip Hammond as he prepares for his spring statement next month, income from taxes outstripped public spending by £14.9bn, the biggest January surplus since records began in 1993.Related: Hammond will keep his powder dry over pre-Brexit windfall | Larry Elliott Continue reading...

Cumulative effect since 2010 has left each person £1,495 a year worse off, analysis showsAusterity policies from the Treasury have resulted in slower growth in every year since 2010 and left each household £300 a month worse off as a result, a thinktank has said.The New Economics Foundation said its analysis of the impact of tax and spending changes since the Conservatives came to power, first as part of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, had left the economy £100bn smaller than it would otherwise have been. Continue reading...

MPs committee report suggests online sales tax and more help for local authoritiesThe government should consider taxing online sales, deliveries or packaging and cutting property taxes for retailers as part of a package to help revive the UK’s ailing high streets, according to an influential group of MPs.In a report published on Thursday, the housing communities and local government committee says local authorities need more help, including extra cash, to redevelop town centres. It also suggests an overhaul of planning regulations, including scrapping rules that allow developers to turn offices into flats without special permission. Continue reading...

Chief executive Mike Coupe’s strategy shows he is lost in the retail jungle and lacks a plan BSainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe said he will keep banging the drum for its merger with Asda, despite a damning report from the competition regulator that effectively rules it out.It’s a strategy that shows Coupe is lost in the retail jungle without Asda holding his hand. It also reveals he lacks a plan B. Continue reading...

Competition regulator finds merger could have an impact on choice and reduce quality

The clock is ticking quickly towards crisis point, the employers’ organisation saysThe CBI has stepped up its campaign for the UK and the EU to strike a compromise Brexit deal after its latest snapshot of manufacturing showed the pace of output growth slowing.Despite stronger order books the employers’ organisation said industry was struggling to cope with the twin impact of slower global growth and uncertainty about Britain’s future relationship with the EU 27. Continue reading...

Brexit might not have much of an effect on the labour market as unemployment hits a record lowAnybody expecting the Brexit impasse to harm the UK’s labour market has so far been proved wrong. Employment is at its highest ever level, the number of job vacancies has hit a new record and the unemployment rate for women has dropped below 4% for the first time. Growth slowed in the final quarter of 2018 but the dole queues shortened. Crisis, what crisis?One possibility is that because the latest jobs and wages data from the Office for National Statistics only covers the period to December, it might not capture more recent surveys suggesting that firms have become warier about hiring since the turn of the year.Related: Employers squeezed as job vacancies grow to record levels Continue reading...

Number workers from EU27 nations falls by 61,000 as non-EU workforce hits record levelThe number of workers in the UK from elsewhere in the EU fell by 61,000 at a time when the number of British and non-EU workers soared, official figures show.There were an estimated 2.33 million workers from the EU27 in the UK between October to December in 2017, but that figure dropped to 2.27 million a year later. A notable drop in workers from A8 countries, which joined the bloc in 2004 and include Poland and the Czech Republic, largely accounted for the decrease.Related: Honda's Swindon factory closure threatens 7,000 jobs – business live Continue reading...

UK firms struggle to find staff as unemployment falls to lows not seen since the mid-1970sRecord numbers of unfilled job vacancies across Britain appear to have strengthened the bargaining power of workers to demand higher wages, amid mounting fears over skills shortages at UK companies.According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of vacancies in the British jobs market rose by 16,000 to an estimated 870,000 in the three months to January, the highest level since comparable records began in 2001.Related: Deal or no deal, UK jobs will remain hard to fill | Larry Elliott Continue reading...

People in pro-leave areas of Britain have tended not to curb expenditure, finds PwC surveyBritish consumers are preparing to carry on shopping despite the mounting political chaos over Brexit, according to a survey, even as business leaders increasingly sound the alarm over the potential hit to the economy.More than half of consumers in the nationwide survey told the accountancy firm PwC they had not, and would not, alter their spending habits over the course of this year as a consequence of Brexit. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as investors cling to hopes that Beijing and Washington are making progress in their trade talks

Many fear the abrasive David Malpass will use the bank to pursue White House’s agendaUntil a month ago David Malpass was a civil servant at the US Treasury with die-hard Republican sympathies and an abrasive management style. Jim Yong Kim’s decision in January to step down as president of the World Bank means he is now in line to head the international community’s flagship development body.Kim’s decision to accept a job at a Wall Street private equity firm went down badly with staff at the bank, who were unimpressed that he could make more of an impact in global development through his lucrative career move. Instead, he is considered a greedball. Continue reading...

Wanting to forge new trading relationships after Brexit and securing them are two very different thingsA trade deal, any trade deal: that is all Liam Fox wants from his civil servants. It is not much for an international trade secretary to ask. Especially when the prospect of all-encompassing agreements on imports and exports was held up in the referendum and its aftermath as one of the chief benefits of quitting the European Union. Not least by Fox himself.Wanting a trade deal and securing one are not the same thing, as Fox has found out in the last two years of chasing down the 69 nations that have deals with the EU which the UK needs to replicate.Related: Post-Brexit trade partners ask UK to lower human rights standards Continue reading...

Austerity has stripped local services to the bone – and those on the lowest incomes will be forced to pay for it“The most boring and complicated subject in all of public life,” declared William Waldegrave, former minister and an architect of the fateful poll tax, when speaking of local government finance. But this is misleading: the consequences of local government austerity are anything but boring for those on the lowest incomes. The design of the council tax system – and recent reforms to it – hits the poorest hardest. Here’s why.Since 2010, the central government grant to local government has been cut by almost 60%. This has had a devastating impact on local public services with spending falling in real terms by nearly one-fifth (excluding education and public health) since the start of the decade. So it’s little surprise that council taxpayers in England face substantial increases in their bills, with nearly all councils set to increase them this April.Related: Why is the tax on a London mansion a tiny fraction of that in New York? | Simon Jenkins Continue reading...

President said potential delay was justified as deal ‘must be the biggest in history’President Donald Trump has conceded that he will delay planned increases in import duties on $200bn (£155bn) of Chinese goods if there is progress in trade talks in Washington next week.Appearing to soften his demand for talks to conclude before 1 March, Trump said there could be a 30- or 60-day extension, should negotiators get closer to a deal. He said a delay was justified, based on the scope and scale of the talks. Speaking on the White House lawn, he said: “Trade with China – how big does that get? It must be the biggest deal in history.” Continue reading...

Gertjan Vlieghe’s estimate of weekly bill, £800m, is more than double battlebus ‘bonus’The cost of Brexit to the British economy is running at £40bn a year and a damaging no-deal scenario could force an emergency cut in interest rates, according to a Bank of England rate-setter.Gertjan Vlieghe, a member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, said that since the vote in June 2016, the economy had lost about 2% of GDP compared with a scenario where there had been no significant domestic economic events. Continue reading...

Retail sales in the UK rose 1% in January as price discounts convinced shoppers to splash out on clothing.

Figure of £1.6bn means bank records second straight year of profit since 2008 state bailoutRoyal Bank of Scotland has said Brexit uncertainty has “gone on far too long”, despite posting better-than-expected full-year profits and declaring new dividends that will boost government coffers by £1bn.RBS’s chief executive, Ross McEwan, admitted the additional pressure of Brexit risks would affect the bank’s performance over the coming year and it may struggle to meet its target of getting costs below 50% of its income by 2020.Related: One in 10 support quick sale of government's RBS stake, poll finds Continue reading...

The City isn’t going to lose its status overnight, but can the loss of assets pre-Brexit be reversed?Only now, as we approach the third anniversary of the UK’s referendum on membership in the European Union, are the implications of leaving the bloc finally sinking in. One indication, amusing to those with a taste for black humour, is the marketing success of Brexit survival kits containing a water filter, fire-starting equipment and enough freeze-dried food for 30 days.Another indication is the launch, at the end of January, of a parliamentary inquiry into London’s prospects as a financial centre. This investigation is a response to prominent financial firms voting with their feet. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have moved nearly $300bn of balance-sheet assets from London to Frankfurt, and Barclays has won approval to move another $215bn to Dublin. BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, and Société Général have transferred 500 staff from London to Paris. HSBC has shifted ownership of many of its European subsidiaries from the UK to France.Related: How can we tax the footloose multinationals? Continue reading...

Previous projections of a deep recession had assumed the MPC would crank up interest ratesA no-deal Brexit, in economic terms, would be a trip into the unknown and would very likely involve a severe shock. Even the sober sub-set of Brexit promoters concedes the latter short-term point. But at least one likely outcome is becoming clearer: the Bank of England would not make things worse by cranking up interest rates.The idea that it might was a strange notion entertained by Threadneedle Street last November as it sketched various scenarios for the UK’s departure from the European Union. In the most hellish projection, GDP was seen as falling by 8%, meaning a worse recession than the one that followed the 2008-09 financial crisis. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, including the latest German GDP report and a speech by Bank of England policymaker Gertjan Vlieghe

The race to head the World Bank opened with the US candidate already known. Other countries must stand up and be countedWith characteristic lack of restraint, the Trump administration last week jumped the gun on the World Bank presidential election process by naming David Malpass as its preferred candidate to succeed Jim Yong Kim.The formal nomination process, which did not begin until the following day, is based on selection principles agreed in 2011 that put the emphasis on an “open, merit-based and transparent” appointment. It is high time those principles were put in practice.Related: Jim Yong Kim resigns as World Bank president Continue reading...

Europe’s largest economy recorded zero growth in the fourth quarter of 2018Germany narrowly avoided falling into recession in the second half of last year as weaker exports dragged Europe’s largest economy to stalling point during the final three months of 2018.The German economy recorded zero growth in the fourth quarter, managing to just avoid a technical recession after reporting a contraction of 0.2% in the third quarter amid a slump in industrial output.Related: Germany narrowly avoids recession after stagnating in last quarter - business live Continue reading...

‘Chronic underfunding’ forces cuts to services including social care, roads and libraries

International trade secretary, Liam Fox, explains why limited progress has been madeBritain has received demands to roll back its human rights standards in exchange for progress on post-Brexit trade deals, including from some countries that ministers are pushing to secure agreements with.In an admission that some countries have sought to extract a high price for their continuing to trade with Britain after leaving the EU, Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, said some nations had made the requests as part of talks. Continue reading...

Readers respond to an article and editorial on the use of agricultural pesticides and the alarming decline in insect numbersIt is not just the insects that are in serious decline, but also the entomologists who study them (Plummeting insect numbers threaten collapse of nature, 11 February), both in terms of promoting and conserving beneficial species and combating pests. In 2016, I had an article published in the scientific literature entitled Insect biology – a vulnerable discipline?, highlighting the good that insects do as well as the bad, and how necessary research is on insects, but also how this has been eroded for many years by reductions in both government and industrial funding.For example, Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, where I spent most of my career, used to have a thriving entomological research community working on various aspects concerning the role of insects in the agroecosystem. However, especially since the early years of this century, most of this vital work has been terminated due to severe cutbacks in funding, with very few projects surviving. In my view, considering the importance of insects as described in your article, renewed funding is urgently required to continue such essential exploration of insect science in all its diversity.

The housing market is likely to stay weak until the overall economy is back in syncHousing and personal finance commitments are one of the best indicators of how people are feeling. Yes, we may respond to a survey that we feel confident or not about the economy but if you really want to see what people feel, look at their borrowing. You don’t take out a loan for a car or for a new block of land or for a house when you think things are not looking good. And right now there seems to be very little confidence that things are good, or about to get better.Housing finance is subject to other vagaries than “confidence”. You might feel secure in your job but you are not sure if it is the “right time to buy”. Such issues however are not the case for buying a car, and the latest finance figures show throughout the past year the amount of personal fixed finance for a car loan fell every month:Related: With an election looming, the government's fear is palpable | Greg JerichoRelated: An interest rate cut might be coming – and the reason why is rather scary | Greg Jericho Continue reading...

Boost for real wages as the cost of living rises at its slowest rate in two years

Liam Fox has agreed deals with only seven of 69 countries covered by EU arrangementsThe government’s push to roll over EU trade deals from which the UK currently benefits has yielded agreements covering only £16bn of the near-£117bn of British trade with the countries involved.Despite frenetic efforts by ministers to ensure the continuity of international trade after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, has so far only managed to secure deals with seven of the 69 countries that the UK currently trades with under preferential EU free trade agreements, which will end after Brexit.Related: Brexit minister plays down prospect of article 50 extension Continue reading...

Offering respite to households, consumer price index dips to 1.8% in January from 2.1%Inflation dropped to 1.8% last month following the biggest monthly fall in gas prices since the 1980s, to offer hard-pressed British consumers some respite from rising prices ahead of Brexit.The consumer prices index (CPI) fell from 2.1% in December to its lowest level in two years as wholesale energy prices tumbled, cutting heating bills for millions of households. Continue reading...

Readers respond to what Mike Carter discovered on his long walk through EnglandCongratulations to Mike Carter on raising such important issues (The country I walked through deserves better than Brexit, 11 February). My husband, Colin Barnett, was – like Mike’s father – also instrumental in organising the People’s March for Jobs, as the then north-west regional secretary of the Trades Union Congress. He spent his working life as an officer of the National Union of Public Employees, which represented the poorest paid members of society, many of whom were women.His deep belief in trying to improve their pay and working conditions meant he tirelessly spent time travelling to their places of work, talking to them and persuading them to join the union. If he were still alive he would be distraught at what has been allowed to happen, with the destruction of all he fought for and with so little public concern. Why has it taken until now to realise how neglected many communities, especially outside the south of England, have become? What was the Labour party doing supporting contracting out when it was obvious that savings were made by reducing the pay and terms and conditions of the low-paid? Why, when in power, did we do nothing to stop the sale of council houses and other public assets? Why was removing control and assets from democratically elected local authorities to establish academy schools pursued? Continue reading...

The UK uses three measures and each has its fans, but it does seem unnecessarily complicatedMPs press Treasury to abandon ‘absurd’ inflation measureIs inflation really that difficult to calculate?

Bank of England governor is warning that the global recovery is slowing, trade wars are hard to win, and Brexit will be an important test

Ministers urged to ditch RPI, which it is claimed penalises students and rail passengersWhat are the different measures of inflation, and are we being conned?The government is coming under intense pressure to either abandon or fix the “grossly unfair” retail prices index inflation measure, which MPs say is penalising students and rail passengers.In a rare combined letter from parliamentarians in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, RPI was described as “absurd” and its continued use was labelled “a ridiculous merry-go-round”.RPI

Bank of England says UK must avoid protectionism in favour of international cooperationBrexit is an acid test of whether it is possible to reshape globalisation in a way that offers the benefits of trade while allaying public fears about the erosion of democracy, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has said.Speaking in London, Carney said the ramifications of the UK’s departure from the EU would be felt around the world and would determine whether it was possible to shrug off rising protectionism in favour of a new era of international cooperation. Continue reading...

Forcing universities to compete with each other is a bad idea. What we need is a Teaching Happiness FrameworkIn The Methods of Ethics, a book read only by philosophers with an overdeveloped sense of duty, the late Victorian utilitarian moralist Henry Sidgwick argued that other philosophers of his day were wrong to believe that human beings act only for the sake of their own happiness or pleasure. There is a second spring of human action, he argues: the pursuit of excellence. A poet, a philosopher, or a sportsperson working obsessively may hope to be happy, but, more likely, what matters to them most is what they can achieve.Sidgwick’s work faded from fashion soon after his death in 1900. At Cambridge University, where he had been professor, he became a symbol of times past. The young Bertrand Russell and his fellows referred to him as Old Sidg. But his fortunes revived in the 1980s, and he is being read by undergraduates again. I don’t know if the current generation of university regulators ever studied him, but, if so, they have only remembered half of what he taught. We have the Research Excellence Framework, and the Teaching Excellence Framework. Where is the Research Happiness Framework, or the Teaching Happiness Framework? Continue reading...

Environmental and social problems could interact in global breakdown, report saysThe gathering storm of human-caused threats to climate, nature and economy pose a danger of systemic collapse comparable to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a new report that calls for urgent and radical reform to protect political and social systems.The study says the combination of global warming, soil infertility, pollinator loss, chemical leaching and ocean acidification is creating a “new domain of risk”, which is hugely underestimated by policymakers even though it may pose the greatest threat in human history.Related: Humanity faces an existential crisis – Labour must join the fightback | Owen Jones Continue reading...

Chancellor’s claim undermined as rapid slowdown in GDP growth is revealed

The public want the government to spend more, yet the Tories cannot grasp how this makes economic and political senseLast week it was revealed that a secret group of Whitehall officials were drawing up plans to rescue the economy if it were to tank after Brexit. However, the release of the latest GDP data shows that even before the UK leaves the European Union the economy looks as though it needs resuscitating. Philip Hammond thinks Brexit is a terrible idea. He also believes there is little wrong with the economy. As the man in charge of the nation’s finances, he would say that, wouldn’t he? The truth is that rather than presiding over a “fundamentally strong” economy, Mr Hammond and his Conservative predecessor George Osborne have been slowly asphyxiating the economy by depriving it of the oxygen of demand.The result has been that UK economic growth is as bad as it was in 2012, when Mr Osborne first softened ever so slightly his hardline policies but not his offensive rhetoric. It is important to say that we are some way off a recession, and it would be premature to suggest otherwise. However, the data shows that business investment is going backwards, unlike in other big European nations, and exports have stalled, which was perhaps foreseeable given the slowdown in near neighbours. The UK consumer, already in debt, is not willing to spend when Britain’s future direction, not least in respect to the EU, remains unsure. That leaves the government, which ought to be turning on the spending taps but is instead consumed by ideological rows over Brexit. What the Conservative party ought to realise is that the slow recovery from the 2008 crisis is about a deficiency of aggregate demand. The way out is more public spending. Remember the £350m on the side of the Brexit bus? Theresa May thinks she can get Mr Hammond to cough up that much and claim it as a Brexit dividend. In reality Brexit’s causes run deeper than that. Much more will be needed to repair the damage wrought by years of austerity politics. Continue reading...

Donald Trump may be a ham actor but he’s got the whole world on tenterhooks nowArt is supposed to hold a mirror up to society butfor Donald Trump the opposite is the case. Current events in the White House increasingly mirror the soap opera of the West Wing only with a rightwing nationalist rather than a social democratic globalist at the helm.As with the TV series, there are a number of interwoven plots. Is Trump involved in an attempt to smear the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos? Will the probing by the special counsel Robert Mueller lead to the president’s impeachment? Will the president’s battle with Congress over a wall along the border with Mexico lead to a second shutdown of the government? Continue reading...

Chancellor blames Brexit uncertainty for a sharp slowdown at the end of 2018, but trade secretary points to China

GDP contracts by 0.4% in December in weakest year for growth since 2012The British economy plunged into reverse in December, with a broad-based slump in economic output completing the weakest year for growth since 2012.The Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product contracted by 0.4% from the previous month, fuelled by a fall in spending on the high street over the key festive shopping period.Related: Britain's Brexit slump will be quietly cheered in some quarters | Larry Elliott Continue reading...

A trip across England in 2016 revealed a nation broken by neoliberalism. For it to heal, this above all has to changeIn May 2016, a few weeks before the EU referendum, I walked 340 miles from Liverpool to London to see what was happening to my country. I was travelling in the footsteps of a 1981 march against unemployment that my late father had helped to organise. In that year, Tory policies had devastated industry and sent unemployment skyrocketing. In 2016, Tory austerity was putting the final nail in the coffin of those broken communities.Even so, on my walk I was shocked by the level of poverty, by the sheer number of homeless people in doorways and parks, and by the high streets of boarded-up shops and pubs, full of payday loan outlets and bookies. People in those former industrial towns spoke of their anger and betrayal, of having being forgotten by Westminster politicians, of their communities having been destroyed as the manufacturing that had sustained them either folded or moved to low-wage economies.Related: All Together Now? One Man’s Walk in Search of His Father and a Lost England – reviewIn Nuneaton (66% leave), I met a man who reeled off the names of closed-down factories like you might your football team’s greatest all-time XIRelated: What I found in Theresa May’s heartland: an England in miniature | Ian JackRelated: UK austerity has inflicted 'great misery' on citizens, UN says Continue reading...

Official figures likely to show Brexit anxieties weighing on consumers and businessUK growth slowed sharply in the final three months of 2018 as Brexit anxiety weighed on consumers and firms, official figures published on Monday are expected to show.City economists estimate that economic growth halved to just 0.3% in the fourth quarter of last year, compared with 0.6% growth in the third quarter. Continue reading...

Brexit is an opportunity, for remainers as well as leavers, to put the country on the right pathThis year marks a centenary of sorts. Back in 1919, with the first world war finally over, Britain woke up to a new reality. The days of being the world’s pre-eminent economic power were in the past.In truth, the writing had been on the wall before 1914. The US and Germany had caught up with Britain before the assassination at Sarajevo and were forging ahead in the new sectors that had sprung up around the turn of the 20th century. Even in industries where the UK had traditionally been strong, such as coal, rival countries were much faster to deploy new, productivity-raising technology. Continue reading...

Corbyn’s determination to free the UK from what he sees as the EU’s shackles would actually be damaging to the party’s causeThe spectre of Brexit haunted last weekend’s annual Venice seminar hosted by the Italian government, but we had to wait for the return home for comparisons with Dante’s Inferno.The president of the European Council has received a lot of flak for his outburst – which, in case you missed it, was: “I have been wondering what that special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan to carry it out safely.”On the biggest issue facing this country Jeremy Corbyn has been letting people down Continue reading...

From the devaluation of sterling in 1967 to Brexit uncertainty, our economics commentator reflects on how Britain has diced with fiscal catastrophe

Treasury mandarins plan emergency measures designed to avert recessionTreasury mandarins have lined up emergency measures to protect the UK economy from a potential no-deal Brexit in fewer than 50 days’ time, with a series of growth-boosting measures designed to avert a recession.News emerged this week of cross-Whitehall plans codenamed Project After, drawn up after the 2016 Brexit vote. As the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit grows, some ministers and officials have returned to the work in search of emergency levers to pull in the event of a downturn, the Guardian has been told. These are the options that could be open to ministers: Continue reading...

Investors rattled after President Trump said there were no plans to meet President Xi Jinping before US tariffs on Chinese imports kick-in next month

Although there is a cloud over economy, the silver lining is central banks are more dovishAfter the synchronised global economic expansion of 2017 came the asynchronous growth of 2018, when most countries other than the US started to experience slowdowns. Worries about US inflation, the US Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory, trade wars, Italian budget and debt woes, China’s slowdown and emerging-market fragilities led to a sharp fall in global equity markets toward the end of the year.The good news at the start of 2019 is that the risk of an outright global recession is low. The bad news is that we are heading into a year of synchronised global deceleration; growth will fall toward – and, in some cases, below – potential in most regions.Related: The next financial crisis may come soon – are we all that safe? | Kenneth Rogoff Continue reading...