As the UK government delivers its spending plans for the next five years, here’s why a number of controversial cuts are on the cards.
- Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University
How Labour’s ‘radical’ shadow chancellor might deal with another down-cycle, Brexit, immigration and an energy crunch.
Corbyn has proposed giving the Bank of England a new mandate to invest but the track record of this approach makes it hard to swallow.
The frontrunner for the Labour leadership has some good ideas that were rejected by voters when they elected Margaret Thatcher.
The arithmetic for town halls and previously endangered Whitehall departments is now distinctly rosier.
The dismal science has had a dismal verdict from the UK electorate, and the new government isn’t coming to the rescue either.
Markets were always likely to prefer a Conservative majority to any other result, but they might need some policies diluted for the gains to be sustained.
The election campaign has so far skirted round the genuine dangers which face whoever is in Downing Street next month.
For five years the Chancellor has sought to invigorate returns on investment for businesses, but the pay off is yet to materialise.
The first ever minutes from the rate setting meeting at the ECB should remind member governments of the Eurozone’s disarray.
By allowing the European Central Bank (ECB) to start buying debt issued by its member states, the eurozone is copying a strategy now associated with the earlier return to growth in the US and UK. Quantitative…
Rugby players are starting to glance enviously at the other football’s English Premier League, which is heading for its first £1 billion transfer season with prices for top players rising towards £100m…
By backing a new Charter for Budget Responsibility, the main political parties in Britain want to persuade you that they’re legally obliged to balance the books within three years. Fortunately, it’s not…
Refuting the charge that he opposes “green crap”, George Osborne has become a recycling champion. His Autumn Statement is built on re-announcements of existing projects (including the £15 billion road…
The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has delivered the financial package he hopes will convince voters to deliver a Conservative majority in May 2015. Here, our team of academic experts responds…
The news that the British housing market may have reached a turning point, with one forecast showing a price fall in 2015 and a drop in London prices for the first time in three years, will have been welcome…
While Edinburgh and London wrestle over the future of the pound, it has has been sinking. The slide (especially against the US dollar) is widely seen as a knee-jerk reaction to the possibility of Scotland…
Mario Draghi almost single-handedly rescued the Eurozone from disaster two years ago, by pledging to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro”, so the appeal from the European Central Bank (ECB) chief…
In imploring the world to be less dependent on the US dollar for international transactions, French finance minister Michel Sapin is expressing a wish that many of the euro’s creators hoped would already…
It’s not unusual for central banks with economies to revive to let their interest rates go negative in “real” terms by keeping them below the rate of inflation. The eurozone, the US and the UK have done…
After initially celebrating the new-found freedom to spend their pension savings how they want, people are now waking up to what scrapping the annuity really meant. One reason for forcing people to buy…
No amount of international sanctions will reverse Russia’s takeover of Crimea. But unless Vladimir Putin can now extend his influence over eastern Ukraine, the incomplete triumph could undermine him. If…
George Osborne’s impromptu child-minding of shadow chancellor Ed Balls during pre-budget interviews summed up his task in the last full year before the election as effectively as Wednesday’s budget speech…
Household debt in the UK recently hit a record high, surpassing the previous peak reached in September 2008. That was the month when Lehman Brothers collapsed, sparking off the global financial crisis…
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