25th July 2024
Introduction
The Office for National Statistics data for the UK’s public debt in June 2024 was duly published, and there was a turnaround in the direction-of-travel, of sorts anyway.
June borrowing was another disastrous £14.5 billion, but this resulted in Debt/GDP being ‘provisionally estimated’ at 99.5%, when the equivalent Debt/GDP number in May was 99.8%.
How […]
15th July 2024
Introduction
Underline 21st July 2024 in your diaries.
This will be the publication date of the Office for National Statistics data for the UK’s public debt in June 2024.
Barring a turnaround in the direction-of-travel, the debt will exceed 100% of GDP.
UK public finances between January and May 2024
Debt was 99.8% of GDP in May, although […]
Callable ESM capital
8th July 2024
The ESM has a different legal mechanism for calling for more funds compared to the European Financial Stability Facility.
It is part-paid shares.
All Eurozone member states – including Croatia – are shareholders in the ESM, and they have subscribed to €708.5 billion of capital and paid in €80.6 billion of that. […]
Member state guarantees behind the EFSF and the resulting percentage of the EFSF’s bonds that are covered by guarantees of member states with different levels of credit rating
8th July 2024
The EFSF’s credit rating was recently lowered to AA-. This is due to the interplay between the credit ratings of the EFSF and of the EFSF’s […]
Labour’s plans for the economy
2nd July 2024
Labour’s plans for growing the UK economy have been highlighted as being based on fresh air by a group of prominent Remainers and Rejoiners:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/22/starmer-growth-plan-doomed-access-eu-markets-economists
Their argument is that Labour’s plans for growth are unachievable without a shot-in-the-arm from somewhere. That we can agree on. They contend that rejoining the EU […]
Headline in the Daily Express of the article in which the £800bn appeared
29th June 2024
Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan will be based around Great British Energy, the new entity which will have equity of £1.7bn according to the Fiscal Plan in the Labour manifesto.
Labour were stating until some months ago that they planned to borrow £28bn […]
Cover of Global Britain paper
14th June 2024
Labour’s plans for the economy once they are in power have been dressed up in words like ‘stability’, ‘investment’, and ‘security’. They represent a great leap forward – over the precipice on the edge of which the UK already teeters.
This is laid out in the Global Britain paper ‘De-coding […]
Analysis of Mais Lecture
23rd May 2024
Labour is the no-risk economic option as the outcome is certain: it’s disaster.
This is the message of my analysis of Rachel Reeves’ Mais Lecture delivered in March 2024.
The full, final version of this research can be downloaded here.
Now that a General Election has been called, it is of importance that […]
24th April 2024
You can download here the rough, first-draft version of my analysis of the 2024 Mais Lecture given by Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
This summary has just been published by the Conservative Post website so I have decided to make available the current, not-totally-polished version of the full paper behind it.
In […]
Published by Global Britain
16th February 2024
Global Britain has released my report on the degree to which the economy of the Republic of Ireland is dominated by activities that reduce the tax bills of foreign multinationals.
You can download the report here.
The report dissects the two elements of tax-sparing activities:
the re-invoicing through Ireland of goods made elsewhere […]