Today’s UK budget is called ‘the budget for growth’ with the four E’s of enterprise, education, employment, and everywhere. Jeremy Hunt heavily trailed the latter in a speech he made at Bloomberg’s offices in January. Many of the proposals in the Budget were as expected and were known by the media. In other words, there …
Has the Chancellor tightened policy too much?
Framed as a budget to shrink debt and control inflation, Jeremy Hunt’s statement in the fifth fiscal event of this year essentially left most of the heavy lifting to 2025 and beyond. Of the measures announced, some three quarters were spending cuts, and just one quarter were tax increases. Of the £61.7 billion fiscal tightening …
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UK energy price freeze: the ‘big short’
As was widely expected, the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has opted for an energy price freeze. It caps the price for the typical energy consumer at £2500 for a unit of energy for two years. But this still represents a sharp increase compared to the previous price cap and the year before. Roughly speaking, …