The world's central banks turned hawkish in unison this spring, just as the shock that frightened them was already reversing. My mid-year report card, honestly marked, and where I think the second half goes.
The OBR forecast that business investment would fall 0.9% this year, and the Bank of England 1.5%. It is up 5.2% on a year ago. Burnham’s theory of growth, a hawk on the MPC, and institutions that never admit a mistake.
ONS data show first-time buyer mortgage sales are higher than in 2006, while sales to existing homeowners have more than halved. Andy Burnham’s new scheme helps the part of the market that is working. Stamp duty is holding back the rest.
The ONS has revised second-quarter growth up to 0.5%, which puts the first half of 2026 at 1.2%, the fastest in the G7. Retailers are reporting the same thing, and oil is flowing out of the Gulf again.
August's borrowing numbers were worse than forecast and the gilt market did not care. Yields are following the oil price and US Treasuries. If investors really were losing faith in the UK, the pound would be the first place to look, and it is well above its 2022 low.
The price cap for January is set in November and, on where gas is now, it could go up by more than 20%. Freezing it would cost about £10bn. Lower inflation would hand roughly £7bn of that straight back through the index-linked debt book.
Andy Haldane says the markets now see a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos. The Prime Minister’s reply was to cite scrapping digital ID as a difficult decision.
A pact offered in Downing Street on Monday, a labour market that shrank again on Tuesday, and inflation on Wednesday with no second-round effects anywhere in it. The Committee votes on Thursday.
The consensus said the economy would flatline in July. It grew 0.4%, and the first half of 2026 was the fastest in the G7. The budget on 28 October will be built on five-year projections from the institution that missed all of it.
The ONS now admits its own labour survey understated Britain's productivity by half. The full story: how the establishment got it wrong, what it means for interest rates and tax – and the dated record of every time we said so.
Is the UK's productivity crisis actually real? The ONS has quietly admitted its Labour Force Survey overstated UK employment, and the HMRC tax data tells a completely different story about the UK economy, your taxes and interest rates.
The ONS now says its own labour survey has been understating how productive Britain is. On the better data, output per hour has grown twice as fast since 2019 as the number used to set tax and interest rates.
Slowing private sector pay, mythical price gouging and a cost of living crisis that isn't – what yesterday's labour market data actually reveals.
A year after its £51bn black hole quietly evaporated, the NIESR is back with a £24bn sequel and an inflation forecast to match. I think it will be just as wrong – and just as damaging.
A new Prime Minister, the same script. If Mr Burnham asked me how to get the UK growing again, here is what I would tell him – keeping everything simple.
The Bank of England spent the week being wrong – on wages, on prices, on growth, and all in the same direction. Follow the data instead and you arrive somewhere the MPC won't go: inflation below 2%, rates below 3%. A cat amongst the pigeons, in other words.
With oil prices back at pre-conflict levels, our arithmetic shows CPI inflation peaking at a little over 3% in September and falling below the 2% target in the second half of 2027.
Oil hit $144 a barrel in April, the highest price ever paid for physical crude, and underlying inflation barely moved. This week, Neil Woodford explains why the oil price doesn't work the way most people think, and why three central banks tightened into a shock that was already reversing.
Neil Woodford’s 2026 economic outlook: insights on global growth, market trends, and challenges across the US, China, Europe, and the UK.
