Simon French
@Frencheconomics
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Chief Economist & Head of Research @panmureliberum Former @cabinetofficeuk @dwp. 🏏 @hmtreasury. @thetimes columnist. 🚴♀️ tours & 🐝-keeping. Views are my own
London
Joined February 2012
Good. Stamp Duty on property and listed shares is a £18bn/ year headwind to the UK economy. Abolish it and it is the closest thing you get (apart from scrapping the Energy Profits Levy) to a fiscal free lunch.
A future @Conservatives government will: CUT your taxes. ABOLISH Stamp Duty. ABOLISH Business Rates for pubs and shops on high streets. And deliver a big, bold offer for YOUNGER PEOPLE. All because of the decisions we have set out to live within our means.
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My speech to the Conservative Party Conference on how to reverse the UK’s decline. I didn’t hold back. The state has grown in every sphere, almost without people noticing; a wild move to the left over two decades. Farage is a socialist (look at his actual economy policy!) who
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Pretty sensible stuff from @MelJStride here. £47bn over five years is rather more credible than the £250bn (largely unspecified savings) being targeted by Reform UK. The challenge for Reform will be whether they can evidence where they can take 5p/£1 out of every line item of
The Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride will tell the Conservative party conference in Manchester that there is “no more pretending we can keep spending money we simply do not have”. He told @JustinOnWeb where savings could be made.
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Today’s @thetimes column suggests that despite flatlining UK productivity data, forecasters should be open minded to what comes next. Inflection points are hard to forecast, but trend reversion has been a lousy guide throughout the OBR’s history. https://t.co/O90Edy7s9r This
thetimes.com
Is the OBR about to throw in the towel on UK growth at the very moment things are about to improve?
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NovelAI Diffusion V4.5 just released with sharper anime image generations and smarter prompts. Start generating for free today.
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In recent conversations with publicly listed operators in the UK housing industry (builders, developers, and agents) they generally urge rapid action if/when it comes to stop activity freezing on prolonged policy uncertainty. As usual I agree with @ChrisGiles_ @PJTheEconomist
Agree with the article. Reform needs to be carefully thought out, not introduced to raise short term money and will take a long time. Legitimacy is crucial. But the economics profession is not misguided in calling for major reforms. Major reform is very much needed.
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Ok some perspective on this. Firstly, I ran tech listings at LSE for 4 years 2016-2020. That jump before the drop off was my pipeline. - the huge spike at the start of the chart was an enormous volume of listings on AIM. Lots of these were very bad companies. It was a bit like
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The Conservatives have announced plans to scrap the Climate Change Act (and the legally-binding Net Zero target) if they are elected. I wrote this earlier in the year on the act's flaws (and why it needed reform). https://t.co/RyBlNvcb1Y
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Agree (as usual) with Julian. Incentivising new issuance and providing a runway to prove yourself on the public markets is better than tax relief based on unlisted/ listed status. Would remove some friction for retail investors of participating in the raising of UK public equity.
"UK set to exempt newly-listed company shares from stamp duty" This is good news - Budget set to include a two-three year stamp duty holiday for new listings 👍 (better to scrap stamp duty altogether of course, but this is better than nothing)
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The United States ended FY 2025 with $30.287 trillion of debt. That is likely 99.9% of GDP, up from 98.2% last year. Note CBO's January forecast was 99.9% of GDP. In June CEA projected that if OBBBA passed it would fall to 96.2% of GDP this year.
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Better late than never.
Opinion: Stablecoins could form a major part of the shift in the financial system away from reliance on commercial banks for lending, governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey said in an article for the Financial Times https://t.co/kUF8N6KBl9
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This is 35 years in the making with pension regulation & corporate governance asymmetry (public vs private) to the fore. This government and the last one have done credible supply side reforms to listing rules, but flow-driven valuations for UK public equity remain lower than
The pace with which London is losing its status as a global financial markets hub has been laid bare after the capital fell to as low as 23rd in a global ranking of IPO destinations. Just £184m was raised on the London Stock Exchange in the first nine months of the year, a far
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GDP grew by an unrevised 0.3% in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025, following an unrevised increase of 0.7% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar): · Services +0.4% · Production -0.8% · Construction +1.0% Read more ➡️ https://t.co/168edvkk9z
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The whole "will she/ wont she" on a VAT increase at the Budget is missing two central issues. Firstly, and most saliently, a flat increase in the VAT rate would be one of the most inflationary tax increases that could be levied. The 2010/11 experience (of taking VAT from 17.5% to
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@CoachLouHoltz88 sits down with former MLB pitcher Cody Beckman to talk about faith, masculinity, and raising the next generation. Don’t miss this powerful conversation on the mission to restore America's soul.
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It is a defendable line from the Chancellor that the UK is the fastest-growing G7 economy. True YTD for on both GDP and GDP per capita basis. More "middle of the pack" when looking at shorter and longer time horizons....
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Chancellor Rachel Reeves @RachelReevesMP tells @TimesRadio she would like to go to one OBR forecast a year (from two). "The IMF have said that ... and I agree with their recommendations." OBR in the past have not been so keen ...
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A pretty sensible set of comments from the Chancellor in this interview on wealth taxes, the role of the bond market, and child poverty. https://t.co/qpFARuLVyW The issue is (and has been) the fiscal decisions that have fuelled UK inflation. Rather less here on what practical
thetimes.com
Rachel Reeves says she’d like to be less in hock to bond markets, but must handle the economy as it is — not as others want it to be
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Two months to go until the UK Budget and what is striking from recent conversations with businesses & investors is that the Treasury getting a grip on its impact on inflation is generally seen as more important than aggregate tax/ fiscal repair. The most damning (economic) chart
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I agree with Richard
Nigel & I met Governor of Bank of England today Debated why Bank is voluntarily paying interest on printed money QE reserves & doing Quantitative Tightening, triggering tens of billions taxpayer losses I’m asking Govt for urgent debate in HoC. Could change Budget decisions
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