Chart of the Day 🫤 According to the flash UK PMI, March saw the biggest monthly jump in manufacturing input cost inflation since sterling was ejected from the ERM in 1992...

Here's a chart for anyone still willing to believe that #Brexit has knocked 8% off the UK economy... The lines show what has actually happened to GDP in the UK, France and Germany since the vote to leave. The green unicorn shows where the UK would be if GDP were 8% higher 🤔

250 years ago today Adam Smith gave the world a fantastic insight. That order, cooperation and prosperity are not ordered from above by priests or chiefs but emerge from the social interactions of ordinary people. It’s the most revolutionary and benign idea ever proposed.

1/8 With Britain’s gas storage levels back in the news, here’s what you need to know. Gas storage is a complex topic, so it’s easy for data to be misunderstood or taken out of context.

Great graphs but depressing @billwells_1

The 15% tariff "already has some jagged edges,” Gary Hufbauer says. Anything covered by the USMCA, & "the president has exempted a lot of specific goods that will not be covered no matter where they come from, like pharmaceuticals, critical minerals." https://t.co/icjSeBPMzO

A relatively good day for UK economic data, with the news on the public finances, retail sales, and the PMI survey all better than expected. But here are the main caveats... 1⃣ the budget surplus was boosted in January by the fact that people are having to pay a lot more tax,

I’ll leave others to continue litigating Brexit, Carl, but these figures are nonsense. Just consider — for them to be true Britain would have been just about the fastest growing advanced economy in the world, up there with America, if we’d stayed in the EU, way ahead of rest of

Damning verdict on the (presumably unintended but entirely predictable) consequences of the Employment Rights Act, from the CIPD’s latest Labour Market Outlook... 🙄 source and more: https://t.co/8d8W0gf7F9

🚨 Huge news: The FCDO admits a crucial detail that destroys the government’s basis of their Chagos Islands deal

UK trade data for 2025 published yesterday. We now have 10 years of data since the EU ref & 5 since we left the customs union. Remember the OBR forecast Brexit would reduce UK trade by 15% (hence their forecast of a 4% hit to productivity). Let’s see how that is working out …

It is widely expected that UK’s Labour gov’t will “turn left” as a result of its leadership crisis. Yet in 18 months under Starmer & Reeves, public spending and borrowing have already escalated alarmingly. A left turn in economic policy will make public finances even worse!

Wow

My latest Telegraph column (I did not choose the title) The Gordon Brown was right about this one tax

EXCLUSIVE: Chagos First Minister's letter to the British people. "Please contact members of the House of Lords. Ask them to stop this deal. Ask them to defend British territory, security, taxpayers, and a unique natural environment that Britain has safeguarded for generations."

With Third Reading tomorrow, let me appeal to peers in all parties. 🇮🇴Let Chagossians decide their own future 🇮🇴Don't imperil the most important base in the region 🇮🇴Preserve the marine conservation zone 🇮🇴Don't raise taxes here to cut taxes in Mauritius 🇮🇴Defend democracy

Economics 101: Milton Friedman on 4 ways to spend money: 1). Your money on yourself (you’re careful about both cost and quality). 2). Your money on others (you care about cost, less about quality). 3). Someone else’s money on yourself (you care about quality, not cost). 4).

Soviet joke, loosely translated: Brigitte Bardot comes to visit the USSR. Brezhnev falls in love with her and says: “Brigitte, be mine. I’ll fulfill any of your desires.” She says: “Leonid, open the borders.” Brezhnev: “Aren’t you clever! You want us to be left here alone?”

🧵Over Christmas I had an opportunity to catch up with friends across Europe, and those conversations convinced me even more that unless there is a fundamental rethinking inside the European Union, the continent will slide into geopolitical irrelevance-and we'll all lose. 1/13

Waiving inheritance tax on Isas could solve the Chancellor’s debt woes