It’s appalling how long inquiries take in the UK. The inquiry into Sarah Everard’s horrendous murder has been going for four years. The Post Office Inquiry took five years. Infected Blood Inquiry took six years. There’s no kindness or justice in such monstrously long inquiries.

https://t.co/1m0IV44bAt Rachel Reeves accused of exaggerating gloomy outlook to pave way for tax-raising Budget

The way the British talk about the budget is just bonkers. A £4.2b “surplus” on Reeve’s fiscal target in 2029-30 actually means a budget deficit that is still ~£60b a year! This is crazy. Who gives af about the fiscal rule, look at the actual budget balance!

Labour in Australia understood this with policies like the 20% cut to all outstanding student loan balances. Brilliant politics. Appeals to voters who otherwise get no govt support but pay lots of tax.

No one in Australia is looking to MMT. Why? Because debt is low, deficits are low, and the govt has money to make the policy choice that it wants. It hasn’t racked up such vast sums of debt that it now has no good choices available.

It’s telling that MMT cranks only become popular once govt debt gets so high that the govt has to start making hard, unpleasant, unpopular choices. MMT presents a magic money tree argument that says, “Look! Free money! You don’t have to make any difficult choices ever again!”

There’s no excuse for following any of these spam political accounts anymore

https://t.co/97n1bIWU7x

This is why Australia must avoid high government debt at all costs. We cannot become enslaved to bond traders, we cannot let debt become a constraint on government action. I never want our government looking over its shoulder like this.

It’s 2025 and apparently some people still think it’s okay to call British politicians Uncle Toms.

This is a good proposal. I remember the NSW Government trialled this exact same thing (when Dom Perrottet was Treasurer) a few years but then abandoned it. Why?

No one on the British left is ready to grapple with the reality that a European welfare state can only be paid for with high, broad-based taxation on everyone, including low and middle income earners.

I’m more concerned that it’s a DOA attempt to placate climate change denialism on the right.

No one serious ever said it would but okay. If the result of all this political recalibration on climate change is a greater focus on adaptation (taboo in some circles as a sign of “giving up” on emissions reduction) then that’s a positive.

In Australia we talk about a lost decade (now 15 years) of productivity growth. This is the result. We fall further and further behind America. It’s already clear that their economic “problems” are of a different order to ours because they are SO much richer.

Walking home from the station. Lady drives up in a Mustang E-Mach. She gets out and dumps several big bags of rubbish next to a bin outside an estate. Gets back in her car and drives away. It was a Motability car.

Parliament must kill this deal

PM Albanese’s meeting with Trump at the White House went better than anyone expected. All the superlatives are deserved. A resounding win for Australia 🇦🇺

It is absolutely diabolical that this logo does not read, “Funded by the UK Government”.

Sensible suggestions from Andy Haldane. Government needs an independent fiscal monitor, but the current OBR model is too inflexible, and too biased towards fiscal constraint and against growth