After last night’s Mansion House speech, in which Rachel Reeves promised an audience of City financiers that she would reduce regulation of financial services and encourage risk-taking by investors, the Public Accounts Committee has released a report this morning which suggests the state isn’t doing the greatest job of taxing the wealthiest in society. “HMRC does not know how many billionaires pay tax in the UK or how much they contribute overall,” the report finds. This sounds bad. It will certainly lead to even louder calls for a wealth tax from the left of the Labour Party and groups such as Patriotic Millionaires. But does HMRC need to know who’s a billionaire? Campaigners will doubtless be incensed by the revelation that “HMRC has no ...

In Britain, checking the weather forecast is second nature. We obsessively consult our favourite weather app, ready to adapt our day based on whether sunshine or showers are predicted. But we understand that weather forecasts become less reliable the further out they go. If someone claimed it would rain at exactly 10:13am two Tuesdays from now, would we believe them? We might pack a brolly. But we certainly wouldn’t rearrange our life around that precise time. We understand that weather forecasts are informed guesses. They deal in probabilities, not guarantees – and culturally, we use them with that understanding. But when it comes to economic forecasts, we seem to forget this common sense entirely. Take this year’s spring forecast from the Office ...

Labour has no shortage of woes on the domestic stage. The last week has seen flagship welfare reforms abandoned, new junior doctor strikes announced and intense speculation over Budget tax rises.  But many inside government draw consolation from Labour’s international performance. They argue – with some justification – that they have exceeded expectations by striking trade deals with the world’s largest economy (the US), the world’s fastest growing economy (India) and the UK’s largest trading partner (the EU).  This momentum has continued with the array of deals announced by Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron today. Chief among them was the long-mooted “one in, one out” migrant agreement, which for the first time will allow the UK to return people who cross the ...

Power is shifting on the left of politics. Last week saw the half-announcement of a new party co-led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn, representing the most significant breakaway from the Labour party in years. But while Corbyn and Sultana enjoy a cultish national following, their journey to left-wing dominance will depend on more than mere profile. Is a new party of the left viable without the support of the Greens? The Green Party is currently in the middle of a defining leadership election. The current co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, and fellow MP Ellie Chowns are locked in a battle with Zack Polanski, the party’s “eco-populist” deputy leader. Whichever candidate emerges at the helm of the Greens will have a defining effect ...

It’s hard to establish quite where the legal maxim “justice delayed is justice denied” comes from. The Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, likes saying it, as did her predecessor, Alex Chalk, and his predecessor-but-one, Brandon Lewis. It’s often attributed to William Gladstone, but the notion that the timely conclusion of a legal issue is fundamental to a functioning justice system pre-dates the Victorian prime minister by hundreds of years. One such variation can even be found in the Magna Carta: “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.” Echoing the sentiment is the retired judge Brian Leveson, who is chairing the government’s review into a broken courts system. Leveson recently warned that radical reform is ...

Desperate times, desperate measures. Climbing from 245th to 238th on the rich list may not qualify as desperate to all readers, but it does to Rishi Sunak. His net worth having actually slimmed by £11m last year to a worrying £640m, Sunak has returned to Goldman Sachs, where he first worked as an intern in the hazy days of Gordon Brown’s boom. Now Sunak – who is still an MP – is in the boardroom, as a senior adviser. He probably won’t have to make anyone a coffee. Who knows – he may even earn enough to buy an umbrella. Actually he won’t. In fact, Sunak is donating his pay to the Richmond Project, the charity he and his wife created ...

I used to think Morgan McSweeney filled his evenings browbeating backbenchers or Sharpie-ing constituency boundaries. It is therefore pleasing to learn that the man of action is also a man of letters – and ideas. In his Spectator cover story this week, Tim Shipman reported that McSweeney currently has Alexander Karp’s The Technological Republic on his bedside table. Alright, it’s not Sun Tzu. It’s not even Harold Macmillan paging through Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right (so dedicated was Macmillan to finding moments for literary reflection that in No 10 he would hang a do-not-disturb on his reading room door saying “Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot”). But we can read something of Macmillan’s methods from his favourite writers, himself a conniving patrician ...

Conversations about welfare spending in Scottish politics are – contra Westminster – rarely about how it might be reduced. No, up here we are always looking for new ways to shovel more money out the door. If you belong to a vulnerable group, you should be reassured that someone somewhere is working on a plan to lob some taxpayer cash your way. This might speak well of the Caledonian heart, but it doesn’t say much for the brain. As the frankly terrifying projections around future spending and demand pile up, one is left wondering whether the nation’s policymakers are ignorant, irresponsible or just plain daft. Whatever upset Rachel Reeves this week – bad personal news, rows with colleagues, a weakening Prime ...