The UK economy is heading into a malaise. The latest news – UK construction activity in July falls at steepest rate since Covid (August 6, 2025) – and – UK services sector has biggest fall in orders for nearly three years (August 5, 2025) – confirms that there is a slowdown underway. That was prefaced…
Britain
Last week (July 15, 2025), the British Chancellor delivered the – Rachel Reeves Mansion House 2025 speech – which is an annual event where the Chancellor outlines the state of the economy and what the government is doing. Mansion House, London – is the official residence of London’s Lord Mayor and is located in the…
I doubt any of you will recall, but in 2003 I wrote a long post over at a different place, that NATO was dead. It was useless, much like the Concert of Europe that emerged after the 1848 Revolutions in Europe recast and sought to revise the settlement of 1815, set up by Castlereagh-Metternich and […]
The lack of correspondence arises when a government tries to operate within the tight constraints of unjustifiable fiscal rules by proposing legislation that cuts billions in government support for programs that are the difference between abject poverty for millions and a modest standard of living is once again coming to the fore in Britain. The…
This is the second part of my thoughts on the current acceleration in military spending around the world. The first part – The arms race again – Part 1 (June 11, 2025) – focused on background and discussed the concept of ‘military Keynesianism’. In this Part 2, I am focusing more specifically on the recent…
The Chair of the Finance Committee in the Irish Parliament invited me to make a submission to inform a – Scrutiny process of EU legislative proposals – specifically to discuss proposals put forward by the European Council to increase spending on defence. This blog post and the next (tomorrow) will form the basis of my…
It’s been a week of grand fiscal statements. Tuesday, it was for Australia as I discussed yesterday – Australian fiscal statement – rising unemployment amidst a moderate fiscal contraction (March 26, 2025). Then yesterday in the UK, the Labour Chancellor delivered the British Government’s – Spring Statement 2025. Both statements come at a time when…
The British press are reporting that the Government there is planning further spending cuts of the order of billions of pounds because the economic environment has changed and the current fiscal trajectory is threatening their self-imposed fiscal rules thresholds. We already heard last week how the Government is significantly cutting Overseas Aid as it ramps…
It is hard to keep track of the major shifts in world politics that are going on at the moment. I am in the camp that saw the extraordinary confrontation between Trump/Vance and Zelensky as demonstrating how embarrassing the US leadership has become. I am not a Zelensky supporter by any means but the behaviour…