Economy

Think back 12 months to January 2022. Boris Johnson was prime minister and had resisted calls for a lockdown in response to the Omicron variant of Covid-19. It was assumed inflationary pressure from post-pandemic supply-chain bottlenecks would soon abate. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was still several weeks away. There were rumblings of discontent in the Labour party at Sir Keir Starmer’s failure to register a commanding opinion-poll lead.All of which is a way of making the point that a lot can happen – to the economy and in politics –...

I did not get where I am today making forecasts about how the economy will perform in a new year. But I do feel it is my duty to emphasise the tangle into which this benighted government has got itself and us, and the connection between the three macroeconomic policy errors that have made us what we are – namely the “sick man of Europe”, with an economic performance worse than any other member of the G20 economies apart from Russia.What prompted me to do this was a BBC Today...