Economy

For much of the world there has been hope for some time that the worst economic shocks from the Covid pandemic are in the rearview mirror. In China, however, there are important reminders that risks to the world economy still remain.Three years since the virus first spread, protests in several Chinese cities against the Beijing government’s strict zero-Covid policies have reignited concerns in financial markets over the economic costs of the pandemic. Global oil prices have fallen back, while the Chinese yuan and stock markets across Asia have taken a...

Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals.The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained since then,...

When recently asked on the Today programme to cite chapter and verse on the subject of Brexit “opportunities” Michael Gove, the secretary of state for all seasons, was hopelessly out of his depth.However, Gove missed a trick. What he should have said, but as a signed-up Brexiter obviously could not, was that the only “opportunity” arising from Brexit was to conduct a scientific experiment to demonstrate that the whole idea was a mistake. Moreover, it was a confidence trick on the British public, the majority of whom now realise that...