ISSUE NO. 29 · FRIDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2026 A 60 per cent tax rate that only exists between £100,000 and £125,000, a department store £124m in the red, and a tourist tax that would cost the Treasury £688m About 12,000 parents are now holding their income below £100,000 on purpose. Four years ago it was roughly 1,100. They are not avoiding tax — they are avoiding a cliff-edge, because crossing £100,000 ends free childcare outright while the personal allowance is being withdrawn at the same time....
4 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 28 · THURSDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2026 A thirty-year bond at the steepest yield since 1998, a five-year fix at 5.68%, and £124bn of British companies bought by people who thought they were cheap The Debt Management Office is marketing a thirty-year bond at the steepest yield on any new debt since the body was created in 1998. Behind that sits a number already baked in: UK debt interest is projected to top £137bn in 2030, whatever the Chancellor decides in October. And the room to do...
5 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 27 · WEDNESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2026 Hiring grew for the first time in four years while vacancies hit a twelve-year low, a private share market that keeps drawing banks, and an audience of 5.4m that has yet to become a business 707,000. That is where UK job vacancies landed last month, the lowest outside the pandemic since November 2014. In the same report, permanent placements came in at 50.5 — above the neutral mark, and the first growth in permanent hiring since September 2022. Two...
6 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 26 · TUESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2026 Optimism at its best since 2024, four thousand jobs going at Jaguar Land Rover, and a gilt yield the Budget has to live with British firms have not felt this good since just before the 2024 Autumn Budget. BDO’s optimism index reached 94.22 in August and its output index hit 98.37, the strongest since January 2025 — while its employment index did almost nothing, sitting at 93.10, only just above a recent 15-year low. Firms are producing more and taking...
7 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 25 · MONDAY 7 SEPTEMBER 2026 The week in review — a gilt yield at 2008 levels, a shop price line that turned in a single month, and a tax on hiring that retail wants moved by £1,000 Last week had one subject, and it took until Thursday to show its face. UK gilt yields moved to levels not seen in a generation — the ten-year at its highest since 2008, the thirty-year back at 1998 — with Britain paying more than £130bn a year in debt interest against a national debt approaching £3tn....
8 days ago • 6 min read
ISSUE NO. 24 · FRIDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2026 A tax on hiring the young, an insurer whose profit fell on bonds rather than claims, and a housebuilder whose rescue keeps slipping Britain has nearly a million young people out of work, education or training, and the tax on hiring them went up. Retailers have absorbed more than £2.3bn since employer national insurance changed, and shed 115,000 jobs in two years. They are not asking for a bailout. They are asking for one threshold to move. Underneath...
11 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 23 · THURSDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2026 A ten-year gilt at levels last seen in 2008, business investment set to shrink, and a startup survival rate eight points below the European average Governments set out their plans in the Commons. The pricing happens elsewhere. UK gilt yields moved this week to levels not seen in a generation — the ten-year at its highest since 2008, the thirty-year back at a mark last touched in 1998 — and Britain is now paying more than £130bn a year in debt interest...
12 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 22 · WEDNESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2026 Shop prices at a two-year high, an energy cap written in the Strait of Hormuz, and £16,350 of stamp duty nobody legislated 1.5 per cent. That is shop price inflation in the year to August, against 0.9 per cent a month earlier and a three-month average of 1.2 per cent. It is the fastest pace in over two years, and food did most of the work at 2.8 per cent against 2.2 per cent in the previous reading. Nobody announced it — and that is the thread running...
13 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE NO. 21 · TUESDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2026 The week in review — a demographic bill nobody has costed, a land tax killed inside a week, and a department asking the poorest pensioners for their bank statements The Budget is 57 days away, and last week was the week Britain started arguing about who pays for it. Three different answers surfaced, none of them compatible. Ben Ansell put the long bill at about 10 per cent of GDP by 2075. Andy Burnham killed a land value tax within days of taking...
14 days ago • 5 min read