The @ONS says that the “broadest measure of inflation” - the “GDP deflator” - rose 4.8% in the first three months of the year. It is the question of the moment whether government stimuli and Covid19-impaired capacity means inflation is back is a serious risk. It is...
really striking that nominal GDP - GDP in cash terms - barely fell at all in the first quarter. All the 1.5% real decline was due to price rises
The other important way of looking at this is that output was surprisingly robust in the first three months of the year - since much of the so-called inflation was (eg) the phenomenon of the government paying teachers for not very much teaching, when lockdown closed schools
Sorry. I know all teachers work incredibly hard whether locked down or not! I was not making a point about the amazing contribution they make whether locked down or not. But through no fault of their own, we know their productivity is impaired by lock down. If that was...
not so, there would have been no need to cancel exams or commission expensive catch up programmes. In other words the price of standardised educational outputs has risen significantly, we hope only temporarily
One more thing, I was making a point about how @ONS measures the most general measure of inflation, the GDP deflator. In getting so angry and upset, you are blaming the messenger - which I think is something most teachers would discourage
PS Anyone who knows anything about me would know I admire teachers hugely. And I would never knowingly cause offence. I am sorry I used the sloppy phrase “paying for not very much teaching”, which I can see is capable of being misunderstood. It was not a reference to the...
effort put in by teachers; it referred to the output of that huge effort, which - with no teachers at fault - diminished.
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The prime minister said today there would be a "full proper public enquiry" into the government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis. This is highly significant, because a "full proper public enquiry" means one led by a judge and with witnesses represented by lawyers...
I am also told - though Downing Street is refusing to comment on this - that the Cabinet will be asked by the prime minister to approve the terms of the enquiry tomorrow morning, and there could be an announcement shortly afterwards...
Such a public enquiry - like Leveson's into hacking and Chilcott's into the decision to go to war in Iraq - would take many years, and might not report until after the next election...
One slightly odd thing about @Keir_Starmer’s reshuffle is normally a leader would want the support and advice of the deputy leader and the chief whip, to prevent party unity being seriously undermined. But Rayner has been publicly embarrassed by being stripped of her role...
as party chairman and there have been briefings that Nick Brown is losing his job as chief whip. So the question arises who is in the room with @Keir_Starmer if not them, to help him ensure the reshuffle isn’t a car crash. If he wanted to replace Brown and change...
Rayner’s duties, that would surely have been better done as the last pieces in the reshuffle jigsaw not the first. I constantly hear from Labour MPs that @Keir_Starmer’s greatest weakness is that he has too few people in his office who have grey hair and have seen it all before.
Back to Scotland for a moment. I am told by a minister that the PM’s big plan to keep Scotland in the union is to love bomb it in the 18 months or so before @NicolaSturgeon introduces her referendum bill into the Scottish Parliament in late 2022 or early 2023. That is...
consistent with my assumption...
that he knows he can’t stand in the way of a referendum without dishonouring the UK’s democratic heritage, and taking the whole UK to a very dark place. As @GavinBarwell argues it is hard for a British PM to...
argue that parliamentary votes don’t matter, whether at Holyrood or at Westminster. His least risky strategy is probably to work out how to win a referendum, rather than looking at constitutional and legal devices to stop it. The UK will not...
Bunker mentality seems to have arrived weirdly early in the @Keir_Starmer tenure. As I understand it @lisanandy and @JonAshworth are bracing themselves to be sacked for allegedly being disloyal to Labour’s leader. If they have been disloyal they certainly never showed such...
when I’ve spoken with them. And if @lisanandy is positioning herself for a tilt at the leadership, again that has been invisible to me. But they do have two characteristics unusual in @Keir_Starmer’s team: they’ve been effective in their jobs. So sacking them would...
arguably be self harming for Starmer and Labour. Maybe this is all post-election trauma gossip that is not rooted in reality. But as I say Nandy and Ashworth believe the gossip is well grounded. And given that @AngelaRayner has been sacked very publicly for an election...
It would be a mistake to read too much into these elections, other than it helps to be a figurehead and in power during a crisis like the Covid-19 one. Voters have rewarded every leader who they saw as enduring the stresses of trying to protect them and hear them, from...
were not “normal” elections. @Keir_Starmer and Labour may be in deep deep trouble. The Scots may be signalling they want another referendum on independence. But there is a lot of Covid-19 emotion and noise conditioning these votes, and when that emotion and noise subsides...
On 26 May Dominic Cummings will give evidence to MPs grouped on the health and science super committee, chaired by @Jeremy_Hunt and @GregClarkMP. This will be box office politically, because - as I have mentioned - Cummings will prosecute Johnson and his scientific...
advisers for failing to lock down early enough in March 2020 and Johnson (and Sunak) though not the scientists for failing to lock down in early September (not late September). But the Tory controlled committee will not allow him to use them to humiliate the PM in...
other ways (though some might say the charge that the PM put thousands lives at risk by refusing to lock down is humiliating enough). The committee’s members expect Cummings to give them a massive “dump” of papers and data. “We will sift through what...