Essential post-Budget read here from @PhilAldrick: How Hunt has pushed the public finances to the limit in a dash for economic growth before the election... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… This is one of the key charts. Hunt has left himself barely any room to meet his fiscal rule - and that constraint is regarded as proof that the government is committed to sound money, and helped restore calm to financial markets late last year 2/

A quick pre-budget thread to explain what Jeremy Hunt is about to do... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Remember, Hunt's overriding political aim = make people want to vote Conservative. The Tories have a large (slightly narrowing) poll deficit v Labour and they want to fix that, or risk losing the election next year. But he faces constraints.. 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

How does Sunak's deal fare against the demands of the DUP and the ERG? There were two important points made in a briefing with the UK government just now... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… On the `Stormont Brake' - where Northern Ireland has the power to reject changes to EU laws affecting the region - it was confirmed that, if the veto is used, the old EU law remains. This might upset the DUP - some will still claim a democratic deficit.. 2/

New: Members of the ERG including Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood have teamed up with the DUP to send a warning to Rishi Sunak over Brexit. A sign of the political difficulty ahead… 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… On Wednesday the DUP tabled an early day motion in Parliament calling for the government to scrap plans to build new border control facilities in N. Ireland, as are required by the current Brexit deal… 2/ bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northe…

Brexit latest: The UK says there'll be a continuing role for the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland -- this will be the crunch issue for Tory MPs... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… @EllenAMilligan Asked today whether the government wants to remove the role of the ECJ in the NI protocol, Sunak's official spokesman said: “We don’t think it’s right to have a situation where across all areas it is only the ECJ that has a view." Note use of the word `only'... 2/

`We are being levelled down' - here's our @BloombergUK feature on what's holding back `levelling up'. It's a story of government inaction, inflation and funding anger... 1/ bloomberg.com/graphics/uk-le… Remember, the big picture is that the UK's wealth gap has widened since the Conservatives won the 2019 election - despite the flagship `levelling up' promise to close the gap 2/ bloomberg.com/graphics/uk-le…

New: Brexit is costing the UK economy £100 billion a year. Here are 4 charts that tell the story... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @economics If it had tracked the G-7 average since the referendum, the UK economy would be 4% larger than where it currently stands 2/

Exclusive: The UK's poorer regions are falling further behind London & the South East, despite the promise to `level up' Britain.

Major update to Bloomberg's levelling up tracker published today 1/👉bloomberg.com/graphics/uk-le… Bloomberg first published the Levelling Up Scorecard in May last year. We're tracking all 650 parliamentary constituencies against the government's own levelling up targets. Explainer on the project here 2/

https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1524667487723429888

New: Chancellor Jeremy Hunt contests the OBR's projection of a 4% reduction in the size of the UK economy from Brexit.

He says the split from the EU could actually make Britain richer 1/

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics @bpolitics Hunt says the OBR projection doesn't account for the potential benefits of regulatory reforms the UK could make outside of the EU. Here are those OBR numbers.. 2/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-d…

The Bloomberg newsroom was on fire yesterday digging into everything in the autumn statement 🔥🔥Here's all our budget stories in one place... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The big picture: Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt laid bare a bleak new reality for the UK economy, one plagued by weak growth and rising taxes for years to come 2/ @PhilAldrick bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

What did Jeremy Hunt do today? A thread on the political choices and economic context of the autumn statement... 1/ In short, he announced a major package of tax increases and spending cuts, aimed at curbing inflation which is at a 41-year-high and retaining the confidence of financial markets after the disastrous tenure of Liz Truss 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

New - There is `no evidence' yet of a Brexit dividend and Rishi Sunak should improve the UK's trade deal with the EU, according to one of Britain's top business executives 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Shevaun Haviland, head of the British Chambers of Commerce, said Sunak should seek a deal with the EU to reduce customs checks on British food exports, which have been badly hit by post-Brexit burdens 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Exclusive: An error in the government’s post-Brexit border IT system disrupted imports from the EU this week, adding costs and delaying deliveries 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… You’ll remember that, since Brexit, companies moving goods between the UK and EU have to file extra customs paperwork to cross the border. We wrote a lot about the initial disruption last year… 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Labour ask: What will you do to avoid a market crash on Friday, when the BOE withdraws support from the gilt market?
Government minister: We've invested in a big energy support package. We're not hiking national insurance. We have complete confidence in the BOE... 1/ 🤔 Trouble at the mo is the government doesn't seem to be giving markets any reassuring signals. At PMQs, Truss ruled out any public spending cuts, which would've been seen as a positive on fiscal responsibility.. 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Markets are still behaving in a worrying way for Liz Truss... Despite more moves by the Bank of England today, the borrowing cost on 10-year government debt spiked again. It's almost at the level prior to the BOE's emergency intervention last month... 😬1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… This is painful for the government. Remember, higher borrowing costs = more spent on debt interest = less money available to spend on public services. Chancellor Kwarteng says the key metric he watches is gilt yields... 2/

Our exclusive inside account of Tory conf:
-How Gove led rebels, tapping up grumpy MPs
-Truss's desperate hotel suite private meetings as she tried to reassert control
-The gallows humour facing voter wipe-out 1/
bloomberg.com/news/features/… @kitty_donaldson @elashton @EllenAMilligan Truss came into the conference with MPs despairing at record poll leads for Labour and the party's reputation for sound economic management gravely damaged by the market fall-out to her mini-budget.. 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Exclusive: The UK government is concerned that higher interest rates in the years ahead may cancel out any benefits from Liz Truss’s economic reform agenda 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The worry inside the Truss government is that, with the Bank of England expected to raise interest rates to ~5% next year, both households and companies will face much higher borrowing costs, sapping demand and curtailing investment.. 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

What's just happened to the UK economy? A thread on how we got here, and what's next for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng... 1/ Think back to the summer. Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak fought to be prime minister with competing visions on the economy. Sunak = be cautious, disciplined, bring down inflation. Truss = go for growth, borrow more, reject Treasury orthodoxy... 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The Conservative leadership race has been going for more than a month - nationwide hustings, TV debates, interviews. The candidates still haven't been asked a crucial q: Are you willing to start a trade war with the EU during a cost of living crisis? 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… At best Truss and Sunak have said they will keep pushing through the Northern Ireland Protocol bill, which would give ministers the power to unilaterally override the Brexit deal... 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

A quick thought on these Tory hustings. Each time, Rishi Sunak dedicates a large chunk of his opening speech to his Conservative values. It’s at least half of the speech. This is very precious airtime with the voting membership. But what’s hard to understand.. 1/ Is why he thinks that’s an effective approach against Liz Truss. She’s a Conservative too. She has those values. It’s not a reason to vote for Sunak over Truss. Truss on the other hand.. 2/

Exclusive: Norman Lamont, the Conservative chancellor who introduced the UK inflation target in 1992, says it would be a ‘terrible error’ to drop it 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/… In her bid for 10 Downing Street, Liz Truss has said she’d review the mandate of the Bank of England, mooting a money supply target as one option to better control inflation 2/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…