I was scrolling through the business stories this morning and it was just one piece of bad news after another. This is becoming a habit. Friday’s news was dismal as well.
On Friday, we learned that the UK economy came to a grinding hald in the first three months of the new Labour government.
Experts blamed PM Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves for talking down the economy and terrifying businesses and consumers by hiking taxes in the Budget.
The tax hikes duly came and on Friday Deutsche Bank warned they will destroy 100,000 British jobs.
Which brings me to Monday.
First up on today’s doom scroll was news that our gas and electricity bills will jump again from January, rather than falling as expected.
This will place even more pressure on households following October’s 10% increase in the energy cap to £1,717 a year. Within weeks, that will climb another £19 to £1,736, according to consultancy Cornwall Insight.
Adding to the gloom, it warned that “prices will be staying relatively high for the remainder of winter.”
With an early cold snap forecast this week, that’s the last news we needed. Unfortunately, there’s plenty more where that came from.
Consumer price inflation (CPI) fell to 1.7% in September but the Bank of England has warned it will average around 2.75% over the rest of the year.
That’s largely down to Labour’s Budget tax hikes, too. Mortgage rates will remain higher as a result.
This morning, online estate agent Rightmove revealed that house prices fell more than £5,000 in November. That’s more than expected but hardly surprising given the gloom.
Insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor has just forecast that more British businesses will go bust due to Labour’s tax hikes and interest rates.
That’s good news for Begbies Traynor, which is going to be busy. It’s bad news for thousands of businesses that will now go to the wall.
Today we also learned that Labour ministers are drawing up plans to deal with food shortages if farmers go on strike over Reeves’ Budget IHT raid.
Food shortages! Just what we need. And completely unnecessary, too.
It’s just another way that Labour’s Budget has backfired.
And here’s another Rachel Reeves own goal.
All the pre-Budget doom and gloom hammered the luxury property market, as buyers gave up on the UK. Stamp duty revenues plummeted by £140 million.
Her tax onslaught is costing the Treasury money rather than raising more. We’re going to see a lot more Budget blowback in the months to come.
As if the prospect of five more years of Labour wasn’t bad enough, we face four years of Donald Trump from January.
The president-elect has repeatedly pledged to impose tariffs on goods entering the US, set at 60% on Chinese products and 20% for all others, including from the UK.
This morning, the Centre for Economics and Business Research warned this could shrink the UK economy by 0.9% by the end of the Trump administration, possibly more if we retaliate.
That’ll cost us £20billion. Starmer has his work cut out, as he battles to keep the UK out of a costly and unnecessary trade with the US.
So much bad news in one day. I can’t remember a Monday like it, but I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of them. It’s going to be a long, cold winter.