The news horizon

Guests, which included hedge fund managers, allegedly congratulated the chancellor and told him to ‘double down’

Kwasi Kwarteng reportedly attended a private champagne reception with hedge fund managers at the home of a Conservative donor on the same day he delivered his mini-budget.

The chancellor is alleged to have given guests information about forthcoming government spending cuts during the event at the west London home of Andrew Law, a financier, on the evening of Friday 23 September.

No need to apply because £400 discount will ‘reach people automatically’, says Rees-Mogg

A scam alert has been issued by ministers encouraging people not to fall foul of fraudulent messages asking them to provide bank details as the energy price guarantee comes into force.

From 1 October, a limit on the price households pay for a unit of gas and electricity they use will mean a typical energy bill should be £2,500 a year. The first instalment of a £400 discount for households will also appear on bills.

Aides Alice Robinson and Mac Chapwell paid by company run by Liz Truss’s new chief of staff

Two of the prime minister’s most senior advisers are being paid through her new chief of staff’s lobbying company, it has emerged, days after Downing Street said it would employ the latter directly.

The government admitted last weekend that Liz Truss’s chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, was being paid through his lobbying firm, a move that could have helped him avoid paying tax.

The disastrous Conservative mini-budget has left the country in tatters. This government can no longer be trusted

The past 10 days have told us all we need to know about this Conservative government. First, they crashed the economy by handing unfunded, unnecessary tax cuts to those at the top, while undermining the very institutions that make the UK a safe place to invest. Now they’re doubling down on their failed approach.

This crisis started when the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, stood up and delivered his mini-budget. The markets reacted immediately: sterling dropped 3.6% against the dollar while yields on five-year gilts increased by 50 basis points. The turmoil continued, leaving the Bank of England to take the unprecedented step of injecting £65bn into the economy to stop pension funds collapsing – just days after announcing they were winding down their programme of quantitative easing.

Do Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng fully comprehend the destruction they unleashed? The evidence is not encouraging

The Treasury is an institution with a sense of history. Officials, as a matter of course, have a deep knowledge and understanding of economic crises of the past. The “pound in your pocket” devaluation of November 1967, the expansionary “Barber boom” initiated by the budget of March 1972, the IMF bailout of September 1976 and our ejection from the ERM in September 1992 will be all too familiar as case studies of failure from which lessons should be learned. To add to that list – perhaps the worst of the lot – will be Kwasi Kwarteng’s economic statement of 23 September 2022.

Culpability, of course, lies with ministers. A chancellor of the exchequer should have a feel for what the market will tolerate and the sense not to push their luck. Nonetheless, it would be no surprise if there is some soul-searching among senior officials as to whether more could have been done to warn the politicians that £45bn of unfunded tax cuts would break the markets’ patience. It did not help, of course, that their boss – Permanent Secretary Tom Scholar – had just been sacked for being insufficiently positive.

David Gauke was lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice from 2018 to 2019

This book is one of the most important ever written on Britain’s tortuous relationship with Europe in the last 50 years. It has been dismissed as a book written by a haut fonctionnaire, what in English would be called a Whitehall Mandarin. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason Barnier comprehensively out-negotiated his [...]

The post Barnier’s Secret Brexit Diary – A British perspective appeared first on The Federal Trust.

What is it about England’s right-wing journalism and France? The obsessive hate against France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, in papers like the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, and Spectator is without precedent. As news arrived of the death of 27 refugees drowned in the Straits of Dover, the Daily Mail summed up the style and language of the Francophobe press. It blasted the “Tantrum [...]

The post The Macron Obsession – a Very English Virus appeared first on The Federal Trust.

The extraordinarily tight outcome of the German elections has created the danger for the European Union of prolonged negotiations before the next federal government can be formed, lasting even as long as until Christmas. However, it also contains a most significant opportunity. This is not merely due to the defection of voters from the anti-European [...]

The post The German elections and the future of the euro appeared first on The Federal Trust.

This essay was commissioned by Léo Keller on behalf of the Blogazoi blog, as part of a collection to be published following the German election.   It is over 21 years since Angela Merkel took over from Wolfgang Schäuble as leader of the CDU, Germany’s most consistently successful political party. Schäuble, the heir apparent to the long-serving [...]

The post Angela Merkel, Britain and Europe: a view from offshore appeared first on The Federal Trust.

From Unidentified Political Object to European Democracy Thirty years after the foundation of the European Union by virtue of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty the nature of the Union has been established at last. At the time of its creation as successor of the European Communities the EU used to be described by the then President [...]

The post The Identity of the EU appeared first on The Federal Trust.

ESAs propose disclosures for fossil gas and nuclear energy investments<div class="field field-label-hidden field-name-field-eiopa-body field-type-text-long item-list">

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The three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA – ESAs) have today delivered to the European Commission (EC) their Final Report with draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) regarding the disclosure of financial products’ exposure to investments in fossil gas and nuclear energy... </div>

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Strengthening the resilience and sustainability of the insurance and pensions sectors: EIOPA sets out its strategy for 2023 – 2026<div class="field field-label-hidden field-name-field-eiopa-body field-type-text-long item-list">

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The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) has set out its strategy for the period 2023 – 2026. Current geopolitical tensions due to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine coupled with lingering effects of the pandemic, market volatility and inflation underline the need for... </div>

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European Commission Infringement decisions Brussels, 29 Sep 2022 Overview by policy area
In its regular package of infringement decisions, the European Commission pursues legal action against Member States for failing to comp...

European Commission Statement Brussels, 29 Sep 2022 Executive Vice-President Dombrovskis:
At a time of surging inflation and an energy crisis provoked by Russia's brutal war in Ukraine, it is more important than ...

European Commission Press release Brussels, 28 Sep 2022 Today, the Commission decided to register a European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) entitled ‘Focus on Specific Learning Disabilities on EU Level'.