(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/bcIB-Tt5DIE ) Of all the Christmas presents anyone’s given anyone this year, the standout has to be the great dollop of dosh the European Union’s just lobbed Ukraine’s way. And what’s unusual about it is that it’s a gift that repays itself pretty much straight away. Because if it hadn’t been forthcoming every one of us would have been exposed to Russian barbarism. Consider the alternative. Within weeks, months at the outside, the Kie

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/8RNRnjrVKcg ) As the post budget rumpus finally runs out of steam two closely related questions linger. What about the pound in our pockets? Where exactly is the growth coming from? While answers remain patchy and unconvincing one intriguing possibility keeps peeping from the sidelines. Maybe, just maybe, a seriously moneymaking reset of relations with the European Union. After all, it’s the Prime Minister himself who’s set the ball

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/mtTRxtcA6eA ) In one sense, budgets are all the same. A wheezing, limping race to the finishing bottom line. Exhausting but essential. Because behind the impenetrable mass of facts, figures and fulmination they are a defining pointer to what any government is doing. Or at least trying to. This latest foray can be chalked up as a victory – but only on one front. No question, Wednesday’s statement was decisive. By lifting tax levels t

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/RURWz05W3kM ) After what’s felt like the longest orgy in history of will-she won’t-she speculation about the 2025 budget, we’re finally going to know for ourselves this week. But it’ll take a bit longer than that to find out which bits will actually stick, and which will fall by the wayside. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, Downing Street’s grip on events is looking increasingly fragile. Goes without saying tha

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/6senVX4u-80 ) Where to now then? With the budget little over a week away the only thing we know is that we don’t know. How to balance the books without breaking a key pre-election promise? Anyone’s guess. Nor do we have any idea who turned the entire Downing Street operation inside out by suggesting Sir Keir Starmer was for the chop. But all these mysteries do feel seriously intertwined. To sort the money thing first, or at least take

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/g9MStXRePDw ) It’s turning into the mother of hoary old chestnuts. Yeah yeah, Labour’s going to do what it promised not to. Whack up income tax. It’s getting as boring as Keir Starmer endlessly banging on about his dad being a toolmaker. Tell us something new. Please. And yet what’s going on actually is new, as governments are not in the habit of fessing up to the hole they’re in. Consider the alternative. Chancellor Rachel Reeves wai

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/C4pHdMgWUWs ) No denying it’s been quite the week, what with the British monarchy rocked to its foundations and the British government scraping through the mother of all near misses. But as the immediate hullabaloo settles down the underlying sense of near crisis shows no sign of going away, as the huge question of how much we’re all going to have to shell out to keep UK PLC afloat still hangs over us. To most observers the very wors