The Bank of England forecast inflation at 2% when it was going on to hit 11%. So clearly it does not understand inflation and has little ability to forecast it accurately as it is required to do. It tells us the inflation was caused by the Ukraine war and energy prices which it could not predict. So how come inflation was already 3 times target before the invasion? That main part of the inflation was not caused by the war. How come Japan and China kept inflation down to around 2% despite having to import much dearer energy as a result of the war?
N ow we are told they cannot risk lower rates because there could be more trouble in the Red Sea. Freight rates and insurance rates are already well up and much shipping has been diverted to the long route, so markets know all about that pressure on prices. Meanwhile the money supply has been squeezed, credit is dear and scarcer, mortgage demand has fallen and the Bank ignores all these obvious signs that inflation will come down.
Worst of all is the gross distortion of its balance sheet. They bought far too many bonds at crazy prices in 2021 only now to want to sell them at huge losses and send the taxpayer the bill. Why? The ECB that made the same inflationary mistake is not doubling the error by selling bonds in the market. The Fed is not getting reimbursement from its Treasury. Only the Bank insists on double austerity with squeezed money and less public spending or tax cuts as the taxpayer picks up the bill of the UK’s uniquely bad bond investor, the Bank of England. Never has the Bank lost so much money so quickly for no good purpose.
We need an urgent change of Bank policy, Stop selling the bonds. Cut the base rate by 25 bp. Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, China have started cutting their rates.
March 22, 2024
Don’t blame the BoE, it’s the government’s fault for allowing it to happen. The government can change the way the BoE behaves anytime it wants.
Reply The government says the Bank is independent so the Bank is to blame. I am trying to change it over the bonds
March 22, 2024
I suspect that the Bank rely on useless and outdated computer models for their forecasts. Like many in government, they prefer theories to pragmatism and what is happening in the real world.
March 22, 2024
No one wants to be the one to say we should change the way we do things. That way ostracism and ridicule lies. Group think in action.
March 22, 2024
JR,
If the BOE wanted Labour to govern would you give Tory any kudos by cutting rates to help their election prospects when they were in office? No.
Why did Sunak not ensure stability in markets through BOE and Treasury when Truss was coming into office?
Come on, JR. 14 years to change anything they wanted. 2019 an 85 seat majority to get Brexit done, your party and govt chose to betray the nation on its manifesto. You are still manipulating immigration figures and stated govt reduction to appear less than what it actually is. 1.395 visas issued last year plus illegal immigration. The govt wants to cut by 300,000 that means the govt wants to import 1 million low paid welfare claimants each year against its manifesto pledge to cut below 219,000! Legislation introduced last August gives illegal immigrants no status or right to apply to be here, how many deported since last August? What is the delay and why is it not happening? Sunak made clear on 7th March 2023 his legislation would sort it out. So again, why no deportation?
March 22, 2024
A shame as these fake Tories need to do 180 degree U-turns on almost every every issue. This starting with Net Zero, open door immigration and the vast size and waste within of government. Geoffrey Cox seem worried there will be no credible opposition post the general election annihilation.
But this Government has the same dire policies as Labour and is not a credible government or opposition anyway.
March 22, 2024
Reply to reply: this type of statement “the government says” is exactly why your party has a problem. The whole point of being in government is that it doesn’t have to say that the Bank is independent or anything else. Who appoints the Bank governor for goodness sake? We need a government which takes responsibility rather than passing the buck!
March 22, 2024
The minister says UK can adjust its own VAT rates! Sunak is acting in lockstep and stated UK would not be more competitive than neighbours! EU lockstep is the name of the game, corporation tax rate ?
March 22, 2024
Level playing field = suck it up UK
March 22, 2024
Interest rates will be kept high until the General Election. The BoE is stuffed with leftwaffe and will not do anything to assist you. You’ve had almost 14 years to do something about it but luke most things zilch.
490 boat claimants yesterday, yes fishys plan is working.
March 22, 2024
Ian
Yep, A barge load of Illegals in one day !
Given the way many Politicians think and act, I would not be surprised if they order another 365 barges, so they can then say, we have solved the problem until next year !!!!!!!!
Rwanda Policy is also a joke, what is the point of sending 300 people, at a cost of Hundreds of ÂŁ Millions do ?
The only real solution is to return them to France immediately.!
No paperwork, no entry, so simple .
March 22, 2024
Everyone else knows the solution is to return them to France the same day, either by turnarounds or ships/ferries/trains. So stop pretending Rwanda is anything other than an expensive smokescreen. More arrived in the last few days than any Rwanda deal will ever achieve in a year. Why is no one ever deported or sent back to “safe” Countries? We’re being lied too on an industrial scale. Any Country in receipt of aid should agree a returns policy this week or NO AID. DNA data base would prove Country of origin forthwith. Get on with it useless Tory’s.
It’s obviously Government policy to receive their share but it’s not their Country to agree. It’s ours and you politicos are in temporary charge and about to be removed by Reform who will act as the people want not you liberals.
March 22, 2024
The War of the Worlds song with the voice of Richard Burton
ââThe chances of anything coming from France; is a million to one âŠ.or so they saidââ
March 22, 2024
Not one person should be lifted into boats and brought to England! Why is an unfortunate Lorry drive prosecuted for having a sleep mandated by his taco graph , this is two faced actions. The RNLI reputation is totally destroyed, they are now enemies of Britain.
March 22, 2024
Just to update the picture: Last 7 days – 15 March to 21 March inclusive total 900 arrivals in 19 boats. The weather improved.
Fri 15/3 Zero / Sat 16/3 Zero / Sun 17/3 62/1 boat / Mon 18/3 Zero / Tue 19/3 61/1boat / Wed 20/3 514/10 boats / Thu 21/3 263/7boats. ( MoD official figures/website )
March 22, 2024
What hogwash!
Sir J, you can’t say the BoE bought Gilts at ‘crazy prices’ when you are now calling for lower interest rates to take the price of government debt higher, nearer to the prices they paid.
Interest rates are ‘normalising’, (Interest Rate in the United Kingdom averaged 7.09 percent from 1971 until 2024,) with your long experience you know this, so why the indignation?
The BoE does the Treasury bidding on guilt buying, why else would it demand the Treasury loss make-up provision? The BoE bought gilts so that your government could play at mass population manipulation.
The BoE may be incompetent, but no more so than your government.
Reply It us not guilt but gilt, though the way they bought them guilt would be a good word. The prices of the last tranches were crazy,way over repayment value to guarantee big losses. I am not proposing taking interest rates back down to 2021 levels
March 22, 2024
Reply to reply: You say the bank bought them âway over repayment valueâ. If the BOE bought a ÂŁ100 gilt for, say, ÂŁ120 and it was 8 years from repayment at 4% a year, presumably they would avoid the liability of paying the interest of (8 years x ÂŁ4 interest) ÂŁ32, and, they then owned the bond, they wouldnât have to redeem it – avoiding paying out ÂŁ100 in 8 years time. If, instead, they sell the bond now at a loss, they then have to pay the new owner the annual interest and pay out the ÂŁ100 when the bond matures. On the face of it, what they are doing is simple insanity.
If they lower base rate below the coupon on the bonds they have bought, those bonds will increase in price in the open market. Isnât there a huge incentive for them to lower interest rates to increase the price of the bonds they have bought? It would be interesting to see actual figures of the bonds they have bought and now sold.
March 22, 2024
Mike
It makes no sense to me either, simple mathematics suggests it is daft, why deliberately Crystallise a loss, when there is no immediate need to do so.
If anyone can make a positive case for the BOE action, then I would be pleased to try and understand.
March 22, 2024
They are keen on crystalizing losses at public expense. They government want to do it with the NatWest shares now that the losses have been socialised and the bank is making money again and can pay dividends so privatising profits in the time honoured Tory way. JR is thoroughly supportive of this one.
March 22, 2024
Still with the ‘loss’ issue. The BoE (and by extension the Treasury) creates, under QE, and destroys, under QT, our ÂŁ ‘Fiat money’. The BoE’s job here is money supply to the economy, profit or loss on selling bonds is irrelevant to them, just a special accounting issue. We have too much money chasing limited assets, hence inflation, the BoE is managing the money supply by destroying ‘excess’ money it receives when it sells or surrenders GILTS, under QT.
March 22, 2024
We didn’t elect the BoE, who is supposed to hold them to account? Our Treasury, whom we elected with a massive majority. They sold us sovereignty, so why aren’t they taking action with the power we gave them?
March 22, 2024
We have done QE5. QE was introduced to keep banks solvent and interest rates down following a crisis. It went on to become standard fare to keep inflation and interest rates low.
The central banks are now reducing the number of existing bonds in the market, at great cost, to encourage buying new bonds at lower rates to fund the Government debt.
Central Banks are now propping up high risk over spending by Governments
March 22, 2024
How are they doing that? When they bought bonds they reduced the number of existing bonds, but they are now selling them so, surely, they are increasing the supply?
March 22, 2024
The Govt. âcreateâ bonds and then the BOE buys them. They bought the bonds when interest rates were low – the interest rate on Bonds is fixed. So when interest rates go up the value of the bonds drops.
Itâs a scam of course, because the Govt is in control of the BOE. So they donât have to creat the bonds (money) âopenlyâ which would upset voters.
March 22, 2024
A shocking admission you cannot govern. Letâs add the Lords, Quangos, the judiciary, the Police, Civil Service working from home, NHS etc all ignoring or deliberately obstructing our elected representatives costing us more and more whilst the service declines.
March 22, 2024
@reply – how can anything that survives of taxpayer money be independent? Who manages the UK? It is not the BoE, the OBR or any of the hangers on it is simply this Sunak/Hunt Conservative Government, no one else. They could pull the plug on these failures today, they obviously are demonstrating that damaging the UK is preferably to them doing their job
March 22, 2024
The trouble is even when it is repeatedly pointed out nothing changes.
Advice and criticism is simply ignored.
March 22, 2024
In practice , these people should be sacked, just as we would if we made such a stupid meds. Why has our government not done that?
However we will be sacking them soon for not controlling these idiots!
March 22, 2024
Correct, huge economic harms and jobs destroyed by the BoE yet again.
Furlough announced 4 years ago and Sunak claims it âsavedâ 14 million jobs. What planet is this dope on?
The lockdown did huge net harm, the vaccines did huge net harm, the Covid loans did huge net harm, the vast tax increases to finance all this did and are still doing huge net harm to jobs. As is net zero, your governmentâs excessive red tape, endless waste & excessive tax levels.
Also the vaccines were/are not remotely safe and you have not even started to cut taxes yet? So please stop lying to us and the House and correct the record Sunak.
March 22, 2024
And yet more green crap lunacy from Sunak with âCarbon Border Adjustment Mechanismsâ yet another EU driven green tax to impoverish us, destroy out ability to compete and damage the economy even further.
March 22, 2024
Fraser Nelson – “Sunak was right to worry about his ÂŁ70 billion scheme. It has led to a welfare crisis, not a jobs recovery” this is from a Conservative. Always a stupid and counterproductive scheme. I’m not sure he worried about it though, small change!
March 22, 2024
Itâs not from a ConservativeâŠ.you provide the proof.
March 22, 2024
“Climate Change – the Movie” makes for interesting viewing. A good way to pass the time while your EV is charging!
March 22, 2024
Needless to say I have not wasted ÂŁ40k on an EV. Keeping my old petrol car is far cheaper and also produces less CO2 (not that a bit more CO2 is a sig. problem anyway), less tyre wear and less road wear and will not need a new ÂŁ20k battery in 8 years time. Nor do I have to wait hours to refill the car for another 800 miles.
But I will probably watch the movie.
March 22, 2024
We need an armed revolt in this country as the government is returning to the EU with no mandate to do so!
March 22, 2024
I’d go with that. There are many reasons why the elites should be removed. Our leader has absolutely no understanding of the ordinary people on economics and common sense, social issues or our identity, he just reads reports put in front of him by people who don’t know either.
By the way I am a traditional conservative.
March 22, 2024
@Lifelogic – as much as I hate the EU way of doing things, but you have to admit that importing kit off-shored by our Government from China and the assembling inside the UK or the EU as a way of bypassing the NZ burden imposed by this Conservative Government and the high import duties is not a level playing field. A car that consists of 60% Chinese or similar NZ bypassing products is not going to damage our economy. The NZ contradictions keep mounting Sunak is paying the Worlds biggest polluters so far more than ÂŁ1billion of our Taxpayer money to cancel UK industrial capabilities then import from the same big polluters. Thats the bit that stops us competing. So the ability to compete is not a result of any âCarbon Border Adjustment Mechanismsâ it is this Conservative Government refusing us our own manufacturing base.
I take your point and anything that suggests we are keeping in step with the EU is plainly wrong
March 22, 2024
Vaccines crow barred into everything, you are obsessed. Please give us a rest, we know your views,
March 22, 2024
+1 You’d be forgiven for thinking it was deliberate and there was an objective which required the destruction of our economy.
March 22, 2024
So nothing can be done to ease the financial burdens because the Bank of England is in charge of our purse.
Nothing can be done about 1000’s of fighting age men landing illegally to join those already here, because the ECHR/UN, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all, seemingly run our immigration policies.
Great.
March 22, 2024
Michelle you can, vote Reform UK.
March 22, 2024
415 boat people on Wednesday alone it seems. Just the ones the recorded anyway. How are the 4 failed pledges going Sunak? Stop the boats, NHS waiting lists (are you going to pay doctors enough to live on), repay the debt, grow the economy⊠not too well it seems.
Much talk of the Ombudsman compensation ruling for the Waspi women and state pension ages being leveled up with men. Surely the far greater inequity was the fact that men, for very many years, paid far more contributions in but only got their pensions five years later than women at 65. This despite the fact that they lived circa 2 years less than women. What has the ombudsman said on this nothing it seems?
But no it only works the other way. It is when this blatant inequity is finally corrected then it is the women who deserve compensation. This as it was apparently not made sufficiently clear to these women. All rather silly as in most cases the pensions go to couples anyway and benefits top up when there is real hardship anyway.
March 22, 2024
Indeed there is no functioning government it seems, so perhaps they should move on.
March 22, 2024
+++
Yesterday they declared an âImmigration Emergencyâ
YesâŠreally!
LOL
My first laborious comment just disappeared like the problem now will.
Double lol đ
March 22, 2024
So did mine, funny that?
March 22, 2024
Immigration emergency means….. they do nothing other than talk about it and do nothing. We all know what your Government needs to do. Grow some and just do it and start deporting the rest. Our security and safety more important than criminal migrants!
March 22, 2024
In 2021 the Johnson conman (a clownish cartoon figure who has turned verbosity into an art form) and his halfwit sidekick Bailey flirtation with Socialism in the name of Quantitative Easing triggered a series of fiscal and cultural harms that will be felt across generations. What we see today is simply another consequence of a free-money criminal enterprise (inflation being the downside of free-money) led by a moronic Tory PM and his willing pet monkey, Bailey
Unfortunately for the people we have another pair of dopes namely Reeves and Starmer who I have no doubt will abuse this nation’s fiscal base for political and ideological profit
March 22, 2024
Indeed but Boris? More to blame surely was Sunak? His tax, borrow, currency debase, lockdown & piss the money down the drain Chancellor at the time.
March 22, 2024
Johnson was First Lord of the Treasury.
Heâs doing very well for himself they want us to believe – earned ÂŁ5 mill completely out of sight – âwriting and speakingâ. Pull the other one.
March 22, 2024
I can never understand why PM’s let their Chancellors do this stuff which always lands back on their heads. Probably because they just don’t understand it I suppose. In Boris’s case I say he was too lazy to even try to find out the implications of budgets, dreaming of being King of the World.
March 22, 2024
Yes,Boris!
Fittingly,given his ancestry,there is an old Turkish proverb that accurately covers Johnson’s tenure as PM:
“When a clown moves into a palace,he doesn’t become a king.The palace becomes a circus.”
March 22, 2024
đ€so true!
March 22, 2024
Both Labour and Conservatives have deferred decisions and power to technocratic super and sub political organisations. All parties in Parliament are supported and sponsored by technocratic think tanks such as the WEF.
March 22, 2024
It was surely Sunak who persuaded this round of QE to start exactly 4 years ago? Johnson was just a willing follower in both numeracy and philosophy. It’s perhaps more fitting than it appears that Sunak is also on the end of the current popularity slump.
March 22, 2024
@DOM – Government is a Collective Cabinet responsibility, we still have intact what passes for the Boris Johnson cabal sitting around the top table. Getting rid of one of the team never changes anything
March 22, 2024
“The Bank, the Bank got it wrong again, I am not going to vote for the Bank at the next Election, I shall vote for the Conservatives and hope they can bring a fresh approach to running the country after 14 years of misery inflicted by the Bank”. Said no one, ever
March 22, 2024
Central banks the world over are buying gold – so much that the spot price has surged repeatedly to new highs this year. Priced in sterling, a kilo of the yellow metal on Wednesday cost ÂŁ55,323 – or ÂŁ1720.62/oz – and London silver hit ÂŁ638/kilo.
Central banks clearly fear the stupendous global debt levels, now at a record high of $313 TRILLION acording to Institute of International Finance as reported by Reuters in Feb 2024. The global debt-to-GDP ratio hit nearly 330% in 2023. This level of debt is clearly unsustainable. Turkey has just raised it’s interest rate by 500 basis points to 50% (!!)
For once I disagree with Sir John’s analysis. High BoE interest rates are necessary – to attract lenders to finance a country that routinely imports more than it exports and which has a government that for the past 14 years has borrowed and spent more than it raised in tax.
Gold is the asset of last resort, a store of wealth that has lasted millenia. Should the world suffer another pandemic, or – as looks likely following Putin’s “re-election” – the Ukraine war morphs into a NATO/Russia world war, all fiat currencies will become as worthless as a Zimbabwe $1 trillion note
March 22, 2024
The âUkrainianâ war has long since been a NATO/Russia conflict. NATO lost. They are admitting it now. Surely you can smell the panic? After all Russia, two days ago, moved on from âactive defenceâ. So their assessment is that they have destroyed the Ukrainian/NATO Defence forces (3 in total).
Offensive now, complicated by the terrorist attack in Moscow Crocus.
Donât bother with hold. Invest in industry! Education! Self-sufficiency in food and energy.
March 22, 2024
The Sunak government are the product of and result of the Blob, or BOE,OBR, Treasury conspiring to remove Truss. Do not expect them to do anything other than those blob wishes. They cerrtainly will not respond to your advice, however good it may be.
The most sinister event yesterday was the slipping in of CARBON BORDER ADJUSTMENT MECHANISMS, a bastard child of the EU. A fantasy device guaranteed to make the UK less competative in the World than it already is. A tax on what we are forced to import, steel for instance, because our insane energy policy and the forced inflated prices we have to pay for it, dictate that we cannot make it ourselves. Who pays this tax, you Joe Public.
Meanwhile do you see the USA, China, Japan, India or anyone else who trades getting involved, fat chance. Yet another device to ensure that the UK does not thrive outside the EU and conived at by our consocialist illigitimate government. Yet another selling point for Reform UK.
March 22, 2024
+ 1 having destroyed our energy-intensive heavy manufacturing (steel, cement etc) with the Net Zero lunacy and a deliberate policy of expensive energy, they are now intending to make it more expensive to import the products we need but no longer produce.
The lunatics really have taken over.
March 22, 2024
And let’s face facts, our host is loyal to the party and consequently the incompetent government. He would vote for it in a vote of confidence. This must be admitted.
Reply I was elected as a Conservative and I promised to support a Conservative government government. I also promised to be critical and to press for change where needed as I do.
March 22, 2024
Yeah, But we don’t have a Conservative govt. JR.
March 22, 2024
Reply to reply. But we haven’t got a Conservative Government ….. we’ve got a lefty, WEF-supporting Green-Socialist one, so you’re absolved of your promise.
March 22, 2024
Reply to reply.
That you do SJR with great , if somewhat misplaced loyalty. However please face up to reality. Conservatism exists in circa 50 MPs, in the country, and now in its natural home Reform UK. Our government, most conservative MPs, the opposition are all consocialist or social democrat by leaning. I judge that your loyal support for this confidence trick on the electorate needs re- thinking. You are wasting your talent and advice on a lost cause.
You could mount a coherent arguement against the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, but government is not interested. They ars intent on reversing Brexit. You really do need to decide where your future lies, with Conservatism or with fantasy consocialism.
March 22, 2024
reply to reply …in this forthcoming GE you may survive, I hope so, but are likely to be very isolated on the opposite benches. Should the awful prospect of the dreary grinning Libdem character misrepresent and win more votes, what will you do? I cannot imagine you easily retiring from politics, nor your convictions.?
March 22, 2024
Maybe on the Cross Benches. When JR is elected for another term, he will work as he now does to provide the facts for government to make good decisions.
March 22, 2024
But import by the millions claiming more houses need to be built! How about food, water, waste?
March 22, 2024
Yes Hope, the pen pushing beings that talk of building houses and more house forget they all need full infrastructure- water waste internet electric and transport!
We need intelligent members of Parliament instead of big mouths like Starmer of Sunak!
March 22, 2024
@agricola +1
I like most people don’t like being in step with the EU, we should be our own ‘man’. But, how does the CBAM make us less competitive? As you state it was our insane Conservative Government that chose to give the Worlds Largest Polluters close on ÂŁ1 billion of our taxpayer money to close UK production down and then force the UK to import the steel that we desperately need from those same polluters.
This new tax, coming out of the EU(and I hate them with a passion) is there to redress the situation that car manufacturers in the EU and UK are importing more than 60% of the components from the Worlds largest polluters and then assembling the units here and calling them a being manufactured in the EU or UK. They are bypassing tariffs and our insane NZ laws. UK and EU car producers could just manufacture here in the UK and EU they choose not to, but just become China’s back door to circumvent tariffs and undercut our home grown products. All that is happening is what used to be home grown manufacturers has become Chinese assembly plants. You could say they have taken the lead from Sunak and this Conservative Government by pushing production of all the much needed major components offshore – the insane concept of NetZero that isn’t thought through
March 22, 2024
I and many others have pointed out again and again that the Conservative Party has been pro mass migration, anti energy green, anti-British, high tax, anti entrepreneurial, pro authoritarian, anti free speech. Literally nothing of the Party remains.
The root core of the issue is that the technocrat class has taken over the political class. This is due to deferring Government to the EU, super national organisations and sub national quangos and regional Governments. The cabinet now mange non Governmental organisations and pander to activist organisations.
I pointed out a while ago the vast majority of conservative MPs had left the Conservative Party and the party was little more than a hollow shell. This is why the momentum is against the Conservative Party and for the Reform Party.
I think we are looking at less than 100 Conservative seats, probably 75 and could go as low as 50. Most Conservative MPs will be gone. This will narrow the gap with the Reform Party and it will then be a head to head between the two parties.
Possibly a extinction level event. All brought to you by the WEF sponsored managerial class.
March 22, 2024
@Javelin +1
March 22, 2024
@Javelin
“This is due to deferring Government to the EU, super national organisations and sub national quangos and regional Governments.”
+1
March 22, 2024
Paragraph two excellent and spot on. Deliberate action by Sunak govt. his wife will not need or have non Dom status and his green card will be back in flash as he jest to US on a private plane.
March 22, 2024
It is also due to the fact that the Political Machine chooses the shortlist – the Narcs stick together. I donât believe many would get past a Selection Committee – indeed the proof was that when the members freely chose their candidate, most were proven-over-half-a-lifetime upstanding locals. People who could control the Civil Service, thatâs half an MPâs job! To stop the civil service using the power of the state to crush the individual!
We need to dismantle the Party Machines! That includes Reform – was Tice elected? I think not, so why is he so different from Sunak?
Reform imposes irreversible damage on the British people – PR means they permanently lose power to the party machines.
Better to have Starmer for 5 years – we can still sack him!
March 22, 2024
Sir John, once again you ask why oh why is this happening, why is the BoE selling bonds at a loss and failing to adjust the base rate? Have you considered it might be because their actions are not in human hands at all, but are driven by AI algorithms? Just wondering.
March 22, 2024
People who HAVE accurately forecast UK inflation over the past couple of years (monetarist economists) now predict it will rapidly fall to 2% with a chance it will overshoot and get to zero and deflation by end-year. This seems extreme but in fact China is already in deflation and due to their high level of exports that will be impact us too. What I want to know is why the two BoE economists who voted for an interest rate rise last month and voted to hold it fixed this month haven’t been fired for incompetence ? Changing their outlier votes means they admit they got it badly wrong the previous month.
What we do know is that the BoE will not under any circumstances reduce rates in advance of the Fed and are probably also coordinating with the ECB to stay aligned with them.
However, never mind, Sunak has a plan. The plan is to pass more important legislation which makes it illegal for me to buy you a pack of cigarette papers if you were born in 2009. One interesting effect of a smoking ban is that the tax the government collects from smoking will fall to zero but NHS costs will rise because those people will live longer and require more old age care – I haven’t seen how they are proposing to fill this funding black hole ? .
March 22, 2024
@Roy Grainger +1 – overshoot or is it undershoot? either-way that is a forced rescission, more jobless, more woes
March 22, 2024
China sanctions quietly dropped!! I wonder if it is anything to do with Hunt or Cameron!
March 23, 2024
I’m sure they haven’t got a conflict of interest
March 22, 2024
Good morning.
So who is in control then, the government, or ‘other(s) ?
It is important because I want to know who to vote for.
/sarc
March 22, 2024
@Mark B +1
March 22, 2024
I see the latest YouGov poll has the Tories down to 19%, with Reform fast catching up.
Well, that budget worked, didn’t it?
March 22, 2024
keeping Sunak/Hunt a roaring success.
March 22, 2024
@Bill B +1
Is it gloating or despaired
Tories 2019, 376 â seats, predicted for 2024 just 76
Sunak is doing wellâŠ. going to his and CCHQ’s plan – the destruction of UK Conservatives
March 22, 2024
Despair at the quality of people who become ministers, Ian. Hunt was a health minister whose idea of preparing for a pandemic was to cut thousands of hospital beds and impose a below-inflation pay cap on nurses. Then, after nurses had been at the front line of their biggest challenge for nearly a century, his way of saying thank you to them was to refuse them a decent pay settlement. The whole country would’ve understood that after Covid, nurses deserved something extra and would not be a precedent for high wage increases. Not Hunt, apparently.
I normally keep my comments short and cheerful, but this man makes me spew.
March 23, 2024
@Bill B +1, despair that someone with proven failures gets to fail all over. A bit like the failure of the outfit he is responsible for the BoE – the only ones paying are the UK’s taxpayers
March 22, 2024
You’re talking to the hand Sir John. If the face was listening they’d have changed policy by now.
They (the B of E and the two puppets in No.10 and 11) are “on a mission” and it isn’t one that is intended to benefit the UK or British taxpayers.
Sunak and Hunt have their Globalist post-governmental employment opportunities to secure and Bailey knows he is untouchable all the time the IMF / WEF want him in place.
A nation can survive its fools; its the traitors within who will destroy it.
March 22, 2024
@Donna +1 – well said
March 22, 2024
Sanctions against China dropped in November! Putin bad but Xi and his slavery, organ harvesting, reneging on Hong Kong treaty and coal fired powered stations to sell UK all the goods it wants transporting here by diesel lorries, ships and trains!!
March 22, 2024
“They” thought they were going to get control of Russia(the war the west provoked and the sanctions that ensued were supposed to trigger a regime-changing collapse and installation of a western puppet to hand over all those resources).Control of Russia is key to emasculating China-just look at the map.
That is absolutely not going to happen.The Russia-China-Iran axis will sweep all before it-it’s fairly basic geopolitics.Have you done a tally of the proportion of world resources under the control of the expanded BRICS(a further expansion will take place this autumn)?Resources are REAL money.
Are you following the development of the East-West trade corridors that the BRICS members and their allies control-the trans-Eurasian land routes,the INSTC (linking India and Russia through Iran-Russia has recently placed an order for 24 cargo ships with India’s Goa shipyards to handle the rising volumes),the Arctic Northern Sea Route(there will be a huge uplift in volumes here from this year onwards).Meanwhile,Iran’s Houthi allies have a stranglehold on the Red Sea route (ironically,this is what the Portuguese,the first Europeans to establish themselves in this region, tried to do to the extremely lucrative Arab/Mamluk controlled Red Sea trade in the early 16th century.
If you control both the resources and the routes to market,you control the currency in which trade is conducted.
Better get used to it.
March 23, 2024
Yes, that’s about where things are, Mitchel. A failure by strategists to get the bigger economic picture. And our political masters were too busy focusing on their real enemy – not Russia, not Iran, not China, but the domestic public who might vote them out of office. That is the existential threat to the political class, here and in other Western democracies. So they have to keep control of the narrative, even when the reality is slipping away from them. The next general election isn’t going to change that, in my opinion, any more than Georgia Meloni’s election victory in italy changed much there, or Geert Wilders’ election victory in Holland will result in a big change of government policy there. We’ll see what happens with Donald Trump. He was told by Democrat-friendly public health chief Anthony Fauci in 2017 he might have a pandemic to deal with. Perhaps this time (if elected) he’ll be told by the neocon hawks in Washington that he’ll have a world war to deal with.
March 22, 2024
@Hope, according to the BBC Hunt is about to give the Chinese ÂŁ300million of our taxpayer money to close real steel manufacture in the UK then import back from China our specialty steel requirements – so as you say coal fired powered stations in China are OK the goods being transported to the UK is OK. All leading to UK specialty jobs trashed, UK self sufficiency and resilience trashed. All in the name of NetZero when his actions increase emissions by another magnitude, so the pretense is just a lie. Whose Chancellor is he.
March 22, 2024
@Donna
+1
The only good thing is that more and more people are now writing and speaking about how it’s not government running the country!
March 22, 2024
WASPI women is another government non-decision.
In a world which is run by contract, the State Pension is an odd half-promise made to people who pay NI that they might get some unspecified amount at some unspecified age. You can’t carry on taking cash from people on such an uncertain promise in today’s world. Either you have to say “NI is a tax, don’t rely on it, anything is a bonus” or “NI is a contribution, you will get x back at age y”.
Going half way on this is, saying it’s a contribution with no definitive payback is de facto government mis-selling.
March 22, 2024
All pensions are a gamble really since they did away with the old style ones where you got a percentage of final salary. I took out a pension in the 1980’s and paid extra to get guaranteed payout based on those ruling at he time. Thank God I did as I ended up with a pension about twice the value of payouts the market was issuing in exchange for the money paid in.
March 22, 2024
In earlier decades families and friends gathered in small groups to form Christmas Clubs or Loan Clubs to assist each other. Members were able to loan money from the collective savings and paid interest for a dividend shared by all. If the person running the club recklessly gambled membersâ money he would have been dismissed and likely to face legal action, even imprisonment. The BoE is reckless with taxpayersâ money, yet remains fully paid, without penalty, Scot free.
March 22, 2024
The Bank of England is Park Hampers which has gone bust and resurfaced several times.
March 22, 2024
The joy of Groupthink!
March 22, 2024
Very odd the govt doesnât put a stop to this. Have you spoken directly to the chancellor or pm on this topic if I may ask – do they disagree with your analysis?
Reply Of course I have set out my views in the Commons and direct to them.
March 22, 2024
This all goes over the head of Joe public, so it’s not going to affect votes, so the government doesn’t care.
March 22, 2024
reply to reply ..how many times and subjects do you put your explanation to them, only to be ignored?
It amazes me you can keep doing it – Reform beckons.
March 22, 2024
When you set out your views direct to Hunt was he more or less dismissive than he was to Sir James Dyson !
March 22, 2024
“The Bank gets it wrong again” and who is the banks ultimate management?
This version of a Conservative Government appears happy to permit all their periphery cabals to do their dirty work and maliciously drag the UK down.
How much more can the Country take without someone getting a grip?
March 22, 2024
I read yesterday that interest rates needed to remain high to support sterling against the dollar. Seems quite plausible to me given that whatever the US does with its economy no one loses faith in its currency. The US national debt is mind-blowing yet still it gets funded.
March 22, 2024
Sunak & Hunt are happy with the BoE direction of travel âŠ.in the media they both keep saying that their (BoE) plan is working
Its not just the BoE thatâs out of step; itâs the whole leadership of this Tory government
March 22, 2024
…and the rank and file Tory MPs. Years and years of reliably sitting on hands while the PM/Cabinet perform disaster after disaster. How many Sir Johns do we have? Count them on one hand!
March 22, 2024
@glen cullen +1
March 22, 2024
You define the problem, but shy away from the solution. Andrew Bailey must be sacked.
March 22, 2024
It’s very hard to understand why he was appointed in the first place – he didn’t exactly shine at the FCA. It seems time served counted more than actual ability. The old adage ‘Promoted to his level of Incompetance’ comes to mind…
March 22, 2024
Time serving, that’s all. Stay long enough and you get to the Peter principle which you suggest.
March 22, 2024
Sunak must be sacked! Hunt must be sacked! Bailey is just a functionary.
March 22, 2024
Its been estimated that the illegal boat crossing will cease mid June when there are no longer any immigrants in France to cross âŠ.Theyâve all arrived
March 22, 2024
Glen
I will let you know when I next go there for a holiday !
Think they have perhaps got better at hiding !
March 22, 2024
Don’t go near the northwest beaches, you might get frogmarched to the nearest small boat and frisked for a credit card!
March 22, 2024
In that case – the plan is working!
March 22, 2024
Worry not, there are another 100m or so waiting in the wings!
March 22, 2024
Views above suggest the government will not change anything – on the Bank of England policy, illegal immigration, policing etc etc .
Many do not believe government works on behalf of voters.
Many believe highlighting Bank failures is simply passing the buck
Many believe the government will face a severe defeat in the next election, with a massive loss of seats.
Some believe the Reform party will prosper.
I agree with most of this except the success of Reform. At least a diminished Conservative party will deny many of the usual chancers a place in parliament. Labour will soon fall to infighting, but what happens after that is anybody’s guess.
I would like to hope the nation will put up some sort of fightback rather than meekly continue to put up with all this.
March 22, 2024
Both the prime minister and the Chancellor recently hailed the fall in inflation rates as showing their plan is working. That boast turns to ashes of course when it is recalled that last year, before they had a plan, you told us that inflation would fall appreciably this year.
March 22, 2024
Or when the Chinese run out of rubber and sticky tape to make them…
March 22, 2024
On the England Football team & the FA ditching the English flag while playing in the European Championship â supposedly wearing the English Flag has racist if not fascist connotations.
From Kier Starmer âBranding the change âwrongâ, Starmer told the Sunâs YouTube channel: âIâm a big football fan, I go to England games, men and womenâs games, and the flag is used by everybody. It is a unifier. It doesnât need to be changed. We just need to be proud of it.â
How Woke does this Country need to be before we have a Government that supports it?
March 22, 2024
The failings of the Bank of England have been well reported and presumably this information is in the hands of the Government. Why then doesn’t the Government either do something about the problem or refute the comments that are made and support the Bank.
March 22, 2024
There would appear to be only two ways to get anything done in this country – forget Parliament – (a) make a TV Docudrama or (b) get GB news on the case.
March 22, 2024
The record of the BoE speaks fpr itself ; it has let everyone down in the country and we suffer as the consequence . Bailey should not be in office and the change can only be made from one source – we all know where that is . We should not have to wait until an election for heads to roll . Publicising hope is not enough .
March 22, 2024
The Bank, the Treasury, OBR – they are all lost to us – they all live on a different planet.
Who is going to admonish these organisations – who will straighten them out – like HMG they are immune to criticism from the likes of our host who certainly knows better.
Be interesting to be a fly on the wall at some of the meetings held by the Bank, especially the Unminuted ones – only then would it be possible to know what their game is.
Or we could simply extrapolate from their actions.
March 22, 2024
On the bankofengland.co.uk website, by checking the tags for Asset Purchase Facility, Monetary Policy Committee, Monetary Policy Committee Minutes, Gilt Market one can get access to 34 documents.
March 22, 2024
Why will Sunak and Hunt not explain why they will do nothing about the Bank of England.
If they wont, then explain why Sir John Redwood is wrong!
March 22, 2024
John
I fear that a great deal of our establishment seem to be working for regime change.
Britain increasingly seems to be a technocracy that looks to the international globalist consensus which is actively hostile to the idea of nation states.
Regards
March 22, 2024
âThey [BoE] bought far too many bonds at crazy prices in 2021 only now to want to sell them at huge losses and send the taxpayer the bill. Why?â
For the same reason that we are being forced to transition all our energy to very expensive, weather dependent, chaotically intermittent electrical energy with no means for grid=scale storage. Net Zero is designed to destroy the economy even though Happer & Wijngaarden have shown there cannot be any climate crisis caused by increasing levels of CO2, either natural or anthropogenic, because of IR saturation.
For the same reason that despite the PM declaring that we have âa[n] [illegal] migration emergencyâ of unidentifiable young men of fighting age and with cultures inconsistent with the indigenous population entering the country the Government has delayed the Rwanda Bill until after Easter.
For the same reason that the Government has handed out visas to 1.2m legal migrants last year.
The electorate needs to realise that any vote for any of the existing Parliamentary parties will be taken by these parties as a vote to continue with the BoEâs (and OBRâs) policies, Net Zero and mass immigration.
If the current opposition gains power at the next GE, the situation will worsen further leading to the high likelihood of civil unrest.
March 22, 2024
âWe need an urgent change of Bank policy, Stop selling the bonds.â
Itâs not going to happen.
As Jonathan Swift said :
âYou cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.â
March 22, 2024
It would seem that the Bank of England is accountable or answerable to anyone and can therefore take any action it wants and palce the blame on external factors with no comeback, disgraceful!!
March 22, 2024
Sir John – did they get it wrong? the evidence suggests not
The BoE is trying to ensure all seeds of recovery remain hidden, the last thing they want is not only Sunak/Hunt back in office but the Conservative Government to survive, that option doesnât fit their politically active narrative.
The BoE seemingly got away without anyone noticing the briefing against the UKâs elected representatives, so are getting braver and more politically motivated.
They got away with hiding their bossesâ mistakes with LDI funds so they have been embolden by the ineptitude amongst those that are actually their managers and benefactors.
The BoE have taken the fool my once, fool me twice parody to that next stage
March 22, 2024
Bailey and most of his MPC have to go, no iffs or buts, they need to be gone. It should have happened two years ago. He constantly gets the big calls wrong and follows them up by even worse decisions.
The man has cost the British taxpayer countless billions.
March 22, 2024
Reply to Agricola
Reform is the only party given any traction by Google = YouTube, doesnât that strike you as slightly odd?
Any comments that I try and make are immediately trashed by numerous people
Reform at the Rochdale By-Election got fewer than 2.000 votes, 1.910, hardly a âgo home and prepare for governmentâ moment?
GBNews arenât the great white hope that theyâre made out to be and Nigel Farageâs interview with Donald Trump was lacking in any facts
Iâll try again!
March 22, 2024
Nationwide Building Society had a widespread IT glitch today, just another of many in the past fortnight âŠ.do we still have faith in A.I., power security/outage (see net-zero), system hacking and everything apps/online/paperless (see net-zero)
March 22, 2024
Will it survive moderation???
I never receive any notifications from AOL
March 22, 2024
It isn’t all bad news, though, is it? Inflation has come down and seems set to go lower; and the BOE’s suggestion that interest rate cuts are on the way gave the stockmarket a shot in the arm in the second part of the week.
I don’t know about the bond selling and can only assume it is because they want to be certain inflation comes and stays under control:
“And yet I’ll make assurance double sure”
March 22, 2024
Dear Sir John,
As so often, your post is spot on . Does anyone outside Bank world seriously and coherently argue the opposite?
May I just add that the Monetary Policy Committee has for many years made the damaging mistake of focusing solely on the direction of travel of interest rates and neglecting the appropriate level for the balance of the economy.
Bank Rate of even 5.25 per cent per cent is not itself particularly high. It was the movement from near zero, a fifty-fold increase in 20 months, that has caused so much havoc.
If Bank Rate had stood at say 2.5 per cent In November 2021 it would merely have doubled. And going further back, if Bank Rate had stood at a near-neutral 3.5 to 4 per cent In February 2020, instead of 0..75 per cent, it could have responded much more effectively to the pandemic.
By neglecting the level, the Bank has presided over negative real interest rates for about 15 years, especially for savers. And since banks had money for nothing they have chosen to lend too much of it on existing assets, such as homes and takeovers of British companies, at the expense of investment in creating new assets. No wonder we consume ever more than we produce and 30-year olds cannot buy a home.
March 22, 2024
John Redwood for Chancellor of the Exchequer (and PM at the same time).
March 27, 2024
You always ask the same questions and then ask “Why?”.
The answer is always that there’s a bunch of globalists who have infiltrated all walks of public life. Their aim is to equalise standards of living across the world. Their flawed strategy to achieve that is to impoverish all nations to the same level of decay. Essentially, levelling down. On a global scale.
You seem reluctant to accept this, despite the evidence of maladministration that is nigh on impossible to explain away as mere incompetence. My turn: why?