Jonathan Portes

Jan 8, 2025 | theguardian.com | Jonathan Portes

The cost of UK government borrowing is higher than it has been since just before the global financial crisis of 2008. The yield on 10-year gilts – the interest rate the government is paying on the £4.25bn it borrowed today to finance the deficit – is about 4.5%, nearly five times what it was a decade ago, and higher than at any time during the Liz Truss meltdown.

Jan 7, 2025 | independent.co.uk | Anand Menon |Jonathan Portes

CommentThe president-elect’s die-hard Maga supporters are unconvinced by the First Buddy’s insistence that US tech industries require an inexhaustible supply of young, skilled migrants from abroad – and the coming battle over work visas will prompt a mighty schism, say Anand Menon and Jonathan Portes Civil war has broken out in the Trump camp.

Nov 27, 2024 | theguardian.com | Jonathan Portes

Yesterday Kemi Badenoch said the Conservative government “got it wrong” on immigration, and promised a “strict numerical cap”. We’ve been here before. In the summer of 2010, I was chief economist at the Cabinet Office. Not long after the election, I sent David Cameron an unsolicited paper about his pledge to reduce migration to the “tens of thousands”.

Oct 29, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jonathan Portes

The high-water mark of ideological Thatcherism in the UK came between Nigel Lawson’s triumphalist 1988 budget, which – not long after the Conservatives’ third successive election victory – slashed the top rate of tax, and the introduction of the poll tax in 1990. Both have since been reversed, either suddenly or gradually – the poll tax didn’t survive Thatcher’s fall, while those on top incomes now mostly face average or marginal tax rates close to 1987 levels.

Oct 28, 2024 | theguardian.com | Jonathan Portes

It’s a tall order but Labour has a chance to improve people’s lives in both the short and long term, says economics and public policy professor Jonathan Portes