Julian Jessop

1 week ago | yahoo.com | Julian Jessop

Life is much simpler if you are willing to blame Brexit for anything that is going wrong in the British economy. This easy road attracts plenty of “likes” on social media from those who want the UK to rejoin the EU, and column inches in the Europhile press. Unfortunately, it almost always leads you down the wrong path. Take the observation that GDP per head has grown much faster since 2016 in the euro area than it has in the UK – “nearly three times as fast”, according to one cheerful commentator.

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Julian Jessop

Those relying on GDP per head as a measure of the impact of Brexit then have to gloss over Germany's even worse performance. Since 2016, Germany's GDP per head has grown by barely 2pc, compared to 20pc in the period between 2000 and 2016. Was that also due to Brexit? Of course not. Common factors between the UK and Germany include the difficult transition to electric vehicles, relatively high energy costs and policy choices regarding non-EU migration.

2 weeks ago | substack.com | Julian Jessop

Many people are understandably still confused about the huge differences between the official figure of 'just' £3.4 billion for the cost of the Chagos deal, as cited by the Prime Minister, and other estimates which are as high as £30.3 billion. Here's my best attempt to clarify. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The top figure of £30.3 billion (which I first saw mentioned by The Daily Telegraph’s Tony Diver) is easiest to explain.

2 weeks ago | substack.com | Julian Jessop

The larger than anticipated jump in UK inflation in April has prompted many to argue that the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee will now be much slower to cut interest rates. But there is, of course, nothing that the MPC can do now about last month’s CPI. The right question to ask is what the figures might be telling about the path of inflation in the future. The short answer is ‘not a lot’.

3 weeks ago | substack.com | Julian Jessop

The first official estimates suggest that the UK economy grew by 0.7% in the first quarter of the year, which was better than most had expected. GDP per head increased by a respectable 0.5%. On the bright side, this should trigger a wave of upward revisions to growth forecasts for 2025 as a whole. (I have already nudged mine up from 1% to 1¼%.) The fading fears of a global trade war mean that the risks around these forecasts are now more evenly balanced too.