Archive

October 16, 2025
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UK: Unseasonably Resilient In Q3

  • Slight growth in August sustains an above trend level of activity and is tracking to a 0.2% q-o-q pace for Q3, matching our forecast and the consensus, but disappointing the BoE.
  • The ongoing slowdown in service sector activity repeats residual seasonality that would leave a trough in two months, but there is slightly more resilience this year.
  • Policymakers shouldn’t react to statistical noise, and are unlikely to amid ongoing excesses in underlying inflation that a stabilising labour market wouldn’t break.

By Philip Rush

October 14, 2025
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UK: Mixed Messages On Labour Market

  • Most narratives can find some support in the latest labour market report, preserving uncertainty that should keep the BoE on hold at least until some clarity emerges.
  • Unemployment has increased (LFS) or stabilised (payrolls), while pay is shockingly resurgent (inc-bonuses), slowing as expected (ex-bonus) or stagnating (private pay).
  • Weakness isn’t as clear as the consensus and press sometimes make out, but concerns aren’t invalidated. We still expect resilience to preserve excess inflation hawkishly.

By Philip Rush

October 09, 2025
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UK: Poor Productivity Paradigms

  • The OBR looks likely to trim its productivity trend assumption to 1%, which would still be a bullish break from the current stagnation. Trends rarely break outside recessions.
  • High taxes are squeezing the most productive and being transferred to the inactive. It should not be surprising that the UK’s political choices have stalled productivity.
  • We see no reason to think the UK will pull off an internationally exceptional jobs-light boom from here. Ongoing stagnation would extend the UK’s rule for fiscal slippage.

By Philip Rush

October 08, 2025
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US Shutdown: A Means To An End

  • The Democrats opted for a US government shutdown despite the Administration being well prepared for what it sees as an opportunity to promote its longer-term agenda.
  • While they hold out, the president’s ‘grim reaper’, OMB Director Russell Vought, will have a free hand to cut the size of government and pursue his unitary executive vision.
  • Some of his actions will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts, but the signs are that the Supreme Court will continue to side firmly with the Administration.

By Alastair Newton

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