The role of political opposition is key to improving policy outcomes for the country, but that country should ideally be the UK…

UK opposition politicians and media spending the week joining in and amplifying a US led social media pile on deliberately designed to undermine confidence in the UK, should wake up and smell the coffee. They are facilitating the very loss of market confidence they object to.

Most of the growth the US has seen in recently years has come from a small number of unimaginably large and successful tech companies. The UK has the chance at the start of the political cycle to build momentum in growth and start to catch up.

There are definite short term Budget inspired bumps in the road but the decisions on UK growth - particularly in relation to stimulating long term investment, planning reform and energy markets - are the right ones and many of them were as much Conservative ideas.

This has made my Friday.

Crumbs. Hope there aren’t any officials at HMT with any plans for holidays any time soon.

This series of announcements from the Chancellor are massive. 🤯

Yup.

@themerl.bsky.social - oh phew, you’re here. There’s a relief. As you were.

To be fair, @ukparliament.bsky.social and #politics generally would be more entertaining if MPs just did this every Wednesday at midday…

I’ve written about this elsewhere but for the life of me - aside from deeply cynical reasons - can’t think why the Conservative Party wouldn’t just bring forward its leadership timetable.

Would have though the future leader would want to be the one challenging the Chancellor come #Budget24.