As Reeves heads back from a Davos charm offensive this week has dropped a triple whammy of domestic gloom over the economy on the Treasury. First Deloitte had confidence stalling, followed by the British Retail Consortium’s new monitor showing drops in sentiment over the New Year. Now the closely-watched GsK sentiment measure, one of the best-respected, reports that UK consumers are losing confidence in all possible areas…
Month-on-month drops are the largest since September and the total measure of consumer confidence fell to its lowest in more than a year. NIQ GfK says the “figures underline that consumers are losing confidence in the UK’s economic prospects…people see dark days ahead ” and it is unclear if they will recover anytime soon. In the face of angry investors in Davos Reeves softened her non-dom tax raid, trashed Labour’s rhetorical commitment to net zero, and promised to ease lending rules. Is she going to reverse the budget in the face of angry consumers back home?
Sarah Pochin at Reform Scotland’s manifesto launch event: “I really wanted to come on in a Reform tartan burka, but apparently I wasn’t allowed… One day let’s do one of these events not live-streamed. We’ll do all the naughty stuff…”
