Inside sources tell Guido that Liam Halligan has handed in his notice to GB News. One tells Guido “He is hugely productive and appears on air many times each day, dissecting economic and fiscal issues, while discussing politics too. But he has grown pretty disillusioned since his dedicated ‘On the Money’ show was ditched.”
Other newsroom sources are concerned GB News will miss having a proper Economics Editor in the coming months, given the importance of fiscal and cost-of-living issues for the upcoming general election. Halligan was one of the few remaining on-screen faces from the original launch in 2021.
Halligan would not comment, though Guido understands he will continue to write his long-standing weekly Economics Agenda column in The Telegraph, while co-presenting the Planet Normal podcast he founded with Allison Pearson. There are few broadcast journalists who can explain economics who are not left-of-centre, so he will be hard to replace…
A packed house in the Trafford Suite at Tory Conference this afternoon, as Liz Truss made her one and only fringe appearance to beat the drum for tax cuts and sweeping planning reforms. Flanked by Ranil Jayawardena, Priti Patel, and Jacob Rees-Mogg… and with Nigel Farage sat front row in his first Tory conference appearance since the 80’s.
Truss opened by calling on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt (whom she appointed) to bring corporation tax back down to 19%, just an hour before he delivers his main stage address. She also got a big round of applause for demanding massive deregulation to build 500,000 new homes every year. Cutting corporation tax would be nice, although she was Prime Minister when Hunt announced he’d hike it last year. At the time, she claimed it was justified because it would “raise £18 billion a year”, despite previously campaigning against it. Now she appears to have changed her mind again. At least she was right the first time…
Ranil, Mogg, and Priti gave similar rallying calls. Liam Halligan, hosting, won the biggest cheer of the lot when he introduced himself as a GB News host. Rees-Mogg and Farage beamed from the front row…
Liam Halligan on the eye watering costs of Net Zero policies…
Reaching the 2050 target has enormous cost implications not only for households and firms, but also the government. Between now and mid-century, subsidies and other “green investment” will add 21 percentage points to the UK’s national debt-to-GDP ratio, according to a recent Office for Budget Responsibility Report. In today’s money, that’s equivalent to £500 billion. These are vast costs and, as long as “Net Zero 2050” remains in place, the process of spreading them around will become increasingly politically contentious.
Today is becoming a big day in media news as Nish Kumar’s BBC show is axed, Huffington Post shuts its news desk, and Guido can exclusively reveal Telegraph columnist Liam Halligan is to join GB News as economics and business editor. Halligan, who led Channel 4 News’ economics and business coverage for eight years will co-present a daily lunchtime show on the new channel. He will continue writing for the Telegraph and co-presenting his podcast Planet Normal. His experience at Channel 4 will have provided great experience in presenting broadcast news with a political agenda…
Halligan won the Wincott Business Broadcasting Award four times for his television work, including a series of Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries, and has won a British Press Award. Halligan will join Andrew Neil, Sky News‘s Colin Brazier, businesswoman Michelle Dewberry, The Sun‘s Dan Wootton, broadcaster Inaya Folarin Iman, former Brexit Party MEP Alex Phillips, EuroNews‘s Darren McCaffrey, journalist Becca Hutson, and our own Tom on the channel. Shaping up nicely…
Brexiteers are waking up to the fact that the writing is on the wall after May’s capitulation on no deal and the Benn / Letwin successful coup on Monday night. First Jacob Rees-Mogg, now Boris and even Dominic Cummings have effectively put themselves in Guido’s camp of “the deal is rubbish but it’s better than all the other options left on the table, provided we get a new PM for phase two”. Tory MPs are now starting to switch in significant numbers…
Key pro-Brexit economists have also been quietly making the switch. Professor Patrick Minford had a “blunt message to politicians that want to deliver Brexit”: they need to “weigh up the risks and not give way to their natural feelings of hatred for Mrs May’s deal. Let not the best with little chance be the enemy of the good with a reasonable chance.” Minford is Chair of Economists for Free Trade has long been the High Priest of No Deal…
Liam Halligan used his latest Telegraph column to say “May’s deal is ghastly – now it’s the best hope” and has warned that “NOW” is the time to back the deal “before Brexit is lost altogether”. He literally co-wrote the book Clean Brexit…
Even Shanker Singham, the key intellectual driving force behind a clean Brexit, has all but switched – Shanker retweeted David Campbell Bannerman’s endorsement of Rees-Mogg’s position yesterday before defending him against accusations that this made him a “traitor” and saying Brexiteers “must be realistic about alternatives”:
This coming from the “Brexiteers’ Brain”. Brexiteers can’t ignore him…
