The Growth Commission is getting growing by appointing former Brexit Party MEP turned Tory SpAd Lucy Harris as director. The former Brexit campaigner, known for building successful campaigns from the ground up across different sectors, joins a team of international economists to understand the causes of sluggish long-term growth rates in many Western economies, and set out a pathway for how the UK can get back on a high-growth trajectory.

“The UK and many other Western European nations are stuck in a low-growth trap. It’s essential to our future prosperity that we understand the root causes of this problem and what we can do to fix it – this is why the work of the Growth Commission is so important if we want to turn this around.”

Lucy’s corporate spinning and campaigning background indicates an intention to broaden the conversation of pro-growth economics beyond SW1 and engage a much wider range of businesses, thinkers and ordinary people in this vital national endeavour. The growth advocates need to win the argument more broadly. Currently it is just the concern of a Tory faction and a few broadsheet columnists.

As the two-year anniversary of the Sewell Report approaches, and with Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Bill threatening women-only spaces across the UK, Guido is happy to report that Kemi Badenoch has beefed up her team in the Equalities Unit by appointing Nikki Da Costa and Mercy Muroki as Policy Fellows. Two warriors in the culture war on the side of the angels.

Nikki has served as the Director of Legislative Affairs for two PMs, has huge experience navigating parliament, and speaks a whole lot of sense on women’s issues. Mercy has a Masters from Oxford on Social Policy and was one of the Commissioners on Tony Sewell’s mould-breaking Race and Ethnic Disparities Commission, who – to the disgust of much of the Labour Party and the woke left – found that Britain was “not an institutionally racist country”.

With nearly every charity, chattering class pundit and academic ready to slaughter anyone with a dissident view on women and equalities issue regardless of what they say, this Government can use all the outside expertise it can get…

Now the Office for Budget Responsibility isn’t even trying. This morning, less than a day after the Autumn Statement, the OBR’s Chairman Richard Hughes held a fireside chat with none other than Torsten Bell at the latter’s left-of-centre think tank, the Resolution Foundation. The same Resolution Foundation that spends its days pushing for ever-higher welfare payments and attacking every Tory chancellor since George Osborne.

Why would Hughes appear at the Resolution Foundation, flanked by Resolution Foundation employees and effectively endorsing the Resolution Foundation, when he’s running an ‘independent’ body that blesses every policy coming out of the Treasury? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he used to work there, spending his days co-authoring reports on the horrors of Brexit and rubbing shoulders with the man who used to be Ed Miliband’s policy director. You can perhaps wonder if Kwasi Kwarteng had legitimate suspicions about the OBR/Resolution Foundation marking his homework. The Resolution Foundation has a left-leaning ideological position, plain as day. Even the BBC thinks so…

There’s been plenty of media squawking in the last couple of weeks over the lack of an Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast in the mini-Budget. Never mind the fact the OBR didn’t even exist until 2010, without its explicit blessing, how can any fiscal policy ever be trusted?

Even a cursory look at the OBR’s personnel gives you an idea of which school of thought its leaders belong: both the chair of its Budget Responsibility Committee and its Deputy Chief of Staff are former colleagues or protégés of Torsten Bell, chief executive of the left-of-centre* Resolution Foundation (RF). Torsten Bell will be a familiar face to co-conspirators. Before he spent his days pushing for ever-higher welfare payments at the RF, Bell was Labour’s Director of Policy under Ed Miliband. For years it seemed carving Labour’s manifesto into stone would be his crowning achievement. It turns out seeing his friends land top jobs overseeing government fiscal policy has won out…

Richard Hughes, now the chair of the OBR’s Budget Responsibility Committee, spent a year alongside Bell at the Resolution Foundation as its research associate, where he:

• Co-authored new fiscal rule proposals which were “urgent” because the Government was promising “a flurry of spending commitments and promises to cut taxes” in 2019.
• Warned of the “economic disruption associated with a no deal Brexit“, and claimed it would lead to “a smaller and slower-growing economy in the long run.”
• Claimed the impact of Brexit on the economy would be “worse than Covid” which was responsible for over 100,000 deaths.

Laura Gardiner, OBR Deputy Chief of Staff responsible for policy costings, expenditure, receipts and “fiscal risks“, worked for Bell for six years. In that time she:

• Claimed it “makes sense” to bribe 25-year olds with £10,000 handouts – an £8 billion-a-year policy which was soon swept under the rug, presumably once everyone realised how bonkers it was.
• Attacked the government for “the era of austerity“, and proposed reforming Universal Credit. Learned plenty from her days alongside Bell, obviously.
• Served as a “Lambeth Equality Commissioner“.

It baffles Guido that Richard Hughes was recruited to head the OBR from an organisation, the Resolution Foundation, which has been unremittingly critical of every Tory chancellor since George Osborne. Is it any wonder that Kwasi didn’t fancy having his plans benchmarked by known ideological opponents who favoured staying in the EU and egalitarian redistribution on a gargantuan scale. It doesn’t take a great insight to guess what the OBR will say when a budget that doesn’t align with their values and objectives lands on their desks…

*David Willets, the foundation’s president, is used as a token Tory shield against accusations it is a left-wing campaigning organisation. Guido would not go as far as to say Two Brains is a useful idiot, he is however an ideological fig-leaf…

The annual Council Rich List is out and the data provides insights into local government. Rather than moaning about the increase in six-figure earning local officials, Guido thought we should perhaps pay tribute and applaud one council, Epping Forest, where the number of officials drawing six-figure pay packets has halved from ten to five. Guido notes that the council has not one Labour Party representative on it…

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has created this very handy interactive map so you can see for yourself how your council is performing:

They highlight that:

• The number of officials earning over £100,000 has increased five-fold since the Council Rich List was first published. In 2007, there were 578 council officials earning above £100,000. In the last financial year, which this list covers, at least 2,921 people were employed by local authorities on this amount.
• The number of officials earning over £150,000 has increased ten-fold since the Council Rich List was first published. In 2007 there were 64 council officials earning above £150,000, compared to 739 in the 2020-21 financial year. There are now more council officials on over £150,000 than there were total officials on over £100,000 15 years ago.

Something to contemplate when you consider your council tax bills before the local elections. Are the most effective councils really the ones with the most highest paid officials?

Ahead of Rishi’s Spring Forecast Statement due in two weeks, the Centre for Economics and Business Research has issued a chilling scenario analysis which calculates the likely knock on effect from Russian sanctions on global commodity prices and consequently UK inflation. They expect GDP growth this year will be halved – down from a previously forecast 4.2% in 2022 to 1.9%, with growth in 2023 reduced to zero. They calculate the reduction in GDP to cost more than £90 billion per annum…

Higher commodity prices will:

• Reduces the level of disposable income by 1.9% in 2022 and by 2.1% in 2023. As a result they estimate disposable incomes will fall in 2022 by 4.8%, with a further fall of 1.4% in 2023. The fall in 2022 is the largest since records started in 1955.
• The forecast fall in living standards this year is an estimated £71 billion – which amounts to £2,553 per household. The part of it due to invasion of Ukraine is about half – £35 billion (£1,259 per household) – with a further reduction from this source in 2023 of £29 billion (£1,043 per household).
• The combined effects of sanctions and slower world trade growth reduce export growth in 2022 by 2.1% and by 0.5% in 2023. Export growth was previously predicted to be 3.0% this year and 0.4% next so these combined impacts more or less wipe out the predicted export growth.
• Inflation by Q4 2022 is likely to be 4.1 percentage points higher than CEBR previously forecast. They now expect quarterly CPI inflation to hit 8.7% in Q2 and to remain above 7% until Q1 2023.
• The CEBR now expects the Bank of England to guide interest rates to 1.25% in 2024 rather than the previous forecast of 2%.

CEBR’s analysis was based on oil and other commodities being at lower prices than they actually are today. Rishi is going to be under pressure to put the economy on a semi-wartime setting in his spring statement…