How a big election win for Nicola Sturgeon and SNP will hit sterling
The pound could be in for a bumpy ride if the party backing Scottish independence scores a knockout victory in Thursday s elections
1 May 2021 • 3:00pm
The Brexiteer hedge fund manager Crispin Odey made £220m betting against the pound in 2016 as the UK voted to leave the European Union, but he is sitting on the sidelines this week as Scotland goes to the polls.
Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, is chasing an overall majority at Holyrood in Thursday’s elections in a bid to create unanswerable pressure for a second independence referendum in a decade – if Westminster decides to grant one.
Unlocking early could give £26bn boost to recovery
CEBR forecasts come ahead of the Prime Minister s roadmap out of lockdown next week
16 February 2021 • 6:00pm
Dropping all Covid restrictions at the end of April could give a £26bn boost to the UK economy’s recovery by the summer, research for
The
Telegraph has shown.
Conservative MPs Mark Harper and Steve Baker, leaders of the Covid Recovery Group, have urged the Prime Minister to cease all restrictions by May due to the “tremendous pace” of the UK’s vaccination programme, although Boris Johnson favours a more “cautious but irreversible” approach.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research modelled the CRG’s earlier reopening push against a more gradual scenario, ahead of the Government setting out its official “road map” next Monday.
The five surprises in the jobs figures
The number of women working full-time soars, while the self-employed face a cull and 3.7m workers are away from their jobs
15 December 2020 • 4:22pm
The UK’s Covid-blighted economy was struck with record redundancies in the quarter to October while the headline jobless rate also rose to 4.9pc. But a closer look at the UK’s pandemic labour market reveals winners and losers - as well as worrying signs of further pain to come.
Women vs men
One striking aspect of the figures was the rising number of full-time female workers, despite a 144,000 fall in employment overall during the quarter. Economic inactivity for women fell to a record low 24.4pc.