George Osborne has declared it the “fastest and most collegiate spending review in recent history.” We’ll see by the end of the day how collegiate the rest of Whitehall is feeling. Usually, within hours, we in the media would be given juicy examples of innocent victims and...

Should international investors worry less about the euro? The voice for calm would say yes. True, financial markets have been spooked this week by aggressive German rhetoric – and action – against speculators. But it’s hardly news that European governments want to rein in...

Berlin: “Germany’s lost the plot: it’s rushing ahead on banning speculation, and now it wants other countries to go along.” This has been the widespread reading this morning of what the German regulator did yesterday. I write this from Berlin, and I can tell you that...

Sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words. Here’s what’s happened to inflation recently in Britain – and the eurozone. Attending his first meeting with other European finance ministers today, George Osborne might reflect that inflation is yet another area where the view from...

It’s democracy: but not as we know it. That’s been many people’s dazed response to the advent of coalition politics in the UK. One minute British politics was a battle of competing tribes – the next we had two terribly nice chaps in the garden of No 10, united by their...

The Liberal Democrats may have swallowed some extra spending cuts, but the Conservatives have taken on a lot of Lib Dem tax policies in return. hat’s the first conclusion to draw from the seven page agreement between the two parties that’s just been published. It’s not just...