Columnist for Daily Mail UK and MailOnline USA. @TimesRadio anchor. Former Chairman of The Spectator, Editor Sunday Times, BBC TV anchor, Chairman Sky TV
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Joined April 2010
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The ANDREW NEIL Report on the UK economy:
4% interest, 5% inflation.
'Another hike in time for Christmas!' | Andrew Neil & Liam Halligan
youtu.be/rObOnXEebBY?is=kapx… via @YouTube
My monologue on today’s The Times at One with ANDREW NEIL. @TimesRadio
Interest rates up, inflation up — in the UK
As the rest of the world tries to grapple with the fall out from the US midterm elections — what will two bloody noses for President Trump and a Democratic Congress mean for US foreign policy? — PM Andy Burnham’s contribution is to suggest the world unites around cost of living issues.
Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but high prices.
It is, of course, an absurd proposition.
Presumably he’s referring to the need to resolve the conflicts in Ukraine and the Gulf, both of which have pushed up energy prices and added to general inflationary pressures.
But it’s not clear how the midterm results will affect either war — certainly not in ways of which Mr Burnham would approve.
President Trump would have no compunction in selling out Ukraine. That would certainly bring peace of a kind — in the form of a Russian victory. Mr Burnham surely couldn’t approve of that.
In the Gulf there’s a renewed US military build up with Mr Trump indicating, now the midterms are out of the way, more major assaults on Iran.
To what purpose has not been explained and they would likely pave the way to massive Iranian retaliation. So Mr Burnham would surely not approve of that either.
The implication of the PM’s remarks is that, on the cost of living — the most important economic issue facing British people — he is not in control.
That it depends on global factors outside his powers. The Chancellor paved the way for this position when he began his Budget speech by claiming everything he was about to say could be blown away by global events beyond his control.
Mr Burnham has now echoed that.
And, of course, there are global events which can push up prices in Britain and stymie economic growth, about which a British government can do very little.
But ministers are not exactly powerless when it comes to the cost of living, though they like to give that impression.
Take petrol. If it costs you £100 to fill up your tank — and that’s not uncommon these days — be aware that almost half of that is going in taxes.
The tax take in all manner of energy costs is enormous. The government could do something about that, pressing down on inflation. But its so-called breathing space measures barely scratch the surface of living costs.
The Bank of England has just whacked up interest rates by a quarter point to 4%, with the prospect of more to come next year. Some speculate they could be as high as 5% by this time next year, which heralds more misery for those with a mortgage or a small business loan.
Inflation rose to 3.6% in September, propelled by energy costs, and the Bank expects to reach around 5% before next summer — a dramatic rise on previous forecasts.
Nobody is sure when it will start to come down again. That may depend on what President Trump has in store in the Gulf.
The official forecast is for the UK economy to grow by 1.2% this year and 1% next. These are hardly stellar rates for a government that promised to put growth left, right and centre of its economic policy.
Now, other than tinkering at the edges, it has become a spectator, hoping that events outside of its control will come to its aid.
But hoping President Trump will somehow do the right thing when it comes to the cost of living isn’t an economic policy, it’s a fool’s errand.
Nevertheless Mr Burnham appears to have set out on one — and it will be of no help to the cost of living this winter.
We look forward to it.
I’ll be on @TimesRadio today, talking about JD Vance’s extraordinary honesty about the war with @afneil
Andrew Neil retweeted
This was a referendum on Donald Trump and he lost. Big time | Andrew Nei... youtu.be/eliHPT42yig?is=c-t9… via @YouTube
I knew it would be bad for Trump, but THIS bad? | Andrew Neil youtu.be/D4dIkSgjaI8?is=T3vc… via @YouTube
Andrew Neil retweeted
Trump achieved the ultimate humiliation: Uniting Republicans & Democrats... youtu.be/D4dIkSgjaI8?is=Gclk… via @YouTube
Trump achieved the ultimate humiliation: Uniting Republicans & Democrats... youtu.be/D4dIkSgjaI8?is=Gclk… via @YouTube
My Times Radio monologue on The Times at One with ANDREW NEIL today: @TimesRadio
Vote as if my name is on the ballot, President Trump urged Americans in the run up to yesterday’s midterm elections.
Americans did as they were told — and delivered the most decisive repudiation of a sitting president in modern times.
Make no mistake this was a referendum on Donald Trump — which he lost, big time.
His Republican Party was washed away by a blue wave in the House and the Senate. The Democrats will now have comfortable working majorities in both.
There are still about 60 House seats to report. You need 218 for a majority. The Democrats already have 231.
They’re projected to end up with 258 — the widest House victory margin since 1993. In terms of the House popular vote, the Democratic share was 54%, the Republicans 44%. It doesn’t get much more definitive than that.
The Senate was a tougher nut to crack. But with two seats still to report the Democrats have picked up seven gains, lost none, giving them a 54:44 clear majority.
Mr Trump immediately defaulted to rewriting history. As he does.
‘I wasn’t on the ballot,’ he suddenly claimed. ‘If I was, we would have won BY A LANDSLIDE.’ Of course by his own words we know that not to be true.
The man in the Oval Office is almost entirely to blame for his party’s defeat.
At a time when ordinary American families — the kind who re-elected Trump in 2024 — were reeling from soaring prices at the petrol pump and supermarket check-out counter, Trump was droning on about a reflecting pool in Washington, men’s bodies and his White House ballroom project.
Compared to Trump’s delusional campaigning, Marie Antoinette had the common touch.
He had been elected on a promise to foreswear forever wars, especially in the Middle East. A year after his inauguration he launched yet another forever war — in the Middle East.
He promised to get on top of inflation. It rose. All the higher because of what his attack on Iran did to fuel prices. And because his tariffs pushed up prices too.
China would pay the tariffs, he insisted. It was always a lie. By the time they voted yesterday Americans knew it to be a lie. They, not the Chinese, were picking up the tab.
A massive nationwide poll taken yesterday found that 90% of voters saw the cost of living — affordability — the biggest midterm issue. They thought Trump’s war and his tariffs had made inflation worse.
Six in 10 specifically mentioned the price of food, petrol, diesel; 60% opposed his war, which was unpopular from day one and grown even more unpopular.
Trump responded with a tin ear. ‘Inflation is solved’, he insisted, bizarrely, as the campaign came to an end. Americans knew otherwise.
There are times when the Trump administration and its cronies look like the ruling class in the Hunger Games — living the life of Reilly in palatial splendour and bling while most folk struggle to make a living.
Corruption was an issue in these elections for over 70% of voters.
They see the Trump administration as something of a kleptocracy, the Trump family and its cronies enriching themselves with lucrative multi-billion dollar deals with foreign potentates and billionaires while plain folk struggled with diesel at over $6 a barrel.
Thus did Trump reap what he had sowed. The Democrats won all their target Senate seats and a few others — Kansas, South Carolina — besides.
They will have a majority in the House beyond their wildest dreams.
The coalition of voters which returned Trump to the Oval Office in 2024 — MAGA, independents, moderate Republicans, Hispanics — has shattered. Other than the MAGA base, it has defected to the Democrats — or stayed at home.
In the full flush of victory, however, the Democrats should realise that this is much more a rejection of Trump than an embrace of them.
Historic though their victory is, it settles very little. Trump still has two years to rampage. Congress can do little to confine him.
The Democrats need to work out what they really stand for. The Republicans to determine what they should be post-Trump. Both parties risk becoming seriously fractured.
The world is not about to become more stable, more predictable, more comfortable. If anything, the opposite given how hard it is to know what Trump, wounded and resentful and increasingly unstable, might do next.
But at least he has said he will accept the outcome of the elections. So no constitutional crisis, no repeat of January 6th. That’s at least something. Now brace yourselves for what’s to come.
With over 95% of the votes counted (almost 1m votes) in Mississippi Senate race, the Democrat is ahead by 43 votes!
Andrew Neil retweeted
After the appalling way colleagues at the @Telegraph have been treated, including @LiamHalligan, I’ve cancelled my @Telegraph sub and subscribed to this instead. Would urge you all to do the same.
substack.com/@liamhalligan/n…
Andrew Neil retweeted
Andrew Neil says American voters "delivered the most decisive repudiation of a sitting president in modern times."
"There are times when the Trump administration and his cronies look like the ruling class in The Hunger Games."
@afneil
Andrew Neil retweeted
🚨WATCH! Andrew Neil has just delivered one of the strongest, most necessary interventions of the week on this absurd “mystery celebrity” high court injunction. He is completely right, and anyone in a position of power should be paying attention.
He is clear-eyed about the ruling itself: “I’m delighted he’s ruled that way. I’m not so delighted he’s kicked it into the long grass and we still can’t name this person.”
Then he gets to the heart of it: “It really is ridiculous to stop legitimate newspapers and broadcasters who’ve done a legitimate investigation into somebody’s behaviour which seems unsavoury to put it mildly, not to be able to publish because that person says he’s gonna kill himself. You might as well shut down the British media if that’s the case.”
This is exactly the point. We indulge this sort of nonsense far too often in Britain. A celebrity with the means to hire expensive lawyers should not be able to muzzle legitimate reporting of serious allegations simply by invoking mental health or the threat of self-harm. Money must not be allowed to buy silence, and threats of this kind must not become a reliable tool for suppressing scrutiny.
@afneil is equally sharp on the contrast with America. Speaking from the US, he notes that a case like this would never have seen the inside of a courtroom. The First Amendment would have stopped it dead. As he puts it, we need to stop allowing our media to be “cribbed and confined and intimidated by people who are trying to hide their own wrongdoing by muzzling the media”.
The whole situation is made even more ridiculous by the fact that everyone already knows who it is. The name has circulated freely in Scotland because the ruling does not apply there. Yet the English media remain gagged from publishing their own investigation and the allegations themselves. It is a farce.
We need to get much tougher on this. The more the courts entertain these applications, the more people will keep using them to bury inconvenient truths. Let the press do their jobs.
This was a referendum on Donald Trump and he lost. Big time | Andrew Nei... youtu.be/eliHPT42yig?is=c-t9… via @YouTube
Andrew Neil retweeted
Pathetic, and very patronising, by @AbdulElSayed . He should show more respect to the UK and one of our best journalists.
Michigan's Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed confronted @jamesmatthewsky, telling him he wouldn't answer his questions as he wants "zero" votes in the UK.
Watch the heated exchange between the two.
Watch our live coverage of the US midterms➡️ trib.al/BikRSb2
