…November 2025

The British public began November by celebrating Guy Fawkes’ efforts to blow up Parliament in 1605, and ended the month with the government’s efforts to blow up the economy, courtesy of yet another tax raising budget.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, claimed that she was “asking everyone to make a contribution to repair the public finances”, but that she wanted the wealthiest to pay the most. She then announced an extra £26 billion in tax rises, which is going to make life tough for many voters. The decision to freeze income tax thresholds means that more people at the lower end of the economy are paying more tax, leading to less consumer spending. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted that the average disposable income will go up by just 0.5 percent over the next five years. The minimum wage has gone up, making it harder for businesses to justify hiring more staff, and there will be increases in business tax rates as well as a cap on the salary sacrifice scheme that lets workers defer some pay to their pensions. 

Overall, most commentators feel that the budget introduced more cost and more uncertainty for businesses, which will translate into lower economic growth for the country as a whole. The Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted that the UK economy will grow by 1.5 percent this year, slightly up from its earlier forecast of just 1 percent. However, the forecast for the next five years has been downgraded to 1.4 percent in 2026 and 1.5 percent for the following four years. This is largely due to uncertainty over conflicts and global trade, but the OBR also described UK business and consumer confidence as “subdued”.

The budget itself was marred by chaos, caused by contradictory government briefings, which then descended into farce when the OBR accidentally leaked the entire budget just 40 minutes before Reeves announced it. Some of this chaos has led to opposition politicians stirring trouble by asking the Financial Conduct Authority to investigate possible abuse by discussing potential budget policies to manipulate the markets. 

But for all the criticism of the budget and the government’s priorities, it’s still better than the alternatives. The Conservatives have nothing to offer but further tax cuts, funded by further running down the nation’s infrastructure. Britain desperately needs to be rebuilt into a country fit to face the challenges of the 21st century. Everything, from the roads and railways, to the welfare system, the health service, even the military, is creaking at the seams, with the impact worse the further you travel from London. 

Reeves has since been accused of misleading the public and the rest of the cabinet over the scale of the deficit in the nation’s finances, which was used to justify the tax rises. The OBR delivered a report predicting a £4bn surplus on 31 October, which only came to light after the budget. This has left Starmer to fill in the gaps by claiming that the money was actually needed to repair the nation’s infrastructure including the welfare system.

This begs the questions as why the government could not just say so in the first place. The answer most likely lies in the need to avoid frightening the investors on the bond market, who might see repairing infrastructure as unnecessary waste. And their view matters because the UK’s national debt currently stands at roughly £2.65 trillion, almost 100 percent of the country’s GDP. Servicing that debt is the biggest drain on the government’s finances, but rebuilding the fabric of the country without adding to that debt is a big ask. 

Britain is fundamentally a wealthy country, currently ranked sixth for both wealth and gross domestic product according to the International Monetary Fund. Yet there is a huge gap between the richest and the poorest, which is so great that the welfare system is now being used to prop up people who are in full time employment but still can’t earn enough to keep up with the cost of living in the UK. No matter which party is in charge, it’s those voters at the lower end of the scale who are repeatedly expected to bail out the economy. Their growing frustration at this explains the popularity of smaller fringe parties, like the hard right Reform UK and the chaotic new left wing Your Party. 

Voters expected Starmer to use his huge once-in-a-decade parliamentary majority to shake up the distribution of wealth. Instead there is an unspoken pact amongst the main parties to protect the wealthy at all costs. How else to explain the criticism of the increased council tax on higher value homes made by Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats and mild stunts fan, who told BBC News that people could live in a £2 million home and still be poor, which suggests a very limited grasp of basic mathematics. Unlocking such assets is a far better solution to the financial problems than simply charging businesses and the working class, and would bring Starmer and Reeves closer to the heart of the Labour Party. So the so-called mansion tax is a start, but not nearly radical enough.

Separately, the Bank of England opted to hold interest rates at 4 percent but noted that inflation, currently at 3.6 percent, was still a persistent problem, particularly for food costs. Nonetheless, the bank is predicting that inflation will fall back to 2 percent in the near term and that this will lead to further rate cuts. Naturally, much of this depends on what happens on the world stage. 

Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim travelled to Belgium to speak with politicians at the European parliament. Several countries, including Britain and France, have pledged to support Taiwan in the face of China’s aggression, though none have formal diplomatic links with Taiwan. Nonetheless, European countries are increasingly ignoring China’s efforts to isolate Taiwan in an effort to gently remind China that snuffing out a democracy would mean crossing a red line for the EU nations. It’s not clear how far those European nations would go, though Britain has sent warships to patrol the international waters around Taiwan. 

The Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, went a step further and sparked a diplomatic crisis with China by suggesting that Japan would respond militarily if China were to seize control of Taiwan by force. Japan has increased its military spending in recent years, partly in response to the rapid growth of China’s military and China’s aggressive efforts to seize control of small islands in the Pacific. China has previously suggested that it would take control of Taiwan by the middle of this century. Not surprisingly, most of the Pacific nations have tried to reinforce their military capability. 

Previously announced US sanctions on two Russian oil exporting companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, are due to kick in on 13 December and expected to significantly affect the Russian economy and the value of its Rouble currency. The sanctions will preclude other countries from buying Russian oil, which will also impact China and India but not Hungary which has now been given a one-year exemption. Hungary through its prime minister Viktor Orban has maintained reasonably good relations with Russia, and resisted some of the EU’s efforts to sanction Russia. 

Elsewhere, there’s more excitement over a possible peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. This appears to have started exactly as with all the previous efforts, with the Americans attempting to force Ukraine to sign up to a list of Russian demands. However, by now the European leaders are well versed in this particular diplomatic dance, praising Trump for his efforts whilst trying not to get sick, and then reshaping the ‘peace plan’ into something more pragmatic that reflects the battlefield realities of where the front lines are rather than Russia’s efforts to further weaken Ukraine in preparation for a second attempt at invasion in a couple of years. 

Trump and his ego are focussed on the short term aim of an end to hostilities as part of his ongoing quest for a Nobel peace prize. But European leaders fear that Russia is preparing for a wider conflict that might engulf other European nations. We are already seeing the first signs of skirmishes around the borders, with Russian military aircraft repeatedly testing European airspace while Russian naval vessels have conducted aggressive manoeuvres off the UK coast, including firing lasers at the RAF planes shadowing them. 

This has led to a rapid increase in military spending as the Europeans try to plug gaps in their defence. France has announced a limited return to national service to prepare for war. This will be for volunteers, starting with 3000 next year but rising to 50,000 by 2035. Belgium and the Netherlands already have similar voluntary military service schemes and Germany is reported to be planning to introduce its own scheme. 

However, Britain’s efforts to reset its post-Brexit relationship with the EU have suffered a setback. The UK had hoped for better access to the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe defence loans scheme. The UK signed a defence pact with the EU in May that allowed British companies to supply weapons and parts up to 35 percent of the total value of a complete project, and had hoped to be able to expand on this. However, the EU opted to treat the UK as a non-EU country and accordingly demanded a higher contribution which Britain was not willing to make. Nonetheless, the European nations do want to strengthen their military capabilities and Britain is a major European defence manufacturer so this is a decision that both sides will probably want to review later. 

This underlines the continuing damage the Brexit is doing, mostly to the UK but also to the EU. Britain is also trying to renegotiate other parts of its relationship with the EU. This includes a deal to reduce post-Brexit border checks on food products. Britain is also attempting to join the EU’s carbon Emissions Trading Scheme, which should lead to more stable energy prices and help to avoid a tax that the EU is planning to introduce next year on high-emissions products such as steel and cement.

Naturally both the Conservatives and Reform UK have attacked these efforts as a betrayal of Brexit. But considering the damage that Brexit has inflicted on the EK economy, it’s fair to conclude that the only betrayal is the Brexit itself. The British economy is heavily dependent on financial services, but roughly 10 percent of the UK’s banking system – and some £1 trillion – decamped to the EU in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Many economists are now linking this to Britain’s anaemic economic growth. 

Meanwhile, the fallout from the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein continues to ruffle many of his former friends. This feeds into the lurid fascination of many in the Make America Great Again camp that spawned numerous conspiracy theories. Trump himself was happy to lean into these theories whilst campaigning for the presidency, promising to release all the government files on Epstein. He subsequently fought hard against this before being forced to sign a bill ordering the release of the files. Those files reveal Epstein’s fascination with Trump, though so far there has been no smoking gun linking Trump directly to Epstein’s abuse. 

Instead, Trump has continued his one-man assault on democracy, attempting without success to swing several votes in the US, mostly for mayors but also including some state constitutional questions. The most significant of these is the mayoralty of New York, won by the progressive democrat Zohran Mamdani. Strangely, Trump who has falsely accused Mamdani of being a communist, suggested during their first meeting that he was happy for Mamdani to call him a fascist. 

Elsewhere, Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion after a leaked internal BBC memo highlighted poor editing choices in a BBC Panorama documentary on the attempted insurrection of 6 January 2021 in the American capital. This edit combined two separate parts of a speech by Trump into an apparently single statement inciting his followers to violently overrun the Capital and prevent the elected officials within from formally certifying Joe Biden as the next US president. There is an argument that Trump’s speeches are often rambling and incoherent, full of tangents and dog whistles, and that the edit captured the meaning of the speech in a short clip. 

This is a common problem in journalism where we are trying to convey someone’s views from a longer interview, and possibly other sources, into a short digestible format. However, it is dangerous for journalists to assume that they understand what someone else really means. That’s tricky when dealing with someone like Trump who rarely says explicitly what he means, and heavily caveats his speeches, yet everyone believes they know exactly what he means – though we may all have a different understanding. 

The golden rule is to give the audience an accurate report, including where necessary any caveats or alternative readings. I can only hope that I have managed to do this and would encourage readers to get in touch if they feel that I have fallen short in this. It’s not always easy, but then that’s the skill that separates journalists from influencers and other social media commentators. 

In Panorama’s case, a simple fade between the two parts of the speech would have separated out those parts. The BBC has apologised to Trump and pointed out that since the program was not broadcast in the US, a Florida court has no jurisdiction for defamation. And since the BBC is funded through its license fee, there is the possibility that British tax payers would ultimately foot the bill for any compensation to Trump, which has led to politicians on all sides of the political spectrum defending auntie beeb. 

In a subsequent row over censorship, the BBC removed a line from one of its prestigious annual Reith lectures delivered by the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman in which he alleged that Trump was the “most openly corrupt president in American history”. Bregman has since alleged that the BBC was “bending the knee” to authoritarianism. It’s possible that it’s exactly this type of cautiousness that Trump really wants from the BBC. 

But then standing up to authority and having the backbone to speak truth to power is a core tenet of journalism. Yet the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, has accepted a report noting “that journalists face an increasingly hostile environment across the whole OSCE region”. Despite the name, that region includes many northern hemisphere countries from Russia to Canada and the US, as well as the European and Baltic nations. The report by the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media, Jan Braathu, found that journalists have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted in a number of the member countries and that in others the judicial and penal systems are turned against journalists, while attacks on them remain unpunished. It is indeed grim up north.