Peter Fleet

Global Automotive Business Leader; Chairman, Non-Executive Director, and Advisor. Personal X account. 🇬🇧

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Yes. And I will 💅

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

Faced with a choice between a Defence Secretary who wanted to spend more on our armed forces, a Chancellor who wouldn’t, and an Attorney General who enjoys suing them, the Prime Minister decided he could do without … the Defence Secretary.

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

This is truly pathetic. Cut the welfare freeloaders, cut the ludicrous self harm of Net Zero. This Treasury now resembles the government of the 1930s

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

This is an outrageous, disgraceful smear on John Healey — and an outright lie. There are a ton of ways to finance more for defence — starting with net zero — without taking a penny from schools or hospitals. Reeves should be ashamed of herself for allowing this nonsense. Suggests she’s really desperate.

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Well done, @JohnHealey_MP. We prioritise disability benefits over drones. The MoD can’t get the £28 billion which it needs to keep us safe, yet the welfare budget is set to rise by £42 billion.
We spend more than 5️⃣ times as much on social security as on actual security.

[Tom Tugendhat @TomTugendhat]

The first duty of government is defence of the Realm. @JohnHealey_MP’s principled resignation states clearly this administration has failed.

I’ve criticised every party for the state we’re in but the truth is now clear: the complacent confidence in peace is over. We must rearm.

[John Healey @JohnHealey_MP]

My letter to the Prime Minister

[Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸 @DouglasCarswell]

Rather than addressing the problem, they want to target people who notice the problem

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

This is the woman David Lammy wants to choose our judges.

She says merit alone should NOT determine judicial appointments.

“Merit is crucial but so is a focus on diversity."

[Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn]

A rant. There’s a misunderstanding about just how short the government’s Defence Investment Plan will fall, when we do finally see it. Sadly, it’s so much worse than the general conception.

It’s not just the gap between the £28billon that the chiefs asked for and the £13.5bn Rachel Reeves is offering. The chiefs’ £28bn was actually just the minimum they think defence needs to get through the next four years. To pay for the full transformation that the SDR prescribes, and insists is vital, I’m told internal MoD estimates put the real sum needed at 4.5 or 5% of GDP (which btw is also NATO’s new annual spending target). The UK currently only spends 2.3% of its GDP on defence, rising to 2.5% next April.

In cash terms, that means defence actually needs an extra £60bn, and not just over 4 years but EVERY year. That’s the true scale of the task, and what our allies like Germany and Poland are now well on their way towards. So the Treasury/No10’s current sticking plaster offer is not just woefully thin, it doesn’t even touch the sides.

To defend Britain properly in the frightening modern world that we now live, the next Prime Minister (Burnham, Badenoch or Farage) is going to have to start all over again. And unlike the current government, they will have to have this debate publicly and honestly.

[Harry Cole @MrHarryCole]

Time for the British government to be decisive - and maybe divisive. There are options.

America shows us we don’t have to put up with what happened in Belfast.

[Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ]

It’s not social media that’s “inflaming tensions”.

It’s not Elon Musk.
It’s not Nigel Farage.
It’s not the ‘far-right’.

It is the very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders.

This policy has to end or it will destroy Western nations.

[Mike Pompeo @mikepompeo]

Within hours of being announced as the nominee to be the U.S. Director of the CIA, I received a hand-delivered message on MI6 stationery congratulating me on my nomination. It was signed simply "C" in green ink. Legendary. I shared it with my son and even he thought I was now cool!

More than that, this note, from Sir Alex Younger, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, confirmed what I already believed: the work that the CIA and MI6 did together mattered, that the partnership was critical, and that two leaders focused on the mission could save lives and provide tools for our nations to deter our adversaries.

Alex's passing this week brought back so many memories of our time in service together. He flew to Langley to see me the day I was confirmed. We brought our two senior teams together in the UK to plan and coordinate and build in the first several weeks of my time on duty: making clear to them all that this relationship was more than special - it was critical for the security of our two countries.

Alex was a remarkable intelligence partner. When we needed help, it wasn't "let me see;" it was "this matters to you and America we'll get it done." And he and his team always did. I think he knew we would do the same for him and his team and his nation. Many Americans are alive today because of his leadership of MI6, I never knew how to thank him enough.

Alex became a friend as well. In the years since we both left office we would see each other from time to time. He was always so kind, so thoughtful, so smart. His deep love of his country was surpassed only by his deep commitment and love of his family. Decent and proper - and funny as hell - Alex was "C." As espionage requires, he was quiet, not attention seeking. He knew what evil was and he was ruthless in his efforts to crush it with every legal tool at his command. And he knew who his friends were and committed himself to supporting them.

I miss Sir Alex Younger. He was a role model for me and a man with whom every minute I spent was valued and savored. Blessings to you Alex. Praying for you and for your family. Well done and may you rest in peace in His hands.

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

Britain will over the coming months endure the biggest rise in unemployment of any major advanced economy.

That was the conclusion of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last week, when it warned that UK joblessness will soar from 4.8pc last year to 5.5pc by the end of 2026.

When Labour took office in July 2024, unemployment was just 4.1pc. But the number of payrolled employees has since fallen in fourteen of the twenty-one subsequent months to April – with around 1.81 million now unemployed.

It is unusual, when the population is rising, for the number of payrolled jobs across the economy to fall.

But that pattern has been broken under Labour.

🧵1/8

[Harry Brown @HazBrown1]

It's fucking tragic 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

Labour risks being forced to seek emergency help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Britain lurches toward a debt crisis, leading economists are now warning.

Former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff says, in a new interview, that there is “more than 50:50 chance” of a major UK debt crisis before the end of this decade.

He is joined by Sir Charlie Bean, a former senior official at both the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility, who says the need for an IMF bail-out is now a “material risk” for the British economy.

I not only firmly agree with Ken Rogoff and Sir Charlie Bean – but have been repeatedly issuing the very same warnings for a very long time.

Because the grave risk of a major fiscal meltdown has been apparent for at least the last two years – to anyone who combines serious knowledge of UK economics and politics and global debt markets with an open mind.

The UK's public finances were already fragile when Labour took office back in July 2024.

But this government's misguided, ideologically-driven statist policies have made a bad situation much worse, seriously increasing the danger of a deep fiscal crisis - which would cause a disastrous state funding shortfall and a very nasty inflation spike.

That would result in Downing Street being forced to follow the orders of unelected technocrats flown in from Washington and elsewhere.

It would be a very major national humiliation combined with a deep economic slump and an even more intense cost-of-living crisis – in which low-income households, as ever, would suffer the most.

Yet those of us that have shown the brains and courage to point out these inconvenient truths over recent months and years have long been dismissed and derided for our trouble - not only by ignorant politicians and approval-seeking journalists but also the overwhelming majority of "leading economists".

Ahead of the general election in mid-2024, with Labour on course to win, the conventional wisdom among the great sages of broadsheet journalism and the economics establishment was that "the adults would soon be back in charge" ... Labour would "get lucky with the economy" ... and "Britain would now enjoy an extended period of political and fiscal stability".

I thought that was total nonsense – not least as I was well aware Labour's plans irresponsibly to increase borrowing and spending would be met with deep scepticism by the global pensions funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors that lend governments serious money.

My weekly @Telegraph "Economic Agenda" column of 23rd June 2024, a fortnight ahead of the general election, was a total outlier. I recounted the disaster of 1976 – when Britain was forced to go "cap in hand" to the IMF for a bailout – and warned that "The Ghosts of the 1970s" would haunt Labour's (so-called) economic resurrection".

Six months later, after the October 2024 "Hallowen" budget in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves did indeed sharply hike borrowing and spending, I assessed the market reaction then doubled-down – warning more assertively in my column of 12th January 2025 that "The UK risks a return to 1976 unless Reeves changes course".

And then again on 20th July 2025, as Labour's policies raised the costs of doing business, translating into price pressures which pushed up government borrowing costs even more, I again cautioned that "Inflation risks are taking Britain to the debt-crisis cliff edge".

"It’s now screamingly obvious that Labour’s crude Keynesianism – “pump priming” the economy by upping state borrowing and spending – isn’t working," I wrote in that column last July.

"Worse than that, this Government’s actions are pushing Britain towards a budgetary crisis every bit as serious as that in 1976 – when the UK was forced to go “cap in hand” to the IMF for a bail-out".

It's been a lonely task issuing these warnings. I've been hounded in public debates, slagged off by senior civil servants and often dismissed by "leading economists" as "alarmist".

So what do these same "leading economists" now say to Rogoff (Harvard Professor, Former IMF Chief Economist) and Bean (LSE Professor and Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England)?

The "economics establishment" – with very few honourable exceptions, the brilliant @jagjit_chadha among them – has been and remains extremely reluctant to point out the deeply unsustainable nature of this government's addiction to ever more borrowing.

The systemic fiscal dangers of evermore "tax and spend" – and the prospect of a serious spike in gilt yields and related fiscal meltdown – are now so real and present as to be completely undeniable.

Yet the UK government is about to shift even further to the left, pushing up borrowing and spending even more under a new leader, in a bid to appease the massed ranks of economic illiterates among Labour's Parliamentary party and activist base – making those dangers even more acute.

Yet, still, the silence among "public intellectual" economists is deafening.

I'm glad the likes of Ken Rogoff and Charlie Bean are now issuing clear warnings. So where is the rest of the "economics establishment" - those who purport to understand fiscal management and financial markets, and often funded by taxpayers' money?

Britain is now clearly in the crosshairs of a very serious danger. The government's creditors are increasingly fickle and based overseas – with no regulatory or cultural obligations to lend money to the UK government.

Those holding UK gilts are increasingly "speculative" rather than "strategic" long-term investors – looking for quick returns, financing their government bond purchases with "leverage" (money borrowed from elsewhere), which will quickly be withdrawn when senitment decisively shifts, causing a plunge in gilt prices and a sharp additional surge in government borrowing costs, setting up a vicious circle.

The UK government is very heavily indebted – and the global investors we rely on to bankroll a huge slice of our state spending are alarmed that of the £132bn the government borrowed last year, no less than £110bn was spent on debt interest – as I wrote in a column on 17th May 2026, "As Labour lurches further left, the markets are calling time".

Global investors are alarmed the UK has consistently had the highest inflation in the G7 (which pushes up borrowing costs) and has easily the highest share of index-linked debt (which magnifies the burden of inflation on the state's balance sheet).

And they are deeply, deeply alarmed that when Labour came to power in mid-2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting additional state borrowing of £323bn by 2029, the scheduled end of this Parliament.

But Labour’s runaway spending and growth-crushing tax rises mean that the same five-year borrowing forecast is now £583bn – 80pc higher. And still, the trade unions, MPs and Labour activists who will choose Starmer’s successor now want even more.

It is not too late to pull the UK back from the fiscal brink, to avoid the extremely painful and deep, lingering damage of being forced to go to the IMF and perhaps other multi-lateral creditors for a bailout.

It is not too late to avoid the inflation surge, the currency crash, the shocking blow to consumer and business confidence alongside the sky-high interest rates that will seriously whack our economy – or the perhaps even deeper damage of yet more of the British electorate losing faith in the ability of our establishment to manage the country in a manner that avoids imposing serious hardship on so many hard-working people simply trying to make their way.

But our political and media class needs to start acknowledging the economic and financial truth – that the UK government is borrowing and spending too much, taxation is now so high that it's hammering growth and employment, and that trying to finally get the economy moving by "moving further left", borrowing and spending even more, will result in a fiscal collapse.

Smart, experienced, high-profile economists need to start speaking out – as Rogoff and Bean just have – raising the alarm in a bid to force the broader establishment to face reality. Before it's too late.

If you've read this far, you clearly think this analysis is worthwhile and important. So please like and share.

And for more, read my "Economic Agenda" column in The Sunday Telegraph each week – and subscribe to "When The Facts Change: Economics and Politics in a fast-moving world, with Liam Halligan"

[Simon Danczuk @SimonDanczuk]

Here’s a reminder why Burnham couldn’t even beat Miliband or Corbyn for the leadership. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s tetchy, and temperamental. Most of today’s Labour MPs don’t know him. They’re in for a shock if he wins Makerfield…

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

You don't like depending on the bond markets, Zack, and neither do I. There is only one way to end that dependency: stop borrowing.
Can we agree on finding an immediate £150 billion in annual savings so that our budget is back in balance? Starting with the biggest item: welfare.

[Victoria Freeman @v_j_freeman]

There he is! The Andy Burnham I remember from his Westminster days. Tetchy, evasive, unable to explain himself fully, irked by female interviewers.

[Tom Tugendhat @TomTugendhat]

This is a man-made tragedy all down to energy policies that have pushed prices higher in search of a carbon ambition at home and simply pushing businesses to the wall.