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Well this is unexpected...

UK borrowing costs are expected to fall further next year, according to the average forecast from nine big investment banks, as investors increasingly price in interest rate cuts from the Bank of England (BoE) after a prolonged period of restrictive monetary policy.

Britain's 10-year bond yield, which hit a 16-year high of 4.95% at the start of 2025 — due to worries about near-record debt issuance and a global bond sell-off — is expected to come down to 4.32% by the end of 2026.

Investment baskets expect UK gilts to be the best performers amongst peer countries. They are impressed by the brilliance of Rachel Reeves budget.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/bond-market-2026-060013107.html

But that's with 1pp of base rate cuts by the BoE from beginning of 2025 to the end of 2026 being priced in. This doesn't strike me as very good news. If we compare our current debt yields to what they were the last time the base rate was 3.75%. At the end of January 2023 when the BoE put rates up the 10Y yield was ~3.3% and that's after the Trussterfuck which burned so much of our national fiscal and monetary credibility plus substantially higher inflation.

What's actualy happening is thay the BoE is cutting the base rate which is expected to drop to between 3-3.25% by the end of 2026 and the government is seeing little to no benefit from that as debt markets continue price in a big risk premium.

I don't think falling debt yields are going to save the government. They will be back in November next year begging for more money to pay off striking public sector workers and to put welfare payments up again.

Good morning, everyone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp89p082y2xo

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there will be no more wars after Ukraine, if Russia is treated with respect - and dismissed claims that Moscow is planning to attack European countries as "nonsense"."

Man who has repeatedly invaded a European country pretends the notion he might invade a European country is nonsense. Hmm.

It is nonsense, depending whether you classify the ex-Soviet states as European countries or as breakaway regions of Russia.

Looking forward to Novgorod demanding that Moscow cedes authority to it again.

Before the Mongols shifted the chief tributary state of the Rus, Novgorod (which had some degree of democracy) was the primary city of the realm.

Somewhat belatedly, it is time to go and get the Christmas tree. Then put some decs up. Our son is coming home in the early hours for Christmas. Looking forward to that.

This has been a very unhappy hear for me in politics. I feel an orphan. I have nothing but contempt for the SNP government in Scotland and I am in despair about the Labour government in London. My enthusiasm and even interest has waned sharply. I may have a break from PB for a while.

We're in a dull phase right now.

That's certainly part of the problem. Sometimes, as with the bug going round at the moment, the only answer is to hunker down and wait for nature to do its thing. The current personnel aren't ideal casting, sure. But if the alternatives are worse, what are we to do?

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Besides, how did we get here and then get out? Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that we're demanding leadership qualities that go well beyond what we have any right to demand. Since Blair, we've had seven PMs, all of whom failed fairly unambiguously and fairly quickly. What was the sliding door moment where we could have avoided all this?

Unfair on Cameron. PM for seven years, led the best government of the last twenty years. Made one tiny miscalculation…

Cameron's “best government of the last twenty years” flatlined the economy, gerrymandered our electoral process (which arguably resulted in losing the referendum), broke the NHS (which is why there was no support for Lansley over plebgate), almost lost Scotland and did lose Europe.

Lansley wasn’t plebgate, surely? I think the coalition set the national finances on the road to recovery. If you look around, most western governments have flatlined since 2007. What Gerrymandering are you refering too?

Good point. Two people with the same first name. Deliberate mistake. AI slop. Autocorrect.

Until Osborne, we'd been largely tracking America's economy. Ours was recovering by the time of the election.

Gerrymandering. Cameron, Osborne and CCHQ generally had become convinced Labour had an unfair advantage, partly because they did not understand the notion of efficient vote spread, so needed to put their own thumb on the scale. Mainly this was done, in a ruse copied by the Republicans in America, by purging the electoral rolls and making registration harder, and then redrawing boundaries based on the new rolls, so that more seats were created in traditional Conservative areas than Labour ones. By also reducing the number of seats, they ensured every boundary had to be reconsidered. There was more to it than that but you get the gist.

So you believe that the electoral commission is biased? Because surely they are responsible for boundaries etc?
And as for making registration harder? I get a letter that I have to log on and confirm or make changes. Pretty sure there are other ways too. It’s not rocket science.

It's early out but I think I'm going to base my early betting strategy on this vote share in 2029:

C - 27
L - 19
R - 21
LD - 15
G - 12

I think we're going to end up with a Con/Ref coalition after the election. My gut feeling is that the "punishment" narrative that the media pushed so hard against the Tories last time has gone away and people just aren't responding to Labour's attempts to blame the current economic fuck ups on the previous government and they are taking the majority of the blame for falling jobs, higher inflation and falling investment because of their tax rise agenda.

I also think that by the time 2029 rolls around Labour will have gone through at least two more rounds of tax rises and working age people will be fed up and be willing to give the Tories a go just on the basis of cutting spending and stopping taxes from rising to pay for welfare.

What's the basis for the Fukker -> tory swing apart from hopes and dreams?

If you're the type of small minded sociopath drawn to toryism/fukkerism then you might as well vote Fukker because there is zero meaningful policy distance between them but the Fukkers, at least, sound like they mean it. The tory offer is, the Fukkers are right about everything but vote for us instead because of Kemi's natural charm.

Labour are going to fuck the economy so hard over the next few years that enough of the softer voters saying they'll vote Reform will peel back to the Tories. I think there will be ~17-20% that will turn out for Reform whatever the weather because of the immigration programme so if Labour fuck up the economy badly enough too many right wing voters will scream for mummy and come running back.

I'd have more faith in your economic predictions if you had warned us repeatedly how the Tories were going to fuck up the economy over the past 15 years.

The 14 year excuse is rapidly coming to an end as Starmer/Reeves own the economic mess they have now created all on their own

The last government blamed its predecessor for at least 10 years, as did the one before it.

It's early out but I think I'm going to base my early betting strategy on this vote share in 2029:

C - 27
L - 19
R - 21
LD - 15
G - 12

I think we're going to end up with a Con/Ref coalition after the election. My gut feeling is that the "punishment" narrative that the media pushed so hard against the Tories last time has gone away and people just aren't responding to Labour's attempts to blame the current economic fuck ups on the previous government and they are taking the majority of the blame for falling jobs, higher inflation and falling investment because of their tax rise agenda.

I also think that by the time 2029 rolls around Labour will have gone through at least two more rounds of tax rises and working age people will be fed up and be willing to give the Tories a go just on the basis of cutting spending and stopping taxes from rising to pay for welfare.

What's the basis for the Fukker -> tory swing apart from hopes and dreams?

If you're the type of small minded sociopath drawn to toryism/fukkerism then you might as well vote Fukker because there is zero meaningful policy distance between them but the Fukkers, at least, sound like they mean it. The tory offer is, the Fukkers are right about everything but vote for us instead because of Kemi's natural charm.