Liam Halligan

Some personal/professional news: I'm launching "When the Facts Change - economics and politics in a fast-changing world". Click on the link in my X biography to read my first post. I'll obviously continue to write my weekly "Economics Agenda" column for the Telegraph, and co-present the "Planet Normal" podcast each week with the brilliant @AllisonPearson I've been encouraged by lots of people, not least on X, to do more writing and broadcasting. So here goes .... "When the Facts Change" will initially be limited to written posts. But, as I find my feet, I'll add audio and video content too. So please check out my launch post via the link in my X biog and feel free to share this news. 🧵 1/2

Hooligans playing evening of Saturday 11th April. Come and join us !! 🎻🎸🥁☘️🎶💃 ⬇️⬇️⬇️

This is well worth reading - whether you are a minister, opposition politician or anyone trying to understand the UK's energy vulnerability and how we address that. The exec summary alone is hugely informative and well-argued. Congrats to @CeeMacBee and co-authors. ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

But the negative impact of that mindless move pales into comparison when it comes to Labour’s swingeing reforms to Business Property Relief (BPR). Also to be implemented from next week, these changes will do untold damage to countless family-owned SMEs by capping the amount of qualifying business assets that can be passed on free of IHT. While changes to Agricultural Property Relief have commanded more attention, the harm cause by these new BPR rules will be even more widespread – with countless SMEs facing ruinous IHT bills, meaning many will be forced to fold. Ministers argue that such changes to IHT relief make the tax system “fairer”. But all these reforms to APR and BPR do is reveal the utter lack of business experience and commercial acumen at the top of the Labour Party. Even in their diluted form, the APR changes will seriously impact countless modest farming families, upending generations of hard work. But the BPR changes are even more counter-productive – destroying hundreds of SME businesses and countless thousands of jobs. And that’s on top of the damage from this ongoing Middle East conflict. 🧵7/7 telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…

Some challenger banks have raised their game – with the likes of Monzo and Allica now providing over half of all new lending to SMEs, despite accounting for less than a fifth of all deposits. But net lending to small businesses remains negative, with firms paying back more than they’re borrowing – which acts as a major drag on growth and productivity. Numerous surveys suggest small firms find it harder than ever to access finance, with many concluding they will never source external growth capital. Since the mid-2000s, the number of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) has also fallen from almost 1,700 to less than 700 – driven by onerous regulation and reduced tax incentives. That’s made it harder for sizeable SMEs to really take flight. And now Chancellor Rachel Reeves has halved the inheritance tax (IHT) relief on AIM shares from 100pc to 50pc, effective from next week, this once vital source of risk capital has been further undermined. 🧵6/7

"Britain's small firms are needed to rescue us from this slump - yet Labour's policies are crippling this vitally important part of our economy" My latest @Telegraph column telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/… 🧵1/7

💥📺📻NEW When The Facts Change interview Britain's dreams of being an AI super-power will be stymied by energy realities. Liam Halligan talks to leading data-centre entrepreneur John McGee, Managing Director of @DurataUK Desperate for a pro-growth narrative, Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently argued that "the UK will achieve the fastest AI adoption in the G7". But Britain's role in the AI revolution will be seriously curtailed, says John McGee, because "we simply haven’t got the power generation capacity at the moment”. Running AI data centres uses up huge amounts of energy. "As things stand, we are going to really struggle power-wise, unless something changes very quickly,” warns McGee. “I’m all for green energy,” he says. “But when we are trying to build an AI revolution, the clean energy timeframe is simply too aggressive … “It’s all very well for politicians to jump on the latest buzzword – which is AI – but do they actually understand what it will take to be a global leader in this sector, not least when it comes to buildings and energy”. Click on the link below for FREE access to this exclusive, insightful interview. And please share/subscribe to support quality, independent journalism. comment.press/mcgee

Do I have 70s hair? What will happen to the economy due to rising oil prices? And can the government survive? Answers to all this and more from 27 mins into this week’s Planet Normal podcast with @LiamHalligan and @AllisonPearson

I'm going to set out the conversation I had with the Metropolitan Police Press Office yesterday. People can judge whether their response represents an attempt to facilitate a legitimate journalistic query, or something else: Me: "Hi, I'm writing about the above issue for tomorrow's paper [Mandelson]. I would like to know: If the Met has any record of the reported theft of former Downing Street Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney's mobile phone, as widely reported in the media. If any efforts are being made to recover the phone given its significance to the investigation. If any efforts have been made to obtain centrally held Government records of communications from the phone" Many thanks

“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”. This quotation from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises describes how economic ruin often occurs ... My latest Economic Agenda column in today's @Telegraph attempts concisely to explain the extent of the delusion not just of this government, but of much of the UK's political and media class, when it comes to the state of Britain's public finances – and the related dangers. The idea that the roll-out of artificial intelligence is going to provide a major growth/fiscal boost over the next few years, as argued by Rachel Reeves in last week's Mais Lecture, is also widely complacent. Yes, AI is of huge significance and COULD be a major source of economic wealth-creation/progress for Britain (if the related job upheaval can be managed). But AI, and the related data centres, require HUGE amounts of energy. And Britain's considerable potential in this sphere is being massively curtailed by our sky-high energy costs, shaky national grid – and the related difficulty/impossibility of securing grid connections. And that's before Ed Miliband's madcap idea to "decarbonise the national grid by 2030" I've said for a couple of years now that the UK needs to choose between net-zero virtue-signalling and economic growth (with growth being absolutely vital if we are to pull this nation back from the fiscal cliff-edge). That reality is becoming ever more apparent with every passing week and month .... This is a slow-motion crisis - and the vast majority of decision-makers/commentators still have their eyes shut and their fingers in their ears. But financial meltdowns, for both individuals and countries happen gradually, then suddenly – as Hemingway understood. telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…

@AaronBastani This is happening ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ And you're scouring Wikipedia to make (crap) jokes. I fear you're making a fool of yourself. You're certainly demonstrating you have zero understanding of financial markets - and related fiscal realities

@LiamHalligan I agree, by the way. But it’s a disaster which is decades in the making, mostly overseen by neoliberals on the right, who didn’t grasp they were creating a bloated, useless state.

In their defence they didn’t rush headlong into a conflict that catalysed this, and will make it much much worse. I wish I could say the same for some of your fellow travellers...

If football is art, this is a masterpiece 🖼️ #UCL

@PeterJRepper Thanks. Support When The Facts Change - and tell your friends to do the same

@LiamHalligan Just to say you are performing a magnificent public service in doggedly pressing home the message of the parlous financial state we are in. Many of us really appreciate your perspicacious work and effort. Do not be discouraged. Keep driving the message forward.

So the UK's 10-year gilt yield - the cost of government borrowing - is now up at 2008 levels. An 18-year high The difference is that, back then, UK national debt was 48pc of GDP, and now it's the best part of 100pc. So the debt service costs are much MUCH heavier. Of the £14.3bn the UK government borrowed in February alone, no less than £13bn of that was spent on interest on existing debts - a situation which is not only unsustainable, but very close to provoking a disastrous financial collapse. Yet still, our national discourse is all about more spending, more borrowing, more "state intervention". When is the Labour party – and much of the listless, unthinking rump of the UK's political and media class – going to start acknowledging reality? WHEN ....?

@LiamHalligan I still don't understand why there arent cooler heads in the Treasury or Bank just saying "no". I mean I say I don't understand, but of course their record over the past 10 year suggests they don't understand the economy either so...