Introducing: Reality Check

I’m delighted to announce the launch of my new podcast and newsletter Reality Check. In each episode I’ll cut through the spin and explain the numbers behind the noise. For the first installment I sat down with the American economist Arthur Laffer.

‘Course you would,’ is not the answer I expect when I ask tax-cutting American economist Arthur Laffer if he’d break manifesto promises and raise the big three taxes – income tax, national insurance and VAT – if he were in Rachel Reeves’s shoes.

It’s an astonishing remark from the man who built his reputation preaching the gospel of low taxes. Britain’s finances, it seems, are now so dire that even Arthur Laffer – probably the world’s most famous living economist – appears to think the Chancellor should put up her main taxes.

I’m so surprised