Growth negligence: Britain’s budget
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The tax-and-spend plan was fine-tuned to avoid immediate political jeopardy. But it will do little to help Britain’s chronic growth problem, and is likely to erode further the political centre. We meet with Yogi Adityanath, the leader of India’s most populous state and a harbinger of the country’s possible political future. And readers’ best—or most discombobulating—job-interview questions.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:15.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:23.6 | We pay a visit to India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh and meet its leader. |
| 0:29.6 | Like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he's another muscular Hindu nationalist type, but in holy robes. |
| 0:35.6 | And he might be a sign of India's politics to come. |
| 0:40.3 | And job seekers pay attention. We've gathered up some of our readers' best interview questions. |
| 0:47.3 | It's the simplest ones that turn out to be the most disarming. |
| 1:02.8 | First up, though. |
| 1:15.9 | We've been telling you for some time that Britain's biggest ailment is its low growth and low productivity. |
| 1:21.6 | Britain's Chancellor or Finance Minister Rachel Reeves would love to blame that on the previous conservative governments. |
| 1:23.3 | This is not about the last 14 months. It is about the previous 14 years. |
| 1:29.1 | The legacy of Brexit and the pandemic. |
| 1:32.8 | And the damaging decisions by the party opposite. |
| 1:36.9 | So when she presented her much-anticipated budget yesterday, her main job was clear. |
| 1:42.2 | Today's budget builds on the choices that we have made since July last year. |
| 1:47.3 | To cut NHS waiting lists. |
| 1:50.1 | To cut the cost of living. |
| 1:52.6 | And to cut debt and borrowing. |
| 1:55.8 | She announced 26 billion pounds, |
| 1:58.3 | $34 billion worth of tax rises, on wages, on pensions, on housing. |
| 2:03.6 | I do recognise that I was asking ordinary people to pay a little bit more. |
... |
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