Reality Check: 2025 – tears, tariffs & taxes
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
2025 has been a busy year in economics, with tariffs, taxes – and even some tears. It's also been a busy year for the Spectator's economics editor Michael Simmons, who launched his new show Reality Check. The aim of the show is to cut through the spin and explain the numbers behind the noise. In each episode, Michael will make a data-driven case on a story hogging the headlines.
In this special episode for Coffee House Shots listeners, Michael reflects on some of the economic highs and lows of 2025. For more episodes – with guests including Arthur Laffer and Rory Sutherland – search for Reality Check, wherever you subscribe to your podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Give something clever this Christmas. |
| 0:02.2 | Treat a loved one to a year of The Spectator, in print and online, for just £99. |
| 0:07.9 | And we'll send you a bottle of our very own English sparkling wine worth £48 £48, absolutely free. |
| 0:15.3 | Have a bright and sparkling Christmas with the Spectator. |
| 0:17.7 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash Christmas. |
| 0:23.1 | Hello, and a very merry Christmas from me, Michael Simmons and everyone at Reality Check. |
| 0:30.7 | I'm really proud of this new show that we launched in just October. So I wanted to use this Christmas episode to go over some of the |
| 0:40.0 | highlights from the show and some of my appearances on Spectator TV this year before the |
| 0:46.5 | Hogmane bells ring in 2026. We were really chuffed with our launch episode of Reality |
| 0:52.9 | Check because we managed to secure |
| 0:54.8 | the famous American economist Arfer Laffer. |
| 0:58.7 | He was so full of energy when he came into the studio. |
| 1:02.2 | I was kind of awestruck just to be sat opposite him. |
| 1:05.7 | He explained the history behind his famous Laffer curve and how a staggeringly high tax burden is killing Britain. |
| 1:13.7 | Here's some highlights. |
| 1:15.3 | The US, I guess, might be making some headway, but it's harder to make that case in Britain. |
| 1:20.4 | Our overall tax burden is heading for a post-war high, even if individual taxes on sort of middle |
| 1:27.3 | earners are actually relatively |
| 1:29.4 | low to where they've been in the past. You said we're on the wrong side of that. Two questions. |
| 1:35.7 | What would be the optimal tax rate on the Laffer curve for Britain? And given that we're |
| 1:42.3 | about to have this budget that there's going to massively raise |
| 1:44.5 | taxes again. How far wrong are we? Let me just say the optimal is so far away from anything we |
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