Nothing will contribute more to Labour’s growth agenda than lower interest rates. 

It would give impetus to a lagging housing market, make it easier for companies to borrow and expand and ultimately cut the cost of servicing a whopping national debt.

Caution by the Bank of England at a time when other Western central banks have moved more rapidly to lower rates needs to end.

Pay growth, which has been seen as a key obstacle to lowering borrowing costs, is on its way down. 

In particular, wage growth in the dominant services sector, closely watched by the interest rate setting Monetary Policy Committee, has fallen from 5.6  in the first half of 2024 to 3.6  now.

Even though headline unemployment improved to from 4.1 per cent of the workforce to 4 per cent in August there are signs that a relatively robust labour market is easing.

The payroll count is down and vacancies are subsiding. The energy transition, as seen at Port Talbot and Grangemouth, could make matters worse.

By the time of the next interest rate meeting in November, governor Andrew Bailey and colleagues will have clearer sight of consumer prices, expected to fall a notch when September data is released today, and the fiscal stance.

The first budget from Rachel Reeves on October 30 will include an alphabet soup of tax rises, with employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs), inheritance taxes (IHT) and capital gains taxes (CGT) in the Chancellor’s armoury, along with an assault on online betting.

The International Monetary Fund’s fiscal monitor gives buy-in to Reeves’s tax raising plans. It argues that with debt growing in the UK at a faster level than in the pre-pandemic years, delaying efforts to bring it down would be ‘costly’. 

The Fund also approves of the idea that making room for public investment is the right way to go. It comes as no surprise that the IMF wants to see prudence now rather than later.

All the more reason for the Bank to bring interest rates down as quickly as possible to boost confidence and avert a slowdown.

Hard currency

The fight for survival at De La Rue has received a critical boost. As one of the oldest names on the London Stock Exchange, its disappearance would have been a bruising blow. 

Survival is now possible following the sale of its authentication division for £300million to Connecticut-based Crane NXT. The disposal, engineered by chief executive Clive Vacher, saw an under pressure share price zip up 14.4 per cent and the stock is 27.5 per cent better this year to date.

The sale enables the banknote printer to pay off some crushing debt and pay an additional £12.5million into the pension pot, which will be a relief to current and past employees who may have feared being dumped in the Pension Protection Fund with diminished benefits. 

It is enormously disappointing that a tech driven enterprise is ending up in overseas hands as that usually means industrial know-how shifting abroad.

De La Rue now boils down to a pure play currency enterprise. That might not appear a great place to be given the rise in digital transactions among the G7 advanced economies. In the UK, only dry cleaners and builders seem to favour cash payments these days.

Vacher is nevertheless buoyant on the prospects for both paper and polymer currencies where it is claimed that De La Rue has some of the most advanced technology on the planet. 

The transition to polymer and central bank decisions to cut back on new notes in the pandemic means order books are full at £250million.

Ideally, Vacher would like to sell currencies too, pay off remaining obligations and finally reward fractious shareholders for their patience. 

What a sad ending that would be for a 211-year-old company inextricably with Britain’s banknote and security printing heritage.

Flight risk

Nothing is more likely to create despondency than the thought of a flight from an overcrowded, facilities-light Stansted. 

So the unveiling of an already-in-the-pipeline £1.1billion terminal expansion over the next five years will come as a relief to travellers and should ease congestion at London’s airports. Heathrow needs to get in on the act with the long delayed third runway.