The spectre of recession is looming over the UK as unemployment hits 5%, higher than most analysts had predicted. The Office for National Statistics figures, released last week, are in some dispute but point to a weakening jobs market and slowing wage growth. 

Taking out the “skewed levels” of the pandemic years, said the BBC, this unemployment rate is the highest since August 2016. With latest official data also showing that GDP grew by only 0.1% in the third quarter of this year, alarm bells are ringing.

What did the commentators say?
A “gang” of chief executives “fired warning shots at the Treasury” in September, said City A.M. editor-in-chief Christian May. One claimed we are heading for a recession, which is a “big call”. More people are talking about stagnation – “an equally ugly phrase” – but that we’re talking about recession at all is “telling, and alarming”.

To count as a recession, the economy has to have two consecutive three-month quarters in negative territory, and while ours grew by 0.7% in the first quarter and 0.3% in the second, we’re now “flatlining”, said The Independent’s James Moore. Last week’s unemployment stats “caught most economists on the hop”; they “weren’t expecting anything quite as bad”.

Britain’s economy is “in the dog house”, said The Economist. “Inflation is sticky, debts and deficits are high, and productivity growth is low.” Infrastructure and housing projects are “turning out to be a sorry disappointment”. But “some of the doomsaying is overdone”. Britain’s “structural strengths”, such as its universities and the City of London, are “enduring”. 

What next?
No mainstream economist has “a fully blown UK recession pencilled in” for the coming year, said The Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner. Recessions “generally require some sort of trigger” – although it may not be necessary for the UK, given that the economy “seems instead to be simply dying”.

ONS figures published today showed that inflation fell to 3.6% in October, down from 3.8% in September. This “slight improvement offers limited relief”, said The Spectator. All eyes will be on how the chancellor navigates this in next week’s Budget.

“Please do not allow football to be dragged into every ideological or political battle,” Fifa president Gianni Infantino said ahead of the last men’s World Cup. That didn’t prevent accusations that host Qatar was using the tournament to sportswash its poor human rights record.

Next up to face such scrutiny is Donald Trump, who appears to have every intention of exploiting the 2026 World Cup – to be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico – to push his Maga agenda. The US president “will make sure he is front and centre at this tournament”, said Alexander Abnos in The Guardian – even “in spots where he has no business or where his involvement may be seen as uncouth or inappropriate”.

Host cities threat
Trump recently suggested he may ask Fifa to relocate matches away from Democratic-run US host cities, including Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles, over “safety concerns”. This would be an “extraordinary decision that has little, if any, precedent”, said CNN. All of the host cities were announced in 2022 and have already lavished “time and money” on “infrastructure improvements” and plans to accommodate millions of visitors.

At a White House conference with Infantino to discuss World Cup plans, Trump also told reporters he would be “OK” about ordering strikes against co-hosts Mexico as part of his ongoing war on drug trafficking. “They know how I stand,” he said.

Peace prize
After making his sixth visit of the year to the White House this week, Infantino will use next month’s World Cup draw in Washington D.C. to award the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize. The stated aim is to reward “individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and, by doing so, have united people across the world”. Fifa has disclosed no details about the process for choosing the winner.

If Trump receives the award, as expected, “it’s likely to add to the perception that it’s been created in response to the US president not winning the Nobel Peace Prize”, said The Associated Press. The timing of the award and Infantino’s “proximity to the president” have “raised questions about whether Fifa is adhering to its own rules on political neutrality”, said The New York Times.

“Indelible, sublime moments will still happen” at next year’s World Cup, said Abnos in The Guardian. “But those moments will be punctuated by Trump – eternally encroaching on even the most elevated of emotional experiences.”

Two children and a cow called Vicky join a protest against inheritance tax on farms. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch came out to meet farmers and the Limousin heifer in Parliament Square yesterday.

Guy Bell / Shutterstock

As Donald Trump threatens to sue the BBC over a speech edit by “Panorama”, journalist Andy Webb has “chucked a load of petrol on the bonfire” with his “extraordinary” new book, said Lucy Denyer in The Telegraph. “Dianarama: the Betrayal of Princess Diana” examines the “explosive” interview between Martin Bashir and Diana in 1995, broadcast by the BBC and watched by 23 million people in the UK. 

Because of Bashir’s actions and, “more importantly”, because of the ensuing cover-up, Webb claims, “Diana’s life had been sent off on a terribly dangerous course, resulting in her death”. 

This is “punchy stuff”, said Denyer. Webb clearly has an “endearing soft spot for Diana” but holds no grudge against King Charles. “All his ire is instead directed at two targets: Bashir and the BBC.” The first part of the book tackles how Bashir “lied, faked and forged” his path to the interview, while the second shines a light on how the corporation sought to “cover its back” after the story broke.

“Dianarama” charts Webb’s “decades-long campaign to uncover the truth”, said Kate Mansey in The Times. Among his claims is the “extraordinary scale of Bashir’s lies”, including “astonishing allegations” that “Prince Edward had Aids”, that her son Prince William was recording her with a “special watch” and that the Queen would “abdicate within six months”.

“Some readers might look at ‘Dianarama’, shrug and think it old history,” said Denyer in The Telegraph. But Webb reminds us it is a story that “will not go away”. He has “reopened a writhing can of worms”.

The British state is quietly erasing one of your fundamental rights
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i Paper
“Our ‘liberal’ democracy is cracking down on liberal democracy”, writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. How can “climate activists and defenders of Palestine Action” be declared “a threat to our national security”? That should be “intolerable” if you value democracy. People say they “just want to live their lives”, but amid the “tightening grip of the state”, no one “is safe”. And “our freedoms are being stolen” because we are not “vigilant” in protecting them.

Thank goodness pugs will once more look like Trump
Francesca Peacock in The Telegraph
Today’s pugs are “squat, wrinkled, and flat-faced”, with “the wheeze of Darth Vader if he smoked a pack a day”, writes Francesca Peacock. But that may change thanks to a Kennel Club-affiliated scheme with the “laudable aim” of encouraging dog breeders to avoid extreme features, such as a flat face that can cause breathing problems. Soon, the modern pug may look more like the one painted by “18th century artist William Hogarth” – “a noble creature called Trump”.

Pens have gone extinct
Druin Burch in The Spectator
I always used to carry “a pen in my pocket”, writes Druin Burch. But those days are long gone. Pens were once “such a part in normal life” that they could be key to book and film plots: in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, for example, Indy’s sidekick dad squirted “a fountain pen into a foe’s eye”. His “consequent quip – about the pen being mightier than the sword – is almost as dated now in its first part as in its second”.