Are we facing a global recession?

0:05Hi, I'm Suze Cooper and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. Coming up, what's really going on with the Beckhams? It's what they're posting or what they're not posting that says the most about it, because ultimately, if you're a celebrity in the public eye this much, you know that everything that you post on Instagram or don't post on Instagram is going to be taken as a sign. We'll be joined by the London Standards features writer and columnist Maddy Musson.

0:39But first, new figures show government borrowing has climbed to over£151 billion, far more than expected. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund is warning that US President Donald Trump's new tariffs could slow down the global economy and push up borrowing costs. It's all putting pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of the autumn budget and could mean higher taxes are on the way. Well, the London Standards business editor Jonathan Prynne is with me now. Jonathan, last week we were talking about falling inflation and stronger wages. Now the headlines are about global warning signs and rising borrowing.

1:16What's going on? I know. A week is a long time in politics. It's an awful long time in economics as well. Yeah, things are looking a little bit rosier last week. But so far, all the data this week after Easter has been pretty grim. I guess I'd say the sort of big picture explanation for that is that last week's data was more backward looking. And the figures we've had today are kind of throwing a bit more of a light on the economy as it is now and really not terribly encouraging numbers today. So economists are talking about the possibility of a global recession. What would that look like? Yeah, they are.

1:57And the reason for that is after, as you said, a relatively benign start to the year when things were starting to look a bit more stable in the first few months of the year, suddenly Donald Trump threw this massive rock into the global economic pond on the 2nd of April with his so-called Liberation Day announcement on tariffs. And basically, the tremors for that are going around the world. And we don't quite know what sort of impact it's going to have. But we do know, or at least most economists are predicting, that it will result in a sharp slowdown in global economic growth. The IMF came out yesterday.

2:39They knocked about half a point off their forecast for global economic growth this year. Now, the danger is if this trade war is not resolved, the two biggest economies, America and China, are locking each other out of their own economies. And other countries, too, are getting waxed with big tariffs from the American administration. And I think the danger is that that not only slows down global trade, which is a bad thing for the global economy, but also is extremely corrosive to confidence in domestic economies. So the worry is that the impact could be that the global economy slips into recession.

3:24A recession is defined as two quarters of negative growth that hasn't happened for a while apart from the pandemic. We'll see. We'll see. I think it's still unlikely, hopefully, that things won't get quite that bad. But within individual countries such as the UK, things definitely are looking tougher. How worried should we be here in the UK? What does it mean for our own economic outlook then? We're now into the second quarter of the year, which starts on the 1st of April. That's looking a lot more turbulent and difficult to predict. but the numbers we had today on the public finances in March, before Donald Trump's impact even got started, but the public finance numbers were not good.

4:07The country had to borrow$151.9 billion last year just to keep the wheels of government turning, and that was much bigger than the OBR expected, the OBR being Office for Budget Responsibility, which is the government's kind of economic watchdog. now the the risk of that is that to keep the books balanced in in a way that will keep international investors on board rachel reeves will be forced to raise taxes again or probably more likely cut public spending quite severely i suspect when we get around to the budget in the autumn essentially low growth globally feeds through to low growth in the uk low growth in UK means the government is collecting less taxes.

4:55The government collects less taxes and that means the public finances are more strained. Ultimately, that means the government has to either borrow more or increase taxes or cut spending. And I suspect it will be a combination of all three, but none of them are welcome. If taxes are raised in the autumn budget, then who is likely to feel that the most and how are they going to feel it? Yeah, very good question. My gut feeling is that headline rates she'll find for all sorts of political reasons headline rates of tax will be very hard to increase i don't think she'll want to touch business taxes after the really huge increase in national insurance rates that she introduced in the last budget so i think what she might do is go for what people often call stealth taxes where you don't actually increase the headline rates but you do extend the period that you freeze the threshold of higher income tax rate.

5:49So more and more people, as their pay rises come through, start paying higher rates of income tax. And that delivers a really good stream of revenue for the Treasury. So I suspect we may see the freeze on income tax thresholds extended out to the end of the Parliament to 2030. I think that's quite likely. She also might have a go at some of the very generous tax allowances on pension saving. That's got to be in her sights as well. But I think probably more importantly, she will push through really quite dramatic cuts in public spending, probably focusing on the civil service, the size of the civil service, and also some departmental spending budgets are probably going to get pretty savagely cut back to try and balance the books.

6:40So we've spoken there about what's going on globally, then the impact on that here in the UK. I mean, Trump has made a lot of decisions and taken a lot of action since he came to power that seem to have had quite a sudden impact on the world economy. I mean, have we ever seen anything quite like this before? I don't think so. Not in my time as a business journalist. I can't remember anything that really comes close to this, where one, the actions of one single individual, in this case the president of the united states having such a huge impact on the whole world economy in such a short space of time i think that is without precedent certainly in peacetime and you know these things are very hard to predict so we shall have to see how events unfold over the rest of the year but we saw today some early survey results in a monthly survey called the the PMI survey, which is very closely watched by the city.

7:39And that has shown a real sudden drop in business confidence, a really quite dramatic drop in business confidence in April, which the people who compile the survey are saying is almost certainly due to the impact of the Trump tariff chaos. So, yeah, it is an absolutely massive and almost certainly unprecedented impact.

8:04Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two. These guys very much know that they are being watched and they kind of benefit from it to some extent. The Beckhams, family feud or just the fame game? We'll see you back here in just a moment.

8:25Welcome back. The Beckhams are back in the spotlight today as talk of a growing family rift continues. Two birthdays, an old flame and private lives being played out on social media are providing the perfect storm and putting Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz centre stage. The London Standards features writer and columnist Maddy Musson is with me now. Maddy, let's rewind. How did this all begin? Basically, there is a big rumoured feud between the Beckham clan and it's been going on since around December of 2024 and it's come to a head because David Beckham celebrated his 50th birthday last month and people started noticing that Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz-Beckham were absent from pretty milestone birthday and it was becoming increasingly obvious that actually Brooklyn and Nicola hadn't been spending time with the family for a while for like the past few months and they also missed Victoria's birthday a couple of weeks ago.

9:27Turns out that the person that Romeo Beckham is dating is an old friend of Brooklyn Beckham's from school age back in like 2016, 2017. Everybody thinks that they used to date. So her name is Kim Turnbull. She's a London-based DJ and she's dating Romeo Beckham. But back in school, she was friends with Brooklyn Beckham. However, Cruz Beckham has confirmed, there's a lot of Beckhams involved, Cruz Beckham has confirmed that they did not date. It seems like they might have been a bit flirty, but it was around the time that Kim Turnbull was dating Rocco Ricci, Madonna's son. So it's all very messy and there's a lot of past stuff involved.

10:06And TMZ is reporting that Brooklyn is a bit suspicious of Kim Turnbull and her motives with Romeo. So that seems to be what has divided the family and split them in these two factions. Wow. I mean, we've all been there, right? Family fallouts aren't ever easy, but being in the public spotlight and it all playing out, what are they saying about it? Well, it's interesting. It's what they're posting and what they're not posting that says most about it. Because like, ultimately, if you're a celebrity in the public eye this much, you know that everything that you post on Instagram or don't post on Instagram is going to be taken as a sign.

10:40so what seems to be noticed most is that there are some times where the Beckhams are posting about each other and then there are some times where they're not so for instance for Victoria's birthday Brooklyn didn't post anything whereas loads of the other children pretty much all the other children apart from half or seven did and then for Brooklyn and Nicola's wedding anniversary their third wedding anniversary which was in the past few weeks no one posted anything about that either so that it's kind of like a silence that's becoming very obvious on social media it's almost like they're pretending that each other don't exist when otherwise this is pretty close family and they normally are quite open about things on social media like they're very supportive of each other but with certain members of the family that seems to have just gone recently how much of this is reality how much is this the Beckhams the soap opera being played out on socials and how do we tell?

11:34I think, to be honest, there's always shades of truth to these things, even if it's probably like massively blown out of proportion. Like, I don't think that they probably hate each other, they're a family. I would not be surprised if in the next month or two, you see a big family photo of them all together dispelling the rumours. And I also wouldn't be surprised if that was on purpose to dispel the rumours. I think it can be both things. I think there's probably maybe a divide between them because they've just not seen each other I mean to some extent they're just closer with some parts of their family than others you know like David and Romeo spend loads of time together because they both really enjoy watching football whereas Brooklyn has like an actual wife that he spends all his time with and some of those are just natural things that would happen within families and then there's probably a level where it's true you know it probably is a bit weird that Romeo's dating someone that Brooklyn maybe had like a flirtationship when he was young with and stuff like that.

12:29Like, I think probably there's about 50-50 true, 50-50 a bit blown out of proportion. Social media seems to be really key in all of this. What do you think the level of scrutiny over celebrities says about how we consume those celebrity relationships now? I mean, it must be exhausting, right, that everything that you do on social media is taken as like a sign. And I think it's kind of sad that we do treat it that way when, for instance, if you applied the same level of scrutiny to your own Instagram account or if anyone did it to you if you became famous overnight and people started reading into every single thing you do every person you follow every Instagram story every lack of Instagram story you would be like oh my god leave me alone I'm not even thinking that much about my Instagram like who is so I think there's a level to which we kind of you know need to allow it because it doesn't all mean something however unfortunately celebrities do know that we are paying this much attention so sometimes they do utilise that to send us messages.

13:26Like, I don't think that it's all entirely unplanned. As a Spice Girl and an international footballer, Posh and Becks put themselves out there. But maybe the kids didn't. This is sort of happening to them by default. I would absolutely say that was the case if they were younger. I think that there is a right to privacy that young children of famous people have because they have never caught the public eye willingly. However, I do not think that is true of the older Beckham children. I think that they very much enjoy the spoils of being Nepo babies and being in the public eye. While I don't think that means that we're entitled to be mean to them, I do think that they know and enjoy that they're in the public eye.

14:07And then, you know, I'm afraid that certain things come with that. And yeah, it's a bit of scrutiny. So yeah, I think if they weren't enjoying the spoils of being Nepo babies so much maybe we should give them a rest and you know if people aren't active on social media they do fall off like people stop paying attention but these guys very much know that they are being watched and they kind of benefit from it to some extent you know none of them have significant careers or other things that they're famous for or are busy doing other things that they want to keep their head down doing they are famous for being Beckhams and you know they're making news for being in a Beckham feud so that's just the way it goes.

14:43and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk and please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk this podcast returns tomorrow at four we'll see you then