It was always going to be a bad week for Sergey Lavrov, who was taking Vladimir Putin’s place at the G20 meeting in Bali. A number of world leaders proceeded to take shots at the Russian Foreign Minister. UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, called for an end to the “barbaric” war Russia has waged on its neighbour Ukraine. You would think that Russia would hold off any retaliation at least until the end of the conference, however, this proved not to be the case with the Russians launching their largest artillery strikes in months, nearly causing an international crisis with missiles hitting NATO member Poland’s borders, killing two. In the hours following this there was extreme escalation in international relations with all major countries scrabbling around to corroborate the truth of the matter. As it turned out it appears as if it was a Ukrainian air defence missile that had missed its mark and landed around 10 miles over the Polish border, meaning tensions eased off from the worrying idea of a full-blown NATO attack on the Russians. President Zelensky, whilst talking to Bloomberg yesterday afternoon, stated that the war would not end until they had retaken the whole of the Donbas and, more importantly, Crimea which was annexed back in 2014 during Russia’s last military operation. This means that the war is likely to drag on and with the Russians holding the rest of Europe hostage in terms of both fuel and food it is likely inflation will continue to rise well into the new year.

Domestically, the UK’s Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt released his highly anticipated Autumn Budget yesterday in which he raised taxes and slashed public spending in an attempt to balance the books and raise £55bn for the UK economy over the next year. The move was condemned by the opposing parties with many of them seeing it as robbing the middle class. However, I would argue this is not strictly true: the windfall tax on oil companies has been extended to 40%, up from 30% whilst the top earners will now pay at least an extra £1200 in tax per annum, far more than the middle and lower earners. Aside from this, the minimum wage was raised to £10.42 an hour and they will also be giving more support to the woefully underfunded National Health Service. Although it is the opposing parties’ job to criticise the Government it has to be said that with extreme borrowing comes extreme debt. Especially with raising interest rates it now vital for the UK economy to begin paying back the debt they have accumulated over the last 13 years.

The markets this week have once again been extremely volatile, with the Sterling gaining against most major currencies, with Cable reaching 1.20 for the first time since August. The Pound seems to have consolidated around the 1.19 mark, with attention now turning to Wednesday’s Flash PMI results in which the BOE will be hoping that strong readings will see the Pound test 1.20 once again. With that being the only real major news out next week, it could be a real chance for GBP to regain some ground. With all of this happening, you might have hoped the UK government could avoid any further controversy within its own party, but once again this was not the case. Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, has been caught up in yet another conservative bullying case, apparently throwing the tomatoes from his Pret a Manger salad at civil servants he had become disgruntled with. Let’s hope next week they can avoid another controversy!