United Kingdom History, Population, Map, Flag, Capital, & Facts
The entire contents of the budget were leaked half an hour before Treasury chief Rachel Reeves delivered the budget statement in the House of Commons. Prof Peter Murphy says working together would give the islands more influence in negotiations. The possibility of redesigning the Union Flag to include representation of Wales was discussed in 2007.541 The national anthem of the United Kingdom is “God Save the King”, with “King” replaced with “Queen” in the lyrics whenever the monarch is a woman. The UK has many gastropubs and is the birthplace of many alcoholic drinks including several beer styles such as pale ale, India pale ale, bitter, brown ale, porter, and stout. The number of craft beers and microbreweries has expanded rapidly in the last two decades.512 Other popular alcoholic drinks produced in the UK include Scotch whisky, English wine, gin, perry and cider.
Public sector net debt expressed as a percentage of GDP in the United Kingdom from 1900/01 to 2029/30
The most important key figures provide you with a compact summary of the topic of “The UK economy” and take you straight to the corresponding statistics. Unsurprisingly, the heat wave that spread across the British Isles in 2018 was the result of particularly sunny weather. This was more hours of sun than was recorded in July 2024, which only saw 5.8 hours of sun.
OBR calls in cyber expert over botched release of Budget analysis
Hitting fiscal targets, such as reducing the national debt, will require a careful balancing of the books from the current government, and the possibility for either spending cuts or tax rises. Although Labour ruled out raising the main government tax sources, Income Tax, National Insurance, and VAT, at the 2024 election, they did raise National Insurance for employers (rather than employees) and also cut Winter Fuel allowances for large numbers of pensioners. Less than a year after implementing cuts to Winter Fuel, the government performed a U-Turn on the issue, and will make it widely available by the winter of 2025. The archipelago formed by Great Britain and the numerous smaller islands is as irregular in shape as it is diverse in geology and landscape.
But speculation is swirling about a potential challenge to Starmer’s leadership from within his party, and analysts say a misfiring budget could add to the sense of crisis within the government. Then, the entire fiscal forecast from the independent watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), including details of the budget’s main measures, was published online half an hour before Reeves’ statement. Reeves also abolished a much-hated cap on benefits paid out to families with more than two children. She also announced measures to ease the financial pressure on households, by freezing rail fares and cutting levies on household energy bills. But the chaos that has engulfed the government during weeks of mixed messaging and political infighting continued up to the final moment.
England’s highest mountain is Scafell Pike, at 978 metres (3,209 ft) in the Lake District; its largest island is the Isle of Wight. The UK inflation rate was 3.6 percent in October 2025, down from 3.8 percent in the previous two months, which was the fastest rate of inflation since January 2024. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation, which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. Due to this long period of high inflation, UK consumer prices have increased by over 20 percent in the last three years.
As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the education sector, at 7.5percent, with prices increasing at the slowest rate in the clothing non gamstop casinos and footwear sector. Apart from the land border with the Irish republic, the United Kingdom is surrounded by sea. To the south of England and between the United Kingdom and France is the English Channel.
- As of 2025 the UK unemployment rate is 4.7%,270 which is moderately low by European standards.
- This was followed by energy and food inflation skyrocketing after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- The peoples who, over the centuries, have hewed an existence from this Atlantic extremity of Eurasia have put their own imprint on the environment, and the ancient and distinctive palimpsest of their field patterns and settlements complements the natural diversity.
- Upland areas include the Lake District, the Pennines, the Yorkshire Dales, Exmoor and Dartmoor.
- Due to this long period of high inflation, UK consumer prices have increased by over 20 percent in the last three years.
Since World War II, however, the United Kingdom’s most prominent exports have been cultural, including literature, theatre, film, television, and popular music that draw on all parts of the country. Perhaps Britain’s greatest export has been the English language, now spoken in every corner of the world as one of the leading international mediums of cultural and economic exchange. Another way of measuring inflation is to strip out the volatility of energy and food prices and look at the underlying core inflation rate. As of December 2024, this was 3.2 percent, slightly higher than the overall CPI rate, but more aligned with the overall figure than it was in 2022 and 2023.
The nearby island polities of the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey are crown dependencies, in union with the British monarch, but do not strictly form part of the United Kingdom or any of its three jurisdictions or four countries, although the British government retains responsibility for their external affairs. The Isle of Man lies roughly midway between Great Britain and the island of Ireland in the Irish Sea, while the Channel Islands lie just off the northern French coast. From late 2021 onwards, various factors converged to encourage a global acceleration of prices, leading to the ongoing inflation crisis. Blocked-up supply chains were one of the main factors as the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. This was followed by energy and food inflation skyrocketing after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Central bank interest rates were raised globally in response to the problem, possibly putting an end to the era of cheap money that has defined monetary policy since the financial crash of 2008.