The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain,m is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,n with a population of over 69 million in 2024. The capital and largest city of both England and the UK is London; Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
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The CPI, along with the CPIH (Consumer Price Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs) are usually preferred by the UK government, but the RPI is still used in certain instances. Increases in rail fares non gamstop casinos for example, are calculated using the RPI, while increases in pension payments are calculated using CPI, when this is used as the uprating factor. The use of one inflation measure over the other can therefore have a significant impact on people’s lives in the UK.
The Welsh Government is currently a Welsh Labour minority government led by the first minister, Eluned Morgan. Local government in Wales consists of 22 unitary authorities, each led by a leader and cabinet elected by the council itself. England accounts for 53 per cent of the UK, covering 50,350 square miles (130,395 km2).153 Most of the country consists of lowland terrain,154 with upland and mountainous terrain northwest of the Tees–Exe line which roughly divides the UK into lowland and upland areas. Lowland areas include Cornwall, the New Forest, the South Downs and the Norfolk Broads. Upland areas include the Lake District, the Pennines, the Yorkshire Dales, Exmoor and Dartmoor.
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.
Inflation nevertheless remains elevated, fueled not only by high food inflation, but also by underlying core inflation. As of February 2025, the overall CPI inflation rate was 2.8 percent, although an uptick in inflation is expected later in the year, with a rate of 3.7 percent forecast for the third quarter of the year. The origins of the United Kingdom can be traced to the time of the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan, who in the early 10th century ce secured the allegiance of neighbouring Celtic kingdoms and became “the first to rule what previously many kings shared between them,” in the words of a contemporary chronicle. Through subsequent conquest over the following centuries, kingdoms lying farther afield came under English dominion.
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In the three months to September 2025, average weekly earnings in the United Kingdom grew by 4.6 percent. In the same month, the inflation rate for the Consumer Price Index was 3.6 percent, indicating that wages were rising faster than prices that month. Inflation is an important measure of any country’s economy, and the Retail Price Index (RPI) is one of the most widely used indicators in the United Kingdom, with the rate expected to be 4.1 percent in 2025, compared with 3.6 percent in 2024. This followed 2022, when RPI inflation reached a rate of 11.6 percent, by far the highest annual rate during this provided time period. In 2024, the annual inflation rate for the United Kingdom was 2.5 percent, with the average rate for 2025 predicted to rise to 3.5 percent, revised upwards from an earlier prediction. The UK has only recently recovered from a period of elevated inflation, which saw the CPI rate reach 9.1 percent in 2022, and 7.3 percent in 2023.
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 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.
- The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
- This statistic is using original data from the Office for National Statistics and includes copyright material from © Crown, licensed under the Open Government License v3.0.
- The United Kingdom comprises the whole of the island of Great Britain—which contains England, Wales, and Scotland—as well as the northern portion of the island of Ireland.
- Other major cities include Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester in England, Belfast and Londonderry in Northern Ireland, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and Swansea and Cardiff in Wales.
- The budget is a high-stakes moment for Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is facing mounting concern from Labour lawmakers over his dire poll ratings.
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