I left the Sunday Times a year ago to create a CEO reputation advisory firm. Sir Philip Green, the former retail tycoon with whom I fought a running battle, apparently rang a mutual friend and said: ‘I hear he’s going into PR – he should try adding ICK to that.’ More constructive advice came from a property entrepreneur, who told me that my emotional and financial volatility was about to be ‘massively heightened’. That turned out to be very true. When the methadone of your final PAYE payslip cuts out, reality kicks in. But winning clients, and looking after them, is amazingly rewarding. And even when you have a bad day, it’s your bad day.

Newcome Advisory celebrated its first birthday last week. We managed to choose not only the same date as The Spectator’s summer party but the evening of England’s game against DR Congo. Unpatriotically, I prayed for a clear result either way by full time. Despite my fears, we filled the splendid courtyard garden of C. Hoare & Co on Fleet Street with the great, the good and the fourth estate, including cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo, Babcock chair Dame Ruth Cairnie and Thames Water chairman Sir Adrian Montague. Thanking early supporters, I gave a speech channelling that famous philosophical tract Ratatouille. In the Disney Pixar film, Anton Ego, a restaurant critic known for his excoriating reviews, is served a transformative dish (ratatouille, obviously) by newcomer rodent chef Remy. Back in his garret, Ego reflects: ‘In many ways, the work of a critic is easy… But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends.’

One such friend is Suki Sandhu, the founder of Audeliss Executive Search and my co-host at Hoare’s. Suki is the most flamboyant headhunter – indeed, perhaps the most flamboyant man – in London. He is also responsible for one of the best things to have happened at any of my parties. It was at Claridge’s, before the last election, and Labour was in the ascendant. Suki was taking giddy selfies with Rachel Reeves. ‘Oh my God, Rachel, I would totally vote Labour,’ Suki exclaimed (I hope he won’t mind my mentioning that he’s gay, but this was said in a camp falsetto that made the following even more amusing). Reeves blinked and gargled her appreciation. Suki paused. ‘I mean, I would if I hadn’t moved to Jersey for tax reasons.’ More frantic blinking.

Reeves now looks likely to be demoted as chancellor if Andy Burnham is crowned. This might allow the King of the North to reverse, at least partially, the policy most hated by business: her £25 billion raid on employers’ national insurance contributions, which has been an extra hand around the throats of the already spluttering hospitality and leisure industries. But I worry that Burnham and the new occupant of No. 11 would be tempted to fund that through higher taxes on capital. Louise Haigh, a key Burnham ally, argued last month that ‘unproductive’ capital should be brought into line with income, tax-wise. Having started a business with my own savings and being about to employ someone, I find this failure to understand the relationship between the two baffling. Capital is the acorn from which jobs sprout, which is why nourishing it is essential. And, per the relocation of Suki and thousands of others like him, it is more mobile than ever.

Leaving a Sunday paper after 15 years is a bit like the ending of The Shawshank Redemption. You stumble, delirious, onto a bright beach of Friday-night dinners and weekends away. At the end of last month we braved the canicule, the pleasing French word for heatwave, and took the Eurostar to Paris for the Matisse exhibition at the Grand Palais, a blockbuster on a par with the Hockney retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton last year. I remember Andy Street, then in charge of John Lewis, getting into l’eau chaude in 2014 for describing France as ‘sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat’. French politics has become only more sclerotic since then, but Paris is enjoying a long post-Olympics high, overflowing with tourists and new restaurants. In recent years it has been London’s turn to endure overblown headlines about knife crime and no-go zones. I am a long-term bull on our fair capital and know that, like its cousin across the Channel, it will flower again.