Has Rachel Reeves secured a rare victory for growth?
There’s very little to celebrate in Downing Street these days but it must have been vodka shots all round in…
If oil prices stay high, you can bet on a recession
Shares everywhere dived for cover as missiles started flying. But one stock ahead of the pack, and responding to a…
Brace for higher inflation
All eyes on the Strait of Hormuz, the 24-mile-wide choke point between Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, through…
The no.1 quango that deserves the axe
There are elements of economic life, such as the impact of President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariffs, that are far beyond…
Is it last orders for BrewDog?
‘Nostalgia is not a strategy,’ declared Schroders chief executive Richard Oldfield after announcing that the investment firm, descended from a…
Japan’s female leader is a bright beacon, but do her sums add up?
My scepticism towards soaring markets with unconvincing fundamentals was nurtured by working in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, when the Nikkei…
The role of ABBA in the Ajax fiasco
‘It’s all about ABBA,’ a military acquaintance whispered when I mentioned the scandal of the British Army’s order of 589…
Where have all the graduate jobs gone?
It’s a relief not to have been pressganged into joining the Prime Minister’s plane-load of business chiefs and reporters bound…
Bookshops deserve tax breaks
My Davos spy disguised as an Uber Eats driver sent word that this year’s World Economic Forum was rammed ahead…
Trump’s attack on the Fed is a pivotal moment of hubris
The phrase ‘trumped-up charges’ dates from the 18th century, I learn, and derives from the Old French tromper, to deceive.…
Am I really a tightwad?
Of all the heavyweight books I’ve ever been asked to review, one that most influenced my view of how the…
Pubs, schools and water in crisis: my economic forecast for 2026
Forecasting is a mug’s game, as the Bank of England governor Mervyn King once said. But I’ll sketch a few…
Why does Netflix never show us business heroes?
God bless Netflix: I’ve just watched all 28 episodes of Foyle’s War, the 1940s detective series set in Hastings and…
Why the Budget let banks off the hook
‘Banks don’t vote and citizens don’t love them, so they’ll always be the Chancellor’s target of choice,’ I wrote in…
Let the Daily Mail buy the Telegraph
When I first joined The Spectator under the proprietorship of Conrad Black, we operated in sisterhood with the Telegraph titles…
Why has Peter Thiel dumped his AI stocks?
How, I wonder, did a shortlist of candidates to succeed Sir Mark Tucker as chairman of HSBC come into the…
This time it’s crypto: now the Bank of England bows to Trump
The softening of the Bank of England’s stance on ‘stablecoins’ looks like another tugging of the British forelock towards the…
Income tax must rise – but Rachel Reeves must go
Call me hard-hearted, but I doubt even a magic mushroom-induced tantric visualisation of a harmonious universe could transport me into…
Who would want to be a housebuilder in Britain?
In a radio discussion of the Renters’ Rights Act which passed into law this week, I heard ‘Britain’s housing emergency’…
The Chinese spy case you won’t have heard about
The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, handsomely housed in London’s Bedford Square, is responsible for trade relations between the…
The AI crash is coming
Who knows what Rachel Reeves reads in bed. Perhaps she dips into her own debut book, The Women Who Made…
How could the Co-op be so insensitive to Jewish shoppers?
Between news bulletins of the Manchester synagogue attack last week, I popped into my local Co-op for some groceries. When…
Don’t surrender to soulless self-checkouts
A friend runs a small factory employing 60 skilled workers. He exports industrial components worldwide, competing with Europe for quality…
Housebuilding’s in crisis? Bring back Angela Rayner!
Barely noticed amid all the other bad news and political shenanigans, there’s a slump in UK housebuilding that makes Labour’s…
Bring on the robot-run railways!
I awoke on Sunday to what felt like a Brave New World moment: Radio 4’s news-reader reciting an unedited Downing…
