Why is no one marching against VAT on school fees?
How passively we respond to revelations of Labour’s real direction of travel. As millions of pensioners brace for the confiscation…
My time on Hinge
Back to work, back to school, back to politics: the French call it la rentrée and my own summer idyll…
The tragic misfortune of Mike Lynch
Twice I met the tech tycoon Mike Lynch (missing, feared dead, as we went to press), once a decade or…
After the Olympics, France has to face its grim reality
The French television personality Laurent Baffie, interviewed by Le Figaro, came up with a nice phrase for the success beyond…
Market apocalypse? No, a welcome correction
A bout of global stock-market turmoil and an outbreak of UK street violence as adjacent news items gave an apocalyptic…
Give us a pubs tsar – but spare us Tim Martin
More than a third of UK universities are in financial doo-doo: staff cuts, cancelled courses, slashed research budgets and possible…
How many summers do you have left?
If the new government’s ‘pensions review’ takes forward last year’s ‘Mansion House reforms’ – credited to chancellor Jeremy Hunt but…
How the markets reacted to Trump’s assassination attempt
Market reactions to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania represent, according to taste, rational bets on the significantly increased likelihood of…
How safe do you feel boarding a Boeing?
‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is…
Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne
‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when…
Can things only get better under Starmer?
‘We are the masters now,’ I chirrup to my Holborn and St Pancras neighbours – misquoting Labour attorney-general Hartley Shawcross…
Why should Putin be allowed to keep seized Russian assets?
The seizure of enemy treasure, formerly known as plunder and pillage, is an ancient tool of war. Though still practised…
Nigel Farage is right: the City should not kowtow to Shein
Nigel Farage and I agree on one thing: a red-carpet welcome at the London Stock Exchange for Shein, the Chinese…
A thriving City will test Labour’s tolerance
The City is having a busier year than pessimistic observers – including me – might have expected. The biggest deal…
Bury the Canaletto, now
I’m not on the guest list for the Duke of Westminster’s wedding, but I wish him luck anyway. Mind you,…
The need for greed
I suspect I’ve had a lot more fun writing about the annual Sunday Times Rich List over the years than…
Can Starmer and Reeves add some fizz to the economy?
If the 0.6 per cent first-quarter GDP uplift reported by the Office for National Statistics is sustained for the rest…
How to bottle Britishness
The US crackdown on trade finance for Russia from international banks – designed to impede imports needed for the continuing…
Live the high life… in a mid rise
How radically left-wing is Labour’s proposed ‘renationalisation’ of the railways? Though militant Mick Lynch of the RMT union ‘strongly welcomed…
How Pret ate itself
How bad would it be if Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services (IDS), were to be taken over by…
Sack Andrew Bailey? Let’s look at the case against him
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, is a loyal and well-intentioned public servant in a role that,…
The arrogance of Apple
Can flexible working get the best out of what a ministerial press release calls ‘hardworking Brits’ – or is it…
Why Thames Water is the pariah of post-privatisation capitalism
‘It would have been ideal not to have so much poo in the water,’ said Oxford captain Leonard Jenkins after…
