The Pret plunge isn’t quite what it seems
Gold goes on up: having risen by an unprecedented 40 per cent in a year to pass $3,600 (or £2,675)…
Kemi Badenoch’s North Sea plan is just another soundbite
‘We’re going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea’ was certainly a winning line for…
Don’t bring back British Rail
The theme of my holiday reading has been the insidious ways in which the vanities and fetishes of rulers harm…
In defence of fat cats’ growing pay packets
News from the High Pay Centre – the revolutionary guard of left-wing thinktanks – that average FTSE100 chief executive pay…
What is there to be optimistic about for British business?
In this season of scant corporate news – a Ryanair rant against the French here, a new BP oilfield there…
Was the car finance judgment fair?
I must modestly doubt that the Supreme Court justices took account of my 12 July column in their ruling on…
Is Len McCluskey a Manchurian candidate for the Tory party?
At Stansted on Monday, a currency kiosk offered me €270 for £300. ‘Wrong way round,’ I said, having swiftly figured…
A new water regime must still reward private investors
The weekend’s torrential Yorkshire rain amid a hosepipe ban offered a handy metaphor for the chaos that has befallen the…
Why wealth taxes don’t work
The nation owes the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock an eternal debt for losing the 1992 general election when he…
Don’t compensate drivers for mis-sold car loans
Surprisingly big numbers are the theme of this week’s column, several having flashed up to disturb the pleasures of a…
What hope is there for today’s unlucky graduates?
I’m fresh out of advice for those now leaving university and wondering how on earth they’re going to make a…
The hidden costs of Angela Rayner’s Employment Rights Bill
One peril of a sudden adverse turn of global events is that it provides cover for bad domestic government. If…
Mark Carney, the mischief-making pin-up
Well, would you look at Mark Carney. Just three months ago I described the incoming prime minister of Canada and…
The Sizewell delusion
The Chancellor’s promise of £14 billion for the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk is hardly news. The project…
In praise of Michael O’Leory
NatWest has returned to full private-sector ownership 17 years after the £46 billion bailout that took it into state hands…
Will Labour’s rail replacement service leave travellers stranded?
By spooky coincidence, on Saturday night I watched an old episode of Slow Horses in which a passenger died mysteriously…
It’s time to get rid of the Rich List
Here’s a takeover tale that captures the zeitgeist. It involves two FTSE 250 companies and some deep-pocketed US investors –…
Beef farmers have been stitched up
An awkward delay in the unveiling of the Mansion House Accord was, we’re told, nothing more than a Downing Street…
If the numbers add up, Shell should bid for BP
A hangar full of analysts and investment bankers must have spent the long weekend formulating advice for Shell chief executive…
The New York deli sandwich that changed history
There’s nothing new about bringing maverick businesspeople into government to give the bureaucratic blob what an unnamed ‘Trump adviser’ was…
Save London’s black cabs!
Donald Trump’s Soprano-like threat that the ‘termination’ of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell ‘cannot come fast enough’ has been headlined…
No one wants American cars
The weekend’s Scunthorpe drama was a distraction from endless chatter about Donald Trump and his tariffs. Perhaps Downing Street’s spinners…
Why it might be best if US stock markets go on falling
It gives me no pleasure to say I told you so. ‘If [Donald Trump] is prepared to cause mayhem in…
Britain needs a Rearmament Isa
The City’s self-styled ‘cheerleader in chief’, Lord Mayor Alastair King, on a recent visit to Beijing and Shanghai found leading…
UK tax on US tech is a useful bargaining chip
The Digital Services Tax (DST) is a relatively easy bargaining chip to give away in a last-ditch bid to appease…
