Rishi Sunak
Cancel culture
The cancel culture wants to obliterate people who do, or more often say, the wrong thing (for example, that there…
Diary
I’ve been a regular runner for 40 years, pounding my way across Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House and back. This…
Banning Huawei is right, but late – and bad for productivity
This column has been banging on about the peculiar nature of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, ever since its expanded…
Diary
A rare illness has broken out in Westminster. Last week a case of what was known before Brexit as ‘consensus’…
Deadweight
I was trying to understand what they meant on the wireless by deadweight costs. These were something to do with…
Portrait of the Week
Home New regulations would compel people to wear a face covering in shops in England from 24 July on pain…
‘Rishinomics’ could cost the Tories the next election
A truism is emerging that the Tories’ massive public spending has left Labour politically with nowhere to go. This quasi-social-democrat…
Prepare for Javid vs Sunak in the next Tory leadership contest
In 1992 a young footballer named Dion Dublin left my local team, Cambridge United, to take up one of the…
Portrait of the week
Home Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced measures intended to stimulate the economy. Under a £111 million scheme,…
Hinduphobia
The success of British Indians is troubling for some. Why?
If ‘whatever it takes’ means state share stakes in industry, so be it
Should the government be prepared to take equity stakes in major companies that will struggle to survive the current crisis?…
Portrait of the Week
Home The government changed its slogan from ‘Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’ to ‘Stay alert, control the virus,…
Sunak was right to tie the banks into his rescue loan scheme
Was the Chancellor wrong to guarantee only 80 per cent, rather than 100, of ‘coronavirus business interruption loans’ to keep…
A new ‘sharing economy’ offers a path to herd survival
The phrase ‘sharing economy’ was coined a decade or so ago to describe collaborative new business models made possible by…
Don’t let anyone tell you there’s a war on
‘Shut up — don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Strong hints of that attitude have emerged in recent weeks,…
Coronomics
The crash is surreal – and ordinary remedies won’t be enough
How will this ‘war’ change us?
In the past ten days we have seen the greatest expansion of state power in British history. The state has…
Portrait of the week
Coronavirus Sunday dawned with 233 people in the United Kingdom dead thus far from the coronavirus Covid-19 (a week earlier…
Airlines are no special case when we all need a bailout
The world needs airlines — and, barring Armageddon, will still have some when this crisis is over. It will also…
Rishi Sunak’s wartime economy
At least no one can say it isn’t bold. The United States is fiddling around with some possible cuts to…
Free enterprise
Could freeports help ‘level up’ the north?
The antidote to virus panic is in the hands of entrepreneurs
‘It’s a ghost town,’ said the officer manning the body scanner at Manchester airport — Manchester, New Hampshire, that is,…
The great Tory Budget giveaway
It’s always tempting for governments to respond to economic trouble with a debt-fuelled spending splurge, but it’s a notoriously blunt…
The Budget’s corona contagion
When Sajid Javid resigned in a row with No. 10, there was much speculation about what would be in the…
Time for new leadership at Barclays and HSBC – and a new name at RBS
After a dull interlude, the big banks in their annual results season look a bit more interesting again. First to…
