Let the market fix the oil crisis March 5, 2026 The conflict in Iran is unlikely to lead to 1970s-style oil rationing, but policymakers must use price mechanisms and encourage domestic energy investment to insure against unpredictable escalations, says Andy Mayer In 1979 the Iranian Revolution sparked the ‘second oil crisis’ as the price of crude oil more than doubled to $40 per barrel. Although [...]
How sectarian is London’s politics? March 5, 2026 If the by-election in Gorton and Denton is a seismic event, then the aftershocks will be felt by Londoners in borough elections across the capital in May, writes James Ford By-elections are often exceptional, aberrant outliers from normal politics. The full attention of party campaign strategists and the national press are ruthlessly trained on a [...]
Why network effects, taste, and rails are the new software moats March 5, 2026 In an era of AI coding agents, the true moats for companies now lie in four key areas: deterministic rails for critical systems, non-replicable network effects, genuine taste and strong branding, and core software infrastructure that is too integral to replace, says Lewis Liu I sit on advisory committees for several investment firms, and over [...]
Reeves is outrageously complacent on economic growth March 5, 2026 The dust has settled on the Chancellor’s pointless Spring Statement and, if anything, it looks even worse in the rear-view mirror than it did in real time. Yesterday, top think-tanks and policy wonks chewed over the claims made by Rachel Reeves in her panglossian speech to MPs, and they don’t appear to be overly impressed. [...]
The £100k tax cliff edge is punishing ambition March 4, 2026 The £100,000 income cliff edge has become one of the most punitive and distortionary features of the UK tax landscape, says Michael Healy The government has made clear that it wants to boost economic growth, strengthen UK capital markets, and encourage greater participation in investing. These are ambitions we strongly support. But one part of [...]
Two party politics is over in Britain March 4, 2026 Meaningful support is now spread across multiple different parties, but Westminster still acts like there’s a government and an opposition, says Louise Thompson The Green Party’s victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election is a watershed moment. Hannah Spencer secured the party’s first-ever parliamentary by-election win in what had been Labour’s sixth most secure seat. [...]
The Debate: Was a ‘quiet’ Spring Statement what businesses needed? March 4, 2026 It was good for the Chancellor's blood pressure, but was it good for business? We hear the case for and against the "boring" Spring Statement.
Why you should put your CEO on Tiktok (from someone who’s done it) March 4, 2026 After a viral Tiktok video led to a spike in business enquiries, Riannon Palmer tells us about the power of founder-led storytelling.
Nuked nuts and gamma ray greens: the joy of nuclear food March 4, 2026 Britain needs to get over radiophobia and embrace the benefits of atomically enhanced food, says Tim Gregory The first time I hovered a Geiger counter over a sample, the clicks made me jump backwards. I overreacted; in my lab, the radiation dose seldom exceeds background levels. (And even when it does, it’s normally far less [...]
It’ll take more than planning reform to get London building again March 4, 2026 London isn’t just facing a housing delivery downturn. It’s facing a double development whammy of falling housing starts combined with a deep decline in the pipeline of new commercial development coming forward, says Melanie Leech Down, down, deeper and down go the lyrics from a track by Status Quo from the early 1970s. A decade [...]