Jack Welch: A business giant by any definition March 3, 2020 There are corporate titans — and then there is Jack Welch, who led General Electric through an extraordinary expansion as its totemic chief executive in the go-go days of the 1980s and ‘90s. Fortune magazine named him Manager of the Century and considering that the market capitalisation of the firm went from $13bn (£10.2bn) to [...]
DEBATE: Could Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation turn into a major headache for the government? March 3, 2020 Could Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation turn into a major headache for the government? Eliot Wilson, head of research at Right Angles and a former House of Commons official, says YES. The resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam is not just a spat between a Whitehall mandarin and his minister. Its impact goes much further than that, [...]
We are blind to the soft-left bias across British institutions March 3, 2020 A few weeks ago, I went to an art exhibition at Somerset House called 24/7. Billed as “a wake-up call for our non-stop world”, it promised to explore the many ways in which technology is speeding up our lives. This was, admittedly, something of a busman’s holiday. Back in 2016, I wrote a book called [...]
Hungary for UK growth March 2, 2020 Last Friday, after four years, I stepped down as the ambassador of Hungary to the Court of St. James’s. I arrived just days before the Brexit referendum — a referendum that, of course, shaped almost everything I did in the role here. It became apparent that the two priorities for me would be the representation [...]
How Yorkshire Tea turned a storm in a teacup into a marketing success March 2, 2020 Yorkshire Tea unwittingly found itself in the middle of a Twitter storm last week when the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, published a seemingly innocuous image of himself “making tea for the team”. The photo featured the brand like a poorly orchestrated influencer marketing campaign. Soon after, the company was faced with a torrent of abuse [...]
Home Office chaos looks none too Priti March 2, 2020 The perpetual conflict between Eastasia, Oceania and Eurasia’ in Orwell’s 1984 is a warning, not a how-to. Yet Number 10 and Boris Johnson’s government seem to be creating their own version of permanent war, finding enemies real and imagined right across the ranks of the civil service, the backbenches and Britain’s oldest institutions. The latest [...]
It is staggering that breastfeeding at work is still an issue anywhere March 2, 2020 In January, House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle finally overturned a 20-year-old ban on breastfeeding in the chamber, saying: “If it happens, it happens. I won’t be upset by it.” It’s about time. I have just returned to work after having my second child, who I am still breastfeeding. As an employer myself, I [...]
Will France soon find a German dance partner for EU reform? March 2, 2020 Spare a thought for the President of France, the supremely confident Emmanuel Macron, in his uphill attempt to reform a floundering Europe. Following the great recession of 2008, the lion’s share of European leaders failed to fix the economic roof while the sun shone, eschewing the difficulties of structural economic reform in favour of the [...]
First Homes is a flawed solution to three very different problems March 2, 2020 What do you do when a government has all the right intentions for solving the country’s biggest challenges, but is going about it in entirely the wrong way? That’s a question we should all be asking, particularly when considering the recently announced housing plan. Optimistically entitled “First Homes”, the proposal is to offer a 30 [...]
If Britain is to hit net-zero, we need the City to step up its green finance ambitions March 2, 2020 The unveiling of the COP26 Private Finance Agenda at Guildhall last week was a landmark moment for our climate change efforts as a nation. The annual UN conference, this year taking place in Glasgow, will convene global leaders to discuss the world’s most pressing issue. And as policymakers gear up for the pivotal event, it [...]