Labour’s agenda risks serious economic damage September 16, 2024 Labour ministers, and even large parts of the public, might not shed a tear over the loss of these remote, almost abstract, purveyors of high-end financial services, but they should.
Raise a glass to the City’s rich history of pubs, taverns and inns September 12, 2024 Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century writer, poet, and lexicographer, spent much of his life on Fleet Street, in the City of London. Dr Johnson’s house in Gough Square still stands a mere drunken stumble from pubs that the great man would have frequented, such as Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. In Johnson’s London, Fleet Street [...]
Labour’s employment rights package is playing with fire September 10, 2024 In the years following the financial crisis, the UK faced an unemployment challenge. As the great recession bit, the unemployment rate started to rise – peaking at over 8 per cent in 2012, around about the time former chancellor George Osborne was being booed at the Olympics. However, by the end of that year the [...]
Labour smashes the “don’t mess with pensioners” rule September 9, 2024 Nothing in politics is more painful than the removal of a benefit to which the recipients have become accustomed. Successive Chancellors and Prime Ministers have discovered this, sometimes to their embarrassment and sometimes to their very great cost. Related to this first rule, comes another; don’t mess with pensioners. In fact, ‘not messing’ with them [...]
Labour can’t resist flirting with economic populism September 4, 2024 Keir Starmer’s closest advisors spent last week briefing journalists that this government would be straight with people, and that it would reject the “fake populism” of the Tories which, they claim, raised people’s hopes before disappointing them. Labour figures said that the Prime Minister’s doom-laden introduction to the country was more responsible than attempting to [...]
Starmer’s in power, but is he in control? September 2, 2024 Labour MPs barely had time to gather for a group photo in Westminster before the summer recess started and they were packed off back to the constituencies. The lucky ones may even have made it abroad for a holiday. Today, when they file back into the Parliament and cram themselves onto the government benches in [...]
When it comes to delivering growth, talk is cheap August 29, 2024 Keir Starmer might not have much in common with Liz Truss, but they both put the pursuit of economic growth at the heart of their plan for government.
Next ruling heralds employment law headache August 28, 2024 The Employment Tribunal accepted that the difference in pay rates between Next’s shop floor staff and their warehouse-based colleagues was not down to “direct discrimination” or the “conscious or subconscious influence of gender” on pay decisions. Why, then, did the retailer lose the claim brought by store staff? The answer concerns the much thornier issue [...]
Labour’s miserable mood music comes with its own risks August 27, 2024 The last time a Labour government replaced an unpopular Tory administration it did so to the sound of Things Can Only Get Better, by D:Ream. Now, 27 years later, Keir Starmer is changing the tune with a warning that “things are going to get worse.” This stark contrast will be set out in a speech [...]
The City View podcast, from City A.M., with Adam Byatt November 18, 2020 The City View: Michelin-starred chef Adam Byatt on how hospitality became a scapegoat Subscribe to The City View Podcast: Apple / Google / Spotify / RSSIn this episode Christian talks to Adam Byatt, the Michelin-starred proprietor of Trinity in Clapham, about how the pandemic has inflicted huge pain on the hospitality sector and why he feels it was made a scapegoat ahead of [...]
