Editorial: TfL deal needed as you can’t grow the UK with London in gridlock February 2, 2022 It is a strange and perverse mark of this government that it seems thoroughly uninterested in Britain’s most successful industries. Financial services were broadly absent from the treaty with the European Union, and barely feature in the post-Brexit discussions instead dominated by debates over our mackerel catch. It seems in a semi-permanent state of war [...]
Editorial: The activists are a welcome sign of faith in the City’s future January 31, 2022 The City is not always portrayed well in the wider media, but a certain kind of Square Mile institution was rather effectively deployed at the beginning of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The Crimson Permanent Assurance, a “once proud family firm fallen on hard times,” fights back against its new ownership by the Very [...]
Editorial: These “tax-cutting Conservatives” seem very keen on hiking taxes January 30, 2022 If it quacks like a high-tax duck and talks like a high-tax duck, it is difficult to believe that it is fact anything but a high-tax duck. So it is with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, who professed this weekend to be “tax-cutting Conservatives” in a column confirming they were dead set on hiking national [...]
London is back – but our historic cousin Hong Kong will take a while longer January 28, 2022 What a delightful sight it is to see a busy London train station on our front page today. The world is, slowly, coming back to a new normal. As we wrote yesterday, there is no question the world has changed – and smart employers will have to respond to new expectations. But there is still [...]
If Ukraine falls, others will be next January 26, 2022 Down by the harbour in the beautiful city of Tallinn lies the Seaplane Harbour museum, the exhibits of which tell the story of Estonia’s heritage and, hopefully, its future. It achieved independence only in 1920 after centuries of foreign rule – before being invaded by the Nazis, and then annexed by the Soviet Union. It [...]
Moulding is no villain but he’s better off not trying to play the hero January 24, 2022 Matthew Moulding has, by just about anybody’s standards, been an extraordinary business success story. His origin story as an entrepreneur is a very British, self-made one; inspired by buying a CD online, he has built and floated his THG business which as a rule does the thing it was meant to do (flog stuff online [...]
A banker in the boardroom is exactly what our health service needs January 23, 2022 Over the past two years, rightly or wrongly, the NHS has become Britain’s national religion. So perhaps it’s a good thing that there’s now a banker in charge. One tiresome left-leaning news outlet this weekend titled its story about former TSB chief Richard Meddings’ new appointment thusly: “Fury as banker set to become chair of [...]
Firms must explain themselves in this winter of price hikes January 20, 2022 The last time inflation was a hot-button political issue, Whitney Houston was top of the charts, the VCR was the must-have purchase, and a scandal-ridden Tory prime minister was clinging on desperately to power. Some things change, others less so. This marks trouble for business – in two ways. In the most obvious sense, prices [...]
It’s been tough, but there really is light at the end of this tunnel January 20, 2022 Could it really be coming to an end? The implication from the health secretary Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday was that Britain might genuinely be coming out the other side of a nearly two-year pandemic which has disrupted so much. Perhaps it is time to take stock – and though it’s not overly British to do [...]
Cancel the tax hike – inflation is biting into the recovery enough already January 18, 2022 ASK ANYBODY in and around Westminster what the ‘story of 2022’ will be and it’s hardly surprising that most point not to Downing Street parties or the pandemic but the cost of living. The Tories are acutely aware of the pain coming down the road – Labour keen to capitalise. Well, it’s already the story [...]
