Any other business
Is No. 10 coming for game shooting next?
I confess I was lunching at L’Escargot in Greek Street as Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget. My excuse was that…
Still hunting for a Trump trade? Gold may have further to rise
Anyone hunting for a ‘Trump trade’ at this late stage has probably missed the US election bus. If you bought…
Wahed’s alarming Tube adverts
As the interminable Budget wait goes on, so does the trawl through the Chancellor’s bin bags. I refer to the…
In defence of eating out
Scheduling the Budget almost four months after their election victory would have counted as a monumental misjudgment for the Labour…
Where are all my after-dinner speaking gigs?
How excited are you to hear the Prime Minister talking tech with Eric Schmidt, an American billionaire who used to…
Goodbye to Old King Coal
So farewell, Ratcliffe-on-Soar: the UK’s last coal-fired power station shut down on Monday, having burned five million tonnes of coal…
The Murdochs’ next move: Rightmove
Next month’s Budget tax raids on capital have provoked a festival of creative doom-mongering on the fringes of Labour’s conference…
In defence of McJobs
The burden of higher taxation must fall on those with ‘the broadest shoulders’, says the Prime Minister, and City folks…
Don’t look back in anger… it’s just how ticket sales work
We expect Ryanair tickets to cost more on holiday Saturdays than term-time Tuesdays and Uber fares to surge in the…
Why is no one marching against VAT on school fees?
How passively we respond to revelations of Labour’s real direction of travel. As millions of pensioners brace for the confiscation…
My time on Hinge
Back to work, back to school, back to politics: the French call it la rentrée and my own summer idyll…
The tragic misfortune of Mike Lynch
Twice I met the tech tycoon Mike Lynch (missing, feared dead, as we went to press), once a decade or…
After the Olympics, France has to face its grim reality
The French television personality Laurent Baffie, interviewed by Le Figaro, came up with a nice phrase for the success beyond…
Market apocalypse? No, a welcome correction
A bout of global stock-market turmoil and an outbreak of UK street violence as adjacent news items gave an apocalyptic…
How many summers do you have left?
If the new government’s ‘pensions review’ takes forward last year’s ‘Mansion House reforms’ – credited to chancellor Jeremy Hunt but…
How the markets reacted to Trump’s assassination attempt
Market reactions to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania represent, according to taste, rational bets on the significantly increased likelihood of…
How safe do you feel boarding a Boeing?
‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is…
Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne
‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when…
Can things only get better under Starmer?
‘We are the masters now,’ I chirrup to my Holborn and St Pancras neighbours – misquoting Labour attorney-general Hartley Shawcross…
Why should Putin be allowed to keep seized Russian assets?
The seizure of enemy treasure, formerly known as plunder and pillage, is an ancient tool of war. Though still practised…
Nigel Farage is right: the City should not kowtow to Shein
Nigel Farage and I agree on one thing: a red-carpet welcome at the London Stock Exchange for Shein, the Chinese…
A thriving City will test Labour’s tolerance
The City is having a busier year than pessimistic observers – including me – might have expected. The biggest deal…
Bury the Canaletto, now
I’m not on the guest list for the Duke of Westminster’s wedding, but I wish him luck anyway. Mind you,…
