Economy

As the hype builds for the reported $1.5 trillion (£1 trillion) IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX later this year, there will be plenty of critics who argue the company’s marketing has more hot air than one of its rockets. It has been claimed by some that the IPO will be worth more than the top seven companies currently listed on the London Stock Exchange – including century-old giants such as Shell, HSBC and AstraZeneca – combined. And yes, sure, there is probably an element of wishful thinking in these reports, as there often is with Musk. But SpaceX also has the potential to become one of the giants of the

Junior doctors have voted to extend their strikes – by a whisker. Turnout for yesterday’s vote collapsed to less than 53 per cent – a whisker above the threshold needed to make it legal. Framed as a pay dispute, the strikes are the result of a needlessly ruined career structure, and a government perversely willing to leave British doctors unemployed. The strikes started after an early February 2023 ballot in which turnout was more than three quarters and 98 per cent were in favour. In the following strikes, support remained at or above 90 per cent, but turnout kept dropping. In March 2024 it was 62 per cent, last July

After losing his erstwhile allies and clients in Syria and Venezuela over the past 13 months, Vladimir Putin ought to be breathing a sigh of relief at the bloody suppression of the protests in Iran. Russia and Iran are natural bedfellows – a marriage of inconvenience, if you will. Both languish under Western sanctions, though Iran’s are stricter and have endured longer. Both economies depend heavily on China hoovering up their sanctioned oil at a discount and Beijing flogging them technology. Both deploy shadow fleets to export their oil. Neither has access to global financial markets. The brutal suppression of Iran’s protests ought to reinforce Putin’s calculus that if dissent

Labour has long prided itself on being the party of compassion. Indeed, ever since Thatcherism, personified in the minds of many by the fictional television character Alan B’Stard – and ever since Theresa May gave her 2002 speech admitting that the Conservatives were the ‘nasty party’ – being compassionate has been a trademark and a selling point of the Labour party. Labour politicians constantly bleat about how caring they are. Sometimes it seems that the only people they care about are themselves This is why those who lead it are always reluctant to cut welfare spending, and why those further to the left on its parliamentary backbenches are ideologically hostile

I want to congratulate the Department for Work and Pensions. They’ve made the excellent decision to – once again – refuse compensation to the Waspi women. The cohort of 3.6 million women born in the 1950s claim to have not been informed that their state pension age would rise – bringing it into line with the male retirement age. Their campaign group (Women Against State Pension Inequity) have led one of the most vocal but ridiculous campaigns in modern British history. Despite leaflets being individually written, information campaigns in doctors’ offices, and relentless TV and online adverts, the group claims that they were not adequately informed of the pension age change, and

It’s a relief not to have been pressganged into joining the Prime Minister’s plane-load of business chiefs and reporters bound for Beijing this week. With Sir Keir Starmer are leaders of the likes of Astra-Zeneca, BP, HSBC, JLR and Rolls-Royce, and some billion-pound deals will no doubt be announced while they’re there – agreed in advance on the condition that Downing Street gave the green light for China’s Royal Mint Court mega-embassy-cum-listening-post on the edge of the City. The Chancellor is on the trip too, perhaps carrying a nice set of hunting prints as a housewarming gift for London ambassador Zheng Zeguang’s new office. But as is routine for senior

Nigel Farage didn’t need the help of corporate Britain to build Ukip, the Brexit Party and Reform UK into national forces. He didn’t need open letters from big business to help win the EU referendum. And he didn’t need big brands to take GB News off their advertising blacklists for his show to succeed. This time, though – as Reform’s leader strives to become Britain’s next prime minister – things are different: Farage needs businesses, and businesses know that they soon might need Farage. As ties grow stronger with the corporate world, Reform must tread carefully to avoid losing the attribute that draws many of its supporters Some have already

Donald Trump’s tendency to exaggerate and make up figures as he goes along is for some people a symptom of the ‘post-truth society’. But for the president himself it is a useful rhetorical tool which helps draws attention to things which might otherwise get less of an airing. Yes, it is a gross exaggeration to say, as Trump did in his speech at Davos yesterday, that Britain has ‘500 years’ worth of oil in the North Sea. The trouble for his critics, though, is that the essential point he was making – which is that Britain is denying itself valuable energy resources in the shorter term, to the detriment of the