Business

There are elements of economic life, such as the impact of President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariffs, that are far beyond national control; others, including the supply of most consumer goods, that are best left to free markets; and others which naturally benefit from state intervention. New housing, wholly dependent on planning and building regulations, clearly falls into the last category. So we might well ask how the Labour government plans to solve a homebuilding crisis so extreme that its target of 1.5 million new homes within this parliament is likely to be undershot by 50 per cent or worse. As for London, the locomotive of national prosperity that needs a

‘Nostalgia is not a strategy,’ declared Schroders chief executive Richard Oldfield after announcing that the investment firm, descended from a City banking house founded in 1804, is to be sold for £9.9 billion to Nuveen – which sounds like a brand of cooking oil but turns out to be a Chicago-based manager of retirement savings. The two together will hold £1.8 trillion of assets, placing them tenth in a global league headed by the giant American ‘passive’ investors BlackRock and Vanguard. Oldfield is right that there’s no point looking backwards in a tech-driven sector that’s rapidly consolidating to keep pace with those leaders. He’s also keen to point out that

God bless Netflix: I’ve just watched all 28 episodes of Foyle’s War, the 1940s detective series set in Hastings and London that first aired on ITV more than 20 years ago. Pedants may have spotted minor anachronisms or been irritated by London scenes filmed in Dublin, presumably for tax breaks. But for me, the whole oeuvre – Spitfires, ration books, moustaches and all – stands as a monument of meticulous and compelling period drama. And as an amateur actor who always struggles to keep a straight face on stage, I’m in awe of Michael Kitchen’s gift of expressing Detective Chief Inspector Foyle’s moral outrage and inner pain by the tiniest

Between news bulletins of the Manchester synagogue attack last week, I popped into my local Co-op for some groceries. When the public address system said something indistinct about ‘solidarity’, I paused to listen: it was an advert for Sun & Stone lager, produced in Scotland in collaboration with Taybeh, a Palestinian microbrewery, and with a slice of any profits going to the Disaster Emergency Committee’s Gaza appeal. The Co-op is a benign beacon of alternative capitalism, owned by its members and valued by millions of customers. At their annual meeting in June, those members voted to ‘cease all trading with Israel’, as the Co-op has also done with the likes

I awoke on Sunday to what felt like a Brave New World moment: Radio 4’s news-reader reciting an unedited Downing Street script for Donald Trump’s visit, about US financial firms (mostly Citigroup, in fact) agreeing to invest £1.2 billion over here to create 1,800 jobs. Or some such propaganda, the Financial Times having already set the tone with ‘Rush for deals ahead of Trump trip – tech, nuclear and whisky on table’. As the President packed his best leisurewear for Windsor Castle, news followed of £5 billion from Google for UK-based AI services; and finally, even bigger bucks from Microsoft. All to the good if pledges turn into realities and

The nation owes the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock an eternal debt for losing the 1992 general election when he was clear favourite to win it, thereby sparing us whatever socialist folly he might have brought to Downing Street. I salute him again for popping up to propose a 2 per cent wealth tax on fortunes above £10 million that might raise a supposed £11 billion for the hard-pressed Chancellor – thereby bringing into sharp focus the vague threat that several cabinet ministers have studiously refused to rule out. Pressure is building on Rachel Reeves from backbenchers, unions and anti-poverty campaign groups to mount a raid on the rich in

Surprisingly big numbers are the theme of this week’s column, several having flashed up to disturb the pleasures of a summer season of parties, music and sport. The first is the 69,000 tally of jobs shed in the UK hospitality industry since the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions in October’s Budget – the most destructive legislative measure for business in recent memory, except perhaps for the Employment Rights Bill that’s expected to receive Royal Assent before parliament’s recess this month. The UKHospitality trade association thinks losses could rise to between 150,000 and 200,000 by the autumn, as 70 per cent of member businesses cut more staff and pub closures

Well, would you look at Mark Carney. Just three months ago I described the incoming prime minister of Canada and former governor of the Bank of England as ‘a fish-out-of-water technocrat’ who made little public impact over here and was swiftly forgotten after he left in 2020. When I once came across him hunched and dark-suited in the Pret queue at King’s Cross, midway through his Bank tenure, I actually felt sorry for him. But here he is, beer-swigging in an Ottawa bar with Sir Keir Starmer; cutting Donald Trump short in a press call before the G7 meeting; shedding his eco-credentials to champion Canadian oil and gas; and generally

A hangar full of analysts and investment bankers must have spent the long weekend formulating advice for Shell chief executive Wael Sawan for and against a takeover of BP. On the plus side, Shell’s strong share performance, reflecting its undiluted focus on oil and gas and boosting its market value to £150 billion, makes a bid look almost bite-sized – BP’s value having shrunk to £56 billion over the past two years as investors decried the commitment to renewables that its board has belatedly reversed. And the addition of BP’s assets in North America and the Gulf of Mexico would turn Shell into a carbon-fuel giant to challenge the likes

Donald Trump’s Soprano-like threat that the ‘termination’ of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell ‘cannot come fast enough’ has been headlined as one of his wildest thrusts to date, but is actually one of his most conventional. Prickly politicians always resent unelected central bankers, though they also see them as useful scapegoats for economic trouble. Liz Truss longed to fire Andrew Bailey from the Bank of England; Gordon Brown gave Eddie George’s Bank its ‘independence’ but took away so much of its power that George nearly resigned; Margaret Thatcher never accepted the most potent modern governor, Gordon Richardson, as ‘one of us’. Trump’s predecessors took fewer potshots at the Fed because