Google

Google’s decision to employ an extra 3,000 people in London is undoubtedly great news for Britain. But it's nonsense to try and tangle the company's plans as being all - or, indeed, anything - about Brexit. Of course, it was only a matter of time before Google’s announcement was glimpsed through the Brexit prism. Everything is these days. Some have said the new jobs promised by Google and the firm's £1bn investment is ‘despite’ the outcome of the referendum. In their coverage of the announcement, Bloomberg said tech firms had been left wondering ‘whether they’ll still be able to hire workers from overseas…after the country leaves the bloc’.

'Can anyone seriously imagine the German state and corporate establishment allowing the bank that bears their country’s name to go down?’ I asked in February, adding rather bravely, ‘Of course they won’t.’ And that, I fear, makes my next question, ‘Am I about to eat my hat?’ Shares in Deutsche Bank have plunged to their lowest level since 1992 as the US Department of Justice seeks to impose a $14 billion fine relating to Deutsche’s issuance of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 crisis, and rumours say Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out a state bailout. Deutsche boss John Cryan says the bank hasn’t asked for her help to fight its US battle and is in compliance with all its capital ratios, both of which may be true.

The only MP who doesn’t want Angela Eagle to be the next Jeremy Corbyn is Jeremy Corbyn. He was away today -- thank Gawd! -- leaving Eagle to take on George Osborne who replaced the PM. Eagle is quality. Her low stature, her kindly, nunnish face and her merry eyes give her a huge advantage in debate because she appears to be without defences. What weapon could this sweet-natured tinky-winky milkmaid possibly wield? A roll of grease paper? A warm scone? A rubber duck? When she strikes, as she does, the blow arrives invisibly. She has a slangy northern tongue that can easily make an Oxbridge toff look like a waste of school fees. Today many Tories were secretly hoping to see their chilly, entitlement-oozing chancellor getting biffed about by Labour’s pocket Boadicea.

Today’s PMQs was an opportunity for Jeremy Corbyn to embarrass the government and align himself with public anger over how little tax some multinationals pay. But he missed this opportunity. By going on HMRC’s deal with Google in isolation, he allowed Cameron to point the finger of blame at the last Labour government. Indeed, Cameron even dragged Corbyn into defending the record of the Blair and Brown governments on corporate taxation. A far more effective tactic would have been to contrast the British deal with the French and Italian ones. Why have these governments managed to get more tax out of Google than our own? Another problem with Corbyn at PMQs is that he doesn’t pick up on Cameron’s hostages to fortune.

When George Osborne announced at the Conservative Party conference in 2014 that he would force companies such as Google, Facebook and others to pay more tax in the UK, some of those firms were privately incandescent. As a Daily Telegraph journalist covering the conference at the time, I was witness to a rare example of usually conciliatory American firms eager to critique government policy in robust Anglo-Saxon. Why, they asked, didn’t the UK see the wider benefits of having major digital employers based here, and didn’t ministers understand that they were paying their due taxes where they were founded, in America? In public, technology-friendly commentators suggested the announcement was all politics and no practicality.

Even though, as Fraser argued last week, Google has done nothing wrong in agreeing to pay £130 million to settle its UK tax claims, MPs were in a furious mood about the agreement when they discussed it in the Commons this afternoon. John McDonnell asked an urgent question on the deal, and found, unusually, that he had support from across the House. It wasn’t just Labour MPs who stood up to condemn what they saw as one standard for their constituents, who are hounded by the taxman over relatively small claims, and another for big powerful multinationals like Google. Tory MPs joined in, too, with Steve Baker telling David Gauke that the deal was ‘at once derisory, substantial, lawful and completely unacceptable to the public’.