Martin Vander Weyer

By spooky coincidence, on Saturday night I watched an old episode of Slow Horses in which a passenger died mysteriously on a replacement bus between High Wycombe and Oxford Parkway – and on Sunday I woke to reports that the first service of the new era of rail renationalisation, the 5.36 from Woking to Waterloo, had also featured a replacement bus. Nobody died, but it wasn’t a good omen. Nor was it quite the ‘turning point for the future of our railways’ that Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander declared. South Western Railway’s return to state hands this week was in fact the fifth major passenger franchise to go that way – four having already failed under the previous government.

Here’s a takeover tale that captures the zeitgeist. It involves two FTSE 250 companies and some deep-pocketed US investors – and I’ll explain it as simply as I can. In essence, how would you feel if your GP surgery fell into the hands of American investors associated with the book title Barbarians at the Gate? The first of the two London-listed companies is Assura, which owns 600 NHS surgeries and diagnostic facilities and has accepted a cash offer of £1.6 billion from a pair of New York investment giants.

The weekend’s Scunthorpe drama was a distraction from endless chatter about Donald Trump and his tariffs. Perhaps Downing Street’s spinners stage-managed it with that in mind. Or perhaps the heroic tale of shop stewards confronting villainous Chinese managers while rescue teams scoured the horizon for emergency shipments of iron ore and coking coal was a different kind of smokescreen – to hide the fact that British steelmaking has been doomed for decades and what just happened is a job-saving nationalisation that will be a massive drain on public funds for as long as it takes to admit that the last British blast furnaces belong to history. I’m sorry to take such a downbeat view.

It gives me no pleasure to say I told you so. ‘If [Donald Trump] is prepared to cause mayhem in global trade as his first move, he’s even more dangerous than his detractors thought,’ I wrote in February. ‘British commentators of the “Why can’t we have visionary maverick musclemen like Trump?” persuasion should be careful what they wish for.’ And in November, ahead of the presidential election, I wrote that gold could have ‘more upside ahead’ while bitcoin holders would be wise to take profits – advice that looked wildly wrong in December but finally came right with gold at an all-time high and the cryptocurrency suffering its worst first quarter for a decade.

‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’ is a maxim attributed to leaders on both sides of the French Revolution. ‘Move fast and break things’ is today’s equivalent, emanating from Silicon Valley and amply demonstrated by Donald Trump and Elon Musk in their approach to government and geopolitics. ‘You can’t make omelettes at all if you can’t afford eggs’ might be the next variant: inflation and scarcity afflicting America’s favourite breakfast have become a major political issue. In brief, a dozen US eggs used to cost $2 or less but by January this year the supermarket price was $5 and rising – in some places $9 was reported, rationing had to be introduced and Mexican suppliers were spotted smuggling truckloads across the border.

I’ve been judging a beauty parade, but I hasten to add that no bikinis were involved. Four leading investment firms were competing for the mandate to manage a charitable endowment – and offering insights into the way professional stock-pickers see the world. First, despite (or if you’re a disciple, because of) the madness of Donald Trump, any portfolio designed for even a moderate-risk UK investor will be heavily weighted towards US tech and consumer stocks. On the other hand, none of the pitches said anything about China or other previously fashionable emerging markets. And their lack of enthusiasm for pure UK equities (as opposed to London-listed multinationals) was impossible to disguise.

Among British car factories, Nissan at Sunderland is the most productive and Jaguar Land Rover at Solihull probably the most advanced. As for industrial landmarks, the former British Leyland complex at Longbridge is reduced to a research and development facility for Chinese-owned MG; but ‘Plant Oxford’ at Cowley, the original home of Morris Motors now owned by BMW of Germany, still produces 1,000 Minis per day. And BMW’s decision to halt a £600 million project to build electric Minis there is, I fear, a moment of destiny for the whole UK auto industry. The truth is that the transition to electric cars has descended into chaos. Total UK car production in 2024 was at its lowest (in non-pandemic conditions) since 1954.

If the new Trump era has a theme, it’s one of quixotic disruption with random consequences. In that spirit, stand by for more interventions from activist shareholders seeking to electrify sluggish businesses while making fast bucks on the way through. The first episode over here was the attack by the New York investor Boaz Weinstein on seven London-listed investment trusts, in which he acquired stakes and forced shareholder votes to replace board members, with the aim of taking the trusts’ assets under the management of his own firm, Saba Capital. ‘Go home! You’re selfish and wasteful,’ shouted one headline after Weinstein was emphatically defeated in all seven polls.

The Chancellor’s appeal to regulators last month for suggestions to boost growth was mocked as evidence that the government itself is hopelessly bereft of ideas. Might as well ask traffic wardens to devise urban regeneration schemes, we scoffed, or food safety inspectors to plan state banquets. But it made sense to the extent that smarter regulation really should have the potential to boost economic activity – and there are signs the message has got through. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey speaks of using Brexit freedoms to shield smaller UK banks from ‘Basel rules’ that would require them to hold larger reserves.