Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
From our UK edition
Market reactions to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania represent, according to taste, rational bets on the significantly increased likelihood of a second Trump presidency or stark confirmation of the madness that has overtaken America and threatens the civilised world. Shares in Trump Media & Technology – the parent of his social media platform Truth Social
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‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is a conventional rebuild, nothing Grand Designs about it, on the south coast. ‘But it’s taking forever to get planning permission for the new one. They want reports on everything, from bats to highway impacts: you’d
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‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory.’ As the last constituency results trickle in, we’ll all inevitably find ourselves in some combination of those four states. If you’re sad, I hope at
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‘We are the masters now,’ I chirrup to my Holborn and St Pancras neighbours – misquoting Labour attorney-general Hartley Shawcross from 1946. I don’t mean I’ve decided to throw in my vote with the predicted Labour landslide: frankly, I’d rather give it to the candidate calling himself Nick the Incredible Flying Brick. What I mean
If realpolitik says an orderly plunder of Russian treasure might save Ukraine, then shouldn’t the rules change to allow it?
From our UK edition
The seizure of enemy treasure, formerly known as plunder and pillage, is an ancient tool of war. Though still practised in the world’s nastiest conflict zones, it’s a tricky business within a rules-based international order. The G7’s agreement to lend $50 billion to Ukraine – using income from $300 billion of frozen Russian assets to
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Nigel Farage and I agree on one thing: a red-carpet welcome at the London Stock Exchange for Shein, the Chinese online fashion retailer, would be ‘a very bad idea’. Valued at £50 billion, Shein could become London’s biggest-ever initial public offering. Both the departing Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds have
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The City is having a busier year than pessimistic observers – including me – might have expected. The biggest deal on the block, the £39 billion bid by Australian giant BHP Billiton for its London-listed South African mining rival Anglo American, has fallen away. But plenty of bankers’ and advisers’ fees have already been clocked
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I’m not on the guest list for the Duke of Westminster’s wedding, but I wish him luck anyway. Mind you, the young seventh duke – Hughie to his friends – hardly needs more luck than has already come his way in the form of the £10 billion Grosvenor property empire in London and elsewhere. When
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Entries for The Spectator Economic Innovator Awards, in partnership with Investec Wealth & Investment (UK), come in all sizes and sectors. How do our judging panels choose between them? We’ve asked three of our most experienced judges to offer their top tips for regional finalists to make the very best of a 10-15 minute pitch.
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I suspect I’ve had a lot more fun writing about the annual Sunday Times Rich List over the years than many of its denizens have had clambering into it and staying there behind their high-tech security gates and their phalanx of tax advisers. The 2024 roll call includes some great British wealth-creation stories – led
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If the 0.6 per cent first-quarter GDP uplift reported by the Office for National Statistics is sustained for the rest of this year, Rishi Sunak will be able to claim – as he waves goodbye – that he and Jeremy Hunt have succeeded against their naysayers in dragging the UK economy from pandemic depths back
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All the chosen finalists in The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards, in partnership with Investec Wealth & Investment (UK), have unique stories to tell. And in 2024, alongside regional and overall winners and an extra award for excellence in Sustainability, we’re looking for a very special entrant which we’re calling the One to
Complex globalized financial structures are capable of spreading damage everywhere
From our UK edition
The US crackdown on trade finance for Russia from international banks – designed to impede imports needed for the continuing assault on Ukraine – is biting hard, reports the FT, quoting an investor who thinks ‘the logical endpoint of this is turning Russia into Iran’. Quite right too: sanctions like these are a vital non-military
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How radically left-wing is Labour’s proposed ‘renationalisation’ of the railways? Though militant Mick Lynch of the RMT union ‘strongly welcomed these bold steps’, the real answer is: hardly at all. The revolutionary socialist group Counterfire agonised thus: ‘While it would be extremely obtuse to say that Labour’s policy is bad, it would be naive to
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Hot news for UK entrepreneurs: The Spectator Economic Innovator of the Year Awards 2024, in partnership with Investec Wealth & Investment (UK), is open for entries. As ever, we’re excited to hear from high-growth businesses in every sector and every corner of the UK. We’re also delighted to welcome back our sponsor, Investec Wealth &
From our UK edition
How bad would it be if Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services (IDS), were to be taken over by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky? Our historic postal service is heavily lossmaking, struggling to maintain its universal delivery obligation and at war with its unions: a foreign owner would surely take an axe to it.
From our UK edition
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, is a loyal and well-intentioned public servant in a role that, by its nature, attracts constant blame and hindsight judgment. Liz Truss is a spectacularly failed 44-day prime minister with a book to sell. So when Truss says Bailey should have been sacked for his part
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Can flexible working get the best out of what a ministerial press release calls ‘hardworking Brits’ – or is it a couch potato’s charter? As of 6 April, employees have had the right to ask for flexibility – including remote working and hours to suit – from their first day in a job; employers can
