Any other business

How Labour’s 50p tax trick has ended up helping George Osborne

Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention than the employment and wage-growth numbers a week earlier, underlining my belief that voters care a lot less (or indeed not at all) about the intangible ‘fiscal deficit’ and its implications than they do about

Bet on a swift Grexit

‘Will Greece exit the eurozone in 2015?’ Paddy Power was pricing ‘yes’ at 3-to-1 on Tuesday, with 5-to-2 on another Greek general election within the year and 6-to-4 on the more cautious ‘Greece to adopt an official currency other than the euro by the end of 2017.’ I’m no betting man — as I reminded

Why cheap oil could mean a Labour victory

BP’s profits are down, and the oil giant is slashing up to $6 billion out of its investment plan for the year. At Shell, the cut could amount to $15 billion over the next three years. At troubled BG, still waiting for new chief executive Helge Lund to arrive, capital spending will be a third

Are the Qataris ready for the curse of Canary Wharf?

I’ve written before of a ‘curse of Qatar’ that might explain misfortunes attending the Gulf state’s UK investments, of which the seven-years-delayed Chelsea Barracks redevelopment is an example. I also claim to have coined ‘curse of Canary Wharf’, a phenomenon afflicting not only financial tenants of the Docklands complex but visitors such as Gordon Brown,

Why I’m glad there’s no British Las Vegas

I didn’t realise that the Rialto Bridge has a moving walkway and muzak, that the gondolas beneath it float on a clear blue pool, and that the school of Tiepolo had so many apprentices available to paint hotel ceilings. ‘Still in Venice, Martin?’ you’re thinking. ‘Surely that was last month?’ Well no, your intrepid columnist

What British start-ups are still missing

This issue includes the new Spectator Money supplement, in which I hope you’ll find a bouquet of stimulating ideas. The cover piece by the enterprise campaigner Michael Hayman waxes lyrical on the important theme of investing in high-tech start-ups: important because it’s an exciting thing to do with the slice of savings on which you’re

How Italy failed the stress test (and Emilio Botín didn’t)

Continuing last week’s theme, it was the Italian banks — with nine fails, four still requiring capital injections — that bagged the booby prize in the great EU stress-testing exercise, followed predictably by Greece and Cyprus, while Germany and Austria (with one fail each) fared better than some of us had feared. The most delinquent