Any other business

Sending seized Russian loot to Ukraine is no simple matter

We must be bolder in seizing frozen Russian assets, writes the Prime Minister in a Sunday newspaper. ‘That starts with taking the billions in interest these assets are collecting and sending it to Ukraine.’ Can that really be done? Having consulted international legal opinion, here’s my summary. The principle of ‘sovereign state immunity’ doesn’t prevent

China is set for a serious economic fall

 The future trajectory of the Chinese economy is a subject for doctoral theses rather than casual column items. But the advent of the Year of the Dragon, at last weekend’s Lunar New Year, was greeted with such pessimistic commentaries that the natural contrarian should ask whether the consensualists are getting it wrong: maybe the dragon

Can anyone save the Post Office? 

Angry farmers offer a theme for the week – starting with the French at close quarters. Leaving the Eurotunnel at Calais en route to a wedding in the Alps, my car party encounters agricultural rage in the form of convoys of stationary trucks at all the port’s major exit points, as tractors blockade the autoroutes

Where are the smart investments under a Starmer government?

I worry that my Burlington Bertie life in London’s West End offers a misleading picture of the real economy. Yes, boutiques and brasseries are busy, but what’s it like in outer boroughs and distant provinces? To take a single morning’s headlines, on the plus side there’s upbeat trading news from ABF, the grocery and Primark

Why can’t the UK be more like Marks & Spencer?

Marks & Spencer was a 20th-century paradigm of better business: a trusted brand and a benign employer that built strong relationships with suppliers and generated handsome returns for shareholders. Then its performance began to fade, as one management team after another failed to keep pace with retail trends in-store and online. By August 2020, when

Fujitsu should pay for the Post Office scandal

Let’s talk about Fujitsu. In particular, let’s ask why the Japanese multinational IT supplier has not been taken to court, or heavily fined, or barred from bidding for new public-sector contracts, for the faults of its Horizon sub-post-office system and the mishandling of pleas for help from hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters who were wrongfully convicted.

My election advice for Starmer? Offer a new Citizen’s Charter

A giveaway Budget in March preceding a general election in May against an improving economic backdrop: that, we’re told, is Downing Street’s favoured scenario. But still the election is Keir Starmer’s to lose, so here’s my start-the-year advice to him. Don’t bang on about Rishi Sunak being too rich; don’t make immigration the issue, because

Thank goodness for the Christmas elf of York station

It’s 10 o’clock on a Friday evening in early December. My crowded northbound train departed King’s Cross two hours late and has lost two more between Newark and Retford. Overhead line trouble, we’re told; engineers on the line. I’ve read this week’s Spectator from cover to cover. I’ve exchanged emails with friends in Los Angeles,

Was COP28 any more than hot air?

What position should the distant observer take on the COP28 conference in Dubai? That the sight of 70,000 delegates flying into a desert oil state from around the world to discuss human impacts on climate change is beyond satire and that its proceedings are never likely to rise above Greta Thunberg’s encapsulation of all such

Rishi Sunak can’t take the credit for falling inflation

Even the best-run companies have occasional leadership crises. But if you asked ChatGPT to come up with a blockbuster boardroom-bloodbath movie scenario, I doubt it would propose anything as extreme as this week’s events in its own San Francisco-based parent company, OpenAI. Chief executive and co-founder Sam Altman was fired last week for failing to

What’s the point of a degree?

‘Place nose on dot.’ That’s what my screen is telling me to do as the first step in a ‘liveness’ test I must complete to be accepted as a signatory on a club bank account. But if I align the image of my face with the dot, nothing happens. If I press my nose to

Alison Rose doesn’t deserve a huge NatWest payout

When I wrote in July that Dame Alison Rose’s forced exit as chief executive of NatWest in the wake of the Nigel Farage scandal was ‘unnecessary’, many readers vehemently disagreed with me. Out she went, Treasury ministers having steamrollered the NatWest board’s brief attempt to hold her in post – and a subsequent Information Commissioner’s

If Chris Packham is anti it, it’s probably a good idea

If the broadcaster and eco-warrior Chris Packham describes something as ‘an act of war against life on Earth’, sensible people might suspect that it’s probably, on balance, a good thing. Such is the case with the Rosebank field – the UK’s largest remaining undeveloped reserve of oil and gas, in deep waters west of Shetland,