Financial times

Monday

Steerpike

Is the Financial Times ashamed of capitalism?

It seems no-one has a good word to say about capitalism these days. For now, even the Financial Times – that bible of our captains of industry – seems to have gone off the filthy rich. Once, the newspaper’s ‘How To Spend It’ supplement was an unashamed paean to conspicuous consumption; a veritable smorgasbord of plutocratic excess. The FT itself still describes it in near-orgastic terms, writing that the 28 year-old pull-out is ‘the benchmark for luxury lifestyle magazines’ with an ‘affluent readership’ of whom one in five ‘has or would consider using the service of a private jet’. But it seems such tributes to the tastes of the rich

Thursday

Aidan Hartley

My ocean voyage from hell

Kenya Wondering what this year will bring, at dawn this morning I stood in the waves in front of our beach house and watched two Swahili sailing dhows battling through monsoon surf, heading out to the fishing grounds. For 1,500 years mariners off our East African coast have voyaged in these lovely boats and now, just in the past couple of years, fibreglass hulls have started to replace teak planking, and outboard motors instead of lateen sails propel men across the ocean. I was looking at the end of a long history. In my life I’ve enjoyed wonderful sea safaris on dhows, hunting for tuna and ambergris and waves to

Thursday

Steerpike

The FT remembers Karl Marx – ‘more relevant than ever’

Happy Karl Marx day. To mark the 200th anniversary of the revolutionary philosopher’s birth, a statue of the revolutionary philosopher (funded by the Chinese, natch) has been erected in his German hometown Trier to protests, Owen Jones has tweeted a picture of his cat reading Das Kapital and a range of pieces have been published across the media on his legacy. Only some articles are more gushing than others. Take for example, the Financial Times essay on new Marx biography ‘A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx’. The glowing piece sees the journalist offer a rather selective account and verdict of Marx’s life and legacy. Adam Tooze praises the

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 5 May 2016

The comparison between the referendum questions — that asked in 1975 and the one which we shall be asked on 23 June — is interesting. In 1975, the question was ‘Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain part of the European Community (Common Market)?’ (Answer: Yes/No). Today, the question will be ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of European Union or leave the European Union?’ (Answer: Remain/Leave). The modern question is the fairer, and it also brings out how things have changed. In 1975, it seemed almost obvious that the answer was ‘yes’: even many who did not like EEC entry could see it was strange to leave only

Wednesday

Steerpike

Janan Ganesh, citizen of… Washington, DC?

Theresa May’s decision to launch a verbal attack on ‘citizens of nowhere’ backfired in the snap election when metropolitan voters turned on the Prime Minister over fears her Brexit vision was an inward one. Happily, citizens of nowhere have since found some champions of their own. Citizen-of-nowhere-in-chief Janan Ganesh, the Financial Times columnist, kindly wrote a column titled ‘how to be a true citizen of nowhere’: ‘True, we tend to come from nowhere. I live in one continent, was born in another, but originate from a third. So I am not even from where I am from. I grew up in an ambiguous social class in one of those zone

Thursday

Steerpike

Jilly Cooper: Presidents Club outcry was ‘absolutely ridiculous’

This is going to end well. The Financial Times’ report on allegations of inappropriate behaviour at a Presidents’ Club charity dinner is the paper’s most-read story of all time. The investigation revealed hostesses at the event were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned. However, one writer has been left wondering what all the fuss is about. Step forward Jilly Cooper. The bonkbuster writer has told Londoner’s Diary that she thought it ‘was absolutely ridiculous’ – ‘it was just men having fun… behaving badly’. ‘The girls knew what they were going in to, didn’t they? The fuss they made about it with everything going on. Also, Great Ormond Street Hospital sending that money back was

Thursday

Ross Clark

The Brexit bounce

Next time it comes to redesigning the PPE course at Oxford, I suggest a module beginning with a quotation from George Osborne. It’s something he said to the Treasury Select Committee in May, back when he was still Chancellor: ‘If you look at the sheer weight of opinion, it is overwhelmingly the case that people who look at the case for leaving the EU come to the conclusion it would make the country poorer, and it would make the individuals in the country poorer, too.’ There might be advantages to Brexit, he said, ‘but let’s not pretend we’d be economically better off’. In other words: it wasn’t just George Osborne’s

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 August 2016

Those who want to revive grammar schools are accused of ‘bring backery’ — the unthinking idea that the past was better. But many of their accusers suffer from the rigid mindset of which they complain. They say that grammar schools ‘condemned most children to failure at the age of 11’, and that, even at their peak, grammars catered for less than 20 per cent of the school population. Why assume that the return of grammars must re-create either of these things? Grammar schools grew up, historically, in different ways and at different times. Then, in the mid‑20th-century mania for uniformity, they were standardised and, in the later 20th-century mania for comprehensives, almost

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Is Brexit’s impact coming at us like a derailed train – or am I panic-mongering?

I enjoyed the Daily Mail’s lambasting of the Financial Times as ‘panic-monger-in-chief’ for its doom-laden post-Brexit tone: ‘Is it determined to provoke a downturn in a bid to justify its lurid predictions?’ And I’m happy to let ‘Britain’s most self-important business newspaper’ take some flak, my own rather downbeat column last week having been so at odds with our ‘optimist’s guide’ on other pages. Panic-mongering used to be the Mail’s own stock-in-trade back in the Gordon Brown era, when it regularly invited me to wax apocalyptic on ‘the death of the middle classes’ in response to stock-market wobbles and stealth taxes. But there’s a serious point behind its FT-bashing, which

Saturday

Charles Moore

Why the FT’s Martin Wolf is wrong about the EU

Last week, I wrote about the fevered state of mind of the Financial Times as British voters threaten to throw off their EU chains. Here is another example. Martin Wolf, usually the best columnist in the paper, wrote a column giving ten reasons to remain. He said: ‘Above all, those promoting departure ignore what the UK’s European partners think about the EU. Their political elites, particularly of Germany and France, regard the preservation of an integrated Europe as their highest national interests. They will want to make clear that departure carries a heavy price, which is likely to include attempts to drive euro-related financial markets out of London.’ Those who

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 28 April 2016

‘England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her interactions, her markets and her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions.’ This classic Eurosceptic statement was made, as Daniel Hannan reminds us in his excellent book Why Vote Leave, by a great European, Charles de Gaulle. He was explaining why France was rejecting our attempt to join the EEC in 1963. The General understood what the European project was, and why Britain was not a

Wednesday

Charles Moore

The FT has become the Daily Mail of the Europhile elite

An enjoyable aspect of the EU referendum campaign is the nervous condition of the Financial Times. Unable to maintain its usual pretence at judicious balance under the strain, it has become the Daily Mail of the Europhile global elites, warning of the Seven Plagues which will afflict us if we vote to leave. Rather as the Mail loves the headline beginning ‘Just why…?’, so the FT all-purpose referendum headline begins ‘Fears mount…’ Its star columnists like Philip Stephens and Janan Ganesh pour withering scorn on Eurosceptic ‘nostalgists’ and bigots. Although they — and most of the paper’s writers — are highly intelligent, it does not occur to them to take

Wednesday

Steerpike

Lionel Barber strengthens his ties with China

Last night’s state banquet saw Jeremy Corbyn join David Cameron, President Xi Jinping and Her Majesty to raise a glass to the beginning of a golden era of partnership between China and the United Kingdom. With Corbyn meeting the Chinese president earlier in the day to raise grievances regarding the country’s human rights track record, his encounter with the president at the dinner appeared to be a civil one. Although Corbyn’s wife Laura Alvarez chose to give the lavish do a miss, the Labour leader wasn’t short of company with other guests in attendance including the Bank of England’s Mark Carney — who previously suggested Corbyn’s economic policies would ‘hurt’ the poor, and

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 30 July 2015

Obviously when one attends what the papers call ‘cocaine-fuelled orgies’, one expects to find several members of the peerage present, but I must confess that until all this trouble, I had not heard of Lord Sewel, beyond a vague apprehension that he was a misprint rather than a person. I now discover that he is a Blair peer — a specially ignominious category, rather like Lloyd George’s creations. But I still worry that he has ‘resigned’ from the House of Lords. If we continue to think that our second chamber should be unelected, it should be all but impossible to get rid of a peer once appointed. Otherwise, politics being

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Do Nikkei and the FT really share the same journalistic values?

It’s nearly 30 years since I worked in Japan, but I still have a few words of the language and a certain idea of how the place worked. The role of the business press, for example, was to trumpet export successes of Japanese corporations, and not to report shenanigans in which securities firms boosted prices of selected shares by pushing them to housewife investors, to generate campaign funds for favoured politicians. So I’m curious how the Financial Times will fare under its new owner Nikkei, the very Japanese media group that has paid £844 million to acquire the world’s most prestigious business title. Has the culture changed since my day?

Tuesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Do Nikkei and the FT really share the same journalistic values? | 28 July 2015

It’s nearly 30 years since I worked in Japan, but I still have a few words of the language and a certain idea of how the place works. The role of the business press, for example, was to trumpet export successes of Japanese corporations, and not to report shenanigans in which securities firms boosted prices of selected shares by pushing them to housewife investors, to generate campaign funds for favoured politicians. So I’m curious how the Financial Times will fare under its new owner Nikkei, the very Japanese media group that has paid £844 million to acquire the world’s most prestigious business title. Has the culture changed since my day?

Thursday

Steerpike

Financial Times staff live blog the sale of their paper: ‘we’ll be sent to Canary Wharf’

After much speculation, the Financial Times has today been purchased by Nikkei, the Japanese media group, for £844 million. Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei is buying Financial Times from U.K. publishing group Pearson for $1.29 billion http://t.co/x26Px8sXfW — MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) July 23, 2015 This comes after the paper’s owner Pearson confirmed it was on sale this morning. However, it had been thought that the German media group Axel Springer were the frontrunner for the purchase. With the sale confirmed, little is known about what the new owners have planned for the paper: FT editor @lionelbarber says to look to nikkei's track record and Japanese corporate culture as reassurance pic.twitter.com/D66f5krNEH — Renée Kaplan (@rkapkap) July

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 2 July 2015

‘The Greek people,’ the Financial Times leading article said on Monday, ‘would be well advised to listen closely to the words of Ms Merkel. The plebiscite will be a vote for the euro or the drachma, no less.’ It is interesting how menacing powerful ‘moderate’ institutions can become when popular feeling challenges them. In the eurozone theology to which the FT subscribes, its statement above cannot be true. It is not possible (see last week’s Notes) for a member state to leave the euro, any more than it is for Wales to renounce sterling. Eurozone membership, once achieved, is a condition of EU membership. So the Greeks cannot vote to

Wednesday

Charles Moore

Why is the FT ordering Greece to do what Germany wants?

‘The Greek people,’ the Financial Times leading article said on Monday, ‘would be well advised to listen closely to the words of Ms Merkel. The plebiscite will be a vote for the euro or the drachma, no less.’ It is interesting how menacing powerful ‘moderate’ institutions can become when popular feeling challenges them. In the eurozone theology to which the FT subscribes, its statement above cannot be true. It is not possible (see last week’s Notes) for a member state to leave the euro, any more than it is for Wales to renounce sterling. Eurozone membership, once achieved, is a condition of EU membership. So the Greeks cannot vote to

Thursday

Jonathan Portes

Right to reply – Jonathan Portes on Niall Ferguson

Two weeks ago I was too ‘obscure to bother with‘ for Professor Niall Ferguson. He’s changed his mind, dedicating an entire article in The Spectator to me. In particular, he is very upset that, after I complained, the FT was obliged to correct his recent article about the UK economy. Professor Ferguson’s article contained one undisputed factual error (about UK business confidence) and one statement which the FT’s independent complaints commissioner found to be misleading, but which Professor Ferguson argues is composed of two ‘true statements’. This was: ‘Weekly earnings are up by more than 8 per cent; in the private sector, the figure is above 10 per cent. Inflation is