Moneyblog

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Brexit negotiators need to focus on our fishermen

I listen in despair to Brexiteers’ dismissals of pleas from business for a settlement that allows them to plan beyond March next year. On last Friday’s Any Questions?, Jürgen Maier — who runs the £5 billion manufacturing business that is German-owned Siemens UK, and who may be the most respected industrialist in the north of England — spoke persuasively (in the accent of his Leeds schooldays) about the ‘dramatic’ fall-off of business investment and potentially ‘catastrophic’ impact of a no-deal outcome. The response of Tory MP John Redwood was so condescending, essentially ‘well done for coming here and building a business but stop scaremongering’, that I wanted to pour a boiling kettle

Tuesday

Spectator Money

Best Buys: Cashback credit cards

If you’re on the hunt for a new credit card – and you’re planning on paying off your card every month – it might make sense to look for one which rewards you for using your card. Here are the best fee-free cashback cards on the market at the moment, according to data provided by moneyfacts.co.uk.

Monday

Ross Clark

Why do we care what the CBI thinks about May’s Brexit deal?

Big UK business is often guilty of short-termism and the CBI’s response to Theresa May’s draft withdrawal proposal is no exception. Large companies are backing May’s appalling deal with the EU because they are preoccupied with ensuring that next year’s results are no worse than the guidance they have given markets. The opportunities which could arise from a proper Brexit, in which Britain is allowed to do its own trade deals, set its own regulations and lower taxes and other barriers in order to suck in overseas investment, are too far over their horizon for them to see. How often have you heard the words drip from well-fed FTSE 100

Friday

Keith Ridgway

The UK has a great future in high-value manufacturing – but changes are needed

The opening of McLaren’s new production facility in Rotherham may have been rich in pomp and ceremony – a 3,850 horsepower convoy of supercars racing to meet the more sedate Royal fleet of Bentleys, for example – but behind the showmanship there are vital lessons for UK manufacturing. There are also important lessons for a government that has staked the economy’s future on an Industrial Strategy targeting just four grand challenges: future mobility, clean growth, artificial intelligence and an ageing population. The first lesson is that the UK has a great future in high-value manufacturing. The second, especially in the case of automotive and aerospace, is that this requires industry

Tuesday

Ross Bailey

There’s no reason why there should be empty shops in Britain’s high streets

If you care about your local community, you can’t help but feel disheartened at the sight of a closing store. Vacant shops on a once-busy high street are, in a word, depressing. So too are the words, practically screaming at you in block capitals, ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO’. But these are increasingly familiar sights. With the collapse of House of Fraser, Toys ‘R’ Us and Maplin among others, the phrase ‘retail apocalypse’ has gained ever-greater potency. Last week, two reports painted an even grimmer picture. PwC found 1,123 stores had disappeared from Britain’s top 500 high streets in the first half of the year. And the Local Data Company recorded the

Monday

Martin Vander Weyer

Is Mike Ashley the only person on a mission to keep bricks-and-mortar retailing alive?

I dreamed I saw a monster advancing through a devastated town centre, mighty footsteps shaking semi-derelict buildings. I awoke in my armchair to find I had been reading a news item about Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley’s latest gambit: buying the 60-shop Evans Cycles chain out of administration for just £8 million, to follow his swoop on House of Fraser’s tottering department stores group in August. Say what you like about Ashley’s ruthless opportunism — he’s already said himself that half the Evans outlets will have to close — he’s the only big beast out there who’s on a mission to keep bricks-and-mortar retailing alive. But in this era of

Saturday

Charles Day

If Jo Johnson is so worried about financial services, he should back Brexit

Jo Johnson has noticed that Theresa May has managed to unite the country, in that both Leavers and Remainers worry that her deal will let the EU pass our laws and regulate our markets but leave us no say in that process. But why does he think that staying in the EU is a remedy for the problems he outlines? He focused on a supposed threat to the service sector, spelling out the damage he seems to think Brexit would do. Here’s what he has to say: “Even if we eventually secure a customs arrangement for trade in goods, it will be bad news for the service sector — for firms in

Tuesday

Rebecca O'Connor

Has HMRC done enough to solve the botched implementation of child benefit charges?

You’ve just had a baby. Life is upside down, but in a good way. A couple of months in, you are talking to your antenatal group and someone mentions child benefit. It’s not something you’d have thought you’d be eligible for, as you and your partner earn too much to get any benefits, as a rule. You go to the HMRC website, fill out the form and get a letter back. ‘I am writing to tell you that you are entitled to child benefit at £20.70 a week’, it begins. ‘Brill, that will pay for the nappies’, you think. So you take it and you are £1,076.40 a year to

Matt Ridley

Britain is ripe for agriculture innovation after Brexit

Agriculture is being transformed by innovation at a rapid pace. Genetically modified crops are being grown on 190 million hectares worldwide, with on average 20 per cent higher yields and 40 per cent fewer chemicals than their non-GM counterparts. Genome editing (which involves no cross-species DNA transfer) has produced fungus-resistant wheat and disease-resistant pigs. Farmers in Ukraine and Brazil are using satellite and drone data to target fertiliser and pesticide where and when it is needed, reducing the costs and environmental impact of farming. Robots are starting to drive tractors, identify weeds and pick strawberries. New nitrogen-fixing bacteria derived from sugar cane by Nottingham University promises higher yields in maize

Monday

Daniel McCarthy

Could the economy rescue Trump in the midterms?

The Trump economy has defied all sceptics and naysayers. Unemployment is at half-century record lows, wages are up, and Wall Street opened November by bouncing back from a rocky October. Trump was supposed to be a reckless leader who would panic the markets. He hasn’t. His tariffs were supposed to torpedo the economy. They haven’t. If Americans vote on jobs, wages, and the business climate come Tuesday, Republicans will keep the House of Representatives and expand their Senate majority. But do voters ever think of midterm elections as a referendum on the economy? Conventional wisdom says no, but the reality is more complicated. Republicans lost 26 seats in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm

Friday

The Spectator

The winners of the Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2018 | 2 November 2018

Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a gala dinner hosted by Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator, and attended by over 120 guests from across the world of business. We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Economic Disruptor of the Year is Pockit – a low-cost, easy-access banking app aimed at helping Britain’s ‘unbanked’. Developed by the London-based group Concentric,

The Spectator

The winners of the Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2018

Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a gala dinner hosted by Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator, and attended by over 120 guests from across the world of business. We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Economic Disruptor of the Year is Pockit – a low-cost, easy-access banking app aimed at helping Britain’s ‘unbanked’. Pockit is billed as ‘a bank for

Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The simple solution to the V&A’s Brexit fears

Now it is London museums bleating about Brexit. A memo from the V&A released under Freedom of Information laws, warns darkly: ‘we will struggle to keep the museum open to the public in the immediate short term’. A no deal Brexit, it is claimed, could affect visitor numbers from the EU, diminish donations and also affect the ability of the museum to stage travelling exhibitions. As with so many Brexit scare stories, it has the whiff of hysteria. But if the V&A and other museums do ever feel the pinch they could, of course, resort to an action they should have taken years ago: start charging an entry fee. It

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tory fiscal hawks uncharacteristically relaxed about Hammond’s spending ‘gamble’

Although Philip Hammond’s spending splurge Budget has received broadly positive front pages and a cautious thumbs up from the public, the Chancellor has been given a reality check by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). After crunching the numbers, IFS director Paul Johnson has concluded that Hammond had ‘gambled’ on the public finances. Johnson said that the Chancellor ought to be ‘thanking his lucky stars’ for his £12billion windfall from a revised public borrowing forecast. With no plan set out for how to fund this level of spending in the future, Johnson concluded that ‘inevitable tax increases’ would have to follow in order ‘to pay for our ageing population’. On

Tuesday

Matthew Lynn

Why the IFS is wrong about a ‘no deal’ Brexit

The growth forecasts might be too optimistic. The economy may yet turn down, the pressure on public services will only continue to rise, and, most of all, leaving the European Union may yet turn into a catastrophe. The Institute for Fiscal Studies did not waste much time in branding yesterday’s Budget ‘a bit of a gamble’, with plenty of risks attached to it. In saying so, the IFS no doubt reflects the mainstream view in the economics profession and probably among the professional scribblers of the City as well. And yet the truth is that Philip Hammond didn’t take enough of a gamble. With the British economy in better shape

Monday

James Kirkup

How Philip Hammond’s Universal Credit promises could unravel

One of the joys of Budget analysis is looking for the unexploded bombs, the measures that could – to use the traditional verb – unravel and cause the Chancellor future torment. I’m not claiming to have spotted a confirmed UXB here, but there are several signs in the Budget papers that suggest that the changes to Universal Credit will come in for a lot more scrutiny in the coming weeks. The headline announcement on UC is a good one: Philip Hammond has decided to increase the amount of money UC claimants can earn before they start to lose benefits, known as the Work Allowance. This will cost the Treasury £1.7 billion a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Hammond may regret breaking his promise to eliminate the deficit

As Nick Clegg, George HW Bush and many other politicians have proved to their cost, manifesto promises matter. How damaging, then, will Philip Hammond’s brazen abandonment of the 2017 Conservative pledge be, whereby financial discipline was supposed to ‘guide us to a balanced budget by the middle of next decade’? Now, Hammond seems to be trying to tell us that running a public deficit doesn’t really matter. While George Osborne delayed and delayed the date he promised to bring the public finances back into balance, Hammond has apparently abandoned any idea of ever doing so. There is now no target for eliminating the deficit at all. It is hardly as