Martin Vander Weyer

Having been awarded the title of business editor of this paper by Boris Johnson in his former incarnation, I know more than most people about the extent of his interest in how businesses succeed or fail, what motivates those who run them and what they want from government. The answer is that his attention span for such subject matter is vanishingly small and that the opportunity to address the CBI conference in the midst of an election campaign would have been no more stimulating for him than a request to pop in and say something funny at the retirement party of a Downing Street doorman whose name he’d never learned.

It cannot be other than good news that a rescuer has been found for the bankrupt remains of British Steel, and in particular for its ‘long products’ plant at Scunthorpe — even if the buyer, at a token £50 million but with a promise of £1.2 billion of investment, is a little-known Chinese group, Jingye, owned by a former communist party official, Li Ganpo. Jingye has stepped in after potential offers from the Anglo--Indian tycoon Sanjeev Gupta and a Turkish steelmaker, Ataer, failed to firm up. Some 4,000 British Steel jobs, and many more in its supply chains, will be saved if this deal goes through. But still we might wonder at Jingye’s motivation.

Five years ago this week, George Osborne as chancellor announced a scheme to place tax revenues from shale gas fracking in Lancashire and Cheshire into a ‘sovereign wealth fund for the north of England’. Soon after that, a leaked memo revealed him urging fellow ministers to intervene with planning authorities to fast-track fracking proposals and in particular to help Cuadrilla, the company whose drilling near Blackpool caused a seismic tremor in August big enough to give the current government reason to impose a moratorium on fracking ‘until and unless’ it’s judged completely safe. Jeremy Corbyn probably isn’t wrong when he calls this ban ‘an electoral stunt’.

When Facebook announced details earlier this year of a global digital currency called Libra — backed by a roll call of other corporate giants — I declared myself a sceptic on the grounds that behind its libertarian sales pitch, the concept was really ‘a power-grab for cash balances and personal data out of the conventional banking system’. Furthermore, ‘since when did any project originated by Mark Zuckerberg and his pals have the good of the world as its prime objective?

Minding my own business at 67 Pall Mall — the private members’ club favoured by oenophile West End hedge-fund managers that will serve as this week’s restaurant tip — I’m watching two tieless but well-tailored gents at the next table sampling different vintages of Château Pichon Longueville. And I’m thinking: ‘Bastards! These must be the friends-of-Boris who are conspiring to reap billions from a no-deal Brexit!’ It was former chancellor Philip Hammond who wrote recently of Johnson being ‘backed by speculators’, citing the PM’s sister Rachel who had spoken of the influence on him of ‘people who have invested billions in shorting the pound and shorting the country’.

Private secretary: ‘The Bank of England governorship, Prime Minister… opposition MPs have been saying it’s a political stitch-up and calling for the shortlist to be made public. Have you had time to look at the file?’ Boris, distracted: ‘Stitch-up piffle! I thought we’d picked my economist chum Gerard Lyons — very sound on Brexit.’ ‘Treasury wouldn’t have him, Prime Minister. They’re trying to fix it for one of their own, Sir John Kingman, former second permanent secretary, now chairman of Legal& General.’ ‘And weren’t we going to pad the list with women and, ah, minorities? Like Baroness Wossername?’ ‘You mean Labour peer Shriti Vadera, chair of Santander UK, Prime Minister?

It’s not obvious that the state has a moral obligation to repatriate holidaymakers whenever a tour operator goes bust, as Thomas Cook did on Sunday night. Being briefly stranded in a sangria-fuelled resort is not like being left behind in a war zone, after all. But when large numbers of tourists are involved such situations will swiftly become consular crises if government does nothing to help. So there’s pragmatic reason for ministers to act — as well as political motives that might have been scripted by Armando Iannucci for The Thick of It. Here’s the scenario: a government in chaos under a prime minister who’s all over the Sunday papers for his ‘association’ with a blonde who is neither his wife nor his official mistress. Then: bingo!

Another fine lunch and a particularly fine Edinburgh venue for our encounter with finalists for the Scotland & Northern Ireland region of The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor Awards 2019. We’re in the Register Club, inside the Edinburgh Grand Hotel on St Andrew’s Square – a building which happens to have been the headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland before its chief executive Fred Goodwin commissioned an extravagant new campus on the city outskirts. Fred’s name will forever be associated with RBS’s 2008 collapse, and guess what: we’re lunching in a handsome room that actually used to be his office.