Europe should be careful in wishing for their own Trump
They shouldn’t be seduced by his pro-business, anti-woke agenda
Martin Vander Weyer
Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
Monday
Thursday
Britain’s Trumpists should be careful what they wish for
From our UK edition
When I visited Toronto with a UK delegation last winter, conversation focused on the issues of immigration, housing and inflation that were contributing to the unpopularity of Justin Trudeau, who finally announced his resignation as prime minister last month. The prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House was the slumbering python in the
Thursday
I’m being driven mad by Microsoft Outlook
From our UK edition
Call me a cynic, but I suspect this week’s headlines about a revival of Heathrow’s third runway plan amount to little more than a political game. Arguments for and against this project have been aired many times over, from a white paper in 2003 to the Davies Commission’s final report (in favour) in 2015. Much
Friday
Is it worth it for Trump to buy Greenland?
There’s no disputing the potential to find everything from gold to rare earth elements. But the operating difficulties are truly formidable
Thursday
Would it be worth Trump buying Greenland?
From our UK edition
London’s capital market needs a kick in the pants, as I write every week, and ‘activist investors’ are no bad thing if they provoke sharper corporate performance. The assault by the New York hedge funder Boaz Weinstein on seven UK investment trusts – demanding shareholder votes to replace directors with his own people and take
Thursday
Rachel Reeves owes Brompton bikes an apology
From our UK edition
I long to write less about Rachel Reeves and more about world-beating British businesses – such as Brompton, the folding bicycle maker whose fortunes I have followed since I bought the product and interviewed the founder-designer, Andrew Ritchie, 20 years ago. The latest Brompton news was that profits collapsed from £11 million in 2023 to
Thursday
Should you leave the country? Other questions for 2025
From our UK edition
I was intending to write one of those ‘Ten tips to change your life’ lists that fill so many column inches at this drab time of year. But I got no further than ‘Buy bigger trousers’. Instead, I’ll tackle some of the obvious questions you might be asking as you watch snow turn to slush
Monday
My business predictions for 2025
From our UK edition
Headed for ‘the worst of all worlds’ is not where any of us would wish to find ourselves at the start of the new year. But that was the phrase used by the CBI economist Alpesh Paleja to sum up the predictions of member businesses – of reduced hiring and output, rising prices and weak
Friday
Why we must not forget Hong Kong
Jimmy Lai has scant hope, barring a Trump intervention, of regaining his freedom
Thursday
Negroni inflation is out of control
From our UK edition
Forty years ago this Christmas I visited Hong Kong for the first time – a few days after the signing in Beijing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed the former colony’s transfer to mainland rule in 1997. It was a moment of apprehension, but at least the timetable had been set. And how lucky
Thursday
The marketing genius of Jaguar
From our UK edition
Woke it may be, but Jaguar’s ‘Copy Nothing’ video is a work of marketing genius. With its ungendered models, ungrammatical slogans (‘live vivid’, ‘delete ordinary’) and strange absence of cars, the 30-second ad has brought global attention to a brand that was dying for want of a new generation of customers, in an auto industry
Thursday
The dark side of Black Friday
From our UK edition
How is it possible that we’re still reading headlines about the £4 billion fundraising from the Gulf that saved Barclays from a bailout in 2008? It’s not too sweeping to say that most of the financial world smelled something fishy in the undisclosed £322 million of advisory fees that were paid to Qatari investors –
Thursday
A sparkling celebration of innovation – and business optimism
From our UK edition
November is the season for the fireworks display of talent that is The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards gala dinner, in partnership with Rathbones. This year, at the Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel in London’s Russell Square, the energy generated among the assembled founders, judges and sponsors beats any Guy Fawkes pyrotechnics. We’ve attracted more
What does the City really think of the Chancellor?
From our UK edition
Regular invitations to Mansion House banquets petered out after I asked a shifty-looking waiter for a glass of champagne and he told me he was a deputy governor of the Bank of England. So I can’t report firsthand whether last week’s speech by Chancellor Rachel Reeves was greeted by assembled financiers with napkins on their
Wednesday
Why Trump changed his tune on crypto
From our UK edition
This column comes to you from Atlanta, Georgia, where but for one giant ‘Trump Stands Up For Families’ billboard and some Harris-Walz placards in the leafier suburbs, you would hardly know there had just been an election. I was hoping to report a whiff of teargas after a contested result, but no. Urban Atlanta voted
Wednesday
Is No. 10 coming for game shooting next?
From our UK edition
I confess I was lunching at L’Escargot in Greek Street as Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget. My excuse was that I thought I already knew what was in it – but in reality the package was even more anti-business than I feared. My punishment was a risotto too glutinous to finish, but the Chancellor’s 76-minute
Wednesday
Still hunting for a Trump trade? Gold may have further to rise
From our UK edition
Anyone hunting for a ‘Trump trade’ at this late stage has probably missed the US election bus. If you bought gold as a traditional safe-haven asset back in February at £1,600 an ounce, you’d be a smug 33 per cent up by now – though my man in the bullion market tells me the rise
Wednesday
Wahed’s alarming Tube adverts
From our UK edition
As the interminable Budget wait goes on, so does the trawl through the Chancellor’s bin bags. I refer to the old tabloid method of digging in celebrities’ dustbins for evidence of depravity or scandal; in Rachel Reeves’s case, that would mean piecing together shredded Treasury analyses on all the various tax wheezes floated since July.
Wednesday
In defence of eating out
From our UK edition
Scheduling the Budget almost four months after their election victory would have counted as a monumental misjudgment for the Labour government were it not for all the other cock-ups that turned their first 100 days into a sitcom. Still, the extended period of speculation about which taxes Rachel Reeves is really planning to raise has
Wednesday
Where are all my after-dinner speaking gigs?
From our UK edition
How excited are you to hear the Prime Minister talking tech with Eric Schmidt, an American billionaire who used to run Google? Me neither. But their on-stage conversation is billed as the highlight of the government’s International Investment Summit in London next week, designed to show the world the UK is ‘open for business’. What
