News

Mercifully, on 20 October, Liz Truss bowed to the inevitable following a calamitous loss of confidence amongst the Conservative parliamentary ranks, as her authority and credibility was swept away in recent weeks. Her replacement as PM will be in office within seven...

Readers of a certain age will remember the ‘Ring of Confidence’ promised by a leading toothpaste brand. The ring in the famous TV adverts was a sort of fallen halo which had settled at mouth level, complete with sparkle. There’s little sparkle, however, in the outlook...

The prospect of relatively weak sterling for the foreseeable future inevitably leads optimists to spot good news for UK exporters. “What could we export?” sceptics might cry, mindful of our shrinking manufacturing base. In reality, while overall imports outstripped...

The Government's emergency financial statement may have lacked the formal designation of a Budget, but in some ways, it represents a more significant fiscal and economic event. Meanwhile the political implications are clear - after twelve years of Conservative...

To say that our late Queen Elizabeth II will be a hard act to follow is a huge understatement. Only a few weeks ago, in a short article, I posed the question “Would the Queen make a good CEO?. It’s a theme I reflected on again after a weekend of lengthy queueing to...

For thousands of schoolkids and parents, not just in the UK, September has meant a new one of these. Half empty by Christmas and a discarded box by the following July, the Helix Oxford has become an annual repeat purchase for several decades. Like new shoes, it...

How will historians make sense of the unremitting political turbulence that has engulfed the UK since the EU referendum in June 2016? Well, it is instructive to step back from the trauma that has played out exclusively in the Conservative Party these past six years....

Stagnation looms for British business. New August figures show that the private sector slowed to a snail’s pace as factory output fell and the larger services sector struggled to match July. The S&P Global/CIPS Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) estimate dropped to...

One of the many great pleasures of being in London for at least part of the summer is the wonderful feeling of leaving a theatre, with hundreds of other happy people, to walk out into a warm evening buzzing with life.  Our love of opera at Buchler Phillips is well...

It is no surprise at all that the Bank of England has announced the first 0.5 percentage-point jump in the official lending rate since it was granted independence from the government in 1997. Surging prices over the past two years have been a rude awakening for...

The cost of living crisis is a ‘cost of doing business’ crisis for a very large number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). While inflation hit a fresh 40-year high of 9.4% in June, input price inflation for the 12 month period reached 24%, its highest on record. ...

It may be a long time before brave retail investors discover whether or not cryptocurrency is shrouded in the emperor’s new clothes. Collapses of crypto-based businesses all over the world in recent weeks have followed an estimated $250bn fall in valuations of digital...