How can the City recover its political capital?
The good news? The financial sector is no longer enemy number one. Its place has been taken by our fumbling politicians. The bad news? The City has not regained its political capital.
Post the financial crisis the City, meaning financial and professional services in the UK, lost the trust of the nation. A perfectly understandable and justifiable result, but one that must change because of the harm that is being done to our economy when the City has no advocates beyond its own members.
As the country grapples with Brexit, assembly lines of MPs appear on television defending the UK’s manufacturing base. Not one talks about the need to defend the City, despite it being responsible for over 13.5% of tax revenues – that’s a lot of hospitals, infrastructure and schools. It is also responsible for around 2.3m jobs – jobs that aren’t just in the Square Mile, or London and the South East, but also in Liverpool, Glasgow and Bournemouth.
Ode to London
“You cannot tax me out of London,” says a retired top banker who has made a considerable amount of money in his lifetime. HMRC, the UK’s tax collecting body, will be glad to hear that.
An anti-globalisation duet: Trump & Corbyn
As Donald Trump and his toupee continue to ride high in the US presidential opinion polls, I find myself musing on his fellow jockey, UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Tale of a Whale
The New York tourist sitting next to me with the map of London spread out on his lap asked where he could find the London Whale.