Tories facing revolt over CGT increase May 26, 2010 THE GOVERNMENT is facing a damaging revolt from angry Tory backbenchers over plans to hike capital gains tax (CGT). Simmering dissent among Conservative MPs came to a head yesterday, when former cabinet minister John Redwood wrote an open letter to the Treasury saying it “would send a strange signal if a Lib-Con government decided to [...]
Brown warns of double dip April 19, 2010 GORDON BROWN launched yet another attack on Conservative tax and spending plans yesterday, in a bid to convince voters that a Tory emergency budget would plunge the UK into a double-dip recession. Flanked by chancellor Alistair Darling and business secretary Lord Mandelson, the Prime Minister said Tory plans to “take money out of the economy” [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING May 16, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES HEDGE FUNDS HIT BY MAY VOLATILITY Some of the world’s biggest hedge funds have suffered significant losses this month after high levels of volatility across markets and the shortlived stock market plunge in New York combined to wipe billions from portfolios. Losses in the first week of May alone erased all gains made [...]
Clarke denies chancellor hopes March 18, 2010 KEN Clarke yesterday said he had no ambition to become chancellor, in a bid to scotch suggestions he has designs on the job. Our panel of City and business professionals last week said Clarke would make a better chancellor than George Osborne, who will almost certainly take the office if the Tories win the election. [...]
Poll: vote for your dream chancellor March 9, 2010 THE next chancellor will have one of the toughest jobs in recent political history. With credit rating agencies warning they could strip the UK of its AAA rating unless the government acts quickly to cut the huge £178bn budget deficit, he will have to make the biggest public spending cuts in a generation. This is [...]
Young entrepreneurs are hope for the future May 10, 2010 LAST Friday night, I spent the evening in Hatfield House – one of my favourite UK historical sites as Queen Elizabeth I is my hero – with the top entrepreneurs of the University of Hertfordshire, which was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education “Entrepreneurial University of 2009” award. The university, whose chancellor is the Tory [...]
Banks and champagne are out, but the Tory big beast is still standing May 4, 2010 KEN Clarke has gone awol. He left the last campaign stop at the same time as his chief of staff, who has long since arrived, but is nowhere to be seen. “He insists on driving himself,” one aide tells me, with an exasperated look. Eventually, forty-five minutes after we’re supposed to meet, he storms into [...]
Nasty double whammy for investors May 18, 2010 WITH all the focus on growth and the deficit, too little attention has been paid to inflation. Yesterday’s disastrous figures show how unwise this has been. The rise in the official consumer price index inflation to 3.7 per cent is bad enough – but I suppose it can be tolerated, given the ending of quantitative [...]
Green investment bank will invest in renewables March 24, 2010 AMONG the more eye-catching proposals in the Budget was the plan for a £2bn state-backed investment bank to develop infrastructure and renewable energy projects. Chancellor Alistair Darling confirmed the widely-trailed idea, which will be half-funded by the sale of the government’s interest in the Channel tunnel and in half with private cash. The bank will [...]
CITY: KEN CLARKE FOR CHANCELLOR March 10, 2010 KEN Clarke would make a better chancellor than George Osborne, according to our panel of City A.M. readers. Clarke, who held the job between 1993 and 1997 and is now shadow business secretary, topped the vote with 36 per cent and pushed Osborne – the official shadow chancellor – into second place. The City A.M./PHI [...]