Despatch: Heathrow airport – an allegory of our decline





In 1920 a Scottish Unionist MP Noel Skelton coined the term ‘property-owning democracy’, arguing that widening the base of property ownership among the working class would stabilise democracy and counter socialism. The term came to the forefront of political discourse when Prime Minister Anthony Eden used it at the Conservative Party conference in 1946. However, […]

An index-linked gilt – known as a linker in City speak – is a government IOU whose principal and interest payments rise with the Retail Prices Index (RPI). Inflation erodes the value of an ordinary bond; a linker compensates the holder for it. The post-Covid inflation shock showed why anybody would want one. Inflation, thought […]

The Iran war has created the largest supply disruption in the history of the oil market, beating the shocks of the 1970s and the war in Ukraine. Whatever happens with Donald Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, the Middle East oil industry cannot afford to be this exposed again. The Gulf has the money and […]