So, who’s going to be our new prime minister? Or will Theresa May manage to wrestle on in the mud at No. 10? Never a dull moment these days. If nothing else, we should at least appreciate the theatre –…

Almost two years ago now, during my old job as a financial adviser, I attended an “annual masterclass” for fellow advisers. The event was held in a scenic location by a horse racing track in the Scottish countryside. During these…

A medical emergency left my keyboard out of reach yesterday. I was unable to write to you on one of the most interesting days in British politics for many months. After six attempts to take a blood sample by nurses…

Jokes about there not being an EU to exit from next year are making the rounds in the papers. My book about exactly how this will happen hit the printworks last night. You can get a copy here. But today…

For all the talk of ending austerity, you might think there was any in the first place. But I can’t see any budget surpluses on any charts. Government debt to GDP flatlined for three years around 88%, it didn’t really…

It’s Giovanni Tria’s 70th birthday tomorrow. His political career might not last that long though. The Italian government budget proposal is due by midnight tonight. Sort of. The finance minister must submit finance and growth targets. As the Bank of…

On Monday we looked at the future of the UK and EU. Yesterday, my thoughts turned into front page news. Prime Minister Theresa May threatened the EU with its worst fear. Turning the UK into a low-tax and business-friendly environment…

What do the US Open umpire Carlos Ramos, Australian Greens Senator Adam Bandt, and Brexit voters have in common? They might have plenty in common, as far as I know. But I’m going to write about the odd abuse they’re…

There is hope for Brexit yet. And I’m not talking about Tony Blair’s comment to delay it. Although that is still my preferred outcome. Continuing Brexit negotiations after the May 2019 European elections would make things very interesting. French President…

If you haven’t been reading Capital & Conflict for long, add some sugar to your coffee before you read it today. Or something stronger. The newspapers are building their own Project Fear over a no-deal Brexit. You might call it…

Since the Brexit negotiations began, I couldn’t work out why they were so acrimonious. Free trade is mutually beneficial. Restricting it is mutually harmful. What is there left to argue about? The answer comes from British intelligence. At least that’s…

The Bank of England (BoE) raised interest rates by 0.25% last week. It was an unanimous decision by all nine members of the committee. The Telegraph called it the second rate hike in a decade, but the first real one….

Today, I will show you a crafty scheme to make German taxpayers pay for your French cheese and wine. It’s called a hard Brexit. Which is now looking more likely. Another week, another Brexit deal falls by the wayside. You…

Before England got booted out of the World Cup last week, I asked you why politics has come to dominate so much of our lives, and what vacuum it is filling. I received many thoughtful responses – thank you to…

A colleague has just informed me he’s put a bet on. Not for money either. If England win the World Cup, he’s going to get his first tattoo: the three lions crest, with “thirty years of hurt” in bold beneath…

Brexit is roiling markets. The pound dumped, jumped and dumped again as ministers resigned. Is a soft Brexit more likely than ever? Is a hard Brexit on the cards now? Which of the two is good for Britain and bad…

I’m having a tough time trying to persuade the Japanese future in-laws to let their first-born move to London. Relations between Japan and our capital city have been strained since former mayor Boris Johnson flattened a ten-year-old Japanese child trying…

In 2016 I joined the Free Market Road Show. We travelled around Europe giving speeches about things like the EU and the sharing economy. The troupe mostly visited eastern European countries, where the battle of ideologies is still distinct. In…

I’ve argued for years that Britain should draw out the Brexit process as long as possible. Every week, the EU weakens. Every week, warnings about Brexit fade. But this week has me wondering if I was wrong. There seems to…

My resignation from Capital & Conflict is pending. It hinges on the Brexit negotiations. And the suitability of property for sale in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Perhaps you can help. I’m looking for a pair of properties – one either…

The absurdities of Brexit roll on. Boris Johnson supposedly told Germans that Brexit is a mess. No doubt everyone can agree some aspect of the process is a shambles. So why the controversy? Brexit negotiator David Davis found himself reassuring…

Negotiations between the British government and the EU are hotting up. The new question is how many agreements they need to establish a trade agreement. If they can’t agree on this, there won’t be an agreement. Do you need an…

Government shutdowns are practically tradition in the US. They never impact anything in the end. I think it’s some sort of deal between politicians and the media to manufacture some airtime. So let’s look at our neighbours on the other…

We interrupt your coverage of Brexit, bitcoin and central banking to cover something far more important. According to The Sun, experts are concerned chocolate will run out in the next 30 years. Climate change will make it too hot to…

One of the longer running themes of newsletter writing is to stand up for the downtrodden. The meek and weak. The people who newspapers and politicians don’t take sides with. It’s gotten us into plenty of trouble in the past….

The war is over, but the battle has only just begun. That’s the summary of Prime Minister Theresa May’s agreement with the EU. We now know how much we’ll pay the EU… well, approximately how much. What’s a few billion…

Reading the latest news about Brexit makes me feel sick. The whole debate is entirely absurd. The problems are artificial. The political posturing self-serving. A thousand political problems and structures have created a thousand more, none of which need exist…

There are two ways to muck up Brexit. The first is to fail to leave the EU at all. Or to fail to leave to an extent that allows Britain to distance itself from the EU on key issues. Not…

The latest bout of Brexit coverage leaves me with nothing but questions. A lot of them are rhetorical thanks to the nonsense being spouted. A Capital & Conflict reader feedback email is in the works, so you might be able…

Time is ticking away for a Brexit deal. If the next hurdle of the negotiations isn’t completed by December, then vaulting the remaining hurdles by March 2019 will be too difficult. Bloomberg summarised: At a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday,…

Imagine playing the TV show Deal or No Deal with your entire family. Not in the stands, giving you “advice”, but there on stage with you. You all have to make the choices together. For most families, it’d be a…

Today is the day Brexit reaches our Parliament. The first pieces of Brexit’s legislation hit the agenda. The spectacle promises to be entertaining. As always, the British political system has created an ambiguous and contradictory situation which makes a Brit…

It’s a sign of the times. Provident Financial and Royal Mail were kicked out of the FTSE 100 index yesterday. The Royal Mail blamed its slump on Brexit. A lack of confidence is reducing direct mail advertising. Nothing to do…

Posting on social media is keeping the politicians too busy to reform anything these days. It’s not just Donald Trump on Twitter though. EU pollies are avid twits too. Politics seems to have become an ideological drug dealer. People need…

What a glorious day. It has happened at last. Health and safety’s overzealousness has struck Parliament where it hurts – right in the bong. Big Ben’s bong, to be precise. According to various accounts of an enormous parliamentary furore, nobody…

Economics, and life, is about trade-offs. You have to choose the best possible option from a selection of alternatives. Analysing just one of those alternatives and declaring it good or bad does not in any way make it the right…

Smuggling is probably the most honourable profession around. Risking jail time for your customers is quite a service! Second only to people smuggling – risking your own freedom for the freedom of others. Unfortunately neither smuggling nor people smuggling has…

It’s Brexit negotiation day today. David Davis, the exiting the European Union secretary and potential prime minister in waiting, is meeting the European Union’s chief negotiator Michel “Barmy” Barnier in Brussels. Barmy Barnier had previously warned that missing the first…

Well, what do you make of that? A hung parliament and nobody is quite sure why, how or what really happened. One thing’s for sure. The pound wasn’t happy, falling 2.5%: Source: Yahoo Finance It’s difficult to make sense of…

With her local policies causing nothing but problems for Prime Minister Theresa May, she’s turned attention back to Brexit to bolster support. But now her opposition has sanctioned Brexit too. Jeremy Corbyn promises to get a deal with the EU….

The papers have new French president Emmanuel Macron down as a europhile. Apparently he’s going to be a tough negotiator when it comes to Brexit. I explained yesterday why he’s more likely to encourage a deal than cause problems. But…

I promised you an explanation of where the cult of central banking leads us. But that’ll have to wait. The Brexit battle is hardening up. Everyone involved is puffing their chest and making tough statements they’ll later have to walk…

Theresa May wants an election in June. So we’re going back to the polls once more. In true EU style, the rejection of the EU in the referendum wasn’t clear enough. Please vote again… It might seem like this time…

Brexit is done for. A parliamentary inquiry confirmed it on 31 March. A few hours later and the story would’ve read like an April Fools joke. I’m still not completely sure it isn’t. Here’s the totally surreal reason Brexit won’t…

It’s fitting that Theresa May had to address her letter to Donald Tusk. Not on an official level – she had no real choice on that front. Unless there’s a WhatsApp group with all 27 heads of state in it…

Is tomorrow independence day? Theresa May’s declaration of Article 50 is widely expected. Here’s the relevant clause in all its glory: 1. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light…

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel “Barmie” Barnier, wants the UK to pay around €60 billion to the EU as part of a Brexit deal. That’s around six times our average net annual contribution from 2011 to 2015. Former justice minister…

Barmie Barnier cracks down The Financial Times reports on the latest threats from Europe. Michel “Barmie” Barnier, the EU’s lead negotiator and former French minister of the environment and way of life, is getting creative. He claims a “hard Brexit”…

Yesterday we left you wondering who Barmie Barnier is. Quite simply, he’s the key to Brexit. He’ll decide whether the referendum was a mistake or the beginning of something great. True, we’ll get something in between good and bad in…

In today’s letter… why Brexit may never happen… a very British coup… a warning from history… and “operation Clockwork Orange” returns. Tonight MPs will vote to grant, or deny, the government the right to trigger Article 50 and make good…

In this issue of Capital & Conflict… the irony of sovereignty… asking the European Court for permission to leave… inflation returns… how to admit you’re wrong like a central banker… and why gold is suddenly back in fashion. Well you…

What’s the mood in Westminster ahead of Brexit negotiations? If you ask MP Steve Baker, it’s positive. Last week, The Fleet Street Letter’s Charlie Morris sat down at Portcullis House with Steve to talk about what’s coming next for Brexit…

Ah, Donald Tusk you absolute scallywag. Surely you have better things to do than talk Brexit all day? What am I saying. You’re a politician. You’re an EU politician. Of course you don’t have anything of real value to contribute!…

Well if this is the Brexit disaster the establishment predicted, bring on the sequel! Not to be too flippant, but the news just keeps getting worse if you expected Brexit to trigger an immediate catastrophe in Britain. That doesn’t mean…

Remain lost the war, says Tim Price. Better by far that they come to terms with the peace as quickly as possible.

Maybe Britain should have a national identity crisis more often. The FTSE 100 became the first big European index to enter into bull market territory when it closed at 6,682. It’s up 7% year-to-date but more than 20% from the…

Germany up. France up. Italy up. Hungary, Iceland and the Republic of Ireland on fire in the football. Everything’s coming up Europe today! Stockmarkets on the continent have not let last night’s thunderstorms in Britain dampen their spirits. The late…

Let’s take a step back from the abyss. Whether the financial world ends in fire or ice, it still ends. Let’s admire the view from the edge of the abyss. Better yet, let’s ponder the latest note from Goldman Sachs…

Tell me truly: is it possible that Brexit is bad for the City but good for Britain? No one’s really asked this question yet, at least not directly. As someone who’s in the financial services industry, at least nominally, it’s…

Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson wants Prime Minister David Cameron to ban hedge funds from running exit polls on 23 June. It’s not because he’s worried they’ll influence the vote. That’s happened in the US before, where exit polls in…

Last week I showed you that if you took all the UK government liabilities – central and local government, plus pensions and the banks – that the figure was bigger than just the official debt-to-GDP number. Well the government published its…

It’s not quite going nuclear. But chancellor George Osborne has played the “pensions” card in the Brexit debate. He’s said that younger individuals would be “between £223 and £335 a year worse off in retirement.” That’s if you’ve got £20,000…

It will cost you and your family £220 to leave the European Union, according to figures released today by HM Treasury. The expected cost increase is based on a projected 12% decline in sterling over two years (after Brexit), and…

Lower growth and higher inflation. Or liberation from a “mosquito infested swamp and the greatest economy in the world.” You couldn’t get a bigger contrast of possibilities. But that’s how the public debate on Brexit is shaping up. Which side…

The civil war on the Tory party heated up this weekend. The leadership is doubling down on its anti-Brexit rhetoric. Chancellor George Osborne took to the airwaves and said it would “be catastrophic for people’s jobs and their incomes and…

The closer the 23 June referendum gets, the more expensive leaving the European Union gets, at least if figures from the “Remain” camp are to be believed. Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling says that the UK economy…

Another international organisation has warned Britons that leaving the European Union will be costly. This time it’s the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). You can read its report if you like. It’s called “The Economic Consequences of Brexit:…

“Safer, stronger and better off” says the prime minister, to which one might retort “how can we possibly be safer if, as might potentially happen to any one of us, we can be arrested without the least shred of evidence…

I’ve been asked by several readers whether I think the Brexit campaign will succeed. My answer is that the people who will vote to leave are more passionate and committed than the people who want to stay. But as far as I can…

Reader mail continues to pour in on George Osborne’s forecast that Brexit would cost each UK household £4,300 by 2030. One obvious criticism: how can you claim, on the one hand, that we shouldn’t leave because a post-EU future poses…

Is Brexit-induced volatility blowing out the UK current account deficit and causing the pound to slide against the US dollar and the euro? That question rears its thorny head this week with two pieces of macroeconomic data. Let’s do the…

The countdown to Brexit continues. The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) – the lesser known and lesser important cousin to the Monetary Policy Committee – released notes from its meeting on 23 March concluding that ‘Brexit is a…