Innehållsförteckning för 1231 från MoneyWeek

“Bull markets don’t die of old age; they are murdered.” Upswings usually end because central banks put up interest rates and snuff them out (2022); or because bubbles burst (2000, 2008); or a crisis damages confidence and changes the economic outlook (2020, 1973). Today, the American stockmarket has rarely looked healthier. It is on track to post gains of more than 20% for two successive years for the first time since 1997 and 1998. The S&P 500 index has risen in 37 of the past 51 weeks, which hasn’t happened since 2004. But the air is getting thinner and thinner, and several potential culprits could be about to derail the rally (see page 4). “Gold bull markets should not be considered red hot until silver shines” An uphill struggle There…

Food giant Nestlé has been left “counting the cost” of pushing up prices of its most popular brands beyond the reach of “increasingly squeezed customers”, says Sian Bradley in The Times. It has been forced to cut its sales guidance again. Underlying sales increased by an unexpectedly weak 2% in the first nine months of this year, which means that it now expects sales to rise by only 2% over the full year, “the lowest rate since the turn of the century”. Experts have blamed the malaise on Nestlé’s decision “not to ease up quickly enough on price increases” as inflation has cooled, as many of its competitors did. Nestlé’s poor numbers explain why former CEO Mark Schneider was ousted in August, says Aimee Donnellan for Breakingviews. It’s not just…

Despite a sharp slide in the shares earlier this year following mixed quarterly results and the exit of its CEO, Expedia Group “could be an investor’s ticket to paradise”, says Barron’s. News that ride-hailing app Uber is looking to buy the online travel agent “only makes the case stronger”. Demand for travel is high, and new CEO Ariane Gorin is focused on improving market share, efficiency, and sales. There are concerns about hotels being resistant to sharing profits, but on the other hand Expedia and rival Booking have a “near duopoly”, controlling 42% of global bookings. Expedia’s more streamlined platform has led to increased free cash flow. The stock “looks like a bargain”.…

Vladimir Putin will have been “cock-a-hoop” posing for photographs with world leaders including Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping as Russia hosts the 16th Brics summit this week, says The Economist. The rapidly expanding club, which Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all joined this year, now covers more than 40% of the world population and accounts for more than 25% of global GDP. Having been increasingly isolated from the West after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia wants to show the world that it still has friends and is “doing quite well”, says Dewey Sim in the South China Morning Post. The aim of the alliance is to “challenge the economic and political monopoly of the West”, says Sarah Shamim on Al Jazeera. To this end, Brics partners…

Most projections put him only narrowly ahead in the electoral college, but Donald Trump’s momentum in the betting markets continues. With £95.9m matched on Betfair, the former president is now at 1.63 (61.3%) to win, with Kamala Harris at 2.6 (38.5%). This is the highest level Trump has been in the betting markets since the days following Joe Biden’s decision to stand down as Democratic nominee in late July. I still stick with my position that Harris should be the favourite to emerge victorious. Trump may have outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020 in some key states, but the Republicans actually underperformed at the polls in 2022. What’s more, Trump himself did slightly worse than many projected in the primaries (though he won them comfortably). Throw in the fact…

What’s happened? Earlier this month SpaceX achieved a major, thrilling milestone in its mission to create a fully reusable rocket system, which can be recovered and turned around rapidly for another launch without the need for refurbishment. In a world first, at the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX sent the world’s largest and most powerful ever rocket up into space, and within a few minutes returned its “Super Heavy Booster” to the launch site – two giant metallic arms swinging closed to catch it. The technological feat is stunning, the culmination of years of work. As it reapproached Earth, the giant booster (232 feet long, or 70.7 metres) was travelling so fast it glowed hot from the friction. But then its engines briefly fired up again, slowing the…

A yield curve is a graph that shows how the yields on a group of related bonds vary according to their maturity. Investors normally focus on the yield curve for bonds such as US Treasuries or UK gilts. These governments have a vast number of outstanding bonds, with remaining maturities ranging from months to many decades in the future, and so their bonds provide a key benchmark for pricing other bonds and loans of different maturities. But yield curves are also used to compare yields versus maturities for bonds issued by a group of borrowers that have similar credit ratings, or even a single large company. Yield curves move up and down, and shift in shape, in response to demand for bonds of different maturities. A normal yield curve slopes…

Air Products and Chemicals’s (APC) decision to invest $15bn in clean hydrogen projects, because it hopes demand will outstrip supply, has weighed on the US industrial gas firm and “attracted two pushy investors”, says Robert Cyran on Breakingviews. US hedge funds D.E. Shaw and Mantle Ridge are urging APC to curb spending, restructure its board, present a succession plan for its octogenarian CEO Seifi Ghasemi, and overhaul its strategy. Mantle Ridge, with a $1bn stake in APC, has also teamed up with former managers at rival firm Linde to shake up APC. APC is pausing investments until it finds more buyers for its green hydrogen, which governments are promoting because it could decarbonise sectors such as steel and shipping.…

“Women of my generation are the luckiest there’s probably ever been. We got everything, didn’t we? Milk, cod liver oil, rock’n’roll, the pill, no tuition fees. I was paid for by Hull Council. Even my lodgings were contributed to. What a world we had then. In retrospect, prime minister Harold Macmillan was right when he said: ‘We’ve never had it so good.’” Actor Maureen Lipman (pictured), 78, quoted in The Observer “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.” US comedian Phyllis Diller, quoted in Parade “Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason.” Portuguese writer Eça de Queirós, quoted in Gentleman’s Journal “I will be very…

blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview The idea has taken hold that you can live a more meaningful life if you follow your “calling” and make that your day job, say Kirsten Robertson, Brenda Lautsch and David Hannah. That may be true for some, but putting the advice into practice is not straightforward. Consider precisely what you feel called to do. If to play music, for example, would you be happy in any job connected with that, or would only going it alone as a performer do it for you? If the latter, you will find it much harder to make a living and hence may need to supplement your income with other jobs. Then consider labour-market demand for your work and how important financial stability is to you. If it is important, pursue your…

● “Savers are stuffing Isas [individual savings accounts] with cash ahead of the Budget to shield their wealth from a possible tax raid,” says Noah Eastwood in The Telegraph. In the first half of October the number of people who have used their full £20,000 annual Isa allowance has tripled, according to research by Bestinvest. Last month, the increases in contributions of more than £15,000, £10,000 and £5,000 were 208%, 213% and 188% respectively compared with the year before. Concern over higher capital-gains tax rates on the sale of shares has fuelled demand for stocks and shares Isas. If you want to put some money in a cash Isa before the Budget, the best rate is 5.10% from Trading 212. Alternatively, you can get 4.5% on the State Bank of…

● Good news on pension transfers. It now takes an average of just 12 days to move your pension from one provider to another – assuming it’s not a final-salary plan – which is a shorter period than at any time since Covid. That’s encouraging, since shorter pension transfer times make it easier to organise your pension savings into a single account, which in turn can help with retirement planning. And if your pension provider suggests a transfer will take significantly longer than this, you’re entitled to kick up a fuss. ● Thousands of workers at Royal Mail have, from this month onwards, the option of joining their employer’s “Collective Plan”, the first collective defined-contribution (CDC) pension scheme launched in the UK. CDCs are a new type of occupational pension,…

● Canada’s ABC Technologies “seems to be winning over the board of TI Fluid Systems”, says Russ Mould of broker AJ Bell. The manufacturer of fuel tanks and fluid lines for vehicles has said it is “minded to recommend” a proposed bid of 200p per share to shareholders, after rejecting four previous offers. That represents a 37% premium to the company’s share price before the first approach from ABC, which is controlled by private-equity group Apollo. This is less than the average 44% premium across the 30 or more closed and ongoing bids for UK-listed firms this year, but it suggests that “trade buyers still think there is value to be had in the UK market”. ● Tate & Lyle should tell its potential acquirer to “take a hike”, says…

2021 Mount Langi Ghiran, Talus Shiraz, Grampians, Victoria, Australia £39.50, telephone: 020 3609 1331, email: sales@dvinecellars.com Darren Rathbone is the CEO and winemaker of the Rathbone Wine Group, which owns Victoria’s oldest winery, Yering Station, founded in 1838; Xanadu Wines, the elite Margaret River set-up in Western Australia; and my featured estate, the idyllic Mount Langi Ghiran, a cool-climate shiraz icon in the Grampians, a couple of hours’ drive west of Melbourne. Darren launched a suite of 2021 vintage shirazes, which took the roof off St. James’s private wine club, 67 Pall Mall, with their uniquely compelling flavours. Darren raided his museum, opening wines as far back as 1981. It was extraordinary to taste how his precious granitic soils and briskly racy climate give rise to some of the purest,…

The Apprentice Written by Gabriel Sherman Directed by Ali Abbasi Out on general release, cert 15 From unexpectedly beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the US presidential race, to being ejected from office in 2020 and refusing to accept the result, few people have experienced as many highs and lows as the real-estate mogul, reality-television host and former president Donald Trump. The Apprentice, a film written by Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi, dramatises the rise of Trump in the 1970s and ’80s. When the film opens, Trump (Sebastian Stan) is a relative nobody, collecting rent for his “slumlord” father (Martin Donovan), dreaming of redeveloping a derelict hotel but derailed by a racial discrimination lawsuit that threatens to damage the family business. Things change when disgraced lawyer Roy Cohn…

Britain’s top-ten law firms have hiked their hourly rates by nearly 40% over the past five years amid high inflation and a sharp rise in salaries to fend off competition for talent by the expansion of wealthy US firms in London, says Suzi Ring in the Financial Times. They charged clients an average £449 an hour in 2024 compared with £321 in 2019, and there was double-digit growth in average rates across the top-100 firms surveyed by accounting firm PwC. Lawyers booked more billable hours thanks to an upturn in corporate dealmaking and a busy litigation period last year. Although UK rates increased, they remain below top US firms’ on average, and British law firms would find it tough to sustain the pace of growth, cautions PwC’s Mark Anderson. The…

Has the chip cycle turned again? Semiconductor companies have spent the past two years cashing in on the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The PHLX semiconductor index, which tracks the industry’s leading lights, has rallied 140% since a low in late 2022. But the index is down 12% since July this year. Last week, $50bn was wiped off shares in ASML, the firm that enjoys a near monopoly in cutting-edge “extreme ultraviolet lithography” machines, says Ryan Browne for CNBC. The Dutch equipment maker had issued disappointing sales forecasts. The news dragged down other chip stocks, including AMD and Broadcom. Market star Nvidia also wavered before rallying back. The chip market is becoming increasingly “uneven”, says Dan Gallagher for The Wall Street Journal. While demand from AI data centres booms, the wider…

Europe has as many start-ups as the US, but they have a much tougher time growing, says Vincent Collen in Les Echos. A major culprit is the region’s relative dearth of venture capital (VC), which invests in high-risk start-ups. Most start-ups fail, but the most innovative will grow to become tomorrow’s billion-dollar companies. A report from former European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi notes that the EU’s share of funds raised by VC is just 5%, with the UK at 3%. By contrast, China accounts for 40% and a majority (52%) is in the US. The VC funding gap, which is caused by failures to fully integrate the continent’s capital markets, leaves European companies disproportionately reliant on risk-averse debt investors to finance new investment instead.…

Netflix’s shares soared 11% to a record peak after the streaming company added more than five million customers in the third quarter and surpassed Wall Street’s forecasts on every key financial metric, says Lucas Shaw on Bloomberg. Sales for the quarter grew 15% year on year, while earnings increased 41% . The company also predicted that sales next year will rise between 11% and 13% thanks to “a mix of new members and price increases”. Overall, Netflix’s stock has risen more than fourfold since the spring of 2022, with the firm adding more than 60 million customers thanks to a “crackdown” on password sharing and the introduction of a lower-priced subscription with advertising. Tightening the use of passwords has certainly boosted subscriber growth. The streaming service is also “investing heavily”…

One of China’s biggest condiment manufacturers, Foshan Haitian Flavouring & Food, is contemplating a second listing in Hong Kong that could raise around $1.5bn, says Bloomberg. The soy-sauce maker’s Shanghai-listed shares have surged 20% this year, valuing Foshan at around $35bn. Foshan would be following other Chinese firms that have pursued second flotations in Hong Kong, such as appliance maker Midea, which raised $4bn last month. Large listings are beginning to return to Hong Kong thanks to stimulus measures by Beijing. Around $7.3bn has been raised so far this year, more than double the $3.5bn in the same period last year.…

They rely purely on oil and gas. They don’t have much in the way of a domestic economy, nor do they have the depth of technical skills to compete in highly sophisticated service industries. Yet commerce hubs in the Gulf, such as in Bahrain, are emerging as genuine finance centres on their own terms. Most of the major European financial centres think they are competing purely with one another. But those in the Gulf could in time pose a real threat to Paris, Frankfurt and, of course, the City of London too. On a visit to Bahrain earlier this month I was struck by how quickly the island kingdom is developing as a finance centre. “Financial services are already the largest sector of the economy, overtaking oil and gas in…

China needs to implement a “beautiful deleveraging” strategy alongside recent stimulus measures to prevent a debt crisis, says Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund Bridgewater. Mishandling the country’s debt burden could lead to an economic and psychological malaise similar to the one Japan experienced from the 1990s until the middle of the past decade. The solution must involve a balanced combination of debt restructuring alongside boosting the money supply and debt monetisation (having the central bank buy up government debt). Restructuring is deflationary while money creation will be inflationary and the two will help offset each other. “Doing a deleveraging in this way not only reduces debts without triggering either unacceptable deflation or unacceptable inflation, but it also allows viable businesses to get back to business unencumbered by their…

■ Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMIT) has purchased a record £1bn of its shares since announcing its buyback programme seven months ago, says Citywire. In March, SMIT launched the buyback of 8.3% of its shareholder capital to prop up its weak share price after US activist hedge fund Elliott Associates revealed it had a 5% position in the trust. This was the largest-ever buyback for an investment trust. Shares in Baillie Gifford’s flagship fund, which invests in high-growth companies such as Nvidia and Tesla, have struggled in recent years and are down 44% from their November 2021 peak after high interest rates cooled investors’ appetite for high-growth businesses. The shares are trading at a 12% discount to their net asset value (NAV), suggesting that further buybacks are a possibility. London-listed…

unherd.com The “nanny state” is alive and well under the new government, says Christopher Harding. From October 2025, TV ads for junk food will be banned before a watershed and online ones banned entirely. Measures are on the way to stop children buying high-caffeine drinks and smoking. The NHS is poised to enter workplaces to check our weight and blood pressure. The idea is to reduce the strain on the NHS and society. More than a quarter of the population is obese; in Japan, the figure is less than 5%. What could we learn from Japan? Eat a better, more wholesome diet, for starters. School children learn about nutrition in depth and healthy lunches are provided. Governments have long “crafted attitudes” to physical health, with the aim of producing fit…

Defence is one of the hottest investment themes of 2024. Shares in BAE Systems (LSE: BAE) and its European peers have surged higher as investors have flocked to the European rearmament trade, repricing companies for increased spending on defence. The MSCI World Aerospace and Defence index has jumped 22.7% year-to-date and 45.3% over the past year (to the end of September) compared with a return of 18.9% and 32.4% for the wider MSCI World index. While most of the companies in the sector now look fully priced, some opportunities remain. One such opportunity is the defence contractor Babcock International (LSE: BAB). Profits in nuclear subs Around 70% of Babcock’s revenue is tied to the UK defence and civil market; 30% comes from overseas customers. A good percentage of that international base…

“Savers hoping to buy a house paid in £2.4bn last year” Lifetime individual savings accounts (Lisas) are less well-known than other types of Isa but have been growing in popularity. The latest data from HM Revenue & Customs shows that there was a 43% spike in the number of people opening Lisas last year. Those savers paid £2.4bn into the accounts. Lisas are primarily aimed at younger savers keen to build up a deposit for their first home; if you don’t ultimately use the cash for that purpose, you are supposed to leave it in your account as a retirement savings pot. You can invest in a broad range of assets within your Lisa – the same range as with other Isas – and your money grows tax-free. But the…

The price of gold has been on a tear this year; it had gained a fifth by the start of September. But its recent stellar performance notwithsatnding, for many investors, gold is a vital piece of insurance in their portfolio. As the old saying goes: “Gold is money, everything else is credit.” Gold is the only monetary system that has been with humanity for most of its history on earth. Therefore history and stability are the key reasons you buy and hold physical gold. Historically, if investors wanted exposure to gold, they would have had to purchase physical bullion themselves. This can be complicated and makes buying and selling to maintain a target weighting in a portfolio tricky. Many investors now use physically-backed exchange-traded commodities (ETCs). Investors can buy shares…

Has the US Federal Reserve made a mistake? America’s central bank slashed interest rates by 0.5 percentage points last month, an unusually dramatic move designed to pre-empt an economic slowdown. But recent data suggests that cut may have just poured fuel onto the fire. Investors have been treated to a “string of hot data” from the world’s biggest economy, says Matthew Fox for Business Insider. Jobs growth is strong and retail sales “solid”. The Atlanta Fed estimates that US GDP grew at an annual pace of 3.4% in the third quarter, hardly the sign of a stalling economy. That is prompting a rethink about how fast the Fed will cut rates. The US ten-year Treasury yield, which reflects expectations about future rates, has risen from 3.6% in September to 4.2%…

“By failing to mention pollsters’ abysmal track records, the media presents a wildly distorted view of future election results. Who answers phone calls from unknown people and spends 20 minutes answering questions? I suspect they are not a representative pool of US voters. Since 1980, turnout in presidential elections has ranged from 50% to 67% of the voting-age population, which pales in comparison to most other Western democracies. Who gets up off the couch and casts their vote? The answer is a giant unknown. A third to half of eligible voters don’t bother. This is also why a 2%-3% margin of error is laughably wrong – it’s much closer to a 6%-8% margin of error. The polling misled people in 2016 (Trump won), they didn’t get 2020 quite right (Biden…

Shares in luxury-goods firms have slumped after LVMH, which owns Moët & Chandon and Dior, reported an unexpectedly steep decline in third-quarter sales, says Joanna Partridge in The Guardian. Revenue in the “bellwether” fashion and leather goods division fell by 5%, which LVMH blamed on an “uncertain economic and geopolitical environment”, especially in Asia. The news unsettled investors in Hermès, Burberry and LVMH’s smaller rival Kering (the owner of Gucci). Chinese shoppers have cut back amid the ongoing real-estate crisis, wiping “the equivalent of $60,000 off the net worth of Chinese households”, says Carol Ryan in The Wall Street Journal. This is bad news, as China has been a key growth driver for luxury over the past two decades, with the country now accounting for a third of global luxury…

Five to buy Intertek The Telegraph Intertek’s shares have returned 26% since April 2023, outperforming the FTSE 100. The prospect of a short-term economic slowdown could undermine the stock, but the provider of testing and inspection services stands to benefit in the long run from lower interest rates in the US, its biggest market. Half-year sales and operating profit both increased. Intertek offers a “favourable long-term risk/reward opportunity”. 5,105p IMI The Times IMI makes valves to regulate the flow of steam, gases, and fluids. Around 60% of sales are generated from its automation business, with 45% from high-margin aftermarket services. IMI boasts an 18.7% operating profit margin, an 89% cash-conversion rate, and geographically diverse sales. Although the shares are cyclical and have struggled recently, first-half organic revenue grew 5%. The…

India and China reached an agreement on patrolling arrangements along their disputed border, raising hopes of an “easing of tensions”, say John Reed and Edward White in the Financial Times. The border area in the Himalayas is “one of Asia’s most tense arenas of geopolitical conflict”. Clashes between the two sides in 2020 left at least 24 troops, mostly Indians, dead, with both sides later deploying at least 50,000 more troops each to the area. Since then the government of prime minister Narendra Modi (pictured with Chinese president, Xi Jinping) has taken a hard line on the issue, making de-escalation a condition of resuming normal relations. The dispute has “bedevilled” ties between the world’s two most populous nations, and resulted in India banning certain Chinese products, restricting Chinese investment and…

Classic Hollywood film monsters, such as Nosferatu, Wolf Man, and Frankenstein, are being remade by renowned filmmakers such as Robert Eggers, Leigh Whannell, and Guillermo del Toro, says Keiran Southern in The Sunday Times. These monsters, which have traditionally appeared in “shlocky B-movies”, are being used as powerful storytelling devices in prestige films, ripe for Oscars glory. It’s no wonder del Toro has spent his career exploring the meaning of monsters, notably with The Shape of Water, given the commercial potential of the genre. Initially unsucessful Godzilla Minus One, for example, made more than $115m at the global box office last year on a budget of $15m. Their resurgence may be a response to global crises, providing a way for audiences to confront their anxieties. German expressionists, responding to World…

Short-term interest rates are going down – the only questions are how much central banks cut, and how fast. Longer-term rates are another matter. Yields on US ten-year Treasuries are up by half a percentage point to 4.2% over the past month; UK ten-year gilts are up by a quarter point at the same level. That’s unusual: the only time in recent history that ten-year Treasuries have risen by that much immediately after the US Federal Reserve began cutting was during the 1995 soft landing. Markets clearly do not believe we will return to the ultra-low rates of the past decade. This seems reasonable. Since 1962, the average (median) yield on the ten-year Treasury has been 5.6% and average inflation over the same period has been 3.09%. As a crude…

This year is shaping up to be a landmark one for the investment-trust sector. It entered 2024 in turmoil. Trusts were trading at the widest average discount to net asset value (NAV) since 2009, and managers were fighting the City regulator’s heavy-handed application of cost-disclosure rules. These made trusts seem far more expensive than other actively managed funds. While there are many advantages to owning an investment trust over an actively managed fund, not least trusts’ closed-ended nature making them suitable for holding illiquid assets, they will always be lumped with the actively managed sector and compared with passives. Active management will always be more expensive than passively managed funds, and there will always be more risk involved in picking stocks. For the past decade, moreover, there has been a…

Get out of the fiscal doom loop Wolfgang Munchau The New Statesman As our government ponders higher employer national insurance, it should consider the probable fate of the unpopular Olaf Scholz, whose austerity measures could cost him next year’s German election, says Wolfgang Munchau. Indeed, “the one-term government is austerity’s single biggest trophy”. Scholz won in 2021 on a modernisation ticket and, although he started well with a “big investment programme” thanks to an unused pot set aside for Covid recovery, last November Germany’s constitutional court decided that the “heist” was unconstitutional, leading to a raft of “panicked” austerity measures. “The tragedy about fiscal rules is that the left invented them” in an effort to “atone” for the profligacy of left-wing governments in the 1970s. Germany’s SPD co-invented the constitutional…

cuttingroomtales.wordpress.com Veterans of the British film and TV industry have said this year is the worst they can remember, says Guy Ducker. “No one’s working.” Last year, 74% of British film crews were out of work. This year, 88% are concerned about their financial security. Why so grim? A “perfect storm” of factors have contributed. High interest rates have raised the cost of borrowing and made films a less attractive investment. The cost-of-living crisis has kept audiences and advertising revenue away and raised the cost of production. Crews are demanding higher salaries. Broadcasters’ budgets have collapsed. Films going straight to streaming services – rather than first to cinemas and DVD release and so on – make less money. The streamers too are reining in spending and lucrative Hollywood franchises are…

Storm Ashley has been a stark reminder of the damage bad weather can do to people’s houses and the importance of having a suitable home-insurance policy. Let’s start with the practical steps you can take to prepare your home for winter. “If your roof, shed and property aren’t well maintained, there’s a higher risk of damage, which could lead to a denied claim [on] the grounds that the damage was due to poor maintenance rather than the storm,” says Anna Thurnstrom from Saga Insurance in Good Housekeeping. Firstly, check your roof. “Look for dislodged tiles or slates, missing mortar, wet patches indoors, loose flashing, and standing water on flat roofs,” says Jayne Dowle in The Sunday Times. “Any of these can indicate roof problems that will only get worse when…

The average age of a borrower taking out a new equity-release plan has fallen to just 68, data from one of the industry’s leading providers reveals. Pure Retirement says its typical lifetime mortgage customer is now just 68 when they first borrow. Equity-release plans are aimed at older people looking to release cash tied up in their homes. Traditionally, the schemes have been the preserve of older pensioners – perhaps those needing cash to pay for care costs, for example. But pressure on finances are prompting more people to explore equity release at an earlier age – often to generate cash to supplement their retirement income. That’s not necessarily a problem, as long as people understand the products. With most plans, you borrow money against the value of your home.…

Unleashed Boris Johnson William Collins, £30 Shortly after the 2019 election, I remember talking with someone who argued that Keir Starmer was too “metropolitan” to win back the Red Wall. Surely, I countered, no one could be more metropolitan than the victor in that election, Boris Johnson, who was born in New York, spent much of his childhood in Brussels, was paid as much as a footballer for much of his career and was once the mayor of Britain’s largest city. But my interlocutor had a point. For many years the normal rules of politics didn’t seem to apply to Johnson. His memoir, Unleashed, reminds us of the reasons why he rose so high, despite obvious shortcomings. For one thing, Johnson is a talented – or at least striking –…