Insights

TMT icon

Political support for the “gig economy”: nowhere left to hide?

TMT

Conan D'Arcy
|

Ed Vaizey made a splash at Global Counsel’s breakfast “Digital Tech: Bridge or Barrier to Social Mobility?” when he suggested that self-employed platform workers should receive the minimum wage. The former Minister of Culture and the Digital Economy was responding to a succession of controversies over working conditions in the so-called “gig economy”: Deliveroo riders…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

An £18bn misunderstanding

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

A British think tank rather definitively announced last week that it had added up the potential tariff bill for EU-UK trade in a ‘hard Brexit’ scenario – and declared the EU the bigger loser by some margin. Applying the EU’s existing tariffs by tariff line to existing trade flows gave them a ‘bill’ for EU exports of around £13bn. The implied tax on UK exports to the EU…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

What kind of trade policy passes the Namur test?

Trade & Manufacturing

Guillaume Ferlet
|

After a rough week in Namur, Wallonia’s capital, EU member states and EU trade policymakers will be reflecting on what CETA's near death brush with elected politicians means for future trade deals. So what are they likely to conclude?

Read more
Financial services icon

'Singapore of the North Atlantic': a viable option for post-Brexit Britain?

Financial Services

Ying Staton
|

In the months since Brexit there have been murmurings about whether, post-Brexit, Britain could adopt a ‘Singapore model’. A number of Brexiteers in the financial sector have suggested that Britain could become a “super-duper Singapore” through deregulation and focusing on new markets in Asia.

Read more
General Politics

Offshore Britain?

General Politics

Leo Ringer
|

According to one major newspaper, the UK Government is developing a “nuclear” Brexit negotiating threat in the form of a corporation tax cut to 10%. The logic goes that the prospect of an aggressively low-tax “offshore” UK on the doorstep would scare the EU into accommodating British preferences for the future UK-EU relationship. But as with all nuclear deterrents, the…

Read more
General Politics

Spain will have a new government, but how much will it be able to do?

General Politics

Roberto Robles
|

After 10 months of political uncertainty and two general elections, Spain will now get a government, but one that will be severely constrained. Incumbent interim centre-right Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will now face, and win, an investiture vote in the Congress of Deputies at the end of the week. This follows the decision by the centre-left Socialist Party at the…

Read more
General Politics

Pravin Gordhan and what happens next in South Africa

General Politics

Matthew Duhan
|

In his time, Pravin Gordhan has played many roles: pharmacist; anti-apartheid activist; prisoner; chief taxman; and finance minister not once, but twice. In South Africa’s current political morality play, he is cast as the martyr – fending off what many see as politically motivated accusations of fraud from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to prevent him exposing…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

CETA: What’s the matter with Wallonia?

Trade & Manufacturing

Daniel Capparelli
|

This has been a tricky week for EU trade policy. Up until last Friday, EU governments were largely expected to unanimously give their final greenlight in this week’s Council meeting for the signing and provisional implementation of CETA. However, this week the minister president of Belgium’s Wallonia Region Paul Magnette de facto ordered the Belgian federal government to…

Read more
General Politics

Is Donald Trump about to become an exception to the ‘October 31 rule’?

General Politics

Kirsty Allan
|

Donald Trump’s performance in the third and final presidential debate seems unlikely to do much to stem his plummeting popularity. It is not unusual for presidential campaigns to be tawdry affairs but the last couple of weeks has seen the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton shock even seasoned political commentators. The clip of audio revealing Trump’s amused…

Read more
General Policy icon

Less taxation for… more representation

General Policy

Thomas Gratowski
|

The German federal election is less than a year away and strategists in the two large coalition parties are both preparing to answer the same question: how to change the subject from migration. This week hinted at the likely answer, and it is not a particularly novel one: money.

Read more
Financial services icon

Marmite for banks

Financial Services

Gregor Irwin
|

When British Prime Minister Theresa May addressed her Conservative Party conference earlier this month she railed against the side-effects of super-low interest rates and bemoaned the cost to savers. She promised to fix the problem “because that’s what a Conservative Government can do” raising concerns about whether a government that says it is “prepared to intervene”…

Read more
General Policy icon

The 100,000 person question

General Policy

Leo Ringer
|

Immigration is the simmering political issue at the heart of Brexit. Much of the debate has focused on how far the UK can reclaim control of EU migration into the UK, while retaining some form of participation in, or preferential access to, the single market. But what if we assume that full migration policy is back in the hands of the UK government. How does it meet…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

In the Brexit divorce, who gets custody of the EU’s FTAs?

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

Like many divorces, Brexit is going to be a custody battle of sorts. UK Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox has warned (via his preferred UK newspapers) his EU counterparts that attempts to prevent the UK inheriting a large number of FTAs signed on the UK’s behalf by the EU could be met with retaliation by those EU trading partners. This is, in essence,…

Read more
General Policy icon

Indonesia opens a new front in the GAFA wars

General Policy

Ying Staton
|

ASEAN policymakers have always watched their European counterparts closely – both for good and bad examples. The European Commission’s landmark decision last month instructing Ireland to claw back €13 billion of unpaid corporate tax from Apple is no exception.

Read more
General Politics

EU tuition fees post-Brexit: feast or famine?

General Politics

Leo Ringer
|

In a week when a UK university, Oxford, was crowned the best in the world, it’s worth reminding ourselves that Brexit gives the British higher education sector a lot to chew on. The potential loss of research funding and restricted access to top EU talent are headline concerns, but here’s a different question: what happens once EU students become classified as …

Read more
TMT icon

Brexit and the audio-visual sector – facing up to life outside the single market

TMT

Conan D'Arcy
|

As Whitehall limbers up for the UK’s exit negotiations from the European Union by establishing new departments and recruiting new staff, it will be some time before the government reaches its full capacity for managing the negotiations. Before this point, however, fundamental decisions will need to be taken about the direction of the negotiations, such as whether to…

Read more
Financial services icon

Support for outward investment: a questionable solution to a misdiagnosed problem

Financial Services

Gregor Irwin
|

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox slipped out an important change in policy earlier this month when he told Conservative MPs that from now on the government would give the same weight to supporting outward investment as it does to inward investment. His concern is the deterioration in the current account. Inward investment may bring jobs, but foreign companies want a…

Read more
TMT icon

Will the EU's new cybersecurity law prevent another Yahoo?

TMT

Conan D'Arcy
|

The data security world has been rocked by Yahoo’s revelation that it had been the victim of a “state sponsored” hack leading to the exposure of 500 million user accounts. Beyond the sheer scale of the breach, its significance lies in the apparent lack of transparency with users, who were only notified this week when the incident is reported to have occurred in 2014. This…

Read more