A look into the Lord Mayor’s wardrobe secrets, Old Street reopens it’s “non-roundabout” and Nick Clegg dishes out some career advice: catch up on the latest City gossip in this week’s edition of The Capitalist
Fight for the Right (to Party)
What remains of the centre-right’s great and good gathered in Westminster Abbey’s dramatic cloisters for Conservative Home’s summer drinks reception on Tuesday evening, with the gothic surroundings providing an appropriate backdrop for a party still traumatised by the election results. Angus Parsad-Wyatt, the website’s CEO, noted there were fewer Tory MPs around than the previous year, but on the upside that meant “more wine and canapes for everyone else”. That’s the spirit! Two MPs who did show up were Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly, canvassing support for their leadership campaigns.
Meanwhile the Tory bible’s new editor, the ebullient Giles Dilnot, insisted that “rumours of the Conservative party’s inevitable demise are exaggerated” but it must be said that most of the chatter among guests was about adapting to life in opposition. Spirits were lifted, however, when it was announced that the night’s sponsor, Nationwide, had opted not to give a speech. Last year a different sponsor held the stage for so long that someone in the crowd fainted.
The Magic Three-Sided Non-Roundabout
That the reconstruction of Old Street Roundabout (first announced by David Cameron in 2012) would ever reach completion had become something of a joke among Silicon Roundabout’s techy frequenters, but TfL got the last laugh last week with the junction’s grand reopening – which came in only four years behind schedule and a mere £82m over budget. Not to worry, developers were confident the grand unveiling of the new roundabout – which original government plans promised would be a “visionary project” that would create “Europe’s largest indoor civic space, dedicated to startups” – would prove it had been well worth the wait. Alas.
“Clearly, this is risible,” Nicholas Boys Smith MBE, chairman of town-building think tank Create Streets, told The Capitalist after the unveiling of the grass-topped glass structure. “No fair-minded observer will conclude that this is good enough for London or for Londoners.”
Oh dear. Perhaps an architect would be more sympathetic? “As a local resident, pedestrian and bus passenger I think the Old Street Roundabout project has been a waste of public funds which has resulted in a degraded urban experience,” architect and former City of London planning officer Professor Peter Wynne Rees told The Capitalist. “We now have a three-sided non-roundabout which delays buses and constrains vital services to the City of London. TfL must realise that transport planners are not capable ‘place-makers’. Appointing architects to ‘tartify’ the ‘piazza’ was a waste of time. You cannot polish a t**d.”
Hope remains though, with TfL confirming to The Capitalist that “finishing touches” were still to come – we’ll keep you posted.
The silent treatment
Investors and founders gathered at an event in London this week were understandably nervous about the upcoming Budget and looming changes to the tax regime. This crowd is generally diplomatic in public but in private some of them let off steam, with one high-profile figure lamenting the lack of any engagement with Downing Street or the Treasury. “They’ve built a ring of steel around Starmer and Reeves,” he said. The PM and Chancellor aren’t exactly easy to get to, but this entrepreneur thought he had a good way into the new regime, having contributed to Labour’s plans for start-ups in the run up to the election. Since then, crickets. This doesn’t bode well.
The Lord Mayor’s clothes
Victoria Starmer’s knickers got the Prime Minister in a twist this week. Or something like that. The Labour leader certainly came under fire for not immediately declaring clothes gifted to his wife by Labour donor Lord Alli, and the hoo-haa got The Capitalist wondering about our own Lord Mayor’s bulging wardrobe of ceremonial robes, chains and hats. On an annual salary of £32,000, is he relying on hand-outs, too? Maybe. “The City of London Corporation holds a central stock of aldermanic robes and if required, a robe can be provided at no cost to them,” A City of London Corporation spokesperson said, confirming the garb comes at “no cost to the taxpayer.” Although, frankly, rummaging through the old lockers at the Guildhall is a bit of an embarrassing look, isn’t it? “Most buy their own robes,” added the spokesperson.
Clegg’s warning to ex-MPs
The City is still awash with ex-MPs looking for a gig after losing their job at the hands of voters back in July. It’s not easy out in the cold, which is perhaps why Nick Clegg went to California. The former Deputy Prime Minister, now right hand man to Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, has been chatting to Jimmy McLoughlin for the latest episode of the Jimmy’s Jobs podcast, and he has some advice for defeated MPs trying to forge a new path. “Don’t trade on past glories,” he says. “Maybe there’s some jobs where people care that you were the minister for pencil sharpeners… but in most cases they don’t.” Plenty of people were surprised when Clegg rocked up in Silicon Valley but he tells Jimmy that he wasn’t ready to “sit on a few non-exec [boards], write a book that nobody reads and pontificate occasionally on the Graveyard slot of the Today Programme.” Who might he have in mind?
On the nose
Is now the right time to sell your business? That’s the question asked in a recent marketing email from wealth managers Evelyn Partners. If their clients are scrambling ahead of expected changes to Capital Gains Tax, they’re not the only ones busy in the market. Evelyn’s private equity owners, Permira, is preparing to offload the advisory firm’s professional services arm for a reported £500m. The division in question specialises in offering tax advice to businesses, which is surely a growth industry these days.
Onlyfans is hiring
Looking for a new job? Sex worker platform Onlyfans is hiring a legal compliance analyst, much to the disdain of some Linkedin loudmouths. One dissenting voice hijacked a post by CEO Keily Blair to criticise the website’s saucy reputation. “Couldn’t imagine a better job as a lawyer than legitimizing prostitution,” wrote one founder. Blair hit back, typing in the comments: “you should probably check out our ToS before saying things that are factually incorrect (good lawyers do that).” She might have the last laugh: Onlyfans’ rating on company review website Glassdoor is 4.4, way above the average of 3.5.