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RAIL STRIKES BATTER HOSPITALITY AS UNION’S LYNCH VOWS TO FIGHT ON JACK BARNETT, EMILY HAWKINS, ILARIA GRASSO MACOLA AND STEFAN BOSCIA LARGE parts of London resembled a ghost town yesterday as rail workers kicked off the first of several days of strikes. Bars in the capital warned they are haemorrhaging tens of thousands of pounds in lost bookings due to mass walkouts deterring commuters, raising the threat of businesses missing out on revenues from the so-called ‘golden quarter’ for the third year in a row.
Industry groups UKHospitality and the Night Time Industries Association estimated that venues would lose as much as £2bn due to the walkouts. Nightlife bosses also warned firms would go bankrupt and thousands of jobs could be lost. London Bridge bar Amazing Grace shed £50,000 due to cancelled Christmas parties, with Sammie Ellard-King from the venue saying staff’s lost hours were “really upsetting”. City cabaret club owner Alex Proud said his venue was sold out every night a
month ago but was now down £30,000 in 24 hours. After Covid-19 disruption, Proud said he was “in shock” that the industry was “now being hit again”. Figures out yesterday from the ONS revealed 400,000 working days were lost to strikes in October, the highest since November 2011. The disruption is set to ramp up in the coming weeks and union bosses told City A.M. the annual figure could hit the highest this century. Network Rail staff and 14 other train operators will also down tools on
December 16, 17 and four days in January as part of a long-standing dispute. Members of the union RMT will also strike over Christmas after they rejected a nine per cent pay rise over two years and no compulsory redundancies until early 2025. Rishi Sunak yesterday warned his cabinet that winter will be “challenging” in the face of widespread industrial action. Yesterday RMT boss Mick Lynch railed against the “super-rich”, the “right-wing” BBC and the government in interviews from the picket line.
BANK OF ENGLAND governor Andrew Bailey poured cold water on ambitious government plans to rewrite the financial services rulebook yesterday, warning that the regulatory issues which led in part to the global financial crisis have not gone away. The government is set to tweak some 30 pieces of regulation, the so-called Edinburgh reforms, which it believes will free the City to be more competitive on a global basis. That includes changes to EUera Solvency II regulations, which put limits on long-term investing by pension funds and insurers, as well as changing ring-fencing rules for banks. But yesterday Bailey said he “would… caution that the notion we’re past the financial crisis, and we therefore don’t need the regulations that we had post the financial crisis, I would not go along with that view.” The governor – who welcomed the review of regulations – appeared to be responding to remarks by City minister Andrew Griffith in an interview with City A.M. last week, when the former Sky exec said the world had “moved on” from the global financial crisis. “Banks have much more capital today [and] lending practices are much tighter,” he said last week.
Branson: I’d be looking to invest elsewhere unless the UK can fix red tape issues CHARLIE CONCHIE SIR RICHARD Branson has ruled out investing new cash in the UK for the foreseeable future, claiming the economy has been hamstrung by trade barriers, economic headwinds and “red tape”. The Virgin tycoon, who founded
his business empire as a record shop in London in 1970, said the company was looking elsewhere to invest its cash due to the cocktail of economic pressures battering the UK economy. “As far as new money’s concerned, we would not necessarily invest new
money in Britain at the moment,” he told Tom Swarbrick on LBC. “We’re more likely to invest in America or in some other countries.” Branson called for a Swissstyle arrangement with the European Union in order to give the UK some
much-needed go forward. “I think what the government needs to do is to urgently seek a mutually beneficially relationship with the EU – it’s the world’s largest trading bloc – it needs to be at least similar to the deal Switzerland has.” Such an arrangement would see the UK fall in line with the EU on
food and agricultural standards and would slash the checks on goods between the UK and the bloc. Suggestions of a Swiss-style deal have recently been rubbished by ministers however, following backlash from hardline Eurosceptics in the Tory party after the idea was mooted by government aides.
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