Statutory warning: The value of your investment philosophy may go down as well as up, and you may not get back the Prime Minister you put in.

Half a year, as they say, is a long time in politics. (Well actually, they were talking about a week, but let’s not quibble.) As we start a brand New Year,  it’s quite hard to reflect that it’s been  more than six months since Theresa May lost her electoral halo in the mid-June election, in the sort of dramatic throwaway election decision that would have made a decent plot for any Greek tragedy.

You know the storyline already. She whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. Or proud, or triumphant, or something like that. Not that any of those descriptions properly fit Theresa May’s description, we might protest. Decent, yes, determined, yes, intelligent, yes, principled, probably, argumentative, yes – but mad? Surely not?

No change, honestly

That doesn’t alter the fact that the knives have been well and truly out in the forum, and that the Brutuses and the Cassiuses (Bruti and Cassii?) are probably still plotting. But so far, so good. As December approached, the heavily-rumoured conspiracies against the iron-effect-lady were still in welcome abeyance, and even her continental adversaries seemed aware that, if they undermined her too badly, they’d only open the way for a coup d’etat from the Borisites or the Govites, or even the Corbynites. And that would be worse than anything.

Praise be, then, for Mrs May’s Chancellor, Philip Hammond, who delivered just enough on 22^nd November to keep the spittle-flecked hordes at bay without opening up too much of a vulnerable flank. His deceptively skillful Budget speech absorbed all the economic bad news, without appearing to concede that anything much needed to be done to improve matters.

Oh, he said, the country would be building 300,000 homes within eight or nine years, and we’d beef up our tech investment with extended tax incentives for risk investment, and we’d reinstate George Osborne’s forgotten talk about the Northern Powerhouse, but otherwise it was going to be business as usual. For once, there was no need for big changes to taxation or pensions; just an incentive for first time housebuyers and a quick bung to the National Health Service, and the job was done.

Crowd Pleaser

To nobody’s great surprise, the London stock market applauded. Well, sort of. (Question – do you detect a pattern here?) The Footsie’s stability during the next few days seemed to suggest that relief rather than adrenaline was driving the trend as we all rolled toward the Christmas bonus season. All we had to do was hold our collective breath, and we’d make into through to the spring with, well, a spring in our step.

Is that confidence justified? I ask that question in a wide-open way. Bearing in mind, of course, that the Footsie has been supported by the multinationals who account for so much of its weight. And that gold, oil and financial stocks have been in an uptrend that has more to do with warring Middle Easterners than with the success of Philip Hammond’s local prognostications.

OK, so last month Mrs May managed to pour some calming oil on the Brexit waters and we have to hope that things can progress in a meaningful way as a result.  Any hold-ups in negotiating trade deals would clobber British industry and commerce in ways that are hardly being voiced at present. But you can take it that investment, job creation and the entire question of where to site the European command and control room are being discussed, and urgently so. The shareholders would expect nothing less.

Where does that leave the Prime Minister? Still in charge, still centre stage, but still in need of her prompter as the pantomime plot develops at a pace that would leave Ant and Dec breathless. Is she in danger of getting voted off the island?

“Oh no she isn’t.”

“Oh yes she is.”

“Behiiiiiiiind you…..”

Happy Christmas!

Michael Wilson, Editor in Chief