That’s how the chancellor’s luck runs these days. You arrange to open the day’s trading on the stock exchange to hail a “new golden age” for the City and bask in the sight of the FTSE 100 index above 10,000, and what happens? You have to skip off to the prime minister’s statement on Greenland.
In the event, Rachel Reeves needn’t have worried about the poor optics of overseeing a terrible day for share prices. Donald Trump’s weekend threat of tariffs on eight European countries, including the UK, did not cause an explosion in the London stock market. The Footsie closed down 0.4%, which doesn’t register on the doomsday radar, although European stocks did worse. There was even a £7.7bn bid for the insurer Beazley at a fat premium.
