Weekend Box: Spreadsheet Sunak, Adidas & more
Editor's Note
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business, and cultural news from around the world.
At the end of every busy week in Westminster, ministerial private offices ask their departments to submit papers to the ‘weekend box’ for Ministers and Secretaries of State to catch up with over the weekend. Similarly, we would like to send you into the weekend with a few stories to catch up with at your leisure.
So, let’s delve inside the Weekend Box.
Image credit/Number 10 on Flickr/License
Spreadsheet Sunak
This week UK markets rallied and sullen backbenchers were revived by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the despatch box. Evidently, there is already a feeling that the former Goldman Sachs analyst, who spent over an hour running through spreadsheets with the Chancellor yesterday, is a safer pair of hands than his predecessor.
At PMQs this week, Sunak was clearing the decks and wiping away the remnants of Truss’s policies. A ban on fracking was reintroduced and it was apparent that every area of public spending would be up for review as a part of the fiscal plan which will now take place on 17 November. In a move that has rattled some Tory MPs, Sunak also refused to commit to raising the state pension in line with inflation, as Truss did last week. Come November, he is likely to have a battle on his hands if the divisive manifesto pledge is canned.
However, the “fairytale economics” of unfunded tax cuts are decisively out and Sunak is not just enforcing fiscal discipline, but operational discipline in his own party. As it was reported by The i, departments will be instructed not to jump the gun on any policy area before it has been examined by Sunak and the Chancellor.
As Audley’s CEO Chris Wilkins writes for Audley Intelligence, Sunak’s ‘slickness has been replaced by sombre stability. Grown-up, sensible government is the order of the day’. The new Prime Minister’s penchant for numbers and spreadsheets may seem pedestrian, but with a gaping financial black hole that needs filling, a ‘nerdy workaholic’ has never seemed more enticing. After the chaos that was Johnson and the idealogue that was Truss, sombre stability seems to be back in fashion.
Read more about Sunak’s gamble on continuity over change in Chris Wilkins’ blog for Audley Intelligence.
Image credit/Corey Velazquez/License
Adidas Kicks out Ye
It was one of the most famous partnerships in music and fashion history; a collaboration between a world-famous name in sportswear and a modern-day icon of pop culture. However, the deal that produced the Adidas x Yeezy shoe series is no longer, with Adidas cutting ties with Ye, F.K.A. Kanye West on Tuesday.
The split follows a string of incidents of public antisemitism by Ye, and comes just two weeks after the rapper wore a ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt at Paris Fashion Week. The Yeezy collaboration was Adidas’ most successful in the brand’s history, accounting for 10% of the sportswear giants’ revenue. The split with Ye will, in the immediate term, cost the company up to EUR 250m.
Ye, meanwhile, is projected to lose a billion dollars of his fortune, lending a bitter irony to his recent appearance on Piers Morgan’s Piers Uncensored, where he offered him tips on how to be as rich as he is. When news of the Adidas split broke, Morgan took to Twitter, goading Ye (who was banned from the platform earlier in the month) by telling him to ask “again” who the richer of the two is.
This is far from the only partnership that Ye has lost due to his recent behaviour. Balenciaga, GAP, FootLocker, Peloton, Def Jam, JP Morgan, and talent agency CAA have all severed ties with the rapper as well. The fallout from his behaviour is a reminder to brands and PR professionals that attaching so much of yourself to one individual, even if they deliver creatively, can carry the risk of tarnishing a whole business and wiping millions off its value. Adidas has escaped lightly given they can rely on the brand recognition of their historic three-striped style, with or without Ye, but other companies might not be so lucky.
ECB: Will inflation break the bank?
On Thursday the European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates in the eurozone to 1.5%. The ECB made a strong signal that more rate rises will be coming as it battles to control inflation.
The ECB, not unlike the Bank of England, is facing an incredibly tough balancing act. Double-digit inflation must be tamed, so raising rates is the obvious lever to pull. But the corollary is higher borrowing costs, which risks tipping already ailing eurozone economies into real strife.
European leaders will be painfully aware of the attendant horrors a serious downturn could bring, remembering how the last serious recession led to the proliferation of populist politics and the real threat of European disintegration.
Heads of government across Europe have not been shy in questioning the ECB’s approach. Italian premier Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin have all, with varying degrees of hostility, urged the ECB to rethink its course of action, lest it makes the looming recession even worse.
Could the ECB’s very independence be under threat? While genuine threats to the central bank’s decision-making still seem far off, in such fractious economic and political circumstances, we may yet see our European neighbours wanting to “take back control”.
Image credit/Ldo/License
Carr-Crash TV
This week, Channel 4 continued its mission ‘to create change through entertainment’. The subtly named Jimmy Carr Destroys Art saw the comedian present a number of artworks to a studio audience, including pieces by people responsible for heinous crimes and atrocities, and put it to them whether the pieces should be saved or destroyed. The result: a work by Rolf Harris was preserved, while one by Eric Gill, who is said to have sexually abused two of his daughters, was burned.
Coming from the broadcaster that brought us Naked Attraction, in which couples pick their partners based on – you guessed it – their birthday suits, and My First Threesome, about which the less guessed the better, we should hardly be surprised at the provocative title.
The destruction of art for political or protest’s sake is a theme as old as time: statues of Roman emperor Augustus, who ruled from 27BC, were beheaded by an invading army shortly after he came to power. The Mona Lisa herself will not have been shocked at the recent soup attack by Stop Oil protestors. In her time, she has been targeted with, in no particular order, a razor blade, acid, a rock, red paint, a teacup, and cake. It’s no wonder that smile seems a little strained.
But the popular sentiment seems to be that Carr’s latest endeavour has taken one liberty too many. Commentators have compared it to the burning of books, with Carr facing criticism for the inclusion of an artwork by Adolf Hitler on the programme, in light of his own previous comedic material about the Holocaust. The FT gave the ‘grim and unedifying’ show one star. In any case, Jimmy Carr Destroys Art has reignited the long-standing debate about whether art and creator are inextricably and innately linked, or whether the two can ever be separated. Carr may come to wish the latter was true.
Ford: The Fiesta’s Over
Nearly 50 years after its launch in 1976, next June will see the end of the road for a cultural icon: the Ford Fiesta.
Launched as an economical run-around and made in Valencia, Spain, the Fiesta soon became a favourite in the UK – even if its name suggesting a party was a bit of a stretch. For many, it was an affordable first car, while some families chose it as their second car in the 1990s and 2000s when car ownership grew.
Many owners were women, some of whom had joined the workforce and chose the Fiesta for their commute. Others, principally younger men, were drawn to the ‘hot hatch’ versions of the Fiesta: the XR2 and later the ST, which gained legendary status and an ever more startling array of custom finishes.
Across all variants, the Fiesta’s popularity grew and grew, with 4,804,098 sold. Between 2009 and 2020 it was Britain’s best-selling car until the Vauxhall Corsa overtook it last year.
So, what led Ford to terminate one of its most popular models? The answer lies in their wholesale switch to producing electric cars, with a target to produce only electric by 2030. To that end, Ford is phasing out this and other models, such as the S-MAX and Galaxy, in favour of electric alternatives. Other models such as the Mondeo are already gone. The Fiesta’s replacement will be an all-electric version of the Puma mini-SUV. This will be made at their plant in Cologne, Germany, along with some 1.2m other electric models in the next 6 years, following a $2bn investment.
To say farewell, Ford has released a nostalgic video, in which a Fiesta-owning grandad reads his grandson the bedtime story of ‘Fiesta – Little Family Car’. It describes the Fiesta as ‘a car for the people’, with the book closing on it now because ‘its job is done’. Worth a watch, if the story of the Fiesta sparks a few fond memories from your lifetime.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audley.uk.com.
For now, that’s the weekend box officially closed.