Monday and already we suspect that John Healey will essentially kill off the idea of the family-run business. 93% of UK businesses are family-run and employ 15.8m people. When they tried it in Canada and Greece, many collapsed and investment in the remainder did as well. And if you think that is helping the farmers, think again.
Not content with that, Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Mike Wood asked whether under the SPS “deal” being agreed to, farms and food manufacturers that currently do not trade with the EU and only trade within Britain would be bound to the rules. DEFRA minister Stephen Morgan replied: “The SPS agreement with the EU means that Great Britain will apply certain rules in line with the EU. These arrangements will apply domestically, regardless of whether a business trades directly with the EU or not.” He then admitted “the precise scope of the agreement remains subject to ongoing negotiations with the EU”. This also means that Britain will have to take on every existing EU regulation plus any future changes Brussels makes to them.
Before midday, Labour had declared that the Chagossians do not have the same right to decide their future as Falkland Islanders. Tory MP Sir John Hayes asked whether the Government’s policy on self-determination “applies equally to the Chagossian people as it does to the Falkland Islanders.”. FCDO minister Uma Kumaran replied: “The British Indian Ocean Territory is not comparable to inhabited Overseas Territories such as the Falkland Islands. It has no permanent population and has never been self-governing.” Given that our Uma is a Sri Lankan Tamil and several Human Rights groups have cited similarities between the plight of the Tamils and Chagossians, (forced displacement, and ongoing struggles for self-determination for example), you might think she’d have a bit more sympathy.
Hours to go, and already I’m looking forward to Friday!
I have already suggested elsewhere, (HERE), that the student riots would morph thanks to the enlarged support of the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. What I had not surmised was just how quickly and dangerously the protests have attracted an additional, substantially male contingent of local neighbourhood rioters and looters whose televised activities have shocked and dismayed le quidam moyen. However in doing so, the rioting is merely throwing petrol onto the Le Pen bonfire of Macron’s record. These citoyens lambda will be remembering every torched car, every refused insurance claim, every broken shop, every closed business and every destroyed icon of their former quieter, more affordable past, and they will blame not only Macron, but the EU.
Part of the Franco-EU issue, other than having nothing in the bank, are the EU demands surrounding the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which came into force in June 2026, replacing the European Agenda on Migration, which was a massive, highly publicised policy framework announced by the European Commission in May 2015, which essentially focussed on the Dublin Agreement, (first EU country arrival country, accepts responsibility).
So far, so problematic. Because if Marine gets in, then as a comprehensive survey conducted by Ifop in October 2026 highlighted, 41% of all French respondents stated they would refuse to obey laws they considered unjust under a far-right government, a figure that jumps to three-quarters among Mélenchon voters. The same poll, found that 21% of total respondents across France would consider leaving the country if Le Pen won. This sentiment is highest among marginalised and younger demographics, with 46% of French Muslims and 44% of Jewish respondents indicating they would weigh moving abroad due to fears of increased social friction and discrimination.
Marine Le Pen’s central voter pitch is focussed on a "Europe of Nations" model. Her plans include unilaterally cutting France's annual contribution to the EU budget by approximately €11 billion to fund domestic fiscal strategies, introducing strict national immigration laws that override EU rules, and withdrawing France from the New Pact on Migration and Asylum.
This time next year, Paris could make the past weekend look like a quiet day at Brighton racecourse in the 1950s.
About what seems like fifty years ago, one of my absolute marketing heroes, was Faith Popcorn. She was (and remains) the pioneering American futurist, best known as the founder and CEO of BrainReserve, a trend forecasting firm established in 1974. Nicknamed the “Trend Oracle,” she changed swathes of corporate thinking by applying the study of long-term cultural shifts directly to their business strategies, boasting a documented 95% accuracy rate across decades of forecasting.
The entire background story is simply too long, but her list of “credits” is truly mind-boggling. Her provably accurate predictions, her understanding of the mass-human condition and the likely resulting outcomes, have changed our lives.
She predicted that our homes would become a sanctuary - Popcorn said make them warmer, softer, more comfortable. Bigger sofas. Better bedding, more security make the music centre look sexy and create the home theatre. She told everyone who’d listen, (and they paid handsomely to do so), that Joe and Betty Schmoe were “nesting” at home more - so deliver them all the services they need. Martha Stewart and every “Domestic Goddess” since, owe their living and financial empires to FP’s insights. She advised the development of Blockbuster and Deliveroo and Netflix and Waitrose deliveries, five to ten years before they were there.
One tiny example: In 1981, she walked into Coca-Cola’s main board and told them that the future of beverages was not sugary drinks, but pure, clean, unflavoured bottled water. Coke’s execs initially scoffed at the idea of selling plain water, but her data proved correct, entirely reorganizing the global grocery and wellness landscape as bottled water grew into an everyday lifestyle staple.
In the 1980s and 90s her concept of Egonomics, led her to start telling major corporate boards that women were becoming the primary financial decision-makers. That directly led to, for example, a radical shift in how cars were designed and how wealth was managed. She made the effective case for abandoning condescending marketing materials and for institutions to start treating female entrepreneurs as sophisticated, high-net-worth individuals. The rise of dedicated female-focused wealth advisory divisions, holistic financial planning, and values-based investing portfolios throughout the 1990s and 2000s directly tracks back to the corporate strategies she pitched to Wall Street decades earlier.
This history is important. Because when Faith Popcorn talks - a wise person listens.
She was already telling us over a year ago [HERE] that we are now in an era marked by deep social anxiety and institutional distrust. In her current briefings, she emphasises that the traditional social contract is officially fractured, accelerating a trend toward “ParanoiaLand” and severe surveillance fatigue where consumers feel actively watched everywhere, all the time. For the 2026/2027 consumer market, her framework focuses heavily on the rise of deeply curated digital identities and an intense craving for local micro-communities. She believes we’re now seeking smaller networks that we trust, that are truly local.
And on AI, (and before we get to her frightening predictions for the mid-2030s), Faith Popcorn believes that AI is navigating its critical “kindergarten” phase. Rather than an immediate replacement for everything, it functions as a tool, driving early “human-hybrid” trials and automating our logistics, such as driverless deliveries, but always setting the stage for the deep biological integration, she projects for the next decade.
Popcorn has identified a sharp rise in aggressive consumer behaviour, where deeply polarised communities completely reject mainstream organizations. She labels this a period of “cultural civil war,” where fractured populations form insular, defensive networks (”clanning”) to protect themselves against a broader society they view as volatile and unsafe. She defines our current era not as an absence of trust, but as an active, widespread conviction that “someone is out to get you”. She also warns that this collective mindset will directly trigger deep civil fracturing, tribalism, and localised disorder.
Sadly, Faith’s future view is bleak, but the reality is that she isn’t saying anything that our Amygdala and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex wasn’t already telling us. Of course, I could simply be wrong. I could simply be suffering from too much protein or Quinoa or Fava beans and of course, it could all just be El Niño’s fault.
But if both Faith and I are wrong to even be concerned, and we’re just a couple of old 1970s has-beens …why am I reading these?