Soothing mood music from Hammond and May disguises challenges ahead
Theresa May likes to give a kitten-heeled kicking to conference audiences, even when they are police officers or her own party delegates. But at the CBI gathering at Grosvenor House in London on Monday, she was out to make friends with soothing (if essentially hollow) remarks about Brexit, and promises of the lowest corporate tax rates in the G20 and an extra £2 billion a year for research and development to help the UK stay close to the forefront of technology and bioscience. Assembled fat cats may still have been irritated by her commitment to binding annual shareholder votes on executive pay, but at least she backed away from putting