So coping with new regulation is a direct new burden on someone whose time is already pulled in different directions. If this goes on, the business community will turn sharply against Labour, and probably Europe too. I suspect a lot of the rising hostility among business people towards Europe is the result of a feeling that we are allowing Brussels to impose new burdens on business.And structural change? It is hard to appreciate how fast the economy has changed over the past four years. There has been decent economic growth, but some sectors have not seen any growth, parts of the tourist industry and much of manufacturing for example. One town, where a large employer has closed, is struggling, and a neighbouring town where a new shopping centre has opened is cracking along.Expect this to continue even more rapidly. If the pace of change is already unsettling to many, expect it to become even more unsettling.

There may be nothing much governments can do about these concerns, but they will affect attitudes towards political leadership. During the past four years, Labour has received little of the blame for the pace of change, and rightly so, for it would be unfair to attack it for things beyond its control. In another four years the business community may feel differently, especially if those years are going to be tougher ones.. If there was ever any doubt about Railtrack’s ejection from the FTSE 100 index, then the final coup de gr? was delivered by ABN Amro yesterday No pussy footing around the recommendation here. Sell, said the investment bank; the shares are worth no more than 58p each and are more likely worth nothing once you take into account the risk that the Government won’t cough up the extra £2.6bn the company needs to deal with the Hatfield rail crash aftermath.

If there was ever any doubt about Railtrack’s ejection from the FTSE 100 index, then the final coup de gr? was delivered by ABN Amro yesterday No pussy footing around the recommendation here. Sell, said the investment bank; the shares are worth no more than 58p each and are more likely worth nothing once you take into account the risk that the Government won’t cough up the extra £2.6bn the company needs to deal with the Hatfield rail crash aftermath.
Everyone knows that Railtrack is deep in the mire, but can things really be as bad as ABN paints them? Maybe not. Phil Oakley, ABN’s analyst, has used a seductively simple but controversial methodology in arriving at his valuation. Essentially he’s taken the regulatory asset base and subtracted the debt What’s left is the value of the equity, he says. Rising debt could easily wipe out even this, he adds.Well, this is one way of valuing a company, but as Mr Oakley’s competitors were quick to point out, if you applied the same valuation method to BAA, the airports operator where ABN is house broker and presumably recommends a buy, BAA’s share price would be trading at 251p less than it is.