Dance moves and diplomacy

If you’ve been online over the past week, you’ve surely heard about (and likely seen) Theresa May’s trip to South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, on which she aimed to develop the UK’s trade relations with African nations for the post-Brexit era. However, it was her dance moves rather than her diplomacy that was noticed online. […]
Is unchanging Brexit sentiment changing the UK investment landscape?

Investor sentiment towards Brexit remains negative overall, according to new data from onefourzero. With one year to go until the UK is set to leave the European Union, government efforts to reassure investors seem to have been largely unsuccessful. In the nearly two years since the Brexit referendum, the British economy hasn’t fallen into recession […]
Significant drop in number of Eastern Europeans searching for UK jobs online

Google searches for jobs in the UK dropped by 35% across Poland, Romania and Bulgaria between 2016 and 2017 Searches for jobs in the UK’s agriculture and manufacturing sectors fell by 34% over the same period Searches for jobs in the UK’s construction sector also fell by 30% Interest in health and social care jobs […]
How has the announcement of a snap General Election affected the financial and investment community so far and how will its outcome affect them?

In the immediate aftermath of Theresa May’s announcement of a snap general election, markets moved considerably: in the world of finance, uncertainty breeds volatility. Markets have now reconciled with the widely anticipated outcome of a landslide Tory win and the expected Brexit route. Both traditional polls and our own sentiment analysis support this prediction. The […]
Can sentiment analysis help predict the 2017 general election?

Ten days ago Theresa May called a general election. Since Tuesday 18th psephologists – a.k.a pollsters – have been churning out predictions: these show Conservative leads of between 11% and 25%, with conventional wisdom telling us to watch for a Tory landslide. A Conservative majority is on the cards in Wales, and if we take […]
GK wins Specialist Adviser Of The Year at Real Deals UK Private Equity Awards 2017

Our sister agency GK Strategy was chosen Specialist Adviser Of The Year at the RealDeals UK Private Equity Awards 2017 for their political due diligence work. Commenting on the win, GK’s Chief Executive, Emily Wallace, said: “We’re delighted to win the award for Specialist Adviser of the Year against a strong field. Winning demonstrates the continued […]
Local Gov: Phil Hope on the devolution of health and social care

GK associate, Phil Hope, discusses the nuances of local devolution of health and social care following our report ‘Devolution Disconnected: Political Priority, Public Apathy‘. “The Government is devolving budgets and responsibility for health and social care in different ways in different parts of the country including Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, London, Cornwall and the […]
Public Finance: Public is not excited by devolution

Public Finance website has published an article about the latest report from GK Strategy and onefourzero, “Devolution Disconnected: political priority, public apathy“. “The public is becoming increasingly disengaged with devolution despite its political priority for the government, research from consultancy firm GK Strategy has found. In partnership with its sister company onefourzero, GK monitored online […]
Update: Is Britain still good for business now that Article 50 has been triggered?

As our November analysis showed, the low value of the pound post Brexit resulted in a 500% increase in inbound searches for flights and hotels. This finding was in line with ForwardKey’s tourism market analysis report, which showed an immediate increase in international net bookings for arrival in the UK. According to Google Trend data, […]
The Problem with Polls: How can you predict behaviour in today’s fragmented society?

In recent years polls have become increasingly ineffective at predicting the views of the populace. YouGov admitted that “We were, like most people, surprised at the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections.” Part of the problem are the antiquated methodologies used; they suffer from biases in sample selection, over-generalisations, and in an age of big […]