The Tory and Labour General Election campaigns got off to a rather bumpy start this week. On the day of the Conservative campaign launch, Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns was forced to resign, Jacob Rees-Mogg had to apologise for insensitive comments about the Grenfell Tower tragedy and there were accusations that one of the Tory campaign videos featured a "doctored" interview with shadow Brexit Secretary, Sir Keir Starmer. Yet, it wasn't just the Conservatives who got off to a bad start. Labour lost their deputy leader, Tom Watson, and two former Labour MPs have told voters not to cast their ballot for Jeremy Corbyn. Hardly a ringing endorsement! From false starts to never ending finishes, it was announced on Friday that the beleaguered Crossrail project (originally due to open in December 2018) has been hit by even further delays. TFL have committed to open the line as "soon as practically possible in 2021", but you'd forgive the public if they've lost faith in the ever-moving timeline. The Weekly is sure we'll have to listen to a lot more undeliverable promises as the stuttering election campaigns get into full swing!

The Weekly attended the MSCI/IPD UK Property Investment Seminar this Tuesday to hear the results for Q3 2019. The Seminar revealed that the quarterly total return (0.3%) slumped to its lowest level since September 2009, with property delivering a lacklustre 2% total return over the last 12 months. That said, property has still delivered 40 consecutive quarters of positive total returns and, importantly, has still outperformed the other asset classes over a five and ten year time horizon. As you'd expect, the retail sector has proved the main drag on performance (just take a stroll down your local high street to see why!) with capital values falling 5.6% over the last 12 months. Residential was the best performing sector and the performance of the regional cities was also a bright spot. The likes of Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh (top of the pile) and Manchester have all outperformed London over the last two years (for offices) with continued rental growth driving their performance. With limited short term prospects for yield compression, other than perhaps for Central London offices, driving income returns is going to be key.

Only weeks after Animal Rebellion (an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion) blockaded London's Smithfield Market, it was announced this week that Smithfield is to start selling vegan burgers. Times are clearly changing for the historic meat market, which has been the centre of London's livestock and meat trade for almost a thousand years. The Grade II listed, covered market buildings we see today were completed in 1868 when attendees at the opening ceremony feasted on "boars' heads and barons of beef". The Weekly wonders what those guests would have made of vegan burgers or Animal Rebellion's recent candle-lit vigil held "in memory of all the animals who lost their lives"? Smithfield certainly has a bloody history. Wat Tyler, one of the leaders of the Peasants Revolt was stabbed at Smithfields during an altercation with the Lord Mayor and, in 1305, Scottish revolutionary Sir William Wallace (yes, Mel Gibson in Braveheart) was put to death at Smithfield. All that bloodied history may well be coming to an end after plans were announced earlier this year for the City Corporation's wholesale markets (Smithfield, Billingsgate and New Spitalfields) to be consolidated into a new site at Barking Reach. After a thousand years of butchery, it's likely that visitors to Smithfield in the future will be doing nothing more contentious than sipping on non-alcoholic beer and dining on sushi!