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Northern Ireland should slash corporation tax in line with the Republic of Ireland to drive growth in the cash-strapped region, according a proposal from the region’s biggest business lobby group.

The gulf between the UK’s 25 per cent headline corporation tax rate and Ireland’s rate of 12.5 per cent for small firms and 15 per cent for large companies is making it impossible to compete for investment, said the Federation of Small Businesses.

The group has outlined its plan to the finance ministry at Stormont and UK officials ahead of detailed talks on the subject.

Ireland’s rate of corporation tax, well below the EU average, has driven a budget surplus and the FSB says reviving mothballed plans for Northern Ireland to cut its rate could create jobs and boost the region’s economic fortunes.

“We are massively disadvantaged,” said Roger Pollen, FSB head of external affairs. “Aligning with the Republic of Ireland isn’t going to impact the UK but it would dramatically affect our local economy.”

The vast majority of Northern Ireland’s funding comes from an annual “block grant” payment of £15bn at present. The Stormont executive raises less than £1 in every £20 of the region’s tax revenue — some £1.5bn in 2023-24.

Northern Ireland contributed £1.2bn to the UK Treasury from corporation tax in 2021-22, the latest year for which data is available, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The UK passed legislation in 2015 to allow Northern Ireland to set its corporation tax rate. But the act was never implemented because of frequent political crises and the stipulation that the region would first have to demonstrate its finances were sustainable.

Under an agreement dubbed “Safeguarding the Union” that helped restore Stormont in February after a two year hiatus, London promised to “swiftly progress” its corporation tax devolution commitments “supported by the necessary resource from within HM Treasury”.

Under the FSB’s plan, sums raised would not be deducted from the block grant for several years under a kind of “overdraft facility” to give the scheme time to get established. The business body argues that a lower tax rate would attract more global manufacturing investment and thus boost receipts.

“We need to be imaginative about it,” Pollen said. “What do you do in a company if you don’t have the cash to buy a business? You borrow and pay it back from the increased value and revenues of the business.”

Despite the trade-boosting prospects offered by Northern Ireland’s unique post-Brexit access to both the EU’s single market for goods and Britain, the former linen and shipbuilding powerhouse is struggling financially.

Ministers have warned they cannot afford to continue to deliver even the current level of crumbling public services. Productivity is 11 per cent below the UK average and the region has the UK’s second highest number of people neither employed nor looking for work.

The UK government wants Northern Ireland to raise revenue by introducing water rates and increasing other charges that are lower than in Britain. But Pollen said the answer was “revenue raising not by increasing corporation tax but by growing the corporation tax pie”.

Higher investment would also mean more jobs and thus more payroll and other tax revenue that would continue to flow to the UK Treasury, according to the FSB.

A low tax policy has paid dividends for the Republic of Ireland with corporate tax receipts more than doubling since 2019, to a record €24bn last year. However, Dublin has warned that the bonanza is already waning.

Slashing corporation tax in a region that already enjoys better post-Brexit access to the EU than the rest of the UK would be a “hard sell” in Britain, said Lorraine Nelson, tax partner at consultancy BDO Northern Ireland.

Caoimhe Archibald, Northern Ireland’s finance minister, said she was discussing a new fiscal framework for the region with the UK government.

“It is my intention that this would also include how increased fiscal powers could be devolved to the executive,” she told the Financial Times. “l welcome any proposals or evidence that could inform this work and my officials and I are happy to engage with business leaders on this.”

London, which has agreed £3.3bn in extra financing for Northern Ireland to ease current pressures, said it was working closely with Stormont on its Safeguarding the Union commitments.

“This includes further work on the devolution of the rate of corporation tax to Northern Ireland,” it said.

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Former US president Donald Trump raised eyebrows among his no-nonsense New Jersey crowd at a rally Saturday when he recited a 1963 soul song in its entirety and referenced a fictional cannibal as “great.”

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In a meandering recitation of “The Snake” during a more than 90 minute speech, Trump used the Oscar Brown song to draw a parallel with “illegal immigration and how stupid it is what we’re doing right now.”

“We’re letting people come into our country that we will only be trouble,” said the Republican contender for president.

Trump has drawn on the song several times to highlight his anti-migrant stance, reportedly drawing objections from Brown’s family.

“A tenderhearted woman saw a poor, half-frozen snake,” Trump said, reciting — but not singing — the song to the crowd.

“But instead of saying thanks, the snake gave her a vicious bite.”

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Trump, who will face Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s polls, is using increasingly violent rhetoric around the country’s migrant crisis.

At the same time, the lengthy recitation of “The Snake” drew a subdued reaction from the crowd of thousands gathered on a beach in Wildwood on the New Jersey shore.

Some looked on quizzically, while a man behind Trump shown on a big screen yawned, and a trickle of spectators made for the exits.

“Did everybody enjoy it? Don’t enjoy, you should be — you should be scared!” he said awkwardly, speaking off-the-cuff following his recitation from a crib sheet he had in his jacket pocket.

Just months ago, the Republican claimed that migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States, sparking a fierce backlash.

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Biden’s campaign accused him of imitating the language of Hitler.

And during his first presidential campaign in the lead-up to the 2016 vote, Trump shocked observers with his language about “rapist” illegal migrants.

A rambling bit on cannibalism also drew attention on social media.

“The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man,” Trump said, referencing the 1991 film “Silence of the Lambs.”

“He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner,” he said grinning, rehashing a well-worn joke about the infamous cannibal character before diving back into migration.

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“But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations, the late, great Hannibal Lecter. We have people that are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country.”

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Ken Griffin has called on Harvard University to embrace “western values”, with the billionaire hedge fund manager and donor saying the turmoil sweeping across college campuses was the product of a “cultural revolution” in US education.

Griffin, who founded the $63bn US hedge fund Citadel and has given more than $500mn to his alma mater, told the Financial Times that the US had “lost sight of education as the means of pursuing truth and acquiring knowledge” over the past decade.

“The narrative on some of our college campuses has devolved to the level that the system is rigged and unfair, and that America is plagued by systemic racism and systemic injustice,” he said in an interview.

Universities including Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been consumed by sometimes violent protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that have pitted wealthy donors against student activists.

Bill Ackman, another hedge fund billionaire, led a successful campaign for the resignation of the president of Harvard. Marc Rowan, head of private equity group Apollo Global Management, has stoked a fierce debate about governance at the University of Pennsylvania, whose Wharton school of business has reported a fall in donations. 

“What you’re seeing now is the end-product of this cultural revolution in American education playing out on American campuses, in particular, using the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed,” Griffin said.

“The protests on college campuses are almost like performative art, and we’re not actually helping Palestinians or Israelis with these surreal protests,” the 55-year-old financier said, adding that in previous humanitarian crises, Americans would focus on practical help, such as organising food drives.

As a Harvard undergraduate, Griffin had a satellite dish installed on the roof of his dormitory so he could trade convertible bonds, laying the foundation for the launch of his hedge fund in 1990. 

He has since given the institution roughly a quarter of the more than $2bn he has provided to philanthropic efforts, making him one of the university’s largest donors in its modern history. A record $16bn profit for Citadel’s investors in 2022 established Griffin’s company as the most successful hedge fund of all time. 

In January, the financier called Harvard students “whiny snowflakes” and said he was pausing donations to the university over its handling of antisemitism on campus, which he blamed on its “DEI agenda”.

His critique of its diversity, equity and inclusion policies came amid a leadership crisis that culminated earlier that month with the resignation of its president Claudine Gay. With a $50bn endowment, Harvard is the world’s wealthiest university.

Asked what Harvard should do next, Griffin told the Financial Times: “Harvard should put front and centre [that it] stands for meritocracy in America and will educate the next generation of leaders in American business, government, healthcare, and the philanthropic community. Harvard will embrace our Western values that have built one of the greatest nations in the world, foster those values with students, and ask them to manifest these values throughout the rest of their life.”

Griffin casts himself as a proponent of free speech and advancing the “American dream”. People who know him expect that one day he may move into politics.

“Freedom of speech does not give you the right to storm a building or vandalise it,” said Griffin. “That’s not freedom of speech. That’s just anarchy.”

The Citadel founder drew parallels between the US campus protests and the Black Lives Matter social movement, when some social media users posted black squares on Instagram, out of solidarity with the fight for racial justice. 

“You didn’t help a single child learn that day how to read, write, or do math better,” he said. “You want a pat on the back for posting a black screen on your Instagram account? Give me a break. It’s embarrassing.”

Donors’ withdrawal of millions of dollars in planned funding to punish US universities for their responses to Hamas’s attack on Israel has reignited questions about the influence of plutocrats on US universities. 

Griffin said the many wealthy Harvard donors he had spoken to had “little interest in micromanaging the university”, however. “There is a palpable interest in Harvard serving as a beacon of truth-seeking and meritocracy,” he said: “Many wealthy donors have valuable insight into transformation and improvement strategies that are clearly needed at this time.”

Additional reporting by Joshua Chaffin in New York