The writer, a barrister and former Conservative MP, was attorney-general 2010-14 The political challenges the government faces from the arrival of asylum seekers in the UK require some sympathy. Sections of the public are anxious about the numbers and about the difficulties in removing to their home countries those who do not qualify for refugee
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US secretary of state Antony Blinken has arrived in Beijing on a highly anticipated mission to reboot US-China relations, which have cratered this year after an alleged Chinese spy balloon flew over North America. Blinken will be the first secretary of state to visit China since 2018, a reflection of Beijing’s strict coronavirus pandemic lockdowns,
Rishi Sunak is facing a fourth and highly problematic by-election after another Conservative MP quit, this time over allegations of personal misconduct. David Warburton, MP for Somerton and Frome, announced he was resigning in the face of allegations of harassment and drug use. To compound the prime minister’s problems, a video has emerged of Tory
When Paddy Scott developed agonising stomach pains in 2017, the possibility of cancer never entered his head. The British expedition photographer and film-maker, whose work often took him into rugged or dangerous terrain, was just 34 years old and prided himself on his physical fitness. After his GP referred Scott to hospital for a colonoscopy,
Paradigm shifts happen slowly, and then all at once. This was the case during the last economic shift, in the Reagan-Thatcher era. Ronald Reagan wasn’t elected US president until 1980, but many of the speeches he gave during his 1976 Republican primary run set the stage for a new post-Keynesian era. In this, he argued,
Students applying for graduate jobs this summer can take advantage of a new personal interview coach. If they send over a specific job description they can receive tailored interview questions and answers — and feedback on their own responses — all for free. The coach, offered by the job search engine Adzuna, is not human
Barclays is facing a High Court trial next year after being sued by a Dutch social housing association that came close to collapse in 2012 after it bought complex interest rate derivatives. The housing association, known at the time as Vestia, rents homes to thousands of low-income tenants and brought lawsuits against seven global banks
For Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, the evening of November 29 was no different to any other. She got back home from the start-up’s San Francisco offices that evening, after her team wrapped up the release of an experimental product: ChatGPT. ChatGPT was lined up as a research demonstration. That plan changed dramatically when
German chancellor Olaf Scholz once described his politics as “liberal, but not stupid”. As he prepares to welcome a large Chinese delegation to Berlin, a senior German official claims a similar characterisation applies: “On China you could say: we’re free traders, but we’re not stupid.” That confidence, however, masks deep rifts within Scholz’s three-way ruling
When the UK government launched its replacement for EU development grants last year, ministers promised to “slash” bureaucracy and give spending decisions back to communities. But economic development experts and local leaders have warned that the UK Shared Prosperity Fund — the three-year, £2.6bn pot allocated for regional economies that superseded Brussels grants — is
Beijing’s bid to persuade investors to value its giant state-owned enterprises according to their socialist credentials, rather than by conventional western capitalist measures, has flopped after a rally in their shares fizzled this month. The stocks rose after officials in November called for the creation of a “valuation system with Chinese characteristics” that departed from
Joe Biden returned to the campaign trail on Saturday for a rally with union members in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the first major political event for the US president since he announced his re-election bid in April. Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, received a warm welcome from the crowd. But there are fears among
Lenders to San Francisco’s beleaguered commercial real estate market are braced for defaults on billions of dollars of debt after the owners of the city’s largest shopping mall and biggest hotel ceased loan payments and handed back the keys on what was once the city’s most valuable property. This week, Westfield and Brookfield Properties announced
UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has given the clearest indication yet that his bank intends to keep hold of Credit Suisse’s domestic business in spite of fierce opposition within the country. Speaking at a company-wide meeting this week, Ermotti told Credit Suisse staff that retaining the Swiss bank and merging it with UBS’s domestic business
Emerging and frontier markets are poised to benefit from US-China tensions as global investors seek companies and projects that can avoid the economic rivalry, Mercer’s chief investment strategist has said. Non-aligned countries are benefiting as western companies move supply chains out of China, said Rich Nuzum, who is also executive director of investments for a group
Female delegates at UN climate talks allege they were bullied, abused and sexually harassed by male negotiators, casting a deeper shadow over this year’s COP28 summit. Delegates at the UN talks in Bonn this month told the Financial Times of several instances where female delegates faced intimidation or harassment from male counterparts, prompting a letter
The Labour party has lifted its boycott of the crisis-hit CBI, with shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds meeting the UK lobby group’s new director-general Rain Newton-Smith this week. Both Britain’s main opposition party and the governing Conservatives ceased engagement with the CBI earlier this year in the wake of a misconduct scandal which has brought
In a week where the entire nation has been gripped by interest rate panic, the loudest voices in the room are those of the mortgage bores. Every workplace, family and social circle has one. Been prattling on about how you signed up for a 10-year fix at a smidgen over 1 per cent long before
Donald Trump indicted; Boris Johnson practically fleeing parliament; Silvio Berlusconi gone from the Italian stage he had dominated for decades. Pundits might be forgiven for declaring the death of populism alongside that of Berlusconi. Liberals are likely to feel confirmed in their view that populism always ends not only in policy failure — since populists
UK households that come to the end of fixed-rate mortgage deals next year face an average £2,900 increase in annual payments, putting Rishi Sunak under pressure to defuse an election-year time bomb. The estimated increase in payments by the Resolution Foundation think-tank reflects concern that the UK has a worse inflation problem than other countries
The writer directs the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution “Look at us! We’re a serious, grown-up country now!” This was the self-congratulatory message Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz had to convey to the world on Wednesday, when he stepped in front of the assembled national press, accompanied by his foreign, defence,