The cost of two-year fixed rate mortgages in the UK has surpassed the highs reached in the wake of last autumn’s “mini” Budget, as lenders push up prices in response to interest rate increases. Lenders have responded to rising interest rates and expectations of further tightening by ratcheting up the cost of borrowing, with the average
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The US will transfer F-16 fighter jets to Turkey in consultation with Congress, the US national security adviser said on Tuesday, hours after Turkey’s president agreed to drop his veto on Sweden joining Nato. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s U-turn on Stockholm’s accession to the US-led military alliance — which followed heavy lobbying from Washington
UK pay grew more quickly than expected in the three months to May, adding to pressure on the Bank of England as it tries to tame inflation. Annual growth in employees’ average total pay, which includes bonuses, was 6.9 per cent in the three months to May, up from a revised 6.7 per cent in
Even the warmth of a London summer evening and a cool glass of Pol Roger was doing little to raise morale among MPs in Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservative party, as they contemplated their own political mortality and the threat of a wipeout in a British general election next year. “I just want the election over
Mark Hertling was commanding a squadron of armoured vehicles in Iraq when he heard a series of loud pops overhead. It was five cluster bombs, of the same kind that the US last week authorised to be sent to Ukraine. “It was like we were inside a popcorn popper, with small bomblets landing around us,”
People have dreamt for many years about a world without work. In an essay in 1891, Oscar Wilde imagined a future where, “just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure — which, and not labour, is the aim of man — or
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has agreed to support Sweden’s membership of Nato, paving the way for the Nordic country to join the military alliance after more than a year of opposing the country’s bid. Erdoğan has agreed to send Sweden’s accession protocol to the Grand National Assembly, Turkey’s parliament, “as soon as possible and work
Warm weather boosted UK consumer spending on clothing, in pubs and at outdoor retailers last month, but overall retail sales growth remained below the pace of inflation, according to data published on Tuesday. The value of retail sales rose an annual rate of 4.9 per cent in June, a stronger reading than the average of
City executives gathered in London’s Square Mile on Monday evening to hear chancellor Jeremy Hunt announce his latest reforms aimed at tapping the UK’s financial services sector to reinvigorate the economy. Hunt will use his “Mansion House reforms” to attempt to boost the UK economy by channelling pensions savings towards potentially higher growth, illiquid assets
The UK and France are Europe’s closest relations. They have economies of similar sizes and shapes. They have colonial pasts of a similar hue and geographic spread, though the British empire was the larger. Given this, anyone interested in improving the lot of people in one country would do well to study the successes and mistakes
Andrew Bailey, Bank of England governor, will warn on Monday that the “unexpected resilience” of Britain’s economy has exacerbated wage and demand pressure that is fuelling stubbornly high inflation. He is due to tell the annual Mansion House dinner in the City of London that current pay deals are unsustainable if the central bank is
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tied Ankara’s approval of Sweden’s Nato bid to his country’s efforts to enter the EU, in a fresh blow to Stockholm’s attempt to join the military alliance. “I call out to those who have kept Turkey waiting at the EU door for more than 50 years, pave the way
Russian president Vladimir Putin met Yevgeny Prigozhin and other Wagner commanders a few days after their aborted mutiny, the Kremlin revealed on Monday. Dmitry Peskov, the president’s spokesperson, said Putin invited at least 35 people, including Prigozhin and the battalion commanders from the private military group, to the Kremlin on June 29. The meeting lasted
“Holding Nato together is really critical,” says Joe Biden. But the unity of Nato’s 31 members will be put to its biggest test since the beginning of the Ukraine war, at the organisation’s summit in Lithuania this week. The issue that threatens to divide the alliance is Ukraine’s ambition to join it. One camp, including
UK homeowners are rushing to refinance their mortgages as borrowers who had been waiting for the cost of debt to ease lock in deals amid fears that interest rates will rise further, according to brokers. The value of new remortgages written by Knight Frank Finance jumped 41 per cent over May and June compared with
European equities slipped on Monday, extending last week’s decline while stock markets in Asia edged higher even as new data showed China’s economy on the cusp of deflation. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600, France’s Cac 40 and Germany’s Dax all shed 0.2 per cent in early trading, while London’s FTSE 100 was steady. Those moves came
China’s economy teetered on the brink of deflation in June, adding to calls for Beijing to launch a stronger stimulus package to sustain the country’s sputtering post-Covid recovery. The consumer price index was flat year on year and declined 0.2 per cent compared with the previous month, while factory gate prices fell at the fastest
Good morning. Here’s a prediction I feel close to 100 per cent comfortable making: whichever party wins the next election will raise taxes by more than they claim during it. How Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and, equally importantly, Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves navigate that is one of the big questions not only in
Thames Water has fallen short of its goal of raising £1bn of urgent funding, instead securing conditional agreement from its shareholders to inject £750mn of new equity. The troubled UK utility said on Monday its investors had agreed to provide the £750mn by April 2025 if certain conditions were met. These include a business plan
Banks sold a record amount of ultra-safe mortgage-backed debt in the first half of the year, rushing to lock in a cheap source of funding during a turbulent period for the sector with lenders facing growing political pressure to offer chunkier interest rates to depositors. More than €175bn of so-called covered bonds were sold to
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy strides into Nato’s annual summit in Vilnius on Wednesday, his country will have been fighting a full-scale war of survival against Russia for 503 days. As his battered troops continue to fight off a relentless invasion and attempt to claw back occupied territory in the country’s south and east, Zelenskyy