Three Aprils ago, Sir Keir Starmer took over a UK Labour party in the electoral and moral pits. He lost his first 18 months to a pandemic that made the role of opposing the Conservative government seem almost unpatriotic. He has the “help” of a shadow cabinet that, as a gathering of talent in one
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CBI director-general Tony Danker has been sacked with immediate effect following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment at the employers’ organisation. He will be replaced by Rain Newton-Smith, the UK lobby group’s former chief economist, who will return as director-general after a brief spell as a managing director for policy at Barclays. The dismissal
European stocks advanced at the opening on Tuesday, as investors took heart from a late rally on Wall Street and looked towards the possibility of more interest rate increases from the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve. The region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.5 per cent, while Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 were up
Low-income countries will face their biggest bills for servicing foreign debts in a quarter of a century this year, putting spending on health and education at risk. Repayments on public debt owed to non-residents for a group of 91 of the world’s poorest countries will take up an average of more than 16 per cent
Yasin Üztürk, an ethnic Uyghur who runs a barber shop in Istanbul, never expected to become the target of a Chinese intelligence operation. Fearful for the safety of his parents back home in China, he avoided political protests and speaking out about rights abuses in Xinjiang. Then he spotted one of his customers surreptitiously photographing
The writer, an FT contributing editor, is chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts After a decade of radical financial regulatory reform, designed to rid the world of institutions that were “too big to fail”, this time was meant to be different. Alas, not. Not only the big (Credit Suisse) but the medium-sized (SVB) were
One of the things that makes policymaking easier in the modern world is that we know more. We have better information about outcomes, a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t and — thanks to advances in technology — we can use algorithms and machine learning to make better-informed decisions. But better-informed decisions aren’t
The writer is a financial journalist and author of ‘More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy’ The recent turmoil in financial markets is a sign of a longer term problem. More than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation has proved to be far from transitory. That has meant government bond yields, while
Under cloudy skies in Warwickshire last month, a 2,000-tonne boring machine nicknamed “Dorothy” tore through a concrete wall to complete the first in a series of tunnels that will eventually carry high-speed trains under the English countryside. The breakthrough moment provided a much-needed boost for HS2, the controversial high-speed rail project that was originally envisaged
Thousands of junior doctors in England will begin an unprecedented four days of strike action on Tuesday, forcing an estimated 350,000 appointments and operations to be cancelled as the NHS focuses on urgent and critical care. Around the country, hospital trusts are scrambling to fill gaps in rotas, deploying consultants, nurses and other health professionals
Twitter’s ex-leader Parag Agrawal and two other former executives are suing the Elon Musk-owned social media platform for failing to cover more than $1mn in personal legal expenses, including those related to an investigation by the US Department of Justice. Agrawal, Twitter’s former general counsel Vijaya Gadde and Ned Segal, former chief financial officer, were
The biggest blank cheque company in Europe, backed by LVMH founder Bernard Arnault and former UniCredit chief Jean Pierre Mustier, is set to be wound up after failing to find a target in the financial services sector. Pegasus Europe has announced that it will cease operations and is preparing to return capital to its investors
US president Joe Biden is set to arrive in Belfast on Tuesday night to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement as London urged the region’s biggest unionist party to end its boycott of Northern Ireland’s political institutions. Biden’s visit, which will be followed by a longer trip to the Republic of Ireland,
The Pentagon said it was “working around the clock” to determine the source and scale of a leak of highly classified intelligence documents that appear to contain operational data on the war in Ukraine and information from countries in Asia and the Middle East. “We’re still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope
Corporate America is facing its sharpest drop in profits since the early stages of the Covid pandemic, according to Wall Street forecasts, as high inflation squeezes margins and fears of an impending recession hold back demand. Companies on the S&P 500 index are expected to report a 6.8 per cent decline in first-quarter earnings compared
Stocks dropped as US equity markets reopened from the long Easter weekend on Monday and investors fretted that the Federal Reserve will keep lifting interest rates. The S&P 500 slid 0.8 per cent in early trading, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1 per cent. Monday marked the first opportunities traders have had to respond
Stocks dropped as US equity markets reopened from the long Easter weekend on Monday and investors fretted that the Federal Reserve would keep lifting interest rates. The S&P 500 slid 0.8 per cent in early trading, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1 per cent. Monday marked the first opportunity traders had to respond to
Monday brought a windfall for many investors in Chinese equities. Ten companies debuted on the main exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen, raising a combined $3.1bn. Pops in the share prices of as much as 200 per cent reflected undervaluation rather than strong growth expectations. The 10 are the largest group to list after China overhauled
When Mark Craig first moved to the Merseyside town of New Ferry in north-west England 35 years ago it had a decent reputation. But over the past decade, antisocial behaviour has come to blight the community. Gangs of 30 or 40 children hang around the boarded-up shopping precinct or the corner of the park, starting
The Chinese navy has conducted 120 flight sorties from an aircraft carrier over the past three days, Japan said on Monday, highlighting the concerns that Beijing’s war games around Taiwan have raised for the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region. Fighter aircraft took off and landed 80 times on the Shandong, China’s second
Should the US defend Taiwan? This is not an abstract debate. Over the weekend, Beijing simulated bombing raids on the island, while its navy encircled Taiwan. In response to the steady escalation of Chinese military pressure on the island, President Joe Biden has promised — four times — that the US would defend Taiwan from