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Police have arrested the husband of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon as a suspect in an investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National party. Peter Murrell resigned as chief executive of the SNP last month after the party was forced to admit it had 30,000 fewer members than it had claimed.

Sir Keir Starmer was never supposed to win the next election. The Labour leader himself may have thought differently — you do not get to the top of politics without an immense sense of destiny — but even close allies doubted it was possible. However low one’s opinion of Boris Johnson, few predicted how rapidly

The writer is director of research and advisory at Asia House think-tank Global youth unemployment is soaring. China’s rate is at a record high. Even more problematic is the lesser-known Neet rate, measuring the share of youngsters not in employment, education or training. A rising Neet rate should be ringing alarm bells everywhere. It has

French president Emmanuel Macron has landed in Beijing in the latest bid by a European leader to urge China’s Xi Jinping to wield his influence with Vladimir Putin to push for a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. On the eve of his three-day visit to China, the French president spoke with his US counterpart Joe

It was a familiar scene of American white-collar justice: a stern-faced defendant seated between high-priced lawyers in a Manhattan courtroom. But in this case, it was extraordinary. The defendant was Donald Trump. When he pleaded not guilty just before 3pm in New York on Tuesday, the 45th US president became the first holder of that

Defined benefit pension assets are invested for one reason and one reason only: to solve a problem. This problem is how to meet (mostly historical) income-in-retirement promises made by employers to their staff. Pensions represent a greater portion of British household wealth than housing, and the UK is unusual in having so much of its

For more than a year, a criminal inquiry into whether Donald Trump masterminded a “hush money” scheme to keep porn actress Stormy Daniels silent was thought to be dead and buried. Federal prosecutors in New York had looked at the case and declined to pursue it. When Alvin Bragg became Manhattan district attorney in 2022,

Donald Trump has launched a blistering attack on “election interference at a scale never seen before” in the US, casting himself as a victim of political persecution after he became the first former president to face criminal charges. In a grievance-filled speech on Tuesday night from the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump

Most of the world’s electric car batteries are now made in China. Accounting for more than 70 per cent of market share by shipments, that concentration also puts global automakers at risk of supply chain disruptions amid escalating geopolitical tensions between the US and China. But Tesla’s new batteries are set to upend the hierarchy

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney bringing the case against Donald Trump, accused the former president of masterminding an expansive scheme to suppress damaging stories that could have threatened his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election campaign. This included arranging a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, made 12 days before Trump took

Donald Trump has arrived at a Manhattan courthouse to be formally charged in connection with payments made to buy the silence of a porn actress ahead of his 2016 campaign for the White House. The arraignment of Trump marks the first criminal case against a former or sitting US president and will fire the starting

The arraignment of former president Donald Trump, in the presence of a secret service detail and with the world’s media camped outside, will be unlike any other in the Manhattan criminal courthouse’s colourful 82-year history. Once the TV crews have left, however, the case known as People vs Trump will proceed in a more pedestrian

We are living in a dividing world. These divisions have many ramifications. But not the least important of these are for global commerce. The slowdown in world trade, the shift towards economic nationalism and the growing demands in the west, and especially in the US, for decoupling from China are reshaping the global economy. It

The Bank of England’s chief economist hinted at a further interest rate rise in May when he said the central bank needed to “see the job through” in its battle to eradicate high inflation. Huw Pill, however, stressed that the Monetary Policy Committee faced a tight decision on whether to raise interest rates again from

US Treasuries rallied and the dollar weakened on Tuesday after demand for workers in the world’s biggest economy fell more than expected. The yield on two-year US Treasuries dipped 0.12 percentage points to 3.85 per cent as prices rose, while the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries fell 0.07 percentage points to 3.36 per cent. The

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has disclosed investments in dozens of private equity and venture capital firms via its Sanabil Investments arm, including Blackstone and General Atlantic. The firms were listed on Sanabil’s website, which said it invests about $2bn in capital a year in “venture, growth capital and small buyouts.” Others include KKR, Hellman

Imagine that you lead one of the many countries caught between the US and China. Yours, Ambivaland, is in south-east Asia. It needs Chinese trade but finds Beijing high-handed. It looks to America for security and technology but mistrusts the west. Even its own political model is hard to place on the spectrum from liberal

Sterling has risen to its highest level against the US dollar in 10 months, helped by recent signs of resilience in the UK economy that have bolstered investor expectations of further rises in interest rates. The pound climbed as much as 0.8 per cent on Tuesday to $1.252, helped by a broad retreat for the

Jamie Dimon has criticised regulators in the wake of the banking turmoil for incentivising banks to load up on government securities and imposing flawed stress tests. Dimon said the failure last month of Silicon Valley Bank and the Swiss government-engineered takeover of Credit Suisse risked undermining confidence in the banking industry and had prompted investors

The writer is author of ‘Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria’ Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14 will pose a key question of our time: is it possible to slow authoritarian backsliding and renew democratic progress? At a time of autocratic surge, it has become fashionable to make bleak