Sir Keir Starmer strode into Labour’s headquarters in London’s South Bank on Friday, basking in applause from staffers after the party’s local election victories. “Doesn’t it feel good to win?” he beamed. When it comes to general elections, some in the room would have had no idea: Labour last won power in a national contest
News
When US officials announced on Monday they had found a buyer for First Republic, the second largest bank failure in American history, the successful bidder’s identity was for many in finance a foregone conclusion. Though more than a dozen institutions looked at First Republic’s assets, and four banks bid and rebid repeatedly last weekend, in
The writer is an FT contributing editor and writes the Chartbook newsletter The US is not eager for war with China. This is the message prominent spokespeople for the Biden administration have been sending in the past few weeks. The fact that this needs saying tells you something about the state we are in. In
Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III will be the most public display in seven decades of the curious relationship in the UK between England’s established church and the hereditary monarchy. The King will be accompanied to and from the ceremony by thousands of military personnel, a reminder that Britain’s constitutional monarch remains head of state.
European gas prices have fallen to the lowest level since the start of the energy crisis, boosting hopes of a stronger economic recovery as energy pressures ease. The European TTF benchmark hit a low of €35.20 a megawatt hour on Friday, a level last seen in July 2021 when Russia was first starting to squeeze
Britain is not the global power it was when it crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. But it still knows how to put on a grand spectacle. The ceremony that will on Saturday anoint Charles III as King is one that connects the present with Britain’s, or England’s, earliest history, its roots stretching to before
The latest non-farm payrolls data is out, and once again it thumped expectations with 253,000 jobs added in April. Basically, if there’s a recession coming someone forgot to tell the US economy. After playing around on the Bloomberg terminal we discovered that this is actually the 13th straight month where US job creation has surpassed
Most of the olives harvested in the groves of the Monastery of the Ascension, a Russian orthodox compound on the sun-blasted slopes overlooking Jerusalem’s old city, find their way into the oil lamps that light its buildings, or pots used for cooking. But on Saturday, some of the crop harvested by the black-clad nuns who
This is a public service warning for Conservatives. Voters do not regard a rudimentary ability to govern as a bonus feature for those seeking to run the country. For the past three months, Tories have been allowing themselves to believe that under Rishi Sunak the mere restoration of floor-level competence and political sanity would be
US jobs growth was stronger than expected in April, showing the resilience of the economy even as the Federal Reserve signalled it was “getting close” to pausing its cycle of interest rate rises. The US added 253,000 non-farm jobs last month, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, confounding expectations
The German economy ministry plans to subsidise 80 per cent of the electricity cost for energy-intensive companies, in a proposal likely to fuel divisions inside the governing coalition and further alienate European nations who cannot afford such measures. Under a long-awaited and highly contentious proposal published by Green economy minister Robert Habeck, a large part
HSBC’s shareholders voted against a proposal backed by its biggest investor Ping An to split up the sprawling global lender, in a victory for chair Mark Tucker at the bank’s annual meeting on Friday. Two special resolutions demanding that the bank regularly reviews separating and listing its Asia operations and restarts a guaranteed dividend were
And poof, it’s gone! First Republic Bank’s magical disappearing trick wowed us all on Monday. Other US regional lenders seem to be practising the same. My European bank ETF better not vanish in a puff of smoke. I won’t clap. Time to take profits, then? Answering this requires number crunching. And some thought. Which would
On a crisp, sunny morning late last month, a lone black official Škoda draws up at a family wine farm in southern Moldova. This sliver of land was one of the great wine-producing regions of the Soviet Union and it aspires to play the same role for Europe today. It is a stunning setting of
A confrontation broke out in Los Angeles this week as 11,500 writers for film and television went on strike. Screenwriters know all about confrontations: they are the second acts of three-act dramas, when the main characters face a crisis that only gets resolved at the end. “You put them in the worst possible position they
European stocks and Wall Street futures rose on Friday, while US regional banks clawed back some of their recent losses in pre-market trade, as investors looked ahead to the publication of US jobs data for evidence of the health of the American economy. The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 added 0.3 per cent in morning trade
Good morning. The people have spoken, but what they’ve said isn’t yet entirely clear. Most votes in the local elections are still being counted and we still only have a partial picture. What we can say is that it has been a very bad night for the Conservative party. What’s less clear is what it
The UK’s opposition Labour and Liberal Democrat parties expressed optimism early on Friday that they were making significant gains as votes began to be counted after local elections in many parts of England. Both parties argued that their performances positioned them well for the forthcoming nationwide general election. Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, told
One evening in late December last year, I received a cryptic phone call from a PR director at TikTok, the popular social media app. I’d written extensively about the company for the Financial Times, so we’d spoken before. But it was puzzling to hear from her just before the holidays, especially since I wasn’t working
The soaring value of family homes means that many pensioners are living inside a potential tax liability. The number of people in the UK paying inheritance tax jumped by 24 per cent in the past year, with 41,000 estates caught in the IHT net — nearly double the number three years ago. Should this trouble
Remember the rise of the right? First Brexit, then Trump, then a wave of rightwing populism broke over Europe. There were dozens of news articles on the “rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment”. Except it turns out that in the west, 2016 was a high water mark for such views. This is true of almost all