Category: News

Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, has died, leaving her people in mourning but reflecting on a life of duty in which she bound the country together through 70 years of momentous change. Her death, at the age of 96, was announced by Buckingham Palace at 6.30pm on Thursday. It marked a watershed moment in…

The pound has fallen to its weakest levels since 1985, reflecting the daunting scale of the economic challenge new prime minister Liz Truss faces as she prepares to unveil an emergency energy package. Truss will on Thursday give details of the state intervention to shield households and companies from soaring energy bills. Government insiders said…

Liz Truss has vowed Britain will “ride out the storm”, as the new UK prime minister began confronting an economic crisis with a massive energy bailout for families and businesses that could cost more than £150bn. Truss dodged torrential rain outside Downing Street to tell the country that she would create an “aspiration nation”, adding:…

Liz Truss will enter Downing Street on Tuesday after a bruising battle to become the UK’s next prime minister and will finalise a two-year package of energy relief for households and business that could cost up to £100bn. The foreign secretary beat rival and former chancellor Rishi Sunak in a ballot of Conservative party members…

Kwasi Kwarteng, who has been tipped as Britain’s next chancellor, has launched a pre-emptive bid to reassure markets that Liz Truss will not blow a hole in the public finances if, as widely expected, she is named as prime minister on Monday. Kwarteng writes in the Financial Times that although there will need to be…

Sweden will give emergency liquidity support to electricity producers as its prime minister warned that Russia’s decision to halt gas deliveries to Europe could place its financial system under severe strain. Magdalena Andersson said on Saturday that the government would offer hundreds of billions of kroner in funding to electricity producers, who have seen the…

Surging inflation, the rising cost of government debt and Liz Truss’s promises on tax cuts and defence spending will blow a £60bn hole in the public finances by the middle of the decade, according to Financial Times calculations. Although Truss, favourite to be named Britain’s next prime minister on Monday, has said she will stick…

Vladimir Putin has called Ukraine “an anti-Russian enclave” as Moscow delivered a fresh threat to western efforts to curb surging energy prices. Speaking in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on Thursday, Putin said of Ukraine: “Our guys who are fighting there are defending both the residents of Donbas [the industrial area in the east largely…

Sterling is on track to post its steepest monthly decline since the wake of the Brexit referendum against a backdrop of intensifying economic and political uncertainty. The pound traded on Wednesday as low as $1.16, leaving it down 4.6 per cent this month in the steepest decline since October 2016. Sterling has also declined by…

Rishi Sunak, Tory leadership contender, has warned that it would be “complacent and irresponsible” to ignore the risk of markets losing confidence in the British economy, as wagers against UK government debt sent short-term borrowing costs in the gilt market soaring. In an interview with the Financial Times, Sunak said his leadership rival Liz Truss…

The EU is preparing emergency measures to curb the price of electricity by separating it from the soaring cost of gas, as Shell warns the energy crisis could last for years, and utilities turn to the state for support. With member states stepping up pressure for action, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said…

Central bankers face a more challenging economic landscape than they have experienced in decades and will find it harder to root out high inflation, top multilateral officials and monetary policymakers have warned. The world’s leading economic authorities this weekend sounded the alarm about the forces working against the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and other…

The writer is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think-tank Economic crises have phases you can almost feel. They ebb and they flow, as the nature and scale of the crisis, and our awareness of it, changes. Single events often crystallise a shift, forcing policymakers to wake up to the fact they are required to…

The scale of the challenge facing the UK’s next prime minister was laid bare on Friday when the energy regulator said household power bills would surge 80 per cent with further rises expected next year. Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, the two candidates for the leadership of the Conservative party, will face a spiralling cost…

Liz Truss is considering plans to trigger “Article 16” proceedings against the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol within days of entering Downing Street if she succeeds Boris Johnson as prime minister next month, according to several government insiders. The UK and Brussels are locked in a fractious legal stand-off over implementing the deal covering…

Joe Biden’s administration will cancel $10,000 in student loan repayments for millions of Americans in a move that has pleased progressives but threatens to push up inflation. The US president announced the decision on Wednesday, following months of deliberations over the exact structure of the debt forgiveness scheme. Biden paused most student debt repayments during…

One of the UK’s largest energy groups has told ministers that a rescue plan to protect households from rising bills will need funding of more than £100bn over two years, underlining the scale of the crisis engulfing Britain as gas prices surge. Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottish Power — one of the “Big Six”…

US stocks suffered their biggest decline in two months on Monday, with tech shares falling sharply on worries about the gloomy economic outlook and concerns that members of the Federal Reserve will adopt a hawkish tone at a symposium this week. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index slid 2.1 per cent, its most severe one-day…

Moscow sees no possibility of a diplomatic solution to end the war in Ukraine and expects a long conflict, a senior Russian diplomat has warned, as President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion reaches the six-month mark this week. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, told the Financial Times that the UN should…

Some investors are warning of a mismatch between market expectations and the Federal Reserve’s stated commitment to stamping out inflation as traders stand by their wagers on interest rate cuts next year. Traders in the futures market are betting the central bank’s main interest rate will be cut to 3.3 per cent by the end…