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If only Britain had had a Conservative government for the past decade instead of the crypto-socialists who botched everything, including Brexit. Ever since his resignation last year, David Frost, Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, former cabinet minister, peer and latterly ferocious evangelist of the lost creed of true Toryism, has been compiling a charge sheet against

Perhaps we need a new rule. When a politician complains that regulators are being too slow, too cautious or a bit of a “dog in the manger” about overhauling insurance rules for the glorious benefit of Brexit Britain, they should be asked to explain the issues involved. Rather as political wannabes are regularly asked to

In the first lockdown, I became trapped. Inside my head. Stuck indoors, work was intense; so was home-schooling. Thoughts piled up, with no release. At the end of the working day, often late at night, I would take a short walk to clear my mind, keys clutched between my fingers in case of an attacker,

Asian equity markets fell on Wednesday as investors braced themselves for the latest US inflation data, which are expected to shape the pace of future monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed as much as 2.2 per cent, while China’s CSI 300 benchmark of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks declined up

Fourteen years ago, I told a well-informed friend that Barack Obama was considering picking Joe Biden as his running mate in the 2008 election. “You’ve got to be kidding,” came the riposte. “Biden is way past it.” Similar obituaries were being penned only two weeks ago as Biden’s poll numbers dropped below even Donald Trump’s

Donald Trump cried foul on Monday after FBI agents searched his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, while his fellow Republicans have rushed to defend him as a victim of judicial persecution. The execution of a search warrant at the former president’s home has highlighted the extent of the legal troubles that have engulfed

The writer is UK economist at Morgan Stanley With inflation higher than it has been in decades, there is no shortage of critics of the Bank of England. Still, the bulk of the blame seems largely unfounded. The BoE has been criticised for being too slow to raise rates and doing too little since. But

Most people driving through Napa County, California’s famed wine region, see only beauty. Steven Burgess sees something different. Spotting clumps of juniper along the edge of a multimillion dollar property, he calls out the combustible shrub’s local nickname: “green gasoline!” The 49-year-old volunteer firefighter and former vintner is giving the Financial Times a history tour,

Elon Musk has taken advantage of a recent rebound in Tesla’s stock price to sell $6.9bn worth of shares in the electric carmaker since the end of last week, according to a series of regulatory filings late on Tuesday. The sales are the first since the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive sold $8.5bn of stock

Liz Truss, frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest, has rejected business pleas for her to meet prime minister Boris Johnson and rival Rishi Sunak to “agree a common pledge” on tackling the cost of living crisis. Speaking in Darlington on Tuesday during the latest hustings in front of party members, the foreign secretary pushed back

Game developer Roblox became the latest company in the video game industry to report a slowdown in growth, with a drop in a closely watched sales metric triggering a share price tumble in after-hours trading. The company, whose eponymous platform helps players design their own games, went public through a direct listing in March 2021,

Liz Truss is facing an early fight with the Bank of England if she becomes the next UK prime minister after signalling she will give ministers powers to override City regulators seen to be holding back post-Brexit reforms. The foreign secretary has vowed to press ahead with a law allowing ministers to “call in” regulatory

Carlyle Group’sousted chief executive Kewsong Lee asked for a pay package worth up to $300mn over five years and resigned from the US private equity group after its co-founders refused to even discuss the deal, multiple people with knowledge of the matter said. Lee crafted the deal during negotiations with his consultants and Carlyle this

The typical household energy bill in Britain is forecast to soar to £4,420 next April, more than three times the level it was at the start of 2022, stoking calls for increased state support for families facing energy poverty. But why has Britain’s energy price cap, which dictates a maximum that suppliers can charge the

The flow of oil along a key pipeline transporting Russian crude to central Europe has been halted amid a row over payments, threatening supplies to the region and exposing the EU’s continued reliance on Russian imports. The southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline, which takes Russian oil across Ukraine to refineries in Slovakia, the Czech

Grim news about the UK economy keeps mounting. Last week, the Bank of England forecast a 15-month recession, with inflation peaking at more than 13 per cent. The energy price cap, which limits how much households can be charged, is now forecast to soar 80 per cent in October from today’s record levels, pushing many

The writer is a science commentator InnerCity Weightlifting, a non-profit gym in Boston, Massachusetts, recruits personal trainers from deprived backgrounds to get rich clients into shape. The unlikely pairings, aimed at steering youths away from a troubled life on the streets, produce more than just honed biceps: affluent gym-goers have spontaneously offered trainers extra job

SoftBank’s record $23.4bn quarterly loss, a pledge of heavy cost-cutting and an hour of public self-criticism by its founder Masayoshi Son could push the Japanese billionaire to reconsider a management buyout of the technology conglomerate. Analysts and investors said the latest results, which delivered fresh signs that SoftBank is preparing to sell key operations such

Vladimir Putin must think the leaders of Europe were born yesterday. The Russian president has made it perfectly clear that he will use tight restrictions of natural gas supplies as an economic weapon in the coming winter, but European politicians and central bankers still talk of a Russian embargo as a mere possibility. There is

Household energy bills in Britain are projected to peak at more than £4,420 a year on average next spring, posing a “fresh shock” for households already enduring a cost of living crisis. The energy consultancy Cornwall Insight on Tuesday raised its forecasts for Britain’s price cap following an announcement by the energy regulator Ofgem of