News

Liz Truss has overruled her chancellor and insisted the UK should not set a limit on the number of applications for low-tax investment zones despite internal Treasury concerns the projects could cost billions of pounds in lost taxes. The flagship policy designed to turbocharge UK investment is a key plank of Truss’s “dash for growth”

The White House said nothing was off the table a day after Opec+ angered Washington with sharp cuts to world oil supply, as it considered responses — including new releases from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to contain energy prices. The Opec+ cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia on Wednesday agreed to lower production

The White House has accused Opec+ of aligning with Russia after Saudi Arabia led the group in agreeing deep oil production cuts, prompting a backlash from countries already battling surging energy inflation triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The Opec+ group said it would reduce production targets by 2mn barrels a day, equivalent to 2

Liz Truss will on Wednesday attempt to rally Conservative MPs behind her faltering leadership, at a party conference that has descended into acrimony, cabinet infighting and confusion. Truss, who has been prime minister for less than a month, will urge her party in a brief 30-minute speech to unite behind her tax-cutting economic policy, which

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is to accelerate the publication of his plan to cut Britain’s debt in an attempt to reassure markets after he was forced to make a humbling U-turn on a key part of his “mini-Budget”. Kwarteng is expected to publish his medium-term fiscal plan, accompanied by official forecasts, later this month after previously

Kwasi Kwarteng is facing a mounting Tory rebellion over his plan to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax, but will on Monday tell Conservative party members he is “confident” that the plan is “the right one”. The chancellor’s tax-cutting “mini” Budget, which also included a wave of new government borrowing, created turmoil in

Prime minister Liz Truss has said that “Britain’s economy needs a reset” and pledged to prioritise “aspiration, enterprise and growth” as the Conservative party prepares to gather for its annual conference in the wake of a week of market turmoil. MPs and party members will convene on Sunday in Birmingham, and Truss is expected to

The UK watchdogs responsible for the £1.5tn corner of the pensions sector that came close to imploding this week are holding daily talks with asset managers to stave off a fresh crisis when the Bank of England’s emergency bond buying ends. The £65bn plan, which ends on October 14, was launched on Wednesday to safeguard

The writer is director of the London School of Economics and Political Science and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England The government’s recent fiscal plan fails to respond to the UK’s twin economic crises in a manner that takes into account either evidence or experience. While they are absolutely right to focus

European stocks and government bond prices turned lower on Thursday, after the Bank of England intervened to calm turmoil in gilts trading, sparking a rally that had rippled into other global financial markets. The Stoxx Europe 600 share gauge fell 1.1 per cent in early dealings, after the regional gauge ended the previous session 0.3

Banks have been waiting years for a rising interest rate environment to boost revenues and margins. That time has finally come. Just not how they expected. The Bank of England base rate is already up from 0.25 per cent at the start of the year to 2.25 per cent. Since Kwasi Kwarteng’s “fiscal event” last

A pension meltdown forced the Bank of England to intervene in gilt markets on Wednesday. Executives told the Financial Times that markets barely dodged a Lehman-Brothers-like collapse – but this time with your mum’s pension at the centre of the drama. Problems with “pension plumbing” are what caused the mess. The culprit is said to

When Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget sent UK government bonds plunging, the chancellor said “markets will react as they will”. Five days later, the Bank of England stepped in to prevent chaotic drops in gilts prices from stinging pension funds and threatening financial stability. A rout that began with Kwarteng’s package of energy subsidies and tax cuts

The Bank of England’s intervention in the bond markets on Wednesday has headed off an immediate funding crisis for final salary pension schemes, but has focused people’s fears on how the fallout from the government’s mini-Budget could affect their retirement savings. Why did the BoE intervene to protect final salary pension schemes? The bank took

The Bank of England went into full financial crisis mode on Wednesday, rushing out an announcement that the central bank was restarting its money printing presses at “whatever scale is necessary”, and later confirming it was planning up to £65bn of new quantitative easing. Ministers have tried saying recent financial turbulence was global, but no

A military court in Myanmar has sentenced deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her economic adviser, an Australian academic, to three years in prison. A closed court in the capital Naypyidaw on Thursday convicted the Nobel Peace Prize laureate alongside Sean Turnell, an honorary professor of economics at Macquarie University in Sydney, of violating

The Bank of England took emergency action on Wednesday to avoid a meltdown in the UK pensions sector, unleashing a £65bn bond-buying programme to stem a crisis in government debt markets. The central bank warned of a “material risk to UK financial stability” from turmoil in the gilts market sparked by chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax

Liz Truss has vowed to stick to her tax-cutting plans, breaking her silence on the market turmoil that followed her government’s fiscal policy announcement last Friday. In a series of interviews on local radio stations, the UK prime minister insisted she would not change course on the economy, saying lower taxes were vital to stave

One of the leading contenders to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister has said he will not stand in the forthcoming leadership contest, as other Conservative MPs prepare to launch their campaigns. Defence secretary Ben Wallace was the favourite among the Tory grassroots, with a net approval rating of +86 among party members according to

Rishi Sunak, who quit as Boris Johnson’s chancellor this week, launched his bid to lead the Conservative party on Friday with a pledge that he will avoid “comforting fairy tales”. His video to launch his campaign appeared a coded attack on what many MPs have seen as the prime minister’s Panglossian approach to policy. “Someone