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

Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for the initially agreed price of $44bn, in a move that could put an end to one of the most high-profile corporate legal battles in decades. The Tesla chief sent a letter to Twitter on Monday night offering to go ahead with the deal, less than two weeks

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

Liz Truss, prime minister, has admitted that mistakes were made in the controversial “mini” Budget that sparked market turmoil last week, as she braced herself for a fraught Conservative conference in Birmingham. Truss said she would not retreat on her plan to deliver £45bn of unfunded tax cuts, insisting it would help deliver growth, but

Prime minister Liz Truss has conceded that her government’s £45bn “mini” Budget had caused short-term “disruption”, but insisted that she had an “iron grip on the national finances” and would deliver economic growth. Truss argued that the existing economic status quo in the UK “was not working”, adding that the country had for too long

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

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, unleashing a £65bn bond-buying programme aimed at stemming a spiralling crisis in government debt markets. The central bank warned of a “material risk to UK financial stability” from turmoil in the UK government bond market, which was sparked by chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts and borrowing

Borrowing costs in Britain are projected to nearly treble to 6.25 per cent by May, after the Bank of England’s chief economist warned the government’s new debt-laden economic plan required a “significant monetary response”. Huw Pill’s intervention came as Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor, prepared to reassure markets that he would control debt in a new medium-term

Some of the UK’s biggest mortgage lenders, including Virgin Money and Skipton Building Society, have stopped offering new home loans in response to the market volatility triggered by the government’s mini-Budget. Halifax, part of Lloyds Banking Group, the biggest mortgage lender in the UK, is also withdrawing a range of new home loans, it told

Western capitals are making contingency plans should Vladimir Putin take steps towards acting on his threats of nuclear attacks against Ukraine and are sending private warnings to the Kremlin about possible consequences, according to western officials. The Russian president’s nuclear warnings are “a matter that we have to take deadly seriously,” White House national security

Investors have warned UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng that the bonanza of tax cuts and spending measures he announced on Friday risk undermining their confidence in the country. On Friday the chancellor heralded a “new era” for the UK economy, in which he plans to boost growth by delivering the biggest tax reduction since 1972 at

Sterling tumbled against the dollar to below $1.09, hitting its lowest point since 1985, after UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled a £45bn debt financed tax-cutting package that sparked a historic increase in borrowing costs. Kwarteng’s political and economic gamble includes the biggest set of tax cuts for 50 years, with the end of the 45p

The Bank of England raised interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 2.25 per cent on Thursday, setting out the prospect of a further big increase in November to bring inflation under control. The move takes the BoE’s benchmark rate to its highest level since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008. However,

Vladimir Putin has ordered the mobilisation of army reservists to support Moscow’s ailing campaign in Ukraine and warned that he would use Russia’s nuclear arsenal if its “territorial integrity” was “threatened”, declaring: “This is not a bluff.” The warning, which sparked immediate alarm in Washington and elsewhere, came as Putin claimed the west wanted to

Four Moscow-controlled regions in Ukraine will stage referendums this week over becoming part of Russia, as the Kremlin tries to regain the initiative after major battlefield losses earlier this month. In another sign of Moscow’s hardening stance, Russia’s Duma passed a law on Tuesday that would increase penalties for desertion in the event of a

Queen Elizabeth II has begun the journey to her final resting place at Windsor after a momentous state funeral at Westminster Abbey, attended by world leaders and British citizens mourning the country’s longest-serving monarch. Crowds thronged the route of the Queen’s coffin as it made its way from the abbey through the heart of ceremonial

Public admonishments of Russian president Vladimir Putin by the leaders of China and India over his invasion of Ukraine signal a shift in global perceptions of the war, western officials have said, amid efforts by Europe and the US to erode the Kremlin’s international support. The chiding of Putin by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi