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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 on Friday 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

UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng will on Friday attempt to deliver shock treatment to Britain’s stagnating economy, with a 30-point growth package to turn “the vicious cycle of stagnation into a virtuous cycle of growth”. Kwarteng’s mini-Budget will feature tax reforms to help struggling self-employed business owners, alongside scrapping a planned increase in corporation tax that

Two former health secretaries, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt, on Sunday announced bids to stand as Conservative party leader with pledges to slash taxes in an effort to win support from MPs. A total of nine candidates have now announced they will stand to replace Boris Johnson as UK prime minister, with more expected 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

Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has been shot in the city of Nara, public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday. Abe was seen collapsing during a speech in Nara at around 11.30am, the broadcaster reported. He was bleeding. An NHK reporter on the scene heard the sound of a gunshot. The former prime minister has

Boris Johnson was rocked by further ministerial resignations on Thursday morning, as senior Tories attempted to force a defiant but broken UK prime minister out of Number 10. Brandon Lewis, Northern Ireland secretary and once a loyal Johnson supporter, said he was quitting and that the government was no longer being run on the basis

Nadhim Zahawi, the UK’s new chancellor of the exchequer, has said he will review government plans to raise corporation tax from 19p to 25p as Boris Johnson seeks to rescue his floundering administration. Zahawi was appointed on Tuesday night after the shock resignation of his predecessor Rishi Sunak, health secretary Sajid Javid and 10 junior

Boris Johnson on Tuesday faced explosive allegations that Number 10 did not tell the truth over what the UK prime minister knew about inappropriate behaviour by the disgraced former Tory deputy chief whip Chris Pincher. Lord Simon McDonald, former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote on Tuesday that Pincher was subject to a formal

Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit. In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the

Senior Brussels officials are discussing the creation of an EU-wide sanctions authority, as they push for tougher and more consistent enforcement of penalties related to the war in Ukraine. Mairead McGuinness, financial services commissioner, said officials were open to introducing an EU version of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac), the powerful US Treasury

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, the pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, has warned fares will rise for the next five years because flying has become “too cheap” to make profits as industry costs spiral. His warning comes as ticket prices have risen in Europe and the US this summer as passengers return and some airlines

Tensions are growing between Downing Street and UK regulators over Boris Johnson’s flagship post-Brexit reform of the insurance sector, which aims to unleash an “investment big bang” in British infrastructure. The prime minister has told allies he is “getting impatient” over the pace of change to the so-called Solvency II rules and with what he

The UK’s trade performance fell to its worst level since records began in the first quarter of 2022, heaping more pressure on sterling in international currency markets. Although the Office for National Statistics warned that the figures it published were “subject to higher levels of uncertainty than normal”, the new system it used to collect

The US will increase its military deployments in Europe as part of a scaling up of Nato defences, President Joe Biden said, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden said the Nato leaders summit in Madrid was “history-making” and that the additional US deployments would “send an unmistakable message that Nato is strong and

Emmanuel Macron wants to see a drive for higher oil production around the world as the French president seeks ways of bringing down the cost of energy and alleviating the pressure being felt by energy-importing economies. Macron made the proposal to fellow G7 leaders as they seek to hammer out the details of a price

Nato is to agree an overhaul of its battle plans to offer better protection to the alliance’s eastern flank, tearing up a model that could have meant relinquishing and then attempting to recapture the Baltic states in the event of a Russian invasion. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato secretary-general, told the Financial Times that the new military

Samantha Eberhart, a 19-year-old student at New York University, had just finished a Spanish exam on Friday morning when her smartphone relayed the news: America’s highest court had struck down a woman’s constitutionally-protected right to an abortion. “I just kind of went to the bathroom and cried,” Eberhart said. Eventually she made her way to

The battle over abortion rights in the US shifted rapidly to Congress and the midterm elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade and gutted the decades-old constitutional protection for women seeking to end a pregnancy. As conservative states began to implement new abortion restrictions across the country in the wake of Friday’s ruling,

Boris Johnson on Friday suffered a double blow as the Conservatives lost two parliamentary by-elections just weeks after the prime minister survived a vote of no confidence in his leadership. In Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, Liberal Democrat Richard Foord overturned a Conservative majority of 24,239 votes, winning by 6,144 votes. The seat had been