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Liz Truss, foreign secretary, has proposed sweeping reforms to UK trade union laws that would guarantee minimum services during strikes and raise the threshold on the number of workers needing to take part in ballots on industrial action. Truss, the bookmakers’ favourite to be the UK’s next prime minister, pledged on Monday to introduce legislation

The chemicals sector faces a £2bn hit of post-Brexit red tape, twice the cost of initial industry estimates, as Britain sets up its own regulatory regime, ministers have warned. While Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have promised to “axe EU red tape” during the Tory leadership campaign, the cost of homegrown British red tape after

The travel chaos seen around the main Channel ports of England since the end of last week has demonstrated how quickly the arterial link for tourism and trade between the Britain and the EU can clog up. In the first big test for post-Brexit border checks, with thousands of families embarking on their summer holidays,

Russia will slash gas supplies through its largest pipeline to Germany to just a fifth of capacity from Wednesday in a move that threatens to leave the continent short of critical supplies ahead of the winter. Russia’s state-owned Gazprom said on Monday it would cut existing flows on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in half

Ukraine hopes to start implementing a deal to export millions of tonnes of grain from blockaded Black Sea ports as soon as this week, even after Russian missile strikes hit the key Ukrainian port city of Odesa and threatened to unravel the agreement. Preparations include demining essential areas for maritime traffic and setting up special

Wall Street stock markets put in a mixed performance on Monday as cautious investors looked ahead to a week of big tech earnings and a crucial interest rate decision from the US Federal Reserve. The broad S&P 500 equity gauge edged 0.1 per cent higher. A fall in the S&P’s technology sector was balanced by

German business confidence has fallen to its lowest level for more than two years in the latest sign that Europe’s largest economy is teetering on the brink of recession. Companies across Germany became more gloomy about both their current situation and the outlook for the next six months, according to the Ifo Institute’s closely watched

The Goldman Sachs bankers were in a hole. It was February 2022 and they were trying to sell over £5bn worth of bonds and loans backing the UK’s biggest leveraged buyout in years: US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice’s £10bn takeover of grocer Morrisons. They were well behind schedule, having put plans on

Satellite operator Eutelsat has confirmed it is in discussions to acquire smaller player OneWeb over an all-share deal that seeks to help the France and UK-based groups better compete with US rivals. Eutelsat’s share price fell by more than 17 per cent to €8.60 in early trading after the statement on Monday as investors balked

As evening draws in across Turkey’s frontier with Syria, the trickle of traffic passing through the Öncüpınar border checkpoint turns into a stream. Through one channel, dusty trucks, their loads long emptied, rumble northwards back into Turkey. Through another, Turkish civil servants and aid workers head home after a day’s labour in the war-devastated neighbouring

The strong dollar has wiped billions of dollars off the second-quarter sales of US companies, prompting many to cut their guidance for the remainder of the year. The list of bellwethers stomaching multimillion- or billion-dollar hits has grown by the day after the US currency surged to its highest level in 20 years this month,

By the standards of contemporary activist campaigns, it was an unremarkable press release. Color of Change, a racial justice group, fired off a statement last week demanding that companies stop funding politicians who restrict women’s access to abortions. Color of Change is far from the first progressive organisation to accuse businesses of hypocrisy for enabling

Britain’s overseas aid programme has been thrown into confusion after the Treasury blocked “non-essential” new payments for the rest of the summer over concerns that the cost of relief work in Ukraine will breach a spending cap. Last year Boris Johnson’s government cut Britain’s overseas aid budget after the Covid pandemic, “temporarily” ditching a manifesto

Textile manufacturers in Leicester are still underpaying and exploiting workers, despite a clampdown by enforcement bodies and concerted efforts by UK retailers to clean up their supply chains, according to new research by the Low Pay Commission. Labour abuses in garment factories in the city in the East Midlands have been known for years, but

Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday tell Labour to change its “instincts” and focus as much on boosting growth as on the redistribution of wealth, as he tries to wrest the mantle of economic competence from the Conservatives. Starmer believes the fractious Tory leadership contest has offered Labour a chance to regain the public’s trust

The Conservative leadership contest has another six weeks to run before the UK has its next prime minister, but Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have already earmarked key allies for potential top roles in government. Both leadership campaigns insist no job offers have been made and that it is premature to discuss who might serve

The UK and French governments will each have a seat on the board of a new satellite operator aiming to take on billionaire space entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos under merger terms being thrashed out on Sunday between Eutelsat and OneWeb. Paris-listed Eutelsat and OneWeb, the space-based internet pioneer rescued from collapse by a

European governments are attempting to water down Brussels’ plans to push the bloc into cutting gas demand to better weather a shortage of Russian supplies this winter. Diplomats from the 27 EU member states have been locked in negotiations since the European Commission proposed measures last week requiring countries to cut gas use by 15

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday met Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as part of a tour of several African nations designed to counter western accusations that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a global food crisis. Lavrov’s meeting with the Egyptian leader as well as with foreign minister Sameh Shoukry showed that

The writer is former chief economist at Goldman Sachs and was a UK Treasury minister It is now over 12 years since the Conservative party regained power. As members ponder their fourth leader during that time, the country urgently needs their choice — and our next prime minister — to have a credible vision of how to