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Despite the approach of some candidates, the Conservative party leadership contest is a serious matter. The UK’s next prime minister will inherit a series of continuing crises at home and abroad, in a country suffering more than most from inflation and slow growth. Although only members of the ruling Conservative party have a vote in

Everyone in the UK, it seems, is angry about their pay. Rail strikes are set to escalate over the summer. Bus drivers, refuse collectors and baggage handlers have staged walkouts across the country; more than 100,000 postal workers at the Royal Mail Group have voted to follow suit. In the public sector, unions representing teachers

Joe Biden has contracted Covid-19 and has started taking Pfizer’s antiviral pill to combat the disease, the White House announced. The 79-year-old US president tested positive on Thursday morning, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and will work from isolation until he tests negative. The White House said he is fully vaccinated with

The European Central Bank has raised interest rates by half a percentage point — its first increase for more than a decade — while pledging to prevent rising borrowing costs from sparking a eurozone debt crisis amid political turmoil in Italy. The central bank increased interest rates by twice as much as it said it

Italian stocks and bonds sold off on Thursday after Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned and the European Central Bank sharply raised interest rates in its effort to tame blistering inflation. The yield on Italy’s 10-year government bond jumped 0.24 percentage points to 3.6 per cent as Draghi’s national unity coalition unravelled and the ECB lifted

Britain needs new economic rules of thumb. The old norms and assumptions are not remotely adequate for a world with severe shocks to the supply of gas and other commodities, high inflation and extremely low rates of underlying productivity growth. In the past, the shortcuts most economists have used to describe a complex and dynamic

Foreign secretary Liz Truss on Thursday slammed Tory leadership rival Rishi Sunak as “the continuity economic policy candidate”, claiming he took the UK economy in the “wrong direction” when he was chancellor. In a sign of the gloves-off nature of the final contest to become leader of the Conservative party, Truss promised to hold an

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi has resigned, ending a national unity government formed to tackle unpopular reforms and spelling trouble for Europe at a time of acute economic challenges. In a statement, President Sergio Mattarella’s office on Thursday said that Draghi would remain in charge of current affairs. Mattarella is now expected to dissolve parliament

This article is an online version of our Inside Politics newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every weekday. It took five ballots but she got there eventually: Liz Truss has secured the all-important second slot alongside Rishi Sunak. The two politicians are now gunning for support from Conservative

Years ago, after I received some negative feedback at work, my husband Laurence told me something that stuck with me: when we receive criticism, we go through three stages. The first, he said, with apologies for the language, is, “Fuck you.” The second is “I suck.” And the third is “Let’s make it better.” I

The 350m Lotus Tower that looms over the skyline in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo is one of the tallest buildings in South Asia. Funded by a Chinese state bank and designed to look like a giant lotus bud about to burst into flower, it was intended to be a metaphor for the flourishing of Sri

United Airlines reported its highest-ever second-quarter revenue and had its first profitable quarter since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the carrier said on Wednesday. The Chicago-based airline, the second largest in the US, reported net income of $329mn on operating revenue of $12.1bn. Revenue was up 6 per cent compared with the March to

Autcraft, a Minecraft server for autistic children, was about to celebrate its ninth anniversary when the troll attacked. They sent explicit photos and abusive messages to the autistic children on Autcraft’s social network, wreaking so much havoc that founder Stuart Duncan was forced to shut down the site. Nearly a decade of community history was

One thing to start: Last week the Scoreboard team participated in a virtual event to discuss how long the boom in sports investing will last. Subscribers can watch a replay here exclusively here. Is women’s football the next big investment opportunity? That’s been on my mind ever since England’s Lionesses scored eight times against Norway,

In a more optimistic era, the overthrow by Sri Lankans of a feckless government they blamed for their country’s economic collapse might have been called a Velvet Revolution. It began last Saturday when tens of thousands descended on the largest city Colombo and poured into public buildings, including President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s official residence, amid chants

Chinese regulators are trying to stamp out panic over rising home loan risks at banks as a wave of homeowners join a country-wide mortgage boycott of unfinished houses. Hundreds of thousands of buyers have halted mortgage payments on more than 200 unfinished property projects in China this week, aggravating a property sector crisis that has

Italy was plunged into political turmoil on Thursday when prime minister Mario Draghi offered to resign after a split in his national unity government. The former European Central Bank president said conditions were no longer in place for him to carry on after the populist Five Star Movement refused to support his government in a

You can enable subtitles (captions) in the video player This is a story of finance gone wrong. The Credit Suisse story is the story of one of Switzerland’s most important institutions, one of the most important banking institutions in Europe. The bank which ignored risks, ignored red flags. We are in a very challenging situation.

British manufacturers have warned that a proposal to lift anti-dumping measures on a type of Chinese steel risks a flood of cheap imports and threatens hundreds of jobs in the sector. The Trade Remedies Authority, an arms-length body set up last year to make recommendations to ministers, has advised revoking existing duties on Chinese high-fatigue

Britain’s leading role in providing weapons to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion will endure, whoever replaces Boris Johnson as prime minister, the country’s ambassador to Nato has said, amid concerns in Kyiv that a successor could fail to match his focus on the war. Johnson’s enthusiastic support for Ukraine was one of the