News

US president Joe Biden has said Liz Truss’s original tax proposal was a “mistake”, in his most critical comments about the UK prime minister’s fiscal policy. Biden made the remarks during a visit to an ice cream shop in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, adding that Truss’s decision to reverse some of the sweeping tax cuts

The UK’s new chancellor Jeremy Hunt has admitted that Liz Truss’s government went “too far, too fast” in last month’s “mini” Budget and that in the near future taxes will have to rise and spending will have to be cut in order to regain economic credibility. In a statement on Saturday evening Hunt said the

Liz Truss sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and shredded her economic strategy on Friday, but her effort to salvage her premiership failed to win over financial markets and left Conservative MPs in a state of mutiny. In a Downing Street press conference lasting less than 10 minutes, Truss named Jeremy Hunt, former foreign secretary, as

Liz Truss, UK prime minister, is preparing to rip up the government’s “mini” Budget in a desperate attempt to rebuild market confidence and save her embryonic premiership. Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, is expected to return from IMF meetings in Washington on Saturday, with government insiders saying he will have to scrap measures in his £43bn

The Bank of England battled a renewed sell-off in UK government bonds on Wednesday after its vow to end its emergency gilt-buying programme unsettled markets already unnerved by the fiscal plans of prime minister Liz Truss. The central bank bought £4.4bn of gilts from investors, its biggest intervention since it entered the market last month

Andrew Bailey dashed the hopes of pension funds on Tuesday, ruling out continuing the Bank of England’s £65bn bond-buying intervention into next week. The BoE governor said that although strains had been felt, market conditions in the government bonds “seemed calmer” on Tuesday after it had staged its second emergency intervention in two days. “We’ve

A sell-off in UK government bonds pushed the country’s long-term borrowing costs to their highest point since the Bank of England stepped in to avert a financial market collapse, as new BoE and government measures failed to reassure investors. Monday’s fall in gilts came despite the BoE announcement earlier in the day of a new

Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of carrying out a “terrorist attack” against the bridge linking Crimea to mainland Russia, a key military supply route for its invasion of Ukraine and symbol of Russian prestige. Russia’s president said there was “no doubt” that Ukraine was behind the explosion, which sent two of the bridge’s road spans

An explosion tore through Russia’s bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea early on Saturday, killing at least three people and severely damaging its structure in a major blow to Vladimir Putin more than seven months into his invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s anti-terrorist committee said a truck exploded on the bridge’s roadside in the early

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

The UK government’s loosening of fiscal policy “will require a significant monetary response”, the Bank of England’s chief economist has said, pushing market expectations for interest rates sharply higher. Futures markets are now betting on a wave of interest rate hikes by the bank in coming months, following the comments by Huw Pill. Borrowing costs