Author: Blake Anderson

Rachel Reeves was forced to slash spending to balance the books in her Spring Statement this week. Welfare spending will be cut more deeply than initially trailed, prompting warnings that 250,000 people — a fifth of them children — could be plunged into poverty. Economists also fear the chancellor will face further tough choices — more cuts or a fresh tax raid — in the autumn. Host Lucy Fisher is joined by the FT’s George Parker and Stephen Bush, as well as economics commentator Chris Giles to discuss the winners and losers, and the main economic takeaways. The panel also…

“In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry,” wrote the art critic Kenneth Clark. Fry — prolific art critic and writer, and a painter himself — was a passionate champion of the latest work coming from France in the early 20th century, and determined to convert the English-speaking world to his way of thinking. He was also a central figure in the circle of thinkers, writers and artists dubbed the Bloomsbury Group (for the London district in which many of them lived), and of whom Dorothy Parker later quipped “they lived in…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.“Ah, look at all the lonely people.” When The Beatles bemoaned the solitary existence and unmourned death of Eleanor Rigby it was 1966, and a cup of tea would have cost you a few pennies. A chat in a café with the waitress perhaps, or someone at a nearby table, may well have meant a lot to our Eleanor — and she doesn’t come over in the song as a high-net-worth individual.For a decade or so, I enjoyed engaging with the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sir Keir Starmer’s director of communications Matthew Doyle is to step down from his role after just nine months in the post.The 49-year-old served as a special adviser to former prime minister Tony Blair and led communications for Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign in 2015.Doyle wrote in a letter to colleagues in Downing Street that “when I started working for Keir four years ago, not many people thought we could win a general election and certainly not in the emphatic way we did”.…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.MainFT:WHSmith branded shops will disappear from UK high streets following a £76mn deal to sell the business on Friday. The group will offload all 480 stores in town centres to Modella Capital, which also owns HobbyCraft in the UK, to focus on its lucrative international travel retail business, which accounts for 75 per cent of group revenue and 85 per cent of trading profit. The WHSmith stores will be rebranded as TG Jones as part of the deal, the company said on…

This article is an on-site version of our Inside Politics newsletter. Subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. If you’re not a subscriber, you can still receive the newsletter free for 30 daysGood morning. Stephen is having a rare break from his mad schedule and we’re all punch-drunk from digesting the implications of the Spring Statement. You can find a cache of excellent FT analysis here. But in the meantime, I’m going to give Inside Politics readers a break too — at least from the economic gloom. Let’s have a look at the May electoral…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.British retail sales unexpectedly rose by 1 per cent in February, propelled by an increase at department stores as well as clothing and household goods shops.Friday’s monthly data from the Office for National Statistics showed the volume of goods bought exceeded the 0.4 per cent contraction expected by economists polled by Reuters.However the figure fell short of January’s 1.4 per cent increase.Retail sales rose by 0.3 per cent in the three months to February compared with the previous three months, indicating resilient…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldSenior figures around Reform UK have drawn up plans for a think-tank that aims to attract Maga donors from America and help Nigel Farage’s party craft policies as it seeks to professionalise. The group will be styled on American outfits that are independently funded but openly support political parties, such as the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute that back Donald Trump. A recent presentation seen by the Financial Times called the proposed organisation “Resolute 1850”, an…

Weeks after the start of meteorological spring, the NHS in England is still mired in winter pressures. Almost 1,700 people a day spent more than 12 hours in accident and emergency last month after doctors had decided to admit them, according to official data published on Thursday. More than one in seven beds were occupied by patients unable to be discharged, often because of a lack of community care. But a group of European countries offers instructive evidence that it is possible to navigate seasonal strains without big disruption to services.Nothing in the approaches that have allowed countries such as…

My daughter has asked if I can help pay for her son’s private school fees as she is struggling with higher mortgage rates and increased cost of living. I am in a position financially to help, but is there anything I should think about before I say yes? For example, would this impact inheritance tax? Second, how best should I structure the payments? And how would I deal with questions from my other children?Alice Edwards, associate at Winckworth Sherwood Alice Edwards, associate at Winckworth Sherwood, says that with VAT imposed on school fees from the start of the year, many…