Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In a 26-acre glasshouse in Lincolnshire, a robot is slowly wheeling down a long line of strawberry plants, picking ripe red fruit to be dispatched to supermarkets. This is the latest project of James Dyson, one of the UK’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, and now its biggest commercial farmer.Dyson’s effort to produce superior fruit and put his British strawberries on sale at Christmas is characteristically ambitious. The inventor who revolutionised the vacuum cleaner business wants to do the same in horticulture, using technology to…

As 2024 draws to a close, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is pulling in the cash, whether from billionaire donors or punters betting that the populist party is on the verge of turning British politics on its head.Ladbrokes now has Farage as 5/2 favourite to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, ahead of Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative opposition. This week property tycoon Nick Candy switched his support from the Tories to Reform, taking on the role of fundraiser and vowing to bring in “tens of millions” for the party.Farage may have momentum, but can he turn a rag-tag start-up…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK energy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.UK ministers are drawing up plans for the country’s biggest ever renewable energy subsidy auction as they attempt to hit their challenging clean power target, according to government figures.Energy secretary Ed Miliband is due to launch a “Clean Power 2030 Action Plan” on Friday, which will set out how the government aims to decarbonise the electricity system by the end of the decade. Last week Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer named it as one of his “milestone” targets. The UK subsidises low-carbon electricity…

European Nato members are holding talks about increasing the alliance’s target for defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP at its annual summit next June partly in anticipation of Donald Trump’s return as US president.Four people involved in the preliminary talks told the Financial Times they were discussing the steep rise from 2 per cent of GDP, a move that would put intense pressure on already strained national budgets and that has raised misgivings in many capitals.Of Nato’s 32 members, 23 will reach the existing 2 per cent target this year, according to alliance calculations, up from six in…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Measures designed to smooth the UK government’s new planning rules by giving local councils time to adapt to higher housing targets risk delaying their impact for years, experts have warned. A “landmark overhaul” of England’s planning regime to be published on Thursday will increase the pressure on councils to use “local plans” for development that set out where homes should be built, in order to speed up future decision-making. But plans that reflect the new targets could take years to put in place,…

Sir Keir Starmer will on Thursday accept an invitation to hold talks on defence co-operation with the EU, in the first such meeting between a British prime minister and the bloc’s 27 leaders since Brexit.António Costa, the new European Council president, will extend the symbolic invitation to Starmer at a meeting in Downing Street, in a sign of improving relations between the two sides.Costa’s meeting with Starmer comes just 12 days after he took office in Brussels, in a sign that the former Portuguese prime minister wants to prioritise the bloc’s relationship with the UK.On Thursday he will discuss his…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.More than 10,000 civil service jobs are set to be cut under ministers’ plans to find savings of 5 per cent to their departments in the spending review, according to government figures.Ministers are looking at rolling out voluntary redundancy programmes across a range of departments to achieve the savings that chancellor Rachel Reeves has demanded as part of her comprehensive review of expenditure.Headcount in the civil service topped 513,000 this year, a 34 per cent increase on 2016 levels and the eighth…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK ministers have rejected calls from unions to restore public sector pay to its pre-austerity level, saying real-terms increases in wages will be affordable only if they are underpinned by productivity gains.Proposals to limit awards for teachers and NHS staff to 2.8 per cent next year drew an angry reaction from unions, which said the government was adding insult to injury by asking schools to fund the uplift from existing budgets, and hospitals to fund workforce reforms from the same pot.But Downing…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.You can gauge the popularity of a song at a Sam Fender gig by the quantity of forefingers pointed towards the stage. For the most popular at the O2 Arena there was a bristling mass of digits, many thousands of them, all directed at Fender in his Bob Dylan T-shirt as he sang and played guitar. It resembled a crude electoral tally. Hands up if you like this one.Some acts get befuddled by mass support: they lose sight of what they want…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Business leaders have warned Rachel Reeves at a private meeting that the economic environment is “extremely challenging” with companies facing major uncertainty after last month’s tax-raising Budget and the “Making Work Pay” package of employment reforms. The UK chancellor on Wednesday morning attended a meeting of the British Chambers of Commerce “business council”, a group of senior corporate figures who gather every quarter to discuss the economic landscape. Some 19 executives came to the gathering in south London from companies including SSE, NatWest, Heathrow,…