Author: Blake Anderson

This article is an on-site version of Free Lunch newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Thursday and Sunday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newslettersGreetings, and happy Signalgate week. Given the ever more extraordinary news coming out of Donald Trump’s America, Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement to the UK parliament was not perhaps this week’s most consequential event (read all you need to know about it here). But it’s one significant piece of an important pattern that is at play all over Europe.For weeks before the Spring Statement, the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Utilities myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Britain’s privatised water companies tipped sewage into rivers and coastal waters for a record 3.6mn hours last year despite a groundswell of anti-pollution protests and pledges to increase investment, according to official government data.Although the duration of spills increased, the number of outflows fell slightly compared with 2023, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in its annual report on sewage outflows in England on Thursday.  It said the increase in sewage outflows was due to a lack of capacity in the pipes…

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. Rachel Reeves announced a series of spending cuts in her Spring Statement yesterday to restore the government’s wriggle room against its fiscal rules. Some thoughts on what happens next in today’s email. Inside Politics is edited by Harvey Nriapia today. Follow Stephen on Bluesky and X. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK chancellor Rachel Reeves’ new economic plan came under immediate pressure on Thursday after US President Donald Trump’s imposition of 25 per cent car tariffs “crystallised” some of the many risks facing the economy.Within hours of Reeves announcing her Spring Statement, the prospect of an escalating trade war posed a new threat to her strategy and the “very small” £9.9bn of headroom she had given herself.Richard Hughes, head of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, warned that a full-blown global trade war…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK retail bellwether Next has already upgraded its profit outlook for this year after better than expected sales in recent weeks. The fashion chain, led by chief executive Lord Simon Wolfson, said it expected pre-tax profit this year to be £20mn higher than what it guided in January to just over £1bn. The group said it was “positive” about its prospects, as it aimed to serve more shoppers globally than just the UK, but cautioned it operated “in an environment where the risks to…

President Donald Trump has designs on potential rare earth resources in Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Greenland. But one company says it has developed a smarter way to access critical minerals needed for military drones, wind turbines and electric vehicles.At a plant on Belfast Harbour in Northern Ireland, Ionic Technologies, a unit of Australian stock exchange-listed Ionic Rare Earths, has patented a method for extracting the four highest-value and most in-demand rare earth oxides from industrial magnets. China dominates both rare earths mining and processing, and the market is valuable: Adamas Intelligence, a consultancy focused on supply chains…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry and Anish Kapoor unite to end HIV Because you Left – I wanted to hold you, 2024, by Tracey Emin © Tracey Emin StudioTerrence Higgins Trust fundraising auctionWhen: 31 MarchClick: tht.eventsMore than 70 contemporary artworks – a painting by Tracey Emin and a Grayson Perry ceramic tile among them – are on offer at the Terrence Higgins Trust’s annual fundraising auction this month. Over the past two decades the auction has raised more than £5mn to help meet its…

After completing her PhD in immunology at Imperial College London, Dr Tamara Elliott feels fortunate to have had the support of her supervisors and to have secured the necessary funding to advance her career. Not every doctorate student or budding clinical researcher is able to do so. “If I hadn’t managed to secure this [funding] then I wouldn’t have been able to progress. I would have just continued along the pure clinical pathway, which is what a lot of my colleagues have done,” says Elliott, now a clinical lecturer.“They’ve done PhDs and haven’t been able to find an academic position,”…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Rachel Reeves carried out a £14bn repair job on the UK’s strained public finances on Wednesday in a push to restore the government’s fiscal “headroom” and keep to her “non-negotiable” budgetary rules.The chancellor’s announcements in the Spring Statement included big cuts to welfare and a squeeze in day-to-day spending by Whitehall departments later in the parliament.Reeves, who told MPs that her statement took account of “a world that is changing before our eyes”, stopped short of raising taxes. But analysts warned that…

Rachel Reeves insists she has put the UK public finances on a stable footing. But the government’s fiscal watchdog on Wednesday made clear how easily the chancellor could get knocked off balance.The chancellor’s Spring Statement left her with a £9.9bn margin of error against her “non-negotiable” fiscal rule requiring her to balance the current budget by 2029-30 — the third-slimmest room for error since 2010.“The array of potential claims on that small amount of headroom is large and varied,” warned OBR chair Richard Hughes, giving Reeves no more than a 50 per cent chance of meeting her targets. “The risks…