Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK’s prisons will run out of space despite plans to channel several billion pounds into building four new jails, the justice secretary has said.Shabana Mahmood warned on Wednesday that “building enough prison places is only one part of the prolonged solution” to the capacity crisis. In a written ministerial statement to parliament, she conceded: “In the coming years, the prison population will continue to increase more quickly than we can build new prisons.”Earlier, she explained that other efforts would be required…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Hundreds of tractors gathered on Whitehall on Wednesday morning in the latest protest by UK farmers against changes to tax reliefs announced by Rachel Reeves in the Budget, which they say will spell the death of their sector. Farmers from across the country drove to central London to join the rally under the banner “RIP British Farming”, the most recent in a string of demonstrations by the industry, which says it is already buckling under the strains of climate change, withdrawal of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The owner of London’s St Pancras station has laid out plans to more than double the passenger capacity of the UK’s only international train terminal, taking advantage of booming demand for high speed rail travel.Robert Sinclair, chief executive of HS1, which owns the station and the high-speed rail track running to the Channel Tunnel, said a study had found that space for international passenger numbers to increase from the current capacity of 1,800 an hour to nearly 5,000.“There is an amazing opportunity…

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. One of the big political stories of the first half of next year will be the spending review, which the government will hope will set out its spending plans for the rest of the parliament. (I say “the government will hope”, because of course some kind of shock external event, or a political mess, might force Keir Starmer’s administration to revisit…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chief executives of London-listed companies should be able to be paid like “top-rate footballers” without facing a backlash, according to billionaire financier Lord Michael Spencer. The founder of brokerage ICAP, part of which was sold to Tullett Prebon, said the UK needed to tackle the “political hot potato” of executive pay if it was to attract the best executives to run some of the largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. “We don’t mind paying our footballers, top-rate footballers, extraordinary amounts…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.England’s NHS is heading into its busiest ever winter “confused” about the government’s priorities for the service, health leaders have warned, urging ministers to be honest about the trade-offs required to hit performance targets. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer last week named as one of his new policy “milestones” the target of ensuring 92 per cent of NHS patients in England wait no more than 18 weeks after referral to begin non-urgent hospital treatment. Health secretary Wes Streeting has also vowed to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK public sector workers face fresh pay restraint next year, after the Treasury said it would not raise taxes to fund more generous awards. The education and health departments said in evidence to independent pay review bodies that anything beyond a 2.8 per cent increase in pay for teachers, NHS staff and doctors would be unaffordable in 2025-26, in the absence of big cuts to other spending. Similar wage guidance will cover prison and police officers, members of the armed forces and…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is a science commentatorThe well-preserved tomb near Aleppo in Syria contained six skeletons, gold and silver jewellery, cookware, pottery and even a spearhead. But it was the finger-shaped clay cylinders lying nearby that transfixed archaeologists.Each cylinder was inscribed with a string of symbols. Carbon dating suggested the tomb and its treasures dated back to 2400 BCE. That put the cylinders in the frame as possibly the oldest known representation of alphabetic lettering, a form of written communication quite different from…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In a game of chicken, the first player to flinch loses. In the stand-off that has been playing out this year between Thames Water on the one side and regulator Ofwat and UK ministers on the other, the latter might be feeling triumphant. But they shouldn’t celebrate too soon. They have been pushing Thames, which had warned in September it could run out of cash by the end of the year, to find a market-led solution to its troubles. That now looks…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Global Economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Has rapid economic growth in the world’s high-income countries come to an end? If so, did the bursting of the bubble economy in 2007 mark the turning point? Alternatively, are we at the start of a new age of rapid growth fuelled by artificial intelligence? The answers to these questions are likely to do much to shape the future of our societies, since stagnant economies partly explain our bitter politics.What then does the record look like and how far did it depend…