Author: Blake Anderson

Labour’s long-awaited spending review dropped this week. Rachel Reeves unveiled funding settlements for government departments – and a newly upbeat tone after the gloomy promise of hard times in her previous Commons set pieces. The NHS and defence were prioritised but other departments and services face a squeeze. Are dividing lines now clear as Labour fights for a second term in power? Why did even the experts call Reeves’ speech “baffling”? Will voters notice any benefit – and in time for an electoral dividend? Host Miranda Green is joined by regular panellists Stephen Bush and Jim Pickard, as well as…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Watching Rachel Reeves deliver her spending review, I once again felt I was being embraced by the rhetoric of Gordon Brown. The blizzard of figures bore all the hallmarks of Labour’s former chancellor and prime minister — some were presented in cash terms, others adjusted for inflation, one or two expressed as a proportion of GDP, a few compared payments over the next three years, some over five and some cumulated over many to arrive at a single enormous number. As a…

Ballymena has always been proud of its place within the UK, but this week, the union jacks and images of King Charles festooning houses multiplied in the predominantly Protestant town. After racist violence erupted there on Monday, before spreading to other parts of Northern Ireland in four nights of disturbances, many Ballymena homes are also displaying yellow posters with “LOCALS LIVE HERE”.Some houses have shattered glass or are boarded up. The window of a local violin maker is criss-crossed with tape to protect it from smashing. A sign on the shop reads: “This shop is run by a local man…

Ian Wace first saw the advertisement for the remote island of Tanera Mòr in 2013. “It basically said, ‘idiot required,’” the hedge fund manager recalls. But when he set foot on the island in north-west Scotland, overgrown with bracken, moss and brambles, with no proper roads, an abandoned herring station, and views out on to the immense ocean, “I just thought this was an extraordinary place”. At around 800 acres and only a mile or so from the mainland, Tanera is the largest of the Summer Isles archipelago. Traditionally, local crofters used the islands for summer grazing of their livestock, giving…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Parents and schools who took the UK government to court over the imposition of VAT on private education have lost their case. High Court judges on Friday dismissed three cases brought in London by families and schools who argued that the 20 per cent levy breaches their human rights.They had hoped the legal action would force the government to reinstate the VAT exemption that was removed by the Labour government in January. However, in a written ruling published on Friday, Dame Victoria…

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. Israel carried out multiple strikes on Iran overnight, sending oil prices spiking and adding to the already long list of geopolitical crises and uncertainty facing Britain and the world. But it’s too soon to say what the precise consequences for British politics will be. Much more on that in the coming weeks, I’m sure. For now, some thoughts on the government’s…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A quarter of the biggest companies in London’s bumper crop of 2021 listings have since left the stock market while those remaining have lost £10bn in value, highlighting the exchange’s struggle to retain top-tier businesses. This week alone two businesses in the 2021 vintage have succumbed to cut-price takeovers. Electric vehicle charging firm Pod Point, which floated with a £352mn market capitalisation agreed on Thursday to be bought for just £10mn by EDF. It followed chip designer Alphawave, which on Monday agreed…

Sir Keir Starmer is hoping this week’s spending review will enable his government to hit its six “milestones”, the targets he promised to meet before the next general election — expected before August 2029. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday that increases in Whitehall spending and a boost to infrastructure investment would kick off a period of “national renewal” for Britain. But will it be enough for the prime minister to deliver on his pledges to voters? 1. Living standards Raising living standards in every part of the UK, so working people have more money in their pocket Reeves on Wednesday emphasised…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Britain’s foreign secretary has the grandest office in Whitehall, far grander than the prime minister’s across the road in Downing Street, as Jeremy Hunt notes. It was designed to impress foreign dignitaries. Insiders are less prone to awe. As one permanent secretary, housed in the vast room directly below, said to me as he pointed to a crack in his ceiling: “It would be quite wrong to assume that is from the foreign secretary stamping his foot.”What do you do with the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The FTSE 100 index closed at a record high on Thursday, completing its recovery from a sharp decline earlier in the year sparked by US President Donald Trump’s global trade war.The UK’s main equity benchmark rose 0.2 per cent to 8884.92, helped by gains on Wall Street following soft US inflation data and topping its previous closing record of 8871.31 set on March 3. The index was caught up in a global stock market rout in early April after Trump’s “liberation day”…