Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Centrica is set to take a 15 per cent stake in the UK’s Sizewell C nuclear project after years of delay and months of drawn out negotiations.All sides are keen to reach a final investment decision on the project before parliament’s recess on July 21, according to people familiar with the discussions. The final cost of Sizewell — set to be only the second new nuclear plant built in a generation in Britain — could be close to £40bn, the Financial Times…

Sir Keir Starmer hopes he has averted the biggest rebellion of his premiership by agreeing to dilute his controversial welfare reforms, but he will be left counting the political and financial costs for years to come. The sudden capitulation came during hastily-arranged, surreptitious talks with senior Labour MPs in Westminster on Thursday. It will carry a hefty price tag of more than £1.5bn — and invite questions over how a Labour government with a gargantuan majority has found itself so close to a House of Commons defeat. When more than 100 Labour MPs vowed on Monday to vote against Starmer’s…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK government needs to urgently rethink a key element of its flagship workers’ rights reforms to avoid inadvertently creating “a veto on all contractual change”, according to a leading trade unionist. Mike Clancy, general secretary of the union Prospect, said provisions in the employment rights bill intended to stop employers using controversial “fire and rehire” tactics to impose worse terms and conditions on their staff could backfire unless the draft legislation was amended. “It is essential to ban the practice of fire and…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Automobiles myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.UK vehicle production collapsed in May to the lowest level since 1949 after US President Donald Trump’s tariff war forced Aston Martin and other British carmakers to halt their shipments to the US.Car and van production at British plants fell 33 per cent in May from a year earlier to 49,810 units, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders released on Friday showed. Output declined for the fifth consecutive month, marking the worst monthly performance in 76 years, excluding when vehicle factories…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The UK’s financial ombudsman will be overhauled to stop it acting like “a quasi-regulator”, the City minister said on Thursday, opening the door to the potential introduction of a new appeal process for companies to challenge its decisions.Emma Reynolds said the conclusions of a review she was leading into the Financial Ombudsman Service would be announced next month as a critical part of the government’s financial services strategy.A plan being considered as part of the review is to hand greater control…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Small-town England can have a strange underbelly — and larky comedy Chicken Town knows this well. The movie is set in the flat badlands of Lincolnshire and Norfolk, where unlikely drugs kingpins fill quiet cul-de-sacs. The story unites young and old at the social margins. At one end of the age spectrum, veteran comic actor Graham Fellows plays a lonely retiree, stumbled into dealings with a cannabis empire. At the other is teenager Jayce (Ethaniel Davy), with scores to settle after a miscarriage…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Global Economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The writer is founder and director of the New Britain Project think-tankOf all the tremors unleashed by Donald Trump’s second term, one of the most quietly consequential is a reordering of the global innovation economy. Top talent is fleeing the US or seriously considering it. This isn’t a story confined to university campuses. Tech workers are questioning whether a culture increasingly shaped by Elon Musk-style libertarianism reflects their values; scientists are watching research budgets freeze and vaccine scepticism rise. And green entrepreneurs…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chancellor Friedrich Merz is “delusional” in his expectation that Germany’s car industry will be spared from US tariffs, according to EU officials involved in trade talks with the Trump administration.Merz has been pressing the European Commission, which manages trade policy on behalf of the EU’s 27 member states, to sign a “framework” deal with Washington aping the US-UK agreement signed earlier this month, which included a special dispensation for cars. But Brussels officials have privately told Berlin that such an arrangement would…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK government has been told to split the role of the country’s top statistician in a hard-hitting report that criticised the Office for National Statistics’ handling of the country’s most market sensitive economic data. A review by Sir Robert Devereux commissioned by the government warned of “deep-seated” issues within the ONS as it recommended that the role of the national statistician be temporarily split in two during a turnaround effort at the embattled agency. One official should take responsibility for statistical output,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer may have hoped for a more enthusiastic reaction to the long-awaited launch of his government’s industrial strategy on Monday. But it has been overtaken by other events this week, from developments in the Middle East, to a mounting rebellion from his own party over a proposal to cut welfare payments, which risks undermining his premiership.Still, the 160-page document marks an important moment for Britain’s economy. It identifies eight priority sectors including advanced manufacturing, life sciences and…