Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sultan Stevenson emerged from the ranks of the London-based Tomorrow’s Warriors forging house in 2020 and soon stood out for his personal touch. A regular trio followed, as did an album and a catalogue of club dates and tours. Now in his mid-twenties, the London pianist’s modal voicings, syncopated single note lines and gospel shades spice the modern jazz mainstream with originality and flair. Stevenson’s second album, El Roi, confirms his equally mature grasp of jazz composition on a set tackling themes of…

Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley said he hesitated about leaving the US for Canada until the “capitulation” this month of Columbia University to a list of demands from Donald Trump administration. That settled the matter and convinced him to speak out.“I believe in the values of academic freedom and defending democratic institutions,” he said. “Not the idea that the proper response to authoritarians is to hide and hope you’re not next.”Stanley, along with Yale historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, are joining the University of Toronto, with the latter also linking her decision with Trump winning a second presidential term.Their…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Plans by operators including Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to launch new cross-channel rail services to rival Eurostar have been given a boost after the UK’s rail regulator said there was space for rivals to access the group’s east London train depot. The Office of Rail and Road said on Monday that an independent report had found that Temple Mills depot could accommodate more trains if needed, despite Eurostar’s claim that it was basically full. A number of prospective new operators including…

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. I’m very grateful to Miranda for writing Friday’s newsletter, as it allowed me to focus on getting in the way of our movers in the morning to unpack our boxes. Had it not been for that, today’s newsletter would not have been written, as the computer I am typing it on would still be in a box. In a sense I…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.G.Network, a full-fibre broadband wholesaler, has launched a fresh attempt to secure a sale, signalling a new wave of consolidation among the providers trying to challenge BT and Virgin Media O2. With a network spanning 416,000 homes in London, G.Network has instructed bankers at Jefferies and Nomura to contact potential buyers again, having first appointed them 18 months ago to explore a deal. The banks have been contacting rival so-called alternative network providers over the past week to gauge their interest in…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In last Wednesday’s Spring Statement, Rachel Reeves, chancellor of the exchequer, did exactly what was expected of her. Confronted, as predicted, with worse forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility than those of last October, the government tweaked plans for spending and revenue, with a view to restoring the headroom the OBR judges it had lost relative to its fiscal targets five years hence. Was this sensible? No.As I argued two weeks ago, the world has changed substantially, not least given the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A group of pro-growth Labour MPs is urging the UK government to raise the pay and number of political advisers, in a bid to attract more experts to Whitehall who can help ministers overhaul the state. The Labour Growth Group (LGG), which boasts more than 100 parliamentarians, has co-written a report with Reform, the non-partisan Westminster think-tank, examining how Downing Street can improve the operations of central government, particularly the civil service.Its recommendations seek to knock down a series of shibboleths that…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.One of the government’s most senior civil servants has been tasked with getting to the bottom of the problems with data produced by the Office for National Statistics, as concern grows in Westminster about the reliability of the numbers used to steer the UK economy. Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, has asked his top official Cat Little to look into the performance of the ONS amid fears that chancellor Rachel Reeves has been left flying blind as she draws up her plans…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Councils and low-cost housing providers say they could build more than 90,000 additional affordable homes over a decade if ministers included them in two multibillion-pound cladding funding schemes. The National Housing Federation (NHF), which represents housing associations, and the Local Government Association have written to chancellor Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, urging them to include affordable housing in the “Building Safety Fund” and “Cladding Safety Scheme”.The programmes were designed to prevent leaseholders from shouldering the cost of removing…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.An artificial intelligence tool to mark schoolchildren’s homework is being developed using a trove of UK government data, ahead of plans to sell public records including health information within a decade. A new government scheme has pooled public documents such as curriculum guidance, lesson plans and anonymised pupil assessments, which are now being used to train AI models, including one that can mark children’s work and provide detailed feedback. The “content store” — created by UK company Faculty AI with £4mn of…