Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nigel Farage’s biggest backer asked an associate to donate £50,000 on his behalf so that it would appear that the Brexit party had a broader donor base, according to messages seen by the Financial Times.Businessman Christopher Harborne told the associate in 2019 that he wanted to avoid the perception that Farage’s party, later renamed Reform UK, had just one big backer at the UK general election that year.Harborne, an aviation entrepreneur and crypto investor, said in the messages: “I would like to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Conservative donor Lord Rami Ranger was stripped of his CBE on Friday following allegations he made derogatory comments about Pakistanis and harassed a journalist, in a rare case of an honour being forfeited. Tech entrepreneur Lawrence Jones also had his MBE nullified after being sentenced to 15 years in prison for raping two women and sexually assaulting a former employee. Revelations about his conduct emerged following a Financial Times investigation in 2019.A notice published in the Press Gazette on Friday stated that…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There’s an ice queen, a ball and a transformation scene, but no, we’re not at a pantomime. This is the world of high fashion as depicted in the spindly heeled musical version of The Devil Wears Prada. And forget good versus evil — here the stakes are really high. Sure, a character might get eaten by a wolf in a seasonal fairytale, but that doesn’t come anywhere near the horror of fetching the wrong coffee for she-dragon Miranda, the imperious editor of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The chair of Japan’s Hitachi has warned that its UK train factory is at risk unless the government revives the northern leg of HS2 or launches other significant infrastructure programmes within a year.In an interview with the Financial Times, Toshiaki Higashihara said the 750 jobs at the site at Newton Aycliffe near Durham could not be guaranteed unless demand increased.“If [the northern leg] stays cancelled, then the volume of work at Newton Aycliffe goes down,” he said, “so the issue is rising…

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. From missions to milestones: Keir Starmer has refined down his government’s focus to six new (or newish) targets. He also used his speech yesterday to argue that the machinery of Whitehall itself needs to be reformed to deliver that agenda. My thoughts on that in today’s newsletter.Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here.…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.MainFT:The UK telecoms industry will receive its biggest shake-up in years after the country’s competition regulator on Thursday approved the £16.5bn merger of Vodafone’s domestic business with CK Hutchison’s Three UK. The move from four to three mobile operators marks a milestone for the sector.The telecoms companies were toasting the competition regulator’s approval (with conditions) of their long-awaited domestic merger yesterday.Vodafone, in a celebratory mood, hailed the merger on X as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the UK’s digital infrastructure”.Meanwhile, over on…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Last month, the UK’s government announced a series of proposals to “get Britain working”, premised on the claim that the country is facing “spiralling economic inactivity”, with “2.8mn people locked out of work due to long-term sickness”.Regular readers of this column may recognise these themes from a series of articles I wrote in 2022 arguing that Britain was facing a unique crisis among developed countries. An enduring post-pandemic contraction of the labour force had been caused by a rapid rise in chronic…

What is the best investment when it comes to a party outfit? I’m looking to buy a piece that can serve me for a good few years. Investment pieces definitely still exist. In fact, you could argue that they have become even more important now that we should all be trying to buy better and buy less. There are a few ways to think about this. One approach is to invest in something classic that never dates, such as a tux suit or a little black dress that can be worn year-round, something that doesn’t immediately scream “party” or “festive”.…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK tax myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The UK’s largest 40 taxpaying estates paid an average of £9.2mn in inheritance tax in 2021-22, according to figures released under the freedom of information act, seen by the Financial Times.The data revealed that the top 40 estates had an average net asset value of £42.4mn, meaning that their average effective tax rate was around 22 per cent. The headline rate of inheritance tax, or IHT, is 40 per cent, charged above a tax-free threshold of £325,000 — with an additional £175,000…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is chancellor of the exchequerAfter nearly a decade and a half of stagnation and decline, this country has a radically different government. One that is relentlessly focused on delivering what matters most to working people. People whose household budgets are still stretched. People who lie awake at night hoping that their rent is not hiked, their boiler does not break and that their car starts in the morning. Because there is no emergency fund.The root cause of these everyday battles is…