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The writer is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think-tank Economic crises have phases you can almost feel. They ebb and they flow, as the nature and scale of the crisis, and our awareness of it, changes. Single events often crystallise a shift, forcing policymakers to wake up to the fact they are required to

The scale of the challenge facing the UK’s next prime minister was laid bare on Friday when the energy regulator said household power bills would surge 80 per cent with further rises expected next year. Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, the two candidates for the leadership of the Conservative party, will face a spiralling cost

Liz Truss is considering plans to trigger “Article 16” proceedings against the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol within days of entering Downing Street if she succeeds Boris Johnson as prime minister next month, according to several government insiders. The UK and Brussels are locked in a fractious legal stand-off over implementing the deal covering

British companies face a “cost of doing business crisis”, ministers have been warned, with many commercial energy bills poised to rise more than fourfold this autumn. The majority of UK companies are due to renegotiate their electricity and gas rates in October, the month fixed prices for businesses have been set since energy markets were

One of the UK’s largest energy groups has told ministers that a rescue plan to protect households from rising bills will need funding of more than £100bn over two years, underlining the scale of the crisis engulfing Britain as gas prices surge. Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottish Power — one of the “Big Six”

US stocks suffered their biggest decline in two months on Monday, with tech shares falling sharply on worries about the gloomy economic outlook and concerns that members of the Federal Reserve will adopt a hawkish tone at a symposium this week. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index slid 2.1 per cent, its most severe one-day

Moscow sees no possibility of a diplomatic solution to end the war in Ukraine and expects a long conflict, a senior Russian diplomat has warned, as President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion reaches the six-month mark this week. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, told the Financial Times that the UN should

Some investors are warning of a mismatch between market expectations and the Federal Reserve’s stated commitment to stamping out inflation as traders stand by their wagers on interest rate cuts next year. Traders in the futures market are betting the central bank’s main interest rate will be cut to 3.3 per cent by the end

Investors are raising red flags over a stock market rally that has added more than $7tn in value to US equities since June, with many of the gains being driven by hedge funds unwinding bearish bets rather than newfound conviction that it is time to buy. Traders at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he is ready to support peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow after he met president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Lviv. Erdoğan, who has acted as an intermediary between Moscow and Kyiv, on Thursday made his first trip to Ukraine since Russia’s full-blown invasion on February 24 and said he

Federal Reserve officials discussed the need to keep interest rates at levels that restrict the US economy “for some time” in a bid to contain the highest inflation in roughly 40 years, according to an account of their most recent meeting. Minutes from the meeting, at which the US central bank raised its benchmark policy

The global energy crisis deepened on Tuesday as a further surge in natural gas prices in Europe and the US threatened to push some of the world’s largest economies into recession. Gas markets in Europe jumped by as much as 10 per cent to as high as €251 a megawatt hour, equivalent in energy terms

Autcraft, a Minecraft server for autistic children, was about to celebrate its ninth anniversary when the troll attacked. They sent explicit photos and abusive messages to the autistic children on Autcraft’s social network, wreaking so much havoc that founder Stuart Duncan was forced to shut down the site. Nearly a decade of community history was

One thing to start: Last week the Scoreboard team participated in a virtual event to discuss how long the boom in sports investing will last. Subscribers can watch a replay here exclusively here. Is women’s football the next big investment opportunity? That’s been on my mind ever since England’s Lionesses scored eight times against Norway,

Italy was plunged into political turmoil on Thursday when prime minister Mario Draghi offered to resign after a split in his national unity government. The former European Central Bank president said conditions were no longer in place for him to carry on after the populist Five Star Movement refused to support his government in a

Two former health secretaries, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt, on Sunday announced bids to stand as Conservative party leader with pledges to slash taxes in an effort to win support from MPs. A total of nine candidates have now announced they will stand to replace Boris Johnson as UK prime minister, with more expected to

One of the leading contenders to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister has said he will not stand in the forthcoming leadership contest, as other Conservative MPs prepare to launch their campaigns. Defence secretary Ben Wallace was the favourite among the Tory grassroots, with a net approval rating of +86 among party members according to

Rishi Sunak, who quit as Boris Johnson’s chancellor this week, launched his bid to lead the Conservative party on Friday with a pledge that he will avoid “comforting fairy tales”. His video to launch his campaign appeared a coded attack on what many MPs have seen as the prime minister’s Panglossian approach to policy. “Someone

Boris Johnson has announced his “painful” resignation but defied pressure to step down immediately as prime minister, insisting he would remain in office until a new Conservative party leader is chosen. In an address in front of No 10 Downing Street, after days of turmoil and mass resignations from his government, he accused his party

Sajid Javid launched a devastating critique of Boris Johnson in the House of Commons as he told MPs why he quit as health secretary, warning that “the problem starts at the top” with the prime minister. Javid triggered an avalanche of ministerial resignations when he stepped down on Tuesday evening, including chancellor Rishi Sunak —