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Jeremy Hunt, chancellor, will on Thursday seek to restore Britain’s tarnished economic reputation with a £54bn package of spending cuts and tax rises intended to repair the public finances and tame inflation. “We will face into the storm,” he will say. Hunt’s Autumn Statement will intensify the financial hardship facing millions of Britons and begin

The UK’s rate of inflation hit a fresh 41-year high in October, accelerating to 11.1 per cent on the back of rising energy and food prices. The Office for National Statistics said the rate rose from 10.1 per cent in September, putting inflation at its highest level since October 1981. Economists polled by Reuters had

World leaders will state at the G20 summit in Bali that today’s era “must not be of war” and will condemn threats to use nuclear weapons, reflecting rising global anxiety around Russia’s war against Ukraine. A draft communiqué agreed by diplomats, seen by the Financial Times and confirmed by two delegations, said: “Most members strongly

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping began their first face-to-face talks as heads of state on Monday, raising hopes that the two presidents could at least begin to stabilise US-China relations. The meeting is being held in Bali, Indonesia, on the eve of the G20 summit hosted by Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president. It is the first

Democrats will retain a majority in the US Senate in a big boost to Joe Biden’s presidency after Catherine Cortez Masto won re-election in Nevada. According to the Associated Press, Cortez Masto is projected to win her contest against Republican candidate Adam Laxalt, in one of the most competitive races of the midterm elections. Cortez

FTX is investigating abnormal transactions as analysts said hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets had been withdrawn, in the latest blow for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire following its collapse into bankruptcy. The potential hack is the latest blow for FTX, the cryptocurrency empire formerly controlled by 30-year-old entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and until recently valued

Global regulators are closing in on embattled crypto exchange FTX as fallout spreads in digital asset markets and founder Sam Bankman-Fried pursues a last-ditch effort to raise up to $8bn in fresh funds. Authorities in Japan, Australia and the Bahamas, where FTX is based, have all taken actions as worries mount that customers in one

FTX is on the brink of collapse as chief Sam Bankman-Fried races to secure billions of dollars to salvage his empire after Binance ditched an eleventh-hour rescue of one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges. Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital said it would mark down its $214mn investment in FTX to zero after a run

Democrats put up an unexpectedly strong fight as results rolled in from US midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress, even as Republicans led by governor Ron DeSantis notched up a string of convincing victories in Florida. The early tallies from the midterm elections on Tuesday showed many battleground races across the country

A plan by ministers to review or repeal all EU laws on the UK statute book by the end of 2023 has suffered another setback after the discovery of 1,400 additional pieces of legislation. Rishi Sunak has started backing away from his ambitious proposals to scrub Britain’s statute book of unwanted EU laws, by abandoning

The US is working on a plan to harness cash from the world’s largest companies to help developing countries cut their use of fossil fuels, an idea it aims to unveil at the UN climate summit this week. US president Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry is trying to marshal support from other governments, companies

US oil producers have raked in more than $200bn in profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as they cash in on a period of geopolitical turmoil that has shaken up the global energy market and sent prices soaring. Aggregate net income for publicly listed oil and gas companies operating in the US came to $200.24bn

Elon Musk has begun to slash Twitter’s 7,500-strong workforce as the social media platform’s new billionaire owner warned of a “massive drop in revenue” following his contentious $44bn buyout of the group. As Musk embarks on the cost-cutting cull, he claimed on Friday that Twitter “has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist

Banks and building societies will cut the costs of UK fixed-rate mortgages after financial markets pared back their expectations of future rises in the Bank of England’s main interest rate, brokers and lenders have predicted. Mortgage brokers said the current high costs of fixed rates were set when markets had expected aggressive future rises in

Elon Musk has drawn up plans to fire as much as half of Twitter’s 7,500-strong workforce, according to people familiar with the matter, in a major cost-cutting overhaul that could come by the end of the week. The billionaire is looking to cut around 3,700 jobs at Twitter after his $44bn buyout of the social

Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in pole position to emerge victorious from Tuesday’s parliamentary elections, according to exit polls that put his rightwing bloc on course for a razor-thin majority. Polls by Israel’s three main television channels, released after voting closed, forecast that a bloc combining Netanyahu’s Likud party, the extreme-right Religious Zionism

UK home secretary Suella Braverman was fighting for her political life on Monday as she was accused of breaking the law over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, was coming under increasing pressure to fire Braverman, who admitted earlier she had used her personal email seven times to handle documents

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva claimed a nail-biting victory in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, defeating incumbent rightwing leader Jair Bolsonaro by less than two percentage points and setting the stage for a return to leftwing governance in Latin America’s largest nation. The tight result tops off a dramatic comeback for the 77-year-old opposition leader,

Moscow has suspended its participation in a UN-backed deal with Kyiv that unblocked the movement of Ukrainian grain out of its southern ports, threatening to deepen the global food crisis. Russia linked its decision to pull out of the deal to an attack on Saturday on ships in the port of Sevastopol in the Crimean

Elon Musk has joined the elite club of social media barons after clinching a $44bn takeover of Twitter in the same week that investors wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from Big Tech valuations. Musk’s drawn-out acquisition of Twitter, which he launched in April but attempted to abort in July, has closed just as a

Elon Musk has closed his $44bn deal to take Twitter private, according to three people familiar with the matter, bringing an end to one of the most high-profile and dramatic buyout sagas in recent memory after months of legal wrangling between the world’s richest man and the social media platform. As the billionaire entrepreneur took

UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has delayed the date for his long-awaited debt-cutting plan from October 31 to November 17, as calmer markets gave the government some economic breathing space. Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, has cleared the way for painful cuts and tax rises to plug a fiscal hole of between £30bn and £40bn,

Rishi Sunak on Tuesday became Britain’s third prime minister in the space of two months and immediately started to assemble a “unity cabinet” to tackle “the profound economic crisis” facing the country. Sunak, who was invited to form a government by King Charles on Tuesday morning, said he would prioritise “economic stability and confidence” but

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser. Rishi Sunak will on Tuesday enter Downing Street as Britain’s youngest prime minister in modern times and its first non-white leader, with a vow to get to grips with the “profound

Boris Johnson has pulled out of the race to become Britain’s next prime minister after his campaign stalled and rivals claimed he did not have the backing of the 100 Tory MPs needed to enter the contest on Monday. Despite frantic attempts by Johnson to bolster his support, he announced at 9pm on Sunday that

Former UK chancellor Rishi Sunak is poised to formally enter the race to become Britain’s next prime minister after securing public backing from the 100 Tory MPs needed to enter the ballot. Sunak had 111 declared backers by Saturday evening; Conservative MPs had yet to decide whether to put former prime minister Boris Johnson on

Investors and some Conservative MPs took fright on Friday as Boris Johnson considered running for a second stint as UK prime minister, with warnings that he risked triggering further political and economic chaos. Johnson’s allies are scrambling to secure the 100 nominations needed from Tory MPs to enter Monday’s ballot to replace Liz Truss, who

Video: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, former chancellor, has emerged as the early favourite to become Britain’s next prime minister, after Liz Truss terminated a 44-day premiership marked by economic and political turmoil. Truss’s resignation made her the shortest-serving prime minister in Britain’s history; her time in Number 10 will be

Liz Truss’s UK government was plunged into complete disarray on Wednesday as Suella Braverman was forced to quit as home secretary and party discipline collapsed in the House of Commons. Many Tory MPs said the government was dying, as recriminations flew over Braverman’s ousting and Tory MPs openly rebelled over the government’s plans to resume

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is preparing to raid the profits of banks and energy companies in an attempt to fill a £40bn fiscal hole through a mix of tax rises and public spending cuts. Hunt’s Budget on October 31 is due to include big tax rises, with allies of the chancellor saying they expect him to