NatWest’s embattled chief executive, Alison Rose, has admitted she was the source of a controversial BBC story about Nigel Farage’s bank accounts and issued a humiliating apology in a bid to save her job. Rose said he made a “serious error of judgement” in discussing Farage’s banking relationship with his exclusive private lender Coutts, in … Read more
Rishi Sunak has made a calculation this week, after holding on to Uxbridge in large part because of the Tories’ anti-Zone campaign, to backtrack on other Green policies in the hope that it will create a fault line with Labor at the next election. However, his own version of David Cameron’s fateful decision to “cut … Read more
hHousing policy administered for decades to benefit developers and homeowners has created insecurity and inequality for everyone else. The number of privately renting households in England and Wales has risen enormously – from 1.9 million in 2001 to 5 million in 2021, while the home ownership rate has fallen to 62% from 64% a decade … Read more
One lucky shopper with US Men’s size 10.5 feet and $50,000 (£38,969) to spare will be able to buy one of Apple’s earliest and most obscure products: trainers. Auction house Sotheby’s is selling “ultra-rare” Apple-branded sneakers on its website, believed to have been custom-made for employees in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Men’s UK … Read more
Greed in action? Well, Unilever and its ilk certainly make more plausible corporate culprits than supermarkets. Last week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reported on the state of grocery retailing in inflationary times: in short, competition is alive and thriving, even if retailers should clarify their price tags. Average industry profits were down 40% … Read more
The massive scale of parental support for young people looking to buy their first property has been revealed in a UK study showing that one in four new homebuyers under the age of 25 trust the ‘mum and pop bank’. A blog post by a Bank of England economist found that even before the sharp … Read more
The Jaguar Land Rover boss has said the carmaker will not slow down its move to electric cars even if the UK government delays a 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel models. Adrian Mardell, chief executive of JLR, said the “company’s plans will remain the same” after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak failed to publicly … Read more
Rogue energy brokers will be targeted by the industry’s regulator in a crackdown aimed at preventing small businesses from being ripped off by their heavy-handed tactics and high fees. Under proposed rules to be presented by Ofgem on Wednesday, energy providers would be forced to come clean about the billions in secret broker fees they … Read more
Britain’s health regulator has partially suspended the manufacturing license of Sciensus, a private company paid millions by the NHS to provide vital drugs, after the death of a cancer patient who received the wrong dose of chemotherapy. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it had taken “immediate” action under regulation 28 of … Read more
Interest rates in the UK will need to stay higher for longer than previously anticipated to cope with persistently high inflation, the International Monetary Fund has warned. The IMF’s regular update on the state of the global economy singled out the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England as two central banks that will … Read more