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Penny Mordaunt has held nine ministerial positions in eight government departments, including three cabinet posts. Yet until this summer’s Conservative leadership contest, when she came third, she was an unfamiliar figure to most of the British public. Now she is making another bid to become prime minister, touting her “fresh face” as a virtue that

Conservative MPs were on Friday deeply divided by the prospect of Boris Johnson returning as party leader and UK prime minister — just three months after he quit following a string of scandals. On Friday morning contenders to replace Liz Truss — who dramatically resigned on Thursday after only six weeks in power — were

A UK minister has warned that “appropriate discipline” will be imposed on Tory MPs who voted against the government without “specific constituency reasons” in last night’s chaotic vote on fracking. “The parliamentary managers will discuss with colleagues who didn’t vote with the three line whip why that was. Sometimes there are very specific constituency reasons

Britain’s inflation rate rose to a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent in September, as prime minister Liz Truss committed to increasing state pensions in line with prices next year. The rate of inflation according to the consumer price index rose from 9.9 per cent in August, driven by the highest food price increases in

The Bank of England is set to delay the sale of billions of pounds of government bonds in a bid to foster greater stability in gilt markets following the UK’s failed “mini” Budget. The BoE had already delayed the start of its sale of £838bn of gilts bought under its quantitative easing programme from October

Jeremy Hunt, the new UK chancellor, on Monday scrapped the bulk of his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts in a desperate effort to calm markets, while slashing the government’s energy support package. In an emergency move to rebuild the government’s fiscal credibility, Hunt rewrote the government’s tax and spending plans, putting a wrecking ball through

US president Joe Biden has said Liz Truss’s original tax proposal was a “mistake”, in his most critical comments about the UK prime minister’s fiscal policy. Biden made the remarks during a visit to an ice cream shop in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, adding that Truss’s decision to reverse some of the sweeping tax cuts

Jeremy Hunt, the new UK chancellor, has admitted taxes will have to rise and spending will have to be cut after prime minister Liz Truss failed to reassure markets with a U-turn on cutting corporation tax. In his first interviews since replacing Kwasi Kwarteng, who was sacked by the prime minister on Friday, Hunt buried

Liz Truss, UK prime minister, is to hold a press conference on Friday to confirm a humiliating U-turn on her mini-Budget, as she prepares to axe large parts of the £43bn package of unfunded tax cuts. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng arrived back in London from IMF talks in Washington on Friday meeting and headed straight to

GlaxoSmithKline said its potential new blockbuster shot for respiratory syncytial virus appears to be more effective than rival Pfizer’s vaccine candidate, as the pair compete for a new market protecting older adults against the common lung infection. In data released on Thursday, GSK said its vaccine showed overall efficacy of 82.6 per cent in a

A sell-off in UK government bonds accelerated on Wednesday, sending long-term borrowing costs higher after the Bank of England reiterated that it will halt its emergency gilt buying scheme as planned on Friday. The central bank said on Wednesday morning that it “has made clear from the outset, its temporary and targeted purchases of gilts

The Bank of England has widened its emergency bond-buying programme to include inflation-linked gilts in its latest attempt to stem “fire sales” by pension funds that have created a “material risk to UK financial stability”. The central bank said on Tuesday it was prepared to buy up to £5bn a day in index-linked UK government

Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities came under sustained missile and rocket attacks on Monday, a day after President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of terrorism over an attack on a bridge linking the occupied Crimean Peninsula with Russia’s Taman region. Several missiles hit downtown Kyiv as loud explosions were heard in the first attack on

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said the move by Opec+ to cut oil production was “unhelpful and unwise” for the global economy, particularly emerging markets already struggling with high energy prices. The Biden administration has been loudly critical of the decision by the oil cartel backed by Saudi Arabia and Russia this week, which took

An explosion tore through Russia’s bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea early on Saturday, severely damaging it in a major blow to Vladimir Putin more than seven months into his invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s anti-terrorist committee said a truck exploded on the bridge’s roadside in the early hours of Saturday morning and caused seven

Millions of British households will be asked to cut back on energy consumption by National Grid this winter, as it warned them to prepare for rolling three-hour blackouts in the “extreme” case of gas shortages and reduced electricity imports from the rest of Europe. But despite the bleak assessment, Liz Truss’s government has resisted mounting

The UK’s largest private-sector pension scheme increased its exposure to debt-fuelled investment strategies earlier this year in spite of warnings the move would bring “significant risks”. The £90bn Universities Superannuation Scheme ploughed more of its members’ assets into leveraged hedging, the strategy that was engulfed by crisis last week after a surge in government bond

Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for the initially agreed price of $44bn, in a move that could put an end to one of the highest-profile corporate legal battles in decades. The Tesla chief sent a letter to Twitter on Monday night offering to go ahead with the deal, less than two weeks before

Prime minister Liz Truss sought to hold her nerve during the course of a fraught Sunday at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, but at around 11pm in her hotel suite she finally admitted defeat. Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng met in the Hyatt Regency to consider whether a key plank of his “mini-Budget”

Jair Bolsonaro may have finished in second place in Sunday’s presidential election in Brazil, but his tally of 43.2 per cent outperformed pre-election polls and propels him into the runoff with fresh momentum. Many of his allies and former cabinet ministers were elected to congress and to state governorships. His Liberal party will form the