British Steel: No10 ‘confident’ it will secure materials to keep plant running April 14, 2025 The UK government is confident it will beat a race against time to keep the British Steel furnaces running after taking control of the plant from Chinese owners Jingye this weekend. Civil servants and steel workers were rushing to secure the raw materials to keep the Scunthorpe site’s furnaces going – which supply Network Rail [...]
UK-EU summit: To talk defence, Starmer has to talk fishing first April 14, 2025 Is the EU going to mug off Britain again? It will be our fault, writes Eliot Wilson ahead of the UK-EU summit in London.
Reynolds issues guidance to British Steel after MPs back emergency law April 13, 2025 The business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has issued instructions to British Steel, using the emergency powers approved by Parliament on Saturday to save the Scunthorpe blast furnaces. A government source confirmed that Reynolds had given directions to the company following the extraordinary sitting of Parliament. But they declined to give details of those instructions, saying they [...]
British Steel: Why are MPs having an emergency session? April 12, 2025 Westminster had begun to wind down gently on Friday afternoon. Parliament had concluded its formal business on Tuesday in advance of Easter. The news therefore came as jolt that the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, had agreed to a request from the government to recall the House of Commons to sit from 11.00 am on Saturday; [...]
Trump, tariffs and GDP: How do you forecast uncertainty? April 12, 2025 The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), one of the UK’s central forecasters, prepared itself for President Trump’s tariff war – or at least partially. At a presentation after Chancellor Reeves’ Spring Statement, OBR chair Richard Hughes admitted the fiscal watchdog’s central forecast risked being completely undermined by global events. Hughes came up with three possible [...]
Parliament to be recalled over future of British Steel April 11, 2025 Parliament will be recalled on Saturday to discuss the future of British Steel, Downing Street has confirmed. A government source said it is looking “take control” of the company after its owner, China’s Jingye, said its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe were “no longer financially sustainable.” British Steel employs around 2,700 people but is weeks [...]
Cabinet Office to shed 2,100 jobs as government shrinks civil service April 10, 2025 The Cabinet Office will lose almost a third of its staff as Labour seeks to shrink the civil service, the government has announced. Around 1,200 jobs will go through redundancies and leavers not being replaced under plans unveiled to civil servants on Thursday, with another 900 transferred to other departments. The 2,100 job cuts represent [...]
Starmer says UK government must ‘rise to the moment’ on tariffs April 10, 2025 The UK government needs to “rise to the moment”, Sir Keir Starmer said, adding that he would not “pretend” US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are “good news”. Speaking this morning after Trump announced a 90-day pause in his sweeping global tariffs, while raising his tax rate on Chinese imports to 125 per cent, the Prime [...]
US tariffs: Reeves stresses ‘imperative’ to improve UK-EU trading relations April 9, 2025 Rachel Reeves has stressed it is “imperative” for the UK to improve its trading relationship with the European Union (EU), amid US President Donald Trump’s global trade tariff war. The Chancellor’s comments emerged in an interview with the Financial Times (FT) ahead of a crucial summit with EU leaders in London next month. Reeves told [...]
If you think this government is pro-business, let me sell you Tower Bridge April 9, 2025 As the government continues to develop its response to Trump’s tariffs and the changing global economic order, the Prime Minister’s muddled thinking is troubling me. We now know that he wants to simultaneously “unleash” British business whilst “sheltering it from the storm,” like a parent who implores his child to “run, but not yet, and [...]