Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
Chancellor accused of being ‘missing in action’ as she visits Beijing in bid to boost UK’s economic ties
Independent Premium
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has faced calls to cancel her trip to China amid strife in the UK government bond markets, as Britain’s borrowing costs hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.
Tory shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused Ms Reeves of being “missing in action”, while Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey urged her to “come before the House of Commons to cancel her counterproductive jobs tax and set out a real plan for growth”.
The cost of UK government borrowing climbed again as markets opened on Friday, following a week of volatility, with yields on 30-year gilts hitting 5.41 per cent in early trading as the pound also fell against the US dollar.
While former Bank of England deputy governor Sir John Gieve told the BBC that the situation was linked to the US and “not a response to anything that we’ve done in the UK”, Treasury minister Darren Jones warned that “public services will have to live within their means”.
It came as Nigel Farage and fellow Reform MPs Lee Anderson and Rupert Lowe were found to have made thousands of pounds from posting content on Elon Musk’s social media site X.
Experts have warned against new cuts to public services, as the rising cost of UK government borrowing raises concerns that chancellor Rachel Reeves will struggle to meet her fiscal rules.
George Dibb, of the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, told The Guardian: “Making further cuts to public services or departmental budgets is not necessarily the ‘easy choice’, nor will it fix the underlying problem.
“There’s little fat to be cut after years of austerity, and imposing more cuts at this stage could be damaging, to people’s lives and also to the economy.”
And Cara Pacitti, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, told the outlet: “Announcing further departmental cuts would be suboptimal.
“Reeves should not allow short-term volatility in the markets to force her into really significant spending cuts which will have a genuine impact on concrete items of long-term spending.”
Elon Musk has been examining possible candidates to replace Nigel Farage as leader of Reform UK, including MP Rupert Lowe, and has looked into which potential mechanisms there are to replace him, the Financial Times reports, citing people briefed on his thinking.
The outlet also cited sources as claiming that the billionaire has been looking at ways to try to force Sir Keir Starmer out of Downing Street prior to the next general election.
Rachel Reeves’s trip is expected to revive the China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue – annual bilateral talks suspended since 2019 due to the Covid pandemic and deteriorating relations in recent years, amid a series of spying allegations and China’s crackdown on liberties in Hong Kong.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and the Financial Conduct Authority’s chief executive Nikhil Rathi are also in the chancellor’s delegation, according to the Treasury.
Representatives from some of Britain’s biggest financial services firms will join the trip. Officials did not provide details, but media reports have said senior executives from HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered were included.
England’s forthcoming cricket match against Afghanistan should go ahead amid calls for a boycott over the Taliban’s treatment of women, the Culture Secretary has said.
“I do think it should go ahead,” Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast, adding: “I’m instinctively very cautious about boycotts in sports, partly because I think they’re counterproductive.
“I think they deny sports fans the opportunity that they love, and they can also very much penalise the athletes and the sports people who work very, very hard to reach the top of their game and then they’re denied the opportunities to compete.
“They are not the people that we want to penalise for the appalling actions of the Taliban against women and girls.”
However, she insisted the UK should not be “rolling out the red carpet” at the event, adding: “When China hosted the Winter Olympics, I was very vocal, many of us were very vocal about making sure that we didn’t send dignitaries to that event, that we didn’t give them the PR coup that they were looking for when they were forcibly incarcerating the Uighur in Xinjiang.”
Reform MPs including Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson have been accused of profiting from “spreading hateful rhetoric” after it emerged they’ve made thousands of pounds from posting content on Elon Musk’s social media site X.
Mr Farage, Mr Anderson and Rupert Lowe MP have all declared thousands in payments from the company in their recent parliamentary register of interests, via its ‘Creator’ revenue programme.
The scheme allows premium users with over 500 verified followers to ‘monetise’ their accounts on the controversial site, which has grown increasingly toxic since it was taken over by billionaire Musk in 2022. More than £10,000 has been paid to the trio since July last year, according to parliamentary filings.
However, Mr Farage has suggested that Reform MPs are not the only ministers making money from the scheme. He said: “Many MPs are on X and have the tick. Whilst their views are tiny compared to ours they will be receiving money, it’s automatic once you pay for the tick so why are we the only ones declaring?”
Athena Stavrou and Millie Cooke report:
The scheme has been branded an ‘unholy alliance’ between the far-right and Elon Musk
A senior minister has said she disagrees with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s calls for a limited national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Asked about his intervention, culture secretary Lisa Nandy told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I get the point that Andy’s making. He said that there was a case for a smaller, more limited national inquiry into the specific issues that the inquiry that he instigated could not pick up.
“I do understand that because the inquiry that we had here in Greater Manchester, astonishingly, some of the Greater Manchester Police officers refused to even take part, and the local inquiry couldn’t compel them to do so.”
She added: “But I do disagree with Andy actually. The reason that the Theresa May government set up a national inquiry, which ran for seven years and took evidence from thousands of victims, is precisely because of the points that Andy made.
“That inquiry found what every inquiry has found, that young girls weren’t believed because they were young, they were female, and they were working class, and that the systems that were supposed to protect them protected themselves instead of protecting those brave young victims.”
Asked if Labour was cross with Mr Burnham, Ms Nandy said: “It’s impossible to be cross with Andy Burnham, but also this is the whole point of devolution, is that we want to make sure that people’s views are heard from across the country.”
Former Bank of England deputy governor Sir John Gieve has warned that Rachel Reeves could soon be forced to raise taxes or make “very severe” cuts to public services.
“Really what the Budget did was to increase the provision for public services in the coming year quite markedly to a 3 per cent increase. But the projections assume thereafter it will fall back to a little over 1 per cent a year,” Sir John told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“And if you then say ‘well but the health service has to go up by a lot more than 1 per cent a year, and defence spending is due to go up, and so on’, you quite quickly realise that 1 per cent a year for the total is going to require cuts in many programmes.
“And those have not been announced. So the choice she’s going to face in the spending review and then the Budget in the autumn is: can I raise borrowing – and the increase in interest rates that’s happened now, if it continues, will decrease her scope for doing that within her rules – or do I increase taxes again, or do I actually institute some very severe reductions and squeezes on public services?”
The cost of UK government borrowing climbed again as markets opened on Friday, following a week of volatility.
The yield on a 10-year gilt rose to 4.85 per cent in early trading, up more than three basis points compared to Thursday’s closing price.
Meanwhile, yields on 30-year gilts reached 5.41 per cent in early trading, also up three basis points. The longer-term gilt yield had hit its highest point since 1998 on Thursday, before settling later in the day.
Both 10-year and 30-year gilts eased back slightly after early trades, but remained up several basis points.
The rise in gilt yields has an inverse effect on the price of government bonds, which have fallen in recent days as a result, increasing the cost of borrowing.
The pound was down 0.1 per cent against the dollar on Friday morning, with Sterling valued at $1.229.
Former Bank of England deputy governor Sir John Gieve has warned that a lot of “difficult new decisions” will need to be taken for Rachel Reeves to stick to her fiscal rules.
Asked why the cost of government borrowing is rising now, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Well this is very different from the Truss debacle, in that it’s not a response to anything that we’ve done in the UK. Our long-term bollowing yields tend to follow US borrowing yields quite closely.
“And what’s happening is that markets are taking a different view on how [the US] economy is going to go once President Trump’s in office, and their rates have gone up to 4.75 per cent on 10-year Treasuries, and ours have gone up in parallel to that.
“So I don’t think this is a response to something we’ve done … We’ve always followed US movements more closely than Europe has, and also we’re borrowing a lot of money. The Budget did increase our projections of borrowing markedly for the next few years and we already spend £100bn on debt interest every year.”
He added: “So yes we are a bit more vulnerable. I think what’s happening here in relation to Britain is that the Treasury has come forward and tried to reassure markets by saying ‘we’ve got new fiscal rules and we’re definitely going to stick to those’.
“But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that that’s going to be very difficult and going to require a lot of difficult new decisions.”
Elon Musk has privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as prime minister ahead of the next general election, the Financial Times has reported, citing people briefed on the matter.
The billionaire, who is set to hold a senior post in Donald Trump’s new US administration, is looking into ways that he and his allies can destabilise the Labour government in the UK beyond his campaign of attacks on X, those sources claimed, with one saying: “His view is that western civilisation itself is threatened.”
He is claimed to have sought information about whether it might be possible to do so by building support for alternative British political movements such as Reform UK.
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
