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Streeting says he won’t be able to guarantee patient safety in NHS if resident doctors’ strike goes ahead Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is being interviewed on on LBC. The presenter is Nick Ferrari. Streeting said the flu was putting the NHS under the worst pressure since Covid. There is a particularly aggressive strain of … Read more

Overbearing health and safety rules are stopping Britain building new infrastructure, according to the economist whom Keir Starmer has cited as an inspiration for his growth strategy. John Fingleton, who recently wrote a report for government on how to encourage developers to build new nuclear power plants, told the Guardian regulators needed to change their … Read more

Introduction: UK GDP report for October coming up…. Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy. The important thing about last month’s budget is that we now have certainty, as one FTSE 100 CEO told me last week; no more endless speculation about which taxes might … Read more

Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature The disappointment over Oracle’s earnings report is rippling through the AI sector. In Japan, shares in Softbank – a major AI investor – have fallen by 7.7%, pulling down the Nikkei 225 stock index. Tokai Tokyo Intelligence Laboratory market analyst Shuutarou … Read more

Rachel Reeves has condemned leaks before her make-or-break budget as “unacceptable” as she revealed her income tax U-turn was agreed in partnership with Keir Starmer. Defending her tax and spending plans before MPs on the Commons Treasury committee, the chancellor said she had been frustrated by “leaks that were clearly not authorised” before her November … Read more

Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Introduction: SpaceX aiming for $1.5tn valuation Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is aiming to hold one of the biggest stock market listings of all time next … Read more

Fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential. The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026, based on data compiled by 200 researchers, … Read more

The “premium” that the UK pays to borrow money compared with its international peers may be coming to an end as markets grow more confident about the government’s plans, a thinktank has suggested. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said that the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s announcement in the autumn budget that she would be … Read more

Good news for Rachel Reeves: the cost of government borrowing has fallen a bit relative to the US and eurozone countries. Better news: the chancellor may have something to do with it. Better still: some economists think there’s more to come. Let’s not get carried away, though. The UK is still paying a painful premium … Read more

The Conservatives have begun a policy review to slash the scope and cost of the benefits system, with Kemi Badenoch saying an “age of diagnosis” for “low-level mental conditions” was fast making it unaffordable. While it is up to the review to come up with specific policies, the Conservative leader hinted that some payments could … Read more