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Good morning. British politics is simple: the Labour party does well when general elections are about public services, the Conservatives do well when they are about literally anything else. Today, we explore one reason why 2024 may be a public services election, and discuss how targeted ads sometimes pay off, but carry several risks. However

Reckitt Benckiser pushed up prices in the first quarter by more than 5 per cent to pass on higher ingredients costs, helping it to compensate for the reduction in disinfectant demand as Covid-19 restrictions ease. The maker of Durex condoms, Dettol and Lysol disinfectants, and Nurofen painkillers increased prices by 5.3 per cent, boosting like-for-like

Italian energy major Eni outlined plans to increase gas exports to Europe as it reported strong profits driven by soaring prices for oil and gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Claudio Descalzi, Eni chief executive, said the group had “rapidly reacted to the ongoing challenges of the energy market” by signing agreements in Algeria, Egypt,

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan embraced the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on a visit to Saudi Arabia, signalling the end of a years-long spat between the two men over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The encounter on Thursday night between Erdogan and the day-to-day ruler of the Gulf kingdom is highly

NatWest struck a note of caution about the effect of inflation on its customers despite reporting first-quarter profits well ahead of analysts’ expectations. The UK lender said on Friday that pre-tax operating profit in the first three months of the year was £1.2bn, 40 per cent ahead of the previous year and significantly higher than

The renminbi is set to close out its steepest monthly fall on record as China’s economy reels from severe Covid-19 lockdowns and the US Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates, driving global investors to ditch Chinese assets. The Chinese currency has fallen 4.2 per cent this month to about Rmb6.6 per dollar, the biggest

The writer is a managing director at BlackRock For the private equity and venture capital firms of Bangalore, 2021 was a fine year. Inflows surged to record levels and a flurry of technology firms achieved “unicorn” status, with capital raisings that valued them at $1bn or higher. As central bank largesse supported markets around the

The ghostly, vibrato-laden sustains, shrieks and honking low-note groans that Albert Ayler conjured from his tenor saxophone sounded outrageous when they surfaced in the early 1960s. And, as this compelling four-CD box-set audibly demonstrates, they still sound outrageous today. The collection presents two complete concerts from the Fondation Maeght art museum in the South of

In the years after the first world war many composers found themselves struggling to take up where they had left off. Those who retained one foot in the romantic era often turned towards music that was elegiac, inward, haunted by images of death or farewell. In his mid-30s the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck found his

The young British sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun, born in Leeds, started Kirtan singing at his local Sikh temple as a boy. By 15, he was studying with Ustad Dharambir Singh, himself a pupil of Vilayat Khan and one of the best-connected figures in British Asian music. Two years out of a degree in music at

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. The race for a successor at the helm of the eurozone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, is formally kicking off next week when the application process begins. A few names of potential candidates have already emerged and we’ll bring you up to speed with who could succeed

Good morning. I’m not sure what to make of the negative first-quarter GDP number, which was a disappointment, but included a huge shift in the trade balance, which may be noise. But we are seeing slower growth elsewhere, so in any case the report was not wildly anomalous. The employment cost index, out this morning,

In a cemetery on the edge of the Namibian desert, volunteer Laidlaw Peringanda tends the low dirt mounds where victims of the 20th century’s first genocide are buried. Tens of thousands of people from the Ovaherero, Nama and San groups died in atrocities committed by German colonisers between 1904 and 1908, some in concentration camps

Standing in a field on a beautiful summer’s day, I received the call telling me my brother Charlie had died. It was a remarkably tranquil scene. Tall grass swayed on either side of me in the warmth of the afternoon sun. I was eight months pregnant with my second baby, and my partner and I

It will take about three minutes to read this column. Whether it’s worth three minutes depends on me, of course. I will do my best. But it also depends on you, on your attitude to time and, perhaps, on your profession. Twenty years ago, M Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology, began an

Louise Kennedy’s debut novel plunges us into Northern Ireland in 1975 — one of the bloodiest years of the Troubles, despite a ceasefire. Cushla Lavery is a 24-year-old Catholic primary school teacher living with her mother in a garrison town near Belfast. She sometimes helps her brother out at the family pub, where a “fifty-odd”

In an article for British Vogue published in 1943, the American war photographer Lee Miller detailed – often with dry wit – her observations of the lives of nurses at a US Army base in Oxford: “They are not forbidden, but not encouraged, to marry. They may not serve in the same unit as their

Alice Murray has three complaints about her neighbourhood in Scotland: lamp posts, dog poo and politicians. Standing outside her pebble-dashed house in Springburn, a northern suburb of Glasgow, the 85-year-old bemoaned the poor infrastructure, particularly the rusting street lights. Murray, who voted Labour all her life until 2017 when she backed the Scottish National party

I read Martin Sandbu’s article (“Central bankers should ease off the brakes”, Opinion, April 20) with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. My amusement stems from Sandbu’s heroic assumption that “accelerated inflation in 2021 arose from Covid-related production disruptions”, in effect a negative supply shock. Missing from his analysis is any discussion of excessive monetary

The “non-dom” tax status is not a loophole — it is a specific provision within the tax code aimed at attracting wealthy foreigners to the UK (“Labour vows to overhaul ‘outdated’ tax perk for rich”, Report, April 26). Akshata Murty has used the rules as they were intended to be used. That the wife of

Is there not a danger that we in the west may be fooling ourselves if we believe, like US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, that Russia will come out of its “special military operation” in Ukraine weakened? History may help with the answer (“US wants Russia ‘weakened’ and orders return of diplomats”, Report, April 26). It’s