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Boris Johnson was rocked by further ministerial resignations on Thursday morning, as senior Tories attempted to force a defiant but broken UK prime minister out of Number 10. Brandon Lewis, Northern Ireland secretary and once a loyal Johnson supporter, said he was quitting and that the government was no longer being run on the basis

Boris Johnson’s premiership was teetering on the brink on Tuesday night, after chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid dramatically resigned from the cabinet. Downing Street was braced for more ministers quitting with many Tory MPs believing the dual resignation of two senior ministers could signal the beginning of the end for Johnson. Sunak

Protesters brought parts of the UK’s motorway network to a standstill on Monday in a demonstration over high fuel prices. Police warned drivers that a “slow-moving rolling roadblock” was causing delays on parts of the M4 motorway near the border between England and Wales and on the M5 near Bristol. There were also “significant delays”

Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit. In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the

Senior Brussels officials are discussing the creation of an EU-wide sanctions authority, as they push for tougher and more consistent enforcement of penalties related to the war in Ukraine. Mairead McGuinness, financial services commissioner, said officials were open to introducing an EU version of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac), the powerful US Treasury

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, the pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, has warned fares will rise for the next five years because flying has become “too cheap” to make profits as industry costs spiral. His warning comes as ticket prices have risen in Europe and the US this summer as passengers return and some airlines

Tensions are growing between Downing Street and UK regulators over Boris Johnson’s flagship post-Brexit reform of the insurance sector, which aims to unleash an “investment big bang” in British infrastructure. The prime minister has told allies he is “getting impatient” over the pace of change to the so-called Solvency II rules and with what he

Chinese university students have been lured to work at a secretive technology company that masked the true nature of their jobs: researching western targets for spying and translating hacked documents as part of Beijing’s industrial-scale intelligence regime. The Financial Times has identified and contacted 140 potential translators, mostly recent graduates who have studied English at

The UK will cut off gas supplies to mainland Europe if it is hit by severe shortages under an emergency plan that energy companies warn risks exacerbating a crisis on the continent. With European countries facing the prospect of Russia severing gas exports, the British plan to shut off pipelines to the Netherlands and Belgium

Emmanuel Macron wants to see a drive for higher oil production around the world as the French president seeks ways of bringing down the cost of energy and alleviating the pressure being felt by energy-importing economies. Macron made the proposal to fellow G7 leaders as they seek to hammer out the details of a price

G7 leaders meeting for a summit in the Bavarian Alps on Sunday are seeking a deal to impose a “price cap” on Russian oil as the group works to curb Russia’s ability to finance its four-month war in Ukraine. The goal would be for a broad range of countries going beyond the G7 to impose

The battle over abortion rights in the US shifted rapidly to Congress and the midterm elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade and gutted the decades-old constitutional protection for women seeking to end a pregnancy. As conservative states began to implement new abortion restrictions across the country in the wake of Friday’s ruling,

The US Supreme Court has struck down Roe vs Wade, the legal decision that has enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years, in a dramatic ruling by the court’s conservative majority that will shake up American society, politics and jurisprudence for years to come. In the decision authored by Justice Samuel

EU leaders agreed at a summit on Thursday to make Ukraine and Moldova candidates to join the bloc, a historic move by Brussels in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. “Today marks a crucial step on your path towards the EU,” tweeted European Council president Charles Michel, who chaired the leaders’ meeting. “Our

The second of three one-day rail strikes across Britain will go ahead on Thursday, the union at the heart of the dispute said, after talks to resolve the dispute broke down. Mick Lynch, head of the RMT union, criticised transport secretary Grant Shapps for the impasse in the negotiations between the RMT, the train operators

Large parts of Britain have ground to a halt after the biggest strike to hit the country’s railways in 30 years began in the early hours of Tuesday with disruption to passengers expected to last all week. Members of the RMT union officially launched the industrial action by not turning up for night shifts that

Strikes will spread across the UK unless the government acts on its promise to create a high wage economy, the leader of the country’s main movement for organised labour has warned. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said that workers all over the country were supporting striking rail employees and would in

President Emmanuel Macron was on course to lose his majority in France’s National Assembly on Sunday night, after a strong showing in legislative elections by a left-green opposition alliance and a late surge from the extreme right. Initial results and projections by polling agencies after voting stations closed showed that Macron’s centrist Ensemble (Together) alliance

A top US Federal Reserve official expressed early support for another 0.75 percentage point interest rate rise at the central bank’s next meeting in July, in anticipation that inflation will not moderate sufficiently to slow the pace of monetary tightening. In a remarks delivered on Saturday, Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, affirmed the central bank’s

Shares in Asia followed Wall Street lower after the UK and Switzerland raised interest rates, adding to concerns that tighter monetary policies from central banks could undercut a global economic recovery. Japan’s benchmark Topix index and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 both shed 2 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.7 per cent. China’s CSI 300