United Kingdom

    The Prime Minister will on Tuesday reveal her long-awaited plans for improving corporate governance that will include empowering workers and shareholders. Theresa May will this week announce an Ed Miliband-style crackdown on executive pay in a move that threatens to inflame tensions with big business. The Prime Minister will on Tuesday reveal her long-awaited plans for improving corporate governance that will include empowering workers and shareholders. Number 10 sees the move as making good on a Tory leadership campaign pledge and addressing what ministers perceive as voter disillusionment with corporate greed. However critics are likely pounce on the fact that the proposals are in some cases word-for-word replicas of Labour policies adopted before the last election. The ...

    As Chancellor of the Exchequer he may be the holder of one of the oldest and highest offices of state, but that has not saved Philip Hammond from being humiliated by his neighbour. Or to be more precise, his neighbour’s cat. Mr Hammond has had to endure the indignity of being forced to keep his dogs locked away in his official No. 11 Downing Street flat to protect them the vicious cat next door. While relations between Mr Hammond and his Prime Minister appear at the moment to be good, the same cannot be said for Rex, the Chancellor’s welsh terrier, and Oscar, his wire haired dachshund, and Larry, the resident cat at No 10. It seems that Larry has taken a dislike to the two dogs, so much so that Mr Hammond has confessed to friends that he has been forced to keep them inside...

    Labour will not win a general election if it lurches to the right to become, Diane Abbott has said, as she called on her party to hold its nerve over the issue of immigration. In an interview with the Guardian, the shadow home secretary said Labour’s priority should be to push for Britain to remain a part of the single market after Brexit, and that politicians must be honest with voters and tell them the only way to achieve that is to accept continued freedom of movement. We can’t fight and win an election in 2020 as Ukip-lite. The idea that moving right on immigration in post-industrial Britain will save us seats is I think misconceived, she said. She claimed that the toxic atmosphere since the EU referendum, fuelled in part by newspaper coverage, had left many Britons fe...

    George Osborne made more than £320,000 from giving speeches in the US in the months after he was sacked as Chancellor of the Exchequer, parlimentary records have been revealed. The MP for Tatton, who already earns the standard salary of an MP which is £74,962, earned £81,000 for one speech he gave in October, according to the latest figures on the parliamentary register of members’ financial interests. Mr Osborne, who had been David Cameron’s right-hand man for decades and campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU alongside the former Prime Minister, was sacked by Theresa May when she reshuffled her new cabinet in July. © Provided by Independent Print Limited image Since leaving government, Mr Osborne has delivered speeches at banks and universities in the US. The politici...

    Police in Northern Ireland have been slammed after an officer was pictured performing a stop and search on a girl of 10. The image was posted on social media showing the youngster, dressed in a purple coat, being spoken to by the female cop on a footpath. The incident took place in the Falls Road area of West Belfast on Tuesday night. Republican group Saoradh have condemned the stop and search, saying it left the girl “terrified”, Belfast Live reports . However, they and the police have issued statements about the incident offering differing versions of events. West Belfast police commander, Chief Inspector Norman Haslett confirmed that a police patrol stopped a vehicle on the Falls at around tea time “to speak with the driver and an adult passenger”. He added: “From the o...

    Philip Hammond is clearly keen to tell us he has a populist touch. Even George Osborne never issued a formal pre-announcement of the goodies in his bag. The new chancellor’s approach takes the Treasury’s news management operation to new heights (or depths, depending on your point of view) but Hammond has at least created a talking point by slapping a ban on the upfront fees letting agents charge their tenants. Everybody can applaud that measure – or, rather, everybody apart from the agents, but they have only themselves to blame. Upfront fees have become divorced from the costs of arranging a tenancy and are instead a means to gouge the tenant. London-based Foxtons charges £420 per tenancy, which is essentially a fee for printing out a standard letter and is ridiculous giv...

    Hundreds of thousands of British expats are set to be granted the right to carry on living on the Continent after Brexit after the majority of European Union countries signalled they were ready to do a “reciprocal rights” deal with the UK. Senior Government figures have told business leaders that only “a few” of the 27 EU member states are left to agree the outline of a reciprocal rights agreement for Britons in the EU, and EU nationals living in this country for when Britain leaves the EU. The Government said no deals had yet been struck, but the closeness of an informal understanding is leading to speculation that any deal will be announced at a key EU summit in Brussels next month. It came as Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, delivered a significant rebu...

    Nigel Farage has accused Downing Street of putting its dislike for him ahead of the national interest, after aides to the Prime Minister dismissed out of hand a call from Donald Trump for him to be made the UK’s ambassador to the United States. The interim Ukip leader said it was time for Number 10 to recognise that “the world has changed”, as he claimed he was “in a good position, with the President-elect’s support, to help”. Mr Trump shocked Westminster with a late-night tweet declaring that Mr Farage would do a “great job” and that “many people” wanted to see him as the UK’s senior diplomat in Washington. The property tycoon’s highly unusual endorsement was a fresh embarrassment for Theresa May, who was beaten to meeting the future president in person by Mr Farage. Down...

    Richard Branson is reportedly partially funding a large-scale campaign to reverse the Brexit referendum and keep Britain within the European Union. The Independent revealed an email that highlights how the founder of Virgin Group offered office space and money to help the organisation launch. Virgin has, however, denied funding any Brexit related campaign or organisation. Former Labour health minister Alan Milburn is leading the new initiative according to The Guardian; and Freuds, a public relations agency that was founded by Matthew Freud, a close friend of former prime ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron, will handle the strategy and marketing. © Reuters Brexit: Reactions of Richard Branson, Jes Staley and other top business leaders The email, written by Milburn, poi...