Chancellor targets cost of living crisis in budget for a ‘difficult moment’

Healey hopes to give ‘hope for the future’ but only modest policies are expected with important decisions deferred

Budget 2026: six charts that reveal the economic realities facing the chancellor

From tackling the youth jobs crisis to repairing Brexit’s economic damage, John Healey has his work cut out for him

The chancellor’s pet PuFins have an important role – but they need more scrutiny

A regulator to keep the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank on mission is starting to look essential

UK shop price inflation ‘highest since 2024’ as retailers struggle to limit price rises

British Retail Consortium says ‘dam is starting to break on the huge wave of costs’ being kept from consumers

What the claw arcade game tells us about the cost of living crisis

No matter how you crunch the UK data, prices are rising while average wages stagnate. The system is rigged – and it’s time we kicked over the toy dispenser, writes Zoe Williams

Anthropic files for stock market IPO; Meta announces $95bn fundraising drive to pay for AI expansion – as it happened

Meta says share sale will support its “continued investment in AI infrastructure and personal superintelligence”, as Elon Musk warns some AI cloud computing firms face ‘guppy-level death’

‘We don’t have inflation’? Five charts show the US economic reality of Trump’s second term so far

As the US midterm elections approach, we take a look at data to see a true picture of the US economy under Trump

Drive reindustrialisation from No 10 North or risk failure, MPs tell Burnham

Ninety-plus Labour MPs warn civil service lacks skills to drive growth where it is needed and plan should be steered by Louise Haigh from Manchester

Volkswagen to build $4bn Audi SUV factory in US despite job cuts at home

VW investment, creating 4,500 jobs in Georgia, comes amid Trump’s damaging tariffs, intense Chinese competition and costly shift towards EVs

Cutting ‘red tape’ is nothing but a red herring – and arguably counterproductive

Blaming a moribund economy on too many rules is a hackneyed neoliberal trope – UK plc needs smarter regulation, not less regulation

Interest rates unlikely to reach 4.75% by next summer, say City economists

Experts say Bank of England unlikely to increase rates by full percentage point – and could lower them by end of 2027

Is a job guarantee the solution to mass AI unemployment?

An old idea springs anew as a chorus of influential voices predicts that AI may trigger crises of vast magnitude

UK consumer confidence falls at fastest rate since Brexit vote as cost of living bites

Economic fallout from war in Middle East adds to pressures on consumers and on chancellor before budget

‘No indications’ PHP code flaw has led to government systems being hacked, cyber security official says – as it happened

Some 32 government services are offline while work is carried out to address potential cybersecurity issues, a minister has said

Too little, too late: Trump takes on gas prices as fuel costs hamper his midterm hopes

Polls show US voters are deeply upset by high gas prices and are likely to punish Republicans in the midterms as a result