Faisal Islam

Faisal Islam - Economics editor Football World Cups are rarely completely politics-free but never has the beautiful game navigated a geopolitical high-wire act of this kind.

Analysis showed how much the UK could have grown if it had not exited the EU.

Jinnah asked for a country in which the law was supreme and every citizen equal before it. Nuremberg asked whether institutions, when tested, would hold that line. Pakistan is, in its own way and on its own terms, being asked the same question now

Tether is a giant in crytocurrency, an industry that Nigel Farage believes the UK should be embracing.

Every tricky decision and trade off is being watched by the country and the markets at the same time

Artificial Intelligence companies make vast claims about their tools replacing human labour - our charts show what's happening.

The Bank also expects the economy to grow more than previously forecast this year, although uncertainties remain because of the Iran war.

The actual presentation of FIFA's plan to part-privatise the World Cup raises many more questions than it answers.

The doctrine underpinning it was dwifungsi, dual function: the armed forces existed both to defend the state and to guide its political and social life. In practice that meant legislative seats nobody had voted for, thirty-eight of five hundred as late as 1999. Serving officers running provinces and state enterprises. A territorial command shadowing the civil administration down to the village. Foundations holding commercial assets nobody could properly audit. None of it seemed to matter while the numbers were good. It mattered enormously in 1997, when output fell thirteen per cent in a single year and income per head in dollars went from 1,045 to 455. The growth had been real. The state capable of protecting it had never been built.

Here is what the map-makers keep missing. Our problem was never the number of provinces. It was that we stopped one storey too high. We fought for the 18th Amendment, moved power from Islamabad to the provinces, and then watched them hoard it exactly as the centre once hoarded from them. Article 140A commands every province to establish local government and hand it real political, administrative and financial authority. It sets no timetable, no formula and no penalty, so provinces obey it in form and defeat it in substance. Mayors, where they exist, are ornamental. In Punjab nobody has elected one since 2015; in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the councils' terms ran out in March with none elected since. We devolved to Lahore and Karachi and called the job done.