Matthew Brooker

Nigel Farage adopts the affable persona of a pub-going man of the people most of the time, but can quickly switch to thin-skinned tetchiness when questioned on matters he would rather were left alone. That tendency has been on display as the Reform UK leader comes under scrutiny over an undeclared £5 million ($6.7 million) gift from a crypto billionaire, now the subject of a parliamentary standards inquiry. The controversy has drawn renewed attention to the influence of overseas money in British

The demise of the UK buy-to-let sector has been predicted many times in the past. This time may be different. A landmark law that came into force this month shifts the balance of power away from landlords and toward tenants in what amounts to the biggest shakeup of England’s rental property market in almost four decades. Home sales by small investors have accelerated. This has the look of a turning point.

There’s a memorial to Paul the octopus at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen after the cephalopod seer earned worldwide fame by correctly predicting the outcome of all Germany’s seven games at the 2010 World Cup. If the Netherlands win the 2026 tournament that kicked off Thursday in Mexico, there may be calls for a statue of Panmure Liberum’s Joachim Klement, the finance world’s reluctant oracle of World Cup forecasting.

Rejoining the European Union is again a live topic of UK debate, a decade after Britain voted to leave. Reversing Brexit would be a mistake. That’s not because the decision to leave was correct; at this point, it’s indisputable that withdrawal damaged the economy, as well as doing obvious harm to the UK’s diplomatic relationships and global influence . Neither is it because of the practical objections to going back in, though these are substantial. The real reason is because Brexit was, at its h

Rejoining the European Union is again a live topic in the United Kingdom, but the hurdles are daunting, says Matthew Brooker for Bloomberg Opinion.

The clamor for Britain to scrap its unaffordable state-pension escalator is growing louder. Voices including the head of the Iceland supermarket chain, former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, the think tank of previous Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and the influential Resolution Foundation are among those to have called in recent weeks for an end to the so-called triple lock. The hard part is getting someone with any prospect of holding power to join the cause: No one wan

The Manchester model is coming south, with Andy Burnham returning to Westminster — and possibly winning the office in No. 10 Downing Street — after nine years leading a city that’s been a hotspot in a generally stagnant economy. One area where the northern metropolis could offer some lessons to London is in housing policy. Anyone doubting that should take a look at Peckham.

It takes a true believer to bring an unfinished revolution over the line. Like Vladimir Lenin, Andy Burnham returned from self-imposed exile on a train, though with more news helicopters in tow than his Russian predecessor. Derided by critics as an ideological shape-shifter and a blank canvas on which Labour members of Parliament have projected their fading hopes of holding on to power, the former Manchester mayor nevertheless has a signature cause. If he can deliver, it would mark a historic tu

It’s not quite the summer of love. London has been going through a heatwave, the World Cup is on and the city is kicking off an alfresco dining extravaganza aimed at boosting the hospitality and nightlife industries. Revelers can choose from 15 different areas spread across the capital. A conspicuous absentee is the city’s most famous entertainment district, centered on Soho, which draws more than three times as many nighttime visitors as any other part of London. Mayor Sadiq Khan isn’t happy.

Handing control of Britain’s main commercial broadcasting network to a foreign-owned buyer would once have been unthinkable. It’s a measure of how much and how quickly the television landscape has changed that ITV Plc’s sale of its media and entertainment arm to Comcast Corp.’s Sky Group Ltd. has elicited such a quiescent public response. While the deal comes with guardrails for protection of UK-made content, program makers may nevertheless feel a chill wind from the encroaching power of global