Matthew Brooker

Chelsea FC fired its manager after losing five straight Premier League games without scoring a goal, marking its worst run of defeats in more than a century. Management changes are nothing remarkable in the results-driven business of top-level football, but the upheaval at the west London club has a wider resonance. The team’s imploding form and the rising disenchantment of supporters call into question the compatibility of private equity-style methods with English soccer. Four years after US in

US President Donald Trump says he will raise the case of imprisoned Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai when he meets President Xi Jinping in China next week. It might seem implausible that Beijing would consider releasing the pro-democracy businessman, an arch foe who feuded with the ruling Communist Party for decades, only three months after he was given a 20-year sentence on national security charges. The obstacles are formidable and shouldn’t be underestimated. But there are enough reasons to t

Many places have representative offices in the UK, from Canadian provinces to Spanish regions to outposts of the former British empire such as Bermuda. The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office is unusual in enjoying consular-style privileges that are generally only available to national governments — staff immunity for official acts, tax and customs advantages and inviolable premises. When these benefits were granted, it was never imagined that the office would become an arm of China’s transnatio

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.