Reeves plans to refund some visa fees in effort to attract ‘trailblazer’ investment to UK
Rachel Reeves will pledge to refund visa fees for some global businesses on Tuesday, as she flies to the World Economic Forum in Davos aiming to showcase the UK as a haven of stability, despite Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats.The chancellor, who will be accompanied by the business secretary, Peter Kyle, will hold a series of meetings with business leaders at the annual gathering of the global elite in the Swiss mountain resort.She will announce tweaks to the visa regime aimed at encouraging “trailblazer” businesses to bring highly skilled staff to the UK – including refunding fees – and speeding up the time it takes to qualify as a sponsor of migrant workers.“Some countries give you a platform, but Britain gives you momentum.My message at Davos this week is clear: choose Britain – it’s the best place in the world to invest,” the chancellor said in pre-released remarks.
She added: “This government is making sure Britain is home to the stability, talent and capital that businesses and investors want and that drive greater growth.”She will stress Labour’s investment in industry, including steel and clean energy, as well as the commitment to renew transport infrastructure in the north of England.However, the chancellor will be delivering her upbeat message at a meeting overshadowed by the row between the US and Europe over the future of Greenland.Donald Trump, who is attending the World Economic Forum with the largest ever US delegation, will give a keynote speech to the gathering on Wednesday.His Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is expected to face questions over US tariff plans when he appears on Tuesday.
Reeves pulled out of an event at the London Stock Exchange on Monday intended to celebrate a “new golden age” for the City, as markets wobbled in the face of Trump’s threat to slap 10% tariffs on eight European countries, including the UK, rising to 25% in June,While her focus will be the global tech companies that are well represented at the event, the chancellor is also likely to face questions over a support package for hospitality businesses, aimed at cushioning the blow of changes to business rates made in her November budget,As Reeves prepared to head to Davos, more than 130 hotel providers wrote to the chancellor to warn that business rate rises threatened to damage investment and jobs in the sector and urged her to announce a solution,The signatories, including Butlin’s, Hilton, Marriott International and Travelodge, said planned changes to business rates “present the most significant challenge to accommodation providers in terms of their ongoing viability, and many will face tough decisions in terms of employment and their ability to invest”,Ministers have been promising the measures for several days, but no details have yet been published.
It follows a series of other Treasury U-turns, including over winter fuel allowance, welfare cuts and inheritance tax on farms,
Nervous rex: the Davos elite brace for Trump and his dinosaur diplomacy
“There’s no diplomacy with Donald Trump: he’s a T rex. You mate with him or he devours you.” Debate at the World Economic Forum annual meetings high in the Swiss Alps is usually scrupulously polite, but as this year’s gathering got under way in Davos on Tuesday, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, had this blunt advice for handling the week’s star speaker.The US president was yet to arrive but throughout the blond wood congress centre the hottest topic among the global elite of business and politics – on and off conference stages – was Trump’s intemperate attack on European allies, threatening punitive tariffs if they fail to let him annex Greenland.Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, kicked off the day by urging US allies to calm down, accusing them of “hysteria” in their reaction to the president’s comments
US and European markets fall as Trump steps up Greenland rhetoric
Stock markets fell on both sides of the Atlantic on Tuesday as investor concerns persisted over the fallout from Donald Trump’s push for US control of Greenland.The sell-off hit US stocks on Tuesday, the first day of trading on Wall Street since Trump threatened new tariffs on eight European countries, after the market was closed for a public holiday on Monday. The S&P 500 was down 1.5% while the Dow Jones was down 1.3%
Big tech continues to bend the knee to Trump a year after his inauguration
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor.One year ago today, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States. Standing alongside him that day were the leaders of the tech industry’s most powerful companies, who had donated to him in an unprecedented bending of the knee. In the ensuing year, the companies have reaped enormous rewards from their alliance with Trump, which my colleague Nick Robins-Early and I wrote about last month after Trump signed an executive order prohibiting states from passing laws regulating AI
Elon Musk floats idea of buying Ryanair after calling CEO ‘an idiot’
Elon Musk has floated the idea of buying the budget airline Ryanair, escalating his public spat with the Irish carrier’s boss, Michael O’Leary.The two outspoken businessmen have locked horns since last week, when O’Leary was asked whether he would follow Lufthansa and British Airways in installing Musk’s Starlink satellite internet technology on his fleet of 650 aircraft.The Ryanair chief executive rejected the idea, saying that adding antennas to the jets would result in “2% fuel drag”, adding an extra $200m-$250m to its $5bn (£3.71bn) annual kerosene bill.Musk said that interpretation was “misinformed” in a post on his X platform, prompting a tit-for-tat exchange of insults, with each calling the other an “idiot” and then the Tesla and SpaceX CEO saying O’Leary should be fired
Wales coach Steve Tandy left trapped in middle of toxic Ospreys and Cardiff saga
The prevailing mood in Welsh rugby has frequently been dark but rarely this bible black. Once upon a time a Six Nations squad announcement would have topped the agenda across the country; on Tuesday it felt like a semicolon in a much bigger narrative. Even Wales have never selected seven players whose club is in imminent danger of being axed by their own union.The bare facts of the situation are increasingly stark for all involved. The existing owners of Ospreys, Wales’s most successful region of the past two decades, have just been controversially nominated as the preferred bidders for Cardiff, potentially clearing the way to reduce the number of Welsh professional sides from four to three
Naomi Osaka’s jellyfish-inspired outfit steals the show at Australian Open
Naomi Osaka’s renowned 125mph serve is positively slow compared with a jellyfish’s sting, which can cover 10 to 20 micrometres in less than one-millionth of a second. But it wasn’t just the invertebrate’s speed that the tennis player was calling on when she wore a jellyfish-inspired outfit to face Antonia Ruzic of Croatia in their first-round match at the Australian Open.Entering Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, the 28-year-old tennis player’s look consisted of a pleated miniskirt over wide-legged trousers, a wide-brimmed hat with a white veil and a parasol. Jellyfish-esque elements were also incorporated into her on-court outfit, which featured a watery turquoise and green palette and soft frills on the warm-up jacket and dress, alluding to tentacles.As Osaka told Vogue before the match, which she went on to win 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, the inspiration came when she was reading a storybook to her two-year-old daughter, Shai: “Reading to my daughter, discovering beauty in unexpected places like the underwater world, working with artists who care about meaning – those moments have all shaped the way I see this expression now
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