FirstFT: Braverman fights for her political life

UK home secretary Suella Braverman is fighting for her political life as she faces accusations of breaking the law over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, is under increasing pressure to fire Braverman, who earlier admitted she had used her personal email seven times to handle documents about government business.

Braverman is under intense scrutiny about the crisis at an immigration processing centre at Manston in Kent, where conditions were described as “wretched” last week by David Neal, chief inspector of borders and immigration.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told Braverman in the House of Commons yesterday that her failure to heed legal advice about the prolonged detention of migrants at Manston had led to dangerous overcrowding and outbreaks of disease, including diphtheria.

Cooper suggested the home secretary’s refusal to adopt contingency plans to ease the overcrowding, including at a meeting on October 19 — the same day she admitted wrongly using her private email for government business — amounted to her knowingly “breaking the law”.

• Political espionage: Calls for an inquiry are growing after allegations that a personal phone used by Liz Truss while she was foreign secretary was hacked by foreign agents suspected of working for Russia.

Thanks for reading FirstFT Europe/Africa. Here’s the rest of the news — Gary

Five more stories in the news

1. Banks prepare to hold $12.7bn Twitter debt until 2023 The lenders that backed Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of Twitter have conceded they will be stuck holding the debt on their books for months or even longer, possibly incurring huge losses on the financing package, as they wait for the billionaire to unveil a clearer business plan.

• Dorsey’s endorsement: In his latest show of support for Musk’s takeover, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey rolled his entire stake into the private company.

2. Britishvolt on brink after government rejects rescue plea The UK battery start-up was teetering on the brink of collapse yesterday, after ministers turned down a request for emergency funding and the embattled company made a final effort to secure a private rescue to avoid bankruptcy. The company had planned to develop a £3.8bn gigafactory in the north-east of England.

3. EY partner pay in UK hits £803,000 Average UK partner pay at the Big 4 firm has soared to a record on the back of fast growth in its consulting business. EY’s UK arm reported a 17 per cent increase in sales to £3.2bn for the year to June, driven by a 33 per cent increase at the consulting division, whose sales reached £888mn.

4. Carlyle seeks $700mn over insurers’ failure to pay for jet seizures The aircraft leasing operator owned by Carlyle Group claims more than 30 insurers and reinsurers failed to pay out over jet seizures by Russian airlines. Carlyle Aviation Partners is one of many lessors struggling to recover aircraft leased to Russian airlines before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

5. Biden floats windfall tax on oil companies The US president has urged Congress to punish oil companies with higher taxes unless they increase output to bring down prices at the pump. His comments come days after oil and gas producers reported enormous profits and a week before crucial midterm elections.

The day ahead

Economic data In the UK, the Nationwide Building Society releases its index of house prices for October.

Israel Voters head to the polls for Israel’s fifth election in less than four years. Leading a rightwing bloc, Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to overcome a small deficit in polling to take a majority of the Knesset and return as the nation’s prime minister.

Denmark Danes also head to the polls in a general election where the ruling Social Democrats are urging voters to look past their botched culling of minks at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and trust them to lead the country through a deteriorating security situation and cost of living crisis.

Earnings Companies reporting third-quarter earnings include Airbnb, BP, Electronic Arts, Mondelez, Nippon Steel, Pfizer, Saudi Aramco, Sony, Thomson Reuters, Toyota and Uber.

What else we’re reading

Germany struggles with China dependency If the war in Ukraine exposed the folly of Germany’s decades-long reliance on Russian gas, Berlin is about to pick up a bigger tab for its even deeper dependence on China. The country has long been one of the largest markets for German machinery, chemicals and cars. Some fear this presents a much greater threat to German security in the long term than Russia.

Will Sisi take Egypt’s economy out of military hands? Egypt’s woes have underscored the vulnerability of poorer nations to geopolitical events after the war in Ukraine triggered capital flight from emerging markets. But economists and Egyptian businessmen say there are more fundamental issues at stake, arguing that the global crisis has magnified the fragility of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s state-driven economic model.

The nuclear threats hanging over the world Broadly speaking, there are four main scenarios to consider: nuclear normalisation, nuclear blackmail, avoidance of war and Armageddon, writes Gideon Rachman. It is not hard to see how the use of a Russian nuclear weapon could spiral into an all-out nuclear war.

Lula keeps investors guessing on his economic vision After scraping a narrow victory in Brazil’s presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva must now persuade investors and financial markets. A policy-light campaign and indications that he might ditch Jair Bolsonaro’s pro-market model and restore the state to a bigger role in the economy have left investors guessing.

Explainer: Tough options for Northern Ireland In the quarter century since “the Troubles” ended and the Good Friday Agreement laid the foundations for power sharing between Northern Ireland’s unionist and nationalist communities, the devolved executive has been paralysed almost as often as it has been functioning. What are the options for restoring it now?

Food & Drink

British comedian Ahir Shah lets us inside his fantasy dinner party, complete with the cast of Goodness Gracious Me, Gujarati cooking and mango lassis.