Finance news

UK Has Enough Electricity for Winter Despite Energy Market Turmoil

The UK will have sufficient electricity supply this winter despite the Strait of Hormuz crisis, NESO, the country’s grid operator, said today. “While we will continue to monitor global energy markets, households and businesses can be confident that electricity supplies remain secure,” NESO’s head of whole energy system resilience, Deborah Petterson, said in a statement, as quoted by Reuters. The UK has, in recent years, become increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas as several successive

Brexit 10 years later: How the UK economy and politics changed, in charts

Ten years after the Brexit vote, CNBC compiled these charts show how the U.K. has changed across growth, immigration, sterling, trade and politics.

How Keir Starmer will be replaced as UK PM and will anyone stand against Burnham?

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer conceded on Monday that he had lost the support of his rank-and-file Labour Party members in Parliament and that he will step down once his successor as party leader is chosen, possibly as soon as the middle of July. Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester whose resounding victory in a special UK election last week set in motion Starmer’s resignation, has confirmed he will put himself forward to be his successor. Burnham is seen as the...

Trump criticises UK’s Starmer after PM announces resignation

US President Donald Trump criticised outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday after the Labour leader announced he would resign, saying he had “really hurt himself” over energy, immigration and his handling of relations with Washington. “I think he’s a lovely man,” Trump told reporters at an Oval Office event, before accusing Starmer of mishandling Britain’s energy policy by failing to exploit North Sea oil and allowing “windmills all over the place”. “The UK buys much of its...

London Mayor: UK Tops Green Finance Rankings for Eighth Straight Year

As the City of London Corporation marks the fifth instalment of the Net Zero Delivery Summit this week, I reflect on the world we were in back in 2022. Only four years ago businesses and communities were recovering from Covid, war had returned to the European continent with the invasion of Ukraine, and surging fuel and food prices were driving global inflation to historic levels. Since then, global instability has only deepened, with conflict in the Middle East and tariff wars disrupting global

Who is Andy Burnham? And 4 other things investors should know as the UK replaces its prime minister

Keir Starmer’s exit puts Andy Burnham, gilts, sterling and the next UK chancellor in focus for investors.

As Europe rearms, can it decouple its military supply chains from China?

Europe’s defence industry would gradually reduce its reliance on China during the continent’s ongoing rearmament drive, rather than decouple completely, analysts said. On Wednesday, during the Group of Seven summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, the leaders of France, Germany, the UK, Italy, the US, Canada and Japan signed a declaration on securing supply chains for critical minerals. Without naming China, the leaders agreed to “significantly reduce” their dependency on a “single supplier outside..

UK PM Starmer resigns as Britain faces its seventh leader in 10 years

Starmer resigns, making way for UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade

Keir Starmer announced his intention to step down as Britain’s prime minister on Monday, succumbing to intense party pressure as his popularity plummeted and rivals have manoeuvred to challenge him. “Every decision I have taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party,” an emotional Starmer said in a short speech outside 10 Downing Street in London. Starmer, who up until Monday had resisted calls to stand aside, said he would remain

Britain’s Energy Crisis Is Driving Manufacturing Offshore

The UK risks a major wave of deindustrialization and widespread factory closures unless the government expands emergency relief measures for manufacturers battling soaring energy costs, a prominent manufacturing trade body has warned, as reported by the Guardian. According to a June 2026 survey by Make UK and the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Britain faces an imminent risk of industrial collapse unless the government provides immediate financial relief to protect manufacturers from surging energy

Report says UK PM Starmer ready to quit, but source says he is still focused on the job

⁠Britain’s Observer newspaper said ⁠UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was expected to resign on Monday and set out a timetable for his departure, though a government source ‌said the leader remained focused on getting on with the job of governing. The threat to Starmer’s position, which has been building for months, increased sharply on Friday when his rival Andy Burnham won a ⁠seat in parliament that would allow him to launch a ‌formal leadership challenge. The Observer report said Starmer was...

UK PM Keir Starmer expected to announce resignation on Monday: Report

SS: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce his resignation on Monday and outline a timetable for his departure, The Observer reported on Saturday. The newspaper said Starmer had concluded that his position was no longer tenable following discussions with cabinet ministers, advisers, donors, and trade union leaders. The report said Starmer was discussing the issue with his wife at his Chequers country residence before making a final decision, but that senior Labour Party figu

UK PM Starmer braces for cabinet showdown, with Burnham ready to pounce

A clear majority of Keir Starmer’s cabinet believe it is now inevitable Andy Burnham will take over as prime minister, according to people familiar with the thinking of more than 15 cabinet ministers, who spoke on condition of anonymity on Friday. However, as of late in the afternoon, most remained unwilling to do anything about it. Most the cabinet was still not ready to tell Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure, the people said, preferring to wait and see how developments...

The Real Reason BP Is Retreating From the North Sea

BP is still considering a sale of all or part of its UK upstream portfolio, which could fetch around £2 billion ($2.7 billion), though talks of a sale to Ithaca Energy fell through earlier this month, according to reports by Bloomberg and the Financial Times. We think the information is credible. A sale would fit the group’s strategic direction, and the company is an outlier in the UK, where other majors have either sold down or formed joint ventures. At the same time, BP has been pushing aggres

Ukrainian, Romanian jailed in UK over Starmer arson plot ordered by mystery Russian

A British court sent two men to prison on Friday for setting fire to property linked to Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a plot orchestrated by a mysterious Russian-speaking figure. Ukrainian national Roman Lavrynovych, 22, and Stanislav Carpiuc, a 27-year-old Romanian citizen, were jailed for seven years and two years, respectively, after being found guilty of conspiracy to damage property by fire. The men targeted a car and two properties linked to Starmer over three nights in May 2025 on the...

Chinese embassy in UK denounces jailing of 2 Hongkongers for spying

The Chinese embassy in the UK has called on the British government to “stop its acts of slander and suppression” after a court jailed two men linked to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London for up to 10 years for spying on activists. Bill Yuen Chung-biu, a manager at the office, was sentenced on Thursday to eight years behind bars for assisting a foreign intelligence service, while co-defendant Peter Wai Chi-leung, a security firm operator and former part-time UK Border Force...

Andy Burnham wins Makerfield by-election, opening path to challenging Prime Minister Keir Starmer

Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election, defeating Reform UK by more than 9,000 votes with nearly 55% of the vote.

‘King of the North’ Burnham wins seat, setting up bid to oust UK’s Starmer

Labour mayor Andy Burnham ⁠cleared a path to ⁠be able to attempt to oust ⁠British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after winning a parliamentary seat in northern England on Friday in what could be the most consequential local election in more than six decades. Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor nicknamed the “King of the North”, won the contest in Makerfield in northwest England with ‌24,927 of the votes, while the candidate for Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party came second with 15,696...

Man arrested for attempted murder after toddler ends up in crocodile enclosure at UK zoo

A man has ⁠been arrested ⁠on suspicion of attempted murder ⁠after a three-year-old boy ended up in a crocodile enclosure at a zoo in central England on Thursday, resulting in him sustaining ‌critical injuries, police said. Cambridgeshire Police said officers were called following reports of an incident at Johnsons of Old Hurst, a zoo near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, which resulted in the boy being in the ⁠enclosure. The child has been taken to hospital with serious ‌injuries and is in a critical

Sweden Picks Rolls-Royce for First New Reactor Since the 1980s

Rolls-Royce SMR just added its third major European contract. Videberg Kraft, backed by Sweden’s utility Vattenfall, selected the UK design for three units on the west coast, making it Sweden’s first new nuclear plant in more than forty years. The multibillion-pound export win, actively supported by UK government trade efforts, lands on top of existing deals in the UK and Czechia and makes Rolls-Royce the only SMR developer with multiple binding commitments across the continent. We tracked when

The AI Spending Boom Is Creating a Depreciation Time Bomb

The eye-watering capital expenditure plans of Big Tech has been one of the year’s biggest stories. Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have all splurged to secure a podium spot in the race to build out the infrastructure that will run the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. Total capex by these four firms is expected to reach $750bn (£560bn) this year, around half the annual spending of the entire UK government. It is much higher than this high-tech quartet has budgeted for before. And it i

UK envoy to China visits Yanan, historic party site rarely seen by Western officials

The British ambassador to China has paid a rare visit to a Chinese communist heartland where President Xi Jinping performed hard labour as a young man. Ambassador Peter Wilson on Wednesday visited Yanan in the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi along with Lu Kang, vice-minister of the Communist Party’s International Department, the department said. State newspaper China Daily said Wilson made the trip at the invitation of the International Department. The two men toured the former...

UK court jails 2 Hongkongers tied to trade office for up to 10 years for spying

Two men linked to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London have been jailed for up to 10 years for spying on activists in a case that escalated into a diplomatic row between China and Britain. Bill Yuen Chung-biu, an office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, was sentenced to eight years in prison for assisting a foreign intelligence service on Thursday. Co-defendant Peter Wai Chi-leung, a security firm operator and former part-time UK Border Force officer, was...

Starmer’s future on the line as Britain holds closely watched vote

Keir Starmer is not on the ballot, but the UK prime minister’s future is on the line in a special election on Thursday. Voters in the Makerfield district of northwest England were electing a new lawmaker, and the leading contender is Andy Burnham of the governing Labour Party, the current mayor of Greater Manchester and oddsmakers’ favourite to be the next prime minister. If Burnham defeats a candidate from the anti-immigration party Reform UK and wins the seat for Labour, he is almost certain..

2 universities, HKU and CUHK, rank among world’s top 20 – a first for Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have been ranked among the top 20 in a global league table – the first time two of the city’s universities have achieved this simultaneously – with CUHK making significant gains in its reputation among employers. The UK-based education information firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also pointed out on Thursday that Hong Kong had Asia’s most improved higher education system for the second consecutive year, with seven of.

Shipping Industry Remains Wary Despite U.S.-Iran Agreement

Shipping firms remain reluctant to navigate the Strait of Hormuz sea passage despite this week’s peace deal, according to a boss of the industry’s lobby group who warned that trade volumes will not return to full capacity until next year. Peter Aylott, director of policy at the UK Chamber of Shipping, told City AM that firms would need to see a “fairly robust string of evidence” that tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf could leave free from before they would have the confidence to sail through the

How to best manage insurance payout

Recently got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease while studying on my third year of my bachelor in the UK, I’m from Norway and live in Norway now. I am yet to complete the last two months and the final exams of my degree but will do so next academic year (important for student loans) I recently received a one time payment of 520 000kr from my student insurance and family life insurance plans that I don’t know what to do with. I will have 950 000kr in student loans when I graduate next year. I h

UK inflation holds steady at 2.8% in May

The Bank of England is due to update its monetary policy on Thursday.

New UK party emerges as a threat to Farage. And, it’s even more far-right

A new political party called Restore Britain is threatening the rise of Nigel Farage’s hard-right group, with a tougher anti-immigrant stance and the backing of tech trillionaire Elon Musk. Led by businessman and ex-football chairman Rupert Lowe, Restore is tipped to deprive Farage’s Reform UK party of victory over the ruling Labour Party in a crunch special election on Thursday. Lowe, 68, formed Restore as an alternative on the right of British politics in February following his split from...

The Bottleneck Holding Back Britain's Energy Industry

Alan Chang believes Britain’s energy crisis is largely self-inflicted. The founder of Fuse Energy, the $5bn (£3.72bn) energy supplier and infrastructure developer, argues that the UK already has the ingredients needed to drive investment in the sector. What it lacks, he says, is a planning system capable of turning that potential into projects. “There is more money chasing infrastructure projects than there are infrastructure projects”, Chang told City AM. “It’s basically a self-imposed bottlene