The UK’s public finances came in better than expected for the year to March, with annual borrowing falling roughly £20bn. The improvement is real but the government will struggle to bank it — the Iran conflict is already starting to feed through to energy costs and broader inflation expectations, and analysts are flagging that the fiscal picture deteriorates from here.

Starmer is having a rough week domestically. Cabinet divisions over his sacking of senior Foreign Office official Olly Robbins are now out in the open. A senior minister declined to say the dismissal was fair, several permanent secretaries have called for Robbins to be reinstated, and at least one Labour backbencher has called on the PM to resign. The Mandelson vetting row, which triggered all of this, is not going away — the NCA received a referral about Mandelson and Epstein in 2024 but decided it didn’t warrant a full investigation. Sadiq Khan, meanwhile, is telling anyone who’ll listen that Labour faces a drubbing in the 7 May London local elections, describing the campaign as the most difficult he’s experienced in over forty years. Not a great backdrop for a government trying to project economic competence.

On the Iran situation: the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, with Tehran saying it’s “impossible” to reopen it while it accuses Washington of breaching ceasefire commitments. The US Navy secretary John Phelan was fired this week after falling out with Hegseth — abrupt enough that the Pentagon announced it mid-conference. Trading houses Vitol, Trafigura and Mercuria have been quietly manoeuvring vessels out of the Gulf, which tells you something about how the commercial community is reading the duration risk. There’s also a reported incident where a ship was attacked by Iran after apparently falling for a crypto scam promising safe passage — a sign of how chaotic conditions in the strait have become. China’s export sector is starting to feel the pressure from the conflict on top of tariff headwinds, which matters for global supply chains.

Tesla reported Q1 2026 earnings overnight. Still profitable, car sales up, but battery sales and emissions credits were down. The more significant number is the capex plan — $25bn for 2026, roughly three times historical spend. The CFO confirmed Tesla will run negative free cash flow for the rest of the year. That’s a big bet on infrastructure and energy, and the market will want to understand how much of it is discretionary.

Google pushed a significant Workspace update, folding its AI layer more deeply into productivity tools under the “Workspace Intelligence” branding. Not a product launch in the consumer sense, but if you manage teams using Google’s enterprise stack, the automation capabilities are now meaningfully broader.

UK retail sales data for March is due Friday morning.

Sources

Al Jazeera, Guardian, BBC News, TechCrunch, FT, Ars Technica, The Economist, Politico — 2026-04-23