Good morning. Here’s what matters today.

The Mandelson affair is moving into parliamentary territory. Philip Barton, the former top diplomat, told the foreign affairs committee this morning he wasn’t consulted about the Mandelson appointment — and implied he should have been. Morgan McSweeney is due to give evidence later today, with a vote this afternoon on whether Starmer misled parliament. It’s unlikely to bring the government down, but a defeat on the motion would be a real embarrassment and could sharpen internal Labour tensions at an already difficult moment.

On welfare reform, there are signs the internal arithmetic is shifting. Key Labour MPs are beginning to accept that some overhaul of the benefits system is unavoidable, with the cost of ill-health related benefits now forecast to exceed £100bn by the end of the decade. That’s a meaningful softening from where the parliamentary party was six weeks ago, and it gives Reeves and Streeting more room to move when the white paper lands.

BP’s profits more than doubled in the latest quarter, driven by what the company called an “exceptional” performance in its oil trading business. The Iran conflict is the direct cause — higher prices plus volatility is a trading desk’s ideal environment. Worth noting if you’re thinking about energy sector positioning or broader inflation pass-through.

On that inflation point, the FT has a useful piece on Trump’s affordability problem. The Iran war has pushed up fuel and food costs domestically, compounding the tariff-driven price pressures already running through the US economy. No single analyst forecast to cite, but the direction of travel matters for Fed rate expectations and dollar positioning.

OpenAI has ended its exclusive commercial partnership with Microsoft. The amended agreement opens OpenAI’s models to Amazon Bedrock, which is the more significant commercial consequence. Microsoft retains access but loses the preferential exclusivity it has held since the original deal. This had been flagged as likely ahead of OpenAI’s IPO preparations, but the formal confirmation changes the competitive picture for cloud infrastructure — AWS gains a meaningful AI credibility boost, and Microsoft’s moat around enterprise AI narrows.

The Musk versus Altman trial is also under way, with Musk’s legal team arguing OpenAI has abandoned its founding non-profit mission. Musk’s own shifting public statements on AI risk are reportedly complicating his case. The outcome will determine whether OpenAI’s for-profit restructuring proceeds cleanly or faces a prolonged legal constraint.

The afternoon vote on the Mandelson motion in the Commons is the thing to watch today.

Sources

BBC News, Guardian, Al Jazeera, FT, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Politico, The Economist — 2026-04-28