Good morning. Here’s what matters today.

The UK elections tomorrow are the most significant political test Keir Starmer has faced since taking office. Votes across England, Wales and Scotland — covering devolved parliaments, six mayoral races and over 4,500 council seats — are expected to show Labour losing ground on multiple fronts simultaneously: Reform taking northern English councils, the Greens threatening inner London, and Labour potentially falling to third in Scotland. The scale of potential losses raises genuine questions about Starmer’s authority heading into the second half of this parliament. Watch the Scottish and Welsh results particularly — a bad night in both devolved nations complicates the constitutional picture as well as the party management one.

On the Hormuz situation, Trump has paused “Project Freedom” — the US mission to escort commercial vessels through the strait — citing progress towards an Iran deal. The blockade of Iranian ports remains in place. Oil fell on the news. The pause is being read as de-escalatory, but the strait is not open and ships remain stranded. Iran’s top diplomat was in Beijing ahead of a Trump-Xi summit, which the FT notes gives Xi potential leverage — Tehran as a bargaining chip in broader US-China talks. That dynamic is worth watching as any deal takes shape.

The jet fuel story has moved beyond aviation disruption into something with macro implications. Airlines have pulled nearly two million seats from May schedules. The Guardian reports aviation fuel has roughly doubled in price since the Iran conflict began. If Hormuz stays blocked for weeks rather than days, the supply chain effects broaden well beyond airlines.

The UAE’s formal departure from OPEC, covered by the FT, reflects something structural rather than tactical. The cartel’s ability to manage price through coordinated cuts weakens further if a major Gulf producer with significant spare capacity is operating outside the framework. Worth factoring into any energy positioning assumptions built around OPEC cohesion.

On the OpenAI trial, Elon Musk’s legal team had OpenAI president Greg Brockman’s personal diary entries read into the court record, arguing they show the moment the organisation abandoned its non-profit mission. The trial is shaping the narrative around OpenAI’s governance ahead of its restructuring and IPO timeline — any finding that cuts against the for-profit transition has implications for how the Microsoft commercial relationship is valued.

SAP has agreed to acquire German AI startup Prior Labs for $1.16 billion. The target is 18 months old. The price reflects both the scarcity of European enterprise AI assets and SAP’s urgency to embed AI capability into its core stack before competitors do.

Tomorrow’s UK local and devolved election results will start coming through from late Thursday evening. Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru results will follow into Friday morning.

Sources

BBC News, FT, Al Jazeera, TechCrunch, Guardian, Politico, Ars Technica, The Economist — 2026-05-06