The UK local elections have delivered a serious blow to Labour. The party has lost around 200 council seats and control of at least eight councils, with Reform UK making substantial gains across the north-east and the Midlands. Seats in Hartlepool, Chorley, Wigan, Redditch and Tamworth have all moved against Starmer. Scottish and Welsh parliamentary results are still coming in. The scale of the losses is worse than some internal projections, and the pressure on Starmer’s leadership will intensify over the weekend. For anyone watching UK political risk, this matters: a weakened prime minister heading into a difficult spending review period is a different macro backdrop than one with a stable mandate.
Reform’s surge is the other side of that story. Farage’s party is now a genuine force in local government, not just a polling phenomenon. How that translates into Westminster arithmetic over the next two years is the question, but the direction of travel is clear.
The US-Iran ceasefire is wobbling. Trump said overnight that the truce remains in place, but Iran is accusing the US of targeting an oil tanker and striking coastal areas. ASEAN leaders meeting in Southeast Asia are already calling for deeper energy cooperation and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which tells you how seriously the region is treating the risk of a sustained disruption. Worth watching oil prices into the weekend.
The Economist is reporting that Russia proposed supplying Iran with fibre-optic guided drones — unjammable by conventional electronic warfare — to use against American forces. If accurate, that is a significant escalation in the Russia-Iran-US triangle and has implications for how the ceasefire holds.
On tech, Anthropic is fielding inbound investment offers that could push its valuation close to $1 trillion, which would put it ahead of OpenAI. Revenue is reportedly surging. Separately, Big Tech’s AI infrastructure spending has sent free cash flow across the sector to a decade low — the FT’s framing is that Silicon Valley has shifted from asset-light cash machines to capital-intensive infrastructure investors. That is a meaningful shift for anyone holding the mega-cap names.
Scottish Parliament results are due from midday today.
Sources
- Amid Ukraine’s daring assaults, Russia scales back Victory Day celebrations — Al Jazeera
- Elections 2026 live: Labour loses hundreds of council seats in England as Reform UK surges — Guardian
- What early election results show us in maps and charts — BBC News
- World Cup 2026 squad deadlines: Key dates, team lists, final announcements — Al Jazeera
- Southeast Asia’s leaders confront fallout from Iran war at ASEAN summit — Al Jazeera
- Starmer under pressure following dire local election results — FT
- Migration is getting riskier even as progress is made — Al Jazeera
- Chris Mason: What the results tell us so far — BBC News
- Third British national has suspected hantavirus infection, government says — BBC News
- Labour losses pile up in England local elections as Reform UK makes gains — Guardian
- Trump says US-Iran ceasefire still in place after exchange of fire in Strait of Hormuz — BBC News
- Election results at a glance – and what’s still to come — BBC News
- I, robe-ot: the android monk working to reboot the faith of South Korea’s Buddhists — Guardian
- When will we know the results? — BBC News
- 2026 election results: latest from local, Scottish and Welsh votes — Guardian
- Why you can never get your doctor to call you back — TechCrunch
- ‘We’re not Lady Gaga and Elton John’: unmasking Angine de Poitrine, the year’s buzziest, dottiest band — Guardian
- Experience: I am the best lightsaber fighter in Europe — Guardian
- ‘Being human helps’: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe’s translators? — Guardian
- Happy centenary, David! Attenborough’s 100 most spectacular TV moments — Guardian
- The jury is still out on AI in finance — FT
- Big Tech’s $725bn AI spending spree sends free cash flow to a decade low — FT
- Anthropic weighs deal for near $1tn valuation as revenue surges — FT
- Trump sons back $1bn vehicle targeting sectors championed by US president — FT
- Leon Panetta on Iran, Ukraine and the new global power struggle — Politico
- Koreans flock to pay with their faces — FT
- Ramp in talks to hit $40B+ valuation, 6 months after reaching $32B — TechCrunch
- OpenAI launches new voice intelligence features in its API — TechCrunch
- Kodiak AI raises $100M at a steep discount, sending its stock tumbling 37% — TechCrunch
- DHS can’t create vast DNA database to track ICE critics, lawsuit says — Ars Technica
- Hochul’s Mission Accomplished — Politico
- Mozilla says 271 vulnerabilities found by Mythos have “almost no false positives” — Ars Technica
- How Russia planned to help Iran kill Americans — The Economist
- Tennessee Republicans pass new gerrymander following Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling — Politico
- Is the AI genie stuck in a bottleneck? — The Economist
- David Attenborough says he is ‘overwhelmed’ by 100th birthday messages — BBC News
- The civil-rights activists planned to change the world, not just the country — The Economist
- Google unveils screenless Fitbit Air and Google Health app to replace Fitbit — Ars Technica
- RIP social media. What comes next is messy. — Ars Technica
- Economic data, commodities and markets — The Economist
Al Jazeera, Guardian, BBC News, FT, TechCrunch, Politico, Ars Technica, The Economist — 2026-05-08