UK GDP came in at 0.3% growth for March, well ahead of the consensus forecast of a small contraction. That’s a decent beat and will give the Treasury some breathing room, though the underlying picture on services and consumer demand will matter more to the MPC than a single month’s headline. Sterling will likely take it modestly positively.
The Labour leadership situation has moved fast. Wes Streeting is reportedly preparing to formally launch a challenge against Keir Starmer, with enough MP support being the threshold he’s working towards. Angela Rayner has simultaneously been cleared by HMRC of deliberate wrongdoing over her stamp duty affairs — she settled £40,000 in unpaid duty but paid no penalty — which removes a significant obstacle to her own potential candidacy. Ed Miliband is also being mentioned on the left of the party. This is no longer Westminster chatter; if a contest is triggered, it creates genuine policy uncertainty around planning, energy, and NHS reform — all areas where Streeting and Rayner would take meaningfully different positions.
Trump is in Beijing. Xi met him with a full state reception and told him directly that there are “no winners” in a trade war, while also warning that Taiwan remains the central issue in the relationship. The CEOs of Nvidia, Tesla, and Apple were in the room when Xi told them China would “open wider” — useful optics for both sides, but the FT and Economist both note that business deals are doing a lot of work to paper over unresolved tensions on Iran, Ukraine, and AI supply chains. The Rubio name-change detail — he attended as “Marco Lu” to get around Chinese sanctions — tells you something about how much both sides wanted this summit to happen regardless.
On tech, the Economist’s piece on big cloud providers is worth a read if you haven’t seen it: the argument is that AI capex is now so large that it is visibly compressing free cashflow at the five major cloud players even as headline profits look strong. That’s a positioning question for anyone long the hyperscalers on a valuation basis.
UK April retail sales data is due Friday morning.
Sources
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- How China changed Rubio name to let him join Trump summit despite sanctions — Al Jazeera
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- Chris Mason: Potential leadership challengers jostle for position — BBC News
- Madonna, Shakira & BTS to headline World Cup half-time show — BBC News
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- And did those feet in ancient time: walking Britain’s oldest paths — Guardian
- Thursday news quiz: station to station, and doing the locomotive after Ted Lasso — Guardian
- ‘Oh my God, did my dad and I fight’: Olivia Colman on the regrets triggered by new film Jimpa — Guardian
- After a hard-fought victory to legalise medical cannabis in the UK, why is it still so hard to access? — Guardian
- Self-report fraud and walk free, New York prosecutors tell Wall Street — FT
- The luxury industry’s many contradictions — FT
- A note from Trump and Xi’s couples therapist — FT
- Hezbollah support endures in south Lebanon as ceasefire fails to stop war with Israel — BBC News
- Solar drone with jumbo jet wingspan broke a flight record—then it crashed — Ars Technica
- Notion just turned its workspace into a hub for AI agents — TechCrunch
- Big tech’s fat profits conceal unsettling cashflows — The Economist
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- FCC angers small carriers by helping AT&T and Starlink buy EchoStar spectrum — Ars Technica
- Protein in Homo erectus teeth suggests Denisovans gave us some of their DNA — Ars Technica
- The war between businesses and hackers enters a perilous new phase — The Economist
- Foiled plot tried to sneak 49 lbs of cocaine into Australia via Xerox printers — Ars Technica
- The world’s best-sounding nightclub is in an unexpected place — The Economist
- Musk’s xAI is running nearly 50 gas turbines unchecked at its Mississippi data center — TechCrunch
- McMaster plans to call special session to redraw South Carolina House map — Politico
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BBC News, Al Jazeera, Guardian, The Economist, FT, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Politico — 2026-05-14