The Labour leadership chatter has been firmly slapped down. Lisa Nandy called it “froth and nonsense” on the Sunday shows, denying any formal challenge to Starmer despite persistent speculation around Burnham and Streeting. Worth noting only because the volume of that speculation has been high enough to require a cabinet minister to spend her Sunday morning killing it. Nothing has changed, but the fact it needed killing tells you something about the mood inside the party.

Separately, the Guardian has a story that will cause some discomfort in Westminster. Yvette Cooper apparently wrote a newspaper column justifying the proscription of Palestine Action despite the CPS warning her it could prejudice an active criminal trial. That’s a serious procedural misstep for a former home secretary, and it’s the kind of story that tends to have a longer tail than a single weekend news cycle.

On global macro, Gulf freight rates are jumping as shippers divert cargo to trucks — a knock-on from whatever is disrupting sea lanes in the region. Lorries carry a fraction of container volumes, so the cost differential is significant for businesses with Gulf supply chains. Worth watching whether this feeds into goods inflation data over the coming weeks.

Tata and ASML have signed a semiconductor deal during Modi’s visit to the Netherlands. The strategic logic is clear — India wants chip manufacturing capability and ASML controls the equipment chokepoint. It won’t move markets this week but it’s another data point in the gradual rewiring of semiconductor supply chains away from pure East Asian concentration.

In the US, Bill Cassidy has lost his Louisiana Senate primary to Julia Letlow, Trump’s preferred candidate. Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump after January 6th. He’s the first of that group to face a primary and lose. That removes any residual ambiguity about the political cost of crossing the president — the remaining six will have noticed.

The WHO has declared the DR Congo Ebola outbreak a global health emergency. Around 246 cases and 80 deaths so far. The WHO was explicit that it does not meet pandemic criteria, but the declaration triggers international coordination mechanisms and additional funding. Relevant for anyone with exposure to African frontier markets or global health-adjacent positions.

UK CPI data for April prints on Wednesday.

Sources

Guardian, Al Jazeera, BBC News, Politico, FT, TechCrunch, The Economist, Ars Technica — 2026-05-17