UK inflation came in flat in May, holding at 3.4% against expectations of a modest dip. The ONS said higher petrol prices offset slower food inflation, particularly in meat, dairy and vegetables. For the MPC, this is uncomfortable rather than alarming — services inflation remains the sticking point — but it removes any residual case for a July cut. Markets had already largely priced that out; this confirms it.

The political situation around Starmer is moving fast enough to warrant attention. Andy Burnham is the strong favourite in Thursday’s Makerfield by-election, and if he wins, there is an organised push — including from former health secretary Wes Streeting — for Starmer to set a departure timetable. Starmer has responded by offering Burnham a senior government role and warning against an immediate challenge. The FT and Guardian coverage suggests the internal Labour dynamics are more fractured than the public positioning implies, with reports that Miliband has been effectively ignoring calls from Number 10. A leadership contest, even a slow-burn one, would complicate the autumn Budget and the ongoing spending review — not a tail risk anymore.

A Russian warship fired warning shots at a British-flagged yacht in the English Channel this week. Russia says the vessel was outside UK territorial waters and ignoring diversion signals. Starmer called it reckless. The incident is minor in isolation but sits within a pattern of Russian naval assertiveness in European waters that is worth tracking for anyone thinking about defence spending trajectories and NATO cohesion.

Dollar bulls are back. The FT reports investors are piling into long-dollar positions on the thesis that US economic resilience will keep the Fed on hold longer than peers. The oil price fall has not translated into the disinflation signal some expected, and with the ECB already cutting and the Bank of England stuck, the rate differential trade is reasserting itself. Sterling will feel that pressure.

On the Trump-Iran deal: critics, including some Republican voices, are openly asking whether the reported concessions to Tehran are worse than the 2015 JCPOA that Trump spent years denouncing. The FT frames it as a political embarrassment rather than a done deal, but if the terms hold, it reshapes the Gulf risk premium and has implications for oil supply assumptions through 2027.

Anthropic is worth a brief note. Sales data from Ramp suggests enterprise adoption is accelerating, and TechCrunch reports that the company’s public friction with the Trump administration may actually be helping it with corporate buyers who are wary of concentrating AI exposure in OpenAI or government-adjacent platforms. Not a positioning story today, but relevant for anyone watching the enterprise AI stack.

ONS publishes UK retail sales data for May on Friday morning.

Sources

TechCrunch, Guardian, FT, BBC News, Al Jazeera, The Economist, Politico, Ars Technica — 2026-06-17