The Ofgem price cap rose 13% today — the new quarterly level kicked in this morning. Worth flagging for any consumer-facing exposure, and it feeds directly into the July CPI print that the Bank will be watching closely.

Starmer’s Defence Investment Plan is generating real political noise. The funding mechanism — cutting road and infrastructure projects to find part of the £15bn uplift — has angered MPs on both sides. Hamish Falconer, a Labour minister, and Reform’s Robert Jenrick have both gone public about cuts to East Midlands road schemes. The more structural problem, flagged by Luke Pollard, is that whoever becomes chancellor after Burnham — if Burnham does move — will inherit a defence spending commitment with no obvious funding source beyond further trade-offs. The Economist’s read is that the plan is controversial but represents a genuine break from the post-Cold War settlement on UK defence budgets. The political cost is becoming clearer by the day.

On global macro, the FT’s piece on economic resilience is worth a skim if you have time — the thrust is that the apparent durability of growth across major economies may owe more to luck and lag effects than structural strength. No specific forecasts to pull out, but it’s a useful frame given how compressed rate-cut expectations have become.

Trump’s financial disclosure landed overnight. He earned over $1bn last year, the bulk from digital currency interests. The FT and BBC both cover it; neither disputes the headline figure. The policy relevance is that it reinforces how entangled the administration is with crypto markets, which has obvious implications for how seriously you take any future regulatory tightening from Washington on digital assets.

The White House has lifted its ban on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models, allowing them back into federal procurement channels. The reversal is notable less for the models themselves and more for what it signals: the administration’s AI policy remains reactive and inconsistent, which TechCrunch notes has left companies across the sector uncertain about what framework actually governs future releases. For anyone with exposure to AI infrastructure or enterprise software plays, the regulatory unpredictability in the US is now a standing risk factor rather than a one-off.

The Economist has a piece on Taiwan’s chipmaking leverage over Trump worth reading if you’re thinking about semiconductor supply chain positioning. The argument is that Taipei has more coercive capacity than it typically uses, and is beginning to learn how to deploy it.

Ocean surface temperatures hit a record high for June, per Copernicus. The direct consequence flagged by European scientists is disruption to weather patterns this summer — relevant for energy demand modelling and agricultural commodity exposure.

The MPC’s next scheduled speaker appearance is tomorrow, Thursday 2nd July.

Sources

BBC News, Al Jazeera, Politico, Guardian, FT, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, The Economist — 2026-07-01