The Farage story has moved on from the £5m crypto gift to a second front: the Sunday Times is reporting he failed to register support from George Cottrell, a close ally who was convicted of fraud in the United States. Farage has denied any rules were broken. The Guardian notes Westminster is now openly discussing whether he might quit the Reform leadership, though friends describe that as wishful thinking. Either way, the drip of financial disclosure stories is becoming a structural problem for the party heading into any by-election cycle.

On the EU defence front, France’s attempt to exclude the UK from access to cheap EU defence loans has backfired. Paris had pushed for strict eligibility criteria designed to keep Britain out, and has ended up losing access to the preferential financing itself. The FT’s reporting doesn’t name a specific figure but the implication is that French negotiators overplayed their hand. For UK defence investors and anyone watching the post-Brexit security relationship, this is a meaningful shift — it removes one of the main structural obstacles Paris had constructed.

Iran’s ambassador to China has confirmed that new transit fees will be charged to vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, with “friendly” countries receiving preferential treatment. This is not a closure threat, but it is a formalisation of discriminatory pricing on one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes. Energy traders will want to watch how “friendly” gets defined in practice, and whether insurers start repricing accordingly.

The Trump-Putin call is worth noting for positioning rather than any breakthrough. The Kremlin says the call ran nearly 90 minutes and Trump offered to help end the war. Separately, the FT reports Ukraine is striking Russian energy infrastructure at an unprecedented rate, driving what it describes as Russia’s worst fuel crisis in decades. The two stories together suggest the diplomatic channel is open but the military pressure is intensifying simultaneously — not obviously consistent with an imminent ceasefire.

Alibaba has reportedly classified Anthropic’s Claude Code as high-risk software and banned employees from using it. No official statement from either company, but it fits the pattern of Chinese firms restricting exposure to US-origin AI tooling amid the broader technology decoupling. Worth watching for whether other Chinese tech groups follow.

Nicholas Stern, former chief economic adviser to the Treasury, has publicly backed Ed Miliband for chancellor in any future Andy Burnham-led Labour government. It is an early shot in what looks like a succession positioning exercise, and Stern’s Treasury pedigree gives it more weight than a standard endorsement.

UK GDP data for May prints on Friday.

Sources

Al Jazeera, BBC News, FT, Guardian, Politico, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, The Economist — 2026-07-05