British Steel is now formally in public ownership. The Scunthorpe works were nationalised yesterday under emergency powers passed earlier this week, Starmer’s last significant domestic act before Andy Burnham takes over as Labour leader tomorrow. The move was framed around energy security and industrial capability rather than ideology, which is probably how Burnham will want to keep framing it too. Worth watching whether the new administration signals any appetite to reverse or deepen the intervention.

Starmer also flew to Kyiv on Thursday for a final meeting with Zelensky, pledging continued UK support. Largely symbolic at this point, but Burnham will inherit whatever commitments were made, and the defence spending trajectory Starmer locked in last week.

On Iran, the situation in the Gulf is deteriorating faster than markets seem to be pricing. The US has struck a tanker heading for Kharg Island — Iran’s main oil export terminal — as part of what’s being described as a renewed blockade. Nightly exchanges between US and Iranian forces are intensifying. Mark Esper, Trump’s former defence secretary, told the FT that air power alone won’t change Tehran’s behaviour, which is a notable warning from inside the Republican establishment. The Strait of Hormuz angle is the one to watch: any sustained disruption to tanker traffic there moves oil prices sharply and quickly.

On tech, Microsoft is reportedly training its salesforce to position its in-house AI models as more cost-effective than OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s products. That’s a meaningful strategic signal — Microsoft is the largest distributor of OpenAI’s models commercially, so actively talking them down to customers suggests the internal calculus on that partnership is shifting ahead of OpenAI’s IPO timeline.

Energy IPOs are running at their fastest pace this century according to the FT, driven largely by investors looking for exposure to AI-related power demand. The caveat in the same piece is that many of these stocks underperform post-listing, which is worth holding in mind if you’re being pitched on the theme.

UK retail sales data for June is due Friday morning.

Sources

The Economist, Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera, Politico, FT, TechCrunch, Ars Technica — 2026-07-16