The US has now struck Iran for seven consecutive nights, with Kuwait reporting damage to a power and water plant — meaning the conflict is actively spreading to third-country infrastructure. Hormuz remains the stated near-term objective, but the strait’s continued closure is the story that matters for energy positioning. No sign of an off-ramp.

Andy Burnham is expected to announce plans for new North Sea oil and gas drilling, a significant reversal of the 2024 Labour manifesto commitment to halt new licences. The political logic is clear — Burnham is being positioned as a pragmatic reboot for a Labour party that has struggled on cost-of-living and energy security — but it will sharpen tensions with the party’s green wing and reopen questions about the government’s net zero credibility with investors who priced in the original policy.

Washington is keeping pressure on Brussels to announce a formal rollback of import rules as part of the post-tariff deal struck a year ago. The EU has been slow to move, and the US is now pushing publicly. If Brussels doesn’t deliver something concrete soon, the truce looks fragile — relevant for anyone with European export exposure.

Martin Wolf in the FT argues that equity markets are pricing in extreme optimism while ignoring obvious macro threats. Worth noting not because Wolf is always right, but because the argument is getting harder to dismiss: US banks are posting record regional revenues on the back of Asia AI bets and semiconductor flows, which is doing a lot of work to hold sentiment up.

Databricks has closed a round valuing it at $188 billion, cementing its position as the leading independent AI infrastructure play. The company has also published research on cost savings from open-weight models for coding — a shot across the bows of closed-model providers and relevant to anyone thinking about enterprise AI adoption curves and where margin accrues in the stack.

Israeli defence and finance ministers have announced plans for three settlements in Gaza and over $400 million in West Bank construction funding, explicitly timed ahead of the 27 October election. This puts the Netanyahu government in direct breach of the Trump ceasefire framework — notable because it tests whether Washington will push back on an ally while simultaneously bombing Iran.

The Economist’s two-year assessment of Starmer’s government lands this weekend: “some progress, but all too plodding.” Not a surprising verdict, but the timing alongside the Burnham North Sea story suggests the political pressure on the leadership to show momentum is building from multiple directions.

On the calendar: the Gibraltar-Spain territorial dispute is live following FT reporting on land reclamation into the sea — no immediate vote, but EU-UK talks on the Gibraltar treaty framework are ongoing and this adds friction.

Sources

BBC News, Al Jazeera, Guardian, TechCrunch, FT, The Economist, Ars Technica, Politico — 2026-07-18