Andy Burnham made his first Commons statement as Prime Minister this morning, framing his agenda around returning essential services to public control and using that as a lever for growth. The Conservatives meanwhile completed a shadow cabinet reshuffle yesterday — Andrew Griffith replaces Mel Stride as shadow chancellor, Tom Tugendhat takes the foreign affairs brief from Priti Patel. Griffith is a more combative pick and signals Badenoch wants sharper economic attacks on the new government.

The bigger story for anyone with UK rates exposure is the bond market. Gilts sold off sharply overnight, pushing UK borrowing costs to their highest level since 2008. The move is part of a broader global sell-off driven by renewed inflation fears, with Japanese yields simultaneously hitting levels not seen since the 1990s. That combination — UK fiscal risk premium and global repricing of duration — is worth watching closely as Burnham’s spending commitments come into focus.

The FT has a piece on the AI boom and how it is being financed, framing the current equity and bond divergence partly around AI capital allocation. Worth reading alongside the rates story — the argument is that the financing structure of the AI build-out is introducing the kind of leverage dynamics that tend to matter when bond markets move like this.

On the tech side, Apple has filed what it describes as “shocking evidence” against a former employee accused of stealing proprietary data for OpenAI — including alleged destruction of evidence after the investigation began. This is live litigation, so the facts are still contested, but it adds another complication to OpenAI’s regulatory and reputational picture ahead of its IPO timeline.

The Economist has a piece on how the AfD would actually govern if it wins its first German state. Worth a read for anyone with European political risk on the radar — the focus is on ideology in schools and public broadcasting, which suggests the policy agenda goes well beyond the immigration framing that dominates the headlines.

The ONS releases UK manufacturing PMI final figures for August tomorrow morning.

Sources

BBC News, Guardian, FT, Al Jazeera, The Economist, TechCrunch, Politico, Ars Technica — 2026-09-01