Friday, 24 July 2026

Britain has a new prime minister, and he is not wasting the honeymoon. Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor and one-time health secretary who returned to Parliament as MP for Makerfield in June, formally took office on July 20 after Sir Keir Starmer resigned, winning the backing of 379 of Labour's 403 MPs. He has since fronted a first week built almost entirely around the cost of living: a package that the BBC's fact-checking team puts at around £1.5bn (via BBC News).

The eye-catching pledge is scrapping VAT (the 5% sales tax charged on household energy) from domestic electricity bills later this year. The government estimates that alone costs about £850m in 2026-27, which it says will be partly covered by axing the previous government's planned digital ID scheme, pegged at £1.8bn over three years. BBC Verify notes the sums do not fully add up: scrapping digital ID eases a future spending pressure but does not itself pay for the tax cut, which will still need funding at the next Budget (via BBC News). Alongside it came £340m aimed at rough sleeping (enough, ministers say, to support at least 3,000 people over five years) and a bus-fare cap the Department for Transport reckons will cost more than £500m.

The new cabinet has a familiar face in an unfamiliar chair: John Healey is back as Chancellor of the Exchequer, less than two months after quitting as defence secretary, having previously attacked a "Treasury orthodoxy that's a dead hand on dynamic government" (via BBC News). Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is also set to take a ministerial role in Burnham's government (via BBC News), a signal of how tightly the new PM is binding the devolved parties in ahead of next year's Scottish and Welsh elections.

The turmoil is not confined to Labour. Grant Shapps, the former Conservative cabinet minister who held five different secretary-of-state jobs, has been blocked from standing again as a Tory candidate, an awkward internal scrap for a party trying to rebuild in opposition (via BBC News).

Wise, the London-founded money-transfer firm that moved its main stock listing to New York earlier this year, has just had a US door shut in its face. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the American regulator that charters national banks) rejected Wise's application for a US banking trust charter, and the shares dropped more than 7% (via City AM). Wise, which says it serves about 19 million customers and moved over $240bn across borders last year, insists its existing US operations across 48 states are unaffected and that it has "invested significantly in enhancing our processes and controls" and will resubmit.

As the Starmer era formally closes, one City verdict on it is blunt. Investment bank Panmure Liberum argues the outgoing Starmer-Reeves government left the UK economy "no better off than it was in July 2024," with chief economist Simon French accusing ministers of prioritising "luxury beliefs over hard-nosed competitiveness" (via City AM). The economy grew about 1.2% a year over that span, and pledges on 1.5 million new homes and a £300 cut to energy bills went unmet. Rachel Reeves had insisted she "restored economic credibility."

The strain in housebuilding has a poster child: Vistry, the group formed from the Bovis and Galliford Try merger, is now the most shorted stock on the UK market, with short interest above 17% (via City AM). A £30m first-half loss and a 12% one-day share slump have exposed the flaw in its model of pre-selling homes to councils and institutions at fixed prices: when build costs rise, as they have across southern England, it cannot pass them on. It follows a £165m cost overrun the firm flagged back in 2024.

The gap between Britain's "AI superpower" branding and the plumbing needed to run it is getting hard to ignore. At a community meeting near Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, neighbours of Google's newly live datacentre gave the company both barrels over noise, light and a planning process they say ignored them. The 33-acre site has 77 megawatts of computing capacity when fully running, and one resident put it plainly: "We haven't had the opportunity to object" (via The Register).

Water is the deeper problem. England's datacentres already use roughly 1.9 billion litres a year, yet they are explicitly excluded from the country's water-planning framework even as drought bites. Water UK's line is striking: "We desperately want to supply the water that datacentres need. That's impossible because the UK government explicitly excludes them" (via The Register). Ten new reservoirs are approved but years away, and Slough already hosts Europe's largest cluster.

And Fujitsu is quietly back in the government's good books, despite the Horizon scandal that ruined hundreds of Post Office operators. The firm has been added to the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 procurement framework, worth up to £14.9bn, arguing it does not breach the self-imposed freeze on new government bids it adopted over Horizon (via The Register). The Cabinet Office says it is "monitoring Fujitsu's compliance with their bidding constraints."

A wildfire that had smouldered in the Cairngorms for 10 days turned serious this week. Police Scotland declared a major incident after a sharp change in weather pushed the flames toward Nethy Bridge, and the whole village was evacuated as a precaution, with smoke visible 59 miles away in Aberdeen (via BBC News). Superintendent Judy Hill said the conditions "added further complexities," part of a wider heatwave and drought stretching into North Wales.

On housing, the new government has drawn an early line. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner told BBC Breakfast that rent freezes and rent controls are not "a way forward at the moment," pointing instead to the Renters' Rights Act that took effect in England in May (via BBC News). It is a notable shift: Burnham himself called for private-sector rent freezes as Manchester mayor back in 2023. The policy applies to England; Scotland's temporary controls expired last year.

Mosques say a promised safety net is arriving too slowly. The British Muslim Trust warns that government protective-security funding, raised to £40m for 2026/27, is taking months to reach places of worship, even as it logged 70 attacks on Muslim sites in the year to July 2026, from vandalism to intimidation (via The Independent).

And the NHS is grappling with a surge in demand it did not plan for: 427,000 people in England were prescribed ADHD medication last year, up 31%, with a 40% jump among middle-aged women and more than 800,000 people still waiting for an assessment referral (via The Independent).

The Commonwealth Games are back on home soil, and Glasgow has kicked off a streamlined 2026 edition, with medals now being handed out across 10 sports. Northern Ireland's Rhys McClenaghan, the Olympic pommel horse champion, booked his place in the pommel final in qualifying, an early marker for one of the Games' genuine stars (via BBC Sport).

The build-up has not been all good news. Katerina Johnson-Thompson, the two-time world heptathlon champion, has withdrawn injured, part of a run of high-profile pull-outs that has prompted questions about how much a packed calendar is asking of athletes (via BBC Sport).

For a reminder of what makes these Games different, look to the pool. Sisters Astrid and Ursula Carroll are making their debut in Glasgow on opposite sides: Astrid, 17, born in Edinburgh, swims for Scotland, while 14-year-old Ursula, born in Halifax, represents England. The visually impaired siblings lined up against each other in the women's 100m freestyle S13 heats. "It'll be nice walking out and just seeing you," Astrid said (via BBC Sport).

One of the biggest names in R&B has admitted a crime in a London courtroom. Chris Brown, 37, pleaded guilty to affray at Southwark Crown Court over an attack at a nightclub, after prosecutors dropped more serious charges of assault, attempting to cause grievous bodily harm and possessing an offensive weapon (a tequila bottle). Police said CCTV showed Brown hitting a man over the head with a bottle before the victim was chased, pushed down and kicked (via BBC News). His vocal coach, Florida rapper Omololu Akinlolu, also pleaded guilty to affray. Affray carries up to three years in jail, and Brown will be sentenced in October.