Stock markets are wobbling, but £10bn cash bids at fat premiums can still happen

It was a bad day for the FTSE 100 index on Tuesday – down 1.4% – but the puzzle in many quarters is why share prices haven’t fallen further since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran. The index is still up by a couple of percentage points since new year, which is not a bet most would have made at the time if they had been told an inflationary energy price shock lay around the corner.An absence of Iran-related corporate profits warnings partly explains the relative resilience, even if those usually take a while to arrive. So, too, the fact that the Footsie is overpopulated with overseas earners for whom the US economy, which isn’t suffering Europe’s soaring natural gas prices, matters more than their home market

UK electric car sales leap ‘could be hit by Iran war inflation and energy price rises’

A recent jump in electric car sales in the UK is likely to be “tempered” by worries over rising inflation and energy prices caused by the Iran war, a leading industry body has warned.New car sales in the UK rose by 24% year on year to 149,247 in April, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).The trade body said battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales jumped by 59.1% last month and the two millionth electric car had been registered. They accounted for more than a quarter (26

‘There is a good deal of fear’: what would a Labour leadership challenge mean for bond markets?

Who calls the shots on the bin collections in Sunderland, potholes in Hackney, or schools in Cardiff is not normally of interest to City traders in the multitrillion-pound sovereign bond market.But for those dealing in UK government debt, Thursday’s local and devolved government elections are significantly more important than usual, amid speculation that a dire showing for Keir Starmer’s Labour party could topple him as prime minister.“Usually local elections should not be a market relevant event, but this has indeed become one,” said Sanjay Raja, the chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank.“Mainly as the repercussions, not just from a leadership challenge, but also any changes to fiscal policy and any pressure on fiscal rules the chancellor had signed up to. That is what the market is really signed up to

Thousands of Just Eat couriers launch legal action to improve workers’ rights

More than 7,000 Just Eat couriers are taking legal action against the food delivery company in an attempt to gain better employment rights including the minimum wage and holiday pay.The employment tribunal, which begins on Tuesday and is set to run until 2 June, will determine if the couriers are classed as workers, a status that comes with improved rights, or self-employed independent contractors.Judgment is expected later in 2026.Just Eat dismissed about 1,700 couriers in the UK in 2023 when it returned to a gig economy model and scrapped an experiment that offered guaranteed minimum pay, sick pay and holiday pay in six cities in the UK and Europe.Under its “Scoober” experiment, couriers who Just Eat said handled less than 5% of UK orders at the time and also worked set shifts, were provided with e-bikes or e-mopeds and had the option to operate from a central hub, where they could pick up equipment and take breaks

Our national energy transition is a rare opportunity to enrich and reward Australian workers | Thom Woodroofe

Norway, where both of my daughters were born, was not an exceptionally prosperous nation before 1969. That changed when they struck oil in the North Sea that year. In Norway, each child is now born with a national inheritance that individually runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and collectively now stands at over US$2tn dollars. This is thanks to a far-sighted government decision to establish a sovereign wealth fund (colloquially known as “the oil fund”) that now controls the equivalent of 1.5% of all shares in the world’s listed companies

Trump may not be a fan of clean energy but Iran war is accelerating global shift from oil and gas | Heather Stewart

Operation Epic Fury has thus far achieved none of Donald Trump’s war aims, but it may well accelerate the global transition towards the clean energy he loves to hate.Last week brought the latest exchange of verbal blows in the standoff over the strait of Hormuz. Iran was “choking like a stuffed pig” on the oil it was unable to export because of the US blockade, Trump claimed.From Tehran, the supreme leader shot back that foreigners who “maliciously covet” the waterway “have no place there except at the bottom of its waters”. To the rest of the world, the exchange raised the spectre of a prolonged impasse

Dynamic pay on platforms such as Uber should be banned, says TUC

The practice of using “dynamic pricing” to set pay on gig economy platforms including Uber should be banned because it leaves workers at the mercy of shadowy algorithms with no certainty over their earnings, trade union leaders have urged.In a report exposing the human cost of the gig economy practice, the Trades Union Congress said pay was becoming decoupled from time, skill or effort. Instead, work had become a speculative practice with the rewards determined by an algorithmic process with little transparency.Under dynamic pricing, computer-driven algorithms set variable prices on a gig economy platform for customers and rates of commission for workers to match real-time supply and demand in a market.However, union leaders say the practice replaces fixed rates or transparent tariffs with opaque, constantly shifting pricing mechanisms, where the data used to determine the rewards and decision-making process are largely obscured

Totally grounded? How the jet fuel crisis could change our holidays – and world history

Jet fuel has doubled in price since the start of the war on Iran. How bad will the disruption get and could this accelerate the route to jet zero?What happens to flights if the world runs out of oil? Well, obviously they will be grounded. To be more specific, is it possible, if the war in Iran does not resolve and the strait of Hormuz remains blocked, that airlines will simply run out of aviation fuel?It’s not a question anyone has had to ask before. Air travel has hit some hurdles this century that nobody could have seen coming – Covid, of course, but also the Icelandic volcano in 2010, which closed much of European airspace for eight days, cost an estimated €3.75bn (£3

Four in five Britons worried Iran war will make food more expensive, poll finds

Four in five people are worried that the Iran war will make food more expensive, according to a new poll, as businesses warned the “window is closing” for ministers to cut energy costs for UK retailers.Research by Opinium found that 80% of people are worried about the rising price of groceries, which would come from retailers passing on cost increases to consumers, while 73% expect the conflict to push up prices of other products.The blockade of the strait of Hormuz has already sent oil and gas prices soaring, caused a crisis in the global fertiliser industry, and has made shipping and distribution more expensive.The effects have so far been felt most acutely in sectors such as manufacturing and chemicals, which use high amounts of gas. The UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced more support on bills for the most energy-intensive businesses in April, but now faces fresh calls to cut costs for the food sector

Vodafone to take full control of UK mobile operator in £4.3bn deal

Vodafone is to take full control of the UK’s biggest mobile operator in a £4.3bn buyout deal with the Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison.The billionaire Li Ka-shing’s business said it had agreed to sell its 49% stake in VodafoneThree – a network with more than 27 million subscribers – to its partner Vodafone.Vodafone will buy out CK Hutchison, paying cash, and cancel the shares.The deal is part of CK’s efforts to reshape its global portfolio, offloading major assets to boost shareholder returns

Concierge firm co-founded by queen’s nephew went on ‘ill-timed’ hiring spree before Iran war

The embattled luxury concierge service co-founded by Queen Camilla’s nephew Ben Elliot embarked on what appeared to be an inopportune hiring spree in the Middle East and Asia before wealthy individuals began fleeing the region because of the US-Israel war on Iran.Quintessentially almost quadrupled staff in the regions from 22 to 84 during its financial year to 30 April 2025, according to newly released annual accounts, which again reported multimillion-pound losses and warned of “material uncertainty” about its future.The increase in staff numbers came less than a year before the conflict erupted in the Middle East – with Iran retaliating against US and Israeli strikes by targeting Gulf cities including Dubai. The attacks prompted a scramble among the wealthy to leave the Emirates via alternative routes on private jets.A Quintessentially spokesperson said the business continued to hire in the region and was planning another office in Dubai

UK food prices on track to rise by 50% since start of cost of living crisis

Food prices are on track to be 50% higher in November than at the start of the cost of living crisis in 2021, research suggests.Climate and energy shocks have driven an almost quadrupling of the pace of food price growth, according to research from the thinktank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), with costs rising in five years at about the same rate as they had over the previous two decades.Anna Taylor, the executive director of the Food Foundation charity, said: “Food prices rising this high and this fast leaves families on the lowest incomes with nowhere left to cut except the food on their plate. When that happens, people skip meals, children go hungry, and diet-related illness rises – taking parents out of work and piling pressure on an NHS that can least afford it.”The research suggests that the cost of living crisis, which many voters blame on political elites and big business, is likely to continue to be an important political issue during 2026

Spring soup and bean and cheese quesadillas: Thomasina Miers’ Mexican-inspired seasonal recipes

I have always loved the evident (though not proven) link between how foodie a country is and its love of soups. In Mexico, where nose-to-tail eating is a given, broths maintain a steadying presence in any self-respecting cantina, and soups are commonplace on most menus. We don’t eat a crazy amount of meat at home, but having homemade stock in the freezer is an ingenious fast track to flavour and goodness. Here, whether your stock is chicken or vegetable, homemade or shop-bought, the joy is in the gentle spicing, a scattering of herbs, zingy tomatillos and some lovely spring leaves.There are so many different herbs in Mexico that are impossible to find here, so I’ve used bundles of more common soft herbs to try to capture the lovely breadth of flavour in this soup

When it comes to wines, it pays to look beyond the fashionable

The sommelier Honey Spencer, of Sune in east London, struck a real chord on Instagram earlier this year: “I’m so fucking sick of expensive wine,” she lamented. There followed an angry plaint about the “unrelenting rise” in the cost of bottles from “artisans making wine properly … and FORGET BURGUNDY”. In a difficult climate, this is “one of the hardest pills to swallow” for the restaurateur.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link

The surprising boom in blouge wine: ‘It’s for 5pm, in the sun’

Twenty years ago, a winery could do well selling one white and two reds, says Konrad Pixner, a northern Italian winemaker who set up his vineyard, Domaine de L’Accent, in Languedoc, France, in 2019. But today, importers and bars always ask: “Do you have something new?” So up in the hills, surrounded by deep gorges and limestone plateaus, Pixner is constantly experimenting.After a good harvest in 2023, Pixner walked into the shed he shares with other winemakers at 4am to find that his biggest vat of white wine, pressed from carignan blanc grapes, had overflowed during fermentation. He had run out of space, so he quickly “pumped the white juice into the tank where whole bunches of carignan noir were,” he says, and left them to ferment for 10 days together. In contrast to rosé, made from red grapes left for a short time with their skins on before being pressed, he created “blouge” – a light, fresh wine blended from white and red grapes that’s best served chilled

How to make the perfect custard creams – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

Prue Leith reckons the custard cream is “arguably Britain’s most iconic biscuit” – and, certainly, we’ve been dunking this fern-patterned treat in our tea for well over a century, with early advertisements for this “delicious biscuit” placing it, perhaps aspirationally, in the “fancy” category. By 1920, Bermondsey baking behemoth Peek Frean could confidently declare the custard cream “far and away the most popular of all the cream sandwich biscuits”, a status only slightly dented by the time I was at school about seven decades later, when it sat just below its contemporary, the chocolate bourbon, in the playtime snack ratings.Despite my love of both custard and cookies, however, I’ve always found this particular custard-flavoured product a bit sugary and dull. As historian Lizzie Collingham explains in her magisterial book, The Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence, it combines two early industrial foodstuffs, namely custard powder and machine-made biscuits, and though they may have been created in a factory, I think they’re much better made at home.Let’s be honest, the biscuit isn’t really the point of the packet variety – as children, we’d prise them open to scrape out the sugary filling, like bears sucking honey from a split log – but when you bake them yourself, it can be

Impala, London W1: ‘Shamelessly, brilliantly too much’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Impala is like no restaurant I’ve ever been to, yet it somehow has echoes of almost all of themLate last month, Impala drove into Soho already flaming hot in the hype stakes: this was a sizzling booking to brag about even before executive chef and co-founder Meedu Saad had turned on the stoves. Impala, after all, is a Super 8 restaurant, the group that has, among others, Tomos Parry’s Brat in Shoreditch, which has been constantly, unfalteringly brilliant since 2018. It also runs Parry’s second baby, Mountain, which is likewise wonderful; sometimes weird, yes, but always wonderful. Long before that, back in 2016, they opened Kiln, the famed live-fire Thai counter hangout that cheffy boys in beanies have tried and failed to emulate all over Britain, while Super 8’s beginnings were with the boundary-pushing and much-loved Smoking Goat. That is nothing less than a litany of solid-gold bangers, and now they’ve unleashed Impala by Saad, the former head chef at Kiln

Disco hit: Penne alla vodka, popular in New York 80s clubs, is now a menu staple

Despite most traditional Italians considering it sacrilegious, penne alla vodka is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand Italian dishes.Previously popular in suburban Italo-American restaurants during the 80s, the dish is now enjoying a widespread resurgence that is being driven by several factors including nostalgia and social media.Featuring a tomato and cream base with a splash of vodka, the silky smooth sauce sits somewhere between coral and carrot on the colour wheel. The Guardian’s Rome-based food writer Rachel Roddy describes it as “luxurious and a bit racy”.Dara Klein, a chef and founder of Tiella Trattoria in London, says the dish “hits lots of comforting notes”, comparing it to a slightly more grownup take on the Italian childhood favourite pasta al pomodoro which is “eaten from day dot”

Why we care so much about preserving family recipes

“Chicken, leek, flour, a few more ingredients.” That was it: my grandma’s WhatsApp response to me earnestly asking if she’d mind sharing her time-honoured chicken pie recipe. She wasn’t being obtuse – well, not deliberately. She had simply never before committed a dish that was second nature to paper, let alone an iPhone screen.It wasn’t how she’d learned it and it wasn’t how I’d go on to learn it, either

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for spaghetti with crab, chilli, herbs and lemon | A kitchen in Rome

My copy of the River Cafe Cookbook is silver, having lost its original blue sleeve some years ago. Naked, the hardback cover is completely plain, so it is my handwriting of “River Cafe blue” along the metallic spine, even though there is little chance of mixing it up with the yellow softback River Cafe Cookbook Two or the emerald cover of River Cafe Cookbook Green.Blue was first published in 1996, a sobering fact, because that’s the same year I enrolled at the Drama Centre London, as well as the year when Pierce Brosnan took on rogue agent Alec Trevelyan (played by Sean Bean) in GoldenEye. That was Brosnan’s debut as James Bond and Dame Judi Dench’s first appearance as M. Brosnan trained at Drama Centre between 1973 and 1976, which is why, when I bought the blue book in 1996, I had good reason to imagine my future career as looking a little like that of Pierce, or Judi, or both

Why sweet, chewy dates go perfectly with chocolate – and the best ones to try

I first cemented the allure of the “chew” aged 14, working illegally as a chambermaid (I lied about my age) and finding a guest’s Gummy Bears laid open – a breach I heavily exploited. Recently this chew need has been sated by dates and their use in chocolate as a healthy caramel. Dates do have nutritional benefits over mere sugar: fibre, minerals, antioxidants and make a great pre-workout boost.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link

The perfect birthday cake: tips for the best blow-out

What’s the best birthday cake?Katie, by email“My mum once made a cake with mini rolls made to look like cats with googly eyes and strawberry lace tails,” says Nicola Lamb, author of Sift and the Kitchen Projects newsletter. And that’s the whole point of a birthday cake, right? It should align with the recipient’s favourite thing: “That could even be a lasagne,” Lamb says. “I’m not at all prescriptive about what you stick a candle into.”Of course, some cakes are a safer choice than others. Take the Victoria sponge: “I don’t think anyone is going to have a problem with a plush vanilla sponge, jam and cream job,” Lamb says

A pasta bake and a sumac salad: Sami Tamimi’s prep-ahead sharing recipes

My ideal way of entertaining is completely fuss-free, with everything prepared ahead of time so I can enjoy being with my guests rather than worrying about cooking. I like to put big, generous dishes in the middle of the table, such as this one-tray chicken, pasta and chickpea bake, alongside a fresh salad, so everyone can serve themselves and share a simple, delicious meal.This is a comforting and flavourful dish that brings together tender chicken, hearty chickpeas and perfectly cooked pasta in a rich, pungent sauce. It’s a simple yet satisfying meal that’s ideal for busy weeknights or casual family meals. Everything cooks together in the oven, and the flavours blend beautifully while keeping prep and washing-up to a minimum

‘We don’t want to make the same mistakes’: Jamie’s Italian reopens in London

Jamie Oliver’s head of restaurants is optimistic about new recipe of smaller site, slimmed-down menu and no burgersWhen Jamie’s Italian crashed and burned in 2019, with the company in £83m of debt and causing 1,000 job losses, no one imagined the celebrity chef would try again.But seven years later, Jamie Oliver has opened a flagship site under the same name in Leicester Square in central London, and believes he has a new recipe for success: a smaller restaurant with a slimmed-down menu, which features cheaper cuts of meat and no burgers.At its peak the chain, which opened in 2008, had 47 UK restaurants. Now it just has the one.Ed Loftus, the global director of Jamie Oliver Restaurants, has worked with Oliver for 20 years and is charged with making the reopening a success