Reeves slips into yoga voice to try to soothe fears over costs of Trump’s war | John Crace
You have to feel a bit sorry for the chancellor.Roughly four weeks ago, Rachel Reeves had come to the Commons to deliver her spring statement.A moderately upbeat picture of the nation’s finances that didn’t necessarily coincide with people’s lived experience.Still, it more or less did the trick.Bought her another six months until the autumn budget.
Or so she thought.Now, thanks to the orange manchild sociopath in the White House, her forecasts are in tatters.And Reeves can’t even begin to assess the damage because there is no end to the war in sight.In the best-case scenario, the economy might just be in intensive care.The worst doesn’t bear thinking about.
A full-scale financial meltdown.There again, we don’t even know what the world will look like in the next few weeks, let alone the next six months.The only comfort for Reeves is this isn’t personal.When it comes to war, Donald Trump has broken the habit of a lifetime and been genuinely inclusive.Equal opportunities.
He’s not just happy to take the US down with him.He won’t rest until he’s also completely screwed over the rest of the world.Every country gets to feel the aftershocks of his reckless dysfunctionality.It’s a war where everyone but The Donald gets to pay for his decision.A global regressive tax for the pleasure of the Americans voting Trump into the White House.
That still left the chancellor with some sorting out to do, mind,So on Tuesday lunchtime, Rachel came to the Commons to announce what contingency measures she had in mind if – when – things got even worse,No one for a minute believes there is a chance of things getting unexpectedly better,Since Brexit, it feels like we have been on a never-ending doom loop,Only it was an announcement without any announcements in it.
More a holding operation,On days like this, you get the feeling that the government really doesn’t know any more than the rest of us,That it also spends its time trying to analyse the president’s Truth Social posts and respond to them,A hopeless task because not even Trump knows what he is going to be doing in a few hours’ time, let alone a few days,He is both winning the war and not winning it enough.
He’s a one-man dialectician.Trying to second guess the mind, if you can call it that, of The Donald is an act of futility.To base a country’s economic future on it an act of existential despair.But needs must.So Reeves began with the caveat that everything she was saying was subject to a health warning.
If the war went on for a few months, we’d all be better off dying today.She then slipped into her finest yoga meditation voice.The one that puts you to sleep in seconds.All that was missing was some mystic pan pipes as background music.It was oddly soothing.
Everything was going to be just fine, she said, because the government had already taken the measures to keep us all safe and well.Think of the children who were benefiting from free breakfast clubs.Think of the families who would get help with the abolition of the hated two-child benefit cap.Every cabinet minister is now under orders to call the two-child benefit cap “hated”.Even though it had been government policy to keep it until recently.
Still, the eyes began to close.And no one thought to ask what any of this had to do with energy prices.We moved on.Reeves had spent a lot of time collaborating with our European allies.And she was pleased to report that they were also panicking.
But nothing was off the table.We might drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.There again, we might not.And we were going big on nuclear.Sometime in the 2030s, if the country is still here.
She would work to stop price gouging and if the time came when she needed to offer targeted support, she would.The well-off should just see increased energy bills as their own Trump tariff.More would be revealed.Or not.The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, is always a delight in the Commons.
Because he is so spectacularly out of his depth.Other shadow cabinet ministers try to conceal their hopelessness.Mel revels in his.Doesn’t care who sees his half-wittedness.His abject naivety.
There’s so much that escapes him, it is almost endearing.You have to work quite hard to get the wrong end of quite so many sticks.He has no idea the Tories were all in favour of the war that is crippling the economy.He has no idea it was the Tories who left the economy on its knees.He has no idea he was the work and pensions secretary who doubled the welfare bill.
He has no idea.At some point, though, Stride has made a deal with the devil.He has renounced everything he once held dear.Principles sacrificed to be Kemi’s right-hand man.A man of no qualities.
Not so long ago, Mel was a passionate advocate of climate change and net zero,He went into schools to promote it,Now he just wants to drill, baby, drill,He seems to think you can restart the flow of North Sea oil within days,He also seemed a bit put out that Reeves was proposing targeted rather than universal support.
The Melster wants his fair share of any cash going,Why does it always go to the least well-off?Other Tories appear to have given up on their shadow chancellor and the combative incompetence of Kemi’s team,Edward Leigh tried to reach a consensus,He appreciated it wasn’t easy for the government, but could we just have a commitment that oil and gas would be part of the mix? We could,Jeremy Hunt has managed to throw off the stigma of failure and reinvent himself as an elder statesman.
He would support targeted help.Reeves thanked him, pointing out that Liz Truss’s untargeted help had cost the country £78bn.Which the country was still paying for.Curiously, not a single Reform or Green MP had bothered to turn up.Apparently, none of them are that bothered about one of the country’s biggest challenges.
Still, that made Reeves’ job just a bit easier.She had done her bit.Everyone was still alive.World war three hadn’t started yet.Be thankful for small mercies.
MPs urge UK government to halt contract giving Palantir FCA data access
MPs have urged the government to halt its latest contract with Palantir after the Guardian revealed that the US spy-tech company is to gain access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data.The Financial Conduct Authority, the watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, has hired Palantir to apply its AI systems to two years’ worth of internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime.But the Liberal Democrats on Monday called for a government investigation into the contract, which the party said could be “a huge error of judgment”, while the Green party said it should be blocked over Palantir’s links to Donald Trump.Questioned on whether the UK was becoming “dangerously overreliant” on US tech companies including Palantir, Keir Starmer told parliament he would prefer to have more domestic capability but added: “I don’t think we’re overreliant.”Palantir was founded by the Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel and it supports the US and Israeli militaries and the ICE immigration crackdown
AI boom risks widening wealth divide, says BlackRock’s Larry Fink
The boom in artificial intelligence risks widening inequality, with only a handful of companies and investors likely to reap its financial rewards, the BlackRock chief executive, Larry Fink, has said.The boss of the $14tn (£10.4tn) asset manager used his annual letter to investors on Monday to highlight potential hazards around the exponential growth in AI, which has attracted rapid investment and become, he said, “central to strategic competition” between global powers such as the US and China.“The massive wealth created over the past several generations flowed mostly to people who already owned financial assets,” Fink said. “And now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale
Leonid Radvinsky, owner of OnlyFans, dies aged 43
Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company announced on Monday.“We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer,” said a spokesperson for the company, best known for subscriptions to pornographic content creators. “His family have requested privacy at this difficult time.”Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American billionaire with a net worth of about $3
‘Kids say they take a quick look at TikTok’: a new kind of distracted driving is on the rise
As watching videos, using touchscreens, and even livestreaming behind the wheel become more common, experts warn of increased risk of crashes Jackie was on her way to a doctor’s appointment last fall when she realized her Uber driver’s eyes were not fully on the road. “He had a video playing on his phone and was intermittently looking at it,” she said. Jackie, who is 32 and lives in New Jersey, could not tell exactly what the driver was watching, but she remembers seeing shots of people talking – she guessed it was a video podcast. “I was definitely feeling a lot of dread and distress.”As they continued on their 40-minute drive down the New Jersey Turnpike – a hectic highway that is not easy driving – Jackie considered saying something
iPhone 17e review: Apple upgrades its cheapest new smartphone
The cheapest new iPhone has been upgraded for this year with a faster chip, double the storage, automatic portraits and MagSafe, providing even more of the core Apple smartphone experience for less.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The iPhone 17e is an upgraded version of the mid-range “e” line launched last year with the first iPhone 16e and is the latest member of the iPhone 17 family
Campaign groups rail against Palantir, but the UK contracts keep coming
Palantir’s latest UK contract takes the AI and data analytics company into the heart of one of Britain’s biggest industries: financial services, which accounts for 9% of the economy.The Miami-based company embedded its technology in the NHS in 2023, the police in 2024 and the military in 2025. Land and expand, they say in the tech industry. Palantir has followed the script, building contracts worth more than £500m.Now in 2026, its deal with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to dive into the terabytes of information it gathers gives it yet another unparalleled view of the inner workings of the British authorities
Reeves slips into yoga voice to try to soothe fears over costs of Trump’s war | John Crace
Labour lost white working-class voters to Greens in Gorton and Denton, party analysis finds
Reform UK suspends mayoral candidate over comments on Jewish group
UK defence firms ‘bleeding cash’ as delayed spending plan leaves industry in ‘paralysis’
Rachel Reeves rules out universal support on energy bills
Ed Davey accuses Reform UK and Tories of importing ‘Trump-style divisive politics’