War in Middle East threatens UK living standards growth, as markets brace for energy shock – business live

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Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy,The dust is settling after Rachel Reeves’s spring forecast statement yesterday, which showed that growth will be weaker than hoped this year while unemployment will be higher,While the chancellor claimed the UK could ‘beat the forecasts again’, economists are concerned that the ongoing Middle East crisis will hurt the economy, and household finances, badly,The Resolution Foundation have just released their overnight analysis of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast,The good news? The UK is set for a “decent”, one-off increase in living standards this year, and a bumper rise for lower-income families.

The bad news? A fresh energy price shock risks wiping out these gains,The big picture? The medium-term picture for living standards remains bleakAccording to Resolution’s calculations, living standards for typical working-age families are set to grow, by £300, over the coming year (between 2025-26 and 2026-27),Lower-income households are set for a bigger bump in living standards, up 3,9% or £800,This would be the second strongest year for living standards in the past two decades for poorer families.

BUT if energy prices don’t drop, then all these gains will be wiped out.If recent rises in the price of oil and gas were to be sustained they could add around a percentage point to inflation and £500 on to typical annual energy bills, Resolution say.The energy price cap could raise by £500 in June says the Resolution Foundation.That puts everything else from the Spring Forecast in the shadows.Watch: https://t.

co/KynP3Cq9mRRuth Curtice, chief executive at the Resolution Foundation, says:double quotation mark“The immediate economic outlook for Britain is highly uncertain, with yesterday’s forecasts already looking out of date, while the living standards picture for the rest of the Parliament is very lopsided,“This coming year is set to be a decent one for living standards, and a bumper one for poorer families, as wages and benefit support rise above the level of inflation,But a fresh energy price shock risks puncturing this good news,9am GMT: Resolution Foundation event on the spring forecast9,00am GMT: eurozone services PMI for February9.

30am GMT: UK services PMI for February10am GMT: Eurozone unemployment report for January2.45pm GMT: US services PMI for FebruaryThousands more Britons stranded in the Middle East are returning home on Wednesday as airlines ramp up their flights from the region, PA Media report.Emirates is operating seven flights from Dubai to the UK while Etihad has two Abu Dhabi departures.Virgin Atlantic will operate a flight from Dubai to London Heathrow.British Airways has not restarted its usual flying programme from the region, but will run an evacuation flight to Heathrow from Oman capital Muscat, which it does not usually serve.

The UK Government has said it will charter a repatriation flight from Muscat “in the coming days”, but it has been reported there will be no major evacuation of the 130,000 British nationals who have registered their presence in the Middle East.The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the anti-poverty charity, have calculated that there will be limited growth in disposable incomes this parliament…🔔New analysis alert! Our modelling finds that average annual household disposable incomes are projected to grow by just £40 over the course of the current parliament (from April 2024 to April 2029) after adjusting for inflation.pic.twitter.com/OrY9gniY8A…and the growth may actually be over!However, we estimate that we are already at the high point of the parliament, and that from April 2026 to April 2029, incomes are set to fall by £580.

📊 These figures differ from the £1,000 increase over the parliament quoted by the Chancellor in her Spring Forecast speech,📐This is because they are modelled on a household basis and take into account actual housing costs at 2025-26 levels, making them a more accurate reflection of whether families are likely to feel any better off,The oil price is climbing again, as Donald Trump’s offer to have the US navy escort tankers through the strait of Hormuz fails to calm markets,Brent crude is up 3,2% this morning at $84.

08 a barrel, up from $72.48/barrel on Friday night before the Iranian conflict began.Trump yesterday tried to get traffic moving through the strait of Hormuz – through which 20% of oil and gas would normally travel.The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform:double quotation mark“If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible.”“No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD.

”Asia-Pacific stock markets have continued to tumble today, on growing fears that the US-Israel war on Iran will cause an energy shock.Japan’s Nikkei was down 3.6% in late trading, while South Korea has plunged by 12%.Stocks continued to fall despite Donald Trump’s offer to have the US navy escort tankers through the strait of Hormuz.The sell-off was so sharp that trading in both South Korea and Thailand was briefly suspended.

While the near-term picture for UK living standards is positive, the picture for the remainder of the Parliament is far bleaker.The Resolution Foundation projects that after next year, the incomes of typical working-age families are projected to fall by 0.5 per cent, or £150, for the remaining two years of the Parliament.CEO Ruth Curtice says:double quotation mark“With wage growth set to tail off, the living standards picture for the rest of the Parliament is bleak.This should remind policy makers of the need to both navigate near-term uncertainty and support productivity-based economic growth over the medium term.

That is the only way to meaningfully lift living standards throughout Britain.”Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.The dust is settling after Rachel Reeves’s spring forecast statement yesterday, which showed that growth will be weaker than hoped this year while unemployment will be higher.While the chancellor claimed the UK could ‘beat the forecasts again’, economists are concerned that the ongoing Middle East crisis will hurt the economy, and household finances, badly.The Resolution Foundation have just released their overnight analysis of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast.

The good news? The UK is set for a “decent”, one-off increase in living standards this year, and a bumper rise for lower-income families,The bad news? A fresh energy price shock risks wiping out these gains,The big picture? The medium-term picture for living standards remains bleakAccording to Resolution’s calculations, living standards for typical working-age families are set to grow, by £300, over the coming year (between 2025-26 and 2026-27),Lower-income households are set for a bigger bump in living standards, up 3,9% or £800.

This would be the second strongest year for living standards in the past two decades for poorer families,BUT if energy prices don’t drop, then all these gains will be wiped out,If recent rises in the price of oil and gas were to be sustained they could add around a percentage point to inflation and £500 on to typical annual energy bills, Resolution say,The energy price cap could raise by £500 in June says the Resolution Foundation,That puts everything else from the Spring Forecast in the shadows.

Watch: https://t.co/KynP3Cq9mRRuth Curtice, chief executive at the Resolution Foundation, says:double quotation mark“The immediate economic outlook for Britain is highly uncertain, with yesterday’s forecasts already looking out of date, while the living standards picture for the rest of the Parliament is very lopsided.“This coming year is set to be a decent one for living standards, and a bumper one for poorer families, as wages and benefit support rise above the level of inflation.But a fresh energy price shock risks puncturing this good news.9am GMT: Resolution Foundation event on the spring forecast9.

00am GMT: eurozone services PMI for February9,30am GMT: UK services PMI for February10am GMT: Eurozone unemployment report for January2,45pm GMT: US services PMI for February
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Stuffed battered chillies and chilli cheese toasties: Maunika Gowardhan’s favourite Holi snacks – recipes

Celebrate Holi, the festival of colours and the arrival of spring, with sumptuous, delicious and addictive snacks. The bharwa mirchi pakode ki chaat is full of flavour and topped with tamarind, green chutney and chaat masala. Alongside it, a street-food favourite from my home town of Mumbai: the classic chilli cheese toastie stuffed with potato, peppers and green chutney. Both are the sort of dishes you can eat at any time of day, and the unifying ingredient is the humble potato, which I feel is the backbone of Indian cooking, be it in curries, stir-fries, flatbreads, snacks and even raitas.I’d happily eat this delicious street-food classic on any day of the week

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Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for chard borani soup with yoghurt, crispy garlic and beans | Quick and easy

I am emphatically not a dip person (see also: salad), but the first time I tried chard borani, a Persian dip made with chard and yoghurt, I became so obsessed that we’ve been having it on repeat at home ever since. Today, I’m sharing my soup version, thickened with beans and topped with crisp garlic and brown butter. It’s perfect served with flatbreads, and takes just minutes to put together: a homage to the excellent original.If you’re making this in advance, reheat it very gently so as not to split the yoghurt.Prep 15 min Cook 30 minServes 3-42 tbsp olive oil 1 large onion, peeled and roughly sliced2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely grated400g rainbow or Swiss chard, stems roughly chopped, leaves roughly sliced2 tsp sea salt flakes 1 400g tin haricot beans, drained and rinsed (260g drained weight)Juice of ½ lemon150g natural or greek yoghurt, at room temperature , plus extra to serve For the crisp garlic butter 40g salted butter2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced2 tsp aleppo pepper (optional)Heat the oil in a large, wide-based pan, add the onion and stir-fry on a medium to high heat for five minutes

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How to make the perfect bara brith – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

Bara brith, the traditional Welsh fruit loaf whose name means speckled bread, is, as Ben Mervis notes, not dissimilar to Yorkshire brack, Irish barmbrack and Scottish “kerrie loaf” – the last is a new one on me, though, of course, I’m more than familiar with how well they all pair with strong tea and cold salty butter. According to food writers Laura Mason and Catherine Brown, they were originally known as teisen dorth in south Wales, and they date the recipe to no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. However, the digitising of records since their book Food of Britain was published in 1999 allowed me to find a reference to it being eaten before school examinations in Bala, Gwynedd, in Seren Cymru from 1857. (Pen Vogler notes that “anything made with flour, however, is likely to be relatively modern, as wheat was too unreliable to be a staple in wet, upland Wales.”) There’s no reason to doubt the pair’s claim that bara brith was originally made from excess bread dough, but I think it’s good enough to need no such excuse

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Breakfast at Pavyllon, London W1: ‘Does fine dining strictly have to wait until lunchtime?’ - restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Now that gen Z is eschewing booze and all-night raves, are we moving into a hospitality era when the big posh breakfast might well be the main event?For 5am Club people such as myself, who love to be up, caffeinated and scribbling on Post-it notes pre-dawn, the Four Seasons’ recent launch of London’s first Michelin-starred breakfast is perfect. Now we can do all that over a £70, five-course tasting menu served at a counter in a genteel, pastel-shaded dining room. If, that is, you can get a booking, in which case well done; otherwise, you could simply sit a little farther from the counter and order almost the same food off the normal breakfast menu, only without all the explanations.Regardless, chef Yannick Alléno is clearly doing the world a favour by luring all of us early risers to one room and distracting us with lobster flatbread and a bespoke “amuse juice”, because we are clearly some of the most annoying people on Earth. Have you ever heard one of my bumptious 5

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Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for coffee and walnut cookies | The sweet spot

When it comes to British cakes, coffee and walnut is such a staple that if there isn’t one present at a bake sale or coffee morning, I’ll raise an eyebrow. I’ve taken the classic combination and put them in a cookie for something fun and quicker to make. Full of toasty walnuts and a hit of that very nostalgic instant coffee flavour, I finish them off with a white chocolate button as a nod to the sweet, creamy icing.Prep 5 minChill 2 hr+ Cook 55 min Makes 1080g shelled walnuts 140g unsalted butter 1½ tbsp instant espresso powder 100g dark brown sugar 75g caster sugar 1 large egg 150g plain flour 80g porridge oats ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda ½ tsp flaky sea salt 10 white chocolate buttonsHeat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4. Put the walnuts in a single layer on a small baking tray and roast for 10-12 minutes, until toasty

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Bitter-sweet symphony: vermouth is more than just another cocktail ingredient

I like to think of vermouth as the Nile Rodgers of drinks, a backbone of good times known more for big hit collaborations than for its solo work. It is a foundation of any self-respecting cocktail cabinet (though it should be kept in the fridge), and also a family of drinks with many individual talents, which are now at long last being more widely recognised – Waitrose’s most recent Food & Drink report even touted vermouth as a 2026 trend, with searches for the stuff up by 26%.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more