UK long-term borrowing costs hit highest since 1998 as Starmer faces pressure to stand down – business live
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Politics Live: Minister says Starmer is ‘listening’ but refuses to say if PM will stay on ahead of critical cabinet meeting

• Starmer on the brink as cabinet ministers urge him to quit

Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at investing and trading platform IG, says:

There is no clear plan for what comes next, but markets are already pricing in a new PM who will open the floodgates on spending despite the UK’s dangerous fiscal situation.

Faced with hordes of Labour MPs worried about their re-election chances as Reform surges, a new PM will find it very hard to resist calls to spend more money in order to shore up their embattled party.

We could see a blowout in longer-dated gilts if this turns into a dogfight– political, fiscal and inflationary risks will rise.

Markets tend to dislike a lack of certainty over who runs a government; the fiscal position is already fragile and likely to become worse should a left-leaning ticket prioritise spending; and that this makes inflation stickier.

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Five former Carillion executives banned by accountancy regulator
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

Richard Adam, Zafar Khan and three others are also fined by Financial Reporting Council

• Business live – latest updates

Five former executives at the collapsed government contractor Carillion have been banned by the UK’s accountancy regulator, effectively ending the career of its former finance chief, after they “acted recklessly”.

Before Carillion collapsed into compulsory liquidation in January 2018 – one of the biggest corporate failures in UK history – it was a large multinational construction and facilities management services company and employed 43,000 people around the world.

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UK households cut back spending at fastest rate in 16 months, Barclays says
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

Dip in credit card spending in April, particularly on travel, suggests Britons preparing for harder times amid Iran war fallout

Households cut back on their spending in April at the fastest pace in 16 months, as the conflict in the Middle East provoked fears of another cost of living crisis, a report from one of the UK’s biggest banks has suggested.

Barclays, which processes nearly 40% of the UK’s credit and debit card transactions, said its data showed there had been a 0.1% fall in card spending last month compared with a year earlier. This was the first year-on-year fall since November 2024.

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‘There’s too much risk’: Britons on changing holiday plans amid Iran war
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

Prospect of flight cancellations and petrol shortages prompt people to switch from air and road to rail and bus

The Middle East crisis, now in its 11th week, has resulted in higher fuel prices for drivers and prompted fears of jet fuel shortages, rising air fares and cancelled flights.

Given the uncertain outlook, prospect of higher travel costs and potential disruption, we asked whether people had changed their holiday plans.

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AI-powered hacking has exploded into industrial-scale threat, Google says
Posted on Monday May 11, 2026

Criminal groups and state-linked actors appear to be using commercial models to refine and scale up attacks

• Business live – latest updates

In just three months, AI-powered hacking has gone from a nascent problem to an industrial-scale threat, according to a report from Google.

The findings from Google’s threat intelligence group add to an intensifying, global discussion about how the newest AI models are extremely adept at coding – and becoming extremely powerful tools for exploiting vulnerabilities in a broad array of software systems.

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Trump heads to China to spread the gospel of American tech while emulating Xi Jinping on AI
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

Tim Cook and Elon Musk, among other tech CEOS, will accompany the US president on a trip to China

Donald Trump is heading to China this week. If his guest list is any clue, he wants to discuss technology with Xi Jinping, though perhaps after the war in Iran.

On Monday, news broke that outgoing Apple CEO, Tim Cook, as well as SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, would join the US president. Other guests from the tech sphere include Meta’s recently appointed president, Dina Powell McCormick; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of computer memory maker Micron; Chuck Robbins, CEO of longtime telecom giant Cisco; and Cristiano Amon, CEO of semiconductor maker Qualcomm, according to a White House official.

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David Squires on … Arsenal, West Ham and a Royal Rumble for the ages
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

Our cartoonist on the Premier League title potentially being decided by a lengthy VAR check after grappling

• Buy this cartoon here | His favourites from 2025

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

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Bryson DeChambeau could give up golf for YouTube in his athletic prime. Is he right?
Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2026

The two-time major champion has mused about life as a full-time streamer. But sport should be more than just a platform to grow an athlete’s brand

Golf: a feeder sport for aspiring YouTubers? When Bryson DeChambeau, faced with the expiry of his LIV Golf contract at the end of this year and the implosion, possibly even sooner, of the now Saudi-less LIV Golf, mused last week that he might give up life on tour to focus on his YouTube channel, most professional golf watchers scoffed. This was just a bluff, a move to gain leverage as DeChambeau, like every other LIV player, contemplates an uncertain future and negotiates the fraught path back to the PGA Tour.

“I think, from my perspective, I’d love to grow my YouTube channel three times, maybe even more,” DeChambeau said. “I’d love to do a bunch of dubbing in different languages, giving the world more reason to watch YouTube. And then I’d love to play tournaments that want me.”

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