Back to back 🏆

Happy Monday. Full disclosure, we had two drafts of this introduction lined up and I’m thrilled to be pasting in this version.

Amidst all of the chaos at the moment, lets hope things might just well be on the up - England have actually won a penalty shootout in the final of the Euros! Back to back Euros for England’s lionesses - and if things couldn’t get any better, Wetherspoons are looking to open another 30 locations. What a time to be alive!

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Rolls Royce (RR.), AstraZeneca (AZN), HSBC Holdings (HSBCA), Shell (SHEL), Unilever (ULVR), BAE Systems (BA.).

Notable US earnings this week: Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Visa (V), Mastercard (MA), Procter & Gamble (PG).

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PROJECT WATCH

🚢 Government announces winners for £30m funding to decarbonise shipping. Read more

🌊 Geotechnical survey work set to start for North Sea’s “North Falls” offshore wind. Read more

🛤️ Transport Scotland unveils contract notice for £205m A9 dualling job. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Silver Spoons
JD Wetherspoon’s tills are ringing louder than the phone of the old boy stood at the bar, thanks to a spike in Guinness guzzling and a nationwide craving for cooked breakfasts. In a three-month stretch ending 20 July, like-for-like sales rose 5.1%, with pint-pulling and poached eggs leading the march back to pre-pandemic levels of consumption.

Apparently, we Brits are once again waking up and smelling the fry-up, with breakfast sales now well ahead of where they were pre-Covid. And the humble chicken? It's absolutely flying – with demand up 50% since the pandemic lull. Somewhere, a Nando’s manager sighs.

Guinness, the dark, velvety darling of the draft world, took centre stage, echoing Diageo’s global reports of a booming stout stock. Who knew that Irish exports would be the toast of English beer gardens during what the Met Office briefly referred to as “summer”? Results are so good that they’re looking to open another 30 ‘Spoons across the country!

Tim Martin’s throwing side-eye at the Treasury, taking the opportunity to bang the drum about the VAT imbalance between pubs and supermarkets – a long-time sore spot. With supermarkets selling for “off-site consumption” they don’t have the same VAT rates, pubs grimace under the full 20%.

Suns out... wallets out?
The high street got a bit of a heat boost in June, and for once it had little to do with flash sales or flash mobs. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), retail sales volumes rose 0.9% last month. Turns out when the sun’s out, wallets come out – especially for barbecue supplies and discounted sun hats. Fuel sales also shot up 2.8%, probably because half the nation fled to the coast the minute the weather stopped being “mildly damp with a persistent chance of bleak”.

Now, before we get too carried away with the paddling pool optimism – yes, May's figures were shockingly bad (-2.8%, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys numbers with sad stories). So this “bounce” is more of a hop. Economists, being the perennially disappointed bunch that they are, were expecting a bit more oomph. Ruth Gregory from Capital Economics called the rise “disappointingly small”, which is also how many of us feel about our pay increases lately.

POLITICS

Corbyn’s brewing
Jeremy Corbyn is back, and this time, he's not dragging Labour leftward from within but launching something entirely new and grassrootsy. Yes, the former Labour leader and current independent MP has teamed up with fellow rebel Zarah Sultana to birth a new party-to-be-named-later, aimed squarely at “the rich and powerful”.

The party’s yet-unnamed website ("Your Party" is not the name) has reportedly been flooded with interest - 500 sign-ups a minute, according to Corbyn.

Flat pints & peace plans
Over 200 MPs, in a rare burst of cross-party solidarity, have penned a letter urging Keir Starmer to recognise a Palestinian state, citing Britain’s colonial legacy and a century-old promise in the Balfour Declaration. Starmer, trying to hold together a fractious coalition of MPs, pressure groups, and backbenchers with sharply-worded petitions, has said recognition should be part of “a wider plan”.

Meanwhile, back on home turf, the government’s keen to remind us that it can still get something done - namely, saving pavement pints. Yes, in an effort to inject some fizz into the ailing hospitality sector, ministers are pushing reforms to make it easier for pubs and venues to stay open longer, serve more street-side Aperols, and stop newcomers from complaining about noise when they move in next to a bar.

ACROSS THE POND

See you at the 19th
Whilst many of us in the UK might be gearing up for the Lionesses Euro final, there was another European showdown: Donald Trump's golf course in Turnberry. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen flew in to meet President Trump there on Sunday in a bid to make Brexit-grade tariff chaos a thing of the past by securing a trade deal. The EU, seemingly a fan of the 'keep calm and carry on' mantra, hopes to settle on a 15% tariff on most EU goods to curb months of uncertainty.

Both camps had battened down the hatches recently, with U.S. and EU negotiators poring over paperwork like it's Bake Off recipe week, hoping for a sweet outcome. Critical sectors—cars, steel, aluminium, and pharmaceuticals—were in the spotlight.

Big bucks for beef
Across the pond, many Americans are feeling grilled as ground beef prices soar to stratospheric heights. The humble mince meat has cost 10.3% more than last June, tipping the scales beyond a whopping $6 per pound. Steak isn't resting easy either; it's carved out a 12.4% hike. Clearly, beef is having a 'prime' time at the cost of the consumer's wallet.

The culinary landscape seems more unsettled than Manchester weather lately. Earlier this year, eggs were cracking open bank accounts like Humpty Dumpty's fall from the wall, thanks to bird flu striking a feathered chord with 23 million culled chickens. Yet, egg prices have since boiled back to some semblance of normalcy, while beef just doesn't seem to budge.

At the core of America's beefy problem is a record shrinkage: the US cattle herd is down to puny proportions with fewer cows than a bad Western remake. A beef shortage naturally leads to hiked prices as demand butts heads with dwindling numbers.

Adding salt to the wound, often misguided climate escapades bring droughts that parch the plains, turning feed for cattle into a luxury reminiscent of truffles rather than grass. These challenges, magnified by global warming, don’t bode well for the burger.

TECH

The Matrix with Milkshakes
Hollywood now boasts a gleaming, chrome-plated Tesla drive-in movie diner where you can slurp down a burger from a Cybertruck-shaped box while your car juices up. The retro-futuristic eatery also features Tesla’s Optimus robots serving popcorn.

But why stop at burgers? In other Musk company news, Neuralink just clocked its ninth human brain implant, part of its plan to merge mind with machine. A first for the company, both the eighth and ninth implants were installed on the same day.

Sip the tea, mind the spill
Meanwhile, a different kind of futuristic furore is steeping in the US, where Tea, a women-only app designed to crowdsource dating red flags, has become the nation’s most-downloaded app. Think TripAdvisor for Tinder... if TripAdvisor leaked 13,000 photos in a catastrophic data breach.

Billed as a digital sisterhood offering catfish-detection, criminal background checks, and anonymous reviews of dodgy dates, Tea's meteoric rise has been matched by a scorching backlash. Courts tread carefully around defamation and digital doxxing.

Back in the UK, the online safety kettle is also whistling. Ofcom’s new age verification rules for adult content launched this week with stern promises and even sterner sanctions. With users partaking in prowling certain sites, having to upload ID… that’ll likely be next week’s database spill.

WORLD

Recall me, maybe? Taiwan’s referendum
Taiwan’s so-called “Great Recall” - not a sweeping memory test, but a civic showdown. Aimed squarely at Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers accused of being too cosy with China, the vote was billed as a democratic reckoning. Instead? Not a single politician got the boot. Democracy, it seems, has a stubborn streak.

Backed by the DPP-leaning Bluebird movement, the recall was driven by suspicions that KMT lawmakers were sneakily sipping oolong with Beijing. Yet despite viral petitions, social media campaigns, and rallies louder than this Monday morning’s alarm, voters in all 24 districts said "nah" to the idea of legislative eviction.

It’s not over, mind - another recall round brews in August. But for now, the KMT clings on with its wafer-thin majority. Analysts warn this stalemate could deepen Taiwan’s political rift, as lawmakers dig in their heels. In the meantime, Taiwanese politics remains gridlocked.

Hong Kong’s long-distance drama
Across the South China Sea, Hong Kong’s authorities are casting their net wide - and wildly - slapping arrest warrants on 19 overseas activists accused of subversion. Their alleged crime? Taking part in the unofficial “Hong Kong Parliament”.

The targeted activists - many now in the UK or US - have been charged under Hong Kong’s national security law. With juicy bounties dangling for delivering dissidents, the city’s police want them to surrender or to be squeeled on. Cue global outcry. The UK and US condemned the move as “transnational repression”, while China accused Britain of having a “colonial mentality”.

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