Here are two other UK power records:
1. Highest industrial energy costs in the world.
2. Second highest domestic energy costs in the world.
As E Miliband says, we’re setting an example for the rest of the world. Indeed we are. Which is why nobody is following us.
Come on @dcfcofficial let’s give the man the recognition he richly deserves whilst we still have him.
Let’s get a bust done in main reception, I’ve offered to help, I’ve even been to see Arthur.
#dcfcfans
40 years ago this season we were second division champions, consecutive promotions back to the top tier, he took us from the depths and the club was about to go bust.
Let’s not forget what a great thing he did for our club.
#dcfcfans
Derby County are in talks with Saudi sports supremo Turki Alalshikh over a potential investment deal. Negotations are advanced and now with the Independent Football Regulator #dcfc https://t.co/m3DcEwDhX3
Callaghan's Ghost. Labour is Walking the Same Road.
Britain's government borrowing costs have hit their highest level since 1998. Morgan Stanley has told its clients the economy will flatline for the rest of the year. Asset managers are advising clients to avoid long-dated gilts. The pound is falling. And the Labour Party is consumed by a leadership contest that the bond market is watching with undisguised alarm. These are not separate stories. They are one story.
The war in Iran has delivered an £11 billion blow to Rachel Reeves's fiscal headroom, slashing it in half. Conveniently, Iran arrived at exactly the right moment for the Chancellor: a ready-made alibi for a position that was already untenable. Unemployment is forecast to rise from 4.9% to 5.5%. Families will be no better off at the end of this year than they were at the start of last year. Living standards, frozen. Growth, gone. Against that backdrop, the gilt market is not pricing in recovery. It is pricing in what comes next.
The trap is structural and there is no exit. If Starmer survives, markets see a weakened prime minister held hostage by his left flank, forced to loosen spending to buy loyalty. Gilt yields rise. If Starmer falls and Burnham or Rayner takes the keys, markets price in higher borrowing and a harder left turn. Gilt yields rise further. There is no combination on the Labour benches that the bond market greets with confidence. The verdict has already been delivered.
Morgan Stanley's chief UK economist Bruna Skarica is explicit: there is limited scope for additional borrowing given what she calls binding market constraints. The more likely pressure valve is corporate tax hikes. Higher taxes into a flatlining economy is not a growth strategy. It is a contraction signal. Investment decisions get made before the tax even lands.
The numbers are stark. The 30-year gilt yield is close to its highest level in 28 years. Every quarter-point rise in borrowing costs adds approximately £2.5 billion to annual debt servicing. Britain is already carrying the highest government borrowing costs in the G7. The arithmetic does not improve with a change of leader. It worsens with instability, and instability is now the only certainty on offer.
Labour has been here before. In 1976, James Callaghan's government went cap in hand to the IMF, accepting humiliating spending cuts as the price of market confidence it had forfeited. The lesson was never fully learned. What is happening now is slower and more diffuse than 1976, but the underlying logic is identical: a Labour government that spent beyond what bond markets would tolerate, then lost control of the story when the consequences arrived.
A new Labour leader arriving in Number 10 will inherit a fiscal trap with no exits: bond market discipline on one side, a restless parliamentary party demanding spending on the other, and an economy already in the forecasters' freezer. The temptation will be to reach for the same emergency language Reeves has used throughout. Markets have already discounted that language. They are waiting to see whether the new occupant has a credible story. The early evidence, from gilt yields, from sterling, from the parade of asset managers advising clients to look elsewhere, is that they have made their judgment in advance.
Britain is not facing a single catastrophic event that can be identified, blamed and reversed. It is facing a slow-motion crisis with no circuit-breaker: no credible borrower, no credible story, and no political figure in the governing party with the standing to change the market's judgment. The bill has arrived. Nobody in Labour can pay it.
"In 1976, James Callaghan's government went cap in hand to the IMF, accepting humiliating spending cuts as the price of market confidence it had forfeited."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz just called the EU a "complete failure" in front of global elites by stating, "Germany & Europe have wasted incredible potential. We have become the world champion of over-regulation & zero growth."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz just called the EU a "complete failure" in front of global elites by stating, "Germany & Europe have wasted incredible potential. We have become the world champion of over-regulation & zero growth."
I’ve long warned that Labour’s attacks on wealth creators and entrepreneurs would cost Britain.
Now the Sunday Times Rich List gives us the results: it’s a bloodbath. 1 in 3 left the UK.
Here's why top taxpayers and philanthropists are fleeing like it's the 1970s again. 🧵👇
SHE FILED 181 REPORTS. THEY CALLED HER NOT CREDIBLE. THE CHILDREN WERE 11 YEARS OLD.
Sara Rowbotham spent years working as a sexual health coordinator for the @NHS in Rochdale. Between 2005 and 2011 she filed 181 detailed referrals to Greater Manchester Police (@gmpolice) and social services.
Each one documented the systematic rape and trafficking of girls as young as 11. Each one was ignored.
Authorities did not dispute the abuse was happening. They disputed her. She was labelled not credible. Her team was dismissed. In 2014 she was made redundant.
The reason officials gave for ignoring her? Community cohesion. That was the calculation. Institutional comfort weighed against the rape of children, and the children lost.
A 2024 independent review commissioned by Greater Manchester's mayor confirmed her referrals were credible, substantive and appropriately communicated.
The review found 96 men still considered a risk to children, and described the convictions that did happen as having scraped only the surface. Five police officers refused to cooperate with the review. They retired without sanction.
Sara Rowbotham was awarded an MBE.
The officers who ignored her received words of advice.
That is the full story. That is the entire joke.
@BBC@guardian @morningstaronline @GMP@AndyBurnhamGM@ITV