US stock futures point to lower Wall Street open; British grocery inflation slows to 3%, says Worldpanel, while heatwave boosts sales of suncare and syrups for water amid #WaterTok trend
UK business leaders have called for bold decisions from a new government to kickstart the economy, after Keir Starmer resigned as prime minister on Monday, paving the way for Andy Burnham to become the next leader.
I spoke to Marc Vlessing, the Dutch-born chair of the property developer Pocket Living, who said:
We need people with a vision, that’s what this is all about. Starmer is not a visionary, he’s not a bold leader. [Chancellor] Rachel Reeves is a rule pusher, she’s not a bold leader.
Inward investment in the UK is lower today than it has been at any point in the last 20 years from abroad, so we need to fix that.
It’s frustrating to have yet more disruption. We will spend, it seems, the next three months in the run up to a critical 2026 budget, seemingly in the dark about who will actually deliver it. Who will advise them? Who should businesses reach out to in the meantime that might still have a job in September?
The big change that the country needs to see is the unshackling of the power of the Treasury, whether that is through greater subsidiarity at the devolved regional government level, or… [in] housing, where Homes England is still essentially stymied from using the powers that it has, both in terms of regulation and finance, to put out significant chunks of money into the markets to create public-private partnerships.”
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