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Brent crude rises after Trump says he wants to ‘take the oil’ in Iran; Starmer to gather business leaders to discuss emergency measures – business live | Business
Key events
Brent crude on track for record monthly rise of nearly 60%
Brent crude is on course for a record monthly rise of nearly 60%, exceeding gains it made during the 1990 Gulf War.
The global oil benchmark is currently trading 3.5% higher at $116.051 a barrel – up 59% so far in March – while New York light crude rose 2% to $101.6 a barrel.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched their first attacks on Israel over the weekend as the US–Israeli war with Iran widened. More US troops have arrived in the Middle East while the Israeli military said today that is it attacking government infrastructure “throughout Tehran”.
Vandana Hari, founder of oil market analysts Vanda Insights, said:
The market has all but discounted the prospect of a negotiated end to the war, Trump’s claims of ongoing ‘direct and indirect’ talks with Iran notwithstanding, and is bracing for a sharp escalation in military hostilities, which is a bullish signal for crude, with huge uncertainties on the timing and nature of the outcome.
Natural gas prices have also gone up again, amid concerns that supplies will be further disrupted. Dutch month-ahead futures rose 1.6% to just over €55 a megawatt-hour.
Debenhams lifts 2027 profit forecast as turnaround pays off
British fashion retailer Debenhams has raised its 2027 profit forecast after beating forecasts for last year, as its turnaround strategy is paying off.
The shares rose more than 6% on the news. The well-known brand made a comeback last March after the online retailer Boohoo rebranded as Debenhams. It embarked on measures to cut costs and debt amid fierce competition from low-cost fast fashion rivals such as Shein and the resale app Vinted.
Debenhams, which owns brands including PrettyLittleThing, Oasis, Warehouse and Karen Millen, forecast annual adjusted core profit of £53m for the year to 28 February, ahead of its previous guidance, driven by a 76% jump in second-half profit. It expects 2027 profits to grow in double digits.
Dan Finley, the chief executive, said:
Our multi-year turnaround strategy continues at pace. Our pivot to the stock-lite, capital-lite, highly profitable marketplace is working.
The cost base has been reset, the warehouse consolidation completed, the tech re-platform delivered, the stock base rightsized, most of the onerous costs exited and the brand management teams strengthened. This is significant progress, ahead of our plan, but there is still more to be delivered and we now focus on growth.
The company said all its brands are trading profitably, on an adjusted core profit basis. It raised £40m from shareholders in February, more than its initial target of £35m, backed by the Boohoo founder, Mahmud Kamani. It came less than 18 months after the group raised £39m from shareholders as it battled to revive sales.
The retailer has been locked in a drawn-out tussle with its top investor Frassers Group, majority-owned by retail tycoon Mike Ashley, which unsuccessfully tried to block the rebranding and out Kamani from the board.
Wayne Brown, analyst at Panmure Liberum, said:
This is the third upgrade this year and FY26 EBITDA has now been upgraded 51% since the same time last year.
Net debt is not overly stretching and is predicted to fall organically before we even see the sale of non-core assets.
The transformation work done has been huge and the noise (and costs) associated with these is now all but over.
Some may say it is too early to call, but all the signals and green shoots of the new business model are now visible and when investors start to recognise this, the shares will rally very hard.
Global government bonds set for biggest monthly losses in over a year
Government bonds around the world are set for the biggest monthly losses in more than a year, as investors worry about the impact of a prolonged war in the Middle East on inflation and economic growth.
Declines in bond prices have pushed their yields (or interest rates) higher, although they eased on Monday.
The two-year US Treasury yield is set for a monthly rise of around 50 basis points, the biggest increase since October 2024. Australia’s three-year yield is also 50bps ahead in March, the most in 17 months. Japan’s two-year government bond yield has risen 12.5bps this month.
Moh Siong Sim, a strategist at the Singapore bank OCBC, told Reuters:
Now that the reality is sort of sinking in that perhaps the oil price might stay high for a bit longer, given that it’s hard to see an end to the war anytime soon, the growth impact is starting to become more of a focus.
The buzzword here is stagflation. Initial focus was on inflation. Now the ‘stag’ bit is moving into the picture, and that’s perhaps explained why short-ended bond yields have come off.
Oil prices have surged above $100 a barrel since the US and Israel began attacking Iran on 28 February. This has raised fears of higher inflation, and led to a dramatic shift in interest rate expectations. The Bank of England is now expected to raise interest rates, rather than cutting them, at least twice this year, as is the European Central Bank.
The US Federal Reserve, which has been under pressure from Donald Trump to cut rates, is forecast to leave them on hold.
Introduction: Brent Crude rises after Trump says he wants to ‘take the oil’ in Iran; Starmer to gather business leaders to discuss emergency measures
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Asian stock markets have fallen while oil prices have climbed further, after Donald Trump said he wants to “take the oil” in Iran.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, has risen a further 2.2% to $115.01 a barrel, up $2.4.
Asian stock markets have declined, with the exception of the Shanghai and Singapore exchanges, which have edged slightly higher. Japan’s Nikkei tumbled 3% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.1%.
Donald Trump has said his “preference would be to take the oil” in Iran and that US forces could seize the regime’s export hub on Kharg Island, the Financial Times is reporting, as the US sends thousands of troops to the Middle East.
The US president compares the potential move to Venezuela, where the US intends to control the oil industry “indefinitely” following its ousting of president Nicolás Maduro in January.
Trump said in the interview with the FT on Sunday:
To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.
You can follow the latest news on the Middle East here:
Keir Starmer will convene executives from the energy industry, shipping, banking and insurance at No 10 Downing Street today to discuss emergency measures to contain the continuing crisis from Iran’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz.
The roundtable includes leaders from Shell, BP, British Gas parent Centrica and Norway’s Equinor, as well as the insurance giant Lloyd’s of London (the centre of global shipping insurance), banking groups HSBC and Goldman Sachs, and container shipping companies, Denmark’s Maersk and France’s CMA CGM.
No 10 said it is intended to be a constructive meeting about the perilous state of the strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route through which about a fifth of global oil and gas supplies pass, our deputy political editor Jessica Elgot reported. It is likely to inform short and long-term contingency planning amid threats from Iran that it intends to assert sovereignty over the strait, including potentially charging vessels for access once the chokepoint is eventually reopened.
Separately, Rachel Reeves, the UK chancellor, will warn G7 nations they must move faster on clean energy to insulate economies against global price shocks from oil and gas as she and the energy secretary Ed Miliband meet G7 finance and energy ministers today.
The Agenda
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9.30am BST: Bank of England mortgage lending and consumer credit
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10am BST: Eurozone economic sentiment and consumer confidence
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1pm BST: Germany inflation for March (preliminary estimate)
On 24 March he ended his programme saying “back tomorrow” and the following morning Gary Davies was standing in for him.
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UK News
Starmer says UK won’t get ‘dragged into Iran war’ as Labour launches its local elections campaign – UK politics live | Politics
Starmer insists UK won’t get ‘dragged into’ Iran war, highlighting his willingness to resist Trump’s calls for more help
Keir Starmer is speaking now.
He thanks Sarah, and say he has the cabinet with him in the room. There is a lot of energy there, he claims.
Moving into the substance of his speech, he starts by referring to the Ukraine war, praising the courage of the Ukrainians, before move on to the Iran war.
He goes on:
People look at their screens and they’re worried when they see explosions, infrastructure blown up, the rhetoric that goes with it, worried about whether this is going to escalate even further.
And therefore it’s really important that I reiterate where I stand and where this government stands, because this is not our war and we are not going to be dragged into it.
He says this applies “whatever the pressure [to join in] and whoever it’s coming from”.
(Starmer is referring to Donald Trump at this point, highlighting is refusal to comply with Trump’s requests for more military support.)
Starmer says Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch both “wanted to go straight in, with both feet, into the war without thinking through the consequences”.
And he criticises Zack Polanski for wanting to leave Nato.
Key events
Starmer ended his speech talking about the NHS, where he named Wes Streeting, the health secretary, as the person leading efforts to improve it.
He said:
This is the thing, I think, that broke all of our hearts is that confidence in the NHS was a record high in 2010 and then it plummeted under the last government because of what they did to the NHS.
Gradually, through the hard work that we’ve put in, the investment we’ve put in, Wes’s leadership, that confidence is going back up because people can see that it matters to us.
We don’t see public services just as a chart of how much money you can save here or there. We see it as something you invest in because they’re vital for people.
This did not sound like the sort of thing that Streeting would say if, as some reports have claimed, he were thinking of sacking Streeting.
If this had been a major launch, with a lot of national media journalists present and Starmer taking questions, someone might have asked about today’s Guardian report saying the NHS is set to miss key targets to shorten waiting times for help at A&E, cancer care and planned hospital treatment.
But it was not that sort of event, and after Starmer’s speech the formal part of the event wrapped up.
Starmer complained about other parties whipping up division, and he specifically criticised Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, for “complaining about Muslims praying in public”.
Labour, by contrast, values bringing people together, he said.
And he highlighted Labour’s Pride in Place programme as an example of that.
He claimed this was an example of Labour trusting people, because under the scheme “you decide what the money is spent on, because you’re going to have a better idea than someone in Westminster or Whitehall, and that’s why it’s Pride in Wolverhampton. Let Wolverhampton decide.”
Starmer refers to Labour’s cost of living measures (see 9.42am), saying that energy bills will start going down this month because of a decision by the government.
Starmer insists UK won’t get ‘dragged into’ Iran war, highlighting his willingness to resist Trump’s calls for more help
Keir Starmer is speaking now.
He thanks Sarah, and say he has the cabinet with him in the room. There is a lot of energy there, he claims.
Moving into the substance of his speech, he starts by referring to the Ukraine war, praising the courage of the Ukrainians, before move on to the Iran war.
He goes on:
People look at their screens and they’re worried when they see explosions, infrastructure blown up, the rhetoric that goes with it, worried about whether this is going to escalate even further.
And therefore it’s really important that I reiterate where I stand and where this government stands, because this is not our war and we are not going to be dragged into it.
He says this applies “whatever the pressure [to join in] and whoever it’s coming from”.
(Starmer is referring to Donald Trump at this point, highlighting is refusal to comply with Trump’s requests for more military support.)
Starmer says Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch both “wanted to go straight in, with both feet, into the war without thinking through the consequences”.
And he criticises Zack Polanski for wanting to leave Nato.
Powell introduces “Sarah from Dudley”, who is talking about having two “amazing” adopted twins.
Sarah is talking about the impact of the 30-hour free childcare allowance introduced by Labour. It has saved the family £400 a week, she says. It meant she could return to work full-time, she says.
Powell goes on to make jokes (not particularly good ones) about Nigel Farage and Zack Polanki.
Farage has got a new job as Donald Trump’s intern, she says.
And she says Polanski is making “hypnotic promises” that are “just an illusion”.
Labour launches its English local elections campaign
The Labour local elections launch is starting.
Lucy Powell, the deputy leader, is opening the proceedings.
She starts by saying the party is “immensely proud” of the way Keir Starmer has dealt with the Iran war, and his decision “in the face of a lot of pressure and criticism not to follow blindly into an offensive war”.
In Australia the Labor government has announced that it is halving excise duty on fuel for three months. Only last week Reform UK called for VAT on road fuel to halved for three months. Explaining the policy, Reform UK said:
The tax cut would reduce pump prices by around 12p per litre for petrol and 14p per litre for diesel at current prices, at a static exchequer cost of about £1.5bn. The measure could be funded within current spending envelopes using the estimated £2.7bn windfall from higher oil prices that the chancellor has received.
Tories call for VAT on household energy bills to be removed for three years
At the Conservative party conference last year, the Tories announced plans to cut £165 a year from the average household energy bill by getting rid of the renewables obligation subsidy and the carbon tax.
Today Kemi Badenoch is visiting an oil rig in the North Sea to publicise what the Conservatives are calling their cheap energy plan. In addition to the measures announced last year, they are now proposing removing VAT from household energy bills for three years. They say this would save the average household £94 per year, at a cost of £2.2bn. They say they would fund this by cutting subsisides for renewables.
In a statement issued overnight, Badenoch said:
Labour promised to cut energy bills by £300 but they are still higher than when they took office. Instead, Ed Miliband is blocking drilling in the North Sea during an energy crisis and Rachel Reeves is hiking taxes on working families to pay the energy bills of those on benefits.
The Conservatives would use extra tax revenue from our plan to Get Britain Drilling in the North Sea to cut taxes and ease the cost of living. Our Cheap Power Plan would scrap VAT on energy bills and cut bills by £200 for every family.
Badenoch also says the Tories would “back the North Sea” by allowing new oil and gas drilling licences to be issued, and repealing the windfall tax on energy firms. They claim this would boost tax revenues, which could be used to cut costs for households.
Labour highlights 13 ‘key cost of living measures’ coming into force within next week as it launches local elections campaign
As Jessica Elgot reports in her overnight story on the Labour local elections launch this morning, Keir Starmer will also highlight what Labour is doing to help people with the cost of living.
In his news release issued ahead of the launch, Labour has highlighted more than a dozen measures coming into force within the next week that it says will help people with the cost of living. Here is the list.
Key cost of living measures coming into force on 1 April:
-Prescription charge freeze, keeping prescriptions under £10
-National Living Wage (age 21+) rises to £12.71 an hour – 4.1% increase
-National Minimum Wage (age 18-20) rises to £10.85, under 18 £8, apprentice £8
-Energy bill support – average £117 reduction on household energy bills, applied to all households on top of £150 Warm Homes Discount for millions of low income households.
-Benefits uprating – most inflation-linked benefits to rise by 3.8% (CPI Sept 2025)
-Child benefit increases
-Crisis & Resilience Fund launches (replacing Household Support Fund). New £1 billion per year fund begins April 2026.Offers: Cash‑first crisis payments; Housing payments (replacing Discretionary Housing Payments)
-Healthy Start vouchers increase by 50p a week
Key cost of living measures coming into force on 6 April:
-State pension uplift – increasing by 4.8% rising to £241.30 per week
-Two child limit removed – expected to lift 450,000 children out of poverty
-Statutory Sick Pay rights from day 1
-Day one entitlement to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave
-Universal credit standard allowances receive an additional 2.3% uplift
Starmer to say Iran war means Labour’s values needed more than ever at local elections campaign launch
Good morning. Keir Starmer will today chair a meeting in Downing Street on how the government responds to the economic consequences of the Iran war, which has the potential to upend much of what the government is trying to do to improve living standards. And so he is probably not too happy about the fact that this morning he has to attend an event in the West Midlands launching Labour’s English local elections campaign.
It is a relatively low-key launch. “The Westminster press pack wasn’t invited for a full Q&A,” Politico reports. Starmer will be back in London later for his Iran war meeting.
No one expects Labour to do well in the local elections and last week Stephen Fisher, an Oxford politics professor and an elections expert who works with John Curtice on the widely admired general election exit polls, published his projections for how many seats he expects parties to win and lose in the English local elections, based on current polling and other factors. It is terrible reading for Labour.
As Fisher points out in his blog on this, his equivalent forecast for Labour losses in 2025 turned out to be reasonably accurate.
According to the extracts from his speech briefed in advance, Starmer will not be forecasting success for Labour at the local elections, but he will argue that the war in Iran means that Labour is needed more than ever. He will say:
We’re going to fight to earn every vote. Fight for our values. And fight for the country we are building together, a Britain built for all.
Because, in the context of everything that is happening in the world. Those values – that fairness we stand for – it’s never been more important.
That is the thing about the volatile world we live in now. It tests, not just our security, our strength on the world stage. It is also tests our fairness at home. Our unity.
He will also attack Reform UK and the Conservatives in particular for their initial unqualified support for President Trump’s decision to go to war.
We will protect our forces, our people, our allies in the region. But I made the decision that it is not in our national interest to commit British forces to a war, without a clear legal basis and a clear plan – and I stand by that.
It’s a question of judgement. Do not forget that the Tories and Reform would have rushed us into this. With no thought of the consequences, including for the cost of living. Utterly reckless.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, launches Labour’s campaign for the Senedd elections.
Morning: Keir Starmer launches Labour’s campaign for the English local elections in the West Midlands.
10.30am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, launches Plaid’s campaign for the Senedd elections.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Afternoon: Starmer hosts a roundtable with business leaders to discuss the impact of the Iran war.
2.40pm: Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, addresses the National Education Union’s conference.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, take part in a virtual meeting with G7 counterparts to discuss the economic impact of the Iran war.
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“There will be real upset and trauma for many people who witnessed what happened on the night as well, of course, as those victims who were directly impacted, but we understand that there were no fatalities and that two people have already been discharged from hospital and more we hope, soon.”
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