Deals

Market Impact

The deal is significant as it marks the first time that a former phone monopoly in a major European country is divesting its landline grid.

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Sir Keir Starmer will warn that difficult times lie ahead for the UK as he tries to tackle an array of deep-seated challenges facing his government, but will insist that tough decisions taken now will lead to “national renewal”. 

He will say on Tuesday there are “no easy answers” and “no false hope” as he issues a stern message in his first speech as UK prime minister to the annual Labour party conference in Liverpool. 

Starmer will describe a country in which there are “decimated public services leaving communities held together by little more than goodwill”.

But he will argue that despite tight public finances his government can deliver a brighter future and “open the door to national renewal”, enabling the rebuilding of Britain.

Starmer has enjoyed only a brief honeymoon as the UK’s first Labour prime minister since 2010 and now faces falling poll ratings and infighting within his administration.

Last week saw damaging revelations about donations of clothing worth thousands of pounds made to Starmer, his wife, deputy leader Angela Rayner and chancellor Rachel Reeves during a cost of living crisis.

Starmer will try to reassure delegates in Liverpool — and the wider public — that the government is already taking steps to change the country.

He will cite planning reforms, settling the doctors’ strike, new solar projects, new offshore wind farms, an end to one-word Ofsted judgments, a ban on MPs’ second jobs, a new “border security command”, a ban on no-fault evictions and legislation to nationalise the railways. “And we’re only just getting started,” he will say.

The Labour leadership is drawing up a Budget and spending review next month, which are likely to include tax rises and continuing constraints on public spending given the country’s high levels of debt.

Starmer will say that ministers will have to rely on innovative reforms rather than turning on the spending taps.

“I have to warn you, working people do want more decisive government. They do want us to rebuild our public services and they do want that to lead to more control in their lives. But their pockets are not deep — not at all,” he will caution. “So we have to be a great reforming government.”

The Labour leadership has been walking a tightrope between warning that public finances are eye-wateringly tight while also offering a glimmer of hope for the future.

Ministers have claimed to have found a fiscal “black hole” of about £22bn that needs to be plugged — leading to predictions of tax rises and spending cuts. 

“The politics of national renewal are collective. They involve a shared struggle. A project that says, to everyone, this will be tough in the short term, but in the long term, it’s the right thing to do for our country. And we all benefit from that,” Starmer will say. 

Labour delegates will on Wednesday vote on a motion calling for the government to reverse its cuts to the winter fuel allowance, an issue that has prompted criticism from unions, charities and many of the party’s own MPs.

The prime minister will repeat his five priorities of higher economic growth, a better NHS, stronger borders, more opportunities for children and clean energy from low-carbon sources. 

He will also touch on how he dragged the Labour party towards the political centre ground from its previous, more left-wing incarnation under former leader Jeremy Corbyn.  

“I changed the Labour party to restore it to the service of working people. And that is exactly what we will do for Britain. But I will not do it with easy answers. I will not do it with false hope,” he will say. 

Business & Finance

Market Impact

The move, applicable in Canada and the United States, comes after BMO’s bad debt provisions in retail trade surged to C$81 million ($60 million) in the quarter ended July 31 compared with a recovery of C$9 million a year ago, in a sign of growing stress consumers face from a rapid rise in borrowing costs. 

Business & Finance

Market Impact

A wobbly Chinese economy, long hobbled by a protracted property crisis, has sent investors scurrying away from the volatile stock market while banks have also continued to cut deposit rates. That’s sent investors – from large banks and insurers to mutual funds to rural financial institutions – pouring into the bond market.

Technology

Market Impact

Demand for use of Arm’s technology in personal computers got a boost after Microsoft unveiled ambitious plans last month to launch a new breed of PCs with artificial intelligence features to compete with Alphabet and Apple. 

The calls and texts came seemingly at random, on landlines and mobile phones across southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut. They left their recipients, ground down by almost a year of conflict, with little doubt about what to expect.

“Hizbollah is forcing the Israeli army to act against its terrorist infrastructure in your villages,” a voice in slightly accented Arabic said to the thousands of people contacted on Monday. “Residents of this area must leave your homes now . . . because we do not wish to harm you.”

The warnings from Israel had echoes of those it gave to Palestinians in Gaza ahead of new offensives, and within hours Lebanon too felt the brunt of Israel’s heaviest bombardment of the country in decades.

Israel’s military struck hundreds of targets stretching across southern and eastern Lebanon, killing 356 people and injuring more than 1,200, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

No day had been as bloody in Lebanon since Israeli tanks rolled over its border in 2006, triggering a 34-day war with Hizbollah.

As the air strikes rolled through Monday, panic spread through swaths of Lebanon.

The country had been gripped by angst since Iran-backed Hizbollah launched rockets at Israel the day after Hamas’s deadly assault on southern Israel last October. For many, a land war felt all but inevitable.

“It’s massacre upon massacre upon massacre,” said Abboudi, an emergency responder in Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, who spent the day dodging air strikes and transporting victims to nearby hospitals. 

Monday’s violence hit a country still haunted by its civil war, which saw various sectarian militias brutalise one another and their respective communities from 1975 to 1990.

When it ended, Beirut was in ruins, as was its social fabric, the ravages of war visible in every neighbourhood.

The country has been shaken by bouts of violence and instability since, not least the devastating 2006 war with Israel, and the 2020 Beirut port blast, which killed more than 200 people, injured thousands more and levelled parts of the city.

Praised for their resilience, Lebanese citizens often wonder how much more they and their small country can take.

Lebanon’s health ministry on Monday said women, children and medics were among the dead. Footage on social media showed them bloodied and broken, being pulled from rubble.

Tens of thousands of people fled north in a chaotic exodus, packed tightly into cars that jammed the main highway all the way to Beirut, as plumes of smoke rose behind them.

WhatsApp groups sprang up with offers of housing for the displaced, while schools were converted into emergency shelters.

“We have no idea where to go and my children are hungry,” Abu Ali Ahmad desperately asked a police man in Beirut, after arriving in a pick-up truck with his wife and four children.

Others were frantically heading to supermarkets to stock up on canned goods and fuel, running errands they thought they wouldn’t be able to once the war “really” began.

University student Abir Hammoud said she had been “paralysed with fear” waiting for her mother to pick her up after classes were cancelled.

With traffic across the city at a standstill, she found comfort by donating blood. “I don’t know what else to do,” Hammoud said.

Monday was the culmination of a devastating week for both Lebanon and Hizbollah, its most powerful political and military force.

Mass detonations ripped through the militant group’s communications devices, killing 37 people, followed by an air strike that wiped out two senior commanders, more than a dozen elite officers and scores more civilians on Friday.

It was a stinging blow to Hizbollah that undermined its credibility in the eyes of its members and support base. Some in Beirut speculated that Monday’s warnings to residents were designed to further weaken their spirits.

With around 110,000 people already displaced along Lebanon’s southern border, it was not clear how many people would be affected by Israel’s warnings. But there were still several thousand people living within 5km of the border, according to government data.

Israel has accused Hizbollah of transforming entire communities in the south into military zones, hiding rocket launchers and other infrastructure in residential communities from which it draws support.

The Israeli warnings left open the possibility that some residents could be living in or near targeted structures, without knowing that they are at risk.

That uncertainty was the final straw for many fleeing north on Monday.

“I stayed as long as I could, I really did,” said Nelly Abboud, who packed her car with her three kids and left Nabatiyeh to stay with relatives in Beirut. “But I couldn’t take it any more — I don’t want to die, I don’t want my kids to die.”

As she drove north, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Lebanese people to “get out of harm’s way now”. “Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes,” he said.

“How can we believe anything they say?” asked Abboud. “My parents stayed behind . . . because they know Israel wants to make them leave and seize their land. We know this has been the Israeli strategy since day one.”

Data visualisation by Steven Bernard