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Andy Burnham’s speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester was the first time we saw the man likely to be Britain’s next prime minister set out his vision for power. He promised “good growth in every postcode” in a speech that focused on a significant transfer of power out of Whitehall to local communities and a new economic vision. But what might this mean in practice? Devolution double quotation mark It will be about offering new opportunities to extend devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by taking power deeper down. What else would be at the heart of Burnham’s plans other than devolution? Burnham leant on his experience as one of the most powerful regional mayors to say devolved power was nowhere near adequate. Britain is the most centralised G7 country for tax and spending policy, and is among the most economically unequal in the developed world. Key to changing this will be a new hub for No 10 in the north – based in Manchester, but with the remit to redistribute power across the regions. Rather than local areas applying to Whitehall to extend powers, sweeping new powers, including on tax, skills and industry, would be devolved by default. There was a nod to an idea, too, that Burnham has mooted in his book Head North: a German-style Basic Law – essentially a statutory right to equal living standards. Reform of Westminster and Whitehall double quotation mark They require radical change if the country is to get back on track. Burnham, who has spent less than three days in Westminster since he was re-elected, said he was very concerned by the atmosphere he experienced as he met groups of MPs – “a more fragmented, disjointed place than the one I left, and, frankly, unhappier,” he said. His intention appears to be the opposite approach to Keir Starmer, whose strategists banned MPs from tabling amendments or voicing any public dissent. That handling of the parliamentary party is widely seen as one of the No 10 operation’s gravest errors, because of how much resentment it created. Burnham said he would do things differently. Backbenchers should be empowered to act to change things in their local areas, he said, promising he would not be “using the whip system to create fear or close down debate”, though he stopped short of promising to abolish it. That greater sense of unity in parliament would be a useful directive to Whitehall, he said, suggesting that he wanted to end the adversarial system in the civil service, especially departments versus the Treasury. Burnham and his ally Louise Haigh have expressed interest in the past about the prospect of splitting up the Treasury. Burnham’s critique of Whitehall as a drag on growth has a long history in British politics, from Harold Wilson’s attempt to weaken and split the Treasury in 1964 to Dominic Cummings’s war on “the blob”, Liz Truss’s demonisation of the “deep state” and Keir Starmer’s criticism that too many civil servants were comfortable in the “tepid bath of managed decline”. End of trickle-down economics double quotation mark All parts of the UK should now be given the chance to develop … focusing on the things that most matter to them. Burnham said his vision for growth was founded on a “rejection of the old trickle-down model” of the economy, pursued since the 1980s in the hope that minimal state intervention would allow for the spread of prosperity created by businesses and individuals. This analysis is far from radical: for several years the tide has been turning on this approach across western economies, given the sluggish growth that followed the 2008 financial crisis. His comments differ little in tone to Rachel Reeves, who argued in her first party conference speech as chancellor that the era of “trickle-down, trickle-out economics is over”. Where Burnham may diverge from the chancellor is in the breadth and execution of this vision, with promises to expand the role of the state in the running of essential services, housing, and in industrial strategy. Utilities double quotation mark We will ensure all parts of the UK are able to take greater public control of essential services like water, housing, energy and transport … Greater public control over key utilities including water, energy and transport have been consistent Burnham campaign pledges, so it was no surprise these featured prominently in his speech. Burnham said he would be informed by the transformation of the Greater Manchester bus network during his time as mayor, which included bringing the system back under public control from private operators. The future of Thames Water is seen as an early test case, with ministers set to decide if the company should collapse into a special administration regime (SAR), or to allow its bondholders to take it over. Social housing double quotation mark Britain has lost almost 1.5m council homes since the 1980s and around the same number of people are now on housing waiting lists and have been there for a very long time. Burnham promised to oversee the “biggest council house building programme since the postwar period” as he linked the loss of almost 1.5m council homes since the 1980s to a rise in the number of families on social housing waiting lists to similar levels. Guiding his approach is the idea that affordable housing is important for both individuals and the economy at large, by enabling people to contribute to their full potential. He also said high costs were having a “ruinous impact” on the government finances amid record levels of taxpayer support allocated to housing, much of which flows to private landlords. Under Starmer, Labour had already pledged £39bn to social and affordable homes and a target to build 1.5m new homes in total, but the government could struggle to hit this. skip past newsletter promotion Free newsletter | Every weekday Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Preview latest Enter your email Sign up after newsletter promotion High streets double quotation mark Shouldn’t we make our high streets the symbols of Britain’s renaissance? Britain’s run-down high streets have become a key political battleground, with Reform UK highlighting boarded-up shops as a symbol of the economic mismanagement of Labour and the Tories. Burnham said he would “reform business rates” to support pubs and other high street businesses that bring social benefits to communities. The detail will be critical, after Labour made similar promises before the 2024 general election, only to face a severe backlash from the hospitality industry and retailers over business rates and other tax changes. But there was no mention of the role of technology and online shopping in reshaping the economy. Nor was there any reference to one of the biggest forces affecting economies and jobs: artificial intelligence. Reindustrialisation double quotation mark We will support every region to set clear and credible industrial ambitions – and provide the support to achieve them. Burnham said he would “safeguard sovereign manufacturing and production capability across the country in critical sectors like steel, defence, energy, food and farming”. Across rich countries, there is a growing focus on domestic manufacturing amid mounting geopolitical tensions. Industrial decline is another issue seized on by Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, as a sign of Britain’s economic underperformance. Farage was the first party leader to call for the nationalisation of the steel industry. But this agenda has been held back in Reform by new economic influences, particularly those with a more free-market approach, such as the Tory defector Robert Jenrick, so it is a fruitful area for Burnham to seize back the agenda. Education and employment double quotation mark We need a complete rethink of how we support the next generation to succeed, and it has to start with the education system. The days of a school system configured entirely around the university route will be brought to an end. Politicians have called for many years for greater parity between technical and academic education, and Burnham said “that is what we will build” as the bedrock of a more balanced economy. Highlighting the recent report by Alan Milburn on the rise of young people not in education, employment or training to more than a million, he said a “complete rethink” was required. This would include mental health support being provided in work, and giving mayors more devolved powers over employment support. Cost of living double quotation mark We will set out 10-year plans to bring down the cost of … essentials to individuals, families and businesses. Burnham knows how constrained the fiscal circumstances are, but there will need to be a cost of living intervention that feels significant before the next election. It is unclear what form that will take, though Burnham has hinted in the past that he would look at tax cuts. There is also the distinct possibility that an energy intervention will be needed come the autumn, depending on the fallout from the Iran war, though the Treasury will strain to avoid this. But Labour strategists are acutely aware of the need to offer some good news on the cost of living in the run-up to the next election. Burnham suggests he wants it sooner. In the speech, he said he “will seek to give Britain some breathing space as soon as I can”. Fiscal rules double quotation mark All of it backed by the stability that comes from sound public finances, as I said before, and the discipline of our current fiscal rules. The biggest challenge for Burnham, as for successive prime ministers, will be how to pay for his plans. The role of his chancellor – still undecided – will be crucial here. Sending a clear signal to jittery bond investors, he pledged that his policy agenda would be “backed with sound public finances and the discipline of

Frontline's record profits came from the Strait's closure, not its reopening, making it the riskiest “peace trade” on this list as tanker rates start to soften. ExxonMobil and Halliburton both took direct financial hits from the war, but their core operations are positioned to recover once Gulf drilling and LNG output normalize. Brent crude has fallen more than 20% in a month as the Strait of Hormuz reopens, even as drone strikes and tit-for-tat attacks keep flaring near the waterway. Brent crude has fallen more than 20% in the past month, sliding from triple digits during the worst of the Iran war to around $72 a barrel today. WTI sits near $70. That kind of move usually means one thing: the crisis is over. It isn't, not quite. The Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil, spent nearly four months effectively shut after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28. Iran mined the strait, fired on tankers and closed the lane to anyone it considered hostile. The U.S. and Iran signed an interim memorandum of understanding on June 17 meant to reopen Hormuz to toll-free traffic and wind the war down over a 60-day window. It hasn't gone smoothly. Iran briefly reclosed the strait in April over what it called ceasefire violations. As recently as June 25 through 28, Iran and the U.S. traded a fresh round of strikes: drones hit a container ship, the U.S. retaliated, and Tehran hit a vessel carrying Qatari oil before both sides agreed to pause ahead of new talks in Doha. Shipping is still moving under a daily quota system run by Iran's Revolutionary Guard navy, hundreds of vessels remain stranded in the Gulf, and war-risk insurance premiums are still many times above pre-war levels. Set OilPrice.com as a preferred source in Google here Call it half-open. Saudi Arabia has started loading tankers again at Ras Tanura, and the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are all pushing more crude onto the water, with Gulf flows reportedly climbing back to roughly 75% of prewar levels. That's enough to crater oil prices and scramble the math for nearly every energy stock with Middle East exposure, even as the underlying conflict simmers. That combination, falling prices, a still-fragile peace, and a region racing to restore lost output, creates an odd set of winners. Some obvious oil and gas names are nursing real wounds from the war while betting on a clean recovery. Others made their money from the chaos itself and now have to prove they can hold onto it once the chaos fades. Here are five stocks caught in that transition. 1. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) Two of ExxonMobil's Qatari LNG trains, tied to its stake in the North Field, took damage during the fighting in the first quarter, the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a stock chart so much as in the footnotes of an earnings call. CEO Darren Woods says that lost capacity, about 3% of last year's upstream production, could take up to five years to fully repair. It's a big part of why Exxon's net income fell to $4.2 billion in the first quarter, the lowest in five years, with $706 million in hedge losses tied directly to the war and another $3.9 billion in derivative timing effects layered on top. None of that stopped Exxon from beating estimates on an adjusted basis: $1.16 a share against a Street consensus near $1.01, a beat of more than 15%. The reason is simple. Most of Exxon's growth engine never touched Hormuz to begin with. Permian output is tracking toward 1.8 million barrels of oil equivalent this year, and Guyana just posted a record above 900,000 gross barrels a day. Add a planned $20 billion in 2026 buybacks, a dividend bumped to $1.03 a share, and a Bank of America upgrade to buy on June 15, and you get a stock that's clawed back ground even with an open wound in Qatar. Shares sit around $137, still well off the $176.41 high hit in March before the war's costs were fully priced in. There's also a political wrinkle that has nothing to do with Hormuz: Trump has accused Exxon of gouging consumers at the pump and ordered a Justice Department inquiry. Call this one a slow-recovery trade rather than a peace trade. The company is healing on a timeline measured in years, not on a calendar tied to whatever happens next in Doha. 2. Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) Halliburton trades around $34. Citi's price target is $52. That gap is more or less the entire investment case. The first quarter showed why both numbers exist. Middle East and Asia revenue fell 13% year over year to $1.3 billion as the war hit drilling activity across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Iraq and Kuwait, costing the company an estimated 2 to 3 cents a share. Yet adjusted EPS of 55 cents still beat the 50-cent consensus and operating income jumped 56% to $679 million, with CEO Jeff Miller calling North America's recovery still in its “early innings.” What hasn't happened yet is the actual rebound in Gulf drilling activity. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iraq are still well below prewar levels, and Halliburton kept its crews and equipment in place through the war instead of pulling back, a decision one Melius Research analyst says positions the company to catch that demand once it returns. Shares have fallen 14% in the past month anyway. Either the market doesn't believe the rebound is coming soon, or the stock simply got ahead of itself on the way up and is now sorting that out. 3. Frontline plc (NYSE: FRO) Frontline's stock hit a new 12-month high intraday on June 24 and closed down 5% the same day. Two days later, it fell another 6%. That kind of whiplash says a lot about what kind of stock this actually is. The world's largest VLCC operator made an enormous amount of money from the Strait of Hormuz being closed, not from it reopening. Longer voyages, rerouted cargoes and general chaos in crude trading patterns pushed spot VLCC rates above $100,000 a day and drove Frontline's adjusted profit to $344.9 million in the first quarter, the company's best showing since 2004. Frontline pays out its adjusted earnings per share as a dividend almost dollar for dollar, so the payout jumped too, roughly 50%, to $1.55 a share. Now the thing that made the stock is unwinding. BTIG raised its price target to $55 from $45 on June 24, arguing the reopening sets up the largest seaborne oil restocking cycle the tanker market has ever seen as Gulf states finally move crude they've been sitting on for months. Evercore, Danske Bank and Pareto don't see it that way; all three have downgraded the stock to Hold in recent months, betting the windfall rates simply revert once the disruption that created them is gone. Frontline's own CEO, Lars Barstad, has said tanker markets tend to thrive on instability, which is a fair description of the last four months, and an open question about the next four. 4. Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO) Valero doesn't need this list. Shares hit an all-time high of $265.61 on June 3 and are still trading near $259, comfortably above where they sat before the war even started. First-quarter EPS of $4.22 crushed the $3.16 consensus. Refining margin per barrel jumped to $16.06 from $9.56 a year earlier on unusually wide crude differentials and surging distillate cracks; ultra-low-sulfur diesel margins over Brent more than doubled, to $27.60 a barrel from $16.69. Some of that has nothing to do with Iran: a March explosion knocked out Valero's 380,000-barrel-a-day Port Arthur refinery, which has only partially restarted, and U.S. refining capacity is tight enough on its own that crack spreads aren't about to collapse just because a war ends. Some of it is Hormuz-specific: jet fuel exports cratered during the closure and are recovering now as the strait reopens, a tailwind that plays directly to Valero's export business. Wall Street keeps raising targets through the noise, Mizuho to $289, Citi to $259, though Wolfe Research is the outlier with an Underperform call and a $203 target on the bet that these spreads can't hold. Either way works for Valero. It makes money if the peace holds, and it was making money before the peace process even started. 5. KBR, Inc. (NYSE: KBR) KBR has nothing to do with tankers, drilling rigs or refining margins. It's a bet on what gets rebuilt after the shooting stops. The Houston-based engineering and government-services contractor has quietly built a real footprint in Iraqi energy infrastructure over the past couple of years: integrated field management for Basra Oil's giant Majnoon field, detailed engineering on the AGUP2 gas project with TotalEnergies and QatarEnergy, an advisory contract with Iraq's Ministry of Planning, and, in recent weeks, a detailed-engineering win on a Qatari offshore project. The bull case leans on the $300 billion in regional reconstruction financing the U.S. committed to in the Islamabad memorandum, money aimed at the broader region rather than Iraq specifically, but exactly the kind of pipeline KBR's existing relationships put it in position for. None of that shows up in the numbers yet. First-quarter revenue slipped 5% to $1.9 billion on a planned runoff of European military work, though adjusted EPS of 96 cents beat estimates, and management says it hasn't seen Middle East clients pull back capital spending despite the war. The stock has been priced for trouble rather than opportunity, down roughly a third over the past year to around $32, against analyst targets mostly still sitting in the $40s to $50s after a string of recent price-target cuts. KBR is also mid-spin, planning to separate its Mission Technology Solutions arm by January 2027, which adds its own complexity to the story. This is the smallest, most speculative pick on the list: a name that wins only if reconstruction money actually shows up in contract awards, not just in a memorandum's fine print. By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com

During a recent conversation in the House of Lords, a former senior US government official told me that “democracy was broken”. When I asked why, they pointed to research that showed that governments – regardless of party – represent the interests of the wealthy and not the people who vote for them. Nowhere is this more visible than with the tech lobby, which has effectively thwarted all attempts to hold the sector to account, while at the same time embedding its services into the heart of the state and our personal lives. Powerful interests, aided by seemingly limitless cash fund thinktanks, pay for friendly research and deploy armies of lawyers, consultants, preferred academics, thinkers and government relations professionals who spin a tale in which technology is both too complicated to regulate easily and too important to refuse. What they want isn’t a world without regulation, but one in which big tech itself writes the rules. And while the lobby problem might have started in the US, where most tech firms are based, it has not stayed there. Looking at the past two years of UK tech policy, we can see the results of lobbying in action. In opposition, Labour was at the forefront of efforts to effectively protect children online. It made a commitment to protect creative copyright and workers whose jobs might be disrupted or displaced by technology. And it wanted to prevent the data held in trust on behalf of the public – including by the NHS – from being treated as a private asset to give away to Silicon Valley. Every one of these positions was changed once in government. Some argue that this is simply “realpolitik”. Others point to the influence of big tech; as one insider recounted to me, the government was “swaddled” by lobbying, wrapped around it like a blanket from the very beginning. What the government has given up is our democratic right to set the terms under which we use technology, and with it any semblance of national control over infrastructure and critical services, large swathes of which have been handed over to big tech in deals completed with little oversight. Since the start of 2025, the government has signed multiple MOUs (memorandums of understanding) without scrutiny. It has pledged to discount energy costs for datacentres, largely benefiting American multinationals. It has opened tenders for military satellites to a US company for the first time. And, it has given access to highly sensitive, valuable data – including in health and defence – to US companies such as Palantir, a controversial company with a history of citizen surveillance that has been amassing government data at scale. The lobbyists frame the debate as one between regulation that will inhibit innovation, or no regulation to bring progress and wealth. But that obscures the real choice, which is between imposing our rules or living under terms of service set by Silicon Valley. If we refuse to do this, then big tech will reap the benefits, while we pay the costs. The impact of the tech sector on mental health services, the time stolen from education, the displacement of UK businesses, and the destruction of the creative industries all have economic and social costs. We are choosing between democratic accountability and private power. Soon we will have a new leader of the Labour party, and the country. For the incoming leadership, it is essential to reject the swaddling and soft promises of the tech lobby. To be a nation is to govern in one’s own interest. To deliver household prosperity (not theoretical growth), we will need control of tech. This means investing in UK-based tech companies, valuing our data as a sovereign asset and understanding that it is inefficient to replace a worker who pays tax and lives and spends in their community with an AI, the profit of which goes largely untaxed to its US owner. Unfortunately, these considerations have not been factored into the decisions made by the government over the past two years. The safety of our country and our kids, the livelihoods of our creators and the future breakthroughs based on our health data must be under our democratic control. I have spent the past year talking to businesses, people at the cutting edge of tech, and those who are being hurt and left behind. I believe that without solving this issue, no leader will be truly in control of the country. skip past newsletter promotion Free newsletter | Weekly Sign up to Matters of Opinion Guardian columnists and writers on what they’ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more Preview latest Enter your email Sign up after newsletter promotion Pope Leo recently set out in 245 paragraphs his vision for the future of tech. It made for inspiring reading. Our new leaders should start with just three commitments. First, an unequivocal commitment that any tech deployed in the UK will respect the privacy, rights and safety of children. Second, an unequivocal commitment to use the precious data of the BBC, NHS and that held by the UK’s innovators, creators and businesses to benefit the UK. And finally, an unequivocal commitment to invest in key parts of the UK infrastructure so that no US company is in a position to exert influence over Britain’s defence or security or our government’s decisions. These are the minimum terms of engagement for a new deal – a good deal – with big tech.

Inflation and energy prices are among the topics being presented to clients by James Humphries, founder and managing partner at Mindset Wealth Management. "The theme we are watching most closely is persistent inflation; a reality that forced Fed Chair Kevin Warsh into a hawkish pivot," he said. "While oil concerns have softened recently as the Strait of Hormuz tentatively reopens, it will take significant time for previous energy spikes to work their way out of headline inflation data." Interest rates are also top of mind for Justin Greenhill, co-founder and chief investment officer at Sollinda Capital. His firm is adjusting fixed-income allocations accordingly. "Long-duration bond yields are just below multi-year highs, and a break above could cause cross-asset volatility," he said. "On the flip side, this area of the yield curve is likely underowned if rates start trending lower, so we are currently short-duration in our fixed income exposure, but will act quickly based on this dynamic." They're watching the Federal Reserve closely to see how interest rates will shape the economy. Already, expectations of multiple rate cuts have transformed into a "hawkish hold" through the rest of 2026, said Sean Lovison, founder of the advisory firm Purpose Built. "We are looking at a perfect storm of geopolitical supply shocks and unyielding domestic fiscal policy," he said. "The second half of this year isn't about waiting for a soft landing, it's about navigating stubbornly elevated inflation that could be increasing." Against that backdrop, advisors are tempering their optimism for the rest of the year with realism. Financial advisors are becoming increasingly concerned about the risks looming in the second half of the year. While the benchmark S&P 500 Index gained a respectable 9% over the first six months, many advisors are focused on the details behind those big-picture numbers. The mid-year report by JPMorgan Private Bank warned that investors should prepare for "stickier inflation" that "could collide with an energy price shock." The stock market is also heavily concentrated in artificial intelligence, and that's causing fears over a bubble to well … bubble up. Meanwhile, geopolitical unrest over the war in Iran could cause massive global disruptions. At the midway point of 2026, resilience has become the theme for both the financial markets and the economy. The question is how long that can last. Concerned about an AI bubble? Sign up for The Daily Upside for smart and actionable market news, built for investors . Story Continues Huge F-AI-lure Meanwhile, Humphries believes the biggest risk clients aren't paying enough attention to is the lopsided performance of the tech sector and fledgling AI companies. "The credit risk AI companies are taking on will significantly outpace the actual productivity gains produced by adoption of the technology," he said. "Cheap capital will not be available to bail these companies out of poor execution." Over the first six months of 2026, the strongest performing stocks have been concentrated in the semiconductor and specialized technology sectors: Micron Technology, riding the demand for high-bandwidth memory chips for AI accelerators, has gained more than 250% this year. Planet Labs, a developer of technology for AI applications, is up 160%. Brian Boswell, wealth manager at Savvy Advisors, said the tech sector's lopsided performance has prompted him to focus more on capital preservation. "In January, client meetings were entirely dominated by the fear of missing out regarding AI because everyone wanted to know how to maximize their exposure to the tech rally," he said. "Since May, the mood has shifted toward capital preservation and locking in those outsized gains." Boswell attributes the "psychological pivot" to heightened market volatility and a skeptical eye on 2027 earnings estimates. "Clients are now asking how to play defense without sacrificing growth entirely," he added. The Wild Card Goes to … A couple of 2026 wild cards include the war in Iran, but also the upcoming midterm elections. "I don't think many people went into the year thinking there would be a war with Iran," said Bryan Byrer, founder of Millennial Financial Planning. He's not confident the war will be resolved quickly or easily, and he thinks the financial markets have become "numb to President Trump's declarations of success" that were anything but. "Oil prices could stay elevated and that will negatively affect the economy," Byrer said. "I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of retraction in the markets this year." When the Iran war started at the end of February, the stock market experienced a quick pullback, with the S&P 500 losing 8% over the next month. But the rebound was equally quick, and the S&P has gained nearly 17% from that late March low point. "The market dropped on the Iran news and recovered when earnings came back into focus," said Jeff Judge, managing partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners. "That whipsaw is the cost of admission for returns, and trying to dodge it is how people turn a paper loss into a permanent one," he added. "I'm reminding clients that a year with two or three scary headlines is a normal year, not a broken year." Midterm-inology. Chuck Failla, founder of Sovereign Financial Group, says the next scary headline could involve the upcoming midterm elections. "The midterms are normally bad for the incumbent, so you have to wonder what types of battles will be fought over the legitimacy of the elections," he said. "The new normal with elections is to challenge the results, and the markets hate uncertainty." Failla said his best move for clients is to allocate assets into short-, medium- and long-term buckets to help take the focus off the increased stock market volatility. "Multifamily housing is what I'm key on right now in this environment, because it's AI proof and an inflation hedge," he added. One thing most advisors agree on is that clients should brace for more market volatility over the coming months. "The second half of the year will likely bring plenty of headlines capable of moving markets," said Andrew Fincher, a financial advisor at VLP Financial Advisors. "Our outlook has become somewhat more optimistic than it was at the beginning of the year, largely because the economy has remained more resilient than many expected," he added. "That said, we're reminding clients that a stronger outlook doesn't eliminate volatility." Actively Optimistic. Humphries, of Mindset Wealth Management, said there is a stark contrast between the conversations he's having with clients now and the conversations he was having at the start of the year. "In January, client conversations were dominated by market euphoria and the expectation of aggressive rate cuts, but the dialogue is now driven by geopolitics and stubborn economic data," he said. "Between the US and Iran fighting a war and tentatively agreeing to a peace deal, and the looming November midterms creeping into our daily discussions, clients are realizing that passive optimism may have to take a back seat to active management." This post first appeared on The Daily Upside. To receive financial advisor news, market insights, and practice management essentials, subscribe to our free Advisor Upside newsletter.

For Liz Webster, who farms 647 hectares (1600 acres) in Wiltshire, south west England, the latest impact of Brexit has been particularly brutal. About £400 per animal has been wiped off the price she can get for her beef cattle, a hefty blow at a time when all the inputs – feed, energy, fertiliser – are going through the roof. The fall in price, on livestock that typically fetch £2,000 to £3,000 per animal, is the result of a flood of cheaper meat arriving from Australia, the result of one of the new trade deals the government has signed since the UK left the European Union. Prices for beef in the supermarkets have remained broadly the same, but farmers have seen their income plummet. “It’s just inevitable that if it continues, British food will disappear, unless it’s niche, appealing to a particular wealthy market, because in the mainstream supermarkets British food won’t be able to complete,” she says. For farmers, it seems Brexit is the gift that keeps on taking away. A study published last year found the quantity of farmed exports to the EU, the biggest market for farm produce, had fallen by nearly half (47%) and the value by 35%, while the variety of exports also reduced by a third. Separate analysis by the National Farmers’ Union published earlier this year found exports from the poultry sector fell by 38%, beef exports 24%, lamb 14% and dairy 16%. Brexit has also cost the UK consumer – a study in 2023 found it had already added £7bn to food prices for consumers. View image in fullscreen Liz Webster, who farms 647 hectares in Wiltshire, south west England. Photograph: Liz Webster Nor has Brexit been the only disaster to strike farmers in the last decade: Covid, energy shocks from the Ukraine and Iran wars, and extreme weather events have all compounded the damage. “There’s been so many global challenges, to try and decipher how much is down to leaving the EU and how much down to global turmoil is difficult,” says Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU. “But we always warned that [the issue with Brexit] wasn’t going to be the immediate impact, it was sort of a death by a thousand cuts, a slow burn, and that’s exactly what we’re now seeing.” Brexit wreaked three massive changes to British farming: the withdrawal of the UK from the EU’s common agricultural policy (Cap), the subsidy system that held sway since the mid-1970s; changes to trade policy, which let in floods of imports, many of which farmers say are produced to lower standards than UK equivalents; and the introduction of trade friction with the EU, previously the biggest food export market. Added to these have been changes to environmental and animal welfare regulations that affect farmers, difficulties with visas for the seasonal workers many farmers rely on at harvest, and a huge increase in paperwork – ironically, for a rupture its supporters said would cut red tape. “It’s been the ultimate in shooting ourselves in the foot,” says Webster, who set up a group, Save British Food, to campaign for re-entry to the EU. “It’s dire for farms, but it’s mostly dire for the British people because it means they’re being forced to eat food which is bad for their health and it leaves us exposed in terms of national [food] security.” View image in fullscreen Despite beef prices in supermarkets remaining broadly the same, farmers have seen their income decrease. Photograph: Shutterstock The government says that 65% of the food we eat is still grown here, and ministers say they are making the best of a bad job. “Brexit has been terrible for farming and even the Tories admit they made it worse by selling farmers down the river in bad trade deals,” Stephen Morgan, farming minister, says. “This Labour government is backing British farmers: cutting millions in red tape through a new EU agreement, securing a landmark £800m Gulf trade deal, and delivering a record £11.8bn farming budget.” The most tangible of the effects on farmers has been the reform of subsidies, the biggest shake-up in more than a generation. The Cap awarded payments to farmers based on how much land they farmed. Michael Gove, environment secretary at the time and one of the key architects of the Conservative party’s Brexit, hailed sweeping reforms that would lead to “public money for public goods”. His pledges were welcomed, initially, by farmers and green campaigners. The Cap has been called “welfare for the rich”, so notorious is it for rewarding the biggest farmers (though it is so opaque that it is hard to even tell who they are), with scant regard for the consequences of their overuse of pesticides, fertilisers and other trappings of intensified agriculture. Gove’s reforms would mean farmers – in England at least – had to start showing that their stewardship of the land was protecting nature, maintaining air and water quality, nurturing the soil and providing havens for wildlife. These are known collectively as ELMS – environmental land management schemes, under which farmers agree to take a series of actions, from sowing cover crops that nourish soil, to leaving wildflower borders. At least, that was the theory. In practice, delays and revisions, difficulties with measurement and direction, frequent changes of ministers and other disruptions got in the way. Now, farmers in England are facing the end of all the old form of land-based payments next year, but the switch to the replacement sustainable farming incentive (SFI), landscape recovery scheme, and other ELMS measures have been fraught and patchy. View image in fullscreen Wildflowers growing on arable farmland in Kent, a landscape recovery scheme adopted by many farmers to qualify for government subsidies. Photograph: FLPA/Alamy The farm budget is about £2.3bn a year for England alone, roughly the same as it was before Brexit, but it has not grown with inflation. In England, only about half of farmers receive payments now, with the rest either unable or unwilling to apply for the available schemes. Farm support systems in the devolved governments now differ widely – roughly another £1bn a year is spent among them. Introducing friction to trade with Europe has sent some small producers to the wall. “It’s been more significant for farming and food than for other sectors, particularly those wanting to trade livestock products from the UK into the EU market,” says Tom Lancaster, head of land, food and farming at thinktank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. “It’s become much harder, particularly for smaller producers who can’t really afford the sort of haulage costs of having to send a small load.” All sorts of businesses found themselves stranded: exports of seed potatoes were banned; shellfish sales were suspended; the market for bull semen dried up. The reset promised by the Labour government could ease some of these issues, but not all, says Lancaster. “There’s a live debate at the moment over who the winners and losers will be from the realignment with the EU,” he says. For some small businesses, the last five years of destruction will have been too much ever to bounce back from. The Conservatives also promised that Brexit would be green, with farmers playing a key role in this. But a report this week from the Wildlife Trusts found the reality has been anything but. Instead, the UK has diverged from the EU on key environmental regulations, and Labour’s pitting of “bats and newts” as the enemies of developments needed to solve the housing and economic crises has plunged nature into a worse plight. Matthew Browne, head of public affairs at the Wildlife Trusts, says: “We were promised a green Brexit, but what we got was a greyer UK. Brexit freedoms have been used to attack the laws that help nature and people flourish, risking a dangerous future and a standard of living below that of our EU neighbours.” View image in fullscreen ‘We are importing more organic food than ever, instead of growing it – that’s a bit mad,’ say the The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA Concerns over farmers doing the minimum for their public subsidy – taking the easiest methods such as scattering wildflower seeds in margins, rather than the more difficult but more valuable actions such as restoring ponds or peatland areas – contributed to the government’s decision to abruptly close the SFI last year. But Vicki Hird, strategic lead on agriculture at The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, worries there has been little focus on organic farming. “We are importing more organic food than ever, instead of growing it – that’s a bit mad.” Meanwhile, in the EU, the Cap is still controversial, and key environmental protections have also been rolled back across the bloc. Furious farmer protests in 2024 involving tractor blockades and burning hay bales nearly sabotaged a landmark law to restore nature and contributed to a weakening of green strings attached to the Cap, which still makes up a third of the EU’s budget. As it is, Ariel Brunner, regional director of BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, a nature protection group that has lobbied for reform, concludes: “[The Cap] remains a policy that is terribly wasteful, harmful to the environment, and socially regressive.” Before Brexit, the UK had been one of the leading voices striving to make the system fairer, greener and more efficient.