Keir Starmer to face PMQs as inflation jumps and Trump confirms meeting
UK inflation rose to a near 18-month high in June as food prices surged for the third month running, according to official figures.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Consumer Prices Index inflation rose to 3.6% in June, up from 3.4% in May and the highest since January 2024.
The increase was unexpected, with most economists forecasting inflation to remain unchanged at 3.4%.
Wednesday's PMQs also comes weeks before Starmer is due to meet with Donald Trump in Scotland.
Trump said he would meet the Prime Minister in Aberdeen later this month during a private visit to Scotland, during which they will 'refine' the trade deal between the UK and the US.
The US President said they were going to do 'a lot of different things' and described Britain as a 'great place' which is a 'true ally' of the US.
Scottish secretary Ian Murray said holding talks with the president is the 'right thing to do'.
Scottish First Minister John Swinney will also meet the president, who recently voiced his support for the oil and gas sector over wind power projects.
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Ironically, for all her intractable reputation, one of the few to manage it is arguably Margaret Thatcher, who retooled her administration in 1981-2 after receiving perhaps the most wounding memo ever sent to a PM by their underlings. ('Your own management competence, like that of most of your colleagues, is almost non-existent … You break every rule of good man-management. You bully your weaker colleagues. You criticise colleagues in front of each other and in front of their officials…').As for 'let Keir be Keir', who will Keir actually be? We've been told, over the years, that the Starmer mission is all about service, or change, or radicalism, or necessary decisions. But it feels like a series of attempts to project a personality, and a narrative, on to a blank screen. Recently, on the train back from Kyiv, my colleague Josh Glancy asked Starmer about standing in the spotlight of history. The PM, he wrote, bristled impatiently: 'I don't do all this self-analysis bit. I thought you'd picked that up a year ago. You're still desperately trying to get in there. Come on.' Starmer's position is that his job is not to construct fancy theories. It is to sit down and do the work — to make decision after decision until there are no more problems left to solve. But all truly successful politicians tell a story about themselves. Whitehall, too, works best when everyone can buy into a single shared narrative, imposed from the centre. Starmer not only hasn't done that, but actively resists it. The result, to steal a put-down from Bismarck, is that he ends up seeming like a Sphinx without a riddle. And the government ends up with a majority but no mission. It may be that the PM can turn things around — that by the time he leaves office, maternity wards will be packed with little Keirs, Morgans and Angelas. But I can't help feeling that progressive Keir will soon be discarded alongside change Keir, growth Keir, and tough decisions Keir with kung-fu grip. Because if there's one lesson from history for our leaders, it's that the fault lies not in their advisers, but in themselves.
