Some goodbyes

Hello, you glorious beasts.

After three years of negotiations, a UK-India trade deal has finally arrived, proving that good things come to those who wait... and wait... and wait…

The deal aims to boost trade by £25.5 billion a year (which would be handy) and represents our biggest bilateral trade deal since Brexit.

Speaking of long-awaited arrivals, our new Bunce rewards are finally here. Scroll to the bottom to see what’s new.

To business…

THE MARKETS

*courtesy of Google Finance as of market close

BUSINESS
Fare Thee Well, Deliveroo

Deliveroo has just agreed to a £2.9 billion buyout from US food delivery giant DoorDash. And it’s not even clear whether they’ll keep the name.

What deal is on the cards?

DoorDash made the offer last week because those cowboys want to expand in Europe, where Deliveroo has a hefty presence. 

Fair is fair: it is a pretty good deal.

• Co-founder and CEO Will Shu could make more than £170 million 

• Current and ex Deliveroo staff will get £65.7 million due to their 36.5 million shares

Not bad, all things considered. 

But who in God’s name is DoorDash? 

DoorDash is a food delivery app just like Deliveroo. And just like Deliveroo, it was founded in 2013. And just like Deliveroo’s co-founders, DoorDash’s co-founders personally worked as delivery drivers in the early years. 

But since then, DoorDash’s value has shot up while Deliveroo’s has plummeted to half its value 4 years ago, when it was first listed on the London Stock Exchange. Now DoorDash is worth 35 times more than its repressed British cousin.

How did it come to this? 

For a few reasons. 

• US businesses are worth more money, giving UK investors more bang for their buck—a 116% return on dividends versus a big yawn of 45% from their British counterparts. 

• UK financial regulations make domestic investment too risky. British financiers would rather buy government bonds than go all-out. Which is why in just 30 years, the share of the UK market owned by UK banks has shrivelled from 50% to a measly 5%. 

In short, DoorDash could only do this because it had access to big fat American capital. 

What does this all mean? 

It’s an open secret that UK stocks are really undervalued. Even the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, thinks so.

BlackRock has been buying up UK stocks on the cheap, a sign of confidence. 

If the CEO of the “world’s shadow bank” thinks the UK is undervalued, then perhaps things will change. Larry finks so: “I have more confidence in the UK economy today than I did a year ago.”

What happens now?

No one knows if they’ll keep the name “Deliveroo” in the UK. Which is a shame. Deliveroo has such a quintessentially camp English ring to it. Unlike DoorDash, which just sounds like yanky slang for burglary. 

Fare thee well, Deliveroooooooh.

IMMIGRATION
Government thinks some people aren’t really asylum seekers

The Home Office plans to make it harder for people from certain countries to get visas because they think they’ll game the system. 

What’s the problem?

People from countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nigeria come to the UK on work and study visas. But after their visa expires, they claim asylum, meaning they can get: 

• Hotels 

• Money

• Even smartphones. 

Last year alone, 40,000 people did this. 25% of them were then housed in all-expenses-paid-for hotels—not just at the expense of the taxpayer, but at the expense of actual migrants fleeing genuinely war-torn countries. 

Sri Lanka and Pakistan aren’t war-torn countries, so the Government, which isn’t exactly drowning in cash, wants to put a stop to it. 

What will the Government do? 

They’re getting down and dirty, basically. 

For one, they’re building up a list of high-risk nations most susceptible to this kind of thing, including Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. 

Officials will:

• Scrutinise dodgy bank statements that show a suspiciously low amount of funds (particularly for students, who must have sufficient financial means just to get a visa in the first place)

• Flag students who don’t turn up to class

• Ban people with links to people smugglers.

Why are Labour really doing this?

They’re clutching at straws. And no wonder. The Government got trounced in last week’s local council elections by Reform, which has vowed to freeze all non-essential immigration. Which is why Tory Boy shadow home secretary Chris Philip goaded the PM, calling the move “desperate”. 

If the Government thinks this is a vote-winner, it’s likely that they’ll see it through. 

POLITICS
Reform bans all flags but British

After bludgeoning all major parties in last week’s local council elections, Reform has caused a political firestorm: they’ve moved to ban all flags but British flags from council buildings. 

What’s the controversy?

Chairman Zia Yusef said on social media that the only permitted flags in Reform’s local councils will be the Union Jack and St. George’s flag. “No other flags will be permitted.”

He later made a quick back-pedal (after some criticism) to include county flags. 

How have people responded?

People are furious, particularly because many local councils fly Ukrainian flags as a show of solidarity to the country suffering from three years of invasion. 

Labour MP and former soldier Mike Tapp replied on X: “Shameful. And as VE Day approaches.” He went on to note the UK’s “proud” history of working with allies to defeat tyrants and then accused Reform of being “Putin’s puppets”. 

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice replied to Mr Tapp on social media with water drop emojis, writing “drip, drip, drip… Oh, it’s the Tapp again.” 

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 🚗 🙅 BMW just sacked 180 agency workers at its mini-plant in Oxford, a pretty damning indictment of just how broken British manufacturing is. Production has more than halved since its 2018 peak. Experts say this is only the beginning. There’ll be job losses across all UK auto makers due to Trump’s tariffs and unexpectedly slow demand for EVs. 

• 📫️ 🇨🇿 Shareholders agree to Czech billionaire buying Royal Mail for £3.6 billion. For the first time in its 500-year-odd history, the Royal Mail will be in private hands. Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group will take over. Included in the deal is that the Universal Service Obligation—the principle that customers pay one price to send anything anywhere—will continue. 

• 🇵🇱 💸 Polish immigrants earn more than native Brits. Which is incredible, considering they earnt 15% less just a decade ago. An economist at the University of London suggested that, since Brexit, fewer low-income Poles are coming to the UK due to immigration restrictions while those who remained climbed the career ladder. 

• 🔵 ⚔️ Tory MPs want to overthrow Badenoch after the Conservatives got hammered in last week’s council elections. There are reports that disgruntled backbenchers are going to meet this week to discuss how. Former leader Sir Ian Duncan Smith called them “deluded”, pointing out that after four leadership elections in 5 years, a new leader is the last thing the Tories need right now. 

• 🇷🇺 🕵️ Three Russian spies attended a Brexit event in 2016, according to a BBC investigation. The three Bulgarian nationals, all convicted of spying for Putin and going after his long list of enemies, managed to attend the event held in the Palace of Westminster despite reportedly “robust” security measures. Baroness Brown, who sponsored the meeting, said she had "absolutely no memory" of it. 

• 💉 ⌛️ NHS just rolled out an anti-cancer “super jab” in a trial of thousands of patients. The jab fights 15 types of cancer and can be administered in 5 minutes, as opposed to the usual 1 hour IV drip. Apparently, this will save a whole year’s worth of treatment time every year for patients, and free up doctors’ time and hospital space.