Crypto News: Trump, oil and Diane Abbott

Hi there, welcome to The Readout. Until the general election on July 4, The Readout will be co-written by Allegra Stratton and Ailbhe Rea alongside other colleagues from the newsroom, giving you extra perspective and analysis as the campaigns unfurl. Hope you enjoy it.

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A welcome breather for both big parties as the conviction of Trump knocked the election off the front pages. As Ailbhe has written, Labour has been in an ill-timed and ill-advised circular firing squad over who they are allowing to stand for election, and should hope the 34 convictions of the former president will also act as a kind of circuit breaker. They must surely rather be talking about how UK living standards have "lagged" other major economies than whether the country's first black female MP is allowed to represent their party.

But the US election has already had an effect on the British one. Nigel Farage deciding to campaign only minimally in the UK election so that he can help out on the US one will have an effect on how many one-time Tory voters desert the party for Reform.

The events in New York will also affect any possible future Labour government. Today, Keir Starmer said that while Trump's conviction was an "unprecedented situation," if he and Trump are elected, Starmer would "work with whoever the [American electorate] choose."

Those two statements are fighting each other quite a bit. How will a future prime minister Starmer handle questions at any joint press conference he might hold in the future alongside President Trump II? The former Director of the Crown Prosecution Service, shoulder-to-shoulder with the first US president to be convicted of a crime? The moment in his first term when Donald Trump grasped Theresa May's hand outside the White House will seem like very simple times indeed.

Meanwhile, my colleagues at Bloomberg Intelligence have been examining how the markets are factoring in events on July 4, and there is good and bad news for Labour: strategists and fund managers expect that a new government would bring stability and lift a political overhang which has weighed on markets for years. Companies on the FTSE 100 are expected to buy back £37 billion in shares this year, according to the BI data, but the same BI strategists warned that returns could be lower if Labour decides to raise some taxes.

P.S. If you want more election discussion and you're free on Wednesday evening, then come down to the Science Museum for Voternomics: UK Election '24 Special. Join me and Stephanie Flanders for a live recording of our new weekly podcast that looks at the way geopolitics — and elections — are upending the longstanding assumptions of policymakers and business people around the world. Hope to see you there.

Today, after yet another morning of party discontent about the Diane Abbott row and the ways it has been drowning out the party's campaign for the past few days, Keir Starmer put an end to it: Abbott is free to stand for Labour in the general election, he said this afternoon.

Now he'll be hoping that his campaigning efforts will start to cut through again. Today he was in Scotland with Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, launching the party's offer to voters north of the border.

Starmer and Sarwar focused their message on Great British Energy, the publicly-owned company Labour would establish to co-invest alongside private funders in wind and solar projects, as well as hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

GB Energy is a double-edged sword for Labour in Scotland, particularly in the north east around Aberdeen. Having been out with Conservative and SNP candidates in that area during the last election, I can attest to how many voters owe their jobs to the oil and gas industry and are likely to worry that Labour's pivot to renewables will cost jobs in their industry in the short term, as the Tories and SNP say will happen.

Today, Starmer's message was one of reassurance: "We're not turning off the taps. Oil and gas will be part of the mix for many years, we're not revoking any licenses. But a transition is coming," he said in a speech in Glasgow. "The worst thing we could do now is do what Rishi Sunak is doing and put our head in the sand and pretend it's not happening."

Anas Sarwar added to that what he called "a direct message to oil and gas giants": "There will be no cliff edge. Oil and gas will play a significant role for decades to come… if we are to get the scale of the investment that's required we need the oil and gas giants to be part of that investment." That's the key point about Labour's GB Energy plan, and indeed the party's growth ambitions more widely. In the absence of big spending from the government, success or failure will depend on how much money Labour can leverage from the private sector. And Labour knows that.

The stories you need to know about this evening

Wall Street scans for potential volatility after Trump verdict.
Thames Water tells Surrey villagers not to drink water after fuel leak.
Banks warned of "huge" fallout of UK's new greenwash law.
CEO who said no to $49 billion must now dismantle Anglo American.
Soho House rejects acquisition offer, says it undervalues company.

The number of felony counts that former President Donald Trump was found guilty of in New York last night.

One key story, every weekday

Stephen Schwarzman and Donald Trump and Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Before 12 New Yorkers branded Donald Trump a felon, a very different kind of jury — one assembled at the sumptuous Pierre hotel on Fifth Avenue — had reached a verdict of its own.

Even if the courtroom jury found him guilty as charged, the wealthy Wall Streeters at the Pierre concluded, he'd still be their choice for the White House.

That meeting, 16 days prior to Thursday's historic verdict, laid bare the cool calculus now at play in American finance.

From longtime supporters to reluctant fellow travelers, a growing number of prominent figures in US business and finance are embracing the possibility of a Trump restoration — criminal conviction be damned.

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Allegra Stratton worked for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor and runs an environmental consultancy, Zeroism.

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