Business

The chancellor’s adviser on entrepreneurs has warned that the machinery of government has already been “frozen for six weeks”, and cautioned that the change of prime minister amounts to a “colossal waste of energy” at the very moment British business needs decisions, not delay.

Alex Depledge, the serial entrepreneur appointed by Rachel Reeves as an adviser last June, said she feared Whitehall would remain stalled for many months while a new political leadership beds in.

“We are going to lose six months, at best, probably a year once you start to brief the new ministers coming in. It is just a colossal waste of energy. The British people deserve better,” she told an audience of business leaders at The Times Entrepreneurs Network Live event in London.

Depledge, co-founder and former chief executive of the architecture technology platform Resi, made her comments a day after Sir Keir Starmer resigned as prime minister, clearing the way for Andy Burnham to become the next leader. The future of Reeves as chancellor remains unclear.

The intervention is the latest warning from the business world about the cost of prolonged uncertainty in Westminster, a theme that has dominated boardroom conversation ever since founders and MPs began cautioning that Britain’s tax system is, in effect, telling entrepreneurs to leave.

Depledge said it was now very difficult to make meaningful progress inside government. “It is about carving out what we can get done within the parameters in which we are allowed to operate,” she said. “There is some stuff we can’t do any more, but there are other things you can.

“My biggest fear is that I have to spend another year trying to get new ministers and new people to understand the burning platform and the need to move at speed.”

Separately, Gareth Quarry, a Labour donor, investor and long-standing director of the legal recruitment consultancy SSQ, called for Wes Streeting to become the next chancellor.

Quarry, a former Conservative donor who gave £150,000 to Labour before the general election, said: “Wes would make an excellent chancellor because the City wouldn’t be spooked by him. I’m a businessman with a large number of businesses. I also hold significant assets in gilts.”

He said Streeting would “command the respect” of the City, adding: “And that is going to be fundamental as to what comes next. That’s assuming it’s not going to continue to be Rachel.”

Another Labour donor and business leader, speaking confidentially, said Ed Miliband was “too ideological” and “clearly just doesn’t understand what energy security means”. They added that Reeves, who although had “made mistakes, would not be a bad outcome” if she continued as chancellor.

The succession debate lands against a backdrop of mounting anxiety among wealth creators, with Reeves repeatedly warned against “anti-enterprise tax rises” and growing evidence that Britain is facing one of the largest exoduses of millionaires of any major economy.

Also speaking at the TEN Live event, Harry Stebbings, who has invested more than $550 million in promising young companies across a series of venture capital funds and is founder of the popular tech podcast 20VC, said that, if asked, he would advise Burnham not to raise taxes on investors and entrepreneurs.

“Don’t fing bring in a wealth tax. We’ll all fing go,” he said. “I have looked at Monaco and it is not as good as Dubai. Probably Milan or Athens. Touching a wealth tax would really kill the investor side and the founder side.”

His warning chimes with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which has cautioned that the more an annual wealth tax is concentrated on the very wealthy, the more it would incentivise them to leave, or simply never come to, the UK in the first place.

Stebbings, who has previously argued the UK should adopt a zero per cent capital gains rate for global talent, said the priority should be attracting and keeping the people who build companies.

“The most important thing is that we get amazing talent-building [companies] in the UK. Let’s give unbelievably easy access to high-talented people to come and build in our country. Income tax free for the first year, why not?

“If you are an amazing entrepreneur and want to build your company in this country we’ll give you no capital gains for the life of your business. We could be so creative, and this is the crime of politicians, that none of them has had a proper job. When it comes to creativity and figuring out a solution that works for the country, it is ‘let’s go back to a think tank’.”

For Britain’s founders, the message from the room was blunt: the country cannot afford to spend another year with its hands tied while Westminster works out who is in charge.

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Trust has become one of the strongest competitive advantages in digital business. Customers now make decisions based not only on price, choice or convenience, but also on how safe and transparent a platform feels.

This is especially true in online casino entertainment, where users expect secure account handling, clear payment information and dependable customer support.

For real money casino brands, trust is not a marketing extra. It is the foundation that influences acquisition, retention and long-term reputation.

Digital customers are more selective than ever

Across online markets, customers have become better at spotting poor experiences. A slow checkout page, unclear terms or hard-to-find support channel can quickly push people towards another brand. In sectors such as fintech, travel and subscription software, companies invest heavily in reducing uncertainty because confidence drives repeat use.

Casino brands face the same challenge, with added sensitivity around payments and account security. A player needs to feel that a platform is organised, responsive and clear before they are likely to engage for the long term.

A trustworthy digital experience usually depends on:

Simple registration and account navigation
Clear information about deposits and withdrawals
Transparent promotion terms
Secure handling of personal details
Easy access to responsible play tools
Support that is visible and responsive

When users compare options in the real money casino space, these details shape whether a brand feels credible or forgettable.

Transparency turns uncertainty into confidence

Transparency is one of the clearest ways casino brands can build trust. Customers want to understand how a platform works before they commit time or money. If important information is hidden behind vague wording, confidence can decline quickly.

This is not unique to iGaming. Online banks build trust by explaining security steps. Retailers build trust by making delivery and return policies easy to find. Software companies build trust through simple pricing pages and clear cancellation processes.

Casino brands can apply the same principles by making key information visible. This includes bonus conditions, payment timeframes, identity checks, account controls and game categories. The aim is to reduce friction before it becomes frustration.

Good transparency often means:

Plain language rather than dense legal wording
Visible terms placed near relevant offers or features
Consistent information across desktop and mobile pages
Helpful FAQs that answer common customer questions
Clear escalation routes when support is needed

Customers do not expect every process to be instant. They do expect to understand what is happening and why.

Payment reliability is central to reputation

For real money casino brands, payments are one of the most important trust moments. A customer may enjoy the design, game range and promotional experience, but payment uncertainty can weaken confidence immediately.

This makes payment communication essential. Brands need to explain available methods, processing expectations and verification requirements in a way users can easily understand. Confusing payment pages can create avoidable support queries and damage loyalty.

Payment trust is shaped by several factors:

Secure deposit and withdrawal processes
Clear transaction histories
Accurate status updates
Straightforward verification guidance
Responsive support for payment questions
Consistency between stated and actual timeframes

These expectations mirror wider digital commerce. Customers now expect the same level of payment clarity from entertainment platforms that they receive from online retailers, finance apps and delivery services.

Customer support is a trust signal

Support teams are often where trust is either strengthened or lost. A polished website may attract attention, but customer service proves whether the business can handle real problems.

In online casino environments, support agents may deal with account access, payment queries, bonus questions and technical issues. They need to be trained, patient and precise. A rushed or vague answer can make a customer feel ignored, especially when money or personal information is involved.

Strong support teams usually provide:

Fast acknowledgement so users know their query has been received
Accurate answers based on clear internal processes
Calm communication during sensitive conversations
Escalation options for complex issues
Follow-through when a case cannot be solved immediately

Support should not be judged only by speed. Quality, consistency and resolution accuracy matter just as much.

Responsible play strengthens brand credibility

Responsible play is now part of how casino brands demonstrate maturity. Customers are more likely to trust platforms that make control tools easy to find and use. These features show that the brand is thinking beyond short-term engagement.

Responsible play tools may include deposit limits, time reminders, account history and self-management settings. The most credible brands present these tools clearly rather than hiding them in obscure menu areas.

This approach reflects a broader trend across digital services. Social platforms now provide screen-time tools. Banking apps offer spending insights. Fitness apps encourage recovery and balance. In each case, responsible design helps customers feel more in control.

For casino brands, visible responsible play features can support long-term trust by showing that entertainment is being framed responsibly.

Brand identity must match the experience

Trust is not built through claims alone. A brand can present itself as reliable, premium or customer-focused, but the actual experience must support that identity. If the website is confusing, support is slow or terms are unclear, the brand message loses credibility.

Successful casino brands align identity with delivery. Their tone, design, policies and support all point in the same direction. This creates consistency, which is one of the most important drivers of trust.

A strong trust-led brand identity should feel:

Professional without being cold
Helpful without being intrusive
Clear without being oversimplified
Engaging without being aggressive
Consistent across every customer touchpoint

Customers may not analyse each of these details separately, but together they shape the feeling of reliability.

Trust is earned through repeated proof

Real money casino brands compete in a market where customers have plenty of choice. Offers and game libraries can attract attention, but trust determines whether people stay.

The brands most likely to stand out are those that combine transparent communication, secure payments, strong support, responsible play tools and consistent delivery. Trust is not created by one headline feature. It is earned through repeated proof across the full customer journey.

For operators, the lesson is straightforward. In a crowded digital market, credibility is not only good ethics. It is good business.

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The head of Europe’s airports trade body has urged politicians to “stop pretending” that the European Union’s new digital border system is working, warning that the chaos now unfolding at passport control is keeping industry bosses awake at night.

Earlier this year the EU completed the roll-out of its Entry-Exit System (EES), which requires travellers from outside the bloc to register biometric information, including facial scans and fingerprints, when they enter most European countries. That data is then checked each time they cross the borders of the Schengen free-travel zone. For Britain’s roughly four million summer holidaymakers heading to the continent, it has become the most consequential change to cross-Channel travel since Brexit.

While the system has bedded in smoothly in some countries, it has been blamed for significant delays at a number of airports, with some passengers missing flights altogether.

Stefan Schulte, president of ACI Europe and chief executive of the company that owns Frankfurt Airport, did not mince his words at an industry gathering in Prague. Politicians, he said, should “stop pretending that EES is working just fine. It is not.” He added: “Passengers are queueing for hours at peak traffic times and I just do not know how we will be able to cope in the coming weeks with the expected increase in traffic.”

The warning lands at the worst possible moment for the travel industry, with the summer peak now under way and passenger volumes climbing week on week.

The disruption is no longer hypothetical. Earlier this month, dozens of Ryanair passengers were left stranded in Athens after their flight to London Luton departed without them. Ryanair blamed border delays, while the airport pointed to congestion linked to “additional processing requirements”. Neither party stated directly that EES was the culprit, but the episode fits a now familiar pattern.

In April, passengers due to fly from Milan Bergamo and Milan Linate to Manchester also missed their flights because of problems at passport control. Wizz Air, meanwhile, has gone as far as advising British holidaymakers to arrive at European airports three hours before their return flights to absorb the lengthening queues.

The friction is a direct consequence of the new requirement for most travellers from outside the European Economic Area to register biometric data on entry, a process that takes considerably longer than the old practice of stamping a passport. As Business Matters has reported, the Port of Dover has warned that the EU border system carries lasting “negative impacts” for cross-Channel traffic, and UK officials had already feared port chaos well before the scheme went live.

Schulte is pressing for the system to be made far more flexible. “We urgently need full flexibility for border control authorities to suspend the EES whenever needed to avoid further chaos, along with a rethink of those processes,” he said. “This is about showing respect and decency for those who chose to travel to the EU, and safeguarding our reputation as a welcoming and efficient destination.”

The European Commission is permitting EES to be suspended in certain circumstances until September. But Schulte told the BBC’s World at One that the decision to suspend rests with individual governments rather than airports, and that queues simply grow longer while those decisions are being weighed. He cautioned that the summer peak runs well beyond early September, after which the industry could be staring at the “complete collapse of the system”.

The official UK government guidance confirms that British travellers should expect biometric checks under the EU’s Entry-Exit System, with the requirements rolling out in phases across member states. The House of Commons Library has set out in detail how EES interacts with the forthcoming travel authorisation scheme, underlining how much remains in flux.

For travellers, part of the frustration is the inconsistency between countries. Earlier this year Greece’s tourism minister, Olga Kefalogianni, said she did not want visitors “burdened” by bureaucratic procedures, and promised British passengers would not face biometric checks when travelling to Greece this summer. The picture was muddied when the Greek Foreign Ministry subsequently disputed that any exemption existed.

There were also reports that Portugal and Italy were weighing exemptions for British nationals at their airports, only for the European Commission to insist no such plans were in place.

The confusion is unlikely to reassure an industry already braced for a difficult summer, and it comes ahead of a further layer of bureaucracy: from next year, British holidaymakers will also need to pay for an EU visa waiver under the ETIAS scheme. For now, the message from Europe’s airport bosses is blunt. The system, as it stands, is not coping, and pretending otherwise will not make the queues any shorter.

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UK retailers could be sleepwalking into a £34.1 billion hole in annual sales by tightening their returns policies, with new research suggesting that the very measures designed to protect margins may end up driving shoppers away.

The figure comes from Locus, the global logistics technology company, which has modelled the potential cost of the industry’s growing crackdown on returns. Against a backdrop of faltering consumer confidence, the warning lands at an awkward moment for a sector already wrestling with thin margins and cautious households.

Recent Office for National Statistics figures show that total UK retail spending on textiles, clothing and footwear reached roughly £57.8 billion over the past 12 months. Drawing on its own consumer sentiment data, Locus estimates that £34.1 billion of that spending, well over half, could be put at risk each year if shoppers cut back on purchases as returns policies become more restrictive.

A survey of 2,000 UK shoppers carried out for Locus paints a stark picture of how sensitive consumers have become to the friction of paying to send goods back.

Some 59 per cent said they would be less likely to make a purchase if a retailer introduced return fees or stricter returns policies, while 56 per cent said they would simply switch to a different retailer altogether. Crucially for any retailer hoping that tougher rules will nudge customers into keeping more of what they buy, only 38 per cent said they would hold on to items rather than return them in response to a fee. One in five shoppers, meanwhile, expect or plan to return goods from the majority of orders they place.

The findings cut against the grain of a strategy now spreading across the fashion sector, where rising returns costs have prompted a wave of return fees, shorter return windows and tighter eligibility rules. ASOS is the latest to draw criticism, with frequent returners facing new charges under a revised fair use policy. The Locus research suggests such moves may carry an unintended sting, denting both spending and loyalty at precisely the point where shoppers are most easily lost.

For Subhro Chakraborty, chief revenue officer at Locus, the data points to a balancing act that many retailers are getting wrong.

“Returns have become one of the most complex challenges facing retailers today,” he said. “While there is understandable pressure to reduce return-related costs, our research indicates that overly restrictive policies risk creating friction at a crucial point in the customer journey. Retailers need to balance operational efficiency with customer expectations, or they may inadvertently drive shoppers elsewhere.”

Chakraborty argued that consumers remain acutely sensitive to anything that increases the perceived risk of shopping online, particularly in fashion, where fit, size and product expectations can vary widely from one purchase to the next.

His prescription is to tackle returns at source rather than at the till. “Rather than relying solely on stricter returns policies, retailers may find greater success through investments in technologies and operational improvements that reduce unnecessary returns before they occur,” he said, pointing to better product information, enhanced sizing guidance, sharper inventory visibility and more efficient fulfilment.

“By improving operational efficiency across the supply chain, retailers can lower return-related costs while maintaining the flexible shopping experience consumers expect. The retailers that will succeed are those that leverage technology and customer insights to create a better post-purchase experience while simultaneously reducing avoidable returns. The goal should be to improve purchase confidence, not undermine it.”

It is a message that chimes with a broader shift in how the sector is thinking about profitability. Rather than reaching reflexively for discounts or penalties, a growing number of retailers are turning to technology to protect their margins, using data and automation to take cost out of operations without passing the pain on to the customer. As the digital transformation of UK retail accelerates, the question for boardrooms is whether the cheapest way to cut returns is to charge for them, or to design them out altogether.

For an industry counting every basket, £34.1 billion is a sobering reminder that the route to healthier returns may run through the warehouse and the product page, not the refund policy.

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A Manchester company has been hit with one of the largest nuisance marketing fines in recent years after it deliberately targeted people already struggling with debt, deluging them with millions of unlawful texts and, in some cases, fake threats that bailiffs were on their way.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined KRA Consultancy Ltd £300,000 after finding that the firm sent 5,575,715 unsolicited direct marketing texts between April 2022 and May 2025. The messages pushed debt solutions at people who had already been turned down for loans, a group the regulator says the company knew would be especially vulnerable to high-pressure tactics.

The scale of the operation is reflected in the response it provoked. More than 60,000 complaints were logged with the ICO and through Mobile UK’s 7726 spam reporting service, making this one of the most heavily reported campaigns the watchdog has dealt with.

What lifts the KRA case above the usual run of spam enforcement is the content of some of the messages. Alongside the marketing texts, the firm sent fabricated bailiff threats engineered to scare people into engaging with its debt services. They went out under the sender ID ‘DEMAND’ and read:

“We have attempted on numerous occasions to contact you without any success. This matter has escalated further and an Enforcement agent will attend ****** within 48 hours to remove your goods as per Court Order. If you are on any legal/debt plan you will need proof readily available.”

Internal WhatsApp messages recovered during the investigation show company director Khuram Rezvan Ahmad referring to these threats with the euphemism ‘coaching’. In one exchange he wrote: “Get through as much as and pitch whatever. Don’t worry about forcing anything back because the coaching will take care of that tomorrow morning.”

The ICO’s investigation, which included search warrants executed at KRA’s offices and at Ahmad’s home, paints a picture of a business that understood it was breaking the law and tried to cover its tracks. Ahmad approached a telecoms provider in China seeking assurances that the bulk texts could be made “completely untraceable”. Even after the search warrants, the firm went back to its unlawful marketing, generating a further 161 complaints.

The company also made no effort to verify whether its loan-decline data was accurate or whether recipients had ever consented to marketing. Challenged internally about data that was three years old, Ahmad was blunt: “Am I confident on the data set? As long as I’m doing the cases I don’t really give a f*** if it’s old as long as it’s making money.”

Andy Curry, Head of Investigations at the ICO, did not mince his words. “People in financial difficulty deserve support, not exploitation. KRA deliberately sought these people out, knowing they might be especially susceptible to this kind of high-pressure marketing, and bombarded them with illegal texts. When that wasn’t enough, it sent fake threats telling people bailiffs were coming to their homes to remove their belongings. This was a calculated, unlawful scheme, and it caused real fear and distress to people who were already struggling with debt.”

He added: “KRA showed complete disregard for the law throughout our investigation and this £300,000 fine, one of the largest for nuisance marketing in recent years, reflects that. It should leave no doubt that we will pursue any company that thinks it can evade the law and prey on the public.”

For the overwhelming majority of firms that market within the rules, the KRA case is a useful reminder of where the lines sit. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), businesses must have clear, specific consent before sending direct marketing texts, and they must be able to evidence both that consent and the provenance of the data behind it. Buying in aged or unverified lists, as KRA did, is precisely the practice the regulator is targeting, and the ICO’s enforcement action shows the watchdog increasingly willing to follow the money to company directors personally.

It is also part of a clear pattern of escalation. The ICO has been steadily raising penalties for spam marketing, and earlier cases such as the £495,000 in fines handed to firms over millions of intrusive messages signalled the direction of travel. This is not the first Greater Manchester operation to attract the regulator’s attention either, following earlier raids on addresses in the region over 11 million nuisance texts. With the cost of breaking anti-spam rules reaching new highs, the message to any business tempted to cut corners on consent is unambiguous: the economics no longer add up.

Anyone who receives a suspicious marketing text can report it free of charge by forwarding it to 7726, and complaints of this kind feed directly into the regulator’s monitoring of nuisance marketing.

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Two university-led research labs are to share up to £60 million of government money in a bid to make artificial intelligence cheaper to run, more dependable and far easier for ordinary British businesses to adopt, ministers have announced.

The labs, hosted by the University of Oxford and University College London, will be tasked with building the foundations for the next wave of AI breakthroughs on home soil, rather than leaving the field to a handful of deep-pocketed American technology giants. Backed by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and given access to large-scale computing power worth tens of millions of pounds, the two centres represent a deliberate attempt to compete on ideas rather than raw spending power.

For the small and mid-sized firms that make up the backbone of the UK economy, the pitch is straightforward. Much of today’s most capable AI is expensive to run and concentrated in the hands of a few model providers. The new labs are being asked to change the underlying economics, developing open-source tools that can run on widely available hardware, potentially including ordinary consumer computers, and rethinking how AI systems learn so they no longer demand vast, centralised data centres.

The first, the Science of Fundamental AI Research (SOFAIR) Lab, will be led by Professor David Barber at UCL, working alongside the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh. It will pull together researchers from computer science, mathematics, statistics and neuroscience to design new kinds of AI system, with the explicit aim of making advanced tools cheaper and more accessible.

“While current AI systems are impressive, many still suffer from basic issues such as inaccurate responses to questions,” said Professor Barber. “These systems often use similar underlying architectures, so SOFAIR will bring together the broader sciences and fresh ideas to create a new generation of open-source models. This will reduce dependency on the small number of model providers, boosting UK sovereignty and its position as a global player in AI.”

The second, the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery (BOLD) Lab, will be led by Professor Jakob Foerster at Oxford, with UCL and Imperial College London. Its focus is on how machines learn in the first place, building systems that can adapt to new situations, navigate physical spaces and turn research into practical tools for workplaces, infrastructure and public services.

Professor Foerster was blunt about the strategy. “The UK cannot win the global AI race simply by trying to outspend the largest technology companies on data and compute,” he said. “BOLD is about a different route: discovering fundamentally new ways to build AI that are more efficient, more open and better aligned with human needs.”

The political framing is as much about security as it is about productivity. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said Britain could “set the agenda for what comes next”, arguing that building the capability at home reduces reliance on others and strengthens national resilience. The timing was pointed, with the announcement made on what would have been Alan Turing’s 114th birthday.

Professor Charlotte Deane, who chairs the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and is senior responsible owner for the UKRI AI Programme, said the UK was “one of the few countries in the world with all the right ingredients, from a deep pool of top AI experts to world-class universities”, and that the labs would back “the bold, high-reward ideas that can shape the future of AI”.

That ambition sits alongside a string of recent state interventions in the sector, from a headline AI investment package aimed at driving growth and jobs to funding for shared supercomputing capacity that gives researchers and start-ups access to advanced compute. The thread running through all of it is access: the gap between firms that can afford frontier AI and those that cannot.

The case made by the labs lands directly on a problem business owners already recognise. AI is no longer the preserve of large enterprises, and a growing number of smaller firms are finding ways to harness the technology without breaking the bank. Cheaper, open-source models that run on modest hardware would push that door wider still, lowering the cost of entry for the firms least able to absorb six-figure compute bills.

The money, made available through EPSRC, will run over the next six years. Each lab will also receive £2 million earmarked for hiring at least 10 doctoral students, part of a wider effort to grow domestic talent, and both will work alongside the Alan Turing Institute and UKRI’s existing AI research hubs. The commitment, set out in full on GOV.UK, goes further than first planned, doubling the number of labs from one to two and lifting the total from £40 million to up to £60 million. It forms part of UKRI’s broader £1.6 billion AI strategy to strengthen the UK’s position over the next four years.

Whether that translates into cheaper tools on the desks of British SMEs will take years to judge. But the direction of travel is clear: the government is betting that the route to broad adoption runs through cost, not just capability.

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Far from luring shoppers away from the high street, social media is sending them through the door in their millions.

New research from American Express estimates that content scrolled on phones is now behind some 1.7 billion visits to UK high streets every year, an average of more than 30 million a week.

The Hype to High Street study, carried out with analysts Retail Economics, found that nearly two-thirds (63%) of UK adults have walked into a shop or hospitality venue, a café or restaurant among them, in the past year after being swayed by something they saw on social media. Among Gen Z consumers, those aged 18 to 28, the figure climbs to 88%.

It is a striking corrective to the familiar story of the doomed bricks-and-mortar store. For all the talk of declining footfall and shuttered shopfronts, the channel often blamed for emptying the high street is increasingly the reason people turn up at all.

The research suggests social media has become a powerful engine of both footfall and loyalty, particularly among younger shoppers. More than four in five (82%) consumers return to a business after a socially influenced first visit, rising to 96% among Gen Z. They make persuasive advocates, too: nearly eight in ten (79%) say they shared their most recent visit in some way, whether by recommending the business, posting about it or leaving a review online. Among Gen Z, that rises to 89%.

Short-form video is proving especially good at turning online buzz into offline queues. The viral spread of products such as Dubai chocolate and matcha drinks, along with trending venues and experiences, is pushing consumers to seek them out in person.

That points to the emergence of what the study calls a ‘viral pilgrimage’ economy, in which shoppers travel real distances, to other towns and other parts of the country, to get their hands on products, venues and trends first discovered on a screen. More than a third (35%) of Gen Z consumers say they have travelled to another city or region to buy something they first saw trending online. Once there, nearly nine in ten (87%) say they would happily queue for a sought-after product or experience.

It is a behaviour that would have baffled retailers a decade ago, when the rise of live commerce and shoppable video was still a novelty borrowed from Chinese platforms. Today, the journey from a 30-second clip to a physical till is becoming routine.

The findings draw on a survey of 2,000 UK adults, combined with economic modelling used to size the total value and volume of social media-influenced spending on the high street.

Nearly nine in ten (87%) respondents said they spent money during a socially influenced visit, rising to 94% among Gen Z shoppers. More broadly, Retail Economics’ modelling suggests social media now shapes one in every 20 in-person high street purchases across the UK, a measure of how quickly online engagement is translating into real-world spending.

At a time when many high streets are still under pressure, with the British Retail Consortium reporting six consecutive months of falling footfall towards the end of last year, the research suggests the benefits of a socially influenced visit spill well beyond the business that prompted it.

Almost a third (32%) of consumers visited additional nearby shops, restaurants or venues on the same socially influenced trip, while more than one in five Gen Z shoppers (22%) admitted to spending more than they had planned once they arrived. For neighbouring independents, a rival’s viral moment can lift the whole street.

Dan Edelman, UK General Manager, Merchant Services at American Express, said: “Social media has become the new shop window for Britain’s high streets. What starts as a scroll on social is increasingly translating into real-world visits, increased spending and growth opportunity for businesses across the UK.

“What’s striking is that the impact doesn’t stop at the venue that first caught a consumer’s attention, social media is creating a domino effect that benefits neighbouring businesses and helps entire high streets thrive. For merchants, particularly those looking to attract younger consumers, the ability to turn online hype into memorable in-person experiences has never been more important. At American Express, we’re committed to championing the UK’s high streets and the businesses that power them, helping merchants make the most of these changing consumer behaviours.”

Few businesses illustrate the phenomenon better than Randalls, a family-run sweet shop in the East Midlands. After posting a 60-second video of staff packing a customer’s £270 pick and mix order, it watched shoppers arrive from across the country. The clip racked up more than 12 million views, lifting takings and, crucially, the fortunes of the streets around it.

“We’ve always known we had something special, but it was always a local secret. One video changed that overnight,” said Jarrod Burke, founder of Randalls UK. “People started travelling from across the country to visit the shop, including one customer who made a special trip while visiting the UK from Australia. Since the video went viral, our daily takings in-store have tripled, and we’ve regularly had queues outside the shop. What’s been amazing is seeing the impact spread beyond our business too, people are making a day of it in Market Harborough, visiting other independent shops, cafés and businesses nearby.”

For independents wondering how to engineer their own moment, the lesson is less about chasing virality than being ready to convert it, with the basics of how to increase footfall in store mattering just as much as the content that draws people in.

Richard Lim, chief executive of Retail Economics, said the channel’s influence now reaches well beyond e-commerce. “Social media is not just driving online sales, it is now also influencing in-person spend on the UK high street,” he said. “The channel’s growth underlines just how quickly shopping via social has become mainstream, as well as the extent of its positive contribution to the long-term health of UK high streets. Social media is becoming an increasingly important driver of footfall in its own right, helping turn shops, restaurants and venues into destinations consumers actively seek out, visit and share with others.”

The timing matters. With online sales accounting for more than a fifth of total UK retail spending and the high street long braced for the worst, the idea that the feed can fill the street rather than empty it is a welcome shift, and one that hands smaller, nimbler merchants a rare advantage over their larger rivals.

American Express, for its part, has been expanding its own high street presence. Since 2021, the number of UK locations accepting its cards has tripled, taking in more small businesses than ever before, while Amex cards are now accepted at over 170 million merchant locations worldwide as of the end of 2025.

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Thousands of shoppers and football fans were forced back to notes and coins on Tuesday night after a power outage at Worldpay, one of the world’s largest payment processors, knocked out card transactions at pubs, supermarkets and restaurants across the country.

The disruption could hardly have come at a worse moment for the hospitality trade. Tills and contactless terminals began failing just as fans settled in to watch England’s World Cup group game against Ghana, the kind of fixture that turns an ordinary Tuesday into one of the busiest trading nights of the year for licensed venues.

Customers reported being unable to pay by card at a number of retailers, including branches of Tesco, while videos circulating on social media showed queues snaking out of cash machines as drinkers and diners hunted for the funds to settle up. Several pubs and entertainment venues posted notices that they were accepting cash only until the system came back.

Worldpay attributed the fault to a third-party power problem rather than any failure of its own platforms. “The UK experienced a power grid disruption, which is causing intermittent transaction authorisation issues for some Worldpay clients,” a spokesperson said. “Our technical teams are engaged and working to address the matter as soon as possible.”

In a statement on its website, the company added: “A third-party power disruption is causing intermittent transaction authorisation issues and tokenisation request errors on some Worldpay platforms. Our technical teams have restored service to some platforms and continue to troubleshoot to restore full service as soon as possible.”

The monitoring site Downdetector logged more than 1,000 reports of payment problems at Tesco from around 8pm. Responding to a customer on X, the supermarket said: “There is an issue with Worldpay at the moment affecting us and other businesses taking card payments.” A Tesco spokesperson later confirmed the problem had been fixed, saying: “An issue that affected payments in store and online is now resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

Frustration among consumers focused as much on the timing as the fault itself. “Global outage on Worldpay, leaving busy pubs in the UK unable to sell beer to customers who don’t have cash, not great,” one customer wrote. Another posted: “Unbelievable, busy England game and Worldpay goes down on card terminals. Multiple sectors reporting issues of terminals down.”

For all the inconvenience, the episode is a useful reminder of how thoroughly Britain has moved away from physical money, and how exposed that leaves small firms when the plumbing fails. Contactless now accounts for roughly three-quarters of all debit card transactions in the UK, according to UK Finance data, with supermarkets among the most common places people tap to pay. As Business Matters has reported before, contactless is at record levels and there is little appetite to return to cash.

That convenience comes with concentration risk. When a single processor handling a large share of the market goes dark, the effect ripples instantly across thousands of unrelated businesses, from the corner shop to the national grocer. A pub that has quietly gone card-only over the past few years suddenly cannot take a penny, and few customers now carry the cash to bail it out.

The incident lands against a tougher regulatory backdrop for the firms that run the country’s payment rails. Since March 2025, payment and e-money firms have had to comply with the Financial Conduct Authority’s operational resilience rules, which require them to identify their most important services, set tolerances for how long disruption can last, and prove they can stay within those limits. An outage that stops shops trading on one of the busiest nights of the football calendar is exactly the sort of scenario those rules are designed to stress-test.

For SME owners, the practical lesson is the value of a backup. Venues with a second terminal on a different acquirer, a working cash float or a simple offline payment option were able to keep serving while rivals turned customers away. Many smaller operators have already been rethinking their relationship with the banks’ card machines in search of lower fees and better terms, and resilience deserves a place on that checklist alongside price.

There is a security dimension too. Nights when systems are patchy and queues are long are exactly when staff cut corners and opportunists try their luck, so it pays to understand how to keep cashless customer payments secure even when the technology is under strain.

Worldpay said service had been restored to some platforms within hours and that engineers were working to bring the rest back online. For the publicans who watched a sell-out crowd struggle to buy a round during the second half, the bigger question is not whether the system came back, but how quickly they can make sure the next outage does not cost them the takings.

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With Sir Keir Starmer standing down, Andy Burnham, the newly elected MP for Makerfield, looks all but certain to become the next prime minister. The bigger question now exercising Westminster, and the markets, is who he will install next door at No 11.

Many in the party believe Burnham will want his own chancellor rather than keep the current occupant, Rachel Reeves. Whoever takes the keys to the Treasury inherits a daunting in-tray: high debt, sluggish growth, an unfinished welfare reform programme, rising defence commitments and the economic fallout from the US-Israel war with Iran. It is a list that would test the most seasoned operator, and the choice matters well beyond Whitehall. Burnham’s arrival has already unsettled the business community, with eight in ten SME owners telling Business Matters they fear what his premiership would mean for their firm.

Here are the names in the frame for the second most powerful job in British politics, and what each could mean for your finances.

Wes Streeting

The bookmakers’ favourite is a former leadership contender, Wes Streeting. Having thrown his weight behind Burnham rather than running himself, the thinking is that the former health secretary could be rewarded with the number two job for his loyalty.

Not everyone is convinced that loyalty should be the deciding factor. Lord Jim O’Neill, the economist and cross-bench peer who has been advising Burnham, has warned against the approach. Without naming names, he told the BBC: “There are clearly some people pushing to be chancellor who feel they are owed it for their support.”

There is also a question of fit. Though Burnham may value Streeting’s backing, the two men’s instincts diverge, with Burnham seen as the more willing spender of the pair. Simon French, chief economist at the consultancy Panmure Liberum, describes Streeting as a “relatively market-friendly option” on the strength of his pro-growth language, but also flags a political risk: a chancellor who may one day want the top job himself. As for the suggestion that Streeting could be handed the role for his support rather than his ability, French is blunt: “Politics is what politics is. It’s a popularity contest.”

Ed Miliband

The bookies’ second favourite is Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, who is politically closer to Burnham than Streeting is. Paul Johnson, former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, sees that alignment as a strength. “You really don’t want people in Number 10 and Number 11 having very different views,” he says.

Whether a former Treasury adviser such as Miliband could win over the markets is more contested. Nick Macpherson, the former permanent secretary at the Treasury, told the Financial Times: “The key to gaining the confidence of the markets is to articulate, implement and deliver a coherent strategy. Miliband is one of the few cabinet members with the intellect, experience, and authority to do that.”

Others see an inflation risk. Critics blame his drive for net zero as energy secretary for the UK’s high energy prices relative to its peers, and analysts say that reputation, fair or not, could colour how the bond markets greet him. Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, has gone further, warning that a Miliband chancellorship would be a “noose around the neck” of job creation because of his opposition to new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Pat McFadden

Seen as a longer shot than Streeting or Miliband, Pat McFadden is regarded by some as the most qualified candidate of the lot. He has held shadow Treasury briefs, served as a business minister in a previous Labour government and is the current work and pensions secretary. It is that last role that could prove decisive, giving him a head start on what many expect to be the next chancellor’s single biggest task: welfare reform.

Panmure Liberum’s French believes the markets may view McFadden as “the safest pair of hands” among the runners, reacting either positively or with a shrug if he were chosen. The catch is political. If Burnham is hunting for a clean break from the Starmer era, he is likely to look past so loyal a servant of the outgoing regime.

Yvette Cooper

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper could be the compromise candidate. She brings years of government experience, having served as chief secretary to the Treasury under Gordon Brown, and sits somewhere between Miliband on one side and McFadden or Streeting on the other. Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, calls her a “middle of the road” option, but also “a bit more of an unknown”.

Rachel Reeves

There remains the possibility that the incumbent simply stays put. It looks unlikely, given how closely Reeves is tied to Starmer, but a few bookmakers are still taking bets on no change at the Treasury this year.

Lord O’Neill says his advice to Burnham has been to “figure out what his priorities are as prime minister before he picks a chancellor”. Follow that counsel and Reeves may yet survive, at least for now. Burnham has previously said he would stick to her fiscal rules, and the chancellor appeared in his Westminster photoshoot after he was sworn in as an MP on Monday. She was, tellingly, absent from Sir Keir’s resignation speech.

And the rest

Beyond the front-runners sits a longlist of wildcards. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, reported to be fiscally conservative but light on economic experience, is one. Former defence secretary John Healey, who quit very publicly over what he saw as inadequate defence spending, is another, though Paul Johnson cautions that appointing him would amount to a spending commitment in itself. “If I was Andy Burnham, I would not want to tie myself to that particular pillar that quickly,” he says.

Bookmakers and Westminster chatter also throw up Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, and Torsten Bell, the former chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, as outside bets.

Whoever lands the job, the backdrop is unforgiving. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the UK’s public finances are in a relatively vulnerable position and facing mounting risks, leaving little room for error. That is precisely why the markets, and business owners already bracing for an end to “drift and delay” after Starmer’s exit, will scrutinise the appointment so closely.

For now, every name on the list wants the role. As Lord O’Neill puts it: “The ones whose names are in the papers are the ones who are putting themselves forward.”

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Britain has shed £74 billion of goods exports since Brexit and tilted ever more firmly towards a services-led economy, according to new research that throws cold water on hopes of reindustrialising the country, an ambition recently set out by Andy Burnham.

The Resolution Foundation, a think tank, found that some of the nation’s most prized industrial sectors, among them cars and pharmaceuticals, have been the biggest casualties since the UK formally left the single market and customs union in 2020. The economy’s overall share of goods exports fell by a fifth between 2019 and 2024, leaving exporters roughly £74 billion worse off, the steepest decline anywhere in the G7 group of large economies.

Crucially, the researchers pin the blame on Brexit itself rather than on higher energy prices or a flood of cheap Chinese goods, both of which are frequently cited as the culprits behind Britain’s trade weakness. The findings are set out in full in the foundation’s report on the UK’s post-Brexit trade performance, which calls for an industrial strategy rethink.

The pain is concentrated in precisely the goods the rest of the world is buying more of. “The UK has lost ground in exactly the goods the world is buying more of, including medicines, electronic microcircuits and data processors,” said Sophie Hale, research director at the Resolution Foundation. “Some once-staple strengths have disappeared outright in the past five years. Revealed comparative advantage has gone in road vehicles, chemicals, dairy, live animals for food and non-ferrous metals.”

Since the referendum, Britain has slipped from the world’s 11th-largest goods exporter to 14th. The losses sit squarely within the eight priority, high-growth sectors the government has identified as central to future prosperity, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence and life sciences.

Business sentiment underlines the strain. In a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce, an industry lobby group, 54 per cent of UK exporters said the trade and co-operation agreement struck after Brexit had made it harder to sell into the bloc, and that “urgent change” was needed. Only 16 per cent felt the deal had helped them grow their exports. The lobby group’s own assessment that EU trade is getting harder chimes with the Resolution Foundation’s data, and echoes earlier warnings that the UK-EU trade deal has failed to boost exports as cross-border friction has worsened.

The squeeze has not fallen evenly. Smaller firms have borne the brunt, a pattern Business Matters has tracked as UK exporters face a £27bn Brexit hit, with the smallest businesses seeing relative goods exports to the EU fall far faster than their larger rivals.

Brexit has also hastened Britain’s pivot to services, which now account for 59 per cent of total exports, up by 11 percentage points since 2019. Services trade with the European Union has dipped, but nowhere near as sharply as goods, according to figures from the Centre for European Reform.

For Hale, that shift is no cause for alarm. “The shift towards services should not be viewed as a problem,” she said. “Countries specialising in services can be rich. So doubling down on these strengths should be viewed as a feature, not a bug.” Her prescription is a clear-eyed triage: defend the sectors where Britain remains world-leading, such as aero engines, contest a handful where the advantage is slipping but not yet lost, such as medicines, and be honest where the realistic prize is carving out niches rather than recovering share, as in electronic microcircuits.

The research lands awkwardly for Burnham, who is challenging Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership after winning the Makerfield by-election in Greater Manchester. The mayor has pledged to reindustrialise the north of England and bring utilities under greater state control, yet the data lays bare how hard that will be when the UK’s most lucrative and competitive sectors are now in services rather than on the factory floor. It is a tension familiar to readers who have followed how pro-Brexit regions became more dependent on EU exports than many had assumed.

Labour says it wants a warmer relationship with Brussels through a veterinary agreement covering animals, plants and food, and an extension of Erasmus schemes for students. The Centre for European Reform cautions that the economic dividend from such measures would be modest, and that the single biggest lift to UK trade would come from rejoining the single market, a step neither the current government nor Burnham backs.

The BCC found that 55 per cent of exporters would support aligning with EU product rules and standards, a move that would unlock single-market access but surrender Westminster’s control over large areas of regulation. William Bain, head of trade at the BCC, warned that rejoining the EU “would compromise the trade deals we have made since leaving and cut our advantages in areas such as AI where [the UK’s] regulatory approach differs”.

Gerard Lyons, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, a centre-right think tank, argued that rejoining the customs union, the single market or the EU would reduce the UK to a “rule-taker”. He added: “The fundamental causes of our poor economic performance predate Brexit and are in our power to fix.”

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