📊 Starmer, Inflation, and Cannes

Resignation pressure, fuel pain, and festival season.

May 12, 2026

Greetings! Happy National Odometer Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

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🌎 GLOBAL NEWS

🇬🇧 Starmer’s party turns on him. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he will not resign. That answer is becoming less persuasive inside his own party. Several junior ministers quit Tuesday. Miatta Fahnbulleh, minister of housing, communities and local government, was first to step down. She urged Starmer to set a timetable for departure. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, followed. She called Starmer fundamentally good but unable to make bold changes. Around 90 Labour lawmakers now say he should quit or name an exit date. Labour rules require 81 lawmakers to back one challenger before a leadership race begins. No challenger has done that yet. Starmer told his Cabinet the process had not been triggered. He also said the past 48 hours had destabilized government and carried real economic cost. Labour’s local-election losses sharpened the panic. Reform UK, the Green Party, and nationalist parties all took bites from Labour’s coalition. Starmer still has the office, not the room.

🇨🇳 Trump and Xi try to fence off Iran. President Trump is heading to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Iran war will be in the room before either leader sits down. Trump has tried for weeks to push China to pressure Tehran. The goal is an Iranian deal or at least a reopened Strait of Hormuz. China is the world’s biggest buyer of Iranian oil. It also imports about half its crude and nearly one-third of its liquefied natural gas from Middle Eastern countries hit by the strait closure. The White House has lowered expectations. American Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Washington does not want Iran to derail the broader relationship. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have increased pressure on Beijing. The State Department sanctioned three China-based firms over satellite imagery tied to Iranian strikes on American forces. Beijing called the sanctions illegal unilateral pressure. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last week. Analyst Craig Singleton said Xi wants tariff predictability and recognition of Chinese leverage. Trump wants cooperation without restarting a tariff war. Xi wants enduring global influence.

🇺🇸 LOCAL NEWS

⛽ Gasoline drags inflation back into politics. American consumer prices rose sharply again in April. The Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) climbed 3.8% from April 2025. That was the biggest annual jump in three years. It was also up from 3.3% in March. Monthly prices rose 0.6% from March. Gasoline prices rose 5.4% in one month. They are up more than 28% from a year earlier by federal data. The American Automobile Association (AAA) put regular gasoline above $4.50 Tuesday. That is about 44% higher than the same time last year. Grocery prices rose 0.7% from March to April. Meat prices rose after falling the prior month. Core prices, excluding food and energy, rose 0.4% for the month and 2.8% annually. Navy Federal Credit Union economist Heather Long said inflation is now eating wage gains. Real average hourly wages fell 0.3%; pump prices have turned into a campaign-season tax.

🏨 World Cup hotels wait for the wave. American hotels expected the World Cup to print money. The bookings have not arrived that way yet. The American Hotel & Lodging Association surveyed operators in April. It found softer demand across most of the 11 American host cities. Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle reported bookings behind normal seasonal demand. New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston looked flat. Hotel executives blamed international travel concerns, visa wait times, ticket costs, and transit expenses. Michael Black, general manager of the Cloud One hotel in Manhattan, said expectations met a messier world. Mexico City hotels are only about 30% to 36% booked ahead of the June 11th opener. Prices may be part of the problem. A New Jersey hotel near MetLife Stadium moved from about $200 a night to $800 around June matches. It rises above $1,300 before the July 19th final. Fan advocate Ronan Evain said experienced tournament travelers often wait for inflated hotel prices to fall. Airbnb Inc. ($ABNB) says its rentals could still see the company’s biggest hosting event ever. More than 5M tickets have been sold. Hotels are learning that attention and occupancy are not the same product.

🗂️ MISC

🎬 Cannes opens without Hollywood’s usual armor. The Cannes Film Festival has begun its 12-day run. The Côte d’Azur is again doing what it does best. It turns cinema into art, commerce, gossip, and national prestige in formalwear. Hollywood studios are mostly on the sidelines this year. That does not make the slate small. South Korean director Park Chan-wook is leading the jury. Peter Jackson will receive an honorary Palme d’Or. Barbra Streisand will receive one later. The HBO series “The White Lotus” is also shooting its fourth season on the Croisette. Na Hong-jin’s “Hope” brings a Korean and Hollywood cast into genre-shifting science fiction. James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” adds Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson to competition gravity. Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord” brings Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve into European art-house weather. Jane Schoenbrun’s new film stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Steven Soderbergh’s John Lennon documentary uses artificial intelligence to illustrate philosophical passages. Cannes remains the rare place where prestige still wears sunglasses and expects to be obeyed.

📉 AI stocks finally blink. Wall Street fell from record highs Tuesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500) dropped 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 77 points by early afternoon. The Nasdaq composite fell 2% from its own record. The damage centered on artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. Intel Corporation ($INTC) fell 10.5% after more than tripling this year. Micron Technology Inc. ($MU) dropped 9.8% after rising nearly 180% in 2026. CoreWeave Inc. ($CRWV) sank 10.8%. South Korea’s Kospi index fell 2.3% earlier from an all-time high. Oil added another bruise. Brent crude rose 3.3% to $107.66 as the Iran ceasefire looked weaker. The Strait of Hormuz closure continues trapping oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Treasury yields rose as investors reconsidered Federal Reserve (Fed) patience. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.45%, above 3.97% before the war. Zebra Technologies Corporation ($ZBRA) still jumped 16.8% on stronger earnings. Under Armour Inc. ($UAA) fell 19.1% after a worse loss. Even bull markets eventually learn gravity.