Victoria Craig

The Fed's preferred inflation gauge hit 3.5 percent in March, the highest level in nearly three years.

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is fighting for political survival as he faces growing calls to resign.

That's after disastrous local election results at the end of last week, in which his Labour Party lost hundreds of seats and its share of the national vote plunged to just 17%, according to the latest BBC projections.

In a bid to quell the unrest in the party, Starmer is due to make a speech later today laying out his values.

Lucy Fisher will be listening keenly to that speech.

She covers Whitehall for the FT and hosts our Political Fix podcast.

Hi, Lucy.

Hi, Beth.

So what are we expecting from Starmer's speech today?

And it's not, we should mention, just Starmer that voters are upset with.

Labour's main rival, the Conservative Party, also did not fare well in those local elections last week.

And instead, they heavily favoured third parties.

What's going on with voters?

What was it about those third parties that they liked?

Okay, so Starmer is going to try to get things back on track for labor today.

And then in a very pomp and pageantry event on Wednesday, we have what's called the King speech in Parliament.

And Lucy, for those who are not familiar with this, just walk us through what that is and why it does actually relate to this political conversation we're having here.

Lucy, will either one of these speeches, do you think, actually go a long way toward helping satisfy these labor MPs, these labor voters?

Do you think Starmer will stay in power or is this going to be a situation that could change day by day?

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