UK economy slows amid political unrest, Middle East war

Britain’s economy slowed in the second quarter, the national statistics office reported Thursday, saying that output remained “robust” despite domestic political unrest and fallout from the US-Iran war.
Gross domestic product increased 0.4 percent in the April-June period after GDP expansion of 0.6 percent in the first quarter, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.
Keir Starmer resigned as British prime minister in late June and was replaced around one month later by Andy Burnham, as the Labour government was overtaken in opinion polls by the hard-right party Reform UK.
Following Thursday’s data, the country’s new finance minister, John Healey, said that unde...