UK sugar tax to be extended to more soft drinks and milkshakes; markets rally ahead of the budget – as it happened

Government sets out plans to lower the threshold within the Soft Drinks Industry Levy to 4.5g per 100ml, down from 5g

• Full story: UK to extend sugar tax to cover bottled milkshakes and pre-packaged lattes

• Reeves expected to reveal cut in growth forecasts for next five years in budget

The painful truth" is that sterling captures the confidence of international investors in the UK economy, writes Professor Costas Milas of the University of Liverpool's Management School.

Professor Milas tells us:

Investors, of course, hate economic policy uncertainty. From a historical point of view (going back to 1965!) there is an inverse relationship between year-on-year growth (strength) of the sterling effective exchange rate and Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) in the UK, the latter proxied by economic policy uncertainty relative to its five-year moving average (the correlation coefficient is -0.43).

I also note (sadly) that economic policy uncertainty in 2025 is higher than that of 2016 in relative historical terms...

We explained how our legislation is working, it is not discriminatory and it is not aimed at American companies. We simply need to do more explanation in this regard. We'll engage in that process."

They rule out diesel gas and you gotta have batteries here by 2035. But Europe doesn't make batteries! Only certain countries make batteries and Europe is not one of them. They gotta think better about themselves ... come on! Think correctly."