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Will Today's British 'Midterms' Spark 'Starmageddon' For The Labour Party?

All eyes on UK local elections (Britain's 'Midterms') today.

As JPMorgan's Market Intel desk noted this morning, while the seats up do not influence national policy, Brits have historically used local and regional elections to punish the party in power in Westminster.

Reform UK is expected to come out as the main beneficiary of the elections, with Labour the biggest loser.

The key risk is that Labour’s poor performance causes MPs to push Starmer out in an attempt to improve the party’s standing ahead of 2029 elections.

This could come in the form of a formal leadership challenge or a ministerial resignation that triggers others to follow suit (for the former, Rayner seen as the most likely candidate for now, while Andy Burnham could make another attempt to enter parliament in the summer).

Gilts are especially sensitive to political developments (muscle memory from LDI crisis and the 2024 Autumn Budget) and renewed fiscal concerns could drive further underperformance – risk premia has been building as 30Y yields surged to their highest level since 1998 on Tues, underperforming EA rates by ~35bps since the war.

While risks are skewed bearish for GBP and rates, our economist emphasizes changes to fiscal strategy are not a foregone conclusion.

With the market impact out of the way, LibertyNation.com's Mark Angelides explains below, such small-scale ballots were traditionally focused on garbage collections and potholes, but with the growing disaffection in politics – aimed squarely at the ruling Labour Party and the Conservative Party – politicos and pundits are treating them as a midterm equivalent. And with potentially the biggest defeat for any establishment party ever as the most likely outcome, UK politics may never be the same again.

End of the Line?

Before getting to the almost certain defeat of Sir Keir Starmer’s ruling Labour Party, it’s worth sparing a thought for His Majesty’s loyal opposition, the Conservative Party.

The party of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, rightly regarded as the most successful political outfit of all time, is on the cusp of no longer being a national party. But how could such a reversal of fortunes happen in a contest that is not even a general election?

As well as in local council elections in large parts of England today, voters are also casting ballots in the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales: Holyrood, the Scottish body, and the Welsh Senedd elections. The Labour Party is in the unenviable position of having to defend the lion’s share while contending with historic deficits in overall approval. But the rise of the Reform Party and the reinvigorated Green Party is at the root of the anticipated toppling of the UK’s two great parties.

Reform UK – An Unstoppable Force?

Labour won the general election in a landslide back in 2024, and it has all been downhill since then. Nibbling away at the edges of its supposed “red wall” support in the north of the country is the Reform Party, whose leader, Nigel Farage, made his own parliamentary breakthrough in ’24. Notably, in every single poll for the last 12 months, Reform has placed first – not bad for a new party. And while it was initially thought it was only the Conservatives who were bleeding members, support, and treasure to Reform, the surveys show a clear decline for Labour, too.

Indeed, if a general election were held today, a polling aggregate suggests Reform would be the largest party in Parliament with around 250 seats (out of 650). Second place would go to Conservatives with just 128, and Labour a distant third on only 78 (a loss of 334 seats). This is the backdrop as the two parties that have exchanged power for the last 100 years head into today’s elections – a midterm referendum by another name would smell as sour. But that is the big picture; the local contests are set to be even more damning.

The projections are enough to create panic across Westminster.

Local Elections Matter

Of the almost 5,000 local seats up for grabs, Labour is defending 2,557; polling suggests it will lose between 50% and 75% today.

The Conservatives are defending more than 1,300 and will be lucky to save even a third of that number.

Different parts of the country hold local elections in different years, so Reform currently has zero seats to defend. However, if last year’s elections are any indication, it is likely to score big – with an estimated 1,300 pick-ups. This will mean that not only does it win more seats than any other party, but also more votes.

[ZH: DailySceptic's Mark Littlewood notes that the scale of the apocalypse facing Labour is almost unimaginable. Last year the party lost two thirds of the seats it was defending and it may fare even worse this time. In absolute rather than relative terms, the position is bleaker still. In 2025, it had fewer than 300 councillors up for re-election as the areas voting were largely the Tory shires. This time, over 2,000 seats start in the Labour column and it could be reduced to 600 or even fewer. Swathes of the party’s campaigning infrastructure will be overwhelmed as a turquoise tsunami engulfs the Red Wall. Outside London it may struggle to maintain majority control in any area at all with ‘all out’ elections – although it has sufficiently impregnable majorities to remain in power in a good number of places which elect in ‘thirds’.]

But that’s not the end of the bad news for the big two.

The Green Party has been on the eco-fringes of UK politics for several decades. With a core message on tree-hugging and environmental issues, it failed to make a significant breakthrough. Until now. Headed by new leader Zack Polanski, the party has shifted its focus from the environment to Gaza and has been courting the “independent Palestine” vote among the Muslim voting blocs.

One might assume this was a recipe for electoral disaster, and yet, with sizable, concentrated Muslim enclaves across the country, it is a formula for a certain amount of success.

The Muslim vote has been reliably Labour since it became a bloc. So, while Reform has been taking Labour votes in the traditional working-class heartlands from the right, the Greens are now encroaching on its territory from the left. The Greens are projected to win almost 700 seats in today’s contests.

What does this mean for Starmer?

Parliament on Maneuvers

Sir Keir is arguably the least popular prime minister since records began. His downfall from winning a huge majority in 2024 to being on the outs in 2026 is nothing short of a lesson in failure.

And his own party would have already moved to oust and replace him if it were not for today’s elections.

Unlike Americans, who vote for a president, Brits don't vote for a prime minister but for a party – meaning that the current leading party can have an internal election to jettison an unpopular leader while still remaining the party of government.

So why haven’t they?

The simple answer is that no one wants to be the leader of a party that oversees a crushing local election result. In normal times, that leader must resign, step aside, or be removed by a party vote. Starmer is holding on only because they want him to shoulder the blame for the anticipated losses. And when the dust settles, the smart money says he will be shuffled off to “gardening duty,” while the Labour hopefuls pitch their dreams and schemes.

[ZH: Goldman Sachs base case is that a poor Labour result will not lead to an immediate leadership challenge for a two main reasons:

1) The three most likely leadership contenders (Burnham, Rayner, Streeting) all have recent / current issues limiting their prospects, and

2) A Labour leadership challenge requires at least 20% of the party (81 MPs) to publicly support a new leader – creating a much higher bar relative to the recent Conservative challenges we have seen (requiring just 50 anonymous MPs).

That said, this view is low conviction, acknowledging the massive uncertainty both of the result as well as implications, and therefore they can easily see a scenario where in aftermath the situation snowballs towards a leadership challenge.

We also acknowledge that were Andy Burham a current sitting MP, the situation would likely be much more perilous for Starmer.]

By this time tomorrow, when the ballots are counted, the results declared, and the crying jags finished, the prime minister will effectively be a dead man walking, and the Conservative Party will be a shadow of its former self in constituencies across the country, and maybe even nonexistent in certain parts of the UK.

Who said the pothole and garbage collection elections weren’t worth watching?

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2026 - 07:20

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Gundlach Warns "Bagholders" Will "Lose Money" In Private Credit As BDCs Slash Asset Values, JPM Faces $500MM Loss In Biggest "Hung" Deal This Year

Add another vocal warning to the chorus singing about the dangers of private credit. 

DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach, who has been especially critical of private credit for the past year warning last November that the space “has the same trappings as subprime mortgage repackaging had back in 2006,” raised fresh concerns about financial advisers and other principals who ushered retail investors into private credit and other so-called semi-liquid funds, suggesting they’ve been motivated by high fees as much as by their clients’ interests.

“It’s clear that prospectuses talked about the gating mechanism, but I have a feeling that the financial intermediaries, not all of them of course, but enough of them, didn’t explain,” he said Wednesday on a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills.

The products have been “kept opaque and not granularly described,” he said according to Bloomberg. “That’s why everybody wants their money back: They’re starting to realize they might be the bag-holder.”

Gundlach took issue with private credit firms calling their funds “semi-liquid” in nature. “Semi-liquid is kind of a diabolical name,” Gundlach said. “Half the time it’s liquid. It’s liquid when you don’t want your money, and it’s illiquid when you do want your money.” A little bit like "half cash, half stock", in the parlance of our times.

As documented extensively, private credit firms have been slammed with a wave of redemption requests, a jolt to an industry that had viewed retail investors as a new source of capital to complement institutions; instead it is scrambling to gate them as they seek their money back as cracks have emerged in the private credit architecture. At Milken and elsewhere, asset managers are now questioning the wisdom - or at least, the marketing message - of selling illiquid investments to the masses.

Gundlach also compared today’s private credit market to the boom-and-bust cycles in the dot-com era and in mortgage-backed securities and other derivatives. Risky credit might be able to hide in the private market, he said, noting that the quality in the high-yield public market is much better than it was before the global financial crisis.

“This is gonna be an interesting period because the data points aren’t as frequent as they were with the dot-coms and the mortgage market,” Gundlach said. “I don’t know what systemic means, but people are going to lose money here.”

They certainly are, and today the firm at the epicenter of the private credit crisis, Blue Owl, reminded us of that when two of its private credit funds bought back $85 million of shares as volatility in technology markets and a selloff in publicly traded loans brought down their value. 

The firm cut the value of its $14.1 billion technology-focused business development fund by about 5% to $16.49 a share in the three months ended March 31, according to a filing Wednesday. The value of its $15.3 billion Blue Owl Capital Corporation, fell almost 3% to $14.41 a share.

Ever a cheerful cheerleader for his struggling product, Blue Owl co-president Craig Packer said underlying credit trends remained sound for both funds. “We continue to see solid credit performance across our portfolio of durable, mission-critical businesses with many already taking steps to adapt to the evolving AI environment,” Packer said in a statement, referring to Blue Owl Technology Finance Corp.

Blue Owl noted that share buybacks had helped boost the net asset value of the funds in the quarter.  At the same time, the firm which has been facing a liquidity crunch, cut the dividend at the bigger fund to 31 cents a share from 37 cents, citing an “extended period” of declining rates and lower risk premiums. The total dividend for the technology fund was flat at 40 cents.

Blue Owl, which earlier this year precipitated the crisis in the $1.8 trillion private credit market and gated redemptions at two other private credit funds when faced with an unprecedented $5.6 billion in withdrawal requests sending shares to a record low last month, on Wednesday said it had reduced the leverage at its biggest publicly traded fund, giving it flexibility to act fast when buying opportunities come up in an improving market for lenders.

Blue Owl wasn't the only one to suffer from mismarked loans. A private credit fund overseen by Apollo Global reported a quarterly loss, citing declining valuations amid market volatility and weakness in some specific deals. 

MidCap Financial Investment Corp., a business development company focused on direct lending, reported a net loss per share of 30 cents, compared to a 32 cent gain for the same period a year ago, it said in a statement. Net asset value per share fell to $13.82 compared to $14.18 at the end of December, missing analyst expectations.

BDC earnings are drawing sharper scrutiny as managers grapple with exposure to software companies confronting the disruptive potential of AI. Oaktree Capital Management said this week that it cut the value of one of its private credit funds by almost 4% as the firm marked down its software assets, while Sixth Street Specialty Lending reduced its dividend and reported a decline in net asset value per share.

“Our net loss for the quarter was driven by a combination of unrealized valuation adjustments reflecting broader credit spread widening, as well as credit weakness in certain positions,” MFIC Chief Executive Officer Tanner Powell said in a statement.

Loans marked as non-accrual - typically meaning the borrower missed debt payments - climbed to about $167 million on an amortized cost basis, from $48.5 million in the same period a year ago, according to a presentation. The firm said that its software portfolio had a fair value of $327 million, accounting for about 11% of its total holdings. MidCap is “highly selective” on those investments, avoiding categories where workflows are easily automated, it said. 

Meanwhile, in a sign even more pain is yet to come for the sector, Bloomberg reported that a group of banks led by JPMorgan is expected to shoulder paper losses of more than $500 million on a debt deal for software firm Qualtrics Internationa. The banks are preparing to use their own balance sheets to fund $5.3 billion of debt for Qualtrics’ acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. That would make it the biggest “hung” deal in the leveraged finance market this year.

According to Bloomberg, the lenders decided not to launch a formal offering after pausing early discussions on the deal in March, when investors in the leveraged loan and junk-bond markets balked because of Qualtrics’ exposure to the software rout. Back then, the roughly $1.5 billion Qualtrics loan due in 2030 had fallen to about 86 cents on the dollar, down from near par levels just one month earlier. At those levels, investors would find it more attractive to buy existing debt rather than participate in a new issuance, which would also sharply push up borrowing costs for the company.

The financing effort, led by JPMorgan, was tied to Qualtrics' $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta, with the package expected to include a $3.3 billion leveraged loan and another $2 billion across junk bonds or private credit.

Qualtrics, which makes online survey tools, has emerged as one of the highest-profile examples of the pain plaguing software firms at the heart of the private credit crisis, as investors reassess business models across the industry given the rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

The reason why JPMorgan capitulated on laucnhing a formal offering is because the existing term loan is currently trading at about 84 cents on the dollar, creating a hurdle too big to overcome when pricing any new deal.

Banks typically provide bridge financing commitments to support acquisitions with the intention to sell the debt on to institutional investors as part of a syndication process, and earn a fee for doing so. They try to offload the borrowings quickly - before the transaction closes - because getting stuck with the debt on their balance sheets means they can’t commit that capacity to new deals.

In the case of Qualtrics, the company imploded much faster than anyone had expected, stiffing the bank syndicate with massive paper losses.

Qualtrics’ acquisition of Press Ganey, an online survey and data analytics business, is expected to close as soon as this month. Banks are discussing a number of potential structural changes with PE sponsor Silver Lake to make the deal more palatable to investors, and plan to bring the debt offering to the market at a later date, arguably in hopes that the current market euphoria lasts long enough to find a new, naive batch of buyers who would be willing to take on the banks' balance sheet risk. Should that happen, it’s possible that some of the paper losses banks will have to book when funding the Qualtrics deal will be reversed once they bring the transaction back to market.

Qualtrics is the biggest deal to have run into trouble this year. In February, a Deutsche Bank-led group was unable to sell about $1.2 billion of loans supporting an acquisition by Thoma Bravo-backed Conga Corp., another software business. More recently, banks led by UBS financed the tie-up of two logistics firms after pausing early talks to offload a $765 million loan to investors.

And as more and more firms reveal just how badly they mismarked their books over the years in hopes of attracting retail investors with mark-to-model gains which have in retrospect turned out to be fictitious, some are taking proactive steps to restore confidence in the space. Apollo is one of them: the alternative asset manager plans to offer investors daily valuations for its private-credit funds by the end of September, a move that could help ease worries about the health of an opaque world of lending.

The private-market giant disclosed its plans Wednesday during a call with analysts after reporting its first-quarter results.

“This is the beginning of standardization across this marketplace,” Chief Executive Marc Rowan said on the call reported by the WSJ.

Since most private investment funds provide valuations of their assets to investors on a quarterly basis, the investing public has to wait at least three months to get an updated sense of how the portfolio is performing. The marks (or valuations) are used to calculate fees and give investors a sense of their unrealized returns. Unlike with stocks or public debt, investors don’t have real-time updates on how their investments are faring.

Rowan said the firm would observe other trades, comparable assets and market trends to produce a price for assets. Then again, if all Apollo does is merely spew out what some excel model thinks the loan book is worth daily instead of every three months, nothing at all will change unless the actual marking process is also fixed.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2026 - 06:55

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Half Of Vienna Secondary School Students Are Now Muslim As Cultural Tensions Grow In Classrooms

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix news,

Almost half of students in Vienna’s public middle schools are now Muslim, according to new figures from the Vienna Education Directorate, marking the latest sign of a rapid demographic and cultural shift inside the Austrian capital’s classrooms.

The data, cited by Heute, shows that Muslim students account for 49.4 percent of children in Vienna’s public middle schools — just short of an absolute majority. Across the city’s public compulsory schools more broadly, including elementary, middle, special needs, and polytechnic schools, Muslim students now make up 42 percent, up from 41.2 percent in the previous school year.

Catholic students, once the dominant group in the city, now account for just 16.7 percent of children in the public schools included in the figures. Orthodox students make up 14.2 percent, while children with no religious affiliation account for 23.2 percent.

The figures also reveal a stark divide between Vienna’s public and private schools.

In private schools, Catholics remain the largest group at 45.39 percent, followed by students with no religious affiliation at 25.1 percent and Orthodox students at 10.6 percent. Muslim children account for just 7.6 percent of students in Vienna’s private schools.

Taken together, across both public and private schools, Muslim students now form the largest single group at 38.3 percent. Even when Catholic and Orthodox children are combined, they reach only around 33.6 percent.

The numbers reveal how the city’s public schools are becoming the front line of a much broader cultural transformation. Earlier this year, Remix News reported that more than half of first-grade students in Vienna were listed as Muslim for the first time, while separate reporting from Profil described one secondary school where a Christian boy was allegedly the only Christian in his first-grade class.

At that school, 230 of the 390 students were Muslim, while 99 percent of the students had an immigration background. Only five children in the entire school were reported to have no migrant background. The Christian boy was reportedly mocked by classmates and called a “pig,” while teachers described classrooms marked by language barriers, social problems, and growing religious pressure.

The school was said to include students speaking 32 different languages, with Turkish, Arabic, and Chechen among the most common home languages. One teacher said that the problems were so extensive that every class could use its own social worker.

Concerns over integration have also spilled into the school canteen. In October 2025, the Austrian Farmers’ Association warned that pork dishes such as schnitzel, ham noodles, and roast pork had become rare or had disappeared entirely from some Viennese school menus. The association said some schools now offered only vegetarian meals or meat dishes without pork, citing a mother who said her daughter could choose only between vegetarian food and “pork-free” food.

“No one has to eat pork, but it must be offered. Pork is part of our culinary culture,” said Corinna Weisl, director of the Farmers’ Association.

The group’s president, Georg Strasser, said preserving choice was the key issue, arguing that “diversity on the plate means freedom of choice for everyone.”

For some parents, however, the question is whether public schools can still deliver basic education. In February, Remix News reported the case of a Vienna mother who withdrew her daughter from a public primary school in Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus after two years, saying only four children in the class spoke German fluently.

The mother, identified as Sabine G., said teachers spent much of the day translating instructions and managing basic communication rather than teaching. By the end of the first school year, she said her daughter still could not recite the alphabet, while several classmates had to repeat the grade.

She also said her daughter had begun refusing pork after being told it was “unclean” and had started rejecting certain summer clothing.

“I felt my child was being strongly influenced,” she said.

Teachers’ representatives have voiced similar concerns. In November last year, Thomas Krebs of the Christian Trade Unionists Group warned that some students and parents were increasingly unwilling to learn German or accept local values. He said female teachers had faced disrespect, insults, and even physical assaults from male students and parents, and claimed that religious rules were often being placed above Austria’s national curriculum.

“Our educational principles are often rejected. For example, religious content is prioritized over the content of the curriculum prescribed by Austrian law,” Krebs said. He called for mandatory German-language instruction and compulsory integration programs outside school.

The cultural tensions have also reached school leadership. In December, Christian Klar, headmaster of the Franz Jonas European School in Vienna-Floridsdorf, used his book “How Do We Save Our Children’s Future?” to warn of what he called a growing “clash of cultures and religions” in the classroom.

Klar cited the case of a gay teacher at a public elementary school whose sexuality prompted a Muslim father to demand his removal. The school refused to dismiss or transfer the teacher, but allowed the father’s son to change classes. Klar called the decision “de-escalating” but questioned what precedent it set.

“When is it time to say ‘Stop!’? I think we should have done that a long time ago!” he said.

The school figures reflect wider demographic changes across Vienna. In January, Statistics Austria data showed that 40.5 percent of babies born in the capital did not have Austrian citizenship, double the share recorded two decades earlier. In districts such as Favoriten, Ottakring, and Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, the figure has passed 50 percent.

At the same time, more than 44 percent of Vienna’s roughly 16,700 first-graders reportedly lacked sufficient German to follow lessons. In the 2018/2019 school year, the share was 30 percent. Officials have noted that around 60 percent of those children were born in Austria, intensifying concerns that poor German language skills are being passed on inside migrant communities rather than solved by birth and schooling in the country.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2026 - 06:30

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UK Jet Fuel Rationing Risks Emerge As Goldman Warns Of "Extreme Physical Tightness"

Brent crude futures briefly tumbled below $100 a barrel on Wednesday morning after an Axios report indicated the Trump administration and Tehran were working toward a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Still, any near-term peace deal would not immediately normalize the badly fractured global energy supply chains. Crude products markets remain physically tight, and the damage from months of disrupted tanker flows will take time to unwind. Some countries may already be entering a critical point, with jet fuel and diesel inventories at risk of being drawn down to dangerously low levels in the months ahead.

Goldman analysts, led by Michele Della Vigna, warned about diesel and jet fuel availability in Europe ahead of the summer months, noting that "extreme physical tightness in summer/early autumn" is a scenario they are forecasting.

"We believe jet fuel prices in Europe will need to remain elevated to redirect cargoes from other regions, covering 50% of the shortfall in disrupted volumes from the Middle East through Hormuz and from Asian exporters no longer exporting to Europe," Della Vigna told clients.

Della Vigna, the head of EMEA natural resources research at Goldman, pointed out that "some countries (the UK in particular) could end up with extremely low inventories, and it's possible that rationing measures would be put in place to slow inventory draw."

Readers have been well informed about the looming jet fuel crisis set to hit Europe this summer (read here & here & here & here), as well as JPMorgan's March take on how the energy crisis is spreading across regions (read here).

As we detailed on Tuesday, President Trump's push to reopen the Hormuz chokepoint at the start of the week likely reflects the beginning of a one-month countdown to accelerated energy chaos if the critical waterway is not reopened. The risk is no longer confined to crude markets. Prolonged disruption through Hormuz is spreading into refined-product supply chains, with Europe's jet fuel and diesel inventories facing the brunt of physical tightness heading into summer and early autumn.

Della Vigna estimated that Europe faces a gross jet fuel loss of about 500,000 barrels a day from Gulf-area exporters and Asian tankers transiting Hormuz, and assumes that half of that shortfall can be offset by redirected U.S. and West African energy flows, leaving a net loss of approximately 250,000 barrels a day. For diesel, he assumes the full 220,000 barrels-a-day loss is absorbed by European stocks.

Exhibit 3: We estimate a gross jet fuel loss of c.500 kb/d from Middle East Gulf and Asian exporters and we show the sensitivity to different % of exports subtitutions coming from other regions

He singled out the UK as having the highest-risk jet fuel market because it is Europe's largest net importer of jet fuel, at about 195,000 barrels a day, and lacks proper reserves. He warned that UK commercial stocks could fall below 10 days of cover by midsummer, raising the risk of rationing, which in turn would impact commercial flights.

Della Vigna continued:

Under our commodities teams' base case (Gulf normalization in June), we see European jet fuel inventories - on commercial stocks alone, excluding government emergency reserves - falling to the IEA's critical 23-day shortage threshold by end-May and breaching it in June, slightly more aggressive than the IEA's own assessment as we account for the disruption of Asian-origin cargoes transiting the Strait.

Under an adverse scenario (normalization delayed to July), stocks could be depleted entirely by year-end (Exhibit 1). Diesel faces a more gradual erosion given lower ME import dependence.

At the country level, the UK appears most at risk of rationing (Exhibit 4), with commercial stocks falling below 10 days of cover by mid-summer given high starting import dependence and no government reserves. Net exporters such as the Netherlands and Greece are more insulated but would still be affected through higher prices.

Exhibit 1: Jet Fuel is the tightest oil product market

Exhibit 4: For jet fuel, the UK is most at risk with low inventories and high reliance on imports

To offset losses, Europe has drawn in more jet fuel and barrels from Nigeria's Dangote refinery, but Della Vigna said prices will need to remain elevated to redirect even more tankers to the energy-stricken continent.

Bloomberg's Javier Blas notes, "US refiners are going gangbusters trying to solve the global jet-fuel shortage (and to cash in record high margins)." 

CHART OF THE DAY: US refiners are going gangbusters trying to solve the global jet-fuel shortage (and to cash in record high margins).

The chart shows seasonal jet-fuel output from 2000-to-date (2026 is top line in blue). The bottom outliers are 2020 and 2021 during Covid. pic.twitter.com/fllcX6EM5y

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) May 6, 2026

On the topic of airlines, he said carriers on the continent have already slashed summer capacity by low single digits, while Middle East schedules have been reduced by high double digits through late June.

Exhibit 8: Low single-digit capacity cuts on EU short-haul post conflict

Exhibit 9: Similar cuts on Transatlantic capacity

It's clear Europe has a jet fuel problem. And this won't be solved by Brussels' weird obsession with 'green' energy. 

Professional subscribers can read the full "Stress testing European jet fuel and diesel availability this summer" at our Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2026 - 05:45