The US president announced tariffs for almost every country - including 10% rates on imports from the UK - on Wednesday evening, sending financial markets reeling.

While the UK's FTSE 100 closed down 1.55% and the continent's STOXX Europe 600 index was down 2.67% as of 5.30pm, it was American traders who were hit the most.

Trump tariffs latest: US stock markets tumble

All three of the US's major markets opened to sharp losses on Thursday morning.

By 8.30pm UK time (3.30pm EST), The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3.7%, the S&P 500 opened with a drop of 4.4%, and the Nasdaq composite was down 5.6%.

Compared to their values when Donald Trump was inaugurated, the three markets were down around 5.6%, 8.7% and 14.4%, respectively, according to LSEG.

Worst one-day losses since COVID

As Wall Street trading ended at 9pm in the UK, two indexes had suffered their worst one-day losses since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The S&P 500 fell 4.85%, the Nasdaq dropped 6%, and the Dow Jones fell 4%.

It marks Nasdaq's biggest daily percentage drop since March 2020 at the start of COVID, and the largest drop for the Dow Jones since June 2020.

'Trust in President Trump'

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN earlier in the day that Mr Trump was "doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term".

"To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump," she told the broadcaster, adding: "This is indeed a national emergency... and it's about time we have a president who actually does something about it."

Later, the US president told reporters as he left the White House that "I think it's going very well," adding: "The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom."

He later said on Air Force One that the UK is "happy" with its tariff - the lowest possible levy of 10% - and added he would be open to negotiations if other countries "offer something phenomenal".

Economist warns of 'spiral of doom'

The turbulence in the markets from Mr Trump's tariffs "just left everybody in shock", Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions in Boston, told Reuters.

He added that the economy could go into recession as a result, saying that "a lot of the pain, will probably most acutely be felt in the US and that certainly would weigh on broader global growth as well".

Meanwhile, chief investment officer at St James's Place Justin Onuekwusi said that international retaliation is likely, even as "it's clear countries will think about how to retaliate in a politically astute way".

He warned: "Significant retaliation could lead to a tariff 'spiral of doom' that could be the growth shock that drags us into recession."

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It comes as the UK government published a long list of US products that could be subject to reciprocal tariffs - including golf clubs and golf balls.

Running to more than 400 pages, the list is part of a four-week-long consultation with British businesses and suggests whiskey, jeans, livestock, and chemical components.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday that the US president had launched a "new era" for global trade and that the UK will respond with "cool and calm heads".

It also comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a 25% tariff on all American-imported vehicles that are not compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

He added: "The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. This is a tragedy."

The explanation given by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to the US outlet Axios was that existing sanctions "preclude any meaningful trade" with Russia.

But the numbers don't quite back that up.

It's certainly true that US-Russia trade isn't what it was. The war in Ukraine has seen it plummet from $35bn (£26.6bn) in 2021 to $3.5bn (£2.6bn) in 2024.

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But last year's figure was still higher than Washington's trade volume with Kyiv ($2.9bn, £2.2bn), and that didn't stop Ukraine from being slapped with 10% levies.

It's also considerably more than what the US traded with the likes of Brunei ($366m, £278m) and Mauritius ($282.5m, £214.9m) - another two nations which didn't escape the punitive measures.

What's more, from Donald Trump's point of view, the vast majority of US-Russia trade is flowing in the wrong direction, i.e. into America. Of that, $3.5bn (£2.6bn) in 2024, $3bn (£2.2bn) were Russian imports, like fertiliser and aluminium, giving a deficit that's much worse (proportionally speaking) than several of those on the naughty list.

So what's behind Russia's exemption?

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Many say it smacks of further favouritism towards the Kremlin.

"I hope the American people get an explanation for this. I find it outrageous," Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, wrote on X.

Donald Trump has been lambasted by critics for not being tough enough on Vladimir Putin as he pushes for a peace deal in Ukraine.

He did recently threaten to impose secondary sanctions on Russian oil if Moscow blocked a ceasefire, but this latest softball makes those threats sound increasingly hollow.

His tariff announcement also coincided with a visit to Washington by Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who is the highest-ranking Russian official to travel to the US on state business since Moscow's invasion.

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The former Goldman Sachs banker, who is head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, is meeting US officials, including Steve Witkoff. Was the timing of his trip a coincidence? Or a reminder to Team Trump of what's at stake?

Moscow has made it abundantly clear to Washington that there are lucrative deals to be done should relations continue to thaw. It's not hard to see how new levies could derail that.

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There is an alternative view - that it's all part of Donald Trump's famous negotiating strategy. Hold something back to use with greater effect down the line.

"One of the reasons why Russia is not on Trump's tariff list yesterday is that tariffs should be left as a tool for forcing Russia to peace," Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote on Telegram.

"If they are introduced now, what will they threaten in a week?"

Well, there's an answer to that - more sanctions.

For now, though, it seems the US is content to cosy up to the Kremlin rather than coerce it. The question is, who is calling the shots?

Five years after becoming Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer has been on a remarkable journey. He turned left to win the party leadership and turned right to win a general election.

It has been five years of dramatic highs and lows: the elation of winning a landslide general election victory after the gloom of contemplating quitting following a by-election humiliation.

As opposition leader, Sir Keir purged the Labour left, including banishing his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn to the political wilderness, and flushed out the scourge of antisemitism.

As prime minister, within weeks of entering Number 10 he was confronted with riots on Britain's streets. And throughout his premiership he has had to play a leading role internationally in a volatile and war-torn world.

At home, his government's economic policies have been condemned by political opponents and some of his own MPs as a return to austerity. Labour's opinion poll ratings have nose-dived.

Abroad, as well as the challenge of defending Ukraine against the brutality of Russia's Vladimir Putin, the so-called "special relationship" with the United States has been tested to the limit by the erratic Donald Trump.

Five-year Keir was elected Labour leader on 4 April 2020, just weeks after prime minister Boris Johnson ordered a COVID lockdown that was ultimately to bring about his demise.

Sir Keir won 56% of the vote, defeating the Corbyn-backed left-wing candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy from Labour's soft left.

To win the backing of left-wing Labour activists, he backed a wealth tax on the top 5% of earners, abolishing university tuition fees, nationalising water and energy and restoring freedom of movement between the UK and EU countries. Whatever happened to those promises?

There was also a showbiz connection. When he was running for the leadership, a rumour persisted that he was the inspiration for Mark Darcy, the dashing human rights lawyer played by Colin Firth in the Bridget Jones movies.

But, alas for Sir Keir and his spin doctors, who did nothing to dispel the myth, several months after he became leader the Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding laid the rumour to rest - though she conceded they were very similar.

Sir Keir had much bigger battles to fight, however. From day one as leader, he condemned antisemitism as "a stain on our party". Within weeks he sacked his rival Ms Long-Bailey from his shadow cabinet in a dispute over antisemitism.

But in his ruthless determination to show the party had changed under his leadership, he had a bigger target: his predecessor Mr Corbyn, still the darling of left-wing Labour activists.

After the former leader claimed the scale of antisemitism in the Labour party had been "dramatically overstated for political reasons", Sir Keir struck, suspending him for refusing to retract his comments and then finally expelling him a month before last year's general election.

But while he was winning that battle, Sir Keir's first year did not go well at the ballot box. In 2021, in the first by-election after Boris Johnson's 80-seat victory in the 2019 general election, Labour lost the previously safe seat of Hartlepool to the Conservatives. The swing against Labour was a huge 16%.

It was his lowest low point of the last five years. Stunned by the Hartlepool defeat, Sir Keir panicked, sacking his chief whip Nick Brown and attempting to demote his deputy, Angela Rayner, stripping her of her posts as party chair and campaign coordinator.

But it backfired as she fought back and emerged stronger than ever. She gained the titles of shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and shadow secretary of state for work. Four years later, her Employment Rights Bill is in the House of Lords and on course to become law.

Last year, in a Sky News interview with political editor Beth Rigby, Sir Keir admitted he had considered quitting. "I did, because I didn't feel that I should be bigger than the party and that if I couldn't bring about the change, perhaps there should be a change," he said.

But it wasn't just the result in Hartlepool that was damaging. In 2022, in a scandal the Conservatives called "beergate", he and Ms Rayner were accused of breaching lockdown rules by eating curry and drinking beer in Durham while campaigning in the by-election.

He was cleared, but at the height of the Tory onslaught he said he would resign if he was issued with a fixed penalty notice. It was another low point. But in 2022 it was Mr Johnson who was forced to quit over breaking COVID rules, not Sir Keir.

A top civil servant, Sue Gray, produced a damning and ultimately fatal "partygate" report, accusing Mr Johnson of lying to parliament, Liz Truss came and went - her brief 49-day tenure likened to the life of a lettuce - and Rishi Sunak became the Tories' fifth prime minister in six years.

Sir Keir was on his way. But it was his turn to stun his opponents in 2023 when he announced that Sue Gray was to become his chief of staff, in a move the Tories claimed was treachery and proof that she had been biased against Mr Johnson.

But though she lasted longer than "lettuce" Liz Truss, Sue Gray didn't survive for long. Within months of Labour's 2024 election victory she was out, the victim of a vicious power struggle with a Number 10 "boys' club" led by Starmer's campaign chief Morgan McSweeney, who helped himself to her job as chief of staff.

On the back of several by-election successes and sweeping local government gains, when Mr Sunak shocked his own party on 22 May by announcing a 4 July general election, Labour entered the campaign as overwhelming favourites to win a big majority.

A turning point in the campaign came on 2 June when Nigel Farage announced a comeback as Reform UK leader and declared that he would, after months of keeping his opponents guessing, be a candidate after all.

As a result, Reform UK won 4.1m votes, piling up votes in the tens of thousands in hundreds of seats, mostly at the expense of the Conservatives, and handing a landslide to Sir Keir: 411 Labour MPs and a majority of 172.

His triumph came close to rivalling Tony Blair's landslides of 1997 and 2001 with one crucial difference: Labour polled just 34% of the vote, the lowest share for a party winning a majority.

During the campaign, Sir Keir faced tough scrutiny not just about his pledges not to increase income tax, VAT or national insurance, but also about his character and personality.

In "The Battle for Number 10" on Sky News, a 90-minute event in Grimsby featuring Sir Keir and Mr Sunak, the Labour leader froze when a member of the audience told him he seemed like a "political robot".

He also squirmed when another audience member challenged him on why he now condemned Mr Corbyn when five years earlier he told voters he would make a great prime minister.

Yet despite those difficult moments, the event was more bruising for Mr Sunak than Sir Keir and a YouGov poll declared a decisive victory for the Labour leader, by 64% to 36%

But there was to be no honeymoon period for Sir Keir after Labour's landslide. Within days of his election victory, riots following the killing of three young girls at a dance class in Southport presented the new prime minister with a law and order crisis.

His background as Director of Public Prosecutions served him well, however, and he showed a steely determination in ensuring rioters were dealt with swiftly and severely by the courts, though critics hit out at inconsistencies in sentencing and branded him "Two-tier Keir".

Another crisis was self-inflicted. Many in his own party were shocked by the staggering amount of freebies, gifts and hospitality he and his wife accepted since he became Labour leader, many paid for by a millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. According to a Sky News investigation, their total worth was more than £100,000.

They included expensive clothes for the PM and his wife, luxury designer spectacles for Sir Keir, hospitality at his beloved Arsenal FC, free accommodation in a flat owned by Lord Alli and - perhaps the most contentious - freebie tickets to a Taylor Swift concert at Wembley Stadium, all worth eye-watering amounts.

To make matters worse, the "freebie-gate" scandal engulfed the PM at a time when his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners, the first of a series of controversial moves by the woman derided as "Rachel from Accounts" by political opponents that have badly damaged Sir Keir's government in its first nine months.

The two-child benefit cap, national insurance rises in her October budget, benefit cuts last month and no compensation for the so-called Waspi women have all infuriated many Labour MPs and put Sir Keir's loyalty to his chancellor under strain.

He's standing by her for now. "I have full confidence in the chancellor," he declared, tetchily, when challenged by a Tory MP at PMQs just minutes before her spring statement last week.

But for how long? Most prime ministers eventually fall out with their chancellor: Margaret Thatcher with Sir Geoffrey Howe and then Nigel Lawson in the 1980s and later Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Be warned, Rachel!

On foreign policy, the PM's record is better. His baptism on the world stage, at a NATO summit in Washington in his first week as PM, helped him swiftly establish a reputation as a safe pair of hands and reliable ally on foreign policy.

Though the UK is no longer in the EU, Sir Keir has forged strong alliances with European leaders - particularly France's President Macron - as he attempts to build a "coalition of the willing" to defend Ukraine. And he has won the trust of Ukraine's President Zelenskyy.

And on his biggest foreign policy challenge, establishing good relations with the maverick President Trump, the verdict - even after the president's tariffs bombshell - is so far, so good.

His Trump Tower dinner last September went well, his White House stunt with an envelope containing King Charles' state visit invitation was a diplomatic masterstroke and the 10% tariffs slapped on the UK could have been a lot worse.

Now comes the really hard part for Five-Year Keir: securing a trade deal with the US, bringing peace to Ukraine without a sell-out or concessions to Vladimir Putin, smashing the gangs smuggling illegal migrants, tackling welfare reform and - the biggest challenge - finding that elusive economic growth at home while the Trump tariffs make autumn tax rises look almost inevitable.

No pressure, then prime minister. If the lows of Sir Keir's first five years as Labour leader took the shine off the highs, the next five years - to the next election and perhaps beyond - look even more challenging.

And the journey from Doughty Street to Downing Street is now just a distant memory.

The 38-year-old, who lived in Milton Keynes, was given first aid by officers but died at the scene after the incident on Tuesday.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has appealed for witnesses and confirmed its investigators collected a knife and other evidence from outside Milton Keynes railway station.

The police watchdog said: "No other weapons were recovered from the scene. The police cordon at the scene was lifted last night (2 April).

"We were advised by [Thames Valley Police] that firearms officers were sent to the station shortly before 1pm following a 999 call reporting that there was a man with a gun at the scene.

"We have viewed police officers' body-worn video footage and a substantial amount of CCTV footage and established that at around 1.04pm the man was just outside the railway station main entrance with a knife in his hand, and ran towards the officers.

"Shortly afterwards the man was shot at close range. We have established that a single shot was fired by one officer."

Mr Joyce's next of kin has been informed and he was formally identified at a post-mortem examination on Thursday morning (3 April).

Provisional cause of death is said to be a single gunshot wound to the abdomen.

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IOPC: Community will want answers

IOPC director Derrick Campbell said: "Our role is to independently investigate all of the circumstances surrounding this incident including the actions and decisions taken by the police.

"We appreciate that this incident outside a busy train station will understandably cause concern. We know the community will want answers quickly and our investigators are working hard to establish the facts as we piece together what happened and how.

"We have obtained details of some members of the public who witnessed the incident who we will be contacting, however we know there were many people near the station around the time of the shooting and we want to hear from anyone who may have seen the incident or has footage of it."

'Officers should be praised'

Matthew Barber, police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, said he was "confident that the officers should be praised for their actions".

On Tuesday, local residents told the PA news agency they saw a large number of police at the scene and one person "lying on the floor and they were trying to resuscitate him".

Another woman added that they heard a "bang" and "quite a lot of commotion outside" but did not realise what had happened until she saw a man being given CPR.

Sky News has seen a document from a source close to the trustees which shows a breakdown of the £427,497 spent on consultants between June 2023 and January 2025 on work related to media, website and fundraising advice.

It comes as the Charity Commission said it had opened a "regulatory compliance case" to assess concerns raised about Sentebale.

The expenses were said to have been authorised by the charity's chair, Dr Sophie Chandauka.

A spokesperson for Sentebale, who confirmed the figure spent on consultants was "roughly accurate", told Sky News: "Board members for many non-profits are intended to be individuals with skills relevant to the work, in addition to being well-connected persons with the ability to create opportunities, attract contacts and further resources for the benefit of the charity.

"To this effect, Dr Chandauka was specifically brought in because of her deep and broad networks in Africa, the UK and US, and commercial experience and resources that could benefit Sentebale.

"Not all introductions that were made were taken up, and those that were, were all vetted appropriately via the CEO at the time, and COO, and their terms of engagement and scope of work was also defined by the CEO and COO in consultations with country directors and the chair as necessary.

"The board met frequently where resource requirements and budgets were discussed. Indeed, in the case of the senior advisers, the board participated in focus groups and other activities early on in the transformation journey and appeared to be hugely appreciative of their expertise and contributions. It is therefore rather surprising to hear the opposite.

"Dr Chandauka volunteers in excess of 20 hours per week for Sentebale, pro bono, and her family was the third largest donor to the organisation in the last year."

LEBEC, a strategy and financial innovation firm, was paid the most with a bill of £185,000.

Also on the list of payments is Iain Rawlinson, who was appointed as a new trustee last week and appeared on Sky News alongside Dr Chandauka.

Mr Rawlinson, who has been involved in philanthropic and charity work since the 1980s and has extensive experience in southern Africa, was paid £24,000 and is said to be owed £66,000, but Sky News understands no invoice has been submitted for that amount in the current circumstances.

Global Philanthropic, the company of which Mr Rawlinson was director and chair, received £21,000.

Sources close to the former trustees have told Sky News of their huge concerns about the thousands of pounds spent on consultancy work.

Sky News has been told that through the consultation work a financial pledge was made that should have covered the cost of all of the fees, some of that has been paid.

On the latest published figures to August 2023, Sentebale's income was only £3.4m.

Experts say that spending between 10% and 15% on a single item would undoubtedly require express trustee approval.

When asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky News on Sunday about whether she had hired expensive consultants without board approval, Dr Chandauka replied: "Well, that's just not true. Iain is a witness."

She said she had reported the trustees to the Charity Commission and that a UK court had issued an injunction to stop them from removing her.

Geoff Hand, a charity governance and dispute resolution expert, told Sky News: "I doubt the Charity Commission would major on the amount paid to consultants as such; they would be on the lookout for any conflicts of interest - for example, any personal connections between Sophia Chandauka and any of her chosen consultants.

"They would want to know that decisions to engage consultants were properly made by the right people [the trustees] and that the trustees took all relevant factors into consideration in making that decision."

Last week, it emerged that the founders of Sentebale, Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, had taken what they called the "heartbreaking" decision to step down in solidarity with the trustees, who had found the situation between them and Dr Chandauka "untenable".

During her interview on Sunday, she accused Prince Harry of "harassment and bullying at scale", but a source close to the charity's trustees described her allegations as "categorically false" and "completely baseless".

Sky News approached Sentebale about the work of consultants.

Specifically addressing its work with LEBEC, it told us: "In November 2023, Sentebale engaged LEBEC and its team of six consultants to provide tools and strategic guidance on how to better prepare for entry into the US marketplace and build credibility.

"Over the course of a 12-month engagement, LEBEC successfully delivered against every deliverable, including facilitating 65 key connections with potential strategic partners, connectors, advisory board members, and funders.

"This audience included high-net-worth individuals, family offices, corporations, foundations, and partner non-profits".

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Sky News understands that Global Philanthropic was hired to do a "strategy envisioning" project in Autumn 2023 which Iain Rawlinson led given his knowledge of southern Africa. Iain was then hired from April 2024 onwards to advise Sentebale on transformation strategy and governance, his main consulting practices. The scope of work and contract was agreed with the then CEO Richard Miller.

Also on the list of payments are £41,451 for Sarah Essien, who has worked with Dr Chandauka at Morgan Stanley and biotechnology company Nandi Life Sciences.

Dawn Whyte, who worked at the Black British Business Awards - founded by Dr Chandauka - was said to be paid £26,110.

MM Media Consultant received £46,124, and an anonymous website consultant was paid £12,114.

Ms Whyte told us she did not want to comment. Ms Essien did not respond to emails, messages left or phone calls made.

There have also been allegations from both sides about who was responsible for the end of the relationship with a significant sponsor, ISPS Handa. When we approached ISPS for clarity, they said they had "no comment".