Overview

• Thirty-year UK gilt yields climbed to roughly 5.68%–5.72%, the highest since 1998, extending a long-end bond sell-off.
• Sterling fell about 1% against the dollar toward $1.34 and weakened versus the euro, while gold hit a record near $3,508 an ounce as risk appetite faded.
• Investors linked the latest move to Keir Starmer’s shake-up in No 10, including shifting Darren Jones and appointing Minouche Shafik, interpreting possible shifts in fiscal approach.
• The surge tightens Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s room for the Autumn Budget, with forecasters citing a shortfall variously near £20–25bn, ~£35bn or up to about £50bn under fiscal rules that require debt to be falling in five years.
• Analysts stressed global and technical drivers—rising long-dated yields in the US and Europe, reduced pension demand, heavy gilt supply and Bank of England quantitative tightening—while 10-year gilt yields also rose and a DMO sale cleared at the highest yield since 2008.