Business Britain: BP's War Windfall, EE Bills the Widow
BP's profits double on Iran war oil prices while EE chases a widow for £1,007. UK business shows its two faces as retailers slash prices to lure shoppers.
The numbers tell a story Britain would rather not hear. BP just posted $3.2bn in quarterly profits — more than double last year — courtesy of an oil spike powered by war in the Middle East. The same morning, a widow opened her late husband's post and discovered EE wanted £1,007 to release him from a broadband contract. Two transactions, same economy.
Why is BP printing money again?
According to The Guardian, BP's underlying first-quarter profits hit $3.2bn (£2.4bn), up more than 130% from $1.38bn a year earlier. The company beat City forecasts of $2.67bn and hailed the "exceptional" contribution of its oil trading desk. The Financial Times put it more bluntly: BP's quarterly profit is at its highest level since 2023, with Brent crude touching $110 a barrel on Iran-talks uncertainty.
Translation: war pays. Not for the soldiers, not for the civilians, not for the British family staring at their next gas bill. For shareholders.
The pattern is no longer surprising. Russia invades Ukraine in 2022 — fossil fuel majors post record profits. Instability flares in the Middle East — same script. Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth told The Guardian that "ordinary people pay the price when soaring energy prices threaten to plunge the UK into an even deeper cost of living crisis." The mechanism is well documented. The political response stays the same: a windfall tax that dampens the windfall, a round of speeches, and back to business.
The case for "cheap, clean, homegrown renewables" Childs makes is no longer an ideological argument. It is a question of energy sovereignty. Each barrel of imported crude is, mathematically, a tax paid to whoever happens to be at war.
What does the EE letter say about UK consumer rights?
If BP shows what the corporate sector extracts when the world wobbles, the EE story shows what it extracts in peacetime. The Guardian's consumer column reported the case of a widow whose husband died suddenly. He had been paying £171 a month for an EE broadband and TV bundle. Her first calls produced an offer of £44.99. Her postbox produced something else: two letters, sent a day apart, both addressed to her late husband. The first demanded £1,007 to terminate. The second, £520. Both reassured him he could "take the contract with him when he moved house."
A telecoms company that cannot read a death notification is one thing. A telecoms company that turns the death of a customer into a billing opportunity is another. The episode lays bare a structural feature of the UK's bundled consumer market: prices renewed on anniversaries the customer never negotiated, exit fees that exceed the cost of the device, and customer-service scripts written for everything except grief.
Ofcom has tightened bereavement rules over recent years. Cases like this suggest enforcement, not policy, is the missing variable.
Why are UK retailers discounting so heavily?
Underneath the war profits and the consumer horror stories sits the third number from Tuesday — the one nobody is celebrating. Shop price inflation rose by just 1% year-on-year in April, down from 1.2% in March, according to the British Retail Consortium. The reason, the BRC said, is "heavy discounting" by retailers trying to entice shoppers back amid weakening consumer confidence.
Slowing inflation usually counts as good news. This is not that kind. Retailers do not cut prices because life is good; they cut prices because tills are quiet. The BRC reading aligns with the Pret index discussed earlier this week — British consumers are tightening, and the high street is bidding for what is left of their wallet.
The macro picture, then: oil up, retail down, telecoms billing the bereaved. The cost-of-living crisis policymakers declared "fading" last autumn has done what crises tend to do — it has mutated rather than ended.
The takeaway
Three stories, one economy. BP's $3.2bn windfall is a transfer from drivers and bill-payers to shareholders, mediated by a Middle East crisis nobody in Britain voted for. EE's debt letter is a transfer from a grieving family to a FTSE 100 telecom, mediated by contract law nobody reads at signature. UK retailers' discounts are a sign that consumers, squeezed from both ends, have started saying no.
The numbers are not abstract. They are the same household budget seen from three different desks.
