Times Radio Evening Briefing Friday 27 March 2026

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands, so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. This is the Times Radio News Evening Briefing on Friday the 27th of March. A month into the Iranian war, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US expects the war to end in weeks, not months.

0:46But the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Israel's Defence Minister have both warned that attacks on Iran will continue to escalate. The Times foreign correspondent Richard Spencer is in Tel Aviv. He told us there are a number of options right now. We're at a proverbial fork in the road. We've seen the heavy bombing, but it hasn't caused the regime to collapse and it hasn't caused its surrender, it can still control the Strait of Hormuz. So either an escalation or there has to be an off-ramp, in which case the shadow talks that are happening at the moment, you need more than a couple of days for that to happen.

1:21So 10 days is a starting point. The Times has been told that NATO could be abandoned by the US, with sources suggesting that America could make a deal with Russia. Senior European officials and a new report from MPs published today both warned Europe should be in a position to fight alone in a worst-case scenario. Lord Robothan fought in the Gulf War and was a Conservative MP for 20 years, serving on the Defence Select Committee and becoming a Defence Minister. He told Times Radio he fears for the future of the UK. I argued against the last government's cuts in defence, and they've got only worse since June 2024.

1:58It's been embarrassing, actually. The government doesn't do anything for defence. It talks about it, but it doesn't do anything about it. and I worry about the future of this country. Some petrol pumps are experiencing temporary shortages due to supply chain issues linked to the war. The average price of unleaded petrol has risen by more than 14p a litre in the last month. Meanwhile, ministers have warned that diesel supply shortages will begin to hit Britain from as early as the middle of next month. Oliver Wright is the Times' policy editor. The two fuels that are vulnerable is diesel and jet fuel and largely that's because we don't produce enough of it ourselves.

2:35The UK is largely self-sufficient in petrol. We actually export more than we produce. But the same isn't true of diesel. Within a few weeks, we're going to be about between 10 % and 20 % down on the normal supplies of diesel, and that means some level of shortages. Peter Mandelson is to be asked by the Cabinet Office to hand over messages from his personal phone. It's part of the investigation into his appointment as US ambassador. The move comes after the Times reported he had not been asked to supply personal messages, despite using the phone for the first few weeks in the role. The Times' chief political commentator Patrick Maguire says the revelations could be damaging for the government.

3:15It's going to dominate a week or two of the local election campaign. Clearly not great for the Labour Party, but the bigger impact, I think, is likely to be internal. Everyone has heard the Peter Manesson story already. The public have made up their minds. their trust in politics is already low. The sort of bigger problem, I think, is that the airing of the Labour Party's dirty laundry at a time where the atmosphere is broadly, you know, at best fatalistic and weary, and at worst one of fear and loathing. You can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and also listen live to Times Radio online.

3:47This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk.

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