Afternoon.

It’s Friday 4th September: Argentina is turning up the pressure over the Falklands, Britain could be better prepared for a serious food-supply shock, and the Army is cutting back some training because it’s short of cash.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1998, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? first aired on British television, with Chris Tarrant asking contestants increasingly expensive questions and an entire country discovering the phrase “final answer”.

Argentina’s president Javier Milei has threatened tougher sanctions against companies involved in oil and gas drilling around the Falkland Islands, as the long-running dispute over who should control the islands takes another turn.

The Falklands are a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, around 300 miles from Argentina. Argentina calls them the Malvinas and claims sovereignty over them, while the UK says their future should be decided by the islanders themselves. In a 2013 referendum, 99.8% of those who voted chose to remain a British territory.

The latest row is partly about oil. Companies are preparing to develop the Sea Lion oilfield north of the islands, which Milei says is an illegal use of Argentine resources. He now plans to strengthen sanctions against businesses involved and increase Argentina’s military capabilities in the south of the country.

The US has long recognised British administration of the Falklands, while officially remaining neutral over whether Britain or Argentina has sovereignty. But Donald Trump said this week that he is reviewing the US position on the islands. Milei has seized on the comments as evidence that international attitudes may be shifting Argentina’s way. The UK government says its commitment to the Falklands remains “unshakeable”.

None of this means another Falklands War is around the corner. Milei has previously said Argentina should pursue its claim diplomatically. But sanctions, oil and the US suddenly sounding less predictable have given a very old dispute some genuinely new ingredients.

The UK has a pretty resilient food system. The problem is that the government hasn’t properly worked out how well it would cope if something went really wrong. That’s the conclusion from the National Audit Office (NAO), the independent body that checks whether government is spending and operating effectively.

Britain’s food supply has handled some sizeable disruptions in recent years, including Covid and the war in Ukraine. But the risks are growing, from extreme weather and cyberattacks to disease and major power cuts, and the NAO says the government hasn’t done enough to prepare businesses, local authorities and households for a truly severe event.

Part of the issue is that food works differently from something like the electricity grid. The government doesn’t run the supermarkets, farms, warehouses and delivery networks that keep everything moving. Most of the system is private, so emergency planning requires an awful lot of people to know what everyone else is doing.

That hasn’t always happened. Businesses had limited involvement in developing one government emergency plan, while some local emergency groups told the NAO they weren’t clear what would be expected of them during a major food disruption.

This isn’t a warning that supermarket shelves are about to empty. The NAO actually says the system has proved resilient so far. Its point is that the government shouldn’t wait for a genuinely catastrophic event to discover whether its plans work.

The British Army has stopped some larger training exercises because it doesn’t have enough money in this year’s budget to run them all. The reported cuts include some exercises involving 90 or more soldiers, as well as live-fire training with Challenger 2 tanks and Apache helicopters. 

This isn’t because the Army suddenly considers practising optional. Fuel and ammunition have become more expensive, while military budgets are set years in advance. The government has announced £2bn to improve Army training over the next 15 years, but the current problem is much more immediate: having enough day-to-day money to actually run exercises now.

The Army says training is continuing and that it is prioritising activity that contributes most directly to “readiness, deployability and operational effectiveness”. Still, there’s an obvious awkwardness in telling the country its armed forces need to be increasingly ready for conflict while cancelling some of the practice.

Two senior Reform UK figures have stepped down while the party investigates allegations over political donations. Channel 4 News alleges that a US company paid £32,500 for three polls commissioned for Reform, which could potentially breach rules restricting overseas political donations. Rival parties have reported the allegations to police.

Reform says it has broken no laws and has launched its own investigation. Policy chief James Orr and Dan Jukes, a close aide to Nigel Farage, have stepped down from their roles while that takes place.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says people charged with serious knife and firearms offences are increasingly being released on bail because of pressure on the justice system. Rowley described himself as “flabbergasted” by the trend and blamed what he called an overloaded system.

One important distinction: being charged does not mean somebody has been found guilty, and decisions about whether defendants are remanded in custody are made by courts. Rowley’s argument is that the shortage of capacity is affecting those decisions.

UK new-car registrations rose 13.7% in August compared with last year, with electric cars accounting for almost three in every ten new registrations. Battery-electric registrations were up 27.7%, while petrol was the only major type to fall.

There is a small number-plate-shaped caveat. August is normally a quiet month because plenty of buyers wait for September’s new registration plate, so relatively small changes can produce unusually large percentages. September will give a much better idea of how healthy the market really is.

The government has changed immigration rules to prepare for the UK’s return to Erasmus+, the EU programme that lets students and young people study, train and gain work experience abroad. The UK left Erasmus after Brexit but is rejoining from 2027. The new rules will allow participants to do things including short-term study at state schools, work placements, training and job shadowing in the UK.

In other words, the UK-EU reunion announced last year has now reached its natural next stage: immigration paperwork.

Aardman is celebrating its 50th birthday by opening up an auction of 234 pieces from its animation history. That means actual models, props and other bits from the Bristol studio behind Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run and Morph are going under the hammer, with bidding running until 24 September.

Which does raise the possibility that somebody will shortly have to explain why a small penguin was a perfectly sensible use of the household savings.

Have a great weekend.

See you Monday.