Gustavo de Arístegui,
July 21, 2026
I. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
There are days when current events, capricious as they are, place two seemingly disparate news stories on the same table, yet they are linked by a common thread that the analyst has a duty to unravel. Today is one of those days. In London, Andy Burnham crossed the threshold of 10 Downing Street without having been elected; in the southern reaches of the Red Sea, the Houthis announced the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, thereby opening a second maritime front in the war between the United States and the oligarchic-jihadist regime of Tehran. Two scenarios, two latitudes, one common denominator: the price of energy and the West’s chronic inability to take its own security seriously. We will focus on these two issues, and we will do so without holding back, because analysis that pretends to be objective is not analysis, but a notary’s report.
II. MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE LAST 24 HOURS
1. Andy Burnham, Prime Minister without ballot boxes
Facts
Last Monday, July 20, Andy Burnham—who served for nearly a decade as mayor of Greater Manchester and was jokingly nicknamed “King of the North”—became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the seventh in just over ten years. He succeeds Sir Keir Starmer, who resigned as Labour leader in June despite the overwhelming majority won only two years earlier. There was no general election: in the British parliamentary system, simply winning the leadership contest within the ruling party is enough to inherit power, without a vote of confidence or direct referendum. King Charles III entrusted him with forming a government at Buckingham Palace, a mere constitutional formality. Rachel Reeves left the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and the markets reacted swiftly: the yield on the 10-year British gilt climbed to around 5.04%, the 30-year gilt reached a two-month high of 5.75%, and the pound weakened, all following the new prime minister’s suggestion of employing “any flexibility within the fiscal rules.” The appointment of the new chancellor—the latest reports point to John Healey, who previously resigned due to insufficient defense spending—mattered less to traders than the underlying fiscal signal. Donald Trump was quick to congratulate him and celebrate his plans for North Sea oil and gas.
Implications
It is worth pausing to consider the minority nature of this appointment. Burnham assumed the premiership thanks to the majority vote of her own party’s MPs, not the electorate as a whole. She has an absolute majority, yes, but her decisions lack the oxygen and legitimacy of a direct election. The contrast with Sanae Takaichi’s Japan is instructive: having taken office last October, the country’s first female prime minister immediately called early elections and, on February 8, won by a landslide—between 315 and 316 of the 465 seats in the House of Commons, the Liberal Democratic Party’s biggest victory since its founding in 1955. This is what a real and robust democracy looks like, and much of Europe should take note. As for the ideological profile of the new Downing Street resident, there are those who describe him as a hybrid between Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn: more left-leaning than the former and many of his colleagues—classic social democrats—and closer in many of his policies to the populism of the latter. In short, he is closer to Sánchez’s ideology than to the old European social democracy—the German SPD, the French Socialist Party, classic Labour, and even more so to Tony Blair’s Third Way, the paradigm of that moderation. The backdrop is severe fiscal fragility: British borrowing costs are the highest in the G-7, soaring in May to an eighteen-year high due to the energy shock of the Iran war, and London is burdened by the exodus—and I mean exodus—of around 16,500 high-net-worth individuals by 2025 alone, according to Henley & Partners, with the consequent drain on tax revenue, consumption, growth, and employment. The long shadow of Brexit, that colossal folly, poisons everything.
Perspectives and scenarios
Everything remains to be seen. We will have to scrutinize his first budget, the promised tax reforms, and his initial government measures, which we will analyze in detail in upcoming reports. Two contrasting scenarios are emerging. In the first, the discipline of the bond market and the prudence of an orthodox chancellor impose restraint, and Burnham governs defensively; his own predecessor at the Treasury warned him that if he intends to “cease being captive to the markets,” he risks “ending up like Liz Truss.” In the second, the temptation of a leftward shift in public spending unleashes a new upheaval within the gilts. The biggest question is whether, like Takaichi, he will dare to seek the legitimacy he currently lacks at the ballot box; his initial weakness suggests he will not. Meanwhile, the agreement on Gibraltar will be sold as a sign of British flexibility when, in reality, it is a sign of Spanish weakness: London’s concessions are temporary; Madrid’s are structural.
2. The Houthis close Bab el-Mandeb: the second gorge
Facts
On Monday, July 20, the Houthi “military” spokesman (a terrorist in uniform), Yahya Sarea, announced in a video a naval blockade “with immediate effect” against Saudi Arabia under the motto of “an eye for an eye,” with the explicit threat of closing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait —the “Gate of Tears”—through which approximately 12% of global trade passes. The immediate trigger was the Saudi bombing of Sana’a airport on July 13, after a Mahan Air plane, repatriating Houthi cadres from the funeral of the late Iranian Supreme Leader, defied the air embargo. This escalation comes with the Strait of Hormuz closed by Tehran since the end of February, following the US-Israeli attacks: a complete closure of Bab el-Mandeb would reduce the global crude oil supply by about 7%, in addition to the 10% already lost due to the Gulf War. Oil prices and Red Sea shipping insurance premiums surged. The Riyadh-led coalition vowed to respond with force. On a human level, two US soldiers were killed Friday in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan. Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar are trying to broker a ceasefire.
Implications
I’ll start with the essentials, because words are not innocent: the Houthis are not “militiamen,” as even center-right and right-wing media insist on calling them, but terrorists in military uniforms. The fact that some come from the former Yemeni regular army says very little: Yemen was for decades two artificially and artificially reunified nations, and that fracture—north versus south, and underneath it, sectarianism—remains alive. The tightening of the noose is, in reality, part of the strategy of the triumvirate that now commands the Revolutionary Guard, headed by General Ahmad Vahidi—supreme commander of the force since March 1, former first commander of the Quds Force, and wanted by international justice for the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. They pursue three objectives, as we have been arguing: first, to win the power struggle within the leaderless regime; Second, to send the region the message that Tehran is returning stronger to rebuild its channels of influence where it had lost them—particularly in Syria, after the implosion of Bashar al-Assad’s regime—and to rearm its terrorist proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militias of Iraq, and the Houthis themselves; and third, to exploit the blackmail they disguise as a “toll” to swell the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard—not Iran’s—and sow terror once again.
Perspectives and scenarios
The risk of a second maritime front is enormous, and its effects global. If the Houthis move from threats to sustained action, merchant shipping will have to circumvent the Cape of Good Hope, with the consequent increase in freight and insurance costs and a further surge in energy prices, which, let’s not forget, is the same factor driving up yields on British debt: the circle closes on the first issue of this report. The diplomatic path being devised by Doha and pursued by Islamabad is, for now, fragile. And looming over all of this is the biggest unknown on the Iranian chessboard: the absence of a Western plan to address and anticipate all possible scenarios in this conflict. An intensification of the power struggle in Iran could generate an even more acute leadership vacuum than that of February 28, 2026, and could even trigger the implosion of the regime, which in turn could degenerate into regional chaos.
III. MEDIA RACK
The international press of the last 24 hours has focused, as expected, on these two main themes. We offer a representative selection of newspapers and analysis centers actually consulted:
The Washington Post, NPR, CBS News, CNN, and NBC all point out that Burnham is the seventh British prime minister in a decade and highlight his promise of a “circuit breaker” to the cycle of instability; they emphasize that no single voter directly elected him.
CNBC , Reuters, Euronext, Saxo, and Mizuho focus on the reaction of gilts and the pound, Rachel Reeves’ departure, and the fiscal signal as the true keystone of the new phase.
The Washington Times, Fox News, and NBC News treat the Houthi blockade as the opening of a new front in the war against Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz already closed and energy markets under strain.
• Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and CSIS. The former openly questions whether the Red Sea will be “another Hormuz” and quantifies the weight of the strait in world trade and crude oil; the latter had dissected Takaichi’s resounding electoral victory, a useful mirror for the British case.
• AP, Euronews, and The Week. They echo the Houthi spokesman’s “eye for an eye” rhetoric and address the threat to Saudi exports and the kingdom’s reliance on its East-West pipeline as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.
IV. RISK TRAFFIC LIGHT
● Effective closure of Bab el-Mandeb and opening of a second maritime front: maximum risk, with an immediate global energy shock.
● Closed Strait of Hormuz and open war between the United States and Iran: maximum and persistent risk.
● British fiscal stability and tension in the gilts market: high risk.
● Power vacuum and lack of a plan for the “day after” in Iran: high risk.
● Labour’s leftward drift and Burnham’s economic credibility: moderate risk.
● Gibraltar dispute and its structural concessions: moderate risk.
● Mediation by Pakistan and Qatar: the only temperate, albeit fragile, sign.
V. EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
Andy Burnham is as popular as he could be considered populist. His tenure as mayor of Greater Manchester, which earned him the nickname “King of the North,” wasn’t particularly noteworthy, but he did manage to project a sense of firm leadership. The pertinent question is what he brings that’s different from Starmer or Corbyn. Some see him as a hybrid of both: further to the left than Starmer and many of his colleagues—true Labour social democrats—but closer in many of his policies to Corbyn’s radical socialism, in a vein more akin to Sánchez’s policies than to classic European social democracy, whose most successful expression was Tony Blair’s Third Way. The unknowns are piling up because he hasn’t even presented a program; and since there’s no government referendum in the UK, simply defeating his rivals in the party’s internal struggle is enough to form a government. It’s therefore a very minority choice: he has an absolute majority, but he lacks the backing of a direct election. Remember what happened in Japan, where Sanae Takaichi succeeded a fellow party member, implemented reforms, immediately called elections, and dramatically improved her party’s performance. That is a real, robust democracy, and many parts of Europe should take note.
The United Kingdom, although no longer part of the European Union—however much some fools remain stuck on that colossal folly that was Brexit—suffered more from that decision than the rest of us, and continues to pay the price today, as I argued in my article in La Razón on June 21, 2016, “Brexit: Anatomy of a Folly.” We will have to see how Labour attempts to compensate for its disastrous consequences with some kind of agreement.
And beware of biased interpretations: the agreement between the European Commission and the United Kingdom on Gibraltar will be presented as a sign of British flexibility when it is, in reality, a sign of weakness on the part of the Spanish Government, because all the concessions made by London are temporary and all those made by Spain are structural.
It’s also important to remember that the United Kingdom is going through a very deep social and economic crisis: London is clearly in recession, with the exodus—and I mean exodus—of more than 16,000 wealthy individuals who contributed enormous sums to the public coffers and the Greater London economy in the form of spending, growth, prosperity, and employment. We will analyze in detail the program—if there is one—the budget when it is presented, and the first measures when they are finalized.
Let’s talk about the Houthis.
It is important to emphasize that even center-right and right-wing media insist on calling them militiamen: they are not. They are terrorists disguised in military uniforms. The fact that some come from the regular Yemeni army means very little, because Yemen was for a long time two artificially and artificially reunified nations, and that division—north versus south, Sunnis versus Shiites—remains very much present in the life of the country. Curiously, some Yemenis belong to the Zaidi school, persecuted in Iran and yet allied with Iran in Yemen. Such are the strange bedfellows that breed the terrorism and extortion of the jihadist regime.
It is worth remembering how, back in 1988, the already dying Khomeini, after having won the war between Shiites in Lebanon—which I witnessed firsthand—”the war of the brothers” or “the war of the black flags,” fought between 1986 and 1988 with the defeat of Amal, supported by the Syrian regime, while Tehran supported its creation, its monster, Hezbollah—granted the Alawites (not to be confused with the dynasty) of the Assads, as a pledge, a fatwa (religious edict) in which, incomprehensibly, he declared that the Alawite sect, which is a heresy, was in reality a branch of Shiite Islam, thus trying to legitimize them. Remember that for the Alawites, the Quran is a secondary book; They possess books for initiates, accessible only to men consecrated in the sect, and whose revelation carries not only exclusion from the community but even a death sentence; they do not pray in mosques, although today they attend Shia mosques and bury their dead there. This concession demonstrates nothing less than the pragmatically terrorist, rather than dogmatic, nature of the Iranian regime, capable of making allies of those who ideologically should be its worst enemies. Therein lies the great difference with the Salafists—that terrorist ideology derived from Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood—for whom anyone who deviates from orthodoxy, regardless of their school of thought, is an apostate and, therefore, an enemy. The Iranians will try to expand their terrorist coalition by incorporating clearly non-Muslim elements, such as the Alawites; and let us not forget that there is far less distance between a Twelver Shia and a Zaidi than between either of them and an Alawite.
In purely geostrategic terms, the Bab el-Mandeb blockade is another twist in the chain of command by the Revolutionary Guard triumvirate—those leaders wanted by international justice, now embodied by General Vahidi—and serves the three objectives we have always emphasized: first, to win the power struggle within the regime itself; second, to send the region the message that they will return stronger to rebuild their channels of influence where all hope of dominance seemed lost—as in Syria after the implosion of Bashar al-Assad’s regime—and to rearm their terrorist proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, and the Houthis themselves; and third, to use blackmail disguised as a toll to obtain enormous revenues for the Revolutionary Guard, not for Iran, with which to rebuild their weapons, their influence, and their capacity to sow terror, instability, and insecurity throughout the region.