The decision to replace Murray Auchincloss with Woodside’s Meg O’Neill is puzzling on at least two counts

Here we go again. Just when you thought BP was trying to generate less drama, the new chair has decided a new chief executive is needed. Say goodbye to Murray Auchincloss, who junked the green-ish transition strategy of his predecessor as recently as February. Meg O’Neill, the American boss of the Australian group Woodside Energy, becomes BP’s first outside hire as chief executive.

At face value, a new appointment should not be an outright surprise. Albert Manifold arrived as BP chair in July and, after the many flip-flops under the ineffectual Helge Lund, he had a mandate to take his own view of how the company should be managed. If he and the board think an injection of “increased rigour and diligence” is necessary to fulfil the new oilier plan, fair enough. The activist investor Elliott may have been urging much the same. Even Auchincloss recognised the possibility he could be axed. His statement said he had told Manifold of his “openness to step down” if a new leader was identified.

Argument for ensuring ethylene production at Grangemouth is strong, yet policymaking on deindustrialisation is disjointed

• Government invests £120m to save UK’s last ethylene plant

“Our commitment is clear: to back British industry, to stand by hardworking families, and to ensure places like Grangemouth can thrive for years to come,” said Keir Starmer as the Ineos ethylene plant on the Firth of Forth was saved for the nation with the help of £120m of public money.

Is the commitment clear, though? What, precisely, does the prime minister mean by “places like Grangemouth”? Which heavy industries and plants is the government pledging to shield from the forces of sky-high energy prices and carbon taxes? Is there a strategy here? Or does intervention happen only at the 11th hour when an important plant is threatened with imminent closure and ministers panic about knock-on consequences?

Many critical details have been deliberately left to be resolved in secondary legislation – including the introduction of guaranteed hours contracts

• Business groups urge Tory peers to stop blocking Labour’s workers’ rights bill

Will the employment rights bill be passed by Christmas? Well, the chances are slightly improved after six leading business groups published a temperature-lowering letter on Monday that said parliament, which in this instance means the blockers in the House of Lords, should get on with it.

The employers, note, are still unhappy about the issue that triggered the most recent revolt by Conservative peers and a few cross-benchers: the removal of a cap on compensation claims for unfair dismissal. But they’re more worried that further delays would jeopardise their negotiating victory last month, namely the government’s U-turn on rights guaranteeing workers protection against unfair dismissal from day one of employment. A six-month qualifying period was adopted instead, with the blessing of the TUC, which was similarly motivated by trying to get the bill over the line quickly.

It would be absurd to claim the UK has suddenly become a life-sciences leader thanks to the new pricing and tariffs pact

That’s gratitude, eh? It’s not even a fortnight since the government agreed to raise the prices the NHS pays for new medicines and here comes the boss of GSK, Britain’s second largest pharma firm, to extol the virtues of doing business in the US.

The US is “still the leading market in the world in terms of the launches of new drugs and vaccines”, said the chief executive, Emma Walmsley, in a BBC interview, explaining why GSK invests about three times as much over there as it does at home. Alongside China, the US is also “the best market in the world to do business development”.

UK gilt yields may have dropped a bit relative to other major countries, but it’s not at all clear that the fall with continue

• UK’s higher borrowing costs compared with major countries ‘may be coming to an end’

Good news for Rachel Reeves: the cost of government borrowing has fallen a bit relative to the US and eurozone countries. Better news: the chancellor may have something to do with it. Better still: some economists think there’s more to come.

Let’s not get carried away, though. The UK is still paying a painful premium on its borrowing costs, as the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank illustrates. Since last year’s general election the yield on 10-year government gilts is up almost 70 basis points – or seven-tenths of 1% – compared with US Treasury bonds, and the increase versus the eurozone is almost 25 basis points. The gaps are wider for 30-year bonds and the consequences are real. IPPR calculates that if the premium could be reduced to zero, the Treasury would save as much as £7bn a year until 2029-30.