Don’t, whatever you do, call it a “relaunch”.

When the chancellor stands up and delivers her much-anticipated speech on Wednesday – with all sorts of exciting schemes for new infrastructure and growth-friendly reforms – she will cast it as part of the new government’s long-standing economic strategy.

Having begun the job of repairing the public finances in last October’s budget, this is, Rachel Reeves will say, simply the next step.

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Regardless of whether you believe that this is all business-as-usual, it’s hard to escape the fact that the backdrop to the chancellor’s growth speech is, to say the least, challenging.

The economy has flatlined at best (possibly even shrunk) since Labour took power. Business and consumer confidence have dipped. Not all of this is down to the miserable messaging emanating from Downing Street since July, but some of it is.

Still, whether or not this constitutes a change, most businesses would welcome her enthusiasm for business-friendly reforms. And most would agree that making it easier to build infrastructure (which is a large part of her pitch) will help improve growth.

But it’s not everything. What about the fact that the UK has the highest energy costs in the developed world? What about the fact that these costs are likely to be pushed higher by net zero policies (even if they eventually come down)? What about the fact that tax levels are about to hit the highest level in history, or that government debt levels are now rising even faster than previously expected.

None of that is especially growth-friendly.

The greatest challenge facing the chancellor, however, is the fact that very little of what she’s talking about in her speech is actually new. Most of these schemes, from the Oxford-Cambridge Arc (or whatever they’re calling it) to the multiple new runways planned around London, are very, very old. They’ve been blueprints for years if not decades. What’s been missing is the political will and determination to turn them into reality.

The new government may fare better at delivery. But it won’t be easy. And none of these projects will deliver growth immediately. Not until some time after the end of the parliament will they properly bear fruit.

Quiz Clothing, the troubled fashion business, is close to collapsing into administration days after its shares were delisted from the London stock market.

Sky News has learnt that Quiz, which is chaired by the former JD Sports chief Peter Cowgill, is lining up Teneo as administrator in a move expected to take place before the end of next week.

The pre-pack insolvency would be intended to enable the founding Ramzan family to take control of a restructured business with substantially fewer stores and employees.

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Quiz currently operates roughly 60 standalone stores and dozens more concessions, employing about 1,500 people.

Last month, Sky News reported that Quiz’s main lender, HSBC, had hired restructuring experts at Interpath to advise it.

A solvent restructuring of the business is now said to have been effectively ruled out, although one source said the timing of an insolvency filing was still unclear.

Quiz’s troubles come amid growing financial pressure on retailers, many of which are facing a deepening challenge in 2025 as a result of looming hikes to employer’s national insurance.

In the last 10 days alone, Sky News has revealed that: Poundland’s parent has hired advisers to assess options for the leading discount chain; Lakeland, the family-owned kitchenware retailer, has been put up for sale; and that The Original Factory Shop was on the verge of a sale to family office Baaj Capital.

At the weekend, Sky News also revealed that WH Smith was in talks to sell its entire high street chain, numbering 500 stores and about 5,000 employees.

Quiz Clothing, Teneo and Interpath all declined to comment.

Donald Trump thinks the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which claims it has a technical advantage over US rivals, should be “a wakeup call” for American AI firms.

DeepSeek says its artificial intelligence models are comparable with those from US giants, like OpenAI which is behind ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, but potentially a fraction of the cost.

That has triggered a fall in various US shares, especially chipmaker Nvidia which registered a record one-day loss for any company on Wall Street.

But the US president believes the success of the Chinese firm could be helpful to America’s AI aspirations.

“The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company should be a wakeup call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Mr Trump said in Florida.

He pointed to DeepSeek’s ability to use fewer computing resources. “I view that as a positive, as an asset… you won’t be spending as much, and you’ll get the same result, hopefully,” he added.

On Monday, the DeepSeek assistant had surpassed ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s app store.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has given his rival some acknowledgement in a post on X, reacting to DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model – a core part of the AI technology which answers questions.

“DeepSeek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price,” he wrote.

But Mr Altman was also defiant: “We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”

There have been concerns DeepSeek could undermine the potentially $500bn (£401bn) AI investment by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank in Stargate which Mr Trump announced last week at the White House.

That project essentially aims to build vastly more computing power to boost AI development.

But while addressing Republicans in Miami on Monday, Mr Trump remained upbeat. He claimed that Chinese leaders had told him the US had the most brilliant scientists in the world.

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He indicated that if Chinese industry could come up with cheaper AI technology, US companies would follow.

“We always have the ideas. We’re always first. So I would say that’s a positive that could be very much a positive development.

“So instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution,” Mr Trump said.

The intense attention on the Chinese firm has not all been good news though. It reported suffering “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services.

The company said it was hit by a cyber attack on Monday which disrupted users’ ability to register on the site.