After last year's election PM Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy PM Secretary Angela Rayner thought they were top dogs, but they're no longer in charge of events.

So who is telling the UK what to do?

President Donald Trump and US tech billionaire Elon Musk are giving it a go, but it’s not them. It isn't Nigel Farage either.

For years, Euro sceptics accused the EU of bossing us about, but it's not them either.

Our real lords and masters like to keep their heads down, but now they've been forced to give our government a public dressing down.

Rachel Reeves’ ears are still ringing, and will continue to ring until she’s fired.

So who is dictating UK economic and political policy?

The same people who’ve been running it for years. A shadowy group of international investors who go by the name of the bond market.

You didn't vote them in and you certainly cannot vote them out. Bond market representatives do not sit in Parliament or write the laws that govern our country.

They don't have a name, a face or an institutional body that sets out their policy or handles queries and complaints.

But we’re stuck with them, like it or not.

The bond market is made up of a global band of institutional investors such as big pension and sovereign wealth funds who buy government debt including UK gilts.

Governments rely on bond investors to fund spending and plug deficits, so have to keep them sweet.

If they turn against us, we're doomed.

This was the lesson that former Tory PM Liz Truss learned in September 2022, when she announced £43billion of unfunded tax cuts.

His mini-Budget fiasco triggered a bond market strike, as investors lost confidence in her handling of government spending and debt.

Yields on 10-year gilts rocketed to 4.22% and Truss was gone. The UK did as it was told.

The bond market has that power. In 1998, US President Bill Clinton’s political adviser James Carville called it more powerful than presidents and popes.

And now Reeves has handed it yet more power, with her Budget fiasco.

Reeves plans to borrow £297billion this year. That's a mind-boggling sum, and the only place she can raise it is the bond market.

So she needs to win its trust.

Instead, she's thrown it away by losing control of tax and spending, just like Truss did.

She's not up to the job and the bond market knows it.

As a result, so-called "bond vigilantes" are demanding higher rates of interest to buy UK government bonds. Yields on 30-year gilts have climbed to 4.89%. That's the highest since 1998.

This will cost taxpayers an extra £12billion a year in extra interest. Soon gilt yields could climb past 5%, costing us even more.

It's not all Labour's fault. The Tories piled up the debts during their 14 years in charge.

But Labour is the last straw. The UK is now the bond vigilantes' number one target.

Reeves is a mere puppet Chancellor. The bond market is her master now. And ours. Let's hope it doesn't cut the strings.