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What Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told voters about the economy in a special press conference on 4 November was at odds with what the Office for Budget Responsibility had told her, Richard Hughes, its chairman, explained in a letter to the Commons Treasury Committee. Asked directly by Trevor Phillips on Sky if she had lied, Ms Reeves replied: ‘No, of course I didn’t.’ Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘There’s no misleading there.’ Chris Mason, the BBC political editor, concluded: ‘On one specific element of what the Chancellor and the Treasury told us before the Budget, we were misled.’ Mr Hughes then resigned as the OBR’s chairman, after an inquiry found that its mistaken publication of the contents of the Budget, 45 minutes before it was delivered, was the ‘worst failure’ in its history. Fifty-seven per cent of voters in a YouGov poll said they thought the Budget breached Labour’s manifesto promises. Ms Reeves said that people whose only income comes from the state pension will not have to pay tax when the pension rises above the normal level for paying tax in April 2027, but only after 2030. Dozens of council houses valued at more than £2 million would escape the new mansion tax.
Sir Keir declared: ‘We do need to get closer to the EU.’ Labour scrapped its manifesto undertaking to protect employees from unfair dismissal from their first day in a job. At its plenary conference, Your Party chose to keep the name Your Party, rejected a single leader in favour of a member-elected politburo and welcomed members of other political groups including the Socialist Workers party. Rupert Lowe MP, a former member of Reform, set up a new political party: Great Yarmouth First.
David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, told the Commons that defendants facing less than three years in prison would no longer be entitled to trial by jury; he had earlier mentioned that 12 more prisoners had been accidentally released in three weeks, two still at large. The government delayed to January a decision on a big Chinese embassy in London. A long-awaited report on the Hillsborough disaster found that 12 police officers would have faced gross misconduct proceedings under today’s laws, but they had long ago retired. Net migration dropped to 204,000 in the year to June from 649,000 a year earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics; 898,000 people arrived and 693,000 left, 252,000 of them British. Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, the playwright, died aged 88. Sir Andreas Whittam Smith, co-founder and first editor of the Independent, died aged 88. Resident doctors in England and Wales will strike from 17 to 22 December. Girlguiding said that biological boys who identify as girls will no longer be able to join.
Abroad
A Ukrainian delegation met Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in Florida. Then Mr Witkoff met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. ‘If Europe starts a war, Russia is ready right now,’ Mr Putin said. Russia continued attacking Ukraine with hundreds of drones and missiles, killing civilians and destroying infrastructure. Ukrainian naval drones hit two oil tankers from Russia’s so-called shadow fleet as they travelled through the Black Sea. Sheep and goat pox swept Greece, with 413,000 of the animals culled.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, asked its President, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon over corruption charges he has been defending. Two members of the National Guard were shot in Washington, D.C., and one died; a 29-year-old former special forces commander in the Afghan army was shot and arrested. In south and south-east Asia, about 1,100 people died in a week of flooding. Fire tore through seven of the eight tower blocks of Wang Fuk Court, each 31 floors high, housing 4,600 people in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong; at least 151 died. Prada bought Versace.
France agreed to start intercepting small boats in the Channel, but only if there were no migrants in them. The European Court of Justice ruled that Poland must recognise same-sex marriages legally contracted in other EU member states. Slovenians voted in a referendum to suspend a new law legalising assisted suicide. The Pope visited the Turkish town of Iznik, the site of the ancient city of Nicaea where the ecumenical council was held in 325, and later said mass on the waterfront in Beirut. CSH
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