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Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said she had found a £21.9 billion hole, and a black one at that, ‘covered up’ by the Tories in the finances Labour inherited. ‘The biggest single cause of the £22 billion fiscal hole was Reeves’s decision to give inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers,’ the Financial Times reported. Junior doctors were offered an average rise of 22 per cent over two years. The Chancellor told the Commons that the government was cancelling: the universal winter fuel payment; the cap on the amount people must spend on funding their social care; A-level reforms; and a tunnel near Stonehenge. Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, noted that estimates had been ‘signed off by senior civil servant accounting officers’. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced central powers to impose housing. The High Court ruled that a ban on puberty blockers introduced by the previous government was lawful. Kemi Badenoch, Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly were nominated as candidates for the leadership of the Conservative party.
A 17-year-old youth, the son of a couple from Rwanda, was arrested after three children were stabbed to death and ten wounded at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class at Southport, Lancashire. Police blamed the English Defence League for violence outside a mosque after a false rumour of a Syrian connection. A police van was set on fire and bottles and bricks thrown at police, injuring 39. Footage acquired by the Manchester Evening News of a fast-moving fight at Manchester airport on 23 July put a new complexion on a shorter video of a policeman kicking a man’s head. Crowds had protested outside Rochdale police station. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, said that it was ‘a complicated situation with two sides to it’. Four men were arrested. A policewoman’s nose was broken. There was disorder between young people in Southend, Essex. Anjem Choudary, 57, convicted of directing the banned terror group al-Muhajiroun, was jailed for a minimum of 28 years. The former BBC News presenter Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children.
A woman died after being found unconscious while attempting to cross the Channel on a heavily loaded boat. In the seven days to 30 July, 1,010 crossed to England. The far-right campaigner known as Tommy Robinson left Britain despite being arrested for a while by Kent police on the eve of contempt-of-court proceedings against him. Cineworld, which has 101 cinemas, said it was closing six.
Abroad
Twelve young Druze were killed when a rocket hit a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights; Israel blamed Hezbollah and in response attacked targets in Lebanon. ‘Hezbollah will pay a heavy price,’ said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister. There were fears of regional war. America and Britain told their citizens in Lebanon to leave. Israel carried out a strike in Beirut that it said killed Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander. Hamas blamed Israel for the killing of its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Israel had earlier struck a school near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, killing at least 30 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run ministry of health. The Israeli military said it had recovered from Khan Younis the bodies of five Israelis taken to Gaza as hostages on 7 October. That would mean that of the 251 people taken hostage, 111 were still being held in Gaza, including 39 presumed dead.
Elvis Amoroso, the head of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, declared Nicolas Maduro, who has been President for 11 years, had been re-elected; amid protests, the opposition said its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, had won 73.2 per cent of the vote. Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested in El Paso, Texas, along with Joaquín Guzman Lopez, the 38-year-old son of the cartel’s other founder, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman. Edna O’Brien, the novelist, died aged 93. Robin Warren, who discovered that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori caused stomach ulcers, died aged 87.
Islamist rebels in Mali killed dozens of Wagner mercenaries, now called Africa Corps, in a sandstorm. Kim Jong-un, the ruler of North Korea, was photographed observing floods from a black Lexus. The Olympics began with a rainstorm in which Sir Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, was praised by his supporters for putting up the hood of his anorak. There was hot denunciation of a tableau of drag artists that resembled a parody of ‘The Last Supper’. CSH
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