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Neither Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, nor Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ruled out a rise in employers’ contributions to national insurance in the Budget on 30 October. The annual rate of inflation fell from 2.2 to 1.7 per cent. Starmer backed an idea by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, to give fat unemployed people injections of weight-loss drugs in a scheme involving a £280 million investment from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that makes the diabetes medication Mounjaro. At the International Investment summit, the Chancellor announced that the UK Infrastructure Bank will become the National Wealth Fund. But the government came up with only £5.8 billion of new money, despite a promise that it would be ‘capitalised with £7.3 billion’. Manchester Airports is to spend £1.1 billion expanding by a third the buildings at Stansted, which it owns. Dovid Efune, the publisher of the news website the New York Sun entered exclusive talks to buy the Telegraph.
After exciting days of uncertainty, DP World, based in the UAE, confirmed that a £1 billion investment in the London Gateway at Thurrock, Essex, would go ahead, making it Britain’s largest container port within five years. The announcement was meant to be a bright feature of the Investment summit. But Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, had said that she had been boycotting P&O Ferries (which DP World owns) as a ‘rogue operator’. The Prime Minister said: ‘Well, look, that’s not the view of the government.’ In the seven days to 14 October, 721 migrants in small boats arrived in England. The England men’s football team greeted the Bavarian Thomas Tuchel as its new head coach.
A bill for assisted suicide was published. ‘This bill is no fucking use at all,’ the Sunday Times was told by Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a retired High Court judge who has Parkinson’s disease, which would not count as a terminal illness. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, said the bill ‘risks bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill’. The bill to remove the 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords reached its second reading. Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014 (when a referendum rejected Scottish independence), died aged 69. General Sir Mike Jackson died aged 80. Fleur Adcock, the poet, died aged 90.
Abroad
War grew grimmer in Lebanon and Gaza. The US Secretary of State and US Defense Secretary jointly wrote to Israel’s government demanding ‘urgent and sustained actions’ within 30 days to increase access for relief aid to Gaza or risk cuts to military assistance. The US deployed a Thaad missile defence battery to Israel, with a crew of troops to operate it. Israel had issued military evacuation orders affecting more than a quarter of Lebanon, the UN refugee agency said. After a pause, Israel resumed air strikes on the country. The Lebanese Red Cross said 18 people were killed by a strike on the majority-Christian district of Zgharta, 60 miles north of Beirut. A strike on Ard al-Mufti school in central Gaza killed at least 20, according to local officials. Another strike, on Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, set fire to tents for displaced people. Hezbollah killed four Israeli soldiers in a drone attack on a military base south of Haifa. Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system intercepted rockets fired from Lebanon over Haifa. UN peacekeepers were caught up in Israel’s offensive in southern Lebanon.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed the fifth test flight of its Starship, with a booster stage being cleverly caught after use by a pair of mechanical arms. Nasa launched the Europa Clipper spacecraft, due to reach Europa, a moon of Jupiter, in 2030. Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata who bought Tetley tea, Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, formerly British Steel, died aged 86.
China held manoeuvres round Taiwan, which reported 34 naval vessels and 125 aircraft in formation. North Korea blew up roads leading to South Korea. Russia pressed its offensive against Potrovsk in Ukraine and retook territory in Kursk. The Duchess of Edinburgh heard accounts of sexual exploitation from refugees from Sudan’s civil war she met in Chad; ‘People are having to exchange food and water for sex, for rape,’ she said. Google signed an agreement for small nuclear reactors to generate energy for its AI data centres in America. Prague is to ban pub crawls organised by travel agencies, often for stag and hen parties, after 10 p.m. CSH
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