© Jacqueline Hernandez/Associated Press
Chancellor to give Downing Street speech as markets open and is expected to be ‘candid’ about choices to fill fiscal gap
Keir Starmer perhaps gave a clearer hint as to what is coming in the budget when he addressed Labour MPs in private last night at a meeting of the PLP (parliamentary Labour party). This is what Jessica Elgot and Pippa Crerar are reporting in their splash story.
Starmer told MPs on Monday night it would be a “Labour budget built on Labour values” and promised it would protect the NHS, reduce debt and ease the cost of living.
The prime minister gave MPs a hint at how the government would frame its potential manifesto breach – saying it was “becoming clearer that the long-term impact of Tory austerity, their botched Brexit deal and the pandemic on Britain’s productivity is worse than even we feared”.
Later this month, I will deliver my second budget as chancellor.
At that budget, I will make the choices necessary to deliver strong foundations for our economy – for this year, and years to come.
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© Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters
© Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters
© Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters
Kyler Murray said to be not ready after foot problems
Dallas fall to 3-5-1 as Arizona move to 3-5 with win
Jacoby Brissett had a stock answer ready for the question of whether the Arizona quarterback has done enough to be the replacement, not just the fill-in, for Kyler Murray. Coach Jonathan Gannon barely had an answer at all. The Cardinals will worry about what appears to be a full-blown controversy later. For now, they’ll enjoy ending a five-game losing streak.
Brissett threw for two touchdowns and ran for a score in another game with Murray sidelined by a foot injury, and the Cardinals beat the Dallas Cowboys 27-17 on Monday night. Brissett made his third consecutive start after the week began with expectations of Murray returning coming off the team’s open week.
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© Photograph: Richard Rodriguez/AP
© Photograph: Richard Rodriguez/AP
© Photograph: Richard Rodriguez/AP
The story of hot tea and unconsummated love hails from a very different era – and was far from easy to make. Yet it remains a key influence for film-makers from Sofia Coppola to Celine Song, James Ivory to Greta Gerwig
The first time David Lean’s 1945 romantic masterpiece was shown to the public, the audience were in stitches. It not being a comedy, this was far from ideal. The director was so embarrassed, he returned to his hotel planning to break into the film lab and burn the negative at the earliest opportunity.
Eighty years on, the legacy of Brief Encounter has proved anything but. First, its train station setting and ubiquity on British TV led to parodies by everyone from Victoria Wood to Birds Eye ready meals.
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© Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock
© Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock
© Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock
Nasser Abu Srour says prisons became like ‘another front’ in Gaza war and tells of struggle to adjust to life outside
A celebrated Palestinian author who was freed last month after more than 32 years in Israeli prisons has said the use of torture increased dramatically during his last two years of captivity as Israel came to treat its jails as another front in the Gaza war.
Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exile to Egypt, where most remain in limbo.
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© Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images
Cut-price watch offers most of what makes the Series 11 great, including an always-on screen, watchOS 26 and wrist-flick gesture
Apple’s entry level Watch SE has been updated with almost everything from its excellent mid-range Series 11 but costs about 40% less, making it the bargain of iPhone smartwatches.
The new Watch SE 3 costs from £219 (€269/$249/A$399), making it one of the cheapest brand-new fully fledged smartwatches available for the iPhone and undercutting the £369 Series 11 and the top-of-the-line £749 Apple Watch Ultra 3.
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© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
A quarter century after that landmark cult novel, this new epic has aspects of brilliance but seems designed for academic study rather than readerly enjoyment
In this moment of cultural panic about the decline of reading, it takes an enviable confidence to deliver a volume such as Tom’s Crossing. Weighing in at more than 1,200 pages of closely printed text, the novel contains, I would hazard, about half a million words – roughly two Ulysses. It’s also, for that matter, about twice the length of Danielewski’s debut, House of Leaves, which secured cult status for its author on publication 25 years ago. Tom’s Crossing is so big that when I got it out on the tube, I felt like that character on Trigger Happy TV with his enormous mobile phone. “Look,” I seemed to be telling the passengers scrolling Instagram on their devices, “I’m reading a book!”
The novel is not merely long, it’s also a challenging, deliberately arcane work that insists on its own epic status, yet has at its heart a straightforward and compelling story. Kalin March, a 16-year-old nerdy outsider in the town of Orvop in Utah, is a preternaturally talented horse rider. Through a shared love of horses, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with handsome and popular Tom Gatestone.
“Earlier that afternoon, when for some reason Allison’s thoughts had angrily returned to the curse she’d laid upon Kalin before he’d left, warnin him from guns, makin it clear by insubstantial decree that even handlin a gun might cost him the horses he loved, and for the rest of his life, she and Sondra had returned to the Isatch Canyon parkin lot, where they’d promptly learned about the great rockfall.”
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© Photograph: Karl Hendon/Getty Images
© Photograph: Karl Hendon/Getty Images
© Photograph: Karl Hendon/Getty Images
From sharks to rays, from island cliffs to the tribes of Africa’s Omo Valley, Cristina Mittermeier’s show A Greater Wisdom celebrates the beauty of our planet – and highlights the biggest threats it faces
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© Photograph: Cristina Mittermeier
© Photograph: Cristina Mittermeier
© Photograph: Cristina Mittermeier
Laid-back clubs proving a hit in London, Birmingham and elsewhere as people look for new ways to socialise
One of the liveliest spots on a Tuesday night in east London’s Brick Lane isn’t a restaurant or a streetwear brand pop-up, it’s a chess club – or chess club-nightclub hybrid, to be exact.
Knight Club is the unlikely crossover between chess and London’s fervent nightlife scene. It was started by Yusuf Ntahilaja, 27, who began his first chess club in August 2023 at a smaller bar in Aldgate, not too far from the current location at Café 1001 on Brick Lane.
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© Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
After a colleague had the bright idea of a workplace version of the hit BBC show, I lied and cheated with impunity. Then the strain began to show
There aren’t many people who understand the stress that the celebrity Traitors Cat Burns and Alan Carr have been feeling as their stint wearing that famous green cloak draws to an end – but I do. I spent four weeks lying, cheating and murdering friends and colleagues in our office version of The Traitors.
I almost lost my mind.
Ed Campbell is a journalist who reports on British culture, politics and the internet. He also co-hosts the PoliticsJOE podcast
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© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
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