Hard work should pay. Unlock quality journalism that champions free enterprise. | | The Chancellor will insist she has to make ‘important choices’ for the economy |  | Ben Riley-Smith Political Editor | Beware manifesto breaches. Even the briefest of glances at recent political history delivers that message to Rachel Reeves as she weighs up how to play the Budget.
Norman Lamont as chancellor increased tax in 1993 to right the public finances. He would call it his finest Budget... and later admit that it guaranteed Tory defeat in the 1997 election.
Rishi Sunak’s threshold freezes, bringing in tens of billions more in revenue to pay off Covid debt, may have been wise economics. Politically, they infuriated Right-leaning voters.
And as for explicit breaks, Nick Clegg is a one-man warning sign. Almost every Liberal Democrat seat was lost in the 2015 election after his about-turn on raising university tuition fees.
So when Ms Reeves called a press conference for 8am this morning as Downing Street refused to stand by Labour’s manifesto pledges on tax, alarm bells were ringing.
The Treasury wrote coded nods into the speech, such as references to “necessary” steps that must be taken to secure the public finances for “years to come”.
The mantra increasingly emanating from No 11 about “fairness” is another sign of financial pain for the well-off being pitch-rolled.
The economic arguments will play out. Some think-tanks have long been calling for increased fiscal headroom to leave the Chancellor less exposed to changes in circumstance.
The politics of it all, however, are pretty clear: parties that break their campaign word on tax are more likely to get two fingers than applause from the voters.
Read the full story and follow the latest updates here ➤
How Labour is preparing to betray working people ➤ | | Stephen Pollard After Panorama’s Trump distortions, how many other examples by the corporation are waiting to be exposed? Continue reading ➤ Robert Tombs The Crown has survived much worse than Andrew Continue reading ➤ Sean Thomas Europe is becoming a Remainer fever dream Continue reading ➤ | Make your voice heard. Join our journalists in conversation on today’s biggest topics. | | Polls suggest that Zohran Mamdani, a hard-Left Democrat, will win today’s mayoral election in New York. Donald Trump has called him “a 100 per cent Communist Lunatic”. But, the success of Mr Mamdani and a fresh generation of Left-wing politicians – including Zack Polanski, the radical new leader of the Green Party in the UK – is down to campaigning tactics taken straight from the US president’s own playbook. Colin Freeman asks how far their slick campaigns could take them. Continue reading ➤ | | | We are constantly told we are a nation of dog lovers – yet our behaviour tells a different story, writes Suzanne Moore. So many people get a puppy when they have no idea how – or are too lazy – to train it correctly. When there’s a horrific case of a child being mauled by a dangerous pet, the owners are so often to blame. If we can’t look after them, perhaps it’s time we stop owning them. Continue reading ➤ | | | The Louvre heist is looking less and less like a sophisticated Ocean’s Eleven-style operation and more and more like a bungled smash-and-grab. Police have netted a coterie of suspected criminals who left DNA, dropped jewels and tried – but failed – to set fire to their getaway truck. While French forensics officers show their expertise, the stolen goods and the suspected mastermind remain missing. Continue reading ➤ | | | Tapping your foot along to the rhythm is a simple pleasure for most music lovers. So when Patrick Darling, who had been playing instruments since he was 14, noticed that he was struggling to keep in time, he knew something was wrong. Here, Patrick shares the moment he discovered it was the first sign of motor neurone disease, a diagnosis that meant he had to put his instruments down for the last time. Continue reading ➤ | | |
Which British city is shown in the picture above? | | A bad night’s sleep can affect our energy, mood and concentration the next day. But the long-term implications can be even more serious, with a growing body of research linking sleep problems with an increased risk of dementia. Scientists believe this is due to getting less “deep sleep”, a phase when our brains are believed to clear out toxins which, if they accumulate, can lead to dementia. So what can we do to pack in more deep sleep as we age? Polly Dunbar asks the experts. Continue reading ➤ Below are two more helpful articles for you this morning: - Which supermarket hot dogs are worth buying this Bonfire Night? Xanthe Clay has the answers.
- If you’re taking part in Movember, here is a guide to the best moustache for your face shape.
| | Welcome to our Greatest Interviews series – a collection of our most significant, informative and entertaining conversations with notable figures over our 170-year history. Today we go back to 1994 for a trip to Calcutta and a rare meeting with the world’s most famous nun. It was surprisingly easy to contact Mother Teresa for my 1994 interview – considering she was arguably the most famous woman in the world. I dialled the Mother House in India from the Telegraph offices in London, not expecting to get very far, and within seconds Mother Teresa herself was on the phone. I explained that I wanted to interview her in person and she said she’d have to check with God. Well, it wasn’t a no.
So I flew to Calcutta (now Kolkata) on a wing and a prayer and by the time I landed, approval had been granted. What followed was a very disjointed but illuminating interview: she would give me different tasks to accomplish – visit an orphanage, attend early morning prayers – and as I ticked off each one, she would grant me a few more minutes of her time.
The interview stretched out over several days and I got the impression of a very shrewd, practical woman who knew exactly how to parlay her fame to the advantage of her mission. She was also surprisingly relatable. During mass, she played with her toes and burst out laughing with the other sisters when they confused the words of a hymn. She died three years later and was canonized in 2016. She is, without question, the only saint I am ever likely to interview.
Read the full interview here or explore our entire Greatest Interviews collection here ➤ | The collection conundrum Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal Reader Correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Orlando writes...
I can barely remember the days when my living room looked like a place for grown-ups. We have now surrendered it more or less entirely to our one-year-old daughter. Gone is the mid-century coffee table scattered with highbrow – albeit mostly unread – publications. The toddler-height bookcase, on top of which we kept our cocktail spirits, has been similarly exiled. Instead, there’s a giant playpen, littered with lumps of brightly coloured plastic.
Lately, though, we’ve attempted to introduce a few tasteful wooden toys (Scandinavian, naturally). Our daughter is far less interested in them, unmoved by the fact that they cost four times as much. And perhaps that’s a good thing, I thought, when I read the tale of the £8,000 Jellycat collection. Would we want such an expensive habit on our hands?
One reader took a bullish view: “Things like this often turn out to be good investments, as they become collectors’ items.” Suzanne Norman wasn’t so sure: “Beanie Babies were once the toys to collect, with rare editions. Twenty-five years later, they are worth hardly anything. I hope the Jellycat toys bring happiness, but don’t think of them as an investment: keep them and enjoy them.”
Neil Walker also felt there were limits: “Our daughter is nine and has the odd Labubu toy. But £8,000 is a lot. How does a child understand the value of anything and the work needed to pay for it if a parent can’t say no once in a while?”
Helen Coast, however, was grateful to have caught the collecting bug early: “I’m a second-generation collector, trained by my father. My biggest collection is of Lea Stein brooches. Go for it!” How much is too much for toys? Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of From the Editor PM, for which you can sign up here. | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including PlusWord, Sorted, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
The solution to yesterday’s clue was FORMATIVE. Come back tomorrow for the answer to today’s puzzle. | | Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow. Chris Evans, Editor
P.S. I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback here. | |
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