Borrowing costs soar to highest in decades, leaving Prime Minister facing £14bn Budget shortfall Daily Telegraph 01/09/26 Andy Burnham’s Commons debut as Prime Minister on Tuesday was overshadowed by a market rout that sent borrowing costs to their highest in decades. Addressing MPs for the first time since entering No 10, Mr Burnham claimed that “life is too expensive and too hard for too many”, blaming Brexit and Margaret Thatcher for “low growth and stalled regeneration”. Pledging to bring back hope to Britain , the Prime Minister said he would deliver “much more substantial change” to the economy to reduce household bills. However, he now faces a shortfall of up to £14bn in his autumn Budget following a surge in gilt yields, which will squeeze his plans for higher spending. Britain’s borrowing costs have risen at one of the fastest paces in the world, with interest rates on 10-year gilts, a benchmark for the Treasury, reaching their highest level since 2008. The cost to bor...
Sacking Mel Stride and Priti Patel signals Badenoch is building a serious government-in-waiting Daily Telegraph 31/08/26 If you were leader of the Opposition, would you rather have: a) shadow ministers that the public had never heard of, or b) shadow ministers they had heard of and disliked? This week, as rumours of an imminent reshuffle swirled, those appeared to be Kemi Badenoch ’s only two options. Dame Priti Patel , for instance, suffers – rather unfairly – from a lingering association with the Boriswave, at least in the Tory assessment. At the other end of the spectrum, most voters would be unable to tell you whether Mel Stride was a man or a woman. Well, on Monday both were sacked (though Patel was handed a new “international role”). With Reform bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, this tells us something about Badenoch’s ambition for the party, not to mention her emerging strategy and determination to succeed. Both Stride and Patel were appointed in the aftermath of the ...