The gender pay gap for full-time employees has continued to decline in the UK. It was 6.8% in April 2026, down from 7.2% in April 2025. This compares with 9.4% a decade ago and 16.4% 25 years ago.
Secondly, I asked Healey whether he sees the banks as making excessive profits, which would be the coherent justification for him to increase the surcharge on bank profits – as he is expected to do in the Budget next week.
He said: “You know the banks are the engine of investment in this country. The banks are doing well at the moment and that is good to see.
Some speakers at the conference suggested that it is time for Jews to stop accusing Israel critics of antisemitism, and start recognizing that it may be time to cut the cord.
Jack Ross was filmed allegedly discussing with an undercover reporter violent options to deal with enemies
A former Conservative election candidate has been suspended from the party after he was seemingly filmed discussing the cost of hiring contract killers and offering to “broker” the services of a far-right activist with alleged paramilitary links.
Jack Ross was filmed apparently asking an undercover reporter “What do you want done?” before listing the type of violent options that could be bought.
Zia Yusuf claims undercover investigation broke the law as broadcaster stands by its journalism
Here is an explainer by Jill Ambrose about the Jackdaw decision.
But environmental groups have condemned the decision. Ami McCarthy, head of politics for Greenpeace UK, said:
Approving Jackdaw shows the toxic grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over our energy policy. Andy Burnham promised pragmatism [see 8.40am], but there is nothing pragmatic about rubber-stamping a project that won’t lower energy bills, won’t boost energy security and will create just 27 full-time jobs …
True pragmatism means severing our reliance on expensive oil and gas that leaves British households broke, supercharges extreme weather, and leaves our energy security at the mercy of petrostates.
Is the prime minister living in a parallel universe? One where we haven’t just endured our hottest summer on record, with droughts, wildfires and, in all likelihood, the most heat-related deaths on record? And where the UN hasn’t warned that we’re on the brink of breaching the all-important 1.5 degree warming limit?
Shell will be cheering this decision but it won’t knock a penny off our energy bills, which is what’s keeping people up at night, or make a meaningful difference to our gas supply.
Jackdaw will provide around just 2% of our gas demand for roughly ten years. It has been oversold and won’t stop the decline in North Sea jobs, as it will be largely unmanned and operated remotely.
The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures caused the virus to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, a public inquiry has found.
Heather Hallett, who is leading the Covid-19 inquiry, said it was a “significant omission” that the government did not advise that patients discharged from hospitals into care homes should be isolated, causing the virus to spread rapidly among residents and staff.
Andy Haldane writes that Conservative economic plans would be best for growth ahead of Healey budget
Badenoch says Britain needs tax cuts.
We need to get out of the way of job creators who make our country richer. We need to encourage risk taking, wealth creation, enterprise.
Britain’s tax burden has never been higher. You are taxed on the heating in your home. You’re taxed at the petrol pump filling up your car. You’re taxed when you insure that car. You’re taxed if you take the family away on holiday. You’re taxed if you stay in the UK thanks to Andy Burnham’s tourist tax. You’re taxed to buy a home, taxed to live in a home, taxed to pass on your home. This is clearly not working. Britain does not feel better off.
Andy Burnham wrote in The Times yesterday about the moral outrage of the current benefit system. But as far as I could work out, his answer is to spend even more on benefits.
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Todaygang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For a slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a Guardian column by Aditya
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator, read Nesrine Malik’s recent Guardian column
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Todaygang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For a slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a Guardian column by Aditya
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator, read Nesrine Malik’s recent Guardian column
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible, the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Today gang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a column by me for the Guardian
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator read Nesrine Malik’s recent column in The Guardian
The prime minister is correct to judge the time is right to push for closer links with the EU. The political risk is far outweighed by the potential rewards
The German philosopher GWF Hegel famously evoked the owl of Minerva when discussing the historical wisdom that comes through hindsight. This autumn, she has flown tirelessly over the landscape of British politics. Party conference season was dominated by conflicting Labour and Conservative accounts of the 1970s and 80s. And a decade after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Andy Burnham this week abandoned all equivocation over the damage – economic but also strategic – that resulted from that decision.
Having declared that it is time to “face up to the reality that Brexit has done more harm than good”, Mr Burnham told the House of Commons on Monday that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to explore all options for closer relations with Brussels. Though he confirmed that in this parliament he will honour the red lines in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto, all bets will subsequently be off.
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