James Nation

Undoubtedly there is tweaking that can be done to the proposals. But the truth is the broad thrust of the changes - Longer period before ILR - Asylum status being based on a country being unsafe - New sponsorship routes Command support across Labour’s 2024 coalition.

Andy Burnham wants to makes sure we "buy British" when ramping up defence spending. As I wrote earlier in the week, if all European countries adopt this 'home bias' approach to procurement, European defence will remain fragmented, and rearmament will be more expensive.

Andy Burnham says he will not reduce the benefits bill by going with "crude cuts". Instead, he says he would reduce spending by guaranteeing work placements and apprenticeships for every 16-18-year-old who wants one, expanding technical education, improving mental health support for young people and building more council homes to lower housing benefit costs.

No doubt it will be a tricky Autumn Budget, but one thing the (current) Chancellor can be vindicated on is her wait-and-see approach to intervening on hhld energy costs. The latest projections have modest falls in the Energy Price Cap through the turn of the year and into H1 2027. Deflated by average earnings the EPC is set to be only £150/year higher than pre-Ukraine War levels.

There's some irony in Reeves and Starmer leaving behind a £1.2bn unfunded spending commitment, but it's not that big a sum to find at the Budget, in the grand scheme of things. Bigger issue: the £25bn funding gap relative to the 3.5% target. Absolutely no realism about that.

If true, detail to watch will be: a) how much of the increase is capital? That’s where the Gov has more headroom; b) what does that imply re funding left for the 10 year infrastructure plan, where defence wasn’t mentioned?; c) if minimal resource £, what about army numbers?

Earlier drafts of the Honest Day paper included a version of this quote in the foreword. It is, in my view, the single most important thing for progressives who care about the post-war liberal settlement to internalise in this political era. ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things are going to have to change.’