The legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg has posted a good story on his Facebook page. He says that Liz Truss, the lord chancellor and justice secretary, is being sued by six high court judges for age discrimination. Two of the judges are also claiming sexual discrimination and racial discrimination respectively.

Here is an extract from Rozenberg’s post.

All the claims relate to reduced benefits the judges can expect to receive under a new judicial pension scheme introduced last year.

A two-week hearing has been arranged before a tribunal judge who is not affected by the new pension arrangements. There could be further hearings before appeal judges.

It’s thought to be unprecedented for serving judges to sue the lord chancellor and the Ministry of Justice.

Turning back to the IFS report (pdf), this is interesting. It’s a table showing how many of the fiscal targets set by the Treasury since 1997 have been met.

The IFS counts 12 targets in all, and concludes that only two of them have been hit. Both were rolling targets that did not involve balancing the budget in a given year, but setting plans that involved balancing the current budget over a five-year, and then later a three-year, timetable. That may sound like cheating, but the IFS commends this approach.

Only two targets managed to be met consistently: that is the coalition government’s initial target to aim for a cyclically-adjusted balance on the current budget five years out and its subsequent revised target to aim to achieve this three years out. It is perhaps not a coincidence that these two targets also had much to commend them. In contrast the other targets either had more thresholds that were more arbitrary (“when did the cycle start and end?”, “why 40% of GDP?”, “why should debt definitely fall between two future points in time?”, “why should welfare spending definitely be below some fixed level?”) and/or were not sufficiently flexible in the face of adverse fiscal shocks (“why must there be an overall surplus in 2019–20?”, “why must borrowing in 2013–14 be no more than half what it was in 2009–10?”). The weaknesses of these other targets often meant that their abandonment was preferable than trying slavishly to adhere to them.

Here are some more pictures from Theresa May’s India tour today.

And this is what Number 10 said about the visit in a briefing note sent out in advance.

The prime minister will visit the Sri Someshwara Temple in the Ulsoor District of Bengaluru later today to pay her respects at this ancient Hindu place of worship.

She will be welcomed by a guard of honour consisting of garlanders (who place a garland of fragrant flowers around the neck) and musicians playing drums and horns.

She will then tour the temple, built by the Chola dynasty (300 BCE–1279 CE) and showcasing an impressive mixture of Chola, Hoysala and Vijayanagar architecture.

Someshwara means “he who wears the moon on his head”, and is another name for Lord Shiva, one of the principal deities in the Hindu triumvirate.

The prime minister will conclude her visit by participating in a Hindu Aarti (blessing). Aarti is a part of pooja (prayer) in which light from wicks soaked in ghee (purified butter) or camphor is offered to the deities. The prime minister will draw her hands together across the top of the flame and touch her eyes, in a traditional ritual. She will then be offered Kumkum Tika (red power) to touch and dab a single spot on her forehead.

A senior City figure who was a remain supporter during the EU referendum has urged Theresa May to “get cracking” with the process of Brexit, warning that any delays would only cause more uncertainty for business.

John Nelson, the chairman of Lloyd’s of London, said: “To be blunt with you, the longer the uncertainty goes on the worse it is for business.”

His intervention, while travelling to India as part of a delegation accompanying the prime minister, is significant because he has been a vocal opponent of so-called hard Brexit.

But while some pro-EU campaigners want to push back the triggering of article 50, Nelson said delays could be damaging.

“I think unfortunately if it means greater uncertainty for a longer and longer period it is not so good,” he told the Evening Standard.

Get cracking is my view. It’s not a view that’s shared by all my colleagues here.

Lloyds announced major plans to expand during May’s three day visit to India, designed to boost economic ties between the two countries.

Nelson said he believed ministers understood the importance to City-based firms of resisting non-tariff barriers in the deal negotiated with the EU.

From our point of view we are very, very keen to have passporting rights and single market access. I detect that ministers are getting that very strongly now indeed.

He said it was important to prevent a cliff edge.

The other thing is we have to negotiate transitional arrangements otherwise we will be at a cliff edge for both sides, the EU and us. And they won’t start negotiating those until article 50 has been moved.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, was inevitably also asked about the US election at her regular press conference this lunchtime.

Unsurprisingly, she’s expressed her preference for Hillary Clinton before now. Today she added that, whilst this is America’s election and not usual for a leader of another country to comment, “it would be good to see that biggest crack to date in the glass ceiling”.

Sturgeon said of the Democratic candidate:

I think her experience, her strength, her resilience which has been on show throughout this campaign will make her a good president and somebody well able to address the challenges America in common with many other countries faces.”

Above and beyond that, I’m standing here as the first woman to hold the office of first minister and I think it would be great to see the world’s biggest democracy elect the first woman leader. The message that would send to women and girls across the world would be a very positive one. It would be good to see that biggest crack to date in the glass ceiling.

Jeremy Corbyn has not been commenting on Bill Clinton, but his brother Piers has been using his Twitter feed to comment on Clinton’s wife today. He’s not a fan.

Jeremy Corbyn’s office has not commented on the Clinton leak. This is from Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh.

The Bill Clinton speech also includes reference to another British politician. Clinton told his audience:

I had a man come up to me this summer when we were on our family vacation, and a friend of ours holds a party on Long Island every summer and I’m honored to go to the party. I was the designated attendee from our family. So I’m just standing there drinking a Coke and this guy comes up to me and says, “You don’t know me because I was not in government when you were there, but when your wife was Secretary of State, I was the British cabinet [secretary] for Northern Ireland.” And I thanked him. Cameron was good on Northern Ireland; we did pretty well when he was there. So he said in 2010 – remember when the whole thing was about to come off the track? We had terrible conflicts. He said, “I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. And finally, I realized that Hillary was the only person in office anywhere in the world that had enough influence with the Irish to solve it, so I called and pleaded with her to help me put it back on track. Thirty-six hours later, we were moving again.” She’s the only person in the world who could have done that. And he said, “She did that for a lot of us in a lot of different places, and a lot of us would like to help her now.”

Clinton did not name the Northern Ireland secretary but, although he mentioned David Cameron, he was probably talking to Shaun Woodward, Northern Ireland secretary under Gordon Brown (who oversaw a crisis about devolving policing powers) not Cameron’s first Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson.

Here is a longer extract from the leaked Bill Clinton speech. (See 12.45pm.)

My experience is that very often the winner of any election is determined by what people think the election is about. So we should all give a lot of thought to that when you’re talking to your friends and neighbours and trying to influence them. The first thing this election is about is how to restore broad-based prosperity and growth to the American economy. And I hope in the next presidential debate she and Senator Sanders and the others will be able to talk about what the best way to do that is. Hillary says that you have to have a campaign that appeals to the struggling, the striving and the successful. We have to do this together. And Bernie says just go get the money from the millionaires. And it sounds good because there’s – to a lot of people, if you look all over the world – the British Labor Party disposed of its most (inaudible) leader, David Miliband, because they were mad at him for being part of Tony Blair’s government in the Iraq War. And they moved to the left and put his brother in as leader because the British labor movement wanted it. When David Cameron thumped him in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadn’t moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labor Party, who I saw in the press today said that he was really a British citizen and had real British (inaudible). (Laughter.)

But what that is reflective of – the same thing happened in the Greek election – when people feel they’ve been shafted and they don’t expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them. And that is perfectly psychologically understandable and predictable. Most people in America haven’t had a raise in 15 years. 86 percent of the American people, adjusted for inflation, have an income today lower than it was the day before the crash. The median income of American families, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was the day I left office.

So this election, first of all, should be: how do we restore broad-based prosperity? We’ve only had one period in 50 years, since the early 1960s, when all segments of the American economy grew together, and that was the eight years when I served. You have to work at that. It is not an accident. That’s a matter of policy. It really does matter what you do. And I’m really proud of the fact that we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty into the middle class through work as happened in the Reagan years. You had 16 million jobs almost; we had almost 23 million. But the most important thing was 100 times as many people moved into the middle class. That’s policy. It’s policy that led the bottom 20 percent of workers to increase their income in percentage terms as much as the top 5 percent.

Here’s what the Treasury is saying about today’s IFS report. (See 10.33am.) This is from a spokeswoman.

The chancellor has been clear that, although we have already made significant progress in bringing the public finances under control, our debt and deficit remain too high.

Sustainable public finances are necessary to build an economy that works for all and we will return the budget to balance in a way that allows us the space to support the economy as needed.

The fundamentals of the UK economy are strong, and we are well-placed to deal with the challenges and take advantage of opportunities ahead.

That suggests the Treasury is not challenging the broad thrust of the IFS analysis.

Here is John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, commenting on today’s IFS report. (See 10.33am.) He said:

The fact that the Tories have no credible plan for the economy and no plan at all for Brexit, is starting to build up problems for the public finances. This report further highlights the past six years of Tory failure on the economy that Philip Hammond supported every step of the way, and which has meant our economy is not properly equipped for any downturn that may arise from Brexit. It is time the chancellor learnt the lessons of George Osborne rather than repeat them.

And this is from Susan Kramer, the Lib Dem Treasury spokeswoman.

This Brexit black hole means having to take billions out of public spending or rapidly increase taxes. Yet the government continues to pretend that all is well. They cannot keep ducking the question of how they are going to cope with the economic reality of Brexit.

These are not small numbers - £25bn is double what we spend on policing each year. Cuts of this size mean hitting schools, the NHS and public services up and down the country.

Theresa May is returning to the UK today at the end of her tour of India. She has given an interview to Sky News, and here are the key lines.

• May refused to defend the honesty of the leave campaign. Yesterday the Guardian revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service is considering a complaint from an academic who thinks that false claims made by the leave campaign break an obscure electoral law banning “undue influence”, defined as corrupt practices including the use of “a fraudulent device or contrivance” to “impede or prevent or intend to impede or prevent the free exercise of the franchise”. Asked if she thought the EU referendum campaign was honest, May replied:

I think what we need to do now is not focus on what happened during the campaign. People voted on whether or not they wanted to leave the EU. They voted to leave the EU and what I’m focusing on now and what I’m determined to do is to deliver on that and make a success of it.

May, of course, backed remain in the EU referendum.

• She refused to defend the Vote Leave claim that leaving the EU would free up an extra £350m a week for the NHS. Asked about this, she said: “I think when people voted on June 23 in the referendum and voted to leave the EU, they were looking at a number of things.”

• She refused to comment on the suggestion from Stephen Phillips, who resigned as a Conservative MP last week, that the Tories are becoming “Ukip-lite”.

• She claimed that leaving the EU would present Britain with “a world of opportunities”.

Leaving the EU presents us with a world of opportunities and I’m determined to seize them. That’s why I’m here in India, delivering on global Britain. And I have to say the response has been very good. During this visit, we’ve seen £1bn worth of deals being signed and we’ve come to an agreement with the Indian government that we will work together with them on developing our trade relationship for the future.

• She sidestepped a question about whether she expected the UK to have a transitional deal with the EU when it leaves, preserving aspects of the current arrangements, because of the difficulty of reaching a final Brexit deal. (As I reported on the blog yesterday, there is growing speculation that the government will strike such a deal.)

• She said she would be taking the “earliest opportunity” to speak to the winner of the US presidential election.

I will be taking the earliest opportunity to speak to whoever the winner of that contest is and talking to them about the special relationship that the UK has with the US. That relationship spans a whole range of issues, not just trade but also dealing with terrorism, security matters and defence matters as well.

No, we didn’t cancel today’s blog because all the interesting politics is happening in the US, although it is, and you can read about it here. I’m late starting because I got held up this morning for various reasons. Sorry.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has issued a new warning about the impact of Brexit, with the ominous, Game of Thrones-inspired title “Winter is Coming”. Essentially it is saying that lower growth will result in government receipts being £25bn lower than they otherwise would have been by 2019-20. Here is our preview story.

The full 54-page report (pdf) is out this morning. This IFS is also saying it expects auserity to carry on into the next decade. Here is an extract from its conclusion.

Another reason for the chancellor to wait before implementing any further fiscal tightening is that there is even more economic uncertainty than usual. But building a plan for further austerity in the next parliament would be prudent. Indeed even if a balanced headline budget was delivered in 2020–21 and then maintained thereafter public sector net debt would not be on course to reach its pre-crisis level of 40% of national income until around the mid-2040s. Unfortunately if anything the £25 billion estimated deterioration in the public finances in 2019–20 is likely to understate the increase in the longer-term challenge that has occurred since the March Budget. The OBR’s previous long-run projections were based on an optimistic assumption about NHS productivity growth which they have recently said is likely to be revised down in their future projections. More fundamentally any reduction in future immigration, any reduction in longer-term growth or any increase in future interest rates would make the fiscal arithmetic harder still.

This morning Nick Gibb, the education minister, and Lord O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, are both giving evidence to select committees. And Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, is giving evidence to a committee this afternoon.

As usual, now I’m here, I will also be covering the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

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