Rachel Reeves, please, let’s make budgets boring again

Budgets need to be reassuringly dull with no repeat of this year’s long, drawn-out and chaotic buildup

UK gambling firms spent ‘astronomic’ £2bn on advertising last year

Calls for Rachel Reeves to increase taxes in budget as estimate outstrips duties collected from online casinos

Relief for rail passengers as fare freeze in England announced for 2026

Chancellor will confirm the measure, intended to help commuters on expensive routes, in her budget speech

Lord Rothermere’s Telegraph takeover strengthens UK media’s rightwing tilt

Many fear competition and diversity will be diminished as Daily Mail owner wins race to buy newspaper

Labour must back delivery drivers sacked by DPD, former cabinet minister says

Louise Haigh criticises delivery company over treatment of workers who spoke out against pay cuts

A make-or-break budget: inside the Treasury before Labour’s crucial day

From the outside, the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s announcement has looked chaotic, and many see the future of the chancellor and PM in the balance

Will pay-per-mile raise Reeves money or drive people away from electric vehicles?

Need for new road taxes is clear – but there are concerns that pricing plan could stall transition away from petrol

Voters could abandon centrist parties if budget fails, warns former cabinet secretary

Simon Case says voters will look elsewhere if chancellor cannot find solutions to tax, spending and debt problems

UK government borrows more than expected in setback before budget

October figures represent final snapshot of public finances before Rachel Reeves’s tax and spending statement

Rachel Reeves sick of people ‘mansplaining’ how to be chancellor

As she prepares to deliver her budget next week, Reeves speaks of pressure of being UK’s first female chancellor

‘Devastating to think of lives that could have been saved under different PM’, say Covid bereaved – as it happened

Findings of inquiry into handling of pandemic by Boris Johnson’s government paint picture of delay and inaction

Reeves urged to ‘grasp the nettle’ with wholesale reset of council tax

Experts say chancellor should go further than rumoured plan to update value of homes in top three bands

What does the left want? A wealth tax. What will that accomplish? Very little

Imposing a 1% levy on the super-rich isn’t a policy, it’s pantomime. Tackling inequality in Britain will require much more far-reaching changes, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

Microsoft has ‘ripped off the NHS’, says MP amid call for contracts with British firms

Samantha Niblett highlighted government’s multi-billion-pound deals with Microsoft and ‘getting locked in’

Fall in UK inflation looks like turning point that heralds interest rate cut

Rachel Reeves hints there will be budget measures to push down prices and Bank of England is likely to act