Public spending hikes and pro-poor tax cuts might fix the economy and be popular enough to stop the far right

With poverty rising, a recession approaching and annual inflation topping 120% in Argentina, it is unsurprising that voters are fed up. They would be forgiven for wanting change in the upcoming presidential election. However, voting for a far-right candidate, Javier Milei, would be a serious mistake. Mr Milei admires Donald Trump, trades in misogyny and says the outrageous to get noticed. Despite what Mr Milei claims, the Pope is not an emissary of the “ evil one ” nor is the climate crisis “a socialist lie”.

After winning Argentina’s primary election this summer, Mr Milei is, depressingly, in pole position to clinch the presidency. His pitch is that Argentina’s interventionist, welfarist economic model has failed. Mr Milei is a fan of the free market missionary Milton Friedman . He thinks inflation results from too much of the Argentinian currency, the peso, being in circulation. Mr Milei’s solution is to shrink the state and replace the peso with the dollar. Friedman’s ideas have been debunked . But they are held with religious fervour by adherents such as Mr Milei.

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Labour’s Stella Creasy elicits confirmation of higher charges to firms which some say risk further fuelling food inflation

The government has admitted it will cost businesses £330m each year in additional charges when new post-Brexit border controls on animal and plant products imported from the European Union are implemented next year.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, a minister of state in the Cabinet Office, confirmed the estimated annual cost adding that the UK needs tighter border controls to “protect our international reputation” in a letter to Labour MP Stella Creasy, the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe.

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Local government has been steadily squeezed by austerity, inflation and centralisation. Greater devolution is needed.

In most of Britain’s towns there are buildings hinting of a more prosperous past. Vast stone public libraries, swimming baths, and theatres; all encircling the grand town halls that once controlled them. Many are long shut, converted, or owned by someone else. But the symbolism remains – local government used to do stuff.

Today, England’s councils are in the worst crisis since the foundation stones of these municipal palaces were laid. Birmingham, the largest local authority in Europe, is the tip of the iceberg in its effective bankruptcy . Woking, Thurrock, Croydon, Slough, and Northamptonshire have all gone bust. Dozens more are perilously close – from “red wall” Stoke-on-Trent , to the blue-blooded Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead .

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The Conservatives could be out of office for two terms. Labour has the chance to govern with seriousness and restore trust

In his classic work The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1951), the New York Herald Tribune humorist Will Cuppy’s verdict on Attila the Hun was: “Attila’s career teaches that you may get by for a while, but it can’t last.”

Without wishing to push the comparison too far, I think Cuppy’s observation epitomises the situation our present prime minister – they come and go, these Conservative prime ministers – now finds himself in.

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Revisions to figures show stronger performance than Germany and France but momentum starts to stall

• Business live – latest updates

The UK economy made a faster recovery from the Covid pandemic than previously estimated, according to revisions to official figures revealing a stronger performance than Germany and France.

In a boost for Rishi Sunak before the Conservative party conference in Manchester beginning this weekend, revised figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed gross domestic product was 1.8% above pre-pandemic levels at the end of the second quarter this year.

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Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• UK households face tax rise of £3,500 a year by next election, finds IFS

Today’s GDP report shows that the UK economy grew faster than other G7 rivals in 2022 (with growth revised up from 4.1% to 4.3%), and also in 2021 (with 8.7% growth).

Remember, that follows the 10.4% fall in UK GDP in 2020 during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Thinktank says Tories have overseen the biggest increase in taxes during a parliament since records began in 1951

UK households are facing an average tax rise of £3,500 a year by the next election, the country’s leading economics thinktank has said – the biggest increase over a parliament on records dating back more than 70 years.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that on current forecasts the Conservatives were on track to raise £100bn more annually by 2024 than if taxes as a share of national income had stayed the same as in 2019.

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Tanzania government blamed for violence against villagers in national park, while thousands more people face losing their homes

The World Bank is investigating allegations of killings, rape and forced evictions made by villagers living near the site of a proposed tourism project it is funding in Tanzania.

The bank has been accused of “enabling” alleged violence by the Tanzanian government to make way for a $150m (£123m) project ministers say will protect the environment and attract more tourists to Ruaha national park.

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Survey finds parents under pressure, as second study finds some are leaving workforce because of costs

Parents of nursery and primary school-age children are facing more than £600 of extra childcare costs a month, a study has found, as employers demand staff spend more days in the office.

More than half of parents said they had come under increasing pressure to increase time spent at their desks, in response to a survey by the flexible childcare provider Pebble.

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