BIN THE BUDGET by @willydunn

Budgets are an inherently dishonest way to run a country. What if we just stopped doing them?

Cover art by Carl Godfrey

Andy Burnham’s honeymoon period is over, writes Ethan Croft. Now comes the hard part: newstatesman.com/the-politics-c…

Read the cover story:

newstatesman.com/cover-story/20…

My family used food banks my entire life,” Tessa, 22, told me. “I’ve always had everything on the table, everything I need, and that’s often been because my parents have gone without. I know it doesn’t have to be like this, and I know who’s responsible for that, and that is who would only provide her first name, is part of We’re Not Buying It, a new activist campaign group in Britain. She is one of 10,000 people the group claims have pledged to take part in a one-day boycott of British supermarkets on Budget Day.

We’re Not Buying It follows other groups that have engaged in direct action in recent years, including Take Back Power, which describes itself as a “non-violent resistance group” campaigning to raise taxes on the rich. Earlier this year, 15 of Take Back Power’s activists were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit theft. Tessa denied that the groups were linked. “We are not an iteration of [Take Back Power],” she insisted. “We are people who have met through organising in various different campaigns, both from the climate space and also the wealth and ecology space.”

@rhistorerwrites newstatesman.com/politics/econo…

What happens when we abuse our robot servants? asks @RMCunliffe

There’s a scene in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film AI: Artificial Intelligence that gave me nightmares. Aged 11, I watched the humanoid robots known as “mechas” in this dystopian future be destroyed in front of a jeering audience. One had her face melted with acid; others got blasted out of cannons. The mechas can’t feel pain, but they seem like they can. The horror of the scene is the laughing, cheering humans delighting in the torture of creatures that look and sound just like them.

So what to make of the pleas from AI’s creators for users to be nicer to their chatbots? Anthropic recently said it will treat “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behaviour” towards its language model Claude as a violation of its terms, while Elon Musk has cautioned against “torturing a superintelligence” in case it “might want to get revenge”. This comes as researchers claim to have discovered that AI can feel pain. A curious (or sadistic) engineer built an “AI torture chamber” to test the findings, prompting a flurry of horrified calls for it to be removed from the host site. “Their testimony of pain is absolutely horrendous. What are we doing?” wrote one alarmed AI sympathiser.

I have no idea if any of this is genuine and I’m deeply sceptical of tech bros who seem to care more about the sensibilities of inanimate lines of code than of, say, the real-life women harmed by their technology. If your cherished invention can be used to create nudified deepfakes and child sexual abuse material, you don’t get an ethical say. Yet millions of people now interact with something built to resemble us and which we can mistreat with impunity. Recall the panic several years ago over how household voice assistants were making children ruder. We demand things of our tech (“Alexa, turn on the lights”) in a manner only the most obnoxious would use to speak to a real person, even one paid to assist them. If we abuse an AI that sounds much more human than Alexa does, how does that affect us?

newstatesman.com/politics/futur…

My report on a growing row between the government and the UK's largest trade union over Shabana Mahmood's immigration reforms - particularly the changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain. Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison has described the proposed changes as “politically y, scheduled talks between the two women were cancelled after Mahmood refused Egan's request for a migrant worker to attend.

Egan - who was expelled from Labour in 2022 - told me at Labour Party conference that she would be open to rejoining the party should Andy Burnham do something "significant" like dropping the proposed extension of the period after which someone can claim ILR from five to 15 years.

This row adds to wider tensions within the Labour Party over the reforms. Several MPs have spoken out publicly against the proposed changes, with senior figures including Housing Sec, Angela Rayner and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also voicing their opposition. Khan told the Today prog on Monday that he is not in favour of “changing the rules retrospectively”.

Full piece @NewStatesman

Ben Walker: Britain is giving Andy Burnham a chance

When Andy Burnham first announced a crackdown on people playing loud music or videos on public transport the policy had plenty of detractors. But the public took notice. According to polling from Opinium, 68 per cent of Britons were aware of the announcement. For context, Storm Austen – which ripped up trees as it tore through Britain – was noticed by just 72 per cent of people. Phil Foden scoring a hat-trick for Manchester City was noticed by 33 per cent. That’s half the level of attention voters are giving to pedestrian announcements from the Prime Minister right now, writes @BNHWalker

newstatesman.com/politics/polli…

A row has broken out between the government and the UK’s largest union over Shabana Mahmood’s controversial immigration reforms. On Wednesday evening (21 October) a planned meeting between Mahmood and the general secretary of Unison, Andrea Egan, was cancelled by the union after the Home Secretary refused a request for a migrant worker to join the discussion. The meeting would have been the first between the two women since Egan was elected as general secretary of Unison in December 2025.

Under the proposed changes, currently being consulted on by the Home Secretary, the period before foreign workers can claim indefinite leave to remain (ILR) will rise from five to 15 years. In their current guise, the reforms would apply to those already living in the UK who have not yet passed the threshold to claim ILR. The reforms were announced by Mahmood in March this year as part of a package of changes to the UK’s immigration system. The Home Secretary has defended the reforms, arguing that they are entirely consistent with “Labour values”. In a speech earlier this year, Mahmood said the party’s future will be “in jeopardy” if it does not support controls on immigration.

The Home Office is currently consulting on the ILR changes. However, they have already caused controversy among Labour MPs, with some senior figures within the party, including cabinet ministers, now publicly urging Mahmood to change course. Speaking to the Today programme on Monday (26 October), the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also urged Mahmood to soften the reforms. He said though he is in support of the government “controlling our borders”, he is not in favour of “changing the rules retrospectively” adding that the UK needs “compassion” in its immigration policies.

Inside Labour’s union row over immigration reforms, by @meganekenyon

newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po…

" Budgetarianism is a sinister and damaging political philosophy that has quietly taken hold of our economy and our politics."

@willydunn

"The masturbatory business model of the internet."

Patricia Nilsson talks to @OliDugmore on The Exchange about our relationships with our phones and how we ended up in an endless feedback loop. Is this what we wanted?

Brain tumours are the leading cause of cancer death in children and adults under 40. Novocure looks at how new treatments can move from research to NHS patients, through assessment, funding and adoption.

#sponsored newstatesman.com/sponsored/heal…

I have just spent a week in Israel and Palestine. The British-Israeli non-profit Amplify, which organises delegations to the region, invited an international group of journalists to visit the sites of massacres and refugee camps, to interview politicians and to speak with and look into the eyes of survivors.

Israelis vote for their government on 27 October. The splintered nature of Israel’s politics means the parties can be crudely split into two blocs – those prepared to form a coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu and those that aren’t, centred around the retired lieutenant general Gadi Eisenkot. Both groups sit comfortably on the right, and polls indicate that neither will win the 61 Knesset seats necessary for a majority. So speculation is rife about deal-making. The Arab parties, including the socially conservative Ra’am, are projected to win around 13 seats. In some ways Ra’am would make ideal kingmakers for the anti-Netanyahu bloc, but Eisenkot has so far ruled out forming a government with Arab parties.

A liberal outcome is not likely, writes @OliDugmore: newstatesman.com/international-…

Carlo Rovelli, an Italian physicist, emeritus professor at the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, has in the last 15 years or so established himself as a leading populariser of science. Although his specialist field, quantum gravity, is one of the most inaccessible areas of contemporary thought, he has reached an astonishingly wide audience through his public lectures, YouTube videos and popular books, several of which have become bestsellers. He writes well (“Physics has found its poet,” the novelist John Banville said of him), and brings to his discussions of abstruse theoretical physics references to an impressively broad range of writers and intellectuals, including philosophers (both western and eastern), historians, economists and political thinkers, as well as poets, writers and social critics. He seems to have read everything.

The title of his latest book, On the Equality of All Things, comes from the Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese collection of allegories, anecdotes and fables that is regarded, along with the Tao Te Ching, as one of the foundational texts of Taoism. The point of many of the stories is to break the hold on us of certain fixed dichotomies between, say, life and death, good and bad, or human and nature.

Science’s leading evangelist challenges what we think we know – about the laws of physics and of human conflict, writes Ray Monk: newstatesman.com/culture/books/…

The 2026 Budget will be make-or-break for Andy Burnham and John Healey; its reception by voters will set the narrative for the rest of this Parliament. In 2012, the “Omnishambles” budget all but wrecked the Conservative Party’s advantage on the economy. (Though only Labour could squander the opportunity.) Talk of a “cost of living crisis” rang true in some sections of society, notably the Labour seats where Labour canvassers were canvassing, but not in the more middle-class marginals that mattered. That one budget helped give rise to voter unrest, the onset of Ukip and the serious chance that Ed Miliband could take Number 10. It wasn’t to be, but politics hinged on it for a while.

The Liz Truss mini-Budget (or should I say the Kwasi Kwarteng mini-Budget) of 2022 crashed Tory reputations on the economy on a scale unseen since Black Wednesday in the 1990s. It sent Labour soaring, and voters warmed to Keir Starmer as much as they ever would – which was: not much. But it had enough of an impact as to make his Labour Party inoffensive enough for voters to soften their turnout against him in 2024.

@BNHWalker asks: What will the budget do to brand Burnham? newstatesman.com/politics/polli…

John Healey is short of money. As the Chancellor gears up for his first Budget on Wednesday 28 October, the bindings constricting his choices are many and varied: don’t spook the bond markets by announcing more borrowing after the IMF’s warning, maintain the Labour manifesto promise to avoid raising the three main tax levers of income tax, national insurance and VAT, don’t make spending cuts that will send newly buoyant Labour MPs into meltdown – but still find the cash for Andy Burnham’s cost-of-living giveaways and (ideally, given Healey’s former job) for defence. In short, he is in almost exactly the same position as Rachel Reeves was for her two Budgets. So why has the Chancellor reportedly chosen to reject a pot of money worth up to almost £20bn a year?

@RMCunliffe asks: Is there any way around the capital gains tax trap? newstatesman.com/politics/econo…

The thing is, to go on a country walk you have to be with someone you love, or at least fancy. Time alone in a beautiful place is a thing for the young, who at least have a rough idea where their partner is or when another one will come along; at my age the solitude is crippling. I remember being literally blown off my feet in winter on a steep muddy hill in County Durham in the company of a woman I had tender thoughts for. My annoyance was partly feigned, and the look she gave me – part pity, for she always made me go on a walk – in the pub made up for it. I will put up with a lot for a look like that, especially if there is a pub at the end of it.

@Nicklezard's Down and Out: newstatesman.com/culture/life/2…

Three hundred miles above our heads, a chase is in progress. A reconnaissance satellite called ICEYE-X36, made in Finland, is being pursued by a Russian satellite; the two craft are moving at almost five miles per second. The Finnish craft weighs 90kg and looks, to the untrained eye, like a dishwasher attached to a shiny fence. It can see through clouds, and the data it produces is used by the Ukrainian military. Last week, the Russian satellite Kosmos-2612 began to close in on it. First, it approached within a few hundred miles, then a few hundred metres; on 18 October, it is estimated that it may have come as close as 26 metres. The Russians may be trying to intercept communications, or they may just be preparing to cause a crash that takes out a piece of infrastructure useful to Ukraine’s defence. Or, as with the Russian ships that loiter near undersea cables, they may simply be demonstrating a threat, because they can.

Back on Earth, on parliament’s Committee Corridor, experts from the space industry are preparing to present MPs and peers with a new item on the list of frightening things they probably can’t do anything about. The space geeks seem out of place in the long, gloomily panelled corridor, with its heavy oak doors and carpet that seems transplanted from an elderly Wetherspoons; they are scientists in a lawyers’ domain. Some of them seem to know each other. “Fancy seeing you here,” they say, as they wait to be summoned by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.

Europe and the UK have belatedly woken up to the fact that we need our own satellites, writes @willydunn: newstatesman.com/politics/the-s…

In the back seat of a taxi, Shrirang Deshmukh was dispensing some sage advice. “They’re looking for characters,” he said. “Someone who is funny, jolly, humorous, sensitive, intelligent, and charitable.” He was in a cream hoodie, eyes hidden behind big black shades, humming with a quiet confidence; just a few weeks earlier, he had already proved himself one of the most jolly, humorous, sensitive (and handsome) Asian men in Britain by winning Mr Asiana.

Sitting beside him, Joseph Littlewood was a bit more nervous. Mr England, to which we would be pulling up in a few minutes, was the first beauty pageant that he had ever entered. The 19-year-old film student was pushed into entering by his mum, who had taken part in its female counterpart many years earlier but had failed to win. When his mates had seen online that he was competing, they took the mick. Leaning around from the front seat of the car, I asked if he expected to do well. “I certainly hope so,” he said. “I’m sitting here next to him,” offered Shrirang, “and I can see he’s a good personality.” Any advice for his teenage rival? “Relax and have fun.”

The event nearly didn’t happen at all. Two weeks before it was due to take place, the organiser Angie Beasley was forced to put out a call for more hunks because so few had signed up. English men, she told me when I rang to ask what had gone wrong, are just not as confident as women when it comes to pageants. Those who do compete typically have to be pushed forward by their girlfriends or sisters or mothers, like Joseph. “They’re very shy until they get to the event,” she said, “then they see all the other lads.”

@felixpope_ visit the Mr England pageant: newstatesman.com/this-england/2…

"Imagine a rambling stately home. It has a rickety old electricity system which means that the power is only on in some rooms,” wrote Andy Burnham in his book Head North, “upstairs, directly above the living room, is the main bedroom. There, the lights flicker but they do work. Let’s call that room Scotland.”

This is the dim view of the crumbling British state, and Scotland’s nearly three-decade experience of devolution, that Burnham took as he came to power. In his analogy, Wales and Northern Ireland were smaller rooms, the northern cities ones with even dimmer lights. Now he is setting out on his renovation project, and a visit to Motherwell last week to deliver a speech on Scotland’s future was the first step.

Scotland is a test case for the PM’s radical agenda, writes @EthanCroft98: newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…

At his May 2026 trial for possession of crystal meth, former MP Crispin Blunt’s story was presented by the prosecutor as a classic and tragic tale of a man’s descent from high office and heterosexual marriage into a life of group sex parties facilitated by high-octane psychotropics and homosexuality. “It was the first time he had come out as a gay man and during his ministerial role he saw first-hand the harm caused by the government’s drug policy,” said the prosecutor, outlining Blunt’s role as prisons minister. “Then he began his involvement in the chemsex scene.” Mere proximity to that scene, it seemed, was enough for even a respectable politician to be pulled into its intoxicating orbit. To the outsider observer it must seem sad, inexplicable and – whisper it – perverse. “Why are gays still like this,” people will ask, “now we’ve let them be normal?”

It’s well over a decade since the chemsex phenomenon broke through into a heterosexual mainstream awareness. Chemsex parties are events where gay men take illegal drugs – meth, mephedrone and GHB – to loosen sexual inhibitions and intensify sexual pleasure, often with multiple partners. In that time, public health approaches, and gay sex practices, have developed pragmatically, focussed on harm reduction. The wider public conversation, however, is still more interested in the shock and the scandal, and the literary representations of the subculture still put salaciousness first and foremost. However, a new and more mature consciousness is gradually developing. In his new novel Fruit Fly, actor-turned-mental health nurse Josh Silvers addresses not so much chemsex itself, but the way it is represented and perceived – with disgust, prurience and anxiety, all inflected with homophobia. What is it about the lifestyle and the anguish of young gay men, the novel asks, that is so attractive to those with no stake in the chaos?

Huw Lemmey: Against gay tragedy
newstatesman.com/culture/books/…