Last week’s budget left middle-income families anxious and angry. The party is turning its back on voters it can little afford to lose

Just over 15 years ago, a realisation began to dawn on British politicians, triggered by the financial crash of 2008 and its effects on millions of ordinary lives.

Before that rupture, they had clung to the idea that a huge chunk of the public was made up of contented consumers and property owners. Now, though, any such certainties were being shaken – something highlighted by the Labour conference speech given in 2009 by Gordon Brown, which contained two particularly eye-catching words: “When markets falter and banks fail,” he said, “it’s the jobs and the homes and the security of the squeezed middle that are hit the hardest.”

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Women of all ages, especially older ones, are actively choosing to travel alone. What’s behind the trend?

UK travel companies have reported an increase in bookings for solo travellers, primarily older women, often leaving partners behind to “explore on their own terms”.

Last month, the tour operator Jules Verne said solo travellers accounted for 46% of bookings for its trips departing next year, up from 40% in 2023. Just under 70% of its current solo bookings are made by women.

That he stayed after relegation in 1978 and lifted the FA Cup with the team still in Division Two typified his commitment

Some players embody a club but few have ever embodied their side more than Billy Bonds, who died on Sunday at the age of 79. He was not a one-club man but by the time he finally retired, at the age of 41, in 1988, he felt like one, having racked up a record 799 appearances for West Ham. Just as significantly, he had lifted the FA Cup twice as captain.

There was applause at the London Stadium on Sunday as a montage was shown on the big screens. It featured a number of spectacular long-range strikes because it’s easier to show somebody scoring goals than preventing them, and still harder to somehow sum up leadership.

Understanding the surprising mechanism behind apathy can help unlock scientific ways to boost your motivation

We all know people with very different levels of motivation. Some will go the extra mile in any endeavour. Others just can’t be bothered to put the effort in. We might think of them as lazy – happiest on the sofa, rather than planning their latest project. What’s behind this variation? Most of us would probably attribute it to a mixture of temperament, circumstances, upbringing or even values.

But research in neuroscience and in patients with brain disorders is challenging these assumptions by revealing the brain mechanisms that underlie motivation. When these systems become dysfunctional, people who were once highly motivated can become pathologically apathetic. Whereas previously they might have been curious, highly engaged and productive – at work, in their social lives and in their creative thinking – they can suddenly seem like the opposite.

From Vietnam to the Balkans, Donald Trump’s family has launched a global dealmaking blitz since his re-election

A crusading prosecutor in the Balkans comes under pressure to drop a big case. Vietnamese villagers learn they are to be evicted. A convicted crypto kingpin in the Gulf receives a pardon.

All have one thing in common: they appear to be connected to the Trump family’s campaign to amass riches around the world. Since Donald Trump’s re-election a year ago, warnings that his use of presidential power to advance personal interests is corroding American democracy have grown ever louder. What is less understood – and perhaps even more dangerous – is the damage this is doing everywhere else.

Exclusive: Shot as he barricaded the synagogue, Yoni Finlay describes the assault – and the climate that allowed it to happen

It was just after 6am and Yoni Finlay woke early with nerves. It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and the 39-year-old Mancunian was due to sing the dawn prayer, Shacharis, before hundreds of worshippers later that morning.

After practising his verse, Finlay buttoned up his white robes and headed to Heaton Park shul in north Manchester. He greeted familiar faces – exchanging a cheery hello with Bernard Agyemang, the security guard – then took a seat on the stage, the bimah, and said prayers.

Chancellor accused of misleading public about reasons for tax rises, with opposition MPs calling for her to resign

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Rachel Reeves has denied lying to the public in the buildup to last week’s budget, insisting that she needed to raise taxes to a record level to ensure economic stability.

The chancellor said on Sunday she had announced £26bn-worth of tax rises on Wednesday in part to build a buffer against her fiscal rules and reduce the risk of further tax increases in the future, and in part to protect public spending.

MP speaks to delegates in Liverpool after boycotting conference yesterday

Kemi Badenoch has reiterated her calls for the chancellor to resign on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, after accusing Rachel Reeves of breaking promises not to raise taxes.

In this year’s budget, Reeves froze tax thresholds for three years longer than previously planned, meaning that as wages rise more people will have to start paying income tax.

The chancellor called an emergency press conference telling everyone about how terrible the state of the finances were and now we have seen that the OBR had told her the complete opposite. She was raising taxes to pay for welfare.

The only thing that was unfunded was the welfare payments which she has made and she’s doing it on the backs of a lot of people out there who are working very hard and getting poorer. And because of that, I believe she should resign.

The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, has written to the FCA (the Financial Conduct Authority). Hopefully there will be an investigation, because it looks like what she was doing was trying to pitch-roll her budget – tell everyone how awful it would be and then they wouldn’t be as upset when she finally announced it – and still sneak in those tax rises to pay for welfare. That’s not how we should be running this process.

Exclusive: Long waiting times affected 386,849 patients in England during September, data analysis shows

Hundreds of thousands of people in England are not getting tests for killer diseases because of widespread delays that doctors fear will harm patients.

A total of 386,849 people in September had been waiting more than six weeks for a diagnostic test for cancer, heart problems and other serious conditions, according to an analysis of NHS waiting time data by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR).

Request is submitted weeks after Donald Trump called on Isaac Herzog to pardon Israeli prime minister

Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Israel’s president for a pardon for bribery and fraud charges and an end to a five-year corruption trial, arguing that it would be in the “national interest”.

Isaac Herzog’s office acknowledged receipt of the 111-page submission from the prime minister’s lawyer, and said it had been passed on to the pardons department in the ministry of justice. The president’s legal adviser would also formulate an opinion before Herzog made a decision, it added.