POLITICS: Newslinks for Sunday 12th October 2025 – USSA News

Budget 1) Reeves will “tax the rich” rather than cut spending

“Rachel Reeves has signalled the better off will be forced to “contribute more” as she prepares to raise taxes at the Budget. Treasury sources have said that the Chancellor will not cut spending on public services or significantly increase borrowing, as she looks to plug a £20-30bn black hole in the public finances. It will leave her with no option but to increase taxes substantially. Ms Reeves will argue that growth boosting reforms, such as a further loosening of planning rules, can avoid the need for tax rises on “working families”. She will instead target those with higher incomes or more wealth, The Telegraph understands.” – Sunday Telegraph

• Reeves looks for extra headroom in budget to insulate UK economy against bond market – The Guardian
• The Chancellor should cut taxes, not raise them – Leader, Sunday Telegraph
• Reeves blaming the OBR is like blaming a hangover on the bar – Robert Colvile, Sunday Times

Budget 2) Inheritance tax on farmers “could be eased”

“Changes to inheritance tax relief for farmers are being explored by ministers before next month’s budget. Rachel Reeves is under pressure to alter proposals that have been derided as a “family farm tax” since she announced them last year. The chancellor provoked uproar with her decision to require farmers with assets of more than £1 million to pay 20 per cent inheritance tax (IHT), half the usual rate, from April next year. Under the previous regime, farmland was exempt from inheritance tax under agricultural property relief.” – Sunday Times

Budget 3) Badenoch: If Labour want to steal my plan to axe the hated stamp duty, they’re more than welcome

“Stamp duty is holding Britain back. Abolishing it would free up the housing market, help every generation, and get Britain moving again. Abolishing stamp duty shows the Conservatives have a serious plan for a stronger economy. But this is not about the Conservative Party, it’s about the country. I’m serious about ideas, not territorial about their ownership. If the Government wants to take a good idea, I’ll applaud them for it – Britain wins either way.” – Kemi Badenoch, Mail on Sunday

>Today: ToryDiary: Our Survey: Badenoch secures her position as leader with her renewal speech but will it add up to revival for the party?

China 1) White House warns Starmer intelligence sharing could be threatened

“The White House has warned Sir Keir Starmer that the failure to prosecute two alleged Chinese spies risks undermining the special relationship and could threaten intelligence sharing between Britain and the US. President Trump is understood to be growing concerned about the UK’s reliability after charges were dropped against two Britons accused of spying for Beijing. The case against Chris Cash, 30, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, 33, an academic, collapsed last month after the government failed to provide evidence that China was a threat to national security.” – Sunday Times

• Jonathan Powell, the envoy-in-chief with more than China to worry about – Sunday Times
• Powell under pressure over Chinese factory ‘that poses threat to Britain’ – Sunday Telegraph
• Alicia Kearns, the MP at the heart of the China spy scandal, will demand Beijing is hit by sanctions for targeting her – The Sun on Sunday
• It looks like Keir Starmer and his aides let the China spy ring trial collapse. We are owed answers – Chris Philp, The Sun on Sunday

China 2) Intelligence on embassy threat left out of official review

“British intelligence agencies were prevented from directly submitting spying concerns about the proposed Chinese super-embassy in London. The embassy, which would be China’s largest in Europe, has prompted national security warnings from officials, including over a “spy dungeon” in the basement of the building.” – Sunday Telegraph

SNP members back Swinney’s independence plan for Holyrood election

“SNP members have backed John Swinney’s plan to declare a mandate for a second independence referendum, if the party wins a majority of seats in next year’s Holyrood election. The first minister’s strategy was endorsed ahead of a bid to make the 2026 ballot a de-facto vote on independence. Swinney told the SNP conference in Aberdeen his proposals were the most realistic way of pursuing the goal, based on a previous precedent which brought about the 2014 referendum.” – BBC

• Swinney: No ‘shortcut’ to NHS wait time reduction – BBC

Wales 1) Farage promises to challenge status quo

“Nigel Farage says it is “too early” to answer questions about his party’s policies for next year’s Senedd election, but promises “it’ll be very different to the status quo of the last quarter of a century”. The head of Reform UK was speaking to BBC Politics Wales as part of a series of interviews with party leaders at the start of the Senedd term. He hinted at plans to vary income tax, and said they would “use every devolved power we possibly can” to make life easier for businesses.” – BBC

• Why business is starting to talk to Nigel Farage and Reform – Sunday Times
• Reform councils are axing net zero targets – The Observer

Wales 2) Plaid promises free childcare if it wins Senedd election

“Families who have children aged nine months to four years old will get free childcare if Plaid Cymru wins the next Welsh Parliament election, its leader has said. Rhun ap Iorwerth made the pledge as he told conference delegates he was ready to lead the country “right now”, replacing Labour as the party of government.” – BBC

EU to use steel trade war to strong-arm Britain on youth mobility

“Brussels is poised to use negotiations over new EU steel tariffs to lobby Sir Keir Starmer for further concessions on work visas for young people. The Telegraph understands that European countries view upcoming talks as an opportunity to press their demands for significantly more generous terms. Last week, the EU Commission announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 50 per cent on all steel imports coming into the bloc, including those from the UK.” – Sunday Telegraph

Streeting denounces BMA for wrecking tactics

“Wes Streeting has accused the doctors union of “dangerous extremism” after its members urged GPs to “overwhelm” A&E departments with patients in a revolt against reforms. Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) wrote to doctors telling them to ignore guidelines saying patients should go to a pharmacy if they need same day care.” – The Sun on Sunday

Other political news

• Tony Blair met Jeffrey Epstein while prime minister – BBC
• Tuition fees set to be lowered at universities with poor teaching – Sunday Times
• ‘Stalker’ armed with knife arrested for ‘targeting Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey and his family at their home’ – The Sun on Sunday
• Nesbitt says English nationalism biggest threat to union – BBC
• Police usher pro-Jewish protesters away from Palestine march – Sunday Telegraph
• Reform UK oppose changing Sunday trading laws – Sunday Express
• Labour councillor suspended over racist comment – BBC
• Lambeth Council using legal loophole to serve families with no-fault evictions – The Guardian
• Russia may have been behind Jaguar Land Rover cyber attack – Sunday Telegraph
• Rayner moves lover Sam Tarry into her new seaside home weeks after quitting as Deputy PM over stamp duty scandal – The Sun on Sunday
• Nandy to crack down on Islamic centres preaching anti-Semitic hate – Sunday Telegraph
• £74 million of taxpayers’ cash paid to migrants leaving the UK – The Sun on Sunday
• Ed Miliband’s split with Starmer over a £100bn mega-project – Sunday Times
• No plans to send UK troops to monitor Gaza ceasefire, says Cooper – BBC

Daley: Self-improvement was Badenoch’s mantra to take on the centrists

“Encouraging welfare dependency and punishing self-improvement is not just damaging to the economy: it is a wicked waste of human potential and a perverse denial of social mobility. Most important, as the reception to the leader’s speech made so thunderously clear, this is the philosophy that most Conservative voters see as their natural home. Everything in the party’s programme should have this idea at its core, and make the explicit connection between that crucial moral principle and the practical application of policy…Then there is the personality problem that the emergence of the real Kemi Badenoch will present for Sir Keir. A man with one badger-in-the-headlights facial expression and no sense of humour is going to have to face a woman of infectious warmth and considerable wit in a painful series of electoral debates. Labour supporters will be watching through their fingers.” – Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph

• Badenoch’s Tories are standing up for fiscal reality – and rightly so – Liam Halligan, Sunday Telegraph
• The Conservatives must stop imitating Reform – Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer

Lawson: Do the Conservatives really back fiscal responsibility?

“They also refused to support the government’s admittedly rushed scheme to reduce some disability benefits. As the Conservative Home website reported in July, there was a split in the shadow cabinet over whether it should back that bill, which would have cut about £5 billion from the welfare budget, and the leader of those who successfully argued for outright opposition was the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride. In the purely political sense he was shrewd. Still, I could not help laughing when I saw Stride, in an interview on stage in Manchester last week with my colleague Robert Colvile, declare that, in terms of the government’s fiscal credibility, “the watershed moment was when they failed to get through their £5 billion of welfare savings because their backbenchers wouldn’t agree to it. It sent a signal to the markets.” The shadow chancellor was too modest about his role in the debacle, given that, had the Conservatives backed the welfare cuts, those Labour backbenchers would have rebelled in vain.” – Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

Hannan: Why do our rulers dislike our country?

“What is it about Britain that inspires such dislike from its own people? Not from normal people, obviously, but from a chunk of our intellectual elites. Why is it that flying the national flag has become an act of defiance against our own rulers? Left-wingers in France or Greece or Argentina are generally patriotic, and rightly so. It is natural to feel an attachment to the nation that gave you your birth and infant nurture. Here, though, distaste for this country hovers behind all manner of apparently unconnected political movements…In order to maintain such self-loathing, it is necessary not simply to ignore context and perspective but to invert things. Every country practised slavery, but reparations are sought solely from the one that poured its blood and treasure into eliminating the foul trade. To condemn colonialism, everything that came before and followed after must be expunged from the record, and colonised peoples are presented as having lived in prelapsarian bliss.” – Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph

• Why won’t the woke Left stand up for what we in Britain hold dear? – Leader, Mail on Sunday

Hodges: Starmer promised us full transparency. So perhaps he can shed light on the mystery of Company 12373398

“There’s something decidedly murky about this network of seemingly interconnected political campaign companies, all of which have dabbled in internal and external Labour politics. And which directly and indirectly have had a significant role in ushering Starmer into power. Some of this opaqueness is due to be further challenged in a forthcoming book, The Fraud, due to be published later this week. But the imminence of its publication also seems to have coincided with another mystery.” – Mail on Sunday

• PM’s right-hand man Morgan McSweeney is ‘a dead man walking’ after skipping No 10 meeting – Mail on Sunday
• Calls for transparency on political funding after first crypto donation made to UK party – The Observer

News in brief

• Labour’s deputy leadership election gets nasty – Megan Kenyon, New Statesman
• Why I am still a Thatcherite. And you should be too – Marc Sidwell, CapX
• Is anyone listening to the Scottish Tories? – Lucy Dunn, The Spectator
• A victory against Britain’s Islamic blasphemy laws – Hugo Timms, Spiked
• Leeds University is abandoning intellectual independence – Freddie Attenborough, The Critic

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