Evening Briefing: Wednesday 7 October 2026
- What you would leave behind: The Conservatives would raise the inheritance tax threshold from £325,000 to £500,000 each and take the family home out of the tax entirely, whatever it is worth. On an estate with a £2m house that is a bill of about £400,000 falling to nothing. About 5% of deaths currently pay it, and this is a policy for the next parliament, not a change now.
- Your living standards: Incomes after housing costs are forecast to be £440 to £770 lower in real terms by 2029-30 than two years ago — on the lower figure, the steepest fall since records began in 1961. The average five-year fixed mortgage went through 6% this week. The Budget is on 28 October.
- Your post and your high street: Royal Mail is cutting 2,500 head-office jobs, with posties and drivers excluded, while just over 75% of first-class letters arrive on time against a 93% target. Boots has been sold for £6.7bn — 1,800 shops and about 50,000 staff, including prescriptions and vaccinations.
Twenty-Four Killed in Ukraine, Eighteen in One Apartment Block
Russia fired seventy ballistic missiles and forty-six jet-powered drones at eleven Ukrainian regions overnight, killing at least twenty-four people. Eighteen of them, four of them children, died in a single five-storey apartment block in P…
A Drone Threat Linked to Iran Emptied RAF Fairford
A credible threat linked to Iran, potentially involving a drone attack, is why the United States abruptly removed at least a dozen B-1 and B-52 bombers from RAF Fairford on Sunday, American officials say. A seventh man, a 22-year-old Brito…
France Suspends Stun Grenades After a Boy Loses His Hand
The interior minister Laurent Nuñez has ordered a temporary halt to police use of stun grenades in the school protests, after a fifteen-year-old’s hand was amputated following an incident in Lens on Monday. His mother told French televisio…
Bolsonaro’s Son Promises to Re-Democratise Brazil Before the Runoff
Flávio Bolsonaro, who beat Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s first round and goes into the 25 October runoff as favourite, has pledged to use a greatly enlarged far-right congressional bloc to change the constitution and “re-democratis…
China Puts Attack Jets at Its First Overseas Air Base
Satellite images show eight light attack aircraft and more than a dozen military vehicles at Ban Keun airport in Laos, fifty kilometres north of Vientiane, a day after China opened a joint “support and training centre” there on 29 Septembe…
No Inheritance Tax on the Family Home, Badenoch Pledges
Kemi Badenoch told the Conservative conference that “the next Conservative government will legislate so nobody will ever pay inheritance tax on their family home”, with couples able to leave an additional £1m tax free. The party puts the c…
Worst Parliament for Living Standards Since Records Began in 1961
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says average household incomes after housing costs will be between £440 and £770 lower in real terms in 2029-30 than when the government took office two years ago. Even the smaller figure would be the steepes…
Royal Mail to Cut 2,500 Jobs as Letter Volumes Collapse
Royal Mail will cut 2,500 head-office and other non-frontline roles by the end of 2027, just under 2% of a workforce of more than 131,000. Posties and drivers are excluded, and the company says it will use voluntary redundancy and natural…
Boots Sold for £6.7bn to Canada’s Weston Family
Wittington Investments, the Weston family holding company, is buying Boots with the Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings in a deal worth $8.9bn, or about £6.7bn. The sellers are Sycamore Partners, which has owned it for eighteen months…
Greens Face a Venue Ban and Open an Inquiry on Polling Eve
Brighton and Hove’s council leader is considering refusing to let the Greens hire the Brighton Centre again after Sunday’s motion defining Zionism as racism, the party has opened an investigation into the member who proposed it, and its fo…