Evening Briefing: Sunday 1 November 2026
- If you have a mortgage or savings: markets expect the Bank to raise rates to 4% from 3.75% on Thursday, which would be the first rise since 2023. That is an expectation rather than a decision. Inflation was 3.5% in September, the energy cap rose 3.6% on 1 October, and a further rise of about 22% is forecast for January.
- If you are travelling by train at Christmas: book around ten days of engineering works now. Birmingham New Street closes from Christmas Eve to 29 December, Great Western services terminate at Reading from 27 December to 4 January, and the east coast main line is part-closed on Christmas Eve with buses between Newark and York adding two hours.
- If you follow the Gulf: nothing has been agreed and no date exists for anything. Tehran has cut the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz it is offering from seven days to two, mediation is in its third day, and the American president says one or two nuclear sites remain. Oil rose 2.4% on Friday on that uncertainty.
“One or Two Sites” Left, as Mediators Cut the Hormuz Window
Speaking to reporters at his Florida club on Saturday, the American president said of Iran: “We’ve knocked out their nuclear. We still have to take care of, I would say one or two sites, but we can do that in 10 minutes.” Meanwhile Qatari…
Ebola Passes Five Thousand Deaths, With No Vaccine for This Strain
More than 5,000 people have now died in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s deadliest Ebola outbreak, with more than 10,300 confirmed cases across eight of its 26 provinces. The epicentre is a conflict zone. There is no treatment or vaccine…
Oleshky Emptied, and the Ceasefire That Allowed It Ends Tonight
The local truce in Kherson region, the most significant between Kyiv and Moscow since the invasion, is expected to end this evening. It allowed a joint evacuation of the besieged front-line city of Oleshky that finished on Saturday. About…
Tusk Says There Can Be No Compromise on the Polish Court
In a prime-time address on Saturday night, after the riot police we reported yesterday, Poland’s prime minister vowed to see the contested overhaul of the constitutional court through: “in certain matters, there can be no compromise”. He s…
Sixteen Minutes of Silence, and the Arrest of a Police Chief
Thousands marched in silence through Novi Sad in the rain today, two years after a station canopy collapsed and killed sixteen people — sixteen minutes of silence, sixteen wreaths. Hours earlier, the head of Serbia’s criminal police, whom…
An Apology Without Reparations, and a Leader Who Rejects Both
The chancellor confirmed this morning that the apology the prime minister is open to would carry no financial liability: considering one “doesn’t mean accepting that British people now should accept the financial liability” for acts “in wh…
Starmer Says Europe Can No Longer Rely on American Money
The former prime minister told an audience in Dublin on Friday that the change in Europe’s defence relationship with the United States is permanent, not “an aberration of the Trump presidency”, and that Washington will no longer “bankroll”…
325 Arrested Outside the Embassy as the Ban Faces Appeal
The Metropolitan Police say 325 people were arrested at a protest supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action outside the American embassy at Nine Elms on Saturday, 320 of them for expressing support for a proscribed organisation unde…
Green Party at a Crossroads After the Zionism Motion
A former Green co-leader says the party is at a “crossroads” and should return to its “core values”, weeks after members adopted a motion defining Zionism as a form of racism. The current leader replied that there is “no environmental just…
Ten Days of Christmas Rail Works Close Paddington and New Street
Engineering works over the holidays will shut London Paddington, disrupting intercity services to the west of England and Wales into January, and close Birmingham New Street for five days. The east coast main line is partly closed on Chris…