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Nigel Farage, launching Reform’s policies on illegal migrants, said: ‘The only way we’ll stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone who comes via that route.’ A Taliban official in Kabul responded: ‘We are ready and willing to receive and embrace whoever he [Mr Farage] sends us.’ The government sought to appeal against a High Court ruling which temporarily forbade the housing of asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex. Protests against asylum hotels and counter-protests continued in several places. The government said it would introduce a panel of adjudicators instead of judges to hear migrants’ appeals in the hope of speeding up the asylum process. The number of migrants arriving in England in small boats in the seven days to 25 August was 950.
Lucy Connolly, released after serving 40 per cent of a 31-month sentence for inciting racial hatred in a tweet in the wake of the Southport murders, said she considered herself ‘Sir Keir Starmer’s political prisoner’. A new craze spread for flying Union flags and crosses of St George from lampposts after Operation Raise the Colours, a Facebook group, supported such gestures. Some councils, such as Tower Hamlets in east London, removed them from ‘council-owned infrastructure’; 12 councils run by Reform said they would not take down national flags. There were two stabbings at Notting Hill Carnival.
The number of people living on out-of-work benefits rose to 6.5 million. More than half the jobs lost since last autumn’s Budget were in pubs and restaurants: nearly 89,000 or 53 per cent of the total. Gas and electricity prices will rise by 2 per cent from October. Annual food price inflation rose to 4.2 per cent. Britain’s third largest steel maker, Speciality Steels UK, was pushed into liquidation after insolvency courts heard the firm owed creditors hundreds of millions of pounds; the government agreed to cover wages and costs while a buyer was sought. Poundland avoided going into administration after the budget retailer’s restructuring plan was approved. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, bought a third home on the south coast for more than £700,000, adding to her property in her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency and her grace-and-favour ministerial apartment in Admiralty House, Westminster. Shares in WH Smith fell by 42 per cent after an accounting error forecast North America profits of £55 million instead of the £25 million now expected.
Abroad
There is a famine in Gaza City affecting more than half a million people, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a globally recognised body; its report was called an ‘outright lie’ by Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, called a double strike on a Gazan hospital that killed 20 people, including five journalists, ‘a tragic mishap’. Israel launched air strikes against Houthi targets in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Russia bombarded Ukraine with 574 drones and 40 missiles in one night. Ukraine confirmed Russia had crossed into the eastern industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk. A Ukrainian drone blew up an oil pumping station in the Russian region of Bryansk, halting oil pipeline deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia.
Ghislaine Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking, told Todd Blanche, the US Deputy Attorney General, in a newly released inteview transcript: ‘President [Donald Trump] was never inappropriate with anybody.’ The US President said he would remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors; she said she will sue. FBI agents searched the home of Mr Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March and then brought back to the United States to face human trafficking charges, was arrested by immigration officials and told he may be deported to Uganda. The Duchess of Sussex said what she misses about Britain is Magic Radio.
A 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods entering the United States came into effect. The US government will take a 10 per cent stake in the California-based chip-maker Intel with a $8.9 billion investment. Evergrande, the Chinese property giant, was delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange with debts of $45 billion. Porsche scrapped plans to build its own electric vehicle batteries. François Bayrou, the French Prime Minister, called a vote of confidence for 8 September over his plans for budget cuts. The Danish government said it would abolish 25 per cent VAT on books to combat a ‘reading crisis’. South Korea banned phones in classrooms. CSH