On one of Benjamin Netanyahu‘s election posters, he stands shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump under the Israeli flag, with what appear to be two F-35s overhead. The message is that the partnership that bombed Iran is on the ballot. Now that Israel’s general election is over, and after Americans vote in next week’s midterms, expect the war with Iran to resume, full throttle.
It suits both men to start bombing again. Netanyahu is clinging on in a caretaker government while tortuous coalition negotiations get under way. His critics – and this election was, above all, a referendum on his premiership – say he is more than capable of inviting Iranian missiles to fall on Israel again to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, Trump is desperate to force Iran back into talks and finish the war on something less than humiliating terms.
reports that US officials have privately warned several Gulf Arab states to prepare for a “short, intense military campaign” after the midterms. The also says the US is sending another Patriot missile defence system to Israel and has moved American troops off Middle East bases where they might be at risk.
A quick guide to this year’s Budget
This is a Budget for the working people.
Chancellor John Healey today unveiled the long-anticipated Budget, the first for Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Healey called it a Budget “for the working people” as he announced details.
So what are the key takeaways?
Cheaper energy
- This winter, 20 million households in council tax bands A to D will receive a £100 energy payment paid directly into people’s bank accounts – a £2.6bn scheme.
- Gas standing charges will be removed from next year, and similar reforms will follow for electricity.
- The Chancellor says he will remove some levies on energy bills.
- He also extended a VAT cut on electricity to July 2027, cutting £50 off the annual price cap.
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Savings and pensions
- The tax-free limit on cash ISAs will stay at £20,000, abandoning plans to reduce it to £12,000.
- “To make the investment more accessible, I will work with the sector to create a new starter ISA to reward first-time investors,” Healey said.
A new pension tax allowance will be introduced. “Pensioners with income up to the value of the full new state pension will not pay income tax in this parliament,” Healey said.
Benefits and paternity leave
- A benefits rule that punished unpaid carers for earning too much is being abolished. Now, if they earn any amount above the threshold set by means-testing (£204 a week), they lose the whole carer’s allowance.
- This will be replaced, Healey announced.
- Self-employed dads and same-sex partners will also be eligible for two weeks’ support worth up to £194 a week.
3.9%
The Chancellor announced a rise in the minimum wage by nearly 3.9 per cent, the same rate for workers aged 18 to 20 years old and those aged 21 and over.
The Chancellor promises to reform non-compete clauses in contracts.
- Healey also said he will extend the fuel duty cut until July 2027.
- Workers using their car to get to work can be reimbursed a greater amount by their employers tax-free – the higher mileage rate will increase from 25p to 35p per mile.
The threshold for small business rate relief will increase from £12,000 to £18,000 for retail, hospitality and leisure.
Healey will also raise taxes on the gambling industry to pay for the changes. A £10m alcohol duty relief will be provided for around 2,000 small British brewers and cider makers.
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The two reasons Man Utd have given Carrick shock second chance
Michael Carrick will remain in charge of Manchester United for their weekend trip to Chelsea, despite overseeing the club’s worst start to a top-flight season in 40 years.
Carrick is ‘preparing team to face Chelsea’
The i Paper has been told that despite several alternatives being explored, Carrick was at United’s Carrington base taking training on Tuesday and is “preparing the team to face Chelsea on Saturday”.
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A closer look at the detail
Club sources insisted that “Michael and the players will have the opportunity to turn the situation around”, with everyone focused on “showing our response on the pitch”.
Carrick was expected to be relieved of his duties on Monday, with Eddie Howe the frontrunner to take charge. However, after senior executives held a crisis meeting on Monday, Carrick will get a surprise reprieve.
What happened on Monday?
- With the squad on a day off, Carrick was not expected to be at Carrington, as senior figures were sharpening their axe. Instead, there was no white smoke from the boardroom.
- Rumours circled that United were waiting for the afternoon and the New York Stock Exchange to open before making an announcement, but club sources insisted no news would be coming out of the club.
Why has Carrick got another chance?
- Insiders told The i Paper that chief executive Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox could not make a call on sacking Carrick yet until they believe a suitable successor is lined up.
- Dismissing Carrick will cost the club a considerable amount, so they must be certain the next coach is fully interested.
- One source has claimed that there is a feeling the club needs to stop the cycle of sacking managers.
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Why Neil Young is suing Trump campaign for the second time
The Canadian-American singer has filed a $10m (£7.5m) lawsuit against a fundraising committee that supports Donald Trump, citing “unauthorised” use of his music.
What does Young claim?
Young, 80, alleges that the Trump 47 Committee infringed on his copyright when it used his hit song Rockin’ in the Free World before Trump took to the stage at a rally in Ohio on 12 October.
The lawsuit claims the use of the song amounts to an “unauthorised public performance”, and that Young “has not, and would not, grant the required licence”.
A closer look at the lawsuit
The lawsuit said Rockin’ the Free World is “a blistering anthem that contrasts the hollow promises of American political rhetoric with the harsh realities faced by the poor, homeless and forgotten”.
- Young says that the song is “the opposite of everything that Donald J Trump stands for”.
“We have all been here before,” to quote by Young’s former supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
This is the second time Young has sued Trump over use of the song. The singer filed a lawsuit in 2020, which was later settled.
Young’s lawsuit says Trump’s use of the song again breaks the terms of the prior settlement. The new $10m lawsuit also asks for an injunction against further public performance for political purposes.
The Trump administration has not yet responded to the suit.
The Rolling Stones, REM, Rihanna, Adele, and the estate of Prince have all previously criticised the president for using their music at his campaign events.
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Why Bolsonaro has fled to the US after Brazilian election
Brazilian senator and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has left the country for the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election.
The US State Department is expected to grant him and his family entry visas.
What you need to know
Bolsonaro is yet to concede to the current President and leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The losing right-wing candidate left Brazil amid a probe into alleged money laundering, wrongdoing he has denied. He refused to comply with a supreme court order to surrender his passports.
Bolsonaro is the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest as part of his 27-year sentence for attempting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula.
US via Argentina and Ecuador
Argentina’s migration department said on Wednesday that Bolsonaro and his family had briefly entered the country’s Misiones province on Tuesday night through a road crossing, with valid travel documents
They then boarded a private plane bound for Guayaquil, Ecuador. The current location of Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters was not immediately clear.
Donald Trump and Argentina’s President Javier Milei have been vocal allies of the Bolsonaro family.
Tense relations
- Bolsonaro’s departure threatens to deepen a rift between Brazil and the US – the two most populous nations in the Americas.
- Lula has accused Washington of colluding with the Bolsonaros to put them back in power.
- Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he would approve of Bolsonaro coming to the US.
- The US President on Monday said the Brazilian vote “looked like another rigged election”.
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Like father, like son?
Trump has previously alleged that Jair was a victim of judicial persecution in Brazil.
- The elder Bolsonaro also went to the US after refusing to concede to Lula in 2022, when then US president Joe Biden was in office.
- Lula, speaking in Brasilia, said he had just heard that Flavio had left the country, and called it shameful, saying he should have stayed in Brazil and proved his innocence.
- Bolsonaro had been favored to win Sunday’s presidential election but ended up losing in a shock result.
- Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flavio’s younger brother who lives in the US, said ahead of the vote that an election loss would require a move out of the country.
The election in pictures
Everything we know so far about fatal train crash in Spain
At least 64 people have been killed and 80 injured after two trains collided in Spain this morning, it has been reported.
The trains collided between the towns of Los Yebenes and Urda, in the Toledo province in central Spain. Rail operator, Adif, said the entire line from Madrid to the southern Andalusia region has now been suspended.
What do we know so far?
- The crash involved a high-speed AVE train that had left Madrid bound for Seville and an Iryo train travelling in the opposite direction.
- The Iryo train was reportedly carrying 147 people, while the AVE train was carrying 397.
- The crash comes nine months after Spain’s worst rail disaster in more than a decade.
- In January, two high-speed trains collided near Adamuz in Córdoba, killing more than 40 people.
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[I am] shocked by the serious train accident in Toledo…I remain in constant contact with the Minister of Transport, and with the president of Castilla-La Mancha. My affection, solidarity, and support to all the victims and their families.
Pedro Sánchez
The story in pictures
When will the UK rejoin the Erasmus plus scheme?
The Government has confirmed the UK will rejoin the Erasmus plus student exchange scheme from the start of January.
Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer said applications would open next month for young people who will be able to study, train or get work experience in the EU.
What you need to know
- Falconer emphasised to MPs that the opportunities would be open to “educational institutions of all kinds”.
- Work on the UK joining the Erasmus programme was announced as part of former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s post-Brexit reset deal with Brussels in 2025.
- The UK left the scheme under Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal in 2020, with the then-prime minister arguing it did not offer value for money.
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What was it replaced by?
- It was replaced by the Turing Scheme, which was ended when the Government announced the new deal over Erasmus plus.
- The Government has previously said it expects more than 100,000 people to be able to benefit.
As well as university-based study exchanges, Erasmus plus allows further education students and apprentices to take up work placements in European firms.
Applications open this November. They are not simply for undergraduate university students. They are for educational institutions of all kinds.
Hamish Falconer
Three-quarters of pilots have fallen asleep in the cockpit
Three in four European pilots have admitted to falling asleep in the cockpit.
A new study
Research commissioned by the European Cockpit Association, asked 7,200 captains and first officers about their tiredness levels while on shift.
A total of 77 per cent of respondents reported having at least one “microsleep” – a brief, unintentional sleep – while operating an aircraft in the four weeks prior to the survey.
The findings
- One in four pilots admitted to five or more microsleeps during the same four-week period, while 7 per cent admitted to having 10 or more.
- Of the pilots working for British airlines, 54 per cent said they had slept between one and four times.
- A further 13 per cent said they had fallen asleep more than five times and 6 per cent admitted to falling asleep more than 10 times.
If we are serious about managing the safety risks related to pilot fatigue, the numbers we see in this report – and the lack of any meaningful improvement over the past three years – are a clear wake-up call for airlines, authorities and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that something must change in the way Europe deals with pilot fatigue
Captain Tanja Harter, president of the European Cockpit Association
“We may do another little Epic Fury,” Trump told an election rally last week, using the US military’s name for the operation to bomb Iran. “Or they’ll agree,” he said, referring to what he hopes will be Iranian capitulation at the negotiating table.
While Trump may not yet have made up his mind fully about resuming the attack, Netanyahu has consistently pushed for more bombing. It’s what his supporters want. At his Likud party headquarters last night, campaign videos ran on repeat with images from the wars Netanyahu has prosecuted. A camera in the nose of a warplane showed buildings being turned to billowing clouds of dust under Israeli bombs. The Prime Minister’s face appeared next to his campaign slogan: “Netanyahu does not surrender.”
Netanyahu would probably carry the country with him if he embarked on a new round of warfare. There is no Israeli peace party with a large constituency of support. On security policy, Netanyahu has remade the political opposition in his own image. As Ezra Klein put it in on Sunday, the opposition’s leaders have “accepted Netanyahu’s worldview, and even run to his right”. His main challenger is a former chief of the Israel Defence Forces, Gadi Eisenkot, who has said there will be no Palestinian state if he wins. The leader of the Knesset opposition, Yair Lapid, has said Israel should “bomb all the energy facilities” so that “the Iranian economy is demolished”, because “it’s the only thing that will overturn the regime”. A third prominent opposition figure, the former prime minister Naftali Bennett, called for Qatar to be designated as an enemy state.
Netanyahu’s governing coalition is sustained in power with the votes of far-right parties. Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of one of those parties, spent the election campaign calling for what his critics call the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. “This is our place,” he said, calling for Palestinian “emigration” to Britain or France, where they could live more “comfortably”.
Netanyahu recognises the danger for Israel in his “security first” policy. In a remarkable interview on Channel 10 TV last Friday, he told Israelis to prepare for the day when the United States cut off its billions of dollars in military aid. “America has changed,” he said. “It’s over, it’s over, and it will end, okay. It’s only a matter of time.”
Netanyahu went on to say that Israel should prepare for international sanctions, including on its banks. His government, he said, was already working on a “bypass economy”, using cryptocurrencies to get round banking restrictions. It was a telling moment: Israel’s Prime Minister planning to adopt the same sanctions-busting measures as Russia, North Korea, and indeed Iran.
For the next two years, though, Israel and Netanyahu himself have a friend in the White House in Donald Trump. It’s true that Trump – who likes to play a geopolitical version of – initially withheld his endorsement of Netanyahu. But then, on 18 October, Trump came out for Netanyahu, calling him a “Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combating the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
So, when the early results showed Netanyahu doing better than the polls had suggested, Trump could not resist taking the credit. He posted a message written in the third person: “When President Trump endorsed Bibi Netanyahu, the whole tide turned.” He continued – still in the third person – that “President Trump…only wants what is good for the Middle East, Israel, and the United States of America!”
The Middle East may be forever changed by Trump’s decision to go along with Netanyahu’s war on Iran. The Foreign Minister of Oman, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, has called on the Gulf Arab states to – in effect – make their own deal with Iran, with the United States no longer their main protector. Speaking at Girton College, Cambridge, on Monday, he proposed a non-aggression pact binding the six Gulf states, Iran and Iraq; America would no longer be the region’s main guarantor of security. The Gulf had “relied for too long on the involvement of external powers” for its security, he said.
One of those Gulf states, Qatar, is working on negotiations to avert the threat of renewed conflict between the US and Iran. On Sunday, Qatari mediators handed Iran a fresh draft agreement; Tehran is expected to answer by the end of the week, before Americans vote on Tuesday.
Would Netanyahu resume the bombing on his own, before these various deadlines arrive? In his “victory” speech last night, Netanyahu emphasised that the war with Iran was only on pause: “Iran is weaker than ever, while Israel is stronger than ever, yet, it is not over.” He went on: “As long as this regime exists, it will seek to destroy us. Together, with our wonderful friend President Trump, we must eliminate this threat once and for all.”
It sounded like a campaign launch. Netanyahu seemed to be preparing the ground for another election, perhaps early next year if the deadlock holds. By that time, no doubt Netanyahu hopes for the decisive victory over Iran that has so far eluded him and Trump.
This election has not settled much, but it has confirmed one thing: war remains popular in Israel.