Defence secretary Wes Streeting says the country will see a prime minister that ‘runs towards big and difficult issues’ Andy Burnham has said there are “big decisions” ahead of his government on council tax, as he criticised the unfairness of the current system for making some people pay higher rates than are levied on more expensive homes in London. In his interview with Laura Kuenssberg for the BBC’s Panorama programme, Burnham said: There are people here in Greater Manchester who pay a much higher council tax than people living in much larger homes in London. So the chancellor before, Rachel Reeves, was right to start to reform council tax to create some fairness there in relation to people in homes that are of much greater value, who haven’t seen their council tax go up over the years because of the failure to revalue the banding. We need to honour the manifesto upon which Labour was elected, and if I was to bring forward any changes, obviously people would rightly say, well, is this consistent with that manifesto? So there are big decisions ahead, you are right about that. Two models are competing for support: a proportional property tax, which would replace both council tax and stamp duty with a flat 0.48 per cent annual charge on a home’s current value; or a land value tax – an annual charge based on the value of the land a property sits on, rather than the building. Continue reading...

Current and former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers are growing increasingly concerned that the work they did slashing government programs and eliminating jobs will come back to hau...