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Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, came up with a message for the Conservative party conference: ‘Whenever there is change, there is disruption… Everyone will benefit from the result.’ Her words followed a decision not to abolish, after all, the 45p rate of tax, paid by people who earn more than £150,000 a year. Backbench Conservative MPs had let it be known they would not vote for it. ‘The difference this makes really is trivial,’ said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank. But the pound rose and the government was able to borrow a little more cheaply. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the conference: ‘I know the plan put forward only ten days ago has caused a little turbulence. I get it. I get it.’ Michael Gove had prowled around the conference stirring up apathy for government plans. Britain’s economic output rose by 0.2 per cent between April and June, the Office for National Statistics said, and had not shrunk by 0.1 per cent, meaning that the country was not in recession as the Bank of England had warned it might be.

‘Britain could enter into a gas supply emergency’ this winter, according to the energy regulator Ofgem; supplies could be cut to ‘the largest gas users’, likely to be ‘large gas-fired power stations’. The West Burton-A power plant in Nottinghamshire was chosen as the site of the first prototype commercial nuclear fusion reactor, to be operational by the early 2040s, according to the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland Minister, said that during the Brexit process he and others did not ‘always behave in a way which encouraged Ireland and the European Union to trust us to accept that they have legitimate interests’.

Trains were stopped by strikes on Wednesday and Saturday. In England, the number of people testing positive for Covid rose to one in 65 by 17 September (from one in 70 a week earlier) and in Scotland rose to one in 45 (from one in 55) according to the Office for National Statistics. By 29 September, government figures said, 21,053,584 people in the UK had tested positive for Covid once and another 1,188,122 been reinfected. Sir Ringo Starr, 82, cancelled some shows on a North American tour after catching Covid.

Abroad

President Vladimir Putin of Russia declared that the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were now part of Russia. Ukrainian forces took Lyman, in the Donetsk region, a strategically important town. Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s region of Chechnya, said: ‘In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.’ Ukraine also recovered territory in the Kherson region. Thousands of Russians called up in the Khabarovsk region 4,000 miles east of Moscow were sent back home again since they did not meet the criteria for mobilisation. At least 30 civilians were killed when their convoy to bring back relatives from occupied Zaporizhzhia was hit by a rocket. A Russian attack on another evacuation convoy in the Kupyansk area near Kharkiv killed at least 24. Ihor Murashov, the director of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, was abducted by Russian forces but was returned home safely three days later, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Amid continuing demonstrations against compulsory wearing of the hijab, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said: ‘These riots and the insecurity were engineered by America and the occupying, false Zionist regime.’ At least 125 people were killed after police fired tear gas at fans who had invaded the pitch at Malang in the East Java province of Indonesia when the home team was beaten 3-2. Drought brought famine in Somalia. Elon Musk revived his plan to buy Twitter.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile 2,800 miles, over Japan and into the sea. Brazil’s election went to a second round when left-winger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva failed to gain more than 50 per cent of the vote against the right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Burkina Faso’s new military leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who took power in a coup, urged ministers to ‘move faster’ to mend problems. Queen Margrethe of Denmark said that she was sorry about her family’s reaction to four of her grandchildren being stripped of the title prince and princess, but said the decision would ‘future-proof’ the monarchy. CSH