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In the Budget, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke of ‘long-term growth’. He cut National Insurance by 2p in the pound, saving the average worker £450 a year but pensioners nothing. A new ‘British Isa’ would allow an extra £5,000 a year tax-free investment. Tax arrangements for non-doms would be changed. The 28 per cent capital gains tax on property would go down to 24 per cent. Alcohol and fuel duty were frozen for a year; vaping would attract duty. He said the UK was on track to become the world’s next Silicon Valley and second only to Hollywood for film. The NHS would become ‘digitally integrated’ and drones become police first-responders. He announced devolved powers for Surrey and remarked on Sir Keir Starmer’s weight. The Chancellor gave £1 million to building a Muslim war memorial. Royal Mail is raising the price of all stamps again by 10p from April, with first class going up to £1.35. On one day, 401 migrants crossed the Channel. Bully XL dogs will not be banned in Northern Ireland.

Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, addressed the nation from a lectern outside 10 Downing Street, saying: ‘It is beyond horrifying that last night the Rochdale by-election returned a candidate who denies the horror of what happened on October 7.’ He also said that ‘streets have been hijacked by small groups who are hostile to our values’ and that the government would ‘implement a new robust framework’ for policing such protests.

The day before, George Galloway, the Workers Party of Britain candidate, had won the Rochdale by-election with 12,335 votes, 40 per cent of the total. ‘Keir Starmer – this is for Gaza,’ he said. ‘Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside and they both got well and truly spanked tonight.’ Coming second was a local independent, with 6,638 votes, a long way ahead of the Conservative’s 3,731. Labour’s former candidate, already rejected by the party, got 2,402. Mr Galloway took his hat off to swear the oath on the Bible in parliament. A survey by Ipsos for the Evening Standard put support for the Conservatives at 20 per cent, its lowest for 40 years. The Princess of Wales’s uncle Gary Goldsmith joined the cast of Celebrity Big Brother.

Abroad

Hamas sent a delegation to Cairo for further negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, but Israel delayed, because Hamas did not produce a list of surviving Israeli hostages. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the WHO said that in northern Gaza ‘lack of food resulted in the deaths of ten children’. At least 112 Palestinians had been killed as crowds rushed lorries delivering food aid; Israel said that ‘warning shots’ had been fired ‘to disperse the stampede’. 

Crowds queued for days to lay flowers at the grave of Alexei Navalny in Moscow. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two Russian commanders, Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and Admiral Viktor Sokolov, over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Russia’s state-run RT channel posted an audio recording of German military officers, including its air force chief Ingo Gerhartz, discussing the prospect of supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus cruise missiles to hit the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the illegally occupied Crimea. The Sergei Kotov, a Russian patrol ship, was sunk by Ukrainian drones. A Russian drone attack killed residents of a block of flats in Odessa. Opec+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, extended cuts in oil production for another three months to keep up prices.

The US Supreme Court unanimously overruled Colorado’s decision to disqualify Donald Trump from running as a presidential candidate; it said that only Congress had the power to enforce the 14th Amendment ban from office of anyone who has ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion’. President Joe Biden won the Democrat primaries held on Super Tuesday, apart from the territory of American Samoa, and Donald Trump won his, apart from Vermont, which was taken by his Republican rival Nikki Haley, who then decided to withdraw from the race for the presidency. Apple was fined €1.8 billion by the EU for breaking competition laws over music streaming. The 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress met for their week’s annual gathering in Beijing. The French parliament incorporated in the constitution a ‘guaranteed freedom’ to have an abortion. In Haiti, gangs helped about 3,700 people escape from jail. CSH