Rachel Reeves has confirmed that the government is backing plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, saying the expansion is “badly needed” to boost Britain’s economic growth. The Chancellor also revived plans for an “Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor”, including a new railway linking the two cities, which she says has the potential to be the “Europe’s Silicon Valley”. Donald Trump will meet Benjamin Netanyahu next week, making the Israeli PM the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the inauguration. They are expected to discuss negotiations over a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the Iranian nuclear threat, and a normalisation agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. A prototype passenger jet has broken the sound barrier during a test flight – the first civilian aircraft to go supersonic since Concorde was retired in 2003. Flying at 35,000ft over the Mojave Desert in California, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 aircraft reached speeds of more than 770 mph.

“Stop talking Britain down.” That’s the message from Rachel Reeves, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph, “our famously cheery Chancellor”, who has called on every one of us to attract foreign investment by talking up the countless wonderful things about life in the UK. “We are absolutely fantastic as a country,” she told a newspaper at the weekend. “We should be shouting from the rooftops.” I agree. Take our incredible diversity: in Britain today, there is room for everyone. “Literally everyone.” Whether you’re the leader of a grooming gang or an Albanian drug kingpin, a machete-wielding lunatic or a keen member of an Islamist terror cell, our political class will welcome you with open arms, and “our world-beating human rights lawyers will ensure you’re never made to leave”.

But that’s not all. Investors in Britain will benefit from public services that are the “envy of the Third World”. Take our beloved NHS, where, “within days of calling for an ambulance”, patients receive “life-ending treatment in state-of-the-art hospital corridors”. Then there’s our peerless public transport, allowing commuters whose cars have been wrecked by our “world-leading potholes” to wait 40 minutes for a delayed train driven by a man who recently received a 15% pay rise “and is now demanding another”. Meanwhile, prospects for GDP growth are excellent, now that our chancellor has moved to tackle the three root causes of the nation’s economic underperformance: “pensioners putting the heating on, farmers growing food, and businesses hiring staff”. With each of these problems behind us, Britain will soon be booming.