Rachel Reeves said this morning that “each of us must do our bit” to build a stronger economy, in the clearest sign yet that she is planning a manifesto-breaking income tax rise in the forthcoming budget. The chancellor said her goal was to tame debt and bring down government borrowing costs to free up more cash for public services. The BBC misrepresented a speech made by Donald Trump on the day of the January 6 riots, according to an internal whistleblowing memo. A Panorama broadcast a week before the US election last year showed Trump telling supporters he would walk to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell”, when in fact he said he would walk with them to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”. John Lewis has kicked off the festive season with the release of its Christmas advert. The two-minute ad, which is set to Alison Limerick’s 1990s club hit Where Love Lives, concerns a father-and-son relationship. “They’ve stripped away the loveable fictional characters,” says The Independent, “and gone full Adolescence.” Watch it here.

Our politics is becoming “less British”

There’s something strange happening in British politics, says Adrian Wooldridge in Bloomberg: it is “becoming less British”. The pride we’ve long felt in our distinctive parliamentary system – a peaceful, democratic one packed full of “weird rituals” and replicated by 35 other countries – has all but disappeared and the long-established two-party system is fragmenting. In its place, we’re seeing something more like the “distinctive symbols of Ulster”: flags of rival communities fluttering from lampposts, young men protesting in the streets, “no surrender” banners consciously imitating Ulster unionists. And our politics is being shaped by the same forces that shape the Irish province: “ethnic loyalties”.

In Ulster, Catholics vote for Catholics, Protestants vote for Protestants and politicians are primarily “ethnic bosses”. In England, Muslim-dominated areas are increasingly voting for Muslim leaders. We now have four independent MPs who were elected in Muslim-majority communities specifically because of their stance on the Middle East – when Shockat Adam defeated Labour in Leicester South, he held up a keffiyeh and declared “this is for the people of Gaza”. Dozens of Labour MPs worry they’ll be unseated in similar circumstances at the next election. The safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, for example, won her seat in Birmingham Yardley with a greatly reduced majority last year because of a strong challenge from the pro-Palestinian Workers Party. And all this is taking place against a broader landscape of ethnic voting. The Scottish National Party continues to dominate Scottish politics; the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, won a thumping victory in the Caerphilly by-election last month. The Liberal-Conservative system wasn’t perfect by any stretch. But the Ulsterisation of our politics risks “replacing consensus-making with conflict”.