Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will announce tougher rules on immigration at the Labour conference today. Under the new plans, foreign citizens will have to volunteer in their community, have a “spotless” criminal record, speak fluent English and be a net contributor to the economy to qualify for permanent settlement. Rachel Reeves will pledge to abolish long-term youth unemployment by guaranteeing jobs to young people struggling to find work and docking their benefits if they refuse to take up the offer. Moldova’s pro-European ruling party has retained its parliamentary majority after a pivotal election yesterday marred by allegations of Russian bribery, disinformation and threats. The result is expected to keep the country on its path to EU membership and stop it from drifting back into the grip of Moscow. Shane Lowry retained the Ryder Cup for Europe, holing a crucial putt from 6ft to stave off a blistering US comeback. The 15-13 victory – following three days of what the Telegraph described as “reprehensible” behaviour by American fans, including vicious verbal abuse and Rory McIlroy’s wife being hit with a beer – marks Europe’s first away win since 2012.

“The nature of the beast will always be to resist”

At the risk of starting the week on a gloomy note, says The Economist, Britain is “slowly going bust”. Some of the doom-mongering is overdone – our economy grew faster in the first half of this year than any other G7 nation. But the public finances are a mess. The total debt pile has soared from 35% of GDP in 2005 to 95% today, and annual government borrowing is now a whopping 4% of GDP. America and France also have large debts and deficits, but the dollar and the euro are deep currency blocs. Britain is “alone, with higher interest rates and a rising welfare bill”. Worse, even small cuts to winter fuel payments and disability benefits have proven politically impossible. If a government with a huge majority and four years until the next election cannot put the budget on a sound footing, “who will”?

The problem is that Labour isn’t like other parties, says Matthew Parris in The Times. It’s not a parliamentary army supported by a national membership. “It’s the other way round.” This relationship – maintained through all manner of arcane party mechanisms, from funding by “affiliated” trade unions to voting rights at conferences – is underpinned by the idea that Labour is “the people’s party”. And, crucially, their people “disproportionately depend on the state”. In straitened economic times, that makes it very hard for Labour governments to do what’s necessary. There are, of course, MPs who understand “fiscal realism”, and a Labour government can sometimes temporarily be “harnessed” for political purposes it hates, like a cat trained to walk on a leash. “But the nature of the beast will always be to resist.” Market-friendly moves will always be clumsy and half-hearted; employer-unfriendly moves will face no resistance from MPs. “We are cursed with a governing party that hates what it needs to do.”