Chancellor to deliver fiscal statement, billed as decisive moment for fate of Starmer government, at 12.30pm

• Tax, pensions, savings: what to expect in the budget

• Reeves’s high-stakes budget in five key charts

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Yesterday the Metropolitan police said they were not allowing a planned protest in Westminster by farmers to coincide with the budget. Farmers have been protesting regularly about the decision announced in Rachel Reeves’ budget last year to extend inheritance tax to farms.

The decision was criticised by the Conservative party, who said originally the Met had indicated the protest would be allowed. Last night Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, issued a statement saying:

It doesn’t smell right, particularly when we think of the regular and frequent protests that are allowed in SW1 which inconvenience motorists, residents and businesses without consideration. Is this to save the chancellor embarrassment ahead of her budget of broken promises?”

A number of tractors were seen driving through Westminster early on Wednesday, with police stopping around 20 of them in the vicinity.

This included a farmer dressed as Father Christmas, his tractor carrying a large spruce tree and bearing a sign that read “Farmer Christmas – the naughty list: Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Diane Abbott, Angela Rayner & the BBC”.

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© Photograph: Kirsty O’Connor/Treasury

© Photograph: Kirsty O’Connor/Treasury

© Photograph: Kirsty O’Connor/Treasury

Working in a bookshop while failing to write a novel, the narrator admits to being a ‘living cliche’ in this bitter black comedy

“I had become a living cliche: the cantankerous bookseller,” the narrator declares a third of the way through John Tottenham’s debut novel. “No book or movie that included a scene set in a bookstore was complete without such a stock ‘character’.” That’s one way to pre-empt criticism, and Sean Hangland is just such a stock figure. Embittered, rude, apathetic, resentful of the success and happiness of others and intellectually snobbish, he’s a 48-year-old aspiring writer who makes ends meet, just about, working in an independent bookshop in a gentrifying part of LA.

He worries about turning 50 having made nothing of his life. He notes, lugubriously, that he barely seems to get any writing done and that – having no gift for plot, characterisation or prose – the novel he claims to be trying to produce will be lousy anyway. He keeps bumping into old friends whose books are being published by hip independent presses or who have acquired nice girlfriends, or both. His teeth are in bad shape.

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© Photograph: Robert Ascroft

© Photograph: Robert Ascroft

© Photograph: Robert Ascroft

The Democrat, who previously represented the 4th ward as a member of the DC Council, shared the news in a video posted to social media.

Three ICC judges have been put on a list with terrorists after approving an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. This is the charade of the ‘rules-based order’

The fate of one French judge is a case study in the west’s long unravelling. Nicolas Guillou cannot shop online. When he used Expedia to book a hotel in his own country, the reservation was cancelled within hours. He is “blacklisted by much of the world’s banking system”, unable to use most bank cards.

Guillou, you see, has been sanctioned by the United States, putting him on a 15,000-strong list alongside al-Qaida terrorists, drug cartels and Vladimir Putin. Why? Because alongside two other judges of the international criminal court pre-trial chamber I, he approved arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Deif, the former commander of Hamas’s military wing. Guillou and his colleagues had “actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel”, the US claimed when imposing the sanctions in June. All are now barred from entering the US – but that is the least of the consequences.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/AP

© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/AP

© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/AP

A Florida sailor stationed in Hawaii died after heroically rescuing two children in Waiapua‘a Bay.

Transcripts appear to show US presidential adviser saying Kyiv might have to give up control of Donetsk

A relative of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was detained by federal immigration officials in Massachusetts, according to a report.

A game cast and some decent twists help to elevate this passably entertaining London-set Christmas offering about a department store robbery

We’re a few weeks into the annual Netflix Christmas dump and standards have already fallen below freezing. In both Alicia Silverstone’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas and Minka Kelly’s Champagne Problems, motions were lethargically, and cheaply, gone through without any seasonal sparkle added, a low bar once again set for the next month and change.

So while there’s nothing all that remarkable about the streamer’s latest festive effort, crime caper turned romcom Jingle Bell Heist, there’s just about enough to give it an edge over its more anemic peers. Rather than being set in Snowflakeville or some other absurdly named small town in Middle America (while being clearly filmed in Canada), it’s shot on location in London during Christmas 2023 (directed by Mike Flanagan’s long-time cinematographer Michael Fimognari). The city does a great deal of heavy-lifting with every pub, caff and high street helping to conjure up a real sense of place usually absent in such territory (it also means no need for increasingly distracting fake CG snow). There are roles for British comedy stars like Peter Serafinowicz and Amandaland’s wonderful Lucy Punch and the soundtrack opts for alternative holiday songs from Low and Run-DMC over yet another easily affordable cover of All I Want for Christmas is You. There’s also a plot that isn’t quite as rote as we’re used to with no career-minded woman waiting to be tamed by a family-craving hunk. These might not sound like major, applause-worthy diversions but in the hopelessly generic, and at times unforgivably lazy, world of Netflix Christmas fodder, it’s not nothing.

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© Photograph: Rob Baker Ashton/Netflix ©2025

© Photograph: Rob Baker Ashton/Netflix ©2025

© Photograph: Rob Baker Ashton/Netflix ©2025

Dear Abby advises a woman on what to do about her son inviting her sexual assault perpetrator to his wedding.

The president spent so much time talking that Meyers thinks the turkeys would have preferred to be put out of their misery.

U.S. Special Operations Command will use 500 confiscated Chinese-manufactured drones for target practice in a Military Drone Crucible training exercise in Florida.

Decades-old missing child case returns to court as formerly convicted suspect Pedro Hernandez faces new trial for 1979 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz in Manhattan.

Chelsea 3-0 Barcelona: Estevao scored a brilliant solo goal on a night when perhaps the two best 18-year-olds in world football shared the same pitch

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© Disney

Chancellor to unveil series of tax hikes to fill black hole in public finances in highly anticipated Budget on Wednesday

© PA Wire

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her Budget as she battles to turn around the Government’s fortunes.

© PA Wire

© AP

© Kirsty O'Connor/Treasury

© AP

© BBC

The steady stream of Dutch players and backroom staff to Anfield is proof of how the Netherlands has made football one of its greatest exports

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China has imposed sweeping funeral reforms to phase out ground burial

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