A variety of stories feature on Friday’s front pages. The i leads with the Bank of England’s announcement that interest rates will remain at 5.25% following a surprise fall in inflation. The paper says it brings an end to a series of 14 consecutive rates rises and some economists predict rates have now peaked.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who will deliver the Autumn Statement setting out his plans for the economy in November, has said taxes are unlikely to come down while the government’s debt remains high. Speaking to LBC, Mr Hunt said the cost of servicing the debt is higher now than it was when he delivered the Spring Budget in March and that that “makes tax cuts virtually impossible, and it means that I will have another set of frankly very difficult decisions”.
Comments by Mr Hunt also lead the Daily Express. The paper says the “surprisingly upbeat” chancellor has said that the “tide is turning” on the cost-of-living crisis. “If Mr Hunt says so… then it must be true!” reads the headline.
The Times reports that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is drawing up plans to reform A-levels and introduce a “British baccalaureate” under which students would study more subjects after the age of 16. A senior Tory source tells the paper the changes would form a critical part of Mr Sunak’s attempt to address the “bigger, longer-term questions” facing the country.
Campaigners are likely to bring legal challenges to try to block changes to the UK’s net zero strategy, according to the Guardian. It comes after Mr Sunak announced delays and extensions to a number of climate-related targets that critics say will make it harder for the government to meet a legally-binding commitment to eliminate the UK’s contribution to the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2050. The paper says that a number of campaign groups, including Friends of the Earth and the Good Law Project, are exploring legal action.
The Daily Mail leads with a video in which Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is seen discussing the future of the UK’s relationship with the EU. In the footage, shot during an onstage event at a conference in Canada, Sir Keir tells an audience: “Most of the conflict with the UK being outside of the [EU] arises in so far as the UK wants to diverge and do different things to the rest of our EU partners. Actually…, we don’t want to lower standards, we don’t want to rip up environmental standards, working standards for people that work. There’s a lot more common ground than you might think.” The paper says some Tories have said the comments reveal a “monstrous” plan to reverse Brexit.
The news that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of media companies Fox and News Corp and handing control to his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, leads the Financial Times. The paper says the 92-year-old has “over the past seven decades transformed an Adelaide newspaper he inherited from his father into a global media empire, which is feared and courted by politicians across the English-speaking world” and calls the move the “end of an era”.
The Sun says the BBC has been “dragged deeper into the Russell Brand scandal” after the actor and comedian was accused of exposing himself to a woman in a Los Angeles studio and then joking about the incident on his Radio 2 show. The paper says “bosses are under pressure to explain how the pre-recorded segment was ever deemed suitable to broadcast”. Brand has not yet commented on the latest allegation, but has previously denied wrongdoing. His co-presenter at the time Matt Morgan told the BBC he was “not aware until now of the nature of this encounter”.
An eight-year-old girl has become the first UK transplant patient who will not need drugs for life to stop her body rejecting her new organ, the Metro reports. It says Aditi Shankar’s immune system was “reprogrammed” so that her body would accept a kidney donated by her mother as its own. The paper says the procedure “offers hope to other in future”.
And the Star is urging its readers to buy more Spam after it was revealed that “shoppers are turning their back on the trusty tins of meat”. It says that tinned peaches and Bovril are among the other products “on the danger list”.
