Portrait of the week: Reform’s rising membership, peerages and an 11lb puffball

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Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said that the party now had more members than the Conservatives. On Christmas Day, 451 migrants crossed the Channel; another 1,000 arrived in the next three days but three died off Sangatte. Lord Mandelson, having failed to be elected Chancellor of Oxford University, was appointed ambassador to the United States. Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff, was made a peer with 29 other Labour nominations; among the six Conservative nominations were Nigel Biggar, a retired Oxford professor who has identified some good aspects of the British Empire, and Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union and an associate editor of The Spectator.

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The economy of the United Kingdom had zero growth between July and September, according to revised official figures; it then shrank by 0.1 per cent in October. Annual inflation increased to 2.6 per cent. The Bank of England left interest rates unchanged. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that the taxpayer ‘simply can’t afford’ compensation for women (campaigning as Waspi women) hit by changes to the state pension age. Royal Mail was fined £10.5 million by Ofcom for delivering post late. The government approved the sale of Royal Mail’s parent company to the EP Group owned by Daniel Kretinsky, a Czech billionaire. At crown courts in England and Wales, 73,000 trials were unheard at the end of September, twice the figure in 2019. A woman found an 11lb giant puffball near Winslow in Buckinghamshire.

The government gave councils obligatory targets of 370,000 dwellings a year to be built in England; housebuilders pointed out a deficit of 20,000 bricklayers.