Portrait of the week: Weight loss jabs and England’s German manager

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Neither Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, nor Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ruled out a rise in employers’ contributions to national insurance in the Budget on 30 October. The annual rate of inflation fell from 2.2 to 1.7 per cent. Starmer backed an idea by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, to give fat unemployed people injections of weight-loss drugs in a scheme involving a £280 million investment from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that makes the diabetes medication Mounjaro. At the International Investment summit, the Chancellor announced that the UK Infrastructure Bank will become the National Wealth Fund. But the government came up with only £5.8 billion of new money, despite a promise that it would be ‘capitalised with £7.3 billion’. Manchester Airports is to spend £1.1 billion expanding by a third the buildings at Stansted, which it owns. Dovid Efune, the publisher of the news website the New York Sun entered exclusive talks to buy the Telegraph.

After exciting days of uncertainty, DP World, based in the UAE, confirmed that a £1 billion investment in the London Gateway at Thurrock, Essex, would go ahead, making it Britain’s largest container port within five years. The announcement was meant to be a bright feature of the Investment summit. But Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, had said that she had been boycotting P&O Ferries (which DP World owns) as a ‘rogue operator’. The Prime Minister said: ‘Well, look, that’s not the view of the government.’ In the seven days to 14 October, 721 migrants in small boats arrived in England. The England men’s football team greeted the Bavarian Thomas Tuchel as its new head coach.