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The Guardian view on the banks: too big to fail cannot mean too big to tax | Editorial

Financiers owe their windfalls and bonuses to higher interest rates. Britain should reclaim more for the public and resist City lobbyingJohn Healey is planning to tax British banks, the Guardian revealed, in the forthcoming budget. It’s about time for the chancellor to act. Banks have been raking it in. The campaign group Positive Money reported this summer that Britain’s four biggest banks made £29bn in the first half of this year, up a fifth on 2025. These windfalls owe more to higher interest rates than better products or services. Households and businesses pay more to borrow. Meanwhile, the Bank of England pays the banks tens of billions in interest on their reserves, with the Treasury footing the bill.The chancellor is said to favour restoring the bank surcharge from 3% to 8%, which could raise around £2bn a year. This would recover a very modest share of the sector’s bonanza. Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, said that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”. Britain’s banks have plenty of feathers. That hasn’t stopped them hissing. The banks say that they already face higher taxes than other companies, that they won’t be able to lend as much, and that their profits won’t last.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

Extreme heatwaves in Europe not changing Britons’ holiday plans, say travel bosses

Hot summer getaways are still popular – but tourism industry fears impact of rising jet fuel costs and squeezed household incomesAfter a year marked by extreme heat and war sending fuel prices skywards, British travel executives hoped for solace in Madeira’s benign subtropical climate, separated by hundreds of miles of blue sea from the overtourism protests and six-hour EU-entry queues seen on the Portuguese mainland.As bosses admitted, holidays will be ever less affordable, AI is coming for their jobs, and the visitable world is shrinking – not least those parts where tourists remain welcome. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

Target pensions or welfare, not banks, IMF tells John Healey

Supporters of planned tax, however, say banks were bailed out by taxpayers during financial crisis and can afford to pay more nowJohn Healey poised to raise taxes on banks in budgetThe International Monetary Fund has urged John Healey to target savings on pensions and welfare, instead of taxing Britain’s banks at the budget later this month.Helge Berger, deputy director of the IMF’s European department, was asked about bank taxes after the Guardian revealed Healey plans to tap the sector for additional revenue. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

UK risks losing key role in European space industry over satellite contract, says Airbus boss

Guillaume Faury writes to Andy Burnham warning him against choosing US firm Lockheed Martin to build Skynet satellitesThe boss of Airbus has told Andy Burnham that choosing its US rival Lockheed Martin to manufacture military satellites could cost the UK a key role in the European space industry, intensifying a last-minute lobbying effort for the £2.4bn contract.It is understood that Guillaume Faury, the chief executive of France-headquartered Airbus, has written to the prime minister suggesting that the choice of provider of the Skynet system could have effects for decades to come on the UK’s strength in military satellites in Europe, in an effort to tip the contract away from its US rival. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

The ultra-rich are spending one million dollars a day fighting California’s proposed billionaire tax

Tech billionaires have raised more than $340m to defeat Prop 40, a one-time 5% wealth tax that will fund healthcare and educationTech billionaires have been dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the fight against a wealth tax in California. They’ve raised more than $340m, and the campaign they’re funding is spending more than $1m a day to defeat the measure, according to state financial disclosures.With the election less than a month away, those funds are being spent at a stepped-up pace. During the first 19 days of September, according to the most recent campaign filings, the opposition campaign plowed through at least $21.2m to fight the billionaire tax – surpassing $1m per day. Voters are being inundated with robotexts, mailers and advertisements that warn a tax on billionaires would “expose all Californians to higher taxes”, as one ad reads. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

British food and drink exports to EU collapse by more than a third since Brexit

NFU analysis of official data shows falls in exports to UK’s largest trading partner since 2019 include 70% for sugar and 74% for egg productsExports of British food and drink to the EU have collapsed by more than a third since Brexit with eggs, chicken and potato producers badly hit, new figures show.Analysis by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of HMRC data shows a sharp fall in exports in the year to July compared with the same period in 2019, with sugar dropping the most, down 70%. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

Elon Musk reveals ‘world’s first flying car’ at Tesla event

The Tesla Roadster 2 drove up a curved ramp before using SpaceX rocket thrusters to fly, flip and landElon Musk has revealed Tesla’s latest model, which he claims will be the world’s first flying car, using technology from his aerospace company SpaceX to “basically fly like a rocket”.The billionaire, who hosted a demonstration of the Tesla Roadster 2 at the SpaceX rocket development and testing facility in Texas, said the sports car could go from 0 to 60mph in a record time of less than a second and had thrusters. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

‘We should all be worried’: calls grow to limit London rollout of robotaxis

Protest planned at Wayve HQ as Uber drivers fear for their future and city’s politicians demand TfL should have power over licencesFor passengers in Britain who want to try the latest ride, robotaxis are eagerly awaited: more than 100,000 are on Uber’s waitlist in London after the first UK services started in September.Others view them with trepidation. “I think we should all be worried,” said Florentina Ghiuzan, an Uber driver from Essex. “I was shocked TfL approved it so soon. I knew change would come. But I thought it would come with a solution for us.” Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

AI threatens democracy. But we are not powerless: here’s how to fight back | Carine Fouteau

Tech platforms pillage public-interest journalism for profit. But we have leverage as they sow the seeds of their own downfallCarine Fouteau is president and publishing director of the French investigative news outlet MediapartBig tech companies pose an immeasurable threat: socially, politically, militarily and ecologically. They are also causing a profound crisis of information. The tools they design now serve as weapons of mass destruction against democracy. There is so much at stake that an urgent and broad mobilisation is required.From the harvesting of personal data and the weaponisation of public opinion, to the destruction of jobs, the infringement of civil liberties and environmental damage, ordinary citizens are the main victims of this predatory economy – an economy with an agenda that aligns with the interests of the planet’s most authoritarian and reactionary states.Carine Fouteau is president and publishing director of the French investigative news outlet MediapartMediapart is hosting Hacking Big Tech, a public event about technology, AI and democracy in partnership with the Guardian, in Paris on Saturday 17 October 2026. The conference will be live-streamed free on Mediapart’s website, app and YouTube channel and can be accessed here from 1pm CEST on 17 October Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

Revealed: VW, Ford and Tesla batteries linked to destructive deforestation of indigenous lands

Mines in supply chains of western carmakers linked to widespread deforestation of primary rainforest in nickel-rich lands inhabited by Tolaki people in IndonesiaVolkswagen, Ford and Tesla are among the electric carmakers whose batteries may contain nickel mined in indigenous woodlands plagued by deforestation, an analysis has found, highlighting the struggle to make vehicles that are free from environmental destruction.Corporate disclosures and trade flows from the last two years show mines in the battery supply chains of automotive giants are linked to the loss of trees in Sulawesi, a wildlife hotspot in Indonesia that houses the world’s largest nickel deposits. The metal is widely used in cathodes in car batteries because it boosts energy density and increases range. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

From Dallaglio’s medals to Cantona’s shorts, sporting memorabilia is big business | Emma John

Like transfer fees and ticket prices, mementoes are one more marker of sport’s rampant self-inflationThe auctioneer cradled his gavel in his palm like a pipe, the handle pointing towards him. It gave his patter the air of a Victorian gentleman holding forth by the mantelpiece in a period drama. “Are you bidding, Wilf? You’re waving at me.” Under the hammer was a Barclays Manager of the Month trophy, complete with travel case, but no indication of which Premier League luminary once owned it. It outstripped its estimate and sold for £700.An hour and a half into what Budds auction house dubbed its “Octoberfest” of sporting memorabilia, David Convery at the podium showed no sign of fatigue, save the occasional swig from a water bottle. There were 332 lots in total; Convery regularly manages sales with twice as many. In his three decades as an auctioneer he’s even secured some world-record prices, from the oldest surviving FA Cup to Pelé’s 1970 World Cup final shirt. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

The right’s scrounger rhetoric dominates the benefits debate. Labour must fight back – and win | Frances Ryan

The prime minister has a once-in-a-generation chance to reintroduce fairness to the system. He has to seize the momentBack in 2009, months before the coalition government unleashed sweeping austerity, the then Conservative backbencher Iain Duncan Smith produced a study that would go on to lay the foundations for the rollout of universal credit. Now, nearly two decades later, Duncan Smith and his thinktank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has published State of Dependency: a landmark report promising to expose “the full scale of Britain’s worklessness crisis”.The study paints a picture of mass benefits reliance: it identifies 3,400 local areas where more than half the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits, or “economic opiates”, as the authors call them. They’ve even provided an interactive map (in the yellow and black colours of a road hazard sign, no less) so members of the public can type in their postcode to see if their neighbourhood is “a welfare hotspot”.Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

Commercial kitchen staff exposed to high levels of air pollution, study finds

US research says nitrogen dioxide in restaurants that cook with gas can exceed WHO limits, which also affects dinersEach time we enjoy a meal out or order a takeaway, someone cooks for us in a commercial kitchen. In the UK, 3.6 million people work in catering and hospitality. In the US it is estimated at close to 16 million. A first-of-its-kind study in the US has found catering staff can experience high air pollution at work – and that this can affect diners too.Dr Drew Michanowicz, senior author of the study at non-profit research institute PSE Healthy Energy, said: “I was motivated by what we have learned over the years about what just 30 minutes of gas cooking can do to air quality in homes with the realisation that millions of people cook for a living for hours on end.” Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 day ago

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