Boris Johnson at heart of furious Tory row at state visit reception

A state reception dinner for British right-wingers descended into a bust up between Boris Johnson and other senior Tories over the party’s record in government.

In an astonishing turn of events, a witness described “real anger” as the meeting of minds led to a spat between Liz Truss, Mr Johnson and his former boss, broadcaster Andrew Neil.

The event, at the luxury Peninsula Hotel in London’s Mayfair, was hosted by US broadcaster Newsmax and included guests of honour Marco Rubio and US treasury secretary Scott Bessent. Both are in the UK for Donald Trump’s state visit.

Nigel Farage and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg were also there representing the right of British politics.

After canapes, Mr Farage and the US cabinet members left, before the rest of the guests, which also included Sir Sajid Javid and Mark Harper, were treated to dinner.

Mr Johnson then gave a speech defending his record on Brexit, and it was at this point a witness said “tensions were evident over the last government’s record”. Right-wing critics have rounded on Mr Johnson for overseeing mass migration into Britain as PM, with Reform UK dubbing it the “Boris-wave” of migration.

The witness told The Daily Telegraph tensions came to a head when former transport secretary Lord Harper raised the need for welfare reform and immigration control, before being rebuked by broadcaster Mr Neil about why the Tories had not done so in power.

The witness added: “At that point, Boris robustly defended his government’s record. Boris argued that Brexit gives us powers to reduce immigration if we wish, and said he did reduce it. He also said we shouldn’t bash the contribution migrants make to Britain.

“There was a robust exchange of views, and everyone defended themselves well, but real anger is obvious. The Reform attendees were of the view that this is why the Conservatives don’t function well as a party any more.”

Sir Jacob reportedly attempted to make peace between Tory critics supporting Reform and those defending the Conservatives’ record, apparently believing the two parties should work together.

The row comes after a week in which Mr Farage welcomed a fresh handful of defectors to Reform UK, with high-profile former Tories Maria Caulfield and Danny Kruger joining the party.

Mr Kruger became the first sitting MP to defect to the party, while Ms Caulfield became the thirteenth former Tory MP to join Mr Farage’s ranks.

As he left, Mr Kruger urged other Tory MPs to join him in Mr Farage’s party, saying: “I would hope that colleagues who share my view about the crisis the country is in and the opportunity that Reform offers to save our country.”

Ms Caulfield meanwhile told GB News: “If you are Conservative right-minded, then the future is Reform.”

Melania style decoded: Jackie O designers and hats to hide behind

There was one question on the lips of observers when the president of the United States and the first lady arrived by military helicopter at Windsor Castle today to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales. Would anyone be able to see Melania’s eyes?

As it was, her felted aubergine hat was so low-brimmed – colour-matched to her husband’s tie and teamed with a charcoal Christian Dior haute couture skirt suit – that her eyes were completely shrouded from view. It was all very reminiscent of when the 55-year-old first lady donned a wide-rimmed boater by Eric Javits for her husband’s inaugural swearing-in ceremony. Then, the statement-making accessory seemed to handily keep her husband at a cool distance and spawned hundreds of hilarious memes online comparing her to fictional cartoons and evil movie characters.

“Melania’s hats almost function like Anna Wintour’s sunglasses and bob, where you can’t actually see her face for her hair,” says Claudia Croft, editor of 10 Magazine. “It’s a little bit unsettling.”

The late Queen, she adds, would never wear a hat that hid her face. “Our Royals exist to be in public – part of their public duty is to be seen, and to look good while doing so. Maybe Melania doesn’t feel the obligation to be seen in the same way that they do.”

The late Queen’s hats were, says Croft, “like replacement crowns – formal pieces that she would wear for daytime engagements”. Meanwhile, the Princess of Wales clearly got the memo, wearing a small, netted Jane Taylor hat, neatly positioned away from her face.

“Melania has taken a very different approach,” continues Croft. “There’s something about her hat that leaves you with more questions than answers. It makes you think, ‘What’s she hiding? Why doesn’t she want people to see her? Is she trying to create a mystery?”

It’s tempting to speculate that Melania might be playing a game with us. For nearly a decade, rumours have swirled that the first lady uses a body double for some of her official engagements, when, as the internet loves to speculate, “she can’t be bothered”, or “when she’s doing downtime for cosmetic surgery” – and of course they call her doppelganger #fakemelania.

Indeed, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci fuelled this rumour in 2020 during an appearance on an Australian TV quiz show, reporting that the president’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, “insists” that this is true, and that, “Her sister sometimes replaces her on the campaign trail … usually when you see somebody more affectionate with Mr Trump.”

While this is all, of course, gossipy nonsense, Melania was certainly in a “cover-up” mood when she wore an intriguingly long raincoat to step off Air Force One at Stansted Airport on Tuesday evening. Her Burberry Kensington Heritage trench coat was floor-skimming, worn with Christian Dior Empreinte leather riding boots. Why so long? Did her advisors not clock that, as glamorous as she looked, the ensemble was giving off some serious disguise vibes?

Nevertheless, says Croft, “It was good diplomatic dressing to wear Burberry – a great endorsement for a great British brand – though I was worried about her coming down the steps. One false move in a maxi-trench and you’re over.”

Usually, so much thought goes into planning outfits for official visits, you can expect some kind of messaging within the specific choices of designer, colour, style, etc. But what is it exactly that Melania is trying to say?

“It’s interesting that she’s chosen to wear prominent European couture,” notes the fashion historian Dr Kate Strasdin of Falmouth University – not least when Europe keeps being sent to the naughty step by JD Vance. Most likely, it’s a homage to Jackie Kennedy, who had a penchant for French couture, particularly Dior. Indeed, Melania has long admitted that the OG icon of first ladies is her style crush. In fact, the dress she wore to the state banquet, a bold yellow, off-the-shoulder column gown, was designed by Carolina Herrera, another of Jackie’s favourite designers. It’s easy to see Jackie’s influence – say what you like about Melania, but she is undoubtedly the most sleek and stylish of any of the presidents’ wives to follow her.

It’s also interesting to note, adds Strasdin, that the Dior skirt suit has a military aesthetic, “with the suit’s button placement running down both sides from the shoulder to below the waist – there’s a strength to the outfit, and maybe a sense of an embattled first lady under fire”.

In sharp contrast to the sharp edges and sombre colour choice of Melania’s first outfit choice, both the Queen and Kate wore rich jewel tones to greet the Americans – for the Queen, 78, a royal blue Fiona Clare dress and matching hat by Philip Treacy, for the princess, 43, a dark red Emilia Wickstead coat dress. Red and blue, plus, for the state banquet, Kate’s white silk crepe couture gown by Phillipa Lepley (worn with a gold lace Chantilly evening coat): there’s the colours of the British flag right there – another tick for diplomatic fashion, albeit predictably literal.

“The royals dress to be seen in a crowd,” explains Croft. “The late Queen would only wear black for funerals, and all the royals follow that protocol. But the one thing everyone can agree on is a stiletto pump.”

The detail that might have been missed even more than Melania’s eyes is Kate’s choice of brooch, the historic three feathers. “It was a wedding gift to Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she married the Prince of Wales [who later became King Edward VII] in 1863,” says Strasdin. “She went on to become a much-beloved Princess of Wales.”

The brooch, made up of 18 brilliant-cut diamonds encircled by tiny emeralds, includes the emblematic Prince of Wales ostrich feathers and a scroll inscribed with the Prince of Wales’s motto “Ich Dien”, which is German for “I serve”. So very on-message for Kate, who rarely puts a stiletto-pumped foot wrong when her star power is needed most.

Björn Borg talks cocaine, overdoses, cancer and why he quit tennis

Björn Borg’s memoir, ‘Heartbeats’, opens with his 1990s hospitalisation after overdosing on ‘alcohol, drugs, pills — my preferred ways of self-medication’, and concludes with a prostate cancer diagnosis.

“It’s good,” Borg, 69, said in a recent video interview with The Associated Press from his home in Stockholm, “to have a good beginning and a good ending.”

This 292-page book, set for US release on 23 September by Diversion Books, details his love life, adventures, regrets, and the 11-time Grand Slam champion’s match recollections.

Famously private, Borg kept a lot to himself during his days on tour — as well as since he surprisingly retired in his 20s.

He brings readers back to when, having lost the 1981 Wimbledon and U.S. Open finals to rival John McEnroe, Borg realized he was done.

“All I could think was how miserable my life had become,” he writes.

He was 25 and, while he would briefly return to tennis, he never competed at another Grand Slam event.

After the 1981 final at the U.S. Open, a tournament he never won, Borg grabbed some beers and sat in the pool at a house on Long Island, where friends planned a party to celebrate a victory.

“I was not upset or sad when I lost the final. And that’s not me as a person. I hate to lose,” he told the AP.

“My head was spinning,” he said, “and I knew I’m going to step away from tennis.”

Borg writes about his childhood and his relationships with his parents (and, later, his children).

He writes about earning the nickname “Ice-Borg” for calmness on court — often contrasted by fans to the more fiery McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. And Borg writes that did not come about “organically,” but rather via “the bitter experiences” of a 12-year-old kid.

“I behaved so badly on the tennis court. I was swearing, cheating, behaving the worst you can imagine,” he recalled in the video interview.

He said his hometown tennis club banned him for six months and, when he returned, “I did not open my mouth on the tennis court, because I was scared to get suspended again.”

“Boiling inside? Yes,” Borg told the AP. “I had to control my feelings. … You cannot do that in one week. It took years to figure out how I should behave on the court.”

Borg writes about panic attacks and his drug use, which he says started in 1982.

“The first time I tried cocaine,” he says in the book, “I got the same kind of rush I used to get from tennis.”

He also writes about “the worst shame of all,” which he says came when he looked up from a hospital bed in Holland to see his father. Borg also clarifies that an earlier overdose, in 1989 in Italy, was accidental, not a suicide attempt.

“Stupid decision to be involved with this kind of thing. It really destroys you,” he told the AP about drugs. “I was happy to get away from tennis, to get away from that life. But I had no plan what to do. … I had no people behind me to guide me in the right direction.”

In all, Borg paints the picture of quite a life.

There was a water-skiing shoulder injury before 1977 U.S. Open. Death threats during the 1981 U.S. Open. Getting paid in cash … and getting robbed at gunpoint. A woman claiming he was the father of her son. Coin-throwing by spectators in Rome that led him to never return.

This is not the typical sports autobiography: There is a reference to getting a message to Yasser Arafat and, five pages later, the phrase ”Andy Warhol was someone easy to like” appears. There are name-drops of Donald Trump, Nelson Mandela, Tina Turner and “my old friend Hugh Hefner,” among many, many others.

“People will be very surprised what really happened,” Borg told the AP. “For me to come out (after) all these years, all I went through — I went through some difficult times — (it’s) a relief for me to do this book. I feel so much better. … No secrets anymore.”

Brigitte Macron to show court ‘scientific proof’ she is a woman

Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte will provide “scientific and photographic evidence” that she is a woman at her defamation trial against far-right American podcaster Candace Owens.

Tom Clare, a lawyer acting for the Macrons, said the couple were ready to prove “generally and specifically” that Owens’s allegations that Ms Macron was born male were false.

Owens began spreading absurd conspiracy theories about Ms Macron’s gender identity in 2024 in YouTube videos and podcast episodes that have accrued millions of views. She has stated that she will stake her “entire professional reputation” on her belief that Ms Macron “is in fact a man”.

The Macrons filed a defamation lawsuit in a court in Delaware in July, accusing Owens of spreading “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched” lies that have triggered a “campaign of global humiliation” and “relentless bullying”.

Mr Clare told the BBC’s Fame Under Fire podcast that the court would be provided “expert testimony” that would be “scientific in nature”. He did not elaborate on what evidence might be given at the trial.

Despite the looming legal action, Owens doubled down on her baseless claim in an interview in July in which she alleged that Ms Macron’s death would be faked before the case reached the discovery phase.

Mr Clare said that Ms Macron has found the allegations “incredibly upsetting”, while her husband has found them a “distraction” from his duties.

“I don’t want to suggest that it somehow has thrown him off his game. But just like anybody who is juggling a career and a family life as well, when your family is under attack, it wears on you. And he’s not immune from that because he’s the president of a country,” he said.

“It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself, to put this type of proof forward.”

Mr Clare said Ms Macron was determined to “set the record straight” in public.

“It is a process that she will have to subject herself to in a very public way. But she’s willing to do it.”

He added: “If that unpleasantness and that discomfort that she has of opening herself up in that way is what it takes to set a record straight and stop this, she’s 100 per cent ready to meet that burden.”

The Independent has contacted Owens for comment.

In a YouTube video posted by Owens in response to the 219-page defamation complaint, she claimed that she had provided Mr and Ms Macron with multiple opportunities to offer proof and comment against her claims – but had received no response.

Ms Macron was awarded £6,750 in damages last year after two right-wing influencers, Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey, accused her of being a transgender woman. They were also ordered to pay damages to her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, who they alleged had assumed the identity of Brigitte.

Nazis looted art is worth billions – but who gets it when it’s found?

It began, absurdly enough, with an estate agent’s photograph.

A grainy picture of a living room in a bungalow in Argentina, snapped for a property listing, showed a gilt frame above a sofa. An eagle-eyed researcher recognised the work as Portrait of a Lady, an Italian portrait once in the collection of a Jewish Dutch art dealer called Jacques Goudstikker – a name synonymous with the wholesale dispossession by the Nazis of Jewish collectors in the Netherlands in 1940. Argentinian prosecutors, alerted by the sighting, swept in; the painting was recovered and handed to the courts. The family of the original owner is among those now pressing for restitution. It is a remarkable, if familiar, story: what was taken in wartime surfaces decades later in the most mundane of places.

That fluke also re-focuses a question historians and lawyers have been arguing over for three generations: how much of the art looted by the Nazis is still missing, and what is it worth? The blunt answer is: we don’t know – and whatever number you pick, it will be both terrifyingly large and maddeningly imprecise.

Estimates vary. A commonly cited figure is that between 1933 and 1945, some 600,000–650,000 works were seized or sold under duress across Europe. Many were small domestic objects – china, silver, family heirlooms – but the haul also included thousands of paintings, prints and sculptures taken from private Jewish collections, museums and synagogues. Only a fraction has been returned.

Put a monetary figure on that and the problem becomes even more slippery.

Single masterpieces can command sums that make the head spin: Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was famously returned to Maria Altmann and later sold to Ronald Lauder for tens of millions; Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally resulted in a $19m (£13.9m) settlement after protracted litigation in New York. At the other end of the scale lies The Amber Room – the enormous, amber-panelled interior looted from Catherine Palace in 1941 – whose modern valuations have oscillated, in different hands, from many tens of millions into the hundreds of millions.

All of which underlines the point: a handful of works could be worth hundreds of millions on their own; the total value of what is missing could comfortably sit in the billions.

And yet the headline numbers sometimes mislead. When Cornelius Gurlitt – the reclusive son of Hitler’s art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt – was exposed in 2012, newspapers lectured that a billion-euro bonanza had been found in a Munich flat. That trove, extraordinary as it was, contained hundreds of works, only a minority of which could be proven to be looted. The public outcry that followed taught a salutary lesson: provenance matters, and establishing theft or forced sale almost eight decades after the event is painstaking work.

Which brings us to the core of the modern system for deciding ownership when an object is rediscovered. There is no single global court of restitution. Instead, the architecture is a tangle of moral principles, national procedures and ad-hoc settlements. The Washington Conference Principles of 1998 and the Terezín (Theresienstadt) Declaration of 2009 set the international tone: identify, research and, where appropriate, find “just and fair” solutions for Holocaust-era confiscations. They are not legally binding – they are moral-political instruments intended to nudge museums, governments and dealers into transparency.

How that principle works on the ground varies from place to place. In the UK, the Spoliation Advisory Panel examines claims concerning works in national collections and recommends remedies – which have ranged from outright restitution to monetary compensation to long-term loans. In Germany, there is an advisory commission and a now-more-sophisticated provenance infrastructure (the Lost Art Database and the German Lost Art Foundation) to help identify suspect pieces and broker solutions. Private restitution is often litigated, sometimes mediated: the Portrait of Wally case was litigated under US forfeiture law; the Klimt case made its way to the US Supreme Court before being resolved in arbitration and settlement.

That framework performs the work of history in public: provenance research, legal argument and, crucially, negotiation. Institutions frequently point to gaps in the archives, to ambiguities of ownership during a chaotic era, and to good-faith purchases made in the decades after the war. Claimants point to forced sales, deportation, murder and the simple fact that families were stripped of their property. The result is rarely neat justice; it is brokerage. And sometimes, despite all the declarations and commissions, justice is delayed or denied – as heirs continue to battle over works held in state galleries or private hands. Recent cases show that even when the provenance is strong, bureaucratic and legal obstacles can delay restitution for years.

Who does the finding? A mixed cast: dedicated researchers in national archives and museums; NGOs like the Commission for Looted Art in Europe; databases and private companies such as the Art Loss Register; independent sleuths – often glorified as “art detectives” – who comb auction catalogues and anonymous photographs; prosecutors and customs officers who act on tips; and, increasingly, the public. The Argentinian discovery was classical amateur detection turned civic action: someone saw a picture online, recognised it, and the wheels of justice started turning.

My forthcoming TV series for the History Channel, The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold, has taken me across Europe this August on much the same hunt. I followed leads in Germany for the collection of Baron Ferenc Hatvany, the Hungarian connoisseur whose works were dispersed in the chaos of 1944–45 and are still turning up in vaults and galleries. I hauled myself to Lake Toplitz in Austria, where generations of divers have dreamed of sunken Nazi caches; I chased rumours about The Amber Room and the circuitous trail of crates and reports that might, just might, lead to it. I met many treasure hunters, some of whom are sane, some of whom are, shall we say, “out there”. All are obsessional.

Practical obstacles for art and treasure hunters abound. Many institutions acquired works in the postwar years when provenance was either not investigated or was obscured by paperwork. Records have been lost or deliberately destroyed. Some treasures were trafficked across borders – sometimes with the complicity of local officials – and have migrated into private collections where discoverability is slim. Even when a looted work reappears, legal systems differ: statutes of limitation, evidential burdens and compensation models are not uniform. The Washington Principles and national panels attempt to smooth these differences, but they cannot legislate away messy human history.

Yet there is reason for cautious optimism. Provenance research is no longer niche; whole departments and databases are devoted to it. International cooperation has improved, and high-profile successes demonstrate that recovery and redress are possible, even decades on. The public now helps; internet catalogues, digitised archives and social media mean that a painting can be traced from a living room in Argentina to a Jewish dealer’s Prague ledgerbook in a matter of days.

What I took away from my time on the road was neither grand optimism nor despair, but the stubborn persistence of memory. Looting was a crime against people as well as property; for heirs, a returned frame can be a fragment of family restored. For historians, each recovered object rewrites a small part of the past. The lesson is blunt: the past does not only live in museums. Sometimes it hangs over a sofa in an ordinary house, waiting for someone to notice.

If the Argentinian estate agent photograph teaches us anything, it is that the search continues and that recovery is – at least occasionally – a matter of exposure and will. The moral architecture we have built since 1998 gives us routes for redress, and institutions are increasingly obliged to look under the carpets of their collections. But the scale of what was taken means that, long after our generation, there will still be searches, claims and occasional triumphs. And that, if nothing else, is a measure of the damage the Nazis inflicted – a theft that has echoed for 80 years and shows no sign of going quietly into the past.

1. Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man

Believed to be a self-portrait, it vanished from the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland, during the Second World War. Widely regarded as the most famous missing piece, its whereabouts is still unknown.

2. Andreas Schlüter, The Amber Room (18th century)

This spectacular amber-panelled chamber, once dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, was looted from Russia to Königsberg in 1941 and has never been recovered.

3. Van Gogh, The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888)

Last seen in Magdeburg, it reportedly was lost in a fire after Allied bombing destroyed the salt mine where it was stored.

4. Johannes Bellini, Madonna with Child (c.1430)

Reportedly housed in a flak tower in Berlin during the war; presumed destroyed or still lost.

5. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Trude Steiner (1900)

A portrait taken from collector Jenny Steiner in 1938; it never resurfaced.

6. Rembrandt, An Angel with Titus’ Features

Looted in 1943 and intended for Hitler’s “Führermuseum” – still missing.

7. Peter Paul Rubens, The Annunciation

Disappeared after a forced auction.

8. Canaletto, Piazza Santa Margherita

Once part of Goudstikker’s collection, its location remains unknown.

9. Degas, Five Dancing Women (Ballerinas)

Part of Baron Mór Lipót Herzog’s collection; missing in the postwar dispersal.

10. Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre, Twilight (1897)

Though sporadically sighted over the years, it has never been traced to a stable location.

With thanks to War History Online

How Macmillan Cancer Support built a movement that reaches everyone

Ukraine to receive first Patriot missiles under Europe-funded scheme

The Trump administration is sending Ukraine its first missiles for Patriot air defence systems and HIMARS rocket launchers under a new Europe-funded scheme.

Volodymyr Zelensky said the first two batches, worth $500m (£366m) each, will “definitely include missiles for Patriot and HIMARS”.

Nato’s senior representative in Ukraine said the first batches of equipment funding through Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) were already on their way and the equipment is “already flowing”. PURL funding allows Europe to pay for the weapons and the US to send them.

The new supplies of critical weapons comes as Ukraine is bracing for a heavy autumn offensive from Russia, with Vladimir Putin’s forces accelerating strikes on its shattered energy system, including gas infrastructure.

On the battlefield, Russian General Valery Gerasimov toured positions held by his troops in Ukraine and said Moscow‘s forces were “advancing on practically all fronts”, the Russian defence ministry said.

The claims by Moscow contradict Ukraine’s position that Russian troops enjoyed little frontline success in their recent activity after three failed campaigns.

Families in Britain £20,000 worse off than 20 years ago

Families in Britain are tens of thousands of pounds worse off due to two decades of sharply declining living standards, a damning new report have revealed.

A typical household today would be £20,000 richer had incomes continued at the rate of growth trending in 2005, the findings from the Resolution Foundation show.

The influential think tank finds that incomes for working-age families have grown only seven per cent over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, essentials like energy, food, and rents have risen by as much as 120 per cent over the same period.

This level of stagnation is “unprecedented in modern times,” the foundation says, publishing its findings on its 20th anniversary.

From 1995 to 2005, growth was recorded at 35 per cent. Had this continued, the typical family income today would be £51,000, but is instead £31,000.

This would equate to £394 extra every week for the average worker.

The level of income growth has varied between groups, with pensioner incomes growing by 21 per cent, and owner-occupiers by 14 per cent. Meanwhile, the incomes of working-age families in private rented accommodation have increased by just four per cent.

Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, writes that “dire productivity of the UK economy” is the ultimate cause of the downturn, with “years of under-investment across public and private sectors” being a key factor.

The think tank lead points out that middle incomes in the UK are now 19 per cent lower than the average in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Ms Curtice said: “Over the past 20 years, the Foundation has helped to put living standards at the centre of political debate in Britain. And that’s where they belong given the scale of the living standards slowdown across Britain, which has cost the typical family an astonishing £20,000 a year.

“As we look ahead, the task of raising living standards across Britain is bigger than ever – we simply cannot afford any more stagnation. This makes the work of the Foundation even more urgent as we redouble efforts to push for sustained family income growth.”

The findings come as food and drink prices in the UK were confirmed to have risen for the fifth month in a row on Wednesday.

While August’s rate of headline inflation (CPI) stood firm at 3.9 per cent, the rate of food inflation rose to 5.1 per cent, up from 4.9 per cent in July.

Responding to the figures, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “I know families are finding it tough and that for many the economy feels stuck. That’s why I’m determined to bring costs down and support people who are facing higher bills.”

Among food items, beef and veal has had the biggest annual rise in price, up by a quarter (24.9 per cent) over the past 12 months. Butter saw the next highest increase at 18.9 per cent, while both chocolate and coffee have risen 15.4 per cent.

Paired with the rising cost of essentials, sluggish income growth in the UK has left millions of people struggling to get by. A recent report from food charity Trussell found that 14 million people are facing hunger, including one in four children (3.8 million).

Research by comparison site Uswitch on Thursday also found that two million households are planning to avoid using their central heating this year due to rising energy costs – a 22 per cent increase on last year.

A Treasury Spokesperson said: “As the Chancellor has made clear, our economy isn’t broken but for working people, it does feel stuck. Through our Plan for Change we are taking action — raising the National Living Wage, extending the £3 bus fare cap, and expanding free school meals to put more money in people’s pockets while we work to build a stronger, more stable economy that rewards hard work.

“We are making progress since the election: real wages have risen more than in the first ten years of the previous government after over a decade of underinvestment and stagnation, interest rates have been cut five times and the UK had the fastest growth in the G7 in the first half of this year.”