Andy Burnham is to give England’s mayors the power to introduce an uncapped tourist tax. Housing Minister Angela Rayner (pictured above) chaired a virtual meeting at No. 10 North today to discuss the tax, which will be set as a percentage of accommodation costs – rather than a flat fee – at the discretion of regional leaders. Burnham has committed to starting the scheme, first proposed by Keir Starmer’s government, towards the end of the 2027-28 financial year.

Where would the money go?
A tourist tax would allow mayors to “prop up crumbling local authority finances and invest cash back into the area”, said The Telegraph. Local authorities are already facing a financial crisis, with a “record 35 councils now relying on £1.5 billion of emergency government financial support to balance their books”. This tax would also provide a new “revenue-raising stream” for England’s 14 regional mayors, who are unable to raise council tax bills, which is a council-level decision.

What about the rest of the UK?
After Holyrood passed a law permitting the levies in 2024, Edinburgh introduced a 5% overnight rate this summer, capped at five nights. Glasgow also has a 5% rate, while Aberdeen’s is 7%. In Wales, a capped levy of £1.30 per person per night (reduced to 75p for hostels and campsites) will be introduced in April 2027.

How will it affect the hospitality industry?
This tax could raise hundreds of millions for local public services, said The Guardian. But it could also be a “blow for the hospitality industry”, already “squeezed by tax rises and extra employment costs”.

UKHospitality’s chief executive Allen Simpson told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme that a tourist levy would add roughly £100 to £120 to the average cost of a family holiday, because it is uncapped and mayors would “pull that lever until it snaps”. Simpson’s trade body also claimed the move would cost 33,000 jobs and result in a £2.2 billion hit to the UK’s GDP.

“Zia Yusuf is a brilliant man, and he’s a genius actually,” Tory defector and Reform member Nadine Dorries told Times Radio recently. But “I wish he closed down his Twitter account”. The interview followed a tweet by Reform’s self-styled “shadow home secretary” about reports that Somali-born Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden Council, was the favourite to be Labour’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. In a remark that drew condemnation from across the political spectrum for its apparent racial undertones, Yusuf asked his followers: “Do you understand what’s happening?”

‘Remarkable and rare gifts’
“Even in these polarised times”, it is hard to imagine another politician as “unlikeable” and “rebarbative” as Yusuf, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Take, for example, his decision to accuse former defence secretary Ben Wallace, a former Scots Guards officer who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, of being a “traitor”. Yusuf then posted a poll asking if Wallace should be prosecuted for treason.

The son of Sri Lankan immigrants, Yusuf built a hugely successful business career and is clearly “a man of remarkable and rare gifts”, said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator. But “the more one sees and hears from Yusuf, the more obvious it becomes that he is a liability for Reform”.

‘Ticking time bomb’
Controversial or not, “behaving as he does is entirely politically rational”, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. Yusuf’s combative communication style “alienates” many, but it also “makes his signal – that with him there is no compromise or messing about – more reliable”. This has endeared him to rank-and-file Reform members. In a poll of 850 members in June, 22% said they would opt for Yusuf as leader in a contest to replace Nigel Farage, ahead of current deputy Richard Tice.

Senior figures within the party are forming an “Anyone but Zia” group to try to prevent him from succeeding Farage should he step down, said The Observer. “They all know [Yusuf’s] a problem, but he is popular among the grassroots,” one critic told the newspaper. “He’s a slowly ticking time bomb.”

A municipal employee marks out spaces designated for displaying political posters in Salé, Morocco. The country’s general election campaign kicks off today ahead of the vote on 23 September, when 27 parties will compete for 395 parliamentary seats.

Abdel Majid Bziouat / AFP / Getty Images

The Bayeux Tapestry is “shivers-down-the-spine, tell-the-grandchildren sort of stuff”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. Textbooks can tell you the facts – “seventy metres, 58 scenes, 626 figures” – but the reconstructions and photographs can’t compare to seeing the real thing at the exhibition opening today at the British Museum. It’s “more than a shiver of excitement”; it’s the “loan of the millennium” and truly “magnificent”.

Simply “let the images carry you”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. The early sections, showing the Normans’ preparations for invading England, have a “documentary veracity” and “cinematic drive”.

The tapestry’s “most famous section”, depicting the Battle of Hastings, feels like an “11th-century equivalent of Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece ‘Guernica’ (1937)”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. It’s “pure carnage”: horses fall, warriors are decapitated and a mace flies through the air. It is striking how much it feels like a “requiem” for Anglo-Saxon England, rather than a “tub-thumping celebration of Norman power”.

Against the brutality of the violence, depictions of peasants working the land are stitched in “distracting, vibrant detail”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. This is both “pointed and poignant: whoever wins, whoever rules England, country people will still work the soil”.

There are moments of levity, too, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. The narrow tapestry is “topped and tailed by joyously random images of fantastical beasts and the odd weird naked guy”. This is not just an artefact consigned to the past, but “an action comic realised in millennium-old cloth”.

Let’s give Harry and Meghan a break
Annabel Denham in The Telegraph
Royal history is full of “difficult children, sibling rivalries and unhappy marriages”, writes Annabel Denham. So “what’s surprising isn’t that Harry and Meghan happened, it’s that anyone thinks this is unprecedented”. Yes, the couple have made “spectacular unforced errors” and they’re “ridiculous, but they’re not wicked”. I “hold no torch for the Sussexes”, but the public pile-on is “vicious, tedious and unnecessary”. Our monarchy “has survived wastrel princes, warring relatives, abdications, and it will survive the current bunch”.

Europe’s far right: Putin’s best friend?
Dimitar Bechev on Al Jazeera
A “good week” for Vladimir Putin was capped off by the AfD’s “resounding success” in the Saxony-Anhalt election, which raises hopes of a Russia-friendly German government, writes Dimitar Bechev, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. As Europe’s “populists and nativists” exploit “genuine economic grievances and cultural anxieties”, Russia’s “influence campaigns” seek to “amplify social cleavages and feed resentment” to “disrupt the established order from within”. The “choice” lies “with the voters in a given democracy”, but far-right gains could “hobble” EU geopolitical ambitions.

Is Burnham trying to appease Trump? Or Reform? What other reason is there for these North Sea oil plans?
George Monbiot in The Guardian
Andy Burnham’s impending approval of further North Sea drilling offers “tiny material gains while risking huge political losses”, writes George Monbiot. His plan would create few jobs and make “no significant difference” to our energy bills. When our government “refuses to leave fossil fuels in the ground, its credibility diminishes” and the “diplomatic implications are considerable”. And while Burnham might imagine this move will get Reform UK “off his back” and “appease” Donald Trump, “of course, it won’t”.