Hospitality chiefs urge PM to cut VAT

Rayner accused of ‘two-tier’ donation rules | Maye Musk: ‘My son Elon was a genius by three’

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Monday, 14 September 2026 Issue No. 568

Good morning. More than 800 pub, restaurant and hotel leaders have signed a letter urging Andy Burnham to honour his pledge to slash VAT in a move hospitality bosses say could halt sweeping high street closures and save thousands of jobs. The plea comes just days after the industry was blindsided by the Prime Minister’s “tourist tax”. James Titcomb reports. Elsewhere, Angela Rayner has signalled that political donations from wealthy individuals may be capped, prompting claims of a “two-tier” party funding system to protect Labour’s union support. Charles Hymas has the story. Chris Evans, Editor P.S. Don’t miss our Summer Sale. Act now to try four months of The Telegraph free. If you’re already a subscriber, make sure you’re logged in to read today’s stories.   In today’s edition Russian drone strikes train behind Boris Johnson’s — Maye Musk: ‘My son Elon was a genius by three years old’ — Plus, the state blunder giving Trump his voter fraud ‘smoking gun’

Summer Sale: Try four months free Get full access to this newsletter every day, plus our award-winning website and app. Be quick: this offer must end soon. Claim now   Hundreds of hotels, pubs and restaurants urge Burnham to slash VAT James Titcomb   Back in February, Andy Burnham won points with the hospitality industry by endorsing a proposal to cut VAT on the beleaguered industry. At the time, Burnham was merely mayor of Greater Manchester, and the comments burnished his potential leadership credentials. He said he supported the tax cut for hospitality “because of the social value that your businesses bring to places and towns that need that life injected into them”. Reducing VAT to 10 per cent would bring Britain in line with France, Spain and Italy. Now that he is in No 10, Burnham is being pushed to honour his support. This morning, more than 800 businesses have written to the Prime Minister calling on him to stand by his words and halve VAT on hospitality. Pub groups including Greene King, Fuller’s and JD Wetherspoon signed the letter alongside celebrated chefs Tom Kerridge, Angela Hartnett and Heston Blumenthal. The hotel giant Marriott and family holiday favourite Center Parcs also sought to hold Burnham to comments he made earlier this year. The letter to the Prime Minister said: “Our businesses are penalised by the highest tax burden in the economy, which is causing three hospitality venues to close every day. “Without action, closures will only continue to accelerate, jobs will continue to be lost and opportunities for young people reduced. A lower rate of VAT for hospitality can turn closures into openings, lost jobs into new jobs and boarded-up high streets into thriving centres of community.” The letter is well timed, amid a brewing backlash against Labour’s “tourism tax”, which has also hit the industry. Burnham will have to make a choice: will he stand by his support or concede that it’s harder to honour your word when in power? This report is available to subscribers only. Read the full story ➤ Families will be forced to pay more by Labour’s tourist tax ➤   Rayner accused of ‘two-tier’ donation rules to protect union funding Charles Hymas Home Affairs Editor   Angela Rayner has opened the door to capping political donations from wealthy individuals, raising fears of a “two-tier” party funding system to protect Labour’s union paymasters. The Communities Secretary said a government taskforce would look at whether new laws were needed to prevent individual donors “buying their way into democracy” after Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was handed a record £72m in two days by two cryptocurrency tycoons. Union leaders indicated that they should be exempted so as not to penalise their members who wanted their subscriptions to support Labour. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, said donations from trade unions were “not the same as two crypto millionaires waking up and giving £72m”. “It’s very different when you’ve got millions of members who are giving 10p each, when they say that they want to, into a political fund, and some of that then goes to Labour. That’s nurses, that’s people who clean our streets, that’s people who make vehicles,” she said. It has prompted a furious response from Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, who accused Labour of plotting to rig the system and institute a two-tier approach to funding. Labour has received more than £22m from the unions since the start of 2023, just under a quarter of its total funding in that period. Continue reading ➤   Opinion Dominic Lawson The Kremlin view of Nazism in Germany is the mirror image of the truth There are some echoes of 1939 today, but they come from Germany’s AfD and the Kremlin, not the West Continue reading ➤     Allison Pearson Spare us the righteousness, Ed Miliband. You’re a disgrace Continue reading ➤     Jonathan Sumption I support assisted dying, but I’m not surprised this bill failed Continue reading ➤   To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here. In other news • Boris Johnson was on a train travelling from Ukraine to Poland when the railway line was struck by a Russian drone. The former prime minister was woken up by guards and told to prepare for evacuation. • Schoolchildren will be made to eat lentils and chickpeas once a week, while ice cream will be banned under Labour plans. Deep-fried food such as fish and chips will also be scrapped. • Global supplies of Saudi Arabian oil could run out within days unless a vital pipeline is brought back into operation after it was attacked by drones launched from Iraq on Thursday. The Saudi east-west pipeline after the strike • Kemi Badenoch is considering abolishing inheritance tax and could make an announcement as early as the Conservative Party’s autumn conference. • Man Utd 0-1 Man City | Manchester United have received a formal apology over the controversial decision to allow Erling Haaland’s derby winner to stand after referees’ chiefs admitted it was a mistake. • The Duchess of Sussex has provided the first glimpse of her family’s new life in the British countryside. A video montage posted on her Instagram account painted an idyllic picture of the English autumn. Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet appear to have settled into British life   Your essential reads Maye Musk: ‘My son Elon was a genius by three years old’ I caught a last-minute flight to New York to meet Maye Musk, mother of the world’s richest man, at her Manhattam home, writes Abigail Buchanan. She has had a remarkable second act as a septuagenarian supermodel, but her greatest achievement is her three children: Kimbal, Tosca and, yes, Elon Musk. Amid his myriad political controversies and the release of a damning new documentary about his life, Musk (senior) gave me the full story on the making of Elon, from his troubled childhood in South Africa to family gatherings today. It was a surprisingly open and revealing conversation. For subscribers only ➤   The state blunder giving Trump his voter fraud ‘smoking gun’ The elusive search for evidence of Donald Trump and his allies’ claims of rampant election fraud landed me in Trenton, New Jersey, writes Iona Cleave. In the state capital’s halls of power, a scramble is under way to prepare for an impending battle with the White House to defend the integrity of its elections. Trump has insisted – without evidence – that hundreds of thousands of non-Americans are voting in elections, helping to “rig” the system against him. In New Jersey, his supporters claim that he has found his long sought-after proof. Continue reading ➤ Trump rejects Silicon Valley’s calls for AI slowdown ➤   How restless legs pills turned a respectable policeman into a ‘dirty old man’ When Alan Williams, a retired police sergeant, was prescribed medication to ease restless leg syndrome, his family could never have predicted that the last years of his life would be marred by a side effect that led to his becoming obsessed with sex, eating up to 1kg of sugar per day and gambling away his life savings. Here, his son David shares Alan’s story and experts explain the side effect. Continue reading ➤   Premier League rights could be endgame in Lineker vs Neville ‘podcast wars’ The stakes have been raised in Gary Lineker and Gary Neville’s “podcast wars” after Netflix and Disney+ signed up their flagship football shows for the whole of this season. What is the endgame in the battle for supremacy between the two Garys’ media empires and could Premier League rights soon be within their grasp? Continue reading ➤   Seize the day An insider guide to a weekend in Paris If you’re planning a weekend in Paris, avoid mediocre tourist traps and follow our experts’ advice to fall in love with the city. Our insider guide to the French capital will help you find its best side, from world-class restaurants and bakeries to chic cafes and bars. Continue reading ➤ Here is another article that I hope you’ll find helpful this morning: Heart disease is often called “the silent killer”. Here are the expert-backed ways to lower your risk and reduce your blood pressure.   CAPTION COMPETITION WITH... Matt Pritchett Cartoonist   Hello! This week, you have a squire imparting news to a family of peasants. What is he saying? Congratulations to Geoff Parker on his caption for last week’s anthropomorphic strawberry. Out of all the seeded jokes, yours was the best! Submit your caption here ➤ P.S. For an inside look at what inspires my weekly cartoons, you can sign up for my personal newsletter here. Catch up on last week’s here.   Beauty makeovers Welcome to the final instalment of our reader makeovers, writes Sonia Haria, our Beauty Director. At the start of summer, I asked the readers of The Telegraph’s Fashion and Beauty newsletter to contact us if they were interested in a hair and make-up makeover. We were inundated with worthy applicants. We invited three readers to come to London for a special makeover day. I called in the services of Lisa Eldridge, an award-winning make-up artist, and Luke Hersheson, a leading hairdresser.   Your say All aboard! While Orlando Bird, our loyal Reader Correspondent, is away, Joe Burgis is on hand to share an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Joe writes... My memories of the school bus are largely happy: pile-ons, songs, cigarettes. On winter mornings, the bus was a haven from the cold. The windows were always steamed up, as boiling hot pipes heated the place up. Modern buses, however, are apparently not so toasty. Last week, it was reported that London bus drivers will be able to stop working after little more than half an hour if they deem it to be too cold in their cabin.   To this, Ralph Seymour replied: “The London bus drivers who are worried about being too cold may wish to consider the plight of those who drove trams. As recently as 1940, Bristol tram drivers operated on open platforms – in all weathers. “Remarkably, the fleet retained its original open-top design for decades. Five new cars built in 1920 were built to essentially the same design as those introduced in the 1890s, while most of the older cars were rebuilt to a standard design during the 1920s and 1930s.”   Nick Anderson added: “I recall visits to relatives in the Lake District in the 1960s. In those days it was not unusual to see bare Leyland bus chassis being driven northwards on the A6 over a wintry Shap Fell en route to a coachbuilder in Scotland. “The drivers would typically be swaddled against the cold in an Army greatcoat along with stout leather gauntlets and motorcycle goggles, with no weather protection other than, at best, a rudimentary plywood windbreak. Truly a hardy breed.”   Not for me, Nick. I like a heated seat (and steering wheel). For the modern bus constructor, Roderick Archer had this suggestion: “It would be sensible if the roofs of all buses were fitted with solar panels, so that they have a power source for air-conditioning and heating.” That’s more like it. That’s all from me folks. I’ll be back tomorrow to bring you the best Telegraph talking points. In the meantime, you can contact me here. Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name.   On this day 1901 | Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the youngest man to serve as US President 1914 | Lord Kitchener’s “Your Country Needs You” advertisement appears on the front cover of the London Opinion magazine 1940 | The Blitz hits London, Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Southampton, Bournemouth, Hastings, Brighton and Warrington, among other places 2022 | Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin returns to Buckingham Palace from Scotland (see our front page from the following day) Birthdays: Ron DeSantis (48), Pope Leo XIV (71), Martin Tyler (81) Plus, in the news today, this summer’s record temperatures and prolonged droughts have reduced the water content in fruit and accentuated their natural sugars. Which alcoholic drink has this enhanced the flavour and strength of? 1. Wine 2. Sloe gin 3. Fruit brandy 4. Perry Click one of the options to reveal the answer...   Puzzles Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.   Yesterday’s Panagram was MINIBREAK. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle.   Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow. Chris Evans, Editor I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk. Summer Sale: Try four months free Get full access to this newsletter every day, plus our award-winning website and app. Be quick: this offer must end soon. Claim now

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