Relief for some of Britain’s poorest lands at right moment to cushion Iran aftershocks | Heather Stewart
It doesn’t involve warships, drones or strategic oil stocks, but one of Labour’s most potent weapons for containing the economic aftershocks from the Iran war for the UK is about to be unleashed: the scrapping of the two-child limit.If the cost of essential goods spikes as a result of high oil prices it is the poorest households who will be the most exposed.The timing is purely fortuitous, but ministers are about to write to parents in more than half a million such homes to let them know they are likely to receive an average of £440 extra a month from April.These are families with three or more children, claiming universal credit.“It’s massive,” says Alex Clegg, an economist at the Resolution Foundation thinktank.
“The amounts of money for families with four or five children, it’s life-changing: it’s thousands of pounds a year, for people right at the bottom of the income distribution.”An above-inflation, 6.2% increase in the standard allowance of universal credit this year will also help these and a much wider group of low-income households.Resolution’s latest projections, drawn up after Rachel Reeves’s spring forecast, suggested 480,000 children should be lifted out of poverty in 2026, as a result of these changes.A pessimist might point out that with a wave of war-fuelled price rises heading our way – “Trumpflation”, as the TUC rightly calls it – the additional cash won’t go as far as it might have done, and that is true.
The flipside is that the reinstatement of support scrapped by the Conservatives when the cruel two-child policy was introduced in 2017, could hardly come at a better moment.“Having a strong safety net is really important for these families to be able to manage shocks – ensuring that they can still put food on the table for their kids,” says Sam Tims, lead analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.The government’s impact assessment of the policy suggests that of the 2 million children living in households likely to benefit from the change by 2030, 600,000 live in “deep material poverty”.That’s a new definition introduced by Labour and means a family is unable to afford essentials such as heating, transport and three meals a day.The policy would be the right one, regardless of timing.
No decent society should allow its children to grow up without the basic necessities of life, and they shouldn’t be punished for being born into a family that can’t make ends meet.As Prof Ashwin Kumar, director of research at the Institute for Public Policy Research says, there are more hard-headed arguments, too, because this is the workforce of the future.“The reality is that teachers know what they have to deal with when children turn up at school not fed, not ready to learn,” he says.“And in the end, if you want to give the next generation a chance, then you can’t have a whole bunch of people be left behind because their families don’t have the money to look after them – which is an economic argument.”Reeves highlighted this in her budget speech last year announcing the change, talking about “the future cost to our economy and to our society, of wasted talent and a welfare system that bears the cost of failure for decades to come”.
Protecting families from economic shocks was meant to be one aspect of the philosophy Reeves calls “securonomics”, which she will restate in her Mais lecture on Tuesday – though her rhetorical focus in power has tended to be more on fixing the public finances and building roads, railways and runways,Mothers affected by the two-child limit recently told the charity Save the Children what they would spend the additional money on – and the weight it would lift from their shoulders,“From now on I’ll be able to pay the bills and be able to stick that heating on a little extra for the children,” said Kim, from Ashton-under-Lyme, a mother of five whose partner works,Thea, a working mother of three in London who has campaigned for the limit to be scrapped, said: “It could mean winter clothes, new shoes or a summer holiday club,But in the end all I want is to spend a weekend just playing with my kids, without stressing about money.
”Anti-poverty campaigners are now taking aim at the overall benefit cap, which limits the total households can claim; and the fact that local housing allowance has been frozen, causing the support level to fall ever further behind rental costs.As calls for the government to be prepared to act over energy bills grow, Reeves is right that households already struggling must be her priority.So it is fortunate that while officials prepare for weeks of wrangling over the details of any support scheme, some of the UK’s poorest families are already about to receive a helping hand.
Seth Meyers on Pete Hegseth: ‘The face of a man war-fighting with his colon’
Late-night hosts dug into the Trump administration’s vague intentions for the war in Iran, the conflict’s oil-price effect and a Maga rally in Kentucky with Jake Paul.On Late Night, Seth Meyers checked in on Donald Trump’s now two-week-old war in Iran. “The president is maybe sort of threatening/teasing that he might put boots on the ground in Iran? But Republicans can’t seem to agree on whether they support that idea, or for how long, or why,” he explained.The confusion comes from the top: Pete Hegseth, the “defense secretary/morning show host/fifth-year senior who just found out that yeah, he’s gonna need to do a sixth year” who made a big deal about turning the defense department into “the department of war” and “refocusing on the core mission: war fighting”.“And before we go any further: was there a problem with the term ‘warfare’?” Meyers wondered
Sydney Biennale 2026: politics is everywhere – but with nuance, beauty and heart
According to its critics, this year’s Biennale of Sydney, under the leadership of Emirati artistic director Hoor Al Qasimi (the first Arab appointed to the role in the festival’s 53-year history) was destined to be a “hate Israel jamboree” at worst; a hotbed of pro-Palestinian politics at best. These fears – which appear to have originated from pro-Palestine statements Al Qasimi and her parents made in the past – are not borne out by the festival itself, which opens this weekend across five key venues, spanning from the inner city out to Penrith and Campbelltown.In an unusual move for the biennale, Al Qasimi wasn’t present at the vernissage – but with or without her, the resulting festival, the event’s 25th, is complex and nuanced. It’s light on spectacle and slogans; not a political chant but rather a polyphony of voices – more than 80 artists from 37 countries – singing their own songs. The theme, “Rememory” – taken from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved – is reflected in works that look to the past to find answers to present dilemmas and envision better futures
Naples museum to allow visually impaired visitors to experience art through touch
The Sansevero Chapel Museum in Naples will allow dozens of visually impaired visitors to take part in a rare tactile experience, letting them touch celebrated works of art including the Veiled Christ, which is widely regarded as one of the most striking masterpieces in the history of sculpture.On 17 March, the museum will host an initiative called La meraviglia a portata di mano – Wonder within reach – organised in partnership with the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Naples, offering about 80 blind and partially sighted visitors a chance to encounter the marble masterpieces.Visitors will be guided through the chapel by guides who are also visually impaired in a programme designed to place accessibility at the centre of the museum experience.The protective barrier surrounding the sculptures will be removed, allowing participants, wearing latex gloves, to explore by touch the intricate marble surface of the sculptures including Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ, which depicts Jesus covered by a transparent shroud made from the same block as the statue. The tactile route will also extend to the reliefs at the feet of the sculptures La Pudicizia and Il Disinganno
Jimmy Kimmel on Pentagon splurging on doughnuts: ‘Is this My 600lb Defense Department?’
On late-night shows, hosts poked fun at the Trump administration’s inconsistent messaging on the Iran war, Pete Hegseth splurging on high-end food at the Pentagon and New York’s John F Kennedy Jr lookalike contest.On what Jimmy Kimmel called “day 11 of Jabba the Hutt’s war on Iran”, the host focused on Trump’s mixed messages over the Middle East conflict.“Trump said yesterday that the war could end very soon, which would be encouraging, had be not also told us he’d end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours,” said Kimmel.“He’s going to make a huge mess and walk away like it’s the new toilet in the Lincoln bathroom.”Kimmel then turned to reports that Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, spent $93bn of US taxpayer money last year, including millions of dollars in September on luxury food items: “$2m on Alaskan king crab, $6
Stephen Colbert on US war in Iran: ‘We’re still no closer to learning what the goal is’
Late-night hosts looked into the murky goals, economic impact and disrespect for military protocol of Donald Trump’s war in Iran.“We’re on day 10 of the Iran war,” said Stephen Colbert on Monday evening, “and we’re still no closer to learning what the goal is. Is it regime change? Is it ending a nuclear program? Is it changing the name to Donald Trump’s Iran-a-Lago?”“But we are learning more about the cost,” he noted, as the first week of the war alone is estimated to have cost about $6bn. “Do you know what you could buy with $6bn? Twenty-seven Kristi Noem horsey commercials!” he joked before clips of the very expensive, controversial ad campaign that likely ended Noem’s tenure as secretary of homeland security.Despite the exorbitant cost, Trump said over the weekend that this new surprise war would stop only after Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, to which Iran replied: “That’s a dream that they should take to their grave
Womadelaide 2026 review: Grace Jones embraces the compulsion for dancing in the dark times
Botanic Park, AdelaideNo matter the music, no matter the mood, the festival crowd moved and moved – in a celebration embodied by the liberated, messy and sexual stylings of the 77-year-old headlinerGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailStraight away, the atmosphere at Womadelaide is calmer this year. On opening night, it is only 25C – the warmest it is forecast to be all weekend. After two years of temperatures in the 40s, this will be a festival to ease into. Even the bat colony at the entrance feels decidedly more settled. “I hear we missed a really hot one last year,” says Beoga’s Niamh Dunne later that night
Row over tuition fees cut for European students threatens Starmer’s EU reset
UK needs nuclear deterrent independent from US, Ed Davey to say
Reform UK government would replace top civil servants with those ‘more likely to implement party’s priorities’
Phil Woolas, former Labour minister, dies of brain cancer aged 66
‘We are a completely different political party’: inside the Greens’ membership boom
Wealthy British nationals fleeing Gulf conflict bypass UK to avoid tax bills