With the days ticking down to Wednesday’s Spring Statement, most papers are choosing to start the work week by keeping the front pages focused squarely on the Rachel Reeves. The i Paper splashes with a warning to departments across Whitehall that are preparing to tighten their belts ahead of expected spending cuts, with the education sector being no exception. Education, it reports, is bracing for the “worst squeeze in a generation”, a senior figure in the sector told the paper, while a union source is predicting a “bloodbath” this week.
A separate ominous warning to the chancellor is spelled out on the front page of the Daily Express: “Reeves must take action to stop OAP bill hike.” The paper references a petition that has garnered more than 100,000 signatures that asks her to use the Spring Statement to stop pensioners on modest incomes from being hit with tax bills.
Reeves’s potential battle with union bosses is playing out on the front page of the Times, where the paper reports that the chancellor is risking “war” with the public sector over her plans to cull thousands of civil servant jobs. Meanwhile, the paper centres its readers’ attention on a picture of Pope Francis returning to the Vatican after five weeks in hospital.
“How about cutting your freebies, Chancellor?” asks the front page of the Daily Mail, highlighting Reeves’s decision to accept free tickets to a Sabrina Carpenter concert earlier this month. The £600 seats will be declared, she has since said. But ithe revelation threatens to revive anger over last summer’s donation row – which saw the PM covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets he was gifted.
“Starmer’s £1.6bn pothole ultimatum” leads the front page of Metro, as the paper reports how the prime minister is asking councils to hit the ground running with their tallying up of how many pockmarked roads they are repairing. If they don’t start burning rubber, he warns, they could miss out on their share of the highway maintenance funding confirmed last year.
As well as handing out warnings, the prime minister is also on the receiving end – as the front page of the Guardian highlights that his Labour peers and Lib Dem leader Ed Davey are cautioning Starmer against “appeasing” Donald Trump with a cut to the UK’s £1bn-a-year digital services tax that affects companies such as Meta and Amazon.
Trump’s trade war takes the top fold on the Financial Times, as the paper notes it’ll be a prominent feature in the snap election that was called in Canada this weekend. The paper’s second story is an interview with the National Grid’s boss, who insists there was no lack of capacity at substations near Heathrow Airport and questions the scale of Friday’s shutdown after one substation went up in flames.
“Heathrow ‘had enough power to avoid shutdown'” is the lead story on the Daily Telegraph, which quotes John Pettigrew’s interview with the FT. A half-page picture of Princess Beatrice gets equal play on the front page, as the paper reports on her “Tears over premature daughter”.
“Heathrow boss goes bye byes” is how the Daily Star frames their story about sources saying Thomas Woldbye reportedly went to sleep not long after news of a fire at Europe’s busiest airport broke. The paper even mischievously produces an edited picture of Mr Woldbye in a bed with the flames in the background. The proverbial heat continues elsewhere on its front, where the paper reports a “mad March” that will see it reaching the “hottest since 1910”.
Police are reportedly racing to charge the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, according to the Sun. It uses the lion’s share of its front page to report that Christian Brückner, who is serving an unrelated jail term in Braunschweig for raping an American woman, could be freed from that sentence in days. He has never been charged in the case of McCann, who disappeared aged three in 2007 in Portugal, from the same resort that the American woman was raped.
An exclusive interview with the son of Christine Keeler, the model embroiled in the 1963 Profumo affair, splashes the front of the Daily Mirror. Seymour Platt tells the paper he is continuing to pursue a royal pardon for his mum in regards to a nine-month jail sentence she was given for perjury in an assult trial which was separate from the parliamentary and national security scandal that made her one of the most photographed women of the decade.
