Exclusive: Isabella Weber prescribes a common-sense solution to poverty, inequality and fascism – making life’s essentials affordable for all

The trouble with economists, Isabella Weber believes, is they do not behave like dentists. They obsess over ideological purity and are inflexible when searching for solutions, regardless of society’s symptoms. Dentists have no such pretensions – patients have little patience for dogma when in insufferable pain.

John Maynard Keynes, Weber clarifies in the canteen of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study), was the first to draw this dental comparison – and she is running with it. As she sees it, the symptoms could not be more severe. “The status quo for the majority is entirely unbearable,” while extreme inequality and corporate concentration has reached levels “simply incompatible with democracy” worldwide. This is exacerbated by a climate crisis that “generates massive windfall profits” for big business as the “ecological foundations of our lives disintegrate”. All the while the far right is making hay.

The prime minister has a once-in-a-generation chance to reintroduce compassion to welfare. He has to seize the moment

Back in 2009, months before the coalition government unleashed sweeping austerity, the then Conservative backbencher Iain Duncan Smith produced a study that would go on to lay the foundations for the rollout of universal credit. Now, nearly two decades later, Duncan Smith and his thinktank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has published State of Dependency: a landmark report promising to expose “the full scale of Britain’s worklessness crisis”.

The study paints a picture of mass benefits reliance: it identifies 3,400 local areas where more than half the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits, or “economic opiates”, as the authors call them. They’ve even provided an interactive map (in the yellow and black colours of a road hazard sign, no less) so members of the public can type in their postcode to see if their neighbourhood is “a welfare hotspot”.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist

Adored by Madonna and Charli xcx and buoyed by finding true love, the Londoner is branching out into rock and breaking the mainstream. She explains how her working class upbringing made her so fearless

Leaving the important stuff to chance isn’t Shygirl’s style. First aid kit, wind-up radio, batteries: earlier this morning, the singer filled her online shopping basket in preparation for impending disaster. She had read a news article advising households to put together an emergency kit. “I’m that kind of person,” she says, grinning. She woke her boyfriend, who was asleep in bed next to her. “I was like: babe, we’re sorted! I’ve got the water purifying tablets, everything!”

It’s a sticky September afternoon in east London, and the singer, whose real name is Blane Muise, introduces herself as “Shy” and slides into the booth opposite me at an Italian trattoria. She first burst on to the club scene with the naughty, pulsating Want More in 2016, and in the decade since, the singer, rapper and DJ has applied the same rigour to her career as she has to her emergency prepping, going from cult underground artist to rising pop star, opening arenas for Beyoncé and Charli xcx, winning a Mobo award in 2024, and appearing in Madonna’s recent Confessions II – The Film, in which she shared a toilet stall with Arca and Richard E Grant.

How architects worked with harsh environment to create sustainable building in location where fossils were found

Viewed from afar, the silver-hued Hami Pterosaur Museum almost looks like a space base on Mars. Viewed from above, it resembles a collection of dinosaur eggs in the sand. Nestled in the Gobi desert, in north-west China, the new tourist attraction showcases hundreds of impressive fossils of pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles related to dinosaurs. But far from reflecting its prehistoric exhibits, the building itself is a modern-day architectural specimen.

Designed with underground exhibition halls, giant light funnels and sprawling solar farms, the museum is able to operate sustainably while withstanding an extremely harsh environment.

In search of autumn festivals, good food and islands where it still feels like summer? We asked you to recommend your best off-season breaks

• Tell us about a spooky spot in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Last October, while I was cycling around south-west France, near the Spanish border, a tip from a local waiter led me to Collioure, near Perpignan. The town was like a Mediterranean dream, where the summer crowds had faded, leaving behind a peaceful, artistic haven of soft light, warm sunshine, cobbled streets, sandy beaches – and the Pyrenees as a backdrop. In the early evening, the still balmy autumn air was perfect for wandering through the quiet, pastel-coloured alleyways of the Le Mouré district to enjoy €5 off-season happy hour wine with fish tapas. I had planned to stay a weekend but ended up staying a week, seduced by Collioure’s perfect autumn cocktail of chilled Catalan culture and sunkissed seaside sensuality.
April

Pontiff is recovering from a lobectomy, which is standard treatment for lung cancer caught early and can be curative

On Tuesday, surgeons in Rome removed the lower part of Pope Leo’s right lung, after a routine health check found a small growth that tests have since confirmed as lung cancer. The operation, called a lobectomy, is the standard treatment for lung cancer caught early, and for many patients it is the only treatment they will ever need. So what exactly did his doctors do, and what happens next?

Exclusive: Chancellor to target sector in his first budget, to help offset Iran war’s damage to public finances

John Healey is poised to tax Britain’s banks in his 28 October budget, to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands.

The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the International Monetary Fund has praised the UK’s progress towards balancing the books, urging him to “stay the course”.

US president says Zelenskyy ‘more difficult ​to deal with ​than Putin’ after so-called energy ceasefire collapses

Donald Trump has called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries a “disgrace”, while renewing his criticism of Volodymyr ⁠Zelenskyy after an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine collapsed.

Ukraine resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries ⁠after Zelenskyy said that Kyiv was abandoning a ceasefire abruptly declared by Trump last week, one that neither Russia nor Ukraine said they had agreed to.

Shevaun Haviland argues PM is right to revisit Labour’s EU red lines as current trading relationship is bad for business

Repairing the economic damage of Brexit should be the top priority for Andy Burnham as he reconsiders Labour’s red lines on EU membership, the head of one of Britain’s leading business groups has said.

Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said she welcomed the prime minister reopening the Brexit battle lines despite the uncertainty it could create, arguing that the UK’s current trading relationship with the EU was bad for business.

Analysis of countries’ broadcasting rules confirms Ofcom code is highly unusual, amid concerns about impartiality

The UK has been confirmed as an outlier in Europe for allowing Nigel Farage and other serving politicians to present TV shows covering current affairs, according to an unprecedented analysis of broadcasting rules.

Farage is one of a series of Reform UK figures who are permitted to present shows on the rightwing network GB News. The Reform MP Lee Anderson and former candidate Matt Goodwin also have regular slots on the channel.