From a young chef and a single father to business owners and a pensioner, Guardian readers reveal how John Healey’s measures will affect them

• What the budget means for you

Louie, 24, a chef living in London, says a lot of people have “written off the idea of even considering getting a property” in their 20s.

From ‘everyday fixes’, party management and communications to long-term plans for care and pensions, the PM’s six key acts so far

Andy Burnham arrived in Downing Street promising to transform the way Britain works, restore hope and bring an end to years of political division. One hundred days later, the prime minister has announced a series of measures aimed at making everyday life easier, he’s reopened the debate over Britain’s relationship with the EU and set out plans to overhaul public services. He has also managed to maintain an unusually visible public profile, appearing regularly on social media and even taking part in a charity edition of Channel 4’s Gogglebox. Burnham has said he’s been surprised by the public’s appetite for change, insisting his first budget on Wednesday would offer some breathing space for households and businesses.

But the early weeks of his premiership have also exposed tensions between immediate political wins and the structural changes he has promised. Here is how his first 100 days have unfolded in six key ways.

Downing Street delivered a rare rebuke to a senior member of Donald Trump’s administration

Asked why the Lib Dems were opposed to a third runway at Heathrow when they professed to be in favour of growth, Cooper said she did not accept that a third runway would produce all the benefits its supporters claimed.

She explained:

On Heathrow, it is clear from looking at all of the economic analysis of airport growth over the last few years that many of the promises made by all sorts of different airport companies simply haven’t come to bear.

The promise of higher wage jobs hasn’t been substantiated. Often it’s lower paid jobs, and often not as many as they’ve claimed.

Some say party risks ‘looking twee’ by focusing on small fixes amid growing nervousness that budget lacks ambition

In the days since Labour’s annual conference, party insiders have been sharing a word cloud produced by the pollsters More in Common, which shows the phrases voters most associate with Andy Burnham.

Such polling is rarely flattering for politicians, and the prime minister’s version had its fair share of negatives. But one of the most prominent words in the cloud – and the one that has caught the imagination of Labour strategists – was “trying”.

Party formally adopts policy which equates Zionism with racism, a move has alarmed some Jewish members

• Green party votes to adopt policy that equates Zionism with racism

On Friday the Times revealed that Katie Lam, the communities secretary, told a meeting in private earlier this year that the state pension system needs a fundamental overhaul.

Speaking in June, when she was a frontbencher but not yet in the shadow cabinet, Lam was asked at a meeting with activists if she thought the pensions triple lock was sustainable. She replied:

Ultimately I think what we will need in the end is an entirely new pension system.

I mean, a baby that is born today has a 20% chance of living to be 100 and I don’t think we can fund one in five people half of their lives, you know, for the first 20 and the last 30 years. But obviously if you are 90 you probably can’t go out and get a job right, so I think you have to be realistic about how you would taper that and bring that in across the population.

The fact is, the triple lock and pensions are things that people have contributed to.

Conservatives believe that if you have contributed, then you deserve to get your state pension.

The UK prime minister has earned his party a rehearing but the battle of public opinion is not yet won

“He’s offering what no other politician has offered for a long, long time. He actually feels like he’s one of us,” was how Neil, a geography teacher, described Andy Burnham in our focus group on Thursday night.

Neil wasn’t alone in his praise: this group of Labour 2024 voters – some of whom had drifted to Reform, the Tories and Greens during the Starmer era – provided the most positive reception for a politician since Boris Johnson at the height of his Covid-vaccine bounce.

Farage was speaking ahead of a rally in Doncaster

Just as a reminder of why prisoners are being released early, here is an explainer by Jamie Grierson which sets out how the scheme works, why it was introduced and the changes made by Burnham’s government:

Jamie writes:

The Labour government says it inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse, with fewer than 100 spaces left in the summer of 2024. No 10 says a lack of investment in the prison estate, with just 500 net places added over a decade, has led to a situation where adult male prisons are now at 98% capacity. It says the steps are necessary while it builds capacity.

Health secretary also announced the government was setting up collective pension scheme for workers in care sector

Andy Burnham has suggested that it would not be legitimate for a party to form a majority government with less than 30% of the vote.

In his Today interview, asked why he wanted electoral reform and a move towards proportional representation, Burnham replied:

I found it better being elected under a different system as mayor of Greater Manchester, where people had one or two, they could put that on the ballot paper.

Because you had a reason to stop on every doorstep and chat to people who might not always support your party and try and get their second preference.

No, it could happen with any political party. It’s whether that would be a legitimate government.

I think you’ve got it completely wrong really, if you don’t mind me saying, to put it like that, because I have put out … a vision for a national care service.

There are pensioners out there who watch your programme who are paying for care costs from their basic state pension. Now, is that right or fair?

The PM’s stated trajectory is a rebuke to past Tory and Labour governments. The challenge now is to make his project progressive in word and deed

As Andy Burnham delivered his conference speech to the Labour faithful yesterday, it was hard not to recall Jeremy Corbyn’s words after the party’s shattering 2019 election defeat. “I am proud that on austerity, on corporate power, on inequality and the climate emergency,” he wrote for this publication, “we have won the arguments and rewritten the terms of political debate.” Given Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority, widespread mockery ensued.

But when it comes to rhetoric, who can now deny that the left has won the argument? A Labour prime minister has declared that “Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time”, listing five villains: “Deindustrialisation, deregulation, privatisation, austerity, Brexit.” His speech was infused with class politics, as he condemned a society “run for vested interests, not in the public interest, with power held in too few hands”.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist. His latest book, The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, is published on 1 October. Order your copy at the Guardian bookshop

By linking Brexit, voting reform and public services, the prime minister made a powerful, personal pitch for a brighter future

Andy Burnham’s first speech as prime minister to a Labour conference was a serious attempt to argue that rebuilding the public realm will be better for the country than shrinking the state. He is right about this. Mr Burnham’s belief in the power of government is welcome, as is his instinct that by spending now on public services he will save money later. Admitting that Brexit “has done more harm than good” before setting out options for a closer relationship with the EU could be the speech’s most consequential sentence. Offering voters a bargain at the next election – give up a little of the annual triple-lock increase in pensions for free personal care for older people – is a gamble.

But Mr Burnham clearly thinks that he will be able to show that enough has improved by then for him to ask voters to let him finish what he has started. The prime minister smartly recast “take back control” as a Labour argument. His pitch was that privatisation removed economic control, emasculating local government removed political control, and Brexit reduced control over immigration. This was deftly done – threading a common idea through housing, water, energy and Europe.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

PM, in first speech to party conference as leader, insists his plans are a ‘good deal’ for older people

• Burnham to signal willingness to look at scrapping pension triple lock to fund social care

Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, has apparently confirmed that Andy Burnham will float the prospect of getting rid of the pensions triple lock to help fund the creation of an NHS-style care service.

Asked about the prospect on Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Rayner said that Burnham was “absolutely right to start the conversation” and that he was being “brave”.

The high principle on this is that people have paid in all their lives. They are willing, I think, to look at that.

What they don’t want is what they consider to be, quite frankly, incompetent politicians that are going to take something from us to fill a black hole.

When we met with Andy [Burnham] this week, it certainly wasn’t mentioned.

But I do think that it’s important that Labour make sure that working-class people know that they’re on their side, and this would be a direction of travel that would say the opposite to that.

What I understood the national care service to be was a universal benefit: everybody paid in and everybody gets out, and that is what actually the principle of that is.

Going to a group of people who are getting around £12,500 a year in order to pay for it to take away their security is wrong.

‘Radical’ report likely to influence party’s platform also proposes abolishing inheritance and capital gains taxes

A thinktank linked to Reform UK has called for the abolition of the state pension and £75bn worth of sweeping tax cuts in a “radical” report likely to influence the party’s platform for the next election.

The Centre for a Better Britain’s (CFABB) report – which also calls for weaker rules for UK banks and Trump-style investment accounts offering £1,000 to newborns – will be formally launched at a private event with City executives on Wednesday.

The issue cannot be avoided any longer. Andy Burnham and his chancellor must face the fear of a pensioner backlash, and find a fair solution

There is always something oddly unreal about party conference season. In theory, everyone is getting away from Westminster to better reflect on the state of the nation. In practice, the whole circus just briefly relocates to the coast, to live off warm white wine and gossip for three days, before coming back with a streaming cold. But this year, reality seems more elusive than usual.

Everyone knows hard choices loom, but everyone is frightened to make them. Every serious party needs billions of pounds to fund their promises, and everyone knows there’s an obvious place to find the money, but nobody wants to be the first to say so. And so a deferential silence shrouds the pension triple lock, whose future will be vigorously debated on the fringes and in private conversation this autumn, but less so on the stage.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Sell-off raises concerns of higher borrowing costs for households. Here’s what it could mean

The bond market sell-off has sparked fresh fears of higher borrowing costs for UK households. We look at what the turmoil in financial markets could mean for your mortgage, pension and savings.

Burnham faced questions from Kemi Badenoch and other MPs amid speculation over budget

In the news release to mark the first anniversary of his election as the Green party’s leader, Zack Polanski highlighted what he described as 10 achievements during his first year in charge. For the record, this is how he sees his record.

-Won the Greens’ first ever parliamentary byelection in Gorton and Denton

-More than tripled the party membership from 68,500 to over 230,000

Zack Polanski in Holborn and St Pancras sounds like a done deal from the hints the party is dropping over the past 24 hours. Needs the formality of local party sign-off.

Our budget for day-to-day spending next year will be lower in real terms than this year. Our capital budget will fall in real terms every year until the end of the decade.

John Healey should equalise the tax break on pension savings to stop inequalities from widening

Private pensions are a privilege for the lucky few and a curse for everyone else. Sold as a saviour for what would otherwise be a ruinous old age, they have become pernicious financial vehicles that allow an older generation to hoodwink younger generations, who also seek security in their latter years.

To make matters worse, saving by the better off is enhanced by state subsidies, widening the divide between rich and poor in retirement while driving a wedge between the generations.

Chaos of Capita-run scheme has left some people waiting up to a year for payments and in financial hardship

Retired civil servants have been failed by the decision to outsource their pension scheme, the government has admitted, and the maladministration meant some were left waiting up to a year for payments.

Multiple members of the civil service pension scheme, run by the private company Capita since December, have come forward to say they are unable to afford rent and have been forced to use food banks after being left without an income.

Almost half of working-age adults in the UK do not save into a pension. Four readers explain why they fear for the future

“I am 35 and have essentially nothing saved for my future, which is a huge concern.” Sarah* works in library services in Oxford – full-time at one library and part-time at another. She has saved £5,000 into her pension.

After finishing her PhD in 2020, she said she had “good intentions of contributing to pension schemes. But because I then had a succession of part-time jobs, I never started. I never thought, this is a job I’ll be doing for long enough.”