Look at the Moto G's, I think 6 and 7 is the key numbers now. I got a Moto G4 Plus and more than happy with it. Peli got the 6 atm because she dropped her Moto G4 plus and smashed it up. She got the 6 because the price dropped a bit as the 7 were coming out.
I finally retired my Moto G4 because the lack of performance was impairing my ability to do things like take photos reliably and pay for electrons at motorway services.
I've now got a G7. Main complaint is that it's Too Big, like all modern phones (though, to be fair, this does make the keyboard a bit more usable in portrait mode). Second complaint is that it seems to suffer from the same obscure WiFi bug as the G4 (whereby if there's a router advertising IPv6 on the network, it randomly tears down the entire WiFi stack from time to time, closing any connections). Minor grumble about the lack of an OLED screen, but that doesn't really matter in practice. It's fast, the battery lasts for ages, and the Motorola bloatware is minimal and inoffensive.
Then switch your number over to GiffGaff (which uses O2) even their £5 a month one is more than enough for your usage. I got more minutes and data than I know what to do with on the £7.5 a month. Since the whole family is on it the calls to them are free and not even counted on the free minutes you get. But even if they were I would have spare minutes.
Note that they've just put their prices up. You now get even more minutes and texts to not use, and the cost of PAYG data has gone up too.