The Observer - 04.10.2026 — 2026-10-04

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THE OBSERVER

Established 1791

ANDY BURNHAM'S VISION

The road

back from

Brexit

'Nobody was expecting this.'

How the prime minister astonished his closest colleagues on Europe

by Rachel Sylvester

Plus, The Observer view 'His opening to Europe has the potential to be historic'

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THE OBSERVER

Established 1791

ANDY BURNHAM'S VISION

The road

back from

Brexit

'Nobody was expecting this.'

How the prime minister astonished his closest colleagues on Europe

by Rachel Sylvester

Plus, The Observer view 'His opening to Europe has the potential to be historic'

#1

We are the UK's best brand for customer service.

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[THE OBSERVER VIEW | Road to joy] Andy Burnham's speech on Brexit and Europe could be historic, offering a chance to make the positive case for EU membership that was missed in 2016

H ope is in the air, because

finally a prime minister has

been honest about Brexit

For years now, a clear majority of British voters have been saying Brexit was a mistake. At last, politics is catching up.

Andy Burnham's speech to Labour last week will be remembered as bold on social care and electoral reform whether or not he finds the money and spends the political capital to turn his ideas into action. But his honesty on Brexit and his opening to Europe have the potential to be truly historic, for three reasons.

First, he showed he wasn't a prisoner of the red wall; that unlike Keir Starmer he isn't prepared to govern in fear of a rebellion by Labour Brexit voters. His promise of options for a new relationship with Europe before the EU-UK summit in November was an essential first step towards striking out Starmer's red lines against rejoining the EU single market or customs union. His confirmation the next day that these options could include going “all the way” was not vague or accidental. It was part of a plan to show he is not just thinking what was previously unthinkable but preparing for what is best for the country.

Second, European leaders saw this step for what it was and welcomed it. France's Emmanuel Macron called it “excellent news”. Pedro Sánchez said Spain would welcome Britain back “with open arms”. A European Commission spokesman said it was “open to engaging on the options [Britain] may put forward”.

Third, the Office for Budget Responsibility consistently projects that rejoining fully would yield substantially more in terms of GDP growth for the UK than any intermediate steps. A bid to rejoin is also far more likely to attract the attention of EU heads of government, as Macron and Sánchez have shown. Incremental resets like those sought by Starmer sit at the bottom of the European Commission's to-do list and anyway leave the UK a rule-taker.

This, then, is an opportunity to make the positive case for EU membership that neither David Cameron nor Jeremy Corbyn made in 2016. It rests on benefits and shared priorities: the benefits of frictionless trade with 500 million people, deeper food and energy security, targeted urban development aid, new vistas for students and scientists (not to mention musicians) and the freedom to live and work in 27 countries beside the UK. As for shared priorities, Europe's inheritance from the Second World War is a good start and it consists of peace, democracy, free markets and the rule of law.

Reasonable people will object that the EU in 2026 is too keen on regulation and too willing to put up with low single-digit growth while the US and East Asia saddle up on AI stallions to leave the old world in their dust. The EU is obviously flawed and has always been a work in progress. Rejoining has to be a practical mission, not an ideological one. Now, as in 2016, the argument should be for membership of a reformed bloc that shelves ever-closer union, accelerates the creation of a single market for financial services and enacts all of Mario

of a single market for financial services and enacts all of Mario Draghi's 2024 competitiveness agenda. That would speed up the rate the UK claws back the £100bn a year it has foregone by cutting itself adrift but it would also make the EU richer, stronger and more confident.

Ten years is a long time. Sceptics may say the rise of the European hard right in the past decade makes rejoining less tempting. But if they look beyond Europe's horizons they should see this as a reason to rejoin, not stay out. Reform, Restore, the AfD and France's National Rally are of a piece with Trumpism and Putinism. The EU is the world's best defence against the malice and misinformation on which they thrive. It needs and deserves Britain's support as much as Britain would benefit from membership.

years is long enough, too, for structural change in the electorate and for a country to change its mind. Nearly twice as many Brexiteers as Remainers have died since 2016, while among the newly enfranchised Rejoiners outnumber Brexiteers by five to one.

The UK had in fact changed its mind about Brexit well before

mind about Brexit well before Starmer entered Number 10, but he could not bring himself to acknowledge this or act on it. The failure of Brexit was an elephant in Downing Street. Burnham has done the country a great service in calling out the elephant and calling time on Starmer's incrementalism. Now he has to see it through, laying out the options as promised and making crystal clear which one is best for Britain. It is to rejoin.

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The lesson of Christa Pike

There is a solution to the horrifying spectacle of a botched execution.

Stop executing people.

The convicted murderer Christa Pike was alive but in critical condition yesterday after surviving two doses of supposedly lethal pentobarbital. The US supreme court had previously cleared

the way for her to become the first woman in more than 200 years to be put to death in Tennessee.

Death penalty opponents have seized on her case as more evidence of the barbarity of executions, which it is. Pike's lawyers say the execution team failed at least seven times to find a vein in her arm and showed "deliberate indifference to her basic medical needs": Part of the problem for US prison authorities is sourcing drugs that no respectable pharmaceutical company will supply for the purpose and expertise that no trained medic can offer without violating their vocation. But the bigger problem is that they are administering a punishment which doesn't work. Year in,

year out, murder rates are higher in the 27 US states that have the death penalty than in those that don't, according to the non-partisan Death Penalty Information Center. For every eight people on death row, one is exonerated. At least three innocent people have been executed since the supreme court reinstated the penalty in 1976, and at least 51 attempted executions by lethal injection have been botched since 1982.

State-wide death penalty moratoriums are on the rise and overall numbers of executions in the US have been falling steadily for quarter of a century. But it is still the only western democracy where the penalty is available to prosecutors, which should not be a source of pride.

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Unimportant

Overheard

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'I watch Air Crash Investigation'

Yaniv Hayun, who helped save a FlyDubai flight from disaster, on how he knew what to do to stop the plane crashing

The week in brief

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Widdecombe accused faces Farage charge

Joshua Kerry, who is accused of murdering Ann Widdecombe, was charged on Friday with preparing acts of terror against Nigel Farage. The charge relates to alleged terrorist activities between May 2024 and July 2026. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said: “Let no one make any mistake: an attack on anyone in politics is an attack on us all.” Kerry was charged in July with the murder of Widdecombe, who was a Reform UK spokesperson. She died on 9 July at her home in Devon. Kerry is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

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A fire in a street in Aubervilliers, north-east of Paris, where students clashed with police in protests over school conditions. The government said more than 400 protesters, including children, were detained. Tom Nicholson/Getty Images

The price of Meghan Markle's new chocolate advent calendar

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Green party to vote on Zionism motion

Green party members are set to vote on the controversial motion “Zionism is racism” today at their conference in Brighton. If the motion passes, it will change official party policy. The motion says that “Zionism... will be treated as any other form of racism, and this motion will be implemented by the anti-racism policy working group as appropriate and in accordance with its ordinary practice”. Former MP Caroline Lucas said on the Today programme that she had “serious concerns” about the motion and would not support it. Leader Zack Polanski refused to set out his views but said he was “calling for an amendment” to specify that it would not be used to discipline Jewish members attending synagogues that consider themselves Zionist.

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Prisoners released early hard to track

Probation officers warned that they may struggle to keep track of the hundreds of prisoners released from jail last Thursday, many of whom will not have anywhere to live. About 2,000 criminals are set to be freed over the next month and another 3,000 in stages over the next year in an attempt to ease overcrowding. The Ministry of Justice says it is launching its biggest expansion of electronic monitoring – with the expectation that offenders leaving prison will be tagged and monitored. However, a new report said that only 55% of GPS tags were fitted on time.

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Government scraps judge-only trial plan

The lord chancellor Alex Norris announced that the proposal for some criminal trials to be heard by a judge alone has been dropped, meaning more serious cases will be heard by a jury. But defendants will lose the right to choose whether their case goes before a jury or a

magistrate. Complex fraud cases will still be heard by a judge and magistrates' sentencing powers will be increased to try to tackle the backlog of more than 80,000 cases. The changes will be made to the courts and tribunals bill when it returns to the Commons next week.

French pupils protest over state of schools Thousands of French teenagers protested outside their schools in

The Observer news matrix anger at overcrowded classrooms, unsanitary facilities and a shortage of teachers. More than 500 schools faced disruption on Friday as young people took to the streets. President Emmanuel Macron said he could “understand the anxiety, the anger” of protesting students, but that “none of these debates, none of these fears justifies violence”. The protests are set to grow, as trade unions have called for members to join a protest on 6 October, saying that “today’s students... must not pay the price of austerity policies”.

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Slim now, pay later: pharmacies warned about hard sell of diet pills

Retailers deny they are

breaking advertising

rules by marketing

weight-loss medication

and online services

Jon Ungoed-Thomas & Marine Saint

Sales of new diet pills that are part of the UK's multibillion pound obesity treatment industry are being promoted with “buy now, pay later” credit, discounted prices and loyalty points, despite a ban on advertising prescription medicines themselves.

Two brands of prescription weight-loss pills – Wegovy and Foundayo – manufactured by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly were approved for use earlier this year. The pills are on track to be blockbuster drugs and have triggered a marketing drive from pharmacy firms and weight-loss services.

It is illegal to publish an advertisement or promotional material in the UK that is likely to lead to the use of prescription-only medicine. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) warned in June that drugs are not “ordinary consumer goods” and improper use may have serious health consequences.

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'Many promotions are inducing demand and would appear in breach of the law'

An Observer analysis of marketing of the authorised drugs has found promotions likely to result in increased uptake of the newly approved pills. The investigation has found:

\- The high street pharmacy Superdrug offers bonus points on its health and beautycard to customers wanting to buy Wegovy or Foundayo tablets.

\- Asda's online doctor service says patients can “get started” on Wegovy or Foundayo, with prices from £87.97 a month. It promotes credit with PayPal Pay in 3, which offers payment over three instalments.

• The online chemist pharmacyonline.co.uk offers a deal on prescription drugs on the discount code website Groupon. The promotion says: “Up to £90 off the Wegovy pill. Only 7 days left.”

Major retailers say they are complying with all relevant regulations and are promoting their weight consultancy services, rather than prescription drugs. Campaigners are calling for tougher actions to prohibit the promotions of weight-loss drugs.

James Larkin, the Centre for Evidence and Values

“Many of these promotions are likely inducing demand for prescription drugs and, as such, would appear in breach of the law,” James Larkin, from the Centre for Evidence and Values, said. “There is a failure of regulation.”

A breach of the relevant regulation in the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 is a criminal offence, with possible penalties of unlimited fines and up to two years in prison.

One of the most high-profile campaigns that has generated complaints is an advert by the digital health platform Voy on London buses since late July 2026, and on Facebook, with the strapline “the weight is over” and the picture of a pill.

The ad is assumed to be promoting prescription weight-loss pills, but the small print in a disclaimer indicates the pill being advertised contains glucomannan, an over-the-counter weight-loss supplement. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) confirmed this weekend it has launched a formal investigation into the ad, with a ruling expected shortly.

Online pharmacy Bolt Healthcare promotes weight-loss treatments with the strapline “The Wegovy pill is finally here”. It offers savings of £20 a month for subscribers choosing Wegovy or Foundayo pills. The promoted cost of prescription weight-loss pills on the website ranges from about £25 to £28 a week. Prescription weight-loss injections range from about £20 a week for Wegovy to about £38 a week for Mounjaro.

In 2025 and 2026, the ASA has upheld 27 rulings concerning the promotion of prescription-only obesity medicines, but none to date has involved Wegovy or Foundayo tablets. It has upheld complaints against pharmacyonline.co.uk; Medwell Ltd, trading as Voy; and Bolt Healthcare for promoting prescription weight-loss drugs.

The MHRA has acted against more than 50 firms in 2025 and 2026 for suspected breaches of promoting prescription weight-loss drugs, but typically the promotions were amended and no sanctions were imposed.

Ruth Micallef, an eating disorder specialist based in Edinburgh, said she had turned down offers to do paid ads relating to weight-loss medications. She found it “disturbing” that she had been approached, given she was providing support for people with eating disorders.

She said the marketing of prescription diet drugs in tablet form was a significant concern. “It will make it even more accessible,” she said. “We’ve already had patients injecting this stuff for a long time, often from the wrong places and the wrong people.”

Nic, a 54-year-old consumer advocate in Buckinghamshire, who takes the injectable weight-loss drug Mounjaro and asked for his surname not to be used, said he was concerned that some weight-loss promotions suggested prescription diet pills were a “quick-fix miracle cure”.

The tablets are currently only available on private prescription, with a likely commitment of a year or longer. "They never tell you how much it's going to cost in the long term," he said. "We shouldn't be going into debt over our health."

Piotr Ozieranski, a reader at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at University of Bath, has previously complained with research colleagues to the ASA and MHRA about the marketing practices of online pharmacies.

"There has been a consistent breaching of the regulations. It's shocking it's still happening. This is a huge market and the financial incentives for some of these companies are just too hard to resist," he claimed.

Superdrug said promotions were regularly reviewed for its Online Doctor service to ensure they complied with regulation. The firm said: "Weight-loss services can bring real health benefits to patients. We recognise the concerns about marketing and welcome clear regulation."

Dr Earim Chaudry, chief medical officer at Voy, said patient decisions were clinician-led and promotions were developed to comply with advertising standards. The ad on London buses was subject to the appropriate Transport for London advertising approval process, according to company sources.

Asda said it regularly reviewed its communications. It said its online doctor service is operated by a contracted third party and any treatment is only prescribed following clinical assessment. Any promotions relate to the patient consultation, said an Asda spokesperson.

A Groupon spokesperson said a promotion for £90 off the Wegovy pill had since been removed. Bolt and pharmacyonline.co.uk did not respond to a request for comment

A PayPal spokesperson said buy now, pay later was a form of credit and customers should think about how they will afford repayments. The spokesperson said the credit was interest free, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and could provide an affordable way to manage the cost of purchases, including higher-value items, such as essential medicines.

The ASA said breaches of code concerning prescription drugs were a priority area, with extensive enforcement. "There is significant innovation in the digital healthcare sector," said a spokesperson. "However, that does not excuse advertisers putting commercial incentives over public safety." It said the majority of companies complied with advertising standards.

Julian Beach, executive director of healthcare, quality and access at the MHRA, said it took the issue of medicines advertising “extremely seriously”. He said: “Where advertisers breach the regulations, we will not hesitate to use the full range of available options to protect the public.”

ON OTHER PAGES

The godfather of weight-loss drugs: 'I know there can be bad outcomes'

Page 16

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Burnham's shock statement on Europe stuns his colleagues in Westminster

The PM's assertion that ‘we could go all the way’ had Whitehall reeling as it emerged all but the closest advisers were in the dark about his bold first step towards rejoining the EU. Rachel Sylvester reports

When Andy Burnham told the Labour conference “Brexit has done more harm than good” and that all options were on the table for the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU, the civil servants who have been beavering away on Europe policy for months were stunned. “Nobody was expecting this,” one Whitehall source said. “Officials were totally reeling. It was a million miles away from what they have been working on.

"It's exciting to have more ambition, but they also need to work out what to do next. It's a new world they're in."

There was no cabinet discussion in advance about a policy shift that has transformed the political landscape. The prime minister wrote the speech himself, and was determined to include a significant announcement on Europe. He then doubled down on the pro-European message in subsequent interviews, confirming that the UK could “go all the way” and rejoin the EU. This was “coming from Burnham himself”, according to a Foreign Office insider.

Those around the Labour leader are still trying to think through the consequences. “It could be very significant,” one cabinet minister said. “We need clarity about our long-term relationship with Europe. It’s been a bit crablike, and things have changed since 2016 because of the Ukraine war and Donald Trump. But there are a lot of unanswered questions. I don’t really know what the end destination point is.” Another argued that, in an increasingly unstable world, Britain needs to be “part of a club” for the sake of the economy, as well as national security.

It was only in May that Burnham promised during the Makerfield byelection campaign not to “rerun” the Brexit arguments, and said he was not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU. But the prime minister’s personal view has long been that Britain should aim to go back into the bloc at some point, and public opinion is shifting. When Burnham met Trump at the UN general assembly in New York last month, the US president asked him whether support for Brexit was “still 50-50”. The prime minister replied: “It’s actually changing.”

A recent YouGov poll that is circulating in Downing Street found 59% of Britons now support rejoining the EU, almost double the 32% who oppose it. Among Labour voters, the number in favour is 85%, while for Liberal Democrats it is 76%, and among Greens, it is 83%. The issue that drove apart the Labour coalition could now reunite progressive voters. Even in Makerfield, which voted Leave in 2016, the mood has changed. During the byelection, Burnham was shown private polling that suggested the constituency had flipped and would now support Remain.

The economic arguments are compelling for a Labour leader who urgently needs to generate resources to fund his priorities. The prime minister has said he wants to add “percentage points” to growth by getting closer to the EU but this will never be delivered within the parameters of Keir Starmer’s “red lines” for negotiations. These rule out a return to the single market, customs union or free movement of people.

To make matters worse, Burnham has been warned in recent weeks that the UK looks increasingly likely to be excluded from the EU's Made in Europe policy, which aims to protect European companies from state-subsidised competition from China. This would have a devastating impact on the British car industry, and more than wipe out any economic gains from the incremental “reset” in relations between the UK and the EU that is now under way.

Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, says a new approach is essential to break through the economic “glass ceiling”. He thinks more ambition is also crucial to engage European heads of state. “What was on the agenda in the Starmer era was so modest that it doesn’t really deliver much for the EU. Friedrich

Merz in Germany or Pedro Sánchez in Spain or Giorgia Meloni in Italy have got a lot on their plate at the moment, so they weren't very interested," he said.

“You’ve had the European Commission on autopilot negotiating at snail’s pace, then the French putting more and more barriers in the way of the UK. I think what Burnham’s done has completely changed the dynamics around this, so people are sitting up and paying attention in a way that they really weren’t before.”

Last week the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Britain returning to the EU would be “excellent news” and Spanish prime minister Sánchez declared that the UK would be welcomed “with open arms”. Susanne Baumann, the German ambassador to the UK, confirmed Berlin would be a “partner” for as ambitious a new relationship as possible.

One cabinet minister suggests that the associate membership offered to Canada by the EU “opens up” the idea of an outer circle that Britain could join. Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said a “salvage operation” is required. “We walked into the negotiation saying: ‘No to 'Most European capitals are delighted to have a British prime minister who has a clear vision'

Peter Ricketts, former Foreign Office head

this, no to that, no to everything.' Who negotiates like that, apart from a toddler? [The Canadian PM] Mark Carney has walked in and said: 'What do we share in common?'

"He is immediately getting a much more expansive and productive response. You can see a pathway whereby Britain shows willingness to put everything on the table, have a serious conversation, and Europe comes up with a bespoke deal."

Burnham's top team is divided about whether Labour should go into the next election with a bold offer on Europe. Two-thirds of cabinet ministers, including the first secretary, Louise Haigh, the chancellor, John Healey, and the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, represent seats that voted Leave in 2016. Last week, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, warned Labour against rejoining the customs union and said Britain must not return to the “paralysis” of the Brexit years. But Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has argued that leaving the EU had been a “catastrophic mistake” and the UK should “one day” rejoin.

Speaking at the Labour Movement for Europe rally in Liverpool, Miliband made clear where his instincts lie.

“Every experience I’ve had in the two months that I’ve been foreign secretary tells me our future lies in a deeper, stronger partnership with the EU,” he said. “From climate to the Middle East, to Sudan,

Students at an 'Our future, Our Choice' event in London in 2019 raise awareness of the desire for another EU referendum.

Leon Neal/

Getty Images

to AI, where have I turned? To our European partners."

Unlike his predecessors, the foreign secretary has refused to leave the Brexit negotiations to the Cabinet Office. Hamish Falconer, the minister for European relations, straddles the two departments. Stewart Wood, who worked alongside Miliband when they were both advising Gordon Brown, is now the Foreign Office minister in the Lords. He is described as being “critical” to the internal discussions on Europe, bringing intellectual heft and economic expertise to the debate. The prime minister’s chief of staff, James Purnell, is in favour of further integration. Will Straw, who plays the same role for the chancellor, ran the Remain campaign in 2016.

The unions have also been pressing the government to seek the deepest possible partnership with the EU. The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, said Brexit has been “disastrous” for workers and businesses, and negotiations should be “guided by the national interest, not arbitrary red lines”.

More than half of voters think Burnham is taking the right approach in considering all options, according to the latest Opinium poll for The Observer. Only 13% think Brexit has done more good than harm to the UK, and 46% believe it has done much more harm than good.

Former Foreign Office head Peter Ricketts said the “mood music is positive" before the delayed UK-EU summit, which is expected to take place on 20 November. "Most European capitals are delighted to have a British prime minister who has a clear vision on future relations with Europe," he said. "Their big grouse over the past few years has been that nobody ever had more than a very tactical, short-term view of the relationship with the EU. Here we have a politician who's coming out clearly with a strongly pro-Europe message that Brexit was a mistake, and that's very welcome."

But Ricketts thinks negotiations will not start in earnest until after the next general election. “Supposing we started and then there was a [Nigel] Farage government. The only way we’re going to get a major move forward is after an election which confirms another pro-Europe British government,” he said.

The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock believes Burnham was brought to this point by “realism and patriotism” in a world that has changed “seismically” in the past decade. “We have got to seek to join again because what we left isn’t there any more,” Kinnock said. “I’m working on trying to persuade everybody I know that should be the objective, so that the mandate is clear. I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime. I’m 84 and I think that, by the time of my funeral, it’ll be much nearer. That’s the direction of travel.”

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The prime minister has pledged to prioritise Britain's social care. Getty Images

Rachel

Sylvester's

Politics

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No 10's ‘theory of growth’ is set for a cautious reality check on budget day

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COMMENTARY

Ben

Zaranko

Economics editor

A ndy Burnham has rightly received plaudits for facing up to issues that politicians have for too long shied away from.

Whether it's fixing the inequity of England's social care system, or removing the worst features of the state pension triple lock, he plans to tackle things that he could easily have ignored.

Or, at least, he said he'll tackle them in the next parliament, if he gets re-elected. In the meantime, the budget is just weeks away and the financial storm clouds are gathering.

The yield on 30-year UK government bonds – what investors demand to lend to the UK government – nudged above 6% this week for the first time since 1998. That’s an uncomfortable milestone, comparable to the borrowing costs that the Italian government faced during the height of the Eurozone crisis. This week’s market movements were driven by global shifts, rather than UK-specific factors, but are no less painful for that.

Against that backdrop, the general expectation is for a steady-as-she-goes budget that avoids spooking the markets, and delays the biggest decisions – including how to pay for the government's defence promises – until next year, at the earliest.

That doesn't mean the budget will be devoid of content. We can expect new announcements on devolution, which sits at the heart of what Burnham this week called his “theory of growth”. The theory, such as it is, is that public control of the essentials and the devolution of power out of Whitehall will optimise conditions for businesses to grow.

During her time as chancellor, Rachel Reeves set in train plans to allow regional mayors to keep a share of tax revenues raised in their area, rather than be funded by grants from central government. John Healey will now confirm the details in the budget.

This does have the potential to be a genuinely growth-friendly policy. If mayors' funding is more closely linked to the economic performance of their area, they've got a financial incentive to facilitate economic growth. And, if a mayor thinks a local investment project (such as a railway extension, or a tram network) would boost local growth and tax revenues, they can borrow against those revenues to help finance the investment without first having to convince Treasury officials that it's a good idea.

Areas that under-perform will

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The expectation is for a steady-as-she-goes budget that avoids spooking the markets

lose out financially, but that's sort of the point: it's the flip-side of allowing mayors to share in the benefits when their local economy is booming. Still, that brings risks. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned on Friday that without careful design, tax devolution could widen regional inequalities, rather than narrow them. Instead of growth in every postcode, we could get growing postcode lotteries.

The prospect of a budget narrowly focused on devolution and targeting cost of living measures is also causing consternation among some Labour figures. The Guardian reported on Friday that government insiders are worried about a lack of clarity from the new chancellor and an “underpowered” budget process.

More generally, Burnham's “theory of growth” is a bit thin. It was the flimsiest element of what was otherwise a strong and well-argued speech to Labour party conference. Healey was right to tell delegates this week that “without growth, there is no social democracy”. But his government’s plan for how we get it needs a bit more work.

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Karl Mathiesen

A British-Iranian national who was arrested in Westminster in relation to suspicious events that took place at RAF Fairford airbase has been released on bail, counter-terrorism police said yesterday.

The decision to bail five other suspects arrested last weekend near the Gloucestershire base, all UK nationals, raised eyebrows in the White House. But two of the UK's most senior barristers said police had acted appropriately despite political pressure.

“It’s good that the police are sufficiently independent that they ignore what President Trump says from afar,” said Jonathan Hall, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.

After the five men were released by police last Monday, Donald Trump, his secretary of state Marco Rubio and Reform leader Nigel Farage all questioned the decision. Denying Iran's involvement, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote on X: "Releasing individuals who are allegedly state-sponsored foreign terrorists speaks for itself."

But Hall and Max Hill, who served as director of public prosecutions for England and Wales from 2018-2023, said the police had bought themselves time to pursue a complex investigation, which prime minister Andy Burnham said last Wednesday would probably lead back to Iran.

The suspects are believed to have driven vans carrying fuel to the perimeter of the airbase, which the US is using for bombing operations in Iran, early last Sunday. After apprehending them, police had 24 hours to charge them under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace) or apply for a court extension. Otherwise they could arrest them as potential terrorists or agents of a foreign state. Under counter terrorism laws, that extends to 14 days. But police can stop that clock ticking by releasing suspects under bail conditions, if they believe they are not a safety or flight risk.

“It’s better to hold sufficient time on that custody clock to allow you to really bottom out your investigation,” former DPP Hill said. “All of their options are open.”

Last Thursday Iran summoned Britain's ambassador to complain about Burnham's allegation.

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Cap lifetime social care costs or elderly risk ruin, PM is told

Rachel Sylvester

Political editor

Andy Burnham is being urged to introduce a lifetime cap on social care costs to ensure that those living with dementia do not face ruinous bills.

Louise Casey, the crossbench peer leading an independent commission on adult social care in England, is understood to have concluded that imposing a limit on the total paid by individuals who need residential care is the only way to stop people with long-term conditions such as Alzheimer's losing all their savings or having to sell their home.

Her recommendation has not been finalised but two sources said the commission is concerned about the risk of “catastrophic costs” for vulnerable elderly people if there is no cap. This could be a financial limit or a maximum period that self-funders would have to pay for their own care.

The proposal would increase the cost of social care reform, raising fresh questions about how it would be funded. A planned lifetime cap of £86,000 was scrapped in 2024 by then chancellor Rachel Reeves. As Labour health secretary, Burnham supported a two-year time limit on residential care costs, meaning the state would fund anyone who was in a home for longer than that.

In his Labour conference speech, the prime minister promised to create a National Care Service, providing free personal care for older people, based on need rather than ability to pay. He described his pledge as “a landmark policy as significant as the creation of the NHS” and announced that the pension triple lock would be adjusted to help fund the reform.

In a post on X last week, he said the social care system was “broken”. “Shamefully, millions of older people have unmet care needs,” he said. “Far too many see everything they have worked for – their home, pension and savings – wiped out by care bills.”

Downing Street said Burnham wanted to create a system similar to the one in Scotland, where all older people are eligible for free personal care at home. However, critics say the Scottish system still leaves many families with crushing debt. Those who go into residential care and do not qualify for means-tested support receive only £260 a week. A care home place typically costs £1,500 a week, meaning expenses quickly accumulate and some people end up having to sell their home to plug the gap.

Officials at the Department of Health and Social Care warn that introducing free personal care without also introducing a cap on costs would not fix one of the main problems identified by the prime minister.

A report from the King's Fund, to be published next week, will propose universal access to social care, partly funded by the taxpayer and with a cap on costs for individuals. Simon Bottery, a senior fellow for social care at the thinktank, said: "It's one of the great injustices of the social care system that some people end up having to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on their individual care costs. You have to pool the risk."

About 75% of adults over 65 are expected to need care in later life, with one in seven facing costs of more than £100,000. Today people in England with assets of more than £23,250 are responsible for funding their care. Burnham's proposal would provide support for needs such as eating and bathing but families would still pay the bulk of care home costs.

Somebody with Alzheimer's who is in a home for several years could still end up losing everything. If there were a cap, people would pay for residential care up to the limit and then the state would take over the costs, based on the rate paid by local authorities for those who are funded.

The cost of a cap would depend on the level at which it was set. The budget for the £86,000 lifetime cap, which has already been legislated for, would rise to about £4bn a year by 2035-36. The Health Foundation estimates that Scottish-style free personal care would cost £7.5bn a year in England by the same date. A system of social care that covers all of people's care home costs would cost about £18.5bn a year by 2035-36, according to the thinktank.

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Celebrity Traitors bosses watched Grant's gaffe ‘with hands over our faces’

The actor's opening-episode faux pas may cost him dear at the round table, but it has sent series ratings sky-high

Stephen Armstrong

The gobsmacking revelation at the centre of the new series of The Celebrity Traitors hasn't just come as a surprise to its faithful viewers, it caused the creators of the BBC hit series to reel in horror, according to one of its makers.

“We sat in the control room, watching from a distance, with hands over our faces, [thinking] ‘What is going to happen?’” said Mike Cotton, an executive producer.

"There are no producers in the castle talking to contestants or trying to shape the show. So we don't really have any control over anything, except in the way we plan the season and the set pieces. And you couldn't have planned for that."

Cotton is referring to the extraordinary moment Richard E Grant revealed to his competitors that he was a Traitor, in the opening episode, screened last Thursday. It's the first time in the show's history that a contestant has threatened to upend the game by showing their hand. The 69-year-old actor has since attempted to row back, citing nerves and a mere desire to be a Traitor. This week viewers will learn whether his castlemates believe him.

Essentially an elaborate game of Wink Murder, the show pits the killer Traitors, who must keep their identities a secret, against 18 Faithfuls, who must guess the Traitors' identities and banish them from the Scottish castle where the game is set. Grant's outburst was followed by a dramatic finale to the first episode in which the comedian James Acaster was set against the broadcaster Amol Rajan: one was to be recruited to treachery, the other mur-

Richard E Grant, above, has boosted ratings for the show, hosted by Claudia Winkleman. Euan Cherry/BBC, Studio Lambert

dered. In the end, Rajan became the first victim in Friday's episode. "I should have stayed shtum and flown under the radar," he said. "But it's all in the edit. Almost everyone quizzed Richard, but in the episode they only showed me grilling him. It's gutting. I would have loved being a Traitor."

Rajan, 43, went on to say he had especially enjoyed the challenge, as well as his proximity to fellow contestant Jerry Hall, 70. "If my 21-year-old self was told that I was going to be stood in a wetsuit, with new walking boots, on a beach in front of a burning shipwreck, next to Jerry Hall, telling me she was about to wield a crowbar and that she was an expert in it, I'd have said your life has turned out pretty damn well," he said.

In March Studio Lambert, which produces the UK and US versions, signed a deal to keep the franchise of the original Dutch format on BBC1 until 2030 at the very least. In November last year, a report by Visit Scotland and Screen Scotland credited the programme with generating roughly £22m for the Scottish economy since filming began in 2022.

The overnight ratings of the first two episodes of the latest series of The Celebrity Traitors have exceeded those of the first episodes of the inaugural series and generated more than 600 memes in two days – including Amol Rajan and James Acaster cast as Del Boy and Rodney from Only Fools and Horses.

The first episode in the first celebrity series, broadcast in 2025, drew an overnight average audience of 6.1 million, and episode two averaged 6.5 million viewers. Both went on to secure 15 million viewers for their 28-day viewing figures – the official ratings measure.

By the same scale, episodes one and two of the second series are already pulling in roughly 3 million more viewers than the first.

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‘They’re clear they’re innocent and they’re going to prove it’

Andy Burnham's former deputy mayor stands by Manchester City and criticises the Premier League investigation into the football club's finances, after it was found guilty of numerous breaches, write Catherine Neilan and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

The architect of Manchesterism and former deputy mayor of Greater Manchester under Andy Burnham has launched a strong criticism of the Premier League's investigation into Manchester City football club's finances.

Richard Leese, now the honorary president of Manchester City, has stood by its owners.

“They are quite clear they are innocent and that they are going to prove it,” he said. “If I have a choice of believing the Premier League or Man City football club, I wouldn’t choose the Premier League.”

Last Tuesday, the league confirmed the club had been found guilty of all charges relating to breaches of financial regulations between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons, with an independent commission finding that it had arranged “sham contracts” as well as “relying on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs”.

The club maintains its innocence and has lodged an appeal.

Manchester City was bought in 2008 by Abu Dhabi United Group, a private investment company owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al

Nahyan, the brother of the UAE president. Sheikh Mansour's group of companies has since invested in a £1bn regeneration project in Manchester for the planned development of 6,000 homes; the Co-op Live arena next to the Manchester City stadium; and the Medlock Square entertainment district.

“From a Manchester point of view, the involvement of Abu Dhabi United Group... has been entirely positive. The city is a lot better place for the work they have done,” said Leese.

The Observer has established that Abu Dhabi held talks with a British minister following initial reports of the verdict, as the government insisted that the Premier League's investigation into the club's finances was “independent”.

Stephen Doughty, a foreign office minister with responsibility for the Middle East, was called by UAE officials last week. He also joined the UAE ambassador Mansoor Abdullah Khalfan on a panel at Labour's party conference last Monday. Although it is thought that Manchester City was not raised during the meeting itself, Abu Dhabi has made clear its displeasure with the ruling. There was also a series of phone calls between senior diplomats on both sides that touched on business and security concerns.

An FCDO spokesperson said: “As you’d expect, UK government ministers, including Stephen Doughty... regularly engage with the UAE on a range of issues in our mutual interest.”

Senior figures within the regime have been hoping to speak directly to Burnham, in what one source described as a “top to top” call between him and the Emirati royal and vice-president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mansour. “They do things very much on personal relationships,” the source added.

Over the past five years, the UAE has poured more than £30bn into the UK, overseen by its state-owned sovereign fund, Mubadala.

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'If I have a choice of believing the Premier League or Man City, I wouldn't choose the Premier League' Richard Leese

In 2021, when Boris Johnson was prime minister, an expanded UAE-UK Sovereign Investment Partnership was signed in Downing Street, through which UAE officials agreed to provide significant investment in technology, infrastructure, energy transition and life sciences.

A wave of new investments in Britain by the UAE followed, including a stake in a £11bn North Sea windfarm announced by Rishi Sunak in December 2023; education projects, including provision of specialist school places; financial services; and broadband infrastructure.

Documents obtained by the Telegraph have shown how Labour ministers had courted the UAE for new investment in a high-tech corridor between Cambridge and Oxford. A letter sent in February invited partners of Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who is also chief executive of UAE fund Mubadala, to visit the corridor project.

Major UAE-owned firms have also backed infrastructure projects in the UK and supported thousands of jobs. Dubai-owned DP World is investing £1bn to increase capacity of its London Gateway container port in Essex. Abu Dhabi property firm Aldar Properties has significant investments in London, and Diafa this year bought a controlling stake in the Ivy restaurant empire. Trade in goods and services between the UK and UAE is worth about £25bn a year.

When asked about the Premier League's investigation, Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester between 2017 and June 2026, said he was not

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The Mancini contract that could deepen Manchester City's crisis

Matthew Bishop

"It's not a problem that concerns me," said Roberto Mancini. The manager of Italy's national team was responding to the guilty verdict on 114 of 115 charges against Manchester City, the club he used to coach. His unusual double contract while at the club has become a focus of debate about whether City's appeal might succeed.

Unless it can overturn the decision of the independent commission that heard the charges of breaking the Premier League's financial fair play rules, the club faces a potential points deduction, relegation or expulsion from the league and a fine. If authorities outside football get involved, there could be lawsuits from other clubs and a possible criminal prosecution.

The commission found City paid one individual through agreements that were a “sham”. A report by Tax Policy Associates, a thinktank, concluded the individual was likely to be Mancini, and “the evidence points to £12m in unpaid UK tax”. With interest and penalties, the bill could reach£24m, followed by a criminal investigation.

When Mancini became City's gaffer in 2009, he got two contracts. The first, with the club, gave him a basic salary of £1.45m per season after tax. The second, with Al Jazira Sports and Cultural Club, was a consulting agreement paying Mancini's company £1.75m a year, with no tax deducted. Both clubs are owned by

After eight years of investment in the city centre, Beetham Tower is surrounded by skyscrapers.

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After investment, in 2026

getting “directly involved in the process”. He was criticised for some of his initial comments about the verdict, having said: “It’s frustrating when people rush to judgment and proclaim people guilty”.

Last Wednesday he told the BBC: "I would be really concerned to lose them [City's owners]. They've been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester."

No 10 has since issued a new statement: “The initial judgment is serious and there can’t be any suggestion that anyone is above the rules”, and it stressed the “independent process”.

“Wherever wrongdoing is established, those responsible should face the appropriate consequences,” a spokesperson said.

But one Labour MP called Burnham's initial comments “really silly” and said that “he needs to recognise he’s no longer the mayor of Manchester”. Another said: “Andy needs to be more diplomatic now than he was a few years ago.”

Christopher Davidson, author of Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond, said the Man City verdict was “uncharted territory” because it involved a highly personalised deal, involving Sheikh Mansour and Al Mubarak.

Davidson said sources he had spoken with suggested there would probably be an “unwinding” from the club if the verdict stood and once the appeal process had been exhausted. “This clearly is a reputational blow,” he said. “Any soft power benefits are now a net negative and the

Roberto Mancini, the former City manager, says he is not concerned by claims about his finances.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Leaked documents show that in 2011, the first payment on the consulting contract was made from a Manchester City account. This suggests the two contracts were in reality one, and were payment for Mancini to manage City. If so, the club understated his pay in its accounts and possibly failed to hand over the pay-as-you-earn income tax and national insurance due on it: about £12m on £8.9m of payments over four seasons. When TPA asked the club if the tax had been paid, it received no reply.

costs will continue the longer they stick around."

He said the associated investments in Manchester may also be affected, but other UK investments were likely to be more secure.

Simon Penney, a former trade commissioner for the Middle East, said ownership of the football club had for years helped boost the international image of the UAE. “If you buy a club that has not experienced much success, and you take them to eight [Premier League] championships, it’s an immense source of pride,” he said. “The flipside is the reputational damage that is now being caused. The leadership of the UAE are very protective of the reputation of the country and they will feel this quite acutely.”

Penney considered it unlikely that any existing investments in the UK would be affected by the controversy, but said that future investments could potentially be reviewed. "There may be a period of things slowing down," he said. "The underlying investment logic will remain."

One backbencher suggested the situation was a wake-up call following what they considered to be “a decades-long sportswashing exercise”.

They said: “This has been a long time coming. [Manchester] City under Sheikh Mansour have always pushed the envelope of what’s permitted. Now it looks like time has caught up with them.”

Pressure is growing for an investigation by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, has sent a letter to the independent financial regulator requesting a new investigation into City's “alleged misstatements”. Byrne, chair of the Commons business, innovation, science and trade committee, asked the FRC to examine the case..

Mancini reportedly insists that if the double contract is a problem, it is City's. On that, the taxman may agree.

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The PM is a true football fan. It's why he scored an own goal

ANALYSIS

Rory Smith

Football correspondent

ndy Burnham and Keir Starmer count as genuine, sincere and avid football fans. The prime minister has regularly been

seen running in a mid-80s Everton shirt, while Starmer has, for years, held a season ticket at Arsenal.

What distinguishes Burnham, though, is that his fandom plays as inherently authentic to a demographic that is inclined towards cynicism on these things: David Cameron once confused Aston Villa, the team he claims to follow, with West Ham.

Starmer, for reasons that are not entirely clear, seemed to be placed in much the same category. But football should be one of Burnham's strengths, a core tenet of his appeal to a vast swathe of the electorate and terra firma politically. And yet, twice in a couple of weeks, he has managed to misread it spectacularly.

First, he said he would be willing to countenance lifting the ban on drinking alcohol in view of the pitch at games, a rule Burnham has long regarded as outdated.

– being found guilty of more than 100 counts of breaching the Premier League’s financial regulations.

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Except most fans now think adults are capable of going 45 minutes without a pint and do not want to be continually disturbed by people going to get a drink, or going to get rid of one. Burnham duly backed down.

The prime minister's first response was to suggest that he would be “really concerned” to lose City’s owners, while thanking them for investment they had made into both the club and Manchester as a whole. He also said he did not wish to “leap to one side” on the issue.

Those remarks were later clarified to state that nobody could be “above the rules” if wrongdoing were proven, before reminding everyone that wrongdoing had already been proven, albeit pending an appeal. By that stage, of course, both the Tories and Lib Dems had expressed surprise at Burnham’s apparent defence of a team found guilty of industrial-scale cheating.

More serious, last week, were his attempts to pick his way around the issue of Manchester City – a club owned by a group with connections to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi

There are two lessons here. One is that football is complex and capricious territory for any politician, because most issues are interpreted through a tribal lens. The other is that fandom is not always a strength.

Rory Smith's Football Observer

Burnham's initial response was rooted in his experiences as an Evertonian. His team, after all, was found guilty of breaching financial rules a couple of years ago, in a much more minor way.

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He allowed that to inform his immediate reaction to the City verdict. “I fought for Everton in that situation. I still hold the view very firmly that they weren’t fairly treated in that process,” he said. This is an orthodox Evertonian belief; and Burnham is a real fan. It is just that tribal logic, however sincere, probably should not shape a worldview.

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Read our full analysis of the Manchester City scandal Sport, pages 3-8

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HENRY GRAY HAS WORKED FORMSF IN NUMEROUS CRISES AROUND THE WORLD.

"I've worked for MSF on and off for twenty years, but I still remember the first project I worked on. We were setting up a hospital in the middle of a forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There had been a lot of fighting in this area, and although the conflict had died down, the legacy of war was still very visible. About 125,000 people lived in the immediate area, but there were no services, and not even basic medical care was available. Women couldn't get caesareans if they needed them; there were no medicines, no vaccinations, and no treatment for diseases. It was a desperate situation, and that's when MSF sent us to get an emergency hospital up and running.

From the start, our goal was to provide medical care and save lives. But we knew that for this work to continue and to have lasting impact, we couldn't just provide medical care. We needed to bring the community on board; we needed to hire local staff and train local people to do the jobs that we were doing. So that's what we did.

It was fantastic to see the immediate impact of that lifesaving work. But what really surprised me was seeing how the hospital transformed the entire area. I still remember the day we switched on the generators that would power the lights in and around the hospital. Suddenly, schoolchildren started turning up to sit under the lights and do their homework. Over the weeks, businesses sprang up, and the local economy grew.

Over the years I've worked in war zones, in Ebola outbreaks and in natural disasters, and I've seen over and over again how the simple actions we take as MSF can have massive and positive knock-on effects for people, for their families and their communities.

But none of those simple acts happens without your support. MSF doesn't take money from governments. We're privately funded by people just like you. By leaving a gift in your will to MSF, you can know that your gift will not only save lives, but will change lives now and into the future. Thank you."

Above 4-year-old Franyeli receives medical care at MSF's mobile clinic in Puerto Alegre, Colombia. Photo: ©Natalia Romero Peñuela/MSF

"We will always be committed to providing care to those who need it. But that legacy is not ours alone."

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Botched Tennessee execution exposes death row's reliance on weak, fake or expired drugs

Unable to access lethal sedatives from pharma companies, US jails use what they can – and inmates such as Christa Pike pay the price.

Isabel Coles reports

The botched execution of a woman in a Tennessee prison last week is drawing attention to the murky supply chains used to procure the drug used in lethal injections in the US.

Lawyers for Christa Pike say she is now unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator after being injected on Wednesday with two doses of pentobarbital – a sedative also used in animal euthanasia and assisted suicide.

But pharmaceutical companies have imposed strict controls to prevent pentobarbital and other drugs being sold for use in executions. Instead, US state correction agencies have sourced the drug from abroad or from under-regulated pharmacies.

“We don’t know whether the drugs that were injected into Christa Pike’s veins were expired,” said Blaire Andres, who leads US death penalty case work for the nonprofit Reprieve. “We don’t know anything about where the products originated from.”

Sentenced to death two decades ago for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, Pike, now 50, is the only prisoner in the era of the modern death penalty to survive the administration of lethal injection drugs.

The scandal prompted Tennessee's head of prisons to resign yesterday. Frank Strada, commissioner for the Department of Correction, said he was stepping down "in the best interests" of the state and said the investigation into Pike's execution was "entirely appropriate and necessary".

Pentobarbital is so hard for states to come by that some have brought back execution by firing squad or considered nitrogen suffocation.

As it became harder to source the drug abroad, many turned to compounding pharmacies that make drugs for individual patients.

“It is creating a system where quality is now certainly at risk,” said Prashant Yarav, a globally recognised expert in healthcare supply chains. “It could have lower potency, it could have less active ingredients than what it’s supposed to have. It could be completely counterfeit and fake.”

Pike's lawyers have suggested the pentobarbital was degraded. Compounded medications fail quality and potency specifications at much higher rates than drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The drug should be kept at a controlled temperature and may have been improperly stored, said Yarav. "Somebody could have kept it in the trunk of their car for hours, exposed to direct sunlight... Or it could have just been past its expiration date."

Death row defence attorneys raised concerns last year that Tennessee might be using expired drugs, which they said would be less potent and could lead to suffering. At the time, the state refused to disclose the expiration date of its pentobarbital.

"With animal euthanasia you have veterinarians that are trained to do this. In the execution context we don't have the same trained people," said Corinna Barrett Lain, author of Secrets of the Killing State: the Untold Story of Lethal Injection.

Inability to insert an IV line is among the most common reasons for botched lethal injections, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI). Pike's remarks that she felt a burning sensation in her arm suggest the drug may have been injected into tissue instead of a vein.

Tennessee's governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review of the state's lethal injection protocols and halted all executions this year.

Executions using lethal injection are the most likely to go wrong, experts say. Data published by the DPI showed that 7% of executions using lethal injection in the US were botched between 1890 and 2010, compared with an overall rate of 3.2% during the same period.

"It only does one thing well: it hides the violence of what state killing is," said Lain. "With the firing squad we have to see blood, and with the electric chair you have to smell... burning flesh, and with the gas chamber people are retching and trying to knock themselves out. With lethal injection you get to tell yourself that these people are just falling into forever sleep."

The gruesome spectacle of Pike's killing may begin to change that.

Christa Pike survived two lethal injections of pentobarbital. Ambulances at the Tennessee prison, above, last Wednesday.

Tennessee Department of Correction/Zuma Press, Avalon

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El Niño is already breaking records – weeks before it hits

Jeevan Vasagar

Climate editor

Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific reached new highs last week, indicating the growing strength of the El Niño weather phenomenon as its first impacts are felt worldwide.

Temperatures rose to 3.23C above average, according to preliminary data gathered from Niño 3.4, a region of the equatorial Pacific halfway between South America and Australia that scientists use to classify the strength of an El Niño event.

El Niño is a natural climate event that releases stored heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, dispatching drought and storms around the world. That temperature records are being broken several weeks before the phenomenon is due to reach peak intensity in the northern hemisphere winter has strengthened fears it will be unusually strong.

Andrew Coburn, co-founder of Risilience, a climate risk consultancy, said: "We expect El Niño to last longer now, into February, and then start dropping off between April and June.

That will eat into the planting season next year and that's one of the key factors for our forecasts – the food price inflation that we are worried about. It will be a stressful period, with the risk of power shortages and food price rises."

The initial impacts are already being felt. India's monsoon is the weakest it has been for more than a decade, threatening the rice harvest and hydropower generation. The fall-out will not be limited to the country's farmers but ripple through the entire economy as consumption drops.

Meanwhile, California has declared a state of emergency, bracing for severe winter storms blowing in from an unusually warm Pacific. A giant underwater band of warm water known as a “Kelvin wave” is heading for the state's coastline, where it is expected to elevate sea levels by up to 30cm for months, amplifying the risk of floods from destructive storms.

Other regions such as southern Africa will face an increased risk of drought as El Niño strengthens.

Abundant harvests of wheat and rice in 2025 and 2026 provide some buffer for food supplies, but many countries rely on “just in time” supply chains to keep shelves full.

In China, which holds the world's biggest stockpiles of wheat according to a US government estimate, officials reassured the public that food reserves are well stocked. Egypt, Morocco and Algeria have begun amassing reserves of grain anticipating an El Niño-related supply crunch.

Most European countries operate on slim margins. Among the exceptions are Finland, which keeps a nine-month reserve of grain, and Sweden, which advises citizens to be able to manage for a week without power, water or buying groceries. Its government began stockpiling food, seeds and artificial fertiliser last year.

Aside from food, the choking of fuel supplies from the Middle East means Europe is heading into winter with depleted energy reserves, with gas storage at 71% compared with the seasonal average of 87%.

For the UK, El Niño raises the chances of heavy rainfall and storms until December, followed by a cold snap in early 2027, which may lead to a surge in energy demand at a time when the gas supplies are expected to remain tight.

Dr Raymond Pederson at his home in Vancouver.

Jimmy Jeong/

The Observer

From the intestines, GIP and GLP-1s travel to organs across the body

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The godfather of weight loss drugs: 'I know there can be bad outcomes'

In his first interview, the Canadian scientist Ray Pederson, who discovered the hormone that led to the development of GLP-1 drugs, tells James Tapper why he is concerned about the potential risks of their widespread use

Without Ray Pederson, weight-loss drugs might not exist. It's a legacy he's not entirely comfortable with.

"I do have real concerns," he says. The Canadian physiologist was a pioneer, the junior partner in the two-man team that discovered the first hormone to govern appetite: gastric inhibitory polypeptide, or GIP. Their discovery forms the foundation of the entire \$92bn weight-loss drugs market.

“Certainly for the morbidly obese, it’s been a godsend,” Pederson says. “But it’s being promoted as a way for everybody to lose weight, not just people who are obese, but if you want to lose a few pounds to fit in your bathing suit.”

Given Pederson's central role in a discovery that has transformed the world, it seems extraordinary that he has never given an interview before. Yet he and the other member of the team, his PhD supervisor John Brown, a hard-drinking, combative scientist from County Durham, have largely been forgotten. In fact, Pederson, now 84, feels they've been written out of history. After all, weight-loss drugs are known by the name of the second hormone

to be discovered: GLP-1, not GIP. The two substances cooperate in the body to regulate our appetites, but the story behind them is one of rivalries: between the two main drugs, Mounjaro and Wegovy; their active ingredients, tirzepatide and semaglutide; their makers, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk; and between the researchers behind the discoveries of GIP and GLP-1.

But first, why does Pederson think we are being too blasé about drugs that have already transformed millions of lives?

“[GLP-1] affects the central nervous system, affects a lot of different systems in the body, and no one is really clear what’s going to happen with long-term use,” he says. “I have enough experience with interfering with [the body’s self-regulating] homeostatic systems to know there can be bad outcomes over a long period of time.”

Such warnings are familiar to people taking these drugs. As well as the more common side-effects of nausea, constipation and fatigue, rare cases of pancreatitis and gallbladder disease have been reported. Researchers are looking into the possibility of a link to loss of vision. A potential public health disaster seems unlikely, though. The first drug in this class, exenatide,

was approved for use by diabetics in 2005, giving plenty of time to spot issues. Other side-effects may even be positive: there are signs that the drugs lower the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, addiction and inflammation throughout the body, although some of this may be the result of reducing obesity.

Even so, Pederson worked on these hormones throughout his four-decade career. His expertise is based on examining them in people and animals in fine detail. He mentions experiments on “knockout mice” – animals bred to remove a gene that gives the body instructions to produce a particular hormone.

“Where a hormone is just removed from the body, there may be an initial effect, but usually – often – what happens is that another hormonal system will increase to compensate,” he says. “So when you’re adding a lot of GLP-1 to the system, it seems to me that there could be interference or adjustment in other biochemical systems that might have deleterious effects.”

For people with obesity or diabetes, the potential risk is justified, he feels. Not for others. When Pederson first met Brown at the University of British Columbia

In the pancreas, GIP and GLP-1 trigger a release of insulin, lowering blood sugar

GIP is produced by K cells in the upper small intestine, while GLP-1 comes from L cells in the lower small intestine

Graphic: Hannah Schuller

In the brain,

receptors are

stimulated by the

hormones, reducing

appetite and

increasing

fullness

GIP

travels to fat,

tissue and

bone cells

GLP-1 travels to the stomach, slowing the emptying of food, and the heart

in 1967, obesity was a minor issue compared with cancer, or polio and measles. Since then, diabetes and obesity have turned into epidemics and when pharmaceutical firms looked to science for solutions, they focused on GIP and GLP-1.

Weight-loss

drugs mimic these

effects, lasting much

longer in the body

than the original

hormone

At first, Novo Nordisk's Ozempic, a diabetes drug, and its weight-loss clone Wegovy, led the way. The pharma firm was such a powerhouse that economists had to separate its revenues from Denmark's GDP figures to avoid giving a misleading impression of the country's economy.

Wegovy mimics GLP-1, but has been eclipsed by Mounjaro, which mimics both GIP and GLP-1 and is more effective at

controlling appetite. It has transformed its maker, Eli Lilly, into a \$1tn pharmaceutical behemoth.

Pederson is not a rich man, although his retirement

islands has been comfortable – he restores vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles, proudly showing off pictures. He remains professor

emeritus at the University of British Columbia.

Why does Pederson think few people remember GIP? “Part of the reason GIP got downplayed somewhat was that John made a lot of enemies,” Pederson says. “He just rubbed people the wrong way.”

Pederson liked Brown from the moment they met. Pederson was 27, and starting a master's degree after teaching high school biology. Brown was 35, a coalminer's son from Crook in County Durham, with a PhD in gastrointestinal physiology from Newcastle University.

“He was an aggressive guy, and I liked him right from the start,” Pederson says. “The prevailing attitude at the university was that if you were a junior person, you kept your place and kept your mouth shut.” But Brown had been unwilling to “pull his forelock” in the class-bound British university system of the early 1960s and joined the brain drain of academics fleeing the UK. Why should he have to wait 15 years for his own lab?

“He’d march over to the dean’s office and raise hell,” Pederson says – and he got what he wanted. Pederson became Brown’s PhD student, and his supervisor “treated me like an equal – but he demanded a lot of work too. We had a goal: not just to publish papers, but to really do something significant.”

T hat significant thing was investigating the human gut. By the 1960s, scientists had worked out that if someone eats

glucose, the amount of insulin created in response is much larger than if they were given glucose via an intravenous drip. Scientists speculated there might be a hormone that governed appetite, and called it an incretin.

Brown and Pederson had only low-tech tools. The research team didn't have the ability to purify substances enough to study them properly. The place to find the new techniques was Sweden: Brown went to work with Viktor Mutt at the Karolinska Institute. Mutt had pioneered techniques for extracting gut peptides. Brown spent a year in Sweden, purifying extracts from hog intestine and sending the samples to Vancouver. Pederson examined their effects in dogs and guinea pigs and demonstrated that their purified extract was a new hormone. The result was his PhD thesis in 1970, and interest from other researchers.

Not that it was a large field. "In the early 1970s we'd have international meetings and there'd be 30 people there," Pederson says. "[John] was always front and centre and sort of pissing everybody off. He would stand up at a meeting and say 'you're full of crap'. In many ways he didn't understand how the system worked."

This abrasive side of Brown's character was matched by warmth and enthusiasm. "He also attracted people like a magnet," he says. Brown put a sign on his door: "If I'm going to be replaced by a robot, it's going to have to learn how to drink.

“We’d work all week, but our lab was party central on Friday

Professor

Tim Kieffer, top,

who worked

with both Ray

Pederson and

Joel Habener.

Dr Jens Juul Holst, above, accepting the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2025.

afternoon," he says. "[John] would get a big jug of lab alcohol in a liquid nitrogen bottle, and we'd make these cocktails. So there's all kinds of radioactivity, and we'd sit around smoking and drinking.

Maybe a sense of humour forged in the shadows of Crook colliery did not translate well with the urbane Scandinavian and Californian researchers. Some “knew John, they dished it back to him”. But many did not. Camps were forming in the world of hormone research.

Brown and Pederson knew they

---

'There's this undercurrent of politics in science. There's competition, and egos and power'

had a hormone, but not what it did. Another Canadian, John Dupre, suggested it might be the mythical incretin hormone, and during the 1970s, they demonstrated that GIP stimulated production of insulin.

They had demonstrated how your body tells you that you're full after you've eaten something. It took another four decades to work out how to make a drug to do the same thing. But there was still a gap – GIP didn't fully explain the amount of insulin the body produced.

By the early 1980s, technology had moved on – specifically DNA sequencing, which researchers working with endocrinologist Joel Habener at Massachusetts General Hospital used to identify a gene they discovered would make hormones that had yet to be isolated. They called one of them GLP-1.

Ray Pederson

was less effective. GLP-1 became the focus. That's not the only reason that GIP has been overlooked, Pederson believes. Mention the Dane to Pederson and there is some froideur. "There is this undercurrent of politics in science and it happens everywhere," he says. "There's egos, there's competition, there's power. I felt that in my career, it didn't suffer greatly, but it certainly did suffer because of the fact that I just was not prepared to get involved in many of these pissing contests."

Then Jens Juul Holst, a Danish medical doctor, did what Brown, Pederson and Dupre had done with GIP and showed that GLP-1 stimulated insulin in pig intestines.

Two hormones, each doing something similar. Which one was more important? The key moment came in 1993 when a team in Germany, working under Werner Creutzfeldt, compared the effects of the two hormones in nine patients with type 2 diabetes. GIP

While Pederson has enjoyed his retirement on an academic's pension, Holst has had more acclamation. The Dane, along with Habener and three others, was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2025. He was scientific director of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen from 2010 to 2020, at a time the company was translating GLP-1 research into diabetes medicines that led to Ozempic, and then Wegovy.

Holst's book, The Story of GLP-1, mentions Brown briefly and Pederson not at all. (Holst did not provide comment for this story.)

The last time the two men saw each other was in 2015. Tim Kieffer, who was Pederson's first PhD student, arranged a conference to mark the history of the discovery of GIP. Kieffer spent time in Habener's lab as well. "I may be the only one who trained with the people who discovered GIP then with the people who discovered GLP-1," he says.

Which hormone does Kieffer think is most important? Habener would have said GLP-1, he says. Each milligram of GLP-1 makes more insulin than GIP. But after a meal, the body produces only a small amount of GLP-1, whereas GIP increases dramatically.

For the conference, Kieffer commissioned both Pederson and Holst to write accounts of GIP's discovery for the Journal of Diabetes Investigation. Pederson's version included some of the people involved; Holst drew unflattering contrasts between GIP and GLP-1, rankling his rival. By this time Brown was ill, and he died in 2016.

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When Pederson sees Eli Lilly's extraordinary profits – it sold \$23bn worth of Mounjaro in 2025 alone – based on a drug that mimics both GLP-1 and GIP, does he wonder if he could have taken a different path?

"When you see a drug that you helped develop make billions of dollars, you think it would have been nice to have a slice of that. But it's not an all-consuming thing...

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“By today’s standards, using pretty primitive tools, we were able to discover a hormone. When I pick up a physiology textbook, it’s there, and I feel proud of that.”

He is also proud of his work in diabetes research, which led to the emergence of DPP-4 drugs that have made diabetics' lives much easier.

Even in his last week at work, he was at the lab bench. “I love science, and that’s where I want to be, in the lab,” he says. Brown did set up a biotech company in a different area, but Pederson feels it did not make his mentor happy: “I think he found out that money is just money.”

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Saving is a good start. What comes next?

With housing costs and monthly bills taking up a large chunk of people's income, simply managing to put a bit of money aside each month can feel like a major achievement

No matter what you're into.

---

Prepare your finances for the year ahead

Cash savings play an important role in helping people feel more secure financially. Having money set aside in a cash savings account can help protect you against an unexpected bill or expense such as a boiler breaking down or car repairs, or if you find yourself out of work.

But do you have a longer-term plan for the money you're setting aside? Perhaps to provide for yourself in retirement or to help your children as they go through life?

Investing could help you achieve these goals by delivering long-term growth on your money. Even putting away a small amount each month could, over time, grow into a substantial nest egg. Saving and investing don't need to be an “either/or”.

---

Are you already an investor?

You may not think of yourself as an investor and you wouldn't be alone. Just 36% of UK adults agreed with the statement “investing is for someone like me”, according to a recent ISA Barometer report from industry body the Investment Association.

You may associate investing with a wealthy professional who has extensive financial knowledge and large sums of money to set aside. But in fact, this is far from the case.

“More than eight in 10 workers now pay into a workplace pension, meaning investing is already part of everyday financial life for most households,” says John Owen, chief executive of the Investment Association.

Investing beyond a pension may feel like a bigger step though, which is natural. "We know from the Barclays Investment Readiness

'£1,000 in cash savings would be worth £595 in real terms after 20 years, compared with £1,216 had it been invested'

'There are many investment platforms and accounts that let you start with as little as £1'

---

You don't have to be an expert to benefit.

Index that the perception that investing is too complicated is one of the main barriers holding back non-investors," says Sasha Wiggins, Chair of the Invest for the Future Campaign and Chief Executive, Private Bank and Wealth Management at Barclays.

---

How can investing help you achieve your goals?

"Investing really is for the long term," says Wiggins. "Whether it is home ownership or a comfortable retirement, investing can help achieve those financial ambitions."

There are a whole range of ways people can start investing and it doesn't necessarily mean picking your own stocks and shares. Some platforms will offer ready-made portfolios, so you don't even have to choose your own investments.

If you're saving money in a cash account each month, perhaps some of that money is in a Cash ISA, which means that any interest you earn is tax-free.

But what's also available to savers in the UK is a Stocks and Shares ISA. With a Stocks and Shares ISA, you can invest your money without paying UK tax on any potential growth on your investments.

Investing offers the potential for higher long-term growth than money earning interest in cash savings accounts, although in the short-term your money might fluctuate.

"It is natural to feel nervous about investments going up and down, but it's important to remember that investing is a long-term commitment," says Owen. "The key is to think about when you'll need the money, and the longer you can leave it invested, the more time it has to grow." In fact, the top reason why people have a Stocks and Shares ISA is because they believe that investing will give a better long-term return than a Cash ISA, stated by $54\%$ of holders in the ISA Barometer report.

About 51% of Stocks and Shares ISA investors say their goal is to save for retirement, highlighting how investing can form part of longer-term financial planning.

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A recent report by Barclays bank, titled The Missed Opportunity of Not Investing, found that from 2004 to 2024, money held in an average cash savings account would have reduced in value by 40.5%, once the effects of inflation are accounted for – even including interest paid on those cash savings.

In contrast, Wiggins explains, money “invested

---

'Providers offer diversified funds that invest across different companies, countries or asset types to spread risk'

in a diversified investment portfolio of UK assets would have grown by more than 20%” – even after typical fees of 0.8% were applied.

That means £1,000 in cash savings would be worth £595 in real terms after 20 years, compared with £1,216 had it been invested.

---

You don't need a lot to start investing

Investing is not just for the wealthy and doesn't mean committing with a large lump sum. You don't need a financial adviser to get started, although some might appreciate guidance from an adviser before making any investment decisions.

You can get started with either a lump sum amount or set up a regular payment, such as £50 a month, and build your investment up over time.

One in five UK adults (21%) said they were likely to start with a small, regular investment of £10 to £50 in 2026, according to the Investment Association's figures.

The benefit of investing little and often is that you can start small while you feel more comfortable and familiar with investing – particularly if you've never seen it as something that applies to you before.

Even starting with small amounts, there's also the potential impact of compounding over time. If your investments generate returns and those returns are reinvested, they have the opportunity to build further.

As an illustration, if you'd invested £50 a month into a typical global equity fund over five years to the end of 2025, it would have been

worth £3,906, according to calculations from the Investment Association. That's £900 more than had the money been kept in cash in a bank account.

---

Decide the next step that's right for you

If investing still feels unfamiliar, there's no need to make a decision immediately. Your first step might simply be to learn more about how investing differs from saving, and whether it's suitable for your own life goals, once you've built a rainy-day fund.

Invest for the Future is an initiative bringing together 20 leading banks and investment companies to provide information for people who save but don't currently invest. The aim is to make investing easier to understand and help people explore whether it could have a place in their longer-term financial plans.

Wiggins puts it simply: “This campaign is not about telling people what they should do with their money. It is about helping people feel more informed, more confident and better equipped to understand whether investing could play a role in helping them achieve their long-term financial goals.”

You might ultimately decide investing isn't right for you right now. Or you might decide that putting a small amount away regularly for a long-term goal such as retirement or helping children financially is worth exploring.

Search "Take the Next Step. Invest." to find the next step that's right for you.

First person

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Ranulph Fiennes took me on a global caper. It’s hard to imagine him ‘isolated’

As concern grows for the veteran explorer's welfare, Giles Whittell recalls the joys of his continent-hopping seven-day marathon quest

First it was family, then friends, then royalty, then the police. The list of concerned parties in what has become a national hunt for Britain's best-known living explorer is long.

Ranulph Fiennes, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and dementia, is thought to be living in a remote farmhouse somewhere in the UK with his second wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, who has power of attorney to make decisions about his care.

The farmhouse could be the one on Exmoor where Fiennes has lived for decades, but few people know for certain and a lot of people want to. He has not been seen in public for two years.

His wife's estranged son, Alexander Millington-Cotes, contacted the press after hearing that he had been living in a series of care homes under assumed names. Inspectors alerted by a care provider in Wales concluded that he was being “deprived of his liberty unlawfully”.

The idea of Ran Fiennes being deprived of liberty by anyone is upsetting and hard to fathom. I can't claim to be a close friend, but for two years, in another life, we were thrown together by one of his wilder schemes and we seemed to hit it off.

In the spring of 2003, Fiennes had had his chest cut open for double bypass surgery after a heart attack. He blamed it on eating whole packs of butter to sustain his calorie intake during long Antarctic winters.

The surgery went well, so six months later it seemed only natural to accept an invitation from his friend Dr Mike Stroud to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. They were doing it to raise money for the British Heart Foundation; I went along for the Times, and for the ride.

We started in the Concorde lounge at Heathrow. Roger Moore strolled in with a small entourage and Fiennes let it be known that he'd auditioned in front of Albert Broccoli for the part of James Bond before Moore had.

Fiennes was always more of a real-life Bond. In the next 10 days we tried and failed to land in Antarctica in a propeller plane because a Chilean air force Hercules wouldn't vacate the runway. We turned back half an hour south of Cape Horn and consoled ourselves with cocktails on a private jet to the Falklands so that Fiennes and Stroud could run a marathon there instead.

We did three long laps of Sydney Harbour and practically ground to a halt in the clammy heat of Singapore. “Our muscles are literally breaking up,” said Stroud, then 48, who by this time was urinating

blood and lagging far behind Fiennes (then 59).

He was welcomed as a “messenger of peace” by Egypt’s tourist minister at the great pyramids of Giza at midnight. Curious well-wishers cheered him on along the route of the

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Giles Whittell with Ranulph Fiennes, right, and Mike Stroud, left, leaving the Falklands in style in 2003. Times Newspapers Ltd

1908 London Olympics marathon through Windsor and Eton.

The seventh marathon was New York's, which Fiennes and Stroud ran with tens of thousands of others. I got a migraine five minutes into it, jogging over the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge, but it was worth it. BA was a sponsor and we went business or first class on every flight.

At one point Fiennes's first wife, Ginny, phoned to ask how he was bearing up. I took the call and told her he was doing well. If only the same could have been said for her. When the whole caper was over and Fiennes got back to her at the farm they shared with a herd of Aberdeen Angus, he knew at once something was wrong. They drove straight to London. Ginny was diagnosed with stomach cancer the next day and never returned home.

“Life is now one big, black void,” Fiennes told me afterwards. “Now I just want to work.” Which at least partly explains why, a few months later, we were drinking tea in an Italian hut halfway up a 4,000-metre peak near Zermatt, in training for a trip up Everest. He said he wanted to conquer a fear of heights. I wondered if he wanted to push his heart to the limit and beyond.

“Friends told me the passing of time would help,” he said. “They may be right, but time is not yet working its magic for me.”

Fiennes married Millington-Cotes before he set off for Nepal the following spring. She has said she doesn't want to be approached and so I didn't for this story, but I met them in the tea room of the Ritz in 2005 to talk about Everest. It's fair to say Millington-Cotes was already extremely protective of him. She wanted to be sure coverage of the expedition was positive. Abandoning professional detachment, I did my best to reassure her.

In the end I didn't go. A much better writer did and she wrote hilarious accounts of men doing masochistic things in the death zone in Tibet.

Two decades on, Cheshire police say they are satisfied that Fiennes is in an appropriate setting, with suitable care. But the King has tried to write to him and allegedly been rebuffed. Anton Bowring, a fellow explorer, has been admonished by Millington-Cotes for passing her husband's contact details to Buckingham Palace.

Last week, Ginny's sister told ITV that Fiennes's apparent isolation was "heartbreaking, for him as well as us [because] we want to see him, take him Toblerones and Mars bars, buoy his spirits".

As a humble scribbler who had far too much fun whenever our paths crossed, I can only say: hang in there, Ran, and thanks for all the upgrades.

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Wagyu crisps? It's a high-steaks gamble for Japan's boeuf du jour

Patrick Kidd

When it comes to selling posh crisps, upmarket adjectives count. So when the Co-op was after snacks for the Christmas market, mere “beef” wouldn’t do. This year the beef is wagyu, the expensive Japanese breed. Or “cooked wagyu beef powder”, the penultimate ingredient between paprika and smoked maltodextrin. What do you expect for £1.75?

Wagyu beef might cost you £100 for a fillet steak at a good butcher, but the brand is entering the mainstream at a fraction of the cost. Burger King sells a wagyu burger for £8.99.

The breed didn't leave Japan until the 1970s and won attention for the supposed pampering of the cattle. In recent years, interest in the product has exploded in Britain. In 2023 35,000 wagyu-sired calves were born here, a $1,378\%$ increase on 2014.

So prolific has the meat become at the cheaper end of the market that some British producers are keen to promote the pleasant lifestyle of their herds, which affects taste and price. Andrew Knowles, from Trenchmore Farm in West Sussex, says its herd are sucklers that graze in the fields over the summer. He has crossbred wagyu with Sussex and Angus cows since 2013, aimed at restaurants. "There is a risk if the wagyu market goes into oversupply that the premium it will command will evaporate," he said.

A fillet steak of marbled wagyu beef might cost £100 at a good butcher.

Others are now shunning the beef. Alex Keys, of Farmer Tom Jones, a London butcher, warns it has become ubiquitous. “That fatty marbling looks good on Instagram but if the human body looked like that it would mean all sorts of health problems.”

The business prefers to deal with native breeds that are given a lot of love. “It’s not the cow, it’s the how,” Keys said. “We have one producer in Northumberland who keeps his cows outdoors, feeds them on a 25-plant silage mix and it has fantastic taste.”

In the fields of his Tonbridge constituency, the shadow foreign secretary tells Rachel Sylvester about his fears over China and his support for Kemi Badenoch, and why Labour is wrong about a ‘far-right nostalgic vision’ of Britain

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The Observer Walk Tom Tugendhat

MAP BY ELLIE WINTOUR

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'My wife promised me we'd get a labrador. Now I find out they're fascist'

W

hen Tom Tugendhat is meeting foreign diplomats or dignitaries,

he takes them on a walk. Most politicians have favourite spots for lunch; the shadow foreign secretary has preferred routes. "You talk differently on a walk," he says. "I normally walk around St James's Park. I've spent a lot of time walking around parks in Paris and gardens in Berlin. I was with an Austrian minister last year walking around Vienna. There were lots of interesting spots in Iraq and Afghanistan. I did some great walks in Yemen. It's much easier to get into conversations with people if you're walking next to them than if you're sitting across from them."

I have always wondered whether the habit comes from his military background. Tugendhat was an intelligence officer in the British Army before going into politics. "I haven't thought of it like that," he says, brushing aside questions about undercover operations on walks. "You're luring me down lines I'm not going to go down."

There are – as far as I know – no dead drops on our stroll across the fields in Tugendhat's constituency of Tonbridge, Kent. We meet at Hever station and set off towards Edenbridge. The MP lives around the corner. "This is my walk to church on Sunday," he says. "I find it clears my mind."

We go through a gate warning of cows with calves. An oast house comes into view, surrounded by oak trees. “There’s a reason why Kent is known as the ‘Garden of England,’” Tugendhat says. “It’s the county of warm beer and black labradors.” These were the two things highlighted by a Labour minister last week as symbols of a “far-right nostalgic vision” of Britain, but the shadow foreign secretary finds the culture they represent comforting. “It’s gentle and it’s true, and it’s homely,” he says. “My wife promised me for our engagement that I’d get a labrador and, 13 years later, we still haven’t got one. Now I find out from a minister that labradors are fascist.”

His time as a soldier was less reassuring. Tugendhat served in two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and almost died on “several occasions”. One time, when he was working

as an adviser to the governor of Helmand province in Afghanistan, “a suicide bomber came into my office and killed the people I was working with and blew the hell out of the building”. He only survived because he had popped next door. “There’s a lot of luck in life,” he says. “I got blown up by Iraqis. That took a piece out of my chin. We were invading their country, and they weren’t very happy about it.”

He speaks five languages “and can just about understand what’s going on in another few”. He is “pretty good” in French and Italian. “My Arabic’s OK. I used to be able to work in Persian and Pashtu. I did a year of Japanese but it never really stuck. I can understand German and I get by in Dutch.” The qualities he learned as a soldier that are useful in politics include “self-discipline and not to get too riled”.

We cross into another field, avoiding the newly planted crops. Tugendhat was appointed shadow foreign secretary by Kemi Badenoch in August as part of a reshuffle designed to put the Tories on an election footing. Before that, he was not planning to go to the Conservative conference. Now

he will be making a speech. As a linguist, he is well qualified but he insists: “The job isn’t speaking languages – it’s trying to get the best out of foreigners to deliver for Britain.” He despises the idea of diplomacy based on moral values. “The so-called ‘ethical foreign policy’ is rubbish,” he says. “It’s vapid, because the truth is, what another country wants and what we need are different things.”

Ed Miliband promised to stand up “for what is right” around the world when he announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Tugendhat did not buy it. “His politics is entirely transactional,” he says. “He’s trying to make deals within the leftwing coalition, the so-called ‘progressive parties’. What I think is ethical is standing up for the British people. Every embassy is paid for by British taxpayers. So you had better be damn sure you are getting the best for them.”

We stop by a tree where bees are buzzing around a nest. Tugendhat stood twice for the Tory leadership, representing the centrist one-nation wing of the party. He is socially liberal and voted Remain in the Brexit referendum. Badenoch is

a staunch Brexiteer who recently introduced an ideological purity test for Conservative candidates requiring them to oppose net zero and support withdrawing from the European convention on human rights (ECHR).

Tugendhat had no qualms about rejoining the front bench. “I’ve gone back because I think it matters,” he says, striding off across the field. “Kemi’s demonstrating the kind of leadership that the country needs. I think she’s doing really well, and I feel a responsibility to help her.”

He is happy to sign up to the Tory leader's conditions. "She hasn't said she doesn't believe in climate change. She's just said – and I think it's true – that net zero in one country is like socialism in one country. It's absurd. It doesn't work. All you do is impoverish yourself for no gain." As for the ECHR, "most of it is UK law, anyway, so what you're talking about is the application of it, not the principles behind it", Tugendhat says. "I think what Kemi is doing is a perfectly orthodox Conservative message."

We walk through a small area of woodland, alongside a stream. Andy Burnham used his conference speech to call for more cross-party collaboration on issues such as social care and electoral reform. "He's doing the old political trick of saying this isn't politics. Here's a really contentious political idea that you must agree with. Of course social care should be reformed. But his answer is to nationalise social care and to make kids pay for it."

Photograph by Tom Pilston

In fact the prime minister is proposing to amend the pension triple lock that is set to cost an extra £11bn at today's rates by the end of the next decade. Tugendhat last year described the triple lock as "simply not affordable". So does he agree with Burnham and disagree with Badenoch, who has promised to keep the pensioner benefit? "I'm focused on foreign policy," he replies. "I have my own views about many things, but if you want to join a team, you've got to make sure that you work as part of the team."

We emerge into another neatly ploughed field. A single tree stands majestically alone in the middle. Britain is starting to look dangerously isolated in an unstable world, detached from Europe and abandoned by an unreliable US. Tugendhat insists it is important to have a sense of perspective about Donald Trump. It is, he says, “an illusion that America has ever been anything other than what it is. America is an extremely important partner who views things through its own lens. Those of us who’ve served alongside Americans in combat knew that very clearly. There are American decisions taken for American reasons, and we may agree, or we may disagree, but that’s the pattern.”

Trump seems different from previous presidents, though. He has no respect for the rules-based world order or international institutions, including Nato. He has threatened to invade Greenland, backed a united Ireland and questioned British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. “He has his own ways of expressing himself,” Tugendhat says. “I don’t find it helpful... but we’ve got to work with him. You can be rude about the American president if you want. Then you can watch investments in the United Kingdom fall, our security be endangered, intelligence sharing damaged. Or you can be honest and say: ‘There’s ups and downs in every relationship.’”

red kite soars overhead. "The Battle of Britain memorial flight goes over here from Biggin Hill," the MP says. "It's

extraordinary to see birds of prey and Spitfires dancing in the skies over Kent." Tugendhat is a China hawk and one of the MPs who was sanctioned by Beijing. Keir Starmer announced earlier this year that the sanctions had been lifted but the shadow foreign secretary has had no confirmation. "The Labour party didn't listen to Starmer – I don't see why Xi Jinping should," he says. "Could I go to China? I think it would be really unwise."

There is no doubt, he says, that the Chinese government has tried to hack into his computer and intimidate him. “Every now and again, if I do something that annoys them, I’ll get a few letters from Beijing or Shanghai, which say rude things. It’s basically: ‘We know where you live.’ Sometimes they’re hand-delivered,” he says. “I think they are behaving in an unbelievably hostile way.”

He thinks there is a strong probability that Covid was created

Tom Tugendhat in the fields outside Edenbridge in his Tonbridge constituency.

by Chinese scientists. “I have no doubt that the pandemic began in Wuhan. Do I think they meant to do it on purpose? No. But I’m almost certain it came out of that laboratory,” he says. “Dictatorships are built on fear. So nobody said anything early enough, and by the time they found out what had happened and where it was from, it was way too late to ask for help and sort it out. And then there was a massive cover-up.”

The economic threat from Beijing is, in his view, just as great. “Forget about whether they’re good, bad, evil, or whatever,” Tugendhat says. “They need to massively export, and the only way they can do that is by swamping the manufacturing systems of every other country.”

Last week, MI5 warned that academics had been involved in research that supports Chinese espionage. The real danger, Tugendhat says, is “one of control. Who controls what’s said in a British university? Already, there are universities which won’t talk about Uyghur genocides, or Xinjiang [the region where many Uyghurs live], or Tiananmen Square. They are so dependent on Chinese students that, if they don’t adapt, as they’d put it – silence themselves, as I’d put it – the Chinese embassy here threatens them that they won’t have any.”

He thinks it was a huge mistake for Labour to give approval for a new Chinese embassy on the edge of the City of London. “We shouldn’t open it. The government bluntly covered up a whole series of things which it has since admitted. It said concerns about cabling were completely rubbish. And the moment they gave approval, they said: ‘We’re going to have to spend millions of pounds moving the cables.’”

We turn on to the road and walk into Edenbridge, a pretty market town full of medieval buildings. It is a quintessentially English scene. The quiet calm of this high street in Kent could not be more different to the anti-migrant protesters who gathered in Dover late last month in the name of defending England. As we walk towards the station, I ask Tugendhat what he thought of the men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas. “I find all that really distasteful and wrong,” he replies. “It’s an undermining of who we are as a society. It really weakens us.”

The Tories must, he insists, align with the decent majority. “This county of Kent was colonised by the Jutes. My mum’s French. My wife’s French. My grandmother is from Ireland. My name comes from Austria. Our leader is Kemi Badenoch. Our former leader was Rishi Sunak... This country is made up of various different peoples.”

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'A shady deal with a shady character': America invites investors to help kickstart Venezuela's oil industry $\rightarrow$ Black gold rush, page 27

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Cornell gang rape accuser ‘under siege’ online as fresh culture war divides US

While conservative voices support and students condemn the seven men accused of assault, digital sleuths are seeking to unmask their purported victim, Ed Helmore writes

The alleged rape of a female student by seven fraternity members at New York's Cornell University has reopened America's culture war divide and reignited debate about consent, online judgment and victim blaming.

The allegation that a 20-year-old woman was subjected to an hours-long assault while her attackers bragged on social media and summoned fraternity brothers to join them has broken out of the Ivy League campus and on to the international stage. In the US, conservative commentators have leapt to defend the accused.

The case has divided social media since campus student newspaper The Cornell Daily Sun published the names of the accused last month. Photos of the men, dubbed the “Cornell Seven”, were posted online. All deny any wrongdoing, with some arguing sex was consensual and at least two denying any sexual contact.

“She’s under siege on social media where people are trying to identify her,” the victim’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, told CNN on Friday.

In retaliation, online sleuths began “doxxing” the victim, named only as Jane Doe, in an effort to unmask her. That prompted a social media counter movement last week, with hundreds of female students posting “I am Jane Doe” to shield her identity.

The case, and Cornell's handling of the allegation, has prompted claims that the university has a “rape culture problem”. Reports have highlighted past incidents, including an alleged assault and multiple allegations that victims were drugged at frat parties in 2022, which drove the university to suspend all fraternity social events.

Studies have found that up to 27% of undergraduate women experience nonconsensual sexual contact or rape at American universities. One former head of a New York university told The Observer that the situation at Cornell was “very typical”.

“Cornell has failed our community through its lack of accountability, transparency, and failure to address the state of the Cornell student body at this time,” Sophia Riley Sim, a junior, told the meeting at the student union.

In a 101-page civil lawsuit, filed last month, Jane Doe detailed how she went to visit a friend at Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity house one evening late in 2024.

“She’s a sophomore, and frequently it’s freshmen,” they said. “There are the athletes they look up to, who egg them on to drink or, in this case, take ketamine. So then the girl is so wasted she doesn’t know what happened. Then people talk. It’s complicated.”

Already intoxicated beyond the point of consent, she claims that her friend and one of his fraternity brothers proposed a threesome. They plied her with marijuana and rum, she said, and pressured her to snort a white powder claimed to be ketamine.

'This woman was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her'

Kathy Hochul, NY governor

While the row rages online, at Cornell itself the mood on campus was sombre last week. But at a student assembly, simmering anger at the university's handling of the case boiled over. Reports that the university initially allowed the accused men to submit “essays to mitigate their conduct”, rather than pursuing a criminal investigation, has fuelled the uproar among fellow students.

As the assault unfolded, a third man joined in. One of the men then messaged a group chat named “Chi Phi Actives”, telling members that there was “free pussy” at the frat house. Later, someone asked, “Shop still open?” “Yeah,” another responded with a devil emoji, and later added: “Boys come whip it out.”

“I fucking love Chi Phi,” one posted.

she saw other students in an online forum discussing the incident as rape.

Records of the original investigation, first reported by the New York Times, revealed how the woman's initial embarrassment at the incident evolved into a conviction that she had been assaulted. She exchanged friendly texts with some of the men. When one apologised that the night had "got way out of hand", she reassured him that "non (sic) of the sexual stuff was illegal".

Police declined to bring charges, arguing that the woman's statement "described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual".

Friends said Jane Doe was “in shock” and “not understanding the gravity of what she was saying”, until

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” she told investigators.

Tompkins County district attorney Matthew Van Houten pleaded last week that his office had not received the group chat messages at the time. The latest revelations have brought renewed finger-pointing between police and officials at Cornell.

“It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the university,” Van Houten said.

Responding to the growing outrage, New York governor Kathy Hochul appointed state attorney general Letitia James as special prosecutor to reopen the criminal case last week. Hochul, who is running for re-election next month, said she moved to act after learning “troubling details” about how authorities have handled the woman’s claims.

“This woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable, and then at every turn she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her,” Hochul said.

Hochul has vowed to close the “voluntary intoxication loophole” in New York rape law. But the case has prompted a backlash among right-wing commentators and the so-called “manosphere”, the online network of influencers and chat forums that promote masculinity and misogyny.

“She said she was fine with it until she suddenly wasn’t,” conservative podcast host Clay Travis said on his show last week. “This is a retroactive rape charge.”

The involvement of James, who brought a fraud case against Donald Trump and his family in 2022, was enough to goad the president into joining the debate on Friday. Denouncing the prosecutor as a “corrupt person”, Trump suggested that the students being investigated by James “won’t get a fair shake”.

"I feel badly for whoever she's looking at," the president told reporters outside the White House, though he admitted he knew little of the case.

“Cornell is a fine school, and I’m sure they’ll do what’s right,” he added.

Students at Cornell University, above; Jane Wung and Sophia Riley Sim this week talking at a student assembly meeting about sexual violence on campus. Matt Rourke/AP

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An oil rig in

Lake Maracaibo,

Venezuela's

largest lake,

visible at the end

of a residential

street in the city

of Cabimas.

Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg

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Oil giants gather to feast while Trump calls the shots in scramble for Venezuela's riches

A black gold rush is drawing entrepreneurs and wildcatters to Caracas, eager to tap into the country's vast US-controlled reserves

Thomas Graham

Caracas

On the golf courses and in the steak houses of Caracas last week, it was just like old times.

“Venezuela is the place to be,” said Erik Keskula, a director at the Qatari company UCC Oil and Gas Holding, observing the excited throng at the Marriott hotel in Venezuela’s capital.

“We’re here to make money,” he went on, before adding: “But we’re also here to try to improve the places we operate.”

Keskula was among hundreds of oil executives who jetted into Venezuela for the first big oil and gas conference since Donald Trump's administration seized the country's leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January. As the White House turns Venezuela into a de facto client state and takes control of its vast oil reserves, a new gold rush has descended on Caracas.

At the Marriott, which has become an unofficial US embassy and a hive of dealmaking between these new prospectors, executives from the world's oil giants mingled with survivors of Venezuela's once titanic oil industry and independent wildcatters, looking for the high-risk bet that could make them a fortune.

“We hired our CEO for Venezuela,” said Keskula. “He asked me what we’re interested in and I just said, ‘Yes’. We’re interested in it all.”

But amid the expectant mood among the delegates and the chatter about contracts and deals, no one was in any doubt who is in charge.

“There’s always give and take in negotiations,” said one attendee from the city of Maracaibo, once the engine of Venezuela’s oil industry. “And the Americans are more take than give,” he added with a laugh.

Trump has basked in the success of his operation in Venezuela, which saw Maduro and his wife snatched in a pre-dawn raid by US special forces. The president has bragged repeatedly of his “historic” deal to control the country’s 300bn barrels of proven oil reserves and paraded gold bars from Venezuela in the Oval Office.

"To the victor belong the spoils," the president gloated during his address to the UN general assembly the week before the conference.

Among the New York audience was Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's vice-president, who has traded American control of Venezuela's natural resources for her own political survival and that of the regime she now leads. Underscoring his point, Trump reminded Rodríguez and other world leaders of Washington's "unmatched military might".

As the executives settled into their seats at the Marriott, Michael García, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Caracas, struck a more diplomatic tone. He stressed the White House's plan to stabilise Venezuela's economy before eventually calling elections, and hailed Venezuela's “renewed willingness to negotiate” with US companies.

"The direction is unmistakable," he said. "Where there was stagnation, there is now investment. And where foreign adversaries once held lease rights to Venezuela's future, American and Venezuelan companies are now riding that future together."

That overstates it. A few oil majors have already announced deals, including Chevron, which will invest \$7bn to double its current production in Venezuela, and the Italian giant Eni, which signed a contract to operate a massive field in the Orinoco belt.

But others remain hesitant to pour billions of dollars into a country that, in some cases, still owes them similar sums from 2007, when Venezuela's former leader, leftwing firebrand Hugo Chávez, nationalised the oil industry and stripped foreign companies of control of their projects. Those who refused to take minority stakes were kicked out of the country.

For all the deal buzz at the Marriott, the technical challenge of what lies ahead is immense. Experts estimate it could cost more than \$100bn and take a decade to restore Venezuela's oil production from roughly 1m barrels a day back to the 3m of its heyday.

The infrastructure is in ruins after years of mismanagement and US sanctions, compounded by the devastating earthquake in June. Outside Caracas, much of the country endures blackouts for eight hours a day.

Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela's acting president, at the UN general assembly.

To jumpstart the new investment, the Trump administration announced a colossal deal with North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), a private Venezuelan oil company, at the end of August. Nabep is run by Alejandro Betancourt, a young oil baron and billionaire, who is currently living in the UK, fighting extradition

---

'There's always give and take in negotiations – and the Americans are more take than give' Venezuelan delegate

to Switzerland and under investigation for alleged money laundering in several countries. He has denied any wrongdoing and has never been convicted of a crime.

Under the deal announced by the White House, the Pentagon has taken a 35% stake in Nabep, which in turn signed a 100-year deal with Venezuela to develop 17 oil fields, holding 65bn barrels of oil. The state department will be able to buy 20% of them at production cost, far below the market price.

“Trump wants this to happen, fast,” said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for Crisis Group. “So his administration determined that they can kickstart the process by a rather

– to say the least – shady deal, with a shady character.”

Venezuelan law does not allow concessions longer than 25 years, but that appears irrelevant in the new Wild West of Caracas.

“That deal is completely illegal,” said one Venezuelan executive at the conference, who did not want to be named. The kidnap of Maduro, “was just the tip of the iceberg” in the Trump administration’s plan for control of the country. “We’re a US protectorate,” he added.

Speakers who took to the stage at the Marriott included Hunter Hunt, the Texan chief executive of Hunt Energy, a family-owned oil firm that operates in high-risk markets such as Yemen and Iraq.

"As my father likes to say, a deal's not a good deal unless it's good for both sides," said Hunt. "Because [if not] it's just a matter of time before somebody comes back to the table and says it's not working."

Venezuelans will have to take his word for it. So far, little has been made public about any of the deals being signed. While the Trump administration and the oil majors carve up the country, lesser known companies hunt for a piece of the action.

"These deals are being negotiated behind closed doors, and the terms are usually not made public," said Gunson.

The greatest risk to the revival of Venezuela's oil industry is one that moderators on stage did not want to discuss: politics. Every deal signed today rests on the uneasy accord between Trump and Rodríguez. With Democrats favoured to take back control of Congress in US midterm elections next month and Trump set to leave the White House in two years, it is uncertain how much of the new Venezuela policy will survive him.

Trump's move to prop up the remnants of the Maduro regime is widely unpopular. Many Venezuelans crave an election and the popular opposition leader María Corina Machado has already questioned the legitimacy of deals signed with Rodríguez.

“They keep talking about change,” said a former engineer from Venezuela’s state oil company. “But the change we want is for this government to go.”

Outside, delivery drivers watched as the oil executives were whisked away to their next meetings. Nothing has improved for ordinary Venezuelans since January, said one called Rafael.

“But if even 10% of what they’re planning comes to be,” he added, “maybe we’ll be a rich country again.”

---

Putin's African recruits: the Kenyans lured into fighting Russia's war

As the Ukraine conflict approaches its sixth winter, hundreds of young men who believed they were starting civilian jobs are finding themselves instead on the battlefield. Francisco Garcia reports

At first, Stephen doesn't seem like the most talkative source. A Kenyan man in his early thirties, he has recently returned from the war in eastern Ukraine. In the living room of his family home in Nairobi, a series of framed photos sits along the back wall, including one with his beaming young daughter. But the most striking is a faded image of Stephen in military fatigues, aged 19. It shows the day of his graduation as a member of the Kenya Air Force.

After a decade of service, Stephen – not his real name – left in the early 2020s to sell spare car parts. Business was good until last year, when his premises was looted in a wave of unrest that followed Kenya’s 2024 Gen-Z protests. “I had to start again,” Stephen says. “[One opportunity] came soonest, so I took it.” An advert appeared online offering well-paid security guard work in Russia. There would be a hefty signing bonus and a salary translating to around £3,000 a month.

Weeks later, Stephen was in Vovchansk, a mostly destroyed town in north-east Ukraine. “[This] was war,” Stephen knew. But nothing had prepared him for the scale of the bloodshed or the thin whine of drones that stalked his every move.

Weeks later, Stephen triggered a landmine which ripped through the right-side of his body. He suffered deep shrapnel wounds and internal bleeding between his chest wall and lungs. On medical leave in St Petersburg at the start of this year, he hatched an escape plan. After approaching a friendly contact at the Kenyan embassy, a flight home was organised, paid for with Stephen's wages.

Stephen is one of hundreds of Kenyans – and several thousand other Africans – who have travelled to fight in Vladimir Putin's war over the past year. Some have done so willingly. Others have been misled by the promise of civilian jobs.

This line between willing and duped is often blurred. Kenya's National Intelligence Service estimates that well over 1,000 Kenyan nationals have travelled to fight for Russia in Ukraine. Several dozen have been killed. Many more are being held in Ukrainian prisoner of war camps with little immediate prospect of returning home. A few, like Stephen, have come back to tell their stories.

As the war in Ukraine approaches its sixth winter, Russia is losing an estimated 30,000 soldiers a month and both sides have become increasingly reliant on foreign fighters to plug the gaps in their armed forces. Most are from poorer countries. More than 7,000 Colombians have joined the Ukrainian war effort and perhaps 2,000 are fighting on the Russian side as mercenaries.

Thousands more have swelled Russian ranks from its ex-Soviet republics, along with a steady flow from North Korea. The Kremlin's rationale is clear: almost anything is preferable to imposing a politically and demographically costly mobilisation of Russian citizens.

Putin's African recruits have prompted the most vivid headlines. From South Africa to Togo and Cameroon, a sophisticated network of recruiters has kept African labour flowing to the Russian frontline. Freshly published research by Code for Africa, an investigative NGO, shows how these recruiters have advertised on Meta and TikTok.

Some posts are “casting calls” seeming to offer work as actors and film extras in Russia. Others are more straightforward. “Military contract in Russia,” runs one targeting Ivory Coast earlier this month.

Kenya has been badly hit. Anger at the country's dire economic situation has been building for some time, prompting a government-backed drive to send Kenyan workers abroad. More than 400,000 have travelled to Europe, the US and the Middle East in the past decade. Remittances from workers abroad are worth £7.7bn to the Kenyan economy, but many become trapped in exploitative conditions.

“Everyone now tries to look for opportunities where they can get them, even the riskiest places,

Countries with recruits who joined Russia in the war on Ukraine

Number of foreign fighters

Fewer than 100 100-499 500-999 More than 1,000 including Russia," says Ndindi Nyoro, an opposition MP. "People feel they are already in a corner here, economically speaking."

Source: I Want to Live project - Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and Defence Intelligence of Ukraine

Protests by the families of Kenyans trapped on the frontline in Ukraine have brought growing public pressure. In February Kenya's foreign minister, Musalia Mudavadi, travelled to Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. No more Kenyans, they agreed, would be taking up arms for Russia, voluntarily or otherwise. Since then, more than 600 Kenyan recruitment agencies have been closed.

The most high-profile case has centred on Festus Arasa Omwamba, the head of an agency called Global Faces Human Resources. The 33-year-old was arrested in February trying to cross the Ethiopian border after 22 Kenyans were discovered in an apartment complex waiting to travel to Russia. Omwamba pleaded not guilty to human trafficking charges and was bailed earlier this year. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

Three other Kenyan men recruited by Omwamba's company did make it to the frontlines. One of them was Stephen. First came the job advert, then the rapid procurement of a visa and a plane ticket to St Petersburg via Istanbul. On arrival he was met by a Russian contact whose name seemed to keep changing. "I knew him as Rizwan," Stephen says. "Others knew him as Ali. [We] went to his apartment to eat... the next morning, we left."

After opening bank accounts, they were sent on a journey of several 'I told my commander I didn't want to fight Ukrainians. But he said, we gave you food. You can't refuse'

Dancan Chege

days to a military camp where they received three weeks of basic training. Then they were shipped to the front.

“I don’t want to be stereotypical [but] white people do not love Black people,” Stephen says. “[We] were the ones who were immediately sent out.”

As a former soldier, he thought he understood violence. The hundreds of unburied, often mutilated bodies on the battlefield disabused him of that. It was impossible to know how many people he saw killed, or even how many he killed himself, he says. Sleep was impossible. Rations of ammunition, food and even water were sporadic at best. Within days, the few survivors of his unit were reduced to eating termites. “We survived like that for two or three days until [our] drones dropped food for us”.

Families of Kenyan men recruited to fight in Ukraine hold pictures of their missing relatives, left. Anadolu/Getty Images

Dancan Chege, below, signed up for a driving job and ended up as a soldier.

After several weeks of combat, Stephen stumbled on to the landmine that left him hospitalised and gravely injured. Arriving back in Nairobi was “heavenly, the best feeling in the world. I have never been that happy”.

His elation was short-lived. Everything he earned was spent on his journey home. Still jobless, he struggles to afford the medication he needs to deal with his injuries.

Did he have any idea of what would happen, before his departure? Perhaps, he concedes, “security” might have involved guarding a military base, but he is adamant he didn’t know it would involve frontline combat.

It didn't take long for Dancan Chege to realise the truth. A wiry figure in his early thirties, he answered an advert for a well-paid driving job in Russia last summer. "I was thinking I will change our [situation]. I will go there and make things better here."

To raise the deposit demanded by the recruitment agency, Chege's mother took out a loan from a local co-operative. Like Stephen, he flew to Russia via Istanbul. He was given a gun and two weeks' basic training before arriving in war-shattered Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine. His new Russian employer was the Wagner Group, the notorious mercenary outfit. "I told my commander I didn't want to fight Ukrainians. I wanted to go back to my home country. But he said, 'We have given you training, given you food. You cannot refuse'."

The price for disobeying would be death. Chege tells a familiar story of constant drones, chaos and indiscriminate killing. Eventually, he secured medical leave after feigning-mental health issues. In Moscow, he absconded from hospital and bought a flight home after his mother sold the family cow. He was never paid.

Chege made a startling claim. Even now, after months of publicity about the fate of Kenyans who have travelled to Russia, he still gets messages from people keen to go. Several times a week, he fields requests from people wanting to be linked up to recruiters. "I tell them to just [go] away," he says.

Scan the QR code for the slow newscast to find out more

Was it possible that the covert military recruitment networks were still operational? While in Nairobi, we found several recent Facebook posts appearing to show at least two dozen young Kenyan men recently leaving Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for jobs in Russia. Recent recruitment ads offer lucrative agricultural and food processing jobs, using AI-generated templates similar to those used in the military ads documented by Code for Africa. Another post published last month depicts a group of smiling men being waved off for their departing flight. Their matching hoodies bear the logo for Wings Recruitment, a Nairobi-based agency, as well as BRICS Mobility, a Russian firm. There is no evidence that the advertised jobs are for anything other than civilian roles.

When we contacted Wings, we were told that while there were some unscrupulous people in their line of work, everything the firm does is above board and complies with Kenyan recruitment laws. At its offices in an upmarket Nairobi neighbourhood, a sign proudly declared its expertise in sending Kenyans abroad. There was no mention of Russia.

BRICS Mobility also declined to respond directly to questions about its connections to Wings, though it did offer to arrange an in-person visit to check on the conditions of its African workers if we could arrange Russian visas and media accreditation. The firm subsequently issued a press release on its website, warning that “unscrupulous recruitment and education agencies in African countries may be using our name”.

Stephen was not surprised that Kenyans are still willing to travel to Russia. There was an old proverb that got to the heart of it, he said. It was about a poor young boy hunting an elephant for its ivory. "If he kills the elephant, his poverty ends. If the elephant kills him, his poverty ends. Either way, his poverty has ended."

Additional reporting by Edwin Okoth. This article was supported by a grant from the Alameda Institute

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I'm all too familiar with how Whitehall views devolved powers. Good luck, Andy Michael Heseltine, page 33

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The first-past-the-post system was built for a two-party Britain. That era is over Andrew Rawnsley

As politics fragments, Andy Burnham's promise to overhaul elections is welcome. But what comes next is far from settled

At the 1951 election, Labour and the Conservatives had a combined vote share of nearly 97% and no one much complained about the electoral system. When British politics was truly a two-horse race, you could justify using first-past-the-post to select the government.

We now have a five-horse race in England and a six-horse one in Scotland and Wales. Perverse results ensue when you try to feed multiparty politics through a system built for a duopoly. Andy Burnham inherited a mammoth parliamentary majority from Sir Keir Starmer, but Labour's vote share at the 2024 election was only a whisker over a third of those who turned out. That loveless landslide was the most disproportionate result in Britain's experience of universal suffrage. The next election threatens to produce even more outlandish outcomes. When a handful of parties are scoring between $10\%$ and $30\%$ , small shifts in support can trigger massive swings in the seats won and lost. It is not impossible that a single-party government could take office with the support of just three in 10 of those who voted and two in 10 of the country as a whole. That will not feel legitimate and it will be rotten for public faith in democracy.

The arguments for retaining first-past-the-post have never felt weaker. Defenders used to justify the disproportionality of winner-takes-all on the grounds that it guaranteed strong and stable governments capable of decisive action. Yet two of our five most recent elections – in 2010 and 2017 – have produced hung parliaments. David Cameron had to scramble together a coalition with Nick Clegg which no one had actually voted for. Theresa May cobbled up an arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party. Mr Burnham is the seventh leaseholder of Number 10 in just a decade. Not so strong and stable.

Of all the bold announcements made in his bravura speech to his party conference, the Labour leader's declaration of support for electoral reform has the potential to be the most transformative. He says that a new national commission will examine the options and he will contest the next election with a manifesto commitment to overhaul the electoral system “so that everyone’s vote counts and everyone’s voice is heard”. This means the next election could be the last ever fought using first-past-the-post. This prospect terrifies most Tories. They have already said they will boycott the commission and can be expected to be ferocious in their opposition to change.

"The next election could be the last ever fought using first-past-the-post." Leon Neal/Getty Images

The issue will expose Labour's internal divisions. While reform has become an increasingly popular cause within the party's ranks, support for it is by no means universal. “Terrible idea,” says one minister. “We’ll never have a majority Labour government again.” A different Labour MP warns that two years of wrangling over reform will be “a massive diversion for Andy when he’s got so many other big things to deal with”. Others shudder about a future of European-style coalitions and fear that proportional representation would ultimately encourage Labour to splinter into its underlying factions. Among the cabinet, John Healey, the chancellor, has a history of opposing reform. I’m told that Louise Haigh, the number two to the prime minister, and Anneliese Midgley, the chief whip, are sceptics.

Mr Burnham used to be one himself. He gives some credit to his recently deceased dad, Roy, for his conversion to the cause. Unlike his predecessors as Labour leader, he doesn't seem leery of coalition politics and consensus-building is a constant theme of his rhetoric. There's also shrewd calculation lurking behind this promise. "If your strategy is to unite the progressive bloc, it's a smart move," comments one Labour strategist. Along with his suggestion that the UK needs a closer relationship with the EU, promising electoral reform helps the Labour leader build "a progressive alliance" in the run-up to the next election and will likely make it easier to snag tactical votes from Greens, Lib Dems and others.

Precisely what transpires will be highly contingent on what kind of reform is proposed. Who will chair the commission? Who else will sit on it? What will be its precise remit? The future will be as clear as fog until Number 10 starts answering the key questions.

We do have some clues about what is in the prime minister's mind. Aides say that he regards it as “critical” that any new system retains the “constituency link”. That would rule out a move to the purely proportional systems used in some other countries such as Israel and the Netherlands. The prime minister's conference speech did not actually mention proportional representation. He spoke about “electoral reform”, a more elastic term.

Manchester under the Supplementary Vote system, where voters are invited to choose first and second preference candidates. If no candidate receives more than 50% of first preferences, the top two continue to a run-off. It incentivises politicians to reach out to supporters of other parties and encourages positive campaigning. It's certainly not proportional.

Many Labour reformers favour adopting a version of voting mechanisms that are already in place in the UK. The Scottish Parliament and the London Assembly are chosen by the Additional Member System, which consists of two ballot papers. Voters elect a constituency representative using first-past-the-post. They also vote for a party, and additional members are then allocated from regional party lists to help ensure that each party's share of seats more closely reflects its share of the vote. This retains the constituency link while making the overall outcome more proportionate.

First-past-the-post has survived as long as it has because neither of the big parties previously found it in their interests to scrap it. For the first time, we have a Labour prime minister who thinks electoral reform makes sense for him personally and for the wider progressive cause. The battle to come will be about what precisely it should be replaced with and whether it would be proper to make a fundamental change to the rules of the game without holding a referendum. A conference pledge is not the same as a change to the law. The struggle ahead will be prolonged and it will be fierce. Buckle up.

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Esther Rantzen made it impossible to ignore our struggle for assisted dying Sarah Wootton

W e have all

heard a lot

over the past

few days about

people who

grew up with

Esther Rantzen. About families who gathered to watch That's Life!, about the young people whose lives were changed by Childline, and about the older people who found companionship through the Silver Line she created.

I want to talk about how the campaign for assisted dying grew with Esther.

Esther came to assisted dying late in an extraordinary life of social reforming, after her diagnosis with stage four lung cancer in 2023. But when she arrived, she brought everything that had defined her public life: curiosity, courage, mischief, persistence and an instinctive determination to make people listen to those whose voices were too easily ignored.

That instinct ran through everything she did. Esther succeeded in television at a time when women were routinely denied the opportunities, authority, and airtime afforded to men. She became not just a presenter, but a producer, journalist and formidable campaigner. Later, she created Childline and the Silver Line

because she saw people being failed and decided that noticing was not enough.

Those qualities were unmistakable when you met her in person. I arrived at one event with a much-laboured-over speech. Esther, on the other hand, had one word on her prompt sheet. She proceeded to tell a long, lewd joke.

The room was transfixed. Then it dissolved into fits of laughter. That was Esther: completely in command, herself, able to move people from seriousness to joy and back again without ever losing sight of why she was there and what she wanted people to feel.

When she began speaking

Esther Rantzen, who died last week aged 86, photographed in March 2022. She spoke openly about her cancer diagnosis and the possibility that she might one day want an assisted death.

Hollie Adams/AFP, Getty

publicly about assisted dying, she did something equally powerful. She gave a voice to the suffering, highlighting the hard conversations and choices of so many terminally ill people and their families.

By talking so openly about her own diagnosis, her fears and the possibility that she might one day want an assisted death, she gave permission to thousands of other families across the land to talk about their wishes, too.

Dignity in Dying had spent decades building the case for change, reflecting huge public support, bringing together terminally ill people and their families, developing the evidence on the failures of the status quo and steadily pushing assisted dying up the political agenda. Esther's intervention gave our long-running campaign an extraordinary new reach and urgency, taking a cause already supported by so many people into homes and conversations across the country.

After Esther spoke publicly about wanting the choice for herself, assisted dying moved rapidly up the national conversation. She challenged political leaders directly, supported parliamentary efforts to change the law and, even as her health deteriorated, continued to speak about what the existing

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Esther saw people being failed and decided that noticing was not enough

law meant for her and her family. Tributes this week have captured what made her such an effective campaigner. Childline's Shaun Friel remembered her as someone who "inspired people, energised people, persuaded people". Lord Dobbs recalled her as "delightful, articulate, fun – and very persistent".

That last word matters.

Esther did not see every campaign she fought for succeed immediately. She understood that social change

is rarely neat, quick or linear. What mattered was continuing to make the case, continuing to expose what was not working and continuing to insist that the people most affected were heard.

Her death comes after a painful period for those of us who campaigned alongside her on assisted dying. Westminster came closer to changing the law than at any point in modern British history, before the latest bill was narrowly defeated last month.

Esther did not live to see the change she wanted in England and Wales. But she did see assisted dying come to the British Isles: in Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Our debt to her is enormous. So, too, is our debt to her daughter Rebecca Wilcox, who campaigns alongside us with extraordinary strength.

Sarah Wootton is the chief executive of Dignity in Dying

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Delayed justice on Grenfell Tower is not a ‘milestone’

The case is finally with the CPS – too late for a mother dying without answers, argues Kimia Zabihyan

Esther spent her life refusing to accept that difficult problems should simply remain somebody else's problem. That fighting spirit will remain with us.

That 20 companies and 54 individuals in the Grenfell Tower fire investigation have been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service was hailed as a jubilatory “milestone” last week.

We will miss her wit, her warmth and her wicked sense of humour. Above all, we will remember her persistence.

For the families of the majority of the 72 people who died, it was no such thing.

The next deadline for our diaries? The CPS charging decisions, expected before the tenth anniversary of the fire in June 2027.

“It feels like yesterday,” is something I hear repeatedly. But the truth is it has been more than nine years of waiting. Toddlers have become teenagers, parents have died without seeing justice.

I have been an advocate for more than 250 of the survivors, residents and next of kin of the deceased since the week after the fire. The faces of their loved ones are familiar from the memorial poster cobbled together from social media posts. It – were separated in the gallery of faces. “Can you put them together?” she asked me. I did, matching up all the families so they were side by side. These things mean so much.

was Masoomeh Samimi who told me one day how much it upset her that her mother and her aunt – found together, their ashes mingled

Some things you can't change: another mother has died waiting for justice. Three months ago, Zohra Rabaee died, aged 82. She made sure she visited to say her goodbyes at the tower before she passed away. Night and day, she prayed for the soul of her daughter, Khadija Khalloufi, who died in the fire. Her picture on the poster is of a bright face with a beautiful smile.

Zohra's son Karim once told me: "My mother is holding on for justice. I don't know how to tell her it may not come in her lifetime. And perhaps not even mine." Delayed justice is not abstract. It is a mother dying without an answer.

From 2019 onwards, at meetings with the CPS senior prosecutors and the Metropolitan police, the families kept asking: why are there no charges yet? In 2020, we heard the answer: it was because the Grenfell

And we will carry it with us.

On 15 June 2017, the day after the fire, the then prime minister Theresa May had visited the still-smouldering tower. Later that day, she announced a full statutory public inquiry. This single decision changed the course of justice because it led to delays in the police investigation and will affect the ability of the CPS to bring charging decisions. Defendants will lawyer up and the first defence will be “my client can’t get a fair trial”. The CPS may conclude it cannot proceed with many of the charges that might have been brought.

The senior prosecutors and

The irony was that the evidence at the inquiry was gathered by the Met and given to the inquiry, but the police had to wait until the inquiry was “over” before it could present the evidence to the CPS for charging decisions. “So what was the inquiry for,” the families asked. “For learning lessons,” they were told.

Tower public inquiry had been sequenced to take priority.

'What was the inquiry for,' families asked. 'For learning lessons,' they were told

the Metropolitan police said they had never “experienced anything like” this in their “entire careers”. It was “unprecedented” that the inquiry had been ordered before the criminal process. The delays, they said, were due to “waiting” for the inquiry to be over. The police told us that they were dealing with an extraordinary situation: a public inquiry and a criminal investigation examining many of the same events at the same time with almost all the evidence coming from the police being handed over to the inquiry.

In September 2024, when the inquiry finally published its report, the families of more than half of the deceased gathered for a press conference. They were furious: an inquiry they never asked for had cost over £173m. It had delayed justice for seven years, at that point.

That autumn, we asked the now Baroness May of Maidenhead why she had made that decision, and if she had sought legal advice about its impact. She replied, citing the “unimaginable tragedy”, but failed to answer our question. We wrote back: had she spoken to the attorney general, the Met police or the CPS about the potential impact? She

replied: “I set up the inquiry so we could fully establish how and why the fire happened and to learn the lessons to ensure such a tragedy never happens again.”

In January 2026 we asked the CPS and the Met and were told: “We were not consulted. We were told.” So we approached the then prime minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet office through freedom of information requests, and for a year were given no answers about May’s process.

This is not a historical curiosity. An answer would allow the families and the public to understand how one of the most consequential decisions in the aftermath of one of the largest homicide investigations in the country with large corporate and state players – including the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a government department and ministers of state – came about.

We are asking Andy Burnham to give the families something the system has failed to: transparency and answers. Prime minister, open up the files. Let the light in.

Now that would be a milestone.

Kimia Zabihyan is an advocate for Grenfell Next of Kin

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I did Manchesterism – in Liverpool Michael Heseltine

anchesterism was an appropriate title for Andy Burnham's speech in

M

which he called for growth in every postcode in Britain. I have made similar speeches, although they would appropriately have been labelled “Liverpoolism”. I have waited with anticipation now that, as prime minister, he is in a position to drive the devolution agenda forward.

I do not doubt his conviction. As mayor of Greater Manchester, he showed what was possible in that job, but half the country has no such devolved framework, and even in the metro areas, too much power is still concentrated in the Whitehall departments of central government.

I am all too familiar with the ability of those departments to create obstacles to any proposals that threaten their dominance.

When Margaret Thatcher gave me the go-ahead to create the Docklands Development Corporation to regenerate more than 2,400 hectares (6,000 acres) of derelict land in London's East End, they explained that it would require hybrid legislation, with all the delay that would have involved, because only one place was affected by the proposed law. I said we would take general powers to tackle urban regeneration, and asked for the second worst area. Liverpool got a development corporation too!

Faced with the responsibility to replace the poll tax with the council tax, I was told it would take the district valuer 10 years to complete the necessary valuation of every house. The private estate agents did the job without complaint in six months.

The search for a more effective relationship between the central government and the country at large has been a continuing debate since the 1940s. The Labour government created the new towns programme to cope with slum clearance, and then established the Redcliffe-Maud commission to report on the pattern of about 1,200 local authorities in England.

The recommendation that they should be swept away and replaced by approximately 60 unitary authorities was rejected by turkeys being asked to vote for Christmas in the corridors of Whitehall, and by the aldermen and councillors of England. I was the environment secretary Peter Walker's junior minister when we managed to reduce the number to about 300 in 1972, consisting of two-tier county councils, with a new tier of metropolitan councils in the big cities co-ordinating the urban

boroughs. I still carry the political scars accumulated in meetings with councillors whose world I was about to end.

It was in Liverpool in 1981, however, that my understanding of local government underwent a personal transformation. As secretary of state for the environment since 1979, I had inherited a special relationship with the city established by my Labour predecessor, Peter Shore. I felt my decision to announce the development corporation and the garden festival, the redevelopment of the Albert Dock, and to transfer the derelict land grant into city improvement confirmed this relationship.

In 1981, the NatWest bank was torched amid riots in the Toxteth part of the city. I agreed with Mrs Thatcher that I would visit the city.

What are you going to do about it, asked a journalist. I had noticed one common feature in all the many conversations I'd had. Everyone knew who to blame – and it was always someone else. There was no one in charge. I had produced a list of about 30 ideas that had struck me as potential opportunities as I walked the streets.

The General Electric Company could be asked to regenerate what became the Wavertree Technology Park on its doorstep; the housing corporation could unlock the cathedral precinct; and the Victoria and Albert wanted a new museum in the Albert Dock.

Who was going to make all this happen? I had learned that only as secretary of state did I have the power and resources necessary. There was just one answer. For the next 18 months, I spent a day every week running a taskforce drawn from the public and private sectors, making that list a reality. I believe it represents the most interventionist ministerial experience on record.

Burnham's “every postcode” demands a comprehensive national policy. He has mayors in

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I bear the scars of meetings with councillors whose world I was about to end

the metropolitan areas. He should legislate at once to convert the counties into mayoral unitaries, with the first mayors to be elected in 2027. He will have to confront the argument that counties do not always reflect economic reality. The best should not be allowed to be the enemy of the good. The project should be tackled with urgency.

The critical need to create wealth precludes the option and delay involved in creating a new class of authority. Each mayor should

be charged with producing a local economic plan and invited to bid for central funds, indicating what additional investment would be attracted if such funds were provided. This process would involve local companies, organisations, universities, quangos and citizens more widely in wealth-creation policies relevant to local strengths and the elimination of weaknesses.

There is no more money. The solution is to use existing budgeted funds more effectively. The experience of gearing is well proven. George Osborne top-sliced £2bn from the Whitehall functional budgets of about £10bn. I would suggest raising this to approximately £5bn and to distribute it to mayors offering the most attractive extra funding. Less successful mayors would learn rapidly how to improve their bids.

There is nothing new in these ideas. They have all been proved in practice. If the prime minister wants to fulfil another of his ideas and reach out across the political divide, he could invite Greg Clark to join his team and bring all his experience as a successful devolution minister.

Michael Heseltine was an MP from 1966 to 2001. He has been a cabinet minister and was deputy prime minister from 1995 to 1997.

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Keynes is my intellectual lodestar. Is a play about his life on the money? Will Hutton

James Graham's celebration of John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, brought a tear to the eye. Our resident expert separates fact from fiction

regard the economist John Maynard Keynes as offering the most original, insightful and best understanding of contemporary capitalism yet devised. He is my intellectual lodestar, whose thinking has informed all my writing. So it was with some trepidation I went to see James Graham's The Standard of Living, which depicts Keynes's life and ideas. Could the playwright with a genius for the popular get beyond Keynes's bisexuality and involvement with the Bloomsbury group? How much would he fall for the bastardised comic-cut version of Keynes offered by the economic and political right – “he was merely a tax-and-spend quasi-socialist” – but try from the liberal left to defend those propositions?

The play's foundational proposition is that Keynes believed that economics had to be the science that above all allowed people to live good lives. Is that right?

I left London's Theatre Royal Haymarket impressed. Graham gets Keynes and his paradigm-shifting importance – he stands alongside Einstein and Freud. Even if two-and-a-half hours of sometimes brilliant theatre, and a superb performance from Rory Kinnear as Keynes, inevitably leaves much unsaid. In the last few minutes I had to blink back tears. Here were unexpected allies from an unexpected quarter celebrating the majesty of Keynes's thinking – but, given his love of the arts, maybe they were the most fitting.

Emphatically, yes. Keynes believed passionately that the task of economics was to offer everyone the chance to live a good life – that money only served that end. His greatness was to break from the desiccating propositions of laissez-faire and offer the thinking and means to do just that.

He laid the foundations of the postwar national and international settlements that allowed governments to shape markets, especially financial markets, partner business as equals and create cradle-to-grave social security systems. For 30 years there was full employment and rising living standards. He delivered the promise of economics.

Yes. In his landmark The Economic Consequences of the Peace published in 1919, Keynes argued in scathing terms that the scale of the colossal reparations that the victor powers of the First World War had imposed on Germany were unpayable and could only lead to German hyperinflation, economic and political instability and ultimately a threat to the liberal world order the allies had fought to preserve. Hayek lived through the privations of hyperinflation in Vienna and admired that an English economist could so bravely condemn the Treaty of Versailles. What later divided them was Keynes's belief that free market capitalism has no embedded proclivity to find so-called "equilibrium outcomes" (ie all will be well for all) except perhaps, and unreliably, in the very long run. Thus the state has a duty to act. Instead Hayek argued the state, in the name of liberty, must never interfere in the market's attempt to find equilibrium, which it will unfailingly do despite any slump – eventually.

In the play the great free market ideologue Friedrich Hayek is portrayed as a superfan at the start and later Keynes's greatest critic. Was this really so?

Did Keynes really tell the parable about when an innkeeper accepts a £1 deposit for a room that is never actually rented but triggers a chain reaction of spending in the village that lifts business and morale?

Keynes used vivid examples to explain his thinking to the wider public, and it's often said he used this “parable of the pound” to explain the “multiplier” effect – that spending has a ripple, stimulating effect – a core component of his thought. As far as I know there is no hard evidence that Keynes used this example – on the other hand, Graham’s research is pretty good!

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Did he really score higher in psychology than economics?

He took the civil service exams before the First World War, and his poor marks in economics compared to his high marks in everything else, including psychology, stopped him from coming first. His examiners, he joked, must have known less about economics than him.

Graham portrays him as a gay man who solicited sailors in public loos and had affairs with the writer Lytton Strachey and the artist Duncan Grant. Is this so?

Keynes had many relationships with men during his undergraduate days in Cambridge and during and after the First World War, including with Strachey and Grant, both members of the Bloomsbury set. He kept a log of who he slept with and noted their sexual performance. And yes, he cruised in parks and public loos. If the great Greek philosophers could pay homage to male beauty, why not scions of Cambridge colleges?

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Did he really fall in love and marry a dancer with the Ballets Russes?

He fell head over heels in love with Lydia Lopokova. He loved

John Maynard Keynes, inset, in 1929. Below: The ballerina Lydia Lopokova, later Lady Keynes, pictured in 1931.

Rory Kinnear as Keynes with Natalia Osipova and Luke Cinque White in The Standard of Living.

Manuel Harlon

the energy of her high-octane dancing. Homosexuality was illegal at the time; the risk could make encounters with men transactional. With a woman, this was not an issue. After marrying, his log of sexual conquests ceased. Lopokova's love and care carried him through the next 20 years, including the period of his best work. Their big regret was not having children.

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Did he set up the Arts Council?

Yes. He believed great art enriches everyone's life – it was part of his moral universe that art should not be the preserve of the wealthy. The Arts Council was to try to bring that experience to every British citizen, and he was drafting its statutes even in the days leading up to his death.

In the play, Hayek is seen to be adopted by Margaret Thatcher, his book placed in a symbolic handbag. Did this happen?

Few economists rate Hayek professionally, but The Road to Serfdom is regarded as one of the great rightwing ideological rallying books of the 20th century. Markets equal freedom; the state equals coercion. Thatcher insisted that every member of her cabinet read it to underscore their commitment to ending the Keynesian-inspired postwar settlement. Tories sympathetic to Keynes were dismissed as “wets”. Despite the manifest failings of “Thatcherism”, Keynes has largely been in cold storage even since.

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At the end of the play, Graham seems to be saying that there is an inevitability that we will return to a Keynesian model. Is that true now in Burnham's government?

I hope so. Whether it is the “privatisation of capitalism” and the power of the bond markets, the unfolding of the “fourth” industrial revolution and the need to create a new “innovation economy”, the challenges of climate change or alleviating gross inequalities, we need the spirit of Keynes.

Capitalism will not find its own way to the best outcomes in the decades ahead. It will need, as the play argues, public action rather than inertia.

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Sunbeds cause cancer. It's time for social media to stop pushing the glow

Medical experts have become increasingly alarmed by the promotion of sunbed use via platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, overlooking the fact that sunbeds are a significant risk factor for developing skin cancers (“How social media helped make sunbeds dangerous again”, News, last week).

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and rates are rising in the UK. It is the fifth most common cancer in the country (and now the fourth most common for men), with more than 20,000 new cases every year. It causes about 2,600 deaths a year in the UK, or more than seven deaths a day, but nearly nine out of 10 cases are preventable by avoiding UV radiation, which comes from the sun or from sunbeds.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has placed sunbeds alongside tobacco and asbestos in the highest category of carcinogen. Young skin is particularly vulnerable to the risks; research has shown that a single sunbed use prior to age 35 increases the risk of melanoma by $59\%$ . This is why commercial sunbed use has been banned in countries such as Australia and Brazil, and Ireland's Institute of Public Health has recommended a ban.

Despite this, the sunbed industry and influencers continue to promote their use as a beauty trend, downplaying or ignoring the significant risk of cancer. Online aggressive marketing of sunbeds, often veiled as wellness or beauty advice, is deeply unethical. The disconnect between the messaging and the scientific evidence about UV dangers causes unnecessary risk, contributing to preventable cancer cases.

Another concern is the rising use of tanning peptides, known as Melanotan II, MT-2 or the “Barbie drug”, in nasal sprays and injections, which are commonly promoted and purchased alongside sunbed use. These products are unregulated and have not been tested for safety or quality. They carry significant health risks that remain largely unknown to users. Melanotan II is touted as a quick way to achieve a tan, but it can cause dangerous side effects and there are emerging concerns about its potential links to melanoma.

We strongly urge social media platforms to take greater responsibility in regulating content that promotes unsafe practices like sunbed use. Regulators must also take stronger action against misleading sunbed advertising and social media content promoting harmful behaviours. We await the outcome of the Department of Health & Social Care consultation on under-18s sunbed use this autumn and we welcome a further wider consultation.

Sunbeds have always been dangerous, but the spread of misinformation fueling their use, particularly via social media, is now a serious public health concern that requires urgent attention and action. Susanna Daniels

CEO Melanoma Focus

CEO, Melanoma Focus

Cambridge

health, care, education and the police. The job-rich infrastructure work that could occur in every constituency would range from tackling cracked pavements and potholes to providing cheap heating and cooling in public buildings.

The answer to this, which could also be the hope-inducing big idea that could unite progressive parties in the run-up to the next election, is a “social and green new deal”. This would entail making clear that “good growth in every postcode” means an increase in labour-intensive economic activity aimed at improving the caring sectors in every community, alongside the social and green infrastructure that communities need.

Most ambitiously, and most crucially for tackling climate change and high fossil-fuel energy bills, would be the electrification and improved energy efficiency of all buildings. These programmes would create a huge number of private-sector job and investment opportunities.

This must begin to happen at some scale in the next two years, spread strategically across as many postcodes as possible, so that by the election Labour has a chance of demonstrating what place-based improvements can achieve and of turning hope into tangible results. Colin Hines UK Green New Deal Group Twickenham Middlesex

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Letters

AI has been entering into our lives for the past 30 years, and is the chosen misnomer for codified human intelligence (CHI): the encoding of human knowledge, rules and decision-making into software. This is not the conventional definition of AI, but it provides a useful way of understanding the continuity between earlier software and today's more sophisticated AI systems.

What has changed is the scale. The application of CHI on a global scale is new territory, and it cannot remain almost exclusively in the hands of a small number of big corporations in the US, China or elsewhere.

Regulation of AI across the internet is just not possible. Despots and dictators are already using AI-enabled systems for surveillance, with serious implications for freedom of expression. The challenge is not whether AI can be regulated, but how effective regulation can be made across borders and applied to governments and corporations alike. Fergus Sweeney

Your pro-AI editorial (“The future of labour”, last week), with its trilling over UK tech “unicorns” and its demands that Andy Burnham not miss out on these “epoch-making opportunities”, fell short of answering the question in your title: what will be the future of labour? Something that worries so many people, particularly the young.

Nkechi Simms's powerful account of accessing her care records (“Careless”, Investigation, News. 20 September) shines a light on an important issue that affects thousands of people. Care records represent so much more than personal data, and trying to make sense of your own childhood should never become such a battle.

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A duty of care

Banbridge, County Down

We are pleased Nkechi was inspired by our Better Records Together campaign to pursue access to her records, but we are frustrated and disheartened that doing so led to such a traumatic experience. Sadly, it reflects what we've heard from hundreds of people. Most faced long delays, poor communication and, ultimately, unanswered questions.

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Implications of AI

This is a systemic problem, and organisations must do better. Providing people with their care records is the law. Records should never arrive late, without warning, or without appropriate support to help navigate difficult details. As the data protection regulator, we've produced new standards to help organisations get this right.

This would require adequate staffing levels in sectors such as

We are calling on every UK local authority and Health and Social Care Northern Ireland to commit to improving care records access, resourcing teams appropriately and implementing our standards so requests are met with care.

Regrettably, Nkechi's story is not an isolated failure. It should be a wake-up call to every organisation holding a child's care records today. By putting that child first now, we can spare years of pain in the future. Paul Arnold CEO, The Information Commission's Office Manchester

Humanitas, challenging “the cult of AI”. The truly shocking question she was asked at a Microsoft panel, “Is there anything unique or special about human beings?”, reflects the appalling state we have reached in our thinking about who we are.

Manchester City were beautiful to watch on the pitch, but they have been caught cheating (“Without

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Away days for City fans?

Does the fact that we have such dreadful world leaders (Trump, Putin, etc); predators like Elon Musk controlling so much social media; and evidence of the damage we are wreaking on the planet, contribute to such a nihilistic assessment?

integrity, without honesty, it's not a sport at all", Sport, last week). Demotion to the League Two for next season, together with a large points deduction for the remainder of this season (plus a huge fine), would be my suggested penalty.

How necessary, then, that a voice like the Pope's should be heard, calling on the imaginative capacity that we have within us to recognise the beauty of humanity and to act upon it. Can we hope that our new prime minister, with a degree in English literature, will call upon that faculty of imagination to find more truthful answers to our problems? Joe Unsworth

Newcastle upon Tyne

On the upside, avid away supporters would have the joy of travelling to every ground in the English Football League as the club worked its way back to the top.

Matthew Hooberman

Bruton, Somerset

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Ham tomorrow

Hanif Kureishi recalls a meal in Sicily made with “Tesco’s Finest clotted cream, which Isabella [his wife] had, absurdly, carried from London in her hand luggage” (“Sicily, or how I learned to stop worrying and enjoy lunch”, New Review, last week). It doesn’t strike me as absurd: my wife and I once packed some Waitrose Parma ham for a train journey from London to Italy – and ate it while travelling through Parma.

Maurice Waite

Appleton, Oxfordshire

---

Imaginative solution

FIVE GO TO RAF FAIRFORD

What a timely review (“The Pope vs the cult of AI”, New Review, 20 September) by Naomi Alderman of Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica

SAF

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For the record

\- In our O, really? quiz last week (Magazine, page 46) question three asked readers: “which 3D shape has only one surface?” One correct answer is “a solid sphere”, but there are infinitely more possible 3D shapes with only one surface, and thus a variety of different answers.

• In a leader (“Take more care”, 20 September, page 3) we said that research into the life prospects of care-experienced people had been carried out by the Nuffield Trust. The findings were in fact the work of the Nuffield Foundation, a separate organisation.

• We welcome feedback from readers.

---

Observers needed

Write to us

Letters, which may be edited, should include a full name, telephone number and postal address.

Send to:

Email letters@observer.co.uk (please insert Letters to the Editor in the subject field). Or write to us: Letters to the Editor

The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W1T 3LP

To be received by noon on Thursday.

● To request a correction or make a complaint please write to readers@observer.co.uk

Obituary

---

Peter Prince

Writer who ‘turned convention upside down’ and pre-empted Christopher Nolan with BBC Oppenheimer drama

D

Peter Prince wrote the screenplay for The Hit (1984), which Quentin Tarantino says is one of his favourite films. Caroline Forbes uring the final

televised debate

of the 1980 US

presidential

election, Jimmy

Carter was felt to

have committed a gaffe when he said he had asked his 13-year-old daughter's opinion of the most important issue at stake and she replied "control of nuclear arms". With the Cold War heating up, Americans preferred the more hawkish Ronald Reagan.

The next evening, the BBC began a seven-part drama, made with WGBH, a public radio station in Boston, that looked at the dawn of the nuclear age. Forty-three years before Christopher Nolan's film of the same name, Oppenheimer was a highly regarded biography of the father of the atomic bomb. Michael Billington described it in the New York Times as “the ultimate account of the scientist dealing with matters of private conscience and public morality”.

It was produced by Peter Goodchild, who worked for the BBC's science unit and had been editor of Horizon, and given its dramatic edge in a dialogue-heavy script by Peter Prince, who had been a prize-winning novelist at the first attempt before turning his talent to television plays, several of them directed by a young Stephen Frears.

Prince and Goodchild spent weeks in America researching the scientist, speaking to his academic peers, including Edward Teller, who would be played by David Suchet and who gave a passionate defence of the need for nuclear weapons. They also interviewed members of Oppenheimer's family to get an accurate picture of a complicated man.

The portrayal was not always flattering but it was felt to be balanced on both the man and the subject, presenting the arguments as they were made at the time rather than playing to a modern audience's views. Prince told Variety in 2023 that the actor Sam Waterston had captured J Robert Oppenheimer's complexity. "He was charming, conflicted and driven," he said. The series won three Baftas and Prince was nominated for an Emmy.

Peter Alan Prince was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1942, the son of a war correspondent for the Times who didn't see his son – “the little chap" as John Prince noted in his diary – until he was 18 months old, and was soon off again to cover D-day.

After Dulwich College in south London, Prince intended to study at the London School of Economics until his mother saw an advertisement for a scholarship that offered places at the University of Pennsylvania. He majored in history there, developing a love of American football and civil war battlefields, then took an MA at Columbia University before returning to Britain with an American wife, Beth.

In 1966 he went to Cambridge to write a PhD on the history of Sunday newspapers, particularly The Observer, but left without finishing it. He then worked

as a supervisor at an adventure playground in south London, which inspired him to write his first novel, Play Things, a comedy about the battles between an idealistic playleader and the criminal activities of the children in his care. Prince later admitted it was “a betrayal of the truth” but it received glowing reviews from the likes of Nina Bawden and JG Farrell.

It was while visiting his in-laws in New York in 1973 that Prince learned he had won the Somerset Maugham award for young novelists (Martin Amis and

---

His final novel was praised for its flamboyant use of filthy 18th-century slang

Ian McEwan were the next two recipients) and Beth was pregnant. Their daughter Rosa is a political journalist. Beth and he divorced in 1981 and he married Linda Romano, a television producer, in 1987.

The book's success encouraged him into screenwriting. He adapted Play Things for the BBC, which was directed by Frears and starred Jonathan Pryce and Nigel Hawthorne. He also worked with Frears on the TV plays Early Struggles and Last Summer, a drama about car thieves with Richard Beckinsale that one reviewer called “a miniature classic”. In 1975, he wrote The Floater, a courtroom comedy for the BBC’s Play for Today series that was favourably compared to John Mortimer’s Rumpole tales.

While he continued to write novels, his heart may have been with the screen. Susan Hill, reviewing the novel Agents of a Foreign Power (1977), called him “an original who writes as sharply as always” but said he was much better with pictures. John Sutherland, on Prince’s 1990 book, Death of a Soap Queen, said its “sharp turns” and subject matter would have made it ideal for television. Prince adapted his 1983 novel, The Good Father, as a film directed by Mike Newell, featuring Anthony Hopkins and Harriet Walter. His final novel, Adam Runaway (2005), was praised for its flamboyant use of filthy 18th-century slang.

In 1980, he worked again with Frears on a stage play for the RSC called Television Times. Four years later, they collaborated on a feature film, The Hit, about a botched contract killing, starring Terence Stamp and Tim Roth. Quentin Tarantino has called it one of his favourites, while Wes Anderson said it was the fifth best British film ever made, after ones by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed.

Frears praised his originality. "He was a clever, thoughtful man who liked to turn convention upside down," he said. "He was also very funny and wrote good jokes. Some of those television plays we did together got a large audience and deserve to be repeated." Patrick Kidd

Peter Prince, novelist and screenwriter, was born on 10 May 1942, and died on 22 September 2026, aged 84

My week

---

Bateleur eagle

There's only one form of true flight and I am its only true mistress. True flight is not about sordid flapping or,

worse, humans' deafening engines. True flight is the perfect glide: when I travel for 300 miles in a day seldom more than 30 metres (100 feet) above the ground while expending as much energy as a human does lying on a sofa.

---

Monday

I am the glide: the glide is me. My wings are almost three times as wide as my body is long. And look: no tail. Or rather not one that you'd notice; my bright red feet stick out beyond it. This tailless configuration cuts down on drag to a massive extent, and that's what makes possible the extreme gliding life. All it takes to

live it is immense skill acquired over many hard years.

---

Tuesday

Look at the young ones, my son, say, or my younger daughter. They look nothing like me. For a start they have tails – can't live without them, not yet. They're like young humans with stabilisers on their bikes: they need to acquire the basic skills and, crucially, their confidence in them before they fly like grownups. We take up to eight years to reach maturity, longer than most birds of prey. We have more to learn.

---

Wednesday

How do we steer without a tail? By banking, like a human on a bicycle. How do we maintain balance and control? Skill, experience and the

dihedral: the w we hold our wings in a shallow V. That

conformation is optimal for stability – excuse the technical language, but technique is my obsession, for without it I die. Should I wobble in unstable air, the dihedral makes for a swift return to straight, level flight.

---

Thursday

Vultures can out-soar us, circling in thermals to gain height until they're out of sight. Our edge comes from the perfect glide at low level

How do we maintain balance and control? Skill, experience and the dihedral – and low level means we're always first. Today it was a dying hippo and, as always, I had it to myself... at least for a while. I can't rip a hippo

open like a hyena does, but the eyes were mine. As usual.

---

Friday

Not that I restrict myself to dead stuff: I catch mammals as big as duiker antelopes, birds as big as a guinea fowl and, today, a hefty little monitor lizard. Eat and back to the sky: nine hours on the wing, and scarcely a flap all day.

---

Saturday

Bateleur is French for street performer. We got the name for our tumbling, courtship displays:

somersaulting, barrel-rolling, always a great moment. On other days we look more like tightrope walkers as we stroll across the skies, wings extended, tips flipped up and the occasional instantly corrected wobble. The first part of our scientific name is Terathopius: “marvellous face” in Greek. In all modesty, I have to accept they got that one right. Marvels, we are. The air is my sofa.

Lifespan Maybe 25 years

Eating habits Those who live and die beneath us

Hobbies Aerodynamics

Sexual preferences Other tumblers of the airways

As told to Simon Barnes

Profile

---

Claudia Winkleman

The Traitors host says she's ‘too thick’ to be a contestant. Friends beg to differ, writes Lily Isaacs

The 'Claudia Winkleiman' returned to screens across the country for the new season of The Celebrity Traitors, she claimed she'd never be able to participate in the show herself. "I'm too thick... I'm just being honest," she said. "I would just be too awful at it."

According to those who know her, this humility is typical of the woman with TV's most famous fringe.

“Claudia’s very bright,” said her good friend Kirsty Young, the former host of Desert Island Discs. “She never really wants to talk about the work; she wants it to be effortless. But it takes effort and ambition to do what she does. It is a beautiful illusion that she just walks on there and does that... she’s a grafter and she puts her mind to it.”

Winkleman has been on and off television since her early 20s when she was as a pundit on daytime television, giving dating advice and making even serious hosts dissolve into fits of laughter. She had her big break in 2014, when she began co-hosting Strictly Come Dancing with Tess Daly. They were prime-time's first female presenting duo.

"It might not be brain surgery," Young said, "but there's not that many people who can do what Claudia does... Those are rare talents, people who can be the beating heart of those big shows."

Winkleman was born in 1972 to the journalist Eve Pollard and Barry Winkleman, a writer and literary publisher. She grew up in Hampstead, London.

Pollard learned she was pregnant with Winkleman when she was woman's editor of The Observer magazine. In those days the paper didn't offer maternity leave, so she moved to the Sunday Mirror, where they'd never heard of a

woman editor with a baby. "We thought it might be interesting," she remembered the paper's boss saying.

Pollard and Winkleman divorced when Claudia was three, leaving her an only child, though she acquired a half-sister when Winkleman remarried and a half-brother when Pollard married newspaper editor Nicholas Lloyd. She has called her mother and father “incredible, loving, wonderful parents who never wanted me to be anything other than who I am”.

She lived mostly with Pollard, the daughter of Holocaust survivors who always kept a suitcase in the hall in case they needed to make a quick escape.

Winkleman said her mother was a “brilliant feminist”. From her, she learned grit and stamina. She recalls a memorable rebuttal when she asked for a Barbie doll: “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not what you’re supposed to look like.”

Winkleman's father, Barry, instilled in her a lifelong love of art. Every weekend he took her to the National Gallery, where he made a rule that they could only look at one painting. "It made me thirsty and hungry for art," she said.

She took art history at A-level, thinking it would be a good way to “wear fishnets, smoke fags and hang out with boys”, but fell in love with the subject, which she went on to study at Cambridge, where she also grew to love fashion and began to shape her signature bronzed and kohl-eyed look.

She was so dedicated to tanning, she said, that she filled her bedroom with a rented

Claudia

Winkleman

Born 1972

Alma mater

Cambridge

Work 30 years

of TV presenting

Family Married

to Kris Thykier,

three children

sunbed, and slept on the floor. Winkleman has since traded sunbeds for fake tan. Young said that in 20 years, she'd "rarely seen" her friend's natural skin colour. "She's mad for the tan." Winkleman is just as dedicated to art, though she keeps that more under wraps. Insiders at the British Museum, where Winkleman is now a trustee, said they were surprised by how involved the TV host wanted to be. The director, Nicholas Cullinan, said Winkleman had "a real passion for celebrating the work

---

'Those are rare talents, people who can be the beating heart of a big show'

of the museum staff. She helped launch our annual staff awards and has been closely involved."

Asked if she'd like to host an art show, Winkleman worried she would annoy viewers who know her as “the orange girl on Strictly”. “I’m not good enough. I wanted to, but I don’t want to give too many versions of me.”

Many versions of her have flourished. When then BBC One controller Danny Cohen gave Winkleman the Strictly gig, he told her: "Your fringe is too long. We all wanted to be a goth, right? But we grew out of it." Winkleman did the first show with a side

parting and a pink dress. "The worst of it was that the makeup was all natural. Awful," she said.

Her stylist, Sinead McKeefry, said that when she started working with Winkleman, she was wearing wrap dresses because “that’s how female presenters were meant to look”.

But viewers didn't need a toned-down Winkleman in order to love

Illustration by Andy Bunday

her. Her evolution in style has mirrored her confidence in herself – cementing her punky outfits, dark eyeliner and signature fringe in television history.

“Claudia is a stunning example of how to live your best life,” McKeefry said. “She doesn’t take herself too seriously. She’s taught me not to be too precious.” She has learned from Winkleman too that you can be serious about your job, but have fun while doing it.

W

inkleman quit

Strictly, with Daly, in 2025, saying: "It's best to leave a party before you're fully ready." The Traitors had come calling in 2022, quickly becoming the BBC's most successful TV show, with last year's celebrity final attracting 13 million viewers. Her brief interlude hosting The Claudia Winkleman Show merely affirmed her humanity. The show received less than effusive reviews and was cancelled after seven episodes. Winkleman said she had been "too nervous to enjoy it".

Young says people don't realise how funny Winkleman is. "She has the timing and the instinct of any properly funny person. She gets to the line quickly and she's not afraid to say it if she thinks it will get a laugh. However outrageous."

Young said she often told Winkleman: "You stand next to these men and you're laughing and applauding their lines but you're funnier than any of them, and it really pisses me off."

She's happy her friend has reached a stage where “people know she's the star”, but said Winkleman wouldn't wish for more fame. She “lives and breathes for her family”.

Winkleman married film producer Kris Thykier in 2000. "When I think of Claudia," Young said, "I think of her with her kids and her husband in her kitchen, with her dog."

She has three children with Thykier. In 2014, the Halloween costume her middle child, Matilda, was wearing caught fire at a neighbour's house. The then eight-year-old was badly burned.

"We couldn't put her out," Winkleman said at the time. "Her tights had melted into her skin."

Winkleman had kept her private life private, but she took to TV screens in a plea for laws on the flammability of children's costumes to change. Flammability testing has been obligatory since 2015.

Winkleman received an OBE in 2025, and this week's premiere of The Celebrity Traitors was the most viewed debut episode of any series on British television, ever. But Young said that even as Winkleman has the world at her feet, she keeps her dreams closer to home. "I know what she'd wish: that all her kids are healthy and happy," she said.

---

AI's monster debt problem could cause another crash, warns Enron short seller

Jim Chanos is betting against firms he calls highly leveraged data centre landlords. But the ‘creative accounting’ of key players is an even bigger concern, he tells Barney Macintyre

The short seller who famously predicted and profited from the collapse in 2001 of the energy trader Enron has said that the increasing use of debt to build AI infrastructure could become a systemic risk to the financial system by 2028.

Jim Chanos, whose firm has placed bets against Tesla, Wirecard and the Chinese property sector, said in an interview with The Observer that he was betting against “most of the neoclouds” – smaller companies that let out AI computing capacity – because they are “valued as tech growth stocks when, in fact, they’re highly leveraged landlords”.

Many neoclouds are former bitcoin mining companies that have borrowed heavily to turn to the business of buying AI chips and land for data centres, before renting the computational power out to firms such as OpenAI. Neoclouds including CoreWeave, Nebius and TeraWulf have all become targets for short sellers betting that demand for the assets they lease will fall.

Chanos isn't the only contrarian betting against AI. Michael Burry, the investor played by Christian Bale in film The Big Short, this week said he was “moving timelines up” with his short positions against AI behemoths Nvidia and Palantir.

More august institutions are also worried about the levels of debt now supporting the data centre build-out, and cosiness between the key players. This week the Bank of England warned of the risks of a “sharp correction” owing to the “rapid increase in artificial-intelligence-related debt issuance”. The co-head of credit at the private equity giant KKR said he doesn’t “think enough people are talking about the potential volatility if AI growth slows”.

People have been calling it a bubble since 2023, but investment in the AI trade is roaring. Micron, one of the compute companies Burry is shorting, has posted results showing quarterly revenues up 379% year on year.

But the costs are staggering. The consultancy Bain & Company estimates annual spending on AI infrastructure and its upkeep could reach \$1.5tn (£1.14tn) by 2031. Assuming this outlay amounts to about a quarter of sales, the market will need to reach \$6tn annually. And if that revenue fails to materialise? The share of US households with a paid AI subscription is only 2.2%, according to PNC. To paraphrase the activist investor Bill Ackman ahead of the 2008 crash: who is holding the bag this time?

---

Singularity or circularity?

A web of reciprocal deals between companies at the heart of the AI trade has given rise to accusations of “circular” and “vendor” financing – when a seller lends money directly to a buyer of its products.

Anthropic exhibits a co-dependent relationship with SpaceX. It generates a chunk of revenue from coding services delivered to Cursor, an AI-powered code editor owned by Elon Musk's company, while its single largest operating cost is a \$1.25bn per month deal for access to SpaceX's Colossus 1 data centre in Tennessee.

Details from Anthropic's IPO prospectus, leaked last week, failed to ease concerns that frontier labs rely on patronage. It shows 47% of its sales to customers came through cloud partners Amazon and Google. Chip supplier Broadcom has agreed to lend Anthropic up to \$42bn to finance infrastructure spending. The filing states “potential conflicts of interest” could arise from the deal that affect the lab’s ability to access compute.

Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp, said: “AI has proven its value to highly technical companies that use it heavily... The problem is 1% of firms can’t sustainably drive these growth projections. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic have made meaningful inroads with non-tech businesses.”

At the centre of this web is Nvidia which Chanos claims has “almost a monopoly-like vice grip on this boom”. He points to data that shows Nvidia made more than \$190bn in profits in the past 12 months, while at the same time ploughing \$83bn into “the companies that are their customers”. The company released a memo rebutting accusations of circular financing.

'The problem is that 1% of firms can't sustainably drive these growth predictions'

Ara Kharazian

Nvidia's CEO

Jensen Huang,

above, at its

2025 GTC AI

conference in

California. Inset:

Jim Chanos.

Josh Edelson/AFP

via Getty Images

"If something was to happen... Meta will [make the payments], but

A recent study by economists at the Bank for International Settlements found that between 2021 and 2025, nearly a third of AI firms' investment deals (by deal value) involved a target that was also an AI company.

---

A shadow economy?

Chanos refers to these as “Enron-like structures”, pointing to the example of a \$28bn deal to finance the 2GW Hyperion data centre in Louisiana. Meta and private credit firm Blue Owl set up a separate company to own the centre and borrow the cash. Meta promised to pay rent and cover any shortfall.

Anthropic and OpenAI have become such a furnace for burning cash that their funders – Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle – are posting smaller returns. And they are finding creative ways to take off that funding from their balance sheets. The Financial Times estimates in the past year big tech has erased \$300bn of AI exposure from their financial statements through “residual value guarantees”.

Circular dealing among AI giants

\*Neoclouds

systemic, but at the rate it's going, it probably will be by 2028."

they'll also take the data centre, and Blue Owl will be wiped out," said Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson. "That's the weak link."

This week Amazon launched a vehicle that would offload about \$8bn of advanced Nvidia chips to external investors to bolster its balance sheet. "One should always ask: if this is such a great business proposition, why are you trying to not show investors the numbers?" said Chanos.

---

The debt

AI's hunger for capital has been transforming debt markets since at least the beginning of 2025. Hyperscalers are issuing more corporate bonds, which investors buy as a way of lending money to a company in return for interest payments. This is affecting investor demand for the bonds of smaller companies – and even countries.

"It's really quite unprecedented," said Chanos. "The only thing we found that was bigger was the Chinese real estate bubble from 2010 to 2020. But that was an entire economic model based on debt. [The risk] is not

Last week Japan's SoftBank raised more than \$11bn in debt to finance investment in OpenAI – the largest junk bond sale in history. Goldman Sachs says investors have bought nearly \$200bn worth of hyperscaler debt so far this year. Kevin Warsh, chair of the US Federal Reserve, has noted that these companies are now directly competing for capital with a \$31tn market for US Treasuries.

“Using debt to finance speculative investments is always a bad idea,” said Luria. “It’s never worked out, and it’s not going to work out this time.”

---

The bag holders

None of this will matter if AI can prove its profitability. But one estimate by the economist Hanno Lustig suggests total data-centre revenue needs to grow at roughly 45% per year for seven years to keep up with expenditure. If that doesn't happen, hyperscalers may be partially insulated. "If OpenAI as a company doesn't succeed and Nvidia ends up owning those data centres, it can just provide that to another model company," explained Luria.

Yet Nvidia is clearly getting prepared for all eventualities. The company has in the past month held talks with insurance companies about products that would provide cover on loans to neoclouds. It's not a proposition that the cautious folks at Berkshire Hathaway seem likely to jump at.

---

What's the difference between a printer company and a global pioneer of quantum computing?

There isn't one, according to official data, and this leaves UK policymakers trying to build an industrial strategy blind to our valuable frontier firms

UK productivity has, even with recent revisions, been pretty dire in the past two decades. But one area where productivity

is booming is the invention of political phrases to respond to it. “Reindustrialisation” joins a list including “rebalancing”, “march of the makers” and “levelling up” that are no doubt politically expedient but more questionable in substance.

We're in this position because the part of the economy that we need to nurture isn't to be found in our national statistics. This isn't because of the quality of what is produced – although that is no doubt a challenge. It's because we don't even measure it.

If the economy is going to grow at anything like the rate we need, that expansion will be delivered by companies at the cutting edge of industry. Firms working in areas such as AI, biotech and quantum computing will create the inventions and innovations that will push our economy on. These frontier firms are the most productive part of the economy. On average, each of their employees produces 60% more than those in non-frontier companies, and they outstrip every other sector in our industrial mix. Plus they have a broader impact on other parts of the economy.

Because they sell around the world, they bring money into the UK. This puts cash in the pockets of workers, who subsequently spend it on high streets. New research from The Data City, which classifies frontier companies using the language businesses use to describe themselves, suggests the multiplier effect is substantial. Areas of the UK with the most cutting-edge companies also have more jobs in cafes, bars and shops.

Government ministers have in the past claimed that jobs created in cutting-edge companies have limited relevance for the “everyday economy”. That “ordinary” workers don’t feel any gain from these firms. The data shows the opposite. The frontier leads the rest. It’s important therefore that we can measure it, understand it, and assess how it is doing. Investors know the value

Median worker output

2025 figures of these firms. Frontier companies make up about 3% of all businesses, but have accounted for 41% of all equity deals and 56% of all the money invested via these deals since the start of 2025.

Frontier companies as share of all businesses

But here's the problem: you can't see these sectors in official data because there isn't a definition for them. The UK's standard industrial classification system was designed in the 1940s for an economy of factories, farms and department stores. This means the UK's latest unicorn company – Fractile, builder of what it says is the world's fastest AI chip – sits in the same category as IT support firms. Oxford Ionics, a world-leading quantum computing business, is classified with computer printer manufacturers.

This leaves policymakers flying blind. The monetary policy committee sets interest rates without knowing how the frontier is performing; the Office for Budget Responsibility makes its growth forecasts without knowing the trajectory of these companies; and the Department for Business and Trade has itself admitted that the SIC system “does not adequately cover many of the sectors” it is trying to support.

The result is catchy words rather than clear policy prescriptions for our economic malaise. It is unclear (perhaps deliberately so) which sectors reindustrialisation actually covers, but even were it more explicit, politicians still wouldn't be able to measure them – and you cannot build an industrial strategy around sectors you cannot measure.

So we're left grappling for answers as to why wages in real terms have barely grown over the past two decades, and why people are turning to populism at the ballot box. A policy for supporting better statistics is never going to get hearts racing. But if we are to find our way out of the economic wilderness it is exactly where we need to start. It's great to read about the frontier in news stories in The Observer, but we need to see it in statistical readouts of the economy, too.

Paul Swinney is chief economist at The Data City

---

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Thought we had bond problems? For beleaguered France, 'le spread' is only going to get worse

ANALYSIS

Ben

Zaranko

Economics editor

You could be forgiven for not noticing, given the relentless torrent of other news, but the bond market has had another bumpy week.

Long-term borrowing costs for the UK government hit 6% last Thursday

– a threshold last breached in 1998 – before falling back. US government borrowing costs rose to their highest level since 2002. Yet it was France that found itself in the spotlight, amid mounting investor concern over political turmoil in the eurozone’s second-largest economy.

Yields on France's 10-year bonds – the return investors demand to lend to the government – rose above $4.9\%$ on Thursday, their highest since 2002. This was part of a global bond rout, triggered by a rising oil price as reports indicated that the US is sending a third aircraft carrier to the Gulf region, and unexpectedly high European inflation, but France was singled out.

The premium investors demand to buy French 10-year bonds over safer German equivalents – often termed “le spread” – reached 1.5 percentage points on Friday. That’s the widest gap since 2011, during the worst of the eurozone crisis, when a bond market spiral eventually forced an intervention from the European Central Bank.

"It is logical for markets to go

Investors also worry that whoever wins next year's presidential election in France will make matters worse

after the weakest link, and we have seen a sharp widening in French spreads," said Mohit Kumar, chief European economist at Jefferies.

French finance minister Roland Lescure made reference to rising interest rates as he presented the details of the government's budget for 2027, which includes €43bn of spending cuts and reduced tax breaks. His government aims to reduce its budget deficit to around $5\%$ of GDP in 2027, against $6.5\%$ under unchanged policy, and down from $5.4\%$ in 2026.

"To reduce the spread between France and its main European partners, it's a question of credibility, a question of confidence," Lescure said last Thursday, adding, “we are capable of doing it”. The budget proposal includes savings from sensitive areas such as pensions, healthcare, sick leave and public sector wages. The country’s fiscal watchdog described it as “optimistic”. Students and public sector employees staged protests across France last week, raising the prospect that the budget will fail to make it through parliament.

Investors also worry that things will get worse whoever wins next year's presidential election: both the far left and far right, in the form of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, are riding high in the polls.

Looking beyond France's particular challenges, the rising cost of energy has been a key driver of

Firefighters protest in Paris last week as public sector workers strike before the budget. Thomas Samson/AFP, Getty

higher borrowing costs this year. Higher oil and gas prices add to inflationary pressure – especially in European economies that rely heavily on energy imports – and make central bank rate hikes more likely, which in turn leads to higher bond yields. In recent weeks, US threats of a diesel export ban and the possibility that Houthi strikes will disrupt shipping through the Red Sea have contributed to rising European fuel prices.

Concerns about energy prices add to, and interact with, concerns about stubbornly high government borrowing. France's level is troublesome but far from unique.

“We do not see any major economy taking steps to control deficits over the next 12 months,” said Kumar at Jefferies. “With 10 elections in Europe next year, our view is that the inflation problem will translate into a deficit problem, as most countries would be inclined to provide help for the cost of living due to higher oil and food prices.”

For Andy Burnham and the chancellor, John Healey, a key aim of this month's budget will be to navigate the pressure to provide households with “breathing space” without triggering a reaction that leaves the UK competing with France for the role of bond market problem child.

---

G7 bows to US diesel demands with ‘substantial’ release in 20 days

Jeevan Vasagar

Climate editor

Leaders of the G7 countries have agreed to release 100m barrels of diesel and crude oil from strategic reserves and not to restrict exports following US pressure to bring down pump prices.

The plan will include a “substantial” release of diesel within the first 20 days – bringing some welcome relief. Consumers and businesses in the UK are paying £20m more a day for diesel than they were before the Middle East war broke out, based on the average increase over the months since the conflict began, according to figures shared exclusively with The Observer.

The cost of filling up has now risen by £20.40 per visit to the pump for car drivers and by £327.51 per visit for lorries, according to analysis by the Transport & Environment UK thinktank.

European countries came under pressure to release more diesel, with the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent calling on Europe to “accelerate delivery on existing commitments and make additional supply available”.

The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, told reporters earlier in the week that most European nations had yet to draw down the stocks of crude and refined oil products they had committed to in a coordinated release agreed in March.

Prices were driven upwards by the threat of a US export ban in addition to war-related disruption, threatening a fuel that is essential for agriculture and road transport. An export ban by Russia, the second biggest global supplier after the US, has also restricted the availability of diesel.

Ukrainian airstrikes on Russian refineries mean that even if that ban is lifted, supplies will not come back on stream soon.

Diesel prices reached 200.01p a litre on UK forecourts this week, according to the RAC, surpassing the previous high of 199.09p reached in June 2022 in nominal terms. Adjusted for inflation, the 2022 price would be above 230p now.

The price rise has added a total of £3.4bn to UK consumer and business costs since the US and Israeli attacks on Iran in late February, according to calculations by Transport & Environment UK. The analysis does not include the latest increase.

Some sectors are harder hit than others by the diesel price rise. Farmers in Britain, for example, are shielded because they pay a lower rate of tax on agricultural “red diesel”.

The rate on red diesel, which is dyed to distinguish it from the more expensive kind, was cut to 6.48p a litre in May; other consumers pay tax at 52.95p a litre.

Diesel has climbed above £2 per litre at the pump, adding a total of £3.4bn to UK consumer and business costs.

Bus fleets in the UK are rapidly electrifying, with Coventry the first city to run an all-electric bus service and London aiming for complete electrification by 2034. But Britain lags behind European countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands in electrifying lorries.

Tim Dexter from Transport & Environment UK said: “A lot of the logistics sector is small to medium businesses that run off wafer-thin margins, 2% margins. Price rises like this have a huge implication. You have to decide whether to take losses or pass them on to the businesses that are your consumers.”

Dexter urged the government to prioritise shifting to electric cars and lorries. He said: “Doing so will insulate the country from volatile international fossil fuel markets and better protect the cost of living.”

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[0800 715 137 stannah.com | The minutes | Deals and earnings] Banks take £18bn hit over fears of new tax

The UK's four largest banks – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest – took a hit this week when £18bn was wiped from the value of their stocks. Speculation that John Healey will levy new taxes on the sector intensified after key lenders were summoned to the Treasury for talks, as the chancellor prepares for his first budget on 28 October. The Treasury has not revealed details of the summit, reported to be taking place on Tuesday. Trade associations and investors are divided on what higher taxes would mean for the UK's financial sector. The Trades Union Congress argues a levy on British bank profits could redirect cash to cost-of-living support, while finance chiefs warn a tax raid would threaten Britain's position as a global banking hub and undermine institutions' ability to lend to growing companies.

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The Observer business matrix

year on record for violent crypto attacks, with a higher rate of home invasions, kidnappings and hostage situations. Recovering crypto assets once they have been transferred is extremely difficult. Crimestoppers is offering a £10,000 reward for new information on the Solihull attack.

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Panicked investors find haven in Germany

Investors flocked to Germany and Switzerland this week in pursuit of a safe haven from market turmoil. As French government borrowing costs jumped to multi-decade highs (see page 41), German borrowing costs fell. Germany has historically kept a tighter lid on its borrowing, in part due to its constitutional “debt brake”, and is seen as a safer bet than its neighbour. Swiss borrowing costs also fell, and the value of the Swiss franc rose, fuelled by similar dynamics. “When debt risk in the Eurozone spikes up, the franc is always the preferred haven,” said Francesco Pesole, a currency strategist at ING.

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Sales boost for Greggs but job cuts loom

Greggs reported a 7.7% increase in total sales during the third quarter of 2026, and a 3.4% increase in like-for-like sales. The firm credited better weather with supporting trading conditions in August and September, and said that iced drinks – including new matcha and cherry lemonade flavours – had proved a hit with customers. The news for Greggs workers is less positive: the chain has announced plans to restructure its manufacturing operation, which is expected to lead to 740 job losses and the closure of several sites. Roisin Currie, chief executive of the bakery, warned that market conditions were “challenging” and that higher oil prices would feed through to distribution costs.

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[Hot commodity] UK soaks up savings with plug-in solar

British households are snapping up plug-in solar panels in pursuit of savings on their bills, as gas and electricity prices continue to rise. The government legalised plug-in solar panels at the end of August. The kits, which do not require professional installation, can each produce up to 800W of power, or as much as 20% of an average home's electricity use. Unused electricity can be sent back to the grid. The average customer can save as much as £150 per year, according to Octopus Energy, which reported that demand for plug-in solar has been so strong in the past month that it has had to restock twice.

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New car market keeps its foot on the gas

The UK's new-car market continues to perform strongly, posting its 10th consecutive month of growth in September, according to provisional data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. New car registrations for the month were $12\%$ higher than a year earlier. Robert Wood and Elliot Jordan-Doak, economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote that "another strong gain in private car registrations shows that consumers remain sufficiently confident to continue spending through the energy price shock". Battery electric vehicles hit a market share of $28.3\%$ – a strong performance, but still below the legislated target of $33\%$ under the government's zero-emissions vehicle mandate. The Jaecoo 7, nicknamed the "Temu Range Rover", was again the most popular new car in September, highlighting the UK's enthusiasm for competitively priced Chinese models.

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[Risk radar] Rise in violent crypto attacks on investors

Violent thefts known as “wrench attacks” that target cryptocurrency investors are on the rise. As the

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The coming week...

Companies

Monday: Meta, X, TikTok challenge Ofcom in high court. Tuesday: FCA annual public meeting. Thursday: Tesco results, PepsiCo results.

● Economic data/reports

Monday: New car registration monthly data.

Wednesday: IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva speech in Thailand. Thursday: speeches from Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, chief economist Huw Pill, deputy governor for monetary policy Clare Lombardelli and committee member Megan Greene.

value of crypto coins increases, reports of robberies to seize digital assets by force have spread across the US, UK and France, where there have been the largest number of attacks so far. A recent BBC report detailed a brutal break-in and attack of a businessman in the West Midlands town of Solihull. Thieves threatened to kill his unborn child unless he surrendered his digital wallet. Research group Chainalysis found that \$30m (£23m) was stolen in the year to June. It estimates that 2026 is likely to become the worst