PM will give a speech shortly, followed by a Q&A with the media
The Conservatives claim Keir Starmer is “not serious” about civil service reform. In a statement released last night in response to the overnight preview of Starmer’s speech, Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said:
Labour is not serious about getting Britain growing.
The prime minister has no plan to reform the civil service or cut public spending. Thanks to his budget the size of the state will reach a staggering 44% of GDP by 2030. Meanwhile businesses are being strangled by Rachel Reeves’s taxes and Angela Rayner’s red tape.
Key factors will drive the Kremlin’s decision. Can Russia fight on and for what? Or is there more benefit in allying with Donald Trump?
At this stage of the crisis, it is important to be clear-sighted. The US-Ukraine meeting in Jeddah was a damage-control operation. Both parties reset relations that had been damaged, largely by Washington’s impatience. The US reversed its previous decisions in exchange for something Ukraine was ready to provide anyway: privileged access to Ukraine’s natural resource wealth and a willingness to start a peace process.
It is encouraging to see renewed US-Ukraine dialogue to end the war. As Churchill said, the only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them. The public mugging in the Oval Office, calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator and the pause in military and intelligence support were hard to fathom. Ukrainians wondered why President Trump was putting the blame and the pressure on the victim, and protecting the aggressor. Trump’s “beautiful” deal involved bullying the weaker and reassuring the stronger. He finds it more natural to put pressure on allies, be it Ukraine or Canada, and relax it on adversaries.
Performing in Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist during A-levels was a lesson in low-art laughs and political anger that unites an audience
It was 1999. I was doing A-levels in Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the former mining community I depict in my TV series Sherwood. My comprehensive school was one of the biggest in the country, one of a very small number with a working theatre. I wouldn’t be doing what I get to do now without that massive bit of luck.
I started doing loads of acting, and the department decided to do the first A-level drama they’d ever done because there were about a dozen of us who wanted to keep going after GCSEs.
In skijoring, competitors ski or snowboard while being pulled by horses at full gallop. It’s dizzying and dangerous – but for these athletes, it’s not their first rodeo
At first, the crowd seems incompatible. It’s as if someone took a wrong turn. Cowboy hats and helmets, saddles and ski boots, belt buckles and snowsuits – those two types of gear aren’t usually cut from the same cloth. But this weekend in the midwest, at this year’s Extreme Skijoring event, they go together like “Minnesota” and “nice”.
The sun is beating down on the snow-covered track at Canterbury Park, 25 minutes from downtown Minneapolis, where fur and fringe fill the stands and old-school country blares from the speakers. It’s noon, but people are already taking shotskis. There’s a bison named Kidd Buffalo off in the distance, and the American flag beats against the wind.
A rider and skier compete at the Extreme Skijoring event at Canterbury Park in Shakopee, Minnesota in February.
How do you choose a design you will love for life? And what can you do to cover up an old flame’s name? Top tattooists, including David Beckham’s artist, reveal all
“My customers generally come to me for my style,” says Aly Sidgwick, a tattoo artist at Take Note in Edinburgh. “I do a lot of woodland creatures, like bats, badgers and birds, and also mythical creatures.” Trawling through designs on social media can be helpful in choosing an artist, if a little overwhelming: “Work out if you want something bold and bright or soft and subtle,” says Sidgwick, “then look online and see what kind of styles there are and who does those designs in your town.” Be prepared to travel for the right artist, Sidgwick adds.
The defense secretary has empowered his lawyer Tim Parlatore to remake the judge advocate general’s corps
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is expected in the coming weeks to start a sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The changes are poised to have implications across the military, as Hegseth’s office considers changes to the interpretation of the US rules of engagement on the battlefield to the way that charges are brought under the military justice system.
We would like to hear from people aged 18-24 about their childhood experiences with smartphones – positive or negative
We would like to hear from people aged 18-24 about their childhood experiences with smartphones and social media, positive or negative.
What approach would you take with your own children, as a result of lessons learned from your experience? Would you let them have access to a smartphone or social media, and how often? What rules would you put in place?
I’ve always believed the people are powerful. Now we know the world’s richest man does too
On Saturday morning, I woke up to a nightmare of notifications. On Sunday, it got worse. Elon Musk had tweeted and amplified inflammatory lies about me and Tesla Takedown, a growing national grassroots movement peacefully protesting at Tesla showrooms that I’m proudly a part of. Musk tweeted: “Costa is committing crimes.”
As a longtime local activist and organizer in Seattle, I’m accustomed to some conflict with powerful forces. The intention of the Tesla Takedown movement is to make a strong public stand against the tech oligarchy behind the Trump administration’s cruel and illegal actions, and to encourage Americans to sell their Teslas and dump the company’s stock. Protests like these – peaceful, locally organized, and spreading across the world – are at the heart of free speech in a democracy and a cornerstone of US political traditions. So it’s telling that the response from so-called “free speech absolutist” Musk has been to single out individuals – and spread lies about us and our movement. The harassment that’s followed his post has been frightening.
A new exhibition in Los Angeles celebrates the life and work of a painter who died at 37 of Aids as he tried to preserve a record of those around him
Taken too early by the Aids pandemic, the artist Larry Stanton created work for an exuberant, prodigious handful of years before dying in 1984 at age 37. Championed by David Hockney, whose work his paintings at time resemble, Stanton excelled in creating portraits of gay men that are at once guileless and penetrating.
Clearing Gallery in Los Angeles is presenting a survey of the artist’s work titled Think of Me When It Thunders, a reference to one of the last things Stanton said to his longtime lover, Arthur Lambert, while on his hospital deathbed. Trying to assuage the pain of watching his confidant and lover deteriorating, Stanton told Lambert to “think of me when it thunders.” The latter later lamented that “it doesn’t thunder every day.”
Briton ‘under no assumptions that it will be easy’
Hopes high at Melbourne for Hamilton and Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton has insisted he has nothing to prove and feels no pressure going into his first race for Ferrari at the Formula One season opener in Melbourne this weekend, with the seven-time champion simply revelling in what he described as the most exciting period of an already long and storied career.
Hamilton, who made his F1 debut in 2007 and is now entering his 19th season in the sport, will make his debut with Ferrari at Albert Park after six years at McLaren and then 12 at Mercedes.
Jack Draper booked his place in the quarter-finals of the BNP Paribas Open with a straight-sets victory over third seed Taylor Fritz. Seven successive games from late in the first set turned the match in Draper’s favour before he navigated a late stumble to win 7-5, 6-4.
Serve dominated the first 10 games, the British No 1 seizing his only break opportunity in the 11th game and serving out to win the set. Draper, seeded 13th in Indian Wells, broke twice more as he surged into a 4-0 lead in the second set.
Ryanair runner has a big chance to become only the second winner at the festival from across the Channel since 2005
While the Gold Cup on Friday revolves around the odds-on Galopin Des Champs and his bid for a third consecutive success, the Ryanair Chase over two and a half miles on Thursday is much more open, with live contenders from Britain, Ireland and France, and the prospect of seeing the bold front‑runner Il Est Francais tackling Cheltenham for the first time, with top-class opponents including Fact To File and Protektorat in hot pursuit, is one to savour.
Il Est Francais(3.20) was a clear leader for much of the way in the King George VI Chase at Kempton at Christmas before Banbridge reeled him in on the run to the last, and his devastating front-running success in the Kauto Star Novices Chase at the same meeting in 2023 was one of the best performances by a novice in recent years.
As energy firms race to meet challenges of storing power, critics worry about fluctuations in the depth of the loch
Brian Shaw stood at the edge of Loch Ness and pointed to a band of glistening pebbles and damp sand skirting the shore. It seemed as if the tide had gone out.
Overnight, Foyers, a small pumped-storage power station, had recharged itself, drawing up millions of litres of water into a reservoir high up on a hill behind it, ready for release through its turbines to boost the UK’s electricity supply. That led to the surface of Loch Ness, the largest body of freshwater in the UK, falling by 14cm in a matter of hours.
Suspilne, Ukraine's state broadcaster, reports that Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Odesa, and partially occupied Zaporizhzhia were the Ukrainian regions that suffered overnight Russian attacks. Ukraine’s military has claimed it shot down 74 of 117 drones overnight, and that Russia also launched an Iskander-M missile.
Russian media reports that Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, has arrived in Moscow.
Slyly investigating language and bias in media culture, this follow-up to Assembly confirms Brown as one of the most intelligent voices writing today
Should your social media occasionally present you with publishing-related content, you may have spotted proofs for Natasha Brown’s Universality on your feed last autumn. The excitement with which various “bookfluencers” clutched them was twofold. Brown appeared on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list in 2023, and Universality is the follow-up to her 2021 debut, Assembly, which saw her shortlisted for a Goldsmiths, Orwell, and Folio prize: its critical and commercial popularity has undoubtedly created a sense of anticipation for this next book. But alongside that fact was the feeling that the proof itself provoked as an aesthetic object: striking and slender, with its reflective gold jacket and spectrally engraved lettering. “Oh, it’s a book,” a family member of mine exclaimed on holding it, having been intrigued by what I was carrying around. It wasn’t an absurd response. Those early copies were fashioned to look like bars of gold, in reference to the fact that the first 49 pages are delivered in the style of a magazine feature about a young man who uses one to bludgeon the leader of a group called The Universalists, a faction of political activists (or squatters, depending on who you ask) attempting to form a self-sustaining “microsociety” on a Yorkshire farm during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It’s the sort of story that would set social media alight for days, or rather, as Brown wryly notes in the book’s second chapter, two weeks: “a modern parable [that exposes] the fraying fabric of British society”. Each detail is more eye-popping than the last. Both the farm and the gold belong to a banker named Richard Spencer, a man with “multiple homes, farming land, investments and cars […] a household staff; a pretty wife, plus a much younger girlfriend”. A perfect symbol, in short, of “the excessive fruits of late capitalism”. Jake, the young man doing the bludgeoning, is the son of a reactionary British journalist, Miriam “Lenny” Leonard, whose columns are designed less to provoke thought and more to go viral online. The Universalists themselves share DNA with Extinction Rebellion, and do just as good a job at polarising the great British public. At the centre of it all is that gold ingot, with which, post-bludgeoning, Jake absconds after police raid the farm. Hence the flashy proofs. Except – not really. Engraved on the back of each copy is a quote from the penultimate chapter: “Words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency.” After the first section the conceit of a magazine feature drops, with succeeding chapters told from different characters’ perspectives. We learn to read carefully.
To celebrate this significant milestone, our writer follows the flow of the artist’s inspiration, taking in sights that would have been familiar to the Old Master
For visitors in search of scenic walking routes, the province of North Holland is perhaps not an obvious choice. The landscape is famously as flat as the local pancakes and picturesque mountains, forests and waterfalls are in short supply.
Head into the countryside south of Amsterdam, however, and you can find lovely walking routes amid a quintessentially Dutch landscape of green fields, windmills and waterways. Walks along the Amstel River, which flows north into Amsterdam, also offer an opportunity to follow in famous footsteps. Rembrandt van Rijn lived for much of his life close to the river, was fond of walking its banks and produced some beautiful pictures here. With Amsterdam about to celebrate its 750th birthday in June, it’s a good moment to see the city from another angle, along the waterway which gave the city its name.
Former Philippines president filmed a video message en route to the Hague, saying ‘I will be responsible for everything’
Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has said he will accept responsibility for his government’s so-called “war on drugs” in a video message filmed on board a plane shortly before he was taken into the custody of the international criminal court (ICC).
“Whatever happened in the past, I will be the front of our law enforcement and the military. I said this already, that I will protect you, and I will be responsible for everything,” he said.
A ‘dog act’ isn’t simply ruffling someone’s feathers – it’s an act of betrayal. Caitlin Cassidy explains the meaning of the Australian phrase to Julia Hollingsworth.
Caitlin, this week Australia’s industry minister, Ed Husic, called US president Donald Trump’s tariffs on aluminium and steel a “dog act”. I grew up in New Zealand, a country so close to Australia and yet so free from the phrase “dog act”. Please tell me – what does it mean, and does it have anything to do with dogs?
Your nation has missed out on a truly scathing critique.
The documents would ultimately inform whether Musk has been operating unconstitutionally to the extent Doge’s activities should be halted
Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, have been ordered by a federal judge to turn over a wide array of records that would reveal the identities of staffers and internal records related to efforts to aggressively cut federal government spending and programs.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan’s order forces Musk to produce documents related to Doge’s activities as part of a lawsuit brought by 14 Democratic state attorneys general that alleges Musk violated the constitution by wielding powers that only Senate-confirmed officials should possess.
Video footage, described as ‘callous’ and ‘pretty dreadful’, shows Sam Jones grabbing the joey from its mother at night
A US hunting influencer who shared video of herself snatching a baby wombat away from its mother is being investigated for a potential breach of her Australian visa.
The footage, with scenes described as “callous” by the RSPCA and “pretty dreadful” by the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, showed the Montana-based influencer Sam Jones grabbing the wombat joey at night as it was walking with its mother.
Mauritshuis exhibition reveals how Dutch citizens hid in attic to avoid being taken to Germany in second world war
The 13-year-old boy answered the doorbell. “Tell your dad I’m here,” said a man, who stored his bicycle and then disappeared upstairs.
It was 1944, and right under the noses of Nazi command, people were hiding in the attic of The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum from forced labour conscription – Arbeitseinsatz – under which hundreds of thousands of citizens from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands were conscripted to work in Germany.
Kim Johnson tells parliament lessons must be learnt from poor treatment of children at institutions in 1960s and 70s
The historic injustice of a scandal in which black children were incorrectly labelled “educationally subnormal” and sent to schools for physically and mentally disabled pupils must be addressed with a public inquiry, an MP has said.
Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, is calling on Keir Starmer to bring justice to survivors and to also expose the long-term effects it has had in the education system.
At 18, Mustafa was told his only way out of prison was to join the regime forces. After 14 years, his past as one of Assad’s fighters could get him killed
Mustafa was 16 when he was detained and beaten by the police for the first time. It was early 2011, and the first stirrings of the Arab spring had grown into anti-government demonstrations across the Middle East. In Syria, a sense of anxious anticipation hung in the air, and the government was responding with propaganda films and TV shows designed to fire up nationalist sentiment. A friend of Mustafa’s hired him to play an extra in one of these shows. The job didn’t pay much, but it was more fun than the long hours Mustafa spent working in a restaurant kitchen. Tall and handsome, with dark eyes and long eyelashes, Mustafa dreamed that maybe one day he could join the long list of Syrians who starred on Arab TV dramas.
The youngest of three brothers and a sister, Mustafa had grown up in a crowded working-class district in the eastern part of Damascus. His father was a stern and conservative cleric, who would beat his children for even minor infringements. At 14, Mustafa had run away and a relative in another neighbourhood had found him the restaurant job. On his first day at work, it took him four hours to peel a sack of potatoes. Within a week, he could do it in half an hour. He soon began working two shifts: mornings in the kitchen and nights making deliveries. He worked 20 hours a day. Looking back now, Mustafa thinks of this as the happiest time of his life.
Projections suggest Merthyr Tydfil and Dudley could be won by Nigel Farage’s party – but how real is the threat?
“Labour used to be the party of the working class. I haven’t got a clue what it is now,” was how Richard, a retired welder, described his feelings towards Keir Starmer’s fledgling government.
That response would be sobering anywhere, but more so for the fact he was speaking as part of a focus group in Merthyr Tydfil, the parliamentary constituency of Labour’s founder and the prime minister’s namesake, Keir Hardie.
Luke Tryl is the UK director of the research group More in Common
The government’s move to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion policies is a naked attempt to appeal to prejudice – but it may well backfire
Almost a decade ago, I started a business called Rent-A-Minority, which enabled companies to hire a minority ethnic person whenever they needed an injection of diversity to boost their image. I had a variety of inclusivity-enriching hires available, including an “ethnically ambiguous” category and a selection of smiling Muslim women (guaranteed not to support Islamic State or your money back).
Like every good startup, Rent-A-Minority posted testimonials from clients and influencers on its website. I made up all the blurbs, because that is the Silicon Valley way: fake it till you make it. One of those fake comments was from Donald Trump, who was still considered a long shot for the presidency in January 2016, when my business launched. “When I’m president, I’ll shut this site down,”Trump’s blurb read.
The role has inspired the world’s best ballerinas and her story is as popular as ever – whether revived, reimagined or deconstructed. Dancers explain the appeal of Giselle
‘I thought I looked too healthy to play her,” says Miyako Yoshida of her debut in Giselle, back in the 90s, when she was a vibrant, strong young dancer asked to play the part of the sweet village girl with a weak heart. “But from the first time I came on stage, I could just live her,” she says; she simply became Giselle. Yoshida is not the only dancer, or audience member, or ballet critic, to fall in love with this 19th-century peasant girl. “It was always my favourite,” says English National Ballet’s Erina Takahashi, “emotionally you can explore yourself in such a wide range.” “It’s a perfect ballet choreographically,” according to veteran dancer Alessandra Ferri.
Giselle is almost the oldest ballet heroine to still grace the stage, created in 1841 by librettist Théophile Gautier, choreographers Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, and a young star ballerina of the day Carlotta Grisi. Through the decades the character has inspired legendary performances from some of the world’s best ballerinas: Galina Ulanova, Natalia Makarova, and more recently a startling interpretation from Natalia Osipova.
Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s drama about a teen accused of murder is astounding. Its dazzling performances, and the devastating questions it asks, will linger with you
In the late 80s, there was a trilogy of dramas by Malcolm McKay called A Wanted Man. It starred Denis Quilley and Bill Paterson and at the centre had the most phenomenal performance by Michael Fitzgerald as Billy, a man arrested for gross indecency who comes to be suspected of the murder of a child. The first instalment followed his interrogation by a detective (Quilley), the second his trial and the third its aftermath. It was, and remains, the most devastating and immaculately scripted and played series I have ever seen – as close to televisual perfection as you can get.
There have been a few contenders for the crown over the years, but none has come as close as Jack Thorne’s and Stephen Graham’s astonishing four-part series Adolescence, whose technical accomplishments – each episode is done in a single take – are matched by an array of award-worthy performances and a script that manages to be intensely naturalistic and hugely evocative at the same time. Adolescence is a deeply moving, deeply harrowing experience.
After months of speculation, the government will soon lay out plans to change the benefits system. Keir Starmer argues that the current system is ‘the worst of all worlds’. But with deep cuts to disability payments on the table, could the changes come at the expense of the most vulnerable? And will Labour MPs really be able to support this? John Harris hears from the head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation, Tom Pollard, and the Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
Many of us believe that cognitive decline is an inevitable part of ageing, but a new study looking at how our skills change with age challenges that idea. Ian Sample talks to Ludger Wößmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich and one of the study’s authors, to find out how the team delved into the data to come to their conclusions, and what they discovered about how we can all maintain our faculties for as long as possible
Ukrainian president would not be drawn on details of proposed deal and also steered clear of criticising Trump at press briefing
As journalists filtered out of the presidential administration in central Kyiv on Wednesday afternoon after a 30-minute press conference with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the general consensus was that he had not said anything that would immediately make for a dramatic headline.
That, it seems, was the point. Eager to show the White House that Ukraine is onboard for negotiations and not an obstacle to Donald Trump’s desire to bring peace, Zelenskyy seems to be trying to erase the memories of the nightmare meeting in the White House two weeks ago.
The Reform MP Rupert Lowe has been suspended from the party. What’s behind his feud with its leader? Eleni Courea reports
On Friday, the MP Rupert Lowe criticised Nigel Farage in an interview with the Daily Mail, saying Reform UK was a “protest party led by the Messiah”, and that it was “too early to know whether Nigel will deliver the goods” and become prime minister.
The next day, Lowe was suspended by the party. Reform UK published a statement making a series of allegations against him, including that he had made threats against the party chair, Zia Yusuf.
Islamophobia in Australia report details 309 in-person incidents between early 2023 and late 2024, with girls and women bearing the brunt of the attacks
Islamophobic incidents – including physical attacks, verbal harassment, people being spat on and rape threats – have more than doubled in the past two years, with girls and women bearing the brunt of hatred towards Muslims in Australia, new research shows.
The fifth Islamophobia in Australia report details 309 in-person incidents between January 2023 and December 2024 – a more than 2.5-fold increase from the previous reporting period. Verified online incidents more than tripled to 366.
The Australian is out to challenge for the driver’s championship in 2025 after helping McLaren to the Formula One constructors’ crown last year
He has the face of a child and the nutritional preferences to match, but nobody doubts Oscar Piastri deserves his place at the Formula One grown-ups’ table. The 23-year-old helped McLaren to the constructors’ championship with two race victories last year, and has emerged as a genuine contender for the driver’s crown in 2025.
Days before this week’s first race of the season in Melbourne, the chocolate milk-loving, chicken parmigiana-ordering Victorian isn’t tempering expectations. “It’s hard to not be confident when you’ve got the championship-winning team around you,” Piastri said at his latest sponsor’s engagement on Wednesday evening, for McLaren partner Airwallex.
Exclusive: Jotham Napat said pact must be taken ‘back to the drawing board’ and should reflect climate change as security issue
Vanuatu’s new prime minister has said his government intends to “revisit” a security agreement with Australia, arguing it does not reflect his country’s priorities including climate change and travel mobility for its citizens.
Jotham Napat, who was elected in February, said the pact with Canberra had to be taken “back to the drawing board” as he sought a “win-win situation” in a renegotiated deal.
The thorn that Carlo Ancelotti said was wedged in Atlético Madrid’s side remains buried in their flesh, deeper and more painful than ever before, never to be removed. For a sixth time they faced their city rivals in Europe – 2025 joining 1959, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 – and for a sixth time they were defeated. Utterly, perhaps eternally defeated. The team that lost one European Cup final derby after a 93rd-minute goal and another on penalties fell once more, and this time may even have been the worst of all, another chapter in the never-ending story.
All of which may sound a bit much for a last-16 tie but the pain accumulates, each loss crueller than the last, and if the final result was oddly inevitable, how it happened was unthinkable, even for a battle between these two. If Atlético didn’t beat Real this time, they may feel they never will. Just when it seemed that fate might have shifted their way at last, it twisted the knife again. “I go in peace,” Diego Simeone said after, insisting that in their silent, lonely moments Real will reflect that over all these years no one made them suffer like his team. Perhaps they will, yet they always survive, and here they did it again.
Polish research also finds increased risk of both sexes being overweight if married
Marriage triples the risk of obesity for men, but does not affect women, according to research.
Global obesity rates have more than doubled since 1990, with more than 2.5 billion adults and children classed as being overweight or obese. Worldwide, more than half of adults and a third of children are predicted to be overweight or obese by 2050.
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