↩ Accueil

Vue lecture

Home secretary rejects Zarah Sultana’s claim Labour failing to improve lives – UK politics live

Sultana announced on Thursday she was quitting Labour to join Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance

My colleague Lauren Almeida, who is running the Guardian’s business live blog, has shared the following:

Rachel Reeves has not given herself enough fiscal headroom to manage public finances, Charlie Bean, the former deputy of the Bank of England has said, and has to “neurotically fine tune taxes”.

About £10bn – that’s a very small number in the context of overall public spending. Government spending is about one and a quarter trillion so £10bn is a small number … and it is a small number in the context of typical forecasting errors.

You can’t forecast the future perfectly both because you can’t forecast the economy and you can’t forecast all the elements of public finances …. The forecasts are imprecise and there is no way you can avoid that. That is a fact of life.

In light of reports of atrocities committed by the Israeli government in Gaza and reports of the UK’s collaboration with Israeli military operations, it is increasingly urgent to confirm whether the UK has contributed to any violations of international humanitarian law through economic or political cooperation with the Israeli government since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

  •  

Transfer latest: Nico Williams signs eight-year contract extension at Athletic Bilbao

  • Arsenal had held talks with forward this summer

  • Jonathan David poised to join Juventus from Lille

Arsenal’s hopes of one day signing Nico Williams have taken a blow after the Spain forward agreed an eight-year contract extension to stay at Athletic Bilbao until 2035.

Mikel Arteta is a long-term admirer of Williams and Arsenal’s sporting director, Andrea Berta, held talks with the player’s representatives this year over a potential move. The 22-year-old had looked set to join Barcelona until this week. Barcelona, despite the sales of Ansu Fati to Monaco and Clement Lenglet to Atlético Madrid this week, have yet to satisfy La Liga’s financial requirements to register new players.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Vincent West/Reuters

© Photograph: Vincent West/Reuters

  •  

‘No other explanation’: children of slain Gaza doctor say he was deliberately targeted

Family of Dr Marwan al-Sultan says the Israeli airstrike ‘precisely’ hit the apartment block the cardiologist and his relatives occupied

The children of Dr Marwan al-Sultan, director of Gaza’s Indonesian hospital and one of the territory’s most senior doctors, said they believed their father was deliberately targeted in the Israeli airstrike that killed him on Wednesday.

Sultan died when an Israeli missile was fired into the apartment block in Gaza City where he and his extended family were staying after their displacement from northern Gaza. His wife, daughter, sister and son-in-law were also killed in the attack.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

  •  

‘The crosser Jeremy Paxman got, the more we giggled’: what it’s like to come last on a TV show

From scoring so badly at Eurovision it made Terry Wogan resign to having Paul Hollywood call your cake ‘tough as old boots’, here are the contestants who lost big on the nation’s favourite shows

We often hear about the people who win TV contests. As well as the glory of victory, they might earn an enviable cash prize, a lucrative record deal or a life-changing career boost. But what about those who finish last? Are they philosophical in defeat or throwing tantrums behind the scenes? We tracked down five TV losers to relive their failure in front of millions, reveal how they recovered from humiliation and share what they learned.

Continue reading...

© Composite: PR

© Composite: PR

  •  

Canada races to build icebreakers amid melting ice and geopolitical tensions

In an Arctic reshaped by the climate crisis, less ice really means more as countries face risks in push for more ships

For millennia, a mass of sea ice in the high Arctic has changed with the seasons, casting off its outer layer in summer and expanding in winter as it spins between Russia, Canada and Alaska. Known as the Beaufort Gyre, this fluke of geography and oceanography was once a proving ground for ice to “mature” into icebergs.

But no more. A rapidly changing climate has reshaped the region, reducing perennial sea ice. As ocean currents spin what is left of the gyre, chunks of ice now clog many of the channels separating the northern islands.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: US Coast Guard Photo/Alamy

© Photograph: US Coast Guard Photo/Alamy

  •  

Cocktail of the week: Síbín’s clandestine – recipe | The good mixer

This elderflower margarita shakes hands with a champagne cocktail, and then gives her a big sting in the tail

How better to welcome the arrival of summer proper than with a refreshing champagne cocktail with a spicy Mexican twist?

Guilherme Vieira, bars manager, Síbín Speakeasy at Great Scotland Yard hotel, London SW1

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Rob Lawson/The Guardian. Drink stylist: Seb Davis.

© Photograph: Rob Lawson/The Guardian. Drink stylist: Seb Davis.

  •  

‘The lawsuit was my life. Of course I’m writing about it’: Hard Life – formerly Easy Life – on being sued by easyGroup and starting afresh

When the Leicester band were forced to drop their old name after a legal threats from a certain budget airline, it could have been curtains. But frontman Murray Matravers’s trip to Japan has prompted a bold new outlook – and an upbeat new album

When writing songs, “95% of the time” Murray Matravers starts with the title. It’s a tactic he picked up from Gary Barlow: a producer once told him the Take That man tends to arrive at sessions touting a load of prospective song titles “cut out on little pieces of paper, and he’d put them on the table and you could just choose one. I was like: that’s fucking brilliant. Ever since I’ve always had loads of titles in my Notes app. It actually changed the way I wrote music,” he says with genuine enthusiasm. “Shout out to Gary Barlow!”

Names are clearly very important to the 29-year-old – but in recent years they have also caused him untold stress. By 2023, Matravers’ band Easy Life was thriving, having scored two No 2 albums on the trot by fusing upbeat, synthy bedroom pop with wry emo-rap. But that same year, his career came to a screeching halt when easyGroup – owners of the easyJet brand name with a long history of taking legal action against businesses with the word “easy” in their branding – decided to sue the Leicester band for trademark infringement.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Charles Gall

© Photograph: Charles Gall

  •