Kemi Badenoch has warned Tory members the Conservative party will cease to exist if they choose the wrong leader.

The shadow housing secretary said that “we have one chance to get this right”, telling members that the current leadership race is an “existential” moment for the party.

In an interview with The Telegraph, she said: “Assuming we can just do this [again] in 18 months’ time is not serious. There will be no second chance.”

Mrs Badenoch, the current bookies’ favourite to become leader of the Opposition next month, said she would be “Labour’s worst nightmare”, partly because she would nullify any attempts to portray Conservatives as prejudiced.

In a direct attack on her rival Robert Jenrick’s pledge to quit the European Convention on Human Rights and portray it as a Leave/Remain issue, she said: “Trying to recreate the referendum is not something people want to hear right now.”

Mrs Badenoch said accusations she is running scared of TV debates with Mr Jenrick are “hilarious”, pointing out that she is also accused of crossing the street to start a fight and “they can’t both be true”.

The leadership contender, 44, spoke to The Telegraph on the day that ballot papers were posted out to Conservative Party members, who will now choose between her and Mr Jenrick. The winner will be announced on Nov 2.

She voiced concern regarding conversations with colleagues who think that if they regret the choice of leader they can just hold another contest in 18 months or so.

She said: “If we get this wrong, there’s not going to be a party. There’s no second chance. We have one chance to get this right.

“This endless tossing out leaders as if they’re just disposable has been one of the things that has damaged the party brand.

“People want to see some stability and some certainty. This is not the time for more psychodrama. We need to get serious and I think members are very serious about wanting to pick a leader for the long term, and they are looking very closely at which candidate best represents their views.”

She added: “They want somebody who has conviction. They want somebody who has been consistent. They want someone who tells the truth and who champions and fights for conservative values. And I think that I’m the candidate who most represents what they are looking for.”

Mrs Badenoch said that for the party to hold another leadership election halfway through the current parliament would not only be a waste of time and money but would be “disrespectful to the country, to the members”.

The choice of leader comes at a time when the Conservatives face an “existential” threat because of the rise of Reform UK and the resurgence of the Liberal Democrats.

She said: “We are having our lunch eaten by everybody.

“If we lose a chunk of our party to the Lib Dems, they could become the opposition. So in the country, the Reform vote is critical for us to win back, but in Parliament the Lib Dems also pose a significant threat.”

Mrs Badenoch said the next leader needs to address the threat from both the Left and the Right and must be able to “represent the common ground”.

Worries about immigration are shared by Lib Dem voters as well as those who backed Reform and the Conservatives, she argued, as are the importance of family, personal responsibility and personal freedoms.

Mrs Badenoch said Reform UK, which is more popular than the Conservatives among under-35s, had attracted the youth vote because “young people like the new thing”, adding: “We have to be that new, exciting thing again. We have to be the ones who are offering hope.”

‘It’s about the mission’

If the bookmakers are right, Mrs Badenoch will be the fourth female leader of the Conservative Party and the first black leader of any mainstream party in the UK when the result of the leadership race is announced on Nov 2.

But Mrs Badenoch is focused on being “Labour’s worst nightmare” if she becomes leader of the Conservative Party.

The shadow housing secretary believes she knows Labour’s weak points better than Mr Jenrick and that her ethnicity will make it harder for Sir Keir Starmer to portray people on the Right as prejudiced.

As the Tory leadership race enters its final three weeks, Mrs Badenoch said it was an honour to be compared by some colleagues with Margaret Thatcher, but insisted: “I need to be my own person.”

She is anxious to get past personality politics and persuade the Conservative Party it needs a wholesale rethink of its plan to transform the country.

“I don’t want anyone to assume that this campaign is all about my personality,” she says. “It’s why my campaign is not called Kemi for leader. It’s called Renewal 2030. It’s about the mission.”

That mission is a return to traditional conservative values, which in her view have been eroding as successive Tory governments have given too much ground to the Left.

Asked to define conservatism, she says: “Conservatism, for me, is about personal responsibility, a belief in individuals, in families, to have more control and freedom over their lives, rather than the government making all of the decisions for them.

“There is a place for government, but government should do the things that only government can do very well, rather than getting involved in everything and doing everything badly.”

It is a message Mrs Badenoch has been taking round the country as she and Mr Jenrick continue an almost endless odyssey of constituency associations, talking to party members and fighting for every vote in a race that is shaping up to be much closer than others in recent memory.

As we speak, she is meeting members of South Northamptonshire Conservative Association, which was retained for the Tories by Sarah Bool at the general election after its previous MP, Dame Andrea Leadsom, stood down.

The venue for their event is the sprawling Whittlebury Park hotel and spa, which is within earshot of the Silverstone motor racing circuit. Golfers and well-heeled country types wander through its corridors, passing ladies in towelling robes fresh from their Balinese massages.

Mrs Badenoch has no time in her schedule for such relaxing pursuits as she is off to Nottinghamshire as soon as her event here is wrapped up.

Supporters of Mrs Badenoch argue only she can offer the sort of change that the Tories need to shake them out of their current torpor and that Mr Jenrick will be seen by the public, fairly or unfairly, as more of the same.

Will she be Labour’s worst nightmare?

“The team that I’m putting together will be Labour’s worst nightmare, not just me,” she says.

“I understand them better than they realise. I know where their weak points are. I know that they do not start with principles, or certainly, they don’t have the same principles that we do.

“You look at what they’ve done with VAT on private schools. It’s a tax on aspiration. They don’t believe in aspiration, we do.

“They assume that everyone in the country is like them, and that is not the case. You look at what happened on race, where they tried to paint the UK as a racist country, and a lot of people wanted just to just let them get away with it.

“I stood firm on that, and I also exposed a lot of their hypocrisy. They want to paint people on the Right as being prejudiced, and they know that with me there, they will be unable to make that case convincingly.”

She laughs at the fact Labour portrays itself as a meritocracy. “They’re still congratulating themselves for having the first female chancellor, pretending that this is the world’s greatest achievement when we’ve had three women [prime ministers] in our party, including one before Rachel Reeves was born.”

Mrs Badenoch, who is firmly on the Right of the party, has been compared by some of her colleagues with Mrs Thatcher – and even described as her natural heir.

“It’s the people who make the comparisons that are interesting,” she says.

“People who actually knew her. Rocco Forte, who is a great businessman. David Davis. People who knew her make that comparison.

“I think it would be presumptuous for me to make that comparison. She is an idol of mine, and I remember growing up when people would make derogatory statements about ‘women can’t do this, women can’t do that’. And you’d just say two words: Margaret Thatcher, and it would shut them up. And I would love to have that effect.

“If I could do what she did for this country, turning it around after the socialist nonsense which we had experienced, that would be amazing. It is an honour to be compared to her, but I would never make that comparison. And at the end of the day, I think I need to be my own person, so I admire her, but I am Kemi. I’m a different person.”

Mrs Badenoch, who was born in Wimbledon but grew up in Nigeria before returning to the UK aged 16, says her job if she becomes leader will be to restore trust in the Conservative Party, and to define what the party stands for.

She believes that the failings of the past 14 years include allowing a bloated university sector to grow out of all proportion to the economy’s need for graduates, and wants to significantly reduce the number of students and axe pointless degrees.

A 40-page pamphlet titled Conservatism in Crisis, to which she has written the foreword and which she says sets out the problems that the country needs to tackle, states that since 1990 the number of people graduating from university has risen from 77,000 a year to 750,000, while postgraduates have gone from 31,000 to 493,000 in the same period.

“It cannot be right that we are sending people to do degrees where they can’t get jobs,” she says. “They’re coming out with a lot of debt, and we then wonder why we don’t have people in work.”

She is aware that she could be accused of hypocrisy, having completed an undergraduate degree and a masters degree in engineering, but points out that she also undertook an apprenticeship before university, making her well qualified to make a comparison.

“I can’t remember three quarters of my engineering degree,” she says. “The apprenticeship I still remember, and that influences a lot of my thinking, the practical skills I got from that I use much more than a lot of the theory which I learnt.

“The number of graduate jobs that we have are not enough to sustain the number of people going to university.”

Mrs Badenoch says the rise of what might be termed the higher education blob feeds into other issues, such as immigration, because of the number of visas being granted to foreign students on whose cash universities increasingly rely, but also home ownership, as student debt is affecting young people’s ability to afford their own homes.

It is for this reason, she says, that Mr Jenrick’s pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights “isn’t radical enough” in and of itself. Instead, she says, a much wider rethink of the economy and the structures on which it is built is needed.

She says: “If we need to leave the ECHR we should do, but we’re not in government right now.

“I think a lot of people forget that we are out for five years. I want us to have a plan that’s going to work in five years time, not a plan that maybe we should have done last year.”

She adds: “I have demonstrated that I’m not playing catch up in showing people who I am. I’m not fattening the pig on market day. I have been working every day to champion conservative values.”

Mr Jenrick has grabbed headlines by saying he would make Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg party chairman if he became leader, and would bring back the likes of Penny Mordaunt, though Ms Mordaunt has suggested she would not want to work for him.

Mrs Badenoch says she would love to see many of the former MPs come back, but that offering jobs, especially publicly, is “disrespectful to the people who are in those jobs at the moment”. She says she is “not presumptuous about getting this [role]”.

Would she bring Boris Johnson back?

“I’m very much about the future,” she says diplomatically.

“He is a former MP. If there’s an association that thinks that he would be a great MP for them I think that he should be allowed to stand there. But I am not recruiting former prime ministers to say please come back. I’m trying to make sure that we are talking about the future and drawing a line under the last 14 years.”

Mrs Badenoch and Mr Jenrick will face each other in a TV debate on GB News later this month, but as things stand there will not be any other such events. Mr Jenrick says he will debate his rival “any place, any time” and has accused Mrs Badenoch of running scared, saying she is finding reasons not to do more TV debates.

She laughs when the subject is raised. “I’m not blocking any debates,” she says.

“This whole thing is hilarious. People say, ‘Kemi crosses the road to have a fight,’ and, ‘Oh, Kemi is running scared.’ They can’t both be true. It just feels like there’s a lot of mud being thrown at me, and I think people should ask why all the mud is being thrown in one direction.”

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of diluting Britain’s global influence by proposing to increase the number of permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, said Britain would push to reform the council by adding permanent representation from Africa, Brazil, India, Japan and Germany.

That would double the current permanent members, which comprises China, France, Russia, the UK and the US, although it also includes 10 non-permanent members who are elected for two-year terms by the UN General Assembly.

“We will advocate for reform of the Security Council, to ensure that those with seats at the top table truly represent the global community,” he said in a lecture to the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law.

They mirror similar proposals advocated by James Cleverly when he was foreign secretary and called for reform of the UN Security Council.

The council is the UN body charged with maintaining international peace and security. It has responsibility for determining where UN peacekeeping troops should be deployed.

But Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Tory leader, said it would be a mistake to widen membership further as it would be seen as a “dramatic weakening” of the UK’s foreign policy following the decision to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

He feared it would play into the hands of Russia and China which have forged close relations with some of the proposed new permanent members. China has become India’s and Africa’s biggest trading partner and is increasing investment in Brazil, with financing for oil exploration and repairing railways.

Russia has sought to gain influence across Africa in recent years and has emerged as the security partner of choice for a growing number of African governments. India and Russia have forged a special relationship with increased cooperation across security, defence, trade, science and technology.

Sir Iain said: “China and Russia would be the net beneficiaries as they are hugely allied with the wider list of countries. With the exception of Germany that would be a disaster for the free world. It is utterly naive and dangerous.”

Grant Shapps, the former defence secretary, said: “First they surrendered the Chagos Islands in the British Indian Overseas Territory, and now they want to dilute Britain’s influence at the United Nations.

“When Sir Keir Starmer told us he’d bring change, he failed to mention it would involve shrinking Britain’s global responsibilities.”

Labour hit back at the criticism, pointing out that Mr Cleverly had advocated a similar expansion when he was foreign secretary, with the same countries.

A source close to David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, said: “That was a government that Grant Shapps served in and he supported that policy. His comments are a bit absurd. They should have raised their objections to UK government policy when they were in government.”

General Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary, set out plans to increase permanent members of the Security Council in a 2005 report, In Larger Freedom. It set out two models. One added six new permanent seats and three two-year term elected seats. The second would create a new category of eight seats, renewable every four years.

However, reform has stalled because of the failure to secure agreement on which and how many countries could be added. Each of the five permanent members currently have a right to veto a resolution, unlike the 10 elected members who serve two-year non-consecutive terms.

Tim Loughton, former Conservative minister, favoured more fundamental reform of what was an “anachronistic” structure where just five members could veto motions that might be critical of one of them.

“Nobody is ever going to agree who the permanent members should be, in which case should we have any permanent members at all,” he said.

Not saying hello to a colleague could break employment laws, a tribunal has suggested.

The ruling came in the case of a recruitment manager who won an unfair dismissal claim after complaining that her managing director refused to say hello to her.

Nadine Hanson had greeted Andrew Gilchrist, her new boss, three times when she arrived for work in September 2023 but was deliberately ignored every time, the employment tribunal heard.

Mr Gilchrist, 62, was angry at Ms Hanson because he thought she was late when in fact she had been at a medical appointment.

Ms Hanson won her claim and Employment Judge Sarah Davies concluded that his behaviour was “unreasonable”.

“That is conduct, from the owner and director of the new employer, that is calculated or likely to undermine trust and confidence,” she said. “While it might not, by itself, be a fundamental breach of contract, it was capable of contributing to such a breach.”

Mr Gilchrist had just taken over as managing director of Interaction Recruitment, which had 30 offices in England at the time. The firm had acquired another recruitment company, which was not named in proceedings, where Ms Hanson was northern regional operations manager.

Mr Gilchrist travelled to Scunthorpe, in Lincs, to meet Ms Hanson and two employees who she managed. The tribunal, in Leeds, found that after a “get to know you” meeting of less than an hour, Mr Gilchrist formed an unwarranted “snap judgment” of Ms Hanson that she was not pulling her weight.

Days later, he made an unannounced visit to the firm’s offices in the town and arrived before Ms Hanson, who was at an appointment.

“It was a busy day because they had arranged for a number of candidates to come in and be interviewed,” the tribunal judgment said. “There were about eight candidates filling in forms when [she] arrived. [Ms Hanson’s] evidence is that she said good morning to Mr Gilchrist three times, but he ignored her.”

Mr Gilchrist claimed at the tribunal that he “could not remember” whether he said hello because it was busy, but said he believed that he said “hello to everyone”. The tribunal found his evidence to be “wholly unconvincing”.

Mr Gilchrist then told Ms Hanson to go into a meeting room, where he pushed her phone out of the way as she attempted to show him proof of her appointment.

“He said, ‘I suggest if you don’t want to be here that you leave’,” the tribunal report continued. “She replied that ‘after 20 years of working for the company, the only way I will be leaving is if you make me redundant’.”

The tribunal heard that within an hour of the meeting, Mr Gilchrist sent an email to her two direct reports giving them a pay rise.

Judge: Not hearing greeting was ‘implausible’

Ms Hanson said she was “humiliated” because she was not informed. In October 2023, Ms Hanson handed in her eight-week notice, saying she had been made to feel “undervalued”.

She was signed off work with anxiety during her notice period because of how she was treated by Mr Gilchrist. But he withheld her sick pay because he thought she was faking it.

Judge Davies ruled in favour of her claims of unfair dismissal and unauthorised deduction of pay. She said it was “implausible” that Mr Gilchrist did not hear Ms Hanson’s greeting and that he “deliberately” ignored her before launching “straight into criticism” of her.

“When she told him that the only way she was going was if she was made redundant, he determined that she had no future with the business,” she said. “That is why he offered pay rises to her staff members within an hour and without discussing it with her.

“The situation was not that urgent … He simply did not want [Ms Hanson] there any more.”

Ms Hanson is now in line to receive compensation from Interaction Recruitment. The amount will be determined at a later date.

Sir Keir Starmer met with Taylor Swift after the decision was taken to grant her a royal-style police escort, No 10 sources have confirmed.

The Prime Minister had a 10-minute meeting with the US pop star in Wembley when he attended her final UK concert on Aug 20.

It came after Sue Gray, his then-chief of staff, was involved in talks to secure the singer VIP security protection, against usual police protocols.

The admission will drag Sir Keir into the row over whether ministers and No 10 applied undue pressure on Scotland Yard to provide the escort.

Downing Street rejected Tory calls for the Cabinet Office to launch an independent inquiry into claims of impropriety.

No 10 was earlier forced to deny that the tickets, provided by the singer’s Universal Music record label, had been a “thank you” for sorting the police escort.

Downing Street sources said that Sir Keir spoke with Swift and her mother Andrea, who is also her agent, about the Southport murders.

They insisted nobody at the meeting brought up the discussions around her security arrangements which had threatened to derail the UK tour.

Swift’s mother is reported to have threatened to call off a series of shows unless her daughter was provided with a blue-light escort through London.

The singer had been forced to cancel several concerts in Vienna weeks earlier because of the threat of an Islamist terror attack.

Scotland Yard was reluctant to sign off on the protection, which is highly expensive and is usually reserved for senior politicians and members of the Royal family.

The force is said to have concluded that there was no significant threat related to the shows.

Labour politicians including Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, and Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, are claimed to have put pressure on the force.

Ms Gray, who was then Sir Keir’s chief of staff, is also reported to have become involved in the discussions with senior Met officers.

Scotland Yard eventually relented after asking Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, for legal advice on whether it could break with normal protocol.

Downing Street insisted on Tuesday that the decision on providing security had been made by the Met who were “very clear that they are operationally independent”.

Sir Keir’s spokesman said: “Their decision-making is based on a thorough assessment of threat, risk, harm and circumstances in each case.

“But we have said that more broadly, you would expect the Government, the police, the Mayor of London, to be involved in planning events of this size in the capital to ensure that the public is kept safe.

“The context is that these concerts took place just days after a planned terrorist attack, resulting in the cancellation of concerts in Vienna.”

Asked whether the tickets to the Aug 20 concert were a “thank you” for sorting the VIP escort, he replied: “I completely reject that characterisation.”

It comes after the Cabinet Office rebuffed demands that it open an investigation into whether ministers acted improperly over Swift’s security.

Susan Hall, the London Tories’ spokesman on policing, wrote to Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, calling for the independent inquiry.

“The actions reportedly taken by the Home Secretary, the Mayor of London and the Attorney General have very clearly undermined this independence and unfairly placed the Met in a difficult position,” she wrote.

“It is highly concerning to me that senior Labour politicians in positions of power and responsibility have sought to create this worrying precedent for future policing matters.

“Given that two of the three politicians involved subsequently accepted free tickets to Taylor Swift’s concerts, it is right and proper that the Cabinet Office now opens a full investigation into this matter.”

The Telegraph understands that the Cabinet Office will refuse the request, arguing that the Met made its decision independently of the Government.

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British Army, has died at the age of 80.

The former Chief of the General Staff led the British Army in Iraq and commanded troops in Kosovo, where he refused to start a “Third World War” with Russia.

Gen Sir Mike served as head of the Army between 2003 and 2006, during the Iraq War, and was hailed as “tremendous” and “inspirational” last night.

In a statement, the British Army said “Jacko” would be “long remembered”.

“It is with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of Gen Sir Mike Jackson GCB, CBE, DSO, on Oct 15 surrounded by his family,” the statement said.

“General ‘Jacko’ served with distinction for over 40 years, finishing his career as Chief of the General Staff.”

“He will be greatly missed, and long remembered. Utrinque Paratus.”

A soldier’s soldier

Dan Jarvis, the security minister, who formerly served in the Parachute Regiment and was aide to camp to Gen Sir Mike, called him a “soldier’s soldier”, describing him as “an outstanding, inspirational and charismatic leader and a true airborne legend”.

Lt Col Edward Green, Britain’s defence attache to Kosovo, said he was a “legendary figure” in the Army who will be “long remembered here in Kosovo”.

Over an illustrious career, Gen Sir Mike became known as “The Prince of Darkness” for his cool manner and gravel voice.

Maj Andrew Fox, a former company commander in the Parachute Regiment, paid tribute, saying: “I am so very sorry to learn of the passing of Gen Sir Mike Jackson.

“A glare and a voice like gravel, who at ten yards could skewer a mid-level officer who had been asked to read out a contentious letter from the RSM at a regimental charity meeting. And yes, that is oddly specific.

“But also a tremendous capacity for drinking every other man in the mess under the table, and a wicked sense of humour. My honour to have spent time in his company on a couple of occasions.”

Gen Sir Mike was immensely popular with troops as a hard but fair commander known for his uncompromising style.

Air Vice-Marshal Mick Smeath, the Commandant General of the RAF Regiment, said: “Very sad to hear of the passing of Gen Sir Mike Jackson.

“One of the most inspirational officers I have had the privilege to serve under. Rest in peace Sir.

Born on March 21 1944 into a military family, Gen Sir Mike was educated at Stamford School and graduated from Sandhurst in 1963.

He was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, where he learned Russian at the height of the Cold War before transferring to the Parachute Regiment in 1970.

As adjutant of its 1st Battalion, he was present on Bloody Sunday in January 1972 when paratroopers shot and killed 13 Roman Catholic men during a civil rights march in Londonderry.

He made a “fulsome apology” for the shootings in 2011 after the publication of the Saville Inquiry’s report, saying the men had been killed “without justification”.

Gen Sir Mike served on two further tours of Northern Ireland, his second as a company commander in the late 1970s – where he witnessed the carnage of the IRA’s 1979 Warrenpoint massacre – and the third as a brigade commander in the early 1990s.

He also served in Berlin, Germany, and as commander of the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Bosnia between 1995 and 1996.

He went on to command Nato’s ACE Rapid Reaction Corps from 1997 to 2000, taking command of the Kosovo Force in 1999 which stopped the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the country.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his service and was given the epithet “Macho Jacko” by the British press in June 1999 following a confrontation with Gen Wesley Clark, the American supreme commander of Nato forces in Europe.

‘I’m not going to start the Third World War’

When ordered to intercept Russian forces at Pristina Airport after they entered Kosovo without Nato’s agreement, he refused.

“I’m not going to start the Third World War for you,” he told Gen Clark.

In 2000, he was made a full general before replacing Gen Sir Michael Walker as Chief of the General Staff in 2003, a month before the war in Iraq commenced.

During his time as Britain’s top soldier, the general had to deal with claims of Iraqi prisoner abuse at the hands of British troops and growing discontent about the role of coalition troops in Iraq.

He began an inquiry into the abuse allegations, admitting they had damaged the Army but insisting the situation would be worse if there had been a cover-up.

After leaving the Army in 2007, the general was outspoken in his criticism of bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence and what he perceived to be inadequate support for the armed forces from the New Labour government.

Gen Sir Mike’s son, Mark also served in the Parachute Regiment.

He is survived by his wife, Sarah, sons Mark and Tom, daughter Amanda, and four grandchildren.

Israeli soldiers hadn’t even finished their dinner when they heard a “crazy boom” at their training base in northern Israel.

“The iron door bent. We didn’t know what happened, and suddenly something pierced through the ceiling. We didn’t hear anything before, just the huge blast. No sirens went off,” a soldier inside the Golani Brigade training base told Ynet news.

The boom was caused by a Hezbollah-launched drone that evaded Israeli fighter jets and struck the base in Binyamina, just south of Haifa. Four soldiers were killed in the attack, with 60 more injured.

The Israeli army’s preliminary investigation into the attack revealed that the Lebanese terror group launched two Sayyad 107 drones from the Mediterranean into Israeli airspace shortly before 7pm local time.

One drone was detected and intercepted near the coastal city of Nahariya, but the other evaded Israeli tracking by lowering its altitude, before hitting the elite Golani brigade training base in Binyamina, northern Israel.

Tables were largely left intact, but pools of blood permeated the dining room, hallways and kitchen.

It was the deadliest drone attack launched against Israel since Oct 7. But it was by no means the first.

Israel has been attacked by hundreds of drones in the last year, mainly by Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also from Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

Earlier this month, two soldiers were killed in the Golan Heights when a drone from Iraq hit their base.

On July 19, the Houthi rebels sent a large drone from Yemen all the way to Tel Aviv without detection. The drone smashed into an apartment building, killing an Israeli civilian.

The Iron Dome’s fatal flaw

While most of the focus has been on Hezbollah’s huge collection of precision-guided missiles, Israel has found that much smaller and less aggressive drones are posing just as big of a challenge, if not bigger.

In the past 12 months, hundreds of drones from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran have infiltrated Israeli territory on a daily basis, often without setting alarms.

The drones have crashed into apartment buildings, highways, kindergartens, and military installations.

Some experts fear that the rise in these attacks have exposed a possible flaw in the Iron Dome: it wasn’t designed to deal with drones.

The Iron Dome consists of a series of batteries that use radars to detect short-range rockets, missiles and drones.

But the prevalence of cheap drones, as also seen in the war in Ukraine, has been causing problems for Israel owing to their ability to evade the Iron Dome.

The drones are often flown through Israel’s northern mountains and valleys at “a very low altitude”, according to Amnon Sofrin, the former head of Mossad’s intelligence directorate.

That the drones are flown at low altitude means they are often under the Iron Dome’s radar, making it “very difficult” for the Israeli military to shoot them down, as played out in Binyamina on Sunday and Yemen in July.

How Hezbollah are using this to their advantage

James Patton Rogers, a drone expert and executive director of the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, suggested this reflected a “broad neglect of air defence for over a generation”, which non-state actors like Hezbollah have sought to capitalise on.

“They fly [drones] slowly and reduce their electronic output to reduce their radar signature and chance of detection, and have increasingly used materials like carbon fibre that are harder to detect,” he added.  

The cure

The fact that Hezbollah was able to fire an undetected drone and strike an Israeli air base, killing several soldiers, raises serious security questions for Israel.

Defence chiefs face the prospect of further drone “swarms” that could overwhelm urban centres.

Onn Fenig, who runs a defence software company, says he is working on a solution to the drone issue.

“A 1000-pound drone can take out a three million-pound tank. We have seen this in action in Ukraine and this is what the IDF should assume it will face in Lebanon, if and when a ground entry happens,” he warned in an interview with The Telegraph.

His software works by using AI-powered sensors that could be placed all across Israel and algorithms to detect drones flying low in the sky.

The information would be automatically channelled to the IDF who could shoot the drones down with traditional weaponry or targeted air defence systems.

He said the IDF is working with R2 in “various contexts and locations to detect drones” but is yet to incorporate its new software.

In the meantime, the Pentagon confirmed it would send a missile battery to bolster Israel’s defences in anticipation of a further barrage from Iran.

Asked on Sunday why he had taken the decision, Mr Biden replied: “To defend Israel.”

The decision was taken after Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, piercing its Iron Dome defence system in some places.

Seventy portraits of Italy’s prime minister adorn the walls and the restaurant’s menu features a variety of Giorgia Meloni’s facial expressions superimposed on pieces of fruit.

Welcome to “Trattoria Meloni”, the slightly creepy Albanian eatery opened in honour of the hard-Right leader.

As the port of Shengjin awaits with trepidation the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants under a contentious offshore processing deal with Italy, one corner of the town at least is already reaping the rewards of the accord struck between the two countries.

The trattoria, which bills itself as the world’s only restaurant dedicated to her, is doing a roaring trade.

“We are fully booked every weekend and it’s been like this ever since we opened on August 20,” said the manager, Enis.

“We have had tourists from all over the world – British and Italians but also Czechs, Germans and French. And lots of Albanians of course.”

Italy has poured hundreds of millions of euros into the area. But Ms Meloni has also become popular across Europe as a figurehead for the populist Right. She is now a key power broker in EU politics despite her rise through a party with neo-Fascist roots.

Eating at the restaurant, which can accommodate up to 150 customers, is a surreal experience. First, there is the façade, decorated with Ms Meloni’s face in a variety of expressions which have been digitally superimposed onto four honeydew melons – an unsubtle joke about her surname, which means “melons” in Italian.

Next to the faces is an image of a fish and the word “orgasm”. Its meaning is not quite clear.

At the entrance, a large doormat proclaims “Trattoria Meloni”. Once inside, customers are confronted by walls adorned with more than 70 portraits of Italy’s prime minister. Painted in bright oils, she is depicted in all sorts of moods – from smiling and laughing to scowling, hectoring and sulking.

There are portraits of Ms Meloni, in a variety of outfits, on every wall and above every table. In one, she holds two melons in front of her chest and winks suggestively – it is an exact rendition of a photograph she once put out on social media, again playing on her surname.

Another shows her in a somewhat disturbing embrace with Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister, with whom she signed the offshore processing deal a year ago. Mr Rama, a former basketball player who is 6ft 7in tall, towers over Ms Meloni, who is 5ft 3in. He holds a red rose with one hand and with the other has her in a headlock.

The portraits were painted by Helidon Haliti, a celebrated Albanian artist.

The inspiration for creating the world’s first Meloni-themed restaurant came from its owner, Gjergj Luca, 58, a former actor who runs a chain of restaurants in Albania.

He said last month that he decided to dedicate the restaurant to Ms Meloni because he regarded her as “extraordinary”. “When cuisine, art and politics come together, you can make beautiful things.”

Enis, the manager, said of his boss: “He’s ironic, he’s an artist.”

The restaurant was busy when The Telegraph visited, with customers tucking into sushi, tuna steaks and seafood linguine.

“We come here for the food but we also like the artwork,” said Romario Medja, 28, who was having supper with a friend. “I like the pictures of Meloni, I think they’re done really well. She’s beautiful – both as a woman and as a politician.”

The restaurant is just a hundred yards or so from the entrance to Shengjin’s gritty port, where Italy has built one of two migrant processing centres.

Migrants trying to cross the central Mediterranean from north Africa to Italy will be transferred to Italian navy boats and brought here, hundreds of miles away on the Adriatic coast of northern Albania.

They will be identified before being transferred to a much larger facility about 15 miles inland near the village of Gjader, on the site of an abandoned Cold War Albanian air force base. From there they will either be sent back to their home countries or, if judged to be genuine refugees, taken to Italy.

The Italian government claims the two centres will be able to handle up to 36,000 asylum seekers a year but NGOs are sceptical that the authorities will be able to process people that fast. 

The centres were officially opened on Friday and the first shipload of migrants is expected within days.

Human rights groups say the bilateral accord tramples on asylum seekers’ rights, but the Meloni government denies this, saying that it has been drawn up according to international law.

Ms Meloni has not yet visited the restaurant that is dedicated to her. But the staff live in hope.

“There are rumours that she might come in the next few days, if she visits the migrant camps,” said Gerard, 20, waiter. “That would be great.”

A gun you can make at home sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but a landmark sentencing today is a reminder that it has become a terrifying reality in the UK. 

This afternoon (Monday Oct 14), a 20-year-old neo-Nazi who was at an “advanced stage” of building his own semi-automatic rifle and accompanying ammunition was jailed for six-and-a-half years. 

When police arrested Jack Robinson, then 18, in February 2023, they also discovered a stash of military-style clothing, stab vests, balaclavas and German Second World War memorabilia at his home in Portsmouth.

Winchester Crown Court heard that while operating online under usernames including “kill all Jews”, the teenager had downloaded more than 500 documents containing information on explosives, weapons and 3D-printed guns, alongside a large volume of white supremacist propaganda.

Prosecutor Naomi Parsons said Robinson had been working on his rifle for months by the time he was arrested and “it was simply fortuitous that police found the gun before it had been completed and assembled”.

His case has shone a light on the growing problem of 3D-printed firearms, which threaten to enable British criminals to bypass strict gun control laws using online instructions.

And it was his weapon of choice, the FGC-9, which is beginning to pose a particular challenge for law enforcement in the UK and around the world.

Standing for F— Gun Control and the 9mm ammunition it fires, the semi-automatic rifle can be entirely manufactured at home, without commercially manufactured or regulated parts.

Now thought to be the most popular gun of its kind globally, it has sparked particular concern among authorities because of the unprecedented detail contained within its instruction manual and the availability of all necessary materials, which dramatically lowers the bar for construction compared to previous homemade firearms.

With a 3D printer, everyday materials and tools, and some metalworking skills, anyone can now make the high-powered weapon in their living room or garage, like a deadly Airfix model. 

As a result, over the four years since the design was first released, the FGC-9 has spread from obscure pro-gun internet forums into the hands of criminals, terrorists and insurgents across five continents.

But its appeal is not just attributed to its practical effectiveness – the FGC-9 is also an ideological project designed by its creator to inspire people around the world to make guns in defiance of “tyrannical” governments.

While it has been especially popular in mainland Europe, the weapon has made steady inroads in Britain, too.

The Robinson case marks one of more than a dozen instances in the past four years in which British criminals and terror offenders have been charged with either trying to build the FGC-9 or possessing its instruction manual.

Several were aspiring to commit mass shootings with the weapon, while others have been seeking to manufacture it as a criminal enterprise to sell onto gangs, or apparently just building it as a hobby. The FGC-9 has become so desirable among the far-Right, in particular, that authorities now prosecute the possession and sharing of its instruction manual as a standalone terror offence.   

In Robinson’s case, he pleaded guilty to attempting to manufacture a firearm, possessing prohibited parts and three counts of possessing material useful to a terrorist – including the FGC-9 manual. The court heard how the “isolated” defendant had dropped out of sixth-form college and had few friends.

Sentencing Robinson as his mother loudly sobbed in the court’s public gallery, a judge ruled that he was a dangerous offender, although he claimed he did not intend to use the gun beyond “testing” it.

“I find you were motivated by terrorism,” Mrs Justice McGowan told Robinson, as he stood impassively wearing a crisp blue shirt. “Your interest in firearms has to be viewed in connection with the mindset material found. That material found glorifies the killing of Jews.”

Robinson also admitted four other offences relating to 810 indecent images of children, which police found while examining his computer and hard drive.

The FGC-9 first emerged in March 2020 when the manual was published online by a 3D firearms printing collective called Deterrence Dispensed.

The 110-page document took readers through the process in painstaking detail, from a list of the tools needed to step-by-step diagrams and a suggested manufacturing timeline.

Dr Rajan Basra, a researcher from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation who has studied the development of the FGC-9, says it was “groundbreaking”.

Although 3D-printed guns had been around since 2013, previous designs “weren’t reliable”, he explains. “You could maybe only fire a few shots, they could disintegrate. And the 3D-printed guns that were reliable and accurate needed off-the-shelf parts manufactured by gun companies, like the barrel.

“That is very difficult to get hold of outside of the US. So the FGC-9 was groundbreaking because it was the first time that you could have a reliable, semi-automatic, 9mm firearm that could be entirely made at home.”

But practical instruction was not all the guide provided – it was also an international call to arms. The author urged readers to build the FGC-9 as a “means to defend yourself and not be a victim to unjust firearm legislation any longer”, adding: “We together can defeat for good the infringement that is taking place on our natural-born right to bear arms, defend ourselves and rise up against tyranny at any time.”

The words were written by the FGC-9’s creator, who called himself JStark in tribute to General John Stark – a hero of the American Revolution – and adopted his slogan: “live free or die”.

The phrase was automatically etched into the side of the FGC-9 by the files released to make its 3D-printed parts, and JStark and fellow members of Deterrence Dispensed swiftly began publicising the manual across multiple online platforms.

It took just eight months for it to emerge in a criminal case in Britain, when police found a teenage neo-Nazi called Matthew Cronjager had downloaded the manual as part of a terror plot.

He was attempting to recruit and arm a militia for coordinated attacks on targets including the UK government, Jews, gay people, Muslims and ethnic minorities, but was caught after unknowingly trying to pay an undercover police officer to manufacture the FGC-9.

At least 11 criminal cases involving people who downloaded the manual or attempted to make the gun have followed – five charged under terrorism laws, two under the Firearms Act and four as a mixture of both.

The cases indicate that the FGC-9 is particularly attractive to neo-Nazis and anti-government extremists, but the first known case of a jihadist downloading its manual emerged this month. Abdiwahid Abdulkadir Mohamed, a 32-year-old Londoner, was convicted of six terror offences for possessing the document and instructions for other homemade firearms.

Kingston Crown Court heard that he had obtained them from a channel on the encrypted Telegram messaging app, which was run by a prominent Slovakian neo-Nazi.

Mohamed’s own ideological sympathies lay in a very different direction, with records of his online activity showing him consuming material associated with Isis and al-Qaeda.

Prosecutor Martin Hackett said Mohamed had a “radical Islamic mindset” which was “directly related to the gathering of the 3D-printed firearm material”. Mohamed denied possessing material “useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism” but was convicted of all six counts and will be sentenced in December.

Terror offenders are just one of several groups showing interest in the FGC-9, which has spread to at least 15 countries including Myanmar, where it is being used by anti-government groups fighting in the ongoing civil war.

Organised criminals in nations with strict gun control laws have meanwhile started manufacturing the weapon at a small scale, with a makeshift factory being busted in Spain in April 2021.

A year later, Australian police seized a complete weapon and homemade silencer in Perth, while in June 2023, an attempted assassination by a Marseilles drug gang was carried out with an FGC-9.

In August 2022, police arrested two men who were making the gun at home for criminal gangs, in the first case of its kind seen in the UK.

Because of the difficulty obtaining firearms in Britain, criminals have long resorted to adapting or attempting to make weapons. There has recently been a spike of criminals trying to adapt toy or imitation firearms for real use. But there are concerns that the increasing accessibility and falling price of 3D-printers, combined with the FGC-9’s detailed instruction manual, could make such attempts easier and cheaper.

The National Crime Agency says that although the weapon accounts for a “very small proportion of firearms cases overall”, illicit interest is growing.

“The NCA recognises the recent improvements in technology around 3D printing, the availability of online blueprints and advice, and is working closely with partners to mitigate this threat and suppress the availability of such weapons in the UK market,” a spokesman for the agency tells the Telegraph.

“Successful manufacture of such a weapon takes a high degree of skill and expertise, and in 2023 only five complete weapons were seized, of which only one was confirmed to be viable, out of a total of 25 cases.”

Some of those making the FGC-9, including a forklift driver found manufacturing the gun at his Birmingham home in 2020, have no discernible ideology or ambition to fire the weapon.

“People can get involved in making the gun because they’re just looking to experiment,” Dr Basra says. “But with time, they become more familiar with the ideology behind the FGC-9 and may come to adopt that worldview. It is ingrained in that design – by the name alone, and having on the side of the gun as its design the words: live free or die.”

The slogan was absent from an updated version of the design, the FGC-9 MKII, which was released online in April 2021, but soon events would unfold that would broadcast its designer’s vision to the world.

JStark, who was identified by Dr Basra as a German national of Kurdish origin named Jacob Duygu, was arrested by police in June 2021. Two days later, he was found dead in a car parked outside his parents’ home in Hannover, at the age of 28. 

An official autopsy ruled out “foul play or suicide” but failed to determine the cause of his death, triggering a wave of rage and conspiracy theories when the news reached the 3D-printed gun community.

“JStark’s death made him a martyr within the movement,” Dr Basra says. “He was seen as an example of someone who was really willing to risk his life, risk imprisonment, for the sake of everyone worldwide having access to DIY guns. I think that inspired just as many, if not more, people in death as it did when he was alive.”

Dr Basra’s s research uncovered not just JStark’s true identity, but his carefully hidden political sympathies and mental health issues. Duygu was an incel, standing for involuntary celibate, an online subculture in which men bemoan their inability to find a sexual partner, often resorting to extreme misogyny as a consequence. He had considered moving to the Philippines in the belief it would help him get a girlfriend. Dyugu was depressed and frequently talked of suicide, while identifying himself as autistic.

The sad reality was far from the image of a Second Amendment-loving hero he projected as JStark online, where he was lionised after appearing in a 2020 documentary wearing a black balaclava and military-style clothing while unloading an FGC-9 in a forest.

“I have a responsibility to make sure everybody has the option to be able to get a gun,” he stated, with his voice electronically modified into a deep crackle. “The way they use it is up to them.”

Conspiracy theories sparked by Duygu’s death turbocharged his narrative of state “tyranny”, with supporters vowing to make the FGC-9 in his memory, while news coverage of his death brought the weapon to international attention.

Interpol, the international law enforcement body, believes it is now the world’s most popular 3D-printed weapon, and it has inspired several adaptations. They include an FGC-type weapon photographed being brandished by members of Real IRA splinter group Óglaigh na hÉireann at a 2022 Easter parade in Belfast.

Dr Basra says the gun has now “taken off” and is spreading so rapidly that authorities must consider “concrete steps to reduce the prevalence of these designs and tackle people that are trying to make these guns in the UK”.

Possession of the FGC-9’s manual is now being charged as a terror offence in Britain, but success requires prosecutors to prove an ideological mindset that those possessing the instructions for purely criminal purposes are unlikely to have. 

Without that, those seeking to make the gun can only be prosecuted if they have already made component parts that breach the Firearms Act 1968.

The FGC-9 case is an example of how traditional regulation has failed to keep pace with modern technology. Plans and manuals can be freely distributed online, and 3D-printers, which use an additive process to produce 3D models, have enabled production processes once associated with factories to be carried out in our homes.

In theory, this was a boon for those keen to develop prototypes capable of improving our day-to-day lives, but it was not long before people adapted the technology to more dubious ends. The first 3D-printed gun emerged in 2013. Called The Liberator, it was the brainchild of Cody Wilson, an American pro-firearms activist. Since then, there have been countless models. In 2021, a Florida gun range held a competition for 3D-printed weapons. 

In November 2023, the Conservative government brought forward laws which would have made possessing 3D-printed gun manuals an offence as “articles for use in serious crime”, but the Criminal Justice Bill did not finish its passage through parliament before the general election was called. 

Talking to the Telegraph, a Home Office spokesman  says the Government is committed to pursuing the legislation. “A 3D printed firearm is subject to the law in the same way as any other firearm. The maximum penalty for possessing a prohibited weapon is ten years imprisonment, with a minimum penalty of five years.”

“We will introduce new laws to criminalise owning with the intention to be used for crime, supplying and offering to supply templates or manuals for 3D printed firearms components.”

Authorities hope that the threat from the FGC-9, in particular, will be suppressed by the difficulty of obtaining the 9mm ammunition it fires. Although one of the weapon’s co-designers has released a manual for homemade bullets, which was used by Robinson, the level of complexity involved is significant.

Still, Dr Basra warns that the FGC-9 manual remains “shockingly available” online, alongside countless social media posts and videos showing how to create it and advertising the design. “There’s limits to what authorities can do,” he warns. “This gun is designed to be made by anyone without being detected.”

Robinson will not be making any more weapons at home for a while. But as 3D printers become cheaper and more ubiquitous, you can be sure he will not be the last person to try. 

A rapist who escaped justice until he confessed his crime on YouTube has been jailed for six years.

Craig Strachan, a Scottish DJ who has performed across Europe, assaulted a woman while she was sleeping in a flat in Edinburgh in 2013 and incapable of giving consent.

He revealed the incident himself in a podcast published on YouTube in 2022, claiming he had felt moved to speak about the rape following a “spiritual awakening” the previous year.

Strachan, who had the stage name Craig Saint, smiled and giggled through the interview and revealed he had forgiven himself after “finding God”.

However, after he said he also got in contact with his victim and his family to apologise, he was arrested by police and charged.

Despite his public confession, he pleaded not guilty to the offence, forcing the woman he targeted, who is now 32 and cannot be named for legal reasons, to give evidence.

‘I raped a girl’

Strachan had told Impossible Conversation, a YouTube channel, that during his “spiritual awakening” he had been “reminded of something that happened when I was 21, when I was really high and totally f—– up, I raped a girl.”

He added: “I had sex with her when she was sleeping. It lasted about 10 seconds. She was in my bed and as soon as it happened I instantly knew, ‘s—, I should not have done that’.”

Jurors took only an hour to unanimously convict him.

Now 33, Strachan was told by Judge Fiona Tait that his actions had a considerable impact on his victim.

“She should be commended for her courage in giving evidence – especially in the difficult circumstances of the publicity which your online disclosure attracted,” Judge Tait said.

Strachan was placed on the sex offenders’ register for life and made subject to a non-harassment order banning him from approaching or contacting his victim for 20 years.

Judge Tait said that the order was necessary despite the fact that the offence took place over a decade ago, because Strachan had made contact with his victim more recently, “in circumstances which prompted the present proceedings”.

Facebook messages

During the three-day trial, jurors were shown a series of Facebook messages, including one that the woman had sent him immediately after the incident in which she bluntly stated: “You f—— raped me.”

In Strachan’s police interview a detective asked him: “Did you penetrate her with your penis while she was sleeping?” Strachan answered: “Yes.”

Strachan was described on the YouTube site as “an international DJ, producer and event promoter from Glasgow with a love for bringing joy into the lives of the people he meets”.

He said in his podcast interview that he felt “so guilty” for months after the rape but that he did not think “someone should have to spend a lifetime carrying their mistake if they have done everything in their power to fix the situation”.

Katrina Parkes, the Procurator Fiscal for high court sexual offending, said: “Craig Strachan is a predatory individual who attacked the victim while she was sleeping.

“This type of offending has no place in Scotland and prosecutors are committed to pursuing justice for victims of such crimes.”

Those who bought Miranda Hart’s memoir this week expecting a light-hearted romp through the sitcom star’s life might have been a bit surprised. The 51-year-old has written I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, which details a decade of misery and a career that was put on hold, as she battled ME caused by Lyme disease.

It’s not what you expect from a comic actor known for pratfalls and fart jokes in her hit series Miranda. Instead, Hart’s book is full of the lessons she has learnt from being chronically ill, a self-help book for “how to live more freely and joyfully in all circumstances”. She details various “treasures” – the practices, research and ways of thinking that she believes have helped in her recovery, not just for fellow sufferers, but for anyone feeling crushed by modern life.

But while the permanently jolly Call The Midwife star has been doing the rounds promoting her memoir after a four-year break from our screens, controversy has been brewing that some of the claims the book makes about chronic illness are unsubstantiated and potentially harmful.

Dr Frances Ryan, who is a journalist, an activist for those with disabilities and the author of Who Wants Normal?, wrote on X: “Miranda Hart’s new memoir on chronic illness seems very well intentioned but this pseudoscience is worrying. If you’re writing a book after you’ve recovered, there’s a particular responsibility to be accurate to readers who are desperate to recover too.”

Critics have singled out Hart’s citing of a study by Dr Masaru Emoto, a Japanese businessman turned best-selling author, who claimed human emotions could influence the molecular structure of water. 

Emoto has now been widely dismissed as a pseudoscientist, but in a section of the book about the importance of self-compassion, Hart recalls how Emoto conducted an experiment in which he spoke to two bowls of rice, one of which received pleasant words, the other abuse. “The bowl spoken badly over started going mouldy in a way the other didn’t,” writes Hart. “I KNOW! Talk about the power of words.”

Hart also writes of “the clear science” linking chronic stress to the onset of long Covid, ME and chronic fatigue syndrome and claims “the cause and the solution are in the brain’s heightened stress response”. But studies on long Covid are in their infancy, and results of studies linking stress to these long-term conditions have been divided.

Many people in the chronic illness community say they hate the presumption that stress has caused their conditions, reporting that this stigma in itself can be a source of stress. One wrote on X: “People are going to be angry today at Miranda Hart. Excerpts from the book are really bad. I am sure we will be seeing posts about it soon. I am so sorry #pwME [people with ME] we don’t deserve this.”

As you might imagine from an author who describes her revelations as “heavy revvies”, Hart is not claiming to have written a science book. But it does seem surprising that she hasn’t at least provided credible sources for all of her assertions. 

Equally troubling is that Hart has been associated with some controversial figures who have made unsubstantiated claims about curing long-term conditions. In 2021, Hart endorsed a book by Alex Howard called Decode Your Fatigue. “A hopeful, practical book to help people move from debilitating fatigue to a purposeful, joyful life once again,” Hart gushed on the cover.

Howard is the founder of the Optimum Health Clinic, which teaches courses in the Lightning Process and claims to “train the brain to ward off tired thoughts”, including treating conditions like ME, depression and chronic pain. But in 2022, Nice recommended that the Lightning Process should not be used by GPs. “The Lightning Process is not a treatment that we endorse or recommend for people with ME/CFS,” says Dr Charles Shepherd, Medical Adviser for the UK ME Association.

The Miranda star has hit back at criticism of her book this week, writing to her 2.2million followers on X: “I don’t profess to have medical answers for ME. My learning was how to reduce stress in all aspects of my life. Some of it had unexpected positive effects on my physical health. But I would never say I have found an answer. The misunderstanding and lack of answers is just awful for all of us… Finally on the ME front, I am NOT saying stress causes it. For me, Lyme caused it. My body went into severe stress to fight the disease. As bodies naturally do. Reducing stress in other areas of my life helped recovery but was not [the] sole cause or answer. My book isn’t about that.”

I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You reveals how Hart first became unwell aged 15 and how her illness developed into chronic fatigue and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). It culminated in her collapsing in her mid-40s after the final series of Miranda, leaving her confined to bed with doctors struggling to diagnose her illness.

Hart recalls how just a short walk outside “was as hard as anything I had done. I would stand in the road feeling as if I had to remind my brain how to put one foot in front of the other. I would look at a cup of tea on the table and wonder if I had the strength to take a sip.”

For many years, Hart says, her symptoms were downplayed or disbelieved by doctors, who told her she was suffering with stress and anxiety and repeatedly offered her antidepressants. In 2020, Hart finally got a diagnosis. She had Lyme disease, most likely contracted at the age of 14 when her family briefly relocated to Virginia in the US, a well-known Lyme hotspot.

Hart certainly isn’t the first celebrity to speak out about her battle with Lyme disease. Bella Hadid, Justin Bieber and Riley Keough have all revealed they also have the infection, which can be notoriously difficult to diagnose. Kris Kristofferson, the country music star who recently died aged 88, also had Lyme, and was once told it was Alzheimer’s.  

The condition – which is acquired through the bite of an infected deer tick – can cause flu-like symptoms at first, but the long-term effects can lead sufferers to develop ME, arthritis, chronic pain, heart palpitations and brain inflammation. While the disease is very rare in the UK, with around 1,500 laboratory-confirmed cases in England and Wales each year, it’s reportedly on the rise in the US. 

However, myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS, is much more common in the UK. While there are no official figures, the charity Action for ME estimates 250,000 people are affected nationwide. Because of the difficulties in receiving a diagnosis, the true number may be as high as 750,000. 

Hart’s book will no doubt raise some much-needed awareness for a condition that, at the moment, has no cure. But I Haven’t Been Completely Honest With You isn’t just a misery memoir about a star overcoming chronic illness, Hart has used her time out of the spotlight to find love. In the book, she coyly refers to dating someone whom she refers to as “The Boy” and details how she “open[ed] the Hart heart up to love”.

While promoting the book on The One Show, she made a shock wedding announcement, revealing: “He’s my best friend, we have the best fun and I’m just thrilled to be a young bride at 51.”

“The fact that I met someone during a pandemic, during chronic illness when I couldn’t get out of bed or get out of the house, and I really really wanted to meet someone, I didn’t want to do life on my own any more, and I kind of admitted that to myself and I tell that story in the book,” she said. “The fact that I could meet somebody is not some kind of rom-com story, but it’s hope, there is always hope, things can always change.”

While appearing at Cheltenham Literary Festival, Hart revealed more details about her now-husband, Richard Fairs. The 60-year-old is reportedly a building surveyor who met Hart during the pandemic while treating mould in her house. Their first date involved ordering takeaway pizza to her home.

“Unfortunately, mine had shunted its way across the box and turned into a calzone,” she said. “I was going on and on about my shunted pizza and it did not seem to phase him. We had already been talking for about two hours at this point, and I realised almost immediately that I was in love with him. It was our first date and to my surprise he came back for a second date, despite me having gone on and on about that pizza.”

Fairs has two children with his ex, Jeanne Speight, whom he was with for over 25 years before they separated in 2017. He proposed to Hart at Kew Gardens and they reportedly married in July at a country church ceremony, which was followed by a Hawaiian-themed party.

In a video on X, Hart seems back to her usual jovial self, unwilling to let her condition or the backlash about her book get her down. “I’ve got my best friend to do life with and it’s wonderful, and I’m also utterly thrilled to be back in telly land and having a book out, so thanks so much for all your support.”

But as one commenter put it: “She’s a lovely lady and I wish her well, but ‘everything fixed and happy ending’ sells books, not ‘there’s no cure for ME’.”

The moment a father of a 10-year-old girl wept down the phone to police as he confessed to beating his daughter to death for “being naughty” has been heard in court.

Sara Sharif was allegedly murdered after being beaten with a cricket bat and having a plastic bag placed over her head as a “homemade hood”.

The Old Bailey heard the schoolgirl suffered weeks of “appalling” abuse at the hands of Urfan Sharif, her 42-year-old father, Beinash Batool, her 30-year-old stepmother, and 28-year-old Faisal Malik, her uncle.

Her body was discovered in a bed at her home in Woking, Surrey, on Aug 10 last year with an “awful constellation” of injuries including burns, bite marks, broken bones and extensive bruising.

Jurors on Tuesday were played a 999 call made by Mr Sharif from Pakistan on Aug 10, almost two days after he allegedly killed his daughter and fled the UK.

During the call from Pakistan, which lasted eight minutes and 34 seconds, the taxi driver can be heard crying as he tells the operator what he has done.

In the recording, Mr Sharif said Sara had been “naughty” over the last three to four weeks and he was “giving her punishment” to “sort her out”. He added: “I did something and she died.”

Earlier in the call, the operator can be heard asking Mr Sharif, “is everything okay?” to which he responds: “Nothing is okay.”

Mr Sharif continued: “I did legally punish my daughter and she died.

The operator asks who killed Mr Sharif’s daughter, to which he responds “It’s me. Her dada.”

When asked where he was, Mr Sharif responded: “I cannot give more detail, I promise I’ll come back.

“I’ll face the death sentence.”

Detectives believe Sara was killed at some point on Aug 8. Her body was found by officers from Surrey Police shortly after Mr Sharif made the phone call.

Jurors were shown a note “in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting”, which read: “It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating… I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”

The note also said: “I am running away because I am scared.”

Earlier the court heard Sara was subjected to “brutal abuse” by her father and stepmother and was forced to wear a hijab to school to hide her bruises.

Jurors were told it was “unusual” that Sara was the only member of her family who wore a hijab.

William Emlyn Jones KC, prosecuting, said the fact that she began to wear a hijab in the last months of her life was “indicative of the need to conceal injuries to her face and head from the outside world”.

On Tuesday, jurors were told that, before the family fled, a Ring doorbell camera “with potentially valuable information” had been removed from the family home.

Jurors were provided with a timeline of mobile phone data which, the prosecution alleges, will give an idea of who was in the house and when.

Mr Emlyn Jones continued: “We will go through it, day by day, to give you a feeling of who is at home and when during those weeks when Sara was suffering, being injured, being hit and hurt and burnt and restrained.

“She was suffering dreadfully – and these three defendants, these three adults, were there, living in the same small house – they were there, day in, day out.”

The prosecutor also told the court that police found a “number of strange-looking objects” described as “bits of plastic bag bound up with parcel tape” when they searched bins at the side of the property

“The prosecution suggest that it is obvious what these items are,” Mr Emlyn Jones said. “They are home-made hoods. They had been placed over Sara’s head.”

In the weeks before Sara died, Ms Batool allegedly bought 18 rolls of parcel tape online within nine days, jurors were told.

Sara’s blood was found on the floor of the kitchen, and a belt with her DNA on it was discovered in a Wendy House in the garden. Her blood was also found on a cricket bat and a rolling pin, jurors were told.

Wife accused husband in texts

The court also heard that Ms Batool sent text messages to her sister in which she spoke of Mr Sharif being violent towards the children.

In one, sent in May 2021, she said: “Urfan beat the c— out of Sara… She’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black. She added: “I feel really sorry for Sara” and  “The poor girl can’t walk.”

Mr Emlyn Jones said Ms Batool had told her sister that she “really wanted to report her husband”. But he suggested that she was presenting herself in a “favourable light” to her sisters and ultimately did not report her husband, “not then, and not ever”.

The court also heard that in 2019, the family was living at another, smaller property in another part of Woking.

Rebecca Spencer, a neighbour, said “from the moment the family moved in” she would hear “banging and rattling”. In a statement, she said the “metallic” noise sounded as if “someone was banging on and pushing at a door that would not open”.

She continued: “On the occasions that I would hear these banging and rattling sounds, they would often be accompanied by the sounds of a child crying or screaming, followed by complete silence. 

“On those occasions, I can only describe the silence as deathly quiet and I cannot even imagine what had happened to make the crying or screaming child become immediately silent.”

The court heard that other witnesses had seen locks on the outside of the children’s bedrooms.

Ms Spencer also claimed she heard other loud noises that sounded like someone being “hit or smacked”. She considered reporting what she heard to social services, but ultimately decided against it as the children appeared clean and she never saw any bruises or injuries.

‘Shouting foul-mouthed abuse’

Chloe Redfin, another neighbour, said she would often hear Ms Batool shouting foul-mouthed abuse at the children.

She claimed she heard her scream “shut the f— up” and “go to your room, you f—ing bastard”, and that Ms Batool frequently referred to the children as “c—s”.

She said she too had heard sounds of smacking that were “shockingly loud” and followed by “gut-wrenching screams” from “young female children”.

She claimed that screaming and shouting appeared to primarily take place when Mr Sharif was at work. She said she never heard a male voice using abusive language towards the children.

In January last year, Ms Redfin said she also noticed that Sara began wearing a hijab to school. She said she thought it was “unusual” as she had never worn one before and her mother did not wear one.

In late February, the family moved out of the property and into their new home on Hammond Road, where Sara died.

Brenin Lozeron, one of their new neighbours, said Sara was “always wearing a hijab and it mostly hid her face”. He said it struck him as unusual, as she was the only family member to do so.

Scream ‘didn’t sound good’

Another neighbour, who was not named, said that two days before Sara’s death she heard a “single high-pitched scream”. She said it sounded like “the scream of someone in pain” and “didn’t sound good”.

Jurors were told teachers at Sara’s primary school noticed a bruise under her left eye in June 2022, and a bruise on her chin and a dark mark on her right eye in March last year.

One teacher described Sara as a “sassy child” and said that,when she asked about the bruises, she tried to hide them. She also noticed that “Sara would often pull her hijab to hide her face if she did not want to speak or was being told off”.

Sara claimed the bruise under her eye in June 2022 had been caused by her little brother hitting her.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Sharif said he would be home-schooling Sara, but he later changed his mind and she returned to school in September 2022.

Her teacher said she noticed another bruise on March 28 last year and asked Ms Batool what had happened. In a “strange” conversation, she said, the stepmother claimed it had been caused by a pen.

The school, St Mary’s Primary in Byfleet, decided that a referral to social services was required, but Sara was taken out of school in April last year.

All three defendants have pleaded not guilty to Sara’s murder and to causing or allowing the death of a child between Dec 16 2022 and Aug 9 2023. The trial, set to last for nine weeks, continues.

The Chancellor has insisted that increasing employers’ National Insurance contributions in the Budget won’t break Labour’s promise to protect working people from tax rises.

Rachel Reeves on Monday hinted that she would launch a tax raid on jobs in the Budget, warning of “tough” measures to boost public services and balance the books.

She insisted that a manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, National Insurance (NI) or VAT only applied to “working people”, and not the companies that employed them.

The Chancellor refused to rule out an increase in NI contributions paid by employers, despite previously warning that such an increase would take “money out of people’s pockets”.

The Government’s tax and spending watchdog has also warned that the levy would be “passed through quite quickly into lower pay”.

It came as Labour unveiled £63bn of investment to “support wealth creation and increases business investment” at an investment summit in London that the Government claimed would create 38,000 jobs.

Asked about employers’ National Insurance, Ms Reeves said: “We were really clear in our manifesto that we weren’t going to increase the key taxes paid by working people, income tax, insurance and VAT.”

Asked on GB News if that included employers’ contributions, she said: “That was not in the manifesto.”

Ms Reeves added that her only pledge to business was keeping corporation tax at 25pc, which the Chancellor said would remain the case until the end of Parliament.

However, the Chancellor made clear that tax increases of some form would be necessary in the Budget. She said: “You know that there’s a £22bn black hole, over and above anything that we knew about going into the election, that we need to fill.”

National Insurance is a levy on companies and their staff, which raised £180bn last year.

Employers currently pay 13.8pc on staff earnings, with some allowances for small businesses. Contributions to employee pension schemes are exempt.

Speculation that the Government is preparing to increase the tax – or apply it to pension contributions – has ramped up in recent weeks after ministers began saying Labour had only promised to not increase employee National Insurance contributions (NICs).

However, critics say a change to employers’ NIC would break Labour’s manifesto pledge.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said Ms Reeves would be guilty of a “straightforward breach”.

He told Times Radio: “I went back and read the manifesto and it says very clearly ‘we will not raise rates of National Insurance’. It doesn’t specify employee National Insurance.”

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “It’s obvious to most people that raising National Insurance would breach Labour’s manifesto pledge to … not raise National Insurance!”

Laura Trott, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “If Labour raise employer NICs it will be a tax on jobs, break their manifesto commitment and mean lower pay for employees according to the OBR.

“Rachel Reeves herself criticised the move as anti-business in opposition, but now is trying to convince us otherwise.”

Business leaders warned that the threat of a “punitive Budget” on Oct 30 was hanging over the summit.

Sir Nicholas Lyons, chairman of FTSE 100 insurer Phoenix, the UK’s biggest long-term savings business, warned that piling an ever greater burden on business was not cost-free.

“Whenever you think about taxing employers, you’re taxing jobs, you’re taxing enterprise,” he said.

“You have to look at the potential collateral damage. All of these things might look good on paper, but you have to really look through and see, what are the implications of this [and] what are the potential impacts.”

Craig Beaumont, executive director at the Federation of Small Businesses, said his members would be hit hardest. 

He said: “Making every local job more expensive to maintain would hit job creation and hurt wages right across the UK.”

Robert Jenrick, one of two MPs in the running to become the next Conservative Party leader, has said raising employer National Insurance would amount to a “tax on jobs” that would hurt wages and hiring.

Sir Nicholas said: “We have hanging over us the Budget on Oct 30, which will tell us whether they really do mean they want to encourage wealth. Because if it’s a punitive Budget, I think that will be a message that’s very negatively received by the City of London.”

The former Lord Mayor also warned that a big raid on capital gains would send a “negative message about investment”.

It follows reports that the Government was looking at raising the capital gains tax rate to as high as 39pc. However, Sir Keir Starmer such speculation was “wide of the mark”.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Government’s tax and spending watchdog, has previously said that increases in employers’ national insurance contributions would lead to lower wages. 

Following Rishi Sunak’s 2021 decision to increase employers’ NI via the health and social care levy, the OBR said: “The employer element of it is expected to be passed through quite quickly into lower pay for employees in the private sector.”

Ms Reeves has previously branded employers’ NI the “wrong tax on the wrong people at the wrong time”, adding that it “takes money out of people’s pockets”.

The Chancellor is also considering introducing NI on employer pension contributions as a way of raising billions of pounds of extra cash in her maiden Budget.

Employers currently pay NI at a rate of 13.8pc on salary paid directly to staff but pension contributions are exempt.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated that if employer NICs were introduced on contributions at the current rate of 13.8pc in full it would raise about £17bn a year.

Ms Reeves said on Monday: “Our manifesto was really clear […] it says working people, and then lists those three taxes paid by working people.

“We are going to stick to those manifesto commitments.”

Ms Reeves also insisted that she was sticking to a pledge not to return to austerity, which the IFS has warned will require up to £25bn in tax rises.

“Public services are in a mess […] and our public finances are in a mess,” she said. “I don’t think it’s any surprise to British people that the first budget of this new Labour government is going to be tough to get public services back on a firm footing.”

Sir Keir on Monday pledged “tough love” for the public finances in a sign that big tax rises were likely in the Budget. He said Labour would act “quickly” to “fix our public services” and “stabilise our economy”.

The Government is widely expected to launch a raid on capital gains, pensions and inheritance in her Budget speech.

In an interview that was recorded prior to Monday’s International Investment Summit, Ms Reeves said those with the “broadest shoulders” would be most affected.

She told the New Statesman’s NS podcast: “I said during the election campaign we’re not going to be introducing a wealth tax.

“But I think people will be in no doubt when we do the Budget that those with the broadest shoulders will be bearing the largest burden.

“You saw that in our manifesto campaign. You know, non-doms, private equity, the windfall tax on the big profits the energy companies are making and putting VAT and business rates on private schools.”

A senior Amazon employee has provoked a backlash after wearing a controversial pro-Palestinian necklace in a promotional video for the business.

Ruba Borno, the vice president of global specialists and partner organisations for Amazon Web Services, was seen wearing a pendant shaped like the map of Israel emblazoned with the Palestinian flag in the official company video, published to promote a company conference in Las Vegas in the autumn. 

Ms Borno’s necklace triggered an angry response on social media, with some users claiming it was inappropriate given that another Amazon employee remains a Hamas hostage after being abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Oct 7 terror attacks.

Some identified the area with the flag as comprising the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and territory that is today Israel in a manner resembling the protest chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

Amazon has since removed the video, and a spokesman said: “The violence and loss of life happening every day in the Middle East is tragic, and at Amazon, our hearts and thoughts are with any person or community that’s affected.

“Our leadership remains in regular contact with our teams based in the region to offer our support. The video shot was not meant to be a political statement, but we’ve taken down the video and will repost a new one in the coming days.”

‘Shame on you’

Ms Borno, a Palestinian, was reportedly evacuated by the US embassy from Kuwait with her parents during the first Gulf War in 1990 as her sister had been born in America.

She earned a PhD and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan, leading to a stint as a principal with the Boston Consulting Group. She spent six years at Cisco, where she became the chief executive’s chief of staff, before joining Amazon in November 2021.

Ms Borno has been a non-executive director at Experian and a member of the Forum of Young Global Leaders, a non-profit organisation created by Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum.

As calls for her resignation grew, it appeared that she had made her X and LinkedIn accounts private or removed them altogether.

In the aftermath of the video, some people posted online that they had cancelled their Prime subscriptions. Others said it was highly inappropriate given that Sasha Troufanov, an employee at Annapurna Labs, an Amazon subsidiary, was abducted on Oct 7. The 28-year-old hardware engineer is still in captivity.

An Instagram account with the handle “troufanov_family” and the name “bring Sasha Home Now!” reshared a post criticising Ms Borno and saying “shame on you @‌amazon”. It added: “Your employee Sasha has been held hostage in Gaza since October 2023.”

The story was followed by a photograph of a takeaway cup with the caption #coffee4Sasha – an initiative launched by Mr Troufanov’s colleagues to encourage supporters to drink coffee at 3pm, a tradition of his.

Earl Spencer has confirmed his relationship with Cat Jarman, the “brilliant” Viking archaeologist and his podcast co-host.

It comes days after Prof Jarman, 42, lodged a High Court claim against Countess Spencer, 52, the Earl’s third wife, for misuse of private information.

The Earl, the brother of the late Princess Diana, revealed in June that he and the Countess were divorcing. He met Prof Jarman when she led the search for remains of an ancient Roman villa in the grounds of his family estate, Althorp, in 2021 for a Channel 4 documentary.

Last year, the pair, along with Rev Richard Coles, became co-hosts of The Rabbit Hole Detectives, a history podcast, with the trio writing a trivia book to accompany it.

The Earl told  ITV’s Good Morning Britain hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley: “Cat Jarman, who is my partner now actually, she’s a brilliant archaeologist.

“It sounds like an Alan Partridge title, but she is Nordic Person of 2024, which is usually handed out to someone like Sven-Goran Eriksson or a composer to be Nordic Person of the Year.

“Well, first of all, I met her because we both had the same publisher, but secondly – I know this sounds rather bizarre – but she came to dig up a Roman villa on some land I’ve got.

“Richard, Cat and I would end up together, and Richard had been recently bereaved so was semi living with me and the three of us would just talk and talk and talk. Cat said ‘Let’s do a podcast’, and out of the podcast came the book.”

Prof Jarman was presented with the CoScan Nordic Person of the Year award in May. Established in 1994, the prize recognises achievement of outstanding merit by an individual, body or group related to one or more of the five Nordic countries. 

She follows in the footsteps of Magnus Carlsen, the world chess champion, and Sandi Toksvig, the comedian.

Born in Norway, Prof Jarman moved to the UK to complete a doctorate specialising in the archaeology of the Viking Age at the University of Bristol.

She has since published two books: River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads and The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons.

The Earl is father to Lady Kitty Spencer, 33, twins Lady Eliza and Lady Amelia, 32, and his heir Viscount Althorp, 30, from his first marriage to Victoria Aitken, and Edmund, 21, and Lady Lara, 18, from his second marriage, to Caroline Freud.

Lady Spencer, born Karen Villeneuve, shares a 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte Diana, with the Earl. She also has two daughters from her first marriage to Mark Gordon, the Hollywood producer.

The Earl also spoke to ITV about his sister, the late Princess, saying: “Every day, people tell me what an inspiration she was and how much they miss her, what they did the day she died. Like everyone else, you sort of get used to it [grief] without it ever going away.”

British model Kate Moss made her Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show debut, alongside her daughter, during the return of the US runway event.

The lingerie brand returned for its first live fashion show in six years, with some of the world’s most famous models and musicians gracing its New York City catwalk.

Moss made a surprise appearance during the event, strutting on the catwalk moments after her 22-year-old daughter Lila Moss took to the stage in a pink ensemble.

The 50-year-old wore a lace-covered slip dress over a black bodysuit ensemble with a pair of feathered angel wings, as she emerged during a rendition of the 1981 track I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Meanwhile, US star Gigi Hadid was the epitome of glamour, with her highly-anticipated return to her angel wings opening the show before her sister Bella Hadid made a surprise appearance as a scarlet bombshell.

Bella swapped the trademark angel wings for a red and black ombre tulle cape with a long train as she emerged during a performance from Cher – whose boyfriend Alexander “AE” Edwards was at the event in support.

Cher performed a medley of her 1998 track Strong Enough and the remix of her hit song Believe as she led the show’s first line-up of all female performers, including K-pop star Lisa and South African singer Tyla.

Donning a pair of fluffy wings, Tyla interacted with models as she performed her Push 2 Start track before singing her Grammy-winning song Water, as she modelled her baby blue lingerie with gold detailing.

US model Tyra Banks returned to the show for the first time in two decades, closing the showstopping catwalk wearing a silver metallic cape and bodice ensemble as pink confetti rained down.

The America’s Next Top Model host, 50, broke her retirement to walk her first Victoria’s Secret runway since 2005.

Brazilian model Adriana Lima also made an angelic return to the show, having announced her retirement in 2018.

Among those in the crowd was US actor Dylan Sprouse who was cheering on his model wife Barbara Palvin, holding up cardboard cutouts of their pets.

The fashion show, which launched in 1995, was a major pop culture event and at its peak was watched by millions of viewers each year.

However, in 2018 it fell to its lowest ratings as the show began to attract criticism, including for lack of diversity on the catwalk.

The 2019 show was cancelled but was brought back this year, with the brand confirming it was “celebrating all women”.

Last year the company dropped its feminist revamp following falling sales, promising to being back “sexiness”.

The right to die risks becoming a duty to die if assisted suicide becomes legal, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. 

The Most Rev Justin Welby warned legalising the practice could have “disastrous consequences” and lead people to opt for an assisted death to avoid feeling as if they are a burden on others. 

A private members bill tabled by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater is being introduced in the House of Commons on Wednesday, which will see MPs debate the proposed changes before they are put to a vote. 

MPs will be allowed to vote freely with their conscience rather than on party lines as is usually the case. 

Writing in the Daily Mail, the Archbishop warns any liberalisation of the law would mean “the pressure to end one’s life early would be intense and inescapable.” 

While proponents of the bill have formed their views “from a position of compassion”, he warned “we can never be sure that assisted suicide will be safe from abuse.”

‘We could open the door to more pain and suffering’

He said his mother worried about being a burden before she died last year, adding: “The legalisation of assisted suicide may introduce structural incentives to our health system – incentives that could have disastrous consequences.

“The right to end your life could all too easily – all too accidentally – turn into a duty to do so.” 

He went on: “I worry that even the best intentions can lead to unintended consequences, and that the desire to help our neighbour could, unintentionally, open the door to yet more pain and suffering for those we are trying to help. 

“We know, for example, that older people are often mistreated in our society. We cannot pretend that some people’s decisions around dying would be unaffected by this.

“The same is true for other vulnerable people: those with disabilities, those with mental health issues, those in coercive and controlling relationships.

“But even where there is no abuse, the pressure to end one’s life early could be intense and inescapable if the law were changed.” 

He said that in the US state of Oregon, which legalised the practice in 1997, half of people who opt for assisted suicide say the fear of becoming a burden is a factor in their decision. 

The archbishop has previously spoken out in opposition to assisted dying but is seen by many as a progressive voice within the Church. 

Last year the Synod, the Church of England’s governing body, backed allowing vicars to bless same-sex couples and the archbishop heralded the vote as “a new beginning”. 

It comes after Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Britain’s most senior Catholic, warned the proposed changes risk “bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill.” 

The last time there was a binding parliamentary vote on changing the law was in 2015, the proposed reforms were defeated at the second reading by 330 votes to 118. 

Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, voted in favour of the change and said while leader of the opposition that he believed there were grounds for changing the law. 

Proponents of a law change say assisted dying allows someone with a terminal illness to end their pain and suffering if it becomes unbearable and they have given consent. 

Dame Esther Rantzen, the television presenter, has become a leading campaigner for changing the law since being diagnosed with terminal cancer and revealed last year that she has signed up to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. 

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British Army, has died at the age of 80.

The former Chief of the General Staff led the British Army in Iraq and commanded troops in Kosovo, where he refused to start a “Third World War” with Russia.

Gen Sir Mike served as head of the Army between 2003 and 2006, during the Iraq War, and was hailed as “tremendous” and “inspirational” last night.

In a statement, the British Army said “Jacko” would be “long remembered”.

“It is with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of Gen Sir Mike Jackson GCB, CBE, DSO, on Oct 15 surrounded by his family,” the statement said.

“General ‘Jacko’ served with distinction for over 40 years, finishing his career as Chief of the General Staff.”

“He will be greatly missed, and long remembered. Utrinque Paratus.”

A soldier’s soldier

Dan Jarvis, the security minister, who formerly served in the Parachute Regiment and was aide to camp to Gen Sir Mike, called him a “soldier’s soldier”, describing him as “an outstanding, inspirational and charismatic leader and a true airborne legend”.

Lt Col Edward Green, Britain’s defence attache to Kosovo, said he was a “legendary figure” in the Army who will be “long remembered here in Kosovo”.

Over an illustrious career, Gen Sir Mike became known as “The Prince of Darkness” for his cool manner and gravel voice.

Maj Andrew Fox, a former company commander in the Parachute Regiment, paid tribute, saying: “I am so very sorry to learn of the passing of Gen Sir Mike Jackson.

“A glare and a voice like gravel, who at ten yards could skewer a mid-level officer who had been asked to read out a contentious letter from the RSM at a regimental charity meeting. And yes, that is oddly specific.

“But also a tremendous capacity for drinking every other man in the mess under the table, and a wicked sense of humour. My honour to have spent time in his company on a couple of occasions.”

Gen Sir Mike was immensely popular with troops as a hard but fair commander known for his uncompromising style.

Air Vice-Marshal Mick Smeath, the Commandant General of the RAF Regiment, said: “Very sad to hear of the passing of Gen Sir Mike Jackson.

“One of the most inspirational officers I have had the privilege to serve under. Rest in peace Sir.

Born on March 21 1944 into a military family, Gen Sir Mike was educated at Stamford School and graduated from Sandhurst in 1963.

He was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, where he learned Russian at the height of the Cold War before transferring to the Parachute Regiment in 1970.

As adjutant of its 1st Battalion, he was present on Bloody Sunday in January 1972 when paratroopers shot and killed 13 Roman Catholic men during a civil rights march in Londonderry.

He made a “fulsome apology” for the shootings in 2011 after the publication of the Saville Inquiry’s report, saying the men had been killed “without justification”.

Gen Sir Mike served on two further tours of Northern Ireland, his second as a company commander in the late 1970s – where he witnessed the carnage of the IRA’s 1979 Warrenpoint massacre – and the third as a brigade commander in the early 1990s.

He also served in Berlin, Germany, and as commander of the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Bosnia between 1995 and 1996.

He went on to command Nato’s ACE Rapid Reaction Corps from 1997 to 2000, taking command of the Kosovo Force in 1999 which stopped the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the country.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his service and was given the epithet “Macho Jacko” by the British press in June 1999 following a confrontation with Gen Wesley Clark, the American supreme commander of Nato forces in Europe.

‘I’m not going to start the Third World War’

When ordered to intercept Russian forces at Pristina Airport after they entered Kosovo without Nato’s agreement, he refused.

“I’m not going to start the Third World War for you,” he told Gen Clark.

In 2000, he was made a full general before replacing Gen Sir Michael Walker as Chief of the General Staff in 2003, a month before the war in Iraq commenced.

During his time as Britain’s top soldier, the general had to deal with claims of Iraqi prisoner abuse at the hands of British troops and growing discontent about the role of coalition troops in Iraq.

He began an inquiry into the abuse allegations, admitting they had damaged the Army but insisting the situation would be worse if there had been a cover-up.

After leaving the Army in 2007, the general was outspoken in his criticism of bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence and what he perceived to be inadequate support for the armed forces from the New Labour government.

Gen Sir Mike’s son, Mark also served in the Parachute Regiment.

He is survived by his wife, Sarah, sons Mark and Tom, daughter Amanda, and four grandchildren.

A senior female officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF) was awarded a £2,000 payout after she was told by male colleagues to “grow a pair”, a High Court judge has revealed.

Squadron Leader Anne Rubery first submitted an official complaint of “bullying and discrimination” in her unit in September 2018, an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) heard.

In the complaint, she alleged that she had been “mistreated, undermined, unsupported and mismanaged in the workplace by her chain of command”.

She also alleged that senior officers used “discriminatory and sexist language”.

Sqd Ldr Rubery’s allegations were dismissed by two Wing Commanders, named only as Wg Cdr Bradley and Wg Cdr Ward, who said she was “ballsy” and that she should “grow a pair”, it was heard.

A RAF investigation was subsequently opened into the comments made by her male colleagues, but it dismissed her complaints, concluding that their comments could be applied to “both genders equally”.

All her allegations of sex discrimination and harassment were dismissed by the Decision Body.

It also found that the comments did not meet the threshold of bullying, adding that Wg Cdr Bradley had made some “poorly judged comments” but they were not discriminatory.

Ombudsmanfound ‘overly masculine culture’

At this stage, Sqd Ldr Rubery received an apology and was told that the RAF would share “lessons” from her complaint to its diversity team, but she was told Wg Cdr Bradley left the service so could not be counselled.

However, she was “dissatisfied” with the outcome of the Decision Body so an Appeal Body was appointed.

The Appeal Body dismissed her case.

Sqd Ldr Rubery, a serving RAF officer of over 30 years, then took her case to the official Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces (SCOAF).

The Ombudsman criticised the RAF’s handling of the matter and found that there was an “overly masculine culture” in her unit, which showed a “disregard for the female workforce”.

The SCOAF said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) failed to recognise “wholly inappropriate” emails that objectified women and also criticised that no one else considered that there was inappropriate language.

Sqd Ldr Rubery’s complaint was partially upheld, but “not on the grounds of discrimination or harassment”.

It recommended that the RAF apologise to Sqd Ldr Rubery and pay her compensation of up to £2,000.

It also said “there were wider lessons to be learnt” and that the RAF “must reconsider how personnel are currently refreshed on their inclusion and diversity, equal opportunities and core values training”.

Sex discrimination

Details about the case emerged for the first time in Mrs Justice Stacey’s judgement regarding an EAT, as Sqd Ldr Rubery tried to sue the MoD for sex discrimination at an employment tribunal.

An employment judge in Watford allowed the case to proceed, however after an appeal by the MoD, the EAT has now found that the judge made an error allowing this.

The EAT found that an employment tribunal does not have the jurisdiction to deal with her complaints.

“In her report, the SCOAF was critical of the way in which [Sqd Ldr Rubery] had been treated by her line management and found that she had not been given the support required and that various provisions had not been adhered to, but did not find that [she] had been treated differently due to her sex,” Mrs Justice Stacey said.

“The SCOAF stated that ‘I do not consider the spirit of the RAF’s Ethos, Core Values and Standards has been adhered to when the [Appeal Body] decided that the phrases or use of language were not considered to be objectively offensive, sexist or gender related’.”

Robert Jenrick will announce plans to withhold student loans for the worst-performing courses in a major speech set to be delivered on Wednesday.

The Tory leadership contender will propose withholding student loans for the worst 10 per cent performing courses – freeing up funding for apprenticeships and vocational training.

Under the plans, set to be delivered to the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies, 130,000 fewer students would go to university.

The money will instead go towards expanding the funding for small businesses taking on apprenticeships for under-19s to include medium-sized businesses.

He will also enable universities to become Institutes of Technology.

Apprentices would learn alongside university students in some situations allowing for a “two-way transfer of knowledge”, a source close to Mr Jenrick said.

Mr Jenrick will not announce which particular courses will be affected, but a campaign source said the decision will be made based on university rankings.

The plans are part of a “plan for growth” that will detail how to “radically” increase nuclear baseload power, transform the welfare state to get people back into work, build houses and cut the size of the state to lower taxes.

Mr Jenrick will say: “We are sending thousands of young people to university who would benefit far more from building practical skills.

“It’s time to end Blair’s failed experiment with higher education, close down failing universities, and replace them with apprenticeship hubs for young and old alike, giving people the real chance at a better life they deserve.

“We should never again be reliant on foreign labour for the brickies, welders and electricians that build this country and power our economy forward.”

Kemi Badenoch, his rival in the contest, has not outlined her plans for higher education.

The former business secretary did, however, tell the Tory conference earlier this month that lecturers were marking down young Conservatives because “of their beliefs”.

The university sector has become increasingly reliant on foreign students as the value of tuition fees have gone down in real terms, after being frozen in 2017 at £9,250.

Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies also estimates that one in five graduates would be better off financially if they hadn’t gone to university.

A separate study by the Office for Students showed that nearly three in 10 graduates do not progress into highly skilled jobs or further study 15 months after graduating.

An award-winning British photojournalist was allegedly stabbed to death by his teenage son while hiking in California.

Dr Paul Lowe, 60, a celebrated photographer who captured the fall of the Berlin Wall, was found dead in the San Gabriel Mountains on Saturday.

Police from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said they were called to “an assault with a deadly weapon” and discovered Dr Lowe with “trauma to his upper torso” near Stoddard Canyon Falls at about 3.30pm local time.

He died from a stab wound to his neck, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.

Emir Lowe, Dr Lowe’s 19-year-old son, was detained and arrested on suspicion of murder after he crashed his car while driving away from the area at high speed.

He was due to appear in court on Tuesday.

Dr Lowe, who split his time between London and the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, is understood to have been visiting Los Angeles on family matters.

A lecturer at London College of Communication and King’s College London, he documented world events throughout his celebrated career.

His work appeared in publications including TIME, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The Independent.

The Cambridge University graduate covered Nelson Mandela’s release, the famine in Somalia and the destruction of the Chechen city of Grozny.

He was best known in the former Yugoslavia for documenting the siege of Sarajevo, where he first came to work not long after the start of the war in 1992.

In 2022, he told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: “During the siege, I really tried to document the lived experience of the citizens of Sarajevo: their resilience, their creativity, their courage, their humour and their energy in the face of the incredible aggression that they faced.”

Ika Ferrer Gotić, a CNN broadcaster and former Bosnian refugee, paid tribute to Dr Lowe, whom she described as a “storyteller who showed the world the truths that many wished to ignore”.

She added: “Paul wasn’t just any outsider. He became one of us, a Bosnian in spirit, returning to live in Sarajevo with his Bosnian wife he met during war. He chose to make this city, scarred but beautiful, his home.”

The embassy for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the UK said it was “deeply saddened to hear the news of the sudden death of our dear friend Paul Lowe”.

It added: “Paul was a true friend of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a wonderful human being, a great artist and professional, loved and respected by all who knew him.

“The memory and the important work and legacy of Paul Lowe will continue for future generations.”

The VII Foundation, which was founded by independent photojournalists in 2001, wrote on social media: “It is with deep sorrow that we share the news of the passing of our dear friend and colleague Paul Lowe, whose brilliant life was cut short in Los Angeles, California on Saturday.

“Paul was a courageous and beloved comrade, and a deeply devoted father and husband. The loss is shocking and overwhelming, and our hearts go out to his wife and family.”