Outrage over mourners taking selfies with casket as thousands queue to pay respects

The Vatican has kept St Peter’s Basilica open nearly all night as thousands of the faithful flocked to pay their final respects to the late Pope Francis.

The Pope’s coffin has been brought to St Peter’s Basilica, where it will lie in state for public viewings until his funeral on Saturday.

After the Vatican suggested that visitor hours could be extended beyond midnight, it emerged on Thursday that St Peter’s had been kept open all night, closing only briefly between 6am and 7am, after more than 50,000 people paid their respects during the first 12 hours of public viewing.

World leaders, cardinals and crowds of pilgrims are expected to attend the funeral itself, which will be held at 10am on Saturday in St Peter’s Square.

The Prince of Wales will join the likes of Donald Trump, Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky to pay their respects to the pontiff, who died aged 88 on Monday.

Francis is said to have shown the first signs of sudden illness two hours before passing, according to the Vatican news outlet, which reported he made a gesture of farewell with his hand to his nurse before falling into a coma.

Jamie Vardy was the ultimate Premier League icon – this is the end of an era

He signed off in a manner only he could. Two days after Jamie Vardy called Leicester’s season a “miserable, embarrassing s— show” came the confirmation that it would be his last at the club. But the low of a second relegation from the Premier League in three years does not come close to scratching the unbelievable, record-breaking highs of Vardy’s 13 years in the east Midlands. “We did the impossible,” Vardy reflected.

With Leicester, Vardy became a champion and a Premier League legend. He may be the most unlikely, too: the £1m signing from non-league Fleetwood Town who arrived as a journeyman in 2012 and fired the 5000-1 outsiders tipped for relegation to the top-flight title. The Jamie Vardy movie has yet to be made by Hollywood, but the script writes itself.

Leicester declared Vardy as their “greatest ever player”. He scored 24 goals in their title-winning season of 2015-16, including a Premier League record of scoring in 11 consecutive games between August and November. He was a devastating finisher with lethal pace. He was electric and defences found him unstoppable. That year, Vardy was the Premier League’s Player of the Season, the embodiment and face of the Leicester story.

That’s how it’s remembered, too. Riyad Mahrez was named as the PFA Players’ Player of the Season that year, the left-footed winger who added a touch of class to the impossible job. In midfield, the tireless and selfless N’Golo Kante did the work of two men; the World Cup winner left for Chelsea that summer and, a year later, took the Premier League title with him, underlining his importance to the Leicester miracle.

Vardy stayed at the King Power while Kante left for Chelsea. He turned down an offer from Arsenal in 2017, the summer Danny Drinkwater joined Kante at Stamford Bridge. A year later, Mahrez got his move, going on to become a multiple Premier League champion with Manchester City. As the team improbably guided to the title by Claudio Ranieri was broken up and then rebuilt under Brendan Rodgers, Vardy remained the link to the club’s greatest moment.

He also improved. Vardy was not a one-season wonder. He scored 143 Premier League goals for Leicester, putting him 15th of all time, and netted at least 15 goals in five consecutive seasons between 2017 and 2022. Vardy won his Premier League golden boot in 2019-20, becoming the oldest player to finish as the league’s top scorer at the age of 33. As others slowed down, Vardy remained a livewire, fuelled by Red Bull. Experience added sharpness to his finishing.

He also remained a total nuisance. Leicester chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha described Vardy as “special” and “unique” but he was also a wind-up merchant. He tormented home fans as a visiting player, destroying corner flags and mocking Crystal Palace fans by flapping his arms like an eagle at Selhurst Park. On his return to the Premier League this season, eight years on, he taunted Spurs supporters by reminding them of Leicester’s title and Tottenham’s near-miss.

Perhaps it was the rise from non-league that made Vardy such a character. If Leicester defied the odds to win the Premier League, Vardy’s ascent from non-league, playing for Stocksbridge and Halifax Town, to becoming a 26-cap England international is another remarkable tale. Another was winning the FA Cup with Leicester in 2021, becoming the first player to appear in every round from the preliminaries to the Wembley final.

Vardy stayed with Leicester after their relegation in 2023. Just seven years after winning the title, their dramatic decline into the Championship was a further twist to the Leicester story. If it felt inexplicable at the time, their relegation under Ruud van Nistelrooy this campaign was far more predictable. “My one regret – and I’m devastated about this – is that I’m not saying farewell to you on the back of a much better season,” Vardy said. “This isn’t the way I wanted my career here to finish.”

Vardy’s final two seasons in the Premier League brought just three and seven goals, though he may add to the latter. That he struck 18 in captaining Leicester to promotion from the Championship shows he has finally slowed down.

But there is no shame in that. Vardy, the ultimate late bloomer, is now 38. He has not retired, but a shot at another Premier League club feels beyond him, even as the “desire and ambition to achieve so much more” still burns inside.

For now, there are still five games to go, including his farewell to the King Power against Ipswich on May 18. Against Bournemouth on the final weekend, the Premier League will witness the departure of an icon.

Leicester, too, will be waving goodbye to the final piece of the team who achieved the impossible. A year on from the retirement of Marc Albrighton, Vardy is the last of the 2015-16 team to go. An era is ending but as Vardy said, “those memories will last a lifetime”.

Constance Marten tells court ‘my children were stolen by the state’

Aristocrat Constance Marten has told jurors she moved from place to place with her newborn girl to prevent the baby from being taken into care, claiming her other children were “stolen by the state”.

Marten, 37, and Mark Gordon, 50, are charged with the manslaughter of their daughter Victoria, who died after they went off-grid in early 2023.

The Old Bailey was told the couple were avoiding their fifth child being removed from them amid a high-profile police hunt for the missing baby, with Marten insisting she and her partner did “everything we could to protect her”.

It is alleged Victoria was inadequately clothed in a babygrow and that Marten had got wet as she carried the baby underneath her coat.

The prosecution alleges Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping in the “flimsy” tent on the South Downs, despite past warnings.

The child’s body was discovered with rubbish inside a shopping bag in a disused shed near Brighton after the defendants were arrested on February 27 2023.

There had been a delay to Marten starting her evidence after she complained of suffering from a headache and toothache on Tuesday, but she began her evidence-in-chief on Thursday morning.

Sitting in the witness box wearing a blue blouse and navy blazer, Marten told the court that she “absolutely” loved Victoria.

Asked if she did anything to cause her harm, the defendant said: “Absolutely not, we did everything we could to protect her.”

Questioned on how she felt about her death now, Marten told jurors: “I don’t think this process has really allowed me to grieve properly.

“I still feel angry, upset, still in shock.”

She said Victoria was born on Christmas Eve 2022 and died January 9 the next year.

The court heard how Marten and Gordon “stayed all around the country” in various hotels and properties in the months leading up to Victoria’s birth.

Marten explained they moved between places “because I didn’t want one single authority to have jurisdiction over my daughter, so if we kept moving, they couldn’t take her”.

“I knew that my family would be looking and they would have people that they were paying to follow us,” she added.

Jurors heard the defendants checked into a cottage in Northumberland between December 20 and 26, where she gave birth.

Marten said she had an “easy” pregnancy and delivery with no complications.

Detailing their plan after checking out of the cottage on Boxing Day, Marten said: “Continue to move jurisdictions every three or four days, rent a place in cash and live there as long as I can with Victoria.”

Asked about the concerns they had about moving around with a newborn, she told the court: “Obviously it would have been nicer to have been somewhere stable and been able to properly relax and enjoy ourselves with her as a family but we weren’t in that position so we had to do what we had to do really.

“Because I knew that the local authorities were after her and I knew that there were private investigators investigating us.”

She described the baby as “good” during that time – feeding regularly and spending a lot of time asleep.

Jurors heard Marten comes from a wealthy family with whom she “never really had a strong connection” and eventually became estranged from.

She said she was financially privileged growing up, but “emotionally not at all”.

“Obviously I don’t want to seem ungrateful for having comfort and nice things and access to finances,” she said. “It’s great but without familial love… there are more important things.”

The court heard Marten and Gordon met around 10 years ago and became good friends before going travelling in Peru for around six months and getting married there.

She described the marriage as a “blessing” ceremony and not one legally recognised in the UK.

Gordon elected not to give evidence in the trial.

The pair, of no fixed address, have denied the gross negligence manslaughter of their daughter and causing or allowing her death between January 4 and February 27 2023.

Jurors have been told the defendants were convicted at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.

Post-Brexit youth visa scheme with EU ‘not in Government plans’

A post-Brexit youth visa scheme with the European Union is not in the Government’s plans, a Cabinet Office minister has said.

Nick Thomas-Symonds slapped down calls for such a move after more than 60 Labour backbenchers signed a letter calling for “a new and bespoke youth visa scheme” that would allow UK and European citizens under 30 to live and work between the two for up to two years.

Speaking in the Commons, Mr Thomas-Symonds told MPs the Government is pursuing a new partnership with the EU which will make the UK “safer, more secure and more prosperous”.

The EU has pushed for a youth mobility scheme ahead of a UK-EU summit planned for May 19, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also meeting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday.

Pressing the Government on the issue of a youth visas scheme, Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokesperson Sarah Olney said: “Warm words about a reset in UK-EU relations is no longer enough. The summit taking place in London on the 19th of May is an opportunity for real action.

“So can the minister take this opportunity… that the summit presents to commit to bringing in a UK-EU youth mobility scheme that will boost economic growth and enhance chances for young people in our country and across the EU?”

Mr Thomas-Symonds replied: “On the issue of a youth mobility scheme, it is not part of our plans. We have always said we listen to sensible EU proposals, but we will not go back to freedom of movement.

“Where I do agree with her, is about concrete proposals and concrete progress on the 19th of May, and we are looking to secure that new partnership with the EU that will make our country safer, more secure and more prosperous.”

In their letter, the MPs and peers said any youth mobility scheme should be in line with the UK’s existing arrangements with countries such as Australia and Canada, with a time limit on visas and a cap on numbers.

The group also called for deeper collaboration with the EU on defence, a deal on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures to reduce border checks on food products, both of which are in line with Government policy, among other suggestions.

Later in the session, shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart urged the Government to “rule out dropping the right to annual quota negotiations on fishing”.

Mr Thomas-Symonds said he would not give “a running commentary on negotiations”, but added: “We will, of course, negotiate in the interests of our fishers.”

Mr Burghart then asked: “Can he assure the house that EU AI (artificial intelligence) rules will not be applied to Northern Ireland?”

Mr Thomas-Symonds said: “He again comes with his questions on the reset, and what I want to just say is we’ve had an atmosphere of collegiality, and I want to join in that atmosphere, because I want to agree with something that the leader of the Opposition said, when she said that the previous Conservative government left the EU without any plan for growth, and that is absolutely true.”

He added that “major retailers like M&S, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Lidl all supporting this Government’s approach in the reset to get an SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) agreement, he should be backing that”.

Downing Street said it would not get into a “running commentary” about whether negotiations with the EU could include a youth mobility scheme in future.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told reporters: “Discussions with the European Union are ongoing at the moment.

“We’ve got clear manifesto commitments, we’ve got clear red lines in these talks, but with those discussions ongoing, I am just not going to get into commentary on any specific details.”

Former top civil servant Philip Rycroft, who served as permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union, has meanwhile warned that ministers made a “tactical mistake” by ruling out a mobility scheme.

“It meant that if we do a deal, and I hope we do on youth mobility, there will be accusations of a climbdown,” he said at an evidence session of the UK Trade and Business Commission on Thursday.

Elsewhere in Cabinet Office questions, Labour MP Matthew Patrick warned that “despite a record number of civil servants in a generation”, his constituents have faced “worse” outcomes.

The MP for Wirral West said: “It’s clear to me that under the last government, our state failed the public. We had an agenda not rooted in the lives of everyday people, which meant that despite a record number of civil servants in a generation, outcomes for my constituents in Wirral West and across the country were worse.

“So could (Pat McFadden) please set out how a smaller, more modern and more focused state can once again deliver world-class public services?”

Cabinet Office minister Mr McFadden replied: “Over recent years, the public has seen the state get bigger. It’s seen taxes go up, but they haven’t always felt that they’re getting the right outcome for those changes, and so to deliver our Plan for Change, we do need to reform the state to make it more efficient and more effective.

“We’ve started to deliver these reforms – stronger performance management, accelerating AI adoption, focus on the front line, reforming rules around recruitment and secondments.

“These plans will help empower our excellent Civil Services to work better to reduce bureaucracy and to focus on what really matters, which is better outcomes for the public.”

Miliband confirms he could charge homes in the South more for power

Ed Miliband has confirmed the government is looking at plans to charge homes in the South more for electricity after critics dubbed the plans a “postcode lottery”.

The ‘zonal pricing’ system would mean different regions are charged different rates for energy, with prices being determined by supply and demand in each area. With Scotland benefitting from greater wind supplies, its likely that homes in the South could face higher bills as a result of the scheme.

The energy secretary said ministers will “make a calm and considered decision” on the issue, arguing the government’s main priority is to “cut bills” in a “way that’s fair”.

But the plans have been dubbed “madness” by Labour donor and eco-tycoon Dale Vince, who warned it would create “complexity, delays and unfairness”.

Asked about the reports, the energy secretary told Sky News: “This is a very complicated issue that you’re referring to that my department is looking at around so called ‘zonal pricing’.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you, we’re still looking at the details of this, which is something we’ve got to really, really get right, and we’re studying in detail the effects.

“Look, my bottom line here is we want to cut bills, and we want to do so in a way that’s fair, and we want to make sure that happens, and that’s my test for any reforms that we make.

“There’s very strong views on both sides of industry, because you’ll probably have gathered on this. People are fighting it out. We’re going to take this, make a calm and considered decision on this.”

He later added he is “not in favour of a postcode lottery on bills”, saying his “test for any reform is will it cut bills and will it do it across the country in a fair way”.

Mr Miliband added: “What I do not want to do is somehow jack up bills in one part of the country in favour of another”.

No 10 later confirmed the idea was being looked at.

Downing Street said that the government was “studying the previous government’s consultation on this issue.”

The PM’s official spokesman added that “in general our approach is about cutting bills” but did not deny that could still see different parts of the country charged different prices.

But Mr Vince, founder of clean energy company Ecotricity, warned zonal pricing would create a “postcode lottery”, telling The Independent: “Tens of millions of Britons could end up paying more for their energy than they do now. It makes no sense when Labour’s mission is about cutting bills for all rather than a few.

“Zonal pricing is being presented as a solution but it’s madness. Fragmenting our energy market into 12 different regions would create complexity, delays and unfairness.

“Then there’s the idea that businesses will relocate to where most of the renewable energy is, like the north of Scotland, because they can get cheaper energy there. I mean the chances of it happening are slim, and then there’s the timeframe within which it would happen – we don’t have that much time.”

He added: “I think this plan has been written up in a windowless room with no connection to the real world.

“If the government is serious about lowering energy bills, we have far more sensible and effective options – chief among them ‘breaking the link’ between the price of gas and the price of all our electricity.”

RenewablesUK is also urging the government to rule out introducing zonal pricing, saying it could be incredibly disruptive to investment.

“The government has a golden opportunity to secure a record amount of new wind and solar farms in this year’s auction for new projects, but we can only achieve this if we get the right framework in place to attract billions in private investment,” said chief executive Jane Cooper.

What smart investors need to know about changing status symbols

“It’s not a bag, it’s a Birkin.”

In 2001, Sex and the City introduced us to the Hermès Birkin, with character Samantha Jones being told there was a five year waiting list for would-be buyers. The fashion set’s favourite accessory went mainstream.

The Birkin continues to sell well over 20 years later, both new and second hand. Resale values have reportedly risen faster than gold. The Birkin has helped Hermès to outperform in what has been a torrid time for luxury brands.

But how long can that appeal sustain?

A Met police colleague used a slur about a rape victim – and kept his job

I have always had this innate longing to want to help people and protect them from harm. So, when I saw a role advertised for a 999 call handler for the Metropolitan Police Service, I immediately hit “apply”.

Although the first few years were a whirlwind of new information and nerves, I truly believed I had found the career for me. And, two years ago, I could never have imagined that my relationship with the police would come to a bitter end within 18 months – simply for doing the one thing they asked of me: reporting wrongdoing.

One day in April 2023 I had settled into a shift answering emergency calls and found myself sitting next to a colleague I had never met before. Throughout the shift he made horrific and unnerving comments to me, such as “she sounds like a sl**” about a rape victim.

He typed on his phone “why don’t you f*** off back to your own country” about an immigrant and whispered “Sarah Everard turf” into my ear while I was trying to help a victim on an emergency call and he could see a map of the Clapham area on my screen. I even hung back after our shift ended to avoid him leaving, but – to my surprise – he was still outside when I exited and proceeded to follow me the beginning part of my journey home, despite him saying earlier that day that he lived in the opposite direction.

When you work in public service, you are told over and over that if you witness misconduct, you should report it – and that you have a duty to report it. I did exactly this. If you had told me back then that what I was doing would end my career and thrust me towards a mental health crisis, I would not have believed you.

Because of my report, my colleague was dismissed for gross misconduct, but later reinstated because the appeal decision-maker thought it was “too harsh” and that the original panel was “too heavily swayed” by the police movement to combat violence against women and girls. Not to mention: the Baroness Casey report, which had found the Metropolitan Police institutionally misogynistic and racist.

As you can imagine, when I found out that my former colleague would be returning to work, I was heartbroken. I really thought the Met was trying to better itself. Clearly not.

For 18 months, I tried to raise my concerns, but was ignored and silenced. I left the force in November 2024. By this stage, my mental health was near breaking point – I felt like I had been seated at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, all that time.

The College of Policing’s guidance on misconduct hearing outcomes states that misconduct proceedings “are not designed to punish police officers”. It also states that the panel should be centrally concerned with the reputation or standing of the profession, rather than the punishment of the employee.

Here we have a clear admission that reputation trumps the quality of the employees, which is clear in cases such as mine, and many others that are published online. A recent case of an officer sending unsolicited private pictures to another colleague, found proven, was deemed as “limited harm” as it was not publicly known, and the officer was given only an 18-month written warning.

We now have police employees and officers who cyber flash and vocalise racist, misogynistic and sexist opinions and still have their jobs. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it?

So, now I am campaigning to raise awareness on the nonsensical legislation, guidelines and policies that police forces rely on when making judgments on misconduct hearings. Sometimes it feels like my research has led me down a rabbit hole, unveiling just how much the police protect the police and how little they protect the public.

I have set up a platform called Speak Up Now, where public service workers can anonymously write in with their experiences and concerns, because I understand, first hand, just how impossible it is to hold them accountable from the inside, and if I can help others express concerns for good, then we are half way to effecting change. I have also created a petition to ask the government to reconsider the legislation and guidance that enables rogue employees to keep their jobs, in the hope that amendments will be made.

If any of the experiences I have detailed resonate with you, or if you have been on the receiving end of the failures in policing, then please do join me. If the police protect the police, then we must protect us.

Does anyone really want a Chevrolet in downtown Doncaster?

At the very considerable risk of the consequences of trying to be fair to Donald Trump, I wonder if, on the very specific case of tariffs on cars, the guy has a point? The US imports a fair quantity of fine-quality British vehicles, and, until very recently, added an import tax of just 2.5 per cent of the cost – a trivial consideration in any case for the price-insensitive owners of Bentley Continentals, Rolls-Royce Ghosts, and Range Rovers.

In return? The British, with all their post-Brexit freedoms, continue to slap the same tariffs on imports of American-manufactured vehicles, a rate inherited from EU membership. Well, you have to ask yourself; was that fair? Of course, under the mad plans announced by Trump a couple of weeks ago, the American tariff has been ramped up to 25 per cent, which is hardly just either; but the point still stands.

So Rachel Reeves offering to cut the UK tariffs as part of a wider trade deal with the US is not a bad idea. Superficially, at least, it is also quite a smart one, because UK imports of “traditional” American vehicles are in any case tiny, and aren’t likely to explode in the short term – so, at first glance, she isn’t giving much ground away here. Indeed, there are very good reasons, much more significant than the tariffs, for why American cars have traditionally not been that popular in the UK: historically they’ve been oversized, over-chromed, under-engineered and over here.

The few imports that did arrive wearing their classic nameplates never won the reputation for durability that the German makes did, nor were they as reliable as all those Toyotas and Mazdas. Indeed, such factors, and not tariffs, lie behind the long-term decline in their own home markets of the American “Big Three” – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Yank tanks. Gas guzzlers. Gaudy gargoyles. They tried everything, including GM rebadging tiny Korean Daewoos as Chevrolets, launched without success on a bemused car-buying public. They dressed up a Saab as a Caddy, to no avail; and, after a brief fad inspired by their use by the US military in Iraq, the massive civilianised Humvees have also disappeared from British roads. Such cars just didn’t appeal to European tastes and were never understood. Not even the handsome Chrysler 300C, a large saloon inspired by the Rover P5 and partly based on Mercedes-Benz components, and which did enjoy sales success in the early 2000s, could build critical sales mass.

The most prominent American-brand cars on sale in Britain today trade heavily on their American heritage and glamour – the latest generation of the Ford Mustang, complete with lazy five-litre V8 (Flat Rock, Michigan) and the famous Jeep Wrangler (Toledo, Ohio). Both are magnificent artefacts of American culture; neither is good for the planet or sells that well. And that’s about it for that kind of American automotive presence in Britain – and it wouldn’t change much under different tariffs.

But that is not the end of the story. Because of globalisation much has changed in the American industry, and some of it invisibly. For example, a much more significant importer of American cars to Britain these days is … BMW, which brings in X5 SUVs, a common enough sight on our roads, from Spartanburg, North California. They have German-made engines and other bits, but they are “American” cars acceptable to European tastes. Or take the all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV (which doesn’t have much in common with the sports coupe). That’s assembled in Mexico, but, thanks to the free trade deals signed by Donald Trump, has components from the United States too.

Or, even more to the point, there’s the Tesla. It just so happens that all the many Tesla models sold in the UK, almost ubiquitous in some cases, are shipped in from China and Germany, but there’s no reason why these Muskmobiles couldn’t be sourced from his expanding operations in the USA. Aside from the Cybertruck, which apparently nobody wants, they’re not laughably big, and have zero CO2 exhaust pipe emissions. There are now obviously very different, politically driven image reasons why sales of Musk’s “swasticars” have collapsed; but if Toyota bought out Tesla no one would object to these Yankmobiles.

With minimal tariffs on US imports, whatever their badging, British motorists could have more choice and cheaper personal transportation than would otherwise be the case. The market would evolve, as it always does, and, in return, more UK-made products could win a following in the States – where car buyers are much more open-minded and less snobbish. On this at least, Reeves is steering in the right direction.