Sue Gray issues first remarks since she was sacked by Starmer

Sue Gray has warned “Afghan women are being systematically removed from their own society” in her first remarks since being ousted as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

The former top civil servant warned the prime minister and world leaders they must not “legitimise any process that sidelines Afghan women”.

And, speaking publicly as she joined the Friends of Afghan Women Network (FAWN) as chair, Baroness Gray said “we must all pull together to do better”.

She said: “I feel honoured that my first role since leaving government is to be invited to chair the Friends of Afghan Women Network. Afghan women are being systematically removed from their own society.

“This is not simply an issue of education. It is a question of human dignity, of rights, of global responsibility.

“I’ve been privileged to work with governments who have worked hard to improve human rights, and I will take this learning into this role.

“The world must not legitimise any process that sidelines Afghan women. It must continue to support Afghan women and girls. We must all pull together to do better.”

Baroness Gray was sacked as Sir Keir’s chief of staff in October after losing a bitter power struggle with his campaign guru Morgan McSweeney, who has since adopted her former role.

Sir Keir then offered her the symbolic role of envoy for the nations and regions but she rejected the position.

The ex-Partygate investigator had been blamed for Labour’s dreadful start in government after July’s landslide general election win. Its early months were plagued by infighting, a row over freebies and complaints Sir Keir had failed to plan for government and was lacking a driving vision, with policies such as the withdrawal of winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners defining his tenure.

At the time, allies of Baroness Gray, who was put in the Lords by Sir Keir, said she would “focus on other things”.

She has now joined FAWN as chair, a British campaign group aimed at supporting Afghan women facing persecution under Taliban rule.

Writing for The Independent on Friday, FAWN co-founder Shabnam Nasimi warned girls in Afghanistan have lost access to education and participation in public life. “This is not a cultural nuance or a transitional phase, it is the formalisation of gender persecution,” she said.

She added: “The international community must now move beyond symbolic gestures and adopt a principled, coordinated approach. Diplomatic engagement with the Taliban must be conditional on measurable progress on women’s rights.”

FAWN is calling for an increase in funding for women-led organisations working inside and outside Afghanistan, despite Sir Keir’s government slashing the international aid budget to pay for an increase in defence spending.

Bargain Hunt art expert admits terror offences

A BBC Bargain Hunt art dealer has admitted failing to report high-value sales to a man suspected of financing terrorist group Hezbollah.

Oghenochuko Ojiri, 53, pleaded guilty to eight offences under section 21A of the Terrorism Act 2000 during a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.

The art dealer, who has also appeared on Antiques Road Trip, was charged with failing to disclose information about transactions in the regulated art market sector between October 2020 and December 2021.

The legislation makes it an offence to not alert police if someone knows or suspects a business associate of being involved in financing a proscribed group.

Prosecutor Lyndon Harris said Ojiri sold artwork to Nazem Ahmed, a man designated by US authorities as a suspected financier for the Lebanese militant group.

“At the time of the transactions, Mr Ojiri knew Mr Ahmed had been sanctioned in the US,” Mr Harris told the court.

“Mr Ojiri accessed news reports about Mr Ahmed’s designation and engaged in discussions with others about his designation.

“There is one discussion where Mr Ojiri is party to a conversation where it is apparent a lot of people have known for years about his terrorism links.”

The prosecutor said that Ojiri “dealt with Mr Ahmed directly, negotiated the sales of artwork and congratulated him on those sales”.

Ojiri was charged on Thursday following an investigation by the Metropolitan Police‘s specialist arts and antiques unit, alongside the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) and HMRC.

New money laundering regulations introduced in January 2020 brought the art market under HMRC supervision, and Ojiri is said to have discussed the changes with a colleague, indicating awareness of the rules.

The court heard the total value of the artwork sold was around £140,000.

The prosecution added the art was sent to Dubai, the UAE and Beirut.

District Judge Briony Clarke granted bail but ordered Ojiri to surrender his passport and not to apply for international travel documents.

Ojiri will be sentenced at the at the Old Bailey on 6 June.

Gavin Irwin, mitigating, told the court: “He is not a flight risk.

“The fact that he is here – he has left the UK and has always returned knowing he may be charged with offences – he will be here on the next occasion.”

As a Canadian, I can see the fatal flaw in Keir Starmer’s Trump deal

Starmer called it a “fantastic, historic” day, but while he and Donald Trump were busy praising their plan as a “breakthrough deal”, the details were still hazy. After all of his pleading and self-abasement in the Oval Office, the letter from the King and all the rest of it, all we knew for sure is the UK has less access to US markets and the US has more access to UK markets than it had in February, and the 10 percent tariff rate still applies.

It will do nothing for the UK economy. Indeed, Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, has already said that the deal will not be enough to dampen uncertainty. All that we do know for sure is that the British now lead the world in prostrating themselves before Trump for no noticeable gain. And as recent history from Canada attests, I am also certain that Trump will be waiting to tear up the agreement whenever he chooses.

This is why our new prime minister, Mark Carney, set a different tone. He defined his campaign in a single sentence: “Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” he said.

Only a week after his victory, Carney showed up at the White House for the most important meeting by a foreign leader since the humiliation of Zelensky. Carney didn’t speak much, but he didn’t have to. The contrast between the two men showed just how far the two countries have diverged. Canada, with Carney, is now at the forefront of the international effort to build economic, political and military structures without the United States.

Carney is the rules-based global order coalesced into a man who can walk around. Carney is Trump’s opposite – a boring, decent, responsible human being who has gone from success to success. He is a financial crisis manager of the highest order, with experience handling the 2008 crash and Brexit effectively, first as governor of the Bank of Canada, then as governor of the Bank of England. Unlike Trump, he has no entertainment value.

“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose,” Carney told a rally just before the election. “As the assembled media will tell you, I campaigned in prose. So I’m going to govern in econometrics.” That should tell you just how unglamorous a politician the man is. He uses “econometrics” as a punchline.

Canada doesn’t feel much like laughing right now anyway. The brokenness of the relationship with our neighbour is not a partisan matter; the sense of threat from America is well understood across the political spectrum. It’s not like the Conservatives took a different position. Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative candidate, could not have been more explicit: “Canada will never be the 51st state.” Stephen Harper, who served as prime minister for 10 years, declared that the country should sustain “any level of damage” in resistance to American attempts at annexation.

Canadians elected Mark Carney in part to stand up to Donald Trump, and the world is taking note. As one of the world’s leading economists and a man with deep connections throughout the global economic order, he is best poised to lead us out of the American sphere of influence and create new institutions to protect us from a newly belligerent United States. The tariff war is only the beginning.

Trump’s trade “strategy”, if that’s the right word, is reminiscent of the scene from Blazing Saddles where the sheriff takes himself hostage by pointing a gun to his own head. There’s no way to plan for the implicit chaos of the current American administration. Perhaps Trump will randomly change his mind on tariffs as American economic pain grows. Perhaps the threats to Canada can be resolved by a straight bribe, through one of Trump’s various memecoin ploys.

Canada is already making adjustments. After the imposition of tariffs, Canada’s exports to the United States declined 6.6 per cent. But its exports to the rest of the world increased 24.8 per cent, almost entirely offsetting the difference. America, it appears, is not a necessary nation.

Trump has taught Canada, and through Canada, the rest of the world, an invaluable lesson: if you make a deal with the American government, as we did with Trump’s first administration in 2018, it’s not a deal; they can just change their mind whenever they want. If you buy American military hardware, the president has been explicit that you are buying a degraded version because “we like to tone them down about 10 per cent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” That question applies to all of America’s allies, not just Canada.

Quite outside the question of the threat to our sovereignty, Canada cannot be tethered to a dying animal. With or without Trump, the American condition worsens day by day. The hyper-partisan politics, the massive inequality in its economy, the declining trust in institutions, the collapse of the legal system, the rising sense of the illegitimacy of power itself – all of these fires are about to have mass poverty poured over them like petrol.

Trump’s next hundred days will, in all likelihood, be more chaotic than the last hundred. When the United States faces its next debt ceiling crisis in August or September, it will most likely be in recession, with debt servicing costs higher than military spending, a promised five trillion in tax cuts, and zero appetite for spending cuts to Medicaid and social security.

Something has to give. America is about to face some very adult economic decisions; there are no adults in the room to answer them. America’s bullying is dangerous, but its self-destruction is actually what Canada and the rest of the world needs to fear.

“If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will,” Carney said early in his campaign. Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia, Canada’s hotter cousin, has said, “Carney is the man for the times.” Of all the middle powers, we understand America best. We are closer than Europeans or the Japanese. We can see America more clearly. The United States is a bus that Trump is driving over a cliff, and Canada has hired Carney to jump out with the least amount of injury possible. The rest of the world will have to follow when they realise the other option is crashing out.

Starmer has chosen another path; it is not a path of security or independence, even more so now that Trump knows that Britain is a pushover. Starmer may be feeling confident today, but as more details emerge, there will be many wondering whether he should have pulled a Carney instead.

The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future by Stephen Marche is published by Simon & Schuster

Inside Arsenal’s biggest transfer window in a generation

It was a message some of the Arsenal players didn’t quite expect. In the hours between the Champions League elimination to Paris Saint-Germain and Sunday’s trip to Liverpool, the mood was naturally downbeat, and a few players needed to be picked up.

Mikel Arteta didn’t quite indulge self-pity, though. Anyone feeling that for too long will be discarded. The Arsenal manager instead proclaimed that he has never been more convinced his team is on the brink of glory.

Some in football will feel that such stories are typical of the “delusion” around the London club, especially as they travel to Anfield having to give a guard of honour to a team that stole in ahead of them for the title.

This Arsenal might yet become the fifth English team to finish as runners-up three times in a row, and that’s only if they actually hang on to second place. Arsenal have to battle to just be bridesmaids again.

All of the four sides previously responsible for that record, including Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal 1998-2001, actually won the title around those periods. The closest parallel is probably Sir Matt Busby’s first Manchester United, who eventually built up to the Scot’s first title in 1951.

Arteta has to convince himself that Arsenal are on a similar path. Otherwise, that semi-final defeat to PSG will only foster the sense of a “nearly team”, of a club that has suddenly gone backwards. A trip to newly-crowned Liverpool couldn’t come at a worse time. It just emphasises another disappointment. Arteta found it difficult to watch Liverpool’s title celebrations and now has to be in the middle of it all.

The message to the players will be to remember what it feels like. Arteta’s staff don’t necessarily feel the same as everyone else, though. They would describe this as a “frustrating season”, rather than a bad season.

The PSG match is even cast as an illustration of all this, and how it’s frustrating rather than concerning. Those at the training ground can’t help but compare it to last season’s quarter-final elimination to Bayern Munich. Then, in an earlier round, the sense at their London Colney base was that the squad expended too much nervous energy and then couldn’t lay a glove on Bayern. Now, they’ve gone further, and dominated a PSG team cast as European champions elect. There was no inferiority complex, as Arsenal genuinely felt they were much better. Arteta isn’t the only one pointing to far superior xG, how all of PSG’s goals were long shots and Gianluigi Donnarumma’s star performance.

All that was missing was the finishing touch, and Arsenal feel that was mostly down to the missing players. They didn’t even have a striker, and they still got so close.

That is what has Arteta so convinced. It’s not like Arsenal are in a situation where they have gone to their limits and failed, struggling to figure out exactly what went wrong.

They know precisely what they need to do: signings at some key final positions and injury prevention.

It’s why there is little indulgence within the club for the growing argument that Arteta just “isn’t a winner”, and that he himself represents the missing piece.

Arsenal believe the core of the squad is in a very promising place, especially given its prime average age of 26.9. They just need to complete or complement key positions, which is what the recruitment team have been working on for months. Real Sociedad’s Martin Zubimendi is said to have been “wrapped up” since last summer, and they are close to signing Espanyol’s Joan Garcia as a challenger to David Raya.

The main focus will obviously be on a forward, and those within the club say there are now so many options there are “no excuses”. Arteta would love to sign Alexander Isak, who is known to be interested, but few see that as having any chance. Arsenal just aren’t going to rise to a figure in the region of £150m that would start any Newcastle United auction, something that would only happen in the unlikely event Isak agitates to leave.

Such reticence about spending has played into frustrations around Arsenal, especially given the club now have the seventh-highest revenue in world football. Their firm stance is nevertheless that they do not just want to be at the limit of PSR. “That’s not how we go about things,” one source inside the club said, while senior figures talk of “wanting to be good citizens” in a manner that befits their establishment status.

Others have bitterly quipped about rivals who are barely compliant with PSR but “don’t care”.

Arsenal want to be sustainable and organically put money back on the pitch.

All of that means that most of the work to date has been on Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko, whose contract clauses make him available for around £70m. There is also interest in Sporting’s Viktor Gyokeres and Eintracht Frankfurt’s Hugo Ekitike. Ollie Watkins isn’t off the radar either.

The most fanciful signing would be an explosive left-sided forward, but the club are now aware they badly need to match Bukayo Saka’s productivity on the other flank. They’ve become lopsided. Athletic Bilbao’s Nico Williams, who has a buyout clause thought to be in the region of £50m, is the ideal option, but his wages would be high, in contrast to a higher fee for Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo. Arsenal also like Brentford’s Bryan Mbuemo but he would have to be retrained on the left.

Room will at least be created by Jorginho going to Flamengo and Kieran Tierney to Celtic, with the likelihood of one other significant exit.

One of the reasons that Andrea Berta has been brought in as sporting director is because of his immense experience in player trading at Atletico Madrid. That is now essential in a world of ‘PSR churn’.

Should Arsenal be as successful in the market as they hope, there is then this season’s biggest problem to solve. That is actually keeping their best talent on the pitch in the way Liverpool did. Availability has really been the major difference this season, although some Arsenal insiders continue to point to refereeing decisions above all else. When one discussion arose about how Arsenal had suffered the bad luck of typical overzealous application for new rules, like bookings for kicking the ball away, one senior figure interjected “nudging the ball away”.

Some in football talk of how such attitudes hardly help their pursuit of success. There’s a belief it just creates a propensity for self-destruction, rather than defiance. The club is prone to being engulfed by this emotional angst, and Arteta is sometimes central to that.

The very mention of injuries can provoke eye rolls elsewhere, but it’s still a fact that Arsenal have had the worst record in the Premier League this season. Half of their preferred XI have been out for extended periods, including all of the attack. Worse was how they had clusters of injuries in the same positions, like Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus being out at the same time.

The constant counter-argument is “that’s football” and the need to adapt, but Arteta’s staff would say that’s precisely the point. They talk of how Jurgen Klopp missed key players in 2020-21 and 2022-23 and tried to play the same way, but suffered drastic drop-offs. The same was true of Pep Guardiola in November, before Manchester City spent close to a quarter of a billion.

Arsenal were conscious of this, so decided they had to temporarily switch up. If you try to play the same way without the same players, there are going to be gaps. This is how systemised football has become – especially Arteta’s. This logic has been the source of more cautious approaches and an over-reliance on set-pieces. Without Havertz now, or Martin Odegaard in autumn, Arteta’s side haven’t been able to press in the finely-tuned way that brought 91 goals in 38 games last season. They get the system so much – with instant responses to certain pressing triggers – that it’s very difficult to replicate. That explains a reticence about signings in attack.

One of the fairest questions about Arteta is nevertheless whether he has gone too far with that; whether he’s become too controlled, with too much of a shift towards defensive structure.

Arsenal believe there will be a reversion once they have close to a full squad.

The greatest debate should really be about the fitness approach. Arteta is described by some as “a control freak” in a similar way to how Klopp was, and there have been constant questions over whether he has overplayed some players. Muscle injuries are usually a giveaway.

They are a sign that this isn’t just “luck”. Liverpool significantly changed their preparation approach after Klopp and won the league again. That’s how there are other lessons for Arsenal at Anfield.

Arteta, for his part, has already been considering this. It is going to be a big theme of Arsenal’s summer, especially now they have the data from the first season of the expanded Champions League.

That also plays into why there isn’t that much worry about the drastic domestic points drop-off. Arsenal feel they actually did OK given the many injuries, to the extent that the players felt so secure in second for so long that they have taken their eye off the ball in the league. It may yet have an effect against Liverpool, just as it did against Bournemouth last week.

Arsenal again listed. Some of that was again down to this inability to finish things. There have already been 17 games where Arsenal have scored just one goal, compared to 11 last season. A total of 21 points have been lost from winning positions. A stretched team left too many wins on the pitch, and too many influential players on the sidelines.

Again, they see this as solvable.

If all this seems a little too serene for a club enduring more frustration, there are going to be other challenges. This summer will make it two years until the contracts of Saka, Gabriel, William Saliba, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus all run out. That is the time to start talking seriously. As one source put it, these are key renewals, at a club that haven’t faced this for years. You’re suddenly negotiating with players who want to maximise their careers, and have a lot of suitors.

That makes winning next season all the more important.

That does run alongside another message from within the club. The team is close. The absolute wrong thing to do now would get panicked into recruitment decisions that don’t fit with this step-by-step process.

As those around Arteta stress, the closer you get, the more important it is to hold your nerve.

British Airways plane caught fire and closed Gatwick runway after pilot forgot left and right

A British Airways flight caught fire after a pilot confused his left and right hands during take-off.

Flight BA2279 was set to depart from London Gatwick Airport to Vancouver on 28 June 2024 when the co-pilot mixed up his right hand for his left, subsequently operating the aircraft’s thrust.

A report published on Thursday by the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) stated the pilot was supposed to “move his left hand during the takeoff roll, while preparing to pull back on the control column with his right hand.

“However, he unintentionally pulled his left hand back instead.”

The “action slip” led to a rejected take-off and a brake fire, and forced the pilot to perform a “high-speed emergency stop” on the runway after reaching speeds of more than 190mph.

Airport fire and rescue services attended the aircraft and extinguished the fire on the right main landing gear.

The incident also resulted in the temporary closure of Gatwick Airport’s main runway, with 16 inbound flights being diverted elsewhere and a further 23 cancelled.

None of the 347 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 777 were injured, although the incident prompted a formal investigation and report by the safety agency.

The experienced co-pilot, who had more than 6,000 flying hours under his belt, insisted he was “well-rested and feeling fine” at the time of the incident and “could not identify a reason” why the mishap occurred.

The captain stepped in to “calmly and methodically” bring the plane to a halt and alert air traffic control.

“The airport rescue and firefighting service attended the aircraft and extinguished a fire from hot brakes on the right main landing gear,” the AAIB report noted.

A spokesperson for British Airways said: “Safety is always our highest priority and our pilots brought the aircraft to a safe stop.

“We apologised to our customers and our teams worked hard to get them on their way as quickly as possible.”

Bucket-list beaches: Crystalline waters and secret shores in Dalmatia

Dalmatia’s coastline is, quite simply, spectacular. With the lion’s share of Croatia’s 1,200-plus islands, islets and reefs, Dalmatia’s stretch of the Adriatic has some of the country’s most beautiful beaches and seascapes. Whether you’re on the mainland coast or island hopping, you’ll be wowed by towering cliffs that hover over sheltered, pine-fringed coves, and broad sweeps of beaches

The sheer variety of swimming spots means there’s something for everyone; families in search of long stretches of beach with watersports, vibing beach bars and all the facilities to romantics looking for secluded pebbly coves to revel in tranquillity.

If Croatia’s beaches weren’t appealing enough, the coastal waters have just been crowned the cleanest in Europe, beating holiday hotspots including Greece, Spain and Italy to be ranked number one. The European Environment Agency checked out more than 22,000 beaches throughout the European Union, and Croatia’s coastal waters came out on top. In fact, out of nearly 900 Croatian beaches tested, over 99 per cent got the highest rating of ‘excellent’, owing to low industrial pollution, minimal over-construction and a lack of mass commercialisation.

So, beyond being picture-postcard idylls, Dalmatia’s beaches should be your top choice for a relaxed, sustainable holiday in a protected natural environment. To get you started, here’s a selection of Dalmatia’s unmissable beaches.

A popular inclusion in ‘world’s best beach’ lists, Zlatni Rat (pictured above) – also known as Golden Horn – is a curvy, V-shaped beach of fine white pebbles flanked by vivid turquoise waters on the southern coast of the island of Brač. Watch the windsurfers in action as you bask in the sun, or take respite at one of the wood-shaded beach bars. Follow the coastal footpath to the seafront promenade of the much-loved village of Bol – and as it’s only a 20-minute walk to Zlatni Rat, this makes the perfect base for your stay.

For a more laid-back vibe and beautifully calm sea, just a few miles west of Bol is the blissful Murvica. Find a shady spot under the pines to flop after your swim and snorkel in crystal clear waters, or take in vistas of Vidova Gora, the highest peak on the island. There’s a delightfully rustic beach bar where you can grab a cold drink and a bite to eat, and while you’ll have to bring your own parasols, you can reach the beach easily from the carpark.

Punta Rata’s Blue Flag beach is used to vying for the title of Europe’s top beach, and once you set foot on its long expanse of pebbles, it’s clear why. This breathtaking idyll, north of the Makarska Riviera town of Brela, appears to go on forever – fringed with pine trees and surrounded by waters that offer fabulous snorkelling. Look out for the Brela Stone, a giant rock that rises from the sea and is found on many local postcards.

It takes a bit of effort to reach award-winning Stiniva Bay on the southern coast of Vis island, but it’s 100 per cent worth it. Take the rocky footpath downhill to this glittering bay sheltered by two curving cliffs that almost close the cove off from the sea, with only the smallest boats able to squeeze through the gap. There’s just enough room for a beachside café, with its terrace offering superb views.

Heading to the northeastern coast of Vis, and easier to access than Stiniva Bay, you’ll find scenic Stončica Beach. Its sparkling blue waters and mix of white sand and pebble beach, shaded by woods, make this truly picture perfect. The shallow waters, with a very gradual slope, are perfect for children. Stop for lunch on the covered terrace of the waterside restaurant and feast on freshly grilled fish and meat.

Tucked away on Hvar island’s southern coast is the unassuming Dubovica beach – surrounded by tumbling slopes covered in maquis and olive trees. In contrast to the sophisticated beach clubs of Hvar Town, this tiny coastal treat, set in a cove beside a 17th-century church, is perfect for relaxing, while the turquoise waters are made for sea safaris. Refresh and refuel at the beach restaurant or bar.

Back on the mainland on the Makarska Riviera, Velika Duba is a peaceful, pebbly bay backed by fragrant pines and connected to the village of Blato via a pleasantly shaded footpath. It’s all about simple pleasures here: swimming in gin-clear waters, lazing in the sun, doing a bit of snorkelling, having a cold drink in the beachside bar and falling under the spell of a Dalmatian sunset.

For more travel inspiration, information and to plan your trip visit Central Dalmatia

The fall of Weight Watchers isn’t the victory against diet culture you think it is

It’s a scene that has played out in community centres up and down the country. A cluster of people, most of them women, inevitably, are nervously waiting to stand on the scales in front of their peers. Will they have lost or gained a few pounds since their last communal weigh-in? But although set-ups like this were once a defining part of diet culture, soon they may become extinct entirely, an archaic throwback to another era.

This week, Weight Watchers, the company that commercialised the diet group and has reigned over the industry for around six decades, announced that it had filed for bankruptcy, reportedly in an attempt to eliminate $1.15bn (£863m) worth of debt. Under Chapter 11 rules in the United States, the business has the chance to reorganise its liabilities while continuing to operate. The company also recently revealed a 14 per cent drop in subscribers compared to the same time last year; revenues had decreased by almost 10 per cent over the same period. Its fortunes have been on the slide for a couple of years: in 2024, it reported a net loss of $364m.

What’s responsible for this dramatic change in fortunes? Perhaps the most obvious culprit is the seemingly inexorable rise of Ozempic, and other drugs like it, which have transformed the way that we approach weight loss. Semaglutide was originally developed as a diabetes medication, but over the past few years, its ability to help control blood sugar levels and regulate appetite has made it popular as a so-called “skinny jab”. Ozempic has turned the diet industry upside down, and left more traditional brands struggling to keep up.

Weight Watchers started out in Sixties New York. Housewife Jean Nidetch had struggled with her weight for most of her life, testing out diet pills (including prescription amphetamines – it was the Sixties, after all), crash diets and hypnosis in an attempt to lose pounds. But none of these methods worked; as soon as she stopped, she’d end up putting the weight back on. Spurred on by a neighbour who’d asked her when her next baby was due (she wasn’t pregnant), Nidetch headed to the city’s obesity clinic for advice.

Her experiences with the clinic’s weight loss group helped inspire Weight Watchers; its hallmarks were a plan of recommended and prohibited foods, and weekly group weigh-ins, where a lower number on the scales would be rewarded with prizes (and the praise of your peers). In 1968, five years after its launch, the group boasted more than 1 million members around the world. Ten years later, the business would sell for more than $71m (roughly equivalent to around $347m or £260m today).

By the Nineties, the brand name was practically synonymous with a culture that encouraged women (who made up the vast majority of the Weight Watchers customer base) to constantly scrutinise their bodies and find them wanting. You’d see flyers outside community centres and church halls, advertising weekly meetings, and would hear anecdotes of friend groups and family members (typically mums and daughters) signing up together in solidarity.

Head into the aisles of any supermarket and you’d also spot ready meals emblazoned with the Weight Watchers logo, proudly proclaiming the amount of “points” that they contained. This now ubiquitous aspect of the Weight Watchers universe – whereby certain foods would be awarded a certain number of “points” based on their nutritional and calorific content, and members would tot up their daily and weekly allocation – was in fact only introduced around this time.

Celebrity ambassadors, including a post-divorce Sarah Ferguson, only seemed to make the brand more omnipresent. In the UK, we also had our own homegrown equivalent, Slimming World, which used a system of “syns” to manage calorie intake. “Syns” were, as you can probably guess, attached to stuff with higher calories – and the counter-intuitive spelling was introduced some time in the Nineties (perhaps the original version was deemed too shamey, because there’s nothing like a superfluous “y” to soften the potential demonisation of certain foods).

Weight Watchers, and all the similar programmes that sprang up in its wake had their own success stories. Many members reported finding a sense of community and accountability in their groups. But the rhetoric of these diet plans was so all-pervasive that, even if you weren’t a paid-up member, it seemed to infiltrate the way you thought about food. Anecdotally, at least, I know of far too many women in their twenties and thirties whose early attitudes to their diet were shaped by the calorie-counting systems they heard about from older relatives, or who still find themselves doing mental maths when comparing food labels in the supermarket aisles.

When programmes like these were everywhere, it was near-impossible not to absorb some of their rhetoric, or to start feeling like you should be scrutinising every morsel that passes through your lips. I’ve never felt more self-conscious of my eating habits than a brief period in the mid-2010s, when a couple of housemates embarked on a Slimming World stint, filling the kitchen with talk of foods that could be enjoyed “unlimited”, and which would be branded as “syns” (side note: I have never, before or since, seen as many low-fat yoghurts as I did whenever I opened the fridge during this time).

By this point, though, Weight Watchers and its ilk were starting to feel out of kilter with a prevailing cultural mood that valued wellness over constant dieting, and body positivity over standing on the scales. But in 2015, Oprah Winfrey helped to revitalise the company’s fortunes when she bought a 10 per cent stake and became its most popular celebrity ambassador yet; three years later, revenue had risen by one-fifth. If it worked for Oprah, people seemed to think, then maybe it’ll work for me.

In 2018, they rebranded as WW, part of an attempt to move away from explicitly aligning the company with, well, weight loss. Instead, their new tag line was “wellness that works”. It’s safe to say, though, that the new name didn’t exactly capture people’s imaginations. The pandemic meant that their in-person weigh-ins were off the cards, so the brand formerly known as Weight Watchers leaned into online plans instead.

Their one-time saviour Winfrey then became something of a canary in the coalmine when, in 2023, she revealed that she’d been using weight loss drugs as a “maintenance tool”. It felt like the first major blow for WW’s more traditional take on dieting, and Winfrey later stepped down from the board. Her departure prompted shares in the company to drop by around 25 per cent.

Where celebrities go, we mere mortals tend to follow. And so has been the case with Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and other semaglutides prescribed for weight loss. It’s now estimated that around one in eight adults in the United States have used them at one point, and it’s thought that increasing numbers of British people are paying to access the drugs online. These appetite suppressants seem to render a calorie-counting platform like Weight Watchers, well, pointless; you don’t need to stress over adding up your daily points if your semaglutide injection has drastically curtailed the impulse to eat. Weight Watchers did recently acquire a digital health company, with the aim of focusing on remote prescriptions for similar medication, but it felt a bit like too little, too late (although recent stats from the company show that this is one part of the operation that is actually doing OK right now).

As someone with a deep-rooted suspicion of the diet industry in all its many guises, from food-tracking apps to meal-replacement shakes, I thought that I might experience some vague sense of triumph upon learning of Weight Watchers’ floundering. But I’m surprised to find that the victory feels pretty hollow. Why? Because Weight Watchers is the symptom of a problem, not the cause, and it’s not like we’ve managed to stamp out the diet culture that broadly underpins enterprises such as this one.

We’re just as obsessed as we ever were with being thin – we’ve simply found another potential way to achieve it (or, at least, another way to spend lots of money in its pursuit). And Ozempic seems to have ushered in a new era of super-skinniness, where already extremely thin celebrities are shrinking before our eyes, at a speed that previously seemed impossible – all while denying that they’ve ever touched the stuff. It’s all creating a sense of cognitive dissonance that’s arguably just as damaging for our body image; growing up in the size zero epoch of the Nineties and Noughties was bad enough, but I feel slightly sick thinking about the messages that young girls are absorbing now.

The brave new world of weight loss jabs makes the traditional diet group seem almost quaint by comparison – at least, you might think, those programmes fostered some sense of togetherness, rather than having us injecting meds in silo and, in some cases, in secrecy. The decline of Weight Watchers isn’t a sign of a better culture around weight loss and diet – just a more complicated one.

UK to be hotter than Barcelona this weekend as warm weather returns

The UK is expected to enjoy hotter temperatures than Barcelona this weekend.

Temperatures will soar into the mid-twenties on Saturday and Sunday, the Met Office has predicted, as the UK’s sunny spell continues.

The mercury is set to peak at 24C in London and the south east of England on Sunday, with temperatures of 20C stretching into the north of England and south Scotland.

Coastal areas to the west of the country will experience cooler temperatures in the mid to late teens, with Plymouth experiencing temperatures of 17C. Skies will remain clear and bright across the UK for the most part, with some cloudy patches towards the west.

Met Office meteorologist Honor Criswick said “it’s going to be a dry and pleasant day ahead” on Saturday with “wall to wall sunshine in some spaces”.

Meanwhile, Spain’s top holiday destination will see temperatures peak at 18C on Saturday and 22C on Sunday. This comes as other regions of Spain and the Balearic Islands have been hit with a Status Orange storm warning, with thunderstorms predicted in the northern regions, including Barcelona and Madrid.

Popular hotspots across Catalonia, Andalusia, Castile and Valencia put storm alerts in place on Thursday afternoon, stretching into Friday, with forecasters warning of the possibility of snow in higher areas.

AEMET, the state weather agency, has warned that there is a possibility that the conditions will be “accompanied by hail”, with poor weather set to continue throughout the weekend.

Spain’s poor weather is being caused by a low-pressure system moving in from the Atlantic, as well as a cold air mass that is making its way across the Iberian Peninsula.

This region of low pressure risks pushing into the south west of England on Sunday, with the Met Office warning of heavy showers towards Devon and Cornwall.

The Met Office forecaster added: “We need to keep an eye across the South as we head into Sunday. Just this area of low pressure could potentially push up something across the South West. Heavy showers, these possibly turning into some thundery downpours, so something we need to keep an eye on for Sunday.

“But for many of us, it should be a dry end otherwise the weekend.”

The UK has so far experienced record-breaking sunshine so far this year. The Met Office clocked an average of 228.9 hours of sunshine across last month, meaning the UK recorded its sunniest April since the series began in 1910. This follows the sunniest March since records began for England.

May started off with the hottest day of the year so far as the Met Office recorded 29.3C in London.

Today

Early morning mist and low cloud soon clearing, otherwise a dry day with plenty of warm sunshine. Breezy in the northwest and southeast, but warmer for most compared to recent days. Dry with mainly clear skies allowing isolated mist and fog, and rural frost. Cloudier in the far northwest with patchy light rain later. Breezy in the far northwest and southeast.

Saturday

Mist and fog soon clearing. Another fine, dry day with plenty of warm sunshine for most. Cloudier and breezy in the far northwest with patchy rain. Generally warmer than Friday.

Sunday to Tuesday

Turning warmer and cloudier on Sunday with showers arriving for some, mainly in the southwest, these turning heavy and thundery by Monday. Showers easing and becoming cooler through Tuesday.