Farage backtracks on pledge to stop small boats within fortnight

Nigel Farage has rowed back on a pledge he made to the party’s conference to stop small boat crossings within two weeks of taking office, just one day after making it.

It came as Reform UK’s conference entered its second day in Birmingham, with key party figures taking aim at the chaos within the Labour government and calling for an early election as the party set out its plan for government.

The Reform UK leader had told an audience at the conference on Friday that it would take a fortnight of him entering Downing Street to halt small boat arrivals, if he won an election.

But on Saturday, Mr Farage backtracked on the claim, telling Sky News: “I didn’t say that”.

He instead said Reform would stop the boats within two weeks of passing their proposed legislation.

The party has proposed quitting the European Convention on Human Rights and repealing the Human Rights Act to be replaced with a British bill of rights – a process which is likely to take more than a year.

Mr Farage also said he would introduce similar laws to those passed by former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott over a decade ago to stop arrivals from Indonesia.

“As soon as the law is in place. As soon as you have the ability to detain and deport, you’ll stop it in two weeks,” he clarified to the BBC.

On Friday, the Reform leader had said: “You cannot come here illegally and stay – we will stop the boats within two weeks of winning government.”

It’s the second time Mr Farage has sparked confusion with his migration policy over the last month, after he went back and forth on whether or not the party would deport women and children.

On Saturday, he confirmed he would deport female asylum seekers back to the Taliban in Afghanistan if he wins the next election.

Speaking to Sky News on the second day of the Reform conference in Birmingham, he was asked whether he would detain women and children and “send them back” – to which he responded: “Yes.”

But he said the UK has a “duty of care” if a four-year-old were to arrive in a dinghy.

It comes after Mr Farage faced condemnation last month when he said everyone who arrives in the UK via small boat, including women and children, would be detained.

He later rowed back to clarify that the party was “not even discussing women and children at this stage”, and then, in a separate interview, said that single women could face deportation if they didn’t arrive with children.

His latest comments came on the second day of the party’s conference after he had told attendees on Friday to expect a general election in the next two years amid disarray in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

Attendees at the conference passed motions on Saturday, including one that will call for Reform’s immigration policy to be broadened to include a review of asylum approvals by Labour and Conservative governments.

Lancashire County Council deputy leader, councillor Simon Evans, proposed the motion, which would see a review of immigration decisions on potential illegal migrants, where the police national computer and counterterror checks were bypassed.

Similar motions on repealing the 2008 Climate Change Act and removing “gender ideology from public organisations” were unanimously passed.

The conference also saw Mr Farage admit he misspoke when he said he bought a house in Clacton before the last election.

The Reform UK leader said last year he had bought a home in his Clacton constituency, but it was later reported that his partner had actually made the purchase.

“I should have said ‘we’. All right? My partner bought it, so what?” he said.

He said it was “her money” and “her asset”, adding: “I own none of it. But I just happen to spend some time there.”

“I should have rephrased it. I didn’t want … to put her in the public domain.”

Mr Farage’s deputy Richard Tice had earlier said the party leader’s tax affairs are “irrelevant” to voters after questions about the purchase resurfaced following Angela Rayner’s resignation. The deputy prime minister resigned on Friday over underpaying stamp duty on a seaside flat she bought this year.

Meanwhile, Reform’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, used her main stage address at the conference to promise to do away with “woke policing”, saying she has “had enough” of police that appear to “sympathise with protest groups that simply do not reflect the views of the majority of the British people”.

Lee Anderson, who has been tasked with putting together Reform’s plan to crack down on benefits, told the conference that the benefits system should be “a safety net, not a career option”.

“The best way out of poverty is education, training, opportunities and a bit of decent graft,” he said.

“Benefits should be a safety net, not a career option. Work should always pay more than benefits, which is why Reform UK will overhaul our benefits system and reward our workers, not the shirkers.”

And on Saturday afternoon, Lucy Connolly appeared on stage in a special live recording of The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, telling the conference that the justice system is “broken”.

The former childminder and wife of a Conservative councillor was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers in the aftermath of the Southport murders last year.

“Never in a million years did I ever think I was going to end up in prison. And it’s not funny, but as I said earlier, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry,” she said.

“However, I learnt a lot in there and things that you’d never see in any other walk of life, and I really hope that I can change some things having come from there.

“Because it really is such a broken system, the whole system just needs completely reforming.”

Sabalenka defends US Open title to earn revenge over Anisimova

Aryna Sabalenka banished a year of frustration to defend the US Open and win a fourth grand slam title, defeating Amanda Anisimova 6-3 7-6 (7-3). World No 1 Sabalenka becomes the first player to defend their US Open crown since Serena Williams in 2014.

Following painful defeats to Madison Keys in the Australian Open final and Coco Gauff in the French Open final, as well as to Anisimova in the Wimbledon semi-finals two months ago, Sabalenka ensured she finished the season with a grand slam title with an emphatic display in New York.

After marching into a first-set lead by winning four games in a row, Sabalenka looked to be heading for a dominant win after getting the break in the second. Anisimova stayed alive to break Sabalenka as she served for the match, but the 27-year-old regained her composure to win the tiebreak.

Anisimova has now lost back-to-back grand slam finals but the American showed impressive resilience to bounce back from her 6-0 6-0 defeat to Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon. The 24-year-old beat Swiatek and Naomi Osaka to reach the final, but it was Sabalenka who came out on top in the battle of the big-hitters.

Follow the latest scores, updates, analysis and reaction from the US Open below:

Cable snapped in Lisbon funicular crash, report finds

A cable linking the two carriages on the Lisbon Gloria funicular snapped, a preliminary report into the deadly crash has found.

At least 16 people died and 23 people were injured when the carriage came off the tracks at about 6pm on Wednesday.

Footage from the crash shows the tram-like funicular, which carries people up and down a hillside in the Portuguese capital, destroyed and emergency workers pulling people out of the wreckage.

Five of those killed were Portuguese, along with three Britons, two South Koreans, two Canadians, an American, a Ukrainian, a Swiss and a French national, police said.

The carriage had only travelled about six metres when it lost the “balancing force of the connecting cable”.

The vehicle’s brake‑guard immediately “activated the pneumatic brake as well as the manual brake”, the Office for the Prevention and Investigation of Aircraft Accidents and Railway Accidents said.

But the brake did not work, and it crashed at around 60kmph (37mph) within about 50 seconds.

“The violent collision was immediately noticed by bystanders and law enforcement officers present, and emergency services were quickly notified,” the report added.

When assessing the wreckage, inspectors said: “It was immediately clear that the cable connecting the two cabins had given way.”

However, the report suggests maintenance of the equipment was up to date, with a visual inspection carried out on the morning of the accident.

But it notes the area where the cable broke is not visible “without dismantling”.

Analysis of the wreckage also showed the cable had a specified life of 600 days, but at the time of the accident it had 263 days left.

It is still unclear how many victims were travelling on the carriage, which can hold about 40 passengers, and how many were on the street, the document states.

The investigators stress they have not reached “valid conclusions” about the cause of the crash and will provide a full preliminary report within 45 days.

The line, which opened in 1885 and is popular with tourists, connects Lisbon’s downtown area near the Restauradores Square with the Bairro Alto (Upper Quarter), known for its vibrant nightlife. Its two cars are attached to opposite ends of a haulage cable with traction provided by electric motors on the cars that counterbalance each other.

Kate Middleton cheers England on at Women’s Rugby World Cup

The Princess of Wales looked thrilled as she cheered on England to beat Australia from the stands in Brighton on Saturday.

Kate Middleton was pictured smiling, clapping and waving to people at Brighton and Hove Albion Stadium, with her new lighter locks tied in a half-up hairstyle.

England Women won their match against Australia 47-7.

The game, which marks the final of the group stages, sees England sitting at the top of the leaderboard and Australia in second place.

England are ranked number one in the world and are one of the favourite teams to win the tournament.

The princess posed for a group photo and shook hands with players in a post on the couple’s Instagram account, which was captioned: “Well done @redrosesrugby! A great result against Australia and on to the Quarter Finals.”

Her appearance comes after she debuted her new blonde hairstyle in her first royal engagement after the summer holidays earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales hugged a member of the Welsh rugby team after their narrow defeat.

The couple attended different games on Saturday afternoon, with William watching Wales and Fiji at the Sandy Park stadium in Exeter earlier in the afternoon. Wales lost 28-25.

The prince is patron of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) while the princess holds a similar position with the Rugby Football Union (RFU).

Pictures were shared on the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Instagram showing William meeting players, shaking hands and hugging one.

The online post was captioned: “Commiserations to @welshrugbyunion. You fought hard and made the nation proud.”

MP loses eight stone on Mounjaro after abuse from online trolls

A Labour MP has lost eight stone with the help of Mounjaro after battling online abuse from trolls who made fun of her.

Carolyn Harris was a size 24 and weighed 19 stone when she started taking the weight loss jab in October.

The 64-year-old, who is on the highest weekly dose of 15mg, said she weighs 11 stone and is a size 10 one year later, and is now “healthier than ever”.

“The abuse I was receiving online was horrendous and I made the decision to try Mounjaro,” said Ms Harris, who has since quit the social media platform X.

But the MP for Neath and Swansea East fears the drug’s price rise will exclude others from benefiting from Mounjaro.

Currently around 1.5 million people use weight-loss drugs in the UK, with the vast majority paying for them privately.

However, the drug company Eli Lilly said in August it was putting up the list price of the drug by as much as 170 per cent.

Eli Lilly launched Mounjaro in the UK in February last year, while rival Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy treatment has been available in the country since September 2023.

The company said when it launched Mounjaro in the UK, it agreed to a list price “significantly below” that in its three other European markets to prevent delays in availability through the NHS.

“We are now aligning the list price more consistently,” a spokesperson previously said.

Ms Harris said she has never spent more than £150 a month on her private prescription but, like many of the 750,000 people in the UK who are thought to be using Mounjaro, she now faces paying hundreds of pounds extra a month. Her 15mg dose is increasing to £429 a month.

She has written to the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to ask for help for those who cannot afford the weight-loss jab.

In the letter, shared with The Sunday Times, Ms Harris said the impact of the price rise was of “huge concern” and called on him to work with the manufacturers to “keep the cost for patients at, or near, the current level”. It would also “keep the NHS waiting list at a lower level”, she claimed.

In the letter, she explained the drug could be life-saving and save the NHS millions, with obesity currently costing the NHS £107bn each year.

It comes as thousands of NHS patients who could benefit from the weight-loss jab Mounjaro are missing out due to funding issues.

Less than half of commissioning bodies across England have started prescribing the drug on the NHS in line with health service guidance – with just 18 out of 42 starting the roll-out more than two months after it started nationally.

Mounjaro is currently only available on the NHS for those who are older than 18 and who meet strict criteria – they need to have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 or higher and four or more weight-related health conditions, including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and obstructive sleep apnoea.

The funniest, strangest and best things from this year’s Fringe

The Edinburgh Fringe is a place where British eccentrics take centre stage and the country’s weirdest most wonderful talents get to explore the craziest outreaches of their creativity, whether it’s staging immersive theatre in a bathroom, or performing a show on a treadmill.

For all the silliness, though, there’s a seriousness to the whole thing: the Fringe is the breeding ground for Britain’s comedy trendsetters: The Mighty Boosh and The League of Gentlemen first found audiences here and the international phenomena that are Fleabag and Baby Reindeer got their first outings on the stages of the Fringe.

This year, as ever, the festival’s packed schedule sees Edinburgh veterans rubbing shoulders with dozens of emerging voices on the hunt for an audience, many of them willing to perform anywhere from the backroom of a pub to a book shop, or even a bathtub.

The summer of 2025 is looking like it’s going to be a particularly strong year for established heroes of the Fringe. Winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award back in 2009, Tim Key returns to the Fringe with a new show Loganberry, likely to be informed, in part, by his recent experiences starring in the film The Ballad of Wallis Island and appearing as pigeon in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17. Expect deadpan poems and much hilarity.

Following the success of her smash hit Channel 4 show The Change, about a menopausal woman rediscovering herself in the Forest of Dean, Fringe-favourite and 2013 winner Bridget Christie returns to Edinburgh with a work in progress at the Monkey Barrel. Also showing a work in progress is Ahir Shah, who has pedigree when it comes to licking a show into shape at the festival – when he did so in 2023, he won the main prize. Television presenter and podcaster Nish Kumar is back on his old stomping ground too with a new show Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe at the Gordon Aikman Theatre.

For all the tried-and-tested performers who pretty might guarantee laughs, one of the real joys of the Fringe is to be found in taking a risk on an up-and-coming comedian in the hope you stumble across a star of the future.

In some cases that might mean checking out a Fringe first-timer like Toussaint Douglass, who makes his Edinburgh debut with his hotly-tipped show Accessible Pigeon Material, which promises to be joyfully absurd and very pigeon-heavy in terms of content. Or popping in to see if promising young talents can pull off that tricky second album: having scooped a Best Newcomer gong at last year’s Fringe, Joe Kent-Walters is reprising his gloriously demonic working men’s club owner, Frankie Monroe, at the Monkey Barrel Comedy venue (Cabaret Voltaire).

Also keen to build on a promising start will be Leila Navabi, a television writer from South Wales, whose 2023 musical comedy show Composition included a song about having her ears pierced in Claire’s Accessories. This year, she’s back with Relay, which blends jokes and songs to explore her attempts to make a baby with her girlfriend and a sperm donor.

Whether they’re promising young tyros or established names, for many comedians the creative freedom and outright silliness of the Fringe has them coming back time and time again. Take, for example, Ivo Graham whose show this year is called Orange Crush and is described by the man himself as “a show about hats, haters and hometown heroes, from a man who promised everyone he loved that he wouldn’t do Edinburgh in 2025, but then came back anyway, because he simply had to do this show.”

If you are planning to join Ivo in Edinburgh to soak up the comedy chaos in person, don’t forget provisions. The average Fringe day involves walking 15,000 steps, climbing 43 hills and sitting through at least one show in a sauna-like attic with no ventilation. So, pack accordingly: a bottle of water, a sturdy fan and a packet of Maynards Bassetts Wine Gums or Jelly Babies to keep your blood sugar and national pride intact. Nothing says “I’m here for the arts” quite like chuckling through a late-night experimental mime while chewing on a Jelly Baby’s head.

Now you’re in the know, don’t forget to set the juice loose with Maynards Bassetts – grab a bag today!

Harry returns to UK – but it’s unclear if he’ll meet with Charles

The Duke of Sussex is set to return to the UK this week for the first time in five months, with plans to support BBC Children in Need and revisit a community recording studio in Nottingham.

Harry’s visit will include a series of engagements and a significant donation to the broadcaster’s charity, aimed at bolstering its efforts to combat youth violence.

However, it remains uncertain whether the Duke – who is estranged from his brother, the Prince of Wales, and has a strained relationship with his father, the King – will arrange a family reunion during his stay.

The King, currently at Balmoral in Aberdeenshire, and the Queen have no public engagements scheduled for the coming week.

Harry and Charles last met face-to-face over 18 months ago, in February 2024, when the Duke, who is no longer a working royal, travelled across the Atlantic following news of his father’s cancer diagnosis.

Their meeting lasted just over 30 minutes before the King departed to recuperate in Sandringham.

The duke will be in London on Monday – the third anniversary of the late Queen’s death – for the annual WellChild Awards, a cause close to his heart as the charity’s long-standing patron, before travelling to Nottingham on Tuesday.

Harry last visited the Community Recording Studio (CRS) in the city’s St Ann’s area to mark World Mental Health Day in October 2019, just two months before he and the Duchess of Sussex announced they were stepping down as senior working royals and moving to North America.

He is planning to hold a private briefing with Children in Need, the Police and Crime Commission, the CRS and community outreach group Epic Partners in Nottingham, stage informal catch-ups with some of the young people he met before, and watch performances from CRS artists and make a short speech.

The duke appears to be focusing on his philanthropic ventures, while the Duchess of Sussex, who is not expected to join him on the trip to the UK, has been working on her lifestyle brand As Ever and promoting the recent launch of the second season of her critically savaged Netflix show.

The duke is hoping to bring together key stakeholders, influencers and potential funders to shine a light on the work of grassroots organisations such as CRS and Epic Partners and the sports apprenticeship body Coach Core.

Coach Core was originally started as a programme by William, Harry and the now-Princess of Wales’s joint Royal Foundation in 2012 to use the power of sport to help change lives and train young apprentices.

It has since become an independent charity. Harry and Meghan broke away from William and Kate’s Royal Foundation in 2019 after rumours of a rift began to circulate.

Senior aides to the King and the duke were pictured together in London this July in what was reported to be an initial step towards opening channels of communication between the two sides.

Harry, who levelled accusations at the King, Queen, William and Kate in his Oprah interview, Netflix documentary and memoir Spare, told the BBC in May that Charles will not speak to him because of his court battle over his security, and he does not know “how much longer my father has”.

But he also outlined his hopes for a “reconciliation” with his family, saying: “Of course, some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book. Of course, they will never forgive me for lots of things.”

He added: “But you know, I would love reconciliation with my family,” and said there was “no point in continuing to fight anymore”.

Harry’s level of security changed in 2020 after Megxit.

He was last in the UK in April for a court hearing about his security arrangements, but lost his Court of Appeal challenge in May and said in the TV interview he “can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back”.

He failed in his appeal against the dismissal of his High Court claim against the Home Office, over the decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec) that he should receive a different degree of protection when in the UK.

Donald Trump was an FBI ‘informant’ on Epstein, Republican claims

Donald Trump was an FBI informant on convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a senior Republican has claimed.

Mike Johnson also told CNN that Trump thought what Epstein did was a “terrible, unspeakable evil” and that the US president had been “misrepresented” throughout the controversy over the files during his second term.

Mr Johnson’s comments come after months of speculation regarding a “client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February was sitting on her desk.

The Wall Street Journal later reported that Ms Bondi had informed Mr Trump that his name had appeared several times on the list, which is understood to have included names of influential figures associated with the sex offender.

Epstein was found dead in his cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on a number of sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled as a suicide but has prompted countless conspiracy theories and public scepticism.

Trump had initially been friends with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s and has been pictured with the disgraced financier, but severed ties with him after an argument at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

“What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him,” Mr Johnson said.

“I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself.”

Mr Johnson added: “When he first heard the rumour, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”

The controversy has divided the Maga camp, with even loyal supporters of the president including Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson calling for greater transparency.

Republican Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Democrat Ro Khanna, of California, are also campaigning for a “discharge petition” in the House of Representatives that would force a vote on publicly releasing the entirety of the government’s Epstein case information.

On Wednesday, a group of Epstein victims and their families held a press conference to support the discharge petition, intensifying the pressure on the White House.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has said it has found no evidence of a client list that was kept by the paedophile.

In previous years, Mr Trump has speculated that it was possible Epstein had been murdered, and called for a full investigation in 2019.

However, last week he described it as a hoax, saying: “From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it’s really a Democrat hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”