Labour grandee tells Starmer to sack No 10 chief Morgan McSweeney

Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to fire his Downing Street chief of staff by former Labour home secretary David Blunkett.

Lord Blunkett said the prime minister should dismiss his top adviser Morgan McSweeney and replace him with someone who can “manage people well”.

The intervention by Lord Blunkett comes days after anonymous briefings by unnamed Downing Street sources claimed that health secretary Wes Streeting was plotting to replace the prime minister.

Mr Streeting denied the allegation and said it was proof of a “toxic culture” in No 10.

Sir Keir apologised to Mr Streeting. He later said he had been assured the briefings “didn’t come from Downing Street”, adding: “I will absolutely deal with anybody responsible for briefing against ministers, cabinet ministers or any other ministers.”

Lord Blunkett said: “If I was Keir Starmer I would say to Morgan McSweeney, ‘You have got great skills, you helped enormously with me in building a winning team before the election. Now is the time for me to find you another role that you are good at and I will bring in someone with the overall experience that we need to be the chief of staff’.”

He went on: “It is a particular role – it is about knowing about government and having been in a senior position where you have had to not only run the show but manage people well. It is not rocket science but it is a particular skill.”

Mr McSweeney has been blamed by some within Labour for the fallout from the attacks on Mr Streeting, which were an apparent ploy to warn off potential leadership contenders.

The prime minister has also faced calls to sack Mr McSweeney over the row.

But sources who have spoken to Mr McSweeney told the BBC on Thursday he would remain in his post.

They said: “He’s done absolutely nothing wrong. He’s not going anywhere.” They added: “I can categorically say he was not involved indirectly or directly.”

Speaking to the Newsagents podcast, Lord Blunkett said if the government did not improve its performance it would pave the way for Nigel Farage to take power.

He said: “We will be in serious trouble if we don’t get our act together, because the opinion polls are awful and the feeling of bewilderment in the electorate is palpable.”

The unrest at the top of the party comes as Labour’s poll ratings have plummeted since Sir Keir delivered a landslide general election victory in July 2024.

It precedes Rachel Reeves’s 26 November Budget, in which the party could rip up its manifesto promise not to increase income tax, and what MPs fear could be a bloodbath in elections next May in English councils and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.

England hit back after All Blacks surge ahead early in huge clash

England will attempt to prove their progress as they take on New Zealand seeking a rare win over the All Blacks at Twickenham.

It is 13 years since the hosts last beat their opponents on home soil, and six since they secured a victory at all in an outstanding performance in the 2019 Rugby World Cup semi-final. Yet hopes are high that this may be England’s time to win again — Steve Borthwick’s side arrive on a run of nine consecutive victories, and pushed New Zealand mightily close in three meetings last year.

Those three games, however, served to underline just how ruthless the All Blacks can be. A vintage team this may not be but there have been signs of late that they are moving in the right direction under Scott Robertson, and wins over Ireland and Scotland have so far left them on course for a “grand slam” tour with a clash against Wales to come next week. Can they burst England’s bubble and prove their class yet again?

Follow all of the latest from Allianz Stadium with our live blog below:

How to fight in ‘hell’: Ukraine veterans say Nato not ready for war

Ukrainian intelligence is warning that a Russian Lancet drone is prowling the sky, loitering above Kramatorsk, like a heron poised over a fish pond, ready to strike.

A laptop shows multiscreen images of medics racing through shredded forest, Russian soldiers in Ukrainian sights, bunkers being blown up – everyday terror.

This is the future of war – and the West isn’t ready for what may be coming in an open conflict with Russia: mass casualties and a transformation of the battle beyond anything that Nato’s armies are training for.

The laptop feed is for Rebekah Maciorowski, an American volunteer paramedic who runs the medical operations, evacuation and training for an entire battalion of men and women on Ukraine’s eastern front, under its 3rd Brigade. In a conventional war, she would be a major. In this conflict? She has no idea what her rank is and cares even less.

But the revelations from this frontline soldier, one who has the rare claim to have shot down an incoming Russian drone attacking her patients, are chilling.

“You have had encounters with Nato training teams. You’ve talked to Nato when you’ve been back in Europe. Do you think that they’re ready for the next war with Russia?” The Independent asks her.

“No. No, I’m honestly a little bit terrified,” she replies – after more than 40 months at war here.

She goes on to explain: “If you were to talk to Nato military officials, they would reassure you that everything is under control, they’re well equipped, they’re well prepared. But I don’t think anyone can be prepared for a conflict like this. I don’t think anyone can.

“And what’s concerning to me is, while they’re offering training [in Europe for Ukrainians], I think it would do them well to also take some information and training from the Ukrainians.”

Maciorowski has undergone training with Nato forces in the last year and says what they taught was relevant to Afghanistan and Iraq – not Ukraine.

“When I went to train with Nato, the factor of drones was not really filtered in. It was very much the tactics that were learnt in the previous war. And these tactics now do not apply because you’re not making a linear assault.

“Everything has changed with drones. And I don’t think it was factored in, at least not in this training,” she says in her secret medical evacuation headquarters.

Her teams evacuate wounded soldiers using quad bikes because armoured ambulances are now death traps, while quads can race between forests and dugouts trying to avoid drones.

But her team takes heavy losses. Over the last week, a top medic, callsign Viking, was killed on a rescue mission east of Slaviansk. A few weeks before that, another driver was blown up by a drone.

“I don’t see other Europeans coping with this,” she says.

Nato’s leaders and intelligence agencies agree that Europe, especially, is already involved in a hybrid war with Russia. This includes propaganda to undermine democracy, cyber attacks, sabotage and assassinations.

Lately, it has included probing attacks inside Poland and Estonia by Russian aircraft and continuous challenges at sea.

An outright war may never happen. It may also be inevitable.

Vladimir Putin has made it clear he wants to force the Baltic states back under Russian rule and has designs on all of eastern Europe in countries once dominated by Moscow.

Ukrainians and Georgians know that when he says such things, he invades.

If it came to a war, Russia has experience in modern combat that only Ukraine shares.

An officer operating in Pokrovsk, where Ukraine says Russia is concentrating 150,000 men on trying to break through Ukrainian lines, describes the fighting there as “hell”. It is in the heat of this inferno that a new approach is being forged.

“We are changing the structure of the war on the go,” says Oleksandr Yabchanka, commander of a drone unit in the Da Vinci Wolves, part of the 59th Brigade.

“There is bad news for Ukraine and Europe. Russia is adapting just like us. It is a colossal threat and very underestimated in Europe.”

A spokesperson for the British-led programme Operation Interflex said that 61,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been trained for “putting them in the strongest possible position as they resist ongoing Russian attacks”.

He said that Ukrainian military experts and drone operators had served as consultants to train soldiers going to war and that 91 per cent of Ukrainian soldiers who completed Nato’s basic training “feel more confident of their survivability at the end of the training”.

However, a recent study by Jack Watling at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) warns that Nato needs to catch up with understanding that war has changed.

The advent of small, deadly drones, often flown with first-person vision (FPV), frequently guided by fibre-optic cables, and capable of pinpoint accuracy far beyond what were considered front lines, has transformed conflict.

Nato doctrine focuses on what it calls “combined arms manoeuvre”. This means an emphasis on the concentration of aircraft, armour, infantry and artillery with the aim to surprise and overwhelm an enemy.

That doesn’t work any more.

Dr Watling explains that “pervasive networks and sensors have made the ability to achieve surprise difficult”. Known as battlefield transparency, the modern surveillance of battlefields means that an unexpected attack is almost impossible.

On top of that, “the ubiquity of precision weapons” makes concentrated forces vulnerable to “rapid attrition”.

Armoured vehicles, engineering equipment, electronics warfare kit – it can all be spotted and picked off with ease, and over long distances.

This means that the front lines are wide, deep, shattered and almost empty of infantry.

Nato’s method is to take on mass attacks by the “near peer” forces of Russia. But Russia’s tactics no longer concentrate on mass – the weight of numbers in men and arms used against Ukraine three years ago.

Now, Ukrainian forces are being attacked with long-range glide bombs. Russian drones hunt out Kyiv’s UAV teams in their bunkers and force them away from their forward lines. And above all, the lines of logistics are pounded with terrifying accuracy.

As a result, small groups of two or four Russians covertly sneak into locations on the front lines to try to hold bunkers and dugouts while Ukrainian drones patrol overhead.

The soldiers use blankets designed to muffle their thermal images, sometimes held above them on poles, to get into locations where they may be embedded for weeks or months.

Ukrainian troops do the same. And now that their lines of communication have been cut, they rely entirely on supplies of food and ammunition, as well as medical supplies from drones in the air or on the ground.

In Afghanistan, 99.2 per cent of British army casualties who were evacuated to the main Helmand hospital at Camp Bastion survived – mostly because they were taken there from the front lines within the first “golden hour” after injury.

In any war with Russia, it could be days or weeks before a severely wounded Nato soldier could be evacuated. And the numbers injured in a single incident or a drone blast are likely to be high.

“The wounds, the injuries, are catastrophic,” explains Maciorowski. “And they’re multiplying because the radius of impact for a drone that drops a grenade or explosive device is massive.

“So you can have an entire group that’s taken out, all of them injured in one drop. We’re not seeing that hand-to-hand combat so much now.

“Now we’re looking at prolonged field care; guys who are unable to evacuate and giving medical advice over a radio, making sure that when guys come to the unit, every soldier is trained like a medic because we don’t have enough medics, and there’s no guarantee that they can get to the wounded soldier in time.

“So every soldier needs to be a highly trained medic… to treat himself and others around him.”

Nato’s regular armed forces are rarely, if ever, trained how to treat themselves for long periods with antibiotics and intravenous drips.

And, above all, they are unprepared for the potential mass casualties that Nato forces would face in a conflict with Russia.

“We almost can’t comprehend the scale of those losses,” says Ed Arnold, a former British Army officer who is now with Rusi.

Gangrene among Ukrainian soldiers is commonplace because they are stuck on the front lines for so long. Britain’s biggest mobile field hospital has a capacity of only 80 general beds and 10 for intensive care.

In a Ukraine-type war where the UK, and Nato, can expect hundreds of casualties every day, the capacity to cope is just not there.

“We should have Ukrainians training [British officers] at Sandhurst (Royal Military Academy) at the moment,” adds Arnold.

“There should be a resident Ukrainian platoon, which regularly rotates, giving us the actual download on what’s going on.”

Trump blasts ally Marjorie Taylor Greene as Maga rift over Epstein deepens

President Donald Trump called his once loyal ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a “Lightweight Congresswoman” and accused her of being a ‘traitor’ to the Republican Party, as their rift over the release of the Epstein files deepens.

Trump continued to insult the Georgia Republican on Truth Social Saturday morning, after announcing he would no longer endorse her due to her recent criticisms of the White House for refusing to release more files.

“Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left, performed poorly on the pathetic View, and became the RINO that we all know she always was. Just another Fake politician,” Trump wrote.

He later posted, “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green is a disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!”

Greene called the president’s vitriol “astonishing” and accused Trump of coming after her to “make an example to scare all the other Republicans” from voting on the Epstein files.

The Georgia representative said she does not “worship or serve Donald Trump.”

Food photography tips: how to make food look as good as it tastes

Ever since the rise of social media, sharing food online has become a global obsession. From Instagram reels to TikTok trends, food content dominates our feeds and for good reason. Food is a universal love language. There’s something irresistible about the smell of freshly baked bread or the comfort of a steaming bowl of delicious pasta.

But as any food lover knows, capturing a photo that truly does your meal justice is easier said than done. Yet, it’s a powerful skill to have, as the perfect food shot can turn a humble dinner into viral content and, in some cases, transform small cafés, bartenders, and home bakers into internet stars.

At the heart of this movement sits the smartphone camera. And as someone who’s been immersed in food photography for over a decade and adores a smartphone for its ease of use and authentic way of capturing food moments, I was eager to see what Samsung’s new lightweight Galaxy S25 FE device could bring to the dinner table as it were.

When it comes to shooting food, I look for four essential things in a phone camera:

The Galaxy S25 FE ticks all four boxes and then some, and truly feels as though it was designed with the modern day foodie/food creator in mind. It even introduces ground-breaking AI features that promise to make editing and shooting more intuitive than ever, for a true end-to-end all encompassing device that elevates your food images effortlessly.

When it comes to food photography, the right lens can transform an ordinary plate into a visual feast – and the Galaxy S25 FE delivers a versatile mix that makes shooting creative, effortless, and fun.

The phone features four lenses in total, each one offering something unique for the way you tell your food story. Up front is a 12 MP selfie lens – solid, though not one you’ll often reach for when photographing your meals (unless you’re keen to share a reaction pic after). The real excitement is at the back, where three impressive lenses open up endless visual possibilities.

The 12 MP ultra-wide lens truly shines in tight spaces – whether you’re in a bustling café or a cosy, low-lit bar – capturing the full atmosphere with ease. It’s also perfect for those beautiful ‘table spread’ shots that continue to be popular on social media: think a tapas feast, a Christmas dinner, or a brunch spread where you want every dish in frame, without needing to balance on a chair!

For most food photography though, the star of the show is the 50 MP wide lens. It’s the one that produces those crisp, vibrant images with lifelike colours that leap off the screen. I always suggest shooting dishes that are abundant in natural hues such as bright salads, deeply coloured curries, or gorgeous fruit platters – and wherever possible, using natural light – because on social media colourful food always wins! I’ll often book a restaurant table near a window or shoot at my home studio beside one: it’s the easiest way to make textures sing and let the Galaxy S25 FE’s sensor show what it can really do.

Then there’s the 8 MP telephoto zoom lens, your best friend for capturing all the delicious food trends making the rounds right now such as the creamy frosting on a cinnamon roll or the sparkle of sea salt on a perfectly fried egg with feta and chilli sauce. It’s also great for those close-up shots that add a touch of drama and intimacy to your food feed – the ones that make people stop scrolling and think, ‘Dang, I need that right now.’

Together, these lenses help you capture not just what your food looks like, but how it feels to eat it.

As mentioned above, natural light is always a food photographer’s best friend, but when you’re enjoying a cosy evening meal, it’s not always an option. Most phone cameras struggle in those dimly lit restaurants or candlelit bars, often leaving food looking flat and colours washed out. That’s why I was especially curious to see how the Galaxy S25 FE would perform once the sun went down considering it has Enhanced Nightography and an AI-powered ProVisual Engine – an image processing engine that analyses each shot to automatically improve its visual. So, I put it to the test and am pleased to report, it delivered.

Even under low, warm lighting, the Galaxy S25 FE captures crisp textures and allows your food to look as good as it tastes, whilst infusing it with that evening ambience. For best results, I would recommend using the ultra wide lens in evening settings to capture the restaurant’s atmosphere and the wide lens for your food shots as it will result in the sharpest low light shots.

The Galaxy S25 FE also introduces some clever AI-powered tools that make creating food content even easier. One standout is Audio Eraser*, perfect for those who prefer filming in lively, bustling restaurants. It intelligently removes unwanted background noise, allowing the subtle sounds of your dish like the gentle bubble of hot soup or the satisfying crunch of a bite to take centre stage instead.

There’s also Photo Assist**, which includes Generative Edit and Sketch to Image***. The former lets you effortlessly move or remove distractions from your frame, while the latter allows you to write or draw directly onto your image – not something I’d necessarily do because food is just so naturally beautiful in its own right, but which could be ideal if you’re keen to add a more personal or artistic touch to your social media food posts to ensure you stand out from the crowd.

The Galaxy SE25 FE isn’t just another smartphone, instead it’s a powerful tool for food lovers and food content creators alike. Whether you’re an aspiring influencer keen to share your latest cookie haul, a café owner hoping to make your matcha lattes go viral or simply a home cook who loves sharing their latest creations, this phone can absolutely help you along your delicious journey. Cheers to that!

Kimberly Espinel is an award-winning food photographer, blogger, stylist, podcaster, teacher and author – find out more at her website or on Instagram.

To find out more about the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE visit Samsung

*Samsung account login required. Six types of sound can be detected; voices, music, wind, nature, crowd and noise. Results may vary depending on audio source & condition of the video.

**Samsung account login is required. Requires network connection.

***Samsung account login and network connection may be required for certain AI features.

Starmer’s week of chaos brings us closer to Farage as prime minister

The word of the week was “shambles”. Indeed, the verdict was so unanimous that we are duty bound to consider the contrarian case in Keir Starmer’s defence.

The briefing on the prime minister’s behalf against Wes Streeting, the health secretary, plainly went too far, giving the impression of a government at war with itself. But it achieved part of its aim, which was to let Labour MPs know that Starmer would not go quietly if – as some of them imagined – a group of cabinet ministers told him privately that the game was up.

It reminded Labour MPs that removing a sitting prime minister who doesn’t want to go is difficult. It is harder to remove a Labour prime minister than it used to be to remove a Conservative one, because Labour’s rules require 81 MPs – 20 per cent of the parliamentary party – to declare publicly that they support an alternative candidate. Under the Tory rules, the first stage of the procedure was triggered by 15 per cent of MPs privately demanding a vote of no confidence – although that has now been raised to 33 per cent.

The briefing by No 10 also reminded the Labour Party that changing prime minister would unsettle the markets – although the Budget U-turn two days later reminded everyone that keeping the same prime minister could also unsettle the markets.

But the briefing also had the effect of forcing leadership plotters to face other awkward facts. One is that Labour members cannot be relied on to choose a prime minister who would be an improvement on Starmer. Streeting may be more popular with the people who have the deciding vote in Labour leadership elections at the end of this week than he was at the beginning, but he is still a Blairite.

These are the people, after all, who thought that Lucy Powell, sacked for encouraging a rebellion against welfare spending restraint that she was supposed to be managing, should be deputy leader of the party.

I do not believe that the members would choose Ed Miliband as leader again. Polls of members have been misread: he is popular with them because Labour is sentimental about losers; but when asked in June who should be leader if Starmer goes, Miliband had fewer supporters than Clive Lewis, the Socialist Campaign Group MP for Norwich South.

Still, this is not a risk that a sensible party should want to take, with Liz Truss’s seven-week premiership standing as a reminder of the folly of allowing unrepresentative party members to decide who the country’s prime minister should be.

It is possible to make the case, too, for abandoning the plan to raise income tax in the Budget. Politically, I think it is the right decision. Explicitly breaking such an important manifesto promise would have been catastrophic. Starmer and Rachel Reeves knew that, which is why the chancellor made that unusual early-morning speech last week to prepare the ground.

It is also, incidentally, part of the reason for the No 10 briefing against Streeting. Starmer was so fearful of the reaction to a manifesto-busting Budget that his aides were panicked into launching Operation Shore-Up.

So when the Office for Budget Responsibility offered Starmer and Reeves a way out, they leapt at the chance. Its latest forecast this week suggested a narrower fiscal gap than expected, which could be bridged without an increase in income tax.

Of course, all the sensible economists say that an income tax rise would be the best policy, which it would be if Labour weren’t starting from the position of having promised not to do it. But Labour made the promise and must keep it if it can, even if it has to stretch the meaning of words close to breaking point.

That, then, is the case for the defence. But the prime minister hasn’t half made it easy for the prosecution. Instead of strengthening his defences against a leadership challenge, he has weakened them in the longer run. I never took seriously this summer’s predictions from sources on the Labour right of a leadership challenge by Christmas, and I still think talk of Starmer going after next year’s local elections is premature. Who is the candidate, and what is the alternative policy?

But it is harder now to imagine Starmer leading Labour into the next general election. His opinion-poll ratings are dire, and his handling of this week’s twin shambles has not suggested that he has the ability to turn things round.

He and Reeves may have ended up with the less bad of two options for the Budget, but the way they got there didn’t inspire confidence. It was a mistake for the chancellor to make that “scene-setter” speech on 4 November warning of an income tax rise: if it hadn’t been for that speech and later interviews, we wouldn’t have known that she and the prime minister had now changed their minds.

Of course, changing your mind in the light of new information is a good thing, as Maynard Keynes never quite said, but there is no need to advertise it if you don’t have to, because it can look like indecision.

This week’s confusion in Downing Street may not have been quite as bad as it seemed, then, but it confirmed an underlying shift in the tectonic plates. We are 16 months into this government, which means the window for delivering meaningful change in this parliament is closing fast. One-and-a-half million new homes? No chance. Noticeable improvement in the NHS? In the balance. Stopping the boats? No sign of it yet, although Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, will sound tough on asylum seekers this weekend.

Starmer has been in power long enough to confirm that there is a big gap in his case between knowing how to win elections – for the Labour leadership and for the keys to No 10 – and knowing how to govern.

The trouble is that governing well is the key to Labour winning a second term at the next general election. This was a week that brought the prospect of Nigel Farage as prime minister a step closer.

Man charged over allegedly posing as admiral on Remembrance Sunday

A man has been charged with allegedly impersonating a British military official during a Remembrance Sunday event.

North Wales Police said they made an arrest on Friday after a man was seen wearing “the uniform and medals of a high-ranking Navy officer” during a wreath-laying service in Llandudno, Conwy, on Sunday November 9.

Jonathan Carley, 64, from the Harlech area of Gwynedd, has been charged with wearing uniform and dress bearing the mark of His Majesty’s Forces without permission.

He is due to appear in Caernarfon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, according to North Wales Police.

Chief inspector Trystan Bevan said: “We understand that this incident has caused significant public concern, particularly given its occurrence on Remembrance Sunday.

“In response to the reports made to North Wales Police, officers have responded swiftly to make an arrest and proceed with charges.

“We urge members of the public to avoid online speculation and to refrain from sharing any content that could compromise future court proceedings.”