Democrats claim DOJ has deleted photo of Trump

The Trump administration faced renewed calls of a cover-up Saturday after Democrats claimed the Justice Department had deleted a photo featuring President Donald Trump that was part of the Epstein files library on Friday.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee accused the DOJ of deleting the previously available file, which showed a photo of a drawer crammed with papers and photos, including one image of a man who appeared to be Trump with a group of women.

“What else is being covered up?” the committee asked in an X post.

Critics from both sides of the aisle have accused the DOJ of heavily redacting the materials and failing to meet a legal deadline to share all documents in its possession by Friday.

The White House did not comment directly on The Independent’s request for comment on the alleged disappearance of the Trump photo but said the Epstein files release makes this administration “the most transparent in history.”

The Epstein files so far include an extensive library of legal documents, paperwork and photos, including several images of former President Bill Clinton lounging in a hot tub and pool, and Epstein with a host of prominent figures, including Michael Jackson.

How Google overtook ChatGPT – and why the AI race may already be over

When Google unveiled its latest artificial intelligence model in November – three years after the launch of rival ChatGPT – the tech giant described it as a “new era of intelligence”. Gemini 3 was faster, better at reasoning, and achieved a record score in Humanity’s Last Exam – a test designed by AI safety researchers to identify artificial intelligence that can meet or surpass human intelligence.

Google’s announcement contained the same kind of bombast that has become common with the launch of new models from major AI firms – but this time it seemed different.

Early users were quick to spot that the new AI model was not just an iterative update, but a whole new way of using the technology. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of tech company Salesforce, described the leap in “reasoning, speed, images, video… everything” as “insane”.

In a post to X, he wrote: “I’ve used ChatGPT every day for three years. Just spent two hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back.”

He was not alone. Artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who is sometimes referred to as the Godfather of AI, said in an interview that Google was now “beginning to overtake” ChatGPT, adding, “my guess is Google will win.”

Another analyst declared Gemini 3 as “the best model ever” after it beat every other model in 19 out of 20 industry benchmark tests that companies use to measure an AI’s capabilities. The only one it took second place in involved coding, which Anthropic’s Claude model came top.

Its success led ChatGPT creator OpenAI, to declare a “code red”, three years after Google declared its own code red in response to the launch of ChatGPT.

The pace of advances left some questioning how Google achieved it in such a short space of time, with the standalone Gemini app launching just last year. Those working for the tech giant have explained the “secret” to Gemini’s success by saying that they simply improved everything. But the real reason may be more insidious.

For more than two decades, Google has been the gateway to the internet. Its search engine is the way most people access and find information on the web, with publishers and content creators relying on it to send traffic their way.

Websites give Google’s search crawler bots special access in order to appear on the results page, with every click allowing the sites to gain visitors and monetise them through online ads, subscriptions and sales.

But as the internet now shifts away from search to AI – with so-called zero-click searches now accounting for more than 60 per cent of all queries – Google has taken its privileged position as the dominant search engine to gain significantly more access to the web than anyone else. It is now using that dominance to train its AI tools.

As the so-called “middle-man of the internet”, security firm Cloudflare acts as a protective barrier against cyber attacks for more than a fifth of all websites. This gives it a unique perspective into how companies are using AI bots to crawl websites in order to train their models.

“Cloudflare sits in front of a substantial portion, more than 20 per cent of the web, and so we have a representative sample to see how much more of the web Google’s bots have access to versus other AI companies that are out there, and the answer is astonishing,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince tells The Independent.

Figures from Cloudflare, shared with The Independent, show that Google has a massive advantage over its rivals when it comes to training its AI.

Google’s AI crawlers, which have the same access as the ones it uses for its search engine, see 322 per cent more of the web than OpenAI. It also sees 478 per cent more than Meta, 484 per cent more than Anthropic, and 437 per cent more than Microsoft.

“If you believe that whoever has access to the most data will win, then Google will always have an advantage in the market, which no one will be able to overcome. That seems pathologically unfair,” Prince says.

“There is a massive structural advantage to being Google, and if you want to ask, ‘why did Gemini just leapfrog OpenAI and everybody else in the space’, it’s not because of the chips, it’s not because of the researchers, it’s not because they’re smarter. It’s because Google has access to more data, and it’s giving an unfair advantage. And Google only has access to that data because it is leveraging its monopoly in search.”

Gemini 3 still has fewer users than ChatGPT – around 650 million users compared to 800m – but it is growing at a faster rate. Following the launch of the Nano Banana image generator in August, which is integrated into Gemini, the number of users shot up by 200 million.

Gemini 3 is also built into other Google products like Search, Gmail, and Drive, meaning it reaches billions more people worldwide. Together with Android, Chrome, YouTube and Maps, Google has seven products that have more than 2 billion users.

Gemini 3 is still far from perfect. It still suffers from hallucinations, can fail at technical tasks like debugging a large codebase, and has what some claim to be overly restrictive safety features that limit its performance.

But despite the flaws it is ahead of the competition, and may well stay there if things do not change. One way to make things more fair, according to Prince, is to split Google’s AI crawler from its search crawler.

He has already met with regulators, and is pushing the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to enforce stricter rules on Google to allow other startups to compete in the AI race.

“From a pure fairness perspective, I believe that Google should have to play by the same rules as everyone else in this space,” he says. “And the easiest way to do that, and this is one of the remedies that the CMA is currently considering, is to split the AI and search crawlers up. That way they have to start from scratch with AI, the same way that all the other AI companies are starting from scratch.”

In October, the CMA designated Google Search with Strategic Market Status under the UK’s new digital markets regime, which will allow it to impose new rules and regulations on how it works.

Google responded by claiming that “unduly onerous regulations” would stifle innovation and growth, as well as slow down product launches. A spokesperson also told The Independent that it already has tools in place for publishers to control how Google accesses their content.

One such tool is Google-Extended, which allows site owners to control whether their content is used for AI training, which Google claims does not impact their inclusion on its search pages. Google currently operates an opt-out model for AI training, meaning websites have to manually add specific instructions to their code to block it.

Prince warns that if new rules are not introduced, then the AI race may already be over, and Google could monopolise artificial intelligence in the same way it did with online search.

“Google is refusing to play by fair rules. And that’s the sort of place where it’s right for competition authorities to step in and say, ‘this is a failure in the market. You can’t leverage your monopoly from search in order to gain a monopoly in AI’,” he says.

“Google has set the world up in such a way that it has such privileged access that I worry that the market for AI will never catch up. And that seems just radically unfair.”

New dawn for England as Ashes humiliation sparks end for Bazball

Sometimes, relationships come to an end.

England, a very modern cricket team, have been in bed with three men for the best part of four years. Rob Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes.

Stokes has been the front man. And in the early days, it was McCullum who reined him in. Stokes wanted to go bigger, better, madder and further.

“There was a bit of me that wanted them to get 450, just to see what we’d do,” Stokes said after England chased 378 against India in 2022. At the beginning, Stokes elected himself as the lunatic-in-chief, charging down the wicket early in his innings to show his men that this is how far we can take it. There’s nothing to fear. Commit and be all in.

England, and Stokes, abandoned that in Adelaide. The consequence-free cricket they’ve played for so long was replaced with clamours to “fight” and that Stokes’ dressing room was “no place for weak men”.

They still lost – but they did so in a way that was more palatable to the masses, with a nod to the future of what England fans can expect from this team.

“I think there’s a lot of stuff that as a team that we can actually take forward with us,” Stokes said following defeat.

“Obviously it’s a pretty emotional time for me in the dressing room and the guys, players, management, backroom staff. But when we get ourselves together… I think we will take a lot out of this game and go, ‘this is how we can maybe apply ourselves to give us a better chance of being a much more consistent cricket team.’”

Stokes’ pivot to diplomacy makes him the most likely to remain in post following the series. Something will have to change, but Stokes is still seen as an inspirational leader, just one whose manifesto has worn thin.

There will be a certain sadness if he does continue, however sensible that decision may be. Stokes initially took the job with a vow of sticking to how he wanted to do it. Like or loathe the current regime, it has been different.

The pendulum following this Ashes defeat will swing in the other direction. Less golf, more skinfold tests, fewer beers, more forward defences. Sounds dull. To see Stokes in charge will be to see a man still in charge of England, but not of his team. We know what Stokes’ north star looks like, and it failed.

“Obviously sucks,” Stokes said of the overriding emotion following defeat. “Very disappointing knowing now that we can’t achieve what we set out to do.”

It would be in-keeping for his character, however, to offer his resignation were it to continue in this fashion, despite his post-match assertions that he has lost no appetite for the job. But a look around the changing room should hasten the ECB to ask him to reconsider if that offer does come.

There not being a better alternative is rarely a good reason to do anything, but what choices do England have? Harry Brook is the vice-captain of the Test team and white-ball captain but, really? Ben Duckett, Zak Crawley or the potentially dropped Ollie Pope are other options. Don’t laugh. Those are the names.

Tactically, Stokes has received criticism of late. Most recently from former Australia wicketkeeper Brad Haddin who described Stokes as a “captain you want to follow on effort” but “tactically is not great.”

A captain’s tactical ability is a moving target. The better your team, the better they make you look. Ricky Ponting is one of the greatest captains of all time, which in part, is in no small part because his major decision switched between who should bowl next out of Shane Warne or Glenn McGrath.

To that end, Stokes has been on a losing trajectory. His bowlers have performed poorly for large parts of the series. But they have also been haphazard with plans, with Stokes admitting as such following defeat in Perth where a Travis Head onslaught saw them lose in two days.

“I could have been a lot better as captain,” he said in the week following defeat. “I am the person who makes decisions about how we go out there and operate and I am the one who gives the plans to the bowlers. I wasn’t as clear as I normally am.”

Just as the blinding light of Bazball has faded, so too has some of the more creative, wacky plans we saw from England in the past. Arguably Stokes’ greatest tactical act as captain came in Rawalpindi in 2022, when England declared early, bowled bouncers with the new ball, then once the ball had scuffed, were able to make it swing. They won in the fading light.

Stokes’ power has been total. Only those with the stature of him and McCullum would have been able to make decisions such as moving James Anderson on, or plucking players from obscurity such as Shoaib Bashir or Josh Hull. This was their project, and the project is now coming to an end.

It was why there was a certain sadness in the dignity England showed in defeat in Adelaide, even if it was their strongest showing of the series to date. This was the group that was meant to be not for turning. Who were trying something new under a new-age leadership. But when push came to shove, they reverted to social norms.

It will appease the masses, but it wasn’t the foundation of what this team was built on. For years, they have been steadfast in their approach but in Adelaide, that changed. The future will look: normal.

It’s baffling that David Walliams’ publishing deal lasted this long

David Walliams has been dropped from his lucrative publishing contract with HarperCollins, following an internal investigation into alleged inappropriate behaviour towards young female staff at the company. Former employees alleged to The Telegraph that they were advised to work in pairs when meeting with him and not to visit his home. It is by far the most damaging in a string of controversies linked to the comedian and writer, who has strongly denied the new claims. He had previously managed to delicately balance his career as a provocative, womanising comic with a moonlit role as Britain’s most important children’s novelist. Finally, that precarious coalition seems to have collapsed.

Born in London in 1971, Walliams grew up in the suburbs and attended Reigate Grammar School, the alma mater of Sir Keir Starmer. While studying drama at the University of Bristol, Walliams enrolled in the National Youth Theatre, where he bonded with another young actor, Matt Lucas, over a shared appreciation for Vic Reeves Big Night Out. They had a mutual interest in comedy that verged on the grotesque, which led the duo to their first sketch show, Mash and Peas, directed by Edgar Wright, which appeared on the Paramount Comedy channel in 1996.

But it was their breakout hit, Little Britain, that turned them into stars. After a successful first appearance on Radio 4, the show was adapted for the BBC’s alternative comedy channel, BBC Three, in 2003. “Matt Lucas and David Walliams are going to be the funniest double act on television this autumn,” a contemporary reviewer wrote. And Walliams and Lucas did, indeed, come to define early-Noughties comedy. From gobby teenager Vicky Pollard (“Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but…”) who got pregnant and swapped her baby for a Westlife CD, to demanding wheelchair user Andy and his guileless carer Lou (“I want that one!” Andy would routinely demand), the Little Britain characters became instantly iconic. In pubs and schools around the country, these catchphrases were barked with relish.

Little Britain was, in many ways, symbolic of the bitter televisual landscape of the Nineties. Take Marjorie Dawes (played by Lucas) who runs a weight-loss group called “Fat Fighters” and encourages attendees to eat dust. In part, it was a send-up of fatphobic dieting culture, but it equally lampooned overweight Marjorie’s delusions. Similarly, Vicky Pollard both parodied tabloid fears about “chav” culture and turned Vicky into the butt of the joke. This edge led to frequent criticisms that the show was racist, sexist, classist and homophobic: comedy legend Victoria Wood labelled Little Britain “very misogynistic”, while left-wing author Owen Jones decried its “caricatures”, particularly Pollard, “a grotesque working-class teenage single mother who is sexually promiscuous, unable to string a sentence together, and has a very bad attitude problem”.

In the years since it captured the zeitgeist, Little Britain has aged like cottage cheese in an airing cupboard. So too has Walliams and Lucas’s follow-up, Come Fly with Me, which has faced repeated criticism for its use of blackface and brownface.

By the time the series aired in 2010, Walliams had already established himself as a successful author. His first book, The Boy in the Dress, was published in 2008. Executives at HarperCollins who signed Walliams to this deal obviously saw something in the actor – fresh from his Little Britain role as Desiree DeVere, a monstrously cartoonish African-American maneater – that was not immediately apparent to viewers.

But The Boy in the Dress was an instant hit and sparked a run of 22 novels (plus seven short story collections and 10 picture books) that turned Walliams into one of the most bankable authors in British publishing. While his co-conspirator, Matt Lucas, seemed to shuffle away from the limelight, Walliams sought it out. In 2012 he joined the judging panel of Britain’s Got Talent alongside Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon, a job that he would do for a decade, giving him a primetime platform.

Throughout this, Walliams struck a mercurial figure. He had made his name through exaggeratedly camp performances with Lucas (who is gay), leading to some unedifying speculation about his sexuality (though Walliams at times courted this: in 2011 Ofcom received complaints about a Channel 4 show in which Walliams announced that he’d “like to suck his cock”, in reference to a 17-year-old Harry Styles). Yet, at the same time, he was becoming tabloid fodder for high profile relationships with glamorous women. In 2009, the 37-year-old Walliams was reported to be romancing an 18-year-old model, Lauren Budd. A year later, he married supermodel Lara Stone, 12 years his junior. Following their 2015 separation, Walliams was linked with a string of women including Ashley James, Ashley Roberts and Keeley Hazell.

Somehow Walliams’s reputation in the publishing world remained bulletproof. Throughout this period, Walliams was regularly performing a notorious live sketch called “hide the sausage”, in which male volunteers (including celebrities like David Baddiel and Mark Ronson) were invited on-stage and had their genitals exposed to the audience by Walliams. Reports suggest that men as young as 16 were corralled into the routine. “You could never get away with that today,” Lucas wrote in his 2017 autobiography. “In fact, he didn’t always get away with it then.”

Yet, to outsiders, it seemed like he was very much getting away with it. That’s possibly because his books for children had become a publishing sensation, and he was held up in some quarters as an heir to Roald Dahl (another children’s author with a difficult personal life). “[Dahl’s] books are perfect and I don’t think mine are in the same league,” he told ITV at the height of his popularity. “But it’s a nice comparison.” Through the 2010s, he continued to consolidate power in this market: his books were adapted for TV, translated to over 55 languages, and at one point reportedly constituted 44 per cent of HarperCollins’ children’s book sales. He seemed untouchable.

And then, at the peak of the #MeToo movement, Walliams was reported to have hosted an event for the Presidents Club in which a number of female staff had been assaulted by guests. The reports in the Financial Times implicated many powerful men and tarnished Walliams’s reputation. In the years since, Walliams’s interactions – particularly with young women – have been more heavily scrutinised, with him eventually leaving Britain’s Got Talent in 2022 after recordings of him making derogatory and sexually explicit remarks about contestants were leaked. And even his literary empire has received increased mainstream hostility (with The New Statesman judging it to come from “the Boaty McBoatface school of fiction”).

Now, “after careful consideration”, HarperCollins has severed ties with the author – a decision that was no doubt at odds with their bottom line. A spokesperson for Walliams responded saying that “David strongly denies that he has behaved inappropriately and is taking legal advice”.

But this feels like the culmination of an increasing dissonance between Walliams the children’s author and Walliams the prickly, controversial public figure. With so many bad headlines building up over recent years, it is baffling that his publishing deal lasted this long.

Streeting ‘worried’ about NHS recovery after resident doctors’ strike

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS “is coping” during the resident doctors’ strike, but admitted he was concerned about the coming days.

Resident doctors went on strike on Wednesday after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) rejected a fresh offer from the government.

“I think the NHS is coping,” Mr Streeting told The Observer.

“The period that worries me more is the post-strike period when we have to try and recover the service. That now falls at a time of year which is the NHS’s busiest.”

Resident doctors will return to work at 7am on Monday.

On Friday, he said he wanted to end the dispute and that “we will get around the table with them again in the new year”, but insisted he has a responsibility to all NHS staff.

“I don’t think that doctors are selfish and don’t care about nurses and other healthcare professionals, but the BMA’s position can be quite hardline and uncompromising,” he said.

Mr Streeting insisted Sir Keir Starmer has his “absolute support” and laughed off suggestions he has discussed a deal with former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner about a leadership challenge.

“I’ve been reading some of the stuff recently and thinking this just bears no resemblance to reality,” he said.

“The closer I see that job and the pressure on Keir and the demands of that job, the more I wonder why anyone would want it.”

After November’s Budget saw taxes increased by £26 billion, Mr Streeting admitted he was “really uncomfortable with the level of taxation” and that the country had taken a “massive economic hit” leaving the EU.

“The best way for us to get more growth into our economy is a deeper trading relationship with the EU,” he said, although he argued any such partnership cannot lead to a return of freedom of movement.

It’s about experience: Further Education teachers share what it takes

In the modern world, many of us are working longer than ever. Research based on ONS Labour Market data found that there are almost one million more workers aged 65 and above since the millennium and the state pension is set to rise to 67 by 2028 and 68 by the late 2030s. Subsequently, having multiple careers is becoming increasingly popular. And after decades working in a specific industry, sharing the work-based knowledge you have gained via teaching in further education is one of the most rewarding career shifts you can make.

Further Education teaching (defined as any education for people aged 16 and over who aren’t studying for a degree) allows you to switch up your working days and harness the skills and experience you have developed, all while helping shape the next generation of workers in your field.

To find out more about the role, from what it takes to the best parts of the job, we spoke to Further Education teachers who have switched from doing their day job to teaching it…

John Ryan, 51, from Weston Super Mare, worked for more than a decade on site in the construction industry, mainly in bricklaying and supervising roles, before an opportunity to become a Further Education assessor changed his path in his thirties. Travelling nationally to assess the work of new bricklayers in order to sign off their NVQs (National Vocational Qualification), the college John was associated with then started offering him some teaching work.

With no prior teaching qualifications, John completed these alongside his assessing and teaching roles with the fees picked up by the teaching college. “I liked the idea of passing on my knowledge and giving young people the skills and confidence to progress in a trade,” he says. “Teaching in Further Education felt like a natural next step because it would allow me to combine my practical background with coaching and mentoring.” There were practical draws too. “On site in the construction industry you are self-employed so you do not get holidays or sick pay. The stability of income and regular paid holidays was a big draw of Further Education teaching,” he adds.

Since his first assessing role 18 years ago, John has worked between assessing, teaching and jobs back on the construction site and now, he currently teaches bricklaying and groundwork full-time at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College.

John’s extensive site and supervisory experience has proved to be hugely valuable when it comes to teaching his students there. “I can explain not just the ‘how’ but also the ‘why’ behind industry standards,” he explains. “Learners often respond well to hearing about real jobs, site challenges, and the professional behaviours that employers expect. It makes the lessons more relatable and credible,” he shares.

“For example, I can share stories of accidents when teaching site safety, or explain how a mistake of a few millimetres on a construction site can cost you time to rectify, which in turn will cost you money,” he says. “These hands-on, real world experiences make the theory relatable and show learners the real value of getting it right.”

Coral Aspinall, 52, who became a full-time Further Education teacher 12 years ago, agrees. “My experience allows me to put my teaching into context,” she says. Coral started out her engineering career at 16 as an apprentice in a local engineering company. Following a BSc in Engineering and Business Management, she worked for many years in the engineering industry before enrolling on a part-time PGDE (Professional Graduate Diploma in Education) course for teaching. She’s now the Engineering Programme Leader at the Stockport campus of the Trafford and Stockport College Group. Here, they offer qualifications such as Level 2 Performing Engineering Operations as well as engineering-focused Level 3 T Levels and Level 3 Btec Awards. They also offer Level 3 apprenticeships across engineering including Technical Support, Engineering Fitter and Maintenance Management.

“Because I’ve been an engineering apprentice myself, I understand what the student needs to be successful in terms of skills, knowledge and behaviour,” she explains. “I also have contacts in the wider engineering community and understand what an employer is looking for in an apprentice, and can also share insights in terms of how the sector is shifting and evolving to help support their progress.”

Working for an extensive period of time in a field before passing on that knowledge gives teachers maturity and empathy which can be hugely helpful for students, especially those facing complex life situations.

Beyond the practical techniques, a big part of John’s role is helping learners build confidence, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills that employers look for. “Many of my learners have different challenges, so they value teachers who are approachable, who believe in them, and who prepare them for real opportunities in work or further study,” he says. For John, his previous work experience has allowed him to do this. “On site, I worked with people facing all sorts of pressures, from work to life issues, which taught me to be patient and supportive,” he explains.

Coral has had a similar experience. “I see my role as more than imparting knowledge; it is about preparing the young person for the next stage of their journey. The students trust me to have their best interests at heart; they come to me for advice on their next steps and how they can achieve their aspirations, and I’ll support them with both practical advice and words of encouragement.”

For Coral, teaching later in life allows her to draw from a mature perspective, and teach her students positive workplace behaviours alongside skills and knowledge. “Students thrive when they have clear unambiguous boundaries, so I’m firm around expectations in terms of timekeeping, attendance and attitude. This is particularly important to succeeding in the workplace as employers value these behaviours as much as, or even more than having specific expertise or know-how (which can generally be developed).”

If you’re looking for a fresh career option, and keen to share your skills with the next generation, Further Education teaching could be a really enriching new phase. Further Education covers a huge range of career sectors including construction, law, engineering, digital, hospitality, tourism, beauty and more. This includes BTECs (Business and Technology Education Council qualifications), T Levels, NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) or City & Guilds Qualifications.

Teaching in a mixture of colleges (often General Further Education Colleges or Sixth Form Colleges) and Adult and Community Learning Centres as well as workplace and apprenticeship settings, further education teachers share their years of real world industry skills with a diverse mix of people from those straight out of school aged sixteen to those making career switches later in life.

You don’t always need an academic degree or prior teaching qualifications to start teaching in further education. You can undertake teacher training on the job, often funded by your employer, so you can start earning straight away.. Furthermore, it doesn’t mean you have to stop working in your chosen field. Further education offers hybrid opportunities – so you could teach part time alongside your other commitments. This means you could have the best of both worlds, where you are still working in your chosen industry and teaching alongside it at a time that suits your schedule. Find out if it’s the right move for you here.

If, like John and Coral, you see the appeal in sharing the knowledge and skills you’ve developed with the next generation, exploring the option of becoming a Further Education teacher can be a great next step. As John shares, the reward is always worth it: “It never gets old passing on my knowledge to people starting on their journey, knowing I have made a difference and getting a smile and thanks in return!”

Looking for a new role that’s rewarding, flexible and draws on your current career? Why not consider sharing your experience where it matters most – helping inspire the next generation of workers in the field you love? Visit Further Education to find out more

The anti-Farage Tories who want Labour to win

Gavin Barwell may hold the key to the next election. He was the Conservative MP for Croydon Central until Theresa May thought it would be a good idea to cash in her huge opinion-poll lead to win the substantial majority she thought she needed to Get Brexit Done.

She lost the small majority she had inherited from David Cameron, and Barwell lost his seat. Barwell went to work for May as her chief of staff in No 10, and spent two fruitless years trying to persuade Labour MPs that they should vote for May’s soft Brexit – warning them that the alternative was a hard Brexit under Boris Johnson.

There is not much reward for being right in politics, but he got to be in the House of Lords, as Baron Barwell of Croydon, and he continues to offer a thoughtful centrist Tory perspective on social media.

Two days ago, he took issue with Kevin Hollinrake, the chair of the Conservative Party, who had unwisely allowed himself to answer a forced-choice question. Asked by The Telegraph if he would rather enter into an alliance with Nigel Farage or Ed Davey, Hollinrake said: “If that was my only choice, of course I would choose Reform. We are the only parties who believe in controlling our borders.”

Barwell did not agree. “This is politically insane,” he said on what I continue to call Twitter. “As things stand, the Conservatives will face a challenge from Reform in many of the seats they hold. If they don’t rule out coalition with Reform, they won’t be able to get the tactical votes they will need from Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green supporters.”

He is right, you know, and it will probably do him as much good as it did in 2017-19. He and Hollinrake both understand that pre-election deals by which parties stand down candidates in each others’ favour are unlikely at the next general election. They are thinking ahead to possible deals in a hung parliament after the election. Hollinrake said out loud what most Tory MPs are thinking: that they would rather work with Farage than Davey, assuming that is the choice. Most of them assume that Reform and the Tories will come together at some point.

Barwell, on the other hand, pointed out why Tories shouldn’t say that bit in public: because they want to benefit from anti-Farage tactical voting.

What was really interesting, though, was what Barwell said in his next tweet: “I also think it would be morally wrong to go into government with Reform, but I accept some in my party will feel differently about that.”

The implication of what Barwell says is that, if he faced a different forced-choice question, he might vote tactically to stop Farage becoming prime minister, and that he would prefer a Labour prime minister if that was the only alternative.

This is where the “Macron” strategy of Keir Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney starts to bite. Starmer wants to force voters to choose for or against Farage, just as Emmanuel Macron twice forced French voters to choose for or against Marine Le Pen.

And this is where the fashionable “bloc” theory starts to break down. Some recent academic commentary points out that most vote-switching occurs within blocs rather than between them. Since the last election, most of the traffic has been from Tories to Reform, within the “right-wing” bloc, and from Labour to the Greens, within the “left-wing” bloc. Therefore, it is argued, Labour should concentrate on getting Zack Polanski’s voters back, rather than “appeasing” those parts of the electorate considered to be unworthy.

I disagree. Green protest voters will come back to Labour anyway if the alternative is Farage as prime minister. Labour should focus on socially conservative voters who might be persuaded to cross bloc lines. They may not be as numerous as defectors to the so-called left, but they count double, because they take a vote off Reform and add a vote to Labour.

They do exist. I have come across Labour Party members who say they would vote Tory if it stopped Farage becoming prime minister, and lifelong Tories who would vote Labour for the same reason. I don’t know if Barwell is one of them, but he seems to be most of the way there.

I have one prediction for 2026, which is that these cross-party currents are going to grow. You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to think, for example, that Starmer is happy to allow Tory county councils to postpone elections affected by local government reorganisation. He does not want the Tories to be utterly smashed by Reform.

He may not like the kicking he gets from Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions every week, but he does not mind that the Tories are currently gaining support at Reform’s expense. They are only a couple of points up and Reform a couple down in the opinion-poll average since October, but every little helps.

Anti-Farage tactical voting could be an important feature of the next general election, and within that one of the most interesting groups will be centrist Tories who would rather have a Labour government than a Reform one.

‘I was left homeless after the Home Office claimed I wasn’t a child’

Jean was just 16 when he was left outside the front door of the headquarters of UK visas and immigration in Croydon, London – alone, frightened and without any documents to prove who he was. He had arrived in Britain just hours before – his first ever trip outside his home country in Central Africa and the first time he had even travelled out of his home town.

The past few days had been a nightmare that had seen him witness a horrific attack on his family. He himself had been subjected to torture and, left without anyone else to turn to, he had managed to find help from a trusted friend of the family.

She had brought him to the UK by plane, and Jean briefly thought he might have found safety with her, until he was taken to Croydon’s Lunar House and told he was now on his own.

“She said ‘I can’t support you anymore’. All I remember is she said ‘go into the building and tell them who you are’. It was a bit of a fight to let her go. I was scared, I didn’t want to go into that building. But she convinced me to go inside. I found out later that it was an immigration centre,” Jean, which is a pseudonym used for safety reasons, told The Independent.

“I was feeling confusion and fear. The weather, the language… everything was new to me. I was just lost. Initially I was scared seeing people in uniform because that brought me back to what I had witnessed at home. I was traumatised from what I had experienced.”

Thousands of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children seek help from the UK authorities each year, with the majority of them aged 16 or 17. In the year ending March 2025, there were 3,707 asylum claims from lone children.

For those aged 17 and under, social services must provide somewhere safe to live, as well as provide clothes, food, education and help with an asylum claim.

However hundreds of children are wrongly assessed by Home Office officials as adults, meaning they do not get the help they are entitled to and are often put into dangerous situations.

Data obtained by the Helen Bamber Foundation revealed that at least 678 children in 2024 were wrongly classified as adults after a human “visual assessment” at the border.

David Bolt, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, found factors like “lack of eye contract” were used to make decisions, and said that children were being “pressured” into declaring they were over 18. From a sample of 55 cases that the inspector looked at where the Home Office had said the asylum seeker was “significantly over 18”, 76 per cent were in fact found to be children.

Ministers now plan to replace human judgement with AI facial-recognition technology, in a move that charities and rights group have said amounts to an “experiment on migrants” that will lead to “serious, life-changing, consequences”.

The Home Office are in the market for “an algorithm that can accurately predict the age of a subject”. A government contract notice, seen by The Independent, says that the technology “will have multiple use cases for Home Office, an example could/ would be to assist in determining the age of those who are encountered without verifiable identity documentation”.

The three-year contract, which will start in February next year, is valued at £1.3 million. Announcing the plans in July, then-Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle said that the AI facial age estimation technology would be the “most cost-effective option”.

The aim is for facial age estimation to be “fully integrated into the current age assessment system over the course of 2026”, she said.

It is not yet clear at which stage of the asylum process the AI age-estimation technology would be used; whether it would be deployed on children as they arrive to the UK on small boats or whether it would be used to inform final asylum claim decisions. The Home Office have said that the technology will be used to assist officials, and that no final decisions had been made about what stage of the process it will be integrated.

If it used on arrival, the algorithm would have to account for the ageing affect of traumatic journeys, past torture and abuse – experiences that can often make young asylum seekers appear older.

Jean initially found help from social services when he arrived in the UK in 2012, and was housed in care with other children. However Home Office officials later decided he wasn’t a child after all and his support was taken away.

The decision was devastating. “I was called to an interview at 4pm. They gave me a time when offices are about to close, that’s my understanding now, but I didn’t release it at the time,” he said.

“I had to wait for them to receive me at 5pm. They said ‘you are not a child, saying you are a liar’. I told them ‘I am not a liar, I know who I am, I know my age’. When someone is at a desk questioning your age, you feel like you are invisible. You have to fight for your identity, and it is not easy to fight for your self.

“You feel like you have to isolate yourself to cope with what you have been through, constantly questioning: Why, why, why? You feel like you want to end everything because they don’t believe you, and I know for sure that many young people are in the same situation.”

He explained that the immigration officials told him he had to go to the offices of a charity, Refugee Council, and that he should find his own way there: “They gave me a map, and it was a long journey to get there, especially as I was struggling with the language. I managed to get there but it was about to close, and I got sent to a hostel to sleep”.

A now 17-year-old boy with little English, he was housed with adult asylum seekers in a hostel. He felt incredibly unsafe and felt it would be a good decision to leave, something he later viewed as a mistake.

“I was traumatised, anxious, and I just wanted to be on my own. That was the idea,” he explained. This then led to around four years sleeping rough in London – until a stranger who saw him begging for money at a train station directed him to Notre Dame charity in Leicester Square.

He got a referral to migrant charity Freedom from Torture, who were able to support Jean submit a fresh asylum claim. A judge’s decision to grant him sanctuary in 2018, and a recognition that he should have been helped as a child refugee all those years ago, has meant Jean now has a roof over his head in council-provided accommodation.

On the day of our interview, he has heard that he is now a British citizen. However he fears for others like him who arrive in the UK as children but who are told they are liars.

Speaking about the government’s plans to use AI to help with decision-making, he said: “It’s a way of not treating people as human beings. They are treating us as a tool to train their AI.

“They are testing something and it’s like we are not human. They are thinking ‘Ok let’s use them’.

“Making decisions based on a computer, we all know it’s not always accurate. They need to understand that a lot of young people are going through trauma, and they may look different at that moment when they really need help.”

Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, said the government’s plans were “concerning unless significant safeguards are put in place”.

She added: “Existing evidence has found that AI can be even less accurate and more biased than human decision-making when judging a person’s age, with similar patterns of errors.

“Crucially, AI cannot account for factors that can significantly alter a young person’s appearance after fleeing conflict and persecution and making dangerous journeys, such as trauma, malnutrition and exhaustion.”

Anna Bacciarelli, senior AI researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “The UK government’s plans to use facial age estimation are misguided at best, and should be scrapped immediately.

“In addition to subjecting vulnerable children and young people to a dehumanising process that could undermine their privacy, non-discrimination and other human rights, we don’t actually know if the technology works. There’s no standarised industry benchmarks, and simply no ethical way to train and audit this technology on like-for-like populations.

“In the UK, it’s been used so far in shops and bars, not refugee processing centres”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Robust age assessments are a vital tool in maintaining border security.

“We will start to modernise that process in the coming months through the testing of fast and effective AI age estimation technology. We then intend to integrate facial age estimation into the current system subject to the results of testing and assurance.”