Brooklyn Beckham says parents David and Victoria try ‘endlessly to ruin’ his relationship

Brooklyn Beckham has launched an astonishing attack on his “controlling” parents claiming they have been trying to ruin his relationship.

The 26-year-old eldest son of David and Victoria addressed their long-standing feud in a six page statement posted to Instagram on Monday night.

Brooklyn announced he has no wish to reconcile with his family and is “standing up” for himself “for the first time” in his life.

The former photographer wrote: “For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family. The performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into.”

Brooklyn, who married model and heiress Nicola Peltz, 31, in April 2022, claimed that: “My parents have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn’t stopped.”

He said his mother Victoria had “cancelled making Nicola’s dress” and “hijacked” the first dance at the wedding.

“She danced very inappropriately on me in front of everybody. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life,” he said.

I’m a White House reporter. Here’s the side of the Trump admin you don’t see on TV

When Donald Trump took the oath of office one year ago, I was watching on a laptop screen in the White House briefing room while bracing myself from the absurdly cold air that flooded the small space every time someone opened the door.

As he delivered not one but two separate stemwinding addresses in the Capitol — first the traditional post-inaugural speech in the Capitol rotunda, then a second, far more partisan and unscripted rant to supporters who’d been seated in an overflow area — I looked up to see a colleague from another news outlet who, like me, had been on the White House beat since the start of Trump’s tumultuous first term nearly a decade earlier.

As the president rambled on about the various grievances and slights he’d been made to endure since losing the 2020 election and decamping to Florida for what became just a brief exile from power under the Biden administration, she rolled her eyes and turned to me with a knowing smile.

“Here we go again,” she said.

Those of us who covered Trump’s first administration thought we knew what to expect. Boy, were we wrong.

His first four years in power were often a non-stop barrage of news that left journalists exhausted but well-fed on copious amounts of leaked information from various camps within the West Wing looking to knife one another, plus less useful — and often far less truthful — information delivered by a rotating cast of press secretaries and spokespersons.

Sean Spicer’s now-infamous 2017 debut in the briefing room, during which he castigated the press for reporting on the far smaller crowd that attended Trump’s first inaugural compared with either of Barack Obama’s swearings-in, set the tone that more or less characterized the next four years. Things got weirder from there, with his appearances in the briefing room becoming so bizarre — remember “Holocaust centers?” — that he was infamously parodied by Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live.

Press briefings got fewer and farther between as Trump moved on from the oft-combative Spicer to the more affable but equally unhelpful Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who is now living her best life as governor of Arkansas) to Stephanie Grisham, who did not hold a single press briefing for her entire tenure.

And even though Trump’s official schedule didn’t kick off until mid-morning then, reporters such as myself got in the habit of arriving at the White House as early at 7am because administration officials, most often Kellyanne Conway, would engage in pugilistic back-and-forths with us after appearing on Fox News.

The president himself discovered the briefing room during the Covid-19 pandemic, often spending as many as 90 minutes a day there as he took questions from a pared-down press corps while Americans sheltered at home.

And while Trump often liked to attack or belittle specific reporters or outlets, his administration more or less let us do our jobs.

We expected more of the same when Trump was sworn in for a second time, and as I and other colleagues greeted the incoming Trump II press staff — some of whom we’d gotten to know during his previous term — on inauguration day, one person remarked to me that the atmosphere had a “first day of school” vibe that portended a smoother ride than last time around.

Well, guess again.

To be sure, there are positive differences between Trump I and Trump II from the perspective of a beat reporter. Whereas the Trump I press staff was more likely to scream at you than answer a question if you walked into their office, their counterparts in his second administration are often so cheerful and friendly that it’s more than a bit disconcerting.

Unlike the heady days when Spicer, Sanders and Grisham ran an amateurish and uncommunicative press shop, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Communications Director Steven Cheung are generally professional behind the scenes and their subordinates actually respond to queries on a regular basis.

But on the whole, this administration has not been much like the last.

Unlike the leaky ship that was Trump I, Trump’s White House this time around is far more disciplined. From a reporter’s perspective, that’s not exactly a good thing.

But the real difference is how Trump’s new-look team has put his combative attitude towards the free and independent press into action.

In February, Leavitt’s office announced it would take control of the “pool” rotation under which a group of outlets — including The Independent — cover Trump as he holds court in the Oval Office and while he travels around the country aboard Air Force One.

While I and my colleagues from reputable and legitimate news outlets still take our turns and dutifully file pool reports that are used by the rest of the press corps to write the “first draft of history,” we’ve been joined by more and more people chosen by the White House while some outlets (such as the AP) have been banned for dubious reasons that are currently being evaluated by the courts, such as refusing to acknowledge Trump’s proclamation that the Gulf of Mexico should now be referred to as the Gulf of America.

Some of the newcomers are from conservative-leaning outlets who approach their jobs in a responsible, reputable manner. But others, to be frank, are sycophants and clowns who do little to help inform the American people.

Leavitt has often given pride of place to these people by letting them ask the first question at White House briefings (traditionally the role of the AP) in a “new media” seat located in a section of the briefing room usually reserved for White House staff.

In one instance, she hosted notorious plagiarist turned MAGA troll Benny Johnson there and let him kick off a briefing with a fabricated tale of how he and his family had fled Washington after their “house was set ablaze in an arson” (according to the DC Fire Department, it was his neighbor’s house that was set on fire).

Another Leavitt guest, beanie-wearing podcaster Tim Pool, used his time there to complain about how legitimate news outlets had characterized him and other “new media” seat occupants and asked Leavitt to join him in disparaging the mainstream press. Leavitt diplomatically replied that the administration “welcomes diverse viewpoints.“

More recently, I (and others) have been placed on White House-authored lists attacking us as biased in retaliation for reporting accurately on the president’s own words and actions.

My counterparts in the Pentagon press corps and elsewhere in Washington have had it worse.

Last year, they surrendered their press credentials en masse after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that they all sign documents pledging not to ask anyone in the federal government or elsewhere for information about anything while only publishing pre-approved information — the definition of propaganda.

They were replaced in the halls of the Pentagon by a coterie of sycophants and influencers aligned with Hegseth and his vision for his department.

One attempt at a briefing for the “new Pentagon press corps” saw seats in the Pentagon briefing room taken by self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, the disgraced ex-Florida congressman who was briefly Trump’s pick for Attorney General before resigning from the House in a fruitless attempt to avoid release of a damning ethics committee report that allegedly found substantial evidence he had sex with a 17-year-old girl and allegedly also was found in possession of illegal drugs. Gaetz has denied both allegations and a Justice Department probe into Gaetz’s alleged actions with the girl produced no charges.

And just this past week, FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter who the government alleged to be communicating with a suspected leaker — even though it’s not illegal for a journalist to receive leaked documents, even classified ones.

Agents seized her phones and laptops, ostensibly as part of a probe into a Defense Department employee who’d mishandled classified information, but perhaps as a warning to others who might dare correspond with journalists from inside the government.

And while the president has largely avoided the briefing room during his first year back, he has dispatched Vice President JD Vance there on more than one occasion, most recently last week when he appeared there to berate me and my White House press corps colleagues about coverage of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good.

One would think the Vice President of the United States has better things to do than scream at a bunch of journalists because he doesn’t like the headlines on a story, but here we are.

And Leavitt hasn’t been shy about unleashing over-the-top rebukes when cornered with legitimate questions she’d not answer. Days ago, she laid into one of my colleagues from The Hill — an affable gentleman who originally hails from Northern Ireland — for having the temerity to offer an opinion contrary to hers after she’d asked him to tell her what he thought of last week’s shooting.

She reacted to his honest answer by angrily raising her voice and smearing him as “a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion” and “a left-wing hack” who was “pretending like you’re a journalist.”

It’s a tactic Trump himself has used on numerous occasions — often with female or non-white journalists — when hit with tough questions on subjects he’d prefer to avoid.

Still, the dirty little secret about Trump — then and now — is that he actually likes reporters. One of the things he missed most about the presidency wasn’t the plane or the other similar perquisites of the world’s most powerful job, it was having a “pool” of reporters he could summon any time he wanted to talk about anything at all.

For all his talk about “fake news,” he’s spent years calling journalists and still takes calls from them on his mobile phone (and if you’re reading this, Mr. President, you can always ask Karoline for my number).

What’s different — and chilling — this time around is that Trump has now surrounded himself with people who actually believe the anti-press talk he has spent years spouting in public while remaining friendly in private.

Trump may occasionally call me and my colleagues “the enemy of the people,” but people like Vice President JD Vance, Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and others actually believe it.

Zelensky says US can do more to stop Putin as he cancels Davos meetings

Volodymyr Zelensky will reportedly not go to Davos following a large-scale strike on Kyiv, as he insists the US can do more to stop Vladimir Putin.

The Ukrainian president is set to stay in the capital after he had initially suggested that a “prosperity deal” could be signed at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. Now, Zelensky has said he will only go to Davos if a bilateral meeting with US president Donald Trump is scheduled, according to Axios.

He said Ukraine and the US were “almost finished” preparations for prosperity package but there was room for Trump to do more in making Putin stop the war. He added that Ukraine, as well as Russia, had been invited to join Trump’s “board of peace”, but felt it was hard to imagine how Kyiv and Moscow could be on the same board.

It comes as more than 335,000 residents ‌in Kyiv were left ‌without ​electricity ​after Russian airstrikes ‍ovenight. Ukraine’s air force reported that Moscow launched 339 drones and 33 missiles, targeting the capital.

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha called the “Putin’s barbaric strike” a “a wake up call to world leaders gathering in Davos.”

Bodies still trapped in train wreckage as Spain deploys cranes and death toll rises

Spain has deployed heavy machinery to recover the bodies of missing people amid the wreckage of a fatal train crash that has killed 41 people.

Emergency services used cranes to gain access to the worst-hit carriages on Tuesday as police said they had received 43 missing reports, provisionally matching the reported death toll.

At least three bodies have been seen still trapped in the wreckage two days on from the crash, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told state broadcaster TVE late on Monday.

Technicians investigating the cause of the deadly Spanish train disaster have identified a faulty joint on the rails, a source briefed on the preliminary probe said.

At least 41 people were killed on Sunday evening after a high-speed train derailed and crashed into an oncoming train, pushing it off the tracks near Cordoba. The death toll rose overnight as another body was recovered.

Experts on site identified wear on the joint between sections of the rail, known as a fishplate, which they said showed the fault had been there for some time, the source told Reuters.

They found that the faulty joint created a gap between the rail sections that widened as trains continued to travel on the track, but an official reason is yet to be confirmed.

Why my £500k beach hut shouldn’t be slapped with second home tax

“Hold on tight”, warns Stephen Bath as he slowly notches up the throttle on his blue and white speedboat to send us gliding across the calm waters of Christchurch Harbour.

It’s a cold, misty January morning, but quickly into view comes the postcard image of dozens of colourful wooden beach huts perched on the beachy headland ahead.

Such a high-speed marine arrival for a news job may seem unorthodox. However, at Mudeford Sandbank, where huts sized from just 150 sq ft go on the market for up to £575,000, nothing is quite ordinary.

Unlike other UK coastal spots with beach huts, here, on the Dorset coast, at the edge of the sprawling Bournemouth Bay, the isolation and surrounding water views create a remote village-like community.

The huts do vary widely in appearance. Some are discoloured, with wood clearly rotting, while others are luxury in comparison, kitted out with solar panels, new felt roofs and modern interiors to match a Chelsea penthouse.

And their appeal, thanks in part to a Covid-wave of city-living sunseekers looking for a slice of seaside life, has seen prices balloon, from just a few thousand pounds in the 1980s to more than half a million pounds today.

But all is not well.

“It’s so unjust we are being targeted,” says Mr Bath, on news that the cash-strapped local council has pushed ahead with plans to charge beach hut owners full second-home council tax.

For years, the professional photographer, whose family has owned beach huts since 1964, has had a 50 per cent discount on the tax along with his fellow 343 “hutters”, but with Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch Council under financial pressure, bosses decided to act. Based on 2025/26 charges, it will mean council tax for the huts will increase from £618 to £1,236 a year.

Councillor Mike Cox said: “This change delivers fairness and consistency for all owners of second homes in the area.”

But the beach hut owners, who have no connection to mainline electricity or water supply and cannot stay in their properties for the four months from November to February, are calling the move a step too far.

They already claim to be victims of rising license fees that the council charges for renting the ground the huts sit on, which is currently £3,400 a year, but set to rise next year.

Mr Bath, standing in the doorway of his £500,000-valued hut, says: “It’s very disappointing, since 1997 we’ve paid half the [second home] council tax because there is no power or toilets. It’s just a hut on the beach. And that seemed fair enough for the past 30 years, but now the council have put it up to the same value as for a one-bedroom house. This is just an unjustified money grab by a desperate council.”

Mr Bath’s hut cost him £3,000 in 1982, before he rebuilt at the cost of £8,500. Inside, there is a small kitchen with a sink and taps connected to a water tank and a kettle powered by a solar panel. The kitchen opens out into a living room with old family pictures on the beach on the walls. Up a wooden stairwell is a tiny second floor with two mattresses, enough to sleep six people.

“For many of us, we have stayed here for generations in the family, and this is our second home,” Mr Bath says. “Plain and simple, this is a cash grab by the council and it will impact those like us who won’t be able to afford the £100-a-week cost of fees and council tax. I think it’s clear we’re going to see more people selling up.”

Most of the 344 huts are laid out on the beachhead in orderly lines, but some appear placed in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, with almost every spot possible taken up by the 15ft by 10ft buildings. Yet despite concentration, it doesn’t feel crammed. Not on a January off-peak day, anyway.

The huts are broken up by a number of communal brick toilet blocks and tap facilities. At the heart of the community is a cafe, that despite partly burning down six years ago, still retains its sheltered viewing area. Serving up is a catering van selling cans of beer from £5 and scampi and chips for £13.

Access to the strip of sand is a 20-minute walk from the nearest car park, or a ferry from Mudeford on the other side of Mudeford Quays.

Nine huts are showing for sale signs in their windows. Hayley Reynolds is selling one – a sea-facing hut with solar panels and a tank for running water – for £430,000. Her family bought it for £4,000 in 1986, but a life-changing crash involving her brother left them needing cash to pay for a home conversion.

However, with the hut already having been on the market for more than a year, the 55-year-old, who lives in Oxfordshire, fears the council tax increase will only push back interest. And while the hut remains unsold, her family will be faced with paying the bills.

“The council have realised there is wealth they can get at,” she says. “But not everyone is in the same position; some of us are just lucky to have a hut in our possession, and would never be able to afford one now. The extra tax will only make it harder to sell, and we’re looking to let it out to pay the extra bills.”

In opposing the council tax rise, members of the Mudeford Sandbanks Beach Hut Association have also pointed out the condition of the toilets. They say they also spend money on maintaining the huts, which enhances the beauty spot for visitors.

However, the local council, which claims around a third of the huts are owned by its residents, points out that they sell for more than the £313,000 average house price for a home in the local authority.

Councillor Cox said: “We understand this change may be disappointing for some owners, but it is important to apply council tax policy consistently and fairly across the council area.”

He added: “The council, like all local authorities across England, faces an unprecedented, ongoing financial crisis and the latest government settlement does not address this. As a result of this severe financial pressure, the council must use all levers at its disposal to raise funds to protect essential services important to our residents.”

Save £190 on heat pump installation with this exclusive deal from Octopus

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Labour opens door to Australian-style social media ban for under-16s

The government has announced plans for a consultation on social media restrictions for under-16s amid growing calls for an Australian-style ban.

The consultation will look at all options for reform, including a blanket ban, limits on app time, raising the digital age of consent, and restricting potentially addictive app features such as “streaks” and “infinite scrolling”.

Ministers will visit Australia as part of its consultation, where a social media ban for under-16s came into force in December.

It comes after dozens of Labour MPs signed an open letter urging prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to back a ban, and to “protect young people from the consequences of unregulated, addictive social media platforms”.

Another letter, written by the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey and signed by eight sets of bereaved parents, urged Sir Keir to back an amendment to stop children under 16 from using social media platforms.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said it will be taking immediate action on children’s social media use, including by directing Ofsted to examine schools’ mobile phone policies and whether they are effectively implemented.

The government will produce screen time guidance for parents of children aged five to 16, before guidance for parents of under-fives will be published in April.

Later this week, the Lords is set to vote on an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which if passed would require social media platforms to stop children under16 from using their platforms within a year of the Bill passing.

The amendment, tabled by former schools minister Lord Nash, is supported by the National Education Union (NEU) and the 61 Labour MPs who signed the open letter to Sir Keir.

Lord Nash said the government’s consultation will only produce more delay. “This announcement offers nothing for the hundreds of thousands of parents, teachers, medical professionals, senior police officers, national security experts and parliamentarians of all parties who have been calling for a raising of the age limit for social media,” the Conservative peer said.

“The prime minister must be in no doubt about the strength of feeling on this. The longer we delay, the more children we fail. I continue to urge all peers to back my amendment on Wednesday which would begin to end the catastrophic harm being done to a generation.”

In her joint letter from the Bereaved Families for Online Safety on Monday, Esther Ghey described how her daughter had a social media addiction and was “exacerbated by the harmful content she was consuming online”.

“I speak not only as Brianna’s mother, but alongside many other bereaved parents who have lost their children to harms that began or were amplified online,” the letter, signed by a number of bereaved parents, reads.

“Some have lost children after they were groomed by online predators, others through dangerous online challenges, and others following prolonged exposure to self-harm and suicide content.”

It adds: “The online world our children are living in, and the harms that come with it, are vast. We need a multi-pronged approach to address this crisis properly, one that includes legislation, regulation, education, and societal change.”

Speaking on the government consultation, Jess Asato, Labour MP for Lowestoft said: “Consulting on a social media ban for under 16s is a good first step in protecting our children from the huge harms they face on platforms which were never designed with their wellbeing and development in mind.

“Parents and carers across the country are calling for bold action now and it’s crucial the consultation does not simply kick this issue into the long grass.

“There is strong evidence that social media has a significant negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, educational attainment and exposure to harms such as child sexual abuse and exploitation.

“Listening to parents, children and the generation who have grown up with this technology must take priority over the industry itself.”

On Monday, Sir Keir said that “no options are off the table” when it comes to changes to the use of social media for children.

“We are obviously looking at what’s happened in Australia, something I’ve discussed with the Australian prime minister,” he added.

“I don’t think it’s just a question of social media and children under 16. I think we have got to look at a range of measures.”

The open letter from 61 Labour MPs read: “Across our constituencies, we hear the same message: children are anxious, unhappy and unable to focus on learning. They are not building the social skills needed to thrive, nor having the experience that will prepare them for adulthood.”

The letter, signed by dozens of backbenchers as well as education select committee chair Helen Hayes, former whip Vicky Foxcroft, and former education minister Catherine McKinnell, says Britain risks being “left behind” if it does not act.

The UK’s largest teaching union has also said the prime minister should fully support an amendment for an outright ban.

National Education Union (NEU) general secretary Daniel Kebede said No 10 signalling it is open to raising the age limit for social media “was a welcome shift”.

Mr Kebede said: “The additional pressure from Labour backbench MPs needs to move Keir Starmer to full support of this amendment to ban social media for under-16s. This cannot be a moment for passivity – it demands leadership.

“Every day, parents and teachers see how social media shapes children’s identities and attention long before they sit their GCSEs, pulling them into isolating, endless loops of content.”

However, at the weekend, 42 child protection charities and online safety groups issued a joint statement warning a blanket social media ban would not deliver the improvement in child safety and wellbeing needed, and would treat “the symptoms, not the problem”.

Instead, the government should strengthen the Online Safety Act to require platforms to robustly enforce risk-based age limits, the organisations said.

Alan Carr’s BFF Amanda Holden ‘vying for spot on Celebrity Traitors’

Amanda Holden is the latest star vying for a spot on the second series of Celebrity Traitors, according to reports.

The 54-year-old Britain’s Got Talent judge is reportedly hoping to follow in the footsteps of her BFF Alan Carr by entering the show’s Scottish castle to try to win a huge sum for a chosen charity.

However, Holden’s busy schedule could stand in her way. A source told The Sun: “Filming for The Celebrity Traitors takes place in the Scottish Highlands at the same time that BGT semi-finals are filmed live in London on a Saturday night.

“It’s not impossible for her to be given some time off but it isn’t the only work she’d have to juggle. There’s her Heart Breakfast radio show as well as potentially more series of her show with Alan and her Beeb quiz show The Inner Circle.”

“But it’s something she’d really love to do if she can make it all work,” they added.

If Holden does sign up, she’ll be able to get some tips from pal Carr, who she has hosted a number of property renovation shows with.

Amanda & Alan’s Italian Job saw them revive a dilapidated Tuscany home bought for €1 and their latest series, Amanda & Alan’s Greek Job, is the first to air since Carr won £87,5000 for Neuroblastoma UK by successfully deceiving his Traitors castmates into thinking he was a Faithful.

The first British celebrity version of The Traitors was a huge hit for the BBC and quickly became the most-watched TV show of 2025. While many celebrity reality shows struggle to pull in big names, host Claudia Winkleman welcomed an all-star line-up to the game, including the likes of Sir Stephen Fry, actor Celia Imrie and Olympian Tom Daley.

If Holden does land a spot on the second series, she could be joined by other famous faces including Danny Dyer – who turned bosses down before but has since changed his mind – and Gareth Southgate, who previously revealed the England team and backroom staff played their own version of the game during the Qatar World Cup in 2022.

This Morning host Alison Hammond has also thrown her hat in the ring, as has a member of the royal family: former rugby player Mike Tindall, who is married to Queen Elizabeth II’s granddaughter Zara Tindall.

While an air date has not been confirmed, the second series of Celebrity Traitors is expected to arrive on our screens this autumn.