Sir Keir Starmer ousted Sue Gray as his chief of staff on Sunday after she lost a power struggle at the heart of Downing Street.

Ms Gray has been shifted to a part-time role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for the “regions and nations”, given a pay cut and will no longer report directly to Sir Keir, just weeks after it was revealed she had a higher salary than he did.

Morgan McSweeney, a longstanding Labour insider who ran the successful general election campaign, has been appointed in her place after a rumoured battle between the two for control in Downing Street.

Allies of his were made deputy chief of staff in a series of co-ordinated appointments that appeared to have been carefully planned by Number 10. 

Downing Street also filled the vacant role of Sir Keir’s principal private secretary, a key position that Ms Gray had been expected to help recruit herself.

The overhaul of a Downing Street set-up still only three months old comes as the Prime Minister tries to draw a line under weeks of headlines about infighting and leaks, with Ms Gray at the centre of a storm of negative briefing.

One government insider said Ms Gray had become “a convenient punchbag for everything that has gone wrong”. A former Tory government adviser described her demotion as “pretty extraordinary”.

Sir Keir also appointed a head of strategic communications as he fights to regain control of the media narrative before a “painful” Budget later this month expected to include sweeping tax rises.

Ms Gray’s departure was presented as her own decision, with a quote issued in her name saying she had “chosen” to go after becoming a distraction, while Sir Keir praised the impact she has had.

But The Telegraph has talked to multiple sources with direct knowledge of developments who believe it was the Prime Minister who asked Ms Gray to move on.

Ms Gray told allies early last week she was not going anywhere. A change of stance from Sir Keir appears to have led to 48 hours of intense discussions about her departure.

Just days earlier, sources close to Ms Gray had stressed the pivotal nature of her role by emphasising that she was set to give advice on who should become cabinet secretary, ambassador to the US, national security adviser and the head of the Prime Minister’s private office in the coming weeks.

Ms Gray will take a pay cut in her new role, The Telegraph understands.

However, it is possible that Ms Gray, who had been paid £170,000 as chief of staff, compared to Sir Keir’s £167,000, may not get a salary at all in her new role.

‘Who will run the country now?’

Number 10 declined to comment on pay. Whether she will be paid for what is understood to be a part-time position is yet to be confirmed.

A Conservative Party spokesman said Sir Keir’s government had been “thrown into chaos”, adding: “The only question that remains is who will run the country now?”

Ms Gray had joined Sir Keir’s team in opposition as chief of staff in September 2023, prompting Tory fury given that as a civil servant she investigated Boris Johnson and his team for Covid lockdown-breaking parties. The scandal contributed to Mr Johnson’s resignation as prime minister.

Her influence in Downing Street has been the subject of intense press scrutiny, especially since the leaking of her salary last month, which indicated briefing wars inside Number 10.

The announcement of her ousting came at lunchtime on Sunday.

Sir Keir is said to have been considering a shake-up of his team for two weeks since the end of Labour conference.

A source told the Financial Times that he had been “chastened” by the depth of discontent within the party and increasingly concerned that Ms Gray had “become the story”.

Ms Gray said alongside the official announcement: “I am pleased to have accepted a new role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for the regions and nations.”

She added: “It has been an honour to take on the role of chief of staff, and to play my part in the delivery of a Labour government. Throughout my career, my first interest has always been public service.

“However, in recent weeks it has become clear to me that intense commentary around my position risked becoming a distraction to the government’s vital work of change. It is for that reason I have chosen to stand aside, and I look forward to continuing to support the Prime Minister in my new role.”

Sir Keir said: “I want to thank Sue for all the support she has given me, both in opposition and government, and her work to prepare us for government and get us started on our programme of change.

“Sue has played a vital role in strengthening our relations with the regions and nations. I am delighted that she will continue to support that work.”

Ms Gray’s new role will be connected to the Cabinet Office, where she was working years ago before quitting to join the Labour team, rather than Number 10.

She will be focused on trying to keep the UK together – an issue close to her heart having served in senior positions in the Northern Ireland executive – and pushing forward devolution.

McSweeney heads up new team

Mr McSweeney, credited with a ruthlessly efficient election campaign that won Labour a vast House of Commons majority, will become the new chief of staff.

He had been in charge of political strategy in Downing Street. Vidhya Alakeson, who had been working in Mr McSweeney’s team, will become a deputy chief of staff. Jill Cuthbertson, director of Sir Keir’s office while in opposition, has also been made deputy chief of staff.

Nin Pandit, a former chief of staff to the chief executive of the NHS, has become Sir Keir’s principal private secretary.

James Lyons, a former NHS director of communications who had been a political journalist with the Daily Mirror and The Sunday Times, will head up a new strategic communications team in Downing Street.

John McDonnell, who was Labour shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, said: “We’re facing the potential of a war setting the Middle East alight, already thousands are being killed in Lebanon. What is the focus of the boys around Keir Starmer’s office? Carving up Sue Gray and grabbing her job and salary. Words fail me.”

On Sunday night Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir showed a “lack of integrity” by hiring MsGray while she was still a neutral civil servant. 

She wrote in the Daily Mail: “When I worked with Sue Gray (who, by the way, I quite like), she tried to pressure me into dropping my opposition to the SNP’s crazy Gender Recognition Bill.

“Ignoring Sue Gray’s advice turned out to be one of my best decisions. Hiring her, however, will go down as one of Starmer’s worst – because it shows that Labour has no principles.” 

Hundreds gathered at the site of the Supernova festival massacre at dawn on Monday to remember the 364 killed and 40 taken hostage there exactly one year ago.

It was an achingly sad ceremony as the sun rose across the Western Negev, the silence punctuated by the cries of distraught relatives and powerful intermittent artillery fire into nearby Gaza.

“What are these bombs? Where were you on Oct 7?,” said Mosses Journo, whose 24-year-old niece Karin was among those murdered by Hamas gunmen at the festival in southern Israel. 

It’s clear the wounds of that terrible day have hardly started to heal.

The desert site retained a mystic air ahead of dawn – the same spell that drew so many young people to it in the late summer of 2023. 

At 6:29am, the dance music that played when Hamas struck with machine guns and mortars was briefly repeated, bringing back memories that were too much to bear for some.

A commemorative siren then sounded across the area, followed by softer songs and prayers.

Security was tight and visitors were briefed ahead of the event over a PA system on what to do if there was another attack.

An hour later rockets were launched by Hamas in Gaza towards central Israel, damaging property and injuring several people.

As helicopter gunships hovered above, Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, moved quietly among the crowd, listening to relatives and comforting those he could.

The Re’im festival site is marked by a unique and powerful memorial.

Portrait images of the 364 lives lost sat atop simple metal fence posts, the base of each adorned with pebbles and Kalanit flowers, a wild poppy for which the area is famous.

It was a heart-wrenching sight, but one which somehow managed to celebrate as well as mourn the lives of those who were lost. 

There was hardly a face among the forest of images that looked over 30, with most even younger.

Every family gathered there had their own story and personal sorrow, although there seemed to be a bonding in grief for many. 

Shany Zohar, the older sister of Bar Zohar, 23, spoke eloquently on behalf of her sibling, who was murdered at the site a year ago.

Zohar and her friends had tried to escape in a car but she was shot and fatally wounded, dying of her injuries in the field an hour and a half later. 

“In the end, she died alone but her friends tried to save her for a long time – they really did”, says Ms Zohar, who has pieced together Bar’s last moments. 

“She was my little sister, my soul mate. Today, as the music played, I felt she was here, that she was with us.

“She died but not before she helped three of her friends to escape. That is who she was. She’s a hero.”

Rachel Reeves has reportedly dropped plans for a pension tax raid amid Treasury concerns that it would penalise up to a million public sector workers.

Senior officials from the department told the Chancellor that cutting the 40 per cent tax relief on higher earners would have a disproportionate impact on public sector workers on modest incomes.

One government figure told The Times that imposing a tax rise on those working for the state, such as nurses and teachers, would be “madness” after having agreed significant pay rises.

It comes weeks before the Chancellor’s first Budget on Oct 30, which Sir Keir Starmer warned would be “painful”.

There had been reports that Ms Reeves was considering a proposal for a flat 30 per cent rate of pension tax relief, so that higher rate payers would pay an effective 10 per cent tax charge on their retirement contributions.

Pension contributions are tax deductible, which means basic rate payers receive relief equal to 20 per cent of their payments to cancel out the income tax that would otherwise be due.

Higher rate payers – those earning more than £50,270 – receive relief of 40 per cent, and most additional rate payers earning more than £125,140 are given 45 per cent.

The Times reported that the rumoured changes would lead to a nurse on £50,000 facing an additional £1,000 a year on their tax bill.

The current rules cost the Exchequer more than £50 billion a year through income tax relief, corporation tax relief, zero tax on the growth in pensions and the fact that employers do not have to pay National Insurance on employer pension contributions.

Vishal Sharma, the chairman of the British Medical Association’s pensions committee, told The Times: “The last year has seen a number of pay deals across different groups of doctors begin to make progress at turning these pay cuts around.

“Attacking our pensions in this way would completely reverse this progress by once again taking money away from doctors in a different way. Not only would this negate the recent hard-won pay rises, but it would likely reignite the recent pay disputes that have been seen across the NHS.”

The move appears to be the latest in a series of about-turns by Ms Reeves, including a possible softening of her pledge to crack down on non-doms after Treasury officials voiced concern that too many wealthy foreigners would be pushed out of the UK and the move would fail to raise any money.

Last week, it was revealed that Labour is poised to abandon plans to tax investors after it discovered the policy could have “a net cost to the Exchequer”.

Ms Reeves is battling a series of stand-offs over the Budget as Cabinet ministers rail against the spending efficiencies demanded by the Treasury.

The health and education departments have been ordered to find savings of at least £1 billion each, despite a Labour vow that there would be no return to austerity. One of the first measures ordered by the Treasury was the stripping of the universal winter fuel payment, causing tensions among MPs.

Speculation surrounding what other changes Ms Reeves will make later this month include increasing capital gains tax and an inheritance tax raid.

The Treasury has been approached for comment.

Labour is poised to U-turn on plans to tax investors after discovering the policy could have a “net cost to the exchequer”, according to reports.

In its manifesto, the party pledged to stop private equity investors from paying capital gains tax rates of 28 per cent on the money they make, and instead force them to pay 45 per cent income tax rates.

Sir Keir Starmer claimed the policy could raise £560 million but investment firms warned it could backfire and drive millions of pounds out of the UK to save it from the tax grab.

Further analysis by the Government has now come to a similar conclusion, it is understood, suggesting the policy could cost the Treasury hundreds of millions of pounds a year instead of raising any money.

The analysis, carried out by the Treasury, found it would incur a “net cost to the exchequer” of as much as £350 million a year after five years.

This was because wealthy individuals were more likely to leave the UK than pay the higher rates, The Times reported.

A government source told the newspaper: “We are absolutely in the revenue-raising maximising space rather than doing things for ideological reasons.”

In June, before Labour came to power, Rachel Reeves, then shadow chancellor, told the Financial Times: “I don’t think it is right that … what is essentially a bonus is taxed at a lower rate than employment income”.

The Chancellor did also say the Government would exempt private equity bosses who risked their own capital.

The tax break has allowed private equity fund managers to pay capital gains tax on some of their profits, rather than the higher rate of income tax, for decades.

Called “carried interest”, the tax loophole has seen firms earn more than £780 billion since 2000, according to a paper by Ludovic Phalippou, an Oxford School of Business professor.

Earlier this year, a report by investment bank Investec warned that nearly a third of private equity investors would relocate outside of the country if Labour’s tax policy went ahead.

The Government’s U-turn on taxing investors follows a similar decision by Ms Reeves to soften promises of a crackdown on non-doms.

Last month, it emerged the Chancellor was considering abandoning her pledge to abolish non-dom status altogether over fears it may fail to raise any money.

Labour had pledged to end the tax perk for wealthy residents who are domiciled overseas in its manifesto, hoping the policy would raise £1 billion a year.

A Treasury spokesman said: “We do not comment on speculation around tax changes outside of fiscal events.”

Almost one in 10 young people are sympathetic to Hamas, a report has found.

Support for the Palestinian terror group comes despite its barbarous attack on southern Israel a year ago on Oct 7.

This led to the deaths of 1,195 people, including 815 civilians, the single largest number of Jewish casualties since the Holocaust.

But a survey by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) found that more than one in eight (13 per cent) of 18 to 24-year-olds do not believe that reports of the attacks are true.

While more than half of the British public (55 per cent) believe the reports of survivors of the brutal Hamas incursion into Israeli communities a year ago, only 39 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds appear to.

In April, a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey found that 43 per cent of Gen Z Americans aged between 18 and 24 said they supported Hamas, while 57 per cent backed Israel.

A poll in March by the same agency found that 37 per cent of Gen Z respondents said they supported Hamas.

Jewish groups say the findings have thrown a disturbing light on the attitude of younger people towards Israel and its conflict in Gaza, with far greater levels of sympathy for Hamas than had been shown before Oct 7 last year.

They reveal that 16 per cent of young adults believe the Hamas attacks were justified, compared with only 7 per cent of the wider British public.

Further, more than one in eight (13 per cent) believe the British Government is wrong to classify Hamas as a terrorist group, compared with 7 per cent of the British public.

A spokesman for the CAA said: “Extremism is becoming normalised in our country, and as ever Jews are the canaries in the coal mine.

“Most alarming of all, our young people are becoming radicalised at a far greater rate than the rest of the population, sympathising with terrorists and espousing extreme anti-Jewish racism.”

Critics of Israel say the findings simply reflect sympathy for the huge number of Palestinians killed in the conflict, which has left huge swathes of Gaza devastated by Israeli bombing.

The survey, carried out by the CAA, found that after 12 months of conflict as much as one third of the British public believe that Israel treats the Palestinians “like the Nazis” – a contention that is in itself anti-Semitic, according to the international definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by the the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) intergovernmental alliance.

The figure is even higher among 18 to 24-year-olds, nearly half of whom (48 per cent) compare Israeli actions in Gaza – where more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed – to those of the Nazis towards Europe’s Jews.

Among 2024 Labour voters, the figure is 45 per cent, compared with 36 per cent of Lib Dem, 22 per cent of Conservative and 18 per cent of Reform voters.

In a finding that reflects the continued prevalence among a new generation of anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish influence, a third of 18 to 24-year-olds (33 per cent) believe that “Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media” and 16 per cent believe that “compared to other groups, Jewish people have too much power in the media”.

In another finding which is likely to raise fears among Britain’s Jewish population, almost one quarter (23 per cent) of young adults do not believe that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Nearly a fifth (18 per cent) do not believe Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people. 

Among the British public, the figure is 8 per cent, though this rises to one in 10 among 2024 Lib Dem supporters.

One in 10 young adults believe that Jewish people talk about the Holocaust “just to further their political agenda”.

In a further finding reflecting growing anti-Semitic views among 18 to 24-year-olds, 9 per cent do not believe Jewish people can be trusted just as much as other British people in business. 

That is almost double the 4 per cent of the general British public with the same view.

The CAA added: “This week marks one year since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but here in Britain we need to turn our attention to the home front, where British society is changing before our eyes.

“If the authorities continue to let radicalism run rampant on campuses and on social media, it will not be long before we are looking over our shoulders at generation hate.”

The findings come after a former director of the BBC claimed that the corporations’ “institutionally hostile” coverage of Israel has made Britain unsafe for Jews.

In a report, Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television from 2013 to 2015, accuses the broadcaster of making “false and damaging claims about Israel’s conduct of this war”.

Endorsing his findings, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust jointly warned that the BBC’s reporting has “led many British Jews to conclude that the BBC has become institutionally hostile to Israel”.

YouGov interviewed 2,615 adults aged 18 and above for the online survey, which was carried out between Aug 2 and 5 this year on a sample representative of all British adults.

The British mountaineer rescued from an unsummited Himalayan mountain has told The Telegraph she feared she would die after being stranded in a -15C snowstorm.

Fay Manners, 37, and her American friend Michelle Dvorak, 31, lost almost all of their equipment, food and water in a rockfall on Thursday as they tried to become the first people to summit the 6,995-metre Chaukhamba III in India.

The professional climbers were left to survive for two nights in temperatures as low as -15C in nothing but a sleeping bag and could only watch as a rescue helicopter flew by twice without spotting them.

They were found on Saturday by a team of French mountaineers who were in the area for their own attempt on the remote peak – which Ms Manners said was a “small miracle”.

She told The Telegraph: “What would have happened if those climbers had not come to rescue us?

“We would have either frozen to death or attempted to cross the steep glaciers without the right equipment and slipped to our peril.”

Ms Manners and Ms Dvorak set out on their expedition to climb Chaukhamba III from a base camp on the nearby Satopanth Glacier on Sept 27.

But six days later, on Thursday, they were climbing up a rock spur 700 metres below the summit when a sudden rockfall severed a rope they were using to haul a rucksack behind them.

“I watched the bag tumble down the mountain and I immediately knew the consequence of what was to come,” Ms Manners said.

The bag contained the pair’s tent and stove and all of Ms Manners’ warm clothing, crampons and ice axes, meaning they were now in danger of freezing, starving or falling to their deaths in crevasses if they tried to cross the glacier to get back to base camp.

‘My body was running out of energy’

“We found a ledge, it started snowing and we luckily had our double sleeping bag in the other bag we could crawl into for that night. I was freezing, my down trousers, thicker socks and all the warmer clothes I had in my bag for the evenings were no longer accessible.”

That night, having sent out an emergency SOS, they survived a -15C snowstorm.

“I felt hypothermic, constantly shaking and with the lack of food my body was running out of energy to keep warm,” Ms Manners recalled.

On Friday, she and Ms Dvorak saw a rescue helicopter approach – but it flew by without spotting them.

Fearing that no one would be able to rescue them in the “brutal” conditions, they decided to descend the mountain themselves.

But progress was slow because of their lack of equipment and they were forced to survive another night in just the sleeping bag.

“Saturday morning came, we both barely survived the night,” Ms Manners said. “The helicopter flew past again but couldn’t see us. We were destroyed and we were losing faith.”

As they continued their descent – during which Ms Manners said she thought of nothing but “solutions on how we could survive” – a team of three experienced French mountaineers were searching for them.

The trio – Palin Clovis, Jacques Olivier Chevallier and Vivien Berlaud – had been aiming to summit Chaukhamba III themselves but gave up to find the missing women after being alerted to their peril by one of Ms Manners’ friends.

“As we were abseiling down on Saturday we could see a team of climbers coming up the mountain towards us,” Ms Manners said.

“When we reached them, they said they were there to help us and I cried with relief knowing we might survive.

“They supported us to get across the steep glacier that would have been impossible without our equipment, crampons and ice axes.

“They gave us their tent and sleeping bags, gave us water and food and finally told the helicopter where to come and collect us.”

At 7am local time on Sunday (2.30am BST), an Indian air force helicopter landed at 5,300 metres above sea level on the Panpatia Bank Glacier and airlifted Ms Manners and Ms Dvorak to safety in Joshimath, a town 21 miles to the south-east.

Col Madan Gurung, who co-ordinated the rescue operation for the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), said the women were found to be “exhausted” but in otherwise “perfectly fine” health.

“Their experience as mountaineers helped them conserve food and energy, which was crucial for their survival over the 55 hours they were stranded,” he said.

From Joshimath, Ms Manners is travelling to New Delhi where she plans to “eat plenty of local food, relax my mind and sleep as much as possible” over the coming days.

But despite her brush with death, the professional climber, who has opened eight new mountain routes in the past eight years, has no plans to give up mountaineering.

“I want to go home and go climbing in Europe in the sun,” she said. “But I will avoid the big mountains until the winter comes.”

The mother of the only British hostage still captive in Gaza said her daughter had been forgotten by Britain as she called on the Government to push for her release.

Mandy Damari’s 28-year-old British daughter, Emily, was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from her village in southern Israel on Oct 7 last year.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mrs Damari appealed to the Government not to let her daughter or the other 100 innocent people still being held hostage “continue to be tortured or even murdered”.

She said: “I implore those in power here to use every ounce of influence they have to advocate for the release of all the hostages, and to secure the release of their UK citizen.”

No 10 has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for both sides to reach an agreement to release the remaining hostages.

Some 100 hostages are thought to be held in Gaza still as Israel and the world prepares to mark the first anniversary of the kidnappings. Mrs Damari said she feared her daughter had been “forgotten”.

Given her daughter’s dual British-Israeli citizenship, Mrs Damari told the crowd in Hyde Park, central London: “How is it that she is still imprisoned there after one year?

“Why isn’t the whole world, especially Britain, fighting every moment to secure her release? She is one of their own. But her plight seems to have been forgotten.

“I know we could and should be doing more. I, and everyone else has failed her, and the only way to make us all feel whole again is to get Emily and all the 101 hostages back to their families.”

She implored the British public not to forget her “beautiful, charismatic” daughter locked away in Hamas tunnels.

“Emily, is 28 years old, full of life, with dual nationality, British and Israeli. She is a daughter of both countries, but no one here mentions the fact that there is still a female British hostage being held captive by Hamas for a year now, and I sometimes wonder if people even know there is a British woman there,” she said.

In the early hours of Oct 7 Emily was kidnapped from her home of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a village near the Gaza border, where she was born and raised.

Her beloved golden cockapoo, Choocha, was shot dead in her arms, and she was left with a gunshot wound to the hand.

At the commemorative event in central London organised by leading Jewish community groups, Mrs Damari asked the crowd to “imagine for a moment” that Emily was their daughter.

“Try to picture what she is going through. Since Oct 7  last year, she has been held a hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza terror tunnels, 20 metres or more underground, kept in captivity, tortured, isolated, unable to eat, speak or even move without someone else’s permission. Stripped of every human right. It is almost impossible to comprehend her pain. Yet it is the reality she is living every single day.”

Mrs Damari was born in Surrey and brought up in Beckenham, south London. She told the crowd that she was “raised with the great British ideals of pubs, parties and freedom”.

Emily has British citizenship as it is automatically passed down one generation from Mrs Damari, who feels she has been let down by the British Government.

Mrs Damari told the crowd that the women and children hostages who came back last November, when the last ceasefire deal was reached, said that Emily was alive then.

She says: “They told me that some of them had met her while they were being moved around, some for short periods, some for longer. But they all told me about her bravery and courage and even her laughter and the way she helped hold everyone together even in the worst times. One even said she sang a song every morning called ‘boker shel kef’ – which means ‘it’s a great morning’, despite the darkness.”

But she added: “But who knows? I’m sure she’s not singing now. I keep thinking of the six hostages that were murdered hours before they were discovered by the IDF. About Eden Yerushalmi who weighed just 32 kilos. In the tunnel they were kept in, there was no room to stand up in and hardly any air to breathe, with just a bucket to relieve themselves in.”

She expressed the pain the family was in: “Every day is a living hell, not knowing what Emily is going through. I do know from the hostages that returned that they were starved, sexually abused and tortured.

“Every moment lost is another moment of unimaginable suffering or even death.

“Please, I ask of you all, and also the British government, do not let my daughter Emily Damari or the other innocent people held hostage continue to be tortured or even murdered. I implore those in power here to use every ounce of influence they have to advocate for the release of all the hostages, and to secure the release of their UK citizen.

“We must all stand on the side of humanity, life, justice and freedom and act with urgency and determination to obtain the release of Emily and the other hostages now. Please help us to return them home before it’s too late for them all. We must act now.”

Mrs Damari has also shared a message that she handed to the Prime Minister in Downing Street on Monday.

She hopes the note will reach her daughter when she is “alive and home” with her family, but said that if she reads it in Gaza “know that we all love you and miss you and are sick with worry about what is happening to you every day and we are praying and meeting whoever we can to get you back home”.

Mrs Damari goes on to strengthen her daughter’s resolve, writing: “Please keep strong, keep praying and just be your beautiful self that I love to the moon and back.

The heartfelt note ends with a promise to her young daughter: “You will come home. And I promise that I’ll never complain again about your perfume sticking to me when you’re home.”

At the No 10 meeting, the mother instructed Sir Keir Starmer to get the message to Emily by any means possible – and asked the Government to do far more to bring her home.

She also asked that every time the Government mentions the hostages they must mention Emily specifically.

Sunday’s event was organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Leadership Council, and UJIA – a British charity supporting vulnerable communities in Israel – working with Israel’s embassy in London.

Hassan Nasrallah is dead. The Hezbollah he led is in tatters. Israel and Iran stand on the brink of all out, devastating war. For the optimists, it is the supreme opportunity. 

The Iranian regime will fall “sooner than people think,” as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it in an address to the Iranian public (delivered in English).

“When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled,” he announced. “Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace.”

“Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East,” Naftali Bennet, former prime minister and perennial Netanyahu rival, wrote after Iran fired rockets at Israel on Tuesday night. “The leadership of Iran, which used to be good at chess, made a terrible mistake this evening.

“We must act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime.”

It’s not just the politicians who are pushing for a decisive, region-changing war. There’s also a large constituency inside Israel who believe things must change fundamentally, and via airstrike and infantry assault if necessary.

It is driven by a cocktail of fatigue, years of conflict, cynicism about the moribund peace-process, and fury and fear at the slaughter perpetrated on October 7 last year.

“Look at it this way,” said Major Moshiko Giat, a veteran IDF special forces officer who fought in the last war in Lebanon (in 2006). Israel is surrounded by people who “want to kill you. To butcher you. They proved it on the seventh of October. They’re proving it in various other examples.

“So to come and tell me, ‘Listen, I gained 18, 20, 25 years of peace.’ What’s the meaning of that? That in another 10 years, maybe 15 years, they’ll come back? Yes. So probably my son, or my daughter, or my granddaughter or my future family are going to be at risk? Yes.

“Why? Why? Why can’t we actually get to some thought that it’s going to be different?”

Major Giat’s preferred answer to changing the paradigm is to “teach them a lesson by telling them Israel is here forever” in such a way even the terror groups will acknowledge.  

For many Israelis there is an obvious emotive appeal to finally beheading the snake (or decapitating the “octopus”, as Bennett put it). But beyond Israel’s borders, allies fear doing so my prompt a catastrophic, even nuclear, bloodbath. 

So with the region on the brink, which fate awaits. 

‘If you play this game, you have to pick between peace and war’

In some ways, the conflict between Iran and Israel makes no sense at all. They share no land border or territorial quarrels, they have common historic enemies in the form of the Sunni Arab monarchies, and the general public in Iran does not really share the anti-Israel animus of the regime.

After all, it was Cyrus the Great who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity. Before the 1979 revolution, the two countries were quite close allies.

But the Islamic Republic of Iran “has never really been a project about how Iran should be,” says Arash Azizi, author of What Iranians Want. “It has always been a project about how the world should be: a world without Israel and in which the United States is not a power broker.”

“It’s Bader-Meinhoff meets Nasserism. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamaeni is the last of the revolutionary generation who really believes in this stuff,” explained Mr Azizi.  

Perhaps that is why yesterday, at a rare address to Iranians at Friday prayers, Khamenei said that Israel “will not last long”.

Faced with overwhelmingly superior enemies in the United States and Israel, and a population with bitter memories of all-out war with Iraq in the 1980s, he has long advocated “strategic patience” – spending billions on building an “Axis of Resistance” that at an unspecified date in the future would finally eliminate Israel, but which for now would foment revolution and act as a forward line of defence for the Iranian homeland and regime.

It is a vision with obvious parallels to revolutionary Soviet ideology of the 20th century. And to borrow another phrase of that era, it is now falling apart under its internal contradictions.

“Since 2019, Iran’s policy was no war, no peace. It’s a bit like the Israeli idea of de-escalation through escalation – it’s too smart by half, and it turns out there is no such a thing as no war, no peace, and that if you play this game, you have to pick between peace and war,” said Mr Azizi.

“And that’s exactly where Khamenei is. Now, he has to pick between peace and war. The problem is, peace means giving away his anti-Zionist street cred, and war means destruction of his regime.”

Mr Azizi says his military contacts in Iran are genuinely worried. Hezbollah was the jewel in the crown of the Axis, its massive rocket arsenal viewed as Iran’s principal non-nuclear deterrent against Israel – and most specifically against potential Israeli strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

It is now in tatters and Iran does not have much of an airforce to meet an Israeli strike on the homeland. The hawkish Mr Bennet is right: Iran is more exposed than at any time in recent history. So obvious is the danger that some hardliners in Tehran have even denounced Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who planned and executed the October 7 massacre, as a “Zionist spy”.

“A former official of the Ahmadenijad government said it, and he didn’t face any blow back for it,” said Mr Azizi. “Iran is crazy with conspiracy theories. But in reality the conspiracy theories reflect a truth, and the truth is the October 7 attack has proved the undoing of the Axis in many ways.”

So far, the Iranians have tried to walk a very narrow line. Bizarre as it is, the hope in Tehran seems to have been that Tuesday night’s 200-missile barrage against Israel would be seen as restrained, within the rules, and even responsible.

As with the last Iranian attack on Israel in April they signalled it well in advance and gave Israel and its allies time to evacuate key targets and intercept many of the rockets. Only one person, a Palestinian man in the West Bank, was killed.

It even wrote a letter to the United Nations Security Council saying it acted “in full compliance with the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law, has only targeted the regime’s military and security installations with its defensive missile strikes”.

“If you read some of the statements made by Iranians in the past 24 hours after the attack, it’s pretty clear what they are saying is ‘we would like to draw a line under this,” Sir Simon Cass, a former British ambassador to Tehran and nuclear negotiator, said this week.

“They found themselves in an impossible position. If they didn’t respond to the killing of Nasrallah they would look weak. That always worries the Iranians, that people will take them lightly. On the other hand if you do respond, what is the risk that you pull the roof in down on your own head?

“I think they would like to de-escalate. But my word, that is going to be very difficult to do.”

Nuclear tipping point

For Israeli hawks, that is all the more reason to act now. But this is where Israel, once again, differs sharply from many of its allies.

Until now it was thought (or hoped) by many Western watchers of Iran that the regime was content to remain just below the nuclear threshold.

It was a logical way of having some of the diplomatic leverage of nuclear deterrence without incurring the massive international punishments that actually building a bomb would incur.

That’s hardly an ideal situation, but it gave some space for diplomats like Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to keep talks going in a bid to avert possible proliferation.

For many Western governments, giving Iran a reason to abandon that cautious stance and actually build a weapon is the opposite of good statecraft.

But with its non-nuclear deterrent exposed as a paper tiger, Mr Netanyahu calling for regime change, and the United States and Israel more or less publicly debating a strike on Iranian oil facilities, that calculation could change.

Strikes on refineries would be much more disruptive and dangerous for Iran’s economy and public – and hence for the survival of the regime – than the destruction of the nuclear labs.

Which means at this point, regime insiders would not have to share the Supreme Leader’s revolutionary anti-Zionism to see the case for a nuclear insurance policy.

In theory, it wouldn’t take them long. Iran is believed to have enough near-weapons grade uranium to build a bomb in months, if not weeks, of choosing to do so. They already have the long-range missiles to tip with the warheads.

That does not mean there would be a nuclear war – although there might well be. The enduringly weird point of nuclear weapons is that they are not meant to be used, and with the exception of the end of the Second World War, they never have been.

Perhaps Iran and Israel, which has long had its own unacknowledged nuclear arsenal, would just end up locked in a Cold-War style missile standoff. That would probably suit the regime in Tehran, clearly the weaker side in the current war.

But they would not remain the only members of the Middle Eastern nuclear club for long. Saudi Arabia has been explicit about its own intention to seek a bomb if Iran gets one, for example.

And it is not just the Saudis. Mr Grossi of the IAEA told the Telegraph in July that several “other countries in the region” have said they too would seek a deterrent. “The moment you have two or three countries with nuclear weapons, the possibility of their use is very high,” he warned.

A grand bargain for peace

There is another view of how this ends. “History would tell that you’re never wrong if you take a pessimistic view,” said Alastair Burt, a former UK minister for the Middle East who has spent years wrestling with the topic of a two-state solution.

“But I have written fairly regularly since October the seventh, on the basis that this is now so awful, and we are never going back to October the sixth, that only something positive can come out of it.”

“By that, I mean  that whether or not you agree that the Palestinian issue is the central issue in the region, it is certainly used as a cause for those who can hitch their wagon to it, to make their case for a Middle East which is anti-West, anti-American.

“Now that it’s very clear that if normalisation of Israeli ties with UAE and Saudi is to mean anything at all, it has to encompass a Palestinian dimension. I see in that an opportunity.”

Arab nations insist they are prepared to do their part. Only this week, Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, vented his frustration at the United Nations. “Ask any Israeli official what is their plan for peace, and you’ll get nothing,” he said. “We are members of the Muslim Arab Committee, mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries, and I can tell you unequivocally that all of us are willing, right now, to guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation [of the West Bank] and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state.”

Trust is low on all sides, making a deal almost impossibly hard to secure, but Joe Biden’s White House is putting huge effort into making it work. 

The grand bargain envisioned by the Americans and Saudis, among others, goes something like this: To cement the peace gained by a ceasefire and release of hostages, Israel would commit to an arrangement for a two-state solution leading to a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Saudi Arabia and the other neighbouring Arab states would in turn guarantee Israeli security and shoulder the cost of rebuilding the new Palestinian state, including in Gaza.

A cleverly-structured deal in which the benefits of peace ratchet up and offer a clear, non-violent path to the goal of a Palestinian state would put the terror groups out of business. Hamas or Hezbollah would have the option of putting on suits and attempting to govern legitimately, or fading into irrelevance.

Israel would get security and the Palestinians would get a state and reconstruction. Israel, its Sunni Arab neighbours and the United States would form a single security bloc against Tehran.

The Gulf states would get their own benefits. America has reportedly offered sweeteners, including a bilateral security guarantee and civilian nuclear technology for the Saudis.

And for America, it would have the added benefit of rebottling the Iranian genie it unleashed with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which opened the door to the westward expansion of Iranian influence into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. 

This neat solution is highly appealing to those who view international relations as a clever parlour game.

The problem with that idea is selling it to the people on the ground. The two-state solution is very popular among western politicians and diplomats, acknowledges Mr Burt, but not so much with people on the ground.

Maj Giat rather gloomily complains that outsiders do not understand the mentality of Israel’s enemies. He’s not alone in feeling that there is no peace to be made with people who want to kill you.

Demarcation of borders and the future of Israeli settlements on the West Bank would be a very difficult sticking point, and not only for ideological reasons. Israel is a tiny country with a growing population and not enough room. Rents, not to mention other consumer costs, are through the roof. Anxiety about finding a place to live is a constant part of day-to-day life.

So the Right-wing settler movement is mixed up with the kind of basic bread-and-butter politics that makes any move that looks like giving up land difficult.

The answer, some hope, lies in an old axiom of Middle Eastern politics: that it is only the hardmen who have the political credibility to make the generous concessions that can bring peace.

The greatest single step towards peace in the Middle East, the Israel-Egypt peace agreement of 1978, was made by Anwar Sadat, ruthless dictator and architect of the Yom Kippur war, and Menachim Begin, a former terrorist so extreme that mainstream Zionists for a long time wanted nothing to do with him.

By the same token it was Yitzhak Rabin, hero of the Six-Day war, and Yasser Arafat, a career terrorist, who signed the Oslo Accords. Ariel Sharon, the general who led the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, pulled Israeli settlements out of Gaza.

Could the man who killed Hassan Nasrallah, crushed Hezbollah, and reduced Gaza to fine powder have enough credibility to do the same?

American diplomats, it is said, have been trying to persuade Benjamin Netanyahu that he could. Be a statesman, they whisper in his ear. Lead the country where no one has before. The public could follow you.

Return to the grim status quo

So far, Mr Netanyahu has resisted those voices. There are domestic political reasons to do so. He is reliant on a coalition including small far-right parties in the Knesset to stay in power, although a recent addition has neutered the threat of Itamar Ben Gvir’s ultra nationalists’ bringing him down by quitting.  

He has also built a political career on opposing the two-state solution. To turn around now and accept it would take chutzpah that even he might struggle to muster.

For some, it is simply a question of character. Netanyahu, said another former official who spoke on condition of anonymity, is just not Menachim Begin. Nor is there anyone of the stature of Sadat or Arafat on the other side.

And history tells us that the most likely outcome is a continuation of a grim status quo. Israeli conscripts will fight on three fronts. Palestinians will continue to live with the humiliation of blockade or occupation. Maj Giat’s grandchildren probably will have to fight again, despite his best efforts. 

For Lebanon there is the prospect of an open-ended Israeli occupation in the south, a collapsed state, and the threat of another inter-confessional civil war as armed groups take advantage of the chaos.

For Iran, an even deeper social and economic crisis than the one already underway, which will either cement the IRGC’s mafia-like grip on power, or trigger a collapse that would make “Iraq after 2003 look like a walk in the park,” said Mr Azizi.

“Israel attacking a couple of places in Iran won’t create an alternative. The military people I have talked to are very worried,” he said.  “Yes it could be the unravelling of the regime. Hell, for a lot of us it could be the unravelling of our country. And that’s what is so worrying.”

The ruins of countries where despots have recently been challenged offers grim warning. 

“Do we want the regime gone? Yes. Do we want the regime gone at any price? No. Do I want Iran to be Syria? No. Do I want Iran to be Libya? No.”

Israel has banned large gatherings as thousands of people are expected to turn out across the country to commemorate the Oct 7 massacre.

The IDF Home Command Front has limited gatherings in Israel to 2,000 people, citing the ongoing threat of rockets from Hezbollah as the reason.

However, anti-government campaigners, who had organised a 40,000-strong march on Monday, the first anniversary of Oct 7, claim the ban is a political ploy by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to quash dissent.

Israel has in recent months been rocked by protests seeking to pressure the government to negotiate a ceasefire deal with Hamas in return for the release of the 101 hostages still held in Gaza. The demonstrations have had little effect on the government’s prosecution of the war, which is ongoing.

Thousands of Israelis are expected to assemble on Sunday at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square for a commemoration event to mark the day on which 1,100 mostly civilians were murdered by Hamas and 251 taken hostage.

Around the country, dozens more memorials are due to take place, in spite of a cap of 2,000 per event.

The Telegraph understands that many Israelis are planning to openly flout the army’s ban on mass gatherings in a show of solidarity with the families of the hostages.

Israeli Roni Tsuk, an Israeli war veteran who served in the Yom Kippur war, said the restrictions will not stop him from attending. “We will not be silenced on this important day when it’s so critical for us to come together as a family,” he told The Telegraph.

Another event, which organisers claim 40,000 people have purchased tickets for, is set to be held at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park at 7 pm on Monday.

Israeli Lior Gat said she and her family, who have all lost loved ones in the war, and on Oct 7, will be going out to show solidarity in spite of the bans on gatherings. “This is the one time we have to show the world and each other that we are united, beyond political division,” she said.

“What happened on Oct 7 touched all our lives and continues to, and I will not let our government stop us from being together at this tragic time, even if there are security risks. This is our life in Israel and we are sadly all too used to this.”

The hostage families are calling for the return of their relatives in captivity through a deal which has faltered since November as Israel and Hamas remain intransigent. On Saturday, Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, told The Telegraph there will be “no negotiations” for a ceasefire.

Protests in Tel Aviv in recent months have been full of signs blaming Mr Netanyahu for the ongoing war and hostage situation, with many featuring images of the prime minister with blood on his hands and placards saying “guilty”.

Gatherings will also be taking place from 6.29am on Oct 7, including outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. The hour marks the time Hamas invaded Israel by air, land and sea one year ago. It will commence with a siren for two minutes of silence.

On 7 October last year, Ziv Koren was at home in Tel Aviv with his seven-year-old daughter when he woke to the sound of sirens.

‘Over my 35-year career, I have always run towards what other people are running away from,’ he says, over the phone from his office in central Tel Aviv. ‘I understood immediately that I had to do what needed to be done. My first thought was about how quickly I could get my daughter back to her mother’s and get myself down south, even before I understood the magnitude of how big and dangerous the day was going to be.’

Koren, 54, is one of Israel’s most respected documentary photographers. Born in 1970, he began his career as a photographer for the Israeli Army during his national service.

He has documented countless military campaigns, as well as humanitarian subjects including Guantanamo Bay, the Haitian earthquake and the Aids crisis. His work has appeared in publications from Time to Le Figaro and been featured in exhibitions all over the world. But his latest book, The October 7 War, is his most intense and personal yet – an eyewitness account of the war between Israel and Palestine since the attacks last autumn.

On the morning of 7 October, Koren picked up his camera and got in a car with other journalists to head south. Going off-road to avoid the military checkpoints that had already closed routes leading south, Koren found himself perilously close to some of the heaviest fighting of that day.

‘Our aim was to get to Sderot [a city in the south, by the border with the Gaza Strip], because that is what we had seen and heard on TV: Hamas entering Sderot in white pickup trucks and assassinating every person on the street.

‘When we arrived, we saw it with our own eyes. So many dead people in the cars, in the bus station. Bodies everywhere. The first time we crossed the city, we did not see a single person alive.’

Leaving the city to continue their way south, they came to a crossroads where there were dozens of stopped cars, many shot up or burned out, filled with dead young people. ‘We stopped to see if anyone was still alive inside,’ Koren recalls. ‘The cars were full of young people, dressed nicely, with tattoos and earrings and bracelets. I thought to myself, where did they all come from, on the road on a Saturday morning?’

Suddenly they found themselves under fire from Hamas fighters, who had been lying in wait in sight of the road.

‘We lay under the cars while they were shooting over us,’ Koren says. ‘The cars were full of bullet holes. I’ve been under fire before, but here we were the target and there was nobody around. We were alone in the street. It was quite an experience. I was taking photographs and trying to call for help, but there were a few very lonely moments, where I thought, “This is how I’m going to end my life, lying on the road.” I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.’

Only later did he realise the convoy of ruined cars had been trying to escape Nova, the music festival held near a Kibbutz south of Sderot that endured some of the most horrifying violence that day: 364 mostly young attendees were slaughtered as they tried to get away.

That day was the start of almost a year of intense non-stop work for Koren, during which he has taken around 350,000 photographs, a tiny selection of which have made it into his book. ‘I always go deep into the stories I document, but here, I was obsessed from the very first day with documenting everything possible, because I understood that the pictures I was taking were not just for tomorrow’s newspaper. This is documenting history, and the pictures I take today will be learnt and studied by my grandchildren in schools 50 to 60 years from now.’

Given the subject, he says it has been difficult to maintain objective distance. ‘I covered the war in Ukraine, too, and I can’t say I was neutral when I was photographing that either. I’m not part of any propaganda, I’m not shooting for the government. But I’m Israeli. It’s my backyard. I lost friends and relatives and friends of my daughters on 7 October. I cannot say it’s not personal, but I’m not shooting it differently to any other major story. Obviously it’s emotional. I think somehow most of the world doesn’t remember the atrocities that took place on 7 October, and the rest don’t believe it existed.

‘Everything is difficult to witness. My heart goes out to the civilians who are suffering from the acts of the Israeli troops going into Gaza, too.’

Koren hopes people who see the images in his book will come away with a ‘combination of knowledge and understanding’.

Recently, he says, he has been documenting survivors – hostages, survivors of the kibbutzim, soldiers that were fighting that day.

‘I’ve been taking them back to where they were on 7 October. Their stories are monstrous. You cannot imagine the atrocities that took place that day.’ 

The October 7 War by Ziv Koren, £52, is out on November 10. Available on Amazon for pre-order

Chris Packham has been forced to pay £200,000 to a pensioner and country sportsman he was accused of pursuing ‘vindictively” through the courts, it has been claimed.

In 2023, the naturalist and BBC presenter was awarded £90,000 in damages after the High Court upheld his defamation claims against two contributors to Country Squire, an online magazine that wrongly accused him of misleading people into donating to a tiger rescue charity.

But his case against Paul Read, a 70-year-old grandfather who was the proofreader for some of the magazine articles, was thrown out by the High Court judge.

It meant Packham, 63, became liable for the pensioner’s legal costs, and Mr Read has now claimed his damages have been dwarfed by that bill.

It is understood the Springwatch presenter had to pay £196,008, more than double the £90,000 he was awarded as damages.

“It looks to have been something of a pyrrhic victory for Mr Packham,” Mr Read said from his home in Selby, North Yorkshire.

Mr Read added: “I felt violated. I believe Packham’s pursuit of me was vindictive. I am so relieved all this is behind me now and I can get on and enjoy what’s left of my retirement. It has been a tough time.”

Mr Read, a retired IT consultant and father of three grown-up children, was informed by Leigh Day, Packham’s solicitors, in March 2021 that he was being sued. He feared that if he lost, he could lose his family home.

He added: “The case, after the initial exchange of letters that March, dragged on until the judge threw out the case against me in 2023. That is a long time for my wife and I to be under that sort of stress.”

Mr Read said he had proofread two of the articles Packham complained about as a favour to a friend.

Dominic Wightman and Nigel Bean, the editor and writer of Country Squire, were found to have defamed Packham in May 2023.

They were ordered to pay the damages after their articles falsely claimed the presenter played the “Asperger’s victim card” and had lied to appeal for donations for a tiger rescue charity.

Packham claimed the articles meant he feared he would not “live a long life free from violence and intimidation”.

OAP had no editorial responsibility

The judge ruled that Packham had not taken part in any fraud. However, he found that Mr Read “had no editorial or equivalent responsibility”, and dismissed the case against him.

Tessa Gregory, of Leigh Day, who refused to confirm or deny the £200,000 costs payment, said: “Our client was forced to challenge the serious and damaging lies being published about him, which not only disparaged him personally but also his work for wildlife charities.

“Whilst the court found that Mr Read was a mere proofreader, our client was entirely vindicated in the judgment in relation to Mr Wightman and Mr Bean.

“The court concluded that, contrary to the articles published, our client did not lie, each of his statements was made with a genuine belief in its truth and there was no fraud of any type committed by him.

“This provides a strong deterrent to anyone who sets out to gratuitously smear someone’s character simply because they don’t agree with their views.”

Packham did not respond to a request for comment

A planning row has erupted in a Georgian conservation area after the council ordered an orange and blue shopfront to be repainted.

Peters’ Cleaner in Stamford, Lincolnshire was given the bold makeover in October 2022 in an attempt to make it “stand out”.

Vicky Whiter, its owner, has since been locked in a battle with South Kesteven district council because she did not apply for planning permission before the “unacceptable” paint job.

Conservation rules in her area of Stamford, which has been dubbed “Britain’s most picturesque” town, mean that any repainting of shopfronts needs to be approved by the council.

Ms Whiter said that she was unaware of the rules when she had it painted the shopfront and that she cannot afford to pay to have it changed, which she estimates would cost as much as £5,000.

She said: “I budget to re-decorate the shop front every four years and will happily adhere to all planning when I plan to re-decorate in the summer of 2026.”

“At this time however I cannot put the survival of my business at risk by spending now.”

Ms Whiter’s shop was previously painted dark blue, which she said made it hard to identify.

The new colours were introduced along with a vinyl orange screen covering the top of the front window which Ms Whiter said was necessary to protect her and her employees from the sun which shines into the shop for most of the day.

Several other shops in Stamford have eye-catching shades, including Oliver Bonas, which stands out in pink in the High Street, and Joules, which sports yellow.

Ms Whiter said she fears that she will be taken to court by the council if her request for more time to repaint the shopfront is refused.

According to the Stamford Shopfront Design Guide, a document drawn up by the district council to ensure that the heritage is retained, the maximum penalty for breaking the rules is two years in prison and an unlimited fine.

The rules include a recommendation to use white or neutral colours on slender shopfronts, and a single colour for all the major elements of the design.

But there is no indication of what colours are and are not allowed.

“This bullish attitude is unfathomable,” Ms Whiter said.

“Stamford’s independent shops are the heart and soul of the town and are what makes it special.”

She added: “I very much hope the council will take a pragmatic and supportive stance and work with small independent retailers to ensure that by improving the look of the high street they don’t immeasurably damage it by driving independents out of business.”

A spokesman for South Kesteven district council said any changes to the shop were subject to conservation area and listed building rules.

They said: “Listing ensures that the architectural and historic interests of buildings are carefully considered separately from the merits of any development proposals and before any alterations, either external or internal, are agreed.

“Listed building consent is required for any changes that would alter their special character.

“No advice or guidance was sought prior to the painting of these premises but council officers have since suggested alternative paint colours that would be appropriate and are happy to continue to work with the applicant to agree both these and a timescale for the repainting of the shopfront.”

Britain has never been fatter – with the average man weighing 14st by middle age, according to new data.

The NHS statistics show that we weigh around a stone more than we did 30 years ago – while waistlines keep expanding.

Middle-aged women now weigh an average of 12st, the figures show, with waists of around 36in.

Men of the same age tip the scales at 14st, with a waistband of around 40in.

Health officials said the figures, which reflect the average weights for those aged between 45 and 64, were “worrying” – saying obesity is now one of the greatest challenges facing the country.

It comes as new research suggests that adult obesity may now have peaked in the US. Rates have fallen by around two percentage points since 2020, to 40 per cent.

In England the figure is 26 per cent. Experts said increased employment of weight-loss drugs, which one in eight American adults have used, could be behind the recent US dip.

The NHS is now gearing up for the mass rollout of weight-loss jabs for the first time. The proposals will see up to 1.6 million people offered injections of tirzepatide, marketed as Mounjaro, with some prescriptions issued via “remote clinics” following online consultations.

The jabs will be targeted at the heaviest patients with the most health problems, starting with those with a BMI over 40 and multiple chronic illnesses.

But the national research results reveal a far wider problem – with two in three people losing in the battle of the bulge.

‘Diabetes, heart attack and stroke’

Dr Clare Hambling, NHS national clinical director for diabetes and obesity, said: “These worrying figures highlight that obesity is now one of the greatest public health issues we face in this country.

“It has a major impact on our health, increasing the risk of many diseases including diabetes, heart attack and stroke, and action is urgently needed across society to turn the tide on the rising rates seen in recent decades and stop so many lives being cut short.”

She said the NHS was “here to help” those trying to lose weight, rolling out 12-week courses which offer behavioural coaching and lifestyle advice for obese patients with health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

“Maintaining a healthy weight can be difficult, but the NHS is here to help those at greatest risk through our effective digital weight management programme and providing access to new weight loss treatments, while supporting wider efforts to tackle the issues contributing to obesity to help save lives and reduce its cost to families, the health service and the economy,” Dr Hambling said.

The figures for England show that in 1993, when data collection began, the country was already battling a major weight problem.

In total, 44 per cent of men were overweight, while 13 per cent were obese.

Now 39 per cent are overweight – while 28 per cent are obese.

For women, 32 per cent were overweight and 16 per cent obese.

Now, the figures are 31 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.

The statistics from the Health Survey for England 2022 shows that the peak age for excess weight is 55 to 64, when 80 per cent of men and 69 per cent of women are overweight or obese.

Average heights come in at 5ft 9in for men, and 5ft 4in for women.

Across all ages, the average woman now has a waistline of 34.9in – around two and half inches more than in 1993. For men it is 38.3in, almost two inches more than it was 30 years ago.

The rest of the UK collects data in different ways, but the figures show similar trends.

Tam Fry from the National Obesity Forum said the statistics “highlight the abysmal failure of every administration since 1993 to tackle obesity.”

Katherine Jenner, director of the Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of charities and medical royal colleges, which is calling for extra taxes on unhealthy foods said: “We all want to grow old healthily, and maintaining a healthy weight is an important factor in living out our years in good health.

“However, it is not always easy to access a healthy, nutritious diet, especially if you are juggling responsibilities such as being a parent, carer, worker and managing a household, as many people in middle age are.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “This country has failed to tackle the obesity crisis, harming people’s health and costing the NHS billions of pounds.

“This government is urgently tackling the obesity crisis head on – shifting our focus from treatment to prevention – to ease the strain on our NHS and helping people to live well for longer.”

A motorist has been fined six times for parking outside his own flat – because the designated bay isn’t long enough for his car.

Tom Mulholland started receiving £35 fines for parking his Volkswagen Golf in May.

The 29-year-old says Southampton city council is being “highly disingenuous” with claims his vehicle blocks the pavement.

However, the council has rejected his appeals against the fines.

Now he is launching a new appeal but faces having to pay £660 if unsuccessful.

Mr Mulholland, who lives in Southampton, Hants, said: “It just doesn’t seem like there’s any clarity.

“These flats were office blocks before being converted in 2017. The council approved these spaces and now I’m being fined for parking outside my home, which I think is unreasonable.

“If the council were to say these spaces are too small, I’d understand, but they approved them in the first place – so perhaps they shouldn’t have been approved initially or otherwise it doesn’t seem right to get tickets for parking where you’re supposed to.

“I think it’s highly disingenuous of the council to argue that I’m obstructing the highway given the width of the pavement.

“There are double yellow lines in place on the other side of the pavement to enforce no parking in the road in order to prevent obstruction of the highway.”

‘You have to do something’

He added: “I think many people would just accept it and pay these fines but when it’s a case of parking in a space outside your own home and you’re repeatedly handed them, you have to do something otherwise I just won’t be able to park here.”

In a statement, Eamonn Keogh, a councillor at Southampton city council, said: “No waiting restrictions apply to any adjacent footway and verge to maintain access for pedestrians, pushchairs, wheelchairs, mobility scooters and the visually impaired.

“Vehicles parked in a private property designated parking space that overhang on to the footway where a restriction is on the adjacent carriageway would be subject to enforcement.

“If the resident has submitted a stage 2 appeal and this has been rejected by the council, they are entitled to submit an appeal to the traffic penalty tribunal.”

After a string of solo appearances from her husband Prince Harry, the Duchess of Sussex made one of her own on Saturday night, at the 2024 Children’s Hospital Los Angeles gala.

Her vibrant red gown was by Carolina Herrera from the label’s pre-fall 2022 collection. Featuring a deep, U-shaped neckline and thigh-high slit, it couldn’t be further from the more reserved looks Meghan was required to wear as a working royal. Clearly, she’s still relishing the sartorial freedom she’s enjoyed since moving to the US.

If you think the dress looks familiar, it is: Meghan wore it for the first time in November 2021 at the Salute to Freedom gala. The gown has undergone a significant transformation since then: the full, fairytale overskirt of the 2021 outing has been removed, leaving just the sleek, minimal column dress that had been underneath.

Getting an old evening gown altered to look more current is a style strategy for which Meghan’s sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, has become famous. Catherine’s attendance at Trooping the Colour in June was a case in point – the sash of her Jenny Packham dress was updated with a stripe, and a black-and-white striped bow added to the collar.

Over the years, Catherine has also had the sleeves of three different Alexander McQueen evening gowns altered ahead of the Baftas, which requests that guests “keep sustainability in mind” when choosing their outfits. Meghan may not appreciate the comparison, but evidence that she has adopted the same practice with one of her own go-to labels can only be a good thing. 

Image consultant Annabel Hodin agrees – and believes it’s an improvement on the original dress, too. “The overskirt was rather matronly,” she says. “There will have been a fitting for the removal of the skirt top layer and [a number of alteration] options considered, but there was no surplus material to create a flattering drape. There is nowhere to put a dart or a ruche and the fabric has no stretch.”

It’s worth noting that the Duchess has been criticised in the past for wearing poorly fitting or creased clothes, but the slight volume at the hips in this case appears to be intentional – it’s a clever way to create the illusion of a smaller waist, while also allowing a little more freedom of movement. 

“This more streamlined look with a front slit could not easily be tighter as it would pull when walking or bending over,” Hodin explains. However, she gives the look her seal of approval: “Meghan has an incredible eye for stylish dressing and would not make the mistake of an ill-fitting dress.”

Meghan debuted a new hair look on Saturday too. Usually, she prefers a low bun, or loose, straightened hair, so these glossy curls with a centre parting are a departure from what we’ve seen in the past. “It’s a totally different look for her,” says Zoe Irwin, creative director at John Frieda. “What struck me the most is how young she looks all of a sudden.”

It’s a trend Irwin has already identified as the next big thing. “We’re calling this ‘La Belle Boheme’, she says. “I always like this kind of hair juxtaposed against the minimalist silhouette of the dress.”

This look is nothing like the beachy, boho waves we aspired to in the early 2000s though. It’s sleeker, with far less volume. It’s inspired by the modern boho look spearheaded by new Chloé creative director Chemena Kamali. The key ingredient, Irwin says, is gloss.

“The reason it’s of-the-moment is the high amount of shine in the hair,” she says. “You need to use a very lightweight oil through the hair when you’re blow drying it.”

Nor do you even need curling tongs: “What makes this really groomed is when you do it with a straightener – you get a lot of polish when you’re curling it with a straightening iron.”

The overall verdict? She looks great – although it’s probably not the easiest dress in which to sit down, and those Aquazzura sandals are not the easiest shoes in which to stand for a long period of time. But as a red carpet moment on its own, she’s nailed it.

The village of Creeting St Mary, Suffolk, consists of a handful of thatched cottages, lush high hedgerows and one or two sleepy cul-de-sacs. It is chocolate-box charming, with houses painted in a pastel palette of lemon, pink and cream. Like the rest of rural Suffolk, the village is flat and meandering, quiet and green. Seven hundred people live in the village and its neighbouring hamlet, Creeting Bottom. It is the kind of low-key place where not much happens. Until now. 

In January, parents at Creeting St Mary Primary School started to suspect there was a school-run saboteur. There were mutterings that someone was deliberately puncturing their car tyres. Their suspicions appear to be founded: Suffolk Police are currently investigating multiple allegations of criminal damage and attempted criminal damage from January to September this year, but have made no arrests so far. The investigation is ongoing.

When mother-of-two Anne Howard got a flat tyre for the first time this year, she put it down to “bad luck”. Then it happened a second time, and a third, but she still didn’t suspect foul play. When she got her fourth puncture of the year, she received a call from the garage. “They said: ‘There are six nails in this tyre’,” she recalls. “I realised it was more than just a coincidence.” 

Evidence would suggest that a resident, or residents, of the village have allegedly resorted to makeshift boobytraps to put parents off parking by the school. Parents report that this person has been placing deliberately upturned nails and screws along All Saints Road – the narrow, tree-lined lane through the centre of the village – to deter parents from parking on the grassy verges, and inflicting damage on the tyres of those who do. 

The last report the police received was on September 17. A similar report was lodged in May, when two car tyres were damaged. Another report has been received of damage to four tyres on the same vehicle between January and May. The parents of primary-school-age children who walk along the road every morning and afternoon are afraid not only for the health of their tyres but their children. Thankfully, as of yet, no one has been injured. 

But the problem will remain because parental cars aren’t going to stop coming. There are roughly 100 places at the primary school and, at the last census, only 46 primary school-age children live in the village. This means over half of the pupils travel by car from villages further afield. 

And they’re arriving in normal vehicles at that. It’s not a case of huge 4x4s belching out fumes and pushing other road users out of the way. The area is comfortable but hardly flashy – the average house price is £384k – so a VW Golf is far more likely to drop off children than a seven-seater Mercedes.

But parking is a perennial problem in Creeting St Mary, as in many rural villages. There is limited space at the nearby Jubilee Hall and in roadside laybys. So twice a day, between 8:30 and 8:45am, and 3:10 and 3:25pm, it is pandemonium. 

“It’s a really popular village school, but as you can see, there is nowhere to park,” says Anne, who drops her children aged five and seven off at school from a neighbouring village 10 minutes away. She motions to cars stacked five-deep in a layby and idling by the side of the road. 

“That’s just the way it is,” she continues. “There wouldn’t be enough children in the village alone to keep the school going. There are lots of people who drive, but we try to be courteous and minimise any hassle. The school has a really lovely community feel and when someone does something like this it’s not very nice.” 

“Not very nice” is putting it mildly. When I arrive to investigate on a crisp September morning, a group of parents are huddled by the school’s cast iron gates after drop-off. They all claim to know exactly who is responsible, and so are unwilling to be named. “It’s grotesque,” says one. She motions for me to follow her. A few yards up the road, there is a grass bank which has been covered in rocks. And there, among them, we spot a nail embedded in the verge, sharp side up. There is only one thing for it: to confront the suspect. Nervously, I knock on the door. No answer – and no answer from any of the neighbours, either.

From her tone, as she picks up the phone, you get the sense that Creeting parish council clerk Jennie Blackburn has heard all about this – many times. On one level, she sympathises with residents fed up with their driveways being blocked twice a day. “Parking, as for all schools, especially rural schools, is an issue here and has been for a long time,” she says. “While the parish council tries to encourage parents to park at the rear of the village hall and then walk along the road to school, parents seem quite reluctant. I am aware that various residents say it’s all a hassle and it’s an annoyance that parents park along the road.” 

The main complaint, she says, is the sheer volume of traffic. “In one road adjacent to the school, parents park across driveways and that kind of thing. The school sends out emails regularly asking them to carefully choose where they park. The council has tried everything to find pieces of land we might be able to purchase for a car park, but we haven’t had any luck.” Parents may argue it is just a brief daily interruption, but it’s not hard to see how having your driveway blocked by an entitled parent could send tempers flaring.

She does not, of course, condone the extreme measures the saboteur has taken to deter them. The case has turned into a village-wide whodunnit. “Parents and the school have found nails in the verge, glass, and dog faeces,” she says. “It’s not like the nails are there accidentally or have been dropped by a builder, because as soon as they are picked up, more are put down. That’s what’s suspicious.”

Creeting is not the only area to be struggling to contain school-run chaos. A group of schools in Frome, Somerset, has trialled a car ban at school pick-up and drop-off times, and an extended 20mph speed limit, for pupil safety. In Kent, a similar scheme has been rolled out in Medway, Margate and Tunbridge Wells, to encourage parents and children to avoid driving to school wherever possible. However, such measures wouldn’t work for a rural village school. 

Back at the school gates, the parents have had enough – just another thing to fret about alongside the already fraught day-to-day task of raising children, staying in employment and running a home. “There are much bigger things to worry about in the world,” one says, “Than a little bit of road that is occupied for ten or 15 minutes twice a day.” 

But clearly, not everyone agrees.

A primary pupil has been allowed to identify as an animal in a Scottish school, it has been revealed.

A council has admitted that “one or more [primary school] pupil(s)” had been officially recognised as having “species dysphoria”, despite psychologists warning that the supposed condition has no scientific basis.

It follows the separate case of a pupil at a secondary school in another part of Scotland, who it emerged last month had been allowed to identify as a wolf.

Species dysphoria is a non-clinical condition in which an individual insists they do not identify as fully human.

Claims that children are being recognised as alternative species such as cats in classrooms have previously been dismissed by transgender rights activists as conspiracy theories.

However, two Scottish councils have now officially confirmed cases of “species dysphoria” in their schools.

The council disclosed the second case to The Daily Mail in response to a Freedom of Information request. It refused to state the animal that the child or children identified as, citing privacy concerns.

It also refused to confirm whether there was one or multiple cases of species dysphoria in pupils, saying it was one or more but fewer than five.

“Schools should not be aiding and abetting a child’s mental health crisis,” said Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education.

‘Mischievous behaviour’

“They need to get a grip and show some common sense and leadership. Pandering to what often amounts to mischievous behaviour is pointless and it undermines school discipline.”

Hundreds of primaries and secondaries north of the border are officially signed up to a SNP-backed charter scheme run by LGBT Youth Scotland, the controversial taxpayer-funded charity.

An article posted on its website states that people should be able to identify “however they want” and promotes the concept of “xenogenders”, an umbrella term that is often considered to include those whose gender is influenced or related to animals.

The organisation told The Telegraph that it did not “recognise or support cases of species dysphoria”.

The second council to admit to a case, which is not being named, said that no arrangements had been made to accommodate the condition and that teachers had not been issued specific guidance on how to deal with children claiming to identify as animals.

It added: “Advice would be sought from our educational psychologists or similar if required.”

‘Furry’ culture

The council that includes a school with a child identifying as a wolf confirmed last month that the pupil was part of a group called “furries” who adopt a persona based on an animal or mythical beast.

Tommy MacKay, a Dunbartonshire-based clinical neuropsychologist, has previously said that species dysphoria does not exist and children should be told to “snap out of it”.

However, growing numbers of children are taking on personas of animals such as dogs, cats, foxes and birds, with some posting guides to “coming out” to parents online.

According to an article about “non-binary identities” posted on LGBT Youth Scotland’s website, people can be “both a man and woman at the same time” and those who do not identify with existing labels can invent their own.

It states that “these genders are referred to under the umbrella term of xenogenders”.

‘Identify however you want’

The term xenogenders can be recognised in the trans community as including animal identities.

The article adds: “People can use any pronouns and terms that they want, they can identify however they want.”

A spokesman for the organisation said: “LGBT Youth Scotland does not recognise or support cases of species dysphoria. In addition to this, LGBT Youth Scotland has never offered guidance to schools on this matter.

“The highlighted article on our website shares a young person’s perspective on non-binary gender identities and includes a mention of xenogenders in that context.

“Any connection drawn between this and species dysphoria does not reflect the views expressed by the young person.”

The Scottish Government has been approached for comment.

The world’s largest sausage dog gathering has gone ahead after organisers battled through the local council’s health and safety “red tape”.

More than 1,000 dachshunds flocked to the seaside town of Southwold, Suffolk, on Sunday for a mile-long walk along the seafront.

The much-loved event has become one of the biggest in the sausage dog calendar since it was launched seven years ago by Laura Baggott, 33, of Leiston, Suffolk.

It set a world record for the largest-ever gathering of dachshunds when 2,238 hounds attended in 2022.

But it had to be “scaled back” last year due to “red tape” health and safety requirements imposed by East Suffolk Council.

The council asked the event to put on stewards and toilets and also obtain permits, insurance and risk assessments.

Organisers said at the time that they did not have the resources or time to meet the requirements.

But this year they pulled it off and permission was granted for the event on Thursday last week.

“There was a lot of red tape and paperwork to get through,” Ms Baggott, an eyebrow tattoo artist, said. “But we managed it, and the council were brilliant.”

East Suffolk Council was approached for comment.

The event aims to raise awareness and funds to combat intervertebral disc disease (IVDD), which is common in sausage dogs due to their long bodies.

Thousands of pounds were raised for the group Dedicated to Dachshunds with IVDD which loans equipment to disabled sausage dogs.

Heather Forbes, 52, of Wymondham, Norfolk, who was with her dogs Patsy, Saffy, Bubbles and Dolly, said: “They are just an absolutely fabulous breed.

“Once you have one dachshund, you can’t stop. They are cuddly, snuggly, playful and loyal, despite being a bit gobby.”

Amy Walker, a veterinary assistant who attended with her pets, eight-year-old Lilly and 13-year-old Pickle, added: “I love their wild personalities.

“We have been coming to the walk for three years. It is a lovely event and we really enjoy it. Everyone is so friendly.

“It’s true that they are noisy little dogs, but nobody is bothered about that in Southwold today.”

Sarah Waddoups, who travelled down from Alfreton, Derbyshire, with her 11-year-old sausage dog Lord William, said: “This is a great day out.

“It is fantastic to walk along the beach and meet so many lovely people and their dogs.”

Karen Hodgkins, 61, of Bowers Gifford, Essex, who was in Southwold with husband Brian, 72, and their rescue dachshunds Toby, Minie, Sasha and Harley, said: “It is so lovely to see all the dogs together.

“They have got such beautiful characters, and they are so friendly. We adopted a mother and daughter, and then we got a brother and sister.”

Krystal Alright of Caister-on-Sea, who was with her dogs Shelby, five, and Rollie, three, dressed in Halloween costumes, said: “Sausage dogs are an acquired taste. I just love their personalities and their stubbornness.”

A coroner has told the NHS to take action on “nonexistent” ME care in the wake of a 27-year-old’s death.

Maeve Boothby O’Neill died of malnutrition as a result of myalgic encephalomyelitis in October 2021.

The coroner in her inquest has now made the unprecedented step of issuing a prevention of future death notice in relation to the condition, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

Deborah Archer called on Wes Streeting, NHS officials and other health bodies to take action to prevent more deaths.

Ms Archer presided over the inquest into the death of Boothby O’Neill, which has become a landmark case highlighting the lack of treatment available for sufferers.

The 27-year-old died three years ago having battled with the condition since her teens. It had left her bedbound, unable to speak or eat.

In the lead up to her death she had been admitted to Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital on three separate occasions, but doctors had been unable to treat her despite her begging for help. She chose to die at home with loved ones rather than return to the hospital.

Ms Archer wrote: “During the course of the inquest the evidence revealed matters giving rise to concern. In my opinion there is a risk that future deaths could occur unless action is taken.”

She had concluded in August that Boothby O’Neill died from natural causes when doctors were “unable to treat the consequences of her severe ME”.

The report published on Monday and sent to NHS England and ministers at the Department of Health, declared that her care had been insufficient, and hospital admissions “very difficult for Maeve to endure” because of the lack of expertise on wards.

The report highlighted the absence of specialist beds across the country for severe ME patients, and called attention to the fact there is no funding available for research into ME.

Ms Archer said there would be further deaths unless action was taken.

The coroner also highlighted shortcomings in guidelines from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) regarding how nutrition support should be handled for patients with severe ME.

The NHS, Nice, Mr Streeting and health minister Andrew Gwynne, have a statutory 56 days to respond to the report.

Sean O’Neill, father to Maeve and a journalist at The Times, said the report was “short, stark and shocking”.

“The report is addressed directly to Wes Streeting and I urge him to respond in a constructive and meaningful way,” he said.

“People with the post-viral illnesses ME and Long Covid have been neglected for too long; if ministers are serious about tackling the problem of long-term sickness they must improve care and treatment for sufferers.

He added: “It is my plea, as a grieving and heartbroken father, that these bodies step up and take steps to prevent future deaths from this awful illness.”

In August, Mr Gwynne pledged to boost research, improve attitudes and “better the lives of people with this debilitating disease”.

A woman has claimed she was taken to hospital after a cauliflower fell on her head while she was shopping in Waitrose.

Sammi Mai, 42, was in a Waitrose in Bath when the vegetable allegedly fell 4ft from a top shelf.

Ms Mai said the vegetable hit her head while she was browsing a bottom shelf.

The impact caused her to black out and she woke up to find the cauliflower next to her, which she said staff later moved back onto the shelf.

Ms Mai was treated in hospital for a severe headache, nausea and dizziness, and was later diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, The Sun reports.

Ms Mai, a regular Waitrose shopper, branded the supermarket’s response “insulting” after she was sent a £25 voucher and £8 for a taxi fare following the incident.

‘Unable to work’

Ms Lai said: “I was very unwell and I’m still suffering and unable to work.

“I don’t know how the cauliflower fell but they should not store heavy, roundish items like that on the top shelf.

“The staff just put it back on the top shelf so they were not treating the incident seriously.”

Ms Mai, from Kingston, London, had been holidaying with her husband in Bath when the incident occurred.

The pair complained to the supermarket customer service team two days after, but were told they would need to get a solicitor involved if they wanted to pursue the incident further.

Ms Mai said she was disappointed by the supermarket’s response and hasn’t used the gift card.

A Waitrose spokesman said: “Our customer was seen immediately by a trained first aider at the time of the accident and we are sorry to hear she is unwell.

“We take customer safety incredibly seriously and have thoroughly investigated this case – but will consider any new information she wishes to share with us.”