The truth behind why Victoria Starmer has chosen to be invisible

It’s exactly a year since Keir Starmer got the keys to Downing Street. Three hundred and sixty-five days since I stood at my local polling station in Kentish Town and saw Keir and his Me+Em-clad wife Victoria Starmer do the customary voting shot on election morning. It was quite the media scrum here in NW5 – the community centre at one of the local council estates, which usually hosts mum-and-baby singing or drop-ins, was besieged by the world’s press.

It’s funny when the media circus descends on somewhere you know so well; our prime minister and his wife are good north London citizens, sending their kids to local schools. I often saw Victoria at Tufnell Park station (Kentish Town was closed for a year for refurbishment). In her elegant trouser suits and long bob, she had a very north London working mum aesthetic. She fitted in just fine.

A year ago, I wrote about how I hoped Victoria would be a new kind of “first lady” – one who bucked the traditional trend of buy-one-get-one-free political wives. It’s amazing how many consort occupants of Downing Street have made being “Mrs Prime Minister” their primary identity. Lest we forget Cherie Blair, with her stylist Carole Caplin, being photographed in her Downing Street bedroom applying lip gloss. Or Samantha Cameron, who released shots of her trendified Downing Street flat with its LOVE pillows, on-trend DVD box sets (remember those?) and OKA shelving.

As the first official consort occupant not to be married to her PM partner, Carrie Johnson courted a deluge of media attention for her luxury Lulu Lytle makeover of No 11, lockdown parties, and extravagant tastes. Even Mrs Rishi Sunak was proudly paraded everywhere from Yorkshire to global summits, discussing loading the dishwasher and pretending she was just like the rest of us – despite being one of the world’s richest women.

By contrast, Lady Starmer, a former solicitor and proud occupational health professional, has flown almost entirely under the radar over the past 12 months. Fiercely private about the family’s home life, she’s not one to do a sit-down interview with a glossy magazine. When she did grace the cover of Tatler, the profile had to be stitched together from quotes by those close to her. Described as a “spectral presence” whom many in Labour circles have never met, friends were said to be “terrified of saying much about Victoria – even when it was complimentary”.

In the past year, Victoria Starmer has only appeared fleetingly at a handful of official events. She was there to turn on Downing Street’s Christmas lights, at an 80th anniversary celebration of VE Day, and during an emotional return to Auschwitz for a Holocaust memorial. We also saw her at a Taylor Swift Eras tour concert, in the Wimbledon Royal Box, and at the Vatican for Pope Francis’s funeral.

While Keir Starmer told The Observer that, after the row over accepting expensive gifts – including tickets to see Swift with his family – what really upset him was his wife being dubbed “Lady Victoria Sponger”, her disappearing act is certainly not a case of having a thin skin, but more a positive and empowered decision by Victoria to just do things differently.

If there is a normal life to be had in Downing Street (where they live in the larger flat at No 11), Victoria has seemingly achieved the impossible and managed it. Her husband generally avoids having meetings or drinks with colleagues back at the flat, so it’s kept very much as a family zone – just like their home in Kentish Town. With no interest in being a public figure, Lady Vic has had a year of simply nipping off to work, looking after her teenage children, and mostly staying well away from photo calls or wifely appearances to soften her husband’s image.

Of course, nature abhors a vacuum – and just like with the Princess of Wales, Victoria’s lack of public profile has led to some pretty wild speculation about their marriage. But wisely, instead of attending to these vicious lies, Victoria has brushed off any malicious gossip, preferring to defuse rumours through quiet and steady support behind closed doors.

And it feels very refreshing to have a PM’s spouse who is doing an ordinary gig in the NHS, feeding back the reality of life on the ground, instead of sacrificing her independence to swan around with other political spouses at G7 summits. As a highly intelligent and photogenic woman, she is a potent and valuable asset to her husband. But even more important – to the rest of womankind – is her refusal to be used as a Wag trophy or to publicly play a part in a power couple. This matters. For centuries, it’s been assumed that men who take big jobs – whether as ambassadors abroad or as top politicians – will have a wife who comes as part of the BOGOF package: providing social oil, hosting dinners, remembering names, and making everyone feel welcome and looked after.

Given the dire state of never-here-Keir’s current standing within the Labour Party (how did a PM with a landslide majority read his backbenchers’ mood so badly he ended up having to torpedo his own disability benefit reform bill to avoid a humiliating defeat?), I don’t doubt the pressure could be on his wife to change the mood – to appear in public, to show her husband in a more positive light.

Even the incomparable Michelle Obama was called upon to introduce Barack, talking about how she loved him despite his stinky socks and late-night almond habit (he would never eat more than seven nuts). Such wives were expected to work like Trojans behind the scenes to prop up the husband’s public role. (Anyone else remember Norma Major and her publicly paraded frozen grated cheese in Tupperware to make John Major seem more relatable and thrifty? Or even Mr May, wheeled out in shots of their annual walking holiday in the Swiss Alps to try and convince us that Theresa was human after all?)

But Lady Vic has said goodbye to all that. Everything about her suggests that she will stick to her guns and resist being trotted out to improve Keir’s standing with the public. Letting her husband get on with the job, while she gets on with hers, is what she does best. And she should be applauded for sticking to her principles – keeping her kids out of the spotlight and carrying on as normal, even when it’s not really normal at all. Something I was reminded of yesterday as I walked down the street where the Starmer family home was firebombed in May.

The charred brickwork was a stark example of the high personal cost that political families pay for being in the public eye. It’s Vic’s sister who lives there now, and she was upstairs with her partner when the front door was set alight. “She happened to still be awake,” Keir told his biographer last month, “so she heard the noise and got the fire brigade. But it could have been a different story.”

Vic is all too aware of the dangers in a highly polarised world. I vividly remember pro-Palestinian groups leaving piles of children’s shoes outside the Starmer home and demonstrating against Keir’s policies on our high street. No doubt she has had bile thrown at her family because of her Jewish roots and faith. Last month marked nine years since Labour MP Jo Cox – a beloved wife and mother – was murdered in her constituency, stabbed 15 times. The risk is real; many senior politicians receive near-daily death threats.

In such a highly charged, toxic environment, Victoria’s conviction to stay firmly below the parapet is entirely understandable and sensible. The risk to her teenage kids (whom Keir has said he wants to be able to walk to school and live their own lives – we don’t even know the name of their younger child) is real. We should be pleased that Victoria has resisted the kind of family photo calls beloved of the Blairs, Camerons, or even the Browns. Today, there are no halfway houses. You either play the publicity game – or you totally don’t.

Instead, Vic has pursued her own independence, protecting herself and her kids in the process. Their dad has chosen to be PM—the rest of the family hasn’t. She has honoured their commitment to staying out of the limelight.

As we hit the first anniversary of the first family moving into Downing Street – well done, Lady Vic. You’ve played a blinder.

Ex-Arsenal star Thomas Partey charged with five counts of rape

Former Arsenal footballer Thomas Partey has been charged with raping two women.

The Metropolitan Police said the midfielder faces five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault following alleged offences between 2021 and 2022.

Partey “denies all the charges against him” and “welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name”, his lawyer said.

The Ghanaian international was charged four days after leaving the North London club.

Partey is accused of two counts of rape against one woman and three counts of rape against another.

The sexual assault allegation relates to a third woman, police added.

Partey, 32, of Hertfordshire, is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 5 August.

Jaswant Narwal, of the CPS, said: “The Crown Prosecution Service has today authorised the prosecution of Thomas Partey for multiple counts of rape – after carefully reviewing a comprehensive file of evidence.

“Our prosecutors have worked closely with officers in the Metropolitan Police who have carried out the investigation, to review the evidence and advise on the appropriate charges.

“We remind everyone that criminal proceedings are active, and the defendant has the right to a fair trial.

“We know there will be significant public interest in this announcement, but it is absolutely vital that there is no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

In a statement, Partey’s lawyer Jenny Wiltshire, of Hickman and Rose, said her client denies all the charges.

“He has fully cooperated with the police and CPS throughout their three-year investigation.

“He now welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name.

“Given that there are now ongoing legal proceedings, my client is unable to comment further.”

The Metropolitan Police said the investigation into Partey began in February 2022 after officers first received a report of rape.

Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, whose team is leading the investigation, said: “Our priority remains providing support to the women who have come forward.

“We would ask anyone who has been impacted by this case, or anyone who has information, to speak with our team.”

Partey joined Arsenal from Atletico Madrid in 2020 in a transfer worth around £45 million.

He played 35 games for the North London club in the Premier League last season, scoring four goals.

Lords urge government to end ‘no-hope’ indefinite jail terms

Peers have demanded answers over the government’s refusal to resentence prisoners trapped under “no hope” indefinite jail terms, insisting: “It is not right and it is not fair.”

In an impassioned debate in the House of Lords, peers urged prisons minister James Timpson to take decisive action to end the injustice of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail terms.

Successive governments have refused justice committee recommendations to resentence more than 2,500 prisoners still trapped under the abolished jail term.

The open-ended sentences were scrapped in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving those already jailed incarcerated indefinitely.

Victims of the scandal, whose tragic cases have been highlighted by The Independent, include: Leroy Douglas, who has served almost 20 years for stealing a mobile phone; Thomas White, 42, who set himself alight in his cell and has served 13 years for stealing a phone; and Abdullahi Suleman, 41, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for a laptop robbery.

In a speech as his private member’s bill to resentence IPP prisoners reached committee stage on Friday, Labour peer Lord Tony Woodley admitted it will not succeed without government support.

Addressing IPP prisoners and their families, he told them not to give up hope, but added: “Sadly, my bill by itself will not bring you justice. But it can help build pressure on the government to do the right thing, and it can help build public awareness of this industrial-scale miscarriage of justice.

“So please don’t have false hope in my bill. Hope – but not false hope – is my aim here.”

Raising a series of “probing” amendments designed to “expose the lack of logic” behind the government’s refusal to resentence IPP prisoners, he said it is “as big a scandal as the Post Office and the infected blood scandal”.

“Almost 100 prisoners have taken their own lives – hundreds more have been driven to insanity, with this no-hope, never-ending sentence,” he said.

“The only difference with IPP is that not enough people know about it.”

He reminded the government that almost 700 IPP prisoners have served at least 10 years longer than their original minimum tariff.

He added: “How can the government deny resentencing to these people, still inside, over 10 years past their minimum sentence?

“My lords, let me remind you we are talking about people who have been locked up for over a decade longer than someone else convicted of the exact same crime, but before 2005 or after 2012.

“My lords, a lot of nonsense is spoken about ‘two-tier’ justice, but this is one situation where that label seems to apply. It is not right and it is not fair.”

His proposals were backed by the UN special rapporteur on torture, Dr Alice Edwards, who said the jail terms have caused “unlawful psychological torture” to prisoners.

In a statement before the debate, she said: “It is time to end the perpetual damage caused by the IPP scheme.

“These sentences have caused unlawful psychological torture and ill-treatment to too many prisoners under the care of successive British governments.

“A resentencing court is a promising way forward, in which there could be an initial prioritisation exercise of cases, necessary exclusions and, for those whose mental state requires psychiatric or other intensive treatment, their transfer to a secure mental health facility outside the prison service until such time as they are deemed fit, with regular reviews.”

However, prisons minister James Timpson said none of the amendments eased his fears over resentencing, insisting the government’s priority is public protection.

He said the IPP Action Plan, designed to support each prisoner’s progress to release by the parole board, is “where we will sort this out”.

However, he vowed to “pull hard on every operational lever” to address the crisis and said he was carefully considering separate proposals put forward last month by an expert panel convened by the Howard League for Penal Reform.

The panel, led by former lord chief justice Lord John Thomas, called for all IPP prisoners to be given a release date within a two-year window at their next parole hearing and for fewer offenders to be recalled.

Huge explosion in Rome injures dozens of people

Dozens of people have been injured, residents have been forced to flee and a summer camp was evacuated after an explosion at a petrol station in Rome on Friday morning.

Police have opened an investigation into the incident and seized the station, local media reports.

An enormous orange fireball shot into the sky while huge plumes of dark grey smoke billowed over buildings in the Italian capital.

By the afternoon, at least 45 people were confirmed to have been injured by the explosion, including eight police officers and one firefighter, according to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, as fire crews continue to work to put out the blaze.

Two people were seriously injured, including the driver of a gas tanker involved in the incident, the newspaper reported.

The police union told the newspaper that one police officer was in a “red code” for the burns he sustained.

Several other people were being treated for trauma injuries including fractures, after falling as a result of the explosion.

Rome’s police commissioner Roberto Massucci said the explosion was caused by an accident during the unloading of LPG at the station.

Some residents told Corriere that “pieces of glass and iron were flying” in the explosion, which rocked nearby buildings.

A fire broke out at first, followed by two explosions in quick succession around 8.18am local time, according to local media. The second blast was the biggest.

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has spoken to the mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri about the incident, Corriere reports. Mr Gualtieri said Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella also spoke with him.

“I updated him on the situation and he asked me to convey his thanks to all the operators and the police who intervened promptly, avoiding worse consequences,” Mr Gualtieri said of his conversation with the president.

The mayor, who went to the scene of the explosion, thanked emergency services for their rapid response.

He said that response “allowed the immediate evacuation of all those present in surrounding structures, including a summer camp for children”.

The explosion occurred near via de Gordiani 32 in the district of Prenestino, in Rome’s southeast.

There is a nursery and sports club nearby, as well as several schools.

Video shows debris scattered across a sports field, while the fence to the area has been buckled by the force of the blast.

Italy’s fire service said 10 crews were on the scene working to douse the flames.

Putin may be mocking Trump – but US president won’t act

European leaders have redoubled their efforts to prise Donald Trump away from Russia by warning that the US president is being “mocked” by Vladimir Putin, alleging that Moscow is using chemical weapons in Ukraine and demanding that the US restore weapons supplies to Kyiv.

The move came after Ukraine said it had endured the biggest overnight air attack of the entire war, with swarms of 500 drones and missiles intended to overwhelm already stretched air defences.

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, called for the US to end its suspension of air defence missiles and other weapons – most of which are on standby for delivery to Poland –and derided Trump’s fruitless efforts to secure a ceasefire. “Mr Trump, Putin is mocking your peace efforts,” said the Oxford-educated Sikorski.

In addition, the Dutch and German governments said their intelligence services had evidence of widespread use of chemical choking agents (teargas) against Ukrainian trenches by Russian troops. These have been used to force soldiers into the open where they could be shot by Putin’s forces.

“This intensification is concerning because it is part of a trend we have been observing for several years now, where Russia’s use of chemical weapons in this war is becoming more normalised, standardised, and widespread,” said the Dutch defence minister Ruben Brekelmans.

With the recent US focus on its attacks on Iran in support of Israel, Russia has been gradually stepping up efforts against Kyiv. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been warning for weeks that his country faces a critical shortage of defensive weapons, so the announcement that the US is suspending promised weapons such Patriot air defence missiles will inevitably entrench the already strong belief that Trump has taken Putin’s side after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and that the US is no longer a real ally in the defence of Europe.

Pentagon officials suggested the suspension was a “pause” in delivery of Patriots, precision artillery and Hellfire missiles mounted on Ukrainian F-16 aircraft as part of a review of US supplies worldwide.

But the US has not declared a pause in supply to any other nation. Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid by far and has recently enjoyed an uptick in supplies of bombs and missiles even as it stands accused by the United Nations of “ethnic cleansing” and its prime minister has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Trump has been trying to secure a ceasefire in the Ukraine war for months. Despite Kyiv offering a 30-day pause in fighting, Putin has repeatedly made it clear that Russia is not interested while it pursues a summer offensive to carve out the east of Ukraine.

Trump has suggested he is frustrated by Putin but has threatened the Russian president with no definitive sanctions. Kyiv, however, has endured having its intelligence feed from the US blinded during the Russian counterattacks to retake Kursk, seen military aid suspended, been offered no new promises of support, and forced into a mineral deal that trades future US weapons for mining profits.

In March, Trump said he was very angry and “pissed off” after the Russian president continued to swerve his attempts to get Moscow to agree a ceasefire. The pair spoke again at length on Thursday in what turned out to be, from the Oval Office perspective, another unsatisfactory call.

When asked if he had any success with Putin on Ukraine, Trump was clear: “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all… I’m not happy about that. I’m not happy about that.” But again there was still no sign that the US was going to lift its suspension of military aid to Ukraine, let alone increase it to try to force Russia to negotiate a workable ceasefire.

So Russia continues its grinding offensive, claiming this week to have captured all of Luhansk province, which it has already illegally annexed. As a precondition to any ceasefire, Putin has demanded he keep at least Luhansk, Crimea, Kherson, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia provinces.

The US has largely accepted this position as a “given” and further insisted that in any long-term peace deal Ukraine is prevented from joining Nato and will not get security guarantees from the US to defend its future borders.

So Nato’s European and Canadian members are now planning, training and producing weapons to fill an American void that is widening. Kyiv has held on in spite of the massive air attacks and “meat grinder” Russian land assaults, largely because of its superiority in drone technology. But Moscow has now forged ahead with the development of long-range wire-guided first-person view (FPV) drones and is developing AI weapons. For the last year or so Russian drone pilots have been using civilians in Kherson as target practice on training operations, with FPV drones killing several people most weeks.

“It won’t be long before we see people being hunted through the streets of Kyiv by AI drones in swarms. We need to defeat Russia before that happens,” said a senior officer in Ukraine’s drone warfare operations.

That will be difficult while Trump holds back critical arms when Ukraine needs them most.

How to host a Macmillan Coffee Morning like you’ve never seen before

What comes to mind when you think of a fundraising coffee morning? Soggy digestives, weak tea and sitting in a school hall having forced fun? Think again.

Macmillan Cancer Support are celebrating 35 years of the iconic Coffee Morning fundraiser, and we’re here to help you give your next Coffee Morning a glow-up. Behind the fun, Coffee Mornings help raise vital funds for people facing one of the toughest challenges of their lives.

Almost one in two people in the UK will get cancer in their lifetime, and no two experiences are the same. Where you live, who you are, or whether you have another health condition can all affect the care you receive – and that’s not fair. Macmillan is working to change that, doing whatever it takes to make sure everyone gets the best possible care, whoever and wherever they are.

So while tasty treats and fundraising fun of course get to stay, we’re leveling up the atmosphere with fresh ideas to keep everyone entertained.

Want to be a Coffee Morning Host?

Best of all, these new ways of raising vital funds don’t have to be expensive. In fact, they might even save you a bit of time, wardrobe space and money. Here’s how to host a Macmillan Coffee Morning like you’ve never seen before…

Organise a ‘style swap shop’

Clear out your wardrobe, raise money and bring your community together all at the same time by organising a ‘style swap shop’ – with all your finest, unworn or unwanted clothes and accessories.

Pack up the majestic hats you bought for a wedding but only wore once, the satin gloves that make you feel like Audrey Hepburn but don’t go with anything you own, or maybe that lace vintage dress your aunty wore to Glastonbury in the 70s, which now lives in an unexplored drawer in your bedroom.

Fill up a bag with your best cast-offs and get your friends, family and neighbours to do the same. Everyone pays £5 entry to the ‘style swap shop’ and then you all get to browse through each other’s preloved treasures – grabbing what takes your fancy.

One person’s hand-me-down is another person’s new look – so elbows at the ready! Want to raise extra cash? Add a £1-£2 price tag on each item that’s been donated.

Strut your stuff at a cake walk

We know that staying healthy and being physically active can reduce the risk of cancer, so why not combine the classic Coffee Morning with a walk around the block? Creative costumes, silly hats and streamers at the ready as we leave behind the school hall and instead take our cakes and cookies for a little jaunt to stretch our legs.

Up the fun, and the stakes, by upgrading from a cake walk to a cake race – the bigger and messier the dessert, the better!  And get the kids involved in the baking and racing too.

Or if you want to keep it indoors, turn your catwalk into a cake walk and give your best strut with your favourite pudding in hand. It’s giving egg and spoon race, jelly wobbling on a plate and doubling over with laughter as you sashay along clutching a platter filled with your finest roulade.

Dance away the morning at a sober rave

Why sit or stand when you can dance? Sober raves are all the rage – and ideal for a morning of fun with friends, family and neighbours. There’s no hangover, no late night and the kids can join in too – so, no need for a babysitter.

Grab your glow sticks for a Coffee Morning like no other, and you can still eat cake and have a brew or a cold drink. It’s a club night where nobody has to worry about the morning-after-the-night-before! You can host it in any hall, all you need is music and a disco ball.

You might feel silly at first, but soon you’ll be grinning with joy as dancing is proven to release endorphins (natural painkillers and mood boosters) as well as reducing stress and keeping you fit. Now, who does a good Big fish, little fish, cardboard box?

Run an Is it cake? competition

If you haven’t seen the Netflix hit Is it cake? – an American game show-style cooking competition, you’re missing a treat. Contestants compete to both identify and recreate their best version of everyday items – in cake form.

That could be fire hoses made from vanilla sponge and icing, kitchen utensils that cut open to reveal red velvet cake, replica designer handbags that are actually edible, and even other food items such as burgers, which are of course, cake.

Up the baking ante by running your own cake lookalike competition inspired by the show. The best thing about it is that even if your cake looks like a pair of stinky old sports shoes, it’ll still taste great!

Whether you’re swapping styles, raving sober or sculpting a sponge handbag, every slice of fun helps Macmillan Cancer Support do whatever it takes to help everyone living with cancer.

Signing up to host your own Macmillan Coffee Morning this year couldn’t be easier! Find out more today on the Macmillan website

Macmillan Cancer Support, registered charity in England and Wales (261017), Scotland (SC039907) and the Isle of Man (604). Also operating in Northern Ireland.

Is London’s stock market in crisis?

I will be accused of “clickbait” for posing that question. But look at the figures.

There were just five new listings – or Initial Public Offerings – in the first half of the year, raising £160m from investors. And, well, that is a miserable number.

According to data company Dealogic, it is the lowest in 30 years and a fall of 98 per cent when compared with the start of 2021 (when the UK was still suffering from the effects of the pandemic). It is even lower than the level recorded in the first part of 2009, when large parts of the City were still dealing with the after-effects of the financial crisis.

Once a global giant – that would get interest from any international company looking to list – the London Stock Exchange is shrinking, and fast. Statista shows it hosted more than 2,400 companies at the beginning of 2015. Now, the number is less than 1,700 and that number is falling. It’s now big news today if a feisty young British growth company chooses to stay home rather than head off to Wall Street.

Predators from overseas – whether other companies or private equity – see London as the perfect place to go shopping for bargains. KKR, a US private equity firm, has just had a £4.7bn offer for Spectris, a UK-based maker of testing equipment, high-tech instruments and software, accepted. That offer is at a 98 per cent premium to where the company’s shares were trading before the takeover interest became known.

Private equity companies are all about maths. They have strict targets for the returns from their assets and will only act where they feel those can be met. That KKR thinks it can still hit them while paying a 98 per cent premium speaks volumes about the low valuation this company had prior to the former’s emergence as a suitor.

Even more concerning are the rumours that the giants at the top of the market are also considering booking first-class transatlantic flights. Shell was rumoured to be looking at this last year. More recent speculation has swirled around AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical giant. Its loss would be a brutal blow to both the City and the government – life sciences are a core part of its industrial strategy.

All this should worry ministers who say they are committed to a dynamic, modern, and crucially growing economy. The City provides an awful lot of high-paying jobs, and pays an awful lot of tax. The decline of the IPO market will inevitably result in redundancies and a reduction in revenues.

What to do? London’s strict listing rules have already been eased, to no great effect. The door has opened to controversial practices, such as allowing tech companies to offer dual-class shares, which concentrate power in the hands of their founders. Again, the results have proved to be singularly unimpressive.

The real problem is those valuations. London was once lauded for its deep pool of investment capital, which helped to keep them healthy. Trouble is, it has dried up. Regulation has resulted in big investment institutions such as pension funds and insurance companies dropping shares in favour of lower-risk assets, such as bonds. Brexit also catalysed the flight of billions of pounds of foreign capital. Retail investors have, meanwhile, shunned equities in favour of cash ISAs – even though they often fail to beat inflation.

The British government has, in recent years, expended a great deal of effort and energy on encouraging start-ups. Some of these have borne fruit – especially in tech, and financial tech – for which London has become a hub.

It needs to pay more attention to the next phase of their development, otherwise, as ungrateful as it may seem, they’ll join the transatlantic procession. They have a fiduciary duty to their investors, and as things stand, that duty will be easy to fulfil in the welcoming arms of New York. Headquarters will inevitably follow.

Regulatory reform must go further and faster, along with more radical action – call it a second big bang. Reeves must face down her critics – including the likes of Martin Lewis – and reduce cash ISA limits. Personally, I’d scrap the product. Harsh? Yes. But necessary to encourage saving through equities. Investors will ultimately thank her when they see how they are rewarded.

The UK also currently charges a 0.5 per cent tax on share trades above £1,000. This might not seem like much, but it soon adds up and acts as a disincentive to traders. It is much higher than the charges levied by rival financial centres.

Offering the City a £3.3bn tax break is bound to prove controversial in certain quarters – especially when the government is badly strapped for cash and the beneficiaries would likely be very wealthy – but it would be worth it, in my view.

But here’s the thing: the revenues produced by this levy are in decline, just as London’s place as a financial centre is on the wane. If scrapping it helped catalyse a revival, it would pay for itself, potentially many times over.

Broker Peel Hunt says that higher valuations would translate into higher capital gains and inheritance tax receipts. This is not a new argument. I remember the frustration expressed to me by a lobbyist about scepticism when they made the case to a Tory minister back in the 1990s. It’s time for a Labour minister to be bold and show the way.

It isn’t yet too late to pull London out of its despairing spiral. If Reeves were to unveil an aggressive package of measures, it would serve as a statement of intent that could very quickly change the narrative, persuading the potential leavers to stay put and encouraging new entrants to test the newly welcoming waters. Improving tax revenues and growth would swiftly follow.

Aid cuts create starvation crisis in Nigeria as food supplies run out

The World Food Programme (WFP) is set to run out of food in Nigeria this month following crippling aid cuts, with more than a million people now at risk of starvation, The Independent has learnt.

In April, President Tinubu declared a state of emergency on food security in the country, while in June, a report from the WFP and UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) warned that 30.6m people in the country were now facing food crisis or acute food insecurity, and 5.4 million children were acutely malnourished, as a result of intensifying conflict, economic challenges and climate change impacts.

Now, the WFP – the UN agency that is widely seen as the last line of defence against starvation – is saying that it no longer has the funds to continue its operations.

“We only have resources to go on until this month, and the way things are looking, people are at risk of starvation,” says WFP Nigeria spokesperson Chi Lael.

“We do not have any contingency. We don’t have any carry-over. We are using all the money we have, which takes us to July,” she adds. “Our office is completely stunned right now.”

Lael, who has worked for WFP since 2018, said that the current crisis is different to the “peaks and troughs in funding cycles” that are typical in humanitarian organisations. “There really is no plan for anyone to step in,” she said.

Some 1.3 million people will receive food assistance this month from WFP, but from the start of August, that total is set to fall to zero. WFP’s network of life-saving nutrition treatment clinics are also all set to close, starting with 150 clinics closing in July, which will lead to the immediate cessation of malnourishment treatment for 300,000 children.

While a lifeline to many, WFP has already in recent months been able to only support a fraction of those in need of food support.

A malnutrition analysis released earlier this year by the IPC, a UN-backed food insecurity classification system, found that from May 2024 to April 2025, only 20 per cent of malnourished children in the country were receiving necessary treatment, with malnourishment already contributing to 45 per cent of all deaths of children under five.

According to Lael, WFP closing its operations in the country would result in people either staying put and risking starvation, leaving their homes and moving to other regions with likely no better prospects, or submitting to Boko Haram, the terrorist group that has been driving an armed insurgency in the country’s North since 2009. “All of these are horrible options,” she says.

The Trump Administration terminated more than 80 per cent of aid contracts run by USAID, which until this year had been a major humanitarian provider in the country.

Before contracts were terminated, USAID provided just under 50 per cent of WFP Nigeria’s funding – although Lael says the issues they are facing have been building for a number of years.

Khatija Nxedlana, Nigeria country spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, concurs that aid cuts are not a new phenomenon.

“Over the last couple of years, we have seen less and less money coming in, and organisations have been reshaping and refocusing their priorities,” she says.

But the immediate termination of programmes under Elon Musk’s DOGE Programme – which included close to $200m of cuts in Nigeria – caused chaos at humanitarian agencies and prevented them from being able to continue prioritising resources.

The news from Nigeria also comes as new research published in the Lancet this week found that US cuts to humanitarian aid under President Trump could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030, with children representing a third of those at risk.

Away from the wealth and glamour of the coastal commercial centre Lagos, Nigeria’s food crisis is centred on the country’s Northern districts.

A key driver of the crisis is the ever-more volatile rain patterns driven by the climate crisis. Weather reports from early June, for example, warn of below-average rainfall forecasts for certain central and northern food-growing areas of the country, which are set to result in crop production shortfalls.

But even more devastating than drought in recent years has been the impact of flooding, which had devastating impacts in 2022, 2024, and now also in 2025, with at least 700 people believed to have died from flooding in the town of Mokwa in Niger State at the end of May.

“In 2022, everyone said: We have not seen rains like this in a decade. Then in 2024, they said: We have not had rains like this in 30 years. And this year, Niger State has seen its worst floods in 60 years,” says Lael. “It’s like the rainy season has just become the flooding season.”

These floods wash away farmlands and infrastructure, leaving nothing in their place. “And the problem now is that there’s no recovery time,” adds Lael. “A year is not enough time to rebuild entire communities and get everybody back onto their farms.”

Much of Nigeria’s most climate-vulnerable population lives in the Borno, Yobe, and Gombo states in the country’s North East, which in turn form part of the Lake Chad Basin, a fertile region spread over Niger, Cameroon and Chad, and which centres on the famous lake.

The region has been effectively in a state of constant humanitarian crisis for more than a decade, with at least three million internally displaced people (IDPs) across the basin at the moment, according to figures cited by OCHA, the UN humanitarian agency.

A poster child for environmental degradation for much of the Twentieth Century, Lake Chad lost 90 per cent of its surface area in the 1970s and 80s as a result of reduced rainfall and poor land management practices – though the water level has since stabilised, and an estimated three million people continue to live off the fish stocks and farmlands of the region.

Flooding is now the key climatic risk of the region, after extreme droughts of the 1970s and 80s baked soils hard and left them impermeable. The floods of 2022 and 2024, for example, displaced millions across the four countries, and inundated agricultural land.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram continues to cause terror in the towns and villages around the lake, with reports of an uptick in violence in Northeastern Nigeria in recent months, after several years of waning attacks.

On the night of June 21, for example, a woman who had been hiding an improvised explosive device under her hijab reportedly killed at least 12 people after detonating it in a crowded fish market in the town of Konduga, in Nigeria’s Borno state.

“These are really vicious attacks, and people are living in fear,” says Lael. “You’re in a marketplace, and you just do not know if the person next to you is carrying a bomb.”

Humanitarian experts in countries across the Lake Chad region that have been interviewed by The Independent are warning that this crisis risks being forgotten as more high profile crises take the media spotlight – just as aid cuts put an already-delicate situation under ever greater stress.

“The Lake Chad Basin feels like a forgotten crisis, and with people not only forgetting that people are in dire need, but also that Nigeria’s stability is crucial for regional stability,” says Lael.

“There is a sense that Lake Chad has not been very attractive to international funders, and the aid cuts are only making that worse,” adds Eugene Nforngwa, the programme director at the Africa Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access, who is based in the Cameroon capital Yaoundé. “Countries like the US, UK and the EU have prioritised other crises.”

Nforngwa also confirms that Cameroon – which has an estimated 3.3 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance – is facing similar impacts following cuts to humanitarian aid, particularly from the US.

“Programmes have shrunk, facilities have closed, and many staff have lost their jobs,” he says. “We now have a large number of organisations competing for a very small pool of funding.”

Over the border in Chad, meanwhile, there have also been major cuts, with one source in the region telling The Independent that the human rights agency UNHCR has been dealing with a 40 per cent cut to its budget this year, despite the fact that there has been an influx of refugees from Sudan.

“On the climate front, sometimes there is a lack of rain, and at other times there is too much rain,” says Augustin Zusanne, a Chad-based analyst at the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. “There also continues to be a major security threat from Boko Haram around Lake Chad.”

OCHA’s humanitarian response plan for Chad – which represents the total amount of money required to meet the country’s humanitarian needs – is currently 11 per cent funded. Normally at this time in the year, it is 20-30 per cent funded, says Zusanne.

Speaking at a conference organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development in London last week, Chad’s environment minister Bakhit Djamous Hassan gave his assessment of the country’s humanitarian situation.

“Our communities awake to a triple challenge, the devastating effects of climate change, ongoing insecurity and growing humanitarian needs,” he said. ““We are facing rampant desertification, preparing droughts followed by devastating flooded floods, all while hosting over a million refugees and internally displaced persons.”

“This convergence of crisis is not just statistical, it is the lived reality of millions struggling to survive.”

Back in Nigeria, humanitarian workers report a feeling of fatigue among the victims of a humanitarian crisis that has now been dragging on for many years – and particularly so among the country’s 3.7m internally-displaced people (IDPs), of whom more than half live in the Northeastern Borno State.

“People in the Northeast have been impacted by Boko Haram violence for 15 years now,” says Lael. “Many are living in IDP camps, but even if not they will likely be topping up whatever they are able to farm with food assistance. And they are quite literally physically and emotionally exhausted.”

These are people like 40-year-old Murka, who is the sole breadwinner for her 10 children and her missing husband’s mother and father, and who has been receiving food aid assistance from WFP for just over five year.

“The WFP food ration only lasts us for 15 days and after that we start struggling again,” she told WFP in a recent fact-finding mission. “Sometimes I don’t eat just to ensure that I feed my husband’s elderly parents and my children.”

25-year-old Yagana Bukar, who lives in Borno State with her four children, described similar hardships around not always having enough food, despite WFP’s support.

“We just have water, which I put water on fire that keeps boiling just to keep assuring the children that food will soon be ready till they fall asleep,” she said.

On the same mission, WFP also spoke to Ya Kaka, who receives malnutrition treatment for her eight-month-old baby. The 25-year-old described how she had been kidnapped by an armed group when she was 18 years old, married off to one of the fighters, and forced to have a child, before later escaping.

“I’m hoping and praying to God to take away all my pains,” she said. “I want to forget all I’ve gone through or all that I’m always thinking about.”

Even with WFP and other aid organisations offering their support, it can be hard for people to plan the future. A recent report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre describes the phenomenon of how, even after flood waters retreat, IDPs are simply “staying in the camp” as they feel unable to pick their lives back up as a result of the persistant challenges.

For such people, it is often the case that “the only hope they can find in their lives” comes in the form of food assistance, says Lael. With that now under threat, the hopes of ever tackling the crisis around the Lake Chad basin look ever more remote.

This story is part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid series