Sarah Mullally becomes first ever female Archbishop of Canterbury

Dame Sarah Mullally has been named the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England’s history.

A former chief nursing officer for England, Dame Sarah is now Archbishop of Canterbury-designate, ahead of a legal ceremony that will confirm her position as the Church’s top bishop.

She is the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, with the role having been vacant for almost a year after Justin Welby announced he was to resign from office, following failures in handling an abuse scandal.

Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the appointment of the first woman to hold the role.

The prime minister said: “The Church of England is of profound importance to this country. Its churches, cathedrals, schools, and charities are part of the fabric of our communities.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury will play a key role in our national life. I wish her every success and look forward to working together.”

Lord Evans of Weardale, chair of the Crown Nominations Commission for Canterbury, said he will be “praying for Bishop Sarah as she prepares to take up this new ministry in the coming months”.

Dame Sarah is the government’s former chief nursing officer for England, becoming the youngest holder of the role, having specialised as a cancer nurse.

She trained for ministry at the South East Institute of Theological Education, having studied at South Bank University, London, and Heythrop College, University of London. She is currently the Bishop of London.

While making history as the first woman in the role, she will be seen by many as a safe pair of hands, given her extensive experience.

She was ordained in 2001 and left her government post as chief nursing officer at the Department of Health in 2004, taking up a full-time ministry in the London borough of Sutton.

She was made a Dame in 2005 in recognition of her outstanding contribution to nursing and midwifery.

When named bishop of London in 2017, she spoke about her different careers, saying she feels she has “always had one vocation: to follow Jesus Christ”.

She said at the time: “I am often asked what it has been like to have had two careers, first in the NHS and now in the Church.

“I prefer to think that I have always had one vocation: to follow Jesus Christ, to know him and to make him known, always seeking to live with compassion in the service of others, whether as a nurse, a priest, or a bishop.”

Her appointment at that time marked a sign of the Church’s progress on women’s roles, having followed Libby Lane, who made history when she was consecrated as the first woman bishop in 2015.

While the Archbishop of Canterbury is automatically granted a seat in the House of Lords, Dame Sarah has had a place there since 2018 as a senior bishop.

Dame Sarah is seen as progressive on the issue of same-sex blessings in the Church – a subject which has seen strongly competing opinions among Church members.

In 2023, after a vote to approve blessings, she described the result as a “moment of hope for the Church” but recognised that differences of opinion remained.

She said: “I know that what we have proposed as a way forward does not go nearly far enough for many but too far for others.”

On her own role in giving blessings, she said she “would have the conversation (with a couple), and there are certainly prayers within that suite (of prayers) that I would use”.

The appointment comes after an almost year-long wait since Justin Welby announced he would be resigning over a safeguarding scandal.

He announced he would quit last November over failures in the wake of the damning Makin review, which implicated him in the Church’s failure to protect victims from serial abuser John Smyth.

The review concluded Smyth might have been brought to justice had the archbishop formally alerted authorities in 2013.

Mr Welby said at the time of his resignation, he continued to take both personal and institutional responsibility “for the long and retraumatising period after 2013, and the harm that this has caused survivors”.

“I continue to feel a profound sense of shame at the Church of England’s historic safeguarding failures,” he said.

In a job description published earlier this year by the Diocese of Canterbury, it was stated the person filling the role should be someone of “the utmost integrity who is able to speak honestly” about failures and injustices in the Church, and a “servant leader, who shows compassion towards the disadvantaged and marginalised”.

They must also be “unapologetic about offering a Christian perspective to local, national and international dialogue”, it added.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell took on most of the responsibilities in the interim, and was one of the voting members of the body charged with choosing Mr Welby’s successor.

The health secretary welcomed Dame Sarah’s appointment, dubbing her “the nurse who became Archbishop of Canterbury”.

“A wonderful choice. Kind, caring and compassionate,” Wes Streeting said.

The new appointee’s title is Archbishop of Canterbury-designate.

They are then elected to the College of Canons of Canterbury Cathedral, when they will become the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect.

A legal ceremony, known as the confirmation of election, will take place in a religious service at St Paul’s Cathedral in January, during which the archbishop-elect legally becomes Archbishop of Canterbury.

Kemi Badenoch is just ‘a Reform tribute act’, claims Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband has lashed out at Kemi Badenoch, branding the Tory leader a “Reform tribute act” over her decision to ditch net zero policies.

The energy secretary’s attack comes after Ms Badenoch announced that the Conservatives would no longer pursue net zero if she won power again.

Going further than even some of her close allies predicted, she revealed she would even repeal the landmark Climate Change Act 2008 and other legislation, promoting criticism from Conservative grandees – including Theresa May – who said it would be a “catastrophic mistake”.

Ms Badenoch claimed that her party still wants to leave “a cleaner environment for our children” but argued “Labour’s laws tied us in red tape, loaded us with costs, and did nothing to cut global emissions”.

However, writing exclusively for The Independent, Mr Miliband condemned her new approach.

He said: “Badenoch is attempting a Reform tribute act, who have boasted that they would wage war on the clean energy economy.

“As I said at Labour conference this week, we should be clear that their policies would mean war on the workers at the Siemens wind turbine factory in Hull, war on the construction workers building carbon capture and storage in Teesside, a war on the working people of Britain, and all out war on future generations too.”

He warned that the new policies would harm the economy.

“This policy is anti-jobs, anti-worker, anti-young people, and anti our country’s future. It represents not just a wrong turn, but a lurch away from a framework that has delivered for working people for nearly two decades.

“The Climate Change Act, passed by a Labour government with Conservative support in 2008, has been the foundation for tens of billions of pounds of investment in homegrown British energy. It was businesses that campaigned for this framework in the first place, recognising that clear rules and certainty could power innovation and investment.”

The Labour minister has been pushing green energy projects around the country, a sector he says is now “booming”.

He said that it is “supporting nearly a million high-paying jobs.”

“Whether it is nuclear apprentices at Sizewell C, or engineers delivering carbon capture in the North East, there are workers across the country who are in good jobs with good pay thanks in part to the legacy of the Climate Change Act.

“That is why Rain Newton-Smith, Director General of the CBI, put it plainly today; the Climate Change Act has been the ‘bedrock’ of investment in the UK’s clean energy economy.”

He argued that Ms Badenoch was not only harming the economy but attacking British values.

“I do not believe that the British people want a war waged on the clean energy that can bring not just jobs but also bring down bills by getting us off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel markets.

“This is not just about economics. It is about our identity and our values as a country. I was struck by the words today of the Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, who spoke of the Climate Change Act as reflecting ‘the best of who we are: a nation that cares for creation, protects the vulnerable and builds hope for future generations.’ That is the Britain I believe in.”

This is the snarling face of the police that women like me fear

In the past four years, since my arrest at the Sarah Everard vigil, I have often been asked whether policing has changed for the better. People question whether there has been any real effort to eradicate the misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia and so on. My answer is always no.

A BBC Panorama documentary this week showed why. It revealed reprehensible behaviour at Charing Cross police station uncovered during a seven-month undercover investigation. The documentary captures one PC saying about a detainee who had overstayed his visa: “F***ing either put a bullet through his head or deport him.” Policing attracts those who want to abuse power. As one officer bluntly admits in the documentary, “I like to scrap, and that’s why I joined the force”.

In a separate incident, when a female colleague questioned the decision to release a man accused of raping his girlfriend on bail and pointed out that the accused had also allegedly kicked the pregnant woman in the stomach, another officer with nearly 20 years’ service in the Met, replies: “That’s what she says.” This is the reality of how women are treated in the UK, a country where one woman is killed on average every three days – a reality that is met with dismissal, disbelief and cruel jokes.

And so we all agree – once again – that something is rotten within the police forces that are meant to protect us. And so we all agree – once again – that something must now be done. The reality is that the police are only ever held to account when there is extreme – and short-lived – public pressure and media scrutiny. It takes an establishment to upbraid an establishment, apparently.

It shouldn’t take the state broadcaster to tell you what we have been telling you for decades. Survivors of police brutality, campaigners and communities that have been targeted have been shouting, writing, protesting and trying to get people to see the reality that others refuse to confront. Women and marginalised groups have been saying exactly what Panorama has shown this week, campaigning tirelessly for change, without being listened to. Most of the time their experiences are dismissed as exaggeration or treated like isolated incidents from “a few bad apples” – rather than what they are: a wider culture that is rotten to the core.

This dynamic is exhausting. It reinforces the pervading sense that power is not in our hands or even ours to challenge, that we are not credible witnesses to the abuse that we face. Even when the spotlight does highlight corruption, justice doesn’t follow. I have been told a story where a woman allegedly had her leg torn apart by a police dog, set upon by an officer while standing at a protest. I’ve seen footage of someone I know being assaulted at a station. We tell each other these stories knowing that too often we are the only ones who will listen.

These kinds of stories are not rare, they are everywhere. We should not accept that violence is simply “part of the job” for police. The system is broken and only a complete overhaul will change the way that corruption infects and pullulates within the force. Police should listen to activists, and actually work to change and hold officers to account, instead of giving empty promises yet again. Words, too often, mean nothing.

Bellingham and Foden left out as Tuchel reveals England team

Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish have been left out of the latest England squad named by Thomas Tuchel this morning.

Tuchel promised a “brave” England selection following the 5-0 win in Serbia last month, in what was the standout result of his time in charge, and he has responded by sticking with largely the same group ahead of a friendly against Wales at Wembley and a World Cup qualifier against Latvia on 14 October.

It means there is no place for Bellingham, just two days after being announced 2024/25 England men’s senior player of the year. The 22-year-old is back playing for Real Madrid after missing the start of the season due to his recovery from shoulder surgery, while Foden and Grealish, who have returned to form at Manchester City and Everton respectively, are also not included.

Bukayo Saka returns from injury, however, replacing the injured Noni Madueke, but Adam Wharton also misses out, with Elliot Anderson, Morgan Gibbs-White, Jordan Henderson and Ruben Loftus-Cheek among the midfield options next to Declan Rice and Morgan Rogers. Cole Palmer, Tino Livramento and Trent Alexander-Arnold were unavailable due to injury.

“It’s only three weeks now since the last camp and the last win [against Serbia], the last performance,” Tuchel said. “So the question was, why not bring the same group in? Because they set the standards and now it is about creating habits out of it.”

Follow the latest updates and reaction from the England squad announcement in our live blog below

‘Danger to life’ warnings as Storm Amy to hit UK bringing 95mph winds and heavy rain

Storm Amy is set to batter the UK over the weekend as the Met Office issues amber and yellow weather warnings for every part of the country.

Gusts of up to 95mph have been forecast, with the weather authority warning of “very strong winds and heavy rain” in northern and western areas.

It is the first named storm of the 2025/2026 season, with severe weather expected to last until Sunday morning.

Yellow weather warnings for wind and rain span most of the UK on Friday, before covering every region on Saturday as Wales and the Midlands, east and south of England are all hit with strong winds.

An amber warning has also been put in place for parts of Scotland on Friday, moving over the north of the country on Saturday, bringing the risk of danger to life.

The Met Office said: “Storm Amy will bring a spell of damaging winds, initially in western areas during Friday evening before gradually transferring northeastwards through the night and into early Saturday.”

Eats, Beats and Storied Streets: A journey through Louisiana

Few places in America are as spellbinding as Louisiana. Streets are alive with music, every table groans with food that tells a story, and every river bend reveals landscapes as mysterious as they are beautiful. Whether you’re dancing to zydeco in Lafayette, devouring beignets in the French Quarter, or gliding through the Atchafalaya swamps in search of alligators, this is a destination which offers travellers an unforgettable blend of rhythm, flavour and culture.

Music that Moves You

A seemingly never-ending party, a stroll through the bouncing streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter is one of America’s most thrilling sensory experiences. Guitars crunch, symbols crash and horns howl on every street corner, from Bourbon Street to Frenchmen Street. This Cajun corner of the US has a deep heritage too, and the Preservation Hall – dating back to 1961 – is an essential stop. With its intimate time-worn walls and wooden chairs facing the small stage, it’s a shrine to New Orleans jazz and every note should be savoured.

But Louisiana’s music tradition goes far beyond the Big Easy. Beginning in 1981, the Baton Rouge Blues Festival is one of the country’s oldest blues festivals and the state capital is a haven of Cajun music. It’s also the home of the swamp blues, so to hear the best of these laid-back rhythms, spend a foot-tapping night at Phil Brady’s Bar & Grill or Henry Turner Jr’s Listening Room. And for a little backyard boogie from local Louisiana musicians, try and hit the wonderfully chilled out Bee Nice Concert Series.

One of the more niche regional sounds is zydeco, and these infectious beats driven by accordions and washboards are perfect for dancing the night away. Over in Lafayette, the lush outdoor Hideaway on Lee and the charming Blue Moon Saloon host high-energy zydeco and Cajun jams. For a deeper dive into this unique music of the swamp, drop by the Festivals Acadiens et Créoles for three glorious days of Cajun, Creole, and zydeco sounds.

Flavours to Savour

Louisiana has one of America’s most distinct food cultures, with Creole dishes like gumbo and jambalaya not found anywhere else. Needless to say, the fiery flavours found in these creations are sublime and it’s no surprise that 2025 is Louisiana’s Year of Food.

With its rich broth, often featuring a roux base and embellished by juicy shrimp and thick sausage, gumbo is arguably the quintessential Creole dish. If you’re in New Orleans, look no further than no–frills downtown spots like Coop’s Place or head out to neighbourhood joints like the upscale Gabrielle Restaurant who serve a smoky take on Cajun-style gumbo or the dense dishes plated up at Liuzza’s by the Track. And if you’re so enraptured by this unique stew, then learn how to make it at home at the New Orleans School of Cooking.

A Cajun rice dish that originated in southern Louisiana in the 18th Century, Jambalaya is also iconic down here and can include meats, vegetables, seafood and spices in its mouthwatering mix. The Jambalaya Shoppe is dotted all around southern Louisiana and is a good place to start, though make time to visit Gonzales – the ‘Jambalaya Capital of the World. It even has its own Jambalaya Festival every spring.

Remember to make time for sweet treats though, as Louisiana’s beignets are something special. Warm, deep-fried pastries dusted with powdered sugar, these gentle delights are the perfect cafe snack. Open since 1862, the Cafe du Monde is an iconic French Quarter spot to watch the world go by with a beignet and café au lait.

And if you’re here for Mardi Gras, make sure to sample the sweet colourful King Cake as the jaunty floats pass by.

Culture and the Great Outdoors

Louisiana’s diverse cultural heritage is as unique as its landscape. French, Spanish, African, Caribbean and native influences all converge into Cajun and Creole identities and that’s most famously reflected in the state’s sublime cuisine. But don’t miss the great outdoors, as Louisiana’s biodiversity is enchanting too.

Acadiana’s humid moss-cloaked swamps and bayous are one of America’s last wildernesses, and boat tours of these serene and ethereal landscapes are unforgettable, especially if you spot wildlife like American Alligators, beavers, herons, eagles and white tail deer. The Atchafalaya Basin, just east of Lafayette, is a particular haven and several airboat tours depart from here, including McGee’s Swamp Tours and Last Wilderness Swamp Tours.

Road trails through these bayous can be just as inspiring, and the Bayou Teche National Byway tells stories. Running for 183 miles from Arnaudville down to Morgan City, this serpentine route passes by ornate antebellum homes like Shadows-on-the-Teche, tranquil fields of sugar cane, breezy swamps and historic towns packed with friendly cafes, zydeco dancehalls and local museums.

Look out for the region’s lively 400+ festivals too, which often celebrate Louisiana’s local culture. The Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette celebrates the links between Acadiana and the Francophone world, through music, art and food, while the Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival in Opelousas aims to preserve Louisiana’s most gleeful music genre. And there’s no better way of learning about the state’s people and heritage than at the various tours, concerts, talks and cultural events held in Vermillionville in Lafayette.

Michelle Mone the myth – was she ever a shrewd businesswoman?

This week has been an emphatically bad one for Baroness Mone of Mayfair in the City of London. On Wednesday, a High Court judge ordered that PPE MedPro, a firm controlled by her and her husband Doug Barrowman, should repay at least £122m for supplying 25 million surgical gowns that did not meet rules on producing sterile equipment.

Baroness Mone is, of course, Michelle Mone, probably best known by her tabloid sobriquet, “Baroness Bra”, because of her former career as a lingerie tycoon, in which she apparently netted millions from her supposedly massively successful Ultimo range of lingerie.

But then, Mone is used to having bad weeks: along with Barrowman and companies and charities associated with the couple, she has been, or is currently being, investigated by HMRC, the National Crime Agency, the Charity Commission, and the commissioner for standards of the House of Lords, from where the life peer announced she “will be taking a leave of absence […] in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her” concerning her alleged links to PPE MedPro, which was awarded £200m of PPE contracts.

In addition, it recently emerged that Mone had to sell her luxury yacht for a reported £10.25m, as well as her house in Belgravia for £20m.

Although Mone has not yet completely fallen from grace, it does seem timely to wonder just how successful Ultimo really was, and thereby to establish just how brilliant a businesswoman she really was. Let’s not forget that Lady Mone was awarded an OBE in the 2010 new year honours list for “services to the Lingerie Industry”, and her peerage was granted in September 2015 because she was “one of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs”.

It is easy to see why the governments of both Gordon Brown and David Cameron gave Mone these honours, because on the surface, it looked like she was very successful indeed.

After all, this was a woman who through sheer drive and ability had emerged – in her own words – from a childhood of “both personal and economic struggle” to form Ultimo Lingerie, which she apparently took from “from zero to hero, transforming it from an initial idea and concept into one of the UK’s leading lingerie lines for over two decades” before selling it “to lingerie giants, MAS Holdings – one of the world’s largest manufacturers of intimates”.

As well as being apparently so successful, Mone also had an immensely high profile. It certainly helped that she felt sufficiently confident in her looks to model her own lingerie and that her glamorous and luxurious lifestyle ensured that Mone regularly appeared in the gossip pages of both tabloid and broadsheet alike. And partly thanks to her high-profile charity work, which included sitting on the board of directors for The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust and hobnobbing with the great and good.

Mone was feted, not just because of her glamour, but also because of what looked like her considerable business acumen. In the one interview, Mone is described as being the “founder and chief executive of a £45m lingerie company”, with her business, MJM International, lauded as “one of the country’s top lingerie companies with five brands and a workforce of more than 120 people in the UK and Hong Kong, with a further 1,200 working in factories in China”.

The company really took off when “Julia Roberts wore an Ultimo bra for her role in Erin Brockovich and the brand’s fame spread further amid rumours that Camilla Parker Bowles wore one ahead of her marriage to Prince Charles”. Tellingly, at the same time, it was reported that “Mone is guarded about the firm’s sales figures”.

Michelle Mone would recount how the company enjoyed a £42m turnover, and that she had made her first million-pound turnover in 2001.

When once asked if she allowed herself “the odd indulgence”, the businesswoman unashamedly radiated an aura of deep, deep pockets.

“Yes, I am a car fanatic!” she replied. “They are my real weakness. I own quite a few, including a Range Rover, Aston Martin, Bentley, Audi and Porsche Panamera. I also love Mont Blanc pens, and I’ve got about 100.”

Mone was undoubtedly saying to the world that she was very rich, and that she was very rich because she was a very good businesswoman.

But how successful was Ultimo really?

To answer, we just need to look at the records filed to Companies House by MJM International, a limited company of which Mone was a shareholder, along with her then husband, Michael Mone, and, over the years, a succession of others. As the company was incorporated in 1996 and finally dissolved in 2021, there are too many records to go through here, but it would be useful to have a look at how the company was faring at the time she was doing her round of interviews.

Let’s go back to the claims she was making in 2007. (Incidentally, I’m going to leave aside the Julia Roberts/Erin Brockovich bit, because that has been widely discredited, and I haven’t the foggiest whether the Queen did sport an Ultimo bra, and I’m certainly not going to ring up the palace and ask.) What was the basis that Mone’s firm was worth £45m?

Here’s the balance sheet from April 2007.

To me, this doesn’t look like a company worth £45m, or that employs 120 people. Interestingly, the accounts were filed for a “small company”, which, before 1 January 2016, meant that your company’s annual turnover could not be more than £6.5m, the balance sheet total could not be more than £3.26m, and the average number of employees could not be more than 50. Not 120. Nor 1,200.

By April 2008, MJM was now a medium-sized company, reporting a pre-tax profit of just over £900,000.

Curiously, the number of employees was nowhere near 120, but somewhat fewer – a mere 25 (see below).

In addition, Mone and her husband, along with their fellow directors and investors, also awarded themselves £426,000 in dividends in January 2008, on top of the emoluments of around £100,000-plus that the three directors each took. I’d estimate that Mone herself probably made, before tax, some £250,000 that year. That’s clearly a very nice income, but it’s not multimillionaire stuff.

In short, Mone and her husband were building a nice small to medium-sized business, but they were drawing an enormous amount out of it, both in dividends and in loans, and there was still a lot of debt.

Let’s spool forward to a few years later, to 2011: how was her business looking at the time?

In short, it wasn’t looking great. In the year ending April 2009, the profit before tax was £960,524. For April 2010, the profit was down to £794,557. And by April 2011, the profits were down a huge amount – to £104,790, on a turnover that had decreased by 18 per cent to £8.4m from £10.2m. After tax, the business reported a total profit of just £1,418. Unsurprisingly, no dividends were paid that year.

I have a small inkling of how Mone and her husband were able to afford that £500,000-plus fleet of cars, or indeed collect expensive fountain pens, and it lies in the fact that the couple had borrowed just over £600,000 from the firm, which seems like rather a lot.

There was no way that Mone’s company was ever worth more than £40m as she was claiming. Had they looked a little closer, both the Brown and Cameron governments, before they awarded her any honours, might have indicated that Mone’s business was not quite as spectacularly successful as was often claimed.

Besides, by September 2015, when she was made a peer, Mone had sold her stake in MJM for an undisclosed sum, which cannot have been remotely substantial, as by then both it and its related company – Ultimo Brands International Limited – were trading as small companies, with meagre balance sheets.

Judging by the records at Companies House, the whole basis of Mone’s reputation as a brilliant businesswoman needed to be called into question years ago. One leading Scottish businessman said at the time of her appointment to the Lords that Mone was “a small-time businesswoman with PR exposure far in excess of any success”.

It is hard to disagree. Where Mone is brilliant, however, is creating a financial décolletage that has turned the heads of far too many over the years.

Follow Guy Walters on https://guywalters.substack.com/

I thought I was past worrying about my weight – Mounjaro changed that

I know I am not alone when I say that, for me, silencing the weight-loss noise (or at least pushing it into the background) has been a lifelong challenge. But somehow, in the last couple of years, it seems to have grown even worse. Part of that, I’m well aware, is that I am in my midlife era and so is my midriff. But another part – a far larger one – is the media firestorm around Ozempic or Mounjaro or whatever shorthand we’re using for GLP-1s this week.

In just a few years, thanks to the advent of these drugs, the body image volume in my head has been turned up to 11. Everywhere we look – all over the TV, the internet, social media, the workplace, pretty much every time you leave the house, and when you don’t – there is evidence of unexplained(ish) rapid weight loss. Now, when I see an acquaintance looking gaunt, with her clothes hanging off her (not always her, but almost always), I no longer fear serious illness, I just assume they’re “on the pen”.

It’s not just that they’ve dropped a dress size (or two or three or four). Previously rounded faces become long and thin. Long-time foodies start pushing food around their plates, and the conversation often turns to the fact that they don’t have a thing to wear because nothing in their wardrobe fits any more. And not in the way the rest of us mean. And then there’s my friend who confessed that she had to tuck her stomach skin in with her shirt. She wasn’t exaggerating; she gave me a demonstration. She has since had a tummy tuck.

If, like me, you’ve battled your entire adult life and then some, to keep the body image chatter at bay, this all represents a major setback.

I have battled for decades against the internalised misogyny that has me judging myself on whether my jeans are a size 12 or a 14. I have learnt to (mainly) silence the voice in my head that insists losing 7lbs, or 14, would make all the difference. If you’d asked me, say, five years ago, I would have said it was a battle I had won.

Margaret Atwood famously wrote that “inside every woman is a man watching a woman”. Like so many women on the far side of menopause, I had finally managed to dial that internalised male gaze right down. Not that I could claim a healthy (or even unhealthy) disregard for my slightly larger waistline. But I was… at ease with it.

But now… Mounjaro is a permanent tinnitus ringing in my ears, a Jiminy critic Cricket on my shoulder, tweaking at my waistband, whispering in my ear. Just a little jab, it says, Gollum-like, and that seven, 14, OK, let’s round it up to 21 pounds, could be gone. Wouldn’t you like to get back in those size 28 jeans? Wouldn’t you? Just a little jab.

Or two. Or three. Or more. And how much? And for how long?

And that’s before we get started on the practical concerns like long-term side effects and what happens when you stop taking it. But I’m sure there’s an FAQ app for that. There’s definitely a Reddit thread.

Let’s pause at this point to say that I know many women who have found these drugs transformative. I have a good friend who used Mounjaro very early on, before the surrounding publicity reached its crescendo. After a hysterectomy, and subsequent surgically induced premature menopause in her late thirties, she had piled on several stone, losing sight of herself amid the spiralling weight gain. After a couple of months on Mounjaro, she had lost weight. I have no idea how many stone, but several. And she looks fantastic. It gave her back not just her body but the confidence to live her life. And she is very far from the only one.

But it’s not the women who really need it that I’m talking about here. It’s the rest of us. The women trapped in the echo chamber, just trying to go about their daily lives. The women whose mental health is taking a hammering every time they pick up their phones.

I want to be honest with you. What else are we here for, after all? There have been many times, particularly in the past year, as the Mounjaro frenzy has reached crescendo, where if I could have got hold of it, I would have. Please don’t yell at me. I know, all right? Just as plenty of other women who feel the same do. But knowing and being able to do something sensible with that knowing are two completely different things, and I’m still working on it.

A few months ago, I read an article about an editor who had seen off the stubborn post-baby weight with a touch of micro-dosing (the jury is very much out on whether this works, and you can’t do it on the NHS). In a month, she’d lost a stone and several inches.

I don’t know if I was just having a down day or it hit me right in my susceptibility. I think it was the micro-dosing that spoke to me. After all, if I was microing my doses, then I wasn’t going the whole hog. It was in fence-sitter heaven.

Within minutes, even before my thinking brain had kicked in, I’d hit the internet. Within hours, I had applied to countless clinics. One after another. Sending the requisite pictures and telling the absolute truth about my weight. (I had to step on the scales in order to do that. I wish I hadn’t. It broke decades on the what-do-I-weigh-today wagon.) To cut a long story short, every last one of them rejected me. Because, while plenty of people in the public eye who don’t technically need Mounjaro have found a back door to legally accessing it, that door is closed to the rest of us. Much the same as it is with everything else.

It wasn’t just the promise of shifting that pesky stone that drew me. Truthfully. It was the plentiful claims about silencing the food noise that soundtracks my everyday life. (Along with all the other racket in my head.) The constant “what shall we eat tonight, tomorrow, etc” that kicks in, often before I’ve even put down my fork on the previous meal. That’s what gets me. I have never been an eat-to-live person, and I wanted to be. It was that promise that really lured me.

In the midst of food noise and Mounjaro noise, my own voice of reason was drowned right out.

After my abortive attempt to procure a weight-loss drug, I marinated in shame for a few days: why wasn’t I a better, more well-adjusted person? Why couldn’t I, who has spent so many years and so much money, working on her mental health, suppress the chatter? And then I started to ask around. Tentatively at first, for fear of judgement (last time I wrote about my irrational longing to lose a stone, a subscriber messaged to scold me). And then with a sinking sense of predictability. I wasn’t alone. The sad truth is we (almost) all still want to lose 7 (or 10) lbs.

Most of the women I spoke to said they would, if they could; if they could get it, if they could afford it. These were not, on the whole, women who were massively overweight or with weight-induced health problems. They were, by and large, women aged 40ish to 60ish, who just wanted their clothes to fit like they used to. Women whose BMI (yes, that flawed system the NHS still uses) had strayed into the “overweight” zone. Overweight, according to medical law, but not overweight enough.

They were women, like me, who had wasted a good amount of time and money on menopause-marketed so-called natural GLP-1s and probiotics that claimed to burn off bloat, see off cortisol, and all the rest. They were, like me, women who, try as they might, could not banish the noise. Of food, of weight loss, of should. Women who knew better than to waste their brain power, and in my case my working hours, trying to source a magic bullet.

I thought I was meant to be free of that, by now, in my (gulp) 60th year. But no. Here it comes again, that noise. I have a history of disordered eating, as we call it now. (I’ve written before about my body dysmorphia and lifetime on a diet here.) It started in my teens in earnest, but has its roots much younger. I think I was about six or seven when I got it into my head that I had a “big bum” and therefore shouldn’t wear jeans. I know. It breaks my heart to even write that. I didn’t wear jeans or trousers of any kind for years. And the irony isn’t lost on me that I now wear little else.

I’ve been on a diet (almost) my whole life. There’s a reason (some) women with a history of disordered eating experience resurgence in midlife. Little recognised, like most things about middle-aged women, until recently. A recent study found that 3.5 per cent of women in their forties and fifties reported having an eating disorder in the last 12 months, more than one in 10 women over 50 experience symptoms of an eating disorder, while over 70 per cent of women in midlife are not satisfied with their weight. I’ll say that again. Over 70 per cent.

Even as we say we care far less what other people think – and we mean it. Even as we say that, like Nora Ephron, we wish we’d worn a bikini the entire year we were 26. Even as I look at all the photos of times when I thought I needed to lose weight and wish I could have seen then what I see now.

There’s the noise.

It’s about control. Of course. In perimenopause, our bodies are spiralling out of our control. It makes a perverse sort of sense that in the midst of hormonal and life upheaval, some of us might cope with it exactly the same way we did the last time our bodies spiralled out of our control, in puberty. This is not to say that weight-loss drugs are responsible for this, just that they are hitting midlife women where they are already wobbling and subtly, or not, turning up the volume.

There’s a lot more to say about GLP-1s, of course. And I’ll leave that to the actual experts who know what they’re talking about, but here are some of the things I’ve been thinking about: They are turning weight loss back into a wealth issue. It’s starting to feel like the 1930s again. Or the Sixties. Or the Nineties. Or…

And surely it’s not a coincidence that just as body positivity (and its perhaps more realistic cousin, body neutrality) was taking root with a generation of younger women and making some of us older ones reconsider, along come these drugs? Is it a coincidence that just as so many women are getting vocal, drawing attention to the way they are sidelined and overlooked, silencing the noise, along comes an amplifier with a billion-dollar budget? Maybe it is. Maybe I need to get out more.

But still.

The noise.

It’s there in the background. All day. Every day. On my Instagram feed and all over the internet, where, for better or worse, I spend too many of my days. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m yet to work out how to silence it. Or at least protect my mental health in the face of its onslaught. Have you?

Read more from Sam Baker on her Substack The Shift with Sam Baker