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Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced that ‘more pensioners’ would qualify for winter fuel payments, but did not say how many or when. Nigel Farage of Reform said he would scrap net zero to fund things like abolishing the two-child benefit cap and reversing the winter fuel cut in full. Millions of public-sector workers such as doctors and teachers were offered rises of between 3.6 and 4.5 per cent. From July, typical household energy costs will fall by £129 a year, still higher than a year earlier. South Western Railway was renationalised. Thames Water was fined £122.7 million by Ofwat for breaching rules on sewage and shareholder dividends. Devon fishermen complained of Mediterranean octopuses eating crabs in their pots.
Twenty-seven people were taken to hospital after a car ploughed into crowds at the Liverpool FC parade. A man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and driving while unfit through drugs; police announced he was ‘a 53-year-old white British man’. Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, called for possession of cannabis to be decriminalised. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, 27, who performs as Mo Chara with the group Kneecap, was charged under the name Liam O’Hanna with a terror offence after allegedly displaying a flag in support of the proscribed organisation Hezbollah at a London gig.
Some 431,000 more people arrived in Britain than left last year, compared with 860,000 in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics. In the seven days to 26 May, 918 people arrived in England in small boats. Sir Keir Starmer agreed to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius along with £101 million a year to lease for 99 years the Diego Garcia base on the islands, which is shared with the United States. ‘Chemical castration’ for some sex offenders will be mandatory at 20 prisons after the Independent Sentencing Review chaired by David Gauke said a voluntary trial should continue. Two trans patients a day, including teenagers, are having their penises removed on the NHS, the Telegraph found. The Telegraph is to be bought for £500 million by a transatlantic consortium led by RedBird Capital, subject to regulatory approval. Alasdair MacIntyre, the philosopher, died aged 96. Alan Yentob, the BBC arts broadcaster, died aged 78. Barry Fantoni, the cartoonist and contributor to Private Eye, died aged 85. The two lifts at the 26-storey Grade II-listed Balfron Tower in Poplar stopped working.
Abroad
Russia and Ukraine exchanged 1,000 prisoners each. Russia launched 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles against Kyiv on one day; 367 drones and missiles against Ukraine the next day; and 355 drones the next. President Volodymyr Zelensky said: ‘America’s silence, and the silence of others in the world, only encourages Putin.’ President Donald Trump of America said of President Vladimir Putin of Russia: ‘He’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all,’ adding later: ‘He has gone absolutely crazy.’ Of Mr Zelensky, he said: ‘Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it.’ A destroyer rolled on to its side at its launch in North Korea; four officials were arrested.
Mr Trump suddenly said that from 1 June he was putting a 50 per cent tariff on goods from the EU, but after a telephone conversation with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, he postponed the rise to July. In the Oval Office, Mr Trump confronted President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa with video footage of thousands of crosses lining a road, said to mark burial spots of murdered white farmers. The crosses turned out to be memorials to murdered farmers. A judge issued an order preventing Mr Trump from stopping Harvard enrolling foreign students. The United States accepted an aeroplane from Qatar worth $400 million, for the Air Force One fleet. The King opened the Canadian parliament and said: ‘As the anthem reminds us: The True North is indeed strong and free!’
As Israel continued its war against Hamas in Gaza, an Israeli air strike killed nine of the ten children of a woman hospital doctor in Khan Younis. Two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead in Washington, D.C., by a man who shouted: ‘Free Palestine.’ The skipper of the Lady T, a British vessel impounded by French authorities, was fined for fishing in French waters in the English Channel. Cannes and Nice suffered power cuts attributed to sabotage. The roof tiles of the 14th-century Drum Tower in Fengyang, 200 miles from Beijing, suddenly fell to the ground. CSH
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