Politics

Gary Lineker may have been finally forced out of the Beeb, but the ex-footballer is still managing to make headlines. Now it transpires that the son of the late award-winning football journalist Brian Glanville – who was made football correspondent for the Sunday Times in 1958 and covered every World Cup for the next 44 years – has forbidden Lineker from speaking at his Jewish father’s memorial ceremony after the pundit shared a controversial post about Zionism on social media. Mark Glanville hit out at the former Match of the Day presenter after his sister Jo suggested Lineker speak at their father’s service due to the journalistic duo’s close acquaintance

The country is slipping away. The whole place, slowly, but London suddenly, blinding glass slabs becoming East End blocks, ‘SPLENDID NEW APARTMENTS!’ turning to marshland, to golf clubs, to small towns and a train station, Laindon, Essex, which has a nice 4×4 Porsche parked outside. Decline is the mood of Britain, and I was going to Essex to talk to people about it. Any political energy left in this country is behind Reform, and lately Nigel Farage has been using a new label for his people. ‘We are the party of workers, but also the party of entrepreneurs,’ he said recently. Did he mean the two simultaneously? The appeal to

Well, that was quick. Within 48 hours of his resignation as party chairman, Zia Yusuf has returned to the Reform fold. In a joint Sunday Times interview with Nigel Farage, Yusuf has admitted to making a ‘mistake’. He will now take up a new revised role within the party, focusing on policy formation and leading on the party’s DOGE mission in local government. A new chairman will be named on Tuesday, amid a backroom shake-up focused on sharing the load on Reform’s leadership. ‘Welcome back Zia,’ wrote Richard Tice on one internal Reform WhatsApp group. ‘Hope you enjoyed your holiday!’ What led Yusuf to change his mind? The obvious precedent here is

Vladimir Putin has hit back against Ukraine’s ‘Spiderweb’ operation, which recently destroyed or damaged at least two dozen Russian bombers. Overnight, Russia fired 45 missiles and more than 400 drones at Ukrainian cities and apartment blocks. At least six people were killed, including three rescuers searching for survivors in Kyiv. More than a hundred civilians were injured across the country. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, claimed the mass attack on ‘military targets’ was a response to the ‘terrorist acts of the Kyiv regime’. But Ukraine is far from done; the Kerch bridge, which links the occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland, is high on the hit list. This week, the Ukrainian