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2 November, 2023

Storm Ciarán has brought winds of up to 102mph to the Channel Islands and parts of southern England, causing school closures, travel disruption and power outages. The Met Office issued a rare red wind warning for Jersey, encouraging residents to stay indoors. An Australian woman has been charged with murder over the suspected mushroom poisoning of her family. In a story that made global headlines in July, the parents and aunt of Erin Patterson’s estranged husband died after she served them beef wellington thought to contain death cap mushrooms. The Beatles’s final song will be released this afternoon. Now And Then, which will debut on BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music at 2pm, features performances from all four band members, including vocals from the late John Lennon lifted from a demo of the track recorded in the 1970s.

Pro-Palestinian protesters mobbing the Labour leader in London on Tuesday. Getty

The “biggest crisis” of Starmer’s leadership

Keir Starmer’s response to the Gaza conflict has become the “biggest crisis” of his leadership, says Andrew Marr in The New Statesman. His refusal to join scores of Labour councillors and MPs – plus mayors Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan – to call for a ceasefire has provoked fury. Spreadsheets with the positions Labour MPs have taken on Gaza are doing the rounds in Muslim communities. The Tories think the issue could affect election results in 30 parliamentary seats, “well within the range of denying Labour an overall majority”.

But what would calling for a ceasefire actually achieve? For one thing, Starmer’s authority would be “shot”: a U-turn in his first foreign affairs crisis would shatter the impression that he heads a “ruthlessly disciplined machine”. And the argument is a “semantic and tokenistic” one anyway. “Labour’s ability to persuade the Benjamin Netanyahu government and Hamas to stop fighting is less than zero.” Instead, Labour could pledge to make Britain’s support of Israel conditional on better treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, and speak out about the building of illegal settlements there. “None of this matters as much as the misery and horror in Gaza – nothing like it. But the authority of the probable next British government is in play.”

French photographer Julie Glassberg has documented the esoteric Japanese culture of Dekotora, which loosely translates as “decorated truck”. Her snaps of the vivid vehicles and their drivers include a hand-painted figure with blue hair in the mountains of Aichi; a purple and yellow neon-lit lorry at a ski resort near Sendai; a dump truck decked out in black and gold embroidery; and an HGV painted with a crane and cherry blossom. See more here.

Conservative Party interns are being asked to undertake “privilege walks” to highlight the career advantages they benefit from, says The Daily Telegraph. As part of a workshop led by a diversity charity, the aspiring politicos are lined up – sometimes “outside the Margaret Thatcher boardroom” in Tory HQ – and asked a series of questions, such as whether their parents read to them as children and whether they feel safe walking at night. For each “yes”, they have to take a step forward, and the person who travels furthest is designated the “most privileged”.

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Part of Turkey’s 475-mile border wall with Syria. Cem Genco/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The fall of the Berlin Wall might have symbolised the end of the Cold War, says Adrian Wooldridge in Bloomberg, but since then, quite a few walls have been put up. According to one researcher, there are now 74 border barriers around the world, six times the number in 1989. These include Saudi Arabia’s 560-mile wall on its border with Iraq; Turkey’s 475-mile concrete wall along its border with Syria; and Pakistan’s 2,000-mile wall with India, “consisting of a dual chain link fence and barbed wire, reinforced by a 400-mile-long ditch, 14 feet wide and 11 feet deep and 1,000 forts and border posts”. This “Great Wall of Pakistan” is visible from space, thanks to permanent floodlights.

Garawand: where is the anger over her death?

Beleaguered Muslim women deserve our support too

Armita Garawand, an Iranian teenager, has just died after a month-long coma, says Joanna Williams in The Times. She had a run-in with “morality police” for not wearing a hijab and, like 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last year, paid for it with her life. So where is the solidarity with these brave women, like there was when George Floyd was killed and the Black Lives Matter movement took off across the world? All too often, it seems, “when Muslim women demand freedom they are silenced”. The Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has had invitations to speak at American universities rescinded over claims she engages in “hate speech” against Islam. Students at British universities have tried repeatedly to no-platform Maryam Namazie, a critic of aspects of Islamic theology.

On the left, “the move from class-based to identity-based concerns has created new understandings of oppression”. White working-class men are now considered privileged, whereas Muslims are “one of the most beleaguered of identity groups” – and thus immune from criticism. So while women in Iran protest the hijab because it represents their oppression by a conservative, patriarchal elite, in the west the religious garment has become “a symbol of political resistance to white superiority”, celebrated by organisations wanting to emphasise their anti-racist credentials. A park in the West Midlands is now home to a 16-foot steel statue of a Muslim woman wearing a head covering, with a plaque reading: “The Strength of the Hijab”. This is the “twisted moral reasoning” that identity politics leads to.

The Greek island of Zakynthos. Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/Getty

The cost-of-living crisis, coupled with scorching summers and wildfires in Europe, is pushing holidaymakers away from the usual travel months of July and August, says the I newspaper. According to a 2,000-person survey, the most popular months for jet-setting between this September and next will be May and June. Holiday firm Tui has already extended its package offerings in Turkey and Greece into November, while Easyjet will offer extra flights to Rhodes in the same month.

To The Times:

In your article on reopening a Cornish tin mine, you state that eight million cubic metres of water need to be pumped out. In future could your reporter please use the correct unit of measurement and tell us how many Olympic swimming pools that is.

Martin Boreham, Old Headington, Oxfordshire 

It’s a push-up bra with fake erect nipples, which is now available from Kim Kardashian’s shapewear company, Skims. The entrepreneur says the unsubtle underwear will create a reassuring illusion in a warming world: “No matter how hot it is, you will always look cold.” I’m not sure “cold” is the look she’s really after, says Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Kim is offering you the chance to look “permanently turned on”, sprinkling “random erotic charge” all over everything. Would this make your day better, or worse? “Hard to say, but definitely different.” Get yours here.

“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.”

American writer William Feather

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