We hold power to account. Our journalists investigate, interrogate and report without fear or favour. | | Sir Keir Starmer visited a community group in Hertfordshire yesterday as the announcement was made | | Nick Gutteridge Chief Political Correspondent | Labour has announced plans to deny 4.5 million people a vote, with two of Britain’s biggest councils allowed to delay their elections.
Tory-controlled Suffolk and Norfolk were among 29 authorities given permission to cancel May’s ballot under a restructuring of local government.
The postponements mean that millions of people across the country will be left with no say over who controls their local services and council tax for up to seven years.
There were angry scenes in the Commons as the announcement was made, with the Tories accusing Labour, which controls 15 of the affected councils, of running scared from voters. In response, politicians from across the divide rallied behind The Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy, which is calling for ministers to be stripped of their legal powers to cancel local elections.
Leading MPs from the Conservatives, Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats all told us that Labour must also categorically rule out any more postponements next year.
Ministers have justified the delays by saying they are needed to allow local authorities to merge as part of an efficiency drive, but critics have claimed that councils are cancelling ballots to avoid losing seats.
Continue reading ➤
Read more: How Tory councils stripped people of their right to vote ➤
| | Donald Trump’s hand injury was covered up between appearances in Davos yesterday |  | Michael Searles Deputy Health Editor | As Donald Trump walked across the stage at Davos to sign his “Board of Peace” plan with his right hand, it was his bruised left hand that caught the eye.
Initially, the White House explained away the discolouration as a result of him shaking many hands – not typically performed with the left hand. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told The Telegraph: “President Trump is a man of the people, and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history.”
However, Leavitt then changed tack and offered a new explanation – that the president had knocked his hand at the signing ceremony.
Less than an hour later, Trump reappeared with heavy makeup applied to the hand, which also appeared swollen.
Rumours about the president’s health have been rife since the White House revealed last year that he had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that causes blood to pool in the veins.
The president has insisted he is in “perfect” health, however.
Continue reading ➤
Elsewhere at Davos:
Inside Trump’s mother of all climbdowns ➤
Zelensky attacks ‘weak and indecisive’ European leaders ➤ | | Robbie Collin The industry totally underestimated this vampire horror. Thankfully this year’s nominations reflect its true worth Continue reading ➤ David Frost We should strive to be America’s new Israel Continue reading ➤ Sherelle Jacobs It has finally dawned on Strasbourg’s blob that the European dream is dead Continue reading ➤ | | For the latest headlines all day, sign up to From the Editor PM here, for an early-evening briefing. | | Liam Ramos was detained by ICE agents in Minnesota on Wednesday | | An extract from Fiona Beal’s journal | | At the primary school where she taught, Fiona Beal was loved by pupils and admired by colleagues. What they didn’t know was that the 42-year-old had a dark alter-ego called Tulip 22 whom she wrote about in her diary. When doctors got hold of her journal after she was sectioned, they hoped that it would offer an insight into her mind. Instead it contained the brutal truth of a deadly plot, and the police were called immediately. Continue reading ➤ | | | Xi Jinping, a man who is used to entire cities being built at the click of his fingers, will soon discover just how mind-numbingly slow Britain’s infamous planning appeals system is. Despite the Government having signed off on the Chinese president’s new “super-embassy” in the heart of London, it could be delayed for years as neighbours prepare to challenge it in the High Court, arguing that planning laws have been broken. Gordon Rayner investigates. Continue reading ➤ | | | Dr Laura Berman has been helping couples reignite their sex lives for three decades | | In Dr Laura Berman’s three decades as a sex therapist, the most common issue she has encountered is mismatched libido between couples. One partner wanting more sex can unravel even happy relationships. The good news is that it’s fixable. From scheduling intimacy to taking it off the table completely, she explains how couples can sexually realign. Continue reading ➤ | |  | | Transaction data show property prices close to the Weavers Place development in Skelmanthorpe have suffered | | Nimbys have a reputation for standing in the way of countryside housebuilding – but we can reveal that they do so for good reason. New Telegraph analysis, using official transaction data, shows that rural house prices fell by 2.7 per cent, or £7,000, after a new development was built within half a mile of the properties. By contrast, local house prices outside this radius rose by 1.3 per cent, worth £3,000. Skelmanthorpe (pictured above), six miles outside the Peak District National Park in West Yorkshire, is the most extreme example of the trend. Continue reading ➤ | | | Understanding when to grit your teeth through pain, and when to call for urgent help, can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. So how can you tell if your bad headache is just a migraine – or a medical emergency? Dr Suraj Kukadia, an urgent care NHS GP, reveals six acute pains that should never be ignored and the important symptoms to watch out for. Continue reading ➤ | | American poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths with husband Salman Rushdie in 2024. The couple met in 2017 | Books The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffiths ★★★★☆ It’s tempting to make assumptions about Salman Rushdie and his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths. She’s the fifth woman he has married; is glamorous, beautiful and 31 years younger than him. However, speculating onlookers might think differently after reading Griffiths’ powerful new memoir, The Flower Bearers. It reveals the different tragedies that have drawn the two together – not least Rushdie’s stabbing in 2022 – and the support Rushdie offered when tragedy struck on their wedding day.
Read Helen Brown’s review here ➤ TV
The Beauty ★★★★☆ A supermodel goes berserk and starts battering everyone within a 20-metre radius before exploding. No, not a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Naomi Campbell, but the opening moments of The Beauty, a wild new “body horror” for the weight-loss jab age, which takes society’s desperation to be gorgeous, young and thin and pushes it to the point of absurdity.
Read Anita Singh’s review here ➤
Film Saipan ★★★☆☆ If this visually splashy dramatisation of the 2002 public spat between Roy Keane, the Irish footballer played here by The Sixth Commandment’s Éanna Hardwicke, and Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan), the manager of his national side, feels a tad reluctant to come down too hard on either of its warring protagonists, that’s definitely by design. The film is at its most entertaining when it simply pits Coogan and Hardwicke against each other as two strains of modern Irish manhood at war.
Read Robbie Collin’s review here ➤
PS Did you know that The Telegraph sponsors Oxford Literary Festival? This year will be our third and we hope you enjoy the week (21-29 Mar) of wonderful literary voices. Buy your tickets at oxfordliteraryfestival.org ➤ | | Perched atop precipitous cliffs, clinging to windswept ridgelines and dwarfed by looming glaciers, the high-altitude huts of the Alps are among the most extraordinary buildings on the planet. But where is this one? | Life is what you bake it Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal reader correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Orlando writes...
As domestic activities go, cookery is pretty well represented – on social media, on TV, in bookshops. Yet cookery skills, research suggests, are dying out. Following dozens of chefs on Instagram does not, in itself, confer the ability to chop an onion.
Telegraph readers have been discussing this sorry trend. For Kate Forrester, the solution was obvious: “Unless people are taught to cook from scratch, the health of the nation will surely deteriorate. Reinstate kitchens in schools and bring back practical cookery lessons. Clearly few young people are fortunate enough to learn proper cooking at home, with the joy, satisfaction and health benefits that it brings.”
Debbie Kenyon agreed: “Knowing how to eat healthily is a life skill that should certainly be taught in schools – especially now, with the country in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis. It’s not rocket science: a jar of ready-made pasta sauce is far more expensive than a tin of tomatoes, an onion and a pinch of herbs.”
Others, however, weren’t so sure. “Calls to bring back cookery lessons fill me with dread,” replied Dermot Shortt. “As a boy, I feared Wednesdays, when my sisters returned from home economics class brandishing our ‘tea’. The low point was a stuffed marrow so unlovable that even the dog bolted.”
This resonated with me. I love cooking, but don’t attribute it to the food technology classes at my school. One week we learnt how to make scones: fair enough. But the next week it was pizza – with a scone base. Fusion cuisine has its limits.
I’ve enjoyed other tales of misspent cookery classes. “My efforts were usually offered to my father, who spent 26 years in the Royal Navy,” wrote Violet Hooper. “When I took home my first Yorkshire pudding, he commented that it would make a good anchor for a battleship.”
Jean Thompson added: “At the end of the non-optional term of basic cookery in his secondary school, my son’s report read: ‘Christopher is a danger to himself and everyone else in the class’.” Is the classroom the best place to learn kitchen skills? Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of From the Editor PM, for which you can sign up here.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including PlusWord, Sorted, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
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Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow.
Chris Evans, Editor | |
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