After 14 years of Tory rule, the Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer thought he had seen it all. Westminster would surely tick along nicely once Keir Starmer’s party took over. How wrong he was ...

I feel I should probably start with an apology. A few days after the 2024 general election, I wrote that it felt as if the grownups were back in charge. It wasn’t as if I was carried away by the vision of Keir Starmer or the charisma of Rachel Reeves. More that I felt we had regained a basic level of competence. That politics would become business as usual rather than the breathless psychodrama of the past 10 years. You could go to bed at night relatively confident that the country would be more or less recognisable when you woke up. There would be no more mad people doing mad things as we raced through five or six news cycles in the course of a couple of hours.

And part of me was a little concerned. Because what is good for economic stability and social justice isn’t necessarily good for a sketch writer. Dull, well-intentioned politicians putting in place dull, well-intentioned policies, and a government that is ticking over more or less OK, do not necessarily make for great entertainment. So what would I write about?

The Neoliner Origin set off on its inaugural two-week voyage from France to the US with the aim of revolutionising the notoriously dirty shipping industry

It is 8pm on a Saturday evening and eight of us are sitting at a table onboard a ship, holding on to our plates of spaghetti carbonara as our chairs slide back and forth. Michel Péry, the dinner’s host, downplays the weather as a “tempête de journalistes” – something sailors would not categorise as a storm, but which drama-seeking journalists might refer to as such to entertain their readers.

But after a white-knuckle night in our cabins with winds reaching 74mph or force 12 – officially a hurricane – Péry has to admit it was not just a “journalists’ storm”, but the real deal.

This heart-stopping Danish investigation about a mob lawyer turned whistleblower is more dramatic than Scandi-noir as it drops one huge revelation after another. It’s easy to see why it absolutely rocked Denmark

As film-maker Mads Brügger explains at the outset of this four-part documentary series, a black swan is the name given to an event so extraordinary that you could never have seen it coming. In this case, Brügger’s black swan isn’t an event so much as a person: a lawyer named Amira Smajic, a “once in a lifetime” source for a journalist and the person who – he says – could “force us to rethink Danish society”. Smajic has spent years acting on behalf of some of the country’s most infamous criminal gangs, and is now exposing their activities as part of this major investigation for the state-owned broadcaster TV 2. Crucially, it’s not just the criminal underworld that Smajic is laying bare, but also their white-collar accomplices – the seemingly respectable businesspeople and lawyers unfazed by escapades involving dirty money and fraudulent invoices. It’s a co-dependent arrangement – one section of society “is feeding the other, and vice versa”, says Smajic.

It would be an understatement to say that The Black Swan made an impact on Danish viewers. Half of all Danes watched it when it aired in 2024, and it sparked a string of police investigations, as well as a tightening of laws around money laundering and gang activity. It has also turned the country’s almost prelapsarian vision of itself on its head. Brügger – a steely, often sandpaper-dry compere who has previously gone undercover in North Korea for the film The Red Chapel – claims making The Black Swan has shown him that the country could be “grim and dark”. Simply put: something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

It’s easy to see why the series has had such an impact. As well as the huge revelations it uncovers, the way The Black Swan unfolds often seems to go beyond the work of even some of the best Nordic noir dramatists. Our anti-heroine, Smajic, arrived in Denmark as a child refugee amid the Bosnian war. A legitimate career gave way to working with the mob, and she would go on to be dubbed the “ice queen” by her associates for her ruthless practices. And yet, as the series unfolds, Smajic uses those same practices to obtain a huge cache of evidence for Brügger and his team, often putting herself in seemingly imminent danger as she documents all manner of nefarious activities from a Copenhagen office rigged with hidden mics and cameras. While the production has arranged safety measures for Smajic during her six-month stint as their inside woman, it is still risky business. But as she explains, this could be her only way out of a life of crime that has become so innate to her being, and which she likens to being addicted to drugs.

Many of the scenes that unfold defy belief, not least those that involve Fasar Abrar Raja, a Rasputin-esque former member of the Bandidos biker club whose rap sheet includes convictions for assault, possession of firearms and drug smuggling. His braggadocio and insolence slowly turn to something darker. By episode three, broadcast next week, he threatens to “crush [Smajic] with my bare hands”.

The tactics that gave Labour its huge majority in 2024 were no preparation for government – and the prime minister has proved he has nothing more to offer

The mood among Labour MPs these days follows Edgar’s law. This states that the scale of any misfortune can only be measured against unknown future disasters. As Shakespeare has the banished son of the blinded Earl of Gloucester say in King Lear: “The worst is not, so long as we can say ‘this is the worst’.”

According to Edgar’s law, there is no opinion poll so gloomy for Labour that it can’t be followed by one even bleaker; no fiscal forecast so bad that the Treasury can’t aggravate it with contradictory signals on tax; no misgivings about Keir Starmer that can’t be amplified by malevolent briefing about a leadership challenge; no social policy so nauseating to the party faithful that it can’t be made grosser still with a relish of cruelty.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, Erivo leads a fine cast in a zingily scored conclusion to the hit origin story

Director Jon M Chu pulls off quite a trick with this manageably proportioned second half to the epic musical prequel-myth inspired by The Wizard of Oz – and based, of course, on the hit stage show. It keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one, and we still get those periodic, surreal pronouncements given by the city’s notables to the diverse folk of Oz, those non-player characters crowding the streets. But now the focus narrows to the main players and their explosive romantic crises, essentially through two interlocking love triangles: Glinda the Good, Elphaba the Wicked and the Wizard – and Glinda, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero, the handsome young military officer with whom both witches are not so secretly in love, as well as possibly having feelings for each other.

Jeff Goldblum is excellent as the Wizard, who pretty much becomes the Darth Vader of Oz: a slippery carnival huckster who is realising that his seedy charm is corroding his soul. Jonathan Bailey pivots to a much more serious, less campy, more passionate Prince and Ariana Grande is, as ever, delicate and doll-like as Glinda, though with less opportunity for comedy. But the superstar among equals is Cynthia Erivo, bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, and revealing a new vulnerability and maturity. Elsewhere, Marissa Bode returns as Nessarose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-using half-sister; Ethan Slater is Boq, the Munchkin working as her servant; and Michelle Yeoh brings stately sweetness to the role of the Wizard’s private secretary Madame Morrible.

I had run every day for ten years and cried when the doctor said I needed two months off. Then I borrowed an oversized road bike. At first, I couldn’t wait to ditch it, but something kept me going ...

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that I broke my foot. The injury didn’t seem like a big deal at first, because stress fractures sneak up on you. It just hurt, and wouldn’t stop hurting, except while running. Maybe because running was the only time I felt good about myself. But in the end the pain intruded there, too. I ran on stubbornly, with a limp.

Eventually I had to go to the doctor, and that’s when it hit me. She said it would take eight weeks to heal – no running. I couldn’t imagine even one week without running. I had run every single day for nearly 10 years and I loved it. I tried to find the words to explain, to say that this “rest” was just not possible, but I was too embarrassed. It was a minor injury by clinical standards – and self-inflicted, too. But afterwards, in the corridor, I cried.

Public accounts committee finds Labour’s progress ‘appears to have stalled’ despite billions of pounds in investment

The NHS has failed to cut waiting times as promised in its recovery plan despite billions of pounds in investment, the public accounts committee (PAC) has warned.

The influential parliamentary committee’s verdict raises serious doubts over whether Labour can fulfil its key pledge to voters to “fix the NHS” by ensuring that patients can once again get hospital care within 18 weeks by 2029.

Key NHS targets to improve access to both planned care and diagnostic tests by last spring “were missed”.

NHS England had spent £3.24bn setting up community diagnostic centres and surgical hubs but had not achieved the aim of reducing delays.

In July, 192,000 people had been waiting at least a year for care, despite a pledge to eradicate that practice altogether by March 2025.

22% of patients were having to wait more than six weeks for a diagnostic test, even though that was due to be cut to 5% by March.

Drop in October’s annual rate raises hopes of interest rate cut after Rachel Reeves’s tax and spending statement

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UK inflation fell to 3.6% in October, easing pressure on households and providing a boost for Rachel Reeves as the chancellor prepares for her make-or-break budget next week.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said annual inflation as measured by the consumer prices index cooled for the first time in five months, declining from a peak of 3.8% over July, August and September.

World’s largest scientific review warns consumption of UPFs poses seismic threat to global health and wellbeing

Ultra-processed food (UPF) is linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body and poses a seismic threat to global health, according to the world’s largest review.

UPF is also rapidly displacing fresh food in the diets of children and adults on every continent, and is associated with an increased risk of a dozen health conditions, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and depression.

Bafta-winning director among contemporaries urging contrition and apology from Reform UK leader, who denies the allegations
Portrait: Tom Pilston

It is the hectoring tone, the “jeering quality”, in Nigel Farage’s voice today that brings it all back for Peter Ettedgui. “He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right,’ or ‘Gas them,’ sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers,” Ettedgui says of his experience of being in a class with Farage at Dulwich college in south London.

Ettedgui, 61, is a Bafta- and Emmy-winning director and producer whose credits include Kinky Boots, McQueen and Super/Man: the Christopher Reeve Story.