
As a young teenager, Javid and his brother were caught stealing from slot machines, arrested and held in a cell. His future hung in the balance. How did he get from there to the top of UK politics?
In 2019, when Sajid Javid was home secretary, he spoke about growing up on “the most dangerous street in Britain” and said how easy it would have been to fall into a life of crime. Fortunately, he said, he managed to avoid trouble. But it turns out that Javid was being a little economical with the truth. He did get into trouble. Serious trouble.
Now 56, he has just published his childhood memoir, The Colour of Home. It’s crammed with incident – arranged marriages, savage beatings and boys behaving badly. I think there’s one key moment in your story, I tell him. “What, just one?” he hoots. Javid is not lacking for confidence.
Continue reading...The mysterious Cornish electronic music pioneer has gained an extraordinary second life in the TikTok era. Writers and musicians explain why his glitchy slipperiness is so in tune with life today
QKThr, an obscure cut from Aphex Twin’s 2001 album, Drukqs, sounds like an ambient experiment recorded on a historic pirate ship. Shaky fingers caress the keys of an accordion to create an uncanny tone; clustered chords cry out, subdued but mighty, before scuttling back into dreamy nothingness.
This 88-second elegy has always been overshadowed by another song on Drukqs, the Disklavier instrumental Avril 14th, which alongside Windowlicker is the Cornish producer’s best-known track. But QKThr has become a weird breakaway success, featuring on nearly 8m TikTok posts, adorning everything from cute panda videos to lightly memed US presidential debates, and a fail video trend dubbed “subtle foreshadowing”.
Continue reading...She was half of a 90s art power couple that seemed unstoppable. But they split and the trauma floored her. Now she’s back with defiant paintings celebrating her punk past – and late-career motherhood
Sue Webster is reminiscing about boozy 90s art openings. A hazy memory of Damien Hirst riding Leigh Bowery’s shoulders is surfacing, and a terrible fight with Jake Chapman at Charles Saatchi’s gallery. “It was a verbal thing but he was probably about to punch me. You’d get very drunk on the free champagne.”
Webster, and her former partner in art, romance and general punk rockery, Tim Noble, hit London in 1992 as the YBAs rose to fame. Five years later, Saatchi stopped by their cheap-as-chips live-work space in Shoreditch and, with his taxi still running outside, snapped up a light sculpture called Toxic Schizophrenia and a “shadow sculpture” titled Miss Understood and Mr Meanor. The shadow sculptures were meticulously melded pieces of junk and detritus which, when lit from one side, projected self-portrait silhouettes onto the wall. Webster says she would sometimes cry when saying goodbye to an artwork after selling it. So what does an artist do when such a long and successful partnership ends? “I wanted to unravel my brain, and work out how I ended up here,” she says.
Continue reading...Does Britain have any leverage over human rights or security concerns or is it a decaying nation that cannot risk trade relations?
This week, Keir Starmer will reportedly visit China. This will be the first trip of this kind by a British prime minister since Theresa May’s three-day visit to Beijing in 2018. Since then, relations between London and Beijing have become increasingly fraught, caught between growing security concerns and deep economic interdependence. Allegations of espionage and influence operations have sharpened political and public suspicion in the UK, even as deep trade links and supply chains on which the country depends make disengagement unrealistic. As fierce debate about the recent approval for the new Chinese embassy has shown, there are strong opinions about how to best manage relations with Beijing – as well as what, precisely, constitutes a threat and what is an opportunity. The result is an uneasy balancing act in which caution and cooperation coexist, often uncomfortably.
These security concerns are grounded in recent experience. In December, the Foreign Office disclosed it had been the target of a sustained cyber-attack two months earlier that was suspected to be the work of a Chinese group known as Storm 1849. This followed investigations into alleged espionage involving parliamentary researchers and repeated warnings from security agencies about technology transfer and data exposure in sensitive industries.
Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is The Earth Transformed: an Untold History.
Continue reading...There is no special trick to the interim manager’s early success, just a commitment to sound and sensible thinking
What must Ruben Amorim make of it? Maybe that 3-4-2-1 might not be the answer for this Manchester United team? Perish the thought. The club’s recently sacked manager was clear that not even the pope would make him change – presumably because Leo XIV is also a big fan of three centre-halves. Saying that, Amorim did come close to losing his religion towards the bitter end, however brief and unconvincing his dalliance with a back four was. He reverted to a three for his final game at Leeds in early January.
As the dust settles on Michael Carrick’s second thrilling win as the United interim manager in two matches, the last-gasp triumph at Arsenal following the home win against Manchester City, it is a moment, first and foremost, for the club’s supporters to savour.
Continue reading...Innocent people are being frozen out of basic banking services – and it all traces back to reforms rushed through after 9/11
Hamish Wilson lives a few miles away from me, in a cosy farmhouse in the damp hills of mid Wales. He makes good coffee, tells great stories and is an excellent host. Every summer, dozens of Somali guests visit Wilson’s farm as part of a wonderfully wholesome project set up to celebrate their nation’s culture, and to honour his father’s second world war service with a Somali comrade-in-arms.
Inadvertently, however, the project has revealed something else: a deep unfairness in today’s global financial system that not only threatens to ruin the Somalis’ holidays, but also excludes marginalised communities from global banking services on a huge scale.
Continue reading...Gregory Bovino, aggressive promoter of Trump’s deportation agenda, also said to have been stripped of ‘commander at large’ title
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s on-the-ground immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday, as the Trump administration reshuffles leadership of its immigration enforcement operation and scales back the federal presence after a second fatal shooting by officers.
A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that the 55-year-old, who has been a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists, would be leaving Minnesota along with some of the agents deployed with him.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer says move is ‘good news for homeowners’ in TikTok video announcing change
Ground rents are to be capped at £250 a year for leaseholders in England and Wales, Keir Starmer has announced, as his government unveiled proposals to ban leaseholds for new flats.
New leasehold flats will be banned and existing leaseholders will get the right to switch to commonhold in an attempt to give homeowners greater control over their properties, under proposals to be put out to consultation.
Continue reading...Flood and weather warnings from both Environment Agency and the Met Office are in place across much of the UK
Some of the rainfall totals in the south-west of England for the last 24 hours has almost totalled the average for the entire month, BBC News reports.
Here is a list of some notable rainfalls:
100mm (3.9in) White Barrow (South Dartmoor)
75mm (3in) Marden Down (Dartmoor)
73mm (2.8in) Ottery St Mary’s
60mm (2.4in) Ashcombe (Teignbridge)
51mm (2in) Wendron (South-west Cornwall)
Continue reading...Greater Manchester mayor’s hopes of imminent return as MP appear remote as relationship with Starmer at low ebb
Andy Burnham has not given up hopes of returning to Westminster and will try again, allies say, but would need to be convinced that Keir Starmer would not try to block him again before running.
The Greater Manchester mayor’s hopes of an imminent return to parliament appeared remote, however, as No 10 sources suggested that relations between the two men were at a low ebb and played down chances of a rapprochement.
Continue reading...