JBMauney

A sinister crackdown on your freedoms is gathering pace

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In 1972, I was a post-grad student at Oxford when Idi Amin expelled all Asians from Uganda. Everything fell apart. I thought I’d have to quit university. Professor Hugh Blaschko, a world-famous German Jewish pharmacologist and his Quaker wife, Mary, offered me rent-free accommodation. I lived with them for seven years and grew to love them. The Nazis had murdered many of his family members. Some were in a painted family portrait in their living room. He told me what Berlin was like before and after Hitler rose to power. Those stories stay with me.

The recent attacks on Jewish people and properties and the rally against antisemitism in the UK have reminded us that antisemitism is a very light sleeper. And that British Jews are fearful. Denying that, as some do, stains and dishonours the antiracist struggle.

Just as dishonourable are political leaders who opportunistically exploit antisemitism in their power games.

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What I mean is that Sir Keir Starmer’s Government recently said it would ban pro-Palestine marches if necessary. Those comments, from Home Office minister Alex Davies-Jones, came following a terrible antisemitic attack in Golders Green, where two Jewish men were stabbed.

But these marches are our legitimate democratic right. What we are protesting is the conduct of Israel and our own government’s shameful complicity in that.

Starmer, in my view, seems to believe the UK must provide uncritical moral and material support for the current state of Israel. This March, Belgian authorities seized a shipment of military components being sent from the UK to Israel. According to The Campaign Against the Arms Trade: “The UK’s Labour Government is reported to have approved approximately $160m (£118m) worth of arms exports to Israel between October and December 2024.” The figure is drawn from newly released strategic export licensing data.

A large number of Labour loyalists are dismayed because their government says and does nothing about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

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Five countries – Ireland, the Netherlands, Iceland, Spain and Slovenia – are boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest to protest against Israel’s inclusion. Meanwhile, the UK stands by its ally.

The New York Times, an assiduous newspaper which facts checks everything, has just reported on alleged rapes in prison – some by trained dogs – of Palestinian detainees. The IDF has killed hundreds of journalists and doctors; children and mothers are not spared. The UN rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, has been recording what she calls a genocide in Gaza in the last three years. The US has now imposed severe sanctions against this woman. Belgium and Spain have stood up for this principled observer. Not the UK.

Our media has moved on from the conflict. These demonstrations are the only way conscientious Britons across race, faith and class can keep on reminding fellow citizens of these injustices. Some of the protestors are Jewish. Journalist Maddy Fry spoke to a few such objectors earlier this year. Rabbi Lev Taylor of Kingston Liberal Synagogue told her: “I want to see a shared land where Israelis and Palestinians live in peace, and I want to see a Judaism that is connected to the life of Israelis, but also has its own energy and thrives here in the diaspora, without being dependent upon Israel. The war in Gaza is against Jewish law, but [the media] want a story that divides up Jews and Muslims in Britain and presents a clean narrative that promotes a particular view.”

Check out Na’amod, a movement of Jews in the UK who say they are “seeking to end our community’s support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid, and to mobilise it in the struggle for freedom, equality and justice for all Palestinians and Israelis”.

These are some of the bravest people in the world. Support Palestinians and you often seem to get branded an antisemite. If you are Jewish, hard Zionists contemptuously label you a “self-hater”.

Labour, Tory and Reform UK leaders are now insinuating that pro-Palestinian marches – which some unjustly rename “Hate Marches”- are inciting anti-Jewish hatred. The most rabid antisemitism is found online. During marches, I have argued with young people shouting nasty views. Organisers need to have more people monitoring the demos and stopping these few from poisoning the ambience. The vast number of marchers are simply standing up for the human rights of Palestinians.

The right to protest peacefully is not in the gift of governments. It is a democratic entitlement. So join the march on Saturday. The police may be heavy-handed; marchers may face abuse. But it is our duty as humans to stand by the victims of a genocide. And as democrats to defy authoritarian measures.

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I lost my wife eight months ago – delay in getting £1,100 pension is destroying me

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Widows and widowers are borrowing money and using savings to survive due to “horrendous” delays getting the civil service pensions owed to them.

Thousands of newly retired civil servants and bereaved spouses of former government staff have spent months without payments from the company in charge of the pensions scheme.

Capita has apologised for the “worry and frustration” caused, insisting that it is making progress with a huge backlog inherited when it took over the scheme in December.

Shorts – Quick stories

However, widows and widowers are still suffering from financial hardship and stress as they wait for money, according to the pensioners’ campaign group.

The ongoing delay comes despite a commitment by Capita to resolve all urgent, bereavement-related cases by the end of April.

‘The last thing I want to be doing is chasing money’

Philip Morgan, a 59-year-old from South Wales, has been living without expected payments since he lost his wife Janet in early September.

Janet, who died of cancer at the age of 61, was a relationship manager at the Welsh Government.

Morgan – who sent the forms to the pension scheme in early October – had been expecting to receive £1,100 a month from a widower’s pension.

But eight months on since his wife’s death, the payments have still not begun.

“It’s been horrendous,” he told The i Paper. “It’s made things more difficult at an already very difficult time.

“It’s incredibly frustrating to have to live in limbo. Dealing with this uncertainty really drags you down at an awful time. The last thing I want to be doing is chasing money.”

Morgan is living on £92 a week from employment support allowance (ESA), the benefit available to him as a self-employed maintenance worker.

“I’m going through bereavement and not up to working,” he said.

“So this problem with the pension is destroying me financially, because my income is so small. I’m having to use my savings just to get by, bill to bill.”

‘Not good enough’: No progress despite April deadline

Morgan remains frustrated by the lack of clear information from Capita, having repeatedly called the helpline.

“They’ve said it’s been treated as urgent and offered to escalate the case – eight times, I think – but it hasn’t led to any progress,” he said.

“When I phoned Capita last week, someone said there were 68 steps to go through to sign it off, and I was at step 30.

“The executives said urgent cases would be resolved by the end of April, but it just hasn’t happened. It’s not good enough.”

Richard Holroyd, who runs Capita’s public service division, told MPs on the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee in March that processing had “improved” but was “still not what members deserve”.

Bereaved having to borrow money to ‘stay afloat’

Problems first emerged after the company took over the public sector pension scheme from MyCSP in early December. Capita said it inherited a much larger backlog of unresolved cases than it had expected.

A group of around 8,500 former civil servants were identified in January as suffering from failures in getting both their lump sum and regular pension payments.

Asked about the group of 8,500 people, Capita executives told MPs that it had paid out 7,782 lump sums.

But they did not say how many had also started receiving their regular, monthly payment. And the executives did not say how many bereavement cases are unresolved.

Former Home Office worker Marc Roffey, 60, from Wiltshire, recently told The i Paper he had been waiting five months for regular pension payments. And ex-Home Office official Doug Eckford, from Essex, said he had waited six months.

Marc Roffey, 60, has not received pension payments after a five-month wait (Photo: Marc Roffey/Getty)

The Civil Service Pensioners’ Alliance (CSPA) said they were still hearing from widows and widowers who have not begun receiving money owed to them.

Some are in “severe financial hardship – in many instances having to borrow money from family and friends to pay their bills and keep afloat,” said Sally Tsoukaris, CSPA’s general secretary.

She said many were also suffering from “extreme frustration, stress, anxiety and distress” caused by living in limbo.

‘It’s outrageous to put people through this’

Mikki King, an 81-year-old from Suffolk, lost her husband Jim in early December. He had worked for the UK Government’s customs and excise team for over 30 years.

She had expected to receive around £1,000 a month from her widow’s pension, but has not received anything yet.

“It’s so upsetting to have to deal with it,” King said. “It’s bad enough to lose someone without having to fight for something you’re entitled to. It’s outrageous to put people through this.”

She is concerned about the leasehold and maintenance fees she pays for her apartment, as her state pension does not cover these costs or her other living expenses.

“My savings have been depleted because my husband was in a care home before he died,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to use savings to get by.”

The Cabinet Office announced in January that hardship loans would be available to former civil servants suffering from delays. So far, almost 800 loans have been issued, totalling £4m.

But these crisis loans do not apply to widows and widowers of former government staff, the CSPA said.

A Capita spokesperson said it was working to “establish normal service levels”. They said additional trained staff remain in place to deal with the backlog, adding: “We are sorry for the worry and frustration any delays are causing.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said Capita’s service had been “unacceptable”. The Government will continue to “hold Capita to account and ensure they deliver for both members and taxpayers”, they added.

How rent control could save tenants £1,200 a year

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Want to understand what’s really going on in Britain, and how we can fix it?

Join Vicky Spratt’s subscriber-only newsletter, The State We’re In, where she breaks down the big issues shaping the country. You can sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox, every single week, here.

Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s The State We’re In – a name which, I feel, has never been more fitting for this newsletter.

By now, you’ll be aware that Labour suffered a catastrophic defeat in last week’s local elections. It lost almost 1,500 councillors and 38 councils, while Reform gained over 1,400 councillors and 14 councils. The Conservatives lost 563 councillors and six councils; the Greens gained 441 councillors and five councils; the Liberal Democrats gained 155 councillors and one council.

Shorts – Quick stories

Coming up this week:

  • NOC – no overall control – and why it’s a disaster
  • Rent control: could it really save the state millions?
  • Why you should read Gordon Brown’s book about the 2008 global financial crisis

Politically, the key story is the fracturing of the accepted two-party binary in Britain, with more than 30 additional local councils now classified as having no overall control (NOC), which will make it harder for councillors to find consensus and get things done at a local level.

For this reason, we are going to zoom in on the problem of housing affordability and a contentious policy area which has received much attention in recent weeks: rent control.

(Here’s a primer looking at the different types of rent control – from hard rent caps to inflation-linked increase limits – as well as international comparisons from Scotland to America.)

Before the local elections, it was widely reported that Rachel Reeves was open to the idea of rent freezes.

Rent control is a controversial policy because there is some evidence (albeit complicated in its own way, as I wrote here) that it can limit the supply of available homes to rent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both Housing Secretary Steve Reed and housing planning minister Matthew Pennycook have poured freezing cold water on the idea that the Labour Government would introduce rent controls.

Now, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has shared an exclusive report with me for this newsletter, which runs the numbers and concludes that imposing rent controls on England’s private rental market could bring the Government more than £600m a year in net savings on its housing benefit bill by 2030.

The JRF’s research was carried out by the Autonomy Institute, an independent research organisation.

The rent control they modelled is a cap on rent increases at the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation rate plus 2 per cent, similar to the formula used in Scotland.

To mitigate against landlords losing money, the JRF and Autonomy’s research considered bringing back full mortgage interest relief for the 60 per cent of landlords who have a buy-to-let mortgage (which was restricted in 2020), scrapping the two percentage point increase to income tax payable on rental income and instead applying national insurance contributions to rental income.

One of the arguments often used against rent control in England is that it would hit private landlords’ finances so hard that they would be forced to sell up and leave the housing market.

However, until now, relatively little data-driven research has looked at just how true this is.

Rosie Worsdale, a senior policy adviser at the JRF, told me over the phone: “We commissioned this independent research to interrogate and examine exactly what level of profit or returns on their investment landlords have been making, because we felt that that was a key empirical question underpinning the debates about whether rent control is a good idea or not.”

So, what did they find?

According to the JRF and Autonomy’s research, the majority of landlords record above-normal returns even after tax in most parts of the country.

“A well-designed tax system should do more to rebalance these incentives,” the JRF argue.

While the Renters’ Rights Act will limit the number of times a landlord can increase rent to once a year and allow renters to challenge rises at a new tribunal if negotiations fail, it has become law at a time when rents are at near-historic highs.

In recent years, average private rents have often risen faster than consumer inflation. While that has now slowed, rents have been left high in relation to incomes in many places and, certainly, higher than the support available for lower-income households via housing benefit.

Between March 2025 and March 2026, average rents in the UK increased by 3.4 per cent to £1,434 in England, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The JRF says that rent controls linked to CPI “would have an immediate and significant impact on renters, saving renting households almost £1,200 per year on average by 2030”.

This, in turn, would lead to savings on the housing benefit bill, which currently stands at around £39bn a year, and make it easier for the government to increase the support available via housing benefit in line with rents, they say.

As things stand, housing benefit was frozen in 2024 and will remain so until at least 2027. This is a decision which, homelessness experts like the charity Crisis have warned, will “lead to rising homelessness”.

The JRF hopes that their findings will add data to a national conversation about rent control, which is not often evidence-based.

This also comes as people, particularly private renters, are extremely worried about their living costs.

That said, Rosie at the JRF said they were mindful that “concerns about the potential negative impact of rent control should be taken seriously.”

“For instance”, she said, “we have suggested shielding landlords at the acute end of the recent interest rate spike. There is also a question about whether you should exempt new-build homes to make sure there is a supply of new homes and new rental homes in a rent control scenario?”

Given the Labour Government’s soft spot for build-to-rent developers, this idea is likely to go down well.

What do you think? Let me know vicky.spratt@theipaper.com

Housing crisis watch

In case you missed it, exclusive polling for me by Ipsos has revealed that 49 per cent of people think the Government is doing a bad job on housing.

What I found particularly interesting about this research was that it seemed to suggest that awareness of Labour’s policies, including the Renters’ Rights Act, was part of the reason why voters are inclined to think the Government is doing a “bad” job…

Read the full report here.

What I’m reading and listening to….

  • Gordon Brown is back in government as a special envoy on global finance. What better time, then, to read his book Beyond the Crash, which was published in 2010. It reflects on the catastrophe that occurred in banking in the years leading up to 2007-08 and, rather chillingly, predicts many of the economic problems that Britain faces today, which, arguably, are why Sir Keir Starmer is struggling so much…
  • And, finally, another shameless plug from me! Episodes two and three of my new podcast series for The Rest is Politics are now available to listen. In two, I speak with Professor Bobby Duffy, who questions the idea of generational division and suggests that old and young people may have more in common than they realise. In three, I speak to none other than former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner about what she thinks the Government should be doing to help young people…

The most upsetting thing people say to me now I am disabled

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When I was in the rehabilitation hospital in the winter of 2025, one of my favourite nurses said, as she removed my night-bag one frosty morning, “O, I wish I had a catheter – you don’t need to get out of bed during the night when it’s freezing!’”

I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t mocking me; she was trying to make me feel less bad about having to be hooked up to a plastic sac, which would do its best to extract up to two litres of alarmingly orange urine from me as I slumbered under morphine. But of course, anyone in my position would give their little finger – on both hands – to be able to get out of bed, even in the middle of the coldest night of the century, and use a toilet – even a dirty one! – like an ordinary human being. She was just trying to make me feel better, but failing dismally. 

I’ve experienced quite a bit of this since I became disabled in the Christmas week of 2024, and it’s taken me some time to take such encouragement in the way it’s intended; those things people say to “Wheelchair Warriors” to make us feel less freakish.

I feel gratitude that I’m a paraplegic and can move my upper body; I feel gratitude for my wheelchair (‘Wendy’) but it hasn’t always been that way. “FREEDOM!” another of my favourite nurses called encouragingly the first time she saw me wheeling cautiously along the hospital corridor; I turned on her and snarled, “Freedom? FREEDOM? Being half a person, and half a chair? You try it!” Of course, within ten minutes I felt an utter cow, and sought her out to apologise profusely.

Now I’m out, I get a lot of “You look so well!” from people seeing me for the first time since. How can I look well? I’ve lost half my body. I’m a frail old lady. What they mean is that I’ve lost a lot of weight and put some lipstick on. But no woman who once had her name under a photograph of Jabba the Hutt in a magazine really minds being told how thin she is, even if she had to be 48 hours from death to get there.

What I find more annoying are those who bring up their own troubles. To put a charitable spin on it, they may do so to make you feel that you’re not alone in your woes, but I’m afraid I find it more likely that they are drama queens who hate someone else having the spotlight of sorrow.

A friend who experienced both her ex-fiancé dying and her younger brother beaten into a coma in a short space of time remarks that people would annoy her greatly by referring in turn to some comparatively trivial trouble they were going through; “I don’t think misery is a competition but have some sense of perspective!”

Similarly, I found myself highly impatient with an acquaintance who saw me soaking up the sunshine at a street cafe the other day, sat down and began to talk about the unbearable ghastliness of her life due to her noisy neighbours. Rule one of dealing with disabled people; if we appear to be having a pleasant time, don’t be a misery-bucket and bring us down. You couldn’t possibly comprehend how much effort it took us to secure that place in the sun – and how soon the clouds will obscure our sunny day, even without your whining.

Still, they’re better than the weirdos who take out their own disappointment with their lives on the disabled; the ex-friend who commented on a piece I’d written in a newspaper that when you are disabled “the person you were is dead” or the man who lives in my apartment block who opined that “people like you should be locked away”. But I am a tough old bird – if old age is no place for sissies, as Bette Davis said, disability doubles that – and I find such weirdness interesting rather than depressing. How degraded can a person’s soul be, that they feel the need to attempt to make disabled people feel worse about themselves?

There are very few people who affect me; that’s the way it’s always been, but being disabled has, while making me more physically vulnerable, at the same time made me mentally tougher. The only reaction to my disablement which touches me – and saddens me momentarily – is when my husband became hopeful about the fact that I could stand, then bear my own weight, then totter about with the help of a walking aid. He really believes that I’ll walk again; I do not.

So of all the things you could say to me that you might imagine – for good or ill – would upset me, only “You will walk again!” hits the target. This, more than anything else, illustrates the strange reversal of fortune I have lived through for the past year and a half; it’s the hope – not the spite, or thoughtlessness, or weirdness – that gets me every time.

Billions in pension benefits left unclaimed

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Pension benefits should be paid automatically, experts say, as billions of pounds of pension credit and housing support goes unclaimed each year.

Recent Government estimates suggest up to £2.5bn in pension credit alone is not being claimed by eligible households, while as much as £1.1bn in housing benefit for pensioners also goes unclaimed.

Industry figures said too many older people are missing out because they either do not realise they qualify for support or struggle with complex claims systems and paperwork.

Speaking at the Pensions Age spring conference in London last week, experts from various pension firms argued the UK should make greater use of existing government data to automatically identify pensioners who qualify for support.

What is being proposed

Dan McLaughlin, UK country head at Festina Finance, said the UK should move away from a “pull” system, where pensioners must apply for support themselves, towards a more automatic “push” model.

Under this approach, people could be automatically assessed for benefits such as pension credit or housing benefit using data already held by HMRC, local authorities and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Currently, the UK system relies on pensioners recognising they may be eligible for support and applying for it themselves.

Older people seeking help through schemes such as pension credit or housing benefit must submit an application to the DWP or their local authority, providing details about their income, savings, pensions, housing costs and household circumstances.

Officials then assess eligibility based on this information. Critics argue the process can be complex and difficult to navigate, contributing to many eligible pensioners missing out on support they are entitled to.

Pension credit is a means-tested benefit designed to top up the income of poorer pensioners to £238 for single retirees and £363.25 for couples.

Meanwhile, housing benefit helps low-income pensioners with rental costs. How much you get – whether it’s all or part of your rent – depends on how much you pay, your household income, where you live and household size.

Supporters said this could help reduce pensioner poverty, improve take-up and simplify the process for older people.

The idea was backed by speakers from Festina Finance, Heka Global and Barnett Waddingham.

What happens in other countries

In Denmark, pensioners are automatically assessed for some state support using centralised population and tax records, allowing authorities to calculate eligibility using data already held across government systems.

McLaughlin said the Danish model works because public databases are far more integrated than in Britain, with a single national identification system linking tax, income, address and social security information. This allows government agencies to share data more easily and reduces the need for pensioners to complete separate applications.

Several other Nordic countries, including Sweden and Norway, also use digitised public records and co-ordinated welfare systems to streamline benefit payments and improve take-up among older people.

By contrast, the UK pensions landscape is more fragmented, with information spread across thousands of private and public pension schemes as well as multiple government bodies including HMRC, local authorities and the DWP.

Supporters of reform argue this makes it harder to identify eligible pensioners automatically and creates barriers for older people trying to access support.

Other places that automatically assess who is eligible for benefits include Denmark, the Netherlands, Croatia and the Isle of Man.

Why experts think the UK should change

McLaughlin said pensioners are too often forced to repeatedly provide the same information to different public bodies.

He argued that technology should be doing more of the administrative work instead of relying on older people to navigate multiple systems themselves.

“It should not be the case that information that could be taken from another public body needs to be provided by the citizen rather than technology doing the heavy lifting,” he said.

Hattie Tales, head of UK pensions at Heka Global, said automation could have a major social impact by reconnecting pensioners with support they are entitled to but may not realise they can claim.

According to the Pensions Policy Institute, around £31.1bn in pension savings remains unclaimed because records become fragmented when people move jobs, relocate or fail to update providers.

Tales said: “We’re currently seeing a lost generation of savers who are entitled to support but are living in fuel or food poverty because of a paperwork mismatch.”

What is stopping it

Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb said there were still major barriers to fully automating pension credit.

He explained that eligibility depends on household circumstances, including income, savings and whether someone lives with a partner. The government does not hold all of that information in real time.

Webb said this was particularly difficult for people with self-employment income, rental income or complex financial arrangements.

He also pointed to a previous government pilot, which launched when he was in the position, that tried using existing data to identify people who may qualify for pension credit.

The scheme struggled because departments did not hold enough information to reliably assess entitlement.

He said: “It’s certainly true that more can be done to drive up take-up of pension credit, notably integrating it with housing benefit.

“But there isn’t a silver bullet solution to this problem, simply because the government only holds a fraction of the information needed for a full assessment of pension credit.”

Could the system improve?

Despite the challenges, experts said there was still significant scope to improve take-up.

Webb pointed to plans to integrate pension credit and housing benefit claims for pensioners, which could reduce duplication and help more people access support.

McLaughlin also argued that investment in modern infrastructure and artificial intelligence could help create a more joined-up system over time.

Midge Ure: My daughter found me drunk

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Midge Ure, 72, is a Scottish singer-songwriter, best known as the voice of Ultravox’s “Vienna” and co-writing “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1984, as well as a key organiser of Live Aid the following year. Born into a working-class family near Glasgow, he trained as an engineering apprentice, before scoring his number one, “Forever and Ever”, with the band Slik. He lives near Bath with his wife Sheridan, a yoga teacher; they have four daughters, Molly, 39, Kitty, 32, Ruby, 29, and Flossie, 27. His ninth solo album, A “Man Of Two Words”, is out in May, with a tour running until November.

Here he looks back at the moments that shaped him, from growing up in a crowded slum, passing on the Sex Pistols, getting sober, and why Band Aid still gives him a jolt four decades on.

My childhood sounds grotty, but I’ve got nothing but happy memories. Everyone I knew was in the same situation. I was born in a tenement slum on the outskirts of Glasgow– outside toilet, water running under the floorboards, communal areas lit by gas mantle. It was freezing – you could draw on the condensation on the windows – but warm in bed, weighed down by multiple blankets.

I remember open fires and the magical build-up to Christmas. My dad drove a bakery van after being in the war; my mum did a myriad of jobs, including working in a Hoover factory, to make ends meet. I shared the one bedroom with my older brother. My parents slept in a cavity bed with my younger sister – a hole in the wall with a mattress and curtains. The radio was always on, so the flat was filled with music.

Singing didn’t cost anything, so I sang along to whatever I heard on the radio – 1950s bebop, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Scottish accordion music. Eventually, I got a guitar from a dodgy distant relative, and taught myself using Bert Weedon’s Play In a Day book – the same tutorial book Lennon, McCartney, Eric Clapton and Brian May used.

I formed my first group in secondary school. My mate Jim and I would sit in our bedrooms, working out Beatles songs by ear from the record player. Then we found a drummer and would play at Saturday Morning Pictures at the local cinemas – cartoons, a movie, and us singing whatever was in the charts.

My parents wanted my brother and I to have a trade. I left school at 15 for a four-year engineering apprenticeship at the National Engineering Laboratories in East Kilbride, playing in bands at weekends. At 18, I joined a full-time band, Salvation. After seeing Dirty Harry, we all got James Dean quiffs and renamed ourselves as Slik, with me on lead vocals.

We got to number one, but it didn’t make me happy. We came to London to record and were given a cover – “Forever and Ever”. The track was already recorded; all I did was sing. It went to number one in 1976. I was in a successful band, but hadn’t played a note towards its success.

I turned down joining the Sex Pistols in 1975. Two years later, Glenn Matlock – the original Sex Pistols bassist – invited me to join the Rich Kids. I wanted to bring in a synthesiser, which immediately split the band. When I joined Ultravox in 1979, I knew I’d found my home.

I’ve been with my wife for 35 years, and we have four beautiful daughters. I could have easily missed that particular bus, and not had the headaches and heartaches that come with true love.

I don’t feel the desire to go to football matches, or golfing and skiing holidays with the boys. My wife’s a yoga teacher, so very spiritual. We don’t have to interrupt our individual lives to be a couple. Touring means long stretches alone in hotel rooms, but I’m happy in my own company.

I’ll never forget the look in one of my daughter’s eyes when she found me with a bottle. It was devastating. The idea of her dad as a knight in shining armour collapsed. So, I stopped drinking 20 years ago – I’d had more than my fair quota. I remember playing the Whiskey A Go Go in Los Angeles with Ultravox. A waitress came up, wearing a bandolier of shot bottles and glasses, asked: “What do you guys want to drink before the show?” and gave me a rum and Coke. That was the start of my big downfall.

I started doing all the stuff that you vow you’ll never do – never drink on your own, never drink during the day, never drink a whole bottle. You become someone you wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with.

Performing is like running a marathon every night. Singing for an hour and 45 minutes takes its toll. I eat after the show, which isn’t great because I don’t burn it off. I balance that by eating much better at home.

God knows what fragile, broken bits I’ve got inside me. Back in my day, you were told you were thick rather than being diagnosed with ADHD or dyslexia. If I were to sit on a psychiatrist’s couch, it might all come out. Right now, it comes out in the form of songs.

I’m still not sure how we pulled off Band Aid. We had no money, no office, no secretary, no telephone. There was no internet and no mobile phones with instant access to anybody on the planet. I’m still very much involved as one of the trustees who oversees the distribution of the funds. Every day there’s a request for funding.

I’m still proud of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” – although the song is pretty dodgy. There’s no chorus, the lyrics are a very difficult subject matter, but it does its job. Every time I hear the opening clang of doom coming out a supermarket speaker in October, the hair on my arm still stands up – in a good way.

Midge’s new album ‘A Man Of Two Worlds’ is out now. He’s currently on tour

Man Utd’s £71m chess fanatic has a point to prove

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Bryan Mbeumo appears agitated. He is sitting on a sofa in Manchester United’s plush new Carrington training complex. While young forward JJ Gabriel is lying flat on his back outside, basking in some rare Manchester sunshine, the Cameroon international doesn’t seem quite so at peace.

“There have been some good bits this season,” Mbeumo tells The i Paper in an exclusive interview near the end of his first season at Old Trafford. “But there are some bits to improve.

“I had a good start, I would say. But every year in my career I have always come back better than I was before. Every season I want to improve. If it hasn’t been enough, it can only be better. I always wanted more, even if it was going really well. I always tried to beat records.

“I’m still happy because obviously it’s been a top season, especially collectively, so I think with hard work, it can only get better.”

Mbeumo’s arrival from Brentford is regarded as a rare transfer success story at United, following numerous mistakes and hundreds of millions wasted on ill-fitting stars who came before.

Nine league goals, including at Anfield, the Emirates, and a fine finish against Manchester City, is a decent return for a first term in United’s unrelenting spotlight.

LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 8:Bryan Mbeumo of Manchester Utd celebrates after he scored for 0-1 during the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on November 8, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Shaun Brooks - CameraSport via Getty Images)
Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha joined Man Utd last summer (Photo: Getty)

The 26-year-old has formed partnerships with Matheus Cunha and Amad Diallo to devastating effect, provided an outlet for Bruno Fernandes he doesn’t often get, while offering versatility that is every manager’s dream.

No goals since early February, however, explains the agitation. Mbeumo is not about to waste the opportunity that finally came his way.

‘Chess with Luke Shaw helps me trap opponents’

Mbeumo can play the piano, and rather than turn to computer games to unwind, he also finds solace, and some footballing inspiration, in the black and white of a chess board.

“I have got Luke [Shaw] into it, actually,” Mbeumo says, smiling for the first time. “He is actually good. I think we’ve got the same ranking in the game and it’s really exciting to play against him.

“It can be useful in football because when you move a chess piece, you create something for your opponent to react to. In football it is a bit the same. When you have got the ball, when you make a pass, you tell the opponent to do something, maybe open a space, or get them trapped in a position and it’s a bit advantageous.”

The determination of this quiet, unassuming forward from rural Burgundy to succeed is reflected in how long he had to wait for a shot at Champions League football at a club like United.

Manchester United's Cameroonian midfielder #19 Bryan Mbeumo (L) celebrates scoring the team's second goal with Manchester United's Portuguese midfielder #08 Bruno Fernandes during the English Premier League football match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Manchester United at the Molineux stadium in Wolverhampton, central England on December 8, 2025. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP via Getty Images) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. /
Bryan Mbeumo calls Bruno Fernandes a great captain who also likes to moan (Photo: Getty)

After six seasons at Brentford, most assumed that the chance of a move to a top team was dwindling.

In three previous Premier League seasons, Mbeumo didn’t even reach double figures for goals, before 20 last term alerted a host of suitors to this late bloomer.

His early form has helped convince Ineos and the United hierarchy that a policy of preferring options with Premier League experience is the way forward this summer.

“I think six years at Brentford was really, really important for me,” Mbeumo says. “To grow as a player, and as a person as well. I can only be thankful for everything to them.

“I’ve been working to that point [joining United] all my life. I knew something like this could happen to me. I added my own chef, personal trainers, everything like this to make sure my body was good.

“Nobody can really know how it is to play for Manchester United, unless you play there. It is such a big club with big demands. But I had this chance to spend a few years in the Premier League before, so it was easier.”

‘A lot of people would like Carrick to stay’

The focus now turns to who will be manager next season, when fans assume the squad will finally be good enough to at least compete for the Premier League title again.

With third place all but secured, Michael Carrick is the frontrunner – a popular move with every player you speak to around Carrington. The future of skipper Fernandes is also up in the air – two key elements in Mbeumo’s strategy to reach greater heights next season.

Read more on Man Utd

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“He [Fernandes] is one of the first guys I met here. Really smiley, happy, welcoming. He said to me that he was happy I had joined which is a big praise, knowing what he achieved in this club. He is a great captain, even if sometimes he likes to moan!

“I work a lot with the Trav [coach Travis Binnion], the video analysis team, but obviously sometimes with [assistant manager] Steve [Holland] and the gaffer.

“It’s a good staff. They’ve done really well. A lot of people would like him [Carrick] to stay, but obviously that’s not my decision.”

Russia just tested a ‘Satan’ missile. Here’s the message Putin is sending Trump and Xi

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Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country has fired “the most powerful missile in the world”, which he says will enter combat service by the end of the year.

The nuclear-armed Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile – nicknamed Satan II – was built to replace the aging Soviet-built Voyevoda.

What are the capabilities of the Sarmat missile?

Putin says the combined power of the Sarmat’s individually targeted warheads is more than four times higher than any Western counterpart.

Part of a range of new weapons being developed by Russia, the Sarmat’s development began in 2011.

But it’s not the first time Putin claimed that the Sarmat had test-launched successfully – he said the same in April 2022.

Before now, the missile had only one known successful test out of five, and reportedly suffered a massive explosion during an abortive test in 2024.

Russian Strategic Missile Forces chief, Colonel General Sergei Karakayev, reports to President Vladimir Putin on the test launch of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. (Picture: Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik)
Russian Strategic Missile Forces chief, Colonel General Sergei Karakayev, reports to President Vladimir Putin on the test launch of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. (Picture: Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik)

The Sarmat is classified as a “heavy” ICBM and is capable of carrying up to 10 tonnes in payload, according to America’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defence Project.

Putin says it is capable of suborbital flight, he said, giving it a range of more than 21,700 miles and an extended capability to penetrate any prospective missile defences.

Moscow’s new weapons also include the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound.

How much damage could it do?

Putin says the Sarmat is capable of suborbital flight, giving it a range of more than 21,700 miles and an extended capability to penetrate any prospective missile defences.

According to The Telegraph, Vyacheslav Volodin, a member of Russia’s security council, previously claimed it could hit the European Parliament in Strasbourg in under four minutes, despite no evidence to support this.

Why is the missile being tested now?

It could be possible that Russia is firing this missile now ahead of Donald Trump’s state visit to China this week.

It also comes as Putin faces pressure from within to end the war on Ukraine.

What future weapons are Russia building?

Putin also announced Russia was in the “final stages” of the development of the nuclear-armed Poseidon underwater drone and the Burevestnik cruise missile, powered by miniature atomic reactors.

The Poseidon is designed to explode near enemy coastlines and cause a radioactive tsunami.

The Burevestnik has virtually unlimited range thanks to nuclear propulsion, allowing it to loiter for days, circling air defences and attacking from unexpected directions.

Berlin’s tranquil retreat that’s Germany’s answer to the Norfolk Broads

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Most people, if they think of it at all, regard the Spree as an urban waterway, the river that runs through the centre of Berlin. But there’s much more to it than that. About 50 miles (80km) south of the capital, it splits into a network of rivers and shallow channels known as the Spreewald, a Unesco Biosphere Reserve that’s Germany’s answer to the Norfolk Broads.

It’s a beautiful area, and ridiculously easy to access, either by adding a couple of days onto a Berlin break, or, for old Berlin hands, by making a special trip. April and May are – perhaps surprisingly – the driest months, although summer also has relatively modest rainfall and reliably warm weather, making the Spreewald a pleasant alternative to scorching southern Europe.

A generation ago, this area was marooned in the East German province of Brandenburg, inaccessible to westerners, and it still feels somewhat off the beaten track for international tourists. The vast majority of visitors – 731,000 of 780,000 in 2025 – are German, with the rest mostly from Poland, Denmark or the Netherlands, and just 2,272 from the UK. Few people speak English. Many of the local people are Sorbians, a West Slavic minority, and road signs are bilingual.

Restaurants, such as Wotschofska, tend to close early and only take cash (Photo: Bildagentur-online/Schoening/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Restaurants, such as Wotschofska, tend to close early and only take cash (Photo: Bildagentur Online/Schoening/Universal Images Group)

There’s an old-fashioned quality to the tourism experience that’s refreshing. Restaurants close early – pretty much everything is shut by 9pm – and many places still only take cash. While accessible, the waterways are run with a respect for nature, with very few motor-driven craft and nothing allowed on the water after 6pm.

I stayed in the pretty town of Lübbenau, which is probably the best base for the region, not least because it’s easy to get to from Berlin airport – just a 45-minute train ride (or an hour from the city centre).

Like much of the Spreewald, though, Lübbenau feels a million miles away from the capital. The “altstadt” (old town) centres around a triangular marketplace scattered with café tables, and at the harbour area on Damstrasse, chaps in nautical caps stand around ­waiting for their boat trip groups to arrive.

Boats are the best way to get around the Lubbenau/Lehde area (Photo: ewg3D/Getty Images)
Boats are the best way to get around the Lubbenau/Lehde area (Photo: ewg3D/Getty)

So far, so Norfolk Broads. The tour boats, though, aren’t ­gas-guzzling monsters but traditional flat-bottomed punts that have been ferrying visitors around these waterways for a century, with quaint benches and tables decorated with flowers, and blankets to stop anyone catching a chill.

Preferring to travel under my own steam, I hired a kayak and set off to explore. I was given a decent map, and intersections are well labelled, making it all very safe and hard to get lost. Like most people, I headed straight for the nearby village of Lehde, just a short paddle away, an almost impossibly pretty place of wooden footbridges.

It’s home to the popular Spreewald Freiland museum, an open-air collection of rural Sorbian buildings, with displays on the Sorbian people and their predilection for gherkins – an all-pervasive local speciality with an EU Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).

To really experience the beauty of the Spreewald, though, I had to strike out beyond Lehde. The intricate network of small channels offers the chance to seek out peace and nature – beavers and otters are common, with early morning and late afternoon (before the 6pm curfew) the best times for sightings.

Taking it slowly means you may spot local wildlife such as beavers (Photo: Malorny/Getty Images)
Taking it slowly means you may spot local wildlife such as beavers (Photo: Malorny/Getty)

I spotted a beaver’s snout poking out of the reeds and was amazed to see a tawny owl hunting in the trees and a stork flying overhead. It’s also not unusual to see kingfishers or sea eagles.
It’s hard to overstate the sheer restfulness of paddling these tranquil and frankly gorgeous waterways.

Birdsong was almost constant, massive alders and poplars towered overhead, vivid yellow butterflies fluttered above the reeds, and the only other sound was the gentle swish of my paddle in the water. My sole source of stress was the process of getting in and out of the kayak – something it’s almost impossible to do with any dignity.

I saw practically nobody between the major centres, and in any case, there were few of those. I was able to paddle as far as the village of Leipe – a huddle of rustic houses set on a river island. Accessing it by the water involves navigating a lock – not difficult, I was assured – but, not wanting to risk it, I chose instead to moor up and saunter in on foot.

Gherkins are ubiquitous in the region (Photo: Martin Dunford)
Gherkins are ubiquitous in the region (Photo: Martin Dunford)

The Spreewald isn’t just for paddlers, either; it’s also great for walkers and cyclists, with lots of thoughtfully planned and easily accessible paths, many of which run alongside the water. The ubiquitous wooden bridges even have grooves in them for taking bikes across more easily.
After a day in the kayak, I worked up an appetite by walking the 40 minutes or so from the centre of Lübbenau to the Wotschofska riverside beer garden, which has been serving Spreewald specialities for 100 years.

There were gherkins, of course, but also river fish like perch-pike, and sahne-quark – a creamy cheese served with onions, boiled potatoes and another local favourite: linseed oil, used only for oiling cricket bats and furniture in England. For dessert: delicious, thick, sweet pancakes known as plinsen.
After two days, returning to the city felt like a bit of a wrench. I would have been happy to linger a little longer, paddling, walking, cycling and eating – all before 9pm, of course.

The writer was a guest of the German National Tourist Board and Spreewald Tourism

Trump’s military cheerleader who is learning about war the hard way

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Welcome to Power Players, The i Paper’s opinion series in which our writers and experts take an in-depth look at the key figures in American politics as the US reshapes itself and the world.
• The most powerful woman in the world you’ve never heard of
• The ‘swamp creature’ eclipsing JD Vance in the race to succeed Trump
• The white nationalist at the heart of the Trump machine
• The greatest hope of the Trump resistance is a 34-year-old immigrant
• The 28-year-old Trump attack dog ripping up the Washington playbook
• The ‘pro-white nationalist’ whose power over Trump grows every day

President Donald Trump has never made a secret of his all-purpose contempt for rules-based order, both at home in America and abroad. Rules, he believes, are for betas, pencil-pushers, and nerds – tools for the weak to try to neuter the strong. And in his second term, Trump has found the perfect dance partner to brand this philosophy into the US military: “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth.

And as the President has jettisoned campaign-trail commitments to avoid foreign entanglements in favour of more and more reckless and destabilising military actions, Hegseth’s implementation of that philosophy has become a growing danger to the entire world.

From the moment Trump tapped him for the top post at the Department of Defence – or, as his administration would soon take to calling it, the Department of War – Hegseth has been among the most controversial members of his retinue. A combat veteran, conservative activist, and former Fox News personality, Hegseth faced a bevy of serious accusations during his confirmation process: of sexual assault, of alcohol abuse, and of mismanaging funds at the veterans charities he once helmed. (Hegseth denied all these.) Less explosively, but just as importantly, Hegseth seemed to lack the sort of high-level managerial experience required to competently oversee America’s sprawling military bureaucracies.

But Trump was unconcerned. He liked what he’d seen in Hegseth, both as a TV personality and as an activist he’d worked with during his first term. He’d been gratified by Hegseth’s bulldog Fox News defences of his work as President—and just as importantly, by Hegseth’s seething critiques of Trump’s liberal foes. And Hegseth had impressed Trump with his arguments that America put too many “woke” restraints on its guys with guns; his lobbying helped convince Trump to pardon several American soldiers who had been credibly accused of war crimes.

This was what Hegseth was promising to bring to the military in Trump 2.0: a hard-charging, explicitly Maga-coded contempt for the Biden-era Pentagon status quo specifically and the liberal order in general. With Trump sticking with his controversial nominee and conservative media promising immediate political vengeances against any senator that stood in his way, the Republican Senate dutifully voted to confirm him.

Hegseth courted plenty of controversy in his opening months helming the Pentagon. His paranoia about supposed traitors and leakers in his department led to repeated purges . His hamfisted attempts to root “wokeness” out of the military, including anti-“DEI” scrubs of the curricula of military colleges and military-history databases. These bizarre erasures ranged from the contemptible – the deletion of web pages honouring black and women veterans – to the comical: The scrub also removed references to the aircraft Enola Gay, the worryingly LGBT-friendly plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. And Hegseth’s lackadaisical approach to classified information led to one particularly remarkable scandal after the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine was accidentally added to an extremely sensitive war-planning text chain on the unclassified messaging app Signal.

All the while, Hegseth was taking the war on the press to heights even his boss, the President, had stopped short of. After a series of preliminary press restrictions – evicting mainstream outlets from dedicated workspaces, declaring Pentagon hallways off-limits to media without a comms-shop escort – he dropped the hammer in September, demanding reporters sign a policy pledging not to solicit unauthorised information from military sources. When the vast majority of military reporters refused, Hegseth yanked their press badges; today, he gives briefings to a new-look Potemkin press corps made up largely of Maga influencers.

If Trump had stuck to his campaign-trail promises about retooling America away from foreign conflicts to focus on problems at home, this sort of thing might have remained the extent of Hegseth’s programme. But Trump spent 2025 getting more comfortable with throwing America’s military weight around – bombing nuclear facilities in Iran, blowing up alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, then staging an operation to kidnap the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Through it all, Hegseth was his point man and chief cheerleader. Each operation in turn, he insisted, was the result of unleashing America’s military to flex its muscles without second-guessing, hand-wringing, or apology — the sort of thing other presidents had refrained from, not because they thought the country would be better off, but because they had simply been too lily-livered to chance it.

“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy,” Hegseth said in an unusual speech to assembled military brass at the Pentagon last September. “We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralise, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.”

Instead, however, the war secretary seems determined to take away a different lesson: that the real problem is America’s allies, who themselves proved too cowardly to put their shoulder to the problem of Iran alongside him. In Hegseth’s brain, the de-woked and mighty US military can never fail – it can only be failed.

At the same time, Hegseth always made sure to reassure the President’s more war-averse supporters that this administration would not repeat the forever-war mistakes of conflicts past, which he always characterised as the result of too much pompous liberal do-goodery. Trump and Hegseth represented a different kind of war, one that was overwhelming, unapologetic, and above all, limited: We went in, we killed whoever needed killing, and we got back out again.

Hegseth was certainly correct about one thing: Other White Houses would certainly have blanched at, for instance, his repeated bombardment of alleged Caribbean drug boats.

Still, the strikes on Iran’s nukes last summer and the operation to capture Maduro both went off without a hitch –which, along with Hegseth’s rhetoric about unleashing America’s warfighters, further buttressed Trump’s feeling that he could move with impunity to achieve his foreign policy aims.

Only recently did Trump and Hegseth’s shared faith in the unstoppable nature of de-wokified US hard power finally get a reality check. In February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to the White House to pitch Trump on an audacious, risky plan: a sudden decapitation strike against Iran’s clerical regime. It was exactly the kind of thing that risked the sort of lengthy entanglement Trump had long railed against – but then again, hadn’t he been getting away with this sort of thing lately?

As he later told it, Trump turned to Hegseth, saying, “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up”. “You said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Ever since, Hegseth has been experiencing an object lesson in the limits of what can be done with hard power — woke or un-woke — alone. In the opening salvos of the two-month war in Iran, America quickly achieved many of its military aims, taking out many of the country’s top leaders and annihilating much of its military infrastructure. (Even here, Hegseth’s shoot first, apologise never approach has had its bitter costs: America’s accidental bombing of an Iranian girls school at the very outset of the Iran conflict, killing more than a 100 innocents, sparked international reproaches and may have helped Iran’s tottering regime shore up its domestic support.)

And yet many of the war’s other aims remain frustratingly out of reach. Iran’s clerical regime, though bloodied, has not toppled, and no amount of shock-and-awe bombardment has proven sufficient to shake them loose from their determination to retain their nuclear enrichment programme. Meanwhile, Iran has succeeded in placing an economic chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz that has threatened to bring the entire global economy to its knees.

How that crisis will be resolved – whether it will be resolved – remains an open question. In the meantime, one might hope Hegseth would take away some lessons. That sometimes there are other obstacles to American aims than American squeamishness, perhaps – or that hubris about the unstoppable power of American might was exactly what enmeshed America in so many lengthy conflicts over the years in the first place.