The first British repatriation flight failed to take off from Oman last night due to a technical fault, in what one passenger described as a “farce”. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said yesterday that the US was “just getting started” after one of its submarines sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, the first confirmed sinking of an enemy vessel by a submarine since the Falklands War. The husband of a sitting Labour MP is one of three people arrested yesterday on suspicion of spying for China. Former Labour adviser David Taylor, who is married to East Kilbride and Strathaven MP Joani Reid, is being questioned alongside two other suspects, also understood to be former Labour advisers, on allegations that they assisted Beijing’s intelligence service. Gen Zs have discovered a love of booze now that they’re out of their teenage years, challenging their reputation as “generation sensible”, says The Guardian. Almost 70% of 23-year-olds say they’ve gone on a proper bender in the past year, while nearly a third now do so at least once a month. About time.

The attorney-general is one of the “most important appointments a prime minister makes”, says Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. Under the so-called Shawcross principle, named after the Clement Attlee appointee who first asserted the role’s independence in 1951, the AG is expected to provide No 10 with legal advice free from political pressure – and the PM is obliged to take that advice. Hence Boris Johnson replaced blue-chip barrister Geoffrey Cox with Suella Braverman, who was “less concerned with the good opinion of the legal community”, and Rishi Sunak chose the “moderate and conventional” Victoria Prentis. Keir Starmer, of course, chose his old friend and fellow human rights lawyer Richard Hermer, known for his “rigorous interpretations of our international obligations”.

Hermer’s position on the legality of Britain allowing the US to use our bases to attack Iran is probably the mainstream one, “but it is certainly not the only one”. Can it really contravene international law to act against a regime that wages war by proxy all over the Middle East, sponsors terrorist atrocities all over the world and is building a ballistic missile and nuclear capacity so it can bring death and annihilation to other nations? Is it a sane law that allows action only after such evils have been committed, and after such capacities have been built? One of Starmer’s core diplomatic strategies has been to woo Donald Trump – that is toast. Morally, our position makes little sense: the cheers ring out from Tehran apartment blocks, and in Westminster all you hear is “humming and hawing”. We are letting down our allies, trashing the special relationship and abandoning the people of Iran. “But never mind, at least we can justify our position legally.”

🤔🙅 Starmer was initially in favour of allowing the US to use Diego Garcia to counter Iranian retaliation, says Tim Shipman in The Spectator. Sources say the PM argued as much at a National Security Council meeting last Friday, but he was blocked by the likes of Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper, who questioned not only the legality but also whether a positive relationship with the US was a “good thing”. Starmer backed down, only to reverse his decision two days later in part because of the “undiluted fury” of Middle Eastern allies. Says one former minister: “The Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and even the Canadians are all asking, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Whose side are you on?’”

The operation to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the culmination of an extraordinary intelligence campaign, says the FT. The Israelis hacked into nearly all of Tehran’s traffic cameras years ago, and had been watching the bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials. When they discovered where and when the Supreme Leader would be meeting top officials last Saturday, Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump and the CIA corroborated the information with a human source. On the day itself, the Israelis were able to disrupt “single components” in around a dozen nearby mobile phone towers, so that no one would be able to call and warn Khamenei’s security detail.

Pricey patisserie is all the rage, says Sammy Gecsoyler in The Guardian. In London you can pay a whopping £12.90 for a hazelnut pastry at Copains in Covent Garden, £12 for a croissant topped with gold leaf in Harrods and a frankly absurd £25 for a hazelnut cookie at The Berkeley in Knightsbridge. Outside the capital, Pump Street Bakery in Orford, Suffolk, caused a “festive furore” when it charged £25 for six mince pies. Though many will balk at the prices, it’s part of a pleasing trend: the number of independent bakeries in the UK has risen by 34% in the past five years.

Nigel Farage was always different, says Aaron Bastani in UnHerd. For over a decade he has shown himself to be not only an outstanding campaigner, but also a man “having a bloody good time”. Whether he was “threatening to blow the bloody doors off” with Brexit or teasing Russell Brand on Question Time, you got the feeling “Nige could spend his life arguing with a smile on his face”. With that bombastic style, pint in hand, Farage has contributed to a fundamental re-ordering of British politics. What’s odd is that just as his star is at its zenith, Farage appears to be losing his deepest connection to the national psyche: “merriment”.

As Reform UK has expanded, its political brand – conviviality and down-the-pub connection to actual voters – has gradually been replaced with something else: “whingeing”. If anything, Matt Goodwin’s failed tilt at the Gorton and Denton by-election was defined by a “complaining doomerism” that didn’t convey a single positive thing about the seat, let alone the country. If you’re trying to win over voters who couldn’t name the home secretary, you need to offer something hopeful. Goodwin has taken his defeat in such poor spirit his critics have dubbed him Matt Badloss, which is doubly stupid given his 29% vote share was a pretty decent showing for candidate and party. What won it for the Greens was that their candidate, Hannah Spencer, was absolutely full of beans, and campaigned not on too-online apocalyptic megatrends but on clamping down on fly-tipping and sprucing up the high street. Whether you blame the influx of veteran Tories, Goodwin’s personal oddness or the outsourcing of strategy to consultants, it’s clear Reform is losing its mojo.

This video of the Bee Gees classic Stayin’ Alive reimagined as a 16th-century madrigal has racked up more than 600,000 views on YouTube. To have a listen – and enjoy similar renaissance-style reworkings of modern classics including Let It Be, Sweet Caroline and Mambo No 5 – click here.

The architects of the Iraq War were even more hubristic than people realise, says George Packer in The Atlantic. A few weeks after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, George W Bush met Jay Garner, the newly appointed American proconsul to Iraq, in the Oval Office. Even though the Middle Eastern country was already descending into chaos, the two men spent 45 minutes exchanging congratulations for a mission accomplished. When they were finished, Bush asked the retired general: “You want to do Iran for the next one?” Garner replied: “No, sir, me and the boys are holding out for Cuba.”

It’s Texan firefighters rescuing two people whose hot air balloon had snagged a communications tower 900ft in the air, says Adeel Hassan in The New York Times. The 14-man crew took an hour to scale the structure’s 12-inch-wide ladder, “saying prayers aloud”. They attached harnesses to the balloonists, set up what looked like “the world’s shortest – but scariest – zip line” to the basket, and winched the pair the 10 or 12 feet back to the tower, “with nothing but air below them”. Nearly 100 people gathered to watch the dramatic rescue from below, “some in lawn chairs”. See the (terrifying) footage for yourself here.