Keir Starmer has condemned the ban on supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv football club attending their Europa League match against Aston Villa next month. Ministers are exploring how they can overturn the decision, which was made by Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group after West Midlands police said allowing fans of the Israeli club to attend would be “high-risk”. Donald Trump says he will meet Vladimir Putin in Budapest within the next two weeks to “bring this inglorious war between Russia and Ukraine to an end”. Following a “lengthy” phone call between the two leaders yesterday, the US president also said that American and Russian officials would reconvene for “high-level” talks next week. An almshouse in Bermondsey designed to combat loneliness in older people has won this year’s Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize. The 59-flat complex has communal facilities, including a roof garden, courtyard and community kitchen, which the award’s judges said “sets an ambitious standard for social housing among older people”.

China’s spying is far more serious than people realise

Perhaps the most serious outcome of the “China spying” scandal, says Tim Shipman in The Spectator, is that it shines a light on an embarrassing truth: Britain has been thoroughly and repeatedly penetrated by foreign intelligence. High-level government sources tell me far worse scandals have been hushed up in recent years. One “very serious” case, in which Russia hacked the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street, was suppressed to “avoid embarrassing a former Prime Minister”. The most catastrophic breach came when the Chinese bought a company that controlled a data hub used by Whitehall departments to exchange information, including on highly classified projects, handing Beijing a “goldmine” of secrets. Dominic Cummings recently described the moment, in 2020, when Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson were told about this “truly amazing penetration of critical infrastructure”: the two most powerful men in Britain stared in “open-mouthed amazement” and mouthed “what the fuck”.

None of this should be a surprise. China has long been a “kleptomaniac about information”, constantly probing for chinks in Britain’s defences. In terms of cyber, says one source in the security world, “we know they’re definitely trying to pre-deploy so they can shut down systems when the day comes”. Liz Truss and Johnson were both told, when prime minister, that their phones were being targeted. It’s no surprise the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are all “pissed off” with Keir Starmer over the impression that he would rather cosy up to Beijing than take Britain’s security seriously. Even more incredulous are the China hawks in America, who have long argued that the UK underestimates the Chinese threat. The PM has done nothing to disabuse them.