Britain, France and Canada have condemned Israel’s “egregious actions” in Gaza and threatened Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with sanctions unless they lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and stop military expansion. Yesterday just nine food lorries were allowed into the strip, down from 600 a day during the ceasefire earlier this year. Vladimir Putin refused Donald Trump’s proposed 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine during a two-hour phone call with the US president yesterday. The Russian leader told reporters he was prepared to work with Kyiv on drafting a memorandum for future peace talks, says The Guardian, but suggested his “maximalist objectives” in the war were unchanged. The Conservatives have fallen behind the Liberal Democrats for the first time in more than six years. A YouGov poll found that the Tories had dropped into fourth place, on 16%, behind Reform UK, Labour and the Lib Dems, and that a third of Tory voters at the last election now intend to vote for Nigel Farage’s party.

Has Starmer been “stitched up like a kipper”?

At yesterday’s press conference announcing the EU-UK “reset” deal, Keir Starmer was asked whether he’d been “stitched up like a kipper”. Alas, even that would be an understatement, says Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. In exchange for a few measly concessions – reduced border checks on agricultural exports to the EU, access to the bloc’s €150bn defence procurement fund – Starmer granted Europe’s fishing boats access to UK waters for 12 more years, and agreed to automatically follow EU rules on plant and animal products. So we’ve essentially gone back to paying Brussels for the privilege of following its rules. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Starmer adores the EU and would “gladly feed Captain Birdseye to the sharks if it got us back in”. We should be thankful he didn’t “throw in the Elgin Marbles and Princess Anne to sweeten the deal”.

These howls of “surrender” are bizarre, says the FT. The much-vaunted benefits of regulatory freedom from Brussels have long proven illusory. And although fishing “looms large in the national psyche”, it accounts for just 0.03% of Britain’s GDP (compared to 2.5% for defence). Yes, it’s “regrettable” that France and other EU countries made the security pact contingent on UK concessions in such a tiny industry. But the sad truth is that the moment we left the EU, Britain became a demandeur in future negotiations. “The smaller party in any trade negotiation always needs the bigger one more than vice versa.” For all the screaming in the right-wing press, the boring truth is that this deal is neither a “massive sellout” nor a “massive deal”. Its importance lies in its symbolism: the first big EU-UK agreement since Brexit is a welcome recognition that “it is in both sides’ interests to work more closely together”.

📉😢 Starmer’s team aren’t concerned about the cries of “Brexit betrayal”, says George Eaton in The New Statesman. Leavers used to be able to claim that the elites were on the wrong side of the people, but that’s no longer the case. Just 30% of voters now think leaving the EU was the right decision, with 64% wanting a closer relationship with Europe and 55% now “outright Rejoiners”.