The government has promised to introduce curbs on social media use as soon as its consultation concludes this summer. Measures being considered include a total ban on under-16s; the restriction of addictive features such as “infinite scrolling”; and a limit on children’s interaction with AI chatbots. “It’s not a question of whether we take further action,” a government source tells The Times, “but what that action is.” Russia’s Wagner Group is pivoting to European sabotage, says the FT. According to Western intelligence officials, Moscow is using former members of the mercenary group to recruit economically vulnerable Europeans to carry out arson attacks and other acts of disruption on Nato soil. Team GB enjoyed a Super Sunday at the Winter Olympics yesterday, scooping two gold medals. Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale stormed to a surprise victory in the mixed snowboard cross, securing Britain’s first ever gold on snow, before Tabitha Stoecker and Matt Weston (pictured below) added a second in the mixed team skeleton.

Last week, with his leadership hanging by a thread, Keir Starmer declared how proud he was to have “the most working-class cabinet in the history of this country”. It was the latest example, says Matthew Parris in The Times, of this government’s “increasingly conspicuous weaponising of class”. It started gently, with ministers euphemistically talking of “working people” and “working families”. Yet which adults don’t work in Britain? Pensioners? Students? The sick, the disabled, the unemployed? Were these the groups Labour meant to snub? Of course not. We knew what they meant. Now, with “little else to trumpet” and firmly in hock to the left of the Labour Party, Starmer and co are saying the quiet part out loud.

You might ask what’s wrong with politicians trying to pitch their appeal to the “broad majority”. But the use of words like “working” and “ordinary” – another popular euphemism – is designed not to broaden Labour’s appeal but to narrow it. The whole point of this language is the “implicit reminder of whom it excludes”. Rachel Reeves is about the only person left who is permitted to “whisper encouragement” to those paying the taxes that fund Labour’s much sought-after “rebalancing”. Politically, this is a self-defeating strategy. The wealth creators are only reminded of their exclusion, while the millions of voters who have been lumped together and patronised as “ordinary” will instinctively think the government must be talking about someone else. (There’s a reason “proletariat” will never be a term of endearment.) And morally, it’s beyond the pale. Class antagonism has always been a “nasty element” in Britain’s cultural mix. Shame on our “desperate” government for fanning the flames in a bid to “save their own skins”.

👏❌ I recently remarked to a friend from a “grim northern council estate” that people there must be proud of their “class warrior” Angela Rayner. “You’re so wrong,” he said. “They’ll think her rude and ignorant: an insult to her origins; and that she should behave with the dignity her new position calls for. It’s north London Labour voters who’ll admire her as some kind of mouthy mascot for their inclusiveness.”