Robert Jenrick says the Conservative Party “broke Britain”. Speaking alongside Nigel Farage after defecting to Reform UK, the former shadow justice secretary called the party he spent over a decade working for “rotten”, “dishonest” and “no longer fit for purpose”. Kemi Badenoch, who sacked Jenrick yesterday, says her party is “stronger” without him. Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado presented her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump during a meeting at the White House yesterday, saying it recognised the US president’s commitment to her country’s freedom. Trump called it a “wonderful gesture of mutual respect” but refused to endorse her as the country’s new leader. Britain is bringing back “Dad’s Army”, says the Daily Star, with the Ministry of Defence planning to raise the age limit for the strategic reserves from 55 to 65. Under the proposals, aimed at preparing the country for war, former soldiers will also remain on call for an extra decade.

Nigel Farage was cock-a-hoop over Robert Jenrick’s defection yesterday, says Stephen Pollard in The Spectator. The two men had been in talks since September – and apparently got serious last month over a breakfast at the private members’ club 5 Hertford Street and a dinner in parliament – but nobody expected a deal before the May elections. Then Kemi Badenoch handed him over on a plate. Yet I wonder how much the Reform UK leader should be celebrating. Jenrick has spent the past few years telling anyone who’d listen why he would never join the party and how vile he finds Farage. Many Reform members were already complaining that the defection of disgraced former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was making them simply the “Tories 2.0, ragtag edition”. Among senior party figures like Zia Yusuf and Sarah Pochin, the feeling towards their new recruit is “pure hate”. As one party member texted to me yesterday: “I joined Reform to get away from careerist shits like Jenrick. He is everything we shouldn’t be.”

Kemi Badenoch comes out of all this with her standing much improved, says Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph. There have long been suspicions in Tory HQ about Jenrick, particularly since a mole on his team revealed the secret December meetings with Farage. Suspicions were raised further by his behaviour at a recent shadow cabinet away day, including profuse note-taking about Tory strategy and parroting Reform’s lines on immigration and “broken” Britain. (One Nation stalwarts Jesse Norman and James Cleverly “rolled their eyes”.) Just last week, Jenrick said he would “never, ever” leave the Conservatives. Now, he’s been “unmasked as a traitor”. As Badenoch told GB News yesterday: “All I would say to Nigel is, Rob’s not my problem any more, he’s your problem.”

🔪🤬 I have a great deal of personal sympathy with the position Jenrick finds himself in, said Michael Gove on the Today programme this morning. But I would offer a cautionary tale: me. In 2016, when I withdrew my support for Boris Johnson’s leadership bid and launched my own campaign, I thought – and still think – what I was doing was “the right thing”. But reasons didn’t matter. In the eyes of most people then, and many to this day, “the overall impression was one of treachery”.

The hi-tech capture of Nicolás Maduro is a reminder of just how far America’s “extraordinary technological armoury” has come, says Christian Ruth in Engelsberg Ideas. When the Panamanian leader Manuel Noreiga was toppled 36 years ago, American forces had to chase him down after he initially evaded them and then play rock music at high volume outside the Vatican Embassy where he had holed up until he surrendered. During the numerous failed attempts by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro, US operatives tried everything from poisoned swimsuits to explosives hidden in seashells and cigars.

Frost and Furious is a blissfully simple 2D game, says Matt Muir in Web Curios, where you drive through the mountains in an overpowered off-road vehicle trying not to crash. Extra points for wheelies, flips and so on. “Very, very more-ish.” Give it a go here.

Notable among the slogans being chanted by the protesters flooding the streets of Iran is this one, says Bret Stephens in The New York Times: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran.” More than a mere repudiation of the regime’s foreign policy, this is a reminder that “anti-Semitism has a way of eventually destroying the anti-Semite”. Ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the regime has had a “singular obsession with Jews” – from which the suppurating hatred of Israel is “downstream”. Hence not only their support for Hamas and Hezbollah, but also their long-range anti-Semitic terrorist attacks like the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires.

All this might make sense if Iran and Israel had “ancient grievances” or at least territorial disputes. “There are none.” Jews have owed a debt to Persians ever since Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian Captivity 2,564 years ago and restored Jews to Zion. More recently, Iran was among the very first majority-Muslim states to recognise Israel, and Tehran and Jerusalem were close when the Shah was in power. Even today, ordinary Iranians are markedly less anti-Semitic than others in the Middle East. The regime’s obsession is purely a function of Islamist ideology. The Ayatollah offered Iranians a pathetic $7 monthly stipend amid skyrocketing inflation and a collapsing currency, while somehow finding a spare $1bn to help Hezbollah rebuild its military capabilities and refusing to make concessions over its nuclear facilities, leading to European sanctions that have further crippled the economy. Ordinary Iranians aren’t just revolting against economic mismanagement and corruption. They’re trying to overthrow a regime that would rather pursue a perpetual jihad against the Zionist enemy than feed its own people.

🇮🇱🇮🇷 Shortly after the October 7 massacres, says Florit Shoihet in The Spectator, a few thousand Israelis and Jews “stood lonely in Parliament Square”, clutching photos of hostages. We were mostly ignored, until a group of Iranians joined us, waving a pre-revolutionary Iranian flag with the symbol of a lion, sword and rising sun. That support from the Iranian diaspora – at a time when much of the world had little sympathy for Israel – meant a lot to British Jews and Israelis. In recent days, it has been our honour to return the favour, bolstering numbers and waving Israeli flags at demonstrations in London in support of the brave protestors in Iran.

Donald Trump responded to a heckler in Michigan this week by mouthing “fuck you” at the man, twice, before nonchalantly giving him the middle finger. This sort of behaviour is clearly not “presidential”, says Simon Kelner in The i Paper. But it’s also, in some circumstances, enormously advantageous. Europe’s response to the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown has been typically lame: the EU meekly urged Tehran to “adhere to Iran’s international obligations”. Trump, by contrast, gave the diplomatic equivalent of the middle finger, imploring “Iranian Patriots” to “KEEP PROTESTING” and threatening the mullahs with “very strong action” if they began executing protesters. And as far as we know, it did the trick. Sometimes a blunt instrument is exactly what you need.

The UK government is under pressure to ban smartphones from school premises, says Ben Walker in The New Statesman. It would be enormously popular – some 79% of Britons back the plan – and most would like to go further: almost three quarters of the country want to ban social media for under-16s. Particularly striking is that the cohort most strongly in favour, and who take the dimmest view of the social and psychological harm of social media, is 25-49-year-olds. The internet was “toxifying for us”, millennials are saying. And we’re not letting younger generations make the same mistake.

It’s Jordan Smith, says BBC Sport, an amateur tennis player who beat world number two Jannik Sinner to win a million aussie dollars (about £500,000) at the Australian Open’s Million Dollar One Point Slam. The innovative format involves a pool of 48 male and female players, including 24 top professionals, who play rock-paper-scissors to decide who serves, and then play a single point, with the winner advancing through a knockout system. The 29-year-old Australian didn’t hit a ball against Sinner – pros only get one serve, and Sinner fluffed his. Nice work if you can get it.