Wes Streeting has ordered an independent review of mental health diagnoses over concerns about the sharp rise in the number of people claiming sickness benefits because of mental illness, autism and ADHD. The review will ask whether normal feelings are being “overpathologised” and examine how social media, smartphones and the cost of living have contributed to the increase. Reform UK has received a record £9m donation from billionaire businessman Christopher Harborne, the biggest ever single donation to a UK political party by a living donor. The whopping wodge accounts for almost all of the £10.3m received in cash donations by Nigel Farage’s party in the third quarter of this year, compared to £4.5m for the Tories and a measly £1.9m for Labour. The King hosted German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier for a state banquet at Windsor Castle last night. The 150 guests, including celebrities with German ties such as model Claudia Schiffer, Strictly Come Dancing judge Motsi Mabuse and the Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler, drank a black forest gateau cocktail and ate hot smoked trout, Windsor partridge supreme and baked alaska. Lecker.

Why Labour will campaign to reverse Brexit

At the next election, says Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, “Labour will campaign to overturn Brexit”. The economic and political logic is so overwhelming that the only thing that could foil this prediction is Keir Starmer’s uncanny ability to “defy overwhelming logic”. With its Budget last week, the government made clear its preference for European-style higher taxes and higher welfare spending. Whatever you think of that approach, it’s the precise opposite of the one thing that could make Brexit work – upending our present system to become “nimble and competitive and flexible and cheap to do business here”. Plus, of course, Labour doesn’t believe in Brexit. “It thinks Brexit was and is stupid.” So do many of the voters Labour could actually win over.

Just one in three now thinks Brexit was a good idea, says Janan Ganesh in the FT. Every type of rapprochement with the EU – rejoining the customs union, or the single market, or the Union itself – is more popular than the status quo. If Labour does change its tune and pledge to rejoin the customs union, say, the Tories and Reform would obviously cry “betrayal”. Many voters would agree; another chunk wouldn’t want to “pick at that huge scab”. But on current evidence, and after a few more years of “demographic churn”, it’s entirely plausible that an electoral plurality would vote for Labour on that basis. Whatever happens, the current arrangement, in which Brits agree to avoid the subject, “like a Christmas dinner with 69 million relatives”, can’t last. At some point the right will pay for its role in what voters have decided was a “national mistake”.

As the threat of Russia grows, many are willing the EU to become a bigger geopolitical player, says Marc Champion in Bloomberg. But projecting hard power “isn’t in the bloc’s DNA”. After two “cataclysmic” world wars, the Europeans worked extremely hard to ensure they would never go to war against each other – and largely ignored threats from outside. When the EEC’s Council of Ministers met at the height of the 1962 missile crisis, for example, the “imminent threat of nuclear Armageddon” wasn’t even on the agenda. Instead, the assembled officials discussed such vital budgetary issues as “exemptions from Article 17 of Regulation 19 on the internal trade in grain”.

Wherever you go in Ukraine, says The New York Times, “army recruitment ads are impossible to miss”. Individual units started rolling them out in 2023, in the hope of attracting new fighters rather than relying on conscription. And the way the ads have evolved reveals a lot about the country’s shifting moods. They initially portrayed the Russians as zombies or orcs, before going big on non-combat roles with images of men wielding chainsaws. Later ads emphasised decent pay and a happy professional life – peaking with an image of a drone operator on a beach – before pivoting to how cool and sexy the war was, how proud it would make your mum, and, most recently, soldiers cuddling babies and dogs.

Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco

It wasn’t long ago, says Bobby Ghosh in Foreign Policy, that Silicon Valley was “America’s greatest export”. The founders of American tech firms were hailed as the “great disruptors” – optimist engineers who would remake sclerotic political systems and fix the world’s problems. Delegations from the likes of Beijing and Berlin flew to Palo Alto to ask the same question: “How do we replicate this?” That faith has collapsed with “stunning speed”. In the US, negative views of tech firms surged from 33% in 2019 to 45% by 2021, with those holding “very negative” views doubling from 10% to 22%.

It’s not just Americans who feel this way. In a recent survey of 14,000 consumers in 14 countries, not one category in the tech sector achieved more than 50% approval when people were asked who they trusted with their personal data. Social media, the worst performer, hit just 4%. This isn’t merely a commercial problem. Tech has long been a pillar of US soft power, exporting American values such as free speech, privacy and “innovation unbounded by legacy thinking”. Now many countries are finding it more trouble than it’s worth. The EU has fined Apple €500m and Meta €200m under new rules drawn up because America was failing to regulate its data giants. Facebook was used to incite genocide in Myanmar; WhatsApp is a vector for deadly misinformation in India; YouTube has radicalised kids from Brazil to Germany. And just as Big Tobacco hid the truth about lung cancer from customers, Meta has long known what Facebook does to teen mental health and how Instagram’s algorithm targets vulnerable girls. Big Tech has gone from global inspiration to geopolitical liability.

The media has been full of stories about smoking being cool again, say Laura Cooper and Terell Wright in The Wall Street Journal. In her 2025 single Headphones On, Addison Rae sings about needing “a cigarette to make me feel better”; Sabrina Carpenter was recently photographed wearing a corset made of Marlboro Gold packets. This isn’t just anecdotal: in Hollywood, around half of all movies released last year feature smoking, up ten percentage points on the previous year.

A strange black mould has been discovered at Chernobyl that appears to “eat” radiation, says Jasmine Laws in Newsweek. The freaky fungus was found to be not only surviving in the highly radioactive ruins of the nuclear disaster, but thriving, and even “growing towards radioactive particles” the same way plants reach for sunlight. Researchers determined that the ancient mould uses the radiation as an energy source, an ability that may have evolved during a breakdown in the planet’s magnetic shield some 42,000 years ago. They are now looking into whether the fungi can be repurposed to protect astronauts from radiation or even make space batteries.

It’s Golden Balls, says Jessica Martin in Wigan Today, a 20ft statue of a naked Roman gladiator that has reappeared in Wigan three years after being hidden away over complaints it was too explicit. The tackle-out totem, which was used to advertise the 2000 Russell Crowe film Gladiator, stood outside a local antique shop for several years before a few po-faced locals kicked up a fuss. Shop owner Grant Adamson says he has re-erected the bare bronze to bring “Christmas cheer” to the town. “People liked him,” explains the 60-year-old antiquary. “He was a bit of fun, you know?”