Counter-terrorism police are investigating whether Iran was behind a foiled bomb plot at RAF Fairford in the early hours of Sunday morning. A farmer returning late from a party alerted police after seeing three vans and a group of masked men around 400 metres from the Gloucestershire airbase. Five UK nationals were arrested on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offences, and 85 nearby homes were evacuated while bomb disposal robots examined the vehicles. John Healey says Britain is about to enter a “new age of industrialisation”, with the announcement of a £6bn plan to build three new floating docks at the Royal Navy’s submarine base on the Clyde in Scotland. Speaking at the Labour conference in Liverpool, the Chancellor promised that the work would be carried out by British firms as part of Andy Burnham’s efforts to generate jobs and growth at home. An 11-year-old British chess prodigy is the youngest player in history to become a female grandmaster. Bodhana Sivanandan, from northwest London, secured the title while representing England at the 46th Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan last week.

Tony Blair’s forceful call for Britain to rejoin the EU is “both incisive and welcome”, says The Independent. The former prime minister’s stance is simple. It doesn’t matter that the wounds of the 2016 referendum are “still raw”. All that matters is the answer to a simple question: “Is it worth it?” And the answer is, clearly, yes. Britain is currently missing out on an estimated £100bn in lost economic output and £40bn in lost tax revenues, every single year, because of Brexit. The world has turned more protectionist, dashing Brexiteer dreams of a “swashbuckling” Britain striking lucrative free trade deals around the globe. The need for collective European security – an afterthought in 2016 – is now paramount. Blair is right. “Times change.”

They certainly do, says Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail, which is why rejoining would be a disaster. In every year bar one since the pandemic, the UK has outperformed the EU’s three biggest economies – Germany, France and Italy – as well as the bloc as a whole. “So much for EU membership being the magic elixir to stimulate growth.” It’s the same with politics. A decade ago, Europe’s big three were led by centrists: Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Matteo Renzi. Today, the populist right is on the march across Europe, with Giorgia Meloni on course for re-election in Italy, the AfD ascendant in Germany and Marine Le Pen the favourite to be France’s next president. This insurgency has already changed the outlook of the EU – only four of its 27 commissioners are on the left – and that will accelerate as more of the bloc’s “all-powerful” judges are appointed. Blair says Britain should rejoin only if the EU “changes significantly”. Who does he think is going to spearhead that reform? There were good arguments for voting to remain in 2016. “There are no good arguments for rejoining.”

🙉 📣 Blair seems “chronically unaware” that he is an increasingly bad messenger for the policies he wants to push, says James Ball in The i Paper. Most millennials, who are becoming Labour’s core constituency, remember him primarily for Iraq. That unpopular image is only worsened by his constant desire to cosy up to oligarchs and billionaires. His most useful intervention on most of the causes he supports “would be to stay out of them”.