lundi 3 août 2026

Police numbers face axe

The slow death of the coalition of the willing | Stress, old age or dementia? Here’s how to tell
 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏

Britain’s most popular daily newsletter, read by more than 850,000

Monday, 3 August 2026

Issue No. 526

Good morning.

Britain faces more criminals and fewer police on the streets as a result of Labour’s early release scheme. Police chiefs are warning there will be less capacity for neighbourhood patrols as thousands of serious offenders are set free. Martin Evans, our Crime Editor, reveals plans to expand community sentencing, too.

Elsewhere, Nigel Farage will today pledge that a Reform government would use the Navy to send every small boat back across the Channel. Amy Gibbons, our Political Correspondent, has the story.

Chris Evans, Editor

P.S. Try a whole year of The Telegraph for £19 while our Summer Sale lasts. If you’re already a subscriber make sure you’re logged in to read today’s stories.


 

In today’s edition

The slow death of the coalition of the willing

Thirty best superhero films of all time, ranked

Plus, stress, old age or dementia? Here’s how to tell

Sale ends soon: One year for just £19

Think outside your inbox. Unlock full access to our free-thinking journalism, plus thousands of fun puzzles.

 

Police warn early release will lead to patrol cuts

Martin Evans

Martin Evans

Crime Editor

 

Government plans for the early release of prisoners have come in for intense scrutiny in recent weeks.

However, as ministers prepare to publish details of an urgent review into the scheme, police chiefs are warning that the proposals will significantly affect forces.

Neighbourhood patrols are likely to be cut as chief constables focus resources on managing serious offenders in the community.

Writing in The Telegraph, Assistant Chief Constable Jason Devonport urges the Government to invest in policing and ensure other agencies are sufficiently resourced to prevent reoffending by those who would otherwise be in prison.

He writes: “Every area of policing will be affected by these measures, from call handlers through to sex offender management teams.”

He points out that the Crime and Sentencing Act has already resulted in a crime surge among offenders who were given community sentences rather than locked up.

The Telegraph has discovered that ministers are urgently looking at ways to expand unpaid community work projects to get more criminals cleaning up fly-tipping and vandalism amid widespread criticism of the current soft-touch approach.

Alex Norris, the new Justice Secretary, wants to make community service for offenders tougher and more demanding, in a move he hopes could eventually reduce prison overcrowding by deterring young people from becoming involved in crime.

While police chiefs support the need for action to address the prison overcrowding crisis, they are pressing the Government to ensure resources are available to prevent a crime wave from those who have avoided prison, while ensuring those let out early do not go straight back inside.

Continue reading

 

Reform pledges to use Navy to stop Ceuta-style ‘invasion’

Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, pays an emergency visit to Ceuta

Amy Gibbons

Amy Gibbons

Political Correspondent

 

For years, politicians have argued that there are no easy answers to the small boats crisis.

However, for Reform UK, there is a tried and tested way to defend Britain’s borders.

Today, the party will pledge to call in the Navy as part of the biggest military operation in the English Channel since the Second World War.

Under “Operation Fortress”, migrants attempting the perilous crossing would be stopped at sea and sent back to France or Belgium, with the aim of preventing a single dinghy from touching British shores.

Reform said the shocking scenes in Ceuta last week – where 60,000 migrants from Morocco descended on the tiny Spanish territory in a matter of hours – showed the “urgency” of its plans.

However, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, sought to distance the UK from the crisis in North Africa, insisting it was “trickier” for Britain to clamp down on small boats in the Channel.

Meanwhile, Andy Burnham claimed that “progress” was being made on illegal migration as he highlighted a year-on-year drop in Channel crossings.

The comparison with 2025 suggests he has reason to be optimistic. However, with the latest figures showing a further 2,000 migrants have arrived in small boats since he took over as Prime Minister, Burnham is under mounting pressure to take more drastic action – or hand the baton to Farage.

Continue reading

 

Opinion

Jake Wallis Simons Headshot

Jake Wallis Simons

Congratulations Ireland, you’re no longer Europe’s most ridiculous country

Spain’s socialist PM governs with a brazen hypocrisy that none of his neighbours can match

Continue reading

 
<span style="color:#DE0000;">Matthew Lynn</span> Headshot

Matthew Lynn

BP’s North Sea exit shows Miliband has been a disaster for Britain

Continue reading

 
<span style="color:#DE0000;">Allison Pearson</span> Headshot

Allison Pearson

The school summer holiday should be capped at a month

Continue reading

 

To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here.

In other news

Uefa has threatened legal action against Gianni Infantino over his World Cup sell-off plan and warned him not to destroy any material relating to it. The European federation has also written to several people with links to Donald Trump who were set to benefit from the scheme.

Nigel Farage has prompted speculation that he will make a deal with Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain after pledging to build a “broad coalition” that unites the Right.

Hungary is facing power cuts after the drought that swept across much of Europe forced its only nuclear power plant to shut down. The level of the Danube River, which cools the plant, fell to a record low.

An Afghan man has been arrested in Athens in connection with the death of Elisabeth-Jane Ross, a Scottish woman whose body was found in a suitcase.

A Cambridge professor hailed as a diversity poster boy claimed that he had featured in Seven Up. The inaugural episode was broadcast in 1964, but he was not born until 1985.

Jason Arday became a Cambridge professor aged 37

 

Your essential reads

Coalition of the willing

Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron were the diplomatic double act who unified more than 30 countries to support Ukraine

The slow death of the coalition of the willing

The year is 2027 and Emmanuel Macron is no longer France’s president. His departure from office means the coalition of the willing, which he founded alongside Sir Keir Starmer, will be without its original members. Joe Barnes and James Crisp explore what this could mean for efforts to deploy troops to uphold any ceasefire in Ukraine, and who could fill a leadership vacuum.

Continue reading

 

Nick Johnstone, pictured in his home office in Brighton, says working remotely has damaged his mental health

‘Working from home left me feeling lonely and purposeless’

I thought remote working would change my life for the better, but I’ve lost my sense of identity and miss human interaction, writes Nick Johnstone. Being remote has made my world much smaller. I’m 48, in the peak of midlife male loneliness and feel lost. There’s so much I wish I’d known before quitting office life.

Continue reading

 

‘Should I buy my son’s home so he doesn’t lose it in his divorce?

Watching your child go through a divorce is tough for any parent, and the instinct is to step in and help. This week, Moral Money expert Sam Secomb answers a reader considering using her cash to save her son’s family home. But, as our expert warns, even the best of intentions can cause more issues than they solve.

Continue reading

 

The 30 best superhero films of all time, ranked

From Superman to Spider-Man, Batman to Baymax, these are the 30 greatest superhero films ever made. Our list stretches far beyond capes and comic books, taking in cult classics and unlikely genre-definers. Whether you’re a die-hard fan or a sceptic, Robbie Collin, our critic, might just persuade you to believe in heroes again.

Continue reading

 

Seize the day

Stress, old age or dementia? Here’s how to tell

Illustration

Have you been struggling to focus, misplacing your keys or becoming unusually irritated by everyday frustrations? It’s easy to blame changes in our thoughts, behaviour and feelings on getting older, or the stresses of modern life, and, most of the time, we’re correct. Some behavioural changes also overlap with the earliest signs of dementia, making it difficult to know when they’re worth investigating further. Polly Dunbar speaks to experts about the clues that help distinguish stress and ageing from something more concerning.

For subscribers only

Here is another article that I hope you’ll find useful this morning:

 

CAPTION COMPETITION WITH...

Matt Cartoon
Matt Pritchett

Matt Pritchett

Cartoonist

 

Hello! No new cartoon from me this week as I am away, but congratulations to Mike Garland who came up with my favourite caption for this hosepipe ban rebel. Keep it up, everybody!

P.S. For an inside look at what inspires my weekly cartoons, you can sign up for my personal subscriber-exclusive newsletter here.

 

Your say

Spectacular sardines

Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal reader correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories.

Orlando writes...
Tinned sardines are on a sharp ascent. Long gone are the days when the best they could hope for was a comfortable berth at the back of a store cupboard, where they would patiently remain until the arrival of Armageddon. Today, higher-end varieties are an essential component of the middle-class foodie’s arsenal. In short, these little fish have made it.

I’m a fan, though I confess I had never considered incorporating them into my martini, as recommended by Silvana Franco in her compendium of recipes. Even if Telegraph readers weren’t unanimously sold on that idea, they certainly had plenty to say about the virtues of the sardine, along with a few suggestions of their own.


 

John Georgeson wrote: “So versatile. They are very nice with scrambled eggs and some chopped chives.”


 

Jim Mckinley advised serving them with “chopped red onion and malt vinegar”.


 

Matt Litten favoured “the boneless ones in olive oil. Put them in a pan and sauté with sliced garlic, red chilli, a splash of white wine, lemon zest and juice, black pepper and parsley, and wait until they have broken down. Then toss through cooked spaghetti with a generous grate of parmesan and more black pepper”.

I like the sound of that, although my favourite sardine pasta – indeed one of my favourite pastas of all – is the Sicilian variety. Try this recipe and find yourself transported to Palermo.


 

Finally, Rosanna Doyle offered a gloriously retro preparation: “Sardines mashed up with hard-boiled egg yolk and a smidge of Dijon mustard. Form it into a ball, then stuff it into the halved hard-boiled white of the egg. Add some bechamel and breadcrumbs over the top, then bake. I remember it from my childhood. Quite a faff for my mother to make, but it was delicious.”

How do you like your sardines? Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of this newsletter.

Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name.

 

On this day

1914 | Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, famously remarks: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” (and see our pages the following day on the war below)

1926
| Traffic lights installed at Piccadilly Circus

1936 | Jesse Owens wins the 100m in 10.3 seconds in front of Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics

1972 | Edward Heath proclaims an emergency crisis due to a dock strike

Birthdays: Tom Brady (49), James Hetfield (63), Martha Stewart (85)

Telegraph front page

Plus, in the news today, Phil Collins has ended a years-long feud with Sir Paul McCartney. When did they fall out?

Phil Collins and Sir Paul McCartney

The two rock stars at the American Music Awards in 1986

1. 2018
2. 2016
3. 2022
4. 2012

Click one of the options to reveal the answer...

 

Puzzles

Panagram

Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.


 

Yesterday’s Panagram was OPPORTUNE. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle.

 

Please let me know what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk.

Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow.

Chris Evans, Editor

Sale ends soon: One year for just £19

Think outside your inbox. Unlock full access to our free-thinking journalism, plus thousands of fun puzzles.

 

We have sent you this email because you have either asked us to or because we think it will interest you.

Unsubscribe from this newsletter.

Update your preferences.

If you are a Telegraph subscriber and are asked to sign in when you click the links in our newsletters, please log in and click "accept cookies". This will ensure you can access The Telegraph uninterrupted in the future.

For any other questions, please visit our help page here.

Any offers included in this email come with their own Terms and Conditions, which you can see by clicking on the offer link. We may withdraw offers without notice.

Telegraph Media Group Holdings Limited or its group companies - 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT. Registered in England under No 14551860.

dimanche 2 août 2026

As France burns, Britain braces

Exclusive interview with Trevor Phillips | China’s robot army has Trump scared
 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏

Britain’s most popular daily newsletter, read by more than 850,000

Sunday, 2 August 2026

Issue No. 525

Good morning.

As France battles devastating wildfires, Britain is confronting a quieter but no less serious threat. Record-breaking temperatures are pushing homes, farmland and infrastructure to their limits, while drought grips much of the country and heat-related deaths continue to rise, Melissa Lawford, our Economics Correspondent, reports.

Elsewhere, Rory MacLean explains how losing his wife changed his outlook on faith.

Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor

P.S. Try a whole year of The Telegraph for £19 while our Summer Sale lasts. If you’re already a subscriber make sure you’re logged in to read today’s stories.


 

In today’s edition

Trevor Phillips: ‘London liberals are only now realising how hated they are in Britain’

China’s robot army has Trump running scared

Plus, the four-minute workout that can turn back the clock decades for over-65s

Sale ends soon: One year for just £19

Think outside your inbox. Unlock full access to our free-thinking journalism, plus thousands of fun puzzles.

 

As France burns, Britain braces for its own firestorm

More than 100 firefighters were deployed to tackle a blaze on Dunwich Heath, Suffolk

Melissa Lawford

Melissa Lawford

Economics Correspondent

 

Antony Taylor was driving home on the outskirts of London when he saw a cloud of smoke billowing from a wildfire.

The father of three made it back in time to watch as his four-bedroom house burned to the ground in less than nine minutes.

That was on July 19, 2022, the hottest day ever recorded in Britain’s history – but this was not a one-off.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from Suffolk this week as wildfires ripped across 370 acres along the coast, within miles of Sizewell B nuclear power plant.

Nobody can deny that the UK is getting warmer and high temperatures are becoming a clear threat to homes, nature and food security.

Met Office data show 2025 was the hottest year on record, while the last four years were all in the UK’s top five warmest in history.

Our homes are not built for high temperatures. Yet by 2050, the Climate Change Committee expects maximum temperatures will regularly surpass 40C in many parts of the UK.

The reality is that the UK is chronically underprepared for what is to come.

For subscribers only

 

I was an atheist – then my wife died

Rory MacLean photographed for The Telegraph in Palermo, Sicily, where he has settled

Rory MacLean

Rory MacLean

 

I never believed in heaven. As a life-long sceptic, my beliefs were always wishy-washy and ill-defined; not agnostic, not ungodly, not anything really.

Then my wife Katrin died suddenly, aged 55. I couldn’t imagine living without her, so I decided to find out where she had gone, tracing mankind’s ideas of the afterlife around the globe.

As a travel writer, I’ve crossed hundreds of borders, so navigating the frontier between life and death felt like an obvious extension. Over five years, I travelled from Jacob’s Rock in the Holy Land to the Himalayas, from America’s Great Plains to Amazonia and beyond.

The journey opened doors for me, revealing wonders beyond my imagination, until – in five truly extraordinary moments – Katrin was beside me.
For subscribers only

 

Opinion

Janet Daley Headshot

Janet Daley

State-imposed care works no better for our elderly than it does for our children

The more power a government has over a service, the less variety and personal difference will be accommodated

Continue reading

 
<span style="color:#DE0000;">David Bernstein</span> Headshot

David Bernstein

Infantino’s plan was fatally flawed but a radical proposal is needed to save Fifa

Continue reading

 
<span style="color:#DE0000;">Zoe Strimpel</span> Headshot

Zoe Strimpel

Boy George’s unabashed support for Jews makes him the man of the decade

Continue reading

 
Matt Cartoon
 

To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here.

In other news

 

To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here.

Weekend reads

Sir Trevor Phillips, 72, is seemingly still up for a scrap

Trevor Phillips: ‘London liberals are only now realising how hated they are in Britain’

After three years at Sky, the journalist, broadcaster, and former equalities chief is moving to New York to join CBS News. He tells Ed Cumming about his new, anti-woke boss, his amazement at trans “fantasists” and why Britain’s real problem is out-of-touch politicians influenced by dinner party gossip with other members of the elite.
Read the full interview

 

Donald Trump has banned Chinese robots from being imported into the US

China’s robot army has Trump running scared

China’s top robotics company Unitree mesmerised the world earlier this year with its robots doing martial arts. Now, it has moved on: in its latest videos, the robots are picking up dirty laundry and sorting a pensioner’s pills out. This may look harmless, or even beneficial. Not to Donald Trump: he imagines an army of imported Chinese robot home helpers, ready to be turned into spies or even soldiers. His ban opens a new front in the US-China struggle for tech supremacy. In the world of robotics, China is already streets ahead. The country is embracing a future that becomes more sci-fi by the day.

Continue reading

 

Amanda Knox’s show, Cartwheel, is already the Fringe’s most controversial stand-up act

Amanda Knox on her Edinburgh comedy show: ‘Meredith would have found it funny’

Of all the comedy acts performing at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, one name leaps out: Amanda Knox. How can she possibly make jokes about the tragedy that made her famous? Should she even be performing in the first place? She tells her side of the story to Tristram Fane Saunders.

Continue reading

 

Pablo Avalos, his wife Patricia and son Thomas love their new home in Surrey

Why the three-bedroom home is the sweet spot in a listless housing market

Britain’s housing market is sluggish, with prices falling and homes languishing unsold for months. Even so, one perfectly sized property is bucking the trend: the humble three-bed. They have always been popular with second-steppers with growing families, but three-beds are also now the most sought-after size for first-time buyers and downsizers.

Continue reading

 

Your Sunday

The four-minute workout that can turn back the clock decades for over-65s

Personal trainer Gideon Remfrey demonstrates the exercises shown to improve strength, mobility and balance in over-65s

Think you need to spend hours in the gym to stay fit as you age? Think again. A new study shows just four minutes of simple resistance exercises a day is enough to improve the strength and balance that help us stay active and independent in later life. Even better, the gains were equivalent to turning back the clock by up to 20 years. Personal trainer Gideon Remfrey demonstrates the easy routine you can do at home.
Continue reading

 

Travel with Simon Calder

Sign up for Simon Calder’s weekly travel newsletter and destination guide

One of the joys of writing my Sunday newsletter is the chance to answer a question that helps an individual reader and also provides information or inspiration, or both, for a wider audience. Last week, I tackled Keith’s query about whether Albania is safe for individual exploration (my answer: absolutely); today, Jackie wants to know how to escape winter from her home in Wales to the South Island of New Zealand on a budget (tricky over Christmas, but easy one month earlier).

During August, though, staying in Britain is a wise move. If you're not already signed up to the travel newsletter, we contemplate the 10 most appealing harbour towns around the coast, but I also sing the praises of summer in the city. You can sign up to my travel newsletter here. With the notable exception of en fête Edinburgh, choosing an urban location can deliver a low-cost, high-value experience of summertime Britain. For me this weekend, that means Bristol, with an easy excursion to Bath.

Another happy task for each Sunday: picking a statistic from the week’s many numbers that has a particular travel resonance. Last weekend, it was one: the number of daily trains from London to Antwerp from this coming winter. Today: 25, representing the new arrivals on the Unesco World Heritage list. So much to see – make the most of it now.
Sign up for Travel with Simon Calder

Listen to the podcast

Plus, read about Simon’s latest adventures here

 

One great life

‘Boots’ Bantock, the bard of Bath

‘The Bard of Bath’ declaiming

Terence “Boots” Bantock, who has died aged 85, was, variously, a gifted painter of landscapes and country houses, a wandering troubadour and performance poet of rambling doggerel, a motley jester and a hermit, writes Andrew M Brown, Obituaries Editor.

Bantock took to his life of meandering after a spell at Camberwell art school. He was taken up by the gentry and sold pictures to pay his keep, though he could be a trying houseguest, prone to raiding his hosts’ fridges for food and washing it down with barley wine and Underberg.

Warehouses, Dublin, 1969

Warehouses, Dublin, 1969

By the 1970s, dressed in tweeds or rainbow motley, he had established himself as a public poet, declaiming hundreds of lines in stentorian tones – in Soho, at the Edinburgh Festival, in the tourist arcades of Bath, or even further afield.

He was nicknamed the Bard of Bath after his rants about the despoliation of the countryside were covered on TV, and he thundered against the metric system: “Stand up for the foot: don’t give an inch!”
Read his full obituary here

 

On this day

1865 | Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1880 |
Parliament officially adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

2017 | Prince Philip, aged 96, makes his final solo public appearance before retiring from public engagements (our front page story on that is below)

Birthdays: Charli XCX (34), JD Vance (42), Sam Worthington (50)

Front page
 

Puzzles

Panagram

Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.


 

Yesterday’s Panagram was DICTATION. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle.

 

Thank you for reading.

Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor

P.S. Please share your thoughts on the newsletter at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk.

Sale ends soon: One year for just £19

Think outside your inbox. Unlock full access to our free-thinking journalism, plus thousands of fun puzzles.

 

We have sent you this email because you have either asked us to or because we think it will interest you.

Unsubscribe from this newsletter.

Update your preferences.

If you are a Telegraph subscriber and are asked to sign in when you click the links in our newsletters, please log in and click "accept cookies". This will ensure you can access The Telegraph uninterrupted in the future.

For any other questions, please visit our help page here.

Any offers included in this email come with their own Terms and Conditions, which you can see by clicking on the offer link. We may withdraw offers without notice.

Telegraph Media Group Holdings Limited or its group companies - 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT. Registered in England under No 14551860.