Proud to be British Read more from journalists who champion our culture, history and values One year for £29. |  | In The Telegraph’s Sunday essay, Sir Michael Ellis, a former Tory minister, sets out 10 radical remedies to fix what he argues is the broken British state.
These include curbing the power of courts and judges and withdrawing from international treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights that “too often bind politicians’ hands”. “It is Parliament which is supreme, not the courts” – and many of these damaging constrictions were imposed by Sir Tony Blair’s government and are “hardly ancient pillars of our constitution”. The United Nations, Sir Michael argues, “is a failure. We should defund it and shut it down.”
Drawing inspiration from Donald Trump’s administration, Sir Michael – who served as attorney general under Liz Truss – calls for political appointments to the Civil Service, to prevent Whitehall from blocking radical Right-wing reforms.
He says the Home Secretary must be given the power to direct the police, who must be freed from obligations to investigate non-crime hate incidents, which “are an anathema to justice and are poisoning free speech”.
Only by enacting these measures can Britain tackle its “serious democratic deficiency” – and bridge the gap between what the public demands and what elected governments can deliver. Read the full article ➤ | | | Even the most beleaguered prime minister can try to escape domestic troubles by making a grand and historic gesture.
Sir Keir Starmer will do exactly that today when Britain is expected to recognise Palestine as a state during a “high level international conference” at the United Nations General Assembly.
Diplomats in the UN chamber in New York, drawn mostly from the non-Western countries of the “Global South”, are used to greeting British speeches with studied and frosty indifference.
This time the bearer of the UK’s announcement will bask in rare acclaim. More than a century after Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, promising a “national home for the Jewish people” and paving the way for the birth of Israel, the UN audience will rejoice in the symbolism of a British emissary coming before them like a penitent sinner to close the ring of history and recognise Palestine.
The delegates will be particularly delighted when Britain officially re-emphasises its devotion to the “two-state solution”, which holds that creating a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is the only way of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. | The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced by Israeli attacks on the Strip | And the denizens of the UN will be relieved to see clear water between the British and American positions on the Middle East, a sentiment that many UK diplomats will discreetly share.
Then the acclaim will die away and no one will want to talk about cold reality. So here is the hard fact that you will never hear from our Prime Minister: a Palestinian state will not and probably cannot exist Continue reading ➤ | | Tom Harris Your Party’s obsession with democracy has led to implosion, giving Zack Polanski an opportunity to win the hard Left Continue reading ➤ Zoe Strimpel I know it’s taboo, but gentrification is magical Continue reading ➤ William Sitwell When will the Left learn? If you go woke, you go broke Continue reading ➤ | Time spent wisely See another side to today’s biggest stories with Britain’s leading comment writers One year for £29. | | It’s World Alzheimer’s Day and many experts believe that there is still not sufficient research into potential treatments and cures for this awful condition. Doing what you can to prevent it, then, is crucial, and the best place to start is with your diet. Red meat should be eaten four times a week to protect your brain, experts tell Emily Craig, our Senior Health Writer. They also recommend eating cheese just once a week – alongside a well-rounded Mediterranean diet, with lots of nuts and leafy greens. Continue reading ➤ | |  | | Lt-Gen Keith Kellogg was interviewed by Lord Ashcroft at a secret location in Kyiv | | There’s a joke going round Ukraine that whenever Keith Kellogg is in town Russian bombing stops. In the dimly-lit basement of a Kyiv bar, Lord Ashcroft, the ex-deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, met the US special envoy for Ukraine. While critics say the US is turning its back on Ukraine, Kellogg gives hope to the contrary. But to beat Putin, the West must hold its nerve in a game of nuclear poker – “if you raise the stakes, he’s going to fold.” Continue reading ➤ | | | In 2000, you could buy a house in London for £74,661 – worth £143,130 in today’s money. What followed was an unprecedented property market boom, while wages failed to keep up. Fast forward 25 years and the majority of the workforce is priced out of their city. We explore where this affordability crisis came from, and what comes next. Continue reading ➤ | | | ‘Old age is the time you do your hard thinking,’ says Melvyn Bragg, 85 | | As he steps down from presenting Radio 4’s In our Time, Melvyn Bragg, 85, talks to Peter Stanford about why he’ll never stop working and how “old age is the time you do your hard thinking”. His current concerns include the impact of immigration – “why should people come here and get benefits that several generations of my family have worked for”, the BBC’s diminished interest in the arts, and the ridiculousness of trigger warnings: “It’s comical, timidity posing as policy. I believe profoundly in free speech in a democracy.” Continue reading ➤ | | | “Admin” may not be the most romantic calendar entry, but my husband and I know its real meaning, confesses our writer. Since last year, the couple have been scheduling weekly sex sessions, and have discovered it's not only saved their dwindling sex lives, but has rebooted their marriage. Continue reading ➤ | | | India McTaggart never imagined walking a London Fashion Week catwalk, let alone in a dress made from King Charles’s Sandringham estate. Yet that’s exactly what happened, as eco-designers Vin + Omi turned plant waste into avant-garde couture. She shared the runway with Dame Prue Leith in a truly surreal debut.
Continue reading ➤ Also, see the best items presented at London Fashion Week ➤ | | | Every Sunday, Sarah Knapton, our Science Editor, and Joe Pinkstone, our Science Correspondent, demystify your supernatural experiences. From ghoulish encounters to bizarre coincidences, there’s always a scientific explanation and nothing is as strange as it seems...
A baffled reader writes...
“My weird experience which I still cannot explain – but I still remember vividly after 40 years – was as follows:
“I was on the Gatwick Express returning to London after seeing a client in Horsham. Soon after leaving Gatwick I saw what looked like an orange ball (larger than a golf ball, but smaller than a tennis ball), travelling in a straight line, parallel to the ground, about 30 feet up. I estimate it was travelling at about 60mph. I only saw it for a couple of seconds as the train went past it.
“I can’t think of anything which could have caused this, but it didn’t feel ‘supernatural’.”
Rupert
Sarah and Joe answer...
You wait all your life for a spooky ball story, and then two come along at once.
This orange orb seems far less sinister than last week’s black menacing sphere, but nevertheless it has made such an impression on Rupert that he can still see it clearly in his mind’s eye, some 40 years later.
The first clue is that you were on a train, and therefore looking at this object through glass.
Reflections can be hugely misleading to the eye and brain, and, even today magicians use this technique to spectacular effect...
Read about Sarah and Joe’s conclusion here Plus, send in your questions for them here ➤ | | Over the past 50 years, Britons have enjoyed more ski holidays in the French Alps – home to 249 resorts and over 3,000 ski lifts – than in any other mountain range in the world. But with so much choice, the pressures of cost, reliable snow cover and the mounting volume of skiers, where should you be skiing this season? Our expert reveals his choice of the 10 greatest ski resorts in France, suitable for every type of ski holiday.
Below are two more articles that I hope will brighten your weekend: |  | Sara Leighton was a child actor who became a sought-after society portrait painter, writes Chris Maume, Deputy Obituaries Editor. Glamorous in her own right, she was described by one journalist as “an azure-eyed, Titian-haired masterpiece”.
She painted the Queen Mother for a fresco, following her around for six months with a sketchbook. She also painted acting royalty in Michael Caine, as well as Margaret Thatcher – “a nightmare to paint, as her head was always moving around” – but turned down approaches from Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor saying: “I cannot paint in a three-ring circus – there was too much activity around them.”
Leighton starred as the titular character in Anne of Green Gables, and had a big part in Brighton Rock – though some might say that the acme of her career was as a kidnapped young woman fed to a flesh-eating tree in the 1958 cult horror The Woman Eater. She switched to visual art, studying with the royal portraitist Pietro Annigoni in the mornings and sitting for him in the afternoons: he described her as “the absolutely perfect English rose”.
She certainly decried the stereotype of the scruffy artist stuck in a garret, and described herself as an anti-feminist: she urged women not to vote and founded the Society for the Protection of Utter Femininity, decrying women’s sports – especially cricket and golf.
She also had a Telegraph column about antiques, and you can read more about her wildly varied life here. | | Test your trivia skills and put the answers below in order. Play all three rounds of today’s trivia game, Sorted, plus our full range of brainteasers on Telegraph Puzzles.
Get a head start on today’s Cross Atlantic by cracking this clue: Yesterday’s Panagram was ARACHNOID. 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 here. | |
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