Labour MPs and party insiders fear a backlash from voters after Andy Burnham’s gamble to announce the end of the state pension triple lock.
In his speech at Labour’s conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, the Prime Minister threw caution to the wind by announcing the lock would end in its current form in April 2030 to help pay for free at the point of use social care.
Under the current triple lock, the state pension rises each year in line with the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent.
Labour insiders who support moving away from the lock in principle are worried about the political fallout.
What we know about Ranulph Fiennes care home row
Once described as “the world’s greatest living explorer”, Sir Ranulph Fiennes disappeared from public view in 2024.
Members of his family allege they have not been allowed to visit him.
Who is Ranulph Fiennes?
- Ranulph Fiennes, 82, is a famed explorer, known for his Transglobe Expedition.
- He is related to actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes.
- In September this year, his relatives raised the alarm that they had not been allowed to visit him.
- Fiennes disappeared from public in 2024 after opening up about his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
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Allegations of a family rift
In September, published its first story airing concerns from friends who alleged Fiennes’ wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, was not allowing anyone else to see him.
The newspaper reported allegations that Fiennes had been moved around multiple care homes under false names.
Campaign to free him
The explorer’s stepson, Alex Millington-Cotes, has said he is desperate to visit Fiennes again, and told the BBC he wants power of attorney removed from his mother.
“He’s not an isolated type of person, and so to see him isolated now is very painful,” he said.
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King urged to help
- Concerned friends reportedly wrote to King Charles, an old friend of Fiennes’, but the Palace was also unable to get through to him.
- Alex Millington-Cotes has launched a fundraiser to “locate and safeguard” the explorer.
Louise Millington-Cotes has not responded to the allegations
When you could buy gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown
Step aside banana bread, scientists at a start-up in Norwich have created bananas that keep their colour in your fruit bowl for longer before turning brown.
The flashy new fruit can even stay yellow for up to 24 hours after peeling.
Everything you need to know
- Tropic Biosciences has developed gene-edited bananas which can last longer.
The start-up used the CRISPR-Cas9 process to tweak three genes which make bananas turn brown.
It means the fruit does not produce the polyphenol oxidase enzyme responsible for pesky fruit-bowl browning.
The bananas have marketing approval from the environment secretary but must pass the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) checks before they can go on sale.
Why is this significant?
According to Gilad Gershon, the CEO of Tropic, the edited bananas can resist browning by an extra day or two. He said this would “open up a lot of value in reducing waste”.
It is not known how long it could take for the FSA to approve the bananas for safe sale in the UK. If they make it through, they will need to be labelled as “gene edited”.
How long will the warm weather last for?
Tuesday is set to be warm and sunny, with a brief spike in temperatures, but later in the week, the mercury will struggle to get beyond 20°C.
Warmer than average
On Tuesday, temperatures are set to hit 26°C in London and parts of the South East, continuing into a muggy night.
Met Office meteorologist Clare Nasir forecasts:”A breezy day, but also a warm one… temperatures today will be well above average for this time of year, particularly for England and Wales.”
Fresher end to the week
- Nasir warned there is a risk of “some intense bursts of rain” followed by showers on Wednesday.
- The Met Office forecast that the weather will turn “a little fresher from Thursday with showers or longer spells of rain at times, mainly in the west”.
- As the week goes on, temperatures are set to drop, with very few areas expected to reach 20°C or above.
Snooker champion Graeme Dott jailed for child sex abuse
Former snooker world champion Graeme Dott has been found guilty of sexually abusing two primary school-age children.
In August, he was found guilty of two counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour and on Tuesday he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
What you need to know
The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Dott subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse, with the girl targeted between 1993 and 1996 and the boy between 2006 and 2010.
The jury heard Dott exposed himself in front of both children, touched them inappropriately and kissed them.
What did the victims say?
- One of Dott’s victims, now in her 40s, told the court Dott had sexually abused her on multiple occasions.
- The second victim, now in his late 20s, also said he was sexually abused on multiple occasions.
- Lord Harrower, the judge, told Dott he had “robbed the complainers of a significant part of their childhood”.
- He added the behaviour bore “the hallmarks of grooming”.
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Men feel happier than women about how they look, study finds
Researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School also found men overestimated their IQ, while British people generally rated themselves less attractive than other nationalities.
What did the study find?
- Men consistently gave themselves higher ratings for physical attractiveness than women.
- Participants scored themselves between 0 and 100.
- On average, men scored 6-8 per cent higher than women.
- How attractive the participants were considered by other people was not part of the study.
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A closer look at the study
The study also found that men and women with higher IQs tended to rate themselves as less attractive.
Britons generally rated themselves less attractive than their American, Australian, Canadian and South African counterparts. Researchers suggested this could be a symptom of British manners, with more emphasis on “modesty or understatement”.
What does this mean?
Professor Adrian Furnham, who led the study, noted men often overestimate their IQ, while women typically underestimate it.
He said the similar gap in attractiveness self-ratings could be another indication of “male hubris versus female humility”. He added that more intelligent people could be “more honest”.
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How the UK could rejoin the EU, step by step
Labour grandees have urged Andy Burnham to start preparing to reverse Brexit – but high hurdles would have to be overcome.
Why is it coming up now?
Sadiq Khan said he wants Britain to return to the customs union “almost straight away” and provision in the next Labour manifesto to reverse Brexit without a referendum.
However, experts are sceptical. Polls indicate a narrow majority of Britons support the idea of rejoining, but it may require more support before we could rejoin.
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What the process could look like
Experts warned it could also take five to 10 years to get back in.
Here’s how rejoining might look:
- A second vote is not technically necessary but leading experts think a referendum would likely be needed to provide a stable mandate to start negotiations with the EU.
- If the UK applied to rejoin, the EU would need to ensure the applicant met the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria.
- If talks then began, there would be a series of big issues to resolve.
- The EU could demand that Britain use the Euro and become part of the Schengen Area.
The expert analysis
Experts disagree on the likelihood the UK could be allowed to opt-out of either the Schengen Area or the Euro. Dr Thomas Sampson, economist and Brexit expert at LSE, suggested it is possible the EU would be willing to let Britain rejoin under the same deal.
But others suggested the EU would want to lock the UK into the Euro to “make it harder for [us] to ever leave”.
- The European Commission would need to approve any deal for the UK to rejoin. A majority of MEPs in the European Parliament would also have to vote in favour and all the bloc’s member states.
- Professor Catherine Barnard, an expert in EU law at the University of Cambridge, thinks negotiations and ratification could take as long as a decade.
- If talks did not start until after a Labour general election victory in 2029, it could be 2040 before Britain was back in the bloc.
Watch more from The i Paper
New treatment for ultra-rare ‘second skeleton’ disorder
Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a “devastating, irreversible” genetic condition.
What is FOP?
- According to the charity FOP Friends, there are around 70 known people with FOP in the UK.
It is one of the rarest diseases in the world, affecting around one in a million people.
FOP is a genetic condition which leads to the body creating extra bones in locations where they should not form, including inside muscles, tendons and ligaments.
What is the treatment?
A new “disease modifying” treatment has been shown to reduce new bone growth by more than 90 per cent, reduce flare-ups and potentially offer hope for new surgical options in the future.
The drug garetosmab is an antibody that blocks a protein called activin A, which has been found to be critical in the development of new abnormal growth development in people with FOP.
63 adults were involved in the trial, which saw a massive reduction in flare-ups in the groups which received the treatment.
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Writing in , the authors said they expect the drug to enable “long term preservation of mobility and function”.
Chris Bedford-Gay, FOP Friends founder, said the community “has desperately waited for a way to stop FOP in its tracks”. He added this “is the moment a life-changing treatment comes that bit closer”.
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If Labour won the next election, a new “adjusted” lock would see the state pension rise each year by at least inflation or 2.5 per cent. Burnham also said it would “hold its value relative to earnings over time”. In practice, this means the pension could receive additional uplifts to ensure it does not fall below the share of average earnings it has reached by the time of the next election, which is expected to be more than 30 per cent.
According to the Government, the new policy is forecast to save £15bn by 2040. The savings will help fund Burnham’s vision for a new National Care Service providing free at the point of use personal care, although the cost of bed and board will not be paid for.
A Government source said that while the new lock would not cover the full cost of the new social care system on its own, it will be an enabler. Options for the remainder of the funding will be set out next summer by Baroness Louise Casey, who is currently carrying out a review of the care system.
The Prime Minister acknowledged in his speech that the totemic move to end the lock – which has been in place since 2011 – could lose him votes. “I won’t pretend some of this won’t be difficult,” he said. “I accept I may pay a political price. But someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off.”
Before his speech several Labour figures had already gone public to warn him against scrapping the lock. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the powerful Unite union, told The i Paper that it would be an “absolute disaster zone” akin to Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to cut winter fuel payments, which provoked a huge backlash.
Neil Duncan-Jordan, the leftwing MP for Poole, drew the same parallel. “In life, you’re supposed to learn from getting your fingers burnt,” he said. “Labour got itself into a mess over winter fuel payments and lost trust with millions. To rerun a saga that ended in a bruising U-turn is the wrong approach.”
One Government source praised Burnham for being “brave” and said that getting rid of the mechanism is the right thing to do. However, they questioned the wisdom of making the announcement before spelling out reforms to rein in benefit spending.
Burnham had convened his top ministers on Tuesday morning for a rare ‘political cabinet’ meeting to brief them on his conference speech, which also included bold announcements to get closer to Europe and pursue electoral reform.
A Cabinet minister said they were all united behind his decision on the lock and that Burnham was currently at the “height of his power”, which meant there was little dissent when he gave them the overview of his conference speech.
At a conference fringe event on Wednesday afternoon, the chief secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds told The i Paper: “No one can say that our new Prime Minister runs away from difficult issues, he runs right towards them, and the way I think he is willing to engage in difficult political arguments is really refreshing.”
Reynolds said that she hoped sceptics like Graham would change their mind now that Burnham had outlined how the new lock will work. “I want Sharon to look at the detail because obviously the comments that she made, maybe she thought we were going to scrap it, and we’re not,” she said.
On whether it would command the support of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), she said: “Well, I hope so because, as I say, this is a better deal, a new settlement for pensioners.”
Reynolds said the Government had more work to do on the precise mechanism for ensuring the state pension holds its value relative to earnings over time. “You’ll just have to bear with us on that,” she said.
While there are doubters in the PLP, other Labour MPs were enthused by Burnham’s announcement.
One MP said: “I’m thrilled. Somebody had to grapple this and it’s amazing that Andy’s done it. We just announced a policy that is going to free up tens of billions of pounds.”
“I think the PLP is mostly on the same page about this. It’s not something they’re going to get kickback on.”
Asked whether moving away from the triple lock will be controversial with backbenchers, Allison Gardner, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, said: “Not the way he delivered it. It is not working for us the triple lock. It is not working across the board.”
She added: “It may feel like he’s taking away on one hand but he’s given so much more back.”