In his scathingly brilliant book How They Broke Britain, the LBC presenter James O’Brien describes how the rightwing, Europhobic ecosystem of media, thinktanks and Tory politicians that has developed over the past 40 years prohibits an honest public conversation.

Political leadership cowers in its ever-threatening shadow, so that to keep it calm Sunak has to make claims about Brexit “freedoms” that he must know are specious, while Keir Starmer, no less aware of the economic and geopolitical realities, has to say there is no case to rejoin the single market and customs union.

Winning a general election will represent one advance, but unless Labour changes the ground rules via some combination of media ownership requirements, regulatory standards and strengthening public service broadcasting, the right’s blocking power will remain intense.

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Sunak’s decision to nix a meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis wasn’t a calculated way of showing that he was standing up to European countries: it was a personal reaction to “grandstanding” about an issue that he fears could have implications for other artefacts.

The briefing around the bill has turned into a milkman’s order book, with the immigration minister Robert Jenrick being as unsubtle as he possibly can that he can only stomach “full-fat” measures, while his new boss at the Home Office, James Cleverly, is minded towards skimming off the bits that would risk the legislation getting stuck and curdled in the House of Lords.

He has to follow through on his promise to get flights going by the next election, and that means breaking some eggs Jenrick and Sunak have held meetings to thrash out a compromise, but colleagues who feel that the former is working on their behalf still expect him to quit if their demands aren’t met.

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Rishi Sunak is in danger of missing his target to cut NHS waiting lists unless doctors drop plans to take industrial action over the coming months, the UK health secretary has warned.

Victoria Atkins on Sunday urged doctors to come to an agreement with the government over pay and conditions, suggesting the prime minister’s waiting list pledge would not be hit unless they do.

The waiting list is one of four pledges the prime minister has so far been unable to meet, alongside growing the economy, cutting the government’s debt and stopping small boat crossings across the Channel.

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The Labour leader’s comments are the latest part of his strategy to move his party away from the legacy of his leftwing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, and reflect similar praise heaped on Thatcher by Blair throughout his career.

His praise of the former Tory prime minister caused anger among many on the left of the Labour party, including the MP Ian Byrne, who tweeted: “Inequality, hunger, destitution & misery.

His comments were also seized upon by Scottish National party leaders in Scotland, where Labour is hoping to pick up more than 20 seats at the next election by appealing to a more broadly leftwing electorate than it is targeting in England.

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Richard Desmond, the Brexit-backing media tycoon, is invoking EU law to sue the gambling regulator after it rejected his “fanciful” bid to run the national lottery, in a suit that could deprive good causes of millions of pounds.

Desmond is expected to claim that the gambling regulator made “numerous manifest errors” during a bitter and prolonged bidding war that ended when the commission named the Czech-owned operator Allwyn as the winner.

The commission’s chief executive, Andrew Rhodes, has previously said that any damages that the regulator is forced to pay as a result of a suit by a losing bidder for the licence might ultimately come out of lottery funding dedicated to good causes.

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Her 15-year stint as an MEP came to an end when Brown asked her to replace Caroline Flint as a minister in the Foreign Office, giving her the title Lady Kinnock of Holyhead to do so.

She supported Neil through his leadership and went on to have an impressive political career of her own as a member of the European parliament, in the House of Lords and as a minister in the last Labour government, focused on Europe and Africa.”

Whether in fighting the cause of development, and the eradication of global poverty, social justice in Britain, equality for women or making the case for a European Union of weight and influence in the world, Glenys was passionate and persuasive.”

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