Martin-Baker’s factory in Woking might have produced the ejector seats that saved the lives of 2 RAF pilots yesterday - but Palestine Action thinks it’s a great idea to smash the place up. There are some solar panels the left like - and some they don’t.

Putin is becoming increasingly dangerous as his war with Ukraine drags on - but just because he can escalate against NATO doesn’t mean he will choose to do so, NATO’s deputy Europe commander told me. @KristenMichalPM likened Putin to a “rat in the corner.” apnews.com/article/nato-russ…

Security chiefs to set up new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states like Russia - with Andy Burnham saying government has a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests. National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” info attacks by foreign powers by bringing together intelligence agencies, law enforcement & social media companies. It will boost UK’s defensive capability to combat information warfare and build national resilience by helping communities combat disinfo, preventing “distorted & untrue” narrative about UK. theguardian.com/technology/2…

Security chiefs to set up new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states like Russia - with Andy Burnham saying government has a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests. National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” info attacks by foreign powers by bringing together intelligence agencies, law enforcement & social media companies. It will boost UK’s defensive capability to combat information warfare and build national resilience by helping communities combat disinfo, preventing “distorted & untrue” narrative about UK. theguardian.com/technology/2…

Officers swooped on Manchester city centre to arrest two men who are still being quizzed on suspicion of terrorism manchestereveningnews.co.uk/…

A top civil servant has ordered a review of his department’s decision to destroy evidence submitted to devise a new Islamophobia definition 🔗 telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09…

I was a very fortunate kid. My dad's GP surgery sat between the Dell and Hampshire's County Ground, so at weekends I could go to a game and get a lift home afterwards. It left me with a passion for both sports and a belief that sport opens a window onto who we are. When I was growing up, the Tebbit test was a matter of intense debate. Which side did you cheer for at the cricket? For all the criticism it received, it was a test anyone could pass. If you supported England because you saw it as home, you were part of the team regardless of the colour of your skin. Born in Southampton, 10 year old me passed it without even knowing about it. Giving the @MCCOfficial's Cowdrey Lecture on Thursday made me think about cricket's place in our national life and the current arguments about identity. In Britain we've built the world's most successful multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy. I was a beneficiary of it. Whatever issues people had with me as PM (and there was no shortage) my race and religion weren't among them. I could read a lesson at the King's coronation or light Diwali diyas on Downing Street with my daughters without controversy. Foreign leaders assumed these must be huge symbolic moments. For most Brits, they just weren't that big a deal. But Britain's democratic achievement is now under strain. Some of the challenges are ones I've written about before, like Islamism, and the failure of governments, including the one I led, to adequately control immigration. But something else is going on - a risk that we start equating skin colour with nationality. After I left office, a debate kicked off here on @X about whether I was English at all, because I was a "brown Hindu". During the election campaign I'd been shocked when footage was broadcast of someone calling me a "Paki." It was shocking precisely because it was so unusual. That kind of abuse had simply not been a feature of my political life. But the Englishness argument was stranger still. Call it the reverse Tebbit test. If you're not white, it no longer matters who you support at the cricket, because you can never be English. It's a test no non-white person can ever pass. I have no truck with people who offend our sense of fairness and come here illegally; I spent half my premiership trying to deport them to Rwanda. I think the bar for legal migration should be high. It is entirely possible to want a radical reduction in immigration and a far more robust approach to integration, and still totally reject the attempt to turn Britishness into a DNA test. If you're born and brought up in England and view it as home, what are you other than English? Denying people their Englishness or their Britishness because of the colour of their skin is a recipe for alienation and a two-tier society. How are children who hear this meant to feel? Sport can play a small but significant role here. Cricket is played by nearly every major ethnic group in this country. Ask what my largely white rural constituents in the Dales and the British-Asian kids in Bradford have in common, and the answer is cricket. If cricket can produce England teams in which every kid can see themselves, the impact reaches far beyond the boundary. As I write in @thetimes today, we must all be on the same side, cheering for the same team. We cannot allow race to be reintroduced into our politics. We cannot allow Briton to be set against Briton.

⬇️ Big surge in threats felt by councillors - deeply worrying local.gov.uk/about/news/lga-…

In other news of the Anglican Church’s moral crisis, Leeds Minster removes reverential tapestry featuring 18 Hamas terrorists after Anglican vicar describes the strangling of Bibas childrens as ‘complicated’ jewishnews.co.uk/leeds-minst…

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training. You can read the full post here: darioamodei.com/post/we-must…

Not the first time an English church has hosted a pilgrimage shrine to victims of the Jews' alleged crimes, but I did hope we'd left the Middle Ages behind. thetimes.com/uk/religion/art…