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Pupils will be allowed to change gender at school, according to guidance issued by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary; parents would be consulted, unless there was a safeguarding reason not to, and children would have their preferred pronouns used in the classroom. However, children older than eight would still have to use facilities according to their biological sex. A High Court judge dismissed a challenge to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance last April that single-sex lavatories or changing rooms should be used by people of the same biological sex; the EHRC withdrew its guidance in October, and its revised guidance is being considered by the government. The Church of England’s general synod formally abandoned its plans to introduce blessings for same-sex couples in church. Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, is to appear in court on 25 May charged with embezzling £459,000 from the party over more than 12 years. Sir Vince Cable said: ‘We need a police or DPP check on whether criminal corruption took place,’ during Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s time as trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. A measles outbreak hit Edmonton, London, where MMR vaccine uptake is only 64.3 per cent.
Following legal advice, the government abandoned plans to delay 30 council elections in England. Labour Together, a campaign group that helped Sir Keir Starmer get elected as Labour leader, was reported to have paid Apco Worldwide more than £30,000 to investigate the author of a Sunday Times story about undeclared donations before the 2024 general election. Sir Chris Wormald was forced out by Downing Street as head of the civil service and cabinet secretary. At the Munich Security Conference, Sir Keir said: ‘We must look at where we could move closer to the single market.’ GDP grew by 0.1 per cent in the final quarter of 2025. Inflation fell from 3.4 to 3 per cent. Unemployment rose to 5.2 per cent – and 16.1 per cent for those aged 16-24.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire co-owner of Manchester United, said: ‘The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it?’ Sir Keir Starmer called his remarks ‘offensive’. The Home Office decision to proscribe Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation was unlawful, the High Court ruled; but the group remains banned for the time being to give the government time to consider an appeal. Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were sentenced to prison for at least 37 and 26 years for plotting to shoot Jews with smuggled AK47s. Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport seems crowded, according to Thomas Woldbye, the airport’s chief executive, because the British keep to the left and Europeans keep to the right.
Abroad
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was killed in 2024 by Russia using a poison developed from a dart frog toxin, according to tests by Britain, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Kim Jong-un wept as he opened new housing for families of soldiers killed while fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The night before Russian and Ukrainian delegations met for talks in Geneva, Russia attacked 12 regions of Ukraine with 400 drones and almost 30 missiles. Poland should develop nuclear weapons to guard against Russia, Karol Nawrocki, its President, said. Palmerston, the former Foreign Office cat, died aged 12 in Bermuda, in the care of the governor.
The USS Abraham Lincoln strike group stood off Oman as American and Iranian officials met in Geneva. America boarded the Veronica III, the second oil tanker in the Indian Ocean in a week, after tracking it from the Caribbean where it was suspected of helping Venezuela avoid US sanctions. Bandits on motorbikes, presumed to be jihadists, attacked villages in Tunga-Makeri, Konsoko and Pissa in Niger State, north-west Nigeria, killing and abducting an unknown number. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner, died aged 84. Robert Duvall, the actor, died aged 95.
The Bangladesh Nationalist party, led by Tarique Rahman, whose mother led it for four decades, won a majority of more than two-thirds of seats in parliament in a general election. China confirmed that British and Canadian nationals will be able to visit for up to 30 days without a visa from this week. Peru’s Congress removed President Jose Jeri from office over meetings with Chinese businessmen. A leak from a heating pipe in the Louvre damaged Charles Meynier’s ‘The Apotheosis of Poussin, Le Sueur and Le Brun’. CSH
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