Pope diagnosed with lung cancer

Good morning. The Pope was diagnosed with lung cancer yesterday after a small nodule was detected. The MI5 chief said crediting Russia with swaying the result of the Brexit referendum erroneously made them ‘look 10ft tall’: his speech yesterday leads several of today’s papers. John Healey will make sites like Amazon and eBay responsible for collecting taxes from sellers, and a Celebrity Traitors star who was booted out questioned if it was because of ‘unconscious [racial] bias’. Dominic Cummings will appear before the Lords this morning. Benjamin Netanyahu said he wasn’t woken up before the 7 October attacks, and Nato’s chief is in Estonia. Welcome to Spectator Daily: here’s everything you need to know today.

IT’S A MAD, MAD WORLD

Most of today’s papers lead with the MI5 chief’s scary declaration yesterday that more resources are going towards countering state threats than during the Cold War. Sir Ken McCallum described Russia as ‘aggressor number one’ and cited Iran-linked threats against Jewish sites and military bases.

Sir Ken looking like he’s speaking in front of a particularly powerful room fan

The Tories have gone pretty hard on Brexit over the past two days, but it might be tempting to raise it again at Prime Minister’s Questions at midday given Sir Ken’s comments. The MI5 chief said the result of the referendum was ‘not in dispute’, in response to accusations that Andy Burnham had implied the referendum was illegitimate due to Russian interference. Sir Ken said there is a difference between ‘interference attempted and outcome swayed’. He also said he was ‘anxious that we don’t play into our adversaries’ hands by making these trolls look 10ft tall’.

Might our adversaries soon include Argentina? Today’s Times carries a report showing British troops are training to recapture the Falklands. Paratroopers and locally trained reservists carried out an amphibious assault and a 20-mile overnight hike across the territory – the first time in years a landing operation has been war-gamed. Javier Milei has warned Argentina could ‘act swiftly’ to ‘recover’ the islands, which are ‘under illegal foreign occupation’.

And new-ish Defence Secretary Wes Streeting gave evidence to the Lords yesterday, before he shoots off to the US to meet War Secretary Pete Hegseth for the first time. Streeting told peers he was concerned about integrated supply chains for military tech: ‘We saw this a bit during the pandemic, quite literally with masks. You put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. We should be under no illusions that if we are in a war-fighting scenario that is exactly how our Nato allies would behave’.

Meanwhile, the Mail leads on a thinktank report revealing that migrants account for four in five jobs created over the past 12 years. The Centre for Social Justice found that, of the 3.7 million new roles recorded under PAYE since 2014, 2.5 million went to migrants from the rest of the world, on top of 408,000 to EU citizens. In comparison, 734,000 went to Britons. The vast majority of overseas workers entered jobs in hospitality, retail and social care.

And John Healey arrives in Bangkok today to meet finance ministers and central bankers at the IMF and World Bank meetings. He’ll be lightly buoyed by the IMF’s relative praise for Britain’s deficit reduction plans yesterday, although it warned sternly we must keep going with them. Today’s Times says Healey is planning a tax crackdown on online retailers; online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Temu will be made responsible for collecting tax from sellers. The Treasury hopes the policy will raise up to £1 billion and penalise foreign sellers who avoid paying VAT on sales.

ALZHEIMERS’ APPEAL AND TRAITORS RACE CLAIM

Leading dementia experts have called on Yvette Cooper, the Health Secretary, to secure NHS access to the first drugs capable of slowing the disease. Thirty-eight leading Alzheimer’s scientists have opposed a decision by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to reject the routine use of lecanemab and donanemab, which were licensed in 2024 after positive trials. Notably, the intervention comes just days after Burnham pledged £33 million to make dementia research a national priority.

Meanwhile, the man killed by a tiger at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster has been identified as William Chapman. An eyewitness described seeing him wearing headphones and ‘pacing around’ near the enclosure before he went in. Phone footage, believed to have been captured by Chapman, shows the inside of the enclosure as he approached the tiger across a patch of grass. A force spokesperson confirmed his family were aware and were being supported by officers.

Chapman, pictured in 2025, was a former actor

There’s a new kind of treachery afoot on the BBC’s Celebrity Traitors: ‘unconscious bias’. The Industry star Myha’la Herrold, 30, who was banished despite being a faithful, has said on Instagram that ‘I do agree that unconscious racial and cultural bias exists in this game where my authenticity or honesty or the ways in which I choose to express myself look suspicious to people who are unfamiliar with people like me’ in response to a comment claiming that ‘you were banished because you are BLACK’ (notes of Ali G, a week before the new film). However, making an alliance with Richard E. Grant, a traitor, might have been more significant, and Herrold admitted she had ‘sealed my own fate’.

And there’s two interesting select committee appearances to look out for today. First, the prophet (okay, we’ll calm down) Dominic Cummings will talk to the House of Lords about ‘constitutional safeguards’ at 10.30 a.m. The inquiry is being chaired by Tory peer Lord Strathclyde, and is asking whether the constitution can withstand abuses of executive power (you wonder if he’ll get a bit of a kicking about the 2019 prorogation of parliament). Anyway, good one for the nerds among us.

Later this afternoon, the Treasury committee will hear from Lord (Jim) O’Neill at 2.15 p.m. Lord O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was expected to be a key part of Burnham’s economic team, but pulled out amid concerns over his portfolio management (among other reasons). Since then, his criticisms have been increasingly confident, including warning Burnham not to raise capital gains tax (which it looks like Healey will shy away from).

‘Rough times all round for greens.’

POPE DIAGNOSED WITH LUNG CANCER

Last night, the Vatican announced the Pope has been diagnosed with lung cancer. The Vatican said Pope Leo XIV had successful surgery to remove the lower lobe from his right lung during a 90-minute surgery at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. He was diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma: a nodule was first detected during ‘routine checks’. Further tests were being carried out to see if the cancer has spread. We all wish His Holiness well.

Meanwhile, the White House confirmed that Donald Trump asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign as US ambassador to Greece. The former Fox News host allegedly asked a Trump donor to pay off her credit card bill in exchange for access to the administration (‘honey please I need you to get this done for me today’, read one text exchange). She was also accused of behaving inappropriately in Athens, although she said she would defend herself against ‘false’ claims. Trump said: ‘I didn’t like what I read’.

‘Melania doesn’t even call me “honey”!’

Elsewhere in the States, Cornell University said it would be banning all ‘frat parties’ amid a backlash at how it handled an alleged sexual assault on campus. Last month, ‘Jane Doe’ filed a lawsuit alleging she was drugged and raped by several men at a Cornell frat party in 2024. Frat parties have been popular across the US for decades and function as all-male social clubs. The university’s president said anyone violating the policy would be suspended.

In the Middle East, Benjamin Netnayahu said, staggeringly, that security chiefs didn’t wake him up on the night of 7 October. Bibi said the chiefs were scared he would cause a ‘miscalculation’ by hitting Hamas hard. In an interview with Channel 14, the Israeli Prime Minister said the spooks thought Hamas was preparing for a minor attack. Their logic went, he said, that ‘if we wake up the Prime Minister, he’ll cause Hamas to attack us without meaning to.’ He also said Iran was trying to orchestrate an attack before the Israeli elections on 27 October.

And Nato chief Mark Rutte is in Estonia today, where he will deliver a public address and visit one of the alliance’s airbases. Estonia, which shares a border with Russia, is probably the alliance’s most exposed member, and Rutte’s visit comes amid fears of increasing hybrid warfare. Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kristen Michal, has promised the country’s defence spending will surpass 5 per cent of GDP this year.

YET ANOTHER SUMMIT

Busy day in Dublin as Ireland prepares to host an international AI summit, one of the flagship events of the country’s presidency of the European Council. Attendees will include the Taoiseach Micheál Martin, as well as Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, Microsoft president Brad Smith and OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar.

It’s now or never for Europe to get involved with the AI race: the idea was that Europe would offer to lead the regulatory way, in lieu of frontier model advances. That hasn’t happened so far, but it will be interesting to see whether US execs strike an emollient tone with European regulators. Sixteen of the world’s top 20 global tech companies have their main EU headquarters in the country, so Dublin will be keen to show off its business leaders.

We’ll get US inflation data for September just after lunch time. Economists expect the consumer price index to be 3.6 per cent up on a year ago – getting far off the Fed’s target of 2 per cent now. Energy costs, thanks largely to the Iran war, have been the biggest driver of inflation, with Brent crude rising by more than 14 per cent in September. Analysts even warned that ‘everyone’s models undershoot the actual outcome’ when it comes to oil price rises.

Three more Wall Street giants – Bank of America (which has just been hit with a $1.2 billion fine for failing to detect money laundering and other illegal activity), Morgan Stanley and BlackRock announce their Q3 results today. It was a good opening to results season yesterday: Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Citigroup all did well, still reporting net income higher than a year ago. ‘So far so good, and hopefully we’ll enjoy a good environment for a while’, said JPMorgan’s chief Jamie Dimon. Lending businesses benefited from higher interest rates, with equities trading revenues particularly high too.

Dimon has been in charge of JPMorgan since 2005

‘A bet on the future of humanity’. You’ll never guess what that’s referring to: well, the dating app Bumble has been bought for £980 million, for those reasons. The investment firm Ithaca Holdings (good name) is taking over the loss-making app, and they said their investment was a bet on all of our futures (subtext inappropriate for a morning email). The app used to demand that women made the first move, although it ditched that rule in August.

Britain’s gas pipelines are in Putin’s crosshairs – Telegraph

Laura Loomer: ‘I haven’t got anything from my sacrifice to Trump’ – Times

When only AI can see the cancer – New York Magazine

What each country read on Wikipedia yesterday – Sheet Works

Yet another literary prizewinner seems to be AI – Atlantic

It’s a nightmare for readers who walk their dog in Regent’s Park, but Frieze London, one of the world’s largest contemporary art fairs, opens today: the art equivalent of London Fashion Week. Today is invitation-only: it’s just the collectors, art dealers and VIPs who are going (and, one hopes, The Spectator’s arts editor, although I doubt he’ll enjoy it). Almost 300 galleries from 48 countries are participating this year.

Give us our park back!

It was another miserable night for Michael Carrick’s Manchester United as they lost 2-0 to Atlético Madrid in the Champions League. Defender Lisandro Martinez criticised the club’s hierarchy afterwards. Arsenal, meanwhile, cruised to a 3-0 over Lille. Tonight will see Man City host PSG in their first home game since the unfortunate business about all them charges. Former manager Pep Guardiola, still employed by the club as an ambassador, is expected to be in the stands as a show of solidarity (kick-off 8 p.m.). Liverpool travel to LASK in Austria for a 5.45 p.m. kick-off, while Aston Villa host Fenerbahce at 8 p.m.

Good news for the Anglican worshippers among Morning Press readers: two Spectator contributors are launching a legal challenge against the Church of England’s slavery reparations fund. The Rev Jamie Franklin and the churchwarden Bijan Omrani will argue that the Church has no legal right to direct church funding to the project. Some £100 million has been set aside to help ‘atone’ for the Church’s historic links to the slave trade. The Archbishop of Canterbury said she hoped for ‘justice and reconciliation to all who are still impacted by [slavery’s] legacy’. Omrani and Franklin question how much profit the church made, and pointed out that Anglicans played a leading role in abolition.

Any thoughts on this email? Please get in touch – acolwell@spectator.co.uk

For more, subscribe to our Lunchtime Espresso briefing at 1 p.m. and Evening Blend at 6 p.m.