On a grey Tuesday morning, a handful of people are milling around the centre of St Helens.
It is market day but the town is quiet, with just a handful of locals making their way between the offerings of clothes, phone cases, flowers and fresh produce.
Among them is Janet Wylde, who has always called this corner of Merseyside home, but doesn’t mince her words when asked about how it has changed.
“It’s awful”, Janet tells The Independent in no uncertain terms.
Advertisement
She and her sister Sandra Hilton, 75, meet up in the town centre every week but they don’t claim to enjoy it.
“There’s no joy coming here – we look at the markets because there’s no shops”, she adds.
Now retired, the 79-year-old used to work in the head office of glass company Pilkington. Founded in 1826, it revolutionised production and, alongside coal mining and pharmaceuticals, powered St Helens’ growth as a thriving industrial town.
Pilkington is the only remaining large employer – itself now stripped back and a subsidiary of a Japanese firm.
Advertisement
Janet and Sandra believe the town centre, punctuated by empty units, takeaways and vape shops, is indicative of its struggles. It is a story seen in post-industrial towns across the North West.
St Helens town centre, Merseyside (The Independent)
As concise as her sister, Sandra describes the scenes around her as “horrendous”. They are in agreement that St Helens feels forgotten about, with Janet offering a reason why: “I think Liverpool gets the most money”, she says.
St Helens may be part of the Liverpool City Region, but this is not Liverpool. It is around 15 miles away from the city and you will not hear many Scouse accents here. Most prominently though, this is a rugby league town, with football very much secondary.
But what Liverpool and St Helens do share is a story of post-industrial decline.
While the port city’s docks endured a slump in the second half of the 20th century, coal and glass jobs left this part of Merseyside.
Advertisement
There’s no joy coming here – we look at the markets because there’s no shops
Janet Wylde
Whereas urban regeneration, culture and a thriving hospitality industry powered Liverpool’s recovery from the dark days of post-war deindustrialisation, there is a strong feeling here that they are still waiting for their turn.
Change is on the horizon, however. Much of the town centre is now a building site as work continues on wide-ranging upgrades – made up of a new market hall, a hotel, homes and shops – while a new £35m transport interchange is also being built nearby.
Advertisement
It might be the change that many in the town have been asking for, but it could have come too late.
Market trader Paul Donovan, 61, is not sold on the idea that a hotel will change its fortunes.
Paul Donovan believes St Helens town centre has suffered from a loss of shops (The Independent)
“It needs people”, he says. “And it needs more shops. Because all it’s got is a bakery, bookies and barbers.
“All the big boys have left, all the big shops have gone to the retail park. Each time the town has gone boom, onto the floor.”
St Helens will go to the polls next week to elect its borough council.
Advertisement
As an industrial town, its ties with the Labour party run deep. Other than a six year period of no overall control in the 2000s, it has always been run by Labour, which has 28 of its 48 councillors.
But there is growing feeling that this could be the first area in the red stronghold of Merseyside to fall for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
On a visit to nearby Southport in early April, Mr Farage told the BBC his party will give Labour a “run for their money” in elections on Merseyside, having last year enjoyed success in the wider region when it took control of Lancashire County Council.
“I don’t want to overly raise expectations, but what I will say is the map of local government will look very different after 7 May across the North West”, he said.
Advertisement
Speaking to the Daily Mail last week, Mr Farage mentioned the borough by name as he said that Reform could win in dissatisfied ‘red wall’ areas which did not even contemplate voting for Boris Johnson and the Conservatives when he swept parts of the north in 2019.
“Boris never got a sniff of winning Gateshead,” he said. “Or Barnsley, or Tameside or St Helens.
“This is going way beyond anything that remarkable Brexit election produced in 2019, and my view is that this switch is not a one-off… this is a fundamental shift away from the Labour Party.
The Labour mood on the ground in St Helens appears to be rather despondent – Reform poses a new threat, one which is not burdened with the baggage that the Conservative name carries here.
Advertisement
Regeneration work is ongoing in St Helens town centre (The Independent)
Latest figures from PollCheck suggest a huge swing to Reform would give it 25 councillors required to control the local authority, with Labour set to fall to nine.
A Merseyside Labour source tells The Independent that it is “inevitable” that Reform will control the council after next month’s elections.
“I think the best case scenario for Labour is that it’s the largest party but not a majority”, the insider adds.
“The worst-case scenario, which is much more likely, is that Reform win an outright majority.
“I think Reform will clean out the Labour party. I think they’ll clean out the Green party and take out most Labour councillors.”
Advertisement
There is no love lost for Labour among those who speak to The Independent in the centre of this town, which is the 29th-most-deprived local authority in the country.
The feeling is that the party they have always voted for no longer represents areas like this – a factor that Mr Farage will hope to take advantage of – and that nothing has changed while Labour has been in power.
Janet is just as withering about the Labour Party as she is about St Helens itself.
Sandra Hilton and Janet Wylde in St Helens town centre (The Independent)
“We were always Labour”, she says. But asked if she will be voting for the party next month, she is clear.
“Definitely no – and don’t get me wound up on them. It’s not Labour. That’s a cover. It’s not the old Labour we had.”
Advertisement
Her sister Sandra asks: “What have they done? We’ve got family waiting for houses and they can’t get one.
“I’m sorry, but they put all the immigrants in the new houses and they’re still waiting.”
She is not the only person to raise concerns about immigration in this town, which at the last census saw 93.5 per cent of the local population say they were born in England.
It is high on the list of concerns for market trader Ray Watt, who travels to St Helens from Liverpool for work.
Advertisement
Ray Watt, a market trader in St Helens (The Independent)
“The country can’t cope with it”, the 58 year old says. “The country can’t cope with that and Labour are just soft in my eyes.
Though Ray says he “probably wouldn’t vote for Reform”, he has a theory on why Labour has held power in towns like this for so long.
“I don’t even think some people think too much about it”, he says. “I think they’re on autopilot – well we’re working class so we’re Labour. We’re just Labour. Well, they’re f***ing useless.”
The Liverpool City Region’s Labour mayor Steve Rotheram believes that a Reform win in St Helens, a prospect he describes as a “big if”, would threaten the “trajectory” of regeneration projects his combined authority is working on in the town.
“That genuinely all has a question mark against it if you have somebody who doesn’t believe in the same things that Labour in St Helens does”, the mayor tells The Independent.
Advertisement
However, Mr Rotheram is concerned that noise in Westminster is distracting from his party’s local campaigning and a flurry of u-turns in government has meant its successes have not cut through.
Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, Steve Rotheram (PA)
“There’s definitely a feeling that the ‘own goals’, the number of U-turns that the party made, have reflected really badly on everything else,” he says.
The mayor adds: “I think the way in which we need to approach these elections is a hyper-local, a really granular level – knocking on every single door and explaining that it’s not currently an election for national issues. It’s who’s going to run your town hall.
“Once we break beyond the people who are not supporting the likes of Keir Starmer, when we get beyond that and explain the type of town hall that Labour are proposing, then we get a much fairer hearing.”
Labour face an uphill struggle to hold onto this town. Even if the mayor is right and the local elections will be fought on local issues, people in St Helens will need convincing that their loyalty to the party should remain.
Advertisement
Sitting on a bench in the town centre, Keith Twist, 68, is looking over the town centre and sums up the dilemma Labour faces.
“I vote Labour but I don’t think I’ll be doing so this time”, he says,
Asked why, Keith says: “Well, can you see what’s happening here?”
Zandari went onto win gold in two Paralympics after losing his legs (Picture: Getty)
Alex Zanardi, the former Formula One star who lost both legs in crash, has died at the age of 59.
The Italian driver passed away ‘suddenly’ surrounded by his family on Friday.
Zandari made his F1 debut in 1991, losing both his legs in an accident in September 2001. He then turned his attention to hand cycling, winning four gold medals and two silver medals at the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics.
In 2020, Zanardi suffered another serious accident while competing in a handbike event, leading to severe head injuries which saw him placed in a medically-induced coma.
Advertisement
‘It is with deep sorrow that the family announces the passing of Alessandro Zanardi, which occurred suddenly yesterday evening, 1 May,’ Zandari’s family said in a statement.
‘Alex died peacefully, surrounded by the affection of those closest to him.’
As Starmer acknowledged, it is balancing act that strikes at the heart of what freedom and democracy is all about – including the right to protest, while addressing the deep hurt, anger and fear the repeated protests cause for many in the Jewish community. Plenty of the Prime Minister’s critics, in opposition parties and beyond, say they are tired of what they see as warm words and platitudes about antisemitism and want to see concrete action.
The attacker was already serving a life sentence for murdering his friend and stabbing a 16-year-old boy
A convicted killer broke the jaw of a Jewish chaplain visiting a Cambridgeshire prison in an attack motivated by racial hate. Joseph Gynane, 41, was already serving a life sentence for murdering his friend and stabbing a 16-year-old boy when he shouted “Allah Akbar” as he attacked the chaplain visiting HMP Whitemoor on September 14, 2025.
Advertisement
The chaplain had been speaking to prisoners on the top floor landing of the prison when Gynane attacked him from behind at just before 2.30pm on September 14. Gynane punched the man to the back of the head with such force that he was knocked to the floor and continued punching him.
The convicted killer continued even while being sprayed with PAVA (a chemical spray designed to incapacitate attackers) by a prison officer. He eventually stopped the attack, and the chaplain was taken to a different part of the prison where he received medical treatment.
He later visited Peterborough City Hospital, where medical checks revealed he had suffered a broken jaw and a broken thumb. The chaplain told officers he believed the attack was religiously motivated due to him being Jewish and wearing a black skull cap at the time.
Gynane was moved to the prison’s segregation unit and covered his cell in graffiti, including the phrases “free Palestine” and “Death to the IDF”. He was charged with racially aggravated assault inflicting grievous bodily harm (GBH) and admitted the offence at a court hearing in March this year.
Advertisement
On Friday, May 1, he was sentenced at Cambridge Crown Court where he was handed 11 years (six years plus an extended five years on licence) on top of his existing life sentence. His life sentence holds a minimum term of 30 years, meaning Gynane will not be eligible for release until at least 2055.
Sentencing, Judge Andrew Hurst said chaplains provided support for prisoners and were “valuable, cherished and should be protected”. He noted that Gynane converted to Islam in 2007 and it was clear he held “antisemitic, florid and ideologically disturbing” views.
Judge Hurst said Gynane had a “long record for serious violence, including stabbings”. He also held an “appalling record for violence within prison”, with the highest number of assaults to his name at HMP Whitemoor.
He said the attack was a “serious assault motivated by racial hatred”. He noted his concern about a “very high risk of future assaults” from Gynane, who “will seek to harm innocent members of Jewish community”.
Advertisement
Detective Constable Emma Purser said: “Gynane was already serving a life sentence for murder, but I am pleased he has now had his sentence extended by quite some time and has faced justice for his actions – which were shocking and despicable.
“The Jewish chaplain involved in this case was providing a valuable service and no-one deserves to be attacked in this way, with such strong violence – and especially not because of their religion.”
Mikel Arteta’s side are set to be without Jurrien Timber and Kai Havertz, while Odegaard is a minor doubt for the game after his withdrawal in the secodn half against Atletico Madrid.
The Norwegian midfielder has had an injury-affected campaign, which has seen him able to start just 15 league games so far this season.
Advertisement
But former Arsenal midfielder Wilshere believes the Odegaard has to start against Fulham if fit, such is his importance to the side with and without the ball.
‘With Arsenal, I think Odegaard is key,’ Wilshere told talkSPORT. ‘He’s a player who takes risks. He’s a player who, even out of possession, sets everything.
‘I think he’s had a few injuries this season, maybe lost a bit of form at times. When Martin’s playing, it’s a different team. It’s a different team, and they look braver.’
Martin Odegaard is a minor doubt for Saturday’s match with Fulham (Picture: Getty)
But Wilshere, who was part of Arsenal’s academy coaching set-up under Arteta before moving to Norwich and then Luton Town, said he would like to see his former side get back to a more free-flowing style of football.
‘When Mikel first came in, it was about playing,’ he said ‘It was a big focus on build-up, on finding the free play, and they were really, really good at it.
Advertisement
‘I think then, as a coach and as a team, you always have to look for ways to evolve, to look for ways to change a little bit how you’re playing, because teams will start to work you out. I thought Mikel’s done that really well.
‘I think over the last few years, there has been a little bit of a change in style, but this is also not just Arsenal, right? You look at City and bringing Haaland in, and how they played into him a little bit more.
‘I remember playing against City in a cup final at Wembley, and then the goalie kicking it over all of us, and Aguero scoring. It’s been around for a while.
‘Mikel has obviously thought that this is the best way to win the league. They’ve fallen short over the last few years against the Liverpool team, against the City team that like to dominate the ball.
Advertisement
‘And Arsenal couldn’t get it done. He obviously sees this as the way forward. At times, I would like to see them play a little bit more as well.’
Looking to capitalise on any slip-up from the Tractor Boys is third-place Millwall, who host relegated Oxford as they look to book their place in the Premier League for the very first time. A point behind them is Middlesbrough, on the road at Wrexham with a tough task to end a top-tier exile that has lasted for almost a decade. Only one of those teams can go up this afternoon, with the other two having to pick themselves up quickly for the lottery of the play-offs, where Southampton are already guaranteed a place.
The bout sees Nakatani (32-0, 24 KOs) fight in a division that is relatively new to him, as the former three-weight champion competes at super-bantamweight for just the second time. The 28-year-old moved up in December, scraping past Sebastian Hernandez Reyes to set up this bout with Inoue.
Advertisement
Naoya Inoue during his win over Alan Picasso (Getty)
On the same night, Inoue (32-0, 27 KOs) outclassed Alan Picasso to uphold his end of the Nakatani deal, which now brings the “Monster”, 33, one of his most-intriguing tests ever.
Here’s all you need to know:
When is the fight?
Inoue vs Nakatani will take place on Saturday 2 May at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan. Coverage is due to begin at 10.40am BST (2.40am PT / 4.40am CT / 5.40am ET), with main-event ring walks expected at 1pm BST (5am PT / 7am CT / 8am ET).
How can I watch it?
Advertisement
The action will stream live exclusively on DAZN, with plans starting at £15.99 per month. The fight card has not been announced as a DAZN pay-per-view event, meaning it is available to any DAZN subscriber.
Latest Odds
Inoue is a heavy favourite with all the major UK betting sites, with Nakatani a best price of 7/2 to emerge victorious.
Inoue – 1/4
Advertisement
Nakatani – 7/2
Draw – 16/1
Odds via Betfred. The Independent vets betting sites for usability, security and responsible gambling tools. You can claim free bets to use across a range of sports. Please read the terms.
Fight card in full
Advertisement
Subject to change; ‘C’ denotes champion
Junto Nakatani was put through the ringer by Sebastian Hernandez Reyes (Getty)
Enjoy 185+ fights a year on DAZN, the Global Home of Boxing
Never miss a fight from top promoters. Watch on your devices anywhere, anytime.
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Naoya Inoue (C) vs Junto Nakatani (undisputed super-bantamweight titles)
Advertisement
Takuma Inoue (C) vs Kazuto Ioka (WBC bantamweight champion)
Toshiki Shimomachi vs Reiya Abe (featherweight)
Sora Tanaka vs Jin Sasaki (welterweight)
Kosuke Tomioka vs Shogo Tanaka (flyweight)
Advertisement
Deok No Yun vs Yuito Moriwaki (super-middleweight)
Yoshiki Takei vs Dekang Wang (super-bantamweight)
We may earn commission from some of the links in this article, but we never allow this to influence our content. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
On 30 April, the US embassy in Beirut suggested a meeting between Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would give Lebanon “the chance to secure concrete guarantees on full sovereignty, territorial integrity, secure borders, humanitarian and reconstruction support, and the complete restoration of Lebanese state authority over every inch of its territory”.
Made In Chelsea stars, Jamie Lang and Sophie Habboo, who recently became parents to son, Ziggy, discussed their relationship in candid detail with Olivia Attwood
Reality star, Jamie Laing, has made a bombshell revelation about his sex life with wife, Sophie Habboo. The Made In Chelsea stars, who became parents to son, Ziggy, in December, were discussing their relationship with Olivia Attwood on her podcast, Olivia’s house.
Advertisement
The couple documented their journey to parenthood on Disney + documentary, Raising Chelsea, which was a huge hit with the couple’s Made In Chelsea fans. However, Jamie, 37, has now admitted that the pressure to conceive affected his performance in the bedroom – something wife, Sophie, 32, revealed left her “raging”.
Lifting the lid on the tense time, Jamie said: “For some reason, every part of my being was like ‘don’t do this’ and I was like: ‘What’s going on?’ So, nothing was working.”
“Wait, nothing was working?” shocked host Olivia interjected, as Jamie repeated: “Nothing was working.” Sophie, who met Jamie on Made In Chelsea, then revealed how Jamie’s worries had affected her, admitting: ‘Raging, I was like, you’re f*****g joking, this is f****d…’”
Revealing that the pressure to perform was “so full on”, Jamie continued: “She [Sophie] was like: ‘I’m ovulating’. I was like: ‘How long for?’”
“So the pressure got to you?” Olivia clarified, as Jamie confirmed: “So much pressure, so much pressure. It was like so full on.”
Raising Chelsea follows the couple as they try to conceive before adjusting to pregnancy and eventually becoming parents. For many, the idea of filming such intimate moments, including the birth of your baby, would be out of the question, but for Sophie and Jamie, who have lived so much of their lives on camera, it felt like a ‘natural continuation’.
Speaking to the BBC about deciding to film their pregnancy journey, Sophie said: “People are used to following our journey, so documenting this and having an audience come with us felt really natural and fun.”
Advertisement
Claiming there were times she ‘forgot the cameras were there’, she continued: “We only had one camera so it was very vlog style and there are lots of times I didn’t know we were even filming.”
Meanwhile, Jamie said the couple made a pact to show the real them in the film, warts and all, sharing: “We wanted to capture everything and I wanted to make sure it was really real so you see everything Even when things happened that were intense we kept it in because we made a deal.
Advertisement
“There is nothing off limits – I don’t like the idea of a filtered version of ourselves, it’s not true, authentic or real.”
The couple welcomed baby Ziggy on December 4 and shared a snap of the tot’s tiny hand on Instagram while telling their followers how happy and grateful they were to be parents.
But the headline attraction is in East Asia, where Inoue defends his four belts in the 122-pound division for the seventh time in a super fight. ‘The Monster’, one of the sport’s modern pound-for-pound greats and most formidable knockout kings, can add another exceptional chapter to his remarkable legacy on home soil, though is wary of the challenge posed by Nakatani. ‘Big Bang’ is himself a three-weight world champion who held the unified bantamweight titles before stepping up again in preparation for facing Inoue.
Sir Mark Rowley has spoken out over a torrid rise in antisemitism
10:04, 02 May 2026Updated 10:09, 02 May 2026
The UK’s most senior police officer believes British Jews are now facing their greatest ever threat after a surge of antisemitism in the country. Sir Mark Rowley, head of the Metropolitan Police, says Jews are caught in the middle of a ‘ghastly Venn diagram’ of hate from people across the political spectrum – which he described as an ‘epidemic’.
It comes after a string of horrific attacks – including the Heaton Park synagogue attack, which saw Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby killed in Crumpsall during Yom Kippur last October. In London, a string of arson attacks on Jewish sites over the past six weeks has been followed by the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green earlier this week.
Sir Mark – who has faced criticism from politicians and some members of the Jewish community in recent weeks – says British Jews are facing an outpouring a hate, whipped up by social media. He believes this is now a growing threat to the safety of Jews across the UK, where the terror threat level was raised from substantial to severe on Thursday (April 30).
Advertisement
Click here to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter
Speaking to the Times, Sir Mark said: “Every racist or extremist or terrorist group has a list of people they hate because they all create an ‘other’ who they want to blame everything on and visit everything on. The ghastly fact is that Jews are on everybody’s list, all of those hateful groups, whether you’re extreme right, whether you’re extreme left, whether you’re Islamist terrorist, whether you’re right-wing terrorist, and some hostile states as well now with some sort of Iranian-related threats.
“There’s a ghastly Venn diagram that they’re at the middle of.” The ‘social media-led’ news ecosystem which has developed online means more people are getting their views from ‘non-traditional sources’, Sir Mark said, adding that antisemitism was ‘becoming more and more mainstreamed’.
The Met Commissioner also revealed he has requested urgent funding to recruit 300 officers to protect the Jewish community, with plans for a dedicated group of police to patrol north west London. Sir Mark also defended the two officers who detained the suspect in the Golders Green attack.
In footage shared on social media, the officers appeared to kick the 45-year-old suspect in the head after they had used a Taser to force him to the ground. The Met chief and Sir Keir Starmer were both highly critical of Green Party leader Zack Polanski after he shared a social media post which accused the officers who detained the suspect of acting ‘violently’.
Sir Mark told the Times: “One of the Taser shots has connected but he’s still not giving up the knife. It’s pretty obvious the sort of suspicion they’re going to have that he may have an explosive device.” He said he had spoken to the officers two hours after the incident took place, adding: “It’s very traumatic for them. They’ve got to live with that.”
The Prime Minister had earlier defended the two officers in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. He told the BBC: “There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on.
Advertisement
“And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy.”
The Prime Minister also branded Mr Polanski ‘disgraceful’ and ‘not fit to lead any political party’ for reposting the criticism of police officers. The Green leader has apologised for ‘sharing a tweet in haste’.
But Mr Polanski then hit back, saying in response to a clip of the Prime Minister’s interview: “Yesterday in Hastings, in the wake of antisemitic attacks in Golders Green, I faced Nazi salutes. Today the Prime Minister uses his office to attack the only Jewish party leader to score political points.”
Mr Polanski is expected to meet Sir Mark following the local elections on May 7, to discuss matters related to his apology, the Met confirmed. Earlier, the Director of Public Prosecutions warned of a ‘deeply troubling rise’ in antisemitic incidents across the country, as he vowed to use the ‘full force of the law’ against perpetrators.
Advertisement
Following the Golders Green incident, suspect Essa Suleiman appeared in court on Friday charged with thee counts of attempted murder, including of his own friend before allegedly stabbing two Jewish men, Shloime Rand, 34, and Norman Shine, 76. Suleiman, who was born in Somalia and came to the UK legally as a child in the 1990s, was remanded in custody until the next hearing at the Old Bailey on May 15.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login