Andy Burnham‘s new Cabinet has become embroiled in chaos before even being created as senior Labour figures fight to become his chancellor.

Ed Miliband, Shabana Mahmood and Yvette Cooper are embroiled in a major briefing war as they all put forward their claim to the senior financial post.

With just days to go until Mr Burnham replaces Sir Keir Starmer, reports suggest he has yet to decide who to appoint to run No11.

Mr Miliband, the environmentally conscious Energy Secretary, appears to be the choice of Labour members, but has been opposed by figures around the incoming Prime Minister over his run-ins with business and trade unions. 

Ms Cooper, who was a Treasury minister almost 20 years ago under Gordon Brown, and Home Secretary Ms Mahmood, a former shadow Treasury minister, have now been linked with the post.

Ms Mahmood is unpopular with the party Left because of hardline immigration reforms, and a move would allow Mr Burnham to shake things up. 

One veteran Labour MP on the Left of the party told the Daily Mail: ‘I don’t think Miliband will get No 11. He would be too big a risk.’ 

Mr Miliband was seen as the least market-friendly candidate in a poll by Bloomberg, while he has also clashed with unions over North Sea oil jobs that could be affected by the push for green power he champions. 

But allies of the incoming PM say he has yet to make up his mind about who would control the nation’s finances, with Shabana Mahmood, the current Home Secretary, also an option

It comes after Mr Burnham said people’s everyday living expenses are ‘the issue of our times’ as he was quizzed on his plans for government. 

Speaking to reporters in Parliament last night he said: ‘I’ve been setting out plans that I believe will bring some much-needed change in terms of people’s everyday living expense. I think that is the issue of our times.

‘If we want to connect politics better with people, well, let’s deal with some of the pressures people are under in terms of the everyday cost of transport, the bills that they’re paying. I heard it so often on doorsteps in the campaign.’

‘You know, life has changed for people, and it’s not necessarily got better’, he added.

‘And I think we just need to be relentlessly focused on that.

‘I have talked about more public control of the basics, and then through that control, cutting the cost. I did that with buses in Greater Manchester, and I carry that same principle forward.

‘To me, the cost of living and reducing it is everything, and I think we need to regain the confidence in the public that we’ve got a credible plan to do that and make life better.’

Earlier this month a YouGov poll of Labour members found 69 per cent believed Mr Miliband would do a good job, compared to 30 per cent for Ms Mahmood.

But he has been the source or ire for some trade unions over his lack of backing for the North Sea oil and gas industry as he tries to make UK power greener.

In March, Unite’s Sharon Graham said he should not ‘let go of one rope before having hold of another’.

‘We all know that whatever happens the UK will still need oil and gas for decades to come and the war in Iran is just the latest reminder that when we rely on overseas production our energy security is at the mercy of global events,’ she said.

Reports this week suggested Mr Miliband might be prepared to U-turn on North Sea oil and gas if made chancellor. 

He is said to be keen to give the go-ahead to the Jackdaw gas field in order to show he is not a Net Zero ‘zealot’ and to calm jitters about his possible appointment at the Treasury.

Mr Miliband is reported to have privately signalled his willingness to grant consent for Jackdaw, but cannot confirm the move until a consultation closes next month.

It came as the PM-in-waiting was accused of ‘running scared’ after MPs were denied the chance to quiz him until after the summer.

He will become Prime Minister on Monday but the House of Commons rises for its summer break on Thursday so he will be spared scrutiny for six weeks.

The Conservatives have been calling for one extra day next week so Mr Burnham could give a statement – and face questions – and planned to put pressure on the Government by holding a vote on Wednesday. 

But on Tuesday in an unprecedented move ministers cancelled the Opposition Day debate, saying the time was needed to discuss Iran instead.

It means Mr Burnham, who won so many backings no rival candidate can now be nominated, will not answer questions from MPs until September 1.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch led the outrage, saying: ‘In an unprecedented move, Labour have scrapped the Conservative vote to force Andy Burnham to come to Parliament to answer questions when he becomes PM on Monday. 

‘Labour are running scared because they know the honeymoon will be over the minute he has to tell us his plans.’

Universal Studios will have high hopes for the film at the box office, after Oppenheimer took $975m (£723m) globally.

However, Oppenheimer enjoyed a huge audience boost from the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the 2023 viral trend that prompted movie fans to buy tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day.

The Odyssey is a film with “thrilling ambition, boldness, seriousness, generosity and flair”, wrote the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, external, awarding five stars

“There are some broad-brush moments in the dialogue, yes, but even these are applied with a muscular flourish,” he added.

The Odyssey is “the definition of epic”, according to Empire’s John Nugent,, external in another five-star review.

“The scale and scope here is, frankly, jaw-detaching,” he said. “It is filmmaking at a magnitude few modern directors could ever realistically imagine, demand, or execute.”

The UK Space Agency and space startup Vast just signed an agreement to send Paralympic sprinter and below-knee amputee John McFall into orbit as early as 2027. Most coverage framed it as a victory for inclusion. As a space health researcher, I think something far more interesting happened.

For 70 years, spaceflight has assumed a rigid archetype: a healthy white man with a military background. The assumption was that physical uniformity minimised risk. As we prepare for Mars, the evidence increasingly suggests the opposite.

Star Trek understood this decades ago: exploration rewards difference. The further you travel into uncertainty, the more kinds of human experience you need. It debuted in 1966 with a Black female communications officer, a Japanese helmsman, a Russian navigator, a biracial Vulcan, and a captain who made mistakes and felt his humanity down to the last drop.

What strikes me now as a scientist is not how idealistic that vision was, but how practical. Despite decades of spaceflight, we still cannot reliably predict how one person’s health will change in space. Consider Mars 500, a 520-day simulated isolation mission between 2007 and 2011 where six male crew members in identical conditions diverged dramatically in psychological resilience. Two participants remained stable; three developed severe sleep disturbances; and one suffered persistent depression.

Additionally, around 17% of astronauts experience significant physical deterioration in spaceflight despite following identical exercise regimes. Disability does not necessarily introduce uncertainty into spaceflight; uncertainty is already the norm.

Who performs best in space?

Sometimes those excluded perform better. In 1961, several female pilots outperformed the men of Mercury 7 programme, the first US astronauts. Jerrie Cobb scored in the top 2% of all candidates ever assessed by NASA. Several of the women outperformed the men on cardiovascular endurance. And the late Wally Funk remained in an isolation tank for over ten hours while the male Mercury astronaut record was just over three. But the women never flew. NASA insisted on military jet pilot experience as an entry requirement, while simultaneously barring women from flying military jets.

About a decade earlier, NASA recruited eleven deaf men to study motion sickness, a condition affecting 60 to 80% of astronauts in their first days of weightlessness. Motion sickness happens when conflicting inner-ear signals cause nausea and disorientation severe enough to impair performance. Most of the eleven men had lost vestibular function (the inner-ear balance system) following childhood meningitis. In rotating rooms and on rough seas, as experienced test pilots were sick around them, the deaf participants played cards. The trait that excluded them from military careers made them unusually tolerant of the environments that undid everyone else.

Researchers are finally investigating this issue: like asking whether amputees, who carry less mass and respond differently to microgravity, offer advantages in space. People with lower-limb mobility impairments or vascular differences may be naturally adapted to the headward fluid shifts of weightlessness that cause brain swelling and vision changes in around 70% of astronauts.

When a cooling leak filled Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano’s helmet with water during a 2013 spacewalk, it left him nearly blind and deaf to mission control. He survived by navigating back to the airlock using touch alone. On Mars where dust storms reduce vision to near-zero, blind people would have an advantage here as they are dependent on other senses.

There is no perfect astronaut

The myth of the perfect astronaut has always been just that – a myth. Chuck Yeager, celebrated as the gold standard of what an astronaut should be, broke two ribs the night before he broke the sound barrier in 1947. He concealed the injury, improvised a way to seal his cockpit door using a broom handle, and flew anyway. The right stuff was never about physical perfection. It was about adaptation.

In 1985, Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh manually docked with the dead and uncontrolled Salyut 7 station and spent a week manually rewiring it in freezing pitch-black conditions to bring it back to life. For many people in the disability community, navigating broken infrastructure, sensory issues and isolation is an everyday reality. Disabled people spend their lives adapting to environments designed for somebody else. That makes us experts at navigating the unknown.

The real “right stuff” is interdependence: being creative together with your crew when a plan fails. When Apollo 13’s oxygen tank exploded in 1970, the crew came home not because of perfect engineering, but because people depended on each other under pressure. A Mars mission, years from home and communication delays of 20 minutes each way, will demand it. Astronauts will face problems nobody could anticipate, because that is the nature of exploration.

Disability is an extreme environment

Every person who lives long enough will experience disability at some point. It is my normal. In my research career, I have improvised creative solutions to inaccessible equipment, and learned to pace my energy carefully. Even getting into the building or having access to a bathroom could be my engineering problem for the day.

I’ve been told using a mobility aid is unprofessional and for years, even doctors dismissed my symptoms. When they finally had an answer, it came with a caveat: there is no cure and no treatment pathway. The medical system had reached its limit. I had not. These experiences forced me to monitor my own health, adapt and advocate for myself. On a Mars mission, millions of miles from the nearest specialist, every astronaut will need exactly that skill.

Perhaps the most undervalued asset the disability community brings to space is its relationship with joy. Disabled people do not survive extreme environments through stoicism alone. They survive through humour, putting flowers on their wheelchairs (like mine), and deeply loving communities. On a three-year Mars mission, that may be the most critical thing of all.

Design can be better too. Deaf pilot Sheila Xu described in June 2026 at the United Nations how she designed a colour-changing light signal system to use instead of auditory cues during parabolic flights, aircraft that fly a steep arc to produce brief periods of weightlessness, used in astronaut training. It improved safety for everyone on board, deaf or not, when engine roar made verbal commands impossible. This is the “curb cut effect”: solve for the margins, and you make the system better for everyone.

The good news is we are seeing a paradigm shift. In 2021, Hayley Arceneaux spent three days in orbit on SpaceX’s Inspiration4, becoming the first person with a prosthetic bone to reach space. In 2025, ESA engineer Michaela Benthaus became the first wheelchair user on a suborbital commercial flight. McFall’s selection marks the first time a major space agency has cleared a disabled astronaut for long-duration scientific work in orbit.

Progress does not come from excluding each other, but from discovering what becomes possible when the universe’s criteria finally replace our own.

The goal, then, should not be simply to send one disabled astronaut to space and call it progress. It is to involve disabled thinkers, engineers, and designers at every stage of mission planning. The systems they would help build would be demonstrably better for it.

Adaptation, more than perfection, may turn out to be what matters most.

Charlize Theron had two VIPs with her at the premiere of The Odyssey. 

The actress, 50, was joined by her daughters August, 12, and Jackson, 14, at the New York City debut of her star-studded Greek epic on Tuesday. 

While it was a school night, clearly Theron had made an exception given the very special occasion. 

The trio were seen making their way through the event hustle and bustle, with Theron gently guiding her daughter August through the throng as Jackson followed close behind. 

August wore a stylish black dress, trendy Doc Martens, and knee-high socks, while Jackson donned an off-the-shoulder look with black wedges. 

Theron, meanwhile, stunned in a white bow-adorned mini dress with strappy heels, a gold choker necklace, and bold red lip.

It marked a rare public appearance for Jackson and August, who Theron adopted in 2012 and 2015, respectively.

Adoption was always an avenue Theron wanted to pursue when it came to her family.   

‘I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something,’ she she explained during a 2018 interview with Chelsea Handler for Elle. ‘This was always my first choice, even when I was in a relationship.

‘I was very honest with my partners that I was open to having my own biological kids but that adoption had to be a part of my life. I felt that strongly about it.’

Theron’s daughters have enjoyed A-list experiences with their mother over the years, going to runway shows and now the premiere of her new action film. 

Theron plays portrays Calypso in the Christopher Nolan movie, an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic the Odyssey.

The story follows the titular Greek King embark on a perilous journey home after the Trojan War in a bid to reunite with his beloved wife Penelope.

Despite the film being in the trusted hands of Oscar-winning director Nolan, fans haven’t quite got to grips with the casting yet.

Theron guided her daughter Jackson through the premiere hustle and bustle, placing a gentle hand on her waist 

In what has been dubbed his ‘most extreme project to date’ alongside an incredibly starry cast – the pressure for Nolan to win over critics is like no other.

Already known for his impressive art and high-budget fare, Nolan’s latest film could prove to be his most ambitious yet, with the $250million budget the most expensive of his career, his first shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras.

Lead stars Matt Damon is starring as the titular hero Odysseus, while Devil Wears Prada icon Anne Hathaway plays his devoted queen, who is forced to fend off potential suitors in her husband’s absence.

Yet, the film has received heaps of attention for all the wrong reasons – sparking backlash over its ‘bizarre’ casting, being accused of fuelling ‘brutal repression’ and sending Elon Musk into meltdown.

Nolan recently defended his decision to cast Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o in the movie after Musk called the casting ‘historically inaccurate.’

The star let her children enjoy a school night out to celebrate her big movie 

The star-studded film boasts a cast featuring Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, and Samantha Morton

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Theron plays portrays Calypso in the Christopher Nolan movie, an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic the Odyssey

Nyong’o, 43, is set to play Helen of Troy’s sister Clytemnestra, and was named People Magazine’s ‘Most Beautiful Woman’ in 2014 following her triumphant Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for 12 Years A Slave.

Nolan defended his castings, saying: ‘Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. The oldest depictions of Homeric characters tend to be depicted in the manner of people living in Homer’s time…

‘So there’s a pretty strong case there for portraying things that way because that’s the way the first audience received the story.’

Musk was called out for his remarks about the casting in January by The View host Sunny Hostin.

She said: ‘Anyone can portray a fictional character. It doesn’t have to be a white person that plays this part.’ She added: ‘I think we have to call a thing a thing when we’re talking about someone like Elon Musk… We know what this is.

‘He is a white supremacist. In my view, he is a racist.’

Emmy-winner Alec Baldwin has since weighed in on Musk’s anti-woke campaign against Nolan’s movie.

In a public display of support for Lupita and Nolan, Baldwin wrote on Instagram: ‘Dear Elon… but she IS the most beautiful woman in the world…Alec.’

Northern has warned that train services have been cancelled, delayed, or revised after a signalling fault between Salford Crescent and Bolton.

The disruption began on July 15 and is expected to continue until the end of the day, with just hours until England kick off their World Cup semi-final with Argentina at 8pm.

(Image: NQ)

And Three Lions supporters travelling between Bolton and Manchester for the match have been warned disruption will last for hours.

A spokesperson for Northern said: “It is a signalling system that has gone down, we expect it to last for the rest of the day.

“There is nothing running at the moment, no trains between Bolton and Salford Crescent, just keep an eye on our website for updates.”

Network Rail staff are at the scene working to resolve the fault.

Services between Manchester Airport and Blackpool North, Manchester Airport and Barrow or Windermere, Rochdale and Blackburn or Clitheroe, and Southport and Stalybridge are among those affected.

⚠️Due to a fault with the signalling system between Salford Crescent and Bolton fewer trains are able to run on some lines.

🚆Train services running through these stations will be cancelled, delayed or revised.#NorthernUpdateshttps://t.co/6ACO2NDlDH

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— NORTHERN 🚆 (@northernassist) July 15, 2026

Northern added via social media: “You can travel on Transport for Greater Manchester bus services at no extra cost until further notice on the following: V1, V2, 8, 35, 36, 37, 38, 132, 615, 575, 576, 516, 607, 608, 609, and 615.”

Passengers can also use the next available Northern service where possible, while ticket restrictions, including Advance and Peak restrictions, have been lifted in the affected area during the disruption.

Those travelling are advised to check their full journey before setting off, as other train operators may also be affected.

President Donald Trump‘s nominee for director of national intelligence took blame for insufficient redactions of material released about Jeffrey Epstein‘s victims in a congressional hearing on Wednesday.

Jay Clayton admitted that the buck ultimately stopped with him when a batch of files was released in January, which was chalked up to a ‘technical review error.’

The released information included addresses and even nude photos of potential Epstein victims in the release, and victims’ lawyers said this re‑traumatized survivors and ‘turned their lives upside down.’ 

Clayton serves as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and part of the Epstein case was investigated within his jurisdiction. 

As the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton was tasked to personally certify that unsealed grand jury material did not disclose victims’ personal information.

The judge added this requirement so that a clearly identifiable DOJ official would ‘take ownership’ of reviewing sensitive discovery.

Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico invoked Harry Truman’s saying, ‘The buck stops here,’ and asked where the buck stops in this case, to which Clayton answered, ‘For the Southern District documents, it was me.’ 

Clayton finally took his seat before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, roughly a month after President Trump torpedoed his own nominee’s confirmation hearing in a pre-dawn Truth Social post that threw Capitol Hill into chaos.

In the hearing, Clayton admitted mistakes in the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein

The irony: Clayton had been sailing toward an easy, bipartisan confirmation, with senators in both parties eager to replace acting spy chief Bill Pulte, who has no intelligence background. Then Trump pulled the plug himself.

In June, the President abruptly canceled the hearing and vowed to keep Pulte in place, refusing to let the nomination advance until a string of separate demands were met, among them the confirmation of Jamie McDonald as US Attorney and passage of the SAVE America Act, his voter-ID bill.

‘We are canceling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today, and will not be going forward until Jamie McDonald is approved to be U.S. Attorney,’ Trump wrote at the time. ‘In the meantime, Bill Pulte will remain as the Acting Director of National Intelligence.’

The stunt drew a pointed rebuke from the committee’s ranking member, Mark Warner, who used his opening statement to needle the President. 

Warner said he could not recall another nominee senators had agreed, on a bipartisan basis, to ‘move heaven and earth’ to confirm quickly, only for the president to yank the hearing and, in the process, blow up the critical FISA authorization. ‘I know you had nothing to do with that,’ Warner told Clayton. ‘So I guess congratulations about getting finally in front of this committee.’

The urgency is real. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key spy power, has been expired for over a month since it lapsed in the middle of June, and lawmakers in both parties want a confirmed, credentialed DNI in place.

Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia and Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, at the nomination hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday

Clayton is Donald Trump’s nominee for director of intelligence 

Clayton’s chief vulnerability is that he has never held a formal national security role. Committee chairman Tom Cotton moved to inoculate him, casting Clayton’s day job as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York as perhaps ‘the number one national security-related US Attorney’s office in the country.’ 

That office prosecuted the case against captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Clayton also chaired the SEC from 2017 through the COVID pandemic, a stretch Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota called ‘a period of significant uncertainty for financial markets.’ 

‘National security and economic security are synonymous,’ Clayton told the committee. Rounds added that Clayton already has a working relationship with CIA director John Ratcliffe to build on.

Clayton was Trump’s second choice. 

His first pick, Federal Housing Finance Agency head Bill Pulte, drew swift blowback over his lack of intelligence experience. 

The vacancy opened when Tulsi Gabbard resigned to support her husband, Abraham, through cancer treatment.

Asked Wednesday whether he had been told why his hearing was delayed, Clayton declined to reveal the internal discussions.

Cotton noted Wednesday that he intends for the Intelligence Committee to vote to pass along Clayton’s nomination to the full chamber early next week.

President Donald Trump has leapt to the defense of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after its agents were told to pause traffic stops after two deadly shootings just days apart.

“The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” the president wrote on Truth Social early Wednesday.

“CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades. The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted. Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out,” the president wrote. “In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

He continued: “The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming! Remember, you are loved and respected in America.”

The president’s post came after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin ordered the pause “effective immediately,” advising federal agents to “prioritize other existing operational methods” in an internal email seen by The Atlantic.

The order came in response to the killing of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 28-year-old Colombian man living in Maine, and the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three children in Houston.

Both men died after having their vehicles stopped by agents, becoming the 10th and 11th people to be shot dead since the Trump administration began its large-scale round-up of suspected undocumented migrants last year.

An ICE spokesperson told The Independent of the change of strategy: “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”

Seeking to reassure the public Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan characterized the traffic stop decision as a “necessary short-term pause” and told reporters it was important for ICE to establish the facts about the deaths of Guerrero and Salgado Araujo and ask itself: “Is the training sufficient? Did anything go wrong?”

“I’m confident they’re going to get back to their policy of vehicle stops, but they’re doing… what they believe is a necessary short-term pause just to look at it and make sure everything’s good,” he said.

As was the case with the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year, the version of events offered by officials has been met with a degree of skepticism that are often proven incorrect from witness video and testimony.

An ICE spokesperson said its officers “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop” on Guerrero in the coastal town of Biddeford, Maine, Monday morning when “the vehicle attempted to flee the scene,” prompting an agent “fearing for public safety” to fire his weapon.

Similarly, a DHS spokesperson said that Salgado Araujo had tried to “evade arrest” and “weaponized his vehicle” in an attempt to “run over” an ICE officer in Houston, days earlier, leaving the latter to fire “in self-defense.”

However, in neither case were the agents involved wearing body cameras, despite a directive issued by Mullin’s predecessor Kristi Noem that they should do so to record their interactions in the interest of transparency.

Witnesses who saw the Salgado Araujo confrontation, including the deceased’s brother and two co-workers, have challenged the official narrative and since alleged that immigration authorities have pressured them to sign deportation orders to ensure they leave the U.S.

In a statement to The Independent, DHS said the agency’s Office of Inspector General was leading an investigation into the fatal shooting while the FBI’s Houston office is leading a probe “into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”

Agents have shot at least 20 people within the last year and nearly all of them were in their cars.

Andy Burnham has said he won’t be afraid to disagree with American president Donald Trump, adding that he would try to “meet him where he’s at” while “respecting the office”.

The prime minister-in-waiting told Gary Lineker in an interview for Goalhanger: “Maybe in a similar way to the way I’ve just described, I’ll just meet him where he’s at. And, you know, I like to think I’ve got some personality myself and I’ll just, you know, I’ll deal with him very upfront in the same way. I think he likes people to deal with him.

“He described Manchester as some town when he was referring to my position. And I might have to, you know what Mancs are like, Gary, that won’t have gone down fantastically well in the city I used to represent.

“But yeah, you know, it’s about being yourself, isn’t it? It’s about respecting the office, the relationship, the UK-US relationship. But, you know, where you disagree, do it, but do it in a way that is kind of meeting him where he’s at.”

The interview came after Sir Keir Starmer was told he would be remembered as a “giant of the Labour movement” as he marked the final meeting of his top team of ministers on Wednesday.

Elsewhere in the interview the future prime minister declined to rule out a wealth tax and suggested the Government “might be having to ask for a little more” at some point.

He did not commit to a change but said the UK needed a “greater sense of fairness”.

On the prospect of a wealth tax, he told Gary Lineker: “I’m going to obviously take my time to properly look at the state of things, particularly the state of finances. And I just said a moment ago, Gary, about bringing people together. You know, I don’t want to come in and sort of, if you like, create new divisions and pitch people one against another.

“I’m not going rule things out right now. I do believe we need a greater sense of fairness and people feeling that things are being done in the right way and a fair way. But at the same time, you know, I don’t want to sort of be perceived as somebody who’s coming in with grudges and agendas and, you know, going to just immediately find or demonise one group or create a new way of dividing people.”

He added: “So, you know, decisions to be taken in time, they’re going to be difficult. I’m not going to shy away from that. You know, we are going to have to work quite hard to make sure, you know, we can pay our way.

“And at some point that might be having to ask for a little more. But, you know, those decisions are not for now. They’re for another day.”

Plans to reprofile the watercourse of Tang Hall Beck, in Heworth Holme between Burnholme Drive and Tang Hall Lane, have been approved by York Council.

Applicants St Nicks stated the works would enable the establishment of diverse vegetation suitable for animals including invertebrates, amphibians, birds and mammals while providing the public with new access opportunities.

But seven objections were lodged claiming the works could increase the risk of flooding along the beck and elsewhere.

Council planning officers stated they and the Environment Agency found there would be no increased risk of flooding due to the works which would improve biodiversity.

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Environmental charity St Nicks’ plans, which were lodged in 2024, include the removal of wood and steel bank protection using a 14-tonne digger.

Protection is set to be removed when water levels are low, with St Nicks staff monitoring the works.

The banks of the beck are set to be reprofiled with the grading changed.

More bends will be created in the watercourse and the beck’s capacity would also be increased.

St Nicks is planning to work with the York Consortium of Drainage Boards (YCDB) and York St John University to put wood debris and brash berms in the stream.

Coarse substrate will also be placed in selected locations in the bed of the beck.

Riparian plants, those which naturally grow along the banks of rivers and streams, are also set to be seeded by St Nicks staff and volunteers.

The entrance to Heworth Holme, home to Tang Hall Beck, in Bad Bargain Lane, York (Image: Google Street View)

Plans stated weather and beck levels are set to be monitored throughout the works which would be postponed if conditions become unsafe.

But objectors to the plans, including Osbaldwick and Derwent’s Restore UK councillor Mark Warters, said previous works on the beck in 2017 had raised concerns about flooding locally.

They pointed to flooding in the nearby Osbaldwick Beck in January 2025 which resulted in it bursting its banks in Hull Road Park.

Tang Hall Beck is in a Flood Zone Three which is deemed the most at risk.

Council planning officers stated the intention of the scheme was to improve water quality and biodiversity which was consistent with its local policies.

Officers stated: “The application has been supported by a site-specific flood risk assessment.

“The works include measures to increase capacity of the watercourse, by reprofiling the banks, in addition to altering the profile of the watercourse.

“Overall the assessment concludes there would be no loss of capacity and no increased flood risk, either locally or elsewhere.”