The Bayeux Tapestry | Image by: AP Photo / Kin Cheung / Alamy

4 min read23 min

I still can’t quite believe that it’s here. I have had the great privilege of being the UK government special envoy for the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry and have been involved in the intricate negotiations with the French side to transport and exhibit a fragile and very precious 950 year-old embroidery safely and securely. Over recent weeks, I have been in the room accompanying VIP visitors. But this week I went as a visitor, to see it as a million others will in the next 10 months.

The exhibition has been carefully thought out by the British Museum professionals. As you approach the Sainsbury Gallery, you walk back in time. You are first confronted with a group of deadly looking weapons of the period. As the light level lowers, you go up the stairs to a mezzanine with panels on the history. Then, a breathtaking bird’s eye view of the tapestry, bringing home its full 70 metre scale.

Once down the stairs, I found it intensely moving to be up close to this astonishing window onto life in the 11th century. And I mean up close. One of the great achievements of the exhibition is the showcase. Made of the most high-tech glass, it gives robust protection to the tapestry while allowing visitors to get within a few inches of it. The colours glow in the subdued light. The details are arrestingly clear: the facial expressions, the subtle differentiation in clothes and hairstyles, food being cooked and castles and boats being built, the dynamic movement of the horses urging the action forward and, later, the grizzly scenes of fighting and dying.

The colours glow in the subdued light. The details are arrestingly clear

The wealth of detail presents its own problem. If you start by studying every scene, you won’t get to the end in the 40 minutes allocated for each visitor and those behind you will soon get restless. Flow control is going to be an issue. It’s therefore a good idea to do some homework beforehand and decide which scenes you want to focus in on. I recommend The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry by the British Museum curator Michael Lewis and historian Dave Musgrove. 

The tapestry can be enjoyed as a sweeping narrative of knightly derring-do. But there is a lot of politics as well, turning on Duke William’s justification for invading England and wresting the crown from Harold. My favourite scene (number 23) is a moment of high diplomacy. Before the conquest, Harold is in France campaigning alongside William in Bayeux. With William watching intently, Harold stretches out awkwardly, touching two reliquaries.

The tapestry tells us he is making a sacred oath to William. Was it to support William’s claim to the English throne? If so, Harold perjured himself with his coronation on King Edward’s death. The succession was still a touchy subject in England in the late 1060s, when the ladies of Canterbury probably embroidered this masterpiece. So the tapestry is diplomatically silent. 

As an exercise in cultural diplomacy, this loan has already created powerful moments of UK-French unity such as the opening ceremony with the King, President Macron and Prime Minister. The tapestry is having wider impact than any show since Tutankhamun in the 1970s – not surprisingly since 1066 is central to our national story. Its visual cartoon-like language is a gift to social media and appeals directly to young people. The British Museum have an ambitious schools outreach programme and dedicated time for school groups from Britain and France. 

Some experiences surpass expectations. This show is definitely one of those. More tickets will be on sale soon. Do go. It may be a thousand years before you get another chance.

Lord Ricketts is a crossbench peer and former UK Ambassador to France

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Firefighters dampen down the burnt-out remains of a house on 14 August in Stourbridge (PA Images/Alamy)

3 min read35 min

Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is here with us and we must face up to the fact that it will keep getting worse until we stop burning fossil fuels.

As a former NHS worker, I care deeply about public safety. Right now, our emergency services are being stretched to the limit, and the people we represent are the ones paying the price.

Climate scientists have been clear for years that these events are directly linked to the continued burning of fossil fuels. Yet right now, the government is mulling over whether to approve Rosebank, the largest undeveloped oil field in the UK.

When the Prime Minister visited Stourbridge this month, he rightly said we need to take climate change seriously. The decision on Rosebank, expected soon, will be the biggest test of this statement.

After the courts ruled that the full emissions from burning the fossil fuels extracted must be considered in the consenting process, Rosebank’s developers were forced to admit that its true climate impact over a 25-year period would equate to almost 70 per cent of the UK’s entire annual emissions. To sign off on Rosebank now would lock us into a colossal amount of emissions at the precise moment the science tells us we have to pull back.

Tragically, it is ordinary people and workers like those in my community who will pay the price.

It’s families like those who saw their homes go up in flames along with their possessions and, in some cases, their pets. It’s the firefighters who across the country are on the front line of this emergency but are grossly overstretched. Firefighters who themselves have called on Andy Burnham to stop drilling for more fossil fuels. And it’s the NHS patients sweltering in hospital wards deemed unsafe and “dangerously hostile”.

We keep hearing the same tired argument that projects like Rosebank offer energy security. But the reality is that over 90 per cent of the North Sea’s reserves are already gone. 

And in the case of Rosebank, the vast majority of its reserves are oil, nearly all of which will be exported.

The events of this summer do not begin to scratch the surface of what lies ahead

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Extracting what is left will do nothing to help struggling families facing the consequences of yet another fossil fuel price shock. It won’t knock a penny off energy bills and will further fuel the climate crisis that is pushing up the cost of food and other vital goods. 

This isn’t a choice between the climate and British industry. As the basin declines, jobs supported by the North Sea have more than halved over the past decade despite the previous Conservative government issuing hundreds of new licences and companies raking in record profits.

Unlike the Conservatives and Reform UK, we know the only way to truly reindustrialise North Sea communities is by creating good, unionised jobs in industries with a long-term future. The decision on Rosebank will define where this government truly stands: on the side of people facing increasing climate damage, or with mega-multinationals who have profited to the tune of billions from war and spiralling bills.

If we are serious about protecting places like Stourbridge from worse fires and harsher weather, Westminster needs to show more courage. We simply cannot fight fires with one hand while pouring fuel on them with the other. 

Cat Eccles is Labour MP for Stourbridge

(Alamy)

4 min read10 min

The plans are inspired by European countries like Denmark, where the government uses literature to instruct the public on what steps to take within the first 72 hours.

The Tories say they also want the government to be more honest with the country about threats facing the nation, which could include declassifying information held by the state.

Shadow defence minister David Reed is leading on the party’s national resilience policies.

In an interview with PoliticsHome, the Conservative MP for Exmouth and Exeter East said the coronavirus pandemic had created a public mindset that the state can do everything for them, when, in the event of a national emergency, people will need to take steps themselves, especially in the first hours and days.

“The onus needs to be pushed back onto the citizen to say, if things are coming down the track… you need to start thinking more about yourselves and your families, and start preparing so that you can be more resilient and really start to reinvigorate that idea of being a citizen, contributing, and being part of the community,” Reed said.

“By physically giving something to someone, posting it through their door, what I want to see is the narrative in people’s minds change.”

The government is preparing to launch a public awareness campaign around household resilience later this year, with a spokesperson telling PoliticsHome: “The campaign will bring the UK in line with European countries that run similar campaigns already. We’ll announce further details in due course.”

Last month, the Financial Times reported that people would be encouraged to stockpile emergency supplies, including tinned food and bottled water, as part of the push to help households prepare for hostile state acts, cyber warfare, and extreme weather.

In an interview with Sky News Defence Insider, published on Thursday, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the UK does “need to have a national conversation about resilience”.

Streeting pointed not just to state-based threats but climate-based disruption, too, and said people should consider practical questions, like “in the event you have a power cut, would you know where you keep your torch? Have you even got matches or candles?”

Last week, the National Audit Office warned that government had not done enough to engage with households and businesses to strengthen resilience to supply chain shocks.

Reed, a former Marine, is concerned that the planned comms campaign will “fall flat” unless it goes as far as giving every household in the country a readiness pamphlet.

A version being drawn up by Conservatives, seen by PoliticsHome, seeks to communicate that, for a short period after a national emergency or major disruption, it will be up to people to take action where the government cannot help. It sets out a three-point household response, based on stockpiling supplies, making a plan and checking on each other, and lists key items to have in an emergency kit.

The European Commission has encouraged citizens to stockpile enough supplies to last for 72 hours to increase readiness, following in the footsteps of Germany and Nordic states.

“If you look at the Danes, if you look at the Dutch, and if you look at some other European countries, they produce a pamphlet, and they deliver it to every single house in the country, and it just goes through really simply in a nice, civilian-digestible way,” Reed said.  

At the same time, the shadow minister said the government should look for non-military figures to communicate the importance of preparedness, especially to young people, and said ministers should “definitely” consider influencers as campaign spokespeople.

The Conservative MP argued that due to the UK having experienced peaceful decades since the mid-20th century, resilience has become “such an abstract concept”, especially for younger generations, “that you can’t even have the conversation at all”.

He referred to the experience of his 84-year-old father, born in 1942 during the Blitz in Plymouth: “That’s the last generation that has any sort of real semblance, that physical idea of border insecurity and things not being right in terms of security”.

“Work does need to be done with the younger generation because they will be helping out. They will have to help out with all these efforts,” Reed stressed. 

He also called for a greater central government focus on resilience, pointing to Denmark, where they have their “own ministry for national resilience and preparedness, and they’ve got a centralised minister that has been able to work with the different departments to be able to have the conversation about what needs to be done, to be able to set targets”.

AI generated image.
Andy Burnham has announced he will end the “aim to permit” rule in the Gambling Act 2005

It was 2007, the year the iPhone came out, that Britain’s gambling nightmare took hold. A new Gambling Act came into force, ending centuries of accepted wisdom that gambling was to be permitted but not promoted. It reframed gambling as a mainstream leisure activity, enabling liberalised advertising, licensing and product innovation that have been linked to heightened harm.

Under the Act, the Gambling Commission has given out licences liberally, creating a market that has over 2,000 licensed gambling operators. Whilst it’s widely accepted that social media and smartphones can be addictive, what’s less understood is that the gambling sector pioneered some of the worst addictive digital features, and online slot and casino games still far surpass the addictive potential of other digital products.

The physical land-based versions of these slot games, machines in bookmakers and slot venues across the country, essentially deliver the same highly addictive content.

The result has been millions of people harmed, communities held back, high streets blighted, and losses to the national economy.

When the Starmer administration repeatedly called for the growth of the gambling sector as well as the reduction of harm, the gaslighting seemed to have reached its zenith. Fortunately, Andy Burnham has enough empathy, political nous, and understanding of public opinion to realise something had to be done, and he has acted quickly.

Within days of becoming Prime Minister, Burnham announced that a major principle that made the Gambling Act so harmful – that councils shall “aim to permit” gambling venues, even if they and their residents don’t want them – is to be scrapped.

This isn’t just the deletion of a couple of clauses, “aim to permit” underpins the legislative ambition to grow the gambling sector. Removing it signals a fundamental change to the government’s stance. It acknowledges that the policy of the past 20 years has failed, and a new approach is needed.

Both sides of this debate will be watching closely to see what Burnham does next. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he also joined calls for a prohibition on gambling advertising, something which has long been advocated for by public health leaders.

Burnham’s new gambling minister, Vicky Foxcroft MP, could support such a policy. In the past Foxcroft has called gambling addiction a “public health emergency”, urging greater reforms including a ban on gambling advertising in live sport. Lewisham Council, which covers her constituency, has joined the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, alongside 60 other organisations, including 20 other councils – so she would have a lot of support. Polls (Survation; MiC) have shown the public are fed up with seeing so many gambling ads so any action would also be a vote winner.

As if the opportunity to introduce policies that are popular, cost little to implement, and deliver public health gains weren’t enough, the beauty of restricting gambling advertising is that it will deliver economic growth by restricting the gambling sector.

According to the University of Sheffield this year, a 10 per cent reduction in gambling spend could lead to a £1.25bn uplift to the economy and more than 22,000 new jobs. Combined with multiple other studies with findings that gambling spend is bad for the economy (SMF; NERA) this should be enough to get the buy-in of the Treasury.

Under Burnham, the gambling sector’s permission to profit from the country’s population and finances could be coming to an end. A sector that’s had its way for far too long may be about to experience the overriding feeling of 99 per cent of its customers – what it’s like to lose.

Harry Styles has announced that he’ll be extending his current world tour into next year.

On Wednesday night, Harry – who is currently in the middle of a whopping 30-night residency at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden – told his fans in an email message: “When we decided to do the 2026 tour I knew it would be special but what you turned it into was far beyond what I could have imagined.

“I love playing music, I love being with all of you and being a part of the love and joy you all create together every night. That’s why I wanted you to be the first to know we will be adding 2027 dates.”

Harry then said that the specifics of these shows would be coming on Thursday, teasing: “After that, I don’t know what comes next for me, but l know that I’m excited to find out.”

“I can’t wait for us to keep dancing with all our friends,” he concluded. “I hope to see you there.”

Harry brought the Together Together tour to London earlier in the summer, performing 12 nights at Wembley Stadium, with Shania Twain serving as his opening act.

The recent publication of the Health and Social Care Committee’s report, Food and Weight Management: Fixing the Food Environment¹ and the findings from the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Obesity policy paper on Childhood Food Environment, Planning and School Food² has brought renewed focus to childhood health, children’s food environments and the urgent need to support families to live healthier lives.

With obesity among reception-aged children at its highest recorded level, there’s a very clear message: tackling obesity is not simply about individual choices but about creating environments that help whole families thrive. And while the systemic changes recommended by the Committee and APPG, such as restrictions on advertising of high fat, salt and sugar products and mandatory healthy food sales reporting, are vital, sitting them alongside measures that recognise and harness the influence parents can have on children’s health behaviours could have the potential for further widespread benefits.

New independent research³ published in BMJ Paediatrics Open provides compelling evidence of the relationship between parents addressing their own weight concerns and the health behaviours of their children. The study, conducted by the University of Bristol and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), explored the experiences of 396 Slimming World members with children aged between five and 11 years old.

The findings reveal the powerful link between parental behaviour change and positive outcomes for children:

• more than two-thirds (67 per cent) of parents who were concerned about their child’s weight felt more motivated to support their child after addressing their own weight
• almost half (48 per cent) of parents reported healthier improvements in what their child ate after they joined a weight management programme
• more than a quarter (27 per cent) said their child had become more physically active

These findings are particularly significant at a time when global projections suggest that by 2050, one in three children, teenagers and young adults could be living with overweight or obesity.⁴ Research also consistently shows that children with parents living with obesity are more likely to experience obesity themselves.⁵

Through our understanding of the significant influence parents have on their child’s habits, our Family Affair programme acknowledges the important role family can play in the health of children. It provides our members with a set of resources to support them in encouraging their children to have a healthy, varied balanced diet and form life-long healthy habits.

As policymakers consider how best to address rising childhood obesity rates, recognising the role of families and communities in obesity care and prevention is crucial. In doing so, family influence can become one of the most powerful tools available – putting family at the heart of all adult weight management programmes could help to break the cycle of intergenerational obesity.

Moreover, as the number of people using weight loss medication continues to increase, we should consider whether this could lead to the loss of family influence and what impact this could have on the younger generation, if those using medication aren’t making or being encouraged to make, healthy lifestyle changes alongside it.

Whether our members lose weight with Slimming World alone or alongside medication, they are fully welcome in our groups to receive evidence-based, cost-effective support that ensures they make lasting changes to their diet, activity levels and mindset. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with the government to discuss our commitment to supporting its efforts to help people whose lives are adversely impacted by obesity and introduce them to our members who have lost weight and created lasting healthy habits for their entire family.

For more information on our latest research and outcomes or our programme, please visit slimmingworld.co.uk/health

1. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5902/cmselect/cmhealth/223/report.html
2. https://obesityappg.com/inquiries
3. Mears R, Sharp D, Searle A, Salway R, Hamilton-Shield J. Effect of parent attendance at an adult commercial weight management programme on their children. BMJ Paediatrics Open. 2026;10:e004417. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjpo-2025-004417
4. Global, regional, and national prevalence of child and adolescent overweight and obesity, 1990–2021, with forecasts to 2050: a forecasting study for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 – The Lancet
5. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childhood-obesity-applying-all-our-health/childhood-obesity-applying-all-our-health