She has been trolled online for her weight but says it won’t stop her from telling other women about the condition.

An MLA has said she won’t let online trolling stop her from raising awareness of gestational diabetes.

Alliance representative Sian Mulholland was speaking at a Diabetes in Pregnancy study day, organised by the Belfast Trust and attended by clinicians from across Northern Ireland.

Gestational diabetes happens if your body cannot produce enough insulin, which regulates blood sugar levels, to meet extra needs in pregnancy.

Ms Mulholland, who represents North Antrim, said: “I’ve had comments directed at me that I’m a walking advert for diabetes it had made me really hesitant to even say that I actually had the condition.

“It’s one of the reasons it’s taken me this long to talk about it. There’s a real lack of understanding that any woman can get gestational diabetes. There are risk factors but it’s not controlled to one group of women.”

Ms Mulholland also spoke about the misconceptions around the condition: “People not understanding what you could or couldn’t eat, what that would mean for your pregnancy and the biggest thing that people didn’t understand is that GD goes away immediately after you’ve had your baby.”

While any pregnant woman can develop GD, that possibility is increased if her BMI is above 30, she’s previously had a baby weighing over 10lbs, or if a close relative has diabetes.

Gestational Diabetes can also increase the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes after the baby is born.

“For me it was understanding that taking care of myself post-partum may have staved off a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes a little bit further. But it’s also reeling that back and knowing that it’s not your fault and trying to break that burden of blame and guilt,” Ms Mulholland added.

Women with gestational diabetes are more likely to give birth to a baby that’s bigger than normal, or they may give birth earlier, with GD raising the likelihood of giving birth before full term. Mums are also at a higher risk of pre-eclampsia, which causes high blood pressure during pregnancy.

Ms Mulholland says that despite the trolling and nasty comments, she sees her position as MLA as a platform to let other women know that GD is a common, manageable condition.

She explains: “I had to put my thran head on – a good North Antrim word! – and realise that actually I can’t let faceless trolls get in my way of using my platform to encourage people to get their bloods tested to look out for the symptoms of diabetes, and to speak to their healthcare providers.

“And if you are someone who’s just been diagnosed with GD to realise it isn’t your fault and speak to your healthcare providers about getting full holistic support for you and your baby but also just to keep in mind that you could not have changed anything,” she adds.

Belfast Trust’s diabetes specialist midwives Deborah Burns and Jacquie Simpson organised the Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Day, which attracted clinicians from across Northern Ireland.

Deborah said: “We want to improve the maternity care experience for women with diabetes in pregnancy, so we started by educating our staff. This has expanded from Belfast Trust staff to regionally.

“Diabetes in pregnancy can lead to complications. It’s a complex condition so it’s important to that we all know how to look after these women and keep them and their babies safe during pregnancy.”

Gestational diabetes doesn’t usually cause any symptoms but if you’re noticing increased thirst, needing to pee more often than usual, and/or a dry mouth it is important to contact your GP or midwife. You may then be sent to your local Maternity Service for a GD test.

Most cases are only picked up when your blood sugar level is tested during screening for gestational diabetes. If you have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, this may be manageable with changes to your diet and eating habits and monitoring your blood glucose levels.

However, there are times when medication may still be needed. Women with gestational diabetes are under the care of a specialist team of midwives, nurses and doctors.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty has addressed the ongoing feud between himself and his family

Adam Ramsay-Peaty has spoken out about his family estrangement. He has suggested that a reconciliation may be possible – but only if he believes they have “improved as people”.

The swimmer and Strictly Come Dancing star, who is married to Holly Ramsay, daughter of TV chef Gordon, spoke following what he described as a “real rollercoaster of a week” at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where he picked up two bronzes and a silver.

Following the 100m breaststroke final, Peaty broke down in tears and hit back at his critics, declaring “you can’t hurt me” and insisting they needed to “do better.”

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK! Follow Wales Online’s Swansea City FB page for more news and analysis

In a Guardian interview published on Saturday, Peaty, 31, addressed the personal tensions between himself and his family, including mum Caroline and dad Mark, which emerged in the lead-up to his December 2025 wedding to Holly, 26.

When asked whether a reconciliation with his family was possible, Peaty said: “For me, as a Christian, there has to be forgiveness. It doesn’t mean you have to forget, but forgiveness takes time.

“I’m not saying that it won’t get better but it has to come from a place where I feel like they’ve improved as people, in a sense, and opened that communication up. I haven’t told one thing to the media. I haven’t done one story over the last eight months and more.”

On whether the very public falling-out, which has played out extensively in the press, has taken a toll on him, Peaty said: “I wouldn’t say on me because I’ve got a thick skin.

“But I care about my wife, I care about my son. I care about the relationships that people think I have with my son, and my own family, but that’s my private life.”

The swimming star has a son, who is nearly six, from a previous relationship, and a daughter due in December. He also spoke out in an interview following his 100m breaststroke final in Glasgow.

Expressing his disappointment at finishing third, he said: “It’s hard because I know how hard I work. I know the s**t I’ve been through, which is no fault of my own, but it does take its toll.

“I’m not crying because it’s bronze instead of gold. I’m crying because I know I am better than that. I feel like I couldn’t have put any more in and that’s where it hurts, because I’m like, ‘What’s the point of all the metres every day, what’s the point of being exhausted all the time?

“What’s the point of having to say no to family events so you can go to training’? It has to mean something and for me it has to be human excellence and that is not excellence for me.

“So that’s the emotion that is unfortunately coming out. [Holly] is always going to be proud of me and I think as a father, it doesn’t matter if you come home with a gold, as long as you come home with a teddy.”

Peaty’s mum Caroline posted afterwards: “I forgive people but that doesn’t mean I accept their behaviour or trust them. I forgive them for me, so I can let go and move on with my life.”

The swimmer’s relationship with his parents soured in the lead-up to their December wedding, reportedly after his mum expressed her hurt at being excluded from wife Holly’s lavish hen-party in the Cotswolds.

Victoria Beckham received an invitation to join the celebrations at Soho Farmhouse, yet Caroline was allegedly asked to stay at home and care for Peaty’s son from a previous relationship instead.

Advertisement

She was told she would not be welcome at the wedding at Bath Cathedral, while the Olympian’s father was informed he could attend only if he remained at the back of the church. He declined the offer, and on the day, only Peaty’s sister Bethany was present from his side of the family.

Caroline has previously acknowledged speaking to a newspaper about her son during the early stages of their falling-out, but insists she has not spoken publicly about him since, and has hinted she’s ready to build bridges.

She said: “He’s our son who we love, whom we supported to reach his aspirations. Our love, our time, our sacrifices were given freely with no expectation of financial reward just genuinely given with the love as any mother and father would do for their child.”

Countdown to Kickoff: The Ultimate 26/27 Sky Sports Bundle

Advertisement

This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more

Sky’s Ultimate TV and Sky Sports bundle includes at least 215 live Premier League clashes across the 2026/27 season with more than 1,400 live games across the EFL and beyond, plus F1, golf and darts.

Every subscription now comes with 135 channels alongside free subscriptions to HBO Max, Netflix, Disney+, discovery+ and Hayu.

By SOPHIA STANFORD, NEWS REPORTER

Published: 10:05 BST, 2 August 2026 | Updated: 10:15 BST, 2 August 2026

A tourist plane has crashed at the famous Nazca Lines in Peru, killing all 11 passengers and two crew who were on board.

The crash happened at around 1pm local time in the Pueblo Viejo region, after the small plane took off from an airport in Pisco.

According to Peru’s state news agency, there were two German, two Spanish and seven Italian tourists on the flight.

Peruvian radio station RPP said they ranged from 18 to 78 years old.

The Nazca Lines are enormous figures drawn into the desert sand by people who lived in the area around 1,600 years ago.

Their scale – with one pelican figure measuring 285 metres long – has prompted many questions about their purpose, as they can only be fully appreciated from the air.

In 1994, the site was added to Unesco’s World Heritage List and it continues to attract visitors from across the world.

Images from the scene of yesterday’s crash show smoke rising from the barely identifiable wreckage.

Police Major Jorge Andrade was quoted by AFP saying: ‘Given the severity of the accident, there are no survivors. We have recovered four bodies so far.’

Sightseeing flights over the geoglyphs had been temporarily suspended on Friday due to wins speeds of over 40km/h and resulting dust clouds.

However, the cause of the crash is yet to be fully established.

A statement from the Municipalidad Provincial de Nasca said the aircraft was operated by the Aerodiana airline.

It said the province ‘extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased’.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

MORE: Homes destroyed and several dead after major earthquake

St Ives in Cornwall and St Ives in Cambridgeshire could not be more different in many ways – but they may share more than a name

St Ives in Cambridgeshire shares its name with a fishing town in Cornwall. Beyond that, the two towns have little in common apart from their separate claims to a riddle about a traveller’s trip to St Ives.

The popular brain-teaser is normally found as a nursery rhyme. Its earliest known publication was in 1730 and goes as follows:

“As I was going to St Ives,I met a man with seven wives,Each wife had seven sacks,Each sack had seven cats,Each cat had seven kits:Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,How many were there going to St Ives?”

The answer is subject to debate. Some think it’s a logic trick where only one is actually going towards St Ives. Others believe it’s a mathematical equation summing powers of seven.

The question of which St Ives is referred to is also up for debate. The Cornish claim is based on the cats they keep to prevent rodents damaging fishing gear. But some say there is a stronger case for Cambridgeshire.

According to the Huntingdonshire History Festival, a Royal Charter was granted for St Ives to host an annual market in 1110. In 1200, it purchased the rights to a weekly market and the town’s success skyrocketed.

King Henry III purchased over 7,000 feet of fabric from the town in 1237. By 1250 the market was being advertised in Douai, France. Just like the riddle, many went to St Ives.

In 1202, the Liber Abaci was published to assist traders with their mathematics. Its equation “Seven Old Men Go to Rome” follows the exact same structure as the St Ives riddle.

It’s possible that traders carrying the Liber Abaci found their way to the bustling market town and inspired the disputed riddle. Popular trading commodities also required protection from rodents, so cats were common.

This settles the debate for some people, but leaves room for discussion. While it didn’t reach the heights of its Cambridgeshire counterpart, Cornwall’s St Ives was granted its own market charter much later in 1487. Coupled with its busy fishing port, it was also replete with merchants. We may never know which St Ives is at the heart of the riddle.

It’s like a scene from one of those hard-bitten American crime movies of the 1930s. The police and a key prosecution witness are discussing problems with their evidence in a fast-approaching trial.

It turns out that the facts in the case have changed, rather awkwardly. It is a glum scene. And the cops say to the witness: ‘Yeah, we can’t change the data.’ And then they say: ‘But we can change the interpretation of it.’

It’s easy to imagine, isn’t it, in some smoky interrogation cellar in a dingy precinct of Los Angeles or Chicago? But in fact it happened in the pretty English city of Chester, in April 2024.

The witness was Dr Ravi Jayaram, once a rising star of TV, now the only person who has ever come close to seeing the nurse Lucy Letby doing anything wrong. 

Amazingly, Letby is now in prison till she dies, for seven murders and seven attempted killings. This is despite there being no hard evidence that she harmed anybody. So this is quite important. But is it what it seems?

Dr Jayaram gave evidence to both of Ms Letby’s trials on the same event. His evidence to her second trial in 2024 led to headlines that he had caught her ‘virtually red-handed’ standing by a seriously ill baby.

Though he did not witness her actively harming the tiny child, he said she was failing to help when the infant was clearly in difficulties. As the years have gone by, many have begun to wonder if it was more virtual than red-handed.

My colleague Glen Owen wrote in The Mail on Sunday in 2025 about an explosive email, written by Dr Jayaram in 2017, which appears to go against his later evidence that he found her up to no good.

In that email, Dr Jayaram wrote that he went to investigate Baby K because Letby herself had raised the alarm and asked him for help – not because he had suspicions about the nurse.

Now comes this conversation between Dr Jayaram and the police. The full transcript of this exchange was obtained last week by the distinguished investigative journalist Cleuci de Oliveira.

In the transcript, Dr Jayaram struggles to cope with the fact that swipe records for one crucial door were back to front. They appeared to show a key nurse leaving the Neonatal Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital when she was in fact entering it.

This is important because Dr Jayaram’s account involved Ms Letby being alone while the other nurse on the ward was absent. His account, in Letby’s first trial, depended partly on those records.

Shortly before the second trial, Dr Jayaram met Cheshire Police. During a half-hour conversation with Darren Riley (a civilian investigator) and Detective Constable Kate Millins, this key exchange takes place.

Dr Jayaram’s account involved Letby being alone while the other nurse on the ward was absent

Advertisement

Dr Jayaram: I’m just looking at the swipe data now, to look at the timings… So, it was this, where it says that Jo Williams [another nurse] left the unit at 3:47?

CI Riley: Yeah…

Dr Jayaram: Yeah.

CI Riley: That actually means coming back.

Dr Jayaram: Oh, is that when she comes back?

CI Riley: Yeah, we can’t change the data.

Dr Jayaram: Ah, OK.

CI Riley: But we can change the interpretation of it.

The three carry on for some minutes discussing this confusing mess in what was once key evidence. They also discuss various other aspects of Dr Jayaram’s testimony.

When I asked Cheshire Police about it, they said they would not be commenting.

Dr Jayaram has yet to answer an email I sent him, asking for his response.

Former Tory Cabinet minister, Sir David Davis, said: ‘It is deeply troubling to see what appears to be the police and a key witness reshaping the interpretation of the evidence to Lucy Letby’s disadvantage in advance of her retrial.’

He called for another force to review Cheshire Police’s handling of the case.

Red box beats off red rage by Two Jabs 

The late John Prescott still fills us all with mixed feelings. Many of us enjoyed the day he punched a man who threw an egg at him, and I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d sloshed the fat, plummy Tory MP who used to jeer snobbishly at him about his old trade as a waiter. 

The late John Prescott lost the keys to his ministerial red boxes so frequently that he was given a total of 16 spare keys

Now it emerges that he kept losing the keys to his ministerial red boxes, so often that he was issued with 16 spare keys between 1997 and 2007. Alas, he would sometimes try to smash his way back into the box with a cold chisel and a lump hammer, a scene all too easy to imagine. 

But the boxes are tougher than they look. The old-established firm of Barrow, Hepburn and Gale, which has been making and restoring the boxes for decades, tells me he still failed to get them open. The mangled cases were classed as ‘compromised’ and had to be replaced. 

Left’s sick love affair with the guillotine 

Nigel Farage seems to be carving out a new life for himself as a victim. It’s sad to watch. Imagine the old Nigel demanding that the police arrest someone for posting a picture of a T-shirt. 

In my view he is quite wrong about Green Supremo Zack Polanski’s Instagram, or whatever it was. A guillotine is not a murder weapon. Imagine attacking someone with this unwieldy machine in the street. 

Advertisement

In Peter Hitchens’ home town, Oxford, he often sees people wearing T-shirts similar to this one that Zack Polanski shared on Instagram

Polanski’s action is actually worse than Farage thinks, but in a deeper way. Left wingers claim to be furiously opposed to all executions, but they aren’t really. As experience shows, they’re actually quite keen on killing people for having the wrong opinions. And you can buy, for about £20 on the internet, a popular T-shirt bearing a picture of a guillotine and the words ‘a platform for fascists’. 

I see people wearing them in Oxford, my home town. By ‘fascist’ they mean people like me. They’ll say it’s a joke. But is it? 

As recently as 1959, similar Western fun revolutionaries were cheering on the Cuban firing squads run by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Havana. The moat of the La Cabana fortress was disgustingly wet with their opponents’ blood. And plenty of respectable anti-death penalty Leftists in 1930s Britain excused Stalin’s murderous purges. 

England’s Dimeji Shittu was left upset by the decision following the contest in Glasgow

Controversy has erupted at the Commonwealth Games after England’s Dimeji Shittu had to settle for silver following a controversial defeat by India’s Ankush Panghal.

Despite appearing to have had the better of his opponent in Glasgow, it was Panghal who was awarded the gold in the men’s 80kg boxing final.

The Englishman won the first round convincingly and forced Panghal to receive a count.

But things turned in the second; Shittu was handed a two-point deduction for holding and hitting, in the second and third rounds respectively, with the judges scoring the bout 4-1 in the Indian’s favour.

Four of the judges awarded Panghal the final round.

The result left the 24-year-old visibly emotional and TNT Sport commentators completely stunned, while the crowd booed the confirmation when it was announced.

“Shocking, terrible, totally robbed,” said co-commentator Richie Woodhall. “He [Ankush] certainly had the referee on his side there and the referee has cost Dimeji Shittu the contest.

“He’s been robbed there, I really feel for him.

“How did [Ankush] win that last round on the judges’ scores? That is absolutely terrible. Shocking decision. Totally robbed and that’s not sour grapes.”

Former Commonwealth Games gold medallist boxer Delicious Orie echoed Woodhall’s frustrations, adding that AI scoring would be one way to improve scoring in boxing.

He also added that the lack of warnings to Shittu was a head-scratcher.

“In my opinion, it was a total robbery,” he said in the TNT Sports studio. “I think the referee has stripped that gold medal from Dimeji.

“There’s this thing in boxing, because it’s subjective, the refereeing is subjective, the judging is subjective… I’ve been hearing stories that it would be good to potentially add AI judging into boxing.

“I wouldn’t necessarily be against it because then it becomes an objective sport. In track and field, you’re running to the line, you can’t argue with time.

“If I knew there was a specific set of scoring, then bring AI, because I would follow that scoresheet instead of someone else’s opinion. That can be the difference, as we’ve seen here, between a gold and silver medal.

“It’s a real shame for Dimeji. He scored some really good points, he pushed his opponent back. I don’t know what the referee was thinking. There weren’t even any warnings, so to give him two point deductions really doesn’t make any sense to me.

“I’m no ref, but speaking to Dimeji, stopping the fight, looking him in the face and saying ‘don’t do it again’. That’s enough for him to not do it again. Essentially stripping that gold medal is no good.”

Shittu himself refused to blame the referee. He said after the fight: “A lot of people might say this about the referee, the judging, but at the end of the day I can only blame myself.

“Those are the rules. We live and we learn. At the end of the day, it’s a foul in amateur boxing. It cost me the fight.

“If people think I should have got the decision, fair play, I understand.

“But if I’m sitting here blaming judges, blaming refs, I’m not going to get better.”

Adam Peaty has stated he will ‘forgive but not forget’ his family amid their ongoing rift.

The swimmer, 31, has spoken out about the drama, the roots of which go back to 2024, when Adam and his now-wife Holly Ramsay snubbed wider members of the Peaty family by not inviting them to their engagement party and wedding.

The conflict has since escalated and earlier this week, his family – including parents Caroline and Mark – begged for reconciliation after watching the star score a double bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. 

Speaking to The Guardian, Adam, who embraced Christianity in 2023, stated that his religion means there is prospect of forgiveness, but insisted he will only reconcile with his family if he ‘feels they have improved as people’.

When asked if he would heal the rift, he said: ‘For me, as a Christian, there has to be forgiveness. It doesn’t mean you have to forget, but forgiveness takes time…

Adam broke down in tears following his third place finish on Saturday, and said his feud with his family had ‘taken its toll’. Adam broke down in tears following his third place finish on Saturday, and said his feud with his family had ‘taken its toll’

Advertisement

‘I’m not saying that it won’t get better but it has to come from a place where I feel like they’ve improved as people, in a sense, and opened that communication up… I haven’t told one thing to the media. I haven’t done one story’. 

On speculation around the row, he said: ‘I wouldn’t say on me because I’ve got a thick skin. But I care about my wife, I care about my son [George, five, from his previous relationship].’

Earlier this week, Adam’s family pleaded with the swimmer to heal the rift with his estranged mother Caroline saying: ‘Please don’t hurt her any more.’

Adam’s failure to score gold at the Commonwealth Games saw him break down in tears in post interviews – in which he partly blamed his family for his poor performance, saying the fallout ‘had taken its toll’ during training.

Caroline and Mark had to watch their son on TV at home after being banned from cheering him on poolside, while his pregnant wife Holly, whose father is Gordon Ramsay, watched on and kissed him after the swim.

An insider told the Daily Mail: ‘Adam blaming his family for his failure at the Commonwealth Games is not right. Our message is ‘Come home and talk to your mother. You know your mum will forgive you! Please don’t hurt her any more…

‘You both need to heal. Even the public are turning against you. You have to be careful what you put out in the universe because it always comes back at you threefold.’

The source added: ‘We never thought you would treat your family the way you have. All we have done is love you and support you.’

After finishing in third place during his 100m final, Adam rushed to embrace Holly in the stands, before kissing her bump

Adam waved goodbye to the Games where he was supported only by Holly and his team – with three medals. He notched up two bronze in the individual 50m and 100m breaststroke, and finally a silver in the mixed 4x100m medley relay.

The three-time Olympic champion aims to get back to the top for Los Angeles 2028.

He said: ‘I’ll almost have to forget the experience I’ve had this week in my personal situation and learn from it very quickly.’

The swimmer’s family from Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, willed him on from afar.

The source said: ‘There was a small family gathering willing him on. It’s a shame he didn’t get the piece of metal he wanted. But bronze is better than naught.

‘We’re still proud of him but he seems to have lost some focus, and he’s the first one to admit that.’

Adam – competing for the first time under his new married name – failed to mention the Peatys during broadcast interviews. He said: ‘Thankfully, I’ve got an incredible wife and an incredible support circle around me.’

As the star bowed out of the event in Glasgow with no predicted gold medals he partly blamed his family for his poor performance (pictured previously with parents Caroline and Mark)

After his first disappointing defeat, he took a swipe at his family, whom he is still embroiled in a bitter rift with, as he broke down in tears.

A visibly upset Adam acknowledged the feud and said the fallout ‘has taken its toll’.

He said: ‘It’s hard because I know how hard I’ve worked. I know the s**t I’ve been through, which is no fault of my own. It does take a toll.’

In a fresh swipe at the swimmer the source said: ‘The first words out of Adam’s mouth should have been positive words for the other swimmers.

‘The courageous young lad Archie Goodbourn who swam his heart out with inoperable brain tumours, where was the praise for him? It was all about the self-indulgent Adam.’

Holly, 26, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child, was quick to heap praise on her husband following his disappointment.

Taking to Instagram, she shared photos of her and Adam and alluded to his tough week, she wrote: ‘Proud. Watching your comeback to championship racing has been inspiring.’

She added: ‘It’s not been an easy journey but your determination and faith have never wavered and we will keep going, through the good and the bad together.’

Adam has stated that he ‘wants to get lost in being a husband and father’ as he and Holly prepare to welcome a baby girl together in December.

It’s only two weeks since Gianni Infantino joined President Donald Trump in handing over the Jules Rimet trophy to Spain in New Jersey, wearing a dark suit, blindingly white trainers and the self-satisfied grin of a man celebrating a World Cup triumph of his own.

The FIFA president declared the tournament – and its new 48-team format – a huge success after spending the previous six weeks flitting around North America in a private jet to see his vision become reality.

Anybody else might have been inclined to spend some time reflecting on a World Cup that produced more than its fair share of talking points, or even have some time off.

Not Infantino. He was already moving onto his next project; one that backfired spectacularly this week and has left the 56-year-old Swiss fighting to stay in power.

It took less than four days for his grand plan to sell off football’s crown jewel to private investors for £3.1billion to go up in smoke, from the bombshell news breaking at lunchtime on Tuesday to Infantino’s humiliating statement in the early hours of Saturday confirming it has been scrapped in the face of widespread opposition.

At the end of a seismic week for world football, it is hard to see how he can survive after leading confederations and even senior executives at FIFA turned on the embattled president, and UEFA made the first move towards removing him from office with a vote of no confidence on Saturday morning.

Why did it unravel so quickly? How did Infantino, a skilled political figure, get it so horribly wrong?

It was clear this wasn’t going to end well from the immediate sense of shock and outrage when The Times revealed that Infantino wanted to create a subsidiary company called FIFA Forward Enterprise to run its flagship events, primarily the World Cup, in a deal that could be worth up to £15bn.

Private investors would have been able to buy stakes in FFE through a group led by Thrive Eternal, a US venture capital company founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared.

The 211 member associations were offered a £30m cut if they agreed with the proposals by September 19.

UEFA were the first to voice their opposition with a strongly worded statement agreed unanimously and co-signed by the English FA and Europe’s other 54 associations. They criticised Infantino for ‘a profound failure of leadership’ and presiding over ‘governance by intimidation’, adding: ‘None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.’

UEFA followed that up with a threat to boycott the World Cup if Infantino refused to back down and abandon his plans.

Two other Confederations then came out against Infantino on Thursday and Friday. CONCACAF, which represents 41 countries across North America, Central America and the Caribbean, rejected the proposal and expressed ‘deep concerns about the lack of due process surrounding the proposal and the artificially short deadline imposed’.

The Asian Football Confederation followed, saying: ‘Football should never have been placed in such a position. It has exposed fundamental weaknesses in FIFA’s consultation and decision-making processes that must now be addressed.’

Infantino needed a majority of the 211 member nations to vote through his proposals, but already 136 of them were opposed to him.

He doubled down on Friday morning when FIFA issued a statement insisting that ‘nobody is selling football’ – but opposition was growing at an alarming rate.

New Prime Minister Andy Burnham weighed into the controversy, questioning whether Infantino is the right man to lead FIFA anymore.

‘This was an outrageous suggestion,’ said Burnham. ‘The idea that it could even be brought forward, in my view, shows that the FIFA president is the wrong man to lead the organisation.’

More damagingly for Infantino, two of his senior aides turned against him in the space of a few hours.

President of the US Soccer Federation Carlos Cordeiro was a key Infantino ally before he fell on his sword

CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani has emerged as an early contender to stand against Infantino in March

Carlos Cordeiro, who was FIFA’s representative on the White House taskforce for the World Cup and at Infantino’s side throughout, said: ‘As a senior adviser to the FIFA president, a former banker, and a lifelong football fan, I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup.

‘I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally. It is a bad deal for FIFA’s member associations, a bad deal for football, and a bad deal for the long-term future of the game.

‘Selling a permanent stake in football’s most valuable asset to raise $4.2bn makes little sense. It is mortgaging football’s future without any compelling justification.’

If that wasn’t bad enough for Infantino, FIFA’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour then quit, claiming that Infantino had ‘deceived’ his own administration and accusing him of a ‘lie by omission’. He blasted the plans as a ‘the project of one person’.

‘This (lie) and unilateral exercise of power are not trivial,’ added Lamour. ‘They are indicative of a lack of trust, a lack of transparency, a lack of discernment, a lack of good governance. And a serious lack of respect.

‘Not only must this project not go ahead, but the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions.

‘My colleagues – some of whom have dedicated their lives to football – deserve better than contempt and intimidation.

‘The ball is now in the court of those who have the power to change things. I know I have a duty of loyalty to my employer. But I also, and above all, have a duty of loyalty to certain values and to the upbringing I have received, and a duty to support my colleagues. And if that means I lose my job, then so be it. I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.’

Shortly after midnight, Infantino inevitably bowed to the pressure and announced he was scrapping the proposals because ‘it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place’.

If he thought that would be the end of the matter, however, it quickly became clear on Saturday that the implications could be far greater when UEFA declared a vote of no confidence in him.

Europe’s governing body hit out at Infantino for the ‘shabby, back-room, opaque deal he hatched’ and promised to work with the other confederations in world football to ‘identify those responsible and hold them to account’.

It added: ‘This is a victory for the whole game. But it must not be the end of the story. The proposal has gone. The task of rebuilding trust in FIFA has only just begun.’

So what next for Infantino? He has been in power for 10 years and was expected to win re-election for a fourth term unopposed at the next FIFA congress in Morocco in March.

But with support dwindling fast and UEFA on the warpath, it looks increasingly likely that a rival candidate will stand against him.

CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani has emerged as an early contender, along with current FIFA general secretary Mattias Granstrom and Dariusz Mioduski, a vice-president of the European Football Clubs body.

Two weeks after he had the whole world in his hands, it feels as though Gianni Infantino’s time is almost up.