Handing over the Falkland Islands to Argentina could be Labour’s next foreign policy ‘betrayal’, opposition MPs warned today, as Gibraltar effectively became part of the European Union more than three centuries after being declared British.

Ministers signed a post-Brexit deal at a ‘surrender’ ceremony in Brussels today which will see the border between the Rock and mainland Spain disappear.

It effectively means the peninsula – strategically important militarily because it sits at one of the world’s busiest maritime choke points – has joined the bloc’s free-movement Schengen zone.

And visiting Britons will have to show their passports to Spaniards and face being refused entry despite it being UK territory.

Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty smiled for the cameras as he signed the deal today alongside Maroš Šefcovic, the bloc’s Brexit point man, and Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares Bueno.

But Reform MP Robert Jenrick said: ‘This Government has proven itself completely incapable of defending our national interest.

‘They fold easier than a deckchair. Why are Brits being made to show their passport to Spaniards to enter British territory?

‘Reform UK and Nigel Farage will finally put our country first.’

With an economy based on financial services and online gaming, Gibraltar – which covers just under seven square kilometres (2.7 square miles) – has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world 

Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty, left, smiled for the cameras as he signed the deal today alongside Maroš Šefcovic

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Reform MP Andrew Rosindell added: ‘Having betrayed Britain’s sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, this Government has now turned its back on Gibraltar.

‘Requiring Britons to face Spanish involvement when entering British territory is an unacceptable concession.

‘Gibraltar has been British since the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht and must remain so. If ministers are prepared to compromise Gibraltar today, which British Overseas Territory will they put at risk tomorrow?’

The Tories’ Shadow Armed Forces Minister, Mark Francois, said: ‘It’s a fitting end to Starmer’s Government that it concludes with even further weakening of our sovereign borders.

‘Once Labour showed weakness over Chagos, other nations smelt opportunity – and we are now under pressure over the sovereign base areas in Cyprus and Argentina, which is reviving its false claim to the Falklands.’

Former Tory Brexit minister David Jones, who has defected to Reform, said: ‘It’s an outrageous, pathetic surrender by the British Government.

‘Both this government and the previous Conservative administration have been weak and spineless.

‘It is another unforced surrender and the British people will not forget it at the next general election.’

Former Tory Defence Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson added: ‘The government seems intent on giving everything away. First Chagos, next Gibraltar.

‘They seem to have little care for Britain’s strategic interests or the people that live there.’

The new treaty will come into force overnight and removes 118-year-old border infrastructure from the frontier with Spain and makes Gibraltar part of the EU’s free-movement zone.

It removes border infrastructure from the frontier with Spain and makes the British overseas territory effectively but not formally part of the EU Schengen zone.

Border checks will be introduced at Gibraltar’s airport, with Spanish guards having the final say on who can enter the Rock and by extension Schengen.

Reform MP Robert Jenrick said the Labour Govrnment had ‘proven itself completely incapable of defending our national interest’

The Tories’ Shadow Armed Forces Minister, Mark Francois, said the deal was a ‘further weakening of our sovereign borders’

The fact that Britons will have to show their passports to Spaniards to enter British territory that Madrid has long claimed ownership of and deems a colony is one of the most controversial parts of the deal.

Before Brexit, Britain wasn’t part of the Schengen zone, meaning border checks on Spain-Gibraltar crossings have always been required.

But since Brexit, Madrid has aggressively been pushing for the border to be moved back to ports in Gibraltar and for the border to be abolished.

Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s chief minister, has backed the treaty and attended today’s signing ceremony.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hailed the new arrangements as bringing down ‘the last wall’ inside the EU, with the peninsula reliant on about 15,500 daily cross-border workers from Spain. The removal of the border will now make it easier for local workers on either side to cross.

With an economy based on financial services and online gaming, Gibraltar – which covers just under seven square kilometres (2.7 square miles) – has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

London and Madrid have disputed control of Gibraltar since the tiny territory was ceded to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer drew up a deal to hand control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

It would have seen Britain transfer sovereignty of the islands and lease back the joint US-UK Diego Garcia air base for 99 years to the tune of around £35 billion.

It has been criticised by US President Donald Trump but there are fears PM-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, will try and revive the deal.

Argentina has also started flexing its muscles ahead of tomorrow’s semi-final World Cup clash with England, claiming the Falkland Islands belong to it and that it will spur them on in the match.

While Sir Keir hit back this week at comments by Argentinian foreign minister Pablo Quirno that the Falklands Islanders were an ‘artificially implanted’ population, there are fears Mr Burnham will take a softer approach to the future of the archipelago.

North Yorkshire Police are investigating after a ‘distinctive vivid-red coloured pedal bike’ was stolen from St Andrewgate in York city centre last week.

They said the theft happened just before 11am last Wednesday (July 8) and the suspect was later seen cycling away towards the Granary Court, Spen Lane, and Bartle Garth area.

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He was described as wearing a sky blue t-shirt with a large print on the back, a dark baseball cap, tracksuit bottoms, and a rucksack.

A spokesperson for the force said: “The thief takes measures to hide his face from the local cameras, and afterwards, he cycles away.”

Anyone with information is asked to email mark.burrows@northyorkshire.police.uk, call 101, or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

The reference number is 12260129249.

The heatwaves of late May and June killed an estimated 2,700 people in England and Wales, according to a recent analysis – around 550 in May, when west London hit 35.1°C, and 2,200 in June, as East Anglia reached 37°C.

Both events broke records that had stood since 1944 and 1976, and researchers estimate that 42% of the deaths were attributable to the extra heat resulting from human-induced climate change. They add to a mounting toll: more than 10,000 people died during UK heatwaves between 2020 and 2024, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

Public health experts call extreme heat a “silent killer” that can claim anyone, even the young and fit. That is true and worth repeating. But it obscures the pattern of what is happening: heat deaths are not scattered randomly across the population. They fall predictably and measurably on particular people in particular homes.

Around 60% of the estimated deaths in May and June were among people aged over 85. But age is only part of the story, because vulnerability to heat is socially patterned. A Government Actuary’s Department analysis, published days before the June heatwave, shows that England’s most deprived communities are concentrated in dense urban areas with the least green space – places subject to the “urban heat island” effect. This is where concrete and tarmac absorb heat by day and release it at night, depriving residents the relief of overnight cooling that allows people to recover.

Every English neighbourhood that ranks among both the 10% most deprived and the 10% most exposed to extreme heat is in London. During the 40°C heatwave of 2022, the urban heat island effect was itself responsible for a substantial share of London’s heat-related deaths.

The common thread is housing. An analysis by the Resolution Foundation thinktank found that 54% of the poorest fifth of English households live in homes at high risk of overheating, against 18% of the richest fifth. Two-thirds of social renters, and six out of ten households with young children, live in homes at the highest risk as the country warms.

Flats, small homes and overcrowded properties trap heat. Renters cannot fit shutters or external shading, and cooling costs money that low-income households do not have. The English Housing Survey, carried out by the UK government, found that 2.9 million households say that their homes get uncomfortably hot.

Year-round problem

The troubling part of this is that these are largely the same homes we already knew were dangerous in winter. Cold homes caused an estimated 4,950 excess winter deaths across Britain in 2022-23 – around 45 people a day through the coldest months.

We have treated fuel poverty as a cold-weather problem, answered with winter fuel payments and seasonal campaigns. But a badly-insulated home is thermally incompetent all year round: it leaks heat in January and traps it in July. The same outdated, inadequate housing stock kills in both seasons; only the mechanism changes. Fuel poverty is not a winter problem that pauses in spring – it is a year-round emergency.

None of this is inevitable, as last summer proved. In 2025, UKHSA recorded 1,504 heat-associated deaths in England: roughly half the 3,039 its models had predicted from temperatures alone, a pattern consistent across all five heat episodes from that year. UKHSA is careful to note that causes cannot be firmly attributed, but heat-health alerts and the system-wide response across the NHS, social care and emergency services are likely to have contributed. Adaptation, in other words, saves lives at scale.

But adaptation, too, is unequal. Private adaptation – air conditioning, well-ventilated houses, leafy suburbs – all correlate with wealth. And public health advice to “keep cool” is least effective for precisely those with the least capacity to act on it: the tenant who cannot alter her flat, the pensioner who cannot afford to run a fan. As heatwaves intensify, the gap between those who can buy their way to safety and those who cannot will widen, unless policy closes it.

Heat episodes in England are predicted to become more intense, longer and more frequent as the climate warms. The Climate Change Committee, the government’s independent climate adviser, has proposed that heat-related deaths in 2050 should be no higher than they are today. Achieving this will require treating heat as both a housing and an inequality issue. This includes retrofit programmes that prepare homes for summer as well as winter, more trees and green spaces in the most deprived neighbourhoods, and making sure the Decent Homes Standard – the government’s minimum standard for safe and suitable housing – includes protections against overheating. It also means targeted support for people who are already known to be most at risk from extreme heat.

What it does not mean is simply relying on more leaflets advising people to drink water and close the curtains. The deaths of May and June were tragic, but not random. Our response should not be random either. We know whose homes will be dangerous next summer – the question is whether we act before it arrives.

During the Troubles, a harrowing 30-year conflict over the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, music opened up alternative ways of understanding identity.

Along with boxing and greyhound racing, music offered a rare site of cross-community interaction. Musical identities also offered a powerful counterpoint to the media’s depiction of young people in Northern Ireland as either vulnerable victims or potential recruits to paramilitary organisations.

This spirit of resistance through culture has deep roots. In the decades preceding the Troubles, Belfast had boasted a vibrant jazz and R&B scene, with venues like the Maritime Club and Sammy Houston’s serving as cultural hubs.

However, as conflict intensified into the 1970s, international artists became increasingly reluctant to play in Northern Ireland. While traditional showbands (dance bands that played a mix of pop covers, rock and roll, country and traditional Irish music) continued to tour, they failed to appeal to the evolving youth culture.

Rather than disengaging, young people sought alternative ways to connect with the music they loved. They would cross territorial boundaries between Protestant and Catholic communities for band practice, house parties or underground gigs – and constructed their own subcultures through homemade clothing, DIY fanzines and scrapbooking. In doing so, they forged entirely new ways of identifying with what it meant to be from Northern Ireland.

As the decade went on, the arrival of punk and emergence of local bands such as Stiff Little Fingers and The Outcasts brought young people from both communities to venues such as The Pound and The Harp, and the Good Vibrations record shop. These spaces provided a third space as an alternative to the hostility and violence of everyday life.

Scrapbooking as sanctuary

Scrapbooking, in particular, offered an important way to construct this alternative sense of identity. Over the past year, I have studied a fantastic collection of music scrapbooks held at Belfast’s Oh Yeah! Music Centre, created by teenager Carol Clerk between 1970 and 1973. Clerk went on to become a leading journalist for the music magazine Melody Maker.

Within the pages of her scrapbooks, Clerk meticulously documented the early career of her musical hero, Irish blues-rock guitarist Rory Gallagher. She compiled hundreds of newspaper cuttings, photographs and handwritten notes.

In doing so, she shut out – if briefly – the everyday realities of military checkpoints, curfews and violence, creating an alternative world structured entirely around music as a space of refuge.

In the early 1970s, Gallagher was one of the few artists to continue performing in Belfast, returning every Christmas for a concert at the Ulster Hall. For fans, these concerts offered a chink of light, where young people from both communities could unite under a shared passion, rather than a political or religious identity.

Today, a statue of Gallagher sits outside the venue, serving as a permanent testament to the reconciling power of music.

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Clerk’s scrapbooks preserve these fleeting moments of unity through intimate keepsakes including ticket stubs, autographs, and even a packet of chewing gum from which Gallagher had taken a piece. Most poignant, however, is her inclusion of letters to newspaper and magazine editors written by young fans in 1972 – one of the bloodiest years of the conflict.

One boy from Newtownabbey, writing to the Belfast Telegraph, vividly described the “elation” inside the Ulster Hall, and how the streets outside were temporarily filled with “dancing happy teenagers” and “excited voices”. This was “a very welcome change from the usual sounds we have come to associate with Belfast”.

Another fan recounts to Disc and Music Echo how “tears clouded [his] eyes” due to the joyous atmosphere inside the venue, while a letter in Sounds poignantly asks: “When are other artists going to realise kids still live here and are hungry for music?”

Reimagining belonging

These historical insights still have important implications for how people in Northern Ireland think about identity and belonging today.

Research has shown that younger generations are often more comfortable with complex and overlapping identities than previous generations. Many move between multiple forms of belonging, identifying as British, Irish, Northern Irish or combinations of all three. Others increasingly define themselves through interests, communities and cultural affiliations that extend beyond traditional political categories.

Naturally, the technologies through which musical identities occur have changed dramatically since the 1970s. Young people no longer cut up music magazines or glue newspaper clippings into scrapbooks. Instead, they curate personalised playlists, create TikTok content, participate in online fandoms and build digital communities around shared interests. Yet the underlying impulse remains remarkably similar.

Like Clerk’s scrapbooks, these practices allow young people to tell stories about who they are and where they belong. They create connections that are not necessarily determined by neighbourhood, religion, ethnicity or politics.

Ultimately, music continues to offer invaluable opportunities to imagine different forms of community – reminding us, just as it did during the darkest days of the Troubles, what unites us rather than what separates us.

Police believe it is an ‘isolated incident’

A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after another man suffered serious injuries in a crash. Cambridgeshire Police were called to a crash in Meriton in Orton Goldhay, Peterborough just after 10pm on Monday (July 13).

The crash involved a man and a car. A man, who is in his 40s from Peterborough, was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Officers arrested a 35-year-old man, also from Peterborough, on suspicion of attempted murder. The 35-year-old remains in custody and an investigation is ongoing. Officers believe this is an isolated incident.

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