Politics
Researchers Don’t Think We’re Meant To Be Awake Past Midnight
You probably already know that people have different “chronotypes”, or natural sleep-wake patterns.
Some of us really are born early birds or night owls. And trying to “beat” your body’s built-in preference might have negative effects, like potentially making your workouts less effective.
But there are limits here, too. For instance, a 2024 paper found that even for those with late chronotypes, it’s best for their health to go to bed before 1am. This result surprised researchers so much that they spent six months trying to disprove it – but couldn’t.
A separate 2022 study titled “The Mind After Midnight” carried an even more extreme warning.
“During the biological night, cognitive capacity and mood regulation are diminished and ‘reason sleeps’”, it reads.
The ‘mind after midnight’ hypothesis suggests being awake very late may impact “attentional biases, affective regulation, reward processing, and executive functioning” which can “set the stage for dysregulated behaviors and psychiatric disorders”.
Why might being up past midnight be so bad for our brains?
That all sounds pretty intense, doesn’t it? But we do know that crime rates, substance abuse and overdoses, impulsive eating, and suicides seem to happen disproportionately often at night, when our “biological circadian night” (after midnight for most of us) is in full swing.
The study’s senior author, Dr Elizabeth Klerman, said that “from a high-level, global, evolutionary standpoint, your internal biological circadian clock is tuned towards processes that promote sleep, not wakefulness, after midnight”.
So, she argues, neurophysiological changes take place in our minds during the wee hours, because we’re primed to be alert in situations like these.
Her study suggests that positive affect, or our tendency to see things in a better light, peaks in the daytime. But at night, negative affect – a negative view on life – becomes far more common.
Meanwhile, the body produces more dopamine when you’re awake too late, which could drive impulsive behaviour. This, combined with a worse outlook on life, might help to explain some of those troubling nighttime stats.
Dr Klerman said “there are millions of people who are awake in the middle of the night, and there’s fairly good evidence that their brain is not functioning as well as it does during the day”.
She added: “My plea is for more research to look at that, because their health and safety, as well as that of others, is affected.”
‘Mind after midnight’ theory is just a hypothesis, but others share it
So far, mind after midnight theory hasn’t been the topic of a formal trial – but these are in the works.
However, this is far from the only paper to suggest that our brains might not run at their best when we should be sleeping.
Dr Jamie Zeiter, the author of the sleep and chronotype study we mentioned earlier, said: “If I had to hazard a guess, morning people who are up late are quite cognisant of the fact that their brain isn’t working quite right, so they may put off making bad decisions… Meanwhile, the evening person who is up late thinks, ‘I’m feeling great. This is a great decision I’m making at 3 o’clock in the morning’”.
This could put night owls who stay up too late in harm’s way, he suggested.
Another paper found that those who said they like to sleep late tended to have more repetitive negative thinking.
Speaking to HuffPost UK previously, registered dietitian and longevity specialist Melanie Murphy Richter said: “Going to bed between 10pm and midnight and waking with the sun supports circadian rhythms, hormone balance, and cellular repair – all critical for healthy ageing”.
Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Thursday were allowed back into the White House after earlier being denied access as President Donald Trump’s media ban descended into chaos.
A federal judge had earlier ordered Trump to restore access for journalists from the three outlets, saying his ban on them was likely unconstitutional.
But reporters and staffers from all three were barred from entering the White House on Thursday morning as they attempted to return to work, prompting the outlets to file a request for an emergency hearing.
As of roughly noon Washington DC time, however, reporters from all three had successfully entered the building after their press badges were reactivated.
The restored access came just minutes before the US Justice Department’s deadline to respond to a request from District Judge Tim Kelly explaining why the administration defied his temporary order lifting Trump’s ban.
“We are back and we are ready to cover the president,” CNN’s Betsy Klein said from the grounds of the White House.
In a declaration to the court, the director of White House Press Operations, Micah Stopperich, said the department was notified on Thursday morning to “restore access to affected reporters by turning on their hard badges.”
It is unclear whether the access change means press pool operations are back to normal for now.
“It remains to be seen whether CNN is indeed going to be included in the network TV pool rotation,” Klein added. “But for now, we are back on campus and ready to get back to work.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
There are a plethora of benefits associated with walking, so it’s no wonder the NHS previously called the activity “overlooked” as a form of exercise.
As little as 2,337 steps a day can lower your risk of dying from heart-related health conditions. The activity can also help to manage blood pressure and cholesterol, and has been linked to stronger bones, better sleep quality and even a reduction in dementia risk.
But while we know it’s important for our health, less is said about how it can benefit our relationships, too.
In fact, a new study suggests that couples who exercise together – mostly, through walking – report better communication, stronger conflict resolution and lower levels of marital stress than couples who don’t.
For the study, published in Family Relations, researchers from Brigham Young University (BYU) looked at survey data from nearly 1,700 newly-married couples.
The team compared the effects of individual workouts and physical activity performed together as a couple on three outcomes: communication, conflict resolution and marital stress.
Walking was the most commonly reported form of shared exercise among couples in the study.
Both individual workouts and couple workouts were associated with healthier marriages, but exercising together consistently showed stronger associations with positive relationship outcomes than exercising solo.
“About 60% of husbands and wives in the sample said they exercised, but only about a third exercised together,” said BYU professor Jeremy Yorgason.
“That means about half the people who exercise are not exercising with their spouse. While the impact is not necessarily large, it is very consistent, which gives me confidence that it is influencing relationships in some meaningful way.”
Researchers said exercising together creates opportunities for positive interactions and conversation, which can strengthen relationships over time.
“Out of all three outcomes, exercise had the biggest impact on communication,” said study co-author Ashlyn Hiatt Mildenhall, who began the project as an undergraduate researcher.
“That’s why it was interesting that walking was the number one reported exercise. It naturally provides opportunities to communicate.”
Walking can give you the space to have deep and meaningful chats, free from distraction.
The research also found that couples who exercised together reported better listening and greater feelings of being heard and supported by their spouse.
Prof Yorgason said these interactions may help explain why shared exercise was associated with healthier communication and conflict resolution.
The authors did warn that shared exercise isn’t a cure for relationship challenges, but it can create regular opportunities for connection amid the demands of school, life and parenting.
As for what Prof Yorgason wants people to take away from the study, he told HuffPost UK: “It’s my hope that couples will make time in their busy lives to exercise together regularly. Not only will this benefit their physical and mental health, but our research suggests it will also strengthen their relationship.”
I rarely wear makeup and, when I do, I want my skin to look fresh and dewy.
After falling down an internet rabbit hole of French pharmacy skincare, which led to me venturing into Parisian pharmacies to find the products the internet was raving about, I swiftly discovered people could not stop talking about Embroylisse.
Embroylisse specialise in multi-tasking skincare, which is great for those who don’t want to (or don’t have the time) to be applying an endless stream of products morning and night.
Each product is 6-in-1, which means that it acts as a moisturising cream, cleansing milk, moisturising mask, after-shave cream, after-sun care and a makeup base (whew!).
The products that I tried in the range include:
- Lait-Crème Concentré Moisturiser – the original multi-function moisturiser.
- Lait-Crème Retinol-Like – specifically for the evening as it acts in a similar way to retinol to help prevent wrinkles.
- Lait-Crème Sensitive – formulated for sensitive and reactive skin.
- Lait-Crème Fluide+ – this is just like the original moisturiser but for the whole body.
Makeup artists have long kept these tools in their kit and I can completely understand why. Each product is fundamentally similar but with slightly different functions. Underpinning each product is a key goal of hydrating the skin.
One product (Lait-Creme Fluide+) is formulated for the whole body, one is for more sensitive skin (Lait-Crème Sensitive) while Lait-Crème Retinol-Like is designed to be a bit like a night cream in the evenings.
The Lait-Crème Concentré Moisturiser makes the perfect primer which leaves the skin feeling super soft and ready for makeup. My makeup stayed on at least 12 hours and could handle long days at work. It kept my skin looking soft and dewy. I couldn’t fault it.
When applying the product in the morning, I like to wash my face with a cleanser, use toner, and then apply the Lait-Crème Concentré Moisturiser (unless my skin is feeling particularly sensitive or red in which case I’ll opt for Lait-Crème Sensitive).
In the evening I use the same product to remove my makeup and then apply the Retinol-Like moisturiser overnight. I didn’t use any other products on my face for two weeks in order to really see the impact.
The overall verdict
My skin is absolutely glowing because of these products, so I don’t even really feel the need to put much makeup on. I’ve been left with the most dewy, soft skin – in fact, I’ve never had so many skin-related compliments in my life.
With these products, it is worth bearing in mind that a little goes a long way. You really don’t need any more than a pea-sized amount to notice the benefits (which is good, because they’ll last you a lot longer).
With prices starting at £17 for 30ml the products may feel like they are a bit on the pricey end – but I would say they are worth it. If you wanted to build a skincare routine with glow as your ultimate goal, these are ideal.
No other product has managed to make my skin softer, healthier or glowier. These will be instant re-purchases for me.
Ever get the feeling you’re in the middle of a PR war? Less than a week after Lady Justice Thirlwall published her report into the failings of the Countess of Chester hospital, Channel 5 broadcast its third documentary about Lucy Letby, the NHS neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies in her care there, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The timing of the documentary was almost certainly not a coincidence. The 822-page Thirlwall Report demolished many of the claims of Letby’s defenders and reminded the public of her horrific crimes. It came a day after two of the supposedly world-leading experts, convened by retired neonatologist Shoo Lee, deserted Letby’s defence team and accused her lawyer of relying on arguments that are ‘inconsistent with the available evidence’ and ‘demonstrably inaccurate’. Team Letby needed to regain the initiative and Lucy Letby: Scapegoat?, a collaboration with the Sun newspaper, was ready to go.
The 70-minute documentary mostly reheats Letbyist slop, rattling through old copes and canards in scattergun fashion. The title alone is a red flag. Nobody at the hospital needed a scapegoat. The spike in deaths she caused alarmed some of the staff, but the outside world was oblivious. No doctors were being blamed for it and the hospital managers were desperate to move on. The documentary’s presenter, Sun journalist Rob Pattinson, argues that Letby was scapegoated because, after she was taken off the ward in July 2016 due to doctors’ concerns, the management rallied around her, threatened to report the consultants to the General Medical Council for bullying and considered managing them out. And so to cover their backs, the doctors then decided to call in the police.
This is such a peculiar theory that it requires a little unpacking. One problem is that it doesn’t explain why the consultants raised their concerns about Letby in the first place. But even if we put that down to a fit of pique, we are expected to believe that, having made false allegations against an innocent nurse, the doctors thought the best course of action was not to row back and apologise (as, in fact, they were forced to by the managers) but to call in the Old Bill. By a happy coincidence, the police found medical experts who concurred with the doctors that she had deliberately harmed several babies. The consultants had more good fortune when it turned out that the nurse whom they had victimised because she was always on duty when unexplained deaths occurred had taken home 241 handover sheets, obsessively searched for bereaved parents on Facebook and left notes in her bedroom saying, ‘I killed them on purpose’ and ‘I AM EVIL I DID THIS’. She also happened to be the nurse who was looking after two babies whom, it later transpired, had been poisoned by insulin. And in a final stroke of serendipity, they found a jury who, in August 2023, convicted her of multiple murders.
In other words, the consultants made Letby a scapegoat for some reason and then doubled down on the scapegoating when the management took her side. It was a massive gamble to avoid a trivial risk to their own reputations. While this is technically possible, a more realistic interpretation of events is that Letby was not the victim of a conspiracy, but was instead the beneficiary of a cover-up instigated by the hospital management, which would have succeeded if the doctors had not put the interests of patients first and insisted on a proper investigation.
The realists’ reading of events is given extra weight by the fact that a great deal of evidence points towards Letby being guilty, most of which is ignored in this documentary. Noting that several reviews into the spike in deaths were carried out before the police were called in 2017, Pattinson claims that ‘none of these reviews found any evidence of crime’. But, as Thirlwall points out, the reviewers were not given sufficient information to find a crime and would not have been equipped to conduct a forensic criminal review even if they had.
Neonatologist Dr Jane Hawdon conducted a case-note review in the autumn of 2016, but was not told that there were any suspicions and was not given all the post-mortems. She nevertheless reported that five of the 13 deaths she reviewed were ‘unexplained’ and another was ‘of concern’. The documentary claims that Hawdon’s review not only found no evidence of crime, which is vaguely true, but that it also found that ‘most of the deaths could be put down to poor care’, which is not.
Hawdon identified eight deaths, mostly from natural causes, which she said were ‘explained but may have been prevented with different care’ (my emphasis). She told the hospital’s medical director, Ian Harvey, that a ‘completely unexplained [death] on a neonatal unit is rare. So by definition more than one unexplained death does arouse suspicion.’ This was her way of sounding the alarm. The Thirlwall Report concludes that ‘the failure to call the police at this stage is impossible to defend’.
What about the infamous ‘statistics’? Professor Jane Hutton, described in Lucy Letby: Scapegoat? as ‘the leading statistician involved in the case’, appears in the programme telling her well-worn story about being hired and fired by the police during the investigation. In her telling, the police dropped her because she had too much integrity to produce a dodgy statistic that might lead to a wrongful conviction. After she raised her objections, the police informed her by email that: ‘The prosecutor does not agree with our line of inquiry and has instructed us not to pursue this avenue, any further, at present.’ This episode has been portrayed, not least by Hutton herself, as the police getting rid of an awkward expert, but this misses the point. The documentary shows an email from the police in which they do indeed seem to be fishing for a statistic along the lines of ‘the odds of an innocent nurse being present at all events are one in 50million’. Hutton was right to challenge this and the Crown Prosecution Service was right to tell the police to drop it. But that was the end of the story. The prosecution never made any statistical claims and therefore had no need of a statistician. The police took her advice. She won.
The Channel 5 documentary is not all money for old rope. Dr Colin Ferguson, a retired vascular surgeon, is a relative newcomer to the Letby circus. He says that the autopsy of babies who die from air embolism should show air in their hearts, and yet Pattinson tells us that ‘in six out of seven of the babies on the murder indictment, no air was found in the hearts of any of them’. Ferguson says that air cannot leave the heart after death. Dr Dewi Evans, who gave evidence for the prosecution, says that air can move, especially during resuscitation, and that air was found in other parts of the babies’ bodies.
Ferguson and Evans came face-to-face to debate the issue for the documentary, but the 90-minute discussion was so heavily edited to make Evans look dumbstruck that it is impossible to draw any conclusions from it. It is, however, worth noting that the paediatric pathologist who gave evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry, Dr Jo McPartland, says that ‘you could have a significant amount of air at postmortem and it could be completely undetectable at autopsy’. (To add further confusion, neonatologist Prof Neena Modi, who is on Shoo Lee’s expert panel, has said that post-mortem imaging proves that some of the babies did suffer from air embolism, although she believes it happened during resuscitation. Shoo Lee himself says there is no evidence of air embolism at all.)
Letby was convicted of seven murders, but there were six other deaths during the same period in 2015 and 2016. ‘If Lucy Letby didn’t cause those deaths’, Pattinson asks, ‘what or who did?’. The simple answer is that five of them died as a result of severe congenital abnormalities. The other did not have a post-mortem, but the death certificate records ‘prematurity with sepsis’. Pattinson never answers his own question, but the viewer is encouraged to assume that it must involve sewage since that is where the documentary goes next.
Dirty water has been much on the mind of Letby’s defenders ever since she called a plumber as her sole witness at her first trial. A new face in the Channel 5 documentary is Annalise McClements, whose son was transferred from the Countess of Chester hospital in late 2016 after developing enterovirus and sadly died. She was told by doctors that the baby had contracted the disease from her, but she believes that he got it from some kind of sewage leak. All of this happened six months after Letby was taken off the ward, but it is included in the documentary because it supposedly proves that there was a deadly bug in the unit. ‘How many deaths [in the Letby case] are because of that?’, asks McClements.
The categorical answer is ‘none’. We can say this with certainty because such a disease would have shown up in routine testing. Infectious diseases cannot explain the deaths of any of the babies on the indictment and – with the exception of Baby D, who was recovering from pneumonia – no infectious disease was mentioned in their post-mortems. Natural disease cannot explain either the sudden collapses or the sudden recoveries that were such a feature of the Letby case. The theory that bad plumbing was the root cause of the spate of deaths in 2015 and 2016 falls at the first hurdle since none of the babies had the kind of illness that would be transmitted by dirty water. As the Thirlwall Report says: ‘There was no infection on the unit at all, still less one that could explain the deaths. There had been two periods of concern about infections on the unit – in 2012 and 2015, pseudomonas was found on the taps, and was dealt with and had no consequences for babies.’
Time and again, the Channel 5 documentary presents theories that have been knocked down by Thirlwall. The hospital was desperately short-staffed? Thirlwall says that ‘no deaths could be attributed to staff shortages… The nursing staffing levels at the Countess were slightly better than in all other comparable hospital neonatal units in the region.’ The deaths were the inevitable result of nurses being overwhelmed and expected to care for patients with complex needs, and without adequate senior supervision? Thirlwall says that ‘there was no good evidence that this contributed to a single death, still less that they had caused some or all of them’.
Could the drop in deaths after Letby was taken off the ward be explained by the hospital being downgraded at the same time, and thus taking in fewer patients? No, Thirlwall says that very few mothers were turned away after the neonatal unit stopped taking very young neonates and that the downgrade ‘was not an explanation for the absence of deaths and unexpected collapses’ in the years that followed. Was Letby cot-side when so many babies died because she was one of the most experienced nurses on the unit? Thirlwall says ‘she was one of the more junior nurses on the neonatal unit’. And did Letby write the ‘confession’ notes because a counsellor told her to as part of her therapy? Letby herself has never made this claim and Thirlwall says that ‘there is no evidence that counselling or any form of therapy was provided to Letby’.
The brickbats to Letby simps in the Thirlwall Report cannot be dismissed with the usual Letbyist complaint that Lady Thirlwall started from the presumption of guilt, nor that she is part of the legal establishment. Thirlwall based her conclusions on a strong body of verifiable facts and expert opinion that is thoroughly referenced and easy to check. The inquiry was commissioned to see whether Letby could have been stopped sooner. She did not need to take on Letbyist talking points. Debunking the many myths that have sprouted up around this case was arguably beyond her remit but she did it anyway, presumably because she finds them so contemptible. Yes, she is a pillar of the legal establishment and yes, she applies the presumption of guilt to convicted criminals.
Unfortunately for Letby and her disciples, Thirlwall is exactly the kind of person they will have to convince if they ever get their case before the Court of Appeal. If that day ever comes, they will encounter a tougher audience than Channel 5 gets at 10pm on a Monday night.
Christopher Snowdon is director of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs and the co-host of Last Orders, spiked’s nanny-state podcast.
Watch the trailer for Lucy Letby: Scapegoat? below:
Macklemore has announced a string of shows after finding himself at the centre of headlines when he was dropped as the opening act on Ed Sheeran’s world tour, in light of comments he made on stage in support of Palestine.
Next month, the Grammy winner will perform shows in Dublin, Paris and London as part of what he’s dubbed the Free Palestine tour, all proceeds from which “will benefit organisations supporting the Palestinian people and movement”.
In a statement, the Thrift Store rapper explained: “If these last couple of weeks have shown us anything, it’s that something has shifted over the last three years. There has been a collective awakening around Palestinian liberation, the power of billionaires that try to censor that call, and what we expect from artists right now.
“It’s 2026. Being apolitical during a genocide doesn’t work anymore. People are asking artists to show up, educate themselves and be in community. To use the stage for more than entertainment. To push back when the call for a Free Palestine is met with attempts to silence it.
“What happened to me is bigger than one artist or one stage. When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.”
“So, as you all know, my schedule freed up a bit,” he quipped. “I’ve spent the last week reaching out to artists who have shown up and used their stages to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, regardless of the consequences. Artists who understand that our platforms mean very little if we’re only willing to use them when it’s safe.
“Because of how quickly all of this has come together, a lot of the conversations, schedules and details are still being worked out. But this is a moment of momentum, and there is work to be done. So we’re going on tour.”
He added that announcements about the artists joining him would be “coming soon” as would details of US dates.
Tickets for the Free Palestine tour will go on sale on Wednesday 30 September at 10am local time, with a pre-sale also taking place on Monday 28 September for those who sign up at his website.
While on stage in New Jersey earlier this month, Macklemore told fans in attendance on Ed’s Loop Tour: “A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: ‘free Palestine’. I said, ‘free Palestine!’.
“I want those words to be loud and clear, so that people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them.”
Ed later bowed to pressure to pull Macklemore as his support act, after which the Lego House singer’s other opening acts and backing band pulled out of the tour.
Macklemore said last week: “I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim […] We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.
“The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.”
Andy Burnham had the most nerve-wracking first date imaginable this week: a one-to-one with Donald Trump.
On paper, the soft-left Labour prime minister does not have much in common with the Republican president who is known for being painfully unpredictable.
Trump has waxed lyrical about all kinds of sensitive subjects during previous such meetings, going on to embarrass foreign counterparts in front of the press and upending years of sensitive diplomacy in mere moments.
And in recent weeks, the US president has been on quite the rampage.
He announced his support for a united Ireland, expressed pity for Russia’s depleted oil industry, suggested he could withdraw US support for British sovereignty over the Falklands and warned Iran it faces “annihilation” if it doesn’t agree to a peace deal.
Trump repeatedly ripped into Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, too, saying he was no “Winston Churchill” and calling him “weak” after the pair clashed over the Iran war.
You can’t always pick and choose your international allies, however, and trying to maintain the US-UK special relationship, regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office, is an essential part of being PM.
So, two months after he got the keys to No.10, Burnham finally sat down with Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York for an hour-long private chat on Tuesday.
They then had 10 minutes in front of the press – and, to Downing Street’s great relief, it passed off without any major drama.
Trump loves a winner and is evidently aware of Burnham’s popularity in the UK as he spoke warmly about the new PM.
The president claimed the Labour leader just “gets it,” while also taking a jab at his predecessor by saying US relations with Britain are “more up now” than they were when Starmer was in charge.
It was all going well up until Trump was asked about the UK’s plan to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius.
The deal would involve leasing the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia back at the cost of £9 billion over 99 years.
The president said it was a “terrible” and “ridiculous” plan, meaning the prime minister had to quickly promise he would find a “resolution” for the US concern.
Trump’s remarks were a gift to Burnham’s right-wing opponents, particularly Reform UK leader Nigel Farage who has been lobbying the White House against the agreement.
It’s also unclear just how the prime minister will find a workable solution to Trump’s gripes over having unrestricted and permanent access to the military base, while still giving Mauritius full sovereignty over the islands.
Other stumbling blocks loom for the fragile Burnham-Trump relationship, too.
The president wants Europe to hike its defence spending but the UK is struggling to find the funds.
Trump wants to unleash the full power of artificial intelligence – or super intelligence as he now insists on calling it – while Burnham used his UN speech to call for international co-operation to rein it in before it kills us all.
The Ukraine war is still a concern for European security, yet the White House remains curiously soft towards Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Trump has continually expressed frustration over the UK’s use of wind power too, pressuring Britain to expand drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
However, looking on the bright side, the president already appears to have offered the UK an olive branch after he declined to condemn the government’s to impose sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
The president’s apparent neutrality on the move, despite his keen support for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, handed Burnham his first major international win.
That suggests the relationship the pair’s off to a good start.
But when it comes to Trump, no alliance is guaranteed – as Starmer discovered the hard way, after bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with the president.
Listen to this week’s Commons People as we analyse exactly how Burnham’s first encounter with the US president went down and what might come next.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
‘Pressure’: Brendan Fraser as General Eisenhower, Andrew Scott as James Stagg and Kerry Condon as Kay Summersby | Image: Pictorial Press / Alamy
4 min read
A war film less about the weather and more about judgement, ‘Pressure’ ditches the fancy special effects to focus on the decision-making. And it’s all the better for it
After a day in the Commons and an evening on the doorstep in Holborn and St Pancras, I dragged myself to Battersea Power Station to watch a war film about a weatherman. After 24 years in the Royal Marines, I have spent enough time having plans dismantled by the weather without volunteering for another 100 minutes of it. But I am very glad I did.
Pressure is not really a film about the weather – it’s a film about judgement: how you decide when the information is incomplete, the experts disagree, and the cost of getting it wrong is measured in lives. Think Oppenheimer meets the Met Office.
It is set in the final 72 hours before D-Day. Group Captain James Stagg, a Scottish meteorologist, has been charged by Winston Churchill with advising General Eisenhower on whether Operation Overlord can proceed. The invasion is set for 5 June 1944. The machinery is assembled, secrecy cannot hold indefinitely, the tides and the moon offer only a narrow window. Then Stagg tells Eisenhower what nobody wants to hear… a storm is coming.
The film has stage origins and does not hide them
Andrew Scott plays Stagg with a stubbornness that anyone who has watched a technical expert refuse to be bounced will recognise. He does not raise his voice and he just will not move. His American counterpart, Irving Krick, reads the same charts and reaches the opposite conclusion. Forecasting in 1944 meant hand-drawn charts and sparse observations. No satellites or models. Where Stagg cannot offer certainty, he offers a judgement – and stakes his career on it. He was right, and a more senior American forecaster was wrong. That is not luck. That is simply discipline and trusting what the data actually tells you.
Anyone who has sat in an operations room knows the shape of this. The adviser’s job is to tell the commander the thing he does not want to hear. The commander’s job is to listen, decide, and carry it. I have watched both jobs done well and done badly, and Pressure gets the texture of it right: the tiredness, the politeness that thinly covers disagreement, the moment when someone has to stop hedging.
There is a less elevated lesson buried in it too: never, ever, annoy your front office, and certainly not somebody else’s. Grand strategy shapes history, but access, personalities and gatekeepers have an irritating habit of shaping grand strategy.
The film has stage origins and does not hide them. There is no CGI armada, no swelling score over a beach. We stay in the room, with the maps and the tea and the people arguing. It is the better for it.
Brendan Fraser plays Eisenhower with the weight visible in the shoulders. The film’s best detail is a real one that, before the landings, Eisenhower wrote a note taking full responsibility if they failed and carried it in his wallet. That is what the job actually is. Trust your experts, trust the data, then make the courageous call, and own your decision.
Most war films are about what happens when the shooting starts. Pressure is about the tough decisions in the room right before it: expertise, dissent, judgement and responsibility.
It is, after all, a war film about a weatherman. But beneath the weather charts and the machinery of war, it is really a story about people: about leadership, about making hard decisions and bringing people with you along the way.
Al Carns is Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak
Pressure
Directed by: Anthony Maras
Venue: General cinema release
Politics
Young men are swinging away hard from Republicans, pessimistic about economy, new poll finds
Republicans’ 2024 gains among young men have evaporated — and that could have instant ramifications this November, according to a new Cygnal poll.
President Donald Trump narrowly carried young men in 2024, according to exit polls, a big swing toward the GOP from past elections. But Democrats’ generic ballot lead among male likely voters ages 18-30 now sits at 57%-40%, according to the new survey.
Trump’s favorability is underwater at just 38%-55%, and Republicans’ net favorability among the demographic now sits at -9 points, with 40% viewing the party favorably and 49% unfavorably.
One silver lining for the GOP: Among all registered voters sampled, including those least likely to turn out in November, the Democratic generic ballot lead is much smaller, 44% to 41%.
“It is not a very good electorate, if you’re the Republican Party, among the people who are the most determined to vote,” said Alex Tarascio, pollster and principal at Cygnal, in an interview with POLITICO ahead of the poll’s release during Thursday’s Symposium on Young American Men.
Young men alone likely won’t determine control of Congress; they make up a fraction of the electorate, and they are less likely to vote than women of the same age or their older counterparts. But that lack of enthusiasm itself is a warning sign for Republicans, who will need to motivate their base ahead of November if they wish to maintain control of Congress.
The young men sampled are overwhelmingly concerned about cost-of-living issues — the same reason that many swung toward the GOP two years ago.
When given a list of options and asked which will matter most in determining their vote in November, a wide plurality — 29% — selected “inflation and the cost of living,” and another 14% chose “housing costs and being able to afford a place to live.” When asked what policies would make the biggest difference in their lives, the top answers again deal with the economy: The most-selected options were lowering the cost of goods, lowering housing costs and cutting taxes.
Many young men feel pessimistic about their ability to achieve success. When asked if they feel the rules in this country are set up to work for or against young men, 43% said they feel the rules are set up against them to 47% who said the rules are set up in their favor.
That pessimism bleeds into how they view other institutions. Both the Democratic Party (-1) and Republican Party (-9) have net-negative favorability among the demographic, and the White House’s current occupants are even more unpopular: Vice President JD Vance sits at 37% favorability with -10 net favorability, while Trump is at 38% favorability with -17 net.
“Young men are pretty down on institutions and political figures, and this one isn’t any exception to that,” Tarascio said.
Republicans successfully targeted young men and low-propensity voters in 2024 to help propel them to victory largely in part by having Trump sit for interviews with podcast hosts and influencers popular with young men. Trump has yet to return to those forums en masse ahead of the midterms, but he’s repeatedly told voters to pretend as if he’s on the ballot in November.
But Trump may no longer be the motivator he once was for turning out young, male, low-propensity voters. Among those surveyed who were least likely to vote, Trump’s net favorability is -22, lower than the respondents most likely to vote, where his net favorability is -19.
“If Trump gets in front of them, I don’t think it’s a bad bet, but for some of these people it could backfire,” Tarascio said.
The poll was conducted Sept. 15-18 with a sample of 800 registered male voters ages 18-30. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.
4 min read
Pick any parliamentary seat in Great Britain. Cleethorpes or Caithness, Brighton or Burnley. In every single one, more people say they are worse off than a year ago than say they are better off.
Not most seats. All 631 of them. Yet at the same time, a sense of hope among voters is prevalent, reflected in new constituency-level polling we are publishing on Thursday which shows a clear ‘Burnham bounce’ in voter intention.
At 38 Degrees, working with Survation, we polled more than 8,000 people in Andy Burnham’s first month as Prime Minister, and built a seat-by-seat model of the whole country. The data reveals a country that is economically exhausted, desperate for someone to step up and fix the basics, and ready to reward a PM who takes bold, decisive action.
38 Degrees is a people-powered campaign group. Our supporters come from all walks of life, every corner of the country, and vote for all parties and none. They are united by a vision for a country that is fairer, more respectful and more sustainable. And just like 38 Degrees supporters, most voters across the country agree on far more than they disagree.
The cost of living is the number one issue in every single seat. Two in three people (66 per cent) say it’s one of the issues hitting them hardest. Whatever part of the country people live in, and whoever they vote for, the pressure on their household budget comes first.
Ask people what would most boost their confidence in government, and “bills coming down” comes top in all 631 seats. There’s just nine points between the most and least supportive parties’ voters. Ask what would help their finances most, and cutting the daily standing charge on energy bills comes top in 609 of them, with support from voters of every party.
It doesn’t stop there. More than half (55 per cent) back public ownership of water, with just 11 per cent against. Two in three (66 per cent) could never afford social care costs of around £70,000 a year, whatever their income or however they vote. And, in news that politicians from across the political spectrum should take note of, 65 per cent would trust politicians more if parties worked together to fix social care. Most people say tighter rules on donations (58 per cent), MPs’ second jobs (57 per cent) and lobbying (53 per cent) would also boost their trust in politics.
Focusing, and crucially, delivering on these common ground issues is a route to winning back voters Labour has lost, should Burnham choose to take it. Since 2024, Labour has lost support in both directions: to the Greens and Lib Dems, and to Reform. Picking culture war fights to win back one group will push the other further away. But lower bills, public water and a fix for social care speak to all of them. Economic issues bring people together. Social issues pull them apart.
And the stakes are high. The “Burnham bounce” is real. Labour would be the largest party on 272 seats if an election were held today. But no party is near a majority, and 200 seats would be won by less than five points. A small swing either way changes everything.
The good news for the Prime Minister is that voters want him to be bold. Seven in ten (70 per cent) say it’s important for a government to be bold and willing to take radical action. That’s more than the 58 per cent who value caution. And 41 per cent say a bold Labour Party would make them more likely to vote Labour, against just 18 per cent less likely.
It’s early days for this government, but patience is low amongst voters. So far, only 28 per cent say this government has been bolder than the last. Most (38 per cent) say it’s been about the same.
Burnham promised change at lightning speed. The public is still willing to believe him. Lower bills, public water, cleaner politics and a fix for social care would show whose side he’s on, and bring a divided country together. Right now, not one seat in Britain feels better off. Changing that is his job. Being cautious is the riskiest thing he could do.
Veronica Hawking is Campaigns Director at 38 Degrees
You probably already know that dementia is linked to signs like memory loss and trouble planning ahead. But lesser-known symptoms such as changes in walking style, increasing nightmares, and even shifts in your sense of smell have been linked to the condition too.
And now, researchers think voice changes might herald a higher risk of developing dementia; it could even “represent a stronger early biomarker than hearing loss alone”.
This comes after a 2020 Lancet Commission into dementia deemed hearing loss the biggest modifiable dementia risk worldwide.
What did the paper find?
Researchers followed the health data of 833,417 people with voice disorders and/or hearing loss at least a year after they first presented with the issue.
Patients were split into four groups:
- Those with both a voice disorder and hearing loss,
- Those with a voice disorder but no hearing loss,
- Those with hearing loss but no voice disorder,
- A control, with neither condition.
The paper, published in the Journal of Voice, found that people with a voice disorder and no hearing loss seemed to be 58% more likely to develop dementia than those without one.
This risk was higher than that seen among those with hearing loss but no voice disorder.
Speaking to Drexel News, the University of Drexels’ Dr Robert Sataloff, who was the lead author of this study, said: “Our work shows that voice disorders may be an earlier and stronger sign of cognitive decline than hearing loss alone”.
Meanwhile, “We found the strongest link with dementia among patients experiencing a voice disorder and hearing loss; but importantly, we found that those with a voice disorder and no hearing loss were at greater risk than patients who experience hearing loss only.
“It may be valuable for many of these patients to talk with an otolaryngologist who can arrange a cognitive assessment to help patients develop an appropriate care plan,” he continued.
Voice disorders may affect almost 8% of the UK population
Voice issues can manifest as “worsening voice quality – in pitch, clarity, volume, reduced vocal range or other voice disorders”.
These are sometimes called “dysphonia” and are believed to affect about 7.5% of the UK population.
Dr Sataloff said that “If you have a voice disorder that impacts how your voice sounds or if it’s painful when you attempt to talk or sing, it’s only natural to participate less often in brain-supporting social or other engaging activities”.
We know that maintaining an active social life has been linked to lower dementia risk.
He added, “We already see this in patients with Parkinson’s disease, in which voice disorders often precede other physical signs of the disease”.
More research is needed to work out the kinds of voice disorders that might be especially highly-linked to dementia.
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