Labour MPs want Pat McFadden to be the next chancellor to stop Ed Miliband getting the job, HuffPost UK has learned.

They believe the energy secretary, who has widely-tipped to replace Rachel Reeves once Andy Burnham becomes prime minister, would be “a disaster” in the role.

Miliband is a close ally of the former mayor of Greater Manchester, who is expected to become PM on July 20.

Who he chooses to be chancellor is seen as the key decision Burnham will have to make as he appoints his first cabinet.

Miliband is seen as the frontrunner, but support McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, is growing among Labour MPs.

One said: “Pat is the ultimate safe pair of hands and would be an excellent choice as chancellor.

“Andy becoming prime minister is bound to give us a bit of a bounce in the polls, but making Ed the chancellor would just destroy that because he is such a divisive figure.”

Glasgow-born McFadden was a minister in both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments, and has been a key figure in Keir Starmer’s cabinet since Labour’s general election victory in 2024.

One former Labour minister said: “Pat as chancellor would be like a Scottish bank manager in the mould of [former Labour leader] John Smith and Alistair Darling. He’s just what the country needs.”

Another MP said Miliband’s well-known opposition to opening up new oil fields in the North Sea would kill off any hopes of a Scottish Labour revival.

The backbencher told HuffPost UK said: “There’s growing support amongst MPs for Pat McFadden, no doubt about it.”

“Making Ed chancellor would be a disaster,” one MP said. “He’s a Marmite politician who completely divides opinion, which is the last thing the government needs.

“How would it look to the public if the guy they rejected as prime minister in 2015 was given the second most important job in government?”

Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, has also spoken out against Miliband.

She said: “Ed only seems to be interested in one side of the equation, rushing Britain to net zero with almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security.”

The GMB union, which has thousands of members in the North Sea oil industry, are also opposed to Miliband becoming chancellor.

But he has won the support of other union leaders.

Andrea Egan, general secretary of Union, said: “We need a chancellor who will rewire the economy and properly invest to improve the lives of the majority.

“Of those reported to be in the running, only Ed Miliband could enact the kinds of policies trade unions and our members urgently need.”

Other names in the frame to replace Rachel Reeves include Shabana Mahmood, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper.

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.

Vladimir Putin will see that the UK’s defence spending proposals is not fully funded and is all “smoke and mirrors”, according to a former Nato commander.

Keir Starmer unveiled the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP) on Tuesday, just three weeks before he set to officially step down as prime minister.

While he announced an extra £15 billion would be spent on defence by 2030, chancellor Rachel Reeves admitted that only two-thirds of that sum (£10.3bn) had been identified.

The remaining £4.7bn needed will have to be found at the next Budget in the autumn – when Andy Burnham is expected to be in No.10.

Sir Richard Shirreff, former Nato commander who served as deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, tore into the DIP on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.

He said: “The enemy has a vote here. The enemy, as in Putin, will be watching what is going on.

“When he sees that this is smoke and mirrors, that it is not being properly funded, then it sends a message of weakness.

“It sends a message of opportunity for our enemies and quite frankly it sends an appalling message to our allies in Nato.”

Starmer had been scrambling to find more money for defence before heading to his last Nato summit as leader on July 7.

He managed to find an extra £1.5bn more in recent weeks after John Healey quit as Starmer’s defence secretary over funding concerns.

But the DIP does not explain how the government intends to reach its target of 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence by 2035.

Nato allies also pledged last year to reach 5% of national income on combined national security by the mid-2030s, with 1.5% going on defence-related areas like resilience and security.

The split target is meant to placate US president Donald Trump who has been pressuring for Nato allies to spend more on defence so they relied less on America.

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.

In London, it’s almost impossible to date without speaking therapy. Attachment styles come up on first dates. Arguments are framed as ‘boundary violations’. Compatibility becomes a question of emotional availability.

I’ve lost count of the number of dates where an ex was described as ‘avoidant’ before I’d even learned what music the other person liked.

When I refer to “therapy-speak”, I don’t mean therapy itself or careful psychological practice. I mean the growing vocabulary of terms like gaslighting, narcissist, holding space and doing the work that has moved from consulting rooms into dating apps, podcasts and social media.

Some of this shift reflects real progress. Mental health language has helped many people name patterns that once stayed buried under shame and given them permission to expect emotional safety in relationships.

But as that vocabulary spreads globally through social media and dating culture, it also carries cultural assumptions that don’t always travel with it.

Many popular Western psychological frameworks prioritise autonomy, privacy and boundaries. Those ideas can be valuable, but they also emerged within particular Western traditions and don’t always translate cleanly into cultures organised around family interdependence.

I grew up Sri Lankan, and one of the biggest differences I noticed living in London is how private relationships are expected to be.

In my community, problems were rarely treated as something that existed purely between two people. They were spoken about: aunties asked questions, friends offered blunt opinions, cousins challenged your version of events.

I’ll be the first to admit it isn’t always comfortable. But love was never just a two-person project, it existed within a network.

I remember the first time an ex-boyfriend told me he had a boundary around being offered advice. He was struggling financially. I responded instinctively and began suggesting practical ways to help.

He gently explained that unsolicited advice made him feel worse and that he needed space to process things alone.

If I were struggling financially, my family would sit me down and map out 10 possible solutions. They wouldn’t ask whether I’d consented to input. That’s what they perceive to be love.

What struck me was we were speaking the same words, but different cultural languages of love.

In urban Britain, saying “I have a boundary” is widely understood as emotionally literate and self-respecting. But in collectivist cultures, that phrasing can feel distancing, even rejecting.

The meaning shifts depending on the cultural grammar of care.

Not all relational frameworks start from the idea that the individual is the central unit of wellbeing. In Māori culture in Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, the concept of whanaungatanga emphasises kinship, relationships and collective responsibility.

Yet many therapeutic models prioritise individuation and autonomy. And while those values can be important, they aren’t the only way to define healthy love.

Psychologists have raised concerns about the casual expansion of clinical language in everyday conversation. Research on “concept creep”, coined by psychologist Nick Haslam in 2016, suggests that harm-related language can gradually broaden, sometimes stretching to cover behaviours that fall within ordinary human imperfection.

When diagnostic terms are treated as universal, they can also override cultural context. A family stepping in can be reframed as enmeshment. Direct advice can be interpreted as emotional unsafety. Close involvement may be labelled ‘unhealthy’ simply because it doesn’t centre independence.

Dating is already a negotiation between two worldviews. When therapy language is applied without cultural sensitivity, things can get sticky.

None of this is an argument against therapy. It’s an argument for recognising that therapeutic language is culturally situated.

A person can be fluent in psychological terminology and still misunderstand the cultural logic of someone else’s behaviour.

For many of us, love unfolds inside migration histories, extended families and inherited expectations about duty and care. Those traditions deserve to be understood on their own terms, not automatically translated through the language of Western psychology.

If we want healthier relationships across cultures, we may need to slow down before we diagnose and to ask what support, privacy and care mean in someone else’s world – because the way we speak about love shapes the way we practise it.

Singer Gracie Abrams has opened up about her relationship with actor Paul Mescal in an interview with The New York Times’ Popcast.

Rumours that the pair were dating began in 2024. They have since been photographed together at this year’s Bafta Awards, which some called their first “hard launch”.

They were also seen at the 2026 Golden Globes and the most recent Oscars.

The singer, whose partner helped to write song Imaginary Friend for her upcoming album Daughter From Hell, was asked whether the collaboration might invite more prying into their previously private relationship.

“I don’t like the feeling of hiding,” she shared on the podcast.

That’s not to say she doesn’t want to maintain some boundaries – “I also love privacy where it feels like the right thing,” she stated.

On the topic of public scrutiny about her private life, she said: “I always try to assume the absolute worst-case scenario of everything, and then anything else is pleasant”.

After all, she continued: “If you know how happy your experience was making something or how much you learned about yourself or your partner or whatever the thing is, it’s like, no amount of hate or trolling or whatever could take that away.”

She described her relationship as “a part of my life that brings me so much peace and joy… I’m not going to pretend like that’s not true, but I also think it’s not like an open-door policy.”

She added that working with partner Paul on an album wasn’t as huge a leap for the couple as some might expect.

“That was so fun to write together… That wasn’t some groundbreaking event for us”, she said on the episode.

“We have a very creative home with friends who are so good at what they do and everyone feels happy to share that with one another.”

Daughter From Hell will be released on July 17. You can watch the full Popcast interview here.

If you’re looking for something to fill the void between now and September’s very promising-looking Sense and Sensibility release, it might be time to give an underappreciated Lady Susan adaptation a go.

As a committed Austen fan, my top two on-screen period versions have long been the basically-perfect 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice series and 2016′s Love And Friendship.

But while I think a lot of fans are with me on the BBC take, I’ve seen a lot less buzz around Whit Stillman’s masterpiece – despite its 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and multiple awards.

Perhaps that’s because the wild late-teens writing it’s based on is rarely read, though that, too, should be rectified IMO.

The Love and Friendship movie is based on Lady Susan. I’m not really sure why it’s got the name; there is a story by Austen called Love and Friendship, but though it also features grasping, scheming women, the movie’s plot is clearly based on the “little-known novella”.

Still, the only thing that matters is our Suze. Played by Kate Beckinsale, she’s a ruthless, conniving, cruel and self-serving manipulator – who gets absolutely everything she’s ever wanted.

The Regency marriage market, after all, had all of those traits too.

The book (well, epistolary novella) comes from the young, cynical mind of an Austen who isn’t as concerned about mass-market appeal as she is making her friends and family laugh. The movie feels similar.

You will not swoon as Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) brainlessly squawks the words “Church” and “Hill” around a terrified teen. Your knees won’t buckle when Susan’s friend, Alicia (Chloë Sevigny) sneaks around her older husband (Stephen Fry).

Nor will you sigh longingly when you watch the recently-widowed Lady Susan backstab her way to that sweetest of lovers: solvency.

But you will howl laughing at the absurdity of all of this – the brutal weaponisation of manners, gentlemanly duty, and less-than-gentlemanly urges.

That’s because at her heart, Austen knows love is stupidly simple and very complex. It’s the silliest and most serious topic in the world, and in both her and Stillman’s hands, it becomes the funniest, too.

Love and Friendship is available on Disney+.