Angela Rayner had a secret meeting with Andy Burnham on Friday night, according to new reports.

The Sun on Sunday shared photos of the Greater Manchester mayor arriving at the former deputy prime minister’s constituency home in Ashton.

Their summit adds to mounting speculation the two soft-left Labour figures might be considering launching a joint coup.

Their encounter came hours after Keir Starmer furiously defended his premiership amid fresh developments in the Peter Mandelson scandal.

It was revealed by the Guardian this week that the ex-Labour peer failed security vetting, but still secured the top job as the UK’s ambassador to the US.

Starmer has since insisted that he was not told Mandelson had failed and only found out on Tuesday night.

He then sacked the chief of the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, on Thursday night.

As scrutiny over Starmer’s judgement grows once again, technology secretary Liz Kendall sent a message to the PM’s potential opponents this morning.

She said: “Any politician that focuses more on their future and their job, not people’s future sand their jobs, will lose the public support. That is why I back Keir Starmer.”

Burnham was blocked by Labour’s executive body from running for parliament earlier this year amid fears he would try to overthrow Starmer once safely set up with a seat in the Commons.

Rayner is allegedly also considering a run at the top job, but may still be hampered from any power grab by the ongoing HMRC investigation into her tax affairs.

She had to step down from the cabinet last year after underpaying on stamp duty when buying an £800,000 property.

Labour is expected to endure major losses at the elections in May, when Holyrood and the Senedd are up for re-election along with hundreds of local authorities in England.

Insiders have told HuffPost UK any leadership challenge to Starmer will likely come after the elections so any successor can avoid taking responsibility for the bloodbath.

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Donald Trump has threatened to strike Iranian infrastructure after accusing Tehran of breaching their ceasefire agreement.

The US president claimed Iran fired bullets in the Strait of Hormuz at a “French ship and a freighter from the United Kingdom”.

In a furious post on TruthSocial, the US president said there was going to be “no more Mr Nice Guy” – even though America “loses nothing” over the ongoing chaos.

He also called Iran’s decision to close the strait “strange”, claiming the US blockade had already closed it.

He said Iran should take the “very fair and reasonable” deal the US negotiators put forward on Monday while meeting with their Iranian counterparts in Pakistan – or the US “is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.”

Trump claimed his military would “come down fast, they’ll come down easy”, adding: ” IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”

Tehran has also accused the US of breaching the ceasefire deal by imposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports.

No traffic is currently moving through the major shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, due to the conflict in the Middle East.

Tehran retaliated to the strikes from the US and Israel at the end of February by effectively closing the Strait by targeting any ships which pass through it.

That triggered a global economic shock because the waterway transports around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, with around 140 ships passing through in either direction.

After frantic negotiations, Iran claimed the waterway was reopened for commercial vessels on Friday – but only if ships go through an inspection by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, and in some cases, pay a toll.

Iran then seemed to close the waterway again on Saturday, saying it will remain shut until the US ends its blockade on Iranian ports.

Trump’s full post reads:

“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement! Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations. Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it. They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing. In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be “the tough guy!” We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!

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A Labour peer has called for Keir Starmer to resign over the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Maurice Glasman has become the most senior figure within the party to urge the prime minister to resign, claiming he “cannot conceivably continue” in the job.

It comes after it emerged Mandelson – Starmer’s pick to be the UK’s ambassador to the US – failed security vetting last year.

The Foreign Office then overrode the security advice not to hire the ex-Labour peer and gave Mandelson the plum job in Washington.

Mandelson was sacked over his long-running friendship with convicted paedophile last September, but the decision to hire him continues to haunt Starmer.

The PM insists he was not aware Mandelson failed the vetting process and is blaming Whitehall for keeping him in the dark.

But questions over Starmer’s judgement continue to grow and there is speculation other Labour figures – Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham – could be looking to overthrow him.

Glasman told the Telegraph: “He cannot conceivably continue as a credible prime minister any longer. And that’s all because he cannot say ‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry’.

“If you can’t own your mistakes, you can’t move.

“All he needed to say was ‘we made an error’.

“But he’s completely stuck in saying he hasn’t done anything wrong, so this can’t go away.”

Glasman, known for championing the Blue Labour movement, also warned that his party is facing a bloodbath in the May elections when voters select their candidates for Holyrood, the Senedd and hundreds of local authority seats across England.

He said: “May 7 is going to be another debacle. I can’t see how he [Starmer] carries on after the May elections.

“He could limp on to the summer but the point is we’re doing all this while there’s a war in Iran, there’s a war in Ukraine and where is the political leadership?”

Technology secretary Liz Kendall publicly defended Starmer amid this increase in pressure on Sunday morning.

she told Sky News: “Keir Starmer is my favourite to be the prime minister, to take us into the next election.

“Let me tell you right now, with the cost of living crisis that people are facing and with the world so uncertain, and that’s deeply frightening to people, any politician who focuses more on their future and their job, not on people’s futures and their jobs, will lose the public support. That is why I back Keir Starmer.”

Subscribe 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.

White House Energy Secretary Chris Wright called President Donald Trump a “creative negotiator” when asked about his threats to “knock out every single” power plant and bridge in Iran.

As peace talks between the United States and Iran appear to be at a stalemate amid a tenuous ceasefire agreement and continued jockeying over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the president demanded Iran accept America’s terms or face his full wrath in a Sunday morning Truth Social post.

“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Trump declared, calling the US’s diplomatic offer “very fair and reasonable.”

Asked if the president’s intimidation tactics could “complicate” negotiations with Iran during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” just hours later, Wright said he had full confidence in Trump.

“The president is using every way he can to get leverage over the regime and bring this conflict to an end,” he told host Shannon Bream. “He’s a creative negotiator, he uses pressure in different ways.”

“He uses uncertainty in different ways and I think as you’ve seen in the last 16 months, generally it leads to good results,” the cabinet member went on. “I don’t think we’ll see any surprises here.”

Wright envisioned reaching a “nice end to this conflict,” which he said would rescue Iran’s regional neighbors from “constant terror” and also guarantee a free “flow of goods” through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Imagine a nuclear armed Iran, not far away from that reality,” he said. “This is going to put an end to it.”

Wright stuck by his support for Trump’s strategy in a separate Sunday interview on CNN, where host Jake Tapper asked the secretary if he was worried strikes on civilian infrastructure could “constitute a war crime.”

“The president is looking for maximum leverage,” he said, later adding, “No, I’m not worried about that.”

Earlier this month, Trump triggered international panic with a near-identical ultimatum, telling Iran to “open the fuckin’ Strait” of Hormuz within two days or find themselves “living in hell” via Truth Social.

After upping the ante with a post warning “a whole civilization will die tonight” just hours before his 8pm April 7 deadline, a two-week ceasefire was announced.

I am pretty fussy about cookies. I like them to have that bakery-level softness while maintaining a satisfyingly crisp exterior; I want thick, gooey cookies, ideally eaten warm with melted chocolate and sea flakes.

There are, of course, steps you can take to ensure these features. Resting cookie dough overnight helps to prevent the biscuits from spreading in the oven, which I find leaves them too thin.

And adding some inverted sugars, like golden or maple syrup, alongside granulated kinds goes a long way to keeping them sumptuously soft.

Personally, I swear by the New York Times’ recipe, though I replace about 10g of the brown sugar with maple syrup.

I’ve been making a batch on the weekend, freezing the dough, and baking one in the oven nightly for the past couple of weeks. But recently, partly because baking takes so long and partly because I hated using that much energy on a single biscuit, I switched appliances.

The results were gooier, crisper, faster, and easier to make; I haven’t gone back since.

Though I was happy with the results from my oven, I found that the air fryer left a much crisper top layer on the brownies with a truly gooey underneath. It makes them a little like a very good brownie.

When I bake them in the oven, meanwhile, they often end up getting a little caught and chewy on the ends. My oven probably heats up too slowly, which would explain the thin, lacy edges, where sugar melts into a slightly too hard layer, and the heat doesn’t blast the fat quickly enough to prevent spreading.

Not so with the air fryer, which cooks the cookie much faster (I put a frozen cookie in at 150°C for about 11 minutes, vs the oven’s 20 minutes plus preheating time).

And because air circulates in a much smaller area in my air fryer than it does in the oven, I feel it makes the craggy parts of my cookie crunchier and more golden while still maintaining a fudgy middle.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that baking legend Jane’s Patisserie likes the trick, too.

I wouldn’t go that far. I’m in a specific situation here: I cook one or two cookies at a time, and I much prefer warm cookies to cooled ones. I also make taller cookies, and I think a thinner one could run a little too crisp quite quickly.

If you’re less interested in gooeiness and/or are cooking a lot of cookies at once, an oven will almost certainly be your best bet. I would not, for instance, use this for a bake sale.

But I probably would lob a huge scoop of cookie dough into my air fryer for something like a movie night dessert or a post-dinner cookie cake for friends (just be sure to carefully line your basket with baking paper: this is mandatory, of course, no matter what size cookie you’re making).

And I have stuck to the appliance every night since I first tried it. It’s faster, easier to clean, makes it much easier to check the doneness of your cookies, and makes mine taller, gooier, crisper, and more delicious.