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Tuesday briefing: What challenges would Ed Miliband face as chancellor?

Good morning. Does anybody else remember Reasons to Be Cheerful? The podcast was hosted by radio presenter Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband, during what has been unkindly described as his wilderness years, after he stepped down as Labour leader in 2015. I flipping loved that podcast. It started in 2017, soon after my son was born, and I have fond memories of driving across the country with a pooping infant, listening to Ed and Geoff discuss ideas to fix the world. It gave me hope my kid might grow up into a half-decent future. Barely a decade later, Miliband is back on political centre stage. Everywhere you look there’s a briefing from this former chief adviser, or that union leader, or an ally of Larry the Cat saying that Andy Burnham must make him chancellor, or that, if he does, it will bring unmitigated disaster to the country. But here on First Edition we thumb our noses at conventional Westminster reporting. Instead, I’ve gone back through the Reasons to Be Cheerful archive, and asked a few regular podcast guests about the challenges facing the next occupant of No 11 Downing Street. First, this morning’s headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Nigel Farage has been accompanied by his friend George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster, to numerous Reform events and fundraisers and on a trip to Abu Dhabi, raising questions about the claim that he has no official role in the party. World Cup | Donald Trump said he personally asked Fifa president Gianni Infantino to review the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun, saying he believed the dismissal was unfair but insisting he did not pressure football’s governing body to overturn the suspension. UK news | One of the UK’s most horrific and shocking child custody scandals was collectively ignored for decades because the victims were working-class boys from the north of England, a government minister has said. Immigration | A Jamaican man who has lived more than half his life in the UK is facing deportation to his home country in one of the first cases since new anti-immigration measures were announced in last week’s immigration bill. Israel | A British charity is funding a religious school at the heart of expansion plans for the illegal Israeli settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron. In depth: ‘The idea he’s going to be fiscally irresponsible is just stupid’ No wonder Andy Burnham prefers a Reddit AMA when every Westminster political reporter is gripped by feverish speculation about who the next prime minister might pick as his dance partner. Energy secretary Ed Miliband remains the clear frontrunner – indeed he’s already understood to be developing economic policy for Burnham, a close ally. Shabana Mahmood has been touted as Miliband’s closest rival, although she’s apparently keen to remain in the Home Office (we considered her asylum reforms last week); New Labour veteran Pat McFadden and foreign secretary Yvette Cooper have also been mooted. But the Treasury is a department not an individual – and one of near-mythic status across Whitehall, notorious for rigid orthodoxies and short-term bean counting. That’s precisely the point that my esteemed colleagues on the leaders desk made last week, when they endorsed Miliband for the role: “A government that wants to reshape the country needs a powerful finance minister whose instincts are to repurpose the Treasury, not just reassure it.” *** Take on the Treasury I went first to Jonathan Portes, a professor of economic and public policy at King’s College London, who joined Reasons to Be Cheerful in 2018 to talk about shaping a 21st-century welfare state. Like Miliband, Portes is a former Treasury adviser. There are two reasons why the department is unusually powerful in the UK, he argues: many other countries separate out the budgetary function from longer-term planning and growth strategy; and, second, “we’re exceptional in the weakness of No 10.” “The centre of government ends up, in many respects, being the Treasury,” Portes tells me, “because No 10 is a glorified prime minister’s office, rather than a department.” Portes accepts the criticism of the “institutional mind” of the Treasury but says the department is also very political. “And if it has a strong chancellor who tells them what to do, it is much better at delivering than other departments.” The important question is whether Miliband and Burnham are sufficiently aligned to have a good partnership. Looking at other successful teams that “worked until they didn’t” – such as Lawson and Thatcher, or Blair and Brown – Portes thinks this is not necessarily a left-right political question. “Those partnerships all worked because you had people who were strong-minded, they didn’t agree about everything, but they were aligned enough.” There have been briefings aplenty that Miliband is insufficiently pro-business; that his radicalism will spook the City. “Obviously nonsense, rightwing propaganda,” says Portes. “He is clearly capable. The idea that he’s some sort of communist or that he’s going to be fiscally irresponsible is just stupid.” The notion that Miliband’s appointment would send the bond markets into a tailspin (my First Edition colleague Michael Segalov wrote on the bond vigilantes here) is “not a serious argument”. “The government has a bunch of fiscal rules, and they’ve said they’re going to stick to them. If you want to know what the markets are saying, you look at actual money, prices, interest rates … And we can see that there’s no sense of panic.” *** Look north It’s become a recent irritation of mine that London Town Media keep talking about Manchester as The North, as though it’s Lerwick, when for the likes of us living in Glasgow, it’s Down South. Sarah Longlands, chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, and based in Manchester (AKA The Middle) indulges my moan. She gently explains that The North is “a state of mind”, reflecting what Burnham calls his “place rather than party” approach. No wonder she was invited back after she first appeared on the pod in 2020 to talk about why Westminster doesn’t always know best. “One of the big questions for any incoming chancellor is how to work better with devolved regions and the nations,” she tells me. The funding frameworks for, say, Manchester or the West Midlands comes with “a huge burden of accountability, as they rightly should”. “But that burden is set by central government,” she says. “More care needs to be taken with how we manage the relationship between the centre and those devolved nations and regions to make sure that we’re not putting such a burden on the process that you can’t actually deliver.” That relationship was tested to breaking point during Covid; we all remember Burnham himself raging on the steps of Manchester Central Library at the UK government’s lack of financial support. “A future chancellor has to rebuild that,” says Longlands, “because the Treasury has taken such a role dictating the terms of devolution”. With the prospect of No 10 North shifting the dynamic, Longlands says, “they need to decide what kind of relationship they want to have. That can’t just be about collecting receipts.” *** Green growth Much of the opposition to Miliband as chancellor has focused on his commitment to net zero; specifically, his moratorium on additional drilling licences for oil and gas in the North Sea. Although a number of union leaders have endorsed him, Unite’s Sharon Graham has said his fierce adherence to climate targets would put a “noose around the neck” of job creation. Over the weekend, senior figures in the Trump administration reportedly cautioned against appointing Miliband. (The US president has previously described net zero as “stupid”.) The Guardian’s energy correspondent, Jillian Ambrose, was invited on the podcast in 2022 to chat about clean energy. “First, the nagging issue of the North Sea must finally be agreed between the energy department and whoever moves into No 11,” she tells me. “A greenlight for the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields would not be a breach of the Labour party’s manifesto, but it would be viewed by many in the climate movement as a betrayal. Rachel Reeves was reportedly in favour of the extra billions of tax revenue and economic productivity that these projects offer, but Miliband may be willing to wring more from other areas of the economy to do without the green backlash.” She references that other byelection on the same night as Makerfield – in Aberdeen South, when the Scottish Tories enjoyed a surprise win after deliberately turning the contest into a “referendum” on oil and gas. “Voters across Britain’s former industrial heartlands have already turned against Labour’s net zero agenda, but alienating Labour’s progressive base too by failing to be ‘green enough’ could spell electoral disaster”. And there’s a wider green dividend from a Miliband chancellorship. “The economic debate over ‘green v growth’ could finally be put to rest by a minister who believes that there needn’t be a choice,” she argues. “A green economic agenda is a ‘growth agenda’, in Miliband’s view, and the opportunity to prove this on an economy-wide scale will be irresistible, especially to a politician so keenly aware of their climate legacy, developing in real-time”. What else we’ve been reading From Britney to Oasis, Guardian writers have been remembering what it was like to see legendary performances in the flesh. Patrick I enjoyed Bethan McKernan’s canny analysis of how Burnham’s devolution promises have landed with the nations beyond England. Libby Amelia Gentleman interviews Jane Ouartsi, who was seriously injured after being hit by a Lime bike, about how to improve e-bike safety. Patrick World Cup 2026 On the pitch Portugal 0 – 1 Spain | Mikel Merino’s goal in the first minute of second-half injury time earned Spain a well-deserved 1-0 win against Portugal and a place in the quarter-finals. USA 1-4 Belgium | The USA are out of the World Cup after a comprehensive defeat at Seattle Stadium, which prompted a gleeful response on the Belgian team’s official social media channels. Off the pitch Donald Trump | USA striker Folarin Balogun’s reinstatement on the pitch wasn’t enough to see them through. But ahead of the game, there was growing outrage that Balogun’s ban for a red card was waved after Donald Trump repeatedly lobbied Fifa to let him play the knockout tie. Uefa said it was “incomprehensible and unjustifiable”, and “crossed a red line”. England | Thomas Tuchel called the standard of refereeing at the World Cup unreliable and erratic as he insisted England are capable of going all the way after their dramatic 3-2 victory against Mexico. If you want to relive Sunday one last time, Jonny Weeks has put together a photo essay on the thrilling game in the Azteca. Brazil | The oblivion of defeat is always hard to swallow – particularly if you have already won the World Cup five times. Leander Schaerlaeckens has been picking through the aftermath of Brazi’s last-16 defeat to Norway and what it means for a country with such a proud footballing tradition. Today’s fixtures Argentina v Egypt, 5pm on ITV Switzerland v Colombia 9pm on ITV Sport Tennis | British wildcard Arthur Fery continued his amazing run with an astonishing 7-5, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7) win against Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov in the battle of two wildcards. Cycling | Tadej Pogacar won stage three of the Tour de France near Barcelona, which took place without spectators due to the wildfire threat. Cricket |With yet another heatwave on the way, Tanya Aldred has written the Guardian’s Hotspot newsletter about how trees can be used to keep cricket grounds protected from extreme temperatures. (Sign up here for our free newsletter covering sport and the climate crisis.) The front pages “Trump admits asking Fifa to review red card for USA”, is the Guardian’s front page today. The same story dominates other papers including the Mail, which says “Bend it like Trump: Fury over red card foul play”, the i Paper writes “Global outcry as Trump forces Fifa to change football World Cup rules to help the USA” and the Mirror’s take is “Foul”. The Times leads with “No need to seek work for 100,000 with ADHD”, and the FT has “‘Battle in the sky’ will decide course of Ukraine war, Zelenskyy warns Putin”. The Telegraph has “King puts foot down to block Harry stay”, the Express writes “Harry turned away from Palace”, and the Sun says “Kings snaps at Harry”. The Latest Farage under pressure over gifts from convicted fraudster As Nigel Farage awaits the findings of a standards watchdog investigation into a £5m gift he received from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, fresh allegations about his finances have emerged related to benefits received from the crypto entrepreneur George Cottrell, who has previously been convicted of fraud. The Reform UK leader says he is the victim of an ‘establishment hit job’ and that he has ‘done no wrongdoing’. Lucy Hough speaks to senior political correspondent, Peter Walker. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Many of us struggle with putting our phones down. Anna Mathur was no different – until she banned herself from social media and saw her relationships thrive. By placing time limits on how much she scrolled, installing an app to block email and social media at certain times of the day, and using her laptop instead of her phone for work, she was present for the moments that matter the most. “What I didn’t expect was how much calmer I would feel,” she writes in The one change that worked. “The low hum of overstimulation I had normalised turned out to be costing me more than I knew … I was less irritable, more present, in a way that didn’t require effort. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Australian PM says Chinese missile test could have caused ‘considerable damage’ if weaponised

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has said China’s weapons test in the Pacific risks fuelling dangerous nuclear proliferation, with the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired on Monday capable of causing “considerable damage” if weaponised. International condemnation has grown overnight after China’s state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that a “strategic missile carrying a dummy warhead” had been launched from a “strategic nuclear submarine of the navy”. Speaking during a visit to Solomon Islands, the Australian leader said he was concerned this week’s test, conducted in the wake of a new Pacific treaty alliance, could undermine peace and stability in the region. The Solomons leader, Matthew Wale, described the incident as “further evidence for the need” for a new regional security pact as Beijing seeks to expand its influence across the Pacific. Albanese said Australia would continue to express strong concerns to China over any move to destabilise the region or undermine peace. “The fact that this was a test of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile, fired from a nuclear powered submarine, that is of real concern,” he said. “What we need is a less nuclear weapons, certainly not more. “Part of the concerns that we will express is the nature of the weapon that was tested that has a capacity clearly to reach at long range and to cause considerable, considerable damage were it to be weaponised.” Albanese spoke after Independence Day celebrations in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara, and ahead of hosting a trio of Pacific leaders in Brisbane on Wednesday. Wale said he had registered a “strong protest” directly to China’s ambassador in his role as the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum. “China is a good friend of Solomon Islands. But this is not something a friend does. “We don’t want to see any more countries – China, America, anybody – testing their ICBM’s in the Pacific Islands region. That’s the bottom line, be our friend but don’t threaten us.” Officials in Australia and the US said on Tuesday China’s missile test did not comply with international law and was conducted with “insufficient notice” to nearby countries, amid growing international condemnation. But a Chinese government spokesperson claimed the test was “safe” and part of “routine” military training, telling critics to “not over-interpret it.” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, according to a translated version of remarks posted on an official government website, said the test launch “is a routine part of China’s annual military training, in accordance with international law and practice, and is not directed against any specific country or target. “Relevant countries were notified in advance, and it complies with international law and practice. The launch activity was conducted safely, systematically, and professionally throughout. We hope relevant countries will not over-interpret it.” ‘Destabilising event’ The Australian cabinet minister, Pat Conroy, minister for both defence industry and Pacific Island Affairs, pushed back on China’s claims. Asked in an ABC radio interview about China’s statement that the launch complied with international law and whether he thought that was a correct summary of the incident, Conroy said: “No it’s not, to be honest. “This has been a destabilising event and certainly has drawn criticism from countries in the Pacific and Asia. Secondly, it’s not consistent with The Hague Convention on ballistic missile testing, which would require more notice and greater information provided to countries,” he said. “We would continue to call on China to abide by The Hague convention, which provides sort of instructions or guidance on how to do these sorts of tests.” Conroy wouldn’t say whether Australia had raised objections with China at the ministerial level, but said the countries have “communicated”. He also criticised China for what he called “insufficient notice” of the test, confirming that notice came only hours before the launch was confirmed. Australian government ministers Penny Wong and Richard Marles gave public confirmation of the warnings from China only a short time before the launch occurred. Xinhua reported the PLA navy’s statement that the missile was launched “toward relevant high seas of the Pacific Ocean” and that it “landed precisely within the designated waters”, but did not give a specific location. Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan’s national security council, posted on social media a map purporting to show the missile’s path travelling south-east of China, going over the Philippines and passing Micronesia and Palau, landing south of Nauru. “It’s a provocation that destabilizes the IndoPacific. China just proved itself again to be a bully on the block,” he wrote. Tommy Pigott, a US state department spokesperson, said the US wanted China to “engage in meaningful arms control discussions” and commit to a “regularized notification arrangement for all intercontinental-range ballistic missile and space launches”. “Beijing’s rapid and opaque nuclear weapons buildup is of great concern to the region and the world,” Pigott said in a statement. Marles declined to say what Australia’s information was about the location of the missile test, but said it was “not particularly close” to Australia. He also raised concerns about China’s capabilities. “What we’re seeing here is a long-range missile test from China, which China itself has said is nuclear capable. It’s been launched from a submarine, which also has implications here,” he told ABC TV. “This is China demonstrating a much greater range in terms of being able to deploy a nuclear weapon. “Our fundamental issue in relation to China is that we have seen a very dramatic military buildup by China without that strategic reassurance. There really isn’t an explanation as to why they are building the capabilities that they are, and that is fundamentally destabilising.”

Together in prosaic dreams: anthology reveals Europeans’ anticlimactic subconscious

A young woman discovers in a dream that she is responsible for the Holocaust and tries to come up with schemes to make amends – and then gets distracted by a business meeting. Another woman dreams she is being chased by murderers – and ends up chilling in front of the TV with them. A man gets to advise Emmanuel Macron on social policy – and talks to him about haircuts and dog training instead. Dreams can turn our innermost fears and darkest fantasies into miniature dramas. But an anthology of recollected dreams harvested from online forums across Europe shows how the story arc of the subconscious often bends towards anticlimaxes. “Europeans seem to dream quite prosaically,” said Wolfram Lotz, a German playwright, poet and author of Dreams in Europe. “Of course dreams are always fantastical and ambiguous, but many of the dreams I have collected seem to lack imagination.” For his book, Lotz spent five years reading thousands of entries on “dream forums” – online platforms where users submit accounts of their dreams and invite users to interpret their meaning – in more than 25 European languages, from English to Swiss Romansh. He translated them into German and edited them into short stories, some just a paragraph long. While some of the dreams come from secular regions of the continent and others from countries that are more deeply religious, he was struck by “a surprising consistency” in the way they were structured. “The narrative structures of many of the European dreams I used in my book is that they start with an adventure, a daring journey, which is then interrupted, sidetracked or simply goes up in a puff of smoke,” Lotz said. There is the dream of the woman who is chased across a suburban landscape by two sinister-looking men who she is certain are intent on burning her alive. She breaks into an empty house but the two men follow and corner her. Then they sit together at the dining table to watch the news and crack hazelnuts. Eventually, the woman gets up and leaves. “Of course that has something to do with how we live on this continent,” Lotz said. “When we fall ill, we go to a doctor who gives us a medicine, and in most cases we soon feel better. Or when someone steals something from us then that may in the past have been the start of a long chase, but today we just call our insurance and that’s it.” In another dream, a 34-year-old woman is walking through a shopping centre when she suddenly realises “I used to be Hitler”. She is distraught and considers whether to help pensioners across the road or give money to the homeless to redeem her sins. Then she notices that in her turmoil she has forgotten about a job interview, and the existential confrontation with historical trauma makes way for the more humdrum business of work schedules. Another dream tells of a hobby gardener’s surprise encounter with a large, furry creature with pointy horns. “Now I will show you what it means to live without a god,” the being tells the dreamer in a “non-human” voice. But then the monster disappears, the dreamer continues to focus on the gardening, and nothing further happens. “All these collected dreams have an understated melancholy or sadness. There isn’t much transcendence left in the European mentality: God is dead, and the present lies mutely in front of us, without facing the future,” Lotz said. Lotz, 45, an award-winning playwright, whose 3,000-word work of autofiction Holy Scripture I has gained a cult following in Germany and invited comparisons to Karl Ove Knausgård, said that unlike those contributing to the forums where he found his collection of cryptic tales, it was not his job to decipher them. Indeed, what to make of the dream where someone discovers a little bird living in their anus? Or of someone having to stick app icons to an iPad screen with tape because they keep falling like pictures off a wall? The meaning of a dream, the book suggests, can sometimes lie in the very absence of meaning. “When the media talks about Europe, it rattles through a series of discursive chains: Brexit, Frontex [the EU’s border agency], Schengen and so on,” Lotz said. “But it barely touches on the reality of what Europe feels like. For me, the mission of this book is to explore this continent beyond the discourse.” There are exceptions. In some of the short texts, there is a sense that political events broadcast by the media have seeped into people’s subconscious. One dreamer bumps into Boris Johnson in the street, who invites him over to have tea and cake with Angela Merkel – a scenario possibly inspired by the former British prime minister “wanting to have his cake and eat it” during negotiations over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU. Another person dreams of being invited to the Élysée Palace to advise Macron on how to heal the social divisions running through France. “The big historical events of our time – Brexit, Trump, Covid – don’t register on the surface of these dreams as much as you would expect,” Lotz said. “The only exception is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which shows up in many of the dreams I found on Ukrainian- and Russian-language forums.” Tellingly, many European dreams are not set in Europe at all but in the US. There are dreams about witnessing a nuclear bomb attack and fearing it would set off a war with Japan; about meeting American girls on Facebook and hoping they will turn up to birthday parties in Romania; about erotic encounters with Hollywood stars; about being sent on a mission to buy eye drops for Tina Turner. In one dream tale, the narrator studies an atlas and breaks out in tears upon discovering that the United States has “separated” and its states have drifted apart on the map. Lotz said the emotional timbre of the dream reminded him of someone finding out about their parents’ divorce. “I look at a dream like that and I think: surely it knows something about how Europeans’ relationship with the United States is changing,” he said. “Dreams aren’t just froth. They know something.”

‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation

As Jane Ouartsi walked across a pedestrianised square in central London, on a Friday evening in early August three years ago, she linked arms with her partner, Dave Mathias, and told him how much she had enjoyed the afternoon they had spent together, eating pizza in Soho and visiting an art installation. It was the last time she can remember feeling properly happy and relaxed. “We were walking quite slowly, talking about the art. It’s hard to remember exactly, but I think I was saying what a lovely lunch, and then all of a sudden there was a horrific impact,” she says. “I felt my spine and body split and I thought my life was over.” Ouartsi, who is in her late 60s, can’t bear to watch the CCTV recording of the Lime bike accident that left her with such severe injuries that she spent a total of 36 days in hospital and 18 months learning how to walk again. Mathias flinches each time he sees it, tracking the progress from the left of the screen to the right of a young rider, possibly around 10 years old, as he speeds across the empty square and knocks Ouartsi over. He has had to study it repeatedly over the past three years as he has tried, and failed, to persuade staff at the bike rental company Lime to acknowledge the life-changing consequences of the incident. Last week, the clip of the collision went viral as it emerged that the company has not paid compensation to the couple and has not responded to their calls for more to be done to stop rogue underage cyclists using the electric bikes illegally, flouting all traffic rules, cycling on pavements and jumping red lights. “It has become like the wild west,” Ouartsi says, sitting on a pile of cushions in her west London flat, arranged for maximum comfort in the face of continuing stiffness and pain caused by the incident. She suffered a fractured collar bone, two spinal fractures and a badly broken femur that required three operations to fix. She says the medical staff at the central London hospital where she was treated had not previously seen such severe injuries, but were becoming used to treating patients with ebike-related damage. “They said it was happening more every week, that it was a drain on their time, fixing people’s arms and legs when they could be doing other work.” The footage has attracted attention because it chimes with the ambivalence provoked by the rising presence of Lime bikes in the capital. Although there is warmth for the arrival of alternatives to cars, there is also unease that some of the bikes are ridden and parked irresponsibly. Ouartsi, a retired Marks & Spencer shop worker, says she has become a different person since being hit. When she was discharged from hospital, ambulance staff had to carry her up to her first-floor flat and, for a year, she was unable to walk upstairs to her bedroom or to the bathroom – she had to have a single bed and a commode installed in the sitting room. “I almost forgot what it looked like upstairs,” she says. She spent weeks practising walking up steps, and Mathias, a joiner, had to take an extended period off work to help her recover, installing grab handles around the flat so she was able to manoeuvre herself into a standing position. It took months before she felt confident enough to take a bus, she still relies on a walking stick and the couple, who loved travelling to Scotland, do not envisage making the journey again. “I’m made up of nuts and bolts and screws. I had to learn to walk again like a baby,” Ouartsi says, as Mathias pulls out an A4 file of X-ray photographs revealing different attempts by doctors to mend the complicated break in her femur. The titanium inserted into her leg buckled and failed, so it needed to be replaced. “I’m very scared of falling. I don’t want to go back to hospital again. It has been a horrendous time.” Ouartsi wants the company to rethink the weight and the speed of the bicycles and impose stiff penalties on people who cycle irresponsibly. “I honestly don’t know how I survived. I was a broken china doll – it’s amazing how the doctors put me back together.” In the abstract, Ouartsi and Mathias support the idea that cities should have more bicycles and fewer cars. A few years ago, Ouartsi enjoyed hiring Santander Cycles, which are not electric, and cycling around the perimeter of Hyde Park with her grandson. But their experience has hardened a sense that Lime and the owners of other ebikes need to take more decisive action to promote the safety of pedestrians and riders. They support the principle of making life easier for cyclists, but not at the expense of people who prefer to walk. “People need to use them sensibly, on the road. I’d also rather they weren’t electric so that people could get more exercise,” says Mathias. “People zoom on the pavements because it’s dangerous on the roads,” Ouartsi adds. Mathias still doesn’t understand why Lime has not done more to prevent children from riding ebikes. In the seconds after the impact, he shouted at the child, who went to sit by himself on a bench nearby and cried. He tried to take a photograph of the boy, but was prevented by a woman, who he thinks was the boy’s mother, who arrived some time later. When the paramedics were transferring Ouartsi into an ambulance, they disappeared before police were able to speak to them or take down their names. “Neither of us want to prosecute a 10-year-old or his mother, but we needed a name on the form to claim on Lime’s insurance,” says Mathias. Without a name, securing any payment of damages has proved complex. The police closed the case, and an attempt to work on a no win, no fee basis with solicitors ended because, the lawyer said in an email to Mathias, the rider had not been identified, so it was not possible to make a claim. In October 2024, Mathias was at a well-attended meeting in Kensington town hall, where representatives from Lime, and other ebike firms such as Forest, were there to listen to residents’ complaints about the rising number of poorly parked hire bikes. Charities representing blind residents and people with limited mobility have detailed how difficult chaotic parking has made navigating parts of London with looser regulations about returning ebikes. Mathias took the opportunity to tell Lime publicly about his partner’s injuries. “Mostly they were elderly people there complaining about the bikes being strewn all over the pavement,” he says. “When I got up and said my piece, people gasped.” Two Lime representatives came to speak to him afterwards and offered to help. “We were really sorry to hear of your experience and we want to do everything we can to support you,” a senior public affairs manager emailed him the next day. Another email from Lime promises: “We are dedicated to ensuring that your concerns are properly addressed.” But somehow, this help has not materialised. A message sent via the Lime Claims Management System in January of this year offers “deepest regrets regarding what your wife Jane and yourself have been through as a result of this incident” but states that the firm has again reviewed its records and been unable to find details of who rented the bike or the identity of the rider. “This vehicle was not being used as part of an active ride. As the rider was using the vehicle illegally, we have no record of the trip having occurred and no information on the rider,” the message notes. “Without any further details regarding the user’s identification we are unable to provide any further support on the incident at this time.” At one point, Lime told Mathias that they were willing to make a financial gesture, with no admission of liability, but this offer has not materialised. Robert Goodsell also experienced difficulties securing compensation for his wife, Helen, 79, after she was struck by an underage rider, also riding on the pavement, as she stepped out from her front garden on to the street in north London in 2024. The video of the collision, filmed from their doorbell camera, gives a sense of the speed of the impact. Her injuries were minor, but she still feels stressed when she sees Lime bikes on the road. When Robert tried to make an insurance claim on her behalf, he discovered that Lime’s insurers were unable to settle because the rider was underage, which was an exclusion under the terms of the insurance policy. Lime later offered a modest ex-gratia payment, without admission of liability. He suggested that safety rules should be stencilled on to the bikes, setting out that bicycles must not be ridden on pavements and riders should not go through red lights, but although Lime expressed polite interest in the idea, it was not implemented. “The challenges I would like to put to Lime are: why do they refuse to put basic safe riding guidance and rules visibly on their bikes? Why do they not visibly number their bikes so that the public can report bad behaviour?” he says. He also believes it would be helpful if the company was able to limit the bicycle’s speed in pedestrian areas. The solicitor Sam Collard, the head of cycling accident claims at Osbornes law, says that for the past 18 months his firm has been receiving about 10 inquiries a month, with the vast majority involving Lime bikes, although there were also people wishing to claim damages against other ebike providers. Claims are divided between pedestrians hurt by cyclists, riders who have been injured by defective bikes while cycling and riders with fractures caused by the sheer weight of the bicycle falling on them, a phenomenon known as “Lime bike leg”. “It ranges from cuts and scrapes to more serious issues – brain injury, fractured skull. We’re in the process of settling a number of cases, with payments of between £20,000 and £100,000.” Collard acknowledged it was more complicated to receive an insurance payout when the identity of the rider was unknown. “But certainly, morally, they have questions to answer about how a 10-year-old came to be riding their bike,” he says. A private briefing prepared for Transport for London’s safety panel, and seen by the Evening Standard, showed that hire bikes, such as the battery-powered cycles provided by Lime, Forest and Voi, accounted for 32% of cyclist v pedestrian crashes attended by police in the capital in 2024, up from 3% in 2017. TfL figures also show that there was an 8% rise in serious injuries to people cycling in 2024 (the last period for which records are available), but notes that this increase is heavily outweighed by the 39% increase in cycling journeys recorded since a 2010-14 baseline, suggesting serious injury per cycle journey has reduced. A spokesperson for Lime said: “Our thoughts are with Jane and her family, and we are sorry for the distress this incident has caused. We take incidents like this extremely seriously. This situation has been carefully reviewed and handled in line with our policies. We are also sorry to hear about Helen’s incident. Safety informs everything we do – from how we design and maintain our vehicles, to our rider education, and how we work with cities.” The firm said the bike involved in Ouartsi’s accident was stolen and ridden illegally, not rented, and added that more than 99.99% of Lime trips in London last year ended without a reported incident. Lime launched a redesigned, smaller rental ebike, with batteries repositioned towards the back of the vehicle, earlier this year, rolling out 1,500 new cycles, in addition to the fleet of up to 50,000 dockless ebikes it already operates in the capital. Lime fines riders who end their journeys in unauthorised places, with fines ranging between £2 and £20 and repeat offenders can be banned. The firm slows bikes down when they enter “go slow” areas, such as Regent’s Park or Hyde Park in London. Mathias wants to be positive about these improvements, but is frustrated that the significant impact of the accident on their lives has not been recognised. “The psychological impact of what happened is far reaching,” he says. “Jane and I had hopes and dreams for retirement and our future together which have been blighted.” • Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? 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Nato braces for difficult summit as Trump puts pressure on spending

Nato leaders will gather in Ankara on Tuesday after a turbulent six months. And as the US continues to pressure its allies to increase defence spending, the other 31 members of the alliance will be hoping to mollify an unpredictable Donald Trump. On Monday, Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, called for the allies to present “clear, concrete and credible plans” to reach the organisation’s spending targets. “President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,” he said. Nato members will unveil tens of billions in new arms contracts at an industry forum on the sidelines of the summit, as they attempt to show Trump that they are delivering on defence spending pledges. The two-day summit in the Turkish capital is expected to agree that allies will commit a largely symbolic €70bn (£60bn) in military aid to Ukraine this year and next, though this largely reflects commitments already made to a country that has no pathway to joining Nato. It is not a deal to command Trump’s attention in the same way as last year’s headline agreement. Then, European members and Canada pledged to lift defence spending to 5% of their gross domestic product – 3.5% directly and 1.5% on roads, bridges and ports to facilitate troop movements. “It’s not about keeping anyone happy, it is about delivering,” Rutte said during a visit to London last week. “And what Donald Trump expects, of course, is delivery.” When Rutte met Trump in the Oval Office last month, he brought along a couple of large cardboard panels, illustrating how much the non-US members of Nato had been spending since the US president started to complain about Europe free-riding on US defence outlay. Rutte highlighted a chart referring to “the Trump trillion” – the cumulative amount spent on defence by European members and Canada since the two-time president first took office in 2017. The elementary communication was intended to show, in Rutte’s words, that Trump “is successful in terms of getting the Europeans to spend more”. But with transatlantic relations already at a low, and with the US keen to ensure steps are being taken to honour the 3.5% commitment, a diplomatically harmonious summit cannot be guaranteed. On Friday, Trump posted a graphic on his Truth Social platform showing Nato members’ defence budgets, comparing a vast US spend of $999m (£747m) with smaller figures from European states including the UK and France. Introducing the graphic, he wrote: “Ridiculous for the U.S.A. to continue along this one-sided path when the relationship is not reciprocal.” Since the start of this year, when he threatened to take control of Greenland from Nato member Denmark, Trump has continued to strain relations with US allies. He failed to consult European leaders before the US and Israel launched their economically disastrous attack on Iran, and then complained when they did not allow US jets to bomb Iran from their territory. There have been spats with Britain, when Keir Starmer refused to fully participate in the bombing of Iran, and with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, whom he bizarrely accused on Monday of being obsessed with him. Relations are also difficult with Canada’s Mark Carney after Trump voiced the extraordinary idea of the US taking over its northern neighbour. The US is also planning to cut the number of troops and materiel it assigns to Europe in the event of a war with Russia, reducing the number of F-15 and F-16 jets by a third. Last month, Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said he would hold a further review, looking at US current forces in Europe, and threatening to cut numbers the most in countries that were spending the least. Trump is expected to bring 1,400 people with him to Turkey, including those responsible for bringing back his toilet waste – a standard protocol to prevent other countries analysing the material for intelligence about his health. That the US is coming in large numbers is seen as a relief, given that Trump has at times flirted with the idea of leaving Nato, including at a summit in 2018. Nevertheless, there has been a remarkable effort behind the scenes at Trump-proofing whatever happens in Ankara. Oana Lungescu, a former Nato spokesperson, said she expected the final summit communique – the jointly agreed diplomatic text – to be short, “probably a one pager”, and to “restate some of those fundamentals” that are the alliance’s reasons for being. The final draft text, still subject to approval by the assembled leaders, reaffirms an “ironclad commitment” to Nato’s all-important Article 5, in which an attack on one member state is considered an attack on all. That its authors have considered it necessary to restate that provision so openly is a reminder of how fraught 2026 has been so far. Gen Alexus Grynkewich, the senior US and Nato commander in Europe, announced last week that European allies had “largely filled the gaps” that would be left by the reductions in US troops in war. Though substantial, Europe’s effort is not like-for-like, particularly because it has no long-range bombers, though cruise missiles may be an alternative. A clue to the leaders’ levels of chemistry can be inferred from Trump’s agenda in Turkey. Aside from sitting through one Nato leaders meeting on Wednesday and a summit dinner at Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s presidential palace the night before, his only other confirmed bilateral meetings are with Syria’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa – a war leader he admires – and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Success in Ankara is unlikely to be defined by diplomatic pledges. When asked what she thought a positive summit would look like, Lungescu suggested “no angry outbursts from president Trump”, before adding “a reaffirmation of alliance unity” and “a lot more money” for defence contracts and Ukraine.

Europe faces up to prospect US may be unable to arm Nato allies

There are growing concerns in Europe that the US defence industrial base is no longer providing the weapons pledged to Nato allies with US stockpiles depleted owing to the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, leaving allies to consider new avenues to arm and defend themselves. As Nato leaders including the US president, Donald Trump, convene in Ankara, Turkey, the US plans to address European defence spending and concerns over the Trump administration’s future commitment to the military alliance. The US this year has delayed or cancelled deliveries of a series of key arms shipments to countries in Europe, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Himars mobile rocket artillery and desperately needed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, of which the US used an estimated 50% through April of this year during its war with Iran. They are crucial for countering the threat of missile strikes in Ukraine and would also be needed for the defence of Europe in case of an armed conflict with Russia. After a Russian bombardment killed at least 21 people and left dozens injured in Ukraine on Monday, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the country had been unable to intercept about 23 ballistic missiles that were launched as part of a salvo alongside other missiles and drones. “The reason for this is precisely the insufficient supply of interceptor missiles,” Zelenskyy wrote. “It is very important that the world, especially America and our European partners, come out of the Nato summit in Ankara with strong decisions to support our defence of the sky, and hence, the protection of ordinary people’s lives.” The shortages have also angered European capitals, which have quietly seethed while seeking to avoid direct conflicts with the Trump administration in order to prevent a broader collapse in transatlantic relations. “There are five or six problems at once contributing to this,” said one European diplomat, describing dwindling stocks from the war in Iran and the conflict in Ukraine, the effort to shift defence resources away from Europe toward Asia and replenished stocks of interceptors being sent first to allies such as Israel. “We know that we are not customer number one.” The US has demanded that Nato allies increase their defence spending to 5% for a second year running under Trump and that much of that money be ploughed back into purchases of American arms shipments. But there are now questions about whether further investments in US arms, including next-generation weapons, will be honoured in the future. “We’re going to have billions of dollars in announcements on the sidelines of the summit, I’m not here to preview those specifically but I think there’s a lot of really interesting co-production, building of factories, building of lines of production in Europe and the US,” an administration official said before the Nato summit on Sunday. But, diplomats said, it will take an expected 5-10 years for Europe to develop new production lines, leaving a dangerous period of time before Europe can ramp up its own defence production while the US appears eager to pull troops and other capabilities sooner. About 20 countries are waiting in line for deliveries of Patriot missiles, and an estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies has said that it could take 42 months for the US to replenish just its own stockpiles of the missiles, which were estimated at 2,330 before the war with Iran and during which the US expended about half. “There’s a competition when you have a finite amount of something, someone gets it and someone doesn’t,” said Phil Gordon, a former national security adviser to the former US vice-president Kamala Harris, who noted that the Biden administration was also forced to delay deliveries of arms to allies owing to the war in Ukraine. At the Nato summit, he said, “leaders will want to underscore why they are the most important, but they’ll also be conscious there’s not a lot they can do about it”. When it comes to aborted plans to deliver Tomahawk missiles to Germany, for instance, the “US shot 1,000 Tomahawks in Iran, so like it’s not that they’re not prioritising [Germany], they don’t exist,” he said. “The real conclusion from this is that Europeans are going to have to be more self-reliant and reliant on others.”

Marine Le Pen’s political future at stake with ruling on electoral ban imminent

Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right figurehead and a leading contender for its presidency, will learn on Tuesday whether she can run in next year’s election when a Paris appeals court rules on her attempt to overturn a ban on holding elected office. The ruling will determine whether the far-right National Rally (RN) candidate to succeed the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, will be the veteran Le Pen, 57, or her youthful protege, Jordan Bardella, 30. With her party comfortably ahead in the polls, Le Pen, who came third in the 2012 race and lost runoffs to Macron in 2017 and 2022, has insisted she is prepared for any eventuality. “I’m not scared,” she said this week. “If I can run, I will – as long as I can campaign.” But her allies concede her ineligibility would be a major blow. “It would be a kind of personal grief if it happened,” one RN lawmaker, Thomas Ménagé, told reporters. In a bombshell verdict that reverberated far beyond France, a lower court in March last year handed Le Pen a five-year ban from public office and a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended, for embezzling European parliament funds. Along with 24 former MEPs, assistants and accountants, as well as the party itself, the three-time presidential candidate was found guilty of operating a system that used European parliament funds to employ RN staff in France between 2004 and 2016. Le Pen claimed her party was the victim of a “witch-hunt” and, with 11 others, appealed, denying during the second trial that her party had any system to embezzle the several million euros concerned and saying that it had acted in “complete good faith”. Prosecutors argued she “professionalised” a way of diverting EU funds pioneered by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after taking over the party from him in 2011. They want her five-year ban maintained and her jail term set at four years, with three suspended. Observers have outlined several possible outcomes. Le Pen’s best-case scenario – deemed by most analysts the least likely – would be acquittal. She acknowledged “a mistake” during the appeal trial, saying some staff paid as EU aides had worked in France, but said she believed such work was allowed. The court could also find Le Pen guilty, but shorten the ban on holding elected office to two years or less, or lift it altogether. Because the lower court ordered the ban to take immediate effect, Le Pen has been serving it since 31 March last year. A ban of two years or less, therefore, would expire before the first round of the vote, due on 18 April 2027 – although that does not mean she would definitely run, since any jail term or electronic monitoring would severely hinder her ability to campaign. “If I’m allowed to be a candidate, but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely – then you understand, that wouldn’t be possible,” Le Pen told French television last week. “I can’t be dependent on a judge to authorise me to campaign.” The appeals court could also order any electoral ban to take immediate effect, as the lower court did. In theory, Le Pen could then appeal to France’s highest court, the court of cassation, which has previously said that it would rule before the election. However, she has previously said she would be unlikely to take her appeal further, arguing that the uncertainty would jeopardise her party’s chances. “You can’t launch a presidential campaign at the last minute,” Le Pen said during the appeal trial. Polls suggest that both Le Pen – who transformed the RN from a fringe nationalist movement to the single biggest party in France’s parliament – and Bardella would comfortably win the first round of the 2027 election to reach the runoff. However, the RN’s leftwing and centrist political opponents believe Bardella’s relative lack of experience and lack of “brand” will come under heavy scrutiny if he is the party’s presidential candidate, and could prove a significant handicap. He has recently had to answer media questions – and criticism from within the RN – on how his high-profile romance with Princess Maria Carolina de Bourbon-des Deux Siciles will be perceived ⁠by the working-class voters the party still heavily relies on. While party officials insist Bardella and Le Pen are united and would campaign as a team whoever is the RN candidate, tensions have emerged between the two, notably over economic policy, with Bardella advocating a much more free-market ‌line. Polls are divided over the potential outcome of the second round, with some suggesting Le Pen would win against the radical left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon as well as the centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe. However, others have suggested that Philippe – who is also courting centre-right voters – would emerge victorious in a runoff against either far-right candidate.

Russian cities feel the pinch amid worsening fuel shortages

Five hours into the queue, tempers were already fraying at the gas station. Then a black Audi Q7 swept past dozens of waiting cars and pulled straight up to the pumps. Within minutes, motorists were shouting, mobile phones were recording and a police officer had drawn his pistol to calm the crowds. The confrontation, filmed on Saturday night at a petrol station in the Siberian town of Ust-Ordynsky, captured the growing frustration over Russia’s worsening fuel shortages, which have spread across a country that remains one of the world’s largest oil producers. More than four years into the war, Ukraine’s campaign of long-range drone strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure is increasingly being felt far from the frontlines. After repeated attacks on some of the country’s largest refineries in recent months that have damaged roughly a third of the country’s oil refining capacity, Russia’s gasoline production has fallen by about 25% year on year, leaving filling stations struggling to meet demand during the summer holiday season and the agricultural harvest. The shortages first emerged in Russian-occupied Crimea in May but have since spread across almost the entire country, with only two Russian regions reportedly unaffected. The fuel crisis has become one of the most visible disruptions to everyday life for many Russians since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, challenging the Kremlin’s efforts to shield the public from the war’s economic consequences. For Putin, images of motorists waiting hours to fill their tanks are difficult to reconcile with his longstanding message that life has remained largely normal despite western sanctions and the war. “Mass fatigue with the war is turning into mass irritation,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst. Even so, he said the shortages were unlikely to trigger widespread protests in Russia’s tightly controlled political system. “There is certainly shock, but the lack of any real means of influencing the situation – and the risks associated with trying to do so – make protests unlikely.” The disruption has become so severe that Russian officials acknowledged last week they were exploring fuel imports from Belarus, Kazakhstan and India – an extraordinary step for a country that is normally one of the world’s largest exporters of refined petroleum products. The government is also considering temporarily relaxing fuel-quality standards to allow companies to produce lower-grade gasoline and diesel. Analysts say the longer-term impact of the shortages will largely depend on whether Ukraine can sustain its campaign against Russia’s oil infrastructure. On Monday, Ukrainian drones struck the Omsk refinery in western Siberia, roughly 1,800 miles (2,900km) from Kyiv, in what appears to be Ukraine’s deepest strike yet against Russia’s energy infrastructure. For now, the fuel crisis is already reshaping daily life and beginning to ripple through the wider economy. “I could never have imagined we would be rationing fuel,” said Anastasiya, an employee at a logistics company in Irkutsk, one of the Siberian cities worst affected by the shortages. She requested her last name be withheld for security reasons. She said that several of the company’s lorries carrying cargo had been stranded outside the eastern city of Chita for five days because drivers had been unable to find fuel. “It’s like the stories I heard about the Soviet Union, when people had to queue for food,” Anastasiya added. Taxi drivers are increasingly staying off the road. Industry representatives told the Russian business daily Kommersant that the fuel crisis had reduced journeys by about 20%, with ride-hailing drivers increasingly unwilling to accept longer trips for fear they would be unable to find fuel afterwards. In southern Russia, one of the areas hardest hit by the shortages alongside eastern Siberia, authorities have deployed Cossack patrols to help maintain order at petrol stations in Black Sea resorts as public frustration mounts during the peak tourist season. The shortages have given rise to a grey market last seen shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, petrol is now openly advertised on Telegram and the marketplace website Avito, with sellers in Russian-occupied Crimea offering to deliver fuel by taxi within four hours at heavily inflated prices. Some motorists have started to find their luck abroad, crossing into Kazakhstan and China to fill their tanks, a practice that has become common enough to earn its own nickname: “fuel tourism”. Even Moscow, the political and economic heart of the country that has largely been protected from the consequences of the war, has begun to feel the effects. Many petrol stations across the capital have temporarily closed after disruption at one of the city’s largest refineries after a Ukrainian drone strike in June. “One positive is that I’ve started walking more instead of constantly driving everywhere,” one Muscovite said, estimating that waiting times for petrol had risen to between one and two hours. The shortages are starting to take a toll on the Kremlin’s standing. According to polling by the independent Levada Center, Putin’s approval rating fell five percentage points in June to 74% – its lowest level in four years – while the share of Russians who said the country was moving in the right direction dropped from 61% in May to 52%. Senior Russian officials have begun speaking more openly about the costs of the war. “I don’t believe there is anyone in this country whose primary concern is anything other than an end to military hostilities as soon as possible,” German Gref, the powerful head of Sberbank, said recently. There is little indication, however, that the Kremlin is preparing to change course. Over the weekend, Putin made a rare visit to the army’s headquarters, wearing military fatigues as he hailed what he described as Russian battlefield successes and dismissed Ukraine’s claims of recent successes as an “information and propaganda operation”. Putin, who rarely addresses domestic problems before they become unavoidable, was forced last month to acknowledge the shortages, telling state television that Russia was experiencing “a certain deficit” of fuel, “but not a critical one”. On state TV, the message to Russians has been blunter: endure. “Let’s remember what we’ve already survived. There’s no petrol now? Well, my generation remembers when food was rationed,” Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT and one of the Kremlin’s most prominent propagandists, said on her weekly programme on Rossiya 1 on Sunday. “I call on everyone to stay calm. Yes, it’s hard. Very hard … But we’ll get through this too. I have absolutely no doubt.”