65 m. ago Lib Dems denounce new Reform UK chair as ‘Trump sycophant’ – UK politics live

Daisy Cooper says doctor and presenter David Bull once appeared on TalkTV with his ear bandaged after the assassination attempt against TrumpReeves is now taking questions.The first comes from a delegate who says the proposed welfare cuts are wrong. Will the government think again? Continue reading...

Politics

92 m. ago Echo Valley review – Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney suspense thriller stretches credulity

A mother and her drug-abusing daughter are entangled in a far-fetched crime plot involving scary dealers and hastily disposed bodiesBrad Ingelsby, creator of TV’s Mare of Easttown, has written an enticing-looking suspense thriller which Michael Pearce directs and Ridley Scott co-produces. And with the acting A-team of Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney in the leads, and rock-solid support from Fiona Shaw and Domhnall Gleeson, things look promising. But Sweeney is absent from the drama for too long for the central relationship to be satisfyingly dramatised. And after an intriguing opening, the convoluted narrative doesn’t merely jump the shark but lies down and lets the shark jump over it before the pair of them charleston their way across the rolling Pennsylvanian farmland where the film is supposed to be set.Moore plays Kate, a lonely and unhappy grieving woman who trains horses and gives riding lessons on the farm she now precariously owns. She is divorced from a testy and judgemen...

Politics

2 h. ago Spending review latest: Starmer says ‘no more dithering’ over nuclear power amid £14bn Sizewell C plan

Chancellor signs off on £14.2 billion of investment to build the new Sizewell C nuclear plant

Economics

3 h. ago Juliet & Romeo review – Rebel Wilson and Jason Isaacs cameo in syrupy Shakespeare musical

With bare-faced cheek, this bardless take replaces all the original language with olden-days-effect prose – adding singing, dancing and a pointlessly starry castDirector and former stage actor Timothy Scott Bogart is best known for having made Spinning Gold, a biopic of his father Neil Bogart, the New York music producer and founder of the 70s disco-era label Casablanca Records. Now he has confected a syrupy new musical take on Romeo and Juliet, with music by his brother Evan Kidd Bogart (who won a Grammy for his work on Beyoncé’s single Halo).Bogart retells the basic story but with Shakespeare’s language all removed and replaced with olden-days-effect prose: a kind of bardless Baz Luhrmann. Ultimately – with what I do have to admit is some amiable cheek – Bogart contrives to do for this play what Nahum Tate did for King Lear. It’s really pretty bland, and with each turn in the plot you have to ask what the point of it actually is. Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago Spending review latest: Government accused of not ‘coming clean’ over full costs of Sizewell C nuclear plant

Chancellor signs off on £14.2 billion of investment to build the new Sizewell C nuclear plant

Economics

5 h. ago Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf review – trans activist opens up about the toll visibility takes

Essex-born model and activist shows remarkable grace, resilience and honesty in the face of online vitriol and hostile TV interviewersWhen she was younger, Munroe Bergdorf didn’t want to be queer or black. “I just wanted to fit in. Now those are the two things that I love most about myself.” It would be almost impossible to watch this documentary about the trans model and activist without feeling a surge of admiration for her resilience and grace. Bergdorf hit the headlines with a hiring-and-firing scandal in 2017 when L’Oréal sacked her as the face of a UK campaign following Facebook comments she wrote in response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Watching the backlash in Love & Rage, we see that Bergdorf didn’t hide away. She went on Good Morning Britain, where Piers Morgan snapped at her like an angry yorkshire terrier. Bergdorf is willing to share a platform with people who deny her existence, and it looks incredibly bruising at times. There’s a clip ...

Politics

5 h. ago Against Identity by Alexander Douglas review – a superb critique of contemporary self

A philosopher challenges us to forget about ourselves in this powerfully strange counterblast to identity fetishismIdentity is something socially negotiated, both claimed and given. I cannot be French if that nation does not exist; I can’t be a doctor if no one will grant me a medical degree. Social media, however, promises that we can don or doff identities like so many digital masks. We may become persuaded that identities are private goods over which we have rights of ownership and choice, that we can freely select what we “identify as”. The heightened salience of identity in modern political discourse thus represents an unwitting internalisation of the neoliberal view of humans as atomised individuals who navigate life purely by expressing consumer preferences.The idea that the identity of the speaker should count when assessing his or her argument is what the right used to denounce as “identity politics” (now subsumed under the general concept of “wokeness”), tho...

Politics

7 h. ago Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal review – an ambitious Indian panorama

In the first novel from the author of We Move, descendants of a proscribed intercaste marriage are connected across continents and centuriesGurnaik Johal’s first book, 2022’s We Move, demonstrated how rewarding it can be for a gifted young writer to ignore conventional wisdom. Writers who land in agents’ inboxes with collections of stories are invariably told to come back when they have a novel, and to write about what they know. Johal’s stories were set in a world he knows intimately – the immigrant communities of west London – but they moved between professions and generations with thrilling confidence.Saraswati is also populated by a large cast of diaspora Punjabis. But where Johal’s collection stood apart from the landscape it was published into, his first novel is a representative example of a ubiquitous 21st-century genre. That genre lacks a name – in 2012, Douglas Coupland proposed “translit”, which didn’t catch on then and certainly won’t now – but its features are all ...

Politics

7 h. ago Blix Not Bombs review – former UN weapons inspector revisits the Iraq war

Greta Stocklassová’s documentary films Hans Blix, aged 97, and asks about his role in the war, WMD, and why his world of diplomacy has now disappearedAt the age of 97, entirely lucid, still writing books and physically spry enough to be shown swimming in a Norwegian lake, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has given an extended interview to the Czech-born Swedish film-maker Greta Stocklassová about his life and times, about George W Bush Jr, Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that were not there. The result is insightful and a vivid time capsule for the grim and mendacious era of the “war on terror”, during which Blix was tasked with discovering the truth about Saddam’s supposed weapons. The film is also unexpectedly spiky, with Blix at one stage threatening to walk out, as Stocklassová presses him on his apparent fence-sitting, then as now, insisting on an absence of evidence for WMD but also reluctant to commit himself definitively to this being evidence of abse...

Events

17 h. ago Governors Ball 2025: Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier reign over New York festival

While there were less zeitgeisty moments in this edition, acts like Young Mikoand Benson Boone still brought energy to New York’s cheaper CoachellaFor the past year, I have dined out on the story of being in the Sunday crowd at last year’s Governor’s Ball. That sweltering afternoon in the sun, the largest crowd of New York’s premier music festival – more than could fit on the lawn of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens – gathered at an unusual hour for a mid-bill set. If you’re lucky, there are a few times in the life of a regular concertgoer when it is not just another great show, when you can feel the gravity of the zeitgeist shift. Chappell Roan, dressed as the Statue of Liberty and ferried to the stage in a giant apple, belting Red Wine Supernova to a sea of pink cowboy hats in one of the loudest sing-backs I have ever heard, is one of those times, a clear sonic boom of a cultural rocket taking off.Roan’s star-making moment turned out to be a stake in the ground of a tentpole...

Politics

24 h. ago Nectar mattress review 2025: A comfy and versatile option for every type of sleeper

The brand’s eco-credentials and warranty impress, but can its mattresses rival the bed-in-a-box leaders?

Politics

24 h. ago Yoshitomo Nara review: cutesy terrors swear, smoke, play guitar and burn down houses

Hayward Gallery, LondonThe Japanese artist’s instantly recognisable delinquent infants fill a huge show that also includes more sombre – and still angry – work made since the Fukushima disasterThere’s a video online of 100 kids playing football against three adult pros. The kids get absolutely annihilated. But they’d do a whole lot better if they were more like the menacing, knife-wielding little terrors who populate Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s world. Try dribbling past a toddler when he’s just jabbed a shiv in your calf, Lionel Messi.For 40 years now Nara has been dealing in cutesy kitsch with a vicious edge. His paintings and drawings of adorably bug-eyed little nippers are singularly Nara: love it or hate it, he’s carved out his own instantly recognisable aesthetic path. Continue reading...

Events

24 h. ago Saul review – probing, dark and engrossing staging of Handel’s oratorio

Glyndebourne, SussexBarrie Kosky’s remarkable 2015 production returns to the summer festival with Christopher Purves and Iestyn Davies superb in the lead rolesThe Glyndebourne season continues with a revival by Donna Stirrup of Barrie Kosky’s 2015 staging of Handel’s Saul, widely regarded as one of the festival’s finest achievements and the production that cemented Kosky’s reputation in the UK as a director of remarkable originality. This is the first time I’ve seen it, having missed both its opening run and the 2018 revival, and it strikes me as an example of Kosky’s work at its finest: probing, insightful, sometimes witty, sometimes dark, always utterly engrossing.Premiered in 1739, Saul has often been compared to King Lear. There is much of Shakespeare in this portrait by Handel and his librettist, Charles Jennens, of the Old Testament king whose mind slowly disintegrates under the challenges presented to him politically and privately by David after the death of Goliath. Continue...

Politics

25 h. ago Mythica: Stormbound review – new chunk of swords and sorcery tale ripe for avid franchise audience

The sixth instalment in this low-budget series has a meagre plot and shonky visual effects but the director and cast clearly care about the franchise’s audienceThis low-budget but reasonably competent swords and sorcery yarn is the sixth instalment in a series of Mythica films that goes back to 2014. It seems they were first bankrolled partly by crowdfunding, and then presumably kept going by the production’s low overheads and straight-to-retail distribution to an audience that clearly grooves to quasi-Tolkienian, Dungeons and Dragons-style quests featuring a motley band (there is usually an elf or dwarf). If you like your necromancy tales spiked with huge chunks of nattering as the characters endeavour to bulk out the running time with lots of banter and exposition, this may be just the ticket. Don’t worry too much about not having seen the other five films because this is reasonably watchable, especially as so much time is devoted to filling newbies in on the backstory via dialogu...

Events

26 h. ago Pitbull review – like a children’s party, but with loads of booze

Co-Op Live, ManchesterWith a hedonistic seize-the-day message, the pop-rapper resembles a cult leader or motivational speaker – and his followers are willing to overlook the faults in his live showPitbull is trying to give over 20,000 people a language lesson. “I want to teach you a little bit of Spanish,” he says to the crowd, about 90% of whom are dressed in Mr Worldwide cosplay of bald caps, aviators and squiggly hand-drawn facial hair. The phrase he’s teaching? “Yo no quiero agua, yo quiero bebida”, which in English translates to “I don’t want water, I want a drink”. As people used to say: yolo.This is the vibe of Pitbull’s Party After Dark tour, which returns to the UK for its second run this year. It’s a relentless ride through the era of hedonistic and carefree EDM pop that sprouted up after the 2008 financial crisis, and given renewed economic uncertainty and horrific global events, it’s unsurprising that people are still seeking escapism. Why shouldn’t that be delivered by ...

Society

27 h. ago The Prosecutor review – Donnie Yen leads mashup of legal drama and action flick

Suited and booted, Yen turns to role as public prosector cum ass-kicking vigilante as a late-stage career recalibrationDeveloped by China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate and directed by butt-kicking luminary Donnie Yen, The Prosecutor is a bizarre mashup of courtroom procedural and action flick; it is just as keen on lionising due process and the “shining light” of Chinese justice as it is on reducing civic infrastructure to smithereens in several standout bouts. But Yen, who looks undeniably good in a suit, is more convincing on his habitual fisticuff grounds than the jurisprudential ones.Yen plays Fok, a one-time hotshot cop who – leaving the force after some over-zealous policing – decides to man the “final gate” of justice and become a public prosecutor. Like a low-carb Perry Mason with years of Brazilian jiu-jitsu behind him, trouble keeps knocking on his door. Suspecting that a young drug smuggler (Mason Yung) whose case he is assigned has pled guilty to get his higher-ups of...

Events

27 h. ago When is Rachel Reeves’ spending review and what might the chancellor announce?

The Independent looks at what the spending review is, why the government has launched one and what is expected to be in it

Politics

28 h. ago With help from Haim, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX rule over Primavera Sound Barcelona 2025

While Sabrina Carpenter is unfortunately let down by sound issues, Charli and Chappell embrace Primavera’s reputation as a hedonistic party to which everyone is invited

Politics

29 h. ago Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen review – anything can happen on this remote Scottish island

Life is turned upside-down by a new arrival, in this weird and charming tale of nature and family – with a guest appearance from the ghost of Robert Louis StevensonOften thought of as the northernmost point of the British Isles, the Scottish island Muckle Flugga lies on the outer reaches of the Shetland archipelago. Norse legend has it that this craggy and almost uninhabitable place was created by two warring giants, obsessed with the same mermaid. While throwing boulders at each other, one of the rivalrous giants’ missiles accidentally plopped into the sea: and so the island was born.A version of this mythic tussle is central to Michael Pedersen’s debut novel. When the narrative opens, delivered in a lively present tense sprinkled with Scots, The Father and his 19-year-old son Ouse are the only residents on the island. The Father mans Muckle’s lighthouse, and is as volatile as the waves he illuminates. A gossip from a neighbouring island describes him as irascible, with “a&nbs...

Politics

29 h. ago The Way We Talk review – sensitive drama explores deafness via three friends’ infectious warmth

Each character uses a different method of communication in Adam Wong’s drama, which benefits from the chemistry of its lead performersAn incisive film-maker with a keen eye for contemporary youth culture, Hong Kong director Adam Wong has returned with another sensitive ensemble drama. The film follows three twentysomething friends as they navigate various degrees of deafness. Alan, played by first-time deaf actor Marco Ng, is a cochlear implant (CI) user. He is also an ambassador for the surgery, which can help restore sound perception for those with hearing loss. Wolf (Neo Yau), his childhood friend, is a staunch user and supporter of sign language, which at one point was prohibited in local deaf schools; such institutions prioritised speech training, then believed to work better for hearing-impaired students. Sophie (Chung Suet Ying) is at a crossroads: she is a CI user who cannot sign, but yearns to learn.It would, of course, be simplistic to portray these different forms of comm...

Events