Party leader says six election pledges revealed at launch event will take two terms of government to materialise

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There will be no “quick fix” to the deep problems Labour will inherit if it wins the next election, Keir Starmer has said while unveiling his party’s six election pledges amid a fanfare of endorsements from senior public figures.

The Labour leader said “most reasonable, tolerant people” in the country wanted what his party wanted for Britain, before he received an extraordinary endorsement from the Boots chief executive, Sebastian James, an Old Etonian who was a member of the private all-male Bullingdon Club alongside David Cameron.

Some allege harassment, one claims she was sexually assaulted. His lawyers deny the allegations

• Revealed: Magician David Copperfield accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women
• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out

It was September 1991 in New York and the grand finale of Look of the Year, a prestigious modeling contest that had helped launch the careers of supermodels Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen.

The celebrity magician David Copperfield, one of the judges, watched from the front row as 58 contestants paraded across the runway in their branded hot pink and sorbet yellow swimsuits. Nearly all the contestants were teenagers; some were as young as 14.

Peter Pellegrini says PM ‘escaped death by a hair’ and urges people to temper their emotions after ‘we crossed a red line’

The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, is in a stable condition but “not out of the woods yet”, officials have said, as the country’s president-elect pleaded for unity after a shooting that laid bare the deep political divisions of recent months.

The shooting, the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader in more than 20 years, sent shockwaves across the continent, with leaders linking the violence to an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate across its countries in the run-up to European parliament elections in June.

Financial regulator brings charges against nine people including Lauren Goodger in crackdown on ‘finfluencers’

The UK’s financial watchdog has charged seven reality TV stars, including former Love Island contestants and cast members from The Only Way is Essex (Towie), with promoting an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme on Instagram.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has brought charges against nine people in a crackdown on “finfluencers” who have a combined follower count of 4.5 million on the social media platform.

Entire hush-money trial likely to succeed or fail on whether jurors believe Michael Cohen’s testimony

• Michael Cohen takes stand for cross-examination in Trump trial

Judge Juan Merchan is on the bench and the court is in session.

Donald Trump has arrived in the courtroom for day 18 of his criminal trial.

Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican representative

Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican congresswoman

Eric Trump

Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide

Lesley Sewell said departed CEO had called for help ‘plugging gaps in her memory’ before select committee appearance

A former Post Office executive has told the inquiry into the Horizon scandal that she blocked Paula Vennells’s phone number after the company’s ex-CEO contacted her asking for help to “plug memory gaps” and to “avoid an independent inquiry”.

Lesley Sewell, who was chief information officer at the Post Office until she left in 2015, said that she had subsequently been contacted by her former boss four times in 2020 and 2021.

Hazel Behan, who says main suspect in Madeleine McCann case raped her in Portugal in 2004, tells court she will never forget his eyes

A woman who alleges she was raped at knifepoint by the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has told a court she would never forget the eyes of her attacker, which “bored into my skull”.

Giving evidence in the trial of Christian Brückner, who stands accused of five sexual assaults in Portugal of women aged between 10 and 80 between 2000 and 2017, Hazel Behan, 40, who was raped in June 2004, told the court: “I believe that this man was my attacker.”

Adrian Coghill ordered to leave in response to UK expelling Kremlin’s attache to London for alleged spying

Russia is expelling Britain’s defence attache to Moscow in the latest diplomatic tit for tat, after the UK accused it of sponsoring espionage and hacking attacks against top British officials in a years-long campaign of “malign activity”.

The Russian foreign ministry said it had declared the British defence attache, Adrian Coghill, as “persona non grata. He must leave the territory of the Russian Federation within a week.”

Former civil servant who investigated Partygate says power-sharing executive was prone to ‘silo working’ and leaks

Northern Ireland’s government lacked cohesion and failed to be proactive during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Sue Gray, the former senior civil servant who investigated the Downing Street Partygate scandal.

Gray, who is now Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, said the power-sharing executive at Stormont was prone to “silo working” and leaks that would have been a “terrible thing” if replicated at Westminster.

Force says no confirmed incidents in London as rumours spread on social media after nails found at Oxfordshire playground

The Metropolitan police have been forced to respond to rumours circulating online that nails have been stuck to children’s playground equipment, saying there have been no confirmed incidents in London.

In recent days parents’ WhatsApp groups have been inundated with reports that vandals have glued nails to children’s slides and other playground equipment.