Whoever succeeds Keir Starmer will still have an almost impossible task: convincing voters that politicians will serve the people, not themselves

So, there goes Morgan McSweeney, leaving Keir Starmer even more exposed, and the British side of the vast Jeffrey Epstein scandal still unfolding. The resignation note penned by the prime minister’s former chief of staff is as clear as it had to be, and acknowledges that McSweeney advised Starmer to make the most fateful choice of his time as Labour leader. “The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong,” it says. “He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.” The vetting process for such decisions, it goes on, “must now be fundamentally overhauled”. But the key question festers on, and it has always been political rather than procedural: between late 2024 and early 2025, despite knowing that Mandelson had maintained his friendship with Epstein after the latter’s conviction for what US law calls soliciting prostitution from a minor, why did McSweeney, Starmer and their inner circle still conclude that he was the right man to be the UK’s ambassador in Washington DC?

There is a very important contextual element of the story, which began to surface at the end of last week, about the absence of alarm – in both politics and the media – at the appointment at the time it was made, suggestive of an amazing collective amnesia about details of the Mandelson/Epstein relationship that had been made public. But even so, that doesn’t detract from the awfulness of what the prime minister and his people did, which sits at the heart of the story like an incurable headache. They surely know it, and so does everyone else: presented with a due diligence report based on a vivid account of what Mandelson had been up to (much of which was well known anyway), they apparently took his denials at face value. Despite warnings to the contrary – from, we now hear, the-then foreign secretary David Lammy and Starmer’s then-deputy Angela Rayner – they gave Mandelson exactly what he wanted.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

With the Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan transformed our understanding of food and drugs. Can he do the same for our sense of self?

Several years ago, Michael Pollan had a disturbing encounter. The relentlessly curious journalist and author was at a conference on plant behaviour in Vancouver. There, he’d learned that when plants are damaged, they produce an anaesthetising chemical, ethylene. Was this a form of self-soothing, like the release of endorphins after an injury in humans? He asked František Baluška, a cell biologist, if it meant that plants might feel pain. Baluška paused, before answering: “Yes, they should feel pain. If you don’t feel pain, you ignore danger and you don’t survive.”

I imagine that Pollan gulped at that point. I certainly did when I read his account of the meeting in his latest book, A World Appears. Where does it leave our efforts at ethical consumption, if literally everybody hurts – including vegetables?

Labour faces a battle to hold on to its 13,000 majority, with the Greens the bookies’ favourite and Reform hoping to gain from split vote on left

As Nigel Farage cut the ribbon on Reform UK’s byelection headquarters in Greater Manchester this week, Labour’s candidate, Angeliki Stogia, sat tearfully in a cafe nearby.

Politicians do not often show their emotion but for Stogia, who arrived in Britain as a student from Greece in 1995, this is personal. “I am angry,” she said of Farage’s party. “I am very, very angry. How dare they come here and spread this division?”

After a sexually frustrating marriage led to divorce, I chased increasingly extreme BDSM encounters. But I never felt truly satisfied. Had I been looking for the wrong thing all along?

To everyone else, it probably looked like a regular summer’s evening. Couples and families enjoying the beer garden, people playing cricket on the green – and I was being handcuffed in the passenger seat of a 4x4 by a man I barely knew.

My name is Leesa, and I’m a recovered sex addict.

Fewer under-25s leaving home, and older renters being priced out of ownership or solo renting, is fuelling a change in house-share demographics

When Nicola Whyte first moved into a four-bedroom house share in Balham 16 years ago, she never imagined she would still be living there at 45. But with rents soaring, and ongoing challenges in saving up for a house deposit, she has ended up as a housemate far longer than she anticipated.

“I didn’t think I was going to be here 16 years later, but I’m not unhappy,” she said. “My friends sometimes think I’m a bit weird, they ask me how I can still do it. But I really enjoy it. The rent is really reasonable, it’s close to work and I think it gives you a deeper understanding of people.”

Black Panther made him a megastar, but in private the actor and his wife Simone Ledward Boseman were dealing with his terminal cancer diagnosis. In a rare interview, she talks about the shock of losing him, and how a revival of one of his plays has helped her heal

Simone Ledward Boseman is reflecting on the five years that have passed since the death of her husband, actor and writer Chadwick Boseman. “The edges of grief get less sharp over time,” she says. “Five years definitely feels like a marker. I’ve had to gradually figure out how I talk about Chad. What do I want to share, and what do I feel comfortable sharing? Can I find something that I might want to share in the midst of something I don’t want to share?” We meet on a video call across time zones – it’s 9am in California, where she lives. “Except for my mom, I’m not talking to anybody before 10am,” she laughs. She’s made an exception to give a rare interview ahead of the UK premiere of her late husband’s play Deep Azure, which is currently in previews in London at Shakespeare’s Globe.

When Boseman’s death was announced at the end of August 2020, the shock reverberated across the globe. He was devastatingly young – only 43 – and the world was just getting to know him. The release of the movie Black Panther two years earlier, in which he played the eponymous character also known as T’Challa, had skyrocketed his fame. Before then, he had been a successful Hollywood actor. Now? He was a global megastar – the first Black superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The news was doubly shocking because the family had not previously revealed that he had been suffering with colorectal cancer.

McSweeney, who masterminded landslide 2024 election win, resigns as PM’s chief of staff after Mandelson revelations

• Morgan McSweeney resigns as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff

Speaking to Sky News this morning, Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart said:

This administration under Keir Starmer has failed. It has U-turned, I think, what, 14 or 15 times now.

It has had two resets in the past five months, and it is now caught up in the worst political scandal of my lifetime.

He was lied to by someone who was known to be a serial liar. There’s no excuse for the fact that he made the wrong judgment.

He was in possession of enough facts to have not made that appointment and he did anyway and I am afraid, Laura, he now has to take responsibility for that …

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Alpine skiiing: Breezy Johnson goes top, for USA. Had a twist in the air off one of the early jumps, had to battle to land it, but then comes through with a sizzling run on the rest of the course, improving on her training run time by a second and a half.

Alpine skiing: It’s a gorgeous day out there, blue sky. We’ve had five skiers so far, Ariane Raedler of Austria is leading on 1:37:20, the Italian Brignone and three Swiss skiers following her. Janine Schmitt and Jasmine Flury both almost stacked, but recovered it, terrifying at that speed. Malorie Blanc went first and had a clean run, 1:38:77.

Blaze probably caused by candles at makeshift tribute near Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, say police

A memorial for the victims of a deadly fire at a new year party in Switzerland caught fire early on Sunday, probably sparked by candles left burning inside, police have said.

The memorial was a makeshift tribute to the 41 people killed and the 115 injured in the fire that erupted in the early hours of 1 January at Le Constellation bar in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana, which was packed with mainly teenagers and young adults.

Exit polls point to public endorsement of new prime minister on day of blizzards and freezing conditions

Japan’s conservative governing party is on course to dramatically strengthen its grip on power after exit polls predicted a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections, in what will be seen as an early public endorsement of the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

The Liberal Democratic party (LDP) was projected to win between 274 and 328 seats out of a total of 465, according to an exit poll by the public broadcaster NHK, well above the 233 it needed to regain the majority it lost in 2024. NHK projected a supermajority for the LDP and its junior coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, which will ease Takaichi’s legislative agenda.