For all the talk of coups, this much is clear: without a strong vision, Labour will face a fresh crisis of legitimacy

Will he still be there to see in the next new year? Noise about Keir Starmer’s durability quietens with MPs being away from Westminster’s tearooms and murmuring corridors, but WhatsApps zing to and fro just as busily: should he stay or should he go?

Any party that has fallen so far, so fast would doubt its leader. At minus 54%, Starmer has been declared the “most unpopular PM ever”, a title also held at one time by each of his four predecessors. Given how little Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Starmer have in common, whoever comes next may join their “most despised” club in this time of anti-politician volatility.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The Guardian’s sex advice column is coming to an end after 20 years. Here are some of the most memorable questions and answers
• Pamela Stephenson Connolly on two decades of solving readers’ sex problems

My wonderful new wife is everything I have always looked for in a woman. The issue is that she is openly and proudly bisexual. When we first became involved, she even joked that she didn’t want me getting mad when it was time for her to visit her friend on girls’ trips. A threesome with a bisexual woman has always been my fantasy. She even gave me permission to go online and find a “unicorn” for us. But when I set up a meeting, she didn’t seem to want to follow through with it, so I stopped looking. Recently, on holiday, she made a sexual comment about a girl in a bikini, so I again brought up the idea of a threesome. But she said she might have grown out of that phase of her life and just wants to be with me. She also said that adding another person would ruin the marriage, and I worry that things might change between us if we get together with another girl. I am at a loss as to what to do. If she is truly bisexual, I am worried that if those desires are not met, she may pursue them without me. My only rule is that if she is with a girl, I am also present. Most guys would love my situation – am I making this harder than it is?

Brother Dong is one of a growing band of Chinese volunteers who are lending their support to Ukraine

Are you looking for a way to stay sane in an environment that has been torn apart by war? Then perhaps what you need is a bubble tea.

That is the philosophy guiding Brother Dong, a Chinese-German volunteer in Ukraine. The 52-year-old former officer in China’s People’s Armed Police drives once a month from his home in Frankfurt to collect a haul of tapioca pearls from a warehouse in Berlin. From there he drives across Poland to reach Ukraine.

As 007 makes his gaming return, you can climb a mountain in Cairn, play a scaredy-cat in Resident Evil, and play a criminal couple in GTA VI

Live your mountaineering fantasies and brave the elements in a wonderfully illustrated climbing game. You must carefully place climber Aava’s hands and feet to make your way up a forbidding mountain, camping on ledges and bandaging her fingers as you go. Like real climbing, it is challenging and somewhat brutal.
• PC, PlayStation 5; 29 January

When the people of Waddington teamed up to broadcast self-written soap operas, horoscopes and magic tricks, little did they know it would be the most successful channel in the world – despite the chaos behind the cameras

‘What a cock-up!” Those were the words that ended the first broadcast on the world’s tiniest TV station. Hours earlier, four young locals had been wrangled into being live presenters at their quiet village Sunday school. Despite dead air and awkward line delivery, it was the poor transmission quality that made the stars – Michelle Hornby (31), Jonathan Brown (27), James Warburton (25) and Deborah Cowking (21) – apologise and cut the inaugural broadcast. But Cowking, not realising they were still on air, slipped past the censors and summed up the evening’s vibe perfectly: chaotic, amateur and unrelentingly British.

This was The Television Village – a first-of-its-kind social experiment from 1990 that had the Lancashire village of Waddington “watch, make and become” television. For a short spell in the early 90s, the Ribble Valley was worth a fortune, as Granada Television shipped £3m worth of cutting-edge TV equipment to the rural hills of north-west England. Hidden cameras were set up in villagers’ living rooms to record viewing habits, day and night. Meanwhile, Channel 4 filmed the entire thing for a six-part documentary series. All of this was to monitor how people would react when the number of channels made the leap from four up to 30 – offering everything from sport, film and even porn, with villagers having access to terrestrial, cable and satellite channels, including from Europe and the US.

From writing lists to taking a walk, it can be possible to gain clarity and perspective, even when faced with the most daunting tasks

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“Perfection,” the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote, “is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” The Little Prince author was talking about elegance in design, but it’s not a bad principle to apply to having a productive day. Rather than thinking about how many things you can cram in, perhaps it’s better to ponder how few you really need to do, and focus on doing them really well.

Where do you start? With a list, obviously. To the chronically overstressed, taking the time to handwrite all the stuff you already know you need to do can feel like a waste of time, but it’s always worth the effort. “You can’t prioritise tasks if you feel overwhelmed,” says Graham Allcott, the author of How to Be a Productivity Ninja, “but you can be totally overloaded and still not feel overwhelmed. The key to this is getting all the various things you have to work on out of your head so you can start to make sense of them. Get a piece of paper, and write on it all the things you need to make progress on, all the stuff that feels unfinished, everything you care about that isn’t done. It will take you longer than you think, but the very act of getting it all out of your head will help you get clarity, perspective and a sense of control.”

Engineers still struggling to restore full rail service on Tuesday evening as car passengers face seven-hour delays

A power outage in the Channel tunnel has disrupted thousands of journeys ahead of the new year celebrations, with all passenger and vehicle trains suspended for several hours while engineers raced to repair the fault.

As Eurostar foot passenger departures for the continent were first delayed, then cancelled, the halls of St Pancras International station in London filled with stranded travellers awaiting updates. At Folkestone in Kent, tailbacks formed as drivers hoping to catch the shuttle faced seven-hour delays.

Failure of groups including MSF and ActionAid to hand over staff details means they will not be able to operate in Gaza, say Israeli officials

• During a fierce storm I could hear the panicked screams of children in tents outside. This is Christmas in Gaza

Israel has announced it will stop dozens of aid organisations working in Gaza within 36 hours for failing to meet stringent new requirements to hand over personal details of Palestinian and international staff deployed in the devastated territory.

The list of groups hit by the ban include some of the world’s best known humanitarian organisations such as ActionAid, International Rescue Committee and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Government sources say social media posts by British-Egyptian activist do not meet legal bar for such sanction

The Home Office will not strip the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah of his citizenship because his “abhorrent” past social media posts do not meet the legal bar for such a sanction, government sources have said.

Abd el-Fattah, who landed in London from Egypt on Boxing Day, has been at the centre of a political storm over social media posts he published more than a decade ago, including tweets in which he called for Zionists to be killed.

Young adults and teenagers prevalent in ‘skyrocketing’ admissions linked to class B drug, say doctors in northern England

Experts have warned that urology departments across the UK could be close to breaking point as ketamine-related hospital admissions have “skyrocketed” in the past few years.

Ketamine, a class B dissociative drug used for pain relief and sedation, is increasingly used recreationally in the UK. It is one of only three drugs, alongside magic mushrooms and hallucinogens, to have become used more regularly since 2015.