Few things are more feared than a dementia diagnosis. Now people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes and demanding proper medical support

When Maxine Linnell, 78, a retired psychotherapist living in Leicestershire, learned that she had dementia four years ago, the diagnosis proved less challenging than some people’s reactions. “What was striking was how many people’s attitudes changed almost immediately … they stop seeing you as a person and see only dementia, some professionals included. Like this is the end and everything after will be devastating.”

The assumption that you go overnight from diagnosis to late-stage dementia isn’t confined to family and friends. Julie Hayden, a nurse and social worker from Yorkshire, was diagnosed nine years ago at the age of 54, long after sensing that something was wrong but being constantly told that it was depression or menopause; her doctors still associated dementia with old age and didn’t consider that she might have had young onset. “At the point of diagnosis,” she recalls, “most of us are told: ‘Well, it’s dementia, nothing we can do about that. Best go away and get your end of life affairs in order.’”

One plan would see young workers offered early access to a slice of future pensions. It’s not perfect, but we need bold ideas

While we wait with nail-biting anxiety for the voters of Makerfield to decide the fate of the country, the prospect of renewal at the top provides a fertile time for breeding ideas and confronting great problems. Alan Milburn’s searing analysis of the first generation ever to do worse financially than their parents did at their age opens the door to people with solutions to this crisis. Now is the time to bring them out.

Among the thinktanks, voluntary sector and business organisations coming forward with ideas, this week the Social Market Foundation (SMF) is offering an inventive plan to help ease the growing inequality between those young people gifted some wealth and the majority who have none. We are now in the time of the “great wealth transfer”, with an estimated £5.5tn to be passed down by the baby boomer generation in the UK over the next three decades. My lucky generation had everything for free. Ordinary salaries bought homes easily and property values rocketed to make homeowners wealthy beyond all expectations, even as the UK has gotten relatively poorer compared to other European and North American countries.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Yes, it’s a documentary on a sobering topic. But when you’ve got an endless stream of blockbuster names spouting irresistible gossip – plus Nigel Farage being a total panto dame – you can’t help but have a ball

Let’s get one thing straight immediately: no documentary about Brexit should be this much of a hoot. The dread many felt when the referendum result came in – a fear that reactionary populism was on the rise and Britain was entering an era of managed decline – has only bloomed like mould in the intervening decade. Brexit was the source of much inadvertent comedy, of course, but to see it treated so irreverently en masse does leave a bit of a bad taste. Laughing at a YouTube compilation of politicians accidentally saying breakfast instead of Brexit? Fine. Chortling along with Nigel Farage as he reminisces about tensions between Dominic Cummings and Arron Banks? Tittering as Boris Johnson blathers about losing a tennis match to David Cameron during which the prime minister tried to secure his support for remain? No thanks.

Still, there is something extremely difficult to resist about Brexit: A Very British Civil War, a talking head-heavy chronicle of the period between the 2015 general election and the referendum itself. Rather than get bogged down in po-faced sincerity or hand-wringing about integrity (like the remain campaign!), it deals almost exclusively in attention-grabbing bombast (like the leave campaigns!). From the off we’re blasted with Brexit-flavoured juice. Vote Leave bosses “didn’t really want to win”, says Farage. Johnson’s position had “nothing to do with the EU,” says George Osborne. “It was Game of Thrones.” Johnson denies this, stifling a smile. “Everybody says I did this in order to be PM. I would have become prime minister anyway.”

Recent exchange of missiles between Iran and Israel highlights diverging views between US president and Israeli PM

The latest eruption of hostilities between Iran and Israel appears to have been contained for now after Donald Trump insisted he called “all the shots” in the Middle East, but in a dangerously fragile region Benjamin Netanyahu has again shown he is ready to take shots of his own.

The exchange of missiles on Sunday and Monday was ample demonstration of the inherent instability of the current limbo between war and peace, but it also shone a bright light on the complex and conflicted relationship between the US president and the Israeli prime minister, frenemies who could determine the fate of the current ceasefire.

PM is seeking a few quick wins to guarantee he is remembered for at least a short while after he resigns

Whatever you do, don’t mention the L-word. The official line from Downing Street is that Keir Starmer will remain prime minister for the next 10 years. Possibly longer. In the course of which he will be beatified by the pope, pick up the Nobel peace prizes that Donald “I wuz robbed” Trump should have won, will find a cure for cancer and lead the country into a new age of prosperity. The greatest UK leader of any age. Someone who makes Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher look second rate. A man who can even get Tony Blair to stop talking about himself.

Only that’s not quite the way it looks to the rest of us. What we see is a man who senses his time is running out. He’d hate you to notice, but Keir is after a few quick wins to cement his legacy. To guarantee he is remembered for at least a short while after he resigns.

What does it actually take to win a World Cup? Talent? Tactics? A functioning democracy? Not necessarily.

As the 2026 World Cup begins, the largest ever, we analysed all 22 past tournaments to find the common threads that link every single champion.

From the tactical innovations that shocked the world to the political forces that fuelled past victories, history shows there are eight distinct ways to lift the famous trophy.

• Bracketology: predict a path to World Cup victory

• World Cup 2026: guide to all 1,248 players

Exclusive: Ukrainian leader says he has ‘a very good relationship’ with British monarch, who has supported his country

• Zelenskyy hopes Reform UK councils will allow Ukraine flags to be flown again

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that he plans to invite King Charles on a state visit to Ukraine as early as this year, which would make him the most senior royal to travel to Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian president said he had a close relationship with the king, whom he has met on numerous occasions, including when he gave a public show of support after Zelenskyy’s explosive visit to the White House last year.

Netanyahu acknowledges pause in fighting in TV speech but vows forceful response to future attacks

Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, acknowledged the halt in fighting with Iran in a televised speech, but vowed to respond “with force” to future attacks.

Measures being considered to crack down on practice that has grown as a result of Britain’s housing crisis

London councils could be banned from “dumping” homeless families hundreds of miles across England under measures being considered by ministers, the Guardian has learned.

MPs said vulnerable people, including women fleeing abuse, were being “coerced” into choosing between rough sleeping or moving to cheap, sparsely furnished properties in some of the poorest parts of the country.

In speech on Tuesday, Tory leader will claim obligation to consider equality being used to advance ‘divisive agendas’

Kemi Badenoch will vow to scrap the duty on public bodies to consider how they can promote equality as she seeks to head off the challenge from Reform UK by presenting her party as responsible but also in tune with populist anger.

Badenoch, who was Conservative minister for equalities between 2020 and 2022, will commit to scrapping the public sector equality duty (PSED), a legal requirement obliging those bodies to think how they can improve society and promote equality in their day-to-day business.