Gen Xers have been leading countries for a while now. They need to start instituting policies to save the world

It’s time to start blaming Generation X for things.

In the generational wars, people are sorted into two separate but equally important groups: millennials (AKA Gen Y) and baby boomers (AKA boomers).

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Lady Hayter loses job after comparing those around Labour leader to film about Hitler’s last days

Labour’s shadow Brexit ­minister, Dianne Hayter, has been sacked after she likened the “bunker mentality” around Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership to the “last days of Hitler”.

Lady Hayter, Labour’s deputy leader in the Lords, was stripped of her shadow cabinet position after she attacked Corbyn’s inner circle and its critical response to a BBC Panorama programme investigating antisemitism complaints within the party. “To compare the Labour leader and Labour party staff working to elect a Labour government to the Nazi regime is truly contemptible, and grossly insensitive to Jewish staff in particular,” a Labour party spokesman said. He added that Hayter had been sacked “with immediate effect” for her “deeply offensive remarks about Jeremy Corbyn and his office”.

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Outgoing PM takes aim at ‘rancour and bitterness’ of Brexit absolutists

In a defensive final speech of her premiership, Theresa May has taken a coded swipe at the “absolutism” of politicians like Boris Johnson as the Commons prepared for another tense showdown over efforts to halt a no-deal Brexit.

May took aim at the folly of those in her party who pursued ideological purity at any price, though repeatedly declined the opportunity for self-reflection when asked if she too had been willing to compromise only after being defeated.

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The prime minister had the opportunity to tell her party some hard truths about the Brexit choices it is making, and she missed it

British culture reserves affection for failure if it is heroic, or even dogged, and in that spirit it is possible that history will not be as unkind to Theresa May as politics has been. The prime minister’s tenure in Downing Street ends next week with few policy accomplishments to her name and the single most important task – Brexit – messily incomplete.

There is no evidence that the nation thinks warmly of her, although there is respect for her tenacity, stamina and probity. It is easy to find critics of her judgment, but no one thinks she has been venal. Critics who think her principles were the wrong ones acknowledge at least the aspiration to be principled. The contrast with her successor could hardly be starker.

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Would-be Tory leader was given ?205,000 of political donations in just two weeks

Boris Johnson has received more than ?500,000 in political donations since May, the latest register of MPs’ interests shows, with the Tory leadership frontrunner getting ?205,000 in a period of just two weeks.

By contrast, his Tory rival to become prime minister, Jeremy Hunt, did not declare any new donations for the period. He has pulled in just over ?185,000 in donations overall since May.

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“I’m not sure anyone at the moment has a steady heart … Seven weeks of cricket, 48 games, one ball. Here’s Boult, they’re going to push, are we in for a super over? They’ve got to go quick, they’ve got to go quick. OUT! I’m sure he’s OUT! We’re going for a super over!”

The ICC montage of the last moments of the Cricket World Cup final has almost four million views – which isn’t that impressive considering three million of them are mine. Ian Smith’s commentary, in that gravelly Kiwi drawl, is spine tingling to the last second.

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Fabian Picardo to hold discussions with PM about potential release of the Grace 1

Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, has flown to London to hold talks with Theresa May about the possible release of an Iranian-owned tanker that was seized a fortnight ago by the Royal Marines.

The detention of the Grace 1 and its cargo of 2.1m barrels of oil, which was believed to have been headed to Syria in breach of EU sanctions, has turned into a focal point of severe friction between Tehran and London as Iran threatens to take further steps way from the nuclear deal it signed in 2015 with the US, China, Russia and 3 EU states.

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Local authorities fear sharing data will lead to deportation of non-UK homeless people

Local councils in England are refusing to share sensitive personal data of rough sleepers with the Home Office over fears it could result in their deportation, the Guardian has learned.

A secret programme using homelessness charities to pass rough sleepers’ personal information directly to the Home Office without their consent was revealed by the Observer this month. Data shared through the scheme, which is currently in its trial phase, could lead to the deportation of non-UK rough sleepers in some cases.

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No 10’s document suggests it may take up to 18 months to implement legislation

Pressure groups have warned against lengthy delays to extending abortion rights to Northern Ireland following a landmark legal amendment last week, after a government document said the process could take as long as 18 months to implement.

Downing Street has committed to introducing the abortion plan after an amendment to a separate Northern Ireland bill by the Labour MP Stella Creasy was passed overwhelmingly by the Commons.

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The No 10 contender honed his PG Wodehouse persona through years of TV appearances – and voters lapped it up

Boris Johnson’s unusual connection with the UK public first became obvious to the Labour Brexiter Gisela Stuart in May 2016 when they arrived in Cornwall on a major Vote Leave campaign event.

Surrounded by a media scrum, the backbench MPs descended together from the infamous red Vote Leave bus – adorned with a pledge to spend ?350m a week on a post-Brexit NHS – and were handed top-heavy soft vanilla scoops on thin wafer cones.

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Chris Grayling says company must improve after months of delays and cancellations

The government could terminate the Northern rail franchise if performance does not improve, the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, said, after more than a year of misery for passengers.

Northern has faced intense scrutiny over the past year as travellers have been plagued by delays and cancellations.

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Chancellor rubbishes claim by Boris Johnson ally that no-deal exit could boost economy by ?80bn

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Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has said it is “terrifying” that one of Boris Johnson’s close allies, Jacob Rees-Mogg, believes a no-deal Brexit will boost the economy.

The chancellor, who is expected to exit the government next week, expressed his horror after Rees-Mogg used a Daily Telegraph opinion piece to dismiss the “pure silliness” of Treasury forecasts suggesting a ?90bn hit to the economy.

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I won’t walk away from the fight to root out antisemitism in the party. But the leadership remains in denial

Today marks one year since my face-to-face encounter with Jeremy Corbyn in the lobby of parliament in which I called him a racist and an antisemite.

Afterwards I went out for the evening and switched off my phone. It was late that night when I switched it back on again and realised our confrontation had hit the headlines.

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Shadow chancellor will pledge to eradicate poverty among those struggling on low wages

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, is to make a promise that Labour will eliminate the “modern-day scourge” of in-work poverty by the end of the party’s first full term back in office.

In a speech on Wednesday, the shadow chancellor will pledge to eradicate poverty among those who are working but struggle to support themselves and their families on low wages.

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Ahead of the London mayoral election of May 2012, I was invited to chair a hustings at St James’s Church in Piccadilly. The main attractions were Boris Johnson, seeking his second term, and his doughty detractor Ken Livingstone, alongside their good-natured warm-up acts of Jenny Jones for the Green party and Brian Paddick for the Lib Dems.

Before we took the stage, there was a drinks reception in the rectory. Boris Johnson was holding court, but greeted me to listen to my proposed rules of engagement and graciously remembered that we shared a comment page at the Daily Telegraph at the time. What struck me was that he was softly spoken, genial and engaging.

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Councils should be given powers to enter homes to check on a child’s schooling, LGA says

The government has been accused by councils of watering down plans to improve oversight of the growing number of school-aged children who are educated at home in England, leaving some of them at risk of a second-rate education or worse.

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils in England and Wales, says government proposals to introduce a compulsory register for home-schooled children are welcome but do not go far enough to protect children and ensure they get a high-quality education.

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Predicting currency flow is a mug’s game but there’s little to stop sterling’s slide anytime soon

There are no sure-fire bets in the currency markets but, in retrospect, selling sterling has been a ridiculously easy trade for two months. The direction for sterling has been downwards from the moment Theresa May lost her third attempt to force through the EU withdrawal bill in early May. The Tory leadership contest, in which both contenders have issued hard Brexit statements, has merely continued the losing run. We have now arrived at a two-year low for the pound against the dollar.

Where next? Well, don’t expect the Bank of England to arrest the falls by raising interest rates. There is no recent example of the Bank raising rates when the economy is flat, which is the picture suggested by the data for the April-June quarter.

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Better ways must be found to protect drug users. That can be the only humane response to the terrible news that drug deaths in Scotland have risen by 27% over the past 12 months. At 1,187, the number of fatalities is higher per capita than any other EU country, on a par with the US and three times the rate of England and Wales. Both the Scottish and UK governments should be ashamed. This is an awful toll of human suffering, with the effects of each death rippling out to families and communities.

While the figures are shocking, the story that they tell is not really new. The vast majority (86%) of those killed by drugs were heroin users, many of them members of the demographic known as the “Trainspotting generation”, which refers to people (mostly men) who began using the drug in the 1980s and 1990s. The contrast with England and Wales, where deaths from synthetic opioid fentanyl and cocaine have risen while other drug deaths have fallen, is striking. But a sharp increase in the supply and use of “street” benzodiazepines such as etizolam has been seen across the UK. These were implicated in 57% of Scottish deaths, often in combination with heroin or methadone, with poly-drug use among younger people, and the popularity of painkillers and tranquillisers developed for use as prescription medicines, a particular concern.

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As more leading Tories soften on no deal for the sake of their careers, principled moderates have only one option left

If hardline Brexiteers were free to shop around for beatable enemies they probably wouldn’t change much about the current state of British politics. Their preferred candidate is well ahead in the final straight of a Tory leadership contest, and his rival doesn’t dare to contradict him on the issue that matters most.

Related: Amber Rudd embraces no-deal Brexit as ministers pitch to Johnson

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No 10 frontrunner defied senior officials over doomed projects including Routemaster and garden bridge

Boris Johnson has been accused of repeatedly ignoring expert advice on the viability of his so-called vanity projects as London mayor, leaving taxpayers with a bill of nearly ?1bn and rising.

Some of those who worked closely with Johnson as mayor, including fellow Conservatives, told the Guardian that he defied senior officials over a string of profligate projects and resisted being held to account for their ballooning costs.

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Neither of the potential prime ministers has a grasp of detail or a clear vision

Several weeks of Conservative leadership hustings and associated TV shows are now, barring a final event on Wednesday, finally over. So what have we learned about Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt during this electoral marathon?

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Scotland Yard say its counter-terrorism command is leading the investigation

Police have opened an investigation into the alleged leaking of diplomatic cables involving the outgoing UK ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, and asked that those responsible hand themselves in.

Scotland Yard said its counter-terrorism command, which takes national responsibility for investigating allegations of criminal breaches of the Official Secrets Act, was leading the investigation.

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