Real security comes from having a secure base at home — Keir Starmer’s reckless and renegade decision to get Britain deeper into the proxy war against Russia is as dangerous as it is wasteful, writes SALLY SPIERS

CHOLERA was the big and recurring disease of the 19th century. There was no full understanding of its cause and why it was spread until the 1880s.
Britain, along with the rest of Europe, saw several significant epidemics in 1831-2 and in 1848-9, in both cases also periods of revolutionary political changes.
The disease was held to be one of the lower classes, as indeed it mainly was, because of the insanitary housing conditions they had little choice but to live in.

KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet

KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations



