BBC News

How a new era of heatwaves could shake up the school calendar

2026-08-22T15:16:43+00:00

Over the past two weeks, the sound of children has returned to Scotland's school playgrounds. Their summer breaks began in late June or early July and ended in mid-August.

It's an academic year replicated in other European countries too.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, however, children will not return until early September. Their holidays are a similar length to Scotland's but England and Wales schools did not break up until late July, something that meant pupils were in school during the peak of the early summer heat.

Or at least they were meant to be in school. While it was 30C or more outside, inside many classrooms it felt far hotter. With no air conditioning and limited ventilation, the heat became stifling and more than 1,000 schools across the UK either closed or sent pupils home early before the hottest part of the afternoon. Conditions were particularly challenging for GCSE and A‑level students sitting exams during extreme heat.

Baroness Brown, chair of the UK's Climate Change Adaptation committee, has warned that "we know high temperatures can significantly impair concentration and performance" of children in schools.

Back in February 2026, Ofsted's chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver said the timing of the school holidays should be reconsidered: "It's pretty hot usually in May, June and July, just at the point you're asking children to sit down and take an exam… so I think there is a need to have a good old look at it [the school year]."

The recent hot weather has seen some parents join his call. Andrea Bigger, a parent in London, is "absolutely aware of the dangers" of extreme heat in classrooms. She says her daughter has previously suffered from heat exhaustion and was hospitalised after overheating at her primary school. She is "really concerned that the UK is not ready or prepared for this".

And this summer was not a one off. BBC analysis of temperature data shows a clear shift. In the 1960s, the first 30C day was occurring on average on 13 July. In the 2020s that figure has been 19 June.

This summer is likely to become the hottest on record, according to the Met Office. Multiple temperature records have been broken with five widespread heatwaves and four consecutive months where the temperature has exceeded 35C. This has never happened before.

June saw one of the UK's most intense heatwaves, with up to seven consecutive days where temperatures were well above the official heatwave thresholds of 25-28C - just as the exam period was in full swing. Temperature records were broken too: 38C was recorded in Lingwood, Norfolk on 26 June, the hottest June day ever measured in the UK.

The Met Office issued a red extreme heat warning at the end of June, while the UK Health Security Agency has issued multiple amber warnings over the last few months. The heat then continued into July, with heatwave conditions felt widely for most of the month.

According to a study conducted by the Met Office and University College London, students could lose an estimated 8.2 days of learning a year on average due to extreme heat, if average global average temperatures rise to more than 2C above pre-industiral levels - as many scientists believe will happen on current trajectories.

In the meantime, teachers are left to deal with the consequences.

Steve Chalke, founder of Oasis Academy, which runs more than 50 schools across England, says the heatwaves were a "real inhibitor" to teaching. One of the most difficult challenges came when the Met Office issued the red extreme heat warning at the end of June, suggesting potential "danger to life".

He says headteachers were forced into difficult decisions. "What do you do as a headteacher? How can they run a school safely if the national weather service is warning to travel only if essential and make every effort to stay cool. What if a student or member of staff collapses due to the heat and you're accountable for why you opened the school and didn't take your duty of care seriously?"

And with Met Office predictions of more extreme weather, higher summer temperatures, and more frequent, prolonged heatwaves, these types of questions are likely to only become more prevalent.

Rebecca Martin is concerned about her son taking GCSE exams in a few years' time in potentially increasingly hot weather. She thinks there needs to be "some serious considerations to the school year to reflect the changing climate or better investment in schools to give them air conditioning".

And there is growing evidence to support her worries. The recent Well-Adapted UK report from the Climate Change Committee suggested that taking an exam on a 32C day leads to around a 10% lower likelihood of passing, compared to sitting the same exam at 22C.

Baroness Brown told the BBC that "as heatwaves become more frequent and intense, it is unacceptable that children are expected to sit high-stakes exams in halls that were not designed for these conditions".

Many of us are familiar with a "snow day" in the winter, when snow can make it very difficult for staff and students to get into school. While there is no legal minimum temperature, the National Education Union says classrooms should be kept above 18C. Heat days are a newer concept - and there are no specified maximum temperatures for a classroom.

A 2024 study published in the journal Climate Risk Management suggested that any temperature above 24C can compromise learning. It also found a decline in student performance ranging from 2% to 12% for each degree increase in classroom temperature.

Setting a temperature benchmark of 26C as the upper "comfortable limit" in a classroom, the authors of the study went on to suggest that the average school currently reaches this limit 59 days of the year in England. That would increase to 71 days with 2C of warming.

In "at-risk" schools where there is no suitable ventilation or where newer buildings have lower ceilings, there would be 75 days where the "comfortable 26C classroom temperature would be breached".

In hotter European countries such as France and Spain, local authorities have extreme heat guidelines that trigger timetable changes or school closures when conditions become too hot. It's a model some argue the UK may need to consider as the UK summer continues to change.

While extreme heat or heatwaves can still occur in May and June - or indeed in late August or early September, by which time it's proposed pupils would have returned to class - breaking up for summer at the end of June could reduce the amount of disruption schools face from the hottest conditions heading into the peak of summer.

And while this August has also been hot and dry, some parents argue that an earlier break would be better aligned with the UK's typically warmer and drier mid-summer weather. Rebecca Martin says she'd like to be able to "make the most of the more guaranteed summer-like weather in July" planning to spend more time outdoors in a UK staycation rather than going abroad to parts of Europe where the "heat is getting even more extreme and unpleasant".

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising at around twice the global average. Like the UK, European heatwaves are becoming hotter, more frequent and longer.

Staycations in the UK could become even more popular. According to 2024 research by Mintel, more than half of UK holidaymakers say they are likely to choose to holiday at home rather than abroad for climate-related reasons. Meanwhile, some 28% say higher UK temperatures are encouraging them to take domestic holidays.

What remains to be seen is how any changes to the school summer holiday could affect the price tag. Aligning the holiday period more closely with Scotland and other countries means there could be more demand in late June and July, potentially pushing the traditional price peak earlier in the year.

Other changing holiday habits - such as avoiding the peak of the summer heat and extreme temperatures in southern Europe - will also play a role.

In a recent national survey by InsureandGo, more than seven in 10 UK holidaymakers thought some European countries like Spain, Greece or Turkey would be too hot to visit in the summer months by the end of the decade.

As travel journalist Simon Calder has said: "A significant shift in holiday habits could push up the cost of a domestic holiday.

"If more people decide to stay in the UK, and others come to Britain because it is more climatically appealing, the rise in demand would trigger price increases. But there are always locations where you can get reasonable deals."

Gemma Beake, a parent of two boys at a school in Bristol, suggests that if schools can be made cooler and have investment with air conditioning, they will be "safer places than a lot of homes and flats where we have the same problem of overheating".

British summers will always be variable, and no two years will be exactly alike. But the direction of travel is becoming clearer. Hot weather is arriving earlier, lasting longer and increasingly testing our school buildings that were designed and built in a past climate.

While headteachers can implement changes to uniform - as many did this year - so that PE kit could be worn instead of traditional uniform, for many it's the buildings that need adapting to the changing climate of today and especially the future.

But either upgrading infrastructure to climate resiliant schools or modifying the academic year would need institutional change with the possibility of a lot of investment. And both would take many years to implement.

For parents, teachers and school leaders however, changes are needed as soon as possible. As Steve Chalke puts it: "We need the government to come up with a short-term plan for the next few years."

This may simply mean better guidance during "heat days" and on when it is appropriate to shut schools, as with "snow days". Or just being more flexible - allowing schools to open earlier and finish earlier in the day to avoid a peak in temperatures.

A split in the spectrum? The ongoing battle to define autism

2026-08-21T15:22:11+00:00

If someone asked you to think of an autistic person, who would come to mind?

The world's richest man, Elon Musk?

Maybe Greta Thunberg, who says being different can be a superpower.

Or Robbie Williams, who has recently revealed he's found out that he has "a bit of autism".

What about someone like 34-year old James Fitzpatrick? He doesn't talk, has a learning disability and needs constant care.

A diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) means someone has certain core characteristics including differences in how they communicate and behave. It's an umbrella term that includes people with very different experiences.

In recent years there has been an explosion in the number of people with an autism diagnosis on their GP record. In England, it has gone from just over 700,000 three years ago to around 1.1 million today.

The National Autistic Society (NAS) says "evidence suggests there is a significant underdiagnosis of autism, particularly among women and older people".

But what if some people with a diagnosis aren't actually autistic? What if they've really been misdiagnosed?

These questions largely come from 85-year-old Professor Dame Uta Frith - one of the key figures in autism research since the 1960s.

They go to the heart of a debate that is central to the identity of many autistic people.

Dame Uta says this is about misdiagnosis - people wrongly being told they are autistic.

She is reluctant to say how many people she thinks have wrongly told they have autism: "In my worst moments, I think it's a great number, but in my best moments, I think it is a small number."

Dame Uta is worried that autistic people who need a lot of support are not getting the help they need.

Some autism researchers and charities say her views are "dangerous", "misinformation" and pit "autistic people against each other". Many autistic people are angry too, saying this calls their identity and rights into question.

The increase in diagnoses of neurodivergent conditions such as autism and ADHD, along with a steep rise in people reporting poor mental health, has prompted a government-commissioned independent review that is due to be published shortly.

But whatever its findings, it is unlikely to be the final word on a question that affects so many people: what actually is autism? And does it matter if such a broad spectrum of people are defined as having it?

The definition of autism has shifted and evolved since it was coined in 1911. Then, it was described as a symptom of schizophrenia - excessive fantasies and hallucinations.

By 1943, autism was used to describe children with "fascinating peculiarities" who weren't interested in the world around them.

In the 1960s, it was estimated that 0.04% of children were autistic and most had intellectual disabilities.

By the early 1980s, researchers embraced the idea of an autism spectrum, arguing that autistic people could have average - or very high - intelligence.

This new category of autism was known as Asperger's Syndrome after a little-known paper dating back to Austria in the 1940s, but the term is no longer used.

In 2013, ASD became the official diagnosis for all autistic people. But some autism experts think this is too broad.

Dame Uta ignited this debate by arguing that the autistic spectrum has come to its collapse because people included in it have such different needs.

A quick search through social media tells you that the 85-year-old is "a pioneer", "brilliant" and the "grand dame of autism research".

But also, a "traitor", an "out-of-touch grifter" who is "past her sell-by date".

During one of our conversations, she receives an email - hate mail. It tells her she will have blood on her hands and contains expletives.

She says: "Some people would say it would be better for me to stop. But I want to get at the truth."

But, even so, she hesitated for years before speaking out, partly because she "really, really" doesn't want to hurt people.

She talks about being driven by "almost a duty" to represent autistic people with intellectual disabilities. She thinks they are being ignored "both in research and in general awareness".

About a third of autistic people have intellectual disabilities. But they are underrepresented in research - a 2019 study found that they make up about 6% of research participants.

Dame Uta says: "These cases are in great need of support. They have been completely overshadowed."

She would include this group on a "pruned" autism spectrum along with people who have what used to be known as Asperger's and autistic people who are diagnosed during childhood.

She thinks the rise in autism diagnoses is driven by a "late-diagnosed group, mainly females".

The NHS says it can be difficult to recognise autism in women, but Dame Uta says: "I am sceptical of late diagnosis. That's where I think the diagnostic process has become very superficial."

She believes many of this group actually have other conditions including anxiety, depression or OCD.

She questions: "Are they best served by this label autism? I would like them to get better service than they're getting."

She also thinks researchers might need to create "a label that doesn't exist yet" for some people who've been told they're autistic.

She points to research from the University of Cambridge which found that people diagnosed with autism in early childhood often have a different genetic profile to people diagnosed when they are older. Researchers found that people diagnosed when they are older (from late childhood onwards) show an underlying genetic profile that has more in common with ADHD and depression than it does with early diagnosed autism.

But the lead researcher, Dr Varun Warrier, says this shows "autism broadening out genetically" rather than misdiagnosis.

Dame Uta thinks a small number don't have any mental health conditions at all - but are "identity seekers" who have been influenced by bad information on social media.

She hasn't got a number for how many people she thinks have been misdiagnosed, but believes researchers could figure it out.

She knows this will upset and possibly scare people. She stresses: "If someone has been misdiagnosed, I don't want them to suffer for it.

"It would be a terrible thing to take away a diagnosis retrospectively. It's the future I'm concerned with, making diagnostic process more precise - targeting very different individual needs rather than a label."

Dame Uta first expressed her views in an interview with the Times Educational Supplement in March. The NAS reacted to it in strong terms.

It wrote a blog post about "false narratives and outdated ideas", "misinformation" and "false claims".

Dame Uta says it's "just wrong" to dismiss her like this.

The NAS says anyone with an autism diagnosis will have been assessed against strict criteria and "have lifelong differences in communication, behaviours and focused interests compared to non-autistic people".

Dr Sue Smith, the NAS's head of clinical services, says: "We've got a group of people with a genuine need. We're having this weird debate about what they should be called."

She says this isn't just an academic row but has real implications for autistic people: "Historically a lot of people who weren't properly identified as autistic were given other really unhelpful labels", such as borderline personality disorder or bipolar.

She worries that re-labelling some autistic people could lead to them losing support.

Dr Monique Botha, an associate professor of psychology at Durham University, criticised Dame Uta's opinion using swear words.

Botha is autistic and stands by her reaction: "A lot of people were understandably upset and angry… I still am.

"Researchers have a duty to be a bit more blunt and upfront about how damaging these kinds of things can be."

Botha feels that Dame Uta's ideas add to a narrative that "there's some magical easy autism where you're just quirky, where everything in your life will eventually work out, and you're just using this as a crutch so that you can feel special, and it trivialises the reality of a whole bunch of people".

Botha says autistic people are united by key features: sensory sensitivity, a need for predictability, intense interests and struggles with communication.

"That doesn't mean that we will have the same lives or the same outcomes."

James Fitzpatrick was diagnosed in the 1990s, and doesn't speak. His father, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, is a retired GP.

Michael says he's been shocked by the response to Dame Uta's stance: "Intolerant, strident, abusive discourse that's very redolent of the culture wars."

He feels some autistic people don't understand the reality for his family.

Michael says that James, now 34, has "never developed the capacity to engage with the world. That's the source of profound sadness to his family and a loss to himself."

"He would injure himself, bang his head on the floor, bite himself. If you tried to stop him, he would also bite you or scratch you or headbutt you. And as he got bigger, that became more of a problem."

James has calmed down with age but still can "attack you randomly for no apparent reason".

Michael can't see how the same diagnosis can hold true for James and for someone who lives independently - two "extremely different types of people".

Dr Rachel Moseley, an academic from Bournemouth University, was working in autism research when she was diagnosed in her late 20s.

She agrees that people like James are "incredibly neglected".

But she says: "There's room for all of us, we can still advocate for people with learning disabilities without saying that this group isn't valid."

She thinks ideas about dividing up the autistic spectrum lack nuance, especially around mental health.

"Every so often something will totally knock my feet out from under me," Moseley adds, saying she will self-harm and have suicidal thoughts.

"Everyone's challenges are different. But you can't make the assumption that the person with high support needs is always having a harder time. They will in some regards, but not in all."

To make her point, she cites studies that have found that while autistic people overall are more likely to take their own lives, these rates are highest in autistic people without learning disabilities.

Michael Fitzpatrick is unconvinced by this argument: "I seriously, seriously doubt whether the people with autism and no levels of learning disability have a similar level of pathology and life-threatening problems as the people with profound autism."

It's striking that both sides in this row accuse the other of lacking scientific rigour. One major flashpoint is around the study of masking.

This is when someone hides autistic behaviours to try to fit in with society. There's been an explosion of academic interest in this area.

Recently, a review found almost 400 research papers talking about masking, mostly focusing on autistic women who were diagnosed as adults and don't have any intellectual disabilities.

Dame Uta shudders when I mention the idea: "Agh! Such a vague notion." She dismisses some research papers on it as "absolutely poor quality".

Moseley says the exact opposite: "There is really high-quality work on masking, and it's startling and upsetting to see such work be denigrated."

She sees masking research as part of a "refreshing change" as autistic academics "bring lived experience into research".

But Dame Uta questions if autistic researchers can be neutral or if they have a conflict of interest.

She's something of an outlier with this view.

Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen is director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. When he started out, Dame Uta was his mentor. He disagrees with her on this.

He says: "Someone who's got a degree in molecular biology has one kind of expertise, but someone who's got lived experience has got another kind."

Overall though, Sir Simon says: "I'm not taking sides. I think the answer is to get both sides round the table. A lot of what seem to be irreconcilable differences are actually reconcilable."

He does think the term autism is too broad and can lead to "lumping together people who are so different".

His suggestion is to add sub groups. Type one could be autism with a learning disability. Type two could be autism with language needs. Other types could include conditions that can co-occur with autism, such as ADHD, depression and epilepsy.

He says: "Imagine, we could have dozens or hundreds of subtypes. Why put a limit on it? The more we have, the more precise we can be about what people need."

Once again, there is no consensus.

Dame Uta thinks subtypes could provide "a clean division between those who have these very severe needs and those who don't. But it can't go on endlessly."

The NAS is worried that breaking autism into smaller groups could lead to discrimination or the removal of support from people who need it. It says subtypes have "no clinical value, diagnostic relevance or practical application".

Sir Simon's answer is to "bring in autistic people so we can choose labels that they're comfortable with".

Kayleigh was diagnosed with autism in her thirties. She finds that people hold pre-conceived ideas about what autism is.

She explains: "Some will assume you can't spell your own name. Or you love trains. Or you're extremely clever. Or you're hyper focused on a boring hobby."

Since diagnosis she's been given various labels - Asperger's, high-functioning and AuDHD [Autistic with ADHD].

She says: "The goalposts keep moving. As an autistic person, I don't even know what I should be called."

For her, this row is a huge distraction from the real issues.

She's spent her life thinking she was "weird, sub-normal or really, really bad". She's angry that society didn't recognise that she was struggling.

Since diagnosis, she says she's had "zero" support from professionals. She says emotionally she feels she can only really go out if her family are with her. She's not been to her local town centre in years.

She wants more help, more understanding. She doesn't care what her condition is called.

She says: "You could call it 'silly brain disease'. I still know what I'm going through."

Additional reporting by Kris Bramwell

Lead image: Getty

Correction 22 August: This article originally said autism was described in 1911 as a symptom of childhood schizophrenia. The article has been corrected to say that it was described as a symptom of schizophrenia generally.

The dangers of politicians being 'too online' - or not online enough

2026-08-19T16:57:09+00:00

In early 2015, flower crowns started appearing on Ed Miliband's head. Petals and hearts were photoshopped on to the then-Labour leader by the "Milifandom", a movement of young, mostly female, voters sharing romanticised images on Twitter to protest against Miliband's "distorted media portrayal".

It was the brainchild of Abby Tomlinson, a 17-year-old sixth-form student, who came to the defence of the man she called "Milibae". The hashtag #Milifandom trended. Then Labour lost the 2015 election.

This prompted David Cameron, whose Conservatives increased their number of seats, to boast: "Britain and Twitter are not the same thing." Tomlinson later told me that having her hopes of Milibae in No10 dashed had made her a "political pessimist", after realising winning over voters online "doesn't happen in a day, a week or even months, it's going to take years".

More than a decade on and she is again using social media to big up a Labour leader, but this time in the heart of government. She sits in the press office in No 12 Downing Street as head of content for Andy Burnham. The government has spent the last few weeks recruiting producers, videographers and strategists, working out of both Whitehall and No 10 North in Manchester.

In his first month as PM, Burnham posted more than 50 times on Instagram, ranging from meetings with world leaders, campaigners, farmers and influencers, to meme-based content like ranking pub snacks with Chancellor John Healey as part of an announcement on business rates. Strategists believe Instagram and TikTok can play to Burnham's communication strengths and sense of humour.

They're all at it, of course. Videos of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tearing into the budget or mocking ex-PM Sir Keir Starmer have gone viral. Reform UK's Nigel Farage has by far the biggest online audience of any UK party leader, with 7.6 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and YouTube.

In Scotland, the SNP have long mobilised their online army to campaign for independence, building a following larger than that of the Lib Dems, which campaigns across Britain, whose leader Ed Davey has achieved some success with campaign stunts going viral.

Restore Britain, founded by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, enjoys its highest level of support among users of X. The platform is owned by Elon Musk who has publicly endorsed the party, expanding its reach.

Plaid Cymru, newly installed in government in Wales, is still experimenting with its approach, using First Minister Rhun Ap Iorweth in "fun" memes while also posting more serious interview excerpts. The Greens' Zack Polanski has made much of running his own accounts, though as he has found in recent weeks, this comes with risks too.

So how much is enough? In a world where reputations can be made (or broken) with one comment or collaboration, getting the balance right is tricky – being accessible, authentic and approachable, without being cringe. And does it make any difference to elections?

Cameron's successor, Theresa May, was similarly doubtful about the merits of social media. When she took office she rebuffed aides who suggested she start tweeting: "People don't say 'pass me the hashtag newspaper, or I'd like a hashtag coffee'." Announcements were to be made formally. When cabinet ministers were appointed in May's first reshuffle, it was heralded in press statements beneath the UK government coat of arms.

By contrast, this summer, presenting my 5 Live show from Downing Street during Burnham's first reshuffle, I could predict the appearance of another new minister because the two-person social media team from No 10 would move into position to capture the new arrivals on their cameras.

Of course, prime ministers (and wannabes) have long adapted to new technology. Winston Churchill harnessed the power of radio, but thought television a vulgar diversion. In the 1960s, Labour's Harold Wilson modelled his TV campaigning on JFK in America. In the 1990s, and 2000s leaders like Tony Blair were just as likely to be found on the chatshow sofa as on the Today programme.

Now, podcasts give long-form - and less combative - opportunities to connect with voters, while social media gives a quick hit of direct democratic dopamine.

Peter Hyman, a former adviser to both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer when in Downing Street, said the success of Burnham's early digital output was about "quantity as well as quality".

"You have to narrate the story of what you are doing three or four or five times a day so that you are out there regularly," Hyman said. "Keir Starmer wasn't out there enough and therefore it wasn't landing."

There is a causality dilemma here. Is Burnham more popular in the polls because he is racking up the likes on social media, or is he doing better online because people like him?

Not everyone is convinced. Cody Dahler, a comedian who posts sweary political explainers to his two million followers, warns voters will become cynical if they sense politicians are just using social media simply "as a comms tool". Burnham, Dahler told me on Newsnight, comes across like a "cool substitute teacher".

And after Burnham released a video discussing what a bread roll is called in different parts of the country – barm, cob or bap - to promote his plans for devolution, broadcaster Piers Morgan asked him to "stop wasting your time and ours with these cringe videos".

And therein lies the difficulty of striking a balance. Bea Timpson, a former press secretary to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak who says she prefers "trad media" like broadcast and print, added: "I have to accept that it's now non-negotiable to be online a bit, but you definitely can be too much."

TV and online websites remain the most used sources for news, but more and more of us say we also get news from social media, according to media watchdog Ofcom. While this is highest among 16-24 year olds at 78%, a majority of adults in every age group use social media to access news, apart from the over-65s. Even among over 75s, 22% find out what is happening in the world from social media. For politicians, this is no longer just about reaching young people – this is all voters.

Some platforms are more important than others. Even after Elon Musk's conversion of Twitter into X, you will still see MPs, spin doctors and journalists in the Westminster village scrolling through the platform, but digital strategists say "real voters" are found on other platforms. The main parties have far more followers on Facebook (four million combined), which is much more widely used overall, than X (where they have a combined 3.2 million).

Politicians have always looked abroad for policy and campaigning ideas, and social media is no different.

Those on the right seek to emulate the impact Donald Trump has on TruthSocial, while left-wing politicians look to the success of Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor of New York.

Some have even imported social media experts from overseas. In 2019 Boris Johnson hired New Zealand duo Ben Guerin and Sean Topham to run the digital campaign for the general election. They imported into UK politics the concept of "shitposting", releasing deliberately bad images in order to generate a reaction. This included posting a tweet featuring the slogan "Get Brexit Done" in Comic Sans, a font loathed by graphic designers.

There was a method in the madness. "People are more likely to engage with something if they feel like it's been written by a human, not by a committee of design experts," Guerin told me. "It's pretty easy to go viral for doing something weird and wacky, but that doesn't always advance the objectives of your campaign."

This seems to be borne out by some recent hits. Burnham's TikTok post rating pub snacks attracted a million views. Yet a less gimmicky video, straightforwardly listing the five things he said he had done in his first week as PM, got five million.

There is an inherent tension in political social media. Authenticity is key. Yet who really expects the prime minister to be shooting and uploading his own content?

Back in 2013 I wrote a story about how Cameron's Twitter account had favourited a tweet mocking William Hague from an account handle that made a crude joke about former Tory MP Norman Tebbit being injured in the Brighton bombing.

The prime minister's director of communications called me to complain about my "slapdash and crappy" reporting. My crime? Including a sentence which allowed for the possibility that someone other than Cameron had clicked on the like button by mistake. This would, apparently, spoil the magic for those that thought the prime minister was running his own account for his 500,000 followers.

We now know that Zack Polanski does indeed have his own log-ins. The leader of the Green Party in England and Wales faced criticism in May for sharing a post condemning police actions in the Golders Green attack, for which he apologised. Then in July he accepted an Instagram collaboration which included a man wearing a T-shirt featuring a cartoon guillotine and the song lyrics "we're only making plans for Nigel". Reform UK said it amounted to incitement of violence against Farage. "I'm accepting my responsibility in that I shouldn't have accepted that collaboration," Polanski said, but refused to apologise.

Reform UK's Gawain Towler, a long-time media adviser to Nigel Farage, says: " My big takeaway is: don't be a berk on social media, which I think was Zack Polanski's big takeaway too."

And this in turn raises the question of how long the Burnham digital honeymoon might last. Can a prime minister TikTok his way through a war, terror attack or controversial court case? Announcing a new giveaway may go viral, but what about the details of the cuts to pay for it?

The truth is none of this is new, as Hyman explains: "The politicians who get this wrong think that social media is now the only place to be, and a substitute for doing the hard work and the heavy lifting of actually getting the right policy, getting the right narrative, and telling that story properly," he says. "Politics is about winning arguments."

After all, politicians have always wanted to be liked. It's just these days they can see it instantly if you hit that heart button on your feed.

Listen to Matt Chorley live from Westminster, weekdays from 14:00 on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Young adults are taking prescription drugs instead of alcohol - and it's dividing experts

2026-08-17T16:00:02+00:00

To enjoy a night out with friends, Matt once had to drink until he felt sick.

If he didn't, the 22-year-old from the north of England would spend the night silent, terrified of saying the wrong thing. The warehouse worker says it felt like there was "just no way into" the conversations everyone else seemed to be enjoying.

Then, two years ago, he swapped pints for prescription drugs he discovered through social media.

As he gets ready to go out on a Friday, Matt, whose name has been changed, now takes a medicine he purchases illegally online that usually treats epilepsy and nerve pain; alongside a beta blocker designed to slow a racing heart and relax trembling muscles (physical symptoms of anxiety).

He says it gives him the effects of alcohol without the hangover.

"The amount of alcohol you have to drink to replicate the effects of these is really unhealthy and it doesn't feel good," he says. Matt says the drugs he takes leave him feeling "euphoric," quietens his anxious thoughts and makes socialising easy, he says.

But experts say taking the drugs without medical supervision at high doses can be dangerous and, in some cases, life-threatening. Long-term use of the drugs can also result in dependency; users find they rely on it for any social situation. They also report increased anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts when they try to come off the drug.

For Matt, who says he has already tried therapy to treat his social anxiety, what began as a way to get through nights out now extends to dates and family gatherings. Without the drugs, Matt says, there are many social situations he "would not even bother to attempt".

Matt denies that he has become dependent on the drugs.

Around the world, evidence shows that young people are turning to medications and experimental substances as alternatives to alcohol. Some of them come in pill form - like pregabalin and propranolol, the ones Matt takes. And some are injected - like peptides, a type of protein that's becoming increasingly popular online.

It's part of an effort to quell social anxiety, which seems to affect Generation Z particularly sharply: more than a quarter (28%) of people in their early 20s in England report high levels of anxiety, according to a study published last year by University College London, which found that serious mental illnesses are far more common among members of Generation Z than they were among millennials at the same age.

The trend is alarming scientists - and prompting them to ask why some young adults feel they can only socialise with chemical help.

A search for "healthier" alternatives to drinking has helped create a new market for substances touted on social media as social drugs without the hangover.

They are seen as the "cleaner, safer alternative," says Liam Knowles, an addiction researcher at Teesside University. "[Users] don't feel as bad the next day and it's a medication - so people think it's safer."

Exactly how many young people are using prescription drugs and unregulated peptides to socialise is difficult to know, with many obtaining them without a prescription. Knowles thinks there is "probably a substantial amount of people that are getting addicted".

Hashtags relating to the medications bring up thousands of videos on social media platforms, with users encouraged to create their own cocktail of medications, known online as "stacking".

The growing interest in these substances comes as young adults are increasingly moving away from alcohol, earning Gen Z the nickname of the 'sober generation'. The same influencers touting the benefits of these "stacks" also recommend steering clear of alcohol.

A survey last year by the charity Drinkaware found that 26% of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK did not drink alcohol, compared with 7% in 2012.

Meanwhile, Prof Emily Jones, a psychologist at King's College London believes the Covid pandemic may have contributed to rising social anxiety, particularly among young people.

"Lockdown effectively taught everybody to be afraid of social interaction," she says.

For young people looking to experiment, pregabalin has become a particular focus.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications estimated that global consumption of the drug more than quadrupled between 2008 and 2018.

Meanwhile, there has also been a sharp increase in deaths involving pregabalin. Office for National Statistics data show pregabalin was mentioned on 2,360 death certificates for drug-related poisonings in England and Wales between 2020 and 2024, compared with 768 between 2015 and 2019.

One of those deaths was Alex Cottam, a 27-year-old software engineer from Eccles described by his mother, Michelle, as "lovely, clever, and popular". He was prescribed pregabalin to treat his anxiety, but his mother says he "became addicted" and started boosting his supply by buying the drug from illicit websites. "I can't help thinking every day that pregabalin killed my son", she told the BBC in 2024.

Matt first heard about the drugs he takes when he was 20 through Braden Peters, better known as 'Clavicular', a controversial influencer who has spoken openly on livestreams about taking the medicines as part of a "stack" to reduce his social anxiety.

And the medications have entered mainstream conversation. Actresses Rachel Sennott and Kristen Bell are among the celebrities who have spoken publicly about taking beta blockers, along with the influencer Khloé Kardashian.

Pregabalin, especially in higher than prescribed doses, can make users relaxed and happy - a similar feeling to being drunk.

For Mei, a 20-year-old university student in China, whose name has been changed, these were the effects she was after.

She says the drugs ease her physical symptoms of anxiety, and can make her feel "euphoric". She began taking them for parties. "It was like I could be the most interesting person in the room," she says.

The medicines can also be significantly cheaper than alcohol.

Matt says he spends as little as 18p on the medicines for one night out - a saving he describes as a "nice bonus".

Knowles, the addiction researcher, says many of the young people he has encountered using these drugs recreationally in the UK are extremely focused on health. "People don't want the calories," he says. "They think, 'my doctor wouldn't prescribe them if they were bad for you,'" Knowles says.

That logic resonates with Matt, a keen gym-goer who believes these medications have a "much lower impact" on his body than drinking, especially his liver and heart. "People in this community believe that pregabalin is healthier than alcohol," he says.

Alcohol has been linked to at least seven types of cancer, and the World Health Organization warned a few years ago that any amount of alcohol consumption poses danger.

Prof David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London who has long campaigned for looser drug laws, argues that the drugs Matt takes may be less harmful than heavy drinking, even if they carry risks of their own.

"Propranolol and pregabalin are undoubtedly safer than alcohol, but not perfectly safe," he says.

But he says the picture changes when pregabalin is used in large doses for intoxication (as Matt says he is doing). "If they're using it as a sort of intoxicant to get drunk, then they are at risk of dependence," he says. "It's not a free lunch in that sense."

Propranolol also carries risks. While it is generally considered safe when taken as prescribed, inappropriate or high-dose use can cause dizziness, fainting and a dangerously slow heart rate.

The risks may be greater when medicines come from unregulated sources. "There's always a danger of getting medicines that aren't made to medical standards," Nutt says.

Jones, the psychologist from King's College, argues that comparing the physical harms of these drugs with alcohol risks missing a more fundamental question: what happens when people begin to believe they can only socialise with chemical help?

"Alcohol in large quantities is dangerous, but it is also dangerous to take medication too routinely without being under the supervision of a doctor," she says.

She is particularly concerned that using medicine to avoid anxious feelings can reinforce the belief that ordinary social situations are scary. What begins as a pill before a party can gradually spread to dates, work meetings, and everyday life, she says. "You lose your faith in your own capacity to deal with things effectively."

What started for Mei as a "going out stack" before nights out soon spread to exams, speeches and debates. Eventually, she says, she was taking the drugs every day. "Now I can't leave the house without it."

As China, India and other countries move to clamp down on these drugs, some argue that restricting access further could create different dangers.

Mykyta Lapin, an epidemiologist and head of the Ukrainian harm-reduction organisation Mind Games, says banning substances does not necessarily stop people taking them.

"Banning certain substances simply leads to people turning to the black market and buying drugs of dubious quality," he says, risking overdoses.

Knowles says illicit pregabalin carries an extra risk because users may not know exactly what they are taking.

"If you buy an alcoholic drink from a shop [in the UK] and it says the amount of units it contains and its percentage, then that's what it is." He said the same certainty does not always apply to pregabalin bought online. "That's an added risk that doesn't come with a bottle of spirit."

Matt, despite taking the drugs primarily as a social lubricant, remains convinced that he is also making the healthier choice.

"When I look at the improvement in my quality of life compared with what I see as a very minimal impact on my health, it's such a clear trade-off," he says.

"For me, it's an exchange that's worth it."

Matt's illegal habit remains heavily discouraged by most doctors. But still, with millions of young adults looking for a seemingly easy cure for anxiety, the numbers of people using these alcohol alternatives is likely to rise.

If you have been affected by addiction, help and support is available at BBC Action Line. If you live in Northern Ireland, you can also call the 24-hour helpline Lifeline, on 0808 808 8000.

Top image credit: Getty Images.

Five years after the Taliban swept to power, does the West have any influence?

2026-08-14T09:00:14+00:00

In a whitewashed basement in a village south of Kabul, a dozen young women bustle about, stirring cauldrons of bubbling cherries and plums, and sticking labels on glass jam jars. Ventures like this are one of the rare spaces where women are still able to gain skills and employment in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

It is run by Najia, a 47-year-old Afghan entrepreneur and mother of nine children who was married at the age of 14.

If the authorities hadn't barred girls and young women from secondary schools and universities, many of the women in this workshop, including Naija's daughters, would be studying for a different kind of future.

But now, even this is being squeezed too. Recent rules say women have to ask men to take their products to market, and only men can sit at their stalls to show their wares at trade fairs. The Taliban gives various reasons for this, including claiming that women aren't wearing proper hijab or head covering.

"The world has to talk to the Taliban in a different way because it's just not working," says Najia. "The lives of Afghan women have to change because we're losing hope."

Five years after this ultra-conservative Islamist movement took charge, women are banned from much of the public sphere and girls are prohibited from going to school over the age of 12. Many inside and outside Afghanistan are asking the same pressing question: what's the best way to engage the Taliban to try to achieve meaningful change?

The issue is deeply divisive. There are fissures between many groups, with a huge array of conflicting issues at stake. These include women's rights, unpredictable Taliban edicts, international sanctions and aid cuts during a spiralling humanitarian crisis. The international response is split between Western countries often focused on human rights and others more interested in investment opportunities. And the West itself is divided on the best response.

Many now accept that whatever they're doing, it's not working.

Few voices call for absolute isolation, not when the United Nations warns that 22 million Afghans – nearly half the of the population – rely on some form of foreign assistance to help them survive.

The country has been battered by multiple shocks: an agonising economic crisis; devastating natural disasters; clashes with neighbouring Pakistan, and the influx of millions of Afghans deported from countries near and far into this impoverished land.

And there's no avoiding it – the Taliban are in charge now.

In the years since their fighters swept into Kabul on 15 August 2021, they've grown in confidence and consolidated control despite intermittent attacks by armed opposition groups based abroad, as well as Islamic State fighters.

The Taliban are collecting tax revenues and signing deals in mining, energy and more with Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, and Tashkent, along with other neighbours.

But they're still strangled by international sanctions linked to terrorism and human rights. Russia is the only country to formally recognise their rule, and they haven't been allowed to take up what they see as their rightful seat at the UN in New York.

But formal diplomatic recognition is no longer the focal point.

"The West is losing the argument over recognition," says a former senior UN official who requested anonymity because they continue to work in Afghanistan. They point to the growing number of countries which have conferred de facto recognition by clinching deals, accrediting diplomats, operating embassies, and more.

"There's no doubt the Taliban would like to be recognised at the UN but it's no longer as potent a bargaining chip as it was at the beginning," they assess.

Behind the soaring blast walls of the foreign ministry in Kabul, in the sprawling compound of manicured lawns and graceful historic buildings, Taliban diplomats keep adding names and flags to the growing collection of Afghan embassies worldwide which are now under their control, rather than the last holdouts of the government they ousted. The current tally is more than 40.

"We need to come closer diplomatically rather than talking from a distance if we want to make progress in our relationship," says Zabihullah Mujahid, the main Taliban spokesman.

We meet in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the real seat of power. This is where the Taliban's reclusive emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has been steadily building his political and military base and issuing hundreds of edicts, many of them focused on erasing women and girls from public life – what he portrays as an Islamic obligation to protect them.

This five-year mark is widely seen as an inflection point.

"An unstable and potentially dangerous equilibrium," is how the situation was described in closed-door remarks by a senior UN official at a recent international gathering.

And, yet, Afghanistan has fallen far under the world's radar. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East absorb international attention, and Europe's burning issue is how to stop so many Afghans fleeing towards their shores. It's a startling reversal.

"It's extraordinary given the scale of Western effort from 2001-2021 how ignored Afghanistan is now," remarks a Western diplomat who recently served as an envoy to the country. They did not want to be named because they're still in the diplomatic service.

"The real diplomatic gap is the US," they added, in reference to the current US administration's decision to eliminate their special envoy position and dismantle many agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which once led the world's approach on almost every Afghan issue.

Even within Taliban ranks, especially among those known to differ with some of the strictest edicts handed down by their emir, there is frustration that the world doesn't seem willing or able to forge a different kind of relationship.

"We want to be part of the international community," emphasises Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founding member of the Taliban who now runs a madrasa for boys and girls on the outskirts of Kabul. Unlike mainstream schools, madrasas take girls of all ages and some, especially those run privately, are teaching more than religious classes.

"Just putting pressure won't work," he tells us. He takes the long view of Afghanistan's history of resisting foreign invaders. "We didn't surrender to the Russians, to the Americans, so why would the Taliban surrender now?"

UN officials believe their presence in Afghanistan makes a difference, however limited. They point to progress on issues such as the treatment of prisoners, their detailed discussions on the harsh implementation of the morality code known as the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as well as efforts to improve humanitarian access.

"Engagement is slow, progress is incremental, and reversals are frequent," is the UN's sober summary of the past five years of on-off dialogue.

But it still insists it needs to stay the course.

"A stalled process is better than no process," emphasises Georgette Gagnon, a deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan, who is now the acting head of the UN mission in Kabul.

The UN has been criticised for not pushing back enough against the Taliban, including for holding forums such as the so-called Doha Process, in which a Taliban delegation travelled to the Qatari capital in 2024 to discuss a range of issues, on condition that no Afghan women's representatives were at the table. UN officials insist all issues were discussed, and that subsequent meetings included their participation.

A new process called Mosaic approaches negotiations in a more structured format, on six core issues. On one side there are human rights including women's rights, inclusive governance, and counterterrorism. On the other, there are Taliban demands – sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, diplomatic representation.

"Confidence and reciprocity are beginning to take shape to open the door to engagement on the most difficult issues," says Gagnon whom we meet inside the UN's vast, heavily fortified compound. She calls them "small steps on the long road".

She insists it has to be done through a collective effort, not only through discussions by individual governments. "Pressure has not worked so far, threats have not worked; our best chance lies in consistent and common messaging and action."

In dusty provincial capitals and farmers' fields, where international and Afghan aid agencies wrestle with ways to work on the ground, the conversations continue day in day out.

It's there that edicts handed down by the reclusive emir are translated into what are known as workarounds. These workarounds can mean women are able to work in some agency sectors from home, or in different rooms, on different floors, or even in different buildings to men.

"Everything in Afghanistan is relationships, and day-to-day that can help make things easier," says Chris Kinder, the chairman of Afghanaid, a British charity which has been working in Afghanistan for more than 40 years. He emphasises that most of these conversations on access and implementation are conducted by experienced Afghan staff.

My own visits to provincial cities and towns in recent years have underscored how some local Taliban officials try to find pragmatic solutions. But others remain deeply suspicious of any foreign assistance.

Local agreements were described by another charity as "verbal and fragile".

Kinder rejects criticism that aid agencies have had to compromise on principles to keep their projects in place.

"The Taliban have their red lines and we, and our donors, have ours. We discuss approaches so both sides understand where they are coming from."

Here too, many aid officials call for a more unified approach.

"We need to keep talking, but now we need to set conditions," is the view of Najia the jam maker. It's a stance also taken by women activists in the diaspora and human rights groups who say dialogue has been a one-way street, with the Taliban not offering any significant changes in return.

They insist discussion should not go beyond aid issues until they do.

A recent flashpoint was the decision by EU officials in June to host a Taliban foreign ministry delegation in Brussels for the first time since the Taliban returned to power. Representatives of 15 member states joined this one-day meeting to discuss processes to send back Afghan nationals who had no legal right to remain in the EU.

The EU called them "technical-level" talks. The Taliban saw them differently. A spokesperson described the agenda as including possible consular presence in Europe and the "need for trust-building measures".

"The diplomatic community is well aware that there are already existing channels through which technical issues can be discussed with the Taliban," says Rina Amiri, an Afghan-born former American diplomat who served as the US special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights from 2022 to 2025 and also grappled with the terms under which to meet the Taliban.

"Meeting in Brussels was clearly a decision that was about politics, not logistics," she says.

The critics call it "creeping normalisation".

There are others who say the same.

"Only more capable diplomacy through quiet and confidential engagement can deliver the change," says a former Afghan official who's been involved in discreet discussions with Taliban officials. He hopes whoever is chosen as the new UN Secretary General and takes office at the start of next year will engage more effectively.

But, in the end, it's not the international community which is in the driving seat of any change.

"I don't think the answer is the world finding the right language to talk to the Taliban," says a Western analyst who's long been involved in Afghanistan and like others interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous. "Five years on, it's very clear that real change can only come from within."

Some senior Taliban officials have occasionally spoken out about the emir's harshest orders, in particular the closure of girls' schools, and there've been rare instances when some were able to find ways to roll back his rules. One such case was last year's nation-wide internet shutdown which paralysed daily life and was later reversed.

The emir's edicts are regarded as absolute. The movement has shown it values unity, and power, above all else. Even the entreaties of Islamic scholars and officials of Islamic countries the world over have not bent the iron will of the emir and his enforcers, especially on the most sensitive issue of education.

Five years on, there are no simple or swift solutions.

At Najia's jam workshop, a table bristling with her framed training certificates – from local Afghan institutes to the now defunct USAID – attests to her efforts to become a bigger and better entrepreneur in the face of cascading restrictions.

Year on year, a new society starts to take shape. But many Afghans still keep pushing and praying for a different future – and hope the world won't forget them.

Lead image: Getty

Witness History

2026-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

Available for over a year

In 1963, as Kenya celebrated independence from British rule, one of the last Mau Mau fighters came out of hiding and laid down her arms. Muthoni Kirima was the first and only woman to be appointed field marshall in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army - better known as the Mau Mau. She had been living in the Kenyan forest for 11 years, fighting with other armed rebels to reclaim land taken by European settlers. Thousands died or were imprisoned as Britain tried to crush the uprising. But the rebellion was later seen as paving the way to independence. Jane Wilkinson has found out more through Muthoni Kirima's interview with the Mau Mau Chronicles oral history project. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines’ life and Omar Sharif’s legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives’ ministers underwater. We cover everything from World War Two and Cold War stories to Black History Month and our journeys into space. (Photo: Field Marshall Muthoni Kirima, 1963. Credit: Smith Archive/Alamy)

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Witness History

2026-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, has dismissed the threats of new economic sanctions as signs of desperation in Washington. But the Iranian currency, the rial, has fallen to a record low against the dollar (on unofficial markets). BBC gains rare access to the office of a provincial governor in Afghanistan: we hear how Taliban officials grapple with everyday issues like divorce. Members of the so-called Coalition of the Willing are in the Iranian capital Kyiv as Ukraine steps up attacks on Russian infrastructure targets. we go live there. (Photo: An Iranian rides a motorbike past a political billboard displayed at the Valiasr square in Tehran, Iran, 17 August 2026; Credit: Abedin Taherkenareh/ EPA/Shutterstock)

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Witness History

2026-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

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The Mangione Trial

2026-08-10T16:30:00+00:00

Available for over a year

Since the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the case against Luigi Mangione has become about more than just the evidence that will be tested in court. Across politics, social media and the news media, competing groups have sought to frame the story through their own lens, linking it to debates about left-wing violence, Antifa, healthcare, political extremism and public anger at powerful institutions. In this episode, BBC journalist and extremism expert Mike Wendling helps untangle the claims, examining what terms such as "far left" and "Antifa" actually mean, why some commentators have associated them with the case, and what evidence exists about Mangione's political views. The episode also explores how a high-profile criminal case can become a political symbol, even when the facts are disputed and a trial has yet to take place. Host Jordan Dunbar also looks at parallels from Japan following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, asking how public reactions to shocking acts of violence can evolve into wider debates about social grievances, political division and systemic change. Luigi Mangione denies all charges against him. So how did a murder case become a culture war, and what happens when politics starts shaping the story before a jury hears the evidence?

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Human Intelligence

2026-08-09T23:05:00+00:00

Available for over a year

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration? Naomi explores the mind of Homer, the ancient Greek epic poet. She examines how oral tradition, memory, and performance were integral to the imagination of his work, and how storytelling functioned as a shared cultural intelligence long before writing became dominant. Through themes of heroism, fate, and human struggle, Homer’s epics reveal a deeply patterned way of thinking about the world. Naomi investigates how his storytelling mind has influenced countless generations, cultures and societies. Special thanks to Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at the University of Durham. Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University. Presenter: Naomi Alderman Production Co-ordinator: Amelia Paul Researcher: Sasha Edye-Lindner Series Producer: Anishka Sharma Executive Producer: Paul Smith Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton Production Manager: Jo Kyle

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Fame Under Fire: The Tupac Murder Trial

2026-08-06T06:37:00+00:00

Available for over a year

Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was fatally shot on the Las Vegas Strip, Nevada prosecutors are preparing for the trial of the only person ever charged in connection with the rapper’s death. Duane “Keffe D” Davis has pleaded not guilty to murder and denies the allegations against him. But Keffe D is not accused of firing the fatal shots. So how can prosecutors seek to convict him of murder? And why was he arrested in 2023, decades after investigators first suspected he was in the car? Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty and Fame under Fire’s resident trial attorney Shaun Kent break down everything you need to know before the trial. Could Suge Knight testify? Could Sean “Diddy” Combs be drawn into the case? For Fame Under Fire: The Tupac Murder Trial Anoushka will be in the Las Vegas courtoom every day to bring you updates. Make sure you lock in so you don’t miss a thing. Host: Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Series Producer: Louise Clarke Senior Impact Producer: Melanie Stewart Smith Digital Journalist: Daniel Raza Researcher: Helena Warwick-Cross Production coordinator: Phoebe Lomas Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards Editor: Clare Fordham Commissioning Producer: Adam Eland Assistant Commissioner: Chris Walsh-Heron Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts

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Why phones on loudspeaker may become just another noise

2026-08-05T15:43:03+00:00

Listen to Angus read the story here

Most days on my commute, I am treated to the contents of strangers' phones.

It could be a teenage boy slouching on a seat on the top deck of the number 29, holding his device inches from his face, either unaware or indifferent that everyone else can hear what he's watching too.

Or a woman taking a phone call on loudspeaker before scrolling at volume through her social feed.

Surveys suggest that many do find this modern phenomenon - known as loudcasting, sodcasting, or headphone dodging - similarly frustrating.

In recent years, Ofcom, YouGov and Transport for London (TfL) have all published polls showing the vast majority of people dislike it. TfL has just relaunched its Travel Kind campaign across the London transport network this summer, reminding people to use headphones.

The phenomenon has grown as we become ever more connected. Figures published in July by Ofcom show that mobile data use has increased by 13% year-on-year in the UK. 5G is being rolled out across the country, meaning that more people can get faster connectivity while travelling. And research has found that many data packages have become cheaper, meaning customers are less likely to have to ration their data use when out and about.

So as we become ever more online in public, will we see increasing attempts to clamp down on loudcasting? Or will it end up becoming as normal a part of our soundscape as the hum of passing traffic or the roar of a plane's engine thousands of feet above us?

This phenomenon isn't entirely new and neither are our reactions. Boomboxes in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, caused a stir. Bath University professor David Ellis points out that each new technological trend - including the very use of mobile phones - has often prompted odd looks when deployed in public.

"I remember when my mother was mortified that I was walking down the street with a phone to my ear," he says.

Loudcasting has piqued the interest of experts who study how technology shapes our behaviours, and they agree there's a strong generational factor. In an Ofcom survey of 1,010 people in August 2022, of the 13-to-17-year-olds questioned, 69% said it was acceptable to make video calls, 73% to listen to music and 83% to watch videos without headphones.

University of Sussex physiology professor Harry Witchel, who has a long-running interest in soundscapes, argues that it makes sense in the context of young people's brain development. He notes that adolescence is when young people move from their parents to their peers, and loudcasting is a way of expressing this. "That's what they're doing, they're saying 'I'm here'," he says.

So it's mostly young people? "I would say it is," says Dr Rachael Kent, a senior lecturer in digital economy and society at King's College, London. She adds that it's not wholly borne out of a lack of consideration for others - loudcasting can be a tool for connection.

"Travelling to and from school on public transport with friends, they're experiencing their devices together."

She also argues it's "performative… a way to rebel. 'I'm going to play music, watch stuff', that's a way to express who you are, what your tastes are."

Witchel says he began observing loudcasting around 2011, a few years after the release of the iPhone.

That year he spoke to the BBC about young people playing music aloud from their phones in public, in what he described as a "fascinating human phenomenon of marking social territory".

Fast-forward to 2026, and - alongside tech advances such as improved audio quality - he posits the idea that loudcasting is thriving with the help of a decline in social policing of public spaces and a loss of etiquette in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns.

"People were just used to walking around their homes in their bunny slippers, and when they came back into the commons and the social space they forgot there were rules they had to follow," he says.

But what is it about the sound of someone scrolling on loud that I find so abrasive when any city or bus is already a cacophony of competing sounds?

"Noise is like weeds," Witchel says. "Noise is a sound out of place. If we think that the railway sounds are supposed to be on the railway, then we don't think of it as inappropriate.

"The issue isn't so much just pure decibels… the issue is actually attention and how we deal with certain soundscapes, and how that sound environment relates to us. It has a contextual meaning."

Witchel says we can "habituate" to a train noise, which becomes "much easier to put up with than if someone has a loud conversation".

Transport for London (TfL), which operates the capital's trains and buses, last year launched a public awareness campaign calling for passengers to be considerate after the results of a survey of 1,000 people said 70% of respondents found loud music and phone calls without headphones a nuisance.

The Liberal Democrats say such behaviour should be punishable with fines of up to £1,000.

The party's transport spokesman Olly Glover puts the trend down to a growing lack of social awareness. "Since the pandemic a lot of people live in their own head more than ever before," he says, adding, "they don't necessarily think about their impact on other people".

Glover says technology companies should bear some responsibility, suggesting they should provide headphones at railway stations or return to automatically selling them with phones.

The BBC contacted tech companies including Apple, Samsung, Meta, and TikTok about their awareness of loudcasting and whether they were responding to it in any way. None of the companies commented.

The Lib Dems' push has also garnered some Tory support. Rebecca Smith, Conservative MP for South West Devon, says "things have moved on a bit since a few people carried around a Discman", adding it wouldn't hurt to have the rules "beefed up" to allow passengers to tell others what they're doing is against the law.

Smith says she doesn't notice it in her Devon community, but it's something she's observed on the commute between Plymouth and London.

The government has previously said that under existing railway by-laws, disruptive passengers are already liable for £1,000 fines.

TfL says when its officers encounter someone playing their device out loud, they will typically ask them to stop, with most people complying. If they don't stop, then further enforcement action can be taken, such as referring them for prosecution.

In February, transport under-secretary Keir Mather told a committee hearing he would "engage with officials about how we can more robustly enforce the by-laws". Asked about the result of those discussions, the Department for Transport told the BBC it expected rail operators to use existing powers.

The department said the government was also "cracking down on nuisance passengers" with the Bus Services Act, passed in October, which empowers local authorities to create by-laws to prevent nuisance passengers.

However, the Liberal Democrats say existing by-laws aren't explicit enough, and want the law to specifically ban playing music and videos played out loud. They are currently trying to insert an amendment into the Railways Bill.

A key barrier to enforcement is resourcing.

In an exhaustive list of enforcement activities carried out between 2020/21 and 2024/25, TfL says no one has been fined but identifies prosecutions in which no further action was taken due to lack of evidence or discretion being exercised, including due to a passenger's age.

In one 2022/23 matter, a case was withdrawn from court because the defendant was not from the UK and had returned to their own country.

Despite the evidence that so many of us find it annoying, we also appear hugely reluctant to actually do anything about it. Few official complaints are made. Even though I find loudcasting intensely grating, I have never registered an official complaint and have only occasionally asked other passengers to turn the volume down on their device.

"In train carriages, if there are no conductors, it becomes more difficult in practice to make a public nuisance complaint," says Lisa Lavia, managing director of the Noise Abatement Society, a charity which addresses noise from neighbours, as well as from aircraft and trains.

TfL says it monitors enforcement activity around headphone use, but that complaints where headphones and music are cited are decreasing. It also says that there are only a "small number" of complaints that relate to people streaming content out loud in the context of the billions of journeys each year.

Similarly, Great Western Railways says it has received just 10 complaints of this nature since January 2025.

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said during Mayor's Question Time in June that "a lot of people are concerned" about this behaviour and acknowledged the number of prosecutions was low, adding he was happy to look at what else could be done to educate Londoners, including looking at what other cities and countries were doing.

"Sometimes people are not aware of the impact they are having on others, of their antisocial behaviour," he said.

Lavia says loudcasting is now something the organisation is asked about "quite regularly", including whether it is reasonable to be put off by it, and what can be done.

She says that while the proportion of inquiries the charity receives is small, "it's representative of something much wider", believing the organisation's relative obscurity means people are at their wits' end before they come to them.

Furthermore, Professor Orla Muldoon, the head of the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast, says people aren't necessarily being antisocial by sharing their music or conversations with strangers nearby - in fact, it could be the opposite.

"It is quintessentially social to play music and hope your peers appreciate that music," she says.

Whatever your view on it, experts generally agree that loudcasting has already become ingrained.

In an effort to inject some perspective, Ling shares a paper he wrote in 1997 – nearly 30 years ago – about the appropriateness of mobile telephone calls in public spaces, including restaurants.

"You were seen as being vulgar and gauche to the highest degree," he says. "Now if you get a call in a restaurant it's no big deal."

He suggests of loudcasting that "in two years' time we're not going to worry about it", and that those ruffled by it will be more tolerant while offenders modify their behaviour somewhat.

The next time I sit through another auditory gauntlet on the number 29, I will keep that in mind.

Lead image: Getty

Witness History

2026-08-03T22:00:00+00:00

Available for over a year

In 1988, as floods struck Bangladesh and a heat wave swept across the United States, climate change became a political issue. Governments and businesses alike talked about how to stop it, or at least slow it down. That year the think tank World Resources Institute and the energy company Applied Energy Services announced a novel idea that has been credited as the first example of a ‘carbon offset’: In order to make up for the millions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide that would be released by a new coal-fired power plant in the United States, the energy company would pay to plant 52 million trees in Guatemala. But the reality on the ground was more complicated. Stan Alcorn visits Totonicapán, Guatemala and speaks with Roberto Antonio Alvarado, who planted the saplings that would be some of the world’s first carbon offsets. Additional producing by Dennis Funk. A Written in Air production. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines’ life and Omar Sharif’s legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives’ ministers underwater. We cover everything from World War Two and Cold War stories to Black History Month and our journeys into space. (Photo: Roberto Antonio Alvarado with one of the first carbon offset trees he planted. Credit: Stan Alcorn)

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The History Podcast

2026-08-03T21:00:00+00:00

Available for over a year

1953 Tehran. An American diplomat called Kermit Roosevely III rides through the city’s streets on his way to see the Shah of Iran. Although he can’t see anything because he’s riding in the boot covered in a Persian carpet. He doesn’t want to be seen because he’s on a top secret mission. A mission from the American government. To overthrow Iran’s popular Prime Minister threatening to nationalise the oil industry — Mohamed Mossadegh. Kermit is organising a coup. This is the story of how America came up with a blueprint of how to fight its communist enemies abroad while still looking like the good guy. How it maintained its role as the virtuous superpower while getting rid of people it didn’t like. They decided to do it in secret, using the ultimate invisible hand - the CIA. It’s a tale of oil, money, power and marks the start of a toxic relationship between Iran and the US that is still playing out to this day. David Dimbleby tells the story of how in the middle of the 20th century one country - America - became a superpower and shaped the world around it. It began with a vision. A vision born out of the ashes of World War Two. A vision of a world shaped not by war but by peace. This vision of America at the head of the free world came to be the defining idea at the center of the past 80 years of world politics. And yet now it is under threat. So how did we get here? How did America become the leader of the free world and why did it go wrong? It’s a story shaped by people. People you have probably never heard of. In the 20th Century, these ‘invisible hands’ wrote the story America came to believe about itself. A story of moral leadership leading to prosperity and peace. But is it a story that has run out of steam? Presenter: David Dimbleby Producer: Redzi Bernard Sound Design: Jeff Emtman Executive Producers: Joe Sykes and Dasha Lisitsina Story Editor: Joe Sykes, Dasha Lisitsina, and Peggy Sutton Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke A Samizdat Audio production for BBC Radio 4

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The History Podcast

2026-08-03T21:00:00+00:00

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There's a reason child vaccination rates are falling - and it's not social media

2026-08-03T15:10:05+00:00

Twenty-week-old Grayson easily could have become one of the tens of thousands of British babies left unvaccinated against polio.

His mother, Lily, agrees with the principle of immunisation. But overwhelmed by the early weeks of motherhood, and suffering from post-partum depression after a traumatic birth, she was daunted by the prospect of a long journey to a doctor's surgery. "I've been through the trenches, awake all night. You don't want to leave the house, or go to a different town."

Weeks ticked by, and eventually Grayson missed the polio and diphtheria jabs he was supposed to get at eight weeks old. By that point he was officially classed by the NHS as "overdue" for vaccination; effectively, he was on his GP's naughty list.

Then Lily realised there was a clinic practically on her doorstep - at a location she hadn't expected.

That clinic - in Keighley, West Yorkshire - runs from a vacant retail unit at the Airedale shopping centre, a 1960s-era precinct that locals say has fallen on hard times in recent years, with plenty of empty, boarded-up units. The staff who created the clinic thought: why not use one of those vacant units to administer vaccines?

"This was an empty shop; there was nothing here, the windows were all blacked out," Flora Jennings, a local charity coordinator, tells me over the sound of a baby's laughter, on the morning I visit the clinic.

It's an imaginative solution to a national problem. Over the last 15 years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across Britain. The share of five-year-olds in England who have received a four-in-one jab (which protects against viruses like polio and tetanus) is now 81%, down from 89% in 2014. About 84% have received both of their recommended MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) jabs, down from 88% a decade ago.

"If you just look at the generalised population, the decline doesn't look horrific," says Prof Dan Hungerford, an epidemiologist at the University of Liverpool who gave evidence to Parliament on this topic. "But if you compare us to other nations, particularly our European neighbours, we are one of the worst-performing countries in terms of getting early-life vaccinations to children."

Politicians are now asking how Britain - the country of Edward Jenner, the "father of immunology" - could have allowed its immunisation rates to drop so low, and what could fix it.

One Labour MP on the Health Committee has gone further, telling the BBC that it's time to consider a policy that's commonplace in some countries, but still something of a taboo in Britain: mandatory childhood immunisations.

Before the 1800s, between 40% and 50% of children in Europe died before their 15th birthday. Now, in Britain that number is well below 1%, according to the UN.

Scientists broadly agree that vaccines were key to this improvement.

"Along with clean water and sanitation, immunisations have had a profound impact on keeping children alive," says Ben Kasstan-Dabush, a lecturer in global health policy at the University of Edinburgh.

And that's why some find it so worrying that Britain's rates have slipped. Last year alone saw measles outbreaks in parts of Birmingham, Bristol, and north London; so far this year, two children in England have died of the disease.

In January, MPs on the Health Committee described the backslide as "national disgrace".

Some blame the rise of misinformation on social media. Last year, a group of American scientists found that reading just one anti-vax Facebook comment about the HPV jab - given to teenagers - was enough to make some parents hesitate.

But all of the public health experts who spoke to the BBC said that whilst anti-vax social media sentiment plays its part, they don't think it's the main reason immunisation rates have slipped.

Instead, they point to something more mundane: they think that parents of young children simply have fewer face-to-face contacts with medical professionals than they did 10 or 15 years ago.

Beccy Baird, a senior fellow at the King's Fund think tank, says that despite colourful media reporting around "anti-vaxxers", most parents who turn down vaccination are not ideologically opposed to it. Convenience plays a big role, she says; vaccination rates are highest when parents regularly interact with medics, who can remind them to get their children jabbed and tell them exactly where to do it.

And those interactions have become rarer. England has seen a 45% decline over the last decade in the number of health visitors (nurses and midwives who treat young children at their home), according to BBC analysis. It's part of a health visitor's job to remind parents about vaccines and, in some cases, administer jabs directly.

And over roughly the same period, the number of fully trained GPs in England struggled to keep up with rising patient demand, according to British Medical Association data; while the Nuffield Trust think tank suggests that patients have become less likely to see the same GP on repeated visits - meaning families don't build trusted relationships with doctors they recognise.

"Those touch points have become fewer," says Kasstan-Dabush.

At Keighley's shopping centre, inside the vaccination clinic, nurses are passing around biscuits.

"The kitchen's there, the playpen's there," says Jennings as she points to a soft-play where parents can leave children while their siblings are vaccinated. "I wanted it to be really inviting, almost like you're walking into someone's home."

The idea of opening a vaccination clinic inside a town centre shopping arcade seemed odd to some of the staff when it was first suggested.

Now, they say it's key to the clinic's success. "We need to make it simple, we need to put services where people come," says Jennings. It means they can catch casual shoppers who "pop their head around the door" and decide on a whim to get their child vaccinated.

"We're right in the centre. And down here it's flat, so you don't have to push a pram up a hill." She says some parents simply won't attend a clinic if it involves more than one bus.

And in the families come. Over the morning, the clinic vaccinates 10 infants, some of whom are classed by the NHS as "overdue". In many cases, the parents actually turn up to use a different service, like baby weighing, but once they are inside, lead GP Dr Zoyah Hussain gently suggests an immunisation - and most parents say yes.

"I do get a lot of questions… 'why do we need to give them jabs?', 'why don't we just let nature manage itself?'," Hussain says.

There's Lily, the 18-year-old who finally gets her son Grayson his polio and diphtheria jabs. And there's Keeley, an assistant in a ceramics shop, who arrives with her baby Luca, and is impressed by the clinic's convenience, with no need for an 08:00 phone call or complicated online form. "It's easy-peasy," she says.

Most of the young mothers have come across online anti-vax posts. "I see these things on Facebook where it's like, don't give your child vaccines because it's got ADHD in them," says Lily. Indeed, Hussain says she still hears parents asking if the MMR jab causes autism, a full 28 years after a link was suggested in a now-discredited paper by the former doctor Andrew Wakefield.

So what can be done about falling vaccination rates across the rest of the country?

One option is to emulate the Keighley model, and open walk-in clinics in vacant retail units. Jennings argues there are crumbling shopping centres all over the country, hit by online shopping, that could do the job.

Baird, from the King's Fund, agrees that vaccination works best when it's carried out in small, easy-to-access local venues - like shopping centres - rather than large, intimidating vaccine hubs that might involve a long journey. In a paper, she studied the roll-out of Covid vaccines in Gloucestershire - and found that "vaccines delivered locally through… familiar community venues - instead of mass-vaccination centres - made access easier, more trusted".

She says: "If you put it in Tesco car park, people will get it."

But some experts are sceptical. Whilst schemes like Keighley's can help on the margins, they say, at the national level a much bigger answer is needed. Hungerford says that child poverty is a key driver of vaccine refusal; parents who have to worry about bills often don't have the brain space to think about immunisations, he says.

And some are pushing for more radical solutions.

Labour MP Paulette Hamilton, a former nurse who was recently interim chair of Parliament's Health Committee, tells the BBC it's time for a "national conversation" on whether child vaccinations should be "opt out" rather than "opt in" (though she stresses she is not speaking on behalf of the committee).

"We were a country that was free of some of these childhood illnesses, and now it's just getting really bad," she says. "The conversation should be about, do you get a small payment [for getting your child vaccinated]? Do you make it mandatory, so you opt out rather than opt in? Is it that we need more education?."

She didn't specify what an "opt out" policy would look like, but various US states already do it. In Texas, a child needs certain vaccinations to attend school, unless their parent fills out a government-issued form explaining a moral, religious, or medical exemption. Supporters say these policies capture the "casual refuseniks" - people who aren't particularly opposed to vaccination, but simply don't make the effort to get their child jabbed.

All that said, experts stress that there's still a degree of mystery about Britain's vaccination problem.

Some parents who refuse jabs simply won't say why - and they're the same groups (poor, lower levels of educational attainment) who are hard to reach via surveys.

This becomes apparent towards the end of my morning at the clinic, when a couple in their thirties arrive to have their baby weighed. Hussain quickly notices that their 23-week-old hasn't had any of his recommended jabs - and asks if they might consider it. The couple glance at each other and quietly shake their heads.

They don't give a reason, and they turn down my request for an interview (the only parents who do so).

Still, Hussain hopes their conversation might have planted a seed. "I've sent her some information. Giving them a platform to speak about their concerns can help.

"It's not us forcing it on anyone. This is a choice."

Top image credit: Getty Images.

Across the Red Line

2026-08-03T00:30:00+00:00

Available for over a year

Birth rates in the UK have fallen to their lowest level in decades. Deaths are starting to outnumber births. Some see a slow-burning crisis that threatens the economy and the welfare state. Others say this is not a crisis at all. That in a wealthy, high-consuming country, having fewer children might even be a good thing. Anne McElvoy mediates debate between Paul Morland, a demographer who believes falling birth rates pose a serious risk and we need to act now, and Professor Sarah Harper from the Oxford Population Ageing Unit, who believes we will adapt to a changing world which will include smaller populations. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

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Sir John Curtice: The 'Burnham bounce' is real but it's not massive

2026-08-01T01:13:00+00:00

The consistent message of the opinion polls since the new prime minister walked into Downing Street almost a fortnight ago is that Labour is enjoying a "Burnham bounce". And this has now been confirmed by the party's convincing victory in Thursday's Greater Manchester mayoral by-election.

Polls conducted in the last week put Labour on average in the mid 20s. It is the party's highest standing since the beginning of last year and compares to their rating of 19% in late June when Sir Keir Starmer announced he was standing down.

But with Reform polling only narrowly behind Labour, Burnham's party still has a long way to go before it can face the prospect of fighting a general election with confidence.

The Burnham boost is far from unprecedented.

All but one of the recent mid-term changes of prime minister have been followed by an increase in the popularity of the incumbent government. Support for Labour rose by seven points after Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair in 2007, while the Conservatives enjoyed a six-point bounce when Boris Johnson took over from Theresa May in 2019. Only Liz Truss' arrival in Downing Street in 2022 – which was overshadowed by the death shortly thereafter of Queen Elizabeth II – failed to give her party a boost.

We should also bear in mind the depth of the electoral hole that Burnham has inherited as Labour leader. The 19% at which Labour stood when Sir Keir resigned was the lowest poll rating passed on by any prime minister departing mid-term – even lower than the 23% bequeathed by Liz Truss when she resigned after just 45 days in office.

Against that backdrop, it would have been very surprising indeed if the replacement of the deeply unpopular Sir Keir by the relatively popular Burnham had not given Labour a short-term boost. However, even after Burnham's bounce, his party's poll average is still the lowest for any newly minted mid-term PM, while the party is still well adrift in the polls of the (relatively low) 35% it won at the 2024 general election.

That said, Labour's victory in Thursday's Manchester mayoral by-election was convincing. True, Labour's 47% share of the first preference vote was well down on the 63% that Burnham secured in the last mayoral contest shortly before the 2024 general election. However, not only did it represent a near doubling of the 24% that Labour registered across the region in May's local elections, but also it was even four points up on Labour's tally locally in the 2024 general election – and thus a much better performance than would have been anticipated from even the latest national polling.

But with still no more than a narrow lead over Reform, it is unsurprising Burnham has ruled out an early election. In any event, Reform's displacement from first place in the polls for the first time in over a year appears to owe more to its own difficulties than it does to Labour's new-found popularity.

Reform has been dogged in recent weeks by questions about the legality of the source of some of its funding and about whether Farage should have declared to the Commons authorities some of the funding he received before being elected an MP. Following these allegations, Farage announced on 7 July that he was standing down and putting himself again before the voters of his Clacton constituency in a by-election now scheduled for 13 August.

This move appears to have backfired. Immediately before Farage's announcement, Reform's average poll rating stood at 27%. In the polls conducted immediately after Farage's announcement, it fell by three points to 24%, the level at which it still stands now, and the lowest it has been for 15 months. At the same time, Farage's personal poll ratings are now the worst they have been since he returned as Reform's leader during the 2024 election campaign.

In the Manchester by-election, Reform's share of the first preference vote was nine point down on its tally across the region in May's local elections. As in the Makerfield by-election, the party seemingly suffered from the advance made by Rupert Lowe's breakaway from Reform, Restore Britain, which won nearly 9% of the Manchester vote, outpolling the Conservatives in the process.

But for Reform's difficulties, the "Burnham bounce" would probably have been insufficient to put Labour in the lead in the national polls.

The principal source of that bounce has been clawing voters back from the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, both of whom have suffered a two-point drop since Burnham's uncontested victory in the Labour leadership contest. For the Greens – much of whose increased support in recent months came from disappointed 2024 Labour voters – the change of prime minister has proven particularly damaging. The Greens' current 11% tally is as much as four points adrift of where it was when Sir Keir announced he was leaving.

When he resigned, 14% of Labour's 2024 election voters said they would now back the Greens. That figure is now 9%.

Winning back former Labour voters has generally been a key component of the Burnham bounce. Overall, 67% of those who voted Labour in 2024 now say they would vote for the party, compared to 57% when Sir Keir indicated he was leaving Downing Street.

Following Farage's difficulties, Labour is also now losing fewer of its 2024 voters to Reform. But the same is true of the Conservatives, whose loss of support to Reform in the polls during this Parliament has always been much greater than that suffered by Labour. Far from suffering from a Burnham bounce, Kemi Badenoch's party has edged up to 20% in the polls for the first time since last spring.

Burnham's arrival has given Labour new hope. But despite having overtaken Reform in the polls, the new Labour leader still has to prove he can win back the working class pro-Brexit voters that Labour once regarded as its core vote but who now form the heart of support for Reform.

To do this – and put Labour on course for victory in 2029 - Burnham needs to deliver on the policy challenges facing his government, which remain as formidable as those that beset Sir Keir. Labour's prospects at the next election will ultimately depend on whether voters have come to believe that what he has said he will do is actually happening.

John Curtice is a professor of politics at Strathclyde University and senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe

Top picture credit: Reuters

Sir John Curtice: The 'Burnham bounce' is real but it's not massive

2026-08-01T01:13:00+00:00

But with Reform polling only narrowly behind Labour, Burnham's party still has a long way to go before it can face the prospect of fighting a general election with confidence.

The Burnham boost is far from unprecedented.

But for Reform's difficulties, the "Burnham bounce" would probably have been insufficient to put Labour in the lead in the national polls.

When he resigned, 14% of Labour's 2024 election voters said they would now back the Greens. That figure is now 9%.

John Curtice is a professor of politics at Strathclyde University and senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe

Top picture credit: Reuters

How the UK's extreme heat is shifting the conversation about air-con

2026-07-29T15:33:01+00:00

Mandy Bourne lives with her 80-year-old mum in a top-floor social housing flat in the West Midlands. Both struggle with health conditions exacerbated by the recent heatwaves.

For Mandy, temperature shifts can trigger flare-ups of her chronic lung condition. "I've got COPD and sometimes I can't breathe," she explains.

Across the UK, solid brick homes like theirs quietly absorb heat the way they have for decades. Charged-up walls radiate warmth back into rooms that never get the chance to cool.

Mandy says she is constantly reaching for her inhaler as her flat overheats. "It's red hot in the flat. The sun is just beaming in."

That retained warmth can push night-time temperatures in urban centres up to 7C higher than the surrounding countryside. This is the urban heat island effect and it is at its most dangerous in the early hours when bodies need cooler air and cannot find it. Modelling of a previous West Midlands heatwave by researchers from the University of Birmingham reached the bleak conclusion that the heat island impact alone accounted for roughly half the 130 heat-related deaths.

Jo Shields, head of sustainability for Mandy's housing association Walsall Housing Group, known as whg - which owns 23,000 homes across Walsall and the Midlands - hears the same complaint time and again. "The heat gain stays within the concrete or the brick," she says, "so the night-time cooling becomes harder".

Last summer, as the region baked, the residents of Ellum Pointe - a whg scheme for the over-55s - began telling their landlords they simply could not cool their flats. The response was improvised.

"We took the community room, closed all the windows and doors, and we put a mobile air-conditioning unit in there," Shields says. "And basically, we created an internal cool room." She likens it to the warm spaces opened during the pandemic for people who couldn't afford to heat their homes.

Shields' job has previously focused on decarbonising - reducing the emissions from the housing stock - but she now has to balance those pressures with the need to adapt homes to rising heat. Across the country, landlords are facing similar choices.

As Britain enters a new kind of summer, with homes built to trap warmth and heatwaves intensifying, two questions loom: should we embrace air conditioning despite its costs and consequences, and how much should we spend on adapting homes versus cutting carbon?

For 40 years, wealthy countries have focused heavily on cutting the carbon emissions that cause climate change, known as mitigation. Adaptation such as designing housing so it is more resilient to hotter temperatures and installing air conditioning has not always had the same focus.

Reducing emissions was seen as morally right because richer nations produced most of the gases that have warmed the planet. And with that focus came a funding imbalance.

In 2023, $1.8tn was given to mitigation, while adaptation did not secure even 5% of that – it scraped $65bn globally.

Spending too much on adaption was seen by many as giving up on the fight against climate change. But this mainstream view has now been challenged.

In a memo published last year, Bill Gates - a man who has poured billions into clean technology - argued that the climate movement's "doomsday" fixation on temperature targets had diverted money from the things that most improve lives in a warming world.

Climate change is serious, he wrote, but "will not lead to humanity's demise". Governments, he added, should be investing in cooling for the countries that need it.

There's another reason that muddies the waters and helps explain why cutting carbon became the prime focus – it was investable. Heat pumps and EVs can be sold. Spending on shade, ventilation and cooler hospitals and homes all produce little in the way of bankable returns - even if it reduces costs of climate change long term.

Baroness Brown - also known as the engineer Julia King, who chairs the adaptation committee of the government's Climate Change Committee - argues this imbalance is written into UK law.

Under the Climate Change Act, the mitigation half of her committee recommends legally binding carbon budgets that ministers must deliver and are marked on every year.

Adaptation has no such teeth: the government writes its own risk assessment and its own plans.

"Essentially, the government writes an essay, and our job is to say, is it doing the things it said would do in its essay. It's not actually to say, are these things any good."

Her committee has spent, she says, "almost 20 years pulling our hair out" - but this year has been different. With exquisite timing it produced a report just as the first heatwave was striking Britain in May - urging lawmakers to set hard adaptation targets.

"We've actually looked at the difference that providing some sort of support with cooling for the 30% of most vulnerable homes, and cooling in our hospitals, [with] preventive care visits. The modelling we've done suggests that that would reduce 40% of the increase in heat-related deaths that are predicted for 2050."

"We're saying these are the actions that can make a big difference."

One of the most controversial ideas in the report is on air conditioning. Right now, only 5% or so of English homes have a cooling unit. The Committee recommends fitting these devices in hospitals and care homes within 10 years, and schools in 25 years.

This goes against years of government advice that passive cooling was the preferred method - using shade, ventilation and other design features to bring down temperatures, not mechanical means.

Prof Mat Santamouris from the University of New South Wales, is the world's most-cited researcher on urban overheating.

Machines, he argues, should be the last line of defence: reflective roofing alone, in one of his studies, dragged indoor temperatures from around 43C towards 30C, while a ceiling fan gives comfort for a fraction of the cost.

Putting up unshaded glass towers in cities, he says, is "crazy". "We cannot air-condition our way out of climate change."

Santamouris is scathing about who is driving the air con demand - the industry, he says, is "extremely powerful" – adding that passive cooling adds its own economic growth, as money is spent on plumbers and builders.

Against him stand those who think Britain's hostility to cooling has curdled into a type of masochism.

David Lawrence, of the Centre for British Progress think tank, puts it plainly: we don't tell people to insulate their homes in winter and then skip the radiators. So why insist shade and shutters are enough in summer?

He points out that air conditioning is standard now in offices, hotels and shops, "but we don't expect it for schools and hospitals - which is kind of odd, because those are places where millions of people are every day", and where heat measurably dents concentration, learning and health.

This dispute over the pros and cons of the technology is becoming political.

Some London councils, following a planning "cooling hierarchy", say low-energy ways of keeping homes cool should be prioritised over air conditioning and in a small number of cases have ordered property owners to remove them; the Conservative front bench calls it "dark ages" miserabilism; other MPs and political commentators demand an "air-con revolution".

Since April, in England and Wales the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has offered £2,500 towards a reversible air-air heat pump: a machine that warms a home in winter and cools it in summer. It is, in all but name, Britain's first air-conditioning subsidy - but it is badged as a heat pump, and only worth a third of the £7,500 for a heating-only model.

Such has been the silence around this grant, that in its first month only around 45 households claimed it. By comparison, the numbers claiming a heating-only model ran into the thousands.

In Scotland homeowners can also get a £7,500 grant for a heat pump via its Home Energy scheme - but for air-air versions that could offer cooling there is no funding at all. And in Northern Ireland there is no universal heat pump grant offered for households.

Under the terms of the England and Wales scheme, some people cannot apply at all. It is closed to social housing and new builds - which many argue shuts out the very people most exposed.

Take Woolwich, in south-east London, where a resident called Keisha says her top-floor flat reaches 43C in a heatwave.

She calls the building "inhumane"; she and around twenty neighbours in Canada Court and Clifton Lodge are taking their landlord, the housing association PA Housing, to court over homes they say are unfit to live in.

Even the landlord half-concedes the ground: its chief executive accepts that a growing number of residents face "uncomfortably warm temperatures … due to the changing climate", in homes "designed to keep heat in rather than keep them cool".

Keisha is exactly the tenant the state's new cooling grant might have been written for. But as a social tenant, she is barred from it.

Baroness Brown's committee finds the most deprived neighbourhoods are more than seven times as likely to be badly exposed to heat.

The government had a long-running scheme for supporting upgrades to social housing - ECO - but it will close after this year over reports of "cowboy" installations. The replacement scheme, if it continues under the new government, will not start until next year.

Santamouris and Baroness Brown reach for the same answer: passive cooling first, machines where genuinely needed, clean power behind them, and the lesson that France learned painfully in the deadly heatwave of 2003 - the vulnerable protected rather than left to improvise.

Cooling every home by machine would strain the grid and warm the streets, hampering the effort to slow the warming that drives the demand.

In Tokyo, Santamouris says, so many air conditioners now pump their waste heat into the air that the exhaust alone generates heat that's measured at close to a thousand watts of warming on every square metre - as much energy as falls from the sky at midday. "It's another sun," he adds with emphasis, "another sun."

"It's not the same in London. But if we continue in the same way, in some years we will have the same results."

The heat of this year and last, and the prospects of it being repeated, is a future Jo Shields is upset by.

"It's our survival," she says. Most days, she tries to bury the thought of it - "because otherwise it terrifies me."

Meanwhile, Mandy says she is grateful that the new community room with its air conditioning is providing some immediate respite for her and her mum.

"We sit there all day with it on, it helps so much I want one in my flat."

Top picture credit: Getty Images