Party contending for what has until now been safe Tory territory in south

Tom Rutland is sitting in a cafe in Shoreham-by-Sea reflecting on what drives him to want to become a Labour MP. He was just 18 when the party lost power to the Tories under David Cameron in 2010.

“I have spent my whole adult life knowing nothing else but a Tory government,” he says. “During that entire time real wages have not risen at all. Things have to change.”

Thinktank says decisive action must be taken to counter inequality in health, housing, poverty and the north-south income divide

The next government must take decisive action to reduce inequality or risk unprecedented far-right gains, a thinktank has warned.

A report from the Fairness Foundation says that Britain will become more unfair and unequal over the next five years, with growing inequality in health, housing, poverty and the north-south income divide.

Writing in the Observer, the Labour leader vows to restore the bond of trust with politics if his party wins Thursday’s general election

Keir Starmer pledges to “relight the fire” of optimism and hope among the British people – and rekindle their faith in politicians as public servants - if they come out in sufficient numbers and vote for a Labour government in Thursday’s general election.

Writing exclusively for the Observer with just days to go until polling day, the Labour leader says that after 14 years of the Tories “serving themselves”, restoring the “bond of respect between people and politics” will be the precondition for a Labour government’s success.

Business community decries ‘act of arson’ as one-seventh of trade posts within British consulates in the US are scrapped

America was meant to be Britain’s route to the sunlit uplands of Brexit. Then, after hopes of a free trade deal evaporated, successive Conservative governments have set their sights lower, by trying to forge closer ties with individual US states.

Now the civil servants responsible for delivering those state-level deals have been let go, in what a furious British businessman described as “an act of arson”.

Victoria Groce has plenty of answers. Her hardest question: why did it take so long for a woman to win the World Quizzing Championships?

Q. Who was the first woman ever to win the World Quizzing Championships in its 21-year history?

A. Victoria Groce, who beat nearly 2,000 people from 48 countries to claim the title.