Nigel’s gang has its own ‘one in, one out’ policy, having lost two MPs since the election – now it’s all eyes on the next one to exit

Nigel Farage has always been keen on a “one in – one out” policy. At the last election, Reform won five seats. Two MPs, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock, have since left the party over artistic differences – ie, falling out with Nige – and have gained only one in the cold-hearted Sarah Pochin. Now they are back to their full complement. Five, it turns out, is the magic number. The race is on to find, not just the next recruit, but the next to leave. It could be anyone. Get too close to the Sun God Nige and you tend to crash and burn.

For once, the email from Reform insisting that Monday’s press conference would contain an important announcement was more or less accurate. Normally all you get is a parade of new councillors or a policy that is never going to happen. But this time Reform had gone all in. A room in a luxury Mayfair hotel. And Nige talking deadly earnestly about preparing for government. A job so important, it couldn’t be entrusted to any of his current half-witted derelicts, such as Richard Tice or Lee Anderson. They were really only there as cosmetics. To make up the numbers.

As the show based on their cult TV hit goes on the road, the duo discuss haunted theatres, feeling like arthritic swans and what it was like being mobbed in Shanghai

How do you make a shopping centre in Woking spooky? I bow before Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s many career achievements: Perrier award-winners, makers of successive hit TV series, not to mention megastars (as I shall soon discover) in China. But can they convince us that there are old ghosts haunting the 90s-built New Victoria theatre, located in a shopping mall? Such is the challenge faced by the Inside No 9 duo as they take their hit show-of-the-series on tour. “We made it very much about the ghosts of Wyndham’s theatre,” says Shearsmith of the show’s West End run. “Now we have to change it so that every place we’re in, that’s where there’s a legend of bloody Belle, and that’s where she haunts.”

Over the tour, that may mean the 100-year-old Liverpool Empire or Edinburgh Playhouse: no problem. Or it might be the rather fresher Marlowe in Canterbury or Milton Keynes theatre, which opened in another shopping precinct in 1999. “That doesn’t lend itself to a legend,” admits Shearsmith, chatting over lunch at a London rehearsal room. “So we are amending the phraseology to make it sound older than it is. We’ll say ‘a quarter of a century’ rather than ‘25 years ago’. One sounds recent and the other sounds old.”

This week the first migrants could be flown out of Britain under the ‘one in, one out’ deportation scheme. They talk about their fears and incomprehension

“We can’t eat. We can’t sleep. We have been locked up in this place for more than a month. Some people expect to be forced on to a plane to France today. Nobody wants to go. For us, this is a disaster.”

The man speaking, Fessahaye, is an asylum seeker from Eritrea who fled indefinite military conscription in his home country, and walked through the Sahara before being tortured and enslaved in Libya. He eventually crossed the Mediterranean and reached Europe. From France he travelled to the UK in a small boat.

Created in 1997 and once a Victorian toilet, the 10 sq metre venue was at risk of demolition until the residents of Malvern, Worcestershire, stepped in

Perched on a sign above a tiny stage draped with red velvet curtains are the Latin words “Multum in parvo”. Meaning “much in little”, it has become the motto of this minuscule establishment in the Worcestershire town of Malvern.

This is the world’s smallest commercial theatre with room for 12 people – or 16 with some standing – that has been brought back to life by local residents after falling into disrepair and at risk of demolition.

The whole pantomime is meaningless. The leader makes his or her speech, the commentariat falls upon it, and to anyone half normal reality simply continues, undisturbed

Conference season has arrived for the big political parties, and every year for the past 20 years, I have attended some, though not all, of it. I always have a lot of complaints, which I used to think were all different but in fact boiled down to the same thing: this pantomime doesn’t mean anything. The leader makes his or her speech, the commentariat falls upon it, more often than not declaring it to have saved them from whatever surge of unpopularity they were engulfed in the week before, and to anyone half normal, reality simply continues, undisturbed. No, Boris Johnson promising to “level up” in 2021 did not address the cost of living crisis. Keir Starmer having a tool-maker dad with his “eye on the object” (same year) did not make him more relatable or charismatic.

There were some years that I thought maybe I was being naive, and the wiser heads were correct – might Tony Blair’s admission of fault, in the vaguest imaginable terms (“I now look my age. You feel yours,” at the Labour conference in 2003), be the decisive turning point when we all learned to stop worrying and love the Iraq war? Nope, it was not.

Starmer announced multibillion-pound link-up to build ‘mini-nukes’ likely to be signed during Trump visit

• UK and US line up string of deals to build modular nuclear reactors in Britain

Britain is on the brink of a “golden age of nuclear”, according to Keir Starmer, who has announced a multibillion-pound US-UK partnership to build a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs), sometimes called “mini-nukes”.

The agreement, likely to be signed during Donald Trump’s state visit this week, involves speeding up safety checks to bring new reactors online faster.

Departure of political strategy director Paul Ovenden is yet another setback for PM after Mandelson and Rayner exits

A senior adviser to Keir Starmer has resigned after it was revealed he sent inappropriate messages about the Labour MP Diane Abbott eight years ago.

Paul Ovenden quit on Monday as the prime minister’s director of political strategy after details emerged about a sexually explicit WhatsApp conversation he had in 2017.

Comments follow remarks by Keir Starmer who is under pressure to be more proactive in defence of diversity

Downing Street has fiercely condemned Elon Musk for using “dangerous and inflammatory” language, after he told a crowd of protesters in London that “violence is coming” and “you either fight back or you die”.

Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, appeared via video link at the rally that left 26 police officers injured on Saturday. He spoke to the activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, while thousands watched and listened.

Kash Patel says DNA found on towel wrapped around rifle believed to have been used to kill Kirk matches that of Tyler Robinson

Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, has said that DNA evidence found by investigators links the man accused of killing rightwing political activist Charlie Kirk to the fatal attack despite his alleged refusal to cooperate with authorities after his arrest.

Speaking on the conservative-friendly Fox News network on Monday morning, Patel said that DNA found on a towel wrapped around the rifle believed to have been used to kill Kirk matches that of the suspect in custody, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.

Couple took newborn to live in a tent in wintry conditions in Brighton after going on the run to evade social services

Two parents who caused the death of their newborn baby after taking her to live in a tent in wintry conditions to evade social services have each been sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Constance Marten and Mark Gordon went off the grid in late 2022; their four older children had previously been taken into care due to concerns for their safety if left with the couple.