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Posted by Peter Walker Senior political correspondent

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/18/most-reform-uk-voters-would-back-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-poll-suggests

Exclusive: Best for Britain thinktank says the figures show Nigel Farage is ‘out of step with his base’ on taxation

A majority of potential Reform UK voters would back a one-off wealth tax on the very rich, polling suggests, with about three-quarters supporting windfall taxes on energy companies and banks.

The figures, compiled by the Best for Britain thinktank ahead of next week’s budget, indicate that Nigel Farage might be out of step with many of his supporters.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/18/most-reform-uk-voters-would-back-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-poll-suggests

Posted by Polly Toynbee

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/18/labour-leadership-election-keir-starmer-wes-streeting

The focus should be on talking up this government’s achievements so far – and preventing a Reform victory

The dominant political force sweeping across Europe is the “throw the bastards out” party, whoever happens to be in power. Discontent and distrust spread as global democracy declines. Only 6.6% of the world’s people live in a full democracy, according to the Economist’s global index, down from 12.5% 10 years ago. Europe is still the most democratic place, but it’s turbulent.

Britain is an insular country that needs reminding it is not alone in its political turmoil after an omnishambles week for Keir Starmer’s government. The rumbling earthquakes beneath No 10 also shake the ground under the Élysée Palace and other official residences. A number of European countries have thrown out old governments in the past three years, including Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK (Starmer is Britain’s sixth prime minister in less than a decade). Most are still stuck in a state of post-2008-crash stagnation, more recently compounded by the pandemic, inflation, energy price rises, worsening housing crises and a cost of living squeeze.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/18/labour-leadership-election-keir-starmer-wes-streeting

Posted by Mark Cocker

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/country-diary-what-is-the-thrust-of-the-song-thrush-song-it-has-to-be-joy

Hogshaw, Derbyshire: To hear one in December isn’t totally unheard of – any excuse to revel in that uplifting, deceptively simple sound

It was unmistakable: at dawn, through the bedroom window, a voice of declarative power and pure tones with a volume to rattle the glass. Did-uu … did-uu … did-uu, chwit, chwit chwit. It was a song thrush, and one of those rare occasions when I’ve heard one singing this side of Christmas. I’m tempted to add the “wrong” side, but we’ll come to that.

The customary seasonal order for our three breeding thrushes starting to sing is mistle, then song, with blackbird a month later. However, if we are ranking them in terms of vocal merit then that sequence is usually reversed. It must be added instantly, however, that if the vote were purely on mass approval then the song thrush would come first.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/country-diary-what-is-the-thrust-of-the-song-thrush-song-it-has-to-be-joy

Posted by Presented by Madeleine Finlay, with Ian Sample, sound design by Joel Cox, the executive producer was Ellie Bury

https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2025/nov/18/preparing-for-flu-season-podcast

This year’s flu season has begun more than a month earlier than usual, with a mutated strain spreading widely among younger people and expected to drive a wave of hospital admissions as it reaches the elderly. Science editor Ian Sample speaks to Madeleine Finlay about what we know so far and Prof Ed Hutchinson of the University of Glasgow explains how people can best protect themselves and each other

UK hospitals bracing for once-in-a-decade flu surge this winter

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2025/nov/18/preparing-for-flu-season-podcast

Posted by Steven Morris

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/european-wildcats-could-be-seen-again-in-england-for-first-time-in-100-years

Two-year study finds area of woodland in Devon to be ideal habitat to support a controlled release of the creatures

The prospect of European wildcats prowling in south-west England has taken a leap forward after a two-year study concluded a reintroduction was feasible – and most local people were positive about the idea.

Having been absent for more than a century, mid-Devon has been judged to have the right kind of habitat to support a population of Felis silvestris.

The south-west contains enough woodland cover connected by other suitable habitat to support a sustainable wildcat population.

Two surveys were conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter. In one, 71% of 1,000 people liked the idea of wildcat return. In the other, 83% of 1,425 who responded expressed positivity.

Wildcats pose no significant risk to existing endangered wildlife populations such as bats and dormice. Wildcat diets concentrate on widespread commonly found species, with 75% of their prey consisting of small mammals including voles, rats, wood mice and rabbits.

Wildcats pose no threat to people, domestic pets or farming livestock such as lambs. Commercial and domestic poultry can be protected from wildcats with the same precautions deployed for existing predators such as foxes.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/european-wildcats-could-be-seen-again-in-england-for-first-time-in-100-years

Posted by Wajã Xipai in Belém

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/indigenous-xipaya-journalist-attending-cop30-belem-brazil

An Indigenous journalist’s experience of entering the belly of Cop where time does not flourish, it is consumed

I feel as if I’ve been swallowed. And in the creature’s stomach, I walk with the sensation of being drowned. My nose hurts, with the same pain we feel when we are struggling to breathe. That’s my perception of the blue zone of Cop30, the official area for the negotiations. The architecture makes me think of the stomach of an animal.

My eyes hurt, seeing so many people coming and going through the main corridor. This is the scene of a makeshift forest. On the walls are large paintings of a jaguar, a monkey, an anteater and a lizard. In the middle of the corridor are plants that resemble açaí palm trees, and below them, small shrubs. The place of nature within the blue zone is ornamental.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/indigenous-xipaya-journalist-attending-cop30-belem-brazil

Posted by Robyn Vinter

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/18/women-describe-lasting-effects-choked-strangled-sex

Three women tell of blacking out, feeling dazed and dizzy, and of ongoing memory issues and fatigue

• UK survey shows ‘choking’ becoming normalised in sex

• Warning: this article includes graphic content

When Sophie* woke up on the floor after having a seizure, it took a while before she could comprehend that it had been caused by a man strangling her during sex.

“I blacked out, my legs were kicking, I broke a glass,” she says. At 19, it was the first and only time anything like that had happened to her. “When I came to, I couldn’t work out who he was, where I was, what was going on. And it was utterly terrifying.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/18/women-describe-lasting-effects-choked-strangled-sex

Posted by Guardian Staff

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/nov/18/big-bows-style-trend-feminine-ironic-strangely-subversive

They can be garish and ostentatious, or a sign you are softer than you might first appear. From the catwalk to the high street to the big screen to the rugby pitch, you just can’t miss them right now

Wuthering Heights is a story about pain, revenge and the Yorkshire moors as a metaphor for bad life choices. But if Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation is anything to go by, it’s also about bows.

In the two-minute trailer for the film, Cathy wears red bows and black bows, navy bows and pink bows. There are bows around garden pots, and bows around “baddy” Edgar Linton’s throat. Some bows flutter in the fell wind, others are unlaced at speed. In one memorable shot straight from the Jilly Cooper precoital playbook, a pretty white bow is cut from Cathy’s bodice using a labourer’s knife, which would be unforgivable hamminess were it not incredibly hot. Never mind that Emily Brontë rarely mentions bows in the book; that one is an entire plot device.

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/nov/18/big-bows-style-trend-feminine-ironic-strangely-subversive

Posted by Diane Taylor

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2025/nov/18/people-sent-back-france-uk-one-in-one-out-scheme

In Paris, a group of those returned from UK as part of the immigration scheme say they feel frightened and hopeless

Afran, an Iranian asylum seeker, sits forlornly across the road from a Paris shelter, hemmed in between vast slabs of concrete and thundering trains above. He has been here before – seven weeks ago, to be precise. The second time, he says, is as terrifying as his first.

Afran – not his real name – hit the headlines when he became the first asylum seeker to return to the UK in a small boat after being removed to France under the controversial “one in, one out” scheme on 19 September. He was sent back to Paris for the second time on 5 November.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2025/nov/18/people-sent-back-france-uk-one-in-one-out-scheme