Gerry Adams tells high court he was stunned by 1996 Docklands bombing

Gerry Adams has told the high court he was stunned by the 1996 Docklands bombing as he denied being at the nerve centre of the IRA’s operations.The former Sinn Féin leader also denied having any prior knowledge of the bombing of the commercial district of east London, which shattered a 17-month-old ceasefire.Adams, 77, is accused in the civil trial of being a member of the IRA, having sat on its army council and being culpable for the Docklands bombing, the Manchester bombing in the same year and the 1973 bombing of the Old Bailey in central London.On Adams’s second day on the witness stand, Max Hill KC, acting for men who were injured in the three bombings, suggested to the defendant that he had been behind the Docklands bombing as a way to bolster Sinn Féin’s political strategy.“You shared the frustrations you described others holding and the need, in light of those frustrations, to perpetuate the armed struggle to bring the British government to the table,” he said

Reeves speech had a giant hole: the sky-high cost of energy for industry | Nils Pratley

We’ll have closer trade relations with the EU, be the fastest adopters of AI in the G7, shift some tax revenues to the regions and squash the nimbys if they stand in the way of growth “corridors”. It’s a plan. Or, at least, it’s a sketch of a plan since the EU will surely have its own ideas on what it wants from trade renegotiations. Still, Rachel Reeves’ big resetting speech this week set a direction.But then one comes to the elephant in the room: the sky-high cost of energy for UK industry

Memory loss strikes down Starmer and Badenoch at an infuriating PMQs | John Crace

There’s something weird going on in Westminster. A mutant pathogen in the water maybe. Whatever it is, Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch appear to have been struck down by it.Both have had parts of their memory wiped. At times they now sound like the living dead

Starmer claims Tory party has ‘problem with Muslims’ after Nick Timothy tweet

Keir Starmer has claimed the Conservative party “has a problem with Muslims” after the shadow justice secretary described an event where the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, joined others to pray in Trafalgar Square as “an act of domination”.During PMQs, the prime minister urged Kemi Badenoch to sack Nick Timothy over a post on X in which he shared a clip of Khan and other Muslims praying in the square.Timothy wrote: “Too many are too polite to say this. But mass ritual prayer in public places is an act of domination.” He went on to say: “The domination of public places is straight from the Islamist playbook

Starmer says Tory shadow minister should be sacked for criticism of Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square – as it happened

Badenoch says Starmer did not answer the question. Did he pick up the phone to Mandelson.She says Starmer said Mandelson lied to him. That implied that they spoke.Starmer again criticises Badenoch

Polanski positions Greens’ economic policy as radical alternative to Reeves

The venue for Zack Polanski’s economic speech on Wednesday – a sunny north London garden centre – could hardly have been more different to the sombre City backdrop for Rachel Reeves’s Mais lecture a day earlier.The chancellor was, as it happens, the last politician to give a major economic speech at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the leftwing thinktank that invited the Green party leader, Polanski, to set out his stall as part of its 40th anniversary celebrations. Back in 2018 it hosted the speech in which, as a backbencher, Reeves called for an “everyday economy” that would prioritise the needs of low-paid workers.But with their determination to appear sober and moderate, Reeves and Labour have struggled to communicate in government a willingness to shake things up, even where they have in fact made significant changes.Enter Polanski