In 2019, our second son was born and our family was, to my mind, complete. Just two years later, my wife sought to persuade me that I did not know my mind. It only took her three more years to succeed. In 2024, our third child was born: another son. That was not what my wife had ordered, and Lionel Richie's promise of 'once, twice, three times a lady' had turned out to be empty words. In many cultures and countries, three sons would deem us truly blessed. But surveying the disaster zone of the playroom, we knew we were instead truly messed. A recurrent theme on Mumsnet is posts about 'gender disappointment'. ✍️ Max Hardy Article |

It was back to the future in the House of Commons today. After their weeks of backslapping and self-delusion, MPs were back in parliament and indulging in a full-blown nostalgia overload. That's right – traumatic for those of us who had to report on it and downright tedious for everyone else – the Brexit wars were back. Burnham had spent the last week focused on foreign affairs, including a trip to the UN. But he'd also found time to go on the Rest is Politics podcast for a cosy fireside chat with the Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose of Centrist Broadcasting Delusion. ✍️ Madeline Grant Article | | @Madz_Grant

Civil servants never cease to amaze with just how lazy and entitled they can be. Not content with switching on their laptops for a few hours a day from the comfort of their sofas, they are now threatening to strike unless they are gifted a four-day week and a 10 per cent pay hike. You couldn't make it up… The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union will hold a strike ballot on 20 October, with demands also including greater protection for working from home, more annual leave and the 'right to switch off'. ✍️ Steerpike Article | | @MrSteerpike

The headlines today say John Healey has a £35 billion hole in his Budget. The figure comes from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) – but the think-tank also says that Healey's headroom, the margin by which government revenues are projected to exceed day-to-day spending in a few years' time, may have barely changed since Rachel Reeves's spring forecast, falling from £24 billion to perhaps £20 billion now. So what's going on? The IFS's £35 billion figure isn't for headroom. ✍️ John O’Neill Article |

'Anti-Semitism never goes away.' Following the Green party's declaration that Zionism is a form of racism, Peter Hitchens argues that the 'disease' of anti-Semitism never really went away - it was just 'suppressed and pushed to the margins'. Watch in full | @ClarkeMicah @aroberts_andrew

On today's Coffee House Shots podcast: James Heale and Tim Shipman examine claims of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. What do we actually know about Moscow's attempts to influence the vote – and did they make any difference to the result? Plus: they discuss Andy Burnham's foreign policy, Labour's plans for a reset with the EU and Nigel Farage's latest attempt to put migration back at the centre of the political debate. Listen | | @JAHeale | @ShippersUnbound

Reform today pledged the 'biggest mass deportation programme' in UK history, as Nigel Farage thrust the issue of illegal migration back onto the Westminster agenda. Over the long conference recess, Andy Burnham has made an immense effort to steer public discourse away from the dinghy crisis, opting instead to make bogus claims about Russian interference in Brexit and focus on forging closer ties with Europe. At a press conference in Dover today, Farage sought to put an end to Labour's distraction tactics – and he was shrewd to do so. ✍️ Noa Hoffman Article | | @hoffman_noa

'He doesn’t know anything.' Peter Hitchens on the Tucker Carlson interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg: some of what Rees-Mogg said was “pretty ludicrous”. Some of what Tucker said was “absurdly wrong”. Watch The Edition in full | @ClarkeMicah

Perhaps the most revealing feature of zoos is the way they expose the curious contradiction in our relationship with other creatures. We visit, marvel at the animals and admire their beauty, intelligence and charm. We coo over them and congratulate ourselves on being animal lovers. Then we go to the canteen for lunch, where we may be served the charred remains of chickens, pigs and other animals that also spent their lives inside cages too small for them, before being taken to the slaughterhouse and killed. Some species, it seems, are to be admired and protected; others are to be bred, imprisoned and slaughtered. We are all conditioned into these distinctions from childhood, rarely stopping to examine them. ✍️ Chas Newkey-Burden Article | | @allthatchas

Twelve billion pounds a month, £3 billion a week, or £420 million a day. If we divide the latest estimate of the size of the 'black hole' in the public finances facing Chancellor John Healey by the time he has been in office, the shortfall is starting to grow at an alarming rate. It is very clear that there is no easy way out of the mess he has inherited from his predecessor Rachel Reeves. All Labour Chancellors seem run out of money eventually, but Healey appears to be getting there in record time. ✍️ Matthew Lynn Article | | @mattlynnwriter

Miriam González Durántez, the wife of Britain's former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, has launched a new political party to contest Spain's general election on 29 November. Resisting conventional ideological labels, her party, Democracia21, is pitching for voters weary of choosing between Spain's bitterly antagonistic political blocs. At the party launch in Madrid on Saturday, she urged 'those who hold their noses when they vote' to support her new party. This year's Pew survey found that 68 per cent of Spaniards were dissatisfied with how their democracy works. Spain has now fallen from 30th in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index in 2012 to 49th in the latest rankings, below Botswana and Rwanda. ✍️ Jim Lawley Article |

Oh dear. Andy Burnham's attempt to smear Brexit as the product of a sinister Russian disinformation campaign has already been exposed as nothing more than… disinformation. During a car-crash set of interviews this morning, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty admitted that no Kremlin attempt to interfere with Brexit had succeeded. Not that Doughty didn't try his damnedest to avoid stating the obvious. ✍️ Steerpike Article | | @MrSteerpike

Léa Salamé is one of the most familiar faces on French television. For the past month, however, she has been absent from the anchor's seat presenting the evening news on the big public network, France 2. At the end of the summer, Salamé announced that she had taken a 'difficult decision' to step away from her high-profile programme to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Salamé is romantically involved with politician Raphaël Glucksmann, who on Sunday won the Socialist primaries and is now the party's official candidate in the French presidential election next spring. ✍️ Matthew Fraser Article | | @frasermatthew

As a regular attendee of the Goodwood motorsports calendar, I am well accustomed to slipping into the back of a Land Rover or large BMW at the end of a busy day to be subsequently whisked away to a waiting gin and tonic at the club bar. Last year, though, as I was contemplating the steak tartare that I would inevitably order for dinner, this Range Rover-looking thing drew up, and I was ushered inside. With plush leather and interior tech that would rival the best that Europe has to offer, I sank back into my seat as the driver took us out of the circuit. ✍️ Henry Lloyd Article |

A year before her death, one French newspaper pondered why it was that a country that had lopped off the heads of its own king and queen was now 'obsessed by the British Royal Family'. Good question. From Harry to Kate to King Charles, the French can't get enough of 'Le Firm'. Season Four of The Crown, for example, which was released in 2020, spent 29 days in the top 10 of the most-watched shows on Netflix in France, including five days at number one. ✍️ Gavin Mortimer Article | | @PhoneyMajor

Viewers at home could have a flutter with spread-betting companies on how long it will take her to stop twitching – I’m imagining dynamic odds, flickering across the bottom of the live feed. And think of the merch: "I was supposed to be executed by lethal injection and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” We live, as we're often told, in an attention economy – one in which abstractions like the impersonal administration of justice, legal principle and human dignity are a poor second to the visceral thrill of spectacle, ragebait, and the latest viral atrocity; one where the logic of terrorism and the logic of political communication and the logic of pornography are becoming near indistinguishable. Public executions for macho thrills are just the next step along the road, and public executions for profit are the step after that. It's, y'know, a no-brainer. ✍️ Sam Leith Article | | @questingvole

Donald Trump has opened up the prospect of America being drawn into a wider Middle East conflict, effectively a second front in the ongoing war with Iran. The US president said he is "going to look at" joining Saudi Arabia in the battle against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. It follows the Houthi missile attack on the King Khalid international airport in Riyadh which killed 12 people and injured 309 others. One of the 12 dead is known to be an American. There may be more US casualties among the severely injured. The attack on the airport has reignited fears of a wider regional escalation. "We may. We're going to look at it," Trump told reporters outside the White House when asked if the US would back Saudi Arabian strikes. "We just found out about the recent attack. So, we'll make a decision. We move very quickly." ✍️ Jawad Iqbal Article |

To paint us as a group to be pitied and reduce our collective character as nothing more than target practice for antisemitism is entirely misplaced. Since it is anathema to the reality of our noisy, maddening and richly diverse community. Were we really a people of trembling knees and weak hearts, would someone like actress Sydney Sweeney even be contemplating joining our tribe? Apparently, an intriguing possibility following reports this week that The Housemaid star is considering converting to Judaism amid her relationship with music manager-turned-media CEO Scooter Braun. ✍️ Angela Epstein Article |

Andy Burnham doesn't only want a 'reset' of relations with the EU. The Prime Minister has hinted that he is open to calls to rejoin it. Anyone tempted to support such an idea, however, would do well to consider a couple of recent developments. If they did, they might well think again. One is a European summit planned for this week, ostensibly about streamlining EU administration. Member states are being asked to consider proposals for not only reducing the number of European Commissioners, but also – and very significantly – possibly ditching veto rights on matters such as EU taxation rules and sanctions on third countries. ✍️ Andrew Tettenborn Article | | @Seatradelawyer