Co-op Live, Manchester
Switching from noirish drama to funk stomps, neo-soul to showgirl glamour, this is a big, bold show from a singer who has entered her ‘dramatic era’

On the variety show-style poster for this tour, Raye pledged her gigs would contain everything from dramatic endings to a jazz cover via a nightclub segment, a brass band, and “musical medicine for those in need”.

She also promised new music. Ahead of her forthcoming album This Music May Contain Hope, she teases its contents from the off, with I Will Overcome. Raye is in a long fake fur coat, leather gloves and sunglasses, looking like the lead from a film noir with the song as its soundtrack: she begins with third-person narration but switches into singing as the character she’s created. When the curtain drops, it reveals a huge band that launches into the rousing and infectious funk stomp of Where Is My Husband!. Raye and her singers reappear in sparkling red dresses, creating an air of elegance and glamour reminiscent of old school Vegas, before thundering drums, brass and strings collide with the theatrical heft of a James Bond number. It’s a beginning so huge that it resembles a finale. “I’ve fully entered my dramatic era,” Raye declares.

In the 2010s it described an insurgent rhetorical style; in the 2020s it is inadequate to account for the wildly diverging fates of the left and right

“Populism” may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.

Now, with the fortunes of the two political poles heading in different directions – the right gaining ground across the west while much of the left struggles to rebound from serial defeats – the notion that this word could encompass such different players seems even less plausible. For a lucid account of these forces, we might have to shift our focus elsewhere: finding terms that can explain their unequal balance of power, so that we can in turn find the proper remedy.

Oliver Eagleton is managing editor at Phenomenal World

Given the average British woman may change dress size more than 30 times in adult life, flexibility is one route to feeling at home in a fluctuating body. But that’s not all it’s good for

I always think that the most stylish woman in a room is the one who looks the most comfortable. She might be nonchalant in a pair of wide trousers and a loose white shirt, or stroll in casually wearing the butter-soft leather loafers she’s had for years. It was a longing to be more like one of those women, as opposed to one who fell over regularly in public because I couldn’t balance in platforms, which made me give up wearing heels for good in 2012. So it was a natural progression, a decade later, to shunning another wardrobe constraint that was making me fidget in social situations: the waistband.

I’m about to turn 49 and in the past eight years I’ve been fluctuating between sizes 10 and 14, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the average British woman may change dress size a whopping 31 times in her adult life. I attribute my own yo-yo-ing partly to the hormonal changes that a body in its 40s inevitably goes through, but I should also acknowledge that during lockdown, I developed a taste for the elasticated tracksuit bottoms that working from home allowed, as well as a macaroni cheese, or two, each week.

It used to be fairly easy to get work that paid at or around the minimum wage. But with a shrinking number of positions come ever more hoops to jump through, from personality tests, to trial shifts, to towers constructed of marshmallows

It is 10.30am, and Zahra is sitting in a business centre in Preston, attaching marshmallows to sticks of uncooked spaghetti. There are 30 interview candidates in the grey-carpeted room, split into groups of five, competing to build food towers. Already today they have had to solve anagrams, complete quizzes and rank the importance of various kitchen items. Just to be shortlisted for this two-hour interview round, Zahra had to write an online application consisting of 10 paragraphs about her work experience. As she builds her spaghetti and marshmallow tower, she thinks: “What am I actually doing here? This doesn’t relate to the job at all.”

The job in question is not what Zahra, 20, plans to do for ever. It is as a crew member for Wingstop, a chicken shop chain, with a salary of £10.80 an hour – 80p an hour above minimum wage for her age range. During the interview, she says, “a woman with a notepad was staring at us, and all the shift managers were watching. It was so awkward.” A week or so later, Zahra received a short rejection email. “It felt like a waste of time,” she says. “What a joke.”

Rio de Janeiro’s carnival is full of contrasts: wealth brushes up against poverty, joyful abandon unfolds alongside hard labour. Its visual expression also explores notions of power. In a country with the largest Catholic population in the world, racy nun costumes are everywhere during the festival. Along with revellers dressing up in sexy police costumes, the Catholic cosplay reveals an element of carnival’s underlying subversive nature: authority figures softened, flipped, and reconsidered through street theatre and play

In 1999, Heather Preen contracted E coli on a Devon beach. Two weeks later she died. Now, as a new Channel 4 show dramatises the scandal, her mother, Julie Maughan, explains why she is still looking for someone to take responsibility

When Julie Maughan was invited to help with a factual drama that would focus on the illegal dumping of raw sewage by water companies, she had to think hard. In some ways, it felt 25 years too late. In 1999, Maughan’s eight-year-old daughter, Heather Preen, had contracted the pathogen E coli O157 on a Devon beach and died within a fortnight. Maughan’s marriage hadn’t survived the grief – she separated from Heather’s father, Mark Preen, a builder, who later took his own life. “I’ve always said it was like a bomb had gone off under our family,” says Maughan. “This little girl, just playing, doing her nutty stuff on an English beach. And that was the price.” Yet there had been no outrage, few questions raised and no clear answers. “Why weren’t people looking into this? It felt as if Heather didn’t matter. Over time, it felt as if she’d been forgotten.” All these years later, Maughan wasn’t sure if she could revisit it. “I didn’t know if I could go back into that world,” she says. “But I’m glad I have.”

The result, Dirty Business, a three-part Channel 4 factual drama, is aiming to spark the same anger over pollution that ITV’s Mr Bates Vs the Post Office did for the Horizon scandal. Jumping between timelines, using actors as well as “real people” and with actual footage of scummy rivers and beaches dotted with toilet paper, sanitary towels and dead fish, it shows how raw sewage dumps have become standard policy for England’s water companies. Jason Watkins and David Thewlis play “sewage sleuths” Peter Hammond and Ash Smith, Cotswolds neighbours who, over time, watched their local river turn from clear and teeming with nature to dense grey and devoid of life. Hammond is a retired professor of computational biology, Smith a retired detective, and together, they used hidden cameras, freedom of information requests and AI models to uncover sewage dumps on an industrial scale.

Government considering delay to equalising national minimum wage after jump in youth unemployment

• UK politics live – latest updates

Ministers are considering a slower rise in the minimum wage for younger workers, amid fears over rising youth unemployment.

Labour had promised in its manifesto to equalise national minimum wage rates by the time of the next election, saying it was unfair younger workers were paid less. Government sources said equalisation remained the aim but the rise could come more slowly.

Airline statement will reassure Britons abroad anxious about new immigration rules coming into effect next week

British dual nationals may be able to board Ryanair flights in Europe to the UK even if they do not have a current British passport when new immigration rules come into force next week, the airline has said.

The clarification comes as Abta, the trade organisation for tour operators and travel agents in the UK, called on the government to introduce a grace period during which British citizens with dual nationality can board flights back to the UK with alternative proof of being British.

Exclusive: Five hospitals failed to spot Amisha Adhia had placenta accreta before one obstetrician intervened

After five hospitals failed to spot that she had a rare but potentially fatal complication of childbirth, Amisha Adhia is to launch a campaign urging the NHS to do more to diagnose the condition and save lives.

Pregnant women are at much greater risk of developing placenta accreta spectrum if they have already given birth by caesarean section or had IVF treatment.

Reform UK’s Treasury spokersperson announces party’s plans to cut welfare spending

Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s Treasury spokersperson, is giving his speech now.

He has announced, or confirmed, three measures to cut welfare spending.

The number claiming disability benefits for an attention disorder has more than doubled since Covid. We all know a significant number of these claims are spurious …

We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression, and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead encourage them into the dignity of work.

We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can’t afford them themselves.

We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can’t afford them themselves.