Wes Streeting has said that the public should stockpile three days’ emergency supplies, as he warned that Britain must be prepared for a national crisis. As part of a new “national resilience conversation”, households are being advised to keep extra water, food, medical supplies and cash in preparation for potential disruption to essential supply chains caused by cyber-attacks, state-sponsored terrorism and other threats. Storm Austen has left thousands without power after 80mph winds hit parts of the UK. More than 18,000 homes across Devon and Cornwall have experienced power cuts as strong winds and heavy rain lashed the southwest this morning. Raye won this year’s Mercury Prize for her hit second album This Music May Contain Hope. The 28-year-old’s pop record, full of golden age Hollywood glamour, beat the likes of Paul McCartney and Olivia Dean to scoop the £25,000 prize, which recognises the best British or Irish album of the past year.

Trump makes Chamberlain look like a man of principle

Historical comparisons are always “inexact”, says Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. But Donald Trump’s shameless appeasement of Vladimir Putin carries “more than a noxious whiff” of Neville Chamberlain’s failed attempt, in Munich in 1938, to avoid war with Nazi Germany. The difference is that Chamberlain’s peacemaking efforts had the enthusiastic backing of most people in Britain and France, who were desperate to avoid repeating the horrors of World War One. Trump enjoys no such public support, nor does he face any danger of a US war with Russia. His betrayal of Ukraine – trashing Volodymyr Zelensky, buying Russian diesel, waiving sanctions and seemingly ordering “mysterious, lethal interruptions” in US satellite and intelligence sharing – is cynically self-interested, globally dangerous and “utterly contemptible”. He makes Chamberlain look like a man of iron principle. “All that’s lacking is an umbrella.”

Nobody believes Trump has a “strategic vision” for the US, says Gerard Baker in The Times. But ending the war in Ukraine is essential to his goal of re-asserting America’s global supremacy and reaping the financial opportunities of “raw power”. Trump knows that as long as Putin is killing innocent people, Americans won’t accept his vision for a new, highly profitable, normalisation in US-Russia relations. American leverage over Ukraine has decreased – Europe supplies almost all Kyiv’s military and financial assistance. So the natural focus of Trump’s diplomatic effort is Putin, hence Steve Witkoff’s cringing homage to the “humanitarian” in the Kremlin this week. Unfortunately, the plan is doomed. Putin has repeatedly shown his “imperialist ambitions” and knows Trump’s “new world order” won’t survive long. Whoever succeeds the US president, Democrat or Republican, will see Russia not as a friend but as the “implacable adversary” it’s always been.