Not only is nuclear essential if we want to reach net zero – it’s the key to tackling poverty, too

Money can buy comfort, but energy makes comfort possible in the first place. Energy is the great enabler of the modern world. It connects the globe by moving people and hauling goods. It loosens the grip of the weather by warming our homes in winter and cooling them in summer. It forges the steel that raises our cities and synthesises the fertilisers that keep half the world’s population from starvation. It increasingly empowers us by electrifying the technologies we rely on daily.

It is also the great enabler of socioeconomic development. Monetary wealth and energy abundance move in lockstep: plot a graph of GDP per capita against energy consumption per capita, and you’ll draw a straight line. Low-energy, high-income nations do not exist. Prosperity and energy are inseparable; you cannot have one without the other.

Exclusive: PM lacks ambition and vision, says Ed Davey in damning assessment of first 12 months in power

Keir Starmer risks becoming little more than “continuity Rishi Sunak” because of his lack of vision and ambition, Ed Davey has said in a damning assessment of the prime minister’s first year in power.

The Liberal Democrats leader, whose party recorded its best result in a century at the last general election, said believed Starmer was a decent and principled man, but that it was unclear what he stood for.

Chefs have gone head over heels for the brown stuff. Some drown their burgers in it; others serve it with brioche and black pudding; one even turns it into ice-cream. What’s going on?

Pub roasts, grannies, Sunday lunch, Ah! Bisto!: gravy triggers nostalgic food memories for Britons like little else. But unlike complex French sauces, for example, gravy is brown and plain, not gastronomic alchemy. Its homely bedfellows – potatoes and pies – have had fancy makeovers, but gravy’s potential hasn’t been much exploited on the modern menu. Until now.

The nostalgic wave sweeping Britain’s food scene is reviving this ancient staple, but with a twist: gravy is going gourmet. It is appearing as a dip for burgers in London at the upmarket chain Burger & Beyond and at Nanny Bill’s. It is served with brioche and black pudding at Tom Cenci’s modern British restaurant Nessa in Soho, and even does a turn at Shaun Rankin’s Michelin-starred Grantley Hall in Yorkshire, where it is styled as beef tea and served with bread, bone marrow butter and dripping.

The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse

Sereen Haddad is a bright young woman. At 20 years old, she just finished a four-year degree in psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in only three years, earning the highest honors along the way. Yet, despite her accomplishments, she still can’t graduate. Her diploma is being withheld by the university, “not because I didn’t complete the requirements”, she told me, “but because I stood up for Palestinian life.”

A third of emergency responses are to clubs, largely to attend to people having bad experiences with drugs

The ambulance service on the Spanish island of Ibiza says it is at risk of collapse because of frequent callouts to attend to clubbers having bad experiences with recreational drugs.

The local ambulance union says up to a third of emergency calls are to clubs, the largest of which has a capacity of as many as 10,000 partygoers, and are largely drug-related. It is calling on club owners to contract private ambulance services.

A jittery No 10 now seeks the market’s approval for everything. The result? Cruel cuts and a chronic fear of desperately needed public spending

On 6 September 2022, Liz Truss entered No 10 with a clear vision for the country; the country asked her to leave less than 50 days later. But nearly three years on, even though all that remains of her premiership at Downing Street is a portrait she didn’t stick around long enough to see hung, it is she who really runs Britain.

Not through her influence – which has since been reduced to poorly attended speeches at far-right conferences in the US – but through the fear she left behind. Truss may be gone, but what remains is the shadow her failure cast, and the rigid fiscal caution that grew out of it.

Max Mosley is a senior economist at the New Economics Foundation