Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to water down plans to make foreign workers wait up to 15 years to get permanent residency, following opposition from within the Labour Party.

The original proposals, laid out last November, would apply to both current and future migrant workers and would double the standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK from five to ten years. The lowest-paid workers, including many employed in the care sector, faced a wait of 15 years.

What did the commentators say?
“Mahmood is tying herself in a large and unedifying knot,” said James O’Brien in The i Paper. Moving the goalposts for overseas migrants already here is a “breach of the metaphorical contract” and sends an “ugly” message that such workers are “irreversibly second class”. In trying to make settlement even harder for vital care workers, Mahmood appears to have been influenced by “immigration rhetoric as opposed to immigration reality”.

For Mahmood to back down on her original plans would be a “grave error”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The situation facing Labour is “depressingly familiar”: the government insists it supports border controls yet objects to policies to secure them. Mahmood may be forced to “retreat” from the “necessary” changes to ILR to regain backbench support, but she must break free from this “Faustian pact”. The home secretary “was right the first time round”.

The Home Office could compromise by only applying the new rules to future arrivals, said David Shipley in The Spectator. But that would be “defeating the entire purpose of the reforms”: mitigating the impact of the “ruinous” so-called “Boriswave”.

What next?
Andy Burnham and Mahmood will now have “calculated where to draw the line so that they can be sure that they have a solid majority of Labour MPs behind them”, said John Rentoul in The Independent. The government will also benefit from a divided opposition on the right. As architects of the Boriswave, any Conservative criticism of Mahmood’s plan will sound hypocritical, while Reform UK “is finding it increasingly hard” to compete with Restore’s more extreme positions on immigration.

Unexpectedly strong sales at Poundland are raising doubts about plans announced by its US owner to “push the discount retailer into bankruptcy”, said The Times. The future of the chain hangs in the balance after investment firm Gordon Brothers filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators at the High Court last week – putting at risk 12,000 jobs.

Business model with shelf life
Poundland attracts more than a million customers a week. At its peak, in 2014, the chain was worth more than £1 billion, but high inflation has “exposed a business model which always appeared to have a shelf life”, said The Guardian. The “low-wage shoppers that make up the core of Poundland’s clientele” have less “spare cash for non-essentials”.

When Poundland arrived on high streets in the late 1990s, it had that “unique selling point” of everything being priced at £1, retail marketing academic Sarah Montano told the BBC. But rising prices have forced Poundland to drop that policy, and a slew of competitors now have “their finger on the key trends” and are offering them at “very similar” or even “cheaper” prices.

‘Long time coming’
Government ministers are said to be looking closely at whether Poundland’s owners are “unnecessarily” forcing “the embattled retailer into administration” and jeopardising thousands of jobs, said the Financial Times. Gordon Brothers launched an “accelerated sales process” for the business last month, but its demand for £30 million to cover a shareholder loan has “deterred potential bidders” and was the basis for its rejection of a going-concern offer from Ireland’s Martin Property Group.

Several “suitors, including Lidl, Poundstretcher, Tesco, The Range and B&M, are understood to want to buy packages of stores” should Poundland go under, said The Times. The demise of Poundland has been a “long time coming”, Centre for Retail Research director Joshua Bamfield told The Sun. The prospect of it “being chopped up into bits” is yet another example of the “erosion of the physical high street”.

Wrestlers face off in a friendly match in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. The West African nation is welcoming athletes from around the world as host of the 2026 Youth Olympic Games, the first Olympic event ever held on the continent.

Nicolas Remene / AFP / Getty Images

The “biggest sign” that winter is around the corner is a “steaming bowl of porridge on the breakfast table”, said Chloe Mac Donnell in The Guardian. This simple oat dish has been around for centuries, but now it’s going from “drab to decadent” as consumers discover the endless potential of this healthy, high-fibre option.

Searches for organic jumbo oats at Ocado have jumped by 98% year-on-year, and content creators on social media are sharing recipes for inventive toppings – both sweet and savoury – that embrace everything from miso to “sour cherry and pistachio butter”.

A previous winner of the World Porridge Making Championship turned oats into a “decadent dessert” by adding sticky dates, “layers of creamy caramel sauce” and a garnish of honeycomb, said Anna Shepherd in The Telegraph. Or you can go down the savoury route and try the “controversial” viral Cheddar and Marmite recipe: pile handfuls of grated cheese into cooked porridge, then add a swirl of the “like-it-or-loathe-it” yeast extract and a blob of butter. “Behold, a salty, stodgy-supper porridge – just the thing for chilly autumn evenings.”

For another savoury take that’s an “unexpected delight”, said Sang Yoon in Food & Wine, add rolled oats and stock to a simmering shallot, garlic and tomato sauce. When the oats are tender, stir in torn basil leaves, grated parmesan, butter and seasoning. Top the lot with a poached egg, for a “delicious, incredibly satisfying meal”.

These midterms could effectively end the Trump era – but neither side is yet ready for what comes next
Nesrine Malik in The Guardian
The expected Republican “hammering in the midterms” may presage America’s deliverance from Donald Trump, writes Nesrine Malik, but it “remains a country riven and undermined by what he has unleashed”. Many of his “toxic” policies are “nearly irreversible”, and although the Maga movement is weaker, it still looks “sharp” against the Democrats’ “disarray” and “generic blah-ness”. A Democrat “midterm surge” might only be a “temporary setback for Trumpism, not the restoration of the old order or the beginnings of a new one”.

Using suicide as a weapon is cheap and wrong
Libby Purves in The Times
An “anonymous celebrity” is seeking an injunction against reporting of sexual misconduct allegations against him, claiming the coverage would make him kill himself, writes Libby Purves. If his injunction bid succeeds, it would “be a blueprint for any public figure” under suspicion “to play the mental-health card”. I’ve lost a son to suicide, and I know that “barring extreme abuse or coercion”, it can “rarely be caused by outsiders”. Threatening it is “a despicable weaponising of love or blackmail about future guilt”.

Celebrities can’t speak properly
Ysenda Maxtone Graham in The Spectator
As “The Celebrity Traitors” reached its “flame-lit final”, three of its stars “pronounced the word ‘traitor’ as ‘trai’or’”, said Ysenda Maxtone Graham. A glottal stop “mid-word or at the end of a word” is fine if that’s “an essential element” of a “regional accent”, but for “too many celebrities”, it’s “an affectation” to avoid sounding “too wealthy or middle-class”. It’s even “spreading” to Radio 4. “I fear for the language of Shakespeare and Jane Austen.”