People who have been granted asylum in the UK will no longer be given automatic settlement and family reunion rights – as part of a government effort to “reduce the pull factor for small boat crossings”. The end of these so-called “golden ticket” rights “marks the latest hardening of Labour’s immigration policy, in an attempt to stymie the popularity” of Reform UK, said The Times.

What is the current process?
After being granted asylum in Britain, refugees previously had the automatic right to petition for their spouse and children to join them. Around 4,000 to 5,000 people a year received a family reunion visa in the early 2010s, but this shot up to 19,710 last year, according to the University of Oxford’s The Migration Observatory, a “likely knock-on effect” of the government’s efforts to clear the backlog in asylum applications. Last month, the scheme was temporarily suspended.

Refugees are also given the right to stay in the UK for five years, during which they can study, work and apply for benefits. When the five years are up, they can apply for indefinite leave to remain, which gives them the right to apply for a British passport.

How will things change?
The suspension of automatic family reunification rights will now become permanent, and refugees will only be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain when they have been in the country for 10 years – and are able to meet new “contribution” requirements. These include being in work, making National Insurance contributions, not taking benefits, learning English “to a high standard”, having a “spotless” criminal record, and “giving back” to the local community.

What are the concerns?
These measures “are taken straight from the populist playbook the government itself has condemned”, Kolbassia Haoussou, a refugee and a director at the charity Freedom from Torture, told The Guardian. They keep “people like us, and our children, on the outside, never really allowed to feel secure or like we truly belong”. Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at The Refugee Council, said there are also concerns that restricting legal paths to family reunion “only pushes more desperate people into the arms of smugglers” in an effort to reach their loved ones.

The FTSE indices were looking mainly stable this week but Aston Martin’s share price “stood out like a beat-up old banger in Harrods’ car park”, said Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. When the car company joined the London stock market in 2018, it likened itself to industry titan Ferrari but, while the Italian car maker “flew off the starting grid”, the British company “went immediately into reverse”. Now, with a grim profit warning, it is “dangerously close to running out of road”.

‘Alerts and alarms’
Despite its cachet with consumers and Bond-favourite reputation, Aston Martin is a “112-year-old marque that burns cash like an AI start-up”, said Bryce Elder in the Financial Times. Based on estimates of cars sold wholesale since 2014, each individual vehicle has “cost the company more than £45,000 on average” – which extrapolates to a “£2.8 billion customer subsidy” in the present day.

It is only the “exceptional generosity” of investors that has kept the company afloat in the last few years, said The Telegraph. Nearly £2 billion has been collected in seven separate rounds of fundraising, along with billions more from banks.

Despite the “alerts and alarms” flashing on a dashboard showing missed performance targets and slumps in demand, “there is still some residual belief that Aston Martin is not heading for its eighth bankruptcy in a little over a century”, said Robert Lea in The Times. The eventual rollout of its new £850,000 “Valhalla” supercar this quarter could, at least, slow the demise. 

‘Brunt’ of American tariffs
Aston Martin faces “new taxes on luxury cars” in China, said Jonathan Prynn in London’s The Standard, and Donald Trump’s tariffs have “ravaged” sales in the US. Unlike other larger British or foreign car-building companies, Aston Martin has no American base for manufacturing, meaning it cannot “avoid the brunt of the tariffs” by expanding further into US production, said Una Hajdari on Euronews.

It’s one of Britain’s most iconic brands and the company’s performance carries “symbolic and economic weight” in the industry. So, this sales slump could be a “bellwether” for the fate of the high-end manufacturing sector. It’s certainly a “stark reminder that prestige cannot shield a brand from tariffs and sluggish demand”.

Keir Starmer watches a screening at Mumbai’s Yash Raj Films studios alongside the company’s CEO Akshaye Widhani and actor Rani Mukerji. The PM is also meeting his counterpart Narendra Modi during his two-day trip to India, accompanied by a large delegation from the UK, in a bid to boost trade ties.

Leon Neal / Getty Images

A con artist released from prison on compassionate grounds is reunited with her old partner in crime and begins planning one last epic heist. “How do you make this very familiar set-up feel fresh?” said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. By casting Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker as the leads and turning the drama into “rollicking good fun”.

Set in “dusty southern Spain”, the action kicks off as Bert (Jones) is released early from a 10-year prison sentence after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her old friend Sam (Whittaker) is ready to look after her in her final months, and takes Bert back to her rural home where she has been “keeping a respectably low profile with only a donkey and some chickens for company”. But it’s not long before Bert is “back to her old tricks” and, by the end of the first episode, she has unveiled her “grand plan: an audacious art heist”.

Shot against the “sweeping” backdrop of Tenerife, the show looks “gorgeous”, said Vicky Jessop in London’s The Standard. Jones and Whittaker are “excellent”: the pair have fizzing chemistry and engage in some “side-splittingly funny set pieces”.

The “bad news” is there are some “implausible” plot points, said Charlotte O’Sullivan in The Independent. Still, “the blissful moments outweigh the blah ones”. The feminism is “down to earth and visceral”; hats off to Jones and Whittaker for making the series which, although “not perfect, celebrates sly broads who fly under the radar”.

Why the Tories must unite to fight ‘Trump mouthpiece’ Farage
Michael Heseltine in The Independent
Much as “I want the Conservatives back in power”, writes Tory grandee Michael Heseltine, “it is time that the party wakes up”. To have any hope of re-election, “it must remember its previous successful periods in government” and “make clear that we will never have any part in the populist extremism of Nigel Farage”. The UK will “have to deal with” Donald Trump “for the next three years”, but “we don’t need his mouthpiece anywhere near No 10”.

My mistakes as a female breadwinner – and why we need to rethink this rising phenomenon
Eliza Filby in City A.M.
I’m “the daughter of a female breadwinner and a stay-at-home dad”, writes Eliza Filby. “So why, when I found myself in the same situation, did I struggle so much?” Female breadwinners are “one of the fastest-growing demographics in the US and UK”, yet many “confess to being feminist powerhouses in public but exhausted, resentful and frustrated in private”. The “real measure of progress” will be whether couples “can build relationships that match our economic reality: equal, flexible, interdependent and supported”.

Lord Nelson was not gay, but he was a ‘throuple’ pioneer
Lara Brown in The Telegraph
Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery has “decided” Lord Nelson “was ‘queer’”, writes Lara Brown, and claims “his dying moments are ‘symbolic of the sometimes-hidden queer history of life at sea’”. The UK has “many lesbian and gay heroes” but, “unfortunately” for the gallery’s activists, “Nelson was not one of them”. The “great irony” is that his “actual love life” resembled “the kind of sexual arrangement today’s progressives tend to look fondly on”, since he “publicly, and without a fuss, took another man’s wife”.