Your Party has established its foundations, with members voting on the party’s name, leadership structure, membership status and a party constitution at its inaugural conference in Liverpool. But by the end of the weekend, cracks were already beginning to show.

The group was established by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn to present a “full-blooded left-wing challenge” to Labour, said Politico. Yet if the antics at the conference were anything to go by, it is “mixing deep idealism with the kind of factional splits that would make Monty Python blush”.

What happened at the launch?
Members of Your Party confirmed its formal name will remain the same.  Another takeaway from the conference was the introduction of a collective leadership model, by a narrow margin of 51.6% to 48.4% of votes. Sultana had previously championed the move as enabling “maximum member democracy”, while Corbyn called for a party structured on sole leadership.

The left-wing party had aimed to attract around 13,000 people to the event, said the BBC. This was revised down to around 2,500, “which made the cavernous halls of the conference centre feel much emptier”.

Who won between Corbyn and Sultana?
The two co-founders have been at loggerheads since the party was launched in July, but their relationship hit new lows at the conference. “There would have been more chance of Ted Heath and Maggie deciding to be co-leaders of the Conservative Party than of this pair even being in the same room together,” said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator

Leadership disagreements aside, Sultana undoubtedly came out on top, said The New Statesman. Her “fiery remarks” about the exclusion of the Socialist Workers Party members on day one were well supported, and she “appears to have triumphed in every major debate about Your Party’s future except its name”.

Will collective leadership work?
Your Party will be run by an executive committee of 11 elected members, including a chair, deputy chair and spokesperson to provide “public political leadership”. By establishing a collective leadership style, and also allowing members of rival parties to join, Your Party has “paved the way for maximum infighting in the months and years ahead”, said Heale in The Spectator. And it “runs the risk of repelling enthused members, who do not wish to partake in rancour and recriminations”.

The US president has the absolute right to grant pardons. But Donald Trump’s spree of pardons for loyalists and business allies has raised not only political eyebrows but also legal questions about abuse of power.

In his latest act of clemency, Trump this weekend freed private equity executive David Gentile, who had just begun a seven-year sentence for a $1.6 billion fraud scheme. Trump has started to “expand the pardon power both in nature and in scale”, said Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker. During his second term, he has issued nearly 2,000 presidential pardons and commutations, compared with 238 in his first term. 

‘Grotesque abuses’
“More than any previous president,” Trump has “systematically deployed” pardons to “reward loyalists” and reassure “associates that they can violate the law with impunity”, said Thomas B. Edsall in The New York Times.

Over the past decade, the presidential pardon power has been subject to “grotesque abuses”, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. In his first term, Trump pardoned “lackeys and war criminals”, and now he has “outdone” himself, pardoning “a rogue’s gallery of donors, partisan allies and people with business ties to him or his family”.

Trump is using his pardon power as “part of his effort to put the country on an authoritarian path”, Rachel Barkow, a law professor at New York University, told The New York Times.

Allowed under Constitution
It might seem “quaint these days” to reference America’s founding fathers, said The Wall Street Journal, but when they granted unlimited pardon power, “they anticipated at least a modicum of presidential restraint”. As such, there are no provisions in the US Constitution to rein in a president who embarks on a pardoning spree.

Congress can’t remove the presidential power of pardon without changing the Constitution, but it could seek to “circumscribe” it “around a few basic principles”, said Bloomberg. These could include barring self-pardons and pardons given “in exchange for anything of value”. Seeking to impose these principles “will surely invite legal challenges”. But it would be difficult “to oppose them on the merits. More to the point: doing nothing would be unpardonable.”

A diver dressed as Father Christmas swims with a penguin at Sunshine Aquarium as the Tokyo venue launches its annual “Happy Holidays” festive celebrations. 

Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP / Getty Images

Panettone is “synonymous with Christmas in Italy”, said Forbes, but over the years, the festive bread-cake has become popular “all over the world”. Whether “elegantly boxed, tinned, or wrapped in paper”, it is the “quintessential” edible gift.

Carluccio’s limoncello panettone
This elegant and deliciously sweet panettone is an ideal treat to enjoy in those festive in-between days. With a gorgeous white chocolate crust adorned with sparkling sugar crystals, the sweet bread wouldn’t go amiss as the centrepiece of a festive dessert table.

DukesHill chocolate panettone
Keen to ditch the traditional dried fruit offering? Look no further than DukesHill’s luxury panettone, which makes chocolate the star of the show. The traditional Italian recipe, with its fluffy centre, gets a decadent twist with the addition of chocolate chips and a velvety chocolate cream running all the way through.

Vergani Dubai chocolate and pistachio panettone
This panettone offers a festive take on 2025’s runaway flavour trend: Dubai chocolate. Combining velvety chocolate with a luscious pistachio cream filling, the artisan cake is a delicious fusion of nutty and sweet flavours. 

Fattoria La Vialla organic panettone
From an organic farm in central Italy, this traditional wholewheat panettone is ideal for those who want to get back to the roots of the traditional bread-cake. It’s packed with festive flavour, with fragrant orange peel and generous sprinklings of tasty golden sultanas.

I sympathise with Rachel Reeves
Kwasi Kwarteng in The Spectator
Rachel Reeves is “the prisoner of Downing Street”, writes former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. It’s “a polite fiction” that “she has any real freedom of action”. Both No. 10 and the bond markets have “limited” her “capacity to be bold”, and the Office for Budget Responsibility is “a black spider”, “binding” her “into its web of restrictions”. On top of that, there’s a “growing group of backbenchers” who, “terrified of losing their seats”, “won’t let her cut welfare payments”.

Can’t handle rejection? You shouldn’t be dating, then
Olivia Petter in The Independent
I was dumped “via voicemail” when I was 13, writes Olivia Petter, and “I’m not sure” that “I’ve got better at handling rejection since”. Even “thoughtful rejections” have incensed me. I think “we can’t handle rejection” because “we’ve all become increasingly siloed” by algorithms “designed to reflect us back to ourselves”. Our “small cultural echo-chambers” make us “the stars of the show”, so “being turned down in any capacity” is “particularly hard to take”.

Everything I found annoying in 2025? How much time you got?
Robert Crampton in The Times
“I’ve heard enough” about “cringe, game-changers, iconic anything, intermittent fasting, doomscrolling, being ‘on the pen’, cupcakes, kimchi, matcha and falafel to last me a lifetime”, writes Robert Crampton. I could also do without “the word ‘smorgasbord’, which sounds filthier every time you say it”. Other sources of irritation include the “utter fiction that the Prince of Wales is now, or ever was, hot”. “Duvet day” should not “be a respectable expression”, and “cyclists on pavements” are “an abomination”.