Keir Starmer has appointed Antonia Romeo as his new cabinet secretary, following the departure of Chris Wormald. She will be the first woman to serve as the UK’s top civil servant in the role’s 110-year history.

Who is Romeo?
Romeo has risen through the ranks of the civil service, including stints as permanent secretary in three major government departments: the Department for International Trade, the Ministry of Justice and, since last April, the Home Office.

Viewed as “unorthodox and unconventional”, said Sky News, Romeo is believed to have been instrumental in easing the overcrowded prisons crisis, instigating the Sentencing Review, among other initiatives. The prime minister said that since entering No. 10, he had been “impressed by her professionalism and determination to get things done”.

But Romeo has also faced “multiple bullying complaints” during her career, particularly as the UK’s consul general in New York in 2016-17, said the BBC. She was the subject of an expenses-related allegation, too, although government sources said there was “no case to answer” following investigations.

What has the reaction been?
Amid a “vicious briefing war” surrounding her appointment, said The Times, Romeo’s allies have accused Foreign Office mandarins of preparing “misogynistic” briefings against her that “focused on her unapologetically ambitious personal style, charm, outgoing personality and her physical appearance”.

“The underlying rumours around her are an example of sexist, misogynistic culture,” said Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA civil service union. Romeo has been “vetted within an inch of her life”.

What does this mean for Starmer?
Starmer’s government “faced accusations of being a boys’ club long before” the Peter Mandelson scandal, said Politics Home. “At the same time, Downing Street has been accused of overlooking women to give senior jobs to men.”

Now that Wormald and former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney are out of Downing Street, the PM is “surrounded almost entirely by female advisers”, said The Observer. Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson are acting chiefs of staff, Amy Richards is his political director and Sophie Nazemi is acting head of communications. “The boys’ club may be over but what will determine whether Starmer survives is not the rise of girl power but the ability to get stuff done.”

Illegal skin-lightening products are on sale in UK outlets ranging from grocery and specialist food stores to butcher shops, a watchdog has warned. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute is urging consumers to avoid these harmful creams, oils, lotions and serums and to report the shops and online retailers that continue to sell them.

‘Invisible’ health hazards
Skin-lightening creams containing certain dangerous ingredients were banned in the UK and the EU in 2001. Authorities say anyone found selling the illicit products in the UK will face prosecution, but enforcement has turned into a game of whack-a-mole, with seized stock quickly replaced. A South London retailer was recently fined £30,000 after twice being caught stocking banned skin-lightening products.

Such products generally are “not labelled with mandatory safety or traceability information, a sign they may contain banned substances”, said The Voice. These include hydroquinone, a prescription-only compound that if used without medical oversight, can cause irritation and eye damage. Once absorbed into the bloodstream, it may also “overload the liver and kidneys”, said Chemistry World. Another common ingredient, mercury, can cause high blood pressure, rapid weight gain, renal damage and “can even be transferred to infants through breastmilk, carrying silent, long-term health risks”.

Many of the most serious health impacts of these products are initially “invisible”, so consumers “underestimate the danger” – until it is too late.

Driven by colourism
The illicit UK skin-lightening market is just part of a “thriving, multi-billion-dollar industry” trading on the notion that “lighter skin is worth chasing – no matter the cost”, said The McGill International Review. Such ideas date back to the “colonial belief that lighter skin conferred greater worth”, said The Guardian. Even now, the myth “seems to endure” in many countries worldwide, particularly for women of colour.

Hoardings advertising skin-lightening products and featuring “images of white or lighter-skinned black women” are a common sight across African cities, said NPR. There are also creams marketed specifically for use on children. Multiple African nations have banned products containing harmful ingredients, and Nigeria declared a state of emergency over the issue in 2023. Even so, the industry continues to boom.

Russian military musicians prepare to perform in a blizzard during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, which has been hit by record-breaking snowstorms in recent weeks. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described the freezing onslaught as “relentless”.

Hector Retamal / Pool / AFP / Getty Images

London’s Courtauld Gallery is hosting an exhibition devoted entirely to Georges Seurat’s seascapes. When the pointillist painter died in 1891 at the age of 31, probably from diphtheria, he left just 45 paintings. This show brings together 26 of his works, created during summers on the northern coast of France between 1895 and 1890.

“It is a quietly tremendous exhibition” filled with “blizzards of light”, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. Seurat’s paintings are undoubtedly “peculiar and strange”. His “cumulative little strokes and pustules of pigment” draw your attention to the artistic process, at times creating “a kind of veil of interference between yourself and the image”. But when everything “comes together”, his “unpeopled everyday scenes take on a quivering psychological sense of importance”.

Seurat’s seascapes are “magnificently weird”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. With their “glittering sunshine” and “sailboats bobbing about on enticing turquoise water”, they are reminiscent of summer holidays. But “where are the holidaymakers”?

This “revelatory” exhibition is London’s “most brightly enveloping winter show”, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. The Courtauld’s “coup” is reuniting six canvases that Seurat completed in Port-en-Bessin: these paintings haven’t been displayed as a complete series since their inaugural exhibition in Brussels in 1889.

The Courtauld has a “knack” for this type of intimate show, said Laura Freeman in The Times. In these “long, grey” days, filled with relentless rain, there “could be no greater contrast” than Seurat’s “shimmering seas”. So “book tickets. Cast off your preconceptions. Let the light in.”

It’s said that Tony Blair thought he was Jesus. At least Jesus never thought he was Tony Blair
Emma Brockes in The Guardian
Channel 4’s new documentary “The Tony Blair Story” captures the former PM’s “delusional overreach”, writes Emma Brockes. Yet while for many viewers, the three-parter will be “a futile exercise in confirming one’s existing prejudices”, it left me feeling “nostalgic for an era of political optimism that is impossible to find anywhere today”. In the Blair era, “the country’s spirits matched the energy of a leader habitually captured by cameras boarding a plane by sprinting up the stairs at full speed”.

I didn’t see my friend’s suicide coming – and as a nation, we’re blind to mental health
Kat Brown in The Independent
My childhood friend Sally was “so clever, funny, cool and charming”, writes Kat Brown. Her suicide “absolutely floored me”. But “the cost of a ‘silent’ mental health crisis must be paid”. Sally paid the full price and, later, I paid it “in alcohol and cigarettes”. We “all know someone who has struggled – or worse – with invisible health issues”, and we need to stop staying silent about it “to keep things looking nice and polite”. Otherwise, the “reverberations are truly shocking”.

I first met Charles Bronson 30 years ago. It’s time to give him a break
Ian Acheson in The Telegraph
“Britain’s most notorious prisoner” is up for parole and “it’s time for a bit of mercy”, writes former prison governor Ian Acheson. Armed robber Charles Bronson “wrecked” his victims’ lives and has been a “hyper-violent and confrontational” inmate, but he’s now 73 and there’s “quite a lot of evidence to support” his claim that “he has changed his ways”. If the “principle of rehabilitation” means anything, “it must extend even to people like him”.