What happened
Nigel Farage has defended Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin (pictured with him above) after she said advertisements “full of black people, full of Asian people” made her “mad”. Speaking on TalkTV, Pochin claimed that such ads “don’t reflect our society”, remarks that have sparked broad condemnation.

Who said what
Keir Starmer said the comments were “shocking racism”, while Health Secretary Wes Streeting warned that they risked reviving “1970s, 1980s-style racism”. Farage said he was “unhappy” with Pochin’s words, describing them as “ugly” and “very, very unpleasant”, but insisted that her intent was not to be racist.

“Every party has its bad apples,” said John Crace in The Guardian. “But the benchmark seems to be higher at Farage’s party.” Pochin’s remarks “highlight Reform’s worsening electoral liability”, said the Financial Times. The comments do more than that, said James Ball in The New World; they expose our “new age of open racism”. What Pochin said “was appalling”, but “the Tories’ refusal to condemn her is arguably worse”.

What next?
Farage used the same press conference to urge parliament to investigate grooming gangs, saying the issue had been met with “abject cowardice and wilful neglect”. He said he would meet Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to propose a subcommittee to examine the scandal.

What happened
A protester confronted the King outside Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire yesterday, shouting questions about Prince Andrew’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The King did not respond as the man called out, “How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein? Have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew?” Members of the crowd told the heckler to “shut up” as the monarch greeted well-wishers.

Who said what
Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign group, confirmed that the protester was likely “one of our own members”, with its chief executive Graham Smith saying: “The royals need to be challenged.”

The King and Buckingham Palace “have come under increasing pressure to act on the ‘Prince Andrew problem’”, said Hannah Furness in The Telegraph. Buckingham Palace is facing growing calls to resolve the Prince’s living arrangements at Royal Lodge.

What next?
The King’s advisers are in discussions with Prince Andrew about leaving his current residence, with possible options including a move to Frogmore Cottage. Andrew, who denies all allegations linked to Epstein, has not appeared in public since early this month.

“A woman gets to a certain age and all she wants is to be left alone,” said The Guardian’s Viv Groskop. Well, no chance of that – because the “menopause gold rush” is in full flow.

Public awareness of menopause and perimenopause has improved in recent years, but with that has come a “rapid expansion” of companies and individuals who “see menopause as a lucrative market”, said University College London researchers. The results of their survey of 1,596 women, published in Post Reproductive Health, suggest that women may be “vulnerable to financial exploitation” from the “marketing of unregulated menopause products”, and from menopause information on social media “that may not be grounded in evidence”.

“The slow-dawning realisation that women might be slightly underserved after centuries of demonising female ageing has unfortunately coincided with the high-water mark of aggressive capitalism,” said Groskop. So the market is flooded with celebrity-endorsed menopause products and treatments follow fads, rather than being rooted in science and tailored to a woman’s specific needs.

But perhaps, as doctors increasingly start to actively address menopausal concerns that often go unrecognised, we can arrive at a “happy medium in the world of menopause, where it is a phenomenon that is neither constantly being marketed at us nor swept shamefully under the carpet”, added Groskop. As it is, “we have gone from a time when the word was barely spoken aloud to an era when it’s hard to find a podcast that is not discussing testosterone gel”.