Immersive research into the everyday lives of normal people conducted by the actor Kevin Bacon has revealed some startling results: it’s not as good as being a celebrity.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Bacon said he had long hankered after the anonymity of the everyman, so commissioned a prosthetics specialist to enable him to do so.

“I’m not complaining,” he said, “but I have a face that’s pretty recognisable. Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent.”

He continued: “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”

Kitted out with fake teeth, a different nose and a pair of glasses, the actor trialled his new look at a shopping mall in Los Angeles called The Grove. To his delight, he discovered that “nobody recognised me”.

Yet the newfound freedom soon palled as Bacon discovered the downsides of invisibility.

“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” he said. “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.”

Bacon, now 65, made his screen debut 46 years ago, in National Lampoon’s Animal House, before starring in the likes of Diner, Footloose, A Few Good Men, JFK, The River Wild and Tremors. He has also featured in films such as The Woodsman, Patriots Day and TV series I Love Dick and City on a Hill.

His industry ubiquity spawned the parlour game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which challenges players to trace anyone in showbiz back to Bacon in six names or fewer.

Other celebrities rumoured to have gone undercover using similar strategies include Ellen DeGeneres (as a keen shopper), Daniel Radcliffe (as a dog walker), Arnold Schwarzenegger (as a gym instructor) and Chris Pratt (as a Chris Pratt lookalike).

Meanwhile celebrities who have admitted how much they enjoy the trappings of notoriety include Noel Gallagher, Catherine Deneuve and Billie Eilish.

In 2019, Christina Ricci declared: “I’m not going to lie, I like being famous. I like being well respected. I like that people don’t laugh when they hear my name. I like being able to get tables at restaurants and discounts on clothes. My life is exactly the life that I wanted for myself.”

The former governor of Arizona, once a Trump surrogate in the swing state, is now speaking up to defend the state’s elections as election denialism continues to grip Republican politics.

Jan Brewer, the Republican governor from 2009 to 2015, signed an infamous anti-immigration law, which reverberated in state politics and affected the state’s reputation for years. She was secretary of state, which oversees elections, before becoming governor.

She is, by no means, a centrist, though those to her right now call her a Rino, a Republican In Name Only. She said she’s had enough of a spate of election lies coming from her party in recent years – though she’s also quick to note that Democrats have spread election doubts in the past, too.

In recent weeks, she wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, the state’s largest daily newspaper, to call on Republicans to stop attacking elections, writing that she wants to “pull us back from the brink of election denialism, and get back to focusing on actual policy so we can win elections with our conservative ideas”.

She’s joined with two organizations, RightCount and the Democracy Defense Project, to publicly defend elections, alongside other Republicans and people across the political spectrum. She’s also endorsed Maricopa county candidates in Republican primaries who stood up to their party against intense pressure to overturn the 2020 election results.

“You have to stand up and defend the integrity of our electoral system, because that’s what unites us,” she said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s so important that people understand that.”

Arizona remains a hotbed for election denialism, with major Republican primary candidates maintaining their elections were stolen in 2022 and Trump’s was stolen in 2020. The issue holds a grip on Republican activists, who can sway primaries. And groups like Turning Point USA, based in Arizona, fuel the distrust in elections.

The election situation in Arizona is “out of control”, Brewer said.

“I just hope that we get our state back together and that we preserve our democracy and we save our Republican party, because obviously this is destroying it,” she said. “And if they want Republicans elected, then they’ve got to accept that how that happens is through elections. And we’ve got to assure them, and they’ve got to realize, that our elections are fair, or we won’t have Republicans elected.”

Why speak out now?

We’re hearing these conspiracies, as far as I’m concerned, about elections being stolen, and it was wrong, and that there were terrible things taking place at the polls, and it just went on and on and on. As the prior chief of elections, I knew the procedures that are taken to prevent that. We wrote the election procedure manual. We did the [logic and accuracy] tests. It just was undermining our democracy. And I thought, well, somebody needs to stand up. Other people have stood up too, but I stood up and said a few things, and all of a sudden, everybody kind of listened. These false claims, widespread voter fraud, it just absolutely erodes our elections, and it undermines our democracy.

To be clear, do you think the 2020 election was stolen?

No.

And you have faith in how things are running in Arizona at this time?

There’s always been hiccups, but never to the extent of changing the numbers on the election. I mean, we’ve seen it over and over again, but you’re dealing with human error, you’re dealing with sometimes equipment error, but usually it is rectified immediately, and you can take care of it.

Why do you think doubting election results has become such a sticking point, especially for Republicans in recent years? Why is it still lingering?

Well, I think because they want to win. They want to be the winner, so if they can’t win the election, then they want to say that it was stolen from them. I don’t know, you’d have to ask them why they do it. I just believe that we just need to defend our electoral system, it’s as simple as that, from distrust. We need to speak up, and our politicians need to speak up, and whether it’s left or right, sowing that kind of mistrust and doubt is not good – it’s not good for us, it’s not good for the people out there running, it’s not good for the United States. It certainly is not good for free and fair and democratic elections.

Why do you think election denialism has been so big in Arizona? Is it just because Republicans have been losing in recent years?

I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. It’s just, it’s out of control. I don’t know why. It goes way back when, and it is on both sides. It’s been on both sides. Don’t lay it just on the Republicans, but that happens to be the people that are doing it currently, because we lost the presidency. We had some heated races in Arizona and some of the losers claimed that they were stolen, and they went through all these court cases and they didn’t win and they didn’t have the proof. And evidently, they don’t trust our judicial system either.

So have you seen this level of election doubt before?

No, no, never, no.

Is that why you’re speaking out now? It just reached a fever pitch for you?

I think so. I hope more people speak out. It’s so important.People need to know that they’re vote counts. I mean, none of the cases and the claims have been founded. Yeah, there was an issue with a machine or two breaking down. It got repaired. There was an issue, maybe, with the paper size, but it didn’t change the election. It wasn’t enough. So you have to be realistic. And they make up things. The people here, some of them want voter ID at the polls. Well, we have voter ID at the polls. I implemented that when I was secretary of state in the Help America Vote Act. So there’s just a lot of misinformation out there, misguided claims.

The claims are just outrageous. And the abuse of some of those elected officials, like the board of supervisors and the county recorder and the election workers at the polling places, it’s just been awful. Why would anybody want to serve?

What role do you think Trump plays in that? Isn’t that election denialism coming from the top?

He unfortunately planted the seed that his election was stolen. I didn’t agree with him. I thought that he lost.

Have you talked with him about it?

No.

What can be done to move forward? As a society, how do we move beyond this?

The only thing that I know that has to be done is we need people to stand up and talk about it and move on. This is ruining the Republican Party at this point in time. It’s undermining our elections, and if we don’t stop it, the end is that people won’t vote. And who will that hurt if they don’t vote? It will hurt the Republican Party. We need every vote that we can get at the polls.

For those people that believe in early voting, then they can vote early and trust the system that their vote is counted. I mean, I was not a big supporter way back when I was in the legislature, when they wanted to have early voting, I thought it was important that we go to the polls on Election Day. But as you get older and wiser, and the state grows, and people have more obligations and responsibility, people are sick, they can’t get there. We lead the country in early voting.

Are you going to vote for Trump again this year?

He’s our nominee.

Is that a yes?

Yes.

How do you reconcile that?

He did a lot of good when he was president. I just hope that if and when he wins, that it doesn’t all evolve again. Of course, if he wins, then I guess they’ll think the election is okay.

Does it seem like in Arizona, that there are Republicans who agree with you, who are just afraid of the wrath of the other Republicans?

I know that for a fact, because they talk to me. They’re afraid. You don’t hear people winning, saying it was a rigged election. Look at all the people that say that the presidential election was rigged, but the ones serving in the legislature, I guess your election was okay? It just doesn’t make sense.

Are you at all afraid of any repercussions from the Republican party in Arizona?

I’ve been around a long time. I’ve got a lot of friends. And I get some interesting text messages and stuff, [like] ‘our friendship goes back a long ways, I’m sorry we disagree, I think we can do it in a civil manner’ and try to talk people into seeing at least some of your points. If we keep that dialogue going and are able to talk to one another, and if they’re willing to listen, I’m willing to listen, maybe we can get above and around all of this.

The Labour party’s thumping general election victory, which ended 14 years of Conservative party rule in the UK, drew congratulations from leaders around the world – and reminded Keir Starmer of the complex global challenges he will have to navigate as prime minister.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said he looked forward to cooperating with the new British government as the war in Gaza continues.

“As he prepares to enter Downing Street as prime minister, I look forward to working together with him and his new government to bring our hostages home, to build a better future for the region, and to deepen the close friendship,” he said.

Herzog also expressed his “deepest appreciation and gratitude” to the outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak, “for his leadership and for standing with the Israeli people especially during this most difficult period”.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, congratulated Starmer and said his country and the UK would continue to be “reliable allies through thick and thin”, adding: “We will continue to defend and advance our common values of life, freedom, and a rules-based international order.”

Zelenskiy also made a point of thanking Sunak for helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia.

Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia and who is poised to become the EU’s top diplomat, sent a message stressing the importance of “common security” – an allusion to the growing fears prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Congratulations on your historic election victory@Keir Starmer,” Kallas wrote on X. “Estonia and the UK are the strongest of allies and the closest of friends. The UK’s commitment to our common security is valued by every Estonian.”

The European Council president, Charles Michel, congratulated Starmer on his triumph, which came just over eight years after the UK voted to leave the EU.

“The EU and the UK are crucial partners, cooperating in all areas of mutual interest for our citizens,” he wrote on X. “I look forward to working with you and your government in this new cycle for the UK.” Michel said the shared challenges ahead included stability, security, energy and migration.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European commission, said she looked forward to working with Starmer in “a constructive partnership to address common challenges and strengthen European security”.

Emmanuel Macron – who faces his own day of reckoning on Sunday as France heads to the polls for the second round of the snap legislative elections on which he has gambled his political future – said he and Starmer would “continue the work begun with the UK for our bilateral cooperation, for peace and security in Europe, for the climate and for AI”.

The Irish taioseach, Simon Harris, stressed the importance of his country’s relationship with its neighbour and said it was time for “a great reset”. He added: “This morning from Dublin, I want to send a message to London that I will match Keir Starmer’s commitment and energy to our peace process and to our future potential in so many areas.”

Narendra Modi, who last month won a third term as India’s prime minister, offered Starmer his “heartiest congratulations and best wishes”, while Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, congratulated the new PM on a “historic victory” and urged him to roll up his sleeves.

“Lots of work ahead to build a more progressive, fair future for people on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said. “Let’s get to it, my friend.”

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said: “Congratulations to my friend and new UK prime minister on his resounding election victory – I look forward to working constructively with the incoming government.”

New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, said he was looking forward to “working on every opportunity together as prime ministers” and thanked Sunak for his “service to your nation and friendship to New Zealand”.

The election of a centre-left leader goes against the tide of recent European elections, in which the far right has made huge strides.

In last month’s European parliament elections, populist parties made significant gains in countries including Italy, France, Austria, Hungary and Germany, where Olaf Scholz’s Socialist Democratic party slid to its worst result in a national election.

In France, Emmanuel Macron called snap elections after his centrist alliance was trounced in the poll; Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is now on the cusp of becoming the biggest parliamentary party and potentially forming France’s first far-right government after gaining the most votes in the first round of the national election.

Thursday’s election in the UK also comes four months before Americans go to the polls to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Starmer’s victory also led many international headlines on Friday morning. The New York Times offered a straight appraisal of the results, “Labour party wins UK election in a landslide”, but noted both Starmer’s “remarkable turnaround” of his party and the fact that Nigel Farage, “a supporter of Donald Trump and a driving force behind Brexit”, had won a seat.

Germany’s Die Welt offered a pithy precis – “Tories experience ‘massacre’, Labour have clear victory; ‘Mr. Brexit’ returns” – while France’s Le Monde said Labour’s “historic victory” was evidence of “the thorough reconstruction of the British political landscape”.

In Spain, where the far-right Vox is the third biggest party in parliament, La Vanguardia noted the strong showing by Farage’s Reform UK party: “Labour storms it while the far right makes spectacular gains in the UK.”

And, in an introduction to its Friday podcast, the online Spanish newspaper ElDiario was blunt in its appraisal of the state of the UK – and of Starmer’s Tory predecessors: “A country where nothing works like it used to, a historical power now full of cracks, a society that has fallen victim to its own decisions has voted for change after 14 years of Conservative rule, and for a progressive leader from a humble background without eccentricities.”

White storks could soon be wheeling in the skies above London and building their huge nests among towers, flats and spires as a result of new rewilding plans.

After the success of the charismatic birds’ successful reintroduction into southern England since 2016, a white stork working group has been established to seek out habitat and gauge the political will to reintroduce the birds to Greater London.

Citizen Zoo, a group specialising in community-led urban rewilding that helped establish the Ealing beaver project, which has just produced its first beaver kits, will examine places where the birds could be returned and engage with London boroughs and local community groups.

“We know we have habitat here, and there’s a lot of wetland restoration occurring across Greater London as well so hopefully the habitat opportunities are increasing over time,” said Elliot Newton, co-founder of Citizen Zoo. “We don’t know if it’s possible yet but how amazing would it be if white storks nested in St James’s Park, beside Buckingham Palace, as a symbol of ecological recovery in the capital?”

In 2020, storks bred in the wild in Britain for the first time since a pair was recorded nesting on the roof of St Giles’ cathedral in Edinburgh in 1416.

There have been 40 sightings of white storks visiting parts of the capital in recent years, and although the birds seek out insect-rich farmland and wetlands some nest on the fringes of large European cities including Munich and Lisbon.

In London, storks have been spotted at Beddington Farmlands nature reserve near Croydon and around Wandsworth Common.

White storks fly long distances as they migrate through Europe and more have been seen across southern and central Britain this summer. The increase in sightings in recent years is due to the success of the White Stork Project centred on the Knepp estate in West Sussex, 45 miles south of central London.

At Knepp, a flightless population of 30 birds brought over from a rescue centre in Poland has been used as a “magnet” to draw in wild storks flying overhead, and the birds have mixed and built nests in ancient oaks.

Last year saw the best-ever year for the storks, with 26 chicks fledging from 11 nests across the 3,500-acre estate. The British-born birds have dispersed widely along the south coast and into Europe, with one found breeding in the Netherlands.

The White Stork Project aims to establish a wider breeding population across Britain, and both it and Citizen Zoo see the birds, which are celebrated in many European cultures as symbols of good luck and fertility, as a way to reconnect urban people with wild species.

“White storks breed excitement,” said Newton. “We’re hoping to engage and motivate people to consider their reintroduction into London. It’s such a beautiful bird that people will recognise and see, and it can capture the imagination of people who might miss other species. It will be a symbol of ecological regeneration in urban spaces across the UK.”

Lucas Ruzo, chief executive of Citizen Zoo, said: “Their return will not only be about returning a species once lost, but also a poetic reminder of the bond between humanity and the natural world.”

Citizen Zoo has successfully led the reintroduction of the large marsh grasshopper into wetlands across East Anglia by encouraging hundreds of ordinary people to rear the insects in their houses for release into the wild.

Dressed in celestial white, her hair scraped back from her forehead, Tilda Swinton looks as serene and translucent as one of the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The mothership has deposited her today on a striped cream sofa under a tree-filled window. “I’m in Scotland,” she tells me with crisply enunciated good cheer, before addressing the other face on our video call: Julio Torres, writer-director-star of the surreal new comedy Problemista, who just got back to Brooklyn after taking the film to Copenhagen and Guadalajara. “Julio, you probably don’t know where you are,” she says. “I’m fairly sure this is my apartment,” he replies, his youthful face and copper-tinted pixie-cut filling the screen.

The affinity between Swinton, the 63-year-old arthouse doyen and self-described “boyish, angular freak”, and Torres, the 37-year-old queer comic genius and ex-Saturday Night Live writer, is evident in the way they riff on each other’s gags, or swap favourite movie moments to mutual delight. Take it from me: you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Swinton spend two minutes painstakingly describing an old Austin Powers routine as Torres listens, wide-eyed and rapt.

They have gone from being online friends to collaborators and now besties (a week after our conversation, they are hanging out together at Glastonbury). Somewhere in between, they made Problemista, in which Torres transforms his experience of being a Salvadoran immigrant in New York City into a whirlwind comic fantasy with echoes of Jacques Tati, Terry Gilliam and Franz Kafka. Torres’s own visa declares him “an alien of extraordinary ability”, but the future looks shakier for his character, Alejandro, a budding toy designer who urgently needs a sponsor if he is to stay in the US. Failed applicants vanish instantly into thin air.

His potential saviour is the volatile art critic Elizabeth, played by Swinton with a West Country burr and a frizzy scarlet scare-do. She sees in this shuffling dogsbody the ideal assistant to help her mount an exhibition of egg paintings by her cryogenically-frozen late husband (played by Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA). As she dangles the promise of sponsorship, her demands on Alejandro become ever more onerous. She is, to put it mildly, a lot.

Swinton adores her. “One of the things I love about Elizabeth’s high-handedness is that we’ve seen this kind of autocratic behaviour before, but never out of the mouth of such a mess,” she says. “We’re used to that attitude coming from a perfect height, down a very clean slope, straight in the gullet.” Indeed, Elizabeth behaves as if she is Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, when in fact she is more like Meryl Streep in Ironweed. “She’s a wreck. There’s this rackety-ness to everybody in the film. They’re all hanging on by their nails.”

The character feels like a compendium of some of Swinton’s greatest hits: the bolshie magazine editor in Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, the tyrannical deputy overlord in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and the alcoholic kidnapper in Erick Zonca’s thriller Julia. (“Oh, she was a hot mess,” Swinton agrees.) When Torres points out that Problemista is essentially a film about “a secondary character and a villain”, Swinton embraces the idea. “Not even a primary villain,” she adds, much to his giggly amusement.

Elizabeth is a woman of many grievances; something as minor as an abundance of walnuts on a cafe menu can set her off. Nothing like Swinton, then. “I’m hopeless at asking for what I want,” she says. “I have never, ever sent food back, and I never would. I’ve been with people who have, and it is mortifying.”

Torres shudders in sympathy. “It’s like, what do you do with your eyes?” he asks. “You just have to look down, right?” Swinton cringes back: “And then, what’s going to come out of the kitchen?”

The only time I’ve heard of Swinton displaying any remotely Elizabeth-like tendencies was on the set of Sally Potter’s groundbreaking Orlando more than 30 years ago. A mutual friend of ours, who happens to be American, erroneously referred to Swinton as English rather than British or Scottish; she responded by slapping him. “Well, I’ll slap myself on the back for that now,” she says. Then she warms to the schoolmarm image. “I mean, he should know better, Ryan. And you know these Americans: you’ve got to teach them. Quite right!”

That aside, she is all pussycat. It’s touching, for instance, to hear her describe Problemista as a love story. “Elizabeth and Alejandro are both exactly what the other needs, even though they’re a nightmare for each other,” she says. They certainly lack the supportive artistic communities which have nourished the actors who play them. Torres found his own tribe on the Brooklyn standup circuit: after his day job archiving the papers of the late painter John Heliker, he performed comedy routines in bars. “I would read abstract one-liners and stories from a notebook. Some of us who were worlds unto ourselves gravitated toward one another.” Today, he is a magnet for Hollywood’s more adventurous talent: Emma Stone produced Problemista; Fantasmas, his darkly bizarre new HBO series, stars Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi and Paul Dano; Jon Hamm has called him “phenomenally gifted”.

For Swinton, it was becoming a muse to Derek Jarman, and joining his coterie, that made her feel she belonged. After starring in his 1986 masterpiece Caravaggio, she collaborated with Jarman almost exclusively until his death from Aids in 1994. “It was a way of life, not just a way of working. The conversations were the most important things. It was like: ‘Oh, this year we’re going to do Edward II’ and ‘next year, we’re going to do Wittgenstein’. The works came out of those conversations, which were all engendered around a kitchen table, usually in Dungeness. We made the films, but we didn’t sweat them. I think it was healthy because we were all interested in each other, and the works were just leaves off the tree.”

Torres wasn’t even born when Swinton met Jarman, but he has long been a fan of hers. For his 2019 live show My Favourite Shapes, he even produced a model of what he imagined her apartment to be like: there was a hive of pods for her guests to sleep in, and a giant egg-timer to tell them when to leave. “As you can see, that’s very accurate,” she says now, swivelling the laptop around to reveal her cosy, non-sci-fi surroundings, and a pair of black-and-white springer spaniels. Torres’s pod-based fantasy, though, taps into her otherworldly aura. When he asks whether she had trouble accessing an online link to watch Fantasmas, she replies: “There are elves in my house who do that for me.”

Despite admiring her, Torres was no expert. “I’m inept at knowing the lives of the people behind the things I love. Tilda for me was a fantastic actor and, frankly, a concept.” She places a hand to her face, and trembles with laughter. “I wish my parents were still alive, and I could tell them that I’m considered a concept,” she says, prompting yet more giggles from Torres. “But I think that’s beautiful!” he protests. “Better that than, like: ‘Oh, she’s the actress who dated that person, then got a divorce from this other person, and her kids hate her!’” Swinton accepts the distinction (“Ah, true”) and glows appreciatively.

What was her impression, in turn, of him? Even prior to Problemista, after all, there was ample evidence of a cuckoo sensibility in his supernatural comedy series Los Espookys, and his SNL sketches: Ryan Gosling as a man haunted by the naff Papyrus font used in Avatar; Emma Stone advertising a Fisher-Price wishing-well for sensitive boys; Harry Styles as a lovelorn social-media wonk who posts horny gay messages (“Wreck me daddy”) on the Sara Lee Instagram account he is meant to be managing.

“I was enchanted by Julio from the beginning,” says Swinton. “It’s good for us all, I think, the world of his mind. It’s so visionary and sophisticated.” Hearing himself described as “sophisticated”, Torres gently points out that he cast Swinton in the role of Toilet Water in Fantasmas. That in turn reminds me of his book for children, I Want to Be a Vase, in part about a toilet plunger with lofty dreams. “I do like toilets as concepts,” he concedes. “Being a toilet is a job that’s inherently demeaning, so humanising that is exciting to me.”

In exposing the whimsical secret underworld of our daily lives, Torres is like a benign David Lynch. But he insists that lending consciousness to inanimate objects – such as the snooty curtain that divides first class from economy on a plane in My Favourite Shapes – is something we all do. “When we decide which outfit is ‘too much’ and which one is appropriate, or whether a dress of certain proportions is serious or unserious, we’re projecting those qualities on to it, right?”

Running through all his work, including Problemista, is an authentic dread of the corporate and bureaucratic. Torres has spent his life avoiding credit, and even lived for a while without a bank account. How estranged is he today from the systems he abhors? “Well, that’s the comedy and the tragedy. The more you try to disentangle yourself, the more tangled you get. It’s inescapable. Any time I have to make an account for something, it feels like an impossible task.”

Swinton concurs: “It’s like that disgusting and brilliant South Park episode where you end up with your lips sewn on to someone’s arse, and you’ve got to eat shit because that was in the small print, and you signed the form. But we need a certain amount of connectivity so we turn a relative blind eye to all that. Otherwise we’d go nuts.”

About the corporate side, Torres sounds less forgiving, especially when talk turns to how companies only began displaying rainbow flags once it became fashionable to do so. “The beautiful thing about queer people – and I use that term broadly – is our innate quest for the ‘bite’,” he says. It’s a word Swinton had used earlier to denote the enduring frisson of queerness, its cutting edge. “I think we are not pacified by a bank putting up a Pride flag,” he continues. “I think we say: ‘You’re decades late, but thank you.’” Swinton nods, and offers her own addendum to the banks: “Moving on …”

“Exactly,” Torres says. “Moving on, what would make the banks and the corporations uncomfortable today? Because that is where the bite is.” Any suggestions? “I think there’s a million social issues. Companies are going to wait a decade or two before they put those flags up.” For now, Swinton and Torres can just keep flying their own freak flags. No problemo.

Nigel Farage has been elected as the MP for Clacton, finally succeeding in getting a seat in parliament at his eighth attempt.

The Reform UK leader’s victory came on a night when the hardline rightwing party surged in support elsewhere, winning four seats by 4am on Friday, with the former Conservative deputy chair Lee Anderson successfully defending his seat in Ashfield.

Richard Tice, Reform’s chair and the man who stepped aside so Farage could return, won Lincolnshire constituency of Boston and Skegness, calling it “the proudest day of my life”. The former Southampton football club chairman Rupert Lowe also won a seat in Great Yarmouth, which has been held by the Conservatives since 2010.

Farage defeated the Conservative candidate, Giles Watling, who had represented the coastal constituency in Essex since 2017. Farage won 21,225 votes to Watling’s 12,820, a majority of 8,405.

In a speech after his victory was announced, Farage served notice that his party would be turning its guns on Labour.

“We are coming for Labour … be in no doubt about that,” he said, in a short speech at a leisure centre in the seaside town.

Revelling in the Conservative party’s heavy defeat across the country, Farage railed against the party he had once been a member of, telling reporters: “They are literally a broad church that has no shared religion.”

He ruled out working in parliament with the Conservative party itself but opened the door to Tory MPs coming over to Reform.

Asked if he wanted to become prime minister, he replied: “Whatever happens, happens, and probably by 2029 this movement will have found someone younger and better looking than me.”

Farage told reporters he would “speak up” and provide a challenge in government. As to what Tory MPs should do, he said those who were part of the “one nation” tradition should stay where they were, while others should look to Reform and “join the team”.

“They are so split down the middle. They spent the last four years fighting each other, so God knows what they will be like now,” he said.

Clacton had been regarded as Reform UK’s best hope of taking a seat. It was the only constituency to return a Ukip MP in a general election when it was won in 2015 by Douglas Carswell, who had successfully retained it during a byelection the previous year after defecting from the Tories.

Anderson described his constituency of Ashfield as “the capital of common sense” in his victory speech after polling 17,062 votes, beating Labour’s 11,553. Anderson’s old party was beaten into fourth place by an independent candidate.

In his acceptance speech after winning with a 1,425 majority over Labour, Lowe said a “flood of change was coming over Britain’s political system”.

“I’m intent on ensuring we end up with more common sense in government; that we put the British people first,” he added. “I’m committed to bring about change in Westminster and thereby bring about change in Great Yarmouth.”

Reform had been projected to win as many as 13 seats, according to the 10pm exit poll. Declarations in north-east England showed it outpolling the Conservatives to come second to Labour. But early results for target seats Barnsley North and Barnsley South showed Reform coming second. After Farage’s victory, expectations had been tempered and Reform believed it would win about four seats.

Before his election, Farage had used a video posted on X to deliver his first response to the exit poll, saying: “It’s midnight, there are two results in from the north-east of England that put Reform on 30% of the vote; that is way more than any possible prediction or projection. It is almost unbelievable.”

Early declarations underlined the surge in support for the party in what had been strong Brexit-supporting areas of north-east England, where Reform outpolled the Tories in a number of seats.

Nigel Farage has hailed Reform UK’s “almost unbelievable” early performances in former leave-voting seats, predicting that the party will win “many, many seats right across the country” as the election unfolds.

Lee Anderson, the former Conservative deputy chair who became Reform’s first MP earlier this year when he joined the hard-right party, won its first seat of the night when he held his Ashfield constituency.

The MP described Ashfield as “the capital of common sense” in a victory speech after polling 17,062 votes, beating Labour on 11,553. Anderson’s old party was beaten into fourth place by an independent candidate.

Reform was projected to win as many as 13 seats in the general election, according to the 10pm exit poll. Declarations in north-east England showed it outpolling the Conservatives to come second to Labour.

The projection also indicated that Farage, who returned as leader of the party last month, was set to win the Essex seat of Clacton.

Farage used a video posted on X to deliver his first response to the exit poll, saying: “It’s midnight, there are two results in from the north-east of England that put Reform on 30% of the vote; that is way more than any possible prediction or projection. It is almost unbelievable.

“And what does it mean? It means we’re going to win seats, many many seats, I think, right now, across the country. But to watch the TV coverage, it’s almost comical.

“There’s not a single representative on there from Reform UK. Mainstream media are in denial just as much as our political parties. This is going to be 6 million votes-plus. This, folks, is huge.”

While there was caution about how the poll of 20,000 would ultimately translate into seats, it was clear that millions of people had voted for the hard-right, anti-immigration party, which has previously indicated its intent to destroy the Conservative party.

Ben Habib, Reform’s deputy leader, was the first of the party’s senior figures to seize on the BBC/ITV/Sky survey projection. He tweeted: “This is a huge bridgehead. This is politically seismic. This is the beginning of the fightback for the nation state of the United Kingdom.”

Early declarations underlined the surge in support for the party in what had been strong Brexit-supporting areas of north-east England, where Reform outpolled the Tories in a number of seats.

While Farage has always kept his cards close to his chest about how many seats he expected to win, the projected seat share is believed to be much higher than what he could have hoped for.

Farage’s agent, Peter Harris, told the Guardian that it was early days but the party appeared to be in a strong position. “We could see that there was a strong turnout. In places like Jaywick, the queues were long, and had people in there who had not voted before or had given up on voting until now,” he said.

The expected vote share opened up the possibility of the electorate returning Reform MPs in target seats from Essex, the Kent Coast, south Wales and Yorkshire and the Humber.

Richard Tice, Reform’s chair and the man who stepped aside so that Farage could return, appeared to be in a strong position to win in the Lincolnshire constituency of Boston and Skegness, which has been represented by Tory Matt Warman since 2015.

Others who were in a strong position included the former Southampton Football Club chair, Rupert Lowe, who was running in Great Yarmouth, which has been held by the Conservatives since 2010.

Margaret Hodge, the former Labour minister, likened the challenge of Reform to that posed by the British National party, which she faced down during a battle for her Barking seat in 2010. She told the BBC: “It’s where they put their vote if they don’t have trust.”

A note of caution was sounded by Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, who said that the projected seat shares for Reform UK and the SNP were the two figures about which he and others were least certain.

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The White House has described the latest Hamas ceasefire proposal for Gaza as a “breakthrough” establishing a framework for a possible hostage deal, but warned that difficult negotiations remained over the implementation of the agreement.

A senior US official said the Biden administration received the latest Hamas offer “a couple of days ago” and had been studying it ahead of a 30-minute telephone call between Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

“The conversation was detailed, going through the text of the agreement, constructive and encouraging, while also clear-eyed about the work ahead [and] the steps that must be put in place to finalise this deal and then begin the implementation,” the US official said of the call.

Netanyahu was due to convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Thursday evening to discuss the Hamas proposal, and is dispatching a negotiating team to the Qatari capital, Doha, for talks with US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators in the coming days.

Israeli officials said the delegation would be led, as usual, by David Barnea, the head of the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad.

The White House predicted that the Doha talks could convene as early as Friday. It said the Hamas proposal was in line with the three-stage peace deal that Biden outlined on 31 May, which has formally been accepted by the Israeli government and endorsed by the UN security council.

US officials had said an earlier Hamas response contained elements that were negotiable but some that were not. The White House reaction to Hamas’s new response was much more positive.

“I think the framework is now in place and we have to work out the implementation steps,” a senior US official said. “What we got back from Hamas was a pretty significant adjustment to what had been their position, and that is encouraging. We have heard the same from the Israelis.”

The official stressed that the agreement was not yet final, however. “This does not mean this deal is going to be closed in a period of days. There’s significant work to be done on some of the implementation steps,” they said.

The main obstacle in negotiations until this week had been widely differing views on how the agreement would move from its first phase to its second.

The first phase involves the release by Hamas of elderly, sick and female hostages during a six-week truce, an Israeli withdrawal from Gazan cities, and the release of Palestinian detainees held by Israel.

The second phase would involve the release of all remaining hostages as well as the bodies of those who have died, a permanent end to hostilities and a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Phase three would mark the start of Gaza’s reconstruction.

The transition from the first to the second phase was to be negotiated during the first six-week truce, and the ceasefire would continue as long as good-faith negotiations continued, but Hamas wanted stronger guarantees over the path to a permanent ceasefire.

Netanyahu had publicly cast doubt on whether that would happen, vowing to complete the destruction of the militia, which has run Gaza for nearly two decades and which launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

“Some of the key issues on the transition from phase one to phase two have really been a stumbling block. I think we’ve had a breakthrough in that area,” the senior US official said, without giving details of the text presented by Hamas.

“Between phase one and phase two … you have to have conditions and arrangements in place. I think that is something that is obvious, but it’s something that Hamas has resisted,” they said, adding that Hamas had dropped its resistance to the imposition of conditions before reaching a permanent ceasefire.

The senior US official said many implementation issues to be negotiated in Doha involved “some sequencing and then a release of detainees”.

“I have to say, given the recent developments, we do believe there’s a pretty significant opening here, and we welcome the prime minister’s readiness to try to seize that opening by empowering his negotiating team to engage directly in Doha over the coming days,” the official said.

Keir Starmer is on course to win a landslide UK election victory, returning Labour to power and bringing a crushing end to 14 years of Conservative rule.

The 10pm exit poll, compiled on behalf of the three main news broadcasters, predicted Labour would win 410 seats, securing a majority of 170, to the Conservatives’ 131.

The Liberal Democrats were expected to take 61 seats, the Scottish National party 10, Reform UK 13, Plaid Cymru four and the Greens two after Rishi Sunak surprised the country six weeks ago by calling a summer poll.

The results appeared to confirm that Labour’s “time for change” message struck a chord with voters after years of chaos and division under the Tories, including the Brexit vote and its fallout, the handling of the Covid pandemic and the Partygate scandal.

At the last general election in 2019, the Conservatives had a majority of 80, with 365 seats to Labour’s 203. The SNP won 48 seats and the Lib Dems had just 11.

If the exit poll is correct, Labour has secured a huge swing away from the Conservatives, who will have suffered their worst ever performance, and away from the SNP in Scotland, where John Swinney’s party will have been crushed.

Reform’s polling at 13 seats appears to suggest the hard-right party has squeezed the Conservative vote across the country, with Nigel Farage favourite to win the seat of Clacton in Essex on his eighth attempt to enter parliament.

It will pose a major challenge for the Starmer government who will have to work out a strategy for how to fight the rise of the populist right, a trend reflected across Europe.

The Liberal Democrats, who appear on course to quadruple their seat haul, are expected to have further dented the Tories by making gains across the south-west and home counties in the “blue wall”.

Starmer is set to be the fourth Labour leader to oust the Conservatives since the second world war, and the first Labour prime minister for 14 years. Rachel Reeves will become the UK’s first ever female chancellor in a new Labour government.

The exit poll suggests Labour has won back vast swathes of the north of England and Midlands known as the “red wall”, taken by the Tories in 2019, as well as making major inroads against the SNP in Scotland.

Starmer’s victory appeared to have fallen just short of Tony Blair’s historic 1997 win in which Labour won 418 seats and a majority of 179 seats. Starmer, like Blair, has fought the campaign on a platform of promising change after more than a decade of Tory rule.

Labour’s expected win marks a huge turnaround for the party, four years after Starmer took over as leader and less than five since Jeremy Corbyn led the party to a disastrous defeat, its worst result since the 1930s.

The exit poll also indicates the Conservatives have suffered a catastrophic wipeout, with their worst ever performance, losing dozens of seats they won for the first time in 2019 under Boris Johnson.

Voters appear to have punished the party for years of scandals under Johnson, the financial crisis caused by Liz Truss, and Sunak’s failure to keep his pledges to turn the country around.

The loss of office also follows a weak Conservative campaign by Sunak, marred by a gambling scandal and the prime minister’s early departure from a D-day ceremony, which led cabinet ministers to concede defeat even before polling day.

Starmer thanked those who voted for him, saying: “To everyone who has campaigned for Labour in this election, to everyone who voted for us and put their trust in our changed Labour party – thank you.”

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said: “Keir Starmer’s transformation of the Labour party has been remarkable. He has put country before party and has transformed Labour from a party focused on itself to one back in the service of the British public.

“We have campaigned as a changed Labour party, ready to change Britain. Whatever has been claimed throughout the campaign, the Labour party has assumed nothing about the result and has worked tirelessly to bring our message of change to people across the country.

“Britain’s future was on the ballot at this election. And, if we are successful tonight, Labour will get to work immediately with our first steps for change.”

If the exit poll is correct, Sunak is likely to announce his resignation as prime minister on Friday morning before Starmer goes to Buckingham Palace to be officially anointed by King Charles as his successor.

Starmer is expected to give a short speech on the steps of Downing Street before beginning work on his first steps in government. Sources say they expect most, if not all, of the cabinet, to be appointed by the end of Friday, with more junior ministers being confirmed over the weekend and possibly early next week.

The party is holding a rally in London in the early hours of Friday morning – an event that could echo the party’s event to mark Blair’s victory at the Royal Festival Hall shortly after winning the 1997 election.

Starmer has said, however, that the celebrations are likely to be short-lived, with only a few weeks to begin legislating before parliament breaks for its summer recess.

The Labour leader said on the campaign trail this week that he would extend the parliamentary term to achieve more before recess, and warned his shadow ministers he expected immediate results.

“I’ve said to the shadow cabinet: ‘I don’t want you having a phone call or a meeting the day after the election that you could have had six months before the election,’” he said on Wednesday.

The new prime minister will then travel to the Nato summit in Washington DC next week – his first chance to position himself as a world leader.

At the same time, his ministers will already have started to roll out their plans for domestic reforms. Angela Rayner, the shadow housing and communities secretary, will begin work on a new draft of the national planning policy framework, while Ed Miliband will immediately overturn the de facto ban on onshore windfarms.

Labour then has less than two weeks before presenting its first package of legislation in the king’s speech, including legislation to bolster workers’ rights and to set up Great British Energy, the energy generation company at the heart of Labour’s green plans.

A meeting of the European Political Community will follow immediately afterwards in London – Starmer’s first chance to lobby officially for improved trading relations and to begin work on a new deal for cross-Channel asylum seekers.

Having led a tightly controlled campaign with little in the way of spontaneous interaction with the public or new policy ideas, Starmer is under pressure to spell out in greater detail how he intends to begin tackling problems ranging from Britain’s prisons crisis to record NHS waiting lists.

Reeves is likely to present her first budget in the autumn, where she is expected to announce Labour’s first tax policies, including tightening non-dom tax breaks, extending the oil and gas windfall tax and taxing private school fees.

Reeves has also drawn up plans for increases to capital gains tax and inheritance tax, as Labour looks to avoid swingeing public sector cuts that are implied by the current fiscal forecasts.

In a sign that Starmer was already mentally preparing for the shift to power, he told reporters on Wednesday: “I’m really pleased that four and a half years of work is being vindicated, because this has not been an easy gig.”

Kylian Mbappé has branded the first-round results of France’s snap parliamentary election “catastrophic”, urging voters to turn out in force and fend off the threat of a National Rally-controlled government when polls open for the runoff vote on Sunday.

In the latest of several interventions by members of the France national football team, the influential captain Mbappé warned that the country must take its chance to ensure the far right, anti-immigration party is unable to seize power in what has become a tumultuous political battle.

“It’s an urgent situation,” he said when asked for his thoughts on a parlous state of affairs that saw National Rally win 33% of the popular vote in last weekend’s first round. “We cannot let our country fall into the hands of these people. It is pressing. We saw the results, it’s catastrophic. We really hope it’s going to change: that everyone is going to rally together, go and vote, and vote for the correct party.”

Mbappé emphasised the importance of voting “now, more than ever”. France’s players are currently in Germany for the European Championship but they have maintained close attention on events back home and, unlike their English counterparts, a number of them have felt comfortable commenting on political matters.

Speaking on Monday after their victory over Belgium, the defender Jules Koundé said he was “disappointed” with the level of support for a party that “seek to take away our freedom and take away the fact that we live together”. He stated that previous non-voters must be persuaded to the ballot box in order to ensure the extreme right do not gain an absolute majority.

Before the tournament began, the forwards Marcus Thuram and Ousmane Dembélé both made similar exhortations to those eligible to vote. Mbappé joined them, saying at the time that he is “against extreme views and against ideas that divide people”.

Those comments were criticised by, among others, the National Rally leader Jordan Bardella. Mbappé, who recently signed for the Champions League winners Real Madrid, is France’s star player and a figure whose voice holds considerable weight among the country’s youth.

France face Portugal in a quarter-final on Friday and it means Mbappé, who will again play in a mask after breaking his nose in the group stage, will face a former Real Madrid forward in Cristiano Ronaldo. It is widely held that this could be the moment Mbappé, who is 25, takes the baton of greatness from the 39-year-old Portugal legend. “He is one of a kind,” Mbappé said. “He has shaped football, inspired generations, scored goals. I can only sing his praises.”