Joe Biden has issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden covering convictions on federal gun and tax charges, the US president said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.

The decision marks a reversal for the president, who had repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later.

In the statement, Joe Biden said that he had long maintained that he would “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.

But, he argued, “it is clear that Hunter was treated differently”, adding that the charges in the case “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election”.

Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware in June on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. He had written on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs.

He pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September, opting for an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.

The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the president’s son would have avoided prison time entirely.

The pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted”.

Joe Biden said on Sunday evening that his son had been prosecuted when “without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form”.

He noted in the statement that “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions”.

Biden accused his political opponents of singling out his 54-year-old son.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.

“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Speculation had been mounting that the president would issue a pardon since Hunter was seen with his father in Nantucket over the Thanksgiving break.

Donald Trump had said in October that he would not be surprised if Hunter Biden were to receive a pardon.

“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump said. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”

On Sunday, Trump reacted with outrage, writing on his social network: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Just one day earlier, though, Trump had reminded Americans that he himself had previously used the pardon power to wipe away convictions of those close to him. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. On Saturday, Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.

Republicans have long zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s difficulties – questions around lucrative foreign consultancies, broken relationships and a crack cocaine addiction – in an effort to politically damage his father.

A laptop Hunter Biden left in a Delaware repair shop that made its way into Republican hands formed a scandal in the closing days of the 2020 election. Republicans claimed that the so-called “laptop from hell”, which featured images of Hunter posing with guns, sex workers and crack cocaine, was suppressed by media favorable to Democrats.

Hunter Biden later published a book, Beautiful Things: a Memoir, that detailed his struggles as a drug addict. The Biden family denied more serious accusations that Hunter’s profitable financial arrangements with businesspeople in Ukraine and China amounted to graft using the family name.

James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, denounced the pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” Comer wrote on X. “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”

Hunter Biden said in a statement to the Associated Press that he would never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering … I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport.”

Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.

In the statement announcing the pardon, Joe Biden said that for his “entire career” he had followed a simple principle: to tell the truth to the American people.

“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bob Bryar, the former drummer of the US pop-punk band My Chemical Romance which was said to have influenced the youth culture movement emo, has died aged 44.

Bryar’s body was found in his home in Tennessee last week. The entertainment news outlet TMZ, which was the first to report his death, said that according to police no foul play was suspected as his possessions, including musical equipment and weapons, were untouched.

He performed with My Chemical Romance between 2004 to 2010, making him the band’s longest-standing drummer. In that period, they produced their biggest hit – the 2006 album The Black Parade which reached No 2 in the US Billboard 200 charts and also took the UK music scene by storm.

At the time of The Black Parade, the group became caught up in a moral panic around so-called “emo”. The Daily Mail castigated them as a “dangerous teen cult of self-harm”, though the band denied any association with emo.

“I’m surprised a newspaper thought we were such a threat that they had to write a whole article about us and our fans, calling them a death cult,” the frontperson Gerard Way told the Guardian in 2006.

Bryar was born in Chicago, Illinois, and learned percussion in a marching band at school. He took up sound engineering, which drew him into the orbit of touring rock bands that in turn led him to My Chemical Romance.

He replaced the band’s first drummer, Matt Pelissier, soon after the release of their second album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, in 2004. The group had been formed in 2001 by Pelissier and Way in their home state of New Jersey.

Bryar quit the band in 2010 at about the time of the release of Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.

My Chemical Romance is scheduled to go on a new US tour next year, starting in Seattle, Washington, in July. The current lineup consists of Way, his brother the bassist Mikey Way, lead guitarist Ray Toro, and rhythm guitarist Frank Iero.

Bryar formally retired from music in 2014 and began working as a real estate agent. His passion was advocating for dog rescue and other animal sanctuaries.

Three years ago he sold off the drum kit on which he played on The Black Parade tour to raise funds for an animal rescue center near his home in Tennessee.

Pep Guardiola said he expected more respect at Anfield after being taunted about the sack during Manchester City’s defeat at Liverpool, with the chants prompting the goalkeeper Stefan Ortega to criticise the city as “not the best part in the UK”.

Guardiola held six fingers up to the Anfield crowd – one for each Premier League title he has won at City – in response to chants of “You’re getting sacked in the morning”, as Liverpool moved 11 points clear of the faltering champions with a 2-0 win.

It was City’s sixth defeat in a seven‑game winless run, ­comfortably the worst sequence of Guardiola’s illustrious managerial career, but the City manager claimed he deserved better from Liverpool due to their fierce rivalry in recent seasons.

Ortega defended his manager’s reaction, while criticising the city of Liverpool. “Someone told me before that this area is probably not the best part in the UK,” the City keeper said. “I think he reacted really well.”

Guardiola said: “I’m so proud of my six Premier Leagues against that [Liver­pool] team and the previous team [under Jürgen Klopp]. I didn’t expect Anfield to start chanting at 0-2 that I would be sacked. Maybe I deserved to be sacked with our results! Maybe I’m still in the job because I won six Premier Leagues and a lot of titles.

“They want to sack me. I wish they were more kind. Why didn’t they do it at 0-1? Why didn’t they do it last season when we won the Premier League? Why do they want to sack me now? I didn’t expect that from Anfield, for other clubs like Brighton I can understand it. But for Anfield I didn’t expect this, maybe it is the respect we have. They know we have won six Premier Leagues. But it’s fine, it’s part of the game.”

Guardiola defended his team’s poor performance at Anfield, ­arguing his players refused to give in but admitting they created little. “I have the feeling that from here we can start to build something,” he said.

“Call me delusional but I have the feeling that from here we will start to build back to winning games and confidence. Our target cannot be talking about titles in November or December. We didn’t do that when we were top of the league. But at the same time we are still in December, not the end of the season, so many things can still happen.”

Arne Slot, the Liverpool head coach, said he has no ­sympathy for Guardiola’s predicament as he feels City will recover to challenge for a fifth Premier League title in succession. “You feel sympathy or empathy with managers who are in a really bad place, when they have lost many games or are down at the bottom of the league,” Slot said.

“Pep has won so many things and shown so many times already. The league is not decided in November or December so no one has to feel sympathy or empathy for Pep. He has won so many things and will be able to bring City back.”

Slot, however, described Liverpool’s defeat of the reigning Premier League champions, and their victory against the European champions Real Madrid on Wednesday, as a statement from the title favourites.

The Liverpool head coach, who confirmed he will be without ­Ibrahima Konaté and Conor Bradley for several weeks, said: “Yes it was [a statement]. Playing against Real Madrid, playing against Man City, teams that have been and are so good and with managers that have won so many trophies, it is always nice to come out in both situations as a winner. But the reason these teams have won so much is they weren’t able to win once or twice, they were able to win every single three days.

“We are really happy with these two wins but we also understand if we want to achieve more than this then winning once or twice, even against these big teams, is not enough to win anything at the end of the season.”

Donald Trump’s plan to nominate as FBI director the “deep state” conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.

Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday talk shows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, whom Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.

It is already clear that confirming Patel through the US Senate is likely to be less than plain sailing. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, indicated that Patel could face a tough confirmation battle.

Rounds pointedly sang the praises of the existing FBI director in an interview with ABC’s This Week. He said that Wray, who still has three more years of his 10-year term to serve, was a “very good man”, adding that he had “no objections about the way that he is doing his job right now”.

The senator also emphasised the separation of powers between president and Senate, signaling possible trouble for Patel. Rounds said he gave presidents “the benefit of the doubt”, but also emphasised that “we have a constitutional role to play … that’s the process”.

Other Republican senators rallied to Patel’s side. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, told CBS’s Face the Nation that he believed Patel would be confirmed.

“Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption of the FBI.”

Bill Hagerty, a Republican senator from Tennessee, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he would vote to confirm Patel. “Kash is the best at uncovering what’s happened to the FBI and I look forward to seeing him taking it apart,” he said.

Patel is a Trump loyalist who has published children’s books featuring “King Donald”. He has long denigrated the FBI as a pillar of what he calls the “deep state” or the “corrupt ruling class”.

In an interview with Shawn Ryan in September, Patel vowed to “shut down” the FBI’s headquarters in Washington DC and reopen the building the following day as a “museum of the deep state”.

He has also threatened to use the power of federal law enforcement to go after those he claims are responsible for corrupting the federal government, a list of whom he published in his memoir. Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s current national security adviser, was among that list: Patel called him “one of the corrupt actors of the first order”.

Sullivan was asked by ABC’s This Week whether he was worried personally about Patel’s potential leadership of the FBI, given the threats against him. He declined to comment, saying he was wholly focused on keeping the country safe in the remaining 50 days of his term in office.

But he did highlight that Biden had kept Wray on as FBI chief, despite having inherited the official from Trump. Sullivan said that Wray served “with distinction, entirely insulated from politics or the partisan preferences of the current sitting president. This is a good, deep bipartisan tradition that President Biden has adhered to.”

Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from Maryland, challenged the claim by Trump and Patel that the FBI had been politically weaponised under Biden to go after Republicans. He pointed out on CNN’s State of the Union that over the past four years the FBI had prosecuted the disgraced Democratic senator from New Jersey, Bob Menendez, and the Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar.

“I think that’s what they mean when they talk about politicization in the deep state – anybody who doesn’t do the will of Donald Trump,” Raskin said.

According to an Axios report on Sunday, Trump had initially planned to appoint Patel as deputy FBI director but changed his mind after his pick to head the agency, the state attorney general of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, failed to impress him. Raising Patel to the number one position makes the move far more politically loaded.

Despite the storm he is generating, Trump shows no sign of moderating his leadership choices for his upcoming administration. Over the weekend he tapped Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and a convicted felon whom Trump pardoned in 2020, as US ambassador to France.

On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had chosen his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, to be senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Boulos, a Lebanese billionaire, was active in Trump’s presidential campaign as a liaison with Arab American and Muslim leaders.

Trump has also picked a county sheriff, Chad Chronister, from Florida to head the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The agency will have a key role in attempting to fulfill Trump’s pledge to staunch the cross-border flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the US, which is already causing diplomatic tensions with Canada and Mexico.

Chronister’s father-in-law, Edward DeBartolo, was pardoned by Trump three years ago on a 1998 conviction for involvement in a gambling fraud case. DeBartolo, the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers American football team, was fined $1m and suspended by the NFL for a year.

When times have been tough in the past for Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, there has always been the sense that they will pull through; it will be OK. Almost to the extent there has been little dramatic tension around them, only inevitability. Not now.

The City machine looks broken, the certainties that have driven them for so long absent, the control gone. They got exactly what they deserved here – another defeat, a sixth in seven matches in all competitions, and it is very difficult to see them defending their Premier League title.

The delirious Liverpool crowd informed Guardiola that he would be sacked in the morning, which prompted him to raise six digits in their direction, one for each of his league titles in England. It was an isolated act of defiance from someone with the club’s crest on their chest.

Liverpool were everything City were not; suffocating at the back, physical in every position, slick on the ball, menacing in front of goal. Cody Gakpo’s opener was scant reward for their initial dominance but it was never going to be an occasion when Arne Slot’s team did anything other than extend their lead over second-placed Arsenal to nine points. And put 11 points between themselves and City, who lag in fifth.

Guardiola had admitted that his players were suffering, as is he, and there is no doubt that this is the biggest crisis of his City tenure. At least there is some jeopardy now. Mohamed Salah made the points safe for Liverpool from the penalty spot. The title is theirs to lose.

City were 2-1 or longer to win with every bookmaker in England, the first time since Guardiola’s first season at the club in 2016-17 they had not been the favourites for a league game. City as the plucky underdogs? It went into the mix, as did Guardiola’s record at Anfield. Only once in nine previous visits in all competitions had his City team enjoyed victory – and that was when the ground was empty for the league fixture in the pandemic season of 2020-21.

It was rocking here, the home crowd sensing blood and tasting it after 12 minutes. Nobody could say that the breakthrough was not advertised; moments earlier, Virgil van Dijk had hit the far post with a thumping header. Stefan Ortega, who Guardiola preferred in the City goal, looked to have got his fingertips to the ball.

Trent Alexander-Arnold was the architect of the opener, moseying into midfield to ping a diagonal up the inside right for Salah, who had acres of space into which to run. City were exposed – and not for the last time in that area. Over came Manuel Akanji but Salah cut inside to curve over a beautiful low cross. Less beautiful from a City point of view was how Kyle Walker stopped and watched Gakpo attack the far post and tap home.

It was the symbol of what was a horrible start by City and there were others: loose passes, just a basic timidity. The nerves had been written all over Guardiola’s features before kick-off. His players were edgy. It was the 25th minute before City strung a few passes together inside the Liverpool half and even then, they ended going all the way back to Ortega, red shirts hounding them every step of the way.

Liverpool could have been further ahead by then because Van Dijk was guilty of heading off target from an Alexis Mac Allister corner. The captain was free; he seemed certain to score. Salah had won the corner after a foot-race with Nathan Aké following another lovely Alexander-Arnold pass; Salah had the City left-back for pace, Aké only just managing to get his foot in.

The excellent Dominik Szoboszlai, who more than justified his selection ahead of Curtis Jones, had worked Ortega with a stinging drive in the early going and there was the moment when Liverpool won the ball high up and menaced through Luis Díaz and Alexander-Arnold. Gakpo stepped in to lift high.

City stabilised over the final 20 minutes of the first half, although it was jarring to see how low their threat levels were, particularly up the wings. They wanted extra touches and Liverpool were in no mood to give them time. City’s only flicker before the interval came on 39 minutes when Rico Lewis prodded wide of the far post from an Erling Haaland pass. Just before that, Alexander-Arnold had fizzed inches wide after a corner came out to him.

Liverpool had further chances for the second after the restart, Matheus Nunes making a saving block to deny Gakpo and, from the resulting corner, Van Dijk flicking a header just over. A thought for City – maybe somebody mark the big man? Salah also blew a gilt-edged one-on-one with Ortega, firing high after Bernardo Silva had played a back pass to Akanji with directions to the Royal Liverpool Hospital on it.

City got on the ball more in the second period. They tried to work their short passing game. It was an exercise in rebuilding confidence as much as exerting control. Jérémy Doku made a difference when Guardiola introduced him for Nunes on the left wing. And yet where were the chances?

Liverpool continued to look the more dangerous team on the counter, Salah especially, and if their priority in the closing stages was to defend securely, then another goal would not hurt. It came when Rúben Dias dallied and Walker took a heavy touch, allowing Díaz to rob him and sprint away. When Ortega was late into the challenge with him, it was an obvious penalty, the only question being whether the goalkeeper would face censure. He did not, Salah’s penalty conversion punishment enough.

There was time for Van Dijk to err and present the City substitute Kevin De Bruyne with a one-on-one against the underworked Caoimhín Kelleher. The goalkeeper blocked. For City, there is no way out of the torment.

In the aftermath of its latest flood, the town centre of Tenbury Wells was a scene of chaos. The main street was caked with a layer of mud, shop windows were smashed and piles of sodden furniture and wares, all ruined, were heaped in the street.

“On Monday when we came in we wanted to leave, lock the doors and just disappear,” said Richard Sharman, the owner of Garlands Flowers. “We’ve lost about £6,000 and we won’t get a penny back. Six weeks ago we lost about £4,000 in a flood.”

He’s been trading in the heart of Tenbury for about seven years, and became emotional as he said: “If we get flooded again I’ll walk away, and the landlords can sue us. I don’t care, I’ll go bankrupt. I’ve had enough.”

The Worcestershire market town hit the headlines this week when a 57-year-old man drove a tractor at speed down the flooded high street on Sunday, sending a wave of water towards businesses that smashed windows and doors, adding to the devastation.

It prompted outrage, and the driver was quickly arrested by the police. He has since apologised and said he was rushing to help a friend rescue someone from the flood waters.

Locals said they hope the headlines draw attention to the existential threat facing Tenbury – that, without help, it could become the first UK town centre abandoned due to flooding exacerbated by climate change.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it potentially could be abandoned,” said Dave Throup, a retired Environment Agency (EA) manager in the area and a flooding expert. “It sounds a dramatic claim, but people are already voting with their feet there.

“If you keep getting flooded once or twice a year and can’t get insurance, you just can’t keep going on. Without some kind of flood defences, the future looks very bleak indeed.”

In the past four years, Tenbury has been flooded seven times by the River Teme, and business owners said they had only just got back on their feet from a flood on 17 October, when the latest deluge hit.

Tenbury Wells is in a particularly precarious position as it’s a flat, low-lying town almost entirely surrounded by water – the Teme to the north and a tributary, the Kyre Brook, to the south.

The town is often flooded by the Teme, and the Kyre Brook overspills into the town centre when the Teme is full and it has nowhere else to go. It can submerge whole streets in seconds, and this time around it demolished a wall holding back the water from the high street.

“It’s a particularly dangerous flood, because it is so rapid onset, there isn’t that much warning,” said Throup. “With the Teme and the Kyre Brook, Tenbury gets hammered by two separate sources, the geography is unfortunate.”

The climate crisis means the problem is getting worse. The Teme’s flood peaks at Tenbury are projected to increase by a median 20% this decade, even in a scenario with lower emission increases. Residents have also raised alarm at houses being built on flood plain areas.

Most people in the town centre cannot afford insurance – the premiums are too high because flooding is so frequent, they said. Businesses and homeowners have adapted accordingly, by placing all electrical sockets high up, not storing things on the floor and putting in place makeshift flood defences of their own.

But there is only so much people can do, and some have decided this latest flood might be the end of the road.

“With all the stock we’ve lost, plus everything else, we’re talking probably £25,000–£30,000 in damage,” said Laura Jones, the owner of Rainbow Crafts, which she built up from a market stall several years ago.

“I’m going to have a pop-up shop to sell off the rest of my stock and then take it from there – that might be it, or I might be able to continue. But I know at least three businesses throwing in the towel after this. It’s going to become a ghost town.”

Next door, a beauty shop run by Stephanie Hopkins was boarded up and splattered with mud. “We think the business could be finished,” she said. “We put so much money into it, and everything has just gone. We can’t afford insurance.”

Lesley Bruton, an independent district councillor for Tenbury, said: “Businesses can’t afford to continue. They can’t afford to replace the stock, and while we haven’t got defences, businesses won’t want to come to the town. And residents are finding they can’t sell their homes.”

“And climate change is having a significant impact on the rainfall. When it does rain now, it is more intense and heavier. The ground is absolutely saturated.”

The battle for flood defences for the town has been continuing for decades, but would be “the most complicated the EA has ever dealt with”, said Bruton.

It would entail building a wall and series of floodgates around almost the entire town centre, in a costly and complex scheme predicted to cost about £30m – having risen from £7m a decade ago. Half of the funding has already been secured and the government is being called on to make up the rest.

“The prices have kept going up, and the final design is so complicated it has 20 different floodgates. Some of the walls are in very sensitive areas, so they’d have to be done in historic bricks and Historic England has had to be involved,” said Harriett Baldwin, the Conservative MP for West Worcestershire.

“But the modelling suggests that with climate change, flooding will be even more frequent and very much more unpredictable, because you don’t know where the flash flooding is going to happen.

“So we will just keep pushing until we’ve got the money. The longer they wait, the more expensive it’s going to be.”

The government said it will invest £2.4bn before March 2026 to improve flood resilience across the country, but there has been no confirmation that this will include fully funding the Tenbury flood defence scheme.

Throup said one of the hold-ups has been that the high cost of the flood defences is more than what would be saved by minimising flood damage. “It’s not materialised because it’s not economic,” he said. “But it needs to happen soon.”

“We’re only a small town, I don’t know if we can take much more of it, to be honest,” said Tracy O’Mahoney, who lives in Tenbury and works in a bathroom shop.

Five days after the flood, the shopfront is still lined with sandbags and flood defence boards, with customers directed to go around the back.

“We’re too frightened to take anything down, in case we’re going to have heavy rain all next week, and this time we don’t even have that wall,” O’Mahoney said.

“It will kill the town if it keeps coming up, because people won’t want their business here, and those that already have their business here are, quite frankly, weary of it. We need help really quickly – it’s like we’re marooned on an island, and everyone has forgotten about us.”

A community in Devon has raised £22,555 to turn a 500-year-old oak tree into what they believe will be the longest table ever crafted from a single English oak tree.

The 18 metre-long (59ft) Great Oak Table, capable of seating 60 people, was being built in a small patch of private woodland near Chagford, on the edge of Dartmoor.

It would, said Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, a local artist who owns the wood and conceived the idea, “be a 21st-century re-enchantment of the land: a rewilding with bells on because it brings in the element of human imagination and human flourishing, as well as nature restoration, to a wild space where people can gather to share food, friendship and lively conversation”.

“In its own small way, I want this table to be somewhere hope can be sparked that we can tip the world towards joy,” she added. “It’s a micro-project but these micro-projects are what are going to change the dialogue about how we can all move into a happier future.”

After two years of research, the group says it can find no reference to another table crafted from a single oak tree, apart from the 13-metre “Table for the Nation” made for Ely Cathedral.

Baldry bought the patch of low-grade agricultural land 18 years ago when it was rubbish-ridden and unloved. Naming it Pigwiggen Wood after a fairy knight, she and her two sons have since nurtured it into a nature and wildlife-rich sanctuary, where dormice nest and slow worms thrive.

Baldry had long harboured the dream of placing a long table at the forest’s heart.

“I knew it had to be oak, because there’s such a long tradition in British culture of oak as a great symbol of courage and endurance,” she said. But it took her a year to find one that was sufficiently long, ancient and magnificent.

“I was offered French oak but I said I wouldn’t import oak. I said it had to be Devon oak; every sawmill in Devon was on a search for over a year for a tree worthy of the project,” she said.

Eventually a tree was found: a 45 metre ancient oak that had fallen in a storm 15 years ago but lay undisturbed because the owner couldn’t bear to see it chopped up for firewood.

The project started two years ago with loans and financial gifts from the community. Now that crowdfunding has raised more than Baldry hoped, the loans can be repaid and the costs for the final work met.

“We can now finish making the table and open the space up for community events, such as parish picnics, immersion days for the local primary schoolchildren and quiet days when visitors can ditch their to-do lists and simply read, paint or relax in the dancing shadows of the leaves,” she said.

“Once in a while on one of those rare English summer evenings when the moon is bright and the sky is clear, the woodland glade will become a fairytale space for people to gather. There will be food and fellowship under the trees, the telling of tales and the sound of the harp,” she added.

Terri Windling, a neighbour and local folklore specialist, said bringing a table into a wild space “blurs the boundary between indoors and outdoors, wild and civilised”.

“It brings us, as a community, to a place that is wild and yet still part of human life. The fact that it’s a table is key. There are so many things you can do at a table: it’s where you gather with your family, with your friends, with your community to share food, sit and draw, or write or just be in the outdoors with neighbours that aren’t human: neighbours that are the plants and the animals and the insects.”

Another neighbour, Alan Lee, the Oscar-winning concept artist for the Lord of the Rings films, designed an elfin throne for the head of the table.

Baldry said: “I had this idea for a throne at the end, not for humans – because the whole thing about the table is that it’s a place where all are equal – but because I wanted to have the symbol of the larger world of which we’re all a part,.”

Beej Trigg Woods, the local carpenter who has spent two years on the project, said it was probably the most special design he would ever create.

“It’s humbling to work on wood this ancient, for a project that’s so meaningful,” he said. “I started when my son was just a few weeks old. I hope the table will still be standing when his grandchildren are able to sit round it.”

There is “no route to net zero” that ignores the real concerns of businesses, a cabinet minister has warned, as the government prepares to reduce financial penalties handed to carmakers not selling enough electric cars.

Ministers are also looking at how cheaper loans could be introduced to help people buy an electric vehicle (EV), after a wave of job losses and closures in which carmakers blamed the onerous fines they were facing.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business and trade secretary, stood by the government’s “cast iron commitment” to reinstate a 2030 ban on new cars that run on petrol and diesel. The deadline was dropped by Rishi Sunak a year ago. But he said the government had to be “clear eyed” in its effort to “keep the auto industry alive in the UK”.

“When this government says that decarbonisation must not mean deindustrialisation, we mean it,” Reynolds writes for the Observer today. “There is no route to net zero without backing British industries and workers. We are in no doubt at all about the global challenges the industry is facing and the need for us to play our part to support them.”

Labour sources said support for the 2030 target remains solid across government, including Keir Starmer. However, ministers are fast-tracking plans to review the fines for manufacturers who miss the EV quotas.

Carmakers have to ensure 28% of the cars and 16% of vans they sell are electric from January. If they fail, they currently face fines of £15,000 for each vehicle outside the target. Ministers are holding a consultation on how far the fines could be reduced.

Electric vehicles have very low carbon emissions and are considered to be vital in the bid to reach net zero. This is the point at which emissions across the planet have been reduced so much that these residues can be easily removed from the atmosphere, making it possible to halt the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere, the cause of global heating.

Reynolds blamed the setbacks on the last government, who he accused of waging a “culture war” with green targets – destroying certainty and investment in the process. He said he wanted to make EVs “affordable and accessible for working people and to boost the take-up of electric vehicles”. It is understood that officials are looking at plans to boost demand, including the use of cheaper financing deals.

It comes after a decision by Stellantis, the owner of Vauxhall, to close its van factory at Luton, putting 1,100 jobs at risk of being cut or relocated. The company blamed the UK’s economic conditions and the government’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. Days before, Ford announced it would cut 4,000 jobs in Europe, including 800 in the UK.

Car manufacturers are under financial pressure from EV sales quotas because public demand is lower than expected. Carmakers met Reynolds last month to warn of the economic pressures caused by the tough targets.

Ford UK boss Lisa Brankin warned last week that market challenges were making the financial regime around the move to electric vehicles “unworkable”. Brankin, chair and managing director of Ford UK, posted on LinkedIn: “The end goal is not in question, but current demand for electric vehicles is lower than expected and not in line with the mandated trajectory.

“For manufacturers like Ford who have invested billions in new technologies and advanced manufacturing, there needs to be greater flexibility built into the scheme and government-backed incentives to help encourage customers to make the switch.”

There are also concerns among the unions over the goals to ensure the UK reaches net zero by 2050. Gary Smith, the GMB general secretary, told the BBC in September that the government’s green policy were “hollowing out working class communities’.

Des Quinn, Unite national officer for the automotive industries, said that officials had introduced ambitious targets for EV sales, but had not provided the investment required for the charging infrastructure. He said he was optimistic there would be significant changes to the pathway for zero emission vehicles, but it had already caused economic damage.

“It’s inevitable there are going to be further job losses,” he said. “Some work on electric vehicles might not start, or at least be put back.”

Quinn said in addition to reviewing the current targets, there needed to be a detailed impact assessment of the cost to jobs of moving to EVs. He said most losses would be in the supply chain where components now being manufactured for petrol and diesel cars will no longer be required. “Car workers are going to be the new coal mining communities,” he said. “Thrown on an industrial scrap heap and left to get on with it.”