At least 22 people have been killed in airstrikes in northern Gaza, with Israeli forces stepping up their campaign on the besieged Palestinian territory even as fighting in the new war in Lebanon escalates.

On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) renewed its evacuation orders for Palestinians still living in the decimated northern half of Gaza, although many residents say the fighting and Israeli sniper fire make it impossible to leave.

Avichay Adraee, an IDF spokesperson, told people that the area includes parts of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood and sections around Jabalia, the urban refugee camp.

In a social media post, Adraee asked people living there to head south to al-Mawasi, a coastal area of southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of people are already displaced. A total of 84% of the territory is currently under evacuation orders, pushing civilians into ever-dwindling “humanitarian zones” which Israel has bombed regardless.

The UN says an estimated 400,000 people are trapped by the latest ground fighting and artillery fire centred in Jabalia, which has now entered a second week.

“It is getting tougher every day. The fear and the conditions are unspeakable,” said Badr Alzaharna, 25, from Gaza City. “I cannot leave. I want to travel but I can’t. Rafah crossing has been closed since May.”

Gaza’s ministry of health appealed on Friday for medical teams to be allowed access to the northern half of the strip to evacuate the wounded, and for fuel deliveries to the north’s struggling hospitals, warning that civilians caught up in the intense shelling and airstrikes are running out of food and water. Seven World Health Organization missions were impeded from access to northern Gaza by Israeli forces this week, the UN body said. Also on Saturday, the World Food Programme, the UN food agency, reported that no food aid has reached northern Gaza since 1 October, with a 35% drop in the supply of food to families around the rest of Gaza, raising new fears of extreme hunger and famine that have already plagued the strip for a year.

The last food supplies – canned food, flour, high-energy biscuits and nutrition supplements – have been distributed to shelters and health facilities in the north, and it is unclear how long they will last. Israel has consistently denied blocking aid and food to Gaza.

Airstrikes overnight on Friday on Jabalia destroyed an entire building and severely damaged several more, according to medics and first responders, who are still recovering missing people from under the rubble and ruins created by a 20-metre deep impact crater.

At least six women and seven children were among the dead, and a strike in another part of Jabalia in the early hours of Saturday killed two parents and injured their baby, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. Hospitals across Gaza reported receiving a total of 49 bodies and 219 wounded people in the past 24 hours.

The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest strikes and civilian deaths in Gaza.

Israel has nominally controlled the northern half of Gaza since the beginning of the year, and has cut the territory in two by creating what it calls the Netzarim corridor, which separates what was once the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip. However, it has since frequently re-entered Gaza City and other areas in the north of the strip where it says Hamas fighters are regrouping.

In Lebanon, the health authority said that 60 people were killed and another 168 wounded in the past 24 hours, and the United Nations peacekeeping force that operates on the blue line separating Israel and Lebanon said its headquarters in Naqoura had been targeted a second time. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the fire.

Israel stepped up its campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah last month after a year of tit-for-tat fire triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.

The new war in Lebanon has heightened the risk of a region-wide escalation drawing in Iran and the US. Ceasefire talks on ending the fighting in Gaza have been stalled since July.

The Scottish DJ and producer Jack Revill, known to many as Jackmaster, has died aged 38, his family has announced.

Revill died in Ibiza on Saturday morning after “complications arising from an accidental head injury”, his family said.

A statement said: “It is with profound sorrow that we confirm the untimely passing of Jack Revill, known to many as Jackmaster.

“Jack tragically died in Ibiza on the morning of October 12, following complications arising from an accidental head injury.

“His family – Kate, Sean and Johnny – are utterly heartbroken.

“While deeply touched by the overwhelming support from friends, colleagues, and fans, the family kindly requests privacy as they navigate the immense grief of this devastating loss.”

Born in Glasgow, Revill worked at the well-known record shop Rubadub in Glasgow, and went on to become the co-founder of the record label Numbers.

He had recently released the single Nitro, featuring Kid Enigma, telling Electronic Groove music magazine: “It was about feeling hyped and inspired in the club.

“Sadly, those moments are rare now. Blame the phones and people who don’t dance.

“I am so grateful for my fans, but I got into music because I love dancing. It’s a lost art form at the moment, I think.”

The electronic duo Disclosure were among those paying tribute, writing on Instagram: “Can’t believe this. Heart broken. Thank you for all the amazing memories & inspiration Jack. This is just awful awful awful.”

A post from the official Instagram account of DU duo CamelPhat on Revill’s Instagram page said: “Can’t believe what I’m reading… in an industry full of Ego you were hands down one of the nicest fellas we ever met along the way. Our thoughts are with family & friends. RIP my friend x”.

Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland who led Scotland to the brink of independence, has died at the age of 69.

Salmond served as first minister of Scotland from 2007. He stood down from the role after failing to secure independence in the 2014 referendum, handing over to his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon.

Reports suggested that he collapsed after delivering a speech in North Macedonia on Saturday.

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said he was “deeply shocked and saddened”.

“Alex worked tirelessly and fought fearlessly for the country that he loved and for her independence. He took the Scottish National party from the fringes of Scottish politics into government and led Scotland so close to becoming an independent country.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Salmond had been a “monumental figure” for more than 30 years.

“He leaves behind a lasting legacy,” he said. “As first minister of Scotland he cared deeply about Scotland’s heritage, history and culture, as well as the communities he represented as MP and MSP over many years of service.

“My thoughts are with those who knew him, his family and his loved ones. On behalf of the UK government, I offer them our condolences today.”

Sturgeon said: “I am shocked and sorry to learn of Alex Salmond’s death.

“Obviously, I cannot pretend that the events of the past few years which led to the breakdown of our relationship did not happen, and it would not be right for me to try.

“However, it remains the fact that for many years Alex was an incredibly significant figure in my life. He was my mentor, and for more than a decade we formed one of the most successful partnerships in UK politics.

“Alex modernised the SNP and led us into government for the first time, becoming Scotland’s fourth first minister and paving the way for the 2014 referendum which took Scotland to the brink of independence.

“He will be remembered for all of that. My thoughts are with Moira, his wider family and his friends.”

The former SNP leader and former first minister Humza Yousaf said Salmond had “helped to transform the SNP into the dominant political force it is today.

“Alex and I obviously had our differences in the last few years, but there’s no doubt about the enormous contribution he made to Scottish and UK politics.”

Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, said the “sad news of Alex Salmond’s passing today will come as a shock to all who knew him in Scotland, across the UK and beyond”.

He described him as “a central figure in politics over three decades” whose “contribution to the Scottish political landscape cannot be overstated”.

Tom Tugendhat, the UK’s shadow security minister, said Salmond was a “towering figure who shaped our politics for a generation”.

Joanna Cherry, the former SNP MP, said: “I am devastated to hear this news. He was one of the most talented politicians of his generation, and by any measure the finest first minister our country has had. He changed the face of Scottish politics.

“Sadly, he was ill-used by many of his former comrades, and I am particularly sorry that he has not lived to see his vindication. Above all, I shall remember him as an inspiration and a loyal friend. My heartfelt condolences go to Moira, his family, and all who loved him.”

Salmond began his second stint as SNP leader in 2004, securing power in Holyrood in 2007. That was followed by a sweeping victory in Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011 – the precursor to the independence vote.

Salmond was a huge but divisive figure, gaining criticism for his appearances on the Russian state channel RT. He quit the channel after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He resigned from the SNP in 2018, after allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as first minister in 2013. After lengthy legal battles, he was arrested in 2019 and charged with 14 offences.

He was acquitted of all charges of sexual assault in 2020, when he was found not guilty of 12 charges of attempted rape, sexual assault and indecent assault after six hours of jury deliberations. The jury reached the uniquely Scottish verdict of “not proven” on one charge of sexual assault with intent to rape. Another charge was dropped.

The subsequent Holyrood inquiry into the Scottish government’s handling of the initial harassment complaints led to huge splits within the SNP, with some senior figures backing Salmond, and accusations that he had been the victim of a witch-hunt within the party.

He went on to form the Alba party in 2021, which challenged the SNP on its failure to deliver a second referendum but failed to make electoral headway.

Salmond was rumoured to be considering a return to frontline politics at Holyrood at the next Scottish parliament elections in 2026, with speculation that he might stand for the regional list in the north-east of Scotland.

Reflecting recently on the referendum result, Salmond said he had started to write his concession speech after the first result was declared on the night of the vote. The yes campaign lost the vote, 45% to 55%.

The first result came from Clackmannanshire, often seen as reflecting national sentiment. Voters there backed staying within the UK by 53.8% to 46.2%. “When I saw that result, I started to write my concession speech,” Salmond said.

“Nobody gave us a chance at the start. I always reckoned if we got to the positive side of the argument, if we claimed the positive side for ‘yes’, which in itself is an affirmation, then once we got into the campaign, I thought we’d pick up ground, and so we did.”

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign worked with X to prevent information about his running mate JD Vance from being posted on the social media platform, a move that resulted in the journalist who revealed the information being kicked off the site, according to reports.

The former president’s team contacted X, owned by the billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk, about a 271-page document compiled by his campaign to vet Vance that was linked to by Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist, the New York Times has reported.

X responded by blocking links to the material, claiming that it contained sensitive personal information such as the Ohio US senator’s social security number, and banned Klippenstein from the platform.

The materials published by Klippenstein on his Substack in September appear to be related to a hack of the Trump campaign earlier this year, which the FBI has linked to Iran. Documents from the hack have been shared with several media outlets, which have chosen to not publish them.

Media outlets did not reach the same decision when they gave significant attention to files from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign that were hacked and leaked by Russian intelligence before she ultimately lost that election to Trump. At one point Trump also said he hoped Russia would be “able to find” some of Clinton’s files.

The removal of the material from X has highlighted the increasingly strident support of Musk, the world’s richest person, for Trump’s attempt to return to the White House after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. After buying Twitter in 2022, Musk said that he was an advocate of free speech and the open sharing of information, even if it offended either political party.

Last week, Musk appeared at a Pennsylvania rally alongside the former president, performing an awkward jump on stage before declaring that “I’m not just Maga – I’m dark Maga” while invoking the Republican nominee’s Make America Great Again slogan.

Musk added that “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win in November against Kamala Harris, complaining that she and her fellow Democrats want “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively”.

Klippenstein, whose X account has been restored following the New York Times reporting, said in a Substack post on Friday that Musk had purchased political influence and “is wielding that influence in increasingly brazen ways”.

“The real election interference here is that a social media corporation can decree certain information unfit for the American electorate,” he wrote.

“Two of our most sacred rights as Americans are the freedoms of speech and assembly, online or otherwise. It is a national humiliation that these rights can be curtailed by anyone with enough digits in their bank account.”

Musk is set to appear at further Trump rallies – and he may even knock on voters’ doors for the campaign in Pennsylvania in the coming week. He has funded a political action entity called America Pac that has spent around $80m to help Trump reach voters in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania.

The government risks a huge political backlash if it keeps pushing the public to install heat pumps to replace their boilers, one of Britain’s leading green entrepreneurs has warned.

Dale Vince, a major Labour donor and renewable energy advocate, called on Keir Starmer to rethink national programmes, championed by Boris Johnson, pushing the technology. Vince argued that Whitehall should explore alternatives to the devices, which he said were expensive, caused serious disruption and could end up increasing energy bills for some people.

Vince, whose criticism of heat pumps has proved divisive among environmentalists, said mass use could bring a bigger political backlash than London’s expanded ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), which led to a surprise byelection defeat for Labour last year in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

“It’s a Johnson-era policy, and like most Johnson ideas, it wasn’t thought through,” Vince said. “It wasn’t meant for the real world, if you look at the amount of money committed. Electricity energy bills overall in our households will go up unless you assume heroic levels of performance.

“You’ve got this incredible disruption of home life for tens of millions of people – the need to change heating systems for a lot of people, not just the boiler – and substandard outcomes in a lot of cases.”

He added: “It’s politically threatening for any government to have a heat-pump programme. If you look back at the Ulez byelection and the fuss made about it in elements of the press, imagine a heat-pump programme where a household has just spent thousands of pounds on some technology that doesn’t do the job.” In June, Vince tweeted that heat pumps were like “Ulez on steroids”.

The entrepreneur’s latest comments expose divides even among environmentalists about the best way to move home heating away from the burning of fossil fuels via a regular gas boiler. Critics such as Vince state that heat pumps could increase bills because the electricity used to run them costs far more than gas. A study by the independent Energy Saving Trust put the cost at £20 a year more than using a new A-rated gas boiler. However, new specialist heat pump tariffs could make them cheaper to run.

Johnson’s government was an advocate of the technology, setting a goal of 600,000 new heat pumps a year by 2028. While installations in the UK have hit a record number this year, they have still only reached about 42,000 since January.

Air-source heat pumps cost just over £12,500 to buy and install on average, about four to five times more than a gas boiler. But the government currently offers a £7,500 grant for households installing the technology.

Vince claimed that he was speaking in the “national interest” in criticising heat pumps. He proposes an alternative – green gas, or biomethane, made from organic material, which his company Ecotricity develops.

Other environmentalists claim that the amount of land needed to produce enough green gas would be unrealistic, lead to food insecurity and damage biodiversity.

The Heat Pump Association, an industry body, insisted that the devices are a “proven, efficient, low-carbon heating solution which are readily available and scalable with the potential to reduce carbon emissions from heating by over 75% relative to fossil fuel heating systems”.

“Electricity prices are higher than gas prices in the UK,” it said. “However, heat pumps use three to five times less energy. Well-installed heat pumps that operate efficiently and make use of flexible electricity tariffs will in the vast majority of cases save the consumer money in comparison to their existing heating system.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said of Vince’s concerns: “We do not recognise these claims. The energy shocks of recent years have shown the urgent need to upgrade British homes, and heat pumps are a critical technology for decarbonising heating.

“Biomethane also has an important role in the transition to net zero as a green gas that can decarbonise gas supply, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and increase energy security.”

Vince also revealed plans to take advantage of the government’s decision to end the effective ban on onshore wind by “dusting off” a plan for 100 turbines in Gloucestershire, where his company is based, to power the county’s homes.

He said they could ultimately be transferred to the council’s ownership, handing it both an asset and long-term income. “If they were owned by the local authority, the windmills would bring £7m a year into local authority coffers,” he said.

“We will take the lead on this. We will find the sites, take them through planning and at some point in the future hope to work with local authorities to hand them over for public ownership.”

Tightening poll figures have triggered nervousness and anxiety in Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, with Donald Trump making gains in the states where it matters most as the election race enters its climactic final phase.

Amid a dramatic news cycle that has seen the US hit by two destructive hurricanes and rising fears of all-out war in the Middle East, the Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker showed the vice-president and Democratic nominee with a two-point nationwide lead, 48% to 46%, over her Republican opponent as of 10 October – tellingly, down from a 4% advantage she registered a fortnight ago.

More plainly worrying for the Democrats is the picture it paints in what are generally regarded as the seven key battleground states that will determine who ends up in the White House: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

All seven show minuscule differences between the candidates that are within the margin of error. Crucially, Harris leads in just three – fractional leads in Nevada and Michigan, and a slim one-point advantage in Pennsylvania.

Trump has wafer-thin leads in the five remaining swing states.

If that were to be replicated when voters go to the polls on 5 November, it would get Trump past the 270 electoral college votes threshold needed for victory and propel him back to the Oval Office.

The crumb of comfort for Harris is that, with multiple surveys telling contradictory tales when the details are scrutinised, that particular outcome probably won’t happen.

Indeed, a simulation using polling, economic and demographic data from FiveThirtyEight still had Harris winning the election 55 times out of 100, as of Thursday lunchtime. And a Wall Street Journal survey on Friday also painted a brighter outlook by showing Harris maintaining slight leads in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia – enough to give her a narrow electoral college win if borne out on polling day.

Yet the margins are perplexing for Democratic strategists, given that the vice-president’s campaign recently disclosed that it had raised $1bn within 80 days of Harris replacing Joe Biden as the party’s nominee in July. The amount greatly surpasses that raised by Trump’s campaign.

By late August, Trump’s campaign had brought in a relatively modest $309m, although it has the advantage of financial support from entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Super Pac, which is offering cash incentives to people in swing states to register Trump-friendly voters.

Whatever the cash advantages, Harris seems to have lost some momentum in the “blue wall” Rust belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania since her 10 September debate performance against Trump in Philadelphia, when she was generally seen as coming out on top.

That was illustrated by a Quinnipiac University poll last Wednesday that recorded the five-point lead she held in Michigan in the week following the debate being transformed into a three-point advantage for Trump, 50% to 47%; in Wisconsin, a one-point post-debate advantage turned into a 2% lead for Trump. And in Pennsylvania, a six-point Harris lead was halved to 3%.

One issue casting a shadow over Harris’s prospects is the intensifying conflict in the Middle East, with Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia group, threatening to further erode support among the large ethnic Arab voting bloc in Michigan that was already angry over the White House’s backing of the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza.

Quinnipiac’s survey shows Trump with significant leads on the issue in both Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump has apparently become so confident of victory that he has begun moving beyond the battlegrounds to stage rallies in Democratic strongholds such as New York, California, Illinois and New York, despite polls indicating he has little chance of winning there. The move seems calculated to project an air of impending triumph.

With just 24 days left before polling day, time is running out for Harris to correct her poll stutters, Democratic strategists fear. The timetable has been further curtailed by the twin storms, Hurricanes Helene and Milton, that have buffeted the south-east of the US in the past two weeks, diverting Harris from the campaign trail and presenting Trump with an opportunity to spout lies and falsehoods about her and Biden’s supposed failure to mount a recovery effort.

“I’m very, very concerned and very scared,” James Carville, the acknowledged mastermind of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign and author of its signature slogan – “It’s the economy, stupid,” – told MSNBC last week.

Warning of limited time for Harris to communicate a more aggressive message to voters, Carville continued: “Today is gone. You’re going to lose four to the hurricane … and everything kind of shuts down the Saturday before the election. So you’re really probably under 20 days that you have to really get a message out.”

Calling for a targeted attack on Trump’s plan to impose import tariffs – which economists have warned will stoke inflation – he added: “They need to be sharp. They need to be aggressive. They need to stop answering questions and start asking questions.”

But amid the gathering gloom, glimmers of light remain for Harris. Though survey after survey give Trump clear leads on issues of greatest importance to voters – namely, the economy, inflation and rising costs, and immigration – a majority of voters feel the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And just as Harris has been unable to convert her financial reserves into clear poll leads, Trump is exhibiting a similar failing despite having the edge on some headline issues.

The reason, the Wall Street Journal suggested, may be that his lead on economic issues is more nuanced than at first sight. For instance, Harris has a 6% advantage on bread-and-butter questions indicating that she “cares about people like you”. Likewise, while a majority said Trump has the right experience to be president, 48% said he was “too extreme”, compared with 34% who said the same about Harris, according to the paper’s poll.

Harris may have failed to land an electoral knockout, but her opponent – for all his bombast and resilience – has vulnerabilities and weaknesses that make a victory on points within reach.

In 1978, when I was nine years old, I unexpectedly moved to India with my free-spirited mother, who had recently become a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho). Like others of her generation, she was swept up in the allure of Rajneesh’s promises: enlightenment, freedom and belonging. Osho denounced traditional religion, offering a new path to self-liberation through cathartic meditations and therapy groups, communal living and free love. In the west, they called Osho the “sex guru”.

Shortly after our arrival at Rajneesh’s ashram, I was initiated into the community and the guru gave me a new name: Ma Prem Sarito. I felt as if I now belonged, and being in the ashram was an exhilarating adventure, a portal to a world where normal boundaries dissolved. School became a distant memory. The lush gardens and nooks and crannies of the ashram were transformed into a playground where my friends and I roamed freely, liberated from structure and rules. My mother, like many other parents, embraced Rajneesh’s philosophy that children belonged not to their biological parents but to the collective. Before long, I moved into the ashram and rarely interacted with my mother.

Though I was loved by many sannyasins (Rajneesh’s devotees) and some looked out for me, there was no formal structure to ensure my emotional or physical wellbeing. Over time, the facade of love and celebration began to crack, revealing darker undercurrents that quietly enveloped me. It began innocently enough – a guard teaching my friends and me how to french kiss. But soon I began to sense the inappropriate attention of certain men.

One day, a man coaxed me and another girl into giving him a hand job. We were both only 10 years old. Though I tried to convince myself it was just a game, a reflection of the open sexuality around us, it felt grossly wrong. Deep down, I knew that unless I remained vigilant, situations like this would continue to occur.

These darker undercurrents entangled me more fully when, in 1981, the commune moved to the US. I was among the first to arrive at the ranch the commune had bought in central Oregon. It was during those early days that I was lured into what I thought was a love affair with a much older man. I was only 12 years old; he was 29. However, what I believed to be love was no such thing.

At the time I suffered silently as he repeatedly drew me in with affection and took me to bed only to ignore me for days as I watched him pursue adult women and, in time, my peers. At the same time, other men circled, and eventually I gave in, as sleeping around and being “liberated” was the norm that was modelled to me. As time passed, I felt increasingly worthless and angst ridden, and took my bad feelings to mean I was flawed. We were to be positive, not negative, so I didn’t speak of my pain and confusion.

When the commune collapsed in 1985, we were all flung back into the world unprepared. I was 16, disoriented, broke and unsure of who I was. The trauma of my upbringing haunted me, but I couldn’t yet name it. As the years passed, I came to see it for what it was and came to see how Osho’s teachings tilled the soil for abuse – under the guise of spiritual freedom to boot. It sickened me. I distanced myself from the movement, from the teachings, and forged a life of my own.

Then in 2018 Netflix released Wild Wild Country, a docuseries about the community at the Rajneeshpuram complex. Watching it stirred my heartache and my fury. The series brought Rajneesh back into the public eye – but it only scratched the surface, focusing on the political and criminal scandals in Oregon. What about us children?

I gathered my courage and shared about my abuse in a Rajneesh Facebook group. At that time I was too scared to name my perpetrators. I found some support on the group, but many of the responses were the same old things I’d heard before, such as: “The kids seemed so mature”, or, “It’s not like all the kids were abused – it’s just how you choose to see it.” I left that discussion feeling enraged and determined to break my silence outside the insular Rajneesh community. I reached out to several peers I knew had also experienced abuse, hoping they would join me in speaking out.

They all initially declined, but three years later, in 2021, I received an unexpected call from one of them telling me she was finally ready. We began to share our stories, igniting a reckoning in which many other commune youth, and even adults, came forward and shared their own stories of abuse. Each new revelation was heart-wrenching. One of my peers from Rajneeshpuram said she had slept with 70 men, another said 150. This was before either of them had turned 16.

Children from the Rajneesh communes in Europe also spoke up. This is how I came to know Maroesja Perizonius, director of the documentary Children of the Cult. In her post, Maroesja recounted her own abuse in the Rajneesh commune in Amsterdam. For her, it began at the age of 13. Maroesja and I connected and quickly realised we shared the same determination to expose the systemic abuse that had been suppressed for too long. We each embarked on our creative paths: I began writing my memoir, and she set out to make a film that unveils the pervasive abuse carried out in the name of love and light. Though it has taken me decades to find my voice, I stand here today proud to join Maroesja and others to ensure that our stories are finally heard.

• Sarito Carroll is featured in the film Children of the Cult and is the author of In the Shadows of Enlightenment: A Girl’s Journey Through the Osho Rajneesh Cult, due out this autumn

• In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

At this year’s Labour party conference, health secretary Wes Streeting opened his DJ set at one late-night party with the feminist anthem Independent Women by Destiny’s Child. It was a tribute to Rachel Reeves, who was standing nearby.

A few moments later, partygoers watched as the health secretary scurried over, a look of faux alarm on his face. “It’s the lyrics – I’m so sorry!” he gasped. The chancellor, a quizzical look on her face, joined him as he mouthed the offending words: “The shoes on my feet (I bought ’em). The clothes I’m wearing (I bought ’em) … ” They stifled horrified laughter.

The cash-for-clothes row, in which Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and, to a lesser extent, Reeves have come under sustained fire for accepting gifts worth thousands of pounds from Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli, has been a low point for the newly elected government. It is certainly not how Starmer envisaged his first 100 days in office would end. Keen to avoid the same mistakes as Tony Blair, who later admitted he wished he had done more early on, this Labour government got off to a hyperactive start after 14 years out in the cold.

But along with all the big decisions, new legislation, foreign trips and attempts to set the political narrative, they have found themselves buffeted by headwinds: not just over donations, but also stories of internal rows at No 10 and, perhaps most significantly, a backlash over the cut to the winter fuel payment.

There are, of course, different views on how meaningful “100 days” assessments really are. Do these first weeks set the tone for government, or are they quickly forgotten? After all, any new administration takes time to get their feet under the table, especially when they have little institutional memory of power. But, for better or worse, this is a moment when the political ecosystem pauses and ponders. I spoke to more than two dozen people, including cabinet ministers, senior political aides, leading civil servants and Keir Starmer himself, to get a sense of how it has been on the inside.

When Keir Starmer walked up Downing Street just hours after Labour had won its enormous landslide victory, he grasped his wife Victoria by the hand and worked his way up the flag-waving, cheering crowd, shaking hands and hugging. The images were beamed across the world. But what nobody picked up was the fleeting moment when the new prime minister locked eyes with his two teenage children, who were tucked away in the throng.

“I can safely tell you this secret now,” he tells me. “We hid the kids in the crowd in Downing Street. I really wanted them to be there, but we didn’t want them walking down the street because of the way we’ve tried to keep them out of the public eye.

I caught their eye. I didn’t go to them, for obvious reasons. But it was fantastic to have them there. Nobody knew. But it was a really important moment for the family.”