In the headlines

British ministers are prepared to hand over £8bn of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, warning that Vladimir Putin is an active threat to the UK's citizens, security and prosperity. It's part of a deal Britain is trying to broker with the EU and other nations, including Canada, that could see as much as £100bn released for Kyiv's war effort. Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands will boycott next year's Eurovision after Israel was given the all-clear to compete in the 2026 song contest by the competition's organising body. Despite calls by several participating broadcasters to exclude the nation over the war in Gaza, the European Broadcasting Union held no vote on its participation at its general assembly yesterday. Louvre, Mounjaro and Denzel Washington were among the most mispronounced words of the year, according to presumably very scientific research by the language-learning platform Babbel. The Parisian museum should be "LOOV-ruh", the weight-loss drug is apparently pronounced "mown-JAHR-OH" and the Hollywood actor's name isn't "DEN-zul" but "Den-ZELLE". Click here to see the rest.

Comment

Corbyn delivering his conference speech. Christopher Furlong/Getty

The left "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"

When Your Party was first announced at the end of July, says Owen Jones in The Guardian, 800,000 people registered their interest, revealing, it seemed, an unprecedented opportunity for the left. Faced with an economic model no longer delivering rising living standards or functioning public services, and a deeply unpopular foreign policy – support for Israel – the radical left had its "biggest ever receptive audience". But the party's first conference in Liverpool last weekend was a masterclass in how the left "can never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Members gathering to hear a "credible, inspiring alternative" to Keir Starmer's Labour were instead treated to those timeless left-wing blights: "infighting, posturing, sectarianism and an obsession with meetings".

Oh how I wish I'd been there, says Douglas Murray in The Spectator. It looked hilarious. Zarah Sultana boycotting the first day of her own conference was funny enough. Then there were the speakers, including a gangly young chap called Joseph who declared his pronouns were "she/they", while wearing a knitted bobble hat in the colours of the Pride flag, letting the audience know he was from the trans wing of the party not the Islamic wing. When Sultana finally took the stage, she was heckled by a male Muslim speaker who complained that the hard left party had purged people with "conservative" views. He, in turn, was accused of "misogyny", before another member screamed over both of them with the words: "We should not be screaming over each other." Outside, a young white woman in a keffiyeh confronted Jeremy Corbyn over whether he was sufficiently "anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist". Yes, that Jeremy Corbyn. Visibly furious, he exploded: "What do you think I've spent my life doing?" Judging by the conference, that's an easy one to answer.

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Shopping

Boxes of chocolate can be as decorative as they are delicious, says Clare Coulson in the FT. Top picks include a lobster-printed box from Audrey's (£16.96); Chapon's "Henri Rousseau-esque" boxes covered in tropical scenes (£27); Charbonnel et Walker's gilt-edged boxes of truffles clad in Liberty prints (£62 for three); the ornate Gilded Age tins sold at New York's Louis Sherry (£35); and the navy and white boxes that come with personalised notes from Paris's Debauve & Gallais, which still serves wafer-thin pistole chocolate medallions invented for Marie-Antoinette (£48). Click on the image to see more.

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