The Observer

The Observer is no longer just a Sunday paper – you can now enjoy a little bit of Sunday, every day of the week. We’ve officially launched The Observer’s first digital subscription. Every subscriber gets: 🗞 Early access to our biggest investigations 📱 Exclusive features on our website and app 📥 Premium newsletters including The Puzzle Edit and Observer Food Weekly Head to the link in our bio to read, watch and listen to The Observer.

We’ve officially launched The Observer’s first digital subscription. Become a subscriber and get: 🗞 Early access to our biggest investigations 📱 Exclusive features on our website and app 📥 Premium newsletters including The Puzzle Edit and Observer Food Weekly Head to the link in our bio to read, watch and listen to The Observer.

Did you know that less than 2% of the population will choose the next prime minister? It's pretty much over for Keir Starmer, but what happens next? The Observer's Political Editor, Rachel Sylvester, breaks down the three stages of a leadership contest. Read all of Rachel's reporting at our link in bio.

Introducing The Observer Culture Club. The Observer Culture Club offers our subscribers over £650 worth of benefits tailored for the culturally curious, helping you discover experiences we think you will love. From exhibition and festival tickets to hand-picked travel escapes, our regular Book Club, and the best of independent cinema. Subscribe to the Observer and unlock these benefits and more at the link in bio.

Wes Streeting has resigned as health secretary. While he stopped short of launching a leadership contest, it may only be a matter of time before he tries to oust Keir Starmer from No 10. Read more at our link in bio or comment WES and we’ll send it to you directly. ✍️ @xaviergreenwoodobserver 📸 Toby Melville

It's that time of the week, can you guess our clues to this week's Goldilocks? Comment PUZZLE and we'll DM you Goldilocks to play now 🧩 (We promise it's not too hard, not too easy...but just right!) By Brendan Emmit Quigley Edited by @verballyvisuallyloud

The £5m gift that keeps giving. Nigel Farage could be hit by two separate investigations into the undeclared £5m he received from Christopher Harborne, The Observer understands. The parliamentary standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg, is understood to have opened a probe into the Reform UK leader after the Guardian revealed he had received a seven-figure sum from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire. Separately, The Observer understands that the Electoral Commission will confirm whether it is opening its own probe before the end of this week. The team is continuing to weigh up the extent to which the cash was used for Reform party purposes. Earlier this year the standards commissioner found that Farage had breached parliamentary rules for failing to register 17 payments worth roughly £384,000 within the 28 days required. A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Mr Farage’s office is in communications with the parliamentary commissioner for standards. He has always been clear that this was a personal, unconditional gift and no rules were broken. We look forward to this being put to bed once and for all.” Greenberg said the breach could “reasonably be described as inadvertent”, meaning no further action was taken. This time around things could be much more serious. Several individuals who have previously worked on standards inquiries told The Observer that the nature of the gift, as well as its size, could result in Farage receiving a sufficiently long enough suspension from parliament that it could trigger a byelection. Read more at our link in bio. ✍️ Catherine Neilan Photograph by Toby Melville/AFP via Getty Images

How do you fix the British economy? If it feels like you’re working harder than ever for less in return, you’re not imagining it. Britain is around 30% poorer than it could be if productivity had kept pace with where economists expected it to be. So what went wrong, and what would it actually take to turn things around? The Observer’s Economics Editor @benzaranko breaks it down.

It’s over for #KeirStarmer – how has it come to this? The Observer's Rachel Sylvester, writes, "I think the real reason for the catastrophic collapse in support is that Starmer has never been able to explain – and perhaps has never really known – why he wants to be prime minister. When I saw him on Saturday, he declared that he wanted to be in Downing Street for a decade but even as he was fighting for his political life he seemed oddly devoid of ideas about what that “ten year programme of national renewal” would involve. He was determined to put Britain at the “heart of Europe” but refused to look again at his manifesto red lines on the single market and the customs union. The same vacuum was apparent in the speech he delivered on Monday, which is why so many of his MPs turned on him." Read her full piece on why the PM has lost the support of his cabinet and much of the country at our link in bio now. Photograph by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street

Confessions of an online addict: ‘My phone is a needle and social media the concoction it delivers’ One serial smartphone user, Sebastian Hervas-Jones, recounts the highs of breaking the habit and the lows of relapsing Read his full article on our website - link in bio

'What’s in a name or, to be more specific, an astrophysical category? Rather a lot, according to Nasa chief Jared Isaacman. He recently informed a US senate committee that he was “very much in the camp of ‘Make Pluto a planet again’”. 'Ever since it was discovered in 1930 by the self-educated astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto’s status has been a subject of, if not cosmic importance, then healthy disagreement. 'For 76 years the tiny ball of rock and ice, about two thirds the size of Earth’s moon, was recognised as the ninth, smallest and most distant planet of the solar system, though some scientists such as the astronomer Brian Marsden maintained that it did not satisfy planetary qualification. 'Then in 2006, nine years after Tombaugh’s death, members of the International Astronomical Union voted on the criteria for a planet. The backdrop was a growing concern that more and more objects in the Kuiper Belt, the outer-suburbs of the solar system that are filled with dwarf planets and comets, would join the planetary elite as our observational abilities increased. 'IAU came up with three rules for qualification. A planet must orbit the sun, be spherical by force of its own gravity, and it must have “cleared the neighbourhood” around its orbit, meaning that it must be gravitationally dominant over surrounding objects. 'Pluto passed the first two, but failed the third, because it shares its orbit with objects that it is too small in mass to eject. Thus its status as a planet was withdrawn, leaving only eight officially recognised planets in the solar system. 'Many criticised the decision, the most vocal of whom has been the planetary scientist Alan Stern, the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. In 2015 the New Horizons probe sent back dramatic images showing a geologically active world with ice mountains.' ✍️ Andrew Anthony 📸 NASA / Getty Images Read more in the paper today - available nationwide - or subscribe through the link in bio

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