Given anxiety about Kemi Badenoch, surely now would be a good time to find clarity about what we actually believe. Without that, we misfire

What would the ideal leader of the Conservative party look like? Despite the party’s newly developed regicide habit, this question doesn’t receive enough serious consideration. The sitting leader naturally becomes the locus for dissatisfaction, while speculation understandably focuses on the actual alternatives.

On one level, this is perfectly sensible. As a matter of practical politics, there is limited short-term use in dreaming up an ideal candidate who does not exist: like the serial online dater with the long list of must-haves, you risk ending up in a place where no living candidate can measure up to the one who lives in your head.

Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome

His greatest successes came in domestic policy. Inheriting a post-pandemic economy, Biden orchestrated the best recovery in the industrial world

With his characteristic dyspeptic vitriol, Donald Trump scorns Joe Biden as the “worst president in the history of America”. The historian Robert McElvaine hails him as a “great president”, arguing that his accomplishments rival those of “both Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, the two most effective of 20th-century presidents”, and since Biden didn’t enjoy the congressional majorities of those giants, he had to do it, “as was said about Ginger Rogers doing everything that Fred Astaire could do, backwards and in high heels”.

What is clear is that after four contentious years, Biden leaves Washington as a remarkably consequential one-term president.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times

Should you get an AI to write your application? Does LinkedIn matter? And when should you talk about salary? Recruitment experts reveal how to get hired

At this time of year, many of us rethink our working life, but how can you craft a CV that will catch an employer’s attention and then pull off a winning interview? Recruitment experts share the secrets to getting hired.

Even average use of nitrogen fertilisers cut flower numbers fivefold and halved pollinating insects

Using high levels of common fertilisers on grassland halves pollinator numbers and drastically reduces the number of flowers, research from the world’s longest-running ecological experiment has found.

Increasing the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus doused on agricultural grassland reduced flower numbers fivefold and halved the number of pollinating insects, according to the paper by the University of Sussex and Rothamsted Research.

We would like to hear your memories of David Lynch, as well as whether you are attending today’s global group transcendental mediation at noon PT

David Lynch, the maverick American director, has died aged 78 . He specialised in surreal, noir style mysteries and made a string of influential, critically acclaimed works including Twin Peaks and Eraserhead.

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of David Lynch – whether you met him, or appreciated his work as a film-maker. We are also interested in seeing your most Lynchian photos and hearing your experience of the world group 10-minute transcendental mediation, organised by his children for Monday at noon PT.

Westminster is preparing for Donald Trump’s second term ahead of the US president’s inauguration in Washington

Good morning. Donald Trump becomes president of the United States for the second time today and in Westminster, as across the rest of the word, supporters are giddy with excitement, while opponents feel this is a moment for epoch-defining dread. Nigel Farage , the Reform UK leader and Britain’s leading Trump evangelist, has got so carried away that he has told an interviewer he thinks there is a 20/25% chance that he could be prime minister by the time Trump leaves office (January 2029). It’s not impossible; but few other people would put his chances as high as one in four.

Most people in Labour politics, privately at least, regard Trump with horror, but the government has to work with him and Keir Starmer, who has invested a lot of effort in trying to establish a decent personal relationship with the new president, has issued a statement sending Trump his “warmest congratulations” on his inauguration. David Lammy , the foreign secretary, was on the Today programme this morning and, when asked if he he had changed his mind about Trump since the days when he used to denounce him in the strongest possible terms, he said his approach to foreign policy was grounded in “progressive realism”, taking the world as it is. He went on to praise the Trump he met when he and Starmer had dinner with him in New York in September last year.

The Donald Trump I met … had incredible grace, generosity, very keen to be a good host, very funny, very, very, very friendly, very warm, I have to say, about the UK, our royal family, Scotland, his relationship with Scotland, his mother. That was the Donald Trump I found.

There was a survey this week – 70% of the world welcomed Donald Trump coming to power, 70% of the world, much of that worried about authoritarian actors, actually quite like the fact that Donald Trump keeps them guessing.

I think surrendering the Chagos Islands, or putting the Chagos Islands in a situation where they can easily be coerced, by the Chinese Communist Party for example, I hope it’s a position that we see reversed here by Donald Trump, and by the UK government.

The Pentagon, the State Department and the White House under the last administration pored through this deal. There was an interagency process, [they] said it was a good deal. It’s right and proper that the new administration is able to consider it.

But having gone through the deal in detail, it’s the right deal to keep the global community safe, and I emphasize the importance of that military base and those assets on Diego Garcia that we’ve been working together with with the United States now for all of my lifetime.

Bitcoin rises by 4% past $109,000, reversing earlier losses; Donald Trump meme coin price tanks after wife Melania also launches token

Here’s our full story on Trump’s meme cryptocurrency going head to head with a coin backed by his wife.

The incoming US first lady, Melania Trump , has followed Donald Trump’s lead by launching a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency meme coin – briefly tanking the price of her husband’s coin in the process.

Incoming commander-in-chief had promised retaliation against his foes with majorities in both Congress chambers

The United States was bracing for a new era of disruption and division on Monday with Donald Trump scheduled to be sworn in as its 47th president, promising a blitz of executive orders and radical shake-up of the global order.

Trump’s inauguration ceremony has been moved inside to the rotunda at the US Capitol building because of bitterly cold weather. The high sandstone hall at the Capitol’s centre is the same spot where some of his supporters rioted on 6 January 2021 in an attempt to overturn his election defeat.

WFH has harmed employee productivity, says Stuart Rose, who was also executive chair of Asda

The former boss of M&S and Asda has said working from home has meant a generation of people is “not doing proper work”.

Stuart Rose, who was chief executive of M&S for six years until 2011 and then executive chair of its supermarket rival Asda until November, claimed that working from home had harmed employee productivity – a longstanding problem in the world’s wealthier economies.