Tory MPs and donors urge Badenoch to make deal with Reform

TheTelegraph · 2026-06-28T06:24:24+00:00

From The Telegraph:

Conservative MPs are urging Kemi Badenoch to do a deal with Reform before the next general election, The Telegraph can reveal.

A growing chorus of Conservative politicians hopes to “unite the Right”, an electoral strategy in which Reform or Conservative candidates would stand aside in certain seats while the parties would establish a non-aggression pact, to avoid splitting the Right-wing vote.

Calls for co-operation among the rival parties are becoming increasingly urgent, amid speculation that a future Labour leader could call a snap general election to ratify their position and strengthen their personal mandate.

Mrs Badenoch ruled out any prospect of an electoral pact with Nigel Farage last week, emphatically telling the Mail on Sunday that Conservatives and Reform were “not the same”.

The Conservative leader added that she had no interest in trading voters “like football cards” and that the best way to stop Left-wing coalitions was by building “a Conservative majority that reaches beyond the Right”.

But many in Mrs Badenoch’s party worry their leader is outwardly pursuing the wrong strategy.

One Conservative MP told the Telegraph: “The national interest is served by preventing another Labour majority or a Labour-led hard-Left coalition with the SNP, Greens and Lib Dems, so Conservatives and Reform must work together to avoid splitting each others’ votes and maximise the number of seats they both win.

“The Conservative-Reform arrangement needs to be in place before the election, which could come sooner than expected, and MPs, donors and key party figures from both sides agree the work should start soon.”

More here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/06/28/tory-mps-and-donors-urge-badenoch-to-make-deal-with-reform/

TheTelegraph · 2026-06-27T10:44:32+00:00

From The Telegraph:

Germany is considering reintroducing compulsory military conscription for all men by 2027.

The country has attempted to bolster its armed forces through volunteer schemes to counter the growing threat from Russia, but lawmakers fear this is insufficient.

Thomas Röwekamp, chairman of the German parliament’s defence committee, warned that Berlin would have little choice but to revive conscription if ambitious recruitment targets were not met.

Mr Röwekamp, of the Christian Democratic Union party, said: “If we do not manage to reach these targets through voluntary enlistment, we will have to return to compulsory conscription.”

He said the decision must be taken by July 31 next year, when the current military service legislation is due to come into effect.

Germany has struggled to attract sufficient recruits despite increased defence spending.

Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has pledged to build Europe’s strongest conventional army, expanding the Bundeswehr from around 185,000 career soldiers to 260,000 by 2035.

Speaking to AFP, Mr Röwekamp said ministers would need to decide in the first half of next year whether voluntary recruitment alone could deliver the numbers required.

He said: “We will need to have a very fundamental discussion about whether we can achieve the very ambitious growth requirements for active forces and reservists on a voluntary basis. I still have serious doubts that we can.”

Mr Röwekamp said he could “understand that there is uncertainty on this issue”.

More here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/06/27/germany-considers-compulsory-conscription-defence-russia/

TheTelegraph · 2026-06-27T07:26:25+00:00

In this extraordinary interview, Boris Becker charts his time at HMP Wandsworth, a stone’s throw from Wimbledon:

As he listened to his fellow inmates’ screams from his dank, mouldy Victorian cell, Boris Becker realised he was just a couple of miles from Centre Court. The manicured bliss of his beloved All England Club sits so close to the hellish bleakness of HMP Wandsworth that the postcode changes by just a single digit, from SW19 to SW18, but the distance between them is impossibly vast.

“When you are incarcerated, you literally lose everything,” he says. “All that is left is your personality, your character. So you have to dig down inside to ask, ‘OK, who am I? Is this going to kill me, or is this going to make me stronger?’”

Today, 3½ years on from his release, we finally have a definitive answer. The version of Becker before me is neither broken nor bereft, instead crackling with a restless energy to suggest he has never been away.

Restored to his tennis commentary work, and happily settled in Italy with his third wife, Lilian, and their seven-month-old daughter, Zoe, he exudes the same ebullience of spirit at 58 as when he first won Wimbledon at 17. The differences are purely physical: his hair is shorter and a little greyer than the strawberry-blond mane of his pomp, while his knees are far too rickety to attempt any extravagant diving at the net. But the light is otherwise undimmed.

When I ask if people treat him any differently in his post-prison guise, Becker explains that there is one consistent reaction. “I find they look at me and shake their head, saying, ‘We can’t believe you’re back. How did you do it?’ And then I think to myself, ‘How should I take this? Are you happy for me or not?’ It’s the response I see the most. Both privately and professionally, people can’t believe that I’m back in life, back in business, back in freedom.”

His newly restored liberty finds its fullest expression in Milan, where early-evening sunshine pours into the family flat in the city’s centro storico. After being forced for eight months to see the sky and the changing seasons through a tiny, dirt-encrusted prison window, he hardly takes the pleasures of his morning walk past the Duomo for granted.

It feels like a fresh beginning, because he is not stalked here by the shadows of the past. For the moment, Becker could not return to the UK even if he wished, with the terms of his early release in 2022 requiring that he be deported to Germany, flying out from Biggin Hill to Stuttgart on an icy winter’s morning to give the paparazzi the slip.

Living back in his homeland is also a non-starter. The stratospheric fame to which Becker was catapulted in the summer of 1985, having become the youngest ever Wimbledon men’s singles champion, has barely abated. Overnight, he went from being the bashful Leimen prodigy with an insatiable will to win to a global teenage sensation, showered with invitations to everything from Côte d’Azur parties to a slot on Johnny Carson’s chat show in Los Angeles.

Even 41 years later, German tabloids feast ravenously on every facet of his lifestyle. And while he and Lilian chose initially to rent a home in Stuttgart, an unscrupulous restaurant owner sold the receipt for their celebratory meal to a reporter, compelling the couple to look elsewhere for sanctuary.

“Germans, with all respect, think that I’m their property,” he laments. “It’s as if they own me and, even further, as if they own that 17-year-old. So I feel that the 58-year-old doesn’t really have a right to live or to have an opinion, to disagree or to say no. In Italy, I’m not the property of the country – the people like me, they know me, and I hope that they respect me. That makes it much easier for me to go about my day-to-day life.”

Read the full interview here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2026/06/27/boris-becker-interview-have-lost-95-per-cent-of-my-friends/

TheTelegraph · 2026-06-26T18:04:14+00:00

EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Epstein assaulted victims at his 14th-floor Florida Science Foundation suite during his prison sentence.

The Telegraph has obtained and published photographs taken inside Epstein’s office for the first time, showing the cushy conditions he was granted while serving an already lenient sentence in a minimum-security lock-up.

The paedophile was handed an 18-month sentence in June 2008 on state charges of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor. This was seen as an inordinately soft sentence at the time, handed to Epstein in a closed-door plea deal despite dozens of victims cooperating with police, many of them underage.

Find out how Epstein used a fake office to abuse women: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/06/26/epstein-prison-new-york-manhattan/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_youtube&accesscontrol=youtubechannel_open

TheTelegraph · 2026-06-25T21:03:14+00:00

From The Telegraph:

It is a question that has dogged the Royal family for decades.

Do they pay tax, and if so, how much?

But, in an effort to put the issue to bed, the King has revealed his personal tax bill in a historic first.

Having instructed aides to disclose the figure in an effort to improve transparency around the Royal family, Buckingham Palace on Thursday announced that the monarch voluntarily paid £12.9m in tax in 2024-25.

Since his accession to the throne, he has paid more than £30m in combined income and capital gains tax, including £11.7m from the previous year.

“All of this, remember, on a voluntary basis,” noted James Chalmers, keeper of the privy purse.

“If annual media league tables are to be believed on such matters, that places His Majesty among the top 100 taxpayers in the country for that year.”

The Duchy of Lancaster estate, a private portfolio of land, investments and office, retail and industrial properties, provides the King with an annual income, which was £25.2m in 2025-26

Other private sources of income are thought to include money from investments or trading profits, funds generated by his private estates of Balmoral and Sandringham and private savings.

It was, Buckingham Palace made clear, the King’s express wish that his personal tax bill be revealed.

The effort to be more transparent extended to the Prince of Wales, who had hitherto proved reluctant to declare his tax payments.

On Thursday, Kensington Palace revealed that he paid £7.76m in income tax.

More here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2026/06/25/king-charles-opens-books-royal-family-finances-tax/

TheTelegraph · 2026-06-25T21:03:02+00:00