There is a higher risk of a serious fall in US stocks than is currently being reflected in the market, the head of JP Morgan has told the BBC.

Jamie Dimon, who leads America's largest bank, said he was "far more worried than others" about a serious market correction, which he said could come in the next six months to two years.

In a rare and wide-ranging interview, the bank boss also said that the US had become a "less reliable" partner on the world stage.

He cautioned he was still "a little worried" about inflation in the US, but insisted he thought the Federal Reserve would remain independent, despite repeated attacks by the Trump administration on its chair Jerome Powell.

Jamie Dimon was in Bournemouth, where he was announcing an investment of about £350m in JP Morgan's campus there, as well as a £3.5m philanthropic investment in local non-profits.

Commenting on the investment, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "As one of Dorset's biggest private sector employers, JP Morgan Chase expanding their Bournemouth campus is fantastic news for the local economy and people who live here."

Ahead of the interview, Dimon appeared before a town hall on the campus - cutting a figure more akin to an off-duty rock star than bank CEO - wearing an open-collar shirt and jeans, and high-fiving staff on his way to the stage.

Opening with his take on the UK's economy, Dimon said he felt Rachel Reeves was doing a "terrific job", and he felt optimistic about some of the government's attempts to boost innovation and cut regulation.

However, in the broader economic picture, he felt there were increased risks US stock markets were overheated.

"I am far more worried about that than others," he said.

There were a "lot of things out there" creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, he added, pointing to risk factors like the geopolitical environment, fiscal spending and the remilitarisation of the world.

"All these things cause a lot of issues that we don't know how to answer," he said.

"So I say the level of uncertainty should be higher in most people's minds than what I would call normal."

Much of the rapid growth in the stock market in recent years has been driven by investment in AI.

On Wednesday, the Bank of England drew a comparison with the dot com boom (and subsequent bust) of the late 1990s - and warned that the value of AI tech companies "appear stretched" with a rising risk of a "sharp correction".

"The way I look at it is AI is real, AI in total will pay off," he said.

"Just like cars in total paid off, and TVs in total paid off, but most people involved in them didn't do well."

He added some of the money being invested in AI would "probably be lost".

Bullets, guns and bombs

Global security has been a recent focus for the JP Morgan boss, with his letter to shareholders earlier this year warning the US would run out of missiles in seven days of a South China Sea war.

Reflecting on how the world could combat risk factors, he pointed to greater military investment.

"People talk about stockpiling things like crypto, I always say we should be stockpiling bullets, guns and bombs.

"The world's a much more dangerous place, and I'd rather have safety than not."

Another risk factor which many in the global economy believe the US could be facing is pressure placed on the independence of the Federal Reserve, America's central bank.

On this, he said he thought central bank independence was important - but was willing to take Trump "at his word" that he would not interfere in Fed independence, despite the president describing current Fed chair Jerome Powell as a "moron" and a "numbskull" for failing to lower interest rates more quickly.

Dimon acknowledged the US had become a "little less reliable" but said that some of the Trump administration's action had pushed Europe to act over underinvestment in Nato and its lack of economic competitiveness.

Dimon also shared insights into a potential breakthrough in trade negotiations between India and the US.

He said he wanted to "bring India closer" and he believed a deal was close to reduce additional tariffs on India, which were imposed as a penalty for its continued trade with Russia, particularly its oil purchases.

"In fact, I've spoken to several of the Trump officials who say they want to do that, and I've been told that they are going to do that."

Jamie Dimon's name has been frequently mentioned among the big financial players capable of making a transition into politics.

Ahead of Trump's re-election last year, influential investor Bill Ackman said he would be an "incredible choice" as treasury secretary, and he has also been the subject of speculation about a potential presidential run.

Asked about his political ambitions, Dimon said it "wasn't on the cards", and his focus was on keeping JP Morgan as a "healthy and vibrant company".

"If you gave me the presidency, I'd take it," he joked. "I think I'd do a good job."

The parents of Tom Phillips, who vanished with his three children into the New Zealand wilderness in 2021, have made a public apology - their first comments since Phillips was shot dead by police on 8 September.

"We would like to send our sincere apology... for all the trouble, inconvenience, loss of privacy and property caused by Tom," Neville and Julia Phillips wrote in a letter published in King Country News, a small community newspaper, on Thursday.

"We in no way supported him or agreed with any of his actions in the past four years. We are truly sorry for all that you had to endure."

Phillips evaded capture for nearly four years, despite a nationwide search and multiple sightings.

He was killed in a shoot-out in September, in which a police officer was seriously injured.

The officer has since been discharged from hospital, local media reported.

One of his children had been with him during the shoot-out, and provided information to help locate Phillips' two other children later that day.

Before Phillips disappeared with his children, they had been living in Marokopa, a small rural town in the region of Waikato surrounded by dense bush and forested terrain.

"The vast area in which Phillips kept the children is difficult, steep terrain almost completely obscured from all angles by dense bush," Detective Superintendent Ross McKay said weeks after the deadly shoot-out.

The main goal of the police during the operation had been "locating and returning the children safely" he said. He added that they "knew Phillips had firearms and was motivated to use them".

Police said they could not provide further details amid ongoing investigations.

Phillips' family had previously made public appeals to him to return.

In a message to Phillips during a television interview, his sister Rozzi said "we're ready to help you walk through what you need to walk through".

Phillips' mother Julia also wrote him a letter - provided to New Zealand outlet Stuff - saying that everyday she hoped "today will be the day that you all come home".

A new law in California is aimed at stopping advertisements from pumping up the volume on streaming services.

The law, which says adverts cannot be louder than the primary video content being watched, builds on a federal one that sets the volume of ads on broadcast TV and cable stations to include streaming platforms.

Opponents, including the influential entertainment industry, had argued it would be difficult to implement because streaming services do not have the same control over ad volume as broadcasters.

California is home to the headquarters of streaming platforms Netflix and Hulu, and Amazon produces many of its Prime Video shows and movies there.

In 2010, Congress pass the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act to dial down the volume on TV and radio stations.

The law that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed on Monday forces streaming services to comply with the Obama-era federal law too.

The services were in their nascence when the CALM Act was passed but have since become the primary viewing option in many US households.

"We heard Californians loud and clear, and what's clear is that they don't want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program," Newsom said upon signing the bill.

Existing federal law requires the federal regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to develop regulations that require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany, according to the bill.

In February, the FCC said it had received thousands of complaints about loud commercials over past several years - many regarding streaming services.

This law, which takes effect on and after July 1, 2026, prohibits a video streaming service that serves consumers in the state from transmitting the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the people are watching.

"This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who's finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work," said State Senator Thomas Umberg, who introduced the bill.

Samantha is the daughter of Umberg's legislative director, Zach Keller, who told him about a noisy ad waking up his infant daughter while he was watching a streaming show.

However, the Motion Picture Association and the Streaming Innovation Alliance, which represent streaming services including Disney and Netflix, initially opposed the bill.

They said they do not have the ability to control volume settings on the devices on which their content is offered, unlike broadcast and cable TV providers.

Streaming ads come from several different sources and cannot necessarily or practically be controlled, the MPA's vice-president of state government affairs Melissa Patack said in June.

The bill was later amended with a legal provision that would bar individuals or private parties from suing streaming services for violating the law.

Both groups remained neutral on the amended bill as a result, according to the Los Angeles Times.

US President Donald Trump says Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a Gaza peace deal.

It comes two years and two days after Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.

At least 67,183 have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza since then, including 20,179 children, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

Here is what we know about the agreement, and what remains unclear:

What has been announced?

After intense negotiations in Egypt, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a first phase of a US peace plan, the US president said.

Announcing the deal on social media, Trump said: "This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line."

"All parties" would be treated fairly, said Trump, who called these the "first steps toward... everlasting peace".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it "a great day for Israel" and said his government would meet on Thursday to approve the agreement and "bring all our dear hostages home".

In confirming the announcement, Hamas said it would "end the war in Gaza, ensure the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces, allow the entry of humanitarian aid, and implement a prisoner exchange".

Israel and Hamas do not speak directly to each other - the negotiations were brokered by Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey.

What happens next?

Israel's government is due to vote on the deal on Thursday.

If they formally approve it, Israel must withdraw its troops from Gaza to the agreed line, a senior White House official told BBC's US partner, CBS News. The withdrawal would likely happen within 24 hours, the official said.

After this happens, a 72-hour clock will begin where Hamas must release the living hostages.

The release of the hostages would likely begin on Monday, the senior White House official said.

What do we not know?

What's been announced so far is just the initial phase of Trump's 20-point peace plan, which Israel has accepted and Hamas has partly agreed to.

However the announcements did not cover some thorny issues both sides have not reached a resolution on.

Notably, no details surround the disarmament of Hamas - a key point in Trump's plan. Hamas has previously refused to lay down its weapons, saying it would only do so when a Palestinian state had been established.

The future governance of Gaza is also a sticking point. Trump's 20-point plan states Hamas will have no future role in the Strip and proposes it be temporarily governed by a "technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee", before being handed over to the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu appeared to push back on the Palestinian Authority's involvement last week, even as he accepted Trump's plan.

Ultranationalist hardliners within Netanyahu's ruling coalition, many of whom want to reconstruct Jewish settlements in Gaza, are also likely to object to this point.

Hamas, in response, said it still expected to have some role in governing Gaza.

In addition, as of Wednesday night, Hamas had not yet received the final list of Palestinian prisoners that Israel plans to release in exchange for the hostages in Gaza, a Palestinian source told the BBC.

The 20-point plan states that 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after 7 October 2023 will be released.

What's been the reaction?

Relatives of Israeli hostages have welcomed the deal.

Eli Sharabi, whose wife and children were killed, and whose brother Yossi's body is being held by Hamas, posted: "Great joy, can't wait to see everyone home."

The mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen posted: "My child, you are coming home."

Meanwhile in Gaza, celebrations broke out after the announcement. "Thank God for the ceasefire, the end of bloodshed and killing," Abdul Majeed abd Rabbo, a man in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

"I am not the only one happy, all of the Gaza Strip is happy, all the Arab people, all of the world is happy with the ceasefire and the end of bloodshed."

World leaders have urged parties to abide by the deal.

"The suffering must end," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, adding that the UN would support the "full implementation" of the deal, as well as increase its delivery of aid and its reconstruction efforts in Gaza.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the news, saying: "This is a moment of profound relief that will be felt all around the world, but particularly for the hostages, their families, and for the civilian population of Gaza, who have all endured unimaginable suffering over the last two years."

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the agreement a "much needed step towards peace" and urged parties to "respect the terms of the plan".

Lawmakers in the US have struck a cautiously optimistic tone.

"This is a first step, and all parties need to ensure this leads to an enduring end to this war," Democrat Senator Chris Coons said in an X post.

Republican James Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called it a welcome deal and said he "looks forward to learning [its] details".

With reporting by Rushdi Abualouf and Lucy Manning

Incidents of very young children taking knives into primary schools have been revealed by a BBC investigation.

Police in Kent recorded an assault involving a four-year-old pupil, while officers in the West Midlands reported that a six-year-old had taken a flick knife into class.

The mother of Harvey Willgoose, a teenager murdered by another pupil in Sheffield, says the data is shocking and is calling on the government to fund metal detectors, or "knife arches", for all UK schools and colleges.

One teenage boy from Sheffield, who says he has taken knives to school, told us: "I just felt like I need to protect myself."

There were 1,304 offences involving knives or sharp objects in 2024 at schools and sixth form colleges in England and Wales, a Freedom of Information request by the BBC has found.

At least 10% were committed by primary-school-aged children, police data suggests.

One educational trust in the West Midlands told us it was installing permanent metal-detecting "knife arches" in all four of its secondary schools because the rate of knife crime in its police force area was so high.

Nearly every force - 41 out of 43 across England and Wales - responded to our request for information about knife incidents in schools.

Two thirds of them also gave us data on the ages and genders of children involved - and those figures revealed that almost 80% of offences were carried out by boys, the vast majority teenagers.

We were also given details of incidents involving primary-age children, some of them very young:

• Kent Police responded to a four-year-old with a knife at a school. The offence was recorded was "assault with injury - malicious wounding". The child was under the age of criminal responsibility, so another body or agency intervened
• West Midlands Police reported that a six-year-old was in possession of a flick knife. The child told staff that "I have a plan... I am going to kill [name of pupil]". Staff seized the knife after the child initially denied having the blade on him
• West Midlands Police also logged that a five-year-old had taken a 10-inch kitchen knife into school to "show his friends" and a six-year-old had gone to school with a "meat cleaver"
• Cheshire Police reported that it had gone to a school in Chester where a five-year-old boy had taken in a kitchen knife

Reporting of such young offenders, however, is not always consistent across schools and police forces, as the age of criminal responsibility is 10.

In response to the BBC's findings, the government told us it has a "mission to halve knife crime" and "schools have the power to implement security measures, including knife arches, where necessary".

Mother Caroline Willgoose says "kids are going to school frightened" and the installation of knife arches could be a deterrent to crime.

Her son, Harvey, was murdered by a fellow pupil with a hunting knife in February at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield. The 15-year-old was stabbed twice in the chest.

Caroline says Harvey was afraid to go to school because he knew some children were carrying knives.

"I always thought knives was a gang-culture type of thing. Never in a million years would I have thought there were knives inside school," she says.

The 51-year-old says many of the pupils and teaching staff who saw what happened are still receiving trauma counselling.

"It's been horrific. I can't describe the pain... we need to get into schools and educate kids of the seriousness and the pure devastation that carrying knives can bring."

The police forces were all asked by the BBC about offences with bladed weapons they had recorded on school premises in the past few years.

The types of knives found included machetes, pen knives, flick knives, butterfly knives and swords.

Although the 2024 figure for the total number of knife incidents (1,304) is slightly down on the previous year, according to the data we received, the number of more serious offences recorded - for example violence rather than possession - has gone up.

Some schools have responded to rising knife crime by adding security measures to check for bladed weapons.

Beacon Hill Academy in Dudley has recently installed a new knife arch - the BBC was able to see it in use for the first time.

Evie, who's 16, says the arch is a stark reminder of possible dangers: "You think about what it's there for and what children do bring to school, and you never know."

Thirteen-year-old Archie agrees but says "you've got to keep in mind it was put in for a safety thing. So, it's kind of scary on the one hand, but at the same time reassuring".

Headteacher Sukhjot Dhami says the school needed to add extra security - "whatever it takes to keep young people safe".

The three other secondaries run by Dudley Academies Trust are introducing similar security measures - a response, says the trust, to the high knife-crime rate in the West Midlands Police area.

The boss of one the UK's largest providers of metal detectors says sales to schools of knife arches and handheld wands have risen.

Schools are our biggest customers, says Byron Logue, managing director of Interconnective Security Products.

The company sold 35 knife arches to schools between March 2024 and March 2025 - a threefold increase previous 12-month period before, he says. In the last 12 months they have also sold more than 100 knife wands to schools.

"I think we've reached a stage now where we can acknowledge that there is a problem nationally in the country with regards to knife crime, particularly amongst the youth," says the businessman.

In a Sheffield gym, we meet three teenagers who tell us they have taken knives into school.

One boy, 15, tells us he used to take a 12-inch knife into the classroom.

"The first time I took a knife in, was when a kid sent out a message saying, 'I'm going to kill you this time'. So I asked one of my friends to give me a knife and I paid about £30 for it."

The teachers didn't notice, he says. "I used to always walk in with a blade on my hip. I'd sit down normally so the knife wasn't moving around."

Another boy, 18, says he started carrying a knife into school after being attacked and slashed on the hand by another pupil.

"I just felt like I need to protect myself," he explains.

We challenge the teenagers about why they broke the law and took knives into school.

One of them replied: "You just got to take your precautions. Nowhere's safe really."

The three boys are in the gym as part of an effort - by owner Trevor Chrouch - to offer young people an alternative to crime. A former professional bodybuilder, these days Trevor offers mentoring and teaches young people self-defence. He lets secondary school pupils use the gym for free, he says.

"I think kids are bringing knives into school every day. Just like their mobile phone in their pocket, they've got their knife in the other pocket. It's because they're scared."

We asked the Home Office to read our research.

It said it was addressing the root causes of knife crime through its Young Futures programme and that schools had the power to implement their own security measures including knife arches.

It will also implement "stricter rules for online sellers of knives", it says, by backing "Ronan's Law" which came into effect in August.

The Association of Schools and College Leaders says while it is relatively rare for pupils to bring knives into schools, it would like to see greater efforts across society to tackle the issue.

"More than a decade of cuts to community policing and youth outreach programmes has meant school leaders, too often, find themselves with little or no support," says general secretary, Pepe Di'lasio.

Back in Sheffield, we asked the teenagers in the gym what would have stopped them from taking knives to school.

"Learning how to defend ourselves," the 19-year-old told us. "You don't get taught that in schools. They only teach you science, not how to live life and how to handle your emotions better."

Every year since 1901 they have come together in secret, neither disclosing when they deliberate, nor allowing journalists to see their final meeting – until now.

The Norwegian Nobel committee members – the guardians of the world's most prestigious award – will announce on Friday who they will honour with the Nobel Peace Prize.

And the BBC, along with Norway's national broadcaster, gained exclusive access as they gathered to make their choice.

It is the first time in the award's 125-year history that the media have been allowed a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process.

The five members and the secretary meet in the Committee room of Oslo's Nobel institute, adorned with the same chandelier and oak furniture since the first prize.

Across the walls are framed pictures of every peace laureate, with a space at the end for a photograph of this year's winner.

Beneath a portrait of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and patron of the prizes, the committee convenes on Monday morning, four days before announcing the winner.

They share coffee and pleasantries and then open proceedings; the finale of a months-long selection process.

"We discuss, we argue, there is a high temperature," the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, tells me, "but also, of course, we are civilised, and we try to make a consensus-based decision every year."

They read aloud the criteria for the prize enshrined in Nobel's will from 1895; that it be awarded to whoever has done the most for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, or for holding or promoting peace congresses.

Then we're out and the door is closed. It's decision time. And looming large over the whole affair is one figure: Donald Trump.

The world's most powerful man wants the world's most prestigious award. It seems as if he's become fixated on it.

In speeches and press conferences, he has repeatedly reeled off a list of the seven wars he says he has solved.

He's boasted that he deserves the award and that "everyone says I should get it", but told troops in Virginia last month: "They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing; they'll give it to the guy who wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump… it will be a big insult to our country."

World leaders appear to have realised Nobel flattery is a way to his heart.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu publicly whipped out a nomination letter at the White House; Azerbaijan's president told Trump in a news conference that he deserved the prize; Pakistan's government announced it had nominated him, winning plaudits from the president.

His own cabinet colleagues have followed suit. As the cameras rolled, Steve Witkoff, his chief envoy, gushed that his only wish was that the Nobel committee recognise that Trump was "the single finest candidate" in the award's history.

Jorgen Watne Frydnes seems unfazed by any sense of public pressure.

"Every year, we receive thousands of letters, emails, requests, people saying 'this is the one you should choose' – so to have that campaign, the pressure… isn't really something new," he tells me.

But he adds diplomatically, that the unprecedented glare of this year hasn't gone unnoticed.

"We feel that the world is listening, and the world is discussing, and discussing how we can achieve peace is a good thing. And we have to stay strong and principled in our choices... that's our job."

The Norwegian committee is appointed by the country's parliament, and although the members – usually retired MPs – fiercely guard their independence, many have strident views.

Mr Frydnes, who leads the Norwegian branch of an association promoting freedom of expression, has previously criticised clampdowns "even in democratic nations", calling out Trump.

Norwegian media reported that the US president phoned Jens Stoltenberg, the former head of Nato and now Norway's finance minister, to lobby for the prize.

And there is open discussion over whether Trump could lash out at the country if he doesn't win.

It has felt the heat before; when the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo got the award in 2010, Beijing froze diplomatic ties with Oslo and imposed economic sanctions in a row that lasted six years.

So is it actually conceivable that America's polarising president could win?

He certainly has his backers at home and abroad - but Nina Graeger, the director of PRIO, a peace thinktank, tells me the odds are long.

"The Trump administration has withdrawn from international institutions like the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords, and if you look at Trump's wish to take over Greenland from Denmark… this does not speak in favour of international cooperation."

Combined with clampdowns on protests, critical journalists and academics, she concludes: "I think these point in a non-peaceful direction."

An obstacle for Trump is that nominations for the prize – there were 338 this year – closed at the end of January, to give the committee time to assess them. The president only returned to office that month.

But if his peace plan for Gaza materialises - and holds - Ms Graeger believes he could be a contender next year. "I think it would be difficult not to look in his direction then," she says.

It all makes for rich debate at Oslo University's course on war, peace, and the Nobel Prize.

"There's an element of grace and humility associated with the winners," says Thanos Marizis, a Greek masters student, as he sits with friends in the university library.

"The prize is supposed to be a recognition of your pursuit of peace in the sense of benefiting humanity, not benefiting yourself."

Kathleen Wright, 21, goes further: "To see people who have risked their lives and been given this award in recognition – the teenager Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban – and then for you to go around on your ego trip and have your friends call up the committee I think is laughable, it's disrespectful."

She believes the point of the prize is to celebrate lesser-known people or organisations doing vital work. "When you're working towards peace, it doesn't just begin with the figureheads, it begins with smaller groups – and I think that's important to celebrate."

Many world leaders are, of course, among the laureates. On the walls of the Nobel Committee room are the four American presidents who have won, including Barack Obama, awarded just months into his first term.

That has riled his successor – "if I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in ten seconds," President Trump complained.

Those walls speak of the many issues that the laureates have fought against since 1901; wars, apartheid, nuclear weapons, climate change.

This year may be somewhat overshadowed by the campaign from the White House.

But if Donald Trump wants to find out what has happened behind that committee door, who nominated him and who he's been up against, he'll have a problem - the papers are kept secret for 50 years.

The number of Liberal Democrat party members has almost halved in the last five years, according to BBC analysis of available figures.

The figure has fallen from just under 118,000 in 2020, when Sir Ed Davey became leader, to 60,000.

That is despite the Lib Dems having their most successful general election ever last year in terms of seats won.

A party spokesperson said "in actual elections, more and more people are backing the Liberal Democrats".

It comes as the Green Party of England and Wales says it now has 90,000 members, a 91% increase on 2020 figures.

The Liberal Democrats saw a significant boost in membership in the run-up to Brexit in 2020, when the party was campaigning for a second referendum.

The drop in paid-up members since then has been masked by the inclusion of "registered supporters" in figures published in the party's annual accounts each year since 2017.

Registered supporters sign up for free to get access to briefings and events, but they cannot decide policy or vote in leadership elections.

The party clearly states the figure published in the annual accounts relates to both member and supporters. However, it does not provide a breakdown.

'Public profile'

Prof Tim Bale leads the Party Membership Project, a joint project between Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University.

He said the drop in membership was surprising given the Lib Dems' electoral success, which would suggest "a party on the up, in which case you might get more ambitious people wanting to join it".

But he added: "There's an extent to which surges into parties are prompted by public profile... and they don't seem to have much chance of getting into government at the moment."

In more positive news for the Lib Dems, he said research carried out by his project after the 2024 election showed that the Liberal Democrats were the most active of all the memberships of the political parties.

Figures collected showed that a greater proportion of Lib Dem members (19%) had canvassed voters face-to-face or over the phone than any other party.

Prof Bale said there was "all sorts of research over time that, certainly in very close races, contact with the voters, whether that be face to face or just leafletting does seem to make a difference".

A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: "We have a record number of MPs, the most popular party leader in the country, and elected more councillors than Labour or the Conservatives for the first time ever in May's local elections.

"When it comes to actual elections, more and more people are backing the Liberal Democrats as the only party that can stop Reform turning Trump's America into Farage's Britain."

Other parties

Working out how many members a political party has can be tricky.

There is no legal obligation for political parties to publish their membership figures, so they tend to only be revealed in annual accounts or when a party holds a leadership election.

Labour, which is the largest political party in the UK on current publicly available figures, has seen a drop in membership of 37% since 2020.

Latest published figures put its membership at 333,235 at the end of last year, although reports have suggested it may have fallen further to 309,000.

An updated figure should be given by Labour later this month, when the winner of its deputy leadership contest is announced.

Reform UK did not give a figure for membership in its annual accounts last year, but a ticker on its website says it has just under 260,000 members.

The Green Party of England and Wales has seen a rapid surge in membership and now says its has 90,000 members, which is a 54% rise on last year's figure of 58,322 in December.

The Conservatives do not routinely publish their membership figures, but 131,680 people were eligible to vote in last year's Tory leadership election, which is 40,000 fewer than in the 2022 contest.

Party membership figures are not verified by outside bodies.

Where we got our figures

The figure that has been most recently used for the current size of the Lib Dems is 83,174, which was the figure for December 2024 that appears in the party's annual accounts, including both members and registered supporters.

As the freelance journalist Adam Ramsay has pointed out, the figure for paid-up members is given elsewhere, in a statement for the party treasurer in the accounts for the Liberal Democrats in England.

It says there was an "overall membership of 60K", with 55,000 - or 92% of them - in England, and supporter levels that "remain constant at over 20K".

To get the membership figure for 2020, we looked to the number of ballot papers issued in the leadership election, as only full members can vote.

At the time, the party said it had issued 117,924, papers, which was its highest ever number.

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The parents of Tom Phillips, who vanished with his three children into the New Zealand wilderness in 2021, have made a public apology - their first comments since Phillips was shot dead by police on 8 September.

"We would like to send our sincere apology... for all the trouble, inconvenience, loss of privacy and property caused by Tom," Neville and Julia Phillips wrote in a letter published in King Country News, a small community newspaper, on Thursday.

"We in no way supported him or agreed with any of his actions in the past four years. We are truly sorry for all that you had to endure."

Phillips evaded capture for nearly four years, despite a nationwide search and multiple sightings.

He was killed in a shoot-out in September, in which a police officer was seriously injured.

The officer has since been discharged from hospital, local media reported.

One of his children had been with him during the shoot-out, and provided information to help locate Phillips' two other children later that day.

Before Phillips disappeared with his children, they had been living in Marokopa, a small rural town in the region of Waikato surrounded by dense bush and forested terrain.

"The vast area in which Phillips kept the children is difficult, steep terrain almost completely obscured from all angles by dense bush," Detective Superintendent Ross McKay said weeks after the deadly shoot-out.

The main goal of the police during the operation had been "locating and returning the children safely" he said. He added that they "knew Phillips had firearms and was motivated to use them".

Police said they could not provide further details amid ongoing investigations.

Phillips' family had previously made public appeals to him to return.

In a message to Phillips during a television interview, his sister Rozzi said "we're ready to help you walk through what you need to walk through".

Phillips' mother Julia also wrote him a letter - provided to New Zealand outlet Stuff - saying that everyday she hoped "today will be the day that you all come home".