Starmer told me he'd met every challenge. But things look bad right now - very bad

Will Keir Starmer allow himself to celebrate his first anniversary as prime minister this weekend? Or will he be taking a long, hard look in the mirror and asking himself what went wrong?

That is what is in my mind as he greets me in the Terracotta Room on the first floor of 10 Downing Street for a long-planned conversation about his first 12 months in office, this week.

He looks surprisingly relaxed, given that his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had been in tears sitting behind him in the Commons just hours earlier. That triggered fevered speculation about how long she would last in the job, moving markets to sell the pound and increase the cost of borrowing.

Perhaps that is the impression he wants to convey to me as he shares a story about his photo opportunity with Formula One cars parked outside his front door - the most famous door in the world.

Starmer is determined that the problems of recent weeks - and boy there's been a long list of those - will not overshadow the achievements he believes deserve just as much attention.

"We have done some fantastic things," he tells me, "really driven down the waiting lists in the NHS, really done loads of improvements in schools and stuff that we can do for children - whether that's rolling out school uniform projects, whether it's school meals, breakfast clubs, you name it - and also [brought in] a huge amount of investment into the country. And of course we've been busy getting three trade deals."

It's clear that, given the chance, his list would go on. And yet, I point out, there is another long list - of things he's recently admitted to getting wrong.

In the last year, he's said hiring Sue Gray - Starmer's former chief of staff who left Downing Street in October - was wrong. He's also held his hands up about plans to end winter fuel payments, about rejecting a national grooming gang inquiry, and cutting benefits for disabled people. That's not even the full list, yet it's quite a number of things that he's admitting to being a mistake.

The prime minister thinks I've rather crudely summarised his personal reflections on what he might have done better. He challenges the idea, which is prevalent in Westminster, that changing your mind represents weakness, or a "humiliating U-turn".

This is the fourth time we've sat down for an extended and personal conversation for my Political Thinking podcast.

"You know this from getting to know me," he says. "I'm not one of these ideological thinkers, where ideology dictates what I do. I'm a pragmatist. You can badge these things as U-turns - it's common sense to me.

"If someone says to me, 'here's some more information and I really think it's the right thing to do', I'm the kind of person that says, 'well in which case, let's do it'."

There is, though, no doubt that scrapping so much of his welfare reforms was a U-turn - a costly and humiliating one. Starmer and his chancellor have not only lost authority and face, they've lost £5bn in planned savings, something that will have to be paid for somehow, through extra borrowing, lower spending or, most likely, higher taxes.

"I take responsibility," he says, "we didn't get the process right". But somehow he implies that it might have been someone other than the leader of the Labour Party's responsibility to persuade Labour MPs to back his plans.

He doesn't spell out what he means by getting the process right and, perhaps more importantly, he dodges my attempts to get him to spell out clearly what story he's trying to tell the country about benefits.

Should Labour be on the side of disabled people and people like his own mother, who had a crippling disease that meant she eventually had to have a leg amputated? Or should they adopt her unwillingness to be written off, which he described to me the last time we spoke? When told by her doctors that she wouldn't walk again she refused to listen.

The curious case of the British jet stuck in India

7 hours ago Share Save Geeta Pandey • @geetapandeybbc BBC News, Delhi Share Save

BBC The F-35B has been at Thiruvananthapuram airport in the southern state of Kerala since it landed on 14 June

A state-of-the-art British fighter jet stuck at an airport in India for nearly three weeks now has sparked curiosity and raised questions about how such a modern aircraft could get stranded for days in a foreign country. The F-35B landed at Thiruvananthapuram airport in the southern state of Kerala on 14 June. The aircraft was diverted there after it ran into bad weather during a sortie in the Indian ocean and was unable to return to HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy's flagship carrier. It landed safely but it has since developed a technical snag and is unable to return to the carrier.

Since the jet's landing, engineers from HMS Prince of Wales have assessed the aircraft, but the visiting teams have been unable to fix it so far. On Thursday, the British High Commission said in a statement to the BBC: "The UK has accepted an offer to move the aircraft to the Maintenance Repair and Overhaul facility at the airport. It will be moved to the hangar once UK engineering teams arrive with specialist equipment, thereby ensuring there is minimal disruption to scheduled maintenance of other aircraft. "The aircraft will return to active service once repairs and safety checks have been completed," it added. "Ground teams continue to work closely with Indian authorities to ensure safety and security precautions are observed." Authorities at Thiruvananthapuram airport told the BBC they were expecting technicians from the UK to arrive on Saturday. The $110m (£80m) jet is being guarded around the clock by six officers from the RAF. Dr Sameer Patil, director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai, told the BBC the Royal Navy had only two options: "They can repair it and make it fly-worthy or they can fly it out in a bigger cargo plane such as a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft." The case of the stranded jet has also been raised in the House of Commons. On Monday, opposition Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty asked the government to clarify what was being done to secure it and return it to operational service, the UK Defence Journal reported. "What steps are the government taking to recover the plane, how much longer will that take, and how will the government ensure the security of protected technologies on the jet while it is in the hangar and out of view?" he was quoted as saying. The British armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, confirmed the aircraft remained under close UK control. "We continue to work with our Indian friends who provided first-class support when the F-35B was unable to return to the carrier," he said. "I am certain that the security of the jet is in good hands because Royal Air Force crew are with it at all times."

Kerala Tourism In a post on X, Kerala Tourism said that like most visitors to the state, the jet too was finding it hard to leave

England's lack of penetration with the ball coupled with fitness concerns are an "ominous" sign, says former captain Michael Vaughan.

Ben Stokes' side toiled throughout the second day at Edgbaston as India piled up 587 before reducing the hosts to 77-3.

Brydon Carse struggled with a recurrence of his foot issues while Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes did not bowl after their first spells.

"Clearly there's a problem with Brydon Carse and we're two Test matches into a five-match series in England and then it's not too long after we've got five matches in Australia in the heat on those slabs, some of those drop-in pitches with a Kookaburra ball," Vaughan said.

"Their [England's] tactic after 30 overs pretty much is just to whack the ball into the pitch with a square-of-the-wicket field.

"They're going to need some wheelbarrows to get some of these bowlers off the park in Australia. It's so tough on the body."

Pieces of meteor may have landed in Highlands, say experts

19 minutes ago Share Save Steven McKenzie BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter Share Save

Getty Images Pieces of the meteorite may have landed on Ben Nevis, according to UKMON

Experts believe pieces of a small meteor that lit up the night sky over parts of the UK on Thursday have landed in the west Highlands. Dozens of people reported an orange glow and a "bang", and the meteor was captured streaking across the sky on doorbell security cameras. UK Meteor Network (UKMON), which played a part finding Gloucestershire's Winchcombe meteorite in 2021, said the small meteor had travelled from between Mars and Jupiter. UKMON said it was observed descending to about 12 miles (20km) above the ground and pieces could be scattered across a vast area between lochs Treig and Etricht.

The network - which started in 2012 and involves more than 200 amateur astronomers - uses observations, captured footage and computer programs to calculate orbits and trajectories to figure out where meteorites land.

@adriancoll1 The meteor was spotted on Thursday

The sightings of the small meteor were made after midnight. UKMON said potential locations for the meteorites could be around Ben Nevis - the UK's highest mountain. Toni Hanlon told BBC Scotland News she felt her house in nearby Fort William shake. She added: "My husband and kids slept through it though."

Ray Whyte Ray Whyte, pictured with his daughter Georgie and their dog Rocky, was working in Glen Nevis when the asteroid appeared

Ray Whyte was staying in a static caravan with his dog Rocky while working in Glen Nevis near Ben Nevis when he was startled by the meteorite. He said: "I couldn't sleep after a hard day so got up for a coffee. "Me and the dog jumped out our skin with the bang. "I missed the light as the curtains were drawn, but the whole static shook like it had been used as a drum or a vehicle had hit the side. "Left us both pretty scared and confused."

'Going dark'

Viral band finds itself at the centre of AI claims and hoaxes

A band called The Velvet Sundown has had its tracks played hundreds of thousands of times on Spotify since appearing several weeks ago - without anyone knowing for sure what it is.

The band has a verified page on the music streaming platform, with more than 850,000 monthly listeners.

However, none of the four named musicians in the band have given any interviews or appear to have individual social media accounts, and there are no records of any live performances.

It has prompted accusations that they and their music are artificial intelligence (AI) generated - something the band denies on social media.

It did not respond to the BBC's request for an interview.

Further confusing the story, Rolling Stone US reported that the band's spokesman had admitted The Velvet Sundown's music had been generated using an AI tool called Suno - only for the magazine to report shortly afterwards that the spokesman was himself a hoax.

The man, who goes by the name of Andrew Frelon, said it was a deliberate plot to hoax the media.

A statement on the band's Spotify page says that the group has "no affiliation with this individual, nor any evidence confirming their identity or existence."

An account on X which claims to be the band's official channel, is also fake, it added.

Professor Gina Neff, from the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, says it points to a problem which affects much more than just one band.

"Whether this is an AI band may not seem important," she told me.

"But increasingly, our collective grip on reality seems shaky. The Velvet Sundown story plays into the fears we have of losing control of AI and shows how important protecting online information is."