Wes Streeting says overseas suppliers of defence contracts will need to spend the equivalent amount in the UK

Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, was on the interview round this morning, announcing a new aspect of defence procurement policy. The Ministry of Defence is now saying that, if overseas suppliers win UK defence contracts, they will be required to spend the equivalent amount in the UK.

Explaining the policy, the MoD says:

British workers, businesses and apprentices will benefit from major changes which will see more defence work carried out in the UK thanks to the launch of a world-leading Offsets policy.

Under the new rules, overseas companies that win significant UK defence contracts will be required to invest back into Britain, through new British jobs and apprenticeships, opening UK factories, investing in domestic suppliers, transferring technology and innovation know-how.

Every pound we invest in defence should be judged by what it does for Britain. That’s why we are backing British by buying British wherever we can.

Even when that is not possible, we are acting to ensure that any investment brings jobs, skills and investment back home, strengthening our national security by boosting our domestic industry.

The prime minister has made devolution a central focus for his government. However the UK government must ensure that any devolution proposals respect devolution in Scotland. That means working with the Scottish government.

The Scottish government has put forward substantive proposals to the UK government on areas where further devolution would help grow Scotland’s economy and I will press the prime minister, and his government, to work with us to deliver those proposals.

Owner Gordon Brothers files notice of intent to begin process after rejecting management-backed rescue bid

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The shop workers’ union Usdaw has urged Poundland’s owners to reconsider a decision to prepare the budget chain for administration, putting up to 12,000 jobs at risk.

Gordon Brothers filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators to Poundland at the high court on Thursday, with the advisory firm AlixPartners lined up to run the process.

From AI aunties to long diaspora Uber phone calls, here is a selection of our favourite editions to celebrate our second anniversary

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The Long Wave is two! And over the past year, once again, it has surprised us with the breadth of stories and events in the diaspora.

The Long Wave has also evolved into a large community, with many readers getting in touch and sharing their thoughts, tips and sometimes their polite disagreements. We welcome and relish all of it. Here is the team’s selection of our favourite editions.

Events in Ireland explore origins of Gulliver’s Travels, the Dublin clergyman’s book that became an instant hit in 1726

In March 1726, an Irish clergyman visited London and arranged for a courier to deliver a manuscript to a publisher under cover of night. The dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin knew his novel would cause trouble and wanted to publish it anonymously.

His name was Jonathan Swift and the story was called Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. The satirical work was published that October and is better known 300 years on as Gulliver’s Travels.

3Arena, Dublin
Several unannounced guests feature on the first European date of the rapper’s sold-out benefit tour, including video messages from Mark Ruffalo and Cynthia Nixon

“We’d like to thank Ed Sheeran for organising this concert,” offers a member of Kneecap, one of several unannounced guests who have turned up for the first European date of Macklemore’s Free Palestine tour. It’s a characteristically two-fisted approach to the matter in hand from a band who have seldom shied away from controversy, but it has more than a grain of truth in it.

The events of the last six weeks are quite something, and perhaps not what Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, had in mind when he led efforts to pressurise Sheeran to remove Macklemore from his summer US tour, after the rapper made a speech about Palestine on stage at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium. Macklemore was duly removed from the tour, but the rapper saw his profile rise dramatically as a result – in fairness, he was hardly unknown, but his biggest hits are a decade old – while every other artist on Sheeran’s tour quit in solidarity. Sheeran’s tour limped on amid much opprobrium, while Macklemore was able to translate the publicity into a tour of his own, in noticeably bigger venues than he played on his last European tour, with proceeds donated to organisations assisting Palestinians. Dublin’s 13,000-capacity 3Arena is sold out, as is every other date on the tour.

Pilots report pressure to extend working hours and fears of penalties for declaring themselves unfit to fly

Three in four European airline pilots have taken microsleeps in the cockpit, while almost a quarter routinely fly despite being too fatigued to work, according to a report.

The findings, based on a survey of almost 7,200 captains and first officers by the European Cockpit Association (ECA), include pilots reporting insufficient rest, pressure to extend working hours and fears of being penalised for declaring themselves unfit to fly.

Despite job offers, Jaishree Malik has had visa renewal and extension requests delayed and denied, and she is not alone

Jaishree Malik bounds on to the Cheeky Monkey comedy club stage and brandishes an envelope – it is a letter from the Irish government. Would the audience like to hear what’s in the letter?

“Yeah,” the first rows reply. She repeats the question, prompting a louder response. “Yeah!”

Irish and Welsh authors Chris Haughton and Nicola Davies show solidarity after Rooney’s support for Palestine Action

The children’s laureates for Ireland and Wales are donating royalties from their works to Sally Rooney in a show of solidarity after she was forced to stop selling books in the UK because of her support for Palestine Action.

Chris Haughton, Ireland’s children’s literature laureate, said he also wanted to demonstrate the “absurdity” of the bestselling author being unable to receive royalties from her own UK sales because of her public support for the direct action group.

Man aged 60 and another in his 20s killed by falling trees in Scotland and London as Met Office reports gusts of up to 84mph

Two people were killed and more than 800,000 properties left without power after Storm Boelo and Storm Austen battered the UK over the weekend.

Two men, one aged 60 and the other in his 20s, were killed by falling trees on Sunday, police said. The 60-year-old died in south-west Scotland while the man in his 20s was killed in London.

Founding member of Planxty, Lunny went on to play for bands such as Moving Hearts, the Bothy Band and Coolfin

The Irish traditional musician Dónal Lunny has died at the age of 79 from cancer.

Lunny rose to prominence in the trio Rakes of Kildare alongside his brother Frank and Christy Moore. He went on to play in bands such as Planxty, Moving Hearts, the Bothy Band and Coolfin among others and toured the world.

Met police investigating after referral from PSNI about allegation former DUP leader raped woman in 2016

The Metropolitan police are investigating an allegation that the former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson raped a woman inside parliament in 2016.

Scotland Yard confirmed it received a report from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on 13 October about an alleged rape in the Palace of Westminster involving a man now aged 63.

• Former world No 1 loses 4-2 to Jordan Brown in Belfast

• ‘I don’t see a future with snooker in it,’ says tearful Allen

Mark Allen said he was in a “bad place” and his snooker career could be over after losing to Jordan Brown in the first round of the Northern Ireland Open in Belfast.

The 40-year-old was playing his first match since his world championship semi-final loss to Wu Yize in April. Allen missed a match-ball black off the spot at 16-15 in front and went on to lose the deciding frame to Wu, who went on to win the title.

A new play revisits the story of Ireland’s 18th-century German refugees, whose experience of prejudice and exclusion resonates with today’s debates over immigration

In the early 18th century, a few thousand Germans fled religious persecution and near starvation in their homeland and ended up in remote rural Irish villages. The Irish Palatines, as they were known, were poor, conservative homesteaders who couldn’t speak the language and were the object of suspicion and violence – precursors to the displaced Syrians or Afghans of the past decade.

Their story is told in Refuge, a co-production between Staatstheater Mainz and the Irish company Fishamble. Part love story, part social commentary, it is performed by a mixed cast, mainly in English but with some German interludes.

The former Republic of Ireland international on growing up in a community still reeling from the Troubles and the controversy that scarred his career

“The perception of me is that, basically, I am a madman,” James McClean says calmly. “I’m outspoken. I’m a loudmouth. I’m very opinionated and I hate all things British. That’s from people who don’t know me. The reality is quite the opposite. I’m pretty boring. I go training, go home and switch off. A lot of my days are quite bland, quite basic.”

McClean sounds as sane as he looks gaunt on a bleak Monday in Derry. He spent 14 years in English football and the fact that he is now at war with his own club, Derry City, can’t obscure the fact that he is the fifth-most-capped Republic of Ireland international, having played 103 times. “People define success in different ways,” he says, “but I’m the only footballer from the north of Ireland to win over 100 caps for Ireland. I played 150 Premier League games over five seasons, 800 professional games and won a lot of individual accolades. I count that as success and don’t look back with regrets.”

Donaldson was found guilty in June of 18 counts of sexual abuse including one rape between 1985 and 2008

Jeffrey Donaldson has been sentenced to 15 years for sexual offences against two women who were children when he abused them, completing what was described as a “catastrophic descent into disgrace”.

The sentence at Newry crown court on Thursday sealed the downfall of a former Democratic Unionist party (DUP) leader who once dominated unionism in Northern Ireland.

The popularity of Hand’s book Not the Perfect Victim is the latest twist in a story that puts the spotlight on how society responds to sexual assault allegations

Nikita Hand had a compelling reason to not pursue a civil rape case against Conor McGregor. She was, in her own view, an imperfect victim.

The day of the assault, she had been partying with alcohol and cocaine before contacting McGregor, who took her to a Dublin hotel.

Report finds ‘window of opportunity’ for formal process involving loyalist and republican groups

The British and Irish governments should engage with paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland to negotiate their disbandment, according to a report.

A “window of opportunity” exists to establish a formal transition mechanism for loyalist and republican groups, provided certain conditions are met, it said.

He argued there was no evidence to suggest the result of the Brexit vote had been swayed as a result of the effort

• Andy Burnham promises ‘serious dialogue’ over UK’s relationship with EU

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.

Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:

In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.

Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.

I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.

To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.

I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.

Eamon Ryan is shown to be principled, likable and hard working in a glowing portrait, filmed while serving in the country’s coalition government

This fly-on-the-wall documentary about the former Irish Green party leader and cabinet minister Eamon Ryan reminded me of the political satire The Thick of It – but without the cynical gags and hapless self-serving politicians. Even after you factor in the skewing effect of it being a favourable portrait, showing him in the best possible light, Ryan comes across as one of the good guys: principled, likable and extremely hard working. The film follows his final 18 months serving in Ireland’s coalition government as minister for the environment and transport before stepping down in 2025.

The title is something that Ryan’s 25-year-old son Tommy repeats over and over. “Forever … forever … forever.” Tommy is autistic and requires full-time care. When Ryan resigns from government, one of his reasons is to spend more time with Tommy. We see the pair of them at the allotment picking raspberries and walking the dog. But other than a quick glimpse of his wife, Victoria, the rest of Ryan’s family life is kept firmly behind closed doors.

Gibney, 77, will face justice for abusing athletes in the 1970s and 80s after decades of effort to track and extradite him

More than half a century after he started sexually abusing children, and enjoyed prestige as Ireland’s Olympic swimming coach before fleeing to the United States, George Gibney is to face justice.

The 77-year-old will be sentenced at the central criminal court in Dublin on Monday for abusing four young female athletes in the 1970s and 1980s.