Liam’s pain
THERE are times when the death of a star unites the whole country in disbelief and grief.
The passing of Liam Payne at just 31 is one such terrible moment.
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That shock will have been felt in millions of households yesterday, such was the seismic fame of his band One Direction.
Not since The Beatles had a British group garnered such global fandom.
Their enormous appeal to a generation of young fans is the reason a talented but ordinary lad from Wolverhampton is being mourned worldwide.
But that notoriety also brought troubled Liam a level of stardom with which he ultimately struggled to cope.
Thrust together on X Factor, he and his four bandmates were the first pop megastars to be flung into the bile-filled cauldron of social media.
Everything he did — from going solo to fathering a child — was subject to both adoration and blistering criticism.
Unsurprising, then, that he struggled mentally as his personal relationships floundered and the music industry, which at first so greedily gobbled him up, ruthlessly spat him out again.
What a tragedy.
Clueless
SCRAPPING the Rwanda scheme looks more dumb by the day.
Yesterday the Dutch government revealed it may send Africans who enter illegally to Uganda.
Yet at the very moment that our European neighbours are rightly getting tough, post-Brexit Britain has suddenly gone soft.
By scrapping Rwanda without an alternative the Government has recklessly boxed itself into a corner.
Amnesty will now be granted to 62,000 illegal migrants — equivalent to a town the size of Margate or Kettering.
And as the Chancellor prepares a punishing Budget to fill a £22billion “black hole” in the nation’s finances, another £4million PER DAY will be spent on hotel accommodation.
But as the problem becomes more urgent — and vastly more expensive — the Government still has no answers.
Sin bagged
WHAT a stunning blow Israel has inflicted on Hamas.
Cowardly leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the sickening mass murdera of October 7, has faced the justice he so richly deserved.
Wiping out the fugitive Hamas leader — who had been hiding in a tunnel packed with luxuries and food denied to his starving people — also shows Israel’s mission to rid the Middle East of jihadi terrorism must be allowed to succeed.
Britain and its allies must not falter in their support.