Edinburgh’s Hogmanay is the latest victim of bad weather set to batter the UK over the new year.
The celebrations have been cancelled due to high winds and “extreme” weather, organisers announced hours ahead of events kicking off on Monday.
Outdoor events scheduled for 30 and 31 December have been called off for “safety reasons”, a spokesperson said.
Blackpool’s New Year’s Eve fireworks have also been cancelled due to the forecast of high winds in northwest England tomorrow night.
Organisers of London’s celebrations are monitoring the weather carefully.
Image: Blackpool Tower Fireworks, October 2018. File pic: iStock/Victorburnside
Britain is set to be hit by high winds, heavy rain, and snowfall – as weather warnings cover almost every part of the UK.
Here’s what forecasters are predicting across the UK over the next few days.
England
There are four yellow weather warnings covering different parts of England over the next few days, including one on Monday December 30.
That yellow alert for wind is in place for the North Pennines and Yorkshire Dales from 11am until 6pm.
Image: The Met Office weather warnings on 30 December. Pic: Met Office
It warns of potential disruption to travel in the area and the potential for short-term power cuts.
Another yellow weather warning for wind comes into place from 7am on New Year’s Eve. That covers the northeast of England, down towards Bridlington in East Yorkshire, and across towards Carlisle in the northwest.
Image: The Met Office weather warnings on 31 December. Pic: Met Office
It warns of “strong westerly winds” that could lead to travel disruption on New Year’s Eve and is in place until 11pm.
England then has two warnings in place on New Year’s Day.
The first, for strong winds, covers southern England and parts of the West Midlands from 7am to 11.59pm on 1 January.
The second, for heavy rain, covers a large part of the northwest and covers areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester, parts of Liverpool, Preston and north towards High Bentham.
That warning runs from 6pm on New Year’s Eve until 6pm on New Year’s Day.
Wales
Wales is covered by a yellow weather warning for rain on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Image: The Met Office weather warnings on January 1. Pic: Met Office
The alert covers a central belt of Wales from the north coast, to the south, and is in place from 6pm on New Year’s Eve until 6pm on New Year’s Day.
Scotland
Scotland is covered by five different weather warnings across the next four days – including a more severe amber warning.
The first alert, for rain and snow, covers almost all of Scotland and warns the weather could bring “significant disruption in the build-up to the new year.
It is place across Monday, until 11.59 pm tonight, and warns that some homes and businesses could be flooded and there could be delays to travel services.
Orkney, which is not covered by this warning, is covered by another alert for snow lasting from 5am on New Year’s Eve until midnight.
There is also an amber warning in place for central Scotland from midnight tonight until 5pm tomorrow.
The Met Office says the rain is “likely to cause some property flooding and travel disruption”.
Southern areas of Scotland, including Edinburgh and Glasgow, are also covered by another wind alert from 7am on New Year’s Eve until 11pm.
There is also a yellow alert for snow and ice in place for northern areas of Scotland from midnight on 1 January until 9am on 2 January.
Image: The Met Office weather warnings on January 2. Pic: Met Office
Northern Ireland
A yellow weather warning is in place for much of Northern Ireland, covering Belfast, Londonderry, Coleraine and Larne, from 6am until 7pm on New Year’s Eve.
The whole of Northern Ireland, from Derry to Enniskillen, and Newry to Ballycastle, was covered by a yellow weather alert for “heavy and persistent” snow from 7am until 11.59pm on New Year’s Day, but that has now been withdrawn by the Met Office.
In years to come, it may become known simply as Chequers ’25.
But today’s summit between Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump, at the prime minister’s country retreat, has the potential to be a landmark moment in UK-US history.
There’s plenty of scope for it to go horribly wrong, of course: over Jeffrey Epstein, Sir Keir’s pledge to recognise Palestine, the president’s lukewarm support for Ukraine, the Chagos Islands sell-off, or free speech.
But on the other hand, it could be a triumph for the so-called “special relationship” – as well as relations between these two unlikely allies – with deals on trade and tariffs and an improbably blossoming bromance.
Either way, this Chequers summit – on the president’s historic second state visit to the UK – could turn out to be one of the most notable one-to-one meetings between PM and president in 20th and 21st century history.
Image: Donald Trump and Keir Starmer wave as they board Air Force One on a previous trip. Pic: AP
It was then that the PM theatrically pulled King Charles’s invitation for this week’s visit out of his inside pocket in a spectacular stunt surely masterminded by the “Prince of Darkness”, spin doctor-turned-ambassador (until last week, anyway) Peter Mandelson.
And over the years, there have been some remarkable and historic meetings and relationships, good and bad, between UK prime ministers and American presidents.
From Churchill and Roosevelt to Eden and Eisenhower, from Macmillan and JFK to Wilson and Johnson, from Thatcher and Reagan, to Blair and Bush, and from Cameron and Obama… to Starmer and Trump, perhaps?
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4:08
‘History’ that binds the UK and US
A brief history of relationships between PMs and presidents
Throughout UK-US history, there have been many examples of a good relationship and close bond between a Labour prime minister and a Republican president. And vice versa.
Also, it has not always been rosy between prime ministers and presidents of the two sister parties. There have been big fallings out: over Suez, Vietnam and the Caribbean island of Grenada.
Leading up to this Chequers summit, the omens have not been good.
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3:47
Trump meets Starmer: What can we expect?
Second, the president arrived in the UK to a barrage of criticism from London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, who accused him of doing more than anyone else to encourage the intolerant far right across the globe.
Image: Churchill and FDR at the White House in 1941. Pic: AP
Back in the mid-20th century, the godfather of the “special relationship” was wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, though it was 1946 before he first coined the phrase in a speech in the US, in which he also spoke of the “iron curtain”.
It was in 1941 that Churchill held one of the most significant meetings with a US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, at a Washington conference to plot the defeat of Germany after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour.
Churchill arrived in Washington in December after a rough 10-day voyage on a Royal Navy battleship and stayed three weeks, spending Christmas in the White House and on Boxing Day becoming the first UK PM to address Congress.
The close bond between Churchill and Roosevelt was described as a friendship that saved the world. It was even claimed one reason the pair got on famously was that they were both renowned cigar smokers.
Churchill and Truman
Image: Churchill and Truman catch a train from Washington in 1946. Pic: AP
After the war ended, Churchill’s “special relationship” speech, describing the alliance between the UK and US, was delivered at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946.
The speech was introduced by president Harry Truman, a Democrat, with whom Churchill had attended the Potsdam Conference in 1945 to negotiate the terms of ending the war.
These two were also close friends and would write handwritten letters to each other and address one another as Harry and Winston. Mr Truman was also the only US president to visit Churchill at Chartwell, his family home.
Eden and Eisenhower
Image: Eden and Eisenhower shake hands at the conclusion of their three-day conference in 1956. Pic: AP
But the transatlantic cosiness came to an abrupt end in the 1950s, when Churchill’s Conservative successor Anthony Eden fell out badly with the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower over the Suez Crisis.
Mr Eden did visit Mr Eisenhower in Washington in January 1956, and the official record of the meeting describes the discussion as focussing on “policy differences and Cold War problems”.
Macmillan and JFK
Image: Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy at Andrews Air Force Base. Pic: AP
But in the early 1960s, a Conservative prime minister and a Democrat president with seemingly nothing in common, the stuffy and diffident Harold Macmillan, and the charismatic John F Kennedy, repaired the damage.
They were credited with rescuing the special relationship after the rupture of the Suez Crisis, at a time of high tensions around the world: the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and the threat of nuclear weapons.
The two leaders exchanged handwritten notes, as well as Christmas and birthday cards. The Macmillans visited the Kennedys twice at the White House, in 1961 and 1962 – the second described in the US as a “momentous” meeting on the Cuban crisis.
The relationship was abruptly cut short in 1963 by Supermac’s demise prompted by the Profumo scandal, and JFK’s assassination in Dallas. But after her husband’s death, Jacqueline Kennedy was said to have had a father-daughter relationship with Macmillan, who was said to have been enchanted with her.
Wilson and LBJ
Image: Johnson meeting with Wilson. Pic: Glasshouse Images/Shutterstock
After JFK, the so-called special relationship cooled once again – and under a Labour prime minister and Democrat president – when Harold Wilson rejected pressure from Lyndon B Johnson to send British troops to Vietnam.
Mr Wilson became prime minister in 1964, just two months after LBJ sent US troops. His first overseas trip was to the White House, in December 1964, and the PM returned to tell his cabinet: “Lyndon Johnson is begging me even to send a bagpipe band to Vietnam.”
Thatcher and Reagan
Image: Thatcher at Reagan’s 83rd birthday celebrations. Pic: Reuters
And even though Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were ideological soulmates, Thatcher was furious when she wasn’t consulted before the Americans invaded Grenada in 1983 to topple a Marxist regime.
Even worse, according to Mrs Thatcher’s allies, a year earlier, Reagan had stayed neutral during the Falklands War. Reagan said he couldn’t understand why two US allies were arguing over “that little ice-cold bunch of land down there”.
Image: Thatcher and Reagan became firm friends. Pic: Reuters
But their relationship didn’t just survive, it flourished, including at one memorable visit to the presidential retreat at Camp David in 1984, where Reagan famously drove Mrs T around in a golf buggy.
They would also memorably dance together at White House balls.
Blair and Bush
Image: Blair hosts Bush in Durham in 2003. Pic: PA
Camp David was also where, in 2001, Republican president George W Bush and Labour’s Sir Tony Blair embarked on the defining mission of his premiership: the Iraq War. It was to prove to be an historic encounter.
The war was the turning point of Sir Tony’s decade in Number 10. He was branded a liar over claims about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, he was vilified by the Labour left, and it was the beginning of the end for him.
And to add to the suspicion among Sir Tony’s critics that he was Mr Bush’s poodle, in 2006 at a G8 summit in St Petersburg – that wouldn’t happen now – a rogue microphone picked up the president calling, “Yo, Blair! How are you doing?”
Cameron and Obama
Image: Cameron and Obama serve food at a barbecue in the garden of 10 Downing Street. Pic: Reuters
Some years later, the Tory prime minister sometimes called the “heir to Blair”, David Cameron, bonded over burgers with the Democrat president Barack Obama, serving a BBQ lunch to military families in the Downing Street garden. They also played golf at the exclusive Grove resort in 2016.
They seemed unlikely allies: Obama, the first African-American president, and Cameron, the 19th old Etonian prime minister. It was claimed they had a “transatlantic bromance” in office. “Yes, he sometimes calls me bro,” Lord Cameron admitted.
But not everything went well.
The Tory PM persuaded Mr Obama to help the Remain campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, when he claimed the UK would be “at the back of the queue” on trade deals with the US, if it left the EU. It backfired, of course.
Now it’s Sir Keir Starmer’s turn to tread a delicate and potentially hazardous political tightrope as he entertains the latest – and most unconventional – US president.
The greatest dangers for Sir Keir will be a news conference in the afternoon, in the gardens, if the weather permits.
Good luck, as they say, with that.
Before then, there’s the potential for what the Americans call a “pool spray”, one of those impromptu, rambling and unpredictable Q&As we’ve seen so many times in the Oval Office.
For Sir Keir, what could possibly go wrong?
Chequers ’25 could be memorable and notable, like so many previous meetings between a PM and a president. But not necessarily for the right reasons for this UK prime minister.
London’s mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has for the first time described the situation in Gaza as a “genocide”, becoming the most senior Labour figure to contradict the government’s official position.
It is claimed the government wants to avoid the issue dominating a news conference the two men plan to hold, according to The Times.
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3:47
Trump meets Starmer: What can we expect?
The prime minister has found himself at odds with the US administration over the move, which is opposed to official recognition of Palestine.
The mayor of London, who has engaged in a long-running spat with Mr Trump, has added to the political tension by contradicting official Labour policy at a people’s question time event on Wednesday.
“I think it’s inescapable to draw the conclusion in Gaza we are seeing before our very eyes a genocide,” said Sir Sadiq.
Sir Keir has previously pledged to recognise Palestinian statehood ahead of next week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York if Israel does not meet a series of conditions to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Other nations, including France, Australia and Canada, have said they plan to take the same step at the UN gathering.
The UK has consistently argued that the issue of whether Israel has committed genocide was a matter for the courts. Israel is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in which the country is accused of genocide.
But some opposition leaders, including Zack Polanski for the Green Party, and the Liberal Democrats’ Sir Ed Davey have specifically referred to the situation in Gaza as genocide.
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3:05
Is Israel committing genocide?
On Tuesday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report, claiming: “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza”.
It said Israel’s actions meet the criteria set down for defining a genocide.
A man has died and a woman has been taken to hospital after a shooting at a park in London.
The Metropolitan Police said officers attended Clissold Park in Hackney at 7.06pm on Wednesday.
A woman in her 40s was treated for gunshot wounds and treated by paramedics. There has been no update yet on her injuries or condition in hospital.
Police said a man in 40s also suffered gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead later in hospital.
A firearm, thought to have been involved in the shooting, has been recovered from the scene.
Forensic teams in blue boiler suits could be seen at the park on Wednesday night recovering items, including clothing, and placing them in evidence bags.
A blue forensic tent could be seen in the park with staff also taking pictures of the scene and logging evidence.
Image: A blue forensic tent in the park
Police could be seen guarding several sites in and around the park, which had been cordoned off.
Numbered yellow evidence markers had also been placed on the ground at various locations.
Image: Items are recovered by forensic teams and bagged
Image: Clothing appeared to be among the items being collected
In a statement, Detective Superintendent Oliver Richter said: “We are in the early stages of the investigation, but we believe the man and woman are known to one another.
“At this time, we are treating it as an isolated incident and there is no wider risk to the public.
“A crime scene remains in place for investigation with an increased police presence.”
Det Sup Richter added that officers were still working to establish what happened and did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the shooting or who fired the weapon.
Hackney Council said on social media that it was “supporting the police with their investigations”, adding the park would remain closed on Thursday morning.