A Labour MP has separated from her husband, a lobbyist who is alleged to have spied for China, the Scottish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Joani Reid, who represents East Kilbride and Strathaven, is understood to have split from David Taylor following months of scrutiny around his case.

Mr Taylor was arrested in March on suspicion of espionage.

Ms Reid had also attracted headlines earlier this year after allegations emerged that she behaved inappropriately with two naval officers based at Faslane, the nuclear military base near Helensburgh.

The disclosure about the breakdown of her marriage comes after photographs and videos appeared to show the MP attending events without her wedding ring.

Meanwhile, she is reportedly is in a new relationship with a married man, with the pair pictured going to her flat in her constituency.

Sources close to the couple say they have been separated ‘for some time’ and insisted the split was unrelated to the Met Police’s spying probe or the MP’s alleged flirtations with two naval officers at Faslane.

Her decision to remove her wedding ring is said by close friends to have been ‘one of the most difficult decisions’ the MP had to make.

A source close to the couple said: ‘They’ve split up, it happened a while ago now. Things hadn’t been great between them for quite some time but they have children together so are very much still in each other’s lives. 

‘People close to her know what’s going on, and they are looking at a divorce.’

A friend of Ms Reid added: ‘Deciding to remove her wedding ring has been one of the most difficult decisions she’s had to make. It isn’t something she did lightly, but they have separated and she felt she had to do it.’

Ms Reid, the granddaughter of the late trade unionist Jimmy Reid, was photographed with a married man, said to be a ‘high profile Holyrood figure’ going to a flat in her constituency in July, the day before she was readmitted to the Labour party. 

They are also said to have met twice last month. Friends claim the relationship had not been going on for long and began after her split from Mr Taylor.

The MP had suspended herself from Labour following her husband’s arrest in March, while the party conducted its own investigation. 

But the 40-year-old was readmitted on June 30, and took to social media to announce her reinstatement.

Ms Reid quietly removed her wedding ring on her return to the Labour party, with images on her social media clearly showing her without it.

On June 29, Ms Reid hosted an Armed Forces Day event at the East Kilbride British Legion while wearing the silver ring.

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But on trips around the constituency the following month she appeared to be missing the jewellery.

A photograph on July 15 show Ms Reid at a local business without her wedding ring, while another on August 13 she spoke to constituents in East Kilbride town centre again without the accessory.

On August 26 she posted a video in support of Stonehouse by-election candidate Hannah Miller on Instagram, where she is clearly seen not wearing her ring.

The turmoil for Ms Reid comes after her husband’s arrest on March 4 on suspicion of spying for China.

Mr Taylor, 39, was arrested alongside two other Labour-linked men during a probe by counter-terror police. 

Officers searched Ms Reid’s home in East Kilbride, as well as properties in London and Cardiff in March and arrested the men. They were subsequently bailed and have not been charged with an offence.

The latest development comes after Ms Reid was alleged to have behaved inappropriately with two naval officers based at Faslane in separate incidents since her election to parliament in 2024.

The MP was claimed to have been drinking during a visit to the nuclear deterrent base as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme (AFPS) – which aims to educate MPs about military life – and was said to have behaved inappropriately towards one officer during the trip. 

Ms Reid denied any wrongdoing and said the claims had been a political smear.

Separately a nuclear submarine captain stepped back from his role in April after being investigated for his alleged relationship with Ms Reid.

The Royal Navy launched a probe last year in response to claims that the senior military officer – who is married – had been involved in an inappropriate relationship with the MP.

The pair were claimed to have exchanged flirtatious messages, which the MP has denied. An investigation the Royal Navy is reported to have found the officer had not breached any rules.

The incident was re-examined following the arrest of Ms Reid’s husband but the Ministry of Defence was reported to have been confident there was no breach of security. 

The captain involved said he had decided to step down for personal reasons and had not left the Royal Navy.

Ms Reid did not want to comment when approached by the Mail on Sunday.

Fifteen years ago, Pippa Middleton appeared to step into a level of fame few people experience — and almost no one can prepare for.

When Kate Middleton made her historic walk through Westminster Abbey to marry Prince William, the royal wedding spotlight unexpectedly widened to include her younger sister.

Then 27, Pippa became an instant global talking point in a sleek, ivory Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen gown, carrying Kate’s dramatic nine-foot train as she climbed the Abbey steps with remarkable composure.

What followed was a frenzy of fascination: magazine covers, style analysis, diet speculation and endless headlines about the “girl next door” who had arrived as maid of honour and left the royal wedding as one of the most searched and discussed women on the planet.

But as Pippa Middleton prepares to celebrate her 43rd birthday this weekend, the life of the Princess of Wales’s younger sister appears far more private, polished and deliberately removed from that whirlwind moment of royal fame.

Far from being the guest of honour at the carousel of glitzy events that trailed the royal wedding, she appears to have retreated from public life, building a family with her financier husband, James Matthews, 51, and their three young children, Arthur, seven, Grace, five, and Rose, four.

Indeed, the past year has been a particularly challenging one for the woman who once seemed to have mastered the art of having it all, after she fell out of favour with neighbours and locals in the Berkshire village of Kintbury, where she owns a 32-room Georgian property on a sprawling 150-acre estate.

The Matthews, who paid £15million for Barton Court in 2022, are embroiled in a planning row after blocking local dog walkers and ramblers from crossing their estate, where the path was once freely accessible to the public. The previous owner, the late restaurateur and designer Sir Terence Conran, had reportedly encouraged villagers to use it.

Their actions have sparked a groundswell of ill-feeling after they blocked the path with an electric gate and posted warning signs: ‘No trespassing’ and ‘Private, no public access.’

At a hearing in May, Mr Matthews explained that the gates were installed solely to protect the privacy of his high-profile family and insisted the path is rarely used by the public. But the debacle has alienated the couple and infuriated locals who have not been won over by the ‘Pippa effect’.

Now 35 residents, backed by The Ramblers association, have applied to the local council to preserve the right of way and await the decision of a government-appointed inspector.

Earlier this year it also emerged that the couple had been forced to sell their ‘passion project’, Bucklebury Farm, a 72-acre deer and safari petting park, after accumulating six figures’ worth of debt since its purchase in 2021.

Yet while the royal wedding put Pippa on the world stage, those in her social circle were long accustomed to her being the golden girl. During her school years at the £21,345-a-term Marlborough College, she was known as a superstar on the playing fields, having secured a sports scholarship.

‘We were all a bit sporty, but Pippa was different, she had exceptional athletic ability,’ a source tells the Daily Mail.

Academically gifted, she won a competitive place to read English at Edinburgh University, where she became friends with George Percy, son of the Duke of Northumberland.

Despite her accomplishments and high-powered connections, Pippa’s attempts to build an identity away from the shadow of her royal sibling seem to have so far, fallen flat.

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In 2012 she brought out a book on party planning after securing a £400,000 advance from Penguin. But glossy photographs of Pippa decorating biscuits alongside advice such as sourcing a pumpkin for Halloween failed to shift copies and were widely mocked.

Then she became a columnist for a slew of high-profile publications, contributing to Vanity Fair and The Spectator. In September 2013, she began writing a fortnightly sports and social column, but by the following May it had been discontinued.

Her high profile and health and wellness credentials then saw her appointed an ambassador for the British Heart Foundation in 2014, where she took part in a 3,000-mile cycling race across America and the Bosphorus cross-continental swimming competition in Istanbul. But since her ravishing appearance at the Red Ball at the Park Lane Hotel in 2015, her connection with the foundation has somewhat, cooled.

For all her cleverness, sources say Pippa has never quite found her voice in public because, as the sister of the future Queen, her actions are closely monitored by the palace. Her younger brother James Middleton, 39, an entrepreneur, once alluded to the restrictions of royalty by association when he said: ‘I really want to promote my company, but I have to be very careful, I can never talk about my sister.’

Others suggest she has the best of both worlds – a queen without the scrutiny of a court, with the privileges of a profile she could use to promote worthy causes.

There are other pressures, too. Her society wedding in 2017 to hedge fund tycoon and former racing driver James Matthews, chief executive of Eden Rock Capital Management Group, was attended by the cream of British society, including Princess Catherine, Prince William and their children George, Charlotte, her parents Carole and Michael Middleton, her husband James’s brother, the Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews, as well as tennis legend Roger Federer and his wife Mirka.

Indeed, her annual visit to Wimbledon in July marked a rare public appearance: a stylish floral outfit showing off her toned physique, her hair expensively highlighted, looking serene in the royal box and with a million questions hanging over the polished mystique. Fashion darling or socialite? Hostess or philanthropist? International jet-setting wife? Pippa Middleton wears many hats. Which of them fits the best?

With her husband’s estimated wealth of around £2billion, she is no longer the society butterfly about town, but a member of an elite social clique where discretion and public image are paramount.

While few can really know what life is like for her behind the estate walls, Barton Court is just a short distance from Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park, where the Prince and Princess of Wales are now based.

Sharing a close bond with her sister, Pippa was surely steadfast in her support of Kate during her cancer battle and is known to have fostered a close relationship with her children’s cousins.

Royal insiders also speculate over whether Pippa will receive an honorary title, when Prince William succeeds King Charles to the throne and Kate becomes Queen.

Nevertheless, the woman once dubbed ‘royal hotness’, celebrated for her pert derriere and Sloane Ranger style, has mostly vanished from public life.

Fifteen years after she walked behind the future Queen and unintentionally stole the show, Pippa has learned that life away from the cameras is far more complicated than it may have seemed from the steps of Westminster Abbey.

Whatever the outcome of the footpath enquiry, Pippa and her husband don’t seem to have ingratiated themselves within their local community, coming across instead as a cold-blooded power couple who wish to pull up the drawbridge behind them.

But with her children still young and plenty of life ahead of her, Pippa still has time – and talent – to reinvent herself.

Once the whole world wanted to know what the princess’s sister would do next. But now, perhaps the final twist in the Middleton myth, is that very few people, actually know.

The United Nations has voted to adopt a new world map projection that dramatically enlarges Africa’s visual footprint while making countries such as the UK and the US appear smaller.

The decision follows a growing campaign by African nations and advocacy organisations calling for an end to what they describe as “cartographic colonialism.”

The General Assembly approved the “Correct the Map” resolution, backing a shift away from the centuries-old Mercator projection in favour of the Equal Earth projection.

Opponents of the Mercator map have argued for years that, because it was created for navigation rather than everyday reference, it distorts how people understand the world and reinforces Western-centred perceptions by diminishing Africa’s scale.

One of the most cited examples is Greenland, which appears roughly comparable in size to Africa on the Mercator map despite Africa actually being about 14 times larger.

Campaigners argue the map causes a psychological effect by making some places look smaller than they are and others larger, as we instinctively view bigger things as more important. 

A supporter of the change, Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, told news agency Reuters: ‘A fair world begins with a fair map.’

He told a UN briefing earlier: ‘A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood.’

Friday’s resolution was sponsored by Togo and backed by members of the African Union, passing with 164 member states voting in favour.

Only the US voted against it while six other countries – Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine – abstained. 

The new resolution does not ban the Mercator projection or impose a replacement, it only encourages governments and institutions worldwide to use the Equal Earth projection.

‘Maps shape our understanding of the world,’ the global body quoted Togo´s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey as saying before the vote. ‘They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions.’

But US representative at the UN, Yaryna Ferencevych, said the resolution mocked the work and purpose of the UN General Assembly.

She said: ‘Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th Century, and their role in promoting reparations and “cognitive justice”.

The US was also critical when a UN resolution was adopted in March declaring the transatlantic slave trade ‘the gravest crime against humanity’.

The Mercator map was designed in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to help Europeans navigate across the world at sea.

But to help with this task, he distorted the map to accommodate the curvature of the Earth by making countries near the equator seem smaller than they are, with countries nearer the poles appearing larger.

Whenever a map of the world is drawn, compromises need to be made, as it is impossible to accurately represent the surface of a globe on a two-dimensional chart.

Geographers say the traditional map is only useful for navigation. ‘Outside of that very narrow navigation application, there is no point in using it,’ according to Mark Monmonier, a Syracuse University professor of geography.

Despite its issues, more than 450 years on, Mercator’s creation is still the basis for many of the maps we see in classrooms, on TV and online, including Google Maps.

In an effort to address Mercator’s weaknesses, a team of cartographers in 2018 created an equal area map they called the Equal Earth projection.

It follows the Earth´s curvature and shows continents in their true proportions. 

But to do this, it sacrifices the straight lines that made the Mercator projection perfect for navigating with – meaning it cannot be used for measuring the true distance between different places. 

Africa No Filter, one of the lead campaigners for the adoption of the new map, hailed the resolution, adding: ‘We want to see accurate maps in schools, textbooks, newsrooms, businesses and on the digital platforms billions of people use every day.’

Several countries hailed the adoption, with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot writing on X after the vote: ‘Changing the map obviously doesn´t change the world. But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth.’

Lerato Mogoatlhe from Africa No Filter, one of the groups behind the campaign to ditch the Mercator map, told the BBC: ‘Africa’s misrepresentation on world maps is not just a cartographic error – it’s a narrative issue.’

She claims it was part of efforts to stop the ‘world’s longest misinformation and disinformation’ about Africa.

Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo argued it implicitly downplayed Africa’s vast resources, population and investment opportunities.

Lindsay Clancy’s charming home on Summer Street was meant to be the place where her young family built a joyful future.

It was the house she and her husband, Patrick, chose as they raised their three children: five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and infant Callan.

But over the last three years, that image of suburban family life has been overtaken by a very different reality inside Tewksbury State Hospital.

Within the walls of the pre-Civil War psychiatric facility, the former nurse who once treated patients now finds herself under medical care.

Confined to a wheelchair, Clancy is receiving continuous treatment for both her physical and mental health after what her attorneys have described as a severe episode of postpartum psychosis and depression.

After strangling her three children with exercise bands on the evening of January 24, 2023, the 36-year-old now leads a lonely existence inside the hospital. And, after her triple-murder trial dramatically collapsed on Friday with a hung jury, it is where Clancy will remain as she faces the prospect of a retrial.

Patrick, now her ex-husband, has never visited Tewksbury.

He has publicly expressed compassion for Lindsay, but the tragedy ultimately destroyed their marriage. He relocated from Duxbury, Massachusetts to New York City in May 2023, four months after the deaths of his children, and remarried earlier this year.

Clancy’s childhood friend of 29 years, Amy Bevins, is thought to have visited her in hospital just once in the aftermath of the killings. The visit lasted just 30 minutes and they played boardgames, but they never discussed the killings.

Her parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, have remained steadfastly by her side, uprooting their lives in Connecticut and spending years living out of hotels near the hospital so they can be close to their daughter.

But Clancy does have one other regular visitor: a Catholic priest.

Father Bob Deehan, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Duxbury, has visited Clancy at Tewksbury every week for the past three-and-a-half years.

He told the Daily Mail that little Cora, Dawson and Callan remain constantly on their mother’s mind, with Clancy often talking about them during his visits.

‘She’s doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances,’ the pastor said.

‘She’s very devastated and thinks of the children pretty much every hour of the day.’

They often speak about the children and, in growing closer to her faith, Clancy feels she has been able to connect with them, he said.

‘I’ve been working with her in terms of faith, hope and everlasting life. She understands that her little children are now with the Lord in heaven, and so she is able to pray with them, pray for them, and continue to have a spiritual relationship with them that way.’

While pointing out that he is ‘no medical professional,’ the pastor affectionately known as Father Bob said that he has seen a marked progress in Clancy’s mental state compared to how she was in the aftermath of the killings.

She seems to ‘no longer be in a state of psychological crisis,’ he said.

‘She seems fairly stable in her mental condition.’

But the trial has forced Clancy to relive the killings in excruciating detail.

‘She’ll never get over it but she’s a little bit more able to express herself in terms of her affect,’ Father Bob said.

‘There’s a lot of feelings. Then of course she is virtually incarcerated in the hospital and she’s now paraplegic – which is of course lower in the rung of the losses that she’s experienced.

‘But she’s doing the best she can be doing under some very, very difficult circumstances.’

On Friday, into a seventh day of jury deliberations, the panel of nine women and three men weighing Clancy’s fate declared themselves irreconcilably split eleven to one holdout juror.

Despite Clancy’s lawyer Kevin Reddington filing an 11th-hour bid in an attempt to force deliberations to continue, the appeal was quickly rejected and Judge William Sullivan – who had already twice sent back the jury to deliberate – formally declared a mistrial.

Clancy therefore still stands accused of murdering her three children. She has readily admitted to the killings but her prosecution claim she is not guilty of murder because she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis at the time.

She is now paralyzed from the waist down after having jumped from her second-story bedroom in an apparent suicide attempt immediately after the killings.

On September 29, a court status hearing will take place to determine the next legal steps. Clancy faces the prospect of a retrial and will remain in state custody under psychiatric care at Tewksbury.

Throughout the trial, she appeared lucid, closely following testimony and conferring with her defense team.

She was also been utterly inconsolable when testimony turned to her three young children – in particular the fatal injuries she inflicted on them.

When graphic details of little Cora and Dawson’s autopsies were revealed last month, Clancy broke down into guttural, uncontrollable wails, crying out ‘I can’t do it.’

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Father Bob was inside the courtroom at the time and was ushered into the chambers to help comfort the 36-year-old when the judge swiftly called a break in proceedings.

It was something that sparked the ire of the prosecution team who unsuccessfully demanded information about the pastor as well as access to logs of who was speaking with Clancy during breaks.

Visibly baffled, Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington threw his hands in the air and laughed: ‘It’s Father Bob!’

Reddington went on to describe the pastor as someone who is ‘very, very close to Lindsay’ and a ‘nice, nice man’ who has ‘been with her for three years.’

Father Bob turned up at Clancy’s trial a handful of days, sitting with her parents to lend the family support.

His relationship with Clancy and the wider family stretches back years.

Though not weekly regulars at Holy Family Parish Church, Clancy and Patrick would take the children occasionally.

Father Bob remembers baptizing Dawson and later Callan in October 2022, three months before the killings, as well as seeing the extended family on special holidays.

On Christmas Day morning 2022, mere weeks before the tragic day, Clancy, Patrick, Cora, Dawson and Callan were joined by Patrick’s parents Sue and Chris at a service.

Clancy had worn a beautiful dress that day, her former father-in-law testified, and had said afterwards that she was glad they had all gone.

Back then, Father Bob didn’t know the family personally. But to him ‘they looked like any typical happy family.’

Which is why that day came as such a shock to the whole community.

One day after the killings, Father Bob visited a critically ill Clancy – who, after strangling her children with exercise bands, had tried to take her own life by slitting her neck and wrists and jumping from a second-floor window of her home – at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and administered her the Last Rites.

His visits with Clancy continued weekly from then.

The pastor also reached out to Patrick that day and visited him at his parents’ home in Scituate, where the devastated father had fled in the wake of his unimaginable loss.

He visited Patrick several more times and performed the funerals for the three children, alongside another priest.

After Patrick moved to New York City, Father Bob said their communication became less frequent.

He wouldn’t go into detail about how Clancy is coping seeing her husband move on with his second wife, fertility specialist Dr Rachel Danis.

But he made clear it had impacted her.

‘When a marriage has ended in such a terrible way with a tragedy of the whole family, with the children gone, it has an effect as you would expect,’ he said.

‘She had been so close to her husband, and it looked like a very happy marriage – just like Patrick said too.

‘So, with all of that history and then [the children’s deaths] causing a rift that was very hard to heal, that has certainly had its effect upon Lindsay – and upon him which has of course caused him to move on.’

Despite Patrick’s public support and forgiveness of his ex-wife, the former couple had not seen each other in person since the killings until he became the first witness to testify at her trial.

He choked up with emotion, describing his ex-wife as a loving and doting mother who had struggled with deteriorating mental health.

If Clancy were now found not guilty by reason of insanity at a future retrial, she would still be committed to psychiatric care.

Her confinement would not have a fixed end date: she could remain hospitalized for years, potentially indefinitely.

But she could ultimately seek release if she were no longer deemed a danger to herself or others.

It is unclear how much interaction she has with other patients inside Tewksbury, which is home to a growing number of people who, like her, are part of the criminal justice system – either convicted of crimes, awaiting trial or being evaluated to determine if they are fit to stand trial.

But as well as her regular visitor, Clancy also gets plenty of mail in the way of letters and cards from people offering their support.

‘People write to her at the hospital and send her cards,’ Father Bob said.

‘I think this touched a chord, especially among mothers who may themselves have had some brush with mental illness after the birth of a child.

‘Lindsay knows about the support – and it is very much appreciated by her.’