A royal wedding to cheer the nation

It has now emerged that they became secretly engaged on a holiday in Africa last month. But the lack of any surprise factor in the announcement of the news should not dampen our happiness for the couple.

Prince William and Ms Middleton have had a long courtship since meeting at St Andrews University eight years ago. Since then, the prince has proved himself to be a thoughtful and mature man, progressing through various branches of the armed services.

He also issued a ringing call earlier this year in support of this paper's Dispossessed campaign: the second in line to the throne has an awareness of the wider world beyond royal circles that does him credit.

It will also make the case for the monarchy more strongly than any constitutional arguments.

The wedding will make Britain the centre of the international news, a piece of the kind of pageantry that this nation does so indisputably well. In the process, it will be a great showcase for London, the backdrop to the whole event.

And it will be an overwhelmingly positive and joyous event, at a time when, thanks to our economic straits, the nation needs something to cheer about.

We send William and Kate our heartiest congratulations — and look forward to the big day.

We need a living wage

The growing momentum behind the London Living Wage is heartening for a city in hard times.

Today Bank of America, law firm Freshfields and L'Oréal have signed up to the agreement, under which employers agree to pay an hourly rate presently set at £7.85.

Introduced by former Mayor Ken Livingstone, the wage has been increased by his successor, Boris Johnson. More than 100 organisations are now signed up; the Mayor is today meeting business leaders to encourage more to do so.

The London Living Wage has the potential to make a real difference to the capital's low-paid. It can help, in a modest way, to reduce the yawning gap between London's richest and its poorest.

Now the pressure must be on Whitehall departments to follow suit: despite spending cuts, there can be no good reason why they do not pay their cleaners the same as those at City Hall.

The price of torture

Ministers will defend today's announcement of compensation payments to former Guantánamo Bay detainees on grounds of pragmatism.

Nevertheless, it is deeply galling. The blame for this must lie squarely with the Labour government, under whose watch the policy of alleged complicity in torture unfolded.

Earlier this year the Appeal Court judged that Binyam Mohamed, the best-known of the detainees, had been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities".

Yet even if British operatives were not involved in torture, it beggars belief that they did not suspect that the CIA and its allies in places such as Afghanistan and Morocco were using such methods.

Today's announcement is an acknowledgement that the detainees have a case to answer. Quite why Labour ministers thought they could get away without British or British-resident detainees making that connection and suing on release remains unclear. But the public will now pay the cost of their policy.