| Allies of Wes Streeting expect him to challenge Keir Starmer's leadership within weeks, says The Guardian, despite the health secretary insisting that he backs the beleaguered prime minister. Starmer's allies admit the PM is "too weak" to sack Streeting for plotting, but say doing so would only "uncork even more political chaos". Volodymyr Zelensky is planning a spring election alongside a referendum on any peace deal to end the war with Russia, says the FT. The Trump administration has pressed Kyiv to hold both votes by 15 May or risk losing proposed security guarantees. A Norwegian Olympian has gone viral after tearfully confessing to cheating on his girlfriend just moments after winning a bronze medal. Biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid said the "love of my life" ditched him after he told her about his infidelity, and that he was "willing to do anything" to get her back. It doesn't appear to have worked. "Even after a declaration of love in front of the whole world," the unnamed woman told a newspaper, "it's hard to forgive." | | | |  | Mandelson with Donald Trump in the Oval Office last year. Anna Moneymaker/Getty |
| Stop this merry-go-round of prime ministers | As a "hard-bitten old Tory", says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph, I find myself in the peculiar position of vehemently agreeing with Alastair Campbell. Speaking after the resignation of Keir Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, New Labour's spinner-in-chief ranted that "because of the nature of our politics, the quality of people going into politics, the nihilism of the mainstream media, the anarchy of social media, with dissonance, hypocrisy, short-termism, naivety, industrialised rage and wilful ignorance off the scale, we are becoming ungovernable". Hear, hear. | Starmer took a "legitimate political gamble" in appointing Peter Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to the US, a decision he thought was in the national interest and which many commentators deemed a "political masterstroke". Labour needed a "world-level" operator to navigate the perilous waters of Donald Trump's Washington, and Mandelson was that man. Yes, the gamble failed, because the Prince of Darkness "deceived everybody". But that's not a reason to defenestrate a prime minister less than a third of the way into his term and to impose some "party hack" on the nation. Only in Britain would such a tenuous link to a foreign scandal set off a leadership crisis. And it's the Tories who bear much of the blame for "normalising" Westminster coups. Whatever you think of Boris Johnson, he should never have been ousted over the "preposterously trivial" Pincher affair – a low-level scandal concerning a deputy whip accused of drunkenly "squeezing the bottom of two fellow gentlemen at the Carlton Club". Global investors – in particular the bond markets – already worry that Britain has degenerated into an "intractable and feral condition". We can only hope that Labour's insurgents have learned the lesson of the Tories' "self-destruction". | 📉😬 Starmer is Britain's most unpopular prime minister since records began, says Mike Allen in Axios, with just 23% of voters saying they approve of his performance. But he's still faring better than his European colleagues: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's approval rating is slightly lower, at 21%, while France's Emmanuel Macron is down at 16%. Courage, mon brave! | | | | |  | Three of the UK's new Michelin-starred restaurants |
| The outdated view that there's anything ropey about English food has finally died an unequivocal death, says Andrew Ellson in The Times. Britain and Ireland have added more Michelin-starred restaurants over the past five years than anywhere else in the world, with the 21 new stars dished out on Monday taking the total to 230. Since 2021, we have increased the number of starred restaurants by 24%, compared to just 3% in France, 4% in Germany, 6% in Italy and a healthier 11% in Spain. In poor old Japan, the number has plummeted by 27%. Banzai. |
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