In the headlines

Keir Starmer says he’s “not going to walk away” after early English council results show Labour has so far lost more than 200 seats, including in former strongholds such as Wigan, Bolton and Hartlepool. Reform UK has seized more than 300 seats, in what Nigel Farage has hailed as a “historic change in British politics”, while the Green Party has won its first mayoralty, ousting Labour in Hackney. Most results will come in later today and tomorrow. Donald Trump says the fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran is still in effect after the two sides exchanged strikes in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday. US Central Command claimed the American attacks, described by Trump as a “love tap”, were “self-defence” following “unprovoked” Iranian strikes. The US president also warned that if peace talks collapse, there will be “one big glow coming out of Iran”. David Attenborough says he has been overwhelmed by the messages and cards he has received for his 100th birthday today. The broadcaster, who will be honoured by the BBC with a star-studded concert at the Royal Albert Hall this evening, joked he’d rather thought he’d celebrate his centenary “quietly”.

BBC/ Silverback Films/Alex Board

Comment

Shabana Mahmood: facing vehement opposition from backbenchers. Peter Nicholls/Getty

Labour’s inexorable lurch to the left

However the local election results finally shake out, says Michael Gove in The Spectator, and whatever happens to Keir Starmer, the dynamic that will drive Labour for the rest of its time in government is clear: the party is moving “injudiciously but inevitably” to the left. It is “no longer a working class party”; any “emotional identification” with working class concerns has gone. Consider the vehement opposition from Labour MPs to the efforts of the cleverest Cabinet member, Shabana Mahmood, to tighten immigration rules. The move left may seem odd when Reform is doing so well, but losses to Reform sting Labour far less than losses to the Greens. Watching young, idealistic, pro-Europe, anti-billionaire, sourdough-baking creatives and public sector professionals abandon the party for Zack Polanski’s Greens has been like a dagger to the Labour soul.

What makes the leftward shift so remorseless is the massacre of the Labour right. Its principal “organising group”, Labour Together, is now in near-terminal disarray, its founder, Morgan McSweeney, having been summarily ejected from No 10. The effects will be grim. Rachel Reeves’s Treasury, which once made promises of deregulation and pro-market reforms, now talks about rent controls and subsidies for failing industries while the private sector buckles under tax increases, labour regulations and spiralling energy costs. Even grimmer will be the outcome for the nation’s Jews. How much worse will their fate be if it’s not just the Greens trying to globalise the intifada, but the British government? The Labour right stood firm against this malign trend, but the Labour left has always felt its “dark magnetic pull”. Watching councils in places like Hackney and Lambeth fall to the Greens may make it irresistible.

😵‍💫🇪🇺 The other issue Labour will be entirely unable to resist is Brexit, says Hugo Gye in The i Paper. Support for rejoining the European Union is around 65% among Labour voters, and 79% among Greens. The practicalities would be a nightmare: Brussels would no doubt demand a far higher price than our previous membership, be that in financial contributions to the Brussels coffers, or signing up (at least in principle) to joining the eurozone and open-border Schengen area. And the public debate itself would be both vicious and boring. But here, probably, it comes.

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Fashion

The best round-up of the Met Gala is always the one provided by Australia’s national science agency, says Helen Zhang in International Intrigue. Rather than the usual “isn’t this dress glorious/disgusting”, they compare the celebrity outfits to Australian wildlife. Last year it was birds; this year it was the humble moth. As they say: “Who wore it better?” Click on the image for more.

Take a breath

Knowledge readers contentedly ignoring the local election coverage

The story of the local elections so far is that Labour are doing very badly, Reform are doing very well, and everyone else is doing either quite well (Greens, Lib Dems) or quite badly (Tories, independents). This is, of course, exactly what everyone was expecting, which is why all the opinion pieces we’ve read this morning sound like they were written about five days ago. Presumably half of them were.

The only question anyone actually cares about – will the results spark a putsch at No 10? – probably won’t be answered for days or weeks or months. Which is why we’re keeping our powder dry.

This is one of the reasons The Knowledge is so great. Unlike many newsletters, and all newspapers, we don’t try to give you all the news, every day, because most of it is boring and inconsequential. We only pick out the best commentary (and the most enjoyable facts and anecdotes and pictures and everything else).

So ignore the mindless “live news” feeds today. Go outside, call your mum. And wait for The Knowledge to make sense of it all at some later date, without the hysteria.

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