The picture that shows trouble ahead for Burnham as PM

On the House of Commons terrace, Labour MPs were in a jubilant mood. As they bought each other pints, some kept a watchful eye on the door that leads from the bar to the Thames-side sun trap.

Conversations about Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation on Monday morning were discussed in the manner reserved for a late but distant relative: respectful and brief. MPs craned their necks looking out for one man to join their celebrations: Andy Burnham, prime minister in all but name.

“We need an injection of positivity,” a minister remarked the following day. Inspired by Boris Johnson’s boosterism, they joked it was now the time to tell people to “spend more and shag more.”

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

England’s stunning victory over the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may have England fans elated, but some are wondering if Tuchel is still the right choice to lead the team to a World Cup victory.

England had never lost to an African side in a World Cup match, and only once in their entire history.

Inside seven minutes, a defensive calamity and mistake from Jordan Pickford put the DRC on the cusp of history. 

It was Kane’s two goals within the last fifteen minutes of the match which saw England narrowly take the win.

England’s full-backs were a mess against DRC because Tuchel went weird with his selection and Ezri Konsa looks jumpy.

Gareth Southgate protected an average defence that was the weak point of the team and England became boring to the point of fault. Tuchel is ostensibly doing mostly the same but without the defensive protection bit.

England now face Mexico in Mexico: far harder, far more altitude, far better opponent, far more febrile atmosphere. The worry from Atlanta that won’t leave this brain: what if better are better against us and we’re already living on the edge of incompetence?

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Three families reflect on the early signs of the illness, which affected their parents.

They include the things they missed or dismissed, what they’d do differently and what they’d want other people in the same position to know.

One of the first incidents that rang alarm bells for Robert was his mum falling victim to a suspected scam from someone selling mattresses door-to-door. 

She also started to struggle with cooking and making her special dishes she’d been making for decades without a problem.

We [had] just sort of played along with everything. But on one particularly bad day, I blurted it out over the phone, ‘Because you’ve got dementia, mum!’ She threatened to kill herself, which was very scary. Maybe it’s something I should have explained properly to her from the get go…

I think we missed some of the really early subtle signs.

Rosie’s mother was diagnosed with Young Onset Alzheimer’s Disease at 58 but some symptoms, like brain fog, were put down to the menopause.

She had become more forgetful, and was repeating herself, but as she had always “been scatty” it was dismissed.

It was on strange things like going to the same buffet.

Chloe was just 14 when her mum, Sarah, was diagnosed with young onset frontotemporal dementia, a rare form of the disease.

Another time Sarah, who was diagnosed in her forties, forgot how to boil an egg.

On Saturdays, when she’d usually go shopping, she’d go out and come straight back home, almost like she forgetting
what she was going out for.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

Writer Sadhbh O’Sullivan looked into her own forgotten subscriptions when she became a first-time buyer, and realised how much she was wasting on things she wasn’t using.

I’d long considered myself to be quite a reasonable spender. 

But the hidden costs across her bank accounts, like free trials that hadn’t been cancelled and memberships for abandoned services, proved otherwise.

It was full of small amounts, £2.99 here, £4.50 there. These small amounts added up.

According to a Nationwide survey almost one in five Brits don’t use every platform they pay for.

The bank suggests they could save as much as £400 a year by ditching them. 

National Trading Standards’ 2025 research found 4.7 million people were paying for subscriptions they didn’t know they’d signed up for.

In 2024, a government report found unused and unwanted subscriptions cost consumers up to £1.6bn a year.

Hunt them down

Banking apps usually list your ‘subscriptions’ separately from direct debits and standing orders so you can easily spot what you’re shelling out on.

Check everything

You can be debited through credit cards, E-payment services, your mobile phone bill, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Don’t vow to use a subscription you’re not going to, even if you
have good intentions.

Many businesses have changed from monthly to annual payments so look further back.

Make sure to track any subscriptions you have kept so you can cancel them, if need be, in future.

They were Labour scenes not seen perhaps since the party assumed power for the first time in 14 years, just shy of two years ago. Then, pollsters and commentators warned their landslide was soft, and that the huge number of Labour MPs could prove difficult to manage.

So while Labour was undeniably cheerful – one MP gushed that colleagues from all wings of the party were “embracing each other, hugging” – some are already warning that Burnham will not be able to hold the party together. The economic and political cracks are already starting to show.

“Keir’s wide but shallow coalition broke down not just because of all the U-turns and the mistakes but because of the underlying structural issues, the economy and the impatience of voters for change,” a Labour source said.

In Parliament there may be a feeling of “togetherness in their air”, as Burnham-backing MP Luke Charters puts it, but some of divisions that contributed to Starmer’s demise have not vanished overnight.

MPs who will never get a government job but aren’t in Westminster just to be voting fodder; ambitious big beasts who will inevitably lose out on big jobs; upstart challengers; a difficult economy; lack of money and a huge benefits bill will all remain problems.

There was rage in the wider women’s Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) at a remark in The Spectator magazine on Thursday, for example. It quoted a “senior Labour figure” who described Burnham as “Labour’s first female prime minister” because he surrounded himself with women.

Dubbed the “Northern Queens” by admirers, his key lieutenants include former transport secretary Louise Haigh, Labour’s union co-ordinator Anneliese Midgley, the party’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

“A period of silence from our male colleagues is always welcome,” Labour MP Polly Billington remarked on a private WhatsApp Group. “Now more than ever.”

And while Burnham is expected to be announced as Labour leader in three weeks, with a trip to the Palace to greet the King shortly afterwards, there are still some hurdles for him to jump.

Former Armed Forces minister Al Carns – who resigned from Starmer’s Government over defence spending – has set out five tests for any new leader and has continued to insist he could launch a challenge against Burnham, a threat no one in Westminster is taking seriously because of Carns’s limited support among MPs.

The Labour left will also be watching closely to see how Burnham’s plans align with its more radical agenda.

One left-wing Labour MP, who would have preferred a leadership contest, gave Burnham a long to-do list including fixing youth joblessness, issuing “transformative” economic policies, and planning “big political reform”.

“So apart from those little things, I’m completely unambitious,” they joked.

Ultimately, they said the red line for withdrawing support would be if Burnham fails to “fulfil the promises he made to the people of Makerfield”, which included rethinking trickle-down economics and shifting political power away from London.

“The working people of Makerfield voted in big numbers for Andy rather than Reform because they thought he would change the way the country operates, and therefore, he’s given rise to these expectations,” they said.

Another Labour MP said more than half of their colleagues would like to see a Burnham premiership “go further” in the Government’s support for Gaza. Last year, the UK formally recognised the state of Palestine, but there has been mounting pressure on ministers to issue further support, especially after Labour saw losses in last month’s local elections to the pro-Palestine Greens.

A Labour MP also pointed out that “huge, agenda-setting and defining decisions” over defence and energy security will land on the new prime minister’s desk on day one.

Starmer’s downfall was nailed in after the Defence Investment Plan triggered the resignation of defence secretary John Healey following a months-long row over funding. Ministers are still hoping to find extra cash before Starmer attends the Nato summit in Ankara next month. But Burnham will be under pressure to find billions more.

Who Burnham picks as chancellor and the question of whether they can drive economic growth has fixated Westminster all week.

The i Paper understands Burnham has not yet decided the resident of No 11, although the three frontrunners are Ed Miliband, Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting, with Rachel Reeves expected to be offered a demotion.

Each has their backers and their detractors among MPs, because of the economic principles they hold.

Burnham has no plans to announce any Cabinet picks before he has been confirmed as Labour leader – likely to be on 17 July – for fear of looking presumptuous. James Purnell, a former minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is expected to start work as chief of staff next week, and discussions about policy and personnel will accelerate, allies said.

Since his arrival on Monday, Burnham has spent the week locked in meetings and touring the tearoom greeting Labour MPs.

“He has been out of Westminster for nearly a decade and out of the bubble. The reality of the bubble has hit home,” one ally remarked. “As a team we have been in a pressure cooker and the 40-degree heat in the tiny offices has only emphasised that.”

In a borrowed office in Portcullis House, Burnham spoke to “dozens” of MPs from Monday to Wednesday, focusing on those he has not met before in the 2024 intake and hearing policy ideas, along with constituency pleas for a bridges and train stations. “He was in listening mode,” an ally said.

By Thursday he was back in Makerfield to spend his weekend in the constituency to help campaign for Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate to replace him as mayor of Greater Manchester.

He will also be polishing off his keynote speech on the economy to be delivered in Manchester on Monday. “He likes to write them himself,” an ally said.

Some of Miliband’s team have fed into the speech but the current Energy Secretary is “by no means the co-author,” an ally insists. It is likely to focus on how Manchester’s economic growth can be replicated across the country and will not set out any big fiscal measures.

The speech is likely to include a long section about devolved powers, including the possibility of local mayors setting their own business rates.

But a government minister said they doubt Burnham can bring the change he has promised, saying: “There are no clever ways of doing things within the fiscal rules. If there were a unicorn when it comes to the economy, we would have caught it by now.”

And while a growing number of Labour MPs are getting behind the former Greater Manchester mayor, some are doing so begrudgingly amid concerns his ideas have not been widely tested or do not have a mandate from the public.

A Starmer loyalist, who was supportive of a challenge to Burnham from Darren Jones before that fizzled out, suggested they wanted to stress-test the former mayor’s policies before he gets the keys to No 10.

Jones – Starmer’s Chief Secretary – confirmed earlier this week he would not stand in a Labour leadership contest after a “reassuring conversation” with Burnham over economic plans, putting the Makerfield MP one step closer to becoming prime minister. “We are the only guardrails left before Andy takes up the job in No 10,” the Labour MP said.

Others are concerned all wings of the party are represented at a senior level. One female MP on the party’s soft left said: “Keir has had good diversity on the front bench in terms of women, LGBT and ethnicity, but there hasn’t been political diversity. In fact, there’s been a culture of fear where people haven’t been able to speak out.”

She said: “I’m hopeful Andy will be different,” adding that a wider group of voices would make for “better policy”.

The left-wing MP Clive Lewis emphasised this in an interivew on the BBC Radio 4’s A Week in Westminster. “There is a weight lifted off of my shoulders after the last seven years because, frankly, I didn’t expect that I was going to be able to stand at the next election,” he said.

“I think there were lots of people on the left of the party who thought that we would be kicked out. And that’s a political culture, a toxic political culture, which I think Keir Starmer oversaw.

“Andy is going to have to make some tough choices. He is going to have to say no to people. He is going to have to pick some fights. But those fights will be instructive because if you actually want to change the 40-year settlement that we’ve just had, then that means some people are going to lose out. I don’t think it’s going to be plain sailing. It will be difficult “

Labour grandee Lord Falconer, on the same programme, added: “I think what the country has lacked over the last two years is strong, distinct leadership for the country. And Andy has a political personality, he has a personality as well, which the public will be able to relate to. In a way, it’s been maybe harder to relate to Keir.”

After his emotional resignation speech on Monday, Starmer has spent the week meeting foreign leaders and promoting tax breaks for summer days out. On Monday he held a party for supporters in the No 10 garden. It felt “a bit like a weird wedding, with everyone dressed nice”, one attendee observed. They said the mood was decidedly British, with partygoers “happy to reminisce and have a good time”.

For now, after months of gloom under the outgoing PM, Labour MPs are simply happy to remind themselves they have a winner in Burnham. But remembering also, that they thought they had a winner in Starmer.