Keir Starmer’s dismal decision to block the Greater Manchester mayor has bought him time, but it won’t change his fate

Labour’s impulse for political self-harm defies belief. It is as if some enemy within guides it unerringly along the wrong strategic path. Declaring war on Andy Burnham anoints him as a northern martyr and hero, and casts Keir Starmer as a coward. Many opposed Burnham throwing down the gauntlet for all the problems it would have caused if he won. If he had run, and won, Starmer would have a choice: squeeze him python-tight within the fold, or confront any leadership manoeuvring head on. Instead, before he could show any strength, he funked it, using evasive proceduralism to block his rival from the byelection in Gorton and Denton.

What timing for this decision! Starmer, along with his chancellor, business secretary and other chief allies are due to depart for China on Tuesday: his absence from PMQs, from the weekly parliamentary Labour party meeting and from TV studios is a blunder.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The prime minister may have seen off the challenge for the moment – but what will be the cost to his leadership? Peter Walker reports

Ever since Andy Burnham abandoned Westminster to become Greater Manchester’s first ever mayor in 2017, he has been dogged with questions about returning to parliament for the top job. He never hid his ambition to become prime minister one day – he couldn’t, really, given that he tried and failed twice to become Labour party leader. But he insisted time and again that he was perfectly happy back in his beloved north, and had no plans to get back to London.

Then on Saturday night, he finally cracked. He wrote to Labour’s ruling body to ask for permission to stand in Gorton and Denton, promising a “hopeful and unifying campaign”, in what he admitted was a risky move. Winning the byelection was not a given and he would have to give up being the mayor if he succeeded. But instead he was blocked by the committee, including Keir Starmer, from standing at all.

Monochrome catering was all the rage at the VIP screening on Saturday for Ratner’s officially sanctioned $75m feature-length documentary about the First Lady. Have the photos whetted your appetite?

This week sees the release of Melania, Amazon’s official feature-length documentary about Melania Trump. Melania was directed by Brett Ratner, and has a reported $40m production budget. And, obviously, you’re probably not going to watch it.

Of course you’re not. Coming days after the killing of Alex Pretti by a US Border Patrol agent, an authorised vanity project about the current wife of a globally unpopular political leader – and directed by a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women (he was never charged, and denies the allegations), and whose production and release carried the smell of institutionalised media timidity – seems like just about the least appealing prospect ever. But, hey, any excuse for a party, right?

Most of those at Monday’s event had to remind themselves that Braverman hadn’t defected long ago

That noise? The sound of the barrel getting scraped. Only last summer, Reform insiders were briefing the rightwing media that the party would never welcome Suella Braverman into its ranks. Too much baggage. Too out of control. Reform wasn’t a convalescent home for disgraced and failed Tory MPs. Surely not? Heaven forbid.

So it was only a matter of time before the MP forced to resign from Liz Truss’s cabinet as home secretary for breaking the ministerial code – imagine the shame of being sacked by Liz – and then fired by Rishi Sunak for criticising Scotland Yard’s policing of protests was welcomed by Nigel Farage. Let’s face it: if Kemi Badenoch weren’t already leader of the Tory party, she’d almost certainly be next in line to defect.

Exclusive: Lured by false job adverts, they are unknowingly enlisted on arrival and put in mortal danger

Stephen Oduor was looking forward to starting his new job as a plumber in Russia to support his family after months of unemployment. But soon after landing in St Petersburg from Nairobi with six other Kenyans one afternoon last August, he started feeling something was off.

The man who received them at the airport drove them to a house where their luggage was taken away and they were given black clothes and shoes to wear. Afterwards, they were taken to a police station where they were fingerprinted and forced to sign documents written in Russian, a language they did not understand.

‘I couldn’t think of a line for the chorus – but we had just been to France. I got Baudelaire into the lyrics somewhere, too’

This song was an ode to glam rock. My older sister was really into Marc Bolan and her passion for him and his sound really rubbed off on me. I love the vocal effects and drum sounds on those old records.

Statement, since withdrawn, followed ex-minister becoming third Conservative MP to join Farage’s party in just over a week

The Conservatives are facing a backlash after claiming that Suella Braverman defected to Reform UK after “mental health” issues, as the former home secretary finally joined Nigel Farage’s party after months of denials.

Braverman, who was sacked from the cabinet by both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, became the third sitting Conservative MP to defect in little over a week. She immediately went on the attack against her former party.

Federal agents set to scale back presence in Minneapolis as president and allies strike more conciliatory tone

Donald Trump’s efforts to deploy militarized immigration agents in US cities may finally be reaching a reckoning as he faces widespread opposition across the US, dissenting lawmakers in his own party, and impending court rulings after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis.

While there was no sign the aggressive tactics used by immigration enforcement are coming to an end, the mayor of Minneapolis said the administration would begin to scale back the number of federal agents in Minneapolis starting on Tuesday, as the president and his team soften their harsh rhetoric regarding Pretti’s killing.

Greater Manchester mayor’s hopes of imminent return as MP appear remote as relationship with Starmer at low ebb

Andy Burnham has not given up hopes of returning to Westminster and will try again, allies say, but would need to be convinced that Keir Starmer would not try to block him again before running.

The Greater Manchester mayor’s hopes of an imminent return to parliament appeared remote, however, as No 10 sources suggested that relations between the two men were at a low ebb and played down chances of a rapprochement.

Exclusive: Parents said their children had become withdrawn or hypervigilant because of uncertainty, unsafe environments and removal of support

Neurodivergent children living in temporary accommodation (TA) in England are subjected to conditions that amount to “torture”, and the harm it causes them is “psychologically excruciating” and a form of “child cruelty”, a report has found.

The report by King’s College London through the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for households in temporary accommodation, found that while living in TA was damaging for any child, it had a particularly severe impact on neurodivergent children and those with special education needs and disabilities (Send).