Everywhere the PM turns, he finds generous adversaries. They have made his early days in No 10 so much easier

I don’t know where Andy Burnham found his magic lamp, but I hope he’s taking good care of it. In the early hours of Friday morning, the genie that’s looked so kindly on him these past few months granted him yet another wish, with a byelection win in Holborn and St Pancras. It was just the latest gift for a prime minister for whom things keep going right – and who is especially blessed in his choice of opponents.

Let’s start with that win in London, where Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali defeated the Green party leader, Zack Polanski. It’s easy to miss how rare such a victory is. As the veteran psephologist Peter Kellner pointed out, this was a win that “defied history”. If the past half-century were any guide, Labour should have lost, thanks to a “truly dreadful record” defending its own seats when in government and facing a byelection challenge from the left or centre-left, the likes of the Greens or the Lib Dems. The average swing against Labour in such contests had been 24%. “On those figures,” wrote Kellner, “Polanski should have won at a canter.” But he lost.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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A byelection win is a fillip for Andy Burnham and shows Zack Polanski must confront the failures damaging his party’s credibility and appeal

By holding Holborn and St Pancras, Andy Burnham’s Labour has shown it can attract liberal and left-leaning voters. The seat has substantial numbers of young adults, students, professionals and Muslims – offering fertile ground for the Greens’ ecopopulism. However, Labour prevailed. Having won leave-voting Makerfield in June, Mr Burnham can now claim an appeal that bridges Labour’s divided electorate. It’s worth noting that turnout in London was low and Labour’s vote share fell 3.7 points. But that compares with an average 19.3-point fall in four byelections under Mr Burnham’s predecessor. The new leader clearly has bought Labour breathing space and checked the Green advance.

The Greens more than tripled their vote share in the constituency to 33%. But they were beaten. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% in Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat, leaving Zack Polanski’s ambition of entering parliament unfulfilled. For a party that began the year promising to turn voters’ hunger for change into a serious challenge to Labour, this was a sobering moment. The passing of a motion declaring “Zionism is racism” at its conference probably cost the party support – though the result in central London alone cannot definitively say that. There is a separate question of leadership. Mr Polanski now says he would have voted against the motion. Why, then, did he not make his opposition clear when it mattered last weekend?

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The new exhibition at Tate Britain is part of a wider cultural resurgence from 30 years ago. This is nostalgia for a pre-digital era

Each generation imagines itself to be cooler than the one that went before it, and weirder than the one that comes after it, to update George Orwell. Gen X is no exception. “It felt like something was happening,” Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker writes in the catalogue for The 90s: Art and Fashion, which opened at Tate Britain this week. “Something good. It felt like the weirdos were taking over.”

The exhibition, curated by the former editor of British Vogue, Edward Enninful, is part of a wider 90s cultural revival. Oasis’s Wonderwall was the UK’s unofficial World Cup anthem this summer, after last year’s sellout reunion tour. Pulp have also just completed a world tour. The 1993 novel Trainspotting has become a musical; less surprisingly, so has 90s-set romance One Day, which found a new audience with 2024’s Netflix series. Love Story, which fictionalises the doomed relationship between John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, broke streaming records. Cult drama This Life is now on iPlayer. Vogue has described the era as “fashion’s most revisited decade”.

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• Principal denies bias towards Antonelli over Russell

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Toto Wolff has condemned accusations of bias in how he has managed his drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, with the Mercedes team principal describing those positing such theories as better off watching “Teletubbies or Mickey Mouse” rather than Formula One.

With Antonelli leading Russell by 84 points in the world championship as they go into this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, the Italian’s first title is within his reach. The 20-year-old has driven superbly in only his second season in F1 but Russell has struggled with poor fortune and reliability issues that have stymied his championship challenge.

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Op vakantiepark EuroParcs Resort Poort Van Zeeland aan de Duinweg in Hellevoetsluis heeft vrijdagavond een houten chalet in brand gestaan. De brandweer was uren bezig met blussen. Rond 21:00 uur werd het sein brand meester gegeven. Het chalet moet als verloren worden beschouwd.

In een houten chalet op vakantiepark EuroParcs Resort Poort Van Zeeland in Hellevoetsluis woedt vrijdagavond een uitslaande brand. De brandweer is ter plekke, maar de harde wind bemoeilijkt het blussen. Er komt veel zwarte rook vrij.

Na negentien seizoenen rijdt Bauke Mollema (39) zaterdag zijn laatste wedstrijd als profwielrenner. Zijn sport heeft hij in de afgelopen twintig jaar ingrijpend zien veranderen. „Het is bij de jonge jongens volgens mij wel minder gezellig dan vroeger.”

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide July 1965