The opposition leader wants to pull the UK out of the ECHR, wrecking treaties from the Good Friday agreement to the Gibraltar deal

Sitting in Brussels, or one of the EU’s 27 chancelleries, one could be forgiven for tuning out the latest psychodramas in Britain’s Conservative party. After all, the country has a new Labour prime minister who is a pro-European keen to build upon the “reset” begun by Keir Starmer. Who cares what a party in opposition thinks about anything when it is still reeling from its landslide 2024 defeat, and languishing third in the opinion polls as it haemorrhages support from its right flank? It is easy to dismiss Kemi Badenoch and her party as a sideshow.

That would be a mistake. Following her latest pronouncements, Badenoch has effectively committed the Conservatives to a policy of conflict, and possibly even rupture, with the EU. She recently suggested in a newspaper article that anyone who opposes her policy of withdrawing from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) or ditching net zero commitments would be considered “not serious”, and thus excluded from consideration as a Conservative candidate at the next election. She then withdrew the party whip (a UK parliamentary euphemism for “kicked out”) from Gavin Barwell, a member of the House of Lords who criticised Badenoch’s stance. Such a choice revives memories of Boris Johnson’s purge of pro-Europeans from the party.

Simon Nixon is a journalist and economics commentator

With the outbreak of this year’s war, Iraq’s balancing act between the two antagonists has collapsed, exposing a perilously fragile state

One week after the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited a regional war, drones started flying over Basra in southern Iraq. They were targeting Iraq’s oil industry. They hit an oilfield operated by BP, as well as a cargo terminal at Basra airport and a large compound that houses foreign companies that service the oil sector. Another attack on 6 March hit the same compound, striking offices and warehouses used by Halliburton and KBR, two US companies that have been in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The attack sparked a massive fire that lit up the night sky.

In the wider war, it was not a particularly notable day – but in Iraq the strikes laid bare just how weak the state had become and “how easily sovereignty could be violated”, as one senior Iraqi security official put it to me. For 40 years, the US, Iran and Israel existed in an uneasy equilibrium of neither peace nor war. As this has come to a sudden, dramatic end, Iraq finds itself caught in the middle.

Exclusive: Darren Rosheski won NHS payout over partner Helen Dutton’s death from rectal cancer after GP misjudged her symptoms

“I remember the doctor, after he’d examined Helen and found a large lump in her colon, saying ‘it’s very sinister – we need to bring you in to be investigated.”

Darren Rosheski is recalling the moment a consultant doctor at Tameside hospital broke the news to his partner, Helen Dutton, that her symptoms – which also included back pain, passing blood and altered bowel habits – were so worrying that they needed further tests.

Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren says it is unclear how bank failed to uncover former CEO’s links with sex offender

The leading US senator Elizabeth Warren has called for urgent answers from Barclays over what she claimed was its “apparent failure to meaningfully investigate” ties between the bank’s former boss, Jes Staley, and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a letter sent privately to Barclays’s chair, Nigel Higgins, and seen by the Guardian, Warren – the most senior Democrat on the US senate banking committee – said it was “deeply unclear how Barclays, supposedly investigating Staley’s connection to Epstein, failed to uncover this decades-long relationship”.

The FCDO’s annual report was quietly released just as Starmer was leaving office – it continues a long-term shift from supporting countries most in need to seeking something in return

Somewhere on the new British prime minister’s desk sits a document. It was quietly published last week, in the dying hours of his predecessor’s government. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s annual report cements how the UK aid budget will be allocated until 2029.

It was released at the moment of least political scrutiny: parliament rising for the summer, one prime minister exiting Downing Street, the other waiting for the keys. Anyone asking whether the new PM, Andy Burnham, will – or even can – restore Britain’s 0.7% aid commitment should begin with this document, which appears designed to lock in three more years of retreat from the world’s poorest communities before Burnham could take office.

Analysis shows how heatwaves are making atmosphere thirstier, damaging water supplies, food production and power generation

Extreme heat supercharged by the climate crisis is sucking Europe dry in summer and intensifying the drought hitting the continent, a scientific analysis has found.

Record-breaking heatwaves meant the hot atmosphere strongly evaporated water from rivers, lakes, soils and plants – conditions made 80 times more likely by global heating in western Europe and 40 times more likely in eastern Europe, the study showed. The level of soil dryness in the west was made five times more likely by the pollution from fossil fuels in the west, and 11 times more likely in the east.

Scientists believe sunfish-smashing behaviour could be form of entertainment or to help younger whales feed

Orcas have been observed ramming into giant fish so hard that the prey explode, possibly as a form of gory entertainment.

On several occasions, orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed, causing it to break into thousands of pieces. Since the fish had already been killed, scientists suggested the behaviour may represent a form of play.

Their eye-popping designs burst out of Sheffield in 1986, making them the toast of the music scene. Founder Ian Anderson reveals why some fans think his art is worth remortgaging the house for

Forty years ago in Sheffield, Ian Anderson founded one of the most influential UK design companies by mistake. “The name the Designers Republic was a joke, because we weren’t designers,” he recalls. “Early on, everything we did was in black and white because we didn’t know how to make it colour.”

With co-founder Nick Phillips, The Designers Republic (TDR) quickly became synonymous with music, designing record covers, packaging, logos and campaigns for everyone from Aphex Twin to Autechre, Pulp to Nine Inch Nails. They worked on groundbreaking video games, such as Wipeout and Grand Theft Auto, collaborated with brand behemoths like Coca-Cola and Adidas, and their work is held in the MoMA and the V&A. There exist such obsessive collectors of their work that Anderson cites one person who remortaged his house twice to keep up with their output.

The actor emotes his way through Vesuvius’s catastrophic eruption in a docudrama that is embarrassing and exhausting – but undeniably entertaining. Prepare to be Hiddlestoned!

There’s such a fine line between “cheese” and “cringe”, is there not? Come, walk it with me and Tom Hiddleston in Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston. Let’s see how many of us survive the eruptions of embarrassment that attend our journey!

This is a National Geographic documentary-drama, which means that even the factual bits are emotionally scripted and there’s CGI money and speaking parts for the re-enactments. And there is Tom (he has looked very deeply into my eyes throughout all three episodes, so I feel we are on first-name terms now), wringing every drop of feeling from every moment with the untrammelled appetite of a born actor.