The party needs a leader who understands the difficulties facing ordinary people. I am yet to see anyone obviously equal to that challenge

If this were a poker game, Thursday lunchtime was the point when players were finally forced to show their cards. Was Wes Streeting holding all the aces, as his people relentlessly claimed, or a pair of fours and a lot of empty bluster? Did Andy Burnham even have any cards, if he couldn’t name an MP willing to surrender their seat for him? (At the 11th hour, Makerfield MP Josh Simons did the honours). Would Angela Rayner – late to the table, after scraping together £40,000 in accidentally underpaid stamp duty in order to play – scoop the jackpot by default? Or does the house, in the shape of a prime minister stubbornly refusing to budge, ultimately always win?

But in the end Streeting simply kicked the table over, scattering poker chips in all directions. His resignation from cabinet, in a blistering statement that noticeably failed to confirm he had the numbers to trigger a formal contest, was a frustrated last attempt to break the stalemate by taking what he called “personalities” – including possibly his own – and “petty factionalism” out of a revolt against Keir Starmer in which both are surgically embedded. Since the outcome is unclear at the time of writing, for now let’s leave aside the issue of whether Starmer even has the authority to do a reshuffle and focus on one question: why does Britain need a Labour party in 2026?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

In antiquity, women were considered the more sexual sex – hornier, more libidinous and lust-fuelled than men. Why did that perception change?

All across the world, you will probably have read, people are having less sex. In Britain and the US, in France and Australia, frequency of sex has been on the decline (although Denmark appears to be bucking the trend). In 2018, the US magazine the Atlantic declared a “sex recession”, while last December the Telegraph ran a piece headlined “Sex is dying out. This is why it matters”.

As an ancient historian with a particular interest in the history of sex, this drought is fascinating to me – not least because some of the articles I have read seem keen to hark back to the historical period I spend most of my time researching. “Sex should be more wild and plentiful than it has been since ancient Greece,” reported the Telegraph. But antiquity was no bastion of sexual freedom – especially for women.

We were locked in a box in a lorry for 12 hours. I’ve never been so terrified

I escaped from my home, Soran, in the Erbil area of northern Iraq, in 2011 when I was 19 years old. My life was in danger – powerful people had made threats to kill me. I had been told that the UK was a secure place for refugees. I decided to try to get there and hoped the government would grant me protection.

I travelled by lorry across Europe and arrived in October of that year. I claimed asylum and felt lucky to be in a peaceful country. When I arrived, David Cameron was prime minister. Since then, there have been five others. I didn’t really distinguish between them, though – they all caused me a lot of stress.

Bruno Fernandes, Declan Rice, Erling Haaland, David Raya and Rayan Cherki are the leading contenders

By WhoScored

There is a version of this season in which Bruno Fernandes left Manchester United in the summer. “The club wanted me to leave,” he said in December. Thankfully for United fans, he stayed, navigated the tactical ambiguity of playing for Ruben Amorim and led the team back into the Champions League.

Glenn Murcutt pioneered architecture that was sensitive to its environment, and accomodating to changing temperatures and wildlife

The house teaches you things, Lynne Eastaway says. Today, a choir of cicadas fill the scrub with a rhythm that rises and falls. On other days, there may be visits from birds, goannas, echidnas, wombats, wallabies and kangaroos.

“The bush ends, and the house begins,” she says. “You’re not the centre; you’re just part of it. That’s the thing you learn.

It’s been 12 years since Claire time-travelled through a magic stone into the arms of hot Scot Jamie and left fans light-headed. As Outlander comes to a close, we look back at TV’s steamiest journey – scandalous resurrections and all

It all started with a vase. “I’d never lived anywhere long enough to justify having such a simple thing,” said the second world war nurse Claire Randall in the narration, as she eyed one through a shop window on her honeymoon in Inverness. “At that moment, I wanted nothing so much in all the world as to have a vase of my very own.” Did she buy it and live happily ever after with lovely professor husband, Frank? Did she heck! Instead, Claire found a magic stone circle, fell through time to the 18th century, fell in love with flaming hot Scot Jamie Fraser and embarked on TV’s wildest journey.

Twelve years have passed since the adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books gave us the time-travel bonkbuster we didn’t know we needed. You can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief for its stars, Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan, whose chemistry has sizzled admirably across eight long seasons (it took 17 months to film the first one after Covid). As it limps towards its finale this week, the end is long overdue – but it is a bittersweet farewell to a wonderfully ludicrous show.

The Greater Manchester mayor is hoping to return to parliament after a Labour MP stepped down, triggering a byelection

Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, has backed Andy Burnham’s efforts to return to parliament, saying there will be no attempt to stop the Greater Manchester mayor from fighting an upcoming byelection in Makerfield.

Speaking at a Fire Brigades Union conference in Coventry, she said

We could have further to fall as a party and we absolutely need to come back together as one team, because we’ve got to take the fight to [Nigel] Farage. We are at real risk of Nigel Farage walking up Downing Street in a few years time, and we can’t let that happen.

But we’ve got to do our politics differently. We’ve got to end the factionalism. We’ve got to embrace all the different traditions of the Labour party, all the different voices, and bring one team back together.

China calls for ceasefire and opening of seaway, while Donald Trump says Xi feels ‘very similar’ about ending the war in Iran

• Trump in China – latest updates

Donald Trump has claimed that the US and China “feel very similar” about ending the war in Iran but offered no details about a possible breakthrough.

The US president was speaking alongside Xi Jinping of China at the Zhongnanhai garden in Beijing on the second and final day of the leaders’ summit.

Tube stoppages due on two 24-hour periods next week but sources say RMT seeking talks

Hopes have been raised that next week’s strikes by London Underground drivers could yet be averted, after sources said the RMT union had put out feelers for talks.

The RMT members, almost half of London’s tube drivers, are due to strike for two 24-hour periods from midday on Tuesday and Thursday, closing some lines entirely and bringing widespread travel disruption to the capital until the weekend.

Redress for force-fitting devices in homes includes £20m penalty and £70m of debt write-offs

Thousands of British Gas customers who had prepayment meters force-fitted in their homes will between them receive compensation and energy bill debt write-offs worth up to £112m in the biggest energy supplier settlement on record.

Great Britain’s energy regulator found that British Gas forced PPMs on homes that were not keeping up with their bills at the height of the Russian gas crisis, in one of the most complex investigations in Ofgem’s history.