A different kind of stasis waits after the polls: a candidate gridlock where all Starmer’s potential successors are problematic in their own way

Westminster politics is currently consumed by the fact that the May elections are next week.

On Tuesday night Labour MPs voted down a Tory proposal that would have seen the prime minister referred to the privileges committee over his handling of the Mandelson scandal . Just 15 Labour MPs – mostly long-term critics of the PM – voted for the Tory motion; 53 did not vote, not all of whom abstained.

Morgan Jones is the co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy

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• American nearly lost leg after crash at Winter Games

• 41-year-old does not rule out return to racing

Lindsey Vonn says she is still recovering physically and emotionally from her crash at the Winter Olympics and does not know when, or if, she will race again.

The 41-year-old has undergone eight surgeries after suffering a complex left leg fracture – one that nearly led to a leg amputation – in the women’s downhill in February. She needs at least one more operation to repair a torn ACL in the same knee.

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• Belgian is fourth lowest-ranked player to reach last four

• Injured Alcaraz turns up to support young brother Jamie

Alexander Blockx’s dream run in Madrid continues with the 21-year-old Belgian beating the defending champion Casper Ruud 6-4, 6-4 in the quarter-finals of the Madrid Open on Thursday.

The 69th-ranked emerging talent had not won an ATP Tour match on clay before his third-round run in Monte Carlo three weeks ago. He has also defeated the third-seeded Felix Auger-Aliassime and Francisco Cerundolo on his way to the last four in the Spanish capital.

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Echoes of Liz Truss as Badenoch blusters and blunders through series of short interviews, saving the worst for almost last

It was the sort of day that every politician dreads. One where you can’t not say and do something. The pressure to come up with the right words. The knowledge that even if you do find the right words, they still won’t be enough.

Nothing anyone can say can mitigate the horror of the latest antisemitic attacks in north London on Wednesday. You can promise more money for security. You can proscribe terrorist organisations. You can insist that this is not who we are as a country. But all that must sound hollow to British Jews. They’ve heard all this before and nothing has changed.

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Move comes after mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke on return of the Koh-i-noor diamond after UK royals’ visit to New York

Hundreds of antiquities valued at $14m have been returned to India by New York authorities, including some connected to the alleged art smuggler Subhash Kapoor, in a move that is likely to raise the pressure on others to make similar gestures.

The return of 657 antiquities was announced by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg Jr, on Tuesday, and came as New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, waded into the historically contentious ownership of the 105.6 carat Koh-i-noor diamond.

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The long-delayed film has fans dancing in the aisles and has taken more than $200m at the box office

On Wednesday evening, revelers gathered in the lobby of New York’s Regal Union Square movie theater before filing into the night’s slate of Michael screenings. The King of Pop has become box office royalty after the film moonwalked into the biggest opening weekend for a biopic ever (even surpassing 2023’s Oppenheimer). Now, its success has resulted in even more attention worthy of Michael Jackson ’s immense star-power, with videos circulating online of fans dancing in the aisles at screenings and a sequel likely in the works .

However, much like Jackson’s current polarizing force in culture, it’s all a tale of contrasts . The movie’s Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of a paltry 37%, compared with a 97% audience score is a rare chasm. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw was one of many who lambasted the Antoine Fuqua-directed film, saying it was “bland, bowdlerised and bad”, as well as “ frustratingly shallow”.

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Lee Zeldin claims before Senate that Trump administration plan will make Environmental Protection Agency ‘more efficient’

Senate Democrats accused the Trump administration of abandoning the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment at a congressional hearing Wednesday, slamming agency leadership over a proposal to cut its budget in half.

Lee Zeldin’s appearance before the Senate environment committee was the EPA administrator’s last of three budget hearings this week where he argued for sharply reduced funding for the agency, which already has seen its staffing reduced to its lowest level in decades under his leadership. During much of the week, the former Republican congressman from New York took an aggressive approach, responding to Democrats in the House and Senate with his own questions and at times accusing them of being unprepared or failing to care about the EPA’s record.

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Paul Watkins/Alessio Bax
Signum Classics
Cellist Watkins’ career-long immersion in the composer pays dividends in his pairing with Alessio Bax’s unfussy virtuosity

As cellist of the Nash Ensemble and the Emerson Quartet, Paul Watkins has immersed himself in almost all the chamber music Beethoven wrote. Now he brings those years of experience to his first recording of the cello sonatas. He approached the pianist Alessio Bax for this project after hearing him play the Moonlight Sonata, and his instinct was good: their playing here seems to come from a shared impulse, unflaggingly eloquent without ever seeming to strive for effect.

Together these five sonatas span Beethoven’s composing life. The earliest two date from around the time of his first piano concertos, and they find Beethoven breaking new ground in the way he writes for cello and keyboard as equal duet partners. Both sonatas have slow, serious introductions leading into extended movements showcasing the virtuosity of the pianist, to which Bax rises with a light, crisp touch. The expansive third, Op 69, which Beethoven worked on alongside the Fifth Symphony, centres on a perky middle movement akin to a symphonic scherzo; it’s nicely weighted here, the momentum continuing through all the changes in texture. The final pair of sonatas harness Watkins’s full powers of expression, in particular No 5, the only one of all these to have a full-blown slow movement. It begins in reticent, almost hymn-like style and blooms into something deeply felt; Watkins and Bax handle its closing passages with tightly controlled restraint, then gently clear the air with the introduction to the wrangly little fugue of the finale. It’s all beautifully done.

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Six dancers who made bold career pivots reflect on ballet’s transferrable skills, what they miss about the stage – and what they were glad to leave behind

Lana J ones , midwife, former principal dancer at the Australian Ballet

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