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The House of Commons voted 335 to 223 against a Conservative-led motion to refer Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, to the Privileges Committee over his claims about the vetting of Lord Mandelson; 14 Labour MPs voted for the motion. Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff, who had recommended the appointment of Lord Mandelson, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that No. 10 had wanted Lord Mandelson in post ‘quickly’ but that officials were never asked to ‘skip steps’. Sir Philip Barton, the former permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, told the committee he was ‘presented with a decision’ made by the PM and ‘told to get on with it’. Britain agreed to pay France £662 million over three years to help stop the traffic of migrants across the Channel; about £100 million could be withdrawn after a year if not enough journeys are stopped. Within a week, 339 migrants arrived in small boats across the Channel; the French coastguard rescued 106 people on a single boat and took them back to Calais.
John Cotton, the Labour leader of Birmingham city council, claimed that the 14-month dustmen’s strike was ‘within sight’ of an end. BBC undercover reporters found that cocaine, cannabis, laughing gas and prescription pills were on sale in mini-marts in four West Midlands towns; police arrested a man and a woman in Dudley. The explosion of a car outside the police station at Dunmurry on the outskirts of Belfast was being investigated as attempted murder.
BP’s profits for the first three months of the year more than doubled from a year earlier. All 154 Claire’s shops in the British Isles and Ireland closed with the loss of 1,300 jobs. At the London Marathon, Sabastian Sawe, the Kenyan athlete, ran the distance in a competitive race in less than two hours for the first time. Mark Gerson, the photographer, died aged 104.
Abroad
Shots were fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, attended by President Donald Trump, who was not wounded. A Secret Service officer was hit, but was saved by his bullet-proof vest; Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate the President. A state visit to America by the King and Queen went ahead two days later, beginning with afternoon tea. In a speech welcoming them to the White House, Mr Trump said: ‘My mother had a crush on Charles. Can you believe it?’ The King addressed both houses of Congress, invoking Magna Carta and recalling that Britain stood beside America after the September 11 terror attacks, referring explicitly to Nato’s Article 5 provision on collective defence. He said: ‘Unyielding resolve is needed for the defence of Ukraine.’ His speech was received with repeated standing ovations. The King gave Mr Trump the bell from HMS Trump, a submarine that sank a tanker in 1945. An internal Pentagon email suggested that America was considering punishing Nato allies that it believed had failed to support its war on Iran; options included reviewing its position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands and seeking to suspend Spain from Nato. Wildfires burned more than 50,000 acres and destroyed more than 120 houses in the US state of Georgia.
Mr Trump cancelled a trip by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, to Islamabad that had been planned in the hope of talks on Iran. America kept up its blockade of Iran in the Gulf. John Phelan ceased to be the US Navy Secretary, the Pentagon announced. An oil tanker carrying 18,500 barrels of oil, with 17 crew, was hijacked by six pirates off Somalia. The United Arab Emirates is to leave the Opec cartel, which it joined in 1967. Israel continued to attack positions in southern Lebanon that it said were held by Hezbollah; a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon had been extended. Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, met President Vladimir Putin in Russia.
The EU’s anti-fraud office began a formal investigation into Lord Mandelson, a European trade commissioner from 2004 to 2008. Meta plans to cut 10 per cent of its workforce – about 8,000 people – as it spends $135 billion this year on AI. Mali suffered simultaneous attacks from Islamist groups in different parts of the country and Sadio Camara, the defence minister, was killed; the Russian Africa Corps withdrew from Kidal and Timbuktu was under threat. CSH
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