Jawad Iqbal

Serena Williams is arguably the greatest female tennis player of all time – a seven-time Wimbledon champion and winner of an astonishing 23 Grand Slam titles in all. Even so, should she have been given a wild card to enter this year’s Wimbledon championship? No, not really: a player who has been out of competition for years should not receive a direct entry into a Grand Slam without even playing a proper warm-up tournament. It smacks of a decision based on nostalgia and a desire for cheap headlines on the part of the All England Club. Professional tennis should not be about rewarding superstars trying to relive past glories Wimbledon relies more than ever on marquee names to attract a global TV audience, and they don’t come much bigger than Williams.

It is time to talk about the real Andy Burnham and what he cares about most. In other words, let the discussion begin on his choice of clothing. What Burnham lacks in detailed policies and deeply-held political principles he more than makes up with a wardrobe overflowing with ideas on what to wear and when. Burnham’s wardrobe is all about telling put-upon voters everywhere that he is grounded and relatable The King of the North has spent the last decade or so away from Westminster thinking deeply (more deeply than he cares to admit) about things like bomber jackets and T-shirts. Andy now reaches places that the bog standard male politician (dressed in ill-fitting dark suit, pale shirt and dull tie) can only dream of.

Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election is a big blow for Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage. Farage and co. will offer up plenty of reasons for defeat in the coming hours and days. We should take these with a pinch of salt. Reform’s spinmeisters will be quick to suggest that it is all down to the Burnham effect. Gawain Towler, a long-time ally of Farage, admitted as much before the vote. He said that the Greater Manchester mayor 'does change the weather', adding that it would be a 'very, very hard task' beating him. Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, meanwhile, will be blamed for denting Reform’s chances of victory by splitting the vote on the right. Excuses, excuses and more excuses.

Keir Starmer has entered what might be described as the peak delusion period of what remains of his time in Downing Street. There was fresh evidence of the Prime Minister’s all-consuming divorce from political reality in his latest comments about Andy Burnham, who is widely predicted to win the Makerfield by-election today, and then go on to launch a leadership challenge to turf the PM out of Downing Street. The PM just doesn’t get it Anyone and everyone knows all this and more, except Starmer apparently, who called Burnham “a great asset” and said he deserved “a big role in government”. What is Starmer smoking? The only big role in government that Burnham wants is Starmer’s job in Number 10. That’s the whole point of Burnham’s return to Westminster.

Why is Elon Musk so obsessed with what’s going on in Britain? The billionaire owner of Tesla and X has been busy posting on his social media platform about the murder of Henry Nowak and what it says about the state of British policing. What does Musk actually know about policing in this country? What the tech mogul definitely does know about is how to stir the pot. According to a report in the Financial Times, Musk has written more than 110 posts, retweets and replies about British politics since last Wednesday on X. This is almost three times the share devoted to his company Space X, which is valued at $1.8 trillion (£1.3 trillion) ahead of its highly anticipated IPO next week.

The Green party certainly knows how to pick them. Sarah Wakefield, the Green candidate in the Makerfield by-election, is the executive director of Eating Better, a charity that is open to the idea that British farming is a racist power structure, riddled with white supremacist tendencies, and thereby ripe for ‘decolonisation’. It must come as a shock to most people that the country’s farms are a hotbed of racists. Last year the charity shared a report and accompanying guidance that listed ‘defensiveness’, ‘perfectionism’ and ‘a sense of urgency’ as examples of ‘white supremacy culture’. Who knew that setting high standards in food production was simply a devious way of asserting racial and cultural superiority?

Thomas Tuchel is an England boss who isn’t afraid to be brutal and he doesn’t apparently much care for big names or what football fans think. That’s why there’s plenty of controversy following confirmation of Tuchel’s 26-man squad for the World Cup finals this summer. Unlike his predecessor, Gareth Southgate, Thomas Tuchel is a serial winner of big trophies Embarrassingly, the news of his final choices had leaked out 24-hours earlier. Out goes Trent Alexander-Arnold. Tuchel chose Djed Spence of relegation-threatened Tottenham over the Real Madrid right back: Tuchel has previously hinted that he doesn’t trust the right-back defensively.

Arsenal are Premier League champions after a 22-year wait: their first title since the famous Invincibles season under Arsène Wenger in 2004. The title was sealed after Manchester City (serial champions, let’s not forget) failed to beat Bournemouth last night, handing Arsenal an unassailable lead at the top of the table with one game remaining. The team deserves all the plaudits for winning the Premier League, but what is it with Arsenal and their fans when it comes to celebrations? Why do they always go so over the top? It is cringeworthy stuff, reeking of a certain smug sense of undeserved entitlement, and enough to bring out the “celebration police” mentality in every other fan across the land. What is it with Arsenal and their fans when it comes to celebrations?

The Labour party is pretty useless when it comes to getting rid of its leaders. That’s the only reason Keir Starmer is still squatting in Downing Street after an extraordinary 48 hours of resignations and plots. The PM is badly wounded, his premiership hanging by a thread, but there appears to be no one yet capable of delivering the fatal blow.Part of the problem in trying to get shot of Starmer is that his would-be assassins know all too well the party’s chequered history of failed and aborted coups. It gives them cause to pause. The Labour party has never successfully mounted an official challenge against a serving prime minister. It is a point that Starmer, ‘Mr Rules’, knows all too well.

Even those who dislike Keir Starmer might feel a smidgen of pity – on a human level – for his plight as he tries to cling on in Downing Street. The Prime Minister is being assailed from every direction of his divided government and party with blunt advice about what he needs to do in order to survive following Labour's disastrous performance in last week's local elections. Starmer won’t quit. Every Prime Minister has to be dragged kicking and screaming from office Starmer, to use Norman Lamont’s withering political putdown of John Major, is in office but not in power. His future and that of his ailing administration now rests apparently on the speech he will deliver later today. Get it wrong and his political assassins are ready to strike him down.

Labour is facing a collapse in support among British Muslim voters in this week’s local elections. The votes of many Muslims are instead likely to go to pro-Gaza independents and the Green Party. The bad news doesn’t end there for Labour: if there was a general election tomorrow, only a third of Muslim voters would support the party, according to a poll released ahead of today's local elections. If there was a general election tomorrow, only a third of Muslim voters would support Labour The scale of disaffection with Labour on the part of many British Muslims is laid out in research undertaken by JL Partners for the Policy Exchange think tank.

Even those who don’t think much of New York city mayor Zohran Mamdani’s politics might grudgingly concede he has a knack for jumping on causes that resonate with his achingly progressive voter base. The idea of righting the wrongs of imperial history – anywhere, even thousands of miles away – is high on the tick list. Hence Mamdani’s call for King Charles to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the world’s largest and most controversial jewels, to India. The 105-carat diamond, part of the Crown Jewels, is the subject of a fierce historical dispute, with India claiming that it was stolen during British colonial rule. Leaving aside Mamdani’s political opportunism, what is it about the fate of the Koh-i-Noor diamond that seems to agitate so many Indians?