In your briefing today:

📣 Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham has continued to sketch out his policy platform ahead of his expected coronation in a long, detailed interview with broadcaster LBC. He says he will not push through “crude cuts” to welfare as he attempts to balance the national books, preferring a “different approach” to reducing the welfare bill. (Mirror)

He also said he’d seek to ease the cost of living if he became PM. (Guardian)

📣 As Burnham prepares to enter Downing Street, the post-mortem on the current occupant’s efforts continues: Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, has admitted that Labour failed to properly prepare for power in the run-up to its landslide election win in 2024.

"We didn't prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to,” he told Nick Robinson. “We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government.

"I think we didn't have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state.” (BBC)

📣 The SNP has rejected calls for a joint inquiry between Holyrood and Westminster into the Peter Murrell scandal, saying the matter had already been voted on. The SNP and the Greens, who also oppose an inquiry, used their majority to reject a Labour motion for a parliamentary investigation. (The Times)

"Must the French always insist on doing it better? And by “it” I mean life. Sure, their popular music is often regrettable and they aren’t exactly killing it in tech, but, they look good not killing it. They also happen to look good long after most of us don’t. Sexy, flirty, confident — Parisians embrace aging with typical élan. The most stylish among them share their secrets.

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📣 The troubled Historic Environment Scotland quango is seeking a new chair after Sir Mark Jones - appointed only last September for a four-year term - stepped down. The Herald reports Sir Mark had found the role “very difficult” with “many people resistant to change”. (Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Two of the men involved with the sinister black-shirted ranks standing in Fascist-style “silent protest” in Glasgow and Edinburgh have been unmasked: one’s a notorious football thug, while the other is a far-right YouTuber. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 A Scottish police officer has been jailed for 10 years for raping two women and subjecting a third to years of violent abuse yesterday. But it emerged he was first accused of sexual assault 12 years ago - but the case was dropped. (BBC)

📣 A man has been rescued alive eight days after the earthquakes which devastated parts of Venezuela. More than 2,500 people have been confirmed dead in the last week: tens of thousands are still missing. (BBC)

📣 Monaco has identified the suspect in a parcel bombing which left a Ukrainian oligarch and two others seriously injured. No detail about the suspect is being made public, however. (Independent)

📣 How Jeff Bezos learned to love Donald Trump - and win more contracts for his space company, Blue Origin. (WSJ)

📣 Pubs in England and Wales will be allowed to stay open until 5am on Monday so fans can watch England v Mexico with a pint in their hands. (BBC)

📣 Australian officials are asking fans of Neil the Seal to back off. The one-ton beast has become a local celebrity in southern Tasmania, but his antisocial antics have sparked concern. (AP)

⚽️ Two great stars of the modern game met as Portugal and Croatia clashed in the World Cup round of 32: Cristiano Ronaldo scored his first-ever World Cup knockout goal en route to Portugal’s 2-1 win over Luka Modric’s Croatia.

It’s already being described as a World Cup classic match, packed with chaos and incident - including a late, late equaliser for Croatia that was ruled offside for reasons, at this hour, I don’t fully understand. (Report & highlights)

⚽️ Also in the last 24 hours…

⚽️ Fixtures coming up:

⚽️ Ex-player Tam McManus warns England’s stars will struggle to breathe on Sunday night when they take on Mexico, at a height equivalent to a Ben Nevis and a half. He’s played at that height, and says the English stars will face a “hellish” night. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Rangers have tabled a bid for Partizan Belgrade defensive midfielder Vanja Dragojevic. (The Sun)

🗣️Tomorrow, Americans celebrate their semiquincentennial, notes the Economist in a leader. “From the start, 250 years ago, America’s founders believed that their republic would shine out as an example to all humanity. But the republic was also an experiment, and they feared that it could soon collapse into disorder or tyranny,” it notes.

Their worry was misplaced back then. “Far from succumbing to tyranny, America saved the world from tyrants three times over,” the newspaper says. “Glorious disorder created a dynamism that has long sustained America as a superpower. Dominance comes with temptations, but the United States has by and large held out republican virtues as the salvation of people everywhere.”

Yet this birthday comes at an anxious moment in America’s story. There are concerns the separation of powers is “degenerating into a White House-takes-all world”. The American dream has soured amid a new hostility to immigration. Abroad, America is in retreat from its values.

Yet if you were to conclude America was in decline, The Economist would disagree - “a grave misreading,” it says. “America’s power is immense - and it could be about to grow beyond all recognition, thanks to its leading role in AI. (The Economist (£))

🗣️ David Miliband has written a long piece on Britain’s place in Europe and the vital importance of “a new kind of partnership” with the EU, even if Brexit can’t be reversed. Given the rumours of Miliband’s return to government under Andy Burnham, it’s suddenly a more significant read than it would have been a week ago.

He doesn’t approve of Brexit. “Brexit weakened Britain, Europe and the West at just the wrong time,” he writes. “It weakened Britain because we lost an economic and political force multiplier. It weakened Europe because the UK had been a positive economic and political presence in the EU. And it weakened the West because it created division within Europe just as the first Trump administration was reorienting American policy.”

“I have no doubt Britain’s security and prosperity depend on a much stronger institutional relationship with the EU,” he says. “The question is not whether to turn back the clock [on Brexit], but what future relationship we can build.” (New Statesman (£))

🗣️ The other Miliband, Ed, features in The Spectator’s cover story on the “dark money” flowing into British politics around Net Zero. The “Dark Green lobby,” as John Power and William Atikinson christen it, is “a network of foundations, research groups and policy shops, often funded through foreign channels.

“It has been astonishingly successful in shaping policy, controlling debate and overruling elected governments in the courts. It has prevented the exploration of oil and gas in the North Sea, kept energy prices high and made us ever more dependent on Chinese technology.

“The politician at the heart of this ecosystem is the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband,” they allege. “While his policies have been challenged, the network behind him has remained in the shadows.”

Their long read goes into depth on funding flows, which often originate from charitable foundations and technology and hedge fund barons. (The Spectator (£))

🗣️ Alastair Campbell, writing his diary in The New World, notes “how the people who most volubly reject the idea that global warming is the threat that clearly it is are by and large those who told us 10 years ago that leaving the European Union was going to make our lives so much better.”

“The facts point clearly to the judgment that Brexit was a failure; the facts point clearly to a pending catastrophe on the climate front, yet somehow the self-same people manage to con enough of their fellow citizens into believing that self-harm - economic and political in the case of Brexit, existential so far as the climate goes - is really good for them.

“Maybe it is the Age of Unreality we are living through,” he says. (The New World (£))

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