In your briefing today:

📣 Andy Burnham would “easily” beat Keir Starmer, according to new polling of Labour Party members - if he can win the Makerfield by-election next month. He would beat leadership rival Wes Streeting even more decisively, the YouGov survey has found. (Times)

📣 Two women have alleged they were raped by their on-screen “husbands” during filming of the Channel 4 programme Married at First Sight, and a third woman says she was subjected to a non-consensual sex act while appearing on the programme.

According to claims broadcast on the BBC, Channel 4 was made aware of some of the allegations but broadcast the episodes anyway and left them available on demand. They had been removed by yesterday afternoon. (BBC)

📣 Donald Trump has said the US is holding back on a military attack on Iran, which had been planned for today, as “serious negotiations are now taking place”. The move comes after requests from Gulf allies to pause further military action. (Independent)

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📣 There’s continued fallout from the violence surrounding Celtic’s title-securing victory over Hearts at the weekend. Celtic manager Martin O’Neill appears to have dismissed the furore around the pitch invasion at Celtic Park, saying it was “nonsense” to suggest it embarrassed the game. (BBC)

📣 An inspirational tale: a cancer patient has donated part of his brain to help with Alzheimer's research, in a ground-breaking procedure in Edinburgh. (Daily Record)

📣 Bus operators are in the dark as to how the SNP’s promise of £2 bus fares for nearly half the Scottish population within 100 days of being re-elected is going to be delivered. (Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 Scotland’s Home of the Year has been unveiled - it’s a mid-century bungalow in Edinburgh. (Daily Record)

📣 Three people have been killed, as well as two suspects, in a shooting at an Islamic centre in California. Police are investigating it as a hate crime. (Guardian)

📣 “Dodgy” vape and sweet shops in UK high streets are to be targeted by a new specialist crime unit, the government has announced. (Guardian)

📣 The Ebola outbreak in Congo began weeks ago, health officials fear. It’s been graded a public health emergency of global concern by the World Health Organisation. (AP)

📣 A US jury has rejected Elon Musk’s claims against AI giant OpenAI, taking less than two hours to deliver its verdict in one of the biggest tech lawsuits in recent history. They said he took too long to sue. (BBC)

📣 A backlash against AI is brewing. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt found last week, it’s a bad idea to mention AI to a graduating year group at a US university. He was booed at the University of Arizona as he hailed the “technologicial transformation” AI is bringing - which is also eliminating the jobs many grads are going after. (WSJ)

⚽️ Steve Clarke will announce the 26 players he’s taking to the World Cup later today: while all the familiar names are fit and ready to go, there could be some surprises around the fringes of his squad. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Pep Guardiola will leave Manchester City this summer, to be replaced by former Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca, who had previously worked under Guardiola at City. Guardiola, still only 55, is already a managerial great: he has led City to 17 major trophies, including six Premier League titles and the Champions League. (BBC)

⚽️ Arsenal moved to within three points of the English Premiership title with a 1-0 win over Burnley: as David Hynter points out, this was supposed to be straightforward against the already-relegated side, but it was an anxious evening in North London. (Guardian)

🗣️ The world of the big consultancies increasingly looks like ground zero for anyone trying to figure out the impact of artificial intelligence on white-collar work.

The furious pace of AI development means it’s coming for knowledge workers fast. We should, at this stage, be cautious about making apocalyptic warnings - the signals are mixed. But three things are clear:

Proof point: the FT reports today (£) that the Big Four accounting firms posted more jobs for AI specialists than auditors last year, “in a sign of how the technology is reshaping professional services firms,” it says.

Its survey of job ads comes with some cautions: it’s only in the English language, and only reflects a portion of recruitment across the sector. But it says roles requiring AI skills accounted for almost 7% of job postings by Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC last year.

These are not jobs requiring a gentle tickle of a chatbot and some PowerPoint slides as output: they’re technical roles, from machine learning engineers to experts in using AI agents to automate tasks. According to the FT analysis, four-fifths require coding skills.

Those already working in consultancies are adapting fast, too. A report earlier this year said 90% of management consultants already use AI in their daily work (although I’d note this could range from the lightest-touch AI, such as grammar correction in emails, to far more serious and structured AI work: at this measure, many of us “use AI daily”).

At the higher end, PwC has just announced a big deal with AI powerhouse Anthropic, in which 30,000 staff will be trained and certified to use its Claude AI service.

Beyond the big numbers of that deal, it’s interesting to note where the AI sweet spots are seen to lie there: one area of focus is on helping its software teams “ship production software for major companies in weeks, not quarters” - the idea of AI adding huge scale, rather than replacing human effort, is a recurring one.

And there’s also talk of “AI-native dealmaking”, which may be press release speak for AI taking on more of the gruntwork around big M&A deals, including due diligence, spotting ways to make and save money, and integrating operations in ways that make deals profitable.

There have been warnings about consultancies deploying AI too freely: last week, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said consulting firms risk enabling future competitors by using large AI tools in their businesses. “You are letting the fox into the hen house,” he posted on X.

And where AI gets deployed, and the safeguards around it, will remain an area of focus for consultancies. Only last week, EY in Canada had to retract a report on reward programmes from its website after researchers found AI hallucinations and fake footnotes littered throughout its pages. Perhaps most embarrassingly, the AI had faked a citation to a report from another consultancy.

Even an intern would have had a rap over the knuckles for missing that.

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