In your briefing today:

📣 It’s judgement day for Britain’s political class today as votes are tallied across the UK after yesterday’s elections. Results from English council elections are already rolling in: they show big gains of seats for Reform and some gains for the Greens, and big losses for the Conservatives. Worst hit, however, is Labour: the party could lose 75% of the seats they are defending. Live coverage: (BBC) (Mirror)

In Scotland, counting begins at 9am, with results expected from around midday. The bulk of seats will be declared by teatime. There hasn’t been an exit poll, so there’s no new intel on how that vote will go, but it’s expected the big question is the scale of the SNP’s win - will they win a majority, or have to work with other parties? Live coverage: BBC | Record | Herald

📣 Donald Trump insists the US-Iran ceasefire is still in place despite an exchange of fire between the two countries in the Strait of Hormuz overnight. Iran’s military claimed the US had attacked an Iranian oil tanker: the US said it responded to Iranian attacks on US Navy ships. (BBC)

📣 There’s a “global race” underway to find passengers who left the MV Handius - the hantavirus ship - before the outbreak was confirmed. At least 29 people, of 12 nationalities, disembarked on 24 April, after the first fatality. (Guardian)

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📣 Firefighters have been out all night tackling a fire in Rutherglen, on the outskirts of Glasgow: it’s thought to have started in the basement of a convenience store in a tenement building. (BBC)

📣 The best friend of a teenage boy who was stabbed to death in Glasgow has criticised the Scottish Government over knife crime. (Daily Record)

📣 A heartwarming tale: a Scotland fan says Kenny McLean’s Hampden “wondergoal” saved his life. (The Sun)

📣 MI5 uncovered a Chinese spy ring at the heart of the UK Civil Service: a “shadow policing operation” orchestrated by Chinese agents who had infiltrated the Home Office. Two men were found guilty yesterday of assisting Chinese intelligence: a third man was found dead while out on bail before the trial. (The Times)

📣 A man has been charged with allegedly threatening Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor near his Sandringham home. (BBC)

📣 Five people have died in a fire at a packed Mexico fairground. (BBC)

📣 Tomorrow’s Victory Day parade in Moscow won’t feature any tanks. It’s a sign the Ukraine war is not going well for Russia, thinks Steve Rosenberg. (BBC)

⚽️ Aston Villa blew away Nottingham Forest 4-0 to reach the Europa League final and move within 90 minutes of ending a 30-year major trophy drought. Villa captain and Scotland international John McGinn was at the heart of the victory, scoring twice and - according to pundit Ally McCoist - the best player on the pitch. (Report) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Crystal Palace were also magnificent as they reached their first-ever European final, securing a 1-1 draw at Selhurst Park to add to their 3-1 win away to Shakhtar. Their success - 16 years after the club was rescued from oblivion - means English clubs have a spot in every European final this season. (Guardian) (🎥 Highlights)

🗣️ The weekly magazines are faced with a conundrum… ignore elections taking place long after they’ve been sent to the printers, or take the risk of a bet on the outcome, and ensure they have a cover which will sell nicely for a few days on the newsstand?

This time around, the election appears to have been easy enough to call to allow them to offer weighty pieces of analysis on what has just happened, and what happens next. Mostly they do not, I’ll warn, offer cheering reads.

🗣️The Spectator calls it “Starmergeddon”: the magazine’s editor, former Tory minister Michael Gove, admits he’s writing on Wednesday, before the nation goes to the polls, but uses the analogy of the difference between climate and weather to describe what’s going on. Weather is seasonal, ephemeral. Climate is longer-term: big transformations.

And, he says, the political climate has already changed, he says, “and these elections, in aggregate, will confirm it.”

The big shift, for Gove, is what is happening to Labour’s vote: it’s being eaten away by the Greens. That is, he says, much more painful than losses to Reform on the right. “It is the departure of young, idealistic, pro-European, anti-billionaire, sourdough-baking voters which will hurt most of all. The public sector professionals, the creatives – they were Labour’s extended family.”

Labour’s response will be to move further to the left, he says. “A Labour party that wants to feel passionate about its mission again will find all too many reasons to move even further to the left. Whether Keir stays or goes, Angie, Andy and Ed can be the troika harnessing the energy of every graduate without a mortgage and every public sector worker priced out of the property market.”

The consequences of this: “Britain is becoming daily colder. For the enterprising. For the young. For the aspirational. For the Jewish community. For genuine liberals. A harder rain is going to fall.” (The Spectator (£))

🗣️The New Statesman sees something different: a set of elections defined by nationalism, with Alex Niven noting that - for the first time - all three devolved parliaments will be controlled by anti-unionist parties.

England, however, is confused over matters of constitution and English identity, writes Niven. “Walk down any street in England and ask a handful of domestic nationals the question: ‘Of which nation are you a citizen?’ You are likely to get at least three different answers.” (Britain, England, and the UK being the three).

Niven goes on to cite Scottish historian Tom Nairn’s The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism, tracing the “modern idea that Britain – or rather, the UK – is structurally weak to the point of being on the verge of ‘break-up’” back to the high days of decolonisation in the postwar era.

He sees Britain as being in a “post British” state: a “ghostly echo of what it once was” because we are, for now, “constitutionally unable to find a replacement.” (New Statesman (£))

🗣️ Matthew D’Ancona, meanwhile, finds inspiration from Hungary as he tries to look beyond the “catastrophe of Nigel Farage” in The New World. The trouble is, he says, the centre right is all but dead. “In the international struggle with the populist right,” he writes, “progressives are having to do all the work and put in all the hard yards.

“In a time of international peril, the parties of the left are increasingly the only load-bearing wall holding off autocracy. The post-populist right ought to be pulling its weight. The snag is that, in this country at least, it does not exist.”

That points, then, to a Nigel Farage premiership before long: D’Ancona recommends Peter Chappell’s “excellent and chilling new book What If Reform Wins: A Scenario” to understand more of that version of the future.

What would an alternative to that Farage-ist world look like? The post-populist centre-right would offer a response to the dynamism of tech, for a start - one that both embraced and regulated the change. It would embrace pluralism - easier said than done, he acknowledges. And a raft of other policies would build “a new intergenerational contract”, writes D’Ancona.

Whether you like the ideas or not, D’Ancona’s is by far the most forward-looking of the week’s cover stories. (The New World)

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