In your briefing today:

📣 The resignation of John Healey as defence secretary has pushed Keir Starmer’s premiership to the brink of collapse, with Healey’s damning resignation letter accusing the Prime Minister of leaving the country’s security at risk by failing to secure increased resources for its defence.

Healey said the long-awaited - and as-yet unpublished - Defence Investment Plan (DIP) failed “to give our forces the resources they need”.

Healey’s exit was followed by the resignation of Al Carns, the armed forces minister, and Healey’s two parliamentary aides. Carns said, in his resignation letter, that “we need a new way of governing and we need it now”. (Guardian)

📣 The Tartan Army has arrived in Boston and is immediately feeling the heat as the World Cup kicks off, with highs of 31C expected to continue into Saturday and Scotland’s opening game against Haiti. (BBC)

📣 A mum-of-seven has told of her fear after balaclava-clad anti immigration protestors mobbed her car in Falkirk, amid disorder after the Belfast knife assault earlier this week. The thugs shook the woman’s car and made threats. (Daily Record)

📣 Warnings to Nicola Sturgeon about “one of the biggest scandals to hit Scottish local government” were ignored when South Lanarkshire Council fought an employment tribunal it lost on every count, incurring costs of just under £1 million. (Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Two Bulgarian siblings have been convicted of assaulting a schoolgirl and her sister in Dundee, in an incident which went viral and sparked a global social media backlash. (Mail)

📣 A black post box is to be placed in Hawick to commemorate Britain’s first black school teacher. (BBC)

📣 Donald Trump has called off strikes against Iran, claiming the “final points” of a peace deal have been agreed, but Tehran says otherwise. Trump claimed a peace deal could be signed this weekend. (Independent)

📣 Elon Musk’s SpaceX will make its stock market debut later today after raising around $75 billion in its initial public offering. The company’s stock performance will be closely watched, a gauge for further huge AI IPOs coming later in the year. (WSJ)

📣 Pop star Arianne Grande has asked the White House to stop using her music, after her hit Bye was used on a social media post to accompany footage of border agents putting people in handcuffs. (BBC)

⚽️ The World Cup opened in Mexico with a win for the hosts, and an emotional storyline to go with it. Bores will point out there were more red cards than goals in the game, but the better tale is of scorer Raul Jimenez.

The veteran Mexico striker lost his father in March, and could have died on a pitch in November 2020, but there he was last night, powering in a header to put his nation 2-0 up against a pretty poor South Africa in front of 80,000 at the famous Azteca Stadium. His were not the only tears, one suspects, as the fans went wild. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ In day one’s other game (played in the wee hours of this morning) South Korea fought back to beat the Czech Republic 2-1. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Scotland continue to prepare for their opener in the wee hours of Sunday morning: the big concern is over Scott McTominay, who might be ruled out of the match after suffering a suspected dose of food poisoning. (Daily Record)

Tonight’s fixtures:

🗣️ Matthew Paris reflects on the Henry Nowak case, the fallout from which has dominated the news agenda this week. “What has been remarkable,” he reflects, “was not the story itself, tragic though it is, but the potency of it to spark public anxiety.

“The anxiety is born of an in-built and nascent popular resistance to the idea that certain groups, the victims of unconscious bias, need special consideration in order to counteract that potential disadvantage.

“When the tinder is dry, any spark will ignite.

“Never overlook the importance of how a claimed happening - true or false - catches the spotlight. In this case, disquiet about positive discrimination is what has been lit up.” (Spectator)

🗣️ “We are trapped in a Serco state” writes Anoosh Chakelian in the New Statesman’s cover story about why “Everything is broken. Nothing changes. Voters are mad as hell”.

Serco, the FTSE 250 company whose name is a portmanteau of “Services Company” is taking the blame for part of the asylum crisis, because it buys up the leases of countless houses in poor parts of the country, and turns them into HMOs - houses in multiple occupation.

That sounds benign enough, except they’re doing this work on an industrial scale, landlords are spotting the chance for an easy life by helping them, communities are being dismantled, and local unrest is brewing.

Asylum might be the story du jour, but Serco - around for decades - is all over the UK’s outsourced state, running services you use from cradle to grave. And it’s not just Serco. “So much of the state, from welfare, prisons and asylum to the NHS, security and social care, is in the hands of gnomically named companies most voters have never heard of: Capita, Sodexo, G4S,” writes Chakelian. (New Statesman)

🗣️ Silicon Valley should get God, argues Glen Weyl. Reflecting on Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on digital technology, Weyl argues the document is “an opening between technology and religion that may be society’s best hope in the age of AI. The case for bridging the divide is both principled and practical; spiritual and secular.” (Economist)

🗣️ The Economist reflects on “the World Cup paradox”: half the world might tune in over the next five weeks for a festival of global football. But across the rest of entertainment culture, there is fragmentation.

“From music to television to social media and gaming, audiences are tuning out of American content and embracing alternatives from closer to home,” the newspaper says in a leader.

“There is an emerging paradox: even as the world becomes more connected, people are choosing more local forms of fun. Even as billions tune in to a single show in North America, the American-led monoculture is fading.

“Every four years the world comes together for the World Cup and the Olympics. Otherwise, fans are mainly engrossed in domestic contests. New Yorkers are far less excited about the football than they are about the Knicks.” (Economist)

🗣️ Elvis Castollo predicted the rise of Nigel Farage, reckons Ian Winwood: “no songwriter is more adept at skewering the darker aspects of the English character. Placing his shoulder to what he ‘self-consciously describe[s] as… political songs,’ as he put it in an interview with the BBC arts programme Arena in 1989, Costello catches the scent not only of what is happening now but what might be coming next.” He’s now setting out on an 11-date UK tour. (The New World)

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