Andy Burnham has laid out his 10-year plan to “lift Britain back up” in his first major speech since becoming the presumptive prime minister. In what he says would be the “biggest transfer of power out of Whitehall in modern times”, Burnham pledged to create a “No 10 North” as well as give mayors and councils more responsibility and fiscal powers in order to deliver “good growth in every postcode”. Members of the public will replace judges in deciding asylum appeals under magistrate-style reforms aimed at speeding up the deportation of illegal migrants. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s new plans will see hundreds of people from different backgrounds trained as adjudicators to oversee appeals against rejected asylum claims, starting in late 2027. An experimental plane built by Nasa has broken the sound barrier without producing a window-rattling sonic boom for the first time. Dubbed “the son of Concorde”, the aircraft managed to reach speeds of 924mph at 55,000ft producing only a gentle sonic thump, hopefully paving the way for quieter supersonic passenger flights to resume over land.

Forget Andy Burnham, says Bagehot in The Economist. The big question in Westminster is no longer who runs No 10 but who takes over as chancellor. And there are basically two candidates: “Ed Miliband and Not Ed Miliband.” Many are terrified at the prospect of the former Labour leader taking over at No 11. The Daily Mail has screamed about “Red Ed”. In an interview last week, Kemi Badenoch mentioned Miliband more often than she did Burnham, the actual incoming PM. British politics has, in effect, undergone a “Copernican revolution”: its past, present and perhaps its future all orbit around one man.

Few modern politicians have shaped Britain more. By switching Labour to a one-member-one-vote system, Miliband cleared a path for Jeremy Corbyn. His failed 2015 election manifesto – energy price caps, tough rules on landlords, a higher minimum wage – now reads like “a premonition of Britain in 2026”, much of it enacted by the Tories who beat him. Above all there is his dogged pursuit of net zero – a policy waved through in 2019 by outgoing PM Theresa May – which has taken on an outsize importance for this Labour government. All of this creates a dilemma for Burnham. Miliband is a very good candidate for chancellor: he is an effective minister, he worked in the Treasury for eight years and he has glowing references. (He has “the biggest economics brain”, one ally has claimed, presumably “snapping a pair of callipers together”.) Appointing him would be a bold choice, proving that Burnham won’t be told what to do. But it would also turn the new PM into “merely another celestial body in Miliband’s orbit”. Is he brave enough to “break free”?

Some prime ministers go out with a bang, says Popbitch, but often it’s “more of a whimper”. Which brings us to Keir Starmer. History will show that the last interview question the PM answered before announcing his resignation – in a conversation with British YouTuber Chris Spargo – wasn’t about Britain’s economy, the situation in the Middle East or any other matters of state. It was: “What’s your favourite crisp?” Worcester Sauce, if you’re interested.

Anthropeum is a great little game, says Matt Muir in Web Curios, in which players are shown 10 objects from the Met museum in New York and must guess where and when in history they come from. Extremely hard, but very satisfying. Play for yourself here.

The biggest worry in Europe right now is what defending the continent might look like without America’s support, says Hal Brands in Bloomberg. One country that’s playing a blinder is Poland. Given its location on Europe’s eastern flank, it has been a frequent target of the Kremlin’s “aggressive hybrid warfare”, falling victim to disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, drone incursions and the like. So Warsaw has tooled up. Military spending has soared to 4.3% of GDP, the highest in NATO, and the government has positioned itself as a vital conduit for Western aid to Ukraine.

Most crucially, Poland is successfully managing to keep one foot in camp Europe and one in camp America. Warsaw has strengthened its military co-operation with Europe’s two nuclear powers, the UK and France, and there’s talk of a new group of frontline states, from Romania on the Black Sea to Finland on the Baltic, to help one another resist Russian aggression. It has also diversified its arms imports, now buying a larger share from South Korea than the US. Yet while the rest of Europe is scrambling to achieve “strategic autonomy”, the Poles are working hard to remain a “model ally” for Washington. They are working to attract a more permanent American military presence on their territory, want to position themselves as a “stronger and more valuable” ally in containing the Russia-China-Iran axis, and would, if NATO ever fell apart, “immediately seek a bilateral security deal” with the US. President Karol Nawrocki was even spotted attending Donald Trump’s UFC fight at the White House. While Brussels panics, “Poland is positioning itself smartly”.

🇩🇪😬 One reason Warsaw has cause to act so decisively on all this is because of its “historical trauma”. Scarred by the joint invasion by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, many Poles are viewing the rise of the far-right AfD in Germany with a “lingering discomfort” over the prospect of living, once again, in the shadow of a pro-Moscow government.

The “collectibles” market is booming, says Imogen Tew in The Sunday Times. One collector of rare and valuable handbags – from coveted Chanels to hankered-after Hermèses – recently banked a whopping £500,000 in a one-day sale. Last year, the original Birkin bag, designed for Jane Birkin by Hermès, sold for more than £7m. In the collectible cards market, a very rare Lionel Messi football card could top £1m and in February a highly sought-after Pokémon card sold for £12.5m.

Gen Z are “rewriting London’s literary scene”, says Valeria Berghinz in the FT, replacing the traditional book launch – warm wine in a bookshop – with edgier events in nightclubs and bars. The Soho Reading Series, which is based on events founder Tom Willis enjoyed in New York, hosts book launches and parties where young writers (and the likes of Zadie Smith) read out their work. Its buy-a-ticket-get-a-book model looks set to shift 8,000 copies this year. Others include Lost Property, a series of literary lectures, and Reference Point, a self-described “library, bookshop and bar” off the Strand hosting readings, magazine launches and chess nights.

It’s a picture doing the rounds in Japan, says The Upshot, after the country’s fans started attracting admiration for tidying up football stadiums after their team’s World Cup matches. Japanese men are among the world’s worst at doing their fair share of housework, so watching them bask in global praise while off on a jolly evidently proved too much for a few of the footy widows back home.