Andy Burnham is already into his first funding row, after pledging to cut VAT on electricity bills. The new PM said the cut, worth £45 a year to a typical home, would be paid for by scrapping Keir Starmer’s digital ID scheme, but its architect, former chief secretary Darren Jones, pointed out that the ID scheme was unfunded. It’s the first challenge for surprise new chancellor John Healey, who was appointed in Burnham’s cabinet reshuffle yesterday. Shabana Mahmood will remain home secretary, while Ed Miliband was appointed foreign secretary. The UK government borrowed slightly less than expected in June. According to ONS figures, borrowing was £16bn last month, £7.9bn lower than the same month last year, thanks to higher revenues from income tax and a fall in interest payments on inflation-linked debt. Five cups of coffee a day could lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, heart failure and stroke. In a new study, The American Heart Association found that up to 400mg of caffeine a day was linked to a lower risk of several cardiovascular conditions, while the natural compounds in coffee reduce inflammation and boost healthy gut bacteria.

What makes a great leader, says Rosa Prince in Bloomberg, is a clear vision and a programme for implementing it. Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher inherited far worse economies than Andy Burnham, but they knew what they wanted. Keir Starmer didn’t. Andy Burnham has given little away, but there are hopeful signs: he’s been trying to become prime minister since 2010 – a “long march” suggesting he might have given proper thought to what he’ll do with power now he’s got it. And he has serious people around him – his head of political strategy worked for Barack Obama; his economic thinking has been shaped by experienced economists Jim O’Neill and Andy Haldane. His “No 10 North” builds on George Osborne’s “Northern Powerhouse” and Dominic Cummings’s “levelling up”, and might succeed. “Good luck to him.”

His first 24 hours don’t inspire much confidence, says Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. In his matey, podium-free speech on the steps of No 10, Burnham said his first “instruction” as prime minister would be to “end rough sleeping”. It’s a worthy aim but an odd choice – Burnham became mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 with the same pledge, and while rough sleeping fell at first, it soon rose back towards the levels he’d inherited. Most of all, “I’m struck by how backward looking our new, young(ish) PM is”. He hankers for the days when heavy industry dominated our economy. But that all came crashing down in the 1970s after a decade of over-mighty union barons, power cuts, the three-day week, millions of working days lost to strikes, rubbish in the streets, bodies unburied, soaring inflation and the humiliation of being bailed out by the IMF. “Just why Burnham is nostalgic for any of this escapes me.”

What’s remarkable in the weeks since Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election, says Michael Crick in The i Paper, is how little effect it’s had on the polls. “There’s been almost no Burnham bounce.” Meanwhile, despite a torrent of negative coverage, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK continues to come out on top. A solid quarter of the electorate now looks set to vote Reform come what may, while “most voters” express scepticism about Burnham’s ability to make a difference. And while the new PM struggles with the levers of government, Farage has the advantage that he can go on playing the insurgent in opposition.

Thirty years after IKEA’s famous “Chuck Out Your Chintz” advert, says David Sanderson in The Times, the much-scorned style is having a revival. The Victoria and Albert Museum is mounting an exhibition arguing the bright, flowery hand-painted textiles, which originated in India and became synonymous with Laura Ashley in the 1970s, are “an art form like any other”. Dior’s creative director Jonathan Anderson deployed chintz in his haute couture show at a recent Paris Fashion Week, and plenty of interior designers are re-incorporating it into their work. Today’s approach, according to Homes & Gardens magazine, is “less overwhelming, more considered”.

Last week, says Allysia Finley in The Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump declared the Chinese were trying to interfere in American democracy. They must have had a good chuckle in Beijing. On Trump’s first day in office he gave the Chinese Communist Party a wholesale “licence to spy” when he spared TikTok from a planned US ban, leaving its Chinese parent company ByteDance with easy access to data concerning millions of American voters. He was convinced the platform helped him win, and he might have been right. But TikTok’s reprieve may turn out to be the “biggest blunder” of his presidency.

A recent study found that TikTok’s mysterious algorithm is systematically suppressing pro-American content about the war in Iran. It’s impossible to know if this is “Beijing’s invisible hand at work”, but there’s a wider pattern. Videos about subjects the CCP finds sensitive – the enslavement of a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, say, or the 1989 atrocity at Tiananmen Square – are suppressed. On the other hand, videos promoting Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “letter to America”, in which he justified the 9/11 attack based on US support for Israel, went viral following the appalling Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians in October 2023. Is it any surprise, when some 43% of US adults under 30 get their news from TikTok, that so many spout such nonsense themselves? Melat Kiros, the Democrats’ 29-year-old socialist nominee for a Colorado congressional seat, recently called 9/11 “inevitable” in just these terms. Beijing wants nothing more than to poison American politics. With the rise of US socialists like Kiros and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (who became hugely popular on TikTok) – and wide dislike of the war in Iran – Beijing may have its wish.

A humanoid robot was decapitated during the world’s first anything-goes android combat tournament, says Jasmine Laws in Newsweek. The Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend started in Shenzhen, China, on Thursday, featuring T800 robots designed by EngineAI, the competition’s organiser. In the first fight, a droid called White Eagle landed a high kick to another called Matador, leaving its head dangling precariously from its socket. Matador continued throwing kicks and punches before falling to the floor. As it tried to scramble to its feet the head flew off and it collapsed again, while White Eagle performed a victory dance.

Young people are ditching “wellness optimisation” – Oura rings, sleep scores, glucose tracking, Strava and the like – and embracing the “unquantified self”, says Rachael Akhidenor in Dazed. Searches for “intuitive wellness” are up 2000% this year, with many ditching their Apple Watches and other trackers in favour of strolling aimlessly, and often barefoot. “Wearables represent what I think is ultimately wrong with our society at the moment,” says one 32-year-old. “People have completely lost the ability to listen to what their body is telling them.”

It’s a lobster sculpture, says Finestre sull’Arte, which forms part of the pop artist Philip Colbert’s latest exhibition in Pompeii. The 46-year-old Scot is the first artist in three decades to be given access to the Unesco world heritage site, and the first to be allowed to exhibit in Pompeii’s houses, where he has erected some 36 crustaceans made of steel, bronze or colourful fibreglass that he began creating more than 10 years ago. Colbert’s largest exhibition to date, Philip Colbert in Pompeii: Mythology of Pop is due to run from 27 July to November.