India launched deadly airstrikes on Pakistani territory last night, leaving at least 26 dead and 46 injured, in retaliation for a terror attack in Kashmir last month. Pakistan, which claims its forces have shot down five Indian fighter jets, called the strikes an “act of war” and vowed to respond. Britain’s trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has defended the UK’s new £5bn-a-year trade agreement with India – the biggest since Brexit – as a “smasher of a deal”. India will cut tariffs on British exports such as whisky and cars by as much as 90%, but temporary Indian workers will now be exempt from paying National Insurance in the UK – a concession Nigel Farage described as a “betrayal” of British workers. The conclave to elect a new pope begins this afternoon. A record 133 “bitterly divided” cardinals from more than 70 countries have assembled in Rome, says the FT, where they will be locked in the Vatican until one candidate achieves a two-thirds majority. Bona fortuna!

Europe can’t kick its self-indulgent habits

After the tumult of the past couple of years – first Ukraine and then Donald Trump – Europe knows it needs to “embrace change”, says Charlemagne in The Economist. But the continent can’t bring itself to relinquish its “luxury policies”. Take its relationship with Britain. The UK has “military, geopolitical and industrial heft” that would massively help the Europeans in their support of Kyiv. But “bashing les rosbifs” has been something of a guilty pleasure for the EU since Brexit. A forthcoming agreement to let the UK take part in a defence funding scheme was held up by France’s insistence that issues like fishing rights – “yes, the right to fish” – were settled first. “This is luxuriating in pettiness.”

Britain isn’t the only country to suffer from the EU’s “self-indulgence”. Brussels has long basked in its role as the world’s regulator, dismissing complaints that its onerous rules annoy other countries – like Indonesia, which was “told to grow palm trees in this way but not that” – as “Not Europe’s Problem”. Now that the bloc is trying to sign loads of trade deals to make up for America’s protectionism, “it very much is”. Similarly, after decades of gorging on the post-Cold War “peace dividend”, European governments now claim they are going to boost military spending. Yet they still haven’t been honest with voters about how these “pious commitments” will be financed – through cutting social spending, say, or joint EU debt. So the “otherworldly delusion” continues. To adapt Saint Augustine of Hippo’s comment about chastity: “Give me the will to enact reforms, Lord, but can it be domani?”