Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said there was “no justification” for the violent clashes in Southampton last night, which broke out hours after Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe urged the public to respond with “rage” to the murder of student Henry Nowak. The National Police Chiefs Council said it would review its anti-racism guidance advising officers to treat ethnic minorities differently, after Nowak’s killing prompted renewed accusations of “two-tier” policing. The Trump administration has abandoned plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund that would have compensated Americans supposedly wronged by previous presidents, following a bipartisan backlash. The Department for Justice said it “disagrees strongly” with a court ruling temporarily blocking the slush fund, but will abide by the decision. The Bank of England has unveiled a shortlist of 18 animals that could appear on future banknotes, with the public able to vote for up to six of their favourites by 3 July. Contenders include the brown hare, red fox, common kingfisher, white-tailed eagle, emperor dragonfly and buff-tailed bumblebee. Click here to have your say.

Just eight months ago, says John Rentoul in The Independent, Kemi Badenoch was “doomed”. Conservative MPs were declaring their party dead and counting down the days to 2 November when, on the first anniversary of her election as leader, party rules would allow them to get rid of her. Then she “raised her game” in the House of Commons, adopting a free-wheeling, fast-talking style, and began positioning “fiscal responsibility” as her political USP. That shift may well allow her to “snatch survival from the jaws of oblivion”.

Consider her response to Tony Blair’s recent criticism of the Labour Party. It was a “boisterously well-written polemic” making a neat point about the former PM’s policy prescriptions: “Everything you outlined is what I have already made Conservative policy over the past 18 months.” She’s quite right. Every one of Blair’s 10 points, from energy policy to the labour market, is in line with her thinking. And the lower public spending, lower taxes and lower borrowing he so desires is “not on offer” in any party but her own. Right now, the many floating voters who thought “Blair’s got a point” have nowhere else to go. As Badenoch wrote, Labour MPs “do not know where money comes from”, the Greens are busy trying to legalise heroin, the Lib Dems think “saying nothing of importance is a political strategy”, and Nigel Farage, who has already had to stay away from the Makerfield by-election to avoid questions about a £5m gift from a crypto billionaire, will surely struggle to keep the show on the road for another three years. The Tory leader has found a gap in the market for a “party of sound money”. If she can stay the course, “she has a hope”.

With blissful inevitability, says Megan Kenyon in The New Statesman, a faction of Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party has quit to form a new party. The 250 splitters, who complain that the ageing Islingtonian has “squandered the enormous promise” of the fledgling political movement’s 800,000 online signups last summer, held an enormous Zoom meeting and voted to form yet another left-wing party. Socialist Federation, as the new outfit will be called, says it wants to “rally forces” to form something “neither Labour nor the Greens can claim to be”, which apparently involves “unwavering socialist principles”.

Guess the Doodle is an online game where you are presented with three drawings to decipher each day. They are grouped into categories – shapes, office, nature and so on – and the faster you can guess the item being drawn the more points you get. Give it a go here.

The “secret sauce” of American power since 1945 has been its unrivalled network of alliances, says Max Boot in The Washington Post. The US has 51 treaty partners compared to Russia’s lone client state, Belarus, and China’s single formal ally, North Korea. Yet Donald Trump seems intent on taking a “wrecking ball” to these relationships. He inflicted possibly irreparable damage on the transatlantic relationship earlier this year by threatening to annex Greenland. More recently, he has announced plans to pull 5,000 troops from Germany, cancelled a brigade deployment to Poland (before reversing the decision), blocked fresh aid to Ukraine, and declined to condemn Vladimir Putin’s missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians. “Why would we be there for them,” he asks of Nato, “if they’re not there for us?”

Asia fares little better. All America’s friends there are menaced by China, so imagine their alarm at hearing Trump tell Xi Jinping he is a “great leader” and that “it’s an honour to be your friend”. The US now enjoys warmer relations with Beijing than with Canada. Trump has also cast doubt on defending Taiwan – “the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away”, he says, while waging one 6,300 miles away in Iran – and has frozen a $14bn arms sale to Taipei as a “negotiating chip”. Japan, Australia and South Korea are left wondering if they’re next. Even the Gulf rulers, whom Trump prefers to democratic allies – Qatar gave him a $400m plane – are imperilled by his ruinous war with Iran. The US president has at least maintained America’s strong relationship with Israel, despite reports of a foul-mouthed shouting match with Benjamin Netanyahu this week. The way things are going, they may soon be the only ally we have left.

Anyone angling for the latest trend in fashion and homeware can stop casting around, says Chloe Mac Donnell in The Guardian: the catch of the day is fish. From sardines to crabs, marine life is everywhere. John Lewis says sales of starfish-shaped earrings are up 300% month on month; oversized graphic T-shirts featuring prints of sardines and carp are topping the Asos bestseller list; Anthropologie sells everything from fish-shaped hair clips to a beaded shoulder bag covered in sprats. Apparently it’s part of a “euro summer” trend, where people seek out a simpler, slower, “unoptimised” and rather fishier life.

The Scottish coffee chain Hinba responded to a break-in at one of its Glasgow outlets with good humour, says Kevin Maguire in Glasgow Times. “We’ve been broken into,” read a sign on the plywood covering the smashed front window. “The good news: they didn’t touch the decaf. Even criminals have standards.”

It’s British former Paralympian John McFall, says Sarah Knapton in The Daily Telegraph, who is on track to become the first disabled astronaut working in space. The 45-year-old, who lost his right leg in a motorbike accident aged 19 and went on to win bronze in the 100m at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, was medically cleared for a long-duration space mission last year. After a new agreement was signed between the UK Space Agency and the US space firm Vast, he is now set to conduct pioneering research into human physiology and prosthetics in microgravity.