Andy Burnham has played down suggestions that he wants the UK to quickly rejoin the EU, after his rival for the Labour leadership, Wes Streeting, plunged the party into a debate about reversing Brexit by calling it a “catastrophic mistake”. The Greater Manchester mayor said there was a case for rejoining the EU in the long-term, but that he is “not advocating that” in the forthcoming Makerfield by-election. The terror group thought to be behind a series of attacks on the Jewish community in London has been officially outed as a proxy of the Iranian state. The US Department of Justice says that Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, which claimed responsibility for the Golders Green stabbing as well as the arson attacks on Jewish ambulances and several synagogues in London, is run by a senior Iranian operative. Aaron Rai has become the first Englishman to win the US PGA Championship since 1919, sinking a whopping 68ft putt on the penultimate hole (below). Ranked 44th in the world, the Wolverhampton-born 31-year-old fended off heavyweights including Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm to secure the Wanamaker Trophy.

The Italian newspaper Il Sore 24 Ore noted last week that Larry the No 10 cat would soon be “serving” his seventh prime minister, says Fraser Nelson in The Times. When the Italians are mocking you for democratic instability, you know you have a problem. Over the past decade the UK has had the highest leadership turnover in the Western world, above even Argentina. The irony is that our PMs are being toppled for issues – the economy, housing, welfare – that stem from the revolving door at No 10. “Changing leaders has become the disease of which it purports to be the cure.”

Whoever replaces Keir Starmer will inherit a country “drowning in debt and dysfunction”. Our national debt has risen to 96% of GDP, up from 37% in 2007. We spend £110bn a year servicing that debt, and the so-called “moron premium” – how much more interest we are charged compared to the next-worst country – is above Liz Truss levels. Every new PM follows the same “dispiriting arc”: bold targets are announced, orders are given, nothing happens. A big part of the problem is that Britain’s cabinet ministers serve an average of just over two years, among the shortest tenures of any developed country. We have had nine education secretaries in the past decade and 25 junior housing ministers since 1997. When ministers don’t expect to last more than 12 months, they think: why take the political hit to tackle long-term problems? That leaves No 10 “full of cans kicked further down the road”. The good news is that this cycle can be broken: in recent years both the Italians and the Australians have curbed their political “bloodlust”. Until something similar happens here, the UK will remain “a global laughing stock”.

🤝🕊️ Counterintuitively, the coalition years were relatively stable. Cabinet reshuffles were tricky because David Cameron was terrified of the arrangement falling apart and the Lib Dems jealously guarded their balance of power. The resulting stability was what allowed Michael Gove (education) and Iain Duncan Smith (welfare) to stay in place long enough to “make a difference”.

The way in which middle powers are reacting to the current geopolitical storm offers a reason for “quiet optimism”, says Karishma Vaswani in Bloomberg. Singapore and New Zealand recently signed a pioneering “supply-chain resilience pact” to maintain the flow of essentials from food to fuel, healthcare products and construction materials. Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has struck deals on energy security, defence and critical minerals during visits to Vietnam and Australia; India, Indonesia and Japan are deepening their maritime co-ordination; and Australia and South Korea are strengthening ties on energy resilience.

TikTok is awash with “Scientology speedrunners”, says Dani Di Placido in Forbes: content creators sprinting into Scientology buildings and seeing how far they can get, and what they can uncover about the mysterious and controversial church, before security inevitably chucks them out. Most find safety in numbers, running in groups, but others tackle it solo, aiming to make it further into or higher within the building than others have before they’re caught. One facility in Hollywood got so fed up with the intruders that they removed their door handles.

Last week’s summit in Beijing reignited talk of “imperial twilight”, says Ruchir Sharma in the FT: the idea that America is “ceding its superpower crown” to China. Financially speaking, “the opposite is true”. Never has the gap in financial power between the world’s two largest economies been this wide. Just look at history: normally, when an empire is gaining economic might, its currency takes an increasing share of reserves held by foreign central banks, and the rest of the world does more of its trade in that currency, even if the imperial power isn’t in on the transaction. Britain at its peak accounted for 40% of world trade, but 60% of trade payments were in sterling. China has a leading 15% of global trade, but just 2% of trade bills are invoiced in renminbi.

China will remain an “incomplete superpower” until it can match America’s financial muscle. But it has long held itself back by sealing off its financial system from outside investors, and using currency controls to stop Chinese investors from taking their money abroad. Its home market is “something of a local prison” – Beijing has fuelled growth with “heavy infusions of government money”, which sloshes around inside the walled economy, much of it in domestic real estate lending which has been hammered lately by a vast property bust. Meanwhile, the dollar’s omnipresence allows America to run the show: permanently high demand for dollars keeps US borrowing costs down, and can be weaponised by Washington as a threat to cut foreign powers off from the dollar-dominated financial system. No other nation enjoys this “imperial privilege” and the geopolitical influence it buys. Least of all China.

When you’re next lying awake in the middle of the night desperate to get back to sleep, says Caroline Kee on NBC’s Today, don’t reach for your phone to check the time or catch up on emails. Instead, try this: repeatedly count down from eight to one, while taking deep breaths. The process should help calm your nervous system, allowing you to fall back asleep.

To The Times:

In these dark times, may we shine a little light? Our small but thriving charity, Salaam Shalom Kitchen, is a joint Jewish-Muslim partnership that has been quietly and lovingly providing hot meals and friendship to vulnerable people of all faiths and none in a deprived inner-city area of Nottingham for more than 10 years. This collaboration goes to the heart of the deep charitable precepts of both religions, and it is the shared experience of our wonderful staff and volunteers that working together to prepare, cook and serve food to people in need is one of the most effective ways to break down perceived barriers and to foster mutual understanding and respect.

David Bogod and Ferzana Shan
Co-chairs, Salaam Shalom Kitchen, Nottingham

It’s a Lego model of Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, says Michael McWhertor in Polygon. The 8,278-piece set is one of the biggest ever – more than the Star Wars Millennium Falcon (7,541 pieces) but slightly shy of the Death Star (9,023) – and features figurines of characters including Gandalf, Aragorn and the hobbit Pippin. It doesn’t come cheap: the kit, which comes out on 1 June for “Lego Insiders” and 4 June for everyone else, costs an eye-watering £579.99.