Wage growth slowed and unemployment in the UK unexpectedly rose to 5% in the three months to March, in the latest signs of the effect the Middle East conflict is having on the economy. The Office for National Statistics also said that the number of job openings has fallen to its lowest level since the depths of the 2021 Covid lockdown. A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk’s high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman, saying the Tesla boss waited too long to file it, meaning his claims had essentially expired. Musk accused Altman of “stealing a charity” by converting OpenAI, to which he donated millions of dollars, from a charitable venture to a for-profit company. The King met David Beckham and Alan Titchmarsh at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show yesterday, ahead of its opening to the public today. This year’s show features a rustic cottage inspired by Charles’s Highgrove house, as well as various gnomes painted by celebrities including Joanna Lumley, Mary Berry and Brian May.

Ever since Keir Starmer took office in 2024, there’s been talk of a “reset” with the EU, says Lionel Laurent in Bloomberg. Now, with his premiership on the brink, any successor is expected to “hasten the rapprochement”. But who’s to say the EU wants Britain back? European diplomats still bristle at the UK’s history of “regulatory cherry-picking”. Nor is Britain’s sluggish economy the “El Dorado” it once seemed for a bloc struggling with its own stagnant growth. And good luck debating any kind of agreement while Nigel Farage is “on the march”. The local elections have only cemented to Brussels that Europe-friendly Labour will almost certainly be turfed out and potentially replaced by “Mr Brexit himself”. That’s enough to “keep everyone’s guard up”.

The question isn’t whether the EU would want us, says Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator, but why on earth we’d want them. The bloc is unable to agree on anything from Ukraine to its own budget. Frugal northern nations like Germany and Holland are fed up with the profligacy of an increasing number of southern nations. Italy is on course to surpass Greece as the most indebted country in the Eurozone; unemployment in France has risen above 8% for the first time since 2021, fuelling fears of a “long and deep” recession. Meanwhile, Spain’s decision to grant residency to half a million undocumented migrants provoked fury across the continent and marked the nation out as Europe’s “soft underbelly” – irregular crossings on the Western Mediterranean route into Spain are already up 50% this year. It’s hard to see how anyone could make the case for re-joining a bloc in such “terminal decline”.

🤖📈 Another danger of trying to rejoin is losing our competitive advantage, says Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. Many defence tech firms and top AI companies choose to operate in the UK “precisely because they don’t have to deal with the EU”. If we’re betting major growth on digital services rather than goods then we’re far better outside the bloc, where we can cut deals and innovate without all its complicated standards and constraints.