Justice Secretary David Lammy is under mounting pressure after two more prisoners were mistakenly released from jail. Ibrahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old convicted sex offender from Algeria, was freed in error last Wednesday, but the prison service only told the police earlier this week and he remains at large. William Smith, who was accidentally released after being convicted for fraud on Monday, handed himself in this morning. Electric vehicle drivers are likely to be hit with a new “pay-per-mile” tax in the forthcoming budget, amounting to an extra £250 a year on average. The scheme, which would charge EV motorists 3p per mile on top of other road taxes, comes amid falling fuel duty revenue as more people switch from petrol to electric. The Collins Dictionary word of the year is “vibe coding”, which means making an app or website by describing it to AI rather than writing the code manually. Others on the list include “aura farming” (cultivating a cool, charismatic persona), “broligarchy” (uber-rich tech bros) and “Henry” (an acronym for “high earner, not rich yet”).

The reason New Yorkers went for Mamdani

On paper, says Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal, Zohran Mamdani is the kind of Democrat who might have been “invented in a laboratory of perverted social science by a MAGA Dr Frankenstein”. New York’s mayor-elect is a socialist, an immigrant, a Muslim, the son of a film director and a professor of postcolonialism, and the holder of a degree in “Africana studies”. And the 34-year-old has done plenty to make himself an enticing target for his political opponents, saying at various times he wanted to “defund the police”, “globalise the intifada”, open city-run grocery stores and reinvent an America in which there are no billionaires. He is a self-described child of privilege who says he would arrest the Israeli prime minister if he visited the city with the world’s largest Jewish population.

Plenty of Mamdani’s policies are, predictably enough, laughable. Freezing rents (which has been tried before) would only “aggravate the housing supply problem”, and raising the taxes needed to fund “free” childcare and buses will drive out many who already shoulder the greatest tax burden. But here’s the thing: Mamdani is a “culture warrior of impeccable and deplorable standing”, but that’s not why he won. He won because he spoke directly to voters’ concerns that their lives have become unaffordable in a city where what were once basic aspirations – a decent job, a home – have become “unrealisable fantasies”. If you want to live in New York these days, and you don’t have rich parents or a job at an investment bank, tech company or law firm, “you can dream on”. Mamdani’s radicalism won’t restore the good times. But his success is a reminder that the “steady vanishing of opportunity” is coming to define politics everywhere.

🗳️📉 This is also, clearly, a vote against Donald Trump, says Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. As were the other big election results on Tuesday, for governor of Virginia and New Jersey, where Democrats delivered similarly “crushing defeats” to their Republican opponents. This is the first major round of elections since Trump returned to the White House, and although voters in each place had their own local concerns, there is no doubt this was a chance to “register their discontent” with Washington. It’s sometimes forgotten amid the bluster, but Trump’s approval ratings are at a second-term low of 37%. For his party, the phenomenally effective vote-winner has become an “albatross”.