Left-wing populist Zohran Mamdani has been elected mayor of New York City. The 34-year-old Democratic socialist, who will become the youngest person to hold the office since 1892 and the first Muslim, swept to a comfortable victory with a series of eye-catching pledges including free universal childcare, free buses and rent freezes. Donald Trump, who has repeatedly clashed with the Uganda-born state lawmaker, posted on social media: “… AND SO IT BEGINS!” English schoolchildren will be taught financial literacy and how to spot AI-generated fake news, as part of plans to modernise the curriculum. The first review of what is taught in schools in a decade also recommended compulsory citizenship lessons in primary schools and an increased emphasis on “oracy” – being able to speak clearly. A set of forest towns will be built in the “Oxford-Cambridge corridor”, nestled in a new national forest planned for the area. The proposed communities are part of Labour’s plans to link the two cities to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley”.

Who ate Rachel’s homework?

Yesterday would have been an “understandable day for Rachel Reeves to cry at work”, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian. Less than 12 months after promising she wouldn’t be “coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”, the chancellor made a surprise speech at Downing Street to suggest that, in fact, this is exactly what she will be doing. Of course, this not-quite-admission about her forthcoming budget came as absolutely no surprise to literally anyone in the country. “Vibes-wise, it was like knowing you were going to be very incompetently mugged in three weeks’ time, but having to listen to a speech from the mugger about the context of it all.”

A lot of things seem to have “eaten Reeves’s homework”. She portrayed the Office for Budget Responsibility’s decision to downgrade its productivity forecasts as a “serious curveball” rather than a belatedly realistic engagement with the facts. She seemed taken aback that it’s near impossible to get a single spending cut through the parliamentary Labour party. “Again, if only there’d been signs.” The chancellor’s credibility is shot. She spent the first four months after the general election telling everyone how “utterly abysmal” the situation was, only to be “blindsided” by the subsequent collapse in consumer, business and investor confidence. And having sworn before the election that there were “no ifs, no ands, no buts” to her tax pledges, she has now introduced us to “Mr If, Miss And and President But”. Reeves was dead right about one thing yesterday: “it’s about being honest”. What a shame that since the election she hasn’t once levelled with voters about things she “honestly must have known at the time”.

📈💸 Politics aside, raising income tax is definitely the best way to plug the gaping hole in the public finances, says Ruth Curtice also in The Guardian. It comes with none of the risks to inflation that a VAT increase would bring, and each 1p rise raises a whopping £10bn. If done while cutting employee national insurance by the same amount, then the pay packets of most working people would be “unaffected” – while those who don’t pay national insurance, such as pensioners, would see a rise. The basic rate of income tax hasn’t risen since the 1970s. “It’s time to face reality.”

Humour is an “unacknowledged superpower in politics”, says James Kanagasooriam in The Times. The reason dreary commentators who judge elections on policy platforms and technical, “structural” issues have got it so wrong in recent years is that people vote from the gut. And Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are “plain funny”. Their humour varies: Farage’s is the wink-and-nudge banter of the beer-soaked local golf club; Johnson’s is more of the PG Wodehouse mangled-classical-allusion variety; Trump is master of the one-line put-down. But in all cases, many voters look at them and, however reluctantly, smile. This is “instrumental not incidental” to their success.

Jonathan Bailey has been named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for 2025, says Shahana Yasmin in The Independent. The 37-year-old actor, who is the first openly gay winner of the accolade, plays the ultra-seductive Lord Anthony in Bridgerton and Prince Fiyero in Wicked, and is rumoured to be a contender for the next James Bond. While past recipients – including Patrick Dempsey, Idris Elba and George Clooney – have sometimes divided opinion, Bailey’s victory seems to have “united social media”. When asked whether he expected to be treated differently after receiving the title, he replied: “I fucking hope so.”

Don’t underestimate the monarchy’s resilience

The disgraceful saga of ex-Prince Andrew has allowed republicans to gleefully proclaim a “crisis of the monarchy”, says Robert Tombs in The Daily Telegraph. They’re forgetting that the British royal family has long dealt with such scandals, from the abdication of the “dreadful” Edward VIII to the violent but effective disposals of Edward II (“nasty”), Richard II (“tyrannical”), Henry VI (“mad”), Charles I (“stubborn”) and James II (“Catholic”). In essence, the Crown is “remarkably resilient”. Critics of the monarchy seem to believe the failings, incapacity or “abysmal nastiness” of individuals should discredit the whole institution. Not so.

If avoiding scandal were the goal, we’d be hard pressed to find an alternative political system that isn’t equally “tarnished by moral failings”. Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were also friends with Jeffrey Epstein, and Nicolas Sarkozy is currently languishing in a French jail for cooking the books. Ireland seems to have chosen its recent presidents as “some sort of practical joke”. Monarchies provide continuity and limit constant jockeying for power. They generally make for the best, “or least badly”, governed states – the Arab monarchies, “warts and all”, are vastly preferably to theocracies or military dictatorships. They provide a non-partisan focus for loyalty for vital institutions such as the military and police, galvanise civil society and keep important powers out of the hands of dodgy, come-and-go politicians. Above all, the Crown “symbolises the nation”. It is a perpetual reminder of place, history and common loyalty. For that, the occasional idiot is a “price worth paying”.

Lego has cultivated a “devoted base” of adult fans in recent years, says Te-Ping Chen in The Wall Street Journal, and they’re going to extreme lengths to accommodate their precious bricks. Seattle architect Jeff Pelletier says he has designed plans for more than 20 houses since the pandemic with dedicated Lego rooms for adults. During one recent open house in the Hamptons, the seller “charmed” several potential buyers with his Lego Lamborghini and Ferraris. Cristie North, a 55-year-old in Salt Lake City, has spent $100,000 buying Lego and renovating her house to fit it all in. “I kept wanting to make it bigger and better,” she says. “It just feeds my soul.”

British attitudes to welfare claimants are “hardening”, say Amy Borrett and Jonathan Vincent in the FT. For the first time in a decade, most UK adults believe the generosity of the benefits system is stopping people from supporting themselves, while the share who “strongly agree” that benefit cuts would help people “learn to stand on their own two feet” jumped to 23%, the highest level since records began in 1987. The change was starkest among the young: for 16-to-34-year-olds, it jumped from 13% last year to 28% today.

It’s the world’s oldest McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, which turns 30 this month. The American icon – fondly known as the “senior burger” – has travelled extensively around its home country, visiting local news outlets and catching the eye of a “visibly disturbed” Joe Rogan, says Ariana Bindman in SFGate. Owners Casey Dean and Eduards Nits keep the revolting relic delicately wrapped in its original wax paper, but it has never been refrigerated, instead living mostly in “cupboards, garbage bags and sheds”. Though it still resembles a burger – with no mould or foul odour – it has gone pretty much solid. I’m not lovin’ it.