Labour leadership hopeful Wes Streeting has “put the Europe question firmly back on the political agenda” by dropping the “bombshell” that he’d like Britain to “one day” rejoin the EU, said The Times. However, the process of reversing Brexit and rejoining the bloc would be far from straightforward.

Is it possible?
Yes, although no country has ever left the EU and then rejoined. If the UK decided to seek membership again, it would need to apply through the framework set out in Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union. The support of all member states would be needed to “open and conclude accession talks”, said the Institute for Government, and the UK’s “historical reluctance to integrate fully with the EU” could remain a “concern to the bloc”.

What would the process be? 
First, the UK would submit an application to the Council of the European Union. All existing EU member states would then need to agree unanimously to begin accession talks with London. At this stage, member states could decide to impose stricter eligibility criteria. If the UK cleared that hurdle, it would enter negotiations over alignment with the EU’s legal and regulatory framework across a wide range of policy areas, including trade, fisheries, immigration and borders, environmental standards and competition law.

Britain’s application would ultimately need unanimous approval from the council, as well as the backing of a majority in the European Parliament. Realistically, the entire process could take several years at a minimum. Even relatively straightforward accessions can take close to a decade.

What would the UK have to agree to?
Although the UK previously enjoyed favourable terms within the EU, those concessions might not be available if it sought to rejoin. For example, the opt-out that kept Britain outside the Schengen border-free travel zone would probably not apply a second time.

Rejoining could also involve a commitment to adopt the euro. In addition, Britain would return without the 1984 rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, which refunded roughly 66% of the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget. In 2020, the UK’s net contribution stood at £12.6 billion; any future contribution is likely to be significantly higher. “I think we would welcome the UK with open arms,” a senior European foreign ministry official told The Times. “Just not on their terms.”

The sound of typing has been the background hum of office work for a century and a half. But after years of bashing typewriters, then tapping keyboards, desk-bound employees are, in ever-increasing numbers, murmuring to AI dictation apps to send emails, draft reports and write code.

Voice mode ‘etiquette’
Voice-to-text software has been around since the 1960s, but it was always “clunky” and slow and “never worked quite right”, said employment reporter Jo Constantz on Bloomberg. Now, advances in AI have made it “viable”: it can “take the messiness of speech and package it into something more useful”. In “voice mode”, you can produce double the words-per-minute than when typing.

Dictation is definitely “having a moment”, said Joe Castaldo, business reporter at Canada’s The Globe and Mail. More and more software engineers, in particular, are switching from “pressing keys individually” to “adopting AI-powered speech-to-text apps to verbally issue instructions” to tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Start-ups today are like “a high-end call centre – except everyone is chatting with AI”, one venture capitalist told The Wall Street Journal. There is an “etiquette”: “users try to keep their voices low and often wear headphones to block out sound from their dictating neighbours, dialling down the annoyance factor”. But talking to yourself is still “weird, if not a little embarrassing”.

‘Velocity towards voice’
It’s too early to say if and when “the Qwerty keyboard might follow the ticker tape and fax machines into obsolescence”, Dylan Fox, CEO of San Francisco-based AssemblyAI, told the Los Angeles Times. But “the velocity towards voice is accelerating”.

There’s “a mad dash to dominate any corner of the evolving field”, said Bloomberg’s Constantz. The market for AI voice generators alone is expected to be worth £5.75 billion this year, rising to £16.27 billion by the end of the decade, according to US consulting firm Grand View Research.

Google, Apple and Microsoft have invested heavily in their voice-to-text products, and dictation app start-ups – many with variations of “whisper” in their name – have experienced remarkable growth over the past year. After all, Superwhisper founder Neil Chudleigh told The Globe and Mail, “we’re talking about replacing every keyboard on the planet”.

King Charles sniffs the “Sir David Beckham Rose” at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London. The footballer joined Charles and horticulturist Frances Tophill at the unveiling of the bloom, created by Shropshire-based David Austin Roses at the request of Beckham’s daughter, Harper. 

Adrian Dennis / Pool / AFP / Getty Images

The UK has some great music festivals taking place this year, but a selection of events outside the country are worth going the extra mile. Here are some of Europe’s best shows with tickets still up for grabs.

PhillGood, Plovdiv
With “balmy climes and ancient cities”, Bulgaria is underrated as a summer destination, said Time Out. The country’s second-largest city, Plovdiv, is both “stunning” and “very buzzy”, making it the perfect location for the PhillGood festival, which takes place on “the scenic banks of the Rowing Canal”. This year’s line-up features “heavyweight” artists including The Cure, Gorillaz and Moby.

North Sea Jazz, Rotterdam
While this festival spotlights “classy, populist” jazz acts, it’s “boundary-pushing” when it comes to genre, said The Guardian. Esperanza Spalding, Nils Petter Molvær and Joshua Redman are just a few of the names on the bill as North Sea Jazz celebrates its 50th anniversary. There are also “soul, R&B, disco and African pop” performances, and the Roots are bringing the “funk-fringed edges of hip-hop” to the stage.

Mad Cool, Madrid
This is “one of Europe’s most welcoming festivals”, said The Independent. Mad Cool has multi-generational appeal, with an “impressive” list of musicians on the programme, from “viral” TikTok artists to many a “rock’n’roll veteran”. CMAT, Twenty One Pilots and Zara Larsson are just some of the artists performing this year. Spain has no shortage of fun summer festivals and, as the name suggests, this one is “delightfully chill”.

Adversity doesn’t always forge the best MPs
James Marriott in The Times
“Any candidate for political high office” seems “required to hawk a story of early adversity”, writes James Marriott. But I don’t believe such suffering forges “the pure metal of moral character ”, and “sometimes it breeds a callous determination to look after Number One”. This “most middle-class parliament in decades” may find adversity “mystically compelling” because “misery seems most glamorous to those who know least about it”. But we shouldn’t “underrate the power of the boringly well-adjusted”.

There’s nothing attractive about being a landlord anymore
Melanie McDonagh in The i Paper
The Greens’ proposal of rent controls is “an attractive policy” for many of us, writes Melanie McDonagh. The block where I live once had a “terrific mix of long-term tenants of modest means”, but “that simply doesn’t happen any more”. Yet look at how the new ban on no-fault evictions has some landlords “running scared”, with some tenants “given notice to quit” before it came into force. These changes sound good but actually “squeeze the number of landlords willing to rent”.

Meghan just travelled 6,000 miles to be humiliated – I almost feel sorry for her
Chris Riches in the Daily Express
The Duchess of Sussex flew from California to Switzerland to make a speech about child safety “and just two dozen people” turned up to hear her, writes Chris Riches. “I’ve seen more people watching a Peruvian busking pipe band in Croydon’s Whitgift Centre.” I would feel bad for her, only “it doesn’t matter – as long as people liked the look of her black suit on Instagram and want to buy it, she is laughing”.