Another prime minister resigning from office adds to the “unprecedented instability” of modern-day Britain, said Le Monde. Keir Starmer’s imminent departure – with many of the policies of his likely successor Andy Burnham as yet unknown – is having tangible consequences on the world stage.

Thoughts from abroad 
“God save the King and this desolate land of the United Kingdom,” said Antonello Guerrera in La Repubblica. Since Starmer was elected in 2024, he has “always been a Hamlet: paralysed by indecision, doubt, and sunk by tragic ineptitude”. And on Monday, “the curtain fell”.

Donald Trump predictably “humiliated” Starmer on social media but many other world leaders thanked him for his service, including his “staunch ally” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his “comrade” Emmanuel Macron, and Giorgia Meloni. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, paid tribute, saying: “It can take many leaders years to grow into the statesman you became in just two years.”

“Pragmatic, cool and rational”, Starmer embodied a strain of “anti-politics” and could get the job done without a fuss, said Enrico Franceschini in La Republicca. But these qualities were eroded by a “lack of charisma, the inability to communicate” and a “limited political vision”. He had “good intentions” but was “unable to implement them”.

Where it all went wrong
“Beleaguered” Starmer’s tenure was “troubled” from the outset, said Euronews. From failing to declare gifts in his first few months of office and appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador to numerous policy U-turns on “welfare reform, introducing digital IDs and scrapping winter fuel payments”; his time in office was “littered with controversy”.

He was also “undone by economic stagnation” and “underspending on defence”, said The Washington Post. But for a while there was “no obvious answer” as to who could replace him.

Fundamentally, Starmer “broke his promise of stability”, instead making “constant changes of strategy”, said Claudi Pérez in El País. He inherited a “poisoned chalice” of “stagnant” growth but, like “bad tennis players”, he made “too many unforced errors”.

More than 1,000 schools across England and Wales are closing or finishing their days early this week to protect students against extreme heat. Teachers and pupils are struggling to cope in school buildings that were never designed for sky-high temperatures.

Losing learning
Pupils overheating in schools have become a “major concern”, as the UK experiences increasingly extreme weather, said The i Paper. Government guidance warns school leaders to look out for the symptoms of “heat stress”, including discomfort, irritability and signs of dehydration.

Before this year’s heatwaves, some schools were already known to have one or two days a year when indoor temperatures hit 35C and learning becomes “very difficult”, according to modelling by the Met Office and University College London for the Department for Education. And “without the implementation of any adaptation measures, students could potentially lose up to 12 days of learning per year on average” in the future. 

‘Astronomical’ air-con costs
“Many schools don’t have any ventilation systems other than opening and closing windows,” said Tim Fulford, a teacher and National Education Union health and safety representative. In some, “you can’t even do that”.

Britain is “built for a climate that no longer exists” and “will be increasingly distant in years to come”, concluded a report from the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee last month. Among its many recommendations was a call for air conditioning to be installed in all schools within 25 years.

This is the “only real solution”, said Nottingham junior school teacher Radhika Sanghani in The Independent, but “the cost would be astronomical”. Kids are “tired, they’re red-faced, they’re finding it all horrendous”. Some aren’t sleeping well. They just “can’t cope”.

The Climate Change Committee also said exams should be held at cooler times of the year. The UK Health Security Agency has advised that schools should “consider rearranging school start, finish and play times to avoid teaching during very hot conditions”. 

Walter “the oracle orangutan” cools down with some frozen fruit after predicting a win for Germany in their World Cup match against Ecuador tomorrow. The ape, who has been making football predictions at Dortmund Zoo since 2006, chose a sack of treats bearing the German flag, as he did ahead of Germany’s last two victories.

Ina Fassbender / AFP / Getty Images

“Breathe a fiery sigh of relief,” said Jack Seale in The Guardian. After two “forgettable” series, “House of the Dragon” has finally “found its focus” with a flamboyant new villain played by James Norton.

Set centuries before “Game of Thrones”, the new season of the spin-off sees a “power vacuum” emerge in Westeros, into which various rulers and royals “seek to step”. It kicks off with the bloody Battle of the Gullet at sea: an “orgy of CGI carnage” with “underwater punch-ups and dragonly intervention”.

The “explosive” sequences thankfully don’t “come at the cost of nuanced character drama and thoughtful quasi-historical themes”, said Caroline Siede in Empire. In one “tremendous” episode, Emma D’Arcy (Queen Rhaenyra) is put at the centre of the action as we’re given a “high-wire day-in-the-life-style story about what it actually means to be a queen”.

Until now, the prequel had lacked an “over-the-top anti-hero”, said Ed Power in The Telegraph. The “long wait is at an end”, however, as “top telly totty” James Norton has been brought in to play the “love-to-hate” Lord Ormund Hightower. He goes “full fantasy panto” with his “absurdly OTT” performance, accelerating from “calmly psychotic to full-fledged loony” in one memorable scene. The “reliably charismatic” Matt Smith returns as Rhaenyra’s “power-mad husband” Daemon Targaryen. He is a “devilish delight”.

The show at times “stretches itself thin” as it moves between so many characters on an “increasingly crowded board”, said Siede in Empire. But the “upside” is a “welcome sense of unpredictability” about what will come next, in a series that’s packed with plot twists. “More action-packed but as thoughtful as ever”, season three might just be the show’s “best offering yet”.

Will Israel finally hold up its hands to its atrocities?
Donald Macintyre in The Independent
There are “wearisomely familiar denials from Jerusalem” after a UN report concluded that Israel “has been deliberately targeting children in Gaza”, writes Donald Macintyre. But the evidence is “detailed” and “formidable”, including the “torture of adolescents” and “massive air strikes” on “schools and displacement camps crowded with children”. It’s impossible to justify, yet some Israeli politicians hold the “chilling” view that these “children might grow up to be ‘terrorists’ and therefore it is better to eliminate or cripple them”. 

We are becoming a joke country like Italy used to be
Lionel Barber in The i Paper
Britain used to look down on Italy “as the epitome of political instability”, writes Lionel Barber. But Giorgia Meloni is “into her fourth year as Prime Minister” while we face our seventh in 10 years “after an internal Labour Party coup”. Andy Burnham is “a crowd-pleaser rather than a lion-tamer”; a Westminster “gatecrasher whose legitimacy is open to question”. An “easy come, easy go attitude” to PMs is “becoming baked into our political culture” and we are “poorer as a result”.

Heatwave hysterics wouldn’t have lasted a day in 1976
Ysenda Maxtone Graham in The Telegraph
Many of us have childhood memories of the “blazing” summer of 1976, writes Ysenda Maxtone Graham. Our parents didn’t “infect” us with “heatwave-related anxiety”; they enjoyed the “searing heat” with a “gin and tonic, and perhaps just a mild worry about the dead lawn”. It’s not healthy to have “hysterics every time the mercury slides past 30” and it’s “not fair on children” to rob them of “the unadulterated, carefree enjoyment of a hot summer’s day”.