Andy Burnham began his premiership in dramatic style last night, with a brutal purge of ministers loyal to his predecessor in a cabinet reshuffle far more wide-ranging than many expected. Today the new PM held the first meeting of his top team, “spanning the mainstream wings of the party, including key Northern allies and ministers who fell out with Starmer”, said Politico’s UK political correspondent, Sam Blewett.

Who took the top jobs?
The biggest winner is the new Chancellor John Healey, a surprise pick but seen as a safe pair of hands. Ed Miliband was appointed foreign secretary, replacing Yvette Cooper, who was moved to the health department in what is technically a demotion. Lucy Powell was made education secretary, displacing Bridget Phillipson who was left only with her equalities brief. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is one of the few Starmer-era ministers to keep her job, along with Pat McFadden at the Department for Work and Pensions, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

Burnham loyalists make up much of the rest of the cabinet, with his right-hand woman and key enforcer Louise Haigh becoming chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and first secretary of state, tasked with making government run effectively. Anneliese Midgley, one of the key figures in Burnham’s leadership campaign, has become chief whip, while Miatta Fahnbulleh takes over from Miliband as energy secretary.

Rounding off a long evening of Westminster psychodrama, former deputy PM Angela Rayner returned to her old job as housing and communities secretary, and one-time leadership contender and former health secretary Wes Streeting became secretary of state for defence.

What does this say about Burnham’s plans?
In his first speech as PM, Burnham vowed to end rough sleeping, raise the income tax personal allowance, cut VAT on electricity bills and reform social care. Now it’s up to Healey to find the cash and the flexibility, within strict fiscal rules, to make these, and other ambitions, happen.

Burnham appears to have a “much stronger theory of power – a view about how he wants to use the office and what he wants to prioritise – than his recent predecessors”, said journalist Sam Freedman in his Comment is Freed newsletter. Unlike Starmer, whose government “looked buffeted by events and U-turns” from day one, Burnham “has indicated not just that he has priorities but that he is willing to make the institutional changes required”.

Russia, one of the world’s top oil producers, is facing an “unprecedented” fuel crisis, said Agence France Presse. As Ukrainian strikes on its depots intensify, life in Russia has been disrupted “more than at any point since the conflict began in 2022”. Lining up in queues for petrol has “become a staple of life”, causing “impatience” in a country where cars are the primary mode of transport.

‘Lowest level in over two decades’
Putin has rarely acknowledged that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to challenges. But earlier this month he admitted in an interview with state television that the country was facing a “certain deficit” of fuel. Russia must “reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure”, he told his senior officials. 

Ukraine has “stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities in recent months, hitting Russia’s crude oil”, said Al Jazeera. The “amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day – the lowest level in over two decades”, Gary Peach, an oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence, told The Associated Press.

Ukraine has “clearly scaled up” the quantity and quality of their drones, Christina Harward, an expert at the Institute for the Study of War, told Deutsche Welle.

‘Frustration and uncertainty’
In some parts of Russia, fuel shortages have led to social and financial unrest. The “lines are growing at Russian gas stations – and so is the frustration and uncertainty”, said the AP.

The effects of the shortages have been highlighted across social media, with one post reportedly showing farmers “struggling to afford fuel for harvest”, said Reuters. Some Russian drivers have also started to “crowdsource maps, and trade tips about which stations have fuel and shorter lines”. Internet searches for “‘how to siphon fuel’ rose to more than ⁠9,300” in June from just 697 the month before.

For now, Russia has “enough fuel for the army, key industries, and agriculture”, said Alexander Kolyandr at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “But, everywhere else, the choice is between paying more and waiting longer.”

A member of the Red Devils, the British Army’s parachute display team, turns in the sky above the Farnborough International Airshow. The annual event in Hampshire attracts tens of thousands of aviation fans, keen to see both state-of-the-art and historic aircraft.

Toby Shepheard / AFP / Getty Images

On 12 August, there will be a total solar eclipse over parts of Europe for the first time in almost 30 years. For a few moments, parts of Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and Portugal will experience total darkness in daylight hours.

The Moon will pass directly between the Sun and the Earth, completely blocking the Sun’s brightness and plunging “daylight momentarily into darkness”, said National Geographic. Anyone watching will need proper eclipse glasses, which are thousands of times darker than regular sunglasses, to protect their eyes.

The partial (90%) eclipse over the UK should be visible in Edinburgh and Glasgow at 6.08pm, in Manchester and Liverpool at 6.13pm, and in London, Cardiff, Bristol and Cornwall at about 6.15pm.

Valencia, Spain is on the path of totality. And, in the months leading up to the eclipse, the city has been putting together celestial experiences, lectures and workshops at museums and cultural centres. Cruise lines travelling between mainland Spain and Mallorca, including Celebrity, Fred Olsen and Princess, are also offering “eclipse specials” and will “ensure their vessels are on the path of totality”, said The Independent.

If you’re lucky enough to be in Valencia on 12 August, seek out an open location with a clear western horizon and minimal light pollution in the late evening, shortly before sunset. Some of the “best vantage points” will be rooftops, said National Geographic: places like the Grand Hotel Centenari and Luna de Valencia in Hotel Puerta Serranos are staging rooftop viewings, with cocktails and music to “complete the experience”.

Other Spanish towns in the path of totality include Oviedo, Leon, Burgos and Valladolid. Northern Russia will experience total darkness at midday, before it moves to Iceland and Greenland in the afternoon and evening.

The ultra rich should be delighted to pay a wealth tax
Zing Tsjeng in The i Paper
“As the gap between the haves and the have-nots” becomes an “impassable gulf”, “public sentiment” has shifted, writes Zing Tsjeng, presenter of the “Good Bad Billionaire” podcast. The lives of the uber-rich now inspire such feelings of “discomfort – if not outright distaste” – that three-quarters of Brits back a wealth tax. It would be “in the interests” of the wealthy to fall in line: history shows that, left unchecked, “populist anger towards monied elites has a tendency to end in bloodshed”.

This is the end of Russia
Alexander Etkind in The New Statesman
More than four years into a war it “expected to win in days”, Russia’s defeat in Ukraine appears “decided”, writes Russian historian Alexander Etkind. Ukraine’s “cheap, dispersed and precise” drones have “outrun and outgunned Russia’s sclerotic, Soviet-rooted” weaponry, and Vladimir Putin’s biggest “bet – his mysterious friendship with the US President – has started cracking”. The momentum “has shifted” in Kyiv’s favour and “when the smoke settles” on this conflict, “the geopolitical map of Europe, and of Eurasia as a whole, will change forever”.

France sans onions is like Ireland without potatoes
Hannah Betts in The Telegraph
“France is facing a crisis of national soul-morphing proportions,” writes Hannah Betts. The “foundation of Gallic gastronomy” – the onion – is in “catastrophic dearth” following successive heatwaves, “causing chefs countrywide to weep”. It’s “au revoir to the fond de cuisine” and “bonjour bland monotony”. “Not for nothing” do we imagine the archetypal Frenchman as “bereted and Breton jerseyed”, with “strings of alliums” around his neck: France “without its onion” is like “Italy sans tomato” or “Britons deprived of tea”.