If the results of May's local elections are anything to go by, the Green Party is on the up. For the fifth time in local elections, the party increased its share of council seats overall and it now holds significant influence in some areas.

A new strategy of deploying different types of candidates to appeal to voters and address specific issues in local areas appears to be paying off. However, it "raises questions about what the party stands for", said Ben Wright in The Telegraph, and whether the party is being "hijacked by those for whom a far-Left agenda is more important than the environmental fate of the planet".

How well is it performing?
The Green Party has "long struggled to make itself heard", but its recent results suggest a change in fortunes, said The Economist. In terms of national vote, the party is "polling at a lofty 6% share" and, while it will struggle to improve on its single seat in parliament, it could have an "outsize effect on disaffected voters on the left" that allows it to "wield real influence" for the first time.

What is it campaigning on?
It is the national campaigning that will "raise tougher questions about the party’s coherence". The Green Party is in some urban areas winning voters with a focus on environmental and social issues including trans rights as well as taking a tougher position against the war in Gaza. Meanwhile, it is "appealing to disgruntled Tories" with an "earthy blend of local issues and eco-nimbyism".

Should Labour be concerned?
Labour is worried about "the rise of support" for the Greens and being "outflanked from the left", said Richard Vaughan at the i news site. So much so, it is collating evidence of the Greens blocking environmental projects, including "plans for solar farms and major wind developments", despite its lofty renewable energy commitments.

The Tories too might need to "wake up and sniff the brackish air", said Miranda Green in the Financial Times, as they face the real prospect of "protest votes" for the Greens in rural areas where campaigning focuses on a "loss of green space and restoring nature".

"Nothing quite divides opinion like a royal portrait", and the latest attempt to depict our reigning monarch King Charles III is "no exception". 

The striking portrait by Jonathan Yeo was unveiled at Buckingham Palace yesterday, said The Arts Newspaper, and shows Charles "bathed in red", and wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards, sword in hand and with an "eco-friendly" Monarch butterfly landing on his shoulder.

'Yes, you've got him'
Royal portraits have traditionally played an important role in "signifying power and projecting an image", said the BBC, with one of the most memorable being Henry VIII painted by Hans Holbein. But our relationship with royalty has shifted since the days of the Tudor dynasty, said Yeo.

While "we know they're real people with quirks and personality traits", "on the other hand, we still want to buy into the mysticism and the fairy tale that they're different from us, that there's a bit of magic there". This portrait was an attempt to "figure out how to do both at once", he told the broadcaster. This one appears to have had the royal seal of approval though. Queen Camilla is said to have seen the painting before its unveiling and told Yeo: "Yes, you've got him."

'One of the spookier paintings I have ever laid eyes on'
Despite the many "poignant" details of the royal portrait, some members of the public are "sceptical", said The Mirror. One social media user commented that the painting had a "sinister look" about it, while another wrote: "What in the fiery depths of hell is this monstrosity?"

"Is the likeness convincing?" wondered Alastair Sooke, The Telegraph's chief art critic. To me, the King resembles both his father, Prince Philip, and George W Bush in this painting. 

Art may be subjective, said Danielle Cohen in The Cut, "but I am finding it hard to subject myself to this new portrait of King Charles", which is one of the "spookier paintings I have ever laid eyes on". Plus with hit Netflix show "The Crown" still fresh in the public's mind, "does this guy really think now is a good time to remind us of our associations between himself and blood?"

Colm Tóibín doesn't approve of sequels. So fans of his novel "Brooklyn" will be happy that after nearly 15 years he has "overcome these misgivings" to write the follow-up, "Long Island", said Lisa Allardice in The Guardian.

"Brooklyn", the "best-known and loved of Tóibín's 10 novels" took the "fairytale of New York" – Eilis, an Irish girl who emigrates to America in the 1950s – and turned it into a "heartbreaking story of homesickness and regret".

In "Long Island", Eilis, now in her 40s, returns to 1970s Ireland and "the possibility of rekindling the romance she left behind all those years ago". Although most of the book is set in Enniscorthy, County Wexford – "where Tóibín grew up and where half his novels are set" – it opens in Long Island. Eilis lives here with her husband, Tony, and their two children, until a "knock at the door changes everything".

An angry stranger accuses Tony of sleeping with his wife, who is now pregnant, and he says that once the baby is born, he will leave it on Eilis's doorstep. Tóibín is a "master of silence and shadows", said Allardice: "his subjects are abandonment, loss and denial – the things not said, the feelings not acted on".

It is "more suspenseful and gripping" than "Brooklyn", said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times. The final 50 pages "build to a nail-biting conclusion" and it also "feels more morally and psychologically meaty".

It is an "unexpected last-act development", said Megan Nolan in The Telegraph. It "upends you" with the "gripping drama of life, action, movement, and on the same page, the magic of witnessing multiple silent consciousnesses circling one another".

Meghan is carefully rebranding as a stateswoman – but where's the substance?
Isolde Walters on the i news site
Meghan Markle has long been rumoured to harbour "political ambitions", writes Isolde Walters, and her recent engagements appear designed to show her "not as a 'part-time royal' fitting in tours in between commercial commitments, but as a sure-footed stateswoman on the global stage". Yet "what do we know of her political vision" or "political ability", and what differentiates the duchess from "any other well-educated, well-meaning, left-leaning woman"?

Why is Greta Thunberg wearing a keffiyeh?
Mary Harrington on UnHerd
Greta Thunberg has been wearing a symbol of "solidarity with Palestinians", says Mary Harrington, but what does the Gaza conflict "have to do with global warming"? Amid a widespread "campaign creep", "all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one", creating a "kind of ever-spreading, all-encompassing omnicause" underpinned by "seeming hostility to all established authority, all traditions and all institutions".

I still regret the day I stuck two pins in Peter
Matthew Parris in The Times
I have a "confession", writes Matthew Parris. After I accidentally "outed" Peter Mandelson during a 1998 "Newsnight" interview, I "probably wrongly" blamed the Labour MP when "I was dropped by the BBC". So "mostly as a joke", I named a rag doll Peter and "stuck two large pins in it". The real Mandelson was then sacked by Tony Blair over "some overblown financial nonsense", leaving me "half-worried at my own possible powers". Mandelson subsequently "prospered", but "I've never cursed anyone I know since then".