Keir Starmer has become the latest prime minister to promise a drop in net migration numbers. Unveiling a white paper on immigration yesterday, the Labour leader vowed to fix the UK's "broken system" and make enforcement "tougher than ever".

What did the commentators say?
There's "just one problem", said Jonathan Walker in the Daily Express. "Labour and their lefty friends" have spent years branding opposition politicians who raised concerns about immigration as "horrible, xenophobic and racist". Starmer and his colleagues are "massive hypocrites".

British voters will be "sceptical" of Starmer's new-found hard-line stance on immigration, said Martin Ivens on Bloomberg. "They've heard it all before when it comes to pledges to make the borders less porous." For two decades, "politicians of all stripes" have pledged to reduce net migration, only to produce "half-hearted, ineffective or muddled" measures.

Many of the latest proposals – training Britons rather than importing unskilled foreign workers, and raising education levels and standards of English for those applying for skilled work visas – sound "pretty familiar", said The Independent. But a proposed change giving clearer guidance to judges on the application of human rights provisions "could have a quantifiable effect, as well as helping to reassure that doubting public".

Starmer's warning that "we risk becoming an island of strangers" has already resulted in the PM being accused of "pandering to the populist right", said The Guardian. Some MPs on the left claimed his words echo Enoch Powell's notorious 1968 "rivers of blood" speech, which imagined a future multicultural Britain where the white population "found themselves made strangers in their own country". But while this rhetoric may put off some progressives, Labour HQ will be more than happy if this message cuts through to up-for-grabs voters in Red Wall constituencies.

What next?
With Reform UK surging ahead in the polls and surveys showing immigration emerging as the No.1 issue for voters, why Labour feels the need to talk tough is clear. Now, Starmer will need to "own the change", said Ivens on Bloomberg, "not just mouth the slogans".

The UK is famous for its changeable weather, so that we have just basked in the sunniest, driest April since records began suggests something is afoot. And according to experts, the answer to what held back the famous April showers is simple: a blocked weather pattern.

'Boulder' in the jet stream
Usually, weather systems cross the Atlantic from west to east as they go around the Northern Hemisphere, and bring a variety of conditions (in the UK, mostly rain and wind). That's thanks to the jet stream, the current of wind about six miles above the Earth that moves "like a river of faster flowing air", steering weather around the world, said the BBC. When that river speeds up or slows down, high- and low-pressure areas form, which "shape the changes in our day-to-day weather".

High-pressure systems mean the atmospheric pressure is higher than its surroundings, while low-pressure systems are the opposite. High pressure in the summer usually means hot, dry spells. In the winter, when clouds get trapped under high pressure, we end up with "unrelenting dull days" – the so-called "anticyclonic gloom". But for the past few months, the jet stream has been "amplified", said the Met Office. That means it "meanders", which can lead to areas of high and low pressure.

For the last few weeks, there has been "a stubborn area of high pressure" above the UK, said climate experts Simon H. Lee and Matthew Patterson, from the University of St Andrews, on The Conversation. That has "diverted the usual flow of mild, moist air from the North Atlantic like a boulder in a river". This a "blocking weather system" – when the weather effectively gets "stuck".

Contested role of climate change
Blocked weather was "a driver" of the UK's 1976 summer drought, said Carbon Brief, and of the "deadly" European summer heatwave of 2003. But the important question is how global warming might be affecting the "frequency and severity" of blocking patterns. Trends are extremely difficult to track because there is "no set definition" of a blocking event. 

What we do know, said the BBC, is that global warming has made the weather caused by blocking patterns "more intense", leading to more wildfires, droughts and, in low-pressure patterns, "devastating flooding".

If you dream of a chilly escape during hot weather, you are not alone: travellers are increasingly opting for "coolcations", visiting destinations with mild temperatures and fewer crowds. Sweden is an especially appealing choice, with 100,000 lakes, open-air baths and plentiful aquatic activities. These are some of the coolest things to do there during summer.

Hike the Stockholm Archipelago Trail
Sweden has 267,500 islands — more than any other country. Most are tiny, uninhabited dots in the sea, but several are reachable by ferry and have forests and fishing villages to explore.

Savour a beach day
You can, of course, hit up the beach during a coolcation. Skane in southern Sweden "boasts nearly 250 miles of coastline, long sunny days and abundant swimming opportunities", said Vogue. Sandhammaren Beach in Osterlen stands out with its soft white sand, large dunes and 1860s lighthouse open for guided tours.

Visit Asnen National Park
Covering just seven square miles, this preserve feels "suited for Scandinavian fairy tales", said Men's Journal. It is "mostly pine forest and water" but is also home to Trollberget, or Troll Mountain, whose "hidden corridors are said to hold untold treasures".

Try forest bathing
Skogsbad, or forest bathing, is a way to connect with nature by becoming fully immersed in it. As 70% of Sweden is covered in pine, spruce, beech, oak and other trees, it is relatively easy to access a forest from any part of the country. Set out on your own or book a guided experience.

Is Trump abandoning Israel? Not really
Belén Fernández on Al Jazeera
"One country is conspicuously absent" from the itinerary for Donald Trump's Middle East tour, writes Belén Fernández. The US president is clearly losing patience with Benjamin Netanyahu, though not because he cares about the "ongoing genocide" in Gaza but because it's "hampering" his dream of turning the ruined strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East". Israel "may be sidelined" on Trump's trip but US foreign policy "remains as committed as ever to capitalising on Israel's atrocities".

Britain's 'wokeist' university has finally seen sense
Celia Walden in The Telegraph
Oxford University has made an "extraordinary" U-turn on its plan to remove "gendered language" from degree ceremonies, writes Celia Walden, and has rejected calls to reinstate the "mandatory flying" of the LGBTQ+ flag during Pride month. So what prompted these "intrepid, inclusion-fighting progressives" to "dial it down"? I suspect they've "seen which way the wind is blowing" and that being "inclusive" was about "running with the herd, rather than any core belief system".

When did meat become Right-wing?
Poppy Sowerby on UnHerd
"The bro-ification of food" is "fascinating", writes Poppy Sowerby. Influencers in the "sanguineous slab of the manosphere" have become crusaders" against seed oils and "feminising" soya milk, the "tipple" of the "much-detested soyboy". As "our political culture lurches back towards spectacles of omnipotence", perhaps it's no surprise that "gutsy gastronomy" is returning to "mainstream conservative aesthetics". Red meat is "fully back on the menu" because we've imported "Magaland's bloody-minded populism".