Labour’s relations with trade unions have deteriorated under the current government, with leaders of two key affiliates openly critical of Keir Starmer. Others have withdrawn their support in response to poor poll ratings and rightward shifts in policy.

The head of the Fire Brigades Union has warned that all 11 trade unions formally affiliated with the party could unite to tell the prime minister to step down if the results of the elections in May are “as painful for the party as predicted”, said PoliticsHome. Starmer is on his “last chance”, said FBU boss Steve Wright.

What did the commentators say?
“There have been a lot of own goals,” Wright told The House magazine, citing the government’s initial refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap. “I want to see Labour in a position to fight” off Reform UK, he said.

This is just “the latest threat to the prime minister’s position” before the “make-or-break elections”, said Max Kendix in The Times. Labour’s relationship with its two largest affiliated unions, Unite and Unison, had already deteriorated, with both “run by general secretaries hostile to Starmer”. Unison’s Andrea Egan, elected last year, has “publicly criticised Starmer, and attacked him” for blocking Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from standing in an upcoming by-election.

Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite (which until now was Labour’s biggest donor), has been on a “tireless crusade” against Starmer, said Stella Tsantekidou on The Critic. Unite voted last summer to “re-examine” its relationship with the party after the government scaled back plans to introduce “day one” workers’ rights. Any disaffiliation would mark “the biggest rupture between the party and the trade union movement in recent history”, said Camilla Turner in The Telegraph.

What next?
Should there be a leadership contest, it could be trade union members who “decide the outcome”, said Morgan Jones in The New Statesman.
The Labour electorate comprises party members and affiliate supporters. After a year of policies that “seemed designed specifically to upset” them, party members will “certainly” be fewer than before, making affiliate votes more relevant. 

But Wright sees a “benefit to keeping someone in position”. “No one liked the ever-revolving door of No. 10” when the Tories were in power, he said. “There’s hope. We’ll see what happens in May, won’t we?”

“To have one parent mired in scandal is unfortunate,” said Joy Lo Dico in The Independent. “To have two? This is where the luckless Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice now find themselves.”

The latest release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein has intensified anger against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and also renewed scrutiny of their mother. Emails show that Sarah Ferguson took Beatrice and Eugenie, then 19 and 20, to meet the sex offender in Miami, days after he had been released from prison for his conviction for soliciting a minor.

‘Excruciating’ exchanges
The “incomprehensively misjudged” meeting is not the only mention of the princesses, said Rosa Silverman in The Telegraph. Their names appear in the files several times. One “excruciating” email from Sarah references Eugenie’s “shagging weekend”. There is no evidence of the princesses doing anything wrong, but there is a “strong suggestion” that they were “used as pawns in their parents’ unedifying quest to curry favour with the wealthy Epstein”. Yet there is also “no doubt whatever that they should have refused to be part of their mother’s [actions]”, said royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams.

‘Ticking time bomb’
That the princesses should have to answer for their parents’ mistakes is “deeply unfair and wholly undeserved”, said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. But they will inevitably be asked what they knew. “A pile-on towards these young women is coming, and it will be brutal.”

Beatrice and Eugenie are “sitting on a ticking time bomb”, said Tessa Dunlop in The i Paper. They refrained from commenting after Andrew’s “Newsnight” interview in 2019, even though he used Beatrice’s Pizza Express birthday party as an alibi, but the “pressure has mounted”.

The sisters seem to be “taking different positions”, said Isaac Bickerstaff in Tatler. Beatrice was spotted on a horse ride with Andrew last week, before the latest files were released, while Eugenie is said to have stopped seeing him at all.

The “wisest” course would be for both to renounce their titles, “retire from public life, run their charities and bring up their families”, said Andrew Lownie, author of “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York”. They “may yet retain their dignity despite their parents’ downfall”, he told The Telegraph. For others who were in Epstein’s sphere, “it is surely too late”.

Rubbish clogs the Drina River in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, after being swept upstream from neighbouring Serbia and Montenegro following heavy rains. Tonnes of waste has accumulated behind a hydroelectric plant’s fence, in what local environmental activist Dejan Furtula called an “ecological disaster”.

Elvis Barukcic / AFP / Getty Images

Argyll and Bute: Achnaba Town House, Achnaba
A duplex townhouse in a delightful position on Scotland’s west coast, by Loch Fyne and overlooking Eilean Glas. 5 beds, 4 baths, kitchen, recep, communal garden and grounds, parking. £425,000; Galbraith

Devon: Hope Cottage, Dartmouth
A charming waterside cottage with views over the River Dart and out to sea. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, garage (by separate negotiation). £925,000; Knight Frank

Devon: The Beacon, Exmouth
A duplex penthouse (red brick building) with views out to sea and along the seafront. Exmouth offers walks along the Jurassic Coast. Main suite, 2 further beds, shower, open-plan kitchen/dining room, recep, balcony, communal gardens. £625,000; Knight Frank

Kent: St Elmo, Deal
An impressive Grade II Georgian townhouse on the seafront, with views across the Channel to France. 4 beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, garden, outbuilding. £975,000; Bright & Bright

Pembrokeshire: The Hall, Angle
Splendid manor house with approx. ten acres of gardens and woodland running down to the coast. The scenic route from the pier is known locally as the Hall Walk. 7 beds, 5 baths, kitchen, 7 receps. £1.5 million; Country Living

Working in a pub is a British rite of passage
Ruby Borg in The Telegraph
“Pulling pints made me the women I am today,” writes Ruby Borg. Working long shifts and dealing with angry customers in a “pub’s high-pressure environment” as a student “taught me to be resilient” and helped me “build workplace skills” and confidence. “In these saloons of Britishness”, young bar staff “come face to face with real people and the real world”. With the closures of so many of our “beloved watering holes”, how will they now “learn these valuable life skills”?

Do MPs really want to save the Houses of Parliament?
Isabel Hardman in The Spectator
The Palace of Westminster is “crumbling” and “at risk of a catastrophic and preventable fire”, writes Isabel Hardman, but “MPs cannot agree what to do” about it. They won’t “want to vote for anything that” costs “billions of pounds when public services are cash-strapped and families are struggling with the cost of living”. Our politicians “aren’t prepared to defend parliament”, preferring to “apologise” for “an expensive and embarrassing institution” when “they should be its fiercest advocates”.

America Is Trying to Bully the World Over Climate Change
Elisabeth Braw on Foreign Policy
“Bullying is a mainstay of the Trump administration,” writes The Atlantic Council’s Elisabeth Braw. It has undone an international treaty to reduce shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions by threatening “to punish any country voting in favour”. But reality “won’t bend to Trump’s will; the oceans will rise and the planet will get hotter” regardless of whether he calls climate change “a hoax”. And maybe “the rest of the globe” will “decide to set up schemes that don’t require U.S. participation”.