Britain is on course for a hung parliament in the next general election, according to YouGov’s latest MRP poll. Labour is forecast to be the biggest party with 241 seats, 85 short of an outright majority. The Conservatives follow on 130, trailed by Reform on 123. With the Liberal Democrats at 71 and the Green Party on nine, the likely outcome is a scramble to form a coalition.

Labour-Liberal Democrat
Andy Burnham has not commented directly on the prospect of a future coalition, but Ed Davey did not rule it out completely. Asked if he would form a coalition with Labour, the Lib Dem leader told the BBC that he did not deal in “hypotheticals”. Insiders from the PM’s team told The Times that Burnham’s support of electoral reform, a long-held Lib Dem cause, could provide the perfect olive branch to Davey’s party.

Conservative-Liberal Democrat
Unlike his neutral response to a Lab-Lib coalition, Davey dismissed suggestions that his party could do a deal with the Conservatives. “We’ve got a moral responsibility to stop Nigel Farage, and indeed stop Kemi Badenoch giving the keys to No. 10 to Nigel Farage,” he told the BBC. “I think there could be that sort of coalition on the right and we've got to stop that.”

“Mention of a coalition often sparks fear into the heart of a Lib Dem,” said Politico, “because of how the last one ended.” The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government formed in 2010 was the UK’s first since 1945. But after five years as junior partner, the Lib Dems crashed from 57 Westminster seats to just eight in the next election.

Conservative-Reform
Farage last year denied that he would form an electoral pact with the Tories, following reports that he’d told donors such an agreement was inevitable. “I would never do a deal with a party that I do not trust,” he told the Financial Times. “No deals, just a reverse takeover.”

Badenoch has rejected calls to “unite the right” and ruled out entering a coalition with Reform. “Problematic people” have joined Farage’s party, she told GB News this week. “How can we join with them?”

The world of elite sports is at odds over whether professional sporting bodies should support female athletes in freezing their eggs.
The Royal Spanish Football Federation recently announced an agreement to fund egg freezing and fertility treatments for its players, following similar moves by Chelsea F.C. Women and the US National Women’s Soccer League. But experts and athletes have raised concerns about whether such measures truly support athletes during and after pregnancy.

‘Powerful message’
“Elite athletes have been choosing to freeze their eggs on their own for years,” said El País – when they can “find a gap” in their intense schedules. What’s new is that national teams, leagues and clubs are “beginning to take charge of the process”. Chelsea’s fund, understood to be worth at least £189,000, is enough for the entire squad to freeze their eggs at a clinic in London’s Harley Street, “making it the most significant investment into fertility treatment from a women’s sports team in the UK”, said The Observer.

Offering fertility services sends a “powerful message” that champions “should not have to choose between their sport and motherhood”, said Sarah Carson in The i Paper. The Spanish federation “understands that you are serving your country against your biological clock”, former Spain captain Alexia Putellas told El País.

‘Double-edged sword’
Funding egg freezing and fertility treatments is only a feminist “win” if teams offer support during pregnancy and postpartum, such as maternity leave, breastfeeding facilities and childcare, two-time Olympic rower Jill Moffatt told CBC. “Otherwise, it’s kind of a double-edged sword.”

Scheduling intensive fertility treatment around training and fixtures is also tricky. In her memoir, “All In”, England goalkeeper Mary Earps recalls asking an expert: “I’ve got three weeks. Do you think I could fit in an egg-freezing cycle in that time?”

Spanish Olympic triple jumper Ana Peleteiro-Compaoré Brión has suggested the Spanish federation's move is aimed at pushing athletes to wait until retirement to start a family. “Is this measure intended to make it easier for women to be mothers,” she said on Instagram, “or is it intended to make it easier for them not to be while they’re playing?” 

Palestinians scramble to get food at a charity kitchen in the southern Gaza Strip. According to Unicef, one in eight children in the enclave are chronically malnourished or stunted by hunger despite the easing of aid restrictions.

Bashar Taleb / AFP / Getty Images

Essex: Valentine’s, Arkesden
An arresting “upside-down” house nestled in landscaped grounds on the edge of one of northwest Essex’s most sought-after villages. 6 beds, 5 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, gym, garden, parking. £1.8 million; The Modern House.

Lancashire: The Orangery, Woodfold Park
A fine building with floor-to-ceiling windows built in 1820. 5 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/dining room, 3 receps, garden, parking. £1.5 million; Fine & Country.

London: The Circle, Bermondsey SE1
First floor flat in this iconic 1980s building by the architect Piers Gough on the banks of the Thames. 1 bed, family bath, open plan kitchen/living/dining room, communal gardens. £400,000; The Modern House.

Denbighshire: Eyarth Hall, Ruthin
A remarkable Grade II Elizabethan country house set in approx. 14 acres of gardens and woodland with views across the Vale of Clwyd. 6 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, paddocks, garden, parking. £1.15 million; Fisher German.

My day at Auschwitz with Wayne Rooney and why his reaction to the horrors there confounded every assumption I had about him
Stephen Pollard in the Daily Mail
Wayne Rooney visiting Auschwitz in his new reality series sounds “grotesque”, writes Stephen Pollard, but I accompanied him to the Polish death camp during the 2012 European Championships, and he showed “decorum, intelligent curiosity and thoughtfulness”. He was visibly shaken and called the Holocaust “crazy” and “hard to understand”. For “all their fame and fortune, footballers can be as moved by horror as anyone”. Rooney’s an “unlikely ambassador for the memory of Auschwitz, but perhaps all the more powerful for that”.

Hope’s all very well but can the PM bring it home?
Patrick Maguire in The Times 
Andy Burnham’s Liverpool conference speech will be a return to “hope and belief”, rooted in the city that “made him”, writes Patrick Maguire. The PM is expected to reject Labour’s “it’s too hard” politics and instead focus on “bringing back hope” through intervention, devolution and reforms to Britain’s economic model, despite many “headwinds”. Burnham is “raising expectations far higher than any Labour leader has dared before”; the challenge is whether he can “do more than merely describe” Britain’s problems.

Earl Spencer’s embarrassing mistake is a victory for the Royal Family
Simon Kelner in The i Paper
What Earl Spencer describes as his “small error” over Piers Morgan’s reporting is actually an “embarrassing, and extremely costly, mistake” that benefits the royal family, writes Simon Kelner. Morgan, suing for defamation, is “parading his outrage” while raising questions about how thoroughly Spencer’s book was “fact-checked” and whether “we can trust an author who presents ‘assumptions’ as facts”. Morgan “has become a proxy” for the royals’ “own battles”, and once again, the monarchy “simply needs to outlast” the controversy.