What happened
Andrew Rosindell, the MP for Romford, has left the Conservatives to join Reform UK, marking another high-profile defection from the Tory benches. Rosindell, who has represented the Essex seat since 2001, said his decision was driven by longstanding disagreements over the handling of the Chagos Islands and what he described as a wider failure of political accountability.

Who said what
Writing on X, Rosindell said he joined the Conservatives as a teenager inspired by Margaret Thatcher but that “the time has come to put country before party”. He accused both government and opposition of being “complicit in the surrender of this sovereign British territory to a foreign power”. Rosindell’s departure “raises the prospect that more MPs on the Conservative Right could defect to Reform and will come as a severe blow to (Kemi Badenoch)”, said The Telegraph.

What next?
Reform UK has set a deadline for MPs and councillors to defect by 7 May, when “crucial local elections” will be held “in which they hope to make significant gains”, said ITV News.

What happened
The government has withdrawn a proposed change to the Hillsborough Law after sustained opposition from bereaved families, campaigners and a growing number of Labour MPs. The bill is intended to impose a legal duty on public bodies to act openly and assist fully with investigations into major failures. Concern centred on a government-backed alteration that would have limited disclosures by intelligence officers, requiring sign-off from the heads of MI5 or MI6. Critics warned this would weaken the legislation by allowing security agencies to control what evidence could be shared.

Who said what
A government spokesperson said officials would continue talks to improve the legislation “without compromising national security”. The Hillsborough Law Now campaign welcomed the retreat, saying it would “engage further with government to ensure the bill fully applies to the security services whilst not jeopardising national security”.

The government has “performed a series of recent U-turns on controversial policy areas”, said Raphael Boyd in The Guardian, including farmers’ inheritance tax, digital ID cards and business rates for pubs.

What next?
Ministers confirmed the amendment will not be put before MPs when the bill returns to the Commons today, saying further work is needed.

Spain and Portugal are taking a turn. The Iberian Peninsula sits on a boundary between two large tectonic plates that are being stressed by a variety of forces, and because of this, the peninsula is turning clockwise very slowly. A noticeable shift of the land is still far off, but understanding the dynamics can help us even today.

Using earthquake records and satellite observations, scientists were able to match patterns of earthquake stress with estimates of strain on the Earth’s surface to determine that the Iberian Peninsula is rotating, according to a study published in Gondwana Research. The Earth’s crust is “fractured into portions that float and move on a nearly liquid and ductile lower mantle,” called tectonic plates, said El País.

Plate motion is “pushing Iberia from the southwest and making it rotate clockwise”, said Asier Madarieta, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country and the leader of the study, in a statement. 

Even though it is far in the future, the “very long-term consequences will be enormous,” said El País. The “Mediterranean will once again become a closed sea, Africa and Europe will be joined to the west and what is now southern Iberia will either face the Americas or will have merged with the area of Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa.” Going forward, the “data will increase exponentially,” said Madarieta. “We will be able to calculate the deformations in more detail, even in the places where we have little information available.”