What happened
Andy Burnham is to become Britain’s sixth prime minister in a decade today, using his first address in Downing Street to argue that the country must confront its problems with realism while offering hope for the future.

The Labour leader is expected to unveil an initial package of measures aimed at easing household costs, including action on energy bills and, potentially, bus fares. He is also preparing to allow increased oil and gas extraction in existing North Sea fields, while stopping short of approving major new developments.

Who said what
In an interview with The Times, Burnham said: “A concept I will talk about tomorrow is a 10-year plan for the country. I think that’s what it needs.”

But “being a skilled communicator – immeasurably better than his predecessor – is not enough”, said Renie Anjeh in The Telegraph. It was Starmer’s “lack of direction, not his charisma bypass, which sank him”. And “the same fate could await Burnham”.

Burnham “must take hard decisions on spending or risk failure”, said The Times’s editorial board. Yes, the British people are “a little richer after two years of Sir Keir”. But “the big challenges endure: anaemic growth” and “a national debt that consumes north of £100 billion in interest each year”. Burnham “does not like the party whip”. And yet “he will find himself having to crack it; or fail”.

What next?
Burnham is due to accept the King’s invitation to form a government and is expected to announce his cabinet this afternoon.

What happened
The UK’s biggest listed company bosses received their highest level of pay on record last year, with median remuneration for FTSE 100 chief executives rising to £5.06 million, according to new analysis by the High Pay Centre.

The figure represents an 8.6% increase on the previous year and means that top executives now earn about 130 times the salary of the average full-time UK worker, whose median annual pay is £39,000. The gap is the widest since 2018.

The report found that 66 of the 94 companies analysed had increased their CEO’s pay package. AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot was the highest-paid executive, receiving £17.7 million, followed by former GSK chief Emma Walmsley on £15.6 million.

Who said what
“The substantial growth in the gap between executive and worker pay in the last year should be a wake-up call to those who’ve turned a blind eye to rising executive pay,” said High Pay Centre interim director Andrew Speke.

What next?
The High Pay Centre is urging the new Labour government to reform executive pay rules by implementing measures such as a “fat-cat tax”, adding worker representatives to company boards and strengthening employees’ rights.

The think tank, which has campaigned for pay inequality since 2011, is also preparing to close after 15 years. This is nothing short of a “shock”, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. The closure of an organisation that analyses the widening pay gap between CEOs and their employees “feels like the death of an idea”.

While Donald Trump continues his rhetoric against Greenland, another Arctic island – Svalbard, a sparsely populated Norwegian territory – could end up playing an outsize role in global affairs.

Svalbard is home to scientific researchers from 49 nations and has become the “planet’s leading hub of Arctic science and a rare site of international cooperation”, said CNN. But this also collides with a “quest for influence in the fast-warming Arctic” among the world’s largest powers.

Both China and Russia have research stations on Svalbard that “provide a gateway to Arctic influence”. Beijing has “plans for a ‘polar silk road’, an infrastructure and shipping corridor across the top of the world”. Meanwhile, Russia hopes that controlling more of Svalbard will allow it to dominate the nearby Bear Gap, one of the “key maritime routes” for its naval vessels to reach the North Atlantic, said Al Jazeera.

Military bases and fortifications are banned on Svalbard under a 1920 treaty. However, the article in the treaty that prohibits this is only one sentence long and states that Svalbard cannot be “used for ‘warlike purposes’, leaving much room for interpretation”, said The Arctic Institute.

Russia has recently been using Svalbard as a “grey zone” for military testing, and the “utilisation of these methods is becoming more concentrated on Svalbard as the Arctic Circle captures evermore geopolitical attention”. Norway’s response “may determine if Svalbard maintains its status as an international research hub or becomes defined by its importance in global trade and military security”.