Chris Webb wins back ared walla Blackpool South seat held by Tories since 2019

• Local elections 2024: full council results for England
• Labour claims huge byelection win to claim back ared walla seat Blackpool South

The results of the London mayoral contest and London assembly elections are due on Saturday. Labouras Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term and polls have put him comfortably ahead of Tory Susan Hall, despite jitters in Khanas campaign team.

Following the closure of the polls tonight, Khan said his campaign and Labour activists asent out a message of fairness, of equality and of hopea.

Pollsters say early results suggest Tories could lose half of council seats contested, putting party on course for as many as 500 losses

• Local and mayoral election results a live updates

Keir Starmer has hailed Labouras aseismica win in Blackpool South in a night of local elections that provided further evidence that the party is heading for a large majority at this yearas general election.

The Labour leader called the result in the Blackpool South byelection atruly historica after the partyas candidate, Chris Webb, won the seat with the third biggest swing from the Conservatives to Labour in postwar history.

Result shows Starmer is heading for sizeable Westminster majority, while Sunak has failed to recover ground since taking over from Liz Truss

• Local and mayoral election results a live updates

For the fifth time since the start of 2023, Keir Starmer woke up on Friday morning to a byelection result that indicates he will be prime minister by the end of the year.

The Labour leader called the result in Blackpool South, where the partyas candidate, Chris Webb, won with a swing of 26%, aseismica and ahistorica. Polling experts point out that even Tony Blair did not secure such a sustained series of strong byelection results in the run-up to his landslide election victory in 1997.

With fewer than a third of council elections declared so far, the Conservative party appears on course to lose up to 500 seats

• Local and mayoral election results a live updates

At the start of a long weekend of election results, the first outcomes have been every bit as dire for the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak as analyst had predicted. With fewer than a third of the council elections declared, and none of metro mayoral yet in, here is the current state of play.

Results from more than 100 English councils, as well as for several mayors, are announced as early results show the Conservatives losing control of some key councils. Find out what happened in your area

• Local and mayoral elections a live updates
• UK general election opinion poll tracker

Experts fear children questioning their gender may turn to hidden economy to obtain hormones illegally

Cross-sex hormones designed to masculinise or feminise a personas body are available to buy online for less than APS11 a month, with experts warning that growing numbers of under-18s may turn to the medicines hidden economy.

Last month the landmark Cass review of childrenas gender treatment in England concluded there was a lack of reliable evidence supporting the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers by young people questioning their gender identity.

Civil servant Josie Stewart spoke to media after government presented adishonest accounta, tribunal told

A Foreign Office civil servant felt amorally compelleda to speak to the media about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after the government presented a adishonest accounta of what happened, an employment tribunal has heard.

Josie Stewart was sacked by the Foreign Office (FCDO) after blowing the whistle on the failures of the withdrawal from Kabul and disclosing emails indicating Boris Johnsonas involvement in an aoutrageousa decision to prioritise the evacuation of staff from the animal charity Nowzad, despite his denials.

Post featured compromising image of the broadcaster Narinder Kaur, who said she was left aincredibly upseta

Police are investigating a social media post by Laurence Fox in relation to an aupskirting offencea.

The tweet, posted on Tuesday, featured a compromising image of Narinder Kaur, a broadcaster on Good Morning Britain and GB News. The post remained on Foxas account until it was deleted on Thursday.

Joshua Dean, 45, former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, alleged agross misconduct by quality managementa

Joshua Dean, a Boeing whistleblower who warned of manufacturing defects in the planemakeras 737 Max, has died after a short illness, the second Boeing whistleblower to die this year.

Dean, 45, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alleging aserious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production linea at Spirit.

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

The foreign secretary called the conflict athe challenge of our generationa after making second trip to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy

The UK has promised APS3bn a year afor as long as it is necessarya to help Ukraine, David Cameron said on Thursday as he made his second visit to Kyiv since becoming UK foreign secretary.

He also said he had no objection if weapons supplied by the UK were used to strike inside Russia.

Israel has not said how it learned of the death of Dror Or, who was kidnapped on 7 October

Turkeyas trade halt with Israel will continue until a permanent ceasefire in Gaza is secured as well as unhindered humanitarian aid flow to the region, Turkish trade minister Omer Bolat said on Friday, reports Reuters.

Turkey stopped all exports and imports to and from Israel on Thursday, citing the aworsening humanitarian tragedya in the Palestinian territories.

Exclusive: decision to grant licences condemned by critics as a stunt that shows Tories are aplaying politics with climatea

Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move that campaigners said is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates North Sea oil and gas production, will confirm that it is granting licences to about 30 companies to look for hydrocarbons on sites earmarked for future offshore windfarms.

In the past year, in virtually every region, journalists and independent media outlets faced increasing repression

Political attacks on press freedom, including the detention of journalists, suppression of independent media outlets and widespread dissemination of misinformation, have significantly intensified in the past year, according to the annual World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The index ranks 180 countries on the ability of journalists to work and report freely and independently.

Appeal tribunal orders firm to share details on hundreds of thousands of tonnes of outflows into North Sea

A water company that tried to keep secret details of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of raw sewage discharges into the sea has been ordered by an appeal tribunal to release the data in the public interest.

Northumbrian Water has repeatedly refused to release details about the scale of raw sewage discharges into the North Sea from an outflow at its pumping station in Whitburn, after a campaigner asked under freedom of information and environmental information regulations.

Police arrest more than 200 students at UCLA as law enforcement clears camp at Dartmouth, arresting more than 90 students

More than 2,000 people have now been arrested during pro-Palestinian protests across dozens of US college campuses in recent weeks.

Police arrested more than 300 pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, pushing the total past 2,000, according to an Associated Press tally.

Threats from the state have led many journalists across the world to flee their home countries to report from elsewhere. But for many the intimidation did not stop when they left

Illustrations by Joe McKendry

Fardad Farahzad, journalist, Iran International

Ex-central banker Lady Shafik, the universityas president, now faces calls to resign due to her handling of campus unrest

Steering Columbia University through the choppy waters of anti-Israel student protests was never going to be easy for Minouche Shafik, a member of the UK House of Lords who took over as president of the university in New York after a period of relative calm running the London School of Economics.

During her tenure as LSE director between 2017 and last year, academics largely refused to join the industrial action that dominated campuses across much of the UK.

Four in 10 politicians report low or very low mental wellbeing, and some are being driven out. What can be done to ease the burden?

It was a political bombshell, one that prompted shock and set off debate across much of Spain. But for the film director Pedro AlmodA3var, news that the prime minister, Pedro SA!nchez, was considering resigning last week did not come as a surprise.

aThereas no human being who can resist what the most resistant of our presidents has been suffering in recent years,a AlmodA3var wrote in an open letter, published days before SA!nchez announced he would stay on, depicting SA!nchez as a politician who had potentially reached his breaking point.

Songwriting courses are exploding in popularity, with everyone from Mark Ronson to Alicia Keys as teachers. On a retreat in north Wales, our folk music critic tries to write her first song

Imagine youave spent the past 20 years writing about songs but never had the chops to write one. This is my penance: sitting in a room in north Wales, with a tiny keyboard and notebook spidery with attempted lyrics, the only rhythm in my ears my rave-energy heartbeat, the only melody in my mind the lilting panic of my inner critic going: aArgh!a

Itas the final day of a four-day songwriting course at Literature Walesas 16th-century HQ, Ty Newydd Writing Centre, led by Brian Briggs of folk band Stornoway and Welsh poet and songwriter Paul Henry. Tonight, I have to perform an original song with two relative strangers, in front of people I didnat know four days earlier. This particular terror is the climax of a bigger endeavour on my part: to explore the growing popularity of songwriting courses, and to find out if they work.

(Warner Records)
The British superstar has said her new album is influenced by Britpop, rave culture and Primal Scream, but you could go mad trying to find the evidence

Earlier this year, Dua Lipa gave a lengthy magazine interview, the first salvo on the promotional trail for her third album. It wasnat very interesting a sheas smart enough to keep her private life and her opinions on anything contentious to herself in a world of over-sharing and constantly simmering online outrage a but there was one surprising detail. She said the album was aa psychedelic pop-infused tribute to UK rave culturea, influenced by Primal Scream, Massive Attack and the adonat give a fuck-nessa of Oasis and Blur.

That all sounds intriguing. It would clearly be a dramatic departure from the disco-house sound of 2020as Future Nostalgia, while feeling curiously of the moment: all those artists reached their peak three decades ago, and 90s revivalism appears to be having a moment. A hankering after the eraas pre-9/11 optimism and pre-smartphone straightforwardness has meant Britpop references suddenly seem to be everywhere, as a recent feature in this newspaper noted. Perhaps, by delving into some corners of the 90s where mainstream 2024 pop seldom goes, Dua Lipa has made an album as inadvertently zeitgeisty as its predecessor which rocketed her into popas superleague by providing a soundtrack to lockdown-era kitchen discos.

Money is always the elephant in the room, and can be even harder to talk about than sex a but we can all benefit from a frank conversation, says Annalisa Barbieri, kicking off our You be the judge money special

The one item you will never see in a currency exchange table is what money so often stands in for. It can take the place of things like love, thought, safety, attention or fairness. And the inverse is also true; you often donat need to spend a lot of money to make someone feel loved, or cared for. Ask any parent who has been the recipient of a homemade birthday card or present.

When I speak to divorce lawyers and mediators, they say that money is seldom overtly mentioned as a reason for the breakup. But itas there, hiding in the tales of neglect, control, secrecy, lack of attention, meanness. And it is money, of course, that is so often used at the end of a separation to settle scores, be it a breakdown in a relationship or after a death, and be it between spouses, siblings, friends or even a child and parent. Often all the perceived injustices of life lived up to that point come out. I could fill a column a week with letters I receive about wills and estates.

As humans enter what has been termed the athird space agea, itas private companies a not governments a leading the charge

If the 20th-century space race was about political power, this centuryas will be about money. But for those who dream of sending humans back to the moon and possibly Mars, itas an exciting time to be alive whether itas presidents or billionaires paying the fare.

Space flight is having a renaissance moment, bringing a fresh energy not seen since the days of the Apollo programme and, for the first time, with private companies rather than governments leading the charge.

Simon Chambersa film about his late uncle David makes for candid and compelling viewing. Along with one of Davidas former pupils, and a fan of his film, he talks care, contempt and infatuation

aIave always liked the company of older people,a says Julian Clary, still smoothly beautiful at 64. aI like the fact theyave lived a life they are often assumed not to have done.a He pauses. aWhat old people donat know about recreational sex,a he continues, cadence familiar as a cuckoo, ayou could write on the back of an incontinence pad.a

There are plenty of those knocking about in Much Ado About Dying, a documentary about Claryas old drama teacher. But David Gale a 86 when we first have the pleasure a does not put them to their intended use. They plug holes in the wall, drafts in the window. One becomes a tea cosy.

Sundayas Sounds from the Other City festival is a joyful celebration of Greater Manchesteras leftfield culture

On the first Sunday of May every year, Chapel Street, where central Manchester and Salford meet, comes alive with DIY art, music and spectacle at the Sounds from the Other City festival. It is a vibrant public celebration of the acommunity spirit and collaborative workinga which co-director Emma Thompson says sustains much alternative culture in the region.

aCollaboration is core to what we do, to Greater Manchester as a city,a Thompson says. aPeople come together, and it crosses genres and art forms. Sounds from the Other City wouldnat be turning 20 next year if it wasnat for that. The fees we offer arenat huge but people really get behind it, do it for the love of it.a

Although it is often hilarious, Clarksonas ever-compelling show is back with shocking and harrowing insights into the truth about British farming. Tissues at the ready!

Oh, to be in charge at Prime Video. Imagine spending $465m on a Lord of the Rings remake that hardly anyone appeared to actually enjoy, when it turns out that sticking a few cameras on a tractor while a famous curmudgeon tries to explain the impossibilities of farming in Britain today will give you the biggest show on the platform. That is, in the UK, at least. Weall have none of your explosive charismatic movie star Mr and Mrs Smith remakes, thank you very much. Weall take bickering with the local council about enforcement orders, novel methods of blackberry harvesting and the travails of breeding pigs at Diddly Squat farm instead.

Actually, hold that last thought, because I may still regret my emotional investment in the third season of Clarksonas Farm. The whole series begins with a warning, in fact. aEverything that could go wrong has gone wrong,a says Clarkson, gravely. Itas the council, itas the weather, itas the climate, itas the war in Ukraine. It doesnat rain for weeks. Then it doesnat stop raining. Things break, crops fail and animals have to go, in more ways than one. In among all that bucolic loveliness, this is a relentless and unforgiving grind.

As the climate crisis forces people to abandon their land in Rajasthan, a new industry has sprung up in the desert state, with thousands of gaily decorated vans setting off to sell ice-cream across the country

The parched villages of Gangapur in the desert state of Rajasthan have a new season in their calendar. Between November and February, car workshops along the townas dusty mile-long market open before sunrise, cylindrical stainless-steel food containers are put on display, and traders stock up on chocolate and strawberry syrups.

Come March, the villagers start preparing to migrate. In the workshops, thousands of vehicles are converted into vans for selling a variety of ice-cream, from plain condensed milk flavoured with cardamom to chocolate, vanilla and pistachio, while local farmers turned dessert makers have their old mini-trucks serviced in readiness for the drive to distant towns and cities, where they will sell the sweet treat for the next nine months.

Our system is full of loopholes and vulnerable to millionairesa and plutocratsa demands. Voters simply need clean, fair politics

Thereas a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors. Democracy is meaningless if a country isnat run at the behest of its people. But the rule is riddled with loopholes. Those who have done the most to keep them open are those who most loudly assert their patriotism. Noisy apatriotsa are always the first to sell us out to offshore capital.

Here are some of the tricks they use. One is the aunincorporated associationa. This refers to groups that donat have to open business bank accounts, file financial statements, register with any official body or even give themselves a name. Theyare as transparent as the Berlin Wall on a cloudy day. Astonishingly, these associations are a legal channel for campaign finance in the United Kingdom.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist. Join him for a Guardian Live online event on Wednesday 8 May at 8pm BST. He will be talking about his new book, The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism. Book tickets here

In history, as in romance, beginnings matter a so what we do now will be crucial in shaping the future

In these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War, as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued? Or, as I have found myself suggesting on occasion, is the world beginning to resemble the late 19th-century Europe of competing empires and great powers writ large?

Another way of trying to put our travails into historically comprehensible shape is to label them as an aage of a|a, with the words that follow suggesting either a parallel with or a sharp contrast to an earlier age. So the CNN foreign affairs guru Fareed Zakaria suggests in his latest book that we are in a new Age of Revolutions, meaning that we can learn something from the French, Industrial and American revolutions. Or is it rather The Age of the Strongman, as proposed by the Financial Times foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman? No, itas The Age of Unpeace, says Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, since aconnectivity causes conflicta.

The policy has always been a sordid theatre of cruelty, and it is unravelling in ways that were entirely predictable

Handcuffed and surrounded, faces pixelated for the video as if they were dangerous criminals, one by one they were bundled into vans. Doors slammed. Keys clicked in locks. The crude political message from this disturbing eve of election video, showing men and women being rounded up for deportation to Rwanda, couldnat have been clearer a despite Whitehall rules precluding partisan activities so close to polling day.

But hey, whatas a row over election purdah, given the amount of souls sold to get this far? All that matters to this government now is getting someone on a plane to Kigali in front of the TV cameras, a tunnel vision that has so far spectacularly failed to woo back lost voters, while costing the country years of parliamentary and legal wrangling, roughly half a billion pounds, and now yet another rift with friends and allies.