Big hitters such as Miliband, Mahmood and Streeting are seen as in line for the top jobs; others face an abrupt end to their ministerial careers
By mid-July, as now seems almost inevitable, we will have a new prime minister in Andy Burnham. He will, of course, then pick his own cabinet. So who will – and won’t – make it to the top table of the former Greater Manchester mayor?
Measures to include restrictions on ‘safe’ social media apps, with some fearing banning some platforms and not others will lead to legal challenges
Teenagers under the age of 16 are to be banned from accessing “high-risk” social media apps while safer platforms will be subjected to restrictions, under a sweeping government crackdown.
Technology secretary Liz Kendall says she is ‘very concerned’ about role of social media but will not be ‘bullied off’ X
The government is considering fresh action to halt the spread of misinformation during public crises, Liz Kendall has said, insisting she will not be “bullied off” Elon Musk’s X.
The technology secretary was speaking after rioting broke out in Southampton over the police response to the fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak, a case about which Musk has repeatedly posted.
Liz Kendall tries to limit fallout from vetting scandal as PM prepares for Commons showdown
Keir Starmer did not gamble with national security by appointing Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, a cabinet minister has said, as the government tried to limit fallout from the scandal.
With the prime minister preparing for a high-stakes Commons showdown on Monday, Liz Kendall said Starmer should not lose his job over last week’s revelations because he had “made the right calls” on the big issues facing the country.
Liz Kendall announces £1bn funding to help design large-scale quantum computers for scientists, researchers, public sector and business
The UK will not let quantum computing talent slip through its fingers and must learn lessons from US dominance of the AI race, the technology secretary has said, as the government announced a £1bn quantum funding pledge.
Liz Kendall said the government hoped to retain homegrown quantum startups, engineers and researchers rather than lose them to competing countries, with the US stealing a march on its western rivals in AI.
Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand
Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.
Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.
Liz Kendall to launch consultation next week that will also explore alternatives such as curbs on infinite scrolling
Ministers will take another step towards banning social media for under-16s next week as they launch a consultation on the policy, with government insiders increasingly certain Keir Starmer will back the idea.
Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, will publish the terms of reference for the consultation, which is expected to explore options including an age limit and less hardline action such as curbs on infinite scrolling.
The government was warned by its lawyers that such a move could be illegal as it pledges an additional £63m to help councils with reorganisation
In his Q&A with journalists, Keir Starmer was also asked to respond to a report by the BBC’s James Landale saying he is looking at plans to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by the end of this parliament. In the past Starmer has just said that he would like to do this at some point in the next parliament.
In his reply, Starmer said that at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend he was arguing that the UK, and Europe as a whole, needs to “step up”.
We want a just and lasting peace, but that will not extinguish the Russian threat, and we need to be alert to that, because that’s going to affect every single person in this room, every single person in this country, so we need to step up.
That means, on defence spending, we need to go faster.
Nigel Farage, speaking at his press conference in Scotland, has said that “of course” he has had conversations with Robert Jenrick, who was sacked by Kemi Badenoch this morning for planning to defect.
UPDATE:Farage said:
I have had conversations with a number of very senior conservatives over the course of the last week, the last month. A lot of them realise that for all the talk on 8 May the Conservative Party will cease to be a national party. They will be obliterated in Scotland, Wales, the red wall councils.
As far as Mr Jenrick is concerned, of course I have talked to Robert Jenrick. Was I on the verge of signing him up? No. But we have had conversations.
This morning I removed the Conservative whip from Robert Jenrick after dismissing him from the shadow cabinet.
I was very sorry to be presented with clear, irrefutable evidence, not just that he was preparing to defect, but he was planning to so in the most damaging way to the Conservative party and shadow cabinet colleagues.
Big tech companies cannot be trusted. It is not enough that they remove harm when they find it – the law must make their systems prevent harm
On X, a woman posts a photo in a sari, and within minutes, various users are underneath the post tagging Grok to strip her down to a bikini. It is a shocking violation of privacy, but now a familiar and commonplace practice. Between June 2025 and January 2026, I documented 565 instances of users requesting Grok to create nonconsensual intimate imagery. Of these, 389 were requested in just one day.
Last Friday, after a backlash against the platform’s ability to create such nonconsensual sexual images, X announced that Grok’s AI image generation feature would only be available to subscribers. Reports suggest that the bot now no longer responds to prompts to generate images of women in bikinis (although apparently will still do so for requests about men).
Nana Nwachukwu is an AI governance expert and a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin
As head of the editorial page, he encouraged The Tribune’s support of Barack Obama, resulting in the paper’s first endorsement of a Democrat running for the White House.
As technology advances, so does the problems it causes. Ministers as well as regulators need to be tough and proactive
Awareness of the harm caused by online pornography is rising. Last month, the government bowed to pressure from campaigners and pledged to make depictions of strangulation illegal. Research showing that a majority of children have viewed this kind of material is extremely disturbing, all the more so given evidence that viewing “choking” makes people – mostly men – more likely to do it in real life. This week, the Guardian examined the distressing effects of deepfake pornography in schools, and interviewed the women behind the successful campaign to criminalise the nonconsensual creation of deepfake intimate images.
Ofcom’s announcement that it has issued a £1m fine to a Belize-based pornography company, AVS Group, thus seems timely. Oliver Griffiths, the regulator’s director of online safety, referred on BBC radio to a “tide turning” as enforcement powers in the Online Safety Act take effect. The age-verification checks on AVS’s websites, introduced to protect children, are judged not to be effective enough. If the company does not pay up, Mr Griffiths said that he would move to block the site.
Liz Kendall and Jo Stevens react after about 20 people claim they either witnessed or were victims of Reform leader’s abusive behaviour
Cabinet ministers have described detailed and multiple allegations of teenage racism by Nigel Farage as “repulsive” and doubled down on the prime minister’s call for him to address the claims.
Liz Kendall, the secretary for science and innovation and technology, said she was appalled by the descriptions reported by the Guardian.
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