Bereft of any big ideas, or indeed policies, the PM is in his happy place: a never-ending parliamentary procedural process

Have his enemies done it? Have the rebels managed to find a thermal exhaust port in the Death Starmer that would enable them finally to destroy it? No, would seem to be the answer after yet another morning of increasingly unwatchable procedural drama for the prime minister.

You know what, it’s such a shame procedural rows aren’t a path to growth. The UK would be a global economy unicorn by now. Still, here we go again for another trip down committee corridor, as the displacement activists of the British political system mine further nitty-gritty on how a sex offender’s best pal was accidentally-on-purpose appointed ambassador to the US. If we keep digging, we’re totally going to strike gold and be able to pay for all the infrastructure upgrades and housing and incentives to capital investment that are the only way out of our decline spiral, to say nothing of the defence boosting urgently required. And I’m barely kidding. There’s probably genuinely more chance of those happening via an orgy of recriminatory committee hearings than via the policies of Keir Starmer and his chancellor. If we stuck the prime minister on the psychoanalyst’s couch, I think they’d find he subconsciously provokes these endlessly consuming process crises. It’s certainly more his happy place than big ideas.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

UK artist Linett Kamala was astonished to see a maypole in a Jamaican hamlet – a colonial relic, but one bringing joy. So she reinvented the tradition by ditching English folk tunes and adding bass bins, LED lights and pounding beats

In a community centre in London, a ping pong table, a treadmill and a row of computers hug the edges of the room. It all feels familiar, apart from the towering green structure with dangling multicoloured ribbons: a maypole, and we’re here to dance around it. Our group of six circle it and get ready, but instead of traditional English folk music (“And on that tree there was a limb, And on that limb there was a branch …”), it’s dancehall, cranked up loud.

This is a session courtesy of British-Jamaican DJ, artist and educator, Linett Kamala. She made her name as one of the first female DJs at Notting Hill carnival in 1985 at just 15 years old, and is now on the event’s board; as Lin Kam Art, Kamala has dedicated much of her life to music, education, community work and art.

A cottage industry of women are selling courses aligned with a conservative movement that claims feminism is the source of women’s discontent

A thirtysomething woman with the easy smile of your favorite neighbor sits in her earth-tone living room, natural light washing over a gray couch so long it could easily fit four children. The woman speaks of a friend, a married mother, who was frustrated that she had to constantly remind her germophile husband to wash his hands. Hearing this, the woman cautioned her friend: “I think it would be better for your entire family to get the black plague and die … than for you to continue treating your husband like a toddler by reminding him to wash his hands.”

Welcome to Wife School, a video masterclass led by Tilly Dillehay, a 38-year-old Baptist writer, podcaster and pastor’s wife who teaches women how to “become the kind of woman who inspires a godly leader”. That means molding them into the wives she says that husbands want: smiling, attentive and submissive, women who know not to nag – even if it means risking the bubonic plague.

US president has all but declared war on nature but that will not stop Charles quietly pressing his case during state visit

Of the many clashes in worldview between King Charles III and Donald Trump, the greatest is on an issue the White House has sought to silence: the future of the planet.

For more than 50 years, as the Prince of Wales, the environmentally minded Charles spoke out often, addressing UN summits and closed gatherings alike, to urge better guardianship of nature and strong action on the climate.

Two world records were broken in the Adidas super shoes last weekend and the public can soon get their hands on a limited release. Our writer took a pair for a spin

• Bread and honey for breakfast and 150 miles a week training: secrets of Sawe’s world record
  

They’ve been billed as “humanity’s fastest shoe”, the cutting edge of trainer technology, lighter and bouncier than anything that’s gone before. Sabastian Sawe was wearing them when he became the first person to run an official marathon in less than two hours in London on Sunday, as was Tigst Assefa when she beat the women-only marathon record on the same day.

But could the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 help me – a lapsed runner of questionable skill – get my running mojo back? I was sceptical. My trusty New Balance trainers have seen me through a number of long-distance runs, and of the many reasons why I increasingly found running a slog, footwear didn’t feature highly on the list.

Though solar was initially incorrectly blamed for crisis, renewables have helped insulate Spain from gas price rises caused by war in Middle East

One year ago today, all of Spain, and much of Portugal, suffered through a blackout of unprecedented scale and duration. In mere seconds, a cascading sequence of events burst through the grid and created Europe’s first “system black” event in recent memory.

Traffic signals failed, mobile networks stopped working entirely, petrol stations could not pump fuel and supermarkets could not process payments. Madrid’s metro came to a halt and people had to be pulled out of carriages. “People were stunned because this had never happened in Spain,” Carlos Condori, a 19-year-old construction sector worker, told AFP at the time. “There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work.”

Vote goes prime minister’s way but some Labour MPs accuse him of creating perception of ‘cover-up’

Keir Starmer has seen off an opposition attempt to refer him to a standards committee over Peter Mandelson’s appointment, after Downing Street deployed its full weight to force Labour MPs to shore up the prime minister.

However, the Labour leader bore the brunt of anger from some of his own backbenchers who accused him of creating a situation where they would be perceived as being complicit in “a cover-up”.

US president claims Friedrich Merz ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ after German leader criticised US strategy in Iran

• US is being ‘humiliated’ by Iran’s leadership, says Friedrich Merz

• Hezbollah drone strikes target Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon

Saudi Arabia is to host a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Jeddah later today, in what will be first in-person meeting of Gulf leaders since their states became dragged into the war.

A Gulf official told the Reuters news agency that the meeting aimed to craft a response to the thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks Gulf states have faced since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on 28 February.

US president has accused organisation of ‘ripping off the rest of the world’ by inflating oil prices

The United Arab Emirates has quit the Opec oil cartel after 60 years of membership, in a heavy blow to the group and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, as global energy markets contend with the biggest supply crisis in history.

The shock loss of the UAE, Opec’s third-largest oil producer, is expected to weaken the group, which for decades has worked together to use its collective oil production to influence global oil market prices.

Protester says he migrated from Malaysia as a child and describes home secretary’s immigration policies as cruel

• UK politics live – latest updates

A protester who heckled Shabana Mahmood said he came to the UK as a child from Malaysia, describing the home secretary’s claim that he was a “white liberal” as “laughable”.

Joe, 32, who did not wish to give his last name, migrated from Malaysia at the age of four with his family. He said the home secretary’s proposed immigration rule changes would have left him, and thousands of children like him, in limbo.