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Metropolitan police
London mayor Sadiq Khan blocks £50m Met police deal with Palantir
Robert Booth
Thu 21 May 2026 13.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 13.45 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/21/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-blocks-met-police-deal-with-palantir

A £50m Met police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir has been blocked by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan , with City Hall citing a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules.

Scotland Yard had been in talks, revealed by the Guardian last month, to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations. But Khan intervened on Thursday to stop the flagship contract, which would have been Palantir’s largest yet in British policing.

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac), which must approve contracts of this size, withheld approval, saying Scotland Yard had seriously engaged with only one potential supplier, Palantir . Khan’s office also said the Met risked becoming locked into Palantir’s technology and that the proposed deal had not “ensured or demonstrated value for money”.

His spokesperson said Londoners only wanted to see public money being paid to companies that “share the values of our city”.

There does not appear to be any block on Palantir bidding for a similar future contract and Mopac said it wanted to work with the Met on a “new procurement at pace”.

There is rising public and political concern about Palantir’s widening reach in UK public services, where it has more than £600m in contracts with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Financial Conduct Authority and several smaller police forces. The US company was co-founded by the Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel and also serves the Israeli military and Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown operations.

It worked with Peter Mandelson’s lobbying company, Global Counsel, until its collapse, and Mandelson took the prime minister, Keir Starmer, on a trip to Palantir’s Washington DC showroom. Last month its chief executive, Alex Karp, published a mini-manifesto extolling the benefits of US power and implying some cultures were inferior to others, in what one MP called “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

A company’s ethics cannot be taken into account during public procurement processes but the mayor’s spokesperson said in a statement that Khan would raise the question of whether this should be changed with the government.

City Hall’s reasons for blocking the two-year contract to use Palantir’s AI to automate intelligence analysis included Scotland Yard’s failure to obtain Mopac’s approval for its procurement strategy, which meant it was not possible to determine if the market had been tested to ensure value for money.

In a letter to the Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, Khan’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, said: “I have not been provided with any acceptable explanation for this failure, which I regard as a clear and serious breach of the applicable procedural requirements.” She said the process had created “legal and reputation risks” to Scotland Yard and the mayor. She also highlighted how the Met had originally costed the contract at £15m-£25m a year and that the proposed deal was at the top of that range.

A recent Met police trial of Palantir’s AI to monitor staff behaviour in an attempt to root out corrupt and failing officers was carried out under a contract that was awarded directly, without advertisement or open competition, Mopac found. The value of the contract was marginally below the threshold required for City Hall’s approval.

Scotland Yard last month heralded the success of the trial, saying it resulted in hundreds of officers being investigated for misdemeanours, including making money by abusing the computerised roster system, falsely claiming they were in the office, and failing to declare they were Freemasons.

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions calling on ministers to break contracts with Palantir, including its £330m deal to help operate a patient and medical data platform for NHS England. MPs have attacked the deal as “dreadful” and “shameful”, and the government has admitted it is “no fan” of the US company’s politics.

Palantir’s UK chief executive, Louis Mosley , has been seeking to rebut criticism of the company, in what has become a highly public PR fight. He claims its NHS system has helped deliver 110,000 additional operations and a significant fall in discharge delays.

Other police forces using Palantir AI to assist investigations have described it as transformative, allowing them to rapidly process mountains of evidence on mobile phones, including translations from foreign languages. Bedfordshire police credited the system with helping bring down an organised crime gang that looted £800,000 from cash machines.

Khan’s move will be a blow to the Labour government’s efforts to use AI to improve policing. In January, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, called for police to “ramp up use of AI” and to adopt the technology “at pace and scale”. A strategy for the future of policing includes creating a national centre, described by some as “ Police.AI ”, and a £115m investment to “create a platform for identifying, testing and then scaling AI technology”.

Scotland Yard and Palantir were approached for comment.

Film
Mick Jagger to play Josh O’Connor’s father in new film from Alice Rohrwacher
Andrew Pulver
Thu 21 May 2026 12.29 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 12.30 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/21/mick-jagger-josh-oconnor-father-new-film-alice-rohrwacher-three-incestuous-sisters

Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger is playing a lighthouse keeper in the new film from Happy as Lazzaro director Alice Rohrwacher , which is currently filming on the Italian island of Stromboli.

According to reports in the Italian media , Jagger was photographed on arrival in Stromboli after flying in by helicopter to take a role in Three Incestuous Sisters, Rohrwacher’s adaptation of the 2005 “visual novel” by The Time Traveler’s Wife author Audrey Niffenegger.

Rohrwacher, who received considerable acclaim for Happy as Lazzaro, which won best screenplay at Cannes in 2018, and its 2023 followup La Chimera , which starred Josh O’Connor as a looter of ancient artefacts, is making her English-language debut with Three Incestuous Sisters, Niffenegger’s self-created fairytale about three sisters who fall in love with a lighthouse keeper’s son.

Jagger joins the previously announced cast of Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Saoirse Ronan and O’Connor; the latter is playing his character’s son. The musician has appeared sporadically in feature films over the years, including lead roles in Performance and Ned Kelly (both released in 1970), and smaller roles in 1992 sci-fi yarn Freejack, 1997 play adaptation Bent, and 2001 drama The Man from Elysian Fields . Jagger has also been active as a producer, with projects including second world war codebreaker drama Enigma , all-female comedy remake The Women, and James Brown biopic Get on Up .

Colombia
Colombia’s climate crossroads: Trumpism casts shadow over presidential battle
Jonathan Watts
Thu 21 May 2026 12.41 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 13.45 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/colombia-climate-crossroads-trumpism-casts-shadow-presidential-election

S everal hours after dark in a quiet Caribbean neighbourhood, a cluster of environmental activists gather on plastic chairs between a mango tree and a courtyard wall emblazoned with the words “Colombia, respira!” (Breathe, Colombia).

So many people have turned up that some have to stand. That is because tonight’s speaker is Susana Muhamad , one of the most admired socio-environmental campaigners in the world, and this is a moment of profound historical significance.

This month’s presidential election will decide whether Colombia remains a global leader on the climate and exemplar of “popular environmentalism”, or whether it switches to the side of fracking, mining and other forms of fossil fuel extractivism. In other words, whether it will change from green to grey.

The movement is braced for a struggle. President Gustavo Petro , of Pacto Historico, is constitutionally barred from serving a consecutive second term, so the party has selected Iván Cepeda to run for president and continue his policies. The far-right candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, and the centre-right candidate, Paloma Valencia, are both enthusiastic about reopening the oil spigot and fracking. US interference is a big concern, with Donald Trump, talking of military intervention in Colombia.

Muhamad, a former environment minister, tells the attenders: “We must win in the first round because the future of Colombia will be decided here, in this very complicated international context. If we don’t win, our country will be another in Latin America aligned with Donald Trump. We have to win. Otherwise, everything we’re talking about will be completely suspended for four years. Goodbye.”

Muhamad speaks of the progress Colombia has made in declaring its part of the Amazon rainforest a fossil fuel-free zone, how Petro has tried to curtail mining, protect people from pollution and realise the country’s potential as a “great power for life”.

She contrasts this to what is happening in Bolivia, where the pro-business government has sold off tracts of the Junín River basin to a lithium mining company, and to Ecuador, where the far-right president, Daniel Noboa, is trying to weaken Indigenous land defenders and open up protected lands for mineral exploitation and to allow a US military base on the Galápagos Islands.

Colombia plays an outsized role in the push for climate justice. In recent years, Muhamad has become a familiar face on the international stage, notably as a leading advocate for the transition away from fossil fuels at the Cop29 climate conference in Dubai, and then as president of the biodiversity Cop16 in Cali, Colombia.

Muhamad is by no means a lone voice for the environment in the Pacto Historico government. Francia Márquez, the vice-president of Colombia, won the Goldman environmental prize for her campaign to halt illegal goldmining in her ancestral community of La Toma. The environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, has just co-chaired the world’s first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, involving an alliance of countries that want to accelerate the energy transition rather than be held back by the consensus-based UN system and the vetoes of big oil producers.

Petro demonstrated his commitment at that conference in Santa Marta with a call for Colombia to set an example of how to mobilise the population to overcome the “suicidal” economics and “fascistic” politics of the fossil fuel industry.

The leadership demonstrated by Petro’s government has moved the phaseout of oil, gas and coal from the margins into the centre of global diplomacy, according to Tzeporah Berman, the founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative . As a result, she said, this month’s presidential ballot will make international waves. “The implications of this election reach far beyond Colombia. At a moment of escalating climate disasters and geopolitical instability, the world is watching whether this leadership continues, or whether political pressure from the fossil fuel industry succeeds in pushing countries backward.”

Environmentalists in Colombia believe the national commitment draws its force from grassroots activists. Colombia is one of the world’s deadliest countries for environmental defenders. As Juan David Amaya, a 19-year-old climate activist and founder of the pan-Latin American youth organisation Life of Pachamama , put it, the main difference between activists in Colombia and those in Europe is that “there, they don’t kill you”.

After a campaign against oil palm plantations in his home region of San Carlos de Guaroa, Amaya has received numerous death threats. “In Colombia, doing this is an act of rebellion born from hope, born from love. But it also comes at a very high cost,” he said.

“Colombia has made significant progress over the last four years in political discourse and action, which has mobilised many governments around the world. Today, governments like Panama, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia stand out for their ambition, their political leadership, and once again for telling the world: we must take action.”

Paula Andrea Hernández, a Pacto Historico campaign manager, says: “We call it popular environmentalism because it comes from peasants and fishermen. We have suffered severe extractivism, often arm in arm with illegal militias, for so long that people realise the fight for territory and environment needs to be about power.”

Domestically, climate and environment are rarely mentioned directly in campaign debates but shape the context of hot-button issues such as security and health: drug trafficking often overlaps with illegal mining and forest clearance, and shortcomings in medical provision are shown up by water contamination, rising temperatures and floods.

“The environment has become a central issue,” observed Leon Valencia, a political analyst. It is not straightforwardly binary: “There are sectors on the left that favour oil exploitation, and sectors on the right that defend conservation and green markets. What both sides have agreed upon is that the relationship with nature has become a strong political identity … Colombia is experiencing a progressive environmentalisation of public opinion.”

Some campaigners complain that the Petro government’s rhetoric is not always matched by actions. Deforestation of the Amazon has slowed since the Pacto Historico came to power but it continues and illegal gold mining is widespread. Many parts of Colombia are virtually ungovernable because they are controlled by armed groups.

There has been political opposition in Bogotá, the world’s third highest capital city, where the business lobby in Congress has blocked the government’s most ambitious moves to restrict mining. Rightwing commentators said Colombia’s first leftwing government would be an economic disaster, especially when Petro promised to replace fossil fuels with avocados. In fact, GDP growth has remained positive for the past four years.

Julia Miranda, a lower house deputy from the New Liberal party and an advocate for nature, insisted the Petro administration had proved ineffective domestically despite talk in the international arena of Colombian environmental leadership. “It is a false discourse – mere rhetoric while their environmental policies have been a failure,” she said.

Miranda supports Valencia, but on the question of phasing out fossil fuels she sees room for compromise. “Colombia needs to work with complete seriousness and consistency on the energy transition, but in the meantime we need to use our resources, for example gas.”

That would be a setback for the transition and could mean Colombia pulls out of or weakens its commitment to the global “coalition of the willing” that it helped to form in Santa Marta last month. But those goals are still to be fought for.

With 10 days until the election on 31 May, the outcome remains unclear. Polls suggest Cepeda , Petro’s successor as the Pacto Historico candidate, will lead in the first round but fall short of the 50% needed for an outright victory. If there is a runoff, either one of his two rightwing challengers would be favourite.

“That would be an abysmal setback” said Renzo García, a biologist and congressman. “A victory by Paloma Valencia or Abelardo de la Espriella would mark a return to an extractivist model, where we hand the country over to the economic interests of the world’s elites and serve as a pantry for minerals, oil and agribusiness without taking into account the rights of nature.”

Sport
These are the questions I would ask the Enhanced Games … if they would let me
Sean Ingle
Tue 5 May 2026 09.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 13.57 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/may/05/enhanced-games-doping-performance-enhancing-drugs-questions

T he plan to fly to Las Vegas to cover what the Enhanced Games claims is the “next frontier of human performance” ended with a short email sent at 7.02pm on Friday. “After careful consideration, we are unable to approve your media credential request for this year’s event,” it said. “Due to the high volume of applications and limited media capacity, we could not accommodate all requests … thank you again for your interest and understanding.”

Admittedly, the rejection didn’t come entirely out of the blue. Unlike most sports organisations, the Enhanced Games had a pre-screening process which led to a nice PR man calling me a few days beforehand. His opening gambit? To point out the Guardian’s negativity towards the event ( “Grotesque” – Barney Ronay ; “Showcasing so much of the wrongness of the age” – Marina Hyde; “Competitors run the risk of their libido being ‘killed off’, leading experts have warned ” – Sean Ingle).

Why, he then asked, weren’t we criticising others in the longevity space? Er, because they aren’t running an event dubbed the Steroid Olympics?

But after that bumpy start, our conversation was cordial. The Guardian, I explained, wanted to do a proper reporting job on the event on 24 May, including speaking to the athletes, billionaire backers, and scientists involved. The PR man said he would speak to the organisers. Then came the email.

Of course, many in sport dismiss the whole idea of the Enhanced Games, which allows athletes to juice to the gills and also offers them huge amounts of cash to compete including six-figure salaries, $250,000 (£185,000) to win a race, and $1m (£740,000) to break the world record, out of hand.

But a journalist’s instinct is to go where the action is, to hear the athletes’ stories, to ask the difficult questions. Most of all, I wanted to discover in person how much an organisation that violates so many of the values of traditional sport can really be trusted.

The first question I would have asked? What about the basics? Are the tracks legal, the timing devices reputable, the officials pulled off the streets? And will there be any other funny business? In 2016 Justin Gatlin ran the 100m in 9.45sec on the Japanese TV show Kasupe! But nobody claimed he had broken Usain Bolt’s world record, because he was aided by a 20mph tailwind from a giant fan.

Question two. You claim that the athletes are leaving “the old system behind for a new era of honesty and science”. But do you really believe that steroids, human growth hormone and EPO are safe? I ask because I spoke to Prof Ian Broadley and his colleague Martin Chandler, from the University of Birmingham, who specialise in performance-enhancing drug research. They told me claims banned drugs can be made safer if taken under medical supervision are “incorrect and misleading” .

They added: “We are also now starting to see some serious long-term effects from steroid use in the research. Things like reproductive function or libido just being killed off with no real clear understanding of why.”

Question three. Can athletes sue the Enhanced Games? This is not a purely theoretical question. In 2005 the Guardian reported that 190 former East German athletes had launched a case against the German pharmaceutical company Jenapharm and said that steroids had caused infertility among women, embarrassing hair growth, breast cancer, heart problems and testicular cancer. What is to stop the current crop doing the same in 20 years’ time?

Question four, to the athletes. Many of you have stressed the benefits of taking banned drugs. But have you experienced any side-effects?

Question five. I spoke to one former international athlete, who said you are a dangerous influence on kids because they would be attempting to follow in your footsteps. What is your response?

Question six, to Ben Proud. What were you thinking when the first needle went into your vein, and you went from clean athlete to pariah? And while we are here, one for Sam Quek, who won hockey gold for Team GB at Rio 2016 and is now an Enhanced Games commentator: was the TV fee worth it?

Question seven. Will there be drug testing at the Enhanced Games? It sounds like a stupid question. But you say only FDA-approved substances are permitted, so what happens to those who cheat your rules?

Question eight. The Enhanced Games also claims that “the future of the human body has arrived – faster, stronger, and enhanced”. But your swimmers will also be wearing banned supersuits, which decrease drag and increase buoyancy and studies suggest improved performance by 1.5% to 3.5%. So how much of it is the body? And how much is the suit?

Question nine. You say your “new model could change sport forever”. But we have already seen what happens when an Enhanced Games athlete breaks a world record … nothing. Last year Kristian Gkolomeev swam the world’s fastest 50m freestyle time, aided by drugs and a supersuit, and no one batted an eyelid.

Finally, what next? Enhanced Games organisers have suggested the event could become like Formula One for the biotech industry, with drug companies pumping top athletes full of their latest drugs. Do you really believe that?

Personally, I believe such talk is nonsense. But I don’t dismiss the Enhanced Games out of hand. I spoke to one person in the health-tech space, who has dealt with its founders, and he pointed out they are smart people and billionaires who tend to get what they want. While they won’t change sport much, they will claim something that has infinitely more value to them: a bigger chunk of the growing anti-ageing market.

In the future, don’t be surprised if you see adverts for peptides with names that sound like distant planets: CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, Thymosin Alpha-1, TB-4, GHRP-2/6, Kisspeptin-10, Semax and Selank. Because we now live in a world that isn’t just about faster, stronger, higher, but living longer too. And that is something the Enhanced Games knows better than most.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

Gaza flotilla
Penny Wong condemns Israeli minister over ‘shocking and unacceptable’ treatment of flotilla activists
Josh Butler
Thu 21 May 2026 01.39 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 12.41 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/penny-wong-condemns-israeli-minister-over-shocking-and-unacceptable-treatment-of-flotilla-activists-ntwnfb

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has condemned the actions of a far-right Israeli minister who posted a video of himself abusing bound activists captured while trying to sail an aid flotilla to Gaza.

Wong joined international condemnation of the footage , which shows Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, waving an Israeli flag and mocking and taunting the detainees.

Among the flotilla detainees were 11 Australian activists who were taken into custody by Israeli forces off the coast of Cyprus earlier this week. It was not known if they were present in Ben-Gvir’s video.

Among the Australians is Zack Schofield, whose mother, Joanne Jaworowski, said on Thursday that Zack had committed to a hunger strike.

“That makes their release even more urgent,” she said. “This vile conduct toward my son and all the unarmed humanitarian aid workers is unbearable to watch.”

In a statement, Wong said: “The images we have seen are shocking and unacceptable.”

“We condemn the actions of Israeli minister Ben-Gvir – who Australia has sanctioned – and the degrading actions of Israeli authorities towards those detained,” Wong said on Thursday.

“I have asked Australia’s ambassador to Israel to make representations to Israel, reiterating our call for the release of the detained Australians and for Israel to ensure no ill treatment of any detainees and to act in line with international obligations.”

In a post on social media, Wong added: “I have also directed Dfat [the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] to call in Israel’s ambassador to Australia [Hillel Newman] to reinforce this message.”

In the video, dozens of men and women are seen kneeling in rows, with their foreheads to the ground and their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

Ben-Gvir waved an Israeli flag and shouted “welcome to Israel, we are the landlords”.

“I tell prime minister Netanhyahu give them to me for much more time. Give them to us for the terrorists’ prisons,” the minister said.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry “condemned … Ben-Gvir for his humiliating and disgraceful treatment of a group of overseas anti-Israel activists who had been detained in Israel after attempting to break the blockade”.

“Nothing can excuse the appalling behaviour,” the ECAJ president, Daniel Aghion, said.

He argued the group had been engaged in “provocative action that would benefit Hamas” but said that did “not in any way justify their mistreatment”.

The Jewish Council of Australia said Australia should go further than sanctions against Ben-Gvir – imposed in 2025 for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank – and impose country-level sanctions and expel Israel’s ambassador.

Bart Shteinman, the council’s executive officer, said the footage was “a stomach-turning display of cruelty that flies in the face of human dignity”.

“Forcing humanitarian volunteers onto their knees while bound and subjected to psychological torment is completely indefensible,” Shteinman said.

“We stand in solidarity with these courageous activists, including Jewish Australian Annie Mokotow, who risked their safety to challenge the illegal maritime blockade and highlight the horrific deprivation in Gaza .” On Thursday morning, the head of the flotilla’s Australian delegation, Simon Jones, called on the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to join that international condemnation.

Jones said the government could send Newman home. “Our reaction to watching healthy, bright, brave, peaceful humanitarians being harmed in real time pales beside our concern for what occurs off camera,” he said.

Rights group Adalah has reported “systemic violations of due process and widespread physical and psychological abuse by Israeli authorities”.

Adalah reported dozens of people with suspected broken ribs , while three activists were taken to hospital before being released.

The group alleged women had hijabs ripped off, and there was “extreme violence” on flotilla vessels and during the transfer to port, as well as sexual harassment and humiliation.

A lawyer for the Australians, Bernadette Zaydan, said their families were still in the dark about their loved ones’ welfare and any potential injuries. The activists were due to appear before a tribunal.

The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, described Ben-Gvir’s behaviour as “despicable” and said the minister had “betrayed the dignity of his nation” after the video was published on his social media account with the caption: “Welcome to Israel.”

The Israeli ambassador to the US claimed Ben-Gvir’s “reckless grandstanding” was not representative of government policy.

“Ben-Gvir’s antics take a sledgehammer to our diplomatic efforts while Israel’s enemies gleefully jump on every unfortunate nonsense to discredit and demonise,” ambassador Yechiel Leiter said.

The detained Australians are academics, doctors, students, activists and film-makers, including Dr Bianca Pullman-Webb, Neve O’Connor, Violet Coco, Gemma O’Toole, Sam Woripa Watson, Zack Schofield, Helen O’Sullivan, Juliet Lamont, Isla Lamont and Surya McEwan and Mokotow.

On Tuesday, four of their parents and loved ones held a press conference in Melbourne where O’Toole’s mother, Suzie O’Toole, said she was “terrified” for the 23-year-old’s wellbeing.

The Australian government was seeking to meet the detainees.

Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, raised concerns about Israel’s actions. He said that while a naval blockade was a legitimate naval warfare act during an armed conflict, there was “no legal basis under international law” for Israel to enforce a blockade off the coast of Cyprus.

He said this was because there was no international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, despite Israel’s position that a blockade was legitimate due to the threat posed by Hamas.

“The IDF conduct is an example of extraterritorial law enforcement of Israel’s blockade within the maritime zone of Cyprus or on the high seas, which is a violation of the freedom of navigation which the vessels that make up the Global Sumud Flotilla enjoy,” Rothwell said.

“For Australia, interference with the freedom of navigation has been a constant concern in the South China Sea, and more recently in the Strait of Hormuz. It should likewise be a cause for concern in the Mediterranean.”

Rothwell noted that, under international law, an exception to a blockade exists for the provision of humanitarian aid to the civilian population of the blockaded state.

Australian flotilla spokesperson Subhi Awad pushed back at Israel’s claim that the flotilla was not intending to deliver aid to Gaza.

“The flotilla did obtain, load and carry aid. We recorded ourselves doing so,” he said.

Aston Villa
Victorious Villa party hard in Istanbul after ending 30-year trophy wait
Ben Fisher
Thu 21 May 2026 13.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 13.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/21/aston-villa-party-hard-istanbul-ending-30-year-trophy-wait-europa-league-final

I t was 1.43am in Istanbul when Aston Villa’s players began to make tracks for their hotel, over the road from the rubber ring-like Besiktas Park. Matty Cash walked into a windowless basement at the stadium, bottle of Efes in hand, and toasted a Europa League victory that will be etched in history, the club’s first trophy in three decades. “The king set the gameplan out for us,” he said of Unai Emery, who, if he was not there already, now has a god-like status among the fans.

Moments earlier, John McGinn joked that Prince William, who joined the players for beers amid the dressing-room celebrations, might “get his credit card out” and stump up for a free bar. Villa’s billionaire co-owners, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, were also in attendance, the former delighted that Emery had delivered on his promise to put another piece of silverware in a trophy cabinet that had been gathering dust. “It means a lot,” Sawiris said, wearing a Villa scarf. “I can’t express myself with words. Amazing. Very special. An eight-year ride and we saw today what hard work can do with Unai’s effort and the whole team.” Asked what’s next, there came a reminder of Villa’s ambition. “The sky’s the limit,” he replied.

Emery had spent the previous three and a half years walking past the European Cup, lifted by Dennis Mortimer in 1982, that sits round the corner from his office at the club’s Bodymoor Heath training base. Nigel Spink, one of the heroes in Rotterdam and among the former players present for Wednesday’s final, had said it was about time that the trophy moved along the mantelpiece. Villa triumphed in style against Freiburg, outclassing the Bundesliga side, and, after flying back on Thursday morning, will spend the afternoon celebrating Emery’s fifth Europa League on an open-top bus parade. Their Istanbul party went on until after 7am, Emery and McGinn giving speeches and William there with little security.

Villa’s players were never going to go quietly. Morgan Rogers, scorer of his side’s third goal in the final, headed for the team bus wearing ski goggles, following a trail of teammates on a kind of conga as they exited the bowels of the ground. Jadon Sancho had a speaker blaring music, Leon Bailey, Amadou Onana, Lamare Bogarde and Ian Maatsen not far behind him. Villa’s players were keen to savour the occasion.

For Ollie Watkins, who has hit double figures for Villa for a sixth straight season, a first winner’s medal. Finally, tangible reward after a couple of near misses for club and country. “I’m not going to get too carried away,” he said of the celebrations, in part because after the final whistle he was selected to do Uefa’s mandatory anti-doping tests. “I want to remember it. I’ll party, but I want to cherish the moment. It has been so long since we won a trophy and this tops the season off.”

Watkins is part of a Villa core that have been on a rollercoaster ride with the club. Villa dodged relegation by one point in 2020, the season after averting financial crisis by clinching promotion via the playoffs. Watkins was one of six players in Wednesday’s XI who were in Emery’s first Villa starting lineup; 11 players from that squad in November 2022 were celebrating in Istanbul. “This club was close to being in a right bad way seven years ago,” McGinn said. “Tonight was everything we built coming together. The pride I felt with 10 minutes to go knowing we were about to be champions … I can’t describe it.”

Villa’s squad will surely evolve this summer. With a Champions League place secure, there is a desire to sign elite talent – potentially from rivals and perhaps players previously deemed out of reach – in an attempt to go to the next level. At the same time, the likelihood is the window will be another balancing act. The financial regulations remain prohibitive for teams with high wage bills and without huge revenues. Villa have been unafraid to trade and know players such as Rogers have a queue of admirers. The future of Emiliano Martínez, who broke a finger in the warmup, remains unclear.

But those conundrums and conversations can wait. Villa’s players had the date of the game and the opponent inscribed on their special-edition shirts and it was a night that will live long in the memory of everybody of a claret-and-blue persuasion. Who will forget Martínez hoisting Emery on to his shoulders? Ian Taylor, part of the Villa team that won their last trophy, the League Cup in 1996, erupted with joy. William, sitting behind the former Villa defender and now ambassador Ahmed Elmohamady, issued his royal approval. Towards the end of the on-pitch celebrations, McGinn was practising knee slides with his nephews.

“When we were on the way to the stadium, we went past loads of Villa fans: ‘Wow’ … that’s when it hit,” Cash says. “In the hotel you’re relaxing, thinking: ‘Right, try and stay calm.’ My friends were out on the razz all day getting drunk, talking about how excited they are and I’m in bed: ‘I need to focus here, I’ve got a final to play.’

“Driving into the stadium, the fans were incredible; they deserve it so much. Ginny [McGinn] spoke about how they went to Rotherham away, Wigan [in the Championship] … they’ve seen the club at its lowest, they have seen the highs. The parade, we’re all going to enjoy it.” Will there be any time for some shut-eye? “Naaaah,” he says. “I’m going to party for the next however long, the next couple of days.”

Film
Finding Emily review – warm-hearted gen Z campus romcom is impossible to hate
Cath Clarke
Thu 21 May 2026 14.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/21/finding-emily-review-gen-z-campus-romcom-is-impossible-to-hate

L ast week came the news that gen Z are big fans of going to the cinema. Now here’s a gen Z romcom from Working Title, the company behind Bridget Jones’s Diary and Notting Hill. Directed by Alicia MacDonald from a script by Rachel Hirons, Finding Emily shares DNA with Richard Curtis’s comedies – the same warm heart and charm, plus levels of cheesiness that some may find cringe. In the end I found it impossible to hate, though one or two performances felt a bit lacking in comic flair.

It’s set in Manchester , where indie singer-songwriter Owen (Spike Fearn) meets undergraduate Emily (Sadie Soverall) at the student union. They click, but when Emily taps her number into his phone, she misses out a digit. Is it a drunken error, or has she wrong-numbered him? Owen is convinced it’s a mistake and sticks up posters around campus to find her. After a tipoff, he waits outside a lecture hall for psychology student Emily (Angourie Rice). She’s American, and not his Emily, but she offers to help, suggesting Owen emails every Emily enrolled at the university – all 318 of them. Owen accidentally sends the email to all rather than BCCing, creating an email group of Emilies who are divided in their reactions. Is he some kind of creepy virgin “incel”? Or a diehard romantic? Owen becomes a meme: “email guy”.

Some of the funniest scenes are the reactions on social media after Owen appears on a college YouTube channel with a guitar playing a song he wrote for Emily. “It’s like Ed Sheeran on Crimewatch,” someone writes. Another coins the hashtag #ratboysummer. This is a very gentle, light-touch send-up of campus culture wars and social media pile-ons.

In fact, psychology student Emily has an ulterior motive for helping Owen: she wants to use him as a case study for her thesis that being in love is temporary insanity. “He is just data,” she says, protesting too much. But, like in Curtis’s films, the supporting characters are the most fun. Prasanna Puwanarajah is very funny as Emily’s professor, a celebrity psychologist with a rampant ego. Distractingly, Owen is the spitting image of the young Liam Gallagher and at certain angles, Rice’s Emily is a dead ringer for Taylor Swift. In a couple of scenes of them together, the effect is plain weird.

Finding Emily is out on 21 May in Australia, on 22 May in the UK and on 28 August in the US.

Championship
Millwall and Wrexham consider legal options over Southampton spying scandal
Matt Hughes
Thu 21 May 2026 12.26 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 13.04 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/21/southampton-spying-scandal-millwall-wrexham-legal-options

Millwall and Wrexham are considering their legal options after confirmation that Southampton have been expelled from Saturday’s Championship playoff final and replaced by the beaten semi-finalists Middlesbrough.

The aggrieved clubs will await publication of the written reasons for the decisions taken by the English Football League’s independent disciplinary panel, which were upheld by an appeal panel on Wednesday night, but are understood to believe they could have grounds to make a claim for compensation.

Millwall and Wrexham could seek to test whether the EFL rulebook has been correctly applied or whether the disciplinary process was flawed, and could argue that because Southampton’s spying on Middlesbrough took place before the playoffs, they should have been replayed without Southampton’s involvement.

Millwall were beaten by Hull in the playoff semi-finals after finishing third and Wrexham missed out after finishing seventh.

There has been speculation in legal circles that one of the parties could seek an injunction at the high court to force the EFL to postpone Saturday’s game but that is regarded as a non-starter owing to the timescale. Any claim would therefore be retrospective for damages.

Hull’s owner, Acun Ilicali, said on Wednesday that his club had received legal advice that they should be automatically promoted to the Premier League as a result of Southampton’s expulsion rather than playing Middlesbrough.

There appears little prospect of Hull pursuing that case in the next 48 hours but they could also pursue a claim for damages if beaten at Wembley in a game worth a minimum of £200m to the winners.

Publication of the written reasons will be key because there has been little explanation from the EFL as to how it arrived at its decisions and the process involved.

By giving Southampton two sanctions – expulsion from the final and a four-point penalty in next season’s Championship – after the club admitted to spying Middlesbrough, Oxford and Ipswich, it appears the panel treated the playoffs as a separate competition.

The EFL’s rulebook contains no reference to the process for replacing an expelled team, although its guidance notes state that the playoff final should be contested between two semi-final winners, which will not be the case on Saturday.

Wrexham and Millwall declined to comment.

The FA is expected to bring charges against individuals after confirming it is investigating Southampton’s conduct. The position of the club’s head coach, Tonda Eckert, is regarded as untenable by the squad.

One of the players, Léo Scienza, has described expulsion from the playoffs as “heartbreaking” and said the fans “definitely deserved better”.

World Cup 2026
UK police sending only three officers to England’s World Cup games after failure to land funding
Paul MacInnes
Thu 21 May 2026 15.32 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 16.56 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/21/uk-police-sending-only-three-officers-england-world-cup-games

The UK Football Policing Unit will send only three officers to this summer’s World Cup after a failure to secure extra funding from authorities in the United States.

With as many as 15,000 England fans expected at each group fixture, police said their role would be to act as “cultural interpreters” for local law enforcement and they had no concerns over the safety of supporters in the US.

“The number of officers we send is generally dependent on the request of the host and [US] states aren’t funding mobile delegations this time,” said the head of the UKFPU, chief constable Mark Roberts. He added that the unit cannot fund more officers themselves, citing a 10% cut in its funding from the Home Office.

“This isn’t a criticism, it’s a statement of fact. There will be [lead officer] Supt Gareth Parkin supported by two football officers, which is a significant change to what we would normally employ. But we’re having to fund that, so that’s limited the number of officers we can get out there.” Roberts said the UKFPU had given online presentations to each of the 16 World Cup host cities on how to engage with supporters, with England’s group-stage matches taking place in Dallas, Boston and East Rutherford, New Jersey.

“We have to work hard to make the point that our fans behave really well,” he said. “They may have a drink or two, but we will be often trying to calm people down and say this is not a problem. It’s not going to lead to disorder. They are just having a good time and enjoying themselves. Equally, it’s important to get the message to supporters that while certain things might be acceptable in the UK they might not be elsewhere. “We are not anticipating problems,” Roberts continued. “We can expect the supporters will behave very well. We’ve got the message out about our fans and everyone we’ve had meetings with seem fine and receptive. Nothing is leaping out as cause for concern.”

Roberts said Police Scotland would be one of the few other European forces to send officers to the US, thanks to funding from the Scottish government. Scottish policing efforts are expected to focus on the Boston area with the Tartan Army’s opening two fixtures scheduled for the Foxborough Stadium. Some 40 officers were sent by the UKFPU to the Euro 2024 championship in Germany after a request from the organising committee was backed by government funding. A similar arrangement is also understood to have been in place during the World Cup in Qatar. The UKFPU said it has been working to deepen the relationship between police and fans groups before the World Cup, with the Football Supporters’ Association to play a key role in delivering messages about safety and local laws. The Foreign Office has also advised all those expecting to travel to monitor their online travel advice and take out travel insurance. Around 3,500 tickets have been sold for each group-stage match to England fans registered with the FA’s travel club. On top of that there will be another 10,000-11,000 ticket holders who have bought through the Fifa portal and declared themselves England supporters.

Finally there will be around 1,000 friends and family of the England team travelling to the games. FSA sources suggested that demand for a potential last-16 tie in Mexico City will exceed these numbers.

Gilts
Britain’s politicians need to worry less about the bond markets – and more about the Bank of England
Daniela Gabor
Thu 21 May 2026 14.45 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 14.47 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/21/politicians-bond-vigilantes-markets-gilts-bank-of-england

A spectre is haunting British politics: the bond markets.

Defending Keir Starmer after the disastrous local election results earlier this month, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, warned that a leadership contest would trigger the wrath of those investors who lend the state money by buying and selling UK government bonds (also known as gilts). The prospect of Andy Burnham winning that contest prompted shriller warnings: the left-leaning contender, after all, had dared to suggest governments should stop “being in hock” to the bond markets.

The bond vigilantes, sober voices tell us, would punish him in the same way they punished Liz Truss’s mini-budget: detecting fiscal irresponsibility, they would sell gilts, thereby increasing government borrowing costs, until he dropped any plans for transformative public investment.

This seems plausible: if you want to borrow, you have to do it on the terms of the creditors who lend it to you. But wholeheartedly accepting this logic turns us into “choiceless democracies”, as the economist Thandika Mkandawire warned , where democratic mandates for change are vetoed by bond investors. Burnham has already this week reasserted his commitment to fiscal rules – a sign of the bond markets’ continued grip on our politics. But there is another way: here is a plan for progressive politicians to stop worrying (too much) about bond vigilantes.

They should start by holding their nerve. Tremors in the bond markets are often driven by global factors. They should also have a clear-eyed understanding of what the bond vigilantes want – and communicate this with the public. The bond vigilantes cheer austerity because their profits are highest when the economy slumps. In this scenario, interest rates are expected to fall and gilt prices increase, pumping returns for investors. Conversely, a mild selloff of gilts often signals that investors expect fiscal plans – that is, government spending – to deliver growth. In other words, good news for the economy is bad news for shifty bond holders.

Since the interests of the public and bond investors are not always aligned, governments have to explore other ways to finance big, transformative ambitions: that means scrutinising the Bank of England , getting rid of inflation-linked bonds, and repurposing Britain’s pension funds.

Let’s start with the Bank of England, which has contributed to Britain’s high borrowing costs and the fear of bond markets. The bank is independent but not neutral: it is run by conservative technocrats protective of the status quo. Following the 2008 crisis, the Bank, like its peers, acknowledged that UK gilts had become the bedrock of our financial system, and announced that it would act as gilt “market maker of last resort” : it would buy them when nobody else would to preserve financial stability. It also embarked on massive “unconventional” gilt purchases – ie, quantitative easing, or QE – during the crisis as it did during the Covid-19 pandemic.

By September 2022, having become the biggest gilt owner, the Bank announced active quantitative tightening , or QT, to deal with inflationary pressure from the war in Ukraine, a policy of selling gilts. But when bond investors repeatedly warned that active QT would increase government borrowing costs, the Bank stopped consulting them. It also ignored other large central banks, which didn’t opt for such an aggressive approach, instead keeping government bonds until they matured.

Since 2022, the Bank has sold £134bn in gilts , with its share of UK gilt holdings nearly halved in three years. This year alone it sold £7.6bn , with another £12bn planned . Investors calculate that active QT has added up to 0.7 percentage points to UK borrowing costs. Think of this as the “Bailey premium”, to recognise the role that the Bank and its governor, Andrew Bailey, have played in the gilt market. Without this premium, the UK government would borrow at cheaper rates than the US.

In many ways the current impasse between central bank and government is the result of the aftermath of Trussgate. Her mini-budget amplified an existing problem in UK pension funds that had made gilt bets with borrowed money. When this dangerous combination threatened financial stability, the Bank offered only two weeks of capped support. But it knew from the eurozone sovereign debt crisis that such half-hearted interventions do not calm markets; in that pivotal moment, the Bank of England walked away from its commitment to backstop gilts.

When Liz Truss resigned a few protesting voices charged the Bank with ousting her government . But the Bank appears to have calculated, correctly, that a British commentariat unfamiliar with the intricate life of gilts would be likely to point to bond vigilantes disciplining the then prime minister, rather than its own decisions. This has had the effect of inflating the bond vigilantes’ power in the eyes of the public. Separately, the Bank also presides over another budgetary timebomb, hidden in the design of its QE programme. Since 2022, it has passed more than £100bn in losses on its gilt holdings to the UK Treasury, with more to come. Again, this is not the policy of other large central banks , which keep losses on their books.

Further increasing costs for the national purse are inflation-linked gilts. Also known as “linkers”, they force the UK government to compensate bond investors for higher inflation. Consider the irony: when the Bank misses inflation targets, the government pays. Britain is uniquely vulnerable , with about a quarter of its bonds inflation-pegged, more than twice as many as Italy or France. Since the 2022 Russia price shocks, the British government has had to pay a staggering £153bn in additional debt service. A progressive government must enlist the Bank of England in an orderly exit from linkers, under a new framework for monetary-fiscal coordination.

Finally, there is the role of pension funds. Back in 2012, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition imposed automatic enrolment in defined contribution pension schemes, in which workers bear the investment risks. These kinds of pension funds prefer to invest in high-yielding stocks and private equity funds rather than less lucrative government bonds. .

As a result, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that pension funds will halve their gilt holdings over the next decade, which would eventually result in an increase in annual debt interest costs of about £22bn. This is a political choice that can be reversed. A progressive government could use the recent Pension Schemes Act 2026, which gives governments power to mandate pension fund investments in the UK economy, to channel our savings towards financing public ownership of essential services such as housing, water and transport.

It is clear that if the UK wants transformative change, it needs a new and democratic model of central banking that weakens the power of bond vigilantes. Making the Bank of England serve the common good again, undoing the borrowing mistakes of the past, channelling workers’ capital into public essentials – these are hard political choices, but they exist. Changing the status quo of managed British decline was never going to be easy.

Daniela Gabor is professor of economics at Soas, University of London