After six long weeks of political campaigning, UK voters woke up slightly bleary-eyed last Friday morning to greet Keir Starmer’s new government. The landslide was huge, the number of Labour MPs historic but, as our coverage of the UK election this week reflects, this was an election more against 14 years of Conservative rule than strongly for Labour, which won its 412 seats through just 34% of the vote in a notably low turnout of just 60% of the electorate.
Nevertheless, the mood was cautiously optimistic as Jonathan Freedland conveys in our main piece, which follows Starmer from the excitement of the exit poll to entering Downing Street greeted by flags, cheers and tears from party activists. Robert Ford analyses the new political makeup of the country, examining the Liberal Democrats’ success in targeted seats and how Nigel Farage got out the vote countrywide but in a first-past-the-post system, Reform UK’s roughly four million votes translated into only five seats. We also examine why people turned so decisively against the Tories.
Get the Guardian Weekly delivered to your home address
***
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
1
Spotlight | France votes to keep far-right at bay
In Lyon, Ashifa Kassam reports on the joy and surprise as voters celebrated the success of a coordinated centrist and left campaign that pushed Marine Le Pen’s party into third place
2
Spotlight | Make way for dads on the dancefloor
Science correspondent Linda Geddes gets down with the health benefits of dancing at any age and explains why older movers shake in different shapes to their younger competitors
3
Feature | It’s a knockout
The uses of laughing gas from vaudeville gimmick to revolutionary anaesthetic to modern party drug are traced by Mark Miodownik
4
Opinion | Rebecca Solnit on Joe Biden’s bad press
No one could argue the current US president is leading a flawless election campaign, but the media are fixated on speculating about his health when they should be scrutinising Donald Trump’s behaviour, writes the Guardian US columnist
5
Culture | The robots are coming
AI is already in the studio and it won’t be long before some of TV’s most popular shows are written without humans, says Marah Eakin, but will viewers be able to tell the difference?
***
What else we’ve been reading
During another wet weekend in a seemingly saturated UK summer, I decided to set about clearing out my loft. Productivity levels soon dropped as my family and I became bogged down in the memories that old clothes, books and toys evoke. Emily Retter’s day in the life of a house clearance company really nailed this process of clutter and catharsis. Neil Willis, Production editor
***
Other highlights from the Guardian website
• Audio | ‘Spermageddon’: is male fertility really in crisis? – podcast
• Video | So what does the future look like now? – Anywhere but Westminster
• Gallery | Tokyo’s oldest train line
• Interactive | ‘A difficult hand played poorly’: how No 10 slipped from Sunak’s grasp
***
Get in touch
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the magazine: for submissions to our letters page, please email weekly.letters@theguardian.com. For anything else, it’s editorial.feedback@theguardian.com
***
Follow us
• X
Get the Guardian Weekly magazine delivered to your home address
