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The local elections proved dreadful for the Conservatives but not quite perfect for Labour. The Conservatives lost 474 of the council wards in contention, ending up with 515; Labour gained an extra 186 to reach 1,158. Independents and others, some standing on the issue of Gaza, increased their councillors by 93 to 228, and took away Labour votes. George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain got four seats. Reform won only two seats but took votes from the Tories; it almost came second in Blackpool South, where there was a by-election which Labour won with 10,825 votes to the Tories’ 3,218. Ben Houchen (Lord Houchen of High Leven) won a third term as Mayor of the Tees Valley as a Conservative; Sadiq Khan for Labour convincingly won a third term as Mayor of London. Andy Street narrowly failed to be re-elected as the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, beaten by Labour’s Richard Parker by 225,590 to 224,082. Members of the Garrick Club voted to let women join.
John Swinney was elected leader of the Scottish National party after no one stood against him; the Scottish parliament then voted for his name to go to the King as its nominee for first minister. ‘The fact that I am the only candidate,’ he said, ‘demonstrates that the Scottish National party is coming back together again now.’ A man was found nailed to a fence in a car park in Bushmills, Co. Antrim, with a nail through each hand, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
China was blamed for the hacking of Ministry of Defence payroll information held by a contractor, with details of 270,000 service personnel. Another hacking group, Inc Ransom, released information taken from NHS Scotland. Train drivers belonging to the Aslef union went on strike. Freightliner, the railway goods train operator, said that private freight companies would not invest if plans by Labour and the Conservatives denied them access to routes. A burst pipe left 32,500 Southern Water customers in Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex without water for days. Heineken is to reopen 62 of its 2,400 pubs (which numbered 2,700 in 2019). In the week up to 6 May, 1,375 migrants arrived in England in small boats. Electronic gates broke down at British airports. The Duke of Sussex visited Britain but did not see his father the King.
Abroad
Hamas said it had accepted terms for a ceasefire in Gaza. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, said that the terms Hamas accepted were ‘far from meeting Israel’s demands’. Negotiations resumed. The Israel Defence Forces told 100,000 people in eastern Rafah to move to an expanded ‘humanitarian zone’. Israel carried out strikes on Rafah and said that it had taken control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing. President Joe Biden of America had phoned Mr Netanyahu and ‘reiterated’ Washington’s position that it could not support an invasion of Rafah without a plan to help the civilians sheltering there. At the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, four Israeli soldiers had been killed in a Hamas rocket attack. Turkey suspended trade with Israel over its offensive in Gaza.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the British Foreign Secretary, met President Volodymr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv, and said that Ukraine ‘absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia’. The Ukrainian security service said it had foiled a Russian plot to assassinate Mr Zelensky. Crowds in Tbilisi demonstrated against a ‘foreign agents’ law being put through parliament by the Georgian Dream party, which seeks closer ties with Russia and none with the European Union. Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, flew to France for his first visit to Europe in five years. Maersk, the Danish shipping group, said its ships were sailing faster around the Cape of Good Hope but were also using 40 per cent more fuel; it would not use the Red Sea route for the rest of the year.
America blamed the Rwandan army and the M23 rebel group for the bombing of a displacement camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo which killed at least nine people. An expanding economy and lower inflation in the United States were expected by the OECD and IMF to increase world trade. The judge in the trial of Donald Trump, after finding him in contempt for the tenth time, said that ‘future violations of its lawful orders will be punishable by incarceration’; the judge also cut short evidence by Stormy Daniels, a sex-film actress, about a sexual encounter she says they had. CSH
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