The drought situation is worsening in England. The Environment Agency officially declared a drought on Wednesday in seven regions covering approximately half of the territory, following months of exceptionally scarce rainfall and a succession of heatwaves that have driven up water consumption. The affected areas are London and Hertfordshire, East Anglia, the Thames Valley, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Devon and Cornwall, West Midlands, and Wessex (which includes Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, and south Gloucestershire).

When the British monarchy or political class wants to appear as an integral and integrated part of the people they claim to represent, the recourse to visiting a pub is recurrent: like walking through markets during election time in Catalonia. From Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage; from Theresa May to Keir Starmer; from Charles III to Prince William, or also the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, they all let themselves be photographed with a pint of beer in their hands or filling one, as if they had been doing it since they were children.

The forward of the English football team, of Leicester and Barça, and former BBC star, Gary Lineker has joined a signed open letter for 120 British millionaires asking the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, to create a wealth tax. The letter, driven by the Patriotic Millionaires collective, argues that the concentration of wealth has increased inequalities and calls for higher taxation on the highest fortunes, not on earned income.

Andy Burnham wanted to make things clear from the outset. In the first meeting of his government, this Tuesday at Downing Street, the new prime minister has asked his ministers to focus on seeking "all possible avenues" to help families suffering from the high cost of living. Six hours earlier, the government's information and propaganda machine had already set the course for the new executive and, above all, how it wants its first actions to be perceived, after announcing a total suspension of VAT for domestic electricity from October 1, which until now was 5%. Burnham accompanied the announcement with a message on social media saying: "I said I wanted to relieve the pressure families are suffering, and that's what I'm announcing on my second day as prime minister".

The image is too symbolic to let it go: the United Kingdom has changed its prime minister through the back door. While Buckingham Palace reserves the main entrance for tourists, it forces the political power to reach the audience with the king through the so-called luggage door due to the restoration work being carried out there. It is through there that Andy Burnham entered, who this Monday at noon received the commission from Charles III to form a new government.

Second chance for Labour, but with little room for error. Andy Burnham was officially chosen as the party leader this Friday at an extraordinary congress with the overwhelming support of 379 out of 403 parliamentary group deputies, and will enter Downing Street on Monday with the mission "to tackle the big problems that politics has left aside", according to the first words he uttered after the formalization of his leadership.

A recent scene sums up Andy Burnham, 56, pretty well. Three weeks ago, as he was about to return to the House of Commons as a elected Member of Parliament for Makerfield, he explained that he was traveling to London to take up the post of "mayor". He immediately corrected himself: "I mean MP". The slip of the tongue was revealing. After almost a decade at the head of Greater Manchester, Burnham no longer sees himself as just another member of the Westminster establishment, but as the mayor who has turned the great northern city into a political idea and a different way of understanding the United Kingdom. A look that he now wants to move to Downing Street, and which he can start to make real from Monday, when he receives the commission from Charles III to form a government and thus become the first number 59 of the United Kingdom.

Shortly after midday this Wednesday, a couple of telescopic cranes lifted and removed the fences of one of the "last walls of continental Europe", in the words of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, which separated Gibraltar from La Línea de la Concepción. The ceremonial act has put an end to a negotiation process of almost five years between the European Commission and London, since the United Kingdom made Brexit effective (2020) and the status of the British territory was left in limbo caused by the divorce from the Union.

Hours before England and Norway played on Saturday in Miami in the World Cup quarterfinals, and that Argentina and Switzerland faced each other in Kansas a little later, the Foreign Minister of Javier Milei's government, Pablo Quirno, published a long article in the newspaper La Nación titled "Malvinas: the strength of a just cause". The memory of the 1982 war in which Margaret Thatcher's United Kingdom defeated the Argentine military junta, which wanted to regain sovereignty of the archipelago, remains alive in the imagination of the South American country.

It has been days since the dismantling work of the Gibraltar fence began. The scar that separated the Rock from the Campo de Gibraltar will be erased from the maps – not from history – this Wednesday, when it enters in force the agreement reached a year and a bit ago the United Kingdom, the European Commission, the Spanish state and Gibraltar, and that definitively regulates the post-Brexit status of the territory. This Tuesday the EU and the United Kingdom formalized the signing of the agreement in Brussels and, the following day, the most symbolic aspect of the new status, a frank and barrier-free step, will already be clearly visible. The new framework for relations comes into provisional effect until the definitive ratification by the European Parliament and the House of Commons.

The fuel crisis shaking Russia can be seen circulating through Moscow: at many gas stations there are queues of cars and trucks. Some longer than others; some stopped, others advancing regularly. What is happening? Is anything really happening? Ukrainian attacks against Russian refineries have become one of the newest – and until recently less visible – dimensions of the recent months of the war in Ukraine. Since 2022, and especially during this year, Kyiv has systematically hit Russian refining infrastructure. The goal is to weaken one of the main material bases of the Kremlin's war effort.

The dam of cross-attacks between the United States and Iran this week has left the ceasefire signed on June 15 not dead, but with assisted breathing. At the center of the resumption of hostilities is, once again, the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the key passage for gas and oil and other strategic goods that Iran has brought under its control. A weapon of mass economic destruction that has served it, so far, to survive an attack that surpassed it militarily.

A 61-year-old passenger of Serbian origin narrowly avoided being ejected from a Ryanair plane after a cockpit window broke in mid-flight, in an incident that forced the aircraft to return to Thessaloniki Airport in Greece. The events occurred on Thursday evening on flight FR1879, which was scheduled to cover the route between Thessaloniki and Memmingen (Germany).

Perhaps it is the most evident proof of the British sense of humor or, even, of a very particular way of understanding politics: the far-right – or any other group – can also be fought with comedy. This is what Count Binface, real name Jon Harvey, one of the novelty candidates most well-known in the United Kingdom, who will face the ultra Nigel Farage in the Clacton-on-Sea by-election, in southeast England, on August 13.

Prince Harry suffered one of the most significant judicial defeats of his long battle against the British tabloid press this Tuesday. The High Court of Justice of England and Wales has entirely dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Duke of Sussex and six other British public figures against the publisher of the tabloid newspaper Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers, concluding that they have not been able to prove that the newspaper obtained information through illegal practices. against the publisher of the tabloid newspaper Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers, concluding that they have not been able to prove that the newspaper obtained information through illegal practices.

In a typical populist move, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party, announced this midday that he is resigning as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, a decision that will trigger a by-election in which he has already confirmed he will stand again as a candidate. Farage justified the move by stating that he wants the voters, not the Westminster "establishment", to judge his conduct after the controversy generated in recent weeks by parliamentary investigations into his finances.

Sam Edwards is a professor of contemporary political history at Loughborough University, one of the most prestigious British research institutions, located in the heart of England, between Leicester and Nottingham. Edwards is a specialist in historical memory, commemorations, and transatlantic relations, and is one of the leading authorities on the study of how the United Kingdom and the United States have constructed the shared memory of their colonial past. A member of the Royal Historical Society, he has dedicated the last few years to researching the memory of the American Revolution.

On June 23, 1985, I saw Bruce Springsteen at the dusty Richter Stadium in Montpellier. It was the eleventh concert of the European tour of Born in the U.S.A. and some forty thousand people filled the venue and accompanied the voice of the Boss when he started with the song that gave its name to one of his most famous albums of that decade. The song, misinterpreted as a wholesale patriotic exaltation, was in reality quite the opposite: a denunciation of the way the country had abandoned a generation of its citizens. Springsteen himself complained about it, many years later (2016), in his book "Born to run: "

Politics is also the recognition of truth. After decades of silence, humiliation, and stigmatization, this Thursday the British government has officially apologized to the tens of thousands of women who, between the late 1940s and early 1970s, were forced to give up their children for adoption simply because they were unmarried.