Keir Starmer is living on borrowed time. He doesn't know it yet, he doesn't want to admit it, and he intends to fight with all his might, but the result of Thursday's local elections in England, along with those in the national Parliaments of Scotland and Wales, have left the British prime minister mortally wounded. As a defibrillator and last resort to avoid the inevitable, Starmer, who has been practically rudderless since he won the elections, less than two years ago, has dusted off two of the old glories of New Labour.

A decade after the Brexit earthquake, the British far-right leader Nigel Farage has once again shaken the politics of the islands and has toppled the pillars of traditional Westminster bipartisanship. The Reform Party led by Farage, the man who unleashed the United Kingdom's divorce from the European Union (EU), has been the big winner of the English local elections held this Thursday in 136 municipal authorities. The government has suffered a humiliating defeat, losing more than 1,400 councillors out of the 5,000 in dispute. The defeat has been aggravated from its left by the rise of the Green Party, which has gained just over 300.

In February 2024, the writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe published an article in The New Yorker –he has been writing for it since 2006– titled A teen's fatal plunge into the London Underworld (La caiguda mortal d’un adolescent als baixos fons de Londres). With his usual style, which blends the rigor of the best journalistic investigation with writing that captivates the reader, Radden Keefe addressed the death, in November 2019, of a 19-year-old boy, Zac Brettler, the second son of a well-off family in West London.

At seven in the morning this Thursday, local time, polling stations have opened on a day that could be decisive for the political future of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Millions of citizens are called to the polls to renew almost 5,000 councilor positions in different local authorities in England, including the 32 districts of London; and the national parliaments of Scotland and Wales. The final results will not begin to be known until well into the early hours of Friday and, above all, throughout the morning and midday, when the most important counts are completed. Political expectation is at its peak in Westminster because the super-Thursday will be the first major verdict on the management of the premier since he arrived at Downing Street, less than two years ago.

This is a compass article. Like the magnetized needle instrument, the aim of these words is to try to show us where we are. Or, more precisely, where the Iran war is, a strident earthquake that has strained international politics and the economy.

The Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya (HAYI) group, an Islamist organization with alleged ties to the Iranian regime, has claimed responsibility for a knife attack against two Jewish men this Wednesday in the Golders Green area, north London, home to a significant Jewish community. The two victims, one aged 34 and the other 76, were injured but their lives are not in danger. The assailant, aged 45, whose identity has not yet been released, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder. In his attempt to flee, he also tried to stab a police officer.

Charles III and Camilla brought the British weather to Washington this Tuesday. Intermittent rain in the early hours of a grey morning over the District of Columbia, as the King and Queen of England were formally received, with all honors, by Donald Trump and Melania in the gardens of the White House, as part of a four-day state visit to the United States. A visit to celebrate the two hundred and fifty years of independence that, in fact, had begun in the early hours of Monday afternoon. The Trumps today unveiled a solemn ceremony on the South Lawn of the presidential residence, a sign of the utmost distinction and diplomatic consideration towards a visiting head of state.

Donald Trump and Charles III will coincide up to five times between this Monday and Thursday on what is possibly the monarch's most uncomfortable official trip The visit, overshadowed by the alleged assassination attempt, takes place just seven months after the King bid farewell to the American president at the gates of Windsor Castle, where the monarchy offered the Republican all its usual pomp and ceremony. That second invitation – an exception in itself – had been conceived to smooth relations between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the ever-unpredictable Trump. When Air Force One took off from Stansted Airport, the impression at Downing Street was that the mission entrusted to the crown had been successful.

The pilot plan of the Mossos d'Esquadra to introduce plainclothes officers in schools has a distant precedent. Beyond the data highlighted by the OECD – one in every two developed countries has similar cooperation programs between schools and authority agents "for preventive and community purposes" –, the United Kingdom began to do so shortly after the post-war period (1949, in Liverpool) with contact sessions with young people. But the most recognizable figure of agents in schools —school liaison officers— consolidated from the sixties. And the massive deployment arrived, especially, in the 2000s, under the governments of Tony Blair, with the safer school partnerships. As part of this initiative, officers —safer school officers— were assigned to specific schools, especially in vulnerable or considered problematic urban areas. In many cases, they worked physically within the schools, with an office, regular presence, and participation in the school's daily life, and also, occasionally, in the weekly and traditional assembly, the meeting of all students and staff, as a moment of reflection to strengthen the community. Usually, the officers were in uniform, as their role combined prevention and visibility.

The political crisis surrounding Keir Starmer over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK's ambassador to Washington in December 2024 has worsened this week, after Olly Robbins' appearance in Parliament has revealed numerous contradictions in the process followed. The discrepancies between Downing Street's account and the testimony of who until last week was the highest-ranking Foreign Office official responsible for overseeing the designation, once again place the prime minister's judgment at the center of the controversy, and leave him in a very compromised position.

Is everything subject to commodification? Can a war also turn uncertainty and tragedy into a negotiable asset? According to the figure reflected in the contracts on the Polymarket platform before Iran's announcement that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen, the odds of this happening within a specific timeframe (April 30) were slim. 26%. Within hours, however, following Tehran's statement, the odds rose to 44% before dropping slightly again, to 40%. And they have dropped even further, to 31%, after the Revolutionary Guard said this Saturday that it was closing it again. Bettors from all over the world have invested in one of the two possibilities (yes/no), nearly 15 million dollars.

The weekly magazine Destino published an editorial note on January 17, 1959, which resonates strongly today. It stated: "As we announced to our readers, Josep Pla has boarded a tanker in El Ferrol to produce a series of major reports exclusively for the readers of Destino. The information we have commissioned from our friend is about oil. Europe is dependent on this fuel, and it is necessary for a journalist like Pla to explain to us, with his unparalleled acuity, all the political and economic problems involved in the extraction and exploitation of oil." Almost seventy years have passed, and not only Europe, but the whole world is dependent on it.

Islamabad, Paris, Rome, Ankara, Qatar, London… Behind the scenes, international diplomacy is working against the clock to prevent the collapse of the truce between Iran and the United States. In this context, Donald Trump said this Tuesday in an interview with the New York Post that talks with Tehran could resume in the next 48 hours and that the venue would likely be Pakistan. At this point it is difficult to discern to what extent the tycoon's words are a real prediction or a wish, but they are in line with previous reports indicating that US officials are trying to resume talks with the Iranians before the ceasefire expires next Tuesday.

Donald Trump's deadline to block the Strait of Hormuz expired this Monday past 10 a.m. in Washington and, during the first hour, the only visible change has been on a rhetorical level. The president has once again threatened the Iranians, warning them that any of their ships that try to overcome the siege of the US military will be "eliminated". "If any of these ships approach our blockade, they will be immediately eliminated, and we will use the same elimination system that we use against drug traffickers on boats at sea. It is fast and brutal," warned the Republican, alluding to extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean Sea against alleged narco-boats. Shortly after the Republican announced on Sunday his intention to obstruct maritime passage to economically harm the ayatollahs, Tehran warned that no port in the Persian Gulf would be safe if he tried to stop their ships.

One of the key points of the fragile ceasefire established between the United States and Iran on Wednesday is the free movement of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. A key passage for tankers, fertilizers, and dry goods, the strangulation generated as a result of the war threatens the entire world economy. The volume of ship passage has fallen from between 150 and 200 daily on February 27 to less than ten in the last forty-eight hours.

The war fronts are multiplying everywhere while Donald Trump continues to belittle NATO and opens wars from which he cannot emerge afterwards. In a context of growing global tension, this Thursday the British government revealed that Russia carried out a covert submarine operation in the North Atlantic, in waters near the United Kingdom, for more than a month. A month in which, as in the best moments of the Cold War, Russians and Westerners played the cat-and-mouse game. Because the Russian submarines were being watched at all times: the British frigates were responsible for making it evident.

The UK's Home Office confirmed this Tuesday that it has banned the entry to the country of rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, who is very controversial for his provocative lyrics, in which he has even praised Adolf Hitler. The decision comes after an intense review of his visa and puts an end to weeks of controversy over his participation as a headliner at London's Wireless Festival, which will take place in July. Official sources report that immigration law powers have been used to ban the artist due to his history of antisemitic, racist, and pro-Nazi comments. In its resolution, the government considers them to be "incompatible with the maintenance of public order and social cohesion in the country".

Without insurance, there are no ships to sail. That is why, at number 1 Lime Street, in the heart of the City of London, Donald Trump's words have a relative impact. He can say one thing or the opposite. Either that the war will end in "the next two or three weeks", after sending Iran "to the Stone Age, where it belongs." Or that the navy's aircraft carriers will protect the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Or even more: that it will be the Western allies who will have to do it, either by warlike or diplomatic means, such as those discussed on Thursday by the thirty-five countries that, with the United Kingdom as host, met virtually to analyze the alternatives to the blockade of oil flow in the Persian Gulf.

Sometimes, throwing a letter into a mailbox can be like throwing it into a black hole. A few days ago, Jason Bevan, an eighty-year-old pensioner living in the small town of Lidney, almost 200 kilometers west of London, lamented in the letters to the editor section of the Daily Telegraph about the unreliability of Royal Mail, the iconic British postal service. His wife, to whom he had been married for fifty-eight years, died in January and the man explained: "I received many condolence cards and was expecting more after an announcement in the local press. However, I didn't receive any mail all week."

Karel Lannoo is the Chief Executive Officer of the think tank Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), based in Brussels. The organization is a relevant voice in community politics and debate. A graduate in philosophy and modern history, he has been observing the internal and external fluctuations that the European Union has faced for over twenty-five years. He is, therefore, in a privileged position to analyze the challenges for the 27 at a time when the global order has been shattered and threats to the EU are of all kinds.