This time it was Marcus Rashford who delivered the knockout blow. Three days after the fight between Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni that ended with Real Madrid’s vice captain taken to hospital and the crisis at the club laid painfully bare for all to see, they went to the Camp Nou and finally relinquished the league title they lost long ago. For the first time in 94 years a meeting of sport’s greatest rivals decided La Liga, 62,000 fans starting the party as goals from the Englishman and Ferran Torres took Hansi Flick’s team over the line with three games to spare. For Madrid, at least it was over, nothing left to hold on to. They had avoided it happening last week by beating Espanyol, just across the city limits, sparing themselves from having to hand their rivals a guard of honour before the game but they knew they couldn’t avoid it for ever. Now all they could aspire to was preventing them from beginning the title party in their presence, but like so much else this campaign that was beyond them, and so a second successive season closes without a trophy, and on the worst possible stage. Continue reading...

Multibillion stage of title-relegation stagger boils down to a referee in front of a screen decoding a raised forearm There’s a great moment towards the end of the otherwise non-great Rocky III, when Clubber Lang is asked by a straw-hatted, bowtie-twirling US sports reporter for a prediction before his imminent title fight. There’s a pause as Clubber looks down, lets the mask of showmanship drop, and just says the word “pain”. You can say that again. Let’s face it, this was always going to hurt, whichever way the latest note in the conjoined title‑relegation stagger fell. Just as it was always likely, the destination of the Premier League title would come down to staring at a referee staring at a screen to decide the minutiae of an arm wrestle at a corner. Continue reading...

Washington last picked No 1 overall in 2010 Wizards had worst record in the NBA this season The league’s worst team this season are getting the No 1 pick in the NBA draft. The Washington Wizards won the draft lottery on Sunday and are poised to pick first overall for the first time since choosing John Wall in that spot in 2010. Wall was the Wizards’ on-stage representative for this year’s lottery. Utah won the right to pick No 2, Memphis will pick No 3 and Chicago will pick No 4. Continue reading...

The Netflix drama won the award for best limited drama while Stephen Graham took the best leading actor prize Bafta TV awards 2026: the full list of winners Netflix drama Adolescence, which won universal acclaim for its chilling portrayal of violence by disaffected teenage boys, has dominated the Bafta TV awards. The four-part series where each episode was filmed in a single take won the award for best limited drama, while Stephen Graham, who co-created the show, took the best leading actor prize. Continue reading...

Finborough theatre, London Titas Halder’s raw solo play relays one young man’s feverish struggle in the face of racism, deftly played by Amar Chadha-Patel in his stage debut Titas Halder’s striking new one-man play is about a young British Asian man, A.K., growing up in Britain and experiencing increasingly brutal incidents of racism: bullying in the playground; casual jibes at work; parents who no longer feel safe in their family home. And at the centre of it all: a funny and sensitive man, struggling to find himself and fracturing in two. This is a strangely arresting production but there are some issues too. It feels like there’s a fairly specific play hiding in here but we’re only given scraps of details. A.K. spends his youth growing up on unnamed “Island” and later moves to the city, where he lives in a dingy flat on Seven Sisters Road. There are fleeting references to Walkmans in his childhood and, later, an allusion to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes but the writing wavers between a feverish nightmare and something much more grounded and political. Continue reading...

1st ODI: England, 211-9, bt New Zealand, 210, by 1 wkt Captain guides long tail to low target After all the hype about England’s biggest summer, it got off to an underwhelming start at Chester-le-Street on Sunday, as they limped to a one-wicket win in the first one-day international against New Zealand, chasing just 211. Only a calm rearguard effort from the stand-in captain, Charlie Dean, who finished unbeaten on 31 and valiantly marshalled England’s long tail, enabled them to crawl across the line. England played exactly the way you might expect from a team who have gone 194 days without playing an international match (their last outing was the World Cup semi-final in October). First, they made a spate of fielding errors, costing them precious runs in a low-scoring thriller. Then they subsided to 149 for six, after Emma Lamb, Amy Jones and Dani Gibson all holed out to gleeful fielders. Continue reading...

It was the most extraordinary finale to an occasion when the tension seemed to override everything. The spectacle was suffocated. There was almost too much at stake for both teams. And then there we were, the players from each team standing on the sideline behind the referee, Chris Kavanagh, as he pored over the replay monitor on the advice of the video assistant, Darren England, his heart hammering, like that of everybody else inside the stadium. Arsenal led 1-0 through Leandro Trossard’s 83rd minute goal, which had come shortly after David Raya had produced a massive one-on-one save to deny the West Ham midfielder, Mateus Fernandes. Now West Ham had their lifeline. Or had they? It all came down to Kavanagh’s interpretation of the moment when West Ham sent their goalkeeper, Mads Hermansen, forward for an all-or-nothing 95th minute corner and, after a melee of bodies, the West Ham substitute, Callum Wilson, had lashed a shot over the line. Continue reading...

Party leader has been vocal about its gains in London and there is a feeling that its losses could have been worse By any sane person’s reckoning, the Conservative party had a night to forget in Thursday’s local, mayoral and devolved elections. It lost about 500 councillors in England and ceded control of three local authorities to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – losing to the rightwing upstarts in England, Wales and Scotland. Why then is Kemi Badenoch hailing these results as proof that “the Conservatives are coming back” – and why do many Tory MPs appear to agree with her? The Conservative leader was vocal on Friday about the eye-catching gains her party made in politically atypical London, where the Tories won back the totemic council of Westminster, took the most seats in Wandsworth council and saw off the threat from Reform in Bexley and Bromley. Continue reading...

⚽ Barça will win La Liga with a point from 8pm BST kick-off ⚽ Live scores | Follow us over on Bluesky | And email John Been a quiet week at Real Madrid? Well, even by the standards of the soap opera that is the world football’s equivalent of the Borgias, it’s been chaotic. On Thursday a fight with Aurélien Tchouaméni at Valdebebas left Fede Valverde bleeding and with what a club communique described as “craniofacial trauma”. Kylian Mbappe is missing, too, his popularity rating down at absolute zero. What’s worse is that Barcelona can clinch a second successive Liga title with a draw. Continue reading...

Khadija Shaw showed Manchester City what they are giving up and Chelsea what they are potentially getting in emphatic style at Stamford Bridge, scoring the injury-time equaliser and then the winner as City came from two goals behind to earn a place in the FA Cup final against Brighton. Shaw has dominated headlines this week: the Women’s Super League top scorer is set to leave Manchester City and Chelsea are leading the chase. Her 91st-minute goal forced extra time before a thumping header in the 103rd minute ensured City’s double ambitions remain alive after the most fraught of encounters. Continue reading...

Boreham Wood 2-2 Rochdale (Rochdale 3-1 on pens) Rush 22, Abdulmalik 69; Smith 78, Dieseruvwe 90+6 Supporting Rochdale should come with a health warning. For all that football has a wonderful propensity for drama, few clubs have ever packed in the heart-stopping tribulations of their past fortnight. But, after it all, they are a Football League club again. And that is all that matters. Hopes of returning to the ranks of the country’s top 92 clubs looked to have disintegrated as mere seconds remained for Boreham Wood to cling on for victory in this National League playoff final. Then came Mani Dieseruvwe’s extraordinary 97th-minute equaliser to send the match into extra time that preceded penalties. Continue reading...

Italian could win record sixth straight Masters 1000 title Naomi Osaka beats Diana Shnaider to reach fourth round Casper Ruud believes Jannik Sinner is not unbeatable but the rest of the field will have to catch the world No 1 on a favourable day as they try to stop him winning a record-extending sixth consecutive Masters 1000 title on home soil at the Italian Open. “His results this year kind of speak for themselves,” said Ruud. “Four Masters 1000s in a row to begin the year. Four of four. He’s already made history, he can make more history. But he also showed in the beginning of the year, he’s beatable. Novak [Djokovic] beat him. [Jakub] Mensik beat him. Continue reading...

Officials reportedly drafting legislation likely to safeguard Britain’s last blast furnaces and save thousands of jobs The full nationalisation of British Steel is expected to be announced in the King’s speech this week, a year after the government took over the daily running of the loss-making business from its Chinese owner. The steelmaker, which employs 3,500 people at its plant in Scunthorpe, came under government control last April amid fears that its owner, Jingye, was planning to shut down the site. Continue reading...

Rhun ap Iorwerth says he hopes to work with other parties and press the UK government for extra powers The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has vowed to form a stable minority government in the Senedd and said he would seek out mature cooperation from all opposition parties. Ap Iorwerth said his administration would press the UK government for extra powers over policy areas such as policing and justice and focus on results rather than engaging in political rows with Westminster. Continue reading...

Zsolt Hegedűs’s celebrations since the election of Péter Magyar have sparked joy across the country As Hungary’s Péter Magyar took office, ousting Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power, the daylong event on Saturday was laced with symbolism, from the return of the EU flag to parliament to the ringing out of the European anthem, Ode to Joy. But it was the 56-year-old tipped to be the new health minister – and more specifically, his dance moves – that may have become the most potent symbol of Hungary’s new political era. Continue reading...

Exeter 35-12 Bath Fourth-placed Chiefs secure bonus-point victory The road to the Prem playoffs continues to be full of compelling twists and turns. For a while it seemed Exeter might be about to be reeled in by a Bath side renowned for their finishing strength, only for second-half tries from Paul Brown-Bampoe, Len Ikitau and Campbell Ridl and a resilient defensive effort to steer the Chiefs to one of their more pleasing league wins of the season. With Leicester and Saracens finishing strongly and only three regular season fixtures remaining this was a game the home side could ill afford to lose and that extra edge played a part against a Bath side still feeling the effects of their disappointing Champions Cup semi-final loss in Bordeaux. As the game wore on it was the Chiefs who grew in confidence and this result puts them in fourth place, five points clear of Bristol in fifth. Continue reading...

Progressive nationalist parties now hold power in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That will be a challenge for the United Kingdom’s overcentralised state When the Scottish and Welsh assemblies were created on the eve of the millennium, the then Labour government in Westminster believed that it had engineered a win-win situation. Devolution, it was hoped, would see off any nationalist threat in Scotland and Wales. Meanwhile, the Labour party’s longstanding political dominance in both nations would see it take comfortable control of the two new parliaments. That was then. Last week’s devolved elections left Scottish and Welsh Labour battered, bruised and humiliated. Plaid Cymru’s historic victory in Wales, and a fifth successive triumph for the Scottish National party (SNP), mean that pro-independence governments are now set for the first time to rule in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast (where Sinn Féin won in 2022). The starting gun has been fired on a new and constitutionally contested era in the politics of the UK. Continue reading...

After five years of deliberation the global south has forced the question that defined the Covid crisis: who will get the vaccines? The Covid-19 pandemic did deep and lasting damage to the international political system. Countries in the global south are keenly aware that the established order let them down. They received vaccines later, in smaller numbers and often at a higher price than rich countries, resulting in avoidable death and suffering, and extended economic malaise. Last week, a coalition of those countries made their displeasure known by continuing to stonewall negotiations on the vaunted pandemic preparedness treaty of the World Health Organization (WHO), sending a clear message that when the next crisis arrives, they will not accept the same status quo. An international treaty is sorely needed. But five years into negotiations, it is clear that the western backers of this plan, especially in Europe, have consistently presented it as a fait accompli, while avoiding the most basic and obvious political impasse before them. Continue reading...

Is Adolescence unstoppable? Did Alan Carr pull off the best moment? Will A Thousand Blows be a knockout? Here are all the 2026 winners of the most coveted prizes in British TV Ashley Walters, Adolescence (Netflix) Fehinti Balogun, Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV) Joshua McGuire, The Gold (BBC One) Owen Cooper, Adolescence (Netflix) WINNER Paddy Considine, MobLand (Paramount+) Rafael Mathé, The Death of Bunny Munro (Sky Atlantic) Continue reading...

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Readers assess the prime minister’s position in the wake of Labour’s losses in local elections As a local Labour activist, I understand the general wailing and gnashing of teeth that has beset the party after our drubbing in the local elections. But amid the panic about who should or shouldn’t resign, or what may or may not happen in three years’ time, I’d like to propose a philosophy that I’m calling “positive defeatism”. For only the fourth time in a century, a Labour prime minister has won a general election with a large majority – with a mandate that takes us to July 2029. What if we stop worrying about a second term and just get on with making consequential changes in this term? Continue reading...

Dr Simon Nieder responds to Richard Dawkins’ encounters with a chatbot Richard Dawkins’ reflections on AI consciousness are striking – not because they show that machines have crossed some hidden threshold into inner life, but because they reveal how readily we can be persuaded that they have (Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious, even if it doesn’t know it, 5 May). Many will recognise the experience: a system that responds with fluency, humour and apparent understanding. At some point, simulation starts to feel like presence. But that shift tells us more about human cognition than machine consciousness. The error is a category one. These systems generate highly convincing representations of thought and feeling, but they provide no evidence of subjective experience. To move from one to the other is to mistake output for ontology – to infer an inner life where there is no credible mechanism for one. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer’s banal platitudes | Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman | Tacking backwards | Crap council Keir Starmer’s word salad of banal platitudes – “we will deliver the change that people are desperate for” (which change?) – exemplifies his inability to capture the imagination (These election results don’t mean tacking left or right…, 8 May). If he stays on as PM, it is extremely likely that Nigel Farage will succeed him. While I’m uninspired by any potential Labour successor, it is possible one of them might step up into the role and succeed. Starmer must resign to give us that chance for the future. Dr Kimon Roussopoulos Cambridge • If Keir Starmer is seeking to reassure voters that he is really the man to deliver change, it seems bizarre to bring in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman (9 May). It smacks of desperation. The message is that he doesn’t have the political answers and neither does his cabinet. But that has always been the problem. Starmer’s political antennae are virtually nonexistent. Sadly, Labour made the worst possible choice when it chose him as leader and there is no getting away from that. Shirley Osborn Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire Continue reading...

Investment in the courts and legal aid will be vital to deal with the expected increase in contested repossession cases, says Mark Evans of the Law Society of England and Wales The new Renters’ Rights Act is a step forward in ensuring that both tenants and landlords can access justice, but without proper investment it risks creating new court delays and injustices for both parties (The Guardian view on the Renters’ Rights Act: finally, protections fit for the modern housing market, 5 May). The end of “no fault” evictions in England is expected to lead to an increase in the number of contested repossession cases. If courts do not have the funding to handle the increase, delays will grow and leave many people in limbo, as we have recently seen with the closure of the Hillingdon Law Centre. Continue reading...

Chances of Starmer remaining in No 10 appear to be diminishing as about 40 Labour MPs call for him to quit UK politics live – latest updates Keir Starmer is facing a perilous 24 hours as allies of Wes Streeting said he was prepared to bid for the leadership if the prime minister’s premiership falls apart this week. Starmer was hoping to save his job with a speech that sets out his vision for turning the country around on Monday, after a disastrous set of local election results in which the party lost support to Reform UK and the Greens. Continue reading...