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    Yesterday

    National Rally leader Marine Le Pen with Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old who could be France’s next prime minister.

    Le Pen or Melenchon? France faces a bleak choice

    Razor-edge polls and tenuous alliances of political convenience point to a fragmented French electorate, volatile politics and uncertain economics.

    • Lionel Laurent
    French protesters take to the streets to oppose Marine Le Pen’s electorally victorious National Rally.

    ECB, Le Pen call for calm on turmoil-hit French markets

    France’s stock and bond ructions eased after the European Central Bank counselled calm, and Marine Le Pen sought to reassure spooked investors.

    • Updated
    • Hans van Leeuwen
    Reform UK leader Nigel Farage launches his party’s policy platform in Wales.

    Farage vows ‘radical’ tax cuts to fix ‘Broken Britain’

    The perennial populist outsider, who hopes to reshape the Conservative Party, has combined traditionalist social policies with a radical economic agenda.

    • Updated
    • Hans van Leeuwen

    This Month

    Ursula von der Leyen supporters are quietly confident of securing parliament’s assent, given the victory of her centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) in the EU elections this month.

    EU capitals to back new term for Ursula von der Leyen

    The former German defence minister who was an unheralded choice for the post in 2019, received a boost last week from the bloc’s three most powerful members.

    • Henry Foy
    accent

    Why your accent might be holding you back at work

    Wall Street banks and big law firms are among employers addressing this potential discrimination.

    • Pilita Clark
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    US Vice President Kamala Harris and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky during the peace summit, in Obbürgen near Lucerne,

    Ukraine peace summit seeks consensus on Russia rebuke

    China’s absence from the meeting and the attendance of lower-level diplomats from the BRICS states cast a shadow over efforts to win over the Global South.

    • Updated
    • Thomas Escritt and Sabine Siebold
    Australian actress Bojana Novakovic, pictured at a protest in Serbia has been among opponents of the Jadar mine.

    Serbia to give green light to Rio Tinto lithium mine

    “New guarantees” from the Anglo-Australian miner and EU could transform the continent’s electric vehicle industry.

    • Marton Dunai, Alec Russell, Harry Dempsey and Alice Hancock
    The Princess of Wales looked in good spirits on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with her family.

    All eyes on Kate in first appearance since cancer diagnosis

    The Princess of Wales has appeared in public for the first time this year, as she begins her return to public life with an all-family outing at Trooping the Colour.

    • Updated
    • Hannah Furness
    Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Putin demands land concessions from Ukraine

    The Russian president said Ukraine must recognise four regions and Crimea as Russian territory and Kyiv’s neutral status needs to be cemented.

    • Bloomberg News
    Reform UK leader Nigel Farage arrives at a fundraiser for Donald Trump in London.

    Nigel Farage’s party overtakes Tories in UK poll blow

    Right-wing Reform UK provides a symbolic ‘crossover moment’ in support that Conservative strategists have been fearing for months.

    • Alex Wickham

    Why Keir Starmer’s wife is being kept off the campaign trail

    Victoria Starmer is said to be highly resistant to the idea of breaking up the family’s happy life in the leafy streets near Hampstead Heath, and has kept a remarkably low profile.

    • Guy Kelly and Eleanor Mills
    President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sign a security agreement on the sidelines of the G7.

    Biden vows weapons, aid for Ukraine ‘until they prevail’

    The US president has signed a new security agreement with Volodymyr Zelensky, and the G7 plans $75 billion in aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia.

    • Updated
    • Matt Viser and Tyler Pager

    Macron has poured on the petrol. Someone will get burnt

    The President hopes to prove that votes for the right in Europe were just voters venting steam. If he’s wrong, the consequences will be felt far beyond France.

    • Hans van Leeuwen
    Labour leader Keir Starmer launches his election manifesto in Manchester.

    UK’s likely next PM copies Albanese election playbook

    Labour leader Keir Starmer unveiled a policy manifesto containing almost no new policies, confirming just a handful of tax tweaks if his party is elected on July 4.

    • Updated
    • Hans van Leeuwen
    Keir Starmer projected landslide will have been built around a strategy of making Labour as small a target as possible.

    Starmer will be centrism’s last chance

    Voters need to see normal politics working for them again. Keir Starmer not only carries the dreams of a country demanding change but the hope of all who fear what follows if he fails.

    • Robert Shrimsley
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    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

    What Aussie business can expect from Europe’s far-right shift

    Both sides of politics in Europe will back industrial policies designed to onshore or diversify supply chains – and that’s the space where Australia plays.

    • Updated
    • Hans van Leeuwen
    French President Emmanuel Macron.

    Macron urges unity against surging far-right turmoil

    The French president made the call after the centre-right Republicans ditched its chairman, who had called for an alliance with the hard right.

    • Updated
    • Hans van Leeuwen
    White Britons account for more than 60 per cent of the population.

    White Britons are receiving special attention but don’t tell them that

    The most important ethnic group in British politics is the one nobody talks about.

    • The Economist
    Rishi Sunak’s manifesto this week boasted that “growth has returned” following last year’s slump.

    Britain’s economy stalls in blow for Sunak

    Gross domestic product was flat in April compared with the previous month, a slowdown from 0.4 per cent growth in March.

    • Tom Rees and Irina Anghel
    Ursula von der Leyen’s team are nervous about how the French president’s major electoral gamble will affect his strategy for the EU’s future leadership.

    Talks on EU top jobs kick off at G7 summit

    A summit of G7 leaders hosted by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni will feature private conversations with the EC president as she seeks five more years in the job.

    • Henry Foy and Andy Bounds