Power has been too centralised in Britain and tackling that is key to progress and prosperity. This initiative is ambitious: we’re remaking the state

• Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom

On Monday, while the cameras were fixed on that famous black door in Downing Street, something important was happening 165 miles away. A small team of officials and advisers were walking into an office building in Manchester to set about the remaking of the British state.

This was the beginning of No 10 North: the first major act of this government and what I hope will be seen as its most defining.

Andy Burnham is the prime minister of the United Kingdom

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The unprecedented expression of dissent against India's government, headed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has shown no sign of abating, as protests by the youth-led “cockroach” protest movement entered its fourth day.

The Guardian’s south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen was on the ground in Delhi, where thousands still thronged the streets, many having travelled hundreds of miles to be there.

While the Cockroach Janta party has primarily focused on accountability for the devastating recent leaks of exam papers and called for the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, the overriding feeling as the week develops is that this is now bigger than one issue. 

For some, this is the moment that India’s youth – totalling more than 600 million – found its political voice.

The Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer imagines Nigel Farage’s right-hand man’s thinking behind his book, How to Launder Money

Anti-money-laundering laws are supposed to stop the illicit flow of money. So far, they seem to have stopped next to nothing. About 5% of the global economy is illicit and only 0.05% is stopped by AML laws.

Which makes me, George, something of a rarity. The idiot member of the 1% who actually got done for conspiring to launder money. Just think, while 99% of criminals were getting away with it, I had the bright idea of telling an audience of undercover members of the US Internal Revenue Service in Las Vegas how I could clean up their drug money for them. Much to my surprise, they didn’t take me up on my offer. I was arrested on money-laundering charges at Chicago airport. Still, I did a plea bargain and the charges were reduced to wire fraud and I did eight months in prison. So no harm done.

Pre-Covid, the movie landscape was dramatically different: YouTubers weren’t dominating the box office, video game spin-offs rarely made an impact and Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t yet the star of a slasher movie. Why such a flurry of innovation – and what will be next?

Cinema has always been a medium of research and development. At any given point, the industry is searching for yet another breakthrough that can drive it into the future. Synchronised sound in the 1920s. Technicolor in the 1930s. The invention of the modern blockbuster in the 1970s.

Conversely, the consensus is that, if the 2020s has a defining trend, then it is one of decline. The theatrical experience is under attack from all angles: streaming, YouTube, a once-in-a-century health crisis that shut cinemas down entirely. And yet, if you look closer, this has actually been one of the most innovative decades that cinema has ever seen. Whether down to technology or desperation, the film industry has spent these last few years figuring out new ways to make films that simply could not have existed even at the turn of the decade.

As they release their first album in 16 years, the Vini Reilly-fronted band answer your questions on sandpaper record sleeves, having Harry Styles as a fan and inventing a new style of guitar music

Vini, you’ve created some of the most beautiful, ethereal music of the last 40 years. Is it true that in your youth you were in a violent Manchester street gang? Songy24
Vini Reilly [guitars, vocals, keyboards]: Gangs then had a different meaning. It was just “their lot” and “our lot”. We’d sling insults at each other. Then you’d play football in the park and realise you were playing with the local thugs. They were actually very funny, and I could have fun with them because I was so little. At the time I’d been going through a recurring depressive illness and felt I didn’t fit in at home, so I left without any clean clothing. I wanted to end my life so I decided to go to Moss Side, where the gangsters would shoot me. Of course they didn’t. I’d had a very happy childhood until my father died when I was doing my O-levels, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the really bad things gave me more than they could ever take. How can you know happiness until you’ve known deep sadness?

Bruce Mitchell [drums]: Vini does kick off, though, properly battles. We had to section him once, and six people had to hold him down.

Anton Jäger has been lauded for his exceptional ability to make sense of these strange political times – and he’s only 32. The writer and academic explains why we’re living in an age of hyperpolitics

‘I am acutely conscious,” said Andy Burnham outside 10 Downing Street on Monday, “that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street.” It was good to hear him say it because, beneath all the cabinet gossip and rune-reading, there is a feeling of terror about the immediate future and also about ourselves, the electorate. Is this who we are now? Wildly enthusiastic one minute, seething the next; as passionate about the change we want as we are convinced that those who promise it are incapable of enacting it?

It is perhaps not surprising that Anton Jäger’s recent book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, is being read by Labour watchers and leftwing thinkers. As the New York Times wrote, it’s “among the best and most dazzling efforts to model the political present in all its maddening strangeness”. Still, I think Jäger was surprised to have his honeymoon interrupted so I could interview him about it. Life comes at everyone quite fast in a hyperpolitical age.

Burnham says ‘no one in government loses when power is shared’ as he revives Brown-era national economic council

• It’s not just a No 10 in the north, it’s an engine for growth throughout the whole UK | Andy Burnham

Regional mayors are to be given a leading role in the UK’s economic policy, Andy Burnham has said, as he called the opening of No 10 North “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”.

The new prime minister has revived the national economic council [NEC], first set up by Gordon Brown to put the government on a war footing during the 2008 financial crash, arguing that economic growth requires the same level of urgency, focus and collective action.

Exclusive: Clinical assessments concluded Rudakubana could not be safely managed in prison, sources say

The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been moved from prison to a psychiatric hospital after clinical assessment, the Guardian can disclose.

He was transferred to Broadmoor high-security hospital from the category A prison Belmarsh this week after it was concluded that he could not be managed safely in a prison environment, sources confirmed.

Canada, Mexico, Australia, EU, UK and China among dozens of economies listed in US president’s latest ⁠effort to restore regime of near-global import taxes after supreme court struck down his ‘liberation day’ tariffs

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By a vote of 214-208 lawmakers in the House passed a war powers resolution to curb the Trump administration’s military action in Iran, ahead of the lower chamber’s August reccess.

Four Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick, Warren Davidson, Tom Barrett and Thomas Massie, voted yes, alongside all Democrats.

President’s remarks follow Houthi strikes on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and oil prices rising past $100 a barrel again

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Donald Trump has said he is close to deciding whether to launch “a massive attack” against Iran, on a scale larger than strikes already witnessed during the months-long conflict with Tehran.

Speaking to the Axios news site, the US president said: “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.”