Conservative leader’s attempts to refight the past suggests she won’t be happy until her party sinks even lower in the polls

As the Brexit Nostalgia festival – AKA the Earnestness of Being Unimportant – eased into its second day, Keir Starmer prepared to give a statement to the Commons on how his deal only marginally tinkered at the edges of the Brexit agreement reached by Boris Johnson and Frosty the No Man five years ago. Sorry, that should have read the deal that completely reset Britain’s relationship with the EU paving the way for years of growth and plenty. Or, as the Brexiters put it, the greatest betrayal since the last one. Take your pick.

The Labour and the Tory benches filled up in anticipation. Government backbenchers primed to take full advantage of a rare vaguely good news story. The Tories? They were there to refight the past. Because that has worked so well for them. A new YouGov poll showed the Tories in fourth place. Behind even the Lib Dems. Though Kemi Badenoch won’t be happy until she has steered her party into fifth. A bit more climate denial and the Greens could overtake her.

What you need to know about the essential yet misunderstood body part, including common issues and helpful exercises

The pelvic floor is an essential but often overlooked and misunderstood part of the human body. Some people don’t even know they have one.

“We’re never really taught about it,” says Dr Sara Reardon, a board-certified pelvic floor therapist and author of Floored: A Woman’s Guide to Pelvic Floor Health at Every Age and Stage. “We don’t really get any education about how these muscles work and what’s normal.”

He’s been jailed, gone on hunger strike and been forced to sell his house for bail. In his first newspaper interview for 15 years, the great director explains why every film is worth the consequences

In February 2023 Jafar Panahi walked free from Iran’s Evin prison after nearly seven months behind bars. Friends and supporters had gathered to greet him, but the moment of release felt bittersweet and he struggled to adjust back to civilian life afterwards. In the weeks that followed he developed a habit. He’d drive his car back and forth on the road that paralleled the high prison walls, pining for those who were still inside. “These people had become my people,” he says. “I thought, ‘How could I go and leave them behind?’”

Panahi makes humane, heartfelt pictures about life in Iran. He refers to these as “social films”, although this definition cuts no ice with the Iranian government, which has ruled them to be “propaganda against the system” and therefore hazardous, offensive material. He has to date been imprisoned twice, undergone a hunger strike and sold his house to make bail. Panahi is officially banned from making movies, although he continues to make them all the same. This is his first press interview in more than 15 years. Technically, he’s not allowed to do this either.

To raise money for lymphoedema research, the actor sat before an audience for artist Frances Segelman, who admired her youthful, ‘pixie-like’ face while rendering it in clay

It began as a blob: a 12kg lump of clay the size of a watermelon. Three hours later, it had become Judi Dench’s head, 50% larger than usual, twinkle-eyed even in terracotta.

At Claridge’s hotel in London on Monday evening, Frances Segelman hosted her latest ticking-clock sculpt: paying guests watch as she kneads a celebrity bust on stage, the subject sitting quietly beside her. In the past, Segelman has done Simon Rattle, Joan Collins, Joanna Lumley, Boris Johnson, Mr Motivator and major-league royals, almost always for charity.

The hemlines were high and the diamonds hefty as the world’s second-richest fiancee and her entourage stormed the Seine. Formez vos bataillons!

To Cannes, in the country of France, where last night Jeff Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, got what she deserves: a philanthropy award. Lauren was honoured at something called the Global Gift Gala, where she received the women empowerment award for her commitment to climate justice, social justice and coming off at absolutely all times as a woman who refers to her breasts as “my girls”. Regular readers will know I have a huge amount of time for her. She accepted her gong wearing a necklace with a diamond pendant slightly larger than an Amazon warehouse, once again redrawing the blueprint that other humanitarians will simply need to watch and learn from.

Meanwhile, if there were awards for hen nights – or bachelorette parties, in the American style – then Lauren would surely have taken one for her full-scale invasion of Paris last weekend, after French forces withdrew and declared the city open. Hand on heart, I initially assumed Lauren was the new US ambassador to France, but then remembered that state department randos were probably seated in some windy overspill gazebo for Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, while Lauren had pride of place ahead of the actual cabinet as part of Oligarchs’ Row. Plus, having just Googled, I discover the Senate yesterday confirmed Trump’s pick for the ambassador to France – his own son-in-law’s former jailbird dad.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Once, getting ready for the apocalypse was for the paranoid. Now, in the face of cyber-attacks, climate breakdown and nuclear threats, the UK government recommends it. Should everyone have a survival kit?

This is a great time to be a shopkeeper, if that shop is for those worried about the breakdown of civilisation. “It started with Covid, and people weren’t looking for toilet rolls, put it that way,” says Justin Jones, who runs the online UK Prepping Shop, whose stock ranges from emergency food and wind-up radios to crossbows and body armour.

Business is booming, as is the British prepping scene – 22,700 members of the UK Preppers and Survivalists Facebook group, 6,000 in the UK Preppers Club Facebook group. The scene is not as well-known as its US and Canadian equivalents, but that’s partly by choice. “Preppers are by nature a little bit secretive,” says Bushra Shehzad, who is researching prepping for a PhD in marketing and consumer behaviour at Newcastle University. “They are sceptical of people who aren’t part of it asking questions, which I think is because they’re portrayed in a manner that many of them don’t agree with.”

Foreign secretary, David Lammy, condemns blocking of aid trucks and calls by Israeli ministers to ‘purify Gaza’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

UK-Israeli relations have plunged to their worst state for decades after the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, suspended negotiations over a new free trade deal, saying Israel’s cabinet ministers’ calls to “purify Gaza” by expelling Palestinians were repellent, monstrous and extremist.

He also said wider talks about a future bilateral strategic roadmap with Israel were also being reviewed.

Deal will not come into effect until the autumn and will be phased in over six months

British tourists will have to endure passport-stamping queues in the EU until at least October and possibly well into 2026 despite a high profile e-gates agreement unveiled at Monday’s EU-UK summit in London, it has emerged.

According to the detailed text of the agreement, both the UK and the EU agree there will be “no legal barriers to e-gate use for British nationals travelling to and from EU member states after the introduction of the EU entry/exit system (EES)”.

Exclusive: John Healey says strategic defence review aims to put military on ‘leading edge of innovation in Nato’

Britain’s military will be increasingly powered by artificial intelligence, the defence secretary has said, as he prepares to announce a review with advanced technology at its core.

John Healey said he and his officials had put AI at the centre of the strategic defence review, as the government seeks to avoid the kinds of costly procurement mistakes that have plagued defence spending in the past.

Environment secretary makes announcement after company’s chair said he ‘may have misspoken’ to MPs

Large bonuses due to be paid to Thames Water executives from an emergency £3bn loan have been “withdrawn”, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said, after the Guardian revealed the chair of the company wrongly told parliament creditors had “insisted” on the payments.

Reed told the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee on Tuesday that the retention payment plan had been withdrawn by Thames Water. He said: “I am very happy indeed that Thames have now dropped those proposals. It was the wrong thing to do. They have now withdrawn their proposal to make those payments.”