Olly Robbins’s testimony will have been painful for the PM. The No 10 omnishambles was publicly laid bare – and Keir’s fresh out of scapegoats

‘How dare Olly Robbins not have made me look like a chaotic, unprincipled plonker?” is an interesting defence for a prime minister to go for. But we are where we are. Never mind “this is the future liberals want”: this is the past that Keir Starmer wants. What follows is the alternative branch of history the endlessly victimised PM apparently wishes we’d lived through instead.

In this version, he chooses a career liability to be US ambassador, who is well known to have been big pals with a notorious sex trafficker of underage girls and to have spent years involved in questionable business associations, some with Russian and Chinese firms. He immediately announces the appointment. When that guy is deemed a risk by the famously stringent developed national security vetting process – seriously, who’d-a-thunk-it?! – then Starmer has to go out and tell the public that the wrong ’un isn’t actually going to be his US ambassador after all, for “reasons”. Not to be one of the many people who has to explain how basic politics works to the PM, but after that notional fiasco, we’d have spent a very long time indeed talking about his bad judgment. Just like we are now. It’s almost as if all branches of history lead to a discussion about Keir Starmer’s bad judgment. The only person who doesn’t judge this to be the situation is Keir Starmer, which is another instance of his bad judgment. Monday found him chuntering away at the dispatch box like an arsonist complaining about the price of matches.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Mousehole in Cornwall once had a butcher, post office and general store. Now it doesn’t even have an ATM – and one of its crucial bus services has been cut. Can residents save this vital resource?

It’s early April and the sun is shining over Mousehole, Cornwall, as an older couple trudge up the hill to their nearest bus stop before sinking into two of the plastic chairs that have been lined up on the side of the road. Until recently, buses would come right to the centre of the fishing village, the couple are soon explaining to a pair of Australian tourists also waiting for the bus. But when the bus route was taken over by the Go-Ahead transport group in February, the small, ice-cream-van-like buses that had been used by the previous bus company, First Bus, were swapped for full-size buses – some of them double deckers – that wouldn’t be safe to drive through Mousehole’s narrow streets. So the route, which has been taking passengers down to the harbour since the 1920s, was cut short, and now ends at the edge of the village.

You don’t have to spend long in Mousehole, described as “the loveliest village in England” by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, to learn of residents’ dismay over this change. “Save Our Stop” flyers have been stuck in the windows of houses and businesses, while a banner adorns the railing next to where the old stop used to be, inviting passersby to sign the petition to have it reinstated and “make Mousehole accessible to all again” – a petition that now has more than 5,000 signatures.

Our Legacies of Enslavement team has found humanity and dignity, not blame or guilt, are at the heart of the conversation

Guardian owner heralds next phase in Legacies of Enslavement restorative justice plan

There’s an image, a feeling, that I haven’t been able to get out of mind since my last visit to the Sea Islands, US, in March. That of living in a small box, compressed on all sides. From above, your basic services are being neglected or withheld; from the sides, your ability to find a job or make a living is cut away; from below, a steady assault on your self-esteem as you are criminalised, ignored, gaslit or made to feel invisible. And imagine having to raise a family, make ends meet, maintain your physical and mental health in that box. At some point the air is going to thin out.

Occasionally, a glimpse of something offers respite. A flock of birds against the sky. The sway of the Spanish moss on the oak tree that has binya (“been here”; a Gullah Geechee term used to describe Sea Islands natives) for hundreds of years, that has seen Jim Crow, Reconstruction and maybe even enslavement. You hear the flow of the water as it laps against the dock. The water that represents a passage to the motherland. And life feels worth living.

Rammed with every music-movie cliche, an almost mute supporting cast and a Michael who only produces endless smiley blandness, this is a frustratingly shallow film

Antoine Fuqua’s demi-biopic of Michael Jackson gives you the chimp, the llama, the giraffe … but not the elephant in the living room. It’s like a 127-minute trailer montage assembling every music-movie cliche you can think of: the producers’ astonishment in the recording studio, the tour bus, the billboard chart ascent, the meeting with the uncool corporate execs in their offices.

The film skates through Jackson’s life from the early days of the Jackson Five, terrorised by belt-wielding dad Joe, to his emergence as a stunningly original, globally adored solo act, culminating in the colossal Wembley Stadium concert in 1988, at which stage he was 30-years-old. And there we leave it, with the baffling surtitle flashed up on screen before the end credits roll: “The story continues”. It certainly does. Does this mean a second, darker movie is in the works? Maybe. Producer Graham King and the Jackson family estate are reportedly considering a “Michael 2”; if this happens, they will have to find a very different film-making style, something other than this bland, slick, corporate hagiography. And there is certainly no clear commitment to anything. All concerned might well think it’s best to exit here, and avoid the controversy, like the stage show MJ: The Musical.

Globally, the number of single people is on the rise. Rates of marriage and cohabitation are on the decline, and in some countries, even sex itself is down. In this new series we're on a journey around the world to find out why people seem to be coupling up less, and what could be causing this dating crisis. In this episode, we’re in the UK

When we wonder why marginalized groups are ‘underrepresented’, we are asking the wrong question

For the most part, we have been doing it wrong. For decades, the way that government entities, institutions, organizations, and even advocates and activists have gone about addressing inequality in this country has been fundamentally flawed. We’ve asked the wrong questions, pursued the wrong solutions, and accepted the wrong premises. We’ve mainly obsessed over why people of color, women and LGBTQ+ individuals are “underrepresented” rather than asking: why are straight white American men so dramatically overrepresented in positions of power?

This isn’t about semantic hairsplitting. It’s about asking the right question, a strategic reorientation in thinking that gets to the heart of the matter. The problem isn’t that people of color and other marginalized people are lacking the necessary qualities – intelligence, ambition, discipline, networks and other qualifications, other merit – to climb their way up to positions of power and influence in greater numbers. The problem is the longstanding and widespread practice of granting preferences to straight white American men. White men make up about 29% of the US population, according to census data.

Twenty-nine percent: white men make up approximately 29% of the US population

The percentage of top positions in an organization, institution or entity held by white men

The organization’s overall workforce demographics

The demographics of the relevant qualified candidate pool

The demographics of the communities the organization serves

Industry benchmarks (where available)

The overall general US population?

Who makes hiring decisions for senior roles?

What criteria are used for promotion to leadership positions?

How are “cultural fit” and “leadership potential” assessed?

What networks and relationships influence succession planning?

How are board seats filled?

This article was adapted from Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else?: Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America, out on 21 April from New Press

Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good

Sacked civil servant discloses he overturned vetting ruling without knowing full extent of national security concerns

• UK politics live – latest updates

The sacked senior civil servant Oliver Robbins has said he was subject to “constant pressure” when he started working at the Foreign Office to get Peter Mandelson in post as soon as possible.

He said the Cabinet Office urged the Foreign Office to allow Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US without the usual vetting process but the Foreign Office pushed back and the vetting eventually went ahead.

Olly Robbins told MPs he had been asked to get the ex-No 10 aide a role and not mention it to then Foreign Secretary David Lammy

• Robbins v Starmer: the key Mandelson points they disagree on

The hearing has started.

Emily Thornberry, the chair, started by saying that Robbins did not tell the whole truth about this process when he gave evidence to it in November.

Sacked civil servant says it was right not to tell PM that Mandelson had failed vetting – a view Starmer rejects

In the last 24 hours, the two men at the heart of the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal have given their version of events: Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and Olly Robbins, the man he sacked as the head civil servant at the Foreign Office.

Robbins’ testimony to the foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday completes much of the picture as to why Mandelson was given security clearance against the advice of vetting officials.

US president claims to CNBC that US is in a strong negotiating position and will end up with ‘a great deal’

• JD Vance to lead US delegation in Pakistan if Iran agrees to talks

Iran’s armed forces are ready to deliver an “immediate and decisive response” to any renewed hostile action by its adversaries, Ali Abdollahi, commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, was quoted by the Tasnim news agency as having said.

He said Tehran had the upper hand militarily, including in the management of the strait of Hormuz, and would not allow Donald Trump to “create false narratives over the situation on the ground.”