Evening Brief, Monday 22 June

Keir Starmer resigned outside 10 Downing Street and said he would remain as interim prime minister while Labour chooses a successor. Andy Burnham, freshly returned to Parliament after a special election, moved into pole position after Wes Streeting endorsed him, giving Labour a fast route to a new leader if no serious challenger emerges.

The British drama landed beside a Spanish one. Spain's Supreme Court sentenced former transport minister José Luis Ábalos to 24 years in prison, his former adviser Koldo García to 19 years and businessman Víctor de Aldama to a suspended four-and-a-half-year term for a pandemic mask-contract corruption scheme. Alberto Núñez Feijóo demanded Pedro Sánchez resign, while the government attacked the leniency shown to the cooperating businessman.

Both cases punish leaders who sold competence as the cure for post-crisis politics. Keir Starmer's fall reflects exhausted patience inside his own party; Pedro Sánchez faces an opposition that can now attach court findings to a broader story of insider rot. For voters, the old promise that competent centrists could restore calm has acquired a rather costly maintenance bill.

Iran and the United States left Bürgenstock with a 60-day roadmap, not a peace treaty. Pakistani and Qatari mediators said technical talks would start immediately, while the two sides agreed to create a communication line for commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and a Lebanon conflict-management cell involving Washington, Tehran, Beirut and the mediators.

The talks also produced Iran's pledge to admit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors after nearly a year without access. That gives Washington a measurable early gain, though the session still carried the usual theatre: Donald Trump threatened Iran over the strait, Iranian negotiators briefly walked out according to state media, and both sides later described the atmosphere as constructive.

Energy markets showed why diplomats hurried. Oil prices eased after signs of progress, but European gas stayed sensitive because storage remains well below normal in several key markets.

The bargain still has many tripwires: sanctions relief, inspections, Hezbollah-linked fighting in Lebanon and maritime security all sit inside the same fragile package. The deal will be judged not by communiqués in the Alps, but by tankers moving through Hormuz and guns staying quiet in Lebanon.

France reported three heat-related deaths in Gironde, all elderly people who died at home in the Bordeaux suburbs. Météo-France placed 49 departments under red alert, warned temperatures could near 43°C from Monday to Wednesday, and compared the severity of the episode with the deadly August 2003 heatwave.

The French government closed 845 primary and middle schools and ordered 1,800 more to operate adjusted hours. In Paris, authorities deployed 5,000 police and gendarmes for the Fête de la Musique, banned alcohol on public roads and reported a 20% rise in firefighter interventions by late afternoon.

Italy widened its red alert from 12 cities on Monday to 16 by Wednesday, covering Milan, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Turin and other urban centres. Spain put 14 regions under heat warnings, with the Basque Country at the highest alert level and 40 to 42°C forecast in major river valleys.

This is not just uncomfortable weather. Hot nights above 20°C block recovery, low rivers and depleted Alpine snowpack squeeze water systems, and schools built for milder summers become weak links in public-health planning. Europe has learned to issue red alerts; it has not yet rebuilt enough ordinary buildings for red-alert lives.

Abelardo De La Espriella won Colombia's presidential runoff by the narrowest margin in the country's history, taking roughly 49.7% of the vote against about 48.7% for leftist senator Ivan Cepeda. With nearly all polling stations counted, the margin stood at about 250,000 votes, while Cepeda and outgoing president Gustavo Petro said they would challenge results from more than 30,000 polling stations.

De La Espriella, a millionaire lawyer with no previous elected office, campaigned as a hardline anti-crime outsider and drew explicit support from Donald Trump. He promised mega-prisons, renewed oil and gas exploration, deep spending cuts and a tougher security policy backed by right-wing allies, though his own Defenders of the Homeland movement holds only a small foothold in Congress.

Washington celebrated the result, and conservative governments across Latin America welcomed another rightward turn. But the arithmetic at home looks less triumphant: a divided electorate, street protests in Bogotá and Cali, a fragmented legislature and the country's worst violence in a decade. His mandate begins not as a roar, but as a recountable whisper.