Morning Brief, Monday 22 June

US and Iranian negotiators opened talks at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland to convert a 60-day ceasefire framework into something sturdier. The channel had backing from Qatar and Pakistan, and Vice President JD Vance led the American side while senior Iranian officials pressed for implementation of the memorandum. Then Donald Trump intervened on Truth Social, demanding that Iran restrain its allies in Lebanon and warning of harder strikes if it did not comply.

Iranian state media said the delegation walked out after 80 minutes, calling the message offensive, though later reports suggested the team returned to the venue without restarting formal talks. The two sides also gave clashing accounts of the Strait of Hormuz: Iran said it had closed the waterway, while US Central Command said traffic continued and American forces were monitoring the situation. Maritime firms saw a chill anyway, with one tracker counting only 12 transits on Sunday.

Markets punished ambiguity. Brent crude rose 1.35% to $81.66 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate traded above $77, because the strait carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supply. The nuclear language in the initial memorandum also stayed thin, with Iran pledging not to develop nuclear weapons but verification still unsettled. A truce sold as de-escalation now depends on whether threats can be separated from bargaining before oil markets do the negotiating.

Colombia’s preliminary presidential runoff count put Abelardo de la Espriella ahead by the thinnest margin in the country’s runoff history. With 99.9% of tables reported, the ultra-right Defensores de la Patria candidate won 12,956,941 votes, or 49.66%, against 12,691,709 votes, or 48.70%, for leftist senator Ivan Cepeda. Blank, null and unmarked ballots together outnumbered the winning margin, which gives the result its awkward democratic arithmetic.

De la Espriella celebrated in Barranquilla, cast himself as a restorer of order and warned Gustavo Petro’s camp not to ignite unrest. He also tried a more sober note, acknowledging that debt, division and security failures will limit easy promises. Cepeda accepted the preliminary count as a fact but not as the final word, saying his movement would challenge 33,000 polling stations during official scrutiny.

Donald Trump cheered the result, and Marco Rubio called with promises of cooperation on security, migration and trade. That matters because de la Espriella campaigned as a hardline, US-friendly outsider who promised mega-prisons, an offensive against armed groups and a sharp turn away from Petro’s dialogue-first approach. Colombia has not given him a sweeping mandate; it has handed him a one-point permission slip and a street opposition large enough to read the fine print.

France moved from warning to triage as an early heatwave killed three elderly people in Gironde and pushed Météo-France to place 49 departments under red alert. The victims, aged between 80 and 95, died at home in suburbs around Bordeaux, where forecasts pointed toward 43°C. Authorities compared the episode with the deadly August 2003 heatwave, not for drama but because the timing, intensity and health risk now look grimly familiar.

The government ordered 845 primary and middle schools to close on Monday, while another 1,800 adjusted their hours. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu convened a crisis cell, prefects tightened public-safety measures and emergency services prepared for fires, water stress and pressure on nuclear-plant cooling systems. More than 90% of the French population, over 63 million people, will feel the heat at the start of the week.

The Fête de la Musique went ahead in several cities, which forced police, firefighters and volunteers to manage heat as much as crowds. Paris deployed 5,000 police and gendarmes and banned alcohol on public roads; Rennes added Red Cross first-aid posts to relieve hospitals. France is learning that climate adaptation is not a future infrastructure line; on hot days it becomes school policy, ambulance capacity and who checks on an elderly neighbour.

Sir Keir Starmer spent the weekend under mounting pressure from his own MPs after Labour suffered its worst local-election result for a governing party in three decades. Reports in British newspapers said he could announce a resignation timetable as early as Monday, although Downing Street insisted his position had not changed. More than 100 Labour MPs have publicly urged him to go or name a departure date, and senior cabinet figures have reportedly pressed the same case in private.

Andy Burnham’s return to Westminster sharpened the blade. The former Greater Manchester mayor won the Makerfield by-election and can now challenge for the Labour leadership if Starmer stays and rebels force a contest. Burnham presents himself as a plain-speaking industrial optimist, which is exactly the contrast many Labour MPs want after months of gloomy polling, frustration over immigration and arguments about energy policy.

Donald Trump, never knowingly under-involved, posted that Starmer would resign and attacked him over immigration and North Sea oil. The comment folded personal grievance into political theatre, since Starmer had resisted giving Washington wider use of British bases during earlier strikes on Iran. It also made a domestic Labour crisis look, briefly and absurdly, like a transatlantic spectator sport.

The problem for Labour is not only whether Starmer survives the week; it is that power has begun to look conditional on permission from a parliamentary party already shopping for its next story.