Keir Starmer has agreed to a US request to use British military bases for "defensive" strikes on Iranian missile sites. But the Prime Minister said the UK has learned lessons from the "mistakes of Iraq", and was not involved in the strikes on Iran. So why are we letting the US bomb Iran from our bases if we can’t say whether we support the war or not?

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Iranian state television confirmed this morning that the country's supreme leader had been killed by joint US-Israeli strikes. President Trump addressed the world from his beach resort Mar-a-Lago to declare that "freedom is at hand" for Iran, urging citizens there to rise up against their repressive government.

It’s potentially a pivotal moment in the Middle East as we wait to see if a brutal regime, that has slaughtered so many of its own people, falls. But it’s also a moment of high tension - Iran has already hit back across the region with strikes of its own. And, without taking out the entire regime - including the revolutionary guards that support it - it is possible that nothing in Iran changes but the rest of the world is dragged into major conflict.

Is this Trump's biggest gamble yet? Does international law matter any more? And how many casualties will ensue from a president who promised an end to "forever wars"?

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For all Labour's insistence that the Gorton and Denton by-election was a straight fight between them and Reform - the Greens demonstrated in Greater Manchester that they are now a fighting force on the radical Left of British politics, who present a new kind of challenge to Keir Starmer.

Hannah Spencer won convincingly, with Labour floundering in third place. Starmer visited the constituency earlier this week - a rare move for a Prime Minister not totally convinced of an imminent victory - so how much of this defeat lays squarely with him? And what does it mean for his party's direction of travel looking forward?

Matt Goodwin blamed "sectarianism" for Reform's shortcomings - and Kemi Badenoch accused Labour of creating a "monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes...that came back to bite them". That comes amid reports of 'family voting' - what has happened and is there really anything remarkable about religious groups being targeted in our political campaigning? Or is it a tale as old as our democracy?

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