Last summer the St George’s cross was co-opted by anti-immigrant groups. Now, as the World Cup begins, some communities are reclaiming it as a symbol of a very different sort of pride

As I drove into London with my daughter a week ago, we passed a roadside pub festooned with dozens of England flags. Our eyes met in recognition: we were in one of those areas, we assumed. In the eyes of many, St George’s cross flags have become a kind of territorial marker in the English landscape, signifying a certain kind of identity, a certain kind of politics, not necessarily welcoming to all. As we got closer, though, we realised the pub was actually preparing for the start of the World Cup. Flags of other nations were also on display. We laughed at our mistake and relaxed a bit.

It’s a feeling many Britons might have experienced. We’re gearing up for a summer of both exciting international football and ugly far-right protests and riots, as recent events in Belfast and Southampton have shown. The England flag will be a prominent fixture of both – great news for flag sellers, but a confusing and anxious time for the rest of us. How did England’s national symbol come to evoke such mixed feelings and carry such contradictory meanings? Are we really at the stage of “good flags” and “bad flags”? What are we supposed to think when we see an England flag?

Tomorrow is Andy Burnham’s day of destiny as he seeks to return to parliament in a bid to become prime minister. Our North of England correspondent Hannah Al-Othman answered your questions – read the Q&A below.

ruthj70 asks: Should I go and volunteer to support Labour tomorrow, or have people in Makerfield had enough of people knocking on their doors?

Hannah: I think that question is probably best answered by the Labour Party, but I’d imagine they wouldn’t say no! People may generally be a bit fed up with people knocking on their doors – but I think they probably expect it will happen on polling day.

Hannah: The ticket he is standing on is mostly based around local policies. He has pledged: to build new flooding infrastructure, build a new link road, and to clear that toxic waste dump in Bickershaw that I wrote about last weekend. He’s also promised a new health centre, pharmacy and GP surgery in various parts of the constituency, and to save a local library. Burnham has also said he’ll fight a controversial housing development that some people locally are opposing, due to a potential loss of green belt countryside and destruction of ancient trees.

The main local issues I’ve found in the constituency are environmental ones such as flooding, transport issues, and public services, as well as a general sense that the area has been neglected and the high streets have become run down. Burnham’s ticket seems to be broadly designed to appeal to these local concerns.

Keir Starmer has called the firing of warning shots by a Russian warship at a British yacht sailing across the Channel on Tuesday ‘deeply concerning and reckless’.

Russia’s defence ministry said the yacht was on a ‘dangerous course’ and several attempts were made to contact it – a claim disputed by the retired couple onboard the 40ft yacht.

Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh

Multiculturalism and hard-won equalities are being attacked on all fronts. Labour should look to London’s leaders, past and present, for how to stand against the tide

Not for the first time, the UK is in the grip of a backlash against equality and diversity. Already disadvantaged parts of the population are having the existence of that disadvantage denied – and the limited legal redress for it, which has been won over decades, such as the 2010 Equality Act, threatened with repeal. Two of the largest political parties, much of the media, street protesters, online activists, opportunistic rioters and organised fascists are all working to erase aspects of British multiculturalism, by lawful means and otherwise. In the decade since the Brexit referendum – which awoke semi-dormant forces of social conservatism and nationalism – this reactionary campaign has gained more and more momentum.

Its targets have widened and solidified: from “wokeness”, multiracial cities, diversity, and equity and inclusion policies to immigrant cultures of all kinds, so-called two-tier policing and the general conduct of local and central government. “Britain is a two-tier state – against white people,” claimed Nigel Farage in a sweeping Reform UK policy statement on Sunday. “Anti-whiteness is institutionalised into every aspect of public life.” His party, still consistently ahead in the polls, promises to work relentlessly against this supposed injustice when it takes office, copying the confrontational and divisive tactics of Donald Trump.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Ten years ago, after complaining that traffic was ‘driving him nuts’, Musk’s Boring Company began building underground tunnels to ease congestion on the roads. Did he overpromise and underdeliver?

It’s another blindingly bright day in Las Vegas but I’m 30ft underground and strapped in for a rocket ride to the future. Actually, it’s a Tesla ride to the future, and not a self-driving one. And it’s pretty slow – my driver tells me the speed limit down here is 30mph. It’s also pretty short: the journey is over in a matter of minutes. In fact, the Vegas Loop is a pretty underwhelming experience: a brief trundle down a white-walled tunnel only slightly larger than the vehicle itself, lined by strips of LEDs that change colour every few seconds, in an attempt to inject some Vegas glitz. I’d been hoping to ask other Loop-riders what they made of the experience, but … there aren’t any. I’m the only person here.

This is not the futuristic transport solution Elon Musk originally promised. When he first announced this innovative technology in 2017, it was accompanied by sci-fi visuals showing a car pulling over from the street traffic on to an elevator platform, which then descended into a network of tunnels and whizzed along on an “electric skate” at 200km/h (124mph). “There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have … so you can alleviate any arbitrary level of urban congestion,” Musk said. A few months earlier, with characteristic edgelordly nonchalance, Musk had announced on Twitter: “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging …” Followed shortly after by: “I am actually going to do this.” He did, and he named it the Boring Company.

Ten years after she was forced to leave her friends and family, the Turkish journalist feels the importance of home more keenly than ever. And she believes it is at the heart of many of the world’s conflicts

One summer’s evening in 2022, the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran found herself in a doctor’s office in Hamburg, Germany, lying flat on a stretcher with an IV drip in her arm. After six intense years of work and travel, her body was in revolt. “I now know that I need to talk,” she writes in her latest book, Nation of Strangers, which was shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s prize for nonfiction. “I fear that not speaking will make me really sick. And when homeless, you cannot afford to get sick.”

In fact, she had not been silent in the preceding years: she had published two well-received books, How To Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism (2019) and Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World (2021). She had spoken her warnings in public, too, on stages all across the west, saying: this is what happened to us in Turkey – make sure it doesn’t happen to you, too. And she is not technically homeless; she lives in Berlin. But by “speaking” and by “home”, Temelkuran means something specific yet vast. Nation of Strangers posits that the idea of home, and the emotions that idea contains, is one of the dominant political forces of our time.

British retirees Jane and Alan Kelvey say they do not want incident in Channel to stop them enjoying their sailing trip

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A British woman on a yacht in the Channel near which a Russian warship fired warning shots has told how she does not want the incident to be blown out of proportion, saying: “We don’t want world war three to start because of this.”

Jane Kelvey, 69, and her husband, Alan, 70, were on their yacht, Bright Future, travelling from the south coast of England towards France on Tuesday when they came into close contact with the Admiral Grigorovich, a 409ft (125-metre) Russian frigate.

Speaking at the G7 summit, prime minister says he stands by Labour’s manifesto pledge not to rejoin bloc

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The UK and the European Union should not waste time “looking backwards” to Brexit, Keir Starmer said on Wednesday, as he comes under pressure to reconsider rejoining the EU.

The prime minister reaffirmed his government’s manifesto commitment to not re-enter the bloc, but said there had been “real progress” with the relationship, which was “slowly but surely building”.

French president welcomes group’s unity after ‘very deep change’ in Washington’s approach

Emmanuel Macron has said the whole of the G7, including the US, recognises “the territorial integrity of Ukraine” as he hailed a “re-synchronisation” of positions on the issue.

The French president welcomed a “very deep change in the US approach”, saying Donald Trump and all the leaders present at the G7 summit at Évian-les-Bains understood that Vladimir Putin was not interested in peace.

Images show Israeli military using six companies’ bulldozers and excavators to demolish south Lebanon villages

Human rights experts have alleged that six multinational construction equipment conglomerates may be aiding and abetting war crimes by supplying excavators and bulldozers to Israel, after photos and videos showed the Israeli military using their equipment to demolish villages in south Lebanon.

The Guardian geolocated and verified images showing the Israeli military using excavators made by six companies – Caterpillar, Volvo, Hyundai, Doosan, Hitachi and Komatsu – to destroy homes, public utilities, shops and other structures across southern Lebanon.

Israel has levelled entire villages inside the “yellow line”, a 608 sq km area occupied by Israel along the Lebanese-Israeli border. At least 46 villages in south Lebanon have suffered heavy damage, most of it caused by demolitions carried out after the 17 April Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, according to a satellite analysis by Bellingcat.