Newspaper headlines: ‘Starmer splits party’ and ‘no Royal reunion’

France’s Benjamin Thomas took a surprise victory in Lucca on stage five of the Giro d’Italia as Tadej Pogacar retained his overall lead.

“lacks principles”, while The Times says her admission has “split” Labour. The Daily Telegraph says Labour is facing a backlash from MPs who are uncomfortable about her previous policy positions. In its editorial, The Sun says Labour has embraced “an unprincipled opportunist who has trashed them for years and whose views change like the weather”.

In his parliamentary sketch in The Times, Tom Peck describes Natalie Elphicke’s appearance on the Labour benches at PMQs as a “fireworks display”, adding “somebody, somewhere might find they’ve been badly burned”. The Daily Mirror’s editorial says “when the likes of Ms Elphicke decide Britain will be better served with Keir Starmer in Number 10 it shows how much Labour has changed”. In The Daily Mail, Quentin Letts notes that he saw only three Labour MPs shake Ms Elphicke’s hand, but that she “soaked up the sunrays of everyone’s attention”, before leaving the chamber, shoulder-to-shoulder with Labour’s leader, as they shared an awkward silence.

The Guardian has conducted a poll of hundreds of climate experts, who say they expect global temperatures to rise by at least 2.5C this century. Many predict what the paper describes as a “semi-dystopian” era – including famines, conflicts, floods, wildfires and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond what’s been seen before. “I could not feel greater despair over the future,” one scientist is quoted as saying.

The Financial Times reports on the significantly reduced fortunes of companies that boomed in the pandemic era. It says conference call business, Zoom, and home exercise firm, Peloton, are among 50 companies whose share price has fallen by a combined £1.2 trillion since 2020.