Makerfield By-Election Tests Starmer as UK-EU Food Deal Signed

The day's centre of gravity in Westminster was a single market-town by-election. Voters in Ashton-in-Makerfield -- a Labour-safe seat since its 1983 creation -- will choose on 18 June between Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, the Labour candidate after MP Josh Simons' surprise late-February resignation cleared the way, and Reform UK's Robert Kenyon, with the result widely read as a referendum on Keir Starmer's leadership. Labour lost all eight of its local council seats in the constituency to Reform in May's local elections. Sir John Curtice told Al Jazeera the combined progressive and right-leaning blocs were "broadly level" but that Burnham personally added about nine percentage points to the Labour line. The new far-right Restore Party, endorsed at the weekend by Elon Musk, is polling around 7 percent in Ashton -- "the 7 percent Reform really need," Curtice said. The Conservatives, who picked Michael Winstanley as candidate, remain largely sidelined. Edna Conliff, 84, told Al Jazeera she would vote Burnham because "he's local, very local"; vinyl-shop owner Peter Thompson, 78, said he would vote Reform: "It's not desperate [support for] Reform. ... It's against the establishment." A local activist who gave only his first name, Malcolm, traced the discontent to the Conservative austerity decade: "People are angry and they're diverting it towards migrants."

The other big institutional move pulled in the opposite direction. The UK and EU published the first details of a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement that will eliminate paperwork and physical checks on most agri-food exports between them from summer 2027, covering dairy, fish, cheese, eggs and fresh red meat in both directions and easing Northern Ireland trade under the Windsor Framework. The government said it expected the deal to add up to £5.1 billion a year to the UK economy and to slash red tape for farmers and producers; in Brussels and London it was framed as the most substantive Brexit reset since 2020.

A bleak labour-market report landed underneath both stories. Official data showed more than one million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK were not in education, employment or training between January and March 2026, the highest level in over 12 years. The interim review led by former minister Alan Milburn warned that one in six young people could be NEET within five years without action, calling the picture a "perfect storm" risking a "lost generation," and put the annual cost to the economy at £125 billion. Mental-health pressures and social-media impact figured among the drivers Milburn flagged.

The day's hard-news story from the courts was a murder verdict in Southampton. Vickrum Digwa, 23, was convicted on Thursday of murdering 18-year-old University of Southampton student Henry Nowak with a 21-centimetre ceremonial Sikh kirpan on 3 December 2024. The jury rejected Digwa's self-defence claim that Nowak had used a racist insult and knocked off his turban. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct after officers initially handcuffed the wounded Nowak as he lost consciousness.