Ahead of the first tour date tonight, the poet laureate explores the ‘brotherhood and chemistry’ that forged the band, repelled the Gallaghers and brought them together again

In retrospect it all seems so obvious. Form a band, plunder the Beatles’ back catalogue for riffs, guitar tabs, chord changes and song structures, then bang it out in a key that a stadium crowd could put their lungs into but which suited the subway busker, too.

The resulting success now looks so inevitable. In 1994, dance music flooded the UK charts but not everyone thought a rave DJ wearing oversized headphones and playing records counted as a gig. Some people – a vast number, it turned out – still yearned for meat-and-two-veg pop-rock with guitars and drums, and for songs played by groups. Throw in some Manc bluster, the death throes of a Tory government that had occupied Downing Street since for ever, and the first glimmers of a cooler Britannia, and hey presto: Oasis.

The Treasury focuses on numbers when what’s needed is vision. The party and the country are crying out for leadership, but it’s nowhere to be seen

She is not the first chancellor to cry in public, and may not be the last. But Rachel Reeves is the first whose tears have moved markets. No sooner had the realisation dawned that she was silently weeping – over a personal sorrow she won’t be pushed into revealing, she insisted later, not a political one – as she sat beside Keir Starmer at Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, than the pound was dropping and the cost of borrowing rising. The bond traders who forced out Liz Truss’s hapless chancellor still clearly rate her judgment and want her to stay, even if (perhaps especially if) some Labour MPs don’t. Yet it is an extraordinary thing to live with the knowledge that a moment’s uncontrolled emotion can drive up the cost of a nation’s mortgages, just as a misjudged stroke of the budget pen can destroy lives.

The most striking thing about her tears, however, was Starmer’s failure to notice. Intent on the Tory benches opposite, the prime minister simply ploughed on, not realising that his closest political ally was dissolving beside him. Though within hours, a clearly mortified Starmer had thrown a metaphorical arm around her, and Reeves herself was back out talking up her beloved fiscal rules as if nothing had happened. But it’s the kind of image that sticks: her distress and his oblivion, an unfortunately convenient metaphor for all the times he has seemed oddly detached from his own government.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

In the third in a series, the Guardian hears how Reform UK is targeting voters over green policies – which business says are bringing new jobs to the area

• ‘It breaks my heart’: how a refinery closure is hitting jobs and politics

• ‘They feel betrayed’: how Reform UK is targeting votes in Britain’s manufacturing heartlands

“We’re basically going through a deindustrialisation of the country at the moment and I think we’re losing a lot of jobs,” says John Mac, over a pot of tea in a bustling Caffè Nero in the centre of Stockton-on-Tees.

The local candidate for Reform UK worked for years at the Billingham plant of Imperial Chemical Industries’s (ICI), before taking voluntary redundancy in the 1990s.

The Reservoir Dogs and Donnie Brasco actor had a rare, sometimes scary power, as well as a winning self-awareness and levity

• Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and Donnie Brasco, dies aged 67

• Michael Madsen– a life in pictures

Until 1992, when people heard Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel on the radio, they might smile and nod and sing along to its catchy soft-rock tune and goofy Dylan-esque lyrics. But after 1992, with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s sensationally tense and violent crime movie Reservoir Dogs, the feelgood mood around that song forever darkened. That was down to an unforgettably scary performance by Michael Madsen, who has died at the age of 67.

Stuck in the Middle, with its lyrics about being “so scared in case I fall off my chair”, was to be always associated with the image of Madsen, whom Tarantino made an icon of indie American movies, with his boxy black suit, sinister, ruined handsomeness and powerful physique running to fat, playing tough guy Vic Vega, AKA Mr Blonde. He grooved back and forth across the room, in front of a terrified cop tied to a chair, dancing to that Stealers Wheel number, holding his straight razor, which he had removed from his boot – smirkingly preparing to torture the cop (that is, torture him further) by cutting off his ear.

His loved ones’ lives are changed for ever and at one level this is not a sports story. But Jota’s footballing talent, heart and will should be cherished, amid the grief

Bad moon, bad times and a river that will be overflowing for some time yet. It is impossible not to feel a deep sense of pain, sadness and shared heartbreak at news of the sudden death of Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva in a car crash in Spain. Jota was 28, father to three young children and a husband to his long-term partner, whom he married 11 days before his death.

Things that happen in sport are often described, with due dramatic licence, as tragedies. This is not a sports story. But it is the most terrible human tragedy. Those who have suffered similarly can empathise. But it is above all a private horror, an event that will alter the lives of family and friends for ever.

The return of this twisted tale of two troubled sisters and their mum is yet more scary, lairy and perfectly portioned comedy. It is knockout TV

There’s a scene early on in the first series of Such Brave Girls that sums the whole thing up nicely. Josie – a millennial not long out of a mental health crisis, now just in a general, all-encompassing life crisis – has helped her sister to bleach her hair. Unfortunately, she has neglected to tell Billie that the plastic bag she put over her head has left a massive, Shrek-green Asda logo on the dye job. Billie – who alternates between sweetly naive and absolutely petrifying, with little warning – lunges at Josie and smothers her new dress in ketchup, before threatening to kill herself. The girls’ mother will later attempt to return said dress to the shop – stains and all – feigning tears as she tells the shop assistant how much debt she’s in.

Suffice to say, Such Brave Girls isn’t a wholesome coming-of-age affair. It is, however, a brilliant, startlingly feral comedy, one which scooped the scripted comedy Bafta last year (previous winners include Derry Girls, This Country and Peep Show). The subject matter – suicide, abortion, financial ruin, deep-seated abandonment issues – sounds like the stuff of sadcoms. But what makes it stand out in a post-Waller-Bridge world is that it is an unashamed sitcom, with a regular cast and recurring gags. Think The Inbetweeners, if it had it been written by Julia Davis.

Sultana announced on Thursday she was quitting Labour to join Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance

My colleague Lauren Almeida, who is running the Guardian’s business live blog, has shared the following:

Rachel Reeves has not given herself enough fiscal headroom to manage public finances, Charlie Bean, the former deputy of the Bank of England has said, and has to “neurotically fine tune taxes”.

About £10bn – that’s a very small number in the context of overall public spending. Government spending is about one and a quarter trillion so £10bn is a small number … and it is a small number in the context of typical forecasting errors.

You can’t forecast the future perfectly both because you can’t forecast the economy and you can’t forecast all the elements of public finances …. The forecasts are imprecise and there is no way you can avoid that. That is a fact of life.

In light of reports of atrocities committed by the Israeli government in Gaza and reports of the UK’s collaboration with Israeli military operations, it is increasingly urgent to confirm whether the UK has contributed to any violations of international humanitarian law through economic or political cooperation with the Israeli government since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases.

Militant group said to want stronger guarantees of permanent end to war as Netanyahu prepares to meet Trump in US

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Hamas leaders are close to accepting a proposed deal for a ceasefire in Gaza but want stronger guarantees that any pause in hostilities would lead to a permanent end to the 20-month war, sources close to the group have said.

Hamas officials met on Thursday in Istanbul to discuss the ceasefire proposals and later issued a statement confirming they were talking to other “Palestinian factions” before formally announcing a response.

Seven-hour assault prompts Ukraine to accuse Putin of humiliating Trump hours after the leaders spoke by phone

Ukraine has accused Vladimir Putin of “publicly humiliating” Donald Trump after Russia launched a devastating attack with a record number of drones and ballistic missiles on Kyiv, hours after the two leaders spoke by phone.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the seven-hour raid as a “deliberate act of terror” which “immediately followed the call between Washington and Moscow”. It was one of the most severe assaults of the entire war and a “clear interpretation of how Moscow interprets diplomacy”, he added.

Health secretary banks on resulting efficiencies to reduce number of frontline workers in 10-year health plan

• Twelve key takeaways from Labour’s 10-year NHS plan

Wes Streeting has staked the future of the NHS on a digital overhaul in which a beefed-up NHS app and new hospital league tables are intended to give patients unprecedented control over their care.

A dramatic expansion of the role of the NHS app will result in fewer staff than expected by 2035, with Streeting banking on digital efficiencies to reduce the number of frontline workers, a move described as a “large bet” by health experts.