But with rumours about a certain workshy Windsor circulating this week, are we actually encouraging joblessness with an overly generous safety net?

Finally, some part of our struggling state is getting a massive budget increase – and it’s not even the welfare bill, like normal. Or maybe it is? The monarchy’s core funding is going to double to £100m. Also mentioned under cover of the same info dump is the fact that the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace is currently coming in at £369m, but the King and Queen don’t want to live there when it’s done.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the gaiety the Windsors add to this nation, willingly or otherwise, but I do worry: are we enabling a culture of dependence that isn’t actually great for any of the people involved? Does the royal economy need rebalancing, if it is simply impossible to own an absolutely vast private network of land and high-end properties without somehow still needing a top-up from the state? You’ve heard of the poverty trap – will no one think of the royalty trap?

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to Be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Economist Prof Mariana Mazzucato says governments must ‘get back their mojo’ and believe they can change the world

Good governments have a vision. They know what they want to achieve, can articulate why, and work out in public how to get there. They don’t just spout slogans about economic growth – because growth is meaningless unless we know what it is for. They understand that there is no trade-off between solving social problems and boosting the economy, and aim to do both, while avoiding rigid fiscal rules that defeat their own purpose by strangling public investment.

If this sounds like a critique of what went wrong with Keir Starmer’s government, it is also a lot more. Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, is a world-renowned economist, adviser to governments, chair of international commissions, prolific author, and PhD supervisor to at least one poet. She was the thinker who inspired Starmer to fashion his political project around five key “missions”, now largely forgotten in the mire of scandals, U-turns and infighting that beset his premiership.

Delegates at an ‘anti-woke’ conference disparaged Ed Miliband’s net zero policies. But even they could not ignore the sweat on their foreheads

It was hardly a perfect film, but I keep thinking of Don’t Look Up. In its depiction of a world that stubbornly refuses to heed the warnings of an imminent planetary disaster, it was perhaps too on the nose. But these days, reality itself is too on the nose.

This week served up ample evidence, on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, like much of Europe, the all-consuming concern has been intense, intolerable heat, with temperature records shattered and swathes of the country under the highest state of alert. For the first time, red warnings were issued in the UK for three consecutive days. Schools have closed; nights have become sleepless, with the mercury rising to meet the technical definition of “tropical”. There are wildfires in Derbyshire. All this in a temperate country in June.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Two chefs lift the lid on the expensive business of creating menus they love

You pay: £21
Restaurant profit: £1.65

As temperatures soar across Europe, cities are struggling to adapt, further exacerbating socioeconomic divisions

The heatwave afflicting western Europe is the worst ever, with the combination of heat and humidity fuelled by the climate crisis making scores of cities feel unliveable. While for some the adverse impacts amount to disturbed sleep and sticky days in the home office, low-income families are often worse affected by cities’ lack of adequate adaptation measures, with women at the sharp end.

“[It] throws a grenade into every vulnerability you already have,” says Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, pointing out that vulnerable or marginalised groups often bear the brunt of climate crisis-based hardship globally.

Britain has found itself looking for all three protagonists at once. Who gets to stand at the centre of the national story?

It’s been the refrain of the week. Why can’t the country hold on to a prime minister – and how can it be that Larry, the Downing Street cat, has managed to outlast six of them? Have we become ungovernable? Is it because one government after another has failed to halt the slide in living standards – or have online attention spans eroded our patience for change?

But Westminster isn’t the only dramatic platform casting for a new lead at the moment. Amid the political chaos this week, I was struck by a social media comment that this is the first time the UK has found itself looking for a new PM, a new James Bond and a new lead for Doctor Who, all at the same time.

Estimated 150 million people in Europe could experience temperatures above 35C today

• European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say

Over in the UK, firefighters are still trying to bring a large wildfire in Derbyshire under control.

The blaze, which has burned over 500 square metres of moorland and woodland on Tintwistle Moor, near Glossop, broke out on Wednesday evening, with fire crews from Manchester and Derbyshire deploying a water-dropping helicopter and six fire engines on Thursday.

Exclusive: Labour peer who fled Nazis as a child says Andy Burnham has chance to ‘correct mistakes’ on refugees

Shabana Mahmood should be moved out of the Home Office and her asylum policies of “performative cruelty” ripped up by Andy Burnham’s administration, Alf Dubs has said.

The veteran Labour peer, who came to the UK aged six in 1939 fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, said the home secretary’s talents “would be better used elsewhere in the cabinet”.

Co-defendants in case against Stockport man in his 60s can be revealed after reporting restrictions were lifted

The identities of 13 men charged in the UK alongside a man accused of drugging and raping his wife can be revealed after reporting restrictions were lifted.

The main defendant in the case is due to go on trial in September. He stands accused of drugging and sexually assaulting his wife over a period of 20 years and conspiring with other men to engage in abuse.

Worst incident of its kind in country for more than 125 years leaves many searching for multiple family members – and pleading for international help

• Scenes of destruction after deadly earthquakes in Venezuela – visual guide

Nearly all of Ligia Level’s family lived in a trio of apartment blocks along Hotel Avenue, a seafront sweep of palm-specked resorts and high-rise condos along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.

When a powerful “doublet” of earthquakes jolted the region on Wednesday afternoon, those buildings and the lives within them came crashing down.