In the first of a two-part profile, Daniel Boffey traces the incoming PM’s early forays into politics and his rise to prominence – ultimately leading to him leaving London for Manchester

Andy Burnham had emerged victorious, but niggling doubts remained about his mandate. It was the summer of 1987 and the 17-year-old had represented Labour in a school hustings as Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock were battling it out in that year’s general election.

“Andy was standing against another guy, a really nice guy who was the Conservative candidate,” said Steve Harrington, a former English teacher at St Aelred’s Catholic high school, in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside. “Andy gave a speech, which was excellent, then the other guy came on to make his speech and Andy’s fans – unbeknown to Andy – snatched the plug out of the microphone. So they couldn’t hear what he was saying. Andy won by a landslide. Having said that, he probably would have anyway, as it was a heavily Labour area … But he was innocent, he hadn’t been involved in [the prank] and wouldn’t have been.”

As Hairspray and his ‘angriest movie’ Desperate Living are rereleased, the ‘Pope of Trash’ reflects on dead dogs, dirty rats, ‘that lunatic RFK’ and why there are no novelty dances any more

John Waters still remembers the day his 1988 comedy Hairspray was awarded a PG certificate. “It was horrible,” he says.

Until then, Waters, christened the “Pope of Trash” by the novelist William S Burroughs, was notorious for filming the unfilmable. In Eat Your Makeup, he recreated JFK’s assassination only five years after the event, casting the boisterous Divine in drag as Jackie Kennedy. He invented a blasphemous sex act called the “rosary job” in Multiple Maniacs, which also featured a rape-by-giant-lobster. Most repulsively, in Pink Flamingos, he persuaded Divine to scoff a fresh dog turd on camera.

Paul Dacre broke new ground in selling readers an angry rightwing perspective. Today, most of Fleet Street is run by his disciples

In 1986, 131 years after the Daily Telegraph was founded, its editor, Max Hastings, wrote a memo to senior colleagues about the newspaper’s nature and purpose. “The Daily Telegraph is … ‘nice’,” he said, “in the business of reassurance, of providing confirmation each morning for our readers that their world is looking pretty safe and stable.” He went on: “We are not a strident campaigning newspaper – our business each day is to seek to give our readers the fullest possible information about what is happening in the world, and to suggest what it might mean.”

In practice, under Hastings and many other Telegraph editors, this ethos produced a journalism of pervasive but usually understated conservatism: often focused on the English countryside, the value of hierarchy and tradition, the pleasures of seasonal pursuits such as foxhunting and gardening, the interests of farmers and retired military men – and cautionary tales about more reckless lives gone wrong, often presented through enjoyably detailed reports from the divorce courts. The Torygraph, as many non-readers called it, could be inward-looking and “numbingly dull”, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft, the historian of British conservatism, but it was “thoroughly respectable”. Many of its most renowned figures, such as Hastings’s predecessor as editor, Bill Deedes, were “mildness itself”.

Passenger Ljubisa Karović was nearly sucked out of his seat when Boeing 737-800’s window blew out on flight from Greece

For nervous flyers, it sounds like the stuff of nightmares; for most, only contemplated in an action movie. But last week, a passenger really was nearly sucked out through a broken aircraft window mid-flight.

Ljubisa Karović was on a Ryanair-Air Malta flight leaving Thessaloniki in Greece when the adjacent window blew out of the Boeing 737-800, pulling his head and shoulders out of the plane. His wife and fellow passengers helped to keep him inside.

Psychologist Candice Odgers has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. She fears the current debate around smartphones obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers

The quickest way to make being online safer for children and teens would be to kick all adult men off the internet, the Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers believes. Men are the biggest perpetrators of sextortion and most likely to spread misinformation, she says.

Odgers is not recommending this as a policy for governments to adopt: “That would be crazy, right? It would be unfair.” But she is on a drive to puncture the prevailing narrative that the best way to address online harms is a social media ban for teenagers.

When an investment fund bought their building, the residents of Tribulete 7 protested in the only way they knew how – through radical creativity

Spain’s housing crisis finally came for the tenants of Madrid’s Calle Tribulete 7 when their block was sold to an investment fund. Feeling pressured to leave by rent increases and aggressive construction works that flooded some apartments, they did everything they were supposed to do: organise meetings, contact the tenants’ union and find a lawyer. They also protested, spoke to journalists and created an Instagram account to spread the word. But they also did something I’d never seen before.

They opened up their homes to the public and invited musicians to play inside, in the very flats and shops that were suddenly at risk. A month later they flipped this concept on its head and took their furniture out on to the street. There the tenants cooked, knitted, played chess in their dressing gowns, worked from home and bobbed in their armchairs to a local band playing a brass version of Freed from Desire. It was a spectacular theatrical performance of everyday existence, but also a fight for their lives.

• England hearts broken after turnaround in Atlanta

• In pictures: our pick of the best big-match images

England’s destiny is tournament heartbreak. The only question concerns when it comes and how the fates will contrive to make it as painful as possible. This was an implausibly brutal new low.

Thomas Tuchel’s team had fought fire with fire on an occasion that was overloaded with shredded nerves. The first half was a physical fight; it was gripping all the same. And the possibilities seemed endless for England when Anthony Gordon put them in front shortly after half-time. A first appearance in the World Cup final since 1966 looked on.

Mykhailo Fedorov, credited with transforming the ministry, ousted in reshuffle after six months in post

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed Ukraine’s popular defence minister, despite pleas from foreign partners and civil society for him to keep his job, as part of wide-ranging government reshuffle.

In a post on Telegram Mykhailo Fedorov announced that he was leaving his position, saying it had been a “great honour” to serve the Ukrainian people. He was widely credited with transforming the defence ministry and reducing corruption.

Rise in GDP follows a 0.1% decline in April, figures from the Office for National Statistics show

The UK economy grew by 0.1% in May, despite the impact of the Iran war on energy costs, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics said GDP rose, in line with economists’ forecasts, following a 0.1% decline in April.

Campaigners hail ‘landmark moment’ in early detection and treatment of rare muscle-wasting disease

Every baby born in England will be screened for a rare muscle-wasting disease, starting next year, the Department of Health and Social Care announced on Thursday.

Campaigners said the “landmark moment” should lead to babies who were found to have spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) being treated early and thus growing up without any of its debilitating symptoms.