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LONDON — Andy Burnham has spent the first 48 hours of his premiership picking a new top team. Some of the biggest winners? Sharp critics of the man he ousted.

The former Greater Manchester mayor has brutally culled key allies of his predecessor Keir Starmer — just days after he pledged to end a culture of factionalism in the governing Labour Party.

Starmer’s power as prime minister eroded throughout his time in office — and was chipped away at by colleagues who quit his government or openly called on him to go.

POLITICO rounds up the politicians who publicly challenged Starmer’s authority and have now been rewarded.

Anas Sarwar

As Scottish Labour leader, Sarwar was the first top Labour figure to call on Starmer to quit. At a hastily arranged press conference back in February, Sarwar said scandals involving the prime minister were now becoming a “distraction” from Labour’s mission.

He told reporters there had been “too many mistakes” — his comments followed the furor over sacked U.S. Ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson — and warned that the “leadership in Downing Street has to change.”

This was a moment of real peril for Starmer and cabinet ministers were forced to post messages of support for the then prime minister across social media in a bid to shore him up.

But six months and a whole new administration later, Sarwar’s audaciousness has paid off — he is set to take up a lifetime seat in the House of Lords and become a trade minister in the new Burnham government.

Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband was beaming when he walked up Downing Street on Monday. While missing out on the coveted chancellorship, he was about to be appointed foreign secretary — a nice promotion from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Perhaps he felt like he had earned it. He did, after all, help clear the way for the Burnham premiership when he became one of the first members of Starmer’s cabinet to tell him to consider his position.

Ahead of a disastrous set of local election results in May, Miliband privately suggested that Starmer set out a timetable for his departure.

He now gets to represent Britain on the world stage as its top diplomat.

Ed Miliband is pictured in Downing Street, London on July 20, 2026. | Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images

John Healey

The U.K.’s new chancellor — the government’s top finance minister — spent just a month out of office after resigning as Starmer’s defense secretary.

John Healey quit in June after a heated battle over military spending. This was seen as one of the final acts of damage to the Starmer-led government.

In a seething resignation letter, Healey wrote that the prime minister had been “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling” to “commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country.”

Now he controls the coffers — and insists he’s “burning with a passion” for the Treasury.

Wes Streeting

Wes Streeting had long been seen as coveting the top job. So when he quit as health secretary in May, criticizing the government’s “drift” and lack of “vision,” many expected a rapid bid to replace the prime minister himself.

Streeting’s allies claimed he had the backing of 81 Labour MPs necessary to launch a challenge to Starmer — but a few weeks later he announced he would back Burnham to become Labour leader and prime minister.

There were questions then over what deal had been done to secure Streeting’s support. He has now been appointed defense secretary, a promotion from his old gig and a chance, like Miliband, to project globally.

Louise Haigh

A key architect of Burnham’s ascension, Louise Haigh had somewhat of an ax to grind against Starmer — and she wielded it masterfully.

Haigh was briefly transport secretary under the former prime minister, but resigned following revelations that she had pleaded guilty to a fraud offense more than a decade ago. Allies said at the time that Starmer was aware of these details before her appointment.

The Sheffield Heeley MP then helped orchestrate a powerful backbench rebellion over welfare reforms — forcing the government into an embarrassing U-turn.

Haigh said this month that she had been planning for a Burnham premiership for a year.

The hard work has paid off, as she will now run the Cabinet Office as the new prime minister’s right-hand woman — and gets the grand title of first secretary of state to boot.

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It's no secret that Christopher Nolan has built one of the most impressive resumes in modern Hollywood. By refusing to repeat himself and always maintaining his unique filmmaking style, he's created a broad body of work that includes noir mysteries, superhero blockbusters, science fiction, historical drama, and, with the release of The Odyssey , a mythological epic. However, within the seemingly-disparate 13 movies Nolan has directed , a remarkably consistent set of ideas stick out. Nolan's fascinations with time, identity, obsession, guilt, and sacrifice appear across nearly all his movies: Interstellar focuses on the long journey home and the emotional cost of absence; The Prestige centers on obsession; The Dark Knight trilogy examines what it means to be a hero.

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Science correspondent Nicola Davis investigates the strange story of Tam O’Braan and his attempts to grow tea in Scotland.

In episode three of this mini-series first broadcast in October 2025, all of O’Braan’s lies come to a head and it is revealed where he was sourcing the tea being supplied to hotels and shops. At trial, O’Braan takes the stand and the Scottish growers finally get some answers. But what remains today of the Scottish tea industry that O’Braan instigated?

A strange brew: the case of the man behind an audacious Scottish tea fraud

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The face of a young woman crowned with a laurel wreath, buried in elaborate clothing and unusual cork sandals, has appeared nearly 1,700 years after her death.

She is one of 16 people from Aquincum, a Roman-era city in present-day Hungary, whose faces have been reconstructed for "Once We Were Like You," a new exhibition at the Aquincum Museum in Budapest. The display pairs skulls excavated in and around the ancient city with scientifically informed approximations of how their owners may have looked in life.

Six of the reconstructions are hyperrealistic silicone models, complete with artificial eyes, human hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and, in some cases, beards. The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 31, includes men, women and a child who lived during the region's period of Roman rule.

"The face is the most important feature for recognizing a person," Emese Gábor , a forensic facial reconstruction specialist who sculpted the silicone faces, told Live Science in an email. Although a skull cannot reveal every detail of a person's appearance, reconstruction lets museum visitors encounter the faces as those of "a real human being rather than as skeletal remains," she said.

The entrance to the "Once We Were Like You" exhibit at the Aquincum Museum in Budapest. (Image credit: Gábor Lakos Aquincum Museum Budapest) Rebuilding a Roman face

Aquincum stood on the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire in what is now Budapest. The city was home to a diverse population in the first through fourth centuries, and genetic and archaeological analyses of the individuals in the exhibition point to connections with regions including present-day Italy, Scotland and Syria, as well as Sarmatian groups from the Eurasian steppe and Celtic communities that lived in the region before Roman rule.

The remains of those who lived here have also been unearthed, and continue to be discovered today during the excavation of cemeteries," according to a statement from the museum.

Creating a reconstructed face begins with a high-resolution 3D CT scan of the original skull. Specialists then produce an exact 3D-printed replica, allowing experts like Gábor to work without repeatedly handling or disturbing the ancient remains.

"The latest scientific advances — including 3D scanning, CT imaging, archaeogenetic (ancient DNA) analysis and facial approximation research — are incorporated whenever possible," she said.

"If a hyper-realistic reconstruction is required, I create a mould and cast the face in coloured silicone, finishing it with real human hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and, where appropriate, a beard," she said.

ARC-heo art-REKO Studio ARC-heo art-REKO Studio ARC-heo art-REKO Studio ARC-heo art-REKO Studio ARC-heo art-REKO Studio Ancient DNA can sometimes provide additional clues about pigmentation, including probable eye, hair and skin color. But the results are still approximations, not portraits. For instance, hairstyle, expression and many details of the person’s appearance are usually more speculative.

The woman with the laurel wreath

Of all the people she reconstructed, Gábor said she found it especially difficult to forget the woman known as the Jablonka Road mummy .

The woman's skeleton was relatively well preserved, but the soft tissue on her face had decayed, leaving only the skull. A laurel wreath still rested on her head, and, according to Gábor, her burial contained fine clothing , a spindle for weaving, bird-shaped cork sandals and a painted male portrait that had been placed near her feet. Archaeologists have suggested that the portrait may have represented her husband or father, although his identity is unknown.

The silicon reconstruction of an ancient construction worker. (Image credit: Gábor Lakos Aquincum Museum Budapest) "Based on these details, the archaeological context and the anthropological data, it was the archaeologists who pieced together her story while I reconstructed her face," Gábor said. "That was very moving."

Other individuals selected for the exhibition include those of a young girl who died in childhood and a woman interpreted as a nurse or healer who was buried in a children's cemetery. Some of the other reconstructions include a construction worker, a military officer and a blacksmith.

Two women appear to have met particularly violent or punitive ends. They were buried face down with their legs bound together, Gábor said. The exhibition's interpretation associates one woman with an accusation of witchcraft and the other with poisons, although such details are historical interpretations rather than evidence-based findings from the burials.

Gábor stands in front of a display showing the reconstructed face of a child from Aquincum. (Image credit: Gábor Lakos Aquincum Museum Budapest) "Every reconstruction is a journey," Gábor said. "As I shape each face, I find myself reflecting on that person's life again and again, and by the end, they no longer feel like anonymous remains, but like real people."

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Analyses of the skeletons suggest that many of the individuals endured strenuous physical labor, periods of hunger and chronic inflammation. This evidence led museum curators to conclude that many represented the less wealthy inhabitants of Roman society — people whose names and experiences were unlikely to appear in surviving written histories.

For Gábor, the physical reconstructions offer something that a digital image cannot: Visitors can stand face-to-face with a life-size person, walk around the model and study it from different angles. Her hope is that this encounter encourages visitors to think beyond the scientific data and imagine the full lives that once surrounded the excavated bones.

"When you see a face, you don't just see bones in a display," Gábor said. "You see a person — someone who was born, who grew up, who worked, who loved, who laughed, who struggled, who fought with challenges, who raised children. Some were sick. Not everyone died of illness. Some died in accidents. Some through violence. And eventually, all of them died. That sense of shared humanity helps spark empathy."

Can you match these historical maps to the empires that ruled them? Test your geography skills with our ancient empires quiz !

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Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 5. The Game of Thrones franchise has never shied away from dark stories, and the spinoffs have followed that lead. After all, Westeros has plenty of different horrors to choose from. However, House of the Dragon doubles down on this reputation for highlighting the most twisted parts of Westeros by finally detailing Harrenhal's history . Of all of the castles in Westeros, Harrenhal has the most troubled past from its origins to its multiple inhabitants. The many tragedies that occur throughout its history make Harrenhal infamous and begin rumors of a curse. Yet House of the Dragon shows that this is more than superstition.