There was a sea of empty chairs and but a smattering of supporters in a huge, near-deserted room.

Seasoned operators - be it Nigel Farage, Sir Keir Starmer or Ed Davey - would have had the placards lifted and the activists cheering, but Polanski and his new MP, Hannah Spencer, enjoyed just a smattering of applause as they took to the stage.

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But, make no mistake, if the celebration was muted in the moment, the implications of the result are absolutely mega.

The Green Party went from third in this seat at the 2024 General Election to winning by 4,400 votes over Reform UK, and overturning Labour's 13,000 majority with a whopping 26 percentage point swing.

It was only the 18th time in 100 years that a party had come from third to take a seat, and the Greens clocked up 40% of the vote.

It was a stunning victory that proved the Polanski surge is real and that the Greens are a serious threat to Labour's left flank.

Starmer ran a campaign claiming that only Labour could beat Reform. This by-election proved that wrong.

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Greens can argue they can beat Reform in working-class Britain

Now the Greens can argue that they are the party that can beat Reform in working-class Britain as Polanski positions the party firmly on Labour's left.

It is a nightmare for Labour as it finds itself fighting on two fronts.

Starmer's stony face as he addressed the country on Friday said more than a thousand words could: the Greens, like Reform, are emerging as a serious, seat-winning electoral force.

Had Reform won, Starmer could have used it as proof that voting for the Greens was a waste of time. Instead, he now has to try to prove to Labour voters why they should stick with him rather than tack to the left with the Greens.

Starmer recriminated after results

In the hours after the results, the recriminations began.

Angela Rayner, the former deputy leader, said the result was a "wake-up call" that showed the party needed to be "braver" as she seemed to voice what many MPs think: that Labour needs to move more to the left.

The unions also piled in with Sharon Graham of Unite saying Labour needed to "stop listening to rich mates and listen to everyday people" while Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright said Labour has to change course and its "us versus Reform" strategy "is in tatters", with the core vote collapsing.

Starmer, who looked shell-shocked, didn't answer these criticisms as he addressed the cameras. Instead he reiterated his position that only Labour could unite the country and he would continue to "fight against extremes in politics" on both the left and the right that "want to tear our country apart".

The two-party system has shifted to a multi-party one

It is important to say here that by-election results are in general not indicative of national elections, and - as Labour will be arguing - when it comes to a general election, people are picking a prime minister and government rather than registering, in some cases, a protest vote.

But this result does tell us something about the shape of our politics in this country.

It reinforces the idea that the two-party system has shifted to a multi-party one.

Voters are looking for alternatives on the left and right

The Green Party and Reform UK took 70% of the vote in this by-election as Labour came in third in its once 38th safest seat, and the Conservatives lost their deposit.

It is a reminder that voters are impatient for change, have decided that Starmer's government is not it, and are looking at alternatives on the left and the right of the two governing parties.

Starmer has spent much of his first 18 months facing out towards Reform, but this result shows that the Greens, positioning as the progressive left, can mobilise ethnic minority voters who have long been staunch Labour, younger voters, and more left-wing Labour voters who flocked to Corbyn's Labour but feel politically homeless in Starmer's Labour.

Polanski hails 'seismic victory'

"Labour's electoral stranglehold is over. This is a seismic victory. We have torn the roof off British politics, and that's because people now recognise there is an alternative," said Polanski at his news conference, telling me that, just as Reform are replacing the Conservatives, the Greens are beginning to do the same to Labour.

Starmer's approach, and hope, is that as these insurgent parties become more successful at the ballot box and their policies and people become more scrutinised, voters may think twice about voting for them in a general election.

On Friday, Labour again took aim at the Green Party's policy to legalise all drugs or withdraw from NATO as proof that Polanski doesn't have a "serious programme for government".

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Voters want a full-fat version of progressive politics

But what we saw on Friday is that voters don't want, as pollster Luke Tryl told us on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, a "Macron" strategy in which progressives are asked to compromise in the middle ground for fear of something worse (in this case Reform). They want a full-fat version of progressive politics instead.

What inspired a huge swathe of voters to Corbyn's Labour seems to be now pushing them into the arms of Polanski's Greens.

For Starmer, it is the stuff of nightmares as he contemplates attacks on both flanks.

The squeeze that broke the Conservatives at the last general election - Reform to the right and Labour/the Lib Dems to the left - now threatens to sink Labour too. It makes the May local elections all the more daunting and consequential for Starmer's premiership.

The Bolivian Air Force Hercules aircraft was transporting ‌new banknotes to the interior of the country, media ​station Unitel said, citing the Bolivian Ministry of Defence.

The plane had ​departed from the city of Santa Cruz and crashed after landing and skidding off the runway ​onto a neighbouring street before coming to rest in a field, according to ⁠local authorities.

It's unclear whether the plan was taking off our landing when it crashed.

Reuters reports that social media footage showed chaotic scenes of ​people appearing ⁠to pick up money that lay strewn on the ground following ‌the crash.

Local authorities on the scene were warding off people using water hoses.

Reuters, however, has not been able to verify the images.

Video broadcast on local media showed ⁠the aircraft was severely damaged, as ​were a number of vehicles along ​the road where the crash took place.

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As Ukraine marks the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion, Sky News has partnered with Voices of Children, a Ukrainian charity, to tell the stories of teenagers living through war.

They speak of a childhood stolen, and the pain left behind by losses and sacrifices.

Kateryna

I am 14 and I live in Chernihiv, a city in the north of Ukraine near the border with Belarus. In February 2022, I was 10 and couldn't imagine what war really meant, yet by 22 February my emergency suitcase was packed.

Within days Ukrainian tanks were driving down our street. I had never seen them before. For the first three nights, we slept in the basement. During the day, we counted explosions, and at night, we tried to sleep.

On 4 March, my birthday, we had to leave the city, because Chernihiv was under constant attack from Russian bombers. We travelled for three days, spending the first night with kind people in Brovary, who had taken in the cats and dogs left behind by fleeing families.

The next night was near Khmelnytskyi, where at a checkpoint we were told to stop only in dark places because Russian helicopters might be flying overhead. On the third night, we slept in a kindergarten building on the other side of the country. My family and I stayed there for 40 days before we could go home. It was the hardest time of my life.

Today, the most important thing in my life is creativity, especially writing poetry. I fell in love with literature thanks to my literature teacher, who I can always turn to for help. Writing has become a form of therapy for me.

I do not have many close friends, but I know there are people who help me stay strong, with whom I can talk about everything that worries me. I believe that is important.

Hanna

I'm 17 and I'm from Zaporizhzhia.

In September 2022, a missile hit my building. It was deeply traumatic for me. Everyone survived, but coming to terms with it was extremely hard. The experience pushed me to act because the threat should not destroy my sense of purpose.

Over these four years, I discovered volunteering, civic engagement, various projects and the cultural life of our city. Most importantly, I've met an incredible number of amazing people who inspire me every day.

Perhaps, without that terrible shock and the acute awareness of my own mortality, my life would have taken a completely different direction. Would I want Russia's full-scale invasion never to have happened, never to have touched my life? Of course. But I am learning to live in the reality we face and not to let it stand in my way.

Despite all the difficulties, the celebration must go on.

My Valentine's Day, for example, was bright and eventful. In the morning, I got on a bus and read a message: my friend wouldn't be coming to the event because her parents wouldn't let her go due to the security situation. Drones were buzzing in the background, but I hardly reacted. I'm used to it.

At a modern venue that also serves as a bomb shelter, I immersed myself in an educational training session. I was surrounded by young people full of ideas, eager to change the system, launch their own initiatives and move the city forward.

Time flew and soon I had to rush off. I was one of the organisers of an art exhibition, and that day was the opening. I caught up with my friend Yasia, and we hurried towards the gallery. Even in our haste, we noticed the contrasts of Zaporizhzhia's streets: a clinic destroyed by a strike, buildings nearly reduced to ruins, memorials to the fallen… And right beside them, a cafe was open. Its owners needed only a week to rebuild after a horrific attack.

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Veronika

I am 16. I lived under Russian occupation for two years in my hometown of Melitopol after the full-scale invasion before my family managed to escape.

The first month under occupation was especially hard. Food was scarce, and what little there was became extremely expensive. It was impossible to buy even basics like bread. My parents and I decided I would not attend a Russian school. My mother, a teacher, also refused to work for the occupation authorities. Because of that, we had to hide. I secretly continued studying at a Ukrainian school online.

We also had to hide every trace at home of my brother, who had gone to fight for Ukraine on the first day of the war.

I don't have many memories left from the occupation, but I can picture the Russian soldiers, their military vehicles and the aircraft, so many aircraft. My grandparents' cottage is near an airfield, and throughout my childhood, I loved watching planes arrive. All the helicopters that landed during the occupation had the letter "Z" painted on the side.

The chance to leave Melitopol came through carriers who gathered people in groups and took them across Russia. Before we left, we erased almost everything from our phones - messages in Ukrainian, any mention of my brother.

Half of our group came from Mariupol, so the vehicle stopped to pick them up. It was 2023. I had never seen anything worse in my life than the destroyed Azovstal plant and the Mariupol Drama Theatre, which the Russians were rebuilding. That was the same theatre they had bombed, killing so many people.

At the border, our phones were taken away. My mother was led in for questioning, and I, a child, was left waiting alone in the middle of the customs hall. Finally, at the Latvian border, I remember hearing my native Ukrainian language and feeling a sense of calm.

We moved to Zaporizhzhia. This is where my brother stays when he is on leave. Before the war, the journey here from my hometown took two hours. Now it takes four days and involves crossing three European countries.

I hate how we've got used to war. How I have grown used to explosions and air raid alerts that can last for 10 hours. It has become the background of life, a new reality in which we try to make plans for the future. But at the same time, I have realised that there is one thing I cannot get used to: loss.

Today, I was returning home when I saw yet another convoy carrying fallen soldiers. People who passed by stopped and bowed their heads. In that moment, I felt not only pain, but gratitude. Gratitude that we still care. That we do not just drive past. That even as we adapt to war, we do not become indifferent to human grief.

Liza

I'm 18 and I've lived in Kyiv for the past two years.

I'm trying to build my life here, but my real home is Oleshky, a small town in the south of Ukraine, in the Kherson region, that is now occupied by Russians. We left to survive. Our neighbours were killed by a shell, and back then, in January 2024, there was no one left in the town to help - no firefighters, no doctors.

We travelled for four days through 20 Russian checkpoints. At a checkpoint in the town of Novoazovsk, my mother and I were taken off the bus for "filtration". Russians questioned us for four hours.

We started our lives in Kyiv from scratch. We arrived with nothing - just three bags between my sister, my mother and me. But in Kyiv, I met people from my hometown and made new friends. I was able to continue my studies.

Yet I still can't quite get used to this big city. The first thing I do when I wake up is open the news to check what happened overnight. Then I wash my face. If I'm lucky, there's warm water and electricity. I have breakfast and log into my lectures. I'm studying psychology. I pay for my education myself. After classes, I work as a cashier, because I already know that nothing comes easily.

During my first year in Kyiv, I felt a sense of relief. Here, I'm not scared to walk outside. You can wear make-up and dress the way you want without fearing Russians would target you just because you're a girl. Back home, when we went to the store, we put on old clothes and hats so we wouldn't appear attractive to them. Here, there's no need to hide in a closet as we did in Oleshky when we heard strangers approaching our home. We continued studying online at a Ukrainian school at our own risk, knowing that at any moment we could be forced to attend a Russian one.

In Kyiv, I still have to hide from Russians - in bomb shelters during their attacks. I've grown used to the explosions, so I try to fall asleep before the air raid sirens go off, just to avoid hearing them and get some rest. What's harder to get used to is what comes after the strikes. When the electricity and heating are cut off, it feels like deja vu. In the last months of our life under occupation, in the cold winter of 2024, we also had no power, gas or water.

No matter how hard it was there, leaving home was unbearably painful. I cried and kept repeating that I just wanted the war to end. That is still my greatest wish. I just want to go home.

It is the president and his secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, going nuclear over Anthropic's refusal to allow the Pentagon to use its AI for "any lawful purpose".

Describing Anthropic as a woke, radical left company, the US president said on his Truth Social platform that "The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War", adding that the company's actions were putting American lives and national security in jeopardy.

Until now, however, Anthropic was doing more than any other AI lab to support the Pentagon.

Anthropic's Claude AI is the only frontier model already being used extensively for sensitive military planning and operations.

It's been widely reported that Claude AI was used as part of the Pentagon's "Maven Smart System" to plan and execute the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.

The origin of the dispute wasn't about Anthropic's commitment to the US military; instead, its insistence on "red lines" in relation to the use of AI technology.

Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei demanded assurances it wouldn't be used for mass surveillance of civilians or lethal automated attacks without human oversight.

In a statement on Wednesday, Amodei said some uses of AI are "simply outside the bounds of what today's technology can safely and reliably do".

In a post on X, equally as seething as the president's, secretary Hegseth announced that, as well as being blacklisted, Anthropic would also be designated a Supply-Chain Risk - a legal intervention previously reserved for foreign tech companies seen as a direct threat to US national security.

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Given growing concerns about AI safety, it's a move that has shocked AI safety campaigners, but also raises serious questions about the future viability of the Pentagon's "AI-First" strategy.

Secretary Hegseth has given Anthropic six months to remove its AI from the Pentagon's systems. But there are now questions about what he might replace it with.

For the first time in the short history of superintelligent AI, the row appears to have united the AI industry.

In a memo to staff on Thursday, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which has also been in talks with the Pentagon, announced he shares the same "red lines" as Anthropic.

Separately, more than 400 employees at Google and OpenAI have signed an open letter calling for their industry to stand together in opposing the Department of War's position.

In a copy of the OpenAI memo seen by Sky News, Altman tells staff: "Regardless of how we got here, this is no longer just an issue between Anthropic and the DoW; this is an issue for the whole industry and it is important to clarify our stance."

The move by the Trump administration appears, therefore, to be as much about power as it is about AI safety.

The Pentagon has already said it wouldn't use AI for mass surveillance of the US population, nor unsupervised autonomous weapons.

Its furious response to Anthropic seems more in response to a big tech attempting to dictate terms to the government, rather than what those terms actually are.

In taking on Silicon Valley, which, though AI investment largely accounts for much of the current US economic growth, the administration has just declared war on a powerful opponent.

The Number 9 tram was supposed to have continued straight along the central Vittorio Veneto avenue, but it suddenly swerved at a switch track that is used by another tram line, according to a video of the crash broadcast by Sky TG24.

The video shows the tram nearly flipping onto its side as it takes the curve before crashing.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala suggested human error was to blame, saying the driver had apparently failed to switch tracks to keep the tram going straight.

He described the driver as an experienced employee who had only been on his shift for an hour.

However, he said the driver had skipped a stop before the crash and would be questioned from the hospital where he was being treated for his injuries.

Emergency services said two people had been killed. Mr Sala said one passenger had died on the tram and one on the street.

He said none of the other injured were in a life-threatening condition.

Dozens of ambulances, fire engines and police cars responded to the crash, with crews escorting passengers in thermal blankets away from the scene.

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ATM, the Milan public transport company, said it was cooperating with prosecutors "to precisely establish the cause and dynamic of the incident".

The incident came as the city is hosting its seasonal fashion shows and is in the interim between hosting the Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games.