Keir Starmer promised to give his successor as prime minister his “full and unequivocal support” but Andy Burnham must be wondering what Starmer’s definition of “full and unequivocal” is, following this week’s defence announcement.

Starmer announced a £15 billion increase in spending in his £298 billion Defence Investment Plan (DIP). Of the £15 billion, around two thirds will be raised from “efficiency savings” of quangos, and “cutting capital budgets across Whitehall by 1%”, said The Guardian.

However, £4.7 billion remains unfunded, with the Treasury saying it will be allocated in the next budget, creating a defence black hole for the next prime minister and chancellor.

As presumptive prime minister, Andy Burnham will “somehow need to find more money”, said the Financial Times’ editorial board, likely through a series of unpopular savings. Whether he can succeed where Starmer has failed on defence spending “will be a defining test” of Burnham’s premiership.

‘Dirty rotten trick’

Starmer has left the prime-minister-in-waiting a “series of unexploded bombs” in the DIP to resolve in the first months of his expected term, said political editor Steven Swinford in The Times. Numbers aside, there was an “even bigger bombshell”: no date was set for when a Starmer’s pledge to spend 3% of GDP on defence would be met, “or indeed 3.5% for that matter”.

It is “highly unclear” how reforming the civil service – which has “only got bigger” – and “breaking down operational barriers” will be achieved. Even if Burnham navigates Starmer’s legacy safely, it will have “significant fiscal implications for his own plans”.

This isn’t about Starmer acquiescing on defence, said John Rentoul in The Independent. It is about him “trying to blow up Andy Burnham before he’s started”. Starmer had promised in his resignation to work “dutifully” in the interests of the nation and oversee an “orderly transition”: “he didn’t mean a word of it”. This “dirty rotten trick” shows us in public what he has been feeling in private. He feels “betrayed” by Burnham, Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood, and has “no intention of making life easy for them”.

“Sir Keir Starmer hasn’t actually sewn raw prawns into the hems of the Downing Street curtains, but he might as well have,” said former Labour MP Tom Harris in The Telegraph. His “two-faced” and “spiteful” actions look “all the more distasteful” considering his upset over inheriting his own £22 billion black hole from Rishi Sunak’s government. “We expected more of Starmer.”

Burnham’s ‘call to arms’

If Burnham is “fazed” by this situation, he “isn’t fit to be PM”, said James Lyons, former Downing Street Director of Strategic Communications, in The i Paper. The near-£5 billion deficit he needs to fill is “peanuts” compared to the £1 trillion-plus that the Government spends. The problem could just “disappear” “at a stroke” with improved forecasts, much like the recent Spring Statement, where estimates for the figure needed to achieve it were reduced from £20 billion to £8 billion. “The bad news is that they could also go the other way.” For any chance of success, Burnham needs to “pick a small number of issues” and “stick to them through thick and thin”.

Now this is a “ding-dong political row”, said James Heale in The Spectator. The DIP’s financial commitments were listed in “vague, euphemistic terms”, meaning Burnham’s selection of a chancellor to resolve the £4.7 billion gap is “the most important decision he makes in the next few months”. Burnham has previously shown “little interest” in defence, but it is likely to be a “staple theme of his in-tray”. “He will need an experienced and effective chancellor by his side.”

The MP for Makerfield should see the DIP as a “call to arms” on public finances, said The Times’ editorial board. By arguing that his hands are tied, Burnham could use Starmer’s “political sleight of hand” to “spur him to take radical action on pensions and welfare” to make up the shortfall. Public spending is “out of control”, and if Burnham is to “break free he must attack the root causes”: high borrowing costs, welfare “profligacy” and the “triple lock”. No one will “challenge the edicts of the messiah”.

“The stratospheric rally has left tech stocks vulnerable to sharp reversals,” said Jack Pitcher in The Wall Street Journal. This week saw another, as investors worried about “higher interest rates, stretched valuations and the prospect that billions of dollars of AI spending will outstrip the expectation of blockbuster profits”.

The declines dragged Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq down by nearly 4% over five days to Wednesday, with chip-makers the worst affected. Sandisk and Micron – key members of a small group of memory stocks that have made “parabolic gains” – were among the biggest US fallers, both down more than 13%. But investors can't really complain: even after these slides, their gains this year are 727% and 269%, respectively.

Chip-wreck

The fulcrum of the latest “chip-wreck”, said Bloomberg, was South Korea’s chip-centric Kospi index, where big falls in SK Hynix and Samsung shares triggered a circuit breaker, bringing trading to a halt before panic set in. The country’s top financial regulator, Lee Chan-jin, indicated the sell-off might have been prompted by his approval of “a batch of high-leverage”, single-stock exchange-traded funds tracking chip-makers, said Louis Juricic on Investing.com.

At launch, those funds held combined assets of $3 billion; they have since swelled to roughly $9.1 billion, with 92% bought by retail investors. These are “high-risk products”, and their leverage component means they amplify, rather than merely tracking, underlying moves. Yet “despite consumer warnings, trading hasn’t cooled”, said Lee.

Long, hot summer

A similar defiant bullishness is evident on Wall Street. “People are looking for reasons to hedge, yet stay invested,” said Julian Emanuel of Evercore. Lisa Shalett of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management told The Wall Street Journal that, despite the volatility, “I’m more inclined to be a buyer in today’s market than a seller.”

Traders are bracing for a roller-coaster into summer, when liquidity typically dries up, said Sagarika Jaisinghani on Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs partner Bobby Molavi reckons the current market is similar to the final months of the dotcom era, when investors took sudden 5% moves in their stride. “What happens if 10% breaks”, and there’s “no floor in sight”?

“‘Toy Story 5’ – do we need it?” asked Deborah Ross in The Spectator. It’s been 31 years since the first film came out, and “one worries for the narrative integrity of characters when an IP is thrashed to death like this”.

The latest instalment, however, does at least bring the franchise up to date by addressing one of the “pressing dilemmas of modern childhood”: screen time, and whether it will be the end of toys (“Extinction... Not again!” cries Rex, the dinosaur).

‘Delicious touches’

Our favourite toys still belong to Bonnie, but while Bonnie loves them still, all the other eight-year-olds now play in the digital world. To help her make friends, her parents grudgingly buy her a frog-themed tablet called Lilypad. It does not, however, go to plan: Bonnie not only gets hooked on Lilypad (Greta Lee), she ends up being cyberbullied via it. So the toys contact Woody (Tom Hanks), who left Bonnie’s room at the end of ‘Toy Story 4’, to ask for his help.

The film contains some “delicious” touches – Woody now has a bald spot and a paunch – and it is “superb” to look at – but it does all “feel a little generic”.

‘Loses its nerve’

The plot is “amazingly timely”, said Nicholas Barber on BBC Culture, and may be a bit “triggering” for some parents: this is the only Pixar cartoon that dwells on a child being “crushingly lonely”. But compared with the “peerless” first three films, it is short on good jokes, and heavy on subplots: one of them, about 50 Buzz Lightyear toys making their way across the country, could have been scrapped altogether.

The film also “loses its nerve with its own big idea”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian: the “creepy” tablet turns out to be capable of “self-sacrificial heroism”. “Really? At least Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear, the villain from ‘TS3’, had the courage of his evil convictions.”

Andy Burnham may be on course to take over as prime minister in less than a month, but he “could wreck his administration before it begins with a poor choice of chancellor”, said The Times. If Labour hopes to drastically improve the economy, and curb borrowing and higher spending, it “must change course”. And “that criterion should immediately disqualify” the long-presumed frontrunner for the job, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.

The prospect of Miliband in the Treasury is already angering the unions and spooking the financial markets, so attention is turning to former health secretary Wes Streeting. He surprised many in Westminster by backing Burnham this week, sparking rumours that he’s struck a deal in exchange for not contesting the leadership.

‘Divisive choices’

There are “good reasons” why Streeting “would be a shrewd choice”, said Gordon Rayner in The Telegraph. Unlike Miliband, Streeting is “part of Labour’s future rather than its past, and is someone whom the City feels it could do business with”. He is also “without doubt one of Labour’s best communicators” and has the skills to construct a Budget telling the story of “how Labour intends to improve lives”. He would prepare the country for what’s to come, rather than “pulling economic policies out of thin air” or conjuring up “supposed budgetary black holes to justify them”.

Both Streeting and Miliband “would, in their own ways, be divisive choices”, said The Independent. Streeting is “deeply distrusted by the left of the party” while Miliband’s “hard line on net zero policies have made him a controversial figure”. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood could “emerge as the compromise candidate”, with the added benefit of providing the new PM with an opportunity to “get her out of the Home Office so he could tweak the immigration policy”.

‘Bulging in-tray’

Whoever enters No. 11 “will have a bulging in-tray”, said City A.M. A new chancellor will have to battle “calls for greater spending on defence”, as well as “manage expectations” on easing employment taxes. The triple lock on pensions is also high on the agenda, while calls for new wealth taxes “risk infuriating investors”. On top of that are potential nationalisation plans for “major utility firms” like Thames Water, and, of course, the “continuing fallout” from the Iran war.

What began as a photo opportunity between two world leaders has spiraled into geopolitical acrimony. An escalating war of words between President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni over who asked whom to pose for a photograph at the recent G7 conference now threatens to impact material relations between the Trump administration and Italy’s right-wing government. As Trump rages on social media over the photo flap, Meloni returns to Italy with an eye toward next year’s national elections — and the benefits of being seen standing up to an increasingly unpopular American president.

‘Developing rift’ with origins in the Iran war

Meloni is “clearly irked” at Trump’s “suggestion that she ‘begged’ him for a photo” at the recent G7 summit, said NBC News. While the prime minister “didn’t respond publicly” to other Trump barbs this spring, the “most recent clash, by contrast, quickly escalated.”

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani “abruptly cancelled a planned trip” to the U.S. after calling Trump’s comments “serious and offensive” to the whole of Italy, said The Associated Press. “Italy and I never beg,” said Meloni in a video response posted to social media over the weekend.

The “continuing exchange” between the two leaders has “highlighted a developing rift between the two countries” stemming from Trump’s war on Iran, said the BBC. Trump and Meloni once enjoyed a “close political relationship,” with Meloni the “sole European leader” to have attended Trump’s second inauguration.

The binational relationship has “grown strained in recent months over the war in Iran,” said Axios, particularly after Italy “denied U.S. aircraft permission to land at its bases” in March. Trump’s relationship with Europe more broadly “had long been fraying” over the war with Iran, his trade policies and threats to annex Greenland, said the Los Angeles Times.

Still, while Trump took a “warmer tone toward other European leaders” at the G7 meeting as they “aligned behind his interim agreement” to pause fighting in Iran, “tensions again were expected to be on full display” at next month’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. Meloni’s pushback on Trump’s photograph claim is a “punctuation mark” on a growing trend among European leaders to speak against the Trump administration, said CNN.

Electoral opportunity ‘deftly utilized’

Meloni had been trying to “preserve some harmony” between herself and Trump “until this week,” said The New York Times. She has “sought some distance” from the president now, as their “friendship became a political liability among Italian voters.” Meloni is “doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity,” said Trump on Truth Social. Now that the U.S. has allegedly “defeated Iran militarily,” he continued, “she wants to be friends again in order to get her ‘numbers up.’ No thanks!!!"

Trump may be correct that Meloni’s furthering of this feud is being done with an eye toward domestic Italian politics, said Fox News. The prime minister “must have calculated” that a “public row” with Trump “yields no tangible consequences other than an increase in her domestic and international standing,” said Mattia Diletti, a political science lecturer at Sapienza University of Rome, to the outlet.

Trump’s story is nevertheless “very difficult to believe,” said MS NOW. Not only has he “peddled similar absurdities before,” but “he’s not at all popular in Italy,” leaving Meloni “no political incentive to be seen with him.” Meloni’s pushback to Trump comes as the premier “gears up for a reelection battle,” in which her “close relationship” with Trump has become an “increasing political liability,” said the Financial Times.

Meloni faced a “setback in her grip on power in Italy” in March, after her government lost a battle over justice reform, said Time. Critics saw that defeat as a “barometer of how Italians perceived her closeness" with Trump, and how they have been “troubled by Trump’s globally destabilizing actions.”

Meloni “deftly utilized the opportunity” presented by the president in his photography blame-game to “distance herself from Trump,” said the Financial Times. Italian diplomats are “now working in overdrive,” hoping to “limit the fallout or deter Trump from retaliating against Italy.” Meloni’s “international policy is in tatters,” said former Italian NATO Ambassador Stefano Stefanini to the outlet. In reimagining Italian foreign policy moving forward, she “has to be careful not to appear to flip-flop.” Italians will “remember her closeness to Trump, so she has to tread this very carefully.”

Three decades after Frank Skinner, David Baddiel and the Lightning Seeds first sang that football was “coming home”, the lyrics are being belted out again during the World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico.

In the Radio Times, Baddiel, one of the song’s co-writers, said that English people “feel, with this game, that essentially: it’s our ball” and that “football is ours. We codified it. We gave it to the world.” But critics say it is “mistaken” to claim that England is the home of football, said Sky News.

Scottish professors

The Dutch football legend Ruud Gullit has dismissed the “Three Lions (Football's Coming Home)” song as “arrogant”, saying England does not “own football”.

That chimes with the fact that the “English football public has a certain reputation globally”, said The Athletic. “There is an assumption of arrogance, of high expectations, of going into every major tournament presuming their team will win it.”

It’s also wrong to claim that England is the home of football, Hamish Husband, from the Scottish football magazine Tartan Army, told Sky News, because a group of footballers in the 19th century, known as the “Scotch professors”, were pioneers of the modern passing game.

Their new tactics were adopted by Scotland before spreading across Europe and other continents. “It was the travellers that worked the factories of the UK that took football to the world – not England”, he said.

A letter written by Reverend Samuel Rutherford in the 1600s, “holds the key to Scotland’s claim”, wrote Tom Burrows on BBC Newsround. He complained about people who gathered to play football on Sunday afternoons near Anwoth Kirk, his church. The site can “reasonably claim to be the earliest” game of football, said William Wyeth, a curator of history at English Heritage.

To bolster Scotland’s claim, archaeologists doing building works at Stirling Castle found a football behind a wood panel built in the 1540s. It was “made of pieces of leather sewn together, more like football that we know today”. Also, the first modern football club that’s “widely recognised as such” was founded in Edinburgh in 1824.

Footeball or football?

But the roots of the beautiful game may stretch back much further. More than 2,500 years ago, the Chinese played “tsu chu”, or “kickball”. The earliest reference to organised ball games in England comes in around 1174, said Simon Inglis on English Heritage.

But “we can’t be sure” whether these games in England involved “kicking, as well as handling, the ball”. A woodcut from 1612, which refers to “country swaines at footeball”, shows the players “using hands” as in volleyball. So was it called “footeball” because the “players played on foot, rather than because they played it exclusively with their feet”?

However, football’s “global spread” couldn’t have happened without the “evangelical efforts of British entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, soldiers and sailors, who took the sport to Europe, South America and all corners of the Empire”.

On the charge of arrogance, yes, it’s true that people hear the song as a statement that England “view winning as the rightful outcome, and that anyone else winning is somehow wrong”, said The Athletic. But England fans themselves “simply do not see the song that way”. “The whole point of it is looking back on past glories and melancholy,” one fan told the outlet. “It’s not a triumphant song at all.” But “if English is your second language, I get why people would misunderstand it.”

Another long-standing England fan told the outlet she found the controversy entertaining. “I find it quite funny that people get upset about it,” she said. “I actually enjoy using the phrase just to wind up international colleagues!”

It’s funny what the pressure of a ticking clock can do to a prime minister, said Hannah Barnes in The New Statesman. Just a few months ago, when more than 60 Labour MPs signed an open letter calling for a social media ban for under-16s, Keir Starmer wasn’t convinced. His own teenage children, he told MPs, had benefitted from using social media.

But with a leadership challenge looming, the panicking PM has suddenly “latched” on to this popular policy. He announced this week that, from next year, under-16s would be banned from social media platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, X and Instagram. “I am not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children,” he declared.

Fencing the ocean

Strong rhetoric, said Christopher Snowdon in The Critic, yet this policy “has all the hallmarks of another government failure”. In Australia, a similar ban has proven almost totally ineffectual. Some 70% of parents whose children used social media before the ban say they still do so. Australia's e-safety commissioner, who is in charge of enforcing the ban, has said that it's like trying to “fence the ocean”.

There are countless reasons why blanket bans don’t work, said Chris Stokel-Walker in The Independent. You have to outwit 14-year-olds armed with VPNs, older siblings, and “group chats full of instructions”. Age verification is difficult. And even if you do get the kids off big social media sites, they “don’t suddenly take up whittling”. They move to darker, harder-to-regulate parts of the web: to Discord servers, private groups. “A serious government would force platforms to change their products”, as the campaigner Ian Russell has urged, so that they don’t pummel children with harmful content. “But this is a dead-duck administration grasping for a legacy.”

‘Multi-front’ battle

Besides, whatever happened to parenting, asked Daniel Hannan in the Daily Mail. Why use the “heavy hand” of the state, when the tide is already turning and most people now limit their kids’ screen time?

If only it were that easy, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. Like millions of other exhausted parents, I spend every day waging a “multi-front” battle against the screens: the iPhone and iPad, computer and PlayStation. I’ve set time limits, banned sites at the router, used third-party blockers. And yet still my children’s brains are being rotted by “AI slop, vacuous influencers” and silly videos, while I worry about far more damaging content. So, even if I have doubts about how it will work, I love the idea of the ban – like nine out of ten British parents consulted.

Until now, we’ve been fighting against the world’s most powerful tech companies almost totally unarmed, said Isabel Oakeshott in The Daily Telegraph. At last, the PM is giving us a “half-decent” weapon. Of course some children will get round the ban, as they do with underage drinking. But we haven’t abandoned the law on that, have we? I cannot wait to tell my teens “that lounging around on their screens is ‘literally illegal’”.

ITV has been accused of “unwitting sexism” after placing expert pundit Emma Hayes in a “bureau-meets-countryside-kitchen” set for its World Cup coverage, said The Times.

Hayes, the Londoner who is head coach of USA women and who won seven league titles with Chelsea, has been given an analysis slot during the new hydration breaks in World Cup matches and was in ITV’s Brooklyn studio for England’s victory over Croatia.

In “relegating” Hayes to using chalk and a blackboard, rather than the more customary interactive digital tools, on a set resembling a kitchen, ITV bosses have risked “reinforcing sexist stereotypes”.

Katie Bailiff, chief executive of charity Women in Film & TV, called it an “ill-conceived, damaging creative decision”, which has led to significant online criticism.

‘Intellect shone’

Hayes’ analysis has been “one of the triumphs of the tournament so far”, said Football365. ITV has “adroitly” leaned into her strengths by making the segment “as lo-fi as humanly possible”. Her blackboard insights gave “infinitely more value” than the “empty, lazy” cliches we are used to from the channel’s “tacticos”.

Her greatest asset is how “lightly she wears her vast and extensive knowledge”, digesting the game “without waffle or potential for bafflement” under intense time pressure.

The chalkboard set-up makes sense, said Molly Hudson in The Times. Hayes’ communication skills have helped her to the “pinnacle of the women’s game”. TV coverage is now “dominated by high-tech screens for analysis” by former players, so using the “classic prop for football managers” – especially one at the heart of the evolving game – is understandable. And she can add one more line to her “lengthy list of achievements”: she is the “woman who made hydration breaks fun”.

ITV has “bravely tried to innovate”, said Felix Keith in The Mirror. The BBC, who made the decision to broadcast from Salford, have “chosen to stick with what they know”, filling the time with back-and-forth between the commentator and co-commentator. But rather than copying their competitor, or using the breaks to “pump in another few minutes of adverts” like their American counterparts, ITV has given the stage to one of the world’s best managers to “educate us”.

Despite looking “a bit cheap”, the set had a “retro” feel and was “a bit of a throwback”, said Kathryn Batte in The Telegraph. It has been “genuinely refreshing” to see Hayes’ return after her absence from the 2022 men’s World Cup. ITV’s only failing is giving Hayes such a “short window” and not “maximising the air time of one of the best pundits at the tournament”.

‘Hung Hayes out to dry’

“Hayes’ ­intellect shone,” said The Times. But she was hampered by the ITV’s vision of an “old-school, retro, jumpers-for-goalposts vibe”. Without the “gizmos and graphics” afforded to her male colleagues, her “acute and informative” analysis was reduced to resemblances of “noughts and crosses”. “Lose the blackboard. She deserves better.”

Hayes is one of the “most decorated tacticians in world football”, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. But ITV’s decision to give her a “kitchen-esque backdrop” turned her insightful segments into “pure, uncut meme fodder”. The “inherently sexist optics” of positioning a female pundit in an “almost-kitchen” has “played into the hands of misogynist trolls”.

Hayes offers a “class of punditry that football sorely needs”. She stands alongside other established female commentators such as Karen Carney, Ellen White and Alex Scott who have bright careers in the field – “as long as ITV doesn’t put them in a kitchen, that is”.

“If you drew a Venn diagram of Emma Hayes’ critics and the fragile folk who cry ‘snowflake’ about others”, you would have drawn a circle, said Michael Hincks in The i Paper.

“The optics are awful from the World Cup broadcaster.” The lack of foresight to see that a “tinpot” chalkboard and kitchen setting would cause this much online furore is “naive”. It’s as if “someone ran to the nearest shop when realising drinks breaks equals more studio time”. The result is that ITV has “hung Hayes out to dry”.

When the “spine-tingling” trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” was released, many of us hoped that the great director would be delivering his “career-crowning masterpiece”, said Nicholas Barber on BBC Culture: a “profound last word” on aliens arriving on Earth, a topic that has obsessed him for years. Instead, we have a “flimsy, outdated car-chase thriller” that contains “no ideas about aliens that we haven’t heard before”.

Josh O’Connor stars as Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity boffin who works for Wardex, a powerful US organisation that has for years been concealing proof of alien contact (yes, on one level it is “Men in Black”, but without the jokes). After stealing classified files, he becomes a fugitive pursued by Wardex’s sinister supremo (Colin Firth, “badly miscast”).

Instrumental to Kellner’s plan to expose Wardex is Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a television meteorologist who suddenly finds herself able to speak to aliens. Her scenes are “fantastic”: Spielberg should probably have made the film about her powers and “ditched the rest”.

‘Signature elegance’

There’s plenty of the director’s “signature elegance” to enjoy, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph; some scenes move “with such breathless lucidity it is as if he is beaming excitement directly into your brain”. But the plotting is “woolly and lopsided”, while the tone is “an awkward mix of solemnity and silliness”.

I enjoyed it, said David Sexton in The New Statesman – it’s “as brilliantly filmed as anything Spielberg has ever made”, with a “marvellous” performance from Blunt and a “terrific” score from John Williams (his 30th for Spielberg). It’s a “corker, a proper summer blockbuster” and “a prime example of the genre he originally created with ‘Jaws’”.

Apple introduced the iPhone to the world in 2007. That was the same year that birth rates around the world began to decline. And the two developments may be related.

“If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs,” Brandon Vigliarolo said at The Register. Two new studies suggest smartphones are responsible for the baby bust. One study found the iPhone “caused as much as half of the fertility decline” from 2007 to 2011, said The New York Times. A second study of 128 countries found that teen pregnancies declined “once smartphones became a mass phenomenon.” It may be that people “began to socialize more on their phones and less in person,” or it could be that the technology “made pornography more accessible.”

Experts suggested caution is needed. Smartphones are just one “example of the kinds of social influences” that may have reduced fertility, said Wellesley College’s Phillip B. Levine to the Times.

‘Awkward, antisocial puppies’

Phones have “turned us into awkward, antisocial puppies who can’t handle eye contact,” said Lauren Veldhuizen at the National Review. The rise of smartphone technology has thus created a world in which “fewer people date and fewer babies are born.” Some might see the decline of teen pregnancies, in particular, as a positive development. But that would be true only if the decline were the result of an “increasing respect for the purpose of sex within the confines of marriage” instead of our increasing “inability to speak to one another.”

The media has glommed onto the new studies because of a collective mood of “total paranoia and doom about smartphones,” said Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason. The biggest plunges in the 2007-2011 study were among 15- to 24-year-old females, suggesting more girls and women are “avoiding unintended pregnancy at young ages.” The study’s time frame might also simply reflect the impact of the Great Recession. The research should be greeted “with some skepticism.”

Smartphones “short-circuit the deep-seated human need to have your kids keep you company,” said Noah Smith at Noahpinion. We are choosing to “forsake each other’s company to stare eternally into a black mirror.”

‘No easy fix’

Maybe smartphones first tarnished dating, but AI “might finish the job,” said Eric Levitz at Vox. Streaming and social media have helped us isolate from each other, yet online platforms could not discuss “your career anxieties, favorite Civil War battle or debilitating fear of iguanas.” Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and other artificial intelligence chatbots can. “Humanity may be scrolling its way out of existence.”

There is “no easy fix here,” said Axios. Politicians have proposed “baby bonuses, tax credits or better child care and parental leave policies” to solve the fertility crisis, all to no avail. “Perhaps the solution is that everyone toss their phones into the sea.”

England captain Ben Stokes and bowler Gus Atkinson will not take part in the Test against New Zealand at The Oval, starting on 17 June, after breaking curfew rules in a Chelsea nightclub following their victory at Lord’s, England Cricket announced last week. Sonny Baker and Jordan Cox will make their debuts as their replacements.

At a press conference at The Oval, managing director of England men’s cricket Rob Key “answered the myriad questions over this whole mess with the enthusiasm of someone in a hostage video”, said cricket correspondent Chris Stocks in The i Paper. And as Key was fielding questions “mere metres away from a row of kegs of beer, the irony was lost on nobody”.

Key confirmed that management were considering a ban on alcohol for a national side that has repeatedly faced allegations of booze-fuelled unprofessionalism.

‘Staggering stupidity’

One of Stokes’ strengths as England captain has been his “capacity to show the way”, said Harry Latham-Coyle in The Independent. Given the additional scrutiny around the team’s culture, it is “scarcely believable” that he would allow himself to end up in a boozy altercation at a Chelsea nightclub.

Coming on the heels of reports of excessive drinking at last year’s Ashes, as well as white-ball captain Harry Brook’s run-in with a bouncer in New Zealand, Stokes’ behaviour shows “staggering stupidity”. The leadership team made a vow that things would be different after the Ashes. “That promise has been broken at virtually the earliest opportunity.”

“I find this beyond staggering,” said Matthew Syed in The Times. Stokes’ actions are born out of “utter, crass and unforgivable selfishness”, the symbol of an English side that is neither “trustworthy” nor “mature”. There is something “seriously wrong with the culture” of the England men’s cricket team. For that reason above all, Stokes’ captaincy is “permanently and irredeemably untenable”.

It is “impossible not to feel sympathy” for Stokes, said Emma John in The Guardian. This is a man who recently celebrated his 35th birthday, had just won the first Test of the summer, had 10 days before the next game and has been “teetotal for the best part of a year” in order to manage his heavy workload. England cricket has a “tradition of shooting itself in the foot”, and the instinct to judge him “for the most meaningless of infractions” has felt “perverse”.

‘Lagging behind’

“Heavy drinking sessions are nothing new,” said cricket reporter Elizabeth Ammon in The Times. “Cricket and alcohol have been intrinsically linked since the sport was invented.” Some players believe that “natural talent is a shield”, protecting them from the effects of alcohol, while excessive drinking can also be a response to the “sheer mental toll of long, isolated tours”. But although the modern cricketer is typically more professional than previous generations, the sport is “still lagging behind” its contemporaries.

“The absurd affair captures a simple truth,” said Tim Wigmore, senior cricket writer at The Telegraph. “Cricket is less professional than other leading sports.” Top England cricketers can be earning in excess of £1 million a year – excluding personal sponsorship deals – but this “surge in salaries” does not reflect “comparable advances” in professionalism.

Naturally, the “sheer brutality” of Test cricket – spending “hundreds of days” away from home and 30 hours per game “under spectators’ glare” – demands a “release”. But international cricket has “not merely tolerated alcoholic excess” as a means of escape, but “celebrated it”.

“Does cricket still have a drinking culture?” said The Athletic. “Yes.” But the situation is “complicated and more nuanced than it sometimes appears”. The game is full of “alcohol-related anecdotes”, and social drinking is “deeply entwined” with the sport. Indeed, at the grassroots level, booze is the “lifeblood” of many clubs, with the clubhouse bar “often central to the community”. But admittedly, and “increasingly at the top level, a compromise has to be reached”.

Republicans will be cheering the release of the National Audit Office’s report into the royal family’s property arrangements, said A.N. Wilson in the Daily Mail. We’ve known for years that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was allowed to live at Royal Lodge, his 30-room former residence in Windsor, for a fraction of its market value. But we now know that he was also allowed to let the three cottages that came with it and “pocket the proceeds”.

‘Unfathomable’ deals

He is not the only member of the royal family to have enjoyed such a generous deal. His daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, have never paid a penny in rent for their grace and favour homes in London, despite being non-working royals; King Charles foots the bill using his private wealth, but at a discount on the market rent of about 40%. Meanwhile, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, who pay a peppercorn rent for the “enormous” Bagshot Park, are also allowed to sublet parts of the house, and other houses on the estate. All this will go down very badly, when so many Britons are “feeling the pinch”.

Some details revealed in the report are “unfathomable”, said Jennie Bond in The i Paper. It’s quite wrong that any money Andrew made through this “private” arrangement did not have to be returned to the Crown Estate, which owns Royal Lodge and pays its profits to the Treasury. In other words, it’s “taxpayers’ money for public spending”.

‘Staggering’ royal estate

Actually, many of the arrangements in the report make sense, said Hannah Furness in The Daily Telegraph. It is right that retired working royals are looked after: Princess Alexandra, the late Queen’s cousin, who is 89, made a one-off payment of £670,000 to rent her house in Richmond Park in 1995, and pays an annual ground rent of some £1,500. Few would “want to see her evicted”. It is also hard to quarrel with most arrangements for the grace and favour apartments, which are provided to long-serving members of staff, who pay rent based on a combination of income and circumstances.

Still, the situation as a whole is certainly problematic, said Craig Prescott in The Sunday Times. This report only covers the Crown Estate and the royal household. The family also has a “staggering array” of other properties at its disposal, as part of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Duchy of Cornwall and the private estates of Sandringham and Balmoral. All this will rankle many, particularly young people, who are less likely to own their own homes and whose support for the monarchy is already in decline. It is “distancing the institution of the monarchy from the very generation it needs for its future support”. We need a slimmed-down monarchy, and fewer cosy deals for the extended family.

The World Cup kicked off this week – but in the days leading up to it, “no one seemed all that excited”, said Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. The tournament will feature 48 nations playing 104 fixtures in 16 cities across the US, Canada and Mexico, and will give a stage to “some of the most famous people on Earth” – from Harry Kane to Kylian Mbappé. Yet for many, it is “surrounded by angst”.

Ticket prices are “astronomical”. Fifa has introduced “dynamic pricing”, so a seat at the final could set you back $10,000, and demand for many matches has slumped. Prices for everything from parking to accommodation have been vastly inflated: Airbnbs near New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, where the final is being played, cost up to $17,000 for three nights. America’s relations with its co-hosts are strained, and there are fears of cartel violence in Mexico.

“Hanging over it all is the war in Iran, particularly because it was started by the guy to whom the tournament’s organisers recently awarded a peace prize.”

‘Maga World Cup’

This expanded World Cup will be the largest and most commercially driven in history, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph.

Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, wants “every match to be a money-spinning event” akin to the US Super Bowl: the fans are being treated like a “cash machine”. It’s also likely to be the “most politicised”. There have already been stories of Iranian players and staff struggling to secure visas; and progressives have voiced alarm that America’s immigration agency, Ice, is being used to provide stadium security. As for Donald Trump, he can be counted on to “hijack proceedings” in a cringeworthy way.

Some have already dubbed this the “Maga World Cup”, said Simon Kuper in the FT. But Trump might not see much benefit from it: all 11 of the US cities hosting games voted Democrat in their most recent elections, and there is a good chance of anti-Trump protests at matches.

Hard to mess up

But what of the football itself, asked US Women's National Team head coach Emma Hayes in The Guardian. The favourites for the tournament include Spain, France, Argentina and, yes, England; but much will depend on how well squads adapt to the stifling heat, games at high altitude, and having to play across four different time zones.

Before every major sporting event, “people foresee a nightmare”, said Will Leitch in The Washington Post. And then, when the games begin, everyone just enjoys them. Maybe some things will go wrong. But the World Cup is the one event that captures the interest of the whole planet. It’s hard to make a mess of it, “no matter how hard you might try”.

A few hours after the result of the Brexit referendum was announced, the then UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, appeared on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain”, said Laëtitia Langlois on The Conversation. To general astonishment, he said that a key pledge of the campaign – to divert the £350m that Britain was sending to the EU each week to the NHS instead – would “probably not be delivered”. Call it the start of a decade of national “Bregret”.

Many voters would dispute that summary, said Philip Aldrick and Dan Hanson on Bloomberg, though polls show a majority of Britons are now in favour of rejoining the EU. Economists, meanwhile, are still squabbling about how much Brexit has cost. Bloomberg’s latest estimate, of between 2% and 4% of gross domestic product, is conservative compared with some calculations of 6% to 8%. Cambridge University’s pro-Brexit economist Graham Gudgin puts the damage at 1%. Whatever the figure, the experience of UK businesses has been largely negative, rendering the promise of greater sovereignty a farce.

‘More red tape than ever’

Brexit hasn’t proved the “abject catastrophe” that some thought it would be at the time, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. You can point to some continuing success stories – the City of London is one – and there is “evident relief in the tech sector that the UK is not part of the oppressive regulatory regime the EU is establishing for AI”.

What’s more, there are plenty of other, unrelated reasons for Britain’s current malaise. But Brexit has meant “more red tape than ever” and – worse – has “acted like an energy-annihilating black hole”, inducing “a paralysing effect” on the economy.

‘Big bang’ reversal unrealistic

Some Brexiteer economists reckon that “over the years, the positives will build”, which they may, said Richard Partington in The Guardian. Some also argue that “Brexit was botched”, which is clearly true. But it’s also redolent of the “real communism has never been tried” response to the dystopia of Soviet Russia: it ignores the basic reality.

Meanwhile, the world has moved in a “Brexit-hostile direction”, said Martin Wolf in the FT. In 2016, the idea of “global Britain” was not quite as absurd as it is today, “with globalisation in retreat, the US unreliable, Russia at war in Europe and China even more autocratic and mercantilist”.

That said, a “big bang” reversal of Brexit is unrealistic. As Heraclitus said “you cannot step into the same river twice” – and another referendum would be “highly divisive and re-embittering”. The answer is to emulate Switzerland’s patchwork of treaties that cover the most important parts of the relationship. The UK must get close to its European partners again, “bit by careful bit”.

Presiding over America’s 250th anniversary celebrations should have been an easy win for Donald Trump, said David Frum in The Atlantic. “He is a showman, after all. He loves parades and extravaganzas.” But the president’s plans for Washington DC are shaping up to be “a fiasco”. They were set to include a series of concerts on the National Mall; but almost all of the acts scheduled to headline the 4th of July weekend have pulled out, complaining that what they’d been told would be a non-partisan event had turned into something else.

An irate Trump said that “instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear”, he’d bring the “Number One Attraction anywhere in the World”: himself.

‘Threadbare’ celebrations

Celebrations will officially kick off this Sunday, Trump’s 80th birthday, with, of all things, a series of Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts bouts in an arena at the White House. Are Americans ready for this, asked Jack Crosbie in Rolling Stone: “bloody cage fights” on the South Lawn?

Back in 2024, a friend told me that he was voting for Trump in part because he couldn’t bear the thought of Kamala Harris and the Democrats presiding over the 250th anniversary. He had a point, said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. Just imagine. “It would have been a year-long lecture with 4 July a day of solemn reflection and recrimination.” As it is, though, we’re still not getting much of a celebration, just another Trump rally, and some cage fights; even the remarkable collection of musical “has-beens and one-hit wonders” assembled – Vanilla Ice is the headliner – has begun to fall apart. While the semiquincentennial party will still be special to Americans, “it will feel far more threadbare than it has any right to be”.

Insatiable ego

It’s a shame, said Max Burns in The Hill. America’s bicentennial, in 1976, also came at a tense time. America was “only beginning to process the traumas of the Vietnam War”. President Ford had recently faced two assassination attempts in a month. Yet the country still managed to unite to celebrate.

Trump has ruined America’s 250th birthday by making it all about himself, with his vainglorious architectural schemes, his cage fights, his plans for a new $250 note bearing his image. His insatiable ego has made it impossible for anyone who isn’t a diehard Trump fan to enjoy what should be a shared cultural moment. “Oh, well – maybe we’ll get it right for the tricentennial in 2076.”

“Women are angry. Vexed. Livid. FUMING,” said Helen Coffey in The Independent. And women in Britain are "apparently the angriest in Europe”.

According to the latest Hologic Global Women’s Health Index, nearly one in four of us feel rage, compared with one in seven on the continent. The annual league table (based on polls of more than 76,000 women) revealed a “remarkable upsurge in fury”; rates of anger were 47% higher than the previous year, while levels in other European countries “remained fairly stable”. The UK dropped to its lowest-ever position, from 41st to 48th out of 142 countries in just a year.

This “fall from grace” of the world’s fifth-largest economy by GDP is “little short of a disgrace”. But given the medical misogyny, the crisis in women’s health and gynaecological care, significant gender pay gap, and relatively high rates of femicide, it’s “depressingly unsurprising”.

‘Lack of hope’ and profound pessimism

I might account for all that rage “all on my own”, said Deborah Ross in The Times. Only 27 of the 2,300 paintings owned by the National Gallery are by women – “you’ll be in and out in a flash”. Less than 3% of reported rapes result in charges. About a third of women have experienced sexual harassment or assault on public transport. Only 3% of venture capital goes to female founders. Male screenwriters have “sewn up all the television factual dramas”, so we are “spared a woman’s take on real events”. Care and domestic labour “still fall disproportionally on women”. Women are more likely to have their pain “dismissed by doctors”. Three women are still killed by men every week.

One in four women in England and Wales has also been raped or assaulted, said Emily Lawford in The New Statesman. Many have also been radicalised by Israel’s war in Gaza (and the government’s “apathy”), or the Jeffrey Epstein revelations.

Polling by Merlin Strategy for The New Statesman found that women aged 18 to 30 are 26 percentage points “less likely to feel positively about capitalism than young men”. They are also “much more pessimistic about the future”.

A “significant majority” feel isolated, ignored by the two main political parties, and fearful of Reform, but few seem to believe that voting Green will make a difference. And people they interact with online “reinforce their beliefs”; the femosphere both “reflects young women’s disaffection and perpetuates it, radicalising them further”. A profound “lack of hope” and pessimism has emerged over the past decade. “How could they not be angry?”

Lack of perspective on ‘how far their sex has come’

Actually, women in the West have never had it so good, wrote gender historian Zoe Strimpel in The Telegraph. They have an “overflowing cup”: the right to education, to choose whether to have children, to work, to keep our salary, and to “demand freedom from male coercion and violence”. A woman just flew past the moon, and “nobody even batted an eyelid”. Of course there are problems, and (sometimes violent) misogyny persists, but if Western women “want to make their mark”, there is very little stopping them.

These “furious young women”, with rights that women of the past “could only have dreamed of”, are channelling their anger into “false, often malign causes”, squandering their power. They seem to “lack any perspective on where they are now, and how far their sex has come”.

But “even those who are winning the game want to overthrow it”, said Jack Davey in The Critic magazine. The internet is “abuzz with the topic of ‘angry young women’”, but the ones I’ve met aren’t angry – they’re politicised. Gen Z women are “by far the most left-wing demographic in the country”; even the most privileged “want radical change”. That’s because, unlike young men’s problems, young women’s are “far less tangible”.

Most of these so-called “angry young women” are far more reasonable than the online caricatures, and “far more willing to compromise than polling would suggest”. But get used to them: angry young women are “here to stay”.

“Thirty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming” sang England fans in 1996. Another 30 years later, Three Lions supporters finally “have grounds to dream”, said The Telegraph. But not all football analysts believe the picture is so rosy for Thomas Tuchel’s men.

Gnawing hope

There’s a “familiar, gnawing, feeling growing inside all England fans: hope”, said ESPN, that this time, the Three Lions might just do it. There is “incredible depth” in the squad. Tuchel, England’s German head coach, has experience of winning some of the sport’s “biggest trophies” and his squad selection shows he is “clearly not afraid to duck away from making big calls”, nor “upsetting some of the bigger names”.

It’s not just Tuchel who has bags of experience. The “majority” of his squad can “call upon the muscle memory” of reaching finals in two of their last three tournaments. Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane play for Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, Arsenal’s Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka have “more Champions League knockout experience” than two years ago, and Marc Guéhi, “considered untested” at the Euros, has since moved to Manchester City and gained valuable European experience.

To win, a team “must suffer, have luck on their side and improve as the tournament progresses”, said Felipe Cardenas on The Athletic. England have the “attributes”, and Tuchel “understands the players”. This time, captain Kane “can lead England to the promised land”.

‘Back to reality’

“I don’t have a great feeling about England,” said Oliver Kay on The Athletic. “I’m just not convinced they have really taken shape under Tuchel yet”. He “needs something (and not just Harry Kane) to click”.

The trouble is that England are “always a Kane injury away from a full-blown crisis”, said the BBC. Yes, they became the first European side to win eight World Cup qualifiers without conceding a goal, but March’s friendlies – a “turgid” draw with Uruguay and defeat to Japan – “jolted everyone back to reality”.

“In 1966, I left Wembley convinced England would win again,” said Hunter Davies in The New Statesman, but that “won’t happen again in my lifetime”. I fear that “England lack flair”, because “today in the Prem”, coaches have become “obsessed” with set-pieces and are “guided by videos and boring stats”. This makes the players “nervous”, “too concerned about pushing the opposition at corners” and “scared to express themselves”. But “we all live in hope”.

Even England fans themselves don’t seem particularly convinced, going by new data from bookmakers. Only a fifth of England fans are backing the Three Lions to win the tournament, which places England “significantly behind” several European rivals when it comes to “domestic support for their national team”, said Anna Wise in The Independent. In Scotland, confidence “is even lower”: fewer than one in 10 bets placed there are backing the national side, “who are currently priced at 300/1 to win”.

How Kemal Atatürk – founder of modern Turkey, the man who transformed the decrepit Ottoman monarchy into a modern secular republic – must be “turning in his grave”, said Jonas Roth in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich).

Last week, Turkish riot police stormed the headquarters of the CHP, the social democratic party Atatürk set up in 1923, to flush out the party’s current leader, Özgür Özel. For three days, Özel and a group of party officials had barricaded themselves inside the building in protest at a highly controversial court ruling that had just ordered Özel to stand down, claiming there had been voting irregularities at the CHP party congress that elected him leader in 2023.

Using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets, the police rushed in to evict him; Özel emerged to address the cheering crowd outside and then led a march to the parliament building.

‘No longer unbeatable’

It isn’t hard to detect the hand of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan behind all this. For 13 years, from 2010 to 2023, the CHP under its former leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroglu, had proved an ineffectual opposition, losing every single election, local and national, to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). But under Özel, the CHP has been transformed into a political force capable of ending Erdogan’s 23-year rule.

So the fact that the judiciary, which Erdogan has made his tool, should now have ordered Özel to be replaced by the perennial loser Kılıçdaroglu, speaks for itself. The crackdown on the CHP began in earnest after it inflicted a “historic defeat” on the AKP in local elections in 2024, said Ecehan Balta in Xekinima (Athens). Holding Erdogan responsible for the economic crisis that had seen inflation rise above 80%, voters turned en masse to Özel’s party, which won 35 provinces to the AKP’s 24. This was a huge blow to the president, a sign that his political machine, for all its grip on state institutions and the media, was “no longer unbeatable”.

And, since then, hundreds of CHP officials have been arrested, notably Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, who was detained last March on the same day that he was chosen as his party’s next presidential candidate.

Hope not lost

What happened to Imamoglu was a travesty, said Raphael Geiger in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich): he faces up to 2,352 years in jail, if convicted of corruption and espionage. But the dethroning of Özel is even worse. It “eliminates everything that remains of Turkish democracy”, effectively snuffing out “the faint hope” of a different government being elected.

Indeed Turkey, now lacking a genuine opposition, is closer than ever to “one-man rule”, said The Economist. Özel could try and found a new party, but without the “powerful brand” of the CHP behind him, he is unlikely to succeed. In any case, Erdogan is expected to call a snap election before the next scheduled vote in May 2028. In doing so, he would be exploiting a loophole which allows him to stand again if he doesn’t fully complete his current presidential term, which the constitution mandates should otherwise be his last.

All hope is not lost, though, said Dogan Ertugrul on Turkish Minute. Imprisoning your main challenger and sowing chaos in the ranks of their party is a sign not of strength, but of insecurity.

And these risky political steps could well backfire. Look at the Gen Z-led protests that have erupted across the country since Imamoglu’s arrest. They are still going strong and have Erdogan worried, said Giorgio Brizio in La Repubblica (Rome). On the same day police raided the CHP’s offices in Ankara, thousands of students and staff staged a demonstration at Bilgi University in Istanbul, a bastion of liberal thought that the president had just closed down. In scenes “unthinkable” until a few years ago, police burst onto the campus, targeting protesters with batons and pepper spray. Many of the students were arrested; but they stood firm, and soon after Erdogan issued a decree to reopen the university. The students’ victory is clear proof that Erdogan is not invincible.

Donald Trump just keeps winning, said The Washington Post – at least when it comes to Republican primaries. Last week, Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, became the latest in a series of candidates to triumph in a GOP run-off on the strength of the president’s endorsement. He beat four-term incumbent John Cornyn to secure the nomination for the Senate seat in Texas that is up for grabs in the midterms.

Courting controversy

But this win could cost Trump dear. Republicans are now saddled with a “scandal-plagued” nominee, in Paxton, whose flaws may force the GOP to lavish campaign funds in what would, otherwise, have been a safe seat. And the party could even so lose Texas to the Democrats, which could in turn cost them control of the Senate, and thus bring Trump’s agenda “to a standstill during his final two years in power”.

Paxton is a menace, said Nicole Russell in USA Today. A serial adulterer who has been impeached by his own party over bribery and corruption charges, he “seems to court controversy everywhere he goes”. However, he appeals to some voters as “a culture-war Maga fighter”, and he’s up against a Democrat candidate, James Talarico, who, for all his “polished rhetoric” and mild manner, is equally polarising. Talarico's past comments – which include saying that “God is nonbinary”, and that the US-Mexico border should have a “giant welcome mat” as well as a “lock on the door” – won't sit well with many Texans.

Buyers’ remorse

“Texas has a long history of slipping out of Democrats’ grasp,” said Amanda Marcotte on Salon. The party hasn’t won a statewide election there since 1994. But even if Talarico falls short, Trump will regret endorsing Paxton. Cornyn now joins the ranks of outgoing, alienated Republican senators who have nothing to lose by criticising the president and frustrating his plans. Other GOP senators, meanwhile, are wondering whether it’s still worth sucking up to Trump. Cornyn, after all, had mostly been a loyal footsoldier – his only sin was being a bit slow to endorse Trump’s third White House run.

Republicans are in a tight spot, said David French in The New York Times. Defy Trump, and they risk losing their jobs; back him, and they court “electoral disaster” for their party. Serves them right for not doing their duty in 2021 and convicting Trump in his impeachment trial. “May history treat their failure with the contempt it deserves.”

The European Union could soon add a 28th member to its ranks, as Iceland is set to vote on potentially joining the bloc this summer. But not all Icelanders support EU membership, with polls split down the middle, and what happens in the referendum could have ripple effects on the international order.

‘Important for international security’

Icelanders will not be voting on whether to join the EU but on whether Iceland should resume negotiations about joining. If the referendum passes, a second vote would be held to officially make Iceland an EU member.

Icelanders are mostly at a stalemate on the issue. According to a recent survey “on behalf of the foreign ministry, 42% of Icelanders are in favor of reopening accession talks and 39% are opposed,” said The Guardian.

Icelanders who are in favor of restarting talks view joining the EU as “important for international security and an opportunity for better integration in Europe,” said The Guardian. There have been considerations for a while about Iceland joining the bloc, but the turbocharged referendum is “in part motivated by threats from the U.S., a longtime close ally of Iceland, to forcibly acquire its closest neighbor, Greenland.” The “international order that underpinned our security and prosperity for decades is under serious pressure,” said Icelandic Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir to the outlet.

The EU has “intensified a rethink of its Arctic strategy since Trump’s rhetoric over Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, reached a peak earlier this year,” said Mari Novik at the Financial Times. Iceland was previously at an impasse with the EU over regulations regarding fishing, a major industry in the country, but the organization could “offer Iceland a carve-out on fishing policy to accelerate the country’s potential bid to join the bloc.”

‘Half the country will be upset’

Not all Icelanders are eager to join the EU. Some feel the country is “locked in an existential fight for Iceland’s soul, where extreme measures might be justifiable,” said Elías Þórsson at Icelandic news magazine The Reykjavík Grapevine. Politics in Iceland “tend to be rather benign,” but there’s “something about the EU debate that stirs the pot" of public opinion. “About half the country will be upset with the result” of the referendum, no matter what side wins, according to polls.

Those who oppose becoming part of the EU hark back to a “well-known refrain in Icelandic political discourse” that the nation is “being betrayed, that some kind of treason is underway, that foreigners are being allowed to come and run everything in Iceland,” said political scientist Ólafur Harðarson to the Grapevine. Some feel that EU membership means “giving up Iceland’s sovereignty,” said Þórsson.

The aforementioned fishing industry may be what the referendum ultimately comes down to. Icelanders have “watched with alarm as Ireland, an EU member, has endured cuts to fishing quotas that have devastated its coastal communities,” said Amelia Nierenberg at The New York Times. And the citizens are fearful the EU could do the same thing to Iceland without a carve-out.

“People feel that they might be forced to pick a side,” said Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Iceland’s Bifrost University, to the Times. And then there’s “really only one side to pick.”

“I came here to play tennis, not to put on a fashion show,” said Laura Siegemund, following her loss to Naomi Osaka in the first round of the French Open. “If other people want to do a fashion show, they can do that.”

Osaka came on court in a black corset and matching pleated skirt to face Siegemund. Though she eventually lost to Aryna Sabalenka in the fourth round in a landmark night session, Osaka’s “shimmering gold dress” became even “more eye-catching under the lights”, said The Guardian.

Known for her “elaborate” playing outfits, including a jellyfish-inspired outfit at the Australian Open, Osaka sparked concern that she may “serve as a distraction”. With Wimbledon around the corner, the tennis-fashion debate is likely to intensify.

‘Another language’

Osaka “really knows how to turn a tennis court into a catwalk” and has done so for years, said the Daily Maverick. Though her “court-ure”, which also included an Eiffel Tower-inspired outfit, has been labelled “problematic” by critics, her choice of fashion is “part of how she chooses to be seen”. For someone who has spoken openly about her struggles with anxiety, depression and public communication, her outfits have become “another language”.

The four-time grand slam champion has “never had average tastes when it comes to fashion”, said The Athletic. Her look at the Australian Open – a “dreamy, dramatic ensemble” that was meant to “evoke jellyfish” – “took over cultural discourse far beyond her match”.

Female athletes “don’t want to be known or judged for their outfits alone”, said The Independent, but with less prime-time coverage of their games than male players, it “can’t hurt to turn a few heads and garner extra attention using a bit of tulle and some sequins, right?”

I understand “how annoying it must be for Osaka’s opponents”, said The Times’ fashion director Anna Murphy. Her “ballroom skirt” and “spangled waistcoat” are “more usually seen in ‘Bridgerton’” and “Dancing on Ice”. I appreciate her angle: professional tennis “isn’t for the shy and retiring”, and if you’re on a rumoured $10 million sponsorship deal, “why not milk it”?

Wimbledon has indicated it will go along with Osaka’s “fancy-dress-adjacent thing”, provided what she wears is white. The restrictions are only on colour, not style, “so what’s it going to be for SW19? A snowman? A snowball? A snowballgirl?” But this sets a precedent that could turn the circuit into a “fancy dress party”, inviting others to follow suit. I am “not sure how even I, a fashion journalist, feel about that”.

Fashion ‘embedded’ in tennis

Tennis has “always been a runway” and fashion has “long been entrenched” in the sport, said the Daily Maverick. Osaka’s idols, the Williams sisters, used fashion as a “platform of empowerment”. Serena Williams’ “iconic” 2018 catsuit “became one of the most discussed outfits in tennis history”, while Venus’ “‘scandalous’ cabaret-inspired 2010 look” also “challenged conventions”.

Such pageantry has become commonplace in other sports too, with “paddock fashion” in Formula 1 and “tunnel walks” in US basketball. People are only noticing, and commenting, because Osaka is “using fashion as a form of self-expression on her own terms”.

Outfits worn by Osaka and Sabalenka have “crystallised how deeply luxury fashion has embedded itself in tennis”, said the Financial Times. “Indeed, the relationship between luxury and tennis isn’t new.” Many of the major stars will have a partnership with a high-end brand: Jannik Sinner and Gucci, Carlos Alcaraz and Louis Vuitton, Zheng Qinwen and Dior, British star Jack Draper and Burberry; the list goes on.

Professional tennis is a “visual theatre”, with increasingly viable commercial opportunities. Lacoste, Ralph Lauren and Rolex have all been “intertwined” with the sport, but there has been a dramatic shift in tennis’ “scale and visibility, both as a participatory sport and a spectacle”. Broader participation in the US (up by 54% since 2019, according to the US Tennis Association), and rising broadcast audiences mean tennis has become a “compelling stage” for marketing. Tennis offers a “rare opportunity to speak simultaneously to affluent buyers and aspirational young fans”.

Spencer Pratt is the latest entrant in the reality-TV-to-politics pipeline. Pratt made his name as the villain on “The Hills” during the late aughts. Now he is a contender to be the next mayor of Los Angeles.

Polls show Pratt “within striking distance” of incumbent mayor Karen Bass in Tuesday’s primary election, said CNN. AI-produced viral videos have powered his campaign, which is focused on “frustration with the city’s leadership” amid “overlapping crises” — wildfires, Hollywood’s decline, homelessness — that have left L.A. with “deep uncertainty about its future.” Pratt, who waded into politics after losing his home in last year’s Palisades fire, betrays little such uncertainty about his chances. “I’m for sure going to be mayor,” he said to Vanity Fair. The message and the messenger both remind observers of President Donald Trump, who last week endorsed Pratt’s campaign.

‘Shining a light’ on city failures

The novice candidate has “captivated a frustrated Los Angeles,” Susan Shelley said at The Orange County Register. Rather than running a vacuous vanity campaign, Pratt has been “shining a light on the visible failures of Los Angeles government.” Those failures have left the city residents mired in “crushing utility bills, unaffordable insurance, dangerous parks, unsafe sidewalks, homeless encampments” and other challenges. Pratt could be a mayor “who solves problems instead of preserving them to justify more funding.”

The reality star is “betting that infamy can be political currency,” Louis Staples said at The Atlantic. On “The Hills,” Pratt established himself as an “agitator” who found celebrity by “fighting with the other cast members and even with his own family.” That turned the show into “addictive viewing” plus taught Pratt a lesson about “narrative control.” TV stars and politicians both use tabloid leaks, social media and podcast appearances as part of a wide-ranging strategy to “influence how they’re perceived.” Pratt is a political newcomer, “but he’s been playing this game for years.”

Pratt is part of a line of mostly Republican stars who have “leveraged their reality TV fame into political careers,” Lorraine Ali said at The Los Angeles Times. Pratt and Trump can “push conflict, drama and personality” so far in the social media era that “no one will ask what exactly it is that you do beyond posting.” Pratt has accomplished that much. “But what about his ability to govern?”

‘Almost certainly toast’

Pratt’s strong polling probably “represents a consolidation of the small but very real conservative minority” of Los Angeles voters who see him as a MAGA candidate, Ed Kilgore said at New York. The city’s broader left-leaning electorate puts a “pretty firm ceiling on Pratt’s vote” that will make it difficult for him to win the mayor’s office in November. Instead, his candidacy “may be the best thing that could have happened to Karen Bass.” Pratt may well survive Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary election, but “he’s almost certainly toast against a Democrat in a general election.”

He’s a “thin, limpish, bespectacled 94-year-old grandfather” whose revolutionary days are long gone, said Daniel DePetris in The Telegraph, yet he’s a wanted man in the US for all that. Raúl Castro has been a dominant figure in Cuba’s communist regime since his brother Fidel seized power in 1959.

Cuba’s defence chief from 1959 to 2008 and its president from 2006 to 2018, he still wields great influence behind the scenes. So it’s quite something that the US attorney general has now charged him with a murder he’s said to have been involved in back in 1996 – the fatal downing of two civilian planes over the Straits of Florida.

The four victims of that attack, three of them US citizens, had been working for Brothers to the Rescue, an NGO dedicated to helping Cuban refugees and dropping anti-communist leaflets over the island. Castro is accused of having instructed his fighter pilots to “knock them down into the sea when they show up”.

‘Warning for a deaf regime’

You could see this coming, said Diario de Cuba (Madrid). The Trump administration has been demanding that Havana open up its economy and end political repression; yet despite heavy US sanctions and an oil blockade imposed in January, the regime has made no more than limited concessions – allowing Cubans in exile to found companies back home, for example. So the indictment of Raúl Castro is a “warning for a deaf regime”. And quite possibly an effective one.

The regime was badly shaken when, in January, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured by US forces in a surprise raid on Caracas. And US Attorney General Todd Blanche has hinted something similar might occur in Cuba. Asked how he intended to bring Castro to trial in America, he cryptically replied there are “all kinds of different ways”.

Bringing in Castro would be a major blow to the regime, said CNN (Atlanta). Regarded as his late brother’s “more disciplined and discreet” enforcer, Raúl Castro remains “the power in the shadows”. And his family holds immense economic as well as political clout: GAESA, the military-run conglomerate Castro founded in 1995, controls 70% of the economy on some estimates: Cuba’s tourist industry is just one of the sectors it dominates.

Markets empty, prices soaring

That economy is now suffering its “greatest crisis” since the collapse of its close ally the Soviet Union, said The Washington Post. The oil embargo has driven it to the brink. “Havana looks like a bombed-out city,” said Yunior García Aguilera on 14YMedio (Havana). Its buildings, crumbling from decades of neglect, are “split open like broken ribs”. With no petrol to run dustbin trucks, rubbish is being burnt in the streets. People wade through “toxic clouds”, side-stepping sewage and hopping over pot-holes. “Plastic, rotten food and patience are all ablaze.”

And with no imports reaching the island, Cubans have to eat what’s grown locally, said CiberCuba (Valencia). Which isn’t much. Rice production had plummeted even before the fuel crisis. Without fuel for crop dusters, tractors or irrigation, farmers have “reverted to using oxen, buffalo, horses, windmills, and solar pumps”. Markets are empty, prices are soaring. Most Cubans have begun skipping meals.

The US hopes such suffering will spark a “mass uprising” and cause the regime to implode, said Fabio E. Fernández Batista in El Salto (Madrid). But such is the repressive nature of the regime, that seems unlikely, which is why not a few Cubans now hope that “Saint Donald” will come to the rescue, even “if it means bombs falling” on their homeland.

And the US appears “increasingly willing” to seek regime change in Cuba through military means, said Nahal Toosi on Politico (Washington) – by an air strike or possibly even a ground invasion. The signs are all there: there’s been a reported spike in US surveillance flights off Cuba, and last week the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was sent to the Caribbean. Some assume the ongoing failure of his war in Iran will hold the US president back. Don’t bet on it. It’s never a good idea “to predict what the capricious Trump will do”.

“Suddenly, say those who live there, the mood in Moscow feels very different,” said Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. Ever since Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalled in 2023, Russia’s capital had “exuded confidence. Its residents could either bathe in the patriotic glory of war or ignore it altogether”. But lately, “bombast” has given way to fear, and to a longing for the conflict to end; and this feeling became more acute this month, when Moscow and its wider region came under fire from a barrage of Ukrainian drones.

It was “one of the most sustained aerial attacks of the conflict” so far. Three people were killed; all four of Moscow’s airports had to close; an oil refinery and residential buildings were hit. “Muscovites listening to drones buzz overhead and air defences firing into the night” were given a “glimpse of life in Kyiv – and they did not like it”.

‘Completely unravelling’

Events have not been in the Kremlin’s favour lately, said the Financial Times. Ukraine has upped its use of long-range drones to target energy and military facilities deep in Russia. On the front line, Russia is “scratching out meagre territorial gains at a devastating human cost”: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently asserted that it is “losing 15,000-20,000 soldiers a month. Not injured. Dead.”

The Russian economy, meanwhile, is ailing: some analysts reckon that inflation is running well above the official 5.6%; and interest rates are at a punishing 14.5%. Vladimir Putin has tried to bury bad news by tightening state control over the internet, said Phillips Payson O’Brien in The Atlantic. Even so, videos have increasingly been circulating in which Russians express “shock at their capital’s vulnerability”. His long-standing narrative, that the conflict in Ukraine is a “special military operation” that needn’t trouble Russia’s elites or middle classes, is “completely unravelling”.

‘Most challenging period’

Putin’s calculus on the war in Ukraine has not changed, said Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker in The Guardian. He remains determined to “press on” in the (surely misguided) belief that Moscow can capture the whole of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region by the end of the year. Such “bravado”, however, is doing little to ease the disquiet inside Russia; and speculation is growing that Putin’s regime could be toppled from within.

There have been reports that Sergei Shoigu, the former defence minister, could emerge as a threat to his former boss’s grip on power. The likelihood of an imminent Kremlin coup may be remote; but there’s no doubt that, at 73, Putin is entering “the most challenging period of his long rule”.

Tony Blair has made “his most dramatic intervention yet”, said The Independent. In a 5,700-word analysis of Labour’s woes, the former prime minister decried the lack of a “coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world”. Instead of changing leader, he argued, the party should “start with a policy debate” – from tax to net zero – to reoccupy the centre ground and revive the economy.

Many ‘will likely agree’

Blair may have left Downing Street nearly 20 years ago, but “as ever, he is worth listening to”, said the paper. His argument effectively boils down to “putting policy success – ‘delivery’ – above all else”. He is right that any discussion about the future “should first be about the ‘what’ rather than the ‘who’”.

Many members of the public “will likely agree with Blair’s overarching analysis that now is not the time to turn inward”, said Megan Kenyon in The New Statesman. But that doesn’t mean the party he led to three successive election landslides is likely to “welcome this intervention with whoops and cheers of gratitude”.

‘Maximum annoyance’

Maybe that’s because it “almost feels designed to inflict maximum annoyance on his party”, in terms of the content and the timing, said The Guardian’s Peter Walker. The Makerfield by-election is in just three weeks, and it “could shape Labour’s destiny for years to come”. Both Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham have accused Blair of failing to focus on inequality.

Many in the party agree with Blair’s assessment that this is a Labour administration “that has governed largely from its comfort zone and without a coherent plan”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. Yet it is still likely to “decide swiftly that its problems are best solved by replacing Starmer with a more charismatic and natural politician” rather than having a “serious intellectual debate about what has gone wrong and why”.

This article first appeared in The Week’s Politics Unspun newsletter. Sign up here to receive an email recap of the biggest UK politics news of the week every Thursday lunchtime.

The UK government has rejected a call from Scotland’s devolved parliament for a new Scottish independence referendum. MSPs voted 72-55 in favour of being able to call another ballot, 12 years after the last one failed, but Downing Street said there was no UK-wide consensus for another vote.

Back in 2014, “there was agreement across all parties, across civic society in Scotland and across the Scottish and UK parliaments, that there should be a referendum”, said a No. 10 spokesperson. In the absence of that now, we do not support another referendum; neither does the UK government support independence.

Not a ‘potent issue’

Scottish voters rejected independence in 2014 by 55% to 45%. Over a decade on, the nation is almost evenly divided “on the question of its constitutional future”, said The Institute for Government. Support for independence has “fluctuated” in opinion poll data, “without either yes or no ever establishing a decisive lead”.

When BBC Scotland sampled opinion in a Savanta online survey earlier this year, 47% of the 2,136 Scots surveyed said they would vote yes to independence, and 44% said they would vote no, with 8% undecided. While just a “snapshot”, this is “in line with the polling trend”, said Glenn Campbell, the BBC’s Scotland political editor. But there’s “another consideration” here: only 13% of those polled ranked independence as a “top three priority” for Scotland. Way higher came the cost of living (62%), the NHS (50%) and the economy (31%).

Independence remains an “important motivator for some voters” but “it does not feel as potent an issue” as it has in the past. That said, “independence is significantly more popular” than the SNP, the main nationalist party, itself.

‘The SNP fights for Scotland’

“As if Scotland hasn’t suffered enough at the hands of the SNP, the luxury campervan party and its Green accomplices” now want a second independence referendum, said The Spectator. Thankfully, Keir Starmer “is in no mood to indulge Scottish First Minister John Swinney’s fantasies by granting a Section 30 order” and allowing that to happen.

While this week’s Holyrood vote was “largely symbolic”, said Bloomberg, “it highlights how Scotland’s constitutional future has returned to the core of British politics”. The SNP may have fallen short of an overall majority in the recent elections to the Scottish Parliament but, with the Greens, they have still “secured their largest ever pro-independence majority”.

That the SNP secured a fifth consecutive election victory, despite its “patchy record on public service delivery”, “its bouts of internal warfare”, and the scandal of Peter Murrell’s embezzling of party funds, reflects “the independence aspirations among half the population and the sense that the SNP fights for Scotland”, said Simeon Kerr, the Financial Times’ Scotland correspondent.

“The SNP don’t have to be good; they just have to be Scottish,” Andy Maciver of PR consultancy Message Matters told the FT. But to build support for independence above 50%, the party will need to restore faith in its competence. The prospect of Reform UK’s Nigel Farage in No. 10 could certainly help. “They need people to run away from the rain in Westminster and towards the sun in Holyrood”.

Any path President Donald Trump takes to end the war with Iran is bound to generate a lot of dissatisfaction among his GOP supporters and advisers. Hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) continue to “press for more aggressive U.S. military action,” Daniel R. DePetris said at the Los Angeles Times, and Republicans “consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.” But Trump’s in-house political strategists want a quick end to the unpopular war to “minimize political repercussions against the Republican Party” in November’s midterm elections. Trump clearly wants the deal that he keeps promising to the U.S. public, yet accomplishing that may put him at odds with Republicans who “would consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.”

‘A bad option and a worse one’

The president “seems conflicted,” said DePetris. He’s “fed up with the current situation” but also “afraid of escalation,” said Danny Citrinowicz, of The Atlantic Council, to The New Yorker. The president is “fed up with the current situation,” but he is also “afraid of escalation,” the Atlantic Council’s Danny Citrinowicz said in an interview with The New Yorker. Escalation probably will not work “because the Iranians are not going to capitulate.” The other option to end the war, then, is a deal that provides both money and sanctions relief to the Islamic regime in exchange for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s choices are “between a bad option and a worse one.”

“Will Trump bail out Iran’s regime?” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Inflation pressures at home are likely behind the president’s desire to “reopen the Strait even on Iran’s terms.” But a “bad deal would leave him worse off politically” even if domestic prices recede. Iran’s regime was beset by domestic crises that the war has exacerbated. A “half victory” by Iran now “would hurt America’s standing — and Mr. Trump’s.”

The issue is not Trump “terminating the conflict too soon,” Jacob Heilbrunn said at The Spectator. It is “that he began it in the first place.” The war is undermining both his presidency and U.S. military power, and the idea that escalation would result in Iran’s surrender “defies credulity.” The ugly truth illustrated by the Hormuz closure is that Trump “does not hold the cards.”

‘Leaving core issues unsolved’

Trump is looking to get a ceasefire deal now and “deal with the toughest problems later,” said The New York Times. He took the same approach in Gaza, where he brokered a truce last year. That effort ended the fighting but left issues of Hamas’ future and the rebuilding of Gaza to be figured out at a later date. So far that has not happened. Such an approach can be a way for Trump to “claim victory while leaving the core issues unsolved.”

“Doubling down” on the war remains a possibility, Ravi Agrawal said at Foreign Policy. But that would come with “uncertain benefits” and “much more potential pain.” We may soon find out one way or another, as the U.S. on Monday conducted strikes on Iranian positions, a sign the temporary truce is faltering.

Ferrari’s first foray into electric vehicles has sparked an intense backlash from fans and investors, with shares falling sharply after the unveiling of its new battery-powered Luce.

Created in collaboration with former Apple chief designer Jony Ive, the car’s futuristic shell-like form, silent engine and £475,000 price tag were always going to be “controversial”, said Politico. But Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s former chairman, spoke for many “purists in Italy” when he said it “risks destroying the myth” of the legendary cars and should be stripped of the company’s prancing horse logo.

‘Polarising’

Montezemolo was far from alone in his assessment.

“The Luce does not look like a Ferrari. It looks like the concept for a Honda Hydrogen vehicle from 2002,” said Luke Plunkett on Aftermath. “It looks like one of the ‘this is what the future will look like from the 90s’ cars from ‘Demolition Man’, only worse.” It looks like “anything but a Ferrari”.

It has even managed to unite Italy’s fractious politics. Far-right transport minister Matteo Salvini slammed it on X, while centrist opposition politician Carlo Calenda called it an “aesthetic and technological insult to anyone who loves Ferrari”.

Even Ferrari’s chief design officer, Flavio Manzoni, admitted that the design was “polarising”, but he’s confident fans will embrace the new car with time.

Investors, however, were not so sure. Ferrari shares fell nearly 8% in Milan on Tuesday, amid fears the Luce launch “could become a repeat of Jaguar Land Rover’s controversial failed rebrand” in 2024. That was when the luxury British carmaker “tried to shift the marque away from its traditional ‘Jag man’ image towards ultra-wealthy customers”, said The Telegraph.

‘Energy transition challenge’

The Luce has had a “rather long gestation period”, with a Ferrari EV in the works for “a few years” before development officially started in 2021, said Car magazine. At the time, “EVs were riding high and increasing in popularity in the premium, sport and luxury space” but “the world slightly reassessed that overly positive attitude to EVs not long after and so did Ferrari”.

Since then, mass-production brands like Ford, GM, Honda and Volvo have “all retreated from their EV initiatives in one way or another as consumer demand plummets, profit falls and policy makers deprioritise moving away from traditional gas power”, said Forbes.

“Luxury and performance brands have done the same”, with Lamborghini scrapping its first planned EV, Porsche opting for hybrid and McLaren steering clear entirely.

“Underscoring the energy transition challenge for luxury carmakers”, the “initial negative reaction to Ferrari’s new model was not surprising”, said the Financial Times. But according to analysts, “the key challenge for the company was to fill the order book with the highly specific clients it had targeted for the Luce”.

As far as the Italian brand’s executives are concerned, “whether most current Ferrari customers think the Luce is cool is irrelevant,” said Scott Sherwood, an independent analyst of luxury carmakers. “If it tested well enough with the tech crowd to fill the order book, that’s all they are concerned with.”

“The only thing growing faster than the artificial-intelligence industry may be Americans’ negative feelings about it” – as Eric Schmidt discovered last week, said The Wall Street Journal. When the former Google boss dared to outline the coming “technological transformation” at a University of Arizona graduation ceremony, he was met with “a chorus of boos”.

He wasn’t the first. Everywhere you look, the AI industry’s claims that it will improve people’s lives are being challenged. “Consumers resent energy-price jumps exacerbated by the spread of data centres. Workers fear widespread job losses. Parents worry about AI undermining education and harming children’s mental health.” The “wave of anger” has brought protests, swayed election results and spurred isolated acts of violence. The mood hasn’t been helped by the industry’s tendency to dismiss these worries as the petty concerns of what one executive recently described as “cave people”.

‘What about those who don't have access?’

In the corporate boardrooms too, there are major misgivings – particularly about AI’s potentially devastating impact on cybersecurity, said DealBook in The New York Times. The power of Anthropic’s new AI model, Mythos, to penetrate the most fortified systems, could up the ante in the battle between IT departments and hackers.

The company has sought to head off damage by creating Project Glasswing: a group of some 50 companies and banks to test Mythos and hopefully detect vulnerabilities in their software before malicious actors do. But another big worry has arisen: “What about those who don’t have access to the tool?” The problem of how to share data about threats, while still restricting access, is a major challenge. Expect lawsuits to fly.

‘Slowing down change is rarely wise’

AI is all about the haves and have-nots, said Jonathan Vanian on CNBC. “Across the tech industry, workers are watching as stock prices balloon” while employers cut headcounts. Indeed, even those with jobs could see their earning power shrivel as AI firms “bid up the price of land and energy”, said The Economist. In a truly dystopian future, humans – “like horses in the age of the car” – could become “uneconomical”. The fiscal implications for governments are terrifying. What should they do? Slowing down change is rarely wise.

Taking countermeasures – say, a combination of clever tax reforms and safety nets – would be a better course. South Korea has even floated the idea of a citizens’ “dividend” from AI businesses. “Concentrations of rent must be confronted early, before the power of rentiers is too great.” The jobs apocalypse is not yet here, but governments waiting for conclusive evidence of it will be acting too late. Better start now.

A rare event occurred last week, said Fred Kaplan on Slate: President Trump posted a completely accurate observation on social media. Commenting on Iran’s response to a US ceasefire proposal, he declared it “totally unacceptable”.

He’s right about that. Iran’s statement – which included no concessions and a long list of demands, including war reparations, the lifting of all sanctions and Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz – read like something “the winner of a war would issue”. The question is, what can Trump do about it?

He has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing Iran if the regime rejects his peace proposals, but it’s hard to see what that would achieve. If the 38 days of devastating air strikes that began on 28 February failed to bring Tehran to heel, what difference would obliterating a few more targets make?

‘Wiggle out of this conflict’

“If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close,” said Robert Kagan in The Atlantic. Trump halted the bombing campaign on Iran “not because he was bored, but because Iran was striking the region’s vital oil and gas facilities”. If he’s not willing to accept the risk of more such retaliation, or to mount a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the Iranian regime, “walking away now could seem like the least bad option”.

Trump, to his credit, shows no sign of wanting to “wiggle out of this conflict” or sign some meaningless deal, said Noah Rothman in National Review. He’s rightly determined to stop Tehran getting a nuclear weapon. But to succeed, he’ll need to solicit the public’s support for this project, which requires showing a bit more patience and “humility”. He’s not going to win people over by branding all critics “stupid”, or dismissing the inflationary effects of the war. He recently claimed that he was motivated only by the nuclear issue, saying “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all”. That quote is going to be used against him in countless Democratic campaign adverts.

‘We will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger’

Trump’s rudeness and arrogance has also made Nato allies very disinclined to come to America’s aid, said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. Which is too bad, as the administration could really do with their help. The reality is that it’s in all of our interests to fix the Iran situation. It will be terrible for Europe if Tehran is allowed to decide who can and who can’t pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

And it will be worse still for the Arab Gulf states that rely on the channel, endangering their modernising, pluralistic reforms. “The Dubai model is precisely the one Tehran wants to destroy.” It’s understandable that Nato allies are loath to help Trump, but make no mistake: “we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger”.

“It almost feels like an accident waiting to happen,” said Caroline Dinenage, Tory chair of the Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee.

She was commenting on a string of allegations against “Married at First Sight”, the Channel 4 reality TV show where “people are expected to share a bed and a life straight after meeting”, said the BBC.

Two women told the BBC’s “Panorama” that they were raped during the filming of show and a third alleged she was subjected to a non-consensual sex act. According to “Panorama”, Channel 4 was aware of some allegations before the investigative programme was broadcast.

‘The experiment has failed’

“The name of the show says it all,” said Colin Robertson in The Sun – “could there be a more guaranteed recipe for disaster”? Reality TV is “engaged in a race to the bottom” because “times are hard in telly land” and the genre is “often cheap to make”, offering a “route” to the “lucrative Gen Z and millennial market”.

But “balancing ethics and explosive TV will always be an impossible feat”, said Serena Smith on Dazed. Producers “can’t just let unhappy contestants walk away” from “Married at First Sight”, because they need to “produce a show – and a show packed with high-octane conflict”.

The recent allegations “prove that there’s just no way of making a reality TV show centred around dating that is both ethical and entertaining. God knows bosses have tried”. So “finally, it’s time to accept that the experiment has failed”.

The show is only “watchable” because it “breaks with modern romantic norms”, said Ella Dorn in The New Statesman, “but those norms exist for safety’s sake”. Instead, the format “both pressures people into unsuitable relationships and presents sex as a matter of course”. There was “no real way to restrict its harm to women”.

‘Psychological torment as entertainment’

But what does all this say about society? “By focusing on the undeniable sins of reality television”, there’s “a risk of missing the wider point”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. “The chilling thing about these allegations” is that “reality TV stands accused of being too real by half”.

Hinsliff cites research from 2013 that found one in 10 women in Britain said they’d been forced into sex against their will. Half of female respondents to another survey had “woken up to find a male partner attempting to have sex with them in their sleep – a scenario described by one of the “Married at First Sight” women”.

We think we are “far more virtuous” than the ancient Romans who “flocked to the Colosseum to watch slaves and prisoners killed by starving animals”, said Mary Harrington on UnHerd. But, “at a moral level”, is “staging domestic abuse as primetime entertainment” any “less grotesque”?

The “Panorama” allegations “ought to prompt a deeper reckoning about the national predilection for staging low-grade psychological torment as entertainment”.

“The Venice Biennale is the world’s most prestigious international art exhibition,” said Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times. Every other year, a colossal central show aspires to distil the current state of contemporary art, while the nations of the world stage individual exhibitions in designated pavilions, each competing for the coveted top prize. Elsewhere, a host of satellite exhibitions take over the city’s museums and public spaces.

In 2026, however, the art has been overshadowed by “everything else”. For one thing, the main event’s curator, Cameroon-born Koyo Kouoh, died unexpectedly last May. Then Russia – absent since 2022 – returned to the fold. In response, the biennale jury said it wouldn’t award prizes to countries accused of war crimes – there were protests against Israel too – and resigned in protest.

Yet some of the exhibits at this “massive mess” of a biennale still deserve a visit, said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. The national pavilions are often interesting, and “some of them are even quite fun”. Denmark’s offering incorporates “a hi-tech sperm bank”; “a singing turd” is featured at Luxembourg’s; the Japanese show encourages visitors to carry around “fake babies”; and Malta’s features “a life-size chocolate Russell Crowe”.

Weirdest of all is Florentina Holzinger’s Austria pavilion, “a confrontational, stomach-turning” performance piece, in which naked female performers swim in urine and circle an artificial lake on jet skis. Ridiculous as it sounds, it’s “brilliantly obscene and vile” – and, beneath the wackiness, a scary portent of ecological catastrophe.

Russia’s display, on the other hand, is “wretched”, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. I went in expecting a “whitewash” and was greeted with a “limp” display of flowers, some “embarrassed folk music performers” and insistent “offers of alcohol”. Nor is Lubaina Himid’s British pavilion up to much. Her paintings of “generic black figures characterised by profession (chef, tailor, gardener)” feel “lacklustre” and “predictable”.

The central exhibition, In Minor Keys, which foregrounds artists from the “global south”, aims to celebrate quiet pleasures and beauty in the face of tragedy, said Wullschläger. The idea is nice, but the overall quality is “poor”. Some exceptions aside – not least Theo Eshetu’s uprooted olive tree mounted on a revolving plinth, “superimposed with a film showing its earlier fullness” – it’s the same old melange of “identikit hanging textiles” and anti-colonial railing. I left feeling “alienated, hectored, patronised and bored”.

It’s not all bad, said Hettie Judah in Apollo. The Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar has his own room, “a vast lozenge of space flooded with disorienting red light”; at its end is a tiny metal cube forged from rare minerals necessary for modern technological gadgets. It’s “a temple to callous, extractive greed” and its “catastrophic human cost”. There are other highlights – but, true to its title, this is a show of “minor encounters” not “revelations”. And its very scale, alas, drowns out the “subtleties”. The show could have done with more “editorial rigour”.

Many questioned whether Pep Guardiola could hack it in the rough and tumble of the Premier League when he became Manchester City’s manager a decade ago.

Could his brand of beautiful “tiki-taka” football, refined in Barcelona and developed at Bayern Munich, cut it on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke?

Ten years on and his record speaks for itself: six Premier League titles, including one secured with over 100 points and another as part of a historic treble; the Champions League; three FA Cups; five League Cups; the Uefa Super Cup and Fifa Club World Cup. It makes him the second most decorated manager in Premier League history behind Sir Alex Ferguson. Now, with rumours of his departure at the end of the season, the question of his legacy has arisen.

‘Level of tactical complexity has soared’

As his mentor Johan Cruyff did as manager of Barcelona, Guardiola has “created a legacy that has changed the face of football at every level in England”, said BBC chief football writer Phil McNulty.

During his time at City, Guardiola “has not just shaped elite football and the game in the league’s pyramids” but “has had an impact at every level down to grassroots, where even junior coaches adopt his strategies”.

“His success goes beyond just the many wins,” said The Sun. “It is embedded into the very foundation of the game in England now.”

Even semi-professional teams now play out from the back. Goalkeepers will pass into danger rather than go long. The rigid formations of old are gone. Defenders sometimes play as strikers. “Kids are growing up with these roles more defined than ever” and “the level of tactical complexity has soared”.

To understand the extent of Guardiola’s impact you need only glance around at the other elite managers working in the game today. Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, who this season delivered the club’s first Premier League title in 22 years, cut his teeth as Guardiola’s assistant at City, as did former Chelsea boss and likely successor at the Etihad, Enzo Maresca. PSG boss Luis Enrique worked under him at Barcelona, as did new Chelsea manager Xavi Alonso in Munich. Current Bayern boss Vincent Kompany was City’s talismanic captain for years under Guardiola.

‘Lingering question’

There is no doubt City’s Abu Dhabi ownership “more than got its money’s worth”, said The Independent’s Miguel Delaney, but there is “another way to think about Guardiola”.

Whether it was having Lionel Messi in his prime, taking charge of already Treble-winning Bayern, or the immense resources he was handed at City, “the one purely football caveat in Guardiola’s sensational record” is “he’s never really had to work anywhere where he’s had to compromise”.

The other “lingering question” concerns City’s “bludgeoning power” and how, “Guardiola’s prodigious gifts aside, they were able to acquire it in the first place”, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. The seemingly never-ending Premier League investigation into 115 charges of financial irregularity has hung over the club, and “for years Guardiola has had to deny suggestions of an asterisk being placed alongside their achievements”.

As for the future, replacing Guardiola “will be no easy feat”, said The Athletic. He has “set the standard so high, both for fans of Manchester City and for those of us judging from the outside, that anything short of sustained brilliance could easily seem underwhelming. Mediocrity would feel like disaster.”

Bruising brushes with financial markets have been the fate of Labour “down the ages”, said William Keegan in The Observer. Back in the 1960s, Harold Wilson complained about “the gnomes of Zürich” – a derogatory reference to international bankers then going “short on the pound”. This time, the threat is closer to home – in London’s febrile government bond markets.

‘The risk of some kind of accident is real’

Before this week’s escalation of the leadership fight, economists were playing down the political angle. “For all the noise, politics isn’t what’s driving yields higher right now,” James Smith of ING told The Times. “The overwhelming driver is still the energy crisis, oil prices and the impact on BoE interest rates.” But as a dramatic sell-off got under way, it became harder to discount the sense that debt markets are indeed badly rattled by Labour’s leadership woes. The 30-year gilt yield, which hit 5.81% on Tuesday, is at the highest this century. Yields on 10-year gilts (the benchmark for mortgage rates), at 5.13%, are at their highest since 2008.

It’s “a rubbish time” to be having a political crisis, said Daire MacFadden in the Financial Times. “Sadly, that’s precisely what we have.” Any leadership challenge is “all but certain to herald a move to the left and potentially an increase in government borrowing”. To some extent, the gilt market had already priced this in, but “the risk of some kind of accident here is real”.

It doesn’t help that Andy Burnham – who last year observed that government shouldn’t be “in hock” to the bond market – “keeps talking about bond markets as if they are some sort of entity he can bamboozle with jargon”, said John Stepek on Bloomberg. The view from his camp seems to be that renationalising various sectors of the economy will inherently make them more productive – so gilt markets “will be happy to fund the borrowing”. That’s a somewhat “courageous” assumption.

‘Bond vigilantes’ on the rise

“It seems like the only supporters that Keir Starmer has left are the so-called bond vigilantes,” said Robin Wigglesworth in the FT. As they point out, higher borrowing costs are already chipping away at the chancellor’s £24 billion of fiscal headroom, which forecasts suggest could halve. But for how long “can the gilt market act as the UK’s political police”?

Among Starmer’s rivals, Burnham is perceived by traders as the biggest threat and Wes Streeting as the least risky. We must hope he prevails and persuades investors to lend at “a lower premium” to Britain, said Adam Smith in The Telegraph.

The “intriguing paradox” of Labour politics is that the leader most distrusted by the Left may ultimately be the “most capable of financing the expansive social-democratic state that they all crave”.

Chinese-made EVs are cheap and increasingly popular around the world but not in the U.S. market where imports are mostly banned. American automakers and their allies in Congress want to keep it that way.

Congress is pushing to “lock Chinese cars out of the U.S. market,” said Autoweek. Michigan Reps. John Moolenaar and Debbie Dingell this week introduced a bill to entrench and expand a Biden-era block on “smart” cars with Chinese-made software systems the lawmakers say is a national security threat.

American automakers are also alarmed by what they see as unfair competition from Beijing-backed companies like BYD, Nio and Geely that have made “steady market share gains in ​Europe and Mexico,” said Reuters. Geely sells its EX2 EV for $22,500 in Mexico, while the average sale price of a new car in the U.S. is $51,000. Chinese carmakers have “some level of government support, or else they couldn't transact at that price,” Toyota’s David Christ said to the outlet.

‘Common sight in border towns’

Lifting the block on Chinese EVs “could devastate the U.S. auto industry,” Sandy K. Baruah and Glenn Stevens Jr. said at The Detroit News. China has “cunningly” built its carmakers using “vast state subsidies, uncompetitive labor practices and the monopolization of raw materials” to “dominate the global market.” Those practices have created an “unfair playing field” in which Chinese companies now make 62% of all new EV sales globally. “We must not allow that here.”

It is a question of “when, not if” Chinese cars will hit U.S. roads, Katrina Hamlin said at Reuters. The vehicles are “cheaper” and “often snazzier” than what American brands offer, and U.S. drivers “seem ​keen to buy Chinese cars” as “budget models become increasingly scarce” at home. BYDs purchased in Mexico are already a “common sight in American border towns like El Paso and San Diego” though they cannot be registered in the U.S. The change “looks increasingly like it’s just a matter of time.”

Congress is not buying

“Are cars the next TikTok?” Matthew Choi and Dan Merica said at The Washington Post. Lawmakers are concerned camera, sensor and trip data collected by Chinese smart cars could be shared with Beijing, similar to the fears that forced the sale of TikTok’s American operations to U.S.-based Oracle. President Donald Trump has suggested he would welcome Chinese automakers as long as their cars are “built by Americans in the U.S.” So far, though, “that is not a caveat Congress is buying.”

Chinese carmakers should be allowed “if they agree to conditions,” Bruce Stokes said at Roll Call. They should “hire American union labor” and “buy American-made parts.” They should also share “most advanced Chinese battery and other technologies” with U.S. partner companies and store the “vast amounts data” generated by their cars on U.S.-based servers. The U.S. must strike that deal or risk “being hopelessly shut out of the world market.”

England’s first-past-the-post electoral system has long been regarded as “a friend of the Conservative and Labour parties”, said political scientist John Curtice on the BBC. Under FPTP, the candidate with the most votes in each constituency is elected, and this has always made it difficult for small parties, whose votes may be geographically spread, to take seats from the big two.

But last week’s local election results confirm that Britain has entered “an unprecedented era of multi-party politics”. Labour and the Conservatives jointly got 34% of the vote share – “a record low”. Far from “helping to insulate” them, FPTP “served to exaggerate” their loss of support.

‘Distorts voter choice’

Our “archaic” voting system is “no longer fit for purpose”, said Andrew Grice in The Independent. The traditional argument was that it delivered stability but we have “hardly had stable governments in the 10 years” since the EU referendum, and these recent local election results suggest that “the next general election will be unpredictable and chaotic”. We now have five parties in England, and six each in Scotland and Wales, with nationalists “on the march in both”. It will be very difficult for anyone to win a majority, leading to “post-election horse-trading” between parties in a coalition or “pacts for key Commons votes”.

Nigel Farage used to “bang on about the need for proportional representation”, the voting system used for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd. But – “surprise, surprise” – he “seems to have cooled” on that, now that FPTP offers him a chance of becoming PM. “He was right first time: Britain needs electoral reform, not Reform UK.”

In a multi-party landscape, FPTP “distorts voter choice”, said political scientist Vernon Bogdanor in the Financial Times. Voters must guess “how to keep out” the party they most dislike, making casting a vote seem like “participating in a lottery”. In 2024, Keir Starmer’s Labour won 411 of 650 seats with just 34% of the vote share – lower than Jeremy Corbyn’s 40% in 2017. “How can a government be democratically legitimate when two-thirds of the voters do not want it?”

A proportional representation system of transferable votes, in which second and further preferences count, is now “an essential safeguard”, said the FT’s Martin Wolf. We need to protect Britain from the “tyranny of the minority”, in which “a small plurality secures overwhelming power”. FPTP has “become suicidal”.

‘More horse-trading, not less’

Sorry, I’m not convinced, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. For decades, FPTP has “done a sterling job of keeping extremists out”, while the far right “surged across Europe”. Proportional representation “doesn’t guarantee that we could all just vote for what we want instead of endlessly against what we fear (ask the French)”. It also doesn’t mean “an end to the grubby deal-making”. The choice is simply between “cutting deals with rival factions inside your own party (more common under FPTP) or with rival parties in the coalition governments produced more frequently under PR, which often means more horse-trading, not less”. PR might create parliaments “roughly reflective of how people actually voted” but that proportionality “doesn’t always survive the messy process of forming governments”.

We could introduce a fairer system “with minimal change”, said Labour peer Jeff Rooker on PoliticsHome. A “practical diluted” FPTP would be better than an “impractical pure” PR system. We should introduce regional MPs, as well as constituency ones. Voters would still mark ballot papers with one X, choosing a candidate as a constituency member, but votes for parties would then be “aggregated on a regional basis” and regional MPs would be chosen from “the highest runners-up”. In this “Mixed-Member Proportional System”, the electorate would feel they could “vote for what they want”, removing the “temptation for tactical voting”.

“In the pantheon of destructive, counterproductive laws”, the new Renters' Rights Act “must be up there with the worst”, said Tim Briggs on CapX. The legislation, which came into force last Friday, has been sold by Labour as a “moral crusade” that will drive rogue landlords out of England's private rental sector, protecting tenants from abuse.

It abolishes Section 21 “no-fault” evictions, whereby landlords can evict tenants without giving a reason. Instead, they must rely on specific legal grounds – rent arrears, antisocial behaviour, an upcoming sale – to regain possession, which will mean “more lawyers” and more litigation; those who wish to sell must give four months' notice. Fixed-term tenancies have been abolished, replaced instead with rolling contracts with no end date. Rent increases are limited to once per year; these can be appealed at tribunal.

Together, the measures represent “a regulatory avalanche” – sending a clear message to small landlords: get out. “Fewer landlords mean fewer rental homes. And fewer rental homes mean higher rents.”

I'm a landlord, and I welcome the new law, said Rebecca Tidy in The Independent. If your business depends for its profitability on no-fault evictions, “it's safe to say that the sector – and society – is better off without it”. Up until now, renting a property has been a “terrifying lucky dip where you have no idea what kind of landlord you will get”. I've heard “endless stories” of people booted out of their homes in favour of more lucrative tenants, or for complaining about black mould that is affecting their children's health. This legislation will end all that.

It's hard to overestimate how draconian “no-fault” evictions are, agreed Oliver Edwards on Inside Housing – and how precarious they make renters' lives. As a housing lawyer in Manchester, I see cases like this all the time. My recent clients have included a family of seven, with older parents and a severely disabled adult son; and a single mother with an autistic son who had “finally settled into school”. They've all been moved on, with just a few weeks' notice.

Many in the industry think that the Renter's Rights Act will force out rogue landlords and improve standards, said Emily Braeger in The i Paper. But it will also become more difficult for landlords to evict problem tenants, and the burden of compliance may become too much for many of them. Research by the lender Pepper Money suggests that there will be 220,000 fewer homes to rent in England by the end of the year. The long-term impacts of the legislation will not become clear for years, but this is certainly the most significant reform to the sector since the Thatcher era.

A series of European leaders have been singled out for criticism by a frustrated Donald Trump over recent months, said The Guardian. Currently, it's Germany's chancellor who “finds himself in Washington's crosshairs”.

Friedrich Merz provoked the president's wrath last week by telling a class of schoolchildren in his home region of Sauerland that America lacked a clear strategy in Iran and was being “humiliated”. Trump swiftly hit back, calling Merz “totally ineffective” and threatening to shrink America's military presence in Germany. Two days later, the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of 5,000 of the more than 36,000 US troops stationed in Germany. Trump subsequently suggested that many more could be pulled out. He has also threatened to raise tariffs on European car imports from 15% to 25%, a step that would hit Germany hardest.

Awkward timing

This row arrives at a terrible time for Merz, who is struggling in the polls, said The Economist. However, it remains to be seen whether the troop withdrawals actually happen. Trump threatened to pull out 12,000 troops in his first term, but that plan was later cancelled. German bases such as Ramstein are “crucial hubs for American power projection, not least in the Middle East”. German officials are more concerned by the decision to cancel the deployment of a US intermediate-range missile unit to Germany.

This deployment, agreed in 2024 by President Biden, was “explicitly intended to send a message of strength to the Kremlin, a tangible signal of deterrence”, said Hubert Wetzel in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Trump's cancellation of the plan last week, after yet another long phone call with Vladimir Putin, could “almost be interpreted as an invitation to the Kremlin”. Nato's credibility ultimately depends on the belief that the US would come to Europe's aid in a crisis, but how sure can anyone be of that now?

Political misstep

Given how much Europe depends on America, its leaders really need to stop provoking Trump, said Wolfgang Munchau on UnHerd. Merz was of course right that the president entered the Iran war without a strategy, but it was foolish of him to talk of America being “humiliated”. More careful language is required. For all the talk of creating strategic autonomy, the reality is that Europe is miles away from being able safely to decouple from the US. It hasn't even agreed a joint defence strategy. The Europeans are in “dangerous denial”, always quick to criticise the US while persistently failing to address their own powerlessness. “Now Trump has called their bluff. No wonder they hate him.”

The Trump administration has lofty expectations about the state of the pharmaceutical industry, but not everyone appears to be a believer. Recent data from the White House predicted that the administration’s deals with drug companies could save the economy more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade. While Republicans are lauding this estimate, many Democrats are taking it with a grain of salt.

‘Touted his drug pricing deals as transformative’

The White House predicts that Trump’s deals could save $529 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis of data obtained by The Associated Press. The administration also estimated that federal and state governments could “save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade” because of Trump’s agreements, Josh Doak said at the AP.

Trump administration officials have touted the president’s “drug pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law” as part of “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing, said Doak. The White House has “reached voluntary agreements with 17 pharmaceutical companies,” and it appears the administration’s “goal is to bring manufacturers of sole-source brand-name drugs and biologics into comparable arrangements,” Colleen Cabili said at Quartz. Details on the deal specifics remain unclear.

The president has “sought to position his pharmaceutical pricing push as a winning issue with voters,” said Cabili. Given his plummeting poll numbers over affordability, Trump has been “focusing on his efforts to cut deals with companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. would no longer be dramatically higher than in other affluent nations,” said Doak.

The mechanism ‘remains a black box’

Despite the White House’s optimism, many across the aisle are skeptical of the Trump administration’s potential cost savings. Just prior to the White House’s analysis, 17 Democratic senators introduced legislation that would force Trump to provide details of the drug deals. If “these deals are actually lowering costs for patients, show us,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement. “Americans deserve transparency.”

If “these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public? Because Trump is a giant fraud when it comes to lower drug prices,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a parallel statement. The “scope of the savings claimed by the Trump administration are likely to intensify the scrutiny by Democrats,” said Doak at the AP. One of their primary concerns is that “pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins while working with the administration.”

The “exact mechanism” for these savings “remains a black box,” said Angus Liu at the biopharma news website Fierce Pharma. Beyond the price of the drugs themselves, the White House “has yet to define how commercial markets, such as employer-sponsored insurance, will access those discounted rates.” The “math for these massive savings only adds up if the administration can expand its circle of agreements beyond the 17 Big Pharma firms initially targeted” by Trump. Many biotech companies are also wary of “MFN’s impact on their business models” and “argue that they lack the diverse portfolios of pharma companies that can absorb revenue hits from pricing pressure.”

Plans for a summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were underway before America went to war with Iran. That war delayed the meeting, now set for next week, and will overshadow other issues the two leaders planned to discuss.

The war has “significantly altered” the agenda for the Trump-Xi summit and could be a “major obstacle” to resolving trade issues between the two countries, Lyle J. Goldstein said at Responsible Statecraft. The “tensions are palpable” in part because China has reportedly shared weapons and intelligence with Tehran, but both countries want to keep the world economy “from careening off the looming cliff.” Trump and Xi may be forced to work on “pragmatic compromise in order to keep their rivalry under control.”

Trump “may want to temper his expectations” for the summit, Jacob Dreyer said at The New York Times. China once saw presidential visits as “global validation” for its rise but now has “begun to chart its own course” as its leaders realize their country has “learned all it can from America.” Trump wants to improve the U.S.-China relationship but “maintaining a tense stability is about all he can hope for.”

‘A creditor-debtor dynamic’

The president has “fewer cards to play” at the summit, Brahma Chellaney said at The Hill. His choice to go to war against Iran has “boomeranged” into a “global energy shock,” with the result that a meeting intended as a “show of strength” for the U.S. president may end up being more about “damage control.”

The war has depleted American munitions and weakened the economy, accelerating a shift in the U.S.-China relationship from a “rivalry of near-peers” to “something closer to a creditor-debtor dynamic.” Trump’s question in Beijing is “not whether he can strike a deal,” but rather “what he will give up to get one.”

Trade issues “will take center stage at the summit,” Patricia M. Kim said at Brookings. Trump and Xi likely will continue the “trade truce” between their countries, with the U.S. getting Chinese exports of rare earth minerals and sales of American farm products, while China gets tariff and regulatory relief from Washington. A summit “focused on stability” could lead to more cooperation on security and trade or could turn the Washington-Beijing relationship more frosty if “Trump walks away dissatisfied with the results of the trip.”

Breakthroughs unlikely

The number of Americans with favorable views about China has “ticked up,” said Pew Research Center, nearly doubling since 2023 to 27%. Fewer Americans say China is an enemy, but most “still see it as a competitor.”

The summit is “unlikely to deliver decisive breakthroughs” between the U.S. and China, Yingfan Chen and Dingding Chen said at The Diplomat. Its significance will not be a “transforming” of the dynamic between the two countries but instead “maintaining a minimum level of predictability” in the relationship so the competition between China and America can continue “within constraints the system can absorb.”

“No company is more unapologetic about its controversial goals than Palantir Technologies,” said Brett Shafer on The Motley Fool.

The AI powerhouse has “rocketed to become one of the largest companies in the world by market capitalisation”, by selling its analytics software to governments and big business; yet it is rapidly becoming “a political football”.

‘Ramblings of a supervillain’

Opponents cite the rumoured use of its tech in the Iran conflict, and the confirmed use of its tracking software in President Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown – as well as the “aggressive” political stance of two of its co-founders: CEO Alex Karp and chairman Peter Thiel.

Karp’s recent release of a 22-point “manifesto”, based on a book he co-authored last year, has unsettled minds further. The book’s central claim is that the survival of US civilisation depends on the technological revitalisation of the military-industrial complex. Even Palantir insiders are becoming disturbed by the rhetoric, reported Wired, and belatedly “starting to wonder if they’re the bad guys”.

Palantir’s reputation in Britain is on an even sharper descent, said Robert Booth in The Guardian. One MP compared the manifesto, which “implied some cultures were inferior”, to the “ramblings of a supervillain”.

Indeed, more than 300,000 Britons have signed petitions calling for Palantir to be dropped from UK contracts, which include a £330 million deal to process medical data for the NHS and a £240 million Ministry of Defence deal. A contract to process criminal intelligence for the Metropolitan Police is also under discussion.

‘Blackening’ NHS values

Palantir’s pitch is that it performs essential “plumbing” – joining together scattered, often incompatible, sets of data to be analysed and searched easily. But is this really a company we should trust with “our most sensitive data”, asked Faiza Shaheen in The New Statesman. By funding Palantir, “we are blackening the very values” of the NHS. Even the way it obtained its contracts seems shady. It got its toehold in the NHS during Covid by offering assistance for a token £1. Later deals were helped along by Peter Mandelson, and his lobbying firm Global Counsel.

Palantir, which is run in the UK by Louis Mosley, has become “the Left’s favourite conspiracy target”, said Matthew Field in The Daily Telegraph. Green party leader Zack Polanski has made rooting out the company a rallying call. “The tech giant, meanwhile, has embarked on its own PR blitz, seeking to portray the fears of its critics as concocted and political.” There’s everything to play for: next year, Palantir’s NHS deal “runs into a break clause”. The US firm had “better be ready” for a fight.

Until a few months ago, most voters couldn’t have picked Zack Polanski out of a line-up. Now, the Green Party leader – who was elected in September – is so mobbed by crowds, he travels with a bodyguard, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. He gets stopped by teenagers in the street, and at the club nights he hosts, people cheer his name. It is strikingly “reminiscent of the Corbyn mania of 2017”. His life has been transformed, and his party has been too. His message, mixing hope with a “heavy dash” of left-wing populism, has gone down a storm.

The party’s membership has grown from 80,000, when he became leader, to more than 226,000. The Greens won their first by-election in February, and are now on course to make big gains in next week’s local elections in England.

Equal threat

Keir Starmer has long been alive to the threat posed by Reform UK, said Chloe Chaplain in The i Paper – and in response, Labour has shifted to the right in some areas. But there is a growing realisation that the Greens pose an equal threat.

Reform is still expected to win the biggest vote share on Thursday, but by focusing on issues such as Gaza (where it accuses Labour of being complicit in a genocide) and “affordability”, the Green Party has won over many ethnic minority voters, young progressives and Corbynistas. In London, the party is set to win four councils – including Hackney and Lambeth – that have been Labour-run for decades.

Yet Polanski’s brand of Corbynism is risky, said Daisy Eastlake in The Times. Several of his candidates have been exposed for “incendiary views” (one shared a video saying that a synagogue attack was “not antisemitism” but “revenge”); and he has caused alarm by suggesting that British Jews might be experiencing a “perception of unsafety”, not real danger.

Riding high

Have the people planning to vote Green any idea of the chaos the party would wreak, wondered Danny Cohen in The Telegraph. As well as legalising hard drugs and reducing income inequality by enforcing a maximum 10:1 pay ratio for organisations, it wants to remove many barriers to immigration.

Polanski is riding high now, but soon he will come up against the challenges facing Reform UK, said John Rentoul in The Independent – including novice councillors who struggle to get the basics right, let alone deliver on their “impossible” campaign promises; and national policies that are treasured by members but unpopular with the broader electorate. Polanski might be pragmatic enough to drop these, but there is a problem: in the Green Party, it is the members who decide policy.

Thanks to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “the visually and spiritually ugly Queen film that won four Oscars and earned $910 million worldwide”, we’ve had a spate of “soulless, estate-approved” biopics of famous musicians lately, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. “Michael” is the latest of these.

‘Ghoulishness’

It seeks not to understand Michael Jackson, nor to explore his legacy, but simply to deliver content for fans – the scenes from the star’s life that they hope and expect to see. In that respect, it is not unique; but there is a “particular ghoulishness” in giving this treatment to a figure as complicated as the late King of Pop. “Michael” ends in 1988 – long before child abuse allegations surfaced against Jackson. It makes no mention of his accusers, or his tendency to share his bed with young boys. Instead, it depicts him as a man with no real agency: he is just a kindly dreamer, destined to “spread love and heal”.

Sanctifying bullshit

In this film, Jackson positively glows with Christ-like goodness, agreed Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, which makes sense when you look at the credits. Six of its executive producers have the surname Jackson, as does the film’s star: Jaafar Jackson is Michael’s nephew. The film opens in Gary, Indiana, in 1968, where the Jackson children are being screamed at by their strict father Joe, and little Michael (the poor “Lost Boy” who will one day buy his own Neverland) consoles himself by reading “Peter Pan” in bed. From then on, it plods through the familiar beats of his life, from the Jackson 5 to solo stardom. The music scenes are brilliant, said Kevin Maher in The Times. The rest is pretty disgraceful, two hours of weird, sanctifying bullshit. Surely, the genre has reached its nadir.

Two summers ago, the Scottish National Party was in a sorry state, said Annabel Denham in The Daily Telegraph. It had lost 38 Westminster seats in a punishing general election, and the party was “mired in scandal”, with its chief executive being investigated for embezzlement. It was haunted by policy failures – including a “stagnant education attainment gap”, poor health outcomes and “deteriorating public services” – that remain a problem today.

A recent poll found that 58% of Scots disapprove of the party's record in government. Yet bizarrely, the SNP is set to come top in next month's Holyrood elections, a result that would secure it its fifth win in a row.

Lure of independence

There are two main explanations for this, said Ian Swanson in the Edinburgh Evening News. One is that the party can always count on a solid base of support among pro-independence Scots. The other is that the rise of Reform UK as a political force in Scotland has fragmented the opposition vote. The result is that the SNP, like Labour in 2024, is on track to win a “loveless landslide”.

Under John Swinney, the SNP is doing its best to woo voters by sticking with its strategy of making Scotland the home of “free stuff”, said Chris Deerin in The New Statesman. Having already delivered free university tuition, eye tests and prescriptions, and baby boxes for every new parent, it's now promising a free school bag of stationery and books for every new primary school pupil. The SNP also plans to cap prices for essential food items in supermarkets. Then, of course, there's the lure of the independence issue: Swinney insists that a vote on breaking up the UK could be held as early as 2028.

‘Political panto’

On this issue, Swinney has got himself in a bit of a pickle, however. When he declared last year that the SNP would push for “Indyref2” if it won a majority in the Holyrood election, he no doubt assumed that he had set the bar safely high, said Andy Maciver in The Herald. The party is weakened, and it doesn't feel confident of winning a referendum now. It would rather leave the fight until the end of the decade, by which time it can hope to have a stronger record in government to point to – and the divisive Nigel Farage might be in No. 10.

The timing is not right for the SNP, agreed Robert Shrimsley in the FT. But it can still safely demand a new referendum because it knows Labour will veto any such effort. Swinney can then act all aggrieved. Everyone will play their part in this “political panto”, knowing full well that nothing will come of it. “The starting gun for the break-up of the union? Oh no it isn't.”

The United States has backed Israel since its founding as a modern state in 1948. That alliance is looking fragile these days, with recent polls suggesting American public support for its longtime ally has cratered amid deadly wars in Gaza, Iran and across the Middle East.

The number of Americans who now hold a “very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel” is 60%, said Pew Research Center. That’s up seven points since last year, and “nearly 20 points since 2022.” There was once bipartisan support for Israel among U.S. voters, but 80% of Democrats now disapprove while 58% of Republicans approve. There has also been a departure from 25 years of polling, which long reported that “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” said Gallup. Americans now view Palestinians more sympathetically than Israel, by a margin of 41 to 36%.

‘Heavy-handed militarism’

The United States is “falling out of love” with Israel, Edward Luce said at Financial Times. Fewer Americans remember Yitzhak Rabin, the “courageous prime minister of Israel who sought peace with the Palestinians” but was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist. Benjamin Netanyahu has largely dominated Israeli politics since then, wielding a “heavy-handed militarism” in Gaza, and Americans have noted his role in persuading President Donald Trump “that it was a good idea to attack Iran.” Rabin lost his life for peace. “What will posterity say of Netanyahu?”

Netanyahu may be remembered as the “prime minister who lost Israel’s most important ally,” Michelle Goldberg said at The New York Times. The country’s faltering reputation is mostly a “consequence of its oppression of the Palestinians” and particularly the “mass killings” in Gaza during its war with Hamas. But the growing split is also the result of Netanyahu’s “aligning Zionism” with Trump’s “American authoritarianism.” U.S. views of Israel “could still have much further to fall.”

The United States “must stand with Israel,” Alex Tokarev said at The Detroit News. Like the U.S., Israel “values liberty” but is “surrounded by tyrants and terrorists determined to annihilate it.” A West that will not support its ally against such enemies “will not defend its own liberty.”

An ‘ominous turn’

Netanyahu has “torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation,” said Axios. The collapse can be seen among Democrats in Congress, where “lawmakers who started out staunchly pro-Israel are becoming increasingly vocal critics” of the U.S. ally. American leaders must “have a discussion about how to normalize” the relationship with Israel, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said to Axios.

An “unprecedentedly overwhelming majority of Democrats” last week voted against failed Senate resolutions to block weapons and bulldozer sales to Israel, said The Times of Israel. Americans are “sick and tired of spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s horrific wars,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said to reporters, per the outlet. The votes to deny arms to Israel are an “ominous turn that will encourage Iran, Hezbollah and their terrorist allies around the Middle East,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial.

It was not a joke. The shoe company Allbirds announced last week that it is pivoting to artificial intelligence, a sign that the AI bubble is about to pop. Or maybe the tech optimists are right and everything is AI now.

The company was “once the maker of Silicon Valley’s favorite shoe,” said The New York Times. Allbirds was previously valued at $4 billion, but the company earlier this year closed all its stores and sold its assets for a mere $39 million. Now the brand seeks a fresh start: The business is rebranding itself “NewBird AI” and announced it had received a $50 million influx to buy up advanced computer chips that will let it enter the AI infrastructure business. That investment is a “drop in the bucket” for an industry spending billions to build data centers, but Wall Street loved the news. NewBird’s stock immediately rose nearly 600%.

The market’s reaction proves “AI excitement is alive and well — but as silly as ever,” Noah Weidner said at The Street. The move might make sense, though. Artificial intelligence requires a “massive volume” of computing power, and companies able to furnish it “will drum up excitement” — even if that company once sold shoes.

AI is creating wealth

Will AI spending hold up?

The shoe company’s “flailing AI embrace” is “not a horrible idea on the surface” given that it fills a “real business need,” Nitish Pahwa said at Slate. But the AI spending that has “propped up the economy” might not persevere, and communities are “successfully obstructing the data centers” needed for further expansion. Indeed, Allbirds’ stock started to drop after the initial surge, said Bloomberg. The market roller coaster ride gives Allbirds the feel of a “meme stock,” said 50 Park Investments’ Adam Sarhan, in which “emotions take over and logic and reason get thrown out the window.”

In May 2025, Ye – formerly Kanye West – released a single called “Heil Hitler”, which contained a lengthy sample from one of Hitler’s speeches, said Dan Hancox in The Guardian.

Around the same time, he started selling swastika T-shirts on his website. As a result, the musician, who has frequently been accused of racism, homophobia and sexism, was sued by his own talent agency, and denied entry to Australia. So news that he had been booked to headline the three-day Wireless Festival in north London was, shall we say, “a little surprising”. It brought condemnation from Jewish groups; sponsors withdrew; and a week later the Home Office barred Ye from entry into the UK, prompting the cancellation of the entire festival.

Notoriety sells

Industry insiders were shocked by this sudden unravelling of a major event, said Eamonn Forde and Sarah Walker in the same paper – but were also puzzled as to why its organiser, Festival Republic, had risked booking Ye in the first place. Well, festivals are big business these days, said Zing Tsjeng in The i Paper – and notoriety sells. Festival Republic must have looked at Ye’s still-healthy streaming figures, and his ability to court outrage, and seen dollar signs.

Their own defence, however, was that Ye’s antisemitic actions could be overlooked because they were attributable to his bipolar disorder, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. In January, the rapper had taken out an ad in The Wall Street Journal, in which he explained that he had been in the grip of a long manic episode, and insisted that he loved Jewish people. He sounded sincere, but he placed the ad shortly before announcing a world tour; and it made no mention of his long history of spewing antisemitic hatred.

In 2022, he publicly praised Hitler, and tweeted that he’d be going “death con 3” on Jews. He apologised then too – yet neither he nor his staff seem to have taken steps to prevent a public recurrence. He didn’t record and release “Heil Hitler” alone. He wasn’t printing his swastika merchandise in his shed. A manager with power of attorney could have stopped it.

‘Glamour of the censored’

I don’t really buy the mental health defence, said Ella Whelan in The Telegraph. If Ye doesn’t hate Jews, he uses Jew hatred to get attention. But I still think the government was wrong to ban him. That only lends him the glamour of the censored.

Many Britons will have applauded the decision that Ye’s presence would not be “conducive to the public good”, said Sarah McLaughlin on UnHerd; but do we really want ministers to filter visitors to the UK on the basis of their opinions? Banning them won’t make their offensive ideas go away; and it’s a power to limit free speech that could easily be misused.

Deep-fried food will be banned, high-sugar items restricted and desserts will have to contain at least 50% fruit under plans to overhaul school dinners.

Schools will no longer be allowed to offer unhealthy “grab-and-go” options like sausage rolls and pizza every day but not everyone is convinced it’s a good idea.

‘Innocent pleasures’

“What a loss!” said Ysenda Maxtone Graham in The Telegraph. Treacle sponge – “or ‘stodge’ as it was known”, did “give me the fuel I needed to get through the gruelling 90 minutes of being screamed at by the hockey mistress”.

Typically, this government is “trying to force us to be more healthy”, but in doing so is “imposing a blanket rule” that denies us “some of life’s greatest, and surely quite innocent, pleasures”.

There is much “hysteria about spiking childhood obesity”, said William Atkinson in The Spectator. “But even if our little darlings were rapidly becoming larger darlings, taking the fun out of school dinners is no way to solve the problem”.

Look at the French. They have guidelines too but they ban vending machines, so unlike our schools where lunches are “too often topped up by tuck from shops or machines”, the French “put time and emphasis on lunch” to make sure pupils “aren’t supplementing their diets with what they can acquire outside the canteen”. So “jam roly-poly and chicken nuggets are perfectly fine if pupils aren’t also gorging on crisps, pop and Kit-Kats”.

When I was at school I had a “diet limited to around half-a-dozen ‘safe’ foods” and I would have been “branded a ‘fussy eater’”, said Victoria Richards in The Independent. Decades later “I discovered I was neurodivergent” and had a “need for safety and predictability”, particularly with “consistency of taste and texture”.

My nine-year-old son “is also Send” (special educational needs and disabilities) and when “safe foods” aren’t available for a neurodivergent child they “don’t eat at all”. The government’s plans are “upsetting for parents like me” because they might become “another way Send kids can be demonised, stigmatised and singled out”. It’s “not as simple” as saying “if they’re hungry, they’ll eat” for Send kids, who number 1.7 million in England – one in five of all pupils.

Horror stories

The plans “don’t go far enough”, said Rosie Taylor in The i Paper, and they are “unlikely to make a difference when school caterers so often seem to fail to meet the basic standards of cooking food properly”. My son had a burger that was “overcooked” and there are “plenty of other horror stories of raw, stuck together pasta and hard jacket potatoes”.

The government’s aims are “laudable” and the Unison union supports them, said Leigh Powell, Unison’s national officer for private contractors. But members working in school kitchens fear that the new standards “will be imposed on hard-working kitchen staff without tackling the systemic problems”.

Too many schools have contracted out food services to private companies, which are “laser-focused on ensuring that profit margins are healthy, rather than the food they serve”. Resources have been “cut to the bone”, so it’s important that school kitchen staff, who will be “most affected by these changes”, have their “views recognised”.

Schools “aren’t responsible” for obesity and the poor dental health of our children, said Darren Lewis in The Mirror. “Healthy eating” has been the policy at my children’s school “for many years”, but at home many parents have “a choice between heating or eating”.

Hopefully the new rules will “steer children” towards a “healthier weight and better teeth”, said The Times. “Slices of melon and bowls of berries make a fine pudding”, but some “joy” may be lost and “school memories” may be a “little less rich” without treacle tart.

People across the United States are making their opinions known as the war in Iran enters its seventh week, and perhaps none more so than military members. Active-duty soldiers and veterans are experiencing an array of emotions connected to the conflict, with some in support and others vehemently against it. The differing feelings come as tensions in the Defense Department grow.

‘Powerful motivator’

Some soldiers are angry that the Iran conflict has been run with “strategic incoherence” because the “president hasn’t really been able to say with clarity to the American people what exactly this war is about,” Marine veteran Elliot Ackerman said to WBUR News. The war “leaves this question, okay, ‘So is this tool we have, the U.S. military, is that a tool that we can use to create that better future for our country and for Iran?’” It is important to “articulate a very clear plan if we’re going to put American service members’ lives in jeopardy.”

The number of people looking to leave the military had already been increasing, and the “war against Iran has been a powerful motivator,” Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman said at NPR. Many soldiers are “airing their concerns and frustrations,” Bill Galvin, who helps run the GI Rights Hotline for military discharge, said to NPR. Most of the callers are “asking how to apply to become a conscientious objector,” and nearly all of them “mention the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran on the first day of the war.”

Many veterans also remember the effects of years-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When it comes to the war in Iran, the “U.S. is creating a new generation of anti-American sentiment in Iran and across the region,” Chris Sarson, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, said to WBUR News. Soldiers who served during these conflicts became “acutely aware of the heavy costs that civilians pay for war.”

‘Many acknowledge the role Iran played’

Though many in the Armed Forces feel the conflict might become another “forever war,” others have more complex feelings. Some soldiers are largely against war but “also acknowledge the role Iran played behind the scenes” assisting other regional nations in Middle East wars, Jeff Schogol and Patty Nieberg said at Task & Purpose. Wars in the Middle East have “caused a lot of moral injury and PTSD amongst the veterans’ community,” but “at the same time, Iran again has been a party to this conflict over the last 25 years,” Alex Plitsas, a former Army staff sergeant and Iraq veteran, said to Task & Purpose.

Some veterans feel that the war means Iran is “finally being held accountable,” said Schogol and Nieberg at Task & Purpose. “I’ve flown combat missions against the very terrorists funded and directed by the Iranian regime, and I’ve seen firsthand the threat Iran poses,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), an Air Force veteran, said in a press release when the war began. The conflict has been “coming for the ayatollahs, who have no regard for human life or peace.”

Many younger soldiers are also “excited to deploy” to Iran because the war is “what needs to be done,” Army veteran Juan Munoz said to The Associated Press. Other soldiers support the war thanks to their positive feelings about President Donald Trump. There “had to have been some reason” for Trump “to bomb them,” Army veteran Edward Bauman told the AP. “I don’t think he would have just went out of his way to just, ‘I’m going to bomb these people.’”

Might the war in Iran “do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance”, asked The Wall Street Journal. It’s “no longer an idle question”. Last week, President Trump vented his deep frustration with Nato, dismissing it as a “paper tiger” and declaring he is now “strongly considering” pulling the US out. If he does, it would be the “dumbest alliance breakup in modern history” – and it would be Europe’s fault.

‘Two-way street’

Spain and Italy blocked US military flights from their bases and Emmanuel Macron prevented use of France’s airspace. “Add its reluctance to help clear the Strait of Hormuz, and Europe is playing into every Maga stereotype about a one-sided Western alliance.” Europe’s reluctance to get involved is understandable, given Trump’s erratic policies and his failure to consult allies about the war. But it could have been more helpful. After all, it has its own interests to protect in the Middle East, and it would have shown that the alliance is “a two-way street”.

Our so-called “allies” have spent decades “free-riding on the US security umbrella”, said Josh Hammer in Newsweek: Trump is just saying so plainly. The “imbalance is staggering”: US defence spending accounts for 60% of Nato’s total. It’s clear that the “status quo is no longer defensible – and deep down, everyone knows it”.

Despite America’s frustrations, maintaining the alliance is still in its interests, said Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph. Nato gives the US access to a large network of naval, air and ground force bases – Nato’s top commander in Europe, an American, has gone so far as to say that US power projection depends on its European allies. Nevertheless, European leaders must convince the Trump administration that it is in Washington’s interests to stay in.

Damage is done

The severity of the threat should not be underestimated, said Roland Oliphant in the same paper. The US is not just the biggest member, it is “the lynchpin”, around which the whole edifice is constructed. It has capabilities, in satellite and signals intelligence, in missile defence, that the rest rely heavily on. If it abandons the alliance, the chances of Putin taking a gamble on attacking Europe “would increase substantially”.

“In literal terms, it would be near-impossible” for Trump to leave Nato, said The Independent. In 2023, Congress passed a law that means the US can only leave with the approval of the Senate, and there is little appetite among Republicans for this. But that wouldn’t prevent the US from “quiet quitting”. It could withdraw troops from Germany or simply “ignore its Article 5 duties to defend, for example, Estonia”.

The damage is already done, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. Trump hasn’t just undermined Nato’s collective security guarantee; he has betrayed Ukraine and threatened to invade Greenland. “Trust is gone.” Europe must build up its own security arrangements immediately. There is no guarantee that Europe “will have an ally across the Atlantic” again any day soon.