“We will kill Trump,” says a huge new billboard in central Tehran. There is a “good degree of triumphalism” inside Iran at the results of the US midterms, said Patrick Wintour, diplomatic editor of The Guardian. But supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has warned those expecting an immediate shift in American policy towards Iran that they are “seriously mistaken”.

Donald Trump will soon face pressure on military spending from a Democrat-controlled Congress. But, in the two months before the new Congress convenes, “he has greater latitude and little accountability”. The president has paid a high “political price” for his war with Iran, and, “having come so far”, he may look to “cement his legacy and finish the job”.

What did the commentators say?

Trump will not “go gentle into the political twilight of his career”, said the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen. Despite his drubbing at the ballot box, “he retains broad powers to use America’s military might”, and his “determination never to be seen” as a loser might tempt him to “blot out the electoral rout” by taking action abroad.

The new Congress will curb Trump’s “sledgehammer” approach to diplomacy, said Foreign Policy. The Democrats may not “get their way” completely but “the power of the purse will grant them considerable influence and negotiating power”. They could also “use their new oversight authorities” to hold hearings on the Iran war. If these are navigated shrewdly, any mistakes Trump makes in Iran could be weaponised as a “line of political attack” stretching to the 2028 presidential election.

“The president had been planning with Israel a new offensive after the midterm elections,” said Samer Al-Atrush, The Times’ Middle East correspondent. But such is the “historic drop in support for Israel” among US voters, that, even before the elections, Trump suggested he might soon “scale back American aid to Israel”. Key US ally Saudi Arabia will be “alarmed” by the Democrat triumphs and other Gulf nations that “initially opposed the war” will “welcome the moderating influence of an opposition-led Congress”.

But Trump “is peevish”, said Sam Kiley, The Independent’s world affairs editor. “His will has been thwarted, and his administration has been humiliated by Iran’s defiant resilience.” He will blame Iran’s survival, not his own actions, for “the spike in fossil fuel prices”. And if the world sees Iran as some “plucky underdog”, he “will want to shoot that animal”.

What next?

“All of Trump’s options are problematic,” said Axios. He could launch further strikes but going back to war would keep fuel prices high and be “highly unpopular”. Negotiation could be dogged by Iran, “sensing weakness”, refusing to make concessions, meaning Trump will have a “hard time reaching a deal”. He could continue to “strangle” Iran with naval blockades and sanctions but that “could take months to show progress”. The bottom line is: “there’s no tidy way for Trump to ‘finish the job’”.

Americans woke up to a decidedly bluer map this morning, as sweeping Democrat victories in Kansas, Texas and beyond dramatically realigned the country’s electoral makeup. With Congress soon to be under Democratic control, Republicans face a potential end to an era defined — and perhaps doomed — by President Donald Trump.

What did the commentators say?

After imploring voters “not once, not twice, but 47 times this fall” to act as if he himself were on the ballot, Trump got his wish, said Peter Baker at The New York Times. “Just not the way he hoped.” That Democrats won as decisively as they did suggests the country is “signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.”

There is “something bigger than the misadventures” of any one Republican candidate at play, said John Kennith White at The Hill. The “stench of political death has repelled even Trump’s most devoted followers,” as voters demand an “end to the anything-goes rhetoric” in favor of “leaders they can admire.”

GOP hopes that Trump’s previous victories were a “political realignment grounded in expanded support” from “working-class minority voters” have been “reduced to rubble,” said Ronald Brownstein at Bloomberg. The electoral “drubbing” also “exposed some cracks in the core MAGA coalition” of white men who did not attend college and rural voters that has “sustained Trump since 2016.”

Trump, “like lots of populists,” forgot the “economic bit of populism,” said Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times. That lapse made it “hard to distinguish him from a laissez-faire Republican of yesteryear.” A “voter rebellion” against Republicans could “force conservatives to rethink their undying allegiance” to the “80-year-old lame-duck leader,” said Steve Peoples at The Associated Press. Before polls closed Tuesday, some GOP candidates had already “begun to distance themselves from him.” These midterms mark the “beginning of a high-stakes fight” over the United States’ “political future in the twilight of the Trump era.”

What next?

How Trump responds to the midterm results will “shape the GOP’s fate,” not only for the remainder of his term but in the 2028 race to succeed him, said Bloomberg. While “Trumpism may be receding,” said the Times, its namesake has the “power of the presidency for two more years.” Trump may do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can.”

The US midterm elections were “a total referendum” on Donald Trump, said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the US president’s former-ally-turned-major-critic. “He told people to vote like he was on the ballot and they did” – with a mighty rebuke.

Trump has long relied on the support of a vocal, tight-knit fanbase but even the Maga faithful have wobbled as petrol prices soar, the Iran war staggers on and the president seems more interested in remodelling the White House than addressing their concerns. The crushing scale of last night’s defeats at ballot boxes across the country could loosen Trump’s grip on the Republican Party and weaken its contender in the 2028 presidential race.

What did the commentators say?

“The political weather in Washington and beyond changed overnight,” said Katy Balls, The Times’ Washington editor. This was not a Democratic “blue trickle” but a “blue tsunami”. Candidates from all wings of the party won so widely and broadly that any potential Democrat presidential candidate will be able to “find a statistic” to “back up” a claim that their bloc “is destined for the White House”. Trump’s failure to question the results could be “a rare show of magnanimity” but “the results were so bad, it would be hard to claim this was down to a few thousand lost votes”.

“Donald J. Trump is now officially, thoroughly, a lame duck,” said Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. For the first time, he may start to see the “fealty of the Republican party erode”. Such an “electoral wipeout” shows his “instincts and influence seem to be waning”, which could make his party “more willing to defy him”. As the US gears up for the next presidential race, Republicans will be trying to map out “what their post-Maga future will look like – and what role, if any, Trump plays in it”.

The Democrats have taken control of both chambers of the US Congress and that will have “two immediate consequences”, said Edward Luce, US editor of the Financial Times. First, the campaigns to replace Trump as the 2028 Republican nominee “will begin straightaway”; second, “Trump’s unpredictability” is likely to figure ever larger in the rest of his term. After all, “Trump is rarely outbid in the drama stakes”.

View Trump as a “spent force” at your peril, said Peter Baker, The New York Times’ chief White House correspondent. His power “may be receding” but he will still be president for two more years, and he will do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can”. There is a “natural tendency” to read too much into a “big midterm wave” but there are “plenty of examples” of when such an apparently “fundamental shift” in the electorate “did not last long”.

What next?

“The next two years will look nothing like the previous two,” said Moira Donegan, The Guardian’s US columnist. Trump will be facing “a hostile Congress”, a “cratering approval rating, and a term limit”. He’ll also have to lead a “fractured coalition”, having “split his inner circle and destroyed his credibility with the Republican rank and file” over the Iran war. Ambitious politicians in the party will “smell blood in the water” and “turn on him to shore up their own prospects”. He will “rage at their betrayal”, like a “stupid King Lear”, but, from now on, “his efforts” to “exact revenge may be severely diminished”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to water down plans to double the length of time foreign workers must wait before they are eligible to settle permanently in the UK following opposition from within the Labour Party.

As originally laid out in November 2025, the proposals would extend the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from five to 10 years. The lowest-paid workers, including many employed in the care sector, faced an even longer wait, of 15 years. Adding yet more controversy, the changes would apply to migrants already in the UK. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, said making the rules apply retrospectively was “un-British” while Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh called for more “compassion” in migration policy.

As Mahmood prepares to unveil her revised plans, the prime minister and home secretary are maintaining a united front, said John Rentoul in The Independent, “but we do not yet know what it is that they are united on”.

What did the commentators say?

“Mahmood is tying herself in a large and unedifying knot,” said James O’Brien in The i Paper. Moving the goalposts for overseas migrants already here is a “breach of the metaphorical contract” and sends an “ugly” message that such workers are “irreversibly second class”. By making settlement harder for vital care workers in particular – who do work British nationals consider “beneath them or too poorly paid” – Mahmood would show she been influenced by “immigration rhetoric as opposed to immigration reality”. She is “pandering to feelings built on lies”.

It would be a “grave error” for Mahmood to change her original plans, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The situation Labour finds itself in is “depressingly familiar”: the government insists it supports border controls, but objects to policies to secure them. Indeed, Mahmood may be forced to “retreat” from the “necessary” changes to ILR to regain backbench support. But she must break free from this “Faustian pact. She was right the first time round.”

Given the backlash, the Home Office could compromise by changing the rules only for new arrivals. But that would be “defeating the entire purpose of the reforms”, said David Shipley in The Spectator, which was mitigating the impact of the “ruinous” so-called “Boriswave” of immigrants.

What next?

“The exact shape of the compromise has been fought over for months,” said Rentoul in The Independent. By now, Burnham and Mahmood will have “calculated where to draw the line so that they can be sure that they have a solid majority of Labour MPs behind them”.

Burnham runs a better “ego management programme” with Labour backbenchers than Keir Starmer, and so is unlikely to have a repeat of last year’s backlash over welfare reforms.

The government will also benefit from a divided opposition on the right. As architects of the Boriswave, any Conservative criticism of Mahmood’s plan will sound hypocritical, while Reform UK “is finding it increasingly hard” to compete with Restore’s more extreme positions on immigration.

Viktor Orbán is being touted by the Trump administration as the next secretary general of the United Nations.

“You read that correctly,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, reflecting that the appointment of Hungary’s former authoritarian populist prime minister to succeed António Guterres would be hugely controversial.

What did the commentators say?

Russia and China are “believed to be supportive” and “when the US, Russia and China all want the same thing at the UN Security Council, they usually get it”.

There are “plenty of reasons” not to back Orbán, “such as that he would act as an apologist for Vladimir Putin and other dictators”. But he would be the “dream Maga-conservative candidate”, one State Department official told the WSJ, thanks to what the paper called “his moves against mass migration, liberal NGOs and Hungary’s left-leaning courts and press”.

It has been more common for “failed liberal politicians” to end up in roles at “intergovernmental networks and transnational bureaucracies”, said Philip Cunliffe on UnHerd. These appointments “allow politicians to retain the trappings of high office long after they have been rejected by their own country”.

Orbán won “five national elections, four with supermajorities” so “has a more impressive electoral track record than most liberals” who might be candidates for the top UN job.

But “it would be strange to think of a person less inclined toward the UN”, said Balkan Insight. He was “apparently encouraged by the Trump administration to enter the race”, said Josie Ensor in The Times, but some “UN watchers” think Orban’s name may be being used a “‘stalking horse’ to make the case for another, more pragmatic, contender: the British-educated Emirati diplomat Lana Nusseibeh”.

“Momentum has quickly shifted” towards Nusseibeh, prompting “speculation that she may have been America’s first choice all along”. But her denial of accusations that the UAE is fuelling the civil war in Sudan by supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has caused criticism.

“With all five Security Council permanent members so tied to and dependent on the UAE, it will be no surprise if they eventually wave Nusseibeh through,” said Dino Mahtani on Middle East Eye. “But don’t expect her to act in the interest of the victims of wars, mass atrocities and genocides.”

What next?

Guterres’ second five-year term as UN secretary general ends on 31 December. There are seven candidates officially running to replace him, including Nusseibeh but not, yet, Orbán.

To save the UN “from the irrelevance in which it now wallows”, said former EU and US officials Alex Rondos and Mark Medish in The Guardian, its next leader “will require the concerted backing of the few powers that govern the security council”. War has become preferable to dialogue and diplomacy, but the UN can be a “problem-solver rather than a bystander, a credible forum rather than a costly talking shop, and the prime instrument for collective action”.

This won’t happen “unless the great powers want it to”. Appointing a new secretary general “is one of the few moments when they must agree on a qualified person and a timely agenda”.

Arab parties could reshape the political landscape of Israel after securing a record number of seats in Tuesday’s bitterly fought election. The left-wing Joint List, which includes Hadash, Balad and Ta'al, alongside the socially conservative Ra’am party led by Mansour Abbas, are on course for 18 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

With neither Benjamin Netanyahu or his main rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, close to securing a majority on their own, the Arab parties’ strong showing could make them “kingmakers”, said Liam Stack in The New York Times. “But building a governing coalition with Arab participation remains a fraught exercise in Israel.”

What did the commentators say?

Arab Israeli citizens make up around 20% of the country’s population, and at this election they have turned out in record numbers, driven by what Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh called “an existential moment for Palestinian-Israelis”.

Their success at the polls poses an “urgent and fundamental challenge to the country’s mainstream opposition: either cooperate with Arab Israelis or hand Benjamin Netanyahu a roadmap to political survival”, said Julian Borger in The Guardian.

While Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing Democrats party, hailed the results as an “opportunity to form a change government in partnership with Israel’s Arab citizens”, for the larger opposition parties, the picture is “less straightforward”, said The Washington Post. Their voters tend to “lean further right, and many have long rejected any government propped up by Arab lawmakers”.

Eisenkot has not explicitly ruled out working with the Arab parties but the conditions he has set for any party to join him are so stringent they may make any partnership impossible. Then there are the concessions the various Arab factions would demand in return for power-sharing. “Cooperation would have to survive those disagreements,” said Zvika Klein in The Jerusalem Post. “A shared interest in replacing a prime minister does not settle what comes afterwards.”

What next?

If no bloc secures the 61-seat threshold once the final result is announced, it falls to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to decide who he asks first to try to form a government. They then have six weeks to cobble together a coalition, after which the challenge is passed on to the next option.

Although Netanyahu and Eisenkot are “unlikely to enter a formal coalition with Arab parties”, the record Arab turnout is still “significant”, said Nada AlTaher in The National.

With Netanyahu’s chances of forming a majority government all but over, he would be forced into putting together a unity government. This would have to include members of the opposition, potentially pushing extreme figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich out of a future cabinet.

It’s “not the outcome” Arab voters, or indeed those fundamentally opposed to Netanyahu staying in power, will have hoped for, said Danny Citrinowitz, from the Institute for National Security Studies, but it could at least force the PM towards a more moderate position.

Israelis go to the polls today. It’s their first general election since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 led to war in Gaza. With opinion polls suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is “neck and neck” with the main opposition bloc, this is a nation “deeply divided and ready for a fight”, said the BBC. Most Israelis see this election as “the most consequential in their country’s history”, said The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

For Israelis in Netanyahu’s electoral strongholds, the prime minister is their “champion and protector against enemies across the region” and against a loathed “domestic ‘elite’ they perceive as undermining the will of the people” by succumbing to “international pressure to allow a Palestinian state”, said Neri Zilber in the Financial Times.

Elsewhere, the atmosphere is very different. On Saturday, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu’s government and call for an independent inquiry into the security failures that led to the 7 October Hamas attacks. “Taking part were leading figures from opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot,” said Al Jazeera. The Yashar party leader, and Netanyahu’s main centre-right rival, “was greeted by chants of ‘Who’s coming? The next prime minister’”.

Division has also arrived by air. As most Israelis living abroad are not allowed to vote by post, “expatriates need to cross oceans to cast their ballots”, said The Telegraph. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimates the number of citizens living abroad at 600,000, so the expat vote has the “potential to tip the scale”. There’s much talk “about the thousands coming home, determined to remove Netanyahu”, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator, “but thousands also are coming to keep him in office”.

The young will be a crucial voting demographic. More than 500,000 Israelis have reached voting age since the last election in 2022. This generation “came of age after the Oslo process collapsed” and were teenagers when the October 7 attacks occurred, said The Guardian. “Bucking global trends,” they “are more right-wing than older generations”.

What next?

The first exit polls will be published at 10pm local time (8pm in the UK) but neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor Eisenkot’s are projected to win the 61 seats needed to form a majority government. There’s likely to be weeks or months of political wrangling before any workable coalition government can be formed.

The “critical balance of power” will almost certainly be held by the two Arab-majority groupings, said the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Yolande Knell. Most of the other parties, including Eisenkot’s Yashar, have so far said they would not work with Arab parties, because of “a lack of shared values”. The Arab groupings are open to alliances but they have their own policy aims, not least a solution to “rampant gang crime”. In this high-stakes election, it’s “Arab citizens could yet decide who wields power in Israel, and they see this vote as key to their own future in the country”.

A student-led protest movement has won the Serbian parliamentary elections, defeating Aleksandar Vučić, the strongman who has ruled the country for 14 years. “After toppling governments in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and rattling others in India, Kenya, and Vietnam,” it seems Gen Z protests “have come for Europe”, said Judah Grunstein in World Politics Review.

The Student List – which has no obvious leaders and whose candidates were not politicians but academics, engineers, farmers and athletes – attracted voters angry at government fraud and corruption with the slogan “Serbia or Mafia?”.

Vučić threw “the kitchen sink at the campaign to skew the result his way”, including taking control of all Serbia’s broadcast channels, “cranking up the nationalist rhetoric” and “cultivating support from Moscow”, said veteran central Europe correspondent Misha Glenny in The Guardian. But he and his once-dominant Serbian Progressive party were beaten, in a result that will reverberate across European countries already rocked by their own student protests.

What did the commentators say?

“Protest movements always respond to local factors,” said Grunstein in World Politics Review. But the student grievances in Serbia “and their underlying causal factors” have “more than a passing similarity” to those in France, Spain and Italy: “educational systems starved of funding, a bleak employment outlook and scarce opportunities for housing”. And corruption “is often the trigger that catalyses anger over the rest”.

In Serbia, the catalyst was the 2024 collapse of newly renovated station roof in Novi Sad, killing 15 people. What started as weekly student protests against the corruption that allegedly lay behind the botched building project “soon became a national movement” that “encompassed far more sections of Serbian society, including farmers, actors and judges”, said the BBC’s Europe editor Paul Kirby.

When Vučić, “clearly shaken” by the scale of the protests, announced snap elections last month, the students made a “calculated decision” not to stand as candidates themselves “as the electorate would probably not voted for a list of candidates with little life experience”.

Instead, they “turned months of university sit-ins” and “anti-corruption marches into a serious parliamentary challenge” by hopping on bicycles, walking across the countryside and knocking on doors to build a 250-candidate campaign slate “unlike anything Serbia has seen”, said Noah Sanders on Geosirius.

The Student List successfully “transformed itself” from “social revolt into electoral legitimacy”, said Ljubiša Ivanović on Euronews. They were vilified by pro-government media but used their energy to attract voters across the country who were disillusioned with their local politicians. Their message, said The Associated Press, was “focused on a non-partisan effort to rebuild Serbia’s economy and restore its democracy”. This youth-led victory over an authoritarian leader echoes the recent defeat of Viktor Orbán, once Vučić’s staunch ally in Hungary.

What next?

“Winning an election is one thing; governing a country is another,” said Euronews’ Ivanović. Student List must now “formulate policies on the economy, foreign affairs, the European integration process, social policy and the rule of law”. Its newly elected parliamentarians, with little to no experience of governing, will be tasked with implementing an 11-point programme that includes purging ministries of officials linked to organised crime, “freeing” Serbia’s media and restoring transparency to public procurement.

“For years, Serbian politics revolved around one dominant question: whether a political force could challenge Vučić. The answer has now been given. It can.” But “the force that did it was not one of the established opposition parties, but a student movement” that’s only two years old. It’s a “political earthquake”.

With four political factions working together to defeat Israel’s right-wing Likud Party in upcoming elections, there is a real possibility that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may lose power for the first time since the Gaza war began. But this doesn’t necessarily mean conditions in the region will improve for Palestinians.

What did the commentators say?

Israelis consider the Oct. 27 election to be important, but for “Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the stakes are just as high — even though they do not have a vote,” said The New York Times. Netanyahu has long vowed to “prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and his government has built Israeli settlements in the West Bank at a breakneck pace.” Many Palestinians are “desperate to avoid another four years” of his government.

Still, even a victory that ousts Likud from power “may bring only marginal change for Palestinians suffering record levels of settler violence and mass displacement,” said Al Jazeera. While the opposition coalition of the Yashar party, the Democrats, the Yisrael Beiteinu party and the Together alliance have joined forces against Netanyahu, there is “little daylight between them when it comes to Israel’s foundational policies in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, who could potentially become Israel’s next prime minister, also opposes an independent Palestinian nation. The election is “unlikely to produce a sweeping shift in policies that have hampered a decades-old peace process,” said Reuters. Even if Netanyahu is ousted, the new coalition “effectively repudiates the ‘two-state solution’ that underpinned international peace negotiations for generations.”

What next?

Whether Netanyahu stays or goes, he has left an indelible mark on Israel. The “security doctrine he champions — opposition to a Palestinian state, stifling Iran’s nuclear ambitions, stationing troops in neighboring countries to neutralize perceived threats and the insistence that peace comes from strength, not the other way around — is now utterly mainstream,” said Bloomberg. With no end in sight to the destruction in Gaza, no “matter who wins, there will be no fundamental shift in our policy,” Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., said to Bloomberg. “It may even be a more aggressive policy.”

The UK is facing a greater threat “than we have, certainly for most, if not all, of my lifetime”, Wes Streeting told the BBC.

The defence secretary was referring to the vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, a programming language used in up to 70% of websites. Since then “millions of attacks” have been launched in attempts to exploit the flaw, said The Times, and a “patch” has been rolled out to help sites deal with the issue. The government announced 32 of its services were offline, though there is no indication of a breach.

For many, this episode has highlighted the dependence on, and vulnerability of, internet use. With AI growing ever more powerful – and likely being used by hackers as well as those researchers who found the PHP vulnerabilities – this could be just the beginning of an era of disruption.

What did the commentators say?

In the last few days, the internet has been “tested in a way I have not seen in my – or its – lifetime”, said Andrew Griffin in The Independent. Usually global catastrophes “capture our attention and excite our energy”, whereas the “gradual weakening of things we depend on engenders boredom”. But we need to be aware that AI does threaten the world, just not in a traditional way. It does so in a “way so dull and disengaging that we don’t even realise”.

“The future is here” and our digital infrastructure is “looking very fragile”, said Chris Stokel-Walker in The Guardian. “The solution is the same one we keep talking about, but rarely actually do anything about.” Large tech companies, who make “billions” from software they are obtaining for free from open-source data, “should contribute properly to maintaining it”. Unless we start “properly valuing those who keep our internet safe”, the internet will break, again.

There have been warnings of this crisis for the “better part of a year”, said Matteo Wong in The Atlantic. In the last few weeks, there have been major cyberattacks on “governments, data centres, and hospitals in Ukraine, Russia, Argentina, Bangladesh and Indonesia”.

“Bulking up” IT departments and using passkeys and two-factor authentications are still “important”, but the “most urgent and practical advice being given now is to retreat: prepare to simply go offline”. There is little time now to prepare for the “deluge” of AI-based hacking. In fact, “the dam may have already broken”.

The PHP “patch” does not spell the end of these “dramatic” issues, said an editorial in The Times. “Millions” of websites will still need to be updated, despite the fix, and even then, hackers could use the opportunity to “illuminate their route into systems that may still be sitting unprotected”.

Government preparedness should be an absolute “political priority”. Pilot projects on cyber defence and the AI Safety Institute represent “sensible” first steps, but “more must be done” in the form of public awareness and creating “decisive state emergency levers” in times of crisis. We should not panic, but the coming weeks will “no doubt reveal continuing threats, especially to smaller bodies with less stringent security”.

What next?

“There’s a race on” between attackers and the tech companies who are rolling out the “patch”, said Rowland Manthorpe on Sky News. “The trouble is, this patch doesn’t cover all PHP sites.” Based on data gathered from around 2.6 million services, about 75% don’t run newer versions of PHP, and so it will be “much harder” for them to implement the fixes.

In the long term, AI “could be amazing” for developing cyber defences, but for now it seems the “attackers might have the advantage”. So “we could be in for a bumpy few years”.

When President Harry S. Truman, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Potsdam in 1945, the goal was for World War II’s victorious leaders to coordinate plans for postwar Europe. Eighty years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed another seismic trilateral meeting — this time between himself, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, Russia continues its attempted invasion of Ukraine, a country conspicuously left off the invitation list.

What did the commentators say?

Putin is attempting to “capitalize on warming ties” between himself and Trump in the hopes of negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine that “would favor Moscow,” said The Wall Street Journal. But by omitting Ukraine, Putin’s “unprecedented” summit would “send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.” Coordinating a summit of global superpowers “appeals to Trump’s idealized view of the world” — a vision that would entail powerful leaders carving up territory with Trump “taking his seat, recognized by all, as one of those great powers,” said Slate.

Publicly, Trump has shown interest in Putin’s summit as an opportunity to address atomic weaponry. “I would do it, not so much for Ukraine,” he said to reporters this week, per Bloomberg. “We would have it to talk about denuclearization.” For years, Trump has had an “aspiration to reach a deal” with Russia and China regarding nonproliferation, said Axios. But “so far, Putin and Xi haven’t shown much openness to the idea.”

While the three countries have “overlapping interests,” they lack a “common strategic vision,” said Denis Simon, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to the South China Morning Post. Nuclear weapons offer the “most obvious potential starting point,” yet issues like Ukraine, Taiwan and the “broader international order” would “inevitably enter any conversation” among the trio.

What next?

Chinese officials have “privately welcomed” the potential talks but “have not pushed aggressively for them,” said the Morning Post. There is “no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to the Journal. Still, all three parties “acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place.”

The deadly missile attack by Houthi rebels on Riyadh’s international airport last week “exposed vulnerabilities in the kingdom’s defences that have heaped pressure on the Saudi royal family”, said The Observer.

Thirteen people were killed and hundreds injured in the assault on the heart of Saudi power. “At a stroke, the attack shattered the kingdom’s effort to establish its reputation as a secure global investment hub, backed by world-class sporting events, as it tries to diversify away from a dependence on oil.”

What did the commentators say?

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s bold Saudi Vision 2030 aims to turn the oil-rich country into a hub for tourism, international events and multinational enterprises. Iran’s attacks on US allies in the Gulf had already “dealt a blow” to MBS’ plan, said Agence France-Presse. It “now faces an existential hurdle with unprecedented Houthi attacks, in particular targeting oil infrastructure and airports”.

“I can’t think of another time when the challenge facing MBS was more,” said H.A. Hellyer, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

Houthi attacks have already caused a number of major events to be cancelled, most notably the Future Investment Initiative, nicknamed “Davos in the desert”, which forms the centrepiece of MBS’ diversification drive. Upcoming summits between the EU and Gulf Cooperation Council, the inaugural MIPIM Middle East real estate investment event and the Six Kings Slam tennis exhibition tournament have also been disrupted.

Saudi Arabia’s hosting of football’s Asian Cup in January and February is also now “being questioned”, said Rob Draper in The Guardian. As a result “the kingdom’s position in the sporting landscape looks hugely different from a year ago”.

“For Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation to succeed, it needs to welcome global talent, investment and tourists,” said The Washington Post. But “you can’t do that when people can’t land in your country safely,” said Kristen Smith Diwan, from the Arab Gulf States Institute think tank in Washington.

The events of the past week “highlight the profound dilemma facing MBS, who must juggle immediate security imperatives and long-term economic interests”, said the Post.

What next?

Riyadh’s decision to delay the Future Investment Initiative until 2027 underscores the regime’s “willingness to make difficult decisions – as showcased by an ability to pivot from projects like Neom to sectors like artificial intelligence”, said Bloomberg.

But even before the US’ war against Iran began in February, some international investors and Wall Street firms had begun “questioning whether there was enough money to be made in Saudi Arabia”. Analysts now fear “the fallout from the war will hurt the kingdom’s attractiveness”.

Saudi Arabia’s image as “the premier investment destination within the Gulf has taken a hit”, said Matthew Mullman, from Signum Global Advisors. Firms, he said, could now question the case for building critical infrastructure in the kingdom.

The country “can reduce its exposure through diplomacy and a serious Yemeni political process, but a ceasefire cannot endure if it leaves the country’s power struggle unresolved”, said Amine Ayoub, from the Middle East Forum, on Ynet Global. “Riyadh’s nightmare is not merely the Houthi arsenal” but that “strategic choices helped strengthen an adversary whose consequences continue to outlast the policies that produced them”.

Canada’s largest prairie province will remain part of the country, as voters in Alberta overwhelmingly denied an independence referendum that would have started the province on a path to separation. The ripple effect of the defeated referendum now appears set to echo across Canada.

What did the commentators say?

Most Albertans apparently have no desire to break away. With 93% of the votes reported, nearly 76% of respondents chose to remain part of Canada, according to the preliminary referendum results. The vote “marks a major win for Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is facing a trade and political war with the United States amid President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs and repeated suggestions of annexing the country,” said Al Jazeera. While the vote is clear, it may “not spell the end for a movement that has spent decades pushing for greater autonomy from the federal government.”

Many Albertans are “expressing frustration that their views aren’t sufficiently represented by the Liberal government,” said Time. Still, many in the Canadian Parliament have been reluctant to support an independence push because Alberta is an “oil-rich province; mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction made up about a quarter of the province’s GDP in 2025.” Some in the province feel that “central Canada is taking advantage of Alberta; that the central government has, at times, through environmental regulations, for example, hindered the development of the oil resources,” Andrew McDougall, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said to Time.

The vote will also precipitate further questions about whether Alberta Premier Danielle Smith “can maintain control of her party and the province,” said The Globe and Mail. Smith has consistently said she wants Alberta to be part of a “United Canada” but also has a “contentious relationship with the pro-Canada crowd, who have accused her of pandering to separatists.” The vote’s outcome is “unlikely to position Ms. Smith as an ally to the movement.”

What next?

Carney waxed poetic about the referendum’s defeat. Albertans “made a clear choice. They chose unity, to build together and to take care of each other,” the prime minister said on X. The results “mean that Albertans and all Canadians will move forward together with renewed purpose.”

The government has put energy security at the heart of today’s decision to approve drilling at the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. Climate campaigners have immediately condemned the decision, and Green Party leader Zack Polanski has called it an act of “climate vandalism” that “is a betrayal of all our futures”.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said it is “right” to look at “maximising the existing energy reserves we have in Britain” , while remaining committed to achieving net zero by 2050. Jackdaw “will start to supply gas to British homes and businesses from as early as the end of this month”, Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh told the BBC. But, although it will mean we use less imported energy, it “won’t lower our energy bills this winter”.

What did the commentators say?

“Militant opposition to further drilling in the North Sea is a futile hill to die on at the best of times,” said The Telegraph’s world economy editor, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. It’s pathologically stupid to do so “in the middle of a global energy crisis”. When successive British governments “wrote off” North Sea gas as a “short-term cash cow with no future”, the world’s shipping lanes were all open, “the US was still behaving like a friend and global supply seemed assured”. Circumstances are different now.

That may be true but the “general assessment” from green campaigners is there is only a small amount of fossil fuel left to be “sucked from a largely-depleted North Sea basin”, said Politico London Playbook. Greenpeace, and the other NGOs that originally challenged drilling at Jackdaw, estimate that the gas field “will provide just 2% of the UK’s gas over its lifespan, doing ‘next to nothing’ to reduce reliance on foreign gas imports”, said Hettie O’Brien at The Guardian.

“The most persuasive arguments for Jackdaw are that it will boost UK tax revenues, stem the loss of jobs from North Sea oil” and have “no meaningful impact on UK emissions”. But “ultimately, approving more gas production at Jackdaw means the global supply of fossil fuels will increase”.

Is Andy Burnham “living in a parallel universe? One where we haven’t just endured our hottest summer on record, with droughts, wildfires and, in all likelihood, the most heat-related deaths on record?” said Danny Gross, of Friends of the Earth, in a statement. “Jackdaw won’t make a jot of difference to energy bills but it will fuel the climate chaos already unfurling in front of us.”

What next?

“Broadly speaking”, Jackdaw has cross-party support, and the majority of Labour MPs are “comfortable with endorsing” it, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. But the same can’t be said for drilling at Rosebank, a new oilfield 80 miles off the Shetland coast, which is still awaiting government approval.

Jackdaw “was always going to be an easier sell than the far larger Rosebank, which would produce seven times the carbon emissions” if it were to be approved, said O’Brien at The Guardian. Some environmental campaigners “regard the sole approval of Jackdaw as an acceptable compromise”.

Americans keep buying a lot of stuff, even though said stuff is getting more expensive. The spending helps keep the economy afloat amid rising inflation — but at a cost to households digging deeper into debt to stretch their paychecks.

What did the commentators say?

Americans “continue to spend” even though they are “feeling pessimistic about their finances as affordability pressures mount,” said NBC News. Retail sales were up in August, and holiday spending is “projected to hit record levels this year.” The seemingly good numbers flick at a gloomier reality, however. The rise in spending is largely “because people are paying more” for the stuff they routinely buy.

The trend is “particularly remarkable” given the overall “downbeat consumer sentiment,” said The Wall Street Journal. Those dark moods historically “correlated with lower consumer spending,” but that rule of thumb mostly broke since the pandemic. Now economists say bad feelings about the economy are “increasingly decoupled from spending and other economic indicators.” Americans are “spending their financial condition, not their psyche,” said Mark Mathews, the chief economist at the National Retail Federation, to the outlet.

Older consumers are driving the economy, said CNBC. The affordability crisis is for “younger people,” said economist Ed Yardeni to the outlet. Senior Americans have “accumulated an enormous amount of net worth” that has allowed them to keep spending.

What next?

It is not clear the spending can continue much longer. U.S. households are “borrowing more, saving less and watching their paychecks lose purchasing power,” said The Wealth Advisor. Consumer debt is now above $18 trillion, a total which will carry future consequences. Today’s borrowing has the potential to “constrain spending for years, particularly when balances carry high interest rates.”

High prices “haven’t put a dent in U.S. holiday spending,” said The Street. Consumers have already begun Christmas shopping, increasingly relying on “buy now, pay later” options to buy gifts and other seasonal items. September purchases of holiday items “ran well ahead of 2025,” said Bank of America in a statement, per the outlet.

Ukrainians are “gearing up for the worst-case scenario”, said Finbarr Toesland in The i Paper. In the face of an “emboldened Russia”, this winter is expected to be the “most brutal since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in February 2022”.

Stunned by Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of an “energy ceasefire” that would favour Russia, and apparent plans for “peace talks” without Ukraine present, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is struggling to win back US favour. But he needs ways to help Kyiv make it through winter months where temperatures can drop as low as -20C.

What did the commentators say?

“Trump’s efforts on the part of Russia” are “the act of an enemy”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley. He has “strangled” Kyiv’s intelligence systems and “crippled weapons on the battlefield”. That’s an “act of sabotage”, and “Europe’s leaders must stand up and say so”.

This “sorry episode” shows “just how dependent Ukraine still is on the US”, said The Telegraph’s editorial board. For all the “strong words” of Europe’s leaders, “there remains a gulf” between their “rhetoric and the reality” of their support. Iris2, the EU’s version of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network won’t even be operational before 2030, and the Americans are still the only ones who can offer “ballistic-missile defence”. Europe must step up its provision of hardware, or “Kyiv’s security will remain hostage to Mr Trump, who has shown repeatedly that he cannot be relied upon”.

Britain and Europe have already reached their “limit” of what they can deliver, said Dimitar Bechev, a foreign-policy analyst at Carnegie Europe, in Al Jazeera. Its €90 billion loan of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine now looks like it “might be exhausted well before the end of 2027”, and any attempt to find additional funding could “open a can of worms” in both EU budget negotiations and upcoming elections in member states like France, Spain, Italy and Poland. But the EU and the UK have nevertheless “replaced the US” as the “de facto guarantors” of Ukraine’s survival. Joining the EU – or, at least becoming a closely integrated partner like Norway – is the “best-case scenario for Kyiv in the long run”.

Zelenskyy may have to “consider a temporary, if unwelcome, change of tactics” to relieve the “terminal stress” on his relationship with Trump, said The Times’ editorial board. And two US senators have suggested “a useful compromise”: if Ukraine pledges to stop attacks on Russian energy assets, SpaceX’s Starshield coverage could be “extended to roughly 200 miles inside Russia” to “help Kyiv take out some of the launchers firing at civilians all over Ukraine”.

What next?

To “reduce the impact of Russian missile and drone attacks” on Kyiv’s small number of combined heat-and-power plants, Ukraine “needs to decentralise” such “critical infrastructure”, Olena Pavlenko of Ukrainian energy think-tank DiXi Group told Toesland in The i Paper, but this is not a “short-term solution”.

More urgently, Ukraine must find a way to halt Russia’s “devastating air onslaught”, said The Times. It needs “proper air defences – and fast”, even if that means halting strikes on Russian refineries in return for Patriot missiles. Trump “may not be minded to provide these weapons” but he is under “growing pressure” from the US Congress, where even members of his own party have “expressed disquiet at the so-called energy deal” with Putin. A strategic pause in strikes may help to “prevent further Trump hostility to Kyiv”, which would be a “welcome” contribution to Ukraine’s cause.

Ukrainian officials are scrambling to address the recent throttling of their crucial Starlink internet connectivity, a major engine of the country’s successful drone operations. While SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have blamed each other for directly ordering the outage, a growing number of European leaders see the incident as a worrying sign that Musk's products have undue influence in Ukraine’s theater of war — and across the continent as a whole.

What did the commentators say?

Europe “must not leave it up” to Musk and Trump to “decide whether Ukraine will be able to defend itself or not,” said Renew Europe, the European Parliament’s liberal group, in a letter last week to European Union officials obtained by Euronews. Existing European satellites could instead “fill the gap” while the countries pivot away from Musk, said the outlet. The collective effort to respond to Musk comes as French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot this month accused the tech oligarch of using his X platform to “attempt to influence debate in European democracies,” said Le Monde.

“Big man, are you playing politics with your products again?” said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in a message to Musk on X after Starlink’s latest disruption. “As your European customers, we are watching you.” The minister’s “mocking address” recalled his 2025 clash with Musk, in which he explained that Poland provides millions of dollars for Ukraine’s Starlink access and would “seek another supplier if SpaceX proved unreliable,” said the Kyiv Post. “Be quiet, small man,” said Musk on X at the time, promising later that “Starlink will never turn off its terminals” in Ukraine or “use it ​as a bargaining chip.”

What next?

Even before this month’s throttling episode, European leaders were exploring ways to “strengthen collective satellite capacity” and wean themselves off Musk’s service, said Politico. The EU is now “aiming to give speedy antitrust approval” to a new satellite service “seen as the bloc’s answer to SpaceX,” said Bloomberg. The hope is to “help Europe cut its reliance on American satellite providers” while testing a “revamped EU approach” to creating “regional giants to compete with U.S. and Chinese rivals.”

A weekend of protests in France that saw widespread violence, destruction and looting has made next April’s presidential election even more consequential than it already was.

What started off as student demonstrations over poor school conditions has spiralled into a mass protest movement driven by anger at the cost of living and the state of public services.

Emmanuel Macron refused to accept the resignation of his interior minister over the weekend. The president also used a televised address on Sunday to call for national unity and sought to reassure the public that the perpetrators of the violence would be punished.

“The French passion for protest is legendary in Europe,” said Katya Adler, the BBC’s Europe editor. But six months out from an “already fraught” election, these demonstrations are becoming highly politicised, with the hard left, under presidential hopeful Jean-Luc Mélenchon, accused of “weaponising student frustration” and the far-right, under Marine Le Pen, using footage of the violence to pitch herself as the candidate of a calm and peaceful France.

What did the commentators say?

PM Sébastien Lecornu has made little secret of who he believes is to blame for the protests, accusing members of Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise of “instrumentalising the high school movement for their electoral advantage”, then going through the motions of condemning any violence.

The 75-year-old left-wing firebrand joined Saturday’s protests in which half a million people took to the streets in Paris, but has said accusations that he was responsible for the mayhem were aimed at weakening his presidential bid.

He is in a close race with centre-left candidate Raphaël Glucksmann and Edouard Philippe, from the centre-right, to see who will go up against Le Pen in a two-way run-off for the presidency next April.

Mélenchon is a veteran politician who “appeals to young people and heads an insurgent party built on grass-roots protest”, so the student-led demonstrations that have swept the country in recent weeks are “a golden opportunity” for him, said Mark Landler in The New York Times. But images of riot police, tear gas and streets in flames also carry “acute risks for a politician seeking mainstream acceptance”.

The violence on the margins of what were mostly “massive, peaceful demonstrations” is “potentially ruinous” for Mélenchon, said Peter McPhee, a history professor at the University of Melbourne, on The Conversation.

By contrast, it has been an “early Christmas present” for Le Pen, who has promised to “reimpose discipline in schools, increase funding for police” and target the instigators of the violence and looting as “obviously” illegal migrants to be deported.

“I see only one beneficiary and that’s Le Pen,” Paul Smith, from the University of Nottingham, told Al Jazeera. But Emile Chabal, from the University of Edinburgh, cautioned against automatically assuming a far-right gain, with “fear of disorder” historically benefiting conservative or centrist parties in France.

What next?

With six months left in office and unable to run for a third term, Macron is already seen as head of “pretty much a lame duck government”, said Alistair Bunkall on Sky News. Now his authority seems to be “ebbing away” even more.

“The TV pictures of the past few weeks will hardly inspire confidence,” said the broadcaster. There are “red warning signs” flashing for France’s economy and “a failure by the minority French government to secure a budget deal would be the next big tipping point”.

It is still too early to tell how this will play out at the polls next year. As Jérôme Rodrigues, a prominent activist from the 2018 gilets jaunes protests, said: “Anger has no political party. An empty fridge has no political party.”

Andy Burnham’s making his “first substantive visit” to Scotland since becoming prime minister, and the timing “appears purposeful, if not provocative”, said the BBC’s Scotland political editor Glenn Campbell. The avowedly pro-Union PM is turning up north of the border just as the Scottish National Party gathers for its conference in Aberdeen, and “that’s surely not a coincidence”.

Burnham is scheduled to deliver a speech 150 miles away in North Lanarkshire but there’s little doubt he’s crashing the SNP conference in all but name. First Minister John Swinney has responded good-humouredly – by inviting Burnham to join him in Aberdeen for talks on a second Scottish referendum. “Bring it on,” said SNP minister Stephen Flynn. “We are winning the argument” for Scottish independence.

What did the commentators say?

This “thinly veiled attempt to overshadow the SNP gathering” shows that Burnham has Swinney in his sights, said Patrick Greenfield and Eve Livingston in The Guardian. The SNP leader was the only politician from a rival party – “apart from Margaret Thatcher” – name-checked by Burnham in his Labour conference speech. Unlike his predecessors, who “paid little attention to Scottish internal affairs”, Burnham has decided to “loudly make the case for union on Scottish soil”. Swinney and his party “may regret” their part in shining a spotlight on his visit.

Burnham’s “carelessness and thoughtlessness” in his flat-out refusal last month to countenance a second Scottish referendum has led this supposedly pro-EU, devolution-friendly prime minister into a “political cul-de-sac” from which “he has no option but to reverse course or be condemned for double standards”, said former Labour MP Tom Harris in The Telegraph. Yes, he could deny the SNP a referendum while offering the UK a chance to rejoin the EU but this is “inconsistent and perhaps a little dishonest”. Burnham is taking a “grotesquely reckless approach” to governance.

“I hae ma doots” about Burnham’s motivations, said Lesley Riddoch in The National. The prime minister’s representatives say he’s not trying to “muscle the SNP off the stage” but if the timing of his trip was an “oversight by busy people”, and not a “calculated snub”, then it’s clear that, “for the King of the southern North”, Scotland is “nowhere that really matters”. If it is, indeed, a deliberate “salvo against Scottish independence”, that could backfire. Burnham’s advocacy for devolution in the form of regional English mayors triggers the questions about “devolution as Scots mean it – more powers for Holyrood”. Either way, he will need “good luck to avoid stirring hornets’ nests”. Perhaps “it’s not too late to call off sick”.

What next?

“There is an unwritten rule” that party leaders don’t step on each other’s toes in conference season, said LBC’s Scotland political editor Gina Davidson. So the PM choosing to derail the SNP’s “annual shindig” only proves Swinney’s belief that he’s “got into Burnham’s head”

If Labour is to hold on to its 37 Scottish MPs, Burnham needs to approach the country “not with panic but with a plan”. He needs to offer “tangible action that Scots will feel” on the cost of living crisis, on fuel bills and on security. And if he really wants to “put John Swinney’s gas at a peep”, he should “announce the go-ahead for Jackdaw”. Otherwise, this visit will grab Scotland’s attention but it’s not clear Burnham will “be able to keep it”.

Have the Tories been written off too soon? As commentators point to a “Badenoch bounce”, Reform UK has fallen to third place behind the Conservatives in recent polls.

Nigel Farage’s party has slipped to 21%, two points behind the Tories and three behind Labour, according to a YouGov poll carried out this week. The Conservatives’ 23% – up three percentage points on the previous week – is their highest rating since January 2025.

What did the commentators say?

Recent polling seems to point to a “Badenoch bounce” after “the most trouble-free Conservative Party conference in some years”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Her “improving recognition, policy announcements and forceful personality have helped to slowly drag her party back up in the polls”.

Badenoch “intends to reunite the right by welcoming back Reform UK’s voters while dismissing its leaders as racists, fraudsters and takers of dodgy donations”, said Andrew Gimson in The i Paper.

Boris Johnson “pursued” the same strategy seven years ago when he “proved he was serious about getting Brexit done by removing the whip from 21 Conservative MPs who refused to back him”, and this forced Farage “to stand down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats”.

“Respectability is an important element in her pitch” and Badenoch “dares to be unfashionable”. This is “one reason why she carries conviction with those who might vote Conservative”, because “they too are unfashionable”.

Meanwhile, “cracks have begun to appear” in Farage’s “image as a straight-talking, honest alternative to the politicians whom he claims has let down the country”, said Jules Walkden on Politics Home. He “appears to be alienating the very voters Reform needs to win over”, and though he was once his party’s “greatest asset”, he “may fast be turning into a liability”.

You may be wondering “why much of the media are talking about a Badenoch revival”, said Jonathan Liew in The Guardian, when “her party lost 563 councillors and 40% of its councils” this year and “remains about four points below its apparent nadir of 2024”.

The fact is this “civil war on the right” is a “charade” – a “fake fight being enacted for our benefit” because the “right bloc is now a single basic substance, responsive and carefully calibrated to the different audiences it needs to capture”.

So if, “after all the bickering and infighting, a coalition should be required”, do we “really expect a Conservative Party founded entirely on the gain and exercise of power to suddenly turn it down?”

What next?

Following the successful Tory conference, Badenoch’s “first objective” is not “a spectacular leap in support, but to establish a consistent lead over Reform”. This would “begin changing the political dynamic on the right”, said Caroline Wheeler and Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper.

With sustained “small gains” leading to “incremental progress”, she can “gradually change how voters, commentators and rival parties perceive the contest”. This would increase the “evidence” that the Tories are “recovering” – a “perception” that might, “in turn”, help “attract voters who want a credible alternative to Labour”.

Donald Trump’s proposed “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine has been dismissed as unfair and partisan with the US leaving Kyiv significantly weakened.

As the challenges of winter draw near, Trump’s move has thrown the future of Ukraine into doubt.

“It had already been a terrible week in Ukraine” before Trump’s “one-sided ceasefire plan” put Kyiv “in a tough spot as winter approaches”, said The New York Times.

What did the commentators say?

The deal “comes at a particularly bad time”, said The New York Times, as Russia is “stepping up efforts to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including, crucially, its energy infrastructure” as “part of an ongoing effort to both cripple Ukraine’s economy and break its will to fight”. The coming winter “might be the hardest yet” because Ukraine is “facing a critical shortage of air defences”.

But the “bigger problem” is that Trump is “pressuring Ukraine to give up the best tool it has for fighting back” – its attacks on Russian oil refineries. Ukraine “effectively has no operational oil refineries”, so “this ceasefire, such as it is, would really only tie the hands of one party”.

After Russian drones and missiles “pummelled nearby power stations, triggering power cuts” and Kyiv was “plunged into darkness”, there was a “sense of outrage and betrayal”, said The Economist.

A Ukraine government source said American officials warned that unless Kyiv stopped its drone assaults on Russian oil refineries, the US would block weapons shipments under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List, under which Ukraine has received “about $10 billion [£7.5 billion]-worth of American weapons” paid for by Nato allies and partners.

This move would “further weaken some of the country’s defences” and although Trump’s “new turn against Ukraine may be as transitory as the earlier ones”, this is still “a dangerous moment for Ukraine”.

But Trump’s threat of a suspension is “far from hypothetical”, said Sasha Vakulina on EuroNews. In 2025, the White House “temporarily halted intelligence-sharing and military assistance to Ukraine amid a diplomatic confrontation with Kyiv”.

Although “both were subsequently restored” following talks, the episode “demonstrated how quickly Washington could use security cooperation as a source of political leverage” and “how dependent Ukraine remained on American capabilities”.

US intelligence “remains crucial to Ukraine’s ability to anticipate Russian attacks”, and it is still “unclear how far European allies could compensate should another American suspension come into force”.

Although Trump’s announcement “seemed to make Ukraine’s situation even more perilous”, said Eric Ciaramella on Foreign Affairs, it’s not “necessarily a major setback for Ukraine”, because it “comes amid a broader shift” by Trump to “move away from pursuing an elusive comprehensive peace agreement in favour of a mutual ceasefire on strikes against energy infrastructure”. This shift “could ultimately be beneficial to Kyiv”.

Also, “in his angry retort” to Zelenskyy’s criticism of the diesel deal, Trump “revealed a potential way forward: as long as Ukraine stopped hitting Russian refineries, the president said, ‘you can do whatever you want to Russia’”.

Ukraine has “more leverage than a year ago”, said Nicholas Vinocur on Politico, and European leaders are “warning” Trump “not to squander it by pressuring Kyiv to ease up on Russia”. Although Trump “wants the attacks to stop, Ukraine’s European allies are keen to cripple Russia’s war effort”.

What next?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said “repeatedly” that Ukraine is ready to halt its strikes on Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities if Moscow “did the same”, said the BBC.

But Moscow said Ukraine does not deserve the “respite” a ceasefire would bring, because it would mean Europe would be able to “pump” Ukraine with new weaponry.

Leaders of India’s Cockroach Janta Party have been detained after breaching a security cordon to demand the resignation of the country’s election chief, who deleted 130 million names from voters’ lists.

The activists, who claim the mass deletion was designed to benefit Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, evaded security to enter Jantar Mantar, a “historic Delhi observatory popular for protests”, said the BBC.

The election commission insists the purging of electoral rolls was to remove voters who have died, moved, or cannot otherwise be verified, and that those impacted can apply to be re-enrolled. But over the weekend, tens of thousands of people, including prominent lawyers and journalists, were detained and released in protests that show no signs of slowing.

What did the commentators say?

It will be “difficult” for Modi, who denies the deletions were carried out to benefit his party, to “quell the turmoil”, wrote Andres Schipani and Jyotsna Singh in the Financial Times.

The Cockroach Janta Party emerged as a student-led movement focussing on alleged examination irregularities, but it is now targeting the institution that “oversees elections in the world’s largest democracy”, making it harder for Modi to “find the right response”.

If the PM concedes to the demand for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, he could open the door to questioning the wider legitimacy of his government, Ruchi Gupta, executive director of the Future of India Foundation, told the broadsheet. Fundamentally, “the government has a trust deficit that it needs to address.”

“If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices,” said Vidya Krishnan on Al Jazeera. Indian democracy currently resembles a “plucked chicken, stripped of its plumage”. The revision of the country’s electoral rolls was the last straw – an “exercise in bureaucratic fascism”, for “there is simply no other way to frame an event that strips 130 million Indians of their right to vote.”

Modi now finds himself “retreating behind barricades, facing the wrath of students for whom the slow erosion of democracy has left little to lose and even less to fear”. The mass protest on Saturday was “just an opening salvo”.

But even so, Modi “remains popular” among large swathes of the population, said Faisal Mahmud on Asia Times. His “popularity, cult-like charisma, organisational strength and electoral record cannot simply be wished away”, and “nor can allegations of electoral manipulation substitute for evidence”. But now, “the government’s handling of dissent has become an issue in its own right”.

What next?

The protesters and opposition party are showing no sign of letting up. Modi “does not understand that the game is over”, said the leader of India’s opposition alliance, Rahul Gandhi. “We will ensure that Modi pays for the crimes he has committed against the country.”

“The youth will keep coming out,” Uday Bhanu Chib, national president of the Indian Youth Congress, a unit of Gandhi’s party, told the FT. They’re “no longer afraid of this government”.

The Cockroach Janta Party protests “have laid bare the hollowed-out democracy that India holds up to the world as exemplary”, said Krishnan on Al Jazeera. There is little doubt that “history books will cast Modi in his proper role as the man who caused an entire generation of Indians to lose all respect for the government”.

Saudi Arabia has vowed a firm response to the deadly attacks on the kingdom’s airports and oil and gas facilities by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Iran-backed Houthis said their latest drone and missile strikes – some of which struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 13 people and injuring more than 300 – were launched in retaliation for “brutal Saudi aggression” against areas they control in western Yemen.

“The events of recent weeks are serious. Our response must be equally serious,” said Saudi energy minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman today. There is “no room for fear in the vocabulary of Saudis”.

What did the commentators say?

“No political slogan, ideological grievance or claim of resistance can justify turning airports into targets,” said Hani Hazaimeh on Arab News. The Houthis are reckless, and Saudi Arabia “has every right to defend its citizens” and its “critical infrastructure”. It’s easy “to urge calm from a distance, far from the airports” and homes under missile attack; “it is far harder to explain to grieving families why the international response remains trapped in a cycle of condemnation followed by inaction”. All thought of “diplomatic theatre is over. The time for effective action is now.”

The Houthis are “drawing from Iran’s playbook” and “vowing a painful escalation” by “targeting critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and imposing a global economic cost”, said Mostafa Salem on CNN. So far, Saudi Arabia has largely confined itself to providing air cover for the anti-Houthi Yemeni coalition but “whether that restraint will hold” is now “an open question”. Putting Saudi troops on the ground in Yemen would plunge the nation “into an expensive and grinding ground war” and undercut Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s carefully cultivated image “of a stable, investment-friendly kingdom and global tourism hub”.

But the airport death toll is “bewilderingly high” for the Saudis, who are “unaccustomed to such fatalities”, and that’s “likely to prompt a bloody response”, said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. If so, the kingdom faces a “long, intractable war with a resourceful and impassioned antagonist, one willing to sustain a high degree of pain in ways that Riyadh can’t match without orienting itself entirely towards war”.

The Iran war has “stirred political loyalties, triggering a surge of Houthi advancement”, destabilising the “region’s tense equilibriums” as Donald Trump “decided that the safety and security” of America’s Gulf allies were “secondary” to his beef with Tehran. Saudi Arabia is “bewildered and losing lives and capital, stuck between old alliances that no longer work and new hostilities that are too calamitous to confront”.

What next?

The Houthi attacks on the Saudis could “drive global oil prices even higher”, said Sky News’ Middle East correspondent, Adam Parsons. “Were the Houthis to put a stranglehold” on the Bab al Mandab strait, “it would have a major influence on trade that would hit the price of oil”.

This would “anger Donald Trump, who sees the price of oil as such a barometer of his own success”. The US president has said he is reviewing the situation, and is “going to look at” joining any Saudi response.

Tuesday “may go down as one of the most consequential days in the history of mathematics,” said The Economist. Less than a month after astonishing the world with its solution to the long-standing Navier-Stokes problem, OpenAI has released 722 maths papers, proving or disproving problems across numerous fields from algebraic geometry to number theory. OpenAI said it had consulted extensively with mathematicians about publishing the results but the news seems to have stunned maths world. How they react to this “mathspocalypse”, and the panic it’s inducing, could determine if there’s any human-led maths at all in 50 years’ time.

What did the commentators say?

“If you want some sense of what things feel like now in maths, imagine a hunter-gatherer who’s spent his entire life learning to survive deep in an unforgiving rainforest, then a giant resort hotel springs up right next to him with a helipad and heated pools and Airbnbs,” wrote Scott Aaronson, chair of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, according to Sky News.

This is “heartbreaking” for our community, said Jordana Cepelewicz, maths editor at Quanta Magazine. In mathematics, “problems are posed not so much because their answers will be practical and important, but because they represent interesting journeys”. As we “struggle to solve a problem” we might “come up with intriguing tools and connections, stumble on novel ideas and directions, take fruitful detours, and answer new questions” no one’s ever thought to ask. AI models “just skip to the end”.

AI was already changing maths. Researchers have stopped positing open conjectures at the end of their paper, so they’re not “scraped by bots”. Others are publishing their papers prematurely, to avoid getting “scooped” by AI. There is now widespread fear that new blood will no longer be “attracted to this remade discipline”, resulting in a “whole lost generation”.

“Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power," said the Association for Human Mathematics in a statement. “We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centres human understanding.”

The “floodgates are open”, said Joseph Howlett in Scientific American. This is without question the “biggest maths breakthrough in two decades”. But such is the speed of advancement, there are concerns the movement may be “coming too fast” even for the AI labs themselves. Not that they plan on slowing the tools down; they’re aiming to make them as powerful as possible to “show that their AI is really getting smarter”. The “consequences of this race are becoming harder and harder to predict”.

This could also have dangerous implications for cybersecurity, said Anthony Cuthbertson in The Independent. Cryptography forms the backbone of online encryption, used in web browsers, secure messaging and online banking. It also relies on “mathematical problems that are currently too difficult to solve efficiently”. There is no evidence that AI models have come close to breaking them but these latest advances could “lead to new algorithms capable of cracking them”, and reduce the time available to develop adequate protections.

What next?

It will take years to verify Open AI’s breakthroughs, said The Economist. Many of the papers are more than 100 pages long, only 127 of them “are accompanied by a code guaranteeing logical consistency (a norm in the field)”, and there is published internal reasoning for just 10. And it remains to be seen how many new research avenues the papers could open up. “For now, the mathematical problems AI is revealing are more existential than numerical.”

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement has been invoked for the first time since it was signed in August, following Houthi-led attacks on Saudi infrastructure Mecca, Medina and the capital’s airport.

While not identifying the Yemeni group by name, the alliance, composed of Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, will undertake a “rapid deployment” of troops to Saudi Arabia as part of their “collective defence commitments”.

Saudi Arabia is also supporting an offensive by the Yemeni government to take back the capital, Sanaa, held by the Houthis since 2014. Three people have been killed in attacks on Saudi Arabian airports over two days, as fighting spilled across the Yemen border into the Kingdom. It is unclear how Pakistan and Turkey will contribute to this action.

As the US continues to focus on Iran, and has ruled out direct intervention in Yemen, the alliance’s success could redraw the lines of power and control in the region.

What did the commentators say?

“Even the threat of joint involvement could dramatically shift the Saudi-Houthi conflict,” said Foreign Policy. Although in its infancy, members of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement boast nearly 1.4 million active troops combined, as well as “3,400 aircraft, 6,000 tanks, and more than 340 naval assets”. Pakistan has nuclear capabilities – “the only nuclear-armed Muslim-majority nation in the world” – and Turkey stands second only to the US for the largest armed forces in Nato.

Defence relations between the countries had already been close, even before the Mecca Accord was signed in August, said Abid Hussain on Al Jazeera. Pakistan has trained Saudi military personnel since 1967, and a declassified CIA assessment from 1985 estimated that 13,000 to 14,000 Pakistanis were serving in the Saudi army.

However, the Turkish “footprint is less clear”. And there is a potential sticking point, as Article 92 of Turkey’s constitution stipulates that the “authority to send troops abroad rests with the parliament, which has yet to ratify the Mecca pact”.

The timing of the announcement also “carries deep symbolic weight”, said Sean Mathews in Middle East Eye. Pakistan has been positioning itself as an “honest broker” for peace in the region, mediating between the US and Iran in previous negotiations, and Turkey has overtly established its stance as a “rival to Israel”. And by invoking the pact, Saudi Arabia has demonstrated that it has the “support of the wider region in its counter-offensive against the Houthis” and, by extension, Iran.

In the grand scheme of things, the Mecca Accord should be perceived more as an “additional layer of regional security rather than a wholesale strategic realignment”, said international relations expert John Calabrese on The Conversation. Traditionally, states in the region have relied on external support to gain “greater strategic autonomy”. Yet, as the threats in the region become harder to “separate into discrete categories”, and suspicion of the conventional allies grows, Saudi Arabia is moving to “hedge” its bets to avoid becoming vulnerable.

What next?

Despite the invocation, a resolution in Yemen against the Houthis is “unlikely without a wider deal between the US and Iran”, said Samer Al-Atrush, The Times’ Middle East correspondent. Currently, however, Washington is intent on demanding “concessions” from Tehran by enforcing its own naval blockade.

A seventh man has been arrested in connection with a suspected terror plot near RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, last month, which Andy Burnham has said was most likely linked to Iran.

Amid fears that Tehran was planning a complex drone attack against Fairford, which serves as a forward operating base for US aircraft targeting Iran, the Trump administration made a “historic, unprecedented” decision to withdraw all its 12 B-1 bombers on Sunday, said David Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham.

The incident “tells us much about Iran, Britain and the emerging threats to US forces and assets. None of it is good,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial.

What did the commentators say?

The Fairford plot is far from an isolated event. On Tuesday, three Iranian men appeared in court accused of spying on British-based dissident journalists on behalf of Iran’s foreign intelligence service. Earlier this year, a wave of arson attacks targeting British Jews were linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). And in July, a Tehran-backed cyberattack halted operations at a UK power plant for four days.

It is important to note here that the UK is technically “not at war with Iran”, said BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. But the US is, and “that is a distinction Tehran has publicly challenged”.

In July, Iran warned “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces”. As far as the IRGC “is concerned, Britain is already a participant in America’s war with Iran”, said Gardner.

The emergence of sophisticated state-run drone attacks, such as Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web last year, when low-cost drones were smuggled into Russia and carried on lorries to locations near airbases before being set upon strategic targets, have changed the game when it comes to perceived threats from hostile nations.

But “the question on minds in London is not whether Britain could stage such an attack but whether it could repel one”, said The Times’ defence editor Larisa Brown.

Given that it would require “months of planning, utmost secrecy and the purchase or smuggling of large quantities of explosives undetected by Britain’s security services”, one senior US diplomat asked, does Iran “really have the capability to pull off an Operation Spider’s Web on foreign soil? I think most of the community doubts that.”

“Yet there was enough concern for America to act”, said The Times.

What next?

The government’s strategic defence review published last year earmarked up to £1 billion for homeland air and missile defence over the next four years.

This week, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch ramped up this pledge to £10 billion over the next 10 years to go towards a “Britannia Shield” that would protect military bases and critical infrastructure from missile or drone attacks.

While defence experts have questioned these figures, for Britain the “bigger problem has been finding the will to confront the Iranians and go on offence against their terror networks. Does protecting US jets and UK Jews fit the bill?”, asked the WSJ.

“The IRGC, like Vladimir Putin, clearly doesn’t think it will pay much of a price for orchestrating terror in Britain – or many other states. Until that changes, even the best defence technology can only do so much.”

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has launched a legal action against Thames Valley Police over search warrants issued for raids on his homes at the Sandringham Estate and Royal Lodge, Windsor, in February. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, before being released without charge. The investigation remains ongoing, and Mountbatten-Windsor denies all wrongdoing.

An initial judicial hearing will take place in private on Thursday, though it is not known whether the former prince will attend.

This is the “first time a member of the royal family has challenged the lawfulness of criminal actions against them since Charles I in 1649”, said royal editor Hannah Furness in The Telegraph. “And we all know how that went.”

What did the commentators say?

The review is the “last roll of the dice” to rehabilitate Mountbatten-Windsor’s image, said Furness. Winning would at least “put the idea of his innocence, or injustice, back in the public imagination”. With silence and charity work, he could in time have been able to at least become “unremarkable” in public life. However, this legal action will break that “stalemate”. Ultimately, though, there is only one way Mountbatten-Windsor can re-emerge: by “actually clearing his name”. “No loopholes, no PR – just the truth in the eyes of the law.”

There is an “unusual” form of “gamesmanship” going on here, former senior detective Martyn Underhill told The Times. “In about 50 years in policing I’ve never known legal action against a warrant,” because the threshold required to obtain one is “really quite low”. This looks more like an “effort to try and change the dynamic and narrative, to show he’s fighting back”.

His “calculated gamble” could destabilise wider accusations made against him, said Andrew Tillett in the Australian Financial Review. He will be encouraged by the “weakness” of the police’s “faltering” case against Peter Mandelson, and the failure of US investigators to make the full, unredacted version of the Epstein files available to UK forces.

Mountbatten-Windsor has lost almost everything, and challenging the police “won’t get that back”. But, with “customary arrogance”, he thinks he can “ease some of the shackles on his life in limbo”.

What next?

The former prince will have to finance proceedings on his own, said The Times. Mountbatten-Windsor’s “counter-attack” was made “seemingly without the King’s knowledge”, and Charles has “made it clear” that his brother’s private stipend – “understood to be in excess of £1 million a year” – “should not be used to fund the judicial review”.

“There are several possible scenarios ahead”, said The i Paper. The High Court will establish whether police had “reasonable grounds” for the searches. But even if the police were deemed to have acted unlawfully, “any material gathered in those searches could potentially still be used” against Mountbatten-Windsor.

Alternatively, the court could order that materials from the search be excluded from any case against him, and in the extreme, could award Mountbatten-Windsor compensation and a police apology. However, even if this were the case, “I can’t see that this judicial review would be able to derail the criminal investigation,” solicitor John Hagan told the newspaper.

The Conservatives have kicked off their conference in Birmingham in a buoyant mood. Four years on from the Liz Truss mini-Budget that shredded the party’s economic credibility, and a mere two years since the party’s worst general election result in history, Kemi Badenoch has “a modest spring in her step”, said Politico’s Noah Keate.

The Tory leader “can point to disarray” in Reform’s ranks, “decent personal ratings” and the establishment of “clear dividing lines with Labour” as “reasons to be cheerful”. But “it’s still a massive road back” for Britain’s “once-dominant” centre-right party.

What did the commentators say?

Last year’s conference “marked a low ebb for the Conservatives”; they were “in a fight for relevance and, perhaps, survival”, said Rob Ford, Sky News’ election analyst. A year on and “things are looking up at last”. The public have “warmed to Kemi Badenoch, soured on Nigel Farage” and the party has hauled itself “back into polling contention”.

Key to this turnaround has been the Tory leader’s stance as the “common sense” candidate, combining low-tax economic policies with a disdain for identity politics and a promise to put “foundation conservative values” at the heart of her offering to the public. Although 50% of voters still do not see her as a prime-minister-in-waiting, her net favourability rating is up 20 points from this time last year, according to YouGov polling in August

“Reports of the death of the Conservative Party now look premature,” political scientist Tim Bale told Agence France-Presse. Yet despite attempts by the Tories and their allies in the media to “create some momentum”, it’s still “too early to talk about a ‘Kemi-naissance’”, with the party itself far less popular than its leader and still four points below its disastrous general-election showing in 2024.

There has been “one clear message” from Badenoch’s public announcements: “that Britain must get off benefits and back to work”, said Robin Ashenden in The Spectator. She had framed this as a moral crusade, saying that a life of work, rather than dependency, is not just “better for society” but “better for the soul”. Badenoch’s lean into Thatcherite “Victorian values”, along with “her customary war-cry of ‘What a lot of nonsense!’ may have increasing voter appeal”.

With its talk of benefits scroungers and repealing the Human Rights Act, the party “the country still regards as toxic is determined to double down on its toxicity”, said John Crace in The Guardian. Badenoch seems “desperate to track ever further to the right and abandon its centre right to Labour and the Lib Dems.” This “feels like madness” but “this conference is all about Kult Kemi”.

What next?

Badenoch has released a 30,000-word treatise, “The Right Way” outlining her core principles. This is “the sacred text of the Badenoch project, designed to underpin this week’s Tory conference, the manifesto and – she hopes – a return to government”, said The Times’ political editor Ben Riley-Smith.

With unfavourable economic headwinds likely to limit Andy Burnham’s ambitious reform agenda, there’s now a question Labour strategists “dare not ask”, said Keir Starmer’s former speechwriter Alan Lockey in Arguably: Has Kemi Badenoch managed to turn her party round like Keir Starmer did his? “Is she, after two years of patient preparation, finally ready to make her move?”

President Donald Trump was impeached twice during his first term. As the midterm elections inch closer, there is impeachment talk in the air again, but this time with a twist. Democrats are now talking about impeaching members of Trump’s Cabinet, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could be first on the list.

What did the commentators say?

Democrats “stumbled” onto the Cabinet-impeachment strategy thanks to Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said MS NOW. Massie, who lost his primary election to a Trump-endorsed opponent, introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth last month. This is a “highly underrated” strategy for forcing accountability on the administration, Massie said to the outlet.

Some party leaders are mum about the idea for now. Democrats “haven’t ruled anything out” if they win the midterms, said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to MS NOW. “And we haven’t ruled anything in.”

Impeaching members of Trump’s Cabinet would be an “effective accountability measure,” said David A. Graham at The Atlantic. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has “done serious damage to American public health,” Hegseth “waged an unauthorized war against Iran” and Attorney General Todd Blanche turned the Justice Department into a “partisan tool for persecuting Trump’s political adversaries.” Cabinet impeachments would focus on “actual administration actions and policy” and avoid a presidential impeachment likely to prove a “dead end.”

An impeachment push could “derail” Democrats’ affordability messaging in the midterms campaign, said Chad Pergram at Fox News. While the party’s “hard left” may demand impeachment “for someone,” this could prove “politically toxic” for scandal-weary voters.

What next?

Hegseth might be particularly vulnerable to an impeachment push, with even GOP members expressing “doubts about his leadership” amid a stalemated war in Iran, said The New York Times. The defense secretary has not “developed any productive relationships, even with Republican members,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to the outlet.

Impeachment is “not a fetish” for Democrats, said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It is a “critical tool.” But the party’s higher priorities after November are “getting healthcare to the American people and ending the lawlessness.”

The price of diesel has hit £2 per litre – the most expensive it has ever been – at a third of UK petrol stations, said The Sun.

This is “uncharted territory”, financial analyst Kathleen Brooks told City A.M. Donald Trump has already sent markets into a “frenzy” by threatening to ban diesel exports from the US, said the same paper. Weakened infrastructure for refining diesel and lower reserves than European counterparts mean the UK could be uniquely “exposed” to any further “ripple effects”, including more price rises.

What did the commentators say?

President Trump is trying to bring diesel prices down for US consumers ahead of the midterm elections in November. If he does decide to ban exports of US diesel, it would “hurt the countries which heavily depend” on it, said the BBC, including the UK. But it might also have “unintended effects that could hurt US production” in the longer term.

Trump’s threats have “highlighted Britain’s over-reliance on the goodwill of other countries” for its diesel needs, said an editorial in The Times. Last year, the UK imported more than 50% of its diesel supply, around a sixth of that from the US.

Our infrastructure depends on it: around 10 million cars, a quarter of the country’s trains, 70% of buses, virtually all tractors and “almost 99% of HGVs” run on diesel. Yet the UK has enough reserves to last for only around six weeks, according to International Energy Forum data, compared to around six months for France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

Breaking the £2 threshold for a litre of diesel should “set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government’s response so far has been to remove VAT from energy bills in an attempt to cushion the blow to consumers, but this “hardly addresses the fundamental issues”. As a nation, we have “failed to prepare”, allowing our refining capacity to “wither away” to leave us “dangerously exposed” to market fluctuations beyond our control.

The diesel crisis could “deepen” after the UK’s largest refinery shut down production for up to 10 weeks, said energy editor Jonathan Leake in The Telegraph. The Fawley refinery in Hampshire – which produces “one fifth of the fuel used on UK roads” – has closed for planned maintenance, a move that “will add to fears about another diesel price spike hurting drivers at the pumps”.

In the 1980s, the UK had 18 refineries, but that has dropped to just four. Two closures last year – in Grangemouth, Scotland and Lindsey in Lincolnshire – “slashed UK refinery output by about a third”. Now, any closures, planned or unplanned, temporary or permanent, have a “rapid impact on supplies”.

What next?

“Rising diesel costs aren’t just a problem for drivers generally but a wider inflation threat,” said Sky News. Diesel is the “engine of the UK economy” and shortages would heavily disrupt supply chains and lead to costs being passed on to consumers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. This is the type of inflation that “worries” the Bank of England, which is “widely tipped” to raise interest rates in November.

Taxes on fuel – which account for “just over half of the cost of a litre” – are also set to rise. Hikes planned by former chancellor Rachel Reeves are set to come into effect in January, but her successor, John Healey, should “question the wisdom of raising prices at the pump at a time when they are clearly inflationary in nature”. As such, they are likely to be “scrapped or further delayed” at the upcoming Budget.

As the Israel-Hamas war nears its three-year mark, an outbreak of algae throughout Israel’s desalination plants is threatening the country’s water supplies, which could affect the sewage systems in Gaza. Experts say the ongoing war is likely to exacerbate the problem.

What did the commentators say?

The issue began after a microalgae bloom in the Mediterranean Sea forced five out of six desalination plants on the Israeli coast to shut down, according to Israel’s national water company Mekorot, per CNN. These plants remove salt from seawater, and their closures caused a ripple effect due to the “country’s heavy dependence on desalination for drinking water,” said the outlet. Israel is “arid and has neither big rivers nor abundant rainfall, but its mastery of this technology has made it a water superpower.”

While Israel itself is unlikely to see a shortage of water, it could lead to a compounding crisis in Gaza, which has already seen “many of its pipelines and water infrastructure destroyed during the devastating war with Israel,” said NBC News. The algae currently attacking Israel’s water supplies may actually be caused by the situation in Gaza.

The “discharge of untreated sewage from the Gaza Strip into the sea is contributing to the worsening crisis affecting the Israeli desalination facilities,” the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli environmental NGO, told The Guardian. The wastewater “contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed microalgae.”

Scientists are “trying to assess possible environmental fallout from Gaza’s destroyed wastewater infrastructure” and determine how much of a role it may have played in the algae bloom, said Middle East Eye. Regardless of the cause, it is a “reminder of the dire humanitarian conditions facing 2 million Gazans,” said The Washington Post. Gazans have “faced severe water shortages and have often resorted to using makeshift latrines.”

What next?

This kind of event will probably keep happening thanks to the steadily warming planet. It’s a “fair estimation that this will not be a once-in-a-lifetime” thing, Edo Bar-Zeev, an associate professor in water research at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, said to CNN. People “can assume that this will occur more and more through climate change.”

Andy Burnham has promised to “undertake the most ambitious review of Brexit since Britain left the EU”, said Jon Stone in Politico. And, “for now at least, he’s keeping all his options open”.

With different figures within his party arguing in favour of joining the single market, joining the customs union or rejoining the EU altogether, the prime minister is keeping his powder dry, saying only that he hopes to “find consensus” around one option at the UK-EU summit later this year. With nothing yet ruled in or out, there’s “plenty of space for interpretation” about the direction he might take.

What did the commentators say?

Burnham’s pledge undoubtedly marks a “turning point in the story of Brexit”, said Denis Staunton in The Irish Times. He’s signalling a “readiness to rip up Keir Starmer’s red lines on Europe”, which included no return to the single market or the customs union and no unrestricted freedom of movement.

Burnham’s “dramatic shift on Brexit” comes after EU leaders warned him to “tone down British demands to be included in the bloc’s Made in Europe policy”, said Arj Singh, The i Paper’s deputy political editor. The UK’s push for inclusion, in exchange for lower tuition fees for European students, “sparked anger in Brussels” and “underlined the limits” of Labour’s red lines. Days later, Burnham has “used his conference speech to say he was now prepared to drop” them.

The prime minister risks “reopening the bitter division” that followed the 2016 referendum, said Reuters. His “desire to find a consensus will test his political skill in a nation still scarred by the tumult” of Brexit. But the timing makes sense: Donald Trump’s geopolitics are “reshaping alliances around the globe”, and the “threat of war in Europe” adds weight to an argument for a closer UK-EU relationship.

A commitment to stronger ties with the EU is “vital” for the Labour’s chances at the next general election, said Tom Brufatto of campaign group Best For Britain, on Politics Home. Voters would “resoundingly reward” any parties “who take the plunge”, increasing support by 7%, according to a Best For Britain/YouGov poll.

Rejoining the EU would first require another referendum and then “potentially years of de-Brexit negotiations”, said The Guardian. And Brussels would want “cast-iron guarantees that the UK wouldn’t just walk out again”.

It would create a “decade of trading chaos”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. Any discussions will “take a long time”, and require Burnham to win at least one election while they are ongoing, and the EU would almost certainly demand “tough terms”, including signing up to the Euro. Then, in all likelihood, “all our other trade agreements will have to be cancelled”. The last thing that the British economy needs is a “decade of wrangling over the issue all over again”.

What next?

It’s obvious that none of this can be “rushed,” said The Independent’s editorial board. Even in the Labour Party, most recognise that “rejoining is no simple matter”.

There have been calls for Burnham to make reversing Brexit his top policy pledge at the next election but it would not be “right or sensible to try to fight an election on a single issue”. Labour’s next manifesto needs “imaginative solutions” and “now is the time to open up the debate” and “start clearing the way forward from Brexit”.

Who wants to see the new, nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk? Not Musk.

The former trillionaire is threatening a defamation lawsuit over explosive claims in Alex Gibney’s film “Musk.” Social media companies are hesitant to allow promotion on their platforms, and Hollywood is whispering that the tech mogul’s power might keep the public from opportunities to see the film.

What did the commentators say?

“So much for free speech,” said The Hollywood Reporter. Social media platforms YouTube, TikTok and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook all initially declined to run the trailer for “Musk,” though YouTube and Meta later backtracked. (Musk-owned X is not accepting ads for the movie.) A hesitance to provide publicity is a problem for the film because “traction on social media is key” to the success of most modern documentaries.

The social media freeze-out comes amid “concerns” that “political considerations are influencing the rollout” of the film, said The New York Times. “Musk” is set for an Oct. 9 release in the United States, but Universal “has yet to announce any release dates” overseas. The studio counters that it “simply needs more time” to schedule foreign markets.

Audiences at this month’s Venice Film Festival “loved” the documentary that depicts Musk as a “plutocrat with questionable judgment and unchecked power,” Lorraine Ali said at the Los Angeles Times. There was a time when Musk would have been featured as a forward-thinking entrepreneur. Now audiences want to see depictions of the “dark side of wealth, fame and alleged genius.”

What next?

“Musk” is scheduled to stream on HBO Max after its theatrical run. But Gibney is nervous the streamer “may not be inclined to back the film” following the merger of Paramount with HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, said The Atlantic.

Paramount is reportedly seeking funding from Musk to help complete the merger. The tech mogul, meanwhile, is making his feelings clear about the film and its future. “Musk” is a “hit piece that misses,” he said on X. The documentary is guilty of the “fatal sin of being boring for four hours.”

The word “hope” featured 21 times in Chancellor John Healey’s speech to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, said Tom Peck in The Times. “Hope Again” was on the stage backdrop (twice), on a lectern, and hanging from the ceiling in “7ft-high letters”. Hope was certainly “in the air” but maybe it was mainly Labour MPs “hoping, specifically, that they will not all be out of a job again in a couple of years’ time”.

During his hour-long speech, Healey recommitted the government to the fiscal rules set out in 2024, and then promised “a new age of industrialisation”, and more jobs for young people. But, with the Budget less than a month away, he gave few indications of when, and how, these promises will be realised.

What did the commentators say?

It would have been easy for Healey to “slip from hope into hype”, said The Independent’s editorial board. Instead he exercised caution. Despite the “spring in their step”, conference attendees were “under no illusion that the room was squeezed by the elephants in it”. Compared to the era of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the money “is simply not there now”, the chancellor said, but he made it clear he’s “playing hardball with what he’s been given”: focusing on buying British, addressing spiralling welfare costs and encouraging growth. None of that can “happen immediately, but it’s a start.”

“Labour is caught between sunny aspiration and cold reality,” said Ian Dunt in The i Paper. This is not Healey’s fault: the scene was set by “austerity, Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine and the ineptitude of Liz Truss”. Healey “did a damn good job of sounding convincingly optimistic”. But that “doesn’t hide the brutality of the underlying conditions he faces or how unlikely it is that he can come through them unscathed”.

“Healey is in the uncomfortable position of a man who has just stepped into a lift in which someone else has recently farted,” said Will Dunn in The New Statesman. The air is thick with the “noxious” emissions of Donald Trump and his “cack-handed” war in Iran. That alone could cost the UK £28.5 billion in lost economic growth, and even that’s “assuming the disruption of energy supplies doesn’t get materially worse”. Then there’s borrowing costs – another thing over which Healey had “essentially no control” – reaching their highest level since 1998. But, if Healey does not support his hopeful agenda with action, the “acrid wafts of stagnation and inflation emanating from the UK economy will be assumed to be his fault”.

“With a Budget just weeks away, few policy announcements were expected but this was thin gruel indeed,” said The Telegraph’s editorial board. Healey called for increased growth, “yet everything this government has done has made life more difficult for businesses and entrepreneurs”. He’s right to tell Labour activists that the money they want for health and welfare can only come from increased growth but “few in his party are listening”.

It was what Healey “left unsaid” that is “far more important”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. He alluded to reducing the benefits bill but revealed no clear plan, and he talked of “revitalising industry” with “little explanation” of how this would create good jobs “across the wider economy”. With an “energy shock” on the horizon, the size of the fiscal headroom he is willing to “tolerate” will probably be the deciding factor between additional “taxing to fund a modest energy rescue package, or borrowing for a larger one”.

What next?

This was the “easy bit” for Healey, said Ben Zaranko in The Observer. What remains to be seen is whether he will use the coming Budget to announce “far-reaching reforms” or delay “the biggest and toughest decisions” until later. For now, he is betting that his “hopeful tone can survive rising borrowing costs, disruption to energy supplies, and all manner of painful financial trade-offs. We shall see on 28 October.”

The global impact of the upcoming “super El Niño” weather event is stark: latest estimates suggest more than 450,000 people will die, overwhelmingly in the global south, as a direct result of heatwaves. Extreme weather linked to the climate phenomenon, such as wildfires and flooding, is expected to take yet more lives.

While the UK will be spared the most direct and deadly effects of El Niño, it will feel the global ripple effects of its devastating impact.

What did the commentators say?

The precise effect of El Niño on UK weather is “notoriously tricky to predict”, said Madeleine Cuff in New Scientist. Conditions in northern Europe are “strongly affected” by weather phenomena in the North Atlantic, but El Niño develops over the Pacific.

An El Niño of average strength usually means a “wetter, windier, stormier” autumn and early winter followed by a late-winter cold snap. However, the “sheer size” of the developing super El Niño could mean that those wet and wild autumn conditions extend throughout the winter and even into the spring, according to Adam Scaife, who leads long-range forecasting at the Met Office.

Prolonged rainfall could help “replenish reservoirs and groundwater after an exceptionally dry summer”, said Cuff, but it comes at the price of elevated flood risk.

Perhaps easier to predict are the knock-on economic repercussions for UK consumers as a result of the disruption to global agriculture production and supply chains “already marred by the inflationary impact of the Iran war”, said The Times.

The cocoa market has been volatile in recent years, but hopes of calmer future prices are starting to reverse as investors brace for El Niño-related drought conditions in the crop’s West Africa heartlands. Prices of robusta, one of the world’s major coffee beans, are similarly soaring amid expected “pressure on reservoirs in Vietnam and weak irrigation in Indonesia”. European wheat production is more “resilient” to the effects of El Niño, but exports continue to be affected by “escalating attacks by Russia and Ukraine on each other’s Black Sea ports”.

As a result, British consumers can expect higher prices on supermarket shelves as manufacturers pass on those increases, which come in addition to higher transportation costs linked to fuel supply disruptions in the Middle East. It is, according to climate and commodities expert Hamad Hussain, “a perfect storm” for agricultural commodity markets.

What next?

It is now “beyond doubt” that the strength of the El Niño phenomenon has been supercharged by “human-made folly and injustice”, said The Guardian. The immediate priority must be to ensure support for the developing countries who have “contributed the least to the climate crisis but are likely to suffer most”. But more broadly, the “extraordinary toll” expected from this year’s El Niño must act as a “spur to action” for world leaders to change course. For the UK, that means “accelerating efforts to prepare the UK for increasingly extreme weather”. It is evident “we cannot afford not to do so”.

What do “Seinfeld,” “The Office” and “Family Guy” have in common? Each was used in a recent White House promotional video for the launch of what the administration has dubbed Trump TV, an official White House broadcast that has thus far largely been limited to previously recorded MAGA speeches and events.

Notably, the splashy, if dubiously copyright-compliant, rollout of what the White House has deemed its “Essentials Station” comes as the Trump administration escalates its running altercation with mainstream media outlets. So what exactly is Trump TV, who is it for, and what does this White House have in mind for the programming’s future?

What did the commentators say?

Trump TV was “born of necessity” after multiple major media companies “boycotted the White House press pool in response to the president’s ban on certain outlets,” said New York magazine. But unlike the “Oprah Winfrey Network-esque conservative media company Trump (allegedly) envisioned” as a potential outlet over the years, Trump TV is, for now, “just a dinky livestream on the White House YouTube page.” Still, the launch of an “administration-operated, around-the-clock video channel” places Trump TV “at the center of a coverage gap” caused by multiple major networks pulling out of the White House press pool, said USA Today.

“Not every big moment has made it on your tv,” said the White House in a social media post announcing the new service. “Now it can.”

In addition to streaming on YouTube, “Trump TV” is also featured on the White House website, alongside a “box titled ‘White House Live,’” which noted that it was “‘Off Air’ but advised viewers to ‘Stay Tuned,’” said The Hill. The window also features a “chyron reading official updates” and “statements praising Trump’s actions as president, among other texts.”

In launching Trump TV, the president “follows in Hugo Chávez’s footsteps,” said Al Jazeera. The former Venezuelan autocrat, with his “Hello, President” television program, “sang, took calls from viewers, attacked his opponents and sometimes announced major policy live on air.”

The White House is “drawing sharp backlash from critics” over the platform’s launch, said NJ.com. After banning independent media from the White House, President Donald Trump has launched “what is quite literally state-run TV,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), rumored to be mulling a presidential run himself in 2028, on X. Trump is “drowning out the fact that he and his corrupt administration are failing the American people.”

Trump TV “peaked at 8,000 viewers” for its Monday evening premiere before “dipping to around 4,000,” said The Independent. “Some 1,600 people” tuned in the following morning, “when footage showed the president signing an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico ‘Gulf of America’”

Some MAGA loyalists have “supported the launch of Trump TV” for “punching holes in the mainstream media propaganda,” said The Independent. Trump critics have “lost their minds over Trump TV,” said conservative commentator Benny Johnson, per the outlet. “The White House has perfectly trolled them again.”

What next?

It remains “unclear” whether the streaming platform will air “all current events and conferences involving the president,” said NJ.com. “Weirdly,” said New York magazine, Trump TV “did not even air the president’s big address” to the United Nations on Tuesday. “So far,” said Axios, Trump TV has “no anchors or news ticker.” It does display “banners asking viewers to text White House officials,” although it’s “unclear who staffs the channel, makes programming decisions or sets its schedule.”

Given this “calamitous start to life after the press pool,” The Daily Beast asked the White House if it “intends to try to fix the viewership issues” or if it is “waiting to patch things up with the TV networks,” said the outlet. The White House, to date, has not responded.

China is being quietly credited with keeping energy prices down in the wake of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, in turn helping prop up the global economy while cementing its own power on the world stage.

By tapping into its huge reserves of oil, “China kind of saved the day,” and helped the world avoid the “doomsday scenario” when the Strait of Hormuz closure choked off 20% of global energy supply, said Paul Gruenwald, global chief economist at S&P Global Ratings.

What did the commentators say?

For decades, China heavily depended on imported crude to meet its ever-growing energy needs. But over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to address what has long been viewed in Beijing as a major security weakness by spending billions of dollars amassing the world’s biggest stockpile of oil.

Last year China’s reserves were estimated at nearly 600 million barrels bigger than the US. This enabled it to dramatically cut its oil imports when the war in the Middle East broke out, keeping a lid on global oil prices and safeguarding its own economy.

Not only has this enabled China to weather the global commodities storm resulting from the closure of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, it has seen China emerge as a “clear winner” from Donald Trump’s foray into the Middle East, said The Guardian, citing the findings of a report from geopolitical consulting firm Asia Group.

Long thought to be vulnerable to oil supply shocks, the conflict has made clear how China has “managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power”, said The New York Times.

This has “big implications for the global energy industry, where oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the United States — not importers like China — have traditionally held most of the cards”.

“If they come to feel that in this domain, they are less vulnerable than they and many others may have assessed previously, that is a profound and important shift in one of the key inputs to how China makes decisions about its global strategy,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former White House and State Department official who worked on China issues in the Biden administration.

What next?

While the Iran crisis has vindicated Xi’s investment strategy, the “buffer” of China’s stockpile of oil, which has helped the world avoid a far deeper energy crisis up to now, “may face a test as Beijing shows signs of resuming purchases”, said CNBC.

Should this happen, the drag on global growth from elevated oil prices would deepen well beyond current estimates, said Krishna Srinivasan, director for the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund.

But the Iran crisis has also shown how “China’s muscular energy policy has afforded Beijing a major tool it could use, for instance, in a war over Taiwan”, said The Wall Street Journal.

“In the future, such power could be wielded in a clash with the US In the event of a war over Taiwan”. For example, “Beijing’s ability to slash oil imports for months on end could help China resist efforts by the US and its allies to block energy shipments”.

For China, “oil is not the Achilles’ heel we thought it was,” said Michal Meidan, head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “I think a lot of people thought China was very, very vulnerable to oil supply disruptions. It’s not.”

China and the U.S. are locked in a race to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models. Industry leaders are increasingly calling for regulations and guardrails to keep the technology from threatening humanity, which means the competing nations must collaborate to rein in AI as it gallops ahead. But observers are skeptical that Washington and Beijing can find the will to do so.

What did the commentators say?

AI safety is “on the agenda” for this week’s summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said The Associated Press. But both sides “see the other as the problem.” Trump has warned that “any efforts to regulate the technology would help China,” while Chinese leaders see talk of new safety rules as an attempt to slow their nation’s rapid advances so that the U.S. can create a “monopoly” on AI.

Some experts say Trump and Xi do not need to come to a full agreement on rules to create room for a slowdown. The two leaders “just need to create political space by acknowledging AI poses risks to both countries,” said Samm Sacks, a fellow at John Hopkins, to the AP.

Chinese leaders don’t see AI as an “existential threat to humanity,” said Kyle Chan, of the Brookings Institution, at The New York Times. The two countries have different anxieties. U.S. companies like Anthropic and OpenAI use AI to “develop even better AI systems,” creating concerns about a “feedback loop” in which humans “no longer have control over the process.”

Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot, by contrast, have “limited access to AI computing power” and so see that tipping point as being a “long way off.” Beijing is more worried about AI being used to spark a “mass movement powerful enough to topple the Communist Party.” It will be hard for the two countries to find common ground on the issue “without a baseline level of mutual understanding.”

Beijing would be “perfectly happy to watch Washington scare America into slowing itself down,” said Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) at the National Review. China’s Communist leaders are “actively working to exploit Americans’ fears” about the technology, and Beijing wins every time the U.S. “makes itself slower, more expensive and more afraid to experiment.” Washington is “flirting with exactly that mentality on AI.”

What next?

The U.S. is proposing an “emergency AI hotline” with China, said Axios. “More transparency” between the world’s AI superpowers is “very important," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to reporters, per the outlet.

Still, neither nation “expects a breakthrough” at this week’s Trump-Xi summit, said The Economist. The growing risks posed by artificial intelligence “demand more urgency” than either side is bringing to the table. Until that urgency arrives, the “best hope is that the two sides keep talking.”

“What is the point of the Liberal Democrats?” asked Joanna Williams in The Times. Even those at the party conference weren’t sure: a Lib Dem council leader said the party was “lacking ambition”, while MP Roz Savage wondered why they were “struggling for relevance at precisely the moment when so many people feel powerless”.

During his headlining speech, leader Ed Davey campaigned for an anti-Reform firewall, income tax cuts and a closer proximity to the EU. Yet despite achieving a record number of MPs at the last election, the party is sliding in the polls and its blueprint to Westminster, for many members, is blank.

What did the commentators say?

“Younger readers may not believe me, but we used to take the Lib Dems seriously,” said Gareth Roberts in The Spectator. “Or at least more seriously.” We are surrounded by swathes of “repulsive or infuriating politicians”, but even so Davey is “merely laughable”. There have been calls from within for him to step down, but such is the predicament of the party, these outbursts “hardly seemed to register”.

Davey’s campaign to rejoin the single market in his closing speech underlines how the party’s strategy is “built on sand”, said columnist Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. Traditionally, yes, the issue of Brexit proved the “ultimate gift” for the Lib Dems, allowing them to move to the left economically, while profiting as the “right tore itself apart”.

But now, the subject ranks “as a fifth-order issue” electorally, and placing it at the core of the party’s agenda “just seems odd”. In practical terms, Davey’s claim that his personal allowance reforms would be offset by “growth from a new EU partnership” would take “years to negotiate”, and also just “doesn’t seem credible”. The Lib Dem leader, aptly, is using the nostalgia of “exhuming the corpse of remainerism” to mask the problem that his party’s present “relevance is too terrifying to face”.

Given the current political climate, it “ought to be a boom time for Britain’s traditional third party”, said The Times. Labour is “tilting left”, the Conservatives are also “struggling for national relevance”, and Reform UK is embroiled in funding controversies. But Davey is leading them “towards irrelevance”. At the conference, all he could offer was a “grab-bag of woke talking points”, and he strayed from the popular issue of social care to pursue economic growth, “the standard fallback for the fiscally challenged (see Reeves 2024)”. Davey’s vision is “neither liberal nor democratic. Nor, for that matter, is it ­especially inspiring.”

Unlike other parties, the Lib Dems don’t crave the “sugar rush of going for temporary poll bounces”, said Ailbhe Rea, political editor of The New Statesman. Davey has a “seat-first, not vote-first, strategy”, a source told the outlet. His strategy is founded on local initiatives, building support “typically from councils up”, said Rea, and efficiently targeting only seats it can win. The party had 11 MPs when Davey took over in 2019, and rose to 72 after the 2024 general election, and made gains in “eight consecutive sets of local council elections”. This approach may grind out “unimpressive poll numbers”, but produces “sustainable gains”: “many of the party’s MPs are fully behind both it and him”.

The strange thing is, if a general election were to be called tomorrow, the Lib Dems would “probably repeat their record-breaking performance of 2024, or get very close”, said Hugo Gye in The Economist. They have “firmly dug in to their core areas”, such as Richmond-upon-Thames, where the Lib Dems won all 54 positions in recent council elections.

More pressingly, the party thrives most by riding a certain “brand of eccentricity”, appealing to a concoction of “wealthy, woke and weird” constituents who advocate for “cultural leftism” but hold “centrist views on the economy”. It may have strength in this demographic, but it’s difficult to see where the party will go next. “Not everywhere can be Richmond.”

What next?

Davey has a “balance to strike”, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. He must hammer home his “progressive credentials” by showing his “anti-Farage firewall will be suitably robust”, and consolidate support among former Tory voters in “blue wall” seats that his economic policies will hold.

Local elections next year will test whether Davey’s method is working and a by-election win “may settle Lib Dem nerves”. Currently, while it is difficult to pinpoint the purpose of the party, if its firewall tactic works its “utility to British democracy won’t be in doubt”. Then again, you can only find out if it holds water “when you need it most, and then you don’t get a second chance”.

Andy Burnham, stateside for the United Nations General Assembly, is meeting Donald Trump for their first in-person talks today in a stronger position than Keir Starmer was as a new PM. Trump is increasingly unpopular at home, and preoccupied with the Iran war and looming midterm elections, while the UK has been strengthening its ties with Europe and Canada. “It’s completely different this time,” one official told Politico. “There’s no drama about having to stay in his good books.”

But Trump has previously called Burnham “extremely liberal” and dismissed him as the “mayor of a town”. And if his past meetings with world leaders are anything to go by, there’s still plenty of potential for drama.

What did the commentators say?

In 2024, sucking up to Trump was the “medicine required”, one UK diplomat told Politico. Burnham, however, has inherited “an established relationship” with no need to lavish praise. His job is therefore to “fix the mess of unresolved threads left behind” – and “avoid a barrage of abuse on Truth Social”.

He is “not expected to take a big list of deliverables or policy goals”. His aim, according to senior UK officials and MPs, is: “Get in, smile, press the case for Ukraine, and try to leave without a major upset.” Officials are hopeful that he will encounter a “more pro-Ukraine atmosphere” in Washington, after the House of Representatives approved a “sweeping Russia sanctions bill”. Burnham hopes to persuade the US to increase the deliveries of air defence interceptors – but it’s unlikely that Ukraine is even in the top five of Trump’s priorities, said Daniel DePetris in The Spectator.

Burnham’s more assertive approach seems to be working so far, said Reuters. His team pointed out that Trump “did not push back” against Burnham’s ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. But Trump is a “notoriously fickle and unpredictable” man who “spreads trade tariffs like confetti”, said The i Paper. Burnham will have to avoid the “minefield” of some of Trump’s “fixations”, such as North Sea oil and defence spending.

There is “no suggestion” Burnham will go further and emulate “the more combative approach” of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar. Nor would it be wise to; Trump is still angry the UK didn’t join him in strikes on Iran, and recent comments on the Falklands and Irish unification “suggest his displeasure has not abated”. The meeting will be “fraught with tension” with “potential for further clashes”. The US president might be weaker domestically, but he’s still in office for two more years. For now, “the power still rests with Trump”.

What next?

Even if Trump and Burnham hit it off, the meeting itself “isn’t the most important event”, said DePetris. “What truly matters is the follow-through.”

The Iran war remains “a dark storm cloud hovering over US-UK relations”, and with Houthi rebels continuing to advance, effectively controlling Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, Trump could grant Saudi Arabia’s request for military intervention. In that case, “you can be almost certain the Trump administration will expect the UK to get involved”, and Trump could slam Burnham’s government for insufficient defence spending in next month’s Budget. Remember, things were fine between Trump and Starmer – “until they weren’t”.

Donald Trump has hailed a deal that gives the US “permanent control over security” in Greenland, while backing down from threats to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

The US president said on Friday that “from now on, no US adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval”. This was an “infinite life agreement”, he added.

The deal has been described as a win for both sides but, as ever with Trump, “the devil is in the details” and “the details about this deal are still scarce”, said Sabrina Escobar on Barron’s.

What did the commentators say?

The US has made it easier to “control encroachment on Greenlandic soil by China, Russia and other adversaries” and the Arctic is undoubtedly “a safer place for America and its allies today”. For this, “due credit must go to” President Trump, said The Economist.

A 1951 agreement with Denmark already granted the US military exclusive privileges over the “valuable strategic territory”, but the new deal is “a hedge against the risk that Greenlanders might someday declare independence from Denmark”, said The Wall Street Journal. Having said that, it is still “fair to ask whether this deal could have been reached without the collateral damage to US alliances from Trump’s bullying threats”.

“It is perhaps a triumph of optics,” said Marc Jacobsen on Al Jazeera. Despite all the backslapping in the White House, changes to the existing arrangement appear to be “relatively limited”. This is “a testament to the negotiating skills of the Danish and Greenlandic representatives”, who have given Trump “the opportunity to claim the victory he needed, while preserving sovereignty”.

Henrik Dahl, a Danish member of the European Parliament for the Liberal Alliance, agreed that, in practice, little appears to have changed. “A wise Danish politician once said that you can achieve almost anything if you are willing to let others take the credit,” he told The Telegraph. “So let us give Donald Trump the credit for something very close to the status quo. From a Danish and Greenlandic perspective, it could hardly be much better.”

Despite the US president’s “long-standing rhetoric on invading and annexing Greenland”, this deal “once again shows the limits of Trump’s disruptive politics”, said Swasti Rao in The Print. “The theatrics he created were annexation, but the transaction he got was substantive access,” though Trump still remains “extraordinarily capable of collapsing the distance between the two”.

What next?

The deal is expected to be signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, and will still need to be approved by legislators on both sides of the Atlantic before it comes into force.

But there are hopes the agreement “signals a weather change in Washington”, said The Times. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the chaos on energy markets caused by US and Israeli strikes on Iran “require a united Western response”, so Nato allies must now lay the matter of Greenland “to rest” and “humour the president and let him savour his supposed victory”.

Rebuilding trust will take time, however, said Tillie Martinussen, a former Greenlandic MP. “Even if it’s your best and brightest and strongest sled dog, and it turns around and bites you, you can never trust that dog again.”

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?” asked Finnish President Alexander Stubb recently. That fanciful notion now appears to have taken a step closer to reality. In a speech to the European Parliament, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed the European Union’s ambition for Canada to become its first “associate member”, calling for closer cooperation on defence, critical minerals and energy security.

His comments came a day after President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen proposed “opening the door” to Canada’s associate membership – “a status that does not currently exist”, said the BBC.

What did the commentators say?

The “not entirely straightforward case for CanadEU predates Trump”, said The Economist last year. “Canada is vast and blessed with natural resources but relatively few people, while the EU is small, cramped and mineral-poor.” Its Arctic border with Russia presents shared strategic interests with Brussels, while, culturally, Canada’s social-welfare state and social-democratic foundations align with the values of European democracies.

These arguments have only grown stronger since the start of Trump’s “combustive, combative second term”, said Ishaan Tharoor in The New Yorker. So much so that “a conversation once consigned to academic circles and the parlour rooms of Brussels and Ottawa has entered the mainstream”.

In the face of a hostile Trump administration waging an all-out tariff war with its biggest trading partner to the north, the thinking in Ottawa is simple, political scientist Bruno Maçães told The New Yorker. “If you cannot change your neighbour geographically, change it institutionally.”

Carney has ruled out Canada becoming a full EU member or joining the single market, even if such a thing were possible. But associate membership could, in theory, allow Canada to tap into Europe’s strategic supply chains in key sectors such as energy, AI, critical minerals needed for batteries or semiconductors and, crucially, defence. Underwater cables could be laid under the Atlantic linking data centres and cloud storage, and new pipelines could redirect Canadian gas to meet Europe’s ever-growing needs.

What next?

One Canadian official involved in the talks said in The Wall Street Journal this is a “tectonic change” that would be brought about by “working groups and bureaucracy”. “It’s terribly unsexy but terribly consequential nonetheless.”

Canada is already the first non-EU nation to join the bloc’s defence procurement programme, said Anand Sundar, from the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. But if European leaders really “want to shift the relationship into a new gear”, they will have to rethink their arms-length attitudes towards third countries, “particularly in defence and security, where both sides’ dependence on the US runs deepest”.

And while Canada’s economy is “increasingly interested in the European market, diversification away from the US will not come overnight”, said Peggy Corlin for Euronews. “Geography, after all, matters.”

Russian voters joke that, if there’s a “special military operation” in Ukraine, there’s now a “special electoral operation” for their parliament, said The Economist. Polls open for the Duma ballot on 18 September – the first parliamentary election since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and, despite ever greater public opposition to the war, Vladimir Putin’s grasp on power is unlikely to be shaken.

But battlefield “bodies are piling up” and “smoke is billowing” from oil refineries across Russia hit by Ukrainian drone strikes. The failing Russian economy and continuing fuel shortages are weighing more heavily on the population and, although this election’s outcome is all but certain, the people’s “tacit consent is crumbling”. The educated and politically conscious, who always voted in the past “no longer see much point in the charade”.

What did the commentators say?

“The system of power in Russia is often referred to as ‘managed democracy’”, where “the Kremlin does the managing”, said the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. Critics dismiss the elections as “neither free nor fair” but, frankly, the Kremlin “doesn’t care what the critics say”. Does this mean there will be “no surprises”? “Far from it.” We’ve already seen a TV debate with “six empty lecterns”.

The election of 450 deputies to Russia’s lower legislative house “gives the impression of some diversity”, with communists, nationalists and “even some self-described liberals” on the ballot, said Brawley Benson on Foreign Policy. “In reality, scope for disagreement is vanishingly small.” United Russia – Putin’s party – holds 70% of the seats and there’s “little tolerance for genuine opposition”. The other Duma deputies are seen as “systemic opposition”, or parties that partially differ in their priorities, but “broadly support” Putin.

“United Russia’s popularity has been hovering around 32% in public opinion polls,” said political science professor Regina Smyth on The Conversation. That’s the lowest percentage since the invasion of Ukraine, and “even then, the number is likely inflated by respondents’ fear of revealing their opposition”. But the Kremlin has long deployed an “arsenal of tools” to retain its grip on power. Gerrymandering, “significant” levels of electoral fraud and, this time round, the banning of eight out of 19 political parties have, in effect, “eliminated non-partisan organised opposition”. The election is not about who wins but what could be telling is seeing how heavily the Kremlin needs to place “its thumb on the scale to maintain its party’s two-thirds majority”.

“Engineering” the outcome too tightly is “not without a risk for the ruling regime”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. “Too blatant” an election steal can be “a sign of weakness”. Already last month, Russia’s supreme court blocked the “old and marginal liberal party”, Yabloko, from participating in the vote. It does not “pose a serious challenge to the regime” but it is opposed to the war in Ukraine. The case for banning it was “spurious to the point of absurdity”. Putin wants to look as if he is well supported but “the harder the Kremlin is seen to work at constructing electoral proof of that support, the less confident it looks”.

What next?

While there may be “little reason to care” about this “snoozefest” election and its “foregone conclusion”, many Russians “are worried” about what might follow, said The New York Times’ Moscow-based correspondent, Valerie Hopkins.

“Rumours of a large, forced mobilisation are rampant”, as the military “burns through” troops in Ukraine. And, for a country that is a major oil producer, it “has found itself in the unusual position of running short of fuel”. Nearly 60% of Russians think the “people around them are experiencing anxiety”, according to a July poll from the state-affiliated Public Opinion Foundation. That’s “a four-year high”. And the state-owned Sberbank reported Russians withdrawing more money from banks this summer “than in the previous six years”.

Most significantly, the Kremlin public relations machine has been forced to switch tack. Picking up on the fact that many people are “struggling and scared”, it has abandoned its old “business as usual” message for a call “to rally around President Vladimir V. Putin and his war”.

Republicans have usually claimed the faith mantle in U.S. politics. This year’s midterm elections are developing along a different path, with Democrats like James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas highlighting their religious bona fides on the campaign trail.

What did the commentators say?

“Faith is back in Democratic politics,” Jim Wallis said at Religion News Service. Democrats have often chosen to “ignore, dismiss or even discredit religion” because they did not know how to talk about such values without sounding as though they were “imposing their religion upon a pluralistic society.” But a new generation of “faith-forward” candidates is “reclaiming religion” as a “moral framework for public service.” They talk of faith “with authenticity instead of apology.” There could be broad benefits. “Faith may be our last line of defense in saving, and then restoring, our democracy.”

Democratic Socialists have received a lot of attention this campaign cycle, “but Democratic Christians may prove more influential this November,” Bill McKibben said at The New Yorker. Candidates like Talarico and Hamilton are leading a “resurgence of the once dominant and long-dormant mainline Protestant tradition” in Democratic politics. Their prominence can be seen as a response to the “right-wing evangelical hijacking of the Gospel message” and evangelicals’ embrace of Donald Trump. “Everyone should welcome a new depth to the debate.”

Other faith-centric Democrats in this year’s midterm elections include Iowa’s Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister, and Arkansas’ Robb Ryerse, an evangelical pastor. Iowa’s Rob Sand is not a pastor, but his campaign has featured messaging about “how his faith is deeply woven into his public service,” Vote Common Good’s Doug Pagitt said at The Hill.

A “sense of belonging” is important in “both religion and politics,” said Pagitt, but Republicans are “narrowing their definition of who belongs and which faith matters” with conservative Christian Nationalist rhetoric. Democrats have an opportunity to “welcome those Trump is denying.”

Democratic efforts to “reclaim God” are “unlikely to succeed” unless the party moves toward the center, Eric Teetsel said at The Washington Post. Barack Obama embraced religious rhetoric during his rise to the presidency, but once in the White House he advanced causes — abortion access, LGBT rights — that were “at odds with evangelical priorities.” Today’s progressive Christians are “not reaching out to religious voters by taking a more moderate stance” on transgender rights or euthanasia. Trump is problematic, but he has been able to “achieve reasonable policy wins consistent with a Christian understanding of the good.”

What next?

Republicans are pushing back. Democratic candidates “don’t profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ,” Iowa congressional candidate Joe Mitchell said at July’s Family Leadership Summit, per Religion News Service. Democrats also have to figure out how to speak the language of faith without alienating the large number of secular voters who make up their base, said ABC News. Achieving that balance is a “tricky road,” the University of Notre Dame’s David Campbell said to the outlet. Some candidates “do it better than others.”

Does money matter in an election?

In the US, where billions of dollars are spent each election cycle, the answer has long been a definitive yes. But in the UK, in part because of strict campaign spending limits, the jury is still out.

Now, two record-breaking donations to Reform UK totalling £72 million look set to test the theory to its limits.

Despite calls to strengthen legislation going through Parliament to include a cap on individual domestic donations, government sources insist last week’s mega-donations by two crypto-billionaires are “not being viewed inside Downing Street as a game-changing moment in this debate”, said Jack Fenwick on the BBC.

“But people across the political spectrum are now asking whether this massive injection of money will be remembered as a key moment when politics in this country changed.”

What did the commentators say?

“For all the failings of modern British politics, one virtue has largely remained,” said Lee David Evans on UnHerd: “big money plays little role in deciding our elections.”

In total £94.5 million was spent across the entire 2024 UK general election campaign, according to the Electoral Commission. By contrast, $11.6 billion is reportedly going to be spent in advertising alone for this year’s US mid-terms, said Reuters.

It would be “too defeatist (or triumphalist, depending on your perspective) to conclude that these [Reform] donations mean the next election is already over”, said Evans. But they are likely to “leave the ordinary party member feeling more irrelevant”. And if it means Britain’s political parties and politicians have to spend more time fundraising, “then our politics will have become a lot more American – and will be worse for it”.

The focus up to now has been on foreign influence, and “for good reason; it is for UK voters to choose their government”, said The Guardian. But now “ministers must look beyond the narrow question of outside interference” and find ways to limit mega-rich donors paying for “years of polling, advertising, data and staff, before election-period limits apply”.

But this is just “frothing at the mouth and gnashing of teeth”, said Ameer Kotecha, chief executive of the Centre for Government Reform, in The Spectator. There has been a “collective amnesia” from the mainstream parties, who have long received multimillion-pound donations from wealthy individuals and trade unions.

Arguments about how such donations help level the playing field for upstart parties such as Reform aside, these are “huge and potentially transformative sums for British politics”, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper. Yet Labour and the Tories have “only themselves to blame for this toxic situation after their failure to clear the stench of corruption that hangs over Westminster, despite a string of funding and lobbying scandals”.

The two parties have “tinkered at the edges of real funding and lobbying reforms” and now Reform “threatens to wash them both away with a tide of cash from a couple of billionaire crypto kings”.

People also naturally “assume that the donors are driving a bargain – that for a large donation, they expect something in return”, said former Conservative parliamentary candidate Iain Dale on LBC. “In my experience, that is not true, and most donors act philanthropically.”

The only alternative “is for the taxpayer to fund political parties through a regime set up by the state”. I do “wonder how many taxpayers would think this was a wise use of their taxes”.

What next?

Labour’s Angela Rayner has said the law to stop foreign and crypto donations will be used “retrospectively” and “backdated to 25 March” when it was announced.

But surely the “real question here is whether Labour is trying to save British democracy or itself”, said David Maddox on The Independent.

It’s a dangerous game they’re playing. “They may celebrate forcing Reform to hand back £72 million”, but if Reform were to win power “they could easily point to Labour’s actions to justify their own attempt to stop other parties receiving funding”.

Andy Burnham and his ministers “need to beware of creating a tit-for-tat scenario, which could be far worse for British politics in the long run”.

Amid stark warnings that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity by the end of the decade, the heads of the largest AI firms in the US have all backed a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to slow down development to ensure public safety. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark went even further, saying all AI software should have a mandatory “kill switch”, so society can “pull the plug” on anything that gets too dangerous.

The warnings sent both tech stocks and Donald Trump into a tailspin. The US president dismissed calls for “guard-rails” on the development of AI as a “SICK conspiracy” that would only benefit China.

What did the commentators say?

We’re long past “more mundane” warnings about AI causing job losses or cheating in exams, said BBC Tech and AI editor Zoe Kleinman. Talk now of “existential threats” to humanity has led to “a chorus of serious voices urging a slowdown”. And yet that’s “far from an easy solution” because it relies on AI companies who “haven’t been behaving responsibly enough” so far. It’s like a bull escaping a farmer’s field and wreaking havoc, leading computer scientist Wendy Hall told Kleinman. “Of course it’s not the bull’s fault – it’s the farmer.”

The problem, said AI sceptic Ed Zitron, is that “nobody has given a substantive explanation of what ‘slowdown’ means”.

Amodei’s broad-brushstroke proposals include independent monitoring of AI models as they’re developed, and global agreements on safety standards and security issues. While laudable, these are seen by many as unrealistic, given the current geopolitical landscape. “The US federal government is committed to a global AI arms race”, and “previous proposed AI legislation has wilted under intense, well-financed corporate lobbying”, said The Guardian.

And then there is China. Its state-run newspaper, Global Times, characterised Amodei’s essay as a thinly disguised effort to restrict Beijing’s tech ambitions, arguing that it was “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector”.

America “appears to be increasingly weaponising its dominance in the sector, seeing it as a strategic asset to be protected”, said CNN’s John Liu. China, which is “lagging in the race”, prefers “a more open model” but has given no indication it would mirror any US slowdown in AI development. With so much at stake, it seems neither side would be willing to back down.

What next?

Anthropic is caught in a “classic prisoner’s dilemma”, said Tim Higgins in The Wall Street Journal. If it “is the only one to heed the call, it falls behind OpenAI”; if all US AI labs follow through on a slowdown, “it could well benefit all of humanity” but this would probably see America “fall behind China”.

With both Anthropic and OpenAI planning to list on the US stock market, some have also questioned if their new-found security concerns are all they seem. “That is the IPO story in essay form: we are the responsible firm; we are the cure; buy the safety premium,” said AI entrepreneur Brian Roemmele on X. For him, these dire warnings are nothing more than a sales pitch.

The first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will meet today to affirm their right to seek independence from the UK, with SNP leader John Swinney warning Andy Burnham he “must now be facing up to the idea that he will go down in history as the final prime minister of the United Kingdom”.

In what The Telegraph called an “unprecedented summit” in Cardiff, Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth, Swinney, and Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O’Neill are expected to “put pen to paper on a joint declaration demanding the right to hold independence referendums”.

Labour was routed by Plaid at May’s local elections, the SNP maintained its dominance at Holyrood and Sinn Féin, which won Stormont elections in 2022, is widely expected to do so again when the nation votes next year.

“For the first time ever, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are led by pro-independence first ministers,” said Swinney. “There could be no clearer sign that the status quo is not sustainable – and that Westminster must prepare for a post-UK future. The momentum behind serious constitutional change is undeniable.”

What did the commentators say?

Already boosted by talk of further devolution of powers away from Westminster, two seemingly off-the-cuff interventions last week gave fresh impetus to independence movements ahead of today’s meeting. First, Burnham was forced to row back on comments at PMQs on Wednesday when he suggested he would authorise another Scottish referendum if there were a “clear consensus” in favour of one, wrongly stating that the trigger for a separation vote was “exactly the same situation in Scotland” as Northern Ireland, where the Good Friday Agreement provides for a referendum on Irish unity when there is evidence that a majority would support it.

“Burnham has not read his brief and doesn’t seem to know the basics of the UK Government’s position on the Union,” a source close to Swinney said. “If I was a Unionist I would be very worried.”

Then there were Donald Trump’s comments on Saturday, when he said he would “love” to see a united Ireland, and called the idea of reunification “fantastic”. In so doing, the US president “cast aside decades of White House neutrality”, leading “officials on both sides of the dispute” scrambling to “tamp down the fallout, leverage it or just make sense of Trump’s latest diplomatic curveball”, said Steve Hendrix in the Washington Post.

Trump’s remarks may have been quickly dismissed by No. 10, but they matter because they “potentially change how political actors calculate what can be demanded, defended or negotiated”, said Grace Russo Bullaro on VNY: La Voce di New York, a US Italian English news site.

And in a UK “already arguing over who has the right to determine its constitutional future, his finger on the scale can bear consequences”.

What next?

The legal significance of the so-called Cardiff initiative “lies in the contrast between a shared political claim and three different constitutional positions”, said Edmarverson A. Santos on Diplomacy and Law. “Self-determination, legislative authority to hold a referendum, and a legal entitlement to secede are separate questions.” Scotland and Wales currently require consent from Westminster, while Northern Ireland already has a consent-based mechanism governing the possibility of Irish unity contained in the Good Friday Agreement. “That distinction is essential to understanding what claims of a ‘right to decide’ mean in legal rather than purely political terms.”

Latest polling suggests only around a third of voters in Northern Ireland would currently back reunification, with a similar percentage in Wales supporting independence. Support for Scottish independence is stronger, hovering around half of decided voters. In all three cases, however, support is substantially higher among those aged 45 and under, meaning time is on the side of those seeking the break-up of the UK.

“There seems to always be a troubling aura of delusion and ignorance when it comes to Unionists,” said Steph Brawn in The National. But “whichever way Burnham looks, he should be on edge about a UK that is falling apart around him”.

Twenty-five years on from the most deadly terrorist attack in history, and almost 25 years into the War on Terror, “the world is a less safe place despite our actions”, said Iraq veteran Joslin Joseph on The Hill.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions after 9/11 led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion (£5.9 trillion). “Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure”, said The American Conservative’s David Brady, while “most Americans believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake”. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: “They lied,” he said of the War on Terror architects in 2016.

But while “there is much to criticise in the war on terrorism,” said Douglas J. Feith in The Washington Post, on its main objective “the success has been remarkable”. There has been no second 9/11. “Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums and power plants across the country” and “they have not transformed America into a police state.”

What did the commentators say?

“Hasn’t Osama Bin Laden gotten everything he wished for?” asked The American Conservative’s Brady. The financial costs “have taken an undeniable economic toll, fuelling unprecedented levels of debt” while the “human costs have soured many Americans, not just on Mideast wars, but on the elites who got us into them”. Syria is even “run by a former member of al-Qaida, who has been welcomed to the White House”.

But the “most costly single event to the US would have been another successful major attack”, said The Guardian’s Jason Burke. The fact that this never came is an “unarguable success of US policymaking since 9/11 and a major failure for al-Qaida”. And despite the obvious economic problems in the US, “no one could argue that the country has suffered a similar fate to the USSR”.

The terrorist group that Bin Laden headed up, meanwhile, faces the question of whether it can replace its ageing fighters. Although this is conceivable, al-Qaida as a brand is “visibly fading”, terrorism expert Behnam Heidenreuter-Said, head of the research centre for Strategic Police Research at Hamburg Police Academy, told Deutsche Welle. In Europe in particular, militant jihadism has become less attractive.

Some analysts “add together the presumed strength of groups in Somalia or Mali that have very loose, historic links to al-Qaida, and warn that their total membership is higher than those loyal to Bin Laden in 2001”, said The Guardian’s Burke. However, “these few thousand young men with AK-47s have little in common with the organisation Bin Laden led 25 years ago, both in aims and capabilities”. The fact that al-Qaida “still exists is an achievement of sorts for the group and, posthumously, for its founder”. But “it should not be described as any victory”.

What next?

A key lesson of 9/11 is that “perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself”, said The Washington Post’s Feith.

But America and the West are again under attack, this time “from a Cold War enemy” in Russia “that watched the US and its allies waste lakes of blood and trillions in treasure enfeebling themselves after 9/11”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley.

The West is now “spiritually and politically impoverished, deeply indebted and unable to meet new defence needs, and therefore vulnerable”. Vladimir Putin “has Bin Laden to thank for that”.

Ukraine’s air defences are “dwindling” and Vladimir Putin is “planning to make the most of it”, said international relations expert Rajan Menon in The New York Times. While Russia might be suffering an estimated 30,000 casualties a month and is struggling to replenish its troops, its president appears “adamant he will pay whatever price – human or financial – necessary to win”.

Last week Donald Trump sent his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for talks with Putin. Then on Sunday they travelled to Ukraine for the first time to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who announced plans to widen peace discussions. The Ukrainian president agreed that he wanted to resume trilateral negotiations with the US and Russia in September, amid mounting civilian casualties and intensifying Russian strikes.

But afterwards, senior Kremlin officials “doubled down on Putin’s demands for Ukrainian capitulation”, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, claimed the situation “worsens each day” for Ukraine.

What did the commentators say?

This year has brought “a series of Ukrainian successes that led many to believe Kyiv may have regained the initiative”, said Miro Sedlák on the Atlantic Council. But the “technological gap” between Russia and Ukraine is narrowing, “dramatically reducing” the chances of battlefield breakthroughs. Zelenskyy’s dismissal of his “tech-savvy” former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked “widespread dismay” in Ukraine, while many Russian commentators “cheered the news”.

Ukraine has run out of Patriot missile interceptors, said Menon in The New York Times. Russia is gearing up for “massive strikes” on Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter, aiming to “break morale” and increase pressure on Zelenskyy to “seek a deal”.

Ukraine’s drone strikes are still “inflicting pain on some of the most strategic sectors of the Russian economy”, said Alexander Osipovich in The Wall Street Journal, especially on oil refineries, leading to fuel shortages. “The costs are adding up.”

Ukrainian air strikes are “bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public”, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. But does “out-of-touch” Putin even realise? He doesn’t use a smartphone or the internet, and relies on “inner circle apparatchiks” and loyalists telling him what he wants to hear. He’s likely to “double down” by becoming more aggressive and expanding the war beyond Ukraine, intensifying “hybrid warfare operations across Europe”, than to sue for peace.

Putin’s understanding of the war is “severely distorted by the Russian military’s systematic lying”, which is emboldening him to insist on “his maximalist demands”, said the ISW.

And if Putin cared about the Russian economy, he wouldn’t have launched the invasion in the first place, said Owen Matthews in The Spectator.

He remains “determined” to keep fighting and Trump has “no new plan for peace” other than letting the war end on Putin’s terms. Zelenskyy is “deluded about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia”, and about stopping Moscow’s “slow but relentless advances” and its “ruthless campaign to render Ukraine’s cities unliveable”.

Western sanctions on Russia have “basically failed” because of the West’s “hunger” for its cheap oil and gas. Russia is “stepping up” its defence capacity, while Ukraine’s allies in Europe are also “prioritising their own defence”. Ukraine is heading into “the hardest and most punishing winter of war”, and it’s about to run out of missiles, men and money.

What next?

There are signs that Europe’s “political taboo” on talking to Putin is cracking, said Matthews in The Spectator. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the pro-Russia AfD in Germany, has called for “an open channel to Russia” to reach “an understanding and achieve a peaceful solution”. Putin’s intention seems to be to give Ukraine “a brutal final kicking” before settling the war “on his terms”.

He may try to freeze the conflict while reorganising and re-arming, said Tisdall in The Guardian, or he could accept Zelenskyy’s ceasefire offer “without sincerely committing to a lasting settlement”. But a ceasefire without “cast-iron, pre-agreed security guarantees” could leave Ukraine more, not less, “vulnerable to renewed aggression”.

After the Russian parliamentary elections from 18-20 September “we’ll see whether Putin is going to throw the kitchen sink at this wall to finish it, in his view, once and for all”, said Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke.

“The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.”

With these words, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has delivered the “biggest reset in UK relations with Israel for decades”, said The New Statesman political editor Ailbhe Rea.

His decision to introduce a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not without “political risk”, but it marks a determination to “inject values and politics into British foreign policy” that many at home and abroad feel has been lacking for years.

What did the commentators say?

“Ethnic cleansing” and “forced displacement” are often seen as acts of genocide, a word Miliband was careful not to use, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley. In this context, sanctions against settlers seem “disproportionately low and leave the State of Israel off the hook”, but the “effects of the new British legislation will be felt far more widely”.

Israel has reacted strongly and swiftly by announcing four “counter-measures” against the UK, including the closure of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, and the denial of entry to Israel to 12 “British elected representatives and other British nationals involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity”. Among these are former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, also hit back on X with: “The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts”.

With this announcement, Britain “risks moving from being a country capable of connecting Israel, the Gulf, Washington and Europe to one whose positions are increasingly predictable but whose involvement is decreasingly necessary”, said Labour peer Jon Mendelsohn in The Spectator. This could result in a “remarkable loss of influence in pursuit of policies which have yet to demonstrate that they have made peace, Palestinian statehood, regional security, the safety of British Jews or Britain’s national interests more attainable”.

Miliband will hope his Jewish heritage – his mother was a Holocaust survivor who fled to Israel – and “staunch support of Israel’s right to exist will reassure the Americans”, and he “emphasises the difference” between targeted West Bank sanctions and the full boycott of all Israeli goods which Miliband himself opposes, said Rea.

What next?

Aside from the heavily signposted but underreported impact that West Bank sanctions will have on Palestinians living there “there are other potential prices to pay for this muddled gesture,” said The Times View. Not least, in next month’s crucial Israeli general election where a “siege mentality could rear its head, propelling more hardliners into power”. Were this to happen, the current feel-good mood created by joint UK, French and Canadian sanctions could prove “hugely counterproductive”.

Still, Miliband shows no signs of backing down, and intends to use the UN General Assembly later this month to shine the “clearest and harshest spotlight on what is happening and what must change” in Gaza, he told the Commons.

Those who have long claimed the UK has no influence on the world stage are “missing what’s happening”, said former foreign office special advisor Ben Judah on X. By pulling together CANZUK countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK) with EU members and their associates into these “issue coalitions of non-US led Westerners”, the UK has “found a role and an influential one, partially as a consequence of America abandoning hers”.

“This move against the Israeli settlement project to attempt to protect the possibility of a two-state solution from an extremist Israeli government is a continuation of this geopolitics.”