“Seinfeld,” “The Office,” “Family Guy” — what do they 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”.

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.”

Donald Trump suggested last week that the US might reconsider its tacit support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in retaliation for the UK’s failure to support him in the Iran war. The US president implied that he would not support the UK in a territorial dispute with Argentina.

Soon after, in a televised address, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, said he would reopen the country’s claim to the islands it calls las Malvinas, declaring that the geopolitical “winds of change” would favour Buenos Aires. He proposed a “handover” of the islands akin to the transfer of Hong Kong to China, dismissing Britain as a country “in decline”.

What did the commentators say?

During the Falklands War in 1982, Margaret Thatcher had “the solid backing of the special relationship, and her ideological soulmate, Ronald Reagan, in the White House”, said Robert Tait, The Guardian’s US political correspondent. But Andy Burnham “must contend with the chill wind emanating from the menacing and destabilising presence of Trump”.

The US president’s “vindictive mindset” is to Milei’s advantage and “was almost entirely the trigger” for his address; the Argentinian president is trying to counter his own “falling political popularity”. Indeed, the same factor “may have played a key role” in the military junta’s decision to invade the Falklands in 1982.

But there’s no suggestion that Argentina would “dream of repeating” that “disastrous” decision, which led to the death of 907 sailors and soldiers, said The Economist. Milei “appears uncompromising” but, in truth, he knows forcing any change in status for the Falklands is a “tall order”. In a 2013 referendum with a turnout of more than 90%, all but three of 1,517 islanders voted to remain a British Overseas Territory .

Milei claims “this territory is ours”, but he wants to reach a “consensus solution” over the future status of the islands, similar to Britain’s agreement with China to cede control of Hong Kong. There are “risks to stirring up fresh confrontation”: Britain could block the sale of weapons containing British parts to Argentina, or influence how the International Monetary Fund “deals with” Milei’s struggling government. Milei may simply be trying to “shore up the more conservative parts of his base” ahead of elections next year. “Amping up his rhetoric” is less a show of strength than a reflection of Milei’s weakening domestic position.

In the event of a conflict, even a deployment of “two destroyers and three or four frigates” would be a “stretch” for the Royal Navy, said Lewis Page in The Telegraph. However, the UK’s aircraft carrier capability would be “completely dominant against Argentina”. Their forces are “even more run down than ours”.

While the UK could not sustain an aircraft carrier presence “indefinitely”, we could “dominate the skies over the Falklands for long enough to mount a campaign there”. And, unlike in 1982, the Falklands are “at least somewhat garrisoned”, which would be a “serious problem for a renewed Argentinian invasion”.

What next?

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said British support for the Falkland Islanders’ right to determine their own future was “unwavering”.

However, as part of a “furious backlash” to the UK’s plans to sanction Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israel is now calling for sanctions on Britain over the Falklands, said The Independent. Far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the islands as “Argentine territory under occupation”. Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, took aim at what he called Britain’s “hypocrisy and hostility towards Israel”, saying Israel would only “stop recognising the Malvinas” once Britain stops “recognising Palestine”.

Plans for large-scale oil production around the Falklands “raise the economic stakes”, said Al Jazeera. Milei declared that the Sea Lion deep-sea oil project, a joint UK-Israel operation due to begin production in 2028, was a “clear and present danger” to Argentinian interests. Argentina has threatened to file criminal charges against Israeli energy company Navitas Petroleum and its executives, claiming they have violated Argentinian law by holding UK-issued exploration and exploitation licences.

John Healey has said Britain’s economy is finally “turning a corner” as he set out his mission to “make Great Britain growth Britain” again.

In his first major speech as chancellor, Healey sought to reassure the markets by pledging to stick to Labour’s tax and spend fiscal rules, while trying to present a more optimistic view of Britain’s economic prospects. But only days ago a global bond sell-off saw UK yields hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crash, further increasing the cost of borrowing for the UK government.

But Healey “begins with a credibility problem that is not entirely of his own making”, said Simon French in The Sunday Times. He is the eighth chancellor in 10 years, so many businesses, households and investors are “fatigued and sceptical” about yet another new vision for growth.

What did the commentators say?

“A glance at the news could easily reinforce the gloomy impression” that the UK economy is in dire straits, but some key indicators are “telling a more cheerful story – one of growth”, said James Moore in The i Paper.

There is a “surprising level of optimism” among businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors, with overall GDP growth expected to beat Bank of England forecasts for the third quarter, boosted by warm weather and the men’s football World Cup. The data shows “that UK plc is more resilient than anyone really expected in the face of the strong headwinds that it is battling against”.

There are tentative signs that “consumer confidence has also improved”, said Delphine Strauss in the Financial Times. Private new car registrations are up by almost a fifth compared to last summer, while earlier figures from the Bank of England show growth in consumer credit.

UK recruiters also saw hiring pick up in August for the first time in four years. It adds to “evidence that the UK’s weak jobs market was stabilising and business and consumer confidence were improving – albeit from a low base – before a renewed rise in gas prices and sovereign bond yields that again threatens to hold back the economy”.

Most members of the public who describe the economy as broken “put its condition down to poor political priorities rather than to other reasons, such as global shocks, immigration or failings on the part of individual citizens (such as not working hard enough)”, said Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman.

Andy Burnham and his chancellor are constrained by costly rising debt – interest on debt costs more than the defence, Home Office and justice departments combined – rigid fiscal rules, and Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise the three main taxes. But they need to find a way to pay for their ambitious policy platform “that commands the confidence of markets – and a public more and more convinced that the economy is broken by design”.

What next?

While the underlying numbers look positive, were the Bank of England to raise interest rates later this month, or Healey to announce tax rises in the Budget at the end of October, things could turn sour very quickly.

For now, the chancellor is trying to strike a more upbeat tone than his predecessor. After the equivalent speech in the last two years since Labour returned to power, the public has been “left with a clear message of tough times, and significant tax rises ahead”, said the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam. Today was different.

The chancellor is “trying to nurture some fragile early signs that confidence is returning” but “the burning question is how to fill multi-billion gaps in public finance plans before the Budget, in a way that minimises the economic impact.

“While vibes are important, policy matters more.”

“We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt?” What would Edmund Blackadder think to see Emmanuel Macron and King Charles cosying up in front of the Bayeux Tapestry?

The tapestry, as Andy Burnham said at its unveiling at the British Museum this week “shows a new leader emerging from a northern territory, travelling to the south of England in search of the crown. Something clearly that couldn’t happen today.”

Macron has now become the first EU leader to visit Burnham at No. 10. This week of renewed bonhomie between the British and the French comes as Donald Trump’s America “is threatening to leave Europe to fend for itself”, said The Economist. So that might be one reason why France is “being so nice to Britain”.

What did the commentators say?

Another reason for this French “love-bombing”, as The Economist put it, is that “it costs France very little and buys it so much”, said the UK’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost in The Telegraph.

Much of the British establishment loves this kind of thing and it does so “because it sees diplomacy primarily as a matter of personal relationships and symbolism”. But that belief “generates the besetting sin of British diplomacy: the wish to be liked rather than respected” and sadly “nowhere is that truer than with France”.

But “in these fractured times, the enduring appeal of this 11th-century artefact speaks of a need for a national story”, said The Guardian. The Bayeux Tapestry is a “devastatingly human saga” and, with war raging in Europe, “this medieval masterpiece is a reminder of conflict’s brutality, human suffering and the importance of collaboration between countries”.

Indeed Macron himself “played an instrumental role over nearly a decade in pushing for the tapestry loan”, said France24, and it “is viewed as another step towards healing the rancour of the Brexit years”.

On a political level there is “no shortage of common ground” between Burnham and Macron, said Le Monde, “particularly regarding their policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East”. The French president praised Burnham's recent trip to Kyiv, but also highlighted that, while Paris and London “collaborate in vital areas such as defence, nuclear energy, space or artificial intelligence”, they “do not always agree on everything”.

What Macron “seems to be saying is that despite Brexit, despite Donald Trump, or perhaps because of both, France and Britain need to stick together now”, said The Economist.

A new Charles De Gaulle biopic “not only evokes nostalgia for an age of unimaginable bravery” but “also speaks to modern worries about national sovereignty, dependence and democratic values”. The film “carries another message too”: that “the dark forces of nationalism can be beaten”. With Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage on the rise, the new-found affection from Macron could signify that “this battle is yet another that Britain and France are in together”.

But “what did the love-in between Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron actually achieve?” said The Sun. “For a start, don’t expect the small boats to stop any time soon” as it remains in “France’s interest to let migrants set sail and wait for British border forces to rescue them – especially as we pay £1 billion for the privilege”. And Burnham was “gushing over France’s role in another terrible idea: helping him achieve closer ties to the EU”.

What next?

“To move forward on all these issues and put the entente amicale to the test,” said Le Monde. A French-British summit is due to take place later this year, Burnham confirmed, but he did not give a date.

Zack Polanski will need to reverse his party’s faltering fortunes if he is to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election created by Keir Starmer’s decision to leave Westminster.

Membership of the Greens has more than tripled since Polanski was elected leader almost exactly a year ago and they won their first Westminster by-election in Gorton and Denton in February. Now the leader has said he wants to stand in the vote to replace former PM Starmer in the London constituency and become his party’s sixth MP.

But the Greens have also been dogged by accusations of antisemitism, while Polanski has been criticised for a series of gaffes. There have been questions over his tax affairs, his “inflated CV and ever-presence on social media”, said Pieter Snepvangers in The Telegraph.

What did the commentators say?

Polanski’s likely candidacy “makes what was expected to be a Labour hold into a much more interesting race, with Green activists already flooding [the] constituency”, said The Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar on X.

With Andy Burnham riding a wave of optimism as the new prime minister, the Green Party’s popularity has “plunged to its lowest level ever recorded”, said Snepvangers. A YouGov poll carried out in July put its net approval rating at -23, down 28 points from last August. A majority of the public (56%) has a negative view, up from 39%.

Polanski is “easy to dislike”, said Eliot Wilson in City A.M.: there is something “preposterous and confected about him”. He demonstrates “armour-plated self-belief”, even when he’s declaring “the most implausible silliness”.

But many voters still “like what they’ve heard”. And party leaders compete now not to be the most popular, but to be the least unpopular – Polanski is far less unpopular than Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage. But “the party’s position has begun to slide” and its policy platform is “uncompromising yet unrealistic”. The question now is: “How is the Green Party to stop this leakage?”

To be fair, a fifth of the country still likes Polanski, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman. But “a lot more people now feel negatively towards him”, especially voters over 35. “This may not be down to any missteps on his part. Rather, the Greens may have just reached their natural ceiling.” But the prospect of winning power “looks far away”.

True, the “unexpected resurgence of hope” in the Labour Party poses “an unmistakable threat” to Polanski, who previously “had a virtual monopoly on such things”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Newcomers to the Green Party are now “squarely in Burnham’s sights” as he apologises for the way Starmer handled the Gaza war. But it would be “ridiculous” to assume “this Labour honeymoon can last”. With the Greens “unconstrained by the realities of government”, they will have “the freedom to say whatever Labour won’t”. That could “easily become a powerful weapon”.

At the 2024 general election, the Green candidate came third in Holborn and St Pancras, nearly doubling the party’s vote share in 2019. Meanwhile, Labour’s majority fell dramatically. Hence the “immediate pressure” on Polanski to stand, said John Rentoul in The Independent. I expect Labour will hold it, provided they choose a “solid candidate” – it is “by no means” a safe seat. But Burnham has “calmed the anti-politics rage a little, and I think Polanski will fail to catch the wave at the right moment”.

What next?

Polanski is now under pressure from Green activists to “take more radical left-wing stances to halt the rising popularity of Labour”, said Aubrey Allegretti in The Times. Animah Kosai, a member of the Green Party Council, has tabled a motion to be debated at the Greens’ conference in October. It urges the party to “embrace more enthusiastically the kind of radical policies which excite activists”, said Wilson in City A.M., including the pledge to introduce a wealth tax and attacking Labour for the sale of arms to Israel.

Holborn and St Pancras “has long been a Labour stronghold” and Labour “will throw everything at defending it”, said The Guardian’s Crerar. In the way Makerfield was Burnham’s proof of concept that he could beat Reform, “Holborn and St Pancras will be his test that he can win back progressive voters to the Labour fold”.

Two top-level summits held simultaneously this week offered contrasting visions for the world and who will lead it in the coming years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed world leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Indian PM Narendra Modi, and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, presenting Beijing as a driver of stability and champion of an “orderly multipolar world”.

Meanwhile, 6,826 miles away at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina, the mood could not have been more different. Western finance ministers expressed outrage at the Trump administration’s decision to invite Russia. There was anger at the US’s ongoing trade spat with Canada, Trump’s decision to punish South Korea and, of course, the continuing economic fallout from his war against Iran.

What did the commentators say?

If the Bishkek summit was “designed to project solidarity”, then the G20 gathering “offered an image of fracture”, said David Pierson for The New York Times.

China is using ever-closer ties with Russia and Iran, which are both at war with the West, to “project its influence”, at the same time as the US is “straining the alliances and economic relationships that have underpinned decades of global leadership”.

“China’s theory of the case for bending the international political order in its preferred direction is to amass support from the ‘global majority,’” said Ryan Hass, a former White House national security official now at the Brookings Institution think tank. Xi’s role as lead convener “builds a narrative around China gaining momentum in building support for playing a more central role on the world stage”.

This shows that the “emerging global order is not simply dividing into two fixed camps”, with countries such as India “maintaining relationships with competing powers while pursuing their own strategic interests”, said Business Insider Africa. That is why Xi has also sought to build bridges with the West, hosting the leaders of Germany, Britain and Canada this year, as long-standing allies turn away from the US under Trump.

The world’s two leading economies are “uneasily preoccupied with their trajectory these days”, said Evan Osnos in a recent New Yorker article entitled “The future, made in China”. China is “eager to restore its historical eminence”, but, in a sign the centre of global politics may be shifting, having long “looked West for visions of the future”, nowadays “it favours its own”.

What next?

China’s show of strength, on display not only in Bishkek but also in Asheville where it blocked a G20 joint statement, comes ahead of a crunch meeting between Xi and Trump in Washington DC later this month.

With China now viewed more positively than the US in the majority of 36 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center, Xi could do worse than acknowledge the assessment by Beijing’s Renmin University when meeting the famously vain US president.

Entitled “Thank Trump”, it hailed his efforts to hasten the “twilight of an empire” by undermining America’s international alliances, its institutions at home and credibility abroad, said The Economist.

Observers have long feared Russia’s war against Ukraine will expand to the rest of Europe. The concerns are rising. Moscow has reportedly backed a rise in so-called hybrid sabotage attacks on European targets, as CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Russia last week to warn the Kremlin against attacks on NATO.

What did the commentators say?

Authorities have linked Russia to a growing number of “drone incursions, acts of sabotage, cyberattacks” and other hostile “gray zone” acts in Europe, said The Wall Street Journal. The incidents include several discoveries of explosive drones at or near a German airport — a sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have a “rising appetite for risk” as he seeks to sow divisions among Ukraine’s continental allies.

Hybrid attacks fall short of provoking open conflict. But the frequency has increased to the point that Russia’s hybrid war in Europe is “starting to look a lot less hybrid,” said Politico.

The attacks “require a more concerted response” than Europe has mounted so far, said Bloomberg. It is easy to treat hybrid attacks as a “problem to be managed” because they are “small-scale, deniable and rarely lethal.” Ukraine’s European allies must “demonstrate that attacks come with costs,” with more layered defenses against drone incursions and aggressive action against Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers that transport black-market oil. Russia does not want to “take on NATO outright,” but it is “testing how much the alliance will tolerate.”

Putin now has a choice. The Russian leader can keep the hybrid attacks “below an open assault” that would trigger a NATO response, said David Ignatius at The Washington Post. Or he can “take a harder punch” to see if President Donald Trump will keep the U.S.’s defense commitment to Europe or have the alliance “exposed as a paper tiger.” The war “risks leaping any remaining guardrails” as Ukraine and Russia continue to trade blows. “Where’s the de-escalation button?”

What next?

Analysts suspect Putin has given up hope that Trump “might be able to coerce Ukraine” into surrender, said CBC News. Russia’s leader may turn instead to “expanding the conflict” to conclude the nearly five-year-old war.

Some military think tanks have warned Russia could stage “some kind of provocation in Eastern Europe” to divide the NATO alliance and its support of Ukraine, said CBC News. That could include an attempt to “seize a slice of Russian-speaking territory in a neighboring country” to see how NATO might respond. The latter concern was reportedly behind Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow. The administration decided to “read the Russians the riot act,” said Glen Howard, of the Saratoga Foundation, to the outlet.

Other European officials are skeptical that Putin can expand the war. Russia is “bogged down” in Ukraine and “doesn’t have capabilities to challenge NATO” in a conventional conflict, said Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze on “PBS NewsHour.” But attacks below the level of outright war will likely continue. “We all need to be ready.”

For three and a half months, Andy Burnham has been “in campaign mode”, said The Telegraph. He fought and won the Makerfield by-election, “ousted” Keir Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister, and “spent the summer seeking to establish his credentials for the job”. He has been in No. 10 for 42 days without facing the Commons: longer than any prime minister in British history.

But today, “the honeymoon is over”. Parliament reconvenes after the summer recess, and Burnham and his newly formed government face MPs in the House of Commons. Time for him to “stop campaigning and start governing”.

What did the commentators say?

If there’s one thing Burnham’s “friends and enemies can agree on”, it’s that he’s a “nice guy”, said Martin Ivens in Bloomberg. “Niceness is a bankable political asset.” But some allege he’s “too nice: a political chameleon who likes to be liked, lacking the backbone to confront either his party or the voters with uncomfortable truths”.

Burnham’s team denies such charges, saying he will set out a more comprehensive 10-year plan later this year, said Jim Pickard for the Financial Times. But in at least seven areas, Burnham has already “backed away from his original position”. And on vital matters like welfare cuts and increased defence spending, Burnham seems to have inherited Starmer’s “vice of ducking hard decisions”, said The Times editorial board. No fool, he knows that “spiralling working-age health benefits” and the triple lock state pension are “unsustainable”. But he’s “kicked the can down the road” with a Starmer-style “flimsy alibi”: two “interminable reviews”. Burnham is shaping up to be a “new compère for an old and recognisable show”.

So far the public is responding well to Burnham’s “humanity and emotion”, said Isabel Hardman in The i Paper. But this also could be his downfall. To prevent the killers of PC Andrew Harper from being eligible for the early release prisoner scheme, Burnham tweaked the criteria to exclude anyone convicted of manslaughter. Of course politics “should be conducted with humanity and empathy”, but the PM “simply cannot respond with emotion” to all victims, especially given the “profound” consequences for our overcrowded prisons. How will he bear the “roar of thousands of campaigns” and grieving loved ones on other issues?

Don’t underestimate the “importance of sentiment in economics”, said John Rentoul, The Independent’s chief political commentator. Starmer and Reeves failed to grasp that: they overdid “the doom and gloom” before their first Budget, and “allowed the dead weight of negative speculation” about their second to “gain its own momentum, dragging the economy down”.

Burnham and Chancellor John Healey – “Dr Feelgood and his cheerful sidekick” – seem to understand this, and are downplaying the upcoming Budget accordingly. Consumer and business confidence are rising, and (despite the Iran war) there is “no pressing need yet for immediate tax rises”. “Easy to dismiss as ‘just vibes’, the optimism of the new administration matters.”

What next?

Today Burnham will “signal fresh measures to help voters with the cost of living”, said the Financial Times, “drawing a clear dividing line” with the newly reshuffled Conservatives, whose leader he will face at Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow.

Ultimately, Burnham will be called to take “decisive action” on the economy, said The Times. Britain’s national debt is almost £3 trillion: equivalent to about 94% of GDP, and costing more than £100 billion a year in interest to service, and this “mountainous liability must be tackled”. In the end, said The Telegraph, Burnham will be forced to make decisions that “will make him unpopular among potentially large swathes of the population”.

Andy Burnham’s plan to impose tougher sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank risks becoming “a de facto boycott of all of Israel”, a group of Labour MPs and peers has warned.

The Times reported the PM wants to take a more “robust” approach when dealing with Israel than his predecessor, Keir Starmer, with a senior government source saying he is expected to approve plans for a trade ban and the sanctioning of individuals involved in settlement activity.

It comes after the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, said Israeli plans to open tenders for the controversial E1 settlement east of Jerusalem would effectively cut the West Bank in two and destroy any hope of a two-state solution.

What did the commentators say?

Having already pledged sanctions against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over plans to build thousands of new settlement homes, a trade embargo would “risk further harming relations, which have already deteriorated” since Burnham took office, The Telegraph’s senior political correspondent Dominic Penna said.

UK officials warn that a ban would bring “significant practical difficulties”, The Times reported. “Distinguishing between goods from the settlements and goods from Israel would be challenging” while a ban on services would be “impractical”. There is a risk that “legitimate” Israeli businesses “would be hit by the ban” which risks “undermining trade with Israel more broadly”. There are also concerns Palestinian businesses in occupied territories could be hit by the sanctions.

That may be true, but having apologised for Labour’s response to Gaza, Burnham “must ban settlement trade” to show he “meant it”, said Ismail Patel in Middle East Eye.

Unlike Ireland, which outlawed settlement imports in late July, Britain merely labels settlement goods, “a policy that acknowledges they come from stolen land while inviting shoppers to buy them anyway”.

According to The House of Commons Library, UK trade with the occupied Palestinian territories was worth around £38m in 2025, compared with total UK trade of around £1.95 trillion.

The UK, by contrast, is a “tremendously important” trading partner for Israel, said Jo-Ann Mort in Prospect, meaning if the British government really wanted to intervene, “it has weight” and “leverage available”.

What next?

Around a third of Labour MPs have signed a letter calling for a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements, with supporters also preparing a motion at Labour’s annual conference next month.

The PM is expected to set out steps to introduce a trade embargo before then “as he looks to avoid the issue overshadowing his first party conference as leader”, said the Daily Mail.

But the move still risks splitting the party.

Labour Friends of Israel, which includes senior Labour MPs and peers, said it “strongly opposes” the Israeli settlements and supported “calibrated steps against extremist settlers and extremist settler groups”. But, it added, “a boycott of trade with settlements is practically impossible and will become a de facto boycott of all of Israel, which would be deeply damaging to the UK national interest, the British Jewish community and Palestinian workers”.

A significant drought in Panama caused by the El Niño weather pattern has forced the Central American country to slash the number of vessels it lets through its major canal. And the reduced flow of goods through one of the world’s most consequential shipping lanes could create a ripple effect that shakes the world’s economy.

What did the commentators say?

Starting on Sept. 15, the Panama Canal Authority will let 32 ships pass through the canal’s locks daily, a drop from the 36 it currently allows. While a decrease of just four ships per day may not sound significant, it represents a major change for a “critical chokepoint that moves about 5% of the world’s shipping,” said CNN. The United States is the “canal’s biggest user — about 70% of all the goods moving through it are coming to or going from the U.S.”

These reductions are necessary because the Panama Canal “relies on fresh water to operate its locks and has had less rain than normal” in recent years, said the Financial Times. The coming El Niño, when “surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise, potentially causing severe drought and warmer winters, could be one of the most intense ever.” And for Panama, the “result is a wet season that’s already been drier than usual and is likely to get worse,” said CNN, possibly causing a massive shortage of freshwater in the canal.”

This shift in the number of vessels could result in higher prices for consumers in the U.S. and globally, experts say. While some ships “may wait to transit to avoid the higher fees, those carrying more time-sensitive cargo are likely to take the plunge and pay the steep transit prices, driving up the price of those goods,” said CNN. One notable example: the pharmaceutical ingredients in Tylenol and certain prescription drugs, which “come, in large part, from China and are believed to transit through the Panama Canal to the U.S. East Coast,” said Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to CNN.

Others are not convinced the change will have much impact on prices, especially in the United States. There is only a “small chance that cargo owners, pressed by paying more for shipping and other costs, will pass on this increase to customers,” Simon Heaney, a senior manager at the Drewry shipping research and consultancy firm, told Newsweek — especially since global shipping has already “been upended for months by the U.S.’ war with Iran,” said the outlet.

What next?

The shipping reductions are just the Panama Canal’s latest in a line of “other water conservation measures, such as lowering the maximum draft — the vessel’s depth in the water — for the largest ships,” said The Guardian. But the canal itself could also turn into a hindrance for vessels, as officials said that with the “upcoming reduction, waiting times for ships trying to get through without making a reservation beforehand will increase.”

In the meantime, shipping companies have already been “preparing for possible disruptions in the 110-year-old canal,” said the Financial Times, with many taking drastic measures to get ahead of the cuts. For ships that don’t make reservations to pass through the canal, officials typically issue several extra slots through an auction; at least one large ship “paid a staggering $4 million to fast-track its trip,” said CNN, leaving “others, either unwilling or unable to shell out that kind of sum, in maritime limbo.”

The UK’s productivity, which measures the economic output of each worker per hour, has been dismal since the financial crisis of 2008. But new research suggests Britain’s economy has enjoyed a hidden productivity boom over the past two years.

Productivity has been growing by 1.1% per year since late 2024 – far above the official 0.2% estimate by the Office for National Statistics – according to the Resolution Foundation. The think tank analysed payroll data from HMRC and tax returns from the self-employed, arguing that this gives a more accurate representation of the workforce than the much-criticised Labour Force Survey the ONS uses.

The proportion of people responding to the ONS survey has collapsed since the pandemic, so experts say it has overestimated the increase in worker numbers. So productivity growth has been “respectable” and not as “dismal” as the ONS’ “flawed” measurements suggest, said the Resolution Foundation.

What did the commentators say?

“Britain’s dismal productivity record since the global financial crisis explains a lot of its economic stagnation and weak living standards growth,” said Simon Pittaway, the think tank’s principal economist. But contrary to official figures, our “more accurate productivity measure” suggests the output of workers has been “improving” since 2024.

Explanations include the introduction of AI into sectors like IT and financial services is “boosting output per hour”, said Mehreen Khan, economics editor at The Times. Increases in employment taxes might also have “forced firms to rein back on hiring”, leading to job cuts in low-pay sectors such as hospitality and retail, meaning the average worker appears more productive.

“But neither explanation is borne out by the data,” said Pittaway. The share of the workforce employed in hospitality is not lower than it was in the late 2010s, and AI is more widespread across different sectors of the economy. “Instead, the UK’s productivity recovery has been achieved by the same workers, doing the same jobs, and working in the same sectors.”

In May, economists at the London School of Economics also combined HMRC’s payroll and self-employment information with the ONS’ annual figures for an even brighter estimate. Since Labour was elected in 2024, annual productivity growth has run at about 1.6% – a “remarkable turnaround to our key barometer of material wellbeing”, said LSE professor John Van Reenen, who was chief economic adviser to former chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Despite the “toxic economic and fiscal legacy” the government inherited, and “the headwinds” caused by Donald Trump’s trade wars, Reeves’ strategy of fiscal stability and investment has “started to deliver results”. We might also be witnessing “the first macro-economic flowers of the AI boom”.

However, said Sam Fleming and Amy Borrett in the Financial Times, economists “differ sharply over the relevance of the AI narrative at this stage given the patchy nature of the evidence”. The sectors that registered the biggest uptick in productivity included accommodation, wholesale and retail, which aren’t “leading adopters of AI”.

Still, recent reports are painting a “relatively optimistic picture”, said The Guardian’s economics editor, Heather Stewart. The UK was the joint fastest-growing economy in the G7 in the first half of this year, while consumer confidence rose to a two-year high this month. The economy may finally be emerging from “the long shadow” of the financial crisis.

The UK is now in “an OK place”, said Morgan Stanley’s chief UK economist, Bruna Skarica. That’s true of “the top end” of Britain’s economy, said Mihir Sharma on Bloomberg, but “the bottom is struggling”.

Slowing wage growth, fewer job vacancies than since the pandemic and rising unemployment all tell an “uncomfortable” story. Since Labour took office, Britain has had a “K-shaped recovery”. Its “nascent top-end revival is worth protecting”, but policymakers must think harder about “how to get young people and those in AI-exposed professions in on those productivity gains”.

What next?

In the US, productivity growth “picked up after the pandemic” and has been strong for three years, said Reuters; Skarica at Morgan Stanley expects a similar pattern in Britain.

But this productivity recovery “needs to be sustained and built upon if it’s to lead to big improvements in living standards”, said Pittaway at the Resolution Foundation. If people are still “priced out of jobs without being able to find alternative opportunities”, higher productivity growth offers “a less benign picture of the economy’s performance”, said the FT.

The ONS’ Labour Force Survey is being “revamped to encourage wider participation”, said Khan in The Times. It expects to launch the Transformed Labour Force Survey next year.

Once a fringe movement, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party is on course to take control of a German state for the first time, and blast through a post-war consensus designed to keep extremists out of power.

With polls suggesting that 40% of voters in Saxony-Anhalt intend to support the AfD in next week’s vote, it is now “completely undemocratic to permanently exclude” the party, said left-wing party leader Sahra Wagenknecht. “The firewall has failed.”

What did the commentators say?

Germany’s political “firewall”, the Brandmauer, is an agreement between mainstream parties that they will all refuse to work with extremists, forming coalitions or otherwise cooperating with each other instead. It has succeeded in keeping the AfD out of power at state and federal level until now but it has done nothing to harm the party’s popularity. If anything, being excluded has contributed to its rise in national polls, where it now enjoys a clear lead over all the mainstream parties.

Maintaining the firewall has created a “hollowed-out centre”, said politics professor Alexander Görlach in Jacobin magazine. Building majorities that exclude the far-right “has led to uncomfortable compromises”: parties on the left and centre-right have made coalitions “born of necessity rather than conviction”. Not only has this alienated some voters – in some cases even driving to extremist alternatives – it has also blurred the distinctions between mainstream parties, reinforcing the AfD’s line that they are carbon-copy “cartel parties”.

The Brandmauer also means the AfD has “no incentive” to moderate its policies in order to gain power, as some other populists in Europe have done, said The Economist. Behind the firewall, the party is protected “from the disappointment that accountability in a democracy implies”, Christian Stecker, a political scientist at TU Darmstadt, told the magazine.

It’s certainly “plausible” that the firewall “has contributed” to this “specifically German phenomenon of rapid growth combined with increasing radicalisation”, said Thorsten Benner of Berlin’s Global Public Policy Institute on Foreign Policy. AfD supporters can currently back ever more extreme positions, free from “the risk of having to live with the consequences of their choice”.

What next?

If current polling proves accurate, the AfD could secure an absolute majority in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on 6 September – a rarity under Germany's proportional-voting system.

The consequences of that “would be far-reaching”, said The Centre for Strategic & International Studies. It would not only “create a shock to the ideological spectrum” but also, for the first time, enable a far-right party in Germany “to put some of its agenda into practice”, on issues such as education, security and cultural identity. That could “catapult the far-right into power across Europe’s biggest economy”, said The Spectator. Or it could “be the beginning of the end”, as the AfD “confronts squaring its lavish election promises with sky-high voter expectations”.

The UK will continue to support Ukraine despite the “outrageous threats” made by Russia, said Andy Burnham in Kyiv on the 35th anniversary of the nation’s independence.

On his visit to Ukraine, his first overseas trip as prime minister, Burnham will also be giving his hosts blueprints for building long-range missiles, which can strike “around 150 miles (241km) into Russia”, said the BBC.

Last week, following reports that drones made by British companies were being used to attack targets within Russia, Moscow’s embassy in London said that the UK’s “actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer”.

“Blustering” threats have been directed at the UK before, said Owen Matthews in The Independent. But now, with Russia growing “restless” amid a fast-evolving geopolitical landscape, the UK is antagonising Vladimir Putin more obviously than ever before.

What did the commentators say?

The relationship between the two countries has “already sunk close to rock-bottom”, said Jonathan Singh and Will Hazell in The i Paper. Moscow withdrew its ambassador to the UK last month, reflecting a deepening trend with both nations of “reducing staffing in their respective embassies and expelling each other’s diplomats”.

“Most Britons have little grasp of just how much their country is hated in Moscow,” said former diplomat Andy Pryce on the Centre for European Policy Analysis. In “Kremlin demonology”, it is “Britain that wears the Devil’s face”.

But curiously, Russian media outlets also “mock the UK, at some length”. Britain may be the “organising hand behind Russian failure, especially in Ukraine”, but its “army is too small, its navy overstretched” and its economy is “exhausted”. But this contradiction in propaganda is not a “flaw”: it presents the UK as “large enough to hate and weak enough to be worth threatening”.

But Britain has long been on the receiving end of “regular, blood-curdling warnings” from Russia, said Matthews in The Independent. Supplying Storm Shadow missiles and more recently “BAE-made Nyan drones” to Ukraine is the latest provocation for the “Kremlin’s attack dogs”. Putin believes Britain can be “kicked about with impunity” whereas his “complicated on-again, off-again relationship” with the Trump administration tells of very different priorities.

There were arson attacks in 2024 in Leyton and Birmingham that were both thought to be orchestrated by Moscow. A thwarted attempt by a “gang of dim-bulb Eastern European crooks” to assassinate journalists and activists, and the arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s former home also point the finger at Russia. The success of this “aggravated hooliganism” has been somewhat limited, but one thing is clear: Britain is becoming “extremely vulnerable and unprepared for attack”, whatever form it will now take.

Now is “as good an opportunity as any for the Kremlin to make a political point”, said Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian. Any effort to “undermine public confidence” in the UK, with Parliament in recess and “less domestic political news to crowd out the embassy’s remarks”, is vital for Putin’s agenda. As its economy suffers, and with Moscow being in range of Ukrainian drones, Russia is more vulnerable than ever. What would be concerning is if, now that it feels cornered, Russia’s “brinkmanship” spirals out of control.

What next?

Russia is unlikely to launch direct missile or armed drone strikes on the UK, said David Blair and Roland Oliphant in The Telegraph. Their first port of call would be to “intensify the existing campaign of sabotage, drone incursions and cyberattacks”. Disruptive incidents – like the recent drone attack in Leipzig – cyber attacks and sending drones to “loiter” near airports will all become more regular. Attacking British military targets in Ukraine, whether personnel or equipment, would also be a “straightforward way of retaliating” against the UK.

But, more broadly, Nato has a “deterrence problem”, said Katia Glod in Prospect. The alliance has “formidable mechanisms” to prevent a full-scale armed attack on its member states, but Russia can “operate precisely where those mechanisms become less automatic”, effectively in a “grey zone” where it knows there won’t be a response.

Deterrence will work only if the Kremlin believes there will be proportionate “consequences”. Nato, therefore, needs to “make activity below the Article 5 threshold more costly” to its adversaries, providing stronger protection of military logistics, communication, better counterintelligence and “graduated responses to hostile activity”. The objective should be to deny Moscow the “freedom to operate below the threshold of war”. Nato must “balance between avoiding an unnecessary war with Russia and ensuring that fear of one does not become a weapon Russia can use against us”.

Football may not have come home this summer, but Harry and Meghan are on their way.

This “unexpected development” is even more surprising “when you recall all the things the Sussexes said in books, on Netflix, and to Oprah Winfrey about their unhappy life in Harry’s country of birth”, said ITV’s royal correspondent Chris Ship.

The couple will reportedly move into a private, non-royal residence outside London. One of the main reasons behind the surprise announcement, according to news.com.au is that Meghan has been offered a role in an upcoming TV project in the UK.

No further details have been forthcoming, leaving great speculation over the reasons for their return from California.

What did the commentators say?

This is the culmination of “Project Thaw”, said royal author Andrew Lownie in The Washington Post – the plan, involving King Charles, “to bring Harry back into the fold after years of estrangement following the couple’s ‘Megxit’ from Britain”. In that way “the news should not have caught everyone off guard” and “there have been signs for the past year that Harry was keen to set up his own alternative royal court in Britain”.

“Please say that the Prodigal Son and the Prodigal Daughter-in-Law have decided to return to Britain for the right reasons – to heal family rifts, rather than their finances,” said Harry Mount in The Independent. Experts have noted the couple “have now achieved six full tax years of non-UK residency – enough to manage the ‘temporary non-resident’ rules for capital gains tax”. Their return then “just happens to be ideally timed for their bank accounts, as well as for their children to start the new academic year in British schools”.

But the decision is an “admission of failure, whether Harry and Meghan are intellectually honest enough to admit it or not”, royal commentator Kinsey Schofield told Page Six. “They had America, Hollywood, enormous contracts, global name recognition and every conceivable advantage,” she said. “And six years later, they’re coming back. That is failure.”

But I am told this move is “not due to any problems in the US”, said the BBC’s senior royal correspondent Daniela Relph. Instead “it has been driven by the couple’s desire to spend time in Europe, nearer Harry’s family and wanting to educate their children in the UK”.

The theme that came up again and again “when I spoke to people close to Harry earlier this year” was homesickness dressed up as ambition, said Dan Wakeford on Celebrity Intelligence. “He doesn’t care about the appearance of wealth. He cares about the appearance of doing good work,” one source said, describing a man who missed his family, his friends and his old life. Another source told Wakeford on Celebrity Intelligence the couple were “wildly unhappy”.

While it is “great on a personal level” for Charles to have more private access to his younger son and grandchildren, it will “take a long time to establish a reasonable degree of trust”, Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, told The Guardian. “People will still wonder: do Harry and Meghan have another media deal set up?”

What next?

Harry “has no plans to return as a working royal”, said royal editor Matt Wilkinson in The Sun. But sources admit some elements of their move back to the UK remain “up in the air”.

One such detail is the prospect of a Gallagher-brothers-style burying of the hatchet for Harry and Prince William. But it appears there will be no Knebworth equivalent for the royals quite yet with the former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt suggesting William would be “apoplectic” at the Sussexes’ return.

“In the long term, the return of the Sussexes to the UK opens up the prospect of two rival courts, William’s and Harry’s,” he said. “In the short term, Harry will be able to deepen his rapprochement with his father. And his presence back home will make it harder for his brother to duck a reconciliation.”

The fractures in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s premiership are beginning to show. Sacked defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called for an election, despite a constitutional ban on polls being held in times of war. “Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia,” he said in a YouTube video address. Ukraine must “renew its full democratic process even in the conditions of a long war”.

Fedorov stopped short of launching a direct challenge to the president, but even so political and public support for Zelenskyy seems more fragile than ever. The former defence minister is popular among younger Ukrainians and his dismissal in July sparked protests across the country. Anti-corruption agencies have also announced they are investigating an official in Zelenskyy’s office.

What did the commentators say?

Fedorov’s address was unexpected, said investment strategist Timothy Ash in Kyiv Post, and I “struggle with his logic”. Elections will be impossible to hold and there is no “great clamour” for them anyway.

Perhaps he is advancing his own political ambitions, realising a “desire to take advantage of the momentum he gained” after his dismissal. This announcement seems like an “extraordinary political error of judgement, which some would likely use against him if he ever pitches in to run as president in the future”. In short, “it looks a bit like political suicide from Fedorov”.

“Internally”, this video has been the “biggest challenge to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yet”, said Nick Paton Walsh on CNN. “But it will likely, practically, come to nothing.”

Zelenskyy’s popularity is “sliding” but a vote is “pretty much impossible”. Even if the war were to end, Ukraine would need a minimum of six months to “implement legislative reforms” that would “meet European standards”. And that’s without the complications of reaching soldiers on the front line, or the “millions of Ukrainian pensioners who live off-line”. Fundamentally, a vote would “utterly cripple Kyiv” and could “spell defeat from within”.

The “swelling” corruption cases against several of Zelenskyy’s closest allies have also “contributed to a fall in the president’s approval rating”, said Christopher Miller in the Financial Times. In the latest of a “litany of graft allegations” against his supporters, Zelenskyy was forced to sack one of his top aides, Iryna Mudra, following “Operation Forrest Gump” raids by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

Previous charges brought against former chief-of-staff Andriy Yermak and ex-energy minister Herman Halushchenko (both of whom, as well as Mudra, deny wrongdoing) have also “sparked concern among Western partners who have provided billions to keep the country afloat and support its military”.

Infighting like this just plays into Russia’s hands, said Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. The friction that led to Zelenskyy sacking Fedorov and the ensuing “public discontent” have already undermined the nation just as it seemed to be “regaining the initiative on the battlefield”.

And if an election were to take place, “Russia’s record of electoral interference speaks for itself”. Moscow has “yearned” for a Ukrainian leadership challenge so that it can accomplish what it has “failed to do on the battlefield: sow dissension and encourage Ukrainian society to devour itself”. Whatever narratives “prevail”, it is clear the president is “accumulating powerful public rivals who were once deeply loyal to him”.

Zelenskyy “still commands broad support as a war leader”, said Politico. As his allies have pointed out, there is only so much he can reveal about the “inner workings” of the state, when “national survival is at stake”. Fedorov is “certainly popular”. In a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll, “63% of people saw him as trustworthy”. But Zelenskyy “scored a robust 56%” so is hardly “out of the picture” in terms of any future election.

What next?

This coming “winter crunch” will be a test for the Zelenskyy premiership, said Paton Walsh on CNN. It will “feed into the lacklustre and purblind peace process that the Trump White House is trying to reignite”. Harsher conditions will increase demands on him to “concede territory” to “get the fighting to stop”, a move he has repeatedly ruled out.

Zelenskyy has made clear that any permanent ceasefire would have to be supported by security guarantees. But he is “clear-eyed that the winter ahead is bad, both in the skies and on the front lines”.

The United Nations’ 17th Conference of the Parties in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, has once again brought together an array of countries to battle climate change. But this COP edition is focused on a unique element of the shifting environment: desertification. As more fertile land degrades into dry, barren desert, the meeting is workshopping climate solutions using its key anti-desertification treaty, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

What did the commentators say?

While the U.N. is working on a cohesive plan to fight desertification, the main goal of the Mongolia conference is to “put pledges made two years ago into action through projects in the developing world,” said The Guardian. A plan like this will involve “allocating more than $12 billion to vulnerable countries to help them deal with drought and land degradation,” specifically in countries that don’t have many resources to fight climate change.

The “biannual talks on desertification have taken on far greater importance in the wake of recent heatwaves and wildfires in the Northern Hemisphere, Europe and Asia,” said French radio broadcaster RFI. The $12 billion pledge is also “small compared to the needs — about $2.6 trillion by 2030,” which would be required to “repair degraded land, halt desertification, protect against drought and restore soils.” There’s also a push to focus more on the UNCCD, which has been “garnering the least attention” of three environmental treaties signed in the 1990s, said The Guardian.

The need for additional funding appears dire, as “up to 40% of the world’s land is currently degraded,” said the U.N. regional information center’s site. Beyond desertification causing environmental damage, it can also “reduce food production and water availability, undermine livelihoods and increase economic and social vulnerability.” The “choice of Mongolia as host for COP17 brings particular significance to this year’s conference,” as the U.N. estimates that at least 77% of the country’s land is degraded, making “sustainable management a pressing national concern.”

Solutions are being worked on in Mongolia as countries around the world are “bracing for food price rises as a result of damage to harvests from record heat and lack of water,” said The Guardian. The U.N.’s World Food Programme also “predicts that 50 million more people could be pushed into hunger by the ‘super El Niño’ weather system currently developing.” Better implementation of anti-desertification funds will be needed, as “initiatives to restore land and prevent drought have up to now been poorly funded and badly managed.”

What next?

Many are hoping that the conference will help propel the UNCCD more into the foreground. It is currently the only one of three U.N. environmental treaties from the 1990s in which the U.S. “remains a full party” and is “one of the last multilateral arenas for environmental diplomacy,” said Jean-Daniel Cesaro, a member of the French Scientific Committee on Desertification, to Le Monde. It is “crucial to keep it alive and maintain dialogue and reflection on these issues, which are essential to our future.”

COP17 is slated to run until Aug. 28. Major funding announcements are “generally made at climate COPs, even when they are closely linked to land management,” said Cesaro. The rest of the conference should be used to “remind everyone that science remains, above all, a space for dialogue in a world that more than ever needs healthy land and living ecosystems to face climate change.”

Following his reforms in Manchester, Andy Burnham “enters No. 10 understanding what drives the crisis” of rough sleeping, said Jennifer Williams in the Financial Times.

To fund his A Bed Every Night scheme – 600 new beds across shelters in each of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, open 365 days a year – he donated 15% of his own salary, and used the media to draw attention to the issue. And in the region, rough sleeping numbers are 25% below where they were in 2017.

But crucially “in the almost-decade Burnham was mayor he never ended rough sleeping in Greater Manchester”, said email newspaper The Mill. And that’s why there remains a healthy dose of scepticism about his pledge that every person sleeping on England’s streets is to be offered somewhere to stay this winter. “Ever an optimist” it could be that Burnham “feels that with the power afforded to him as prime minister he can finally make good on the promise”, said The Mill. But regardless, “it is still an incredibly bold one to make”.

What did the commentators say?

He may have failed to meet the Manchester target, said the FT, but he “galvanised a fragmented local system to focus on the crisis, while experimenting with a series of local policies, some of them successful”. But a growing group of long-term rough sleepers are now emerging from the asylum system.

This policy raises “all sorts of political questions” when it comes to homelessness, said Britain editor Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman. Primarily, “regarding ‘no recourse to public funds’”, which bans migrants without settled status claiming most benefits. This condition is a “significant cause of hardship and rough sleeping”, and is only getting worse through the “closure of asylum hotels” which is “contributing to more visible destitution on Britain’s streets”.

Burnham’s pledge to end rough sleeping by Christmas echoes the success of the Everyone In scheme undertaken during the Covid pandemic, said the BBC, which saw “thousands of rough sleepers housed in hotels and temporary accommodation”. In total, around “37,000 people were helped by that scheme”. But currently, according to government data, an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in autumn last year, which is a 96% increase since 2021.

“The Christmas pledge is a major test for Burnham’s key day-one promise to tackle homelessness,” said Vicky Spratt, housing and society correspondent in The i Paper. And “it is possible that not all councils will welcome being asked to work towards this goal”. Currently in England, more than 1.3 million households are “languishing on local councils’ social housing waiting lists”, and addressing this issue with local authorities is “non-negotiable” for Burnham and Minister for Housing Angela Rayner.

This is one of the “hardest-to-achieve” pledges in office, said Caroline Hug in Politico. His announcement of an additional £102 million gives his “big rough-sleeping pledge some meat”, but it is light on detail. “It still doesn’t set out a route to zero or say when the government actually expects to get there.” And while highly effective efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic show a solution is possible, it is “harder to make that solution stick”. This policy will test Burnham’s resolve on devolution, as he “has not given his government control over all the levers to achieve it”. And it could backfire: “if shop doorways empty over Christmas but fill again in spring, who will the public decide is responsible?”

What next?

The issue is not whether ending rough sleeping is “desirable or achievable”, it is figuring out why “previous attempts have collapsed”, said Jo Richardson, professor of housing and social inclusion at Nottingham Trent University, on The Conversation. Even if enough homes were built, the “biggest fear” for rough sleepers is not being able to provide rent, it is “being alone behind a locked door”. “Any serious homelessness strategy needs to fund social connection as deliberately as it funds bricks and mortar.” This requires a dedicated support workforce, and integrated partnerships across health and social care: a “bigger, more specific commitment than five years of funding alone can achieve”.

Reform UK’s plans to cut £50 billion per year from the welfare bill – unveiled yesterday by Robert Jenrick – are “extremely ambitious”, but also a “political risk”, said Ben Chu on BBC Verify.

Nigel Farage has said the party will not cut pensions, meaning roughly £207 billion of the overall £353 billion welfare budget is up for grabs, and Jenrick aims to cut around 25% of that.

Under the plans, long-term welfare claimants who are fit to work would be forced to do 20 hours of community work a week, and foreign nationals would be banned from claiming benefits altogether. Personal Independence Payments (Pip) to disabled claimants would be scrapped and replaced with a “health security allowance” with more stringent eligibility criteria that could exclude up to two-thirds of current recipients.

These proposals may fit Reform’s “current ideological appeal”, pollster Sir John Curtice told The Independent. But this has limitations to their wider appeal, and has the potential to significantly backfire with their base.

What did the commentators say?

The “centrepiece” of the policy is to exclude foreign nationals from claiming most UK benefits, said an editorial in The Times, including European Union citizens with ­settled status in the UK.

This is just another “calculated bang on the populist drum”: the majority of foreign nationals “don’t qualify in the first place”. UK visas stipulate a clause of “no recourse to public funds”. Not only would stripping entitlement from the 4.3 million EU citizens who have been in the UK for many years antagonise relationships with the bloc, it would be “pointless”; many of those with indefinite leave to remain would have a “near-certain chance of being granted British ­citizenship should they apply”.

But for the Reform base, a more pressing issue is the “proposed abolition of Pip”, said journalist Fraser Nelson on his Substack newsletter. “Every Reform MP sits on more Pip claimants than the majority that elected them.”

In Jenrick’s seat of Newark, where he was elected as a Conservative with a majority of 3,572, there are 6,011 residents who claim Pip. And almost all of Reform’s target seats are “heavily welfare dependent”. Jenrick risks going into the next election as “the Pip-snatcher, the grim reaper of welfare”. “The Labour attack lines write themselves.”

There’s no doubt that the welfare state “needs reform – but not Reform”, said The Independent’s editorial board. Not only would the proposed cuts impose “much misery on the most vulnerable in society”, but they would also “substantially weaken” the British economy.

Employers with more than five staff would “take on the role of the state in social insurance and health care”, carrying a “significant increase” in cost, risk and pastoral responsibilities. Afforded only “tiny tax breaks” in return, employers would be “even less willing to take on people with long-term conditions, or who they perceive as liable to develop them”.

There may be “flaws” in the Reform approach, but the ambitious scale of the reforms is “laudable”, said an editorial in The Telegraph. Jenrick is seeking to “revive” the “something-for-something contributory principle” of William Beveridge, “founder of the welfare state”, but is up against a system that is growing at an “unsustainable” pace.

What next?

Reform has been overtaken in the polls by Labour “for the first time in more than a year”, because of the “bounce” under Andy Burnham’s leadership, said the Financial Times. The government has said that it was “already reforming welfare by narrowing the gap between standard and health universal credit rates”, by reintroducing face-to-face assessments and “investing £3.5 billion in employment support”.

Burnham’s willingness to get to grips with the expanding welfare state is “likely to emerge as the key dividing line over the coming months”, said Rupert Yorke, former deputy chief of staff to Rishi Sunak, in The i Paper. “It remains to be seen whether he prioritises this issue with his backbenchers over his ambitious plans for regional devolution or social care”.

Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea after the country stayed out of the war with Iran.

Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term. He also noted that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

What did the commentators say?

The US is losing the Iran conflict, so Trump has “taken the logical next step” of “punishing” a “loyal American friend”, said Tom Nichols on The Atlantic.

In fact, “scaling back the exercise” is an “insane” decision but in “Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult”, and “when things go wrong, someone must be held responsible” and, of course, “that someone is never Donald Trump”.

So the world is “witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage” because Trump “embarked on a war for personal glory”, but “what he got instead was ongoing humiliation”.

The Chinese, Russians and North Koreans will “draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy”, and notice that “when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting”.

It is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favour of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary”, wrote Konstantin Toropin and Alanna Durkin Richer on The Associated Press. It’s a particularly “sharp turnaround” from how his administration has viewed South Korea recently.

The announcement could be “part of an effort to divert attention” from the war in Iran, which has “left energy costs high”. This has become a “sensitive economic issue” ahead of the US midterm elections, said The Korea Times.

It could “trigger a debate over whether the scaling down of joint exercises could affect the allies’ deterrence” against North Korea as the “recalcitrant regime has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs”.

The “sudden” announcement “risks renewing concerns” that “US forces are too stretched to support crucial Western allies or maintain deterrence against autocracies that threaten them”, said Brad Lendon on CNN. It’s also a “gift” to Kim Jong Un at a time when he has “ramped up his own nation’s threat to global stability and offered no concessions in return”.

What next?

Experts told the BBC that the “walking back” of these joint military exercises could “carry a high cost with relatively little benefit”.

They are “essential for military forces to be ready and capable of doing their jobs”, Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told the broadcaster.

“Scaling them back” could “damage alliance coordination”, as well as “slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia”.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments and added that it hoped a favourable relationship between Washington and Pyongyang could lead to meaningful talks.

“What was the point of it all?” said Joe Pike on the BBC. Given that Nigel Farage “triggered this race and the result was entirely predictable”, did the Reform leader get what he wanted out of the Clacton by-election?

If he did, he didn’t celebrate it at the count. Reform UK claimed that Essex Police had warned of a threat to Farage’s safety, which meant he stayed away from the result declaration. But that claim was denied by the police.

When Reform chair Lee Anderson was pressed on this counter-narrative he told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme: “It’s not up to you at the BBC to decide if there’s a credible threat, it’s up to Nigel and his security team. He celebrated a stunning victory in Clacton. The people have stuck two fingers up to people like the BBC, the establishment, the whole blob.”

Not everyone agrees though. Farage “wanted a narrative of him taking on all comers on his own terms”, said James Ball in The New World. But the reality is, he “ended up in a low-stakes fight for his political survival against a comedically oversized bin”.

Farage won with 63% of the vote, with comedy candidate Count Binface coming second with 27% in an election boycotted by all of the main Westminster parties, who dismissed it as a stunt.

What did the commentators say?

In calling the by-election Farage “hoped to cock a snook at an establishment he feels is trying to bring him and his party down via allegations about financial contributions to himself and his party”, said polling guru John Curtice in The Times. In practice, “his decision was followed by an immediate fall in his party’s support, just when its year-long lead in the polls was under threat”. Reform’s national vote share in the polls is down to 24% after hitting a high of 32% last September.

What the by-election has revealed is that Farage, “a savvy, guerrilla political operator, and perhaps the most able political communicator of his generation, can be guilty of missteps”, said Jonny Ball on UnHerd. His victory “will not put a stop to awkward questions” and “the standards inquiry into his donations row will now continue”. He had hoped the by-election “might allow him to chalk up another success on his long political journey, but this victory will feel pyrrhic, and particularly hollow”.

But will it? I'm not so sure, said Ross Clark in The Spectator. Farage has shown that in Clacton “his personal support is every bit as strong as it was before”. It is remarkable that he won “more votes than he did in the 2024 general election in spite of the turnout collapsing”. Yes, Clacton “tells us nothing about the state of political play in Britain at the moment, because it wasn’t a proper contest”, but “I would be wary of anyone claiming that Farage has been weakened by it”.

What next?

Farage has “managed to professionalise Reform UK”, said Pike on the BBC. In securing significant funding and recruiting high-profile figures like Robert Jenrick and Zia Yusuf he is seeking to prove “that the third political party he has led during his long career is not just a one-man-band”.

But ultimately it is “voters nationally, and not in this corner of Essex”, who will decide Farage’s future and whether this by-election will “mark a downward shift in Farage’s brand”, or whether it will “be a springboard towards achieving his bigger aspiration of getting to Downing Street”.

England has just recorded its driest July since records began in 1836. Fast forward to 2053 and we could be living in a “dystopian hellscape”, said Patrick Galbraith, environment correspondent, in The Telegraph. Rivers running dry, water being turned off at the mains, and food “poised to be rationed”: “this is not science fiction, but a very realistic scenario for the UK”.

Nearly three-quarters of England has been declared in drought, with around 45 million people now living in a drought area, and more than 27 million facing water-use restrictions. Nowhere in England is now under a ‘normal’ status.

Problems concerning infrastructure, investment, distribution and regulation have all compounded the effects of Britain’s scorching summer, forcing the government to consider its plans for a water crisis more carefully.

What did the commentators say?

In 2053, Britain is expected to have a shortfall of five billion litres of water per day, according to Baroness Brown, from the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee. If it materialises, this deficit would have “devastating” consequences for food supplies “as well as the economy and social cohesion”, said Galbraith. “The dystopian future of 2053 may not be so far away.”

The “main problem” in our water crisis is regulation, said Emma Duncan in The Times. Water regulators in Britain have indeed kept bills down, but have allowed water companies to give “massive bonuses to bosses and to shovel vast sums to shareholders”. Around “£50 billion” has been paid in dividends in the three decades since privatisation, “rather than spending the money on necessary upgrades to water-treatment works and pipes”.

Jon Cunliffe’s recent review of the water sector produced “sensible” recommendations, arguing principally that the industry’s “disparate regulators be brought together” and so “attracting new capital into the industry”. The whole point of regulation is to “act in the interest of citizens” and ensure water companies are “preventing pollution and ensuring future supplies”.

“Without investment and reductions in our water use, we are facing a serious problem,” said Pippa Neill and Safeerah Ahmed in The Guardian. For “several decades” now, the main issues have been “fixing leaks and building new reservoirs”, meaning there is not only a problem of “storing water during times of plenty”, but also effective distribution when water is needed.

No major new reservoirs have been built in England and Wales since 1992, and research from Greenpeace UK found that 2.87 billion litres of water a day is wasted through leaky pipes in England and Wales: “enough to fill 1,150 Olympic-sized swimming pools and amounting to a fifth of all water pumped through the network”.

To fix the issue, water companies have committed to “record investment” to minimise leaks, and “several” new reservoirs are in the planning stage.

What next?

The UK already has “disaster planning scenarios in place for a severe drought”, said Galbraith in The Telegraph. The government’s Emergency Drought Order, if invoked, would force water companies to “implement rolling water-rationing across entire regions by cutting off people’s taps”. Rationed water would then be distributed from standpipes in central collection points. In this scenario, private customers buying water would “only have 20 litres of water per person per day”: or a “mere 14% of our current average usage”.

Alongside water rationing, repeated droughts would also “increase the risk of fire, with less water for firefighters to battle blazes”, said Joe Duggan in The i Paper.

The UK’s National Risk Register, which outlines the “most serious threats facing the country”, states that under a “reasonable worst-case scenario” of continuous dry weather patterns, “large swathes of South and East of England would be hit by severe drought”. Transport, hospitals, data centres, emergency services and telecommunications businesses would all be hit with restrictions.

Perhaps most concerningly, the document also considers the “potential changes in public behaviour including the potential for localised civil disorder”.

Is the honeymoon over already?

After a confident start in No. 10, Andy Burnham is facing his first real test as PM over his handling of the controversial prisoner early-release scheme.

Having already bowed to public pressure once to stop rapists and child sex offenders being released early, the PM this week insisted he was “increasingly confident” that the scheme can be adapted to exclude the killers of PC Andrew Harper.

Keen to find a line of attack that sticks, his critics have branded Burnham a “people pleaser” and a flip-flopper who does not want to take difficult decisions.

What did the commentators say?

The “conundrum” of how to manage the early release of prisoners required to free up much-needed prison capacity is an “acute example of the tricky political decision-making that inevitably comes with power”, said BBC political correspondent Jack Fenwick.

But Burnham’s choice to focus on the type of crime, rather than the length of offenders’ sentences, has “caused a political storm of its own” which has left the government scrambling to stop Harper’s killers being set free ahead of time.

His shifting position, and the decision to go on holiday while the row snowballed, is “his first serious mistake on the job”, said The Independent’s political editor John Rentoul. He has “belatedly realised that the politics of the problem are simple” and his premiership “would be over almost before it had begun if those two killers were let out early”.

But “the question posed by this course correction is whether the initial mistake was simply down to inexperience”.

While many politicians “seek to avoid the suggestion that they are swayed by public sentiment, Burnham has leaned into the idea that he is responding to Britons’ outrage”, said Lucy Fisher in the Financial Times.

U-turns are not necessarily a bad thing if they are judged to be the result of a government listening to the public’s concerns, as long as they don’t become a habit. Just ask Keir Starmer.

What next?

The row over exactly which offenders may or may not be eligible for early release “masks an uncomfortable reality”, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman: “our criminal justice system fails to keep people out of prison once they have left”.

If we were prepared to have a genuine debate about the issue, the “political fury” currently aimed at the government would instead “be directed at our dangerous reoffending rates” and how best to bring them down.

In place of that, the Home Office is pressing ahead with its aim to build 14,000 more prison places by 2031. In the meantime, in a Facebook post, Burnham has suggested removing foreign offenders more quickly, tackling the “long-running injustice of IPP sentences”, which have kept many minor offenders locked up for decades, and re-purposing some women’s prisons for male offenders, as ways to expand prison capacity.

But these are medium- to long-term solutions. The immediate task facing the government is trying to find a way to keep Harper’s killer behind bars without making a similar exemption for all manslaughter convictions.

Downing Street will hope its efforts over the past week “will be remembered as a PM who has forced the system to do what he wanted”, said Fenwick. They will “fear that the lasting impression could instead be of a misstep that’s left victims’ families in anguish”.

Ukrainian drones have hit 23 Wildberries warehouses across Russia in just three weeks, said Nataliya Vasilyeva in The New York Times. Known widely as “Russia’s Amazon”, the e-commerce giant has been targeted by Ukrainian long-range drones, with a fire breaking out overnight at a facility in Voronezh.

Ukraine claims that the company, founded in 2004 by now-multi-billionaire Tatyana Kim and has disputed links to the Kremlin, is aiding the Russian war effort. The retailer denies this.

Attacking the distribution network of one of Russia’s principal companies will increase financial pressure on consumers and retailers alike, but the longer-term threats to the Russian economy could pose a significant threat to the Kremlin.

What did the commentators say?

Wildberries, as a “linchpin of Russia’s consumer market”, is an “obvious target”, said Vasilyeva in The New York Times. It can access even the “most remote corners of the country”, making its reach in Russia “unmatched”. It is the most popular marketplace platform in the country, with 79 million people – more than half of the population – using it every month.

The strikes have “disproportionately affected” the “one million Russian sellers” who rely on the site for visibility and distribution. In a fractured country whose vast size poses significant business challenges, Wildberries’ 95,000 pick-up points “represent a sense of economic normalcy” for both retailers and consumers, “which the Kremlin has been eager to preserve” amid sanctions and economic pressure from the war.

Since the outbreak of the conflict, Wildberries has been championed as a “symbol of Russian ingenuity and resilience despite Western sanctions”, said The Wall Street Journal.

On the surface, it is a success story of economic growth, employing more than 15,000 people, having tripled its workforce last year alone. But with ties to “Kremlin-linked oligarch” Suleyman Kerimov, it is demonstrative of “Putin’s determination to restrict control over the engines of the economy to a cadre of businesspeople loyal to him”.

Ukraine’s reasons for striking Wildberries “appear to be two-fold”, said The Independent. Ukraine insists the platform is a “legitimate” target due to its involvement in “Russia's wartime logistics and economic infrastructure”. But the overwhelming motivation is a financial one. Alongside its smaller competitor Ozon and other rivals, Wildberries accounts for around 8.5% of Russia’s GDP and supports around four million jobs, “more than 5% of Russia’s workforce”. Signalled by the government purchasing a 5% stake in the company, Wildberries is considered “central to plans for economic growth”.

“Whatever the stated military rationale, the economic consequences extend far beyond the front line of war,” said finance expert Yerzhan Tokbolat on The Conversation. This latest tactic is making the “economic costs of the war harder for ordinary Russians to ignore”. The significance of the Wildberries strikes may not just be the destruction of warehouses, but rather found in the “millions of Russians whose incomes, shopping and sense of normality depend on them”.

The Kremlin’s protestation that Ukraine is attacking Russia’s civilian economy with their attacks on Wildberries “smacks of complete hypocrisy”, said Liam Nolan, Eastern Europe reporter at RTÉ. Russian forces have been destroying businesses and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine for the last four-and-a-half years, “despite the Kremlin’s insistence that it does not target civilian areas”.

Government drives to expand “long-range drone production and greater investment in deep-strike technology” have certainly pressed home the advantage. But Kyiv’s ultimate goal in targeting Wildberries – and Russia’s infrastructure more generally – is to “gain leverage in the negotiating process, whenever it restarts”.

What next?

Support for Putin will “not automatically weaken” because of these attacks, said Tokbolat on The Conversation. As of 28 July, the government announced it had been considering “loans, tax relief and subsidies” to maintain businesses, “but no decision had been made”. In fact, they could “reinforce patriotic sentiment” against Ukraine, and “generate solidarity with affected Russian businesses, rather than anger towards the Kremlin”.

“The greater political risk is cumulative.” The knock-on effects of fuel shortages and subsequent price increases, as well as a decline in small businesses, will make it harder to maintain the impression that “the war can continue without significantly changing everyday life in Russia”. But beyond outward support, Russia’s campaign depends on the “willingness of households and businesses to absorb the costs of war”. By placing a major economic engine, which affects everyday consumption, in its crosshairs, “Ukraine is testing that willingness”.

Colombia’s short-lived era of leftist leadership has ended, as far-right politician Abelardo de la Espriella takes office as the nation’s 36th president. Unlike his predecessor Gustavo Petro, who was the only left-wing president in modern Colombian history, de la Espriella wants to shift the South American country to the right. He is also dealing with a major natural disaster in his first days in office.

What did the commentators say?

The new president represents a “sharp” turn from former President Gustavo Petro, who “stopped awarding new oil and gas exploration contracts while pushing Colombia toward renewable energy” and encouraging a “global transition away from fossil fuels,” said The Associated Press. De la Espriella instead has pledged that “energy security would be a cornerstone of his administration,” as he makes plans to “revive the country’s oil and gas sector, restore state-owned energy company Ecopetrol and strengthen the electricity system.”

Alongside this energy agenda, de la Espriella will also be making changes stemming from his stance on social issues, including crime and drug trafficking. He has “promised to confront rebel groups in Colombia with greater military force while cutting government spending to reduce a budget deficit,” said NPR. In a symbolic move, de la Espriella was inaugurated not in the capital of Bogotá but in Cali, a city which has been “hit hard by drug violence and attacks from rebel groups.”

De la Espriella also “campaigned on promises to crush his country’s powerful drug traffickers with the help of the United States” and in collaboration with the right-wing Trump administration, said The New York Times. The White House has “made targeting traffickers in Latin America a priority,” although before de la Espriella’s election, President Donald Trump “made little headway with Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer and traditionally Washington’s closest ally in the region.”

Overall, Colombia’s new leader is “basically shifting the entire region, especially South America, toward the right,” the Washington Office on Latin America’s Gimena Sánchez said to PBS News. De la Espriella will be “feeling the pressure to make really big moves from the get-go because there’s so much expectation from the U.S. that he’s going to be hard on narcotraffickers.” It could “have a tremendous influence on the direction that Colombia takes.”

While all of these issues are simmering, the new president is simultaneously contending with the aftermath of a 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck western Colombia on Aug. 10. Officials in several major cities, including Cali and Pereira, “reported dozens of injuries, people trapped inside collapsed buildings and serious damages,” said NBC News. “The quake felt here was very severe,” taxi driver Luis Angel Sarrio told NBC.

What next?

The earthquake killed at least 100 people, with casualties expected to rise significantly in the coming days. In the first major check of his power, de la Espriella “declared a national disaster situation,” which gives his government “special powers to react to the emergency, including to reallocate budgets,” said BBC News. Alongside earthquake recovery, de la Espriella’s government is still focusing on anti-crime efforts. In another sign of a looming partnership, the United States notably pledged at least $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia soon after de la Espriella took office. The U.S. State Department said this money would help the new president achieve shared goals, including fighting organized crime and illegal immigration.

Taliban fighters entered Kabul on 15 August 2021 as the Afghan government collapsed and US troops scrambled to complete their withdrawal from the country. A year later, the group declared the date an annual national holiday.

In the five years since, the Taliban’s “increasingly draconian policies have made Afghanistan one of the world’s gravest human rights crises, particularly for women and girls”, said Human Rights Watch.

Among United Nations members states, only Russia has announced it formally recognises the Taliban regime, but “international condemnation is not enough”, said HRW.

What did the commentators say?

On “The Proud Day of August 15”, as the day has become known, Afghans are likely to see parades of the Taliban’s “suicide bomber squad on motorbikes and American equipment left by Nato forces”, said Christina Lamb in The Times.

Yet the country remains “on the brink of famine”. Around 4.7 million Afghans are facing “life-threatening malnutrition”, and almost 19 million are “in the grip of acute hunger or worse”, according to the World Food Programme. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world to ban girls and women from secondary school and university, while “morality police” patrol the streets seeking infringements of dress codes. The Taliban has even “banned women being seen at windows”, and recently “scrapped the minimum age for child marriage”.

Five years into its rule, the Taliban continues to expose the “wishful thinking of Western political and military leaders who insisted the movement had changed”, said the Lowy Institute think tank. The West has a “wilful blindness” towards the regime and is “quietly lowering the threshold of behaviour it is prepared to accept”.

“Tellingly”, the United Nations now refers to the “relevant authorities” in Kabul rather than the “de facto authorities”, in effect “narrowing the linguistic difference between the regime and a recognised government”. Warnings of the widespread repression under the regime are still “accurate”; what has changed is the “willingness of the world to act on them”.

Britain’s hesitation to evacuate eligible Afghans who worked with British officials in the country is “typical” of the UK’s “attitude to its obligations to Afghans generally”, said an editorial in The Independent. According to an internal government review conducted in February, 7,000 people have been found to be eligible for resettlement and “still likely to be at risk from Taliban retribution”, yet Britain has scrapped plans to evacuate them. Made worse by a “catastrophic data breach in 2022”, “obfuscation and delay”, Britain has been “dragging its feet in protecting those who served alongside our troops in Afghanistan”. It, like other countries, must “discharge its obligations to our Afghan allies, promptly and in full”, as a “matter of national honour”.

The US, in particular, “has a moral responsibility to not simply look away,” said Mursal Rahim, who fled Afghanistan in 2021, in The New York Times. Since leaving Kabul, the US has “increasingly disengaged from the country and its people”, closing the embassy, withdrawing diplomats and leaving “sharply reduced assistance” for Afghans coming to America. The situation in Afghanistan no longer “commands America’s attention as it once did”, but to continue in this vein risks accepting that the “systematic erasure of Afghan women is no longer its concern”.

What next?

It may be unpopular, but “Afghanistan’s future depends on greater international engagement” with whoever is in charge, said Tobias Ellwood, former chair of the Defence Select Committee, in The Telegraph. But importantly, “engagement does not mean recognition”. The goal is to ensure that Afghanistan, and its population of 40 million people, is “stable, secure and prosperous enough”, but that “will not be achieved by shouting from afar. It begins by re-engaging with those who govern Afghanistan today.”

“Far too little” is being done to protect girls from child marriages, and promote education, said former PM Gordon Brown in The Guardian. Other countries in the region have had some success. Pakistan’s Sindh province has criminalised marriage under 18 and introduced “penalties for those who facilitate it”. Bangladesh has also tightened its birth registration system to make it harder to conceal a girl’s age.

Changes to the UK government’s new immigration and asylum bill are positive recognitions of the problem. “But we must go further.” We must establish a fund in support of Afghan girls who are threatened with child marriage. It should offer them “bursaries to continue their education, if necessary outside their home country”. This may only be a “small gesture” after five years of Taliban rule, but “it is our moral duty to help them”.

Perhaps Zack Polanski’s refusal to apologise to Nigel Farage last week wasn’t so surprising, given that sorry seems to be the hardest word in politics.

The leader of the Greens said it was “quite obvious” he had not done anything wrong “apart from make an inadvertent mistake” after he had agreed to a social-media collaboration on a series of photos – one of which showed a man in a T-shirt, an outline of a guillotine and the words: “We’re only making plans for Nigel”. Polanski added: “If I’d done it deliberately, I’d be apologising.”

It was the “syntax recognisable to parents of teenagers everywhere”, said The Economist. But the Greens leader’s position fits snugly into a long-standing tradition of politicians stubbornly avoiding or delaying apologies.

What did the commentators say?

For “such a short phrase, it is surprising how little ‘I’m sorry’ crops up in the UK political sphere”, said Rachel Cordery in The New Statesman. Instead, politicians often “employ a common arsenal of political tools” that includes “shifting the blame, denial, resigning”.

After the Suez Crisis of 1956, Anthony Eden “resigned in shame” but “never accepted responsibility for his failings”; instead, the official line given for his resignation was that it was done “on grounds of ill health”.

Today, the “first step is to deny that the problem exists” and if the story persists, politicians “acknowledge the crisis without accepting responsibility”. The “final stage, if it gets that far”, is to “find a person or an organisation to take the blame”.

Sometimes, an apology is just not sufficient. When Nick Clegg said sorry for his U-turn on tuition fees, the “loss of trust was so complete” that most likely no amount of apologising would have been enough. However “genuine” it might have been, it ended up a “derisive meme”.

Public figures make an apology for a scandal so “long after the event” it is made “safe in the knowledge that no blame could possibly attach to them”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. You only need look at “Rishi Sunak for infected blood, David Cameron for Hillsborough” and “Keir Starmer for Grenfell”.

Some opt for the partial apology: Tony Blair said sorry not for the Iraq war, only for “some failures” in its planning and its “aftermath”, and the total of Liz Truss’ atonement for her “disastrous budget” was going “too far and too fast”.

But people “not only need apologies, they are likely to respect them” because there is “nothing nobler than sincere regret”. Offering one could make the public “less cynical towards those in power”.

Politicians “almost never apologise”, said Bence Hamrak on LSE, adding that a plausible reason is the “lack of electoral punishment for dishonesty”. His research found that apologies “may contradict the aggressive, masculine style of politics that voters might expect from leaders”, so saying sorry “might be interpreted as a sign of weakness by voters”.

What next?

Reform UK accused Polanski of “incitement to violence”, but the police decided to take no further action. Polling by the More in Common think tank suggests the row has damaged Polanski and the Greens. His personal approval rating has fallen to minus 28, making him the most unpopular major party leader in the country.

“If Nigel Farage wants to apologise for all the times that he’s put other people in danger then I’ll be happy to make an apology,” said Polanski.

And therein perhaps lies the point, said Marie Le Conte in The New World. When it comes to the current political discourse, “the hypocrisy and bad faith of it all are exhausting”.

Polanski “erred and showed, once again, that he probably isn’t ready for the big time quite yet”. But his lack of apology does not make him “unfit to lead, though: after all, he merely is a product of the times we live in, and these times are really quite rotten”.

While the Trump administration has become known for its policy of anti-globalization, recent reports that the White House plans to shutter five overseas embassies and consulates have some worried about the implications. Several of the planned closures will occur in nations with close diplomatic ties to the United States, including Canada and Japan. The rare moves, which often happen only during times of conflict, could create new foreign affairs headaches, even as Republicans laud the plans.

What did the commentators say?

The U.S. State Department has reportedly informed Congress that it is planning to close the embassy on the Caribbean island of Grenada; the consulates in Nagoya, Japan, and Medan, Indonesia; the diplomatic post in Winnipeg, Canada; and the embassy in Douala, Cameroon. The closures are “expected to save the government roughly $4.4 million per year,” but the affected buildings also “employ very few people compared with others,” said The Associated Press.

The buildings in Grenada and Nagoya “have only one American staffer and five local employees each,” said the AP, and the Medan consulate has only 47 local employees; the Douala embassy has only 14 and the Winnipeg post has just two. The closure effort is “part of a broader push by the Republican president to transform the U.S. bureaucracy so that it is fully aligned with his ‘America First’ agenda,” said Reuters. People seem split on the closures. Supporters have “portrayed cost-cutting measures as necessary to right-size ​an organization many conservatives see as bloated and overly bureaucratic.”

But Democrats “argue that cuts to the U.S. diplomatic footprint — coupled with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, ‌which ⁠provided billions of dollars worth of aid globally — risks undermining American leadership,” said Reuters. While “on paper, the move is about efficiency,” in practice it “goes far beyond the fate of five buildings,” said Newsweek. The consular slashing “suggests the Trump administration sees America’s overseas presence as a dollar figure to be managed on a balance sheet, not as a strategic asset to be maintained.”

Some of the buildings planning for closure are far less consequential than full embassies; the diplomatic post in Winnipeg does “not provide full consular services, only emergency assistance to Americans in distress,” said the National Post. But the closures also mark a “rare reduction of America’s diplomatic footprint outside a specific geopolitical crisis,” said Newsweek, even though the shutterings themselves are “modest in isolation.”

What next?

The State Department hasn’t specifically confirmed or denied the closures but said its officials were “​focused on ensuring that the ⁠nation’s diplomatic footprint was efficient and effective,” the agency told Reuters in a statement. The department also said it was “committed to following congressional notification procedures.” No exact timeline for the shutterings has been announced.

The decision follows a recent pattern of closures. Earlier this year the Trump administration announced it would “permanently close the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, which was the closest diplomatic mission to Afghanistan,” said the AP. At the same time, the U.S. is also “investing millions of dollars into reopening the U.S. embassies in Caracas, Venezuela; Damascus, Syria; and Tripoli, Libya,” to “restore America’s formal diplomatic presence following the ouster of long-ruling autocrats in those countries.”

AI models going rogue and hacking the internet? That’s “the stuff of science fiction”, said The New York Times’ Katrin Bennhold. “Or at least it was until recently.”

The UK’s AI Security Institute announced on Tuesday that two AI agents it was evaluating – one powered by Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and the other by OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 Sol – had taken “sustained, unsanctioned action directed at real people and organisations”. In the most serious incident, the Mythos 5 agent created “fake online identities”, tried to deceive a software engineer, and attempted “to insert malicious code into a open-source project”.

Only a few days ago, Open AI and Anthropic revealed similar testing mishaps, in what was a “big moment” for the world, Nate Soares, of the non-profit Machine Intelligence Research Institute, told The New York Times. “These AIs were committing cybercrimes a human would be strongly punished for”. It is, “in a sense”, artificial intelligence’s “first felony”.

What did the commentators say?

“The ‘robots could kill us all’ argument” has long been dismissed “as hysteria or even calculated hype”, said the NYT’s Bennhold. But fears that frontier AI models were “getting too good too effective at exploiting software vulnerabilities” have “now become reality”. There needs to be “intense debate about the dangers of AI spiralling out of human control and posing a threat to humanity”.

AI engineers “and even their vainglorious bosses, are getting freaked out by the capabilities they are handling and worry about unchecked proliferation”, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The obvious historical analogy is nuclear fission, which could have been “harnessed benignly” or “deployed aggressively in warheads”. But now “there are multiple Manhattan Projects all frantically competing for market share, fuelled by trillions of dollars of debt” and “with the rest of the US economy as collateral”.

Negotiating international agreement on a safe way forward for frontier AI is going to be tricky, said The Economist, when it is “increasingly clear” that the US and China will “restrict access to their models for economic and strategic reasons”.

Chinese officials are already worried “about the cyber-capabilities of Mythos” and “its potential to be used as an offensive weapon, said Bloomberg. And, for the US and its allies, there is deep concern that their geopolitical adversaries “and the criminals in their orbit, will soon wield the same offensive tools”, said Michael Sulmeyer, former US assistant secretary of defence for cyberpolicy, on Foreign Affairs. With China, in particular, “already racing to build and acquire these AI capabilities”, the US may only have “nine to 12 months to protect its critical infrastructure from AI-powered attacks”.

What next?

Any kind of “consistent approach” to global AI regulation has “failed to materialise”, said Sky News. The Trump administration is finalising a voluntary framework under which US AI labs would submit models for federal safety testing before public release. But this latest “alarming behaviour” is “likely to ignite fresh calls” from lawmakers and Silicon Valley for “more rigorous regulation”, said Politico’s John Sakellariadis.

The recent incidents also raise the question of who bears responsibility when AI systems break the law. If those hacking attempts had been “human-originated, they would lead to clear and vigorous prosecution”, ethical hacker and cybersecurity expert Marc Rogers told Politico. “It’s time for a serious discussion about updates to existing computer security law.” Until that happens, said Andrew McDonald on Politico London Playbook, “this kind of thing is going to become more common, and quickly”.

The Ukraine war has entered a “dangerous new phase”, said Sky News’ Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett.

Overnight, 17 Ukrainians were killed in Russian strikes on Kyiv, and just days ago seven people were killed by a Ukrainian drone attack on a crowded Russian Black Sea beach.

“More and more civilians are being killed on both sides” as Russia and Ukraine seem to expand their scope beyond military targets. As the conflict intensifies on multiple fronts, neither side shows signs of withdrawing.

What did the commentators say?

Four years into the war, it seems Ukraine is evolving its approach against Russia, said world affairs editor Sam Kiley in The Independent. Kyiv’s recent drone attack on a Russian Black Sea beach, where seven civilians died, including three children, marked a “shift in the war”. Ukraine may not have a policy of attacking civilian targets, but as it “steps up its war inside the Russian Federation, there have been, and will be, more civilian deaths”. Despite a reshuffle of top commanders, and being “outgunned, outmanned and outsized by the invaders”, Ukraine remains on the front foot. As it presses home the advantage, and “strikes deeper at Moscow, these tragedies will multiply”.

Following successful campaigns against Russian oil refineries, Ukraine’s increasing attacks on Wildberries – Russia’s equivalent of Amazon – are also changing the mood within Russia, said world affairs editor Catherine Philp in The Times. “Far from merely inconveniencing shoppers”, this is an “audacious attempt to bring down Russia’s economy”. The company accounts for around 50% of online retail in Russia, and “barely two days have passed without another warehouse in flames” since mid-July. This campaign shows that the conflict has broken beyond the front lines, and is now regularly “bringing the war into the lives of ordinary Russians”.

Even as these strikes intensify, Vladimir Putin has shown “no sign of backing down”, said Russian expert Professor Stephen Crowley in The Nation. The core response from European leaders has been to engage in the “greatest military build-up since the 1930s”. But all this does is perpetuate a “spiral of action and reaction on both sides” that invites further escalation. Instead, they should “open lines of communication” and bring about “difficult but necessary” negotiations to end the war through temporary lifting of sanctions or thawing diplomatic relations. Some would argue this would be giving “Putin a way out of his war of choice”, but once it is over, he would be forced to “face the Russian people and attempt to justify his historic debacle”.

As Trump focuses on the war in Iran, a “propitious moment to be the peacemaker in the Russia-Ukraine war could be slipping away”, said Thomas E. Graham, former White House Russia expert, in The New York Times. The conflict has entered a “dangerous escalatory spiral”, and both Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have been clear in their wishes for the US to re-engage in negotiations. “Only Washington has the combination of access, leverage and political weight to lead a comprehensive diplomatic effort.”

Given Russia’s animosity towards Europe, the US should send envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Kyiv and Moscow to “lay the groundwork for an intense period of shuttle diplomacy to bridge the yawning gaps between the two sides”. But time is of the essence. They must act imminently, “before escalation closes the diplomatic opening that exhaustion has begun to create”.

What next?

Europe must “seize the moment and demonstrate that they are capable of acting decisively on the international stage”, said Lesia Ogryzko in Atlantic Council. Ukraine’s recent progress provides a “rare window of opportunity to increase the pressure on Putin”. However, this window is “likely to prove temporary”.

The continent should prioritise Ukraine’s manpower constraints, as well as “improving military recruitment, retention and mobilisation”. European leaders should also grant Ukraine access to critical technologies including advanced electronics, cloud-computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence tools, and communications systems. The goal for many years has been “strategic autonomy and Europe’s emergence as a serious security actor”. “The coming months may provide the clearest test yet of whether those ambitions are realistic.”

“Andy Burnham vows no early general election before 2029” was Metro’s take-away headline after a recent interview between the PM and the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

His aides have been “adamant, consistent and emphatic” that there will be no snap election, said The Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman. But Burnham’s obvious hesitation when answering the question “was that of a man calculating the trade-off between survival now and long-term freedom of manoeuvre”.

What did the commentators say?

Burnham spent his first two weeks as PM in a “blitz of hyperactivity”, said The Guardian’s deputy political editor Jessica Elgot. “Bus fares, business rates, energy bill cuts, defence, Ukraine and devolution – he has been everywhere,” and brought a “renewed sense of optimism” among Labour MPs, buoyed by a series of polls that show the party leading Reform UK for the first time in more than a year.

For all his denials, a part of Burnham’s brain “will be furtively wondering whether it might become feasible to go to the country this autumn or early next year”, said Andrew Rawnsley, associate politics editor at The Observer. If “the bounce does get bouncier” then “the risk-reward ratio could begin to look more enticing”.

The Burnham bounce is “real”, Dylan Spielman, who led Labour’s data science team through the 2024 general election, told The Guardian, “but not yet big enough to put Labour back on course for a majority”.

More in Common’s voting intention tracker puts Labour on 28%, ahead of Reform UK on 24%, which, while a marked improvement from polling under Keir Starmer, would still likely mean a hung parliament if an election were held tomorrow.

The problem is that “so far the recovery has mainly come from reuniting the progressive bloc” who had drifted towards the Greens. while Labour is still “making much less progress winning back Reform voters and Conservatives who are pivotal in marginal seats”.

Labour candidate Bev Craig’s emphatic win in the Manchester mayoral election will have given Burnham “more food for thought”, said The Telegraph’s John Power. The PM’s coronation has, “for the moment, crushed his Left flank” while the Right is now “electorally split between the Conservatives and Reform”, with the latter struggling to move on from a series of political donation scandals.

The “strategic logic” behind calling an early election, “perhaps after a few more weeks of positive announcements, seems unassailable if the polls continue to trend up”. With no mandate and a reality-checking Budget due at the end of October, the PM’s “political strategy of promising everything to everyone has a natural timespan on it”. Labour sources are briefing that if the government consistently posts poll leads of 5% to 8%, Burnham will be advised to “go for it” and call a snap election.

What next?

In 2007, Gordon Brown failed to quash speculation of a snap election during his No. 10 honeymoon period – and never recovered when he backed out of holding one at the last minute, said Peter Franklin in UnHerd. The lesson for Burnham is that he “needs to reconcile two contradictory objectives: killing the anticipation that a snap election is imminent while leaving himself with the option of calling one”.

If Burnham does call an early election, “he’ll be like a gambler sticking all his winnings on one last spin of the roulette wheel”, said The Express’s Harvey Jones. “My guess is he’ll bank them instead”, but “if the first big crisis sends his poll ratings into freefall, he may wish he’d thrown caution to the wind while Lady Luck was still smiling”.

Russia’s war against Ukraine would seem to be an entirely separate conflict from the hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. But Ukraine last month attacked an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, raising fears the two regional conflicts could merge and spiral into something bigger and more destabilizing to the world.

What did the commentators say?

The Caspian Sea attack “underscored the links between the wars,” said The New York Times. Russia has “launched swarms” of Iran-made drones at Ukraine, the outgrowth of a decades-long “close military relationship” between Moscow and Iran. (Ukraine said the Iranian ship was carrying a new supply of drones. Iran denied the accusation.) Ukraine, meanwhile, has “brought its hard-earned expertise” in drone warfare to the task of defending Gulf states from Iranian attacks after the U.S. launched its war.

The Ukraine-Iran conflicts are “beginning to overlap,” Gideon Rachman said at the Financial Times. The wars “now span two continents” in Europe and Asia and are “influencing conflicts in Africa.” Ukraine has “ample reasons” to want to hit Iranian shipments of drones that “killed a great many Ukrainians,” but leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy may also “see an opportunity to dramatically improve relations with the Trump administration” by assisting in the U.S. war. This is a fraught moment. The 20th century proved that “regional conflicts and great-power miscalculation can be a deadly combination.”

Zelenskyy appears to seek a “merging” of the two wars into a “single strategic theater,” Trita Parsi said at Responsible Statecraft. The Ukrainian leader has spent the war urging NATO to “move beyond supplying weapons and intelligence” and take a more direct role in defending his country. The Iran war now presents Ukraine with the opportunity to offer itself as a “strategic asset capable of helping Washington turn a military debacle into a splendid victory.” It is a “dangerous gambit” and it could “pave the way for a disaster.”

The Ukraine strike comes as the war in the Middle East appears to be expanding into a regional conflict that includes Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and Iraq. It is a “glimpse of just how apocalyptic” the war could become, Spencer Ackerman said at Forever Wars. There is increasingly a risk of the conflict “spiraling” beyond its current limits. “There is no mechanism at present to stop its growth.”

What next?

Iran and Russia may want no part of a larger war. Tehran and Moscow seek a “pragmatic partnership without entangling themselves in each other's regional wars,” Barnard College’s Alexander Cooley said to Newsweek. Ukraine could continue to “strike ships it believes are helping Russia,” said USA Today, but would otherwise “gain little from a full-scale confrontation with Iran.” Ukraine’s top priority “remains Russia,” Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam told the outlet.

Rupert Lowe has offered an olive branch to Nigel Farage and claimed the pair could unite the “patriotic right” of British politics in an electoral pact that could threaten Andy Burnham.

“Politics being politics,” said Politico, Lowe, a former Reform MP until being suspended by the party in March 2025, spelt out “five conditions for cooperation”. They included “a referendum on the death penalty and the exclusion of former Tory ministers from any future cabinet”.

Farage responded by saying he wanted the support of people from other parties to defeat the left. He didn’t name Lowe and Restore but said Reform’s potential allies should share his commitment to restoring Britain’s borders. But he stood by his former Tory front-benchers, saying: “I will never turn my back on my team.”

What did the commentators say?

The Greater Manchester mayoral election, won comfortably by Labour’s Bev Craig, has shown the danger Restore could pose to Reform at a future general election. Reform took 21% of first-preference votes, while Restore had 8.7% (Craig won 47.1%). Lowe “appears to have come to a realisation: that Restore is just big enough to prevent Reform victories, but far too small to win itself”, said George Spencer on UnHerd.

The conditions laid out by Lowe show that he is not serious about this offer, said veteran Farage ally Gawain Towler on Substack. It “is a demand engineered to be refused” and the timing of Lowe’s “gesture” comes while Farage is “under scrutiny he could do without”. In speaking out while Farage is under investigation for his financial conduct, Lowe “has chosen the moment of maximum embarrassment to apply pressure and called it generosity”.

But one figure with connections in Reform circles told Politico it was a “tempting offer” for Farage that would stop him “bleeding any more support … but the animosity between the pair is a big barrier”, said Politico.

Surely Farage is a “savvy enough politician to spot that this is not so much a gift as a trap, from a man whom he personally detests”, said James Ball in The i Paper. “Even if he wanted to work with Lowe and went along with his list of demands, this would create new political problems for him”. Among Reform’s voters are “people who aren’t fully signed up to the idea of mass deportations and full-blown Islamophobia”. Rather they are “simply fed up of the status quo and the mainstream parties”.

But “it now appears neither can make the progress needed to nullify the left without the other”, said Giles Sheldrick in the Daily Express. “Many of those closest to the man who almost single-handedly delivered Brexit have said he is driven by ego and ambition.” While Farage denies this is the case, Lowe’s “offer in a bombshell social media post may well provide the definitive answer”.

What next?

It remains to be seen “whether the Burnham bounce in the polls and the dip in Farage’s fortunes mark a decisive shift in momentum in British politics or merely a blip”, said Politico. “What is clear is that the challenges facing Reform are substantial, and growing.”

The ball is clearly now in Farage’s court but the imminent by-election in Clacton and the Labour government’s resurgence mean he “is facing something of a perfect storm,” Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told Politico. “But while he’s on the ropes he’s by no means on the floor, let alone out for the count.”

Europe is braced for more explosive debate over immigration and open borders after an estimated 49,000 migrants crossed into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco in 24 hours via land and sea.

Italy’s most senior politicians have called for Spain to be kicked out of Europe’s Schengen zone, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on X that she was “prepared to take action – including extraordinary measures – to defend our borders and ensure citizens’ safety”. Spain’s Interior Ministry blamed human trafficking networks for encouraging the latest crossings, saying criminal organisations had exploited a recent Supreme Court ruling to lure more migrants, particularly young people, into attempting the journey.

Spain’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned under the enclaves’ special border-rejection regime. “It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion,” a Guardia Civil spokesperson said on Reuters.

What did the commentators say?

The tiny Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla sit on the northern shores of Morocco’s Mediterranean coast. Together they form the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. “It’s not yet clear what prompted this surge in illegal crossings from Morocco, or how hard the authorities there tried to prevent it,” said the BBC. But at one point, a Spanish official said the border was in total collapse.

Just a week ago, Jessika Roswall, a centre-right European commissioner, “painted an idyllic image of the Schengen area, praising the ‘seamless journeys’ made possible by ‘decades of European cooperation’”, said Eddy Wax on Euractiv. But “that Brussels fantasy has now been smashed apart”. Italy has “always been quick to clamour for EU solidarity when faced with inflows of migrants at its own borders” but Meloni “has particular form” for exploiting the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s woes while “boosting his far-right adversaries”.

She “challenged him at the last EU leaders’ summit over his move to regularise hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants” and last night, Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, “alleged the policy itself was a pull factor”. That drew “a stern rebuke” from Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, said Joe Stanley-Smith on Politico but the policy “has proven hugely contentious, both domestically and at a European level”.

“A young person leaving, sometimes with their parents’ consent, is a guarantee that they will send money back to their family,” sociologist Ali Zoubeidi said in Le Monde. “The Spanish government’s announcement [in April] of the regularisation of 500,000 undocumented migrants may also have encouraged young people to try to reach Ceuta.”

The situation “may also have been exacerbated by an event that suggests Rabat could have deliberately loosened controls at Ceuta’s border”, said Le Monde. Sánchez’s recent visit to Morocco’s regional rival Algeria, reportedly upset those in Rabat. For Abdullah Abaakil, deputy secretary of the Moroccan Unified Socialist Party, there is no doubt it played a role: “The Moroccan authorities clearly let them through,” he said. “There is a suspicious trend of using migration and the despair of young people to embarrass the Spanish government and to send a message when they are dissatisfied.”

What next?

Spain and Morocco have agreed to return all migrants to Morocco and Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the two countries would intensify joint efforts to combat irregular migration, describing cooperation with Morocco as “exemplary”.

Though Italy has called for closing the open-border Schengen agreement with Spain, the countries “do not share a land border, so Italy would likely need to get other European countries on board to be able to enforce this”, said the BBC.

But the crisis has intensified calls for further action on immigration from the bloc. Manfred Weber, president of the European Parliament’s largest political grouping – the centre-right European People’s Party – called for tougher action. “This proves one thing: the Migration Pact and return regulation must be enforced today, not tomorrow,” he said on X.

What is the best pub snack?

As Andy Burnham and John Healey took up their positions in No. 10 and No. 11 last week, they took a break from running the country to discuss the biggest question potentially facing Brits today. They did so in a video released to promote their announcement of a 20% cut in pub business rates, which racked up two million views across Instagram and TikTok.

The change in government has seen a new media strategy that is already winning much praise. “Labour’s comms has been in another league this week compared to what went before,” said The News Agents’ Lewis Goodall on X in response to the pub snacks video.

“That is certainly true,” said Gareth Roberts in The Spectator, but it’s “a bit like saying that a packet of Scampi Fries is, as a pub snack, in another league from a handful of gravel.”

What did the commentators say?

In 2026, “TikTok and Instagram are the most important stages that any politician who cares about reaching Gen Z, who don’t read newspapers or listen to the radio, must master”, said Issy Clarke on LBC.

Many of Burnham’s critics “will be precisely those who decry the lack of political engagement among Gen Z”, all the while “forgetting that the best remedy is to meet young people where they are”. Burnham “is the first British PM who has managed to do it”.

When it comes to his social media output, it has an “authenticity” to it, Bruce Daisley, the former boss of Twitter in the UK and Europe, told The Times. “And he is getting the cut through as a result.” Burnham is a politician who gets it and uses “a template of frequent, human communications”. In a way “it’s almost over-communication, but that way the message gets across”.

After years of gloom, “the chirpy bonhomie can’t help but appeal”, said Roberts in The Spectator. “Here is somebody saying that Britain isn’t broken, isn’t collapsing, and look, here’s a few little extra pennies for you.” It is the reason the polls are shifting effectively because “it’s so nice to see somebody with a smile on their face, even a gormless smile that defies reality”.

Yet the new PM’s “apparent openness to people he meets on the street has not, so far, been extended to lobby journalists”, said Keir Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin in The Guardian. “Aides insist there is no deliberate effort to avoid scrutiny and can point to how he spoke at length to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg”, but in hoodwinking the lobby over the appointment of Healey as chancellor “there appears to be more than a little satisfaction about the lobby’s humiliation within the prime minister’s wider circle”. It is a dangerous tactic “from a new administration that will need to be trusted by the more responsible end of the Westminster media when, inevitably, the going gets rough”.

What next?

Burnham’s social media output is a “good way to signal to a large audience that the Labour government has changed”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. But “while it allows the prime minister of the day to evade direct scrutiny and difficult debates, it also makes it harder for them to put their opponents under the microscope”.

It also means “neither Burnham nor his opponents are guaranteed a proper comeback when a rival is speaking”. Effectively, we are heading towards “a highly polarised country where political advertising is almost inescapable and neither side can be guaranteed the pain of scrutiny or the consolation of a rebuttal”.

After a World Cup dominated by hydration “ad” breaks, political interference and match-rigging conspiracies, football’s biggest prize really is, “it seems, for sale”, said Alyson Rudd in The Times.

Under plans drawn up by Fifa President Gianni Infantino, football’s world governing body would retain majority control of the tournaments it runs, including the men’s and women’s World Cup and Club World Cup, under a new company, the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE).

But a minority stake would be offered to each of Fifa’s 211 member associations and, controversially, to private investors. Infantino would be installed as “commissioner” when his term as Fifa president ends in 2031, a role that “could potentially earn him tens of millions of pounds”, sources have told The Times, which broke the story.

“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” European football’s governing body Uefa said in a statement. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade – especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially.”

What did the commentators say?

For once, public outrage at the proposals is entirely justified and understandable “because it ties together so many of the extremes that have been pushing, pulling and twisting football, let alone the world, for so long”, said Miguel Delaney in The Independent.

To muddy the waters further, the Financial Times has reported that Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is being lined up to lead the $20 billion commercial part of the deal through his Thrive Eternal investment fund.

Infantino “understands political and commercial power”, said the FT. And “in the latest battle for football’s soul and spoils”, the 56-year-old Swiss “has a key ally in Trump and, many suspect, the support of Fifa members around the world”.

Purists may decry the commercialisation of the beautiful game, but this has been happening for decades. Football’s “owners and exploiters have long seen the matches themselves as mere 90-minute sections of legacy content”, said Marina Hyde in The Guardian. These “would be far better relegated to the second, third or even fourth tier behind such always-on output as branded content, shareable clips, behind-the-scenes footage, lifestyle and commerce”.

Others will say that what Fifa is proposing is “no different to the commercial entities that the likes of the French and Spanish leagues have created and sold stakes in to private-equity funds”, said Matt Slater on The Athletic. The German and Italian leagues have debated “the same move for several years” too, and the strategy has been tried in other sports such as Formula 1 and golf’s PGA Tour.

What next?

Fifa insists the plans are still in the consultation phase, but “if this escapade succeeds, the trickle-down effect would be unpalatable”, said Rudd in The Times. It would, for example, “reinvigorate those who wanted a breakaway European Super League so feared by the fans and then so valiantly protested against”.

Selling off a slice of the World Cup “should be the cue for outright rebellion”, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. Given European teams made up six of the eight men’s World Cup quarter-finalists this year and three of the four semi-finalists, Uefa “should have the courage of its convictions and issue a warning to secede”.

That “will almost certainly never happen”, though. “These scandals follow a time-honoured pattern: politicians fulminate, a few federations speak out, and then Infantino ploughs ahead regardless.”

US Senator Lindsey Graham “relished his role as an informal envoy” between Donald Trump and foreign leaders, said The Economist. So it’s fitting that the Republican’s funeral today “will provide one final round of diplomacy”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu will both attend the service for Graham, a “defence hawk” who “forcibly lobbied Washington” to back Ukraine against Russia, and Israel against Iran, said Reuters. Tonight, the Senate prepares to vote on a bipartisan package imposing sanctions on both countries that Graham “spent his final days trying to push across the line”.

Both leaders are also scheduled to meet the US president “with the goal of winning the ear of Donald Trump” at a time when US policy towards both wars is “in a state of flux”, said Robert Tait in The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

Netanyahu will probably pressure Trump to further “escalate” the war in Iran, while Zelenksyy will “look to shore up American support” after the loss of Graham, “one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers”, said The Economist.

The two wars, taking place 1,550 miles apart, have “converged in recent days”, said Chris Hamill-Stewart on Al Jazeera. On Saturday, Ukraine attacked an Iranian tanker said to be carrying military technology and drones from Iran to Russia. Kyiv’s actions “will please” America, former US ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, William Courtney, told the news site. But Zelenskyy is “unlikely to want to be too closely associated with the ‘unpopular’ US war on Iran”.

There are signs of “a dramatic change” in the US posture on Ukraine, said The Guardian’s Tait. Washington seems “more supportive” of Kyiv than at any other time in Trump’s second presidency. Last week, right-wing influencer Laura Loomer gave the latest “signal of a sea change” when she met Zelenskyy in Kyiv, before “recanting her previous support for Russia”. Trump and Zelenskyy’s “cordial” meeting at the Nato summit in Ankara was also “starkly” different to “last year’s bitter confrontation in the White House”.

By contrast, Trump’s relationship with the Israeli prime minister has grown “visibly strained” since they last met in February, said Tal Shalev on CNN. “Close cooperation and effusive praise” at the start of the Iran war has “given way to Trump’s expletive-laden outbursts”. Trump has said he lashed out at Netanyahu, calling him “crazy”, for continuing to bombard Hezbollah in Lebanon and endangering peace talks with Iran. He has been “resistant” to this meeting, having “little interest in resuming a full fight” against Iran before the US midterms in November, according to one Israeli source.

What next?

Ukraine and the US are moving closer towards a deal on joint drone production, which “could help the US catch up with Ukraine in this crucial military technology”, said Al Jazeera. And Trump and Zelenskyy agreed this month to allow Ukraine to jointly produce Patriot air defence interceptors, “a crucial component for the country’s defence against Russian aerial attacks”.

For Netanyahu, there’s the sticking point of Lebanon: he told his security cabinet on Sunday that the Trump administration “wants to pull Israeli forces back from positions in Lebanon, as well as in Gaza and Syria”. But, as Israel has already refused to withdraw its forces completely before Hezbollah disarms, Netanyahu “intends to oppose the idea”, said CNN’s Shalev. The Israeli PM is under political pressure ahead of elections in October: in recent polls, “he falls far short of the majority he needs to secure another term”. He knows Trump’s support “could be critical”. The stakes “are as high as ever”.

“Overlooked and underfunded” adult social care has become “the Cinderella service of our wider welfare system”, said Labour List. Now Andy Burnham, whose father has Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home, has told the BBC that he will put “whatever political capital I have” into fixing it.

He is not the first prime minister to vow to tackle the issue. But “successive governments have come undone when faced with the tricky reality” of adequately funding state support to help older people live safely and independently, said The Times.

What did the commentators say?

There have been 22 botched attempts to the reform the English adult social care system in the past 30 years. And those successive failures carry “a heavy political cost”, said Chris Smyth in the Financial Times: long-term underfunding has made pay and conditions in the sector so unattractive to British workers that “visa rules were loosened after Brexit” and care workers arriving from abroad became “the single biggest reason why net immigration to the UK rose to all-time high”.

Now, as Britain’s “demographic centre of gravity” tilts towards retirement, social care is reaching its “most painful financial pinch point” yet, said The Telegraph's editorial board. In 50 years, more than 25% of the population could be over the age of 65, according to the Office for National Statistics. The “best solution” for funding social care on that scale would be an “insurance-based system, where Britons would be encouraged to pay into a fund that would cover their own care in old age, should they need it”.

But Burnham has said social care should be delivered “on an NHS basis”. This implies “a public service free at the point of delivery and funded by some form of taxation”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. When Burnham was health secretary in 2010, he proposed a “national care service” to be funded by a deferred levy on dead people’s estates. Other options could include “a new form of social insurance” or “a combination of private and state payments”.

A more “ambitious” solution would be take responsibility for funding social care away from local councils, whose “revenues don’t map neatly on to local care needs”, and simultaneously reform council tax as a central tax that better reflects current property values and generates revenue for a national social care service, said Ben Zaranko in The Observer. That would “create losers, be complicated and take time but the course of true radical social care reform never did run smooth”.

What next?

Burnham is scheduled to deliver a speech on adult social care on Wednesday. In it, he will “stop short of unveiling” any concrete plans, said the BBC, instead announcing that he is speeding up Louise Casey’s independent review of possible solutions for the system.

Yet “the veteran Whitehall troubleshooter on whom Burnham is relying to come up with answers” has already warned there is no quick fix, said the FT’s Smyth. Earlier this month, she said “we cannot keep pretending that a few tweaks will fix adult social care, or attempt major reform without the public’s backing”.