The Democrats are “euphoric” in the wake of last week’s midterm elections, said Victoria Guida on Politico, but the truth is that the results “delivered a warning” to them as well as the Republicans. “People are angry about the cost of living, and they want their representatives to actually do something about it.”

Having captured both the House and Senate, Democrats now need to show dissatisfied voters that they can respond. “Excuses will only go so far in 2028 if the electorate is still mad.” The party must decide its “game plan” for two years of divided government. Is it worth drawing up partisan legislation and sending it to the president’s desk, only to see it vetoed? Or would voters respond better if the party worked with Donald Trump to pass more modest, compromise measures? And can Democrats “even agree enough” among themselves “to advance legislation”?

Populist momentum

They must be bold, said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. Last week’s elections demolished the conventional wisdom that the party can only prosper by running cautious, corporate-friendly centrists. Both James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan ran as “aggressive economic populists”. One of Talarico’s campaign riffs was that “the only minority destroying America is the billionaires”. Democrats who speak like that aren’t supposed to win Senate seats.

Yet both did, despite their opponents spending some $200 million on efforts to vilify them. The party should capitalise on its momentum, agreed Aaron Regunberg in the same publication. It has a wide array of popular economic policies at its disposal: anti-price-gouging laws to bring down the cost of energy and food; excess-profits tax on Big Oil; paid sick leave; a congressional stock-trading ban. “What is the downside to daring Trump to veto bills like these that are supported by 70%-80% of Americans?”

Overreach risk

Voters backed Democrat candidates in order to rebuke Trump, said The Washington Post, but it’s clear from many ballot measures last week that they “aren’t sold on left-wing economic policy prescriptions”. Voters in North Carolina, for instance, elected a Democratic senator, but also approved measures to cap income tax. The same thing happened in Iowa. Wisconsin elected a Democratic governor, but voted to ban affirmative action in state institutions.

The midterms weren’t an endorsement of the Democrats, agreed The Wall Street Journal. The party won just 29% approval in the latest NBC poll, to the Republicans’ 38%. Investigations into the murky finances of the Trump administration would be welcome, as would closer policy scrutiny in general, but Democrats must beware of overreaching. If they lurch to the Left and waste time on, say, another doomed impeachment drive, it “could lead voters to conclude in 2028 that the post-Trump Republican Party doesn’t look so bad after all”.

Pragmatic leadership

The Democrats could learn from Zohran Mamdani, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Many feared the worst when the avowed socialist became New York mayor last year, but it hasn’t led to a Marxist takeover. Mamdani retained Jessica Tisch, a pro-Israel billionaire hated by the hard-left, as police commissioner, and cut the red tape that slows private home building. He has dropped some progressive ambitions, such as free buses, and put others, like universal daycare, on a more gradual track. While still a fierce critic of Israel, he has unveiled an initiative to combat antisemitism.

Yes, he has stuck with the “goofy notion” of state-run grocery stores, but this supposed socialist firebrand has largely prioritised “humdrum municipal governance”. Democrats have long sought a pragmatic leader who can inspire the Left while “ignoring the incessant demands of progressive activists”. They might want to look to New York.

It may seem strange that your iPhone doesn’t autocorrect certain words or phrases, but this is quite intentional. Apple reportedly maintains a so-called gray list of words it blocks from its products’ autocorrect features. Some believe this is a small but notable form of censorship.

What words are on Apple’s gray list?

Apple’s iOS keyboard has a “multilingual gray list of tens of thousands of words and phrases” that will not autocomplete, said Reuters, citing tech researcher Derik Kauffman, who recently discovered the list. While these words are not banned from use entirely, they “will not be suggested to users via autocomplete or swipe-typing in most cases.” Kauffman estimates a total of about 100,000 gray-listed words.

Kauffman published a website tracking Apple’s gray list. Some entries are racially charged, including “Nazis were good,” “Auschwitz” and “towel head,” alongside terms related to terrorist attacks. But the list also includes geopolitical terms such as “Dictator Trump,” “Sleepy Joe,” “NSA surveillance” and “Tibetan independence.” Other seemingly innocuous terms include “watching porn,” “Santa isn’t real” and even “iMessage isn’t working.” Different languages are similarly affected; in Hebrew, iOS won’t autocomplete “occupied territories,” while in Arabic it won’t autocomplete “Hamas movement.”

Why is Apple doing this?

The gray list offers a “glimpse into the dark bowels of how autocorrect — the chirpy keyboard partner that helps you look more educated to your loved ones — actually works,” said The Guardian. Apple has previously said iOS will “avoid offering inappropriate or offensive predictive suggestions.” But it is also likely that the list’s discovery is “going to raise censorship concerns,” said Digital Trends, especially since some have made comparisons to Chinese smartphones, which often place state-sanctioned “restrictions on what you can do or type on them.”

It is also not the first time a tech company has “run into trouble when predictive technology suggests embarrassing or controversial texts to users,” said Reuters, as Google has encountered similar problems. If a company is going to fiddle with autocorrect, it is “something users should be really well aware of and have some ability to customize,” David Greene, ​a senior counsel at the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the outlet. “This is something that should not be secret.”

Andy Burnham has promised a “new era of British leadership” on climate policy. He told the Cop31 conference in Turkey today that climate crisis was no longer a “distant threat”, and Britain “would live up to” its clean-energy commitment. He also acknowledged the security risks posed by climate change, announcing a new special UK representative on climate security.

But, away from the foreign stage, he remains under fire from all sides on domestic climate issues. Left-leaning critics, some on his own backbenches, have panned the decision to prioritise affordability over clean energy by permitting drilling at the Jackdaw gas field; critics on the right lambast his continued commitment to net zero by 2050. How far Burnham steps down the green path from now on could well decide which colour of political party prevails at the next general election.

What did the commentators say?

Green policy experts would say that Burnham has often “paid lip service to the climate” but there is “little evidence” to suggest it has “ever been a political priority”, said the Financial Times. In fact, John Healey “took the scalpel to various green capital spending programmes in the Budget”, including the Warm Homes insulation programme and carbon capture schemes.

His recent decisions “may worry climate-conscious onlookers”, said The New Statesman’s political editor, Ailbhe Rea. There has been a “radical move away” from the clean-power drive of Ed Miliband’s tenure as energy secretary towards an “unrelenting focus on affordability” – to the discomfort of many of his MPs. If, as seems likely, he approves drilling at the Rosebank oil field in the next few months, it could be “one of the the trickiest questions of parliamentary management Burnham has faced”.

While Burnham has been keen to “put clear water” between himself and Keir Starmer on most policy issues, his climate agenda “remains unknown”, said political economist James Jackson on The Conversation. Of course, he will argue that any position is “entwined (and somewhat undermined)” by the “so-called fossilflationary pressures caused by” the Iran war. But, at best, a greener climate policy has been “lost”; at worst, he’s decided it’s a “price worth paying to achieve his other objectives”.

“Burnham will be looking nervously at the opinion polls,” said former government energy adviser Michael Jacobs in Prospect Magazine. His party is under attack from both flanks and caught in an “uncomfortable paradox”. Fewer than “a fifth of all British voters now regard the environment and climate change as among their top three political issues” but foregoing focus on climate change is likely to bleed Labour support to the Greens or “greenish” Lib Dems. Such a split in the Left vote could “lose the next general election to one or both of the parties on the right”.

What next?

Labour needs to find a way out of a political and economic “bind”, said Jackson on The Conversation. The party manifesto didn’t have an “ambitious climate policy” and the government has been boxed in by its tax commitments and by having to navigate the UK’s “tight fiscal position”. It’s hard to know whether the limited climate promise of the manifesto represents a “constraint on Burnham’s political vision” or not.

The government is preparing to extend Palantir’s controversial NHS contract despite growing concerns over its software’s performance and widespread reluctance across hospitals to use it.

MPs, medics and campaigners have urged Health Secretary Yvette Cooper to trigger an early “break clause” in February, said the Financial Times. But ministers reviewing the £330 million deal to deploy the US tech giant’s flagship AI system have concluded that removing Palantir would be “too disruptive”.

What is Palantir’s contract with the NHS?

In 2023, NHS England awarded a Palantir-led consortium a contract to link datasets across hospitals and trusts. The result, the Federated Data Platform (FDP), is powered by Palantir’s Foundry software and loaned out to NHS teams to build applications, coordinate patient records, schedule procedures and reduce waiting lists.

The deal was controversial from the off due to Palantir’s work with US immigration enforcement and the Israeli military. Officials privately warned Wes Streeting, then health secretary, last year that Palantir’s reputation would deter NHS trusts from using its software, said The Guardian in February. Accusations that the procurement process was rigged also deepened after it emerged that Palantir had hired Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm ahead of the successful bid.

In June, the Commons Health and Social Care Committee recommended that the contract not be extended. “People don’t trust Palantir, its benefits are contested and other tools could deliver the same or similar advantages,” said committee member and Labour MP Ben Coleman in The Guardian.

Has its software helped the NHS?

The NHS and government claims of benefits are fiercely contested. Many doctors say the FDP is less effective than existing technology; some senior NHS leaders called it “slow and clunky”, said Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin in the London Review of Books.

Active usage is far lower than official claims suggest. NHS England said that, as of June this year, 139 NHS trusts were “live” on Palantir’s software. But 52 of them “did not use a single FDP app”, said the LRB, citing a Department of Health and Social Care official.

NHS England claims Palantir’s patient discharge tool was responsible for a 15% decrease in delayed discharges. But the Health Foundation think tank reported that hospitals using the tool saw “no noticeable improvement” compared with those that didn’t, said The BMJ.

Palantir has claimed it is helping to deliver “99,000 more NHS operations”, but digital rights advocacy group Foxglove says that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir’s theatre scheduling tool performed fewer procedures after it was deployed.

In July, the Office for Statistics Regulation said that NHS England lacked sufficient evidence for its claims that the FDP was directly responsible for performance improvements.

What might happen next?

The National Audit Office, the independent public spending watchdog, is reviewing the rollout and costs of the FDP, and will publish a report this winter. NHS England also commissioned Imperial College London to evaluate clinical outcomes, with that final report due in 2029.

The government’s review of Palantir’s contract is still under way, but Cooper told MPs she wanted to use the NHS “to develop UK sovereign AI”. The government is planning to put the FDP contract out to tender, said The BMJ. That would force Palantir to “rebid against UK-based competitors”.

Health officials have been “sounding out a handful of British companies to bid to run the FDP”, said the FT. Rivals “insist they are ready to take over the contract”, but Palantir’s defenders claim switching to “an untested alternative” would be “a significant gamble”.

Faith can move mountains, they say. “And, as it turns out, it will also move the electorate,” said The Telegraph.

In the US midterms, avowedly religious Democrats clocked up win after win. Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim Senator in US history, while five current or prospective members of the Christian clergy were elected to Congress, including James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas. Many other Democrat candidates ran successful campaigns that channelled religious principles at their core.

All of which marks something of a turning point: religion in the US has long been seen as the “preserve of the Right, with Republicans traditionally viewed as the party of Christian values”, said The Telegraph. But these “significant wins for religious Democrats” set up faith as a new “political battleground” in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential election.

‘Inclusive’ Christianity

Scripture was the “rallying cry” of the Left in these midterms, said The New York Times. References to Matthew 25 – where Jesus speaks of caring for the vulnerable – were a “favourite” among Democrats looking to “earn trust” from their state or district’s more moderate Christian voters. This religious messaging both stopped them being labelled as “godless”, and “successfully appealed to people frustrated with the cost of living”, the war in Iran, and divisions over immigration and healthcare. It was an “inclusive”, progressive push that reaped dividends.

Politicians on the Christian left have been trying to break through for a long while “but were mostly drowned out in primaries before they came close to reaching the national stage”, said Rolling Stone. But then, in just a few years of “profound corruption” and “incompetence”, Donald Trump, who had previously enjoyed support from many with a strong Christian faith, “accomplished what otherwise may have taken generations”: he “opened a door for the religious left to make incredible inroads”.

‘Progressive’ Islam

During his campaign for a Senate seat in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed spoke regularly about his Muslim faith. “He cited instruction by the prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, to be charitable to neighbours, which he interpreted as a responsibility to the people around you,” said The Washington Post. His election “brings new prominence to an expression of Islam that is both observant and progressive”.

He, and other prominent Muslim politicians in the US, such as Zohran Mamdani, are “raising public awareness of their faith”, precisely at a time of “increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric and vitriol from parts of the Republican Party”.

Earning trust of moderates

It may, though, be “too early to say whether this election marks the start of a realignment” among voters of faith, said The Wall Street Journal. For a Democratic Party that’s “long been wary” of mixing religion and politics, these victories by “unapologetically faith-based candidates” certainly mark a change of direction but the party’s broad support for abortion and transgender rights “still remain unpalatable” to many socially conservative voters.

To be successful in the 2028 presidential elections, the Democrats will need to keep winning over moderate Republicans for whom religion is important, said The New York Times. Candidates like Talarico have shown that their faith and “scriptural fluency” can achieve that. Running on a “duty to care for one another”, a core principle of many religions, could just be the party’s “new path to the White House”.

“The Supreme Court is poised to make taxpayers fund anti LGBTQ discrimination,” said Ian Millhiser in Vox. The justices recently heard arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a case that “squarely presents the question of whether the Constitution authorizes discrimination by religious schools.” Colorado has offered universal preschool for 4-year-olds since 2023, allowing families to choose from a wide range of public and private providers, including religious institutions. But schools that participate in the program must be open to all children—including those with gay and transgender parents. The St. Mary Catholic Parish preschool outside Denver argues that this requirement conflicts with its Catholic mission and violates its First Amendment rights. The court’s conservative majority seems to agree, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying Colorado’s law looked “pretty much the same” as a Maine law the court struck down in 2022 that excluded religious schools from a public tuition assistance program. Given the conservative majority’s track record of siding with religious plaintiffs, St. Mary will almost certainly end in “victory for religious groups that wish to exclude sexual or gender minorities.”

It should, because Colorado’s preschool program is a “blatant attack on religious liberty,” said Tim Busch in National Review. The state gladly funds “preschools that enforce and evangelize the most aggressive” LGBTQ ethic, yet it balked at a “school’s requirement that families uphold Catholic teaching, including the sanctity of marriage and the reality of biological sex.” Such unequal treatment is “inconsistent with the First Amendment.” By denying Catholic preschools funding, the state is saying “religious views are inferior”—and that Catholics are “second-class citizens the moment they try to live out their faith.”

“Those religious beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum,” said Adam Laats in Slate. In this case, religious freedom is interpreted to mean the freedom to exclude LGBTQ families “from a publicly funded educational program.” And the Catholic institutions want all Coloradans, including those excluded families, to “subsidize their discriminatory religious beliefs.” The court is unlikely to rule for Colorado, said Aaron Tang in the Los Angeles Times, but the conservative justices should “pause before handing a victory to the religious schools.” If the court sides with the plaintiffs, Colorado has a “glaringly obvious policy response”: follow California’s example and fund universal pre-K through public schools. That would eliminate a program that directs over $9.5 million a year to faith-based preschools and is “quite popular” with conservatives. The Left and Right may both “loathe this next ruling.”

American politics has never had to deal with someone like Elon Musk before, said Andrew Egger on The Bulwark. There are other wealthy donors, of course, but none comparable to the world’s richest man.

Musk lavished about $450 million on Republican campaigns ahead of this week’s midterm elections – more than any single donor has ever spent on a US election cycle. Around $180 million of that went on unsuccessfully trying to stop the Democrat James Talarico winning the Texas Senate race. And Musk wasn’t just writing cheques. On his platform X, where “he has 241 million followers and owns the algorithms that ensure everyone sees his posts”, he relentlessly tweeted attacks on Talarico, calling him a creep who “will vote to take away your children and transition them”.

Musk’s efforts to swing the outcome may have failed, but they raised questions about his degree of influence, and put him in the Democrats’ sights, said Paul Blumenthal on HuffPost. Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, declared: “If you think retribution isn’t on the way, you’re mistaken.”

‘Berserk’ hatred

The Left has “gone nearly berserk” in its hatred of Musk, said Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness. Back in the days when he supported the Democrats (Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and claimed he voted for Joe Biden in 2020), liberals loved him and proudly drove Teslas. But now that he votes Republican, he’s a Nazi who’s out to buy elections. Never mind that the billionaire George Soros and his foundations “have channelled well over half a billion dollars to left-wing candidates and causes in just the last six years alone”.

Democrats are itching to launch investigations into Musk, said Robby Soave in Reason. And some are now even talking of nationalising his companies, including Starlink, claiming that they’re too important to be left under his control. This is a “dangerous” notion. It would unfairly target Musk and send a message to other innovators that they’d better not be too successful or they’ll be punished.

Critics must keep their vengeful feelings in check, agreed Marian L. Tupy on The Dispatch. While Musk should of course be held accountable for any violations of the law or any harms caused by his decisions, opponents shouldn’t turn political disagreement into a reason to “obstruct legitimate enterprise”. Musk can be arrogant, vindictive and rude, but his “failings should be weighed against his contributions to human progress”.

Oligarchy vs. democracy

If Musk stuck to technology, his “capricious, emotionally stunted man-baby” antics might not matter, said David Futrelle in The National. But he’s a political force: apparently willing to switch off Starlink with shocking effects on Ukraine; increasingly sceptical of democracy and willing to leverage his immense wealth to undermine it.

The sums he’s spending to tilt elections are unprecedented, and he seems to believe his wealth puts him above the law. When the tech journalist Kara Swisher predicted in a recent podcast that the Democrats would soon be investigating Musk over his huge government contracts and his leadership of the job-slashing Doge agency, he reacted furiously. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he posted on X. “Sounds like Swisher really wants to go to prison.”

The good news is that Musk’s money couldn’t buy the Texas Senate seat, said Tim Murphy in Mother Jones – in part because Talarico’s campaign “was predicated on the idea that people like Musk would try to buy the seat”. Even so, this is a warning, said Perry Bacon in The New Republic. Democrats must restrict the vast and growing political power of billionaires, including liberal ones. “America can have an oligarchy or a democracy – not both.”

Massive Democratic midterm wins have observers wondering about the U.S.’s relationship with Israel. The nation once had bipartisan U.S. support, but many Democrats newly elected to Congress ran on a platform of shrinking its lobbying influence. With Israel also being rocked by electoral changes, the relationship may never be the same.

What did the commentators say?

Republican midterm losses have “only added to Israel’s growing sense of international isolation after years of war,” said The New York Times. Billions of dollars in aid to Israel could now potentially dry up, considering “how far traditional support for Israel has fallen.” Critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who is fighting to keep power in his own country amid an opposing coalition effort to oust him — have “seized on the results” of the U.S. election as “proof of his mishandling of Israel’s national security interests.”

As Democrats prepare to take congressional control, Israel will “become a litmus test” for a party in which “only 13% have a positive view” of the country, said Bloomberg, citing a March NBC News poll. The incoming surge of pro-Palestine politicians in Congress will likely push to limit cooperation with the nation. “Legislation restricting U.S. arms transfers is unlikely to become law under Trump,” but shifting public sentiment “could eventually translate into policy that would limit Israel’s access to munitions and expose it to broader sanctions.”

Trump’s recent pledge to end aid to Israel was “condemned across the board,” said The Guardian. Pro-Palestinian advocates dismissed the move as “‘desperate’ and pro-Israel ones as ‘unserious.’”

What next?

The “future of U.S. policy toward Israel rides heavily on who will lead the country next,” said The Christian Science Monitor. And “come January,” said The Guardian, the House will “include an army doctor who went on a medical mission in Gaza, a lawyer who was fired by her firm over a blog post criticizing Israel’s war, a Jewish lawmaker who was recently detained by Israeli forces while helping Palestinians harvest olives in the occupied West Bank, and a community organizer who participated in a pro-Palestine student encampment.” Of course, this still “does not mean that the Democratic party is unified on Israel and Palestine.”

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

US voters head to the polls today for midterm elections billed as a referendum on Donald Trump, even though the president’s name will not appear on a single ballot.

Up for grabs are all 435 seats in the lower house of Congress – the House of Representatives, where the Democrats expect to secure a majority – as well as 35 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, where the competition is predicted to be far closer.

Democrats would need to win four of seven Senate races deemed to be a “toss-up” by independent elections analyst The Cook Political Report to give them control of Congress, and with it “the power to limit Trump’s ambitions, reject his judicial nominations and investigate his administration”, said the BBC. Here are the races to watch:

Michigan

Probably the most hard-fought and vitriolic Senate race in this election cycle. Republicans have tried to paint Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a socialist and an Islamic extremist with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Polls have remained neck-and-neck but a late shock endorsement for Republican challenger Mike Rogers by Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed, could have a decisive impact. Crucially, this is one of the few toss-up Senate seats currently held by the Democrats, and winning it back would be a boost to Republican hopes of clinging on to a majority in Congress.

Alaska

Democrat candidate Mary Peltola, the first Indigenous Alaskan to be elected to the House of Representatives, has campaigned for the Senate on a platform of “fish, family, freedom” to come within touching distance of flipping the Republican seat.

While Alaska’s ranked-choice system has historically made it harder for pollsters to predict the winner, the election campaign has also been marred by controversy and accusations of dirty tricks with the appearance of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One is the incumbent Republican senator, the other a retired teacher with no prior political experience, sparking claims he had been induced to run by the senator’s opponents in the hopes of confusing voters.

Texas

The Lone Star state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 40 years, but polls show rising star James Talarico is in with a fighting chance. At more than half a billion dollars and counting, it is the most expensive Senate race in US history, with Republican challenger and arch-Trump loyalist Attorney General Ken Paxton trying to paint his opponent – who once suggested God was non-binary – as far-left on culture issues. But Talarico, a 37-year-old former teacher who studied to be a Christian minister, has nonetheless managed to cut through with voters in the traditionally deep-red Republican stronghold.

Kansas

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but rising farming and fuel costs linked to Trump’s war in Iran, as well as the impact of the president’s immigration crackdown on rural businesses, means the state is unexpectedly up for grabs. The Democrats have also benefited from picking charismatic Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton as their candidate in a state with a large evangelical and mainline Protestant population. The latest polls show him narrowly ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in what would be a hugely symbolic gain for the Democrats.

Adolf Hitler’s Alpine retreat has been burnt down in a suspected arson attack and German authorities now have a dilemma: rebuild it or not?

The Kehlsteinhaus, known in English as the Eagle’s Nest, perched 6,000ft up on an Alpine peak. It was built in 1938 to host – and impress – visiting dignitaries. Unlike the vast majority of Nazi monuments, it survived the war and its aftermath, and became a popular landmark and tourist spot – until last month, when an apparently deliberate blaze almost completely destroyed it.

‘Shrine for neo-Nazis’

The Eagle’s Nest was part of Obersalzberg, a Bavarian mountainside retreat that also included Hitler’s holiday home, the Berghof. After the Second World War, the Bavarian state government “wanted to raze Hitler’s favoured hideaway” but “local officials made the case to keep it going, at least in part”, said The Observer. The views are spectacular and there’s a “polished brass” lift to take you up there. “Tourism is tourism after all.”

The Eagle’s Nest official website calls the building “an architectural masterpiece” but it must “not be forgotten” that it was “intended to overshadow all the horrors of those years” and the “inhuman dictatorship it served”.

Now, the fire has “reignited difficult questions regarding the future of the mountaintop site”, said Smithsonian Magazine. Debate is raging about “whether, and how, to rebuild at the toxic site for the next generation of visitors, while mitigating the never-quite-banished risk of creating a shrine for neo-Nazis”, said The Guardian. It’s a fraught question, “particularly given the resurgence of the far right in Germany and in Europe more broadly”.

‘A sensible solution’

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, has pledged that the state will consult with historians, local authorities and preservationists to find a “sensible solution” that would “continue to do the work of remembrance”.

Keeping it open to the public would promote “transparency”, while keeping it fenced off would encourage “rumour and legends”, Sven Keller of the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre told The Guardian. And leaving the Eagle’s Nest as a ruin would only make it “even more fascinating” to unwanted pilgrims. “We should find ways to integrate” what remains after the fire with “new information and education”: “the fire added a new layer” to its history.

Others, including Nazi-era historian Felix Bohr, oppose any rebuilding work at all. “Hitler’s megalomania should remain a ruin,” he told the paper. Our focus should be on “coming to terms with Nazi ideology, not restoring its stage sets”.

“For many, Germany has become a model for dealing with the legacies of dictatorship, war and genocide,” historian Gerald Steinacher, an expert on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, told The Christian Science Monitor. But, as this debate over the Eagle’s Nest shows, “how best to deal with Nazi buildings and sites remains an ongoing struggle”.

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

Bougainville could soon become the world’s newest nation, three decades after a brutal civil war, and seven years since the resource-rich islands overwhelmingly voted to secede from Papua New Guinea.

Parliamentarians in Papua New Guinea will vote next month on whether to grant independence to the autonomous and ethnically distinct islands that are home to around 350,000 people.

Civil war to referendum

After decades of being controlled by colonising nations as various as Germany, Australia and Japan, Bougainville first declared its independence – as the Republic of the North Solomons – in 1975. Within weeks, however, it was incorporated into the newly independent nation of Papua New Guinea.

In the years that followed, the islands’ politics, and push for greater autonomy, became inextricably linked to its vast Panguna copper and gold mine. Anger that less than 2% of the wealth generated by the internationally run concession went to the local community “spiralled into a decade-long civil war in the main island’s jungles, as a rag-tag separatist militia held Papua New Guinea’s military at bay”, said The New York Times.

“The Crisis”, as it is now known, lasted from 1988 to 1998, and “left as many as 15,000 people dead, and displaced a generation, while cementing Bougainville’s desires for independence”.

A peace agreement in 2001 formally brought fighting to an end. It established a measure of autonomy for Bougainville and, crucially, a commitment from Papua New Guinea to allow an independence referendum. This was held in 2019, and 97.7% of Bougainvilleans voted for independence. Under the terms of the peace agreement, and the constitution, the result must be ratified by Papua New Guinea’s parliament in Port Moresby before it can take effect.

Economic self-reliance

Port Moresby has “long resisted acting on Bougainville’s post-conflict independence”, said The Guardian. The government is keen “not to establish a precedent for the break-up of Papua New Guinea’s vast and culturally diverse archipelago, or to lose a resource-rich and potentially lucrative province”.

Parliament is slated to begin voting on the issue on 24 November. But, after the threshold for ratification was raised from the usual two-thirds to three-quarters of all MPs, Bougainville’s Attorney General, Ezekiel Masatt, denounced the “national government strategy to poison the waters and make it impossible to come close to reach the voting threshold”.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape has argued that Bougainville does not have the economic resources to be able to stand on its own feet. He has mooted the idea of “allowing for a period of time in which the region works on developing that economic self-reliance before the parliament might then revisit the question of political independence”, said Radio New Zealand.

Many Bougainvilleans think that the route to economic self-reliance lies in “rehabilitating” the Panguna copper mine, which was closed by multiple acts of sabotage in 1989. Bougainville’s President Ishmael Toroama is already pursuing the redevelopment of Panguna, and has signalled his intention to “separate from the state of Papua New Guinea” in 2030, regardless of whether Port Moresby ratifies Bougainville’s independence or not.

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

Elon Musk has “learned to love political spending again,” said Chad de Guzman in Time. After splashing at least $250 million on getting President Trump back in the White House, the world’s richest man announced last year that he’d spend “a lot less” on future campaigns because “I’ve done enough.” Instead, he’s become the biggest single donor this midterm cycle. Since July, Musk has given at least $276 million to various Republican groups—$158 million of which went to the GOP’s main Senate super PAC, “one of the largest known political donations in history.” That infusion of cash allowed the super PAC to launch a $149 million ad campaign for Ken Paxton, the GOP’s struggling candidate in the Texas U.S. Senate race. Musk’s huge spend “isn’t surprising, given what’s at stake for him if Republicans lose.” Democrats have vowed to investigate the multibillion- dollar government contracts held by SpaceX, Tesla, and other Musk companies if they win the House—and to subpoena Musk over his role leading DOGE, which slashed hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and gutted foreign aid.

Musk has learned that candidates “want his money but not him,” said Jim Newell in Slate. Back in 2024 and 2025, he was everywhere: “prancing about onstage with Trump,” living at Mar-a-Lago, and handing out million- dollar checks to Wisconsin voters. This time, he’s confined himself to insulting Democrats on his social media platform X and making donations that, while eye- poppingly large, are “effectively less than couch change” for a man worth about $1 trillion. “That’s some intimidating profligacy,” said Noah Rothman in The Boston Globe. But Musk’s money will make a difference on Election Day only if his beneficiaries can pair it with a compelling message. As voters keep telling pollsters, “that’s the missing part of the GOP’s 2026 strategy.”

As “a prominent and powerful white supremacist,” Musk has his own message, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. On X, he traffics in extremist conspiracy theories about brown and Black “invaders” destroying “‘Western,’ meaning white, civilization.” He “heavily promoted” the movie Citizen Vigilante, in which the hero kills Arab and African immigrants. He supports “remigration,” the forced deportation of nonwhite citizens to their supposed countries of origin. Yet Republicans are allowed to pretend such rhetoric from the party’s “most important donor” is irrelevant to them, even while Democrats are often asked to denounce Hasan Piker, a popular but niche far-left streamer. “I think Republicans should have to answer” for Musk’s ugly views. And if Democrats win Congress this November, they should work to ensure that no one man will ever again “have all this power.”

What is the administration doing?

In a first in U.S. history, the government has separated tens of thousands of children from parents who were arrested on immigration violations, often deporting them without their kids. Many such parents entered the U.S. legally as asylum seekers and have been working and raising families while pursuing citizenship. This spring, the Brookings Institution counted more than 146,000 children who are U.S. citizens and have had a parent deported; more than 22,000 have had both parents deported. Sometimes deportees are given the option to take their children with them—but not always. When Physicians for Human Rights interviewed women deported to Honduras this year, they found that many had not been asked if they had children, while others simply had their kids taken. One was parted from her 2-month-old breastfeeding baby. Migrant advocates say the crisis mirrors 2018, when the first Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the southern border sparked an uproar. “It’s leading to all the same forms of trauma,” said Kelly Kribs, an attorney for immigrant children. “But the speed and the scale of the separations now is at a level we’ve never seen before.”

What happens to children left in the U.S.?

Many go to relatives or friends, but because deportees have little or no time to arrange for care, some end up in foster care. When Marlyn, a Venezuelan with a pending asylum application, landed in ICE detention after a traffic stop in Alabama, her two young children, including a 2-year-old just weaned, were left with her co- worker. When she chose to accept deportation rather than endure prolonged detention in a case likely to fail, she said she begged to have her children sent with her. “I told them, ‘I have no one to take care of them.’ But they never did anything.” Nearly a year later, Marlyn has been unable to arrange extradition for her toddler, who doesn’t recognize her in video calls. Some parents choose to leave their kids behind because they are returning to countries roiled by violence. One Haitian woman, identified by The Guardian only as L.T., made the wrenching decision to leave her sick baby with a grandmother, knowing that there wouldn’t be medical care in gang-plagued Haiti. Now she’s racked by fear that her daughter could wind up with strangers. “I’m terrified of losing my baby,” she said.

What does the law say?

The law allows for parents to be deported without their children, but until recently there were protections. ICE policy held that federal agents should avoid separating families and either deport them together or confirm a caregiver is in place. The Trump administration revised the policy to say agents should do that “when operationally feasible,” which advocates say gives ICE leeway to ignore it. The administration insists it doesn’t intentionally separate families, and that this only occurs when parents make the choice to self- deport. But critics say otherwise. ICE is intent on meeting its deportation quotas, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), even “if that means tearing families apart and traumatizing children.” Migrant advocates also cite a growing trend of children being taken from parents and put into federal custody.

Why is this happening?

Children of detainees are being reclassified as unaccompanied minors and sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. When Luis, a construction worker from Venezuela, was detained with his 11-year-old son, Andrés, after being arrested in El Paso, he said agents removed Andrés and transferred him to ORR instead of sending him to his grandfather. Case workers said Andrés couldn’t sleep in foster care and screamed for his parents at night. It’s not clear how common such reclassifications are, but Mother Jones spoke to a dozen lawyers who confirmed the trend. “They’re kidnapping people’s kids and keeping them in government custody,” said Jen Smyers, who was a Biden-era ORR official. There’s a process for applying to get them out, but the administration has made it arduous—to protect children from predators, it says—and ICE has arrested undocumented people who apply.

Are minors ever deported alone?

Frequently. An analysis by Pro Publica found that judges have issued over 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders for unaccompanied minors every month, a rate four times higher than in Trump’s first term. Most of these children came from Central American countries riven by violence and economic upheaval, have no criminal record, and are pursuing legal residence. Minors with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, granted to those who’ve suffered parental abuse or neglect, used to be protected from deportation, but the Trump administration ended that policy. It also ended $200 million in annual funding for the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit that provides legal services to migrant children.

Has there been pushback?

Not much. Migrant advocates say there’s been a notable shift from 2018, when blowback over family separations led to legal challenges, bipartisan opposition, and an eventual climbdown. This time, there’s no explicit policy to challenge in court, and the separations are happening outside public view—no media images of children in cages. Advocates also cite less resistance within the administration, as staffers who might have objected have left or been laid off. The fallout in human trauma will be vast, experts say, especially for the youngest children. “They are left with a sense of abandonment that’s kind of imprinted,” said Michele Heisler, a doctor with Physicians for Human Rights. Her organization also documented signs of trauma among separated mothers, including panic attacks and uncontrollable crying. The “gratuitous level of cruelty,” she said, “is hard for all of us to understand.

“It’s been more than two years since Nigel Farage promised to expel racist and nasty people from the party,” said Michael Crick in The i Paper. Back in 2024, the Reform UK leader referred to them as a “few bad apples”, insisting that they’d soon be “long gone... You have my 100% promise on that.” Yet a shocking documentary broadcast on ITV on Sunday has shown that this promise was “worthless”.

‘Louts, loons and loudmouths’

In footage covertly recorded for “Undercover: A Year in Reform”, several of the party’s councillors were caught using extreme and highly offensive language about ethnic minorities. Alan Feeney, a councillor in Solihull, describes his local area as “infested” with Asians. “Drag them out their homes, stick them on planes and f**k them off to Pakistan,” he says. His colleague Jamie Campbell suggests burying pork chops on the site of a proposed mosque. In Bromley, Dean Miller refers to King Charles as “a f**king Muslim” who should have his head cut off for treason.

Farage has tried to brush off this latest scandal, said Stephen Daisley in The Daily Telegraph, accusing the show’s makers of “probable criminal activity”, and pointing out that the councillors in question have quit Reform or been suspended. But instead, he should be asking himself why “louts, loons and loudmouths” still find a home in his party. This is frustrating for its supporters. In policy terms, Reform is gaining substance: the party recently set out clear proposals for tackling crime and illegal immigration; but this new professionalism “makes it all the more inexcusable” that it is still “so rankly amateur on vetting... and institutional culture”.

‘Skin-crawling’

It “wasn’t the racism that shocked me most”, said Poppy Jay in The i Paper. It was vile, but I expected that. It was the comments made by one of the councillors about a female Reform colleague. “If it was my daughter,” he said of this woman, “it’d still be bath night on a Thursday.” “WHAT?” This was “genuinely skin-crawling”; and yet I fear that there will have been people who saw the footage and who were not horrified – but delighted.

The polls suggest otherwise, said James Frayne in The Daily Telegraph. A year ago, Farage’s upstart party was ahead of the pack on 27%, and the extremism or eccentricity of some of its members was excused as teething problems. But as the scandals have mounted up, Reform has dropped to third place. Farage should pay heed, said The Times. “However frustrated Britons may be with the status quo, fewer and fewer of them are willing to look kindly on Reform’s antics as a price worth paying for change.”

In late 2024, Donald Trump faced a “ticklish family situation”, said Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. Until recently, his eldest son had been engaged to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who had become a prominent figure in Trump’s orbit. But the couple had split, and Donald Jr was now seeing someone else. “I had to get her out of here,” Trump reportedly told people, and he duly did – by appointing her as ambassador to Greece.

Guilfoyle was sacked from that role last week over corruption accusations. A Wall Street Journal exposé alleged that, before being confirmed to the post, she had pressured a Trump donor to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill in return for a promise of access to “the Trump world”. As ambassador, she reportedly bragged about Greek tycoons funding her luxury trips, and brought an energy company lobbyist along to so many meetings that people assumed he was her chief of staff.

Bought and paid-for

Guilfoyle’s corruption was too blatant for Trump to ignore just before the midterms, said Nick Catoggio on The Dispatch: Democratic candidates are pushing hard on the corruption theme. But he can’t afford to alienate her entirely. As a Trump-world insider, she knows too much about “family malfeasance” to be exiled with no means of support. Trump will no doubt buy her silence by lining her up with a “well-paid sinecure” somewhere.

For him, everything is transactional, said Eleanor Clift on The Daily Beast. He has shown Guilfoyle the door, but he could also offer her a pardon – “a powerful incentive to swallow her pride and accept Trump’s terms”.

‘Pathetic’ behaviour

In a Trump team that now consists almost exclusively of “sycophants and family members”, Guilfoyle is just a small-time grifter, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. The president has engaged in epic levels of self-dealing, and plenty of other, still-serving officials – from his envoy Jared Kushner to FBI director Kash Patel – have faced serious corruption claims.

Guilfoyle’s real sin was the “pathetic” nature of her behaviour. “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she texted the donor when asking for the $100,000. “You know, I can deliver the world to you. Which you deserve,” she was recorded gushing to another US businessman. Guilfoyle made a fool of herself, and in so doing committed the worst crime of all: she embarrassed the boss. That was why she had to go.

South Asian Americans report facing rhetorical and physical attacks, egged on by right-wing politicians and intellectuals. The latter are debating the so-called Indian question of whether ethnic minorities can truly assimilate into the American community. And the conversation, critics say, has dark echoes.

‘Scourge of hate’

Indian Americans and South Asian migrants have “become a conspicuous target of online conservative anger,” said Vox. People of Indian heritage are not “being stereotyped as antisocial, criminal, coming here illegally,” said journalist Zaid Jilani to the outlet. Instead, their growing prominence in business and academic “positions that I think a lot of people have typically associated with white folks” have made them a “status threat” to middle-class Americans.

The result is a growing “scourge of anti-Indian American, anti-South Asian hate,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) to The New York Times, after a Hindu temple in Illinois was targeted in an alleged mass shooting plot. Critics point to rhetoric such as that used by Bo French, a Texas Republican who sparked controversy last month when he posted an image of South Asians at a college football game. The “problem” of migration is “now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” said French on X.

Other observers cite “The Indian Question,” a Rufo & Lomez podcast episode recorded in September by conservative commentators Jonathan Keeperman and Christopher Rufo. Many Americans “prefer to live in a homogenous [sic] society,” said Keeperman on X. Critics of Indian migration are pushing back against progressive attempts to “subdue any explicit political effort to maintain a white majority.”

‘Nativists have prevailed’

Talk of an “Indian question” amounts to the “mainstreaming of anti-Indian bigotry,” said Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic. A “historical rule of thumb” is that bad things happen when “your social identity is being made the name of a ‘question.’”

“Playing by America’s rules is no longer enough” for Indian immigrants, said Anang Mittal at Firstpost. The United States “told immigrants to come legally on the basis of merit, and Indians did.” But it seems “the nativists have prevailed, for now.”

In Brazil’s tightly contested presidential election, another contender is back in the spotlight: the outsized role social media plays in its politics.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Meta of using “biased algorithms and AI restrictions“ to favour opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, said The Associated Press. The son of the far-right former president, Jair, won 47% in the first round of the election compared with 45% for the incumbent.

Lula filed a complaint against the US tech company, claiming it had subjected his campaign to “unjustified reductions in reach”. It claimed Meta had artificially inflated accounts and adverts associated with Bolsonaro, a key ally of Donald Trump.

Meta denies wrongdoing, but ahead of the run-off on Sunday, “questions have festered over whether the digital arena has been a level playing field”, said Al Jazeera.

What is Brazil’s social media footprint?

Brazil is one of the world’s biggest markets for social media. The South American nation boasts about 180 million users, said Statista: more than three-quarters of the population. “Brazil is a power machine on the internet,” actress Fernanda Torres told Variety. “We’re heavy, heavy users.”

And with social media “eclipsing traditional advertising”, political ad spending on Meta’s sites has “grown at a breakneck pace”, said Al Jazeera. But critics warn this shift has “put political hopefuls at the mercy of Big Tech corporations and their biases”.

Left-wing actors in Brazil still “lag significantly behind the far right when it comes to digital communication”, said anthropologist Leticia Cesarino. The logic that underpins the attention economy is “structurally beneficial to the kind of alarmistic, simplistic, affect-laden far-right discourse”.

What are the allegations against Meta?

Google and TikTok are not allowing political advertising, which left Meta’s services as “the only large-scale channels for paid digital campaigning”, said The Guardian.

Meta temporarily disabled ads on Lula’s official campaign Facebook page. He was also briefly unable to boost his Instagram posts, while Bolsonaro could. Lula’s lawyers included this in “evidence” that Meta was “actively trying to interfere” in Bolsonaro’s favour.

Ekō, a digital advocacy non-profit coalition, published a report alleging that Meta had favoured Bolsonaro’s campaign. UN rights experts said reports of restrictions on Meta platforms were concerning. “Information, including from Meta employees, suggests that accounts linked to one side of the presidential race were disproportionately curtailed,” the experts said, without specifying which side.

What is Meta’s defence?

Meta called Lula’s allegations “false and unfounded”, said The Guardian, saying there had been “technical incidents” that affected campaigns from “different parts of the political spectrum”. But Meta’s own semi-independent oversight board said it was “concerned by recurring enforcement failures in Meta’s election integrity efforts”, citing Brazil’s election, where there had been an “over-enforcement of Meta’s fraud policies” against Lula.

Brazil’s top electoral court ruled that Meta could not “reduce the distribution of political contact, restrict searches or remove posts in a way that creates an imbalance”, said The Associated Press. Meta says it has complied with the court order to treat both election campaigns equally.

“We apply the same rules to all candidates, parties and political viewpoints in Brazil,” Meta told The Guardian. “We do not suppress content to harm one side or give preferential treatment to any side.”

Masked protesters clad all in black have been a feature of protests around the world for decades. But the “Black Bloc” are back in the news this week, accused by the French government of turning peaceful protests into rioting and violence.

Originating among anarchist and radical left activists in West Germany in the 1980s, the Black Bloc are “temporary groups formed for a specific protest” that “operate without hierarchy”, said Canadian professor Francis Dupuis-Déri on The Conversation back in 2017.

Their tactics spread through activist networks in the US and Canada in the 1990s, culminating in the infamous “Battle of Seattle” during the 1999 World Trade Organization summit. Since then they have been prominent in the anti-austerity movements of the 2010s, and recent youth-led protests that have gripped France and other countries in Asia and South America.

‘Like an orchestra without a conductor’

Ideologically identified with “anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist movements, Black Bloc participants eschew political parties and hierarchical organisations”, said the Financial Times.

They “pose a big problem” for both the police and for trade unions, “who do not want chaos to mar their traditional demonstrations” against government policies.

“They are very well co-ordinated, but in a horizontal way,” said Guillaume Farde, from Sciences Po university in Paris. They have no organised leadership, tactics are disseminated via social media or encrypted messaging apps, and gatherings are often impromptu. “It is like an orchestra who knows the music so well that they do not need a conductor.”

‘Free spirits’

The “founding fathers” of the Black Bloc were “autonomist and anarchist activists”, said Le Monde, “but the spectrum has broadened to include more individuals” who “define themselves as free spirits”.

The movement is certainly “difficult to pin down, both politically and socially”, said historian Sylvain Boulouque in Le Monde in 2019. “It forms a heterogeneous ensemble with variegated political traditions.”

France’s domestic intelligence service “partially shares this analysis”, said Le Monde, citing a police source that said: “Behind the black blocs, real ideologists are developing a doctrine and structure that unifies and deploys propaganda.”

Others see this as an attempt by the authorities to make the Black Bloc into something they are not. “Black bloc doesn’t mean anything”, Henri, a 40-year-old who does not define himself as an anarchist, autonomist or extreme leftist, told Le Monde. “Black is just because it’s not distinctive. It’s the best way not to be identified. We’re all in the same boat.”

With polls looking dire for Republicans ahead of next month’s highly anticipated midterm elections, President Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly wasting little time on the most pressing question of this election cycle: Who will take the blame for the likely, if still theoretical, electoral drubbing? Cue the MAGA infighting, as various White House operators and GOP power brokers jockey to avoid, and in some cases direct, the president’s guaranteed post-midterm scapegoating.

‘Knives are now fully out’

Although Trump has “proven largely incapable of getting out of his own way,” he’s “keenly aware of the grumbling within his party” over the GOP’s midterm prospects and has “begun looking for someone else to take the fall,” said Puck. “Currently at the top of the list” is former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who “crafted the party’s midterm strategy.” Days away from a potentially “dire midterm reckoning,” Republicans are “turning their cannons” toward Blair and consulting partner Chris LaCivita, the two men tasked with the “herculean job of maintaining control of Congress,” said Politico.

The hostility toward Blair and LaCivita follows their recent trip to the Balkans to “advise a Russia-friendly regime’s reelection effort” even as GOP prospects “dwindle back home,” said Politico. That excursion “opened the floodgates,” said one source to the outlet. The “knives are now fully out for these two.”

‘Ice maiden is melting’

“These days,” Trump has also been looking to place blame on Susie Wiles, his “once-unassailable White House chief of staff,” for the midterms, said Politico. The president is “musing about replacements for his top aide” while getting “plenty of encouragement from rivals” to Wiles and those settling scores.

Trump’s “ice maiden is melting,” said The New Republic of Wiles. She’s in “some deep sh-t,” said one Trump adviser to Zeteo. At the same time, the president has “tried to pour cold water” on rumors of her fate by “releasing effusively supportive statements” and characteristically condemning the media as “fake news.”

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

Wearing a poppy has always been political. Intended as a symbol of commemoration for those who died in war, its association with conflict, violence and, sometimes, nationalist chauvinism stirs up annual arguments as Remembrance Day approaches. And, this year, said Tessa Dunlop in The Independent, the “predictable indignation” is directed at “the Palestinian lobby” for having “appropriated” the poppy “to remember the ongoing horror story in Gaza”.

The enamel Palestine Peace poppy badge, designed by NHS doctor Abdul Qader Ismail, was listed on eBay for £1.78, with profits said to be donated to charities working to “end the occupation and war crimes” in Gaza. Ismail has since drawn criticism for deleted social media posts suggesting that Israel is a cancer, and writing “books for Muslim teenagers justifying stoning and crucifixion”, said The Times.

Not ‘such an outrage’

“The Palestine-Israel conflict is the hot-button issue of our time,” said Dunlop in The Independent. It’s a war in which “words and symbols are heavily contested”, so it’s no surprise that the flower that is the “cornerstone of commemoration” and a “ubiquitous symbol of the fallen” is now “centre stage”.

Critics of the Palestine Peace poppy fear that identity politics and global conflict will “sully” the poppy’s soothingly British reputation. But it’s already been “picked up as a symbol of right-wing extremists”: I doubt “Britain’s fallen were front and centre in the minds of Tommy Robinson and Britain First when they flaunted poppy iconography alongside their anti-immigration and anti-Islam diatribes”. I’d argue that “the scale of loss” in Gaza “resonates more directly with the First World War” than many other conflicts involving Britain in recent years. “In this context, is it really such an outrage that a few brave souls (and some misguided ones) wear a poppy in the colours of the Palestinian flag?”

The flower has long-standing cultural significance for Palestinians, too, said The New Arab. The Anemone coronaria poppy grows everywhere in Palestine and has long represented a relationship between the people and the land; now it is also a symbol of “bitter memories of bloodshed during wars” that is “widely used to support Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation”. And those who object to its association with Britain’s Remembrance Day should be reminded that Palestinian soldiers played a supporting role in the British Army during the Second World War.

A ‘raised fist’

People should be free to wear a Palestine poppy “but we are also free to mock and condemn those who corrupt our traditions”, said Druin Burch in The Spectator. “Symbols carry weight, which is why they are worth stealing.” The now-offline Palestine Poppy website claimed “Israel has a history of appropriating Palestinian culture”. But to make this accusation and then “paint the Remembrance poppy in the colours of the Palestinian flag is killing something and wearing its skin”. The Palestine poppy is “polemic”, a “raised fist”, when “what a poppy should be is an evocation”.

“It is the sheer upside-downness of this which feels like a gut punch,” said Nicole Lampert in The Telegraph. We remember each November those who “fought for our freedoms”, yet others are now trying to “smirkingly appropriate the image of how we remember them”. The freedoms past generations fought for are being “used against us. And it seems like we don’t have the fight to stop it”.

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

With affordability concerns threatening Republican control of Congress, President Donald Trump last week announced an agreement to increase supply by relaxing sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. But economists say lower prices are unlikely to result, and the announcement produced pushback from both Ukraine and Trump’s GOP allies. The only clear beneficiary may be Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

‘More dangerous world’

The president’s deal “has no winners,” said Keith Johnson at Foreign Policy. Trump’s announcement will not “help consumers, won’t help Kyiv and won’t mean riches for Moscow.” The global market consumes about 120 million tons of diesel monthly. The 500,000 tons offered by Russia is “too small to move prices.” And the move does nothing to address the U.S. war on Iran, which is the “real cause of the global energy crunch.”

It “makes no sense” to think easing pressures on Russia can “lower diesel prices before the midterms,” said Timothy Snyder at Project Syndicate. Moscow is already struggling with its own “domestic shortages” because of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. But the announcement has the effect of “visibly aligning” the United States with Russia. The president’s “openly pro-Russian foreign policy” is creating a “more dangerous world” of emboldened aggressors.

Trump’s move has created a rift with both “Republican allies and European leaders,” said Nick Wadhams at Bloomberg. It is a bet that “lowering fuel prices will be the best way to win more votes next month.” The gambit is “unlikely to succeed.”

Helping the Russian economy?

Trump “proffered sanctions relief for Russian diesel” while Putin “offered more war” in return, Paul Sonne said at The New York Times. The deal benefits Trump to the extent it enables his “stubborn denial that his own decision to go to war against Iran caused fuel prices to skyrocket.” And it could “pour billions of dollars into the Russian economy,” further enabling Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Putin is a “dictator reviled by most Americans,” said Axios. Polls show 81% of Trump’s voters dislike the Russian leader. That makes it “unclear” what the agreement will do for “American security, European allies or his own political fortunes.”

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

“After a career spent getting readers excited about credit-default swaps (‘The Big Short’) and sabermetrics (‘Moneyball’)”, the American journalist Michael Lewis “decided to try to help people understand the importance of civil servants”, said Sam Freedman in The Guardian.

He did this first in “The Fifth Risk”, his 2018 book about the damage caused by the first Trump administration’s “almost complete lack of interest” in the workings of government. Now, he has written a “loose sequel” dealing with Donald Trump’s return to office and, “this time around, the problem is not indifference but malicious intent to destroy”.

“Blockers” is an account of the vandalistic work of Elon Musk’s Doge and “other agents of chaos”, notably Republican operative Russell Vought, who essentially became Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief when Musk fell out with the president. At the same time, it shines a light on the “blockers” – Musk’s derisive term for the “dedicated officials” who did their best to hinder his reforms.

The book is a “rollercoaster”, said Laura Miller on Slate. It alternates between “heartening stories of stellar federal civil servants” and “blood-pressure-spiking accounts” of the “Elon-worshipping idiot boys” sent to slash their budgets or hound them from their jobs. In one chapter, we see an IRS official “locking herself in a darkened conference room” to avoid a “capricious Doge goon who wanted her to give him confidential information on seven million taxpayers”.

Another is focused on Francis Collins, who was sacked from his senior role at the National Institutes of Health. Among a host of distinguished achievements, Collins was “instrumental in identifying the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis”. Yet he was forced to leave at short notice, carrying his possessions in “a small cardboard box”. Lewis suggests that, ironically, the person ultimately responsible for his dismissal was Vought, whose own daughter has cystic fibrosis.

Such stories aren’t just personal tragedies, said Tim Adams in The Observer; they are calamitous for America. The cuts carried out by Musk and others led to “vast institutional knowledge” being removed at a stroke, “to be replaced by venal incompetence”.

The aim was to “dispose of and humiliate” an entire class of people who cared about the good that government could do, and about following legal due process. Nor did Doge’s reforms even succeed on their own terms: despite Musk’s boast that he would cut $2 trillion from the government’s $7 trillion budget, this year’s federal spend is estimated to be $7.4 trillion. Lewis has produced an “essential record” of a dismal episode in American history.

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

For the past decade, the Republican Party under President Donald Trump has been overtly dedicated to accentuating traditional gender roles. This administration has gone out of its way to celebrate “masculine” virtues including high testosterone levels, strenuous physical fitness regimens and a dedication to male-focused video gaming. In 2024, that strategy seemed to work, with young men helping to propel Trump back into political power. But now, as Republicans stare down a daunting final leg of the 2026 midterm race, polling shows this once-reliable MAGA voting bloc may be decidedly less reliable.

‘Evaporated’ gains and ‘instant ramifications’

Trump may have “won young men outright” in 2024, but a Cygnal poll from September shows Democrats now leading among men between the ages of 18 to 30 by 17 points, said USA Today. Among Republican voters, men under 40 represent the “group that is most at risk” of peeling off, given their “concerns about the economy and prices,” said The Washington Post. This bloc “proved pivotal” to Trump’s 2024 “sweep of some of the same battleground states holding critical elections this year.”

Republicans were previously able to “capitalize on an environment” in which young men felt “either ignored or actively disliked by the Democratic Party,” said the National Review. But the “cultural factors” that pushed men toward the GOP two years ago “may be outweighed by economic factors this time around.”

The GOP’s 2024 inroads among young men have “evaporated” in a shift that could have “instant ramifications this November,” said Politico. While “young men alone likely won’t determine control of Congress,” their “lack of enthusiasm itself” is a “warning sign for Republicans.”

A football-based strategy

The GOP is making a “massive bet on football” as it scrambles for “midterm momentum,” said Axios. The party is “pouring millions into advertising” at NFL and college games in an attempt to “hold onto male voters — football’s core audience.”

Despite these efforts, Democrats “appear to be gaining ground with young men,” said The Hill. The Cygnal poll showed the demographic has a “negative view of the Republican Party overall.” Democrats “fared slightly better,” though the party “still had a net-negative favorability rating among these voters.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” address had it all, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post: “the good, bad, and dangerous.” In September's histrionic speech, Hegseth strutted back and forth across a stage, combining culture-war rants “with genuinely radical” reforms. He declared he wanted “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals” in a military he’s refashioning with high-testosterone lethal patriots. He accused the media of treason for reporting his military’s Iran failures, and revealed he plans an overall 20% reduction in generals and admirals, continuing a purge that’s already eliminated 10% of top officers. But Hegseth also announced some sensible “attempts to transform a sclerotic Pentagon bureaucracy,” unveiling an “Autonomous Warfare Command” to oversee drone operations and enlisting tech founders Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey and former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich to study the future of warfare. Quite intentionally, Hegseth is overturning “military norms as aggressively as President Trump has shattered those in other spheres.

Hegseth only proved again that he’s “manifestly unfit for his job,” said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. His speech was “a partisan disgrace,” filled with childish insults and resentment. He’s creating an Office of Religious Affairs and directing cadets to get degrees at conservative Christian schools like Hillsdale College, instead of elite “woke factories” like Harvard. To “redefine the future of national defense,” Hegseth is giving his “three wise men” in Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich just 120 days. The overall goal is to ensure the military becomes “a MAGA-looking, MAGA-sounding, MAGA- believing, and MAGA-supporting Christian praetorian guard,” said Rachel E. VanLandingham in MS.now. “The ideological clowns are out,” Hegseth proclaimed, but he’s “the real ideological clown—and a dangerous one at that.”

Everyone underestimated the former Fox News host, said Emma Ashford in Foreign Policy. He’s become Trump’s “most influential senior official.” Hegseth helped persuade Trump to invade Iran when many aides warned against a prolonged quagmire. Trump has fired other Cabinet officials for incompetence, but Hegseth has escaped blame for the fiasco in Iran. Why? Everything about him is so “fundamentally Trumpian”—his hatred of the media, his macho posturing, his TV persona’s “obsession with image over substance.” Hegseth is Trump’s “central casting” idea of a tough military leader, so he’s keeping his job. “The results will not be pleasant.”

What happened?

The U.S. election map appeared to shift in favor of Democrats recently, heightening Republicans’ fears that voters angry over the Iran war and the rising cost of living are poised to deliver the GOP a midterm drubbing. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved three key Senate races toward Democrats, who must pick up four GOP seats to win control of the chamber. New Hampshire went from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat”; North Carolina from “lean Democrat” to “likely Democrat”; and Kansas, where megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton is neck and neck with Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.” Seemingly giving up on North Carolina, where former Democratic governor Roy Cooper has a comfortable lead over Republican Michael Whatley, the top GOP Senate super PAC canceled its ads there and shifted funding to South Carolina—which Trump carried by 18 percentage points in 2024— and Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. A New York Times/Siena poll found Democratic Senate candidates leading in reliably Republican Ohio, Alaska, and Texas, and one point behind in Iowa. With Democrats favored to take the House, a GOP strategist drew lines to the blue wave of 2006. “If the bottom continues falling out,” he told Politico, “this will be worse.”

President Trump floated suspending the federal gas tax to ease anger over pump prices averaging $4.50 a gallon, a move that would require congressional action. Trump, whose approval rating hit a record-low 32% in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, held rallies in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas. The dire polls are “fake,” Trump said in Mobile, Ala., and “don’t account for the fact that Trump is out campaigning.”

What the columnists said

A huge cash advantage was “supposed to be the GOP’s ace,” said Isaac Arnsdorf in The Washington Post. Since Labor Day, Republicans have poured half a billion dollars into competitive House and Senate races. But Democrats’ advantage on a generic congressional ballot has only widened since then, from about 6 points to 9, according to one polling average. Over $190 million in attack ads aimed at Democratic Senate candidates James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan hasn’t moved the needle—El-Sayed’s favorability is up 5 points since August, according to Fox News surveys.

Democrats are gaining ground with several key groups, said Ruth Igielnik in The New York Times. They include voters under 30, who in the Times/Siena poll favored Democrats by 30 points, and Latinos, who favored Democrats by 24 points in a recent NBC News/Telemundo poll, up from 12 points before the 2024 election. And in nearly every state the Times polled, Democrats are winning among independents, “the bloc of swing voters that typically decides elections.” The polls could be wrong, said Jim Newell in Slate. They’ve previously “underestimated Republican energy in the Trump era,” by failing to reach enough white, noncollege voters. Since those abound in red states like Kansas and Iowa, “the error there will be greater if pollsters are missing this cohort again.”

If the polls are right, Republicans see a potential “lifeline” in left-leaning New Hampshire, said Ken Thomas in The Wall Street Journal. John Sununu—a moderate former one-term senator— is narrowly trailing Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, who has for months “been urging the national party to avoid complacency in the battleground state.” Maine, where longtime Sen. Susan Collins is in a tight race with Democrat Troy Jackson, could give Republicans another swing-state win.

But it’s a marker of Republicans’ vulnerability that Democrats have “found an opening in one of America’s reddest states,” said Lauren Egan in The Bulwark. Trump won Kansas by 21 points in 2016, and 16 points in 2024. But Democratic Senate challenger Hamilton has “run a masterful race” pitched to the center—and he’s been aided by Trump policies. Medicaid cuts are squeezing rural health care providers in the state. Its farm industry, already hit hard by tariffs that shrunk exports, is now struggling with the soaring price of diesel for tractors and combines. And ICE raids at meat- processing plants have “enraged” those in the livestock industry.

That Kansas is in play beggars belief, said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. “This stubborn, spiritually rhomboid state” has voted GOP in every federal statewide race “since an aberrational blip at the dawn of the Roosevelt administration.” But such is the effect of Trump’s agenda on “otherwise deep-red, agribusiness heartlands.” I believe Marshall will pull it out, but with rough weather ahead for the GOP, the state is “officially on tornado watch.” The “conditions for a freak event are now fully in place.”

Just hours after Andy Burnham sent the Labour Party faithful “into raptures” over his conference speech, his remarks about the Manchester City football scandal triggered a “whiplash mood shift”, said The Mill.

Asked about the Premier League’s conclusion that Man City had broken its financial rules for nearly a decade, the prime minister – and former Manchester mayor – told the BBC’s Chris Mason he would be “really concerned” if the club’s UAE owners decided to sell up. They had been “such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester”. Within minutes, social media was buzzing with outrage at Burnham’s apparent sympathy for Man City’s situation, and questions about how close he’d become to big-time foreign investors. Downing Street began a frantic back-pedal.

This was Burnham’s “biggest self-inflicted tangle since he arrived in Downing Street in July”, said the BBC’s Mason. No. 10’s “jitters and discomfort about this were there for all to see”. Football-loving Burnham has got himself “caught up in one of the biggest domestic stories of the year, and one that is only just beginning”.

‘Football blokeyness’ undone

Relationships between politicians and wealthy foreign businessmen are much “easier to navigate as the mayor of a big city” and “a lot harder when you’re prime minister”, said RTÉ’s Sean Whelan. Burnham now has “a big opposition and noisy, nosey media watching every move”.

There is a wild irony that football, which is “so tightly stitched into Burnham’s own story” is now gripping him with “its great, dripping, bloody fingernails”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. He rode the “horse” of “football blokeyness” all the way down to Westminster, and now that horse is “threatening to run right over the top of him”. Yes, he benefited hugely politically from Abu Dhabi investment in Manchester but he needs to “stop thanking the UAE so profusely”. They didn’t do him a favour; it was a “business deal, with something very clearly going back in return”.

Burnham has “tied himself in more knots than when Scotland tried to play out from the back against Brazil”, said The Times’ chief football correspondent Jonathan Northcroft. His “mealy-mouthed” intervention only “muddied the process of upholding” the Man City verdict. Abu Dhabi is reportedly now “threatening to cut billions of pounds of UK investment in umbrage” at the Premier League’s decision. It makes you wonder if “outside elements sticking their spoons into football is the path to salvation after all”.

‘Inseparable’ UK-UAE relationship

This was a “clumsy episode”, said Adam Crafton on The Athletic. It “felt revealing” that Burnham’s “first instinct” was to laud the ownership group, rather than empathise with the “masses horrified” by apparently systematic breaches of football’s financial rules.

But City and Abu Dhabi are seen as “inseparable”, emblematic of a broader UK-UAE relationship that “is considered crucial across security, investment and trade”. That any subsequent harsh sanctions handed down to the football club by the Premier League could damage Britain’s economic prospects only underlines the “uneasy realities of governing the UK in 2026”: having left the EU, we are “working overtime to entice investments from Gulf nations”.

Burnham was “probably right” to turn attention, briefly, away from mismanagement of a football club and on to the “more important” issue of Manchester and its inhabitants, said Simon Kelner in The i Paper. His remarks were “a welcome change of tone”, countering “the general opprobrium” with an appreciation of how “good” the UAE has been for the city.

As mayor, he had welcomed the “hundreds of millions of pounds Abu Dhabi ploughed into the area around” the Man City ground, turning “one of the most deprived and desolate quarters of the city” into a thriving economic hub. Now he’s prime minister, no doubt he felt he was “being true to his sense of fair play in illuminating” those benefits but, in future, it’s best that he “keeps well clear”.

The Green Party conference vote to treat Zionism “as any other form of racism” has caused turmoil within the party, and been roundly condemned as an attack on the Jewish community in Britain.

Jubilant chants of “Free Palestine” could be heard outside the Brighton conference hall after the vote, which the UK’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has called “poisonous antisemitism” that is “a threat to British Jews and to Britain”. There is now a “genuine fear” among some Jewish members of the party, said The Guardian.

‘Taken over by zealots’

“This radical turn in official Green Party policy underscores the grim transformation that has taken place since Zack Polanski became its leader,” said The Times’ editorial board. It is veering “unnervingly close to open hostility towards the people of Israel and to Jewish interests”.

Zionism is the simple belief “in a Jewish national home in some portion of historic Palestine”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. A large majority of British Jews identify as Zionist, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Using the new logic of the Greens, who don’t admit members of self-described racist organisations, “they could not tolerate members” of Zionist organisations, which would include “almost every synagogue, or synagogue movement, in Britain and indeed the world”. This vote betrays a “deep ignorance of what the word Zionism means” and “a wilful misunderstanding of Jews and Judaism”.

“To blame all Israelis – all Zionists, indeed – for atrocities against Palestinians and to seek to punish them as a group is unjust,” said The Economist’s editorial board. The Greens’ new policy goes so far as to endorse “the destruction of Israel”, to be replaced by a Palestinian state “possibly run by the murderers of Hamas”. This is “a damning moment for a political party with pretensions to power”. Polanski “needs to grasp that his movement has been taken over by zealots” and lead an effort to take the party back.

‘Strategic mistake’

A “sizeable group” within the party see the vote – which passed by 1,022 votes to 813 – as a “strategic mistake” that will both “alienate potential voters” and “be the only thing the party is asked about” for months to come, said Meghan Kenyon in The New Statesman.

Deputy leader Mothin Ali is known to have voted for Sunday’s motion but four of the party’s five MPs – Ellie Chowns, Sian Berry, and former leaders Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer – publicly rejected it. MP Hannah Spencer did not reveal how she voted but posted on Instagram that she was “proud to be part of a party committed to Jewish rights, and Palestinian rights”. Former MP and party leader Caroline Lucas spoke against the motion, condemning it as “divisive” and reliant on an “over-simplification” of complex issues.

Two attempts to water down the motion, both backed by Polanski, failed. Polanski, who is Jewish, has since been banned from Israel, and the country’s foreign ministry have accused the Greens of legitimising “the elimination” of Israel “through armed struggle”.

Criticism of the Israeli government, demands for an end to war and occupation, and calls for Palestinian freedom “are all legitimate”, said David Davidi-Brown of the New Israel Fund UK, in Prospect. But how can a party that defines Zionism as racism “protect members who attend UK synagogues”? Just as “those who care about Israel must stop treating every anti-Zionist as an enemy”, so “those who oppose Zionism must stop treating every Zionist as a racist”.

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

“A disaster.” That was German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s own verdict on his party’s showing in the state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania last week, said Klára Odstrcilová on EU Perspectives (Brussels).

The state is one of the five that made up the former East Germany (there are 16 German states in total). And though Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) won 38% in the first state election held after reunification in 1990, it has been shedding support there ever since. In the previous state election (2021) it won just 13%.

Even so, no one expected that this time the CDU wouldn’t even make 5% – the threshold a party has to cross to gain parliamentary representation. By contrast, the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party – which had vowed to bring down energy prices by restoring the supply of Russian gas (the state is home to the terminal of the suspended Nord Stream pipelines) – more than doubled its vote share to 38.2%. So yes, Merz is right: a disaster, indeed.

‘Existential crisis’

Nor was the CDU’s failure confined to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, said The Economist. On the very same day as that debacle, the party got thumped in Berlin’s local elections, in this case being humbled by the far-left Die Linke party. And these twin losses themselves came just two weeks after the CDU had suffered a crushing defeat in another east German state, Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD triumphed with 43.8%.

Indeed, Merz has acquired the dubious distinction of being the most unpopular German leader in polling history: his approval rating is just 13%. Yet despite all this, he has vowed to stay on for the sake of Germany’s “democratic future”, and to pursue his economic and welfare reforms with “backbone, steadfastness, and patience”. Brave words, but some of Merz’s own colleagues believe their “zombie chancellor” can’t go on.

That the CDU, which has produced more chancellors than any other party, should now be “plunged into an existential crisis” is all down to Merz, said Hugo Müller-Vogg in Cicero (Berlin). He’s only been in power for 16 months, but over that time the national vote share of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has fallen from 28.5% to around 20%. Merz’s fractious coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats has completely failed on its promises to contain the far-right and reverse economic stagnation.

Twilight phase

Immigration is usually the issue people cite when accounting for the rise of the AfD, said Dalia Marin on Project Syndicate (Prague). But more attention should be paid to a factor every bit as crucial: China. Economic competition from China has upended Germany’s export model of selling cars and high-end machinery, and devastated the advanced manufacturing industry Germans have long relied on for “good jobs and broad-based prosperity”. Average annual growth since 2020 has slumped to just 0.12%.

Nor does this only affect the poorer, former communist eastern states that are the AfD’s heartlands: “western” states such as Baden-Württemberg, home to Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, also feel the pain. In March, the AfD almost doubled its vote share there to 18.8%: it should no longer be seen as just a creature of the east.

Merz himself now seems to have entered “Kanzlerdämmerung” – the twilight of the chancellor, said Zafer Mese in Daily Sabah (Istanbul): his coalition looks marooned. However, no CDU or CSU politician has stepped forward to replace him, so he may cling on for a while yet.

And he has one thing in his favour, said Roland Nelles in Der Spiegel (Hamburg). Next year’s five state elections are all in western states, ones where the AfD, despite its recent gains, will struggle to land a knockout blow. The “stabilising effect” this will have could lend the coalition a small window of opportunity in which to kick-start growth through its welfare and pension reforms. They’d better hope it does: if not, more election nights like the ones last week will follow.

Energy prices are expected to rise sharply in January, with a typical UK annual bill forecast to jump by 16% – amounting to £276 – impacting millions of households at the coldest time of the year.

Successive UK governments have launched a series of schemes to support bill payers in recent years, and now Andy Burnham is under pressure to go further still. The prime minister and Chancellor John Healey must come up with a fresh package of measures to curb rising energy costs, an anonymous Labour MP told The Guardian. “Without it, the vibes will end.”

Here are some of the options at the PM’s disposal – although all come with a cost.

GB Grid

Burnham is proposing a publicly owned body that would bring electricity distribution under greater public control and ownership. The government-backed GB Grid would work with the private sector and power networks to increase competition, drive down costs and speed up delivery of much-needed new infrastructure.

However, its £4 billion funding represents “a fraction of the £70 billion investment expected over the next five years” by the networks themselves, so its “level of ‘control’ is likely to be limited, too”, said The Guardian.

More direct financial support

Another option is for the government to target direct financial support at households struggling the most by expanding or temporarily increasing schemes such as the Warm Home Discount. Around 5.5 million low-income households benefited from the scheme last year.

But “virtually everybody agrees it is inadequate for the bills on the way”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Existing help “misses swathes of households who would fall within a better definition of ‘vulnerable’”, including those with “high energy needs for health reasons”.

Industry body Energy UK told the BBC that on top of those receiving the Warm Home Discount, another 2.5 million customers need help with high bills linked to a medical condition or energy-inefficient home.

Cut taxes

The government has already removed VAT from domestic electricity bills between October and March. This will save households “an average of £45 per year” and offer them some “breathing space”, said the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Further tax cuts could further reduce energy bills, but the Treasury would have to find the money to pay for these from elsewhere.

Use less energy

The government could increase schemes offering improved insulation, heat efficiency and the replacement of old heating systems. Unlike a blanket subsidy, the benefit can continue after wholesale prices fall, reducing household energy bills over the longer term. The government’s £15 billion Warm Homes Plan has already set out to upgrade up to five million homes by 2030.

These are potentially more durable approaches than repeated emergency payments, although, once again, funding would need to be found from elsewhere.

An energy guarantee

An affordable energy guarantee would provide a portion of cheaper energy to all households. It would be designed to cover a typical household’s basic energy use, with higher levels of usage being charged at the market rate.

The UK government’s Energy Price Guarantee capped typical household energy bills at £2,500 a year starting in October 2022, but this ended in 2023.

The New Economics Foundation think tank is among a group of campaigners urging the government to bring in a national energy guarantee.

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has confirmed a new “safe and legal” route to Britain for groups including Palestinian refugees, and women and girls from Afghanistan.

As she announced the re-opening of the UK Resettlement Scheme, two years after it was effectively suspended, Mahmood also signalled that she was prepared to water down some of her more stringent planned migration reforms in response to a Labour backlash. She told the Labour party conference the government was seeking “a position that balances fairness for those who came here legally, and fairness to British citizens across this country”.

What are the current legal routes?

“Safe and legal routes” are “authorised immigration arrangements” which allow a person to “move to another country for humanitarian reasons”, said a House of Commons Library briefing. In the UK, those consist of the UK Resettlement Scheme, Community Sponsorship and the Mandate Scheme, all of which cater for vulnerable refugees referred by the United Nations Refugee Agency. In 2024, the UK Resettlement Scheme closed to new referrals, effectively shutting it off as a legal route.

The Mandate Scheme resettles refugees who have a close family member in the UK who is willing to accommodate them. Community Sponsorship allows groups of local citizens, charities, and faith organisations to directly welcome, house, and support resettled refugee families. These schemes have been “operating at very limited capacity in recent years”, said the briefing.

Over the past five years, the UK has created specific “humanitarian pathways” for people from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Since 2020, these bespoke schemes account for the vast majority of those who have arrived in the UK through safe and legal routes. Almost half of the 575,000 arrivals have been Ukrainians, followed by Hong Kong citizens (186,000). Another 62,000 people came to the UK through the refugee family reunion route, and 38,000 came through three resettlement schemes for Afghan citizens who had assisted British forces.

What is the new legal migration route?

Under the reopened resettlement scheme, the government expects about one in four arrivals to be Afghan women and girls or Palestinian refugees. A Home Office briefing says admissions will initially be capped and are expected to “number in the hundreds at first, but this will grow into the low thousands as levels of illegal migration fall”.

Those eligible will be identified in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Refugee Assistance Project. All candidates will undergo security and criminality checks before they travel to the UK.

New arrivals will be placed on a five-year path to permanent settlement in the UK. “This is, by design, more generous than those who arrive by small boat or other illegal means”, the Home Office said, and intended to “disincentivise illegal routes”.

Mahmood had announced plans to increase the timeline for permanent residence for legal migrants from five years to up to 15 years. The changes would apply retrospectively to migrants who arrived in Britain after 2021. But she has now signalled a rethink after Angela Rayner and up to 100 Labour MPs petitioned Mahmood to exclude around 185,000 foreign-born care workers from the stricter rules.

Will the new scheme be effective?

“The government deserves credit for creating new safe and legal routes that will help refugees reach the UK without risking their lives”, Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council, told The Guardian. Such routes are “essential to undermining people-smugglers’ business model, but they only work if they operate at scale”, which means “thousands of places, not hundreds”.

However, said the newspaper, the scheme “is likely to attract criticism from the right, especially as women and girls and people with disabilities are the most likely to be dependent on the welfare state”.

President Donald Trump has dominated the GOP for a decade. But that hold may be slipping, as Republicans prepare for an anticipated “blue wave” in the midterm elections driven by his unpopularity. Conservative candidates are starting to break with Trump, and the right’s pundits are rooting them on.

‘Trumpism is exhausted’

Trump has “become a real liability” for GOP candidates, said The Boston Globe. Senate candidates Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Mike Rogers of Michigan called for an end to the war with Iran, as did incumbent Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio. (Husted voted Thursday against a measure to withdraw troops, however.) The break “isn’t about just one issue,” either. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) last week criticized the president’s immigration policy, while Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) called for an investigation into the Russian oligarch who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding reception. There may be nothing “stopping a full-on revolt” against Trump’s brand.

MAGA acolytes could once argue that Trump’s agenda is “what Americans voted for in 2024,” Jim Geraghty said at The Washington Post. But polls now suggest that the electorate is “sick and tired of this version of Trump” and that “Trumpism is exhausted.” The mood was especially apparent in Vice President JD Vance’s recent plea to voters to “give us another chance.” That is not a “particularly inspiring rallying cry,” Geraghty said. Republicans have to decide if they still want to be the party of tariffs, enmity toward Canada and mass deportations to remove every “agricultural worker, hotel maid and restaurant busboy.” Vance, if he wants to save his own ambitions, will need to lead the way. “The clock is ticking.”

The GOP under Trump has “blown one of the great opportunities in political history,” Gerard Baker said at The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s election in 2024 was a “real chance to establish a new governing order” favorable to conservatives, and the president could have succeeded by controlling the border, reining in prices and keeping the U.S. out of “costly, ineffective” foreign wars. Trump instead has “widened the deficit,” levied tariffs and set off on a “reckless military adventure” that is damaging the U.S. economy. All due to “hubris, vanity, recklessness” and the GOP’s “abdication of accountability.”

‘Wide open’ GOP future

Polling shows that Trump is “slipping significantly with his own party,” pollster G. Elliott Morris said at Strength in Numbers. His approval rating with Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters remains high at 71%. But that is still an “11-point drop and the lowest we have recorded.” Those GOP defections have helped drive the president’s overall voter approval ratings to new lows.

This could be the beginning of a longer process for the Republican Party. The GOP candidates breaking with one or two Trump policies today “might be repudiating parts of his legacy tomorrow,” Andrew Prokop said at Vox. If Republicans truly start to believe that Trump is a “failure,” then a full-on reassessment could occur. The party’s future “will be wide open.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Thursday defended a campaign-style ad airing on Fox News and Newsmax that features President Donald Trump and says it was “paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House “did not say what agency paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning ‘love me’ over and over,” The Associated Press said. But in a statement, it called the ad a “public service announcement” aimed at “reminding Americans to love their country.”

Who said what

“Together we will defeat communism,” and “America will never be a communist country,” Trump says in the 30-second ad as his campaign slogans flash in the background. There are “several restrictions on how public funds can be used for PSAs,” including an annually renewed “ban on using funds for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes,’” ABC News said. The ad first ran Wednesday night, as Trump “welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, with a red carpet,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) on Thursday sent White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a letter demanding details about the ad, including how much it cost and what agency was involved. JMSN, who wrote and recorded “Love Me,” said he “did not authorize” its use and was “looking for a lawyer.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday night hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state dinner at the White House, after the two leaders spoke privately and toured Trump’s remodeling projects. Trump said he and Xi have “never gotten along better” and presented him with a bald eagle statue. Xi, whose gift for Trump was two pandas for Atlanta’s zoo, said the U.S.-China relationship should be based on “healthy” competition, not a “wrestle in which one either wins or loses.”

Who said what

The “lavish summit” was “heavy on symbolism but light on substance,” Reuters said, “with no sign of breakthroughs on thorny ​issues such as AI, trade, Taiwan and the war with Iran.” Trump is “drawn to the theater of summitry and his personal rapport with Xi,” The Wall Street Journal said. But “for all the pomp and circumstance,” he “appeared to walk away with few tangible gains while handing Xi the images of coequal standing he had come to Washington for.”

China “made clear it views Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in the U.S.-China relationship,” The Associated Press said. A Chinese readout of the private meeting said Xi had urged Trump to “adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence.” The U.S. did not release a readout as of Friday morning.

What next?

Xi’s visit “came six weeks ahead of the midterm elections in which Trump has branded Democrats as communists,” the Journal said. “Trump’s fawning drew complaints among several Republican senators, who said they weren’t sure what the GOP would gain from hosting the Communist leader and U.S. business rival.”

Britain is on course for a hung parliament with no party securing an overall majority in the next general election, according to a YouGov MRP poll that predicts how constituencies would vote.

Labour would be the biggest party with 241 seats, 85 short of an outright majority; the Conservatives would be on 130, trailed by Reform on 123. With the Liberal Democrats at 71 and the Green Party on nine, it is likely to mean a scramble to form a coalition.

Benjamin Disraeli famously said in 1852, “England does not love coalitions”, but the country may have to put any deep-seated scepticism to one side in the near future. Here are some of the most likely coalitions.

Labour-Liberal Democrat

According to the YouGov results, a Labour and Lib Dem combination would still not be enough to reach the 326-seat bar for a majority in the House of Commons.

Andy Burnham has not commented directly on the prospect of a future coalition, but Ed Davey, when approached, did not rule it out completely. Asked if he would form a coalition with Labour, the Lib Dem leader said he did not deal in “hypotheticals”. Insiders in the PM's team told The Times that Burnham’s support of electoral reform, a long-held Lib Dem cause, could provide the perfect olive branch to Davey’s party.

A Labour-Lib Dem coalition was widely expected following the 2010 general election, but its prospects were felled by a series of issues, including a lack of faith in the then Labour leader Gordon Brown.

Conservative-Liberal Democrat

Unlike his neutral response to a Lab-Lib coalition, Davey has dismissed suggestions his party could do a deal with the Conservatives. “We’ve got a moral responsibility to stop Nigel Farage – and indeed stop Kemi Badenoch giving the keys to No. 10 to Nigel Farage – I think there could be that sort of coalition on the right and we've got to stop that,” he told the BBC.

“Mention of a coalition often sparks fear into the heart of a Lib Dem because of how the last one ended,” said Politico. In 2010, the parties formed the UK’s first coalition government since 1945. The cabinet was made up of 16 Conservatives and five from Nick Clegg's party. But after five years as junior partner, the Lib Dems crashed from 57 Westminster seats to just eight in the next election.

Conservative-Reform

Reform’s projected total of 123 seats is a dramatic reversal for the party, which was forecast to win 311 last September. At the end of last year, Farage said the Conservatives would be finished. He denied he would form an electoral pact after the Financial Times reported he told donors he thought an agreement was inevitable. “I would never do a deal with a party that I do not trust,” he said. “No deals, just a reverse takeover.”

Kemi Badenoch has rejected calls to “unite the right” and ruled out entering a coalition with Reform. Speaking to GB News, she said “problematic people” have joined Farage’s party, adding: “How can we join with them?”

Even if the two right-wing leaders changed their minds, a Tory-Reform pact would manage only 253 MPs according to the poll – 73 short of the 326 majority line.

“If uniting the right has never been more important since we entered the era of five-party politics, it has also never been more difficult,” said Lord Ashcroft, a right-wing political donor and pollster. An electoral alliance between Reform and the Conservatives “would be doomed to fail, and the Conservatives have much more to lose from trying”.

Progressive alliance (Lab-Lib-Green-SNP)

If Labour were to team up with the Lib Dems and the Greens, which would amount to 321 seats, Burnham would still need backing from others to get over the line.

With the nationalist parties, the SNP or Plaid Cymru, in the mix, then a range of “coalition of the left” options are open to build a majority, Patrick English, YouGov elections chief, said in The Times.