When returning US president Donald Trump eyes up Greenland, Panama and Canada, as Vladimir Putin once eyed Crimea and Xi Jinping eyes Taiwan, he is both symptom and cause of a new world disorder. Trumpism is just one variant of transactionalism, which is the leitmotif of this new disorder. Liberal democracies, especially those in Europe, … Read more
Keir Starmer made two predictions at the start of his week. He said that artificial intelligence will transform Britain’s economy in the coming years and that Rachel Reeves will continue to run the Treasury. Those were safe bets, but not guarantees. One is a forecast the prime minister makes eagerly, the other was bullied out … Read more
When Keir Starmer became the Labour leader in 2020, Tulip Siddiq described him in her local paper as a “good friend through thick and thin”. On Tuesday she found out where the limits of that friendship lay after the prime minister accepted her resignation from the government after weeks of revelations about Siddiq’s closeness to … Read more
You can only conclude that Conservative MPs are just too trusting for their own good. Either that or they are catatonically dim. The rest of us know enough to not always believe what we read on the front page of the rightwing papers, but Tory MPs seem to take everything at face value. If it’s … Read more
Keir Starmer this week launched a plan to bring a 20-fold increase in the amount of artificial intelligence (AI) computing power under public control by 2030. But the race to build more electricity hungry AI datacentres over the next five years appears to work against another government target: to plug in enough low-carbon electricity projects … Read more
Rachel Reeves has told the Conservatives to “get real” as she blamed global economic volatility for the recent spike in UK borrowing rates, which has triggered calls for her resignation and left her contemplating further public sector cuts. The chancellor appeared in front of MPs on Tuesday for the first time since travelling to China … Read more
Downing Street has blocked plans to release wild beavers in England because officials view it as a “Tory legacy”, the Guardian can reveal. Natural England, the government’s nature watchdog, has drawn up a plan for reintroductions of the rodent, which until about 20 years ago had been extinct in Britain for 400 years, having been … Read more
When Nicola Jalland, 62, was served with a section 21 no-fault eviction in March 2022 – which means a landlord can oust a tenant for no reason – she was upset to leave the property she had lived in for 11 years. She had made the home a sanctuary, with a garden full of flowers. … Read more
Grooming gangs made up of ‘peasants’ from ‘sub-communities’, says Badenoch Kemi Badenoch has said “peasants” from “sub-communities” from some countries are the ones in grooming and rape gangs, saying a national inquiry would seek to identify those in authority who did not act. Jessica Elgot has the story. Share Rachel Reeves told it would be … Read more
Democracy is dying across the globe. This may sound alarmist and generate a follow-up question: what does that actually mean? Will there be no elections? Will the opposition be criminalised? If these are the metrics, then Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains a democracy. Six political parties are represented in the State Duma, its federal parliament, and … Read more