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      Ex-Tory minister defends Labour in Trump row and says he has also campaigned for Democrats – as it happened

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      Labour is not the only party with members who have been out in the US actively campaigning to stop Donald Trump being elected. Robert Buckland, the Conservative former justice secretary, has been campaigning for Democrats in the US too.In an interview with Radio 4’s PM programme, Buckland said that Trump was “not fit for office” and that he thought the Trump campaign’s complaint about Labour was just “a bit of electioneering” rather than a serious allegation about a breach of the rules.Buckland said that he was in the US in September as part of a Havard fellowship, but while he was there he decided to visit friends in Connecticut who were standing as Democracts in various state, congressional and senate elections. “So I went out on the stump to see what it was all about and do a bit of campaigning.”Explaining why he was opposed to Trump, he said:
      I’m free to say what I like. I’m a member of the public now, and I’m not in a government …
      I feel that the record of Donald Trump in the presidency is an affront to those who believe in traditional Republicanism. His behavior around 6 January [the attack on Capitol in 2021] makes it clear to me he’s not somebody who believes in the rule of law either and is not fit for office.
      Asked about the complaint about Labour activists, Buckland said: “I do think that this is a bit of electioneering.” He said the LinkedIn message by a Labour staff encouraging people to volunteer “might have given a false impression there was an organised visit here being funded, which I don’t think is the case at all”.But Buckland did accept that the perception that there was an organised Labour operation going on was “damaging”.

      Kemi Badenoch, favourite in the Tory leadership contest, has said that she is a “net zero sceptic” and suggested that an adaption strategy might be a better solution to the climate crisis than just focusing on cutting carbon emissions. (See 3.58pm.)
      Ben Wallace, the Conservative former defence secretary, has criticised the Trinity House Agreement, the defence pact agreed with Germany. (See 5.06pm.) He posted these on social media.
      If the new UK/ German “Trinity House” agreement is to mean anything then Germany would have agreed with UK requests to send Taurus to Ukraine AND they would lift any export veto on potential Typhoon sales to Turkey – a Nato member. Otherwise it is pretty hollow 1/2

      and made up of stuff we are already doing or had started. This has more to do with “SPD is our sister party” than real military mutual benefit. It does however confirm that Kier Starmer is the UK’s own Olaf Scholz ! -2/2
      Labour is not the only party with members who have been out in the US actively campaigning to stop Donald Trump being elected. Robert Buckland, the Conservative former justice secretary, has been campaigning for Democrats in the US too.In an interview with Radio 4’s PM programme, Buckland said that Trump was “not fit for office” and that he thought the Trump campaign’s complaint about Labour was just “a bit of electioneering” rather than a serious allegation about a breach of the rules.Buckland said that he was in the US in September as part of a Havard fellowship, but while he was there he decided to visit friends in Connecticut who were standing as Democracts in various state, congressional and senate elections. “So I went out on the stump to see what it was all about and do a bit of campaigning.”Explaining why he was opposed to Trump, he said:
      I’m free to say what I like. I’m a member of the public now, and I’m not in a government …
      I feel that the record of Donald Trump in the presidency is an affront to those who believe in traditional Republicanism. His behavior around 6 January [the attack on Capitol in 2021] makes it clear to me he’s not somebody who believes in the rule of law either and is not fit for office.
      Asked about the complaint about Labour activists, Buckland said: “I do think that this is a bit of electioneering.” He said the LinkedIn message by a Labour staff encouraging people to volunteer “might have given a false impression there was an organised visit here being funded, which I don’t think is the case at all”.But Buckland did accept that the perception that there was an organised Labour operation going on was “damaging”.The UK and Germany failed to respond to the threat posed by Vladimir Putin for too long, Berlin’s defence minister said as the two countries signed a new co-operation agreement. As PA Media reports, the deal is a way of strengthening European security at a time when the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House could see US military resources diverted away from the Nato alliance.Speaking at a press conference alongside John Healey, the defence secretary, the German defence minister Boris Pistorius said the allies had failed to respond to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and were now being forced to catch up in the wake of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
      I always stress that the Baltics and Scandinavian countries, they woke up (in) 2014 to the annexation of the Crimea.
      We woke up, too: Germany, Britain, France and other countries in Europe; but what we did was we pushed the snooze button and turned around.
      All the other countries stayed awake, and they did what was necessary to do. And so we lost almost eight years and have now to speed up.
      Healey said European nations needed to take “more responsibility for the heavy lifting and the leadership within the Nato alliance”.Commenting on the deal, known as the UK-Germany Trinity House Agreement, the said:
      The Trinity House Agreement is a milestone moment in our relationship with Germany and a major strengthening of Europe’s security.
      It secures unprecedented levels of new cooperation with the German Armed Forces and industry, bringing benefits to our shared security and prosperity, protecting our shared values and boosting our defence industrial bases.
      As PA reports, under the deal, , German submarine-hunting planes will operate from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland and arms giant Rheinmetall is set to open a factory producing artillery gun barrels using British steel. Defence AI firm Helsing will also make a £350 million investment in the UK.The two countries will also collaborated on developing long-range, strike weapons that can travel further than the UK’s existing Storm Shadow missiles, and on new land-based and aerial drones.The text of the agreement is here and the joint communique is here.Kemi Badenoch has said lots of commentators “do not understand downward social mobility”.She made the comment in her interview with Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast, when she was asked about her claim that she was working class when she came to the UK as a teenager and had a job in McDonald’s while she was also attending school.Badenoch was mocked for the claim when she first made it because she had a middle-class upbringing in Nigeria, where her father was a doctor and her mother a professor of physiology. But at the Tory conference she doubled down, saying that it was not working at McDonald’s that made her working class, but that because she was working class at that stage in her life she ended up doing that job. (Badenoch implied it was like a main job, and that she was so poor she had to work; another account, in a biography of Badenoch published by Lord Ashcroft, says it was a part-time job, and that Badenoch did not need to work because her food and rent were being paid for.)Badenoch told Robinson that the controversy generated by her remarks showed how some journalists did not understand downward social mobility. She explained:
      A lot of people in the commentariat classes do not understand downward social mobility, and they think that where you are is what you are and that’s that, and people don’t move between them.
      But my understanding of class as it is today is that it is different from what it was during Downton Abbey. People actually do move in between them and, given the level of migration that we’ve had into the country, the old class system doesn’t work and people like me don’t fit into it.
      How many people have you met who are doctors in their country who are driving cabs here, for example, what class are they?
      And if you are trying to shoehorn people into an outdated class system, you’re going to run into trouble.
      Describing her situation now, Badenoch, who is married to a banker, said that she would describe herself as “comfortable”, but added: “I wouldn’t say we’re rich.”Kemi Badenoch, the favourite in the Conservative leadership contest, may wait up to two years before coming up with detailed policies, it has been reported. In his Daily Mail interview with her, Jason Groves writes:
      If she wins … Mrs Badenoch plans to spend up to two years ‘renewing’ the party before coming forward with a detailed policy platform.
      In her Political Thinking podcast interview, Badenoch said she would use policy commissions to decide where the party will go next.
      I have said that we are going to set up just like David Cameron did, and just like Margaret Thatcher did, policy commissions where we’re going to pick each of these issues through. We’re going to have an internal debate within the party and then we’re going to come to a conclusion and unite behind it.
      She also said that she would not force shadow cabinet ministers to agree with her on policy from the start. She said:
      What I’m not doing is what my opponent [Robert Jenrick] has done and said, ‘I have these ideas and people are going to need to sign up to them if they’re in this, if they go into the shadow cabinet.’ I don’t think that you can get a party together that way.
      Politics is not like other businesses. It is something that requires consensus. You can’t sack the people who are there. They’re still going to be there. So you need to bring people together.
      Badenoch herself first got properly involved with the Conservative party contributing to a policy commission on globalisation and global poverty, chaired by Peter Lilley.Kemi Badenoch, the favourite in the Tory leadership contest, has repeatedly been accused of avoiding the media by her opponent, Robert Jenrick. But in the last 24 hours or so she has done two biggish interviews – with Nick Robinson, for his BBC Political Thinking podcast, and with Jason Groves, political editor of the Daily Mail.In the interviews Badenoch said that she is a “net zero sceptic” and suggested that an adaption strategy might be a better solution to the climate crisis than just focusing on cutting carbon emissions.In the write-up of his interview, Groves also said Badenoch “does not completely rule out revisiting the 2050 net target [the UK government’s legal pledge to get net carbons emissions down to zero by 2050]”, but Groves did not include a direct quote from Badenoch on this.Speaking to Robinson, Badenoch said she was a net zero sceptic, but not a climate change sceptic. She said she accepted there was a problem to be addressed, but that she was not convinced net zero was the solution.
      What I’m saying is that climate change is a serious issue that needs work. But what strategy should we pick? We could pick an adaptation strategy, that this is going to happen. How do we build lives that will work within that?
      We’ve chosen the strategy, which is to reduce carbon emissions. There is no guarantee that that will work. I want to see something, if we are going down that path, something that has other benefits. So energy security.
      Badenoch said that, for her, the question was: “Is net zero a solution or is it a slogan?” She implied she thought it was more of the latter.
      If you have a target and you can’t meet it, it’s not real. Just putting something in law doesn’t make it real.
      And she also said that her experience of growing up in Nigeria, when there were regular power cuts even though the country was energy rich, helped to explain why she was a net zero sceptic.
      I am a net zero sceptic … because I grew up somewhere where the lights didn’t come on, where we ran out of fuel frequently, despite being an oil producing country, there was often petrol scarcity. That is when a system is broken and I see us making similar decisions here. Let’s do something because it looks good, before we figured out how to do it, let’s make an announcement and I don’t want us doing that.
      I will post more lines from Badenoch’s interviews shortly.The Department for Work and Pensions has published a document explaining how it will go about drawing up a child poverty strategy. The plan will shape the work of its child poverty taskforce.According to the document, the work will focus on four themes.
      1) Increasing incomes: Examining how government and business can work together to support parents into secure employment, and support progression in the labour market, building on our plans to Make Work Pay and to Get Britain Working. This will include childcare as a key enabler of parental employment. We will consider how social security reforms could support people into work and help alleviate poverty.
      2) Reducing essential costs: Working with business and organisations to understand and tackle the key cost drivers for low-income families (such as housing, energy, food). Looking at where these costs are a barrier to education and employment (like childcare and transport), including addressing the poverty premium and where increased costs of disability exacerbates poverty.
      3) Increasing financial resilience: Working with a range of stakeholders, including financial institutions, charities, and consumer representatives to find solutions to problem debt and enabling families to build savings …
      4) Better local support, focussed especially on children’s early years: Our society, through our local institutions and our local communities, is at the heart of tackling the impacts of poverty.
      The document also gives some details of how employers, unions, thinktanks and other experts will be consulted by the taskforce over the coming months.In their legal complaint about Labour activists campaigning for the Democrats, Donald Trump’s lawyers quote newspaper reports saying Morgan McSweeney, who is now Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s communications chief, went to the Democrats’ convention to advise Kamala Harris’s team.As Steven Swinford from the Times reports, Labour says McSweeney and Doyle were not there as advisers.
      Labour denies Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, his director of communications, advised the Harris campaign team when they attended the DNC convention in August
      They confirm that McSweeney’s costs were paid for by the Labour Party and that Doyle’s costs were met by the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democrat thinktank.
      Donald Trump’s six-page filing directly accuses them of trying to ‘exercise direction and control over elements of Harris’s campaign’, in breach of US federal law
      John Lamont, shadow Scottish secretary, told Radio 4’s the World at One that the Trump team complaint about Labour activists campaigning in the US was “a diplomatic car crash” for the government. He said:
      It’s a diplomatic car crash by this Labour government. There’s now somebody who could potentially be the next president of the United States who’s lodged an official complaint with the American authorities about the Labour party, the Labour government, and their involvement in their election …
      If Donald Trump were to win for the election in a few weeks, how on earth is the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, going to rebuild that relationship with one of the most important countries in the world, not least from a diplomatic perspective, but also from a trading perspective.
      The culture minister Chris Bryant, who was being interviewed alongside Lamont, responded:
      What a load of hyperbole and exaggeration. I think the Conservative party in opposition is going to have to learn how to not sound so shrill.
      Bryant said that there was nothing unusual about activists volunteering in foreign election campaigns. And he said in this case people were going to the America in their own time, at their own expense, without Labour funding.He said the story was “a massive fuss about nothing”. Pointing out that Liz Truss went to the Republican convention to support Donald Trump, he told Lamont the Tories were guilty of “arrant hypocrisy”.Lamont said there was no complaint about Truss going to the Republican convention, but that in this case there was a complaint about the party in government.Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has told MPs that the identities of armed police officers charged after opening fire at suspects are likely to stay secret in future unless they are convicted. Vikram Dodd has the story.Daniel Knowles, an Economist correspondent in the US, agrees with the Alastair Campbell analysis. (See 1.35pm.) He has posted these on Bluesky.
      Sorry but nobody in America gives a shit about a few Labour activists door-knocking or whatever. The Trump complaint is entirely cynical, and one of dozens of random speculative press releases I was sent yesterday. I’m not surprised British media is as ever just fucking delighted for a local angle

      The story here isn’t “is door knocking actually an illegal contribution,”, etc. The legitimate UK angle to cover is, “Donald Trump will pick massive fights with the British government over nothing if it wins him a nice headline.” Which we know, from his conduct in office

      This is the same Donald Trump who is currently doing private diplomacy with Benjamin Netanyahu and (he didn’t deny when asked by Bloomberg last week) Vladimir Putin. He also isn’t being transparent at all about who is buying & what money he getting from his random commercial licensing deals atm
      Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications chief who now co-hosts the Rest is Politics podcast, told Radio 4’s the World at One that the Trump allegations about the Labour party were just an attempt to distract attention from other campaign stories, like Trump’s former chief of staff calling him a fascist. It was a “non-story”, Campbell told the programme:
      I think it’s one of the biggest non-stories of this campaign. And I’ll tell you why. Because the one thing I will give to the Trump campaign, they are very good at divert and distract, and the media tend to fall for their diversions and distractions all the time.
      We have just had a situation where the former chief of staff, who worked with Donald Trump more than any other chief of staff, has warned the American people that if they vote for Trump, they’re electing a fascist. Now is that more or less significant?
      Is this situation more or less significant than the Russian interference that we had last time around? Is it more or less significant than the Musk millions that are being poured into this?
      What Angela Rayner said [at PMQs – see 12.17pm] is right. Since time immemorial, people on the right have gone to America to support Republican candidates. People on the left and the centre-left have gone to support Democrats. There is no evidence whatsoever of the Labour party using resources or money [to campaign for the Democrats].
      Campbell was referring to John Kelly, a former general who was Trump’s chief of staff between 2017 and 2019.Kelly made his comments in an interview with the New York Times. Asked if Trump was a fascist, Kelly told the paper:
      Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy …
      So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America …
      Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure … He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.
      Kelly also told the New York Times he had heard Trump praise Hitler. Kelly said:
      [Trump] commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’
      As Chris Stein reports on this blog’s US equivalent, the Trump campaign are dismissing Kelly’s comments.John Healey, the defence secretary, has said the Labour government is determined to have a good relationship with the next US administration, whichever party is in power.Speaking at a press conference this morning, he defended the right of activists to volunteer in the US election, and argued that having Labour people campaigning for Kamala Harris should not affect relations with a possible Donald Trump administration.Healey said:
      Any individual Labour supporters that are over in the US, being part of the Democratic election campaign, are there as individuals. They’re there at their own time. They’re there at their own expense, and if they’ve got accommodation out there that will be also provided by volunteers. This happens in every election. It’s commonplace.
      It is very different to the determination and the way the government will work with whoever the American people elect next month as their president.
      And just as the UK and the US have a special, deep relationship, and have had for decades, that’s a relationship that has withstood the political ups and downs on both sides of the Atlantic, and we’re determined to make that work in the future.
      In an interview this morning Healey suggested that the Republican legal complaint was just an election gimmick. (See 10.33am.) Asked if it was still his view that the Republicans were just “creating controversy”, Healey replied:
      This is in the middle of an election campaign. That’s the way that politics works. You’ve been around almost as long as I have. These are volunteers doing their bit, gaining a bit of experience out there, but doing so as individuals.
      It is nice to see politicians from opposing parties being nice about each other for a change, but maybe Angela Rayner and Oliver Dowden were taking the bonhomie just a little too far. John Crace, who as the Guardian’s sketch writer is paid to take the mick, sounds a bit discombulated by it all.
      This PMQs between Angela Rayner and Oliver Dowden was almost tender
      And Tom Harwood from GB News was pitched into ‘get a room’ mode watching.
      This flirting is getting out of hand.
      They were set off by this exchange in particular.Dowden, a diehard monarchist (even by Conservative party standards), ended his questions sucking up to the king, but he started with the budget, and the charge that raising employers’ national insurance (something Rachel Reeves has not ruled out) would clobber small business owners. On another day, he might have made some progress with this. But Dowden is expecting to be out of the shadow cabinet by the end of next week, and Rayner’s not chancellor or PM, and somehow it felt that he was not really trying. And, even if he had been, Rayner’s opening joke about Dowden’s pushing for an early election – “if his own side hasn’t offered him a peerage, I certainly will” – was so good it would have knocked him off course anyway.Otherwise, it was all rather unremarkable. The best question came from the SNP’s Stephen Flynn. (See 12.17pm.) And the worst questions? Hard to say, but it was not just King Charles getting the sycophancy treatment, and the number of ‘Isn’t the government brilliant?’ questions asked by Labour MPs seemed a bit higher than usual. It is hard to know if that is just an impression, or whether No 10 is tightening up on message discipline under the new Morgan McSweeney regime.John Hayes (Con) says onshore windfarms are a threat to farmland in his Lincolnshire constituency. He says energy security should not compromise food security.Rayner says the government is committed to energy security.Kim Johnson (Lab) asks about a hospice threatened with closure in her constituency. Does Rayner agree they should get statutory funding, not just charity funding?Rayner says the government is aware of the importance of hospices. She promises a ministerial meeting on this.Rachel Blake (Lab) asks if Rayner agrees that the renters’ rights bill will transform opportunities for renters.Rayner does agree with that. More

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      A little about Robert Jenrick actually reveals a lot | Brief letters

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      Robert Jenrick’s website modestly sets out his unimpeachable credentials for leadership of party and country. The “About” section begins thus: “Robert has spent most of his life in the Midlands and comes from small town Britain. Born in 1980s Wolverhampton, his father, Bill, was a small businessman from Manchester and his mother, Jenny, was a secretary from Liverpool. They set up their own business fitting fireplaces around their kitchen table.” So Bob’s dad, a little chap just Bob’s age, came from two places and liked to keep the table warm?Stephen BakerTregynon, Powys Aditya Chakrabortty ends his article on the Tory leadership race (Opinion, 12 September) speculating on who’ll be in the final bout to lead Her Majesty’s opposition. I think he needs to keep up with the news.Michael RobinsonBerkhamsted, Herfordshire When I worked for the Blood Transfusion Service in Ireland in the 1970s, Guinness was always available for donors (Letters, 10 September). The most reliable donors were employees of the brewery who, as a perk of their job, got a daily ration of two pint bottles.Catherine O’ReillyLondon I took the ironing on (Letters, 10 September) when my girlfriend – now my wife – did an MA in chemistry when she was 23. She’s now 63 and still appears reluctant to take the task back.Ian Charlton Northallerton, North Yorkshire Donald Trump refers to Kamala Harris as a Marxist (Harris targets Trump for falsehoods on abortion and immigration in fiery debate, 11 September). Perhaps he needs a dictionary?Derek McMillanDurrington, West Sussex More

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      Here it is, the new right playbook: wreck and impoverish the country, enjoy the high life yourself | Owen Jones

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      Rightwing dogma has cost Britons dearly, but remains the ultimate meal ticket for the guilty men and women. While Tory rule saw workers face the most protracted squeeze in wages since the defeat of Napoleon, the politicians to blame have shamelessly monetised this failure of historic proportions.Boris Johnson – turfed out of No 10 in disgrace after little more than three years in charge – leads the pack, unsurprisingly. Within six months, he had raked in more than £5m thanks to speaker fees, hospitality and donations. A million of that was generously donated by Christopher Harborne, a tech entrepreneur based in Thailand who had mostly donated vast sums of money to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. That means Johnson certainly had the means to settle the legal bill for his defence in Partygate: alas, you and I coughed up that £265,000, with the National Audit Office condemning the government’s decision to use public money.The Rwanda scheme to deport asylum seekers was not just cruel, it was costly: about £700m of taxpayers’ dosh was frittered on needlessly catering to the basest prejudices of the British electorate. Yet its most vociferous champion, the former home secretary Suella Braverman, clearly believes she has expertise deserving of a hefty price tag.She has already made nearly £60,000 on the global speaking circuit, more than any other sitting MP, with another £14,000 from the Telegraph for articles such as one titled “Islamists are in charge of Britain now”. Then there was the all-expenses “solidarity” trip to Israel worth £27,800, paid for by the National Jewish Assembly, who clearly believed it was an investment: its chairman declared that it had paid up because Braverman “has been very influential in politics and we hope that she will again be influential in the future”.Sure, Liz Truss may have crashed the economy with unhinged rightwing policies, sending mortgages and rents soaring, contributing to 320,000 British adults being driven below the poverty line. And yes, granted, in July she was booted out of her Norfolk seat – where she had won 69% of the vote in 2019 – with the biggest swing from Tory to Labour in any UK election ever. But her bank account balance is as healthy as her shame is absent: by last September, she had made £250,000 in speaker fees since leaving office.And while Farage was never a Tory minister, few politicians have done so much to reshape the Conservative party, or deliver a Brexit which, according to the polls, just 13% of Britons believe is a success. He’s the highest earning MP, making £1.2m a year from GB News, alongside lucrative trips to the US funded by wealthy friends.That 14 years of rightwing leadership gave us a Britain with wages lower than in 2008 in two-thirds of British local authorities, stagnant growth, crumbling public services, and chronic divisions and tensions is clearly no barrier to success. All of these figures champion capitalism as a system that rewards success and punishes failure, and yet all thrive precisely because they were architects of Britain’s most calamitous era of the peacetime democratic era.What is termed “rightwing populism” is, in short, an endless money spinner. Truss is a particularly instructive case. In her youth, she was a Liberal Democrat devotee, passionately denouncing the British monarchy. Despite swerving to the right in adulthood, she campaigned for remain in 2016. Since her premiership had its fatal appointment with reality, Truss has either shifted further right or felt liberated to be her true self, or both. A cheerleader for Donald Trump, she spoke at a far-right conference in the US alongside Farage to decry “the deep state” for taking her down, and said nothing while appearing in an interview where Steve Bannon hailed Tommy Robinson as a “hero”.Other attenders at this Conservative Political Action Conference included a US senator who has refused to condemn white nationalists, and allies of the authoritarian Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán. While in the US, Truss accepted another trip worth £20,000 from a murky group called the Green Dragon Coalition, which says it is committed to “break down climate change policy” and “expose the woke mob”.What is going on here? Back in the 1970s, well funded thinktanks helped reshape the western right to embrace privatisation and regulation, slashing taxes on the rich and smashing trade unions. Today’s right is metamorphosing again, epitomised by the authoritarian demagoguery of Trump. Where there was once a cordon sanitaire between what was loosely described as the “centre right” and what lies beyond, that has long broken down.All this money is helping to reshape the international right, bringing together its leading lights to forge common bonds and a shared mission. Yes, it is nauseating to watch politicians make others pay for their failures while they are rewarded with endless pay cheques. But this is not a political project driven by results – and powerful tycoons with bottomless pockets are determined that these walking, talking disasters act as trailblazers for what comes next.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      Republicans beware: weaponising pets is a political minefield | Stewart Lee

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      The Ohio senator JD Vance has attacked “childless cat ladies”, going so far as to suggest infertile cat owners, or cat owners choosing life without children, should enjoy reduced voting rights. Donald Trump has already alienated Elvis Presley fans (“Elvis didn’t have 50,000 people and he had a guitar… I don’t have a guitar”) and the wind (“I never understood wind … I’ve studied it better than anybody”). Now Vance is politicising pets. The MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage, has called Vance a “top man”. Farage fuels violence, as we saw in the moving cocaine-and-cider vigil in Southport last week. Should Clacton cats, and Clacton cat ladies, fear the fist of Farage?Rightwingers aiming to weaponise pets should remember the old showbiz adage: “Never work with animals and children.” Especially if, as the American alt-right theorist Jack Psobiec suggests they should, the Republicans sign up the Trumpanzee rock star Ted Nugent. The blood sports enthusiast, and author of the song Jailbait, already has demonstrably poor history with both wildlife and the young.In 2019, the then prime minister Boris Johnson acquired a jack russell cross called Dilyn to try to seem normal. But the dog savaged the stuffed lemur of an award-winning boy, spaffed up random visiting dignitaries’ trousers, and sexually assaulted a stool made from the foot of an elephant killed by Roosevelt, disrespecting the special relationship and endangered species simultaneously. The journalists outside Chequers looked from dog to man, and from man to dog, and from dog to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.The former prime minister David Cameron’s disputed student friendship with an accommodating pig has become legendary, largely because no one can prove it ever happened. The story was allegedly sourced by the Brexit idiot Isabel Oakeshott from the then Westminster Conservative MP Mark Field, but he denies everything. Piggate aside, Field is most famous for grappling a Greenpeace protester at a Mansion House banquet in 2019 while shouting: “This is what happens when people like you disturb our dinner.” If Field had been at the Oxford feast where Cameron befriended the pig, the Mansion House banquet wouldn’t have been the most disturbed dinner he ever attended, so he would definitely have remembered it.We all know that Alastair Campbell, when Tony Blair was on the verge of first admitting the sheer depth of his religious convictions, told him: “We don’t do God.” What’s less well known is that the spinmeister general also advised “We don’t do pets,” when Blair suggested winning back old Labour’s northern heartlands by releasing video of himself and his wife, Cherie, dressed as prize whippet and a racing pigeon respectively.But in choosing to denigrate cats and their owners, are the Republicans on to something? In 2021, researchers revealed that US voters with conservative beliefs tended to dislike cats. The former Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham summarised the findings: “Conservatives hold strong anti-cat biases, likely stemming from cats’ disregard for social hierarchies, their general lack of loyalty, and their refusal to submit to authority.” Are cats instinctively left of centre? Can it be mere coincidence that Rishi Sunak’s memorably soggy election date announcement was further sabotaged by the Downing Street cat, Larry, shuffling about on the No 10 steps, like Eric Morecambe in the background of an excruciating Ernie Wise song?I do not wish to make light of postal workers’ suffering, but can it also be mere coincidence that, during the decade in which the Conservatives’ dismantling of Royal Mail escalated, attacks on mail delivery people by presumably right-leaning dogs have also increased, with more than 1,000 post-persons losing a finger or part of one in the past five years? The Royal Mail’s Lizz Lloyd was rightly angry to see “postman-flavour” dog treats for sale at a stately home. It is as wrong as if the JoJo Maman Bébé line were to make costly leotards emblazoned with the face of Trump’s rock-star supporter Ted Nugent.I allow two cats to live with me: one rescued from a litter in a back garden where foxes slaughtered its siblings; the other found in a cardboard box outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall on Stamford Hill. As an adoptee, I relate to them, and am fascinated as I watch their abandonment issues develop. Archie, at only a year old, drinks far too much cat milk, while Winged Ear Fingerling, a year older, I estimate, has retreated into a solipsistic world of narcissistic fantasy. And yes I, a cat man, didn’t vote for Reform.As if to prove the point, Adolf Hitler, arguably the most rightwing person who has ever lived, of course had a dog, which was given to him by his personal secretary, the Nazi Martin Bormann, another known rightwinger. Hitler named the German shepherd Blondi, which was rather on the nose given his passionate belief in Aryan supremacy. It’s as if Nigel Farage had instead named his two dogs, Pebble and Baxter, after what he believed in: Money and Nothing.But today Blondi seems a better pet name, politically, than that favoured by the Dambuster airman Wing Commander Guy Gibson, whose dog’s name cannot be mentioned now because of the wokeness gone mad, those wokies and that wokery. Indeed, the dog’s Scampton gravestone was replaced by the RAF in 2020, at a cost of £675. This was fortunate, as the former RAF base’s fences are now used to contain asylum seekers, and an actual grave bearing a racial slur would make them paranoid. The Conservative party leadership contender and Disney-mural desecrator Robert Jenrick would doubtless have had the original grave reinstated, a deterrent even more powerful than Rwanda. I think all politicians should play by 70s swimming pool rules. No petting! Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is on Now TV. He will preview new material at Stewart Lee Introduces the Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with guests Connie Planque (12 August), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk. More

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      Rees-Mogg tells young Tories he wants to ‘build a wall in the English Channel’

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      Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he wants to “build a wall in the English Channel” in a leaked recording, in which he heaped praise on Donald Trump and the hardline Republican response to immigration.Speaking to young Conservative activists, Rees-Mogg doubled down on his backing for the former US president, saying he took the right approach by building a border wall.“If I were American I’d want the border closed, I’d be all in favour of building a wall. I’d want to build a wall in the middle of the English Channel,” the former cabinet minister said.Rees-Mogg is fighting a strong Labour challenge in his North East Somerset and Hanham constituency against Dan Norris, the mayor of the West of England, who was previously MP in the seat until he was defeated by Rees-Mogg in 2010.Rees-Mogg, a popular figure among Tory party members, is likely to be influential in the Conservative leadership race if he retains his seat. Support for Trump’s White House bid is a sharp divider within the party between the right and the centrist One Nation group. Those who have given public backing to the former president, who has been convicted on 34 felony counts, include the Conservative former prime ministers Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, who said Trump’s return would be a “big win for the world”, and the former MPs Andrea Jenkyns and Jake Berry.In January 2024, Jenkyns said: “We’d be a safer place if Trump came back.”; Berry told ITV the US should “bring him back”.Speaking before a pub crawl in March organised by a Young Conservative group, Rees-Mogg said: “Every so often, I slightly peek over the parapet, like that image from the second world war of the man looking over the wall, and say if I were an American, I would vote for Donald Trump and it’s always the most unpopular thing I ever say in British politics, but I’m afraid it’s true. I would definitely vote for Donald Trump against Joe Biden.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the recording, Rees-Mogg claimed Biden “doesn’t like Britain” and said that was his biggest concern going into the election. “That’s … much more important for me than whether somebody closes the border between the US and Mexico … I want Trump to succeed as he looks like the candidate. And one does to some degree worry about the mental acuity of President Biden.”The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has also been a champion of Trump, appearing at multiple rallies in the US and suggesting he wants to mirror the Republican candidate’s success in mounting a takeover of the right.At a rally on Sunday, Farage said he would “make Britain great again” in an echo of the former US president’s slogan. He has previously said Trump “learned a lot” from the provocative speeches he himself made during his years in Brussels.Rees-Mogg did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      Liz Truss says in book Queen told her to ‘pace yourself’, admits she didn’t listen

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      In a new memoir, Liz Truss recounts the advice she was given by Queen Elizabeth II when they met in September 2022 to confirm Truss as Britain’s new prime minister, the 15th and as it turned out last, to serve under Elizabeth II.“Pace yourself,” the 96-year-old queen said – a suggestion Truss admits she failed to heed after the queen died, leaving Truss unsure if she could cope.Truss later introduced radical free-market policies that crashed the British economy and saw her ejected from office just 49 days after winning an internal Conservative party vote to succeed Boris Johnson, making her the shortest-serving prime minister of all.“Maybe I should have listened” to the queen, Truss writes.Replaced in Downing Street by Rishi Sunak, Truss still sits as an MP for South West Norfolk. Just 48, she has increasingly sought to carve out a prominent position on the hard right of British politics and turned her sights on the US, in particular its rightwing thinktanks and lucrative speaking circuit.Truss’s book, Ten Years To Save The West, will be published in the US and UK next week.Though Truss writes that the book is less a memoir than a manifesto for her continuing participation in global politics, it does contain extensive descriptions of her time as an MP, a member of successive Conservative cabinets, a minister of state, foreign secretary and finally, briefly as prime minister.Of her historic meeting with the late queen at Balmoral in Scotland in September 2022, Truss says the 96-year-old monarch “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics,” Truss writes. “She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”Elsewhere, Truss often writes of struggling with the pressures of high office, including an instance in Spain when she was foreign secretary in which motorcade delays saw her “beginning to lose my rag … on account of constant travel and pressure”, causing her to try to get out of her official car to “remonstrate with police”.That episode was quelled, Truss writes, with an intervention by her staff and “a cooling off period at a sherry bar”.But when the queen died so soon after Truss had become her 15th and final prime minister, Truss writes, the news, though widely expected after the monarch’s health had deteriorated, still came “as a profound shock” to Truss, seeming “utterly unreal” and leaving her thinking: “Why me? Why now?”Insisting she had not expected to lead the UK in mourning for the death of a monarch nearly 70 years on the throne and nearly 100 years old, Truss says state ceremony and protocol were “a long way from my natural comfort zone”.Other prime ministers, she writes without naming any, may have been better able to provide “the soaring rhetoric and performative statesmanship necessary”. She herself, she writes, predominantly felt profound sadness.Truss describes carrying out duties including giving a Downing Street speech about the queen’s death and having a first audience with King Charles III. A subsequent Buckingham Palace meeting between the King and his prime minister was widely noted for its stilted nature – Charles being heard to mutter: “Back again? Dear oh dear”. But Truss says their first official meeting made her feel “a bizarre sense of camaraderie between us, with both starting out in our new roles and having to navigate unfamiliar territory”.As the UK went into mourning, so Truss watched on television with her family as the queen’s coffin was brought from Balmoral to Edinburgh. Truss describes being “suddenly overwhelmed by the emotion of it all”, and breaking down “into floods of tears on the sofa”.“Once again,” she writes, “the grief was mixed with a feeling of awe over the sheer weight of the event, and the fact that it was happening on my watch.”That watch turned out to be shorter than anyone could have expected. But after a period out of the public eye Truss has re-emerged, especially in the US where Donald Trump is seeking to return to the White House as a far-right Republican.Last April, she delivered the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. This February, in Maryland, she spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC, telling a pro-Trump audience the Anglo-American right “need[s] a bigger bazooka” to take on its leftwing enemies.At that event, Truss stirred controversy by appearing with far-right figures, including the former Trump White House counselor Steve Bannon and allies of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.Truss announced her book in September last year, saying she would use it to “share the lessons” of her time in government, in which she claimed often to have been “the only conservative in the room”, fighting a supposedly authoritarian left.In the event, she repeatedly blames the so-called “deep state” for her failures, from being excluded from meetings with Trump when Boris Johnson was prime minister to her own short-lived spell in that role.Popular on the US right, the deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives exists to thwart the ambitions of populist leaders. Bannon is one of its chief propagators. He has, however, said it is “for nut cases”. More

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      If we the Black voters ‘get loud’, neither the Tories nor Donald Trump will survive | Al Sharpton

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      Donald Trump’s racist mentality has long been an open secret. In the 1970s, a federal lawsuit was brought against him for alleged racial discrimination on one of his housing developments in New York. He led the campaign calling for the death penalty against the Central Park Five, who were accused of a brutal rape but later vindicated. Even after that exoneration, he continued to suggest they were guilty.So are Black Americans flocking to support Trump? Reports are mixed. Trump himself would tell you he has a unique affinity with the Black community, but personally, I don’t buy it. Polling in 2020 estimated Trump would take 20% of the black vote. The real number was closer to 8%.After all, let’s remember what he says about us. Just this weekend, he said that Black Americans identified with him because he had faced criminal charges and we embraced his criminal mugshot. That was outright racist and insulting. For him to say that during Black History Month in the US is the epitome of an insult.And the irony is that he is the one being prosecuted – and by Black professionals at that. The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, brought the financially ruinous civil financial fraud case against Trump. Fani Willis, Fulton county district attorney, was responsible for challenging Trump’s alleged election interference in Georgia.I spend a lot of time speaking with Black voters. I host a US radio show six days a week – and from what I hear, I’m not alone in thinking that claims that he has growing support among our community are grossly exaggerated. But I do think it is fair to say that Black citizens are asking questions of the Democrats.Joe Biden has simply not done a good enough job on messaging. He needs to be more aggressive in speaking to Black voters – laying out his record, such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (which Trump opposed) and his support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (which almost every Republican voted down). Biden should not assume people know what they haven’t been reminded of.US liberals must understand that if you take the high road and are not making noise about it, no one knows that you’re taking any road. They have to be more vocal, they have to challenge more, and not run away from the issue of race.That goes for the left in the UK, too. Arriving yesterday, I was disgusted to hear racist, Islamophobic language being used by members of the Conservative party. The Tories seem to be alarmingly Trump-like in their language. And that should be a mobilising cry to millions of Black British voters to register to vote.It shocks me that the wider British public doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the threat to Black voting in the UK. The UK’s new photo ID legislation disproportionately disadvantages Black and minority voters. We know – similar legislation was used against us in the US. But Black people mobilised against it, and in 2021 helped to elect Raphael Warnock as Georgia’s first Black US senator. It shows the importance of fighting back.That’s why I came here: to tell leaders to use our playbook to challenge laws that suppress the Black vote – and to impress on Black communities the importance of turning out. It is imperative to democracy that we awaken the black vote in the UK and bring it alive. And we must do it simultaneously in the US.Biden has an opportunity to expose Trump’s lies and get disenfranchised communities back on side. To do that, he must be candid: he must openly call out Trump’s blatant racism for what it is. He must tell Black voters how Trump stacked the courts in a way that is detrimental to them, and that he will aggressively fight that. The Democrats still have time to recapture those whom they think they are losing. If they do that, Trump will have no recourse. He can’t undo things he has already said and done.You have to turn people on before you can turn them out. And if you turn them on to what is being done to us – what has already been said about us – you can turn people out. Liberal movements in the US and the UK have been blindly hoping that people will turn out on their own. But leaders must understand they won’t mobilise without a reason. It’s not enough to be proud in silence – we need to get loud again.
      The Rev Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader, activist and founder and president of National Action Network (Nan). As told to Lucy Pasha-Robinson.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Wednesday briefing: Everyone claims to back a ceasefire in Gaza. But what are they really saying?

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      Good morning. The daily details of the horror being visited on civilians in Gaza can make any conversation about the language of ceasefire proposals being put forward in foreign capitals seem absurd.A massive majority at the UN general assembly backed a ceasefire in December; so did the pope. A few days later, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer backed a “sustainable” ceasefire. Twenty-six of 27 EU states again called for a ceasefire on Monday. Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet been persuaded by any of them.But the calls for a ceasefire, and the subtle ways that they’ve changed over time, do tell us something about Israel’s weakening position on the international stage. This week, in the UK and at the UN, rival propositions for what a ceasefire might look like have emerged. Behind the diplomatic wrangling, and a particular crisis today for the Labour party in Britain, is a complicated story about how the violence might end, and who might be able to influence it.The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, has been covering these discussions. For today’s newsletter, I asked him whether any of them will make any difference. Here are the headlines.Five big stories
      Health | Patients whose health is failing will be granted the right to obtain an urgent second opinion about their care, as “Martha’s rule” is initially adopted in 100 English hospitals from April at the start of a national rollout. The initiative follows a campaign by Merope Mills, a senior editor at the Guardian, and her husband, Paul Laity, after their 13-year-old daughter Martha died of sepsis at King’s College hospital in London in 2021.
      UK news | Detectives hunting for Abdul Ezedi, the man wanted over a chemical assault that injured a vulnerable woman and her two young daughters, have recovered a body in the Thames that they believe is Ezedi, Scotland Yard has said. “We have been in contact with his family to pass on the news,” said Cmdr Jon Savell.
      WikiLeaks | Julian Assange faces the risk of a “flagrant denial of justice” if tried in the US, the high court has heard. Lawyers for Assange are seeking permission to appeal against the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition, and say he could face a “grossly disproportionate” sentence of up to 175 years if convicted in the US.
      PPE contracts | Michael Gove failed to register hospitality he enjoyed with a Conservative donor whose company he had recommended for multimillion-pound personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the Covid pandemic. When asked by the Guardian about not registering VIP hospitality at a football match he received from David Meller, a spokesperson for Gove apologised for the “oversight”.
      Pakistan | Imran Khan’s political rivals have announced details of a coalition agreement, naming Shehbaz Sharif as their joint candidate for prime minister amid continuing concerns about the legitimacy of the recent elections. Candidates aligned with Khan won the most seats in the parliamentary elections but not enough to form a government.
      In depth: ‘The use of the word ceasefire in a US resolution is a shot across Israel’s bows’View image in fullscreenThe prospect of an Israeli ground operation in Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians have now sought sanctuary, has made the urgency over the question of a new ceasefire greater than ever. Israel says that unless Hamas frees every hostage by the beginning of Ramadan on 10 March, it will launch its offensive; if so, there could be dire humanitarian consequences, and a danger of more violence in the West Bank and escalation across the Middle East.Israel and Hamas have been participating in talks in Cairo brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar. And while the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said that recent days “were not really very promising”, discussions are still continuing, Patrick Wintour said: “The focus at the moment is on the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for each hostage. But the pressure is certainly growing.” Two resolutions at the UN and three motions and amendments in the UK parliament this week help make sense of the nature, and limits, of that pressure.The Algerian resolution | ‘Immediate humanitarian ceasefire’Algeria, the only Arab state currently on the UN security council, brought a resolution forward calling for a ceasefire to begin immediately – and endorsing the provisional orders issued by the international court of justice obliging Israel to take action to prevent genocide.13 security council members supported the resolution – but the UK abstained, and the US used its veto. Washington claimed that the Algerian text risked disrupting negotiations aimed at agreeing a hostage release deal in Cairo – although, as Patrick pointed out: “The Arab Group [including Egypt and Qatar] at the UN has made it very clear that they don’t agree with that.” Others suggest that the US, although now more distant from Israel, is simply not willing to back a resolution demanding it agree to an immediate ceasefire.“The Algerians did initially hope that they could win US support for this,” he said. “They were willing to make changes to try to accommodate the Americans. But at the weekend they decided they weren’t going to get that support, so they went ahead without them.”The US resolution | ‘A temporary ceasefire’ beginning ‘as soon as practicable’If the inevitability of the veto might make Algeria’s resolution appear pointless, the fruits of its efforts are not in the vote itself, but in another resolution which will likely be voted on later this week – brought forward by the US in response.Washington has now used its security council veto three times to protect Israel, Patrick noted: “They needed to show that they have some sort of solution to the impasse, not simply putting their hands up and saying ‘No’.”The language is sharp on the prospect of an attack in Rafah, which is said to hold “serious implications for regional peace and security”. The use of the word “ceasefire” in a US resolution for the first time also feels significant, Patrick added: “It’s a shot across Israel’s bows. They’re saying, you mustn’t start a ground offensive, and you must start to let aid in more substantially.”At the same time, he noted, “it’s important not to be bamboozled by the use of that word”. Probably more important is the phrase “as soon as practicable” – which would appear to give Israel total latitude over timing and terms. “It isn’t a demand for a ceasefire now, it’s a proposal for a ceasefire in the future,” Patrick said. “So it does put some sort of pressure on Netanyahu, but a lot less than, for example, stopping sending arms would do.”The SNP motion | ‘An immediate ceasefire’Opposition day motions in the UK House of Commons are non-binding, and obviously far less consequential than security council resolutions. But they do suggest that the centre of gravity on the issue in UK politics might be shifting – a little.The Scottish National party put forward a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in November; their new motion today is substantively very similar. Although it calls for the release of all hostages taken by Hamas, it does not say that should be a prerequisite: “It calls for an immediate ceasefire without saying that there are any conditions attached,” Patrick said.Labour has been worried that a number of its MPs would break ranks to support the SNP motion, not least because it is substantively so close to what many of them have been saying already. That is part of why it finally came up with its own amendment yesterday.The Labour amendment | ‘An immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides’“I don’t think they would have tabled this now but for the SNP putting its own motion forward,” Patrick said. “They can point to external events, like the level of bombardment in Gaza – but ultimately this is the result of knowing that they were facing another very sizeable rebellion.”For more detail on the Labour text, see this analysis from Kiran Stacey. “The amendment is very long, but it does show that they’ve moved – for instance, it says: ‘Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October cannot happen again.’ Previously, they’ve said that Hamas can’t be left in a military position to mount such a strike again – so it seems to back away from that idea.”It is also the first time Labour has called for an “immediate” ceasefire. Nonetheless, it is much less straightforward than the SNP text: the left-wing campaign group Momentum says that “by making its call for a ceasefire so conditional and caveated, the Labour leadership is giving cover for Israel’s brutal war to continue”.Labour’s slowness to respond to growing public pressure, particularly among its own voters, on Gaza is because “they’re trying to stay as close to the UK government position as possible, and to the US”, Patrick said. “They would view it as politically risky to be too far from either.”But Labour’s manoeuvres have not headed off the risk of rebellion. While officials believed yesterday that they had persuaded potential rebels to support their motion over the SNP’s, the government later published its own amendment – and it is not yet clear whether that text or Labour’s will be put to a vote today. If Labour’s amendment is not on the table, dozens of MPs could yet rebel and back the SNP.The UK government amendment | ‘Negotiations to agree a … pause’For a long time, the British government (and Labour) position appeared defined by the term “sustainable ceasefire”. “That became a code, really, for saying that there’s no need for Israel to commit to anything until Hamas was obliterated,” Patrick said. “You hear that much less now. Foreign Office officials now say that the idea Hamas can be militarily destroyed is for the birds.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNonetheless, the government repeats that language in its proposed amendment to the SNP motion. It endorses only “negotiations to agree an immediate humanitarian pause” and then “moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire” – and says that getting there will require the release of all hostages, and “Hamas to be unable to launch further attacks and no longer in charge in Gaza”. That ultimately still accepts that a decision about timing is in Israel’s power – which is why so many Labour MPs will struggle to back it.Do all of these triangulations, whether at the UN or in Westminster, really matter? “I doubt if you’re in Gaza you’re waiting with bated breath to hear what the Labour or SNP motions say,” Patrick said. “And even though Netanyahu’s not popular, the Israel public still doesn’t support a ceasefire. But diplomatic movements like these have brought accumulating pressure to bear on Israel, and placed limits on where they can go.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen
      Members of Generation Z are allegedly going to bed at 9pm: Tim Dowling (above), who is a little older, spent a week trying it for himself. “I sleep fitfully and, after a certain point, not at all,” he grumbles. “My biological clock has blown its mainspring.” Archie
      In 1974, a group of young families established the Old Hall community in an 18th-century manor house, running an ad in the Guardian seeking other “middle-class socialists” to join them. Emine Saner visited the commune to see how the project was fairing all these years later and the legacy it has created. Nimo
      I absolutely loved Fergal Kinney’s headlong dive into the lore of Sex Lives of the Potato Men, a movie so bad that it arguably broke British cinema, and quite a few careers. Especially good are an extract from Peter Bradshaw’s brutal review, and the surprising turn to experimental theatre at the end. Archie
      Gaby Hinsliff reflects on Breathtaking, a Covid drama written by a doctor about her experiences in hospital wards at the height of the pandemic, and asks whether it will shift public opinion on the forthcoming junior doctors’ strikes. Nimo
      A gambling addiction treatment centre run by the charity Gordon Moody in Wolverhampton is the only one in the UK catering specifically to women. Jessica Murray reports on the life-changing benefits for those who use the services. Nimo
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Erling Haaland (above) netted Manchester City’s only goal in a 1-0 victory over Brentford that lifted them into second place in the Premier League table, just one point behind leaders Liverpool. In the Champions League, Luuk de Jong rescued a PSV draw 1-1 against Borussia Dortmund, while a late goal from substitute Marko Arnautovic gave Inter Milan a 1-0 home victory against Atlético Madrid.Tennis | Andy Murray took his first step out of the worst slump of his career as he outplayed France’s Alexandre Müller for much of their battle before holding his nerve at the close to reach the second round of the Qatar Open with a confidence-boosting 6-1, 7-6 (5) victory. Murray entered the court in Doha on a six-match losing streak.Athletics | Radical proposals that could see foul jumps eliminated from the long jump have been criticised as an “April Fools’ joke” by four-time Olympic ­champion Carl Lewis. With around a third of all jumps disqualified at last year’s world championships, World Athletics is to trial a new “take-off zone” instead of the usual fixed wooden board.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Labour leader faces threat of revolt over Gaza despite call for ceasefire” says our Guardian print edition splash this morning. “William: too many have died in Gaza conflict” – that’s the Daily Mail, while the Telegraph has “William: fighting in Gaza must be brought to an end”. “Prince issues Gaza plea for permanent peace” is how the Times reports it. “‘Cam’s govt knew’” – that’s David Cameron’s government and the wrongful Post Office prosecutions, in the Metro. “Barclays to return £10bn to investors in push for new revenues and balance” is the lead in the Financial Times. “PM: completely ridiculous for illegal migrants to jump the queue” reports the Daily Express. “Putin’s Brit targets” – the Daily Mirror touts as an exclusive its page one story about claims the Russian ruler is putting together a hitlist.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenWhy the NHS needs Martha’s ruleFollowing a campaign by her family in memory of Martha Mills, the NHS is introducing Martha’s rule giving hospital patients in England access to a rapid review from a separate medical team if they are concerned with the care they are receivingCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenFor decades the role of Black Americans in space exploration was diminished and ignored. A new National Geographic documentary seeks to redress this erasure by chronicling the stories of African American pioneers in engineering, science and aviation, who battled violent systemic racism in society while trying to climb the ranks of an industry that was hell bent on keeping them out.Ed Dwight, a pilot who very nearly became the first Black American in space, is featured as a “golden thread” in The Space Race. Dwight, who grew up on a farm in the 1930s, knew he wanted to fly and, against the odds, went on to have a successful career in the US air force. With President John F Kennedy’s recommendation, he was invited to train to be an astronaut at Chuck Yeager’s test pilot programme at an air force base in California. Kennedy called Dwight’s parents to congratulate them and he featured on the covers of Black publications such as Jet. Though Dwight (pictured above in 1954) was not ultimately allowed to go into space, he was considered a hero by many. After retiring, Dwight became a sculptor. His contributions to space exploration were eventually recognised when Nasa named an asteroid after him, describing him as a “space pioneer” who paved the way for Black astronauts that followed.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
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