More stories

  • in

    How huge London far-right march lifted the lid on a toxic transatlantic soup

    @font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:400;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:400;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:500;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:500;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:900;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:900;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Titlepiece;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.content__main-column–interactive{margin-left:160px}}@media (min-width: 81.25em){.content__main-column–interactive{margin-left:240px}}.content__main-column–interactive .element-atom{max-width:620px}@media (max-width: 46.24em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-atom{max-width:100%}}.content__main-column–interactive .element-showcase{margin-left:0}@media (min-width: 46.25em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-showcase{max-width:620px}}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-showcase{max-width:860px}}.content__main-column–interactive .element-immersive{max-width:1100px}@media (max-width: 46.24em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-immersive{width:calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width));position:relative;left:50%;right:50%;margin-left:calc(-50vw + var(–half-scrollbar-width))!important;margin-right:calc(-50vw + var(–half-scrollbar-width))!important}}@media (min-width: 46.25em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-immersive{transform:translate(-20px);width:calc(100% + 60px)}}@media (max-width: 71.24em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-immersive{margin-left:0;margin-right:0}}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-immersive{transform:translate(0);width:auto}}@media (min-width: 81.25em){.content__main-column–interactive .element-immersive{max-width:1260px}}.content__main-column–interactive p,.content__main-column–interactive ul{max-width:620px}.content__main-column–interactive:before{position:absolute;top:0;height:calc(100% + 15px);min-height:100px;content:””}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.content__main-column–interactive:before{border-left:1px solid #dcdcdc;z-index:-1;left:-10px}}@media (min-width: 81.25em){.content__main-column–interactive:before{border-left:1px solid #dcdcdc;left:-11px}}.content__main-column–interactive .element-atom{margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;padding-bottom:12px;padding-top:12px}.content__main-column–interactive p+.element-atom{padding-top:0;padding-bottom:0;margin-top:12px;margin-bottom:12px}.content__main-column–interactive .element-inline{max-width:620px}@media (min-width: 61.25em){figure[data-spacefinder-role=inline].element{max-width:620px}}:root{–dateline: #606060;–headerBorder: #dcdcdc;–captionText: #999;–captionBackground: hsla(0, 0%, 7%, .72);–feature: #c70000;–new-pillar-colour: var(–primary-pillar, var(–feature))}.content__main-column–interactive .element.element-atom,.element.element-atom{padding:0}#article-body >div .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type,#article-body >div .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,#article-body >div .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,#article-body >div hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p,.content–interactive >div .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type,.content–interactive >div .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,.content–interactive >div .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,.content–interactive >div hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p,#comment-body .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type,#comment-body .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,#comment-body .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,#comment-body hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p,[data-gu-name=body] .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type,[data-gu-name=body] .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,[data-gu-name=body] .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,[data-gu-name=body] hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p,#feature-body .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type,#feature-body .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,#feature-body .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type,#feature-body hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p{padding-top:14px}#article-body >div .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#article-body >div .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#article-body >div .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#article-body >div hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p:first-letter,.content–interactive >div .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,.content–interactive >div .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,.content–interactive >div .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,.content–interactive >div hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p:first-letter,#comment-body .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#comment-body .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#comment-body .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#comment-body hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p:first-letter,[data-gu-name=body] .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,[data-gu-name=body] .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,[data-gu-name=body] .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,[data-gu-name=body] hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p:first-letter,#feature-body .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#feature-body .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#feature-body .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,#feature-body hr:not(.last-horizontal-rule)+p:first-letter{font-family:Guardian Headline,Guardian Egyptian Web,Guardian Headline Full,Georgia,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:111px;line-height:92px;float:left;text-transform:uppercase;box-sizing:border-box;margin-right:8px;vertical-align:text-top;color:var(–drop-cap, var(–new-pillar-colour))}#article-body >div hr+p,.content–interactive >div hr+p,#comment-body hr+p,[data-gu-name=body] hr+p,#feature-body hr+p{padding-top:0}#maincontent .element.element–showcase.element-showcase figcaption,#feature-article-container .element.element–showcase.element-showcase figcaption,#standard-article-container .element.element–showcase.element-showcase figcaption,#comment-article-container .element.element–showcase.element-showcase figcaption{position:static!important;width:100%;max-width:620px}.element.element–immersive.element-immersive{width:calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px))}@media (max-width: 71.24em){.element.element–immersive.element-immersive{max-width:978px}.element.element–immersive.element-immersive figcaption{padding-inline:10px}}@media (max-width: 71.24em) and (min-width: 30em){.element.element–immersive.element-immersive figcaption{padding-inline:20px}}@media (min-width: 46.25em) and (max-width: 61.24em){.element.element–immersive.element-immersive{max-width:738px}}@media (max-width: 46.24em){.element.element–immersive.element-immersive{margin-left:-10px!important;margin-right:0!important;left:0}}@media (max-width: 46.24em) and (min-width: 30em){.element.element–immersive.element-immersive{margin-left:-20px!important}.element.element–immersive.element-immersive figcaption{padding-inline:20px}}.furniture-wrapper{position:relative}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper{display:grid;grid-column-gap:20px;grid-row-gap:0px;grid-template-columns:[title-start headline-start meta-start standfirst-start] repeat(5,1fr) [title-end headline-end meta-end standfirst-end portrait-start] repeat(5,1fr) [portrait-end];grid-template-rows:[title-start portrait-start] .25fr [title-end headline-start] 1fr [headline-end standfirst-start] .75fr [standfirst-end meta-start] auto [meta-end portrait-end]}.furniture-wrapper #headline >div:first-child,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=headline] >div:first-child,.furniture-wrapper .headline >div:first-child{border-top:1px solid var(–headerBorder)}.furniture-wrapper #meta,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]{position:relative;padding-top:2px;margin-right:0}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst .content__standfirst,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst .content__standfirst,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] .content__standfirst{margin-bottom:4px}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst ul li,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst ul li,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] ul li{font-size:20px}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst li a,.furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst li a,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] li a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] a{border-bottom:none;background-image:none!important;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:6px;text-decoration-color:var(–headerBorder, #dcdcdc)}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst li a:hover,.furniture-wrapper .standfirst a:hover,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst li a:hover,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst a:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] li a:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] a:hover{text-decoration-color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p:first-of-type{border-top:1px solid var(–headerBorder);padding-bottom:0}}@media (min-width: 61.25em) and (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p:first-of-type{border-top:unset}}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper figure{margin:0 0 0 -10px}.furniture-wrapper figure[data-spacefinder-role=inline].element{max-width:630px}}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper{grid-template-columns:[title-start headline-start meta-start] repeat(2,1fr) [meta-end standfirst-start] repeat(5,1fr) [title-end headline-end standfirst-end portrait-start] repeat(7,1fr) [portrait-end];grid-template-rows:[title-start portrait-start] 80px [title-end headline-start] auto [headline-end standfirst-start meta-start] auto [standfirst-end meta-end portrait-end]}.furniture-wrapper #meta:before,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before{content:””;width:540px;position:absolute;top:0;background-color:var(–headerBorder);height:1px}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p{border-top:unset}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst:before,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst:before,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst]:before{content:””;width:1px;background-color:var(–headerBorder);height:100%;position:absolute;top:0;left:.5px}}@media (min-width: 81.25em){.furniture-wrapper{grid-template-columns:[title-start headline-start meta-start] repeat(3,1fr) [meta-end standfirst-start] repeat(5,1fr) [title-end headline-end standfirst-end portrait-start] repeat(8,1fr) [portrait-end];grid-template-rows:[title-start portrait-start] .25fr [title-end headline-start] 1fr [headline-end standfirst-start meta-start] .75fr [standfirst-end meta-end portrait-end]}.furniture-wrapper #meta:before,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before{width:620px}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst:before,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst:before,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst]:before{left:-.5px}}.furniture-wrapper .article-header .content__labels >div,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] .content__labels >div{padding-top:2px}.furniture-wrapper #headline h1,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=headline] h1,.furniture-wrapper .headline h1{font-weight:600;max-width:620px;font-size:32px}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper #headline h1,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=headline] h1,.furniture-wrapper .headline h1{max-width:540px;font-size:50px}}@media (min-width: 46.25em){.furniture-wrapper .keyline-4,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=lines]{margin-right:0}}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper .keyline-4,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=lines]{display:none}}.furniture-wrapper .keyline-4 svg,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=lines] svg{stroke:var(–headerBorder)}@media (min-width: 46.25em){.furniture-wrapper #meta,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]{margin-right:0}}.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social ul li a span,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__comment,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social ul li a span,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__comment{border-color:var(–headerBorder)}.furniture-wrapper #meta .content__meta-container_dcr >div >gu-island,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .content__meta-container_dcr >div >gu-island{display:none}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst]{margin-left:-10px;padding-left:10px;position:relative}@media (min-width: 46.25em){.furniture-wrapper .standfirst,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst]{padding-top:2px}}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p{font-weight:400;font-size:20px;padding-bottom:14px}.furniture-wrapper #main-media,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=media]{position:relative;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:2px;grid-area:portrait}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper #main-media,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=media]{margin-bottom:0}}@media (max-width: 46.24em){.furniture-wrapper #main-media,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=media]{width:calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px));margin-left:-10px}}@media (max-width: 46.24em) and (min-width: 30em){.furniture-wrapper #main-media,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=media]{margin-left:-20px}}.furniture-wrapper figcaption{position:absolute;bottom:0;padding:4px 10px 12px;background-color:var(–captionBackground);color:var(–captionText);max-width:unset;width:100%;margin-bottom:0;min-height:46px}.furniture-wrapper figcaption span{color:var(–headerBorder)}.furniture-wrapper figcaption span svg{fill:var(–headerBorder)}.furniture-wrapper figcaption span:nth-of-type(1){display:none}.furniture-wrapper figcaption span:nth-of-type(2){display:block;max-width:90%}@media (min-width: 30em){.furniture-wrapper figcaption{padding:4px 20px 12px}}.furniture-wrapper figcaption.hidden{opacity:0}.furniture-wrapper #caption-button{display:block;position:absolute;bottom:10px;right:8px;z-index:30;background-color:var(–captionBackground);border:none;border-radius:50%;padding:6px 5px 5px}.furniture-wrapper #caption-button svg{transform:scale(.85)}@media (min-width: 30em){.furniture-wrapper #caption-button{right:10px}}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.content__main-column–interactive:before{top:-12px!important;height:calc(100% + 24px)!important}}.content__main-column–interactive h2{max-width:620px}:root{–new-pillar-colour: var( –darkmode-pillar, var(–darkModeFeature) ) !important;–headerBorderColor: #606060;–darkModeFeature: #ff5943}nav+section{display:none}nav+aside{display:none}aside+section{display:none}.furniture-wrapper{background-color:var(–darkBackground);margin:0 -10px;padding:0 10px 4px}@media (min-width: 30em){.furniture-wrapper{margin:0 -20px;padding:0 20px 8px}}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper{padding:0 20px}}@media (min-width: 81.25em){.furniture-wrapper:before{content:””;width:calc((100vw – 1298px)/2);height:100%;position:absolute;left:calc((100vw – 1298px)/-2);background-color:var(–darkBackground);border-right:1px solid var(–headerBorderColor)}.furniture-wrapper:after{content:””;width:calc((100vw – 1298px)/2);height:100%;position:absolute;right:calc((100vw – 1298px)/-2);background-color:var(–darkBackground)}}.furniture-wrapper .article-header,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] span{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper #headline >div:first-child,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=headline] >div:first-child,.furniture-wrapper .headline >div:first-child{border-top:1px solid var(–headerBorderColor)}}.furniture-wrapper #headline h1,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=headline] h1,.furniture-wrapper .headline h1{font-weight:700;color:#dcdcdc}.furniture-wrapper #headline figure,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=headline] figure,.furniture-wrapper .headline figure{margin-top:0;margin-bottom:2px}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper #meta:before,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before{background-color:var(–headerBorderColor)}}.furniture-wrapper #meta details,.furniture-wrapper #meta summary,.furniture-wrapper #meta summary span,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] details,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] summary,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] summary span{color:#dcdcdc}.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social a,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social button,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social button{border-color:var(–headerBorderColor);color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social a svg,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social button svg,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social a svg,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social button svg{fill:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social a:hover,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social button:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social a:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social button:hover{color:var(–darkBackground);background-color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social a:hover svg,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social button:hover svg,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social a:hover svg,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social button:hover svg{fill:var(–darkBackground)}.furniture-wrapper #meta div,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] div{color:#dcdcdc}.furniture-wrapper #meta a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}.furniture-wrapper #meta a:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a:hover{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature);text-decoration-color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,.furniture-wrapper .standfirst li a,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst a,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst li a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] a,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] li a{border-bottom:none;color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature);background-image:none!important;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:6px;text-decoration-color:var(–headerBorder, #dcdcdc)}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst a:hover,.furniture-wrapper .standfirst li a:hover,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst a:hover,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst li a:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] a:hover,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] li a:hover{border-bottom:none;text-decoration-color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p{color:#dcdcdc}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p:first-of-type{border-top:1px solid var(–headerBorderColor)}}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper .standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst p:first-of-type,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] p:first-of-type{border-top:unset}}.furniture-wrapper .standfirst ul li,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst ul li,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst] ul li{color:#dcdcdc}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper .standfirst:before,.furniture-wrapper #standfirst:before,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=standfirst]:before{background-color:var(–headerBorderColor)}}@media (min-width: 46.25em){.furniture-wrapper:before{content:””;height:100%;top:0;position:absolute;background-color:var(–darkBackground);border-right:1px solid var(–headerBorderColor);left:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 738px) / -2);width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 738px) / 2)}.furniture-wrapper:after{content:””;height:100%;top:0;position:absolute;background-color:var(–darkBackground);border-left:1px solid var(–headerBorderColor);right:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 738px) / -2);width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 738px) / 2)}}@media (min-width: 61.25em){.furniture-wrapper:before{content:””;width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 978px) / 2);left:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 978px) / -2)}.furniture-wrapper:after{content:””;width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 978px) / 2);right:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 978px) / -2)}}@media (min-width: 71.25em){.furniture-wrapper:before{content:””;width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1138px) / 2);left:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1138px) / -2)}.furniture-wrapper:after{content:””;width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1138px) / 2);right:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1138px) / -2)}}@media (min-width: 81.25em){.furniture-wrapper:before{content:””;width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1298px) / 2);left:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1298px) / -2)}.furniture-wrapper:after{content:””;width:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1298px) / 2);right:calc((100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px) – 1298px) / -2)}}.furniture-wrapper .keyline-4 svg,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=lines] svg{stroke:var(–headerBorderColor)}.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__social ul li a span,.furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__comment,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__social ul li a span,.furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__comment{border-color:var(–headerBorderColor)}.article .article__body h2,article.content–interactive [data-gu-name=body] h2{font-weight:200}.article .article__body h2:has(strong),article.content–interactive [data-gu-name=body] h2:has(strong){font-weight:700}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:400;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:400;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:500;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:500;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:900;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:900;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Titlepiece;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}:root:has(.ios,.android){–darkBackground: #1a1a1a;–feature: #c70000;–darkmodeFeature: #ff5943;–new-pillar-colour: var(–primary-pillar, var(–feature))}@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark){:root:has(.ios,.android){–new-pillar-colour: var(–darkmode-pillar, var(–darkmodeFeature))}}body.ios #feature-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+.sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container .element-atom:first-of-type+#sign-in-gate+p:first-of-type:first-letter{color:var(–secondary-pillar, #000)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__header,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__header,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__header,body.android #feature-article-container .article__header,body.android #standard-article-container .article__header,body.android #comment-article-container .article__header{height:0}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper{padding:4px 10px 0}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels{font-weight:700;font-family:Guardian Headline,Guardian Egyptian Web,Guardian Headline Full,Georgia,serif;color:var(–new-pillar-colour);text-transform:capitalize}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline{font-size:32px;font-weight:700;padding-bottom:12px;color:#121212!important}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image{position:relative;margin:14px 0 0 -10px;width:calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px));height:auto}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image .figure__inner,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image img,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image .figure__inner,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image img,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image .figure__inner,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image img,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image .figure__inner,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image img,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image .figure__inner,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image img,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image .figure__inner,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image img,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image a{background-color:transparent;width:calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px));height:auto!important}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst{padding-top:4px;padding-bottom:24px;margin-right:-10px}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner p,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner p,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner p,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner p,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner p,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner p{font-family:Guardian Headline,Guardian Egyptian Web,Guardian Headline Full,Georgia,serif}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)!important;background-image:none!important;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:6px;text-decoration-color:var(–headerBorder, #dcdcdc);border-bottom:none}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a:hover,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a:hover,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a:hover,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a:hover,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a:hover,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a:hover,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a:hover,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a:hover,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a:hover,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a:hover,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner li a:hover,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst__inner a:hover{text-decoration-color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta{margin:0}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .meta__byline span,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .meta__byline span,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .meta__byline span,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .meta__byline span,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .meta__byline span,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .meta__byline span{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc{padding:0}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg{stroke:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .element–showcase #caption-button{display:flex;padding:5px;justify-content:center;align-items:center;width:28px;height:28px;right:14px}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body{padding:0 12px}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),body.android #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),body.android #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive),body.android #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive){margin:0;width:calc(100vw – 24px – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px));height:auto}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image:not(.element–thumbnail):not(.element–immersive) figcaption{padding:0}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body figure.element-image.element-immersive{width:calc(100vw – var(–scrollbar-width, 0px))}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a{color:var(–primary-pillar);background-image:none;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:6px;text-decoration-color:var(–headerBorder)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover{text-decoration-color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark){body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper{background-color:#1a1a1a}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline{background-color:unset;color:var(–headerBorder)!important}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst p{color:var(–headerBorder)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst a,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta .byline__author,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta span.byline__author a{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta__misc svg{stroke:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image.element–showcase figcaption,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image.element–showcase figcaption,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image.element–showcase figcaption,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image.element–showcase figcaption,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image.element–showcase figcaption,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper figure.element-image.element–showcase figcaption{color:var(–dateline)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}body.ios #feature-article-container #article-body >div,body.ios #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div,body.ios #feature-article-container #feature-body,body.ios #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body],body.ios #feature-article-container #comment-body,body.ios #standard-article-container #article-body >div,body.ios #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div,body.ios #standard-article-container #feature-body,body.ios #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body],body.ios #standard-article-container #comment-body,body.ios #comment-article-container #article-body >div,body.ios #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div,body.ios #comment-article-container #feature-body,body.ios #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body],body.ios #comment-article-container #comment-body,body.android #feature-article-container #article-body >div,body.android #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div,body.android #feature-article-container #feature-body,body.android #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body],body.android #feature-article-container #comment-body,body.android #standard-article-container #article-body >div,body.android #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div,body.android #standard-article-container #feature-body,body.android #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body],body.android #standard-article-container #comment-body,body.android #comment-article-container #article-body >div,body.android #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div,body.android #comment-article-container #feature-body,body.android #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body],body.android #comment-article-container #comment-body{background-color:var(–darkBackground)!important}body.ios #feature-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #feature-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #standard-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.ios #comment-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #feature-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #standard-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #article-body >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container .content–interactive >div .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #feature-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container [data-gu-name=body] .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+.sign-in-gate+p:first-letter,body.android #comment-article-container #comment-body .element-atom+#sign-in-gate+p:first-letter{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, #ffffff)}}body.ios.garnett–type-comment #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst,body.android.garnett–type-comment #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .standfirst{padding-top:24px;margin-top:0}.prose h2{font-size:24px}body.ios #feature-article-container #caption-button,body.ios #standard-article-container #caption-button,body.ios #comment-article-container #caption-button{padding:6px 5px 0}body.android #feature-article-container #caption-button,body.android #standard-article-container #caption-button,body.android #comment-article-container #caption-button{padding:4px 4px 0}@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark){:root:root:not([data-color-scheme=light]){–follow-text: #dcdcdc;–follow-icon-fill: var(–darkmode-pillar);–standfirst-text: #dcdcdc;–standfirst-link-text: var(–darkmode-pillar);–standfirst-link-border: var(–darkmode-pillar);–byline: var(–darkmode-pillar)}}:root{–darkBackground: #1a1a1a}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__header,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__header,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__header,body.android #feature-article-container .article__header,body.android #standard-article-container .article__header,body.android #comment-article-container .article__header{opacity:0!important}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper{margin:0}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .content__labels{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper h1.headline{color:#dcdcdc!important}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .article-header a,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .article-header a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .article-header a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .article-header a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .article-header a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .article-header a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=title] a{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta:before,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta:before,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta:before,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta:before,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta]:before{background-image:repeating-linear-gradient(var(–headerBorderColor),var(–headerBorderColor) 1px,transparent 1px,transparent 3px)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .byline,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .byline,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .byline,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .byline,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .byline,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .byline,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .byline,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .byline,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .byline,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .byline,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .byline,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .byline{color:#dcdcdc}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta a,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta a,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta a,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta a,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta a,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta a,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] a{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc svg,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__misc svg,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc svg,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__misc svg,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc svg,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__misc svg,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc svg,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__misc svg,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc svg,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__misc svg,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc svg,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .meta__misc svg{stroke:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .alerts__label,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .alerts__label,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .alerts__label,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .alerts__label,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .alerts__label,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .alerts__label,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .alerts__label,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .alerts__label,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .alerts__label,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .alerts__label,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .alerts__label,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] .alerts__label{color:#dcdcdc!important}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon],body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon],body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon],body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon],body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon],body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon],body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon],body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon],body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon],body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon],body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon],body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon]:before,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon]:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon]:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]:before,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon]:before,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]:before,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon]:before,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]:before,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta span[data-icon]:before,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper [data-gu-name=meta] span[data-icon]:before{color:var(–new-pillar-colour, –darkModeFeature)}@media (min-width: 71.25em){body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4{display:block;border-top:1px solid var(–new-pillar-colour, var(–headerBorderColor))}body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc,body.ios #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc,body.ios #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc,body.ios #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc,body.android #feature-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc,body.android #standard-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper #meta .meta__misc,body.android #comment-article-container .furniture-wrapper .meta.keyline-4 .meta__misc{margin:unset;margin-left:20px}}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body p,body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body ul,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body p,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body ul,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body p,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body ul,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body p,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body ul,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body p,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body ul,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body p,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body ul{max-width:620px}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before{color:var(–secondary-pillar)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a{color:var(–primary-pillar);background-image:none;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:6px;text-decoration-color:#dcdcdc}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover{background-image:none;text-decoration-color:var(–secondary-pillar)}@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark){body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose blockquote.quoted:before{color:var(–darkmode-pillar)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a{color:var(–darkmode-pillar)}body.ios #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.ios #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.ios #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #feature-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #standard-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover,body.android #comment-article-container .article__body .prose a:hover{text-decoration-color:var(–darkmode-pillar)}}:root[data-rendering-target=apps]{–follow-text: #dcdcdc;–follow-icon-fill: var(–new-pillar-colour);–standfirst-text: #dcdcdc;–standfirst-link-text: var(–new-pillar-colour);–standfirst-link-border: var(–new-pillar-colour);–byline: var(–new-pillar-colour);–article-meta-lines: var(–headerBorderColor);–byline: var(–darkmode-pillar)}:root[data-rendering-target=apps] .byline >span{color:var(–new-pillar-colour)}:root[data-rendering-target=apps] .byline >span >div:has(+[name=FollowWapper]){background-image:var(–headerBorderColor),var(–headerBorderColor) 1px,transparent 1px}@media (prefers-color-scheme: light){:root[data-rendering-target=apps] [data-gu-name=meta] a[data-sponsor=”guardian.org”] picture img{filter:invert(1)}}

    A young man in a suit made of union jacks held up a framed photograph of their hero above his head. The crowd loudly chanted the name. The focus of this acclamation was not Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, the organiser of the so-called “free speech” march in central London last Saturday.They were instead shouting themselves hoarse for Charlie Kirk, the murdered political activist from Cook County in the US state of Illinois.It is unlikely that many of the 110,000 to 150,000 protesters estimated to have been on the streets last weekend, at what turned out to be the largest rally of its type in British history, knew much about Kirk before his death at the hands of a gunman at Utah Valley University.The UK version of Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which claims to be the “largest Conservative student movement” in the US, has never really taken off in Britain.But they were moved to cheer him on Saturday. Clips of an almost entirely white and predominantly male crowd of Britons chanting the first name of the murdered 31-year-old were lapped up on social media accounts said to be US-based, as was the minute’s silence afterwards.View image in fullscreen“Thousands of British patriots just fell silent in honor of Charlie Kirk in London,” tweeted Eric Daugherty, an assistant news director at the conservative Florida’s Voice website (“Honest political reporting to Florida, minus the mainstream talking points.”)It is said that when America coughs, Britain catches a cold.The reality with this strain of politics is that there is something of a feedback loop between the US and the UK that is proving mutually beneficial to both sides, said Prof Paul Jackson, author of Pride in Prejudice: Understanding Britain’s Extreme Right.Kirk may not have been a household name in the UK but his murder offered validation for a view that a certain outlook on life is under threat. In turn, the scenes on Saturday provided evidence of the righteousness of the cause back in the US.There is history to this mutually enforcing exchange of ideas on the extreme right, said Jackson.A certain type of US political thought has never travelled well across the Atlantic, notably the Ku Klux Klan, which grew after the civil war in the late 1860s, said Jackson.But other ideas have thrived in the past as they do today, including those contained in Madison Grant’s 1916 book The Passing of the Great Race, which influenced some European white supremacists, and Henry Ford’s The International Jew.It has not all been one way. The Blood & Honour movement, founded by British neo-Nazi and white power music pioneer Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1987, led to the birth of Blood & Honour American Division and Blood & Honour Council US.That was the analogue age, though.In the digital era, particularly in the so-called “counter-jihad” space that now dominates what is loosely termed the far right, the mutual reinforcement of messages is done in real time. Stories of social conflict or moral panic in one country are used to boost a political claim in another.Kirk himself was one of those who picked up on the case of Lucy Connolly, the 42-year-old English woman –married to a Conservative councillor – who was sentenced to 31 months in prison for calling for hotels that were housing asylum seekers to be burned down during last summer’s riots. (She was released in August after serving less than half her sentence.)View image in fullscreen“Every day people say: ‘Well someone should go kill Charlie Kirk.’ I don’t like it, but that is protected speech,” he told GB News. “In America, we care what you do and not what you say.”It was of a piece with the general claim that free speech is under threat in the UK, confirmed in the mind of the likes of JD Vance by the UK’s Online Safety Act, aimed at preventing young people from encountering harmful content, which the US vice-president claims has put Britain on a “very dark path”.The amplification of certain causes, the repetition of choice phrases, cannot be said to be highly organised, but it is nonetheless powerful.The Infowars website, founded by the prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, promoted Robinson’s content about the rally on Saturday, but also that of a series of obscure accounts on X, said to be based in both the UK and the US.“Breaking: London falls silent for fallen hero Charlie Kirk,” said one such account with 335,700 followers that described itself as a defender of western values and culture. “The British media hated him. The British people certainly didn’t.”View image in fullscreenAnother account promoted by Jones’s site was that of Naomi Seibt, a US-based German political influencer linked to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, who is known for her climate change denial and promotion of “great replacement theory” tropes.She tweeted images from the rally to her 436,700 followers that included the words: “White children will grow up as patriots from now on. White guilt is over.”Brigitte Gabriel, founder of the anti-Muslim movement Act for America, which claims to have 1,000 local chapters across the US, posted on X: “Don’t let the media downplay how massive this is. Millions of patriots in the UK are standing up for free speech.”Then there is Elon Musk, who appeared via videolink at Saturday’s rally. It would be difficult to overplay the importance to Robinson of the support of one of the world’s richest men, according to analysts including the Hope Not Hate anti-extremist organisation.View image in fullscreenIn lifting the ban on Robinson’s content on X and through his own misleading posts framing him as a free speech warrior persecuted by the state, Musk gave the activist a vital leg-up, it is argued.Robinson, a former member of the racist British National party, who has a string of convictions to his name including for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, is said to have been able to build upon his profile in the US, stir up protests outside hotels accommodating asylum seekers while pushing anti-immigrant messages that circle around a supposed threat of Islamisation to the UK.“When you hear people talk about the special relationship between America and Great Britain, this is the special relationship that you’re seeing here,” Robinson said at the rally.“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die,” Musk told the crowd, in turn.Musk is not yet believed to have directly funded anyone in the UK, although he reportedly flirted with offering money to Reform, the rising political party on the right that is led by Nigel Farage. But such transatlantic relationships do exist, albeit they tend to remain below the radar. It is a murky soup – but some of the chunkier players can be made out.One is the US tech billionaire Robert Shillman, known as Dr Bob, who in 2018 financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed by the rightwing Canadian media website, Rebel Media, now called Rebel News, on a salary of about £5,000 a month.View image in fullscreenOther Shillman fellows have included Katie Hopkins, the English former reality TV star who compared migrants to cockroaches, and Laura Loomer, the American conspiracy theorist referred to by some as the president’s “de facto national security adviser”.The rightwing Middle East Forum thinktank, led by the neoconservative academic Daniel Pipes, has paid for foreign speakers to attend Robinson rallies in the past, in addition to funding the activist’s legal defence.There are laws against foreign donations in both the US and the UK but the far-right echo chamber is also clearly a useful tool for those seeking electoral success on both sides of the Atlantic.Trump has had no qualms about bouncing off certain British causes, sometimes unadvisedly. He said he was prepared to apologise in 2018 when he retweeted posts from Britain First, an offshoot of the BNP. But he is notably cautious about certain characters.Trump, who will be in the UK for a state visit this week, did not comment on social media about Saturday’s rally. He appears to prefer his outriders to do the work at times, including his son.When the rightwing activist Kurt Schlichter claimed – falsely – on X that Robinson had been arrested for reporting on a court case in May 2018, Donald Trump Jr retweeted it, writing: “Reason #1776 for the original #brexit. Don’t let America follow in those footsteps.”In the UK, Farage, who successfully fought for decades for the UK to leave the European Union and is today riding high in the polls with his anti-immigration populism, has sought to keep a sterile gap between himself and Robinson, who he fears is beyond the pale for much of the British public.He steps carefully in the digital space, seeking support but without getting too close to the most strident actors, including those in the US. He is notably quite loth to associate himself too much with Trump these days when he is at home in the UK, given the US president’s poor approval ratings among the British public.View image in fullscreenBut his long-standing ties to the Make America Great Again movement remain financially advantageous. This week, Farage apologised for breaching parliamentary rules by failing to register a trip to Florida to headline a fundraising event for Trump. He had been the main speaker at the $500-a-head Republican party dinner in Tallahassee in March.Farage hopes to benefit from the promotion of anti-immigrant themes in the digital world, including from US commentators, without putting off those with more mainstream outlooks, say insiders. It will be a difficult trick to get away with – as Musk’s criticism of Farage at the start of the year over his lack of support for Robinson illustrated.“British people are kind of looking for an international source of inspiration,” said Jackson. “[Then] some of the reason why somebody like Nigel Farage or Tommy Robinson might be of particular interest in the US is because they’ve had a lot of success in their own terms.“Tommy Robinson’s social media profile of the last few years has been highly impactful, even more so since [Musk] reversing his ban from Twitter. Nigel Farage’s impact on Britain shortly before Trump’s first presidency can be seen as perhaps providing some blueprints about how to have impact.”Gawain Towler, who was Farage’s long-standing press adviser until he left Reform earlier this year, said he believed the American interest in shaping British politics was also instinctive.“Trump sees the UK as the spiritual home of the US,” he said. “He sees our traditional political and legal traditions as the spiritual background to America’s right.“Musk certainly feels that way. He sees the UK as the spiritual homeland of the concepts of the American Declaration of Independence and its bill of rights and all the rest of it. This is where freedom was born, right? It’s like losing a great-uncle if it falls.” More

  • in

    ‘It seemed like a ghost town’: LA food vendors on how Trump’s Ice raids affected business

    From early morning to late at night, food vendors are feeding the people of Los Angeles. They offer nearly anything – tamales, fried fish, crispy tacos, mole, pupusas, fresh fruit, esquites, bacon-wrapped hot dogs – to Angelenos as they start their commutes or head home after the bars have closed.Taco trucks and food vendors are a vital part of the city’s celebrated culinary scene, one that came under attack this summer as Donald Trump ordered mass immigration raids across the city.Shannon Camacho, a senior policy associate at Inclusive Action for the City, a non-profit in the Boyle Heights neighborhood that focuses on community economic development, says that many street vendors made the painful calculation between risking losing much-needed income or being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“Vendors are in a particularly vulnerable situation, given that they have to work outdoors,” Camacho said. “They rely on foot traffic. They rely on busy neighborhoods and streets … This was something intentional that the Department of Homeland Security was doing – targeting vendors that were outside, understanding that many of them are immigrants and many of them are undocumented.”The LA Vendor Street Campaign, which includes Inclusive Action and three other organizations, has been advocating for the rights of vendors long before this summer. The LASVC led efforts to create a statewide policy decriminalizing street vending throughout the state. Recently, it raised around $100,000 of direct cash assistance for street vendors across Los Angeles county.Still, Camacho says more is needed.“There are thousands and thousands of street vendors, even just in the city of Los Angeles,” Camacho said. “And that’s not even including other parts of Southern California. We don’t have enough to support everybody.”The Guardian spoke to three food business owners in LA about the summer of Ice, and how it’s affected their families and businesses.Juan Carlos Guerra, Taqueria FronteraIt’s Los Angeles … you drive anywhere on the street, you’re going to see pop-ups. You’re going to see street vendors. But it just seemed like a ghost town during that time. No one was out on the street.I was going to open the new Silver Lake location of Taqueria Frontera at the beginning of June. And then the raids happened. It didn’t seem like we should have a celebration or a grand opening.I reached out to Javier Cabral from [the hyperlocal news site] LA Taco, and I said to him, “I want to try to help out. Whatever I can do. Do you know a good organization?” And he said: “Oh, yeah. CIELO is a great organization.”I talked to someone at CIELO, Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (Indigenous Communities in Leadership). I was just like: “Taco Tuesday is usually a thing. Is it okay if I set up something saying that all proceeds of our trompo [taco] – which is what we sell the most – is going to be donated towards fundraising for CIELO so they can help immigrant families during this time?”We did Taco Tuesday with a purpose, and we ended up raising $4,000 from selling the trompo that day alone.Everyone was pretty supportive about it. And not just that day – a lot of people would come in just to check up on us, on my employees, see how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. There’s no way you could live in Los Angeles without being affected by this. And a lot of my clients were like: “I can’t believe this is going on.” Who doesn’t have a friend or family member or co-worker that isn’t undocumented here in Los Angeles?Street vendors are back out now and more people are outside eating. But I think that it’s still in the back of their minds. Could this happen at any time again? Right now it’s pretty calm, but what happens a month from now if they decide to do it again?Bulmaro, street vendorWhen we started the business, there weren’t many jobs out there. We knew how to make tamales, which is what we sell. Due to the lack of jobs and opportunities, we decided to do what we know how to do. From there, business grew and we started getting more clients, little by little. It’s our sole source of income.Because of the raids, everything stopped. We stopped selling for about a month, without working or anything. We just started working again a little more about two weeks ago. A lot of people don’t go out to buy things anymore because they’re scared. Sales have gone down a lot because of the raids. More than half of the clients we had haven’t come back to buy anything because of the fear that continues.We haven’t had phone orders, either. We just bring the day’s supply, and sometimes we come back home with tamales or with atol that didn’t sell. It’s never going to be the same as before the raids.View image in fullscreenIt’s me, my wife and another employee – three of us depend on the business. There’s nothing we can do, we have to keep working. We need to pay rent and bills, even though we’re going outside with fear. There’s no other way. The rent isn’t going to wait. The bills, and the food we need to buy, aren’t going to wait either.Alejandra Rodriguez, Alex Foods and Cemitas PoblanasA lot of our customers stopped coming. They were scared because a lot of them are Latino. Even at the local restaurants in the city of West Hollywood, [the workers] have their visas to be here, but they were still scared because of everything that was going on. They were saying that even if you had a visa, even if you had permission to be here, everybody was still getting kicked out. Our sales dropped more than 70%.Even on the street, there was nobody walking, nobody coming. It did take a very big toll on us … the local people that work at the restaurants, the chefs or the servers or the valet guys, they weren’t coming in to work.We closed down for about 10 days because it wasn’t worth coming out here. And luckily, we had a little bit of money saved up. Usually, when we leave on trips, customers will still call us to place orders. But no, the whole 10 days we were gone, we didn’t go to work. We didn’t get any calls or people asking us when we were going to come back.I had to let one of my two employees go. I couldn’t afford it anymore. And we’ve just slowly been climbing back. We have customers from the local car washes, and they told us that Ice actually got there at that car wash and took about four people. People are still aware. People are still scared. Any time they see a police officer pass by or a sheriff’s department or just somebody, they would flinch.People are just trying to get to work and come back. I know they were able to stay away, maybe for a couple of weeks, but everybody has to pay rent. More

  • in

    Just when Keir Starmer thought he’d got Jeffrey Epstein off his plate – look who’s coming to dinner | Marina Hyde

    Quick update on Keir Starmer’s government of “national renewal”: having just lost his deputy and housing secretary over her failure to pay the required stamp duty, the prime minister has also lost his US ambassador over his known close association with a known paedophile sex trafficker. Hang on – he’s now also lost his director of political strategy for relating some dirty jokes about Diane Abbott.Meanwhile, an increasing number of people think the solution to all this is Andy Burnham taking over, suggesting the current Greater Manchester mayor could run in a parliamentary seat that has only notionally become free because the previous Labour MP was suspended from the party after being found to have sent messages hoping a couple of constituents would soon be dead/“mown down”, and is now apparently “off sick”. On top of which, we’re having the Americans round. US president Donald Trump touches down in the UK tonight on the eve of the most hideously ill-starred dinner party since the vomiting scene in Triangle of Sadness. I don’t think the nation could possibly feel any more renewed.It’s been a few days since Peter Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein were held up in front of the public using the hazmat tongs, and the more I’ve thought about them, the more I come back to one of the more obscure lines. Writing in apparent anguish on the eve of Epstein’s incarceration in 2008, Mandelson opines to him: “It just could not happen in Britain.” Maybe he was right, unwittingly or otherwise. Britain is very, very good at a sort of institutionalised looking away. Maybe Mandelson was – unwittingly or otherwise – characterising something grim about this country that pious old Keir Starmer would no doubt be hugely affronted to be caught up in. Except, the prime minister is caught up in it – in fact, he’s at the very centre of it. He is the one who looked away.It’s hard not to feel there is something necrotic and beaten about a government whose leader would appoint someone he knew had been very close to Epstein, who the entire world by that point knew was – and forgive me for repeating the words – a paedophile sex trafficker. Association with him was already known to be such a horror show that the late Queen Elizabeth II had to sack her own son for it. And there is something worse about Starmer’s horrifying lack of curiosity even as the facts closed in, right till the bitter end, with No 10 dithering for staggeringly long last week over a set of quite the most disqualifying emails, while Starmer fannied about defending Mandelson at the dispatch box.This was, of course, the other dispatch box to the one at which Sir Keir plied his holier-than-thou trade in opposition. There’s an old online rule that declares that if you tell someone off for their spelling or grammar, you will always end up making your own howler while you’re doing it. Starmer spent his years in opposition telling off the Tories at every turn, instead of – for instance – coming up with a creative and coherent plan for growth. Inevitably, we now seem to be strapped in to watching him and his administration warrant a daily telling-off, as offences and immoralities mount up. Why does this keep happening to him, etc?As for Epstein, we know that at the time Mandelson was writing to him telling him to fight for early release, police in Palm Beach, Florida had identified 36 girls who the “financier” had sexually abused. Yet for all the many years of grim and grotesque revelations, it still feels as though we know remarkably little about him. Who was he, this mysterious paedo Gatsby, and where did all his money come from?Shortly after his death, New York magazine ran a fascinating story in which real hedge-funders expressed pointed bemusement over how Epstein made his money, since none of them had really had any dealings with him. As one big hedge-fund president, Doug Kass, put it: “I went to my institutional brokers, to their trading desks and asked if they ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested. Not one institutional trading desk, primary or secondary, had ever traded with Epstein’s firm.” As Kass had said to a journalist: “There’s another guy who reminds me of Madoff that no one trades with.” Or as another hedgie remarked: “It’s hard to make a billion dollars quietly.” And yet Epstein had made no noise at all in the financial world. They could barely find one investor. Their general theory was that the “hedge fund” was simply a cover for a blackmail scheme.Perhaps most amazing, really, is the fact that Epstein will be a ghost at the feast tomorrow night for more than one attender, as Trump continues to butch out his long and close association with precisely the type of evildoer his Maga followers are convinced runs the world. Epstein is a guy who really does fit the very template of their darkest conspiracy theories – rich and powerful, involved in the trafficking of minors, connected in a network of some of the most powerful people in the world. This is all the sort of stuff they’ve been going on about for years – yet who should keep rearing his head in the story, but their own beloved president.Isn’t it intriguing how many of them (currently) just can’t bring themselves to believe it? Something to discuss over the starter tomorrow night at Windsor Castle, perhaps, as long as everyone can keep their food down.

    Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

    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

  • in

    Seth Meyers: ‘Trump clearly has no answer to Putin’s aggression’

    As several late-night hosts take a break for the Emmys – which went to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Sunday night – Seth Meyers looked into Donald Trump’s lack of international leadership.Seth MeyersOn Monday’s Late Night, Meyers pointed out the hypocrisy behind the Trump’ administration’s foreign policy agenda. “Trump and the GOP spent years whining that Democrats were supposedly leading from behind, and have now declared that America will be setting the world’s agenda,” he explained. “No more waiting for other countries to act – America acts first and other countries follow us. You got that, world?”Except earlier this week, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was ready to enact sanctions against Russia for flying drones into Poland’s airspace … but not until all Nato nations had agreed to stop buying oil from Russia. As he put it: “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing.”Meyers had to laugh. “I thought America was back? And now you’ll only act if everyone else does it first?” he said. “Trump is using the same logic for American foreign policy that eighth graders use for smoking pot in the local school parking lot – ‘I’ll do it first if you do it first.’ ‘No way, man, you first!’ ‘OK, let’s do it at the same time. I’m ready to go when you are, just say when.’”Meyers also wondered: “Why does the president of the United States write with the uneven grammar and syntax of a scammer sending you a fake job listing?”The sanctions talk heated up because Russia invaded Poland’s airspace with drones, “a dangerous incursion”, Meyers explained, given that Poland is a Nato ally. “But don’t worry, the president reassured everyone and put our minds at ease.”Well … not quite. Asked last week what he thought about Russia’s actions, Trump answered: “It could’ve been a mistake. But regardless I’m not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation. But hopefully it’s going to come to an end.”“What do you mean ‘hopefully’? I thought you were going to end the war on day one and get the Nobel peace prize!” Meyers laughed. “Now you’re talking in vague generalities like a dad whose daughter is dating a biker who did doughnuts on your front lawn – ‘As for the doughnuts, it might have been a mistake, I don’t know. Also might’ve been a mistake when he was screaming fuck you old man and giving me the finger.’”It’s not that Meyers was against sanctions – “I would love it if we had a president who actually pursued serious diplomacy and got Putin himself to come out and reassure the world after encroaching on Nato airspace and threatening global conflict,” he said. “Instead, we have a president who’s less concerned with the boundaries of Nato than he is with the boundaries of the White House ballroom.”“Trump clearly has no answer to Putin’s aggression,” Meyers concluded. “Diplomacy is good, de-escalation is good, but you can’t have either without competence and leadership, and those are just not Trump’s strong suits.” More

  • in

    When Trump comes to UK, normal rules of state visits will not apply

    Donald Trump has repeatedly described Keir Starmer as a “good man”, distancing himself from the attacks on the UK prime minister mounted by other figures on the US far right such as Elon Musk.One of the many known unknowns, however, of a Trump state visit is what kind of Trump will show up when a microphone is placed in front of him.The US president is often a bundle of contradictions. During his first state visit in 2018 most UK diplomats said he was a picture of affability, yet he took it upon himself to conduct an interview with the Sun in which he insulted Theresa May, and said Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister. He seemed unaware he might have caused offence.Starmer as host will have to grin and bear whatever brickbats Trump sends his way about the state of free speech in the UK, recognition of the state of Palestine, immigration, or the possibility that Reform will lead the next government in the UK. The one thing the Foreign Office knows is that the normal rules of state visits do not apply.An added loose mooring will be the absence of the former UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, who was dismissed for his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Ambassadors are known to personally visit every site of every stop on a state visit. Their job is often quite literally to look round corners for what might be coming. Lord Mandelson, a stickler for detail, would have been poring over every angle of the state visit in conjunction with Buckingham Palace and the White House. Fortunately, most of it will have been battened down weeks ago. But his knowledge of the mood inside the Trump administration in the days before the visit will be missed.Behind the formal glamour, and pre-cooked agreements on tech and nuclear power cooperation, Starmer will have to choose how to spend his limited political capital. The two most pressing foreign policy issues are ones on which the UK and the US cannot agree: Israel’s future relationship with the Arab world, and the threat posed to Europe and Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. But it is the latter on which Starmer hopes to make progress.Speaking at the weekend in Kyiv, Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser, gave a glimpse of current Downing Street thinking. “Putin’s sport is judo. He likes to counterbalance the action with reaction. He likes having options. If we can close his options off and leave him with only one, he will take it,” Powell said.“The main message we should be sending is real pressure to convince [Putin] the war will go on for a long time if he doesn’t make peace. His summer campaign more or less has failed already, the Russian economic position is not good, the whole economy is a war economy. If we can apply the pressure the US president is talking about in terms of targeted sanctions, and tariffs that he put on India, we might bring him to the table.”But Powell skirted around whether Trump’s latest proposal for sanctions was serious or a smokescreen to avoid doing anything. After months and months of patience-sapping delay, Trump has set out in the past fortnight new preconditions that would need to be in place before the US would ever massively sanction Russia. He said he would only do so if every Nato country, including Turkey, stopped importing Russia energy and also punished China with 50%-100% tariffs for its imports of Russian energy. Trump has already put 25% tariffs on India, the other great importer of Russian energy.The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who has spent a lot of time trying to blend the European and US approaches to Russia, explained on Sunday: “We have tried the red-carpet approach. It is not working … It is now time for the Europeans to follow President Trump’s lead to go after India and China – if China and India change their practices towards Putin, this war will end.”Starmer intends to test Trump on whether 50% tariffs on China, which would rupture China-Europe trade, is a deal-breaker. Concerted transatlantic sanctions might yet be possible if Trump demanded a ban on Russian crude imports by Hungary and Slovakia, or of imports of fuel made from Russian crude refined in third countries such as India. A ban on seaborne Russian crude oil has already cut the EU’s Russian oil imports by 90%, but Hungary and Slovakia still import it via a pipeline.Starmer’s task will be to steer Trump to more targeted sanctions on Chinese and Indian refineries, as well as yet more measures against the Russian shadow fleet. Trump’s Ukraine special envoy, Keith Kellogg, said: “If you look at the strength of sanctions from a scale of one to 10, we’re at a six. But we are at an enforcement level of three.”Starmer will also try to convince Trump the incursion of about 20 drones into Polish airspace by Russia was not the accident that Trump has suggested. Radosław Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, ridiculed the accident theory in Kyiv, saying: “We don’t believe in 20 mistakes at the same time.”Behind this argument is the fundamental discussion that Starmer tries to avoid in public – whether Trump knows Putin is stalling on a ceasefire but does not greatly care, since he believes Ukraine will lose the war and inevitably will have to cede large tracts of its territory.That requires going back to the very first principles about the victim and aggressor in Ukraine. More

  • in

    Americans have 400 days to save their democracy | Timothy Garton Ash

    I return to Europe from the US with a clear conclusion: American democrats (lowercase d) have 400 days to start saving US democracy. If next autumn’s midterm elections produce a Congress that begins to constrain Donald Trump there will then be a further 700 days to prepare the peaceful transfer of executive power that alone will secure the future of this republic. Operation Save US Democracy, stages 1 and 2.Hysterical hyperbole? I would love to think so. But during seven weeks in the US this summer, I was shaken every day by the speed and executive brutality of President Trump’s assault on what had seemed settled norms of US democracy and by the desperate weakness of resistance to that assault. There’s a growing body of international evidence to suggest that once a liberal democracy has been eroded, it’s very difficult to restore it. Destruction is so much easier than construction.That’s why all democrats, irrespective of party or ideology, must hope the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections on 3 November 2026. Not because of the Democrats’ policies, which are a muddle, or their current leadership, which is a mess, but simply because US democracy needs Congress, the principal check on presidential power envisaged in the US constitution, to start doing its job again. That will not happen so long as the Republicans, dominated and intimidated by Trump, control both houses.Much has been made of comparisons to other authoritarian power grabs, from Europe in the 1930s to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, but I’m most struck by the distinctive features of the US case. To name just four: excessive executive power; chronic gerrymandering; endemic violence; and the way a would-be authoritarian can exploit the intense capitalist competition that permeates every area of US life.The danger of executive overreach has been there from the very beginning. Revolutionary war hero Patrick Henry (“give me liberty or give me death”) voted against the constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention in 1788 precisely because he thought it would give a criminal president the chance “to make one bold push for the American throne.” Throughout the 20th century, presidents of both parties extended the “executive power” that is so ill-defined in article 2 of that constitution. More recently, a conservative-dominated supreme court has given succour to the unitary executive theory developed by rightwing legal theorists, which gives the most expansive reading of presidential power. And now the Trump administration – well prepared, unlike in 2017 – has exploited every inch and wrinkle of existing executive power, as well as simply breaking the law and defying the courts to stop it.Tom Ginsburg, a leading US comparative constitutionalist, argues that the biggest single flaw of the unreformed US constitution is that it gives state legislatures the power to draw electoral boundaries. The word gerrymandering was coined as early as 1812. In recent times, partisan redistricting has become more extreme as US politics has become more polarised. And then, in 2019, the supreme court declared that it could not correct even the most blatant party-political gerrymandering (only that done on racial lines). So now, at Trump’s direct request, Texas sets out to change constituency boundaries explicitly to win five more seats for the Republicans in the midterms, whereupon California says it will counter-gerrymander to win five more for the Democrats. There’s no longer even a bare pretence of impartiality about the most basic procedure of democracy.No European society can compare to the US for the ubiquity of violence. Hardly a day passed this summer without the evening news reporting at least one violent crime, including yet another horrific school shooting. The US has more guns than people. France loves its pseudo-revolutionary political theatre, but the US had the 6 January 2021 mob assault on the Capitol. Now the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk has been shot. Before the identity of the killer was known, Elon Musk said “the left is the party of murder” and Trump blamed the hate speech of the “radical left”. It will be a miracle if the US avoids a downward spiral of political violence, as last seen in the 1960s. That in turn could be the pretext for Trump to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, bring more military on to US streets and further exploit an alleged state of emergency.Meanwhile, universities, business leaders, law firms, media platforms and tech supremos have utterly failed to engage in collective action in response. They have either kept their heads down, settled humiliatingly like Columbia University and the law firm Paul, Weiss, or fawned on the president, like Mark Zuckerberg. Why? Because they all follow the logic of fierce free-market competition and fear targeted reprisals. I never imagined I would see fear spread so far and fast in the US.Add in attempts to disqualify or intimidate voters, plus Trump’s threat to ban mail-in ballots, and there’s a real doubt how far next November’s midterm elections will be fully free and fair. The task for democrats of all parties is to ensure they are, so far as possible. The task for the Democrats (capital D) is to win them in spite of any such obstacles.The key to that will probably still be bread-and-butter issues. Here, in the economy, lies paradoxical hope. We’re already beginning to see Trump’s tariffs feed through into higher prices. The job numbers are weakening. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” will further increase an already gobsmacking national debt of $37tn (£27tn). Already in the 2024 fiscal year, servicing that debt cost more than the entire $850bn defence budget. But until a debt crisis actually hits, such macro-risks remain remote and abstract to most voters, rather as predictions of diminished GDP growth made little impact in the Brexit referendum debate.So the big question is whether the negative economic consequences of Trump will be palpable to ordinary voters before the midterms. One astute political observer suggested to me that Trump, flush with revenue from the new tariffs, could do a pre-election cash handout to voters, perhaps presented as compensation for the “temporary difficulties” of the transition to a Maga economy. That would be a classic populist move.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe single most important thing for the Democrats in the next 400 days is therefore to bring those economic costs irresistibly home to voters. Democrats won’t win just by talking about the defence of democracy, important though that is, let alone by engaging in culture wars. They need to follow the advice of former Clinton adviser James Carville and focus relentlessly on kitchen-table issues. In doing so, they will also show that they do actually care about the ordinary working- and middle-class Americans whose support they have lost over the last 30 years.Then there’s stage 2, the presidential election in 2028. But sufficient unto the day are the challenges thereof. Despite all the serious threats to democracy itself in the US, for now the first rule of democratic politics still applies: just win the next election.

    Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist More

  • in

    Trump at first says he is ‘not familiar’ with Minnesota Democrat’s assassination

    In response to a question about why he did not order flags lowered to half-staff to honor Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives who was assassinated alongside her husband this summer, Donald Trump initially said he was “not familiar” with the case.The question came up during a briefing in the Oval Office on Monday, in light of the president’s order last week to lower flags in response to the killing of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.Trump was pressed on why he and Republicans continued cast blame the left for a rise in political violence when elected officials and activists from both parties have been targets.The exchange began when the reporter asked about the tributes paid by the White House to Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth activist group Turning Point USA and a close ally of the president and his family.“Do you think it would have been fitting to lower the flags to half-staff when Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota house speaker, was gunned down by an assassin as well?” asked Nancy Cordes, the chief White House correspondent for CBS News.“I’m not familiar. The who?” Trump replied, leaning in across the Resolute Desk.“The Minnesota house speaker, a Democrat, who was assassinated this summer,” she said.“Oh,” Trump replied. “Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would have done that.”Trump did not mention the Minnesota governor Tim Walz – a Democrat and the vice-presidential nominee in 2024 – by name, but suggested that had he made the request, the White House might have obliged.“I wouldn’t have thought of that, but I would’ve, if somebody had asked me,” Trump said. “People make requests for the lowering of the flag, and oftentimes you have to say no, because it would be a lot of lowering.”At the time, Trump said that speaking to Walz, a close friend of Hortman, would have been a “waste of time”.“I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” Trump said then, referring to Walz as “whacked out” and a “mess”.Kirk was fatally shot last week while speaking at Utah Valley University. In the wake of his death, Trump and other prominent conservatives have sought to place the blame for political violence squarely on Democrats, vowing to crack down on the left-wing groups and institutions they allege “fund it and support it”.As Republicans grieve the loss of Kirk, they have largely ignored the violence against Democrats, including Hortman’s assassination, the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a thwarted plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.House Republicans and a handful of Democrats gathered at prayer vigil for Kirk on Capitol Hill on Monday. In brief remarks, Representative Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, reflected on several recent incidents of political violence, including Hortman’s killing by “another evil coward” who also shot a second Democratic state lawmaker that night.Trump, who survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 presidential campaign, denied on Monday that he had blamed just “one side” before accusing the “radical left” of causing “tremendous violence”.“The radical left really has caused a lot of problems for this country,” he said. “I really think they hate our country.”Earlier on Monday, vice president JD Vance, a close friend of Kirk’s, said he hoped for national “unity” while hosting the slain activist’s podcast. But then he insisted that this was not a “both sides problem” and that Democrats were primarily to blame, despite widespread condemnation of Kirk’s killing by party officials and elected leaders.During the lengthy episode, Vance made no reference to Hortman or other acts of political violence, such as the 6 January assault on the US Capitol.“Something has gone very wrong with a lunatic fringe – a minority, but a growing and powerful minority on the far left,” he said, and committed to using the levers of the federal government to “dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”. More