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      How America Made James Bond ‘Woke’

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      After so many decades fighting evil masterminds bent on Britannia’s destruction, the 21st-century version of James Bond has found a very 21st-century antagonist. In the newest Bond novel, “On His Majesty’s Secret Service,” 007 is charged with protecting King Charles III from a dastardly plot hatched by a supervillain whose nom de guerre is Athelstan of Wessex — in other words, a Little Englander, a Brexiteer, a right-wing populist, apparently the true and natural heir to Goldfinger and Blofeld.The novel’s Bond, who carries on a “situationship” with “a busy lawyer specializing in immigration law” (not to worry, he’s not taking advantage, “he wasn’t the only man she was seeing”), must travel to Viktor Orban’s Hungary to infiltrate the vast right-wing conspiracy and avert a terrorist attack at Charles’s coronation; along the way the secret agent muses on the superiority of the metric system and the deplorable dog whistles of populism.The book’s mere existence seems designed to agitate conservatives; I wouldn’t have read it without the spur of hostile reviews from right-of-center British scribblers. But the progressive Bond also usefully illustrates an interesting feature of contemporary politics in the English-speaking world. It isn’t just that American progressivism supplies an ideological lingua franca that extends across the Anglosphere, such that what we call “wokeness” naturally influences the fictional MI6 no less than the real C.I.A. It’s that forms of progressivism that originated in the United States, under specific American conditions, can seem more potent among our English-speaking friends and neighbors than they do in America itself.This is not a fully provable assertion, but it’s something that I felt strongly on recent visits to Canada and Britain. Politically, Canadian Conservatives and Britain’s Tories seem to be in very different positions. In Canada, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, looks poised for a major victory in the next election, which would end Justin Trudeau’s three-term reign as prime minister. In Britain, the Tories are poised for a drubbing in the next election, which would push them into the opposition for the first time since 2010.But in power or out of power, both groups seemed culturally beleaguered, resigned to progressive power and a touch envious of the position of American conservatives (if not of our political captivity to Donald Trump). In Canadian conversations there were laments for what was lost when Trudeau defeated Stephen Harper in 2015 — how elections have consequences, and the consequences in Canada were a sharp left-wing turn that no Conservative government is likely to reverse. In British conversations, the talk was all about how elections don’t have consequences, and how notional conservative rule has done nothing to halt the resilience of progressive biases in government and the advance of American-style wokeness in the culture.These complaints encompass a lot of different realities. In Canada, they cover the rapid advance of social liberalism in drug and euthanasia policy — with nationwide marijuana decriminalization followed by British Columbia’s new experiment in decriminalizing some harder drugs, while assisted suicide expands more rapidly than in even the most liberal U.S. state. In Britain, they cover the increasing enforcement of progressive speech codes against cultural conservatives — like the Tory councilor recently arrested by the police for retweeting a video criticizing how police officers dealt with a Christian street preacher.In both countries the complaints cover rising immigration rates — the conscious policy of the Trudeau government, which is presiding over an extraordinary surge in new Canadians, and the sleepwalking policy of the British Tories, who despite Brexit and repeated populist revolts find themselves presiding over record net migration rates. (By contrast, when America elected the immigration restrictionist Trump, immigration rates did actually decline.)And in both countries, conservatives feel that their national elites are desperately searching for their own versions of the “racial reckoning” that convulsed the United States in the summer of 2020, notwithstanding the absence of an American-style experience with either slavery or Jim Crow.Thus the spate of national apologies, canceled patriotic celebrations and church burnings in Canada in 2021, following claims about the discovery of a mass grave in British Columbia near one of the residential schools for Indigenous children that the Canadian government sponsored, often through religious institutions, in the 19th and 20th century. (The cruelty and neglect at these schools was real but the specific claims about graves at the B.C. school have outrun the so-far scanty evidence.) Or thus the attempted retcon of England’s deeply homogeneous history — well, since 1066, at least — into an American-style “nation of immigrants” narrative, and the sense, as the British writer Ed West wrote in 2020, that in English schools “America’s history is swallowing our own.”To the extent that these complaints capture an Anglosphere reality, I think you can identify several different points that might explain what Canadian and British conservatives are seeing.The first is a general tendency of provincial leaders to go overboard in establishing their solidarity and identification with the elites of the imperial core. Both Ottawa and London can feel like provincial capitals within the American imperium, so it’s not surprising that their leaders and tastemakers would sometimes rush to embrace ideas that seem to be in the American vanguard — behaving, as the British writer Aris Roussinos puts it, like “Gaulish or Dacian chieftains donning togas and trading clumsy Latin epithets” to establish their identification with Rome. By contrast in continental Europe, in countries that are under the American security umbrella but don’t share as much of our language and culture, the zeal for imitation feels a bit weaker, and “anti-woke” politics that double as anti-Americanism feel more influential.The second point is the role of secularization and de-Christianization, which are further advanced in the British Isles and Canada than in the United States. The new progressivism is not simply a new or semi-Christian substitute for the former Western faith, but the rhetoric of diversity-equity-inclusion and antiracism clearly fills part of the void left by Christianity’s and especially Protestantism’s retreat. So it would not be surprising for an ideology that originates in the post-Protestant precincts of the United States to carry all before it in post-Protestant Canada or Britain, while meeting more resistance in the more religious regions of America — and not just in the white-Christian Bible Belt but among the religious-conservative minorities whose rightward trend may be keeping the Republican coalition afloat.Then the third point is that smaller countries with smaller elites can find it easier to enforce ideological conformity than countries that are more sprawling and diverse. Once a set of ideas take hold among the cognoscenti — progressive ideas in this case, though it could apply to other worldviews as well — it’s more natural to conform, and more difficult to dissent, in the cozier precincts of Westminster or among Canada’s Laurentian elite than it is in the American meritocracy, which spins off more competing power centers and dissenting factions.An extreme example of this tendency is visible in Ireland, which shifted incredibly rapidly from being the West’s conservative-Catholic outlier to being close to uniformly progressive, a swing that the Irish writer Conor Fitzgerald attributes to a fundamental reality of small-island life: “Because of Ireland’s size, it is much more socially costly for an Irish person to appear to go against a consensus than it is for other people in other countries.”A recent essay by the Cardiff academic Thomas Prosser makes a related point about other small Celtic polities, noting that Scotland and Wales as well as Ireland have governments that are more progressive than their voters, a pattern he attributes to the way that ascendant ideologies (neoliberalism in the 1990s, or woke progressivism now) can sometimes achieve a kind of full elite “capture” more easily in smaller countries.Bucking consensus is presumably easier in Britain and in Canada. But not as easy, perhaps, as in the vast and teeming United States — which in its First Amendment-protected multitidinousness can be both the incubator of a potent new progressivism and also the place where resistance to that ideology runs strong, indeed stronger even than among 007 and other servants of His Majesty the King.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Slovakia Election Could Shift Sentiment in a Fierce Ukraine Ally

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      The vote in Slovakia this month will be a test of European unity on Ukraine, and of Russia’s efforts to undermine it. The front-runner wants to halt arms shipments to Kyiv.When Ukraine discovered civilian mass graves in an area recaptured from Russian troops, Russia’s ambassador in neighboring Slovakia countered with his own discovery.The mayor of a remote Slovak village, as the ambassador announced last September, had bulldozed Russian graves from World War I. Ambassador Igor Bratchikov demanded that the Slovak government, a robust supporter of Ukraine, take action to punish the “blasphemous act.”The Slovak police responded swiftly, dismissing the ambassador’s claims as a “hoax,” but his fabrication took flight, amplified by vociferous pro-Russian groups in Slovakia and news outlets notorious for recycling Russian propaganda.A month later, the mayor of the village, Vladislav Cuper, lost an election to a rival candidate from a populist party opposed to helping Ukraine.Today, the same forces that helped unseat Mr. Cuper have mobilized for a general election in Slovakia on Sept. 30 with much bigger stakes.The vote will not only decide who governs a small Central European nation with fewer than six million people, but will also indicate whether opposition to helping Ukraine, a position now mostly confined to the political fringes across Europe, could take hold in the mainstream.Vladislav Cuper, the former mayor of Ladomirova, Slovakia, at his home in the village. Mr. Cuper says he was smeared by pro-Russian forces in Slovakia.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThe front-runner, according to opinion polls, is a party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister who has vowed to halt Slovak arms deliveries to Ukraine, denounced sanctions against Russia and railed against NATO, despite his country’s membership in the alliance.A strong showing in the election by Mr. Fico and far-right parties hostile to the government in Kyiv would likely turn one of Ukraine’s most stalwart backers — Slovakia was the first country to send it air-defense missiles and fighter jets — into a neutral bystander more sympathetic to Moscow. It would also end the isolation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as the only leader in the European Union and NATO speaking out strongly against helping Ukraine.“Russia is rejoicing,” Rastislav Kacer, a former foreign minister and outspoken supporter of Ukraine, said in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. “Slovakia is a great success story for its propaganda. It has worked hard and very successfully to exploit my country as a wedge to divide Europe.”Thanks to widespread public discontent with the infighting between pro-Western Slovak politicians who came to power in 2020, and deep pools of genuine pro-Russian sentiment dating back to the 19th century, Russia has been pushing on an open door.A survey of public opinion across Eastern and Central Europe in March by Globsec, a Bratislava-based research group, found that only 40 percent of Slovaks blame Russia for the war in Ukraine, while 51 percent believe that either Ukraine or the West is “primarily responsible.” In Poland, 85 percent blame Russia. In the Czech Republic, 71 percent think Russia is responsible.The World War I cemetery in Ladomirova that the Russian ambassador to Slovakia falsely said had been destroyed.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDaniel Milo, director of an Interior Ministry department aimed at countering disinformation and other nonmilitary threats, acknowledged that “there is fertile ground here for pro-Russian sentiment.” But he added that genuine sympathy rooted in history had been exploited by Russia and its local helpers to sow division and sour public opinion on Ukraine.Those helpers include Hlavne Spravy, a popular anti-American news site, and a bikers group called Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, which is affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves motorcycle gang in Russia.A freelance writer for Hlavne Spravy, Bohus Garbar, was convicted of espionage this year after being caught on camera taking money from Russia’s military attaché, who has since been expelled.Brat za Brata, which has a large following on social media and close ties to the Russian embassy, has meanwhile worked to intimidate Russia’s critics.Peter Kalmus, a 70-year-old Slovak artist, said he was beaten up by members of the biker group last month after he defaced a Soviet war memorial in the eastern city of Kosice to protest Russian atrocities in Ukraine. In March, the bikers reduced to pandemonium a government-sponsored public debate about the war in a town near the Ukrainian border attended by Mr. Kacer, who was then still a minister. Fiercely pro-Russian protesters bused in by the bikers, recalled Mr. Kacer, “jumped on the stage screaming and spitting at us.”Many Slovaks, said Grigorij Meseznikov, the Russian-born president of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Bratislava research group, “have an invented romantic vision of Russia in their heads that does not really exist” and are easily swayed by “lies and propaganda” about the West.The Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Ladomirova. The former mayor said that in his view, Russia did not care who won the election in the village, but had spotted a good opportunity to “present itself as a victim.”Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThat, he added, has made the country vulnerable to efforts by Moscow to rally pro-Russian sentiment in the hope of undermining European unity over Ukraine. Slovakia is a small country, Mr. Meseznikov said, but “if you take even a small brick out of a wall it can crumble.”That is certainly the hope of Lubos Blaha, a former member of a heavy metal band and the author of books on Lenin and Che Guevara who is now the deputy leader of Mr. Fico’s surging political party, SMER. He is also one of Slovakia’s loudest and most influential Kremlin-friendly voices on social media and regularly denounces his country’s liberal woman president, Zuzana Caputova, as a “fascist” and pro-Ukrainian ministers as “American puppets.”“The mood in Europe is changing,” Mr. Blaha said in an interview, describing the conflict in Ukraine as “a war of the American empire against the Russian empire” that cannot be won because Russia is a nuclear power.Insisting he was “not pro-Russia, just pro my country’s national interests,” Mr. Blaha predicted that countries hostile to arming Ukraine would soon “be in the majority while supporters of Ukraine will be in a small minority,” especially if Donald J. Trump wins the next presidential election in the United States.In the run-up to Slovakia’s own election, the usually placid country has been swamped by heated accusations on all sides of foreign interference. Mr. Fico has accused NATO of meddling in the campaign, while his foes have pointed a finger at Russia.Describing Mr. Fico’s SMER party as a “Trojan horse” for Russia, Jaroslav Nad, a former defense minister who led a push to send arms to Ukraine, claimed this summer that, according to intelligence reports, a Slovak citizen he didn’t identify had visited Russia “to receive financial resources to benefit SMER.” But, citing confidentiality, he produced no evidence, and his claim has been widely dismissed as a pre-election smear.Still, the Russian ambassador’s fabricated story of desecrated war graves highlighted Russia’s skill at fishing in Slovakia’s troubled waters. It also provided what Mr. Milo, the interior ministry official, called “a very rare smoking gun” directly implicating Moscow in scripting a fake scandal. “They usually act more cleverly and try not to get caught red-handed,” he said.Children climbing on Soviet and German tanks at a World War II monument outside Ladomirova. In the run-up to a general election, Slovakia has been swamped by heated accusations of foreign interference.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDuring a visit last week to the still-intact graveyard in Ladomirova, Mr. Cuper said that in his view Russia did not care who won the mayoral vote there, but had spotted a good opportunity “to distract attention from mass graves in Ukraine” and “present itself as a victim.”When the ambassador visited Ladomirova, he met with Mr. Cuper’s bitter rival, a former mayor whom Mr. Cuper had accused of embezzling village funds and who was convicted of fraud in 2019. The former mayor’s wife, Olga Bojcikova, who declined to be interviewed, was at the time running against Mr. Cuper, who was backed by pro-Ukrainian parties, in the local election last October. She won.The ambassador’s story of “razed” Russian graves, though debunked by the police, was, Mr. Cuper recalled, “blown out of all proportion” by Kremlin-friendly Slovaks, particularly the Brat za Brata bikers.The bikers posted incendiary statements on Facebook denouncing the mayor’s “blasphemous act” and rallied its members to respond. This set off calls for Mr. Cuper to be “executed,” “buried alive” and “flogged like a dog.”Slovakia’s prosecutor general, Maros Zilinka, who has a long history of sympathy for Russia and hostility to the United States, added fuel to the fire by announcing that the mayor could be liable for criminal prosecution for a “morally reprehensible act” that needed to be investigated.Mr. Cuper said he never touched the graves but had removed stone border markers because they were falling apart. Nor did he touch a notice board put up as part of renovation work financed by Russia in 2014: It falsely described the cemetery as the resting place of 270 Russian war dead. The cemetery contains the unidentified bodies of soldiers from various countries, including Russia, killed in a World War I battle.The ambassador’s story, he said, was “entirely untrue” but still “created a national uproar.” More

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      Los guatemaltecos defienden su democracia. No los dejemos solos

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      Cuando visité Guatemala en mayo de 2022, el sentimiento de desesperanza era palpable. El gobierno del presidente Alejandro Giammattei había desatado una feroz persecución contra los funcionarios de la justicia anticorrupción. En febrero de ese año, Virginia Laparra, fiscala de la Fiscalía Especial contra la Impunidad, fue detenida junto con otros cuatro abogados anticorrupción; todos fueron recluidos en la misma celda de la cárcel militar Mariscal Zavala de Guatemala.En 2017, Laparra presentó una denuncia administrativa contra Lesther Castellanos, juez del que sospechaba que había filtrado detalles confidenciales de un caso a un colega. Ahora Castellanos la había denunciado por abuso de autoridad.Cuando llegué, todos menos Laparra habían sido puestos en libertad, a la espera del juicio. Durante nuestra conversación en la cárcel, recitó varios argumentos jurídicos: “los funcionarios que tengan conocimiento de alguna irregularidad están obligados a presentar una denuncia”. Fue una desgarradora muestra de erudición. No la estaban reteniendo porque alguien creyera en serio que había cometido un delito. Estaba encarcelada en represalia por sus intentos de combatir la corrupción; en diciembre, fue sentenciada a cuatro años de prisión.Lilian Virginia Laparra Rivas, exfiscala de la Fiscalía Especial contra la Impunidad, en custodia el año pasadoJosue Decavele/Reuters, via ReduxEl mes pasado, los votantes guatemaltecos abrieron de manera inesperada una brecha en la permanencia en el poder de la élite corrupta del país al votar por alguien ajeno a ese grupo. Hasta ahora, el enfoque del gobierno del presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, ha sido en su mayor parte el de mantenerse al margen respecto a la corrupción en Guatemala, y no ha llegado a imponer sanciones económicas ni, por lo demás, condenar enérgicamente al gobierno de Giammattei. Biden debería aprovechar esta oportunidad para contribuir al éxito de la verdadera democracia y apoyar al nuevo presidente electo, Bernardo Arévalo.En 1944, una revolución encabezada por los estudiantes, de la que formaron parte mi madre y mi tío, ayudó a abrirle el paso a la década de democracia en Guatemala tras un siglo de dictaduras. Poco después de aquello, emigró a Estados Unidos.Nací en Boston en 1954, el año en que un golpe de Estado dirigido por la CIA derrocó al gobierno electo de Guatemala. La guerra civil de tres décadas que siguió estuvo marcada por masacres genocidas contra los colectivos mayas en las áreas rurales y acabó con los acuerdos de paz en 1996. Las esperanzas de un futuro pacífico y democrático parecieron quedar frustradas en 1998, cuando el obispo Juan Gerardi, defensor de los derechos humanos, fue asesinado por agentes de la inteligencia militar. Sin embargo, en 2001, tres militares fueron condenados por participar en su ejecución extrajudicial, auspiciada por el Estado, un veredicto histórico que parecía anunciar una nueva era de justicia.Construir una democracia funcional mediante la defensa del Estado de derecho y el combate de la corrupción ha sido la lucha central de la política guatemalteca en el siglo XXI. Entre 2007 y 2019, la Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG), que, con el respaldo de las Naciones Unidas, actuaba en conjunto con el Ministerio Público guatemalteco, dirigió una de las luchas anticorrupción más eficaces de América Latina. La comisión desmanteló 70 estructuras de crimen organizado y corrupción e imputó a unas 680 personas, entre ellas dos expresidentes. Esa lucha duró hasta 2019, cuando el entonces presidente, Jimmy Morales, quien estaba siendo investigado por corrupción, expulsó a la CICIG con el apoyo de los republicanos en Estados Unidos, dejando así el país a la deriva.Bajo el mandato de Morales y su sucesor, Giammattei, una alianza de políticos, militares, élites económicas y miembros del crimen organizado, que los guatemaltecos llaman el “pacto de corruptos”, se hizo rápidamente con el control del poder judicial y otras instituciones. La fiscala general, Consuelo Porras, junto con otros fiscales y jueces, fue incluida en la lista oficial del Departamento de Estado estadounidense de actores antidemócratas y corruptos.Se castigó a muchos de los fiscales y jueces que habían combatido la corrupción. José Rubén Zamora, periodista de investigación y fundador de elPeriódico, detenido en julio de 2022 por acusaciones falsas que la comunidad internacional denunció y calificó de intento de silenciarlo, ocupa ahora la antigua celda de Laparra en Mariscal Zavala.En junio fue acusado de lavado de dinero y sentenciado a seis años de cárcel; su periódico cerró en mayo. En febrero del año pasado, otras dos mujeres retenidas al principio con Laparra —Siomara Sosa, fiscala, y Leyli Santizo, abogada de la CICIG— cruzaron el río Suchiate en balsas neumáticas hasta México.Se encuentran entre los al menos 39 fiscales y jueces guatemaltecos que se han exiliado; la mayoría se marchó en los últimos tres años. En conjunto representan a una generación que alcanzó la mayoría de edad en las décadas posteriores a los acuerdos de paz, que cree en el Estado de derecho como base de la gobernanza democrática.Sosa me dijo una vez que su trabajo en la oficina anticorrupción le hacía sentir que el país tenía una forma de asegurar que los impuestos se destinasen al sistema sanitario y las escuelas, en vez de que se desvíe por medio de chanchullos. “Me gustaba desenmascarar a los que robaban descaradamente millones, porque, mientras ellos se hacían ricos, los niños morían de hambre”, dijo.Una manifestación exigiendo la dimisión de la fiscala general, Consuelo Porras, y del fiscal Rafael Curruchiche, acusados de generar una crisis electoral antes de la segunda vuelta electoral en agosto.Johan Ordonez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMi guía en aquella visita a la cárcel en 2022 fue Jennifer Torres, voluntaria de una organización de defensa de los derechos humanos y brillante estudiante maya de derecho en la Universidad de San Carlos. Faltaba un año para las elecciones presidenciales, y todos mis interlocutores se mostraban pesimistas.Torres me dijo que ella y sus amigos iban a votar por Arévalo, profesor de 64 años y candidato del partido Movimiento Semilla. Aunque es hijo de Juan José Arévalo —el querido primer presidente elegido democráticamente de Guatemala, que gobernó entre 1945 y 1951—, pocos sabían de él o de su partido. Cuando les mencionaba su nombre a los expertos en política guatemalteca, se reían. “Le falta carisma”, me dijo uno de ellos.En el periodo previo a las elecciones, los jueces guatemaltecos expulsaron del proceso electoral a cuatro candidatos considerados poco proclives a apoyar al pacto de corruptos. A Arévalo, quien prometió resucitar la batalla contra la corrupción, se le permitió mantenerse en la contienda porque nadie pensaba que podía ganar. Las encuestas le daban solo el 3 por ciento, pero los sondeos no tuvieron en cuenta a los votantes jóvenes e indígenas como Torres.En un resultado sorprendente, Arévalo pudo pasar a la segunda vuelta del 20 de agosto, en la que arrasó. Muchos guatemaltecos no se habían sentido tan optimistas desde 1944. Mi madre, que por entonces era adolescente, repartía panfletos de la campaña del padre de Arévalo en la acera de delante de nuestra juguetería familiar. La victoria de Arévalo hijo une los recuerdos históricos de los mayores con las esperanzas de los jóvenes de hoy.La semana pasada, el Tribunal Supremo Electoral confirmó la victoria de Arévalo. Pero, también, a instancias de Porras, suspendió temporalmente su partido para, poco después, desandar esa decisión. Lo que parece cierto es que Semilla seguirá siendo asechado y se enfrentará a unos poderes legislativo y judicial repletos de miembros del establishment corrupto: los complots de magnicidio contra el presidente electo son una amenaza constante. El viernes, Arévalo denunció a Porras por orquestar un golpe para impedir que su gobierno tome posesión. En todo el país, los manifestantes están exigiendo la dimisión de Porras.La comunidad internacional, incluido el gobierno de Biden, debe estar alerta y dispuesta a prestar todo el apoyo que pueda a este nuevo gobierno. Pero los guatemaltecos han creado, por sí mismos, esta extraordinaria oportunidad democrática y, hasta ahora, parecen decididos a protegerla.Francisco Goldman es novelista y periodista, cuyo libro más reciente es Monkey Boy, obra finalista del Premio Pulitzer. More

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      Why So Many Americans Are So Down on Biden

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      Unemployment is near historic lows, and inflation has come way down. We are inflicting a strategic humiliation on Russia by arming Ukraine without putting American forces at risk. The homicide rate fell by about 10 percent across 30 cities compared with last year. Democrats defied electoral trends by holding the Senate, scoring major legislative victories and easily confirming a Supreme Court nominee.Why, then, do only 20 percent of voters rate the economy as “excellent” or “good,” versus 49 percent who call it “poor,” according to a New York Times/Siena poll? Why are Americans overwhelmingly pessimistic about the country’s future, according to the Pew Research Center? Why does Gallup find a significantly smaller percentage of Americans have confidence in the presidency today than they did in the last, disastrous year of Donald Trump’s tenure? And why is President Biden polling dead even with his predecessor in multiple surveys despite the former president’s 91 felony charges?In short, with everything so great, why are people so down? That’s a question that, as The Times’s Reid Epstein wrote last week, stumps the White House and its political allies, who seem to think the problem is a failure to communicate all the good news.But there’s another explanation: The news isn’t all that good. Americans are unsettled by things that are not always visible in headlines or statistics but are easy enough to see.Easy to see is the average price of a dozen eggs: up 38 percent between January 2022 and May of this year. And white bread: up 25 percent. And a whole chicken: up 18 percent. As for the retail price of gasoline, it’s up 63 percent since January 2021, the month Biden became president.Yet none of these increases make it into what economists call the core rate of inflation, which excludes food and energy. The inflation ordinary people experience in everyday life is not the one the government prefers to highlight.Easy to see is the frequent collapse of public order on American streets. In April hundreds of teenagers wreaked havoc in the Chicago Loop. Two boys were shot. A young couple was beaten by the doorway of a building on North Wabash. Yet only 16 people were arrested. Similar scenes unfolded last month in New York’s Union Square and again in Boston, where police officers were assaulted in two separate riots largely by juveniles.In New York, there were at least 66 arrests. In Boston, just 13.Easy to see is that the kids are not alright. The causes are many; social media companies have a lot to answer for. But so do teachers’ unions, handmaids of the Democratic Party, who pushed to keep school doors closed during the pandemic, helping themselves while doing lasting harm to children. The Biden administration spent much of its early months saying it wanted more than half of schools open at least one day per week by the 100th day of his presidency.“It is a goal so modest and lacking in ambition as to be almost meaningless,” Politico’s Playbook newsletter noted at the time.Easy to see is that the border crisis has become a national one. In May the administration boasted that new policies had contributed to a sharp decline in the “number of encounters” between border patrols and migrants crossing the southwestern border illegally. By August, arrests of migrants who crossed the border with family members had hit a monthly record of 91,000. In New York City alone, more than 57,000 migrants seek food and shelter from the city’s social services on an average night.Nobody can say for certain how many migrants who crossed the border during Biden’s presidency remain in the U.S., but it’s almost certainly in the millions. In 2021 the president dismissed the initial surge of migrants as merely seasonal. “Happens every year,” he said.Easy to see is that the world has gotten more dangerous under Biden’s watch. The president deserves credit for arming Ukraine, as he does for brokering a strategic rapprochement between Japan and South Korea. But he also deserves the blame for a humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal that almost surely played a part in enticing Vladimir Putin into launching his invasion of Ukraine and whetted Beijing’s appetite for Taiwan.How large a part is unquantifiable. Yet it was predictable — and predicted.Easy to see is that the president is not young for his age. The stiff gait and the occasional falls. The apparent dozing off. The times he draws a blank or struggles to complete a thought. Yet the same people yelling #ResignFeinstein or #ResignMcConnell don’t appear to be especially vocal when it comes to the president’s fitness, as if noting the obvious risks repeating a Republican talking point.But people notice, and they vote.Easy to see are tents under overpasses, from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York to the I-5 in Seattle. And the zombified addicts passed out on sidewalks in practically every city and town. And the pharmacies with everyday items under lock and key to prevent shoplifting. And women with infants strapped to their backs, hawking candy or gum at busy intersections. And news reports of brazen car thefts, which have skyrocketed this year.“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith said. Not all the ruin mentioned above is Biden’s fault, and none of it is irreversible. But there’s much more ruin than his apologists — blinkered by selective statistics and too confident about the president’s chances next year — care to admit.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Federal Court Again Strikes Down Alabama’s Congressional Map

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      Republicans failed to comply with a court order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it,” the judicial panel said.A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn, taking the responsibility away from the Republican-controlled legislature while chastising state officials who “ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”The legislature had hastily pushed through a revised map in July after a surprise Supreme Court ruling found that Alabama’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by undercutting the power of the state’s Black voters. The revised map, approved over the objections of Democrats, increased the percentage of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.In its new ruling, the district court panel in Alabama found that the legislature had flouted its mandate.“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. Responsibility for a new map now falls to a special master, Richard Allen, a longtime Alabama lawyer who has worked under several Republican attorneys general, and a cartographer, David Ely, a demographer based in California. Both were appointed by the court. The decision — or the independent map to be produced — can be appealed. State officials have said that a new congressional map needs to be in place by early October, in order to prepare for the 2024 elections.The litigation has been closely watched in Washington and across the country, as several other states in the South face similar voting rights challenges, and control of the U.S. House of Representatives rests on a thin margin. Prominent lawmakers in Washington — including Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus — have kept careful tabs on the redistricting effort.At least one nonpartisan political analysis has predicted that at least one Alabama district could become an election tossup with a new map, given that Black voters in Alabama tend to vote for Democratic candidates.The decision was joined by Judge Stanley Marcus, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton; and by Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, both named to their posts by former President Donald J. Trump. (Judge Marcus typically sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.)For Alabama, the ruling caps off nearly two years of litigation, marking yet another instance in the state’s tumultuous history where a court has forced officials to follow federal civil rights and voting laws.Two decades ago, a lawsuit forced the creation of the Seventh Congressional District, the state’s sole majority-Black district, in southwest Alabama. (Under the Republican-drawn map rejected on Tuesday, the share of Black voters in that district dropped to about 51 percent from about 55 percent.)“It’s really making sure that people who have consistently been kept at the margins or excluded as a matter of law from politics have a chance — not a guarantee — but a realistic chance of electing candidates of choice,” said Kareem Crayton, the senior director for voting and representation at the Brennan Center for Justice and a Montgomery, Ala., native. “The fact that we’re having to fight over that principle is really sad in 2023.”After the 2020 census, which began the process of setting district lines for the next decade across the country, the Alabama legislature maintained six congressional districts with a white Republican incumbent. A group of Black voters challenged the map under a landmark voting rights law, given that more than one in four residents of Alabama is Black.The Birmingham court said the map would need to be redrawn, but the Supreme Court intervened and said a new map could not be put in place so close to the primary races ahead of the 2022 election. In doing so, the Supreme Court unexpectedly affirmed the key remaining tenet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bars any voting law that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” The court had gutted much of that landmark civil rights law a decade earlier, and many had expected a similar result with the Alabama case.But in a weeklong special session, Republicans refused to create a second majority-Black district, and shielded their six incumbents from a potentially brutal primary at a moment when the party has only a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.Republicans defended their revised map, calling it a fair attempt to keep counties and communities with similar economic and geographic issues together, while adhering to the Constitution. Democrats and the Black voters who brought the challenge called it a squandered opportunity to provide equal representation to a historically disenfranchised bloc of voters.At a hearing in August, the panel of judges sharply pressed the state’s attorneys on whether the revised map had done enough to adhere to their guidance on how to address the voting rights violation, making their skepticism clear.“What I hear you saying is that the state of Alabama deliberately disregarded our instructions,” Judge Moorer said at one point. More

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      Democracy in Bangladesh Is Quietly Being Crushed

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      Bangladesh’s multiparty democracy is being methodically strangled in crowded courtrooms across this country of 170 million people.Nearly every day, thousands of leaders, members and supporters of opposition parties stand before a judge. Charges are usually vague, and evidence is shoddy, at best. But just months before a pivotal election pitting them against the ruling Awami League, the immobilizing effect is clear.About half of the five million members of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, are embroiled in politically motivated court cases, the group estimates. The most active leaders and organizers face dozens, even hundreds, of cases. Lives that would be defined by raucous rallies or late-night strategizing are instead dominated by lawyers’ chambers, courtroom cages and, in Dhaka, the torturously snail-paced traffic between the two.One recent morning, a party leader, Saiful Alam Nirob, was ushered into Dhaka’s 10-story magistrate court in handcuffs. Mr. Nirob faces between 317 and 394 cases — he and his lawyers are unsure exactly how many. Outside the court, a dozen supporters — facing an additional 400 cases among them — waited in an alley whose bustle was cleared only by intermittent monsoon downpours and the frequent blowing of a police whistle to open the way for another political prisoner.The police ushering Saiful Alam Nirob, an opposition leader, to court in Dhaka in June. He faces hundreds of court cases.A rally by supporters of the ruling Awami League in July.“I can’t do a job anymore,” said one of the supporters, Abdul Satar, who is dealing with 60 cases and spends three or four days a week in court. “It’s court case to court case.”In recent years, Bangladesh has been known mostly as an economic success story, with a strong focus on a garment export industry that brought in a steady flow of dollars, increased women’s participation in the economy and lifted millions out of poverty. A country once described by American officials as a basket case of famine and disease appeared to be overcoming decades of coups, countercoups and assassinations.But under the surface, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has waged a campaign of political consolidation whose goal, opposition leaders, analysts and activists say, is to turn the South Asian republic into a one-party state.Over her 14 years in office, she has captured Bangladesh’s institutions, including the police, the military and, increasingly, the courts, by filling them with loyalists and making clear the consequences for not falling in line.She has wielded these institutions both to smother dissent — her targets have also included artists, journalists, activists and even the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus — and to carry out a deeply personal campaign of vengeance against her political enemies.With an election expected in December or January, the country again feels on the verge of eruption. The opposition sees the vote as a last fight before what could be its full vanquishing. Ms. Hasina’s lieutenants, for their part, say in no uncertain terms that they cannot let the B.N.P. win — “they will kill us” if they come to power, as one aide put it.When asked during an interview in her Dhaka office about using the judiciary to harass the opposition, Ms. Hasina sent an aide out of the room to retrieve a photo album. It was a catalog of horrors: graphic pictures of maimed bodies after arsons, bombings and other attacks.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office in Dhaka in June.Bangladesh’s economic success story in recent years has overshadowed its slide toward a one-party state. “It is not political, it is not political,” the prime minister said of the court cases, pointing to the visuals as examples of the “brutality” of the B.N.P. “It is because of their crime.”B.N.P. leaders say that about 800 of their members have been killed and more than 400 have disappeared since Ms. Hasina came to power in 2009. In the interview, Ms. Hasina said the B.N.P., when it was in power, had done much the same to her party, jailing and killing her supporters by the thousands.“They started this,” Ms. Hasina said.The SurvivorsThe story of Bangladesh over the past three decades has largely been one of bitter rivalry between two powerful women — Ms. Hasina, 75, and Khaleda Zia, 77, the leader of the B.N.P. and the country’s first female prime minister.Ms. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s most prominent independence leader when the country broke away from Pakistan in 1971. He was killed four years later in a military coup, and much of his family was massacred.Ms. Zia was married to Ziaur Rahman, the army chief who came to power in the bloody chaos that followed Sheikh Mujib’s murder. Mr. Rahman himself was assassinated by soldiers in 1981.For much of the time since, the two surviving women have been locked in a fight over who defines Bangladesh’s democracy — and who is entitled to rule over it.“Actually it was my struggle to establish democracy,” Ms. Hasina said. Pointing to Ms. Zia’s husband, she added: “This opposition, you know, was created by a military dictator.”The B.N.P. says it was the one that restored multiparty democracy after Ms. Hasina’s father declared the country a one-party state — an unfinished project that the B.N.P. says Ms. Hasina is determined to complete.The story of Bangladesh in recent decades has largely been one of bitter rivalry between two powerful women: Ms. Hasina and Khaleda Zia, seen on a large poster inside the office of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the B.N.P.’s secretary general and de facto leader.“They don’t believe in democracy,” said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the B.N.P.’s secretary general.In 2018, Ms. Zia was jailed on graft charges. Today, she lives under house arrest, where, in deteriorating health, she is reduced to watching television and reading the newspaper, her aides say.Her son Tarique Rahman, who was implicated in a 2004 attack in which a dozen grenades were hurled at Ms. Hasina during a rally — a charge the B.N.P. denies — lives in exile in London. Mr. Alamgir, the party’s de facto leader in their absence, spends much of his time dealing with the 93 court cases he faces.Ms. Hasina has intensified her assault on the opposition as she has found herself in her most politically vulnerable position in years.Just as Bangladesh was working to get its garment industry back on track after the pandemic disrupted global demand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in the cost of imported energy and food, pushing the country’s supply of dollars perilously low.“It has put tremendous pressure on our economy,” Ms. Hasina said.Bangladesh was working to get its garment industry back on track after the pandemic when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in the cost of imported energy and food.Anger has risen in Bangladesh over the rising food prices and power cuts.The battered opposition saw an opportunity in anger over rising food prices and power cuts, and, fearing an unfair election, was eager to take the showdown to the streets after Ms. Hasina refused to appoint a neutral caretaker administration to oversee the vote.During a rare large rally in June, B.N.P. speakers demanded free elections and the release of political prisoners. But as supporters marched across Dhaka, their chants offered an indication of the bubbling tensions: “Set fire to Hasina’s throne” and “A flood of blood will wash away the injustice.”As the police held back and allowed the rally and march to proceed, ruling-party leaders staged a rival rally where speakers acknowledged that the European Union and the United States were watching Bangladesh’s democracy. The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Ms. Hasina’s senior security officers and threatened visa restrictions, and American and European officials have made several visits to Bangladesh in recent months.A few weeks after the B.N.P. rally, though, an unsettled Ms. Hasina responded with force. When the party’s supporters tried to hold another large rally, the police met them with clubs and tear gas — and 500 fresh court cases. The crackdown showed that, even as the West issues warnings, it ultimately has limited sway over a leader who has deftly balanced ties with Asia’s two giants, China and India.Opposition supporters during their rally against the governing party in June.Ms. Hasina has governed Bangladesh since 2009 and is seeking re-election in the coming months.Increasingly, the government’s powers are wielded en masse, said Ashraf Zaman, a Bangladeshi lawyer and activist in exile who works with the Asian Human Rights Commission. The police round up scores of people in one case — accusing them of “anti-state activities” or of blocking police work — and leave room for more to be added by listing dozens or even hundreds of “unnamed persons” in the same case. Each individual case can involve multiple charges.By the time the evidence, often flimsy, is put in front of a judge, the accused have spent months in jail, often at risk of harassment or torture in custody, human rights activists say. Bail, lawyers and legal experts said, has become harder to get in political cases. If the accused does get released, the government presents it as a magnanimous gift, not as acknowledgment that the person should not have been detained in the first place.Defense lawyers argue in court that their client “has a family, he has already spent this long time, if you kindly give him bail it would be appreciated, and the prosecution ‘allows’ it,” Mr. Zaman said.The CourtOne of the busiest places for political cases is Dhaka’s magistrate court, where Mr. Nirob, the B.N.P. leader facing more than 300 cases, was taken one morning in June. Syed Nazrul, Mr. Nirob’s lawyer, said his client had at least one case filed against him in every police station in the city.Before proceedings begin each morning, about a dozen lawyers cram into Room 205 at the bar association building, where Mr. Nazrul checks papers one last time. On June 12, the office’s large ledger showed that the team was defending clients in 33 cases that day, 32 of them involving the B.N.P.Lawyers crammed into a room at the bar association building in Dhaka in June. Many represent political prisoners. Syed Nazrul, a lawyer, inspecting documents for cases filed against a B.N.P. leader.Then the lawyers make their way through the narrow alley — buzzing with vendors selling anything from chicken to marigold to replacement teeth — that connects the bar association with the crowded courthouse.“The hearing takes, maximum, 20 minutes. All day is spent back and forth in this harassment,” Mr. Nazrul said.Even those fighting for causes beyond the bitter rivalry between the two political parties increasingly pay a heavy price.Didarul Bhuiyan, a computer engineer, returned to Dhaka after completing his studies in Australia. He set up a small software company, got married and raised three sons. But a question nagged at him: Had he made the right decision in returning?Mr. Bhuiyan became active in a civil society movement aimed at strengthening checks in the system, so his children would not be forced to pursue a life abroad. “Whenever someone gets to power, they go above the law,” he said.After Mr. Bhuiyan’s group criticized the management of relief funds during the pandemic, security forces in civilian clothes took him away in a van with tinted windows.Didarul Bhuiyan with his family in Dhaka in July. He spent five months in jail after criticizing the government’s management of Covid relief money. A woman and her relatives waving at people on a bus leaving court in Dhaka.“The incidents of disappearances were common; we worried about what could happen to him,” said his wife, Dilshad Ara Bhuiyan.As Ms. Bhuiyan went from court to court hoping to apply for bail for her husband, they refused to hear his case, even though the government had filed no charges against him. “The judge would see the name, the case, and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t,’” Mr. Bhuiyan said.After five months in jail, he got bail. The police did not file charges until about a year after his arrest, leveling vague accusations of treason and conspiracy against the state. As a central piece of evidence, the police submitted a Facebook post by Mr. Bhuiyan — which he had written months after his release. A time stamp marked a screenshot as having been taken three hours before.A fellow activist, Mushtaq Ahmed, who was detained around the same time as Mr. Bhuiyan, died in jail. A large portrait of Mr. Ahmed sits on a drawer in Mr. Bhuiyan’s home office.Mr. Bhuiyan called Mr. Ahmed’s death political murder.“Putting someone in jail for 10 months without any trial whatsoever is good enough to kill someone,” he said. More

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      Meet Fabian Nelson, Mississippi’s First Openly L.G.B.T.Q. Legislator

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      Mr. Nelson, 38, won a Democratic primary runoff on Tuesday in a blue district. He talked to The New York Times about the significance of being the first — but why he never focused on it on the trail.Only two states in the nation, Louisiana and Mississippi, have never elected an openly L.G.B.T.Q. lawmaker.Now, there will be only one.On Tuesday, Fabian Nelson won a Democratic primary runoff in Mississippi’s 66th state House district, southwest of Jackson, where Republicans have no candidate on the ballot.Mr. Nelson, 38, was raised in the Mississippi Delta by politically active parents. And while he said he believed having a gay man in the State Legislature was significant, the historic nature of his campaign was never his focus.When he campaigned in South Jackson, he talked about the city’s water crisis and about crime. When he campaigned in rural areas, he talked about broadband access and economic development.“You can’t sit in the Capitol and have the same conversations you were having before we were at the table,” Mr. Nelson said.Lucy Garrett for The New York TimesThe New York Times spoke with Mr. Nelson after his victory. The interview has been edited and condensed.Q. Tell me about yourself — your background, your family, what made you decide to run for office.A. I come from a very politically motivated family. My father is a leader in the community, and he worked with a lot of our elected officials.I remember going to the voting precinct with my mom any time she voted. I saw my parents every single day fighting to help people in the community, whether it was helping people pay their rent, helping people pay their light bills, donating food, donating clothes.When I was in fourth grade, we went to the Mississippi State Capitol, and I remember walking in the galley to look at the floor of the House. I saw these guys in suits and these big, old high-backed chairs. I remember looking down, and I told my teacher, “One of these days I am going to sit down there.”Q. This is your second time running for this seat. What was different this time?A. The first time, I ran in a special election, so I had about a month. I’ve done work in the community, but I’ve mostly done work behind the scenes, so a lot of people didn’t know who I was. Then the special election was right when Covid hit. We really couldn’t get out there, knock on doors, meet people — I wasn’t able to do anything other than social media and put signs up.I said this time I’m going to make sure I do every single thing to get in front of every single person that I possibly can get in front of. I’m going to become a household name. That’s not going to guarantee that people are going to vote for me, but everybody in this district is going to know who Fabian Nelson is.We knocked on everybody’s door five times. The first two times I went around, I was just introducing myself. The third time, that’s when I sat down and developed a platform.Q. Mississippi is one of only two states that have never elected an openly L.G.B.T.Q. legislator. Did you know that when you started your campaign?A. Honestly, I thought Mississippi was the only one. I didn’t know that it was Mississippi and Louisiana. Mississippi, we’re always the last to do the right thing. I said, So we’ve got to beat Louisiana this time so we won’t be No. 50. Now I’m happy to say we’re No. 49.Q. What does it mean to you to be the first in Mississippi?A. I have talked to so many people that say: “We are now hopeful. We feel like we’re in a new place.”What I want people to understand is Mississippi now has somebody that’s going to fight for every single person. I’m going to fight for people in District 66 — those are the people I represent. The issues I’m going to fight for are my platform issues. However, when anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation comes up, which I know it will, I am going to fight that every single day.I’m not only going to the Capitol to fight against anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills. But we cannot have any group discriminated against. It’s OK to disagree with a person, it’s OK to disagree with a person’s lifestyle, but it is not OK to impose on that person’s civil liberties and civil rights. If we look back in our African American community, slavery was pushed because it’s in the Bible. That’s what was used to keep my people oppressed. And so there’s no room for oppression of any group of people.Q. Politically, this is such a complicated time in that there’s this flood of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation, and at the same time we’re seeing increased representation in government and public life. How do you navigate that?A. You’ve heard the saying that when you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re what’s for lunch. We’ve been for lunch for so long. The thing is, our politicians can come out and stand on the steps of the Capitol and say, “Oh, we love the community, we’re going to do everything we can to help you, we’re going to fight for you, love, love, love,” then go in the Capitol and close the door — you don’t know what they’re saying. And then the next thing you know, we’ve got a harmful piece of legislation coming out.Now that they have someone sitting at the table, they’re not going to be able to continue along that path. It makes it so much harder. Once we started getting African Americans elected into office, that’s when we started to see things change, because you can’t sit in the Capitol and have the same conversations you were having before we were at the table.Q. Did this come up when you were campaigning? Was it something you talked to people about?A. My campaign was strictly focused on the issues of District 66, because at the end of the day, I represent District 66, and I represent the issues that are germane to District 66. My platform wasn’t, “I’m the first openly gay guy,” because that doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t make me a better lawmaker or a worse lawmaker. People voted on someone who had experience, people voted on someone who’s going to make a positive impact within our community, and people voted for a fighter.But I come from a family of firsts — my grandmother being the first African American nurse [at a hospital in Yazoo City, Miss.], my dad being one of the first African Americans to graduate dental school from Virginia Commonwealth University.And so I said, I have to raise the bar some type of way. My children are going to have to really raise the bar. More

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      A Resurgent Labour Party Sees Scotland as a Springboard to Power

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      As the Scottish nationalists stumble, a by-election near Glasgow this fall will test support for the opposition Labour party ahead of Britain’s coming general election.For Britain’s opposition Labour Party, the road to 10 Downing Street is likely to run through Scotland. And the first steps on that road lie in a cluster of commuter towns southeast of Glasgow, where Labour is trying to win over swing voters like Cara Scott, in a closely watched parliamentary vote that will test the party’s appeal ahead of a coming general election.Ms. Scott, 18, a geography student who studies in Edinburgh, enthusiastically supported the Scottish National Party in past ballots. But she is disillusioned by her latest S.N.P. representative, Margaret Ferrier, who was forced out of her seat on Aug. 1 after violating lockdown rules during the coronavirus pandemic.She also thinks the Labour Party has better proposals to cope with a grinding cost-of-living crisis that has left people fed up and exhausted. Ms. Scott signed a petition to recall Ms. Ferrier, which triggered this by-election, and now said she was “leaning slightly toward Labour, based on how proactive they’ve been.”“Their campaign has been brilliant,” said Ms. Scott, as she browsed in a slightly tattered shopping mall off the town’s high street. “Right from the get-go, they’ve been really trying to sway people’s voting opinions.”Cara Scott, 18, thinks the Labour Party has better proposals to cope with a grinding cost-of-living crisis that has left people fed up and exhausted. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesIf the Labour Party can snatch back the seat, which it lost to the S.N.P. in 2019, it will be viewed as a harbinger of broader Labour gains across Scotland in the next general election, which the Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, must call by January 2025.A Labour revival in Scotland could give the party the margin it needs to amass a majority in Parliament, even if — as most oddsmakers predict — its current double-digit lead in the polls over the Conservative Party narrows. A date for the election to fill the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat has not yet been set, but it’s expected to take place in early October.“This will become the center of the political world in the U.K. for the next few weeks,” said Ian Murray, who holds the sole Labour seat from Scotland and serves as the party’s shadow secretary for the country.“If Labour wins the election in Rutherglen, you can say Keir Starmer is a prime minister-in-waiting,” he said, referring to the party’s leader, who campaigned in the district earlier this month. “It feels like the wind is at our back,” he added, “but if there’s any party that can fall over in the wind, it’s the Labour Party.”Labour has been reborn in Scotland by the same public distemper that is lifting it above the Tories south of the border (a Tory lawmaker, Nadine Dorries, quit last week in England with a venomous attack on Mr. Sunak, whom she described as leading a “zombie Parliament”). But this is also a story of the breathtaking decline of the Scottish National Party.Long the dominant player in Scottish politics, the S.N.P. has been brought low by scandal, infighting, and voter fatigue. Its formidable leader, Nicola Sturgeon, resigned in February and was later arrested by police in an investigation of the party’s finances (she was released and has not been charged).Children playing in Blantyre, as Labour Party supporters canvas the neighborhood in a campaign to win a Parliamentary seat this fall. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesThe S.N.P.’s new leader, Humza Yousaf, has stumbled out of the gate, proving unpopular with voters, who have not rewarded him with the honeymoon in the polls that most new leaders get.Like the Tories, the Scottish nationalists, who have controlled Scotland’s devolved parliament since 2007, appear exhausted and internally divided. Their political north star — Scottish independence — seems more distant than ever after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the Scots cannot vote unilaterally to hold another referendum after voting against independence in 2014.While support for independence has stayed stable at around 47 percent, polls suggest it will no longer translate reliably into votes for the nationalist party. On a blustery, showery day, people in Rutherglen and the neighboring town of Blantyre said they worried more about the high cost of food and fuel, and long waiting times at hospitals — neither of which, they said, the S.N.P. government had remedied.“For me, independence takes a total back seat at the moment,” said James Dunsmore, 47, who was waiting for a haircut. The manager of the barbershop, Jewar Ali, said business had slowed because several of his cash strapped regulars were putting off haircuts to once a month.Jewar Ali, the barbershop manager, said business had slowed because several of his cash strapped regulars were putting off haircuts. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesElizabeth Clark, 68, a retired nurse, expressed outrage at a recent newspaper report, based on credit-card receipts obtained and leaked by Labour officials, that said Scottish government officials spent public money on nail polish and yoga classes.“The S.N.P. has brought Scotland to its knees,” Ms. Clark said, her mood scarcely brightened by the flowers in her shopping cart.Feelings toward Ms. Ferrier are even more raw. After traveling by train despite testing positive for Covid — a breach of lockdown rules — in October 2020, she was suspended by the party but fought bitterly to hold on to her seat. The episode was especially embarrassing to the S.N.P. because Ms. Sturgeon had been widely praised for taking a more cautious approach to Covid than Boris Johnson did in England.“Other people were prosecuted” for breaking Covid rules in Britain, John Brown, 75, a mechanic, said over a breakfast sausage in Blantyre.“The S.N.P. has brought Scotland to its knees,” Elizabeth Clark, 68, said. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesIn fact, Ms. Ferrier was charged with reckless conduct and sentenced to community service. After giving up her seat, she said: “I have always put my job and my constituents first, and I am disappointed that this will now come to an end.”In 2019, Ms. Ferrier was part of a wave of S.N.P. lawmakers who together won 48 seats in London’s parliament, while Labour won just one Scottish seat — Mr. Murray’s. Polls now show that the parties are virtually tied among voters, underscoring the dramatic collapse in support for the nationalist party, with the Conservatives trailing far behind. A poll last week projected that Labour was on track to win 24 seats next year, the same as the S.N.P.“It’s long been argued that unless the Labour Party can gain seats in Scotland, it will have a problem putting together a clear majority,” said John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde and one of Britain’s foremost pollsters. “It potentially significantly improves Keir Starmer’s chances of getting an outright majority.”He explained the math: With the S.N.P. maintaining its current number of seats in Parliament, Labour would need to beat the Tories by 12 percentage points just to eke out a single-seat majority (it is currently ahead by about 18 points, but Professor Curtice said that was likely to shrink). For every 12 seats that Labour wins in Scotland, it can give up two percentage points to the Tories and still gain a majority.Jackie Baillie, center, Scottish Labour party deputy leader, was among those knocking on doors on a recent afternoon. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesGiven the peculiar circumstances of this by-election, it is Labour, not the S.N.P., that is feeling the pressure. The district has changed hands regularly since it was created in 2005; Labour won it in 2017 under the polarizing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.“In a by-election, you’d expect the government of the day to get a kicking,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of public policy at the University of Glasgow. “If they don’t win this seat, Starmer has bigger problems than he thinks he has.”Labour has left little to chance, mobilizing canvassers to carpet the district with leaflets for its candidate, Michael Shanks. Jackie Baillie, the party’s deputy leader, was among those knocking on doors on a recent afternoon. She played up Mr. Shanks’ roots in the community as a schoolteacher. But party officials did not make him available for an interview, suggesting they are protecting their lead.S.N.P.’s campaign office for candidate Katy Loudon, in Rutherglen.Emily Macinnes for The New York Times“It’s clearly been a difficult few months for us,” Ms. Loudon said.Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesFor the S.N.P.’s candidate, Katy Loudon, standing on doorsteps means getting the occasional tough question about Margaret Ferrier or Nicola Sturgeon. She insisted it happens less than one might expect.“It’s clearly been a difficult few months for us,” Ms. Loudon said. “But we’re in this to win. Our message is a positive one. It is not harking back to the past.” More