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      AI expert Marietje Schaake: ‘The way we think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves’

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      Marietje Schaake is a former Dutch member of the European parliament. She is now the international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Her new book is entitled The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley.In terms of power and political influence, what are the main differences between big tech and previous incarnations of big business?The difference is the role that these tech companies play in so many aspects of people’s lives: in the state, the economy, geopolitics. So while previous monopolists amassed a lot of capital and significant positions, they were usually in one sector, like oil or car production. These tech companies are like octopuses with tentacles in so many different directions. They have so much data, location data, search, communications, critical infrastructure, and now AI can be built on top of all that assembled power, which makes these companies very different animals to what we’ve seen in the past.Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology secretary, recently suggested that governments need to show a “sense of humility” with big tech companies and treat them more like nation states. What are your thoughts on that? I think it’s a baffling misunderstanding of the role of a democratically elected and accountable leader. Yes, these companies have become incredibly powerful, and as such I understand the comparison to the role of states, because increasingly these companies take decisions that used to be the exclusive domain of the state. But the answer, particularly from a government that is progressively leaning, should be to strengthen the primacy of democratic governance and oversight, and not to show humility. What is needed is self-confidence on the part of democratic government to make sure that these companies, these services, are taking their proper role within a rule of law-based system, and are not overtaking it.What do you think the impact will be of Donald Trump’s presidency? The election of Donald Trump changes everything because he has brought specific tech interests closer than any political leader ever has, especially in the United States, which is this powerful geopolitical and technological hub. There’s a lot of crypto money supporting Trump. There’s a lot of VCs [venture capitalists] supporting him, and of course he has elevated Elon Musk and has announced a deregulatory agenda. Every step taken by his administration will be informed by these factors, whether it’s the personal interests of Elon Musk and his companies, or the personal preferences of the president and his supporters. On the other hand, Musk is actually critical of some dynamics around AI, namely existential risk. We’ll have to see how long the honeymoon between him and Trump lasts, and also how other big tech companies are going to respond. Because they’re not going to be happy that Musk decides on tech policy over his competitors. I’m thinking rocky times ahead.Why have politicians been so light touch in the face of the digital technological revolution? The most powerful companies we see now were all rooted in this sort of progressive, libertarian streak of counterculture in California, that romantic narrative of a couple of guys in their shorts in a basement or garage, coding away and challenging the big powers that be: the publishers of the media companies, the hotel branches, the taxi companies, the financial services, all of which had pretty bad reputations to begin with. And surely there was room for disruption, but this kind of underdog mentality was incredibly powerful. The companies have done a really smart job of framing what they are doing as decentralising, like the internet itself. Companies like Google and Facebook have consistently argued that any regulatory step would hurt the internet. So it’s a combination of wanting to believe the promise and not appreciating how very narrow corporate interests won out at the expense of the public interest.Do you see any major politicians who are prepared to stand up to big tech interests? Well someone like [US senator] Elizabeth Warren has the most clear vision about the excessive power and abuse of power by corporations, including the tech sector. She’s been consistent in trying to address this. But broadly I’m afraid that political leaders are not really taking this on the way they should. In the European Commission, I’m not really seeing a vision. I’ve seen elections, including in my own country, where tech didn’t feature as a topic at all. And we see those comments by the UK government, although one would assume that democratic guardrails around excessively powerful corporates are a no-brainer.Have politicians been held back by their technological ignorance? Yes, I think they are intimidated. But I also think that the framing against the agency of governments is a deliberate one by tech companies. It’s important to understand the way in which we are taught to think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves. And so we get the whole narrative that governments are basically disqualified to deal with tech because they’re too stupid, too outdated, too poor in service delivery. The message is that if they can’t even process the taxes on time, what do you think they’re going to do with AI? It’s a caricature of government, and government should not embrace that caricature.Do you think the UK has been weakened in its position with big tech as a result of leaving the EU? Yes and no. Australia and Canada have developed tech policies, and they’re smaller in numbers than the UK population. I don’t know if it’s that. I think it’s actually much more of a deliberate choice to want to attract investment. So maybe it’s just self-interest that transcends Conservative and Labour governments, because I don’t see much change in the tech policy, whereas I had anticipated change. I was obviously overly optimistic there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYou talk about regaining sovereignty. Do you think most people even recognise that any sovereignty has been lost? One of the reasons why I wrote this book is to reach average news readers, not tech experts. Explaining that this is a problem that concerns people is a huge undertaking. I’m curious to see how the impact of the Trump government will invite responses from European leaders, but also from others around the world who are simply going to think we cannot afford this dependence on US tech companies. It’s undesirable. Because, essentially, we’re shipping our euros or pounds over to Silicon Valley, and what do we get in return? More dependency. It’s going to be incredibly challenging, but not doing anything is certainly not going to make it better.

      The Tech Coup by Marietje Schaake is published by Princeton University Press (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply More

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      Abandoning Ukraine means ‘infinitely higher’ long-term security costs, MI6 chief says

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      Abandoning Ukraine would jeopardise British, European and American security and lead to “infinitely higher” costs in the long term, the head of MI6 has warned in a speech that amounted to a plea to Donald Trump to continue supporting Kyiv.Richard Moore, giving a rare speech, said he believed Vladimir Putin “would not stop” at Ukraine if he was allowed to subjugate it in any peace talks involving the incoming US Republican administration.“If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there. Our security – British, French, European and transatlantic – will be jeopardised,” Moore said during an address given in Paris alongside his French counterpart.The spy chief was touted earlier this week as a possible surprise appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US, though he is not thought to be pressing for the job. The former Labour minister Peter Mandelson is considered the frontrunner for a critical role at a delicate time in transatlantic relations.Moore has served as the head of MI6 for four years in what is normally considered a five-year job. At the start of his tenure he overlapped with the Trump adviser Richard Grenell, who was the acting director of national intelligence.Trump has complained about the expense of supporting Kyiv and said repeatedly that he wants to end the war, claiming he could do so “within 24 hours”. JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, has suggested freezing the conflict on the current frontlines, and denying Ukraine Nato membership for an extended period.“The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known,” said Moore. “But the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher. If Putin succeeds, China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened and Iran would become still more dangerous.”A key British argument to the incoming Trump administration is to try to link the war in Ukraine with US concerns about the rising military might of China, emphasising that the arrival of North Korean troops is bringing authoritarianism from Asia into what was previously a European conflict.Moore emphasised the UK’s history of intelligence cooperation with France in a speech to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, but he was also careful to emphasise that he expected UK-US intelligence cooperation to be unchanged regardless of any political tensions.“For decades the US-UK intelligence alliance has made our societies safer; I worked successfully with the first Trump administration to advance our shared security and look forward to doing so again,” Moore told his audience at the UK embassy, a short walk from the Élysée Palace, the official home of the French president.The spy chief’s public presence in the French capital reflects a wider political rapprochement between the British prime minister and the French president. After Trump’s victory, Keir Starmer met Emmanuel Macron in France where the two discussed Ukraine amid reports that the Republicans would like European soldiers to act as peacekeepers if a ceasefire was agreed.Moore said Putin’s goal was to “challenge western resolve” and that western spy agencies had “recently uncovered a staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe” – a reference to a mixture of arson, assassination and kidnap plots, which included a fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham caused by an incendiary device hidden in a package sent at the behest of Russia.Moscow has said its demands regarding Ukraine remain unchanged. Earlier this month, the Kremlin said its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the “direct result” of a Nato policy that aimed at “creating a staging ground against Russia on Ukrainian soil”.Russia continues to demand “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine, and in previous peace negotiations said Kyiv’s military should be reduced to 50,000. It also claims the territory of four eastern and southern Ukrainian provinces, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk, of which only the fourth is fully occupied. More

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      The final straw in Jacob Rees-Mogg interview | Brief Letters

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      I thought I would encounter a fair degree of cant and hypocrisy in the interview with Jacob Rees‑Mogg (Jacob Rees-Mogg on abortion, religion and reality TV: ‘I’ve been called worse than a Nazi’, 18 November), but was prepared to put my misgivings aside and read the whole article. I could cope with his twisting of scripture and the fact that he wants the tenets of the Catholic faith to apply to others and not to himself. However, I realised that he has indeed lost touch with reality when I got to the part where he believes that “Boris Johnson … is a truthful man”.Stan BroadwellRedfield, Bristol Jacob Rees-Mogg says: “I was actually called worse than a Nazi.” Was he called “working class”?Dave VergusonLindley, Huddersfield Many recent discoveries of Roman artefacts have been deemed by historians to be sex-related (Gladiator knife handle found in Tyne ‘reflects spread of Roman celebrity culture’, 15 November). I wonder if the Romans were sex-obsessed – or if the historians are.Cherry WestonWolverhampton I was surprised to see that the Met Office had issued a cold weather warning on X (UK weather: Met Office issues woolly jumpers alert as Arctic blast arrives, 17 November). Of all organisations, surely our iconic weather forecaster should be leading the transfer to Bluesky.Stephen ChickenSwinton, Scottish Borders Elon Musk spent $200m to help get Donald Trump elected (Elon Musk’s Super Pac spent $200m to help elect Donald Trump, 12 November). To keep matters fair, shouldn’t all the other president-elect picks go to the highest bidder?Patrick SheehyLondon More

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      UK must choose between EU and Trump, trade experts warn

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      The former head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has said that the UK should side with the European Union over trade and economic policies rather than a Donald Trump-led US, as fears grow over a possible global trade war.Pascal Lamy, who was head of the WTO from 2005 to 2013, said it was clear that the UK’s interests lay in staying close to the EU on trade, rather than allying with Trump, not least because it does three times more trade with Europe than the US.His comments came after a key Trump supporter, Stephen Moore, said on Friday that the UK should reject the EU’s “socialist model” if it wanted to have any realistic chance of doing a free trade deal with the US under Trump and, as a result, avoid the 20% tariffs on exports that the president-elect has promised.In an interview with the Observer, Lamy said: “It’s an old question with a new relevance given Brexit and given Trump. In my view the UK is a European country. Its socio- economic model is much closer to the EU social model and not the very hard, brutal version of capitalism of Trump and [Elon] Musk.“We can expect that Trump plus Musk will go even more in this direction. If Trump departs from supporting Ukraine, I have absolutely no doubt that the UK will remain on the European side.“In trade matters, you have to look at the numbers. The trade relationship between the UK and Europe is three times larger than between the UK and US.“This is a very structural inter-dependence which will hardly change unless – which I don’t think is a realistic assumption – the UK will decide to leave the EU norms of standards, to move to the US one. I don’t believe that will happen.“My answer is that the option to unite politically, economically and socially with the US and not with Europe makes absolutely no sense. I believe that, for the UK’s interests and values, the European option remains the dominant one.”Ivan Rogers, the former British ambassador to the EU, said it was clear that after Trump’s re-election the UK would have to choose between the US and EU. “Any free trade agreement that Trump and his team could ever propose to the UK would have to contain major proposals on US access to the UK agricultural market and on veterinary standards. It would not pass Congress without them. If the UK signed on the dotted line, that’s the end of the Starmer proposed veterinary deal with the EU. You can’t have both: you have to choose.”Their remarks come as Keir Starmer heads to Brazil on Sunday for a meeting of the G20 where issues of global security and economic growth are set to dominate. The prime minister is expected to hold talks with President Xi of China, on whose country Trump is proposing slap huge 60% import tariffs. Trade experts expect that the US will demand that the EU and UK follow suit, which both will strongly resist for their own trade reasons.The UK is seeking to increase trade with Beijing while also stepping up efforts to find greater ways to access the EU single market. Last week, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, made clear that leaving the EU had “weighed” on the domestic economy.A government source said that developing a trade strategy in the new world order was now the top priority. “It has gone from being very important to being number one in the one tray [following Trump’s re-election].”However, João Vale de Almeida, the former EU ambassador to London, said he believed there was common “territory for agreement” which would involve minimal pragmatic deals between the EU and the UK, and the US and the UK.“We know that Trump will try to divide European member states and divide the UK and EU. This is already what [Nigel] Farage is trying to do. But I think we can walk and chew gum at the same.“Given that a fully fledged trade deal with the US is not possible because agricultural issues will get in the way, and an EU deal is limited by UK red lines, any deals will have to be limited. So there may be a way through.” More

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      The Guardian view on Cop29: 1.5C has been passed – so speed up the green transition | Editorial

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      Predictions that this will be the first calendar year in which the 1.5C warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement is surpassed provide a stark backdrop to the UN’s 29th climate conference. This year – 2024 – has already seen the hottest-ever day and month, and is expected by experts to be the hottest year too. Addressing delegates on Tuesday, the UN chief, António Guterres, referred to a “masterclass in climate destruction”. The escalating pattern of destructive weather events, most recently in Valencia, is a warning of what lies ahead.When the 1.5C figure was included in the 2015 deal, it was known to be a stretch. The treaty says countries must hold the average temperature “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels” and aim for 1.5C. Busting this target in 2024 will not mean it has been definitively missed; the measurement of global temperatures relies on averages recorded over 20 or more years. But the crossing of this threshold is a menacing moment. Around the world, people as well as governments and climate specialists should take notice – and act.Whether temperature data will sharpen minds and negotiations in Azerbaijan remains to be seen. Cop29 got off to a rocky start with a row over carbon markets, which are used by rich countries and businesses to offset their emissions by paying for environmental protection elsewhere. New rules were pushed through despite objections regarding the sector’s history of fraud and false promises. Donald Trump’s victory last week points to renewed conflict regarding the role of the US, not only in relation to fossil fuel expansion, but also institutions such as the World Bank, which must lead on climate finance – and in which the US is the dominant stakeholder.The fallout from Mr Trump’s election and the political crisis in Germany mean that leaders of several of the world’s richest nations did not travel to Baku. But Sir Keir Starmer took the opportunity to announce an ambitious new climate goal for the UK. Several months ahead of the deadline for updated nationally determined contributions – as the carbon pledges made by governments are known – Sir Keir accepted the recommendations of the UK’s Climate Change Committee and committed to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035.Especially given the poor record of the last prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on climate, this is a significant step from the UK and builds on recent announcements on green investment for which the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, deserves credit as well. There is no doubt that the threat to life from climate disruption is rising – and with it the threat of the political instability that is caused when lives and livelihoods are destroyed, as they have been in eastern Spain.The priority for this round of climate talks is the financing of the green transition, and the urgent necessity for rich countries to support poorer ones. New taxes on fossil fuel companies, which have vastly inflated their profits since the Ukraine war, are among measures being argued for, along with frequent-flyer levies and loan guarantees enabling poorer countries to borrow. Petrostates including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates should also become contributors. All of the above, and more, will be needed if the targets set in Paris are not to be pushed beyond the realms of possibility. The transition to clean energy needs to be faster. More

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      Will Typhoon Orange wreak havoc on Britain? Keir Starmer has to prepare for the worst | Andrew Rawnsley

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      Peas from the same pod they sure ain’t. No one is ever going to think that Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are twins who were separated at birth. In their temperaments, their worldviews and the values of the parties they lead, two human beings could not be less alike than the former prosecutor who heads Britain’s first Labour government in 14 years and the convicted felon whom Americans have returned to the White House for another four. When Trumpites are being polite about the Labour leader they call him a “liberal”; when they are feeling vituperative they brand him “far-left”. The animosity has been mutual. There’s a bulging catalogue of damnatory remarks about the president-elect by members of the Starmer cabinet.Which is why Sir Keir felt compelled to lay on the flattery with a trowel when, according to the account from Number 10, he telephoned the American to extend his “hearty congratulations”. If that left many Labour people gagging on their breakfasts, they retched even harder when the prime minister went on to claim: “We stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of shared values of freedom, democracy and enterprise.” He also employed a well-worn diplomatic cliche that one of our ambassadors to Washington banned his staff from using because he thought it fed delusional thinking about the extent of British influence over the US. “I know the special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come,” said the prime minister, even though he can’t be genuinely confident of any such thing. The foundations of transatlantic relations frequently shuddered during the first Trump term. Britain’s defence and foreign policy establishments are seized with a justifiably deep apprehension that the world will become an even more dangerous place during the sequel.Sir Keir’s effusions have been accompanied by a big effort to persuade everyone that he and his team have been working assiduously to cultivate relations with members of the Trump court, including vice-president-elect JD Vance, with whom David Lammy boasts he’s grown friendly. The foreign secretary wins the gold medal for diplomatic gymnastics. Six years ago, when he was a backbencher, he called the then and now future US president “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” and “a profound threat to the international order”. Mr Lammy has never recanted those views, but now feels obliged to assert that the British government “will agree and align on much” with the Trump regime. Operation Ingratiate is controversial within Sir Keir’s party and some are already questioning its wisdom. The vast majority of Labour people, sharing the shock and anguish of their cousins in the Democratic party, are more in sympathy with the Trump-denouncing Mr Lammy of yesteryear than they are with the Trump-clasping Mr Lammy of today. Some Labour MPs mutter that Sir Keir is fooling himself if he really thinks he can win the ear of the other man. The concern is that this will be a fruitless pursuit that will earn only embarrassing rebuffs. Theresa May’s slavish attempts to woo the American were rewarded with insults and humiliations – and she was a Conservative prime minister. The better response to his return to the Oval Office, it is argued by some Labour voices, is to start from the assumption that the US will be an extremely unreliable ally and put more urgency into repairing relations with our European neighbours. Other Labour people think the way to react to the US election result is to drop the pretence that there will still be a lot in common between Britain and America. Sadiq Khan, who has history with Mr Trump, has said that Londoners “will be fearful”.This comeback is distressingly energising for the global hard right. Nigel Farage and other mini-Trump types in the UK are cheering, but they are out of tune with public opinion. The number of British voters who are happy to see the return of King Maga are outnumbered by those who are unhappy by nearly three to one. Tories who think that apeing Trumpism is the way forward should note that a majority of their supporters are among those perturbed by his return.To those critical or anxious about his offer to partner up, the prime minister has a blunt riposte: we have to deal with the US as it is, not the country we would prefer it to be. Sir Keir’s inner circle acknowledge that they are bracing for a wild ride, but argue that they have to try to do business with a Trump regime, however nightmarishly difficult that will be. Their problem is that this looks like a seismic change in how America turns up in the world and it is hard to see how that can be comfortably fitted into the traditional template of UK-US relations. This holds that, whoever is in the White House and whether or not they are personally agreeable or ideologically sympatico, a British prime minister has to “hug them close”. One way of contemplating the coming four years from a British perspective is as the ultimate stress test of whether there is any remaining value in thinking about Anglo-American relations in that way.One peril for Sir Keir is that he will be found guilty of wishful thinking when he implies that he can play a role in influencing him for the better once the 45th president becomes the 47th. There are copious reasons to think that Trump Redux will be even harder to constrain than the earlier incarnation. The way he campaigned suggests that his impulses have not mellowed, but sharpened. He is interpreting his victory as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to pursue an agenda pregnant with hair-raising risks for the global economy, the western democracies and the architecture of international order. He has won not just in the electoral college, but also the popular vote. The Republicans will control the Senate. It will be a clean sweep if, as seems highly likely, they have a majority in the House of Representatives as well. It will be realistic statecraft to assume that Trump will pursue the nativist, protectionist and unilateralist agenda of “America first” with even more belligerence and even less delicacy towards the opinions and interests of historical allies.When he arrived in office in 2017, he did so without a clear plan; he had little familiarity with how government worked and seasoned operators in the administration managed to contain some of his darkest instincts. This time, he says he knows what to do with his mandate and will pack his government with true believers faithful only to his bidding. For all the attempts by Downing Street to suggest it has anticipated and prepared for this outcome, ministers privately speak of the cabinet’s stomachs being in knots about the risks to Britain’s safety and prosperity. Of the reasons to be fearful that I outlined a fortnight ago, three cause the gravest concern.One is the grievous peril to European security posed by his repeated suggestions that he will undo Nato and sell out Ukraine. Another big anxiety is that he will inflict terrible blows on multilateral bodies and agreements, including those addressing the climate crisis. Spines are further shivered by his desire to impose sweeping tariffs on imports into the US. What’s a “beautiful” idea to him will have ugly consequences for us. A global trade war will be hellish for the Starmer government, especially if it is forced to choose sides between the EU and the US. It has never looked more lonely to be Brexit Britain paddling about in the mid-Atlantic as Typhoon Orange masses on the horizon.From tariffs to defence spending, the best minds the British government can muster are trying to guess which elements of the Trump platform should be treated as deadly serious, which are an opening bargaining position by a man who is hyper-transactional and which were just “campaign talk”. The phlegmatic comfort themselves with the thought that policy bite won’t be as savage as rhetorical bark. The pessimists fear that he means to make good in full on his threats. Ministers privately admit that there will be significant impact on virtually every important aspect of government policy, but none of them can yet be sure exactly how bad the fallout will be.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHope for the best is not a strategy. Prepare for the worst will be prudent. If Donald Trump does only half the things he has said he will do, Sir Keir will find this a very perilous dance. Trying to hug close to the American is like attempting the tango with a crack-smoking rhinoceros. The prime minister will be lucky if he endures the experience without getting gored. More

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      It is galling to see Starmer ingratiate himself with Trump – but it would be horribly negligent if he didn’t | Gaby Hinsliff

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      Dawn had barely broken, and nor had Kamala Harris publicly conceded, when Keir Starmer tweeted his congratulations to the not-quite-officially President-elect Donald Trump.Britain would, he said, stand “shoulder to shoulder” with its old ally, as it always does. Though he got the early opportunity he wanted to congratulate the new president-elect even more fulsomely down the phone, those words will have been gut-wrenching for many people. How can it be business as usual, with a president whose own former chief of staff said he met the definition of a fascist? What on earth makes Starmer think he can influence Trump for the better, the usual rationale for engaging with unsavoury leaders, where Trump’s own advisers repeatedly failed? The only people he ever really heeded, the British-born former White House adviser Fiona Hill once told one of Theresa May’s aides, were the now late Queen and the pope.Starmer’s obvious answer, of course, is that it would be an act of breathtaking negligence not to even bother trying; that he can’t be squeamish when there are workers afraid of losing their jobs in a trade war, Ukrainians dying under Russian bombardment, and future generations who would pay a terrible price for the US reneging on its climate commitments. The less obvious one, however, is that if he cannot get Trump’s ear then Trump will get his hot takes on the British national interest elsewhere. Starmer may have got that phone call, but it was Nigel Farage who spent election night at the Trump victory party in Mar-a-Lago.Though this isn’t the result a Labour government wanted, it’s the one it has war-gamed hardest. The charm offensive began months before Starmer and Trump’s relatively cordial dinner in September, with the foreign secretary, David Lammy, making surprisingly deep inroads in Republican circles for a man who once called Trump a woman-hating, neo-Nazi sociopath. But as Lammy’s allies point out, JD Vance once called Trump an idiot who might be the US’s Hitler, which didn’t stop Trump picking Vance as a running mate. The president-elect is both intensely transactional – if anything, he may see British desperation to make up lost ground with him as useful – and wildly unpredictable, a combination offering both opportunity and threat.The lesson Downing Street takes from studying Trump is essentially the one many Republican voters do: that he says a lot of wild stuff but doesn’t always mean it, and if he does he often unexpectedly changes his mind. Already there are hints he might give Ukraine more time to win its war, if only because he hates being associated with losing, while senior Republicans are signalling that “friendly” nations could escape his threatened trade tariffs – a crude signal that there will be rewards for compliance.But there will surely also be a price: Starmer could easily find himself pushed to pick a side in trade negotiations between the US and Brussels, just as he is trying to mend fences with Europe. What if a British government that has staked everything on economic growth finds its business interests pulling one way, and its shared interest in the defence of Europe against Russian aggression pulling the other? At the very least, those budget forecasts – and the money set aside for extra defence spending – may well soon need revisiting.In her memoirs, Theresa May describes the acute anxiety of standing beside then president Trump at a press conference where he was supposed to send a critical signal to Russia by stressing his commitment to Nato, not knowing whether he’d actually say it until he opened his mouth. But at least she could plan for that scenario in advance: harder to deal with was Trump’s tendency to blindside Britain with things nobody saw coming. For her, that meant Trump pulling troops out of Iraq and Syria without warning or concern for British forces fighting alongside them, lobbying her to bring Farage into cabinet, and casually retweeting incendiary social media posts by the British far right. This time, he won’t just be surfing X when he’s bored but actively integrating its owner, Elon Musk – who is already regularly kicking lumps out of Starmer, most recently over cutting inheritance tax relief for farmers – into his administration.The Southport riots, during which Musk tweeted that “civil war is inevitable” and promoted conspiracy theories about white protesters being more harshly treated than ethnic minority ones, convinced many Labour MPs that hate and disinformation online must be tackled. But how brave are ministers prepared to be if that means a direct hit on someone in Trump’s inner circle?Labour MPs in seats where Reform came second in July are, meanwhile, now visibly rattled, and newly fearful of handing Farage further sticks to beat them with. Though Starmer learned his own lesson about the salience of immigration or the risks of alienating white working-class voters way back in 2019, Harris’s defeat is only likely to underline that message for him.There’s no denying that for progressives, the world now looks lonelier than it did; that the choice the US has made will have consequences smaller countries can only do so much to contain. But that doesn’t mean Britain can afford to sit the coming battles out, assuming someone else will do the dirty work. Starmer’s job now is to pull whatever levers he can reach, in alliance with whoever he can persuade to join him; ours, meanwhile, is never to give up hope.

      Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist More

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      It’s OK to feel despair at Trump’s victory. The important thing is not to give up | Polly Toynbee

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      With wailing woe in the small hours, many of you shared that wrenching despair when the US election result extinguished hope. Beyond reason, beyond reckoning, a nation that was once the beacon of the democratic world has knowingly elected a dangerous, racist demagogue, a “pussy-grabbing” criminal who tried to overthrow the government, a wild conspiracy spreader, a squalid, reckless beast of fathomless vanity and corruption. Caligula, Commodus, Nero, Domitian … This is the way a civilisation dies: by suicide not murder.Donald Trump could now command both houses of Congress and the supreme court, with no steadying countervailing instinct for national self-preservation. “America first” means no allies, no “special relationships”, tariffs for all. Encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want”, Nato be damned. He will send in the military to force mass deportations of millions of migrants. He threatens the justice system with revenge, with protesters and opponents branded “the enemy within”. This democratically elected self-described “dictator” can do whatever he wants. And the tides will carry this poison across the Atlantic, invigorating Europe’s hard right from Nigel Farage to Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders to Marine Le Pen, the Alternative für Deutschland to the Sweden Democrats.On the morning of the result I was speaking to US students visiting the UK from Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Jersey. One had her head bowed, sighing. Another told me she had wept. They were mainly liberals, the sort who might choose a semester in Europe, and were distressed at how many fellow students had not voted. “My Republican uncle lives up the road, but we don’t speak, not since he had Obama toilet paper when we visited at Thanksgiving. He genuinely believes Kamala is a street walker.” They talk of abortion rights and deep dark misogyny: “American men will not vote for a woman,” one said, and others agreed. Trump voters live across a divide for ever unbridgeable to them. How can this be happening, they want to know. How can civilisation be so fragile?But enough of this, before I rant myself to lunacy, fearing a dark future for children and grandchildren. Is it wise or useful to feel a political event as such a visceral, gut-punching personal calamity? Pollsters remind us that most normal people most of the time think little about politics. Asked “How often, if at all, do you discuss government and politics with others”, 30% say never, 19% a few times a month, 19% less often, leaving 32% at a few times a week and 10% nearly every day. Political obsessives (you and me, Guardian readers) are odd. If you live and breathe it, if you see the world and everything that happens through a political and sociological lens, you are unusual. Many others can travel through life thinking only of family, work and friends without much curiosity about who is governing, how and why, beyond perhaps a distant dislike.Out canvassing you find plenty who say they don’t care about “politics”, as if it were a hobby for a few and not a citizen’s duty nor a question of self-interest. I resist the instinct to shake some sense into them. I do say that “politics” is everything: the ambulance or police car that does or doesn’t arrive, the quality of your air and water, safety of your food or medicines, tax you pay, pensions you draw, the streets and parks, the arts, sports stadiums – and the fairness of how we live. I usually expect a laconic shrug.Is that a better way to be for your own sanity? Life on the left is a long and often unhappy journey through dashed hopes and deep disappointments, elections lost and lost again. The people will insist on making the wrong choices at the ballot box – perverse, nonsensical and against their own interests. Once in a while all that losing gets punctuated by a burst of radiant sunlight when the left occasionally wins – in Britain in my lifetime in 1964, 1974, 1997 and this good year. But when they do succeed, watch how many on the left prefer to get their disillusion in early when their government fails to fix everything all at once, veers off course or compromises with the voters.The Brexit referendum result felt like a shutter falling across the country, dividing us as never before, while casting us adrift from the mainland of our home continent. I found it hard enough then to inhabit the mind of Brexit voters who had done this to us, but to think yourself into the impenetrable Trump-voting psyche is 100 times harder. No, this is not just “metropolitan elite” obtuseness: the other side is equally uncomprehending.Not long before he died, I had a long conversation with the economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who said research shows that those on the left are much less happy than those on the right: US Republicans have always outscored Democrats on the happiness scale. I can see why seething outrage at social injustice and indignation at reactionary governments that defend the interests of the rich against the chances of children is not a pathway to contentment. In comparison, look at the easeful life of complacent conservatism, perched like a Cheshire cat beaming down from the high branches of power.Would it be better to give up all this angst and agonising and arguing? Let things be? Do the gardening, try gourmet cooking, re-read classics of yesteryear, forget whatever public realm lies beyond the immediate horizon of your own small sphere. No, of course not. There is no escaping the danger of Trumpism, only escapism. The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates, and that applies equally to the unexamined society in which we live. And when you do examine it, action is required. Each time, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again confronting the forces of conservatism. The more vicious they become now, the greater the duty to resist. “Never give up,” said the vanquished and exhausted Kamala Harris.

      Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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