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      Trump news at a glance: a note, a whisper and the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire deal

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      It started with a whisper. Marco Rubio interrupted Donald Trump’s roundtable event with conservative influencers discussing antifa, speaking quietly into Trump’s ear. Rubio handed the president a note, which read “Very close. We need you to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first.”Soon afterwards Trump posted to Truth Social that the “first phase” of a peace plan to pause fighting and release some hostages and prisoners held in Gaza had been agreed by Israel and Hamas, bringing the best hope yet of a definitive end to a bloody two-year conflict.“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump wrote.Trump hails first step to peace Donald Trump hailed what he said was a “great day” for the Arab and Muslim world, Israel and all surrounding nations, as well as the US.“We thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen. BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!” he posted.Hamas said on Thursday it had reached the agreement after talks on the proposal, confirming the deal includes an Israeli withdrawal from the enclave and a hostage-prisoner exchange.Responding to the announcement, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “With God’s help, we will bring them all home.”Read the full storyRepublican lawmakers praise Trump for Gaza deal as Palestinian Americans remain wary: ‘So much remains unclear’While Republican lawmakers lined up to praise Donald Trump on Wednesday for brokering a tentative deal on the “first phase” of an agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, and win the release of the remaining Israeli hostages, Palestinian American were more wary.Read the full storyKristi Noem compares antifa to MS-13, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic StateThe homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Wednesday compared antifa to MS-13, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State, calling the loosely affiliated network of antifascist street activists “just as dangerous” as designated terrorist organizations during a White House roundtable discussion.“They are just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA [Tren de Aragua], as Isis, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them, they are just as dangerous,” Noem said. “They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years.”The roundtable featured rightwing social media journalists such as Andy Ngo, Nick Sortor, Katie Daviscourt and others who cover leftwing protests.Read the full storyUS shutdown deadlock deepens as senators reject competing billsThe deadlock over ending the US government shutdown deepened on Wednesday, with senators once again rejecting competing bills to restart funding as Democrats and Republicans remain dug in on their demands for reopening federal agencies.The funding lapse has forced offices, national parks and other federal government operations to close or curtail operations, while employees have been furloughed. Signs of strain have mounted in recent days in the parts of the federal government that remained operational, with staffing shortages reported at airports across the US as well as air traffic control centers.Read the full storyIRS to furlough nearly half its workforce due to government shutdownThe Internal Revenue Service will furlough nearly half of its employees – about 34,000 workers – due to the ongoing government shutdown.In a statement on Wednesday, the IRS said that “due to the lapse in appropriations”, it will begin its furlough on 8 October for “everyone except already-identified excepted and exempt employees”.Read the full storyTrump calls for jailing of Chicago mayor and Illinois governor as national guard arrives in cityDonald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers.“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. “Governor Pritzker also!” Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats.Read the full storyEx-FBI director James Comey pleads not guilty on lying to Congress chargeThe former FBI director James Comey pleaded not guilty in court on Wednesday in connection with federal charges that he lied to Congress in 2020.Comey entered the federal courthouse shortly before 10am through a private entrance. He was joined in court by his legal team, as well as his wife and daughter, Maurene, who was fired last month as a federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York. Troy Edwards Jr, Comey’s son-in-law who resigned as a prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia immediately after Comey was indicted, was also seen at the courthouse.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Staffing shortages at US airports are anticipated to cause further disruption to air travelers on Wednesday as effects from the US government shutdown, now in its seventh day, ripple out across the country.

      The US supreme court appeared sympathetic on Wednesday to a challenge brought by a Republican congressman to an Illinois law governing how the state counts mail-in absentee ballots received after election day.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 7 October 2025. More

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      Republican lawmakers praise Trump for Gaza deal as Palestinian Americans remain wary: ‘So much remains unclear’

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      While Republican lawmakers lined up to praise Donald Trump on Wednesday for brokering a tentative deal on the “first phase” of an agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, and win the release of the remaining Israeli hostages, Palestinian American were more wary.“President Trump is the peace president! Finally, the living nightmare the hostages have been forced to endure will end and Americans Itay and Omer can be laid to rest,” Joni Ernst, the Iowa senator wrote on social media, referring to Israeli hostages who died in captivity. The tentative agreement would ensure the return of living Israeli hostages, and the remains of those who have died in Gaza since 7 October 2021.Bernie Moreno, the Ohio senator who introduced a resolution in June calling for Trump to be awarded the Nobel peace prize for bombing nuclear sites in Iran, said the announcement made this a “historic” day, “for the United States, Israel, and peace in the Middle East”.“President Trump has once again delivered on his promise to achieve peace through strength. An incredible feat that will go down in history. NOBEL PEACE PRIZE!” Moreno added.Brian Mast, a Florida representative who once served as a civilian volunteer in the Israeli military, and wore his old Israeli uniform to work in the aftermath of the 7 October 2021 Hamas-led attack, also praised Trump.“President Trump just did what career diplomats never could – he brought the world closer than it’s ever been to peace in Gaza,” Mast, who chairs the House foreign affairs committee, wrote. “This deal only works if Hamas follows through. We don’t trust terrorists, we trust results.”While the US lawmakers did not mention the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the exact terms of the agreement remain unknown, a senior Qatari official said on social media that it also includes the release of Palestinian prisoners and the entry of aid.Still, Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet who won a 2025 Pulitzer prize for his New Yorker essays about Gaza and is now living in Syracuse, New York, expressed trepidation.“Trump officially announces that Hamas and Israel signed off the first phase of ‘Peace Plan.’ To be honest, I do not like the language here,” Abu Toha wrote on social media. “The agreement signed should be emphatically about a permanent ceasefire. No more slaughtering of more Palestinians. It must not take phases to end a genocide. This is not truly anything close to peace! To me, it sounds like a pause of bloodshed for a few days or weeks!”“I’m old enough to remember the first phase of the previous ‘ceasefire deal’ in January this year,” he added.There was caution too from Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian American who leads the Palestine/Israel program at Arab Center Washington DC. “Very likely scenario moving forward,” he wrote on X. “1 Trump gets his Nobel Friday 2 Israel gets it’s captives back Saturday 3 Genocide continues Sunday.”Shibley Telhami, a Palestinian American who is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, scoffed at the idea that Trump deserves to be awarded the Nobel peace prize this week.The agreement Trump announced on Wednesday “would be very welcome, especially if it includes full ceasefire and flood of badly needed Gaza aid”, Telhami wrote. “But so much remains unclear, even about first phase, including point of Israeli withdrawal. Key will be measures agreed to assure that first phase doesn’t become last phase.”“While ending carnage is badly needed, Keep in mind: Gaza is obliterated, 10% of its population killed or wounded, possibly more, with overwhelming majority rendered homeless. Could take decades just to build what has been destroyed – and that’s assuming killing has really ended,” the scholar, who was born into a family of Palestinian Christians outside Haifa, added.“Agreement is welcome, but ‘peacemakers’ don’t enable war crimes, including the killing of thousands of children, for most of a year, then expect Nobel prize when a ceasefire is finally achieved,” Telhami observed. “Italy’s PM has been referred to the ICC for much lesser enablement of war crimes.”The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said on Tuesday that she had been reported to the international criminal court for alleged complicity in genocide in connection with support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza. More

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      Senate Republicans vote against check on Trump using deadly force against cartels

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      Senate Republicans voted down legislation Wednesday that would have put a check on Donald Trump’s ability to use deadly military force against drug cartels after Democrats tried to counter the administration’s extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers to destroy vessels in the Caribbean.The vote fell mostly along party lines, 48-51, with two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and the Democrat John Fetterman voting against.It was the first vote in Congress on Trump’s military campaign, which according to the White House has so far destroyed four vessels, killed at least 21 people and stopped narcotics from reaching the US. The war powers resolution would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes on the cartels.The Trump administration has asserted that drug traffickers are armed combatants threatening the United States, creating justification to use military force. But that assertion has been met with some unease on Capitol Hill.Some Republicans are asking the White House for more clarification on its legal justification and specifics on how the strikes are conducted, while Democrats insist they are violations of US and international law. It’s a clash that could redefine how the world’s most powerful military uses lethal force and set the tone for future global conflict.The White House had indicated Trump would veto the legislation, and even though the Senate vote failed, it gave lawmakers an opportunity to go on the record with their objections to Trump’s declaration that the US is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels.“It sends a message when a significant number of legislators say: ‘Hey, this is a bad idea,’” said the senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who pushed the resolution alongside Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California.Wednesday’s vote was brought under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was intended to reassert congressional power over the declaration of war.“Congress must not allow the executive branch to become judge, jury and executioner,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has long pushed for greater congressional oversight of war powers, said during a floor speech.Paul was the only Republican to publicly speak in favor of the resolution before the vote, but a number of Republican senators have questioned the strikes on vessels and said they are not receiving enough information from the administration.The senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, acknowledged “there may be some concern” in the Republican conference about the strikes. However, Republican leaders stridently argued against the resolution on the Senate floor Wednesday, calling it a political ploy from Democrats.“People were attacking our country by bringing in poisonous substances to deposit into our country that would have killed Americans,” said the senator Jim Risch, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. “Fortunately most of those drugs are now at the bottom of the ocean.”Risch thanked Trump for his actions and added that he hoped the military strikes would continue.Members of the Senate armed services committee received a classified briefing last week on the strikes, and Cramer said he was “comfortable with at least the plausibility of their legal argument”. But, he added, no one representing intelligence agencies or the military command structure for Central and South America was present for the briefing.“I’d be more comfortable defending the administration if they shared the information,” he said.Kaine also said the briefing did not include any information on why the military chose to destroy the vessels rather than interdict them or get into the specifics of how the military was so confident the vessels were carrying drugs.“Maybe they were engaged in human trafficking, or maybe it was the wrong ship,” Schiff said. “We just have little or no information about who was onboard these ships or what intelligence was used or what the rationale was and how certain we could be that everyone on that ship deserved to die.”The Democrats also said the administration has told them it is adding cartels to a list of organizations deemed “narco-terrorists” that are targets for military strikes, but it has not shown the lawmakers a complete list.“The slow erosion of congressional oversight is not an abstract debate about process,” the senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said in a floor speech. “It is a real and present threat to our democracy.”The secretary of state Marco Rubio visited the Republican conference for lunch Wednesday to emphasize to senators that they should vote against the legislation. He told the senators that the administration was treating cartels like governmental entities because they had seized control of large portions of some Caribbean nations, according to the senator John Hoeven of North Dakota.Rubio told reporters at the Capitol: “These drug-trafficking organizations are a direct threat to the safety and security of the United States to unleash violence and criminality on our streets, fueled by the drugs and the drug profits that they make. … And the president, as the commander in chief, has an obligation to keep our country safe.”Still, Democrats said the recent buildup of US maritime forces in the Caribbean was a sign of shifting US priorities and tactics that could have grave repercussions. They worried that further military strikes could set off a conflict with Venezuela and argued that Congress should be actively deliberating whenever American troops are sent to war.Schiff said, “This is the kind of thing that leads a country, unexpectedly and unintentionally, into war.” More

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      Kristi Noem compares antifa to MS-13, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State

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      The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Wednesday compared antifa to MS-13, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State, calling the loosely affiliated network of antifascist street activists “just as dangerous” as designated terrorist organizations during a White House roundtable discussion.“They are just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA [Tren de Aragua], as Isis, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them, they are just as dangerous,” Noem said. “They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years.”The roundtable featured rightwing social media journalists such as Andy Ngo, Nick Sortor, Katie Daviscourt and others who cover leftwing protests.Some of the groups Noem cited – Hamas, Hezbollah and Isis – are formally designated terrorist organizations that control territory, operate military wings, maintain command structures and have carried out mass casualty attacks including bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.Extremism experts have long described antifa, by contrast, as having no centralized leadership, formal membership or organizational structure, and it has generally been described by federal law enforcement as a decentralized movement of activists who engage in protest activity, some of which has included property destruction and street violence.The roundtable comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order in September designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization”.Days before the announcement, Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader who was convicted and then pardoned for his role on January 6, posted on X: “Who’s ready to go ANTIFA hunting? Because I know a few guys.”During Wednesday’s roundtable, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, sat beside Trump and repeated his condemnations of antifa. “This is not activism, it’s anarchy,” she said. “We can’t and we will not let masked terrorists burn our buildings, attack our law enforcement and intimidate our communities.”Trump also listed examples of attacks against federal agents which he has attributed to antifa, and suggested that the man charged with shooting Charlie Kirk was a member of the group. Law enforcement officials have not established a link between Tyler Robinson and any specific group.“The epidemic of leftwing violence and antifa-inspired terror has been escalating for nearly a decade,” Trump said.All of the witnesses who spoke during the roundtable were conservative influencers or partisan rightwing journalists, who all claimed that antifa was a terror organization without presenting any evidence. More

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      IRS to furlough nearly half its workforce due to government shutdown

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      The Internal Revenue Service said it will furlough nearly half of its employees – about 34,000 workers – due to the government shutdown, making it significantly harder for US taxpayers to receive assistance.In a statement on Wednesday, the IRS said that “due to the lapse in appropriations”, it would begin its furlough on 8 October for “everyone except already-identified excepted and exempt employees”.“Employee who are not exempt or excepted are furloughed and placed in a non-pay and non-duty status until further notice; however, all employees should plan to report to work for their next tour of duty,” the IRS said, adding that employees would be given up to four hours to close out work requirements and receive formal furlough notification.The furlough will leave only 53.6%, or 39,870 IRS employees, working as the government remains shut down.In the standard furlough letter provided to all affected employees, David Traynor, acting IRS human capital officer, confirmed that furloughed employees cannot work and will not be paid during the shutdown.The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees, condemned the decision, with its president, Doreen Greenwald, saying on Wednesday: “Due to the government shutdown the American people lost access to many vital services provided by the IRS.”The statement continued: “Expect increased wait times, backlogs and delays implementing tax law changes as the shutdown continues. Taxpayers around the country will now have a much harder time getting the assistance they need, just as they get ready to file their extension returns due next week.”The IRS’s decision to furlough its employees comes a day after a White House memo suggested that furloughed workers may not receive back pay, despite the 2019 law Trump signed during his first term, during the last government shutdown; the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 (Gefta) ensures government workers would be automatically paid after future shutdowns.In his letter, Traynor said that “employees must be compensated on the earliest date possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates”. More

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      NHS could pay 25% more for medicines under plan to end row with drugmakers and Trump

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      Ministers are preparing to raise the amount the NHS pays pharmaceutical firms for medicines by up to 25% after weeks of intensive talks with the Donald Trump administration and drugmakers.Labour has drawn up fresh proposals to end a standoff with the industry over drug pricing, including changing the cost-effectiveness thresholds under which new medications are assessed for use on the NHS, according to industry sources.The row has been cited as one of the reasons why big companies in the sector, including MSD (known as Merck in the US) and AstraZeneca, have cancelled or paused investments in the UK in recent weeks, while ramping up investments in the US.The Department of Health and Social Care is in a standoff with the Treasury and No 10 on how to fund the deal, with Downing Street resisting pressure to commit new funds for medicines in next month’s budget.The Liberal Democrats immediately criticised the move, first reported by Politico, asking how much it would cost and whether it would lead to cuts elsewhere in the NHS.The science secretary, Patrick Vallance, has publicly acknowledged that the UK’s spending on new medicines needs to rise from 9% of overall NHS spend, which is below drug spending in the US and many other European countries.The main element of the plan is thought to include raising the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) cost-effectiveness threshold by 25%, which has been unchanged since 1999. Under current rules, Nice considers a medicine costing between £20,000 and £30,000 for every extra year of good-quality life it provides a patient to represent good value for money for the NHS.The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry on Tuesday reiterated its call for “urgent action” on drug pricing, saying the Nice threshold should be increased as soon as possible in line with inflation to between £40,000 and £50,000, and index-linked thereafter. Making this change would, over time, lead to a greater share of the NHS budget being allocated to medicines, and additional funding would be needed to support this.In talks over the summer, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, proposed a deal that would save the pharmaceutical industry £1bn over three years, with billions more promised over the coming decade.But the industry argued that it was forecast to make repayments totalling £13.5bn over the same period and has been demanding about £2.5bn a year extra.A government source said ministers were prepared to spend more on medicines as they increasingly became more ​innovative and preventive. They cited the example of weight loss injections – which are forecast to save the NHS billions of pounds in treating obesity and associated health problems – and trials for cancer-preventing vaccines.The patient-led campaign group Just Treatment called it “deeply troubling news for patients and the NHS”, adding: “We are at risk of importing America’s disastrous drug pricing crisis.” It called on the government to “take steps to establish a system for developing and manufacturing medicines that puts patients first”.The NHS spent £20.6bn on medicines and medical devices in 2023-24, up from £19.2bn the year before.Trump has put pressure on pharma companies to lower their drug prices in the US and increase them elsewhere, accusing other countries of “freeloading” on high US prices. Nearly two weeks ago, he threatened to impose 100% tariffs on pharmaceutical imports from 1 October to ramp up the pressure, although these did not materialise.In response to pressure from Trump, Pfizer and several other US and European companies, including the UK’s biggest drugmaker, AstraZeneca, have started to cut their prices in the US and to sell directly to patients to cut out costly middlemen.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn return for reducing its prices by up to 85%, Pfizer won a three-year reprieve from tariffs last week, which was seen as a bellwether for the rest of the sector.Last week, Varun Chandra, Starmer’s main business adviser, flew to Washington DC for talks with senior US officials and drug companies, the latest in a series of visits to try to hammer out a deal on pricing and tariffs.A UK government spokesperson said: “We’ve secured a landmark economic partnership with the US that includes working together on pharmaceutical exports from the UK whilst improving conditions for pharmaceutical companies here.“We’re now in advanced discussions with the US administration to secure the best outcome for the UK, reflecting our strong relationship and the opportunities from close partnership with our pharmaceutical industry.”However, the Lib Dem health and social care spokesperson, Helen Morgan, said: “It beggars belief that the government is bending to a bullying US president having told patients for years that life-saving new drugs are unaffordable.“Ministers must come clean about how much this move will cost and whether it will be funded by cuts elsewhere in the NHS. They should also lay their plans before parliament without delay so they can be properly scrutinised. It increasingly feels like this government puts the whims of Trump before everything else – even our precious NHS.”The pharma sector’s negotiations with the UK government over drug pricing under a voluntary scheme broke down without an agreement in late August. Since then, MSD has abandoned plans for a £1bn research centre in London and AstraZeneca and New York-based Eli Lilly have paused projects, taking total pharma investments that are on hold or cancelled to nearly £2bn since the start of this year.One industry source said: “We are relieved to see a recognisable change in sentiment and language from August.” More

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      US shutdown deadlock deepens as senators reject competing bills

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      The deadlock over ending the US government shutdown deepened on Wednesday, with senators once again rejecting competing bills to restart funding as Democrats and Republicans remain dug in on their demands for reopening federal agencies.The funding lapse has forced offices, national parks and other federal government operations to close or curtail operations, while employees have been furloughed. Signs of strain have mounted in recent days in the parts of the federal government that remained operational, with staffing shortages reported at airports across the US as well as air traffic control centers. Further disruptions may come next week, when US military personnel and other federal workers who remain on the job will not receive paychecks, unless the government reopens.When the Senate met on Wednesday afternoon, it became clear that sentiment had not shifted in the eight days since the shutdown began. For the sixth time, Democratic and Republican proposals to restart funding both failed to receive enough support to advance, and no senators changed their votes from recent days.Democrats are demanding that any bill to fund the government be paired with an array of healthcare-centered provisions, including an extension of premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans. Those expire at the end of the year, and costs are set to rise for the plans’ roughly 20 million enrollees if they are not renewed.Donald Trump has sought to pressure the Democrats to accept the GOP’s proposal, which would only extend funding through 21 November. On Tuesday, the White House office of management and budget released a memo arguing that federal workers were not entitled to back pay, despite a 2019 law saying they should be.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, poured cold water on that prospect at a press conference the following day, saying: “I think it is statutory law that federal employees be paid. And that’s my position. I think they should be.”Both parties otherwise remained unmoved in their demands. The House of Representatives passed the GOP’s bill on a near party-line vote last month, and Johnson has kept the chamber out of session ever since in a bid to force Senate Democrats to approve it.At his press conference, the speaker alleged that top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer was opposing the Republican bill out of fear from a primary challenge by the “communists” in his party.“They are worried about the Marxist flank in their Democrat party,” Johnson said.“He’s terrified that he’s going to get a challenge from his far left. I’ve noted that Chuck Schumer is a very far-left politician, but he is not far enough left for the communists, and they’re coming for him, and so he has to put up his dukes and show a fight.”In a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer once again faulted Republicans for refusing to negotiate on the Democrats’ healthcare demands. The Senate’s majority leader John Thune has said he will discuss the ACA tax credit issue, but only when government funding is restored.“We can do both: fix healthcare and reopen the government. This is not an either-or thing, which Republicans are making it. The American people don’t like it,” Schumer said.While both parties’s rank-and-file lawmakers have appeared united around their leaders’ strategies, the GOP suffered a high-profile defection on Monday when far-right lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene backed negotiations over the tax credits. However in the days since, no other Republicans have publicly joined her.Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican congresswoman representing a swing district, has received bipartisan support for legislation that would extend the credits for a year, and is viewed a potential compromise in the funding standoff.At a press conference on Tuesday, top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries called the idea a “nonstarter”.“It was introduced by the same people who just permanently extended massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors,” Jeffries said, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Republicans passed this year without Democratic votes. More

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      Why Tony Blair just can’t kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East | Oliver Eagleton

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      “There are two types of politician,” Tony Blair observed in 2012. “Reality creators and reality managers.” While postwar politics was generally a matter of steady management, he claimed, the emerging order called for more creativity, “both in the economy and foreign policy”. Only a particular type of visionary leader was fit for the task.More than a decade later, Blair has now joined forces with the pre-eminent reality-creator, Donald Trump, to draft a hallucinatory 20-point plan for Gaza. It aims to turn the devastated Strip into what seems to resemble a colonial protectorate: cleansed of armed conflict, buzzing with development projects and a “special economic zone” through which foreign capital can flow, and overseen by an international “board of peace” with Trump himself as chair.The authors of the programme have not explained how they intend to impose it on a resistant population, or how they will persuade Hamas to disarm and concede defeat. So there is a high likelihood that the Blair-Trump fantasy will remain just that. Whatever its fortunes, though, it is a clear reflection of our historical moment, representing the most recent mutation of an imperial worldview that has already left a trail of destruction across the Middle East.For Blair, “the economy and foreign policy” have long been entwined. His military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan tried to spread the virtues of the market to supposedly backward nations. The privatisation of resources created new investment opportunities, while a wide range of profiteers, from weapons dealers to security contractors, made a killing off the wars themselves.Upon leaving office in 2007, Blair immediately took up a post as Middle East envoy for the so-called Quartet: the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia. His work in Palestine displayed the same unerring faith in free enterprise. He proposed a series of “industrial parks” to attract foreign investment, advocated eccentric agribusiness and tourism schemes, and promoted other ventures that raised questions about possible conflicts of interest: while being paid £2m per year as a JP Morgan adviser, for example, he was accused of using his Quartet role to advance the interests of JP Morgan clients. (Blair denied the claims, insisting he did not know about the links between the bank he worked for and the companies it served.)As envoy, Blair often bypassed or rejected political solutions – fighting vigorously against Palestinian attempts to win statehood at the UN – and instead treated economics as the route to progress. His diplomatic activities seemed to be based on the notion that peace would naturally follow prosperity. If securing the latter was the task of the intrepid statesman, then strong ties to the business sector could perhaps be framed as an asset.Yet Blair’s tenure in the Middle East brought no diminution of the conflict. In 2012, a senior Palestinian official gave a succinct assessment of his record: “Useless, useless, useless.” Still, undeterred by failure and fond of dramatic political comebacks, the former prime minister now appears to be seeking to apply the same logic to Gaza. Since the early months of the war, he has reportedly been crafting his plan for the “day after”.Staff from his thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), participated in a project that appeared to endorse ethnic cleansing in the territory and outlined what could be built atop its mass graves: a “Trump riviera”, an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone”, “regional datacentres”. Although Blair’s organisation claimed it had no meaningful involvement in the plan, and rejected the idea of displacing Palestinians, there are a number of continuities with his own blueprint, details of which were soon leaked to the press.Drawn up with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the 21-page document suggests reconstructing Gaza through “public-private partnerships”, forged by a “commercially driven authority, led by business professionals and tasked with generating investable projects with real financial returns”. Hamas would be demobilised and a small unelected executive would be installed. This would include Blair himself in a prominent role, plus “leading international figures with executive and financial expertise” and “at least one qualified Palestinian representative (potentially from the business or security sector)”. An international stabilisation force would meanwhile put down “threats to public order”.View image in fullscreenBlair met Kushner and Trump in the White House on 27 August and his proposals got a warm welcome from the president. They have since been refined and repackaged as the Trump “peace plan”. As with previous versions of the initiative, the emphasis is on creating a Gaza that is “conducive to attracting investment”, and in which Israel will continue to reign supreme. Blair is primed to take charge of governing the Strip until some unspecified future point when day-to-day administration may be returned to a “reformed” Palestinian Authority.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe practical issues are glaring. Which states would be irresponsible enough to send troops to serve this novel dictatorship? How can it hope to sustain itself with no mandate nor legitimacy? Even more striking, however, is the extent to which the plan signals the overlap between Blair’s ethos and Trump’s.It is not unreasonable to suggest that Blair might see a business opportunity beneath the rubble of Gaza. To figure out who may benefit, we can look at his network of paymasters. Since 2021, Larry Ellison, founder of the tech company Oracle, has donated or pledged £257m to the TBI. The thinktank has, in turn, transformed into what one commentator has called an “Oracle dealership”: promoting the company’s software around the globe, including in impoverished countries where it has been criticised for potentially “trapping” and “indebting” users. Ellison is also a prominent supporter of Israel who has given millions to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and, according to Haaretz, once offered Benjamin Netanyahu a seat on the Oracle board. Were Blair to rule over Gaza – perhaps establishing “regional datacentres” in line with the TBI-linked plan – it is possible that Ellison could wield major influence.The TBI has also received huge sums from the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, while Blair has been given a lucrative advisory contract by the UAE state-owned investment firm Mubadala. All three states have readily endorsed the plan for Gaza. Once the besieged enclave is opened for investment, they may well be first in line. Blair’s work for these petro-monarchies tallies with his involvement in the fossil fuel industry, having taken cash from a BP-led consortium, the oil company PetroSaudi and the South Korean UI Energy Corporation, which has interests in the Middle East. Given that Israel has recently granted new licences to explore for oil and gas off the Mediterranean coast, such connections could prove significant later down the line.In one sense, then, this “peace plan” could simply be read as an extension of Blair’s belief in market-led development. Yet this chapter in the annals of colonialism also has a uniquely Trumpian twist. Visions of a new world order that underpinned earlier regime-change projects are gone. Here politics is reduced to dealmaking, grand strategy to crude self-interest. The fusion of public power and private profit is complete. Blair may be creating new realities, but few would want to inhabit them.

      Oliver Eagleton is an associate editor at the New Left Review and author of The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right

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