Americans are beginning to worry about their future amid a shrinking economy, warnings of empty shelves – and the president’s failed promises

He says it’s the “best 100-day start of any president in history�, but you can file that along with his boast about crowd sizes and his claim to have won the 2020 election. In truth, the first three months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been calamitous on almost every measure. The single biggest achievement of those 100 days has been to serve as a warning of the perils of nationalist populism, which is effective in winning votes but disastrous when translated into reality. That warning applies across the democratic world – and is especially timely in Britain.

Start with the numbers that matter most to Trump himself. A slew of polls appeared this week, but they all told the same story: that Trump’s approval ratings have collapsed, falling to the lowest level for a newly installed president in the postwar era. He has now edged ahead of his only rival for that title: himself. The previous low watermark for a president three months in was set by one Donald Trump in 2017.

Can Farage’s party now claim to be the official opposition? And what lessons should Labour and the Tories learn after a chastening night?

The local elections results tell us one clear thing: the ‘two main parties’ offer a change that actually changes nothing – and voters know it

It’s been a funny old decade. Just over 10 years ago, the comedian Russell Brand was lionised in some quarters for appearing on a Question Time panel with Nigel Farage, and producing what was widely, if bafflingly, interpreted as a brilliant zinger about the then Ukip leader. “He is a pound-shop Enoch Powell,� honked Brand, “and we gotta watch him.� Well now. Perhaps it takes someone who needs to be watched to know someone who needs to be watched. Mr Brand returned to the UK this week from the Florida base of his conspiracist Christian media outlet, appearing in court today on rape and sexual assault charges. He denies them.

Anyway: the local elections, where the big thing that people said could never happen seems to be happening. Farage now leads Reform UK, which even last year used to be bundled in the “other� category by political pollsters – now its standalone poll results frequently top the charts, with the eponymous two parties of The Two-Party System doing not a whole lot better than simply wailing that it isn’t supposed to be this way. In terms of last night’s byelection, Reform has taken Runcorn and Helsby, one of Labour’s safest seats in the general election you might dimly recall it won by a massive landslide 10 months ago.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

The appeal court verdict makes clear these anti-protest laws should never have existed. Labour must now reflect on what sort of democracy it wants us to be

• Akiko Hart is the director of the human rights organisation Liberty

When we beat the Conservative government over its anti-democratic protest laws in court last year, we thought that would be the end of the story. Judges in the high court had made it very clear that laws that gave the police almost unlimited powers to crack down on any protest that caused “more than minor� disruption were unlawful. It ordered that the laws should be scrapped. We celebrated. Given that the incoming Labour government had voted down these very same laws a year earlier, we believed that protest would be taken out of the culture wars arena and put back into the sacred space of fundamental rights.

Yet Labour dragged us back to court, in a misguided attempt to be seen to look tough on public order. And now today, on a day of much Labour soul-searching, we’ve won again. A unanimous court of appeal victory that, alongside chastening election results, must now trigger a total Labour rethink on how we treat protesters in this country.

Akiko Hart is the director of the human rights organisation Liberty

US foreign policy is turning it into a global pariah – yet Labour’s strike on the Houthis represents a new level of support

• Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University

This week’s RAF attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen was the first to be approved by the Labour government. It joined a major US military operation that started in March and has involved 45 days of airstrikes. Operation Rough Rider is a demonstration by the Trump administration that it will prosecute a vigorous war that is more intense than under Joe Biden, and has, according to the US, already seen more than 1,000 targets hit.

The RAF operation reportedly targeted a plant manufacturing armed drones used in Houthi attacks on shipping transiting the Red Sea, and demonstrated that Keir Starmer has decided to be Donald Trump’s closest military ally.

Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University

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

I’ve learned that at 40, you can set a course. If you’re not there by 50, there’s still time. By 60 the die is cast, and you know it

• David Beckham at 50: his gorgeous, outrageous life in 50 pictures

Happy birthday, David Beckham. Earlier this year, Beckham, still impressively bronzed, toned and sculpted, was modelling his own line of underwear. Today, he turns 50. It would be fair to say he looks good for it.

But how does it feel to be 50? If memory serves – and it doesn’t, really; it was a while ago now – 50 is not so much a landmark age as a whistle stop between 40 and 60. At least, that’s how it seems with hindsight. At 40, there are still big questions to answer – “When do I actually become an adult?� being chief among them. By 50, you begin to understand that adulthood is no longer a desirable goal – you’ve already passed through the era when it would have counted for something.

Tim Dowling writes a regular column for the Guardian

Power outages, the needs of vulnerable people and a general descent into dystopia are all reasons to resist banks’ dream of a cashless society

Opening my wallet, I’m down to my last five dollars. Dog-eared leftovers from a foreign holiday that I keep forgetting to take to the bank, they have somehow ended up being the only physical money I always carry, now there are so few places to use the British folding stuff.

Our village pub was for years a cash-only enterprise, possibly as a means of deterring customers from outside the village (long, gloriously eccentric story), and I keep a few pound coins rattling around the car for shopping trolleys. But using actual money feels mildly eccentric in most places now, or even faintly shady: increasingly cafes and bars are adopting “no cash� rules upfront to save the hassle of carting their takings to some faraway bank branch. Half of us have recently been somewhere that either didn’t accept cash or positively discouraged it, according to a survey by the ATM network Link. But since most people long ago switched to tapping a card reader, what’s the problem?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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

I support the Climate Paradox report from the Tony Blair Institute, but his foreword risks compromising what must be achieved

• David King was chief scientific adviser to the UK government under Tony Blair, and is founder and chair of the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group

I have always been proud of the progress the UK made between 2003 and 2007 in formulating a credible response to the climate change. Under Tony Blair’s leadership, the UK placed climate at the heart of global diplomacy. At the time, our understanding was based largely on scientific projections and models. Today, the crisis is in full view – faster and more devastating than many imagined. The world is now experiencing the daily impacts of climate breakdown, and our responses must reflect this escalating emergency. We need measured, strategic, sustained and, above all, urgent interventions to ensure a manageable future for humanity.

That is why I support much of the thrust of The Climate Paradox report from the Tony Blair Institute. It rightly recognised that the era of endless summits and slogans must give way to one of delivery and impact. But the comments I gave were prior to seeing the foreword, and while there has been some clear misinterpretation from elements of the media, I do believe it has removed the balance of the report in ways that risk undermining what still can – and must – be achieved.

The band’s rightwing critics are now cancel culture advocates, while defenders demand limitless free speech

• Dorian Lynskey is the author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute

Earlier this year, the Northern Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap appeared to be entering their respectable phase. Their self-titled film, a raucous semi-fictionalised biopic directed by Rich Peppiatt, won a Bafta for outstanding British debut, while Kemi Badenoch’s attempt to block a grant awarded by the British Phonographic Industry was overturned in court. As the film illustrates, Kneecap were accustomed to being denounced by unionist MPs but both sides reaped useful publicity. “We have a very dysfunctional, symbiotic relationship,� admitted rapper Naoise Ó Cairealláin.

This process was dramatically derailed last week when Kneecap touched the third rail of Gaza and accused Israel of genocide on stage at Coachella festival in California. Cue fury from Fox News, calls for their visas to be revoked and, according to their manager, death threats. The British press combed through old videos and found clips that appear to show two explosive onstage pronouncements from Kneecap’s November 2023 UK tour: “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah� and “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.�

Dorian Lynskey is a writer, podcaster and author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute and The Ministry of Truth

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

The politics of aid may be toxic, but the UK must realise that supporting the world’s poorest people is both a moral and pragmatic thing to do

• David Miliband is president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee

In more than 10 years working in the aid sector, I have seen extraordinary innovations, from childhood education programmes for refugee children, to AI-driven flood warnings that alert farmers in some of the most vulnerable places on earth. Many of the initiatives I’ve seen are remarkably impactful and deliver serious value for money: it costs the International Rescue Committee (IRC) just £3 ($4) to deliver a life-saving vaccine dose in the midst of a conflict in east Africa, for example.

The politics surrounding international aid, however, are increasingly toxic. The UK’s Department for International Development and now the US equivalent, USAID, have been dismantled, despite the British public being more than twice as likely to say that aid has a positive rather than negative impact. Denmark has stuck to the UN target of spending 0.7% of its national income on overseas development, yet it is an exception rather than a norm among European nations. The UK government now needs to answer a number of hard questions about aid: what is it for, how should it be delivered, and who should pay for it?

David Miliband is president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee

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

Jolly humouring and kind words guarantee nothing from this White House. Right now Walmart has more clout than the UK

It’s not funny, of course – livelihoods if not actual lives depend on reaching a workable accord. But the news that President Trump has probably stiffed the UK into a second- or third-tier boarding group for trade talks, behind South Korea and Japan, triggers at least a snort of recognition for anyone who has experienced versions of that dynamic. The phrase “British negotiators are hopeful� followed almost immediately by use of the word “disappointed� in heavy rotation takes you, with grim amusement, back to every toxic relationship in which you have played Britain to someone else’s America.

We are talking, of course, about the wisdom or otherwise of appeasing a man many think of as a tyrant, and the main takeaway from the Guardian’s story on Tuesday is that no matter how the UK pretzels itself to fit Donald Trump’s requirements, none of it will make any difference. Or rather what difference it makes, beyond the immediate relief enjoyed before the flattery wears off, is likely to be negative. It’s a rule of extortion that demands will increase with each capitulation, as Columbia University is finding out to its cost. (After caving to Trump’s demands last month in return for the restoration of $400m in federal funding, the university has not, in fact, had its funding restored. Instead Trump officials have told Columbia its concessions only represent the “first step�.)

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

The broadcaster behaves like Starmer’s government: suppress the left, cave to your critics, and undermine your own survival

It’s no longer even pretending. Last week, the BBC, already the UK’s most prolific censor, instructed the presenter Evan Davis to drop the podcast he hosted in his own time about heat pumps. It was a gentle, wry look at the machines, with no obvious political content. But the BBC, Davis says, saw it as “steering into areas of public controversy�. It should cease forthwith.

So are BBC presenters banned from saying anything controversial? Far from it. Take an article published earlier this year by Justin Webb in the Times. It praised the “political genius� of Donald Trump, suggested that Democrats are now seen as the extremists, and claimed that Trump is widely regarded as “making [America] normal again�. The BBC was fine with that, and complaints about it were rejected.

An update was reversed that made the chatbot too ‘sycophantic’: always remember that it’s designed not to answer your question, but to give you the answer you wanted

Nobody likes a suck-up. Too much deference and praise puts off all of us (with one notable presidential exception). We quickly learn as children that hard, honest truths can build respect among our peers. It’s a cornerstone of human interaction and of our emotional intelligence, something we swiftly understand and put into action.

ChatGPT, though, hasn’t been so sure lately. The updated model that underpins the AI chatbot and helps inform its answers was rolled out this week – and has quickly been rolled back after users questioned why the interactions were so obsequious. The chatbot was cheering on and validating people even as they suggested they expressed hatred for others. “Seriously, good for you for standing up for yourself and taking control of your own life,� it reportedly said, in response to one user who claimed they had stopped taking their medication and had left their family, who they said were responsible for radio signals coming through the walls.

Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App

The former PM has form when it comes to pushing corporate interests and meeting populists halfway

When Tony Blair came out this week to say current net zero policies were “doomed to fail�, there was something familiar in his arguments: phasing out fossil fuels wouldn’t work because people perceived it as expensive, arduous and not their problem. Stop banging on about renewables; won’t someone think of the things we don’t know how to do, like carbon capture and such wizardry as is still locked in tech bros’ imaginations? Basically, net zero had lost the room, according to the former prime minister. And if anyone knows where the room is, and how to get it back, it must be him.

The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) issued a statement on Wednesday saying that, in fact, it believes the government’s net zero policy is “the right one�. But this is a familiar trajectory for the former prime minister. He said something similar about “woke�, which sadly lost the room in 2022. “Plant Labour’s feet clearly near the centre of gravity of the British people,� Blair advised Starmer. “[They] want fair treatment for all and an end to prejudice, but distrust and dislike the ‘cancel culture’, ‘woke’ mentality.� What exactly does “woke� mean, if not an end to prejudice? Just how effective is cancel culture if Blair himself could work as a lobbyist for a Saudi oil firm in 2016, advise the government of Kazakhstan after it brutally suppressed public protests in 2011, and yet still walk among us as the voice of the progressive left? Memo to my fellow cancellers: we are bad at this.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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

Rodrigo Nunes, a senior lecturer in political theory, explains how despite harsh economic conditions creating fertile ground for ‘entrepreneur culture’, resistance has sprung up among delivery drivers

On 1 April, Brazilian couriers organised a day of action in which thousands of workers engaged in pickets and protests in at least 60 cities, with places such as São Paulo reporting a sharp drop in deliveries. While companies are yet to respond to the demands for better pay and conditions, the mobilisation was a clear step-up for a process of national organisation that began in 2020.

Between 2016 and 2021, the number of people working for delivery apps in Brazil rose by 979.8%, with the number of delivery and passenger drivers in the sector now around 1.4 million. This boom coincides with the period in which the country finally felt the effects of the post-2008 recession. Economic decline, corruption and the impeachment of the then president, Dilma Rousseff, ended 13 years of successful left-leaning governments by the Workers’ party (PT). In the years that followed, a series of austerity measures and labour reforms were put in place, the political spectrum moved steadily to the right and the far-right libertarian politician Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018.

Thomas Graham, a journalist based in Mexico City, explains how the leftwing governing party, Morena, has promoted social justice but diluted principle with pragmatism

If you were to summarise the 2024 election year, you might say: grim for incumbents, good for the far right. Yet Mexico bucked both trends. Its governing party, Morena, not only retained the presidency but – along with its partners in the Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition – gained a two-thirds supermajority in the chamber of deputies, the lower house, while the far right failed to even run a candidate. That a self-described leftwing party could have such success by fixing on Mexico’s chasmic inequality has drawn attention from hopeful progressives worldwide. But Morena’s programme has some not-so-progressive elements too. It is not necessarily one others could – or would want to – copy in its entirety.

Morena first notched a historic result in 2018, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an old face of the left who ran for president twice before founding the party, won a record 55% of the vote during the general elections. Mexico’s constitution limits presidents to a single term. But this time, Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of López Obrador’s, won 60% of the vote. Her victory was reminiscent of the heyday of Latin America’s “pink tide�, when leftist leaders like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales were reelected for a second term with more votes than their initial victories.

Professor Alexandra Bitušíková explains how face-to-face local activism was crucial in bringing down Marian Kotleba, leader of the People’s Party Our Slovakia

Having grown up in Banská Bystrica in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, I vividly remember standing in the city’s historic square a few days after 17 November 1989, the start of the Velvet Revolution, holding candles in solidarity with the students protesting in Prague. Never would I have imagined that 35 years later, I would be speaking at a rally in the same square, this time urging the preservation of democracy.

Back then, when I was a young social anthropology academic at our local university, activism was far from my mind. But everything changed for me in 2013 when Marian Kotleba, leader of the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia, was elected as regional governor. The shock was enormous. No one I knew had believed that such an outcome was possible, yet it happened. Realising the dangers this posed, many like-minded individuals knew we couldn’t stand by idly.

Labour peer Margaret Hodge shares how the party tackled the rise of the British National party in Barking before the 2010 general election

Once again, the far right is advancing across Europe, emboldened by the outcome of the 2024 presidential election and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. To turn back extremism masquerading as populism, I believe there are lessons we can learn from our battle against the extreme right in Barking in 2010, when we crushed the BNP.

The context is different. There was little social media before 2010; we hadn’t been through a pandemic; there was no major war in Europe and no serious challenge to a rules-based international order.

My bungee-jumping and skydiving days are over because I can’t shake the visceral memory of learning that I’m not invincible

I’d just completed the spectacular four-day Inca Trail hike to Machu Picchu and, drunk on nature, was feeling dangerously invincible. Fresh Peruvian air still rejuvenated my lungs and the brain fog induced by my daily smartphone addiction hadn’t yet crept back in.

The disastrous events that followed began once I turned my phone back on. Responding to a Twitter solicitation for Peru recommendations, a man I’d never met posted: “Go mountain biking down a volcano in Arequipa!�

Gary Nunn is a freelance journalist and author

Working in finance, I was unhappy and surrounded by greed. Then I embraced my passion for cooking, produce and nature

• Franco Fubini is the founder and CEO of Natoora

As I wandered out of my New York apartment, the snow compressing on to the sidewalk in that warming dusk light gave my walk to Citarella’s on Third Avenue a rhythmic glow. It was 1999 and Christmas was a few weeks away. In the northern hemisphere, December is the season for vibrant citrus, bitter leaves and pumpkins, yet behind me someone called out: “Where can I find peaches?� I turned around to see an affronted woman standing outside the greengrocer’s. The absurdity of the moment struck me – why would someone crave peaches in the middle of winter? It is just as absurd as sitting by the pool on a blistering summer day and reaching for a warm, woolly jumper.

I was already aware of the issues facing the food system; industrialised farming destroying our soils, the stomach of our planet, opaque supply chains leaving citizens powerless in making the right buying decisions, and the dominance of ultra-processed foods with zero nutritional value in supermarkets, schools and hospitals, to name a few. But this moment underscored our grave disconnect with nature and its seasons. We had normalised the idea that food can and should be eaten any time of the year. I couldn’t escape from this realisation, but little did I know that seemingly innocuous encounter in New York was to change my life for ever.

Franco Fubini is the founder and CEO of Natoora, and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach

The cacophony around me seemed to drown out my daily worries until a writing retreat showed me there was a better way

I’ve lived in South Korea for more than a decade, but it’s only recently that I discovered just how loud it is here. The bing-bong when someone presses the “stop� button on the city bus, and the accompanying sing-songy announcements in Korean, the beeps of riders scanning their transit cards to board or depart; soju-drunk office workers loudly singing off-tune through neighbourhood alleyways; obnoxiously loud K-pop music blaring out of storefronts; and songs that seem to change key at record rates as delivery motorbikes speed out of range.

In reality, I have relied on there being near-constant cacophony around me for the whole of my adult life. Without realising it, background noise became a kind of comfort to me, making me feel less alone. It started after university when I was barely scraping together a living, working jobs I didn’t want to be doing. I would soothe my loneliness and isolation in the evenings by playing endless hours of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit just for the ambient sound – the comfort of Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler bringing criminals of the worst kind to justice.

Krissi Driver is a writer based in South Korea

I couldn’t help but love the woman who brought light back into our lives – and now I feel so lucky to have my big blended family

When my mother died, I didn’t think my stepfather would ever find someone else to love. She met him when visiting New York and he moved to Paris to live with us. He’d always ask: “How’d this gorgeous French-Brazilian woman pick me?� They shared 16 beautiful years together. On the night of her death, he told me he’d “lost 40 years�, the years of them growing old together.

As much as I wanted him to be happy, I never imagined their connection could be replaced, it just seemed too strong. So when, one spring evening over dinner, he said “I went on a date last night� to my little sister and me, my eyes grew wide in shock. I was pleased for him, but devastated for myself. It felt like another era was coming to an end.

Iman M’Fah-Traoré is a writer. She is working on her first book, a memoir

The White House calls it ‘historic’. A more realistic estimate is that while Ukraine is glad to sign, this is not a shift in the big picture

The Trump administration, with its customary rhetorical inflation, has hailed its mineral deal with Ukraine as “historic�. What the world’s most powerful nation says and does matters. But how much? And for how long? This is a government of caprice and chaos. Attempting to connect the data points can be like trying to join up the bug splats on a windscreen. The real issue is that the vehicle is still following the signs for Moscow.

This moment looks like a high because US-Ukraine ties hit such a low, particularly with the Oval Office bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and reports that Washington is willing to recognise annexed Crimea as Russian. Key details of this deal have yet to be finalised in a technical agreement. The idea originated with Kyiv, which saw that economic incentives might be the only way to interest the money-minded US president in its defence. The Trump administration decided the answer was, in essence, to take all the resources without granting the security guarantee that Ukraine had sought. It looked a bit like a protection racket, without ongoing protection.

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

The next challenge for Julia Donaldson’s monster is to get its claws into parents and persuade more of them to read aloud

It is 21 years since Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler published The Gruffalo’s Child, the sequel to their bestselling Gruffalo picture book of five years earlier. While the pair have collaborated on numerous other stories, none is as iconic as the tale of the little brown mouse who outwits a succession of predators. There is no shortage of Gruffalo merchandise. But in an age of franchises and prequels, this author-illustrator partnership clearly decided that less was more.

It is reportedly thanks to her wish to support the National Literacy Trust that Ms Donaldson decided to bring the Gruffalo back after all. The new book will be published next year, and used in an international campaign to promote children’s reading. The depressing findings of a survey released this week, showing a steep decline in the proportion of UK parents who read aloud to their children, make this announcement particularly welcome. Another report, from the National Literacy Trust, found that the proportion of eight- to 18-year-olds who read for pleasure fell last year to a record low of 35%.

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

Sir Tony Blair’s ill-conceived contribution to the climate debate was a political gift to Nigel Farage. But public support for the green transition remains strong

The Climate Change Committee’s latest report on the UK’s response to unprecedented environmental challenges makes for grim reading. Recalling the extreme weather swings of the last few years – which delivered both the wettest 18 months on record and the largest number of wildfires – the report’s authors deplore the current inadequacy of provision to protect the nation against risks which are now a lethal reality. The threat represented by flooding, said the chair of the committee’s adaptation group, Lady Brown, “is not tomorrow’s problem. It’s today’s problem. And if we don’t do something about it, it will become tomorrow’s disaster.�

An assessment so scathing, from such a source, deserved to be at the centre of political discussion ahead of Thursday’s local elections. Instead, Wednesday’s front pages were dominated by a considerably less useful contribution to the climate debate. In a foreword to a report from his eponymous Tony Blair Institute (TBI), Sir Tony Blair suggested that governments should dial down efforts to limit the use of fossil fuels in the short term, or risk alienating voters allegedly put off by the “irrationality� and cost of green policies. Politicians’ focus, he insisted, should shift to investing speculatively in technologies for the future such as carbon capture and storage.

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

The deal with Javier Milei shows how America-first dealmaking is bending global finance to serve authoritarian and extractive ends

It is famed for hard-nosed bargaining with crisis-hit countries, so why did the International Monetary Fund throw a $20bn lifeline to the serial defaulter Argentina – despite alarm on its board? The answer is that the country’s rightwing leader, Javier Milei, is Donald Trump’s “favourite president�. Amid unease over handing a third of the IMF’s global lending to its largest debtor, the deal passed with $12bn upfront. The IMF has long been intellectually compromised – promoting stability while enforcing neoliberal orthodoxy. Under Mr Trump, it is ethically compromised too.

Mr Milei’s bailout marks the second Trump-era rescue for Argentina. In 2018, the fund handed Buenos Aires a record $57bn – but cut it off when its then president, Mauricio Macri, a Trump family friend, was not re-elected. That deal now looks nakedly political. With the US holding an effective board veto, the fund’s independence was always fragile. It’s now completely subordinated. A US takeover of the IMF threatens deeper instability than any Argentinian default.

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

With Labour losing votes to pro-European parties, an intriguing new deep-dive makes clear that the public mood has shifted

It’s nearly nine years now since Britain lost its collective mind.

More than enough time, then, to put the Brexit referendum into perspective. Leavers have moved on to the point where only 11% of British voters still kid themselves that it’s turned out brilliantly. It’s remain politicians who had started to look strangely stuck in the past, still frightened of sounding too pro-European in case they somehow woke the monster. But joyfully – now there’s a word I haven’t typed much lately – it looks like something is finally shifting.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

• Discover and buy more of Ben’s cartoons here
• Order your own print of this cartoon from the Guardian Print Shop

As local elections loom, it’s clear that years of agreeing with the Reform leader have failed to discourage people from voting for him

In the playbook of election strategies, there are two canonical campaigns. Incumbents say things are going in the right direction; don’t let the opposition screw it up! Challengers say everything is screwed up already; it’s time for change!

There is a less orthodox, third option, innovated by the Conservatives in competition with whichever party Nigel Farage happens to be leading: our opponent is right; don’t vote for him.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

The prime minister is apparently pursuing ways to land the 2028 Open for the president. With friends like that, POTUS surely won’t be carrying his own clubs

At what point does realpolitik tip over into nakedly facilitating conflict of interest/corruption? I only ask in the strictest hypothetical terms after reading that Keir Starmer’s government has been exploring whether golf bosses could host the 2028 Open championship at Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort in Ayrshire. Sorry, but no. It’s almost as if the prime minister is compiling material for a seminal 2025 business manual. Call it The Art of the Kneel. Perhaps Starmer could ask the Treasury to “explore� buying a load of Trump meme coins.

According to reports, Donald Trump has frequently mentioned in his phone calls with the prime minister that he’d prefer it if the Open returned to Turnberry. As so often with this particular caller, the reply to this should simply be, “And I’d prefer to be talking to Mickey Mouse, but we’re all making compromises.� Failing that, just go with: “God, you always want MORE, don’t you? Scotland invented the great game of golf. Have you said thank you ONCE?� Unfortunately, the actual reply seems to have been: “Capital idea, Mr President! How can we make that happen?�

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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

From the Canadian elections to universities and civil society, the campaign to turn the tide against anti-liberal nationalists is at last underway

Liberals of all countries, unite! Just as anti-liberal powers outside the west are becoming stronger than ever, the assault on everything we stand for has been joined by the United States. Against this massed onslaught of anti-liberal nationalists we need a determined fightback of liberal internationalists. Canada’s election this week can contribute a strong mounted brigade.

A core insight of liberalism is that, if people are to live together well in conditions of freedom, power always needs to be dispersed, cross-examined and controlled. Faced with the raw, bullying assertion of might, whether from Washington, Moscow or Beijing, we now have to create countervailing concentrations of power. In the long history of liberalism, a free press, the law, labour unions, a business community kept separate from political power, NGOs, truth-seeking institutions such as universities, civil resistance, multilateral organisations and international alliances have all served – alongside multiparty politics and regular free and fair elections – to constrain the men who would be kings.

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

The blue dot of GPS has cut us off from a basic human skill. It’s no wonder mountain rescuers are being called out so often

It does not involve protest or violence, but it might be the quintessential human image of our times: a small group of people in the midst of spectacular natural scenery, drawn there in the certainty that the apps on their phones could somehow get them from A to B to C – but utterly, hopelessly lost.

Two weeks ago, Mountain Rescue England and Wales published figures showing a record number of annual callouts. For the first time, in fact, teams – of overworked volunteers, mostly – had been called out on every day of the year. Between 2019 and 2024, the total number of rescues had increased by 24%, and there was a marked jump among the 18 to 24 age group, among whom callouts almost doubled. Similar trends were evident in data from Scotland: across Britain, there is evidently a mounting problem about the gap between people’s urge to experience wild and open spaces, and their ability to cope when they actually get there.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

This presidency places authoritarian ambition above all – and now the people of Ukraine are paying the price

To see the true face of Donald Trump, look no further than Ukraine. Laid bare in his handling of that issue are not only his myriad weaknesses, but also the danger he poses to his own country and the wider world – to say nothing of the battered people of Ukraine itself.

Don’t be fooled by the mild, vaguely theatrical rebuke Trump issued to Vladimir Putin on Thursday after Moscow unleashed a deadly wave of drone strikes on Kyiv, killing 12 and injuring dozens: “Vladimir, STOP!� Pay attention instead to the fact that, in the nearly 100 days since Trump took office, the US has essentially switched sides in the battle between Putin’s Russia and democratic Ukraine, backing the invaders against the invaded.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the host of the Politics Weekly America podcast

100 days of Trump’s presidency, with Jonathan Freedland and guests. On 30 April, join Jonathan Freedland, Kim Darroch, Devika Bhat and Leslie Vinjamuri as they discuss Trump’s presidency on his 100th day in office, live at Conway Hall London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

By steering Britain’s young people down a positive path, these centres answer a chronic need. Why doesn’t the government protect them?

At next week’s local elections, few will be voting on how their council is run. They will be passing judgment on Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and other national figures. Local democracy no longer thrives in Britain. An opinion poll would be cheaper.

Cut to the humble youth club. I supported a private charity in my old borough of Camden, north London, that was struggling to turn young people, mostly in their teens, away from a life of crime. The local council-run youth club had been forced to close.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Vision and patience are vital if past mistakes are to be avoided, but the rewards for the country could be immeasurable

There is magic in the invention of new towns. Who wouldn’t want to plan out their ideal urban community, like Sim City and its many video game imitators, or Babar the elephant building Celesteville with its palace of work, palace of pleasure, perfect jobs for each citizen and a lake for swimming and sailing? Our king had great fun devising his Poundbury model town. The lucky members of the government’s new towns taskforce in England have been dreaming up a modern generation of new civic places, and are due to unveil their plans in July.

They work in the shadow of the great 1946 New Towns Act, and plans drawn up under a similar committee, chaired by Lord Reith, which led to the building of Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley, Corby and others. In the next waves came the ambitious city of Milton Keynes, Peterborough and others.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The horrifying planning bill, which rips up environmental protections, was drafted with CEOs in mind. We know because Keir Starmer told us

Those of us who try to defend wildlife are horribly familiar with bad laws. But we’ve never seen anything like this. The government’s planning and infrastructure bill is the worst assault on England’s ecosystems in living memory. It erases decades of environmental protections, including legislation we inherited from the EU, which even the Tories promised to uphold.

The rules defending wildlife and habitats from unscrupulous developers are weak enough already, which is partly why, as Labour reminded us in its manifesto, Britain is “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world�. But this bill will make it much, much worse.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

With Rachel Reeves in the US, some clarity is needed: the global economy has been mismanaged and the Federal Reserve does deserve criticism

With his outspokenness about Israel’s outrages, the late pope showed up the hypocrisy of the media and politicians

The deaths of major public figures can provoke the most grotesque outpourings of hypocrisy. So it goes for Pope Francis, now lauded by leaders and media outlets that were complicit in the very evils he condemned. “Pope Francis was a pope for the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten,� said Keir Starmer, a prime minister who stripped the winter fuel payment from many vulnerable pensioners before launching an assault on disability benefits predicted to drive up to 400,000 Britons into poverty. “He promoted … an end to … suffering across the globe,� wrote Joe Biden, enabler of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.

Indeed, the fate of Gaza seemed to preoccupy the pope’s final years. In his last Easter address, he condemned the “death and destruction� and resulting “dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation� – a powerful sermon that hardly any western media outlets covered. Indeed, you will struggle to find much prominent coverage of any of his courageous statements on Gaza, such as: “This is not war. This is terrorism.� In his final published piece, the pope reiterated his support for a Palestinian state, declaring: “Peace-making requires courage, much more so than warfare.�

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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

Readers respond to an article on consumer frustrations with recycling used clothing

Re your article (‘You sold it – now recycle it’: the protesters mailing worn-out clothes to the shops they bought them from, 29 April), a significant percentage of the used-clothing waste stream consists of plastic zips and buttons, nylon ribbons and mile upon mile of polyester sewing thread, which will still be plastic even when it breaks up into microfibre. This is all devastating to wildlife, on land or sea.

Incineration plants are used to dispose of much of this modern clothing trash, but they come with a bad track record. Furthermore, the petrochemical industry saw disinvestment from fossil fuel on the horizon decades ago, so its promoters headed towards every other business that could use it, resulting in a huge move towards plastic packaging and manmade textiles, even though it would lead to industrial-scale pollution.

Readers respond to Emma Beddington’s article that asked why people find the name of the interim pope, Kevin Farrell, funny

In Germany, the name Kevin has become something of a joke (The interim pope is a guy called Kevin. Why do people find that funny?, 28 April). It became very popular in the early 90s, especially among east Germans (particularly in Saxony) and less sophisticated westerners who wanted a supposedly cool name for their sons. Daughters were often named Carmen or Chantal.

So many teachers developed a bias, assuming that these students had an Ossi background and/or working-class parents, and would probably not be academically promising. Nowadays there is the saying “Kevin isn’t a name, it’s a diagnosis�, and “My name is Kevin – so what?� Men change their name in order to get a good job. A pity, really.
Marion Clay
Berlin

Mark Newbury responds to an article about people leaving cities during the pandemic and says he wouldn’t now give up glorious scenery

We chose to move from Tynemouth to a remote valley in the North York Moors (‘I had rose-tinted spectacles’: UK city dwellers on relocating during the pandemic, 25 April). It is a long drive (over country roads) to get anywhere or to do anything. I gave up a secure, well-paid job to go self-employed, extended the mortgage (which would have otherwise been paid within a year), and we live in one of the moors’ coldest spots. A converted chapel is not the easiest home to heat.

At 7am on the day your article was published, I walked across the fields with the dogs, not a soul in sight bar a local farmer (we had a long chat about how the lambing was going) and a 360-degree view of glorious scenery. The thought of moving back to a city? Not a chance.
Mark Newbury
Farndale, North Yorkshire

When Richard Toop played the 840 repetitions of Satie’s Vexations in 1967, the ‘mild stimulant’ he asked for turned out to be anything but, writes Biddy Peppin

To perform Erik Satie’s piano piece Vexations, with its 840 repetitions, is an amazing achievement, but neither Igor Levit nor Ruth Davis was the first to do so in the UK (‘It is trance-like’: pianist Igor Levit performs Erik Satie’s Vexations 840 times, 24 April).

On 10 October 1967, Richard Toop performed it at the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, London. He gave an account of this to Gavin Bryars that was published in Contact magazine in 1983, and later quoted in David Curtis’s 2020 book London’s Arts Labs and the 60s Avant-Garde.

Trump and Crimea | IQ tests | Scottish midges | Dark digestives | Champagne socialism

I wish some journalist would ask Donald Trump: “Mr President, if America were invaded, which states would you surrender to achieve peace?� Of course, their organisation would be barred from all subsequent press conferences, but it would be worth it (Zelenskyy says Ukraine cannot accept US recognition of Crimea as Russian, 24 April).
John Illingworth
Bradford

• The elephant in the room here is that all IQ tests are historically, socially and culturally specific, and hence inevitably reproduce the inequalities embodied in their moment of origin (Maga’s sinister obsession with IQ is leading us towards an inhuman future, 28 April).
Prof Anthea Callen
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

Thousands of doctors who applied to train as GPs are rejected each year due to lack of training posts, says one expert, while Dr David Jeffrey says doctors want more patient contact

In your editorial on the value of face-to-face contact in healthcare (27 April), you say that there are “ongoing difficulties in recruiting enough GPs�. This may be the historic line, but currently, the crisis is not in recruitment but frozen recruitment. In 2024, there was a 44% reduction in jobs available, which is likely to be worse now. The reality is a huge and worsening unemployment crisis for fully qualified GPs, particularly those who have recently completed their (extensive and exhausting) training.

The Royal College of General Practitioners identifies this unemployment crisis, the BMA reports that unemployment is prompting GPs to move abroad, and some GPs remaining in the UK are taking up other work – for example, working as Uber drivers.

The LGBTQ+ rights charity’s former head Ben Summerskill and the parent of a trans-identifying young person respond to coverage of the recent supreme court ruling

Both Gaby Hinsliff, in her typically thoughtful piece (If Britain is now resetting the clock on trans rights, where will that leave us?, 18 April), and your correspondent who says “All sensible, two-way discussion of this topic has been prevented� (Letters, 22 April) highlight the risks that both trans people and many other individuals and organisations face from continuing uncertainty over an important area of public policy.

Sadly, a significant contribution to the prevention of sensible, two-way discussion of this sensitive issue was Stonewall’s 2015 decision to adopt an approach of “no debate� – online, on public platforms and in the broadcast media. This has now had huge reputational and financial consequences for the charity, where dozens of staff have since faced redundancy.

Mary Creagh MP responds to a piece by George Monbiot and says the bill is a win-win for people and for nature recovery

I was disappointed to read George Monbiot’s deeply misleading column on the planning and infrastructure bill and proposals for a nature restoration fund (Labour’s great nature sellout is the worst attack on England’s ecosystems I’ve seen in my lifetime, 24 April).

We need more housing, energy, and transport links, and more nature. The bill seeks to deliver all of these things, but faster than we do now. The bill does not repeal habitat or species protections or give a licence to do harm. Rather, it creates an alternative mechanism for conservation measures to be agreed and funded more quickly and strategically than at present.