38 h. ago Nigel Farage defends MP’s complaint about TV adverts as ‘ugly’ but not ‘deliberately’ racist

Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin said seeing adverts of black or Asian people ‘drives me mad’Nigel Farage has defended remarks made by a Reform MP who said seeing adverts full of black and Asian people “drives her mad”, arguing the intention behind her comments was not racist.The Reform UK leader said if he felt Sarah Pochin’s words were “deliberately and genuinely racist”, he would have “taken action” against her. Continue reading...

Politics

38 h. ago British political commentator Sami Hamdi detained by federal authorities at California airport

Officials say British political commentator Sami Hamdi has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at San Francisco International Airport

Politics

39 h. ago Trump comments about a third term spark concern – US politics live

US president’s musings about an unconstitutional third term in office draw criticism from Democratic congresswomanTrump ‘would love’ unconstitutional third term but rules out running for VPAs Republican states launch more redistricting efforts, Democrats in blue states are still deciding how or if they will respond.House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries is said to be headed to Illinois today to meet with local leaders about redrawing the congressional maps. Punchbowl reports that Jeffries will meet with the Illinois Legislative Black caucus and Black members of Congress, a nod to the fact that Black lawmakers will be needed to pass a new map. Continue reading...

Politics

51 h. ago Geert Wilders failed in government, but the far right retains its grip on the Netherlands | Cas Mudde

A media in thrall to Wilders’ party ensures its agenda is entrenched in Dutch politics and will dominate Wednesday’s electionOn Wednesday Dutch people go to the ballot box again! This will be the ninth election for the Tweede Kamer (second chamber), the Dutch parliament’s legislative chamber, in this still young century. In some ways the Netherlands has become the Italy of the 21st century, plagued by political fragmentation, governmental instability, and radicalisation (accompanied, increasingly often, by violence).This election is a direct result of this fragmentation and instability. The far-right Freedom Party (PVV) led by Geert Wilders dominated the last ruling coalition, but still pulled the plug in July, after less than a year. The various lessons that the Dutch media, political parties, and voters have drawn from this tumultuous experience should be relevant beyond the Netherlands, given that most European countries are struggling with a similar challenge: how to deal with t...

Politics

58 h. ago Labour ministers round on Reform UK over MP’s ‘racist’ remarks

Sarah Pochin’s comments on race in advertising elicit concerted response by politicians in effort to dent populist party’s appeal

Politics

3 d. ago MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Labour has no moral or political mandate for a tax raid on homes

The plan for a tax raid on people's homes is intolerable. It is confiscation of hard-earned, hard-saved wealth which simply cannot be justified.

Politics

7 d. ago Republican senators indicate they won’t confirm Trump special counsel pick after ‘Nazi streak’ comments – US politics live

Senate majority leader John Thune reportedly says Paul Ingrassia is ‘not gonna pass’The Central Intelligence Agency is providing the bulk of the intelligence used to carry out the controversial lethal air strikes by the Trump administration against small, fast-going boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the operations.Experts say the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select which alleged smugglers to kill on the open sea will almost certainly remain secret. Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago The massive No Kings protests may mark a new American political posture | Moira Donegan

The violence Republicans seemed to want did not materialize. Instead the event showcased liberal-democratic consensusOver the past week or so, it seemed as if some Republican leaders were hoping that Saturday’s No Kings demonstrations – the marches and rallies hosted by a coalition of liberal groups across the country and worldwide – would turn violent. House speaker Mike Johnson called them “Hate America” rallies, a moniker that was quickly picked up by other Republicans, and described the No Kings protests as a crucible of potential riots, representing “all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people”. “You’re gonna bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat party,” he said. Tom Emmer, a representative for Minnesota, described the rallies as a product of the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic party. And Roger Marshall, a senator from Kansas, fantasized that the protests would require ac...

Politics

1 week ago Donald Trump makes weird comment about Volodymyr Zelensky's clothes at White House meeting

President Zelensky arrived for talks with Trump with high hopes of a breakthrough that could end the war in Ukraine

Politics

1 week ago Dana Schutz review – an orgy of gloop from the painter who outraged New York

Thomas Dane, London The artist, whose painting of Emmett Till caused a scandal, is back with a grotesque, cartoonish, deeply political commentary on American societyDana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. The American artist’s first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but there are some big messages smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Marjorie Taylor Greene reveals latest rift with MAGA as she bucks Trump on ICE raids that were core of his campaign

New stance comes as Mike Johnson reveals what he told MTG as she continues to break with Republicans

Politics

2 w. ago How diverse is YOUR street? After Robert Jenrick claims there are areas in Britain with 'no white faces', the Daily Mail deep dives the truth behind his claims

Robert Jenrick's comments this week have reignited an age-old question - what does multiculturalism really look like?

Events

2 w. ago France is not alone in its political crisis – belief in a democratic world is vanishing | Simon Tisdall

The populist right offers a solution in the form of turning back the clock. Macron and his counterparts need to find a different answer fastEmmanuel Macron sounded like a man in grief. Not angry, not defiant, just a little triste. Europe, he lamented, was suffering a “degeneration of democracy”. Many threats emanated from outside, from Russia, from China, from powerful US tech companies and social-media entrepreneurs, France’s president said. “But we should not be naive. On the inside we are turning on ourselves. We doubt our own democracy We see everywhere that something is happening to our democratic fabric. Democratic debate is turning into a debate of hatred.”Squeezed between vituperative extremes of right and left, Macron knows of what he speaks. But “ungovernable” France is not alone in its bitter, intractable divisions. Across Europe, in the UK and the US, distrust and grievance daily deepen political dysfunction and social discord. Macron’s words apply, in fact, to almost an...

Politics

2 w. ago Don’t fall for the authoritarian hype – Reform and the hard right can be stopped in their tracks | Gordon Brown

From the US to Europe and Asia, grievances are being exploited to gain power. But moderate voices are still in tune with the majorityGordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010Nigel Farage portrays his Reform UK party as a unique phenomenon that has burst on to the global stage, its meteoric rise an exceptional epochal event. But this week, in every one of Europe’s major countries and from India and Thailand to the US and Argentina, hard-right, anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation parties like his are also ahead in the opinion polls.In last Saturday’s Czech elections, the rightwing, pro-Putin populist Andrej Babiš toppled prime minister Petr Fiala. National Rally, which has just brought down yet another French prime minister, is leading the polls for both the French presidency and parliament. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is currently the most popular party. Hungary’s Fidesz party, Robert Fico’s pro-Russian Slovakian coalition and the Brothers of...

Culture

2 w. ago Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado wins Nobel peace prize

Leader of country’s opposition receives award after scrutiny surrounding committee and comments by Donald TrumpVenezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize.The committee commended Machado as a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness”. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago I Swear review – biopic of pioneering Tourette syndrome activist is funny, fierce and full of heart

Kirk Jones’s moving film about of John Davidson, the man who taught Britain about Tourette, offers compassion and catharsis Feelgood true-life heart-warmers about courageous people overcoming medical conditions are common enough. But not when that condition zaps and jabs and stabs at the genre itself, piercing the carapace of sentimentality while surreally commenting on the form and on the demure niceties of polite society, in which we all keep our thoughts to ourselves.Kirk Jones’s terrifically warm, generous film is about real-life activist John Davidson, who is from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders and has Tourette syndrome, with its tics, compulsive behaviour patterns and random obscene shouts. He was awarded an MBE in 2019 for his work educating the nation about the condition since he first exhibited its symptoms as a teenager in 1989, as captured in the BBC’s sensational documentary John’s Not Mad. I Swear contains a great performance from Robert Aramayo, full of intelligenc...

Politics

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

The Blair-Trump fantasy for postwar Gaza shows the former PM still thinks that free enterprise can solve all the world’s ills“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. Continue reading...

Society

3 w. ago Inside the UK's 'worst integrated' district: Daily Mail visits area of Birmingham where Robert Jenrick claimed 'he couldn't see a white face

With its Asian grocery stores and jewellers, a West Indian bakery and even a branch of the Bank of India, the main Soho Road through Handsworth certainly seems multicultural.

Events

3 w. ago Starmer says Jenrick is ‘hard to take seriously’ after Birmingham comments

PM says Jenrick is ‘still running his leadership campaign’ after he complained about ‘not seeing another white face’Keir Starmer has criticised Robert Jenrick’s comments complaining about “not seeing another white face” in parts of Birmingham, saying the shadow justice secretary was “hard to take seriously”.The prime minister suggested Jenrick’s comments were part of a stealth Conservative leadership campaign and said he did not believe he painted a true picture of the area of Handsworth, which Jenrick had described as “as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country”. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago The Guardian view on political chaos in France: the gift that keeps on giving to Marine Le Pen and the far right | Editorial

Influential abroad, Emmanuel Macron’s strategic errors at home are bringing mainstream French politics into disrepute at a crucial momentIn Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, hell is portrayed as a locked room in which characters are condemned to fall out and squabble for all eternity. Ever since foolishly calling a snap election which delivered a deadlocked and divided national assembly, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has found himself trapped in a modern political version of the same plot.On Monday morning, the third prime minister Mr Macron has appointed in just over a year became the latest to throw in the towel, after only 27 days in the job. Hours after unveiling his ministerial team, Sébastien Lecornu stood down following a backlash from centre-right allies, who objected to the number of carryovers from François Bayrou’s previous administration. By Monday evening, Mr Macron had persuaded Mr Lecornu to conduct a round of last-ditch negotiations to try to resolv...

Politics