54 h. ago Why is defence such a hard sell? The same reason Starmer is struggling in the polls | Martin Kettle

Decades of failures have left liberal democratic governments unable to command public confidence when it really mattersDefence reviews and foreign policy resets seem to turn up almost as often as the Sussexes’ lifestyle brand relaunches these days. Labour’s strategic defence review this week comes less than two years after the Conservatives’ hardly less detailed defence white paper in July 2023, which in turn was a “refresh” of Boris Johnson’s ambitious integrated review of defence and foreign policy of March 2021. By this measure, it must be doubtful if, come the 2030s, analysts will look back on Keir Starmer and John Healey’s review and say it broke the mould.The Labour government was entitled to try to put its own stamp on defence policy, of course, and its review team of George Robertson, Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill did a good, reasonably independent job. Yet this 2020s pattern of repeated strategic adaptation and refocus feels like the new normal now. It is also true that gr...

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3 d. ago ‘Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough’: Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed

The senator and twice Democratic presidential hopeful is on tour with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trying to build a new progressive movement. He reveals why he thinks Republicans are scared to speak up and what went wrong for Kamala Harris in 2024‘I think what Trumpism is about, is an understanding that the system in America is not working for working-class people,” says Bernie Sanders, sat in the Guardian’s offices in London. “In a phoney, hypocritical way, Trump has tapped into that. His quote-unquote ‘solutions’ will only make a bad situation worse.”In person, Sanders’ 83 years read differently than in photograph, perhaps because of how conversational he is. His voice is magnetic – a Brooklyn accent that feels both warm and tough. “But what I have been aware of, and I’ve talked about it for years, is that in America, the very richest people are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck.” Continue reading...

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2 w. ago Trump hints at investigation into timing of Biden's cancer diagnosis: 'Someone's not telling the facts'

The US president has questioned how doctors failed to diagnose his Democratic predecessor, 82, until after he had left the White House in January

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2 w. ago Biden ‘failed this country’ by seeking second term, says Beto O’Rourke

Ex-Texas representative, who lost gubernatorial election to Greg Abbott, joins Democrats lambasting former presidentJoe Biden “failed this country in the most important job that he had” by deciding to run for another term as US president before dropping out of the election that returned Donald Trump to the White House, where he has unflinchingly assaulted democratic norms, the former representative Beto O’Rourke said recently.“We might very well lose the greatest country that this world has ever known,” the Texan who has unsuccessfully run for the presidency and his state’s governorship said on Pod Save America. “And it might be in part because of the decision that Biden and those around him made to run for re-election.” Continue reading...

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3 w. ago Democrats are failing against Trump. We need a new generation in 2026 | Alexandra Rojas

The absence of opposition has been stunning. Americans are losing faith in the party’s ability to solve our problemsAfter more than 100 days of the Trump administration, it’s clear how unprepared Democratic leadership has been for this moment.Words can hardly describe just how far Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the administration have gone to serve the interests of their fellow billionaires, undermine our economy and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs while dragging our basic civil liberties and constitution through the buzzsaw to illegally disappear countless immigrants and send them to privately funded domestic prisons and torture camps abroad.Alexandra Rojas is executive director of Justice Democrats Continue reading...

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4 w. ago US politics live updates: majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s higher education approach, poll finds

Fifty-six percent of Americans said they disapprove of Trump’s approach to higher education, while about four in 10 express approval in new AP pollThe quote Trump is referring to from George HW Bush comes from the former president’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on 18 August 1988.And my opponent won’t rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And I’ll say to them: Read my lips. No new taxes.But Bush’s mistake was that he made that anti-tax pledge in the first place and stuck to it in the first part of his presidency. His courageous 1990 reversal on fiscal policy set the stage for a decade of economic growth that eventually achieved budget surpluses.The budget deal that Bush reached with congressional Democrats in 1990 may indeed have contributed to his failure to win re-election in 1992. There is no question that the timing was terrible. The m...

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