4 h. ago Trump might not know it, but he’s forging a new relationship between Britain and the EU | Martin Kettle

Support for Ukraine means that closer ties to Europe are now a patriotic priority, opening up avenues that Brexit had once blockedIt would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging British upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-cold war order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by Keir Starmer.In July 2024, when Starmer became prime minister, Labour was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority was to reconnect with leave voters. Everything about Europe was thus sidelined during the election. Only vague generalities were permitted. The only foreign leaders pictured in the party manifesto were Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Canada’s Justin Trudeau.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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14 h. ago Donald Trump says Europe must guarantee Ukraine security not US in blow to Keir Starmer before Washington talks

Prime Minister hopes to convince US president to provide security ‘backstop’ at crunch meeting in Washington - as Trump says Ukraine can ‘forget about joining Nato’

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50 h. ago Look at Donald Trump and his gang of broligarchs – and tell me we don’t need a wealth tax | Brian Cox

I played a fictional billionaire on TV. It’s time world leaders got serious about taxing the real onesBrian Cox played Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession and is a supporter of Patriotic Millionaires InternationalYou could be forgiven for thinking the second coming of Donald Trump was fiction. Unfortunately, it’s not – the threat he and his “broligarchs” bring to people around the world is very, very real. Last month Trump, surrounded by his uber-rich friends, was inaugurated the 47th president, while his political supporters sat outside in the cold – the perfect metaphor for who really matters in this presidency.Among the clique were the three richest men in the world: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and top dog Elon Musk, who personally poured $277m into Trump’s election campaign, increasing his own wealth by $170bn as a result.Brian Cox played Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession and is a supporter of Patriotic Millionaires International Continue reading...

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67 h. ago Julianne Moore’s freckles? How Republican bans on ‘woke’ books have reached new level

Trump administration escalates movement forged by US states to censor literature in full-scale DEI crackdownWhen the actor Julianne Moore learned her children’s book, Freckleface Strawberry, a tale of a girl who learns to stop hating her freckles, had been targeted for a potential ban at all schools serving US military families, she took to Instagram, posting that it was a “great shock” to discover the story had been “banned by the Trump Administration”.Moore had seen a memo that circulated last week revealing that tens of thousands of American children studying in about 160 Pentagon schools both in the US and around the world had had all access to library books suspended for a week, while officials conducted a “compliance review” to hunt out any books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics”. Continue reading...

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5 d. ago Britain's Got Talent's Alesha Dixon split with partner of 18 years for sadly common reason

Britain's Got Talent judge, Alesha Dixon, called time on her relationship with her husband, Azuka Onoye, last year, leaving her legion of loyal fans in shock

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7 d. ago Hold your breath and look to Germany: its election could decide the fate of Europe – and the UK | Martin Kettle

If the country holds out against the Trump-assisted AfD, it shows rightwing populism can be resisted in Europe’s heartlandEven in less stressed times, Britain always pays too much attention to the US and too little to Germany. In today’s torrid circumstances, that imbalance is perhaps excusable. After all, Donald Trump, it now turns out, really means it. He is more interested in US plunder and profit from places like Gaza, Ukraine and Greenland than in upholding a just peace or good order.Even so, the inattention towards Germany needs to end. Britain’s politicians, like German politicians, are rewiring their worldviews amid a political gale. But Germany, though no longer a great power, is nevertheless a great nation. Indeed, it may be more than ever the essential European nation now, after the Trump administration’s very public trashing of the entire Atlantic alliance seemed to leave Europe to its own devices. Continue reading...

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