At another meeting, while discussing a near-identical polling scheme to what the undercover team had already paid for, Mr Orr said that ‘if there was any way of seeing it, it would technically be a donation-in-kind’ but added: ‘Is anybody gonna find out? Am I gonna tell anyone... obviously not, so the reality is we could easily get away with it.’

He also joked that they could ‘literally do the old John Le Carré - you print it off, put it in a brown envelope, drop it off somewhere.’

Mr Orr suggested there would be little chance of consequences because the proposal was only for ‘technical breaches’ of rules and the Electoral Commission was ‘completely useless’. He also said the regulator was ‘so dumb and ineffective’. They did not go through with the specific plan for polling discussed at that meeting.

…

In another meeting with the UK-based undercover reporter, Mr Jukes described their polling arrangement as ‘highly important’ and said they had big impact, were relatively good value for money ‘and they don’t show up anywhere in public records’. He added: ‘Those little clandestine projects are so valuable.’

At a Reform UK reception, Mr Jukes introduced the undercover reporter in one conversation as: ‘key donor for off the book project’.

The loss of Dan Jukes and James Orr to an undercover sting over — yet again — questionable Reform UK donation practices cannot be underestimated.

Jukes is known as Farage’s most loyal attack dog — a communications chief who began unflinchingly batting for his boss as a teenager and has lasted for more than a decade in the Farage orbit. They are so close that their relationship is often spoken of as being more like father and son. Orr was Reform’s big policy brain. A Cambridge academic who was leading work to build a robust platform for governance, Orr is a theologian with deep links into the MAGA movement, including a friendship with U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

Cutting Jukes adrift won’t end the questions. Yet again, we see how Reform UK operates: the network of Mayfair clubs, funny foreign money and lack of transparency. Opinion polls arranged by Reform and sold as independent research — with the pollster’s connivance — to this newspaper and others. Such stunts are vital for the overall cause, Jukes was recorded as saying. So what other stunts are there? How much of our debate is being rigged in this way? How many pieces of ‘research’ are funded or even conjured up by this carefully curated ecosystem?

The theme of Reform UK’s conference is ‘the first 100 days’ of their government. It’s still plausible. The table plan for the VIP dinner at Reform’s ‘business day’ was a Who’s Who of corporate Britain. Banks and bosses are hedging their bets, and understandably so. The volatility in British politics is dizzying. Although Reform has fallen in the opinion polls and now vies with the Tories for third place, who would be so bold as to declare it out of the game?

Reform is scandal-resistant — if not quite scandal-proof — because it is not just a political party. Like the Scottish National Party, it is a cause. The SNP showed the world how a cause can endure all kinds of scandal, even leading figures subjected to police investigations and court trials, and still keep its base. One woman I met in Birmingham wore a T-shirt making this point: ‘Attacked: still standing. Smeared: unstoppable. Reform UK united.’The more Farage is attacked, she told me, the harder she’d campaign for him.

But to win, Reform needs floating voters — and they seem to be falling away quickly, dismayed to see this new party more in cahoots with dodgy billionaires than the establishment it rails against. Scandal now seems to chase Farage everywhere. His big speech ended up being delayed by protesters who made it on stage with a Monopoly-style placard saying, ‘Collect £5 million’. And then, when he started, hecklers stopped him three times. All told, it felt more the end than a beginning.

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will travel to Moscow and then Kyiv over the weekend and into early next week. The U.S. has not provided more specific timing for the stops.

‘They are bringing with them a proposal to end the war,’ Trump said.

This would be their first visit to Kyiv. U.S. efforts to negotiate a settlement have yet to produce a path to peace.

Zelenskyy said Friday that he was expecting Witkoff and Kushner to visit Kyiv on Sunday, after visiting Moscow. He said in a Telegram post that Ukraine will refrain from airstrikes during the negotiations and called on Russia to reciprocate to allow the talks to proceed safely.

‘As with previous diplomatic visits by the American side, we will ensure the normal functioning of Russian airspace so that the negotiators can arrive safely. We are concerned about their safety, not about Russia,’ Zelenskyy said.

Nearly half of citizens in eastern Germany, for instance, feel only slightly threatened, or not at all, by Russia. The same goes for supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), some of whose prominent figures have expressed support for Russia. The survey found that two-thirds of AfD supporters consider the threat from Russia to be low.

The same divisions in the German population emerge on the question of arms exports to Ukraine. Just over half of Germans consider the country’s military support for Ukraine appropriate, or think it should even be expanded, but for just over four in ten Germans, that support goes too far. Opposition to sending weapons to Ukraine predominates in eastern Germany and among AfD supporters.

Chancellor John Healey will shelve his own target of spending 3 per cent of Britain’s GDP on defence by 2030 when he presents his first Budget in October, with tough decisions on how to fund the military pushed down the track.

Government insiders told the FT that Healey’s Budget would focus on filling a defence equipment funding gap of nearly £5bn left behind by former prime minister Keir Starmer, amounting to about £1.2bn a year.

But much bigger decisions on an uplift in defence spending will be delayed until a Treasury spending review next year.

…

The chancellor was previously adamant that Britain must increase defence spending to 3 per cent by 2030, notably to address a growing threat from Russia. In his resignation letter to Starmer in June, the former defence secretary said: “As we have regularly discussed, I am certain that a headmark date for 3 per cent of GDP on defence in 2030 is what Britain must set.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham has refused to commit to hitting a 3 per cent of GDP target by 2030. He said this week that the fiscal backdrop to the Budget was “challenging”.

The awkward part of this disclosure is that the claims being amplified are not fabricated. Electricity prices in the United States rose 6.9 per cent year over year as of February 2026 according to Goldman Sachs analysis, and the bank expects further increases as AI facilities drive demand growth. Communities near hyperscale construction have real grievances about rates, water use and noise.

American towns have been rejecting data centre proposals for two years, and the objections come from local officials hearing directly from constituents about rising electric and gas rates. Power availability, not chip supply, has become the binding constraint on AI expansion, with data centre electricity consumption expected to double by 2030. Utilities have struggled to expand generation at the pace demand grew, which pushed operators toward private arrangements that bypass the public grid entirely.

An influence operation that latches onto a genuine grievance is harder to counter than one inventing a conspiracy. It also creates a trap for anyone arguing the other side, because a disclosure like this can be used to paint domestic opposition as foreign-directed. Several prominent accounts did exactly that within hours of the announcement.

…

State-linked influence operations are not new, and neither is the use of generative tools to run them. Platforms have taken down Russian networks built on purpose-made persona generators, and analysis of how bot farms manufacture the appearance of consensus shows the mechanics have been stable for years. Volume creates the illusion that an extreme position enjoys mainstream support. AI just lowers the cost of producing the volume.

OpenAI has published several reports on this activity, including a February assessment describing an operation tied to Chinese law enforcement with hundreds of staff and thousands of fake accounts across dozens of platforms. Coverage of the June bans noted the campaign’s internal name and its focus on energy costs. What X has added is a platform-side count, which is useful, and an unanswered question about what the other accounts in the network were doing.

But look closer and you see that, for Meta, $18bn is not exactly a bank-breaking sum. It amounts to less than a month’s revenue. And it has 10 years to pay it out: the monthly payments could come out of petty cash. What’s more, nearly a third of that sum is contingent on Meta’s rivals YouTube and TikTok agreeing to the same restrictions. All told, the financial penalty is less than a tenth of the $200bn the 29 states were seeking, and a tiny fraction of the $1.4tn the company told the court it feared it would have to cough up. No wonder Meta’s shareholders were doing fist bumps on Wednesday.

Beyond the money, Meta will be thankful it has escaped a court ruling against it, a legal verdict on the behaviour detailed so compellingly in the California courtroom in the first week of the trial before it was abruptly halted. Jurors heard from the former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, who spoke of his own teenage daughter’s experience on Instagram – how she received unwanted sexual advances, crude misogynistic insults and photos of male genitalia on the platform – and of a survey he had conducted that found 51% of teen users had had bad or harmful experiences on Instagram within the previous seven days, and that content was taken down only 0.02 per cent of the time. Béjar reported his findings to Mark Zuckerberg directly, but got no reply. As Béjar told me when we spoke on Thursday: ‘They knew that harm to kids was happening, but they were telling the world it wasn’t.’ Under Wednesday’s settlement, Meta hasn’t even made an admission of liability.

The Fiji pact is the latest in a string of security deals Canberra has inked across the region over the last three years, seeking to counter Beijing’s growing footprint.

‘Central to nearly all of them is this language that prohibits these Pacific island countries from engaging either in infrastructure development or security agreement with a third party,’ said Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The third party mostly remains unidentified in the text of the agreements.

‘But one does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out who that is -- and it’s China,’ said Kabutaulaka.

China, meanwhile, has pulled back somewhat from large-scale, big-ticket infrastructure builds that generated both debt and local criticism, pivoting to smaller, community-focused endeavors it calls ‘small but beautiful’ projects.

From backpacks and bicycles for schoolchildren to visits by doctors, solar panels and fishing nets, these initiatives “come straight out of the diplomatic post in the country, and they have a real community impact,” said Lowy Institute Pacific fellow Connor Graham.

This stands in contrast to Australia’s Pacific engagement, which usually comes in the form of ‘direct budget support or governance or things you can’t put a flag on,’ said Graham.

‘The impact of that (Chinese approach) is you get a lot more influence bang for your buck,’ he said. ‘The Chinese presence is felt a lot more on the ground per dollar spent than for Australia.’

These community-level projects, on top of engagement from Chinese corporations and diaspora, mean China has ‘weaved itself into the fabrics of Pacific island society in ways that the [West] can’t’, said the University of Hawaii’s Kabutaulaka.

But while China goes for ‘hearts and minds,’ there’s little doubt its July missile test, flying over the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of several Pacific island countries, caused shock within Pacific capitals, say observers.

Data from Statistics Canada show the economy grew at its fastest pace since 2004. Gains were seen in roughly 90 per cent of the economy. Energy exports led the way, but even the heavily tariffed auto industry saw major gains.

Put it all together, and you can see Canada’s economy has carved out a small cushion to help weather the next blows from the trade war with the U.S. And economists say Canada needs every inch of it.

“This is genuine resilience, but not immunity from a trade war,” says David-Alexandre Brassard, the chief economist with Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada.

Fedorov’s call was preceded by a gradual shift in the public discussion. Ukrainian public figures and some of the country’s most widely read media outlets had begun breaking the taboo around discussing elections, as Zelensky faced growing criticism for ignoring protests outside his office and refusing to meet demonstrators’ main demand: Fedorov’s reinstatement.

The parliamentary opposition, however, remains more cautious.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a lawmaker from the opposition Holos party, told the Kyiv Independent that he cannot imagine elections taking place until fundamental problems are resolved.

‘Until we have an answer to the question of how to ensure that military personnel and Ukrainians abroad can vote, until the voter registry is verified, and — most importantly — until there have been no attacks for at least six months — I can’t imagine how to hold elections,’ he said.

‘That’s why I don’t understand how Fedorov can call on them to do so.’

Volodymyr Ariev, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party, largely agreed but put the responsibility on Zelensky.

‘Zelensky’s selfishness, his detachment from reality, and his inability to take the steps that Ukraine — not his administration — needs are leading the country into disaster,’ he said.

‘We’ve reached a point where we have to choose between elections and chaos — that is, between a bad option and a catastrophe. It’s not an easy choice, but if Zelensky doesn’t come to his senses, then elections will be the way out.’

Outside one Moscow petrol station I count 80 vehicles waiting in line.

The search for fuel is now a constant struggle.

‘Last night I went to get petrol at 11pm,’ says Elizaveta who’s queuing again for fuel. ‘By midnight I’d reached the front of the queue. Then they shut the petrol station until 2am.’

‘I drove into Moscow yesterday from the provinces,’ says Lyubov. ‘It was empty petrol stations all the way.’

…

To ease the crisis, Russia has begun importing petrol.

That is extraordinary for a country widely recognised as an energy superpower and one of the world’s leading exporters of crude oil.

To reduce the fuel shortage the government has also temporarily authorised the production and sale of lower-grade petrol, like Euro 2, which is faster to produce. Euro 2 contains up to 50 times more sulphur than modern Euro 5 and was banned in Russia in 2013.

…

‘It is a disconnect between people's feelings and the description of reality by Vladimir Putin, the description of his personal reality in his head,’ believes Andrei Kolesnikov, a columnist for independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta.

“Maybe he’s trying to hypnotise himself that everything is okay.”

Recent polling inside Russia, including by the Public Opinion Foundation, suggest that anxiety in society is rising. That would suggest that the Kremlin’s message of ‘keep calm and carry on’ isn’t landing.

‘This permanent feeling of anxiety is with everyone right now. You feel that something is wrong. Anxiety is the main sentiment,’ says Kolesnikov.

‘This regime doesn’t demonstrate any model of the future: the nearest future, a middle- term future, a long-term future. We are ‘great’ right now. What are the qualities of this greatness? The petrol crisis? In that sense, the future is aborted. People are trying not to think about the future. The horizon of planning is very short.’

When then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the disputed islands in 2010, then-Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government recalled its ambassador to Russia two days later in a move widely viewed as a de facto retaliatory measure.

And when then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Takeshima -- a group of islets claimed by Japan and controlled by South Korea -- in 2012, the Japanese ambassador to South Korea was recalled the same day.

Current Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi immediately condemned Putin’s visit by saying Tokyo ‘strongly protests’ the action, but her government has taken no further steps. This initial response has drawn some criticism, considering measures taken in past cases.

Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the opposition Democratic Party for the People, told a news conference Tuesday that “failing to take any countermeasures raises questions about the government’s stance on territorial issues.”

Many in the government and the ruling party argue that Japan should first assess what moves US President Donald Trump will make regarding Russia policy. The US Congress is considering legislation that would impose additional tariffs on countries helping Russia evade sanctions. But Trump himself has often taken a conciliatory approach toward Moscow.

…

An official close to Takaichi cited Japan’s dependence on liquefied natural gas imports from the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in the Russian Far East as another reason for caution. With energy supplies already under pressure from Middle East tensions, the official wondered whether Japan could realistically ‘completely sever relations with Russia.’

…

There is also a view within the Japanese government that, compared with China and North Korea, Russia may still offer some room for future cooperation, which has led to pushback against a scenario in which tensions with Moscow intensify further.

This helps explain why Takaichi has not met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy since taking office as prime minister. In May, a delegation of senior officials from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and business representatives went to Russia.

The decision to gradually eliminate the unit was criticised by military experts, who point to Ukraine as a real-world ‘battle lab’ to learn how drones are changing modern warfare, with the most experienced drone operators in the world, who are constantly learning and adapting amid Russian attacks.

‘The US is behind in adopting and fielding small drones. While the Pentagon is planning a massive investment in small drones, procurement is not enough to close this gap. There is a risk that the US Army invests in the wrong types of drones or obsolete technology and doesn’t learn how to employ them in an effective fashion on a highly contested battlefield,’ Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the defence program at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), told The Hill on Thursday.

‘The experience of a recent exercise in Europe … in which the Ukrainians beat U.S. Army forces, shows that the US has a lot to learn,” added Pettyjohn, a US defence strategy expert. ‘The Pentagon should be taking every opportunity to learn from the Ukraine war. The Russians, Chinese and North Koreans certainly are.’

Cameron McMillan — a former counter-rocket, artillery and mortar battle captain in Iraq — called the phaseout one of ‘several puzzling steps’ by the service branch in recent months, also pointing to ‘transferring or withdrawing units and commands suited for large-scale ground combat in Europe to theatres where they are less needed.’

‘As the Iran war has demonstrated, the US Army has a significant gap in drone defence capability, capacity and doctrine. In the Middle East, that challenge is largely defending static bases against long-range one-way-attack … drones. But in Europe, the counterdrone challenge is much greater’ and includes defending against smaller first-person view drones, McMillan, now a senior research analyst at the Centre on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, told The Hill on Thursday.

‘This drone unit was designed to incorporate and apply desperately needed lessons learned from Ukraine to help the US Army adapt to this challenge.’

And what is it that these books that are significant for all ages have? I think that we who have written with equal application for adults and for children – and we are not that many – know that a children’s book is a particular endeavour. You are writing for a literary innocent, someone without preconceptions of what a story should be, how it should behave. So… let go and take off, shed your own assumptions about narrative.

There is indeed a change of register in writing for children, but you don’t write down to them, you write out of your own adult concerns and interests. You temper these, you tweak and adjust – Auden again – but adult experience takes a back seat here: you are back where you once were yourself, but endowed with the magical power of adult expression.

….

The author of an adult novel is of their time; the issues of the day tend to creep around the story – as do the attitudes and assumptions. We are writing now. We reflect our time and place. We need to.

The writer of a children’s book has license to abandon time and place, to create, to propose alternatives. It is an indulgence, and a hazard. The writer must find a language, a universe, that will persuade all – both the literary innocent that is the child and the sophisticated adult reader. And that is what the great children’s books have done.

The perennials of children’s literature, the great books, are simply those that have become cultural landmarks, whose appeal is to all – children or adults – so that they have lodged in a million minds as an essential component of the imaginative furnishings.

…

The reason that fairy stories, myths, legends were first of all for adults is that they suggested worlds, circumstances, in which things ran differently from the way in which most people’s lives played out; in which the wicked stepmother got her comeuppance; in which the scullery maid married the prince; in which you could find the crock of gold. They may be seen as fodder only for children now, but in the days of their conception the true value of story was understood: it has the power to suggest an alternative.

Until the treaty text provides clear answers, describing the agreement as a Middle Eastern NATO is premature. It may prove to be an important strategic partnership, but partnerships and collective defence alliances are not the same thing.

That does not diminish its potential significance. Collectively, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey possess considerable strategic weight. Their combined economies approach $3 trillion, they occupy nearly four million square kilometres of strategically important territory, and together field around two million military personnel. Their forces reportedly include roughly 1000 fighter aircraft, thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of armoured vehicles, dozens of submarines, and hundreds of combat and naval platforms. Pakistan contributes a nuclear deterrent estimated at around 170 warheads, while Turkey’s NATO experience and expanding defence industry add another layer of capability. Saudi Arabia brings enormous financial resources and unmatched influence in global energy markets.

….

For Pakistan, another issue cannot be ignored. If Pakistan were involved in a future conflict with India, would Saudi Arabia or Turkey be expected to provide military assistance? Would their support be diplomatic, economic, intelligence-based, or operational? Conversely, would Pakistan be expected to come to Saudi Arabia’s defence in a Gulf conflict?

These are not hypothetical details buried in legal language. They are the very questions that distinguish a symbolic partnership from a genuine collective defence arrangement.

The timing of the Mecca Agreement is no coincidence. Around the world, middle powers are reassessing long-held security assumptions as global politics becomes more fragmented. Saudi Arabia has diversified its diplomatic partnerships well beyond Washington. Turkey has pursued a more independent foreign policy while remaining inside NATO. Pakistan continues to broaden its strategic options amid shifting regional dynamics.

Seen in that context, the agreement could become an important bridge linking the Gulf, South Asia, and Eurasia. Whether it develops into something more substantial will depend not on its symbolism but on the institutions built around it.

History offers a simple lesson: declarations are easy; alliances are difficult. They require shared strategic interests, clear obligations, institutional coordination, and political leaders willing to bear the costs of standing by their partners when crises erupt.

…the United States previously assumed that Putin would not wish to provoke a NATO member while still waging war against Ukraine. However, the newspaper quoted US officials as saying that the assessment changed this year.

The aim of a possible attack by Putin on a NATO country during the ongoing war in Ukraine would be to divide the alliance.

The newspaper also cited the deployment of soldiers in unmarked uniforms to occupy territories as a possible scenario.

Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa said China's missile test was discussed by ministers ‘at quite some ⁠length’. While everyone wanted a statement out, there were disagreements over what it should contain, he said.

‘There are mixed feelings on how the ​statement should be formatted, whether just to make an outright statement particularly on that single incident, but there are other ideas that it ​should be a general statement covering any tests in the Pacific,’ Waqa said at a media conference after the meeting.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told reporters that two members had refused to sign on to the statement, without giving a clear reason. He would not name the two countries.

…

China has expanded its influence in the Pacific in recent years through infrastructure financing, diplomatic outreach and security cooperation, which has prompted concern among traditional partners including Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Peters said ​some countries were being influenced by those outside the region. He would not name the country he ​believed was influencing Pacific ⁠countries to not sign the statement.

Yes, I’m worried very much that Xi Jinping could miscalculate in 2028. Why I say 2028, by the way, and not 2027 or 2026, is that the Taiwanese have their own presidential elections in January 2028. And if the existing Democratic Progressive Party, which is anathema to Xi Jinping, gets re-elected, it will be for its fourth term, and it has run consistently on an independence-leaning platform. Will they get re-elected in January 2028? I don’t know, but I think it’s a 50-50 possibility.

Does this, therefore, become a trigger for Xi Jinping to say enough is enough? Open question — given he will have just been reappointed as general secretary of the party the previous October or November. And he’s aware that 2028 is a presidential election year here in the United States.

What do I fear? A miscalculation by Xi Jinping about the level of American resolve. Do the Chinese conclude post-Iran, for example, that the likelihood of any American leadership to deploy forces in the event of a Taiwan crisis would be reduced as a result of the Iran experience?

And then there’s the more mechanical question of the extent to which the American arsenal depth, magazine depth and capability set have been impaired as a result of Iran.

So my concern as an analyst is: Could he arrive at a conclusion through a bout of excessive self-confidence that a unique opportunity has arisen? The danger is that he actually miscalculates.

To act against Taiwan would be to cause President Trump to look weak. And the one thing I’ve observed about President Trump in the last several years I’ve been in Washington: The last thing President Trump likes is to look weak.

So I think we are in potentially dangerous territory.

The heavy rock instrumentation still manages to swallow up the sound design at times, meaning Tim Rice’s fast-paced, witty lyrics get lost.

About the performances: Sam Ryder in the title role - he is a famous pop star, and we understand that. We get plenty of his trademark vocal riffs and high notes, but the performance lacks the gritty emotional stakes and sharp dramatic focus that the role desperately requires. He is clearly still finding his footing with the specific acting demands of a major stage musical, especially in the quieter, reactive moments when he isn’t the central focus of the scene. That said, his vocal power is impressive, his popularity is undeniable, and hopefully he will settle into the dramatic side of things and improve as the run continues.

The president then turned to General Caine. ‘General, what do you think?’

General Caine replied: ‘Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.’

Trump quickly weighed the assessment. Regime change, he said, would be ‘their problem.’ It was unclear whether he was referring to the Israelis or the Iranian people. But the bottom line was that his decision on whether to go to war against Iran would not hinge on whether Parts 3 and 4 of Netanyahu’s presentation were achievable.

Trump appeared to remain very interested in accomplishing Parts 1 and 2: killing the ayatollah and Iran’s top leaders and dismantling the Iranian military.

General Caine — the man Trump liked to refer to as ‘Razin’ Caine’ — had impressed the president years earlier by telling him the Islamic State could be defeated far more quickly than others had projected. Trump rewarded that confidence by elevating the general, who had been an Air Force fighter pilot, to be his top military adviser. General Caine was not a political loyalist, and he had serious concerns about a war with Iran. But he was very cautious in the way he presented his views to the president.

As the small team of advisers who were looped into the plans deliberated over the following days, General Caine shared with Trump and others the alarming military assessment that a major campaign against Iran would drastically deplete stockpiles of American weaponry, including missile interceptors, whose supply had been strained after years of support for Ukraine and Israel. General Caine saw no clear path to quickly replenishing these stockpiles.

He also flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz and the risks of Iran blocking it. Trump had dismissed that possibility on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before it came to that. The president appeared to think it would be a very quick war — an impression that had been reinforced by the tepid response to the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.

General Caine’s role in the lead-up to the war captured a classic tension between military counsel and presidential decision-making. So persistent was the chairman in not taking a stand — repeating that it was not his role to tell the president what to do, but rather to present options along with potential risks and possible second- and third-order consequences — that he could appear to some of those listening to be arguing all sides of an issue simultaneously.

He would constantly ask, ‘And then what?’But Trump would often seem to hear only what he wanted to hear.

I spent seven years working in government, and I could never have imagined that there would be people in the Defence Ministry who were effectively appointed by private companies to head departments. Or that elements of the law enforcement system would have influence over certain processes. That gives you an idea of just how deeply entrenched the problem has become.

I was never fighting a particular person or group of people. Our focus has always been on building systems.

Our goal was to tackle the root of the problem as quickly as possible. First, to introduce competitive tenders. Second, to rebuild the management system within the Defence Ministry and recruit people differently, based on the objectives we set when we came into office.

I regarded pressure from various sides as simply part of the process. The priority was to rebuild the foundations, and once that was done, the problem would resolve itself.

What form did that pressure actually take? How did people try to stop your reforms, and who was behind it? Ukrainska Pravda sources in political circles say that David Arakhamiia, the leader of Servant of the People, the president’s parliamentary faction, actively represented the interests of certain weapons manufacturers.

I would rather not name specific individuals. There were no direct threats. Everyone knows me and knows where I stand on these issues. I think the fundamental problem is that far too many senior officials simply cannot imagine that someone could hold a high-ranking government position without having ties to the defence industry.

It is entirely possible to change the rules of the game, open up markets and help those markets develop without pursuing your own commercial interests within them. That problem of culture and values is influencing decision-making today.

Fedorov: “I was never fighting a particular person or group of people. Our focus has always been on building systems.”

…

But I warned the president back in April. I said: ‘Look, people are going to come and tell you that there’s something wrong with me, that I have political ambitions, that I own drone companies, that I’ve disrupted certain processes, and so on. You need to cross-check those claims with me, because I’ve trodden on the toes of a lot of people and companies. I need your support here.’

You can see that Ukraine’s largest Telegram channels were effectively bought, and they began working exclusively against me and my team. Criminal cases started to appear involving people who worked with me. The pressure ratcheted up month after month. And under that kind of pressure, it became increasingly difficult to continue implementing the reforms.

In the end, we saw where it led: to a government reshuffle, and today I am no longer in office.

Modi had also lost another medium critical to the BJP’s domination over the national narrative – the mainstream TV news channels widely acknowledged to have been co-opted by the BJP government over the past 12 years and turned into mouthpieces for its rightwing Hindu nationalist ideology.

Initially, the channels ignored the protests, and when they did cover them it was to suggest the protesters were being bankrolled by sinister foreign forces and Pakistani terror groups. In response, the protesters turned on the channels, using social media to expose their ‘lies’. When the protests escalated, Modi remained conspicuously absent from the airwaves.

Pradhan’s resignation came as it appeared that all other options for the government had gone. The option of a ruthless crackdown appeared untenable given the mass outcry to the police violence that had hit protesters on Monday.

‘The online space was totally conquered by the protesters and regime-loving media was seriously delegitimised,’ said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of international studies at Brown University in Rhode Island. ‘The anger was so comprehensive there was no option left but for Pradhan to go.’

But this was more than the loss of a minister, Varshney said, it was also the first time in 12 years that the Modi government had lost control of the political narrative. ‘This is a repressive government,’ he said. ‘It wants obedience, it wants no critical discussion and it generates fear. But now the climate of fear has collapsed.’

…

Prior to this week’s unrest, Modi had been riding high on a string of important state electoral victories, in particular the BJP’s first triumph in West Bengal, a politically important state that had long pushed back against its Hindu nationalist politics.

The BJP appeared to have fully bounced back from the blow in the 2024 elections, when the party failed to win an outright parliamentary majority and had to scramble together a large enough alliance to take power. At the same time, the much-beleaguered opposition had continued to lose countless state elections and their allegations of voting impropriety by the BJP fell mostly on deaf ears.

Yet the emergence of the cockroaches has reinvigorated not only India’s youth, but its political opposition parties as well. Jumping on the bandwagon, the opposition Congress party has had its best week in years as it mobilised protests and shut down parliament. The party’s leader, Rahul Gandhi, was dramatically dragged away by police outside Modi’s house in support of students.

Analysts say that dissent, which had been systematically crushed over the past 12 years, has now been re-galvanised as an effective tool to hold the government – and in particular the prime minister – to account.

‘After a long time, there’s an assertion of political agency across different sections of society,’ said Mehta. ‘And the minute you see that agency out in the street, it empowers lots of other agents.’

‘When the fences went up in early May, we could hardly believe it,’ said Kosta Xhaho, a physician and activist with Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), Albania’s oldest environmental organisation, where he works primarily on the protection of marine biodiversity. ‘For a long time, we had publicly warned that something major was being prepared here, but we never thought they would cross the red line so suddenly.’ After secretive deliberations and business dealings, construction in the protected area began quietly almost overnight, in early May, when the tractors began levelling the sand dunes in the heart of the protected area, and workers laid the concrete posts that would later support the iron fencing used to cordon off the site.

It was PPNEA, together with a network of local activists and the efforts of Besjana Guri and her organisation Movement for Water, Environment and Integration (LUMI), that first drew public attention to what was happening in Vjosa-Narta, helping launch the mass protests.

And what began as an environmental campaign has evolved into a broader protest against Rama’s government, a movement that encapsulates years of accumulated frustration with a prime minister who has been in power since 2013.

Since May 30, thousands of people have gathered in Tirana every day at 6 p.m. to protest. Marching peacefully from Skanderbeg Square, the capital’s main plaza, to Rama’s office, demonstrators have formed a procession so long that in recent days it has stretched for half a mile along the Deshmoret e Kombit (Martyrs of the Nation) Boulevard.

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The scale of corruption allegations surrounding Rama’s government is difficult to overstate. Over the past five years alone, several major scandals have implicated current or former members of his Cabinet.

Our British friends would be well advised to adopt compulsory voting and preferential voting as well. I understand there is less support for adopting preferential voting since there was a plebiscite held on the question of what the Brits call “the alternative vote” and it was rejected.

But times have changed. In the UK today there are five major parties, from left to right they are: The Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Reform. In addition there are a number of smaller parties and of course there are always independents including the now famous Count Binface.

With a first past the post system the winner is whoever has a plurality - more votes than any other candidate. With so many candidates and parties this will likely mean many constituencies will be won with pluralities below 40%, maybe below 30%. Couple that with low turnout and your electoral system is delegitimised

In Australia our major parties have seen their primary vote percentages drop down to the low thirties or lower, but because preferences are allocated in every electorate the winner will have more than half of the votes cast on a two party preferred basis. In other words the winner will have been elected by a majority of the voters, albeit for some of them the winner will not have been their first pick.