The Guardian Weekly - 02.10.2026 — 2026-10-04

Cold war Kyiv readies for winter 15

Master minimalist Steve Reich at 90 51

The Guardian

A week in the life of the world | Global edition

2 OCTOBER 2026 | VOL.215 No.14 | £6.50 | €9.95

BACKYARD

The growing global rebellion against datacentres

SPECIAL REPORT

Eyewitness Kenya

PHOTOGRAPH: GERALD ANDERSON/ANADOLU

The Guardian Weekly

Founded in Manchester,

England

4 July 1919

Vol215 | Issue N°14

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Can I kick it?

Virginia Mumbua, 70, takes part in a football training session with the women-founded Mugumoini team on a field surrounded by corrugated metal homes in Kibera, Nairobi. Mumbua, who lives in one of Africa's largest informal settlements, joins the team after completing her daily chores.

Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian's digital editions in the UK, US and Australia, and the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The weekly magazine has an international focus and four editions: global, Europe, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist to hold power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The Guardian is wholly owned by the Scott Trust, a body whose purpose is “to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity”. We have no proprietor or shareholders, and any profit made is re-invested in journalism.

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SPOT ILLUSTRATIONS: MATT BLEASE

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4

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GLOBAL REPORT

Headlines from the last seven days

United Kingdom .... 8

Science & Environment .... 9

The big story

Technology Backlash against datacentres goes global....10

15

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SPOTLIGHT

In-depth reporting and analysis

■ Ukraine

Kyiv residents prepare for a bitter winter .... 15

Palestine

The struggle to dig Gaza out from beneath its war debris.. 19

Argentina

Lessons from Nepal in a Patagonian town.... 24

Russia

From Pussy Riot to FSB informant.... 26

Science

Is AI really going to help us talk to the animals? .... 30

Brazil

Lula accuses the US of trying to colonise his country.... 33

A week in the life of the world

2 OCTOBER 2026

34

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FEATURES

Long reads, interviews & essays

The people shaping Andy Burnham's grand plans

By Hettie O'Brien...... 34

Colin Kaepernick on going from NFL superstar to pariah

By Steve Rose...... 40

45

OPINION

Steve Bloomfield

Macron's UN speech shows how to stand up to Trump ... 45

Elle Hunt

Buying friends on an app won't solve loneliness ....47

Jonathan Freedland

A history of social change in a TV series....48

Macron has

been one of the

only leaders

with a morally

intelligent

analysis of

what the world

should look like

51

CULTURE

TV, film, music, theatre, art, architecture & more

Music

As he hits 90, master minimalist Steve Reich looks back ....51

Screen

Why medical couriers are in the spotlight....55

Books

The big idea: Can avoiding pain make us happy? ....57

Books

US gun culture; slavery's role in UK's success; a Delhi saga .... 58

60 LIFESTYLE

The one change that worked

A new dentist cured my fear..60

Kitchen aide

Is pressing garlic a no-no?......61

Recipe

Turmeric chicken with kefir.61

On the cover While godfathers of AI have been sounding the alarm at the breakneck speed of its advances, the construction of enormous datacentres has worried communities across the world. The pushback is not nimbyism but real concern over land and resource-use for a tech revolution that appears to have little benefit for local people.

Illustration: Edmon de Haro

4

Copyright © 2026

GNM Ltd. All rights

reserved

Published weekly by Guardian News & Media Ltd, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU, UK

Printed in the UK,

Belgium, the US,

Australia and

New Zealand

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ISSN 0958-9996

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Global report

Headlines from the

last seven days

UNITED STATES/IRAN

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Tehran rejects president's claims of negotiation talks

Donald Trump confirmed that a US negotiating team spoke with Iranian officials through mediators on Monday. This comes after the president rejected the latest ceasefire proposal from Tehran, and Iran said it has “no plans” to negotiate.

Mike Waltz, the Trump administration's ambassador to the United Nations, on Sunday said the US rejected Iran's proposal because Iranian negotiators "were asking for everything up front".

Waltz told CNN that Iran had asked for relief “from billions and billions of sanctions that are going into place” as part of an economic blockade. The blockade aims to pressure Iran into stopping its attacks on vessels in the strait of Hormuz.

Trump claimed: “They want to make a deal to open the Hormuz strait immediately because they’re losing so badly.” He further said the US was “winning tremendously” and had “total control of the Hormuz strait”.

Anticipating the resumption of talks this week, the president said: “They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make.” Iran insisted that only diplomacy can solve its conflict with the US and Israel.

FRANCE

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Le Pen hails RN senate surge as 'historic victory'

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said her 2027 presidential campaign will be boosted after her anti-immigration party, the National Rally (RN), and its allies improved to a record 14 seats in partial senate elections last weekend.

Le Pen called the results a “historic victory” after RN cleared the 10-seat threshold to be able to form a senate group for the first time, after an indirect vote by local officials including councillors.

The party's progress in the senate will allow it higher visibility and more funding in the second house of parliament before next spring's presidential election. Le Pen is polling high as Emmanuel Macron prepares to step down after 10 years in office.

Opinion Page 45 →

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UNITED STATES

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Blanche defends Trump's White House media ban

Donald Trump's attorney general, Todd Blanche, claimed the administration was permitted to ban three news outlets from the White House because “it is a privilege and not a right to be there”, in a TV interview.

Blanche said the administration chose to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico from 19 September because the president was “sick and tired” of what he considered to be inaccurate reporting.

Last Thursday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring the White House to temporarily restore the credentials of affected journalists.

TECHNOLOGY

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OpenAI halts release of new model over safety concerns

OpenAI is scrapping the release of a next-generation AI model after researchers raised safety concerns during internal testing.

The model, GPT-6.1 Astra, was expected to appear in ChatGPT and Codex this month, designed to handle complex tasks. Saachi Jain, the head of safety systems at OpenAI, said the new model “didn’t quite meet the bar” of the company’s standards.

The UK's AI Security Institute published its own testing report on GPT-6 Astra on Monday, and found that it conducted a range of unsanctioned attack activities.

Jain told the Wall Street Journal that Astra fell short of the company's standards in alignment tests. The company disclosed that it was reviewing incidents in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways.

Last week, Australia's prime minister, Anthony Albanese, revealed an OpenAI agent had breached the government's national healthcare system - but said no sensitive information had been compromised. The big story Page 10→

5

CANADA

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Rat-free region shattered after dead rodent found

The province of Alberta lost its proud status of being officially free of rats after a dead rodent was found in the town of Bowden.

Alberta's reputation as a firewall against rodent infestation took a hit when Bowden called on the province's "rat patrol" to investigate a dead rat.

The province has actively fought rats from entering at all over seven decades. Today, there are dedicated telephone lines and an email address to report rats. But while the rat patrol receives hundreds of calls each year, it says the vast majority are muskrats, voles and field mice.

BRAZIL

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SWITZERLAND

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Cantons reject stricter neutrality proposal

Voters rejected a proposal for a strict definition of neutrality that would have required Switzerland to curb cooperation with Nato and abandon sanctions against Russia.

All cantons and about $70\%$ of voters rejected the proposal for a strictly defined version of neutrality to be written into the Swiss constitution, final results from the Federal Statistical Office showed. The motion had been promoted by the far-right Swiss People's party (SVP).

Critics of government policy claim that neutrality has been eroded by Switzerland's decision to mirror EU sanctions against Russia, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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Lula bans sports gambling ahead of presidential poll

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed an order banning fixed-odds sports betting just ahead of the first round of the presidential election, in a move he said aimed to tackle household debt.

The order, which came into force immediately but will need congressional approval to remain in effect, prohibits new deposits into accounts and gives users of betting platforms until 5 October to withdraw funds.

Betting and gambling are estimated to cost Brazilian society 38.8bn reais (\$7.4bn) annually.

Spotlight Page 33 →

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Meloni puts limit on foreign pupils in classrooms

The government has been accused of ramping up divisive rhetoric ahead of next year's general election after it passed a decree aimed at capping the number of newly arrived migrants in classrooms and banning the burqa and niqab in schools.

The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her government had approved what she called “commonsense measures that do not divide but genuinely help to integrate”.

Writing on social media, she said the measures included: “A limit of 30% in classrooms for students who do not adequately know Italian.”

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GERMANY/RUSSIA

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Russia urged to abandon 'dangerous escalation'

The foreign ministers of Russia and Germany met in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, in the first such talks since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But Russia's top diplomat dismissed Germany's calls to ease off its “dangerous path of escalation” towards Europe, instead accusing Germany of being Ukraine's main sponsor.

The German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, used the talks to call on Russia “to abandon the dangerous path of escalation vis-a-vis Germany, Europe, and Nato”, according to a delegation source.

His Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, said “nothing new” came from the talks.

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Pope says Catholic church must heal wounds of abuse

The pope called on the Catholic church to heal “deep wounds” and “painful errors”, before meeting survivors of child sexual abuse during his four-day visit to France.

Addressing a crowd near the Catholic shrine of Lourdes last Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called on the church to reckon with its past, without directly referencing abuse scandals in France that affected at least 330,000 children over seven decades.

The day before, an estimated 700,000 people lined the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris for an open air mass.

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ISRAEL/PALESTINE

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UN adds 61 firms to settlements blacklist

The UN human rights office has added 61 more companies to a blacklist of firms that it says are involved in violating Palestinian human rights through business ties to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The vast majority of the 214 companies, which are based in 11 countries, are Israeli. The blacklist, first published in 2020, was born of a vote by the UN's human rights council. Its goal is to name and shame businesses with ties to the settlements.

“This report is another reminder to companies that they have human rights responsibilities,” said Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief.

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SOUTH AFRICA

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At least 27 dead after two mass shootings, police say

Two separate mass shootings near the country's two biggest cities killed at least 27 people.

The police service said 17 people were killed last Saturday night when eight suspects armed with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols opened fire at a bar in Wedela township, about 80km south-west of Johannesburg. At least 15 other people sustained gunshot injuries.

In a separate statement, police said 10 people had been killed in a mass shooting in Lwandle, near Cape Town. Another 11 people were wounded in that shooting. Police said they were searching for multiple suspects, without giving an exact number.

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Offensive raises prospect of a return to civil war

There are growing fears of a return to civil war after an offensive by fighters from Tigray into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara and the formation of a new rebel alliance aimed at overthrowing the government.

On 20 September, seven armed groups from around the country, including the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival, aimed at deposing the government in Addis Ababa. Then, last Wednesday, the TPLF seized control of three airports from federal police.

DR CONGO

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Politician killed after radio appearance about Ebola

A senior member of the ruling party was beaten to death last Sunday after appearing on a radio programme to raise awareness about the Ebola outbreak, a party representative said.

Marie-Celestin Karondwa, the acting president of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party's federal executive committee, was attacked after a radio show during which he promoted prevention measures for the disease, Reuters reported.

Karondwa's death comes after a series of attacks on healthcare workers and treatment centres.

15

THAILAND

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Bangkok floods force thousands into shelters

Thousands of Bangkok residents awoke in shelters last Sunday after flooding triggered by days of heavy rain in the Thai capital inundated homes and roads.

Nearly 4,900 people were evacuated to shelters, with about 52,000 households affected by the floods, which prompted a disaster declaration across the capital, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.

More than 330mm of rain fell between last Thursday and Sunday, the weather agency said.

Thailand is used to wet weather and September is the peak of the rainy season, but several Bangkok residents said this year was worse.

Widespread deluges across the country in 2011 killed more than 500 people and damaged millions of homes.

17

SRILANKA

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Easter 2019 terrorists sentenced to 220 years each

A court last week convicted 15 men on terrorist charges for their involvement in the deadly 2019 Easter bombings and sentenced them each to at least 220 years.

The terror attacks, which targeted luxury hotels and churches, left 267 people dead and wounded almost 600.

Two Sri Lanka-based Islamist groups were believed to have orchestrated the attacks, which were carried out by nine suicide bombers who died in the blasts.

Those on trial were accused of conspiring and aiding the bombings, which had deliberately targeted the minority Christian community and foreign tourists.

The verdict was finally delivered last Tuesday. In total, 15 defendants, who were all from Sri Lanka's minority Muslim community, were sentenced to more than 200 years each. The judges also ordered the property of the defendants to be confiscated.

Nine defendants were freed after the court found that the charges against them were not proven. One other died before the case reached trial.

16

PAKISTAN

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Former PM's party plans to protest for Khan's release

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Imran Khan's party, vowed to go ahead with a nationwide demonstration to demand the former prime minister's release, even as the government deployed tens of thousands of police to Islamabad to try to stop the march.

It was announced after concerns of the treatment of Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges.

Last Friday, PTI leaders said they would postpone the start of the march until 4 October, a week after the original planned date, saying they hoped the delay would further strain the government.

VIETNAM

18

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Government accused of abducting rights activists

Authorities detained three activists, including a Norwegian and an Australian, on what have been described as “fabricated” charges.

The government said the three confessed to being members of Viet Tan - a pro-democracy organisation - which it describes as a terrorist group.

In a statement, Viet Tan said it “strongly condemns the abduction of two of its members in Cambodia and the fabricated charges issued by the Vietnamese communist authorities”.

It is not clear if the third person is also a member of Viet Tan.

VIETNAM

19

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Rick Wakeman plays new songs to a captive audience

The former Yes musician Rick Wakeman has played to all kinds of global audiences, but he has now performed to a new kind of audience - an enclosure of 150 bears.

Wakeman, a supporter of animal welfare causes, played the piano at a bear sanctuary to raise awareness of moon bears kept in cruel conditions for the extraction of their bile.

His concert was performed live on a Yamaha grand piano in Animals Asia's bear sanctuary in the Tam Dao national park, and Wakeman had written some new compositions especially for rescued bears.

Bile is extracted from bears for traditional Chinese medicine by putting a needle into their gall bladder and drawing it out.

20

AUSTRALIA

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Greens leader to step down due to poor health

The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, announced she will step down after revealing on Monday night she has been managing a pre-existing kidney disease.

While her prognosis for recovery was positive, the party's leadership was detracting from a focus on her health.

Waters replaced Adam Bandt after the 2025 election, in which Bandt lost his seat in a shock result. Some Greens members have expressed frustration with the party's position under Waters, including its cut-through with voters as major parties lose support to One Nation.

DEATHS

Mighty Sparrow

Grenadian-born

Trinidadian

calypso musician.

He died on 27

September,

aged 91.

Sandro Mazzola

Italian football

player and

commentator.

He died on 19

September,

aged 83.

Terry Denton

Australian

illustrator and

author. He died

on 21 September,

aged 76.

Catherine Ringer

French musician and songwriter.

She died on 14 September,

aged 68.

Angry Anderson

Australian singer,

songwriter, actor

and advocate.

He died on 21

September,

aged 79.

Pete Byrne

Frontman of

British new wave

group Naked

Eyes. He died on

14 September,

aged 74.

The number of entrants for Mr England, a contest for 17 to 22-year-olds taking place next Sunday in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, and for which the organisers were encouraging applications last weekend

POLITICS

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Chancellor signals welfare reform ahead of budget

John Healey signalled Labour will stage a fresh attempt at welfare reform as he pledged to put fiscal discipline at the core of his budget, alongside measures to inject hope into Britain's economy.

In his first speech as chancellor to the Labour conference, Healey warned that this month's budget would need to take into account a challenging global backdrop. He announced a new local apprenticeship service, to be led by mayors, targeted at young people to deliver “thousands more apprenticeships” across the country.

However, he also indicated that job support would be accompanied by changes to the welfare system designed to incentivise employment while curbing a soaring benefits bill. Healey argued Labour had a “moral duty” to overhaul the system to encourage people to find a job.

Andy Burnham, who was due to deliver his conference speech on Tuesday, was expected to indicate he is prepared to look at scrapping the pensions triple lock to fund a national care service, telling the conference he will be willing to tackle the UK's intractable issues such as social care.

Government sources suggested the prime minister would signal his willingness to review the policy but stop short of a pledge to scrap it altogether. The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said the move would be “electoral suicide”. Burnham was expected to promise “an honest conversation” with the public, saying: “Hope comes from honesty and from saying the things politicians usually avoid.” Feature Page 34 →

SECURITY

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Suspects bailed after US bomber base incident

A counter-terrorism operation near RAF Fairfield was mired in confusion on Tuesday after police released five suspects, all British nationals, on bail, prompting concern and surprise from the US president and secretary of state.

The five men from London were detained on suspicion of explosives offences and terrorism after three suspicious vans were reported to police last Sunday, outside the base in the village of Whelford, Gloucestershire.

However, on Tuesday, the head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK announced all five men had been released on bail. Donald Trump told reporters: “We know everything about them. We would not have released them.”

Spotlight Page 23 →

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NORTHERN IRELAND

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Protesters block Orange Order parade in Portadown

Tensions escalated as Orange Order members remained at Drumcree church on Monday, vowing not to leave until they can march down a nationalist road in Portadown. A third attempt to proceed down Garvaghy Road was made at 4am on Monday, but a line of police blocked their path.

While nationalist protesters were dispersed the previous night, there are fears that the tensions between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) could lead to the collapse of power-sharing at Stormont. The parade was given the go-ahead by the Parades Commission for the first time since 1998.

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ENVIRONMENT

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River Avon gains rights to evolve and to be protected

Councillors, environmental groups and the public marked World Rivers Day in Bath last Sunday by publicly signing the Avon bioregional charter of river rights.

The charter enshrines the Avon's rights to flow sustainably, to not be polluted, to preserve its biodiversity, to aim for regeneration and restoration, to build community connection and to represent the rights of the river.

CRIME

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Superhero chases thief and scales wall for stolen bag

A scene from the fictional comic metropolis of Gotham City played out for real in Norwich when a man dressed as Batman chased a suspected thief.

Sonni Mason, 25, was attending a fancy dress party in a Batman costume last month when he saw a handbag being snatched in a queue for a nightclub in the city.

Mason was joined in the chase by others dressed as comic book characters including Mister Fantastic from the Fantastic Four, and Poison Ivy, another character from the Batman franchise.

They flagged down a group of police officers before catching up with the suspected thief. But the suspect no longer had the bag.

After a tip-off the bag was discovered about 300 metres from where it was snatched, on top of a high flint wall on the perimeter of Norwich Cathedral.

Failed attempts were made to get the bag down, before Mason, still in his Batman costume, scaled the wall and retrieved the bag.

Eyewitness Precious petals A drone view shows volunteers as they place flowers and petals as part of the Flower Carpet project, which saw more than 300,000 dahlia flowerheads displayed in a 29-metre-wide design by local artist Shiraaz Ali and inspired by the area's textile history in Bradford, England. PHIL NOBLE/REUTERS

SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT

MEDICAL RESEARCH

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'Gamechanging' test cuts tumour diagnosis to hours

A rapid new test for brain tumours can diagnose patients while they are still on the operating table.

Scientists have called the development “gamechanging”. The test was developed by the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at the University of Nottingham and can diagnose forms of cancer while the patient is still undergoing surgery.

The diagnostic tool can cut waiting times for a diagnosis from eight weeks to two hours. Prof Frankie Swords, NHS medical director, said the rapid test was “a huge leap forward for patients”.

CLIMATE CRISIS

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Germany pledges to phase out fossil fuels by 2045

Europe's biggest economy, Germany, has committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045, despite fierce debate

about its green policies. The German government set out an explicit promise of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels. Previous pledges were only for “carbon neutrality”.

The plans include ramping up renewable energy from 55% to 80% of electricity generation by 2030, with an additional 12GW of onshore wind, and a target of 215GW of solar energy by 2030. The previously stated target of winding down coal use in the next decade, with a view to an exit from coal in 2038, was also reaffirmed, with the potential for an earlier target of 2035.

ZOOLOGY

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Bats were originally from Europe, new study reveals

Bats probably originated in Europe about 65m years ago - not in Africa, Asia or North America, as had previously been thought - a landmark study has established.

A team of more than 130 international researchers combed through ancient bat fossils and genomic data from living species. They say the earliest ancestors of modern bats dispersed from Europe into Africa, then expanded onwards to Asia, the Americas and Australia.

1m

The amount in Canadian dollars (\$700,000) donated by author Margaret Atwood to establish a university chair in avian biology in Ontario

“Bats, on a scale of amazing to amazing, they’re super amazing,” said Sarah Olson, one of the study’s authors and director of health research at the non-profit Wildlife Conservation Society. The findings are published in Nature.

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ARCHAEOLOGY

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Ancient wall found in Paris could be first settlement site

An ancient wall discovered beneath Paris has been described as a “major breakthrough” by France’s culture ministry, with the archaeological find possibly confirming the location of the city’s original settlement.

A roughly 20-metre stretch of wall dating from the Gallo-Roman period was discovered in Paris this summer beneath a building on the Île de la Cité, near Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of the French capital.

The stone-and-wood structure is thought to be a fragment of the ramparts of Lutetia - the ancient name for Paris - built by the Gallic Parisii tribe in the iron age.

“We may be looking at one of the most important remains ever discovered for understanding Gallic Lutetia,” the culture minister, Catherine Pégard, said.

Demand for AI infrastructure is fuelling a boom in datacentres such as this one in Vernon, California MARIO TAMA/GETTY

The big story

Datacentres

As ever more public figures, from Anthropic's Dario Amodei to the pope and Bill Gates, express their fears about the unchecked speed of artificial intelligence development, citizens from the US and the UK to India worry that the rush to build the huge, resource-hungry datacentres to support AI will harm nature and their livelihoods. The popular pushback against datacentres speaks to the frustration of those who feel big tech has cut them off from making choices about how they live their lives

'Why are Google building this here?' Broken promises in an Indian village Page 12 →

PLUS

NOT HERE

NOT ANYWHERE

ENDAI

Revolt in the English countryside Angry residents fight back in Devon Page 14 →

S ILICON VALLEY'S POWER PLAYERS have just been blindsided by democracy, which has slammed into their programme to

transform the world with artificial intelligence. A cabal that never doubted the greatness of their ambitions unexpectedly finds their project in the hot seat, forcing them into the unusual position of having to persuade the great unwashed of the merits of their endeavour. So far, the public is not buying it. And for all their high IQs and massively endowed wallets, Silicon Valley's greats don't quite know what to do.

Everyday Americans are up in arms against the AI datacentres sprouting across their communities. Villages, counties, cities and states are imposing moratoria and bans on further development. While the backlash has largely focused on stopping the proliferation of sprawling sites packed with energy-guzzling computer servers, the revolt is not merely nimby opposition to local development.

Public opinion has also turned sour on the AI project that has called these datacentres into being. Some 73% of Americans think the costs of datacentres outweigh the benefits, according to a survey by the Marquette University Law School. The same survey found that 70% of Americans think AI is bad for society.

Americans were not always this down on the tech. In 2021, only 37% declared themselves more concerned than excited about the technology, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center. But the share has climbed to 52%. Even 55% of young adults have soured on it. And Democrats and Republicans alike are vastly more concerned than excited. Interestingly, Americans are more mistrustful of the technology than people in other countries.

This surely has something to do with the terrifying announcements that have come out of Silicon Valley recently. A widely shared belief that there's at least a $10\%$ chance that AI could cause human extinction has, rightly, scared many and follows repeated statements that artificial intelligence will end all jobs as we know them. Assuming we do avoid an AI apocalypse, vague promises of an AI cure for cancer

The big story

Datacentres

The Google Midlothian data-centre in Texas

RON JENKINS/GETTY

and a universal basic income or some such to replace wages across the economy sound hollow coming from a clutch of out-of-touch billionaires with questionable moral codes in a country with huge holes in its social safety net.

The political backlash is built on a deeper discomfort, though, beyond fear of the dystopia threatened by the masters of the valley. A fear fuelled by a brooding mistrust in US democracy itself, distrust of a political system that allowed a group of weird, sci-fi addled plutocrats to pursue a civilisation-threatening project behind people's backs. As Henry Farrell, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, said: “The push against datacentres speaks to the frustration of people who don’t feel they are making the choices in their lives.”

PEOPLE ARE NOT WRONG ABOUT THIS. As AI ethicist Rumman Chowdhury pointed out, the dominant narrative out of Silicon Valley, that AI systems are becoming so powerful that nobody - including the companies that developed them - can stop them, is a stratagem to avoid responsibility for whatever harm their products may cause, depriving meat-and-bones humans of any recourse to law.

The popular backlash is unlikely to stop the construction of datacentres. Donald Trump remains on the side of the moguls hoping to build an AI future. In response to the backlash, the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to reject the rule that requires states to solicit public input on applications for air pollution permits for industrial facilities like datacentres and the power plants that feed them, which could keep locals in the dark until construction starts.

Voters' rejection of datacentres raises a question about how the technological revolution of our time will deal with intense popular scepticism and navigate democratic governance. It poses a challenge to a technological elite that exhibits contempt towards democratic rule.

This is not, of course, the first time that some technological revolution brings about societal upheaval without asking for democratic buy-in. The people who brought about America's transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse did not survey farmers about what mechanisation would do to their farms. The Luddites of 19th century England would have loved the chance to put approval of the steam-powered loom to a referendum.

But technological change over the last few decades has not delivered the kind of uplift to everyday workers that their ancestors enjoyed as they were displaced from agriculture to join a highly productive industrial labour force. Automation, instead, has flushed workers without a college degree into a low productivity economy where hotel and restaurant workers, nursing home caretakers, janitors and 7-11 cashiers eke out a living on little more than the minimum wage. Americans have earned their scepticism about the wonders of AI.

Still, the furious backlash against datacentres suggests Silicon Valley's Maga-friendly strategy may run out of runway. Their allegiance with Trump, whose popularity ratings are plummeting, may start feeling like an anvil around their neck.

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic socialist running for the Senate in Michigan, said to Jasmine Sun, who publishes a Substack newsletter on AI and Silicon Valley culture: “This entire industry feels misplaced, and it’s being driven by the interaction between all the worst players. Number one, tech billionaires who are already billionaires, who don’t really need more money but want power. And then VC [venture capital] firms who want to make more money. And then big corporations who want to automate your job. So who wins here? Definitely not the people who live there.”

EDUARDO PORTER IS A JOURNALIST FOCUSED ON ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

INDIA

Prosperity or ruin? Giant datacentre brings anxiety to tiny Indian village

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan TARLUVADA

▼ Forest has been cleared to make way for the datacentre in Tarluvada

When the government officials arrived in Tarluvada last year, they came with abundant

promises. Google, one of the world's most powerful tech companies, would soon be bringing a “golden opportunity” to this tiny village in south India: a \$15bn AI datacentre.

The project, being built in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is to be Google's largest “hyperscale” AI datacentre outside the US and would, officials said, turn the village into a world-famous tech hub.

Jobs would become bountiful, real estate prices would soar and compensation for any land would be generous.

Few in the village - which sits on a dusty unpaved road and is surrounded by farms and forest - had even heard of AI or knew what a datacentre was. Yet it did not take long for jubilation over Google's arrival to turn to suspicion.

“We have learned that America does not want the problems of data-centres and so now Google is bringing them here,” said Tarluvada’s village head, BRB Naidu, who admitted he was torn about whether it would bring prosperity or ruin to the community.

The state government, which is allied to the party of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of trying to obfuscate the true scale of the vast AI hub being built in Andhra Pradesh, to push the project through at lightning speed and avoid more stringent environmental scrutiny.

Google has partnered with the Adani Group, one of India's largest and most politically powerful conglomerates with a reputation for getting approvals through quickly, to build the project. Publicly it was announced as a 1GW project - already a larger energy

\$15bn

The cost of the AI datacentre being built by Google in Tarluvada in the state of Andhra Pradesh

requirement than most AI datacentres. In its response to the Guardian, Google referred to it only as an unspecific “gigawatt scale AI hub”, that was “comparable to other projects”.

But state environmental clearances reveal that permission has been granted for it to be more than double that size - 2.51GW. Over a year, it amounts to upwards of $30\%$ of the current energy consumption of the whole of Andhra Pradesh, a state that is home to more than 55 million people.

Activists fear that meeting the datacentre's vast energy demands will lead to seismic environmental consequences for the region. While Google has pledged to help generate “new, clean energy” to power its AI hub, currently 75% of the country’s electricity grid is run on coal.

The state government argues that AI datacentres will be essential to India's growth and long-term digital competitiveness. But locals and activists say building one of the world's largest AI datacentres in a region of India struggling with issues over extreme heat, power shortages and environmental regulation comes at a cost.

Google's project will in fact encompass three separate datacentres around the state capital of Vizakhapatnam. One other site near Tarluvada is a few metres from a drinking water reservoir and a wildlife sanctuary. Despite the AI datacentre's expansive footprint, the state government issued environmental clearances to Google in just nine days, with no public consultation.

Three petitions challenging the state's quick approval of the project have now been filed to India's National Green Tribunal, the country's top environmental court. The petitions allege that government's assessment of the risks to the environment and water supplies were "grossly inadequate, scientifically unrealistic, and misleading". A public litigation has also been filed in the Andhra Pradesh high court.

In Tarluvada, temperatures regularly soar to about 45C during summer and there are concerns the datacentres - documented emitters of heat - could make this even worse. The mass deforestation required for the project could drive up temperatures even more.

In response to the Guardian, Google said the project would have “no expected impact” on the local community. The strain on water supplies in this already water-stressed area has also been a cause of concern. Google

▲ Farmers of Tarluvada who have lost land to the datacentre

▼ A farmer pumps water, which is a precious resource

'America does not want the problems of datacentres so Google is bringing them here'

BRB Naidu

Village head

said the project would use air-cooling instead of water, and would therefore have no impact on local drinking water supplies.

For the state government of Andhra Pradesh, the deal struck with Google to build the datacentre on its turf is a source of enormous pride.

“Artificial intelligence is becoming foundational infrastructure for the global economy,” said Sribharat Mathukumilli, a local MP with the ruling state government, who rejected the environmental concerns. “Our objective is not simply to host a data-centre, but to create an AI and digital ecosystem,” said Mathukumilli.

Late last year, the state granted permission for another 1GW AI datacentre, to be built by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries. Google insisted the design choices of its AI datacentre have been tailored to local conditions and that it had “engaged deeply” with communities, claiming it would generate thousands of jobs around Vizakhapatnam. But villagers in Tarluvada allege they were forced to give up land for the project and have not been given all they were promised in return.

The state government claims no lands were forcibly taken and that it gave “generous compensation” to those who were eligible. The Adani group says that all necessary legal approvals were given.

“No one will tell us the truth about this project,” said T Applaraju, 40, who was one of the 520 local families who recently had land taken back that the government had allocated to him 20 years ago. “It’s a big shock,” he said. “Why are Google building this here and not in America?”

HANNAH ELLIS-PETERSEN IS

THE GUARDIAN'S SOUTH ASIA

CORRESPONDENT; AAKASH HASSAN

IS A JOURNALIST WORKING IN INDIA

UNITED KINGDOM

'People are fighting back' Devon rejects AI campus in Unesco area

Plans for one of Europe's largest tech centres to be built within nature reserve have sparked a fierce local revolt

By Sandra Laville

The datacentre revolt spreading across the US has reached north Devon in an uprising against a planned hyperscale AI data campus in the middle of a globally protected landscape.

Perched on an inland cliff, the town of Great Torrington has views that stretch a long way over the Unesco biosphere reserve in which it sits, taking in the rolling hectares of wooded valley and wildflower meadows.

The countryside that makes up the biosphere has been selected by a British company, Xlinks, to house a 1.5GW AI datacentre, one of the largest in Europe, as well as a vast 1.8GW battery energy storage system (Bess). About 344 hectares of countryside have been secured for the huge campus, with five vast buildings ranging in height from 15 to 40 metres. Listed buildings on the site, Xlinks said, will be relocated and transformed into a visitor centre.

Such is the anger locally that the new campaign against the AI data-centre has drawn in tens of thousands of people. A recent public meeting in Great Torrington was hosted by Elizabeth Humphreys of the US campaign group Not in My Valley. She was one of the forces behind achieving a permanent data-centre ban in Coachella, California, over concerns about air pollution, water and energy use.

“We’re fighting the largest companies that have ever existed in the world, and that is scary but we are all fighting this together,” Humphreys said. “This is a global issue; we are all connected. People across the world are standing up and fighting back.”

The proposal was first announced this summer with a call by Xlinks for a collaborative approach. But people from the Devon Datacentre and Bess action group took to their keyboards - researching, rallying and requesting more information in a series of freedom of information (FoI) applications.

What they uncovered fuelled the rising tensions. Documents released under FoI revealed the company had been in closed discussions with council officials since March 2025.

Torridge district council, of which Great Torrington is part, told the Guardian the pre-application process was standard practice and confidential. A spokesperson said it was not confirmation of any proposal and intended to offer guidance on whether a proposal was acceptable in principle in planning terms.

In an email dated 18 December 2025, council officials and the developers discussed creating links with a sixth form college in Exeter and a stakeholder engagement plan. “Who do we feel it is critical to get onboard and when, both locally and further afield?” the email asked.

Emily Clark, of the Devon Datacentre and Bess action group, said: "Email exchanges and private meetings spanning the past 18 months reveal some officers treating the project as a foregone conclusion. Community frustration is understandably at boiling point.

“How can the largest and most costly infrastructure proposal in the nation be conducted almost exclusively in secret?”

FoI requests also uncovered a detailed site plan not released to the public. It revealed the two largest buildings would measure 335 metres by 267 metres and cover approximately 9 hectares. Xlinks said its proposals cover about 344 hectares but only a third would be developed; the majority of land would be open to the public or used for new habitat creation to support wildlife, they said.

Xlinks said in a statement that its £13.8bn (\$18.3bn) AI and Bess project would bring significant economic investment, between 600 and 1,200 jobs and clean energy infrastructure to the region. “We will ensure that the Devon data campus is designed sensitively for local people and the environment,” the company said.

"We must legally improve biodiversity by at least $10\%$ , and plan to exceed this. Buildings will be sited to minimise visibility, through topography, landscaping and the existing treeline."

An environmental impact assessment was under way and any mitigation required would be built into the design and secured through planning conditions, Xlinks said.

A spokesperson for Torridge district council said Xlinks had planned to undertake a consultation in July, but this was postponed: "When any proposals are received these will be validated and details will be published on the council's planning portal ... We appreciate that this proposal will continue to generate a lot of local interest."

SANDRA LAVILLE IS ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT FOR THE GUARDIAN

'This is a global issue; we are all connected'

Elizabeth

Humphreys

Campaigner

▲ The proposed datacentre will be built in Great Torrington, Devon

◀ Protesters at a Torridge council meeting in Bideford

FINNBARR WEBSTER/

GETTY

Animal magic

How can AI be

used responsibly

in animal

research?

Science

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UNITED KINGDOM

Manchester

City and its

tainted success

UKRAINE

Cold front Kyiv digs in as bitter winter war predicted

By Charlotte Higgins KYIV

It felt like the last day of summer. On a Sunday afternoon in late September, people strolled through Kyiv's botanical gardens, admiring the late-flowering dahlias. Later, the terraces in the Podil area - a neighbourhood full of bars, patisseries and bookshops - filled up with customers in search of a cocktail.

The idyll was an illusion. As the day darkened, the air defence began its rumble and boom. When something fell with an explosive smack on a bar table, the drinkers flinched and then laughed. It was only a conker from the chestnut tree overhead. Nursing a glass of rosé, Myroslav Laiuk, a writer, talked about the picnic he and his wife had had the previous evening, in a park in the Obolon district - prosecco in proper glasses, cheese and charcuterie. Then a drone was shot down above their heads. Very pretty, he said, with a smile. Shooting stars. Time to make a wish.

Kyiv is no longer the city it was in the summer. Since late August, the Russians have been attacking over and over again in daylight hours, rather than only at night. The crump of air-defence, whine of drones and thunder of explosions are no longer the grim

Daily life in the Lukyanivka district of Kyiv – the neighbourhood most damaged by Russian attacks

Continued

music of the night, but a commonplace waking-hours symphony, disrupting schools and workplaces and threatening life. At times acrid smoke blurs the clear mornings. Kyiv has become a frontline city. And winter is on the way.

Winter is something to dread in Kyiv. Last year the cold was terrible - temperatures in the minus 20s - and cruelly long-lasting, persisting well into February. Sergiy Maidukov, an illustrator, was one of many who lost heating in his flat after the Russians attacked power infrastructure, the invaders' aim seemingly to make the capital unliveable. The indoor temperature dropped to 3C. He kept warm by layering up, but also by going for runs.

"At least for 10 minutes afterwards you felt a like normal person," he said. He had a gas supply, so he could heat water in a saucepan for a wash afterwards. At intervals he'd get up from his work and dance or do push-ups - not an option for the infirm. As Iryna Tsi-lyk, a film-maker, put it: "Young and strong people - they will survive every time. But how about all those invisible people that we usually don't meet?"

---

-20

Tsilyk's biggest fear was, she said, the loss of internet connectivity. Lack of water supply would be another nightmare. Maria Shuvalova, an editor in academic publishing, described the period two winters ago when, for several days, the water supply failed both in her flat and in her coworking space. She was drinking tea to keep warm, then needed the loo. So she would walk the 20 minutes home, pee in a bottle, and return to the coworking space; then drink more tea, and repeat the whole cycle. For bowel movements, there was a plastic bag, knotted and disposed of in the trash. Such details of life were, she joked, “shit you definitely don’t want to know”.

The level, in

celsius, to which

temperatures

dropped in Kyiv

last winter,

persisting into

February

On a stroll in the botanical gardens, Iryna Gorlach, an international cooperation expert, laughed when asked how she was preparing for the coming cold. She pulled out her phone and showed an Instagram post from a popular Kyiv account. “This winter will be super difficult, we need to prepare properly,” it said. Then three bullet points: “Buy a house in a village; go abroad; stock up on grains and cereals." Beneath, were the words "How I'm preparing" and a cartoon image of a panicked-looking dog holding a cross and a copy of the Bible.

Leaving the city is certainly on many people's minds. Nastya Dyakova, the chief executive of an online safety charity, has rented a seven-bedroom house in the Carpathian mountains, in far western Ukraine, where staff and their families can stay rent free if the situation in Kyiv becomes practically or psychologically untenable.

“It is not only a question about winter in Kyiv, but about drones,” she said. Since August, the capital has been assailed by new, faster, jet-powered drones. “It’s become really emotionally challenging to stay in Kyiv, and we understood that it’s difficult for our team to work or to focus because they really worry about their safety. So this option in the Carpathians is available for the next six months, until the end of winter.”

The Lukyanivka neighbourhood of central Kyiv has been hit hard this year, with its shopping complex and market bombed out and burned in the

▲ Halyna sells flowers next to the bomb-damaged market in Lukyanivka

'It is not only a question about winter in Kyiv, but about drones'

Maria

Shuvalova, a

mother-to-be,

and her food

supplies as winter

approaches

summer. Market traders have set up their stalls beside the ruins anyway: one lady, cheerfully presiding over slabs of salo, pork lard, proclaimed that her coping mechanism was going to be a plentiful supply of home distilled hooch, or horilka. Another stallholder, Halyna, cheerfully selling bouquets of lavender, dahlias and chrysanthemums, was similarly fatalistic. "It will be whatever God sends us," she said.

Photographs by Julia Kochetova

Passing the market en route to work was Viktoriia Riabchenko, an accountant. There had been a particularly good harvest this year in her dacha garden, she said, and she had a great stock of plums, sour cherries, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet peppers. Not that she was especially concerned about the possibility of food shortages, she said; Russian propaganda exaggerated the potential problem, and specific shortfalls in shops tended to be remedied fast.

Attitudes to winter, of course, depend on one's perspective and experience. Viktor, a delivery driver, was pausing outside Lukyankivka's branch of McDonald's. The plastic golden arches on the side of the building have lately been restored to crispness after the heat from the summer's bombs and fires. He was used to the cold, outdoors all day on his moped, and, having moved from Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, had plenty of experience with bangs and explosions. Ivan Onyshchenko, who had dropped by for a hamburger and fries, had invested in a generator that he put on his balcony on the fifth floor - a lot of fuel to carry upstairs if the electricity stayed out. His generator, he promised, was “only as loud as a hairdryer”.

Shuvalova lives on the 14th floor of her apartment building, and joked that last year she got great thighs walking up the stairs during power outages.

This year will be different though: she and her husband, who is serving in the army, are expecting a baby, and preparing for the winter has been detailed and intense. The couple have plans A, B and C - plan A is to stay in Kyiv, but leaving to stay with friends or family further from the Russian missiles is on the table.

Realising they could not expect the baby to live “like moles” as they did last year - reading by candlelight and working by laptop-screen glow during days-long outages - they have invested in an energy-storage system. The unit is in effect a giant battery, about the size of a small carry-on suitcase, that can keep appliances going for a day or so, if need be. Last winter they were on sale for 160,000 UAH (about \$3,500). Cannily, the couple bought one for about half that during the summer. Shuvalova also opened a drawer to reveal an array of small power banks.

The residents of their apartment block are voting on taking over the running of their own building. If they manage it, they will install a generator to power one of the lifts during power cuts, and a toilet for the bomb shelter - AKA the underground car park. Shuvalova opened cupboards to reveal stashes of water, dried grains, rice and tinned meat. They have a camping stove and a box full of "dry shower" packs - wipes that, with 50ml of water added, can be used to wash.

In her antenatal classes, a lot of emphasis is put on breastfeeding, she said. Formula requires clean water and the ability to heat it - not to be taken for granted this winter. “Breastfeeding takes care of all that,” she said. The air-defence roared away as she spoke. People outside Ukraine may question the decision to have a baby in Kyiv under such circumstances. “We couldn’t postpone any more so we just have to adapt,” said Shuvalova. “It’s bringing a lot of meaning to our life, and joy. And pregnancy hormones are very nice. I’m so calm and not stressing at all.”

Whether fatalistic, downhearted, or meticulously prepared, the boundaries of “acceptable” or “ordinary” have been pushed outwards for Kyivans in ways unimaginable to the inhabitants of other European capitals. Only one thing is certain this unpredictable, dreaded coming winter: that it will end. According to Maidukov, the illustrator: “In the evening when you are already blue and trembling, you’re thinking: ‘OK, one day is behind me, and I need to bear maybe two or three more weeks of this, which is not such a long time.’”

Last winter's freeze, he said, was a “weird period. Each day I was on the edge, about to fall down with my morale, but I didn't allow myself to. Because nothing will stop spring. Spring will definitely come.”

CHARLOTTE HIGGINS IS THE

GUARDIAN'S CHIEF CULTURE WRITER

GERMANY

Berlin's Mamdani? Left's Eralp looks likely to be mayor

Elif Eralp has promised to be 'a mayor for all Berliners'

AXEL SCHMIDT/REUTERS

By Kate Connolly BERLIN

Elif Eralp launched her election bid last autumn with the blunt statement: "People like me are actually not supposed to become mayor in this country." So the fact that the 45-year-old lawyer and daughter of political migrants from Turkey is on the verge of becoming Berlin's next mayor and the capital's first leader of Turkish origin is quite the moment in German politics.

The mood at Die Linke's election celebrations after the far-left party came first with more than a quarter of the votes was electric. Eralp, whose candidacy has helped propel the party from the doldrums to the brink of heading a coalition government in Berlin for the first time, was feted as a star.

Some commentators suggested Germany was “having a [Zohran] Mamdani moment”, in reference to the democratic socialist mayor of

New York. (One of his advisers was summoned to Berlin to help Eralp before the poll. Her campaign was modelled on that of the veteran US senator Bernie Sanders.)

“In our city, love and justice won over hate ... this signal goes out into the world,” Eralp said at her victory party, the “hate” a pointed reference to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which was celebrating coming first in another regional election. Even in liberal Berlin, the populist party made considerable gains.

With about 26% of the vote, Die Linke outperformed the centre-left Social Democrats and the Greens. It was also well ahead of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the conservative party of the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, which had previously held the mayoral position. A lot is now at stake for Eralp, who has promised to be “a mayor for all Berliners”.

Eralp, who was chosen in particular by the young (47% of whom voted for her) and who mobilised thousands of otherwise non-voters thanks in part to intensive door-to-door campaigning and social media, generated most interest with her ambitious promise to take on corporate giants over unaffordable housing in the German capital. She called sky-high rents a defining social issue, saying: “This city belongs to all of us, not to the speculators.”

Merz has led the charge against Eralp's plans to expropriate more than 200,000 Berlin flats from their corporate landlords, saying her policy would have “calamitous effects” on the economy. The chancellor has said he will push for laws to prevent her plans. Eralp has pledged to plough on.

It is not a given that Die Linke will take control of Berlin's towering Rotes Rathaus, or red city hall, named after its red brick. Eralp's victory has been overshadowed by accusations that Die Linke has failed to tackle antisemitism within its ranks as well as charges that the party has tolerated - or even courted - the support of criminal gangs.

The Social Democrats and the Greens, potential coalition partners, have said they need urgent clarification on these alleged affiliations before they agree to be associated with Die Linke. Die Linke's leadership has repeatedly denied the accusations while vowing to clampdown on any antisemitism in the party.

Eralp lives with her husband and two children in a rental flat in her own constituency of Kreuzberg, in south-central Berlin, home to one of Germany's liveliest Turkish communities. Much of her campaigning in the district was carried out in Turkish.

Unlike most Turkish migrants, Eralp's parents did not come to Germany as Gastarbeiter, or guest workers, from eastern Anatolia but were trade unionists and socialists from Istanbul who were imprisoned after a military coup for their political beliefs. Her mother, Hülya, a well-known feminist in Turkey, was only allowed out of jail because she was heavily pregnant with Eralp. She and Eralp's father, Selçuk, a doctor, fled to Germany, where their daughter was born in Munich in 1981.

The family experienced a complicated asylum process, which Eralp has said helped shape her view of the world. “I’ve experienced a lot about what it means when authorities make decisions you don’t understand. I’ve also felt racism and discrimination first-hand,” she has said.

After studying law at the University of Hamburg, she moved to Berlin for legal training, ending up working in the parliamentary group of Die Linke and later switching to the Berlin state parliament. She said she was inspired to join Die Linke in 2017 in response to the entry of Alternative für Deutschland into the Bundestag.

When she was 12, Eralp says, she wanted to become a human rights lawyer “to fight against all these injustices I’d seen”. Now, she says: “I’m doing what I set out to do, not in a courtroom, but in the political sphere.”

Her family had a complex asylum process, which shaped her view of the world

KATE CONNOLLY IS A GUARDIAN BERLIN CORRESPONDENT

PALESTINE

Painstaking task of clearing the rubble of war in Gaza

By Seham Tantesh GAZA CITY

It took all day to clear a section of road in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City. At the end of it, Ahmed Alyan, a UN engineer, was exhausted, surrounded by mountains of rubble despite the day's work.

“I feel as if we are holding a spoon and trying to empty the sea,” Alyan said, beads of sweat trickling down his forehead after a long, hot day.

Alyan is part of a World Food Programme (WFP) team who have been working on Beirut Street, once a busy main thoroughfare lined with shops, offices and homes and filled with traffic and people. But now it is virtually deserted.

The road was blocked by piles of rubble. Nearby, a tower stood tilted after some of its concrete foundations were damaged, while displaced families continued to live inside. In some parts of the road, sewage flowed from the ground after the drainage system was damaged by Israeli bombardment.

The UN estimates that removing the bulk of the rubble in the Gaza Strip could take at least seven to 10 years and cost billions of dollars. That would make the removal of war debris in Gaza one of the largest rubble-clearance operations in modern history.

"The estimate of the total amount of rubble in Gaza is 61m tonnes. It is approximately 20 times the amount of rubble generated in all wars across the world over the last 18 years," said Jaco Cilliers, the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) special representative in Palestine.

The clearance teams are working in ruins containing countless bodies and unexploded bombs. So far, 580km of roads have been cleared, which has in turn made possible the movement of aid trucks, relief teams and residents.

However, the reconstruction of Gaza is a huge challenge. After more than two years of work, about 907,000 tonnes of rubble have been removed and more than 300,000 tonnes recycled and reused. But this represents only about 1.5% of the total rubble.

To make things more difficult, the Israeli authorities have banned the necessary equipment from entering Gaza on the grounds that almost any aid that is not food or medicine could be “dual-use” and benefit Hamas.

Initially, the WFP work was limited to pushing debris to the sides of roads to create a passage for trucks. But the sheer quantity was overwhelming, and continuing Israeli bombardment during the nearly year-old ceasefire kept adding to the gargantuan task.

Meanwhile, the so-called yellow line, a demarcation established at the start of the ceasefire last October, keeps creeping forward as Israeli troops seize more territory. The area still accessible to residents and aid workers is barely 30% of the whole of Gaza, making the problem of what to do with the rubble even more acute.

"One of the ways we have tried to address this problem is by recycling and reusing the rubble in different ways," Cilliers said.

The UNDP has begun managing five rubble-crushing sites across Gaza, where debris collected from roads and damaged critical infrastructure is processed for reuse. The rubble is first sorted to remove non-concrete materials, including metal and steel rods. The concrete is then crushed down to roughly the size of a marble or a very small stone.

With major restrictions on the entry of construction materials still in place, engineers are reusing the crushed rubble to repair roads and fill pot-holes, while some is placed beneath tents and shelters to raise them above rainwater and sewage.

More than 2.1 million displaced people are living in tents and temporary shelters. Rubble has become part of the environment in which they live. Its removal has also helped revive Gaza's local economy. "One of the things we have seen is that when we clear rubble in front of damaged shops and businesses, many of them reopen within around 20 days," Cilliers said.

Despite the efforts to restore access to residential areas, the remains of homes carry a particular sensitivity. Every metre of rubble may conceal things that cannot be seen from the outside.

“Rubble in some areas does not represent just debris to people; it represents their entire life and memories. In some cases, there may be bodies still under the rubble. That is why removing it is a very sensitive issue for families and communities,” said Nehal Abu Hassan, a member of the WFP team.

SEHAM TANTESH IS A REPORTER BASED IN GAZA

Rubble being cleared and removed in Gaza City

SAEED MM T JARAS/ANADOLU/GETTY

1.5%

Proportion of total rubble cleared in Gaza after two years of work, where about 907,000 tonnes have been removed and more than 300,000 reused

---

Eyewitness China

---

Walk of flame

Folk artists perform traditional fire arts during the mid-autumn festival in Zibo, Shandong province. Local authorities across the country organised performances to celebrate the harvest moon, one of four major festivals in the Chinese calendar.

VCG/GETTY

UNITED KINGDOM

Game over? Manchester City's future in air after guilty verdict

Club claims its innocence but faces sanctions - including possible relegation - after more than 100 rule breaches

By Matt Hughes, Paul MacInnes and Will Unwin

The Guardian Weekly 2 October 2026

Manchester City has been found guilty of the vast majority of more than 100 charges related to

breaches of the Premier League's financial rules, throwing English football into turmoil.

The serial champions now face the possibility of being relegated from the Premier League, or expelled from the competition altogether, after a verdict in the biggest disciplinary case in the history of the sport was finally delivered.

Neither party was willing to publicly confirm the outcome last Friday with an appeal process expected to be pursued imminently by City. Two years after the hearings first began, however, there is now some clarity as to the scale of City's rule-breaking.

The 134 charges made against City cover the seasons 2009-10 to 2022-23 and cover a number of areas, with the most serious relating to claims that the club failed to provide “accurate financial information” to the league during this time. From season 2009-10 to 2022-23 inclusive, City won seven Premier League titles, a Champions League, three FA Cups and six League Cups.

A City spokesperson said: “The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality. As such Manchester City FC's position remains consistent with the club's statement of February 2023.

"The club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence."

The Premier League did not comment, citing the confidential nature of the case. Club executives are understood to have learned about the outcome following a shareholders' meeting in central London last Thursday and subsequently signed non-disclosure agreements.

Andy Burnham was asked about the news last Friday evening. The prime minister told ITV Granada Reports: "I've only just been made aware of it - I think these are reports at this stage. But if they're confirmed, obviously I will want to look at the report of the independent commission.

▲ City players huddle before a home game this season

RICHARD SELLERS/GETTY

"People shouldn't jump to those kind of conclusions. I know this has been a long process between the club and the Premier League. I think quite a contested process. So I don't think it's as simple as jumping to conclusions. I think we would all need to study the independent commission's report in some considerable detail before reaching any conclusions."

The verdict was reached more than three and a half years after more than 100 charges were first brought. According to the Premier League rulebook, any party who wishes to appeal against a decision by a judicial panel must do so by email within 14 days of a decision being announced.

Should City fail in its appeal, the judicial panel would then be expected to produce its verdict on the level of sanction applied to the club. Premier

Former manager Pep Guardiola (left) and club chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak with the Champions League trophy NICK POTTS/PA

How local's 999 call led to terror arrests at RAF base

League rule W64 describes the list of punishments available to a panel. Alongside levying a fine, any disciplinary committee could first suspend a club from competition, or levy a points deduction, or even expel a club from competition altogether.

The recent case involving Chelsea, which was found to have breached the FA's rules on agents on 74 occasions, resulted only in a cash fine of £10m (\$13m), but Chelsea was adjudged not to have gained significant sporting advantage from its actions and was praised for self-reporting the misdemeanours, which had occurred under the ownership of Roman Abramovich. Neither of these factors would appear to apply in the City case.

The unprecedented catalogue of charges related to five distinct areas of alleged rule-breaking. More than 80 charges related to a club's obligation to act in “the utmost good faith” when relaying information to the Premier League and to give complete disclosure of any information requested. These claims pointed towards the league's belief that City had given an inaccurate picture of the club's financial situation and withheld documents that might have cast greater light on it.

The rest of the charges related to alleged breaches of profitability and sustainability rules and the related Uefa financial fair play regulations. Finally, 20 charges related to the club's obligation to provide “full details of ... remuneration”, with breaches being claimed in the rules relating to the payment of players and managers.

Uefa found City in breach of FFP in 2014, a decision that resulted in City paying a €20m (\$23m) fine. The Football Leaks affair, in which millions of private documents relating to football were hacked and made public in 2015, led to reporting on City's affairs and an investigation from Uefa. By 2020, Uefa suspended City from the Champions League for "overstating its sponsorship revenue in its accounts". This suspension was overturned by City on appeal.

In December 2018, the Premier League began its own investigation into City. A secretive inquiry, it is believed to have been inspired by the Football Leaks revelations and resulted, four years later, in City being charged.

MATT HUGHES IS THE GLOBAL SPORTS

BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT AT THE

GUARDIAN; PAUL MACINNES IS A

REPORTER; WILL UNWIN COVERS

FOOTBALL IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND

UNITED KINGDOM

▲ Five men are arrested in a country lane near RAF Fairfield in Gloucestershire BBC

By Jamie Grierson and Helena Horton

In the early hours of last Sunday morning, a resident of the village of Whelford was driving home when she saw three white vans parked on a country road. She was immediately suspicious, she said - all the more so when she spotted a “large group of hooded and balaclava’d” men. She called 999 - and police arrived on the scene 15 minutes later.

The resident, who asked not to be named, told the Press Association: “It would appear that by doing so I just derailed whatever they were planning. A plucky amateur shouldn’t be spotting an unusual bit of activity at 1am when the airbase is on high alert. I think it’s absolutely astonishing.”

If there had been no 999 call, it initially appeared that the authorities would have been unaware of the vans, and the potential threat they posed to nearby RAF Fairfield in Gloucestershire, south-west England.

People living in the area have been used to disturbance from protesters and a heavy police presence ever since the decision to allow the US air force to use it as a base for attacks on Iran. But in recent weeks they have noticed dramatically increased security measures.

“In the prior few weeks they have put very heavy vehicles across all gates,” another resident said. She described them as “big tractors and things like that” parked behind gates into the base, adding: “So obviously they’re taking security seriously.”

The resident said “great big concrete walls” had also been placed behind some gates.

If local people had questioned the necessity of those steps, they may have been persuaded last weekend. In the early hours of last Sunday morning, others in Whelford became aware of suspicious activity as the local WhatsApp group lit up with messages.

One resident of Whelford, named Jason, said they were first aware something was happening at about 1.30am last Sunday, when people on the chat group started discussing the vans.

Julian Tudsbery, who has lived in Whelford for 30 years, said the 999 call had only come after an attempt to contact the airbase itself. “Evidently, they phoned the airbase police, who didn’t answer the phone,” he said. “It just rang out, so she dialled 999.”

'A plucky amateur shouldn't be spotting unusual activity at 1am when the airbase is on high alert'

A photograph published by the Daily Mail showed police arresting five shirtless men at night. Police later confirmed that five men had been taken into custody on suspicion of explosives and terror-related offences.

Residents were then woken at 6am by police banging on their doors and telling them to leave immediately. People from 85 households were taken to a nearby leisure centre.

Tudsbery added: “[The police] were then banging on the door, so I went downstairs in my dressing gown.”

Thirty emergency vehicles were seen in the village, with the army, a bomb squad and counter-terrorism police all investigating at the scene. Explosives experts were seen examining the three vans.

The RAF base has come to prominence since the beginning of the US-Israeli war with Iran. From the perimeter of the base it has been possible to see heavy bombs being loaded on to American aircraft.

Fairford has a very long runway, which extends almost 3km. It is reinforced to support heavy bombers such as the B-1 and B-52, which have been deployed against Iran. The aircraft are capable of carrying large payloads, including “bunker-buster” bombs.

JAMIE GRIERSON AND HELENA HORTON

ARE REPORTERS FOR THE GUARDIAN

ARGENTINA

By María de los

Ángeles Orfila

EL CHALTÉN

Photographs by Javier Rasetti

▼ El Chaltén seen from the beginning of the Laguna Torre trail, a popular route for hikers visiting Santa Cruz province

The images from Nepal stopped Daniela Schmidt in her tracks. A geologist at the University of Buenos Aires

in Argentina, she watched the deadly flash floods on 26 August tear through everything in their path, people running for their lives as the water and debris swept over the landscape.

“I had never seen anything like it,” she said. “This was one of the most catastrophic events on a global scale related to these glacial floods.”

The shock deepened as the first geological figures emerged: the volume of glacier ice and rock that had collapsed and the scale of the resulting flow. Schmidt began comparing them with the cases she had studied during her PhD. Very few glacial lake outburst floods, she realised, had reached anything close to this magnitude.

But Nepal also changed the way she saw her own work. Schmidt studies the glacial lake outburst flood (Glof) that could occur at Laguna Torre, in Argentina's Santa Cruz province, and its potential impact on El Chaltén, a nearby town known as the country's trekking capital.

The disaster already exists on her computer screen: data, models, flood simulations and maps. According to her studies, if the northern slope of Cerro Solo were to collapse into Laguna Torre, at the base of the Torre glacier, a massive volume of water and flood debris could travel the 8km to El Chaltén in 20 minutes.

The discharge could reach 1,769 cubic metres a second, rushing down the Fitz Roy River towards the town and inundating its only access bridge and other critical infrastructure. For anyone in the valley, those 20 minutes would be the window to reach safety. "It is the worst-case flood scenario," said Schmidt, adding that, in the most conservative analysis, the flow would take between 45 minutes and an hour to reach the town.

“You can’t say it will happen on a specific day or at a specific time, but society needs to be prepared,” she said. “It is going to happen.”

The threat was already changing how El Chaltén prepared for the future, but the disaster in Nepal has brought these risks to the forefront. Although the scale of that event and the El Chaltén scenario differ, Schmidt sees a similarity in the mechanism: a mass suddenly plunging into a body of water can trigger a flash flood with immense destructive power.

Authorities from Los Glaciares national park and the municipality of El Chaltén, along with local organisations and various scientific institutions, are working to develop the country's first Glof early-warning system and draft evacuation protocols. "We are preparing for the worst-case scenario," said Enrique Rivero, El Chaltén's secretary of government.

The silhouette of Cerro Solo is unmistakable. The vertical granite peak, rising to 2,121 metres above sea level, is reflected in Laguna Torre amid floating icebergs. That is where the risk begins. The Torre glacier is estimated to have lost 4 sq km of surface area, while its ice thinned by 60-70 metres between 1952 and 2023. As the ice retreats, the balance of the surrounding slopes also shifts - a process researchers call a “release of stress”.

This transformation is visible in landslides and rockfalls that leave scars across the mountainside.

Patagonia tourist town heeds warning of Nepal

Deadly flash floods increase sense of urgency for disaster planners in small town of El Chaltén, where hiker trail visitors are seldom aware of dangers posed by glacial melting

Between 2002 and 2023, the volume of displaced material increased, while the speed of movement doubled. “It moves slowly, but during heavy rainfall or high temperatures, it accelerates in pulses,” Schmidt said. “As the slopes become unstable, they can slide, dumping a large volume of material into the lake and causing it to overflow. It just needs a trigger.”

Her models contemplate landslides involving between 8m and 13m cubic metres of material. If a mass of that size were to collapse into Laguna Torre, it could generate a wave up to 5.8 metres high. The wave would travel across the lake at approximately 20 metres a second, reaching the Fitz Roy River in just one minute and 40 seconds.

The municipality has already ordered the dredging of the river channel and the clearing of the riverbed beneath the bridge that connects El Chaltén to provincial route 41. “But now we are being told that the water level could rise by up to 5 metres, which suggests the bridge could be swept away,” Rivero said.

The flood could also affect critical infrastructure located just metres from the riverbanks, including gas and

power plants, schools and homes. Discussions have already begun on a contingency plan that considers, among other measures, potential relocation.

If the event were to occur in summer, peaking in December to February, the town would be cut off, with more than 27,000 people - locals and tourists alike - stranded. At present, according to local people, there is no signage indicating evacuation routes or instructions, nor do hotels warn guests about the risk.

Horacio Pelozo, the park superintendent, said: "The initial studies

Sustained melting has created a second body of water in Laguna Torre, which increases the risk of the glacier collapsing

Twin peaks of Los Glaciares

Cerro Solo and Mount Fitz Roy loom

above the national park's terrain

Image: Google Earth. View looking north-west

really weren't alarming, or anything of the sort." However, a key new piece of data emerged, Pelozo said, alongside the measurements of the slope's movement: sustained melting had created a second body of water within Laguna Torre, the depth of which now exceeds 220 metres. Previous estimates had placed the depth at about 80 metres.

Then, in May 2025, an image from the Swiss Alps demonstrated the potential scale of a collapse involving ice and rock: the Birch glacier collapsed on to much of the village of Blatten, burying it in a matter of seconds.

email. Yet funding cuts have delayed implementation, with the estimated cost of \$220,000 exceeding the park's current capacity, as noted by Eduardo Marino, a former secretary of government for El Chaltén.

“Let’s not talk about Glofs, because it will scare off tourists” - that concern is circulating around town. And it is not hard to understand why: a large part of the community relies on tourism for its livelihood. Marino owns a hotel; Bonangelino runs a bookstore, rents out a cabin and works as a ski instructor. For them, as for many others, protecting tourism also means protecting their own livelihoods.

Los Glaciares national park has taken steps to address the risk of a Glof, including relocating the De Agostini campsite, rerouting hiking trails, installing warning signs and establishing an evacuation protocol involving at least 25 personnel to manage potential floods during peak visitor seasons.

Marino was asked to drop the subject until the summer season was over. He refused. He knows a day of heavy rain or exceptionally high temperatures could be enough to trigger an event they are not yet prepared for.

For Schmidt, the events in Nepal should serve as a wake-up call, but also as an opportunity. “The community and the tourists must be protected and kept safe in the face of this new reality of constantly changing glacial landscapes,” she said.

Flood figures El Chaltén wants action

20

MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES ORFILA IS A SCIENCE JOURNALIST BASED IN MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY

The response has expanded to include coordination with local and national agencies. The El Chaltén city council has passed a resolution to develop an evacuation plan, while a detection system with six monitoring stations - equipped with cameras, sensors and emergency buoys - is in development to trigger alerts through sirens, SMS and

\$220k

The number of minutes El Chaltén locals would have to evacuate in a worst-case Glof scenario

Estimated cost of

an early warning

system to alert

tourists and

locals in the town

of an impending

flash flood

RUSSIA

Spy trap Pussy Riot activist tells of FSB recruitment

---

In her first interview since fleeing Russia, Rita Flores reveals how she was forced to inform on Kremlin critics

By Shaun Walker

▲ Rita Flores says she was forced to work for the FSB for three years

RITA FLORES

First came the blackmail and death threats to secure co-operation, then came a series of tasks, each more sinister

than the last: to inform on fellow activists, to elicit personal information from protest-minded artists and - eventually - to help with a plot to kidnap and murder a Kremlin enemy.

That is how Rita Flores, a 29-year-old Russian artist, activist and former member of the Pussy Riot collective, described her recruitment and three-year handling by officers from Russia's FSB security service, a cooperation she only broke when she fled the country in August.

Flores made details of her collaboration public in a video discussion with her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, published just days after she left Russia. She explained she was coming clean in the hope that others in a similar situation might feel emboldened to break their ties with the FSB.

Now, in her first media interview since leaving Russia, she gave further detail. “For the first time in years, I feel calm. All this time I was dreaming about getting out and being able to talk about it,” she said. The Guardian could not corroborate the details of Flores’s account, but there have been numerous cases of the FSB

'All this time I was dreaming about getting out'

▼ Flores was arrested multiple times in Russia as part of Pussy Riot

RITA FLORES

infiltrating opposition groups over the past few years.

Flores, also known as Margarita Konovalova, has been associated with Pussy Riot since 2020, when she was detained after a performance near the Kremlin. She had served several short stints in jail and been subjected to surveillance and house searches, which intensified after the domestic crackdown that followed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

She was recruited after one police search in February 2023, when two men introduced themselves as FSB officers, she said. They threatened to open a criminal case over an Instagram post she had made criticising Russian killings in Ukraine. They also suggested they could arrange for her mother to be killed if she did not sign cooperation papers.

“I believed them. My fear was too great,” she said. As a reward for signing, she was given a one-off cash payment of 30,000 or 40,000 roubles (\$350 or \$470), she said.

Her first tasks were to gather information about other opposition-minded artists in the same circles as her. The two FSB officers who recruited her became her regular handlers. She saw the senior officer only occasionally. Flores began calling him “the Jacket”. The junior officer, named Ivan, became her primary handler.

Her handlers kept up the psychological pressure by repeating the threats, and even the friendlier Ivan made it clear that the consequences for crossing him would be severe, she claimed.

"He tried to befriend me, but he could also be threatening. He'd calmly say: 'They'll kill your mother and you won't be able to prove anything,' or 'If you go abroad they'll find you immediately and kill you,' and then he would giggle, like it was a joke."

In time, there were fewer targets to inform on, as most of the protest-minded artists left the country. Last May, Ivan and the Jacket first started asking her questions about Pyotr Verzilov, an activist previously linked to Pussy Riot who now lives in Ukraine and fights with the Ukrainian army against Russia.

Flores said her handlers wanted her to get information from Verzilov, including his address in Ukraine. Then, they suggested she use her old friendship with him to arrange a meeting in Serbia. There, he would be kidnapped and killed by a waiting FSB squad, they claimed. Ivan began to pay her 50,000 roubles a month as an additional incentive to help with the Verzilov case.

▲ Roman

Badanin, left,

and Mikhail Rubin

WIKIPEDIA; PROEKT

RUSSIA

Tsar wars: the writers living in Putin's climate of fear

Meanwhile, Flores said, she was plotting a way out. She married her partner last September, which she said was partly a way of worming out of the Serbia task, so she could claim to Ivan that her husband would never let her go on a trip to meet another man.

It was only when she contacted the lawyer, Zakhvatov, that she realised there could be a way for her to leave. The pair began scheming in secret over the details.

“They created a reality where she felt like they controlled everything, but actually it is not that hard to leave,” said Zakhvatov. In 2022, fellow Pussy Riot activists Lucy Shtein and Masha Alekhina fled house arrest in Moscow by dressing up as food delivery couriers to evade police and eventually leave Russia. Flores’s escape was less dramatic, but Zakhvatov and Flores declined to give details to protect methods for future cases.

By Kim Willsher

After Flores's escape, Zakhvatov announced a secure line for people in similar positions to contact him if they need help. Flores said she would also like to work to help others.

Since leaving Russia, Flores has been making calls to people she informed on as well as other old friends to explain herself, and said everyone had been supportive in these conversations.

“It’s not a big secret that it’s not great to work for the FSB, but fear can change a person,” said Alekhina. “It’s important that she’s now out of the country and that she said what happened to her. Nobody was killed and nobody went to prison [because of her], so that is good news.”

SHAUN WALKER IS A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT FOR THE GUARDIAN

At 6am on 29 June 2021, the Russian journalist Roman Badanin was woken by a knock on the door of his family's Moscow apartment. "Come quickly, someone has scratched your car in the courtyard," a voice shouted from outside. As he opened the door, masked men pushed their way in.

Across the city, a similar raid was happening at the home of Badanin's colleague Mikhail Rubin. The masked men were officers of the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, instruments of the “climate of fear and violence” that the journalists say Vladimir Putin has imposed on Russia in their detailed biography of the Russian president.

The Tsar in Person is almost 800 pages and has won the Grand Prix Strasbourg, a French literary award, whose jury said it read like a “spy novel” and praised the “courage and commitment” of the authors.

As founders of the independent media project Proekt, specialising in investigative journalism, Badanin and Rubin had been threatened, interrogated, labelled traitors and foreign agents, banned from news events and had their offices searched. Other colleagues had not been so lucky: several had died suddenly, in unexplained accidents or seemingly random attacks.

Rubin told the Guardian: “The first time we were threatened was in 2019 when we published an investigation into the chief of Putin’s propaganda operation. A Kremlin official warned me the consequences might be scary. Security agents visited my parents and asked them why I, their son, was selling out his country, betraying Russia.”

Less than three weeks later, the Kremlin declared Proekt an “undesirable” media outlet. “I left Moscow the next morning,” Rubin said. Badanin, who was on holiday with his family in Morocco, decided it was too dangerous for him to return. “The choice was prison or exile and I didn’t want to go to prison,” he said.

Their book, so far published only in Russian and French, charts the rise of Putin from an unremarkable clerk and undercover KGB agent at St Petersburg city hall to the Kremlin, where he has clung to power since 2000. Badanin and Rubin, former Kremlin-accredited “pool” journalists, have 40 years of investigative work between them and have conducted hundreds of interviews to produce their grim portrait. They depict Putin as a modern-day tsar, without ideology or convictions, a dictator capable of “limitless cruelty” who sees himself as above morality and laws.

40

"These pages are the result of war and repression, of exile and the death of some of those close to us, the suffering of friends thrown in prison," the pair write. "We hope it will contribute to destroying the circumstances that have made all this misfortune possible and defeat the person who did this with his own hands."

Neither journalist feels they have entirely escaped what they call “Putin’s death squads”. Last year, FBI agents turned up at Badanin’s California home to warn him they had information that he was at risk of an attack “by foreign special services”. “I feel a little bit safer here than in Europe, but not completely safe,” he said.

It is also the story of Russia from the end of the Soviet Union to today. Badanin said the book is aimed at young Russians who have no idea what their country was like before Putin took power. Unsurprisingly, it is banned by the Kremlin.

KIM WILLSHER IS A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT BASED IN PARIS

Number of years

of experience

as investigative

journalists

shared by

Roman Badanin

and Mikhail

Rubin

Vladimir Putin is depicted as a modern-day tsar

SERGEI ILNITSKY/AP

2 October 2026 The Guardian Weekly

INDIA

Fair talk Ancient art of a good debate given new voice

By Amrit Dhillon

The setting for perhaps the country's biggest exercise in public debate was quintessential rural India: fields of green paddy, a pond, a temple. On a normal day, as dusk falls in the village of Ajgara, in Uttar Pradesh, people gather beside the pond to chat about the price of crops, the weather or the theft of a goat.

But for more than a month, metaphysics and ethical dilemmas replaced the usual topics. Is it permissible to use deceit to defeat an evil enemy? Is a lie justified to save a life? What is the nature of reality?

The debating tournament was the brainchild of Abhishek Pandey, district magistrate of Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. When he took up the post two years ago, he knew the area was rich in archaeological treasures connected to the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata.

Throughout the text, Yudhishthira, one of the central characters, debates the nature of human existence. In Ajgara he answers a string of philosophical questions to save the lives of his four brothers.

Pandey, 35, like most Indians, grew up on this story. When he attended Oxford University on a fellowship, he admired the 200-year-old debating society. But India's tradition of public debate is much older, going back more than 3,000 years.

Pandey started to question why the tradition had not survived. “Indians have celebrated certain traditions for centuries,” Pandey said. “Why have we ceased to celebrate the legacy of debate and questioning?”

He decided that the annual fair in Ajgara would be a good place to stage the event, arranging 1,500 debates across the district in the run-up to the fair. The youngest participant was a 10-year-old schoolboy, the oldest an 80-year-old farmer.

Thousands of people took part, and were whittled down to eight finalists - two women and six men. The finale of the Great Ajgara Debate on 17 September lasted about six hours.

One topic was women's rights. A finalist, Vivek Singh, argued that women might have equality on paper but society's expectations of them

▼ A winner of one of the rounds of the Great Ajgara Debate 2026

'In a democracy, it is crucial for all opinions to be aired so we can get to the truth'

Sadhana

Dwivedi

Debate finalist

impeded the exercise of these rights.

Another, Prajjwal Shukla, 24, argued that the real question was not what role society assigned to women but who had the authority to make those choices. Whether a woman chose a career, household responsibilities, or both, should be her choice and hers alone, he said.

“Everyone listened respectfully, patiently, without interrupting. No one got personal. People sat for hours,” said Pandey.

In television studio debates, everyone shouts at the same time. Sadhana Dwivedi, one of the two women to progress into the last round of the Great Ajgara Debate, despises this approach.

“People need to learn to listen, to understand there may be value in another person’s point of view,” she said. “In a democracy, it is crucial for all opinions to be aired so that we can get to the truth.”

It is only in recent years that dissent has been suppressed, notably by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, which values conformity.

"It's ironic, because the BJP wants to recreate a Hindu state but is not even acquainted with the traditions of ancient Hindu civilisation, such as that of debate and being open to different ideas," said author and commentator Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr.

At the end of the tournament, the eight finalists were garlanded and driven around in an open-top car to much cheering, feted as “intellectual heroes”. The winner was Shukla, who is preparing to sit exams to enter the civil service.

“I can’t believe I am the winner of a debate that took place at the exact same spot as in the Mahabharata all those centuries ago,” he said.

Pandey is still processing the public enthusiasm. “My deputy asked me if we should get some police deployment because the turnout everywhere was so big, but I laughed and said no,” he said. “That would be a sad affair.”

He hopes to spread the event across other Indian states. “We have to inculcate a culture of debate. It’s the hallmark of a democracy.”

Meanwhile, he has planted his flag. The inscription on the stone slab he has installed at the site reads: “The Great Ajgara Debate. First Debate 3152 BC: Yudhishthira. Second Debate 2026: Prajjwal Shukla.”

AMRIT DHILLON IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN NEW DELHI

Farmers harvest

ubes in the

municipality of

Bayabas in the

Philippines

EZRA ACAYAN/GETTY

PHILIPPINES

Export ban is a threat to vivid vegetable's purple reign

By Sarah Marsh

In a corner of north London on a weekday morning, Philippine cuisine is thriving: diners at Mama & Sons in Kentish Town are making their choices, and one of the most popular items on the menu is the ube ice-cream sandwich. It's easy to see the appeal of the light, fluffy bun encasing a purple scoop of ice-cream.

The owner of the cafe, Omar Shah, said ube - a vibrantly purple root vegetable long-beloved in the Philippines - has exploded in popularity in the UK.

The purple yam has found its way into lattes, pastries and desserts, earning comparisons to the global matcha craze. Pret A Manger introduced the Ube Brûlée Iced Latte in May 2025 as a limited-edition summer drink featuring ube's sweet, nutty flavour. Starbucks and Costa Coffee, two of the largest coffee chains, introduced ube-flavoured drinks this year.

Which is why the Philippines' ban on fresh ube exports is causing such a stir. A shortage of planting material, coupled with concerns over maintaining control of the crop, has prompted the government to halt fresh exports.

"We severely lack planting material ourselves, and we don't want to export it to countries that could use Philippine ube varieties to compete with us," said the agriculture secretary, Francisco Pe Tiu Laurel Jr, in a statement. The export ban will not restrict sales of processed or frozen products, which are the primary ingredients used in the US and Europe.

However, Shah, who also owns London's oldest Filipino restaurant and five other eateries, said he cannot get hold of any ube, although he has enough stock to last a year. "Has the price [of ube] gone up? Yeah, I mean, but it was always up anyway ... if it goes up any more it's going to be considered a luxury product," he said.

Customer Jonas Salvador, 25, said he likes how experimental ube has become, with lots of “creative takes”

▼ Pastries made with ube at a cafe in Baguio, Benguet province, the Philippines

EZRA ACAYAN/GETTY

on how it can be used. His friend, José James, 22, agreed that “ube is having a moment”. He is from the Philippines, “so it’s a taste from home”.

Ube production in the Philippines rose 17% in the first half of this year to 5,660 tonnes, according to the national statistics authority. But Tiu Laurel said the industry was “growing faster than its ability to produce”. The government wants to expand domestic production before developing ube into a larger export earner, he added.

Guillermo “Ige” Ramos, a food scholar and founder of the Ugnayan Center for Filipino Gastronomy, argued in a position paper that “when global market demand surged, local farmers exhausted their stockpiles of raw tubers to fulfil lucrative international export orders”.

Ramos added that this effectively depleted “the planting stock required for the subsequent agricultural cycle”. He said: “Ube is not a manufactured colourant or a fleeting aesthetic trend; it is an ancestral root crop whose genetic continuity is under threat.”

Shah said part of ube's rise in popularity could be attributed to social media and its striking colour. Jennifer Creevy, content director at the analysis firm WGSN Food & Drink, agreed. She said that, “coupled with its visual appeal”, demand is “very much coming on the back of the matcha effect”.

Shah, who has worked with ube for a decade, put controls in place to maintain enough stock to last a year in case supplies become difficult to secure. “If all else fails and we cannot get hold of it, there are so many other ingredients from the Philippines that are versatile and just as delicious,” he said. One of those is “calamansi”, an ingredient indigenous to the Philippines that he called “incredible”.

Creevy said: “South-east Asian ingredients and flavours will continue to rise, so if brands needed to look for alternatives, there are plenty. Two also from the Philippines [that] we’ve already called out are pandan and calamansi. Both have beautiful colour and also fall into that gentle experimentation category.”

Omar said his parents have always loved ube. “It’s always been there,” he said. “It’s never been a trend for them; it’s just something they’ve had all their life. So to see it outside, it’s nice. To see the flag being flown.”

SARAH MARSH IS A GUARDIAN CONSUMER AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | As wildlife experts increasingly use AI in their research, they grapple with how to wield the technology responsibly | # Talk to the animals?

By Amy Martin

I'm sitting in a small boat in Shark Bay, Australia, eavesdropping on a conversation between some of Earth's most intelligent beings. The motor is off, the sea is glassy, and Stephanie King and I are motionless, transfixed by the whistles, clicks and squeezy, whirring noises made by the dolphins swimming below us.

If anyone could tell me what these big-brained social mammals are saying, it would be her. Based at the University of Bristol, she co-leads Shark Bay Dolphin Research, one of the longest-running wild dolphin research projects in the world. She has spent thousands of hours watching and listening to this population. Like most other animal behaviourists, King is increasingly integrating artificial intelligence into her research process. "If it's used responsibly, AI can transform what we can do with the data we collect," she said. But when I ask her if AI will someday allow us to "speak dolphin", she stiffens a little. "I think we're doing the animals a disservice by focusing on that question," she said.

The problem, King says, is not AI itself, but the narrative being built around it. She sees her field increasingly framed as a quest for an AI-assisted animal interpreter, with headlines declaring that we've almost “cracked the secret language” of various creatures or are about to “decode animals’ speech”. There are even cash prizes for breakthroughs, including the Coller Dolittle Challenge, which seeks an algorithm for communicating with non-human organisms.

“It’s a sexy topic,” King acknowledged, but in her view misguided. She believes the allure of tech dollars and media attention is priming the pump of research in some unhealthy ways - nudging scientists to make premature claims about AI-assisted findings, and encouraging them to describe their work in sensational terms. “They tend to be biasing themselves towards the most exciting discovery,” said King, which “misleads us to what we know about these animals”.

What we know is in fact very little. Take dolphins. “They’ve been studied for decades, but we’re still scratching the surface with what many of the sounds mean,” King said. Sound itself probably means something different to dolphins than it does to us. They can detect pitches far outside our range of hearing, they process acoustic information much faster than we do, and our sensory systems are wired differently in important ways.

For example, both humans and dolphins can echolocate - or use sound to navigate - but dolphins process echolocation information in the part of the brain connected to touch, while for us, it's more connected to vision. In other words, instead of "seeing" with sound, dolphins might be hear-feeling, or feel-hearing, their way through their watery world. Whatever that experience is, it may be fundamentally inaccessible to us - and it's not something we can comprehend by plugging their whistles and squeaks into a large language model. "We need to appreciate that they have a complex communication system that we barely understand," said King. She believes our focus should be learning about that system - piecing together what dolphin behaviour and communication means to other dolphins - rather than trying to hack into it and start a conversation.

Elephant researcher Joyce Poole agrees. “I get exasperated by this goal of being able to talk to the animals,” she said. As one of the world’s leading experts on African savanna elephants, Poole has spent decades observing the animals in the wild, building up a trove of annotated field recordings of their vocalisations, movements and interactions. She’s convinced there are many layers and nuances of elephant communication we don’t yet understand, but, like King, she’s sceptical about the concept of inserting ourselves into their dialogues. “Just the basic ability to understand what they have to say and what they are thinking about - that’s enough for me,” she said. “I don’t need to interfere in their lives more than necessary.”

At the same time, Poole believes making the inner lives of elephants more legible to humans could transform how we treat them. “I hope that by showing that they’re capable of a more sophisticated kind of communication that we gain them some respect from our fellow humans, and save a place for them in the world, together with their ecosystems,” she said.

Poole's hope is widely shared, and is probably one of the main reasons so many of us are prone to click on headlines about how AI is going to help us talk to animals. As extinction numbers rise and biodiversity declines, we're desperate for some good news.

“I do see AI as a potentially promising avenue for knowing more, and understanding better, non-human animal lives,” said César Rodríguez-Garavito, founding director of the More Than Human Life (Moth) programme at New York University, a leading hub for research and discourse on the rights of nature. He thinks AI could help give animals a voice in the decisions that shape their lives.

“More and more researchers and practitioners are asking themselves: ‘Well, how do we bring in the voices of, say, the whales in the regulation of a marine-protected area,’” he said. It may sound far-fetched to us now, but Rodríguez-Garavito said attempts

'I think this is no longer a science fiction question'

César

Rodríguez-

Garavito

Founding

director, Moth

to bring non-human voices into the realms of law and policy are already under way around the world. “I think this is no longer a science fiction question,” he said. Of course, we don’t need AI to tell us that whales are being negatively impacted by noise, ship strikes, climate disruption and pollution, but perhaps if we heard a direct translation of them expressing pain from underwater seismic testing, or mourning the loss of a calf killed by a ship, we would be more likely to act.

“But I cannot speak about potential benefits without speaking about risks,” Rodríguez-Garavito said. “We have, as human beings, a very mixed track record, to put it gently, in using technologies.” That record tells us that we can’t simply deploy AI in the wild and see what happens; we need to think through the risks ahead of time.

"The nightmare scenario is one where we interrupt their communications and lives at will, just for our entertainment," said Rodríguez-Garavito. It's not hard to imagine whale-watching companies using AI to lure animals towards boats, for example. A tool created with the goal of enhancing our respect for animals could end up having the opposite effect by turning them into playthings.

In an attempt to help steer the field away from these dark scenarios, the Moth programme recently published a set of ethical guidelines for the use of animal communication technologies. But if and how it will actually get put into practice is uncertain.

It's not hard to imagine whale-watching companies using AI to lure animals towards boats. A tool created with the goal of enhancing our respect for animals could turn them into playthings

Mickey Pardo, who works with Poole as a senior scientist at Elephant-Voices, also sees potential benefits and risks of AI-assisted animal communication tools, but he wonders if the speculation is a bit overblown on both sides. “Playbacks can be stressful for animals even without AI - when you’re just taking prerecorded sounds and playing them back - especially if you don’t know the context of those sounds,” he said.

He also questioned whether we're focusing too much on possible harms from AI when there are so many

other ways we negatively affect animals' lives, including in research settings. "The way animals are treated in biomedical science is so incredibly horrific compared to anything that anybody's doing in the field of animal communication," he said.

Luke Rendell, a marine mammal researcher at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, believes the AI hype has got way ahead of the science, and the public is being led to believe we know - or are about to know - much more than we actually do about animal communication. For example, Earth Species Project claims on its website that “with exponential advances in AI and large language models, decoding animal communication is no longer a question of if - it’s when”.

Like King, Rendell believes a quest to reveal the “language” of animals is loaded with humancentric bias that could actually limit our understanding of their unique and wildly diverse ways of getting their messages across. He’s also concerned about long-term damage to his field when the Dr Dolittle machine fails to materialise.

King said it all comes back to testing any AI findings with the experts: the animals themselves. “I think you have to use these AI and machine learning approaches alongside careful examination of the animals: when they produce calls, and in what context, and how they behave,” she said. This requires careful, patient studies in the field, the opposite of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos.

AMY MARTIN IS THE FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF THRESHOLD, A PEABODY AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY PODCAST

ANALYSIS

UNITED STATES

Show time Xi's summit with Trump was pomp with no progress

By Amy Hawkins

If the Beijing meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in May

was the “stalemate summit”, the second round of talks between the presidents of the US and China last week seemed to give up entirely on a breakthrough.

Instead, it was described as a celebration of “diplotainment” rather than diplomacy, where pomp prevailed over progress and where one of the main outcomes was the news that two pandas would be sent from China to Atlanta zoo.

But what of actual substance? Expectations going into the summit were low. But the outcomes somehow still fell short.

One of the biggest issues in the US-China relationship is trade.

Last year, as Trump unveiled successive rounds of tariffs on Chinese goods, the White House accused China of unfair practices that it said contributed to the loss of 3.7m US jobs and inflated the trade deficit. The tariffs were supposed to suppress the volume of Chinese imports and put pressure on China.

To some degree, they worked. The US trade deficit with China in 2025 fell to \$200bn, down from nearly \$300bn in 2024. But experts have noted that some of this shortfall is made up for by Chinese goods being shipped to the US via third countries.

With the US and China accounting for 43% of global GDP, their trade war has far-reaching implications for the world economy. So it was a relief when the two countries agreed a temporary truce last year.

This is due to expire in November. China was reported to be pushing for it to be extended until the end of Trump's term, in January 2029.

Last Thursday, it was revealed that Xi's visit had resulted in a mere two-month extension.

William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said: “This summit largely achieved symbolism and ritualism over substance.” The short extension “reflects the level of fundamental differences that still exist between the two countries”.

China's most powerful response to the tariffs was to block the export of rare earths, critical

▼ Xi Jinping and Donald Trump with their wives, Melania and Peng Liyuan, during the state visit to Washington WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY

minerals vital to US manufacturing and military supply chains.

Julian Gewirtz, who served as a senior China official in the Biden administration, said: “Beijing’s retaliation … seems to have had a profound effect on [Trump] and his administration’s willingness to take risks vis-a-vis China.”

The summit failed to achieve any meaningful progress on thorny issues in the US-China relationship such as artificial intelligence, Taiwan, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, and human rights.

On Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be the most important issue in the relationship, Xi put pressure on Trump to weaken the US's support for the self-governing island that China claims as its own. According to the Chinese readout of the meeting, Xi told Trump he hoped “the US side will adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence”.

For the US to state it “opposes” Taiwanese independence would be a rhetorical shift from the current position of “does not support” such a claim, and would be a move welcomed by Beijing. Trump has not yet commented on whether he agreed to such a statement. But it does seem he is no closer to approving a \$14bn arms sale package for Taiwan, a sale that Beijing would like to see disappear completely.

This

summit

largely

achieved

symbolism

and

ritualism

over

substance

US Senate Democrats lambasted Trump for failing to deliver agreements on “the economic and security issues that will shape America’s future”. Trump ignored recent warnings about the dangers posed by AI, writing on social media last Thursday: “I want to leave it exactly where it is,” adding: “That is China’s position also.”

For China, the lack of big news from the visit is a win in itself. “The summit went excellently from the Chinese perspective,” Thomas said. Xi “got a huge amount of respect from the American president, the full state visit treatment [and] really great images beaming back to China of the Chinese and the American presidents, without having to make any meaningful concessions or compromises.”

AMY HAWKINS IS THE GUARDIAN'S SENIOR CHINA CORRESPONDENT

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attends the Independence Day parade in Brasília

MATEUS BONOMI/ANADOLU/GETTY

BRAZIL

US plans to 'colonise' our country, says Lula, on election eve

By Tom Phillips and Tiago Rogero

RIO DE JANEIRO

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's presidential campaign has accused Donald Trump of wanting to “colonise” Brazil in order to capture its natural resources by meddling in this month's presidential election. The accusation came in a campaign advert that was published on social media last week by Lula's team and first aired on television last Friday amid growing fears over the impact alleged US interference could have on the vote.

The TV spot claims the US president is trying to sway the election in favour of Lula's far-right adversary in the election, Flávio Bolsonaro, in order to advance Trump's interests in the South American nation. "Flávio Bolsonaro is Trump's candidate and what Trump wants is to colonise Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust," the female narrator tells viewers in the minute-long video.

The state department has denied claims the US is meddling in Brazil's election. "Any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation's election is a baseless lie," it said last month in a statement.

Writing on X, Lula accused Bolsonaro of wanting to “hand our natural resources over to the United States”. The leftwing president added: “If it’s up to him, Brazil will become a colony again.”

In the days leading up to the 4 October first-round vote, Lula and Bolsonaro are neck and neck in the polls. A second round runoff will be held on 25 October if no candidate secures more than half of the votes.

In recent weeks, there has been growing alarm - in Brazil and overseas - about Washington's apparent attempts to influence the result, with a campaign of diplomatic and economic pressure, including $25\%$ tariffs on Brazilian imports.

Speaking at the UN general assembly in New York last week, Lula indirectly criticised perceived meddling by the US, telling delegates: "We will not allow the enemies of democracy - internal or external - to attack the will of the people. Brazilian democracy belongs to the Brazilians."

Last week, dozens of Democratic members of Congress wrote to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to denounce the Trump administration's “apparent effort to interfere with, and potentially undermine” Brazil’s elections through a “sustained, multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilisation”.

The narrator of Lula's campaign ad cited a series of recent media stories relating to alleged acts of US meddling. They include reports about the alleged interference of big tech companies as well as a confidential document sent to electoral authorities by Brazil's intelligence agency warning of a “critical level” of risk of US interference. The campaign video also highlighted recent claims about links between Bolsonaro's campaign and the conservative donor network Rockbridge, which was co-founded by the US vice-president, JD Vance.

Éden Valadares, the communications secretary for Lula's Workers' party, said the ad was part of efforts to “alert the Brazilian people” to the ideologically driven US campaign. “We don’t believe it will work but nor will we sit back and do nothing,” he said. “President Lula has instructed us … to mobilise Brazilian society … [and] to react in the streets,” added Valadares, who said a nationwide series of events were being planned.

Fears over US meddling are not confined to the Brazilian left. Last week, another of the rightwing candidates in Brazil's election, Renan Santos, also denounced Trump's behaviour and said he did not want Brazil to become a US vassal state. "They want to interfere in Brazil's elections to secure satisfactory contracts involving rare earths," Santos said in a social media video.

Recalling the US invasion of Venezuela in January, Santos added: "I don't want to see Latin America become an American protectorate."

In the letter sent to Rubio, the Democratic politicians wrote that “rather than helping defend Brazilian democracy”, the US was “acting as an agent of interference and destabilisation - using diplomatic, economic and political pressure in ways that risk weakening the country’s democratic institutions, undermining confidence in Brazil’s electoral process, and inflicting further damage on our relationship with a strategic US ally and trading partner”.

They asked Rubio whether Trump's administration would commit to respecting Brazil's electoral process and requested a response by 1 October. The state department had not responded to a request for comment by last Friday.

Lula's team accuses the US of backing Flávio Bolsonaro, a claim denied by the US state department MARINA UEZIMA/SHUTTERSTOCK

TOM PHILLIPS IS THE GUARDIAN'S LATIN AMERICA CORRESPONDENT; TIAGO ROGERO IS SOUTH AMERICA CORRESPONDENT

---

How Radic

Britain's new prime minister has declared he wants to end 40 years of neoliberalism. But is he really prepared to be that radical, and who are the people shaping Labour's latest grand plans for the UK? By Hettie O'Brien

N MAY 2025, WHEN KEIR STARMER was still prime minister, Labour politicians, campaigners and journalists gathered at the Ministry of Sound in London to watch a series of panel talks and presentations illuminated by the lucid glow of club lights. The day-long event was organised by a campaign group called Compass, and the subjects included child poverty, the

Murdoch-owned media and the rise of the radical right.

“We felt as though the Labour government was failing, and needed to be pulled into the 21st century,” Neal Lawson, the founder of Compass, told me. The Starmer government’s support for the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, its equivocating stance on Gaza and its emulation of far-right rhetoric - crystallised in a speech on immigration, during which the prime minister suggested Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” - were causing Labour supporters to rapidly desert the party. “The Starmer project was so obviously intellectually bankrupt. He was personally so disinterested in ideas and big thinking that I thought: this is never going to fly," Lawson said.

At 4pm, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, got up on stage to give the closing address. “It’s the latest any Labour people have been in the Ministry of Sound on a Saturday,” he joked, cheerfully sweating under the lights. He spoke for 15 minutes, speeding up with excitement. Unlike Starmer, Burnham seemed to have a clear theory about the “dark and divided times” the country found itself in, identifying the long-term cause of Britain’s “modern malaise” as the privatisation of essential services, such as water and electricity, under Margaret Thatcher. Rather than mimicking the rhetoric of the right, he suggested that Labour should take concrete steps to improve voters’ lives, “things that matter to people every single day”.

The prospect that Burnham could replace Starmer seemed did. He wasn't an MP and any route back to Westminster was unclear. But he was the most high-profile Labour politician to eloquently diagnose the causes of Britain's widespread sense of political disenchantment and economic injustice, something Starmer had never managed to do. “It wasn’t just the speech of a mayor of Manchester,” Lawson recalled. “It was the speech of someone who looked and sounded like they wanted to be prime minister.”

A few months later, Compass launched a new membership organisation, Mainstream, with the aim of funnelling leftwing ideas into a new Labour government. It wasn't intended to be a campaign organisation for Burnham, Lawson told me, but it was “a happy coincidence”. Burnham signed its founding statement. As the political momentum for an alternative to Starmer increased, and as Burnham started to look like the only real contender, a small group of economists in London began working together to persuade him that, were he to become leader, he should make the unaffordability of everyday life his focus.

For years, Labour had prized economic growth as the main route to improve living standards. But economists such as Alfie Stirling, the director of policy at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF); Hannah Peaker, deputy chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (NEF); and Carys Roberts, a former policy adviser to Starmer who had resigned in October 2025, argued that this approach was mistaken. The government didn't have long enough until the next election to wait for growth to materialise, they believed, so it should try to improve people's living standards now by intervening in the market to lower the cost of living. On 14 May 2026, the Labour MP for Makerfield, Josh Simons, announced he would be standing down and cleared the way for Burnham to run in a byelection. On the same day, the JRF and the NEF published coordinated research proposing a new system of rent controls. (The Institute for Public Policy Research [IPPR], the thinktank where Roberts formerly worked, had published similar research a few days earlier.)

Burnham seemed to take their message on board. In his first weeks as prime minister, he threw out a confetti of new announcements. He slashed energy bills and lowered bus fares. He pledged to end homelessness, to build more council housing, and to fix adult social care. “The mood is feeling so much more positive than most of the last year and a half in parliament,” the Labour MP and economist Yuan Yang said last month during a lecture she gave in London.

And, yet, owing to the way that Burnham became prime minister - with no leadership contest or general election manifesto - it's difficult to tell how radical his government wants to be. Already, he has watered down the council housing announcement (60% of funding for new homes in England outside London will go to social housing, rather than all of it), backtracked on his intention to cap political donations at £500,000 (\$660,000), and has stopped talking about "public ownership", instead using the vaguer language of "public control". "Burnham is the master of vibes. He's a figure who pops up with a positive story," Karel Williams, an emeritus professor at the University of Manchester, told me. "It feels as though he's become a screen on to which different Labour factions project their hopes, telling us more about what other people want to happen than what he might do."

Nonetheless, Burnham styles himself as the most radical prime minister since Thatcher and has not backed away from his stated ambition to end 40 years of neoliberalism. His willingness to name her ideology suggests that, unlike Starmer, Burnham understands the importance of ideas in politics: having them, spreading them, making them seem like common sense. Many of the ideas that have guided Britain's governments in the past half-century have been produced by a small group of thinktanks close to Westminster. "When there's the prospect of a new Labour government, that machine goes into overdrive," Mark McVitie, the co-founder of the Labour Growth Group, a caucus of MPs formed in 2024 with a self-described mission to "smash the status quo", told me.

In the past few months, a deluge of ideas have been suggested by people seeking to influence the government. Whether any have a chance of becoming reality will become clear over the next few months, first with the publication of the budget and then with the government's 10-year plan for Britain. “Nothing is off the table,” one source close to Downing Street told me in August.

This summer, in the weeks after Burnham became prime minister, I began interviewing the small core of people who are trying to shape this agenda. Some have radical ideas about economic ownership, while others spend their lives thinking of ways to devolve political power away from London to Britain's neglected cities and regions. But for all their different prescriptions, they agreed on one thing: the government can't afford to wait if it is to have a chance against the threat of a globally resurgent right, funded by oligarchs who are hostile to democracy. "There's a ticking clock with this," McVitie said. "I talk about democratic breakdown. And my big fear is that tweaking the current model is not going to work."

ONE PHRASE THAT BURNHAM HAS REPEATED since becoming prime minister is that Britain's great mistake has been privatising economic power and centralising political power. More than one person I spoke to attributed the phrasing to Mathew Lawrence, the founder of the thinktank Common Wealth. In

June, he and the economist Alex Williams published a paper called The Productive State: A Framework for Manchesterism.

"The Blair line was always ‘what matters is what works’," Lawrence told me. "But is private equity really working to deliver social care? Have leveraged buyouts of the water industry really worked for rivers? Has the privatisation of energy really worked to deliver value for money or energy security?" The paper argued for a different kind of economy. It would be based upon a foundation of essential services provided by publicly run corporations, a second tier of privately owned manufacturing and retail businesses, and a third tier of startups in industries such as AI and clean energy that would be regulated and supported by the government.

Lawrence is always having at least two conversations at once: one in person and another on the phone. I've known him for nearly a decade (we briefly shared a flat in 2020), and when we met recently, he took three calls in the space of 20 minutes: one from an MP, another from an MP's special adviser and a third from a journalist. Although his research has been cited as an influence on Burnham, Lawrence has not been given a role in the new government. But Common Wealth certainly is influential. As secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Ed Miliband consulted its research when founding the publicly owned company Great British Energy, and Lawrence has since discussed the Productive State paper with the team of Miliband's successor, Miatta Fahnbulleh.

In Britain, the world of leftwing policy ideas is a small network of friends and former colleagues. Fahnbulleh, who previously worked at the IPPR and was then chief executive at the NEF, has hired people from the network into her department. Carys Roberts, formerly director of the IPPR, is her chief of staff. George Dibb, another IPPR alumnus, was seconded to Fahnbulleh's department to advise on industrial strategy. Another influential thinker in this world is Arthur Downing, a friend of Lawrence who worked as an adviser in the energy department under Miliband. Today, Downing is a strategy director at Octopus Energy and author of a book arguing for public ownership of Britain's energy networks. He recently founded a discussion group called the Haldane Society - named after a hero of his, Thomas Haldane, a Scottish engineer who created one of the world's first heat pumps - bringing together Westminster insiders and people in the energy industry to discuss public ownership. "Privatisation is a form of self-loathing," Downing said at a recent event. "It's believing that your own government can't own and operate assets that another state can."

The thinkers surrounding the Burnham government share certain characteristics. They are mostly men who live in inner London, wear

'It feels

he's now

a screen

on to which

Labour

factions

project

their

hopes dark blazers over open-collared shirts, and write essays on Substack or for the New Statesman using phrases such as “dynamism” and “productivism”. Some of them have worked for MPs, some have spent most of their careers at thinktanks, and others have come up through what one described as the social media “posting to policy pipeline”. Many of them are under 40.

It's possible to discern three distinct camps seeking to influence Burnham. The first, which is closer to Fahnbulleh and Miliband, draws on the more radical ideas of thinkers such as Lawrence and includes organisations such as Common Wealth and the NEF. Its central argument is that the privatisation of life's essentials has created an affordability crisis that is driving up inflation, and that many of these assets should therefore be publicly owned.

The second camp is closer to Burnham's powerful ally, the first secretary of state, Louise Haigh, her adviser Nick Williams, and Josh Simons, the former Makerfield MP. It includes thinktanks such as the newly founded Centre for British Progress and the Good Growth Foundation. For this more centrist camp, the problem with Thatcherism has less to do with privatisation than the erosion of state capacity that resulted from it. "We rely on an army of consultants, lawyers and third-party providers," because Britain has "forgotten how to build", wrote David Lawrence, the co-founder of the Centre for British Progress, in a recent essay. The answer to Britain's economic problems, according to this school of thought, lies in winnowing down the vast apparatus of regulations, particularly planning policies, that protect large and established companies, prevent startups from emerging, and are holding back a potential abundance of new homes and power plants.

Finally, there is a third, older camp of thinkers who might be called the communitarians; they have more power than either of the other two camps, since they hold key positions in No 10. Among them is James Purnell, Burnham's chief of staff and one of his most trusted friends, and Purnell's close friend Graeme Cooke, a former director of the IPPR, who is now director of Burnham's No 10 policy unit. Newcomers to the Burnham government have been reading a 2010 essay that Purnell and Cooke wrote during a period of soul-searching after Gordon Brown lost the general election. They argued that New Labour had failed to develop a philosophy for what a good society looked like, one that rejected the paternalism of the state and put people in charge of their lives.

LAST MONTH, BURNHAM HIRED AN ADVISER named Marc Stears, an influential political theorist in this communitarian tradition. Stears is more concerned with political philosophy than the granular details of economic policy and believes Labour's major challenge has less to do with the minutiae of planning regulations or public ownership than with the need to renew people's faith in politics. "For decades now, the professionalisation of political parties [has] generated a cult of expertise and detachment, a sense that ordinary people do not understand their own lives, that the fundamental aspects of their affairs are better run for them from on high," he wrote in Out of the Ordinary, a wide-eyed study of English writers such as DH Lawrence and George Orwell that was published in 2021. He argued that what Britain needed most of all was a "thoroughgoing devolution of power".

One challenge for the small army of thinkers trying to influence Burnham is that, unlike his predecessor, the prime minister is not a blank slate: he has strongly held principles, derived not from policy papers or Westminster advisers, but from his own experience of governing. At the heart of this is an approach that he has famously dubbed “Manchesterism”. In a speech he gave this March, Burnham defined this as a means of softening the harder edges of capitalism by combining economic growth with social progress. For the prime minister, Manchesterism is also, crucially, a vindication of the policy of devolving power away from London. (The Greater Manchester mayoralty, along with five other new “metro mayor” posts, was introduced in the 2010s under the Tories.)

The British media rarely covers cities outside London in great depth, and Burnham's “ism” has generated its own micro-genre of commentary from journalists and policy experts using the city as a guide to what he might do as prime minister. Yet the idea of combining social and economic progress is hardly a radical philosophy. In that speech, Burnham likened Manchesterism to Benjamin Disraeli's one nation Toryism. So what does it actually tell us about what the prime minister wants?

BURNHAM'S MOST HIGH-PROFILE ACHIEVEMENT as mayor of Greater Manchester was the creation of the Bee bus network, the result of a deal that Richard Leese, the former leader of Manchester city council, agreed with George Osborne in 2014. Under Thatcher, England's buses were effectively privatised in 1986, allowing companies to choose which routes to cover and how much to charge. This meant that from 1986 to 2019, the number of bus journeys in Greater Manchester dropped by nearly half. After Theresa May's government passed the Bus Services Act in 2017, allowing England's metro mayors to bring buses back into public control, Burnham was the first to use these new powers.

While the buses wouldn't be fully run and owned by the state, the newly formed Transport for Greater Manchester now decides all the routes, timetables and fares. Two of Britain's largest bus operators took the mayor's office to court, arguing that the decision was unlawful (the high court dismissed their challenge). "Getting this done was really, really hard work - for Andy in particular," Leese told me. "One wrong step and Stagecoach and the others would have had us back in court. They were watching the commas."

The sunflower yellow Bee network was launched in 2023 and burnished Burnham's credentials as a savvy political salesman. His emphasis as mayor on regenerating communities outside the city centre and making Manchester more affordable, by pledging to build council housing and pressing employers to pay the living wage, has drawn retrospective comparisons to New York City's mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who introduced rent freezes, city-run grocery stores and free childcare to reduce the cost of living. But a number of people I spoke to worried that there would be limits to how much the Manchesterist approach could be applied at a national level.

This year, Haigh wrote a piece for Renewal - an influential centre-left journal published by Compass - setting out her arguments for economic change. It recommended a series of fiscal policy tweaks, but made no mention of public ownership, nor how to tangibly improve living standards in the here and now. Since then, Burnham has put Haigh in charge of a cabinet taskforce that will examine how to bring housing, energy, water and transport under “public control” rather than full-on state ownership. Lawrence, McVitie and other members in that first, more left-leaning camp around the prime minister are sceptical that the system of public control that worked for Manchester’s buses could ever work for England’s water system.

At her lecture in London, Yang, a former Financial Times journalist who has a government role in the Treasury, sketched out a vision for what Burnhamism may look like. “Many words have already been written about which isms might replace neoliberalism: Manchesterism, productivism, localism,” Yang said. “What interests me is not just the switch from one ideology to another, but the end of a neoliberal consensus, the idea that there’s one economic theory to rule them all.”

Yang falls somewhere between the first and second camp. In her lecture, she explained that Manchesterism is about places being able to make choices for themselves. But if power is further devolved to individual regions, she admitted, “there are some regions with Reform mayors [who] will pursue quite different economic structures”, perhaps by pursuing “light-touch regulation and financial

Northern seat

Andy Burnham (rear centre) holds a meeting at No 10 North. He is expected to work there at least one day a week

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/PA/GETTY

services". If this is the case, a Manchesterist approach to running the UK government wouldn't represent the end of neoliberalism so much as the beginning of an experiment in letting hundreds of municipal flowers bloom. From Labour's perspective, some of those flowers would probably turn out to look more like weeds.

The world of policy debate and thinktank research can sometimes feel very insular. These organisations have such similar names - Compass, Mainstream, Tribune, Renewal, Progress, Common Wealth, the Productivity Institute, the Future Governance Forum, the New Economics Foundation - that only an insider could be expected to keep them straight. Since he became prime minister, Burnham's big idea has been to challenge the notion that politics is something that only happens among a clique in a small area of central London. In late June, he announced the creation of No 10 North. It is currently located in a sleekly refurbished 1980s office block opposite Manchester's Victorian town hall. The vibe is more casual than Downing Street: inside, there are breakout rooms and open-plan offices. Some ministers hot desk.

No 10 North could be remembered in a few years as just a gimmick, but it could also turn into one of Burnham's most consequential policies. It is partly a means of wrestling power back from the Treasury in London, which is often accused of blocking investment in the north. Civil servants responsible for local growth are being relocated into a new government department called the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which will be led by Haigh. The idea for such a department originated in a paper produced by the Future Governance Forum, which argued for a new centre of executive power within No 10. "You need a centre that is strong enough that it can give different government departments a direction on devolution they can't ignore," Jack Shaw, who runs a small thinktank called Groundwork, told me. "Paradoxically, in order to get the most out of devolution, Burnham needs a more powerful centre."

Many of the thinkers most excited by Burnham's devolution plans are people like Shaw, a 33-year-old from Dagenham, on the outskirts of London, who has spent many years working on these ideas at smaller thinktanks, including IPPR North. Shaw belongs to a WhatsApp group of 120 devolution experts, which pinged with excited messages when the government recently published an ambitious statement called Rewiring the State. The statement laid out the cabinet's plans to give local leaders greater control over income taxes, skills, transport and public services. "It was like Christmas for devo wonks," Shaw told me. "It's the most radical document in devolution policy that we've seen."

Burnham sees devolution not just as a technical policy challenge, but as a moral imperative. The received wisdom among politicians and civil servants has long been that people care far more about the NHS and other national services than they do about their councils. But the erosion of the public realm has exposed the flaws in this thinking. It is, after all, local government that is responsible for litter, high streets and many of the services that people interact with in their everyday lives. The all-too-visible decline in these areas has fostered a widespread disillusionment. “We now have a hollowed-out local state combined with soulless, top-down public services,” Burnham said in a 2025 speech. “That is becoming, in my view, a toxic combination. Citizens no longer trust these systems to improve their lives.”

One initiative that Burnham launched as Greater Manchester mayor shows what an antidote to this may look like. In 2023, the city created three new community health hubs that offer people healthcare and employment advice in their neighbourhoods. Instead of funnelling people through the NHS or Department for Work and Pensions, these “Live Well” hubs connect them with local charities and community organisations. They’re an attempt to instil what Burnham, quoting Pope Francis, has called a “culture of encounter”, where the local state works alongside organisations that people already trust and listens to their needs. “I think Burnham, in his gut, feels the need to directly empower people and communities,” said Rich Bell, the director of We’re Right Here, a team that has been meeting with No 10 advisers about devolution. “But I have concerns that these ways of working are quite alien to the state and to the Labour party in general.”

If the central idea of Manchesterism or indeed Burnhamism is devolving power away from Westminster, the prime minister will have to confront a deep-rooted anxiety in the UK. Writing about the fragility of the British state in the 1970s, the historian Tom Nairn noted Westminster's resistance to constitutional change: rising Scottish and Welsh nationalism were always seen in London as “destructive forces” that needed to be managed. Labour, too, is inclined towards hoarding power. “The party was born in an age of industrialised, mechanical, top-down, Fordist empire,” Neal Lawson told me. “And old-school Labourism is monopolistic, controlling, ‘we know best’.”

IN THE PAST TWO CENTURIES, every politician armed with grand ideas that managed to change Britain did so through the central state. Reforming Labour governments, such as Clement Attlee's and Harold Wilson's, relied on Whitehall's powerful bureaucracies. Thatcher recognised that her free-market reforms depended on the existence of a strong

state that could police opposition, including restive trade unions and Labour-led councils. Tony Blair once said: “If you want to drive through systemic change, you’ve got to drive it through from the centre.” Burnham has said he wants economic change, but it’s unclear how this will be achieved by giving power away to people who may not share this desire.

Burnham hopes that devolving power will improve Britain's economy and drive “growth in every postcode”. “There are really strong rationales for this,” Diane Coyle, a professor of public policy at Cambridge who co-authored a report whose policies were credited with spurring Manchester’s 21st-century revival, told me. “But I think every ‘postcode’ is overambitious. It’s not going to happen at that granularity, because some places will mess it up.” In Greater Manchester, the economic benefits of devolution have been uneven. The average rent in central Manchester is now at least 200% higher than housing benefits. Outer boroughs such as Oldham and Rochdale are far removed from central Manchester.

In late August, the leader of economic development at Rochdale council took me on a drive around Atom Valley, where the council is attempting to attract a cluster of high-value manufacturing businesses that produce things such as batteries for electric vehicles and fibre-based alternatives to plastic. The government has funded a research and development centre for manufacturing techniques.

Atom Valley could be an example of what the grand talk of ending neoliberalism and new economic models looks like in practice: government-backed manufacturing, focused on the industries of the future. The council officer told me excitedly about the 20,000 jobs that the businesses at Atom Valley would create. But as it has become more advanced and automated, the number of people employed in manufacturing has shrunk. “The political classes, for statecraft reasons, want to restore growth, because it would make it so much easier to manage everything,” Williams told me. “But they can’t restore growth because the good jobs that were partly responsible for growth aren’t coming back.” Williams told me about Ambition North Wales, a regional initiative that is supposed to create 4,200 new jobs by 2036, including roles in advanced manufacturing. After five years, it has produced just 63 full-time roles.

This week, Burnham gave his first speech at Labour's annual party conference since becoming prime minister. On 28 October, the budget will be announced. People will be watching anxiously to see whether the rhetoric of Burnham meets reality ●

HETTIE O'BRIEN IS A WRITER ON THE GUARDIAN'S FIRST EDITION NEWSLETTER AND THE GUARDIAN LONG READ

Ten years ago, San Francisco 49ers superstar Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the pre-match national anthem. He was accused of disrespecting the flag, the game and his country, and then was consequently dropped by NFL. In a rare interview, he talks about growing up adopted by a white family in Wisconsin, inspiring a global gesture of civil rights - and why he longs to play again

Interview by Steve Rose

'WE HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO'

OLIN KAEPERNICK STILL GETS UP AT 4.30AM every morning to train. “Strength training, speed training, position training - still do all of the same type of workouts I did while I was playing,” he says cheerily. “And then go about my day.” It is almost 10 years since Kaepernick last played a game of top-flight American football. His career was abruptly cut short just as it was peaking, after the National Foot-

ball League (NFL) effectively closed ranks and shut him out for being too political. Now, at 38 years old, he is well aware that his chances of a return are dwindling by the day, but he remains as game-ready as ever. “I look at it from the perspective of: ‘What are the things that I can control?’ And what I know I can control is being prepared for when opportunity knocks ... just staying resilient and focused and disciplined - that is what’s gotten me to this point in my life.”

Kaspernick's story is defined by the events of late 2016, when he repeatedly refused to stand for the pre-match national anthem - resulting in a chorus of booing on the pitch, insults and outrage off it, and exclusion from the sport he still loves. He was one of the biggest names in the game; quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, a national celebrity, sponsored by major brands, and looking back, his actions fed into so much that has happened since: the rise of Donald Trump, the Black Lives Matter protests and a global reckoning with racism, then the backlash against what is now being called "Woke 1.0", and the resurgence of a white nationalism that the US complacently assumed was in the past.

Through all of this, Kaepernick has largely held his silence. Why so, I ask. Surely there must have been times he's wanted to speak out?

“Oh, absolutely,” he replies. “But I go back to, like, what am I trying to accomplish by doing so?” The temptation to rebut all the lies, the accusations was great, he admits, but: “Coming out of the protests in 2016, there was a lot of movement and effort made to try to make it as if I was the singular voice in this space doing work, and I was the person solely leading this movement, and that’s just not the reality.”

Kaspernick is friendly and relaxed. Even when he's talking about the worst moments in his life, which is most of the time in our 90-minute conversation, his face defaults to a smile and he's quick to laugh. He's looking as dapper as ever: black shirt, top button done up; neatly trimmed facial hair; his voluminous afro a work of tonsorial topiary.

The reason Kaepernick is talking now is because he has a new memoir: The Perilous Fight, which details his upbringing, his illustrious sporting career, and the events leading up to and from that pivotal moment. This is not Kaepernick closing off a chapter of his life, he insists, he just felt that now was the time to speak up: “It’s important for where society is, where we are at as a country, and some of the direction that the world’s heading in, to be able to continue to move things forward.” Also, he says: “We’re coming up on the 10-year anniversary. So a lot things just naturally aligned.”

He doesn't need to clarify the anniversary he's referring to. Kaepernick's decision to protest was the culmination of "a lifetime of experiences of being Black in America," he says. But it was also spontaneous: "It is not something I discussed with anyone. It was a personal belief and conviction, and originally I did it not thinking anybody would see or ask about it," he says. He didn't even tell his then fiancee (now wife), Nessa Diab. The first three times he did it, hardly anyone noticed. At the 49ers' preseason game in Santa Clara, California, on 14 August 2016, Kaepernick did not take the knee; he simply sat on a cool box during the pre-match Star-Spangled Banner. He was recovering from injury and not dressed for the game, so he was inconspicuous. He did the same thing for the next two games.

By the third time, NFL Network reporter Steve Wyche (who is Black) had clocked it, and spoke to Kaepernick about it. Wyche had also noticed that Kaepernick had been posting all year on his social media about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr,

Muhammad Ali, Black Panther co-founder Huey P Newton and Tupac Shakur. That January, for example, he had posted a quote from Dr King: "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."

Kaepernick had been on a journey in terms of his Black history education, partly thanks to Diab - who, a few years earlier, had given him a copy of Malcolm X's autobiography and told him he'd be "for ever changed". But his decision to act was also motivated by recent police killings of innocent Black men: Mario Woods, shot and killed by five officers in December 2015 in San Francisco, where Kaepernick was living at the time, using what was later judged "unnecessary force"; Alton Sterling, shot and killed in Louisiana in July 2016; Philando Castile, shot and killed in Minnesota the day after Sterling's death.

“You get to a point of, if you understand the problem, the reality and the experience, you either look at yourself in the mirror and say: ‘I’m gonna take action and try to do something about it,’ or: ‘I’m not going to, and I’m going to be complicit in this,’” he says. The reality had become clear to him: that “the United States is not a representation of my ideals and my beliefs and has not been representing myself or the Black community. And that has been true since its inception.”

Y THE TIME KAEPERNICK TOOK THE KNEE FOR the first time, at the suggestion of his team-mate Eric Reid, who knelt alongside him, the issue had become a global news story. He, Reid and others continued to kneel through that season, often to boos and chants of “USA! USA!” Opponents accused Kaepernick of disrespecting the flag, the country, the military and law enforcement, repeating the familiar mantra that politics should be kept out of sport. People began selling T-shirts outside football stadiums showing him in the scope of a rifle or telling him: "Shut up and stand up!" Social media posts against Kaepernick turned vicious and racist. He began to receive death threats, including letters sent to his home address. Unfamiliar cars would park outside his and Diab's house, within a gated community. He temporarily moved out, for their safety.

Trump, then a presidential candidate, seized on the controversy: "I think it's a terrible thing. And maybe he should find a country that works better for him," he told a radio interviewer. Steve King, at the time a Republican congressman, invoked Diab's Egyptian heritage to argue that "this is activism that's sympathetic to Isis". President Obama's response was different: "I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about," he told reporters.

Kaspernick felt largely supported by his teammates; less so by the NFL as an institution. By the end of the 2016 season, by which time dozens of other players had joined in the knee-taking, it had become clear to him they were “trying to get rid of me”. In February 2017, the 49ers’ new coach and manager gave him a choice: he could opt out of his contract now, or they would cut him later - knowing that if he left later, his chances of signing for another team would be greatly reduced. “It was a cowardly way for them to handle it,” he says.

Kaspernick was “both surprised and not” by the response. “History tells us that a reaction like this is likely to take place. At the same time, because I have a belief that people are fundamentally good and want to do right, I was amazed at how visceral the response was to saying we shouldn’t be killing Black people. It is almost unfathomable to me that this is something that’s a debate in this country. And on the back of that was a realisation of: good, we need to have this conversation. It made it very clear where a lot of people’s beliefs lay, which then became a much more honest place to be. And there really wasn’t a whole lot of middle ground.”

It must have been an alienating experience, I suggest. Were there times when it all got to him?

"The same way it revealed a lot about society at large, it also revealed a lot about the people around me," he replies. He talks of how it led to deeper relationships, new friendships, an expanded community. "So while a lot of the immediate reaction is: 'Oh here was all of the backlash and all of the things that were difficult,' it's also: 'Here are all of the great things that came out of this.'"

You are relentlessly positive, aren't you, I say to him. He laughs. "I try to be! That's not to say that negative thing doesn't exist, but I don't want to just live in that negative thing. I think there's always a solution, and a way forward."

If there is any middle ground to occupy when it comes to race issues in the US, Kaepernick could make a pretty good claim to it. His racial identity is more complicated than it appears. He was born to a Black father and a white, teenage mother, and was adopted at five weeks old by a white family from Wisconsin (he has never met his biological parents). Rick and Teresa Kaepernick were conservative, church-going, Republican-leaning. Rick was a manager for a cheese company. They already had a son and a daughter, but had lost two sons due to heart defects and were eager to have another one. So Kaepernick grew up in predominantly white communities, first in Wisconsin, then, from the age of four, in Turlock, California.

As such, his early experiences of being Black in the US were largely as an isolated individual, often made more acute by his parents' lack of understanding of his racial difference. "They came in with a perspective of: 'Hey, if we do things the same way we did with my brother and sister, everything will be OK,' and that just wasn't the case."

Growing up Black in a white community had its advantages, he says. “You get to see things that otherwise may not reveal themselves, like: ‘Oh well, if this Black boy is in this white family, he must have assimilated into some of the white perspectives and cultural elements. That makes it OK for us to talk openly in front of him.’ You get valuable insights into people’s true perspectives, and it gives you a better understanding of how to navigate that.”

But he was often treated very differently when strangers did not realise he was his parents' son. In his memoir he recounts how, aged eight, he was tied to a tree by some older white kids in his neighbourhood, who called him the N-word and told him to "go back to Niger".

Kaepernick's youthful attempts to connect with Black culture did not always go down well with his parents either. When he first got his hair braided in cornrows, like his hero, basketball star Allan Iverson, they told him: "You look like a thug." They were happier when he brought home a white girlfriend than when he brought home a Black one. "But what I will say is, the areas that there was no question around were the idea of being a moral person, doing the right thing and treating people well ... the foundational piece is, I know my parents love me as their son."

Sport was one route to connecting with his racial identity. As he ascended the ranks of school and college football, he came into contact with more Black peers. He also experienced the US's racially charged law enforcement first-hand. As a teen he was pulled over and given a ticket driving his mother's convertible with three Black friends - "driving while Black", he jokes. Another time, at college, the cops pulled guns on his Black roommates, who were helping someone move; they had assumed it was a burglary.

But Kaepernick's discipline and commitment began to pay off: by the time he turned pro, in 2011, he was already a clear talent. The following year he led the 49ers to the Super Bowl. He was one of the best “dual-threat” quarterbacks in the league – as effective running with the ball as he was passing it. In many respects, before 2016, he was living the footballing dream: he was rich, famous, one of the biggest stars in the game. He had a glamorous girlfriend (Diab was hosting a hip-hop radio show and appearing on MTV), big-name sponsors like Nike, and was on the cover of magazines. “Suddenly, I was everywhere all at once,” he recalls.

As much as he still loves the sport, Kaepernick's protest changed

'THERE WAS A REALISATION OF: WE NEED TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION. IT MADE IT VERY CLEAR WHERE A LOT OF PEOPLE'S BELIEFS LAY'

Taking a stand Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem before an NFL game in 2016; with his wife, Nessa Diab

JOSIE LEPE/MEDIANEWS/MERCURY NEWS/GETTY; THESTEWARTOFNY/GC IMAGES

his relationship to it. And as much as he sought to expose racism in policing, he exposed it within football. More than 70% of NFL players are Black, but historically, team owners and coaches have been overwhelmingly white, and there have been mechanisms in place to keep it that way. In his book, Kaepernick likens the NFL's scouting combine, where college players are assessed by NFL teams with physical tests and demeaning medical assessments, to a slave market. He recounts how commodified players often are, how their injuries are often glossed over in the interests of short-term results, even how Black players' intelligence is assumed to be lower than that of white players, which makes it harder for them to claim medical benefits for brain injuries later on. "It is something that historically we will look back on as a society like, how did we ever let that fly? The same way that we ask, how did we ever allow slavery or Jim Crow to happen?"

After he left the 49ers in 2017, no other team picked him up. Other players who protested had similar experiences, including Reid, even as scores more continued to take the knee. Trump, by then president, told a rally that he’d love to see NFL owners respond by saying: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired.” Many of those owners were his people: white, Republican-leaning billionaires. Some were friends and direct supporters, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, and Miami Dolphins’ Stephen Ross (who held a fundraiser for Trump in 2019).

Kaspernick believes the NFL made an example of him: “By black-balling me, denying me employment because of fighting to create a better society and fighting to keep people alive, there’s real implications about who they are as an organisation and what they believe.”

In October 2017, he sued the NFL for “collusion” in shutting him out in retaliation for his activism. The NFL settled out of court in February 2019 for an undisclosed sum. Kaepernick has signed a non-disclosure agreement so cannot go into details, he says, although he would be “very open to the NFL releasing all the documentation and letting society decide”. But he clearly regrets the way things panned out: “I was not protesting the NFL; I was protesting what was happening directly in communities and Black people being killed by police. And the NFL inserted themselves within that conversation and took a side.” (NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has denied Kaepernick was black-balled, saying personnel decisions are made by individual teams.)

As well as being the 10th anniversary of Kaepernick's protest, it is also 10 years since the arrival of Trump on the political scene. Their fates seem intertwined: Trump capitalised on Kaepernick's protest to whip up support, then his associations with NFL owners helped shut Kaepernick out of the sport. What would Kaepernick say to Trump if they met?

“Well here’s the funny part,” he says breaking into a broad grin. “My lawyers got a phone call with him asking for me to come in to a meeting, I believe it was 2017 or 2018.” There was not a lot of clarity around why Trump wanted to meet him, but it was “a very easy no”, he says. “I am willing to work with anyone who has a genuine interest in creating a better environment and a more equitable society. I do not think that is the case there. I would be curious why there would even be a call and what the topic would be beyond trying to do a photo op.”

Within a few tumultuous years, Kaepernick's stance began to look less controversial. The Black Lives Matter movement had already begun before he started kneeling, but by 2020 the catalogue of police killings of innocent and unarmed Black men, many of them captured on video, had become intolerable. The murder of George Floyd, in Minneapolis in May 2020, was a tipping point, sparking huge anti-racism protests worldwide. As a consequence, players began taking the knee across US sports - football, basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey - at every level, from high school upwards. In England, football players began to take the knee before kick-off for every game. Sportspeople and public figures across the world joined in. Where Kaepernick had once knelt virtually alone, now he

had inspired a global gesture. He takes no credit for what happened, simply observing that, when it comes to highlighting police brutality, “there are people that have been doing work on the ground directly in communities for years and decades, and a lot of this bubbled up and came to fruition and got elevated during this moment”.

In terms of the so-called “racial reckoning” that ensued in the immediate aftermath of 2020, he observes that “people and organisations were pledging large sums of money to address everything but police brutality. A lot of it became about businesses using the moment to further their interests.” There was some radical reassessment of racial attitudes on all levels - societal, political, corporate - but there was also a lot of political virtue-signalling, such as house speaker Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and other Democrats taking the knee in the Capitol in June 2020, scarves of kente cloth around their shoulders. In the UK, Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner also performatively knelt, as did many others. Even some progressive politicians cringe at the recollection now. We are speaking shortly before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave her assessment that “Woke 1.0 was crazy” - suggesting that progressives went too far, post-BLM. This comes on top of ongoing efforts by Trump to roll back all manner of civil rights and inclusion advances: removing high-ranking Black officials from the military; allowing immigration officials to target Black and brown people; effectively operating a whites-only immigration policy. It is sometimes difficult to see what progress has been made. What does it say, for example, that Trump is still in power, a decade on?

"It says we have a long way to go," Kaepernick acknowledges. But as ever, he accentuates the positive: "I also think, within that, it has created such a clear and stark reality for so many people that they are rejecting the politics of the administration and looking for something that actually serves everyone."

'I STILL LOVE PLAYING FOOTBALL. I ALSO CARE ABOUT PEOPLE. IF THAT GETS FRAMED AS BEING AN ACTIVIST, GREAT'

This is where Kaepernick's energy is focused: building the movement. He has been busy over the past decade. His Know Your Rights Camp tours the country teaching young people “not just how to survive but also how to thrive”. His charity funds legal assistance and independent autopsies for those who need it (including the family of Nolan Wells, the Black Mississippi teenager who died in mysterious circumstances on a trip with his white friends this July). Kaepernick runs a publishing company, and has donated over \$1m to community projects. He’s thinking in terms of Ella Baker, the relatively unsung activist who laid the foundations for America’s civil rights movement, from the 1930s onwards. “That was centred around: yes, we need strong leaders, but we need strong people, and how do we elevate more people to become leaders so this truly becomes a movement?”

PROGRESSIVE POLITICS IS MAKING A COMEBACK, he says, especially within younger generations. “When we think about gen Z and gen Alpha, they’re very much coming from a perspective of: ‘Do you represent my beliefs? Do you represent who I am? And if you don’t, we’re not going to support you’ ... As more and more pressure is able to be exerted from the ground up, I think those high-level conversations and positionings are going to start shifting and swinging as well.” He has a four-year-old daughter now, he adds, describing her as “relentlessly fierce”: “Being a father heightens the sense of urgency.”

Given this, isn't Kaepernick more an activist than a sportsman now?

“I look at myself as multi-faceted,” he says. “I still love playing football. I still train for it, make sure that I’m ready and prepared. I also care deeply about people. And if that gets framed as being an activist, by all means, great, let’s do that. But at the core of it, I think people should be able to live, they should be able to thrive, they should able to have dignity, have justice, and that should extend to everyone.”

Kaspernick was always mindful of the roll call of Black sportspeople who took a stand for civil liberties and paid a price, he says. “That was something I was aware of prior to ever protesting.” Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War and was stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in Black Power salutes on the podium at the 1968 Olympics, which effectively ended their sprinting careers. Curt Flood challenged the “reserve clause”, which prevented baseball players from choosing their own fates, in 1969, and forfeited his career. More recently, basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem throughout the 1995-96 season, for similar reasons to Kaepernick, and was suspended by the NBA as a consequence.

Kaspernick has had a few tryouts with interested teams, most recently in 2022 with the Las Vegas Raiders - their head coach told him: "You look bigger, faster, stronger than when I last saw you," Kaepernick says. But the longed-for return has not happened. Is there a part of him that accepts his sporting career may be over? "We don't have to accept that as the reality," he replies. "There's an opportunity to change that ... so that when an athlete or when someone speaks up to try to create a better life and better future for a people, for a community, for society, they aren't met with exile, but they're actually embraced and people say: 'You know what, you're right. Let's take the actions to actually make this better.' When we can lay that foundation, that creates significant opportunity for change."

So he will continue to train, he says. “I will not let go of that as a discipline, as part of who I am.”

If he was back on an NFL team again, would he still take the knee for the national anthem?

“Absolutely,” he says. “The work still needs to be done. More people need to be brought into that work. And more people need to be taking action. And I will continue to do the work. I will continue to protest because, quite literally, people’s lives are at stake.” STEVE ROSE IS ASSISTANT FEATURES EDITOR FOR THE GUARDIAN The Perilous Fight by Colin Kaepernick is out now

Opinion

ELLE HUNT

The price of friendship that comes via apps

Page 47 →

UNITED NATIONS

Macron offers a valuable parting gift: the guts to stand up to Trump Steve Bloomfield

ILLUSTRATION: GUARDIAN DESIGN; YOAN VALAT/GETTY

O n the first day of the United Nations general assembly last week, two world leaders outlined competing visions for the future. Donald Trump's speech was disturbingly similar to those he's given before: a litany of false boasts and odd tangents, peppered with grim

military threats against a variety of nation states.

In Trump's eyes, the world is there to be ruled - and ruled only by the US, whose economy is “the envy of the world” and military is “the most powerful on Earth”.

A couple of hours later, Emmanuel Macron took to the podium to offer an alternative. In a full-throated defence of international law, multilateralism and the rules-based order, the French president said we were living in a “new era of barbaric acts”. He directly criticised Russia and Israel, but much of it was clearly aimed at Trump. “They say might is right … but we will not yield,” he argued. “We cannot simply accept this new order of impunity which some are trying to erect … Do we want to live under … the law of the jungle or do we want to live in a civilised international society?”

Over the past decade, Macron has consistently been one of the only western leaders with a morally intelligent analysis of what Europe and the world should look like. As Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have ushered us into an age of impunity, he has defended the rules-based order and, in recent months, been at the forefront of attempts to forge new alliances to support the crumbling old ones.

He has pushed the idea of European strategic autonomy, understanding that while Europe is an economic power, it is yet to fully realise its potential as either a military or geopolitical force. During Trump's first term, Macron was the only major leader willing to publicly acknowledge that Nato could no longer rely on the US, leaving the alliance all but dead.

And yet the big speeches have rarely led to any substantial change. His ambitious call for EU reform in 2017 went nowhere, in essence scotched by Angela Merkel, who praised his “passion” and “verve” but failed to back the substance. Likewise, in New York last week, while his analysis was sound, the solutions were slight.

This isn't all Macron's fault. He came to power in May 2017 as the new world order was crumbling. The EU was in crisis. He has had to work with three German chancellors and is on his sixth British prime minister.

More urgently, Trump had taken office four months earlier. Had Macron had the chance to work with

Many of those who

would have been

scared of speaking

out last year feel more

emboldened now

Barack Obama, Merkel at the peak of her popularity and a British prime minister committed to the EU, things might have turned out differently.

Macron's domestic woes have increased his impotence on the world stage. He has in effect been a lame duck for the past two years, since his disastrous snap election in 2024 left him without a majority. But his speech in New York, his final UN address before he steps down as president next spring, may have a more lasting impact. It certainly set the tone for the week. Over the following days, a procession of leaders of the so-called middle powers defended the principles of the UN and offered coded criticisms of Trump. Many of those who would have been scared of speaking out last year feel more emboldened now.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, warned that “the UN mission cannot be entrusted solely to the great powers, or the biggest countries, or even the loudest voices alone”, while Spain’s PM, Pedro Sánchez, said he sought to “defend what so many are trying to destroy” and called for countries to come together to fight “political actors and governments that want to take us back to a dark past”.

The middle powers are united in their opposition. The question is whether they can agree on what they're for. The events of the past few weeks suggest that process is under way. New alliances based on values, not geography or size, are being formed - a reinvention of multilateralism, rather than a simple defence of the old model.

Last month, the EU and Canada discussed the idea of “associate membership”, while the UK formed a new coalition of middle powers to impose sanctions targeting Israel’s unlawful occupation of the West Bank.

Another new group was created at the UN last week, with Finland and Norway launching a call for an international body to oversee the safety of AI models. It is a direct challenge to Trump, who has called concerns about AI safety a “hoax” - nonetheless, 27 world leaders signed up, including Macron, Canada’s Mark Carney, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Albanese.

What ties all this together is the idea of “values-

\* Steve Bloomfield is a former international editor of the Observer

based realism", an argument first put forward by the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, and echoed last week by Carney, who arguably lit the "middle powers" spark in Davos earlier this year when he spoke of the "rupture" in the world order caused by Trump.

The new world Carney, Macron and others are trying to build will be one of different, sometimes overlapping alliances of like-minded states. There will be an ongoing question here for Andy Burnham and the UK's foreign secretary, Ed Miliband. Which of these groups do they join, which do they try to form themselves and which do they politely decline?

Each middle power will face the same conundrum: when to fight back and when to sit on the sidelines. At least now the middle powers have understood that fighting back is an option ●

SOCIETY

In these lonely times,

friendship is being

sold to us via an app

Elle Hunt

hat price would you put on friendship? In these hyper-capitalistic times, where nothing is beyond being given a monetary value, perhaps even Mastercard wouldn't dare to claim that it's priceless. A YouGov

survey found that 15% of Britons say they have no close friends, while nearly one in 10 (8%) have no friends at all. The numbers are similarly dismal in the US. As we face this contemporary crisis of connection, it is little wonder that friendship, or at least the possibility of it, is increasingly being marketed for sale.

There has been a striking increase in online platforms and apps that promise to introduce you - algorithmically, through social mixers or a combination - to your next BFF. There's Cliq, PLY, standing for "People Like You", and RealRoots, which promises user satisfaction with the tagline "Make new friends. Guaranteed". Meanwhile, 222 boldly declares it is "not a friend-making service", but a means to "explore serendipity" through social experiences with compatible people.

ILLUSTRATION:

GUARDIAN DESIGN;

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And this new sweep of pay-to-play friendships doesn't stop at apps and algorithmic matchmaking. It is accompanied by supper clubs, book clubs, running clubs and other opportunities for you to mingle with people in your area - for a fee, of course. CircleUp, for example, holds regular social mixers across the UK for paying members, so you can “keep seeing the same faces”.

Others cultivate a more exclusive crowd. Gathering Tables hosts dinners for a “curated mix of guests”, united by their willingness to pay £145 (\$190) a head.

These initiatives dangle community, but whether this trumps their commercial reason for being is debatable. The price of these apps and events is sometimes framed as a means of securing commitment, not just covering costs. “When you do things for free, people often don’t turn up,” PLY’s founder told the Guardian. But the effort becomes less civic-minded when you consider the desire for friendship is what makes these services valuable in the first place. These friend-making apps and paid-for gatherings may well offer opportunities for social connection – they are at least a date in the diary. But make no mistake, they exist primarily to encourage investment in a brand and even create opportunities to spend. Of course it is possible to make genuine connections in commercial spaces – many of us have made close bonds at work – but paying for introductions feels antithetical to the spirit of true friendship.

This new commercial interest in facilitating “gathering” speaks to the sense of collective untethering from community. Many of us understand we are lacking community, perhaps even more than friendship. It is unsettlingly common to hear people complaining

\* Elle Hunt writes about culture and people

of their current social network, as though a more suitable or nourishing one already exists, just waiting for you to slot into it. No wonder brands are attempting to package them up.

Cliq claims the first step to "start your community" is to download its app. But real community is built, not bought (and certainly not downloaded). It takes time and shared investment. It is certainly possible that meaningful, enduring ties can begin at a paid-for meet-up. But payment can't manufacture the friendship itself.

Tellingly, ease is often central to the offering: Cliq claims “finding your people shouldn’t be difficult”. Shouldn’t it? No matter how you meet, it takes time and effort to turn an acquaintance into a friend; that same process, multiplied and sustained, is what creates a community. Seeking shortcuts or higher-quality connections is not only beside the point, it works against the rewards: authentic relationships can only be forged without expectation of a return on investment.

That's not to say we don't need more places and opportunities to meet new people. But before entrusting our need for greater intimacy and affection to a third party, we might ask ourselves if we could be doing more to put ourselves out there socially. Could we extend an invitation to friendly strangers, or introduce our mutuals and turn acquaintances into friends?

The best community-building exercise I've heard of lately was before a performance of Austentatious - the Jane Austen comedy play - where all solo ticket-holders were invited to come early and mingle before the show. The event was free, organised around a preexisting commitment and people could opt in. There was the opportunity to meet people; the work, and potential reward, of making a new friend was left to you ●

UNITED KINGDOM

Epic TV documentary reveals much about life over the past 60 years Jonathan Freedland

or an hour or two last week, I was in the company of people whose lives I've seen unfold, almost from the beginning, almost to the end. They are people whom, with one exception, I've never met. And yet I've shared in their triumphs and disappointments for decades.

They are the group who, in 1964, when they were seven years old, were the subjects of a single, 40-minute ITV documentary that flowered into a work that is quite magical. Returning to those same boys and girls every seven years, the 7 Up series has become a document of our times - but also something larger and far more

revealing. Last week the broadcaster aired what it says will be the final chapter: the seven-year-olds are now 70.

The original aim of the show, made under the World in Action banner, was sociological and transparently political. It wanted to expose the entrenched nature of the British class system. And so it watched a trio of pre-prep school boys singing verses in Latin, contrasting them with the cheeky East End kids living just a few miles and a world away. While the posh trio could name, even then, the specific Oxbridge colleges their parents had in mind for them, Paul, raised in a children's home, asked: "What does university mean?"

Sure enough, we have seen how those born into money keep it, while those with less have less - though what the programme missed was the huge and expanding group in between. By focusing either on foxhunting John at one end or cabbie Tony at the other, it largely left out what would turn out to be the story of these decades, namely the growth of the middle class.

Indeed, it's the programme's early assumptions that often turn out to illuminate most sharply how much society has changed. In 1964, the researchers only thought to include one child who wasn't white: Symon. In a later episode, we hear the director, the late Michael Apted, ask him about being “illegitimate”, until Symon gently sets him straight: “We’re living in different times.”

Apted is also admonished for his sexism: why, says Jackie, does he always ask the women about marrying and settling down, but not the men?

We get glimpses of the politics of these years. Lynn was a devoted children's librarian, until budget cuts hacked away at the service. We hear Tony complain about immigrants enjoying access to benefits – except that footage is from the 1970s, a reminder that the current debates are anything but new.

Perhaps most striking is the shifting view of mental illness. When 28 Up aired in 1984, much of the nation was shocked by the fate of Neil, who as a wide-eyed seven-year-old had dreamed of being an astronaut, and who was now found lonely, wandering and homeless. There is vague talk of a “nervous complaint” and Apted asks him, “Can you lick it?”, as if a stiff upper lip and cold shower might do the trick. Now, Neil speaks directly of a lifelong battle with depression, naming it at last.

We see the compromises real people in real situations have to make. Bruce was once “the only socialist in the village” who, on principle, taught maths at an inner London school. At 49, we found him in a master’s gown at a public school, facing accusations from old friends that he had sold out. But life, we realise, is not political theory. Sometimes it just takes a different course. There are events you cannot plan for, including, of course, the lottery of health and the random intrusions of mortality. You know it’s coming, but it stops you all the same: two of the seven-year-olds of 1964 are dead.

\* Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Those who remain are very clear on what matters. One after another, they say they now understand the centrality of family. At 70 and a retired lawyer, Andrew offers an age-old lament when he wonders if, perhaps,

he should have forsaken those extra hours in the office that seemed so important at the time, and gone instead to his children's school play or sports day.

We see how these people were shaped by class but also by family situations. So many devoted themselves to avoiding the mistakes of their parents, to ensuring their own children enjoyed the stability they had lacked.

Perhaps the most vivid example is Symon. At seven he was in care; now aged 70, it still gnaws at him that he never knew his father. In the 1964 film, the kids visited an adventure playground: Symon and Paul, both raised in the same children's home, set about moving planks and bricks. They were trying to build a house. In the latest film, we learn that Symon and his wife became foster parents to a staggering 130 children. As Symon said of his own children when he was 28: "They've got everything. They've got a father." The animating premise of each of the Up films was the old Jesuit saying: "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man."

As Nick, a boy who dreamed of exploring the moon and went on to become a nuclear physicist, says, we are moved when we see time-lapse photography of a single flower, watching it “blossom and then fade away”. How breathtaking then to see the full span of a human life, several of them at once – the quiet, ordinary mystery of it. How breathtaking and how beautiful ●

Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust

Manchester City's tainted glory threatens football's integrity and credibility

n surveys ranking the Premier League's greatest moments, football supporters regularly

give pride of place to Sergio Agüero's title-winning goal for Manchester City in 2012. Scored in injury time on the last day of the season, Agüero's strike against Queens Park Rangers delivered the first league title for City since the 1960s. Knocking historic rivals Manchester United into second place, it also signalled a new era in which the club replaced United as the dominant force in the English game.

“Agueroooooooo!” - the incredulous single-word response from the match commentator Martin Tyler - has entered football folklore. But an asterisk may now be needed at the end of all those Os. Reports that an independent panel has found Manchester City guilty of breaking Premier League rules between 2009 and 2023 cast a dark shadow over that day. During that period, the club won seven Premier League titles, six League Cups, three FA Cups and the Uefa Champions League, all while under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. The inescapable implication of the apparent ruling is that those trophies were won unfairly.

The guilty verdict on more than 100 separate charges against City has yet to be officially confirmed. It may be assumed that the club - which has denied wrongdoing - will launch an appeal. But rivals are already taking advice over compensation claims and the Premier League,

which began its investigation in 2018 after whistleblower leaks, must contemplate how tough it will be.

If the verdict is upheld, the punishment should be severe, given the threat to the integrity and credibility of the world's most popular domestic football league. In essence, Sheikh Mansour and his board stand accused of illicitly bankrolling the City men's team's ascent from Premier League also-rans to repeat champions, using inflated sponsorship deals and off-the-books payments to fuel the rise. The club hierarchy's aggressive response conveyed a sense that it seemingly thought extreme wealth – and the political heft of Abu Dhabi's soft-power project – could confer a kind of impunity.

It is hard not to feel some sympathy for Manchester City supporters, confronted with the likelihood that the greatest period in their club's history will be forever tainted. On the pitch, City's football during the Abu Dhabi era has at times been of a sublime quality, overseen by an inspired coach in Pep Guardiola. But off it, the biggest financial scandal in English football history is a reminder that the volume of money now washing about at the top of the game has been bad for its sporting soul.

Great footballing institutions have lost their spiritual bearings as debt-leveraging carpetbaggers and petrostates have muscled in for a piece of the action. In the case of Manchester City, the Sheikh Mansour takeover delivered undreamt of success and that Agüero moment. But if it took cheating to get there, it was a worthless kind of glory ●

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Parties such as AfD rise when leaders lose touch

Carolin Würfel's article highlights a dynamic that is not confined to Germany (If the AfD finds a path to power, we can't say we didn't realise, Big story, 18 September). The same forces are reshaping politics across Europe and the US, and they all begin with a widening gap between political leaders and the people they are meant to represent.

In much of Europe, that gap produces cynicism. Many citizens feel that leaders are driven by party interests, media pressures and broad national narratives rather than the realities of daily life. When people sense that distance, they become receptive to parties like the AfD.

In the US, the emotional response is different. What I see is not just cynicism but a deeper hopelessness - a belief that no leader or institution can address the problems people face. This is the environment in which Donald Trump rose to power. Like the AfD, his appeal comes from exploiting the disconnect between political rhetoric and lived experience.

Across democracies, people respond to the same underlying pressures:

deindustrialisation, rapid technological change, climate-driven disruption and large migration flows from countries experiencing severe poverty, state fragility and deep social fragmentation. These are human problems, not ideological talking points.

When leaders fail to engage directly with individuals, frustration and hopelessness become political fuel for movements whose primary interest is power, not solutions.

Mickey Wright

Utah, US

Look beyond the capital to strike the right tune

The critical point in Robert Ames's important piece (Class is a major key in who can afford to play as a professional musician, Opinion, 18 September) is buried near the bottom of the first column: “I was determined not to leave London.” The problem, as he highlighted, is the relative absence of similar opportunities elsewhere.

This London-centricity is far from restricted to the arts. Many problems facing the country can only be resolved by spreading opportunities away from London. At last we seem to have a prime minister who realises this.

David Kirk

Dunblane, Scotland, UK

End of the road for veg box is matter of conscience

I have shared the suffering that Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett faced as the veg box was finally cancelled (The weekly veg box has lost its appeal, Opinion, 25 September). I struggle with grimy clothes and soiled dishes as I reluctantly persevere with eco washing and laundry products. As I scrub at stains and unmoved matter after an expensive premium eco wash, the only thing that seems clean is my conscience. Chris Kington Cambridge, England, UK

Please don't suggest we make Pluto great again

Shush! Not so much talk about Pluto (Make Pluto a planet again!, Spotlight, 11 September). Someone might get the idea of renaming it.

Anthony Walter

Coldstream, BC, Canada

Turn over a new leaf on long trip to buy lettuce

The article on supermarket rooftop farming in Germany (A new leaf, Spotlight,

18 September) refers to its “potential to reduce greenhouse emissions from transportation”. The store manager says the lettuce grown there has become such a selling point that “one customer travelled more than 50km just to buy a bag”. Oh dear! I hope the customer used public transport or an EV. John Ewins Southport, England, UK

Nul points for a solution to our Eurovision problem

Maybe the solution to Britain's poor performance at Eurovision (MPs investigate dismal record of Eurovision acts, UK report, 25 September) is to admit that we, as a nation, are unpopular and our next entry should be a take on the Millwall FC refrain, sung to the tune of Sailing: "We are Britain / No one likes us / We don't care."

Colin Burke

Cartmel, England, UK

The right attire for this

parliamentary privilege

I am delighted that,

should I be elevated to the

House of Lords, I won't

be expected to wear a tie

(House of Lords tackles

knotty problem of ties,

25 September).

Christine Walters

Buxton, England, UK

EDITH PRITCHETT ON MILLENNIAL LIFE