Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Latest editorial
Orban and Vucic triumphant: liberalism in peril
KEVIN OVENDEN looks at how the Hungarian and Serbian elections failed to go the way the political centre wanted — and why that is as much the fault of the neoliberal opposition as it is due to support for the hard right
Hungarian and Serbian leaders Viktor Orban and Aleksander Vucic have been comfortably re-elected
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
SUNDAY’S ELECTIONS in Hungary and Serbia saw the return of incumbent right-wing nationalist leaders Viktor Orban and Aleksander Vucic against widespread predictions that they would do worse.
Orban’s Fidesz party won 135 of the 199 seats in the Hungarian parliament, giving him a two-thirds majority and a fifth term as prime minister. Vucic increased his direct vote for the presidency to 2.18 million. His party lost support in the parliamentary elections but that did not go to the liberal opposition. In both countries parties of the far right gained as did those ranging from sceptical of the West and its institutions through to pro-Russian.
The result should temper the triumphalism of politicians of the liberal centre who hailed first the victory of Emmanuel Macron in France five years ago and then of Joe Biden in the US as the vanquishing of “populism,” the restoration of “normal” politics and the inexorable advance of “progressive” capitalism.
Similar stories
As Moscow celebrates the 80th anniversary of the Nazi defeat without Western allies in attendance, the EU even sanctions nations choosing to attend, revealing how completely the USSR's sacrifice of 27 million lives has been erased, argues KATE CLARK
As heavy industry flees and public-sector strikes paralyse the nation, the French leader’s increasingly desperate attempts to rule without a majority reveal the deep crisis at the heart of European liberal democracy, writes KEVIN OVENDEN