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
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Macron’s gamble blows up French politics
The snap election call has spectacularly backfired, with the right and centre furiously backstabbing itself into oblivion, and the left, from the communists to social democrats, quickly uniting into a New Popular Front, writes NICK WRIGHT
Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally and President Emmanuel Macron
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
THIEVES’ argot for a safecracker is “a Peterman.” The word’s origins are contested: one version has it that the term derives from Scotland’s Peterhead prison from which the notorious safecracker Johnny Ramensky, alias Johnny Ramsey, escaped five times.
Another has its origins in the term saltpetre (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient in gunpowder. A more likely origin is in the French verb “peter” — to blow up, or more crudely, to fart.
President Emmanuel Macron is today a Peterman par excellence. His reckless decision to call a general election in the impossibly short time of two weeks leaves just a few days before the French people get to pass judgment on their political class.
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The desperate French president keeps running up the same political cul-de-sac. DENNIS BROE offers an explanation
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