The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY

DONALD TRUMP is adding new dimensions to the culture wars that so animate his critics and supporters alike. The more-or-less abolition of USAid has thrown the US’s erstwhile allies in Europe into a tizz.
Over 12,000 USAid staff are due on gardening leave but the uncounted number of locally engaged staff — employed wherever US foreign policy interests are endangered — is possibly larger.
Trump says he wants to purge USAid of the “radical lunatics” running it and his media mouthpiece trotted out a whole series of exotic programmes which offend his sense of what is proper and permissible.

Reform’s rise speaks to a deep crisis in Establishment parties – but relies on appealing to social and economic grievances the left should make its own, argues NICK WRIGHT

US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT

In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it
