Without energy and without a strategic partner, Cuba is currently fighting for its survival. While the population is literally sitting in the dark, the Trump administration is trying to definitively break the socialist project through economic blackmail. What lies ahead for the island, asks MARC VANDEPITTE
THE decision by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to agree that a giant effigy of Donald Trump as a baby complete with nappy can be floated above central London when the “orange moron” — as he has been labelled — visits Britain has mostly been applauded.
One critic was, of course, Nigel Farage who continued his own tradition of being entirely ignorant about more or less everything by failing to spot that the parading (and sometimes burning) of effigies of unpopular figures is in fact a great British tradition.
Farage claimed that the crowd-funded balloon was the “biggest insult” to a US president ever.
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
While Spode quit politics after inheriting an earldom, Farage combines MP duties with selling columns, gin, and even video messages — proving reality produces more shameless characters than PG Wodehouse imagined, writes STEPHEN ARNELL
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
The left must avoid shouting ‘racist’ and explain that the socialist alternative would benefit all



