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The IndependentElectionsGermany
Germany’s Merz says state election result a ‘disaster’ as AfD make significant gains

Germany’s Merz says state election result a ‘disaster’ as AfD make significant gains

Download our app German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has suffered a severe political blow following state elections on Sunday, including a historic defeat for his centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the party secured just 5 per cent of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved significant gains, taking first place in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with 38.3 per cent ahead of the Social Democrats, while the Left party won in Berlin with 24.5 per cent, leaving the CDU in second place on 20 per cent.

2d ago
Irish IndependentScandal
Sligo GP Margaret Connolly defends viral CNN comments attacking Donald Trump over support for Israeli regime

Sligo GP Margaret Connolly defends viral CNN comments attacking Donald Trump over support for Israeli regime

Sligo GP Dr Margaret Connolly has no regrets about her remarks made during President Donald Trump’s visit to Ireland which made headlines around the world. While her sister, President Catherine Connolly welcomed President Trump at the Aras in the Phoenix Park, Dr Connolly was protesting against the visit in the centre of Dublin and spoke with a CNN reporter, her comments on President Trump subsequently going viral.

18h ago
The GuardianElectionsUSA
Nazi jokes and ‘cum trophies’: meet the Texas gunfluencer who could soon represent Uvalde

Nazi jokes and ‘cum trophies’: meet the Texas gunfluencer who could soon represent Uvalde

Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber known for making outrageous pro-gun statements, is the frontrunner to represent a district devastated by mass shootings The video begins with Brandon Herrera staring intently into the camera. He is filming himself in a hotel room seated between twin beds, his black hair slicked back and beard neatly trimmed. He is wearing a T-shirt branded with his trademark nickname, “The AK Guy”, above the image of a semi-automatic rifle primed for action. Three days earlier, on 3 August 2019, a white nationalist armed with a semi-automatic firearm not dissimilar to the one stamped across Herrera’s chest entered a busy Walmart store in the Texas border city of El Paso and opened fire.

11h ago
The GuardianHumanityEngland
There is a racism and cohesion crisis in Britain, and someone needs to lead us out of it. His name is Andy Burnham | Polly Toynbee

There is a racism and cohesion crisis in Britain, and someone needs to lead us out of it. His name is Andy Burnham | Polly Toynbee

I want him to start the fightback next week against extremists who peddle hate and those who despise this country. That would be true patriotism “The speech” may have been in the making a long while, maybe for a lifetime, but Andy Burnham has only a week left for revision before his first conference as Labour leader. Expect hope, of course, that the future will be better, though the way is hard. Already his optimism means that fewer people think they will be worse off next year. But his most urgent task is the cultural wildfire that needs extinguishing before it takes hold. The rise of anti-migration neofascism is more threatening than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Shock tactics by a few hundred people in black shirts and balaclavas are designed to invade the national consciousness, their noxious hate bleeding into the mainstream – and they do.

1d ago
The GuardianScandalSouth East England
‘It sent a message’: anti-migrant feeling pervades Hampshire town where hundreds protested

‘It sent a message’: anti-migrant feeling pervades Hampshire town where hundreds protested

Far-right posters go up around Gosport, but some residents say there’s ‘another side’ to life in the town Alan Dale was in two minds as he gazed across at Portsmouth harbour in the late September sunshine and reflected on the latest show of force by far-right activists on the south coast against a supposed disembarkation of asylum seekers. A stone’s throw away, masked followers of the anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas had been cheered on Tuesday night by hundreds of people, many of them local, who had gathered after social media posts suggested authorities planned to land the migrants in the nearby town of Gosport.

3h ago
The GuardianHumanityScotland - Northeast
Trans row nurse tells tribunal she ‘felt discriminated against’ by her union

Trans row nurse tells tribunal she ‘felt discriminated against’ by her union

Sandie Peggie accuses RCN of failing to adequately support her in dispute over sharing women’s changing room with trans doctor A nurse who objected to sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor has said she felt “discriminated against” by her union after raising the complaint. Sandie Peggie, who worked for NHS Fife for more than 30 years, won a partial victory against her employer after a tribunal in December 2025, when a judge upheld her harassment claim against the health board but dismissed claims of discrimination, indirect discrimination and victimisation.

7h ago
The GuardianElectionsSouth East England
It’s easy to ignore the Lib Dems, but they could soon hold the balance of power | Rafael Behr

It’s easy to ignore the Lib Dems, but they could soon hold the balance of power | Rafael Behr

Ed Davey’s strategy is meant to build a ‘firewall’ of MPs to prevent Reform UK entering government. The stakes are high if he gets it wrong No politician craves obscurity, but it is better to be unknown than despised. That is consolation for Liberal Democrats, gathered in Brighton for their annual conference, fretting about Ed Davey’s low profile and wondering whether a more prominent leader would hoist their flagging poll ratings. Renewal by decapitation is a concept that has succeeded twice this parliament for other parties. Labour’s fortunes were transformed when Andy Burnham entered No 10. The Greens enjoyed a polling surge last year when Zack Polanski was elected leader. In the fidgety culture of British politics, Davey’s six-year reign feels like an aeon. But the experience of other parties has little to teach the Lib Dems.

17h ago
The GuardianElectionsUnited Kingdom
The Guardian view on the Lib Dems: Ed Davey wants Tory voters without losing the left | Editorial

The Guardian view on the Lib Dems: Ed Davey wants Tory voters without losing the left | Editorial

The party leader offers social liberalism and lower taxes, hoping opposition to Reform UK will hold together voters with competing economic interests Sir Ed Davey’s speech at the Liberal Democrat party conference was a calculated appeal to voters who recoil from a rightwing bloc associated with Brexit, nationalism and reactionary politics. That’s not a bad place to start. But he wants this message not to be lost in the headlines about his party’s £17bn tax giveaway aimed at disillusioned Conservative voters. To walk that line, his address sought to present Reform UK’s politics as an existential threat to Britain, appealing directly to left-leaning tactical voters. At the same time, he told moderate Tories that only a vote for the Lib Dems can reliably block both Reform and a Conservative-supported Nigel Farage premiership. It’s a clever strategy. Too clever, think some in his party, who yearn for clearer dividing lines. Yet the Lib Dem leader is nothing if not ambitious. He claims that his party could have more MPs than the Conservatives after the next election. In 2024, the Lib Dems won 60 of their 72 seats from the Tories; they were also second in a score of Conservative-held seats. That electoral geography pushes the Lib Dems as replacing the Conservatives as the respectable, pro-market opposition, while Reform occupies the space of the nationalist right. The logic is that in a multiparty system under first past the post, it may no longer be necessary to be a national party. Sir Ed might become kingmaker as the parliamentary expression of a liberal southern tendency. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

1d ago
The GuardianElectionsEngland
Lib Dems torn over whether to be voters’ first choice or the route to block Reform

Lib Dems torn over whether to be voters’ first choice or the route to block Reform

Party strategists say careful targeting of seats has paid off and should continue, but some say a wider vision is needed One of the more dramatic moments in a Liberal Democrat conference otherwise short of them came late on Sunday, when the party frontbencher Lisa Smart told the polling veteran John Curtice that, in effect, he no longer understood modern politics. Curtice had warned the Lib Dems they risked being left behind, with the lack of a coherent national message seeing them all but ignored outside a few electoral strongholds. Smart’s response? In the new era of five- or six-party politics, and mass tactical voting, this does not matter.

1d ago
The GuardianHumanityEngland
Britain’s far-right violence comes to us direct from the 1970s. But so does the solution | Taj Ali

Britain’s far-right violence comes to us direct from the 1970s. But so does the solution | Taj Ali

Young men punched in the street, mosques attacked: Britain badly needs an anti-racist uprising. Let 70s Asian youth movements provide the inspiration There it was: a pool of blood spreading across the pavement. A section of the high street had been cordoned off and a uniformed police officer gestured for bystanders to move along. It was the long hot summer of 1976, and a racist murder had stunned Southall in west London. “What has happened here, officers?” asked Suresh Grover, then a curious 22-year-old, later to be widely known as a leading racial justice activist. “Go away, it’s just Indian blood,” was the response. Grover was soon to learn that 18-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an engineering student, had been stabbed to death by racist thugs the night before.

9h ago
The GuardianScandalPakistan
Pakistan jails sisters of Imran Khan before protest seeking his release

Pakistan jails sisters of Imran Khan before protest seeking his release

Police crack down on family and political supporters of former PM who say authorities are ‘slowly killing’ him in prison Three sisters of Pakistan’s incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan have been arrested amid a heavy-handed government crackdown on plans for a nationwide protest to demand Khan’s release. The lawyer for the three sisters – Aleema Khan, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi – said on Monday that they had all been detained and jailed for 30 days under a warrant that accused them of being a threat to public order.

2d ago
Irish IndependentEconomyYorkshire & the Humber
Ineos halts production at three UK chemical plants over high energy costs

Ineos halts production at three UK chemical plants over high energy costs

Ineos, the industrials group founded by billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, is idling all three of its chemical plants in Hull in the north of England after energy prices surged. The plants are Europe’s last remaining world-scale acetyls units, producing the raw material used in industries and products including pharmaceuticals, clothing and construction, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

17h ago
Irish IndependentHistoryThames Valley
Diana suspected Charles had ‘night-time tryst’ with Camilla on royal train during their courtship

Diana suspected Charles had ‘night-time tryst’ with Camilla on royal train during their courtship

Princess Diana had suspected King Charles of having a secret tryst with Camilla Parker Bowles on the royal train, just months before their wedding, her brother’s memoir claims. Charles Spencer’s bombshell new book recalls the scandal in 1980 when Diana and the then Prince of Wales had begun their relationship, with Charles accused of smuggling a blonde woman on to the train for a “rendezvous”.

17h ago
Irish IndependentCelebrity lifeLondon
‘We’ll forget her soon enough’ - Earl Spencer’s explosive claims about Princess Diana and King Charles

‘We’ll forget her soon enough’ - Earl Spencer’s explosive claims about Princess Diana and King Charles

“We’ll forget her soon enough.” That is the extraordinary comment Charles Spencer, Princess Diana’s brother, claims King Charles made in the days following her death. Now, Spencer’s new book has reignited old tensions and prompted a rare response from Buckingham Palace. Daily Mail features writer Fred Kelly joins Kevin Doyle on the Indo Daily to ask why Spencer is speaking out now, whether his claims stack up and what this latest royal row means for Diana’s enduring legacy.

1d ago
The GuardianDiplomacyLondon
Charles’s rebuttal of Earl Spencer’s claim about Diana offers rare glimpse into palace thinking

Charles’s rebuttal of Earl Spencer’s claim about Diana offers rare glimpse into palace thinking

From ‘there were three of us in this marriage’ to ‘recollections may vary’, a lot can be conveyed with a carefully worded phrase As denials go, King Charles’s response to Earl Spencer’s allegations that Charles said after Diana’s death, “We’ll forget her soon enough”, was a masterclass in the diplomatic royal rebuke. Rarely has Buckingham Palace responded to claims in countless books on royalty. But it was straight out of the block on this one.

6d ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsNorth West England
Children as young as 13 being referred to UK hospital suffering from ‘ketamine bladder’

Children as young as 13 being referred to UK hospital suffering from ‘ketamine bladder’

County’s first such clinic, at Alder Hey in Liverpool, treating children suffering from chronic bladder problems with severe cases needing dialysis Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine. Medics at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool opened the first ketamine clinic in the UK for young people amid a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug.

23h ago
The GuardianScandalUSA
Democrats accuse Susan Collins of corruption after bombshell ‘pay-to-play’ report

Democrats accuse Susan Collins of corruption after bombshell ‘pay-to-play’ report

Republican senator calls bribery allegation ‘categorically false’ as ProPublica reports Trump derailed FBI inquiry Democrats in Maine on Wednesday accused Republican senator Susan Collins of corruption after a major media outlet reported that the FBI had proposed investigating her for allegedly accepting bribes – before Donald Trump derailed the inquiry. The article from the investigative newsroom ProPublica rocked the race for Collins’s Senate seat, which is crucial to Democrats’ hopes of winning control of the chamber in the 3 November midterm election. The outlet reported that in the run-up to Collins’s successful bid for a fifth term in 2020, the head of her Super Pac had solicited a campaign donation from contracting firm Navatek, which demanded assurances of business from the government in return.

1h ago
Irish IndependentElectionsEastern Europe
Arrests, armed soldiers and ban on opposition parties: How Putin controlled Russia’s ‘sham’ elections

Arrests, armed soldiers and ban on opposition parties: How Putin controlled Russia’s ‘sham’ elections

Vladimir Putin’s party is set to win by a comfortable majority in the country’s tightly controlled parliamentary elections, widely branded a sham. Initial data from Russia’s Central Election Commission suggests the leader’s United Russia party is in the lead and expected to win with 57.8pc of the votes and more than 90pc of the ballots processed.

1d ago