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‘I have to dodge them all the time’: Rome locals incensed by rise in golf cart tours

On the edge of Piazza Navona, one of the grandest squares in central Rome, Barry and Linda, visitors from Texas in the US, stepped out of a golf cart. They planned to cross the square on foot, perhaps stopping to admire Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century Fountain of the Four Rivers, before being picked up by their driver at the opposite end. The couple had already done a walking tour on day one of their trip, and had been so exasperated by a stifling three-hour shuffle along a corridor towards the Sistine Chapel on day two that by the third day they wanted to give their tired feet a rest. “When I first heard you could do golf cart tours in Rome, I thought to myself: that sounds a little weird,” said Barry. “But then we decided to try it out.” He said the most enjoyable thing about the experience was “feeling the breeze”. Rome is a difficult city to navigate, noted Linda, especially its ancient narrow streets in the centre. “There are no sidewalks,” she said. “Our feet were hurting and we needed a break.” For visitors, golf cart tours offer respite from the heat, crowds and cobbles. For residents, however, their proliferation in recent years has become another source of frustration in a city already wrestling with traffic and overtourism. Taxi drivers are especially incensed, accusing golf cart operators of stealing their business, while one local newspaper said the city had been “taken hostage” by the vehicles. Now Rome authorities are cracking down on the burgeoning trade. Police intensified checks this week after the news agency Adnkronos reported that 90% of the roughly 500 golf carts circulating in the city were operating without authorisation. In recent days, police stopped 131 carts around Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Circo Massimo and the Spanish Steps, issuing €38,000 of fines for offences ranging from unlicensed driving to illegal parking. Rome’s leaders are pushing for regionwide measures to properly regulate an activity that “risks spiralling out of control”, Eugenio Patanè, a councillor for mobility, told the news agency Adnkronos. Prices vary based on the type of tour and duration, but the cost per person can start at €100 and exceed €400 for a half-day trip. Barry and Linda paid €310 for their three-hour ride. “But it’s worth it,” said Barry. Rome’s traffic problem is hardly new. Julius Caesar tried to tackle the issue more than 2,000 years ago by banning private vehicles and commercial carts from the city’s streets during the day. Today, pedestrians, cars, scooters, delivery vans and the occasional rogue horse-drawn carriage all jostle for space. Tourists can also take tours in Fiat 500s, on Vespas with sidecars, and even in tuk-tuks. But the golf carts seem to have drawn a special kind of wrath. “There are too many of them,” said Nora Fahmi, who works at Trevimage, an art photography shop behind the Pantheon. “We’ve had this shop for 13 years and have seen all sorts of things, but the golf cart situation is kind of wild.” Nearby, two teenagers from Israel were taking a rest on a parked cart. “We just want a lift to the Colosseum but you have to book online,” said their mother, Miri. “Rome is too crowded and it’s difficult to walk.” Elisa Isacco, who lives in the Monti area, spares no sympathy for the weary tourists. “What do they actually see or learn about Rome when they are on one of these things?” she said. “I find myself having to dodge them all the time – Rome is chaotic, it’s like a jungle.” Amid the clampdown, several golf cart tour operators have banned staff from speaking to the press. But Leo Pavoncello, a driver for an operator in the Jewish Ghetto area, was happy to publicly defend the trade. “Golf carts are silent and eco-friendly,” he said. “Rome is not an easy city to visit but these vehicles allow people with disabilities and families with children to see the sites in a comfortable way. On top of that, they provide jobs for young people.” Pavoncello, who was subjected to the police checks and was found to be operating fully legitimately, argued that a few rotten apples were giving the business a bad name. “I don’t understand why they are targeting us,” he said, although he suspects “taxi lobbies” are piling on the pressure. “But Rome is a touristic city that has always been full of traffic, and the golf carts are simply another mode of transport.”

Libyan unity talks upended as warlord’s son linked to drone attacks on fuel facilities

Allegations that the son of the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar oversaw a “terror cell” that launched drone attacks on fuel storage facilities and power stations in western Libya have upended plans for the Tripoli-based government of national unity (GNU) to continue cooperating with Haftar on a plan to unify the country. Saddam Haftar, the deputy commander of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), has increasingly been seen by the US as an important figure in its plans to unify Libyan security, judicial and political institutions. But a round of drone attacks in August worsened electricity blackouts in the west of the country, putting intense popular pressure on the GNU led by the prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. Libya has been split between the east, dominated by Haftar, and the west, governed by the GNU, since the fall of Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, leaving the oil-rich country at the mercy of corruption, militia, migrant traffickers and myriad external actors. Donald Trump’s Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, has hatched a plan to unify the two Libyan governments in which Haftar from the east would take on the role of president and a member of the Dbeibah family from the west would become prime minister. Boulos has insisted he is not trying a quick fix that entrenches family elites in Libya. “It’s not about families or names,” Boulos said when asked about the reported Haftar-Dbeibah deal, before adding: “At the end of the day, those are individuals that have to be in one position or the other.” But the drone strikes, it is claimed, were prompted by Haftar’s anger at Dbeibah apparently stalling on the Boulos merger plan and by Tripoli allegedly encouraging tribes in southern Libya to attack and kill his forces. Over more than five days in August, drones attacked the Zawiya oil station and fuel storage facilities in western Libya. The drone strikes hit the gasoline-storage tank at the Zawiya oil complex, west of Tripoli, causing a large fire and the tank’s collapse. The tank held approximately 4.5m litres of fuel when it was struck, according to Libya’s National Oil Corporation. On 5 September, three Libyans and one Spanish citizen were arrested in southern Tripoli by the GNU for their alleged role in a plot that was intended to include an attack on Tripoli airport. It was thought the whole group involved five Spaniards and four Libyans. The three arrested Libyans were allegedly affiliated with the Tareq ben Ziyad brigade, an LNA formation. Information that has emerged from interviews about the plot, and Saddam Haftar’s alleged role, not just in Libya, has been described as a goldmine, capable of weakening Khalifa Haftar. Sources in the GNU said the alleged plotters were working for Saddam Haftar. “No formal decision has been made, but in light of what has been discovered it is impossible to work with Saddam,” the sources said. The claims not only damage Saddam Haftar’s role in the Boulos plan but also the parallel UN sponsored 4+4 talks involving the main four political institutions in Libya that led to an August agreement to stage elections within two years. The deal endorsed by the UN security council overcomes previous obstacles to elections, and had been backed by the main actors capable of delivering the change. Walid Ellafi, minister for state for political affairs in the UN-backed Libyan GNU and an enthusiast for elections, said: “Our support for the 4+4 process is rooted in its role as a UN sponsored framework offering a new approach to achieving practical results that pave the way for elections and institutions whose political legitimacy derives from the will of the people – not as a political settlement that overlooks violations or sets aside the rights of those affected.” He opposes an elite east-west political deal that brushes aside longstanding grievances such as the displacement of 9,000 families in Benghazi during the 2014 war. The allegations about the sabotage operation may intensify a power struggle between the three sons of Khalifa Haftar in the east. Saddam Haftar is seen as his father’s most likely heir, possesses the most resources, enjoys the backing of the United Arab Emirates and has so far dominated the political tracks. But his brothers, Khaled and Belqasim – more allied with Egypt than the United Arab Emirates – have recently started to challenge his dominance.

‘The enemy is tearing our city apart’: terror in Kyiv as Russia ramps up attacks

Valeriya Tkachenko was dropping her son off at school in central Kyiv when the air raid alert sounded. Staff hurried the children and parents into the shelter, where the frightened lawyer spent the next two hours with her son. “I’m scared to death all day about what could happen to my son,” she said as she emerged from the shelter, already late for work. A day earlier, a Russian jet-powered drone had struck a school nearby. “And I can’t plan anything any more,” she said. “It’s not sustainable like this.” Across the city on Friday morning, Artem Marchenko, an IT worker, was forced to abandon his car and walk for 20 minutes across the Pivdennyi, or Southern, Bridge on his way to work after repeated Russian strikes damaged the crossing. He feared Russia would soon target Kyiv’s other bridges, paralysing movement across a city of about 3 million people, the two halves of which are divided by the Dnipro. On Saturday morning, Russia targeted a second major bridge connecting Kyiv, damaging the road surface on the Northern Bridge and temporarily halting traffic. Kyiv is entering its most difficult period since the early days of the invasion, as intensifying Russian attacks reshape everyday life in a capital that Moscow is seeking to plunge into darkness. For weeks, the main worry in the capital had been the coming winter, when Russia is expected once again to try to plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold. But a sharp escalation in Russian attacks has left many residents feeling that some of the hardship they had been bracing for is already here. “The capital is in a very dramatic situation. And it’s no longer possible to pretend that we can live now as we do in peacetime,” the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Friday. “The enemy is tearing Kyiv apart.” This week alone, Russian missiles and drones have struck offices, datacentres, a school and hospital and one of Kyiv’s main bridges. Moscow has also started its attacks on Ukraine’s energy, targeting a thermal power plant and other energy facilities, leaving several neighbourhoods without power and water by morning. Volodymyr Zelenskyy underlined the apparent shift in Russian tactics in an interview with the Financial Times this week, saying Vladimir Putin had recently ordered his commanders to abandon the rules of war. “They want Ukrainians to leave the capital … and show that if you don’t have the capital you don’t have the country,” Zelenskyy said in separate comments to reporters. Until recently, Kyiv had retained a deceptively normal rhythm, while cities closer to the front, including Kharkiv and Dnipro, absorbed the brunt of daily missile and drone attacks. Now, residents joke grimly that the balance is beginning to shift, with those cities at times feeling safer than the capital. The city is confronting a particularly dangerous combination of an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors for ballistic missiles and a new generation of faster, jet-powered Russian drones that are harder to shoot down. Kyiv is racing to fast-track a new generation of interceptor drones capable of taking down the jet-powered models. Several are already in use, according to three defence industry sources, though they said it could still take weeks or months to deploy them at a scale sufficient to provide meaningful protection for the capital. At the same time, Russia’s advances on the battlefield remain relatively slow and are coming at enormous cost. Moscow captured about 361 sq km in September, according to the military analyst Konrad Muzyka, an increase on recent months but still far short of the pace needed to seize the rest of the Donbas before winter, when offensive operations typically become more difficult. Ukraine, meanwhile, has clawed back about 126 sq km in a series of counteroffensives in the east, being conducted under the codename Vivaldi. That slower-moving battle on the ground is increasingly at odds with what is happening far behind the front. The contrast reflects a broader shift in the war, as Ukraine’s major cities come under growing pressure. “You can be quite successful in the land domain, but if you are vulnerable in the air, especially in the rear, that is the vulnerability your opponent is going to exploit,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine’s government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies. Ukrainian officials have been warning their European counterparts about the scale of the looming threat. According to the New York Times, Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, recently briefed European counterparts on an intercepted Russian plan to use as many as 1,000 missiles, drones and bombs against the country’s energy system. The targets included electrical substations, hydroelectric and thermal power plants and boiler houses, in what appeared to be an effort to plunge Ukrainian cities into darkness and cold and create a humanitarian crisis. “Russia plans to freeze Kyiv out, to throw it back into the stone age,” said one senior western diplomat in Kyiv, speaking on condition of anonymity. Western diplomats say publicly that they intend to remain in Kyiv, mindful that leaving would hand Moscow a propaganda victory and risk creating the impression that Ukraine was being abandoned. However, privately two senior diplomats said contingency plans were being drawn up to relocate embassies to Lviv or eastern Poland if Russia began deliberately targeting foreign missions. “The situation is obviously deteriorating fast,” the diplomat said.

Brazil’s neck-and-neck election offers test for growing pro-Trump Latin American bloc

Shortly after his controversial speech to the United Nations general assembly in September, Donald Trump gathered a dozen like-minded Latin American leaders and boasted that rightwing candidates had won all seven presidential elections held in the region since he began his second term. “Everybody I’ve endorsed has won,” the US president said in New York to most of the leaders of the Shield of the Americas, an anti-drug cartel coalition of 15 countries governed by the right or far right. Those electoral victories – and the US takeover of Venezuela after capturing Nicolás Maduro – have left just six Latin American countries under leftwing governments: regional heavyweights Brazil and Mexico, small Uruguay and Guatemala, and the isolated regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua. On Sunday, Brazilians go to the polls in a presidential election that many believe will determine more than Latin America’s largest country’s fate for the next four years. Given Mexico’s geographic proximity and unique economic relationship with the US, analysts see Brazil as perhaps the last country in the region still capable of saying “no” to Trump’s whims – something that could change dramatically depending on the election result. Polls indicate a neck-and-neck race between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the 80-year-old leftist incumbent who is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term, and Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the far-right senator son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. “Trump really does take seriously the idea that the Americas should be his back yard,” said Pedro Telles, a professor at the School of International Relations at Brazil’s FGV university. “Mexico will remain relevant, and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is one of the most popular leftwing leaders. But if Flávio wins, it would be a real blow to the left and a major boost to the far-right agenda globally,” added Telles. “There is a lot at stake,” said Sandra Borda Guzmán, an associate professor of political science at Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes. “Instead of taking the opportunity to expand our region’s autonomy, a far-right victory would align the region unconditionally with the dictates of the US,” she added. Lula and Bolsonaro differ sharply on the US, including over what has become Trump’s main foreign policy for the region: the so-called “war on drugs” used to justify dozens of airstrikes on boats that have killed more than 230 people and joint operations involving US military personnel on land. While Bolsonaro has pledged to join the Shield of the Americas and to follow an “iron fist” approach to crime, Lula has raised concerns about sovereignty and said it is “sad to see the inferiority complex of Latin American presidents” who are part of the Trump-created coalition. Lula and Trump’s relationship has swung between not speaking and public displays of warmth, but it is currently at a low point, with the Brazilian president and Democratic members of the US Congress accusing Washington of trying to interfere in Bolsonaro’s favour. “Brazil is a big prize,” said Michael Shifter, adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, adding that amid endless conflicts in Iran, Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, “US foreign policy is going very badly in the rest of the world.” A victory for Bolsonaro in Brazil, he said, would be used “triumphantly” by Trump for producing an “almost completely aligned region”. At the latest Shield of the Americas meeting, Trump made clear that it was not all about security. The US president also referred to the “tremendous natural wealth” of Latin American countries, which he said could not “be taken over by hostile outside powers” – widely understood as a reference to China. Privileged access to Brazil’s rare earths and critical minerals was one of the conditions Washington imposed in exchange for not applying tariffs, which Lula rejected. Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has offered those natural resources as the “solution” to help the US “break its dependence on China”. “Democracy is also kind of on the line here,” added Shifter, noting that Bolsonaro was only running because his father cannot – Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest after being convicted of attempting a coup to overturn his defeat by Lula in the 2022 election. “So it’s not just a question of one more country moving to the right, but of a right that has a very problematic relationship with democracy,” he said. As in recent elections across Latin America, the race includes other candidates but is polarised between two leading candidates. Lula and Bolsonaro have alternated as frontrunners in the final stretch, making the outcome unpredictable; if neither wins 50% plus one of the votes, there will be a runoff on 25 October. Bolsonaro’s only previous bid for an executive role in government ended ignominiously when he took fourth place in Rio’s 2016 mayoral race. But analysts say there are several reasons why a congressman best known for his family name and corruption allegations – some shelved, others still under investigation – has emerged as a serious challenger to a three-time president. Unemployment, poverty and inflation have fallen, and average incomes have risen, but so has household debt – something many attribute to online betting, which the older Bolsonaro left unregulated and Lula banned days before the vote. The incumbent’s campaign has also been hit by corruption allegations – still under investigation – involving his son and a former aide, while a scandal involving supreme court justices with no connection to Lula may have rubbed off on the president. Many therefore see Bolsonaro’s support as coming both from a simple transfer of his father’s voter base and from an anti-Lula vote. “I’m going to vote for Flávio, but not because I think he’s the best option,” said Bruna Arguello, 34, a businesswoman from Santana de Parnaíba, whose first choice would be Ronaldo Caiado, a far-right former governor of Goiás, polling at 4%. “Unfortunately, he has no chance of winning, so I’m going with Flávio so we can get Lula out,” she said. Actor Docy Moreira, 59, will vote for Lula. In 2018, she was so dismayed by Jair Bolsonaro’s election that she decided to leave her home town of Belo Horizonte, where two-thirds of voters backed the far-right leader. “I couldn’t understand how people, including the vast majority of my family, were choosing so much violence and authoritarianism,” she said. She Googled which cities had given Bolsonaro the lowest share of the vote, chose one about 1,550 miles away and moved north to Luís Correia, in Piauí. She eventually returned home, and most of her family will now vote for Bolsonaro’s son. Still, Moreira remains confident Lula will win. “If not, it will be devastating, but I’m not going to move again. I’m stronger now. I’ve learned that I can find refuge within myself,” said Moreira.

What is Zionism and why do some critics describe it as racist?

Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party, has said he is an anti-Zionist. As his party conference prepares to debate a motion that “Zionism is racism”, what precisely is Zionism and what is the history of the claim that it is racist? What is Zionism? Modern Zionism developed in the late 1800s out of several strands of thinking on the future of Jewish collective and cultural identity, emerging from a millennia-old religious yearning to return to Zion, which runs through Jewish holy texts. The term came, however, to be most associated with Theodor Herzl’s brand of political Zionism, the movement for Jewish self-determination and statehood in the context of rising European antisemitism. Although Zionism tends to be seen by critics as a monolithic political idea, its history has encompassed multiple, often contradictory, intellectual strands including the notion – proposed by the philosopher Martin Buber before the foundation of Israel – of a binational Arab-Jewish state in Palestine. Since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, the debate over Zionism inside the country has largely centred on liberal and rightwing, or “revisionist”, camps – the latter represented by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Issues such as settlement, occupation and whether Israel should be defined as an ethno-nationalist Jewish state moved to the core of political contest. However, as Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of California, wrote in the Conversation last month, the issue is further complicated by the fact that, despite contested definitions, the idea of Zionism for many Jews represents something more amorphous: “Jewish liberation and sovereignty, a safe haven from persecution, a revival of the Hebrew language, and a renewed sense of collective pride, especially after the Holocaust.” What is the criticism of Zionism? One critique of Zionism – used as a shorthand for the state of Israel – is that it is a “colonial” project. Those critics, in parts of the left, in the wider Arab world and among some anti-Zionist Jews such as Polanski, would point to three pieces of evidence. First, the violent displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba, or “catastrophe” for Palestinians, that accompanied the founding of the Jewish state. Second, they argue Israel has created an apartheid system of unequal rights in the occupied territories that denies Palestinian ambitions to statehood and their own self-determination and, third, that within Israel those of Palestinian origin are discriminated against. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, Palestinians had a vibrant society across British Mandatory Palestine, but their connection to historical Palestine has often been dismissed or diminished by significant strands of Zionist thinking. At the heart of academic debate is how widespread the use by some early Zionists was of the notion of a “land without people” for a “people without land”, which critics have used as evidence that Zionism was a colonial enterprise at its very beginning. In contrast, Zionists point to the evidence of a historical presence of Jews in the Holy Land, as well as for many a promised biblical patrimony in a homeland from which Jews were displaced and that many hold up as a refuge in a hostile world. What is the history of the claim that ‘Zionism is racism’? The argument that Zionism is racism, while controversial, is not new. The phrase came to particular prominence during the cold war, when the UN passed resolution 3379 in 1975. The so-called “Zionism as racism” resolution compared “the racist regime in occupied Palestine” to apartheid South Africa. Sponsored’ by the Arab League and promoted by the Soviet Union, it passed with support from countries in the developing world but was later revoked in 1991 under pressure from the then US president, George HW Bush. Proponents of the argument say Zionism privileges the rights of Jews in Israel over non-Jews via a discriminatory system. Opponents of the framing describe it as antisemitic as it singles out Jews as a group to deny them alone the right to self-determination. They argue that, by delegitimising the basis for Israel’s founding as a Jewish homeland, it acts as a cover for antisemitism. The war in Gaza has intensified arguments about the nature of Zionism, in part driven by the overtly racist framing of senior Israeli political figures towards Palestinian society after the 7 October deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel in 2023. What does British law say about the argument that Zionism is racist? An employment tribunal two years ago found that the views of David Miller, a former professor of political sociology who was sacked by the University of Bristol in 2021, that “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing” amounted to a protected philosophical belief under the 2010 Equality Act, a case upheld on appeal. A highly controversial figure, Miller has also argued in social media posts that Zionists have worked as “infiltrators and subversives”, gained access to not just all UK political parties but also “the media, entertainment industries, the law, financial institutions, sports and all sorts of apparently obscure parts of the UK”. Miller is a key figure in the anti-Zionist Movement and has links to Greens for Palestine, which is proposing the Green party motion on Zionism is racism.

Half of UK wants to rejoin EU and backing it could drive up Labour vote, megapoll finds

Andy Burnham’s personal preference to rejoin the European Union after the next election is supported by almost half of all voters, a new megapoll has found, although cabinet ministers concerned about reopening Brexit divides are privately urging him to proceed with caution. The poll by the Messina Group (TMG) found that renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU could boost Labour’s vote share by as much as seven points, if the prime minister offered a fresh referendum in which he campaigned to re-enter the bloc. Almost a third of voters said an in-out referendum would be needed first, while more than one in six felt that a general election mandate would be sufficient, and the same proportion thought parliament could make the decision. The overall findings will bolster the case of those inside Downing Street who want to promise at the next election that Labour would at least negotiate over re-entry, which the prime minister has said he wants to see “in his lifetime”. Burnham used his first Labour conference speech as leader on Tuesday to announce a review of the options for Britain’s future relationship with Europe, and subsequently added that these should include rejoining entirely. However, there are nerves among some Labour MPs, especially those with constituencies that voted for Brexit, that even testing out public support for the move would be fraught with political risk and a potential boost to Reform. Two-thirds of cabinet ministers, including Burnham himself, his first secretary, Louise Haigh, chancellor, John Healey, and foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, represent seats that backed Brexit, and previously said they would respect the 2016 vote. However, public opinion has shifted. Before Burnham’s speech, several ministers had publicly cautioned against the move. Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, said while the defence and security relationship could be better, going beyond EU reset plans inherited from Keir Starmer was “not possible nor desirable”. The trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said “constitutional questions” around Britain’s EU relationship were causing uncertainty for business. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said rejoining was “not a simple, straightforward thing” and the costs might be unacceptable. Downing Street’s strategy appears to be to put the focus on those who made big promises on Brexit but then failed to deliver, rather than accusing those who voted to leave the EU of making the wrong decision. But the government’s shift in position has caused some anxiety among Burnham’s team. One cabinet minister told the Guardian: “Brexit clearly hasn’t worked and the promises made haven’t been kept so Andy is right to open up the question of what the future relationship looks like. But he definitely needs to proceed with caution because we don’t want to restoke division”. A second said: “Andy is right to say we need some clarity around our long-term relationship. Security and trade cooperation are higher up the agenda than they were 10 years ago. But whether that adds up to a real desire for big change in the population I don’t know. My constituents will be cautious.” A third added: “There are obviously different views across cabinet about it, but the Made in Europe agenda means we do need to talk to the EU about what relationship they want with us long term, as what they are currently proposing is very challenging.” Another cabinet source said: “There’s an awareness among a number of cabinet ministers with leave voting seats that opinions are going to differ and the arguments about the future will have to be carefully made about the national interest.” A fifth said there were genuine questions about the best option on the table. “I’m sceptical if we go back in, about the terms we’d be going back in on, and whether that can really resolve the problems in people’s lives. But if you look at the global context you cannot start to solve things for people without having a closer relationship with the EU.” TMG polled 11,461 people, weighted by referendum result, from 12-24 September on seven different options for relationships with the EU. The most popular was rejoin, with 49% in favour and 28.5% against. The second was to keep the existing relationship but cut as many trade barriers as possible – as the government is attempting to do with its reset – and which was supported by 48.2%, with 20.9% against. A customs union came next, on 47.1% versus 20.7%. Joining the single market and associate membership were virtually neck and neck – 45.1% and 45.5% of respondents respectively support them – while sticking with the existing relationship was backed by 42%. The seventh option – the UK moving further away from the EU – was supported by only 27.9%, with 41.2% against. A plurality of voters – 25.9% – said they wanted the UK to rejoin the EU immediately, while a slightly lower proportion – 22.9% – said it should happen in the next three years, and 8.4% over the next decade, while 23% said they did not want a closer relationship at all. TMG also tested political messaging for each of the options to see how they could affect Labour’s vote share in an election, and found that it went up – by between 4.3 and 7.4 percentage points – for all the scenarios that resulted in closer ties, with most votes coming from the Greens and Lib Dems. The polling showed that more than two-thirds of voters thought that trading with the EU was more important than the US or China, in the event the UK had to choose; four in five people want to keep the pound; and a majority want to stay in the ECHR – 53.4% versus 24.2% against. However, it also found that Brexit arguments over immigration control and sovereignty still resonated. Senior Downing Street officials have been in contact with thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test public support for the UK rejoining the EU. The TMG research is expected to be shared with the current operation. Some inside No 10 are nervous, however, that promising to renegotiate entry into the bloc could revive the flagging political fortunes of Nigel Farage, who said on Thursday Burnham had given him “the biggest boost in my career” by reviving the Brexit debate. The TMG research found that 29.7% people thought the UK had been right to leave the EU, while 52.4% said it had been wrong, and 17.9% didn’t know. On whether it had been a success or failure, 12.2% said a success, 54.9% a failure, 23.2% said neither and 9.7% did not know. Ben Judah, a visiting fellow at Chatham House who was an adviser to David Lammy as foreign secretary, told the Guardian: “These polls are a massive validation of Andy Burnham’s boldness on Europe. There is close to a national consensus that Brexit was not a success. “Against this background these results show that Europe as an issue has a unique ability to unite the left and grow the Labour vote share among swing voters. The bolder the stance towards rejoin, the bigger Labour’s reward.”

‘A beacon of peace’: London’s oldest mosque celebrates centenary

Exactly 100 years ago the Guardian wrote about the opening of London’s first mosque, an impressive white building surrounded by immaculate flower gardens in the heart of south London suburbia. A report described the mosque, in its incongruous surroundings, as “a thing of beauty”. The journalists who attended the opening ceremony witnessed the mosque’s large black doors being opened with a silver key. About 600 eminent guests attended the grand opening. Ahead of centenary celebrations at the Fazl Mosque in Wandsworth, also known as London Mosque, there is lots of activity taking place. Putney Labour MP Fleur Anderson pops in and speaks about how well loved the mosque, which is home to members of the UK’s Ahmadiyya Muslim community, is in the area. “No street party is complete without the wonderful food provided by this mosque,” she says. According to Mahmood Rafiq of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK, being part of the wider community is a key part of the mosque’s ethos. They give out sweets to local children at Eid, extend Christmas greetings to neighbours, help to keep the local environment clean and show support for other faiths if they are subjected to attacks. The mosque has been used for all sorts of other purposes alongside prayer, acting as an air raid shelter during the second world war, and more recently as a centre for blood donation and Covid 19 vaccinations. Its core message is “love for all, hatred for none”, a message particularly pertinent in times of hostile political and religious divisions. “Thankfully we haven’t experienced a lot of Islamophobia at this mosque,” says Rafiq. “But there has been an increase in incidents of low level harassment such as cars driving by and hooting their horns aggressively.” The building, which is in the Southfields area, was granted listed status by Historic England in 2018. It appears little changed since it first opened a century ago, with its slim vertical windows, green dome and pristine white exterior. Splashes of colour from English roses still feature prominently in the gardens surrounding the mosque. The purchase of land to build the mosque on was largely financed by a group of Ahmadi Muslims from Qadian in India, many of them women who sold their jewellery so that London’s first mosque could be established, even though they knew they would be unlikely to ever be able to visit the finished building. Mosque leaders are billing the message of this significant birthday as “a century of connection”. To mark the anniversary, 10,000 free meals will be provided for homeless people. Munir Dean, 65, a stalwart of the mosque, can trace its history through his own family, with his grandfather and father playing key roles in the mosque’s development. He said the founders of the mosque had a particular vision in the aftermath of the first world war of faith, peace and uniting humanity. In its early days the mosque entertained visitors from high society such as Viscount and Viscountess Allenby, and had some very English traditions such as serving tea out of the finest china cups. “Visitors to the mosque were much more likely to be served scones with clotted cream than samosas,” he says. In its early days when the UK’s Muslim population was much smaller than it is now there were no halal butchers around and instead people would pile into a car for the weekly treat of going to Blooms, the famous kosher salt beef restaurant in Aldgate East in London to tuck into meat sandwiches – kosher meat is accepted as halal because the methods of slaughtering animals are the same. Bilal Nuttall, who grew up in the same street as Lancashire actor, singer and comedian Gracie Fields, converted to Islam after serving in the Middle East during the first world war and became the mosque’s muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. According to the mosque’s historical records, the imam of the mosque in the 1930s, Abdur Rahim Dard, played a pivotal role in developments leading to the establishment of Pakistan as a separate country from India. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, an Indian politician and a barrister who trained at London’s Lincoln Inn Fields, was living in Hampstead at the time. According to Dean, he was “a very English gentleman” and a sharp dresser wearing the best Savile Row suits. He had been advocating for the rights of Muslims in India but had become disillusioned and was considering remaining in the UK and continuing his career in law. Dard convinced him otherwise and he made a keynote speech in the Fazl Mosque gardens, which proved to be a turning point in India’s future and partition of then British India into independent India and Pakistan. He returned to India the following year and became governor general of Pakistan when it became an independent state in August 1947. Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the current and fifth leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, says the mosque’s history reflects the principles of serving neighbours, showing loyalty to the UK and making peace with all people regardless of faith or background. “As we mark this centenary, I pray that the mosque may continue to be a beacon of peace and a means of bringing people together for generations to come.” As the community reflects on the mosque’s last hundred years, Dean is looking ahead. “Our message is quite timeless. It has no expiry date. Bring on the next hundred years,” he says.

‘We swept a lot under the carpet’: Vichy regime film hits home in France of 2026

It is the story of how a lowly state administrator unthinkingly becomes a cog in the machine of an authoritarian regime, embracing the bureaucracy and logistics of sending people to their deaths – and it is drawing in audiences to French cinemas. The French film Notre Salut (Our Salvation), with its modern lighting, improvised scenes and anachronistic 1980s Europop soundtrack, is far from the standard historical costume drama about the second world war. But the award-winning film about the daily lives of ordinary people participating in the puppet Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis – and ensured the deportation of a quarter of France’s Jewish population to concentration camps – is poised to become a box office hit. The film, which has been given the English-language title A Man of His Time, had a strong cinema opening in France this week, particularly among young audiences, at a time when the country is soul-searching ahead of next spring’s presidential election. Marine Le Pen of the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) continues to top the polls for the presidential race despite the political fallout from an investigation by Mediapart alleging that her party leader, Jordan Bardella, published antisemitic comments as a young party member, which he denies. Notre Salut comes amid a boom in films about France during the second world war, including more than 5m ticket sales for the two-part biopic of Charles de Gaulle, as well the controversial Les Rayons et les Ombres about the press baron and Nazi collaborator Jean Luchaire, and the forthcoming Moulin, about the last days of the French resistance leader Jean Moulin. But rather than tackling well-known heroes or monsters, Notre Salut focuses instead on the role of ordinary people in the Vichy regime that, under Marshal Philippe Pétain, collaborated in the deportation of 76,000 Jewish people to Nazi concentration camps. The film was inspired by a stash of family letters found by its writer and director, Emmanuel Marre, that gave insight into the life of his great-grandfather Henri Marre, who worked as an administrator under the authoritarian puppet regime. “There are great figures who make history, but history is also made by the second-players, the grassroots who act on the ground, and that is what is interesting about this film,” said Marc Olivier Baruch, a historian and specialist on state administrators in the Vichy regime. For Baruch, the most chilling scene in the film is the bureaucratic nitpicking about the costs incurred by providing Jews on cattle trucks with straw and chamber pots. The central character in the film, the administrator Henri Marre, “never chooses to reflect on things or look at what he’s doing, to wonder what his room for manoeuvre is”. Baruch said the film’s sense of unease was a pull for modern of audiences because today France was “in a time of great uncertainty … There’s a strong lack of confidence among French people in their elites and in their state and that has been going on for a long time.” He said the Vichy regime had resonance today as a period in history. “The Pétain dictatorship is the only moment when the far right was in power since 1820. There were these four years at the heart of the 20th century when the far right was in power and clearly for French people in 2026 and 2027 that is interesting … There has been a certain unease in modern France that it would be better to stop talking about Vichy, to draw a line under it, stop the masochism [of looking back]. That of course is stupid, and not possible.” Film critics suggested modern audiences were seeking to better understand the rise of the far right across Europe and in France. Henry Rousso, a historian who has studied the place of the Vichy regime in collective memory, wrote of the film in Le Monde: “The RN is not the fascism of the 1930s, nor a resurgence of the Pétain regime, but knowing this history allows an understanding of what [the RN] is the heir to, and how the mechanisms of gradually renouncing democratic and republican values led to disaster.” Emmanuel Marre, the film’s writer-director, who won the best Screenplay prize at the Cannes film festival, began working on the story more than a decade ago after the discovery of the letters from his great-grandfather that his family had kept in a drawer. He told France Inter radio: “There are [similar] drawers everywhere in France … there is a phantom memory of the collaboration. With this film, we wanted to prise open those drawers and allow all families to look at that – not as flagellation, [but] because after the war France pushed a lot of it under the carpet to survive.” He said it was crucial to look at the nuance of what led people to collaborate or take a stand. “In between resistance and in collaboration, there is a whole range of human emotions, even the most ambiguous.”