Professor Christopher Painter

Far from making America great again, in retrospect Trump and MAGA were manifestations of the decline in US global power, a process that has markedly accelerated as a result of Trump's hubris and strategic folly.

In Trump's world public policy goals and personal venality are entirely interwined. It's conflicts of interest - and corruption - on a grand scale. This helps explain the strategic mess in dealing with Putin's Russia. Two governing elites are literally carving up their countries' respective wealth.

The more Trump tries to evade responsibility for the folly of his own actions, the worse - politically - the situation becomes for him in the run-up to the mid-terms.

Trump has no cards left to play. He's thrown them all away www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

You have Putin's poodles in and around the White House, acting to the detriment of your strategic interests just to accrue yet more wealth and power for a corrupt elite, my American friends. You have mid-terms in just a few weeks to do something decisive about this embarrassing farce.

Putin's conspiracy theories have most resonance in his own backyard. open.substack.com/pub/bylineti...

Both Farage and Badenoch have become increasingly Trumpian with their policy offers. By the likely time of next UK general election Trump will no longer be in the White House - assuming survival of legitimate US constitutional requirements. It's called fighting yesterday's war!

Used to be Labour Oppositions disassociating themselves from and redudiating their own recent time in Office. Now it's the turn of the Tory Party, making reckless promises as it tries to re-capture 'glory days' of 1980s - all framed by an excruciating Conference performance from Shadow Chancellor.

UK political battle lines are now drawn. Burnham's intention to unpick Thatcherite neo-liberalism. Badenoch's Thatcherism on speed, rendering Cameron/Osborne's austerity seem like child play by comparison. Farage replicating the divisive chaos of Reform-controlled local councils on a national stage.

We need to move on from the toxic politics of 'welfare', with its pejorative connotations of dependence (used to be known as social security!), to the politics of 'well-being', whereby everyone has a meaningful stake - and related opportunities - in the society to which they belong.

A notable positive in Burnham's political narrative is weaving in notions around 'public good' and 'public purpose'. That focus is crucial if society is once again to work for the benefit of the majority - not just the few, whose privileges are unashamedly entrenched by the Right.

There is no denying that Burnham's Conference speech was an accomplished performance. The challenge for him now is, having raised people's hopes, not dashing the high expectations thereby created, whilst dancing on a fiscal pinhead.

Autocrats have no interest science (except where it promises to further entrench their power); no interest in truth; and no interest in humanity. That's why each one is ultimately doomed to fail. The more invincible they feel the more vulnerable they become.

Trump doesn't understand economics. He doesn't grasp climate science. Nor does he even comprehend medical science. He's hopeless with statecraft on the international stage. His obvious shortcomings on human intelligence means he's ill-equipped to deal with pros and cons of artifical intelligence.

Obscene concentrations of wealth are threatening the very fabric of our societies. It's essential that these runaway levels of inequality rise to the top of the politcal agenda, if any kind of stable equilibrium is to be re-established. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

The sinister impact - every which way - of the mega-rich on the very foundations of democracy. Countervailing pressures and powers urgently required. Elon Musk is a bigger threat to British democracy than crypto billionaires observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Trump's words carry little meaning any more. So many empty threats confounded by events. A President living off vacuous rhetoric rather than grounded in the real world. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Trump is an utter fool, convinced the only valid repository of knowledge lies in his gut and totally incapable of absorbing actual evidence. BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm... Trump criticises AI boss who called for slowdown and says only guardrail needed is a 'smart president' - BBC News

Democracy for sale! Burnham urgently has to get his act together on capping political donations. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Quite apart from the fact that no one can believe a word Trump says, any blatant attempt by him to bribe American voters for the mid-terms will be more than offset by the inflationary effects - reflected in prices and interest rates - of his reckless domestic policies and foreign adventures.

As expensive, disrupted and extraordinarily damaging fossil fuels are eclipsed by renewable sources of energy, Trump celebrates a neo-colonial deal to access Venezuelan oil and gas (which will take some years to come to fruition). Nothing spells political dinosaur more than this foolhardy obsession!

Something both Trump and Putin need to get into their stubborn heads. You cannot simply bully other countries into doing your bidding!

Conflicts and disputes in which Trump is involved - Gaza, Iran, tariffs - are never resolved. They continue to fester. Confrontation rather than conciliation is his default position. Where decisive intervention would make a difference, he's a pussy to malign autocrats or never-ending war merchants.

Yet more lives lost because of the total irresponsibility of social media platforms and their owners. This posting anarchy simply cannot be allowed to carry on. BBC News - UK minister urges social media firms to remove dangerous driving videos www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Commission an immediate public inquiry to ensure we never see a tragic death like Dr Arday's again. goodlawproject.org/s/abb8a1

So many recent problems are due to disregard for mainstream scientific, economic and diplomatic advice: austerity; Brexit; a botched Covid pandemic; climate emergency; and strategically catastrophic wars. Special interests or political hubris have prevailed. Trump has epitomised this new Dark Age.

The theory that Great Powers can impose their will on others with impunity in the context of a collapsing international order is starting to look seriously suspect, what with Russia's gridlock in Ukraine and Trump's strategic humiliation in Iran.

Re-watched Oscar-winning film, The Deer Hunter. How the Vietnam war tore apart the lives of a friendship group; indeed a war tearing apart American society. Fast forward to 2026. Not only do we have a President who was a draft dodger at that time, but has torn US society apart all over again.

Putin has calculated that time is on his side in Ukraine. Ukraine's allies need to ensure instead that, as time goes by, Putin's terrorist state becomes progressively more vulnerable. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

This is not 'pragmatism'. It is gross irresponsibility in view of the extreme weather events of this Summer. It will merely add to the net global sum of carbon emissions, when the imperative is to do exactly the opposite. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Political bounces these days two a penny. What that suggests is voters are attracted to novelty, looking for immediate outcomes well nigh impossible to deliver, given prevailing financial and geopolitical realities. Marginal resource shifts are no substitute for longer-term structural reforms.

Starmer got it right on Ukraine; Trump fundamentally mis-read the omens. Starmer got it right on Iran; Trump, by contrast, sinking in a quagmire of forever Middle East wars.

The world will only become a safer place once Netanyahu, Putin and Trump have all been removed from office. They are looking politically vulnerable, because of the impact on themselves, but also on each other, of their respective strategic military follies.

A fly on the wall insight on just one dimension of the fractured world in which Starmer had to try to effectively operate: Trump's White House cesspit. Shocking, even withstanding all that we already know. Tina Brown on Trump’s second term observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Good to see a front-line commentator pouring cold water on the fatally flawed idea of a Burnham coronation. Remember Gordon! Why Labour should take a beat before parachuting in Andy Burnham observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Precedents suggest those constantly on manoeuvres to occupy the highest political office in the land rarely turn out to be the national saviours they perceive themselves to be.

It's now becoming abundantly clear not only that Trump's intervention in the Middle East turned out to be an embarrassing strategic calamity for the United States, but also that Trump is losing his bet on Putin having the stronger hand in Ukraine.

A very welcome piece demonstrating how far-right culture war claims are driven by ideology not evidence. The real threat to civilisation is when we allow these ideologues to erase the truth. observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Badenoch chasing Farage; Farage chasing Lowe; Lowe chasing Robinson. All chasing one another in a downward, self-defeating and ugly spiral.

The D-Day landings were infinitely more successful than the debaclè over which Hegseth has presided in the Middle East! BBC News - Hegseth attacks Europe over migration with beach 'invasion' D-Day speech www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Farage has done untold damage to the British economy by being instrumental in Brexit; enormous damage to British society by inflaming ethnic tensions; and incalculable damage to the probity of British politics by countenancing obscene levels of funding from disreputable sources.

Trump badly miscalculated over Iran. Looks like same may apply by cosying up to Putin over Ukraine. Despite continuing deadly bombardments, aerial attacks against determined adversaries cannot compensate for lack of success in a ground campaign. It's Putin who is increasingly the desperate one.

If Burnham finds his way into Downing Street then, yes, there is a high probability that Labour will revert to its comfort zone. It doesn't take too much imagination - or advice from former Prime Ministers - to work out the likely consequences of that for general election outcomes.

What the renowned 20th C philosopher, Bertrand Russell, observed about far right politicians: "first, they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent."

The political chameleon that is Andy Burnham. So much so that his commitment to 'change' the Labour Party now entails endorsing most of the strategic policy positions of the Starmer Government. observer.co.uk/news/politic...

The political language that Burnham deploys is redolent of a country long passed into history. The UK is highly pluralist, using whichever criteria, but including socioeconomic indices. Romanticised notions of working class belong to Orwell's Britain, not its 21st C variant.