Fed up with Boris Johnson? Well, you can be sure of one thing, says Yasmeen Serhan in The Atlantic: the next prime minister won’t look anything like him. Of 10 people on the original candidates list, half were from ethnic minorities and half were women. No credible white male candidate remains. It might seem odd to find this in a right-of-centre party, given the left’s “perceived patent on diversity and multiculturalism”. But the truth is Britain’s Conservatives have a near-monopoly on political firsts, including the first Jewish PM (Benjamin Disraeli), the first female PM (Margaret Thatcher) and the first non-white chancellor and home secretary (Sajid Javid in both cases). According to Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank, this Tory field represents “probably the most ethnically diverse contest for party leadership that has been seen in any major party in any democracy”. The party’s grassroots members may still be overwhelmingly white, but there’s no question they would happily vote for an Asian or black candidate. “The only people who doubt that are liberal progressives.”

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the West is remilitarising, says Simon Kuper in the FT. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has promised an “eightfold expansion in forces on high alert to 300,000”; for member state defence spending, he says, 2% of GDP should be “a floor, not a ceiling”. But is all this really necessary? Russia spends $66bn on its military a year – a fraction of the $801bn splurged by the US, and the $363bn spent by other Nato members. Even if the US abandons Europe after the 2024 election – a possibility if Donald Trump wins – “other Nato states would outspend Russia more than sixfold”.