The new military agreement between the US, UK and Australia puts paid to the “worrying spectre” of declining American power, says Adam Creighton in The Australian. Washington’s top mandarins are wise to see the “necessity” of the world’s top English-speaking countries sticking together to counter “growing Chinese belligerence”. Canada has fallen behind in the international defence pecking order, and the less said about New Zealand “kowtowing to Chinese interests” the better.

At Monday’s Met Gala, we saw America’s glitziest stars prancing around maskless in the middle of a pandemic, “while those paid hourly wages to serve them were required to keep their faces covered”, says Glenn Greenwald in his Substack. It was a depressing parade of a “maskless elite attended to by a permanently faceless servant class”. The so-called liberals are the worst hypocrites – progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posed on the gala’s red carpet without a mask in her “Tax the Rich” dress, turning her appearance into “a celebrity-building branding opportunity”. Other Democrat bigwigs such as Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom have also been caught ignoring Covid guidelines at parties.