Labour came a distant third in yesterday’s Caerphilly by-election, losing the Welsh Senedd seat for the first time in 100 years. A tactical voting surge powered the Welsh nationalist Lindsay Whittle of Plaid Cymru to victory with 47% of the vote, followed by the predicted winners Reform UK with 36%. Labour managed a dismal 11%. Donald Trump has announced an immediate end to all trade negotiations with Canada over a TV advert criticising his tariffs. The US president says the ad – which was created by the government of Ontario and quotes Ronald Reagan saying tariffs “hurt every American” – is “fake” and “egregious”. Mafia members in the US have swindled deep-pocketed victims out of at least $7m in an elaborate gambling scheme, according to prosecutors who called it “reminiscent of a Hollywood movie”. The Cosa Nostra allegedly employed NBA stars to attract rich gamblers to high-stakes games, then rigged them using X-ray card tables, secret cameras, and special sunglasses and contact lenses that could read the dupes’ hands.

Meloni has saved Italy from itself

As Giorgia Meloni completes her third year in office, says Tommaso Manni in Il Tempo, Italy’s conservative prime minister is maintaining a “record level of consensus” with approval ratings hovering around 45% – miles ahead of her European peers. Despite the dark prognostications of her early critics, Meloni’s success in bringing “political and institutional stability” to Italy after years of uncertainty has rightly been rewarded with voter confidence. Nothing’s impossible, but there’s no reason to believe the disorganised left will mount much of a challenge when the next elections come around in 2027. And just by surviving for three years, Meloni’s government is already one of the longest lasting since World War Two. “There is, in essence, a new perception, internally and externally, of our country.” And it’s thanks to one woman.

It’s no wonder “admirers across the continent” are hailing Meloni as a “model”, says Michele Barbero in Foreign Policy. Internationally, she strives to appear “dependable and pragmatic”, standing firmly with Ukraine (to the surprise, and perhaps disappointment, of her progressive detractors) and building a constructive relationship with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Domestically, unemployment is down, which means tax revenues are up. Last month the credit agency Fitch bumped up Italy’s grade, citing its “political stability and improved financial shape”. Italians are simply “not used to either”. Meloni has more than halved the country’s deficit, and yields on 10-year Italian bonds are now pretty much at the same level as those of France. Rotating through a seemingly endless series of short-lived prime ministers and struggling to bring public finances under control used to be a distinctly Italian specialty. Non più.

On Wednesday night, says Mike Allen in Axios, Washington DC’s Cafe Milano – a longtime “redoubt of diplomats and potentates” – hosted, on separate tables, and purely by coincidence, an astonishing roster of diners. Three of Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretaries were holding court at scattered tables: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Joe Biden, dining at a “classic see-and-be-seen table”, was with an old pal from the Senate. And in a private room was Barack Obama, whose security detail had to get Biden’s Secret Service motorcade to “back off a bit from the front entrance”.

Ryan Chen has racked up millions of views on social media with his “uncanny impersonation” of Donald Trump, says Andrew Higgins in The New York Times. The Chinese business manager has never set foot in America, and learned English partly at school in Chongqing and partly from bingeing sitcoms like Friends and Two and a Half Men at university. The 42-year-old mastered the US president’s “idiosyncratic cadences”, hand gestures and fixations by watching video clips. In one, he appears on the Great Wall of China, praising it for doing a great job at keeping out the “Mexi-golians”. See his videos here.

Medieval violence on the streets of Dublin

There was “something medieval” about the riots in Dublin this week, says Finn McRedmond in The New Statesman. I watched a horse-drawn cart charge into police, and I saw one man “actually wielding a pitchfork”. On Tuesday night, thousands of protesters-turned-rioters clashed with police in a leafy West Dublin suburb as they tried to advance on an asylum hotel. Men were pepper-sprayed as they waved Irish Tricolours, while women watched on and called the police “traitors”. Chants of “get them out” were ambient. The spark for this unrest was a man in his twenties being charged – “via an Arabic translator” – over the sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl. He had been issued with a deportation order earlier in the year, and yet here he was.

This is becoming something of a pattern: violence breaking out after an illegal immigrant – or someone misidentified as one – is accused of attacking children. The clashes in Ballymena in June were preceded by the court appearance of two 14-year-olds accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl, “litigated through a Romanian interpreter”. Rioting at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, was triggered by an asylum seeker being charged (since convicted) of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old. It was the same story with England’s nationwide riots of 2024 and the Dublin riots of 2023. On both sides of the Irish Sea, there is a “small, angry, nativist cohort” with common rhetorical cause: in Dublin, protesters shout “Ireland is full”; in England, banners read “We want our country back”. Where they differ is that the Irish have no political representation at all. In today’s presidential elections, the likely winner is an open-borders leftist. So is the likely loser. Until this rage can find expression in the political mainstream, it will only grow.

Oxford Union president-elect George Abaraonye took the loss of a recent no-confidence vote – held after he expressed delight at the murder of Charlie Kirk – with a predictable lack of grace, says Rod Liddle in The Spectator: he point-blank refused to accept the verdict. Abaraonye and his supporters are now appealing the “marvellously conclusive” ballot, in which 1,228 out of the 1,746 who voted said he should go. It must be such a relief to Warwick University, who wisely turned him down for a place, either on the strength of his grades (A, B, B) “or because they had met him”.

A north London family is offering to pay a private tutor £180,000 a year to mould their one-year-old into an “English gentleman”, says Harry Cockburn in The Independent. The job listing with Tutors International states that the candidate must speak with received pronunciation, be “culturally astute” and ideally have worked in embassies or royal households. The hours are a very relaxed 10am to 3pm, and the not-particularly-onerous-sounding responsibilities will include taking the boy to Lord’s, Wimbledon and Twickenham. The end goal is for the child to one day get into Eton, Westminster or St Paul’s, or, if it goes really wrong, Harrow. Apply here.

It’s the 225ft Obama Presidential Centre in Chicago, says Rachel Bowman in the Daily Mail, which is due to be completed early next year. The former president says the chunky granite-clad building, nicknamed “the Obamalisk”, will be a “living, breathing cultural and gathering space”, complete with an eight-storey museum chronicling his time in office. The $850m tower will also contain a branch of the Chicago Public Library, a 299-seat auditorium and, for good measure, an NBA-size basketball court. Yes he can.