Keir Starmer has defended his official visit to China, which began this morning, saying it will make Britons richer and keep the nation safer. He accused the Conservatives of taking London-Beijing relations from the “Golden Age to the Ice Age”, and insisted he would “raise the issues that need to be raised” on human rights. The entire government delegation has been issued with burner phones and throwaway laptops to combat spying. Angela Rayner told supporters “I’m not dead yet” as allies said she could rally 80 MPs to back her in a leadership bid. Speaking at a fundraising dinner, the former deputy prime minister also said Labour’s leadership “should do better” and vowed: “I ain’t giving those keys to No 10 to Nigel Farage.” Older people are twice as likely to drink heavily as those in their twenties, according to new NHS figures. Close to a third of those aged between 65 and 74 drink at “risky levels” – a measly six glasses of wine per week – up from just a fifth two years earlier.

Donald Trump came into office with immigration as his strongest issue, says Edward Luce in the FT. Americans wanted violent criminals deported and border control enforced. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security has turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a “menacing paramilitary” that detains five-year-olds, hauls elderly men from their homes, snatches mothers from daycare centres and murders non-violent protesters. Trump’s lieutenants are unrepentant: after the first killing, Vice President JD Vance declared that border agents had “absolute immunity”; after the second, the self-styled “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth told ICE agents on X: “We have your back 100%. You are SAVING the country.” But crucially, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Americans are “turning sharply against” these methods.

The administration is “ploughing through the US constitution at speed”. Each of its key amendments – the first on free speech, the second on gun rights, the fourth protecting against “warrantless search” – turns out to be optional, depending on the convenience of the arguments. (The second ICE victim was perfectly entitled to carry a gun, but that didn’t stop administration officials pointing to the fact to explain away his death.) A “competent wannabe autocrat” would be covering these actions in a “patina of legality”, claiming some scholars say this, others that, and so on. Trump has managed to unite scholars and ignoramuses alike against him. And he is stirring the public out of the apathy that is essential to any power grab. The victims of the Minnesota ICE shootings were, respectively, a nurse at an intensive care unit for veterans and a mum whose last words were “it’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you”. To depict them as terrorists is “darkly comical and profoundly inept”. And Americans aren’t buying it.

🇨🇦🤷‍♀️ The same incompetence is visible on the global stage. It’s hard to find an American who “dreads Mark Carney”, yet Trump is trying to make him public enemy number one. A competent autocrat selects his enemies with skill. “Trump’s Achilles heel is that he gets worse at this with experience.”