Labour’s “gutted” welfare bill passed yesterday evening, but the government’s “farcical” climbdown, which included ditching planned cuts to disability benefits, says Politico, means “the PM’s authority with his own MPs looks to be at its lowest ebb”. The U-turn also leaves Chancellor Rachel Reeves with a £4.5bn gap to fill through borrowing, tax rises or cuts elsewhere. Donald Trump says that Israel has agreed to the “necessary conditions” for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, crediting Egyptian and Qatari officials for the proposal, which will now be delivered to Hamas. The US president says his administration would use the time to “work with all parties to end the war”, and advised Hamas to accept the deal, “because it will not get better”. British banknotes will get their first major redesign in more than 50 years. Winston Churchill and Jane Austen are likely to be dropped; possible alternatives include landmarks, novels, films, sporting moments, historical events, inventions and nature. The public can submit ideas, though the final decision will lie with the Bank of England’s governor to avoid the embarrassment of “Notey McNoteface”.

Trump’s “reverse Robin Hood” bill will cost his party dear

Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is currently wading its way through Washington, says Edward Luce in the FT. In whatever form it emerges, the “BBB” – as Republicans have “slavishly” agreed to nickname it – is a disaster for the Trump movement. The president’s “reverse Robin Hood” budget is essentially a $4.5trn tax cut for the richest, paid for by the largest reduction in safety net programmes for rural blue-collar Americans in history. This is obviously not good for the “Maga brand”, which promised precisely the opposite of the “upward redistribution” now being voted on. Just 30% of Americans approve of the policy – “an unusually strong thumbs-down for a president’s signature bill” – which is sure to cost Republicans at the polling booth come the midterms. “Having chosen to live by the Trumpian sword, some will die by it.”

Even the incompetent, disorganised Democrats will be able to score points off an incumbent party that has made many voters worse off. The slogans write themselves: “Trump robbed the poor to pay the rich.” What’s odd is that “many of the rich also loathe Trump’s BBB” – Elon Musk says it will put America on the path to “debt slavery”. He’s not wrong: the bill adds between $3trn and $4trn to the US national debt over the next decade. “This will put America into the Italian category.” There will doubtless be some distracting theatrics – the BBB includes new funds for Trump’s notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, so expect to see more military-backed ICE raids in cities like New York and Chicago. But it can’t last. In the end, the politics of BBB is self-harming to Trump. “The economics is terrible for everyone.”

Margaret Thatcher famously revived her flagging premiership at the 1980 Tory conference with the line: “You turn if you want to – the lady’s not for turning!” Few people realise that it was a pun on Christopher Fry’s little-known 1948 play The Lady’s Not for Burning, says Stefan Stern in The Guardian. And in fact the lady very much did turn, just four months later, when the government withdrew its plan to close 23 coalmines in the face of union opposition. (Thatcher’s real fight against the miners began later.) But it didn’t matter. People now saw the Iron Lady as resolute, unflinching, and “determined never to change her mind”.

Some people may “clutch their hearts in horror” at the thought of young people getting their history lessons from TikTok, says Sophie Hines in You Magazine, but 25-year-old Katie Kennedy’s account, “The History Gossip”, regularly racks up millions of views. In her “snappy, sassy” videos the Oxford postgraduate student answers historical questions such as: Is it true that Marie Antoinette slept with her son? How did 1700s women sit down in their enormous dresses? Did Charles II invent dogging? Did people shag during the Black Death plague? And Was Anne of Cleves a Minger? No wonder Gen Z is “lapping it up”. To see her videos, click here.

“Islamism soaked in Maoism, weaponised for social media”

What happened at Glastonbury was no more about a “free Palestine” than 1930s slogans about lebensraum were about a “bigger backyard”, says Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Free Press. Chants of “death to the IDF” were not an attack on the Israeli military or Israel or even Zionism. They were part of a “coordinated, ideological insurgency against the Jewish people”. Although I’m now a Christian, I grew up “in the clutch of Islamism”, and I’ve been researching subversive movements for decades, especially those emanating from the world of political Islam. What I’m seeing is something new: “Islamism soaked in Maoism, weaponised for the social media era.”

Islamism is fuelled by “absolutist theocracy and tribal vengeance”; Maoism by “class war and ideological conformity”. Islamism seeks to restore a seventh-century caliphate through “bombs, blood, and barbarity”; Maoism wants to “flatten all hierarchies” and enforce “equity” with surveillance, humiliation and fear. “One dreams of paradise after death. The other promises utopia after sufficient political and social purges.” But both share a core instinct: “Crush the infidel, purge the impure, seize control of the narrative.” Islamism brings the holy rage, the fixation on martyrdom and the “visceral hatred for Jews” that predates the modern state of Israel by centuries. Maoism brings the strategy – the long march through institutions, the rewriting of history and the reframing of reality through social media sound bites. This combination allows obsessive anti-Semitism to be reframed as “liberation” and Jews to be dehumanised as “privileged” oppressors. The more aggressive the content, the more likely it is to go viral – “the algorithm is the accelerant”. And before you know it, what starts as an online clip becomes a “Molotov cocktail hurled through a synagogue window”. Once more in history, those attacking Jews are being “met with applause”. What happened to “never again”?

Any remaining doubts about exactly why more than 500 people in Gaza have been shot and killed at food points in the past month can be dispelled, says Gideon Levy in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Officers and soldiers in the IDF have confirmed that they received orders to fire live ammunition into crowds of unarmed Palestinians to disperse the inevitable crowds at the territory’s four US/Israel-administered food points. “It’s a killing field,” one soldier says. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day... no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire.” “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire,” he added. “There’s no enemy.”

It’s 18-year-old George Finch, who has recently found himself “leading a sizeable UK council”, says Natasha Leake in The Daily Telegraph. The Leicester University politics student became interim boss of Warwickshire County Council after Reform UK councillor Rob Howard resigned from the post last week. Finch, previously Howard’s deputy, is now responsible for a budget of over £400m and more than 5,000 staff, from local officials at HQ to rubbish collectors and social workers. His appointment has “raised a few eyebrows” in the House of Commons, but as Finch pointed out: at 20-years-old, “Mike Tyson was the youngest heavyweight boxer in the world”.