Energy bills will rise for millions of British households this autumn, after the energy regulator Ofgem raised the annual price cap by an unexpectedly high £35. The increase, which will kick in from October, will take the average household energy bill to £1,755 a year. The Taliban says it is “ready and willing” to work with Nigel Farage to accept Afghan migrants deported from the UK in exchange for aid. Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake says the Tories, if elected, would consider striking a similar deal. Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to American football star Travis Kelce. The 35-year-old pop titan posted pictures of Kelce on one knee and a close-up of her diamond engagement ring, estimated to be worth around £750,000, on Instagram, with the caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

What Farage wants is a “second Brexit”

This week, Nigel Farage set out to bulldoze what’s left of the postwar dream that we are all joined in the “universal brotherhood of humanity”, says Mary Harrington in UnHerd. In a fiery speech, the Reform leader described the ever-rising number of small boat crossings as an “invasion”, a “scourge” and a “threat to national security”, before proposing, essentially, a second Brexit – this time from the rest of the “rules-based international order”. Though he stopped short of calling Keir Starmer a traitor, Farage accused the Labour prime minister of taking the “side” of international courts over the British people. The small boats crisis, Farage thundered, poses a fundamental question: “Whose side are you on?” The side of “women and children being safe on our streets”, or the side of “outdated international treaties, backed up by dubious courts”?

By framing the question as one of “sides”, Farage has launched a fresh broadside in the “meta-political battle” that’s raged since before Brexit, between “particularists” and “universalists”. In its most general terms, this divide is between those who imagine “citizenship” as drawing an imaginary line around a subset of people, and those who wish to expand the in-group to include “everyone on the planet”. To committed universalists like Starmer, it’s “obviously right and just” that universal human rights should take precedence over national ones, “even where foreign criminals are concerned”. But outside the elite, most voters believe – with variations about specifically how to define their “in-group” – that some boundary must be drawn, and that the international treaties that block this have had their day. It’s too soon to say, but I expect that even if Farage doesn’t achieve it from inside No 10, “this consummate politician will eventually score his second Brexit”.