Warning to Starmer's cabinet as anger grows over Palestine
Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood are among those identified by top pollster Sir John Curtice as facing significant challenges from pro-Gaza candidates.
Pollsters suggest that widespread anger over the Palestine issue, amplified by Jeremy Corbyn 's new party campaigning on it, could lead to high-profile casualties for Labour.
The move on Palestinian statehood is considered insufficient to address deeper resentments among Muslim voters, who feel neglected by Labour, a sentiment compared to the impact of Brexit on 'red wall' voters.
Sir John noted Labour's difficulty in maintaining support from both Jewish and Muslim communities, alongside a broader struggle to articulate its direction and reconnect with the wider electorate.
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The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘He has trouble completing a thought': bizarre public appearances again cast doubt on Trump's mental acuity
Donald Trump's frequently bizarre public appearances, which this month have seen the president claim, wrongly, that his uncle knew the Unabomber and rant unprompted about windmills on his recent trip to the UK, have once again raised questions about his mental acuity, experts say. For more than a year Trump, 79, has exhibited odd behavior at campaign events, in interviews, in his spontaneous remarks and at press conferences. The president repeatedly drifts off topic, including during a cabinet meeting this month when he spent 15 minutes talking about decorating, and appears to misremember simple facts about his government and his life. During his presidency, Joe Biden was subjected to intense speculation over his mental acuity – including from Trump. After Biden's disastrous debate performance in June 2024, when he repeatedly struggled to maintain his train of thought, scrutiny over Biden's fitness eventually led to him not running for re-election. Trump, however, has largely been saved the same examination, despite examples of confusion and unusual behavior that have continued throughout his second term and were on full display on his recent trip to the UK. Over the weekend Trump, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, abruptly switched from discussing immigration to saying this: 'The other thing I say to Europe: we've – we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They're killing us. They're killing the beauty of our scenery.' Trump proceeded to speak, non-stop and unprompted, for two minutes about windmills, claiming without evidence that they drive whales 'loco' and that wind energy 'kills the birds' (the proportion of birds killed by turbines is tiny compared with the amount killed by domestic cats and from flying into power lines). The abrupt changes in conversation are an example of Trump 'digressing without thinking – he'll just switch topics without self-regulation, without having a coherent narrative', said Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Cornell University and in the psychiatry department at Weill Cornell Medicine. For years, Trump has batted away questions about his mental acuity, describing himself as a 'stable genius' and bragging about 'acing' exams – later revealed to be very simple tests – which check for early signs of dementia. But Democrats have begun to more aggressively question the president's fitness, including Jasmine Crockett, the representative from Texas, and California's governor, Gavin Newsom, and this week alone offered multiple examples of Trump exhibiting odd conduct. Asked about the famine in Gaza on Sunday, Trump seemed unable to remember the aid the US has given to Gaza, and forget that others had also contributed. Trump claimed the US gave $60m 'two weeks ago'. He added: 'You really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything. 'Nobody acknowledged it, nobody talks about it and it makes you feel a little bad when you do that and you know you have other countries not giving anything, none of the European countries by the way gave – I mean nobody gave but us.' Trump seemed to not realize or remember that other countries have given money to Gaza – the UK announced a £60m ($80m) package in July, and the European Union has allocated €170m ($195m) in aid. And the Guardian could not find any record of the US giving $60m to Gaza two weeks ago. In June, the US state department approved a $30m grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group backed by Israeli and US interests which has been criticized by Democrats as 'connected to deadly violence against starving people seeking food in Gaza'. The White House did not respond to questions about Trump's claimed $60m donation. Segal said another characteristic of Trump's questionable mental acuity is confabulation. 'It's where he takes an idea or something that's happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.' A high-profile example came in mid-July, when Trump claimed his uncle, the late professor John Trump, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, at MIT. Trump recalled: 'I said: 'What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr John Trump.' I said: 'What kind of a student?' And then he said: 'Seriously, good.' He said: 'He'd correct – he'd go around correcting everybody.' But it didn't work out too well for him.' The problem is: that cannot possibly be true. First, Trump's uncle died in 1985, and Kaczynski was only publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Second, Kaczynski did not study at MIT. 'The story makes no sense whatsoever, but it's told in a very warm, reflective way, as if he's remembering it,' Segal said. 'This level of thinking really has been deteriorating.' Aside from the confabulation, there have been times when Trump seems unable to focus. During the 2024 campaign there was the bizarre sight of Trump spending 40 minutes swaying to music onstage after a medical emergency at one of his campaign rallies. Trump's rambling speeches during his campaign – he would frequently drift between topics in a technique he described as 'the weave' – also drew scrutiny. The White House removed official transcripts of Trump's remarks from its website in May, claiming it was part of an effort to 'maintain consistency'. It is worth reading Trump's remarks in full, however, to get a sense of how the president speaks on a day-to-day basis. At the beginning of July, Trump was asked, 'What is the next campaign promise that you plan to fulfill to the American people?' He then rambled about meeting foreign leaders and removing regulations, adding: Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion I got rid of – just one I got rid of the other night, you buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet the water doesn't come out. They have a restrictor. You can't – in areas where you have so much water they don't know what to do with it. Uh, you have a shower head the shower doesn't uh, the shower doesn't, you think it's not working. It is working. The water's dripping out and that's no good for me. I like this hair lace and [sic] – I like that hair nice and wet. Takes you – you have to stand in the shower for 20 minutes before you get the soap out of your hair. And I put a, a thing – and it sounds funny but it's really not. It's horrible. And uh, when you wash your hands, you turn on the faucet, no water comes out. You're washing whole – water barely comes out it's ridi – this was done by crazy people. And I wor – wrote it all off and got it approved in Congress so that they can't just change it.' 'Any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump's performance,' Richard A Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote in the Atlantic, after a stumbling performance from Trump in his debate against Kamala Harris last September. He added: 'If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.' At a recent cabinet meeting called to discuss the flooding tragedy in Texas, the war in Ukraine and Gaza, the bombing of Iran, and global tariffs, Trump went on a 13-minute monologue about how he had decorated the cabinet meeting room. After talking about paintings which he said he had personally selected from 'the vaults', Trump said. 'Look at those frames, you know, I'm a frame person, sometimes I like frames more than I like the pictures,' and added he had overseen the cleaning of some china. As department heads, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, waited to be dismissed so they could go and do their jobs, Trump continued: Here we put out – you know these, these lamps have been very important actually, whether people love them or not but they're if you see pictures like Pearl Harbor or Tora! Tora! Tora!, you see movies about the White House where wars are being discussed, oftentimes they'll show those lamps or something like those lamps, something that looks like them. Probably not the reals, because I don't think they're allowed to – this is a very important room, this is a sacred room, and I don't think they made movies from here. You never know what they do. But they were missing, er, medallions. See the medallions on top? They had a chain going into the ceiling. And I said: 'You can't do that. You have to have a medallion.' They said, 'What's a medallion?' I said: 'I'll show you.' And then we got some beautiful medallions, and you see them, they were put up there, makes the lamps look [inaudible] so we did these changes. And when you think of it, the cost was almost nothing. We also painted the room a nice color, beige color, and it's been really something. The only question is, will I gold-leaf the corners? You could maybe tell me. My cabinet could take a vote. You see the top-line moldings, and the only question is do you go and leaf it? Because you can't paint it, if you paint it it won't look good because they've never found a paint that looks like gold. You see that in the Oval Office. Er, they've tried for years and years. Somebody could become very wealthy, but they've never found a paint that looks like gold. So painting is easy but it won't look right.' The White House pushes back aggressively on the issue of Trump's mental fitness. 'The Guardian is a left-wing mouthpiece that should be embarrassed to pass off deranged resistance leftists as 'experts'. Anyone pathetic enough to defend Biden's mental state – while being labeled as unethical by their peers – has zero credibility. President Trump's mental sharpness is second to none and he is working around the clock to secure amazing deals for the American people,' said White House spokesperson Liz Huston. So do his political allies. 'As President Trump's former personal physician, former physician to the president, and White House physician for 14 years across three administrations, I can tell you unequivocally: President Donald J Trump is the healthiest president this nation has ever seen. I continue to consult with his current physician and medical team at the White House and still spend significant time with the president. He is mentally and physically sharper than ever before,' said congressman Ronny Jackson. In April, Trump's White House physician, Dr Sean Barbabella, wrote that the president 'exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander-in-chief and head of state'. He said Trump was assessed for cognitive function, which was normal. That report hasn't stopped people from questioning Trump's mental acuity. 'What we see are the classic signs of dementia, which is gross deterioration from someone's baseline and function,' John Gartner, a psychologist and author who spent 28 years as an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, said in June. 'If you go back and look at film from the 1980s, [Trump] actually was extremely articulate. He was still a jerk, but he was able to express himself in polished paragraphs, and now he really has trouble completing a thought and that is a huge deterioration.' Gartner, who during Trump's first term co-founded Duty to Warn, a group of mental health professionals who believed Trump had the personality disorder malignant narcissism, warned: 'I predicted before the election that he would probably fall off the cliff before the end of his term. And at the rate he is deteriorating, you know … we'll see. 'But the point is that it's going to get worse. That's my prediction.' The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each.
The Independent
38 minutes ago
- The Independent
Government commits extra £100m to stopping small boat crossings
The UK government has announced an additional £100 million investment to tackle illegal migration and reduce small boat crossings. The funding will enable the recruitment of up to 300 more National Crime Agency officers and provide new technology for intelligence gathering on people-smuggling gangs. It will also support the 'one in, one out' returns agreement with France and fund interventions in key transit countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. New measures include a proposed five-year prison sentence for individuals advertising illegal Channel crossings or fake passports online. The announcement follows record numbers of Channel crossings, with 25,000 arrivals recorded so far this year.
Scotsman
38 minutes ago
- Scotsman
Readers' Letters: Here's how John Swinney can dig himself out of a hole
A reader has thoughts on how John Swinney can help himself, and Scotland Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... John Swinney is digging a lot of holes for himself these days, culminating in the protests at his Edinburgh Fringe interview by pro-Palestine protesters demanding a more forceful condemnation of Israel's actions in Gaza. He is paying the price for copying his predecessors playing at being world leaders instead of doing the job they were elected for. He may have found, however, a tightrope with which to pull himself out of the Indyref2 hole, if he succeeds in arguing down the planned motion to use a majority of list votes cast for pro-independence parties as a mandate for skipping Indyref2 and starting negotiations to leave the Union. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad That should be easy because for the past several years the vote share of anti-UK parties in council and Westminster by-elections has hovered around 30 per cent, peaking at 35 per cent (30 per cent for the SNP) in last year's general election. First Minister John Swinney appearing with comedian Susan Morrison at the Edinburgh Fringe - the event was disrupted five times by six different groups of protesters (Picture: Craig Paton/PA Wire) Winning an outright majority of seats is going to be a big ask, but forming a government might be possible because it is very possible that the pro-UK party vote will be split in favour of the SNP. In that scenario I suspect Mr Swinney will then look at the total percentage of votes cast for Scexit parties, decide to stay put and leave it to the new intake to sort out. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire Festival fatality? Has the left wing damaged the Edinburgh Festival irreparably? Last year it was the Baillie Gifford crisis and now the Scottish Government is having to bail out the book festival. This year it is the Palestinians and the hard left versus anyone associated with Israel that is the battleground, with Israel effectively being 'sent off' even before kick-off. The Scotsman front page (2 August) featured the smiling face of Miriam Margolyes, with the strapline regarding humour, political content and shocking language. Ms Margoyles has herself used shocking language against Israel to the extent of calls for her OBE to be removed. There appears to be no one left to take Israel's side. How can an arts festival be so biased. There are always two sides, or more, to the same story. This flies in the face of just what art is all about. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Can the Edinburgh Festival survive constant controversy especially given the steep costs for performers and the public alike and even the Fringe's Best Joke competition being cancelled? Exit stage left? Gerald Edwards, Glasgow Sort cladding The SNP's progress in removing possible fatal cladding from residential properties would embarrass a snail (your report, 2 August). Only 0.2 per cent of the possibly 1,500 buildings concerned have had the work completed. Unless they begin to take this seriously, it could perhaps outdo the ferries fiasco. Or worse. Forget the meetings with the US President, Mr Swinney. Or your regular missives on Gaza. This is something over which you have total responsibility. The SNP walk straight into avoidable quagmires time after time after time. We must hope and pray there is no tragic ending to this instance. Alexander McKay, Edinburgh Going bananas A few days ago a correspondent referred to Scotland as something akin to 'becoming a banana republic'. This stuck with me when I read about the plight of children in England living in temporary accommodation with their families. There are 164,040 children in this sorry position, the highest number on record (in Scotland the figure is a little over 10,000). Child poverty is a scourge in the UK (particularly in England and Wales) at the moment and the Labour government could mitigate things if they introduced an equivalent to the Scottish Child Payment or were not joined at the hip to the Tories' two-child benefit cap. They could also initiate a wealth tax to be applied to billionaires/millionaires but Rachel Reeves has made her opposition to this crystal clear. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I have no wish to indulge in point scoring on what is clearly a serious issue right across the UK, but surely the desperate situation south of the Border in terms of child poverty and children without permanent homes makes England much closer to a banana republic than Scotland! Alan Woodcock, Dundee Time to deliver Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's Special Envoy, will visit Russia this week on the back of the President ordering two nuclear submarines to be 'repositioned' closer to Russia. This unprecedented situation came after former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused the President's trade ultimatums of taking 'a step towards war', potentially nuclear war. This war of words is not new but the action is. The timing of Trump's decision may not be accidental given Witkoff's pending meeting with Putin. Russia seems to have been taken by surprise, with no Kremlin response so far. Medvedev is known to be a close comrade of Putin, having yielded power to him; it is possible Putin may have endorsed or even authored his comments. Since Witkoff's last trip to Moscow in April the war with Ukraine has escalated. Trump has ramped up the rhetoric and his latest action may help persuade Putin he will follow through on threats of punitive sanctions on Russia and its trading partners. Witkoff, however, is the weak link. The billionaire has very little political experience and his negotiating strategy is based on real estate dealing. After multiple trips to Israel and Russia, talks have yielded little. Like President Biden's principal negotiator, Antony Blinken, Witkoff is Jewish, which will rankle with Gaza's leaders, especially with his habit of blaming only Hamas for the conflict and failure to find peace. He has been described as 'out of his depth' when negotiating with Putin, whom he considers honest, smart and a great guy. With Trump upping the pressure, Witkoff's rapprochement with Putin will be put to the test. More is at stake, and it's time he delivers. Neil Anderson, Edinburgh Write to The Scotsman Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
