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Spain approves decree to regularise half a million undocumented migrants

Spain’s socialist-led coalition government has approved a decree it said would regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, rejecting the anti-migration policies and rhetoric prevalent across much of Europe. The decree, expected to come into effect in April, will apply to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and people in Spain with irregular status. To qualify for regularisation, applicants will have to prove they do not have a criminal record and had lived in Spain for at least five months – or had sought international protection – before 31 December 2025. Announcing the decision after Tuesday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Elma Saiz, Spain’s minister for inclusion, social security and migration, said it was a “historic day”, adding the initiative was designed to “break the bureaucratic barriers of the past”. Saiz said the programme, which is being brought in by royal decree meaning it does not require parliamentary approval, would benefit Spain as a whole. “We’re reinforcing a migratory model based on human rights, on integration and on coexistence that’s compatible with both economic growth and social cohesion,” she said. The decree followed pressure from the socialists’ former allies in the leftwing Podemos party, which has a fraught relationship with the government. “We reached a deal with the [socialist party] for the extraordinary regularisation of undocumented people,” Podemos’s leader, Ione Belarra, wrote on social media on Tuesday morning. “No one else has to work without rights … Today and always, yes we can!” In recent years, Spain has become a European outlier on migration. Addressing parliament in October 2024, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the country was at a demographic crossroads and needed migration to grow its economy and sustain its welfare state. “Throughout history, migration has been one of the great drivers of the development of nations while hatred and xenophobia have been – and continue to be – the greatest destroyer of nations,” he said. “The key is in managing it well.” The announcement was welcomed by the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (Picum). “Today’s decision by the Spanish government to adopt a broad regularisation measure is a powerful reminder that regularisation is not only possible – it works, and it’s the right thing to do,” said Laetitia Van der Vennet, a senior advocacy officer at Picum. “For thousands of undocumented people who have built their lives in Spain, this could mean dignity, stability and access to basic rights. At a time when a hostile environment against migrants is spreading on both sides of the Atlantic, this move shows both humanity and common sense. We hope more governments will follow this example and invest in policies that protect, empower and include people, and make societies stronger.” The decision also drew approval from Spain’s Regularisation Now! movement, which added it had come “in an international context marked by the tightening of immigration policies, border closures, and the criminalisation of migrants in much of Europe”. However, the move has been bitterly criticised by the conservative People’s party (PP) – even though the party ordered similar initiatives when in government – and by the far-right Vox party. The PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accused the prime minister of using the announcement to deflect attention from the government’s response to last week’s deadly rail crash, in which at least 45 people died. “Sánchez’s first response is a massive regularisation to distract attention, to increase the pull effect and to overwhelm our public services,” he said. “In socialist Spain, illegality is rewarded.” Vox, which is rising in the polls and outflanking the PP on the right with an explicitly anti-migrant discourse, went further by using familiar tropes about the great replacement theory and urging the mass deportation of migrants, euphemistically referred to by the far right as “remigration”. “Five hundred thousand illegals!” said its leader, Santiago Abascal. “Sánchez the tyrant hates the Spanish people. He wants to replace them – that’s why he’s using a decree to promote the pull effect and to accelerate the invasion. He must be stopped. Repatriations, deportations and remigration.” Regularisation programmes have long been used across the EU, with 43 put in place by more than a dozen countries between 1996 and 2008. In Spain, nine such programmes have been carried out since the country’s return to democracy, with the PP conducting more regularisation programmes than any other party. The roots of the current push lie in a citizens’ initiative, signed by more than 700,000 people and backed by about 900 social organisations, presented to parliament in 2024. Unemployment levels have fallen to their lowest since the 2008 financial crisis, and Spain’s economy is outperforming those of its neighbours. Sánchez hailed the unemployment news in a post on X on Tuesday, saying: “For the first time since 2008, unemployment falls below 10%. Spain has almost 22.5 million people with jobs, a new record.” Even some of the most ardent critics of immigration have conceded its necessity: in June, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader who has long called irregular migrants a threat to Europe’s future, said her government would issue nearly 500,000 new work visas for non-EU nationals in the coming years, in addition to the 450,000 granted since she took power.

EU-India deal ‘accelerated’ over past six months amid Trump’s tariff threats – Europe live

That concludes our live coverage for today. India and the EU have finalised a landmark free trade agreement, which the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, hailed as the “mother of all deals” (9:36, 9:43, 9:52). The deal is expected to open up India’s vast and traditionally tightly guarded market to the 27 nations in the bloc, with a focus on manufacturing and the services sector (12:40). Talks about the agreement accelerated with gusto over the past six months (10:13) in the face of heavy punitive tariffs by Trump’s administration in the US and joint concerns over China’s monopoly over global manufacturing (10:44). In other news, Europe has marked the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (16:59). The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland said they would visit Berlin and Paris today and tomorrow to shore up support over US president Donald Trump’s recent push to take over the Arctic island (11:09, 15:41, 16:30). A unit of US immigration and customs enforcement agents (ICE) will have a security role in the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Italy, sparking uproar and petitions against the deployment (11:56, 15:13). And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

The US drew up a plan to invade Canada in 1930. Now Trump is reviving old fears

First, American forces would strike with poison gas munitions, seizing a strategically valuable port city. Soldiers would sever undersea cables, destroy bridges and rail lines to paralyze infrastructure. Major cities on the shores of lakes and rivers would be captured in order to blunt any civilian resistance. The multipronged invasion would rely on ground forces, amphibious landing and then mass internments. According to the architects of the plan, the attack would be short-lived and the besieged country would fall within days. The target was Canada, part of a classified 1930 strategy – War Plan Red – for a hypothetical war with Great Britain where the US would seek to deny it any foothold in North America. But the invasion plans, once dismissed as a fumbling historical quirk, have taken on fresh relevance as the US pivots its foreign policy to an increasingly aggressive view of its “pre-eminence” in the western hemisphere and turns its sights on both foes and allies. In early January, the fusion of economic nationalism and belligerent foreign policy championed by Donald Trump was on full display when his government ordered the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and the US president announced on social media the US would seize control of the South American country’s oil. Days after, both Trump and prominent officials spoke openly of using military force to invade and capture Greenland for its strategic position and its immense mineral wealth. In late January, the Globe and Mail reported that Canada’s military had modelled a hypothetical invasion of Canada, suggesting guerrilla tactics, similar to those used to repel both Russian and US forces in Afghanistan, would supplant conventional war. With declarations from US officials that regional dominance is their main geostrategic objective, threats from Trump that he intends to annex Canada have rattled the country. Last year, Trump said the centuries-old border between the two nations was no more than an “artificially drawn line” that, with force and persuasion, might be redrawn. “Somebody drew that line many years ago with, like, a ruler – just a straight line right across the top of the country,” Trump told Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney – adding a unified continent was “the way it was meant to be”. On 20 January, Trump posted an altered image on his social media account that features the US flag covering Canada, Greenland and Venezuela. His comments, condemned by Canadian lawmakers, nonetheless exposed a deep and persistent anxiety that the country, despite decades of tight economic integration, remains vulnerable to US aggression. War Plan Red, first devised in 1927 and then approved in 1930, was drawn up amid fears from American military planners that Britain could launch a war against the US where Canada would be the most likely theatre for battle. US planners conceded that if they lost, Canada would “demand that Alaska be awarded to her”. But the plan highlighted both how Americans believed Canada, with the vast majority of its citizens clustered along the shared border, would fall quickly – and the broader flimsiness of political alliances. “I’ve always felt that Canada was this incredibly ‘ridiculous’ country, geographically and demographically – and this makes us one of the most vulnerable states in the world,” said Thomas Homer-Dixon, a Canadian conflict researcher. “We’ve been critically dependent on the friendship and benignness of the United States, and all of a sudden, both those things have just disappeared. They’ve vanished and I worry that only now Canadians fully appreciate what this means.” Homer-Dixon, who runs the Cascade Institute, a Canadian thinktank that studies global crises, says battle designs such as War Plan Red underscore fears within Canada of its continued vulnerability to US military action. After seizing Venezuela’s president in a brazen night-time attack, the focus of the Trump administration shifted to Greenland, a territory controlled by Nato ally Denmark. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. His vice-president, JD Vance, also chimed in on the issue, telling reporters that Denmark “obviously” had not done a proper job in securing Greenland and that Trump “is willing to go as far as he has to” to defend American interests in the Arctic. Homer-Dixon says the pursuit of Greenland – where the US already has the unfettered ability to build military bases – represents “outright avarice and greed” from the White House. “It is a vanity project because there’s absolutely zero security justification for this,” he said. With Canada, Homer-Dixon warns Trump and his allies could deploy a sustained campaign to “demonize” Canada by warning the 5,500-mile (8,850km) border has grown increasingly lawless and drugs are “pouring across” in order to shift how Americans perceive of their northern neighbour. Alternatively, he worries that a fledgling secession referendum in Alberta could fail but Trump could argue the results were “fake” and the US would move troops to the northern Montana border and tell the rest of Canada that Alberta must be allowed to join America as the “51st state”. Last year, the then prime minister, Justin Trudeau, warned business leaders Trump’s threats to annex Canada were a “real thing” and the president wanted to access the country’s critical minerals. “Canadians need to understand that our neighbour has desires and ambitions and goals under the current administration that no other administration in American history has had,” Bob Rae, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations, recently told the Globe and Mail, calling the threats “existential” to Canada’s future. A 2025 poll found that 43% of Canadians believed a military attack by the United States within five years was at least somewhat likely, with 10% deeming it highly likely or certain. Calls for a “whole-of-society” response have grown and in May, a directive signed by Canada’s chief of the defence staff outlined how the military could train federal and provincial employees to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones in order to bolster the country’s supplementary reserve. The Canadian military currently has 4,384 personnel in its supplementary reserve, which is largely made up of inactive or retired soldiers. But the Canadian Forces suggest new plans could boost that figure to 300,000. The Cascade Institute also released a plan that suggests a “bare-bones” national service program could be delivered for C$1.1bn, with a more robust plan costing C$5.2bn. Homer-Dixon said that in addition to funding a civil defense, Canada needed to both deepen its relationship with Scandinavian allies and to adopt their longstanding approach: “If you attack us, you may ultimately succeed, but it’s going to really hurt. “At the end of the day, we spent decades building a deep economic, social and cultural relationship within a country that can change its character very quickly. Economists told us integration would make two countries incapable of harming each other,” said Homer-Dixon. “But this idea of ‘might makes right’ has always been this recessive cultural gene of the United States. And we fooled ourselves into thinking it had gone away. But it has re-emerged to the surface because it never left.”

‘Enemy of Europe’? How Trump’s push for Greenland spooked far-right allies

Donald Trump’s attempted Greenland grab has driven a wedge between the US president and some of his ideological allies in Europe, as previously unstinting enthusiasm and admiration collides with one of the far right’s key tenets: national sovereignty. Trump’s subsequent disparaging remark that Nato allies’ troops “stayed a little off the frontlines” while fighting with US forces in Afghanistan has only deepened the divide, piquing far-right patriotic sentiments and prompting an avalanche of criticism. The US president last week stepped away from his drive to seize Greenland, pledging he would not take it by force or impose tariffs on nations opposing him. Faced with a fierce backlash, he also appeared to walk back his swipe at non-US Nato troops. But for radical-right populists – who lead or support governments in a third of the EU’s member states, are vying for power in others, and who saw in Trump a powerful ally for their nation-first, anti-immigration, EU-critical cause – he is increasingly a liability. The divide could jeopardise the goals of his administration’s national security strategy, which set a US policy objective of “cultivating resistance” to Europe’s “current trajectory” by working with “patriotic allies” to avert “civilisational erasure”. Just over a year ago, Europe’s far-right leaders were effusively welcoming Trump’s return to the White House. A few months later, they gathered in Madrid to applaud his America First agenda under the banner “Make Europe Great Again”. More recently, some have been having second thoughts. Polling consistently shows Trump is hugely unpopular in Europe. Most Europeans, including many far-right voters, see the US president as a danger to the EU and want a stronger bloc. Polling published on Tuesday by the Paris-based European affairs debate platform Le Grand Continent suggested that between 18% and 25% of far-right voters in France, Germany, Italy and Spain consider Trump as an “enemy of Europe”. Asked to define his foreign policy, between 29% and 40% of supporters of the National Rally (RN), Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Brothers of Italy (FdI) and Vox parties chose “recolonisation and the predation of global resources”. Perhaps most remarkably, between 30% and 49% of voters for far-right parties in the four countries said that if tensions with the US over Greenland were to increase further, they would support the deployment of European troops to the territory. Trump’s expansionism, and his willingness to use economic clout to achieve it, puts Europe’s far right in a tough position. Leaders in France, Germany and Italy have all criticised his plans, some sounding very like the mainstream politicians they despise. In a European parliamentary debate last week, typically pro-Trump, far-right MEPs overwhelmingly backed freezing ratification of an EU-US trade deal because they were so uneasy at his approach, calling it “coercion” and “threats to sovereignty”. Jordan Bardella, Marine Le Pen’s protege and the president of France’s RN, who only weeks ago described Trump as “a wind of freedom”, called the US president’s pledge to seize Greenland “a direct challenge to the sovereignty of a European country”. He told the debate: “When a US president threatens a European territory using trade pressure, it’s not dialogue, it is coercion.” Greenland was “a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic”, he said. “Yielding would set a dangerous precedent.” Normally a fierce critic of alleged EU overreach, Bardella instead urged the bloc to unite and fight back with the toughest weapons in its arsenal. “This isn’t escalation, it’s self-defence,” he said. “The choice is simple: submission or sovereignty.” Alice Weidel, a co-leader of Germany’s AfD, which had hailed Trump’s national security strategy as the dawn of a “conservative renaissance” in Europe, said in Berlin that he had “violated a fundamental campaign promise – not to interfere in other countries”. Even Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK and a Trump loyalist, described as “a very hostile act” a US president “threatening tariffs unless we agree he can take over Greenland … without even getting the consent of the people of Greenland”. Wary of retaliation, far-right and populist leaders who are in office rather than bidding for it were not quite so outspoken. Italy’s “Trump-whispering” premier, Giorgia Meloni, criticised the deployment of European troops to Greenland, but even she eventually said she had told the US president in a call that his Greenland threats were “a mistake”. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s illiberal prime minister and perhaps Europe’s leading Trump fan, dodged the question. “It’s an in-house issue … It’s a Nato issue,” Orbán, who has long vaunted his friendship with the US president, said of Trump’s Greenland plans. Likewise, Poland’s nationalist, Trump-aligned president, Karol Nawrocki, said last week that Greenland tensions should be solved “in a diplomatic way” between Washington and Copenhagen, without recourse to a broader Europe-wide debate. Nawrocki stressed the US was still his country’s “very important ally” and he called on western European leaders to tone down their objections to Trump’s conduct. In the Czech Republic, too, the prime minister, Andrej Babiš, warned against a transatlantic row. But if some leaders were wary of openly criticising Trump over Greenland, there was near-universal outrage at the US president’s comments on Nato allies’ troops in Afghanistan, which Meloni described on social media as “unacceptable”. The Italian prime minister said her country had borne “a cost that cannot be called into question: 53 Italian soldiers killed and more than 700 wounded”. She said Italy and the US were “bound by a solid friendship” but that “friendship requires respect”. Nawrocki said there was no doubt that his country’s soldiers – more than 40 of whom lost their lives in Afghanistan – were heroes. “They deserve respect and words of gratitude for their service,” he said. Babiš was equally critical. Fourteen Czech soldiers had died in Afghanistan, the Czech prime minister said, adding that he knew Trump “likes to provoke and doesn’t mince words, but what he said about the mission in Afghanistan was way off the mark”. Analysts said it was too soon to say if the divide would last. Daniel Hegedüs, of the German Marshall Fund, said domestic electoral considerations meant many far-right parties would be forced to respond to any continued threats to sovereignty. But he said Trump and his European ideological allies “can always unite forces again, around issues where they can cooperate”, such as immigration. Pawel Zerka, of the European Council on Foreign Affairs, said far-right leaders would not lose out. “Far-right leaders in France, Germany and Britain are unlikely to lose points,” Zerka noted. They “demonstrated timely criticism” of Trump’s excesses, while mainstream leaders and the EU “generally failed to display strength, unity and assertiveness”.

Mother of man jailed in Syria for Islamic State links calls for his repatriation to UK or Canada

The mother of a British-born man detained for nearly nine years without trial in Syria has called for his repatriation to the UK or Canada as the US plans to airlift 7,000 Islamic State-linked prisoners from Syria to Iraq. Sally Lane, the mother of Jack Letts, 30, said she was “frantically trying to find out as much as possible” and that it was unclear if he would face the death penalty in Iraq or remain in Syria – or be sent to Canada or the UK in line with US demands. Neither the Canadian nor British government has updated her after an outbreak of fighting in Syria last week left the future of Letts and other prisoners from up to 70 countries uncertain. “We’ve heard absolutely nothing. They think we don’t deserve to know,” Lane said. But she said the UK and others could not easily ignore the issue after the US intervention. “I can’t see that western governments will allow their citizens to be put on trial in Iraq where they have the death penalty and flawed trials.” She said if the authorities in Canada or the UK wanted to, they could charge Letts with terror offences on home ground as a condition for his return. “If there’s evidence, put them on trial. But there is no evidence,” Lane said. Oxford-raised Letts travelled to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq aged 18, during the early phases of the terror group’s caliphate. He had converted to Islam aged 16 and dropped out of sixth form because of mental health problems. He was captured by Syrian Kurdish forces fighting against IS in May 2017 and has been held without trial ever since. British ministers removed his UK citizenship two years later, leaving him a Canadian national, the birth country of his father, John. Letts’ only contact with the world has been through a handful of television interviews. “I’m not going to say I’m innocent. I’m not innocent. I deserve what comes to me. But I just want it to be … not just haphazard, freestyle punishment in Syria,” he told ITV seven years ago. His last known location was in a prison near Raqqa in November 2024, when he was interviewed by Canadian television. Then he said he had not been a member of IS and he had rejected their Islamist ideology shortly after he arrived. “I was imprisoned by them three times,” he added. Lane has not known exactly where her son has been since then and has had no personal contact with him for more than a decade. But she believes he was or is being held in the Gweiran – or Panorama – prison in Hasakah, run by the Syrian Kurds. Last Wednesday, US Central Command (Centcom) unexpectedly announced it had started a planned airlift of prisoners previously held in Kurdish-run detention centres after the Kurds sustained a succession of battlefield defeats by the Syrian government. About 150 of the most dangerous inmates were flown out that day. Lane said she did not know if her son was one of those who had been rendered across the border but she believed he probably would not have been. “Jack’s small fry. He’s mostly been held in local prisons. He’s high profile only because he’s been in the news,” she said. On Sunday Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, spoke to Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and thanked him for expediting the transfer of IS prisoners to “secure facilities” in Iraq. The two men also discussed “ongoing diplomatic efforts to ensure countries rapidly repatriate their citizens in Iraq, bringing them to justice”, according to a readout from the US state department after the call. Last week Centcom said the prisoner transfer would take “days not weeks”. Prisoners would be handed to the Iraqi authorities, Centcom added, but the US military would not confirm if Letts was being transferred from Syria. Yvette Cooper, the British foreign secretary, said in a BBC interview last Thursday that she had been “in touch” with Rubio about Syria. She said the UK and US had “shared interests in countering terrorism and extremism”, though she did not directly refer to the prisoner transfer. The UK has repatriated six women and 10 children since 2022. About 55 men, women and children with British links were believed to be in Kurdish detention before last week’s Syrian government offensive. One of those is Shamima Begum, still held at al-Roj camp, in one of the last Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria. • This article was amended on 27 January 2026. An earlier version, owing to an edit, described Jack Letts as having “travelled to join Islamic State” aged 18; this has been changed to describe him as having “travelled to Islamic State-controlled territory”, because of the uncertainty about Letts’ intentions for the trip.

Tuesday briefing: Why Labour banned Burnham – and what the ‘King of the North’ might do next

Good morning. The “King of the North” will not be marching south – at least not for now. Andy Burnham has been barred from standing as an MP in the forthcoming Gorton and Denton byelection, after a 10-strong “officers’ group” of Labour’s ruling body, which includes the prime minister, voted overwhelmingly to reject his request to stand. It has left the party, once again, in turmoil. The controversial decision staves off, at least for now, a potential leadership challenge. But the move has infuriated some Labour MPs and the party’s union backers. It was described as “petty factionalism”, a “huge mistake” and cowardly, and has been condemned as a failure by the party leadership to embrace the country’s most popular Labour politician. No 10 will hope the anger blows over and the decision swiftly ends this round of Labour’s chaos and, as one senior cabinet member put it, “psychodrama”. By putting out one fire, though, the party, as always, may have ignited several others. To understand why No 10 made this move and what is next for Andy Burnham and the party, I spoke to Peter Walker, the Guardian’s senior political correspondent. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories US news | Donald Trump’s efforts to deploy militarised immigration agents in US cities may finally be reaching a reckoning as he faces widespread opposition across the US, dissenting lawmakers in his own party, and impending court rulings after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti. UK news | Former home secretary Suella Braverman has defected to Reform UK, making her the third sitting Conservative MP to join Nigel Farage’s party in little more than a week. Europe | As many as 380 people may have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean last week during Cyclone Harry, as a shipwreck that killed 50 is confirmed by Maltese authorities. Saudi Arabia | A judge has ordered Saudi Arabia to pay more than £3m in damages to London-based dissident Ghanem al-Masarir, whose phones were targeted with Pegasus spyware. Ukraine | A US security agreement for Ukraine is “100% ready” to be signed, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, after two days of talks involving representatives from Ukraine, the US and Russia. In depth: ‘They see the threats from Reform getting bigger and bigger’ In a fateful Zoom meeting last weekend, Labour’s national executive committee scuppered Andy Burnham’s bid to return to Westminster. Though the move was seen as a deeply political one, the argument justifying it was procedural. Allowing Burnham to stand would have meant a costly mayoral byelection and political distraction, Labour’s leadership said. So what happens now? Peter Walker tells me Burnham (above right, with Starmer) simply goes back to his two day jobs: “Being mayor of Greater Manchester and getting on Keir Starmer’s nerves.” Burnham has long played a dual role inside Labour. As Peter puts it: “Burnham always says loyal things,” but at the same time insists: “We could be doing this, we could be doing that.” Burnham has never hidden the fact that he believes that if he were in Westminster, “he would be a better choice than Keir Starmer to lead the Labour party and give it a kind of direction”. (It is worth reading my colleague Archie Bland’s First Edition on Burnham’s political ambitions.) In some ways, Peter says, this is simply a politician’s ego. “There is always, in any party, probably 20 or 30 people who think they could be doing a better job.” But for a growing number of Labour MPs, Burnham’s appeal goes beyond that. “They see the threats from Reform getting bigger and bigger,” Peter says, and they worry that “if we stay under Keir, the country may be changed forever.” *** Burnham’s evolution Burnham’s political journey has not been a straight line. He ran for the leadership in 2010, coming fourth, and again in 2015, finishing second to Jeremy Corbyn. Back then, Peter says, he was seen as “Mr Cabinet Minister”, who was loyal and would get the job done. At that time he was broadly a centrist, but two things changed him, Peter explains. The first was Hillsborough. “There was this famous occasion where he was culture secretary when the government was holding out against a formal inquiry and he got booed,” Peter says. “He went back to cabinet and argued, ‘We need to do something about it,’” then went on to play a central role in getting the Hillsborough law passed. The second was becoming mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 and building what he now calls “Manchesterism” (Burnham himself delved into what that means for the Guardian a few days ago.) Peter describes this form of governing as “soft left, pro-growth, but quite interventionist devolution”. It’s about giving people local powers, but intervening when necessary, and includes public ownership of utilities. The clearest expression of this ideology is the Bee Network, Greater Manchester’s integrated transport system linking buses, trams, cycling and walking. “It’s pretty good,” Peter says. “Aside from London, it’s a model of how UK cities can do integrated transport.” Peter remembers how fervently Burnham was pushing for this kind of governing at the Labour party conference in 2021, when Starmer was in opposition and Labour were suffering under the Boris Johnson vaccine bounce. “I actually asked his aide at the time the number of fringe meetings he’d been to, and they had lost count,” he says. “He would say then, ‘This is what it’s like to be Labour actually in power. This is what we need to do’.” It places him on the left, Peter says, but far from the politics of the Jeremy Corbyn era. *** To block or not to block From Labour’s perspective, this was an open and shut case, Peter tells me. Party rules prevent mayors from standing as MPs because of their policing responsibilities. Burnham was “seeking an exception”, and “they didn’t think there was a good enough reason why”. Had he been selected, Burnham would have had to step down as mayor partway through his term, triggering a Greater Manchester byelection covering 27 constituencies. “It would have cost the party and the country a huge amount of money. They would have had to endlessly campaign for that, while also trying to campaign for the local elections in May,” Peter says. On the flip side are Labour’s and Keir Starmer’s dire polling. “Burnham’s got this burning personal ambition, but some of the people backing him think it’s not just about having a different person in No 10 – it’s about having someone who they genuinely believe has got more of a vision, of a message, more of a charismatic approach, which could turn the polls around,” Peter says. There is an argument that this leadership challenge is different from the political musical chairs we saw with the Conservatives. “Back then, they were switching between PMs because people were out of favour, they were Boris fans or Rishi fans or Liz fans,” Peter says. “People in Labour argue there is more to it this time. They see where Labour are in the polls, they see where their polls are going, and they’re getting scared – not just for their own seats – but about what a Reform government could do.” *** A three-way race Peter believes Burnham’s “star power would have been enough” to hold the Gorton and Denton seat for Labour. Burnham has said as much, posting on social media on Sunday that the party would now lose the byelection. The contest will be a tough one. “Andrew Gwynne’s majority in the last election was about 13,400, which you would think would be enough to hold. But you’ve got Reform, who will go for it. You’ve got the Greens, with a very good local candidate who’s likely to stand and is well known,” Peter says. The Greens have been bullish about their chances. “It’s a tough ask, but it’s possible they could take enough votes away from Labour for Reform to sneak in and win the seat,” he says. “That’s really bad for Starmer. It makes him look as if he’s made this factional decision based on personal reasons to protect his own position and lost his party a seat.” For now, Burnham waits. If Labour loses Denton and Gorton, pressure will grow to give him the next available seat, Peter says. He isn’t alone in thinking this. Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, predicted that Andy Burnham will become an MP “sooner rather than later”, in a Substack essay published yesterday. But when and where is important. Running in a byelection and losing could spell the end of Burnham’s career, Peter says. As for Starmer, plenty of dangers lie ahead: he is going to China this week, he has to keep Trump on a leash, and he has to maintain support for Ukraine, all while keeping the domestic news focused on the cost of living. “No 10’s argument is that the only way we can beat Reform UK is by making people feel that their daily lives are getting better,” Peter says. “So schools are better, hospitals are better, people have more money in their pocket. And anything that doesn’t do that is taking away the party’s central message.” But the local election is looming and there are threats from all sides. In Wales, Labour is forecast to do “very, very badly”, Peter says. In England, councils that have been Labour “since the dawn of time” are under threat. In London, Reform could take outer boroughs, while the Greens eye inner ones. A red wedding is coming. Time will tell whether Burnham or Starmer is the unfortunate groom. What else we’ve been reading Joel Snape has some encouraging news for those of us who’ve been put off trying to build muscle thanks to conventional “no pain, no gain” wisdom: namely, that science suggests there’s a better way. Lucinda Everett, newsletter team Georgia has become ground zero in the fight over AI’s explosive growth, and its massive demands for energy and water. This fascinating piece explores why opposition is rising and how the backlash is taking shape. Aamna Simon Hattenstone’s interview with Sajid Javid runs the gamut from Partygate to the omnipresent racism in his childhood to his (actually quite serious) teenage brush with the law. An engrossing read. Lucinda Jason Okundaye is sharp and nuanced on why claims of injustice by six-figure earners are absurd, yet reveal something profound about what it now means to live well in the UK capital. Aamna I enjoyed hearing from Guardian readers about their favourite baffling TV shows, from Legion, the Marvel spin-off with no superheroes, to The Leftovers, which reader Mark Hawksley gave the write-up: “I still don’t really understand how it ended, but what a ride it was.” Lucinda Sport Football | Thierno Barry, the £27m summer signing from Villarreal, struck his fourth goal in five Premier League games to earn Everton a 1-1 draw against profligate Leeds. Tennis | World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka ended the teenage challenge at the Australian Open with an emphatic quarter-final final victory over Iva Jovic. Rugby | The Rugby Football Union is hopeful a proposed overhaul of Twickenham rail station and the deployment of undercover police officers on matchdays will help sway opponents of plans to host more concerts to pay for the £660m stadium upgrade. The front pages “Tories face backlash after ‘mental health’ jibe over Braverman’s exit” is top story at the Guardian. The i paper splashed on “Tories weaponise ‘mental health’ claim on defector Braverman – as exodus grows”, while the Mirror ran “Reform’s latest Con” and the Telegraph led on “China hacked phones in No10”. The Mail says “Burnham rebellion growing” and the Times has “Labour fears stumbling to third in by-election”. “Dollar slumps to four-month low and yen rises as gold breaks $5,100 barrier” was the FT splash. The Sun ran “Clan United”, in reference to the Beckham family. Today in Focus Starmer v Burnham: will it split Labour? The prime minister may have seen off the challenge for the moment – but what will be the cost to his leadership? Peter Walker reports. Cartoon of the day | Pete Songi The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Mass layoffs and cancelled projects in the gaming industry. The White House using video game memes as ICE recruitment tools. The rise of the “manosphere” and the fall of mainstream feminist websites such as Teen Vogue, while bigots celebrate the death of “woke”. “[It’s] a dismal stew of doom for someone like me, a queer woman and a feminist who’s been a games journalist and critic since 2007,” says Maddy Myers, who is launching a gender- and identity-focused gaming publication called Mothership. Independent and worker-owned, it will rely on subscribers’ support and will “report on the good and bad of modern-day game-making – alongside investigations, reviews, criticism, and historical deep dives into games and developers who paved the way to now”. Myers says: “It should have existed before, when I and millions of other girls who grew up playing games were made to feel out of place by media and advertising that was laser-focused on teenage boys. But it’s not too late for me to make sure it exists now.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Ukraine war briefing: Nato chief warns of ‘harshest winter’ in a decade as Russian attacks cut power in Kharkiv

Russian drones and missile strikes hit Kharkiv on Monday, knocking out power to 80% of Ukraine’s second-largest city and the surrounding region and injuring two people, local officials said.Mayor Ihor Terekhov said an “energy site” had been targeted in the city as night-time temperatures dipped to -14C. The capital, Kyiv, has been hit by three massive air attacks since the New Year, knocking out power and heating to hundreds of buildings. The war correspondent and executive director of war crimes unit the Reckoning Project, Janine di Giovanni, has suggested Russian president Vladimir Putin is intentionally “weaponising the savage eastern European winter”. Nato secretary general Mark Rutte has warned Ukraine is facing its “harshest winter” for over a decade. He urged lawmakers in the European parliament on Monday to show flexibility on the use of EU funds and welcomed the French move to seize a suspected shadow fleet tanker in a hit to Russia’s model of funding its war. Rutte also highlighted Nato’s continued support of Ukraine with costly US military equipment – and noted Ukraine’s desire to join Nato, but pointed out some member states remained opposed, so “politically, it’s practically not on the cards” for now. Rutte said the aim of the ongoing US-led peace talks should be a peace deal or a long-term ceasefire “as soon as possible”, saying that Ukraine’s security “I think we all know … is also our security”. Discussing Zelenskyy’s recent comments that the US security guarantees are “close to being agreed upon”, he acknowledged the major and “very sensitive” issue of territory with Russia, saying only Ukraine could decide what, if any, compromise they accepted. But according to Tuesday reporting from the Financial Times citing eight people familiar with the talks, the Trump administration has signalled to Ukraine that guarantees depend on Kyiv agreeing to a deal likely requiring it to cede the Donbas region – and indicated it could offer more weapons to strengthen Ukraine’s peacetime army if Kyiv agreed to withdraw forces from the parts of the eastern region it controls. Reuters could not immediately verify the report and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Another Russian drone and missile attack has damaged parts of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine’s culture ministry said on Monday. The attack on Ukraine’s most famous religious landmark – a Unesco world heritage site – took place overnight to Saturday, the ministry said, leaving “damage to doors and window frames”. Agence France-Presse was not able to immediately verify the extent of the damage. Orthodox Christians consider the complex Ukraine’s spiritual centre. Founded in the 11th century, it is home to more than 100 buildings as well as a subterranean labyrinth of caves where monks stay and worship. Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces have captured 17 settlements and took control of more than 500sqkm of territory in Ukraine so far in January. Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield accounts from either side. Gerasimov has visited troops fighting in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram on Tuesday. Kim Jong-un has viewed sculptures for a memorial of soldiers who died in Ukraine. The North Korean leader visited the Mansudae art studio on Sunday to guide the creation of the sculptures, state media KCNA said on Monday. He said they would “convey forever the legendary feats ... of admirable sons of the DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”. Under a 2024 mutual defence pact with Russia, North Korea sent about 14,000 soldiers to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, where more than 6,000 of them were killed, according to South Korean, Ukrainian and western sources. Kim has repeatedly lauded the troops’ “heroism” in fighting abroad and honoured them. Bangladeshi workers were lured to Russia by the false promise of civilian jobs and thrust onto the battlefield in the Ukraine war, an Associated Press investigation has found, with duties including advancing ahead of Russian forces, transporting supplies, evacuating wounded soldiers and recovering the dead. The Russian Defense Ministry and the Bangladeshi government did not respond to questions from AP. A Monday Guardian exclusive revealed similar ways men in Africa have been tricked into fighting for Russia.