Qatari negotiators are still in Tehran to ensure talks remain on track, a diplomat with knowledge of the situation told CNN. The Qatari negotiators are in the Iranian capital in coordination with the US, the source said.
Voters in Switzerland appeared on Sunday to have rejected an unprecedented far-right proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million in a divisive referendum dubbed “the Swiss Brexit”. A projection by the national broadcaster SRF, which traditionally calls referendum votes, showed that about 55% of voters were against the proposal by the Swiss People’s party (SVP) and about 45% were in favour. A different outcome would have obliged the Swiss government to limit the population, currently 9.1 million, to 10 million by 2050, enacting tough restrictions on family reunification, residency permits and asylum if the number had reached 9.5 million before that date. Under the proposals, if the threshold of 10 million people was exceeded before 2050, the Swiss government would have been obliged to withdraw from the country’s free movement agreement with the EU – ending its access to the bloc’s single market. The SVP, which has the most seats in parliament, has for years fuelled anti-immigrant sentiment, especially concerning workers from neighbouring EU countries. The party had insisted that a so-called “sustainability initiative” was needed to address the increase in population, which it argued was putting pressure on Swiss infrastructure, housing, social programmes, natural resources and way of life. Switzerland’s population has grown far faster than that of surrounding EU states, rising by 23% since the free movement agreement came into effect in 2002. Economic output has risen by about 24% over the same period, government figures show. About 27% of Swiss residents are not citizens, according to official data. Urs Bieri, from the polling firm GFS Bern, told Reuters that the initiative failed to pass because people were unconvinced by the plan and worried about the possible side-effects despite widespread concern about population growth. “Voters were worried about negative consequences for Switzerland’s relationship with the EU and for the labour market,” he said. “People are also worried about things like having enough care and health workers. Also, there’s a feeling that in the current international environment it’s not sensible for a small country to do this.” The seven-member government, made up of ministers from Switzerland’s four biggest parties, including the SVP, was collectively against the initiative, warning it would threaten national stability, harm the economy and hurt Swiss prosperity. Business groups were also concerned that a population cap would have limited access to foreign workers while damaging the economy and relations with Brussels. Polls had forecast a close outcome. The projection tallied with a final survey by GFS Bern, which had predicted the proposal would be narrowly rejected. Switzerland’s system of direct democracy allows for “popular initiatives” that are put to a referendum if they get 100,000 backers within 18 months. Typically held four times a year, plebiscites are a long-favoured tool of the anti-immigration SVP. While many countries have limits on immigration, none has ever voted to limit its population.
Donald Trump called for restraint on Sunday after Israel launched fresh airstrikes on Beirut, as mediators sought to reach a preliminary peace deal between Iran and the US to definitively end the three-month war in the Middle East. Trump played down new Israeli strikes but said “all sides should stand down”. “We are very close to a Deal that will bring peace to the region, including to Lebanon … There should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon, but there should also be no more attacks by any other party, including Hezbollah, against Israel. This could be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace – Let’s not blow it!” the US president posted to his social media site. Trump had previously suggested the US could sign an agreement with Iran on Sunday, but as the evening came in the Middle East, there was no sign of a breakthrough. Instead, Iranian officials threatened a military response to the Israeli attack on Beirut, which destroyed a building in the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, killing three and injuring six. Trump told the Axios news site that the Israeli strike had “delayed the signing by a few hours” and said he had told the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he had “no fucking judgment”. Israel said it had targeted senior Hezbollah commanders after the militant Islamist organisation – which has close links with Tehran – launched three projectiles into northern Israel. A strike on Beirut by Israeli forces a week ago triggered a short but intense new round of fighting between Iran and Israel, momentarily destabilising negotiations between Tehran and Washington. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a lead negotiator for Tehran and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, wrote on X on Sunday that Israel’s strikes on Beirut showed “America either lacks the will to fulfil its commitments or the ability to do so”, warning that the strikes could imperil the final stage of talks. Gen Mohammad Jafar Asadi, the deputy commander of Iran’s joint command headquarters, said: “These crimes will not go unanswered,” according to the official Mizan news agency. Iran’s foreign ministry said it held the US responsible for Israel’s attack in Lebanon and warned of a “strong response.” Iran’s top joint military command added that the “finger [is] on the trigger” and was ready to fire at the “enemy’s heart”. Tehran has insisted that any peace agreement must cover “all fronts” and so include the fighting in Lebanon, where Israel has launched a broad offensive and occupied a swath of the south. “The Iranians do not trust the Americans and are not convinced that the Americans will hold the Israelis in check. I don’t think the Iranians care about Lebanon but they do care about Hezbollah … and they have spoilers on their own side who don’t want a deal,” said HA Hellyer, a regional expert at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank in London. Regional officials said Qatari mediators travelled to Tehran on Sunday to finalise terms of a memorandum of understanding, which is expected to be signed electronically. Unconfirmed reports suggest this preliminary agreement will oblige Iran to reopen to all shipping the strait of Hormuz, which before the war carried about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies. At the same time, the US would lift its own blockade of Iran and allow Tehran to sell oil, providing some relief for Iran’s fast-deteriorating economy. However, the memorandum does not appear to address the most contentious issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme, which would be addressed during a 60-day period leading to a more comprehensive deal. Observers have expressed scepticism that complex negotiations could be successfully concluded in less than two months, pointing out that the 2015 US-Iran deal that restricted Tehran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief took almost 10 times longer and the negotiations were conducted by large teams of technical experts. “I doubt we are going to see all this hammered out in 60 days,” said Alia Brahimi, of the Washington-based Atlantic Council. Reaction in Israel to the broad outlines of the emerging deal has been sharp, with widespread concern at the absence of terms in the draft agreement that would force Iran to restrict either its ballistic missile arsenal or support for regional militant movements such as Hezbollah. Netanyahu has publicly supported Trump but faces a tough re-election battle later this year. Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel on 2 March, two days after the US and Israel attacked Iran, killing the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Israeli troops have since pushed their invasion of Lebanon deeper than at any point in over a quarter-century. “This is a colossal failure. A full-blown collapse. Iran has undisputedly emerged as the big winner,” wrote Avi Ashkenazi in the mass-market Maariv newspaper. Jacob Nagel, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, called the draft deal a “big mistake”. Critics in Trump’s Republican party, which is struggling with high fuel prices and an unpopular war ahead of midterm elections, have also criticised the emerging deal. Even if the strait of Hormuz is reopened, relief for the world economy will come slowly, analysts say. Safe passage for shipping trapped in the narrow waterway is far from assured and infrastructure damaged during the conflict will take months to fully repair. Trump is expected to discuss de-mining the strait during the G7 summit that starts on Monday.
Iranian hardliners have mounted a rearguard rejection of a proposed deal with the US as backers in the regime defend themselves against charges it does not guarantee sanctions relief, compensation or control of the strait of Hormuz. “The fact that they say we won and America has retreated is a blatant lie,” the Iranian MP Kamran Ghazanfari said. Meysam Nili, the managing director of Rajanews and brother-in-law of the hardline former president Ebrahim Raisi, called the deal on the table a catastrophic capitulation. He urged Iranians not to sit quietly. Faced with the onslaught, Iranian officials led by Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the head of the negotiating team, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, mounted a detailed rebuttal in an audio message insisting the deal would end the war, including Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, and that Tehran has not been required to make any new commitments on its nuclear programme, leaving the means of disposal of its highly enriched uranium – including down-blending inside Iran – to future discussions lasting 60 days. Mohammadi also said that by referring to “Iranian arrangements”, the text would allow Iran and Oman to charge fees for passage through the strait of Hormuz, and would even prevent Israeli commercial ships using the waterway. The US had fought hard to have the phrase “Iranian arrangements” excluded, he claimed, and in the second phase of the deal had agreed to lift primary sanctions for the first time. His explanation is sharply at odds with the critics on points of fact and interpretation, which he said was because they were working from outdated drafts. On the nuclear programme, Mohammadi said the only statement in the text was that Iran would not build or purchase nuclear weapons, which he said was “what we have been saying for years”. He said the proposed deal was better for Iran than the 2015 nuclear pact agreed under Barack Obama that lifted sanctions in return for limits on its nuclear activities, because Tehran had shown it could control the strait of Hormuz. “This time, it is not like we will shut down the nuclear programme and wait for them to lift the sanctions,” he said. “There is no such wishful thinking. The strait is in our hands, we can close it any time we want at an hour.” He acknowledged that the text on the release of half of Iran’s frozen money held abroad, roughly $12bn (£9bn), had not been finalised. “We know that America will not give us money,” he said. “The Arab countries have pledged this money and are forced to give it, because we are above them and they have seen our power in the region and have tasted our power. One of the implications of this agreement is that the Arab countries have been forced to accept Iran’s sovereignty and superiority and participate in making concessions.” Critics in Iran aiming their fire at Ghalibaf and the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, are from a group in the parliament coalesced around the Paydari Front including Mahmoud Nabavian, a hardline member of the national security committee, commenters such as Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the Kayhan newspaper, and a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who worked alongside Russia in Syria. The opponents have mounted protests outside the foreign ministry in Tehran, and launched a “we will not accept” hashtag. Government supporters say the Paydari Front is opposed to any deal and is not representative of ordinary Iranians, who know wars against superpowers rarely end in outright victory. Shariatmadari wrote in an open letter: “We must ask Mr Ghalibaf and Mr Araghchi, wasn’t closing the strait of Hormuz one of our country’s main levers in the Ramadan war, and wasn’t closing the strait blocking the enemy’s commercial and economic breathing space and bringing it close to suffocation?! With what logical justification and acceptable explanation are these gentlemen going to give up this fateful lever?! “They say ‘we will charge service fees from passing ships’! That’s it?! America and its allies have martyred former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic world shed the blood of dozens of nuclear scientists and high-ranking military commanders, hundreds of innocent people and oppressed students. They have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage … and now by opening the strait of Hormuz and charging service fees (!) from passing ships, we are going to release their economic and commercial bottleneck?!” The hardline Shia cleric and MP Hajatoleslam Naboyan, who acts as the de facto foreign affairs spokesman for the Paydari Front, appeared incredulous that the proposed agreement appeared to allow free commercial shipping in the strait. “Will Israeli commercial ships also be freed? It is the proposal of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said. “From now on, all Israeli ships, not military, all hostile countries, their ships and their movement in the strait of Hormuz must be freed.” The Khorosan newspaper expressed concern at the licence given to the critics of the proposed agreement. “If the regime is going to grant freedom of speech and assembly to this group so that they can chant slogans against the negotiations and the negotiators, similar freedom must be given to those in favour of the agreement so that they can also gather and march in support of the regime’s decision to end the war, sign the agreement, and even resume relations with the United States,” it said. “Then it will become clear that the majority of the Iranian people support the regime’s will for the agreement, and the minority cannot impose its will on the regime and the nation through shouting, using the national radio and television, abusing the gatherings.” The hardliner’s criticism may help Donald Trump as the US president seeks to justify the deal as better than Obama’s. The two deals are not directly comparable, however, because the 2015 deal was a specific and detailed arms control agreement while the memorandum is focused on the preconditions for a ceasefire. Trump, who faces accusations that he has only achieved an agreement through a disruptive, expensive and illegal war that he could have reached through diplomacy, needs evidence that it is superior to the one Obama struck and from which he withdraw the US in 2018.
When an orphanage in Bunia took in a newborn baby after his mother died from Ebola, the nuns who ran it hoped they were giving the infant a chance for life. The baby survived for only another two weeks. Now four of the nuns who cared for him have fallen sick with the deadly virus. It is a snapshot of the tragedies at the centre of an outbreak in which the number of victims is roughly doubling every week, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “It’s really, really devastating,” says Dr Babou Rukengeza, Save the Children’s Ebola response lead in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). All the children and staff at the orphanage are now being monitored for symptoms. A month on since the latest outbreak of Ebola, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, was first identified in the DRC, the latest figures from the UN show 676 confirmed cases and 136 deaths, the overwhelming majority in the DRC’s Ituri province. Frontline workers say they are still battling shortages of the necessary supplies, including personal protective equipment and vehicles to transport dead bodies. Testing has improved, they say, but still needs to be done faster and carried out nearer to patients. In neighbouring Uganda, which has reported 19 cases and two deaths, intensive tracing of contacts means the outbreak is under control, health officials say. Despite the global risk remaining low, 22 countries, including the US, have imposed travel restrictions on people coming from the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan, according to Africa CDC, the health agency of the African Union. Those restrictions have been criticised as impeding health agencies’ response. What the DRC really needs from the international community, experts say, is flexible funding that it can use to get the situation under control. There are reasons for hope: scientists are working rapidly to test and produce vaccines against Bundibugyo, and the latest research suggests existing antivirals are likely to be helpful. In Ituri, the organisations involved in the response meet daily to coordinate plans, and African leaders will meet virtually on Tuesday to discuss the outbreak and make funding commitments. But there are also strong headwinds that are slowing the response: conflict continues in the worst-hit areas and misinformation is rife, leading people to avoid hospitals and the care that could save their lives, and there have even been attacks on aid workers and treatment centres. Gratien Iracan, the local MP for the provincial capital, Bunia, noted on social media last week: “Despite the millions of dollars announced by the international community to support the response to Ebola, these resources are not yet sufficiently visible on the ground in Ituri.” In subsequent posts, he highlighted a doctor’s death from Ebola, saying the medic had sent messages from his hospital bed complaining of poor care in the clinic. The Guardian has not been able to verify those messages. Iracan also described an incident in which a community had called the authorities to report a suspected case of Ebola but the promised support had not arrived, sparking “incomprehension, anger and concern”. According to Africa CDC, community trust is “a critical challenge” – CNN video footage from Bunia’s central market shows people denying the virus exists and blaming Red Cross workers for spreading it. In a statement, the continental health watchdog cited “reports of resistance to hygiene measures and decontamination in some communities, as well as incidents of mob violence”. A key reason for this stems from people’s reluctance to allow their sick relatives to be cared for by strangers in healthcare isolation units – and the importance of funeral rites. For some people, their fear of displeasing God over not performing an appropriate burial for a relative can be greater than their fear of contracting a virus. According to one study after the 2016 outbreak, exposure to body fluids during each “unsafe” funeral for Ebola victims created an average of 2.58 secondary cases. Informing people about the symptoms and risks – using mass media such as radio and TV as well as face-to-face contact in the community – has become a key part of work on the ground, says Rukengeza. “We are pushing and currently we are working with the leaders, community leaders, religious and other people here on the ground just to let them know that this is really Ebola virus, and they have to pay attention,” he says. With about 600 confirmed cases in one area, health experts would expect to have about 24,000 contacts to monitor. On Thursday, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa CDC, says there are 4,955 listed – and 57% of those are being monitored. “It means there is a huge risk of transmission [being] sustained in the community,” Kaseya says. “We still have some confirmed cases not admitted [to hospital]. They are somewhere in the community, elsewhere.” A joint response plan drawn up by Africa CDC and the WHO estimates that $518m (£387m) will be needed over the next six months to bring the outbreak under control. Kaseya says some early financial pledges from around the world “were not real”, but he now thinks that about $212m, including support in kind, was “almost there”. Many of those infected are healthcare workers. Ebola is spread via body fluids, and those caring for the sick are most likely to be exposed to them. Speaking from Bunia on Thursday, Dr Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist who chairs the Africa CDC emergency consultative group, says he visited a treatment centre that day: “There were 22 patients in that particular hospital, five of whom were healthcare workers, two doctors and an anaesthetist.” Even before Ebola arrived, Ituri faced a humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands of people displaced by years of conflict. WHO officials have registered more than 520 security incidents affecting their teams in the field so far. Over the past month, the outbreak has been gradually moving up the grim league tables that rank Ebola epidemics by case numbers and death toll. It is now the third largest on record. Modelling by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests this outbreak could grow to match the 2014-16 one in west Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people. “We hope we can stop that,” says Kaseya, “and it won’t move from the third to the second, even the first one.”
DNA extracted from 2,000-year-old grape seeds found in ancient wells in Tuscany has enabled scientists to map the most extensive genetic history of grapevines recovered from a single site. The findings revealed that vineyards of the Roman era formed part of the empire’s sophisticated agricultural network that might have influenced the development of modern winemaking. The research led by scientists at the University of York also found that white grapes once dominated the site in Chianti, an area of Tuscany famous for its red sangiovese wines. The discovery was made at Cetamura del Chianti, a hilltop archaeological site that was home to the Etruscans before the arrival of the Romans and then medieval Italians. Those living there between 300BC and 300AD dropped grape pips into deep wells, where they were preserved in oxygen-free mud. “We sequenced the DNA of 80 seeds and found a remarkable story of continuity,” said Dr Oya Inanli, the study’s co-author from the University of York. “A large majority of the tested seeds belonged to a single, identical variety passed directly from the Etruscans to the Romans and maintained for centuries. “We were also able to go a step further with the genetic testing and determine the colour of the ancient grapes. The markers revealed that this dominant, long-lived clone produced white berries.” The prevalence of white grapes was a surprise for the researchers. Nancy De Grummond, a professor at Florida State University, which has been undertaking excavations at Cetamura del Chianti since 1973, said: “Our team’s research adds an important chapter on the history of wine in the viticulture region of Chianti. “What a delightful surprise to learn that the world-famous red wine of today was actually preceded by a white vintage that was curated and maintained for centuries in Etruscan and Roman times.” After the Roman conquest of the settlement, new grape varieties appeared at Cetamura, possibly pointing to vines introduced from elsewhere across the empire, the study showed. Genetic testing also revealed that the dominant cetamura clone was closely related to two ancient grape seeds previously tested from southern France. The researchers said this provided biological evidence of long-distance agricultural networks across the Roman empire that might have contributed to the standardised production of wine today.
Months ago, the street was covered with dozens of bodies laid out on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets: victims of Rio de Janeiro’s deadliest day, when 122 people were killed in the bloodiest police operation in Brazilian history. Now, however the asphalt and curbs of Saint Luke’s Square in the Vila Cruzeiro favela are drenched in the colours of the national flag after local artists and children repainted them, emblazoning the street with messages of support for Brazil ahead of the World Cup. Sunday’s repainting was organised by the local artist and painter Luan Medeiros, 33, a former footballer who wanted to bring some joy back to Saint Luke square, which became indelibly associated with the trauma of the police operation last October. “Everything that happened brought so much pain. I thought: paint transforms things, so why not transform this place and the community as well?” said Medeiros, who was helped by local businesses and many volunteers. Aline de Souza Martins, 39, who lives a street away was one of those volunteers, along with her daughter, Ágatha, 15, who was soon covered in green, yellow and blue paint. “I’ll be honest: I avoided this area for a long time,” said Martins. Since the massacre, she had taken different routes to avoid passing through the square, which is home to much of the favela’s commerce and its main public transport links. It was there that the bodies of many of the 117 civilians killed in the operation were laid out by residents after they had been abandoned by police in a nearby forest. (Five police officers also died in the violence) “It was horrific. Much worse than what people saw on television. We had the smell, the screaming, the sound of mothers crying,” said Martins. Last Sunday, her daughter was among the many children who, smiling and playing, had been given responsibility for painting the kerbs and the larger sections of the street, while the finer details – including a portrait of the superstar Neymar – were left to the adult artists. “This doesn’t erase what happened, but the image today is completely different from what it was then, so it eases your heart a bit,” she said. Just over seven months after the massacre, public prosecutors are still investigating how a police operation came to produce such a high death toll – unusual even by the standards of Brazil’s notoriously violent police forces. So far, 17 officers have been charged over alleged offences, including the theft of a rifle and car parts. Marcelo Resende, a journalist whose doctoral research focuses on the politicisation of national symbols such as the national team’s shirt, sees the street painting as an attempt by the community to assert that, despite how it is treated by the authorities, it too is part of Brazil. “Football is one of the few popular phenomena still capable of allowing vulnerable populations to feel that they belong to the nation … By painting a street, you create new meanings. Months ago, that same street had been the setting for one of the most powerful images of what Brazil does to Black people and favela residents,” said Resende, who was born and raised in the Jacarezinho favela, where a police operation killed 27 civilians in 2021. Resende also sees the repainting as part of a broader trend in which Brazilians appear to be reviving the decades-old tradition of decorating streets with flags and murals ahead of the World Cup. “After fading in recent years, my impression is that the tradition is coming back,” he said. It is not known exactly when the tradition began, but another researcher traced it back to at least the 1970 World Cup, when Brazil won its third title. It then returned every four years and reached a peak when Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014. In the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, however, enthusiasm was far more muted. Resende believes that was due, respectively, to the humiliation of Brazil’s 7-1 defeat to Germany in the 2014 semi-final – a subject on which he wrote a book – and to the Covid-19 pandemic. But now, “social media is flooded with images of painted streets from all over the country … It creates the impression that this is happening with greater intensity, and I think that is probably true,” said Resende. Municipal governments are holding competitions to choose the most beautifully decorated street. The mural artist Hugo Silvério, 37, who designed the painting in Saint Luke square, believes much of the tradition’s resurgence is being driven by its trending on social media. “Everything can become something Instagrammable these days, so some big companies are taking advantage of that to generate engagement. But what’s interesting is that it has also spread through communities and people are doing it on their own, so it becomes something positive in the end,” he said.
Before Reform gained control of Essex county council in the May elections, Chris Taylor and members of the Rochford LGBTQ+ community already felt they were witnessing a growing tide of political rhetoric around identity. But they were still shocked when the county’s new leadership moved to ban Pride events in 74 libraries, scaling back events of “any particular groups or themes”, a decision they said was “straight out of Trumpland”. “It communicates the fact that we’re not welcome,” said Taylor, who recently launched a petition against the “Orwellian” ban on pride events in Essex libraries. Reform councils across England, from Essex and Durham to Leicestershire and Kent, have imposed bans on flying the pride flag and holding pride events in public spaces, as well as, in some cases, defunding pride events previously sponsored by local authorities. Essex county council said libraries were “safe spaces for everybody” and LGBTQ+ books and displays would continue, but added the promotion of library events aimed at specific groups was under review. Reform councils have stopped flying Pride flags outside civic centres and county halls and restricted council flagpoles exclusively to union, national, county or armed forces flags at council buildings under its control. Since learning of Essex council’s proposed changes to its libraries, Taylor, 38, has contacted Reform councillors with concerns but has yet to receive a response. With Essex Pride approaching, one LGBTQ+ resident told Taylor they had wanted to attend the library with their child, but expressed safety concerns. “There does seem to be a bit a resurgence of anti-acceptance toward the community in the area,” added Taylor. “It’s a bit alarming.” In Sunderland and Gateshead, Reform-led councils have withdrawn funding for Pride events and ended the practice of flying Pride flags on council buildings, while South Tyneside council has restricted the flag’s display at South Shields town hall to a single day at the start of Pride month. Drew Dalton, an outreach manager at Out North East, which runs Pride events across Sunderland, Gateshead and South Tyneside and recently opened One Centre, the north-east’s first LGBT community centre in Gateshead, said the organisation had been preparing for Reform victories for months. He said Sunderland and Gateshead’s decisions to stop flying Pride flags, alongside funding cuts, had left the organisation feeling it had lost “money”, “visibility” and “a great number of allies” in council chambers. Dalton said: “We’ve spent a long time building up relationships and we lost them overnight in the local elections.” The group has been forced to move events away from council-owned land and venues in anticipation of further restriction, Dalton said. “We had to future-proof everything we were doing,” he said. “It’s become that type of era where you have to watch your step.” He said concerns within the LGBTQ+ community extended beyond council policy. Promotional signs had been repeatedly torn down for a smaller Pride event supported by the organisation, while people attending the One Centre hub had expressed anxiety about the wider climate. “I don’t want to paint us as all scared,” he said. “There’s also a lot of righteous anger about what’s going on. And there’s the beginnings, which is wonderful to see, of people starting to pull together.” Dalton said the political climate was reshaping Pride events. “We’ll probably look back at the latter half of the 2010s as a period when Pride became much more of a party. This year we’re not even having concerts. We’re having a rally in Sunderland. That tells you how the dynamic has shifted.” Gateshead council, defending the changes, said it would only fly the union flag and St George’s Cross from council buildings but would continue to support civic, cultural and community events. Wakefield council said it had adopted a more consistent approach focused on civic, national and military service flags, while Kent county council said it did not fly “cause-specific or community campaign flags” on its buildings. Warwickshire Pride said they had “severely” felt the impact of the Reform administration since the party had won local elections in 2025. “From not permitting the Pride flag to fly, to announcing that Warwickshire Pride should not receive council funding, and this week saying [they] want LGBTQ+ books and information banned from Warwickshire’s libraries and schools, we are seeing hate towards our charity rise as a direct result,” said the charity’s chair, Daniel Browne. Browne had requested the Pride and Trans flag fly at the county council on behalf of Warwickshire Pride, but was not surprised when the requests were declined. However, when the county council’s chair changed from Reform to Conservative, it was decided the flag would be raised this month. Reform’s actions have affected the communities they serve, Browne said. The charity’s services include coffee mornings, LGBTQ+ counselling, youth groups and social events, where attenders have said as a direct result of the changes they have experienced increased anxiety, self-harming behaviours and hate incidents. Browne said: “We’re stretched, under attack ourselves, and that’s difficult to navigate, but we remain here for Warwickshire’s LGBTQ+ population and will continue to push back against attempts to erase us or discriminate against us.”