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Alarm at UN over sanctions threatened by US on international criminal court

The US threat to impose sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC) as an institution, not just its leading judges, could fundamentally disrupt its operation and needed to be resisted, a coalition of countries to defend international law heard at the United Nations on Friday. Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s foreign minister, issued the warning at an event during the UN general assembly called to protect the system of international law from a growing array of threats, including open flouting of its tenets and rulings by Israel. The meeting was organised by the Hague Group, of which Lamola is co-chair, and which was set up in 2025 to protect international law and to call for the proper enforcement of the rulings of its two primary bodies: the ICC and the international court of justice (ICJ). Lamola told the gathering that the US had already sanctioned ICC judges and prosecutors, but was now planning sanctions against the ICC itself. “If imposed, such measures could fundamentally disrupt its operations,” he said. “An independent court remains independent only if judges and officials cannot be punished for carrying out their mandates.” The head of the ICC, Judge Tomoko Akane of Japan, was sanctioned by the US in August, along with senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, for engaging in the ICC’s efforts to “prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction”. The attack on Akane was condemned this week by the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. The US has admitted it seeks to dismantle the Hague-based ICC. In his address to the UN general assembly this week, Donald Trump once again criticised the “out of control” court, which he smeared as an “evil group of people” and urged other nations to reject. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has accused the court of being “a corrupt and fatally politicised supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate. We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty.” The next step by the US is likely to be to impose secondary sanctions on anyone who cooperates with the court, as opposed to sanctioning its senior judiciary. A designation of the whole institution would reach every European bank, insurer and technology supplier serving the court, which sits in the Netherlands. The Dutch government, as the host of the ICC, is taking the lead in trying to warn the US away from the effective immobilisation of the court. The Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten, told the UN general assembly: “International law either works for everyone or for no one. This court was established to protect us against impunity and it was built on the foundations of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. And now, with the ICC under attack, the writing is truly on the wall. “After all, how can you possibly be opposed to prosecuting the very worst crimes? And I believe there can be only one response: to say, hands off the ICC and all those other institutions that protect the international legal order.” William Schabas, a specialist in international law, noted to the meeting the irony that the resort to international law and courts was increasing dramatically even as the institutions were under attack. He said nations needed to strengthen the ICC, including by ensuring positions are not traded and only the highest calibre judges are elected. Diana Buttu, the prominent Palestinian lawyer, was among many to complain of western powers’ partial resort to international law. “The greatest threat to international law is not the state that openly defies it,” she said. “The greatest threat is our selectivity – the quiet decision that is made in capitals and rooms that the rules don’t bind everybody, they only bind some. It is the belief that we can excuse some because they are our allies, our partners and our friends.”

Alberta’s self-image as world’s only rat-free region shattered by discovery of rat

For more than seven decades, residents of Alberta have shared something in common with Antarctica and the high Arctic: all locations are officially free of rats. But on Thursday the Canadian province’s reputation as a firewall against rodent infestation took a hit when the town of Bowden announced the discovery of a dead rat and called on the province’s “rat patrol” to investigate. “If you’ve noticed rat droppings or any signs of rats, please contact Rat Patrol Alberta so they can follow up,” the town said in a statement. “Please stay alert and report any sightings.” Officials in Bowden did not say where in the town the rat was found. But as global temperatures increase, rat numbers have surged in major cities. Over the past decade, rats increased by 390% in Washington DC, 300% in San Francisco and 162% in New York, according to researchers, who analysed public sightings and infestation reports. Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is facing a “perfect rat storm”, with numbers up 186% in the last 10 years. Unlike other regions in the world that have been overrun by the wily and adaptable urban mammals, Alberta has actively fought rats from entering at all. “Albertans have enjoyed living without the menace of rats since 1950 when the Rat Control Program was established,” the province says in its rat guide. It cites both the province’s unique geography, with mountain ranges and boreal forest surrounding most of Alberta, and the fact that the Norway rat – “one of the most destructive creatures known to man”, the province claims – cannot survive in vast natural areas and cannot overwinter in cultivated fields. The very lack of the humans and their structures that rats need to survive has given the province a chance to ward off infestation. In the 1950s, suspecting rats might try to enter from the east by way of neighbouring Saskatchewan, Alberta officials created a “rat control zone” – a strip of land measuring 373 miles by 18 miles (600km by 30km) – to monitor incursions that ranges from Cold Lake in the north to the Montana border in the south. In addition, from June 1952 to July 1953, 140,000lb of 73% arsenic trioxide powder was used to treat 8,000 buildings on 2,700 farms to slow the spread of rats. The province also amended the Agricultural Pests Act of Alberta in 1950, obliging “every person and municipality” to destroy rats they found; made posters reminiscent of a national war effort; and hosted a radio show, Call of the Land, to educate residents. Today, there are dedicated telephone lines and an email address to report rats. But while the rat patrol receives hundreds of calls each year, it says the vast majority are not rats but muskrats, voles and field mice. Still, it concedes there are exceptions. “Alberta’s rat-free status means there is no resident population of rats and they are not allowed to establish themselves. It does not mean we never get rats.”

Pope Leo warns of AI threat to humanity at start of three-day France visit

Pope Leo has warned against losing humanity in a “paradise of machines” as he addressed global concerns over the dangers of artificial intelligence at the start of a three-day visit to France. “If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for people to be educated in ethical discernment, capable of seeing what is morally right,” he said in a speech at the Élysée. At a second address on Friday, the 71-year-old head of the Catholic church insisted that new technologies must “remain at the service of the human person rather than becoming yet another instrument of domination and injustice” in remarks to a gathering at the Paris headquarters ⁠of the UN culture and education body, ⁠Unesco. “Every science risks losing its proper meaning when pursued without ethics,” he said. “Certain artificial systems have even been given the name of our human faculty of thought: intelligence. At the same time, however, our ideas and relationships risk being impoverished by a process of dehumanisation.” He added: “While intelligence is attributed to computational systems, we struggle to recognise the inalienable dignity of human persons whose lives are judged according to the criterion of efficiency and when deemed no longer productive, rejected and discarded.” Leo also criticised world leaders who disrespect the ⁠rule of ⁠law, without naming individuals. “Instead of respecting ‌the law, ‌those in power invoke ‌it when it serves their interests and disregard it when it restrains them, treating even justice itself ‌as though it were a commodity to be bought and sold,” he said. Leo, who became pope in 2025, ⁠has been critical of the direction of global leadership in recent months. He said ‌the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” last April. The first official papal visit to France in 18 years comes as Emmanuel Macron’s decade in office draws to an end ahead of next spring’s French presidential election, for which the far-right, anti-immigration Marine Le Pen is polling high. Pope Francis did not make a full state visit to France during his 12-year pontificate and refused to join the inauguration of the rebuilt Notre Dame Cathedral in 2024. After France passed legislation in June granting some adult patients the right to assisted dying, the pontiff said he was concerned by trends “that risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs or the possibility of arranging one’s own death.” A key moment of the three-day visit will be a giant outdoor mass on Saturday, led by the pontiff at Place de la Concorde. The pope, whose paternal grandmother was born in France, on Friday urged Paris to remain a “tireless champion of peace” worldwide. On Monday, he will deliver a speech on European peace in the eastern city of Metz as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues into its fifth year. Leo called on the world not to ⁠become indifferent to the pain caused by “the scourge of war”. He told Macron and other French politicians: “I urge you ‘… never to grow resigned to the prospect of war or to ⁠consider it ‘inevitable’.” Leo will also visit Lourdes, a pilgrimage site for Christians worldwide, where he will privately meet seven victims of clerical sex abuse. After some survivors’ groups suggested a larger number of survivors should have been canvassed, the Catholic church said the pontiff was seeking in-depth dialogue with individuals. France’s Catholic bishops’ conference has agreed to provide compensation after a 2021 report estimated that 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other church-related figures in France. The report described a “systemic” cover-up by church officials. In recent years, further accusations have emerged, including against workers at the elite Catholic boarding school Notre-Dame de Bétharram, near Lourdes. On his flight to Paris, Pope Leo told reporters they were welcome to cover him, as he responded to the Trump administration’s attempt to bar US media from the White House and affirmed the importance of journalists covering public figures. Asked by a CNN reporter about Donald Trump’s attempt to bar CNN and other reporters, Leo said the media were welcome on his plane. “I am very happy that here, you are all welcome,” he said.

Trump faces tough choices as Iran dangles deal to reopen Hormuz before US midterms

Iran’s seven-day timetable to reopen the strait of Hormuz and start talks on its nuclear programme has been pitched as a deal that could rapidly extricate Donald Trump from a political crisis but requires the US president to make difficult concessions. In the five days left before the proposed reopening of the strait, which is expected to relieve pressure on global energy markets, Trump would need to lift Iranian asset freezes, permit Iran to export its oil and, probably most difficult of all, order Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus achieving the “ceasefire on all fronts”. Iranian diplomats in New York said they thought a three-hour meeting earlier this week with the US envoy Steve Witkoff in which they laid out the seven-day plan was productive, but were doubtful the US would deliver. Iran nevertheless feels it has done the diplomatic spadework, taking the proposal to China for endorsement and ensuring that Oman, located on the south side of the strait, was also on board. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, explained that the idea was to take the elements of the Iran-US memorandum of understanding that Trump signed in June and repackage and accelerate the process since, as they understood it, Trump had come to hate the MoU. “The conditions we have asked the US to meet is nothing new, nothing more than what was already in the Islamabad agreement, which was signed by the US president,” Araghchi said. But what is new is the speed. In the first four to five days under this timetable, the US would have to lift the naval blockade on Iran’s oil ports, restore the waiver that lifted sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, end the war on all fronts and permit the release of some of Iran’s frozen assets. On the sixth day, the strait of Hormuz would be reopened by Iran, with ships using a new route designated by Oman and Iran. And on the next day, negotiations would start on the future of Iran’s civil nuclear programme, including a protocol to allow UN nuclear inspectors back in to look at Iran’s damaged sites and the stockpile of highly enriched uranium. This accelerates the point at which nuclear talks would begin, from 60 days in the June agreement to seven. Those talks could, of course, take a long time, but from Trump’s perspective, the strait of Hormuz would be reopened before the midterm elections, a point in the political calendar that the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, says has never been a factor in Iranian thinking. Trump had claimed Iran was waiting until after the vote to offer a deal. Iran, Araghchi argued at a largely off-the-record briefing with reporters – at which Pezeshkian was also present – had every reason not to negotiate with the US. In particular, he admitted to being sceptical that Witkoff could deliver. He recounted how he had twice held talks with Trump’s special envoy, after which Witkoff had described them as “productive and good”, only for the US to bomb Iran the next day. Other Iranian diplomats say Trump’s willingness to rein in Netanyahu in Lebanon remains key. If he could do that, a deal would be feasible. It is a difficult deal for Trump to swallow since the strait would reopen largely on Iran’s terms, with the new route predominantly going through Iranian waters. Saudi Arabia is also concerned that the route deal is bilateral between Iran and Oman, and not with the Gulf states as joint signatories. Trump says he has a choice to make between the annihilation of Iran and engagement – an engagement that, he says with typical hyperbole, could make Iran one of the great countries of the world. In reality, the judgment he has to make is more prosaic. Is he prepared to go back to war with Iran after the midterms and, if not, does he believe the US can squeeze the Iranian economy so hard that the leadership will succumb. Pezeshkian, who handed all questions about the talks to Araghchi, admitted Iranians wanted the war to end and did not deny the economic pressure, but said the public had withstood sanctions for 45 years. He also insisted Iran’s decision-making machinery was functioning. The reclusive supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was completely healthy, he claimed, a testimony based on spending seven hours in his presence. He did not explain why, apart from security, Khamenei had not issued a voice recording, photograph or video as proof of life.

Pope Leo warns against AI and says technology ‘must remain at service of humans’ during first visit to France – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. Pope Leo has warned against AI creating “a paradise of machines” as he expressed concerned about “losing our humanity” as a result of the uncontrolled technological advance, including the AI (12:49). In later remarks at Unesco, Leo cautioned that technology “must remain at the service of humans,” and not become instrument of “domination and injustice” (15:54). He warned that rapid technological advancements, if not underpinned by “a shared ethical foundation,” could “hinder dialogue rather than foster it” (16:00). Opening the first papal visit to France in 18 years, Pope Leo also stressed the country’s history “rooted in the Catholic tradition” (12:41) and stressed that “authentic secularity” does not exclude religion. Speaking alongside France’s president Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace, he also appeared to criticise the country’s assisted dying laws (12:55), warning about “a temptation to look to science for a solution and a consolation for all our suffering.” Pope Leo also urged everyone not to be “indifferent to suffering” and the “scourge” of war, while also calling for “dialogue and diplomacy” instead of conflicts, and criticising “the mistaken belief” that nuclear arms “guarantee security, … fuelling a new and difficult to control arms race” (13:02). The pontiff also criticised global leaders as he said “instead of respecting the law, those in power invoke it when it serves their interests and disregard it when it restrains them, treating even justice itself as though it were a commodity to be bought and sold” (16:04). His four-day pilgrimage to France – unexpectedly popular, with up to a million people expected to attend all events (10:42) - continues with a visit at the Notre Dame Cathedral today, and further plans in Paris, Lourdes and Metz over the weekend (10:28). 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.

Pakistan locks down Islamabad as Imran Khan’s party vows to march on capital

Leaders from Imran Khan’s party have vowed to go ahead with a nationwide demonstration in Pakistan to demand the former prime minister’s release, even as the government deployed tens of thousands of police to Islamabad, barricaded highways and issued arrest warrants to try to stop the march. The state has taken extreme measures to prevent Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party from proceeding with the march. It was announced after mounting concerns of the treatment of Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges. On Friday, PTI leaders said they would postpone the start of the march until 4 October, a week after the original 27 September date, saying they hoped the delay would put further strain on the government. Analysts said the protest could present a major challenge to the military-backed government, which is widely regarded as weak, illegitimate and unpopular, while Khan remains a popular rallying figure. The ruling coalition is led by the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, but the army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is widely seen as the country’s de facto leader. This week, dozens of PTI leaders and ministers have been detained or made subject of arrest warrants, while Khan’s three sisters were arrested on Monday and remain in jail, charged with posing a grave threat to security. Among those facing arrest is Sohail Afridi, the chief minister of Khan’s home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, PTI’s stronghold, from where thousands of supporters are expected to join the march to the capital. Afridi said the PTI would carry out the march unless the government made significant concessions over Khan’s treatment and conditions in jail, including a fair hearing for Khan’s cases. “The government is panicking – that’s why they have put Islamabad under siege, that’s why they are abducting our ministers,” he said. “But Imran Khan is the most popular leader of the country and people will come out for him. I am certain they won’t be able to stop the public power of the masses when they come out on streets and take to Islamabad.” Afridi acknowledged that the scale of the security deployment had led many to fear there could be a violent confrontation to prevent Khan’s supporters from entering the capital, as had been seen in previous demonstrations. The government has already deployed tens of thousands of security officials to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and shut down the main highway connecting the provincial capital, Peshawar, to Islamabad. “I know they can go to any extent to stop us by brute force, we have no doubt about it,” Afridi said. “But if we have a large number of people, they can’t open fire at us. Our plan is to bring so many people that they surrender.” Faisal Karim Kundi, a central government appointee as governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, defended the security measures being taken against PTI as precautionary and accused the party of trying to create “instability and violence”. “The state can’t allow any violent group to march on Islamabad,” Kundi said. Public frustration has mounted in Islamabad as the government’s measures to stop Khan’s party supporters having any way to enter the capital has led to the city resembling a high-security fortress. More than 1,000 shipping containers, many fortified with spikes, have blockaded roads and sandbags were placed on bridges, while a key highway into the capital was closed. Public gatherings have been banned in Islamabad and 22,000 police and other security personnel have been deployed across the capital. The government’s shutdown has fuelled anger and frustration in the capital, with many businesses unable to get supplies. Shahid, 76, a retired businessman, said: “The entire city is suffering. The government has shut down the whole city and we, as citizens, are helpless. I have never seen such a situation. Joblessness, inflation and insecurity has made our lives hell but does the government care? No.” Despite the considerable efforts by the government and the military to crush Khan’s party and remove the former prime minister from the public consciousness – with media organisations instructed to not even refer to him by name – Khan is still viewed by many as the political alternative to the current regime. The PTI alleges Khan is being held in solitary confinement and has been denied adequate medical treatment and any contact with his family or his lawyers for months. Khan denies all the charges against him and alleges he is being imprisoned due to the political threat he poses to the government and the military. All but one of the court rulings against Khan have been overturned. Analysts say the government and its military backers fear the PTI protest could escalate into a movement that could topple their administration, similar to protests seen in nearby Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. “They have an eye on what has happened in south Asia over the last five years, where country after country has seen huge protests snowballing suddenly out of nowhere and sweeping away a government,” said Niaz Murtaza, a Pakistani political columnist. “Given the breadth of grievances in Pakistan at the moment, the performance of the government has been so poor on the economy and security, while the repression is so high, that they are very nervous that the whole situation could combust very quickly.”

Pomp over progress in Xi’s US summit with Trump is a win for China

If the Beijing meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in May was the “stalemate summit”, the second round of talks between the presidents of the US and China this week seemed to give up entirely on the idea of breakthroughs. Instead, it was described as a celebration of “diplotainment” rather than diplomacy, where pomp prevailed over progress and where one of the main outcomes was the news that two giant pandas would soon be sent from China to Atlanta zoo. Trump rolled out the red carpet for Xi’s arrival on Wednesday and broke with decades of precedent to meet the Chinese leader at Joint Base Andrews. Thus began a three-day state visit that involved a tour of Trump’s new helipad and the Marine One helicopter, and a 90-minute meeting that Trump described as “great” and that revealed, according to Trump, that Xi “has great interest in granite”. “The biggest takeaway is that Trump has been displaying an extraordinary degree of deference to Xi Jinping,” said Julian Gewirtz, who served as a senior China official in the Biden administration. But what of actual substance? Expectations going into the summit were low. But the outcomes somehow still fell short. One of the biggest issues in the US-China relationship is trade. Last year, as Trump unveiled successive rounds of tariffs on Chinese goods, the White House accused China of unfair practices that it said contributed to the loss of 3.7m US jobs and inflated the trade deficit. The tariffs were supposed to suppress the volume of Chinese imports to the US and put pressure on China. To some degree, they worked. The US trade deficit with China in 2025 fell to $200bn, down from nearly $300bn in 2024. But experts have noted that some of this shortfall is made up for by Chinese goods being shipped to the US via third countries, a trend underlined by the fact that China’s trade surplus surpassed a record $1tn last year. With the US and China accounting for 43% of global GDP, their trade war has far-reaching implications for the world economy. So it was a relief not just to Beijing and to US consumers when the two countries agreed a temporary truce in Busan last year. That truce is due to expire in November. China, where the economy is heavily reliant on exports, was reported to be pushing for the truce to be extended until the end of Trump’s term, in January 2029. On Thursday, it was revealed that Xi’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade had resulted in a mere two-month extension. That reflects “the lack of preparation for this summit beyond the pomp and circumstance”, said Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society. William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said: “This summit largely achieved symbolism and ritualism over substance. That is very clear.” The short extension “reflects the level of fundamental differences that still exist between the two countries over a variety of issues”. China’s most powerful response to Trump’s tariffs was the decision to block the export of rare earths, critical minerals vital to US manufacturing and military supply chains. That seemed to skewer Trump’s leverage over China. Gewirtz said: “Beijing’s retaliation … seems to have had a profound effect on [Trump] and his administration’s willingness to take risks vis-a-vis China.” Apart from the trade war agreement, the summit failed to achieve any meaningful progress on thorny issues in the US-China relationship such as artificial intelligence, Taiwan, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, and human rights. On Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be the most important issue in the relationship, Xi put pressure on Trump to weaken the US’s support for the self-governing island that China claims as its own. According to the Chinese readout of the Xi-Trump meeting, Xi told Trump he hoped “the US side will adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence”. For the US to state that it “opposes” Taiwanese independence would be a rhetorical shift from the current position of “does not support” such a claim, and would be a move welcomed by Beijing. Trump has not yet commented on whether he agreed to such a statement. But it does seem he is no closer to approving a $14bn arms sale package for Taiwan, a sale that Beijing would like to see disappear completely. On Thursday, US Senate Democrats lambasted Trump for opting for “pageantry over purpose” and for failing to deliver agreements on “the economic and security issues that will shape America’s future”. Trump ignored recent warnings about the dangers posed by AI, writing on social media on Thursday: “I want to leave it exactly where it is,” adding: “That is China’s position also.” For China, the lack of big news from the visit is a win in itself. “The summit went excellently from the Chinese perspective,” Thomas said. Xi “got a huge amount of respect from the American president, the full state visit treatment [and] really great images beaming back to China of the Chinese and the American presidents interacting as peers on the global stage, without having to make any meaningful concessions or compromises.”

Meloni accused of ‘running scared’ with cap on foreign children in classrooms

The Italian government has been accused of ramping up divisive rhetoric to try to court far-right voters ahead of next year’s general election after it passed a decree aimed at capping the number of newly arrived migrants in classrooms and banning the burqa and niqab in schools. The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her government had approved what she called “commonsense measures that do not divide but genuinely help to integrate”. Writing on social media, she said the measures included: “A limit of 30% in classrooms for students who do not adequately know Italian, plus tools to learn our language and a halt to burqas and niqabs in school.” The announcement was a toned-down version of comments she had made earlier in the week at an event organised by Brothers of Italy’s youth division. “It cannot be that in the classroom it is Italian children who feel left out because they’ve become the minority,” Meloni said as she vowed to “legally set the number of foreign students per class”. Thursday’s decree also sets out that in cases where students show persistent problems with integrating or struggling to learn the language, their parents will be referred to social services and will have to take free literacy and Italian language classes. Parents’ failure to comply could result in fines of up to €1,000. The education minister, Giuseppe Valditara, said the measures, set to take effect in the 2027-28 school year, would affect about 1,000 classrooms, or about 0.3% of the total nationwide. Rights campaigners were swift to link the measures to next year’s election, in which Meloni’s premiership is facing an unexpected challenger on the right. “She’s creating an emergency that is not a real emergency at all,” said Daniela Ionita, of the campaign group Italians Without Citizenship, pointing out that an estimated 60% of the pupils who could be described as foreign were born in Italy but faced a myriad of hurdles when it came to accessing citizenship. “Because there are now new parties pushing from the right, I think Meloni is scared,” she said. The government said students born and raised in Italy or who had attended at least two years of nursery school or completed three years of schooling in Italy would be exempt from the measures. Ionita said the ramped-up rhetoric was an attempt by the government to mask how little it had accomplished during its time in power. “If you remove every decree linked to security or to migrants, the government’s political and economic programme will fall apart, and very little concrete remains of one of the longest-serving governments of the last years in Italy,” she said. Marco Tarchi, a political scientist who focuses on the extreme right and teaches at the University of Florence, said the measures were “undoubtedly” driven by fears of a new political challenge on the right. Since February, a new party, Futuro Nazionale (FN), has galvanised the extreme right, with polls suggesting it could capture about 8% of the vote in an election expected as early as spring 2027. Led by Roberto Vannacci, a former army general best known for self-publishing a book rife with racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, the party’s popularity in polls has eclipsed that of Brothers of Italy’s two coalition partners, the League and the conservative Forza Italia. Those who have shifted allegiances include some who had enthusiastically lined up behind Meloni years ago as she spoke of “ethnic substitution” and vowed to install an all-out naval blockade to prevent migrant arrivals from north Africa. Tarchi said: “Many of the FN’s potential voters are former supporters of Giorgia Meloni’s party who are disappointed that, once in power, the leader softened many of her previous stances regarding the European Union, which she had harshly criticised; immigration, on which she had made radical proposals that were later abandoned; and other issues.” He said Vannacci had capitalised on this, capturing voters with an extreme manifesto that promised “remigration” and limits on the number of foreigners in the country, as well as curtailing LGBTQ+ rights and negating the right to abortion. He said that in order to win back this support, Meloni may have to adopt positions closer to those she held in opposition. A glimpse of what this could look like came this summer when Meloni seized on the sudden entry of tens of thousands of people into the tiny Spanish territory of Ceuta in north Africa, said Elisa De Pieri, a researcher at Amnesty International. “Meloni immediately exploited the situation in Ceuta, which had absolutely nothing to do with Italy and nothing to do with the Schengen space, but she made it into a supposed crisis for Italy,” she said. “And so that’s the mode that I think we’re going to see in the next months.” De Pieri predicted that Meloni “won’t be talking too much” about Italy’s offshore detention agreement with Albania on the grounds that it had not been as successful as she would have hoped. “It’s been very costly, and it’s been struck down repeatedly by national and international courts,” she said. Instead, she expects Meloni will adopt a more aggressive tone on migration more generally, leading to a polarising electoral campaign that would have a disproportionate impact on migrant communities. The view was echoed by critics of the new measures who pointed out the rarity of burqas or niqabs in Italian classrooms and said the government was simply repackaging previous, unenforced policies, given that the 30% threshold was previously floated by the education ministry in 2010. Save the Children said the overall impact would be to “create ‘first-class’ and ‘second-class’ students”. The leader of the Democratic party, Elly Schlein, described the decree as “shameful” and accused the government of “living on a different planet”. She said Italian parents were grappling with a very different set of issues, citing crumbling school buildings, the high costs of textbooks and low teacher salaries. “Faced with all this, the government’s response is to kick foreign children out of the classroom,” Schlein said. “Who do they think they’re kidding? After four years of cuts and no serious investment in school buildings, they’re inventing a witch-hunt that targets the youngest children.”