China and the United States have been on a collision course for years – but has the pandemic hit the accelerator on a new cold war? Despite a new outbreak in Beijing, China has mainly controlled Covid-19 and is flexing its muscles in Hong Kong, on its Indian border and likely in Australia, too. Its economic power also makes it a crucial investor in Europe, Africa and Latin America. The US now wants an alliance of nations to stand up to China – but would such a coalition be possible for a normal US administration, let alone Donald Trump’s? Our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour finds out.
This week, the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced a further easing of lockdown restrictions in England, allowing museums, art galleries, pubs, restaurants and hairdressers to reopen from early July. Johnson also reduced a 2-metre public social distancing rule – to the relief of business owners and worry of some workers and public health officials. It’s an important moment for the government, which, after its slow reaction to the pandemic in March, has been on the back foot and left the UK as one of the world’s worst-impacted nations.
It followed a bad week for the government when it was forced by the Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford into a U-turn on free school meals for disadvantaged children in England over the summer. It also had to scrap the NHS England test-and-trace app, which health secretary Matt Hancock had launched to much fanfare just six weeks earlier. This week, Toby Helm reports on how weeks of blunders have dragged a once-buoyant PM down to earth. Before that though, there’s some optimistic news: health editor Sarah Boseley reports on the treatments and developments that have made UK scientists and doctors more confident they could cope with a new wave of Covid-19.
Last weekend Donald Trump kicked off his re-election campaign with a rally in Tulsa in Oklahoma, not exactly the swingiest of states. The sight of a half-empty BOK Center amused many critics, and infuriated the president. The 6,000 or so in attendance were still enthralled, however, as Oliver Laughland reports. It capped a week for Trump in which he fell further behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls, and when his former national security adviser John Bolton published a book accusing him of seeking Xi Jinping’s help to win the forthcoming presidential election. Simon Tisdall analyses the accusations in Bolton’s book. As bad as they are, do any of them come as a surprise?
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