Towards the end of last month, a convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters set off from Vancouver to Ottawa, in protest against rules requiring any lorry drivers arriving from the US to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Having since ground Canada’s capital to a halt, the truckers have quickly become a symbol for a hotchpotch of far-right views and conspiracy theorists, and a cause célèbre for populists internationally.
Our big story this week asks whether this could be a defining moment for Canada’s right. Then David Smith considers how the US anti-vaccine movement – linked with funding for the Canadian protest – is taking over the Trump-supporting Republican base.
In the UK, a scandal-ridden Boris Johnson somehow continued to cling to power and was, as Jonathan Freedland notes, willing to reach for Trumpian lows of misinformation in his fight. Meanwhile Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart profile the prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, who it has been claimed yields more influence over her husband’s decision-making than many inside No 10 would like.
Guardian foreign correspondent Andrew Roth has tracked the movements of Russian personnel and materiel close to the border with Ukraine and found out what the residents of cities such as Voronezh think of the influx of tanks on their streets.
Look out for some great feature reads in the magazine this week. Philip Oltermann delves into the workings of a poetry club for members of the East German secret police. Were they studying more than just iambic pentameter?
Then, in the Culture section, Steve Rose tracks the rise of media streaming giant Netflix over the past decade and asks whether it can stay at the top for another 10 years.
