The Guardian Weekly splits its cover stories across the Atlantic this week, as we focus on prime ministers on both sides of the pond.
In London, Boris Johnson began last week determined to be the leader who finally solved one of Britain’s most intractable political issues: how to fund the country’s rising social care bill. He ended it as the man who imposed a manifesto-busting £12bn tax rise, taking public spending to its highest-ever peacetime level – and invoked the wrath of many Conservatives and a right-wing press that once lionised him.
But Johnson’s big tax gamble also asked questions of the opposition Labour party, which seemed to have been caught entirely off guard. Toby Helm and Phillip Inman ask what Johnson’s role-reversal on tax could mean for the future of both parties, as well as for the prime minister himself.
In Canada, meanwhile, the chickens may be coming home to roost for Canada’s Justin Trudeau, who announced a snap election last month. As next week’s vote looms it’s unclear as to whether the incumbent Liberal prime minister’s gamble will pay off, with polls showing him narrowly trailing his Conservative rival Erin O’Toole. Leyland Cecco sets the scene and profiles Jagmeet Singh, the progressive NDP leader who could prove to be kingmaker in a tight vote.
Got cash to burn, entrepreneurial spirit and want to live in a floating tech utopia beyond the constraints of international fiscal regulation? That’s what a group of wealthy investors envisaged when they bought an old cruise liner with the intention of anchoring it off the coast of Panama. Unfortunately things only got more complicated from there, as Sophie Elmhirst reveals.
There’s also a great read about the high-security messaging device beloved of international criminals, with only one problem – it was invented by the police. And we catch up with Kacey Musgraves, the reluctant liberal champion of country music.
