How important was the American withdrawal in northern Syria? Possibly important enough to signal a new geopolitical epoch, argues Simon Tisdall in this week’s cover story. With the US continuing a three-decade retreat, will it be the EU, Russia or China who barges America out of the way to become the planet’s 21st-century superpower?
Justin Trudeau managed to hold on to power in Canada with a tight victory in Monday night’s election. The SNC-Lavalin affair (and the prime minister’s blackface habit) looked like they might have sunk the Liberal leader’s hopes, but Trudeau held the Tories off and can form a minority administration. Martin Patriquin analyses how he held on.
Last week Boris Johnson returned from Brussels with a new Brexit withdrawal bill. Johnson’s deal – whose main difference from his predecessor’s was the moving of a customs border into the Irish Sea – was quickly rejected by the Conservatives’ Northern Irish allies, the DUP. But the prime minister was confident that with the backing of Labour MPs keen to appease Leave-voting constituents, it could pass in parliament. Which was why lawmakers gathered in the House of Commons on ‘Super’ Saturday to debate it. There was just one problem … a proposed amendment by Oliver Letwin (one of the Tories expunged by Johnson for blocking a no-deal exit) that ensured a delay in order for MPs to properly scrutinise the withdrawal bill. Its passing left Johnson scrabbling to find a way to ram the deal through parliament before the 31 October deadline. Heather Stewart, Rowena Mason and Michael Savage make sense of this ongoing parliamentary quagmire.
As tens of thousands of anti-Brexiters took to the streets of London last weekend and Hong Kongers continued their pro-democracy protests, many others took to the streets around the world to make their voices heard. In Lebanon, the threat of a tax on WhatsApp proved the spark for a wave of protests against years of graft in Beirut. In Chile, a Santiago metro fare hike provided a similar charge to citizens furious with the country’s inequalities. People have also been out in the street in Bolivia (where Evo Morales looks to have won a new term); Ecuador, where Indigenous protesters helped scrap a new fuel tax; and in Catalonia, where the conviction of separatist politicians has led to fury. This week we travel around the world to try to explain some elements of this global wave of protest. Then Nesrine Malik writes about why protests have taken hold once more in the Arab world.
The edition also features an interview with Led By Donkeys, the guerrilla billboard activists who have done more than most in Britain to expose the hypocrisy of the Brexiters. We also feature an extract from a new book by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy which brings to light dozens of fresh allegations of sexual impropriety by Donald Trump. In our culture section there are interviews with Hannah Gadsby, whose Nanette special on Netflix made her a star of a new kind of comedy, as well as Tricky who talks movingly to Tim Jonze about the death of his daughter.
