The obvious way to read the surprise resignation of Kezia Dugdale as leader of the Scottish Labour party is to cast her as the victim of a likely putsch by forces loyal to Jeremy Corbyn. According to this view, Dugdale jumped before she was pushed, pre-empting the challenge she would have faced sooner or later as punishment for opposing Corbyn from the start – a position rendered unsustainable by the UK leader’s better-than-expected performance in June’s general election.

Published by: The Guardian

The word from the White House is that the events at Charlottesville are behind them now, and they’re ready to move on. Sure, there is still some fallout from the 12 August march by neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as from Donald Trump’s subsequent declaration that those racists and fascists who carried flaming torches and swastika flags included some “very fine people”. There are reverberations too from the president’s initial non-condemnation condemnation, in which if he saw “hatred, bigotry and violence” at all, he saw it “on many sides”.

Published by: The Guardian

Among the many terrifying facts that have emerged in the last several days, perhaps the scariest relate to the nuclear button over which now hovers the finger of Donald Trump. It turns out that, of all the powers held by this or any other US president, the least checked or balanced is his authority over the world’s mightiest arsenal. He exercises this awesome, civilisation-ending power alone.

Published by: The Guardian

This was the moment many Americans, along with the rest of the world, feared. This – precisely this – was what alarmed us most about the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. Not that he would hire useless people or that he would tweet all day or use high office to enrich himself and his family or that he’d be cruel, bigoted and divisive – though those were all concerns. No, the chief anxiety provoked by the notion of Trump in the White House was this: that he was sufficiently reckless, impulsive and stupid to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Published by: The Guardian

What do Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They all profess to be religious. As a new study shows, people think the worst of non-believers. What does this mean for US voters?

Published by: The Guardian

The first thing you notice is what’s not there. Gaze at pictures of the crowds that filled the streets of London in the days that followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales – whether laying cellophane-wrapped flowers outside Kensington Palace or silently watching her flag-draped coffin head to Westminster Abbey – and there is a striking absence. No one is holding up a phone. Instead, people clutch handmade signs or newspapers whose sentiments they shared. Back in 1997, holding up a front page you agreed with was the closest thing we had to a retweet.

Published by: The Guardian

There is, inevitably, much to feast on in the full transcript of the Wall Street Journal’s interview with Donald Trump, which that paper did not want published but which was leaked to Politico and is now available for all to see.

Published by: The Guardian