
Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice
In 2022, they opened their arms to Ukrainian refugees. But this year, the arrival of more than 300 asylum seekers has split the community. Can the rift be healed?
It’s Sunday morning and in the East Sussex town of Crowborough a few dozen anti-migrant activists are waving union jacks outside a travel agent. Their sound system is blasting out a song about “lefty lemons”.
A few yards away, a similar number of protesters are supporting the asylum seekers being housed at a nearby military camp. Their signs read “Humanity has no borders” and “Civilisation fails when hatred prevails”; they’re playing classics about love and peace by Bob Marley, the Beatles and Aretha Franklin.
Continue reading...Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:27 GMT
Guardiola’s success at Manchester City was underpinned by financial cheating. Now he can only double down on his adherence to the owners
“Do you know the question that you are asking me? Today, do you honestly think it is my job to make this kind of question happen …” Cut to the long, painful pause. Chuck in a deep, shaming stare, eyes that have suddenly become death rays of betrayal and disgust and Pep Guardiola himself transformed from a man cheerfully toasting his own FA Cup final victory to a grizzled chief detective addressing a room full of convicted perverts.
Guardiola had the wind entirely at his back at this point, sitting in the Wembley press room an hour after Manchester City’s 6-0 defeat of Watford in May 2019. Success drowns out every other noise in football. To be good is also to be good, noble, virtuous. History is written by the domestic treble winners. Right up until the moment it isn’t.
Continue reading...Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:00:17 GMT
The Emirati royal is increasingly influential on the world stage. Some see him as a visionary. Others compare him to a Bond villain. Who is he?
On the night of 12 November 1993, a slim, young Brazilian named Royce Gracie stepped into an octagonal cage in Denver, Colorado, and found himself staring up into the eyes of a giant. Gerard Gordeau, a Dutch kickboxer, stood five inches taller, weighed almost three stone more than him, and had an extra decade of fighting experience under his belt. Now the pair were about to engage in bare-knuckle combat: no judges, no separation of opponents by size, no respite until someone either got knocked out cold or begged for mercy.
The fight lasted barely 100 seconds. In that time, Gracie calmly tripped Gordeau up, jumped on his back, and clutched at his throat, forcing the big man to hammer the floor in submission.
Continue reading...Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:27 GMT
His videos of cats, loopy contraptions and theme park rides round the heavens (and his back garden) have notched up a billion views. We meet Chris Burton in the suburban home where it all happens
Chris Burton is getting ready to redecorate his house. The first reason for this is quite sad. His beloved cat Bella died recently, aged 17, and the indignities of old age mean a new carpet is in order. The other reason is that Burton, AKA Half-Asleep Chris, is turning his dining room into a recreation of London’s Rainforest Cafe (also RIP – it closed in 2023). There will be temple walls and a talking tree, a fish tank and fronds. Thunderstorms every 20 minutes.
He’s doing most of the work himself, he explains, as we edge past an 8ft fibreglass tapir in the hall. But he’ll need an electrician to rig the starry ceiling and a plumber to check the waterfall for leaks. I sneak a feel of the tapir: firm yet squishy, foam and five layers of silicone over a steel frame. Most people will only see rather than touch it, yet it has exactly the same amount of give as – I imagine – the real deal. This lack of half-measures is very Half-Asleep Chris.
Continue reading...Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:29 GMT
These visualisations from exclusive polling modelling show how the UK parliament could change under different voting systems
New analysis produced exclusively for the Guardian reveals how different voting systems would return significantly different seat totals in the UK parliament, based on recent polling.
While the current first past the post (FPTP) system could leave Labour short of a majority with 250 seats, the modelling shows how proportional systems would be likely to reduce the number of seats given to the leading party – and give the UK a more finely balanced parliament that better represents the votes people cast.
Continue reading...Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:45:42 GMT
Sometimes you want prestige drama that roils with nuance and complexity. And sometimes you want Armitage shouting in a cagoule
Dr Ethan Winter is a maverick, a wildcard, a lone wolf who won’t play by the rules. “Winter!” gasps DI Lauren Bell as the muscular outsider bursts into a police interrogation room and proceeds to subject a tremulous pensioner to the full force of his waxed cagoule. “You can’t do this!” But he can do this. And he will do this. Why? Because he’s Dr Ethan Winter, dammit, one of the greatest forensic pathologists of his generation; a bearded genius whose approach to obstacles is as uncompromising as his approach to tremulous pensioners.
And yet. Dr Ethan Winter is troubled. We know this because Winter – the new six-part ITV police procedural that shares his starkly unseasonable surname – keeps cutting to scenes in which our protagonist paces silently around his fashionably underlit Bristol flat while scowling into the middle distance. Has he misplaced the keys to his vintage sports car? No, they’re over there, next to the gruesome autopsy photos he keeps on the kitchen table in the hope they’ll prompt visitors to ask what made him want to be a forensic doctor (“I became a forensic doctor … to mend sores”). Could it be, then, that the source of his malaise is … complicated? That it could in fact have something to do with the murder, a decade ago, of his fiancee – a case which, though ostensibly closed, continues to raise enough questions to provide the series with its narrative backbone? While leaving sufficient time in each episode for the agitated hunk to solve a new, self-contained crime? It’s certainly possible!
Continue reading...Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:00:18 GMT
Senior Downing Street officials reach out to thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test backing for reversing Brexit
Senior Downing Street officials have been reaching out to thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test public support for the UK rejoining the EU.
Aides to Andy Burnham have been talking to EU experts in a range of organisations about how the public would view a promise to rejoin, as momentum builds behind including such a pledge in the next Labour manifesto.
Continue reading...Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:33:20 GMT
Swift actions of attacked pilot Smit Machchhar allowed passengers and other off-duty pilots to assist in subduing co-pilot and allowing plane to land safely
Smit Machchhar was lying on the floor of the flydubai flight deck, covered with blood, when he managed to click the release to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to gain entry, overpower his attacker and save 174 passengers on board.
Moments earlier, Machchhar’s fellow pilot had stabbed him, in an apparent effort to crash the plane which was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv. Machchhar, an Indian citizen from Mumbai, is being treated in a hospital in Saudi Arabia’s north-western city of Tabuk, where the plane landed safely.
Continue reading...Thu, 01 Oct 2026 02:56:02 GMT
PM also defends decision to release suspects on bail and expresses ‘complete confidence’ in security services
There are “strong indications” that Iran played a role in events in which five men were arrested near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire as part of a terror investigation, Andy Burnham has said.
Speaking to the media at the end of the Labour party conference in Liverpool, Burnham said he could not give any more details amid a police investigation, but that Iran was believed to be involved.
Continue reading...Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:00:12 GMT
Unionists spurn NI secretary’s attempt to resolve impasse after nationalists block controversial Garvaghy Road march
Talks to end the Drumcree parade dispute are on a knife-edge after Jamie Bryson, the legal adviser of the Orange Order, said it would “not surrender” to a deal proposed by the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Bryant.
With echoes of the former Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley’s “no surrender” mantra of the 1980s, Bryson told supporters in Portadown that Bryant could keep his deal.
Continue reading...Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:31:18 GMT