UK - Andy Burnham’s pledge at the Labour conference that the UK ‘could go all the way’ to rejoining Europe was lustily applauded by the party faithful. And yet a glance at the chaos raging across the Continent – from a France amid the turmoil of violent demonstrations to socialist Spain’s snap election following housing protests, and Germany in despair as its motor industry collapses – shows just how deluded Andy’s EU fan club really are. Meanwhile, the euro is in freefall, reaching a 17-month low against the dollar. Britons queuing at passport controls at EU airports will be assuaged by the slump in the currency’s value making continental travel cheaper. But it is hardly the most propitious moment to start talking about reversing Brexit.

USA - Marco Rubio portrayed the United States as the defender of western civilisation as he urged Europe to “awaken from its slumber”. Speaking in front of the Acropolis in Athens, the US secretary of state said the West’s achievements “set us apart from the rest of the world”. He celebrated Michelangelo, Isaac Newton and Christopher Columbus as the embodiment of two and a half millennia of shared Judaeo-Christian values. “In Athens, we found the first full realisation of all the essential traits that would come to define the West,” he said on the Pnyx, the hilltop where ancient Greeks gathered for public debate. “We should marvel at what our forefathers carved out of this countryside. The story of our civilisation is the greatest story ever known to man. And it began here, with the first men and women of the West.” “We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago,” he said.

UK - Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, has warned that further damage to Britain’s credibility from rising spending may trigger a repeat of the Liz Truss crisis. Mr Bailey used a speech less than three weeks before John Healey’s first Budget to argue that growth must be pursued against a backdrop of heavy national debt and nervous markets. Speaking to fellow central bankers on Thursday, he did not directly discuss the Budget but described a fragile financial world in which imprudent tax and spending plans can undermine system stability. He said the crisis after Ms Truss’s 2022 mini-Budget, which triggered extremely sharp rises in Britain’s borrowing costs, “was an illustration of what can happen in these much-changed conditions”.

UK - Defaults have been increasing for the last 18 months as consumer finances are hit by higher mortgage rates and energy prices. The number of Britons defaulting on credit card debt has increased in six consecutive quarters for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, amid mounting pressure on household budgets. More lenders saw credit card defaults rise in the third quarter than fall, by a net balance of 26 percentage points, according to Bank of England survey data. Default rates have now been increasing for 18 months and banks anticipate another increase in the final three months of this year.

USA - Muslim Leaders Say They Will Force Sharia Law Into America either by Ballot or Bullet. On November 5th 2025, more than 40 Muslims were ELECTED into multiple government positions, from mayors, to judges, legislators and even school boards all across the United States. It's the LARGEST Muslim government takeover in American history. Who allowed us to become so infiltrated from within like this?!

GERMANY - Germany really is going through a bad patch. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s governing CDU would currently win just 17.5 per cent of the vote. The SPD has drifted to the far Left, and in Berlin, for the first time, a radical Left-wing, anti-Semitic party, not unlike Britain’s Green Party, is threatening to take power. In the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, a far-Right politician has been president of the state parliament since Tuesday afternoon. Germany’s economic figures are dismayingly mediocre. There is a little growth, but even that comes on the back of €900 billion in new debt agreed by a government that was once deemed a “Grand Coalition” but is now a modest shadow of its former self, enjoying ever-shrinking popular support. Germany today is a nation of sleepwalkers. We are walking into an omnicrisis that stretches from our national football team to the automobile industry and into the highest levels of German politics.

USA - Recently, President Trump was asked about the upcoming midterm elections. And his answer was shocking: “I think if the Democrats get in, we will end up in a financial depression. We will go into a depression the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It’ll be 1929.” If he’s right, we could be in for a bloodbath in the weeks ahead. Speaking of 1929… If you had $100,000 in stocks at the peak, you had about $11,000 left by 1932. And the Dow didn’t get back to even for 25 years. Perhaps Trump is right to be concerned.

FRANCE - Even by French standards, the protests that have convulsed the country this week have been more dramatic than the usual flare-ups. Lecornu and Le Pen have two masters now: not just the angry protesters on the streets, but the anxious global bond investors who are voting with their feet. Investors don’t see a country planning to live within its means. So they have driven French bond yields – the cost of government borrowing – to the highest level in decades. This has pushed the “spread” between French and German bond yields to levels that have prompted fears of a wider eurozone crisis – one that could rope in the European Central Bank (ECB) and set the whole bloc on fire. “If France fails, the whole of Europe fails,” says Desmond Lachman, of the American Enterprise Institute. And he warns that the contagion could even wash up in Britain and America. “What bothers me is that all of this is playing out at a time when the world’s largest economy looks like it’s on its own path towards a day of reckoning. So the last thing the world needs now is a French debt crisis.”

USA - Donald Trump could launch strikes against Iran before November’s midterm elections, US sources have claimed. The US president has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans to attack Iranian targets in a display of strength before the election, according to The Atlantic. “It would make the president look like he got a win,” a Republican source claimed. “The department’s job is to develop and present military options to the president,” a Pentagon official said when asked for comment, without further clarification. Hawks in the administration believe a pre-midterm attack would show the president’s determination to reduce fuel prices – although renewed fighting risks driving them up instead. It would also further deplete the US munitions stockpiles, which Mr Trump has admitted are running low despite previous denials by top officials, including Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary.

USA - A new report shows the scale of US losses during the conflict with Iran, which began in February. At least 81 US military aircraft have been lost or damaged since the beginning of the war in Iran, totaling as much as $3.3 billion, according to a new Congressional Research Service report. Some of America's most advanced warplanes are among the losses, including a damaged F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter and 12 F-15E Strike Eagle fighters that were destroyed or damaged. Three of the F-15 jets, worth more than $30 million each, were shot down in friendly fire over Kuwait on March 2, with another shot down over Iran in April. Another massive loss was at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, each estimated at $30 to $50 million. The Congressional Research Service also noted the loss of one $270 million E-3 Sentry surveillance plane... Last month, US Central Command estimated that the total cost of the war in Iran grew to $43.6 billion, a $5 billion increase from August.