On the Today programme, his comments were disconnected, cliche-riddled and unremittingly stupid. But to clog the collective consciousness with nonsense is exactly the point

Had Reform merely announced its intention to suspend the asylum system for an entire parliamentary term, I’d have just ignored it. Even to dignify its policy platform with a response is to enter its alternate universe, in which it’s preparing for government. I prefer, if only fractionally, this universe we’re in, where the party hangs by a thread on the results of a parliamentary inquiry into Nigel Farage’s £5m gift from a disinterested well-wisher.

Had Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, gone on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme merely promising a British version of ICE, I still would have ignored it, not due to complacency, more due to a bone-penetrating despair that anyone, even he, would look at the US’s shadow militia, performing staged acts of unfettered violence and inhumanity, and think: “That looks cool – I bet I could get some political capital out of that.”

MEP Raphaël Glucksmann issues call after becoming social democrat candidate for 2027 presidential election

The European lawmaker Raphaël Glucksmann has urged the French centre left to wage an “existential battle” to prevent Marine Le Pen’s far right winning the 2027 presidential election after he was chosen as the social democrat candidate for the presidency.

“We’ve got to rid our hearts of the spirit of defeat,” Glucksmann, the founder of the small party Place Publique, said on Monday morning after his decisive win in a centre-left primary race held by the Socialist party.

Research challenges the notion that the growing visibility of crosses and other symbols reflects a revival of Christianity

Christian nationalism in Britain is being driven largely by people who rarely attend church and are more concerned with defending the country’s Christian heritage, according to research.

The report, by the thinktank Theos, identified five different groups within the UK in a survey that looked at their attitudes to Christianity and Britishness.

Exclusive: Former Brazilian environment minister warns of destruction as far-right scion favourite to become president

The former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva has said that if Flávio Bolsonaro becomes president he will seek to finish the “perverse project” of rampant rainforest destruction initiated by his jailed far-right father.

The Amazon was thrown into chaos during Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 presidency, when Brazil’s environment and Indigenous protection agencies were gutted and environmental criminals ran riot, causing surges in deforestation and violence.

Are we really living through ‘end times fascism’? The authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so.

In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaire to Gaza and the ongoing climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis, but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. However, they haven’t given up hope of a fightback.

Radical Thinking will be published every Saturday in the Politics Weekly feed

Extremists are on the rise globally – but UK activists have seen them off in the past in everything from football, politics, music and more. How did they do it?

Tariq Mehmood encountered the far right early – at primary school. “When white children surround you in the playground and sing, ‘God made little black people, he made them in the night, he made them in a hurry, and forgot to paint them white’, and the school doesn’t clamp down on that, then you’re living within the far right. It’s not one organisation, it’s a mass movement.”

Parties vow to challenge law in court, arguing that extra reward for those with 42% of support distorts public representation

• Europe live – latest updates

A controversial overhaul to electoral law that critics say is aimed at boosting Giorgia Meloni’s chances of clinging on to power in elections next year has been given final approval by the Italian parliament.

Meloni, the Italian prime minister, says the new system, which introduces a fully proportional model, including bonus seats for any coalition that wins the most votes, will bring about greater political stability, while opposition parties argue that it mainly serves the interests of those in power.

Little if any sign Bury Park is a place where any group might fear to tread, despite Tory MP’s comments to the contrary

From behind the counter of his chippie, Tanner Ahmed is wrestling with the notion that the regular stop-off point for fans attending Luton Town’s nearby football ground could be in a “no-go zone” for white people.

“The whole point of setting up was to cater for thousands who were coming through here every week, especially in the first year when the club was in the Premier League,” said Ahmed, affectionately known as Mr T, in the Bury Park area, a predominantly Asian district of Luton.

After a surprise first-round victory, critics suggest son of disgraced ex-president could seek to continue his father’s authoritarian project

• Flávio’s surprise first-round win highlights rapid rise of Brazil’s House of Bolsonaro

Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, has vowed to “re-democratise” the South American country, increasing fears about a move into authoritarian rule if he wins power.

Brazil was re-democratised in the 1980s after a brutal 21-year dictatorship that Flávio’s father, the disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has long praised.

A thriving economy, a model green transition, social advances – Spain’s PM shouldn’t be in trouble. Yet he is, and it’s a lesson for progressives everywhere

To progressives across the west, Spain has been a rare glimmer of hope in a world where far-right parties are increasingly entering government. Under Pedro Sánchez, who became prime minister in 2018, the country has combined a post-Covid economic boom with a bold green energy transition programme, and a pro-immigration stance with a principled opposition to the war agenda of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet, at the end of next month, this rare beacon of democratic progress could fall.

On Monday Sánchez called a snap general election, set for 29 November, after two decrees to address the country’s housing crisis were voted down in the lower chamber by politicians from rightwing parties. Speaking from the staircase of the Moncloa palace, Sánchez admitted that his government had not achieved all it had set out to do. “Many injustices remain to be corrected … particularly regarding inequality in public services and access to housing,” he said, adding: “To do more, we need to renew and expand public support.”

Paolo Gerbaudo is a senior researcher at the faculty of political science and sociology of Complutense University in Madrid and a lead researcher at the Alameda Institute