‘A good man fundamentally’

Recently: Can you really switch off? Sara Robin on the growing resistance to addictive technology.

Today: What’s driving the rebellion against the prime minister of the United Kingdom? … A senator wanted for crimes against humanity refuses to leave his office in the Philippines. … &c.

For members: Why have the world’s shipping lanes become war zones? Arnaud Orain on the return of the armed merchant fleet. ... & The U.S. government opened a portal to its UFO files on Friday. But what are they actually releasing?

+ New music from World News …

Party vs. leader

Four British junior ministers resigned on Tuesday, each calling on Keir Starmer to step down as prime minister. Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips called him “a good man fundamentally”—before resigning herself. By nightfall, more than 90 Labour MPs had joined her in public, and the Telegraph reported that six of Starmer’s own cabinet had told him privately to set a date. The pound slipped against the dollar and the euro; the yield on 30-year UK government bonds reached its highest level since 1998. Starmer told a divided cabinet on Tuesday morning the country expected the government “to get on with governing.” Why is his own party turning on him?

Labour won a landslide 22 months ago. Last week it lost nearly 1,500 council seats in England, control of the Welsh Senedd for the first time in a century, and considerable ground to Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK. Real wages have inched up around 1 percent since Starmer took office; inflation has held at or above 3 percent for a year. And then there’s Peter Mandelson: Starmer named him ambassador to Washington in late 2024; the full extent of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein came out in September 2025; Starmer’s chief of staff resigned in February. The cumulative judgment within the party appears to be 22 months in the making—that Starmer hasn’t delivered the change he promised, and that Reform’s surge makes the cost of waiting until 2029 unbearable. Whether the rebels have a candidate they can agree on is another matter. A challenger will need 81 MPs to trigger a contest. No one yet has that, or appears close. It may be a long night or two.

Meanwhile

• Mr. Trump goes to Beijing. U.S. President Donald Trump departed Washington on Tuesday for a three-day state visit with China’s President Xi Jinping—along with an entourage of CEOs including Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Also this week, the Trump administration imposed fresh sanctions on 12 entities accused of facilitating Iranian oil sales to China. Trump told reporters he doesn’t need Xi’s help on Iran.
• On the run inside parliament. Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who oversaw the former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war as police chief, has taken refuge in the Philippine Senate after the International Criminal Court unsealed an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity. CCTV caught agents chasing him through Senate stairwells on Monday; riot police now surround the compound. He told a Manila radio station on Tuesday he’d “exhaust all available legal means” to avoid an involuntary trip to The Hague.
• The fossils are not what they seemed. In the meantime, the Philippine House impeaches Vice President Sara Duterte for a second time, sending the case to a Senate now led by a Duterte ally. … Russia test-launches its RS-28 intercontinental ballistic missile, known to NATO as Satan II. … Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, votes 93-0 to establish a special military tribunal in Jerusalem—livestreamed, with the death penalty an option—for some 300 Palestinians detained over the October 7 attacks. … The European Union approves sanctions on Israeli settler organizations after Hungary’s new prime minister, Péter Magyár, dropped a veto his predecessor, Viktor Orbán, had held for two years. … & Brazilian fossils that paleontologists spent decades interpreting as 540-million-year-old animal tracks turn out to be colonies of bacteria and algae.

Feature

Imperial silos

Why have the world’s shipping lanes become war zones? Arnaud Orain on the return of the armed merchant fleet.

On February 28, the United States and Israel struck Iran with several missile barrages, killing Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with several senior members of Iran’s leadership. By early March, they had crippled much of Iran’s offensive capabilities—but not enough to stop Iran from retaliating forcefully.

Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries roughly 25 percent of the world’s seaborne oil. U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to open the strait, threatening Iran with severe reprisals. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” And yet, Hormuz remains closed.

The U.S. concluded a ceasefire with the Houthis of Yemen only last May. The Houthis had been targeting ships through the Bab-el-Mandeb since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023. They have now threatened to close the strait again—choking off one of Saudi Arabia’s most important remaining oil-export routes—should the situation call for it.

How have the world’s maritime trade routes become theaters of war?

Arnaud Orain is the director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He’s the author of Le Monde confisqué: Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIe-XXIe siècle). Orain says the Houthis and Hormuz have shown that the U.S. Navy can no longer guarantee freedom of navigation. Without a dominant naval power, the oceans have once again become scenes of conflict. A range of countries are now building out their navies—and non-state forces are using cheap military technologies to threaten maritime trade routes.

The U.S. Navy isn’t the only fleet feeling the strain. France’s Marine nationale is stretched thin; so is Britain’s Royal Navy, and most others besides. If navies can’t protect merchant vessels, the merchant vessels will have to protect themselves. That, Orain says, is why merchant and naval fleets are now cooperating more closely. Before long, cargo ships may once again bear arms …

From the despatch

Disclosure, after a fashion

The U.S. government opened a portal to its UFO files on Friday. But what are they actually releasing?

Disclosure, after a fashion

On Friday, the U.S. Department of War launched a public website—war.gov/UFO—and posted 162 previously classified records on what the American government now calls unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. The files include roughly two dozen videos, totaling 41 minutes of military encounters between 2020 and 2026; archival photographs from the Apollo 12 and 17 missions; FBI reports going back to the late 1940s; and case files from the Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NASA, and the Department of Energy. More tranches, the DoW says, will follow every few weeks.

The administration of President Donald Trump calls this project PURSUE—the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (confirming: “U” stands for “UAP”)—and describes it as a “whole-of-government effort” to provide “maximum transparency” on a question the federal bureaucracy has kept largely to itself since 1947. Trump posted on his social-media platform, Truth Social, that Americans can now finally “decide for themselves.” It’s the most extensive release of information on UAP in American history. It’s also a sliver of what the U.S. government holds.

So why this—and why now?

New music

‘Sidestep—Edit’

Now to London for some spiky indie rock from the four-piece World News. The lyrics evoke frustration and conflict—wasted days, abandonment, accusation. But the pre-chorus builds, and the chorus pays off.