Serbia (3-5-1-1)

Predrag Rajkovic (GK) No chance with England’s goal. Denied Alexander-Arnold before making a stunning save from Kane. 7

Milos Veljkovic (RCB) England’s left-sided problems meant the defender had a quiet night. Was able to step forward. 6

Nikola Milenkovic (CB) Too deep when England broke through in the 13th minute. Unable to cope with Bellingham’s charge. 6

Strahinja Pavlovic (LCB) Struggled when isolated against Saka at first. Warmed to the challenge after half-time. Decent display. 6

Andrija Zivkovic (RWB) A lively presence who delivered some teasing crosses. England kept a close eye on him. 6

Nemanja Gudelj (CM) Evening summed up when he hurt himself fouling Bellingham. Booked and removed at half-time. 4

Sasa Lukic (CM) Reduced to fouling Bellingham at times. Nowhere to be seen when England went ahead. Substituted. 5

Sergej Milinkovic-Savic (CM) Caused problems when he moved into a higher position in the second half. Clever player. 6

Filip Kostic (LWB) Often caught high, leaving Saka free to roam forward. Forced off with an early injury. 5

Dusan Vlahovic (AM) On the periphery for long spells but flashed a dangerous ball across goal. Almost equalised. 6

Aleksandar Mitrovic (CF) The big striker fired Serbia’s best chance wide. Appealed in vain for a penalty. Ineffective. 5

Substitutes: Filip Mladenovic (for Kostic, 43): Worried England with driving runs down the left. 7; Ivan Ilic (for Gudelj, ht): Helped Serbia take control of the game. 7; Dusan Tadic (for Mitrovic, 61): Huge cheer when he came on. Made a difference. 7; Luka Jovic (for Lukic, 61): The striker was thrown on as Serbia chased an equaliser. 6; Veljko Birmancevic (for Zivkovic, 74): 6

England (4-3-3)

Jordan Pickford (GK) Earned England victory with a save from Vlahovic. Stayed focused, kicked well. One nervy punch. 7

Kyle Walker (RB) Breakthrough stemmed from his piercing pass. Missed a chance to make it 2-0. Defended well. 7

John Stones (CB) Looked sharp after recovering from illness and shaking off an ankle injury. Composed as ever. 8

Marc Guéhi (CB) Strong and snappy on his tournament debut. Harry Maguire’s inexperienced replacement made some important blocks. 8

Kieran Trippier (LB) Solid defensively but reluctance to use his left foot hindered England. Required treatment late on. 6

Trent Alexander-Arnold (CM) Pressed well in first half but lucky Mitrovic did not punish a mistake. Lacked control. 6

Declan Rice (CM) Unselfish and positionally aware. Made interceptions and always seemed to be in the right place. 8

Jude Bellingham (CM) Dominated the big stage. Surged in for 1-0 and also worked hard off the ball. 8 MOTM

Bukayo Saka (RW) Zipped down the right to cross for Bellingham’s goal. Dangerous dribbling. But he tired. 7

Harry Kane (CF) Little service. Few touches but almost headed in the second. Wasted time by winning free-kicks. 6

Phil Foden (LW) Drifted inside to link the play but got crowded out. Questions remain over his international form. 5

Substitutes: Conor Gallagher (for Alexander-Arnold, 69): Came on with England’s midfield toiling. 6; Jarrod Bowen (for Saka, 76): Immediately made a chance for Kane. 6; Kobbie Mainoo (for Bellingham, 86): A late replacement as England shut up shop. 6

England are up and running. Again. It has been a happy feature of the Gareth Southgate years that his team always win their opening game at tournaments. It never used to be the case with England but to the list that features Tunisia, Croatia and Iran can be added the name of Serbia.

It was a nervy second half, a stark contrast to the enjoyment and expression of the first, which had been epitomised by Jude Bellingham, whose early bullet header would prove decisive. England dropped deep, stirring a few uncomfortable memories but trusting their ability to hold an extremely physical Serbia at bay.

There were periods when England struggled to get out, their passing options were restricted and it was easy to fret. Serbia pushed. And yet in the final analysis, Jordan Pickford was not overly tested, the goalkeeper’s only big save being the tip-over from Dusan Vlahovic’s drive on 82 minutes.

It was the players in front of him who put in the hard yards, who brought the resilience, particularly the central defenders, John Stones and Marc Guéhi. Their only previous appearances together for England had been in the home defeats by Hungary and Iceland. This was much better.

Bellingham had been the star turn before the interval, a heady mix of aggression and incision, and even though the team performance was far from perfect, the result meant everything. The pre-tournament worries had been numerous. Fitness. Players out of position. The burden of favouritism. England have a basis from which to build.

Southgate’s midfield was always going to be a subplot and it was effective in the first half, Phil Foden’s licence to drift into central areas from the left pronounced. Bellingham was the No 10. He was also the left-sided No 8. He dropped deep at times. But it was when he attacked the six-yard box in the 13th minute that he gave England the start they had dreamed about.

The celebratory pose was familiar, Bellingham standing with his arms outstretched, and what a header it was, loaded with raw aggression but control, too. Trent Alexander-Arnold had found Kyle Walker and it was the right-back who ignited the move, ushering in Bukayo Saka up the right. Across came Strahinja Pavlovic, intent on taking man, ball, either, both. He got a bit of the ball when Saka crossed, affecting the flight. Bellingham read it, surging inside Andrija Zivkovic to plant the header high into the net.

Serbia gave no quarter, leaving plenty on England in the challenges, Bellingham feeling a few in the first half. It seemed to fire him up even more. He was in the mood and he decorated the first half with some wonderful moments. How about the side-on volleyed crossfield pass with the outside of his right boot? Or the shoulder drop, the surge upfield, the riding of a challenge and then another thrilling run? It looked as though he was in the playground.

Alexander-Arnold had a few nice moments before the interval but he also had a very bad one when his loose touch allowed Zivkovic to supply Aleksandar Mitrovic for a meaty drive that flew wide. ­Alexander-Arnold was a mixed bag and Southgate replaced him with Conor Gallagher in the second half.

Saka menaced up the right with his quick feet and explosive acceleration. He had the beating of his man and he also released Walker for a run after Alexander-Arnold had stretched to make an interception. Walker’s low cross was just in front of Foden.

Serbia pushed higher from the restart, especially the wing-backs in their 5-3-2 system. Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, the dangerman midfielder, was given greater scope. Dusan Tadic came off the bench. This Serbia team usually score. Their support turned up the decibel levels. The tension was extraordinary.

A detail from the first period was that Kane touched the ball only twice. The captain was more prominent after the interval, although much of his work was more akin to wrestling in his efforts to hold the ball up, to give England an outlet.

Serbia knocked England out of their stride and it was alarming to see Southgate’s players sink back. They invited pressure and Serbia were close to getting in on goal, Pickford diving in on one occasion to grab the ball in front of Mitrovic.

The second half was not a siege of the England goal but it had some of the trappings of one. Serbia made it uncomfortable. Southgate introduced Jarrod Bowen for Saka and the substitute did well, crossing for Kane to extend Predrag Rajkovic with a header. It was a brilliant save from the goalkeeper, who was able to tip the  ball up against the crossbar and away.

It was at the other end where ­England had to get it right. Pickford’s save from Vlahovic was a good one and when Kane made a clearing header to repel a shot from the substitute Veljko Birmancevic it was an example of all hands to the pump. But England did enough.

A missing US tourist has been found dead on a beach on a small Greek island west of Corfu, local media reported.

The body of the man was found Sunday on a rocky, fairly remote beach on the island of Mathraki by another tourist. He had been reported missing Thursday by his host, a Greek American friend. The tourist had last been seen Tuesday at a cafe in the company of two female tourists who have since left the island.

No further details about the victim, including a name or hometown, were immediately available.

Mathraki, which has a population of 100, is a 3.9 sq km (1.2 sq mile) heavily wooded island, west of the better-known island of Corfu.

This was the latest in a string of recent cases in which tourists on the Greek islands have died or gone missing. Some, if not all, had set out on hikes in very hot temperatures.

The body of a 74-year-old Dutch tourist was found by a fire department drone on Saturday lying face down in a ravine about 300 meters (330 yards) from the spot where he was last observed last Sunday, walking with some difficulty in the blistering heat.

Dr Michael Mosley, a noted British television presenter and author, was found dead last Sunday on the island of Symi. A coroner concluded that he had died the previous Wednesday, shortly after going for a hike over difficult, rocky terrain.

On Friday, two French tourists were reported missing on Sikinos, a relatively secluded Cyclades island in the Aegean Sea, with less than 400 permanent residents.

The two women, ages 64 and 73, had left their respective hotels to meet.

On the island of Amorgos, also in the Cyclades, authorities are still searching for a 59-year-old tourist reported missing since Tuesday, when he had gone on a solo hike in very hot conditions. US media identified that missing tourist as retired Los Angeles county deputy sheriff Albert Calibet of Hermosa Beach, California.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating after a Southwest Airlines flight reportedly plunged to “within 400ft” of the Pacific Ocean during a flight.

A memo distributed to Southwest pilots, obtained by Bloomberg, said that the Boeing 737 Max 8 plunged at a rate of 4,000ft a minute off the coast of Hawaii, coming within hundreds of feet of the ocean before climbing to safety.

News of the incident comes as investigators said a Southwest-operated Boeing 737 Max 8 sustained significant damage after it did a “Dutch roll” during a flight from Phoenix to Oakland in May.

The plunge off the coast of Hawaii occurred on 11 April, amid adverse weather conditions. The plane had been flying from Honolulu to Lihue when it experienced the rapid descent, Bloomberg reported. The report said the descent took the plane to about 400 feet above the ocean, according to data from a flight tracking website.

No one was injured. “Nothing is more important to Southwest than Safety,” the airline said in a statement provided to media outlets. Through our robust Safety Management System, the event was addressed appropriately as we always strive for continuous improvement.”

The FAA told CNN that it learned of the incident immediately and opened an investigation. The plane eventually re-routed to Honolulu.

In the separate incident, on Friday Bloomberg reported that a Boeing 737 Max suffered damage to parts of the plane’s structure after it went into a “Dutch roll” during a Southwest Airlines flight in May.

The incident happened as the jet cruised at 34,000 ft from Arizona to California. Associated Press reported that the plane landed safely, but said Southwest did not notify the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) about the roll or damage to the jetliner until 7 June.

“Following the event, SWA performed maintenance on the airplane and discovered damage to structural components,” the NTSB said.

A dutch roll occurs when the plane’s tail slides from side to side, and the plane rocks in a way that causes the wings to roll up and down.

A report by the FAA said that “substantial” damage was discovered to a unit that controls backup power to the plane’s rudder. It is unclear what triggered the incident, which was the latest to involve a Boeing 737 Max aircraft.

In January the FAA ordered nearly 200 Boeing 737 Max 9 to stop flying after a chunk of fuselage blew out of the plane mid-flight. The planes were allowed to return to the air after undergoing an expansive inspection and maintenance process.

Last year Southwest agreed to pay a record-setting $140m civil penalty after a December 2022 holiday meltdown left 2 million passengers stranded at airports around the US. The airline canceled 8,000 flights over a four-day period, following a winter storm.

The US Department of Transportation found that Southwest violated consumer protection laws by failing to provide adequate customer service assistance “via its call center to hundreds of thousands of customers”, as well as failing to provide prompt flight status notifications to more than 1 million passengers and prompt refunds to thousands.

An England fan and one police officer have been left with heavy head wounds after hooligans attacked a bar where Serbia supporters were drinking before the Serbia v England game at Euro 2024.

Shortly after 3.30pm local time, tens of Serbs standing outside a bar on Arminstraße in central Gelsenkirchen were targeted with projectiles, according to witnesses to the violence.

“Chairs, bottles, everything you can imagine suddenly came down,” said one eyewitness. The perpetrators of the violence fled the scene as about 200 German riot police arrived.

One man, said to be from Birmingham, was left with heavy wounds to his head as he was caught up in the fighting. He was seen receiving medical attention including heavy bandaging to the head. A plainclothes police officer was also treated for a blow to the head.

It is understood a group of hooligans, whose nationality has not been confirmed, had been seen by British police “spotters” rushing towards a bar in which about 30 Serbia fans were enjoying a drink five hours before the kick-off of England’s first game.

The German riot police vans were called in but arrived shortly after the attack. About 200 officers sealed off the bar from further attacks while smaller squads of riot police were despatched to hunt down the perpetrators. A police spokesman said that no arrests had been made.

More than 30,000 England fans – only 20,000 of whom are believed to have tickets – have arrived in Gelsenkirchen for the game with Serbia. The match has been designated as “high risk” due to the reputation of the two fanbases, with the police last week warning that up to 500 Serbian hooligans bent on violence could seek to cause trouble.

Some reports claimed that Albanians were involved in instigating the violence but a German police spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

British police have been working in close cooperation with their German counterparts, with undercover spotters from both nations working among the supporters drinking in the bars around Gelsenkirchen in west Germany.

There has been an uptick of football disorder in recent years in England and Wales related to domestic matches, leading to concerns that such behaviour could spill over into internationals.

A downward trend in terms of the number of arrests at domestic football games has been sharply reversed post-Covid, with the number now at the heights of a decade ago.

As of August 2023, there were 1,624 football banning orders in force, an increase of 24% compared with the year before. Within the 2022-23 season, 682 banning orders were issued, an annual increase of 32%.

All those under banning orders have had to surrender their passports for the duration of the tournament in Germany.

Millions of Americans are facing “dangerously hot conditions”, the National Weather Service said, with a heatwave set to hit the midwest and north-east US from Monday.

Michigan, Ohio and western Pennsylvania were all under heat warnings starting Monday, with alerts in place until Friday evening. Meteorologists warned that the heat will spread east through the week, with a “heat dome” expected to trap high temperatures across New York, Washington DC and Boston.

The warnings come as states in the south were experiencing higher than usual temperatures on Sunday. Phoenix, in Arizona, was under a heat warning, with temperatures expected to reach 110F (43C), while officials in Atlanta, Georgia, opened a cooling center over the weekend as temperatures reached 100F.

The NWS said an excessive heat watch will be in place over north-east Indiana, western Pennsylvania and most of Michigan and Ohio from Monday. It warned people to expect “dangerously hot conditions”, with heat index values of 100F (38C) or higher likely.

The heat index, or apparent temperature, combines the air temperature with humidity to calculate what heat feels like to the human body.

People in those areas should drink plenty of fluids, avoid the sun, and stay in air-conditioned rooms, the NWS said. It warned that drivers should avoid leaving children or pets in unattended vehicles, as car interiors “will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes”.

Detroit, Michigan, is likely to see its worst heatwave in 20 years, the Associated Press reported. Monday is expected to see heat indices of 100F, which will last through the week.

Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, said residents should “check on older neighbors, and have a plan if the heat becomes too much”, the Ironton Tribune reported. The emergency management authority for Delaware county, in the center of the state, published a list of “cooling centers” where people can escape the heat.

New York City and other parts of the state are expected to see heat index temperatures of up to 105F (41C) in the coming week. Governor Kathy Hochul said people should “take every precaution they can” over the coming week – including bracing for severe thunderstorms which are expected to hit on Friday.

A heat dome is expected to prolong the extreme heat. A heat dome occurs when high pressure traps hot air over a region, causing temperatures on the ground to rise further.

While some areas will see cooler temperatures at night, there will be areas of extreme heat, with little or no overnight relief, from eastern Kansas to Maine, according to a National Weather Service heat risk map.

It comes as authorities evacuated at least 1,200 people in Los Angeles county on Saturday, as a wildfire spread over thousands of acres near a major highway and threatened nearby structures.

Experts say that the climate crisis, triggered by burning fossil fuels and deforestation, will increase the number of devastating heatwaves around the world.

In 2023, the hottest year on record for the planet, the US had the most heatwaves – abnormally hot weather lasting more than two days – since 1936. In the south and south-west, last year was the worst on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Last year a report by Climate Central, an environmental non-profit organization, found that a total of 175 of the 244 US cities analyzed had at least one week with extraordinarily warm temperatures.

Heat-related deaths have increased in the US in each of the last three years, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. There were 1,602 such deaths in 2021; 1,722 in 2022; and 2,302 in 2023.

Anton Andreev, a Russian soldier from the fifth company of the 1009th regiment, painted a bleak picture of Russia’s offensive in the Ukrainian northern region of Kharkiv.

His unit had been decimated, he said, with only 12 out of 100 soldiers still alive as they came under constant Ukrainian fire and drones in Vovchansk, a prime target of Russia’s advances.

“They just chop us up. We are sent under machine guns, under drones in daylight, like meat. And commanders just shout ‘forward and forward’,” Andreev said in a video message.

Fighting has been raging near the city of Kharkiv since Russian troops crossed the border to open a new front on 9 May.

In the first week of the offensive, Russian troops seized about 99 sq miles of Ukrainian territory – some of its biggest gains in 18 months – raising serious questions about Kyiv’s ability to defend itself.

But Ukraine has been largely able to stabilise the front, alleviating immediate fears in the west that Moscow might be able to encircle Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city.

“I don’t know if I will get out of this or not, but I need to say this to honour the memory of those who died like meat here because of certain individuals,” Andreev said in the clip, which was first published by the Russian outlet Astra and verified by the Guardian.

“You walk through the street, and everything seems to be fine,” he continued. “But then you get caught up in a massacre. During the first night, half the company immediately died.”

Russian state media and senior officials continue to say its troops are on the advance in the direction of Kharkiv. Putin has claimed that Russian losses were “of course several times less than on the Ukrainian side” and the Kremlin has also gone to great lengths to ensure that accounts such as Andreev’s are kept from the public.

Ever since Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in the summer of 2023, Moscow has purged some of the leading nationalist voices who had been allowed to criticise the country’s war efforts. It has jailed Igor Strelkov, a popular nationalist blogger and former FSB officer who had become a vocal critic of how the Kremlin has handled the invasion, and last month authorities arrested Maj Gen Ivan Popov, a widely respected commander in Russia who brought up problems on the battlefield, including deaths and injuries the army was suffering from Ukrainian attacks.

The cohort of influential military bloggers now largely toe the government line, painting an upbeat picture of Moscow’s advances while predicting Ukraine’s immediate collapse.

But on social media, dozens of posts have sprung up with Russians searching for their missing relatives in the Kharkiv offensive, hinting at the staggeringly high number of losses Moscow continues to suffer.

Some relatives have criticised the minimal training troops reportedly received before the offensive.

“I haven’t heard from my brother since the 12 May when they were sent to Volchanks,” wrote Yevgeni, in one post on the social media platform VK. “I am concerned that the training was only a week. Is that even legal?” Yevgeni added.

Despite the mass casualties, overall support for the war in Russia remains high, driven partly by non-stop state propaganda and a lack of alternative viewpoints.

A survey published by the independent Levada pollster showed that 79% of Russians supported the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine. However, half supported initiating peace talks, while almost 40% said they would prefer to return to the period before Moscow invaded Ukraine.

In a rare protest, a group of Russian women made up of wives of some of the 300,000 Russian men conscripted in September 2022, gathered this month outside the defence ministry in Moscow to demand the return of their relatives.

The authorities have recently stepped up their efforts to crack down on the movement known as the Way Home, designating the group as a “foreign agent”, a term that carries negative Soviet-era connotations of spying.

The Russian military leadership has also gone after the growing number of deserters.

The independent Russian news outlet, Verstka published a report that alleged Russia’s military abducted hundreds of mobilised soldiers unwilling to fight and sent them into the trenches at gunpoint.

Moscow has so far been able to replenish its troops without ordering a mass mobilisation by offering recruits generous wages and signing bonuses. It has been able to recruit about 30,000-40,000 soldiers every month, according to an estimate by the UK defence ministry.

Ukraine is facing a shortage of munitions, fighters, and air defences, and is also suffering mass casualties.

And while Russia’s offensive in Kharkiv appears to have stalled for now, the push has managed to achieve at least one of its goals: to draw Ukrainian critical reserves into the region, away from defensive positions in the east, as Russian forces have continued to advance on the eastern axes, signalling their commitment to pressing ahead and trying to take the entire Donetsk region.

Far right? Hard right? Radical right? Or just plain right? The success in the recent EU elections of parties such as Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, or RN, (the rebadged Front National), and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has generated a debate about whether the label “far right” should be retired because, as Spectator editor Fraser Nelson argues, many parties that carry that moniker are “now mainstream in a way that wasn’t the case 15 years ago”.

Such parties are, for Nelson, better categorised as “new right”. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, whose party the Brothers of Italy is descended from a fascist organisation, has shown in practice that “she is centre-right, not radical”. It is “nonsense”, Nelson insists, “to call Meloni’s party ‘post-fascist’ ” or to suggest that the disparate “new right” parties all belong to a single “ ‘far-right’ or radical-right lump”.

It is true that the term “far right” is thrown around too promiscuously and that, in power, far-right politicians often rule not like latter-day Mussolinis but rather as technocrats with a reactionary edge. What is missing from this argument, though, is the recognition that the mainstreaming of the far right should raise questions about the character not just of the far right but of the mainstream, too.

Organisations termed “far right” comprise, as Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar note in a new polemical critique of the “populist right”, at least three distinct lineages. First, there are the “unashamed neo-fascist parties”, such as Germany’s The Homeland, or NPD, and Golden Dawn in Greece. These may pose a threat on the streets but have little popular support.

Then there are the “fascist successor parties”, organisations that developed out of old fascist parties, including Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and France’s RN, many of whom have striven to “detoxify” themselves in search of electoral success. Finally, there are new parties such as the AfD, founded in 2013 as an anti-EU organisation and described at the time as the “party of the professors” and a “bourgeois party of protest” because of the number of academics on board, and Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV), created in the Netherlands in 2006 to oppose immigration and Islam, which triumphed in last year’s general election.

The burgeoning success of far-right or “new-right” parties does not herald the march of jackboots, or a return to 1930s fascism. The fascist parties of the interwar years emerged at a time of fierce class conflict and of violent confrontation between capital and labour. Today’s “new right” has been nurtured by almost the reverse social conditions.

Over the past 40 years, working-class organisations have disintegrated, class conflict has become less overt and large sections of the public have become disengaged from the political process. At the very time that economic and social developments, from the casualisation of work to the imposition of austerity, have made working-class lives so much more precarious, social democratic parties have moved away from their traditional working-class constituencies, leaving many feeling politically voiceless.

Meanwhile, the politics of class has given way to the politics of identity, and class itself has come to be seen not so much a political or economic category as a cultural, even racial, attribute. Politicians and journalists often talk now about the “white working class” but rarely about the “black working class” or the “Muslim working class”, even though a far greater proportion of black people and Muslims are working class.

Instead, commentators such as Matthew Goodwin, an academic researcher into rightwing populism who has now turned into an advocate for it, imagine an “informal alliance between white elites, corporations and minorities against the white working class”, thereby both excluding minorities from the working class and playing on white victimhood. All this has opened the way for reactionary movements to reshape politics by linking a bigoted form of identity politics, rooted in hostility to migrants and Muslims, to economic and social policies that were once the staple of the left: defence of jobs, support for the welfare state, opposition to austerity.

In practice, “new right” politicians advocate measures deeply inimical to working-class interests, from attacks on civil liberties to curbs on trade union rights. But as social democratic parties have abandoned the working class, so large sections of the working class have abandoned social democratic parties and many have sought refuge within the parties of the radical right.

Mainstream politicians, panicking about such political realignment, have appropriated many far-right themes. From the mass detention and deportation of undocumented migrants to the insistence on offshore processing, measures once advocated only by those on the political fringe have become policy. Far-right tropes, such as the “great replacement” – a conspiracy theory that the elites are replacing white Europeans with migrants – and fears about the falling birthrates of “indigenous” Europeans, are now recycled by respectable figures on the mainstream right.

“The positions which were once condemned, despised, looked down upon and treated with contempt are becoming jointly held positions,” the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a political icon for many on the “new right”, told reporters in 2016. “And people who stand up for these positions are today being welcomed as equal partners.” Eight years on, that is even more true.

When Ursula von der Leyen was elected president of the European Commission in 2019, one of her first acts was to rebadge the vice-president responsible for migration policy as the “commissioner for promoting our European way of life”, making clear her sense that migrants posed an existential threat to European culture and identity. Von der Leyen’s move, Le Pen gloated, “confirms our ideological victory”.

There is, many critics insist, nothing “far right” or “racist” about wanting to restrict immigration or in raising concerns about radical Islamists. That is true. There is, though, something profoundly pernicious about demonising immigrants, describing asylum seekers as constituting an “invasion”, castigating Muslims as being incompatible with western societies, obsessing over London becoming a “minority white” city, claiming that immigration has led Britons into “surrendering their territory without a shot being fired”, fearing that Europe is “committing suicide”. These are far-right themes now advanced by mainstream intellectuals and politicians.

If the label “far right” seems redundant to some these days, that is largely because arguments that once were the staple of the political fringe now nestle at the heart of mainstream debate.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

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The Iowa great dane that was recently crowned the world’s tallest dog is the same height as the average three-year-old child – and is often mistaken for being a horse. But Kevin cannot stand up to his household’s vacuum cleaner, which “he is terrified of”, his owners Tracy and Roger Wolfe told Guinness World Records in a recently published interview.

“He won’t let it come within six feet of him!” Tracy Wolfe told the organization known for maintaining a database of more than 40,000 records. “He will jump and run to get away from it.”

To be fair, the three-year-old Kevin is far from the only creature to be skittish around vacuum cleaners, which make loud noises and give off odd smells that can put off dogs, cats and other pets. But because of the imposing figure he cuts, the phobia makes an odd contrast.

Kevin measures 3ft 2in (0.97 metres) from his feet to his withers, or the ridge between the shoulder blades. That’s not only about the same size as many toddlers – it’s eight inches taller than the average male great dane, which inspires many who encounter him to joke about saddling him up and riding on his back.

The pooch secured the title of world’s tallest living male dog in March after the record was vacated by the death six months earlier of fellow American great dane Zeus, Guinness said. The three-year-old Zeus had been 3ft 5.18in (1.046 metres) tall and battling bone cancer when he had his front right leg amputated and developed a fatal case of pneumonia.

At the West Des Moines house Kevin shares with the Wolfes, the married couple’s daughter and son, aged 10 and 12 respectively, and several other dogs, cats, chickens, goats and horses, the record-winner acts as if he has no idea how big he is.

He not only spends his time trying to squeeze into small beds, sit on top of his human family members and “do everything that the smaller dogs do”, but he is also quite easily frightened – and not just of the vacuum cleaner.

When Tracy and Roger had Kevin sized up for his official record attempt to succeed Zeus, the measuring tape spooked him. And when he accompanied the Wolfes’ son, Alexander, to his first training class at the youth development and mentoring organization 4-H, Kevin became so overwhelmed with nerves he soiled himself right in the middle of the session.

In some instances, he does remember how towering he is – such as when he simply steps over a small gate Tracy Wolfe erects at her office in the veterinary clinic where she works so she can keep the door open but the dogs out.

“He just steps right over … like it’s nothing,” Tracy said to Guinness.

Kevin also eats up to 10 cups of food daily. It’s an amount his family marvels at because he’s managed to stay svelte despite spending much of the rest of his time either napping as well as stealing whatever additional food he can off kitchen counters – which he can reach without even needing to raise his snout, much less get on his hind legs.

Taken together, all of the experiences with Kevin that the Wolfes relayed to Guinness have made them as grateful as ever to have brought him home after they endured losing their previous great dane, Cora, they said.

“Kevin is the epitome of a gentle giant,” Tracy remarked. “He was … just perfect for us.”

Donald Trump has made a point in recent months of deriding his rival Joe Biden as being cognitively impaired, mocking the 81-year-old US president for his verbal stumbles and accusing him of falling both up and down stairs.

But people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

On Saturday night Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, returned to the theme during a speech in Detroit, Michigan to the rightwing group, Turning Point Action. He sarcastically quipped that Biden “doesn’t even know what the word ‘inflation’ means”, and challenged his rival in the 2024 election to take a cognitive test just as he had done when he was in the White House.

Trump told his audience that he had “aced” the cognitive test following advice from the then presidential physician, a Republican member of Congress whom he named as Ronny Johnson. “Has anyone heard of Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas?” he asked the crowd.

“He was the White House doctor, and he said I was the healthiest president, he feels, in history. So I liked him very much.”

The Ronny Johnson who administered Trump’s test was in fact Ronny Jackson, who represents Texas’s 13th congressional district. Jackson has been one of Trump’s most loyal advocates since entering the US House in 2021.

Trump’s Saturday night gaffe was instantly shared on social media. One of the most gleeful postings came from Biden’s rapid response team.

Trump was speaking at the People’s Convention, a gathering of about 2,000 Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters organized by Turning Point Action. His 80-minute speech, in which he promised to answer questions from the audience but then notably failed to do so, was the headline act of three days of what the group billed as “training” for Republican troops ahead of the November election.

The event was held in downtown Detroit, a consciously provocative choice of location by Turning Point’s founder Charlie Kirk, given that the city is 77% African American and overwhelmingly Democratic. Kirk has been widely criticized in recent months for a stream of racist and sexist comments including his statement that Martin Luther King was an “awful” person.

Trump’s visit to Detroit was significant, given that Michigan is one of a handful of critical battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome of this year’s presidential race. In 2020 Biden won the state by just over 150,000 votes.

The former president has been attempting in recent campaign appearances to present himself as popular with Black and Latino voters in the wake of a series of polls that show his support among these demographic groups edging upwards. Last month he staged a rally in the heart of the South Bronx, a heavily Hispanic and African American community in New York City.

Before addressing the Turning Point convention, Trump visited a Black church in Detroit for an event billed as a “community roundtable”. His campaign team simultaneously announced the formation of what it called “Black Americans for Trump”, a coalition of African American elected officials, religious leaders and celebrities who have endorsed him.

Kwame Kilpatrick, the Black former Democratic mayor of Detroit who was released from a 28-year prison sentence for public corruption crimes after Trump pardoned him in 2021, was among those who leant their names to the announcement. “I can never thank President Trump enough for what he’s done for me and my family by giving me freedom,” he said.

But Kilpatrick stopped short of endorsing Trump for a return to the Oval Office. He added: “I believe this election and the issues involved are personal to every family and every person in America.”

If Trump had been hoping that a headline speech at the Turning Point convention would further improve his standing with Black voters, he would have been disappointed. The crowd before him was almost exclusively white.

Those attending were able to hear speeches from a range of Trump luminaries, including his former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon who was greeted in the auditorium by chants of “USA, USA”. Supporters could also pose for selfies in front of a gold-plated Mercedes bearing Trump’s image on the bonnet.

In his Turning Point speech, Trump managed to resist any temptation to disparage Detroit in line with his recent habit of pouring scorn on majority-minority Democratic cities. On Thursday, he sparked controversy with his comments on Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he is set to be nominated next month as presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention.

Trump reportedly denounced Milwaukee as a “horrible city” to fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Though he spared Detroit, Trump did make similarly denigrating remarks on Saturday about the nation’s capital which is 53% Black and Latino. He called Washington DC a “nightmare of murder and crime”, warning visitors to the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial that “you end up getting killed, you end up getting shot, beat to a pulp”.