‘It has cycled back around’: Brick Lane and Bradford fear a repeat of infamous far-right clashes

The shoppers and shopkeepers of White Abbey Road in Bradford well remember a time almost 25 years ago when the street was engulfed in flames after a protest march against the National Front turned violent. On east London’s Brick Lane, the British-Bangladeshi population remember the invisible lines they could not cross without being set upon by the far right.For both communities, whose showdowns with racist groups came in different decades, the atmosphere in the UK today feels worryingly familiar, with far-right sentiment on the rise, stoked by politicians.“It feels like it has cycled back around,” says Mohsin Shuja, 42, who works in a jewellery shop on White Abbey Road. As a teenager during the 2001 Bradford riots, he was involved in protests against the far right that descended into clashes with police

Silicon Valley is full of wealthy men who think they’re victims, says Nick Clegg

Silicon Valley is full of hubris and hugely wealthy and macho men who think they are victims, the former politician and Facebook executive Nick Clegg has said.The former leader of the Liberal Democrats makes the claim in a new book chronicling his three careers as an MEP in Brussels, an MP and deputy prime minister in Westminster and as a communications and public policy strategist in San Francisco.In an interview with the Guardian, Clegg heaped praise on his former boss, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Meta, but was scathing of the culture fostered in the tech capital of the world where he said wealth and power was interlaced with “self pity”.“In Silicon Valley, far from thinking they’re lucky, they think they’re hard done by, [that] they’re victims. I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity

‘Why here?’: inside mid-Wales village where far-right figure has created a settlement

During the middle ages, monks would travel to the village of Llanafan Fawr in mid-Wales to visit the church and relics of St Afan, a son of the king of Gwynedd, martyred by foreign pirates centuries before.Today, a different sort of pilgrim can be found there. Two hilly, wooded parcels of land in Llanafan Fawr have been bought by the Woodlander Initiative (TWI), a land-buying scheme led by Simon Birkett, a far-right figure with links to Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s largest fascist group. Critics say Wiltshire-based Birkett’s aim is to create a racially exclusive settlement; he has cited Orania, a whites-only town in South Africa, as an inspiration for the project.TWI successfully bought the two small plots totalling a few acres from a local farmer late last year, after attempts in Cumbria and East Sussex fell through

‘If I felt Zuckerberg and Sandberg were monsters, I wouldn’t have worked at Meta’: Nick Clegg on tech bros, AI and Starmer’s half measures

When Britain’s former deputy PM took a job at Meta, nothing could have prepared him for the ‘cloying conformity’ of the tech world. So why does he still think social media is a force for good? Read an exclusive extract from Nick Clegg’s new book hereThe rain is just starting to fall from a grey London sky as Sir Nick Clegg arrives, ducking through the traffic and carrying what looks like his laundry. Clean shirts for the photoshoot, he says, before apologetically wondering if he might possibly get a coffee. Within minutes he has further apologised for wanting to swap the leather club chair he is offered for a hard plastic one; and then, in horror, for any impression inadvertently given that my questions might send him to sleep.Impeccable English manners should never be mistaken for diffidence – at 58, Clegg remains the only British political figure who could convincingly be played by the equally posh but self-effacing Colin Firth, whose old London home Clegg recently bought – but there are backbench nobodies more grandly self-important than the former deputy prime minister who became number two at the tech giant Meta

Checked out: Jenrick’s migrant hotel record haunts his rightwing bid for attention

Robert Jenrick had been migration minister for just a few days in 2022 when he gave a broadcast interview that could easily have been given by a minister in the current government.“Suella Braverman [the former home secretary] and her predecessor, Priti Patel, were procuring more hotels,” he told Sky News. “What I have done in my short tenure is ramp that up and procure even more. Because November, historically, has been one of the highest months of the year for migrants illegally crossing the Channel.”He went on to add: “I would never demonise people coming to this country in pursuit of a better life

David Lammy given warning after fishing with JD Vance without licence

David Lammy has received a formal warning after reporting himself for fishing without a licence with the US vice-president, JD Vance.The foreign secretary took Vance angling at his official country retreat in Chevening, Kent, on 8 August as he hosted him at the start of a holiday in Britain.It later emerged Lammy did not possess the required licence for rod fishing, with a Foreign Office spokesperson blaming an “administrative oversight” and saying the minister had subsequently bought a licence.Lammy referred himself to the Environment Agency over the incident.Anglers in England and Wales aged 13 or over must have a rod licence to fish for freshwater species such as carp, and can face a fine of up to £2,500 if they do not