LONDON — Green Party Leader Zack Polanski says the British government should freeze energy bills this summer, as high costs caused by conflict in the Middle East threaten to hit families. In a speech at the left-leaning New Economics Foundation think tank Wednesday, Polanski said ministers should not allow the energy price cap — a limit on the amount homes pay for their energy — to increase when it is recalculated for July. The government should instead “guarantee right now that it will not allow energy bills to rise beyond the April-June price cap,” Polanski — whose party is riding high after a by-election victory last month — said.  But the plan has already drawn attacks from the Greens’ political opponents, keen to paint the left-wing challenger outfit as profligate. The last time the U.K. government intervened with a universal cap on costs was in 2022, when then-Prime Minister Liz Truss froze average bills at £2,500 per year, after energy prices rocketed on the back of Russia’s war in Ukraine.  That universal move ended up cost a whopping £23 billion. Polanski said his policy, which would freeze bills at £1,641 for the average household, would cost £8.4 billion, paid for in part through taxing high-polluting oil and gas firms in the North Sea.  Government ministers have already stressed that homes covered by the price cap would not see their bills rise before July. But they are under pressure to get support in place for people exposed to bill spikes once the price cap runs out, after wholesale gas prices surged as a result of the Iran conflict.  Chancellor Rachel Reeves said last week that the Treasury is looking at “targeted options” to help the poorest households. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday the government is not “ruling anything out.”  The Resolution Foundation think tank said this week that the government should “resist pressure to rush out updated versions of old support schemes like the universal blank cheque approach of Liz Truss.” Polanski insisted targeted interventions “are conversations we should have but they’re not things we could bring in immediately”  He said if that means bailing out “wealthy people,” then the government should overhaul the tax system, too. Polanski used his speech to repeat calls for a wealth tax as well as bringing capital gains tax in line with income tax.  “The number one priority has to make sure that people can afford their energy bills today and tomorrow,” he said.  Labour Party Chair Anna Turley said Polanski has the “wrong answers on the economy.”   “Respected economists have sounded the alarm over the Greens’ ‘catastrophic’ plans to print money, which would hammer working people and their living standards,” she argued. 

Just three weeks after the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a stinging defeat over the sweeping tariffs he imposed last year, the legal battle over his first move to replace those import taxes is heating up. Democratic attorneys general and governors from 24 states and a libertarian group representing two small businesses filed their first legal briefs Friday asking a federal trade court to strike down the 10 percent tariffs Trump imposed on most U.S. trading partners in February. Trump promised to hike those tariffs to 15 percent, but hasn’t yet done so. Legal experts told POLITICO that Trump’s backup tariffs are probably on stronger legal footing than the “Liberation Day” taxes the high court struck down. Despite that, his challengers are exuding bravado about their chances. “We are 100 percent confident that we will be successful in the Court of International Trade,” New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters last week. Trump is also projecting confidence, repeatedly claiming that the same Supreme Court went ahead and blessed his use of other authorities, like the so-called Section 122 tariffs he’s turned to as a short-term fix. That is not true. While the three justices who dissented from last month’s decision did cite Section 122 as one of the tools Trump could use to rebuild his tariff scheme, the court’s six-justice majority explicitly declined to embrace that position. “We do not speculate on hypothetical cases not before us,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. While Trump called his new approach “time tested,” that authority has never been invoked before and the high court has not given its blessing to Trump using that specific law in the current circumstances. Here’s a look at the key issues in the legal fight over Trump’s replacement tariffs: A NEW RATIONALE The Supreme Court resolved the earlier Trump tariff case by finding that the statute Trump invoked, the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, conferred no power on any president to impose tariffs. With that off the table, the court did not have to examine whether the global emergency Trump asserted existed. The new challenges could face a bigger hurdle because their arguments will require judges to second guess Trump’s conclusion that the U.S. faces a “large and serious balance-of-payments deficit.” “The bottom line here is: How much deference does the president get in determining … this sort of predicate condition — that there’s a large and serious payments problem?” said Matthew Seligman, a lawyer representing importers seeking refunds of the previous tariffs. “How much deference does the president get in his determination in deciding how large is large and how serious is serious?” “I think [it] will probably be the court’s instinct to defer to the president’s determination that, whatever it is ‘balance of payments’ means, that the requisite facts on the ground exist,” Duke University law professor Timothy Meyer said. DEFINING ‘BALANCE OF PAYMENTS’ The text of the law Trump invoked for his latest round of tariffs, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, makes eight references to “balance of payments” issues. Yet, it offers no definition of the term. Some experts contend the phrase refers to a specific problem the U.S. faced in the years leading up to the law’s enactment, involving the U.S. government buying or selling foreign currency to adjust or maintain exchange rates. “A balance of payments deficit is a term of art incorporating into law a settled meaning from international financial accounting,” the blue states’ lawsuit says. “A trade deficit does not qualify, either as a matter of economics or of law, as a balance of payments deficit.” “The president has tried to pull a fast one by switching the term balance of payments to mean balance of trade, in other words, a trade deficit. But those two things aren’t the same thing,” said Jeffrey Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center. However, other experts say the lack of a definition may indicate that different lawmakers had different views of what “balance of payments” meant and what problem they were trying to fix. “They had a broader set of problems in mind … .They weren’t seemingly talking about just official payments,” said Brad Setser, a Treasury Department official under President Barack Obama and an adviser to the U.S. Trade Representative under President Joe Biden. One awkward aspect for the White House: during the pitched battle over the “Liberation Day” tariffs, the administration’s lawyers suggested that Section 122 wasn’t a viable option to address the trade deficit. “Trade deficits … are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits,” Justice Department attorneys told the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last June. TRUMP’S CARVE-OUTS The law Trump invoked for the replacement tariffs says they should be “of broad and uniform application,” but the president’s approach seems far from that standard. Attached to the proclamation he issued are 88 pages of exemptions and exceptions. The fine print waives the new tariffs for Mexico and Canada and some goods coming from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, or Nicaragua. Trump also carved out a slew of product categories where consumers regularly complain about higher prices, including many foods, cars and prescription drugs. “The exemptions and exceptions the President has made are in direct violation of the text of Section 122, which requires generally uniform treatment the President is declining to observe,” Liberty Justice Center argues in the lawsuit filed on behalf of two importers, Burlap and Barrel and Basic Fun! But the law does contain wiggle room to exclude some products or single out countries in some circumstances. Trump’s proclamation seeks to invoke those exceptions, although many dispute whether his assertions about the current state of global trade and “the needs of the United States economy” are actually true or are just parroting the language in the statute. It’s unclear whether judges will accept Trump’s claims at face value and whether they have time to dig into such factual disputes on the accelerated timetable the challengers have demanded. Another uncertainty is whether a court that strikes down the carve-outs would throw out the tariffs altogether or do what Trump’s proclamation urges in such a scenario: wipe out the exemption and keep the broader tariffs. CAN THE COURTS BEAT THE CLOCK? The law Trump used to deploy the new tariffs limits his move to 150 days, roughly five months. While that may weaken Trump’s hand in negotiations with trading partners and force him to look to other tools to sustain his tariff policies, the short fuse means that the courts are unlikely to deliver a final verdict on the legality of the president’s action before it expires on July 24. In the challenges to Trump’s earlier tariffs, lower courts ruled against the policies but allowed the administration to keep collecting the duties while the fight played out. If the pattern holds, it could take months for the lower courts to consider the issues and a year or more if the Supreme Court decides to weigh in. To actually halt the tariffs, opponents will likely have to persuade the trade court or the Federal Circuit to refuse to issue the stays that the White House won the last time around. The Court of International Trade has set arguments on the pending suits, including a request for a preliminary injunction, for April 10. But some expect these cases to take longer to decide than the last time. “I would expect, at every level, that the time to write an opinion would be longer than it was in the IEEPA case because the issues are just more complicated,” Meyer said. WOULD TRUMP DOUBLE DIP? Some trade experts have speculated that, if the courts don’t stop the new tariffs by the time they are set to expire in July, Trump could attempt to re-issue them for another 150 days, perhaps with a few tweaks to make them a bit different than during the first phase. The statute doesn’t directly prohibit re-upping, but does say it’s up to Congress to extend such tariffs beyond the 150-day period. “It’s arguably a little ambiguous, if he wanted to re-declare a balance of payments emergency right after,” said Stanford Law Professor Alan Sykes. “Certainly the statutory language, to me, implies that the Congress did not want to leave that loophole in place. If I were the judge, I would say that that’s not permissible.”

Satellite images captured after Saturday’s US and Israeli strikes on Tehran show that the residence of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sustained severe damage. The photos, which show several collapsed buildings inside a compound in Tehran known to be one of Khamenei’s main residences, were provided to Business Insider by Airbus. It’s unclear if the Iranian leader was present at the time of the strikes, and his exact status is unknown. Reuters, citing an unnamed source, earlier reported that Khamenei had been moved out of Tehran, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the BBC on Saturday evening that Khamenei was still alive. It’s also not yet clear if it was Israel or the US that carried out this particular strike. Representatives for the Pentagon and Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the hit when asked by Business Insider. One of the heavily damaged buildings in the compound is the House of Leadership, which is known as Khamenei’s office and principal place of residence. In the images, smoke appears to be rising from its roof. Much of the compound has been obliterated, with felled trees and several more smoking buildings. The images show the Imam Khomeini Hussainia, a place of worship used by Iranian leaders for religious ceremonies and political speeches. It’s unclear whether this larger building was also attacked, but what looks like debris can be seen on its roof. A satellite image taken a year earlier shows the complex included at least six buildings, all of which are now damaged by the strikes. “It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations,” Trump said. The US and Israel began their attacks on Saturday morning local time, hitting Tehran and several other Iranian cities in what has been one of the largest strike campaigns in recent years. The full outcomes of these strikes are still being assessed, and much remains unclear about Tel Aviv and Washington’s exact objectives behind the attacks. Meanwhile, Iran has responded by firing dozens of ballistic missiles and drones at its neighbors, saying it is targeting US military bases. The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network is a multi-publication initiative publishing scoops, investigations, interviews, op-eds and analysis that reverberate across the world. It connects journalists from Axel Springer brands — including POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, and Onet — on major stories for an international audience. Its ambitious reporting stretches across Axel Springer platforms: online, print, TV, and audio. Together, these outlets reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

“All we’ve got left now,” the Russian soldier said, “are radios, cables and pigeons.” A decision earlier this month by SpaceX to shut down access to Starlink satellite-internet terminals caused immediate chaos among Russian forces who had become increasingly reliant upon the Elon Musk-owned company’s technology to sustain their occupation of Ukraine, according to radio transmissions intercepted by a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit and shared with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, to which POLITICO belongs. The communications breakdown significantly constrained Russian military capabilities, creating new opportunities for Ukrainian forces. In the days following the shutdown, Ukraine recaptured roughly 77 square miles in the country’s southeast, according to calculations by the news agency Agence France-Presse based on data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. SpaceX began requiring verification of Starlink terminals on Feb. 4, blocking unverified Russian units from accessing its services. Almost immediately, Ukrainian eavesdroppers heard Russian soldiers complaining about the failure of “Kosmos” and “Sinka” — apparently code names for Starlink satellite internet and the messaging service Telegram. “Damn it! Looks like they’ve switched off all the Starlinks,” one Russian soldier exclaimed. “The connection is gone, completely gone. The images aren’t being transmitted,” another shouted. Dozens of the recordings were played for Axel Springer Global Reporter Network reporters in an underground listening post maintained by the Bureviy Brigade in northeastern Ukraine. Neither SpaceX nor the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to requests for comment. “On the Russian side, we observed on the very day Starlink was shut down that artillery and mortar fire dropped drastically. Drone drops and FPV attacks also suddenly decreased,” said a Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance operator from the Bureviy Brigade who would agree to be identified only by the call sign Mustang, referring to first-person view drones. “Coordination between their units has also become more difficult since then.” The satellite internet network has become a crucial tool on the battlefield, sustaining high-tech drone operations and replacing walkie-talkies in low-tech combat. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which destroyed much of Ukraine’s traditional communications infrastructure, Western governments have provided thousands of the Starlink units to Kyiv. With the portable terminals, there is no need to lay kilometers of cable that can be damaged by shelling or drone strikes. Drone footage can be transmitted in real time to command posts, artillery and mortar fire can be corrected with precision, and operational information can be shared instantly via encrypted messaging apps such as Signal or Telegram. At the outset of the Russian invasion, Starlink access gave Ukraine’s defenders a decisive operational advantage. Those in besieged Mariupol sent signs of life in spring 2022 via the backpack-size white dishes, and army units used them to coordinate during brutal house-to-house fighting in Bakhmut in 2023. Satellite internet became “one of, if not the most important components” of Ukraine’s way of war, according to military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, an adviser to European governments and security agencies who regularly visits Ukrainian units. “Starlink constituted the backbone of connectivity that enabled accelerated kill chains by helping create a semi-transparent battlefield.” The operational advantages of Starlink did not go unnoticed by Russian forces. By the third year of the war, Starlink terminals were increasingly turning up in Russian-occupied territory. One of the first documented cases surfaced in January 2024 in the Serebryansky forest. Month by month, Ukrainian reconnaissance drones spotted more of the devices. The Ukrainian government subsequently contacted Musk’s company, urging it to block Russian access to the network. Mykhailo Fedorov, then digital minister and now defense minister, alleged Russian forces were acquiring the devices via third countries. “Ukraine will continue using Starlink, and Russian use will be restricted to the maximum extent possible,” Fedorov pledged in spring 2024. Yet Russian use of the terminals continued to grow throughout 2025, and their use was not limited to artillery or drone units. Even Russian infantry soldiers were carrying mini Starlink terminals in their backpacks. “We found Starlink terminals at virtually every Russian position along the contact line,” said Mustang. “At some point, it felt like the Russians had more devices than we did.” In the listening post this month, he scrolled through more than a dozen images from late 2025 showing Russian Starlink terminals set up between trees or beside the entrances to their positions. “We targeted their positions deliberately,” Mustang continued. “But even if we destroyed a terminal in the morning or evening, a new one was already installed by the next morning.” In the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Kreminna, there was even a shop where soldiers could buy Starlink terminals starting in 2024. According to Ukrainian officials, these devices were not registered in Russia. SpaceX’s move in early February to enforce a stricter verification system effectively cut off unregistered Starlink terminals operating in Russian-occupied areas. Only devices approved and placed on a Ukrainian Ministry of Defense “whitelist” remained active, while terminals used by Russian forces were remotely deactivated. “That’s it, basically no one has internet at all,” a Russian soldier said in one of the messages played for Axel Springer reporters. “Everything’s off, everything’s off.” The temporary shutdown allowed Ukraine to slow the momentum of Vladimir Putin’s forces, although the localized counteroffensives do not represent a fundamental shift along the front. Soldiers from other Ukrainian units, including the Black Arrow battalion, confirmed the military consequences of the Starlink outage for Russian forces in their sectors in interviews with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network. By mid-February, Russian shelling had increased again, though largely against frontline positions that had long been identified and precisely mapped — suggesting that Russia has yet to fully restore all of its lost capabilities. Now, analysts from the Bureviy Brigade say Russian forces are scrambling for alternatives. They have been forced to rely far more heavily on radio communication, according to Mustang, which creates additional opportunities for interception. Russian units will likely attempt to switch to their own satellite terminals. But their speed and connection quality are significantly lower, Mustang says. And because of their size, the devices are difficult to conceal.”The shutdown of Starlink, even if only of limited effect for now, highlights the limited ability of the Russian armed forces to rapidly implement ongoing cycles of innovation,” said Col. Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces. “This could represent a potential point of leverage for Western supporters to provide swift and sustainable support to Ukraine at this stage.“ The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network is a multi-publication initiative publishing scoops, investigations, interviews, op-eds and analysis that reverberate across the world. It connects journalists from Axel Springer brands — including POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, and Onet — on major stories for an international audience. Its ambitious reporting stretches across Axel Springer platforms: online, print, TV, and audio. Together, these outlets reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

BRUSSELS ― EU leaders reckon Donald Trump’s about-turn on Greenland happened because they stuck together. And while they’re not claiming victory just yet, they believe there are clear lessons to be learned after several years where splits and rivalry have dominated the bloc. “When Europe is not divided, when we stand together and when we are clear and strong, also in our willingness to stand up for ourselves, then the results will show,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters as she arrived for Thursday’s summit in Brussels. “We have learned something during the last couple of days and weeks.” Brussels exhaled on Wednesday after Trump announced he was backing away from threats of imposing tariffs on countries that sent troops to Greenland, touting a “framework” agreement struck with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for resolving the crisis. While the fine print of that deal — including whether it respects Denmark’s demand to retain full sovereignty of the island — isn’t yet clear, the situation showed the EU can be effective when it advances in lockstep, shows its ability to strike back and is willing to take clear steps like sending troops to reinforce Arctic security in the Danish-held territory, according to two EU diplomats and two senior EU officials. They spoke to POLITICO having been granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions. “The fact that after those threats were made the EU coordinated very quickly, and reacted very quickly, reacted in a firm and calm way, with principled positions that were clear — this is certainly something that must be taken into account in terms of the reaction that followed,” said a senior EU official. “”We have learned something during the last couple of days and weeks,” said Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images The EU is drawing on months of experience of dealing with the Trump administration, most notably last summer when it came to deciding whether to sign a U.S.-EU trade deal, a senior diplomat said. Before the signing, EU leaders publicly diverged for weeks over how they should respond to Trump’s threat of sky-high tariffs. While the leaders weren’t completely in agreement over Trump’s Greenland threats, the fact that France and Germany quickly agreed on preparing the use of the so-called Anti-Coercion Instrument against the U.S., a powerful trade retaliation tool, showed the bloc was now more decisive in its response. “The debate we had in June-July helped us prepare. There is now a maturity in how the EU prepares and executes,” said the senior diplomat. The decision by eight European countries to send troops to Greenland, on a NATO-led “scoping mission” to bolster Arctic security, also helped to solidify the EU’s position, said former French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. “My understanding is that when we speak the language of strength, we manage to push back against certain ambitions,” Attal told France Info radio on Thursday. “This only validates the idea that in a world that is all about power, we need to show that we can bite.” THE NEW PLAYBOOK In the hours after Trump’s huddle with Rutte in Davos, European diplomats were eager to underscore that a confluence of factors likely influenced Trump to take the military option for Greenland off the table, and that it remained to be seen what exactly motivated his thinking Even European diplomats acknowledge it wasn’t all the EU’s doing. Nor do they claim to know Trump’s thinking. They pointed to U.S. public opinion being skeptical about a Greenland takeover, pressure from U.S. lawmakers unwilling to approve such a move and volatility in markets as all possible factors.  But they underscored that, from the European side, there is now a clearer process for protecting EU interests. A key element is reaching out to U.S. lawmakers and business executives to convince that a transatlantic blow-up — or even, as Frederiksen suggested, the death of NATO — would not be in their interest. “Europe has every reason to act with confidence,” Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said during his way into Thursday’s summit. Another factor is the EU’s willingness to signal the readiness to retaliate. Diplomats pointed to European Parliament leaders pushing to delay approval of the EU-U.S. trade deal as evidence of institutions that are working together more quickly. Rhetoric counts too, they said, pointing to French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for the Anti-Coercion Instrument and a speech from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen vowing an “unflinching” response. “The conclusion we can draw is that when Europe responds in a united way, using the tools at its disposal … it can command respect,” Macron said on his way into the summit. “And that is a good thing.”

LONDON — Nobody likes a backseat driver. But what if the person trying to grab the wheel is a former prime minister? Britain has cycled through a stack of leaders in the past decade, leaving it with an unprecedented eight former PMs still standing — and frequently commenting on the person doing their old job. Just this weekend, Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain’s battered Conservative Party, tried to distance herself from the troubled economic legacy of former Tory prime minister Liz Truss — provoking a howl of outrage from Truss herself. It’s unfortunate for Badenoch, as barely a day goes by without the Labour government raising the specter of Truss.  Prime Minister Keir Starmer has his own problems, with his Labour predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never far from the headlines, offering (largely) unsolicited advice. “You have incomplete prime ministers,” says historian Anthony Seldon, who has written books on many departed prime ministers, including “The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister.” “Some of them felt that their agenda wasn’t yet over.” “They still want to feel like they have a purpose,” said political communications adviser Laura Emily Dunn, who has worked for Conservative cabinet ministers. SECOND BITE OF THE CHERRY  Since Starmer won his landslide just over a year ago, the Blair and Brown interventions have come thick and fast. Blair has used his Institute for Global Change think tank to publish a flurry of policy papers, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence.  Just days before crucial local elections earlier this year, Blair set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street with lines in a report warning that a maximalist approach to net zero carbon emissions was “doomed to fail” — and that politicians needed to face “inconvenient facts.” Blair has used his Institute for Global Change think tank to publish a flurry of policy papers, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. | Jessica Lee/EPA A Downing Street spokesperson said the government would reach net zero “in a way that treads lightly on people’s lives” and “not by telling them how to live or behave.” While admitting there were a “range of views,” No 10 says it sees net zero as an “enormous economic opportunity.” Gordon Brown, who left office in 2010, has unapologetically spoken out on social justice issues through tweets, books, op-eds and even guest editing an edition of the New Statesman magazine — often in ways that are unhelpful to the Starmer project. Most notably, he called for the abolition of the “cruel” Conservative-era two-child cap on social security payments, a view shared by many Labour backbenchers, despite the cash-strapped government’s public opposition to a U-turn. Labour insiders insist there’s no resentment about the ex-leaders opining. A former Labour adviser granted anonymity to speak candidly said: “There is no expectation from the leader of the Labour Party that previous prime ministers should somehow stay silent out of respect.” “They’ve been diplomatic, but it’s been pretty clear what they think,” says Stewart Wood, a Labour peer and former adviser to Brown. LIFE AFTER POWER The interventionist streak in Britain’s former prime ministers may be a consequence of the strange wilderness in which they are left to roam after leaving office. While they receive £115,000 annually for life, a permanent security detail and are expected to attend Remembrance Sunday commemorations at the Cenotaph, there is no official responsibility or equivalent of a U.S.-style presidential library to promote an ex-prime minister’s legacy.  That can leave former leaders feeling stuck on the sidelines. “There is a resource that the country could benefit from using … in some way,” says Wood. “These people did serve us and serve our country,” agrees Dunn.  “If they were to disappear into lonely retirement, that would be wrong.” For some prime ministers, the well-trodden path of writing a memoir and joining the speaking circuit is seemingly no longer enough. Even John Major, the reserved Conservative former PM who kept out of the spotlight during Blair and Brown’s tenure, re-entered the public fray during the Brexit years. | Will Oliver/EPA “There’s been a trend in modern prime ministers not to want[ing] to consult their predecessors,” argues Seldon, saying leaders often fail to assess the actions of those who came before them in office. “They justifiably see their successors falling into the same bear traps that they fell in.” Even John Major, the reserved Conservative former PM who kept out of the spotlight during Blair and Brown’s tenure, re-entered the public fray during the Brexit years. He became a frequent and strident critic of former prime minister Boris Johnson. More recently, he demanded the strengthening of parliamentary standards for rule breakers. Theresa May couldn’t resist wading in either by urging the U.K. to act on delivering net zero, while David Cameron had a full-scale political comeback as foreign secretary during the last eight months of the Tory government. For others, there’s a desire to settle old scores. Johnson and Truss both saw their premierships implode abruptly — leaving them with plenty of unfinished business. Johnson writes columns for the Daily Mail newspaper and hasn’t shied away from strident interventions attacking Starmer’s agenda, including a fresh blast at his Middle East policy in the past few days. Truss, Britain’s shortest serving prime minister, frequently opines on X about Starmer’s economic policies, as well as his approach to justice and free speech, as she fights to reshape her tarnished legacy.  Over the weekend, she laid into current Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch, accusing her of failing to talk about the “real failures of 14 years of Conservative government” and warning the same party that made Truss prime minister is now in “serious trouble.”  MAKING IT WORK So what makes a genuinely effective intervention from a former prime minister? “They have most influence when it’s least known publicly,” argues Peter Just, author of the book Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street. Just says public interventions can be a sign that advice given behind the scenes “is not being listened to.” Seldon says Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most recent former prime minister, is a rare exception who has managed life after Downing Street well. | Tolga Akmen/EPA Seldon says Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most recent former prime minister, is a rare exception who has managed life after Downing Street well. Now a backbench MP, his statements have been limited to supporting Ukraine and backing India during its conflict with Pakistan.  Just divides ex-PMs into statesmen and women who focus on “whether or not the subsequent government of any party is doing things in the right way or in the wrong way” and politicians who represent “a particular philosophy of the world.”  “If you’re a bit more strategic and a bit more infrequent in your interventions, maybe they’ll carry more punch,” says Kieran Pedley of polling firm Ipsos, who argues that too many contributions can dilute a message. Ultimately, effective prime ministers can simply ignore the back seat drivers and hit the gas. “You should just do the policies you want — and let politics deal with itself,” says a former Tory adviser.

For Donald Trump, it was a “monumental victory.” For the Trump resistance, there are signs of hope buried in the fine print. Those dueling interpretations emerged Friday in the hours after the Supreme Court issued its blockbuster decision in Trump’s challenge to three nationwide injunctions that have blocked his attempt to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born on American soil. And both contain an element of truth. The 6-3 decision has a single headline holding: Federal district judges “lack authority” to issue “universal injunctions,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the conservative majority. It’s a breathtaking pronouncement given that district judges, with increasing frequency, have been issuing those sorts of injunctions for decades. It was precisely the bottom-line result that Trump’s Justice Department asked for in the case. Sweeping injunctions have blocked many of Trump’s second-term initiatives, not just his executive order on birthright citizenship. Now, the Supreme Court has made clear, an injunction against a challenged policy should ordinarily apply only to the individuals or organizations who sued. For everyone else, the policy can take effect even if a district judge believes it’s likely illegal. But Barrett’s 26-page opinion leaves a surprising degree of wiggle room. Yes, conventional nationwide injunctions are off the table, but Trump’s opponents say they see alternative routes to obtain effectively the same sweeping blocks of at least some policies that run afoul of the law and the Constitution. The court appeared to leave open three specific alternatives: Restyle the legal challenges as class-action lawsuits; rely on state-led lawsuits to obtain broad judicial rulings; or challenge certain policies under a federal administrative law that authorizes courts to strike down the actions of executive branch agencies. The viability of these three potential alternatives is not yet clear. But the court explicitly declined to rule them out. That led Justice Samuel Alito — who joined the majority opinion — to write a concurrence to raise concerns that the court was leaving loopholes that could undercut its main holding. If lower courts permit litigants to exploit those loopholes, Alito wrote, “today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.” Legal experts were unsure about the practical implications of the ruling — especially in the birthright citizenship cases, but also in other challenges to Trump policies. “One of the things that’s problematic about this decision is how difficult it will be to implement,” said Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia law professor whose scholarship was cited in the justices’ ruling. “I think it’s really hard to say.” THE CLASS ACTION WORKAROUND The court’s decision explicitly left open one avenue for legal challengers to obtain a broad ruling that can apply to thousands or even millions of people: File a class-action case. Class actions allow large groups of similarly situated individuals to band together and sue over a common problem. If a judge sides with class-action challengers against a federal law or policy, the judge can issue a binding order that protects everyone in the class from being subject to the law or policy. Within hours of the court’s decision on Friday, one of the groups challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship policy moved to refashion its case as a class action. But class actions are not a panacea for the Trump resistance. Federal rules require special procedures before a court can “certify” a class. Litigants seeking to use the class-action mechanism must meet several criteria that don’t apply in ordinary lawsuits. And the Supreme Court itself has, in recent years, raised the legal standards for people to bring class actions. Barrett wrote that these heightened requirements underscore the need to limit universal injunctions, which she labeled a “shortcut” around the stringent standards that accompany class-action suits. “Why bother with a … class action when the quick fix of a universal injunction is on the table?” she wrote. Alito, in his concurrence Friday, warned district judges not to be overly lax in green-lighting class actions. “Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following” procedural strictures, the conservative justice wrote. BROADER RELIEF FOR STATES A second potential silver lining for Trump’s opponents is that the court recognized that states may sometimes be entitled to broader injunctions than individual challengers. Barrett wrote in the majority opinion that district judges are empowered to provide “complete relief” to litigants who are improperly harmed by government policies. And when states sue the federal government, it’s possible, legal experts say, that “complete relief” requires a sweeping judicial remedy. That remedy might take the form of an injunction that applies everywhere in the suing states. Barrett herself contemplated that it might be proper for lower courts to forbid Trump from applying his executive order on birthright citizenship anywhere within the states that have challenged the order. (About 22 Democratic-led states have done so.) That scenario would create an odd patchwork: Automatic birthright citizenship would apply in half the country but would disappear in the other half until the Supreme Court definitively resolves the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order. There is even a chance that “complete relief” for a state might extend beyond the state’s borders and apply nationally — because residents of one state frequently move to another. Still, the bounds of what the court meant by “complete relief” remain murky. Frost said that it’s unclear what an injunction that affords “complete relief” to a state, while stopping short of a “universal” or “nationwide” remedy, would look like. “I don’t know, and that’s a problem of the court’s own making,” she said. Nonetheless, Democrats like New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seized on the “complete relief” opening, saying it was a reason for optimism and effectively an endorsement of what he and other blue state officials had contended since the start. He and other Democratic attorneys general emphasized that they argued at all levels of the court system the need for nationwide relief in the birthright citizen case — because it would be pure chaos if residents left one state where they were entitled to birthright citizenship and moved to another state where they were not entitled to it, or vice versa. “As I sit here now, as it relates to states, the court confirmed what we thought all along. Nationwide relief should be limited but is available to states,” Platkin said. Barrett, however, wrote that the court was not taking a firm position on the scope of any injunction the states might be entitled to. “We decline to take up these arguments,” she wrote, adding that the lower courts should assess them first. SETTING ASIDE AGENCY ACTIONS The third potential workaround for opponents of Trump policies involves a federal statute known as the Administrative Procedure Act. That law authorizes lower courts to “set aside” actions by regulatory agencies if the courts find the actions to be arbitrary, rather than based on reasoned analysis. That sort of wholesale judicial relief in some ways resembles a nationwide or “universal” injunction, but Barrett wrote in a footnote that the court’s decision does not address the scope of relief in lawsuits filed under the APA. Some of the lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies have been brought under the APA. For instance, a district judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempt to freeze vast amounts of federal spending after the judge found that the move would violate the APA. But not all policies are agency actions that would be subject to APA challenges. The birthright citizenship policy, for instance, was promulgated through an executive order, not through any federal agency. On the other hand, the order has a 30-day “ramp-up period” in which agencies will develop guidelines before implementing the order. Those guidelines might become targets for APA challenges.