A chancellor can change her mind on fiscal rules

The crises in Ukraine and Gaza are so dire that people here can be forgiven for not paying attention to the threat to democracy and the rule of law on the other side of the Atlantic. It's a threat which has been spreading here too, with vice-president Vance's support for the far right in Germany and Reform in the UK.

- William Keegan @williamkeegan

Tariff wars aren't the only problem. Every day Trump edges closer to "quasi-fascism". Robert Reich, the former labour secretary under Bill Clinton, uses the term "state capitalism" to describe the way Trump is appropriating strategic sections of US business, Mussolini-style, for the Maga (Make America - and the Trump entourage - Great Again) project.

As Hannah Arendt wrote: "Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty."

There are few better examples of this in Trumpland than his recent sacking of the head of the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. The bureau had reported a sharp slowdown in the growth of employment which did not fit with Trump's boasts of a booming economy. Trump's preferred successor is someone who believes a recession should be defined not on the basis of employment or output data, but on "how people feel".