I spent Tuesday night watching the election results with Arab friends. We woke the next day with a familiar feeling

I woke up on Wednesday morning to an email from someone I barely know, a white woman I met at a party this summer. The email was empty and the subject line simply read: “What a heartbreak”. She was writing to me, someone she spoke to just once for five minutes, about Donald Trump winning the US presidency.

This liberal (let’s call her Suzie) and millions of other voters are waking up with a fear that they haven’t felt this intensely in four years. And her new fear made her think of me, a random Arab she met one time. Maybe Suzie assumed that I share her fresh dread.

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Americans believe firmly in democracy, and Trump winning is not an endorsement of authoritarianism

Democracy requires faith of various kinds. It requires faith in the wisdom of the people, in the durability of its institutions and in a future that we cannot foresee.

As one commentator aptly puts it , we must “recognize that democracy is a process and not a destination”.

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People have never been swayed by ‘rational debate’. Only a genuine change in the way we do politics can prevent the march of the right

We were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly. Democracy, accountability, human rights, social justice – all were rolling backwards as money swarmed our politics . Above all, our life-support systems – the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, ice and snow – have been hammered and hammered, regardless of who is in power. Donald Trump might strike the killer blows, but he is not the cause of an ecocidal economic system. He is the embodiment of it.

Under Joe Biden, the US was missing its own climate goals, and those goals were insufficient to meet the global objective of limiting heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. That target in turn might not be tight enough to prevent a tipping of Earth systems. Already, at roughly 1.3C of heating, we see what looks alarmingly like climatic flickering : the ever wilder perturbations that tend to precede the collapse of a complex system.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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As a new collection of his writing is published, Rebecca Solnit remembers her friend, the late activist and anarchist who believed ordinary people had the power to change the world

David Graeber was a joyful, celebratory person. An enthusiast, voluble, on fire with the possibilities in the ideas and ideologies he wrestled with. Every time we met – from New Haven in the early 00s to London a few years before his death in 2020 – he was essentially the same: beaming, rumpled, with a restless energy that seemed to echo the constant motion of his mind, words tumbling out as though they were, in their unstoppable abundance, overflowing. But he was also much respected in activist circles for being a good listener, and his radical egalitarianism was borne out in how he related to the people around him.

He was always an anthropologist. After doing fieldwork among traditional peoples in Madagascar, he just never stopped, but he turned his focus to his own society. Essays such as Dead Zones of the Imagination : On Violence, Bureaucracy, and ‘Interpretive Labor’ and his book Bullshit Jobs came from using the equipment of an anthropologist on stuff usually regarded as boring, or not regarded at all – the function and impact of bureaucracy. His 2011 bestseller on debt reminded us that money and finance are among the social arrangements that could be rearranged for the better.

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German opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, opposes timetable laid out by chancellor in news conference

Germany’s centre-right opposition leader has called for an immediate vote of confidence to be held in parliament, after Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition collapsed.

Friedrich Merz, chair of former chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), stands to profit most from the bombshell developments in Berlin, one day after Donald Trump’s election as US president upended the global political landscape.

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One supports Zionism and the other is horrified by what is happening in Gaza. Could moving on to the climate crisis bring them closer together?

Maria, 5 3, Manchester

Occupation Recruitment director

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Spat between Sexton and Ioane has added another layer of intrigue to first meeting since 2023 quarter-final

In Ireland we have a curious custom of thanking the bus driver when he or she pulls up at our stop. No one knows how or where it started, but this salute on your step out the door is widespread, and has endured. So, you’re asking yourself, maybe Rieko Ioane was getting in on the action when Ireland’s designated quarter-final stop arrived at last year’s World Cup , the last time these teams met. The Kiwis were driving the bus at the time. Maybe he was asking Johnny Sexton had Ireland’s departing legend forgotten his manners.

Not according to Sexton’s account. That little poisonous interplay between them has hurried this fixture along, even if Ireland’s fly-half is involved now only in the background as coach to the 10s in the squad, and won’t be on site for this. For sure though there’ll be something in the air.

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Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as BoE says the higher bus fare cap and adding VAT to private school fees will push up CPI inflation

• City analysts overwhelmingly predict Bank of England interest rate cut
• Wall Street and bitcoin soar to record highs as Trump wins US election

Mark Haefele , chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, predicts more market turbulence as Donald Trump’s policy proposals take shape:

Markets have started to digest Trump’s victory, with the initial response pointing to expectations of stronger growth, higher inflation, a slower pace of interest rate cuts, and trade tariffs.

As more detailed policy proposals emerge from the Trump transition team, investors should brace for further swings ahead. We advise investors to be ready to use any outsized market reactions to build stronger long-term portfolios.

The net worth of billionaires led by Tesla’s Elon Musk , the world’s wealthiest person, surged by $63.5 billion on Wednesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Musk alone added $26.5 billion to his pot. Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos and Oracle’s Larry Ellison were also among the top gainers. It’s the biggest daily increase since Bloomberg’s wealth index began in 2012.

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Runcorn and Helsby MP, 55, to appear in court at later date

Mike Amesbury, the MP suspended by Labour pending an investigation, has been charged with assault after an incident following a night out.

Amesbury, 55, was suspended by the party and lost the Labour whip on 27 October after a clip was published by MailOnline.

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