Labour will launch a crackdown on tax avoiders to pay for key election pledges on schools and the NHS, Rachel Reeves has announced. The shadow chancellor says the measures, which the party needs to plug a funding gap opened up by the government pinching its plan to abolish the “non-dom” tax status, will raise up to £5bn a year. Spain is scrapping its “golden visa” scheme for expats. Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez says the current system, which offers Brits and other non-EU residents a three-year work and residency permit if they invest at least $500,000 in a Spanish property or company, is pricing locals out of the housing market. Yesterday’s total solar eclipse “cast a shadow of wonder” across North America, says The New York Times. The celestial phenomenon (pictured) delighted stargazers from the beaches of Mexico to the coastline of Newfoundland, reminding all in its path of “our planet’s place in the cosmos”.

Why are American liberals so sad?

One of the most striking traits of American progressives is how sad they are, says Lexington in The Economist. Across every age group, among both men and women, liberals are far more likely than conservatives to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Worst affected are the young: older Americans ranked 10th in Gallup’s latest global happiness rankings, whereas younger Americans came 62nd. This trend – which is seen across the globe but is particularly acute in the US – may be correlation rather than causation: conservatives tend to be “healthier, more patriotic and more religious”, all of which are typically associated with happiness. But it’s also possible that liberalism exacerbates sadness. If you’re constantly ruminating on the catastrophic consequences of climate change, for example, you’re probably going to feel a bit down.

Left-wingers are naturally predisposed to being unhappier than moderates and conservatives, says Ross Douthat in The New York Times. They’re constantly desperate to tear up “the givens of the world” in a bid to make something better, rather than be grateful for progress already made. But in the 20th century, they had two very important – and very different – “anchors” that kept them optimistic: the Christian beliefs that infused the civil rights movement; and the Marxist conviction that history would eventually bring about a “secular utopia”. Today, neither anchor remains. Left-wing politics has been almost totally secularised, to the point where even Barack Obama’s “Christian-inflected cosmic optimism” in his 2008 campaign has come to be seen as “cringe-worthy”. And while many still share Marx’s criticism of capitalism, few think we’re in line for some sort of worker’s paradise. The result, for many, is “despair”.

Prince Philip could always be relied upon to “find the positive in life”, says Christopher Hope in The Sunday Telegraph. Eamonn Holmes, the broadcaster, revealed last week that the Duke of Edinburgh once told him “this climate change thing” was “bloody marvellous”. When Holmes asked why, he responded: “We’re getting so much more grouse at Sandringham!”

This video of a mountain goat sitting in a seemingly inaccessible cave has racked up more than 10.6 million views on X. Clearly, says one user, “the laws of physics do not apply to mountain goats”.

The Tory divide on Israel

When the Gaza war began last October, says George Eaton in The New Statesman, “the Conservatives united in support of Israel while Labour fractured”. Six months on, Tory feuds over the issue have emerged too. Several Conservative MPs and peers have called on the government to suspend arms sales to Israel; Foreign Secretary David Cameron has warned that British support for the country is “not unconditional”. Yet some Tories, in common with the American right, are “reaffirming their solidarity” with Jerusalem: Boris Johnson has said an arms ban would be “insane”, while Suella Braverman and David Frost have offered “uncritical endorsements” of the Israeli government’s strategy.

It’s the critics who hew closest to Tory tradition. Labour used to be “Israel’s most redoubtable ally”, with Zionism championed by left-wingers like Tony Benn as a “socialist experiment”. Reaction against this idea – and, in some cases, “simple anti-Semitism” – sparked the tradition of Tory “Arabists” who sympathised with Palestinians. Tory PM Ted Heath blocked UK arms sales to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, “and barred US planes supplying the country with weapons from using British military bases”. It was only under Margaret Thatcher, “who viewed Israel as a vital Cold War ally”, that the party became supportive of the Jewish state. Nevertheless, the Arabist tradition hasn’t been entirely extinguished: Cameron, who described Gaza as a “prison camp” when he was PM, clearly has some sympathies with it. The division between “Israel-philes and Israel-sceptics” will be a crucial subplot in “the battle for the Conservative Party’s soul”.

To The Economist: 

A reader’s plea that The Economist stops using the phrase “formerly known as Twitter” is timely and welcome. Since Twitter’s name change came into effect there have been 1,575,910 uses of the phrase “formerly known as Twitter” in English-language news media, according to my quick search using a media-monitoring tool. That’s 6,303,640 words. There are fewer than 800,000 words in the King James Bible. Ernest Hemingway took only 27,000 words to win the Pulitzer prize for The Old Man and the Sea, and the bold ambitions of the UN Charter required a mere 9,000.

James Tate
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

It’s the thinnest watch in the world, says Le Point. Made by the luxury brand Bulgari, the new Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC is only 1.7mm thick, the same as a 20p coin. Only 20 of them have been made, with the price available on request. It’s the latest example of the watch world’s race to create the thinnest model, trumping the 2022 Richard Mille RM UP-01 Ferrari, which comes in at a comparatively chunky 1.75mm.