Donald Trump says he will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports into the US from today, with top importers Canada, China and Mexico set to be hit hardest. The president also promised to slap reciprocal tariffs on countries currently taxing US imports. Almost half of Gen Z think Britain is a “racist country” and only a tenth would risk their lives to defend it in a war, according to a new study of the attitudes of young Britons by The Times. Some 41% said there were “no circumstances at all” in which they would take up arms for their country. A rogue monkey that clambered into a power station in Sri Lanka has been blamed for a nationwide blackout, says The Guardian. The energy minister said the pesky primate “came into contact” with the country’s grid transformer yesterday, plunging the island nation’s 22 million people into darkness. “There was no word on the fate of the monkey.”

Starmer’s “calamitous” Chagos deal

Keir Starmer has been getting it in the neck lately over his proposed deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, says Esther Webber in Politico. The scheme would cost Britain upwards of £9bn, and risks opening the region to increased Chinese influence. Opponents say Starmer’s interest in the deal stems from a so-called “Matrix Chambers mindset” – a reference to a London law practice which specialises in human rights cases against Britain. The PM’s close chum Richard Hermer, who he appointed attorney general, belonged to Matrix Chambers, as does their pal Philippe Sands, who has represented Mauritius in its Chagos land grab. One person who has worked with Starmer warns that the PM is veering too far towards “Matrix Chambers radical chic”, describing the Chagos deal as “fucking nuts”.

You can see why Labour MPs are “falling one by one into glum silence”, says Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. The assumption that this was somehow “decolonisation” has fallen apart. Instead, as “incandescent” Chagossians have pointed out, the islands are merely being handed to a state 1,300 miles away which has never previously owned them. Then there’s the cost of this “calamitous” deal: £9bn in rent to lease land for an airbase for the next 99 years. That sum comes on top of the £3m the UK government gave Mauritius back in 1965 to renounce any claim to the territory – a deal it appears to have reneged on. And to put that £9bn in context, Labour’s new VAT on school fees, inheritance tax grab on farms and scrapping of the winter fuel allowance will only bring in a combined £3.9bn a year. Having promised growth, Starmer is instead delivering “shrinkage in every sense” – economically, geographically and morally. And his backbenchers know it.