Top story: Mugabe, from hero to tyrant

Good morning and welcome to this Friday briefing with Alison Rourke on what has been an extraordinary week in politics by any measure.

Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, has died aged 95. The news was announced by the country’s current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, this morning. It is believed Mugabe died in Singapore, where he had been a frequent visitor to receive medical care in recent months as his health has deteriorated. As far back as November 2018, Mnangagwa, who took over from him as president, told members of the ruling Zanu-PF party that Mugabe could no longer walk.

Mugabe was a hero of Zimbabwe’s independence struggle and became the country’s leader in 1978 before his decades-long rule descended into tyranny, corruption and incompetence. Though once widely celebrated for his role in fighting the white supremacist regime in his homeland, known as Rhodesia under colonial rule, Mugabe had long become a deeply divisive figure in his own country and across the continent. His final years in power were characterised by financial collapse, surges of violent intimidation and a power struggle pitting his wife Grace, 41 years younger, against Mnangagwa, his former righthand man.

Johnson goes north – Boris Johnson heads to Aberdeenshire today to meet farmers with a promise of £200m in extra funding for the industry – and to shore up his Brexit stance. He will be hoping for a warmer welcome north of the border than during a walkabout in Yorkshire yesterday. One resident in the Leeds suburb of Morley harangued him for not being in Brussels while another shook his hand, and then politely asked him to leave, spawning a the hashtag #PleaseLeaveMyTown. Coupled with his brother Jo Johnson’s resignation, it was a grim day for the PM. The dramatic move by the younger Johnson, who had only recently returned to government, sent shockwaves through the Conservative party and appeared to rattle his brother. The prime minister visited a police training academy where he said he would rather “be dead in a ditch” than bow to the demands of the no-deal bill and request at Brexit extension. He also acknowledged that “Brexit divides families”.

Play Video 0:21 Jo Johnson quits as Tory MP and minister: 'It's time to move on' – video

So what happens next? Jeremy Corbyn is poised to reject the PM’s demand for a 15 October election for a second time on Monday, with Labour fearing it would play into Johnson’s hands. The Guardian understands no final decision has been made about Labour’s tactics next week, but one option is a vote of no confidence. If the government lost, it would be followed by a 14-day period during which MPs could seek to put together an alternative majority.

If nothing else, the Brexit chaos is providing plenty of material for columnists. Simon Jenkins writes that the PM revels in bellicose, war-like rhetoric, but it could see him hoisted on his own petard. “He and his allies have turned a technical debate about trade policy into a Battle of Britain,” he writes . “They suggest ludicrously that the national economy faces an existential threat from Europe.” Lynsey Hanley writes that Johnson wrongly thinks a “culture war” will win crucial working-class votes. And John Crace calls it as he sees it: “Boris Johnson’s speech at a police academy in Wakefield was the shitshow to end all shitshows.”

Dorian death toll rises – Thirty people are believed to have died in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian wreaked havoc across the archipelago. The storm is now skirting the coast of North Carolina as it heads north-east. But in the Bahamas it has left such terrible devastation that authorities are still struggling to get aid to stricken areas and the death toll is expected to rise, perhaps steeply. According to local media the government has taken delivery of at least 200 body bags. Luíz David Rodriguez, the programme manager for Direct Relief, an NGO, said the island’s main health clinic, near Marsh Harbour, was being overwhelmed with hundreds of people waiting to be treated. “Lots of people are just laying around,” he said, “waiting to get off the island. People are getting a little desperate.”

Play Video 1:25 'Everything is gone': Hurricane Dorian survivor tells of terrifying ordeal in Bahamas – video

Take back Isis fighters – The US defence secretary says the UK must take back the estimated 250-300 foreign fighters who are still in Syria. “Our view has been they should repatriated and dealt with appropriately … otherwise that’s a risk to the region,” Mark Esper said at the start of his London visit. Esper estimated there are around 2,000 foreign fighters many from Europe, being held in north-east Syria, but Britain is increasingly unwilling to allow any to return and stand trial. It will make for an interesting conversation between Esper and the defence secretary Ben Wallace today.

‘Turn the lights out’ – Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has told an international summit on demography that it was was conceivable that his country, with a fast-shrinking population of just under 10 million, could simply disappear. “It’s not hard to imagine that there would be one single last man who has to turn the lights out,” he said. Orbán, who has based his political campaigns in recent years on anti-refugee and anti-migration sentiment, said other European politicians saw immigration as the solution, but he firmly rejected this, tapping into the far-right “great replacement” theory. “There are political forces in Europe who want a replacement of population for ideological or other reasons,” he said.

‘Nazi grandpa’ – A German man is being sued by the owners of a four-star hotel in the Austria Alps after posting online reviews in which he criticised them for decorating their lobby with a portrait of a “Nazi grandpa” in a uniform adorned with a swastika. “This incident speaks volumes about the current state of affairs in this region of Austria,” the review of the guesthouse said. A lawyer acting for the owner said the portraits had been hung in the lobby in remembrance of late relatives. In July a court took the unusual step of granting a preliminary injunction against the reviewer, arguing that his posts had implied that the hotel owner shared or sympathised with Nazi ideas. The trial is expected to continue until later in the year, but the hotel owners’ lawyer said the family had since removed the portraits.

Neighbours spin off – The Australian TV soap Neighbours, a staple on British screens for 33 years, has spawned a spin-off miniseries set in the local high school in the sunny fictional suburb of Erinsborough. Erinsborough High is a five-episode series focusing on the teenage cast during their final exams – more than three decades after Charlene (Kylie Minogue) and Scott (Jason Donovan) graduated from the same school. The 22-minute episodes will be streamed on Channel 5’s VOD platform My5n from 11 November.

Today in Focus podcast: Malcolm Gladwell on the consequences of misreading a stranger

Writer Malcolm Gladwell examines our interactions with strangers, and what can happen when they go wrong. Plus: Daniel Boffey on the view from Brussels after a chaotic week in British politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Author Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent work looks at what happens with interactions with strangers go wrong. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Observer

Lunchtime read: The CIA’s darkest secrets

A death at a Manhattan hotel in 1953 seemed like a regular incident to police on the scene: a distressed man had taken his own life. They could not have known that the dead man was a scientist who had worked on the US government’s most highly classified intelligence programmes. The family of the dead man, Frank Olson, was shocked that he might have taken his own life. The funeral was held with a closed casket. Olson’s death was a near-disaster for the CIA. It came close to threatening the very existence of MK-Ultra, the top-secret programme of experiments in mind control that used, as its basic formula, doses of LSD given to “expendables”. The truth would only emerge decades later.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Frank Olson’s death threatened to expose one of the CIA’s most secretive programmes. Photograph: AP

Sport

England face an uphill battle to keep their Ashes hopes alive after a scolding from Joe Root was followed by the agony of watching Steve Smith pile on a masterful double-century in Manchester, where two and a half hours of spills, thrills and bellyaches put Australia almost out of sight in the fourth Test. Serena Williams is back in the US Open final after a one-sided win over Elina Svitolina. The title-decider is tomorrow against Canada’s Bianca Andreescu, who saw off Belinda Bencic in the other semi-final. In the men’s draw at Flushing Meadows, Grigor Dimitrov’s return to form has been dramatic but his semi-final opponent Daniil Medvedev has emerged from the NextGen pack as the best player outside the big three. Anthony Joshua, touching down briefly in New York, desperately wanted to return to the scene of the crime to reclaim his world heavyweight titles but he has settled instead for meeting his conqueror in Saudi Arabia. England’s visit to Newcastle for their last World Cup warm-up, against Italy on Friday, suits Mark Wilson, the former Falcon flanker, as well as northern rugby fans. And Lando Norris has admitted that the death of Anthoine Hubert last week had an impact that still affects the McLaren driver and his family.

Business

The pound has slipped back a little in early overnight trading after hitting a five-week high of $1.2353 amid the ebb and flow of events at Westminster. It is buying $1.2322 at the moment and it is worth €1.1166 in the single currency. The change in valuation of American office rental upstart WeWork has cast light on the febrile state of stock markets. We Co, WeWork’s parent company, had been expected to list on the stock market valued at $47bn. But it is now said to be considering a price tag of $20bn amid concern about the plunging value of tech stocks such as Uber. The FTSE100 looks like opening flat this morning.

The papers

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: THE GUARDIAN

Jo Johnson’s resignation dominates coverage on the front pages today. The Guardian has: “I quit. Jo Johnson puts country before family”, the i reports: “PM defiant as brother walks out”, the Mirror gloats: “Even Boris’ own family don’t trust him” and the FT says: “Johnson suffers fresh setback as brother quits government”.

Other papers lead on delays to Brexit and a potential election. The Telegraph reports: “Labour plotting to push back election to November”, the Times has: “No election until Brexit is delayed” and the Express quotes the prime minister: “I’d rather be dead in a ditch than delay Brexit”.

The Sun: “Mega star”, has another attack on the Duchess of Sussex. It does have a story about the Johnson divide: “Bojo bro Jojo goes” and uses a large picture of Prince George and Princess Charlotte smiling on the latter’s first day of school, as a way of taking a swipe at Johnson: “At least someone’s getting on with their brother”.

The Daily Mail is angry about an impending pilots’ strike: “Greed of BA pilots wrecking holidays”.

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