SEATTLE — In late May, Greg Moriarty formally presented his credentials to President Donald Trump as Australia’s man in Washington. But it wasn’t until mid-June that Moriarty encountered one of the U.S. officials he most needed to meet: Energy Secretary Chris Wright, whose department plays a key role in critical-minerals deals between the two countries.

Moriarty’s encounter with Wright did not take place at the Energy Department’s headquarters just off the National Mall in Washington, or at any of its many facilities around the country. Rather the men met at Lumen Field in Seattle, at last Friday’s crucial World Cup match between their countries, where Wright led the U.S. delegation — an auspicious occasion for an envoy to make connections in a new post.

“The United States is a very sports-mad country, so is Australia, so [it’s] a great opportunity to get to know them on a different level, because you might touch on one or two items of business,” Moriarty said in an interview. “But it’s generally just so that you can both enjoy the spectacle and the connection that we both have through sports.”

Moriarty also introduced himself to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a figure of particular fascination in Australia given that country’s embrace of harsh Covid-era lockdowns, as well as members of Congress in attendance. Moriarty, a former defense secretary and national security adviser, will work to keep Washington’s foreign-policy establishment focused on the Indo-Pacific in a year when its attention has drifted alternately to the Arctic, Caribbean and Persian Gulf.

“The United States is a superpower. It clearly has global commitments and global responsibilities,” said Moriarty. “But Australia, we think that the United States’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific is very solid.”

In Seattle, however, business was front of mind for Moriarty, who finds himself fighting a new 12.5 percent tariff that the Trump administration has imposed on countries accused of not doing enough to prevent slave labor in their supply chains. At the waterfront Edgewater Hotel, Moriarty joined corporate leaders — including Microsoft’s Australian-raised Deputy General Counsel Antony Cook, who has taken a leading role in the company’s approach to AI regulation, and Mikaël Limapalaër of heavyweight pension fund Australian Super — to discuss the future of the bilateral trade relationship.

Moriarty is unusual among Australia’s ambassadors to Washington for not having been a politician — his immediate predecessor, Kevin Rudd, previously served as the country’s prime minister — but he already shows a deft instinct for intertwining economic ties, military alliances and cultural affinity. At one point, he linked a coming National Football League game in Melbourne to the arrival of nuclear submarines as part of the AUKUS security partnership.

“We’re really keen to sort of see how we can use American football to grow an audience in Australia, that will again be really good for the business connections and the people-to-people connections,” said Moriarty.

“Australia will be ready to host the first rotation of U.S. submarines by the end of next year, and we’re hoping that all the Americans who come down to and live down in Western Australia bring their own love of football.”

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OTTAWA — Mark Carney may be Canada’s loudest booster at the World Cup, but some of his countrymen fear he may be hurting more than helping — because he always does when it comes to sports.

In March 2025, the new prime minister joined the Edmonton Oilers for a pre-game skate. That night the Oilers fell to the Winnipeg Jets, followed by a wave of injuries on the team. Former Oiler and “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast host Ryan Whitney took to X: “The Carney Curse is real for Edmonton. What the hell just happened. Guy is on the ice with the Oil this morning and now everyone is injured.”

Now some Canadians are worried that their prime minister has brought the “Carney Curse” to the World Cup, blaming him for Canada’s defeat against Switzerland on Wednesday. His country’s only only goal coincided with a moment that Carney left his box seat at Vancouver’s BC Place.

For a brief, glorious moment last week, the Ottawa fishbowl wondered if the curse had been broken. Carney skipped Canada’s World Cup opener against Bosnia-Herzegovina. But then, after days of anxious whispers over whether he’d jinx the squad, the prime minister witnessed Canada thrash Qatar. If Canada had beaten or tied the Swiss, the team could’ve played as many as two elimination games in Vancouver. With the loss, they fell to runner-up — and a knockout-round game in Los Angeles against South Africa on Sunday.

Canada’s men’s soccer team joins an ever-growing list of inadvertent “victims” of prime-ministerial fanhood, including: the Toronto Blue Jays, who lost the World Series after Carney visited the team; the Canadian women’s rugby team, for whom he traveled to the United Kingdom to cheer on at the World Cup last summer; and the Montreal Canadiens, whom he dubbed “Canada’s team” during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

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The most high-profile team to miss out on the 2026 World Cup, Italy, is picking a new crop of officials to revamp its discredited soccer association — as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s allies failed in their bid to take more control over the body.

Veteran sports official Giovanni Malagò, a former president of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) for more than a decade, overcame opposition from Italy’s right-wing government to become the new president of the Italian soccer association (FIGC) earlier this week.

Malagò’s key challenge is to mend ties with Italian Sports Minister Andrea Abodi, with whom he has clashed in the past and who publicly questioned Malagò’s soccer credentials. Until the very last minute, Meloni’s government tried to block Malagò from clinching the FIGC’s top job — but ultimately failed.

In a soccer-mad country where the sport carries outsized cultural weight, Italy’s failure to qualify for the World Cup turned into a proxy battle over governance, reforms, investment and the Meloni administration’s willingness to extend political influence into independent institutions.

Frustrated Italian soccer fans, who have seen their country miss out on qualifying for the last three World Cups, just want Malagò to pick Italy’s new head coach.

The favorites for the job are Roberto Mancini and Antonio Conte — two soccer grandees who both previously coached the Italian national team. Another soccer legend, former AC Milan captain Paolo Maldini, is being touted for a new job as a bridge between the FIGC and the players, according to Italian media.

But that’s not the only item sitting in Malagò’s in-tray.

Italy must nominate five stadiums capable of hosting matches at Euro 2032, which it will co-organize with Turkey, by an October deadline. That’s potentially problematic given that Europe’s governing body, UEFA, warned that Italy could lose its role as co-organizer unless it upgrades its dilapidated soccer infrastructure.

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If you’ve spent any time on social media recently, you’ve run across the deluge of videos from World Cup tourists celebrating the wonders of the United States. The top Republican in Congress is taking these visual love letters as a validation of his party’s agenda.

“Thanks to social media, we’re seeing a lot of these; this has been encouraging to see the visitors appreciate what we have,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday. “Dutch travelers are in Buc-ees; German players took a midnight trip to the Waffle House. They’re the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. English fans are roaming the Everglades. Japanese tourists marveling over free chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant in Texas.”

Johnson did not really contend with an undercurrent of these videos — that visitors were expecting something far different, and far less alluring, in their American travels — as he cited them in his election-season messaging about “the socialist takeover of the Democrat Party.”

“What a split screen we’re seeing right now. We’re triumphantly hosting the World Cup games all around the country, and we’re seeing people from different countries come and get a little taste of America, a little taste of freedom, of our culture and our society. And they appreciate it so much more than these socialists running for Congress,” he continued. “Sadly, many of these Democrat candidates and their voters just don’t have the same zeal and affection for America.”

Although few of these latter-day de Tocquevilles cite politics as they marvel at America’s bounty — including Freddy, the footloose German fan who has been invited to the White House — Johnson cited their enthusiasm as endorsement of his policy agenda.

“They’re seeing for themselves the genius of America’s system,” the speaker said. “A system that rewards risk takers and entrepreneurs and job creators and innovators, and people who create jobs for others and expand the economy and opportunity and broaden the pathway out of poverty for more people. That’s what the Republicans stand for.”

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Kurdistan is not a member of FIFA, resigned instead to the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, whose biennial CONIFA World Football Cup pits non-sovereign states, minorities, stateless peoples and regions against one another.

But the world’s approximately 40 million Kurds — often called one of the largest ethnic groups without their own nation-state — may have already been today’s big winners.

The Italy-based site Asia News has reported there are nine players of Kurdish extraction at the World Cup, spread across four teams, including Iran, Iraq and Switzerland. But it is German forward Deniz Undav who has attracted the most attention, for both his on-field prowess and eagerness to assert his Kurdish identity at every turn.

The son of a Kurdish-Yazidi family that migrated to Germany to Turkey after the country’s 1980 coup d’état, Undav is tied with Lionel Messi for the most goal contributions in the tournament and will have the chance to add to three-goal, two-assist tally today against Ecuador. Undav has celebrated his goals, including a stoppage-time winner against Côte d’Ivoire, with a traditional Kurdish govend dance. (Our corporate cousins at Bild detailed the origins of Undav’s celebration with his club team, VfB Stuttgart.)

Even if Undav doesn’t come off the bench again for Germany, many Kurds already have something to celebrate: the surprise early elimination of Turkey, whose government they consider an enemy both inside its own borders and beyond. Kurdish social-media feeds have become cheering sections for whichever team is facing off against Turkey, which will face the United States today in a match that has become meaningless for both sides.

“What a great way to start the day—waking up and finding out that Turkey lost the match,” an account named @Kurdistan_C wrote on X early Saturday. “Congratulations to the people of Paraguay on their team’s win against Turkey.”

It is unclear when Kurdistan’s actual team will take the pitch next. The Kurdistan Football Association was suspended by CONIFA after it failed to follow through on plans to host the World Football Cup in 2024. One has not been scheduled since.

“At the moment, Kurdistan FA are excluded from all international football inside CONIFA and have no opportunity to promote and celebrate the beauty and greatness of its people,” the organization announced in September 2024.

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LOS ANGELES — The World Cup was supposed to be a moment of unalloyed triumph for the city of Inglewood and the owner of SoFi Stadium, the signature sports venue where the United States will play its final group-stage match today, against Turkey.

But the estranged partners have been embroiled in a long-simmering legal dispute, and now Inglewood has emerged with a victory in court that could have major ramifications for California property-rights law long after the soccer world has moved on from the city.

Hollywood Park, the sprawling mixed-use property that includes the $5 billion-plus stadium filed two lawsuits against the city after it struck a deal last year with digital billboard company WOW Media to install signs in Inglewood, including near the stadium.

In one complaint, Hollywood Park, which is controlled by Stan Kroenke — the billionaire who also owns the Los Angeles Rams, SoFi’s marquee occupant — alleged that the city’s billboard deal “siphons” money from its property. In its second lawsuit, Hollywood Park sought about $400 million from Inglewood that it said it was owed for public infrastructure upgrades and other improvements, arguing the city was required to reimburse those costs once certain tax revenue thresholds were met.

But the city countered that the development agreement cited by Hollywood Park was unenforceable because it was adopted through an initiative approved by voters — and not a legislative body, the far more common route.

Now, Inglewood has prevailed. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge upheld, in a ruling dated Tuesday, the long-term agreement between the billboard company and the city, affirming that it did not violate the law.

In an interview with POLITICO, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts sought to lower the temperature, extolling Hollywood Park as a “great partner,” adding that “there is no animosity between” the city and the property owner. And he said that the litigation has not put a damper on enthusiasm for the World Cup.

SoFi, which opened in 2020, is drawing praise from soccer fans and athletes alike. Tens of thousands of visitors have poured into Inglewood, a city of roughly 100,000 just southwest of Los Angeles, and the games have unfolded without major incident.

“We’re appreciative for the partnership that we’ve had” with Hollywood Park, Butts said. “And I believe that these issues will be worked out as they should be — during negotiation. This is just a great time for us, and it’s a great time for SoFi.”

In a statement, a Hollywood Park spokesperson said that the developer would appeal the court’s decision.

“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision regarding the City’s long-term agreement with WOW and continue to believe that leasing public rights-of-way in this manner is inconsistent with state and municipal law,” the spokesperson said. “…Despite the court’s decision, Hollywood Park remains committed to continuing its investment in Inglewood and supporting the community’s long-term success.”

WOW CEO Scott Krantz said in a statement that the company was pleased with the court’s “decisive ruling,” adding that the agreement with Inglewood delivers “significant, ongoing revenue” to the city. “WOW has enjoyed a long, successful, and mutually beneficial partnership with Inglewood, and we look forward to strengthening that relationship in the years ahead,” he said.

Butts characterized the skirmish with Hollywood Park as a “business dispute,” adding that the city has “the right to self-determination.”

“The reality is even the best of partners will have business disputes,” he said, noting that SoFi Stadium, also home to the Los Angeles Chargers, will co-host the 2028 Summer Olympics opening ceremony and swimming events.

Butts said he might attend a forthcoming World Cup match at SoFi, which will host the U.S. team’s game on Thursday against Turkey. “I likely will,” he said. “But that’s not what I’m here for — to go to games. I’m here to oversee the city’s public safety and quality of life, and parking and traffic response. That’s the thrill for me.”

Inglewood also prevailed in a similar legal challenge from the owner of Intuit Dome, a nearby arena developed by billionaire Steve Ballmer that is home to his Los Angeles Clippers. A representative of Intuit Dome did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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3 min read20 min

When he took over as Prime Minister in June 2007, Gordon Brown had been thinking about the job for over a decade and planning the succession for many months.

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Brown brought in a set of advisers he had worked with for years, a sense of changes he wanted to make to the centre of government, and policy that included a big programme of constitutional reform.  

But the adjustment from Chancellor to Prime Minister – and being the face of all aspects of government – was one which Brown struggled to make, and his premiership was knocked off course by the financial crisis. Brown was lauded for his response, but many of his plans for power remained undelivered.   

While Burnham has long held prime ministerial ambitions, his ascent to the job could still be far more rapid than Brown’s. But you cannot undertake a comprehensive preparation for government programme in under a month and Burnham and his team should not try. 

Speeches in the weeks ahead look set to reveal more about his plans for power, but there are other key steps he needs to focus on: prioritising early decisions about policy in the first weeks in government, using access talks to ensure the civil service can also help make the transition a success and identify the people he wants to take into government. 

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Burnham is likely inundated with ideas from helpful well-wishers for what he should do – he should shelve much of it for after the trip to the Palace. If he does take over at the start of parliamentary recess, Burnham and his team will have the rest of the summer to continue working through the huge amounts of policy he will inherit or has been thinking about. They would do so with the support of the whole of the civil service and a far better insight into what is currently going on inside government. He will also have to govern during that period, and should be prepared to be hit by events, crises or political distractions, but he can still turn the timetable into a benefit. What he should focus on now is his overall vision and the top priorities for early change.  

Access talks are the crucial first step to building a relationship with the civil service, particularly the Cabinet Secretary. But there is a limit to what they can do, particularly in this context. The Civil Service cannot start serving him, but they can listen to and probe his plans. Burnham should use them to focus on the policies he wants to prioritise early on, the problems he is likely to inherit, the changes he wants to make to structures, and how he wants to work.  

With three years at best before the next election, Burnham cannot afford a No.10 that descends into confusion about who does what or infighting over whose ideas dominate. Burnham needs his No.10 to speak authentically and consistently for him if he wants the system to be clear on what it is supposed to be doing. He needs to be thinking about how to appoint a high-performing team around him, selected in terms of who he needs, not just who he knows and wants to reward. He will have to let some people down.  

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Appointing his No10 team will be followed by Burnham’s first ministerial reshuffle. He will want to think about policy or political signals, balancing party factions and giving encouragement to MPs, but he also needs to think about where continuity on existing policy or performance in the role means avoiding changes, particularly in the junior ranks who are too often the victims of the tail-end of reshuffles. If he wants to make a difference to the performance of his government, he would do well to plan changes by department, focusing on building ministerial teams, not just slotting names into whatever gaps are left.   

Andy Burnham probably has less than a month to think about how he will do the job that is more demanding than anything he faced as a government minister or mayor of Manchester. There is much that he can do to prepare, but he needs to be ruthless with how he uses this time.  

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The latest from Find Out Now: Reform 24% (-3) Labour 21% (+6) Conservatives 18% (-) Greens 15% (-2) Libdem 12% (-1) The Burnham bounce is real. Although political honeymoons don’t last the weekend nowadays…

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These are the people whose job it was to stop the leadership of the SNP from stealing almost £700,000 of “ringfenced” fundraiser money from independence supporters, and who utterly failed at that job.

It was also their job to stop Peter Murrell stealing the best part of £500,000 from the SNP, in a separate but related crime, and they failed at that one too.

A small handful of them (marked with red asterisks) tried their best to do their duties, and were blocked primarily by one powerful woman – Nicola Sturgeon – and a room full of cowards, weaklings and bullies, listed above.

This video is a horrifying watch.

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But the most shocking part comes about 12 minutes in. Allison Graham, a member of the SNP’s Finance and Audit Committee (FAC) as well as its National Executive Committee (NEC) relates how at an NEC meeting on 20 March 2021 she read out a statement from herself and two other FAC members.

Though the statement was quite diplomatically phrased considering the seriousness of the issues, the response to it from the online meeting was a sustained personal attack on Allison Graham from Cllr Ian Cockburn, then the co-leader of the SNP group on Highland Council and who’d completed a law degree just three years earlier.

Despite therefore presumably knowing that he and the other NEC members were legally liable for the SNP’s finances, Cockburn laid into Allison Graham to the extent that she physically bowed her head in front of her PC screen, and then the rest of the committee – including Nicola Sturgeon – joined the pile-on, with both anger and mockery.

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Most of those doing so were women, but alert readers will have also spotted the eternally poisonous Glasgow councillor Graham Campbell – part of Sturgeon’s inner circle and seen on the far right of the pic below – going so far as to say that a member of the party’s Finance & Audit Committee shouldn’t even have been allowed to read out a statement expressing the FAC’s concerns about the party finances at a meeting of its National Executive Committee.

(In other words, that the FAC literally should have been prevented from doing its job of warning the NEC about a massive seven-figure gap in the SNP’s accounts.)

This was entirely in character for Campbell, who at around the same time was demanding that anyone having any dealings (even retweets on Twitter) with Wings Over Scotland – which was also trying to warn SNP members and indy supporters that their money had been stolen – should be expelled from the party.

Ian Cockburn and Christina Cannon, incidentally, are still on the SNP NEC today.

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Allison Graham had read out the statement from the FAC members in the hope that it would be recorded as part of the minutes of the meeting.

But the NEC had stopped properly recording minutes of its meetings in November 2020 – by a remarkable coincidence, the exact same month that Douglas Chapman had been elected as Treasurer specifically on a platform of greater financial transparency, and recruited Allison Graham, Cynthia Guthrie and Frank Ross to help him in that aim – and started providing party members with only “Outcome Of Business” notes.

This is all ordinary party members were told about the 20 March meeting:

And even NEC members got only this:

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It’s important to emphasise once again that at this stage concerns were only about the missing fundraiser money, not Peter Murrell’s personal embezzlement from the party.

The SNP’s accounts for 2020 wouldn’t be published until months after the FAC members resigned, and by the end of 2019 Murrell had only pilfered around £210,000 –  a small fraction of the amount of the discrepancy the FAC had noticed.

But all attempts to solve the problem had been frustrated not just by Murrell – who had obvious motivations to keep the finances away from prying eyes – but by the aggressive hostility of the NEC, the very body that was supposed to hold him accountable, driven by the attitude of the party leader.

And as Cynthia Guthrie ruefully notes, that was the real problem.

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Nicola Sturgeon’s involvement in the coverup of the dodgy finances goes far beyond mere ignorance, far beyond even a wildly reckless lack of curiosity. She actively, brutally crushed any attempt to warn those responsible for the SNP’s finances of any alarming issues about them.

The FAC members told all of this to Operation Branchform police. And yet still nobody has been held accountable for this misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of pounds solicited from donors on a false premise, and which the SNP now admits had already been spent on something else long before the FAC members resigned and long before the majority of Peter Murrell’s embezzlement.

Alex Kerr, who was on that 2020 NEC, is now an MSP and SNP National Secretary.

Kirsten Oswald, the Business Convener who shut down every attempt by the FAC to raise the issue with the NEC, is now an MSP and a government minister.

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(Hilariously, the SNP issued a statement yesterday that Oswald had been committed to transparently updating party members about what had happened at NEC meetings.

Let’s just remind ourselves what Oswald told members about a meeting where half the party’s Finance Committee had resigned because they had extremely grave concerns about the party’s finances and the Chief Executive’s refusal to provide them with even the most basic information required to do their job.)

Alison Thewliss, who was on the 2020 NEC, is now an MSP.

Ian Cockburn, who instigated the pile-on against Allison Graham – the only time he ever spoke at an NEC meeting, Allison told Wings earlier today –  has now resigned from Highland Council but is still on the SNP NEC.

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Christina Cannon, who also joined the pile-on, is still on the NEC and is an SNP councillor in Glasgow.

Graham Campbell, who thought it was outrageous that the Finance & Audit Committee was even allowed to report to the NEC on the party’s finances, is a councillor in the same ward as Christina Cannon, and chairs the SNP’s BAME Network.

Farah Farzana, who also joined in the pile-on and is also a former chair of the SNP BAME Network, describes herself as a “social injustice activist” [sic] and is currently Equalities And Human Rights Officer at Falkirk Council. She was the Scottish Parliament’s “ambassador” for World Hijab Day, and remains active in the SNP.

Heather Anderson, who also joined the pile-on, became an SNP MSP last month, giving her oath in “Dundonian Scots”. She previously founded Scottish Human Services, a charitable trust focused on “inclusion”.

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Laura Brennan-Whitefield, who also joined the pile-on, is an SNP councillor. When seeking to be elected to the NEC in 2018, she expressed her wish to “influence Party policy in a progressive way”.

Stacy Bradley, who also joined the pile-on, stepped down as an SNP office-bearer in 2024 in order to concentrate on a new career as a trainee criminal defence solicitor, which might come in handy in the future.

Emma Hendrie, who also joined in the pile-on, campaigned actively in the SNP’s “Young Scots for Independence” wing, also known as the Twitler Youth, for the decriminalisation of sex work. (She’s the brunette on the right of the pic below.)

When seeking re-election to the NEC in 2020, she said “Constructive criticism is always welcome”, which we’re sure will come as comforting news to Allison Graham. Hendrie to have subsequently vanished from public view.

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Findlay MacGregor, who also joined in the pile-on, is the brother of SNP MSP Fulton MacGregor. He was re-elected to the NEC in 2021 after all the pro-accountability “rebels” elected in 2020 were pushed out. This 2019 campaign pic is almost all we know about him.

All of the people above, and all the other members of the 2020 SNP NEC who didn’t resign, are complicit – either actively, as in the cases of those we’ve just listed, or passively in the cases of others – in the cover-up of the theft of the fundraiser money (and also in the cover-up of Peter Murrell’s embezzlement).

All failed in their duty to the party as NEC members, and in their legal fiduciary duties. All of them bear responsibility for the subsequent calamities that befell the SNP, because none of them asked the questions it was their job to ask, and instead attacked those who did.

But what the testimony of the FAC members this week really demonstrates is that everyone who didn’t resign from the NEC in 2021 was involved in a crime for which nobody has yet been held to account, and that it is now even more astonishing that the Crown Office decided not to even try to prosecute anyone for it, and refuses to offer any sort of explanation for why.

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Crown Agent John Logue’s comments tell us nothing. WHY were the police and Crown Office not able to establish fraud, as the money had demonstrably been spent, and not on what it was raised for? And HOW were they able to establish there’d been no fraud, as at the point when the focus of the investigation switched from the fundraiser fraud to Murrell’s embezzlement they hadn’t questioned anyone in the SNP leadership? Like a magpie distracted by a shiny object, they simply dropped all the twigs they were carrying and went after their new prize.

The SNP was the victim of a crime, but also the perpetrator of one, and until the latter is addressed we’re all just being told to Wheesht For Nicola.

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