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The result on Tuesday represents an enormous blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which led the way in the effort to defeat El-Sayed, backing his opponent, US Congresswoman Haley Stevens, with more than $30m.

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El-Sayed will face former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in November. The race is considered one of a handful of competitive Senate contests in the November midterms and could determine which party controls the chamber for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.

If El-Sayed – who is of Egyptian descent – wins in November, he would become the first Muslim senator in US history.

Tuesday’s result in Michigan – a swing state that voted for Trump in 2024 – will have major implications for the Democrats’ policies on conflicts in the Middle East.

El-Sayed recognises Israel’s atrocities in Gaza as a genocide and argues that money spent on conflicts that benefit Israel should be invested in local communities in the US to address healthcare, housing and infrastructure problems.

Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, a non-partisan advocacy group that does not endorse candidates, called El-Sayed’s victory a “big deal”.

She said voters “did not buy” the avalanche of ads that did not talk about policies and only launched negative attacks “about an Arab American Muslim man named Abdul”.

“I am thrilled for the rest of the country to learn that Michigan is not going to take it,” Berry told Al Jazeera.

Call for party unity

Stevens and her allies tried to paint El-Sayed as sexist – a push that Arab American advocates say tried to play up tropes about Arab men.

The congresswoman is a staunch supporter of Israel, and AIPAC backed her heavily in 2022 to defeat Andy Levin, a progressive Jewish legislator.

The Michigan election result on Tuesday is the latest election defeat to pro-Israel Democrats as the party’s base – and US public opinion generally – turns against the Middle East ally.

El-Sayed will now look to unite the Democratic base after a bitter primary where Israel and AIPAC’s spending took centre stage.

Even before his victory was assured, El-Sayed called on his supporters to “begin to mend fences” within the Democratic Party.

“I’m going to ask all of us as we think about where we go from here, always magnanimity in victory,” he said.

“So if your instinct is to be like ‘I told you,’ no. Let’s come together to build a movement that’s even bigger, that’s even stronger, that’s even more powerful, that reaches into the very depths of this state, that reminds us the best of who we are and who we can be.”

‘Mike … we are coming for you’

The Democratic candidate went on to warn that the primary contest “pales in comparison to the cynicism” that Rogers and Trump will unleash in the general elections.

El-Sayed vowed to go on the attack against Roger, painting the Republican candidate as beholden to Trump and corporate interests.

“Mike – and I know you’re listening, Mike – we are coming for you,” he said.

Polls had suggested that El-Sayed was set for a comfortable win, but Stevens outperformed expectations across the state and had a strong showing in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city.

As the night went on, Stevens kept closing in on a lead that El-Sayed had built in from early returns. The race remained too close to call for hours after the polls closed.

NBC News was the first major network to project El-Sayed as the winner.

As soon as that announcement was made, Mallory McMorrow – a state legislator who was in the US Senate race but dropped out weeks before the elections – endorsed El-Sayed. %!s()

The KO loss came on the strength of a nasty straight right hand to the body. Cowan immediately stopped and nearly folded like a lawn chair. I don't recall ever seeing a fighter take a loss like Cowan and calling it a career immediately afterward.

As it is, Cowan's loss on Saturday was her fourth in a row and they have all come by way of stoppage.

Key Facts at a Glance

The essentials on Cowan's final night:

• Fighter: Hailey Cowan, 34, out of Robinson, Texas
• Career record: 7-6 in MMA, 0-4 in the UFC
• Final result: TKO by body punch, Round 1, 3:41
• Event: UFC Belgrade, August 1, Belgrade Arena, Serbia
• Opponent: Nina Milošević, 9-1 in MMA, promotional debut

What Happened In The Cowan Vs. Milosevic Fight?

Milošević went to the body from the opening exchange and never left it. A front kick got Cowan's attention early, and the Serbian kept working the same target until a clean straight punch to the midsection sent Cowan turning away. The follow-up shot put her on the canvas. Referee stoppage came at 3:41 of the first.

MORE FOR YOU

The finish was one of 12 on the night, a card volume that turned Belgrade into a record-setter. More on that in my UFC Belgrade results and bonuses breakdown.

Why Did Hailey Cowan Retire?

Cowan announced the decision on social media within hours of the loss, thanking the sport and framing the run as something she was proud of rather than something that got away from her.

The math behind it is pretty simple. Cowan went 6-2 in LFA and 1-0 in Invicta before the Contender Series call, then never found a win across four octagon appearances spanning three years, with injuries and a ruptured ovarian cyst costing her two scheduled debuts along the way.

All things considered, here decision makes sense.

Retirements at the moment of defeat are rare. Gilbert Burns called it inside the cage after a TKO loss in April, and Colby Covington walked away weeks later under very different circumstances.

Who Won The UFC Belgrade Performance Bonuses?

Meanwhile, Milošević was awarded one of the $100K performance of the night bonuses. Talk about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. These two fighters clearly epitomize the concept. The other bonuses went to Uros Medic, Navajo Stirling and Gilbert Urbina.

What's Next For Nina Milosevic?

Milošević wants back in fast. She told Michael Bisping in the cage that the body work was drilled and expected to land, and she pointed at the 135-pound division currently run by Kayla Harrison as where she intends to go.

A first-round finish, a six-figure bonus and a home crowd in a country hosting its first UFC card is close to the ceiling for a promotional debut. The matchmakers now decide how quickly they cash it. %!s()

Winner of a 2025 Atlas Workshops Development Award no less, moving from observational social realism to – literally –  flowering magical realism, love story “Chapa 100” is set in Mozambique capital Maputo. It marks scribe-helmer Ique Langa’s follow-up to “The Prophet,” a 2026 IFF Rotterdam main competition entry.   

Beginning with an impossible snowfall blanketing a drought-ridden Ugandan village, “A Vineyard for a Lobster” signals the feature debut of Ugandan Talemwa Pius, a New York Film Academy alum.

Now in advanced development, “Hibiscus in the River” is one of five projects brought to market at Locarno by David Ikeata at Vox Cinematic Films, a burgeoning force on Nigeria’s new film scene. 

Screenings this year at Open Doors pack a particularly powerful punch taking in, for example, Suzannah Mirghani’s Venice Critics’ Week premiere “Cotton Queen,” a Thessaloniki’s best film and Doha Audience Award winner and the first feature-length fiction film from Sudan that is written and directed by a woman. 

Also on show is “Crocodile,” a doc-feature best film, Viewpoints laureate at Tribeca Film Festival, New York and Youth Jury Prize at the U.K.’s Sheffield DocFest, and “Diya,” a 2025 TIFF Centerpiece title praised by those who caught it. 

Aymar Esse’s touching “My Father’s Kora” world premieres at Locarno. 

A Snapshot of Africa’s Upscale Film Scene

Carefully curated, Open Doors 2026 provides a telling take of the range of current upscale titles coming out of Africa plus their artistic and industrial trends. 

Though light years from parity in Africa at large, women cineastes feature prominently at Open Doors, dominating its producers, new Open Doors Connect and directors sections. 

Also, “the cohort of Open Doors 2026 is made up of projects and filmmakers that don’t compromise with authenticity,” says Suzsi Bankuti, head of Open Doors. Many titles are indeed redolently and proudly local. “I Live in V.I’s” “character ensemble and dramatic situations are colored with different aspects of the Nigerian collective psyche,” promises director Ugochukwu Azuya. 

In “Crocodile,” Nigeria’s The Critics collective, though achieving increasing global renown, debate what it takes to be a Nigerian filmmaker.

Directly or indirectly, most films deal with the state of Africa today. That includes a critique of post-colonial dynamics. Formally, the British Empire et al. has gone. But their legacy lingers. In “Cotton Queen,” set on a Sudanese cotton farm, teen Nafisa, raised on her grandmother’s heroic tales of battling British colonizers, sets out to save the cotton fields – and herself when a British businessman arrives planning to introduce genetically engineered cotton.

“‘A Vineyard for a Lobster’ grows out of my interest in how colonial structures continue to shape authority, belief and communal life in Uganda decades after independence,” explains director Talemwa Pius.

Facing Africa’s Challenges

It Takes a Village, a panel at Locarno Pro on Aug. 8, will examine new investment cinema models. Africa desperately needs them, crippled by a fundamental lack of traditional national film funding incentives. Open Doors does hint, however, at some ways African cinema can go and indeed is going. 

One is the full international co-production and sales agent route, empowering a production with top technical talent. One case in point: Produced by Caroline Daube’s Strange Bird in Germany and Didar Maneki’s Maneki Films in France and co-produced by Annemarie Jacir’s Philistine Films in Palestine and Jordan, “Cotton Queen” was set up as a Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Sudan production, supported by 10 institutions in those countries and Netherlands’ Hubert Bals Fund.  

African companies are not just looking towards Europe, however. At Locarno’s mass networking encounter Match Me!, Amadeu Alban at Brazil’s Movioca is currently in development on two Brazil-Nigeria projects, “Trapped” and “La Pyramide,” reflecting his strategy of building co-productions across the Global South.

Or filmmakers are turning to genre, with its ingrained entertainment drive. Brought to Open Doors by producer Tapiwa Chipfupa, “Life On the Other Side of the Sun” has supernatural elements; “Diya” weighs in as a blood money crime thriller. 

Pius uses genre storytelling “to reclaim African narratives and expand how the continent is represented on screen,” he says. Open Doors producer David Ikeata’s slate at Vox Cinematic Films spans “fiction and genre-driven storytelling,” he notes. 

Rather than a market ploy, however, that passion can come from the filmmakers themselves. “Crocodile” charts how Godwin and Raymond, not yet 11, create a homemade collective with siblings and cousins, shooting ever more ambitious sci-fi films on one of their dad’s iPhones.  

Or companies can seek out larger same-territory entities, galvanized by global streamer deals. Nemsia Studios, one of Nigeria’s leading film production-financing companies which signed a slate deal with Prime Video in 2022, has boarded Ikeata’s “Hibiscus by the River” as a financing partner. 

Such deals may be for the lucky few. Their tenor is clear, however. A new initiative, Open Doors Connect, bringing together producers from Africa, Latin America and Asia, aims “to move co-production, circulation and long-term collaboration beyond traditional industry schemes,” Bankuti says. Larger collaboration, now being essayed by film industries as established as France and the Nordic States, is the bigger major way Africa’s film industries can also go. 

Open Doors 2026 Selection

Open Doors 2026 is focused on African projects, producers and directors from outside the northern Maghreb and Egypt and South Africa.

Open Doors Projects

“Accept My Plea for Burial” (“Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon,” Mohammed Sheikh, Djibouti, Somalia, Qatar)

After Warmooge, 12, falls to his death while playing with Waasuge, a fellow goatherd, the village elder fails to resolve the case via customary law and religious counsel. From Minnesota-based U.S.-Somali filmmaker Sheik’s follow-up to “Barni,” screening at Locarno, “a morally complex story where there is no clear truth, told through a rarely seen Somali cultural framework,” he says.

“Chapa 100” (Ique Langa, Mozambique, Portugal)

Sitóe, 80, a Maputo flower vendor, and Valentina, a widowed vegetable seller, fall in love. When he is killed by a speeding minibus when trying to help her, flowers begin to bloom within the vehicle. “My love letter to Maputo, ‘Chapa 100’ is ultimately a story about love, memory, and the invisible bonds that connect us and to the places we call home,” Langa tells Variety.

“I Live in V.I” (Ugochukwu Azuya, Nigeria)

One of the first titles from Lagos-based Ensemble, launched by Azuya and O.O. Ogunsola last year, a social class satire from Azuya, whose short ghost story “Swimming in a Sea of Trauma,” played IFF Rotterdam. Florence, 23, to avoid a tough commute to her job in luxurious Victoria Island, squats in an abandoned high-rise, a relic from an ‘80s government building project. “A film about grief, urban alienation and gentrification in the city of Lagos exploring the lost hope of the Nigerian dream,” say Azuya and O.O. Ogunsola. 

“The Ones With the Tempered Flowers” (Neema Ngelime, Tanzania)

Ngelime’s debut feature, a diary-like essay, she says, using constructed archives, cinema verité performances with her family and stop motion to explore, respectively, Neema’s 1990s childhood, today and imagined future. An auto doc feature about “a journey I am taking,” “exploring identity and the expectations of womanhood,” says Ngelime. Produced by LBx Africa, run by creative producer Bramwel Iro and director-producer Sam Soko.

“Too Much Music” (Aseye Fiagbe, Ghana)

A music doc bio, about Kiki Gyan, a Ghanaian keyboard prodigy catapulted to international fame as a teen with Afro-rock pioneers Osibisa, which he left over conflict over credit and ownership. Shaping African disco and funk, but unrecognised, he became famed for addiction and an early death. “Kiki’s story is about memory and erasure, about who gets remembered for their work and who is remembered only for how they fell,” says Fiagbe.

“A Vineyard for a Lobster” (Talemwa Pius. Uganda)

Billed as absurdist political allegory, after mysterious snowfall blankets a drought-stricken Ugandan village, a desperate trader, a disgraced priest and a reluctant chairman exploit the “miracle.” Their escalating ambitions threaten to tear the community apart. From Kampala-based Gripmagic, “in the film, an impossible snowfall in a Ugandan village becomes a political allegory, echoing colonial intrusion,” says Pius.  

Producers

Tapiwa Chipfupa, Ambidextrous Pictures, Zimbabwe, “Life on the Other Side of the Sun”

Heading Ambidextrous, founder of AVEL and Girls Making Films training programs and a producer exploring “implications of tradition, culture and custom within modern-day Zimbabwe and on the continent, particularly in the life of women,” says Chipfupa. One case in point:“Life On the Other Side of the Sun, ” a supernatural thriller set in a men-ruled mountain hamlet which slides into desperation and witch hunts – until the free-spirited girl Sungano emerges as the village heroine.

Natasha Craveiro, Korikaxoru Films, Cabo Verde, White Mask (“dja branku dja”) 

“In a market dominated by advertising, we established an auteur cinema production house as an act of resistance and cultural affirmation,” Craveiro says of Korikaxoru Films, set up in 2017. Following on multi-prized docu-fiction fest fave Pirinha (2024), she is now developing hybrid feature “White Mask” which plumbs what she calls her father’s “identity denial:” “a Black man from Cabo Verde who served as a soldier in the Portuguese army and, after the war, erased his Cabo Verdean life to settle in Portugal as a judge.”

David Ikeata, Vox Cinematic Films, Nigeria, “Hibiscus by the River”

Set up in 2024 by Nigerian actor Chimezie Imo and producer David Ikeata, Vox Cinematic Films slate includes “Hibiscus by the River,” the tale of a young Nigerian man who moves to England to pursue an education, only to find himself pulled back into the currents of his past. Holmes Awa, behind Prime Video’s “Soft Love,” directs. South African producer-screenwriter Paballo Molingoane, and Bulgaria’s U.K.-based Teodora Shaleva also produce.

Mamounata Nikièma, Pilumpiku Production, Burkina Faso

General secretary of the Africadoc Association Burkina over 2009-2014 and honored at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Africa’s largest cinema festival, in 2021. Behind multiple doc-features, such as “Djeliya, Memory of Mandingo,” an ambitious, five-county co-pro. “Our vision is to become a national and continental reference in film production, digital marketing, and promotion, championing impactful African storytelling, creating jobs for professionals, and nurturing emerging talent,” Nikièma has said.   

Rua Osman, Helomur Picture, Sudan, “Manageable Matter”

Osman’s Helomur focuses on stories that explore memory, identity and social transformation, while fostering meaningful South–South and international co-productions. At Locarno with 

her “Manageable Matter,” a film take on Berlin-based Emma Waltraud Howes’ installation, staging a procession of the Paradox Crew as an Artichoke Brigade, feature nine performances. These build a “meditation on repetition, collective endurance and the search for humility and grace within seemingly unresolvable cycles,” the synopsis reads. 

Adja Soro (Studio KÄ, Ivory Coast, “Unchosen”)

Behind Abidjan’s animation Studio KÄ and now Studi KÄ France and editor-in-chief of Spark Anim and developing African stories such as YA animated thriller series “Unchosen.” It turns on Esmel, an Olympic taekwondo silver medal winner who returns home a national hero, but, linked to his father’s unsolved murder, risks everything in a live TV interview, to help him find his missing sister. “Through Esmel’s journey, ‘Unchosen’ explores the violence of public exposure in a world where the line between good and evil grows thinner every day,” says Soro.

Open Doors Feature Screenings 

“Barni” (Mohammed Sheik, U.S., Somalia)

Sheik’s debut feature, a 2025 Red Sea Fest competition world premiere line-produced by Kadir Harbi at Minneapolis-based Aleel, now behind “Accept My Plea for Burial.” Sheik’s passion to depict Somalia through a Somali lens plus older generation fecklessness shines through as Amini leaves her somnolent village to find sis Barni, 9, in a big city. Arrestingly shot – whether ochre scrub-desert or a big city scrap yard beach –  speaking well of Sheik/Harbi’s larger production ambitions.

“Catcher” (aka “Wrestlers,” Derhwa Kasunzu, Burkina Faso, France, Democratic Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia)

When Kelekele Lituka, a wrestler who became world champion in 1974, dies in 2021, he’s buried with little fanfare. To honor him, the New Generation wrestling club announces one last catch event in his honor, despite a war-torn Kisangani and the fact its members are getting on in years…. A “lovingly made film,” said an IDFA description. 

“Cotton Queen” (Suzannah Mirghani, Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan)

An undoubted Open Doors standout, sparking some rave reviews – “a beguiling mix of magic-realist fable, coming-of-age drama and post-colonial critique,” says Eye for Eye – scoring top plaudits at a slew of festivals labs such as Cannes’ Cinéfondation L’Atelier and sales from Totem Films to MAD Solutions/Film Clinic Indie Distribution (Arab-speaking countries), TAPE Collective (U.K./Ireland) and Jip Film (Germany). Cotton Queen “highlights how Sudanese girls must navigate authority in all its forms, whether patriarchal or matriarchal – from the specter of colonialism, to familial authoritarianism to the needs of contemporary capitalism,” Mirghani has said.

“Crocodile” (The Critics, Pietra Brettkelly, New Zealand, Nigeria)

Built on footage collected by The Critics, a kids’ collective filmed over 13 years through 2025 as Godwin, Raymond, not yet 11, launch The Critics, a filmmaking collective based out of a hardscrabble part of Kaduna, Nigeria, making sci-fi and super-hero films. Now, still determined to make Nigerian genre, they’ve received a digital camera from J.J. Abrams and Morgan Freeman’s narrated Ogun Ola: War Is Coming.” “Crocodile” The Critics and New Zealand’s Brettkelly, whose “A “Flickering Truth” played Venice and TIFF and “Yellow Is Forbidden” Tribeca, chronicle together that journey. 

“Diya” (Achille Ronaïmou, Chad, France, Germany, Ivory Coast)

Rated by critics who have caught it – TIFF’s in-house review calls it “a relentless thriller” – “Diya” sees Dane, an NGO driver, accidentally knock down and kills a child, whose family demands an exorbitant blood debt – a diya – driving Dane ever deeper into crime. Ronaïmou’s feature debut, a critique of diya, still widely extended in Chad, in a film praised for its moral complexity, engrossing tension and sense of place. Bought by Canal+ and a triple winner at the Brussels Intl. Film Festival.   

“My Father’s Kora” (“La Kora de mon père,”Aymar Esse, Benin, Switzerland, Germany)

A Locarno world premiere. Souleymane, an Afro-German trans man, talented fashion designer and increasingly less timid figure on Berlin’s ballroom scene, travels to Dakar to repair his father’s kora. In doing so, he repairs himself, building his new identity rooted in part in his origins, his griot family in Dakar. Souleymane’s journey’s is sluiced by simple but touching scenes such as his bonding with his brother sewing and with grandfather praying and metaphorical shots of the wash of the ocean on Dakar’s beaches.       

“The Prophet” (“O Profeta,” Ique Langa, Mozambique, South Africa, Qatar)

Preaching in the village of Manjacaze, his inspiration and congregation dwindling, evangelical Pastor Hélder turns to black magic to fire up his oratory and heal his parishioners. His powers come at ever larger sacrifice, literally. Pointedly framed, even in vertical box aspect, bringing sense and sensitivity to shots, a black and white film parable becoming “an expression of the community [Manjacaze] that inspired it,” marking out Luque as a director to track.

“Katanga: the Dance of the Scorpions” (“Katanga la danse des scorpions, Dani Kouyaté, Burkina Faso)

Last caught by Variety at Abidjan’s SICA, debating African cinema’s future, here vet Kouyaté (“Sia, the Dream of the Python”) re-imagines “Macbeth” in Africa, shot in bold black and white and placed in a broadly modern setting. A Fespaco Yennega Etalon d’Or winner, creating many new scenes, but key plot beats and the broad parable of overweening ambition remain.  %!s()

At an emergency meeting yesterday, EU interior ministers sought to draw a line under Ceuta, insisting that the passport-free Schengen area had never been at risk from the arrival of migrants at this scale. Despite this, much of the media coverage has suggested that events in Ceuta represent a territorial threat to Europe, sparking calls for greater security across the region’s borders.

It’s a pattern that has become familiar since the 2015 refugee crisis. As Europe has created fewer opportunities for migrants to legally cross its borders, people have tried to cross them illegally, resulting in dangerous bottlenecks, human tragedies, and a slew of spectacular images that the right has seized upon to justify draconian policies.

For this morning’s newsletter, I spoke to Daniel Trilling, a journalist who writes about refugees and migration, about the political actors trying to capitalise on Ceuta, and why tragedies like this are bound to keep happening. That’s after the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Environment | Eight of the biggest oil companies amassed profits of more than $90bn (£67bn) in just three months as the Iran conflict sent energy prices soaring and the emissions-fuelled climate crisis caused deadly heatwaves.

2. UK politics | Women should not feel pressurised into experiencing an “ideal birth”, the new health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said, promising a root-and-branch reform of standards after several damning maternity scandals.

3. Middle East | Jordan is convening an emergency meeting over an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”.

4. Ukraine | Russian strikes in and around Kyiv killed at least 14 people, ⁠injured 27 and ⁠damaged warehouses, ​emergency service officials said. Some reports put the death toll at 15.

5. Ceuta | Hundreds of people have gathered in the northern Moroccan town of Fnideq, near the border with Spain’s Ceuta, flashing photos of their missing loved ones to passersby in the hope of tracking them down.

In depth: ‘The claim that this is some kind of invasion of Europe is entirely untrue’

On Thursday, a group of people roughly the size of Guildford’s population began crossing into Ceuta. Many of them swam around the border fence. Some drowned; others were crushed. Dozens died. “There were so many people in the sea. Everyone was trying to grab on to you to save themselves, and you were trying to escape and move forward so they wouldn’t drag you down or drown you,” one told the Guardian.

Most of these people were young men searching for work and hoping to build a better life for themselves. There are no reports suggesting any of them reached mainland Europe. “It’s very difficult for people without the right documents to travel from Ceuta to mainland Europe, and Spain has lots of experience returning people who cross without permission,” Trilling says. “So the claim that this is some kind of invasion of Europe is entirely untrue.”

Although Spain was reporting on Friday that most of these migrants had returned to Morocco, videos of men clambering on rocks and walking through Ceuta’s streets had already gone viral on social media, where they were amplified by right-wing voices. “Ceuta has been turned into a third world city in only 48 hours,” Tommy Robinson posted on X. Elon Musk, no stranger to sticking his oar into the politics of foreign nations, posted: “all military age males means it is an invasion”.

“By the time the images started circulating, the so-called crisis was over. But the political damage was already done,” Trilling says.

Why did so many people make the crossing?

A social media hoax, which hinged on a Spanish supreme court ruling that migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily deported, seems to have played a pivotal role in encouraging the crossings. Instagram posts suggested Spain’s border with Morocco was opening up, TikTok videos showed people where to swim, and Facebook users began tracking coast guard patrols. It’s unclear who was behind these accounts, as several of them were deleted soon after the crossings. At a crisis meeting on Saturday, EU member states speculated that the events may have been coordinated.

As the hoax spread, Moroccan border surveillance dwindled to a minimum, allowing thousands of people to cross into Ceuta. Some analysts have suggested that Rabat, Morocco’s administrative capital, deliberately opened the border to protest Pedro Sánchez’s recent visit to Algeria (Morocco has a territorial dispute with the country). Others have pointed to Rabat’s increasingly toasty relationship with the Trump administration, which has clashed with Sánchez during the Iran war.

Hasn’t this happened before?

“The central problem is that European border policies have given countries like Morocco a means of exerting pressure on European states,” Trilling says. The EU has increasingly outsourced (“externalised,” in the policy lingo) border policing to non-EU countries, which have the power to loosen their borders whenever they choose. We’ve seen versions of Ceuta happen before: in 2021, Morocco allowed 10,000 people to cross into the territory during a diplomatic row with Spain. Turkey tried something similar on Greece in 2020, and Poland has long accused Belarus (a close ally of Russia) of encouraging migrants to cross into the Schengen area.

The EU has taken an increasingly hardline stance on migration since 2015. This has paradoxically helped to create some of the problems that politicians say they’re trying to solve. The fortification of security means that people are forced into taking illegal and unsafe routes where there might have been safe, legal routes previously. When border security is breached, it results in a sudden influx of people, and the kind of alarming images that we’ve seen this week, which are then used to justify even further restrictions. “The performance of control very often leads to precisely the sense in which things are out of control,” says Trilling.

How is the right capitalising on this?

Following the events in Ceuta, Nigel Farage wasted no time in resurrecting his pernicious “Breaking Point” poster from 2016, and he and Zia Yusuf, Reform’s spokesperson, have described those who made the crossing as “fighting-age males.” The term is one of the right’s favourite new ways to frame people crossing borders, depicting them as threats, while giving little thought to those who lose their lives or don’t fit the brief. By Monday afternoon, Farage had alighted on a new policy that would use the Royal Navy to “stop the boats once and for all”. We published a useful explainer on why this would probably violate international law.

It would be possible to dismiss this announcement as a last-ditch attempt to change the subject, considering the £5m gift that Farage currently seems to want to avert eyes from (and his impending byelection bin fight). But that would be missing the bigger picture. Ceuta has given the right a powerful new argument for why hardline immigration policies are common sense, and, by contrast, why a more pragmatic and humane approach to migration is foolish, harmful or, as one Spectator piece put it recently, the result of “luxury” beliefs.

This sort of language encourages centre-left parties to accept the right’s logic. Take, for example, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who was among 22 signatories to a letter on Saturday that suggested Spain’s liberal migration policies compromise Europe’s security. These policies have no application in Ceuta, but Merz will soon be trying to fight off the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in state elections.

What happens next?

In a speech delivered from the White Cliffs of Dover on Monday, Andy Burnham pledged to be “relentless” in curbing small boats while building a system that offers “safe routes”. It marked a change from Starmer, whose attempts to appease would-be Reform voters culminated in his infamous “Island of strangers” speech. Still, it’s too early to say how Burnham will approach migration, and whether he will reopen routes that his predecessor closed.

“Time and again, the right has tried to claim that you can basically shut yourself off from the rest of the world and make these things go away,” Trilling says. “But they don’t go away. And Ceuta is a perfect example of that.”

What else we’ve been enjoying

• I was really moved by these images from a summer camp for LGBTQ+ kids in Texas, a state where trans people have been regularly targeted and demonised. Michael

• What do Feast, Viennetta, Magnum, Calippo, Twister and Cornetto have in common? They were all invented in the 15-year golden age of British ice-cream. Hettie

• As a fair weather cyclist, I’ve had a smug summer, avoiding sardines-in-a-sauna style public transport on my bike. Reading about commuters on the heaving 17:46 from Euston has only confirmed this. Michael

• “In our culture, we vilify vulnerability and valorise independence”, the author Emily Kenway writes in this thoughtful opinion piece about the family members who sustain our care system. Hettie

• I for one have (obviously) always been a fan of the Turritopsis dohrnii, but at last the immortal jellyfish is getting proper recognition in this year’s Guardian invertebrate of the year competition. Michael

Sport

Cycling | The world time-trial champion, Marlen Reusser, took the overall lead in the Tour de France Femmes after winning the fourth stage from Gevrey-Chambertin to Dijon.

Football | Gianni Infantino’s authority was dealt a further blow after his No 2, the Fifa secretary general Mattias Grafström, called the failed World Cup private investment plan a “sad and reproachable series of events”.

Football | The Manchester United captain, Maya Le Tissier, said her team will “stick together” and be ready for the new Women’s Super League season, despite their head coach Marc Skinner departing.

The front pages

“Oil giants make $90bn from price surge as climate crisis engulfs Europe”, is the Guardian’s front page.

The Telegraph says “Setting free Pc Harper’s killers is ‘not justice’”, the Mail writes “9,300 domestic abusers set to be released”, Metro has “Jailed just last year … but my son’s killer already set freedom”, and the Sun’s take is “See you in court, PM”.

The FT splashes “Google assembles $200bn Wall Street machine to supply chips for Anthropic”, the i Paper has “Private firms may face ban on profiteering to make care homes cheaper” and the Express writes “How many more lives will you risk by doing nothing?” The Times, on fiscal rules, says “Borrowing splurge in bid to boost economy”.

The Latest

Is Gianni Infantino’s time up as Fifa president?

Gianni Infantino’s reign as Fifa president is in severe peril after the collapse of his plans to sell off parts of the World Cup to private investment. Many Concacaf countries are considering following Europe’s lead by formally removing their support for Infantino, and there are widespread calls to remove him from his post. Lucy Hough speaks to columnist Jonathan Liew. Watch it on YouTube.

Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Once the soundtrack to postwar optimism and excess, Côte d’Ivoire’s dance music scene is evolving, thanks to TikTok and street dance battles.

Seven years after the death of its biggest star, DJ Arafat, a new generation of artists and dancers are reinventing the coupé-décalé genre, with the new high-energy biama movement winning over young fans and social media users alike. Eromo Egbejule visits a 400-strong neighbourhood dance arena in Abidjan, where a local rapper calls the craze “a dance for the immature”.

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Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

• Quick crossword

• Cryptic crossword

• Wordiply