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I’d shoehorn a joke about buses in here but, honestly, this feels too consequential for that.

The largest single donations in British political history were made after a dismal party conference, the substance of which was all but obscured by the financial scandals engulfing Reform.

As the financial dubiety continues, and the numbers of millions tick upwards to seem almost meaningless, it might be tempting to roll your eyes and focus elsewhere – but this is not the time to look away. These are gamechanging donations, transformative if used effectively at this stage in the election cycle, just as Labour has regained its confidence and the Tories are contemplating a comeback.

As a bill that could stop donations like this in their tracks returns to the Lords later today, I spoke to Jessica Elgot, the Guardian’s deputy political editor, about what these millions mean and why they matter. First, a wrap-up of this weekend’s headlines.

Weekend roundup

1. Economy | Former chancellor George Osborne said Britain’s economy had “fallen off a cliff” since Brexit – and that rejoining the European Union’s customs union would be the fastest route to recovery.

2. Technology | Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “slow the pace” of AI development. Amodei had cautioned that an AI swarm could otherwise become capable of “taking over the entire internet” within a year.

3. Sweden | With most of the votes counted, Sweden’s national election remained too close to call on Sunday night, with left-wing parties holding a lead of just a single seat according to a partial tally by the election authority.

4. Ukraine | A train carrying Boris Johnson and the former CIA chief David Petraeus may have been the target of a Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian Railways.

5. Travel | The air traffic control outage that caused thousands of flights to be grounded across the UK earlier in the week was caused by a military aircraft entering “spurious” flight data into the system, according to a report.

In depth: More money, more problems?

Let’s start with more detail on the donations, by businessmen who have amassed astronomical fortunes trading in cryptocurrency. Ben Delo, a previous Reform donor, has given £36m. Delo was convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his trillion-dollar cryptocurrency business BitMEX, before being pardoned by Donald Trump last year.

(A brief note here on how that story came to light: the Sunday Times approached Reform and Farage after a confidential source told them that Delo had donated to the party. Soon after, the Telegraph published an opinion piece by Delo himself, announcing the donation and trouncing the Sunday Times scoop. As Sunday Times political editor Ben Riley-Smith noted on X: “A fundamental part of political reporting – approaching for comment before publishing – just totally breaks down if this is what happens. Bad for both sides: Will increase the chance of inaccuracies.” Reform has used the same tactic with the Guardian, as we talked about in a previous newsletter.)

Less than 24 hours later, another crypto donor was troubling the Telegraph’s op-ed page: this time Christopher Harborne – whose previous £5m gift to Farage is the one currently subject to a parliamentary standards investigation – announcing he had likewise donated £36m, saying: “My competitive spirit inspired me to match [Delo].”

Taken together, these donations are unprecedented in British political history: £72m is bigger than the total sum spent by the seven largest parties in the last general election (about £67.9m) and almost double the total donations to all political parties so far this year (about £41.8m).

Are these donations legal?

“There’s nothing wrong with these donations that we know of,” says Jessica, her final four words doing a lot of heavy lifting in present circumstances. The Metropolitan police is conducting an inquiry into Reform’s finances and Farage is facing a parliamentary standards investigation into that £5m Harborne gift, made before he was first elected an MP in 2024 and first revealed by the Guardian. Reform and Farage have denied any wrongdoing.

It’s a legal requirement for every party to rigorously check the sources of donations, and, doing the media rounds yesterday, Reform’s economics spokesperson Robert Jenrick was sounding supremely confident that the donations were “entirely in line with the law as it is and, as far as we know, what it is going to be in the future”.

Jenrick was referencing the representation of the people bill, going through parliament, which will bring in more stringent rules about foreign donations. Gifts to political parties from Britons living abroad or those who have returned to the country within the past 12 months will be capped at £100,000 a year, with the rules backdated to March. Delo has recently moved back to Britain from Hong Kong, while Harborne is a citizen of the UK and Thailand.

I don’t have space to get into it here, but if you’re curious about the path to becoming a crypto billionaire and the people who get trampled along the way, I’d recommend the actor and crypto investigator Ben McKenzie’s excellent film Everybody Is Lying to You for Money. (Yes, he’s Ryan in The OC).

How could Reform spend the money?

Reform has already vastly scaled up its party infrastructure since the general election, moving to new offices in London’s Millbank Tower, once synonymous with New Labour election operations. Press officers, graphic designers, videographers and regional organisers have augmented staffing capacity, but their wider policy offering is still weak. An injection of cash will probably mean more hires to address this, and perhaps even drafting legislation to boost Farage’s projection of a party that’s ready for government.

Reform is expected to install campaign managers and branch coordinators in hundreds of seats across the country – as their list of 60-plus job vacancies indicates.

And if this newsletter gig doesn’t work out for me, I might throw my bunnet in for the senior writer role advertised here – the application requires a 500-word letter, written in the style of Zia Yusuf, “setting out how the political class broke Britain and how Reform UK will fix it”.

The donations also promise a massive boost to Reform’s visibility – they can pay for the big “air war” expenses incurred in coming byelections and council elections next year, more locally targeted online advertising and billboards, as well as getting creative with its TV studios.

Reform now has the money to focus on labour-intensive data gathering in target constituencies as well, says Jessica, who predicts it will be “transformative” for the party.

“You’ve got enough money now to spend on the granular and expensive work of going around every single constituency in the country making sure your data about voters, and non-voters, is bang on. And if you’re a party that wants to show that you’re on the march, they’ve got the momentum, you can dominate the airwaves, dominate people’s social media feeds.”

Will this prompt a rethink on a cap for all donations?

Labour MPs’ WhatsApp chats have been popping off over the weekend, Jessica reports, with anger that the government did not act last week to restrict domestic donations in the elections bill. Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, pulled her amendment proposing an annual cap of £100,000 after Andy Burnham dropped his support for it, following intensive lobbying from the party’s trade union backers, who argued it would undermine their ability to donate to the party.

But the bill has its second reading in the Lords later today and, yesterday, communities secretary Angela Rayner suggested that the government was still considering amendments and that “it’s not as simple as we’re saying we won’t put a cap”.

As Sunday turned into Monday, some unions appeared to be shifting their opposition while Labour MPs and donors were urging the government to look again at party funding rules. But Reform argues that – as a relatively new political force – it needs this cash injection to level the playing field with other parties and their far longer-standing donor arrangements.

What about an early election?

As Jessica reminds me, Reform will be able to splash its cash in the coming months because many restrictions on party spending don’t kick in until a general election is called. “Other parties are not spending that money now because they don’t have it. And their donors are not giving money at this stage in the cycle. So they won’t have any competition for those eyeballs whatsoever.”

There’s growing chatter in Westminster that – if economic growth continues to inch upwards and Reform remains static in the polls – Burnham may go for an early summer general election next year. (With a note of caution from Jessica that there will probably be a backlash from hundreds of Labour MPs on course to lose their seats.)

A major consideration for the prime minister is, of course, Reform – which remains, in recent polls, a couple of points behind Labour and a similar amount ahead of the Tories. According to Jenrick on Sunday, these donations enable his party to be “battle ready”, whatever Burnham decides. Meanwhile, Labour sent out an “urgent” fundraising appeal over the weekend, warning that Reform could “simply drown Labour’s message out in elections to come”.

Clearly, £72m in cash is good for Reform. “But whether it re-energises the party, and voters think, ‘People are willing to give this money millions of pounds because they offer a radical reset and I want that, too’ or whether it adds to that perception of a party being bought by billionaires, it’s hard to say.”

Crucially, it keeps everybody talking about Reform’s finances. After a summer marred by scandal, internal divisions and a damp squib byelection, and at a point when Farage’s own popularity ratings have plummeted and support for the party has stalled, that is last place Reform wants to be.

The week to come

• Monday | First ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will meet in Cardiff to discuss moves towards self-determination across the nations.

• Tuesday | The final report of the Thirwall Inquiry into events at the neonatal unit where Lucy Letby worked will be published. Letby was sentenced to 15 whole-life terms for murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others.

• Thursday | Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, will address the European parliament.

What else we’ve been enjoying

• Much of the hand-wringing around the death of reading can seem uncircumstantial, but not this excellent column from John Harris on what it could mean for the future of our democracy in a time of “nonsense and poison”. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team

• Anyone who, like me, has returned to the place they grew up to see if mere proximity can transport them, in spirit, back to their youth will inhale this thoughtful and emotive collection of mini-essays by Deborah Levy, Julia Samuels and other novelists on revisiting their childhood homes. Here be ghosts. Craille Maguire Gillies, newsletters team

• Our This is how we do it series is a must-read, and this piece from a couple on making time for sex alongside their open relationship and raising three young kids is no exception (not least to understand how they possibly find the time). Charlie

Sport

Tennis | Alexander Zverev, the No 1 seed, beat Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2, the American’s hopes dashed in his first grand slam final.

Golf | The captain Anna Nordqvist led Europe to a 15-13 victory in the Solheim Cup a month after retiring from competitive golf.

Football | Sonia Bompastor’s Chelsea dominated in a 5-0 away victory against Eva Olid’s Manchester United, while Pro Ref admitted Erling Haaland’s winner in Sunday’s Manchester derby should not have counted after the VAR ruled Enzo Fernández was not interfering with play in the buildup.

The front pages

“Revealed: true scale of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade”, is the Guardian’s splash today.

The Telegraph leads with “Hospitality chiefs urge PM to cut VAT” and the Express says “Labour tourist tax will hammer seaside B&Bs”. The i Paper’s headline is “Reform’s £72m crypto bonanza sparks Labour donations row”, Metro says “Labour threat to Reform’s £72m windfall”, while the Mirror’s take is “Bitcon?”. The FT’s splash is “Trump rejects industry calls for brake on AI over fears of losing race to China”.

The Sun has “Boris flees Vlad drone blitz”, the Mail asks “Did Putin drone target Boris and top security officials?”

Today in Focus

AI isn’t going to end humanity … right?

Ten per cent. That’s the risk, more or less, claimed a high-profile AI developer last week, that the technology wipes humanity out in the next decade. “I think it’s a crossover moment for the AI safety story because this has been for a long time talked about inside the AI world”, says our UK technology editor, Robert Booth, “but now, the general public and the political class have become increasingly concerned about it.” So how worried, asks Annie Kelly, should we be?

Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld

The Upside

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

“In bistros and cafes, people don’t just eat and drink, they catch up with each other, meet new people, debate, laugh, read, write and sometimes fall in love,” said Alain Fontaine of Paris’s Le Mesturet bistro. Yet where once there were an estimated 500,000 cafe-bistros dotted throughout France, there are now only about 30,000 to 40,000. But one group of local campaigners in the northern Burgundy community of Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne has saved one such establishment, and in the process, make their village livable again.

After a successful community-led campaign to reopen it, Au Bon Acceuil cafe-bistro has been brought back to life – and every table is taken. As the village mayor, Hervé Chapuis, put it: “Our aim is to keep this kind of business open to support the social fabric. It’s part of village life and people missed it. Now, village life has returned to its proper rhythm.”

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

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

Case in point is Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the 2012 and 2013 animated adaptations of Frank Miller's landmark 1986 comic that are currently free on YouTube. Directed by Jay Oliva and featuring Peter Weller as a much older Bruce Wayne, the two-part film collection isn’t your typical Batman soirée. In the wake of his years-long retirement, crime has flourished, new gangs have taken over the streets, and Gotham is generally steeped in mayhem. Bruce, meanwhile, is enduring a hollow retirement, attempting (but largely failing) to numb his repressed rage with alcohol and reckless thrill-seeking. But when the vicious Mutant gang pushes Gotham past its breaking point and a supposedly reformed Harvey Dent relapses into terrorism, the psychological dam bursts, compelling a grizzled, 55-year-old Wayne to resurrect the Caped Crusader.

Why The Dark Knight Returns is worth watching

What makes The Dark Knight Returns so compelling is how little interest it has in making Bruce's comeback look easy. This isn't a Batman who emerges from the shadows of retirement looking exactly as he did 20 years earlier. Every punch leaves a lasting mark, and every chase takes something out of him. His reflexes aren't what they used to be, and the film repeatedly makes you wonder whether his determination is actually bravery, obsession, or something closer to a subconscious death wish. Weller's performance helps sell that distinction. His Batman sounds worn down, gravelly and stubborn, like a man who has spent too long trying to convince himself he still has one good fight left in him.

The result is a version of Batman who almost feels like an urban legend returning to a city that has moved on without him. The film understands the power of simply letting people react to Batman's presence. Some see him as a criminal. Others still view him as a savior. The news media transforms his return into a spectacle, while the authorities increasingly view him as a problem that needs to be solved. As with many of the greatest Batman flicks, Gotham becomes a character unto itself, with its streets, gangs, and desperate citizens giving Batman a reason to keep pushing forward.

Image: WB

It also helps that The Dark Knight Returns isn't content to give Bruce the same relationships we've seen countless times before. His return creates room for a new generation, most notably Carrie Kelley (Ariel Winter), a street-smart teenager who adopts the Robin mantle and becomes the catalyst for his renewed mission. Their dynamic provides the film with vital emotional warmth without softening Bruce into a conventional mentor. Carrie is bright, impulsive, and energetic, contrasting with Bruce’s cynical perfectionism. That tension pays off in the brutal fight against the Mutant leader: When Bruce's hubris nearly gets him slaughtered, Carrie dives into the fray and hauls his broken body into the Batmobile. Later, when he gruffly acknowledges her with a blunt "you're a good soldier," it speaks volumes about their bond — a passing of the torch forged through mutual survival rather than hand-holding.

Then there is the kinetic escalation of it all. What begins as a bruised 55-year-old bloodying his knuckles against alleyway muggers rapidly spirals into a global catastrophe. The narrative continuously raises the stakes, jumping from the violent anarchy of the Mutant gang to a catatonic Joker waking up on live television to slaughter a studio audience, and then to the brink of Cold War nuclear annihilation over Corto Maltese. By the time a high-altitude nuclear blast triggers an EMP that plunges Gotham into a freezing, apocalyptic blackout, the film expands far beyond a simple vigilante story. Batman responds not by hiding, but by riding a horse through burning streets, marshaling a civilian militia to maintain order while the rest of the country collapses into panic. The movie keeps widening its scope without ever losing sight of its central, terrifying question: How far is Bruce Wayne willing to drag the world to prove that Batman is still necessary?

The Dark Knight Returns still looks amazing

Image: Warner Bros.

For a superhero movie released in 2012, The Dark Knight Returns can feel remarkably unlike the polished comic-book blockbusters that surrounded it. It's grimy, violent, and occasionally uncomfortable, and it isn't particularly interested in reassuring you that its hero is making the right choices. The animation may not reproduce every detail of Miller's distinctive artwork, but it captures the story's oppressive atmosphere and gives its biggest confrontations room to land.

Best of all, the movie understands that Batman is most interesting when the mask starts to look less like a costume and more like a burden. Watching an older Bruce Wayne pick it back up is thrilling, but watching him struggle with everything that comes with it is what makes this story stick unlike most other Batman tales. If you've never seen The Dark Knight Returns, it's an unusually thoughtful Batman movie collection hiding inside what initially looks like another superhero beat-'em-up, ripe for fans of Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is streaming on YouTube %!s()

He won 59 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, officials announced on Monday.

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Koja, a former deputy mayor of Okinawa’s capital, Naha, was backed by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party. He beat Tamaki, 66, who has long pushed for a major US military base to be moved out of Okinawa.

The 42-year-old will become the youngest Okinawa governor since the prefecture was returned to Japan from US rule in 1972. He will also become its first governor born after the reversion.

His election could end Okinawa’s legal efforts to block the relocation of US Marines from the Futenma air base to a new facility at Henoko on the prefecture’s main island, according to Masaaki Gabe, a professor emeritus at the University of the Ryukyus.

Gabe also said it may make it easier to expand military access to airports and ports.

“Koja could reasonably be expected to approve their designation, opening wholly civilian facilities to military use,” Gabe added.

Koja’s victory comes as Takaichi prepares to unveil a new national security strategy this year that is expected to accelerate Japan’s biggest military build-up since World War II.

Her administration said increased defence spending was necessary to deter China from using military force to advance its territorial ambitions in East Asia.

Okinawa forms part of what military planners call the first island chain, a string of territory stretching from Japan through the Philippines that constrains China’s access to the western Pacific.

Yonaguni Island, Japan’s westernmost territory, lies 110km (68 miles) east of Taiwan. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory and has stepped up military activity around the democratically governed island.

Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing have risen since Takaichi said last year that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could also threaten Japan and trigger a military response by Tokyo. %!s()

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Baker Hughes has yet to see higher borrowing costs slow investment in major energy projects, with its chief executive pointing to robust demand for natural gas and power from the global buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

"We haven't seen a slowdown, and the bankability is really based on the offtake agreements that are in place, as well as the outlook of energy demand," Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli told CNBC at the Gastech conference in Bangkok.

Financing remains an important consideration for projects, Simonelli said, but rising energy needs from population growth, industry and data centers continue to underpin investment.

"Energy demand is not necessarily going to slow down with the increasing population, with the increasing linkage between industrial outcomes of data centers and AI, it's intrinsically linked with energy supply and energy sources," he said. "So we haven't seen that as of yet, and we continue to monitor it."

Simonelli's comments come as the Iran war has disrupted Middle Eastern energy flows and sent oil prices back above $100 a barrel, adding to concerns over inflation and borrowing costs.

The conflict has also disrupted natural gas markets, with restrictions on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz threatening LNG supplies from Qatar, one of the world's largest exporters.

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Simonelli said high prices themselves can spur the investment needed to eventually bring additional supply to market.

"It's 'full steam ahead' with the aspect of looking beyond the short term, and obviously high pricing also leads to investment today, which will lead to supply coming in tomorrow," he said.

Baker Hughes expects prices ultimately to remain range-bound and sees little risk that a coming wave of LNG supply will create a prolonged glut. The company estimates that installed LNG capacity will need to reach 900 million tons per annum by 2035 to meet future demand.

AI is emerging as an increasingly important source of that demand. Simonelli said Baker Hughes does not expect the rapid expansion of data centers to slow, even as concerns grow over their electricity and water consumption.

"We think there won't be a slowdown," he said, adding that Baker Hughes is increasing capacity to meet demand.

In Southeast Asia, grid constraints are also leading some data-center operators toward behind-the-meter and distributed power generation, an area where Baker Hughes provides equipment.

Simonelli sees natural gas playing a central role in meeting those growing electricity needs. Baker Hughes has just over $37 billion in backlog, including demand tied to gas infrastructure, data-center power generation and LNG, he said.

"As you look at natural gas, it's not a transition fuel; it's a destination fuel," he said. "We're in an energy demand decade, and gas is central to it." %!s()

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images News | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said the U.S. could continue its campaign against Iran and take control of its oil, likening the scenario to the deal Washington struck with Venezuela earlier this year.

"We'll ultimately get out (of the war), unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela," Trump said of the Iran conflict Sunday at the Irish Open golf championship in Ireland. He added that U.S. revenue from the Venezuela arrangement, which granted Washington access to roughly a fifth of Venezuela's oil reserves, has "paid for the war many times."

Under the agreement reached in August, Venezuela ceded majority U.S. control of more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves — more than double America's own reserves — in exchange for $209 billion to Venezuela's state treasury. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the deal would also bring close to $100 billion in private investment to reinvigorate its economy.

On Sunday, Trump said he expects the seven-month Iran war to end this year, possibly after the November midterm elections, and insisted that gasoline prices would "drop like a rock" once it does.

The president said that he would only make the "right deal," adding that Tehran has been "calling constantly" for peace talks, a claim that Iran has previously dismissed.

Trump's comments came as diplomacy over the Strait of Hormuz stalled.

A meeting in Oman between Gulf countries and Iran to discuss possible agreements on the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for global oil and gas flows, has been postponed, Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said on X on Sunday, citing the need for "consensus."

Officials from Iran and Gulf nations had been expected to meet on Monday and sign an agreement establishing an Iran-Oman shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, though no direct talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing.

The Strait of Hormuz has been subjected to an Iranian and later U.S. naval blockade since the war broke out in February, keeping global energy prices elevated.

A June accord between Washington and Tehran faltered on disagreements over the artery, and a blistering offensive in recent days by Yemen's Houthi rebels has given the Tehran-allied group leverage over a second critical waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb.

Ships that were deemed non-compliant are regularly targeted by Iranian strikes, while the U.S. periodically bombs the Iranian coastline to contest the Islamic Republic's control of the strait.

Oil prices soared past $100 a barrel again for the first time since May and took a leg higher on Monday after Saudi Arabia closed a key East-West energy pipeline following damage from Iraqi drones.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were up 2.3% to $102.39 per barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded 2.4% higher to $107.11 a barrel.

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