The US President’s adversarial style is not only turning off American voters ahead of November’s midterm elections, it is turning global public opinion against the US, polling of 42,000 people across 36 countries reveals.
The research by the Pew Research Centre, a non-partisan think-tank based in Washington DC, has found dramatic reductions in the number of people who view the US as a reliable partner to their country, with less than a quarter feeling confident in Trump’s leadership.
The three ways Healey could soften energy price rises
Ministers are drawing up plans for targeted help with energy bills in next month’s Budget amid fears the Iran war will lead to a cost of living crisis for millions this winter, it has been reported.
Chancellor John Healey has told officials to come up with options to soften the blow from energy price hikes.
Gas and oil prices spiral
Wholesale gas prices have risen by more than 150 per cent since the start of the Iran conflict, while oil has increased by more than 40 per cent, according to figures compiled for the Government.
Energy bills could be more than £600 higher next year than when Labour came to power, despite its pledge to cut them by £300 by the end of the decade.
Existing cost relief
- 1Ministers have already announced plans to remove VAT from domestic electricity bills for six months from 1 October, saving households about £45 a year.
- 2Then there’s the warm home discount, which gives £150 off bills to almost six million households receiving means-tested benefits.
- 3Plus, the £1bn crisis and resilience fund, which is administered through councils.
Pressure mounts as costs rise
Ministers are keen to examine more targeted intervention, reported. But any additional energy relief packages would add to the pressure raise money at the Budget via taxation.
Clare Lombardelli, a deputy governor at the Bank of England, warned on Thursday that an interest rate rise was “increasingly likely” if energy prices remained elevated.
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Healey’s options:
- Ministers could prolong the temporary VAT cut beyond March.
- The Chancellor is also understood to be prepared to reduce the fiscal £23.6bn “headroom”.
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British climber falls
to his death on
Spanish mountain
A British climber, 28, has fallen to his
death on a Spanish mountain, according
to local authorities.
Emergency responders were alerted to
the incident on Torrecerredo mountain – Spain’s 17th highest peak – at roughly
1:30pm yesterday.
What we know so far:
- According to , the man was a 28-year-old from England and fell up to 60 metres from the peak of Torrecerredo in the Picos de Europa in northern Spain.
- Local reports also added that he was 20 metres below the summit when the accident happened.
- A doctor mobilised by a regional emergency response coordination centre confirmed around an hour later the Briton had lost his life in the accident.
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Remains transported to Llanera
A forensic search had been carried out of the area and his belongings were recovered.
His remains were transported to La Morgal,
a regional sports, aviation and emergency services complex, in Llanera near the Asturian cities of Oviedo and Gijon.
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What remains unclear:
- It is not clear whether the unnamed man had been alone or accompanied by family or friends.
- Although one local report said
he was near the summit when he fell, another said he was on his
way down.
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The UK is running low on diesel – how worried should we be?
Britain could see shortages of diesel with prices at the pump soaring to all-time highs of £3 a litre if Donald Trump bans US exports, analysts have warned.
Britain relies on US oil
- Trump is said to be considering a 90-day export ban in weeks, after diesel in America hit a record average of $6.52 (£4.93) a gallon.
- Britain relies on the US for about 30 per cent of its diesel imports.
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Shortages could hit UK pumps in weeks
- Britain has just four operational refineries – down from 18 in the 1970s – leaving the UK with around 42 days of emergency stockpiles, Sky News reported.
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Trucks and cars off the road
A lot of trucks would come off the road. You wouldn’t be able to fill them. We’d start seeing delays in goods being transported around the UK.
dr pauline swift, charity chair,
blood pressure uk
UK turning to alternative suppliers
The Government would have to bring in measures to destroy demand to bring prices down, James Noel-Beswick, head of commodities at Sparta Commodities said.
Though Thomas Pugh, chief economist at the audit, tax and consulting firm RSM UK, say the UK wouldn’t necessarily see a diesel shortage as alternative suppliers exist.
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The Reform MPs who face losing their seats according to new poll
Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman are among four Reform UK MPs who would lose their seats if a general election were held tomorrow, fresh polling by YouGov shows.
Falling behind the Tories
Tory defector Danny Kruger and Sarah Pochin – who beat Labour in a 2025 by-election – would also be unseated, according to the leading UK pollster’s first large-scale election modelling since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister.
Although the party’s numbers of MPs would hugely increase, it would have fewer seats than the Tories overall, marking a significant fall when compared to last year’s polling.
How a Labour government could be formed
The poll predicts that Labour would be the biggest party in a hung parliament.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey recently ruled out forming a coalition with Reform or the Tories but stopped short of excluding a coalition with Labour.
However, to form a Parliamentary majority in this scenario, Burnham would also need to work with the SNP or Plaid Cymru.
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Reform expanding its operations
The polling comes as Reform is preparing a huge expansion of its operations around the country, targeting London, the South East, the South West and the East of England.
- Analysis of Reform job adverts by The i Paper suggests the party is pumping resources into areas where it wants to keep its high-profile Tory defectors.
There’s turmoil in the Liberal Democrats. And MPs are struggling for direction
Stagnant in the polls but still a potential kingmaker, the party’s at a crossroads – even its own members are asking what comes next.
Record number of assaults on Britain’s trains – what to know
Assaults on Britain’s railways have hit record levels, new figures from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) have revealed.
The numbers
The data published on Thursday showed there were 13,464 reported assaults on people who were not railway workers between April 2025 and March 2026, an increase of 36 per cent compared to the previous year.
- 11,289 assaults on rail workers on mainline networks were also recorded, an increase of 12 per cent. This included 6,390 incidents of verbal abuse, 2,487 physical assaults and 2,412 threats.
Working to make railways safer
No-one on the railway should be subjected to violence, threats or abuse. We’re working with industry and our trade union colleagues to address work-related violence and harassment, including through recent guidance which sets out what we expect from rail employers.
Richard Hines, ORR’s chief inspector railways
Walkers reveals three new crisp flavours
Three new “gold” flavours of Walkers are now available for crisp lovers. The new snacks mark the brand’s biggest revamp in 80 years.
What are the flavours and how much are they?
The new flavours are black truffle, sea salt and olive oil and Somerset mature cheddar and onion.
Each pack is branded as “Premium Potato Crisps”.
The crisps come in 140g bags and can currently be bought for £2 each.
Where you can buy them
The entire range launched on Ocado officially today, but from October 12, they will be widely available in major UK supermarkets for a cheaper price of £1.50.
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Trump sank to the lowest approval rating of his political career this week, according to a /Ipsos poll, which could cost his party control of Congress in November as Republican candidates scramble to distance themselves from the polarising President.
And record low approval at home is matched by global public opinion data that has seen an “overwhelmingly negative” shift in how people see the US, according to Pew. Analysts say negative perceptions of the US will hit the American economy in sectors such as tourism, and that rival powers are positioning to take advantage.
Positive views of the US fell dramatically in formerly closely allied countries, with notable drops in Canada, France, Germany, Australia and South Korea compared to polling four years ago. In Britain, only 26 per cent of people say they have confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs, while the share of people who think the US is a reliable partner has crashed from over 80 per cent in 2022 to less than 50 per cent in 2026.
“I’m not surprised, for two obviously related reasons,” Jason Reifler, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Southampton, told The i Paper. “He’s a divisive figure and in domestic polling, his personal approval ratings are low and seem to be trending lower.
“And the second is the United States, with Trump as President, has consistently taken conflictual adversarial positions on trade and security matters with a number of close allies in ways that it would be surprising if those countries didn’t react negatively to it.”
Growing anger at the rising cost of living in the US, driven by the President’s disastrous war with Iran, combined with worries about the wider state of both the economy and democracy are shifting views in key battleground states across America.
Large majorities across the 36 countries polled disapproved of Trump’s handling of the conflicts in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine, the trade tariffs he has imposed and aggressive US immigration policies. 74 per cent of adults in the nations surveyed disapproved of how Trump is dealing with the crisis in Iran.
Only one in four Britons now believes Washington takes the interests of other countries into account when making foreign policy decisions, an all-time low for UK respondents and a figure closely matched in other former strategic partners such as Germany, Italy and Japan.
Global public opinion has real impact on the “soft power” a country has, the critical ability to win friends and influence people. “This is an administration that just doesn’t believe in soft power. It’s a hard-power administration that has gone back to the 19th century and gunboat diplomacy. It’s a nation that wants to bully other nations,” said Dafydd Townley, senior teaching fellow at the University of Portsmouth and chair of the American Politics Group of UK academics.
Townley points to declining tourist numbers in states like Florida or New York and immigration and visa policies under Trump that make the America less attractive for foreign students, as tangible effects of losing global support that damage the US economy.
“If you base relations on hard power, then your soft power is going to decline and you’re just going to be less attractive to work with. The United States is ultimately being viewed as unreliable in terms of international relations,” he told The i Paper.
Reifler agrees that global public perception is important economically as well as diplomatically. “I think it does have real-world implications if fewer people have a positive view of the US in terms of the ability to attract capital investments for example, or the US becoming so problematic that companies decide to start listing on the London stock exchange rather than New York,” he said. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but those things might start to matter.”
The decline in America’s reputation will open doors for other world leaders to develop diplomatic arrangements to get round Trump’s transactional foreign policy, such as Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s proposed alliance of middle powers, or the European led “Coalition of the Willing” to support Ukraine.
Shifts in US engagement and influence provide “the opportunity for leaders to reposition themselves”, according to Reifler.
And as both perceptions of soft power and the hard reality of alliances shift, China is waiting in the wings as an alternative to America. China now sits second behind the US in the global soft power rankings and is expected to overtake the US as Trump’s antics and inconsistency on the global stage drain support.
“What the United States is doing is essentially pushing nations towards China,” said Townley. “China has huge economic potential for every Western nation and while there are a whole host of breaks in position to stop them doing that, security for example, if Trump is going to push you towards China, then China is just sat there saying, ‘Thank you very much’.”
The long-term damage to US power and influence is likely to last well beyond Trump, even if a new president were to try to rebuild America’s reputation. “If there is a skilful Republican in the White House or a run-of-the-mill sort of normal Democrat, I think a lot of the damage would be repaired, but probably not all of it,” said Reifler.
Townley is more pessimistic, arguing that rebuilding brand America is “probably an impossible job and it’s not something that’s going to happen with the immediate replacement of Donald Trump as President”.
The research from Pew reveals how, under Trump, perceptions of the President and the country have become more closely aligned than under former leaders. That’s a problem for the US, said Townley.
“Ultimately, this Trump administration is full of people who are there to do what the President wants, not what is necessarily best for the United States.”
Additional reporting by Liam Buckler