Baron Cohen’s live-ammo prankster is back, 20 years on, but has to battle with his own irrelevance in search of big laughs and the approval of a new generation

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If you liked Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G the first time around, you’ll like this less; if you disliked it, you’ll dislike this more; if you suspected it was racist, you’ll be more emboldened to say so – especially as Baron Cohen has dreamed up a whole new character apparently to pre-empt and mock precisely that objection. Broad and crass as it often is – in fact always is – this Ali G sequel is sometimes funny: the athletic vigour of our hero’s pranking and punking is like the umpteenth Jackass film at which you might find yourself laughing, and Baron Cohen blunders with the semi-intentional force of an XL bully into the issue of whether jokes are still allowed.

Unlike the first film, Ali G in Da House from 2002, this is not a full written-through narrative. It is basically another live-ammo series of hoaxes with some spectacular bad taste perpetrated upon the deserving and less deserving; it satirises the shamelessness of anti-woke free speech martyrs, punching up and down with grossout cringe, and the targets include some big names who shouldn’t be revealed here. There are two other subordinate characters: Erran Morad, a sinister Mossad/IDF officer turned US security consultant (who appeared in Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? TV series), and a new figure: Dr Nira Cain-N’Degrocello, a grotesquely supercilious white liberal who is the self-appointed scourge of cultural appropriation. The dupes are built into a big silly climax fabricated with body doubles and (presumably) covert reshooting.

See if you can do a better job than John Healey at creating a budget that keeps MPs and the bond markets onside

On 28 October, John Healey will announce the autumn budget to parliament. As in all years, the chancellor has to strike a balance between the following:

Raising the money needed to fund the services that voters demand.

Keeping taxes at levels that are acceptable to voters.

Persuading the government’s creditors in the bond markets that it will continue to be able to pay its debts.

Europe’s leaders can no longer trust a word that comes out of Washington. No more slaps on the wrist – we need concrete steps to punish Trump

Historical comparisons are always inexact. No one conflict precisely mirrors another. Yet Donald Trump’s shameless appeasement of Vladimir Putin carries more than a noxious whiff of Neville Chamberlain’s failed attempt in Munich in 1938 to head off war with Nazi Germany. To be fair to the former UK prime minister – and history largely hasn’t been – his peacemaking efforts had the enthusiastic backing of most people in Britain and France who, like him, were desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the first world war. Trump enjoys no equivalent public support for his treachery. Nor does he face the prospect of a US war with Russia. His betrayal of Ukraine is cynically self-interested, globally dangerous and utterly contemptible.

US-Russian talks on agreeing the shoddy terms of a precedent-setting American sell-out of Ukraine are at an advanced stage, after meetings in St Petersburg this week. Trump has zigzagged over the war ever since returning to office. Now, panicked by record-low poll ratings, he seems determined to scapegoat Ukraine and force its de facto capitulation. Recent steps – his shocking decision to fund Putin’s war machine by buying Russian diesel, his waiving of tougher sanctions, his mysterious, lethal interruptions in US satellite and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, and his renewed attempt to oust Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – mark Trump out as the skulking Judas, the craven Brutus of the modern age. He makes Chamberlain look like a man of iron principle. All that’s lacking is an umbrella.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

James says Tony leaving the cat’s water bowl where they prepare food is unhygienic. Should they feed their feline on the floor? You decide

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

It’s unhygienic. The cat will jump out of her litter box and on to the surface where we prepare food

An inflatable Lady Godiva is just one of the thrills in a Pia Camil’s ode to lust. But why is Mark Leckey feeling so doomy and Cindy Sherman so bougie?

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The nine-piece London-based group take a radically fresh approach to traditional music, sounding raging, lo-fi and joyful as they link Britain’s violent past to its present

Those thus far unaware of Shovel Dance Collective’s bracing approach to folk should probably note that their third album is not much interested in breaking newcomers in gently. Everything in Readiness kicks off with a three-song suite that lasts more than 10 minutes and takes you, via a series of dramatic sonic jump-cuts, from a grinding one-note drone to a reel that seems to split the difference between trad folk fiddle-playing and the punishing squall of the Velvet Underground’s Black Angel’s Death Song. It then leaps to Tally Ho! Hark Away!, which sets a hunting song first collected in the late 1940s over a blast of what might best be described as ecstatic noise. It’s genuinely hard to work out what instruments are involved in the clattering arrhythmic chaos behind the vocal – there’s definitely a heavily distorted guitar in the mix – but the effect is weirdly euphoric rather than claustrophobic: a kind of purgative release after the mounting weirdness of the preceding reel.

If you’re looking for evidence that the nine-piece London-based group take a radically fresh approach to folk music, then there it is. The glib shorthand is that they’re doing for traditional English music what Lankum have done for its Irish equivalent – joining the dots with the kind of out-there experimentation that fills the pages of the Wire magazine – although it should be pointed out they sound almost nothing like Lankum. Anyone who already has an interest in leftfield explorations of British musical history might suggest their chaotic collage approach feels more akin to the fascinating collections of field recordings, folk song and avant garde composition released by Todmorden-based label Folklore Tapes. The music on Everything in Readiness careens unpredictably from gentle lo-fi recordings caked in distortion and tape hiss to the tumultuous, surging racket they serve up on their version of the traditional coalminer’s song Jowl, Jowl and Listen; from singing unaccompanied by anything but the sound of birdsong to the disquieting ambient shimmer of Who Killed Cock Robin? A Summoning (Kind Morning in our Fists), which sounds like it was recorded in a vast, echoing crypt.

Exclusive: British Chambers of Commerce president calls for overhaul of business rates and greater powers for local leaders

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Andy Burnham has been urged by one of his most senior former advisers to tax internet sales more heavily than in-store purchases to help “level the playing field” for struggling high streets.

As the prime minister and his chancellor, John Healey, prepare for their first budget next week, Andy Haldane joined calls for action to stop more shops closing across the UK.

Some 32 government services are offline while work is carried out to address potential cybersecurity issues, a minister has said

• Tell us: have you been affected by the PHP code flaw?

The Office for National Statistics has also published a report on the gender pay gap. It says:

The gender pay gap for full-time employees has continued to decline in the UK. It was 6.8% in April 2026, down from 7.2% in April 2025. This compares with 9.4% a decade ago and 16.4% 25 years ago.

Secondly, I asked Healey whether he sees the banks as making excessive profits, which would be the coherent justification for him to increase the surcharge on bank profits – as he is expected to do in the Budget next week.

He said: “You know the banks are the engine of investment in this country. The banks are doing well at the moment and that is good to see.

Iran’s security chiefs say there will be ‘zero red lines’ if Trump and Netanyahu attack again

Iran will strike oil facilities, undersea cables, datacentres and AI facilities across as many as seven countries in the Gulf in the event of a fresh US-Israeli attack, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, has said.

Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Mohammad Ghalibaf, the hardliner who led Iran’s negotiations with the US to end the conflict between the two countries, said Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed in principle on an attack, but could not guarantee a successful outcome. He added: “We see the next conflict as an existential threat. The third war in two years means a threat to existence. Our strategy is ‘zero red lines’.”

Charities say ‘tip of iceberg’ figures show government is not fulfilling pledge to halve violence against women and girls

Almost one in 10 adults in England and Wales have experienced domestic abuse in the last year, a survey from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has found.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) found that 9.6% of people aged 16 and over had experienced domestic abuse in the last year – which equates to about 4.7 million people.