Nineteen-year-old Naama Levy became an indelible symbol of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. In footage from that day, an armed man dragged the barefoot and bleeding soldier out of the back of a Jeep on to a street in Gaza. Her arms were tied behind her back and blood pooled in the seat of her pajamas. Onlookers cheered at her distress.

For months, the women of Levy’s all-female surveillance unit – tatzpitaniyot – had noticed unusual practice raids and drills taking place on the other side of the fence, but their reports and warnings were ignored by commanders. Fifteen women from the unit were killed when Hamas fighters stormed their base on the Gaza border, and seven taken hostage.

Now, not just Levy’s abduction, but her redemption, will go down in Israeli history. On Saturday, 15 months after their ordeal began, her family and those of three other women from the unit sobbed with relief as they embraced their daughters, freed during the second week of a fragile ceasefire and hostage release deal.

“I was amazed by their mental strength. Strong women who survived days of hell and the light in their eyes did not go out,” the hospital director said.

When the Israeli news showed the four soldiers reuniting with their families on Saturday afternoon, Hostages Square in central Tel Aviv erupted, the crowd clapping, cheering and hugging each other.

“It’s an incredible moment, I am so happy,” said Gali Cohen, 28, a member of a group of about 1,000 former and serving tatzpitaniyot, or “spotters”, who came together to support the women’s families and campaign for a hostage release deal.

“They could have been any one of us, that’s why we feel this so deeply. It is bittersweet because now we have to keep fighting for the others,” she added.

In a show of force, Hamas dressed the four soldiers in khaki uniforms for a highly choreographed ceremony on a stage in a square in central Gaza City. The women were surrounded by elite Nukhba fighters, and cheering crowds throwing confetti, before they were handed over to the Red Cross.

“I don’t like the way [the handover] was done, but after 7 October, nothing surprises me anymore,” said Ella, 52, from Holon, near Tel Aviv. “I just want to hug those girls. Look at them, smiling, waving, after everything … How badass,” she added.

A total of 200 Palestinians held in Israel jails were freed in exchange for the four women on Saturday afternoon. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, 114 men – all thin, with shaved heads, and wearing grey prison uniforms – were received by enthusiastic crowds. Sixteen more were released to Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, and another 70 people serving life sentences for violent crimes were driven to Egypt, where they will be deported to third countries.

Last Sunday, the world celebrated as the long-awaited ceasefire and hostage release deal got underway. Three smiling, apparently healthy civilian women came home to a country overjoyed at their return. Ninety Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails were released to cheering crowds in Ramallah later the same night, and Gaza’s besieged population went to sleep for the first time in more than a year without the sound of drones or bombing overhead.

The ceasefire was a long time in the making. Over the past year Netanyahu was repeatedly accused of scuppering internationally mediated talks. He was believed to fear that concessions to Hamas would collapse his government, making the long-time leader more vulnerable to corruption charges.

Many hostage families are still grappling with the fact their loved ones, not among the 33 scheduled for release, are still in danger, or perhaps dead, giving Saturday’s gathering at Hostages Square a sad undertone.

Inbar Goldstein, 37, lost her brother, Nadav, 48, and 20-year-old niece Yam, in the Hamas attack. Her sister-in-law Chen Almog-Goldstein, niece Agam, 18, and nephews Gal, 12, and Tal, 10, were kidnapped and released during the previous ceasefire in November 2023, which collapsed after a week.

“My family can’t be brought back, but we must keep fighting. That is my job now,” she said, sitting on the steps in the square and stroking a dog wrapped in the Israeli flag.

Goldstein said she felt it was her duty to keep up the pressure on the government to keep the deal on track, amid widespread speculation Israel plans to resume the fighting in Gaza after a third of approximately 100 remaining hostages come home during the first stage of the ceasefire.

“We lost a lot, but have a lot to keep fighting for. We can’t let the government sabotage it,” she said.

On Friday, the truce had appeared to falter, after Hamas released the names of the soldiers it would free – Levy, along with Liri Albag, 19, Karina Ariev, 20, and Daniella Gilboa, 20. German-Israeli citizen Arbel Yehud, 29, believed to be the last living female civilian hostage in Gaza, had been slated for this weekend’s release.

Yehud’s brother Dolev was killed in the 7 October attack on their homes in kibbutz Nir Oz, and her partner, Ariel Cunio, is also still a hostage, who should be released in the second stage of the deal in March.

Israeli officials said the delay breached the ceasefire agreement, and is now pushing for Yehud to be released before next Saturday. Until she is freed, displaced Palestinians in Gaza, desperate to return home, will not be allowed to travel north of the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has built to bisect the strip.

Travel through Netzarim was supposed to be possible from Sunday; it was not immediately clear if news of the delay had filtered through to people in Gaza, where electricity and phone signal are often in short supply.

Several reports emerged on Saturday that people who had tried to approach the coastal road through Netzarim were shot at; there was no immediate confirmation of casualties, but similar scenes played out in the southern city of Rafah this week, where Israeli forces are still stationed on the Gaza-Egypt border.

There is still much that can go wrong. Hamas warned later on Saturday that Israel preventing displaced civilians from returning to the north of Gaza could have “repercussions” for the subsequent stages of the agreement.

In the meantime, for the Israelis gathered in Hostages Square, the wait for the other captives continues. Agam Berger, 20, is the last spotter held captive in Gaza; three women in their fifties from Holon, Berger’s hometown, said they did not know the family but had joined the protest movement in solidarity.

“We all have daughters the same age serving in the military,” said Alona, 51. “We will show up to any action, whatever her family wants.”

Goldstein, whose family were killed in kibbutz Kfar Aza, said she was trying to appreciate the rare moment of joy. “What I’ve learned in the last year is that happiness and sadness don’t cancel each other out. They co-exist,” she said.

“Today, at least, there is more to be happy about than sad.”

In a sports hall on the outskirts of Ramallah, three skinny men in grey prison sweatsuits and plastic sandals embraced their beaming friends before being lifted on to their shoulders and carried out into the waiting crowds.

Outside the friends and families of those released gathered in anticipation, some waving flags from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a smaller leftwing faction, others handing out baklava. One man with a shaved head, wispy beard and sunken eyes was carried on the shoulders of the crowd chanting “long live the resistance”.

“I can’t even find the words to say what I feel right now,” said Ahmed Khudjury from Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, as he waited for his family to arrive to collect him.

“I only managed to feel some joy when I saw the happiness of the other prisoners being released,” he said.

There were 114 prisoners released into scenes of celebration around the municipal building in Ramallah, after the release of four Israeli female soldiers held hostage by Hamas for 15 months. A total of 200 Palestinian prisoners were released from two facilities, one in the Negev desert in central Israel and the second on the outskirts of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The mood in Ramallah was joyous, as crowds gathered to await the arrival of more thin pale men with shaved heads. Some clutched plastic bags of toiletries or medical supplies, as they fanned through the sports hall to find their loved ones and embrace friends in welcome. Outside, cars honked their horns, children leaning out of the windows to wave Palestinian flags.

For Palestinians, the detainees released from Israeli detention were heroes, both for having endured prison but also sometimes for carrying out the crimes they were charged with. This included many like Khudjury, who said they had served time for violent attacks on Israeli forces and on civilians. He had served half of a 14-year sentence for a stabbing attack, he said.

Despite the charges against many of those released, Palestinians often view their ability to withstand the harsh conditions of the Israeli prison system as a point of pride.

Prison conditions inside Israeli jails also dramatically worsened after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israeli towns and kibbutzim around Gaza, with detainees increasingly complaining of abuse and a lack of basic supplies.

“Every day they beat us, they used dogs to attack us in the prison,” Khudjury said of his time in Naqab prison, where the Israeli prison service cut water and electricity supplies five days after Hamas’s attack. “There was barely any food after that, and there were no showers.”

Mohammed Rami, who said he was waiting for his neighbour Obeida Abu Rass, was there with his two children, including his young son dressed in a shiny satin cap and scarf in the green colours of Hamas. Abu Rass has spent nine years in prison for his role in a stabbing attack, he said.

Rami said he was “so proud” of Abu Rass for having endured Israeli prison, as he embraced others recently released in welcome. “I pray all of these prisoners will be able to meet their families like this,” he said.

While some of those released returned to Gaza, a place devastated by 15 months of Israeli assault, about 70 prisoners were slated for deportation, reportedly to Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey. This included Mohammed al-Tous, a 69-year-old member of Fatah imprisoned since 1985 for “anti-Israel operations”, making him the detainee who has spent the longest continuous time in jail.

Many of the detainees released into the cold afternoon air in Ramallah thanked Hamas for their freedom, in a nod to the ceasefire deal that ended 15 months of fighting in Gaza and will see 33 Israeli hostages exchanged for almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

“I thank the people of Gaza,” said Khalil Jabarieh from Jenin, as a short burst of celebratory gunfire pierced the air. “And I thank Hamas.”

Those due to be released as part of the continuing exchange include at least 1,000 Palestinian men, women and children detained after the 7 October attack. It also includes a further 47 detainees who were rearrested, despite having previously been released in a 2011 prisoner swap that saw the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar released to Gaza, in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel has specified that none of those released in the most recent swap are accused of participation in the 7 October attacks.

Some prisoners, like Khudjury, said they aimed to return home to their villages, but several of the prisoners from West Bank towns such as Nablus and Jenin said they would remain in Ramallah or find somewhere else to stay owing to continuing Israeli raids on the towns. Israeli forces began an assault on the Jenin refugee camp that is now in its fifth day, including using military bulldozers to penetrate deep inside the camp, and killing at least 12 people with live ammunition while injuring dozens more.

Iyad Jaradeh clutched a sandwich and a cup of coffee outside the sports hall as he spoke to those gathering around him.

“This freedom, it feels like being in love,” he said, almost laughing at the idea. His mood darkened immediately on discussing his time in prison, his eyes widening as the tears came. Jaradeh said he was serving 22 years in prison for the murder of an Israeli citizen.

“There was torture,” he said of his treatment in detention, his face reddening with pain as he attempted not to cry. He was unsure if he would make it back to Jenin.

Wael Jaor, 24, said that despite what he had endured in prison and fear of further Israeli raids on his town, he would attempt to get home to Nablus. “The Israelis are attacking everywhere right now, not just Nablus,” he said. “I will try to go back. I want all the detainees to experience this freedom.”

Azmi Naffah sat on a chair outside the complex, eating an apple with his eyes wide with joy. Naffah was visibly skinnier than some of the other detainees and huddled into a navy coat that his family had provided him.

“I’m struggling to find the words,” he said of his newfound freedom after nine years in prison. Naffah was arrested when 21 years old and charged with attempted murder. Now that he is free, he said, he wanted to go back to college and finally finish his studies in law.

“Prison was hard, especially after the war began,” he said. “But it’s nothing compared with what the people of Gaza have been through.”

For the crowds of militants and civilians gathered in a central Gaza square to witness the handover of four Israeli soldiers held hostage for 15 months, the atmosphere was one of triumph and jubilation.

Hundreds of people gathered on the piles of rubble in Palestine Square, Gaza City, among flags of Palestinian militant groups, to watch a painstaking hostage handover, while in Tel Aviv crowds of Israelis gathered in suspense.

The four Israeli soldiers – Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag – briefly walked on to a podium in khaki military fatigues, smiling and holding hands, their long hair pulled into neat shiny ponytails. Two raised their hands to give a thumbs up towards the cheering crowds, before the group climbed into cars from the International Committee of the Red Cross to be driven out of Gaza.

In Tel Aviv, the families of Israelis who remain captive in Gaza flocked to a central square alongside their supporters to watch live footage of the handover, some weeping with joy and cheering. A few waved Israeli flags, while others held pictures of female Israeli soldiers and other captives expected to be released. Video released of the soldiers’ families watching the handover at a military base showed them shrieking with joy.

Lines of masked, uniformed fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – groups that hold people taken hostage on 7 October 2023 – flanked the square in central Gaza City, with Palestinian flags strung overhead. A woman threw confetti over the crowds of militants in celebration.

In a show of their capabilities after months of war, columns of militants stood among the crowds with shiny white cars decked in flags and ringed the square in their dozens, putting automatic weapons on the car rooftops.

The four Israeli soldiers were handed to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and flown by helicopter to a hospital in Israel for initial checks. They are expected to be taken to a second facility to meet their families for the first time in 15 months.

The group were among an all-female surveillance unit within the IDF, taken captive at the Nahal Oz base, close to the Gaza border that they had been watching for months before their capture.

Families of other female soldiers captured that day said their daughters had reported suspicious training activity as Hamas militants prepared for the 7 October attack on Israeli towns and kibbutzim, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage. Their reports were ignored, they said, until that morning 15 months ago when the militants overran their base and took five women from their unit into Gaza.

More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, the longest war in Israel’s history.

Israeli sources estimate that between one-third and half of the remaining 90 captives are alive, amid calls from the families of those held for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his government to stick to the ceasefire agreement and ensure the release of all the remaining captives.

That agreement appeared briefly in doubt on Friday night after Hamas said it would release the four female IDF soldiers, rather than the remaining female civilians. Israeli media reported that security officials from the Israeli government initially ruled this to be a breach of the ceasefire agreement, but that they would proceed with the exchange.

Israeli officials had requested the release of the German-Israeli citizen Arbel Yehoud, aged 28 at the time of her capture, who is one of the last female civilians held in Gaza. Yehoud is reportedly held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad rather than Hamas, complicating her potential handover and release. Al Jazeera reported that Palestinian sources said Yehoud was alive.

Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel would not allow Palestinians to return to the northern Gaza Strip until Yehoud was released. Two-hundred Palestinians held in two Israeli prisons are expected to be released later on Saturday as part of the agreement, it said.

Israeli forces were due to withdraw from a military checkpoint that has separated Gaza City from the remainder of the territory for months, allowing Palestinians to return to northern Gaza for the first time in more than a year.

“In accordance with the agreement, Israel will not allow the passage of Gazans to the north of the Gaza Strip, until the release of civilian Arbel Yehoud, who was supposed to be released today,” Netanyahu’s office said.

The family of Shiri Bibas, 33 – who may be the other remaining female civilian hostage in Gaza – said they were dismayed that her name was not on the list of captives to be released.

“Once again, we found no rest last night,” they said. “Yesterday … when the list of those set for release was published, our world collapsed. Even though we were prepared for this possibility, we had hoped to see Shiri and the children on the list that was supposed to be for civilian women.”

Bibas was taken hostage on 7 October 2023 alongside her husband, Yarden, and her two children, five-year-old Ariel and two-year-old Kfir, who are the youngest hostages held in Gaza.

R Adm Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the IDF, said: “Hamas failed to meet its obligations to first release Israeli female civilians as part of the agreement.” He added that there was “extreme concern” for the welfare of Bibas and her family.

• The US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine after newly sworn in US secretary of state Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday. The Ukrainian leader did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused. Ukraine relies on the US for 40% of its military needs. “I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” he said at a press conference alongside Moldovan president Maia Sandu.

• Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to offer coal to Moldova, which is gripped by an energy crisis after flows of Russian gas through Ukraine stopped in the new year. Moldova accuses Moscow of refusing to send gas by other routes. “Russia’s latest move has been to orchestrate an energy crisis,” Sandu told reporters. The Moldovan president said energy prices had shot up in areas controlled by her government, and the situation was worse in a region held by pro-Russian separatists who relied on Russian energy and were subject to daily power cuts.

• US president Donald Trump could fulfil his promise to end the war in Ukraine, but only if he includes Kyiv in any talks, Zelenskyy said on Saturday. Zelenskyy also said the terms of any deal that might arise under Trump were still unclear – and might not even be clear to Trump himself – because Russian president Vladimir Putin had no interest in ending the war. Putin has said he is ‘ready for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine with Trump and suggested it would be a good idea for them to meet.

• Zelenskyy said he hopes Europe and the United States would be involved in any talks about ending the war. He told reporters on Saturday that Ukraine also needed to be involved in any discussions on ending the war for such negotiations to have any meaningful impact. “As for what the set-up of the talks will be: Ukraine, I really hope Ukraine will be there, America, Europe and the Russians,” Zelenskyy said, later clarifying that no framework had been established.

• The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, has rejected calls for his resignation after tens of thousands demonstrated against his government’s policy shift closer to Russia. About 60,000 people protested in the capital, Bratislava, on Friday and approximately 100,000 turned out for rallies in cities across the country, the largest demonstrations since Fico returned to power in 2023.

• Three civilians were killed on Saturday in shelling in the Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Moscow-installed governor Vladimir Saldo said. He urged the residents of Oleshky, which sits close to the frontline in southern Ukraine, to stay in their homes or in bomb shelters.

• Russia attacked Ukraine with two missiles and 61 Shahed drones overnight Saturday, said officials. Ukrainian air defences shot down both missiles and 46 drones, a statement from the air force said. Another 15 drones failed to reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures. The downed drones caused damage in the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Khmelnytskyi regions.

• Russia also struck Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region with drones causing casualties and damage, local authorities said on Saturday. Drones targeted the city’s Shevchenkivskyi, Kyivskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts, said mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said the number of victims was still being determined, while Kharkiv’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said three people, two women and a man, were injured in the strikes.

Donald Trump had a fiery phone call with Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen over his demands to buy Greenland, according to senior European officials.

Speaking to the Financial Times, officials said that Trump, then still president-elect, spoke with Frederiksen for 45 minutes last week, during which he was described to be aggressive and confrontational about Frederiksen’s refusal to sell Greenland to the US.

The Financial Times reports that according to five current and former senior European officials who were briefed on the call, the conversation “was horrendous”. One person said: “He was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious and potentially very dangerous.”

Another person who was briefed on the call told the outlet: “The intent was very clear. They want it. The Danes are now in crisis mode.” Someone else said: “The Danes are utterly freaked out by this.”

According to one former Danish official, the call was a “very tough conversation” in which Trump “threatened specific measures against Denmark such as targeted tariffs”.

Trump has previously said that the US needs to control Greenland and has refused to rule out using US military force to take over the territory. During a press conference a few weeks ago, Trump said that the US needed Greenland “for economic security”. The 836,300-sq-mile (2,166,007-sq-km) Arctic island is rich in oil and gas, as well as various raw materials for green technology.

Speaking to TV 2 earlier this month, Frederiksen said that the autonomous territory is “not for sale”, adding: “Seen through the eyes of the Danish government, Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.”

In 1953, Greenland became part of the kingdom of Denmark, and in 1979, home rule was introduced. Despite Denmark controlling Greenland’s foreign and security policy, Greenland has its own parliament.

During his new year speech, Múte Egede, Greenland’s prime minister, said that he wanted Greenland to break free from “the shackles of colonialism”. Then, following a visit from Donald Trump Jr earlier this year, Egede said: “We are Greenlanders. We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish either. Greenland’s future will be decided by Greenland.”

Donald Trump fired 17 independent watchdogs at multiple US government agencies on Friday, a person with knowledge of the matter said, eliminating a critical oversight component and clearing the way for the president to replace them with loyalists.

The inspectors general at agencies including the departments of state, defense and transportation were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires the president to give both houses of Congress reasons for the dismissals 30 days in advance.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An inspector general is an independent position that conducts audits and investigations into allegations of waste, fraud and abuse of power.

Agencies are pressing ahead with orders from Trump, who began his second presidency on Monday, to reshape the federal bureaucracy by scrapping diversity programs, rescinding job offers, and sidelining more than 150 national security and foreign policy officials.

Friday’s dismissals spared the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, according to the New York Times. The Washington Post, which was first to report the dismissals, said most were appointees from Trump’s first White House term from 2017 to 2021.

Hannibal “Mike” Ware, chair of the Council of the Inspectors General, issued a statement addressed to the White House citing the law violation. “At this point,” Ware wrote, “we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed inspectors general.”

US senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, called Trump’s action a “purge of independent watchdogs in the middle of the night”.

“President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption,” she wrote on X.

Warren’s fellow Democratic US senator Chuck Schumer reportedly called the firings “a chilling purge”.

“This is Donald Trump’s way of telling us he’s terrified of accountability,” Schumer, of New York, said, according to HuffPost political reporter Igor Bobic.

Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, an ally of the president, defended the decision on X, saying: “Existing IGs are virtually worthless.”

“They may bring a few minor things to light but accomplish next to nothing,” she wrote. “The whole system needs to be revamped! They are toothless and protect the institution instead of the citizens.”

Many politically appointed leaders of agencies and departments come and go with each administration, but an inspector general can serve under multiple presidents.

During his first term, Trump fired five inspectors general in less than two months in 2020. This included at the state department, whose inspector general had played a role in the president’s impeachment proceedings.

Last year, Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden fired the inspector general of the US railroad retirement board after an investigation found the official had created a hostile work environment. In 2022, Congress strengthened protections for inspectors general, making it harder to replace them with handpicked officials and requiring additional explanations from a president for their removal.

Guardian staff contributed reporting

Elon Musk made a surprise appearance during Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election campaign event in Halle in eastern Germany on Saturday, speaking publicly in support of the far-right party for the second time in as many weeks.

Addressing a hall of 4,500 people alongside the party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, Musk spoke live via video link about preserving German culture and protecting the German people.

“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Musk said.

Last week, the US billionaire caused uproar after he made a gesture that drew online comparisons to a Nazi salute during President Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities.

On Saturday, he said “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents”, apparently referring to Germany’s Nazi past.

“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he said.

Musk, who spoke of suppression of speech under Germany’s government, has previously attacked German chancellor Olaf Scholz on X.

For his part, Scholz on Tuesday said he does not support freedom of speech when it is used for extreme-right views.

Musk spoke in favour of voting for the far-right party. “I’m very excited for the AfD, I think you’re really the best hope for Germany’s fight for a great future for Germany,” he told onlookers.

Weidel thanked him, said the Republicans were making America great again, and called on her supporters to make Germany great again.

Earlier this month, Musk hosted Weidel in an interview on X, stirring concern about election meddling.

Despite winter weather, anti-far-right campaigners were out in force on Saturday, with about 100,000 gathering around Berlin’s Brandenburg gate and up to 20,000 in Cologne, including people of all ages carrying colourful umbrellas.

For those wondering why Elon Musk, the tycoon newly infamous for his stiff-arm salutes, developed a sudden ferocious interest in the UK this month, the answer may lie in an arcane piece of online media legislation working its way gradually towards fruition.

In a ferocious flurry of tweets of his X platform this month, days before formally joining the Trump administration, the world’s richest man portrayed Britain as a dystopian “police state” run by a “tyrannical government” in which young working-class women are routinely kidnapped off the streets by gangs of immigrants.

He went further, singling out the prime minister and Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, for being “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes” and he described a cabinet member, Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding (protecting young girls from harm, for example), as a “rape genocide apologist”.

A Financial Times analysis of Musk’s tweets in the first week in January found that 225 out of Musk’s 616 tweets and retweets in that period were about UK politics. The barrage does not seem to have been provoked by any new political event. Much of his focus appears to have been on rape cases in northern England involving men of Pakistani descent which are more than a decade old.

Musk has explained his interest by pointing to his British-born grandmother Cora Amelia Robinson, to whom he was close to as a child. He said his “nana” was “one of the poor working-class girls with no one to protect her who might have been abducted in present day Britain”.

Gawain Towler, a former head of communications and strategist for the hard-right Reform party (which Musk has enthusiastically backed against the duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives) argues the mogul does feel a genuine attachment to Britain. He pointed out that Musk’s second wife, Talulah Riley, is British, and some of his children are Anglo-American.

“Musk looks at the UK as a sort of distant homeland,” Towler said. “I think he sees Britain as Athens to America’s Rome, and he worries about it.”

He argued that the timing of Musk’s dramatic intervention in British politics was a matter of coincidence – he happened to see transcripts of the trials involving northern English “grooming gangs” that abused hundreds of young girls over decades, enabled by the disastrous inaction of the police and judicial system.

Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. His office failed to act early in his tenure over doubts about the credibility of a central witness and victim, but he acted decisively in the second half of his term, securing key convictions and breaking up the gangs.

Political and media analysts argue the timing of Musk’s political assault has little to do with chance but is intended to put pressure on UK authorities as they work to codify the Online Safety Act (OSA), an effort to regulate online platforms. The OSA became law in 2023 but is yet to be implemented in practice. How that is done is due to be decided by the spring.

Imran Ahmed, a former Labour party adviser who now lives in Washington, where he runs the Center for Countering Digital Hate, has extensive experience of being at the receiving end of Musk’s displeasure for advocating regulation of X’s content. He argues that the furore about northern English “grooming gangs” is a diversion from Musk’s true aims: to fend off tough regulation.

“The media and political classes in general are being distracted by his sleight of hand,” Ahmed said. “This is all flim-flam to disguise what he is really up to, and his agenda is purely economic in nature.”

Andrew Chadwick, professor of political communication at the UK’s Loughborough University, said that Musk’s focus on fending off regulation has both economic and political motives.

“The regulatory context threatens Musk’s idea of influence and how he operates in the world and commands a global agenda, which aligns with the Trump administration, and therefore any, any threat to that which kind of reduces his legitimacy as a political actor, is a problem for him,” Chadwick said.

The OSA is meant to put the onus on the big social media platforms to prevent children from seeing potentially harmful content, such as pornography and material that promotes self-harm, suicide and eating disorders. That will require age verification systems. Adult viewers must be given the means to opt out of such content, and the law will require the companies to ensure their platforms do not host illegal material, with the use of codes of conduct, consistently enforced.

The OSA was considerably watered down by the Conservative government before it was passed two years ago, and in its current form will do little to stop the spread of disinformation by social media sites like X, which fuelled rightwing anti-immigrant riots in Britain last summer.

“The irony with the Online Safety Act is is that it has almost nothing that it can do to deal with the issues that emanate from both Musk and X more broadly. It had many of its teeth removed,” said Joe Mulhall, director of research of Hope Not Hate, an anti-fascist advocacy organisation. But he added that the punitive elements of the law addressing non-removal of illegal content could have repercussions for X.

Much will depend on how the regulator Ofcom enforces the law, and there are fears among civil society groups that the Starmer government will pull its punches out of fear of angering the Trump administration. During the campaign, the vice-president, JD Vance, warned that continued US participation in Nato could depend on whether its European allies sought to regulate X.

There was further alarm when the UK technology secretary, Peter Kyle, said in November the UK should show “a sense of humility” towards the tech giants, applying statecraft usually reserved for sovereign nations. Earlier this month, Kyle expressed regret that the previous Conservative government, which passed the OSA, had watered it down by removing more severe restrictions on legal but harmful content for adults. But he insisted the act had some “very good powers” which he would use “assertively”.

Companies that did not comply with the law would face “very strident” sanctions, he said.

In Brazil, Musk bowed to government pressure and agreed to block X accounts accused of spreading misinformation, as well as pay a $5m fine. Chadwick said the effective implementation of the OSA could give further impetus to governments around the world as they attempt to push back against Musk’s influence.

The EU has parallel legislation, the Digital Services Act, which the European Commission has been slow to enforce. There has been an investigation into potential violations by X since December 2023, which appeared to be moving glacially until last Friday when the commission gave X an ultimatum of 15 February to hand over internal documentation on its “recommender systems” (how some posts get promoted more than others) and any “recent changes” made to those systems.

The European Commission also issued a “retention order” requiring X to “preserve internal documents and information regarding future changes to the design and functioning of its recommender algorithms” in the coming year. X was also asked to hand over interface programmes that would allow the platform to be monitor for its content moderation and “virality of accounts”.

Chadwick said the European ultimatum suggested the European Commission was serious about taking on X, and was “potentially a big development”. If the UK opts to implement the OSA in an assertive way it could add to global momentum to regulate the output of X and other social media platforms.

“Britain is starting to sort of develop regulations that impact the interests of these people and it provides a model which other countries could follow,” he said.

Musk arguably did not buy Twitter to make money, but it could still cost him a lot more cash than he bargained for. The DSA allows fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover for digital companies which break the rules. The OSA envisages fines of 10% of a company’s global trade, and prison sentences for senior executives.

“I think Musk may have overreached,” Chadwick said, referring to the recent ferocious personal attacks on Starmer and others. “I think he has made it potentially easier for the UK government, via Ofcom as it develops these new codes, to implement the Online Safety Act. It’s taken ages so far and they have a bit further to go, but my sense is that something has shifted in the past few days.”

However, in Musk the UK and Europe would be taking on a behemoth who has now combined his hundreds of billions of dollars with the state machinery of the most powerful country in the world. His clout is far greater than media tycoons from an earlier age, like Rupert Murdoch.

“I think he is really feeling his power right now,” said Jen Golbeck, a computer scientist and professor in the University of Maryland’s college of information.

“All this concentration of money and power has combined with an attitude common among a lot of tech CEOs and Silicon Valley types – that they are exceptional and should be able to do what they want, free of the confines that govern the rest of the country,” Golbeck said.

“Elon certainly has this worldview, and now the feeling of entitlement to do whatever he wants, unhindered, combines with having the money and political clout to get his way. So Europe and the UK pose threats to him doing whatever he wants, and it’s a new place to flex his power. I think that is enough for him to feel like he really can step into anything.”

Large numbers of troops from Rwanda have been pouring across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to help rebels seize the regional capital of Goma before an emergency UN meeting about the crisis takes place on Sunday, intelligence officials have warned.

Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) soldiers are believed to have secretly crossed into the eastern DRC over the past few days to assist a lightning offensive by the M23 militia.

Officials speaking to the Observer on condition of anonymity said the RDF had cranked up the pressure on the Congolese city by massing troops on the Rwandan side of the border, a few hundred metres from central Goma.

Most of the RDF’s most senior commanders are said to have been deployed in the Rwandan city of Gisenyi, less than a mile across the border from Goma.

“The Rwandan army is lined up at the border, ready to invade,” said a source who has knowledge of the RDF and is privy to real-time intelligence.

Fierce skirmishes between M23 advance units and the Congolese army were reported on the outskirts of Goma throughout Saturday. Thirteen UN peacekeepers were killed in fighting, nine from South African peacekeepers, three from the Malawi Defence Forces and a Uruguayan member of the UN force who was killed while four others were wounded.

The frontline appears to be moving ever closer to Goma’s outskirts, with one source saying the fighting was almost within the city limits, having bypassed the vast refugee camps that hold more than a million people displaced by the fighting.

A major offensive by the Rwandan-backed M23 was foiled overnight, Congolese army sources said.

“Goma’s defences are just about holding out, but they [Rwanda] want to take Goma before the UNSC [UN security council],” said a senior intelligence source, requesting anonymity.

Meanwhile, the DRC recalled its diplomats from Rwanda and asked Rwanda to cease diplomatic and consular activities in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, within 48 hours, according to a leaked foreign ministry letter to the Rwandan embassy.

The UN security council brought forward an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the crisis.

When the M23 captured Goma in 2012, its forces rapidly withdrew when Rwanda came under intense international pressure to stop backing the militia. This time, intelligence sources believe, Rwanda wants to take control of the city before the west can summon an effective response.

Such a move will rely on M23 units imminently breaching Goma’s embattled defences, routing the Congolese army and assuming control of the city of more than a million people on the northern shore of Lake Kivu.

Before the recent influx of Rwandan troops, UN experts estimated that up to 4,000 RDF personnel were operating inside the DRC.

Sources also warn that Rwanda will not stop at Goma and is hoping to seize the city of Bukavu, which lies close to the border at the southern tip of Lake Kivu.

The M23 insurgency in the DRC’s mineral-rich east has intensified this year, with rebels seizing control of more territory. Last week they took control of Minova, a key town along one of Goma’s main supply routes.

Two days later, they captured Sake, a town 12 miles from Goma and previously the army’s main defensive position against the M23. The developments threaten the supply of food and basic supplies into Goma.

Speaking on Saturday to the Observer, Clémentine de Montjoye of Human Rights Watch said: “The situation is dire. Today we are hearing reports of fighting north and west of the city, as well as water and power shortages in the city.

“Given the huge number of civilians seeking shelter in Goma, pressure must be mounted on all parties to protect civilians and infrastructure such as hospitals and allow access to humanitarian aid.”

Many analysts are critical of the west’s response to the crisis, particularly its failure to rein in Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame. The UK, US and France – three of the five permanent members of the UN security council – are accused by critics of being too close to Kagame.

In a statement on Saturday, the EU said: “Rwanda must cease its support for the M23 and withdraw.”

The Rwandan government says it does not back the M23, but had not res- ponded by the time of going to press.

Large numbers of troops from Rwanda have been pouring across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to help rebels seize the regional capital of Goma before an emergency UN meeting about the crisis takes place on Sunday, intelligence officials have warned.

Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) soldiers are believed to have secretly crossed into the eastern DRC over the past few days to assist a lightning offensive by the M23 militia.

Officials speaking to the Observer on condition of anonymity said the RDF had cranked up the pressure on the Congolese city by massing troops on the Rwandan side of the border, a few hundred metres from central Goma.

Most of the RDF’s most senior commanders are said to have been deployed in the Rwandan city of Gisenyi, less than a mile across the border from Goma.

“The Rwandan army is lined up at the border, ready to invade,” said a source who has knowledge of the RDF and is privy to real-time intelligence.

Fierce skirmishes between M23 advance units and the Congolese army were reported on the outskirts of Goma throughout Saturday. Thirteen UN peacekeepers were killed in fighting, nine from South African peacekeepers, three from the Malawi Defence Forces and a Uruguayan member of the UN force who was killed while four others were wounded.

The frontline appears to be moving ever closer to Goma’s outskirts, with one source saying the fighting was almost within the city limits, having bypassed the vast refugee camps that hold more than a million people displaced by the fighting.

A major offensive by the Rwandan-backed M23 was foiled overnight, Congolese army sources said.

“Goma’s defences are just about holding out, but they [Rwanda] want to take Goma before the UNSC [UN security council],” said a senior intelligence source, requesting anonymity.

Meanwhile, the DRC recalled its diplomats from Rwanda and asked Rwanda to cease diplomatic and consular activities in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, within 48 hours, according to a leaked foreign ministry letter to the Rwandan embassy.

The UN security council brought forward an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the crisis.

When the M23 captured Goma in 2012, its forces rapidly withdrew when Rwanda came under intense international pressure to stop backing the militia. This time, intelligence sources believe, Rwanda wants to take control of the city before the west can summon an effective response.

Such a move will rely on M23 units imminently breaching Goma’s embattled defences, routing the Congolese army and assuming control of the city of more than a million people on the northern shore of Lake Kivu.

Before the recent influx of Rwandan troops, UN experts estimated that up to 4,000 RDF personnel were operating inside the DRC.

Sources also warn that Rwanda will not stop at Goma and is hoping to seize the city of Bukavu, which lies close to the border at the southern tip of Lake Kivu.

The M23 insurgency in the DRC’s mineral-rich east has intensified this year, with rebels seizing control of more territory. Last week they took control of Minova, a key town along one of Goma’s main supply routes.

Two days later, they captured Sake, a town 12 miles from Goma and previously the army’s main defensive position against the M23. The developments threaten the supply of food and basic supplies into Goma.

Speaking on Saturday to the Observer, Clémentine de Montjoye of Human Rights Watch said: “The situation is dire. Today we are hearing reports of fighting north and west of the city, as well as water and power shortages in the city.

“Given the huge number of civilians seeking shelter in Goma, pressure must be mounted on all parties to protect civilians and infrastructure such as hospitals and allow access to humanitarian aid.”

Many analysts are critical of the west’s response to the crisis, particularly its failure to rein in Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame. The UK, US and France – three of the five permanent members of the UN security council – are accused by critics of being too close to Kagame.

In a statement on Saturday, the EU said: “Rwanda must cease its support for the M23 and withdraw.”

The Rwandan government says it does not back the M23, but had not res- ponded by the time of going to press.

The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the coronavirus pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory, according to an assessment released on Saturday that points the finger at China even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.

The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the behest of the Biden administration and former CIA director William Burns. It was declassified and released on Saturday on the orders of president Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in as director on Thursday.

The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin. But the agency’s assessment, suggesting the evidence is deficient, inconclusive or contradictory.

Earlier reports on the origins of Covid-19 have split over whether the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, potentially by mistake, or whether it arose naturally. The new assessment is not likely to settle the debate. In fact, intelligence officials say it may never be resolved, due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities.

The CIA “continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the Covid-19 pandemic remain plausible,” the agency wrote in a statement about its new assessment.

Instead of new evidence, the conclusion was based on fresh analyses of intelligence about the spread of the virus, its scientific properties and the work and conditions of China’s virology labs.

Lawmakers have put pressure on America’s spy agencies for more information about the origins of the virus, which led to lockdowns, economic upheaval and millions of deaths. It’s a question with significant domestic and geopolitical implications as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic’s legacy.

Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Saturday that he was “pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation” and he commended Ratcliffe for declassifying the assessment.

“Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Cotton said in a statement.

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Chinese authorities have in the past dismissed speculation about Covid’s origins as unhelpful and motivated by politics.

While the origin of the virus remains unknown, scientists think the most likely hypothesis is that it circulated in bats, like many coronaviruses, before infecting another species, probably racoon dogs, civet cats or bamboo rats. In turn, the infection spread to humans handling or butchering those animals at a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late November 2019.

Some official investigations, however, have raised the question of whether the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan. Two years ago a report by the Energy Department concluded a lab leak was the most likely origin, though that report also expressed low confidence in the finding.

The same year then-FBI director Christopher Wray said his agency believed the virus “most likely” spread after escaping from a lab.

Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, has said he favours the lab leak scenario, too.

“The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence, and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in 2023.

The CIA said it will continue to evaluate any new information that could change its assessment.

Donald Trump’s order halting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has led the US air force to suspend course instruction on a documentary about the first Black airmen in the US military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, a US official said on Saturday.

The famed Black aviators included 450 pilots who fought overseas in segregated units during the second world war. Their success in combat helped pave the way for Harry Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces in 1948.

Another video about civilian female pilots trained by the US military during the second world war, known as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or Wasps, was also pulled, the official said.

The air force did not directly comment on the decision, which was confirmed by an official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The US president has issued a series of executive orders seeking to dismantle DEI programs since he took office on Monday.

DEI programs seek to promote opportunities for women, ethnic minorities and other traditionally underrepresented groups. Civil rights advocates argue such programs, generally backed by Democrats, are needed to address longstanding inequities and structural racism.

But they have become a rallying cry for conservatives who argue that race- and gender-focused initiatives are inherently discriminatory and fail to prioritize merit.

Reuters reported on Friday that Pete Hegseth, the new defense secretary, has told lawmakers he opposes the use of race as a factor when evaluating candidates for elite US military academies.

Trump’s administration and its backers in Congress argue that the US military also needs to be purged of generals who support DEI initiatives, which they say are a distraction from war fighting.

The US official said the video on the Tuskegee Airmen and other historical materials had been pulled as the air force conducts a review of course curriculum at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where new recruits get basic training.

The official stressed that the videos had not been targeted but were part of the curriculum that had been suspended pending review.

For its part, the air force said in a statement that it is committed to carrying out Trump’s orders.

“The Department of the Air Force will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives,” an air force spokesperson said.

The British husband of Lamduan Armitage, a Thai woman whose body was found in a stream in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004, has been detained by police in Thailand.

David Armitage, a university lecturer, has been detained in Bangkok by immigration officials after an investigation into his visa.

According to the BBC, Armitage, who has a resident visa, was detained at his house in Kanchanaburi on Thursday before being transferred to the Bangkok immigration detention centre while the country’s authorities prepare to revoke his visa.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We are supporting the family of a British national detained in Thailand.”
Lamduan, originally from Udon Thani province in north-east Thailand, was found by a group of walkers on the Pennine Way, between Pen-y-ghent and Horton in Ribblesdale, in September 2004.

Detectives initially believed she had died of natural causes but a cold case team announced in 2018 that Lamduan was murdered.

Armitage, who has been living in Thailand since her death, did not report his wife missing and has not managed to be interviewed by Thai or British police about her whereabouts.

The victim’s family in Thailand came forward to say they had not heard from her since 2004 after seeing an efit that resembled her issued by North Yorkshire police.

They said she had married a British man in 1991 and moved to north-west England four years later.

The investigation into Lamduan’s death is being conducted by North Yorkshire police.

A spokesperson for the force told the BBC it was aware of Armitage’s detention and added: “We understand it relates to his visa status and residence in Thailand and is entirely a matter for the immigration service of the Royal Thai police.

“Should Mr Armitage be deported, we understand that he will have a choice as to where he goes, which will include return to the UK.

“Should that occur, we will again make every effort to speak to him about the investigation.”

Armitage previously told the Sun newspaper he was not involved in his wife’s death.

The villa where Rudolf Höss and his family lived stood immediately next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The garden wall of the villa was the wall of the camp.

At Christmas time, they put up a tree in the living room and festooned it with ornaments and candles. In the garden, there was a pond, a sandpit, a slide, several picnic benches and a greenhouse with exotic plants. At night, Höss tucked his sons and daughters into bed and said: “Schlaf schön meine Kinder” – sleep well my children.

All of this took place just a few yards from the horrors of the Holocaust. The camp where more than one million people, most of them Jewish, were murdered during the second world war.

It was Commandant Rudolf Höss who set up the Auschwitz camp in 1940 following the orders of Heinrich Himmler, and it was Höss who two years later established the machinery of industrial murder – the transports, the selections, the gas chambers, the crematoriums – that resulted in the largest mass killing in a single location in history.

The villa will be made open to the public for the first time on Monday, to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.

The commandant lived at the villa with his wife Hedwig and their five children for four years. The boys, Klaus and Hans Jürgen, shared a bedroom on the second floor. Next to them were the two eldest daughters, Heidetraud and Brigitte, while the baby Annegret slept in a small basket in the parent’s bedroom on the same floor.

From the villa’s second-floor window, they could see the old crematorium where Höss experimented with Zyklon B gas. Prisoners from the camp worked in the house and the garden. Hedwig would later tell her husband that the villa was like “paradise”.

This is the same villa that was featured in the Oscar-winning film, The Zone of Interest, which captured the banality of the Nazi family who lived next to the death camp.

Not long before she died, I interviewed the commandant’s daughter Brigitte, who told me she enjoyed living at the villa. “We had fun together,” she said. She played with her turtles Jumbo and Dilla in the garden. Her father took them for boat rides on the Sola River behind the villa. He played them records on the gramophone. He asked them about their day.

“There was a difference between home and … ,” Brigitte told me, unable to speak the name of the camp or the atrocities that took place there. “But we didn’t know it then at all. Later, we found out what was going on.”

In March 1946, Höss was arrested by British forces (including my great-uncle Hanns, a German Jew, who didn’t talk about it till shortly before his death). The British handed the commandant over to the Americans who had him appear as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. Höss’s testimony was the first to provide a detailed account of the mechanics of the Holocaust and changed the course of the trial.

The commandant was then taken to Poland where he was himself put on trial, found guilty and in April 1947 hanged on the gallows in Auschwitz, just a few yards away from the villa where he once lived.

After the war, a Polish family bought the villa at 88 Legionow Street. In the decades since, they turned away visitors who knocked on the door. The house remained a curiosity, visible to those who came to the camp (last year, 1.83 million people visited Auschwitz-Birkenau), a symbol of darkness hidden behind a tall concrete wall.

In 2024, the American non-profit Counter Extremism Project persuaded the Polish family to sell the property. The organisation is led by Mark Wallace, the 57-year-old former ambassador to the UN under President George W Bush. The Counter Extremism Project’s mission is to “combat the growing threat posed by extremist ideologies”.

With the support of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Polish foreign ministry and Unesco, they are opening what they are calling the Auschwitz Research Centre on Hate, Extremism and Radicalisation (Archer) at House 88.

Wallace has been working on the project for years. “It hasn’t been easy,” he says, “it’s been a bit of a saga.” But, he continues, it has been worth it. “The place is remarkable. When you are in the house, in those quiet moments, you can really feel it. Your skin crawls.”

Not everyone is convinced by the plan to open the villa to the public. One of those is the historian Simon Schama. “This is an absolutely appalling idea,” he wrote on social media, after I posted a story about the villa’s opening. “It will be all about the movie and the perpetrator leading a ‘normal’ life and do nothing to teach anyone about the ordeal of the Jewish victims. Just a perpetrator attraction. Repellent.”

Wallace is adamant that their project will do the exact opposite: it will honour the survivors of Auschwitz by fighting extremism today. He mentions the rising tide of radical politics around the world and then explains: “Hatred lurks in the ordinary house next door.”

“Our plan is to convert the ordinary house of the greatest mass murderer into the extraordinary symbol of the fight against anti­semitism and extremism.”

He then points out that when Höss was living at the house the windows were glazed to prevent anyone looking in. “The house,” he says, “will now be open to the public.”

• Thomas Harding’s book The Einstein Vendetta: Hitler, Mussolini, and a true story of murder will be published by Michael Joseph in April. You can follow him on Twitter/X @thomasharding

Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to forge closer economic links with Europe five years on from Brexit, as a major new poll shows voters clearly favour prioritising more trade with the EU over the US.

The MRP survey of almost 15,000 people by YouGov for the Best for Britain thinktank shows more people in every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales back closer arrangements with the EU rather than more transatlantic trade with Washington. MRP polls use large data samples to estimate opinion at a local level

Even in Nigel Farage’s seat of Clacton, more people think the UK is better off trading more with its neighbours on the continent than with the US under the Reform UK leader’s ally Donald Trump.

The findings come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, on Sunday tells the Observer that Brexit has harmed the UK economy and that she is determined to claw back some of the lost gross domestic product (GDP) by reducing trade frictions for UK small businesses wherever possible.

In one of the clearest statements by a senior government minister on Brexit, Reeves answered yes when asked if she was clear that leaving the EU had damaged the UK’s financial position.

The chancellor, who discussed possible ways to improve trade with EU finance ministers and others at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, said there were “loads of external estimates” showing the negative impact of Brexit on the UK economy and added: “What I want to do is get some of that GDP back by having a better trading relationship with the European Union.”

Reeves also enthused about one specific proposal, saying it was “great”, made by the EU’s new trade chief responsible for post-Brexit negotiations, Maroš Šefčovič , who floated the idea of the UK joining the Pan-Euro Mediterranean convention (PEM). The PEM is a set of common rules for sourcing parts and ingredients for use in tariff-free trade.

Reeves said: “They would not have made those suggestions a year or two ago because they knew they did not have a UK government that was interested. So the fact that they are putting those things out there shows there is a better deal to be had than the one we have at the moment. We look forward to exploring those options with them.”

Reeves’s comments are striking because Keir Starmer’s government has been fearful of moving too fast to foster closer links with the EU because of concerns that it would boost support for Reform among Brexit supporters.

But with Reeves’s sights now fixed intently on stimulating economic growth by whatever means, the Treasury appears to be leading the charge to improve trade with the EU.

Under our current post-Brexit arrangements agreed by Boris Johnson, the UK sits outside both the EU single market and its customs union. This means that goods traded by UK companies to and from the EU face time-consuming and costly delays at borders as checks are conducted.

In addition, UK citizens are no longer able to travel to work in the EU as they were under freedom of movement rules that apply to member states.

The poll found that 46% of respondents said the EU should be the government’s top priority when it comes to trade, whereas less than half this number (21%) opted for the US.

The results come just days after Trump was sworn in for the second time as US president, promising to impose hefty tariffs on imports. Any UK trade deal with the US is likely to mean this country having to accept imports of food such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected meat that breach current UK and EU regulations.

Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain, said: “Trade doesn’t have to be either/or but it’s clear that when it comes to priorities, from Cairnryan to Clacton and Newport to Newcastle, Britain wants a closer relationship with the EU first.

“With Trump threatening new tariffs as soon as [this] week, the government should listen to voters and break down trade barriers with our largest market before pursuing deals elsewhere. That’s how Starmer can meet his growth ambitions, ease price rises for UK consumers and give British businesses a fighting chance in an increasingly protectionist world.”

Writing in the Observer, Praful Nargund, a Labour candidate at the last election, who is director of the Good Growth Foundation, said: “If we’re serious about fixing our economic stagnation, the EU cannot be sidelined. This problem has always been a political one at its heart. Provided it delivers on people’s priorities, there is a way towards a closer relationship with the EU that is not electorally disastrous – indeed, potentially quite the opposite.”

Marley Morris, an associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank and author of several reports on Brexit, said: “As the UK’s closest and most significant trade partner, the EU should be the top priority for the government’s new trade strategy. The current trade deal is not working as it should, with UK businesses facing an array of new barriers to selling goods and services into the EU.”

The poll for Best for Britain found the desire for closer EU-UK ties was even stronger among voters who switched from Conservative to Labour at the last election (57%). Of those who voted Labour at the last election, two-thirds (66%) thought the government should prioritise trade with the EU, compared with only 9% for Trump’s US.

Strong support for prioritising trade with the EU was also found in the constituencies most heavily targeted by Labour at the last general election, including Ribble Valley and Stoke-on-Trent.

In Scotland and Wales, which will hold Holyrood and Senedd elections next year, battleground seats such as Stirling and Strathallan, as well as Llanelli also back prioritising trade with the EU.