Monday briefing: What does Lula’s victory mean for the future of Brazil?
Victory Monday #VictoryMonday
Good morning.
After an election period marred by disinformation and threats of violence, Brazil’s leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – known as Lula – narrowly defeated far right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro by two percentage points in an astonishing political comeback. In a parallel universe, Lula’s once unthinkable, political revival – from the top of Brazilian politics, to prison and back to the presidency – would be the story of the hour. Instead all eyes are elsewhere.
Supporters of Lula flooded the streets, chanting his name and setting off fireworks in a display of euphoric relief. Bolsonaro’s supporters stood, teary eyed and indignant: in the capital, Brasilia, one man with a loudspeaker said to a crowd: “We are with you, President Bolsonaro. Lula thief, you belong in prison!”
By choosing Lula, Brazil is abandoning Bolsonaro’s far-right vision for the country, which has been characterised over the past three years by attacks on democratic institutions, the media, the left and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Instead, the Brazilian electorate chose Lula and a platform that centred social justice, environmental protection, defending democracy and reunifying the country.
‘We need Lula’: Brazilians celebrate leftist leader’s narrow victory – video
This, however, is not the end of the story. Bolsonaro has said on a number of occasions that he may not accept the result of the election, while Lula is tasked with rebuilding a country where poverty, acute hunger and inflation are all on the rise, as well as repairing Brazil’s international standing. I spoke to the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips about what this election means for the future of the country. That’s right after the headlines:
Five big stories
Police | Met police chief, Sir Mark Rowley, has said that the gang violence matrix, a controversial Metropolitan police list of alleged gang members that mainly targeted black men, needs to be “radically reformed”. Amnesty International branded the list part of a “racialised war” on gangs. Rowley has already removed more than 1,000 young men from the list.
South Korea | President Yoon Suk-yeo has declared a state of national mourning and ordered an investigation after a fatal crowd crush during Halloween celebrations. More than 150 people were killed after people surged through a narrow alleyway in a busy area of Seoul.
Cop27 | Rishi Sunak’s decision not to attend UN climate talks in Egypt this week has prompted an outpouring of anger from countries around the world. “It seems as if they are washing their hands of leadership,” said Carlos Fuller, Belize’s ambassador to the UN.
NHS | The NHS has not received any of the funding from Thérèse Coffey’s £500m emergency fund. The money was supposed to help get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital into their own home or a care home to prevent the NHS from becoming overwhelmed in the winter.
National security | UK government ministers risk creating “wild west” conditions in matters of national security through the increased use of personal email and phones to conduct confidential business, intelligence experts and former officials have warned.
In depth: A comeback for the ages Supporters of Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva celebrate his victory in São Paulo. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/VIEW press
Brazil is the latest Latin American country to elect a leftwing president, joining Chile, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Honduras and Argentina who have all favoured progressive parties over the political right. Leaders from around the world were quick to congratulate Lula on his victory, showing global solidarity and support following Bolsonaro’s past claims that the election could be rigged. US President Joe Biden was clear and unwavering in his statement, describing the election as “free, fair, and credible”.
Now the election and campaigning is done, what can we expect from a Lula presidency?
Democracy
Bolsonaro has spent the last four years undermining democratic institutions in Brazil – “he is a pro-torture, pro-dictatorship, former Army captain who has openly celebrated Brazil’s dictatorship and expressed admiration for South American dictators like Augusto Pinochet,” says Tom. He has cast doubt on electronic voting, and made it near impossible to tackle disinformation by limiting the power of tech companies to moderate their sites in the country. Bolsonaro has also been known to lash out the Brazilian Supreme Court and Supreme Electoral Tribunal because of the many investigations levelled at him and his sons, and has also been accused of filling the prosecutor’s office and the police with allies and loyalists
Brazil is a relatively young democracy, emerging from a brutal military dictatorship in 1985. In comparison to most similar democracies, the country has fewer and weaker checks and balances to stop it from returning to those dark days. “I think that the biggest positive consequence of this result will be that Brazil will return within a few months to some kind of democratic normalcy,” says Tom.
Environment
Four more years of Bolsonaro would have had devastating environmental consequences, not just for Brazil but for the whole world. Two billion trees have been burned or cut down during his presidency – an area the size of greater London was lost in the first six months of 2022 alone. His policies on deforestation and illegal logging have turned the Amazon rainforest into a net emitter.
“Lula has said that he will immediately start cracking down down on illegal mining and logging, and he will try to revive the Amazon Fund, which is this big international fund by which governments like Norway and Germany contribute to conservation efforts here,” Tom says. These pledges, alongside Lula’s previous record of radically reducing deforestation, indicate that massive swathes of the Amazon will be saved and protected. Analysis conducted for Carbon Brief indicates that Lula’s victory could cut Amazon deforestation by 89% over the next decade.
These policies could have life-saving consequences for journalists, environmental activists, and indigenous groups, Tom says: “Hopefully this will stop the many invasions of indigenous territories by gold miners and other gangs, like the ones who were seemingly responsible for the murder of a friend and colleague, Dom Phillips.”
The economy
Lula has promised to bring back the economic prosperity that was seen under his presidency between 2003 and 2010, when tens of millions of Brazilians were brought into the middle class. According to a World Bank report, the middle class in Brazil grew by 50% between 2003 and 2009. Replicating this success will not be easy in a global economy that is heading towards recession, however.
While Lula’s pledges of a more progressive tax regime, ending the spending cap on public expenditure, an increase in the minimum wage and boosting social welfare will help alleviate income inequality, there has been very little detail or costing. The commodities that allowed Lula to implement many policies like these during his previous tenure is long ove, and while it’s clear that while his policies may be popular, Lula faces many obstacles in implementing them.
Civil rights
Tom sent me a voice note following Lula’s victory speech – you can hear that the celebrations are in full swing, with rapturous cheering in the background. “[Lula] looked extremely tired and extremely emotional,” Tom says, “The main message of his speech was reunifying the country, he said he’s going to govern the 250 million Brazilians in the country, not just the ones that voted for him. He said he’s going to wage a relentless fight against racism and discrimination.” Lula is viewed as a champion of Brazil’s indigenous population and has called homophobia a “perverse disease”. However, in a public letter to Brazilian Evangelicals, Lula said that he was personally opposed to abortion and that he would leave that issue with congress.
Will there be a coup?
As of yet, there has been silence from Bolsonaro and his team. The country and the world is nervously looking to see if he makes good on his threats of refusing to give up power, after months of baselessly alleging that Brazil’s electronic voting system is plagued by fraud and claiming that there is a conspiracy between the courts and media against his far-right movement. It’s a message that has clearly taken hold. “I’ve talked to supporters of his over the last few weeks who said that they are absolutely convinced that he did win the first round, which he actually lost by 6 million votes,” says Tom.
It’s unlikely that Bolsonaro will quietly slink off into the night. “I suspect that Bolsonaro is going to remain a big figure in far-right politics for many years, he’s got a movement, he’s got a name, he’s got two prominent politician sons in Congress. He’s probably not going anywhere,” Tom says. Nevertheless, he will wake up tomorrow a significantly diminished figure, whose destructive vision for the country has ultimately been rejected.
Remembering Ian Jack Ian Jack, who has died at the age of 77. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/The Guardian
Ian Jack, who has died at the age of 77, was one of the great British journalists of his generation. “No journalist had a deeper sense of history than Ian Jack,” his friend Donald Macintyre wrote on Saturday. “It’s hard to think of anyone in our trade who was better read or had deeper intellectual interests and passions.” You could start almost anywhere among his remarkable body of work and feel certain of pleasure and enlightenment – but here are six recommendations from his colleagues:
Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning
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Ian Jack brought to his writing a degree of craft – and graft – that was, in its way, the equal of the master shipbuilders he so admired. What is most apparent though, as in the shipyards themselves, is not so much the skill on display as the atmosphere all around. His work is infused with the elegiac. He was often described as nostalgic, but it’s more like homesickness for the past, as if he was born just too late and ached with that knowledge. This column on his father’s bookcase is a fine example of his technique, moving – through the accumulation of small details – from the particular and personal to a vast social and historical sweep. We are fortunate to have inherited Ian’s words. We shall miss his curious mind. Peter Ross, freelance journalist and author
I’ve never stopped thinking about this article, written by Ian in 2016. It is a short masterpiece about national identity, and how the then-recent vote for Brexit had changed how he felt about his Britishness and his Scottishness. Its emotional power is heightened by a touching and unexpected anecdote about his family’s relationship with a German prisoner of war he never met. Ian’s sense of bitter betrayal at the end of the piece makes you shiver, with a sense of dread. Katharine Viner, editor, the Guardian
Everyone who has read Ian Jack knows what a brilliant writer he was, his gift for weaving together past and present. What is sometimes overlooked is what a brilliant reporter and researcher he was. In 2016, he wrote about Trident for the long read. Like everything Ian wrote, the piece is a deft synthesis of history, memoir and analysis. But in the course of writing it, Ian also seemed to have quietly acquired a PhD-level knowledge of nuclear technology and military theory. The piece exemplifies one of his key beliefs: that “writing, if it can do nothing else, should at least tell the reader something he didn’t know before.” David Wolf, editor, the Guardian long read
Ian Jack and I shared a love of Arnold Bennett, the great early 20th-century novelist and journalist of the Potteries. Rereading this column, I realise it says as much about Ian as it does about Bennett: both were restlessly curious, brilliant autodidacts, uprooted from but always shaped by the working-class locale in which they’d grown up. Ian loved Bennett’s story The Death of Simon Fuge. Take his advice and read it. Charlotte Higgins, chief culture writer, the Guardian
Ian Jack wrote for the London Review of Books on housing and ships, Scotland and Brexit, model railways and newspaper men. Sometimes his interests combined: just last month we published a remarkable 17,000-word piece by Ian on the CalMac ferry fiasco, a piece no one else could have written. One of my favourite of his pieces came out in May 2019. The book under review was on the subject of public land and its appropriation, but Ian started where he often did, close to home, on a ‘hilly little peninsula that juts south into the Firth of Forth’. Alice Spawls, co-editor, the London Review of Books
Most journalists secretly feel they’re only good as their last story, so I’m going to choose Ian’s final piece, a column for the Guardian published on the Saturday before his death. He grew up in the old newspaper world of hot metal and proper deadlines, acquiring the skills that would make him such a paragon as a reporter and an editor. His reflection on the BBC’s centenary contains many of the elements that made him so distinctive: wisdom, historical perspective, clarity of prose and a late-maturing gift for using his own family background to add depth and colour to a story, something very few can manage. Richard Williams, former chief sportswriter, the Guardian
What else we’ve been reading
More and more artists are cancelling live dates because of astronomical costs. Michael Hann asks whether touring will ever be the same. Nimo
Will disruptive action help save the planet? Two activists – Just Stop Oil protester Indigo Rumbelow and former Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Rupert Read – argue for and against headline-grabbing stunts respectively in this insightful head-to-head. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters.
What happens when advertising starts to swallow an entire city? Oliver Wainwright takes us on a tour through a new West End development that looks to be little more than a hotspot for luxury commerce. Nimo
“I was trying to process this idea of irrevocable change, and what that does to personal relationships, the damage it can do to people, because it’s so isolating.” Kathryn Bromwich’s interview with singer Weyes Blood is full of deep meditations to match her richly ethereal music. Hannah
The Netflix hit Sex Education won’t be back on our screens for a while – so in the meantime why not read this brilliant interview with the actor Connor Swindells by Tim Lewis. Nimo
Sport
Football | Marcus Rashford’s 100th Manchester United goal earned the team a 1-0 win over West Ham. Meanwhile, Arsenal took back their top spot in the Premier League after thrashing Nottingham Forest, 5-0.
Formula One | Max Verstappen won the Mexican Grand Prix with another dominant performance for Red Bull at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, sealing his place in F1 history with a new win record for a single season.
Rugby | England insisted they have no plans to change their forward-dominated gameplan after a 41-5 win against Australia set up a Women’s Rugby World Cup semi‑final against Canada. All seven of England’s tries against the Wallaroos came from their hard‑edged pack.
The front pages Guardian front page 31 October 2022 Photograph: Guardian
The Guardian headlines “Ministers accused of ‘wild west’ attitude to UK’s national security” and carries a warning from intelligence experts and former officials that the increased use of personal phones and emails by ministers could pose a risk.
The Telegraph says “Migrants side by side in hotels with public” in plans by the home secretary to “regain control of the Channel crisis.” Meanwhile the Mail reports “Petrol bomber attacks migrant centre”.
The Mirror says “NHS is facing worst winter on record” and carries a report from inside a hospital. The Sun splashes with “England ace: my racist troll hell” with testimony from England defender Reece James.
The Financial Times reports that “Moscow’s ditching of Ukraine grain deal ‘catastrophic for poor nations”, while the i says “Sunak under Tory pressure to U-turn over climate snub.”
Today in Focus Today In Focus asks what it takes to be an undercover police officer. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
What does it take to be an undercover police officer?
It’s very rare for an undercover police officer to talk about their work. It’s a job that combines a knack of assimilating into different characters, winning the trust of people from all walks of life and specifically from the criminal underworld. David Taylor is no longer a serving officer, but he tells Nosheen Iqbal what it takes to go undercover for long investigations and what the rewards can be. He also talks of the toll it can take, professionally and personally.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett Edith Pritchett / The Guardian
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The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Andrea Busfield at her graduation. Photograph: Andrea Busfield
Following news that Adele plans to complete an English Literature degree after her upcoming Las Vegas residency, journalist and author Andrea Busfield writes about her own experience topping the class as a mature student. At the age of 41, Busfield enrolled with the Open University, studying part-time for a degree in international relations over six years. “In some respects school is wasted on the young,” she says. “I know with absolute certainty that I would never have achieved a first if I had gone to university aged 18”.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.