| The first week of the UK general election campaign has kept the denizens of the FT opinion team on their toes this week (with Lib Dem leader Ed Davey’s apparent determination to open himself to daily ridicule by engaging in varied sporting pursuits providing some light relief). And then, just as most of us were getting ready for bed on Thursday evening, the news broke that a jury of Donald Trump’s peers had found him guilty of 34 felony counts over the cover-up of “hush money” paid to buy the silence of a porn actor in the run-up to the 2016 election. Happily, our Washington-based colleague Edward Luce was on hand to offer some rapid and acute commentary on the implications of the verdict. The decision of the jury, Ed writes, puts America’s entire political system on trial. The Republican presidential candidate’s court of appeal, he says, will be the US electorate. One of the more dispiriting, if predictable, aspects of the general election campaign in Britain thus far has been the willingness of both main parties to pitch the old against the young. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative prime minister, has been prescribing pensioner tax cuts and military service for teens, while Labour leader Keir Starmer plans to give the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds. As Camilla Cavendish notes in her latest column, pitching the old against the young is not a good idea if you’re trying to unite the country. But you can see why it’s tempting. Age has replaced class as a driver of UK voting patterns. The problem, Camilla contends, is that the electoral politics of age are too crude to reflect the nation’s needs. Whoever becomes prime minister will need to govern for the whole country. 
© Joe Cummings Britain isn’t the only country going to the polls soon. Mexicans vote for their next president on Sunday and Claudia Sheinbaum, the subject of a fine profile by Michael Stott and Christine Murray, is aiming to become the first female leader of a country with a long history of machismo. Sheinbaum was formed by the campus protests of the 1980s, Michael and Christine note, but supporters insist she is not an ideologue. Elsewhere, Adam Tooze worries that Germany’s fractious governing coalition is dithering while the heat rises in Europe. Optimists have faith that the EU will always pull through but crisis-fighting depends on choices made in Berlin. As the Edinburgh International Book Festival joined Hay Festival in ending its partnership, John Gapper argues that the Baillie Gifford boycott does more harm than good. Campaigning against the asset manager has shallow logic and will make the literary world poorer. And pollster Luke Tryl introduces readers to Whitby Woman, the latest UK target voter who should prepare to be wooed. Voter archetypes have a chequered history, but they will shape this campaign from Yorkshire towns to Stevenage and Surrey. From the baby boom to the baby bust — Martin Wolf Rishi Sunak’s big net zero UK election gamble — Pilita Clark Higher rates have changed the game for private equity — Brooke Masters The Tories’ disastrous misunderstanding of America — Janan Ganesh There is currency stress on the horizon — Gillian Tett | 
