The Guardian e-paper Journal
Rubbing along in the right way is how we know that we’re alive
Does life, of late, feel just too easy? Are you keen to make it harder than it already is? If that sounds like a genuinely demented question in the week that the world came close to threatened Armageddon, then fair enough. I bridled too when I read...
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Ten years after Brexit, this is us: divided and frozen in time
On 23 June 2016, the British voter changed. Before that day, they picked a party, usually red or blue. By that morning, only two tribes mattered: remain or leave. And they kept mattering long, long after the result was declared. Rather than bin those...
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Europe should not bet on the US becoming sane again
Donald Trump is a despot and the US is a democracy. These things can be true simultaneously but not indefinitely. There is now deadlock in the struggle between a president who would be king and a constitution drafted in repudiation of monarchy. But it...
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How private equity came to own everything under the sun
It was the free croissants that gave it away. And the Scandinavian-style furniture. And the tasteful pastel walls. It was different from other nurseries I’d viewed: marginally more expensive, the aesthetic equivalent of a WeWork for toddlers. I was...
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Trump cannot understand Iran. That’s why his war drags on
Five weeks. We are now more than five weeks into the war on Iran. What was supposed to be a “precise, overwhelming military campaign” to eliminate “an imminent nuclear threat” and urge the Iranian people to “take over” their government is now anything...
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It’s the Trump silver lining: he is pushing us closer to the EU
Going anywhere nice this summer? No, me neither, judging by the warning from the Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, that a global shortage of jet fuel caused by the Iran war may soon lead to cancelled flights. Suddenly a week in Cornwall looks a safer bet,...
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What can the world do about Donald Trump? Wait him out
The United States is extraordinary. One day it goes to the far side of the moon and revives the space age. On the same day, its president is looking to the far side of the Earth and says he will take Iran “back to the stone ages”. It may well be a...
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A glaring truth about the oil crisis: not all of us will suffer
Perhaps the most celebrated writer on oil markets is Daniel Yergin. His work has won a Pulitzer and his advice has been sought by every president from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump. Let’s start by looking at an example. Fifteen years ago, before the US...
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How ideologues laid our green and pleasant land to waste
This country’s a dump. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean it literally. From the point of view of criminal waste gangs, it is one big potential landfill. The chances of being caught range between minimal and nonexistent, and the penalties are...
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Does anyone know what’s in Trump’s mind now? Does he?
Donald Trump’s cognitive skills are amazing. So amazing! So great! So much better than any other dumb presidential contender you could mention, at least according to Trump himself, who bragged once again last week of how he had repeatedly aced what he...
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Will there be peace – or more bombs? Place your bets now
Odd things are happening in the markets. Last Monday, 15 minutes before Donald Trump posted an announcement that “productive talks” with Iran had taken place, oil traders placed half a billion dollars’ worth of bets on the future price of oil. Trump’s...
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At last, a double blow to the tech Goliaths. Now to fight harder
Good news is so rare these days, you don’t quite know how to take it. You want to celebrate, but a rival instinct tells you it’ll be pulled back somehow, the same feeling you get when your team scores a late winner, but you’re filled with instant dread...
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After years of shunning big ideas, Labour needs a thinker
Nature famously abhors a vacuum. So when Morgan McSweeney departed government, leaving a hole where much of Keir Starmer’s thinking used to be, it was always going to be filled eventually. And increasingly, that filling looks Ed Miliband-shaped. The...
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Even in these dark days, I still have hope for Iran’s future
What is a writer’s responsibility? I feel that it has always been to give voice to those who have been silenced and to keep people alive through recreating them in our imagination, time and time again. This is what I have in mind as the Iranian people...
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We’re gambling everything. Act now, before the food runs out
The fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the trigger...
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It’s one man’s mania. Now all of us are going to pay the price
Nothing has changed. Yet. But we stand on the edge of inevitable economic cataclysm, such as not seen in our lifetimes. It’s an odd, hold-your-breath moment, waiting for what the International Energy Agency (IEA) says is now certain to happen: an...
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This is Trump’s video game war: flattened by AI and memes
The war on Iran, even as it spreads and destabilises the Middle East and the global economy, is not real. This is how it is being portrayed by the Trump administration. The war is a video game, a spectator sport, a social media festival of dunking. The...
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These ‘anti-Israel’ attacks punish ordinary Jews – not Netanyahu
Let us begin with an exchange on GB News, confirmed this week as the TV arm of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Following an attack on a synagogue last week in Michigan in which a gunman drove a car packed with explosives through the entrance to the building...
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He strived to look authentic – then gave it all away on Cameo
Nigel Farage will say pretty much anything for money. Write him a script, stuff a coin in the slot and off he goes: the man who would be prime minister can be your personal mouthpiece for less than £100. Or at least, that’s the obvious explanation for...
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Let’s face facts about Iran, and how greed for oil creates chaos
I realise this is a serious breach of etiquette. But could we perhaps abandon good manners and contextualise Donald Trump’s attack on Iran? The intense western interest in the Middle East and west and central Asia, sustained for more than a century,...
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US power has clear limits. But will Trump ever admit it?
Donald Trump is teaching the world a lesson, but not the one he thinks. The attack on Iran was meant to be a dazzling display of military supremacy. It has instead illuminated chinks in the US’s armour. The US president’s formidable arsenal cannot...
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Young people want to work – now there may be jobs for them
Labour did it before. Can it do it again, with things being so much harder now? New Labour’s new deal for the young unemployed levered large numbers of people into work, but in 1998 the economy was on the upswing. Now, economic stagnation has resulted...
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What links the war in Iran, Gulf crisis and protest here? Palestine
A war spiralling in the Middle East. A death toll now in the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there...
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No motive can possibly justify the hell this war is unleashing
It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it. They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The...
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We must resist the anti-net zero conspiracy of the ultra-rich
These are burning, smoking lies. As oil and gas prices soar, thanks to the attack on Iran by the US and Israel, the opponents of climate policy in the UK become even shriller. Rightwing politicians, Tufton Street junktanks and the billionaire press...
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A school turned into a graveyard. Even in war, we can’t accept this
The killing of a reported 168 people, primarily schoolgirls, in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab in Iran has shaken the conscience of the world to its very core. The attack, carried out nearly two weeks ago when classes were under...
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Trump may be tiring of this war – but the damage is done
Waging war with no fixed purpose means victory can be declared at any point. Donald Trump’s motives for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran were incoherent at the start. They are no clearer now that he has declared it “very complete, pretty...
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After years of despair over social care, I now have hope
No government in my lifetime has been dealt a worse hand than Keir Starmer’s: austerity-broken public services, an empty Treasury, a jittery bond market freaked out by Liz Truss and then stricken by the arrival of Trump 2.0 with his bully-tariffs. Now...
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Look to the Gulf states to see how old certainties are evaporating
There is a tendency to think of the Gulf powers as static and unchanging. They are, after all, fortified by massive wealth and absolute monarchical rule, and secured with deep economic and military relationships with the US. The past week of US and...
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Spare a thought for the hawks who want in on the big bad war
Have you heard enough pant-wetting about Britain’s “reputation” this week? Honestly, I don’t think any of us can bear the social embarrassment of not getting immediately involved in an obviously disastrous war in the Middle East. The awks of it. How...
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Buried beneath the headlines is a life-or-death story for our age
My guess is you keep across the news. You know Andy Mountbatten-Windsor has just had the worst birthday ever; that tall hotels in Dubai don’t make for a great holiday right now; and that Keir Starmer’s engagements diary for 2027 will be remarkably...
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It’s 2026 – time to stop putting new gloss on old bigotries
Our political memory fails us. We treat government policies as if we’re seeing them for the first time. But much of what appears to be novel has deep historical roots. If we fail to understand those roots and the soil in which they grow, we will fail...
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Can Trump’s bombs of peace fix Iran? I won’t hold my breath
Donald Trump says Keir Starmer has damaged the special relationship by not helping him more in the US-Israel war on Iran. But you have to remember that when you do help, Trump pretends you didn’t anyway, and also pisses on your war dead. Still, what...
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With Trump at war, Starmer has no more good options
It is not easy being a friend of Donald Trump, but it is a lot less dangerous than being his enemy. There isn’t a huge range of options in between. War in the Middle East is exposing how limited the choices are for a British prime minister. The US...
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Iran as we know it is over. Is the US prepared for what follows?
The coordinated strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning formally reignited a conflict that had been simmering since last summer’s 12-day war. They targeted key command structures and killed senior...
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Anger fused with hope, that is what fuelled this victory
It wasn’t even close. The scale of victory of the Green party’s Hannah Spencer in Gorton and Denton changes everything. For years, British politics has oscillated between snuffing out hope and stoking fear. The main parties converged around an economic...
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The striking omission in the right’s long list of bogeymen
One of the great strengths of populism, in all its rightwing and leftwing varieties, is its readiness to blame people. When democracies are discontented, as most are now, the old early 21st-century politics of relative consensus and moderation is seen...
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Disabled pupils in mainstream schools is a win for everyone
When I was 11, a woman at the hospital asked me what school I was starting in September. I still remember her surprise when I told her I would be going to the local girls’ grammar, as the hoist pulled my wet limbs out of the physio pool. I was a child...
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Mandelson and Andrew did the perp walk. But in the US? Nada
Well, I can’t believe the cops didn’t max out the theatrics on Monday when taking Peter Mandelson to the police station to help with their inquiries. They didn’t even do that thing where they put their hand on top of the suspect’s head to ease him down...
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A new vision for our schools. But is the Send plan Reform-proof?
Whether the change is down to the shifting of the Overton window or the demise of basic decency, one awful feature of the current national conversation is becoming clearer by the day: the demonisation of disabled and vulnerable children and young...
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A degree? A trade? Every rung for young people is a trap
Some months ago I was at my old university, speaking to prospective sixthform and college students about taking a degree in the arts and what future careers they could expect. It was a cohort of teenagers from underrepresented backgrounds: all of them...
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Ukraine is the biggest of all the American betrayals
Viewed from Europe, the United States’ failure to defend the people of Ukraine against Russian aggression is the greatest and most consequential of a host of recent American betrayals. It’s not just the sickening subservience shown to Vladimir Putin,...
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The law takes its course on a day of royal ignominy
The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is a seismic moment for the royal family as well as for himself. On one hand, it is hard to believe any greater harm can befall the family after weeks of drip-feed from the US Department of Justice’s Epstein...
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One day we will see the student debt scandal for the injustice it is
Never go to war with Martin Lewis. The one iron law of politics is that the financial guru who built moneysavingexpert.com has a quasi-godlike status in Britain, the man millions trust with their cash in a way they would never trust any politician. If...
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Labour’s Send revolution is heading for catastrophe
Where is this government heading, and who is in charge? Keir Starmer looks even weaker than he did a week ago, and only still in his job because the cabinet and parliamentary Labour party stared into a chaotic future and decided not to pounce for now....
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Here are the powerful men making racists feel great again
It lacks the elegance of “greed is good”, but as a distillation of the spirit of the age, it’s right up there. “I feel liberated,” a top banker told the Financial Times shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election. “We can...
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Reform’s threat to Bangor Uni is a grim sign of things to come
It must have seemed the easiest offer in the world to refuse. Would students at Bangor University enjoy a question and answer session with Sarah Pochin – the Reform MP famous for saying it “drives me mad” to see TV ads full of black people – and Jack...
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The venerable Labour party is disappearing before our eyes
When he does go, what will the political death certificate give as the true cause of Keir Starmer’s demise? It won’t be the Peter Mandelson scandal, the policy U-turns or the bleak nights at provincial counting centres. All these are symptoms, not the...
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Horror crossed with hilarity, Starmer’s last stand is TV gold
Keir Starmer is now the only person to have lost more comms chiefs than Meghan and Harry. After yet another day of drama, we kept hearing that the prime minister would be pressing the reset button. Not again! Starmer’s reset button is like the OK...
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Who knew team Starmer would fail – and badly? The left
A chicken that loses its head can still, for a short period, run around and flap its wings: the illusion of life sustained by residual nerve impulses. After the downfall of Morgan McSweeney – our de facto PM – this is the phase Britain’s government has...
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What links UK politics and Epstein? A core of contempt
Contempt everywhere. From Jeffrey Epstein’s email exchanges to the scandal of Peter Mandelson’s appointment, it radiates. Contempt for women and girls, for the law, for the public. A continuum of disdain runs from Epstein on the one end to our...
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Silly me for thinking the story here is mass abuse of women
Bill Gates’s ex-wife was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, and executed a very graceful drive-by. “Whatever questions remain there of what I don’t – can’t – even begin to know all of it … Those questions are for those people, and for even my...
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A decent PM brought down by Mandelson: not if, but when
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent Labour leader down with him. That’s the tragedy. Nothing about Keir...
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People first, leaders second. I think I’ve seen the new politics
‘How many?” On the end of the phone is a nice press officer for the Greens, head full from a long day in Gorton, Manchester, showing off their would-be MP. And now, as Friday’s sky turns indigo, I’m calling about reports from Lewisham, south London,...
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Remember the men who aided Epstein, despite his crimes
Like a lot of women, I do vaguely care about the latest political implosion of Peter Mandelson – but I think we’re all massively more obsessed with the fact that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men trying to help a known...
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How deep did the Epstein rot go? The public needs answers
Peter Mandelson did not want, he wrote disdainfully to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to “live by salary alone”. Not for him the life of the little guy, slave to a mere six-figure salary: he had always aspired to something grander, a...
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Here in Gorton and Denton, Labour’s frailty is plain to see
The route of the No 201 bus begins in the regenerated wonderland of central Manchester, and follows a straight line through the neighbourhoods to its east. The city’s box-fresh skyscrapers and gleaming new hotels quickly recede – and within 10 minutes...
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This may look like Trump in retreat. That’s the trap he’s set
Don’t be fooled. When it comes to Donald Trump, what might look like a full retreat is almost always a mere tactical withdrawal, designed to buy time. He’ll step back when he’s forced to, under pressure, but will then revert. Too often, his opponents,...
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How loose and lively rhetoric is remoulding British politics
Who was the last politician you listened to for any length of time? Perhaps it was Andy Burnham or Zack Polanski. Or maybe it was Wes Streeting, Nigel Farage or Zarah Sultana. Perhaps your dark secret is that it was Donald Trump. One thing these...
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The Minnesota revolt tells us this: the people have power too
For most politicians and journalists, the answer to nearly every question is to look up. Not at the moon, the stars or even the chimney tops, but at their leaders: the people who sit atop institutions, wield power and set the line that others follow....
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Starmer must learn: avoiding hard choices hasn’t worked
There comes a point in a prime minister’s career when foreign travel offers some respite from domestic trouble. Even when relations with the host country are tricky, as Britain’s are with China, the dignifying protocols of statecraft make a beleaguered...
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It’s now clear: Labour needs a new leader – and quickly
Labour’s impulse for political self-harm defies belief. It is as if some enemy within guides it unerringly along the wrong strategic path. Declaring war on Andy Burnham anoints him as a northern martyr and hero, and casts Keir Starmer as a coward. Many...
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We can build great council housing still. So why don’t we?
I met Carole Guscott, a retired carer, on a clear winter’s morning in the Somerset town of Minehead. She was walking her whippet, Gracie, on the way back to her new flat, past the local Premier Inn and on to a cul de sac called Rainbow Way. “I knew as...
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What happens when the taps run dry? Soon we will find out
You get up and go to the loo, only to find the flush doesn’t work. You try the shower, except nothing comes out. You want a glass of water, but on turning the tap there is not a drop. Your day stumbles on, stripped of its essentials: no washing hands,...
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It’s Brooklyn v Beckham Inc: a family feud for our online age
The way 2026 has started, none of us wants to see the word “nuclear” in a headline, so on some level you have to feel glad that Monday night’s news alerts announcing in real time that someone “goes nuclear” and “launches nuclear attack” related to...
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The free world now needs a new plan – and new leadership
A European-wide chorus of resistance, led on Monday morning by Keir Starmer, has greeted Donald Trump’s plan to take over Greenland, by force if necessary, and to start a tariff war if any country stands in his way. Have no doubt, this is a moment: if...
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Don’t just look away as the people of Iran cry out for help
Did you notice history being made this week? I am not referring to what may have been the most pathetic moment in recorded time – Donald Trump gratefully taking the Nobel peace prize medal from the woman who actually won it – nor the defection of a...
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While the right wields its might, Keir Starmer fixes potholes
Last weekend, as the world wondered whether Donald Trump would swipe Greenland, Keir Starmer made his own big geographic intervention: he published a map of which councils were fixing potholes. Yes, potholes. Yes, a map. Barely 18 months into office,...
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Take a lesson from the past, and light the way forward
From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand, as the old hymn has it, we seem to inhabit a world that is more seriously troubled in more places than many can ever remember. In the UK, national morale feels all but shot. Politics commands...
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Who’s to blame for the crude Starmer songs? I’m afraid he is
It’s the world darts championships on the first day of the year, and a well-lubricated early afternoon audience at London’s Alexandra Palace is belting out one of the more recent additions to its songbook. Up on the stage, the then world No 20, Ryan...
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Two horrifying truths have come from a lying president
For a serial liar, Donald Trump can be bracingly honest. We’ve known about the mendacity for years – consider the 30,573 documented falsehoods from his first term, culminating in the big lie, his claim to have won the 2020 election – but the examples...
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Trump’s pitch for Greenland is a climate crisis land grab
Another week, another freak weather phenomenon you’ve probably never heard of. If it’s not the “weather bomb” of extreme wind and snow that Britain is hunkering down for as I write, it’s reports in the Guardian of reindeer in the Arctic struggling with...
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