The Guardian e-paper Journal
Polanski could have shown real leadership – but he blew it
When Donald Trump calls someone a socialist he is not using the word in the same way that, say, Zohran Mamdani does. The mayor of New York espouses democratic socialism as a mission of equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity. Trump says...
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Badenoch has the Tories in a dance of death with Farage
You can walk all the way from Somerset to Sussex without crossing a Tory constituency, if you wish. You could also travel through each of the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset and Surrey without setting foot in Tory lands. They are now mainly...
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Disabled adults such as my son need a working care service too
Seemingly brilliant conference speeches are often followed by a hangover, and so it has arguably proved with Andy Burnham’s. It was, it has to be said, something of a triumph, but there is now a sense of angst over how a national care service would...
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It’s my last column: you have 24 hours to gripe before my inbox self-destructs
Journalism 101 – a course I have yet to complete – dictates that if you have something salient to say you should get there fast. So right now, I should mention that this is my last ever column for the Guardian. I’ll level with you: I spent a long time...
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It shouldn’t just be mothers talking to their sons about rape
There were seven men in all, and it lasted almost seven hours. What followed, according to the woman at the heart of the Cornell University case that has gripped student campuses around the world, was less a sexual encounter than a grim pack-bonding...
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Our economic agenda must be wrested back from the right
Andy Burnham does a nice line in nostalgia. His first party conference speech as prime minister was full of fond memories for the Britain of the 1950s and 1960s, when working-class families could sense their lives steadily getting better. The...
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Burnham has a plan for Britain. Can it work in a troubled world?
Andy Burnham is at home at Labour conference, and not only because it is in Liverpool and he has Merseyside roots. The prime minister is native to his political tribe wherever it gathers. He is fluent in its sentimental vocabulary and indigenous to its...
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Risks lie ahead, but at last this is a party that travels in hope
His ambition is big enough to see from space as he promises the “biggest change to Britain in 40 years”. Andy Burnham pledges what no prime minister until now has dared to, breaking the long spell of Thatcherism. Her monopoly markets in public services...
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Pining for an era of two-party politics won’t help Labour win
As I wrote last week, whatever its current troubles, Reform UK has hardly disappeared. Meanwhile, those black-clad quasi-paramilitaries may well be another augury of a frightening immediate future. One more English settlement – the town of Barnham, in...
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7 Up set out to examine class. What it did was more profound
For an hour or two this week, I’ve been in the company of people whose lives I’ve seen unfold, almost from the beginning, almost to the end. They are people whom, with one exception, I’ve never met. And yet I’ve shared in their triumphs and...
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Here’s a realistic plan to deliver public control of our utilities
Andy Burnham came to power promising greater “public control” over the UK’s utilities, such as water and energy. His reasons for doing so were to cut what is described as the “privatisation premium” paid for public services by consumers, and to improve...
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ME sufferers needed help. Instead they were betrayed
I’ve spent my working life covering neglected issues. But few are neglected like the devastating chronic condition ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome). In severe cases, the illness shuts down people’s lives almost entirely,...
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Many doubt the Davey method now, but the plan may work
No politician craves obscurity, but it is better to be unknown than despised. That is consolation for Liberal Democrats, gathered in Brighton for their annual conference, fretting about Ed Davey’s low profile and wondering whether a more prominent...
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Face this fact: the UK can’t stay shackled by the triple lock
There is always something oddly unreal about party conference season. In theory, everyone is getting away from Westminster to better reflect on the state of the nation. In practice, the whole circus just briefly relocates to the coast to live off warm...
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Democracy can be rescued, but hurry: Reform is down not out
Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar...
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Slowly, then all at once: it’s the great British isles unravelling
Monday must have been a historical first. Never before have three of the four “nations” of the UK jointly demanded freedom to vote for its dissolution. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have lost confidence in England. They declared in Cardiff that...
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It’s the Miliband doctrine – and it’s right for the age of Trump
Almost 30 years ago, Robin Cook announced his arrival at the Foreign Office with what would be described as an “ethical foreign policy”. The UK, he said, “must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for...
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25 years on from 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s grand plan has failed
On 11 September, 25 years ago, Osama bin Laden drove with a small number of al-Qaida aides to a remote location in eastern Afghanistan. His convoy of SUVs was accompanied by a minivan that had been converted into a makeshift communications centre. The...
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Why is Labour taking such a huge risk with fossil fuels?
Pinch yourself, it’s happening again. Here is a Labour government spending a vast amount of political capital to earn tiny material gains while risking huge political losses. It occurred repeatedly under Keir Starmer, and now – with the impending...
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Europe can see the far-right abyss. But will it turn away?
Not all that long ago, Europe was a beacon of liberal idealism. One memoir recalls it as an era “comfortably saturated with confidence in the unfailing and binding power of tolerance and conciliation”. The economic system seemed obviously preferable to...
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Israel’s policies are being set by extremists – so why the silence?
The gap between what is being inflicted on Palestinians and the appropriate reaction on the part of the international community has always been vast. But now it yawns so wide that it swallows reality itself. As arms export licences for Israel from...
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Trump can’t be trying to lose the midterms. Or can he?
What is Donald Trump playing at? If it’s true that the best way of understanding the behaviour of an organisation is to assume it’s controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies, perhaps that same logic extends to the current conduct of the president of...
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‘Capitalism has not worked.’ In Luton, a moral tale of our times
After everything, why would anyone still back Nigel Farage? In some of the comments below my piece last week about Reform UK, I spot the usual answers: Farage’s supporters are dim, racist, deplorable. Yet away from Westminster, Reform voters are being...
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The US thought the AI race was won. China has proved it wrong
Almost from the moment it began, the end of the Chinese economic miracle has been much anticipated. Thick and fast, the books have come explaining how it will end badly. Overinvestment. A country wallowing in debt. The collapse of the property market....
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Big ambitions need space. That’s scarce in Westminster
Nothing stays fresh for long in parliament and no one sounds normal. The air, thick with convention, suffocates originality, tuning every voice to the same Westminster pitch. The need to escape that climate is one reason why Andy Burnham quit his...
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Global heating is melting the Earth’s ice – and this is the result
You may not have felt it, but the earth beneath our feet is getting twitchier, and global heating is to blame. As temperatures surge and climate breakdown accelerates, interactions between the climate and geology are becoming ever more apparent – as...
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Devolution is great for cities. What about the rest of England?
Andy Burnham seems to be a prime minister in a hurry – and for good reason. If he decides that his first term is going to run to its maximum length, he has three years, which is a maddening time-frame: too long for him to just tinker here and there,...
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$18bn payouts don’t hurt him. Maybe breaking up Meta will
Follow the money. If you want to know how the tech giant Meta really feels about the $18bn it agreed to fork out to end a landmark lawsuit against it – an outcome widely hailed as a victory for campaigners – just look at its share price. It didn’t go...
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It’s not just Farage: MPs must end their freebies-for-all
How has your summer been? Done anything nice? As MPs prepare to head back to parliament next week, you’ll be relieved to hear that some of the most prominent figures in British politics have been enjoying the season’s cultural highlights – and without...
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An anti-Farage army exists. The question is how to deploy it
Who can stop Nigel Farage? Which voters would actually dig out their ID and schlep down to the polling booth to fight him? Over the past year, these two questions have come to shape British politics. From Runcorn and Helsby to Caerphilly and Aberdeen...
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Peace, rights, solidarity: that’s what the world’s citizens want
Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is already having to make one of his gravest decisions. He has to issue the instructions that he alone gives to the military, setting out the UK response in a doomsday scenario of a nuclear weapons attack on...
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Canadians do not seek a trade war – but we won’t be bullied
The Canadians are exceedingly angry. I realise this can sometimes be difficult for foreigners to deduce, given our struggle to express the full range of human emotion outside ice hockey riots. However, let me assure you that the prime minister...
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The fight for an inclusive Britain is taking place in the countryside
A fortnight or so ago, my two teenage children and I set out on a threenight visit to the Peak District. We stayed at a youth hostel – more of which in a moment – and began the trip with the 20-minute ascent of Mam Tor, a modest peak yet one with a...
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Back in Blighty: the Sussexes in the travel show no one wanted
Wednesday night brought an absolute cloudburst of psychic rain for our parched land as it emerged that Prince Harry and Meghan were reversing their self-styled “freedom flight” to California and returning to live in the UK. Nature is healing! Is that …...
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Make money, make lots of it – that’s the art of this presidency
Many years ago, in the crowded corridor of a Manhattan hotel, I was surprised to find myself standing face-to-face with Imelda Marcos – who was then first lady of the Philippines. At that time, she was said to possess 3,000 pairs of shoes. I really...
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Welcome to the age of climate whiplash: bone-dry and soaked
This summer could be the hottest, driest and deadliest in the history of England. Successive heatwaves have so far claimed almost 3,000 lives. Nearly three-quarters of England and the whole of Wales is in drought, while key reservoirs are parched....
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The far right is tightening its grip on the EU from the inside
The EU exists because its nations swore never to repeat the past. European integration is the insurance policy against the oldest temptation of power: that a majority decides who does not belong. So countries across the continent agreed to share power...
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If ‘Woke 1.0 is over’ in the US, did progressives get it all wrong?
Every once in a while, the discourse gods send a tablet down to the people, announcing that a previous era is dead and a new age is upon us. Recently, it was the “vibe shift”, a post-pandemic change in culture that encompassed everything from fashion...
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Unlike the PM, British workers can’t ignore the climate crisis
I don’t think I have ever written before about a British strike directly related to the climate emergency. But that’s exactly what began late last week in north London, with picket lines outside bus depots and massed walkouts, while the temperatures in...
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The masters of failure: they are good for stunts, and little else
It’s a shame Nigel Farage ducked the announcement of his victory in the Clacton byelection, which confirmed his return as MP for the seat he had needlessly resigned from just a few weeks earlier. You’d have thought he would have loved it. It was the...
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Has drought-hit Britain planned for a food crisis? Not on your life
When a business makes long-term plans, they call it prudence. When a government makes longterm plans, they call it communism. Any sustained state intervention attracts the prefix “Soviet-style”, and triggers vicious attacks across the billionaire...
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The right will use the Jason Arday scandal to halt society’s progress. Don’t let them do it
In 1987, a college at the University of Cambridge considered offering a prestigious position to a black man in what would be the first appointment of its kind. Not only did the man not have a degree, but he had left school at the age of 13, struggling...
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Nigel Farage is looking trapped – now the tide can be turned
Nigel Farage can be confident of victory against a man posing as an ennobled space traveller with a dustbin on his head. At least, in Clacton he can. The refusal of major parties to contest this week’s byelection sets the bar low. But even if the...
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As the PM sets off around the country, will the cash follow?
Andy Burnham begins his travels this week, aiming to reconnect No 10 and the government with voters across the UK. But just weeks before he set out his stall as prime minister, promising to rebalance the economy with growth in every postcode, a...
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Britain’s AI boom is already threatening the places we love
Amid headlines about drought, wildfires and global temperatures, it was 28C when I arrived in Slough last Monday. I was there to look around Slough Trading Estate, a place that might once have conjured up images of the TV comedy The Office, many of the...
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One summer doesn’t make a Keminaissance. Not even close
The Keminaissance will be delayed. For nearly a year, Conservative optimists and a clutch of supportive pundits have been forecasting an upturn in the fortunes of Kemi Badenoch, confident that her party will emerge from the crater it fell into in 2024,...
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Big food firms are panicking. Their time may be running out
It is rare for people to drop dead holding the incriminating packaging, but there is no longer any serious doubt that consuming a diet of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) risks life-shortening illnesses from heart disease and stroke to diabetes and cancer....
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The right made DEI a weapon, and the left just let it happen
‘To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.” That was the breathtaking response of Prof Jason Arday when the Guardian interrogated the details he provided of an alleged racist campaign of intimidation against him, which involved a severed...
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When artificial intelligence meets human foolishness
When I am woken by the sound of my dog whining, I understand that she wants me to get up. When my alarm clock goes off, I don’t consider its needs. It is following an instruction to rouse me but it doesn’t care if I stay in bed. It doesn’t try to get...
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Amid the rage and misery, the right has hit the jackpot in Ceuta
The live streams are still running, training their cameras on the beach at Ceuta, where nothing is happening. The self-styled citizen journalists are still pounding the streets, capturing their shaky smartphone footage. Zia Yusuf of Reform UK was out...
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He’s a PM for the age. But being camera-ready isn’t enough
Andy Burnham is having a good time. I can’t remember the last time a PM (or indeed any high-profile British politician) actually looked as though they were enjoying what they were doing. I saw a clip the other day in which Burnham remembered arguing...
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Will Trump be Burnham’s undoing, or the making of him?
There is an orange cloud in the sky. I’m not referring to the wildfires ravaging parts of Europe and East Anglia, though they are connected. I mean the looming pall from across the Atlantic that threatens to spoil the sunny start to the premiership of...
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Nothing is safe from this global assault on our human rights
No more resistance in the US. The era of human rights is over, and dissent is once more forbidden. This is what certain billionaires and their concierges want, and this is the model they’re also seeking to project across the world. If we fail to...
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This battle for social care will define us. And it must be won
‘People pleaser!” That’s the insult Andy Burnham’s enemies sneer at him. And yes, he will need all his mightiest people-pleasing talents to win over voters to contribute to a new national care service. Choosing this forever failed policy (22 major...
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A political chill has gripped the right. It’s cold in the PM’s shadow
Andy Burnham’s recollections of Britain in the 1970s must be pretty hazy. He was nine when the decade ended. Kemi Badenoch, born in 1980, can remember nothing. Lacking first-hand experience, the Conservative leader evokes the turmoil of a bygone era...
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He controls his message now – but that battle will get harder
After a week in No 10, when Labour’s previously flatlining position in the polls has at least shown signs of having a pulse, Andy Burnham is still just about enjoying a prime ministerial honeymoon. But he has been in politics long enough to know that...
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More conflict, more tariffs – Trump’s wars victimise us all
You would be forgiven, as the US and Iran traded strikes over the past few days, for thinking that it was only last month that the two signed the Islamabad Memorandum, which formalised the process of ending the war and established a 60-day period to...
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Scoff at his bus fares if you like – the PM knows what he’s doing
One of Andy Burnham’s first policy moves brought back a sharp memory. On Wednesday, he announced that single bus fares across England would be capped at £2, starting from January. It was part of a series of small, practical measures designed, said the...
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After Trump, we’ll need the ICC. Don’t let him destroy it
Barely a month appears to go by without Donald Trump making a fresh attempt to destroy the international rules-based order. The US has pulled funding from dozens of international institutions, shut down USAID and withdrawn from the Paris climate...
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Why do our environment ministers keep chickening out?
There’s a slightly mean question I often ask British people with an interest in the living world: can you name the environment secretary? I don’t intend to show them up: it’s not them I’m testing. I watch the brows knit, a finger go up, the mouth open...
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Burnham plays a long game in an age of short attention spans
It all sounded feasible but improbable. A few days after Labour’s disastrous performance in local and devolved elections in May, one of Andy Burnham’s allies confidently forecast for me the sequence of events that would convey the then mayor of Greater...
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So far, so good, but how good? The challenges to come will tell
Only vaulting ambition takes anyone to No 10, but Andy Burnham’s ambition reaches phenomenal heights. Can he really make the biggest changes in 40 years? Can he build a new economy? The new prime minister lashes himself to the mast of those mighty...
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How our oldest political title turned radical Islamophobe
I start this column already resigned to the tune out, the glaze over, the click away. This is not to say that I do not have faith in you, dear reader, to keep reading and caring. But I am aware that it is now normal, when it comes to a certain minority...
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Andy: ignore all the unwanted advice (apart from this piece)
The first piece of unsolicited advice I would offer to Britain’s incoming prime minister is: don’t take unsolicited advice. Don’t be one of those leaders who’s swayed by the last person in their ear. That’s what they used to say about Boris Johnson,...
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Britain must be honest about the sort of politics it wants
Ann Widdecombe was never one to hide from an argument. And she wasn’t afraid for her safety either. She scoffed at friends’ suggestions that she should get electric gates, as an elderly woman with a public profile living alone on Dartmoor, just as she...
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Let Wales be a cautionary tale for how not to do devolution
As a journalist, I have specialised in Wales, Welsh politics and devolution for the past 10 years. Devolution in particular could be considered a bit niche as subjects go. But suddenly everyone wants to talk about it because Andy Burnham is making it...
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Palantir has a foothold in our state. But is it working for us?
Andy Burnham faces a lot of big decisions. But one of the incoming prime minister’s biggest early tests is what he does about the world’s “scariest company” – Palantir. The US defence and surveillance tech behemoth has a swathe of British public...
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Pip needs an overhaul – and at last, that can be progressive
‘Broken Britain” has become the favourite narrative of the right in recent months. The playbook goes like this: politicians and pundits exploit genuine concerns about squeezed services and living standards to propagate a sense of division and despair....
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The tangle of crypto and our politics goes beyond Farage
Tomorrow, the representation of the people bill comes back to the House of Commons for its third reading. It bundles up various measures, including an extension of the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds and changes to voter registration. But thanks to...
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Burnham now has to master the art of dealing with Trump
It’s all starting to feel very real. Or so Andy Burnham said, on the day that he in effect became Britain’s official prime minister in waiting: a moment both heady and sobering. The papers are signed, the die cast. Keir Starmer has yet to leave the...
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