17 h. ago The Guardian view on fiscal rules and financial myths: Britain must stop fearing imaginary bond vigilantes | Editorial

Liz Truss fell not for borrowing, but for incompetence. Rachel Reeves mustn’t repeat the mistake with rules markets don’t demandIn 1995, Nick Leeson, a 28-year-old trader for Barings Bank, brought down the City’s oldest finance house by, among other things, betting that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) couldn’t keep rates low forever after its financial crash led to a borrowing spree. The devastating Kobe earthquake was the final blow. The BoJ cut rates, bond prices rose and his losses spiralled to $1.4bn. His bet that markets would beat Japan brought down the bank.Barings’ collapse is perhaps a spectacular example of the “widowmaker” trade, where speculators think they can outsmart Japanese authorities. They’ve ended up with egg on their face as their gamble on Japan losing fiscal control proved misguided. Japan, with its own currency and a central bank working with the government, shows how the state shapes markets, not the other way round.Do you have an opinion on the issue...

Politics

41 h. ago The Guardian view on Zack Polanski’s rise: he wants to replace Labour, not work with it | Editorial

A mass politics of anti-austerity, identity and climate is emerging from the left’s margins. Keir Starmer cannot afford to ignore itZack Polanski’s landslide election as leader of the Green party marks a turning point for Britain’s fractured left. Young, rhetorically fluent and unafraid to cloak climate arguments in those about class, Mr Polanski is nothing if not ambitious. He sees his party not as a parliamentary pressure group but as a replacement for Labour itself.His ascent might have seemed fanciful last July when Labour had just won a thumping majority. Yet Labour languishes in the polls. Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings have collapsed. On the extreme right Reform UK now boasts 237,000 members, 870 councillors, and 10 councils under its control. The Greens have more MPs than ever before. And the uneasy leadership team of Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana is preparing to launch a new party to Labour’s left. This is no longer political noise at the margins. This is about t...

Politics

41 h. ago The Guardian view on the dental divide: ministers must brush up their policy as well as children’s teeth | Editorial

Gaps in access to dentists mirror other health inequalities. And ‘golden hellos’ won’t solve the problem on their ownDisadvantaged primary school pupils at the government’s first wave of new breakfast clubs can expect to be trained in toothbrushing, as well as fed. Data showing that a fifth of all five-year-olds in England have experienced tooth decay persuaded ministers to make improved oral health part of the early years and reception class curriculum. But the prevalence of decay is not evenly spread across the country. And research showing how much worse the situation is for children in deprived areas is in line with other findings about widening health inequalities.New analysis from the Local Government Association highlights the differing availability of dental care across council areas – a situation sometimes described as a dental divide. It found no specific correlation between the numbers of NHS dentists and young children with tooth decay. But it adds to a body of...

Politics

65 h. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump and India: the tariff war that boosted China | Editorial

The White House wanted India to bow. Instead, Narendra Modi flew to China, shook Xi Jinping’s hand and left Washington sidelined Donald Trump’s imperial tendencies see the US president wield tariffs and sanctions in the expectation that America will receive tributes. Yet his latest move – punishing India with 50% tariffs for Russian oil purchases once encouraged by the US – has produced not submission but spectacle. It has sent India’s Narendra Modi to China for the first time in seven years as Xi Jinping hosted more than 20 leaders for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin. And it is in Tianjin, not Washington, where it looks as if the hinge of history is moving.The SCO is easy to dismiss: the bloc is a bundle of contradictions. India and Pakistan remain adversaries. China and India still stare across a garrisoned Himalayan frontier, though relations have thawed since last October’s border breakthrough. Russia and China vie for influence in Central Asia. Unl...

Politics

3 d. ago The Guardian view on the killing of Gaza’s journalists: Israel wants to stop the world from seeing what it’s doing | Editorial

This is the most lethal war for the media in recent times. A generation of journalists is being wiped outDay by day, the death toll rises, the war crimes mount, and the outrage grows. Last Wednesday, the pope demanded that Israel stop its “collective punishment” of Gaza’s population. A day later, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, warned that “the levels of death and destruction are without parallel in recent times”. More than 500 UN staff have pressed the human rights chief, Volker Türk, to call it genocide. Half of registered voters in the US have already concluded that that is what Israel is doing in Gaza.The agony is deepening. On Friday, the Israeli military declared famine-hit Gaza City to be a combat zone, intensifying its assault and ending “tactical pauses” that allowed limited – if utterly inadequate – food delivery. Many inhabitants are physically incapable of fleeing again, and fear that they would be no s...

Events

3 d. ago The Guardian view on GCSE resits: admitting the problem is just the first step | Editorial

The low pass rate in compulsory retakes is one of many challenges in 16-19 educationFor years, rigid rules and a shocking failure rate in compulsory GCSE retakes have been one of the exam system’s dirty secrets. At last this dire situation is getting some of the attention it deserves. This year, nearly a quarter of all maths and English language entries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were for students aged 17 or older on a repeat attempt – with just one in six of those retaking maths managing to pass.By calling this a crisis, Jill Duffy, who heads the OCR exam board, has thrown a spotlight on the problem. But admitting that there is an issue with resits, as officials are now doing, is only the first step. There are differing views about what ought to happen next. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Is it OK to be happy when the world is falling apart? | Avram Alpert

It is reasonable and moral to think that when others are harmed, you should feel the injury, but our sympathy should not be limited to painA friend of mine called the other day with news of two major life achievements: his first book had been published, and his university had granted him tenure. And yet, he said, he was miserable. How could he be happy about his success when so many terrible things were happening in the world?It’s a good question, and one that I hear from a lot of people these days. As I write these words, humanitarian disasters are unfolding in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Global climate action has not moved fast enough, and we are perilously close to creating an uninhabitable planet. Meanwhile here in the United States, immigrants have been rounded up and shipped to foreign countries without legal protection. Trans people have been demonized. Meaningful government agencies have been cut. Research destroyed. Universities attack...

Politics

5 d. ago The Guardian view on Trump and the Fed: independence is no substitute for accountability | Editorial

The US president’s move against Lisa Cook shows his despotic bent, but the Fed was never democracy’s guardian. It’s time to rethink who really controls moneyDonald Trump’s attempt to sack the Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, is the familiar authoritarian trick of bending institutions to serve the leader’s immediate ends. The widespread condemnation is deserved. This is not some daring experiment in popular control of monetary policy. Yet what should follow censure is reflection. For the furore over Ms Cook has revealed a peculiar reflex: to defend the Fed’s independence as though it were synonymous with democracy itself.But is independence of the Fed, or central banks generally, really that? Eric Levitz at Vox thinks so, or at least that it is close enough. He argues that Congress sets the Fed’s objectives; independence applies only to the means. Without independence, politicians would be free to game rates for votes – as Richard Nixon did in 1972, leaning on the ...

Politics

5 d. ago The Guardian view on Christopher Marlowe: it’s time to read him and honour him | Editorial

England’s second most famous playwright is the star of a new play. But his own works should be staged more, and he should be commemorated betterFor a limited season this autumn, Christopher Marlowe will become a star of the London stage again. Enjoy it while you can, for Marlowe has become an ephemeral figure in Britain’s national culture. His plays, once staples, are now produced only intermittently, if at all. Today, Marlowe is probably better known for his dramatic death, stabbed in a London riverside tavern, than for anything he wrote or for being the literary pioneer that he was.From next week, however, the sexy and brilliant figure of Kit Marlowe will be the centrepiece character, played by Ncuti Gatwa, in Liz Duffy Adams’s two-hander, Born With Teeth, which is currently in previews in the West End, with its offical opening next week. The play teases with the possibility, first reported in this newspaper in 2016, that Marlowe and William Shakespeare, played by Edward...

Politics

6 d. ago The Guardian view on Russia’s strike on Kyiv: Putin is testing Trump’s will and Europe’s resolve | Editorial

The Kremlin sent a clear message with its lethal overnight raid on the Ukrainian capital. Will the US heed it?Wednesday night brought a grim return to Russia’s form: one of the heaviest air raids on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion began. Moscow eased off its strikes on major cities in the run-up to the Alaska summit, and it held off its attack on the Ukrainian capital until Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy, had finished his visit there. But within hours of his departure, at least 18 people, including several children, were dead in an attack on a residential block, and the European Union mission had been severely damaged.Donald Trump periodically suggests that he is drawing a line for Vladimir Putin. Yet each time he appears to set a limit, the Russian president breezes through it. The Kyiv attack shows that it is Mr Putin who is testing the US president. Mr Trump threatened “severe consequences” if Moscow did not immediately agree to a ceasefire – but in Anchora...

Politics

7 d. ago The Guardian view on UK attitudes to Europe: Labour is following where it could be leading | Editorial

There are signs of ministerial courage in making the case for closer ties to our neighbours, but the government could go further and fasterBritain’s relationship with the European Union was not a prominent issue in national debate when Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister, and Downing Street has striven to keep it that way. Labour strategists have seen Europe as a fissile topic, and Sir Keir’s opposition to Brexit in the 2016 referendum as a liability with swing voters. The prime minister has moved Britain closer to Europe, but in timid increments. The summit that formally “reset” relations early this year was long on statements of ambition, but short on substance. The government’s private recognition that economic logics impel Britain back into a European orbit has been in constant tension with fear of making that case in public.The balance now appears to be shifting. In a speech on Wednesday, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for EU relations, made the...

Politics

7 d. ago The Guardian view on France’s latest political crisis: François Bayrou’s gamble on austerity does not deserve to pay off | Editorial

The likely fall of another prime minister is a further blow to Emmanuel Macron’s becalmed presidency. A change in priorities is neededFollowing a startling victory for Marine Le Pen in European elections last June, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, foolishly called a snap legislative poll. The idea was to give voters a salutary wake-up call, daring them to repeat their embrace of Ms Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in a domestic election. The unanticipated result was a suddenly deadlocked parliament, in which the influence of the National Rally and the left significantly increased, and a lame-duck status for Mr Macron’s second term.That failed gamble has now led to another, which appears equally doomed. This week, Mr Macron’s fourth prime minister in two years put the future of his minority government on the line, in an attempt to pass a deeply unpopular budget this autumn. François Bayrou, intending to deliver his own wake-up call to MPs, has unexpectedly called a confi...

Politics

8 d. ago The Guardian view on Nigel Farage’s mass deportation plan: Trumpism in a union jack | Editorial

Reform UK’s leader isn’t offering border control. He’s dismantling democratic constraints and replacing them with fear and authoritarian fictionNigel Farage wants you to believe Britain could deport 288,000 people annually. That’s nearly 800 a day – 30 times the current rate of asylum-related returns. This is a fantasy concealing his real aim: to destroy public trust in democratic institutions, crush legal constraints and turn fear into power. Mr Farage isn’t trying to fix the asylum system. In fact, he wants to dismantle the political framework necessary to achieve that goal: the treaties, parliamentary conventions and centuries of legal protections. In their place, a Reform government would operate by executive fiat cloaked in nationalist rhetoric.“Operation Restoring Justice” is a louder, more extreme version of Rishi Sunak’s failed 2023 strategy to detain everyone, deport everyone and process no one. This led to a backlog of unheard asylum claims, spiralling hotel costs and publ...

Politics

9 d. ago The Guardian view on protests in Serbia: a battle for democracy that the EU must not ignore | Editorial

An authoritarian crackdown on mass demonstrations in an EU candidate country requires a stronger response from BrusselsDuring a summer in which European leaders have focused on shuttle diplomacy with Donald Trump over trade and Ukraine, they have maintained a discreet silence regarding another crisis in Europe’s east. For more than nine months, mass student-led protests in Serbia have been challenging the authoritarian rule of Aleksandar Vučić, who has been in office as prime minister and president for 11 years. Up to now, Brussels has largely opted to look away.The catalyst for some of the largest demonstrations in Serbia’s history was the collapse of a newly renovated railway station roof in the country’s second city, Novi Sad, leading to the deaths of 16 people. The disaster was widely attributed to entrenched fraud and corruption presided over by Mr Vučić’s ruling Serbian Progressive party, and swiftly became the spark for a movement for democratic reform. The students are deman...

Events

9 d. ago The Guardian view on the carnivore diet: red meat for influencers, but bad news for health | Editorial

A fad for consuming high-protein, high-fat food, while avoiding vegetables, has taken off online. Followers are doing themselves no favoursOnce, it seemed that much of the world was intent on drastically cutting back on meat for health and environmental reasons. Vegetarian and vegan options appeared on restaurant menus and the very idea of a bloody red steak became almost unthinkable in liberal circles. And yet the carnivore diet is now all over Instagram and TikTok, prompting health bodies to start issuing warnings.Followers of this diet eat meat, fat, seafood, eggs and butter, avoiding all vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes as if plants were, as Paul Saladino, an advocate of this diet alleged, “poison”. Dr Saladino is a US psychiatrist and health influencer with a range of supplements called Heart and Soil that contain dried animal organ meat. He appears shirtless on social media, denouncing vegetables, which he says will harm us. Other Instagrammers tuck into plates of huge s...

Events

1 week ago The Guardian view on Noel Clarke: accountability came from journalism, not a complicit industry | Editorial

This newspaper’s victory in court underlines the courage of the women who spoke up and how in TV power shielded abuseThe high court’s dismissal of the actor Noel Clarke’s case against the Guardian is about more than one actor’s failed libel claim. Mrs Justice Steyn’s judgment is about power and complicity as well as the failure to protect vulnerable people. In her verdict, she agreed with the Guardian that there were “strong grounds to believe that [Clarke] is a serial abuser of women”.The court heard testimony from 26 witnesses before concluding that Clarke had engaged in harassment, bullying and abuse of power over many years. The judge accepted some of his evidence, but found him to be neither credible or reliable. The Guardian’s journalists, by contrast, were meticulous and gave Clarke reasonable opportunity to respond as well as fairly presenting his denials. Without women speaking up, Clarke would never have been exposed. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The Guardian view on Africa and maps: drawn true, its scale and promise can’t be ignored | Editorial

The push for fairer cartography rejects colonial shrinkage of a huge continent by the Mercator projection. This is not pedantry. It’s politicsThe African Union wants to replace the world’s most popular map with one that more accurately represents the continent’s size. This demand may seem better suited to geography departments than heads of government. Yet in politics, symbols matter. And the Mercator projection, devised in the 16th century to help European sailors navigate their way to conquest and commerce, has quietly shaped how we see the world for centuries.By stretching the higher latitudes and squeezing the equatorial belt, the Mercator projection distorts the relative size of continents. Europe and North America loom vast, while Africa and South America shrink. Greenland often appears roughly the same size as Africa, when in reality the continent is 14 times larger. The impression is that the north is large and central, the south peripheral and marginal. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Gaza’s future: Israel should end the killing. Its allies must not remain complicit | Editorial

The suffering and death of Palestinians is multiplying. Seizing and occupying Gaza City would only deepen the horrorIsrael faces a stark choice. So do its allies. International condemnation pushed Israel into allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza. But it remains utterly insufficient, and Palestinians are still starving to death. Israel has killed more than 62,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.Israel’s former intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, in charge when the Hamas atrocities of 2023 took place, was recently recorded saying that “For every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die. It doesn’t matter now if they are children.” That isn’t merely vengeful and obscene, it explicitly describes a war crime. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Trump and Zelenskyy: Ukraine deserves better than 'better than we feared' | Editorial

In Washington, European leaders helped steer the US president away from his embrace of Vladimir Putin’s talking points. But for how long?The verdict on Donald Trump’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders on Monday depends entirely upon the metric used. The great fear was that this might prove a disaster along the lines of the US president’s dressing down of the Ukrainian leader in February – a scenario so plausible that Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and other key European leaders dropped everything to dash to the White House themselves in support.Following his red carpet welcome for Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Mr Trump reportedly backed the idea that Ukraine should hand over the Donbas to achieve a peace deal. Even if one were naive enough to think that the Kremlin would see that as an end to conflict, rather than a staging post for a later offensive, it would not be a “land swap” but a land grab that Ukraine – for go...

Politics

2 w. ago 30 years on: how Tyson’s comeback fight after prison set the tone for pay

One of the great mismatches ended in controversy after just 89 seconds but did show what people will pay to seeIn Las Vegas, 30 years ago, prisoner 922335, not long released from the Indiana Youth Center, boxed an unknown club fighter in a bout that shattered pay-per-view records. Mike Tyson v Peter McNeeley may be, in a competitive field, the most audaciously staged mismatch in boxing history. Its global success, despite only 89 seconds of action and a farcical ending, set the tone for the sport’s development in the modern era.Promoted simply as “He’s Back”, the contest was Tyson’s return after a three-year imprisonment for rape, but the former undisputed heavyweight champion’s popularity seemed to have increased. Among those ringside at a sold-out MGM Grand sat Madonna, Nicolas Cage, Jerry Seinfeld, Denzel Washington, Jim Carrey, Pamela Anderson, Eddie Murphy and an alarmingly human-coloured Donald Trump. All in attendance to see something akin to a ritual sacrifice. Continue read...

Events