Let citizens’ assemblies break the political deadlock on issues like assisted dying | Letters
Readers respond to John Harris’s call to allow the people of the country to take part when difficult choices need to be made
As chief executive of Involve , I welcome John Harris’s call for a citizens’ assembly on assisted dying to inform Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill on the topic (How can Britain plot its future when it is so deeply stuck in the mud? Empower the citizens, 20 October ). There is a valuable precedent in Jersey that the new government could learn from. In 2021, Involve helped run a citizens’ jury on this issue for the government of Jersey, as part of its preparations for legislation. Politicians later followed the recommendations of the jury, which were to allow assisted dying, for people with a terminal illness, in certain circumstances.
The lesson here is not whether the Jersey jury voted to allow or prevent assisted dying. Rather, the example shows that we should give our decision-makers the tools they need to do their jobs properly and democratically. In Jersey, politicians understood the informed preference of the people, when given space and time to come to judgment. This enabled decision-makers to break the political deadlock on this complex, sensitive and contested issue.
The word ‘fascist’ has lost all meaning. And Trump is using that to his advantage | Emma Brockes
There is a new push by his opponents to brand him with the F-word – and the effect has been both silly and serious
I remember when “fascist” became a word we all used, right around the time we first learned what it meant in adolescence. It had the kerb appeal of a swearword without the rudeness to get you into trouble, and you could spit it – really put your shoulder into the “f” at the front and the digraph in the middle. There was something satisfying about the word “fascist”, which was, back then, the apex, the very fanciest of insults. You thought I was being mean in a trivial, localised way, when in fact I was offering a structural analysis of your political ideology (plus your horrible personality and disastrous side-parting).
Most of us aged out of that phase when everyone and everything that opposed us was fascist. Still, aspects of the pleasures embedded in the word survived its wear and tear so that decades later, there is still a vague frisson, partly nostalgic, lighting up its outer fringes. Among adults, “fascist” tends to be used in a lightly ironised form, often in the context of a customer service dispute or fight with petty officialdom. Analogising the man at T-Mobile with the Nazis delivers some of the old sniggering satisfaction and for a long time this was fine, but now we have run into an obvious problem. The flippancy and babyishness of how we use “fascist” is making it hard, if not impossible, to recharge its meaning.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
UK sanctions on settlers are making a difference. Take it from an Israeli – they should go further | Magen Inon
There will be no peace while these incursions continue. The politicians who encourage them must now be targeted too
Few people in the UK will have heard of Ze’ev Hever. A far-right member of the Jewish Underground in the early 80s, he was convicted in 1984 for attempting to place a bomb under the car of a Palestinian political leader. But in the years since, he has become more sophisticated and influential. He is now the secretary general of Amana, the development company behind some of the most violent settlements and outposts in the West Bank. Last week, the UK government announced that it will impose sanctions on Amana and six other groups that support West Bank settlers – a move that many moderate Israelis such as me welcome.
The No 1 priority of the international community should be to put pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire deal that would see the fighting end in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon and a return of the hostages. But the UK government is right to target the settlement movement in the West Bank: these entities are a serious threat to a peaceful future between Israelis and Palestinians. By imposing sanctions on violent settlers, the UK not only prevents settler violence in the short term, it sends a message that there are red lines and that the international community is losing its patience.
Magen Inon is a London-based father of three from Israel who is a teacher and holds a PhD in philosophy of education
The Guardian view on the US presidential election 2024: a Democratic government is the one we need
This election presents a critical choice. Do we embrace a hopeful future or retreat to a reactionary past. We’re backing Kamala Harris. She will unlock democracy’s potential, not give in to its flaws.
It is hard to imagine a worse candidate for the American presidency in 2024 than Donald J Trump. His history of dishonesty , hypocrisy and greed makes him wholly unfit for the office. A second Trump term would erode the rule of law, diminish America’s global standing and deepen racial and cultural divides. Even if he loses, Mr Trump has shown that he will undermine the election process, with allies spreading unfounded conspiracy theories to delegitimise the results.
There are prominent Republicans – such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney – who refused to support Mr Trump owing to the threat he poses. Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Mr Trump, calls his former boss a “fascist ”. America was founded in opposition to absolute monarchy. The Republican nominee models himself after the leader he most admires: Russia’s autocratic president, Vladimir Putin.
Why our ideas about protest and mob psychology are dangerously wrong | Dan Hancox
Myths about the madness of crowds, long propagated by politicians and the establishment, have been overturned by new research
I don’t expect measured analysis from Suella Braverman, but even so I was taken aback this time last year when I heard that she had described the Palestine solidarity demos as “hate marches”. Earlier that week I had walked with my friends – some Jewish like me, some not – in a crowd of 500,000 others over Waterloo Bridge, and looked west down the Thames towards parliament, as a British Muslim girl of about eight years old led chants through a loudhailer: “Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry / We will never let you die.”
In many years of attending and reporting on protests, rallies, general strikes and riots, I have rarely experienced more orderly, peaceful, family-oriented mass gatherings than these demonstrations.
To my distant cousin Justin Welby: our family’s slavery history is truly awful. Let’s be open about it | Alex Renton
The archbishop has admitted his connections, but must go further. Backing the campaign for reparations would be a start
- Alex Renton is author of Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery
I don’t know my newfound cousin Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury. We’re not close, in any sense. But we do have a mutual great-great-great-grandfather : Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, who died in 1838. He is five generations back on Welby’s side, six on mine. It is not as wildly unlikely as you may think – at six removes we all have 128 grandparents. But this particular historical figure is significant because of what he and tens of thousands of British people like him did – the fallout of which is still dividing and toxifying society today.
Welby’s statement confessing Fergusson’s slave-owning past shows he may not know much about our shared forefathers. So here is some detail. Fergusson and the generation before him were owners of enslaved Black people in Jamaica and, for a while, Tobago. There were 160 to 200 people at any one time at the Jamaican sugar plantation Rozelle, with 75 at Bloody Bay in Tobago.
In Moldova, we held our EU referendum in Russia’s shadow. The result was too close for comfort | Paula Erizanu
Like Brexit, our vote on Europe teetered on a knife-edge. While the pro-EU side scraped a win, Russia is waiting to undermine it
I have now gone through two EU referendums in my life – Brexit and Moldova’s 20 October vote on whether to include EU integration in its constitution. As an EU national in the UK, I was not able to cast my ballot in 2016. I remember the expectation most people had that Brexit would not win. I received the news while travelling in Spain and staying with a British national settled there, who could not vote in the referendum either. Some London-born friends told me they felt as though they could no longer recognise their country, which had been split in two. With that British experience on my mind, I had a sense of deja vu as I watched the results unfold in my native Moldova on Sunday night.
As opinion polls before the vote, which excluded Moldova’s large, pro-European diaspora, suggested, there was between 54% and 65% support for the EU. The only fear for pro-European Moldovans was that the turnout would be too small to have the referendum validated. When it became clear that 51% of voters had showed up – more than in other recent elections – everyone in my bubble felt optimistic, posting pictures of their “I voted” blue stickers given out at polling stations. I was in an echo-chamber.
Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in Chișinău
Britain suffered 14 years of Tory small-state delusion. Labour’s budget will turn the page on that | Rafael Behr
While the Conservative leadership candidates harp on about the ECHR or the ‘woke bureaucracy’, Rachel Reeves will get serious about public investment
What matters more to the British public: the health service or the European convention on human rights (ECHR)? It isn’t a trick question. The obvious answer is the correct one. That is why the party that recently won a big majority began this week by launching a consultation on NHS reform , while the party that would rather talk about the ECHR does so from opposition.
Robert Jenrick, the Conservative leadership candidate who agitates to quit the ECHR , thinks it is not a marginal matter. His argument is that European human rights law interferes with summary deportation of asylum claimants, which is an affront to sovereignty and something about which voters – especially those who have switched from the Tories to Reform UK – have strong feelings.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist