by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
The government has hailed its ‘one in, one out’ migrant returns deal as a breakthrough. But awkward questions over its implementation remain
To use a football analogy that he might appreciate, the first year of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership has been a game of two halves. Domestically, grievous strategic
have been made. On the foreign stage, however, an approach that Sir Keir likes to
as “quiet, serious diplomacy” has yielded some tangible results.
For the most part, this week’s
by Emmanuel Macron further showcased the benefits of leaving behind the blowhard politics of the post-Brexit years. Sir Keir and the French president used the occasion to pledge greater cooperation on security and
their joint commitment to safeguarding Ukraine’s future as a sovereign independent state. But the biggest take-away from Mr Macron’s trip launched the prime minister straight back into toxic domestic terrain.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our
section, please click here.
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
Readers respond to a feature about the controversial Initial Teaching Alphabet, which was adopted by some schools in the 1960s but had a lasting impact
I was a teacher-training student living in Chiswick, London, in 1970 and we were the first people to buy up one of the cottages near Strand on the Green primary school. The start of “gentrification” of the area. Families at the other end of our road had been moved out during, or shortly after, the war from the East End of London and were working in a local factory. They were totally confused by the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), were keen to help their children with school but couldn’t read it themselves and were distressed by the system and lack of understanding from the school (
). They hadn’t the money to buy the special extra reading books, which could have been used at home.
ITA was a stupid experiment that bore no relation to people’s lives and, as your article underlined, had many negative long-term consequences for those children. Children learn to read in a myriad of different ways (reading the print on the breakfast cereal packets, for example) and ITA deprived many children from using the real-world experience.
Harriet Gibson
Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
The government must act to meet the rise in demand for mental health services in deprived areas, writes Dr Sarah Hughes, while Jan Pahl calls for an end to the two-child benefit cap
In the last 18 months I’ve found myself having to respond to claims that mental health culture has gone too far, that we’re over-diagnosing mental health problems and that we’re simply medicalising the ups and downs of life. I hope the children’s commissioner’s report (
) is a moment for everyone to reflect on what the “ups and downs” of life look like for too many young people: going without food, cold and mouldy homes, and not feeling safe in the area you live.
There is a toxic relationship between poverty and mental health. A fact reinforced by the latest NHS data, showing that mental health problems among adults are at record levels, with people in the most deprived areas hardest hit.
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
Across the US, without soundbites or stunts, the president is building a police state and eroding democracy
In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously
. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that
with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice.
But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there’s no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn’t happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
In our current political climate, why is migration minister Johan Forssell surprised that a teenage boy might be drawn to extremism?
Before the elections next year, Sweden’s conservative government has been eager to avoid accusations of racism or xenophobia. So it’s unfortunate that it keeps being plagued by scandals involving both.
The Swedish investigative magazine Expo revealed earlier this month that a minister in the governing coalition, whom it did not name, had a close family member active in violent far-right and neo-Nazi groups. The family member had,
, participated in activities with a far-right network classified as a terrorist group by the US.
Martin Gelin writes for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
The Nazi meltdown of the tech billionaire’s bot Grok leaves me asking: is this post-truth rock bottom, or have we further to go?
Grok, Elon Musk’s X-integrated AI bot, had a Nazi meltdown on Tuesday. It’s useful to recap it fully, not because the content is varied – antisemitic fascism is very one-note – but because its various techniques
. It all started on X, formerly Twitter, when Grok was asked to describe a now-deleted account called @Rad_reflections, which Grok claimed “gleefully celebrated the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods”, and then “traced” the real name of the account as a Cindy Steinberg, concluding: “classic case of hate dressed as activism – and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.”
There are things we can say for certain, which is that Grok is antisemitic – an impression, in case we had somehow missed it, the bot was careful to underline with its subsequent assertions that leftist accounts spewing “anti-white hate … often have Ashkenazi Jewish surnames”, and that
the best historical figure to deal with this hate: “he’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively every damn time,” it tweeted (all the posts have
).
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our
section, please click here.
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
I am almost literally medically incapable of staying in my trousers. So who’s really to blame here – me or the BBC?
I was born in the year 1964, which means I am exactly on the cusp between boomer and generation X. This is more than a fascinating fact about me – although it is of course also that. It is a disability. Yet incredibly, at no stage in my entire BBC career did anyone try to make the world accessible for this disability, neither by mandating every single person I might ever work with – or maybe even just humorously touch – to undergo unconscious Greggism training, nor by helping me with off-ramps for my jokes. I was sometimes left literally stranded halfway down a gag about my knob and no one came to my aid. Where was the compassion?
Having said that, perhaps it still exists in small pockets. I am massively grateful to the close pals whose
resulted in yesterday’s headline: “Gregg Wallace’s autism means he can’t wear underwear, say friends”. I am now keen to encourage further friends to come forward and cite the second medical condition which means that despite knowing that my autism prevents me from wearing underwear, I still have to take my trousers off in front of runners. This is clinical.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
by | Jul 11, 2025 | The Guardian
Once you get past the Mr Darcy fantasies, her new show Too Much is an affectionate sendup of the capital in all its variety and strangeness
I have watched all six series of Girls at least four times. I watched it as it was castigated for its unlikable characters,
,
and sex that wasn’t “
” enough, and I’ve watched it during its recent gen Z-fuelled
. I never thought Lena Dunham’s show was perfect, or a window on to all of humanity. But as an arch portrait of a handful of upper-middle-class twentysomething women in New York, thousands of miles away from my reality, I’ve always believed that it couldn’t be bettered.
Then Dunham moved to London and released a new show, this time about … me?
protagonists are thirtysomethings living in London: Jessica (played by Megan Stalter) moves over from New York after a breakup; her love interest Felix (Will Sharpe) is a Londoner jaded by years of struggling as a session guitarist. The stakes felt high. Not only could a show about my city by an American celebrity be unstoppably cringe, but it could call into question everything I loved about Girls.
Barbara Speed is the deputy head of Guardian Opinion
