Will the chancellor’s tough decisions pay off? Our panel responds
Rachel Reeves has boosted defence spending while piling on further welfare cuts – all set against gloomy growth forecasts
Donald Trump’s ‘war on woke’ is fast becoming a war on science. That’s incredibly dangerous | Christina Pagel
Contrary to claims by the US president, we have found that diversity initiatives result in better scientists and greater progress
- Christina Pagel is a member of Independent Sage
Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) initiatives since his January inauguration have been intense, indiscriminate and escalating. A tragic plane crash was baselessly blamed on DEI . All DEI programmes within public bodies have been ended and private contractors face cancellation if they also don’t comply. Webpages that defend religious diversity in the context of Holocaust remembrance have been taken down.
Science and academia have been particularly targeted. Universities are threatened with losing federal funding if they support DEI. Government reports and government-funded research are being held back if they include prohibited terms such as “gender”, “pregnant person”, “women”, “elderly”, or “disabled”. Grants funded by the National Institutes of Health are being cancelled if they address diversity, equality or inclusion in any form.
Christina Pagel is a professor of operational research within UCL’s clinical operational research unit. She is also a member of Independent Sage and vice president and EDI lead for the UK Operational Research Society
This article is based on a new report by Independent Sage on the importance of DEI in science. Christina Pagel led the report, but all members of Independent Sage contributed
In Cannes, I saw English councils pander to gilet-wearing property developers – at the cost of their residents | Phineas Harper
Desperate local authorities are seeking private investors to build housing. It may be profitable for shareholders but it’s destructive for everyone else
Welcome to Mipim, the world’s largest real estate fair, which returned to Cannes this month. Picture an ocean of property developers in blue suits and puffy gilets thronging the French beachfront. Inside the convention centre, instead of salespeople fronting the booths, you’ll find politicians talking up their region’s heritage, sport teams, music scenes, universities and waterfronts, with glossy prospectuses to tempt global investors.
About one-quarter of Mipim attendees are from the UK, with every British banner and brochure focused on one thing: courting investors with the promise of growth. A billboard declares Manchester “The UK’s Growth Opportunity”. Another proclaims that in the Tees Valley, “Anything is Possible”. Newcastle’s CEO and director of investment and growth tell me how the city makes development “dead easy for investment”. But the question is: growth for whom?
Phineas Harper is a writer and curator
Good morning Britain – prepare to be told yet again that decline is all you deserve | Owen Jones
It’s Groundhog Day: the party may change but even under Labour, the script remains stubbornly the same
It is time to resuscitate Margaret Thatcher’s catchphrase: “There is no alternative.” With a twist, of course. Back then, “Tina” was deployed in favour of an economic model that gave us badly distributed low growth, shambolic rip-off privatised utilities, a housing crisis and social insecurity. It is now devastatingly clear that there is no alternative to discarding this failed experiment.
Yet this week, our supposedly Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will take a scalpel to departmental budgets already devastated by 15 years of austerity. Our government has robbed most pensioners of the winter fuel payment, and announced £5bn worth of cuts to disability benefits, which strip support from citizens unable to independently clothe themselves, or who need an aide to use the toilet. By the time of the next election, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation , all households will have suffered a fall in living standards, but the poorest will be clobbered twice as hard. This, under the rule of a party founded to represent the interests of ordinary people.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
Trump’s show of support for Conor McGregor is making fertile ground for Ireland’s far right | Justine McCarthy
The fighter won’t be Irish president any time soon, but the Trumpocracy seems to think it can shift the country’s politics by endorsing him
Middle Ireland feels grievously insulted by the US president. On St Patrick’s Day, when the globe traditionally turns green, Donald Trump’s official guest at the White House was not the taoiseach bearing a bowl of shamrock, but an unelected stooge recently found by a civil court jury liable for the rape of a woman in a Dublin hotel. Fear and loathing of the mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, who is facing civil trial in the US for alleged sexual assault of another woman in Florida, is one of middle Ireland’s most unifying forces.
“We couldn’t think of a better guest to have with us on St Patrick’s Day,” gushed Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt on 17 March, rubbing salt in the wound. McGregor was given access to the Pentagon, met the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz. In the Oval Office, McGregor and his family posed for photographs with the US president, a man also found liable for sexual assault . Prominent in the photographs was Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual and Trump’s unelected jobs slasher. McGregor presented Musk with a box of his own brand cigars. Four days later, the Dubliner, self-styled “the notorious”, announced he intends to contest the Irish presidential election later this year.
Justine McCarthy is a journalist, author and an Irish Times columnist