The Guardian view on Ukraine and war crimes: the start of a case against Putin | Editorial
The international criminal court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for the Russian president over Ukraine is welcome. It needs support
It is entirely likely that Vladimir Putin may never be held fully accountable for his crimes. But the possibility of eventual justice grew somewhat brighter with the international criminal court’s decision last week to issue an arrest warrant for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children.
The compelling evidence of the forced transfer of thousands of children for adoption or to “re-education camps” is appalling. But this is only one of many horrors that Mr Putin has unleashed on Ukraine. There is growing support for prosecuting him for the invasion itself , which would require the creation of a special tribunal as the crime of aggression is not within the ICC’s scope. These calls are made in part because it is usually hard, if not impossible, for war crimes investigators to prove that those at the top sanctioned atrocities on the ground. Mr Putin can, however, be clearly linked to the abductions. Last month, the children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, indicted alongside the president, appeared on television thanking him for her “adoption” of a 15-year-old boy from Mariupol. This is the beginning of the case against Mr Putin, not necessarily the end.
The Guardian view on the Tory mood: rallying around Sunak | Editorial
The prime minister’s riches raise awkward questions, but the Conservative party has decided Boris Johnson is not the answer to them
The release of details of Rishi Sunak’s tax returns on Wednesday reveals several things. The first is that the prime minister and those around him think his tax returns are a public relations embarrassment. Many months after promising to do so, Mr Sunak finally slipped the details into the public realm at the very time when the political world was almost wholly focused on Boris Johnson’s confrontation with the Commons privileges committee. It was a shabby trick.
When he became prime minister, Mr Sunak promised that his government would have “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”. But this was not the act of a leader who is comfortable accounting for his wealth. The release also stopped well short of complete transparency. This very deliberately furtive act was fully in the tradition of the Labour spin doctor’s notorious advice on September 11 that the attacks on the Twin Towers had provided “a good day to bury bad news”.
The people of Northern Ireland want their assembly back. The DUP must not be allowed to block that | Simon Jenkins
A health and cost of living crisis is causing real problems that must be addressed. Democracy cannot be hamstrung any longer
Nothing in Boris Johnson’s post-Downing Street antics has been more cynical than his dodging from the privileges committee hearing on Wednesday to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Windsor framework. That reform was a hard-won attempt to rescue and reorder Johnson’s own hard-Brexit shambles. The least he could do was say thank you and shut up.
Fleeing to Northern Ireland’s extremist wilderness has long appealed to Britain’s political rejects. It offered a bunker to FE Smith and Enoch Powell. If Uxbridge now drops Johnson as its MP, Antrim will doubtless make him an offer, from whose cliffs he can rant and conspire against colleagues to his heart’s content. But the damage done by Brexit to the vexed politics of Northern Ireland does not end there. As its trade protocol sinks below the horizon, Churchill’s “dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone” are emerging once more in its place.
Letter: Lady Boothroyd obituary
During the 12 years (1994-2006) that Betty Boothroyd (was chancellor of the Open University, she presided at many degree ceremonies across the length and breadth of the UK.
Gina Bridgeland’s memories of the ceremony she attended in Harrogate () are typical of Betty’s stagecraft, which made them such special occasions for so many. By that time, most of the venues had strict “no smoking” policies and it was the responsibility of one of the awards and ceremonies team to find a quiet corner for Betty to light up a Rothmans, between the end of the official lunch and the start of the ceremony procession.
Three years on, there is a new generation of lockdown sceptics – and they’re rewriting history | Richard Seymour
Now academics on the left have joined the anti-lockdown chorus. Yet their Covid theories rely on a travesty of the facts
Was the pain worth it? Between March 2020 and March 2021, the UK had three national lockdowns . The goal was to control the spread of Covid-19. Essential businesses were closed, as were schools and universities, and “stay at home” orders meant families and friends were often kept apart. At the time, the government was unenthusiastic about lockdown and many Tories opposed it. Lord Sumption, for example, insisted that if it weren’t for lockdown, people could have “a perfectly normal life .”
Now a new chorus of lockdown sceptics includes people who position themselves on the left, such as the historian Toby Green and his colleague Thomas Fazi . They have joined the ranks of the Tory right in saying that the public, which strongly supported lockdown and even wanted to go further and faster than the government did, were misled by an apocalyptic campaign by medical professionals overstating the benefits and understating the costs of lockdown.
Richard Seymour is a political activist and author; his latest book is The Twittering Machine
The lifetime Isa home-buying scheme is a flop, so why won’t the Treasury fix it? | Henry Hill
They were designed to help first-time buyers, but lifetime Isas are so restrictive they risk turning into a financial trap for many young people
Of all the counter-productive, demand-stimulating measures successive governments have introduced to try to palliate the effects of endlessly climbing house prices, the lifetime Isa may have the dubious honour of being the most perverse.
Announced by George Osborne, although introduced under Philip Hammond’s chancellorship , it was designed as a vehicle to encourage long-term saving. To sweeten the pot, the government pays in £1 for every £4 saved a year, up to a maximum bonus of £1,000.
Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
Is this the last hurrah for the Boris Johnson circus? Even Tory MPs really hope so | Katy Balls
Diehards remain, but most just don’t want a byelection that would propel the disgraced former PM back into the limelight
The four hours of evidence from Boris Johnson before the Commons privileges committee over Partygate held little in the way of surprises. With much of the witness testimony published in advance, there was no new smoking gun. Instead, there were plenty of tetchy exchanges as Johnson butted heads with the seven-strong committee of MPs. At times, it felt as though they were speaking past each other.
The reaction, too, was broadly as expected. The former prime minister’s detractors have been quick to seize on his comments as evidence of his reckless dishonesty and unsuitability for office. Meanwhile, Johnson’s most enthusiastic supporters offered a rather more optimistic interpretation – heralding the marathon session as a triumph for their man. Former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg declared: “Boris is doing very well against the marsupials.” Other core Johnson MP backers joined in – tweeting their confidence that the former leader would be “exonerated”.
Covid struck and Britain locked down. Here’s what we learned from that – and what we must do next time | Devi Sridhar
Three years on, amid rising lockdown scepticism, the public wants to move on from the trauma. But this is too important to forget
Three years to the day from when Britain went into formal lockdown, it’s worth reflecting on the historical moment we all lived through: a once-in-a-century kind of pandemic that swept the world over. As analysis and inquiries begin to make sense of what we lived through, it’s clear that different political factions are attempting to rewrite what happened and why. Some are questioning, driven in part by the Telegraph’s lockdown files , whether the Covid-19 pandemic was really that bad. Was the response by government proportionate?
In these debates, there’s a clear survival bias. Those who can ask these questions were affected by restrictions and are likely to have had Covid-19 once, if not several times, and survived. Those who died – an estimated 220,437 people in the UK – don’t have a chance to weigh in on whether government intervention was sufficient, or whether their deaths were preventable. More than a million people suffering from long Covid still face scepticism over their condition and an uphill battle to have it recognised and addressed.
London last summer was the trailer for a climate disaster movie. Here’s how to stop that coming true | Sadiq Khan and Chris Skidmore
Cross-party cooperation is the key to facing down the doubters and delayers
- Sadiq Khan is the Labour mayor of London
- Chris Skidmore is the Conservative MP for Kingswood
There is no greater challenge facing our capital, our country and our world than the climate crisis. The only way we can keep the hope of limiting global heating to 1.5C is if we commit to further and faster action as cities and countries.
That’s why we must work together wherever possible – across the political divide – to help achieve net zero by cleaning up our rivers and air, insulating our homes, unlocking a revolution in renewable power and ending our toxic reliance on polluting vehicles.
Sadiq Khan is the Labour mayor of London and Chris Skidmore is the Conservative MP for Kingswood