The Bank of England is redesigning money with new themes. So how about Lincoln Cathedral, the London Marathon … or wheelie bins?

Those appalled by Israel’s actions in Gaza, and the kind of media frenzy prompted by Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury appearance, are finding their voice

If you are in the business of anointing monsters, you can see why your eyes would light up at a punk act called Bob Vylan. Until last weekend, sure, it might have been a tough sell to proclaim them as an avatar for Britain’s revolting youth: prominent though they might be on the UK’s punk scene, they had about about 220,000 monthly listeners on Spotify – a mere 1,000,000 away from a place in the top 10,000. But then, at Glastonbury, they made the most powerful possible case for broad media attention: they said something controversial about Israel’s assault on Gaza, and opened up a chance to have a go at the BBC.

And so the following morning, on the front page of the Mail on Sunday: “NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED ‘DEATH TO ISRAELIS’ CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY.� Pascal Robinson-Foster, aka Bobby Vylan, had started a round of “antisemitic chanting� that was broadcast live on the corporation’s coverage of the festival, the story explained. Keir Starmer called it “appalling hate speech�. The calls for the band members’ arrest were quickly picked up, and before long the Conservatives were suggesting that the BBC should be prosecuted as well. On Monday, the story splashed in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.

Archie Bland is the editor of the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter

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We may believe we see the world exactly as it is – but as studies of optical illusions show, it’s far more complex than that

• Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex

Do people from different cultures and environments see the world differently? Two recent studies have different takes on this decades-long controversy. The answer might be more complicated, and more interesting, than either study suggests.

One study, led by Ivan Kroupin at the London School of Economics, asked how people from different cultures perceived a visual illusion known as the Coffer illusion. They discovered that people in the UK and US saw it mainly in one way, as comprising rectangles – while people from rural communities in Namibia typically saw it another way: as containing circles.

The double standards and hypocrisy used to justify Israel’s aggression will not be forgotten here, or in other countries

A trembling ceasefire has brought a pause to what had become the familiar sounds of explosions over Tehran. I was born in 1988, a year before the Iran-Iraq war came to an end. For my generation, war was something that belonged to the past – an impossible event, until this summer.

For 12 days, we lived in the capital under incessant Israeli attacks, and what we saw has changed us for good: dead neighbours, buildings gutted and worry – endless, deep-etched worry – on the faces of people.

Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher

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From free school meals to the NHS, he believes his record of helping ordinary people is clear. But voters don’t quite view it that way

He doesn’t look like the innovative type, but Keir Starmer is staging a radical experiment. He is testing out a theory of politics a matter of months after it was seemingly – and spectacularly – disproved and, in the process, hoping to pull off a turnaround that would constitute a comeback so stunning it would be closer to a resurrection.

The theory in question is that if you deliver practical improvements to the lives of voters, they will reward you at the ballot box. Its guiding principle is “show, don’t tell�, with the emphasis on results rather than talk, pragmatism rather than ideology. He’s not the first to try it: this was also the animating creed of Joe Biden’s presidency – and we know how that worked out.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

To truly understand the president’s style of rule, we must go beyond Scandinavian sagas and Sicilian crime lore

Ever since Donald Trump returned to power, pundits have struggled to find apt analogies for his style of governance. Some liken his loyalty demands, patronage networks and intimidation tactics to the methods of a mafia don. Others cast him as a feudal overlord, operating a personality cult rooted in charisma and bound by oaths, rewards and threats rather than laws and institutions. A growing number of artists and AI creatives are depicting him as a Viking warrior. And of course, fierce debates continue over whether the moment has arrived for serious comparisons with fascist regimes.

While some of these analogies may offer a degree of insight, they are fundamentally limited by their Eurocentrism – as if 21st-century US politics must still be interpreted solely through the lens of old-world history. If we truly want to understand what is unfolding, we must move beyond Scandinavian sagas and Sicilian crime lore.

David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Congo: The Epic History of a People and Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

Nothing says you’ve lifted the mood of the nation like having to haul your chancellor to a photocall at a ‘wellbeing centre’

Well, British politics has served up another week of compellingly packaged action. Like Drive to Survive, but for clown cars. Leave it to “no-drama Starmer� to come up with the only thing weirder and more awful than watching the chancellor of the exchequer sob on the frontbench – wheeling her out a mere 22-and-a-half hours later for an unscheduled appearance at a wellbeing centre(!), where Rachel Reeves had to get her happy face on and pose for selfies.

The whole thing gave Keir Starmer the feel of one of those remorseless boyband managers who reacts to one of their young charges having a breakdown by getting them a special injection and shoving them straight back out on stage the next night. I think you can probably do it with a member of Take That or 5ive or whoever, and only run the risk of them turning on you in a documentary decades later. But is it a vibe you want at the heart of the team in charge of the world’s sixth largest economy?

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

The left has been discussing this for months, but tactical differences will need to be overcome, as will the threat of Reform

An effective new leftwing party is one of the recurring dreams – or nightmares – of British politics. Many have tried and failed to create one that wins and then holds a significant number of seats in parliament. Labour, founded 125 years ago, has been the only successful example. Others have been defeated by the electoral system, the sheer number of interests ranged against the left, loyalty to Labour and the left’s tendency to over-promise and quarrel.

Could Zarah Sultana’s sudden announcement last night that she “will co-lead the founding of a new party� with Jeremy Corbyn and other “independent MP’s… and activists across the country� – a statement that he did not acknowledge until lunchtime today – finally begin to change the rigid shape of British left-of-centre politics? And would that help the left – or help destroy it?

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

The Treasury focuses on numbers when what’s needed is vision. The party and the country are crying out for leadership, but it’s nowhere to be seen

She is not the first chancellor to cry in public, and may not be the last. But Rachel Reeves is the first whose tears have moved markets. No sooner had the realisation dawned that she was silently weeping – over a personal sorrow she won’t be pushed into revealing, she insisted later, not a political one – as she sat beside Keir Starmer at Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, than the pound was dropping and the cost of borrowing rising. The bond traders who forced out Liz Truss’s hapless chancellor still clearly rate her judgment and want her to stay, even if (perhaps especially if) some Labour MPs don’t. Yet it is an extraordinary thing to live with the knowledge that a moment’s uncontrolled emotion can drive up the cost of a nation’s mortgages, just as a misjudged stroke of the budget pen can destroy lives.

The most striking thing about her tears, however, was Starmer’s failure to notice. Intent on the Tory benches opposite, the prime minister simply ploughed on, not realising that his closest political ally was dissolving beside him. Though within hours, a clearly mortified Starmer had thrown a metaphorical arm around her, and Reeves herself was back out talking up her beloved fiscal rules as if nothing had happened. But it’s the kind of image that sticks: her distress and his oblivion, an unfortunately convenient metaphor for all the times he has seemed oddly detached from his own government.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

The Tory leader should have supported Labour’s welfare bill – but such responsible behaviour would have defied the norms of British politics

They roared, they wept, they cheered. The audience gasped and the markets plunged. The critics loved it. Foreigners are famously envious of British politics played as fun.

I always thought it cruel to attack a person in tears. Tell that to the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. Her savaging of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, at prime minister’s questions (PMQs) on Wednesday might have been a scene from Les Misérables. It was great theatre, but what had it to do with governing the country?

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

The home secretary is apparently an admirer of the suffragettes. I have no doubt that if they were active today she would proscribe them, too

No one can be trusted with power. Any government will oppress its people if not constantly and inventively challenged. And the task becomes ever-more urgent as new technologies of surveillance and control are developed.

The UK government is run by a former human rights lawyer. Its home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has expressed her admiration for the Suffragettes in parliament. Yet such credentials do nothing to defend us from attacks on our fundamental rights. With a huge majority, no formal constitutional checks and a ruthless, scarcely accountable governing machine, this administration is abusing its power to an even greater extent than its Conservative predecessors.

The healing power of exercise should never be underestimated, but be cautious about what recent headlines seem to suggest

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

You might have seen the recent headlines on a new study on exercise and cancer recovery suggesting that “exercise is better than a drug� in preventing cancer returning. Cue a wave of commentary pitting “big pharma� against fitness, as if we must choose between pills and planks. It’s an appealing narrative – but it’s also misleading.

We don’t need to choose between the two. In fact, the best health outcomes often come from combining medicine with a broader view of health that includes movement, diet, social connection and mental wellbeing.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

No more plans for mean, unpopular cuts. Instead, explain why taxes must rise – and be clear about the good that will do

Rachel Reeves will not be sacked, because she is unsackable. The ever-hysterical bond markets just confirmed that by spinning out of control over her tears, then restoring previous rates as soon as Keir Starmer’s serial interviews confirmed heartfelt support after she was seen to be crying during PMQs. Quite right. Joined at the hip, her tough fiscal policy is his. History shows that prime ministers rarely last after sacking their chancellors.

The question for both, and all of Labour, is: what next? Every management guru and motivational speaker will tell you that mistakes don’t matter – the key to success is what you learn and how adroitly you change. Labour has four long years ahead and, most important of all, a stonking great majority. They are the masters so long as they don’t frighten the bond markets that ejected Liz Truss and forced Donald Trump’s handbrake tariff U-turn.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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Sell-offs of public housing and the right’s promotion of home ownership has left too many unable to afford accommodation

• Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest

When I left my family home to study at university in 2007 and moved to downtown Budapest, housing costs were hardly a topic of conversation among my friends. I rented rooms in centrally located flats for £80-£100 per month. Fast forward to 2025 and a similar room in a shared flat would set you back at least £200 – double the price of 15 years ago. Talk to anyone in their 20s in Budapest today, and the deepening housing crisis will inevitably come up as one of the defining struggles of their lives.

The statistics paint an equally grim picture. Between 2010 and 2024, Hungary saw the largest increase of the housing price index among EU member states. While the EU average rose by 55.4%, Hungary’s housing price index rocketed by 234%. Meanwhile, per capita net income only grew by 86% in the 2010s. Budapest, the capital, is the centre of this crisis. According to the Hungarian National Bank, residential property prices are overvalued by 5-19%. This is partly explained with the high proportion of investment-driven purchases: these accounted for 30-50% of all transactions in the last five years in Hungary. Unlike in many other EU capitals, property investors in Budapest are not primarily foreign nationals – who accounted for just 7.3% of transactions between 2016 and 2022 – nor are they institutional players. Instead, they are typically individual Hungarian citizens. As real estate has become an increasingly appealing investment for upper- and middle-class households amid growing economic uncertainty, the result has been a deepening polarisation within Hungarian society.

Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest, focusing on housing and urban development. He is co-founder of Periféria Policy and Research Center and board member of the Alliance for Collaborative Real Estate Development

Rodrigo Nunes, a senior lecturer in political theory, explains how despite harsh economic conditions creating fertile ground for ‘entrepreneur culture’, resistance has sprung up among delivery drivers

On 1 April, Brazilian couriers organised a day of action in which thousands of workers engaged in pickets and protests in at least 60 cities, with places such as São Paulo reporting a sharp drop in deliveries. While companies are yet to respond to the demands for better pay and conditions, the mobilisation was a clear step-up for a process of national organisation that began in 2020.

Between 2016 and 2021, the number of people working for delivery apps in Brazil rose by 979.8%, with the number of delivery and passenger drivers in the sector now around 1.4 million. This boom coincides with the period in which the country finally felt the effects of the post-2008 recession. Economic decline, corruption and the impeachment of the then president, Dilma Rousseff, ended 13 years of successful left-leaning governments by the Workers’ party (PT). In the years that followed, a series of austerity measures and labour reforms were put in place, the political spectrum moved steadily to the right and the far-right libertarian politician Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018.

Thomas Graham, a journalist based in Mexico City, explains how the leftwing governing party, Morena, has promoted social justice but diluted principle with pragmatism

If you were to summarise the 2024 election year, you might say: grim for incumbents, good for the far right. Yet Mexico bucked both trends. Its governing party, Morena, not only retained the presidency but – along with its partners in the Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition – gained a two-thirds supermajority in the chamber of deputies, the lower house, while the far right failed to even run a candidate. That a self-described leftwing party could have such success by fixing on Mexico’s chasmic inequality has drawn attention from hopeful progressives worldwide. But Morena’s programme has some not-so-progressive elements too. It is not necessarily one others could – or would want to – copy in its entirety.

Morena first notched a historic result in 2018, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an old face of the left who ran for president twice before founding the party, won a record 55% of the vote during the general elections. Mexico’s constitution limits presidents to a single term. But this time, Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of López Obrador’s, won 60% of the vote. Her victory was reminiscent of the heyday of Latin America’s “pink tide�, when leftist leaders like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales were reelected for a second term with more votes than their initial victories.

Professor Alexandra Bitušíková explains how face-to-face local activism was crucial in bringing down Marian Kotleba, leader of the People’s Party Our Slovakia

Having grown up in Banská Bystrica in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, I vividly remember standing in the city’s historic square a few days after 17 November 1989, the start of the Velvet Revolution, holding candles in solidarity with the students protesting in Prague. Never would I have imagined that 35 years later, I would be speaking at a rally in the same square, this time urging the preservation of democracy.

Back then, when I was a young social anthropology academic at our local university, activism was far from my mind. But everything changed for me in 2013 when Marian Kotleba, leader of the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia, was elected as regional governor. The shock was enormous. No one I knew had believed that such an outcome was possible, yet it happened. Realising the dangers this posed, many like-minded individuals knew we couldn’t stand by idly.

Labour peer Margaret Hodge shares how the party tackled the rise of the British National party in Barking before the 2010 general election

Once again, the far right is advancing across Europe, emboldened by the outcome of the 2024 presidential election and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. To turn back extremism masquerading as populism, I believe there are lessons we can learn from our battle against the extreme right in Barking in 2010, when we crushed the BNP.

The context is different. There was little social media before 2010; we hadn’t been through a pandemic; there was no major war in Europe and no serious challenge to a rules-based international order.

My bungee-jumping and skydiving days are over because I can’t shake the visceral memory of learning that I’m not invincible

I’d just completed the spectacular four-day Inca Trail hike to Machu Picchu and, drunk on nature, was feeling dangerously invincible. Fresh Peruvian air still rejuvenated my lungs and the brain fog induced by my daily smartphone addiction hadn’t yet crept back in.

The disastrous events that followed began once I turned my phone back on. Responding to a Twitter solicitation for Peru recommendations, a man I’d never met posted: “Go mountain biking down a volcano in Arequipa!�

Gary Nunn is a freelance journalist and author

Working in finance, I was unhappy and surrounded by greed. Then I embraced my passion for cooking, produce and nature

• Franco Fubini is the founder and CEO of Natoora

As I wandered out of my New York apartment, the snow compressing on to the sidewalk in that warming dusk light gave my walk to Citarella’s on Third Avenue a rhythmic glow. It was 1999 and Christmas was a few weeks away. In the northern hemisphere, December is the season for vibrant citrus, bitter leaves and pumpkins, yet behind me someone called out: “Where can I find peaches?� I turned around to see an affronted woman standing outside the greengrocer’s. The absurdity of the moment struck me – why would someone crave peaches in the middle of winter? It is just as absurd as sitting by the pool on a blistering summer day and reaching for a warm, woolly jumper.

I was already aware of the issues facing the food system; industrialised farming destroying our soils, the stomach of our planet, opaque supply chains leaving citizens powerless in making the right buying decisions, and the dominance of ultra-processed foods with zero nutritional value in supermarkets, schools and hospitals, to name a few. But this moment underscored our grave disconnect with nature and its seasons. We had normalised the idea that food can and should be eaten any time of the year. I couldn’t escape from this realisation, but little did I know that seemingly innocuous encounter in New York was to change my life for ever.

Franco Fubini is the founder and CEO of Natoora, and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach

The cacophony around me seemed to drown out my daily worries until a writing retreat showed me there was a better way

I’ve lived in South Korea for more than a decade, but it’s only recently that I discovered just how loud it is here. The bing-bong when someone presses the “stop� button on the city bus, and the accompanying sing-songy announcements in Korean, the beeps of riders scanning their transit cards to board or depart; soju-drunk office workers loudly singing off-tune through neighbourhood alleyways; obnoxiously loud K-pop music blaring out of storefronts; and songs that seem to change key at record rates as delivery motorbikes speed out of range.

In reality, I have relied on there being near-constant cacophony around me for the whole of my adult life. Without realising it, background noise became a kind of comfort to me, making me feel less alone. It started after university when I was barely scraping together a living, working jobs I didn’t want to be doing. I would soothe my loneliness and isolation in the evenings by playing endless hours of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit just for the ambient sound – the comfort of Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler bringing criminals of the worst kind to justice.

Krissi Driver is a writer based in South Korea

I couldn’t help but love the woman who brought light back into our lives – and now I feel so lucky to have my big blended family

When my mother died, I didn’t think my stepfather would ever find someone else to love. She met him when visiting New York and he moved to Paris to live with us. He’d always ask: “How’d this gorgeous French-Brazilian woman pick me?� They shared 16 beautiful years together. On the night of her death, he told me he’d “lost 40 years�, the years of them growing old together.

As much as I wanted him to be happy, I never imagined their connection could be replaced, it just seemed too strong. So when, one spring evening over dinner, he said “I went on a date last night� to my little sister and me, my eyes grew wide in shock. I was pleased for him, but devastated for myself. It felt like another era was coming to an end.

Iman M’Fah-Traoré is a writer. She is working on her first book, a memoir

Sir Keir Starmer promised competence. But a brutal week revealed he hasn’t delivered it, and his failure to lead with vision may be his undoing

“Nothing is inevitable until it happens,� wrote AJP Taylor, rejecting the idea that history unfolds according to a plan. Taylor distrusted grand visions. Sir Keir Starmer seems afraid to have one. A year into power, the prime minister doesn’t act like a man chosen by history, but one hoping to avoid its glare. Modern politics shifts quickly and governing as if nothing has changed is a risk. Yet Sir Keir treats pragmatism as principle and surrounds himself with advisers recycling New Labour-era habits: technocracy, market deference and fiscal discipline.

In a world of Trumpian shocks and geopolitical realignments, that strategy risks looking less like responsible government than crippling rigidity. What once passed for prudence now borders on denial. Change is happening regardless; the only choice is how to meet it. Retreating to the relative safety of the global stage is no substitute for leadership. Sir Keir cuts a confident figure abroad. At home, the instincts stumble. When a rebellion gutted his own government’s disability benefit cuts, he blamed his failure to grip the issue on being “heavily focused� on foreign affairs. In seeking gravitas overseas, he found mutiny at home.

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From blockbuster movies like Jurassic World Rebirth to documentary series, the appetite for these ancient creatures appears inexhaustible

On-screen discussions of DNA and off-screen scientific consultants notwithstanding, no one goes to see a Jurassic Park movie for its realism. Yet one of the less convincing moments in Jurassic World Rebirth, the latest in the franchise, is unrelated to oversized velociraptors. It’s the palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis complaining of shrinking public interest in his field.

This spring, the BBC revived its 1999 hit series Walking With Dinosaurs. Not a week goes by without headlines announcing the discovery of a new species or new theories on how they behaved. Publishers produce an endless stream of dino-related fact and fiction, particularly for children. Palaeontology – at least when focused on the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic, or our hominin forebears – has long exerted an extraordinary hold on the public imagination.

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Local clinics and technology could drive improvement if reorganisation doesn’t slow things down

The NHS is a totemic institution in Labour’s history and that of the country, and voters care more about it than most things the government does. So the publication of Labour’s 10-year plan for health in England was a crucial opportunity for ministers to show that they are in tune with the public. Given that satisfaction with the health service has hit a record low of 21%, and doctors are again threatening to go on strike, the announcement was also a moment of peril – even before the damage suffered by the prime minister and chancellor earlier this week, when rebels forced a U-turn on planned cuts to welfare.

The overarching principles of Labour’s reforms were set out last year: more prevention, more technology, more care delivered in the community (as opposed to in hospital). So the challenge was to find something fresh, original and hopeful to say. The promise of science and the potential of localism are what Wes Streeting’s team has come up with. The strand of DNA pictured on the document’s cover points to high expectations of genomic medicine and other cutting-edge technology. Neighbourhood clinics, by contrast, represent a prosaic recognition of demand for more ordinary services and treatments, from an ageing and increasingly unhealthy population. The aim is to deliver most outpatient care away from hospitals by 2035.

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A ban on the direct action group – backed by MPs on Wednesday – looks like disturbing overreach by the state

When the Labour government introduced anti-terrorism legislation 25 years ago, it stressed that it was targeting extreme crimes. “Terrorism involves the threat or use of serious violence for political, religious or ideological ends. It … aims to create a climate of extreme fear,� said Jack Straw, the then home secretary.

Some MPs still feared that a group like Greenpeace, which had destroyed genetically modified crops and temporarily halted nuclear weapons production at Aldermaston, might be proscribed. Mr Straw reassured them that such bans would be used only when absolutely necessary; he knew of “no evidence whatever� that the actions of the environmental group “would fall remotely under [its] scope�.

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Purists’ attempts to police our global languages are doomed – there’s joy and inspiration in new expressions from all over the world

Even your own language can have the capacity to surprise you. I recently joined a panel at a journalism conference with a reporter and a lawyer, both from Colombia. I found myself captivated by some of the words they used that aren’t – or rather weren’t – so common in Spain. The investigative journalist Diana Salinas referred to her craft as la filigrana, the filigree. I wouldn’t have used the term in that context, and yet it struck me as perfect to describe the intricate, careful work that investigative reporting requires.

Filigrana is not even considered a Latin-Americanism – it comes from Italian – but it has somehow been forgotten in everyday speech in Spain. As is often the case with Spanish in Latin America, usage and context enriches the word.

María Ramírez is a journalist and the deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain

Prime ministers have recovered from bad starts. But unless Starmer can articulate an idea of the Britain he wants, the public – and his party – may desert him

There will be no birthday candles in Downing Street this week. Nor should there be. Twelve months after Labour’s landslide election win on 4 July 2024, Keir Starmer’s government has capped a year in office with a week of political dishevelment and ineptitude. The welfare reform bill itself is now a meaningless shell. The Labour party is united only in its frustrations.

The welfare rebellion was not a bolt from the blue. Instead, it provides the keystone to an arc of earlier blunders. It poses urgent issues about professional incompetence in Labour’s Westminster machine. It embodies what is not working in the way Starmer’s top-down party does politics more generally. This will not be the end of it, as the furore over Rachel Reeves’s tears at a raucous prime minister’s questions seems to confirm. Things can’t go on like this.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

The education secretary speaks of ‘worrying repercussions’ – but as far as wellbeing goes, the UK might be a lot better off

Back in the early 1970s when he was lead singer with the Faces, few of his fans would have expected Rod Stewart to be still belting out Maggie May at Glastonbury more than half a century later. Long gone are the days when rock stars hoped to die before they got old. Instead, 80-year-old rock stars symbolise the fact that Britain and other developed economies have ageing populations. Women are having children later in life and having fewer of them.

Politicians are starting to fret about the prospect of a decreasing number of people of working age supporting an ever-increasing number of pensioners. Just this week, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said the falling birthrate had “worrying repercussions� and that she hoped to be able to make it easier for women to have children.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

The anti-Tory energy that won the PM a majority last year has gone. He needs to give his old supporters new reasons to keep him in office

When politicians can’t admit they are losing, they say they are listening. Your anger has been heard, says the contrite minister after a byelection drubbing. We are addressing the concerns, says the government spokesperson on the eve of a backbench rebellion. Sometimes, it is even true. Usually, it is too late.

The optimal time for Downing Street to have started paying attention to Labour MPs’ complaints about disability benefit cuts was before the uprising threatened to torpedo a flagship government bill.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

One year of Labour, with Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr and more
On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Raf Behr, Frances O’Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government, its current policies and plans for the next four years

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The issue of what happened at Glastonbury is obscuring the outrage about real bombs and actual death, and I think that is deliberate

Let’s compare two news stories from the past few days. On Saturday, Bobby Vylan, the frontman of the rap-punk duo Bob Vylan, chanted “death, death to the IDF� – referring to the Israel Defense Forces – from the West Holts stage at Glastonbury, and members of the crowd joined in. The performance was livestreamed by the BBC.

A day earlier, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that Israeli soldiers and officers had confessed that they had been ordered to shoot at unarmed Palestinians as they queued for aid. Last month, about 600 desperately hungry Palestinians, including many children, were killed this way.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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There are many nasty idiots in the world – but whether the offence was at a music festival or online, none of these people should be in jail

News that Avon and Somerset police have launched criminal investigations into the bands Bob Vylan and Kneecap for their Glastonbury sets reminds me that we have a severe prisons crisis in the UK, and that we need to build more of them. Perhaps we should build a special one for all the people we keep criminally investigating for saying, rather than doing, bad things. I’m pretty sure they have a few of those types of prisons in other countries. Although, it must be said that those are normally countries run by people we consider bad. Confusing! But look, maybe we’re becoming the sort of country where we imprison lots of people for saying awful things. I don’t … love this look for us, I have to say. But no doubt someone has thought it all through very, very carefully.

If so, they could put the two nasty idiots from Bob Vylan in it. Obviously all of Kneecap, too. Maybe those guys would have their cell on the same landing as Lucy Connolly, the woman who was imprisoned for two years and seven months for a repulsive tweet in the wake of the Southport child killings. They could be joined by whoever at the BBC didn’t pull the Glastonbury live stream on Saturday after Bob Vylan started their repulsive chants, given that Conservative frontbencher Chris Philp is now officially calling for the corporation to be “urgently� investigated. I see Chris is also calling for the BBC to be prosecuted – so I guess he’s already done the police investigation for them, and all at the same time as absolutely aceing his brief as shadow home secretary for where-are-they-now political outfit the Conservative party.

Asset manager Aberdeen’s surprise cut to funding research into inequality has left those that used its grants for good works reeling

The axe fell with shocking suddenness. On Thursday Aberdeen Group plc terminated its Financial Fairness Trust without notice and sacked the CEO, Mubin Haq, the chair and all the trustees, leaving eight staff dangling. The company tells me it plans to move in a different direction. That dreaded phrase marks the end of 16 remarkable years, during which the trust sponsored some of the most influential research into inequality and its financial causes.

Aberdeen is a wealth management and investment company. I admired its willingness to fund research not in its own immediate interest, but for the sake of social improvement, as a sign that decent capitalism was possible. Now that’s over. The mood has changed. Wildfires started by President Trump are engulfing global companies as his administration attempts to bar asset and retirement plan managers from considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in investment decisions and targets private sector diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives with executive orders. Companies doing good are at risk. I ask Aberdeen if that’s why it has shut down the trust. It denies it strongly, saying it is just a “natural evolution�.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

This scandalous story gives lie to the claim that the biggest threat to country life comes from city dwellers

Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they’re oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the “urban jackboot� as many participants in the Countryside March, organised by the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions.

Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate “was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn�, but no one knows who the client is. So far I’ve received no response to the questions I sent to Belport.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at Guardian.Live

The Bezos-Sánchez wedding is rewriting the fashion rules. And there’s nothing the outgoing Vogue editor can do about it

How neat that Anna Wintour’s resignation as editor-in-chief of American Vogue should occur bang in the middle of Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos’s wedding extravaganza in Venice. Top takeout? Anna’s revolution is over. She lost. Not personally, of course – she accrued significant riches herself, and her name is literally hewn into stone over a chunk of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Just don’t call her Ozymannadias! But the things she represented are over, and nothing illustrates it in quite such withering fashion as the gathering on the Grand Canal of Instagram’s apex predators.

Don’t worry – this isn’t going to be another article over-egging the fact that someone has unfurled some protest banner or something on a Venetian church. Very little needs refreshing quite as desperately as the eat-the-rich genre, which has started to feel even smugger than the super-rich themselves. I think we can all live without people who positively adored it when George and Amal Clooney took over Venice for their 2014 wedding now wetting their pants when the Bezos-Sánchezes do it.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

From cabinet members to the British public, there is an outcry about these benefits cuts. Why is the government always so poor at reading the room?

Will this disaster bill pass on Tuesday? The dangerous obduracy of the prime minister and chancellor confirms precisely what Labour MPs say: they haven’t listened, they aren’t really listening and the fear is they won’t learn to listen. Even after Thursday’s raft of concessions, and even if the bill is squeezed through with further softening, it will be a pyrrhic victory. Why take such a risk for so little? U-turns are better than crashes, but best not left to the last nanosecond.

Senior ministers, some of whom have already spoken up in cabinet, will put their feet down firmly to insist on radical alteration, or better still that it’s withdrawn and rethought to avoid what they call “this catastrophe�. If niceties of parliamentary practice escape some, understand how extraordinary this rebellion is. Read their “reasoned amendment� with its crushing reasons why.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

With hawks on one side and doves on the other, we ignore the obvious fact that engagement is the best defence against conflict

‘Toadying�, “slavish�, “cringe-worthy� were the words hurled at Nato’s Mark Rutte for the praise he heaped on Donald Trump. But words cost nothing. Keir Starmer went further. He dug into his pocket and gave Trump $1.3bn for just 12 aeroplanes. He promised never to use them, or put any bombs in them, without orders from Washington. He might as well have enrolled in the United States Air Force.

Starmer is engaged in a strategic shift in Britain’s global stance – from soft power to hard. He has clearly received the notorious initial briefing that so moved Tony Blair and led him eventually to war in Iraq. It induced David Cameron to spend billions on aircraft carriers that he had intended to cancel. Now the government warns in its strategic review that Britain needs to prepare for the possibility of being attacked on its own soil. Perhaps Starmer agrees with Nato’s Rutte that the British people “better learn to speak Russian�.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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Readers respond to Guardian coverage of health inequalities in Britain and the government’s 10-year plan for the health service

Your articles on health inequality this week included excellent coverage of the government’s project to shift the emphasis of healthcare from treatment at the clinic and hospital to prevention through public health initiatives (Downing Street’s radical plan for the NHS: shifting it from treatment to prevention, 29 June). However, one key element is missing from the analysis that has frustrated the implementation of such necessary innovations: the way that undergraduate students are educated and socialised into medicine within longstanding conservative curricula.

Historically, doctors gain an identity that is grounded in the sanctity of the “clinic� (primarily the hospital) as a well-patrolled territory with idiosyncratic rituals and language. Patients are kept on the other side of the fence. Medical education traditionally affords little work-based experience in the first two years, but after that students gain increasing exposure to clinical work. However, this is largely focused on secondary care (hospital and clinic) settings, and on cure rather than prevention.

The most effective way to neutralise its power would be through land value taxation, writes John Digney, while Robin Gutch recalls an 18th-century landowner who moved a village

While we might fume at the eviction of a whole village by its landlord, we only have ourselves to blame for allowing such power to remain in the hands of so few (An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England, 28 June). Even socialist governments have balked at dealing with the issue of land monopoly, and we have failed to hold them to account.

In 1909, when landed power was largely synonymous with the aristocracy, Tom Johnston, later to become secretary of state for Scotland, noted that land titles had originally been created “either by force or fraud�. He urged the people to “shatter the romance that keeps the nation numb and spellbound while privilege picks its pocket�.

A tech startup that uses lime pellets to filter ships’ exhaust fumes will gain nothing if emissions from its production process are not reduced, writes Dr Richard Richards

The carbon-capture process described in your article uses lime pellets (Shipping is one of the world’s dirtiest industries – could this invention finally clean up cargo fleets? 26 June). These are typically produced by heating calcium carbonate (limestone), releasing CO₂ and requiring large amounts of energy, producing yet more CO₂. If the used pellets are heated in a kiln for reuse, even if with renewable energy, the captured CO₂ is released again and nothing is gained. Quicklime production creates yet more CO₂, so without removing these emissions, Seabound’s process would make shipping even dirtier.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed under Joe Biden is funding development of cement production from calcium silicate. Once turned into concrete, this process sequesters CO₂ overall, and in even larger amounts if green electricity fuels the kilns. Seabound should take note, else their technology is just another carbon-capture con.

Council budgets have fallen and there is no national strategy for green spaces, despite the huge benefits they offer, writes Ed Stannard

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is right to draw attention to the need for inclusive, better-designed public spaces (Locked playgrounds, broken paddling pools: it’s a heatwave, but where will our children play? 28 June). We, and the green-space owners and managers we work with, had also hoped that the renewed enthusiasm for public space during the pandemic would lead to lasting investment.

Green-space managers would gladly deliver more parks that “integrate children’s play with adult socialising�, but to do this they need funding – not just to develop these spaces but, critically, to maintain their quality long-term. In London, local authority parks budgets have fallen by approximately 8% since 2008, while the capital’s population has grown by more than 15% – that means more than a million more people needing access to quality green space. With the challenges parks are facing from our changing climate, ever-increasing costs, and pressures to generate revenue for vital services, it is testament to those managing our public green spaces that they still manage to deliver so many internationally respected and innovative parks.

I had virtually continuous access to a wide range of events, fuelled by my own food and drink (unlike most festivals), writes Beth Saunders

Having just volunteered with Oxfam at Glastonbury festival, I’ve had some insight into the amount of work that goes into installing the vast infrastructure and acres of immersive artwork before a single artist sets foot on one of the dozens of stages. Over four-plus days I had virtually continuous access to a wide range of events, fuelled by my own food and drink (unlike most festivals). The cost per event is extraordinarily good value; my son has paid half the price of a Glasto ticket for one Oasis concert, and he’ll have to pay for expensive bar drinks and food. He is a musician working full-time in hospitality to pay his rent, as the commercial music industry does not reward people like him. The problem of accessibility to culture goes way beyond the fields of Worthy Farm (Letters, 2 July).
Beth Saunders
Sedbergh, Cumbria

No champagne supernova | Painting planes | Learning the bagpipes | Onion/bagpipes difference | Brittany bagpipes

The suggestion that the Oasis gigs will “inject £940 million into the UK economy� (Will it be rowdier than the rugby? Cardiff gears up for Oasis reunion opening night , 3 July) is the type of thing said about any big events, but I suspect that there is no injection, as it’s not “new� money being created: people chose to spend their pre-existing cash on one thing instead of something else. Certainly as a Cardiff resident I won’t feel any financial benefit from the Oasis gig.
David Rennie
Cardiff

• It has been alleged that Palestine Action caused £7m of damage to two Voyager planes at RAF Brize Norton. I would like to recommend my new business to the RAF – I would clean their planes of red paint for the bargain price of £5m, thus saving the government £2m. A bargain. Where can I apply?
Richard Fielding
Abthorpe, Northamptonshire

Michael Meadowcroft says a failure to forge a constructive alliance with backbenchers was at the core of the welfare bill debacle. Plus letters from Michael Bartlet , Shareen Campbell, Derrick Cameron, Geoff Reid and Valerie Mainwood

The one upside that the government can draw from the welfare reform bill debacle is that it demonstrates the genuine tension between the different roles of parliament and government (Keir Starmer forced into dramatic climbdown to pass welfare reform bill, 1 July). It can be presented as chiming in with the view of many voters that politics today does not work and that all governments simply do what benefits themselves.

The government’s failure to forge a constructive relationship with its backbench Labour MPs lies at the heart of its need for the last-minute revisions of its proposals, but a recharging of that relationship could well resonate with the electorate.

Readers on the controversy over the rap group’s appearance at Glastonbury festival, livestreamed by the BBC

I do appreciate Marina Hyde’s irony and dry humour, I really do (Glastonbury chanters or the Southport hate-tweeter – throw the book at one, you must throw it at them all, 1 July). However, whether the Glastonbury incident constituted a criminal offence or not, her lumping together of Bob Vylan and Lucy Connolly is a case of intellectual apples and pears.

During last year’s riots, people were actually attacking and attempting to burn alive asylum seekers in hotels. No one is in a position to attack the Israel Defense Forces, who are the ones allegedly committing war crimes – eg burning and blasting people to death in cafes populated by students on the shores of the Mediterranean – and a military force that our own government is still giving arms and intelligence assistance to.