The horrors of the war in Gaza, and the Israeli prime minister’s conduct and rhetoric, are spurring shifts in policies overseas

The multiple standing ovations that Benjamin Netanyahu received in Washington this week, on his first trip abroad since the Hamas attack of 7 October, must have rung hollow even to his ears. The problem was not merely the distraction of the US political class by Joe Biden’s abandonment of his re-election bid, and Kamala Harris’s ascension. Almost half of House and Senate Democrats boycotted his address to Congress. Many instead met relatives of hostages, who are furious at Mr Netanyahu for failing to reach a ceasefire agreement. Nancy Pelosi described his speech as by far the worst by any foreign dignitary at the Capitol.

The Israeli prime minister is used to unpopularity: around 70% of Israelis think he has not done enough to win the hostages’ release; a similar number want him to resign. But abroad, he bears much of the responsibility for a decisive shift in attitudes towards his country as well as himself, even in its staunchest ally.

The duty of care must be taken more seriously as illusion meets the tough reality of the dancefloor

The new political dawn, when the BBC might have hoped for at least a brief period of tranquillity, came to an abrupt end with the double whammy of a scandal on one of its flagship programmes, Strictly Come Dancing, and an annual report which revealed that half a million households had cancelled their licence fee last year. Though there is no direct link between the two the coincidence demonstrates the delicate line the corporation is treading in terms of keeping itself match fit and beyond criticism in an era of proliferating competition and sniping social media.

For the last 20 years, Strictly Come Dancing has been one of the pillars on which the BBC has been able to lean in demonstrating its capacity to entertain multiple generations simultaneously, while reflecting their own diversity back to them as something to be celebrated, with stars excelling regardless of age, physical disability, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

The new government is right to want to restore trust in politics, but its lobbying curbs on MPs do not go far enough

In his first speech to the new parliament, Sir Keir Starmer told MPs: “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era.” It was a powerful call to attention. It was also wholly justified. Trust in politics, parliament and government has long been in decline, but slumped to new depths in the last parliament. Without decisive remedial action, the credibility of our democratic system remains at risk. Politics must clean up its act.

Labour has come to power promising changes and using ambitious rhetoric. The manifesto called for “a reset in our public life, a clean-up that ensures the highest standards of integrity and honesty”. It offered the pledge that “Labour will restore confidence in government”. Last week’s king’s speech contained some more detailed commitments. These included an element of House of Lords reform, a duty of candour requirement for public officials, tightened rules on lobbying by MPs and modernisation of parliamentary procedure.

The mortality gap between mothers and infants of different ethnicities reflects the need to tackle discrimination and racism inside and outside healthcare

Childbirth is a vulnerable time for any woman. Black women have particular cause to be anxious. Their labours are almost twice as likely to be investigated for potential NHS failings, the Guardian revealed this week, with the head of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), Gill Walton, blaming institutional racism. For every 1,000 deliveries by black women, there were 2.3 investigations, compared with 1.3 for white women.

Black women are up to six times more likely to experience some of the most serious birth complications as their white counterparts and almost four times as likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum, while Asian women are almost twice as likely to die. Black babies are almost twice as likely to die as white; Asian babies are also at greater risk.

A continuous demonstration of intra-party unity and loyalty to the party leader won’t solve Britain’s problems

The Labour party is a “broad church”, but there’s little space on its pews at the moment for principled nonconformists. The suspension of seven leftwing MPs for rebelling over the abolition of the two-child benefit cap is a curious affair, given that almost all their colleagues agreed with them. The two-child cap, introduced by the Conservatives in 2017, restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households. It impoverishes children, punishes ethnic minorities and humiliates women who have been raped. Unfair and morally repugnant, it is “the worst social security policy ever”, say academic experts. Ministers know this. Yet it is a truth that must be acknowledged everywhere but in the lobby divisions.

Removing the party whip was once considered the nuclear option. But it has now become routine. This will have far reaching consequences. “If we are now saying that MPs will have the whip removed – even temporarily – for voting against their party line on any measure,” posted the academic Philip Cowley, “we have changed the rules of engagement considerably.”

Sporting greatness can unite the world in admiration. In grim geopolitical times, that is a welcome prospect

Forget the politics; relish the spectacle. That was, in essence, Emmanuel Macron’s hopeful message this week, as he called for a domestic “truce” while Paris stages its first summer Olympic Games for 100 years. Following the president’s ill-advised election gamble, which almost opened the gates of power to the far right, the host nation finds itself consigned to a form of rudderless political limbo. At present, there is no proper answer to the question: “Who governs France?” But following Friday’s opening ceremony, a fortnight of excellence on track and field will offer a welcome diversion to a divided nation.

At a time when the geopolitical outlook furnishes few reasons to be cheerful, the same goes for the billions expected to tune in around the world. As the dreams and ambitions of more than 10,000 athletes are pursued, the stage is set for perhaps the most visually sumptuous Olympics of modern times. Adopting an approach of “if you’ve got it, flaunt it”, and avoiding the cost of building expensive new infrastructure, organisers are taking the Games into the streets of one of the world’s most instantly recognisable cities.

A ‘whole-system approach’ sounds good. But the public, and especially victims, need to know what it means

“When I talk to these mums, they are so broken, really broken, and they’re grateful to me because they know I’m talking about all of us,” Mina Smallman said recently of her role as a women’s safety campaigner, in the years since her two adult daughters were murdered in a London park. As Ms Smallman knows, the relatives of women killed by men are also victims. Many more families struggle with the impact of rape and other violence against women.

These offences are now so prevalent that the National Police Chiefs’ Council refers, in a new report, to a “national emergency”. The body’s first analysis of data from official statistics, including the crime survey, reveals that about 2 million women in England and Wales are victims of male violence each year. In the 12 months to March 2023, police recorded more than 100,000 rapes and serious sexual offences, and more than 400,000 domestic abuse-related crimes. Most worryingly, the number of offences has risen sharply – by 37% in five years – while perpetrators and victims are getting younger. The most common age for victims of tech-enabled violence is 10 to 15.

Since 1900, only four Tory leaders have not gone on to become prime minister. Rishi Sunak’s successor is likely to become the fifth

By stepping down as Conservative party leader, Rishi Sunak fired the starting gun on the race to replace him. It’s likely to be a long slog for the winner. The contest will run until 2 November, when a new leader will be unveiled just before the US election.

Those applying for the top job must submit their applications by Wednesday evening. Then will come months of campaigning, speechifying and, if fate allows, a star turn at the party conference. MPs will decide who will be the two final candidates. Members will have until Halloween to choose between them. Whoever wins faces a herculean task of reviving the Tories. The party’s general election defeat was the worst in its parliamentary history.

The president’s decision to abandon his bid for re-election gives his party a chance to reinvigorate the campaign and beat Donald Trump

Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday marked the beginning of the end of an American political life filled with second acts. None was more remarkable than his defeat of Donald Trump in 2020. His acceptance that he could not do so again will burnish what his vice-president on Monday described as an “unmatched” legacy. Elected to relief rather than elation, as the man saving the US from a second Trump term, he became the president who helped it recover from the pandemic, pushed through a landmark green infrastructure package and sought to shape a fairer economy.

He could now be a lame duck, beset by Republican attacks on his capacity to continue as commander-in-chief. But he could cement his record, emboldened by the certainty of departure from office. His decision to quit his re-election bid was belated, yet in sharp contrast to Mr Trump’s delusional egotism.

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 letters section, please click here.

Following serious disorder, Nigel Farage’s cynical response was an attempt to import Trump-style discord into our cities

The renowned social historian David Kynaston observed at the weekend that multicultural Britain has made huge progress compared with 60 years ago, when local Conservatives ran a notoriously racist election campaign in the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick. He is, of course, quite right. It is impossible to imagine a serious political figure delivering a speech like the inflammatory 1968 “rivers of blood” address by Enoch Powell. But the response of some on the contemporary right to the recent disorder in Leeds shows that there is no room for complacency.

After rioting broke out in the deprived multi-ethnic district of Harehills following the removal of children from a Roma family into care, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, swiftly condemned the violence, which saw a police car tipped over, officers attacked and a passing bus set on fire. A series of arrests have since been made, with more likely to follow. Leeds city council has, meanwhile, announced that it will undertake a review of the case that sparked the unrest, which took place in an area with a large Roma population. That review should also seek to address known causes of alienation and mistrust in a troubled community.

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 letters section, please click here.

Ed Miliband has won the argument that his party must go big to cut carbon emissions. But he will need to go bigger still

Sir Keir Starmer’s legislative plan to green Britain has arrived not a moment too soon. Last week, the government’s advisers warned that only a third of the carbon reductions required by law would be met under existing plans. The Climate Change Committee said that, for the first time since setting itself carbon-reduction targets, the UK is not on track to meet its goal. It is supposed to reduce emissions in 2030 by 68% compared with 1990 levels, to meet net zero by 2050.

The UK should, says the committee, now be in a phase of rapid investment and delivery. But the Tories’ turn against net zero policies has meant little progress on the rollout of low-carbon technology. That is why Labour’s king’s speech, which put the environment at the centre of policymaking, was so welcome. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, won the argument that the urgency of the climate emergency needed a bigger, more interventionist state.

A senior diplomat is now in the South. But ordinary people are finding it far more difficult to leave

South Korea celebrated its inaugural Defectors’ Day on 14 July, in honour of the 34,000 North Koreans who have made their home there. Within hours, news broke that one of Pyongyang’s senior diplomats had joined them. Ri Il-kyu, who had been a political counsellor in Cuba, is the highest-level defector since 2016, when North Korea’s deputy ambassador to Britain vanished from London and surfaced in Seoul. Mr Ri said that he was motivated by disillusionment with the regime, though frustrated ambition seems to have contributed.

Such insiders can bring valuable insight into political life and events in Pyongyang. Any such information is especially welcome when the North has deliberately increased its isolation and opacity, and when there are growing concerns about its burgeoning arms-for-oil relationship with Russia and advances in its weapons programme. George Robertson, head of the new Labour government’s defence review, warned last Tuesday that a “deadly quartet” of nations – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – are acting together against the west.

Helen Pitcher has shown no contrition for the failings of the watchdog, which blundered in the case of Andrew Malkinson

Our criminal justice system is rightly loaded in favour of letting those who are probably guilty walk free to avoid locking up the innocent for crimes they did not commit. Juries are directed to convict a defendant only if they are sure of their guilt. But terrible miscarriages of justice can and do happen.

There are supposed to be safeguards in the system to help expose these. Yet a new independent review of the Criminal Cases Review Commission’s handling of the case of Andrew Malkinson – who was imprisoned for 17 years for a violent rape he did not commit – shows just how threadbare that safety net really is.

Error that caused a global standstill reveals fragility of a networked world that has been created for efficiency rather than resilience

One bit of good news about the “epic IT crash” that brought the western world to a temporary standstill is that it was a product of human error rather than a Russian cyber-attack like the SolarWinds hack of 2020 that had a similar modus operandi.

Last week’s outage was caused by an update that a big US cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, pushed to its corporate clients early on Friday morning, which conflicted with Microsoft’s Windows operating system, rendering devices inoperable – with predictable consequences, given that virtually every large organisation in the world is using Microsoft Windows.

Democrats may feel battered by recent events, but they cannot afford to despair

“There are decades in which nothing happens, and weeks in which decades happen.” That aphorism, misattributed to Lenin and repeatedly cited by Steve Bannon, might have been coined for the last seven days. A single week in the US has encompassed the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, his acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination at a triumphalist convention, and reports that Joe Biden – struck down by Covid – is contemplating quitting his re-election bid amid mounting pressure from senior Democrats.

Look back only two weeks further and the political picture encompasses the disastrous debate that began the frenzy over Mr Biden’s candidacy, the supreme court’s momentous ruling on immunity, which transformed the relationship between president and people, and the shocking dismissal of the criminal case against Mr Trump over classified documents.

Billie Eilish is the latest celebrity to read a bedtime story on the BBC’s pre-school channel. It is not just tiny tots who will tune in

The American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish became the latest celebrity to read a bedtime story for the BBC’s CBeebies channel on Friday. Eilish, who won her second Oscar last year with her song What Was I Made For? for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster, Barbie, joins a rollcall of narrators so stellar that the question will soon not be who is on it, but who isn’t. She follows not only fellow singers such as Dolly Parton and Elton John, but the astronomer Brian Cox, the former Strictly Come Dancing professional Oti Mabuse, the makeover artist and TV cook Gok Wan, and any number of actors and comedians.

In publishing, the relationship between celebrity and storytelling for children too often appears to be a cynical exercise in brand extension. But the CBeebies bedtime stories are different. Many of the readers are attracted simply because they are parents themselves. Adult viewers reap the benefits too. No toddler will rush straight to bed at the sight of the actor Tom Hardy sitting on a garden bench beside his French bulldog, Blue, reading a story about the misadventures of a plastic bag – as many of their mothers professed to have done when CBeebies took to TikTok. Sold in overseas territories through the BBC’s commercial arms, the stories are also a moneyspinner for the cash-strapped corporation.

Citizens were failed by a lack of planning, and Lady Hallett wants a better system to be built fast

Citizens of all four nations of the UK were failed by politicians and officials who neglected to prepare properly for a pandemic or other civil emergency. Former UK health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock did not update or improve an inadequate pandemic strategy from 2011, that was geared towards flu rather than a novel virus. Resources that did exist were “constrained” by funding and, after 2018, redirected towards Brexit planning. Ministers were guilty of groupthink and did not make effective use of external experts or challenge scientific advice. The possibility of a lockdown was never seriously considered. Nor was enough attention paid to the likely impact of a pandemic on vulnerable groups.

These highly critical conclusions from the first module of the Covid inquiry are a landmark moment in the process of national reckoning being overseen by Heather Hallett. This is the first time that relatives of the 230,000 people who died of Covid have seen their anger about official failures, both before and during the pandemic, endorsed in such an authoritative way.

Keir Starmer has seized the opportunity of the meeting at Blenheim Palace to announce a much-needed reset in relations

By becoming prime minister two weeks ago, Keir Starmer inherited the host’s role at Thursday’s long-scheduled European Political Community summit in Oxfordshire. From Sir Keir’s perspective it was a perfect piece of timing and an extraordinary opportunity. It enabled this country’s new leader to show the voters at home and its allies abroad that Britain wishes to come in from the post-Brexit cold, taking its place at the heart of European responses to crises such as Ukraine.

The European Political Community is not a decision-making body like the European Union or the Nato alliance. It issues no summit communiques, deploys no armies and enforces no treaties or laws. But it is a pan-European body all the same, and more than 40 European heads of government came to Blenheim Palace. This therefore provided Sir Keir with an ideal platform to highlight what he described as Labour’s “reset” on Britain’s relations with Europe.