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.