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"For so long the US has been the core UK and European ally, the backbone of NATO, the largest contributor to the WHO, and the loudest voice in proudly proclaiming its democracy. It seems unbelievable to state baldly that the US is a threat to the global economy, to global health and to global stability. But it is, and the sooner this is acknowledged the better." Christine Pagel shows that Trump is following the playbook that has seen democracy die in other countries.

Nataliya Gumenyuk explains why Ukraine wants to fight on: "The horror of Russian military rule has been felt not only in areas of the south and east, where much of the war has been fought, but also near Kyiv in the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion, when Russian forces committed widespread atrocities in the capital’s suburbs."

"I have been very anxious to show that these young people are not 'problem young people,' but young people with problems." Richard Kemp reminds us that one of his key themes as Lord Mayor of Liverpool are the problems faced by care-leavers and many other disadvantaged children in the city.

So concern for the Welsh language scuppered a nuclear power station? Rubbish, says Dan Davies.

Brian Klaas on what Detectorists has to teach us about the meaning of life: "Throughout the show, the allure of money and valuable treasure lurks, but whenever it seduces the detectorists and they lose sight of their intrinsic motivation, their lives begin to fall apart, cursed by a momentarily conversion to the False Gospel."

Colin Yeo, an immigration lawyer, reviews Paddington in Peru.

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"Between 2012 and 2019, austerity was responsible for an estimated 335,000 excess deaths. The rate of prescription of antidepressants in England has doubled since 2011: nearly 20 per cent of adults now take them. The average height of children who grew up under austerity fell relative to European benchmarks." William Davies on 14 years of Conservative rule.

Guy Shrubsole analyses Labour's environmental policies.

Naomi Fisher says we’re in the middle of a cultural clash in the way that we understand mental health: "The way that we understand distress is deeply rooted in our culture and time, but it doesn’t feel like that to us. We tend to think that the way we understand things now is the right way, superior to previous generations and other cultures."

"On the May Bank Holiday weekend, I was walking with a group of refugees. We managed a couple of short strenuous climbs, a gorge scramble and long open stretches along the contours of the hills. The walks were tiring and testing, and the wind, rain and sun took turns to blast us. But they were joyful and exhilarating walks. I saw people stretch out their arms and point their faces up to the sky as I do. Their eyes sparkled and their smiles broadened with the beauty and the expanse of it all." Stella Perrott believes the beauty and health benefits of the countryside must be shared with everyone, regardless of background or financial status

"Went the Day Well has been praised for its stark realism, including hostage-taking, numerous close-ups of shootings, threats to execute children and the murder of an elderly vicar during a church service.  Some critics find this surprising in the context of wartime propaganda.  But this is perhaps to misunderstand the film’s purpose, which was surely instructional as much as it was morale boosting." Jeremy Burchardt watches Went the Day Well?, Cavalcanti's 1942 masterpiece.

Emine Saner talks to Cyndi Lauper: "The song Girls Just Want to Have Fun wasn’t written by Lauper, but she changed the lyrics and the feel of the song and it became a huge hit. Suddenly she was famous, but isolated."

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Charlotte Thompson, who lives there, challenges the government's contention that Rwanda is a safe country: "Many Rwandan citizens are extremely proud of the position their country is in now and support the government entirely, one can hardly be surprised having watched the transformation. But many do not, and the price of not supporting the government can often be, well, death."

Ofcom will have to change its attitude towards GB News as the general election approaches, says Stewart Purvis.

"Having just stepped into public life, Magyar is still unknown and somewhat of an enigma. On the one hand, he is extraordinarily self-possessed, sharp, tough, articulate, and strikingly patriotic. On the other hand, he often comes off as idealistic and naïve. Like an escapee from Plato's cave, only slowly adjusting to the light and coming to recognize the extent of his previous illusions, Magyar is a man who still doesn’t fully understand the nature of the political regime he's turned his back on." H. David Baer asks if Péter Magyar is the leader the Hungarian opposition has been looking for.

Jonathan Haidt argues that we underprotect children in the virtual world and overprotect them in the real one.

"In the suppression of the Mau Mau, Britain defaulted to blunt collective punishment, detaining thousands of suspects behind barbed wire, under observation from watchtowers. As a boy in Kenya, even if he’d been made aware of it, such action would have been unfathomable to Rankin. 'What I could not conceive, as I sat on the floor of my father’s study in my shorts and shirt and Bata sandals, was that we, the brave British who I knew had won "The War" ... were now building ... concentration camps.'" Colin Grant reviews Kenya, Mau Mau and Me by Nicholas Rankin.

Tim Rolls remembers the night in 1971 that Chelsea, 2-0 down from the first leg, beat Bruges 4-0 in a European Cup-Winners Cup quarter final at Stamford Bridge: "After the third goal Osgood 'jumped the dog track and fell to my knees and saluted the human cauldron that was The Shed. In that moment, the fans and I were one, united in euphoria. It was a special moment in my life.' It was also, arguably, his greatest moment at Stamford Bridge."

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At the end of a tribute to Peter Hellyer, William Wallace puts his finger on the Liberal Democrats' dilemma: "Britain still needs radical change, but the painful adjustments that will involve are not welcome to voters whose lives are more comfortable as things are.  We are a radical party dependent on centrist support."

Benny Hunter spends a day watching asylum seekers being jailed.

Matthew Pennell argues that, on education, the Lib Dems need to snap out of a call-and-response dynamic with populists: "What do pupils and parents actually want from the education system? Surely it’s that children are taught in a safe and attractive learning environment and the approach to education equips them for the 21st century world as best as it can be anticipated – soft skills (hello English and other modern languages, relevant to the latest tech trends (hello Computer Science) and playing to our strengths as a nation in sectors such as creative industries (hello Arts, Music and Drama)."

How do you recognise a temperate rainforest in Britain and Ireland? John Healey has the answer.

Eoin Morgan says cricket has institutionally marginalised huge parts of society: "Barriers around class, gender and ethnicity are conspiring to ensure that many young people face insurmountable obstacles before they get near the elite pathway system, let along the professional game."

The University of Southampton extraordinary four-year battle to prevent diaries and correspondence from Lord and Lady Mountbatten being made public is revealed by Martin Williams.

News from Labour: Neal Lawson has been expelled and Thangam Debbonaire won't commit to stopping Rwanda flights

Neal Lawson, the head of the cross-party campaign group Compass, writes in the Guardian:

Last Friday an email from the Labour party – of which I’ve been a member for 44 years – broke my political heart. They wrote coldly to tell me that back in May 2021, I’d committed a crime: retweeting a Lib Dem MP’s call for some voters to back Green candidates in local elections, accompanied by my suggestion that such cross-party cooperation represented “grownup progressive politics”. My punishment? Expulsion.

I'm told that if you're a Labour member who wants a political career you have to be careful who you're seen talking to. Sometimes it seems internal repression is the only relic of socialism the party has preserved.

And if you are minded to vote Labour because at least they're not the Tories, don't get your hopes up too high. 

Here's Thangam Debonnaire declining to say that Labour would cancel flights of asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Incredible. When asked would Labour stop flights to Rwanda Thangam Debonnaire can’t simply say ‘no’.

After the last 10 years I think the electorate expects straight talking, if nothing else. Answer the question! pic.twitter.com/PKE2FtdcOi

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) June 29, 2023

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Caroline Lucas, Wera Hobhouse MP and Olivia Blake argue that the Climate and Ecology Bill is our best chance to tackle the climate crisis.

"The root of the asylum controversy in the UK is that our system for determining refugee status works so poorly. It should allow the country quickly to decide who is a refugee and who is not. But it is set up and operated so that most refugees do not have their claims properly recognised in a timely way." David Cantor sets out an alternative to the Illegal Migration Bill.

"From the bin crews in Cambridge Council to Citizens Advice, Dunelm, Atom Bank, some NHS trusts and Sainsburys, the idea is spreading and growing in popularity. Soon it may be the employers who have not tried this who are left behind." Mo Kanjilal asks if it's time we all moved to a four-day week.

"When the historian Nicolas Bell-Romero started a job researching Cambridge University’s past links to transatlantic slavery three years ago, he did not expect to be pilloried in the national press by anonymous dons as 'a "woke activist" with an agenda'." Samira Shackle on the backlash against research into slavery.

Nathan J. Robinson on a Jordan Peterson fan who lost his faith and the lessons we can learn about drawing people away from right-wing ideology.

James Brooke-Smith spent lockdown watching vintage chat shows: "Instead of the torrent of bile and invective and dark mutterings about secret paedophiliac plots orchestrated from pizza parlours in Washington - as the less salubrious corners of the internet would have it - I entered a halcyon world of charm and erudition, wit and glamour."

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"It was an absolute stain on our country that we once kept children locked up in immigration removal centres, such as Dungavel in Scotland. To make the mistake once was bad enough. To return to the policy would be unconscionable." Alistair Carmichael says detaining child migrants is a stain on our country will not deter small boats.

"The review’s findings suggest that, although Washington has since 2014 imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, the Justice Department under the Obama and Trump administrations did not prioritize prosecutions related to that war - filing relatively few cases until after Putin escalated it in 2022." Nahal Toosi examines how the US let Russia off the hook after its annexation of Crimea.

Samira Ahmed on the uncovering of the tape of the Beatles concert at Stowe School: "He brought along an extract that we played through the stage PA system turned up as loud as possible to match the experience he’d had back in 1963. It was emotional for all us, including two young A level music students who came along to listen. It was like time travel."

Pen Hemingway lays bare the brutal history of British prison hulks.

"The film met with both critical acclaim and considerable controversy upon its original release. But thinking about Life of Brian as a parody of biblical epics is both the best way to appreciate it and serves, paradoxically, to illuminate the aspects of the Christian faith that even Monty Python could not puncture." Jack Butler offers a Christian reading of Python.

Mike Klein looks at the chess career of Emory Tate, father of the obnoxious Andrew. who was a trailblazing African-American player.

A reminder that the UK already uses restraint on children in the care system

There has, rightly, been an outcry against the Home Office announcement that child asylum seekers will be forcibly restrained if they 'resist deportation'. But we shouldn't forget that restraint is widely used on children living in the care system.

In July 2021, Children & Young People Now reported:

Dozens of MPs have joined forces to call on the government to ban the use of handcuffs on children in care.

Ministers are backing the Hope Instead of Handcuffs campaign, launched by Emily Aklan, chief executive of children’s social care provider Serenity Welfare, which is calling for legislation allowing a child in care to be handcuffed during secure transportation to be scrapped.

It is currently legal for private transport providers to physically restrain children at their discretion without the accountability of regulation or monitoring of restraint.  

The magazine quoted the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who had tabled a parliamentary motion stating that a child who has not committed or is not suspected of committing a crime should not be placed in handcuffs or any other form of physical restraint:

"The rising use of restraint against children in the care system reflects a whole series of policy failures and wider lack of early intervention. If we're going to keep children safe, we need transparency about how they're being treated. 

We must shine a light on practices which have been allowed to stay in the dark away from public knowledge for far too long and start acting to stop the social care system causing further harm to already vulnerable children and young people."

Emily Aklan, who launched Hope Instead of Handcuffs, said:

“I’ve seen far too many children with red marks around their wrists with massive distrust towards the system which is supposed to be helping them. 

But with no need to monitor and report any use of handcuffs and safeguarding issues preventing children from being able to share their stories, it’s been incredibly difficult to prove just how widespread this issue is.”

Concern over the lives of children in the care system does break out now and then, though it tends not to last long, but there was some good news last year.

As I blogged at the time, Wales became the first UK nation to protect children from being handcuffed or restrained when being transported between care settings.

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"We live in a global, interconnected community and it is ridiculous to think that if we only act in our own self interest, there will not be consequences to our ability to engage internationally. It’s not as if we are anywhere near the top of the league table of countries where refugees flee." Tim Farron says that if Rwanda can support the wellbeing and integration of refugees, then so can the UK.

Pam Jarvis argues that changes to education have created a toxic environment of overbearing discipline, 'zero tolerance' and the rote learning of a narrow curriculum.

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, Charles Dickens' great-great-great-granddaughter, talks to the Mirror: "The gap between the rich and poor in Dickens' time was huge, and in recent years the gap has grown again. We have never been so like the Victorian age in terms of the haves and have-nots. People lived hand to mouth, they weren’t saving to buy a home. They were trying to cover their rent - there is similarity today." 

"Wolves are making a dramatic comeback across mainland Europe, but the controversial prospect of their return to the UK remains unlikely for the foreseeable future. Instead, the growing focus here is on the lynx, a much less well-known predator, but one that many believe could prove less challenging to live with. So, how realistic is a lynx reintroduction and what might it mean for us, should we find ourselves sharing familiar spaces with this unfamiliar cat?" Hugh Webster asks if we could learn to live with the lynx.

Pitchfork choses the 50 best Britpop albums.

"It’s nearly 10 years since I last visited the ruins of Ruperra Castle, in the county borough of Caerphilly, but, to judge from photographs, this magical and unexpectedly sequestered ruin between Newport and Cardiff has only grown more melancholy with the passage of the years." John Goodall makes the case for saving Ruperra Castle.

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"The Homes for Ukraine scheme, which has housed more than 100,000 people in Britain since the start of the war, is now at risk of collapse. Without early and drastic intervention, the scheme will compound rather than ease the suffering of the Ukrainian families it was meant to help." Keir Giles explains what has gone wrong with the government's effort to help war refugees from Ukraine.

Eleanor Rylance remembers helping a young mother of two children living in appalling housing conditions: "We should be viewing this as a national scandal, not demonising young and vulnerable people living in terrible housing stock."

The Guardian interviews the clinical psychologist Richard Bentall, a penetrating critic of conventional views of mental illness.

Gale Sinatra and Barbara K. Hofer explode five myths that fuel the rejection of science.

"Morgan was superficially a 'swinging London' movie – made by a man who was, to the best of my knowledge, not heavily involved in the hedonism of the time: his main hobbies were gardening, collecting art and playing bridge. Yet he and writer David Mercer tapped into the fierce debates, associated with the radical psychiatrist RD Laing, about whether insanity can sometimes be a “rational” response to a mad world." Matthew Reisz on his father Karel's contribution to post-war British cinema.

The Britten Pears Archive examines the composer's rich creative relationship with the boys' choir from the state-sector Wandsworth School.

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"The idea of the 'illegal' asylum seeker is a falsehood that has been actively peddled by the Home Office and the Home Secretary in recent years. When people talk about asylum seekers coming to the UK 'illegally', what they really mean is asylum seekers arriving via informal and unofficial routes, such as crossing the Channel via small boat. However, asylum seekers are legally allowed to come to the UK even when making an 'illegal entry'." Amelia Susserott explodes the myth of the illegal asylum seeker.

Peter Hain says British politicians have failed Northern Ireland: "What a colossal, devastating failure by British politicians over Northern Ireland. The current impasse - with the Northern Irish Assembly still suspended and another set of elections now required, the second since May - is the product of terrible neglect by the British government starting in 2010, accelerated and deepened by Brexit, which has shattered the delicate power-sharing balance required for functioning Northern Irish institutions."

A growing number of children with mental health problems are being treated on adult psychiatric wards as services struggle to cope with a surge in demand, reports Shanti Das.

James West is critical of the way the media covers climate change: "This is one area where many people with no qualifications in science, with largely arts and humanities training and who have no authority in science, feel able to express opinions on climate science and expect to be taken seriously."

"Watching that scene we, the excited children of black Jamaican migrants in Luton, let out a collective 'Yes!'. Sidney Poitier was one cool dude on and off screen - and we loved, absolutely loved Virgil Tibbs, the actor who played him and all he stood for." Colin Grant surveys the career of Sidney Poitier.

Robert Edgar traces the roots of folk horror back to Thomas Hardy.

No, Tony Benn didn't say that about governments and refugees

There's a very good quotation that pops up on Twitter from time to time. It runs:

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.

Almost invariably, these words are attributed to Tony Benn, but he did not say them. Rather, they were written by the Scottish journalist (and sometime Lib Dem Holyrood candidate) Neal Ascherson.

The history of the quotation is as follows.

In 1996 Ascherson wrote an article on the al-Masari affair in the Independent, where he said:

The al-Masari affair overflows in all directions with moral relativism. My own view is that to expel a political asylum-seeker because his country threatens to cancel business contracts with Britain is absolutely wrong. 

And it is not only wrong but dangerous in the long term to us all. This is because of one of the Laws of Politics that I wrote long ago into my little black notebook: "The way a state treats its aliens is the way it would treat its own subjects if it dared".

And in 1999 Francis Wheen paraphrased Ascherson to produce more or less the quotation we know today:

We should always watch how politicians treat refugees, Neal Ascherson once wrote, because that's how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.

Neal Ascherson, incidentally, has passed 90 and is still going strong. You should be able to read some of his articles on the London Review of Books site before its paywall kicks in.