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19 hours ago
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The Guardian view on Nnena Kalu’s historic Turner prize win: breaking a glass ceiling | Editorial
The UK art world is finally becoming more inclusive. But greater support must be given to the organisations that enable disabled artists to flourishThe Turner prize is no stranger to sparking debate or pushing boundaries. This year it has achieved both. For the first time, an artist with learning disabilities has won. Glasgow-born Nnena Kalu took the award for her colourful, cocoon-like sculptures made from VHS tape, clingfilm and other abandoned materials, along with her large swirling vortex drawings. Kalu is autistic, with limited verbal communication. In an acceptance speech on her behalf, Kalu’s facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead, said that “a very stubborn glass ceiling” had been broken.Kalu’s win is a high-profile symbol of a shift towards greater inclusivity that has been happening in the UK arts world over the past five years. Last month, Beyond the Visual opened at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, in which everything is curated or created by blind and partially sighted artists. The exhibits range from Moore sculptures (which visitors are encouraged to touch) to David Johnson’s 10,000 stone-plaster digestive biscuits stamped with braille. Design and Disability at the V&A South Kensington is showcasing the ways in which disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people have shaped culture from the 1940s to now.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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
19 hours ago
Resident doctors, a fair deal is on the table. Please do not strike at this moment of crisis for the NHS | Keir Starmer
A super flu epidemic is sweeping the country. Let us come together to protect the institution we all loveKeir Starmer is the British prime ministerI am a Labour prime minister who believes in workers’ right to strike. But let’s be clear about the strikes planned by resident doctors next week. They should not happen. They are reckless. They place the NHS and patients who need it in grave danger.I remain hopeful they can be averted. A good deal is on the table, and the British Medical Association (BMA) is putting it to members this weekend. My message to the doctors is simple – take it.Keir Starmer is the prime minister of the United KingdomDo 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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
20 hours ago
Donald Trump is pursuing regime change – in Europe | Jonathan Freedland
The US made it clear this week that it plans to help the parties of the European far right gain power. Keir Starmer and his fellow leaders have to face this new realityWhen are we going to get the message? I joked a few months back that, when it comes to Donald Trump, Europe needs to learn from Sex and the City’s Miranda Hobbes and realise that “He’s just not that into you”. After this past week, it’s clear that understates the problem. Trump’s America is not merely indifferent to Europe – it’s positively hostile to it. That has enormous implications for the continent and for Britain, which too many of our leaders still refuse to face.The depth of US hostility was revealed most explicitly in the new US national security strategy, or NSS, a 29-page document that serves as a formal statement of the foreign policy of the second Trump administration. There is much there to lament, starting with the sceptical quote marks that appear around the sole reference to “climate change”, but the most striking passages are those that take aim at Europe.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistDo 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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
20 hours ago
Welcome to the 2026 World Cup shakedown! The price of a ticket: the integrity of the game | Marina Hyde
In World Cup parlance, Qatar was Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s qualifier. Now it’s the big time for Trump’s dictator-curious protegeI used to think Fifa’s recent practice of holding the World Cup in autocracies was because it made it easier for world football’s governing body to do the things it loved: spend untold billions of other people’s money and siphon the profits without having to worry about boring little things like human rights or public opinion. Which, let’s face it, really piss around with your bottom line.But for a while now, that view has seemed ridiculously naive, a bit like assuming Recep Erdoğan followed Vladimir Putin’s election-hollowing gameplan just because hey, he’s an interested guy who likes to read around a lot of subjects. So no: Fifa president Gianni Infantino hasn’t spent recent tournaments cosying up to authoritarians because it made his life easier. He’s done it to learn from the best. And his latest decree this week simply confirms Fifa is now a fully operational autocracy in the classic populace-rinsing style. Do just absorb yesterday’s news that the cheapest ticket for next year’s World Cup final in the US will cost £3,120 – seven times more than the cheapest ticket for the last World Cup final in Qatar. (Admittedly, still marginally cheaper than an off-peak single from London to Manchester.)Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
Trans rights should be a private affair. A toxic debate does no one any favours | Simon Jenkins
The courts are a clumsy means to negotiate social relationships. Let organisations make up their own minds about inclusionTowards the end of her life, I was a friend of the writer Jan Morris. I had known her for many years and, much to my regret, had declined an offer to do her “tell all” interview when she transitioned. Jan presented herself as a woman and had undergone an operation. To me she was simply a remarkable woman. She touched, sometimes humorously, on embarrassing incidents in her life. But it never occurred to me that a legal ruling might hover over our restaurant table and block her from going to the ladies.Last April, the supreme court issued a ruling confirming that the word “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, not a person’s legal gender. This has a wide-reaching impact on how equality law is applied in practice, particularly in providing sex-based rights such as single-sex spaces. Six months later, a draft code on the ruling’s implementation was sent by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson. She has been sitting on it ever since, pleading for more time.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistDo 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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
The facts are stark: Europe must open the door to migrants, or face its own extinction | George Monbiot
Plummeting birth rates mean that without attracting immigration, many countries are sliding towards collapseI know what “civilisational erasure” looks like: I’ve seen the graph. The European Commission published it in March. It’s a chart of total fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman. After a minor bump over the past 20 years, the EU rate appears to be declining once more, and now stands at 1.38. The UK’s is 1.44. A population’s replacement rate is 2.1. You may or may not see this as a disaster, but the maths doesn’t care what you think. We are gliding, as if by gravitational force, towards the ground.Civilisational erasure is the term the Trump administration used in its new national security strategy, published last week. It claimed that immigration, among other factors, will result in the destruction of European civilisation. In reality, without immigration there will be no Europe, no civilisation and no one left to argue about it.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnistDo 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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
The Guardian view on Labour’s new peerages: another boost for the ermine arms race | Editorial
Sir Keir Starmer promised to bring meaningful reform to the House of Lords. He is failing to introduce itIn opposition, Sir Keir Starmer called the unelected House of Lords “indefensible”. This week, barely 18 months into his prime ministership, Sir Keir took the total of unelected peers he has appointed since July 2024 to 96. Remarkably, Wednesday’s 34 new life peerages, mainly Labour supporters, take his appointment total above those of each of his four most recent Conservative predecessors. You must go back to David Cameron to find a prime minister who did more to stuff the Lords than Sir Keir.At the last election, Labour presented itself to the voters as a party of Lords reform. The party manifesto promised to remove the remaining hereditary peers, to reform the appointments process, to impose a peers’ retirement age, and to consult on proposals for replacing the Lords with an alternative second chamber. The House of Lords, the manifesto flatly declared, was “too big”.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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
The Guardian view on far-right perversions of the Christmas message: promoting a gospel of hate | Editorial
A Tommy Robinson-inspired carol service is the latest sign of a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement. The Church of England is right to push backThe story of Christmas is a tale of poverty and flight from persecution. According to Christian tradition, humanity’s saviour is born in a stable, since Mary and Joseph are unable to find a room in Bethlehem. The holy family subsequently flee to Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod. This drama grounds the New Testament message of compassion for the stranger, the fugitive and all those who find themselves far from home. “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat,” says Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”The spirit of a far-right show of force planned on Saturday by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, will be somewhat different. Since reportedly converting fully to Christianity while serving a prison sentence for contempt of court, Mr Yaxley-Lennon has energetically deployed his faith to promote his own gospel of ethnic discord and political polarisation. The Unite the Kingdom rally he organised in July featured hymns, a plethora of wooden crosses and a Christian preacher who spoke of a war against “the Muslim”. His latest provocation is a “carol service” in central London, ostensibly to “put Christ back in Christmas”.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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
An EU-UK mobility scheme won’t erase the ‘violent indifference’ against young people. But it’s a start | Zoe Williams
We need people from Europe to move to the UK – but also a way to give Brits the opportunity to build the futures they craveAnnouncing her new Youth Matters plan – £500m to “boost resilience and teach skills” – the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, spoke of a “violent indifference” from the political establishment towards young people that had been going on “for decades”. She’s not wrong. We can look at all of the ways in which young people have seen their economic prospects and work opportunities systematically destroyed – and see that they all date from 2010.First, the tripling of the tuition fee cap saddled them with debts that have become astronomical, particularly for degrees that are socially beneficial, such as medicine and nursing; this, incidentally, from a coalition in which one party explicitly promised never to do that. Yet for all its boldness in setting fire to manifesto promises and playing fast and loose with a generation’s future, the tuition fees policy didn’t actually deliver a sustainable funding plan for tertiary education – instead leaving it to cross-subsidise with foreign students, whom the political establishment has spent the past five years trying to chase out of the country.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnistDo 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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
In this age of authoritarians, online abuse of women is soaring – and it’s leading to ‘real-world’ violence | Julie Posetti
Our UN report reveals the link between the online misogyny and offline crimes that are hounding women out of public lifeNetworked misogyny is now firmly established as a key tactic in the 21st-century authoritarian’s playbook. This is not a new trend – but it is now being supercharged by generative AI tools that make it easier, quicker and cheaper than ever to perpetrate online violence against women in public life – from journalists to human rights defenders, politicians and activists.The objectives are clear: to help justify the rollback of gender equality and women’s reproductive rights; to chill women’s freedom of expression and their participation in democratic deliberation; to discredit truth-tellers; and to pave the way for the consolidation of authoritarian power.Dr Julie Posetti is the director of the Information Integrity Initiative at TheNerve, a digital forensics lab founded by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa. She is also a professor of journalism and chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, University of London.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. Continue reading...
The Guardian
4 days ago
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