As France’s political left and centre combined spectacularly to keep out the far-right National Rally, Jon Henley explained what could come next in a country unused to coalition governments. Ashifa Kassam captured the moment in Lyon, while Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis summed up the stunning turnaround in an episode of Today in Focus with Michael Safi. Our panel of experts asked: who will govern France now that the far right has been defeated?
In the US, debate over whether Joe Biden should stand aside continues to dominate the conversation. Biden’s nervously anticipated press conference at the Nato summit in Washington was expertly covered by a team including new global affairs correspondent Andrew Roth, while columnist Margaret Sullivan urged the press to do a better job of balancing reporting on the president’s age and decline with giving due attention to the threat posed by Trump. In a much-shared piece, Rebecca Solnit asked why the pundit class is so keen to force Biden out of the race, and Ed Pilkington covered the small group of Democrats who have outlined a way to hold a “blitz primary” to identify a potential successor at next month’s convention.
It was a busy first week for the UK’s Labour government and Keir Starmer’s new Stakhanovites. Patrick Wintour, our political editor in 1997, looked back at what Blair’s landslide could teach Starmer, while Aditya Chakrabortty warned the leaders of the two main parties that Britain’s political foundations have moved. Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey looked back at Starmer’s first week – and his trip to the US for the Nato summit – in Politics Weekly UK. Readers were also taken by Jennifer Rankin’s look back at how badly new MP Nigel Farage behaved in his European Parliament days.
Last week, English former neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was handed a 15th whole-life order, having been jailed last year for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six. The high-profile nature of the case was always going to be emotionally charged, and questioning the safety of the convictions was something to report with care. But many in the medical profession have serious concerns about what they describe as “medical inaccuracies” in the evidence at the heart of the trial. Our special correspondent Felicity Lawrence spoke to dozens of sources over months, as well as the lead prosecution expert witness and the defence expert to produce this investigation.
Our coverage of Euro 2024 has been unmissable. Our Spanish football expert Sid Lowe wrote about wonderkid Lamine Yamal, the youngest scorer in men’s Euros history. England had its own new hero in Ollie Watkins, whose 90th-minute winner against the Netherlands sent England into Sunday’s final. Rob Draper wrote about Watkins’s incredible rise to the top: a decade ago he was on loan at sixth-tier Weston-super-Mare. Jonathan Wilson wrote from the stadium in Dortmund about England manager Gareth Southgate’s unlikely transformation from technocrat to reckless adventurer, and the Football Weekly gang were straight in the studio to capture the giddy joy (if you’re English) of the moment, too.
“The twisted genius of this disease begins with the way it smuggles itself in under the cover of other conditions.” Michael Aylwin wrote a long read with heartbreaking honesty about his late wife Vanessa’s dementia. The affecting article perfectly captures the realities of the illness — I’m not sure I’ve seen it written about in this way.
Once upon a time, British courts were packed with journalists from four different specialist court reporting agencies. Now, there are just a few left. Sophie Elmhirst spent a week at the Old Bailey (the central criminal court of England and Wales) with the last of the old school court reporters, whose eccentric old school panache and often hilarious relish for the job is matched by a strong sense of its importance.
In Australia, Sarah Martin has been investigating the Exclusive Brethren’s school network that received generous support from Australian taxpayers while tightly controlling students and subjecting them to near constant surveillance, according to insiders.
Could placing an elastic band around your phone be the life hack we need to become more productive? If you ever feel a bit lazy but still need to get stuff done, why not try some of Joel Snape’s 11 great tips for productivity … for people who can’t be bothered? Joel’s tips didn’t, however, include getting up at 5am every day to “win the day”. Anita Chaudhuri joined the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Michelle Obama in the “5am club” for a week. The end result? Lots of yawning.
This week Jeremy O’Harris’s Slave Play opened in London’s West End, arriving from New York garlanded with praise and not a little controversy. I went along with the Guardian’s wonderful theatre reviewer, Arifa Akbar, who wrote: “I challenge anyone to leave Slave Play without needing to argue in favour or against, describe moments, express solidarity or otherwise.” It’s true — we were discussing it in the street for a long time afterwards. As Arifa said in her review, “It might be flawed but it is charismatic, needling theatre”.
One more thing … The Toronto Star ran a disturbing piece by Andrea Robin Skinner, the daughter of the great Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, revealing that her stepfather had repeatedly sexually abused her and that Munro knew, yet did nothing. It was published after Munro’s death in May. Skinner wrote that the abuse had started when she was aged nine, but her mother said she “loved him too much” to leave her husband.
