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      Whether it’s Trump or Harris in office, Starmer will need an incredible US ambassador. Here’s my vote | Martin Kettle

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      The widening of the Middle East war has a multiplicity of woeful causes and grim consequences. Many have the potential to become even more intractable in the weeks to come. Fresh human suffering in Israel, Lebanon and beyond is only the start of it. Donald Trump is wrong to claim we are on the brink of a third world war. But these events have global implications. Remember what happened after 9/11.The latest bombings and missile attacks mark a historic failure for politics and diplomacy. This is not the first such failure in the Middle East. But wishing that diplomacy could prevail will not make it happen, and even fragile ceasefires are a long way off right now. As angry populations rally behind the respective combatants the prospects for desperately needed political solutions are almost negligible. You can’t stop a war if those on all sides are determined to fight.On the global scale, the implications for Britain and for Keir Starmer’s government come a long way down the list of the escalation’s most important consequences. In domestic terms, however, they still matter very much indeed. The Gaza war has already made a powerful impact on British politics. Israel’s latest conflict with Iran and its proxies is likely to do the same. The shadow of the Iraq war is a lasting one, more than 20 years on.Yet Britain is not some touchline observer of events in the Middle East. British listening stations in Cyprus monitor the Middle East 24/7. British jets, based in Cyprus, fly over Syria and Iraq almost daily. Those same British jets flew missions to help protect Israel in April, and did so again this week in response to Iran’s missile attacks. Like it or not, Britain also has a history in the region.All of which underscores the high seriousness of the strategic choices that Starmer faces in foreign policy. Like all European nations, Britain now exists in an unstable world shaped by Chinese power, the threat from Russia, US political uncertainty and climate change. It has expelled itself from the European Union. Starmer was in Brussels today to try to make the best of these volatile realities.No one should kid themselves that this is not a difficult hand to play. The difficulty lies behind the escapist and trivialising foreign policy solutions in which Boris Johnson and Liz Truss took refuge, in office and afterwards. Starmer’s seriousness offers a quite different response to theirs but it brings another sort of danger. It puts him at risk of not challenging some inherited orthodoxies of British foreign policy at a newly unstable time for which they are no longer adequate. Dean Acheson’s 1962 comment that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role still echoes.Starmer himself has little background in foreign policy. He gets day-to-day advice from his national security adviser, Tim Barrow, and his foreign policy adviser, Ailsa Terry. It is hard to say from the outside if they are the ideal team for the biggest foreign policy call he faces as prime minister. That call is not, though, over the Middle East war, or the defence of Ukraine. It is not even over the relationship with the EU. It is over the relationship with the US.British foreign policy always seeks to hug America close. But a month from now, the US reaches a fork in the road. Trump and Kamala Harris offer radically different approaches to the country’s global role. These differences will shape Washington’s approach to every important global issue – including Ukraine, the Middle East, China, climate, and digital regulation – for the coming four years. They will be reflected, too, in the way the US operates towards international bodies including the United Nations, Nato, the International Monetary Fund and the international criminal court.The outcome will shape British foreign policy too. A Harris victory would permit something like business as usual. But a Trump win would not. Trying to hug Trump close risks being unsuccessful, dangerous and damaging. Even trying to influence him would require a very special skill set, notably the ability to catch Trump’s attention on Fox News. And Harris would be operating in a more volatile world, too, in which constrained US power might not give priority to British and European interests.That is why, for Starmer, there is an umbilical link between the pressures of a massive event such as the Middle East war and an otherwise relatively niche decision, like who should be the next UK ambassador to the US. Seen through the global lens, the imminent appointment of Karen Pierce’s successor in Washington is relatively minor. Seen through the UK lens, however, it is one of the hinges on which the success or failure of Starmer’s government will depend.Unsurprisingly, No 10 has said the Washington job – the special relationship’s most special post – will only be allocated after the US election. But it will be a defining moment all the same. Politicians including David Miliband, Catherine Ashton and Peter Mandelson have been mentioned. So have current ambassadors, including Menna Rawlings (now in Paris) and Barbara Woodward (now at the UN). Whitehall veterans such as Tom Scholar (former head of the Treasury) and Vijay Rangarajan (now head of the Electoral Commission) may be in the frame too.It’s a job that Labour, nowadays full of West Wing wannabes, has always taken especially seriously. Peter Jay, who died last month, was appointed to the ambassador’s luxurious Massachusetts Avenue residence by his Labour prime ministerial father-in-law, James Callaghan, in 1977. “We want you to get up the arse of the White House and stay there,” were the instructions from New Labour in 1997, when the late Christopher Meyer was despatched to be Tony Blair’s man in Washington.The appointment rests very personally with Starmer. He has surely now learned that the global agenda will also determine Labour’s future, whether Trump or Harris wins. The appointee therefore needs to be someone with the ear of the president but with the ear of the prime minister as well. That’s why, in the end, my prediction is that the job will go to a man who, untypically, did not reply to my inquiries on the subject this week.A generation ago, as Blair’s chief of staff, it was he who gave Meyer those robust instructions. It was also he who played a key role in the hard-won peace process in Northern Ireland. At a time when another peace process is again so urgent, it is hard to think of a stronger candidate than Jonathan Powell.

      Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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      US ‘hero voters’ key to Harris win, say top ex-aides who plotted Labour UK victory

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      Keir Starmer’s former pollster, Deborah Mattinson, is to meet Kamala Harris’s campaign team in Washington this week to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”.The visit comes ahead of a separate trip by Starmer to Washington on Friday to meet US president Joe Biden, his second since becoming prime minister. It will also be his first since Biden stepped down and Harris became the Democratic nominee.With the race for the White House on a knife-edge, Mattinson, who stepped down from Starmer’s office after the election, and the prime minister’s former director of policy, Claire Ainsley, who will also attend the briefings, believe the same strategy that delivered for Labour could play an important role in Harris defeating Donald Trump on 5 November.Writing in the Observer, Mattinson and Ainsley say many of the concerns of crucial undecided voters will be similar on both of sides of the Atlantic.“These voters – often past Labour voters – had rejected the party because they believed that it had rejected them. Often Tory voters in 2019, they made up nearly 20% of the electorate. Labour’s focus on economic concerns, from affordable housing to job security, won them back.“For Harris, addressing core issues such as housing, prices and job creation could also win over undecided US middle-class voters, many of whom face similar economic pressures. Labour set about finding out as much as possible about these voters and applying that knowledge to all aspects of campaigning.“They were patriotic, they were family oriented, they were struggling with the cost of living: squeezed working-class voters who wanted change.”Mattinson coined the phrase “hero voters” to describe a group who were more often than not pro-Brexit and persuadable by political leaders if they felt they would address their fundamental core concerns.The collaboration, they believe, could help tilt the balance by delivering voters in key US battlegrounds.“Before November’s presidential election, Harris has turned on its head a contest that looked like a foregone conclusion in Trump’s favour. However, as the data shows clearly, it is still too close to call. We believe that adopting a similar hero-voter approach could make a vital difference, just as it did here in the UK.“The start point is to identify and understand Harris’s hero voters – undecided voters who have considered Trump and live in the handful of the most crucial battleground states.”Mattinson and Ainsley were invited by the Democratic thinktank the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), with which Ainsley has been working since leaving Starmer’s team in late 2022.Recently, they have been polling among US voters and conducting focus groups to try to understand what will win them over and which groups matter most.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The context is very different but the parallels are almost uncanny,” they write. “This group – who in the US self-define as middle class rather than working class, as the same group might in the UK – is struggling.“Its members believe that the middle class is in jeopardy, out of reach for people like them, denied the dream of homeownership that previous generations took for granted, unable to cover the essentials, and hyper-aware of the cost of groceries, utilities and other bills. Many work multiple jobs just to keep afloat.”Among those that the two former Starmer aides are likely to meet are Megan Jones, the senior political adviser to vice-president Harris, and Will Marshall, founder of the PPI, who had dealings with top New Labour figures, including Tony Blair, when the party was trying to learn from the electoral success of Bill Clinton’s Democrats in the early to mid-1990s, before the 1997 general election.View image in fullscreenMattinson and Ainsley say they had far more time to plan their strategy in detail than have members of the Harris campaign. But they suggest that fine-tuning the Democratic strategy could help sustain recent momentum and give the party a better chance of crossing the finishing line victorious.“From the point where we defined our hero-voter focus, we had three years to mainline the thinking through party activity. Team Harris has less than three months. But looking at what they have achieved in the past few weeks, success now looks within reach. Hero voters may just help to close that gap.” More

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      How the lessons of the UK election could help Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump

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      On 4 July, against all odds, Labour overturned the most shattering defeat in decades to win a stunning landslide. A talented and energetic party team deserves huge credit for this victory: effective communications, innovative digital output, creative policy culminating in the five missions, organisationally brilliant events and a super-efficient ground force – all under the leadership of campaign director Morgan McSweeney and political leads Pat McFadden and Ellie Reeves.It was a cohesive campaign united by its sharp, disciplined focus on our very tightly defined “hero voters”. Could a similar single-mindedness help Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump on 5 November?Just three years before, Labour had suffered the devastating setback of the Hartlepool byelection. While Keir Starmer had made significant strides towards returning Labour to the service of working people in his first year as leader, the party still struggled to embrace a disparate coalition of voters stretching from its base to a wider group of progressive voters and including the “red wall” that had so dramatically abandoned Labour in 2019.It was an impossible task. As the party picked itself up, Starmer’s brief was to really understand the voters who were crucial to that Tory win. He redoubled his resolve to take the party to them. These voters – often past Labour voters – had rejected the party because they believed that it had rejected them. Often Tory voters in 2019, they made up nearly 20% of the electorate. Labour’s focus on economic concerns, from affordable housing to job security, won them back.For Harris, addressing core issues such as housing, prices and job creation could also win over undecided US middle-class voters, many of whom face similar economic pressures. Labour set about finding out as much as possible about these voters and applying that knowledge to all aspects of campaigning. They were patriotic, they were family oriented, they were struggling with the cost of living: squeezed working-class voters who wanted change.Starmer was the personification of this segment of the UK electorate. As someone who had grown up in a pebbledash semi, with hard-working parents who were so strapped for cash that at one point the family’s phone was cut off, he identified with these voters and understood them. This became our focus over the next three years. The discipline paid off, enabling the electoral efficiency that won 411 seats, even on a vote share of less than 35%.Before November’s US presidential election, Harris has turned on its head a contest that looked like a foregone conclusion in Trump’s favour. However, as the data shows, it is still too close to call. We believe that adopting a similar hero-voter approach could make a vital difference, just as it did here in the UK.The start point is to identify and understand Harris’s hero voters – undecided voters who have considered Trump and live in the handful of most crucial battleground states.Working with Democratic thinktank the Progressive Policy Institute, we have attempted to do just that, applying lessons from the UK election, conducting polling and focus groups to really understand the voters that matter most.The context is very different but the parallels are almost uncanny. This group – who in the US self-define as middle class rather than working class as the same group might in the UK – is struggling. Its members believe that the middle class is in jeopardy, denied the dream of homeownership that previous generations took for granted, unable to cover the essentials, and hyper-aware of the cost of groceries, utilities and other bills. Many work multiple jobs just to keep afloat.As one Michigan swing voter told us last week: “There’s less of a ‘legit’ middle class these days. People are just working, working, working – and I think that’s really unfair.” Another voter in Pennsylvania said: “The middle class is being eroded. You used to be able to work one job and buy a house, but those things are out of reach for people like us nowadays.”Unsurprisingly, these voters want change – change that redresses the balance. But they are also deeply insecure and want that change within a framework of stability.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris can use this balancing act to her advantage, offering a combination of stability and the change voters crave. By addressing concerns such as inflation and homeownership while promising steady progress, she can present a vision that contrasts with Trump’s record, appealing directly to the middle class’s desire for practical, lasting change.Like Starmer, Harris has an edge: she comes from the same background as these voters. Her middle-class upbringing and understanding of economic struggle give her a unique connection to working-class Americans. She can own this narrative – something that Trump’s rhetoric, despite his populist appeal, can’t match.There are takeaways for the new Labour government from our research too. US voters want tangible evidence of policies from the Democrats that have helped them and their country. In these early days of the new Labour government, the party will want to plan now what those markers of success will be to their hero voters, well before the next general election.In our project, we have explored how the lessons from Labour’s successful campaign may translate across, reflecting the mood of hero voters, creating clear dividing lines on party brand, and leader reputation and, ultimately, developing a compelling offer.From the point where we defined our hero voter focus, we had three years to mainline the thinking through party activity. Team Harris has less than three months. But, looking at what they have achieved in the past few weeks, success now looks within reach. Hero voters may just help to close that gap.Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley will spend this week in Washington DC with the Progressive Policy Institute, briefing leading Democrats on their project More

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      Beware the Biden factor, Keir Starmer: you can govern well and still risk losing the country | Jonathan Freedland

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      The smile was the giveaway. Asked whether he was “just a copycat” of Tony Blair at the launch of his Blair-style pledge card on Thursday, Keir Starmer positively glowed. He was delighted with the comparison, which the entire exercise was surely designed to encourage. Blair “won three elections in a row”, Starmer said, beaming. Of course, he’s thrilled to be likened to a serial winner. And yet the more apt parallel is also a cautionary one. It’s not with Starmer’s long-ago predecessor, but with his would-be counterpart across the Atlantic: Joe Biden.It’s natural that the sight of a Labour leader, a lawyer from north London, on course for Downing Street after a long era of Tory rule, would have people digging out the Oasis CDs and turning back the clock to 1997: Labour election victories are a rare enough commodity to prompt strong memories. But, as many veterans of that period are quick to point out, the circumstances of 2024 are very different. The UK economy was humming then and it’s parlous now. Optimism filled the air then, while too few believe genuine change is even possible now. And politics tended to be about material matters then, tax and public services, rather than dominated by polarising cultural wars as it is now.All of which partly explains why it’s a comparison to the US president that Starmer should be thinking about – even if it’s not nearly so encouraging.Start with those aspects of the Biden story that can give Starmer heart. The veteran Democrat showed it is possible to win office thanks less to a wave of popular enthusiasm than a hunger for change after years of chaos. He proved that you can make a virtue of a lack of swash and buckle, offering steady solidity as a respite after frantic drama. In 2020, Biden demonstrated that dependable and capable can be enough to win when voters have had enough of charismatic and crazy. It worked for him after the era of Donald Trump, just as it’s working for Starmer after an era that, for all Rishi Sunak’s efforts, is defined by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.In other words, in 2020, Biden showed that playing a hand much like the one dealt to Starmer can be enough to win. The trouble is, in 2024 he’s showing why that might not be enough to win twice.Take a look at the New York Times poll published this week. The headline findings are bad enough, with Biden trailing in five of the six battleground states where the election will be decided. Behind in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, he’s ahead in Wisconsin alone. The underlying numbers are worse still with, improbable as it may seem, Trump gaining among Black, Latino and young voters especially. Most alarming for Biden is the finding that 70% think the US political and economic systems need major change – or should be torn down altogether. It makes the 2024 contest a change election in the US, just as it is in the UK – and for an incumbent such as Biden, that is dangerously bad news.Put another way, the US appetite for change is so great that it is causing the unravelling of key parts of the Obama coalition – minorities and the young – and its reassembly behind Trump. Barack Obama offered himself as the change candidate in 2008, an outsider who would challenge the establishment, and Trump, even though he is a self-described billionaire and a former president less than four years out of office, is successfully making the same rebel pitch.What’s more, those Americans itching for something new are prepared to use as their agent of change a man who incited a violent insurrection against the US government, sought to overturn a democratic election, has made no secret of his dictatorial ambitions for a second term, has been found liable for sexual abuse and is now standing trial on criminal charges in New York. When so many Americans are willing to flock to that person as the alternative, it tells you how much they dislike what they have now.There is a warning here for Starmer. Not for his prospects in the coming election – Biden’s success in 2020 tells him he can be confident – but for the election after that. The former Conservative cabinet minister David Gauke thinks Priti Patel is a decent bet as the next Tory leader, perhaps offering to keep the seat warm for the return of Boris Johnson. If Trump makes the comeback to end all comebacks in November, do not think Johnson will not be tempted to repeat the trick.How is it that a second Trump presidency is even conceivable; how is it that Biden can be lagging behind such a flawed, widely loathed rival? The US economy is improving; the stock market is roaring; inflation is falling. The US is set to grow at double the rate of its fellow G7 nations this year. More to the point, through a series of landmark legislative achievements – a record that outstrips Obama’s – Biden has spread the jobs and investment around, even to those parts of the US left derelict by decades of post-industrial decline. Take his gargantuan infrastructure package, the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act: more than 80% of its green investment dollars have gone to counties with below-average wages. This is levelling up made real.And yet, Biden is struggling, even in those places he has helped most. It’s a reminder of a core fact that is so often forgotten. That politics is an emotions business, one that turns not on what people think but what they feel. All the economic data in the world won’t help you if voters feel squeezed and reckon the country is on the wrong track.As the US commentator Joe Klein puts it, politics often comes down to “the art of competitive storytelling”. The successful politician tells a story that goes beyond the practical matters of pay and public services, speaking instead to voters about the way they see their own lives and the future, for themselves, their families and the country. In that competition, Trump beats Biden. His story is dark and vengeful, pitting his people against a menacing other, but it is compelling. Biden has a narrative, too – he will protect democracy and abortion rights from the Trump threat – but it is defensive.This is the gap Starmer needs to plug – and you can see how he might do it. One Labour luminary says that too many Britons “don’t just feel a loss of income, but a deficit of dignity” and that politicians have to address that. Starmer gets close when he speaks of “dignity at work”, of the human need for respect. It sounds authentic, as if it might even be his animating purpose, when he recalls the way his father, a toolmaker who worked in a factory, “always felt … that he was looked down on. Disrespected.”Whatever the story is, he needs to tell it. Right now, what Keir Starmer offers will almost certainly be enough to get him into No 10. But the lesson of Joe Biden is that, if he wants to stay there, it will take much more.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      The Guardian view on Labour and Brexit: a subtle but important strategic pivot | Editorial

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      For most of the period since the decision was taken to leave the EU, British politicians have overestimated how much thought the continent gives to Brexit. Once shock at the referendum result receded, relations with the UK came to be seen as a technical problem to be solved by hard-headed negotiation.At critical moments, when deadlines neared, Brexit leapt up the agenda. After the treaties were signed, they dropped right down, overtaken by the other issues facing a large bloc with many borders and problems. That represents a perverse kind of victory for Boris Johnson and his chief negotiator, David Frost. The deal they signed was so skewed against British interests that Brussels has little incentive to reopen the settlement.This is a problem for those who think Brexit has gone badly – comfortably a majority opinion, according to polls. The road out was hard, but it was also a unilateral choice. The way back, even to a much looser association, means persuading EU governments and institutions that Britain has something unique to offer and, crucially, that it can be relied on to stay the course.The difficulty with that process is as much a limitation on Labour’s policy as the more commonly recognised domestic electoral taboos against upsetting leave voters. David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, understands this, which is why he and Sir Keir Starmer are proposing a new UK-EU security pact as the main instrument for improving the cross-Channel relationship. This is a field where Britain, as one of Europe’s top two military powers (alongside France), has capabilities and expertise that open doors in Brussels. A security partnership could be wide-ranging, covering energy and climate cooperation, without relitigating the terms of trade and regulatory alignment that inhibit discussions of enhanced economic intimacy.The economic cost of Brexit will still one day need to be addressed. On that front, the options are limited for as long as Labour refuses to countenance talk of a customs union or meaningful reintegration into the single market. This may be overcautious, but general public negativity about the way Brexit has worked out isn’t the same as eagerness to go through the whole gruelling exit process in reverse. And the old terms – the opt-outs and budget rebate – would no longer be available. Mr Johnson’s unpalatable cake cannot simply be unbaked.Even the keenest pro-Europeans – and Sir Keir was once counted in their ranks – must see the many complex practical implications of recognising that Brexit is a fait accompli, for Brussels no less than Britain. The starting point for a new and mutually beneficial relationship is an acknowledgment of geopolitical forces compelling the two sides to work together. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine makes that point compellingly. The prospect that Donald Trump could return to the White House next year doubles the urgency. The former US president, if restored to the Oval Office, would be an unreliable ally to Europe’s democracies and a wilful saboteur of international institutions.The Eurosceptic vision of Britain thriving without its home continent was always a delusion. In the current international context it is unsustainably perilous. The Conservative party’s choice to ignore these facts is as predictable as it is dangerous. Labour’s Brexit policy is still marked by caution, but on the need for a strategic pivot back to Europe, thankfully the silence is breaking. More

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      Wednesday briefing: Everyone claims to back a ceasefire in Gaza. But what are they really saying?

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      Good morning. The daily details of the horror being visited on civilians in Gaza can make any conversation about the language of ceasefire proposals being put forward in foreign capitals seem absurd.A massive majority at the UN general assembly backed a ceasefire in December; so did the pope. A few days later, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer backed a “sustainable” ceasefire. Twenty-six of 27 EU states again called for a ceasefire on Monday. Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet been persuaded by any of them.But the calls for a ceasefire, and the subtle ways that they’ve changed over time, do tell us something about Israel’s weakening position on the international stage. This week, in the UK and at the UN, rival propositions for what a ceasefire might look like have emerged. Behind the diplomatic wrangling, and a particular crisis today for the Labour party in Britain, is a complicated story about how the violence might end, and who might be able to influence it.The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, has been covering these discussions. For today’s newsletter, I asked him whether any of them will make any difference. Here are the headlines.Five big stories
      Health | Patients whose health is failing will be granted the right to obtain an urgent second opinion about their care, as “Martha’s rule” is initially adopted in 100 English hospitals from April at the start of a national rollout. The initiative follows a campaign by Merope Mills, a senior editor at the Guardian, and her husband, Paul Laity, after their 13-year-old daughter Martha died of sepsis at King’s College hospital in London in 2021.
      UK news | Detectives hunting for Abdul Ezedi, the man wanted over a chemical assault that injured a vulnerable woman and her two young daughters, have recovered a body in the Thames that they believe is Ezedi, Scotland Yard has said. “We have been in contact with his family to pass on the news,” said Cmdr Jon Savell.
      WikiLeaks | Julian Assange faces the risk of a “flagrant denial of justice” if tried in the US, the high court has heard. Lawyers for Assange are seeking permission to appeal against the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition, and say he could face a “grossly disproportionate” sentence of up to 175 years if convicted in the US.
      PPE contracts | Michael Gove failed to register hospitality he enjoyed with a Conservative donor whose company he had recommended for multimillion-pound personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the Covid pandemic. When asked by the Guardian about not registering VIP hospitality at a football match he received from David Meller, a spokesperson for Gove apologised for the “oversight”.
      Pakistan | Imran Khan’s political rivals have announced details of a coalition agreement, naming Shehbaz Sharif as their joint candidate for prime minister amid continuing concerns about the legitimacy of the recent elections. Candidates aligned with Khan won the most seats in the parliamentary elections but not enough to form a government.
      In depth: ‘The use of the word ceasefire in a US resolution is a shot across Israel’s bows’View image in fullscreenThe prospect of an Israeli ground operation in Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians have now sought sanctuary, has made the urgency over the question of a new ceasefire greater than ever. Israel says that unless Hamas frees every hostage by the beginning of Ramadan on 10 March, it will launch its offensive; if so, there could be dire humanitarian consequences, and a danger of more violence in the West Bank and escalation across the Middle East.Israel and Hamas have been participating in talks in Cairo brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar. And while the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said that recent days “were not really very promising”, discussions are still continuing, Patrick Wintour said: “The focus at the moment is on the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for each hostage. But the pressure is certainly growing.” Two resolutions at the UN and three motions and amendments in the UK parliament this week help make sense of the nature, and limits, of that pressure.The Algerian resolution | ‘Immediate humanitarian ceasefire’Algeria, the only Arab state currently on the UN security council, brought a resolution forward calling for a ceasefire to begin immediately – and endorsing the provisional orders issued by the international court of justice obliging Israel to take action to prevent genocide.13 security council members supported the resolution – but the UK abstained, and the US used its veto. Washington claimed that the Algerian text risked disrupting negotiations aimed at agreeing a hostage release deal in Cairo – although, as Patrick pointed out: “The Arab Group [including Egypt and Qatar] at the UN has made it very clear that they don’t agree with that.” Others suggest that the US, although now more distant from Israel, is simply not willing to back a resolution demanding it agree to an immediate ceasefire.“The Algerians did initially hope that they could win US support for this,” he said. “They were willing to make changes to try to accommodate the Americans. But at the weekend they decided they weren’t going to get that support, so they went ahead without them.”The US resolution | ‘A temporary ceasefire’ beginning ‘as soon as practicable’If the inevitability of the veto might make Algeria’s resolution appear pointless, the fruits of its efforts are not in the vote itself, but in another resolution which will likely be voted on later this week – brought forward by the US in response.Washington has now used its security council veto three times to protect Israel, Patrick noted: “They needed to show that they have some sort of solution to the impasse, not simply putting their hands up and saying ‘No’.”The language is sharp on the prospect of an attack in Rafah, which is said to hold “serious implications for regional peace and security”. The use of the word “ceasefire” in a US resolution for the first time also feels significant, Patrick added: “It’s a shot across Israel’s bows. They’re saying, you mustn’t start a ground offensive, and you must start to let aid in more substantially.”At the same time, he noted, “it’s important not to be bamboozled by the use of that word”. Probably more important is the phrase “as soon as practicable” – which would appear to give Israel total latitude over timing and terms. “It isn’t a demand for a ceasefire now, it’s a proposal for a ceasefire in the future,” Patrick said. “So it does put some sort of pressure on Netanyahu, but a lot less than, for example, stopping sending arms would do.”The SNP motion | ‘An immediate ceasefire’Opposition day motions in the UK House of Commons are non-binding, and obviously far less consequential than security council resolutions. But they do suggest that the centre of gravity on the issue in UK politics might be shifting – a little.The Scottish National party put forward a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in November; their new motion today is substantively very similar. Although it calls for the release of all hostages taken by Hamas, it does not say that should be a prerequisite: “It calls for an immediate ceasefire without saying that there are any conditions attached,” Patrick said.Labour has been worried that a number of its MPs would break ranks to support the SNP motion, not least because it is substantively so close to what many of them have been saying already. That is part of why it finally came up with its own amendment yesterday.The Labour amendment | ‘An immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides’“I don’t think they would have tabled this now but for the SNP putting its own motion forward,” Patrick said. “They can point to external events, like the level of bombardment in Gaza – but ultimately this is the result of knowing that they were facing another very sizeable rebellion.”For more detail on the Labour text, see this analysis from Kiran Stacey. “The amendment is very long, but it does show that they’ve moved – for instance, it says: ‘Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October cannot happen again.’ Previously, they’ve said that Hamas can’t be left in a military position to mount such a strike again – so it seems to back away from that idea.”It is also the first time Labour has called for an “immediate” ceasefire. Nonetheless, it is much less straightforward than the SNP text: the left-wing campaign group Momentum says that “by making its call for a ceasefire so conditional and caveated, the Labour leadership is giving cover for Israel’s brutal war to continue”.Labour’s slowness to respond to growing public pressure, particularly among its own voters, on Gaza is because “they’re trying to stay as close to the UK government position as possible, and to the US”, Patrick said. “They would view it as politically risky to be too far from either.”But Labour’s manoeuvres have not headed off the risk of rebellion. While officials believed yesterday that they had persuaded potential rebels to support their motion over the SNP’s, the government later published its own amendment – and it is not yet clear whether that text or Labour’s will be put to a vote today. If Labour’s amendment is not on the table, dozens of MPs could yet rebel and back the SNP.The UK government amendment | ‘Negotiations to agree a … pause’For a long time, the British government (and Labour) position appeared defined by the term “sustainable ceasefire”. “That became a code, really, for saying that there’s no need for Israel to commit to anything until Hamas was obliterated,” Patrick said. “You hear that much less now. Foreign Office officials now say that the idea Hamas can be militarily destroyed is for the birds.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNonetheless, the government repeats that language in its proposed amendment to the SNP motion. It endorses only “negotiations to agree an immediate humanitarian pause” and then “moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire” – and says that getting there will require the release of all hostages, and “Hamas to be unable to launch further attacks and no longer in charge in Gaza”. That ultimately still accepts that a decision about timing is in Israel’s power – which is why so many Labour MPs will struggle to back it.Do all of these triangulations, whether at the UN or in Westminster, really matter? “I doubt if you’re in Gaza you’re waiting with bated breath to hear what the Labour or SNP motions say,” Patrick said. “And even though Netanyahu’s not popular, the Israel public still doesn’t support a ceasefire. But diplomatic movements like these have brought accumulating pressure to bear on Israel, and placed limits on where they can go.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen
      Members of Generation Z are allegedly going to bed at 9pm: Tim Dowling (above), who is a little older, spent a week trying it for himself. “I sleep fitfully and, after a certain point, not at all,” he grumbles. “My biological clock has blown its mainspring.” Archie
      In 1974, a group of young families established the Old Hall community in an 18th-century manor house, running an ad in the Guardian seeking other “middle-class socialists” to join them. Emine Saner visited the commune to see how the project was fairing all these years later and the legacy it has created. Nimo
      I absolutely loved Fergal Kinney’s headlong dive into the lore of Sex Lives of the Potato Men, a movie so bad that it arguably broke British cinema, and quite a few careers. Especially good are an extract from Peter Bradshaw’s brutal review, and the surprising turn to experimental theatre at the end. Archie
      Gaby Hinsliff reflects on Breathtaking, a Covid drama written by a doctor about her experiences in hospital wards at the height of the pandemic, and asks whether it will shift public opinion on the forthcoming junior doctors’ strikes. Nimo
      A gambling addiction treatment centre run by the charity Gordon Moody in Wolverhampton is the only one in the UK catering specifically to women. Jessica Murray reports on the life-changing benefits for those who use the services. Nimo
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Erling Haaland (above) netted Manchester City’s only goal in a 1-0 victory over Brentford that lifted them into second place in the Premier League table, just one point behind leaders Liverpool. In the Champions League, Luuk de Jong rescued a PSV draw 1-1 against Borussia Dortmund, while a late goal from substitute Marko Arnautovic gave Inter Milan a 1-0 home victory against Atlético Madrid.Tennis | Andy Murray took his first step out of the worst slump of his career as he outplayed France’s Alexandre Müller for much of their battle before holding his nerve at the close to reach the second round of the Qatar Open with a confidence-boosting 6-1, 7-6 (5) victory. Murray entered the court in Doha on a six-match losing streak.Athletics | Radical proposals that could see foul jumps eliminated from the long jump have been criticised as an “April Fools’ joke” by four-time Olympic ­champion Carl Lewis. With around a third of all jumps disqualified at last year’s world championships, World Athletics is to trial a new “take-off zone” instead of the usual fixed wooden board.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Labour leader faces threat of revolt over Gaza despite call for ceasefire” says our Guardian print edition splash this morning. “William: too many have died in Gaza conflict” – that’s the Daily Mail, while the Telegraph has “William: fighting in Gaza must be brought to an end”. “Prince issues Gaza plea for permanent peace” is how the Times reports it. “‘Cam’s govt knew’” – that’s David Cameron’s government and the wrongful Post Office prosecutions, in the Metro. “Barclays to return £10bn to investors in push for new revenues and balance” is the lead in the Financial Times. “PM: completely ridiculous for illegal migrants to jump the queue” reports the Daily Express. “Putin’s Brit targets” – the Daily Mirror touts as an exclusive its page one story about claims the Russian ruler is putting together a hitlist.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenWhy the NHS needs Martha’s ruleFollowing a campaign by her family in memory of Martha Mills, the NHS is introducing Martha’s rule giving hospital patients in England access to a rapid review from a separate medical team if they are concerned with the care they are receivingCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenFor decades the role of Black Americans in space exploration was diminished and ignored. A new National Geographic documentary seeks to redress this erasure by chronicling the stories of African American pioneers in engineering, science and aviation, who battled violent systemic racism in society while trying to climb the ranks of an industry that was hell bent on keeping them out.Ed Dwight, a pilot who very nearly became the first Black American in space, is featured as a “golden thread” in The Space Race. Dwight, who grew up on a farm in the 1930s, knew he wanted to fly and, against the odds, went on to have a successful career in the US air force. With President John F Kennedy’s recommendation, he was invited to train to be an astronaut at Chuck Yeager’s test pilot programme at an air force base in California. Kennedy called Dwight’s parents to congratulate them and he featured on the covers of Black publications such as Jet. Though Dwight (pictured above in 1954) was not ultimately allowed to go into space, he was considered a hero by many. After retiring, Dwight became a sculptor. His contributions to space exploration were eventually recognised when Nasa named an asteroid after him, describing him as a “space pioneer” who paved the way for Black astronauts that followed.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
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      A message to Starmer from the US: ditching your £28bn climate plan isn’t just cowardly – it’s bad politics | Kate Aronoff

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      It’s hard, from the US, to feel all that confident about the state of our climate policies. The Inflation Reduction Act – the Biden White House’s trademark legislative achievement, which revolved around green investments – was a major accomplishment. Still, the US is breaking new records for its production and export of fossil fuels, last year extracting more oil and gas than ever before. Even more worrying is just how tenuous the country’s modest progress on the climate feels in advance of November’s presidential election: Donald Trump continues to lead Joe Biden in just about every poll.However, at the very least, the Biden administration has set a bar for the scale of green investment that centre-left parties should undertake. The same can’t be said of the Labour party, which has reportedly now scrapped its laudable £28bn green spending pledge in favour of some bizarre fealty to its leadership’s own strange idea of fiscal responsibility. So what can Labour learn from the Democratic president’s approach?To his great credit, Biden took seriously the need to win over progressive supporters of his main opponent in the Democratic primary in 2020. Bernie Sanders was an early adopter of the climate movement’s calls for a “green new deal”, laying out an expansive $16tn plan to tackle global heating and inequality. Biden’s $3.5tn Build Back Better agenda, produced with Sanders and his supporters in consultative roles, was decidedly not a green new deal. It did, however, reflect that platform’s most valuable components, positing climate action as a job creator and driver of 21st-century economic dynamism. Inherent in that was a willingness to spend lots of money, fast, on the things that matter.Almost as soon as Biden took office, however, climate advocates in the US watched the White House’s already too modest jobs and climate agenda get whittled down to what eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act’s roughly $400bn in new spending on climate and environmental priorities. It’s a shamefully slender programme, given how wealthy the US is, and its outsized historical responsibility for the climate crisis. But it’s also the best we might have hoped for, given the political influence of a fossil fuel industry that’s captured the Republican party virtually wholesale, along with key Democrats such as the West Virginia senator, Joe Manchin.Without the idiosyncrasies that weakened US climate policy, why do some members of the Labour party seem so keen to negotiate against themselves? The party’s £28bn a year green prosperity plan has now been dropped, thanks to the political cowardice of people such as the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who was already distancing herself from the policy in an interview with LBC earlier this week. The Labour veteran and podcast host Ed Balls suggested the problem with the plan was the number attached to it – urging Starmer and Reeves to “U-turn” away from it, so as to project fiscal responsibility and deflect repeated attacks from the right that Starmer would raise taxes to fund it. The party establishment is clearly spooked by the spectre of rightwing attacks, as Labour’s latest move so clearly shows.If the US can offer any lessons about how to deal with a right wing yammering on about how green policies allegedly hurt “ordinary people” while preaching painful austerity, it’s that it won’t give you a lick of credit for giving in to its ideas. Neither, moreover, will voters. The planet is even less forgiving. The costs of the climate crisis far outweigh the costs of acting on it. Under present policies, the climate crisis could cost the UK 3.3% of GDP a year by 2050. By 2100, that jumps to 7.4% of GDP a year; in today’s terms, that would be about £168bn.Labour needn’t look to the future, though, to make a straightforward case for going big on green spending. The Conservatives’ long-running war on good climate policy has already made life more expensive for working-class Britons. David Cameron’s bid to cut the “green crap” entailed doing away with a successful home insulation programme in 2013. And the average household could be paying gas bills of up to £400 lower if the Tories hadn’t axed the energy price guarantee scheme.While Labour’s green prosperity plan was designed with the Inflation Reduction Act in mind, there was an opportunity for Starmer to improve on it by emphasising the short-term benefits, such as the money households could save from national home insulation projects. Though it’s a hot topic among wonkish types in the US, UK and other parts of Europe, very few people here could tell you what the Inflation Reduction Act actually is. As of last August – a year on from the act’s passage – 71% of US residents said they knew “little or nothing” about it. Why is the White House’s high-profile accomplishment so far from most Americans’ minds? For one, the consultancy McKinsey has found that $216bn of the act’s $394bn in climate and energy-related tax credits will flow to corporations. Meanwhile, many benefits, such as incentives for pricey items such as electric vehicles and solar panels, are completely inaccessible to lower-income people and renters, who account for about 36% of US households.Driving investment in low-carbon energy and technologies makes a lot of sense: green industries grew four times faster than the rest of the British economy in 2020-21. But courting private-sector investment in green industries above all else – a sadly salient critique of the Inflation Reduction Act – threatens to leave voters in the dark about the benefits of climate action to their pockets. An active green industrial strategy should go hand in hand with an expansion of the public goods, services and planning capacities it will need to succeed. Upgrading public transit infrastructure and ensuring an abundant, affordable supply of low-carbon energy will be key to the success of the emerging green industries. More important, though, is that these can be the foundation on which Labour – should it ever choose to – builds both a broadly shared green prosperity and its electoral mandate for ever-stronger climate policies.The last few years of climate policymaking in the US point to at least one clear conclusion: Reeves and those who pushed to kill Labour’s green spending pledge are dead wrong. Labour should be sparing no expense on reducing emissions and improving livelihoods; if anything, £28bn a year is much too little. If party top brass can summon even an ounce of political courage they’ll make another U-turn away from disastrous, outdated economic orthodoxy and revive their more ambitious climate plans. Should that happen, the party can make voters acutely aware of the choice before them – to live a good, green life under Labour, or to let another Tory government take away more of their hard-earned money. Otherwise, the differences between Tory and Labour rule will keep getting harder and harder to spot.
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back More

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      A written constitution won’t right Britain’s wrongs | Letters

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      Gavin Esler (Here’s the key question about Britain in 2023: why do we put up with this rubbish?, 25 October) makes some good points, but his implication that we should have a written constitution, as the US does, should be resisted. There’s no more pernicious element in American life than the country’s practically irreformable constitution. Made for a slave-owning gentry republic (not a modern democracy), the constitution sports an electoral college that can, and does, overturn democratically elected majorities – often in cahoots with the supreme court, one of the world’s most nakedly political courts (and we complain about Hungary and Poland).The US constitution makes it impossible to legislate for firearms control and periodically allows an irresponsible legislature to threaten the dissolution of all federal government by withholding the revenue needed for the armed forces and civil servants. The US constitution is an affliction that Americans must bear. Let’s not have one. George Baugh Much Wenlock, Shropshire Gavin Esler says that ours is an antiquated democratic system. How can it be described as democratic at all when we have an unelected head of state, an unelected second chamber, a voting system that gives huge majorities in parliament with less than 50% of the vote?In addition, we have three different sorts of devolution to the three smallest parts of the UK and no effective devolution to the much larger regions of England. Dr Ken Hughes Hale Barns, Greater Manchester Gavin Esler’s article poses the questions “why are things so … shit?” and how it is that Liz Truss, Chris Grayling and others seem to repeatedly fail upwards? Esler proposes constitutional change as the solution. There is a much swifter alternative. Don’t vote for people who don’t use public transport. Don’t vote for people who don’t send their children to local schools. Don’t vote for people who don’t use the NHS. Don’t vote for people without links to your local community. Forget constitutional change. Politics can be that simple. Peter Riddle Wirksworth, Derbyshire Gavin Esler’s excellent article identifies the first necessary step in halting our prolonged descent into dysfunction and despair. This age-old decline will not be reversed without grasping the nettle of constitutional reform. How Keir Starmer can be so blind as to claim electoral reform especially is “not a priority” beggars belief. Dr Robert HercliffeLee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire Gavin Esler has it right. Almost every democratic country in the world except the UK has a written contract between its people and their government: a constitution. No sane person would agree to buy a house or a car from a salesman who said that there was no need for a written contract and that “their word was their bond”. And yet most British citizens seem happy to accept that situation with regards to their country. While there are plenty of other challenges facing the UK right now, a written constitution, created by the people, would go some way to resolving much of the dissembling, lying and corruption that are now endemic in our political system. It’s long past time to boot the dodgy car salesmen out of Westminster. Stephen Psallidas Newcastle upon Tyne More