Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Donald, Professor, Middlesex University

Reform UK has laid out plans for an “emergency programme” to address illegal immigration. The party argues its plans, which include expanding immigration detention capacity from the current roughly 2,200 places to 24,000, would enable the deportation of up to 600,000 people over a parliamentary term.

The plans would require removing legal protections against mass deportation without due process. Specifically, Reform has called for repealing the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 and permanently withdrawing the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Nigel Farage has also proposed disapplying for five years the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against Torture and the Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention, although these treaties do not, in fact, allow for temporary suspension.

Beyond the apparent logistical challenges are serious political repercussions. The Good Friday Agreement requires the rights and freedoms in the ECHR and recourse to the European Court of Human Rights to be part of the law in Northern Ireland. Withdrawing would require a renegotiation of the agreement. A showdown would also ensue with the devolved assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Reform has touted its plan as a “legal reset”. But it is better understood as a total rejection of the UK’s postwar international commitments to protect the human rights of everyone within its jurisdiction.

These commitments, and others, have cemented the UK at the heart of the rules-based international order. This is the foundational idea that countries are bound by the legal commitments they make to each other and everyone within their jurisdiction. Successive governments have viewed this as both a moral imperative and a core aspect of the UK’s foreign and defence policies.

Reform’s plan would be an unprecedented and drastic rupture with almost eight decades of commitment to human rights protections. It would have far-reaching implications for all people in the UK, not just refugees.

How the ECHR protects everyone

If the UK withdrew from the ECHR, everyone living in the UK would lose the ability to take cases to the European Court of Human Rights if they fail to get justice domestically.

ECHR rights have been invoked to protect victims of domestic abuse, children and disabled people. The right to private and family life, the application of which has been (inaccurately) criticised for preventing deportation, is the same right relied on to protect privacy in the workplace or from surveillance, to uphold the dignity of older and disabled people in residential care, and to secure legal protection for LGBTQ+ people.

The ECHR alone has provided redress to victims of crime who have been failed by state investigations, like the survivors and bereaved families of the Hillsborough disaster or the victims of the “black cab rapist” John Worboys. Ironically, Reform UK has repeatedly argued for protection of free speech, which is protected primarily by the ECHR.

The wider cost of UK withdrawal from international treaties would be the loss of influence and reputation. These treaties are benchmarks for international cooperation, and foundational to international order. Pulling out of the UN convention against torture and the anti-trafficking convention would signal the UK’s abandonment of global principles to combat torture, modern slavery, sexual exploitation and trafficking, including the illegal trade in human organs.

Far from enabling the UK to control migration, a do-it-alone stance would harm the ability of future governments to do so. Removing the UK from the negotiating table would forfeit the opportunity to shape and benefit from cooperation to tackle a global challenge. We have seen this before: UK withdrawal from the EU took it out of the Dublin system and ongoing EU-wide efforts to manage migration and returns, just as small boat arrivals increased.

Beyond this, removals require treaties with other countries. Treaties require political will, mutual benefit, time and trust that the signatories will hold to their commitments. Where these are lacking, as evidenced by the failed and costly Rwanda policy, receiving countries can extract a very high price from the UK.

Could the rights be replaced?

To implement these plans, a Reform government would need to pass legislation through parliament to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA). If successful, this would pave the way for the UK to give notice to the Council of Europe to withdraw from the ECHR.

Without the HRA, there is no equivalent protection to the ECHR elsewhere in UK law. The common law, a body of law developed over centuries by judicial decisions as distinct from laws passed by parliament, would continue to provide some protection for rights, including personal liberty, access to justice, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture.

Read more:
How the UK could reform the European convention on human rights

Common law principles would still guide British judges when making decisions about mass detention and deportation without due process. It is also possible that a new bill of rights could be enacted, containing a similar or identical catalogue of rights to the ECHR.

The most important difference would be how rights would be protected in practice. Would any replacement, like the HRA, oblige public authorities and the government to uphold rights in their decisions and actions? And would it allow higher courts to declare a law incompatible with human rights, flagging to parliament that the law should be reconsidered?

Human rights protections are invisible to most people living in the UK. The expectation that police and your local council must treat you fairly, that health and care services must respect your dignity, and that there will be legal remedy if the state fails you, is so normalised that it would be inconceivable to think it could disappear within the UK.

But it is the invisible integration of individual rights within the UK system that makes this both a lived and legal reality. Stripping away these protections would leave us all naked.

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Alice Donald is a member of the Labour Party.

Joelle Grogan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Treaties like the ECHR protect everyone in the UK, not just migrants – https://theconversation.com/treaties-like-the-echr-protect-everyone-in-the-uk-not-just-migrants-264057

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Manoj Dora, Professor in Sustainable Production and Consumption, Anglia Ruskin University

This year’s drought has once again put farmers in the spotlight, with yields in some crops falling by as much as 50%. But behind the headlines of empty reservoirs and wilting fields lies a bigger problem: the way the UK’s food system is organised, managed and governed.

For generations, UK food policy has prioritised stable, low prices above all else. This dates right back to Britain’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the birth of free trade in grain. While the policy was meant to keep bread affordable, its influence has endured. The idea that food must remain cheap and price-stable, often at the expense of resilience in the face of climate shocks, is embedded.

These days, it means supermarket shelves stay full and prices rise more slowly than in many other European countries. But the model comes at a hidden cost: it strips resilience out of the supply chain. When extreme weather hits, the whole system wobbles – and consumers end up paying anyway.

The UK produces about 62% of the food it consumes, but only 53% of the fresh vegetables. The rest comes from imports – often from climate-vulnerable regions such as Spain, Italy and North Africa.

That dependence once diversified risk. Now, when multiple regions are hit by droughts or floods, there are far fewer alternatives.

In the UK, supermarkets run “just-in-time” logistics systems meaning produce is delivered to distribution centres and stores exactly when it is needed, with little or no stock held in reserve.

This model is designed to cut costs and reduce waste, and for highly perishable items like fresh fruit and vegetables it can seem essential. But it also makes the system brittle – when harvests fail or imports are delayed, shelves empty quickly.

Strategic storage – whether in the form of grain reserves, frozen produce or regional “cold-chain” hubs – could provide resilience without undermining freshness for short-life products.

At the moment though, farmers deliver crops straight from the field to distribution centres, leaving no buffer in case of a bad harvest. And contracts are often one-sided. If a crop doesn’t meet strict cosmetic standards, or if a retailer changes its order, farmers carry the loss.

All of this means that as soon as weather reduces supply, shortages ripple through the chain and the consumer sees higher prices. In June 2025, food inflation climbed to 4.5% year-on-year – the fastest rise since early 2024.

But the UK still throws away 9.5 million tonnes of food every year, worth around £19 billion. About 60% of that is wasted by households, but supermarkets are far from blameless.

Retailers discard more than 200,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually, often because it doesn’t meet strict appearance standards. Farmers report ploughing perfectly edible crops back into the soil when contracts are cancelled due to faulty demand forecasts.

This isn’t just bad for the environment, it undermines food security. In a year when farmers are struggling to produce crops, the idea that a third of food is lost or wasted worldwide highlights how poorly managed the system really is.

Should consumer expectations change?

The uncomfortable truth is that resilience may mean less predictability. The current model shields consumers from seasonal variations by spreading risk along the chain – usually on to farmers or overseas producers. But this comes at the expense of long-term stability.

If instead consumers accepted that prices might fluctuate more in the short term – reflecting the true cost of climate shocks – supply chains could be redesigned for resilience. Farmers could be paid fairly to invest in adaptation, and retailers could prioritise secure contracts over the cheapest imports.

In the long run, that would protect households from the more damaging spikes caused when the system fails. But lower-income households already spend a far greater share of their income on food, so short-term price increases must be accompanied by targeted government support to tackle food insecurity.

So, what would a more secure food system look like? Based on my research, three changes stand out.

1. Stronger local networks: Investing in regional hubs for processing and storage would mean that food from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England could be better connected and there would be less reliance on imports. Government should fund infrastructure and planning support, retailers should commit to long-term contracts that make local hubs viable and producers can collaborate to share facilities.

2. Fairer contracts: There’s a need for greater risk-sharing between farmers, processors and supermarkets so that a bad harvest doesn’t bankrupt producers. At present, retailers hold most of the power, often setting strict standards and cancelling orders at short notice. But if farmers keep shouldering all the risk, many could exit the sector – leaving retailers with less choice and more volatility.

3. Policy that values resilience: The government should support producers to adapt for the long term with things like drought-resistant crops and water stewardship. This is a better strategy than one-off subsidies after each crisis – as happens at the moment.

Food security is national security. Yet in the UK, it is still treated as a matter of weekly prices. Every drought, flood or heatwave exposes the same fragility – a system designed to deliver cheap food today, but incapable of absorbing tomorrow’s shocks.

If consumers want affordable food in the long run, it’s time to stop asking how to keep prices low and start asking how to keep food supplies secure. That means fairer treatment of farmers, smarter use of resources and consumers willing to accept some short-term price volatility. Otherwise, the next bad year will not be the exception, it will be the rule.

Manoj Dora does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The UK’s food system is built on keeping prices low – but this year’s droughts show up its failings – https://theconversation.com/the-uks-food-system-is-built-on-keeping-prices-low-but-this-years-droughts-show-up-its-failings-263939

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aisling Pigott, Lecturer, Dietetics, Cardiff Metropolitan University

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you’ve probably been told that cooking your own meals is the way to go. This has been backed up by a recent study, which found that people who ate home-cooked, minimally processed foods lost twice the weight to those who ate mainly ultra-processed, ready-made foods.

The recent study, which was published in Nature Medicine, involved 50 adults who were randomly assigned to eat either a diet high in ultra-processed foods or one with mostly minimally-processed foods. Both diets were designed to meet the UK’s national dietary guidelines.

Both groups lost weight, which makes sense as they consumed fewer calories than they usually did. However, the group that consumed mostly minimally processed foods ultimately consumed fewer calories overall – thereby losing more weight. They also saw slightly greater improvements to other measures of their health, such as having lower fat mass, reduced triglyceride levels (linked to heart health) and fewer cravings for unhealthy foods at the end of the study.

The ultra-processed foods group still lost weight and saw some improvements in blood lipids (fat) and blood glucose (sugar), but these changes were generally smaller than those seen in the minimally processed foods group.

As a dietitian, this is both an interesting and important piece of research – even though the results are not entirely surprising. In fact, a surprising result is that the consumption of ultra-processed food still resulted in weight loss.

The minimally processed diet group consumed fewer calories overall, which would explain why this group lost more weight. But the fact that this group saw greater improvements in other areas of their health highlights how health encompasses far more than calories or a number on the scales.

Why processing matters

Despite the bad press, food processing plays an essential role in food safety and preservation.

But how much processing a food has undergone seems to be the factor associated with worse health outcomes. These foods tend to have less fibre, more added fats, sugars and salt. This is because they’re designed to be tasty and long-lasting.

The most common definition of an ultra-processed foods are foods which are industrially produced and which contain extracts of original foods alongside additives and industrial ingredients. Think crisps or frozen ready meals.

The food system in much of the world has become increasingly reliant on ultra-processed foods, with these foods contributing to about half of food intake in the UK, Europe and the US. But there’s clear evidence that high intake of ultra-processed foods is linked with poorer health outcomes, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

The more calorie-rich, less nutritious foods we consume, the more our health will suffer – as this recent study has confirmed. But how can you work out which foods are classified as “ultra-processed” and which are only “minimally processed”? In short, this depends on how much processing a food product has undergone to be ready for consumption.

Ultra-processed foods are industrially formulated products made mostly from ingredients extracted from foods (such as oils, starches and proteins) and additives.

Examples include: sugary breakfast cereals, flavoured yoghurts with sweeteners and thickeners, soft drinks, instant noodles, packaged biscuits and cakes, mass-produced bread with emulsifiers and reconstituted meat products – such as chicken nuggets.

Minimally processed foods are whole foods that are altered only to make them safer or easier to prepare. Importantly, this processing doesn’t change their nutritional value.

Examples include: fresh, frozen or bagged vegetables and fruit, plain yoghurt or milk, whole grains (such as oats or brown rice), eggs, fresh or frozen fish, and tinned beans or tomatoes without added sugar or salt.

Including minimally processed foods

It can sometimes feel overwhelming to work out whether a food is ultra-processed or minimally processed.

Some advice that is often suggested for working out whether a food is ultra-processed include checking to see if a product contains more than five to ten ingredients and considering if it contains ingredients you wouldn’t use at home.

In addition to the number of ingredients, it’s also the type of ingredients that matter. Ultra-processed foods often contain added sugars, refined starches, emulsifiers, stabilisers and flavourings that serve cosmetic purposes (such as improving colour, texture or taste), rather than preserving the food’s freshness or safety.

Minimally processed foods will not contain these types of ingredients, nor will they have as many ingredients on their label.

It’s also important to be aware of smoked meats. While this is a common preservation method, most commercially available smoked meats – such as bacon, ham or sausages – are considered ultra-processed because of the curing agents and other additives they contain. While plain smoked fish (such as smoked salmon) is still classed as a processed food, it uses fewer curing agents and additives than other smoked meat products.

A diet rich in minimally processed foods usually means more fibre, more nutrients and fewer calories – all of which can support weight and long-term health, as this recent study showed. So if you’re keen to include more minimally processed foods in your diet, here are a few tips to help you get more onto your plate:

• build meals around vegetables, whole grains and pulses
• use tinned or frozen products for convenience and to save time while cooking
• choose plain dairy products without sugar or fruit purees, then add your own fruits, nuts and seeds for flavour
• healthy meals don’t have to be complicated. Aim to include a protein source, a wholegrain carbohydrate and plenty of veggies or fruits at each meal
• batch cook meals when you have time and freeze them if possible.

As a dietitian, it’s important to point out that there’s a distinction between the potential harms of excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods and the essential role processing can play in ensuring food safety, preservation and accessibility.

It’s also important not to panic about enjoying the occasional biscuit or ready meal, and we should avoid demonising convenience foods – especially for those who face barriers such as limited mobility or lack of cooking facilities. Because remember, the group that ate a diet high in ultra-processed foods but met dietary guidelines still lost weight and saw health benefits in the study.

Eating well doesn’t mean that you need to completely eliminate ultra-processed foods. But shifting the balance towards eating more minimally processed foods, with more home-cooked meals where possible, is a step in the right direction.

Aisling Pigott receives funding from Research Capacity Building Collaborative (RCBC) / Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW)

– ref. Ultra-processed foods vs minimally processed foods: how can you tell the difference? – https://theconversation.com/ultra-processed-foods-vs-minimally-processed-foods-how-can-you-tell-the-difference-262669

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harsh Trivedi, Teaching Associate French, School of Languages, Arts and Societies., University of Sheffield

The 19th-century novelist Honoré de Balzac was Catholic, French to the core and obsessed with the material details of French society. Yet there is something profoundly Hindu in the way he sought to understand the world.

Balzac was born in the final year of the 18th century. As he began his career, European literature was turning away from the abstraction of the previous century’s Enlightenment and towards realism. Realist writers, including the French novelist Stendhal, insisted that to understand the human condition, they first had to know local customs, political and economic pressures – and the inner lives of individuals.

Balzac was the supreme example of this shift. His vast work La Comédie Humaine (1829-48) was made up of nearly 100 interconnected novels and stories. It sought to map French society, not by generalising from above, but by diving into the specific lives of his characters.

In the preface to the work, Balzac declared: “French society would be the real author; I should only be the secretary.” He described society as a zoological landscape populated by distinct species and insisted that truth emerged from a complete inventory of these types: “the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are absolutely unlike, and change with every phase of civilisation.”

This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.

In his novel Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac devoted the entire opening chapter to the description of a grim boarding house. The copious descriptions of the layout, decoration and even smells serve as a physical embodiment of the moral, social, economic and physiological condition of the dwellers.

In the serial novel Illusions Perdues (1837–1843), meanwhile, he dissected the Parisian press, provincial printing shops and the cruel economy of literary fame. Even the cut of a waistcoat, the price of paper, or the decor of a salon became data for understanding society.

Though his work is known for character typology (grouping them by traits), no two characters of the same “type” are alike. This showed his commitment to individuality within universal archetypes.

Other novelists including Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy, all treated the individual as the key to the social whole. But Balzac articulated the method most systematically: he aimed to know everything about a society by knowing each part in all its messy detail.

Balzac’s mandala

This method resembles a central idea in Hindu philosophy. The formula tat tvam asi (that thou art), from the Sanskrit Hindu text Chandogya Upanishad (8th to 6th century BC), says that the individual self (ātman) is identical to the universal essence (brāhman). It’s the idea that understanding the universe comes from realising that the universe is within the self.

The Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita offers a similar vision, where the deity Krishna declares: “I am the Self, O Gudakesha, seated in the hearts of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all beings.”

Balzac was no expert on Hinduism. But he does have a character (Louis Lambert) write about it in La Comédie Humaine:

Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, the three primitive creeds, originating as they did in Tibet, in the valley of the Indus, and on the vast plains of the Ganges, ended their warfare some thousand years before the birth of Christ by adopting the Hindoo Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity.

The passage wrongly asserts that Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Brahmanism emerged as separate “creeds”, when in fact they are interrelated and complementary currents within Hindu thought. The claim that they resolved their differences by adopting the Trimurti, and that this was the origin of the Christian Trinity, reflects a common orientalist tendency. It misunderstands Hindu ideas and co-opts them into a Christian framework.

But this misreading makes the structural parallel all the more interesting. Balzac didn’t import Hindu ideas; the resemblance emerges from his method. La Comédie Humaine is structured like a mandala: a layered map of a universe made from precise local detail.

In Hindu traditions, a mandala is not merely a symbol but a sacred diagram of the cosmos. Later Hindu and Buddhist cosmology develops it into a meditative tool – an intricate geometric pattern centred on the self and the divine. A mandala places a sacred centre at the heart of an ordered arrangement, expressing the idea that the universal is embedded in the particular. Each part reflects the whole, and the path to the centre is through a journey inward, detail by detail.

Balzac’s work functions similarly. La Comédie Humaine’s order arises not from a single philosophical system, but from mapping the interlocking elements of social existence. Like a mandala, it invites readers to move inward; from the material facts of a boarding house or a printing press to the inner motives of his characters.

Balzac explains his method of structuring La Comédie Humaine in the preface:

It was no small task to depict the two or three thousand conspicuous types of a period… This multitude of lives needed a setting – a gallery. Hence the very natural division … into the Scenes of Private, Provincial, Parisian, Political, Military, and Country Life. … Each has its own sense and meaning, and answers to an epoch in the life of man.

In this sense, Balzac’s realism is not merely descriptive but architectural: a literary mandala of modern society. The affinity with the Hindu mandala suggests that La Comédie Humaine, which has more than 2,000 characters, enacts a recognisably Hindu way of knowing: to know the world, one must first know its inward forms.

Balzac’s Catholic worldview, his (often) moralising narrator, his encyclopaedic ambition, all root him in 19th-century France. But the kinship with Hindu inwardness points to something deeper. His great realist novel, for all its materialism, remains part of a broader human project – to understand the universe by beginning with the self.

Beyond the canon

As part of the Rethinking the Classics series, we’re asking our experts to recommend a book or artwork that tackles similar themes to the canonical work in question, but isn’t (yet) considered a classic itself. Here is Harsh Trivedi’s suggestion:

For readers seeking complex but entertaining social narratives outside the western canon, Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (2006) offers an Indian counterpart to Balzac’s realism.

Set in contemporary Mumbai, the novel intricately weaves crime, politics and mythology. The ripples of the many characters’ actions interlock like a mandala, forming a complex, layered fiction. The protagonist, Sartaj Singh, first appeared in Chandra’s earlier short story collection Love and Longing in Bombay (1997), showcasing his use of recurring characters and interconnected narratives reminiscent of Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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Harsh Trivedi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine is a Hindu mandala – https://theconversation.com/honore-de-balzacs-la-comedie-humaine-is-a-hindu-mandala-262151

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter William Walsh, Researcher, The Migration Observatory, University of Oxford

Speaking to the press in an airport hangar near Oxford on August 26, the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, unveiled his party’s new policy on mass deportations.

There are many elements to the policy, but at its heart is a decision to abandon the UK’s decades-long commitment not to send people to places where they may face torture or death.

At the heart of the global asylum system is one basic principle: countries must not send people to places where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. This rule – known as the principle of “non-refoulement” – derives from the 1951 Refugee Convention but also appears in other human rights laws and agreements. It is why European countries, including the UK, assess asylum claims even when people have arrived without authorisation.

“Look, I can’t be responsible for despotic regimes all over the world,” said Farage, defending the policy in The Times, adding that his responsibility is to the “safety of women and girls on our streets” rather than to those who have entered the UK without permission.

The UK was instrumental in drafting both the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention. For the UK to effectively remove itself from these treaties raises significant questions about whether other states would follow suit, and what sort of protections would exist for persecuted people around the world in the future.

What is Reform proposing?

The plan is indeed, as Farage described, radical. Its main aim is to “detain and deport all illegal migrants” over one parliament. To make this possible, the plan, branded Operation Restoring Justice, entails leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), repealing the UK’s Human Rights Act, and “disapplying” for five years the Refugee Convention and other international agreements that could prevent deportations.

Further, it would greatly expand detention on repurposed military sites, and scale up charter flights for the removal of “up to 600,000” people without the right to be in the UK.

The policy reflects a major departure from the 75-year postwar consensus in Europe that countries should not send people to countries where they could face persecution.

Legal and practical hurdles

Reform’s policy, if implemented, is likely to attract legal challenges. However, as the parliamentary battle over the last government’s Rwanda deportation plan demonstrated, the government has considerable power to prevent the courts from having their say. Leaving the ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and removing all references to non-refoulement in domestic law would make the policy possible, from a legal perspective.

This would not happen overnight. It could take more than a year for Reform’s illegal migration (mass deportation) bill to become law, given that Reform will command no majority in the House of Lords, where the policy is liable to attract strong resistance. Leaving the ECHR requires just six months’ notice – but would probably also require the consent of parliament.

The bigger practical hurdles are logistical and diplomatic. Reform proposes to increase detention spaces to 24,000 within 18 months. As of mid-2024, the most recent available data, detention capacity stood at an estimated 2,200.

The UK’s current system for removals operates at a fraction of the scale Reform envisages. In the year ending June 30 2025, there were around 9,000 enforced returns and 27,000 voluntary ones. Removing hundreds of thousands of people over five years would require a huge expansion of interior immigration enforcement. It also remains unclear how Reform would identify hundreds of thousands of people living in the UK without permission.

Consent from receiving countries (the countries to where people would be deported) is a longstanding barrier to deportations. If a country does not recognise their citizens or refuses to take them back, they cannot be returned.

The government’s recent experience shows documentation and country cooperation are the main practical limits on enforced returns. Questions remain over whether, or on what terms, Afghanistan and Iran would agree to take back their citizens.

Reform has anticipated this potential issue by proposing to pay countries to take back their citizens, or impose sanctions on those that don’t.

Should this not work, Reform’s Plan B would be to deport people to “safe third countries”, a la Rwanda. Plan C: sending people to British Overseas Territories like Ascension Island, something the previous Conservative government was reported to have looked at internally and rejected on feasibility and cost grounds.

Reform estimates that the policy would save over £7 billion in five years. In truth, the policy is so radical that it is impossible to cost with any degree of precision.

What is clearer is that any net saving would depend critically on how many people the policy deters from crossing in small boats. Currently, small boat arrivals and a large asylum backlog generate annual government spending of over £4 billion.

Managing the asylum system has become increasingly challenging over the last decade, as numbers of both unauthorised arrivals and asylum claims have risen rapidly, and the cost of the asylum system has skyrocketed.

However, the most significant part of Reform’s announcement is not the detail, but the essence. It proposes ending the principle of refugee protection – accepting that people would be sent to countries where they could be tortured or killed, as a means of reducing unauthorised migration and cutting the costs of the asylum system.

Peter William Walsh receives funding from the Nuffield Foundation.

Rob McNeil receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is the chair of trustees for the Work Rights Centre, and alongside his role at the University of Oxford, undertakes consultancy work for UN bodies and other international organisations.

– ref. The most radical part of Reform’s deportation plans – https://theconversation.com/the-most-radical-part-of-reforms-deportation-plans-264162

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ailsa Henderson, Head of Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh

One apparent constant in contemporary UK politics is Nigel Farage’s ability to mobilise a sense of grievance among those who regard themselves as English. By doing so, Farage has, on successive occasions, managed to shift the terms of political debate so that the issues he cares about become the key issues of the day. His ability to drag the other parties onto his terrain is a classic success story of what political scientists call issue salience. He identifies a problem, proclaims loudly that it will be our collective undoing and proposes a tantalisingly straightforward solution.

The Brexit narrative was, of course, that the loss of British wealth and influence, as well the crisis of post-austerity public services, could best be explained by the undue influence of and resources willed away to “Europe”.

In England, this frustration correlated not with British but with English national identity. It also correlated with discontent at the internal union of the UK and a sense that Britain’s political class were distributing resources and influence to other foreigners – in this case Scots.

A decade on from the referendum, English-identifying electors are now being successfully mobilised on the basis of a new bogeyman. Social and economic problems in the UK are still being attributed to the way influence and resources are being ceded to foreigners, but this time it’s not bureaucrats in Brussels who are to blame for these ills, or Scots – it’s the people arriving on small boats.

However, even if Farage’s ability to mobilise grievance to political advantage remains unmatched, our 15 years of research into English national identity underlines that the proffered solutions to those grievances – the seemingly simple, quick fixes – simply don’t work. Exiting the EU has not stemmed English grievance. Rather, erstwhile Leavers are not happy at the outcome even while preferring not to have to talk about it. There is precious little reason to believe that five deportation flights a day to Kabul airport will make them any less nostalgic for the past, less aggrieved about the present or more hopeful for the future.

The proposed solutions to English grievances haven’t worked because those solutions were, from their inception, poorly thought-through and unworkable. A hard, “clean break” Brexit was never compatible with the existence of a land border on the island of Ireland. It was never going to be possible to construct a dedicated democratic political space for England through minor tweaks to the legislative procedures of the House of Commons, as was attempted in the introduction of English votes for English laws. Similarly, we’re not going save the NHS or universities by making the UK inhospitable to the skilled migrants it needs.

Moreover, the impact of adopting Farage’s framing of problems and associated bogeymen and simply promising to deal with them more effectively has proved disastrous, first, for the Conservative party, and now Labour. Anyone doubting the impact of issue ownership on electoral success need look no further than Scotland, where years of high constitutional salience rewarded the respective “owners” of the “indy” and pro-union positions at the expense of electoral support for the political centre ground. The dip in SNP and Conservative support in Scotland in the 2024 UK general election can be attributed in part to the weakened salience of constitutional politics. The issues we talk about matter.

None of the solutions offered to assuage English grievances have ever sought to address the real problems. Take, for example, the now longstanding evidence that the English feel aggrieved at the treatment of England following the devolution of power to Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Despite this, there has yet to be a serious discussion of post-devolution arrangements in a way that affords English voters the same opportunity to shape a government that seeks to be theirs as enjoyed by voters in the rest of the UK.

No doubt that reluctance to do so in part reflects the dual role of a UK government. It serves as both the government for the whole of the state and for England alone on issues that are devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The distorting impact of this distinctly odd arrangement is compounded by the steadfast refusal of the UK government to explicitly state when it is acting as the UK’s government or when it is responding to English concerns over English policy to make English lives better. Indeed, in the past two decades, no single English MP has referred in the Commons to the “government of England” as something that actually exists.

Invisible England

One of the stranger consequences of the UK’s asymmetrical governance arrangements is that England is rendered invisible, even though it is by far the largest part of the state. If UK governments of various hues are unwilling ever to name England and, indeed, behave as if the very existence of its English electorate is something to be ashamed of, it’s perhaps little wonder that English identifiers don’t feel they matter or have a voice. There is, in short, an English efficacy problem.

Rather than engage seriously with the reality of English sentiment and, yes, resentment, both Conservative and Labour governments have engaged in the serial ad hocery of constitutional change. They’ve played a never-ending game of constitutional Tetris in which plans for so-called English devolution are constantly made and remade. This process has, in turn, become a substitute for serious thinking about political voice and democratic influence within the state.

Successive UK governments have preferred to give England the structures that are least disruptive to the central institutions of the state. Thus, England is carved into a series of Scotland-sized pieces under regional devolution. What is never spoken of is the fact that this is precisely the least popular solution among England’s electorate. They instead doggedly favour an outcome that dare not speak its name – a political space for England as England.

Perhaps, then, the English are aggrieved and angry, not because foreigners have undermined their influence and stolen their resources but, in part at least, because they and their views are a perpetual afterthought in the UK’s governance arrangements. And maybe that’s another constant in UK politics – UK governments find it easier to address Farage’s successive foreigner problems than to look at their own role in stoking English grievance.

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Ailsa Henderson currently receives funding for the Scottish Election Study from the ESRC and funding for work on research cultures from Wellcome (InFrame). She is Chair of Boundaries Scotland, the independent non-partisan non-departmental public body that sets electoral boundaries in Scotland for local and Holyrood elections.

Richard Wyn Jones receives funding from the ESRC for the Welsh Elections Study.

– ref. Nigel Farage and the political power of English grievance – https://theconversation.com/nigel-farage-and-the-political-power-of-english-grievance-264065

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Clodagh Harrington, Lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early exits. No nothing.” This is what US president Donald Trump announced in the Oval Office in the last week in August. Ever the master media manipulator, America’s communicator-in-chief issued this as an executive order.

An executive order is issued by the president and doesn’t need to be passed by Congress. They are, however, expected to relate to existing law. Trump so far has signed 196. His latest directive, which aims to restore “respect, pride and sanctity” to the US flag, instructs the Department of Justice to investigate instances of burning the nation’s insignia under particular circumstances.

While the practice of flag burning as protest has a long history in the US, dating back to the US civil war, it is not a regular occurrence, and has been constitutionally permitted for decades.

The issue is already creating divisions among Republicans. There are three broad categories of GOP reaction. First, the Maga faithful are unlikely to complain. Unconditional support for their leader is a key trait of this group. And the executive order includes language with guaranteed appeal to those for whom terms such as “American patriots” and “foreign nationals” are predictable triggers. The president has long excelled at rallying his supporters on flag-related matters.

Beyond red-meat-for-the-base appeal, both the executive order and GOP support for it get a little more complex. Traditional conservatives, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, are a group that may have strongly negative feelings about flag burning, but their adherence to the first amendment and associated freedom of expression would generally override this.

Those who hold constitutional principles in high regard are increasingly concerned about a president demonstrating his desire for expansive power. And, the US Supreme Court has clearly ruled on more than one occasion that the act, however distasteful, is constitutionally permitted.

Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court justice and noted constitutional textualist, famously stated that “if it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag”. But, he added: “I am not king.” Alongside the more centrist Anthony Kennedy, these justices upheld the right to burn the US flag in the 1989 landmark case of Texas v Johnson, despite Scalia’s personal distaste for the act. In his writings, Scalia differentiated between the form of expression that was flag burning, and an act of insurrection, which, he noted, was “something quite different”. The first amendment, as he understood it, allowed for symbolic political protests, regardless of how offensive such expressions might be to patriotic sensibilities.

Already, analysts have highlighted how the president’s efforts to sidestep the constitution are laden with problems. Executive orders cannot override a Supreme Court ruling. Even Donald Trump should know that.

Getting around current law

What the executive order does attempt to do is to get around the law that allows flag burning. To do so, it focuses on associated crime such as property destruction, open burning violations and disorderly conduct. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, was instructed to pursue cases against those who “incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country”. So, when someone is (legally) burning a flag, they may be acting illegally at the same time by, for example, committing a hate crime. And this could trigger prosecution.

Furthermore, the executive order nods to a key flashpoint of the current climate by leveraging immigration law, and potentially facilitating the deportation of non-citizens who engage in flag-burning. Beyond the smoke-filled headlines, what this ruling does is circumvent the core ruling of Texas v Johnson by focusing on the circumstances surrounding any flag burning, rather than the act itself. A further aspect will involve the extent to which the courts could expand existing first amendment exceptions. This can only make for nervous constitutional conservatives.

The third group who mostly reside on the Trumpian side of the partisan fence are libertarians such as Republican senator Rand Paul. In a similar vein to their conservative counterparts, their worldview would sit uncomfortably with the president’s foray into testing constitutional principles, and not standing up for more wide-ranging free speech.

Flags and freedom

Libertarians tend to feel strongly about freedom of expression. And when their president picks a fight with the first amendment for no apparent reason beyond a mention he made of it on the campaign trail, he may end up aggravating more supporters than he pleases.

Writing on Reason.com, libertarian journalist Robby Soave argued that Trump is the “last person who should confuse protected speech with incitement to violence”. He added: “Any administration that purports to care about freedom of speech should easily reach the conclusion that criminalizing provocative yet nonviolent acts of political expression is a violation of this principle.”

For a president who deliberately and controversially appointed “Scalia-like” judges during his first term, his latest executive order seems at odds with this vision. Such inconsistency, for what may involve more Justice Department smoke than actual fire, may not serve the president well if many conservatives remain uncomfortable with the move.

To misquote a famous phrase attributed to Voltaire, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that whatever a majority of the justices think of those who actually want to burn the US flag, they will all but defend to the death your right to burn it.

The waters are further muddied now that a self-described combat veteran has set fire to the flag in response to the executive order. It is unlikely he is a “sandal-wearing weirdo”. Hence, the president’s patriotic script may end up somewhat singed around the edges.

Clodagh Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why Donald Trump’s plans to prosecute flag burning divides his supporters – https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trumps-plans-to-prosecute-flag-burning-divides-his-supporters-264059

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dervla Kelly, Associate Professor, Pharmacology, University of Limerick

Vitamin D supplements could help protect the caps on our chromosomes that slow ageing, sparking hopes the sunshine vitamin might keep us healthier for longer, a recent study suggests.

The researchers discovered that taking 2,000 IU (international units, a standard measure for vitamins) of vitamin D daily helped maintain telomeres – the tiny structures that act like plastic caps on shoelaces, protecting our DNA from damage every time cells divide.

Telomeres sit at the end of each of our 46 chromosomes, shortening every time a cell copies itself. When they become too short, cells can no longer divide and eventually die.

Scientists have linked shorter telomeres to some of our most feared diseases of ageing, including cancer, heart disease and osteoarthritis. Smoking, chronic stress and depression all appear to speed up telomere shortening, while inflammatory processes in the body also take their toll.

Beyond strong bones

It is well known that vitamin D is essential for bone health, helping our bodies absorb calcium. Children, teenagers and people with darker skin or limited sun exposure particularly need adequate levels to build and maintain strong bones.

But vitamin D also powers our immune system. A review of evidence found that vitamin D supplements can cut respiratory infections, especially in people who are deficient.

Early research even suggests it might help prevent autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and multiple sclerosis, though more trials are needed.

Since inflammation damages telomeres, vitamin D’s anti-inflammatory effects could explain its protective role.

In this recent study, from Augusta University in the US, the researchers followed 1,031 people with an average age of 65 for five years, measuring their telomeres at the start, after two years, and after four years. Half took 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily, while the other half received a placebo.

The results showed that telomeres were preserved by 140 base pairs in the vitamin D group, compared with a placebo. To put this in context, previous research found that telomeres naturally shorten by about 460 base pairs over a decade, suggesting vitamin D’s protective effect could be genuinely meaningful.

This isn’t the first promising finding. Earlier studies have reported similar benefits, while the Mediterranean diet – rich in anti-inflammatory nutrients – has also been linked to longer telomeres.

The catch

But there are some important points to note. Some researchers warn that extremely long telomeres might actually increase disease risk, suggesting there’s a sweet spot we don’t yet understand.

There’s also no agreement on the right dose. The Augusta researchers used 2,000 IU daily – much higher than the current recommended intake of 600 IU for under-70s and 800 IU for older adults. Yet other research suggests just 400 IU might help prevent colds.

Experts say the optimal dose probably depends on individual factors, including existing vitamin D levels, overall nutrition and how the vitamin interacts with other nutrients.

Although these findings are exciting, it’s too early to start popping high-dose vitamin D in the hope of slowing ageing. The strongest evidence for healthy ageing still points to the basics: a balanced diet, regular exercise, quality sleep, not smoking and managing stress, all of which naturally support telomere health.

However, if you’re deficient in vitamin D or at risk of poor bone health, supplements remain a sensible choice backed by decades of research. As scientists continue unravelling the mysteries of ageing, vitamin D’s role in keeping our cellular clocks ticking may prove to be just one piece of a much larger puzzle.

Dervla Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Can vitamin D supplements really slow ageing, as a recent study suggests? – https://theconversation.com/can-vitamin-d-supplements-really-slow-ageing-as-a-recent-study-suggests-263680

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mary-Ann Ball, Senior Lecturer, Fashion Sustainability and Marketing, Nottingham Trent University

As a fashion sustainability researcher, finding the ReTuna shopping mall in Eskilstuna was a delightful surprise. Stepping into this Swedish shopping centre felt refreshingly different – it is the first in the world to sell only secondhand and repurposed items.

During numerous visits to the shopping mall over the last 18 months, I have spoken to customers, managers and employees – all of whom seemed excited by ReTuna’s innovative business model.

The mall instantly feels very different to the cluttered charity shops or vintage boutiques most of us associate with pre-owned retail. There is a wide range of products on sale – fashion, sports equipment, household items, children’s toys, antiques – and even an Ikea secondhand store selling previously used and repaired furniture.

This is not just a retail space. It is a municipality-led experiment in circular consumption, where everything sold has been donated by the public.

ReTuna was established in 2015 as part of Eskilstuna’s climate and waste reduction strategy. Built alongside the city’s recycling centre, it includes a dedicated drop-off point called The Return, where residents donate unwanted items. These are sorted and redistributed to the retailers in the mall, creating a low-cost, low-waste circular system.

The model is only possible because of public funding and local government support – a reminder that circular innovation often requires structural investment, not just consumer goodwill.

However, what makes ReTuna so distinctive is not just its inventory but its atmosphere. Consumers describe it as “accessible”, “curated” and “convenient”. The mall’s layout and product displays mirror conventional retail spaces, making secondhand shopping feel stylish and enjoyable.

One shop manager told me customers often mistake the secondhand items for new, a testament to how fashionability and design are used to make reuse attractive without increasing cost. At ReTuna, the clean, calm environment helps make ethical consumption feel desirable and emotionally rewarding. As one shopper put it: “It’s not just ethical, it’s beautiful.”

Retailers use low-cost stock and infrastructure to create visually appealing stores. The result is a pleasurable shopping experience that challenges the stigma of secondhand. While affordability and environmental values remain central, ReTuna also reimagines what sustainable retail can look and feel like.

Demand for pre-loved

Consumer interest in “pre-loved” fashion is accelerating, with the secondhand market growing 2.7 times faster than the broader apparel market, according to one recent industry report. Globally, it is projected to reach US$367 billion (£272 billion) by 2029.

And it is not only pre-owned fashion that is growing. Another market research report forecasts the wider secondhand products market will reach US$1.04 trillion by 2035, growing at a compound annual rate of 17.2%.

In a YouGov survey spanning 17 markets, 43% of secondhand buyers favoured instore purchases, compared with 39% who preferred online (19% were undecided). ReTuna is part of this shift – not as an outlier, but a glimpse of what mainstream retail could become.

This pioneering Swedish mall turned ten this year. It has grown from a local government initiative to an internationally recognised model of circular retail. The mall’s success shows that secondhand shopping does not have to feel like a compromise – it can be stylish, convenient and socially meaningful.

Circular retail is not just about what we buy, but how and where we buy it. ReTuna demonstrates that with the right infrastructure, design and public support, sustainable consumption can be embedded into everyday life – not as a chore but a rewarding experience.

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Mary-Ann Ball does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Sweden’s ‘secondhand only’ shopping mall is changing retail – https://theconversation.com/how-swedens-secondhand-only-shopping-mall-is-changing-retail-260459