Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Léonie de Jonge, Professor of Research on Far-Right Extremism, Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism (IRex), University of Tübingen

Dutch voters are to elect a new parliament for the third time in just five years on October 29. Prime Minister Dick Schoof called a snap election following the collapse of his cabinet in June, just 11 months after it was sworn in.

The immediate trigger was the withdrawal of Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) from the governing coalition. The PVV quit after coalition partners rejected its controversial ten-point plan on migration, which included using the army to secure borders and turning back all asylum seekers.

The Schoof government continued in a caretaker capacity, made up of the remaining three coalition parties: the liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the newcomer Christian-democratic New Social Contract (NSC), and the agrarian populist Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB).

However, on August 22, the caretaker government unravelled when NSC foreign affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned over internal disagreements about policy toward Israel. His departure prompted the entire NSC delegation to step down, triggering the second cabinet collapse in as many months.

To understand the current political turmoil, we have to go back to the formation of the Schoof cabinet following the election of November 2023. That resulted in a landslide victory for Wilders’ PVV, paving the way for the most rightwing government in Dutch post-war history.

After months of tense and protracted negotiations, all four coalition party leaders, including Wilders, opted against taking the prime minister role themselves. Instead, they appointed Dick Schoof, a civil servant and former intelligence chief, as prime minister. This unusual “one-foot-in, one-foot-out” arrangement allowed Wilders to exert significant influence over policy without assuming executive responsibility – an unprecedented level of access to power for the far right.

Parliamentary debates soon reflected this shift, with previously fringe ideas like “remigration” and “omvolking” (akin to the great replacement conspiracy) being openly discussed.

The four-party structure was inherently fragile. Deep ideological divisions meant the coalition stumbled from one crisis to another. The inexperience of the cabinet members and the unpredictability of the PVV only made this situation more volatile.

Legislatively, the cabinet achieved little during its 11 months in office, leaving key structural problems such as housing shortages unresolved. Meanwhile, the coalition attempted to bypass parliamentary checks to push through its immigration proposals.

The overall result of a year of chaos: the erosion of democratic norms and principles, and the rapid normalisation of far right ideas.

A gravitational shift to the right

For the past 50 years, rightwing parties such as the VVD, the Christian-democratic CDA and the far-right PVV have consistently outnumbered their leftwing counterparts in Dutch politics – a trend that runs counter to the popular image of the Netherlands as a progressive beacon.

On average, rightwing parties have held around half of the 150 parliamentary seats. This gives them an advantage once votes are counted since they can often form coalitions among themselves. Leftwing parties generally have to seek coalition partners beyond their own bloc.

This pattern is largely driven by voter behaviour. Most voters stay within their ideological lane, switching only between parties on the same side of the spectrum. The only party that regularly attracts support from both sides is the centrist-progressive D66.

Since 2021, a third bloc has emerged: the far right, led by Wilders’ PVV and including the extreme-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) and the FvD-splinter party JA21. This bloc appears to have permanently shifted the political centre of gravity to the right.

As in 2023, the far right is set to play a major role in the 2025 election. Despite a turbulent year in government, the PVV continues to lead the polls. Voters appear undeterred by the party’s failure to govern effectively. This time, Wilders has explicitly said he wants to be the prime minister.

But Wilders isn’t the far right’s only contender. JA21 presents itself as a more “reasonable” alternative on the right, while FvD has undergone a key leadership change: controversial founder Thierry Baudet has handed over the reins to Lidewij de Vos. This move that reflects a broader far-right trend of using female leadership to soften the party’s image.

The centre-right camp, meanwhile, is in flux. The VVD has been slipping in the polls. At the same time, party leader Dilan Yeşilgöz has ruled out further partnerships with Wilders and signalled scepticism towards cooperation with the GreenLeft–Labour alliance. These positions have narrowed the VVD’s coalition prospects and raised questions about the party’s strategy.

The NSC is in free fall. After winning 20 seats from scratch in its 2023 debut, the party now appears likely to secure at most one seat – or potentially none at all. In contrast, the long-struggling CDA is staging a surprising comeback.

Following a historic low of just five seats in 2023, the party is now polling at 22 to 26 seats. This surge has been attributed to the so-called “Bontenbal effect,” named after the party’s popular leader, Henri Bontenbal.

The main contender on the left is the GreenLeft–Labour alliance, led by former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, which is currently polling in third place behind the PVV and CDA. But the broader picture remains unchanged: the left is a structural minority, facing long odds of governing without support from the centre-right.

Finally, after significant losses in 2023, D66 appears to be recovering. Now polling between 11 and 14 seats, the party may once again play a pivotal role in coalition talks, potentially bridging the centre-left and centre-right blocs.

An uncertain outcome

No fewer than 27 parties are running in this election, and in a political landscape that has become notoriously fragmented and volatile, many voters make their final decisions only at the last minute.

With many medium-sized and smaller parties in the mix, and the PVV effectively barred from government participation, it is difficult to envision what a viable coalition might look like – so protracted coalition talks after election day are likely.

But beyond this uncertainty, the stakes for Dutch democracy are unusually high. The Netherlands has seen an alarmingly rapid normalisation of far-right rhetoric. This election may prove more than just another chapter in political instability, but a defining moment for the country’s democratic future.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Netherlands is trying to draw a line under a year of chaos with fresh elections – will it work? – https://theconversation.com/the-netherlands-is-trying-to-draw-a-line-under-a-year-of-chaos-with-fresh-elections-will-it-work-267076

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marc Roscoe Loustau, Affiliated Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University

The US president, Donald Trump, was expected to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Hungarian capital of Budapest in coming weeks for more talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

However, the summit appears to have been cancelled following a call between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. The White House gave no reason for the cancellation but some reports suggest the two country’s positions on Ukraine were seen as too far apart to make a face-to-face meeting worthwhile.

While the summit may yet be revived, scepticism that any progress will be made towards peace is probably the right response. Putin’s own actions have shown how little stock he places in summits and negotiations.

Within hours of his August meeting with Trump in Alaska, for example, Russia launched a barrage of strikes against Ukraine. Russian forces staged another series of drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities a few days later.

If the Budapest summit were to go ahead, above all it would be a boon for Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has long been Putin’s strongest ally in the EU. His invitation to Putin risks causing further damage to the international rules-based order and the already strained relationship between Hungary and Ukraine.

A meeting in Budapest would also pose a threat to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which aims to place checks on the power of national leaders by prosecuting them for grave crimes. The ICC issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest in 2023 for his alleged involvement in the war crime of forcibly deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.

Hungary’s government has announced its intention to withdraw from the ICC treaty. This decision came shortly after it decided to flout an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in April 2025. But as Hungary has not yet completed this process, it remains obliged to detain the Russian leader.

In response to a question from the New York Times about Putin’s visit to Hungary, the ICC’s public affairs office reinforced the legal obligation of its member states to enforce arrest warrants. It added that in the “case of noncooperation, the court may make a finding” and alert an oversight group to take action.

But the ICC is regularly criticised for being powerless to effect real justice, and the Hungarian government’s invitation to Putin and refusal to detain him in Budapest will only weaken its standing further.

Worsening strained relations

A Budapest summit would also be a death knell for diplomacy between Hungary and Ukraine. Relations between the two neighbouring countries have been suffering for years due to Orbán’s attempts to cultivate stronger ties with Russia.

Most of the western world sought to isolate Russia diplomatically after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, Orbán flew to China to meet with Putin in 2023 and his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, has subsequently been sent on repeated missions to Moscow.

Hungary’s real value for Putin lies in shaping EU foreign policy. And, at every step, Orbán has used Hungary’s veto power to block or delay the EU’s efforts to support Ukraine and tighten the screws on Russia’s economy. Despite efforts by the EU to reduce the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy, Orbán continues to import Russian natural gas.

Budapest has also repeatedly accused Kyiv of discriminating against western Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority. The dispute centres around Ukraine’s language laws, which require at least 70% of education above fifth grade to be conducted in Ukrainian.

Hungary has used this to cast aspersions on the international reputation of Ukraine as a democracy that fosters pluralism, and has blocked Ukraine’s EU accession talks. EU accession requires candidate countries to provide human rights and protection guarantees for national minorities.

As I learned while reporting in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod in June, minority community leaders themselves point out that they have had success negotiating directly with Kyiv.

Ukraine has also introduced an action plan to protect the rights of minorities. This plan is based on recommendations from national minority organisations, the European Commission and the Council of Europe. But Orbán, intent on maintaining his leverage over Ukraine, has ignored this progress.

Bilateral relations were dealt another blow in May 2025 when Ukrainian authorities arrested two people, claiming they were collecting sensitive information about air-defence systems. Ukraine’s security service said the spy ring was run by a “staff officer of Hungarian military intelligence”, an allegation Hungary denies.

Several months later, after Russia sent drones into Nato airspace over Poland and Romania, Hungary targeted Ukraine with a similar manoeuvre. It sent several of its own drones across the border into Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region, prompting an angry demand from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for an explanation.

A total breakdown in Hungarian-Ukrainian relations now could cut direct communication between the two countries entirely, just when they might be needed to avoid a conflict resulting from Hungary’s continuous provocations.

Weathering the fallout

Orbán’s fiercest critics have long called for the EU to take action against Hungary, beyond what the bloc has already done by withholding funds from Budapest for consistently flouting EU standards and democratic principles.

But European policymakers should not focus only on punishments. They could give Zelensky a major geopolitical win by, for example, announcing that Ukraine has met a major accession benchmark.

If this were a benchmark concerning protection for national minorities, it would have the additional benefit of undermining one of Hungary’s major claims against Ukraine’s integration efforts.

Regardless of the specifics, pushing ahead swiftly with Ukraine’s EU accession would be a bold and constructive reply to Trump and Orbán’s attempts at rapprochement with Putin.

This article has been updated to include the cancellation of the summit.

Marc Roscoe Loustau 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. Trump-Putin Budapest summit would have posed threat to international rule of law and Ukraine’s relations with Hungary – https://theconversation.com/trump-putin-budapest-summit-would-have-posed-threat-to-international-rule-of-law-and-ukraines-relations-with-hungary-267881

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Murray, Professor of Human Genetics, Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Exeter

A woman’s fertility usually begins to decline in her mid-30s. This means the chances of becoming pregnant decreases drastically each month.

For a long time, scientists thought that the key culprit behind this rapid decline in fertility was egg quality. This is understandable, since women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have – and as they get closer to the menopause, the number of eggs in the ovary decreases. So too does the quality of these eggs.

But a recent study shows that the ovary’s cells and tissues play a bigger role than previously thought in how fertility wanes. This finding could have major implications for how we understand the fundamental process of reproductive ageing and how fertility might be preserved.

Studying fertility has long been difficult to do. Not only is women’s health research historically underfunded, it’s also difficult to study because the ovaries and ovarian tissues are hard to access.

In such cases, scientists typically use laboratory animals whose biology closely resembles a human’s. But it’s again tough to do this, given humans are one of only a handful of species that go through menopause. The only other animal species that go through the menopause are certain types of whales — including orcas and belugas.

But while only a few animal species actually go through the menopause, many animals share a similar ovarian biology as humans. This is why the research team began their investigation into reproductive ageing by using mice.

The research team took ovary tissue from young and old mice, and compared it to ovaries from women in their 20s, 30s and 50s. They then used 3D-imaging and compared the gene profiles of the cells in the ovaries to generate detailed maps of the different cell types and their functions across the lifespan.

They found both similarities and differences in ovarian function and ageing between mice and humans. These initial findings were important in confirming which instances mice might be useful as a model when studying human fertility.

They found that older eggs were more similar in humans and mice than younger eggs were. Human and mouse ovaries also contain similar cell types which support the growth of the egg.

In humans, granulosa cells surround the egg and produce oestrogen. Mice appear to have a similar type of cell, which performs a similar function.

However, theca cells, which in humans produce testosterone and stimulate the granulosa cells, appear to operate differently in mice.

The researchers found evidence that a particular nerve support cell, called a glial cell, is present within both mouse and human ovaries – and that this cell develops early in foetal life. In both humans and mice, the glial cells appear to stimulate the ovary to produce eggs.

They also genetically manipulated the development of glial cells in mice and found the ovaries mimicked what is seen in polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Doing this led to more early-stage eggs developing in the ovary – but these failed to mature properly. The result provides hope that mouse models could help develop new, much-needed treatments for PCOS.

By comparing ovaries in the old and young, researchers found that the tissue structure in humans and mice differed. Humans develop gaps between the eggs – and the ovary becomes stiffer as more fibrous tissue is laid down, probably due to ovulation and repair of the tissue over a woman’s reproductive life.

These changes in the ovary’s cells and tissues could explain why human ovaries age relatively earlier than other species. This study’s findings also show that it isn’t just the eggs, but rather the broader ecosystem of the ovary, that contributes to the decline in fertility that occurs after 30.

Being able to use animal models for research into women’s health will advance our understanding of conditions such as PCOS and infertility, which have been historically underfunded and under-researched. It will allow researchers to better study the reproductive diseases which affect women and develop new drugs that can treat these debilitating conditions.

This knowledge improves understandings of the fundamental processes of ovarian ageing which will enable better diagnosis and treatments of infertility.

Anna Murray is a co-founder and consultant for OvartiX Limited. She receives funding from the MRC and Wellcome Trust. She is affiliated with the University of Exeter.

– ref. Fertility: the ovaries play a key role in reproductive decline, new research shows – https://theconversation.com/fertility-the-ovaries-play-a-key-role-in-reproductive-decline-new-research-shows-267460

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Flint, Professor of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield

The winner of the 2025 RIBA Stirling prize offers an inspiring blueprint for addressing some of our current housing crises. It is also an opportunity to reflect on long-standing dilemmas in providing appropriate accommodation for all.

Architects Witherford Watson and Mann won the prize, for the second time, for the Appleby Blue development. Run by the United St Saviours Charity in Bermondsey, South London, it provides 57 units of one and two bedroom apartments for residents aged over 65, with 11 units fully wheelchair accessible.

It is explicitly a new take on urban almshouses, which date back to the Middle Ages. Throughout their history, almshouses have primarily provided accommodation for the elderly.

Read more:
How the high-rise tower block came to symbolise the contradictions of modern Britain

The almshouse was historically called a “hospital for the poor”. One of the architect’s behind Appleby Blue, Stephen Witherford, points out the intersections between housing and health crises. Often hospital beds are occupied by elderly people because of a lack of appropriate accommodations that fit their needs, paired with a wider lack of mechanisms enabling elderly residents to downsize from their existing homes, Witherford notes.

United St Saviours Charity can be traced back to 1541. The charity’s modern day specialist staff carry a lineage going back to the initial wardens charged with managing the estate and looking after the poor of the parish.

Appleby Blue attempts to address two intersecting crises: the lack of accessible and affordable housing, especially in London and growing levels of loneliness among older people. We face a paradox, while cities like London become more densely populated social connections between us are seen to have reduced, particularly since COVID-19.

The development was partly funded through Section 106 agreements between Southwark Council and the developer JTRE. These legal agreements ensure infrastructure, services, or affordable housing to mitigate the impact of a new development. This is an important agreement when developers are challenging the financial viability of providing affordable social housing or infrastructure as part of new development programmes.

In addition to a design focused on light and space and technical adaptions enabling residents to live as independently as possible, its principal aim is to foster connections – both between residents and with the wider community.

The new development retains the courtyard that has often been a feature of almshouses. As well as the shared courtyard there is a rooftop garden, and spacious balconies, which are provided as spaces for interaction. Britain has a somewhat chequered history of attempts to engineer sociability through the architecture of public housing, including the use of wide deck access in high rise developments.

However, the development seeks, in the words of the judges, to “combine function and community”. This mission recognises that the cohesive design needs to be complemented by shaping daily practices in a way that reduces isolation. The communal kitchen is at the heart of this and while the development includes resident-only spaces, it also emphasises public communal areas, a welcome contrast to “poor door” mechanisms to segregate social and private homes in some other London developments.

There is a deliberate attempt to promote interactions with the wider local community, including shared cooking and dance classes and singing groups. Intergenerational engagement is particularly emphasised, with a toddler’s group and local school children involved in the social activities. This offers an innovative take on a longstanding dilemma in social housing about whether to aim for allocations that mixed generations and household types or to provide more specialist, but separate, accommodation.

Read more:
Stirling Prize 2024: a welcome turn towards reuse and retrofit but too safe to represent the UK’s ‘best’ architecture

Encouraging residents to engage in communal activities has been a constant feature, for example of the housing cooperative movement, with mixed results. But here, the focus is on shared interests and mutual skills development, for example cooking, rather than on volunteering or involvement in the management of the development.

Appleby Blue is also deliberately an ongoing site of research. It includes accommodation spaces for researchers. A study by the University of Bournemouth has evaluated the impact of the development on its residents and other studies are ongoing. This is a welcome reminder about how important robust scientific evidence is in understanding what works in housing for the elderly.

There is much to admire, architecturally and socially, about Appleby Blue. An obvious challenge is the extent to which its specific elements, from affordability to design and specialist support, could be scaled up or replicated more widely given the extent of the crises we face. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate and learn from its pioneering features, including its lessons for tackling loneliness, which is certainly not confined to the elderly.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

John Flint is not currently receiving funding from an organisation. He has previously received research funding from the UKRI, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Nuffield Foundation, a number of UK Government Departments, the Scottish Executive/ Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities He is a Trustee of the Housing Studies Charitable Trust.

– ref. Stirling prize 2025: Appleby Blue pioneers affordable social housing tackling elderly loneliness – https://theconversation.com/stirling-prize-2025-appleby-blue-pioneers-affordable-social-housing-tackling-elderly-loneliness-268017

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mike Duggan, Lecturer in Digital Culture and Technology, King’s College London

One of the most prolific science-fiction writers of the last century, Ursula K. Le Guin was revered for her inventive, genre-defying novels. Exploring humanity through philosophy, gender, race and society, her stories were rooted in fantasy worlds for which she often created original maps. Now a new exhibition in London is celebrating the cartographic imagination of this groundbreaking American author.

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin reveals how maps were central to the other-world building she was so famous for. Fans will find much to enjoy here, including the opportunity to walk around enlarged screenprints of well-known maps from books such as Earthsea and Always Coming Home. They will also have the chance to pore over unpublished maps and artworks from the Le Guin Foundation archive.

Thanks to the accompanying book of the same name, readers will be be able to absorb a deeper sense of maps as world-making and storytelling devices, as scholars and commentators discuss their significance in Le Guin’s oeuvre.

Much has been said about the ways Le Guin began her writing process by drawing a map, where she would place characters and narratives in the bounded space of an world etched out in cartographic form. This was as much a way for her to imagine a world as it was a technique to structure a story about it.

There is now an established field of maps studies called literary cartography that explores the way writers of fiction, poetry and folklore use maps in storytelling. It also examines how literary maps, printed alongside the stories they shape, are used by the reader as a way into a world and a device for understanding it.

It is here that maps take on a life of their own as they seep into the imagination of the reader, becoming a well-loved and remembered part of the story.

How literary maps circulate

The exhibition tells us about the context in which maps are understood and how maps circulate in society, creating new meanings along the way.

In the gallery space, Le Guin’s maps are looked at in isolation rather than relating directly to a text. They demand a different kind of attention, for there is a different form of visual connection between a viewer and a gallery object than between a reader and a book. So the maps are taken out of their original context and placed in another. But this isn’t to say this new context is any less significant.

My research has shown that the circulation of maps in a society is as important as what’s on the maps themselves. The context of where a map is used, and who it is used by, matters. Those with the power to shape a narrative with a map can have more impact than those that do not.

Consider, for example, the way maps are used in migration debates to show clear delineation of who belongs and who does not. Those with the ability to enforce and debate the border lines shown on the map have far greater power than the migrants that might use the same maps to try and cross them.

Bruno Latour’s immutable mobiles theory resonates here – the idea that what’s on a map remains stable, but the map itself is mobile as it circulates amongst different people with different interests.

Who maps are seen by, how they are understood, and where they end up are key considerations for map scholars. The Word for World exhibition is a good example of where literary cartographies circulate in society, and where new meanings emerge.

Much of Le Guin’s work is grounded in a belief that humans and other species are completely entangled with their natural environments. When read within the context of the story, Le Guin’s maps illustrate these entanglements by showing how the landscapes of her fictional worlds shape the actions of the characters.

When read outside of the book, in the context of the gallery, the role of the map changes despite it showing the exact same thing. It makes me wonder how Le Guin would understand the new ways that her maps are being read here.

This is even more the case when we think about the function of the maps in her stories – creating other-worlds that tell fictional, but no less real, narratives about racial, gendered and environmental politics. What does it mean to extract a map from the thorny issues of these politics, to be recontextualised as an aesthetic gallery object?

There will forever be a tension between the map exhibition and the ways that maps are encountered in books. By definition they are being “exhibited” and put at the centre. And there’s no doubt Le Guin’s maps look impressive here, masterfully hung, printed on deep blue cotton, bathed in warm lighting.

Draped thoughtfully in rows throughout the space is perhaps a nod to being immersed in the cartographic imagination of Le Guin. They are certainly a spectacle that encourages a closer look. But is that enough?

There is a common fascination with maps, partly to do with their complexity and invitation to view one’s self in them, which makes them popular objects to exhibit. It’s no surprise then, that the maps do the heavy lifting here, but they are only half the story of the show.

Understanding them more fully means viewing them alongside reading Le Guin’s books, and the show’s accompanying book, which is so much more than an exhibition glossary. It puts the maps into conversation with critical texts on what they meant to Le Guin, but also how they fit into broader discussions about what maps do in the worlds of our imagination.

The Word for World: Maps of Ursula K Le Guin is showing in the Architectural Association Gallery, London until December 6

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Mike Duggan 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 maps of Ursula K Le Guin reveal a fascinating insight into world-building in fantasy fiction – https://theconversation.com/the-maps-of-ursula-k-le-guin-reveal-a-fascinating-insight-into-world-building-in-fantasy-fiction-267561