Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Millman, Postdoctoral Researcher, Polar Science, University of Exeter

Imagine your favourite sunny beach. Anywhere will do. You look out and see the ocean stretching to the horizon. To a glaciologist, that view is not just water; it’s melted ice.

Our new study shows that the best case sea-level rise scenarios may now be out of reach.

Around 20,000 years ago, during the most recent ice age, the Earth was about 5°C cooler than today. Vast ice sheets, comparable in scale to Greenland and Antarctica, covered Canada, northern Europe, and other regions. Those ice sheets formed as water evaporated from the oceans, fell as snow, and accumulated year after year on land.

Locked away as ice, that water was removed from the ocean, lowering sea level by around 130m and reshaping the planet’s coastlines. You could have walked from Britain to mainland Europe or from Siberia to North America as much of today’s continental shelf was dry land.

Between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, global temperatures increased and those ice sheets melted. Sea level rose, flooding coastal plains and river valleys, and leading to modern coastlines. The lesson from Earth’s recent history is simple: When global temperature changes, sea level changes, and coastlines change with it.

The triple threat

Sea level rise has three main causes. First, as the ocean warms, seawater expands, increasing its volume. Second, hundreds of thousands of mountain glaciers worldwide are melting, adding water to the sea. Third, the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass. All three matter, but they do not contribute equally, and their importance is changing.

Since around 1850, the burning of fossil fuels has raised greenhouse gas concentrations to levels not seen for more than three million years. As a result, global temperatures have increased by nearly 1.5°C and global mean sea level has risen by more than 20cm. Just under half of this rise came from thermal expansion of warming oceans. A similar amount comes from the melting of about 300,000 glaciers worldwide, but with a rising contribution from the great ice sheets.

What is striking is how fast this change has happened. Around half of the total sea level rise since 1850 has occurred in just the past 30 years. During this time, Greenland and Antarctica have begun to contribute more to sea-level rise than all other glaciers combined, and together now exceed the contribution from ocean warming. Mass loss from Antarctica alone is around six times greater than it was three decades ago.

This shift matters because glaciers and ice sheets are not equal. If every small glacier on Earth were to melt completely, global sea level would rise by only about 24cm. If the polar ice sheets were to melt, sea level would rise by more than 65m, almost 300 times more.

Ice sheets usually respond slowly to warming air and ocean temperatures. But some regions are far more vulnerable than others. In these hotspots, retreat can trigger dynamic processes that accelerate ice loss, destabilising neighbouring regions and speeding up sea level rise.

Researchers like us are starting to see just this, particularly in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica and the margins of the Greenland ice sheet. Mass loss from these ice sheets commits the planet to metres of sea level rise – and once retreat begins it may be impossible to stop.

The reality gap

The pace of change still depends on us, but the starting point keeps shifting. Observations show that current sea level rise is already tracking along the mid-to-high projections provided by the UN’s climate science advisory group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), placing the lowest, most manageable outcomes out of reach. Sea levels rising by more than 0.5m by 2100 are now increasingly likely, with consequences that include large-scale displacement and the abandonment of many coastal regions at immense and avoidable cost.

This does not mean the outcome is fixed. The world stops warming almost immediately after reaching net zero. Rapid decarbonisation would slow ice loss, buying time for coastal cities, communities, ports, wetlands and beaches to adapt.

Yet a clear gap remains between where the scientific consensus says emissions need to go to avoid rapid rise, and where current government commitments, known as nationally determined contributions are taking us. Many estimates say that we are currently on a path toward roughly 3°C of warming. For context, the threshold for the irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet is estimated to be as low as 1.7°C to 2.3°C. We are flirting with a temperature that would commit the planet to several metres of long-term rise from Greenland.

Now return to that beach. The shoreline is not fixed. It is a product of past warming and it is already being reshaped by the warming we have caused. The question is no longer whether sea level rise can be kept low, but how high it will go, how quickly it will rise, and how much damage we are prepared to accept.
The longer action is delayed, the fewer good options remain, and the more of that familiar coastline is lost to the tide.

Helen Millman is on the advisory council of the Conservative Environment Network.

Martin Siegert receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council.

Richard Alley 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 delaying climate action now means higher seas by 2100 – new research – https://theconversation.com/why-delaying-climate-action-now-means-higher-seas-by-2100-new-research-272290

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Stewart, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University

As the Earth shifts to climates not seen for several hundred thousand years, we may need to look at ancient environments for clues about what could happen next.

Our new study of two whale fossils, with preserved fragments of shark teeth, suggests the modern descendants of these animals could once again roam the southern region of the North Sea, between the UK, Belgium and Denmark. Climate change may recreate the conditions that allowed the ancestors of great white sharks to hunt in these waters.

If you want information about how animals and other organisms might respond to the kind of climate changes our planet is experiencing right now, you need evidence of former responses to such changes.

Palaeoecology, the study of the interactions between organisms in the deep past, has been coopted in the service of conservation science for some years now.

One example of a past seascape which may tell us important information is that of the southern part of the North Sea, which was occupied a few million years ago by large marine animals. In modern times, the area has had a relatively low diversity in its wildlife.

But about 4-5 million years ago the North Sea was home to several large shark species, including the now locally extinct bluntnose sixgill shark and a relative of the modern great white shark. The Greenland shark used to live in this region, as well as tiny right whales, a relative of the beluga whale, and rorqual baleen whales. It was also home to extinct dolphins, such as Pliodelphis doelensis which was about the size of a common dolphin, plus porpoises and several seal species. Many of these animals, like all the cetaceans and seals, and some of the sharks, are now extinct. Others, including many other sharks, have since moved to distant oceans.

It appears that there was large-scale turnover of cetacean species in the southern North Sea during the ice age of the Pliocene-Pleistocene epoch, with the extinctions of most small baleen whales and the departure of other cetacean families (such as that of the beluga whale). This turnover may well have been responsible for the disappearance of the large sharks including the great white relatives and the bluntnose sixgill sharks, that were feeding on the smaller whales, from the North Sea.

Occasionally, the fossil record provides a glimpse of the past relationships between species. This can help scientists better understand these food webs and how ancient ecosystems worked.

Shark bite marks on fossil marine mammal bones are relatively common, revealing intervals of time when two animals interacted. However, it is often difficult to identify the predator species. Much more rarely, bite marks come with fossilised tooth fragments. This is what we found in two cetacean skulls from the Early Pliocene (approximately 5-4 million years ago) of the North Sea.

The first of these two skulls belonged to a diminutive extinct right whale which was found by father and son fossil enthusiasts (Robert and John Stewart – coauthor of this piece) in the mid-1980s in the docks in Antwerp, Belgium. Some 40 or so years later the skull was donated to the Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels where it was identified by one of us (Olivier Lambert) as one of only two fossil specimens of Balaenella brachyrhynus, a tiny right whale species only known from the North Sea.

Further examination revealed bite marks on the top of the skull and in one such mark there was a tooth fragment of a shark. In our study, with the help of the shark specialist Frederik Mollen, the tooth tip was identified using microCT scanning as belonging to part of a lower tooth of a bluntnose sixgill shark Hexanchus griseus, which today is common in the Mediterranean Sea. The position of the bites makes it likely that the whale was scavenged as it lay drifting belly-up.

The second skull, from a close relative of the extinct beluga whale Casatia thermophila was discovered in the early 1980s. It was found during the excavation of a new dock in the Port of Antwerp by another father and son team – Paul Gigase, a pathologist by profession, and his son Pierre.

In this case the whale, which also had bite marks with the tip of a shark tooth embedded, may have been attacked by an extinct mako shark, a relative of today’s great white shark. It appears that the shark was attempting to separate the whale’s head from the rest of the body and focusing on the fat-rich melon, a mass of tissue involved in echolocation on the top of the animal’s head.

These fossils represent direct evidence that relatives of sharks today fed on these whales. Even if the fossil evidence is limited to two pairs of animals, they are tangible examples of such behaviour.

The ongoing biodiversity crisis is directly related to climate change, and has (or will have) an impact on the distribution of marine mammals. Global warming is likely to affect shallow seas in particular. The southern part of the North Sea is not large or deep enough for modern baleen whales, which are larger than their ancestors and live in the North Atlantic, like the modern right whale, the humpback and fin whales. But warming seas could attract dolphins and seals, and in turn great white sharks or other large marine predators.

In the North Sea, scientists have already observed short-term changes in the distribution of porpoises and seals. New seal colonies have established along the coast of the southern North Sea and there have been abrupt fluctuations in the number of porpoises stranded yearly on Belgian beaches.

The fossilised behaviour of the disappeared whales and sharks emphasise that all is change in the ecology of the North Sea.

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. Could warming seas bring great white sharks back to the North Sea? A 5-million-year-old shark tooth may provide clues – https://theconversation.com/could-warming-seas-bring-great-white-sharks-back-to-the-north-sea-a-5-million-year-old-shark-tooth-may-provide-clues-279157

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emma Linford, Honorary research associate, English literature, University of Hull

Shrinking into her yellowing wedding gown with the decay of her wedding breakfast around her, Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel, Great Expectations, is one of the best-known characters in English literature.

Jilted on her wedding day by her unscrupulous fiancé, Havisham can be understood by modern readers as a victim of “romance fraud”, where in a fraudster manipulates someone under the guise of courtship for their own financial gain. Although romance fraud is a 21st-century term, through the character of Havisham, Dickens clearly demonstrated its often-devastating effects.

In her youth, Havisham was manipulated by her fiancé, the conman Compeyson and her half-brother Arthur, in a plan to rob her of her fortune. Both the romance itself and wedding are a ploy and she is jilted at the altar, losing not only her wealth (which she had signed away prior to her nuptials) but also any hope of future romantic prospects due to the scandal that followed.

Alone, rich and looking for a companion, Havisham was particularly vulnerable to a criminal wanting to take advantage. Though she lost her fortune, Dickens makes it clear that the romantic betrayal is what had the biggest impact on her psychology.

The romantic duplicity shapes her relationships with both her adopted daughter, Estella, and Pip, the novel’s protagonist, making her cold and hostile toward them.

---

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

---

The psychological impact of romance fraud

Since being jilted, Havisham has become a recluse, “stuck” within the moment of her abandonment. She remains in the house with the clocks all stopped, perpetually wearing her wedding gown. Her decayed hopes of romance are reflected in the decayed objects which surround her. As Pip muses:

Avoiding her eyes … I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. “Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”

The clocks are all stopped at the time the promise of her future life ended – the moment that she received the letter from Compeyson which made the crime apparent.

Herbert (a relative of Miss Havisham and friend of Pip) recounts the story to Pip:

A certain man, who made love to Miss Havisham … Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham closely and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him.

This description mirrors many modern elements of romance fraud. Compeyson “made love” to her and she became “susceptible”. Like contemporary romance fraudsters, Compeyson inserted himself into Havisham’s life and manipulated and controlled her to believe that he loved her.

Romance fraud in Dickensian Britain

There was a lack of progression in fraudulent law during Dickens’ time. It wasn’t until the Fraud Act of 2006, that real change came about, making fraud by misrepresentation a criminal offence in the UK. Today, romance fraud is considered a “serious crime”.

Long before this most personal form of fraud became illegal, Dickens saw its prevalence and drew attention to it. Others followed in his path, such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Lady Audrey’s Secret (1862), Arthur Conan Doyle in A Case of Identity (1891) and Agatha Christie in Death on the Nile (1937).

Havisham can be viewed in two ways, either as a victim or a fool. It is hard to determine how Dickens wanted her to be interpreted. Was she the stereotypical hysterical Victorian woman, as seen in other novels such as The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1860) or the character of Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre (1847)?

I don’t think so. As he was with so many other social issues, I believe that Dickens was ahead of his time and was actively trying to raise the profile of the crime of romance fraud and the impact it has on his victims.

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 Emma Linford’s suggestion:

If you’re gripped by Dickens’s depiction of fraudsters and criminals, you may also enjoy Dickens’s Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture by Juliet John (2003). In it, John explores the complex villains and anti-heroes of Dickens’ novels. She looks at what inspired his writing, as well as the dramaturgical characteristics of his work.

---

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, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Emma Linford 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. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is an early exploration of ‘romance fraud’ – https://theconversation.com/great-expectations-by-charles-dickens-is-an-early-exploration-of-romance-fraud-241820

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Margherita de Candia, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, King’s College London

The Italian prime minister and leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, Giorgia Meloni, has made fostering ties with foreign leaders a central part of her political strategy. A few years before winning Italy’s 2022 general elections, she started cultivating ties with the US and European conservative world as part of a broader political rebranding effort aimed at projecting a more moderate image at home and gaining legitimacy abroad.

She subsequently became a familiar face within Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. Meloni shares similar views to Maga on migration, sovereignty and national identity. She also aligns with the movement on a constellation of other themes ranging from fighting against “wokeism” and defending the traditional family to the rejection of liberalism, globalism and environmentalism.

After Trump was elected as US president for the second time in late 2024, Meloni’s ties with the American far-right suddenly became a matter of foreign policy. But her relationship with Trump has turned out to be a more demanding balancing act than Meloni may have anticipated. And now their alliance – at least for the time being – appears to be over.

On April 13 Meloni described Trump’s recent social media attack on Pope Leo, who had criticised the US and Israel’s war on Iran, as “unacceptable”. This prompted a rebuke from Trump, who said Meloni “lacked courage” for not joining the war. The conditions for this breakdown have been in place for some time.

Trump and Meloni’s alliance

Trump and Meloni’s shared far-right traits should not hide some key differences between the two leaders. In foreign policy, Meloni has adopted a pro-Nato position and is a staunch supporter of Ukraine. These positions have aided Meloni in what has been called her quest for “respectability”, but they clash with Trump’s lack of support for Ukraine and belligerent position towards Nato.

Politically, Meloni has also faced constraints that have moderated her leadership. Externally, the EU’s institutional and financial straitjacket has required Meloni to work collaboratively with the bloc. This requirement has limited Meloni’s room for manoeuvre in her dealings with Trump and clashes with the US president’s rejection of multilateralism.

Internally, the logic of coalition politics – in particular the moderating presence of the pro-European Forza Italia party in her government – and the fact that centrist voters represent a decisive constituency in Italy have both acted as a further centripetal force on Meloni’s agenda.

Despite these divergences, Meloni’s ideological closeness to Trump did initially translate into diplomatic gains that helped boost her profile with fellow EU leaders. She was the first EU leader to meet with Trump after the imposition of his global trade tariff regime in 2025.

Meloni also managed to organise a trilateral meeting in Rome with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the US vice-president, J.D. Vance. Following the meting, Vance called Meloni a “bridge” between the two sides of the Atlantic.

Still, beyond the legitimacy gains for Meloni and her party, the material advantages Italy has extracted from her relationship with Trump have been limited. Italy was not spared trade tariffs, for instance. Nor did it manage to obtain a discount on Trump’s demand for Nato members to raise military spending to 5% of their GDP.

The scarcity of tangible policy gains from her ties with Trump may be one reason for Meloni’s decision to distance herself from the US president. But Italian domestic politics are another important factor.

The indirect effects of Trump’s policies are likely to have played a key role in the recent defeat Meloni suffered in a referendum on judicial reform. This referendum, which came one month into Trump’s war in Iran, morphed into a vote on the Meloni government.

The Iran war has caused energy prices across Europe to rise and has generated fears among Italians of possible security repercussions. With a recent survey indicating 79% of Italians now hold a negative opinion on Trump, it seems that voters used the referendum to signal their discontent to Meloni ahead of general elections in 2027.

Opposition parties, both on the left and right, hailed the result as a sign that voters are looking for change. And Roberto Vannacci, a former general turned politician, is capitalising on voters’ increased unease with the impact of Trump’s policies. He has criticised Meloni for what he sees as her Washington-first alignment and soft approach to key far-right issues.

Trump’s attack on the Pope – indefensible for Meloni as someone who has defined herself as a Christian and whose party draws on a vast Catholic electorate – gave the Italian prime minister the exit she needed to signal her distance from Trump’s recent actions to voters.

Meloni’s agenda remains far-right in its orientation, aligning with Trump’s in many ways from identity politics and migration to his stance on the green transition. How these ideological similarities are received by Italian voters over the coming year is likely to play a crucial role in determining Meloni’s political future.

Margherita de Candia 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 Italy’s Giorgia Meloni broke with Donald Trump – https://theconversation.com/why-italys-giorgia-meloni-broke-with-donald-trump-280956

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

This is the text from The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up here to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

---

Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have commented in connection with his invasion of Russia that “geography is destiny”. Take a look at a live maritime tracker to see how Napoleon’s aphorism is playing out in the Middle East today. There are presently hundreds of vessels either side of the Strait of Hormuz, idling in either the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman. But nothing is passing though.

In normal times, 20% of the world’s oil flows through this waterway. But since the US and Israel began to launch attacks at the end of February, Iran has effectively closed down the Strait, both by depositing mines and by threatening to board any ships trying to pass without their permission.

The US has countered with its own blockade. And both sides have demonstrated how serious they are in recent days by threatening, boarding or forcing vessels to reroute.

That Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz should have come as no surprise to anyone. The leaders of the Islamic Republic have threatened to do so every time they have felt under threat over more than four decades. Christian Emery, an expert in US-Iran relations and Persian Gulf security at University College London, believes this is why no previous US president has chosen to launch a full-scale attack on Iran.

As we’ve already seen, the ability of Iran to hugely disrupt the global economy by shutting down the Strait was obvious: “The only person who seems not to have understood this is Donald Trump,” Emery concludes.

---

Read more:
Has the Strait of Hormuz emerged as Iran’s most powerful form of deterrence?

---

So now there appears to be a deadlock. It’s an unwinnable war, write Bamo Nouri and Inderjeet Parmar, experts in international security at City St George’s, University of London. The US and Israel may enjoy massive military superiority over Iran, but this is beside the point, Nouri and Parmar believe.

While both the US president, Donald Trump, and Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, need to be able to demonstrate to their voters that they have emerged triumphant, Iran isn’t looking to win. It is looking to endure – while making sure that the cost of this conflict becomes unsustainable. And not just for the US and Israel, but for pretty much everybody else besides.

We’re already seeing that. Oil prices have surged and reserves are coming under strain. Supply chains are disrupted. And political friction is stressing relationships, not just between the US and its Nato allies, but – more ominously – with China, which typically buys between 80% and 90% of Iran’s oil exports and said this week that the Strait must be opened without delay.

Iran, our experts conclude, “does not need to win. It only needs to prevent its adversaries from achieving their aims. So far, it has done exactly that.”

---

Read more:
Middle East conflict looks increasingly like a war nobody can win

---

There’s a principle in classical game theory which explains why Iran’s position is so strong. It’s known as Rubinstein bargaining, writes Renaud Foucart, an economist at Lancaster University. As Foucart explains it, this holds that in a conflict the respective strength of adversaries each depends on two things: “how badly off it would be without a resolution, and how impatient it is to get things resolved”.

As we’ve heard, all the pressure is on the US, while the leverage is mainly in Iran’s hands. “The US’s position is much weaker than first thought because of a stretch of water the world can’t do without,” he concludes.

---

Read more:
The Strait of Hormuz shows how everything is now about leverage

---

On Tuesday, as we waited to see what might happen if the 14-day deadline imposed by Trump on April 8 expired without Tehran opening the Strait, it was clear that both the US and Iran, to varying degrees, were looking for an off-ramp. The blockade is financially ruinous for Iran – whether it is losing US$500 million (£370 million) a day, as Trump claims, we don’t know. But the shutting down of its oil exports is hitting an already parlous economy and this week the social security minister said 2 million people had lost their jobs since the beginning of the war.

For Trump, it’s soaring prices at the gas pumps and the prospect of rising inflation angering voters ahead of November’s midterm elections. The war is very unpopular with Americans – and, significantly, it’s beginning to fracture the Maga coalition which brought Trump to power in the 2024 election.

But there are ways both sides can find off-ramps, writes David Galbreath of the University of Bath. The key thing is to find a settlement that the leaders of both sides can sell as a “win”.

For Iran, this could be an easing of sanctions and access to some of the many billions of dollars of frozen assets held overseas. It could be a recognition of its right to enrich uranium to the level needed for medical uses – particularly given the recent assertion by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, that such a solution would “safeguard its [Iran’s] national sovereignty”.

We know a little about what Iran is prepared to offer because a great deal of it was on the table in February when the US and Israel launched their strikes. But one of the stumbling blocks for the US president appears to be that Iran’s proposals may too closely resemble the deal struck in 2015 by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

But Galbreath concludes that as things stand, some combination of opening the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of limits on uranium enrichment and agreeing to stringent inspections could be made to appear a “win” for Trump. This could be a starting point, writes Galbreath, in what is known in conflict resolution as “sequenced de‑escalation”. It could deliver an initial settlement and allow negotiators on both sides to get to work and hammer out the details. Obama’s treaty took 20 months to agree. It’s early days yet.

---

Read more:
Middle East conflict: how the US and Iran could step back from the brink

---

One stumbling block is likely to be that there appears to be something of a power struggle raging at the top of Iranian politics. This was seen very clearly last weekend, when Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, announced that the Strait of Hormuz was completely open, only to be swiftly overruled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which said it would decide when and how the Strait would be opened.

Since then, a new figure has emerged at the head of the IRGC: a longtime guards member and hardline former commander of its elite Quds force, Ahmad Vahidi. And it seems that with Iran’s freshly minted supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, badly injured after the attack that killed his father on February 28, Vahidi is now calling the shots in Iran. Andreas Krieg, an expert in Middle East politics at King’s College London explains the power struggle that has led to Vahidi assuming control.

---

Read more:
Who is calling the shots in Iran?

---

---

Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

---

– ref. Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s ‘nuclear deterrent’ – https://theconversation.com/strait-of-hormuz-irans-nuclear-deterrent-281376

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Stern, Visiting Professor of Management Practice, Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London

For all of Keir Starmer’s undoubted abilities, steady nerve and top-level experience in the legal profession, his tenure as prime minister has been fraught with difficulty. This is no doubt partly due to his limited enthusiasm for the (at times banal) realities of political leadership.

It is also due to his reluctance to engage sufficiently with the details of important decisions. At key moments, he has chosen to look the other way and defer to others to execute.

The most recent and consequential example of this is the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington DC, which we now know was driven primarily by former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. A quick refresh on recent Labour party history should have been enough to deter this decision. Instead, Starmer outsourced political judgment to others. Now that it has backfired, he is attempting to deflect the blame for his own misjudgments, perhaps not realising – or not accepting – that the buck ultimately stops with him.

He has lost goodwill by removing a range of colleagues, including two cabinet secretaries, two chiefs of staff, and now a top civil servant. He has not focused enough on the detail of policy, but has rather made broad and vague calls for change and asked others to deliver it. Good leaders delegate with clear instructions to people who are capable of fulfilling specific tasks.

A strong sense of leadership from the centre is needed to make the UK government system work. This was understood by the last Labour government with the introduction of the Delivery Unit, a mechanism to provide performance management across key departments.

The Starmer government got off to a false start in the summer of 2024 and has never really recovered. There was misalignment, to put it mildly, between Starmer’s original (and short-lived) chief of staff, Sue Gray, and other colleagues. A clumsily introduced cut to winter fuel allowance had to be reversed, raising no extra revenue but costing a good deal of political goodwill.

There have been other missteps. Starmer sparked anger among some MPs with his speech warning about the UK becoming “an island of strangers”, only to concede subsequently that he was uneasy with that phrase. He was opposed to his own speech.

Welfare reform was necessary until backbenchers rebelled. A harsher line on immigration did nothing to halt Reform’s rise. A seeming reluctance to criticise Israel’s assault on Gaza cost the Labour party support and helped drive the Green party’s new popularity.

And while Starmer did not know and had no particular fondness for Mandelson, he was persuaded McSweeney that he would be the right person to send to Washington DC as a new ambassador. Hence the rushed process to appoint him, and the subsequent political mess that afflicts Starmer now.

All of these suggest a disengagement with the nitty gritty of politics, the consequences of which are now being made clear.

Understanding the job

Amanda Goodall, a professor of leadership at Bayes Business School, has long argued that “domain knowledge” (or professional expertise) is a vital requirement for those in a leadership position. It pays to have someone in charge who understands and has a profound feel for the world in which they are operating.

Credibility among colleagues is established by being good at the core elements of a job and having proven experience. This was always going to be difficult to achieve for a latecomer to politics like Starmer.

In Westminster, Starmer has always been a fish out of water. He has only been a member of parliament since 2015. He emerged as a viable leadership candidate in the aftermath of Labour’s 2019 election defeat. He succeeded as a figure with calm authority, in contrast to the uncertainty created by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Even under the steadier figure of Rishi Sunak, and undermined by the rise of Reform, the Conservative government was doomed to defeat. In July 2024, the quirks of the UK’s voting system gifted Labour a massive 170-seat majority on a vote share of 34% – a “loveless landslide”. The government was never really all that popular even at the outset. A more politically savvy prime minister might have recognised this and led the new government differently.

Starmer became prime minister without ever having established a distinct political identity or programme. He proudly said that there was no such thing as Starmerism, and never would be. That sort of modesty may have been authentic and appealingly British, in a way. But it left the new government without a song to sing.

Politics, it has been said, is “show business for ugly people”. Charisma is overrated, and after Boris Johnson I suspect the country has had enough of performative prime ministers. The PM does not have to be a stand-up comedian or a “celebrity”. But there should be a purpose to what he or she is doing. A more politically engaged prime minister would have weighed up the risks in appointing Mandelson more carefully, and been aware of warnings that the appointment was being “weirdly rushed”.

Effective political leaders have a coherent and compelling story to tell. They strengthen and give credibility to this story when they make important political decisions with conviction and a sense of ownership. This is what Starmer has lacked all along, and it will be his undoing.

Stefan Stern 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. Mandelson vetting: Starmer’s reluctance to engage with the details shows a lack of political leadership – https://theconversation.com/mandelson-vetting-starmers-reluctance-to-engage-with-the-details-shows-a-lack-of-political-leadership-281191

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gerald Mako, Research Affiliate, Cambridge Central Asia Forum, University of Cambridge

The limit of what artificial intelligence can achieve, known as frontier AI, has crossed another threshold. AI can now plan and execute sophisticated cyber operations with minimal guidance at speeds far beyond human capability.

That, at least, is the evidence from an independent test of Claude Mythos Preview, the latest and most advanced model in the Claude family of AI systems, developed by US tech firm Anthropic. Similar to ChatGPT, these can understand and generate human-like text, analyse information, and solve complex problems.

The finance sector is alarmed. It relies on highly interconnected digital systems that are especially attractive targets for sophisticated cyber-attacks. A successful breach could disrupt payments, freeze access to funds, and erode public trust in the banking system.

Major UK and US banks are preparing controlled trials under strict safeguards. They will be granted secure, supervised access to the Mythos Preview model in isolated environments, to evaluate its ability to detect vulnerabilities in their systems while minimising any risk of misuse. It’s a bit like dangerous viruses being examined in high-security laboratories.

The UK’s AI Security Institute, a research organisation within the government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, has already tested Mythos Preview on a demanding benchmark known as The Last Ones. As the name suggests, this series of challenges has been designed as the final hurdle AI systems need to complete before being deemed able to fully automate complex, real-world cyber-attacks from start to finish.

In the controlled test, Mythos Preview autonomously surfaced thousands of “zero day” vulnerabilities – flaws unknown even to the software’s own developers – across every major operating system and popular web browser. Some of these had remained undetected for up to 27 years, even though the software had been carefully checked millions of times.

Under controlled conditions, a skilled human operator would typically need around 20 hours to complete the exercise. In ten independent runs, Mythos achieved full success three times, making this preview version the first AI model to solve the entire attack chain end-to-end.

The results show genuine autonomous chaining of complex sequential actions. Mythos Preview thus represents a major leap in the ability of an AI to act as a truly autonomous agent, planning and executing complex, multi-step tasks over extended periods with minimal human intervention.

But the significance of this technological breakthrough extends well beyond cyber-attacks. The same capability could soon allow AI to autonomously manage software development, scientific research, supply chains or financial operations. Mythos Preview signals a shift from powerful assistant to genuinely autonomous operator, with wide-reaching implications across many industries.

The dual-use dilemma

Rather than releasing it publicly, Anthropic has so far restricted access through its Project Glasswing, an initiative that gives selected technology companies and critical infrastructure providers including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Cisco and Amazon controlled access to the model.

Anthropic’s stated idea is to “to secure the world’s most critical software” by identifying and fixing security weaknesses in the operating systems, browsers and critical libraries that underpin virtually all modern digital systems, before they can be exploited. Only after that will Mythos see wider deployment as a general-purpose AI system.

Traditional vulnerability management is the process of identifying, assessing and fixing weaknesses in software and systems before attackers can exploit them – a slow, labour-intensive task performed by experts. Mythos could change this process dramatically – in both positive and negative ways.

Its emergence creates a classic dual-use dilemma: the same breakthrough that strengthens cyber defence can also lower the barrier for offensive operations.

On the positive side, it could enable defenders to discover and patch thousands of previously unknown vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed and scale, potentially making critical software far more secure and reducing the window for attacks.

Many current cybercrimes such as ransomware succeed by exploiting known or easily discoverable weaknesses in unpatched systems. These could be significantly reduced if Mythos-class models are widely used for defensive vulnerability discovery.

However, more sophisticated or targeted ransomware attacks – especially those using stolen credentials, social engineering, or already-compromised accounts – are far less likely to be affected, as they often bypass traditional software vulnerabilities altogether.

On the negative side, the same capabilities could dramatically lower the barrier for malicious actors, allowing them to find and chain weaknesses much faster than human teams. This would accelerate sophisticated cyber-attacks if the technology spreads beyond controlled environments.

There is no public evidence that Mythos Preview has reached criminal groups or nation-state adversaries – yet. But the history of cybersecurity technology suggests that well-resourced actors, either state-sponsored or criminal, may develop comparable systems or gain indirect access within the near future.

The future of cybersecurity

In the short term, governments are likely to revise their cybersecurity protocols and incident-response frameworks to incorporate mandatory AI-assisted vulnerability scanning. This would require organisations to continuously scan their systems using AI, rather than relying on occasional human checks.

While this could dramatically improve security by finding flaws faster, it is likely to raise costs significantly and carries the risk of system slowdowns, false alarms, or brief operational disruptions when fixes are applied.

Cyber insurers will almost certainly begin demanding evidence of such defences as a condition of coverage, driving up insurance premiums, while critical-infrastructure operators accelerate deployment of automated monitoring and response systems. This change will impact not only banks and financial institutions, but also critical infrastructure operators in energy, healthcare, telecoms, and transport.

Of course, Mythos is not the final chapter. Future models developed by Anthropic and other leading AI companies are being designed to function as highly autonomous AI agents, capable of independently planning, adapting and executing long, complex sequences of tasks. As well as discovering vulnerabilities, this could mean coordinating large-scale operations or managing sophisticated real-world workflows – all with minimal human guidance.

Moments like this demand both urgency and measured action. Careful governance, international cooperation, and sustained investment in defensive applications will be essential. The genie is out of the bottle – the challenge now is ensuring it serves security rather than chaos.

Gerald Mako 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. AI has crossed a threshold – what Claude Mythos means for the future of cybersecurity – https://theconversation.com/ai-has-crossed-a-threshold-what-claude-mythos-means-for-the-future-of-cybersecurity-281308

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

A little after 2pm on April 8, the Israeli military hit more than 100 targets in Lebanon in just ten minutes. Israel called the attack Operation Eternal Darkness and said it struck Hezbollah command and control centres across Lebanon. The Lebanese government said at least 300 people were killed and 1,000 injured.

The scale of the attack on Lebanon was reminiscent of the early days of the Gaza war in 2023 when Israel retaliated for the October 7 attacks, which killed more more than 1,200 people, with waves of aerial bombardment of Gaza.

Israel has a powerful and lethal army, and it’s been defending itself against attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

But why has it chosen such brutal military aggression?

One historian, Yaron Peleg, believes the answer to this question lies in the early days of Zionism in the 19th century when many Jews who arrived in Palestine were fleeing antisemitism in Europe. In defiance, they began a cultural revolution, emphasising military strength and honouring Biblical Jewish heroes.

Peleg, who is a professor of modern Hebrew studies at the University of Cambridge in the UK and author of the book New Hebrews: Making National Culture in Zion, thinks Israel’s view of itself began to change in the wake of the Holocaust. “There started a really problematic combination of defiance, aggression, and a sense of victimhood  and it’s a very explosive and lethal combination,” he says.

In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Peleg tracks how he sees Israel’s self‑image changed from self‑reliance to aggressive militarism, and how that history helps to explain the way it wages war today.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from Sky News.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Yaron Peleg 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 Israel’s history has shaped the way it wages war – https://theconversation.com/how-israels-history-has-shaped-the-way-it-wages-war-281194

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christian Emery, Associate Professor in International Politics, UCL

One of the US and Israel’s justifications for launching the war on Iran was to ensure the regime in Tehran could never possess nuclear weapons, the ultimate deterrent against external attack. But the main lesson that has been taken from the war, according to some commentators, is that Iran’s own geography already provides it with all the deterrent it needs.

The US-Israeli strikes have inflicted massive damage on Iran’s leadership and have destroyed billions of US dollars worth of military and civilian infrastructure. However, this display of force has proved unable to stop Iran from controlling who enters the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime chokepoint through which around 20% of the world’s oil supply flows.

This has led to the suggestion that Iran could emerge from the conflict with a new blueprint for shielding itself against future threats, regardless of whether it agrees to US demands to dismantle or severely limit its nuclear programme.

Geography is arguably Iran’s greatest strategic asset. The Strait of Hormuz is shallow and narrow, with just two-mile-wide navigable shipping channels. There are also a huge number of coves and inlets along Iran’s southern coastline, providing cover for launching small boats to attack shipping or lay mines, as well as anti-ship missiles and drones.

And there is a vast belt of rugged mountains running from Iran’s north-western border with Turkey all the way down to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can store, conceal, produce and launch more drones and missiles here than it would ever need to threaten Gulf shipping.

However, Iran’s capacity to close the strait is not new. For decades, Iran has repeatedly threatened to respond to any external attack by closing the strait. It has also, albeit in a more measured way, demonstrated the capability to make the strait commercially unusable.

In response to Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy across both his first and second terms as US president, Iran has harassed shipping with fast boats, rehearsed loading mines on to vessels, test-fired anti-ship ballistic missiles and even seized a British tanker. These are all classic forms of deterrence signalling.

Multiple analysts had warned of the catastrophic economic consequences of full-scale war with Iran precisely because of Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. The only person who seems not to have understood this is Trump.

When pressed in March on whether Trump had been briefed before the war that Iran would seek to block Hormuz, his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, would not be drawn. But she acknowledged that it “has long been an assessment of the intelligence community that Iran would likely hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage”.

Another challenge to the claim that geography may replace nuclear weapons as Iran’s primary source of deterrence is that its nuclear programme was never a core part of its deterrence. A 2019 report by Chatham House determined that Iran saw its asymmetric capabilities – particularly ballistic missiles and its ability to mobilise its proxy groups in the region – as essential to its national security. Iran’s ability to exercise control of the Strait of Hormuz is another pillar of this strategy.

There is ample reason to believe Iran was engaged in nuclear “hedging” – preserving the option to build a weapon at some point without crossing the line in a verifiable way. But if nuclear deterrence was the core aim, it is unlikely that Iran would have committed to a 2015 nuclear deal that most of the international community argued blocked its path to a bomb.

Regional implications

If a country is attacked, by definition its deterrence has failed. But the perception of restored deterrence can help create conditions for deescalation by justifying an end to the fighting and convincing an adversary that costs can still be imposed. In this sense, Iran’s control of Hormuz may help bring the current war to an end.

Iran’s confidence in having proven its ability to blockade Hormuz may also provide cover for dialling down its nuclear ambiguity posture. And it could compensate for the degradation of its network of proxies that has enabled Iran to project influence across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza.

The weakening of this so-called “Axis of Resistance” in recent years has reduced (though far from eliminated) Tehran’s ability to raise the regional cost of any direct attack on Iran. And Hezbollah, which is widely considered the strongest group in this proxy network, has paid a high price for defending Iran since the start of the war.

Iran is highly unlikely to abandon its proxies completely. However, it may now conclude that using them as a form of forward deterrence to avoid being directly attacked has manifestly failed and roll back on the strategy. This would be an extremely positive move for regional stability.

Iran’s demonstrated capacity to close the strait is likely to shape the regional order for some time. But Iran is unlikely to be willing to rely on this single pillar of deterrence.

Its sustained missile strikes on neighbouring Gulf states, and damage to critical infrastructure, had already created an appetite for a negotiated end to the conflict among the US’s Arab allies. Trump himself admitted he did not anticipate this reaction.

This makes forcing Iran to suspend its ballistic missile capability extremely difficult in upcoming negotiations, which will leave its neighbours nervous and anxious about their own lack of any deterrence capacities.

Christian Emery 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. Has the Strait of Hormuz emerged as Iran’s most powerful form of deterrence? – https://theconversation.com/has-the-strait-of-hormuz-emerged-as-irans-most-powerful-form-of-deterrence-281284

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Iuliana Hartescu, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Loughborough University

Insomnia may have been torturing humanity since ancient times, but over the last 20 years scientists have made progress in their understanding of chronic sleep deprivation.

Today, sleep deprivation is one of the most widespread reported psychological problems in Britain, with about a third of the adult population in England reporting frequent insomnia symptoms.

Insomnia rarely occurs on its own, which brings us to one of the biggest changes scientists have made in our understanding of chronic sleep deprivation. The vast majority of people with insomnia often have other mental and physical health conditions, like diabetes, hypertension, chronic pain, thyroid disease, gastrointestinal problems, anxiety or depression.

In its diagnostic history, insomnia coupled with another illness or disorder was called secondary insomnia. That meant that insomnia was considered a consequence of those other underlying conditions. As such, until fairly recently clinicians did not generally attempt to treat secondary insomnia.

But in the early 2000s, both research and clinical practice evidence started to indicate that this approach was wrong. Scientists argued that insomnia could precede or long survive a primary condition. Abandoning this distinction between primary and secondary insomnia was a major advance in acknowledging that insomnia frequently was an independent disorder, requiring its own treatment.

What’s more, researchers have been accumulating strong evidence that helping people with their sleeping problems could actually lead to improvements in their other health conditions. Chronic pain, chronic heart failure, depression, psychosis, alcohol dependency, bipolar disorder, PTSD, can all improve for patients if they address their sleeping problems.

Who gets insomnia?

Over the past two decades, we have acquired more rigorous and international data illustrating how ubiquitous insomnia is. Insomnia affects almost everyone, though women, older people, and people of lower socio-economic status are more vulnerable to it.

These groups experience a combination of biological, psychological and social risk factors that expose them to long-term sleep-disruption. For example, women often experience acute hormone fluctuations, pregnancy and birth, breastfeeding, menopause, domestic violence, caregiving roles, higher prevalence of depression and anxiety – all of which can lead to more opportunities for prolonged sleep disruption.

Some current issues in insomnia research include the need to understand different types of insomnia symptoms, and their relationship to health and performance risks. For example, there is evidence that difficulty initiating sleep (as opposed to difficulty staying asleep, or waking up too early in the morning) is associated with an increased risk of depression. Similarly, scientists still have questions on changes in things like brain activity, heart rate, or stress hormones that accompany insomnia. In common with all other mental health disorders, we are still yet to find biomarkers of insomnia.

However, research has helped us understand some things people can do to prevent insonmia episodes progressing to chronic insomnia, which is harder to treat. When insomnia symptoms happen more nights than not, and last for more than three months, then a diagnosis of insomnia disorder, or chronic insomnia, can be made.

One of the most common and harmful habits that develop during periods of insomnia is lying in bed, trying to sleep. Scientists have learned that lying in bed awake leads to perpetual cognitive arousal and, in time, it teaches your brain to stop connecting bed and being asleep.

Thus, if you cannot sleep at night, get up and do something else absorbing, but calming – read, write a list for the following day, listen to calming music or do some breathing exercises. When you feel sleepy again, get back to bed. If you are tired the following day, a well-placed short nap is fine, in the afternoon, for a maximum of 20 minutes. However, one must be careful with daytime sleeping, as it may reduce sleepiness at nighttime, and going to sleep may become even more difficult.

For those who do struggle with insomnia, there are effective treatments recommended. The story of the profound changes from secondary insomnia to insomnia disorder speaks of the power of clinical diagnosis in providing a pathway to treatment.

Cognitive behavioural treatment for insomnia (CBTI) is a package of techniques designed to maximise sleepiness at bedtime. It involves structured steps which aim to modify behaviour and mental activity. There are some predictors of treatment success: shorter duration of insomnia symptoms (years, rather than decades), less depression or pain and more positive expectations towards CBTI. But CBTI is broadly effective across all groups of people with insomnia.

Even so, only a tiny proportion of people reporting insomnia symptoms seek medical help. People may consider insomnia symptoms trivial or manageable, or they may be unaware of the options. It may also be due to the unavailability of treatment options. CBTI remains largely unavailable in clinical practice, mainly due to clinicians’ unfamiliarity with the treatment programme, and limited funding.

This pushes patients towards sleeping tablets, which are not an acceptable long-term solution. Sleeping tablets are associated with significant cognitive and motor impairment, increased risk of falls, dependence, tolerance and withdrawal symptoms, daytime lethargy, dizziness and headaches.

The main truly “new” class of sleeping pills are the dual orexin receptor antagonists (DORAs), which have shown a safety profile in many ways better than the traditional sedatives, especially around dependence concerns. But DORAs are not risk free or “mild” pills. They are relatively new to the market, first approved in the UK in 2022. So we lack long-term data to assess their safety for long-term use in people with insomnia.

A decent alternative is online self-delivered CBTI, on platforms such as Sleepful, which are free to access.

We have made great strides in sleep medicine over the past 20 years for people with insomnia, we just need to realise the potential of such profound changes by providing the right help for those suffering with it.

Iuliana Hartescu receives funding from the Medical Research Council; the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

– ref. How scientists changed their view of insomnia – https://theconversation.com/how-scientists-changed-their-view-of-insomnia-279585