Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hannah Bunting, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative British Politics and Co-director of The Elections Centre, University of Exeter

A prime minister who led a party to win 412 seats in an election held only 18 months ago might be expected to have the full support of his party and the public throughout the entire term of government. Yet rumours continue to swirl about Keir Starmer’s position.

The next general election isn’t scheduled until 2029, so why is there already so much speculation about Starmer potentially being replaced?

It’s well known in Westminster that there’s an optimum majority size – big enough to pass legislation easily, but not so big that you can’t keep everyone in the party moderately happy. Having 404 MPs (as it currently stands) means it is difficult to run a tight ship. Labour is also a broad church, so different factions will try to capitalise when policy decisions don’t go their way.

A prime example are the 49 Labour MPs who rebelled to vote against the government’s welfare bill in July and were suspended from the party as a result. This type of whip-defying rebellion is often seen with large majorities, partly because it’s not as costly for an MP’s party when they abstain or vote with their constituency – the vote will likely go through anyway.

But this kind of action by a vocal minority can exaggerate a feeling of disquiet. And during Starmer’s government, we’ve already seen an entire new political party established by one of the MPs he suspended.

Adding another layer are those who have leadership ambitions, such as health secretary Wes Streeting. Members of the parliamentary Labour party will speak to each other and these potential candidates about their aspirations. It only takes a few names and a handful of rebellions to rustle up rumours that someone else could do the top job better.

Lots of seats, not much public support

Labour won what has been called a “loveless landslide” in 2024 on just 34.6% of the vote in Great Britain. The low turnout meant that 40% of people didn’t vote, and nearly two-thirds of those who did opted for a party other than Labour. Though the electoral system delivered a large majority, it was always more precarious than the seat total made it look.

Some evidence suggests public support may have weakened further. The proportion of people who say the PM is doing badly has increased 33 percentage points since August 2024. The proportion of those saying he’s doing well has more than halved, from 36% to 15%. And people are becoming more certain about this opinion – in the early days after the election, a fifth of people said “don’t know” in this polling, whereas now that’s just 9%.

This comes against a backdrop of polling that reflects both fragmentation and uncertainty. The latest YouGov poll, commissioned by The Times and Sky News, shows Reform in the lead but still on just 26% – a very low figure for a party on top.

Labour is trailing at 19% and equal to the Conservatives. The Green party, newly led by Zack Polanski, is on 16% and the Liberal Democrats are on 14%. Among five parties, there’s only 12 points between the one polling highest and the one polling lowest.

The public is not congregating around one or even two parties. And importantly, the proportion of people who say they don’t know who they’ll vote for is high, at 14%.

The rate of uncertainty is highest for those who voted Labour in 2024 (19%) and lowest for those who voted for the Greens or Reform (6% and 7% respectively). This tells us that many people could still opt for Labour in a general election, but the traditionally smaller parties have more stable support. And also that the undecided 14% could change everything if a general election really were held tomorrow.

Despite all this, the conversation around voter uncertainty is rarely mentioned in headlines and rumours, so it looks like Starmer’s Labour government is doing very badly, and that Reform is a key challenger. This too can artificially inflate the sense that something needs to change.

Elections ahead

Away from speculative polling, there have been real votes cast since Labour came to office – in the 2025 local elections and in council byelections. Both Labour and the Conservatives dropped councillors in these contests, while Reform has been the main beneficiary along with the Liberal Democrats and Greens. This follows a trend from the previous few years – smaller parties and independents have been steadily gaining, while Labour and the Conservatives have been declining.

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Read more:
UK local elections delivered record-breaking fragmentation of the vote

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The councils up for election in 2025 were largely in Conservative-heavy areas. Those coming up next May are geographically challenging for Labour. There are at least 72 councils, including all 32 London boroughs, up for reelection and around two-thirds are being defended by Labour. If Reform continues its recent byelection successes and eats into Labour territory, it will give more credence to its challenger status.

That elections are also taking place in Scotland and Wales for devolved parliaments means Labour is facing a nationwide test. Poll ratings suggest the party will perform badly in both countries.

A big set of losses will be interpreted as a sign Starmer’s government is failing, even though the elections are likely to be low-turnout contests that actually represent the public’s continued diversity of opinions.

It’s expected that the Greens will also do fairly well, meaning Labour could be fending off opposition from both ends of the ideological spectrum. We may then see some Labour MPs calling for a leftward shift, and others for a move to the right. Those calling to stay the course will be the quietest.

There’s no denying Labour’s time in office has been difficult. But there have been successes too – notably, delivering on workers’ rights, housing and NHS appointment numbers. But a diverse and uncertain electorate, plus a large majority of MPs to satisfy, makes Labour’s job very difficult.

If the local elections go as expected, somebody could make a leadership challenge. But at the moment, it may be better the devil they know than face greater uncertainty under a new leader.

Hannah Bunting receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

– ref. Rumours about replacing Keir Starmer overlook several important polling details – https://theconversation.com/rumours-about-replacing-keir-starmer-overlook-several-important-polling-details-271825

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Max Western, Associate Professor of Behavioural Science, Co-Director, Centre for Motivation and Behaviour Change, University of Bath

To many people, crossing a road at a traffic light is a mundane task requiring little thought or effort. But for the growing population of senior citizens with limitations to their mobility, strength or balance, crossing the road can be a stressful and sometimes life-threatening experience.

The reason? Cities simply aren’t designed for older people and others with restricted mobility – as our latest research demonstrates. We found that only 1.5% of the older people with reduced mobility in our study – just 17 out of 1,110 participants who had an average age of 77 – could cross the road faster than the 1.2 metres per second walking speed that is programmed into many UK pedestrian crossings.

They told us how “hurried”, “rushed” and “unsafe” they felt being out and about in a city. All lived independently across seven English cities: Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Manchester and Stoke.

Our latest study is part of our community-led active ageing programmes, designed to help adults over 65 with reduced mobility to improve their physical function. From the outset, we were struck by just how slowly many of the people we met walked. The task of trying to time them move four metres from a standing start with a stopwatch could be rather uncomfortable, such was the struggle of walking for some.

To test what this meant when they were faced with crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing, we made a simple comparison between the speed (1.2m/s) programmed into “standard” UK pedestrian crossings and the participants’ normal walking speed. While their average speed was significantly slower at 0.77m/s, many of our participants with reduced mobility were much slower than that – meaning they had no chance of crossing the road safely within the time allowed.

In fact, the majority would have needed to walk nearly twice as fast as their comfortable walking speed to cross a road without significant risk.

Distribution of walking speeds of older adults with limited mobility:

As many of our participants told us, this mismatch between urban design and the capabilities of the growing ageing population can have catastrophic consequences.

First, there is a risk that a failure to take account of inadequate mobility in street features such as pedestrian crossings lowers confidence in older people for staying active and walking outdoors. This often leads to further reductions in physical function and greater social isolation.

Second, those who do keep walking around their local town or city can feel rushed. This places them at risk of a fall when they cross roads quicker than feels comfortable – made worse by wet or windy conditions.

A fall in older adults increases the likelihood of disability and the need for hospital care. It can have a significant impact on life expectancy.

How to make cities truly age-friendly

Pedestrian crossings are one of many features of towns and cities that can affect the physical activity of a mobility-limited older population. In reviewing determinants of physical activity in older adults, we found that the aesthetic quality of the environment, a reduction in noise and air pollution, and the availability of places to rest were all aspects that can lead to greater walkability.

The Centre for Urban Wellbeing has partnered with older adults and local communities and companies to explore how Birmingham, the UK’s second-largest city, can better support its ageing population and move closer to becoming truly age-friendly.

Our research has highlighted the critical role of accessible infrastructure – well-maintained pavements, ramps, benches and public toilets make a big difference. Just as important are safe, welcoming spaces such as parks, gardens, and community hubs that encourage social connection and active living.

Much of our effort to improve quality of life in later years has centred on improving, or at least slowing the decline in, physical function and mobility. The benefits go beyond personal wellbeing: they translate into significant savings for the NHS and social care, largely through reduced hospital admissions.

But for these gains to last, older people need more than exercise programmes. They need safe, inviting communities that motivate them to get out and about. Walking to local destinations is one of the simplest ways to boost daily activity – yet it depends on environments that feel secure and accessible.

To be fair, there is some variability in the way pedestrian crossings work. Some wealthier districts have crossings with sensors that will hold traffic before a road is cleared of walkers.

Other use countdown timers to give some indication of how long a pedestrian has to cross, aiding a judgement on when to start their crossing of a road. But one thing that seems to be consistent is that green signals are programmed based on an assumed walking speed of 1.2 metres per second, which is clearly inappropriate for many people.

The onus should not rest on individuals with reduced mobility to keep pace in a fast-moving world. Rather, we urge cities to prioritise urban design that puts pedestrians first – creating environments that enable physical activity, especially among vulnerable groups.

When it comes to road crossings, simple measures such as extending green signal times at locations frequently used by older adults could make a big difference.

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. Cities aren’t built for older people – our study shows many can’t walk fast enough to beat a pedestrian crossing – https://theconversation.com/cities-arent-built-for-older-people-our-study-shows-many-cant-walk-fast-enough-to-beat-a-pedestrian-crossing-271874

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samantha Newbery, Reader in International Security, University of Salford

Of the countless people who provided intelligence to help the British state fight terrorism during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1968-98), Agent Stakeknife was the best known. He had a reputation for having been involved in the most violent offences as a member of the IRA while simultaneously providing the British Army with intelligence.

While the identities of many of the informers who provided intelligence of this kind remain unknown, agent Stakeknife’s alleged identity as a man called Freddie Scappaticci was first made public in 2003.

The final report of a lengthy independent investigation into this case is now calling for the UK government to confirm Stakeknife’s identity. Operation Kenova, set up by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, found that Stakeknife was named as a suspect in dozens of crimes, including murders.

Although he denied it up until his death in 2023, Scappaticci is widely believed to have provided intelligence to the British Army from the late 1970s into the 1990s. Throughout this time he was also an active member of the IRA, something his handlers in the British Army – the people he reported to – were well aware of.

Agent Stakeknife was able to provide intelligence on the IRA’s members and activities across Northern Ireland. He was privy to a huge amount of sensitive information because he was part of – and may even have led – the IRA’s “nutting squad”. This unit’s aim was to find suspected informers within the IRA and punish or even kill them. Yet he himself was an informer.

The nutting squad has been described as being “like an electrical junction box through which every wire must flow”. It gave Stakeknife access to people and information across the IRA, making him particularly useful to the British Army.

But in this role, he was suspected of being involved in multiple counts of conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to unlawfully imprison and other potential charges in connection with the abduction, interrogation, torture and murder of people suspected, wrongly or rightly, of being informants.

Arguments for and against naming informers

Without the final piece of information on Stakeknife’s identity, the families of those who died feel they are not getting the whole truth.

Since Scappaticci’s death, there has been no attempt to refute claims he was Agent Stakeknife. While alive, a peer named him in the House of Lords as Stakeknife – a claim that was quickly retracted.

Scappaticci was never charged or convicted with any Troubles-related offences and now never will. Civil action is likely to continue, however. The High Court’s highly unusual ruling that Scappaticci’s will should be sealed rather than made public is likely to be challenged.

The Kenova investigators argued strongly that agent Stakeknife’s identity should be revealed. While they don’t confirm their belief that Stakeknife is Scappaticci, they do list the extensive list of reasons that have left many others thinking he was. Naming Stakeknife, they argue, is essential for victims and families, public discussion and debate, media freedom, open justice and public confidence in state authorities and the criminal justice system.

The British government has long maintained a policy regarding informers known as “neither confirm nor deny”. This protects informers’ lives as well as ensuring the government can continue to access intelligence that could save other lives.

Confirming that a particular individual is, or has been, an informer puts that person at risk of being killed by their associates to deter potential future informers and as a punishment. While Scappaticci is dead, others are still alive.

Naming informers also demonstrates to anyone considering becoming an informer that they may not be protected by whichever state organisation they come to work for, whether that be the police, the army or intelligence agencies such as MI5. This therefore reduces their chances of coming forward to provide intelligence.

On the other hand, to deny that Scappaticci or anyone else was an informer would create a situation where if someone else was later alleged to be an informer, if the government did not issue a denial for them, they would be assumed to be an informer. So while there is no harm to Scappaticci in either scenario, others could be put at risk.

Although this nine-year investigation has delivered some new nuggets of information about Agent Stakeknife, it is no surprise that there is disappointment from some quarters that the government still refuses to name Agent Stakeknife. This situation demonstrates the sometimes competing needs of truth, justice, accountability and intelligence work.

Samantha Newbery 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. Stakeknife: should the British government reveal the real name of its top IRA informer? – https://theconversation.com/stakeknife-should-the-british-government-reveal-the-real-name-of-its-top-ira-informer-271699

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andreas Krieg, Associate Professor, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London

Fighters aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group in southern Yemen, raised their flags in the provinces of Hadramout and Marah in early December. The seizures mean the STC now controls all eight of the provinces that make up the south of the country.

The new status quo looks like a fait accompli for the creation of a separate southern state. It has left Yemen’s internationally recognised government, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), squeezed between a pole in the south and a state run by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in the north.

The STC taps into memories of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen which, until 1990, gave southerners their own state. Yemen’s 1990 unification produced one flag, but many people in the south never felt they joined a shared political project.

These grievances led to a brief civil war in 1994. This war ended with northern victory, purges of southern officers and civil servants, and what many in the south still describe as an occupation rather than integration.

By the mid-2000s, retired officers and dismissed civil servants in the south were marching for pensions and basic rights. Those protests turned into al-Hirak al-Janoubi, a loose southern movement running from reformists to hardline secessionists.

And when the 2015 Saudi-led intervention began against the Houthis, which had seized the Yemeni capital of Sana’a the previous year, southern fighters were folded into a campaign to restore a “national” government that had never addressed their grievances.

The STC was formed in 2017 to try and give this crowded field in the south a recognisable leadership. It has a formal president, Aidarus al-Zubaidi, and councils. But in practice it sits at the centre of a web of armed units, tribal groups and businessmen.

Through sustained financial and material backing for the southern armed groups, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) emerged as the midwife of the organisation’s creation. Against the backdrop of widespread failed governance in Yemen, the STC project seems to deliver relatively well on security and public services.

In April 2022, several years after the STC’s formation, the PLC was created to unite the forces fighting the Houthis. Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-based president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, resigned and handed his powers over to an eight-member body backed by Riyadh.

The PLC was designed to bridge the various tribal, ideological and political divides in the country. It also aimed to create a platform to coordinate governance and statecraft with a view to engaging the Houthis through diplomacy.

But as it mixes northern and southern leaders, including those from the STC, the PLC has never emerged as a viable hub to merge competing agendas. The inability of the PLC to deliver on its promise to consolidate governance across Yemen has incrementally eaten away at its legitimacy.

A Gulf proxy war

Yemen has turned into a quiet scorecard for two Gulf projects. Saudi Arabia intervened to defeat the Houthis, rescue a unified Yemeni state and secure its own borders. The UAE went in to secure reliable partners, access to ports and sea lanes and control of resources as part of its regional policy.

A glimpse at a map of Yemen today shows it is the UAE whose vision seems to have been realised. Through the STC and a web of allied units, the UAE has helped stitch together a power base that runs across nearly all of former South Yemen. STC-aligned forces hold the city of Aden, sit on much of Yemen’s limited oil production and control long stretches of the Arabian and Red Sea coasts.

Control of terrain in Yemen

Key national infrastructure in southern Yemen is now guarded by men whose salaries, media platforms and external ties flow through Abu Dhabi. In return, the UAE enjoys a loyal surrogate on the Gulf of Aden and the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab strait. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has been left propping up a fragile PLC.

The Houthis remain the nominal enemy for everyone. But, in reality, UAE-aligned units have poured more bandwidth into sidelining Saudi-backed rivals in southern Yemen than engaging the insurgent-turned-state in the north. The UAE now holds leverage over Yemen’s crown jewels in the south, while Saudi Arabia shoulders the burden of the narrative of a “united Yemen” with few dependable allies inside the country.

Two-and-a-half Yemens

For decades, neighbours Saudi Arabia and Oman as well as most foreign capitals have sworn by a single Yemeni state. The UAE-backed STC project cuts directly across that line, with an entrenched southern order making a formal split far more likely.

If Yemen is carved in two, the Houthi structure in the north does not evaporate; it gains borders, time and eventually a stronger claim to recognition. That would cement a heavily armed ideological authority at the mouth of the Red Sea, tied to Tehran and Hezbollah and ruling over a population drained by war and economic collapse.

Yet, confronted with the multilayered network created by Iran and the UAE in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has few cards to play. It may eventually be forced to concede to a UAE-backed government-in-waiting in the south while the north settles into Houthi rule and territory held by the PLC gets increasingly squeezed.

Oman keeps arguing for a shared table that brings all parties – including the Houthis – into one system. But every new southern flag raised undercuts that goal. For outside powers, a southern client that keeps ports open and hunts Islamist militants is tempting.

The price is to freeze northern Yemen as a grey zone: heavily armed, ideologically rigid and wired into regional confrontation. That outcome cuts against the very unity project Saudi Arabia and Oman have endorsed for years. What is left today are two-and-a-half Yemens – with the half, territory administered by the PLC, looking the least sustainable moving forward.

Andreas Krieg 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 UAE is leaving Saudi Arabia squeezed in Yemen – https://theconversation.com/the-uae-is-leaving-saudi-arabia-squeezed-in-yemen-271777

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicky Hudson, Professor of Medical Sociology, De Montfort University

Around 200 children in several countries were conceived with sperm from a single donor who unknowingly carried a rare genetic mutation linked to early onset cancers, it has been revealed. The consequences have been devastating. Several children have already died and many families across Europe are now facing a risk they never expected.

The case has prompted urgent questions. How was one donor used so widely? Why did standard safeguards fail to identify a mutation that can have such severe consequences? And how did a system created to create families allow a tragedy of this scale?

When someone donates sperm or eggs they are screened for a set of common inherited conditions before being accepted by a clinic. The exact process varies by country and it has limitations. Screening depends heavily on accurate family history, yet many people have incomplete information about their relatives.

Some conditions emerge later in adulthood, which means a young donor may appear healthy. Clinics also focus primarily on established, higher frequency conditions rather than the vast number of rare variants that exist.

Ordinarily, donors complete a detailed questionnaire covering their medical background and their family’s health history. If the information suggests a possible inherited risk, the donor may be offered further testing or, more commonly, they may be declined.

More recently, clinics have begun to use expanded genetic screening. These tests can examine hundreds of genes linked to childhood or early adulthood conditions.

However, the technology is still developing and cannot detect every possible disease-causing variant. Many rare mutations are not part of routine panels, either because they have only recently been identified or because the evidence base is still small.

That context matters in this case. The donor had no family history of the condition and showed no symptoms. A person can carry a harmful mutation without being affected themselves, so nothing in his medical history raised concerns. The newer, broader screening was not used, but even if it had been, the variant is so rare that it may not have been included or detectable.

The donor provided sperm to the European Sperm Bank in Denmark for around 17 years. His donations were used to create roughly 200 children across multiple European countries, although experts say the true number could be higher.

This scale was possible because there is no international law limiting how widely donor sperm can be distributed. Many countries have rules on how many families can be created from a single donor.

The United Kingdom, for instance, permits no more than ten families. These limits, however, apply only within national borders. A donor can be used in several countries without any system to flag that the overall number has far exceeded what any one country would allow.

A recent unrelated case showed how extreme this can become. A different donor was found to have fathered around 1,000 children in several countries. There were no known health issues in that situation, but it revealed how donor use can expand rapidly without oversight.

The challenges in the current case are profound. Families are dealing with grief and uncertainty. Some have lost children. Others face a very high likelihood that their child will develop cancer before the age of 60, often in infancy or childhood.

There has been little public discussion about the sperm donor himself, although the emotional impact of learning these outcomes is likely to be significant.

Because the mutation was so rare, additional routine testing would probably not have prevented what happened. In truth, every person carries some genetic variants that remain undetected and harmless in everyday life.

There have been earlier examples of donors unknowingly passing on inherited conditions, such as cystic fibrosis or fragile X syndrome, but those cases typically involved far fewer families. What makes this case stand out is the sheer number of children affected.

For this reason, simply calling for more screening is unlikely to be the full answer. The more pressing issue is the lack of limits and monitoring on how many families can be created from one donor across borders.

In this case, families were created in several countries and in some places even the national limits were breached. Belgium, for example, permits only six families per donor, yet reports indicate that about 38 families were created.

What is needed is a robust system for tracking and tracing donor use both within and between countries. Without coordinated oversight, national limits are easily bypassed. Establishing international upper limits will be difficult and politically complex, but the conversation has to begin if further tragedies are to be prevented.

As more people use commercial DNA testing to find donor relatives, large networks of siblings connected across countries are becoming increasingly visible. The implications for those families are significant. A coordinated global approach is overdue and would help prevent another case like this one, where families are left facing consequences they could never have foreseen.

Nicky Hudson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council on expanded carrier screening and gamete donation (reference: ES/W012456/1, ES/N010604/1, ES/V002430/1. She is a member of the NICE Guideline Committee on Fertility and a member of the British Fertility Society’s Law Policy and Ethics Special Interest Group.

– ref. One sperm donor fathered 200 children and passed on a deadly mutation – and it could easily happen again – https://theconversation.com/one-sperm-donor-fathered-200-children-and-passed-on-a-deadly-mutation-and-it-could-easily-happen-again-271856

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Jacobsen, Senior Lecturer in Film History in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London

Despite a wonderful central performance from June Squibb, Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut is a sentimental, tonally uncertain drama about grief and holocaust survival

Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old Midwesterner living in Florida, moves to New York after the death of her close friend and roommate Bessie, a Holocaust survivor. She joins a Jewish seniors group and accidentally finds herself part of a meeting of Holocaust survivors.

Eleanor, at first buoyed by the prospect of new friends, fabricates past experiences based on the Bessie’s stories, claiming harrowing recollections as her own.

Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student writing a piece on Holocaust survivors, attends the meetings and is moved by Eleanor’s stories. Having recently lost her mother she connects with Eleanor through shared grief.

Eleanor starts out with ambiguously good intentions of preserving the memory of a dear friend. However, she is soon out of her depth when Nina’s article is taken up by Nina’s news anchor father (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as a human interest story for his show.

Early in the film, a comic exchange in a supermarket aisle telegraphs the film’s central theme. An acquaintance in his 90s tells Eleanor crossly: “You were born in New York. You can’t feel bad about the Holocaust. You weren’t there.”

The film wants to probe the ways in which grief is processed individually and collectively, asking us to consider what drives Eleanor to appropriate her friend’s traumatic life history.

At the centre of the film is the wonderful performance by Squibb, then 94 but now 96, who had a sturdy but unspectacular stage and screen career for more than 60 years before her breakthrough performance in Alexander Payne’s superb Nebraska in 2013.

Eleanor the Great is not a film specifically concerned with ageing and we are not so conscious of the vivacious Squibb’s age until a care home subplot is shoehorned in.

Scarlett Johansson was motivated to direct this film after her own investigations into her family’s history of Holocaust survival. She may have the highest grossing body of work in Hollywood for action films like The Avengers series, but she has a considerable track record of excellent low key independent films – from her breakthrough in Ghost World to Noam Baumbach’s powerful Marriage Story. Eleanor the Great most clearly takes its inspiration from that kind of American character drama.

There is little technical flair or stylistic character to distinguish Johansson as a director in this first feature. The gently sentimental scenes of New York City, its diners, crosswalks and ranks of yellow taxis are clearly inspired by the work of Baumbach as well as Woody Allen, Johansson’s director in two films (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Match Point).

The film is at its strongest in the Allen-esque day-to-day moments in the city that let Squibb embody her character with gentle acidity and likeable crankiness. Johansson, like many actors-turned-directors, has a strength when it comes to allowing performers space to breathe and inhabit their characters. Scenes unfold quietly and unhurriedly.

The script, by Tory Kamen, could be wittier, sharper and more engaging, as there is a promise in character interactions that never quite take flight. When the film reaches what should be its narrative peak with the unravelling of Eleanor’s fabrications it is neither emotional nor funny.

Instead the climax’s tone is uncertain, sentimental and lands flat. What follows is a series of fraught conversations where the actors gamely try to mine emotional heft from a dreary screenplay.

The cultural memory of the Holocaust and the enormity of its legacy on Jewish descendants has been probed with considerably more success elsewhere. Jesse Eisenberg’s impressive, Bafta-winning and Oscar-nominated A Real Pain featured a pair of cousins on a tour of Jewish Poland, confronting its young characters with the memory of the Holocaust.

That film takes a well-executed midway tonal turn from broad character comedy to unexpected powerful poignancy. This happens in a scene where the usually motor-mouthed, bickering men are silenced in the face of a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp. Eleanor the Great doesn’t possess a moment like this that would drive its well-intentioned message home.

The film attempts to sidestep the callousness of Eleanor’s appropriation of Bessie’s stories by switching to flashbacks. In these memories we see Eleanor hear these stories for the first time in the middle of a sleepless night. These scenes, where the words come directly from Bessie, are well acted and moving, especially in a longer, emotional monologue towards the film’s climax.

When the film’s attention turns in the final third to the issue of whether Eleanor should be placed in a retirement home, the tone similarly skirts between humour and pathos – neither of which connect.

The film has admirable intentions but its script and plotting are not worthy of the excellent performance at the film’s heart. It also can’t quite bear the seriousness or the potential power of its central themes, leading to a disappointingly hollow experience.

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Matt Jacobsen 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. Eleanor the Great: a tonally uncertain Holocaust drama with a wonderful central performance – https://theconversation.com/eleanor-the-great-a-tonally-uncertain-holocaust-drama-with-a-wonderful-central-performance-271895

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dominic Wyse, Professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education, UCL

Since 2012, England has taken an increasingly narrow approach to how primary school teachers should teach reading.

The policies on teaching reading have insisted that an approach called “systematic synthetic phonics” is the only way to teach reading. Synthetic phonics involves teaching children the 44 sounds, or “phonemes”, of language and how they are represented by letters in words.

England’s approach to teaching reading was alleged to have created “the best readers in the Western world” by the previous government, when England rose up the rankings of an international reading assessment.

Other countries and regions are now following England’s lead. For example, Australia is following many aspects of England’s approach to phonics. The US has moved towards a much greater emphasis on synthetic phonics. And New Zealand has abandoned the programme called Reading Recovery in favour of more emphasis on phonics.

These regions claim to be basing their new teaching approaches on “the science of reading”. But an accurate reading of the science shows that there are a range of different evidence-based approaches that can be taken to teaching children about phonemes and letters. If countries are following England’s lead, then we need to be sure that England’s approach is based on the most up to date research evidence.

Unfortunately the outcomes for children with reading difficulties in England, over more than a decade, tell a different story from those who claim that narrow synthetic phonics is the only approach. The proportion of children struggling to read has remained at a similar level for many years. The percentage of children not at the expected standards in reading at the age of ten or 11 has remained at about 25% since 2017.

As part of new research my colleagues and I conducted, we surveyed a group of 133 experienced teachers and special educational needs specialists in England. We also carried out a new analysis of already published research. We examined the findings of studies that tested which approaches work best for children with reading difficulties, including those with particular problems such as dyslexia.

There are hundreds of well-conducted studies that have examined how children with reading difficulties can best be taught to read. We found more than 40 systematic reviews of all of these studies. There is clear evidence that flexible teaching approaches are more effective than a narrow emphasis on synthetic phonics.

This means that teachers emphasise a range of components – such as the meanings of words and sentences to contextualise learning about phonemes and letters in real purposes for reading, and teaching writing to help reading.

Another of the components that is vital to attend to is children’s motivation for reading. The kinds of books that are used as part of the teaching is connected to this.

Systematic synthetic phonics is taught using “decodable” books that often have very limited content. But using real books is a way to motivate children through the imaginative ways that stories, poems and information are portrayed in these books. And my own research with Charlotte Hacking shows that phonics can be taught using real books.

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Read more:
Phonics isn’t working – for children’s reading to improve, they need to learn to love stories

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I argue that teaching reading should explicitly focus on motivating children to read. This involves understanding more about children’s interests and providing reading materials that are likely to motivate them. It also requires teachers to actively assess children’s levels of motivation, and take steps to address this as needed.

Deviating from the script

Some of the teachers that we surveyed said that if synthetic phonics was not working to teach a child to read they would try a different approach, including multi-component approaches. But more than 20% of our respondents said they would continue with synthetic phonics even if it wasn’t working, because that was the government’s policy.

Some teachers are more confident than others to innovate with their teaching, and they will have the support of head teachers to innovate. But in education systems with great pressures to conform to one particular approach all teachers find it harder to innovate.

The previous Conservative government used a variety of ways to require teachers to use only synthetic phonics for all children, including those with reading difficulties.

The phonics screening check, taken by all children in year one, and associated targets for schools, encourage a narrow focus on teaching phonics. Ofsted inspections reinforce government messages about synthetic phonics. Teachers in training and new teachers also have new tight requirements on synthetic phonics.

The Labour government has not said it will change any of this. England has just reviewed its national curriculum. No changes were proposed for the teaching of reading in primary schools.

Unless action is taken this will be a missed opportunity that will probably mean that some of our children most in need will not get the teaching based on robust research evidence that they need. However, children and schools cannot wait. The evidence shows that when synthetic phonics is not working, multi-component approaches should be tried.

Dominic Wyse currently receives funding from the Helen Hamlyn Trust and The Welsh Government.

– ref. England’s synthetic phonics approach is not working for children who struggle to read – https://theconversation.com/englands-synthetic-phonics-approach-is-not-working-for-children-who-struggle-to-read-271344

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

This newsletter was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

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Venezuelan Nobel peace laureate, María Corina Machado, plans to return home with her accolade “at the correct moment”. You have to presume the correct moment will be at such a time as her bitter political foe Nicolás Maduro is on holiday or otherwise unavoidably detained, or she certainly risks arrest as soon as she sets foot in her home country.

She told the Times of reports from a local NGO that young people were being detained for simply having the news of the Nobel prize in their phone. So she’d be well aware that the crime of being one of the most prominent opposition figureheads might place her in considerable legal jeopardy.

Perhaps that’s the point. It’s not up to us to speculate, but it’s not hard to imagine news of her arrest going down extremely badly in Washington right now. Having conducted 22 strikes on boats in the Caribbean alleged to be carrying what the US president has designed as “narcoterrorists” with the deaths of at least 87 people, closed the airspace above the country and, on December 10, intercepted and boarded an oil tanker off the coast (more of which anon), one wonders what the Trump administration’s next step might be.

Will there be a “Gulf of Tonkin incident?” The equivalent of the now-infamous confrontation between North Vietnamese and US naval forces which precipitated the Vietnam War – an episode which turned out to be wholly cooked-up by the Americans. Announcing the seizure of the oil tanker, Donald Trump told reporters, cryptically: “Other things are happening.” He did not go into details, but we’ll be watching closely as this develops.

Understandably the Venezuelans are not amused by the incident, which a government spokesman said was “barefaced robbery and an act of international piracy”. We asked Mark Chadwick, an expert in international law at Nottingham Trent University, who has written a book on piracy, for his opinion on the matter.

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Read more:
What does international law tell us about the US seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela?

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Let’s avoid, for now at least, the irony of Trump’s decision to pardon a man convicted in a US court for “flooding the US with cocaine”, while instructing his military to target boats piloted by people he has designated as “narcoterrorists”.

It has been interesting to follow the coverage of these attacks and their legality, or lack of it. For the record, and in case you have missed our expert analysis, these attacks appear very risky, legally.

But it’s not as if the US – and her allies, including the UK – have’t sailed pretty close to the legal wind with “targeted killings” across the Middle East and elsewhere over past decades. Elisabeth Schweiger is an expert on international law and the use of force at the University of Stirling. She writes that the fact that there has not been more of an international outcry at these killings has created a situation where these extrajudicial killings have been almost normalised. Indeed the discussion is “beginning to shift from whether such strikes should occur to how they should be conducted, focusing on issues like target identification”.

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Read more:
Donald Trump’s strikes against narcoterrorists are new but the logic behind them isn’t

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One country where they will be watching what’s going on in Venezuela with close interest is China, writes Tom Harper. Harper, an expert in Chinese foreign policy at the University of East London, says that Beijing reacted to news of the closure by the US of Venezuelan airspace with an admonitory message that China “opposes external interference in Venezuela’s domestic affairs under any pretext”.

As Harper notes, Beijing has worked hard over decades to develop relations and influence with a range of Latin American countries, partly for trade reasons, partly as a counterweight to US influence. China is also one of the largest buyers of its oil. In turn, Venezuela buys Chinese arms.

But now, in its new national security strategy, the Trump administration has invoked the Monroe doctrine. This policy originating from the 19th century essentially claimed that Latin America was America’s backyard to mess around in and that any outside interference in the region would be seen as a hostile act towards US interests. It was discontinued in 2013 by the Obama administration, as the then secretary of state John Kerry declared that “the era of the Monroe doctrine is over”.

Now it’s back, in what the White House is calling the “Trump corollary”, which states that “the American people – not foreign nations nor globalist institutions – will always control their own destiny in our hemisphere”. How Beijing reacts to this remains to be seen.

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Read more:
Why China is watching Trump’s Venezuela campaign closely

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National security strategy

The Chinese aren’t the only people who will have read Trump’s 2025 national security statement with interest, although in the case of most of us in Europe, it’s more a case of bemusement and horror. While barely mentioning Russia and not mentioning North Korea at all, the 33-page document describes Europe’s shortcomings in lavish detail.

Europe, we read, has become weakened by allowing immigration to get out of control to the extent that it now risks “civilizational erasure”. Meanwhile Europe’s politicians have undermined free speech and suppressed democratic opposition. Ominously, the national security strategy talks of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. He doubled down on that theme in an interview with the US, hinting that he might consider endorsing candidates who align better with his geopolitical vision.

Reading between the lines of the document, David Dunn and Stefan Wolff, experts in international security at the University of Birmingham, conclude that “the transatlantic alliance that was the cornerstone of European security and underpinned the liberal international order has ceased to exist”.

It’s a worrying time for Nato’s European members, they believe. Trump and some of his most senior officials have signalled that the US is no longer prepared to act as the security backstop – the principle around which the alliance was originally built. If any silver lining to this is to be found it’s that the US president’s insistence that all Nato members must increase their defence spending has already got them scrambling to adjust their budgets. And Trump’s perceived unreliability around the Ukraine war has led them to form a Europe-oriented “coalition of the willing”.

As our authors conclude: “If Nato founders, which is not now inconceivable, [this coalition] may be Europe’s best hope of surviving in a world where it is no longer one of, or aligned with, the dominant great powers of the day. But for that to become a reality, the coalition of the willing needs to become a coalition of the able. And this is a test it has yet to pass.”

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Read more:
Donald Trump’s national security strategy puts America first and leaves its allies to fend for themselves

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That Washington has often viewed the unwillingness of some European powers to join in with America’s foreign policy adventures as a sign of weakness is well known. When France and Germany declined to join George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, there were quips about “Euroweenies” and “EU-nuchs”. So it’s not surprising that the new US national security strategy focuses on this perceived shortcoming.

But, the document’s focus on the risk of “civilizational erasure” in Europe came as a surprise to many. It feels for all the world like a reheated version of the “great replacement theory” – namely the idea that indigenous Europeans are being outbred by immigrants, to the extent that “will be unrecognizable in 20 years or
less”.

The fact is, writes Roman Birke, an expert in modern European history at Dublin City University, that this has become something of an obsession for some thinkers in the US and parts of Europe. Leaders that Trump admires, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, have promoted policies to get women having more children. “We Hungarians have a different way of thinking,” Orban is quoted as saying. “Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”

Birke believes that Trump and his Maga movement’s suspicion of Europe focuses on these issues which to them mean the Europe has become weak and decadent.

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Read more:
America’s anti-European attitudes are centred on perceptions of military weakness and the decline of native populations

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But you’d be mistaken if you believe Trump’s national security strategy to reveal him as an isolationist, writes Andrew Gawthorpe. Far from it. Gawthorpe, whose research has focused on the changing views of civilisation inherent in Trump’s foreign policy when contrasted with that of the great liberal US president Woodrow Wilson, thinks that Trump sees himself as “the protector of a racially and culturally defined civilisation that covers both the US and Europe”.

Gawthorpe picks out three broad themes from the national security strategy which illustrate how the US president and his top aides see the world and America’s place astride it.

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Read more:
What the US national security strategy tells us about how Trump views the world

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– ref. Did Donald Trump order piracy on the high seas? – https://theconversation.com/did-donald-trump-order-piracy-on-the-high-seas-271881

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Godden, Senior Research Associate, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia

The Arctic Ocean current is at its warmest in the last 125,000 years, and temperatures continue to rise. Due to these warming temperatures more than two-thirds of polar bears are expected to be extinct by 2050 with total extinction predicted by the end of this century.

But in our new study my colleagues and I found that the changing climate was driving changes in the polar bear genome, potentially allowing them to more readily adapt to warmer habitats. Provided these polar bears can source enough food and breeding partners, this suggests they may potentially survive these new challenging climates.

We discovered a strong link between rising temperatures in south-east Greenland and changes in polar bear DNA. DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops. In processes called transcription and translation, DNA is copied to generate RNA (molecules that reflect gene activity) and can lead to the production of proteins, and copies of transposons (TEs), also known as “jumping genes”, which are mobile pieces of the genome that can move around and influence how other genes work.

In carrying out our recent research we found that there were big differences in the temperatures observed in the north-east, compared with the south-east regions of Greenland. Our team used publicly available polar bear genetic data from a research group at the University of Washington, US, to support our study. This dataset was generated from blood samples collected from polar bears in both northern and south-eastern Greenland.

Our work built on the Washington University study which discovered that this south-eastern population of Greenland polar bears was genetically different to the north-eastern population. South-east bears had migrated from the north and became isolated and separate approximately 200 years ago, it found.

Researchers from Washington had extracted RNA from polar bear blood samples and sequenced it. We used this RNA sequencing to look at RNA expression — the molecules that act like messengers, showing which genes are active, in relation to the climate. This gave us a detailed picture of gene activity, including the behaviour of TEs. Temperatures in Greenland have been closely monitored and recorded by the Danish Meteorological Institute. So we linked this climate data with the RNA data to explore how environmental changes may be influencing polar bear biology.

Does temperature change anything?

From our analysis we found that temperatures in the north-east of Greenland were colder and less variable, while south-east temperatures fluctuated and were significantly warmer. The figure below shows our data as well as how temperature varies across Greenland, with warmer and more volatile conditions in the south-east. This creates many challenges and changes to the habitats for the polar bears living in these regions.

In the south-east of Greenland, the ice-sheet margin, which is the edge of the ice sheet and spans 80% of Greenland, is rapidly receding, causing vast ice and habitat loss.

The loss of ice is a substantial problem for the polar bears, as this reduces the availability of hunting platforms to catch seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. The north-east of Greenland is a vast, flat Arctic tundra, while south-east Greenland is covered by forest tundra (the transitional zone between coniferous forest and Arctic tundra). The south-east climate has high levels of rain, wind, and steep coastal mountains.

Temperature across Greenland and bear locations

How climate is changing polar bear DNA

Over time the DNA sequence can slowly change and evolve, but environmental stress, such as warmer climate, can accelerate this process.

TEs are like puzzle pieces that can rearrange themselves, sometimes helping animals adapt to new environments. In the polar bear genome approximately 38.1% of the genome is made up of TEs. TEs come in many different families and have slightly different behaviours, but in essence they all are mobile fragments that can reinsert randomly anywhere in the genome.

In the human genome, 45% is comprised of TEs and in plants it can be over 70%. There are small protective molecules called piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) that can silence the activity of TEs.

Despite this, when an environmental stress is too strong, these protective piRNAs cannot keep up with the invasive actions of TEs. In our work we found that the warmer south-east climate led to a mass mobilisation from these TEs across the polar bear genome, changing its sequence. We also found that these TE sequences appeared younger and more abundant in the south-east bears, with over 1,500 of them “upregulated”, which suggests recent genetic changes that may help bears adapt to rising temperatures.

Some of these elements overlap with genes linked to stress responses and metabolism, hinting at a possible role in coping with climate change. By studying these jumping genes, we uncovered how the polar bear genome adapts and responds, in the shorter term, to environmental stress and warmer climates.

Our research found that some genes linked to heat-stress, ageing and metabolism are behaving differently in the south-east population of polar bears. This suggests they might be adjusting to their warmer conditions. Additionally, we found active jumping genes in parts of the genome that are involved in areas tied to fat processing – important when food is scarce. This could mean that polar bears in the south-east are slowly adapting to eating the rougher plant-based diets that can be found in the warmer regions. Northern populations of bears eat mainly fatty seals.

Overall, climate change is reshaping polar bear habitats, leading to genetic changes, with south-eastern bears evolving to survive these new terrains and diets. Future research could include other polar bear populations living in challenging climates. Understanding these genetic changes help researchers see how polar bears might survive in a warming world – and which populations are most at risk.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

This study was funded by grants from the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/S011188/1) and the European Research Council (SELECTHAPLOID – 101001341)

– ref. Polar bears are adapting to climate change at a genetic level – and it could help them avoid extinction – https://theconversation.com/polar-bears-are-adapting-to-climate-change-at-a-genetic-level-and-it-could-help-them-avoid-extinction-269852

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jake Phillips, Associate professor, University of Cambridge

In England and Wales, whole-life imprisonment is the harshest sanction available to the courts, emerging in the decades after the abolition of the death penalty. The whole-life order requires people to spend their whole lives in prison with no prospect of release, except on exceptional compassionate grounds.

From 1988, whole-life sentences (called “whole-life tariffs”) could be imposed by the home secretary and were used for handful of criminals. However, a number of legal challenges in the 1990s chipped away at the home secretary’s power to do so. In 2003, the Criminal Justice Act formally introduced whole-life orders, giving judges the power to impose them.

The European Court of Human Rights initially ruled in 2013 in response to a challenge from three people serving whole-life tariffs that these sentences breached human rights law, as they constituted inhuman and degrading treatment. A later ruling in 2017 found that the compassionate release clause (part of the 1997 Crime Act) keeps the order lawful. However, notably, no one has ever been released under it.

This punishment represents the state’s most severe power to harm its citizens. Understanding how and why it is used tells us about our appetite for punishment and the state’s power to inflict it. And evidence suggests that its use is rising.

Historically, data on whole-life orders has been difficult to come by. The Ministry of Justice has not reliably published figures on how many people are given these sentences, nor how many are serving them at a given time. Online lists of names, we have found, are inaccurate.

This is where our recent paper, published in The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice in October 2025, comes in.

We sought to understand how whole-life orders have been used since their introduction in 2003. We started by generating what we believe to be the most accurate dataset on the use of whole-life sentencing through a combination of Freedom of Information requests to the Ministry of Justice, as well as in-depth archival research drawing on court transcripts, media reports and parliamentary debates.

In analysing this dataset, we found that there are currently 74 people serving whole-life sentences. The year with the highest number of whole-life orders given was 2023, when Lucy Letby received 15 for her crimes.

Notably, 74% of all whole-life sentences imposed since 1965 were imposed after the Criminal Justice Act in 2003. This suggests that transferring the power of this sentence from the home secretary to the courts created the conditions for it to be used more widely.

Since 2003, the population serving whole-life sentences has risen significantly faster than the prison population as a whole, which has more than doubled since 1990 but remained relatively stable since 2000.

We also found that whole-life orders are being used for a wider range of offences, including those which are not on the specific list of offences for which these sentences can be imposed.

Examples include Wayne Couzens, who was given this sentence for the murder of a single person, and Letby, who received eight whole-life orders for the attempted murder of seven babies (alongside seven others for actual murder). Prior to Couzens, those who received whole-life orders for a single murder had previous convictions for serious offences.

Finally, courts are increasingly imposing more than one whole-life order on individual people. Before 2022, the maximum number of orders imposed on one person was two. Since then, Damien Bendall was given five whole-life orders for four counts of murder and rape, and Letby received 15.

In 2025, Kyle Clifford received three whole-life orders for the murders of Louise, Hannah and Carol Hunt. In most cases, this reflects the seriousness of the offending and the number of victims. It also makes appeals increasingly difficult.

Penal populism

This is not to suggest that we should not be using whole-life orders – clearly these people have caused significant harm to victims, the public and, in some cases, trust in public institutions such as the police and the NHS. But these trends raise an important question: why is this severe punishment becoming more common?

The answer doesn’t lie in a rise in the most serious offences such as homicide, which have remained stable or even declined over the last few decades. Rather, we would point to what criminologists call penal populism: the tendency of politicians to respond to perceived public opinion by introducing tougher sentences.

Over the last half a century, a series of legislative changes have led to sentence lengths significantly increasing, particularly for serious offences. This is especially relevant given recent proposals to make whole-life orders mandatory for certain crimes.

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Read more:
How a doubling of sentence lengths helped pack England’s prisons to the rafters

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We are also concerned about the lack of data publicly available on this topic, which makes it difficult for the government to be held to account, and raises further questions: if the whole-life order is only compliant with human rights legislation because of the possibility of release on compassionate grounds, should we not expect someone to have been released via this mechanism? And if no one has, what does that say about how human rights protections work in practice?

Human rights aside, the cost of imprisoning people on whole-life orders far exceeds that of people who are released, especially as they age and need increasing levels of care and medical treatment. And when we consider the constant problems of overcrowding in the prison system, these pressures become even more paramount.

If we are willing to accept ever-harsher punishment via sentences which do not allow for redemption or rehabilitation, then the rise of the whole-life order may seem justified. People who cause high levels of harm do – perhaps rightly – elicit anger and revulsion.

At the same time, evidence suggests that people believe in rehabilitation as an important purpose of punishment. We argue, therefore, that we need to look more closely at how and why the state is choosing to exercise its most extreme power to punish in increasing numbers of cases.

Nothing to disclose

Jake Phillips 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 whole-life imprisonment is rising in England and Wales – https://theconversation.com/why-whole-life-imprisonment-is-rising-in-england-and-wales-269226