‘The future of our party and our country depends on confronting what happened’

President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews

(Image credit: Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images)

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1. My fellow Republicans, convicting Trump is necessary to save America
2. Inequality vs. innovation. This epic clash will determine the world’s fate
3. Why does Jeff Bezos want world domination?
4. No, Elon Musk, there is nothing ‘cool’ about experimenting on animals
5. Is condemning GB News before it’s started a good use of the left’s energy?

published 9 February 2021

1. My fellow Republicans, convicting Trump is necessary to save America

Adam Kinzinger in the Washington Post

Impeaching Donald Trump “isn’t a waste of time”, says Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, “it’s a matter of accountability”. In a call to fellow Republican lawmakers Kinzinger, who voted in favour of action against Trump, argues that “if the GOP doesn’t take a stand, the chaos of the past few months, and the past four years, could quickly return”. Acknowledging that “many Republicans refuse to admit what happened” when the Capitol was stormed on 6 January, he adds: “The future of our party and our country depends on confronting what happened - so it doesn’t happen again.”

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“The Covid-19 pandemic increasingly presents a story of extraordinary innovation and mounting inequality,” says William Hague in The Telegraph. “Each and every day the gap widens between those who are building up their savings in lockdown and those who can’t”, “between those who can easily work from home and many who cannot” and “between the children learning steadily and those who are rapidly falling behind”, the former Tory leader argues. “To have a cohesive society, and to find a new unifying national identity as the natural home of science, ideas and new knowledge, we will have to show a way out of inequality.”

Amazon is “a snowman’s head, rolling down an endless snowy, retail hill”, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times in a timely metaphor. The success its founder, Jeff Bezos, has made of the online giant cannot be doubted, but “it’s not facile to ask what the hell it has all been for”, he adds. Bezos, the second richest man on Earth, “seems motivated by nothing more than shutting down shops”. And as Bezos prepares to stand down from the top job, his legacy may simply be “that it is now marginally easier to receive an egg whisk on a Saturday morning without going to Tesco”.

Elon Musk’s decision to implant so-called “mind-reading” chips in monkeys “reflects an increase in the number of experiments on animals taking place”, says Dr Katy Taylor. The director of science at Cruelty Free International argues in The Independent that “we all need to ask questions about the direction we are heading in”, acknowledging that while “science has performed admirably during the Covid-19 crisis… we can all clearly do more when it comes to achieving human-relevant science without suffering”.

With Andrew Neil’s news channel GB News approaching its launch date, Zoe Williams says “it is neither premature nor unduly biased to think it’s the last thing our media environment needs”. But writing in The Guardian, she adds that while “resistance, indignation and anxiety” are “understandable” responses, “are they a good use of energy?”. Pondering whether anyone will tune in to watch a channel that she suggests will just be “pro-government boosterism”, she adds: “It is vital not to pre-cancel the mainstream right.”

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