'Are you single or in a 'hard-working family'? Your answer counts for a lot'
Nesrine Malik for The Guardian
As we near the beginning of "what feels like a long general election campaign" we are "witnessing the electoral map shrink ever-more until there's only one true political subject left: 'hard-working families'", said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. Single people are being ignored by both political parties, but not because "there simply aren't that many of them to matter electorally". Rather, because they "do not evoke the right sort of image of citizens who the government should be dedicating itself to".
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'UK politics: Mind the Gap'
The Times editorial board
Rishi Sunak has been criticised for his "well-judged" decision to delay "damaging and unachievable deadlines for the transition to net zero", said The Times, and now "stands accused of drawing dividing lines between the government and its Labour opposition, as if that were a bad thing". It is a "facile criticism", continued the paper. Indeed, the prime minister's "new clarity of vision and voice" gives voters "a clearer choice than that between two parties appearing to accept economic malaise as an inevitability".
'On the opioid crisis, the presidential campaign is making us dumber'
Paul Waldman for The Washington Post
"Imagine what the 2024 presidential campaign would look like if nearly 300 Americans were killed every day in terrorist attacks," wrote Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. "That's how many people die in a typical day from drug overdoses." But if drug deaths do become a campaign issue, "it will only be in the most demagogic and inane way possible". The "irony" is that both Republicans and Democrats barely differ on how to address the addiction crisis, as now "most people understand that addiction is a disease and not a failure of character", said Waldman. "But getting lawmakers to act on that hard-earned wisdom is another story."
'Dividing the world into heroes and villains does us little good'
Jemima Kelly for the Financial Times
On the two occasions I have "dared" to suggest that Donald Trump occasionally "might be funny", sometimes "even deliberately so", my inboxes were "inundated with outraged and perplexed messages", said Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times. Yet we need to be able to speak in "honest and nuanced terms" even about the most "pernicious" members of our society. Simply labelling people villains is "merely encouraging more division".
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