'Suella Braverman went to Washington to talk tough… in an empty room'

'The moment Suella Braverman became a global laughing stock'

Tom Peck in The Independent

A great many people "will have found Suella Braverman's recent speech on 'migration', enraging", writes Tom Peck in The Independent. "But mainly it was laughable", and " at the end", the cameras revealed "an audience of roughly nine people” for "a home secretary who is never happier than when issuing softly spoken proclamations about her own capacity for cruelty, standing in front of a world that absolutely does not care what she thinks…and telling it that it has to change".

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'Why I still believe in the political centre'

Daniel Finkelstein in The Times

In policymaking, "there are few controversies… in which only one side has merit", says Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. It is "understanding this, and living with its implications, that is the core of the politics of the centre," he writes. Being at the centre, right or left, is about "accepting that there can simultaneously be strong arguments for two or more opposing policy positions". "Let us never forget the things that unite the centre and divide it from the extremes".

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The Magic Number: 32 Hours

Binyamin Appelbaum in The New York Times

Autoworkers picketing American factories "aren’t just seeking higher pay", says Binyamin Appelbaum, "audaciously, they are also demanding a full week’s pay for working 32 hours across four days". And if they succeed "we'll all benefit". A shorter work week "would be better for our health, better for our families and better for our employers, who would reap the benefits of a more motivated and better-rested work force". 

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'German politics has a built-in firewall against the far right. It’s beginning to crack'

John Kampfner in The Guardian

"The Germans have a term for what holds them together: Wehrhafte Demokratie," writes John Kampfner in The Guardian. "It roughly translates as fortified democracy", or "the idea that the state has the right to act against those who threaten the liberal democratic order". Now though, Germany is "engulfed in the same populist wave that has swept many of its European neighbours". But the system is "still holding", Kampfner concludes, adding "it might be argued that in the US, Britain and elsewhere it has already been dismantled".

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