Keir Starmer's Brexit reset took in another European superpower this week as the UK and Germany signed their first treaty since they fought each other in the Second World War.

The so-called Kensington Treaty shows Germany and the UK are "really on the way to a new chapter", said Friedrich Merz, who was visiting London for the first time since becoming German chancellor. 

What did the commentators say?
It wasn't quite "le bromance" of Emmanuel Macron's state visit to Britain last week, said The Guardian's John Crace. But it was "equally significant": a "coming of age" and "a relationship of equals with no place for tabloid stereotypes".

"Flying around are a lot of big claims" about a "groundbreaking" agreement, said the BBC. But the 23-page treaty broadly lives up to the "hyperbole".

Some of its contents aren't new: the promise to defend each other from attack comes under Nato commitments; Germany had already agreed to change its laws to "make it easier to seize boats" used by people-smugglers, and the EU had already agreed to open more countries' e-gates to British travellers. But, most importantly, the treaty sets up annual meetings of ministers to co-ordinate policies, and a meeting every two years between the countries' leaders. "That sounds like dry stuff", but "it sends important signals" about "shared priorities and shared intent".

What next?
The treaty also commits Germany and the UK to deeper co-operation with France, said Politico, "formalising the so-called 'triangle alliance' for the first time".

Analysts say the three countries are creating a kind of "break glass in case of emergency" system of planning and action, ready to react to an "increasingly aggressive Russia", said The New York Times. If Donald Trump "continues to back away from American commitments on the continent, having that option might become necessary".

"This is literally all the kids coming together and trying to figure out what to do about the drunk dad," said Minna Alander, from the Center for European Policy Analysis.

"We do have to be a little bit honest and say that, to many, it seems like left-leaning atheists have a monopoly on science," said Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the BBC's new series, Human, in The Times. 

Al-Shamahi describes her politics as "definitely left-wing" but believes including more religious and right-wing biases in science will lead to better outcomes. Her words are a "rare admission of a well-known development", said The Spectator. "They confirm what many have come to recognise: science as presented to the public has taken a decidedly left-wing turn."

'Unprecedented assault'
The head of one of the world's largest biomedical funders agrees. John-Arne Røttingen, chief executive of the Wellcome Trust, told Research Professional News that the scientific community has a "responsibility" to demonstrate why research matters to people who are not politically left-leaning.

It's a clear reference to what is happening to academic funding in the US, where the scientific community has been rocked by an "unprecedented assault" by the Trump administration on institutions and those who work in them, said Byline Times. US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr (pictured above) has threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in medical journals because, he says, "they're all corrupt". Such "orchestrated attacks" are a threat to the bedrock of "evidence-based policy-making and scientific progress". 

Steering clear of 'policy debates'
A recent Kaiser poll found nearly one in four Americans report having "not too much or no confidence at all" that scientists operate with the best interests of the public in mind. Nearly half think scientists should play less of a role in policy debates. 

This matters, said Al-Shamahi, because "if you can't demonstrate that scientists and research labs don't belong to just one tribe, then suddenly it doesn't become a priority to fund them".

"There's a role for scientists as political advocates, and I respect that," Jim Naismith, a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford, told The Times. "But, once you take your lab coat off and argue for a political objective, you enter an arena" that plays "by political rules". You can't then "put the lab coat back on and say, 'I'm neutral and above the political fray'".

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Why is it so hard for the authorities to win public trust? Maybe because they keep lying to us
Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian
If you wanted to "convince conspiracy theorists they were right all along", the "Afghan super-injunction would be hard to beat", writes Gaby Hinsliff. "You don't have to wear a tinfoil hat" to find the cover-up "unnerving". But how can we "know who to trust", when both "excess naivety and unwarranted suspicion" can have "terrible consequences"? There's a "creeping crisis of faith in institutions", which feels "actively dangerous". Yet, "sometimes the alternatives are worse".

The world is winning the war on cancer
The Economist's editorial board
"Good news often goes unreported, especially if it happens gradually," says The Economist. Although today "every adult has had cancer, knows someone who has, or both", the progress of "the war" on this disease has been "remarkable". Since the 1990s, the "death rate has been falling, slowly but steadily, year after year". Some scientists hoped for a "blitzkrieg" but it's "turned out to be a steady but successful war of attrition".

The New Party Must Do More Than Win Elections
Joe Todd on Novara Media
"Let's dream" that it's 2034 and a "new left party led by Zarah Sultana" has won the general election, writes Joe Todd. The "nightmarish second act" is "actually governing": winning an election is "easy", compared with "building the power needed for a socialist transition". The new left party must build links in "the great human network" of community groups to give people "a glimpse of the good life beyond capitalism".