European leaders have taken an “important first step” towards a political declaration on migration and how the European Convention on Human Rights is applied, according to the Council of Europe’s secretary general. They support a new recommendation to deter smuggling of migrants “with full respect for human rights”, said Alain Berset.

Keir Starmer is leading calls to modernise the interpretation of the ECHR. The “current asylum framework was created for another era”, he said in a joint article with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen in The Guardian. It should “evolve to reflect the challenges of the 21st century”.

What did the commentators say?
Starmer has sent his two closest allies, Justice Secretary David Lammy and Attorney General Richard Hermer, to Strasbourg to make the case for updating the convention. They have “one task in mind”, said Andrew McDonald on Politico’s London Playbook: “securing reforms to the ECHR to save his Labour government and the 75-year-old treaty from those on the right who want to ditch both entirely. No pressure!”

Some human rights campaigners, Labour peers and MPs have condemned the government for pushing for changes, “arguing they could open the door to countries abandoning some of the world’s most vulnerable people”, said Pippa Crerar and Rajeev Syal in The Guardian.  The PM, critics warn, “should not be diluting protections that pander to the right”.

But both critics and supporters of the ECHR, which came into force in 1953, acknowledge that it is “woefully outdated” and “does not reflect today’s reality of people-smuggling gangs and the weaponisation of migrants by rogue states”, said The Telegraph. There is “no suggestion that EU leaders will scrap the ECHR”, as some parties on the right “dream of doing”, but a growing number of member states are calling for it to be “‘reinterpreted’ to address current migration challenges”.

What next?
The Council of Europe’s Berset said that the “living instrument” of the convention is possible to adapt, and work will begin next year. The key parts of the ECHR that have been identified as in need of an update are Article 8, which deals with the right to family life, and Article 3, about the right not to be subjected to torture or inhumane treatment. Restrictions on the application of Article 8 are crucial to the radical asylum reforms outlined by Shabana Mahmood last month.

Investors are cooling on Ben & Jerry’s amid an escalating spat between the brand founders and the ice-cream’s owners.

The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which also owns Cornetto and Wall’s, completed a spin-off from parent firm Unilever this week and began trading on the European stock market as a standalone business, but its initial valuation was “significantly lower” than expected, said The Times.

Unilever, and now Magnum, have been embroiled in a “war of words” with founders Jerry Greenfield, who quit in September, and Ben Cohen. The pair have accused both companies of silencing the brand’s “social mission”, after Magnum boss Peter ter Kulve said they should “hand over to a new generation”.

‘Vocal about their dissatisfaction’
The “long-running legal spat” about the “powers to define the company’s direction” has threatened to “overshadow the demerger”, said Madeleine Speed in the Financial Times. Since Ben & Jerry’s was acquired by Unilever in 2000 for $326 million, Greenfield and Cohen have become “increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with the direction of the brand”.

Unilever has suggested that Ben & Jerry’s history of pro-Gaza activism “risks derailing” the success of the spin-off of its ice-cream division, said Tom Haynes in The Telegraph. The brand claimed last year that Unilever had “tried to silence” elements of its social mission in the Middle East.

‘Corporate activism is melting’
Cohen claims that he and Greenfield have been “muzzled”, said The Times, while “Unilever believes it has acted reasonably”. In late 2023, Unilver agreed to allow its subsidiary to speak on the Israel-Gaza conflict if Ben & Jerry’s “also condemned Hamas terrorism and called for the release of hostages taken in October of that year”. And Unilever is hardly “the only big company that shies away from antagonising the White House”.

Greenfield’s departure from the brand that he co-founded almost 50 years ago was the latest episode in the “broader reckoning” taking place in Donald Trump’s second term, said David Kaufman in Monocle. The administration’s promotion of “anti-diversity, America-first mindset” is at odds with the “feel-good, save-the-world, ‘kumbaya’ philosophy” that has fuelled Ben & Jerry’s marketing.

A young gorilla shows off his athleticism while playing with his peers in Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains. The image, by British photographer Mark Meth-Cohn, is the winner of the 2025 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards. 

Mark Meth-Cohn / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

Whether you’re a budding poet or looking for a special gift for a bookworm, these 2025 releases are worth reading from cover to cover.

The Book of Jonah, by Luke Kennard
In his latest collection, Kennard “daringly” remixes his “source material and inspirations”, moving the biblical Jonah “into a world of arts conferences”, said The Guardian. Poems that initially appear lengthy and opaque are “made welcoming with an irresistible energy”, said The Telegraph, and are “liable to leave you both smiling and wincing within the same breath”.

The Empire of Forgetting, by John Burnside
The late Burnside “conveyed an infectious love of the world” that is “heightened” in his posthumous collection, said the Financial Times. “His laser-sharp eye for the beauty of nature” remains unerring in a moving, personal collection that confronts mortality, drawing on Burnside’s own health issues and brushes with death.

Chaotic Good, by Isabelle Baafi
This “playful and sharp” examination of escaping a toxic marriage is a must-read, said The Guardian. Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and winner of the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, Baafi’s debut collection is packed with poems that “absolutely know their power and revel in it”.

Southernmost: Sonnets, by Leo Boix
The Argentinian-British poet’s second collection comprises 100 sonnets covering everything from “religion and upbringing” to “love and sexuality”, said The Telegraph. “Unflinching in its attention to Argentine history”, it includes “lively anecdotes” about Boix’s family, alongside a “reckoning with the long shadow of colonialism”.

FIFA’s World Cup Sycophancy Is Dirtying the Beautiful Game
Lara Williams on Bloomberg
Football’s governing body is “ingratiating” itself with Donald Trump, the man who “pulled his nation out of the Paris Agreement”, writes climate change columnist Lara Williams. Players at next year’s World Cup will face “extreme heat”, and “the new trend of hosting events” across different countries will generate the tournament’s “highest carbon footprint”. By “sidling up to climate deniers” and “making deals with heavy polluters”, Fifa will turn “the beautiful game ugly”.

Why Center Parcs is hell on earth
Annie Kinsella in the Daily Mail
“Thrice I have been duped by the lie that a good time can be had with family and friends in man-made forests just off the M1,” writes Annie Kinsella. Center Parcs is a “pine-filled purgatory” full of “Sweaty Betty-clad, cycling, jogging, badminton-playing morons”. But children “love it, obviously”, which is why “I will have to go again”. “My holiday dream” of filling a “rustic French farmhouse” with friends and “some nice fromage” will “remain a fantasy”.

Believe me, Taylor and Travis, there’s nothing like a good marital argument
Carol Midgley in The Times
“I read that Travis Kelce said he and Taylor Swift haven’t had ‘a single argument’” and “my first thought was, ‘Good God, how boring!’”, writes Carol Midgley. “How dull it must be to agree on everything” and never have a “proper, palate-cleansing slanging match”. They “must be like those dolls constantly nodding in perpetual assent. I don’t think I could bear it.” A “good ding-dong” is “excellent for flushing the gunk out of your marital pipes”.