The Welsh parliament could make wilfully misleading the public a criminal offence. The rest of the UK deserves the same protection In 2019, I helped prove in court that the then prime minister misled the Queen. Boris Johnson claimed he prorogued parliament for purely administrative reasons. The circumstances, the court concluded, demonstrated that “the true reason for the prorogation is to reduce the time available for parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit at a time when such scrutiny would appear to be a matter of considerable importance”. Johnson ultimately faced the supreme court over his decisi ..read more

Our system is full of loopholes and vulnerable to millionaires’ and plutocrats’ demands. Voters simply need clean, fair politics There’s a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors. Democracy is meaningless if a country isn’t run at the behest of its people. But the rule is riddled with loopholes. Those who have done the most to keep them open are those who most loudly assert their patriotism. Noisy “patriots” are always the first to sell us out to offshore capital. Here are some of the tricks they use. One is the “unincorporated association”. This refers to ..read more

Former House speaker says Matt Gaetz led charge to remove him to quash allegations Florida representative ‘slept with a 17-year-old’ The far-right Florida Republican Matt Gaetz forced Kevin McCarthy out as House speaker last year “because he slept with a 17-year-old” and wanted a congressional ethics investigation to end, McCarthy charged on Tuesday. “I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker,” McCarthy said, at an event at Georgetown University in Washington ..read more

It is easy to see the world in a pessimistic light, but by tapping into our innate generosity we have the power to change it As a determined optimist, I never thought I’d be saying this, but it’s true: the world is mean and getting meaner. Instead of bringing us together, the internet seems to have fuelled our divisions by empowering those who are best at sowing fear, mistrust and outrage. We’re angry with each other over migrants, gender identity, climate catastrophe, wokeness and so much more. A recent survey by King’s College London found that for the first time a majority (52%) of the UK p ..read more

Group draws up 100 proposals, including that ministers swear oath to uphold a new code of standards Ministers should have to swear an oath to uphold ethical standards in public life after years of scandals and declining trust in the government, a new cross-party commission has found. The group, whose members include the former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, the Labour MP Margaret Hodge, and Helen MacNamara, a former government ethics chief, set out 100 recommendations aimed at fixing problems with the standards system ..read more

US culture is an incubator of ‘extrinsic values’. Nobody embodies them like the Republican frontrunner Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics. Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are i ..read more

The story has united a nation. Such consensus is rare, and we should refuse to pin the blame on a few bad apples In an age in which there is rarely a consensus on anything, there is something refreshing about the entire nation coming together in shared outrage. The Post Office Horizon scandal has created a rare moment of unity. That we can celebrate. But it is also worth considering why this has happened. While it’s heartening to be reminded that there are at least some issues on which all decent people agree, if we look more closely at the conditions that have allowed for this outbreak of eth ..read more

Extending the limit could help uncover causes of recurrent miscarriage and congenital conditions, experts say Scientists are calling for a review of the 14-day rule on embryo research, saying that extending the limit could help uncover the causes of recurrent miscarriage and congenital conditions. Until now, scientists studying the earliest stages of life have been restricted to cultivating embryos up to the equivalent of 14 days of development. They can then pick up the path of development several weeks later, on pregnancy scans and from material donated from terminations ..read more

Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow will also be subpoenaed over roles in paying for gifts for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Senate Democrats plan to subpoena Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo to quiz them about their roles in organizing and paying for lavish perks for justices on the hard-right wing of the US supreme court. The announcement by Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee came on Monday amid a storm of controversy that has blown up in recent months about conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito not only accepting but also not ..read more

How different the world might be if more of us responded to mishaps without assuming the worst One of the biggest shocks I had this year wasn’t the sound of my car scraping against another car, and the realisation that, in an absent moment, I’d gone straight into someone else’s lane instead of turning left. It was what happened next. I pulled over and started vomiting apologies on to the driver of the ute I’d just scraped. I was sorry, it was completely my fault, I had no idea what I’d been thinking, or rather, I clearly hadn’t been thinking, at least not about the task at hand, and did I ment ..read more