Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Politics, UK news, Keir Starmer, Economics, Business, John Major, Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Theresa May, Boris Johnson
Title – The ungovernable country? Why Britain keeps losing prime ministers | Politics | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tomclark
Link – The ungovernable country? Why Britain keeps losing prime ministers | Politics | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T13:47:06.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/17/the-ungovernable-country-why-britain-keeps-losing-prime-ministers

T hey were times in which prime ministers seemed to be on their way out as soon as they’d arrived. The big strategic decisions the country faced were ducked or postponed. The public finances repeatedly wobbled, yet efforts to rationalise the tax system faltered in the face of vested interests, including farmers. Reforms to social security were trumpeted before being diluted. The whole business of politics was animated by rancour and rivalry, rather than practical action. All the while, populists waited in the wings.

This is not a sneak peak into a future history book about today’s Britain, but a description of the French fourth republic, which staggered after a difficult birth in 1946 until 1958, when the exhausted regime ceded the authority to create a new order to Gen Charles de Gaulle, effectively putting itself out of its misery.

Keir Starmer did not go so gently, raging against the dying of the light until Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield forced him to accept the inevitable. Overseas precedents for our political tumult are all there is, because British history can’t provide them. There has “never been a period like the present,” said Anthony Seldon, author of The Impossible Office?, which charts the 300-year story of the premiership.

Yes, there was a decade in each of the 18th (1760-1770) and 19th (1827-1837) centuries where we burned through prime ministers at a similar rate. But the six – and soon likely seven – PMs since 2016 rank as “unique” once we factor in the wider churn at the top. There have also been eight chancellors and nine foreign secretaries – before any post-Starmer reshuffle.

Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and now, almost certainly, Burnham: cast your mind over the list and the first thought is not of anything solid actually happening, just the simple fact of the frenzy. That is not a coincidence.

Gus O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, has seen three transitions “at close hand”: Thatcher to Major, Blair to Brown and Brown to Cameron. In the “access talks” with the leader of the opposition before the 2010 election, David Cameron briefed him on the changes he would be asking for in Whitehall.

Then, O’Donnell said: “He asked me: ‘And what can I give you?’ I told him: ministers who stay in the same job for as long as possible, so they’ve got some sort of chance to get on top of their brief.”

O’Donnell sounded world-weary as he recollected trying to sustain strategies for big issues through games of ministerial musical chairs. Pensions is one field that cries out for a long-term approach: individuals are meant to plan, save and accrue rights over the course of a lifetime. Whereas, O’Donnell recalls, at one stage there were “nine pension ministers over the course of five years”.

An obvious but underdiscussed consequence of changing prime minister is that a huge proportion of other ministers will automatically change too. Any new PM will, naturally, want to shape their own cabinet, and no politician with the guile to reach the top of the greasy pole will be blind to the opportunities of using the junior ranks of government to reward loyalists and keep tricky customers under control.

And at the helm of the resulting team of novices will be an inexperienced leader – counselled by a new kitchen cabinet of advisers, mostly new to the workings of the centre of British power. As Cath Haddon of the Institute for Government thinktank acknowledges, there comes a point where personally ineffective PMs have to go. But she also worries about rendering the individual in the office ineffective by denying “the time needed to learn, govern and see projects through”. As “the conversion rate from prime ministers under pressure to prime ministers out the door” increases, she sees the second part of that equation becoming “underpriced”.

The evasions embodied in Labour’s one-word manifesto title, Change, have unravelled but lessons have not been learned. The demand from all sides through this leadership crisis is: “faster and less incremental change”.

Excitable lobby reporters, and indeed the passionate party activists who get the final say on who becomes prime minister these days, sometimes forget that big speeches do not in themselves alter much. Effective reforms become reality only after the drawing up of credible blueprints, the use of consultations to reaffirm principles and adjust for practicalities, the rewriting of laws, the securing and effective marshalling of resources.

“You need to do the work,” says Haddon. “And that inevitably takes time.”

The threat of removal can cause almost as much distraction and disruption as the fact of it. Damian Green was a close ally of Theresa May when the June 2017 election saw her lose her majority, raising questions about her survival that hung over her final two years in office.

“Theresa was clearly in trouble then – it became much more difficult to do anything long term,” Green recalls. During the early months of her premiership she had projected interest in big social challenges, and approached difficult subjects, such as domestic violence, that too many others had foregone. But now the order of the day was survival, which was bound up with one and only one issue. Suddenly, her singular and defining job was to “get a Brexit deal”.

To give her half a chance with this, May and Jeremy Heywood, then the cabinet secretary, made an extraordinary move. They shuffled Green from the Department for Work and Pensions to the made-up job of first secretary of state , in effect deputy prime minister, and handed him control of nearly everything else.

“I was in charge of all cabinet committees doing domestic policy, at one point 28, to take the load off Theresa’s shoulders,” said Green.

A loyalist, Green drove through the worthwhile if lower-profile priorities of his boss, such as restrictions on modern slavery. But no deputy has the profile or patronage that the PM can deploy to break logjams, and progress on bigger challenges including social care, a personal passion of Green, ground to a halt.

Today’s bouts of regicide mania were foreshadowed 30 years ago. John Major lasted longer than May: six and a half years. But within two, sterling had collapsed on Black Wednesday.

Thereafter, the battle for survival was constant and often uncertain. A former civil servant, Jill Rutter, did a spell in his No 10 policy unit. That’s the outfit tasked with doing the serious thinking about how to make prime ministerial ambitions concrete, but circumstances weren’t conducive.

After Major was forced to resort to a confidence vote on one step in the Maastricht process, Rutter recalled the unit’s director, Sarah Hogg, assembled the politically appointed half of her team and explained that if things went wrong they’d be imminently out of a job.

“No 10 felt very embattled, super suspicious with enemies at every corner. Often, the only concern was getting back on track,” said Rutter. Smart solutions are harder to hit on when you’re “walking on eggshells all the time”.

Causes like peace in Northern Ireland, in which Major developed a very personal stake, were advanced. But the PM really “can’t be and really shouldn’t need to be directly on top of everything,” said Rutter. Most of the time, it should be enough for “No 10 to know things on their behalf”, and steer the broader machine in line with their wishes.

The possibilities for such “good delegation”, Rutter added, can break down either because the instincts of the PM are too uncertain for staffers to be confident about what they would want, or because other ministers come to regard themselves as working for a temporary boss, go their own way and cease to keep Downing Street in the loop. The Starmer administration was dogged by the first problem from the off. Then the second set in.

Starmer was not wrong to warn there will be financial consequences from all the chaos. As economist Paul Johnson said: “The sad truth is we are in hock to the bond markets … We are already paying many billions more in debt interest than we would be if markets were charging us the same as they are charging other countries. And it is notable that the premium really began at that moment of maximum instability – the Truss premiership”.

Starmer’s problem, however, is that he has ceased to be a credible answer to the chaos. Just like May’s early promise of “strong and stable leadership,” his vow to “end the chaos” has become a sour joke.

So what it is about 2020s Britain that has, after a long period post-Major in which leadership crises were the exception rather than the norm, rendered the premiership an impossible office? Could it be the same sort of thing that has made the country, for example, sink untold billions into building a national high-speed rail network only to pare it back to the point where it connects Birmingham to London?

We are also a society that frets about public debt, yet shrinks from putting an end date on the arbitrary and unaffordable pensions triple lock. We have an economy that groans under an incoherent tax code, but can’t or won’t simplify it. Even modest moves towards big wealth paying a little are followed by retreats like we saw on the (misleadingly labelled) “family farm tax”. Nearly all politicians have now said they’d like to spend far more on defence, but almost none can explain where they’d find the money.

The obvious explanation for the paralysis on underlying substance and the uncontrolled political froth on the top is economic. Stagnation since the financial crisis has, undoubtedly, made the arithmetic of public policy harsher. But many earlier generations have regarded the economic plight of the country as exceptional.

The inflation of the 1970s is one case, the unemployment of the 80s another. Indeed, the author and historian Anthony Seldon points out that when the elderly Winston Churchill returned to power in the growing and fully employed economy of 1951, the newspapers screamed that ration books, balance of payments woes and the need to fund the Korean war made for the most overwhelming “prime ministerial in-tray” in history.

Yet back then, politics was remarkably stable. In that year’s election, a record 97% of the votes were split fairly evenly between the Labour party of Clement Attlee, whose leadership spanned 20 years, and the Tories of Churchill, who was at their helm for a 15-year stretch.

What’s changed, I think, is that the simple class divide of postwar society has been replaced by a variety of deep, overlaying cleavages: cultural divides like Brexit, values divides such as Gaza, and generational divides between older homeowners and younger tenants.

The historian Sudhir Hazareesingh tells me that the real roots of the French fourth republic’s woes were similar – too many separate schisms were drawn through politics at once, with polarised attitudes to the cold war, the constitution, the colonies and the social role of the church all segmenting the electorate in different ways.

Today, with all the enmities electrified by social media, summoning and then holding together a coalition together takes a blend of political talents. Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda was one attempt, but he abjectly lacked the application to see it through.

The great lack with Starmer has been in understanding and imagination. He settled on a view of public opinion as irredeemably reactionary, and sought to impress it with cultural conservatism, instead of emphasising the economic radicalism that could have appealed across the cultural divide. He made the contemptuous bet that the people who should have provided his own base had nowhere else to go, however much he provoked them. Now he is finished, and gnawing doubts are setting in about whether anyone can assemble a governing coalition based on anything other than chauvinism.

That, however, is too dark a conclusion. Margaret MacMillan, a historian who studies leadership, said the “need is to appeal to people’s better natures”, and level with the public about the need for effort, perhaps sacrifice, and above all time to get great things done. She sees Mark Carney doing at least some of this in her native Canada, and notes his popularity is holding up well.

Back in France, once the fourth republic yielded to the fifth, Gaullist rule proved imperious and sometimes blinkered – but effective. A way was found through a lot of problems that had looked intractable. Bitter conflicts lingered and occasionally exploded but now, instead of simply drifting, problems were gripped.

The political frenzy slowed dramatically, and the French earned their reputation for getting roads, bridges, railway lines and other infrastructure built. The key to unlocking the far-sighted policies the country needs is not taking the politics out of everything, but doing politics properly. Andy Burnham should take that lesson to heart.

Tom Clark is a contributing editor at Prospect magazine

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, World Cup, Sport, Football, Côte d’Ivoire football team, Senegal football team, Morocco football team, Tunisia football team, Cape Verde
Title – African teams have a point to prove at this World Cup. How are they faring? | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jonathanwilson
Link – African teams have a point to prove at this World Cup. How are they faring? | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T14:40:55.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/22/africa-is-out-to-prove-a-point-at-this-world-cup

O n Monday evening local time at New York New Jersey Stadium, Senegal will face Norway in a game that is not only crucial in terms of who qualifies from Group I, but will go a long way in determining how African performance at this World Cup is viewed. This is not entirely fair – nobody can seriously doubt that Senegal are an extremely adept side, and it may be that the court of arbitration for sport decides that they are indeed the reigning African champions – but there is a sense that Africa could do with a big performance.

No region benefited as much from the expansion of the World Cup as Africa. In Qatar in 2022, five of the 32 slots (16% of the field) went to the Confederation of African Football (Caf). Of the 48 slots this time around, nine went automatically to Caf, and they secured a 10th when DR Congo beat Jamaica in an interconfederational playoff in March. Caf had lobbied for years for more representation, arguing it was unfair that it had only five slots for its 54 members, while Conmebol, the South American confederation, had four plus a playoff for 10 members (21% of the field). The response was that Conmebol sides had won the World Cup nine times, while Caf sides had only made the quarter-finals on three occasions. By the end of the last World Cup, Conmebol were up to 10 victories and Caf had its first semi-finalist.

Caf’s logic was always that more sides at the finals would give them more of an opportunity to demonstrate quality, that African contenders would be less likely to be undermined by an unfortunate spate of injuries, a badly timed run of form or ill luck. To justify Caf’s extra slots, it really needs a minimum of five of its sides to make it to the last 32. How has that worked out?

Let’s start with the bad. Tunisia have been dreadful, undermined by shambolic leadership. They sacked manager Sabri Lamouchi after a 5-1 defeat to Sweden and then lost 4-0 to Japan under Hervé Renard, their seventh coach since qualifying began. South Africa, meanwhile, bafflingly adopted a back five for the opening game, tried to play in an unfamiliar style and were well-beaten by Mexico. A late penalty brought a fortuitous draw against Czechia and they could still make it through to the last 32 if they beat South Korea in their final group game. South Africa’s passivity, though, is not just damaging; it feels betrayal of the progressive football that had previously characterised them under Hugo Broos.

Algeria’s defensive shortcomings, exposed by Nigeria in the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-final, were shown up again by Argentina in a 3-0 loss. If your defence can’t handle Akor Adams, there’s very little chance of it handling Lionel Messi. Monday’s game against Jordan represents a vital chance to restore stability and confidence.

There have also been positives. For Morocco and Côte d’Ivoire, there is a sense of what might have been. Both took the lead against a former World Cup winner and neither team finished the job. Morocco were all over Brazil before the first-half hydration break and really should have scored more than the one they did. The 1-0 win over Scotland was similar in the sense that it should have been by more.

Côte d’Ivoire matched Germany for an hour and led in an engaging, high-quality game. They may have sat deep and attacked on the counter through Amad Diallo and, especially, Yan Diomande, but this wasn’t an underdog going into the bunker and simply looking to survive. It was a proper game between two well-matched sides, but Germany had greater strength in depth and won it with two goals from the substitute Deniz Undav.

Senegal may reflect similarly after their game against France. There was no shame in their 3-1 defeat, but having held the 2018 world champions comfortably in the first half, they faded in the final quarter. That pattern of African sides fading late is uncomfortably familiar, and may speak to a lack of strength in depth compared to the best sides in the world. Or perhaps it’s due to tactical shortcomings, a mental block or perhaps even a lack of belief that the European and South American elite can be beaten.

Ghana bucked the trend with their late win over Panama. They did not play especially well, but in grim unyielding resistance they were very clearly a Carlos Queiroz side. Queiroz’s former side Egypt, meanwhile, having failed to hold a lead against Belgium, overwhelmed New Zealand in the second half and now sit atop Group G.

Other sides have lesser ambitions. The two African minnows, Cape Verde and DR Congo, have both performed creditably. The latter went behind early to Portugal, responded well, equalised and held their highly fancied opponents relatively easily. The question is whether they can repeat that level of performance against Colombia and Uzbekistan. Cape Verde, having held Spain, then drew a thriller against Uruguay.

Which leaves us where? Egypt, Morocco and Côte d’Ivoire should go through. Ghana have a very good chance, Cape Verde and DR Congo have more of a chance than anybody thought likely, Algeria have to get a result on Monday, Senegal may find themselves undone by a cruel draw, South Africa still have an outside opportunity and Tunisia are done.

The total to advance will probably end up at around the five or six needed in the knockouts to justify the increase in representation. The next step is to start converting those leads against big sides into wins.

This is an extract from Soccer Desk: World Cup edition, a newsletter from the Guardian US that will run regularly during the tournament. Subscribe for free here.

Keyword – Music
Trefwoorden – Music, Culture, Disco, Pop and rock
Title – ‘Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love makes you move your body’: Gloria Gaynor’s honest playlist | Music | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rich-pelley
Link – ‘Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love makes you move your body’: Gloria Gaynor’s honest playlist | Music | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T08:00:25.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jun/21/gloria-gaynor-honest-playlist-marvin-gaye-beyonce

The first song I fell in love with I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, with five brothers and one sister, so there was always music in the house. I remember my mom singing Willow Weep for Me when I was five or six. There was something about the sadness in it that really moved me.

The first single I bought I heard Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers on the radio and bought it from a local record store. I was singing in the hallway of our building when a neighbour leaned over and asked: “Gloria, was that you singing?” She thought it was the radio. That was the moment I decided I was going to be a singer.

The song I do at karaoke I’ve only done karaoke once – about 20 years ago, for my birthday. Someone dared me to get up and sing I Will Survive as if I were drunk. I thought: if you’re going to do it, you might as well commit. So I did – and I nailed it.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to Every Little Bit Hurts by Alicia Keys. I sympathised with the unrequited love in the lyrics, having suffered the same feeling as a young girl.

The best song to play at a party Crazy in Love by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, because it’s a fun song that makes you want to move your body the moment it comes on.

The song I can no longer listen to Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel by Tavares, because my ex-husband used to sing it to me. Now I can’t listen to it without it reminding me of him.

The best song to have sex to Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye because it’s got a sexy groove, the right tempo, and the words have the right vibe.

The song that changed my life Never Can Say Goodbye was my first major hit, and it changed everything. Suddenly there were more shows, bigger audiences and opportunities to travel the world. It took me from being someone with a dream to someone who was living it.

The song that gets me up in the morning Great Is Thy Faithfulness. It’s a traditional gospel song, but I love the version by Carrie Underwood.

The song that makes me cry Amazing Grace: my version opens my last album. Every time I sing it, it touches something deep in my spirit. It reminds me of how God’s grace has carried me through my life.

The song I want played at my funeral A song I wrote called I Want to See You. It’s about reunion – about seeing your loved ones again in heaven. That’s the message I’d want to leave behind.

Gloria Gaynor headlines Boogietown in Walton-on-Thames, on 11 July.

Keyword – Music
Trefwoorden – Music, Culture, Music industry, Pop and rock
Title – Clive Davis predicted music’s biggest stars like no one else | Music | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexispetridis
Link – Clive Davis predicted music’s biggest stars like no one else | Music | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T19:56:58.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jun/22/clive-davis-appreciation

C live Davis always claimed that his life in the music business was really kickstarted when he chose to attend the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival: it was there he saw Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and immediately bought their contract for $200,000, the first really high-profile signing of his career. But Davis was an unlikely fit at the most high-profile event of the Summer of Love: he was a Harvard-educated lawyer who had been “shocked” when a restructuring of Columbia Records saw him promoted from general counsel to the company’s president. He was sharp enough to spot which way the pop cultural wind was blowing – “a revolution in culture and philosophy”, he later recalled, “the Haight-Ashbury scene, with love peace and flowers” – but he was no one’s idea of a hippie. Amid a sea of paisley, batik, love beads and bells David turned up to the festival clad in “khaki pants and a tennis sweater”.

It was an image he would often recall for comic effect – “ I was the costumed freak surrounded by everyone with flowers in their hair” – but there was something rather telling about it too: Davis’s skill as what used to be called a record man lay in his ability to balance the progressive with the traditional. He turned one wing of Columbia into something of a home for artists associated with the burgeoning counterculture, swiftly signing Santana, Blood Sweat and Tears, the Electric Flag and the wonderful psychedelic soul band the Chambers Brothers. But he never lost sight of the other side of the company, which dealt lucratively in soundtracks and easy listening and was home to Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett: at one juncture, he found himself simultaneously attempting to renegotiate the contracts of Bob Dylan and Andy Williams. When he founded Arista Records in 1974, he did exactly the same thing: it was a label that provided a home for both Patti Smith and Barry Manilow.

That Davis never seemed particularly in thrall to one style or genre of music might have been attributable to his background. Before taking the job at Columbia, he claimed he had “zero” interest in the music industry, and wasn’t even a particularly big fan of music: “I listened in a very ordinary way,” he recalled, “like anyone would listen to the radio. I never collected records, or wanted to be the fly on the wall in a studio.” You can see how that enabled him to flit between genres with ease – he was as happy to sign Earth Wind and Fire as he was Aerosmith or Bruce Springsteen – or to take risks when others might have demurred. When Miles Davis protested that his records weren’t selling in the quantities he would have liked, Davis boldly suggested he move out of traditional jazz venues and play as a support act for rock bands, one of the key factors in the crossover success of 1969’s Bitches’ Brew. But more mysterious was his seemingly unfailing ear for a song, his innate understanding of what would grab the public’s mass imagination.

It was Davis who spotted a minor 1971 UK hit by Scott English called Brandy and took it to Manilow (retitled Mandy, it became his first No 1); Davis who heard something in the work of a minor songwriting duo called Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and signed their nascent label, Philadelphia International Records, to a distribution deal; Davis who found Saving All My Love for You and I Wanna Dance With Somebody for his most celebrated signing of the 80s, Whitney Houston; David who re-signed Santana in the late 90s with the proviso that he be allowed to pick half the songs on his next album (Supernatural went on to sell 30m copies); Davis who worked out that what the American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson needed was a song a little tougher and hipper than the usual TV talent show winner’s fare, and spotted it in Since U Been Gone, a Max Martin/Lukasz Goswald track that had already been rejected by Pink and Hillary Duff. He seemed to know instinctively when to meddle in an artist’s career – he told Bruce Springsteen he needed to move around more onstage if he didn’t want to be saddled with the “new Dylan” tag that Davis considered a kiss of death – and when to sit back and leave them alone: rebuffed when he tried to sign the Grateful Dead in the early 70s, he simply bided his time while they attempted to set up their own label, completely independent from the rest of the music industry, then signed them when the venture came to grief, as Davis had predicted it would.

He certainly made mistakes, among them turning down Meat Loaf’s 43m-selling Bat Out of Hell on the grounds that it was “too theatrical” and its author didn’t look like a star. But his successes were so stellar and varied that it seems churlish to dwell on his failures. Moreover, he demonstrated an astonishing ability to pick himself up and carry on after what appeared to be career-derailing disasters. Arista was founded after he was fired by Columbia, who alleged financial irregularities that David hotly disputed. Ousted by Arista in 2000, he set up his own label J, which proved extraordinarily successful in the early 00s, the home of Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne, Alicia Keys and Kesha, Maroon 5 and Leona Lewis: still keeping one eye on the middle-of-the-road, J also reinvigorated Rod Stewart’s career by encouraging him to record albums of Great American Songbook standards.

It was, by any measure, an extraordinary career, so varied that it was almost impossible to make sense of. Confronted with the man who provided a connection between Barry Manilow and Iggy Pop or Bruce Springsteen and Whitney Houston, interviewers were given to wondering, what did the array of artists with whom Davis worked have in common? Clive Davis had a snappy answer preprepared: “They’re all,” he was wont to say, “headliners.”

Keyword – Culture
Trefwoorden – Culture, Pop and rock, Music, Indie
Title – ‘Guys would think I was a girl then get aggressive when they found out my name was Brian’: how Placebo made Nancy Boy | Culture | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/davesimpson
Link – ‘Guys would think I was a girl then get aggressive when they found out my name was Brian’: how Placebo made Nancy Boy | Culture | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T14:17:45.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/jun/22/how-placebo-made-nancy-boy

Brian Molko , singer, songwriter

Nancy Boy was about reclaiming the homophobic insults that were hurled at me every time I went out because I had long hair and wore eyeliner and nail polish. I’d walk into a bar and people would react vociferously, or guys would think I was a girl then get really aggressive when they found out my name was Brian. I thought I could regain some power by writing a celebration of debauchery that was so brazenly sexual it would piss off the people who insulted me even more.

Also, [Suede singer] Brett Anderson had recently told NME he was a “bisexual man who’d never had a homosexual experience”, which I thought was bollocks. I thought he was being a sexual tourist. We know each other now and he’s a fantastic person – back then we all said cheeky things for effect – but part of my motivation was to write a song about a bisexual man who has had a bisexual experience.

I was living on income support in Deptford, London, when I came up with the chorus, but I thought the chords were too catchy or mainstream. I wasn’t sure if I liked them, but when I played them round at Stefan’s – he lived with his parents – he said: “Man, that’s such a hook.” In the rehearsal room it became this distorted punk thing.

The words almost wrote themselves. I was trying to tell a story of a wild night out, so started: “Alcoholic kind of mood, lose my clothes, lose my lube.” It was the kind of night we’d have on rare occasions but it certainly wasn’t our lives yet. “Had some help from insect ways” is a reference to Spanish Fly or any substance that made you horny – you could buy GHB in shops then. The line: “Eyeholes in a paper bag, greatest lay I’ve ever had” was also reclaiming an insult, because at school people would point at girls and say: “I wouldn’t fuck her with a paper bag on her head.” I was a very green songwriter and they’re not my best lyrics.

When we recorded Nancy Boy for our debut album it just didn’t have our live energy. So we re-recorded it with Phil Vinall. Phil enabled us to turn up the distortion. When we performed it on Top of the Pops there were 43 complaints because people couldn’t work out what gender I was. This song changed everything for us and had a purpose: it made people who felt like outsiders feel less lonely, and they became our audience.

Stefan Olsdal , bass, songwriter

In 1994, when we wrote Nancy Boy, I was in an illegal relationship, because I was 19 and the age of consent was still 21 for gay men. That was probably in the ether for Nancy Boy, then when I heard Brian’s chords I was hooked. I was interested in the idea of wrapping dark, subversive or explicitly sexual lyrics in something quite melodic.

We made a demo in Deptford, hiring the studio between midnight and 6am because it was cheaper, and the tape somehow found its way on to David Bowie’s tour bus. We ended up supporting him before we’d even made our debut album. Then when the first proper recording of Nancy Boy wasn’t right we tried overdubbing fast drums to bring some energy, but it didn’t have a punch. By the time we recorded it again we had more live experience and were so pissed off about the first version that the energy went into the well-known one.

I still don’t know how it got on the radio, but maybe the play on words helped us get away with it. There are no expletives in Nancy Boy and I certainly don’t remember us saying: “We can’t sing this – we’ll be in trouble!” When we started touring, we got the shit kicked out of us in Middlesbrough, and in the conservative southern States of the US supporting Weezer we were pelted with coins, but mostly we were embraced. The song’s success brought us a lot of freedom. As human beings discovering who they were in the public eye, it gave us a lot of confidence, and artistically we realised we could push at boundaries and didn’t have to pander to any expectations. Nancy Boy is a snapshot of a moment, but 30 years later it’s very much a part of who we are.

Placebo Re:created is out now. The band’s 30th anniversary tour reaches the UK in November.

Keyword – Environment
Trefwoorden – El Niño southern oscillation, Climate crisis, Extreme weather, Extreme heat, Drought, Famine, Environment
Title – El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries | El Niño southern oscillation | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ajit-niranjan
Link – El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries | El Niño southern oscillation | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T13:00:33.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/21/el-nino-fears-godzilla-strength-hunger-famine

A dugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.

The now notorious El Niño – Spanish for “little boy” – was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.

The 1972-73 El Niño warmed Peruvian waters to levels that collapsed the world’s largest anchovy fishery – prompting scientists to conduct the first forecast of its state the following year – and brought harsh drought to south Asia, the Sahel and parts of east Africa ahead of an oil crisis that deepened global hunger. In Ethiopia, protests against the emperor’s handling of the famine helped a military coup that ushered in a communist dictatorship.

“El Niño is one of the most challenging climate phenomena,” said Woyessa, who grew up to become an epidemiologist at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute and has studied its effects on malaria epidemics . “Nutrition is everything for your capacity to withstand the challenges of its negative impacts on human health.”

All too often, though, nutrition is what El Niño takes away from those who most need it. Woyessa was in high school when a stronger El Niño hit a decade later in 1982-83, forcing some of his classmates to travel 150km to help with harvests on state farms. By his first year of university, further crop failures and civil war had escalated widespread hunger into an even more ruinous famine, which drew global attention through the Live Aid concert. Woyessa and his fellow students took turns helping people in shelters near their college. “We had two breads in the morning, and we were supposed to share our breakfast.”

Scientists are quick to caution that climatic shifts are only one factor among many when a society collapses, but at the extreme end of the spectrum, El Niño can spell apocalyptic suffering. In the worst El Niño years in the 19th century, the death toll from famines in India, China and Brazil stretched into the tens of millions. There is some evidence to suggest it set the scene for the French Revolution in the 18th century with erratic weather that ruined harvests, and it helped the Spanish conquer the Inca empire in the 16th century with rains that nourished the desert vegetation that sustained their march. Looser theories suggest it brought down ancient civilisations from Egypt to China.

This year, El Niño is back – and scientists fear it will resemble a young man more than a little boy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US said El Niño conditions had formed in the Pacific last week and carried a 63% chance of being “very strong” by the peak near the end of the year. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology followed on Tuesday, warning it would worsen the extreme heat and wildfires that engulf the country each year.

Some scientists have informally dubbed it a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño based on the expected size of the temperature anomaly, which will push global heat higher at a time when extreme weather events such as Europe’s recent heatwaves and slew of storms are pushing the boundaries of what societies can handle. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) used more measured language when it warned us to prepare for its return earlier this month, arguing a wide spread in model results made it too early to call its strength.

But even if it falls short of doom-laden predictions, it will be arriving amid unprecedented conditions that will make its effects more complex. Scientists say next year is almost certain to be the hottest on record, while a host of economic factors have left vulnerable countries more exposed. “My worry is not for the El Niño alone,” said Sonali McDermid, a climate scientist at New York University who shares the WMO’s caution about its intensity. “I’m worried about the confluence of multiple stressors happening at the same time.”

About half of the world’s 68 poorest countries are experiencing debt distress or at high risk of it, the International Monetary Fund warned in March, and the Iran war has since led to high energy prices and restricted fertiliser supplies that have weakened buffers against weather shocks. This month, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network projected 115-125 million people would need urgent food assistance by December, with risks of famine in Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia. The gutting of US overseas aid and the shrinking of European development budgets means less support may come when crises hit.

On Thursday, the threat posed by El Niño prompted the UN’s World Food Programme and its Food and Agriculture Organization to issue their first joint appeal for funds to avert a crisis before it happens. Citing research that shows every $1 spent in “anticipatory action” saves $7 in humanitarian relief costs, the agencies said they were $167m short of the $202m needed to help 8.8 million people with drought-resistant seeds, flood defences, water storage systems and cash transfers.

The good news, if there is some, is that El Niño is not expected to lead to worse outcomes for crops at a global scale, as gains in some regions typically offset losses in others, but the losers will include those least able to cope. Many of the African and Asian countries most exposed have also been hit hard by fertiliser shocks, and have some of the highest levels of food import dependence and debt stress, said Anne Jellema, the executive director of 350.org, a climate campaign group. “That means El Niño removes the last domestic lifeline for people who can’t access markets, increasingly can’t get humanitarian aid, and can’t move around freely.”

Shockwaves are also set to be felt in the rich world as El Niño brings stronger heatwaves and wider spread of some vector-borne diseases. Its arrival “persistently” slows improvements in mortality even in wealthy countries such as the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea, according to a study published in January in Nature Climate Change.

To some degree, the damage done by El Niño has in recent decades been checked by a level of predictability – but it provides a taste of the cascading horrors that climate scientists warn will destabilise societies as the planet heats up.

Deepened by geopolitical tensions, high energy and fertiliser prices and fragile supply chains, El Niño-related shocks may be “increasing the likelihood of compound and non-linear systemic impacts”, a study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre warned on Monday, with knock-on effects that run the gamut of economic sectors connected to the natural world.

“A plausible transmission pathway would run from droughts, floods and heat stress affecting agricultural production, labour productivity, water availability, hydropower generation and transport systems, to higher food and energy prices, inflationary pressure, fiscal stress and weaker borrower repayment capacity,” the authors wrote.

Can such calamities be avoided next year? El Niño does not have to be “a recipe for disaster”, according to the WMO, which said its forecasts are more a call to action before hazards escalate into crises. Its secretary general, Celeste Saulo, urged the world to intensify efforts to build multi-hazard early warning systems, as only 128 countries report that they have such systems in place.

Climate campaigners, meanwhile, have called for the cancellation of global south debt and the funding of social protections through windfall taxes on excess profits of oil and gas companies, rather than funding fossil fuels. “There’s a lot of research showing that targeted social protection is way more effective than subsidising fossil fuels and fertilisers because it goes to the people who need it most,” said Jellema.

António Guterres, who ends his terms as UN secretary general at the end of this year, has been making similarly desperate calls to global leaders for years – pleading with them to break the addiction to fossil fuels that has driven the overheating of the planet and the degradation of the natural world. The world has warmed by about 1.3C since the Industrial Revolution, and temperatures are rising so fast that the worst El Niño years of the recent past – such as 1997-98 – are far less hot than current years in which the system shifts to La Niña, its cooler counterpart.

For Woyessa, the rise in temperatures and loss of forests had disrupted rainfall patterns even around the village he grew up in. The river he used to swim in as a boy has been reduced to a small stream and the rainfall that previous generations used to rely on for planting crops has grown erratic. When he used to phone his late father, he added, asking about rain was a typical way to start a conversation.

“The main concern is the shifting of the rainy season,” he said. “The onset is totally changed compared with my childhood.”

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Politics, UK news, Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham, Labour
Title – Keir Starmer has quit as prime minister – what will happen next in UK politics? | Politics | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/benquinn
Link – Keir Starmer has quit as prime minister – what will happen next in UK politics? | Politics | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T17:57:28.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/22/keir-starmer-quits-prime-minister-what-will-happen-next-uk-politics-explained

Britain is to get its fifth prime minister in four years after the current incumbent of Downing Street, Keir Starmer , announced that he would resign.

It was widely expected and came after months of mounting pressure on Starmer, who led the Labour party to a landslide victory in the 2024 UK general election but who has faced months of pressure to quit from members of parliament (MPs) for the centre-left party.

The announcement sets the scene for him to be replaced within weeks by Andy Burnham , who was a minister in the 2007-2010 government of Gordon Brown and, from 2017 until last week, the mayor of Greater Manchester.

Burnham is seen by many in Labour as the party’s best hope of defeating the challenge posed by the populist-right Reform party, led by Nigel Farage.

How did British politics reach this point?

Starmer, a softly spoken former human rights lawyer, had been hailed as a pragmatic and serious leader who could restore stability after years of political chaos and infighting that resulted in two changes of prime minister by the rightwing Conservative party after the 2019 general election.

But although he was elected with the biggest parliamentary majority in 100 years, there was a sense even among Labour supporters that Starmer lacked political nous and conviction. This was underlined by missteps including cutting some winter fuel subsidies for pensioners and a U-turn on welfare in the face of a parliamentary rebellion last year.

Starmer’s judgment was called into serious question after his decision to appoint a controversial former Labour minister, Peter Mandelson, as Britain’s ambassador to the US despite the latter’s known links to the child sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein .

After the true extent of Mandelson’s ties to Epstein became known in September 2025, Starmer sacked him – but it was too late to prevent the prime minister and his government from becoming embroiled in one of the worst political scandals since the second world war.

All the while, and amid deep unpopularity among voters, panic has continued to grow in Labour ranks that he has been unable to meet the challenge from Reform UK, the anti-immigration party headed by the divisive Farage.

Farage’s party routed Labour and the Conservatives in municipal elections last year and again last month , which was a catalyst for the draining away of support for Starmer and resignations by ministers in his government.

Both they and others who stayed in Starmer’s cabinet had privately and publicly urged him to resign, with backers of Burnham advocating for an orderly transition of power rather than a damaging leadership contest.

Who is Andy Burnham and how has he become the prime minister in waiting?

A veteran of the Labour governments of Brown and Tony Blair, 56-year-old Burnham has served since 2017 as the mayor of Greater Manchester, a newly created role which he was elected to after two failed bids to become Labour leader, in 2010 and 2015 .

He has thrived in the position, earning the moniker “the king in the north” for his high-profile interventions in the distinctive politics of north-west England and for presiding over an economic boom in UK’s fastest-growing city region.

Burnham has long been regarded by many in Labour, including those on the moderate left, as the answer to the party’s woes and in particular to the draining away of its support in traditional working-class strongholds.

In January he was blocked by allies of Starmer from returning to parliament when a vacant Westminster seat in the Manchester area became available. But they could not prevent him from becoming the Labour candidate in a fresh special election this month in the north-west of England, after the local MP stood down.

His victory in the constituency of Makerfield has paved the way for his return to the Westminster parliament, where he is eligible to become the Labour leader and consequently prime minister.

However, it was the manner of Burnham’s win that underlined his credentials as the answer to the conundrum faced by Labour after its support collapsed in two previous special elections for vacant seats in Westminster. Not only did he did see off the Reform UK candidate last week, but he did so by a significant margin, resurrecting his party’s support in an area where the populists had made sweeping gains during local elections in May.

What happens next?

Starmer had already informed King Charles III of his intention to resign, as is required by convention, before he announced the news to the British public on Monday morning.

During his resignation speech, the Labour leader said he would ask his party’s ruling national executive committee to set out a timetable for a contest to replace him, with 9 July the date from which contenders can seek nominations by their fellow Labour MPs.

A process of hustings, where candidates would make their case to fellow Labour MPs, would be intended to be completed by 16 July, the last day before the UK parliament breaks up for its summer recess.

If more than one person reaches the nominations threshold, there would be a contest. That would take place when parliament is not sitting, among an electorate comprising hundreds of thousands of members of the Labour party and trade unions and affiliated bodies. Starmer would stay in post in the interim, with a new leader in place by the resumtpion of parliament on 1 September.

However, a contest is almost certain to be avoided after Wes Streeting, another influential Labour MP who resigned last month as England’s health secretary, made a U-turn on his previously declared intention to stand and announced he would back Burnham .

Should Burnham remain unchallenged, he is expected to become the Labour leader on 17 or 18 July. He would expect to receive a call from the king inviting him to form a government.

It is possible that another minister could enter the fray, and some Labour MPs believe a contest would help to challenge Burnham on his ideas and plans, but many others believe a so-called coronation would minimise the disruption and sense of chaos before the instalment of the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years.

Of the opposition party leaders, only Farage has called for a general election , claiming it is “ridiculous to pretend that Andy Burnham has any kind of meaningful mandate to lead the country”.

How would Andy Burnham govern?

Much has been made of Burnham’s record as mayor of the Greater Manchester area. Supporters point to the region’s growth as evidence of his competence and ability to meld social democratic ideas with business-friendly policies.

However, others hoping to establish what he stands for in a big picture sense have variously pointed to his faith – Burnham would be the first practising Catholic to become the UK’s prime minister – and the ideas he and others have put forward in speeches and writings that have come to be known as “Manchesterism” .

The term loosely refers to an argument for increasing devolution of decision-making powers from London to Britain’s cities and regions, providing investment in those regions and a much more interventionist state.

In contrast with the more pragmatic faction which had gathered around and supported Starmer, Burnham is also more closely associated with the so-called soft left of the Labour party while opponents on Britain’s political right have seized on Burnham’s past comments that politicians should not be “in hock” to the bond markets .

However, he has come to be regarded as a someone who has sought to bridge the right-left divides within Labour, albeit with critics ridiculing apparent changes of position on questions such as reopening the debate about whether Britain should seek to rejoin the European Union after the Brexit referendum in 2016.

On one other hot-button political issue, Burnham’s team have signalled that he would back controversial changes to the immigration system that have been pioneered by Starmer’s government, in a blow to those in Labour who hoped to soften them.

What does it mean for the next UK general election?

The UK’s next general election must be called by August 2029, although the prime minister can choose to hold it at any point before this.

Farage’s Reform UK have topped the opinion polls since last year, having gained a small foothold in parliament at the last general election. The party has consistently been projected to win a majority when British voters next elect a government.

Burnham can now lay claim to the mantle of being Labour’s potential “Reform slayer” by pointing to the line he drew in the sand in last week’s vote in Makerfield.

But Labour cannot run him as their candidate in every constituency across the UK, where his party faces challenges and an unprecedented array of rivals who include not just the populist right.

They also include the Green party of England and Wales, which has been outflanking Labour on the left among liberals and British Muslim voters in urban areas, and pro-independence nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales.

Quite apart from his electoral challenge, Burnham must grapple with profound policy challenges.

They include pressure to find money to fund Britain’s military and a debate within the party about how the welfare system can be overhauled.

Above all though, there is the need to get Britain’s economy firing on all cylinders and equip the country to weather the storm clouds gathering in the wake of the war in the Gulf.

Keyword – Society
Trefwoorden – NHS, Nottingham, Women’s health, Women, Health, Society, UK news
Title – ‘Truly horrific’: the stories of five people affected by the NHS maternity scandal | NHS | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jessica-murray
Link – ‘Truly horrific’: the stories of five people affected by the NHS maternity scandal | NHS | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T07:00:03.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/22/nhs-maternity-scandal-nottingham-report-five-stories

T he long-awaited report into maternity failures at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust (NUH), the largest investigation of its kind involving about 2,500 families, will be published later this week.

Led by the senior midwife Donna Ockenden, the inquiry investigated stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and babies or mothers who suffered brain damage and other injuries between 2012 and 2025.

It follows a decade-long campaign for justice and change by the families affected. Some share their stories about what happened to them in Nottingham, and explain why this is such a landmark moment.

Wynter Andrews

Wynter died in 2019 at the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) from hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy – a loss of oxygen flow to the brain – which could have been prevented had staff delivered her earlier.

Wynter’s mother, Sarah Andrews, said: “I went into labour and I was having contractions, and for six days, I was basically told to stay at home. I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. And then in hospital, the care was just beset by failures.

“I actually said to my husband I felt like I’d be better off dead than in the situation I was in … It was truly horrific. When they eventually called the emergency C-section and opened me up, the smell of infection filled the room and that’s when they realised that Wynter was stuck in my pelvis. All the warning signs of infection were there.

“Me and Gary had to watch for 23 minutes while they failed to resuscitate her. We had staff come visit us in the bereavement suite and they said it was one of those things, that sometimes babies die. One said to us: ‘If we listen to every mother’s concerns, we’d be overrun.’ They’re telling us that they can’t see anything that’s gone wrong. And a year later, at the inquest, the coroner rules that it’s a clear and obvious case of neglect.

“We have a lifetime of growing up without our daughter. When the cameras stop rolling, when the media goes home, we’re still traumatised people. We continue to live this every day. We’ll never be the same people we were before.

“This report is going to be very traumatic for families but I think it’s important that what happened in Nottingham is laid out so that we can ensure those failures aren’t repeated again.”

Felicity Benyon

Felicity had an emergency hysterectomy at QMC after giving birth in 2015 when she was 29, during which medics accidentally removed her bladder, leaving her with a urostomy bag.

Felicity said: “I had a difficult pregnancy, I was in hospital for weeks. I had a planned C-section and was told that since it was such a high-risk case, a multi-disciplinary team would be involved. But that never happened. They actually let a student doctor do it, despite it being the highest risk C-section they’d had in years. They took out my bladder without even realising. The whole thing.

“Originally they said the placenta accreta [a serious pregnancy condition where the placenta attaches too deeply into the uterine wall] had completely enveloped the bladder. Initially, I was just so happy my baby was alive, so happy that I’d survived because they made me think they had saved the day.

“But then they instigated an investigation, which found the accreta had not touched the bladder and it was completely healthy. I was absolutely floored. It should have just been a hysterectomy and then home, instead of living with lifelong complications.

“It’s completely taken my trust away. I have regular hospital appointments because I now live with this disability, and it’s horrific because I don’t feel like I can trust doctors. I don’t feel safe in hospitals. But that’s the place you’re supposed to feel safe because it’s where you’re at your most vulnerable.

“This review is a huge moment because we’ve fought for years to get this. Going into a pregnancy there’s a risk, but we’re talking about things that were preventable. Things that should never have happened. Things where there’s actually already a system in place to stop them from happening, but it’s just not being adhered to.”

Caitlin Stringer

Caitlin was born prematurely in 2021 at Nottingham City hospital and at 30 days developed necroti sing enterocolitis (NEC), a severe, life-threatening gastrointestinal emergency. Her parents allege the failure of staff to treat her quickly led her to collapse and suffer a severe brain injury.

Caitlin’s mother, Emily Stringer, said: “Caitlin did really well initially, and got off the ventilator really quickly. But we’d been having concerns for few days. We’d been taking photos and showing them to staff of Caitlin’s abdomen getting bigger and bigger, and she wasn’t tolerating her feeds. She was struggling with her breathing and becoming increasingly lethargic. These are all red flag signs of NEC.

“But staff had an answer for everything. They addressed all of our concerns in isolation. No one was either able or willing to join the big picture together, take a step back and think, no, these parents are right, this is a deteriorating baby.

“She collapsed and needed to be put on to a ventilator. The next day her condition worsened. She ended up having over half of her bowel removed because it had ruptured and died inside of her. About a month later, she had a brain scan which showed a devastating injury.

“The trust commissioned an external review and found an X-ray had been taken about 15 hours before Caitlin collapsed, which diagnosed NEC, and she should have been given antibiotics within an hour – but she wasn’t.

“Now she’s expected to die in childhood. She has cerebral palsy and has had multiple respiratory arrests at home. She was in paediatric intensive care 13 times last year. We know that one day one of these will be fatal. It’s horrendous.

“This review feels like the validation that I never wanted. It’s great that people will understand the truth, the scale of what’s happened to thousands of families in Nottingham, but heartbreaking that they have to. Things that you think are unthinkable, that you think are ludicrous, they can’t possibly do that – well, we know that they have.”

Quinn Parker

Quinn died at Nottingham City hospital 36 hours after his birth in 2021 . His mother, Emmie Studencki, went to hospital four times with bleeding in the late stages of her pregnancy and said her requests for a caesarean section were ignored.

Quinn’s father, Ryan Parker, said: “I know it’s very cliche, but you do think you’re in the best place at the time. Emmie had bled a lot, and in hospital we had a feeling that something wasn’t right. What is really happening is Quinn is just slowly dying but no one’s doing anything.

“Eventually a doctor decided to break her waters and I just remember the whole bed was covered in blood and liquid. People came flying in and tried to scan for Quinn’s heart, and Emmie was stretchered out. I didn’t know if either of them were alive. Eventually a midwife told me that Quinn was OK and Emmie was in recovery, but then 90 minutes later a neonatal consultant appeared and told me Quinn actually had brain damage.

“We later found out that paramedics had noted all of the concerns about rigid abdomen and blood loss of over a litre, and the notes were not collected properly by the hospital.

“The Ockenden review doesn’t feel like the end of a journey, it feels like a significant landmark moment which should result in more attention and a fundamental appreciation of how dire some maternity care in this country is. Ultimately you want to ensure other places aren’t a Nottingham, but the reality of the situation is other places are already Nottinghams.”

Harriet Hawkins

Harriet was stillborn at Nottingham City hospital in April 2016 after her mother had been in labour for six days. An external review of the case found 13 failures and concluded the death was almost certainly preventable.

Her mother, Sarah Hawkins, said: “You hope that you’re going to be the only person that’s been through this, but when you hear of other people, and it’s not just one or two, it’s hundreds and thousands. You just lose your faith in the NHS .

“When I was eventually brought in, Harriet’s head was coming out of me. For three years, they tried to tell us it was an infection. We had to wait two years to have Harriet’s funeral.

“For so long in Nottingham we were made to feel like the mad grieving parents. Harriet should have been a serious incident within 48 hours, and it took us 159 days to actually get an incident logged. It just felt like a complete cover-up.

“Quite a lot of people focus on statistics, and that’s fine. But you’ve got to think we drove home with an empty car seat, we had to empty our nursery, I gave birth so I still had leaky boobs and hair loss, you have everything. It’s not just an intrapartum death, it’s someone’s baby.

“The massive thing for me [with the Ockenden report] will be the feeling of eventually being heard and listened to. It took over 10 years. Loads and loads of families were referred to as tragic, isolated cases which clearly wasn’t the case.”

The NUH chief executive, Anthony May, said: “I want to pay tribute to the bravery of the many families who have worked tirelessly to get answers and to make maternity services safer for others.

“I have met some of the affected families, and they have shared their painful and life-changing experiences with me, for which I am very grateful. I am very sorry for the pain and suffering these families have endured.”

He said NUH staff had “shown their commitment to change”.

“Upon receiving the findings of the review, we will consider carefully what we need to do next to ensure that we learn from what happened in the past and to continue to improve maternity services,” he said.

Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – David Hockney, Painting, Art, Art and design, Culture, Exhibitions, UK news
Title – David Hockney’s funeral held in private with just two mourners | David Hockney | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/donna-ferguson
Link – David Hockney’s funeral held in private with just two mourners | David Hockney | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T12:06:07.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jun/21/david-hockney-funeral-private-two-mourners

Only two people attended David Hockney’s funeral last week – in line with the British artist’s final wishes.

The two mourners at the private ceremony were Hockney’s 61-year-old partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, and his 33-year-old great-nephew, Richard Hockney, a photographer who worked as the artist’s assistant and frequently modelled for him. Both are trustees of the David Hockney Foundation, established by the artist in 2008.

When the pioneering painter of The Splash died peacefully at his home on 11 June aged 88, Keir Starmer and King Charles were among those who paid tribute to his “vivid, instantly recognisable” work and “irrepressible charm, talent and constant innovation”.

Although Hockney wanted his funeral to be an intimate ceremony, his publicist, Erica Bolton, announced that his life and work would be celebrated in a series of memorial services to be held in places he has lived around the world, including London and Yorkshire.

Bolton said: “We have been overwhelmed by your tributes which have meant so much to us and we wanted to thank you.

“As we have already received so many inquiries about David Hockney’s funeral arrangements and memorials, we would like to clarify that it was David’s clear wish that his funeral should be attended only by his partner, JP, and his great-nephew Richard, and that their privacy would be respected. The funeral has already taken place.

“Also in accordance with David’s wishes, we are able to announce that the first memorial service to celebrate David’s life and work will be held in London in spring 2027, followed at later dates by memorials in Yorkshire, Paris and Los Angeles.”

She added that most of Hockney’s works in his private collection would be given to foundations and public institutions around the world “in furtherance of his legacy”.

Hockney refused a knighthood in 1990 and he revealed why 13 years later, in a 2003 interview with his local newspaper, Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus . “I do not care for a fuss,” he said. “I don’t value prizes of any sort. I value my friends.”

Hockney is thought to have created about 35,000 artworks throughout his six-decade career, including the Queen Elizabeth II window at Westminster Abbey, where the memorial in London is likely to be held.

He donated about 8,000 works to his foundation which were collectively valued at more than £1bn in 2024.

A free exhibition, David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting , runs until 23 August at the Serpentine in London.

Next year there will be two more exhibitions of Hockney’s work, at Tate Britain and in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.

There was a surge in demand for the artist’s work at Art Basel last week, where buyers were given one of the first chances since his death to acquire his work in person.

Clare McAndrew, the author of The Art Basel and US Global Art Market Report, told the Observer there had been a “supply grab” of Hockney’s paintings, with demand reportedly up more than 1,200% in the 48 hours after his death.

Keyword – News
Trefwoorden – World news, UK news, Photography
Title – Starmer’s resignation and a ray of new year light: photos of the day – Monday | World news | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/natasha-rees-bloor
Link – Starmer’s resignation and a ray of new year light: photos of the day – Monday | World news | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T12:06:21.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2026/jun/22/starmer-resignation-ray-of-new-year-light-photos-of-the-day-monday