Consider it an advance on Punch and Judy politics: British electoral combat has ascended from the level of the kindergarten to that of the teenage playground. Ahead of 7 May, the UK’s political parties have taken to running about saying who likes who, who’s been seen holding hands, and who will absolutely never be friends ever, ever, ever. The main Conservative theme of the week came in a poster whose message can be broadly distilled as: “Ugh, don’t touch him. He’s best friends with those two!”

Published by: The Guardian

They had come back, some three hundred of them, but this was not the Planet Auschwitz they remembered. The Auschwitz of their memories was a place where the rules of normal life were upended, where the moral laws of gravity were reversed, where good was deemed evil and evil deemed good – a place scholars came to speak of as an alien planet. One even writes of “the Auschwitz universe”.

Published by: The Guardian

In the debate that has been raging these last 10 days, fear is the factor that dare not speak its name. In the public sphere, the discussion following the Paris killings has been intense, wrestling with questions of philosophy and principle, especially the rights, responsibilities and inconsistencies of free speech. But in the private sphere the conversation has been quieter and more anguished. It has grappled above all with a sentiment that few voice with pride: namely, their own terror.

Published by: The Guardian

When terror strikes, we all become mind-readers. With no words to accompany the violence, it’s left to us to supply the motive. We insert our own guess, ventriloquising the killers who remain enigmatically mute. It happened again this week, following the slaying of 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine with little more than an “Allahu Akbar” to go on. They hated the cartoons, we say. Free speech was the target, we declare. They wanted to silence satire and gag dissent.

Published by: The Guardian

Hillary Clinton was on my mind even before word came of the death of Mario Cuomo. The former governor of New York will be remembered by those who have long forgotten, or never knew, his record running that state chiefly for his oratory and his knack for an enduring phrase. Eight minutes spent on YouTube watching his 1984 rebuttal of Ronald Reagan’s depiction of the US as a “shining city on a hill” will not be wasted. It was Cuomo who memorably told us: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.” Still, the Cuomo quotation that lodges in my mind is one that is barely known.

Published by: The Guardian