There’s been a niggling question in the background at Brighton; call it the Ben Okri question. Jeremy Corbyn quoted the novelist and poet (along with Maya Angelou) and the audience loved it; one fan told me how blissful it was to be led by someone who loved writers like that too. Then an MP told me the response in their constituency would be “who the fuck is Ben Okri?”.

Published by: The Guardian

Labour leader’s somewhat meandering address delights delegates with promise to change politics – even similarities with a blogger’s text couldn’t dampen spirits

Published by: The Guardian

Remind me who’s the prime minister again? To judge from the speeches and fringe talk in Brighton, you’d think David Cameron retired long ago. His name is barely mentioned. Instead Labour speaker after Labour speaker concentrates their fire on George Osborne. The chancellor is the target of every jibe, the hate figure offered up for the audience’s guaranteed disapproval.

Published by: The Guardian

I blame the Book of Mormon. Not the actual book, but the show. A couple of hours in the theatre with Elder Price, Elder Cunningham and the gang and it’s hard to take any kind of religious ritual seriously. Not after you’ve spent an evening giggling at the poor saps idiotic enough to venerate nothing more than a book.

Published by: The Guardian

After the national anthem debacle, the new leader must reach out to the country or his agenda will never get a hearing

Published by: The Guardian

Es gab einmal eine Zeit, noch immer lebendiger Erinnerung, in der Flüchtlinge verzweifelt versuchten, per Eisenbahn aus Deutschland zu entkommen. Heute sehnen sie sich danach, per Zug einzureisen. „Wir wollen nach Deutschland, weil wir dort unsere Rechte bekommen, dort sind wir willkommen“, sagte ein Flüchtling zu Guardian-Mitarbeiter John Domokos, der sich einer Gruppe angeschlossen hatte, die zu Fuß durch Ungarn marschierte – auf dem Weg in das Land, das die Fliehenden als ultimativen Zufluchtsort sahen: das gelobte Deutschland.

Published by: The Guardian

The nation is dramatically changing its reputation, but idealistic rhetoric can also mask self-interested motives

Published by: The Guardian

What we learned about ourselves anew this week was something that, in truth, we knew already. We rediscovered a simple, human weakness: that we cannot conceive of an abstract problem, or even a concrete problem involving huge numbers, except through one individual. The old Stalinist maxim about a million deaths being a statistic, a single death a tragedy, was demons trated afresh.

Published by: The Guardian