The junior doctors' strike is becoming Labour's problem – and it has no easy answers
Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian
Recent industrial action has revealed a "wider malaise" among young professionals, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian, "something the next government will inherit". The opposition party could previously "get away with" calling for ministers to "get back round the table", but is now "deep into the era" where "power shifts decisively away from a government". And "all anyone wants to know is what the next lot would do instead".
Sunak plays it safe with election announcement
Isabel Hardman in The Spectator
The prime minister "is – not unusually – playing it safe by saying his 'working assumption' is that the election will be in the second half of this year", rather than the predicted spring date, writes Isabel Hardman for The Spectator. Rishi Sunak "knows from watching what happened to Gordon Brown's Election That Never Was the dangers of ramping up speculation without following through", but "that doesn't mean he won't change course and go for the May election" after all. "But dampening the chatter about it is a sensible tactic."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Jews shouldn't let October 7 change us for the worse
Josh Kaplan in The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish community's collective New Year's resolution should be to "be open-minded towards our critics", Josh Kaplan suggests in The Jewish Chronicle. "Not every single person who disagrees with the mainstream Jewish opinion on Israel wishes us all dead", and "there are good, normal people with critical views" of Israel. To assume otherwise "diminishes something in us and ensures that the debates around the Middle East will only get more poisonous and all-consuming".
If you don't eat at restaurants weekly, you can't complain about their demise
Josh Barrie on the i news site
"Vast parts" of the UK's restaurant industry look "increasingly vulnerable", says Josh Barrie on the i news site, following "a number of high-profile closures" in the opening days of 202 . The rule that "if a business is good enough, it will succeed and survive unsavoury times" no longer seems to apply, in part because British diners are "often still far too suspicious, believing restaurants to be overpriced".
-
August 16 editorial cartoonsCartoons Saturday’s political cartoons include football season anticipation, and Donald Trump angling for Putin's autograph
-
5 hilariously cold cartoons about the Alaska summitCartoons Artists take on the Alaskan totem pole, a peace flag, and more
-
Crossword: August 16, 2025The Week's daily crossword puzzle
-
Journalists killed in Gaza: a chilling assaultIn the Spotlight Anas al-Sharif and three of his Al Jazeera colleagues were targeted by the IDF
-
The most memorable newspaper front pages of 2023In Depth From resignations and Covid revelations to Hamas's deadly attack
-
'Is this the sleaziest parliament of all time?'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Huw Edwards named as presenter at centre of BBC crisisIn Depth News reader’s wife, Vicky Flind, says he will remain in hospital for foreseeable future
-
The most memorable newspaper front pages of 2022In Depth From Uber files and Partygate revelations to Liz Truss’s lettuce face-off
-
The Week Unwrapped: wheels or doors, Russian losses and speaking pigpodcast What makes a social media post go viral? What does the war in Ukraine mean for pensions? And can an algorithm understand a pig’s emotions?
-
The Ukrainian-Russian families at conflict over invasionfeature Estimated 11m people in Russia have Ukrainian relatives – but some ‘don’t believe’ war is even happening
-
How the world reported the ‘final push’ to avoid war in Ukrainefeature Western officials warn of imminent conflict while Ukraine sticks to more measured rhetoric
