Archie Bland

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Archie Bland

I look back at the last day of our old life with a kind of wonder now: the million summer freedoms, the complacency of our ease. I watched the cricket with Max on my knee. Friends came to visit, and Ruth fed Max while we talked about our new neighbourhood among piles of books and packing boxes. Max gurgled regally as I changed one of his famous nappies. I organised our phone chargers and put his birth certificate carefully in a drawer with our passports and the mortgage statement.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Archie Bland

Good morning. Later today, officials from the UK will join talks ahead of a conference next month that could end with participants recognising the state of Palestine. The discussions come at the end of a week in which the UK and its allies in Europe have been more critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza than ever before in the conflict - with new sanctions, measures on trade, and a much harder rhetorical line from foreign secretary David Lammy all part of a coordinated push.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Archie Bland

Good morning. Earlier this month, Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot reported that the government was rethinking arguably the most unpopular policy introduced by Labour since the election: the cut to winter fuel payments for pensioners.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Archie Bland

Good morning. No living victim of a miscarriage of justice has endured their punishment for as long as Peter Sullivan. On Tuesday, 38 years after the murder of 21-year-old florist and part-time pub worker Diane Sindall, Sullivan’s conviction was finally overturned on appeal because of DNA evidence found in semen samples preserved from the scene of the crime. The decision means that the culprit for the heinous sexual killing of Sindall has never been found.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Archie Bland

Good morning. On Monday, Keir Starmer added his name to the dubious list of prime ministers who have used very forceful language to describe the impact of migration on the UK. The UK is at risk of becoming an “island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together”, he said; the system “seems almost designed to permit abuse”. But while the tone echoed much of the rhetoric of the last 20 years, Starmer insisted he was doing something different.