Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days
“Why is Labour’s record to date on human rights – the one thing you might expect a Starmer-led government to be rock solid on – so mixed?” asks Daniel Trilling in this comprehensive long read.
Due to Keir Starmer’s background as a distinguished human rights lawyer, his supporters hoped that he would restore the UK’s commitment to international law. Unfortunately, he is being blocked by a powerful man who has conflated protest with terrorism and called for musicians whose views he dislikes to be dropped from festival bills. That man is also named Keir Starmer. Over the past six months, Trilling has spoken to two dozen Labour insiders, former colleagues of the prime minister and leading human rights advocates in an attempt to pin down the shapeshifting PM.
“At 66, I get to be a boss,” says Jamie Lee Curtis. That is very much the vibe of this interview, in which the actor shows up “aggressively early” to the Zoom chat, opens up about her experience with addiction, and uses – and staunchly defends – the word “genocide” to describe the impact that cosmetic surgery has had on a generation of women. Emma Brockes speaks to Curtis before the forthcoming sequel to Freaky Friday, which sees the actor reuniting with Lindsay Lohan in the mother-daughter body-swap comedy (“I felt tremendous maternal care for Lindsay after the first movie, and continued to feel that”) – but their chat ends up becoming about so much more.
