Politics

They are rich boys with some very expensive toys. As Richard Branson completes his first space flight, it would be easy to dismiss the race between the Virgin founder and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to be the first billionaire in space as the self-indulgence of a couple of tycoons with too much testosterone and too much money.  The competition will be seen by some on the liberal left as a symbol of widening inequalities. They will view it as the emergence of a plutocratic class separated from the rest of us, and as proof of the argument that space should be left to the public sphere. Of course there is an element of truth in all of those complaints.

We don't hear much from Diane Abbott these days. Since leaving the front bench in April 2020, the former shadow home secretary has largely dedicated herself to writing her forthcoming memoirs: 'A Woman Like Me' due in all good book stores next summer. But this weekend the Mojito swilling backbencher returned to the fray with a pointed intervention on Keir Starmer's visit to Northern Ireland. Responding to Starmer's claims that Labour would campaign for Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK in any future border poll, Abbott weighed in to amplify the comments of fellow left-winger Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Brighton's answer to Citizen Smith.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson's announcement that universities can resume face-to-face teaching this autumn has been welcomed by many students. But vice-chancellors are not so happy about the news. Most Russell Group universities have said they will continue to keep some elements of their teaching online – so-called 'blended learning' – revealing their opportunistic embrace of a digital 'new normal'. For cynical university leaders, it seems that lockdowns weren’t a disaster, but an opportunity to accelerate their pre-existing plans for digital education. Since the disastrous marketising reforms of 2011, most universities have been locked into a ferocious competition to attract students and maximise fee income.

Fractious times over at Guardian towers. The long-running battle between Kath Viner, the paper’s editor, and Anette Thomas, the media group’s chief executive, concluded last month after the latter resigned over conflicting views about the Graun’s future. It’s not just the boardroom where such clashes are being played out. Mr S hears word that the editorial floors of the Guardian and its Sunday sister the Observer have become riven with tensions over the perennial problem of trans rights. WhatsApp groups are ablaze with talk that Observer commentator Sonia Sodha could become the next feminist hounded out of the group, following Suzanne Moore’s purging in November.

Peterborough has become something of a political lodestar for Keir Starmer's Labour. The Cambridgeshire city hosted the launch of the party's 'Jobs, Jobs, Jobs' campaign last July and provided one of the few bright spots on local election night this year, helping to elect the area's first Labour combined authority mayor in Nik Johnson. The Economist even interpreted the result as an indication of the Brexit realignment, with southern, affluent areas appearing to countenance voting Labour for the first time in a generation.