New York's 37th annual Fleet Week celebration kicked off this week with the Parade of Ships on the majestic Hudson River and runs through Tuesday.

Editorial: Without a much stronger effort to monitor miscreants and prevent reoffending, David Gauke’s recommendations will, tragically, fail – with all the gruesome societal and political consequences that implies

© PA

Labour’s pivot to welfare cuts and targeting of rightwing voters has backfired. If the party leadership won’t adapt, the public will move on

Sir Keir Starmer’s U-turn on winter fuel payments did not just represent a policy reversal. It was the moment when the prime minister, elected on promises of national renewal, was forced to confront the political reality that his strategy had refused to acknowledge. It may also prove to be the moment he lost control.

The original policy, hatched in the Treasury and defended for months, had cut winter fuel payments, worth up to £300 annually, to millions of pensioners. It was unpopular, and unnecessary. Local election losses and a looming backbench revolt over disability benefit cuts made it politically toxic. The result? On Wednesday, Sir Keir reversed course at the dispatch box – with his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, notably absent. Too little, too late: voters saw delay; activists cried betrayal.

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© Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA

© Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA

The president’s cynical ambush of Cyril Ramaphosa was not about American interests but racial grievances

The most telling moment of Donald Trump’s meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa was not the cynical screening of footage promoting false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was when a reporter asked the US president what he wanted his counterpart to do about it. Mr Trump replied: “I don’t know.”

Leaders enter the Oval Office uneasily, especially since the kicking administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The South African president came armed with gratitude, two golf stars, a billionaire and compliments on the decor – and kept a cool head and a straight face as he was ambushed. Mr Ramaphosa later described it as “robust engagement”. But, in truth, it was a clash of two worlds rather than an interaction.

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© Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

© Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Editorial: The move inadvertently caused maximum political damage to Labour – now, Keir Starmer’s surprise U-turn is an encouraging sign his administration has learnt from its mistakes

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Ukraine’s allies must dial up sanctions to expose the fragility of the Kremlin’s strategy for perpetual war

Donald Trump’s pledge to end the war in Ukraine on the first day of his second term as US president was a sign of his unsuitability as a peace broker. A clearer sign was his apparent sympathy with Vladimir Putin. Mr Trump’s tone regarding the Russian president has cooled somewhat on the discovery that the conflict cannot be frozen by White House diktat. There are hints of recognition that the peace process is failing because the Kremlin is cynically playing for time. Sadly, any such insight hasn’t evolved into outrage at the criminal aggression that started the war in the first place.

Accounts of a telephone call between the two leaders earlier this week indicate no increase in American pressure on Russia. Mr Trump’s impatience with the whole issue seems likelier to result in him walking away. Mr Putin relishes that prospect.

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© Photograph: Reuters

© Photograph: Reuters

Three decades on from Robert Putnam’s account of fraying social ties in the US, new research in Britain identifies similar dangers

Thirty years after writing Bowling Alone, the famous essay in which he diagnosed a dangerous crisis of social cohesion in the United States, Robert Putnam has a right to feel vindicated. In a lecture this spring, Prof Putnam, now 84, warned his audience that, amid levels of polarisation and distrust higher than at any time since the civil war, the US was “in danger of going to hell in a handcart”.

Britain is still, thankfully, a long way from the poisonous toxicity of Trump-era America, notwithstanding the ominous rise of Reform and Nigel Farage. But research published this week by the More in Common polling group paints a worrying portrait of communities in which there is a widespread sense of social disconnection, high levels of distrust among the young and a felt loss of shared spaces and rituals.

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© Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Editorial: Britain has hit Israel with further sanctions and suspended trade talks as it dramatically steps up its response to the humanitarian crisis. Now others must join to stop this violence

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Editorial: The prime minister has achieved what once seemed impossible: strengthening Britain’s global role without reopening the Brexit divide

© Getty