Convenience Big Store: Britain is divided – and all the better for it

4 August, 2021

In the headlines

Jabs for over-16s are coming soon. The government is set to perform another U-turn after weeks of debate over conflicting scientific advice about giving Covid vaccines to teenagers. Boris Johnson is "missing in action" over the climate crisis, says Keir Starmer. "When the issues at stake are so large, it really is irresponsible for the response to be so small," the Labour leader tells The Guardian. The PM has declined a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon as he begins a visit to Scotland. Starmer is also in Scotland today. Cyclist Jason Kenny has become Britain's most decorated Olympian. He won a silver medal yesterday, his eighth in total.

Comment of the day

Belarussian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya. Ivan Romano/Getty Images

Belarus is bringing back the Cold War

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya's defection is "straight out of the Cold War playbook", says Mary Dejevsky in The Independent. The Belarussian Olympian, 24, has been given a visa by Poland – she says her team tried to force her to return home after a dispute over which races she would run in Tokyo. In the Soviet era, pretty much any international tour, sporting or cultural, could bring "a predictable crop of defections" to the West. Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev's efforts to escape his KGB minders at a Parisian airport in 1961 "entailed physical violence and a summit-level international stand-off". These days it's mainly Cuban baseball players who want to stay in the US.

Tsimanouskaya's move looks more spontaneous – the result of a professional spat that turned political. And it shows how much of an "outlier" Belarus now is. The idea that Poland would offer a defector refuge would have been "unthinkable" when both two nations were members of the Eastern Bloc. It's not just Poland: Lithuania and Ukraine have become "places of safety" for many Belarussian activists. The opposition leader at last year's elections, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, is living in exile in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Last year's protests against President Lukashenko may have lost steam, but "what has happened in Tokyo suggests that this is not the end of the story".

Why it matters

Hours after Tsimanouskaya took refuge in the Polish embassy in Tokyo, Belarussian activist Vitaly Shishov was found hanged in a park in Kiev, Ukraine. His death is being investigated as a potential murder, says the FT – and, if it was a "political hit", it highlights just how far Belarus is prepared to go to silence dissenters.

Britain is divided – and all the better for it

Boris Johnson is wrong about Britain, says David Starkey in The Critic. At the G7 summit in June, the PM snapped at President Macron over sausages. "How would you like it if the French courts stopped you moving Toulouse sausages to Paris?" That's a bad comparison, replied Macron, "because Paris and Toulouse are part of the same country". Cue outrage from Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab ("who always looks as though he is trying hard not to hit somebody"), Northern Ireland's First Minister, Edwin Poots ("enjoying his 15 minutes of modest fame"), and Johnson ("the blusterer-in-chief"). Actually, said the PM, "we are all part of one great, indivisible United Kingdom".

Of course, Macron was right. We have always been a decidedly disunited kingdom, from the "extreme rupture" of the Norman Conquest to the constant battles between Protestants and Catholics. As Voltaire said upon visiting: "England has 42 religions and only two sauces." And thank God for that. Unlike continental European countries, we have never had our culture imposed on us. Instead we have muddled along, "letting time and circumstance give rise instead to complex networks of hyphenated identities – national (British and Scots), religious (British and Jewish) and latterly racial (British and black)". The result might offend the "tidy-minded" at home and abroad, "but it works".

Gone viral

When teenager Olita Tetsu visited the orangutan enclosure at an Indonesian safari park, she dropped her sunglasses into the pen. One female ape took quite a shine to them – at least temporarily.

Inside politics

Joe Biden's plans to tackle climate change are being "hampered by a brain drain", says The New York Times. Hundreds of scientists and other experts in the field quit or were fired by the US government during the Trump years. Six months into the new administration, many of these posts remain vacant. One problem is that "money from Congress to replenish the ranks could be years away". Another is that scientists are wary of returning to jobs "no longer viewed as insulated from politics".

Snapshot

Noted

Celebrities are the ultimate saleswomen, says The Sun. When Killing Eve's Jodie Comer wore a Diane von Furstenberg jumpsuit, it took just one hour to sell out. Love Island star Molly-Mae Hague's fans are even quicker off the mark – a yellow dress she wore on the show sold out in 10 minutes. But no one can beat Kim Kardashian, whose lingerie range flew off the shelves in less than 60 seconds. "Everything they touch turns to sold."

Snapshot answer

It's the world's first underwater sculpture park, off the coast of Cyprus. British artist Jason deCaires Taylor has created 70 statues that have been submerged near Ayia Napa at a depth of up to 10 metres for divers to explore. Over time they will attract marine life, forming a reef.