Libby Brooks
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Articles by Libby Brooks
Thursday briefing: What does the mass closure of charity shops tell us about Britain?
Libby Brooks Good morning. I could mark the phases of my life through my charity shop purchases: the tweedy jackets of my student days, the nearly new hiking boots (a tenner!) I bought out of necessity when I first arrived back in Scotland, the battered guitar now re-strung for my son to practise Nirvana's About a Girl. Since they became a fixture of high streets after the second world war, charity shops have rolled with the punches of wider retail trends.
Tuesday briefing: What the Simon Levy case tells us about the women the justice system keeps failing
Good morning. Last week, Simon Levy, a registered sex offender, was sentenced to a rare whole life tariff for the murders of Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo and Sheryl Wilkins. Both women, as well as others targeted by Levy, were vulnerable and involved in sex work. This was no coincidence: in the sentencing remarks, it was noted that Levy – who had a history of sexual offending dating back to 2018 – selected women who sold sex as his victims because he believed he could get away with it.
Nigel Farage’s Clacton circus is finally over, but his financial reckoning is just beginning
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Friday briefing: Nigel Farage’s Clacton circus is finally over, but his financial reckoning is just beginning
Good morning. Less than an hour ago, the results of the Clacton byelection were declared, confirming that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been re-elected MP for the Essex coastal constituency on 22,239 votes, in a surreal contest boycotted by every other major political party. Farage increased his general election vote by just over 1,000 votes, despite a lower turnout.
Thursday briefing: What happens after an asylum hotel closes?
Libby Brooks Good morning. This week, immigration minister Anna Turley announced, with minor fanfare, the government will stop using a further 13 hotels to house asylum seekers across the country. It brings the total shut this year to 44, in pursuit of Labour's manifesto pledge, now reiterated by Andy Burnham, to cease hotel use completely by the end of this parliament. Doing so would remove what have become highly visible symbols of an increasingly toxic debate about migration.
Wednesday briefing: Why the prison crisis is about much more than early release
Good morning. On his family holiday last week, the prime minister, Andy Burnham, was reported to be taking daily calls from Ministry of Justice officials about his government's early release scheme.
Friday briefing: How disabled creators are challenging an ableist world
Libby Brooks Good morning. Among a display of slogan T-shirts in the V&A Dundee's Design and Disability exhibition, the first that meets your eye reads “Access is love”. Then, lest you presume you're in for an easy ride, the next one declares “Piss on pity”.
Thursday briefing: Now he has the power to do it, can Andy Burham really end homelessness in the UK?
Good morning. On 29 June, as the media gathered in Manchester at the People's History Museum to hear Andy Burnham set out his blueprint to transform the UK, over in Westminster the 1824 Vagrancy Act was quietly repealed. It ended two centuries of criminalising people for the typically blameless fact of not having a home. While this largely symbolic move away from punishment to prevention was welcomed by charities, it did nothing to tackle the scale of the problem.
Tuesday briefing: Inside Andy Burnham's first day
Libby Brooks Good morning, and let's abandon all conditional tenses because finally Andy Burnham is UK prime minister and, on a day of ceremony and celebration, he pledged his government would be “a circuit breaker for Britain”. A defining characteristic of Team Burnham thus far has been the concentrated silence at its heart – a vacuum filled by increasingly frenzied speculation in recent days about his cabinet picks and policy priorities.
Friday briefing: Is violence against politicians reshaping democracy in the UK?
Libby Brooks Good morning. When Andy Burnham returned to Westminster as an MP last month after a decade away, what shocked him – some of his colleagues have said – was the security. In recent years, particularly since the 2017 Houses of Parliament terrorist attack in which five people were killed, security around Westminster has visibly tightened, with armed police patrolling the estate, and vehicle barriers and heavy exterior fencing erected.
Why magical kingdoms feel more relatable than real‑world romance for today’s young women
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Thursday briefing: Why magical kingdoms feel more relatable than real‑world romance for today’s young women
Good morning. It was a hare or maybe a small deer that prompted my own excursion into romantasy fiction. Stuck on the train home from London to Glasgow, delayed by animals on the track, I was in need of some diversion and found it aplenty in Sarah A Parker's bestseller When the Moon Hatched, the tale of a female assassin whose fate intertwines – yes, sometimes quite spicily – with a grieving dragon rider.
Tuesday briefing: The law that Hillsborough built – and the bitter final battle to get it through
Good morning. We think we know this story, the one about the 97 who went to watch a football match on a sunny afternoon. Perhaps you remember, as I do, watching footage of the lethal crush at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough stadium, on the evening news in your childhood living room.
Monday briefing: You ask the questions – is Britain ungovernable?
Libby Brooks Good morning. This week, we anticipate the arrival of Britain's seventh prime minister in the space of a decade. Barring a sequence of events too freakish to contemplate this early in the day, Andy Burnham will be declared Labour leader on Friday and invited to form a new government thereafter. Sceptical as I am about doomy predictions on Britain's chronic ungovernability, I wanted to speak to somebody who could offer some deeper context.
Friday briefing: Inside our investigation of Nigel Farage and Reform's deepening financial scandal
Libby Brooks Good morning. One of the privileges of working at the Guardian is attending our morning conference – the gathering of colleagues from across departments to discuss our daily publishing schedule – which is open to every journalist in the building. This is a rarity across media organisations, which tend to keep these discussions to the most senior editors.
What challenges would Ed Miliband face as chancellor?
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Tuesday briefing: What challenges would Ed Miliband face as chancellor?
Good morning. Does anybody else remember Reasons to Be Cheerful? The podcast was hosted by radio presenter Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband, during what has been unkindly described as his wilderness years, after he stepped down as Labour leader in 2015. I flipping loved that podcast. It started in 2017, soon after my son was born, and I have fond memories of driving across the country with a pooping infant, listening to Ed and Geoff discuss ideas to fix the world.
Monday briefing: Who are the people trying to protect our right to protest?
Good morning. At first glance, you could mistake it for an image of a pair of community cops assisting an elderly woman as she navigates some tricky steps. Only closer examination reveals they are arresting her. Yesterday afternoon, 84-year-old Reverend Sue Parfitt, a retired Anglican priest, and 13 others stepped one by one on to a modest cardboard box outside New Scotland Yard in London, to invite members of the constabulary to join the banned direct action network Palestine Action.
Friday briefing: The US at 250: who gets to tell the story?
Good morning, and a very happy 250th birthday to the United States of America. If you prefer to celebrate with cage fighting on the White House lawn, an IndyCar rally through the streets of Washington DC, or simply by watching the president do his lonely bop to YMCA at a sparsely attended state fair, so much the better. It takes a special kind of someone to make the semiquincentennial birthday of a nation of 349 million people, from a whole variety of backgrounds, all about himself.
Tuesday briefing: Inside Shabana Mahmood’s new UK asylum reforms
Good morning. Last night home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, set out further planned reforms to the asylum system. A new means-tested scheme, which will see asylum seekers ordered to pay about £10,000 each for their state-funded living costs or be denied settled status in the UK, has been condemned by refugee charities for placing a tax on refugees fleeing war, torture and famine.
Friday briefing: Can LGBTQ+ communities rethink pride in a hostile landscape?
Good morning. Remember June in years gone by, when it seemed as though a ginormous queer unicorn was burping rainbows everywhere you turned? When even straight-faced Marks & Spencer launched an LGBT (lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato) sandwich to proffer bread-based solidarity?
Thursday briefing: Why EU-Taliban talks have sparked outrage among Afghan women
Good morning. It's a slap in the face. That's the phrase I kept hearing – in furious overnight messages, in blazing opinion columns – as Afghan women responded to the meeting between EU officials and the Taliban that took place in Brussels on Tuesday.
Thursday briefing: Why EU-Taliban talks have sparked outrage among Afghan women
Good morning. It's a slap in the face. That's the phrase I kept hearing – in furious overnight messages, in blazing opinion columns – as Afghan women responded to the meeting between EU officials and the Taliban that took place in Brussels on Tuesday. The talks, to discuss how to scale up the deportation of Afghan migrants, were met with widespread outrage, and disbelief that Europe would countenance offering legitimacy to a regime that affords a bird better protections than a woman.
Tuesday briefing: How might Andy Burnham bring his Makerfield magic to Westminster?
Good morning. It seems inevitable that Andy Burnham will become the UK's seventh prime minister in a decade, after Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday morning and, hours later, Burnham's most likely challenger, Wes Streeting, rowed in behind the former mayor of Greater Manchester. Starmer leaves office barely two years after his landslide victory that swept Labour into power on a mandate of change.
Monday briefing: What’s next for no-drama Starmer as his ‘political challenges’ pile up?
Good morning. Today's the day, probably. Keir Starmer is expected to announce that he will step down as prime minister, after overwhelming pressure from Labour MPs to make way for Andy Burnham to become party leader.
What next for Andy Burnham? Five key questions after Makerfield win
Andy Burnham is heading back to the Commons after a resounding victory in Makerfield, putting Keir Starmer's leadership on notice – and giving Reform something to think about. The – now to be former – mayor of Greater Manchester described it as the "most consequential byelection of our lives" and promised he would not only change the constituency, but the country. Already, he has touted his win as a "turning point".
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