The Joy of Six 1499

Alexandra Hall Hall warns that Donald Trump’s Iran war is bringing the post-war international order to breaking point. "The UN has been completely sidelined in this conflict. The US, who helped design the institution after World War 2, no longer pays either its dues, or even lip service to its founding charter, including the requirement to resolve international disputes by peaceful means."

"The cumulative effect is an ecosystem that looks, from the outside, exactly like what it is: a set of institutions that have come to prioritise their own stability over their original purpose. Outsiders do not see idealism when they look at us. They see a class protecting its position. And that fuels the populist rage, because at some level, they are right." Gregory Maniatis has no words of comfort for the US left.

The new universities of the 1960s were founded on intimacy, radicalism and community. Looking to what is happening at Essex, Adam Wright asks whether an obsession with growth has made those promises impossible to keep.

Michael Solomon Williams makes the case for expanding our railway network: "The story of British rail is often told through major infrastructure projects or high-speed lines. But just as important are the quieter stories of reconnection: the return of a station, the reopening of a route, or the transformation of a corridor into modern public transport. These changes show that the legacy of the Beeching cuts is not permanent. With the right decisions, communities can be reconnected and the network can grow again."

"Crawley has been given a great many opportunities to prove himself – enough, you could argue, that he has already done precisely that. For years and years, he has generally done just enough to maintain the idea of Zak Crawley, without ever really managing to move things beyond that." King Cricket concludes that if England’s leaders aren’t being ejected then some of the players will be.

Anne Bilson ranks the surprising number of killer-rabbit movies.