It’s been the kind of news week when several stories could have sat comfortably on the Guardian Weekly’s cover. The Uber files leak, the assassination of Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe and the popular uprising in Sri Lanka were all huge stories in their own right.
However, we lead with the political demise of Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who was finally backed into a corner after dozens of his government ministers resigned.
In laying out the rise and fall of one of Britain’s most colourful and controversial politicians, Jonathan Freedland writes: “Lies and a brazen contempt for the rules powered his rise; lies and a brazen contempt for the rules brought his fall. Which means the political odyssey of Boris Johnson has a curious symmetry. Except that what began as defects in the personality of one man ended as defects in his party and his government.”
In addition, Observer political editor Toby Helm reflects on the Conservative party’s chaotic succession struggle, while columnists Simon Tisdall and Nesrine Malik write respectively on the erosion of trust in western democracies, and the tattered reputation of the Tories.
The Uber files, a cache of more than 124,000 internal confidential documents from the cab-hailing company which were leaked to the Guardian, lay bare ethically questionable practices through which the company barged its way into new markets. We have a comprehensive overview, but the scale of the investigation was such that we could probably have filled an entire magazine with its extended revelations. The full series can be found here.
A voyage around South America’s coastline was billed as the experience of a lifetime – but for passengers on board the MS Zaandam, sick and marooned at sea during the first weeks of the Covid outbreak, it became memorable for the wrong reasons. Jonathan Franklin and Michael Smith report on the dream cruise that turned into a nightmare.
