Over the last 10 years, the terms of political debate have changed completely – and week by week they seem to get worse

The notion of virtue-signalling – the act of performing progressive stances that don’t cost you anything in order to burnish your own moral credentials – has been around since at least the 00s. In a political sense, it meant always being the one who reminded others to say “chairperson” not “chairman”; always manning the barricades for signs of bigotry, always being on the right demo. If its values were sound – all we’re talking about, really, is trying to systematise courtesy to others – it was often easy to lampoon, because it felt performative and had a hair-trigger.

But what has risen in its wake – vice-signalling – cannot be seen as its mirror or answer, any more than dehumanisation could be seen as the equal and opposite of decency. They’re not in the same rhetorical category. The term doesn’t bring itself to life; for that you need the US president. Cast your mind back to 2015; although Donald Trump had said he might run for election to the highest office in every cycle this century, his speech in Trump Tower was his first campaign launch, and it was where he announced that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico. In seemingly unplanned remarks – the grammar was off, the structure meandered, the vocabulary was vague and repetitive – he said “[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and they’re rapists.”

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Mark Langdon and Jacob Steinberg as Tottenham Hotspur lose at home to Newcastle

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On the podcast today; another defeat for Spurs. Thomas Frank was still in his job at the time of recording. Not any more.

As AI job losses rise in the professional sector, many are switching to more traditional trades. But how do they feel about accepting lower pay – and, in some cases, giving up their vocation?

California-based Jacqueline Bowman had been dead set on becoming a writer since she was a child. At 14 she got her first internship at her local newspaper, and later she studied journalism at university. Though she hadn’t been able to make a full-time living from her favourite pastime – fiction writing – post-university, she consistently got writing work (mostly content marketing, some journalism) and went freelance full-time when she was 26. Sure, content marketing wasn’t exactly the dream, but she was writing every day, and it was paying the bills – she was happy enough.

“But something really switched in 2024,” Bowman, now 30, says. Layoffs and publication closures meant that much of her work “kind of dried up. I started to get clients coming to me and talking about AI,” she says – some even brazen enough to tell her how “great” it was “that we don’t need writers any more”. She was offered work as an editor – checking and altering work produced by artificial intelligence. The idea was that polishing up already-written content would take less time than writing it from scratch, so Bowman’s fee was reduced to about half of what it had been when she was writing for the same content marketing agency – but, in reality, it ended up taking double the time.

Whether making microtonal pop or playing Renaissance instruments with sheep bones, a crop of bold artists are making genuinely strange music go mainstream – but are they at the mercy of the algorithm?

Chloë Sobek is a Melbourne musician who plays the violone, a Renaissance precursor to the double bass. But instead of playing it in the traditional manner, she puts wobbling bits of cardboard between its strings or uses a sheep’s bone as a bow, and these weird interventions have become catnip for Instagram’s algorithm, getting her tens of thousands – sometimes hundreds of thousands – of views for each of her self-made performance videos. “Despite how it might appear, I’m a reasonably shy person,” she says.

When Laurie Anderson’s robo-minimalist masterwork O Superman hit No 2 in the UK charts in 1981, thanks to incessant airplay on John Peel’s radio show, it was a signal of a media outlet’s power to propel experimental music into the mainstream. That’s now happening again as prepared-instrument players such as Sobek, plus experimental pianists, microtonal singers and numerous other boundary-pushing solo performers, are routinely breaking out of underground circles thanks to videos – generally self-recorded at home – going viral on TikTok and Instagram.

In Cardinham, which has had 366mm of rain this year, there’s little need to check the weather forecast: more rain

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“I’m thinking of building an ark,” said Sarah Cowen, an artist and cafe owner. “It’s been horrendous. We’ve never known anything like it. The mud, the silt, the endless rain.” Cowen is one of a hardy, if soggy, bunch who live or work in and around the parish of Cardinham, on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, which has endured 41 consecutive days of rain – and counting.

“This is definitely global warming. You get either baking sun or continuous rain,” Cowen said. The locals don’t have to look at the weather forecast here at the moment. “You know it’s going to be rain,” Cowen said.

The party’s MPs know their leader is failing but they are paralysed by fear of a contest with no obvious successor

Westminster time is counted in scandals, resignations, rebellions, U-turns and leadership crises. All the things that aren’t good government age a regime. Keir Starmer has presided over a lot of woes in 18 months, making a young government look old.

The premature decrepitude is more advanced, and more disturbing to Labour MPs, because it feels like continuity from the turbulent Tory regime that came before. The policies and personnel are different, but to the casual passing voter the sound of screaming and breaking crockery around Downing Street is familiar as a sign of a political problem family in residence.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat is Labour from both the Green party and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party
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Harriet Harman leads calls for an appointment that would ‘turbocharge’ a ‘complete culture change’ at No 10

Furious female Labour MPs have told Keir Starmer to appoint a woman as his de facto deputy to oversee a “complete culture change” in Downing Street after a series of scandals they say have exposed a No 10 “boy’s club”.

Harriet Harman, one of the party’s most senior figures, urged Starmer to revive the role of first secretary of state, a post previously occupied by Peter Mandelson under Gordon Brown. But she insisted the role must be held by a woman to “transform the political culture in government around women and girls”.

Jewish activists interrupt speech at synagogue and accuse party of paving way for persecution of other minorities

Jewish activists have heckled Nigel Farage at the launch of a Jewish members’ organisation for Reform UK and accused the party of planning to use the new group as cover for persecuting other minorities.

Farage spoke at the inaugural event on Tuesday night of the Reform Jewish Alliance (RJA), which he said would help the party target up to 15 parliamentary seats.

Head of Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales says he is working with Thames Valley and Met forces

Prosecutors are “in close contact” with police over investigations into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson’s links with Jeffrey Epstein, England and Wales’s most senior criminal prosecutor has said.

Thames Valley police has said it is reviewing allegations that the child sex offender Epstein provided Mountbatten-Windsor with a woman to have sex with at Royal Lodge in 2010, as well as that the former prince shared confidential reports from his role as a government trade envoy with the disgraced financier.

Mechanics teacher tells how he and 15 students barricaded workshop doors with metal benches

• Full report: suspect dead and nine killed in Canada shooting

• What we know so far about the Tumbler Ridge shooting

“We believe we’ve been able to identify the shooter,” said Floyd, adding that RCMP will withhold the shooter’s identity for privacy reasons and for the conduct of the investigation.

Floyd also refused to disclose details on how many of the victims were children and adults, adding that more details will emerge in coming days.