A familiar story is unfolding: of lofty aims undermined by meagre budgets, constant anonymous briefing – and a drive to remove families’ basic rights

Where is this government heading, and who is now in charge? Keir Starmer looks even weaker than he did a week ago, uncoupled from the aides who wrote his scripts and picked his fights, and only still in his job because the cabinet and parliamentary Labour party stared into a chaotic immediate future and decided not to pounce – for now. The high-stakes Gorton and Denton byelection arrives in less than two weeks’ time. Policy-wise, meanwhile, we are about to finally be presented with a set of plans that have been fitfully gestating for over a year, and causing a quiet chorus of jangling Labour nerves.

That sound is now getting louder. Any day now, the government will publish the education white paper containing its plans for sweeping reform of England’s provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, or Send. Amid rising fears about current and future costs, that document will shine light not just on the government’s thinking about the system it wants to change, but even bigger questions about Labour’s views on disability and human difference, and the relationship between families and the state. And if the proposals misfire, this most fragile of administrations will find itself back in the nightmarish place it ended up in when Labour MPs refused to pass its cuts to disability benefits – only this time, the resulting chaos could consume it.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

He didn’t look like a stereotypical ‘drug addict’, but when he fled to South Africa with all our savings it was obvious that is what he had become

When I tell people that a drug addiction nearly killed my dad, I know what most of them are thinking. Heroin. Crack. Maybe meth or ket. Those substances that steal your soul and slowly wreak havoc on your body. They’re imagining Trainspotting; too-skinny frames and protruding hip bones, the physical effects of addiction that are impossible to miss.

But that isn’t how it played out in my family.

Lego and Crocs have joined forces to create oversized Lego-shaped shoes. Are they as ridiculous as they sound? We sent our most podophilic writer to find out

Everyone knows that standing on Lego is the worst pain known to man, but standing in Lego Crocs – how bad can they be? And are they really worth £199? I got hold of a prototype pair to test how my feet would survive.

He went from being the east London boy who was expelled from school to becoming the Bafta award‑winning star of Alien: Romulus. Ahead of his prison drama Wasteman, David Jonsson discusses the pressures of being a leading Black British actor

David Jonsson is the kind of actor who disappears so completely into his roles that it’s easy to forget you’re watching the same person each time. In Rye Lane, he’s a lovestruck south Londoner; in Industry, an Etonian banker with ice in his veins; in Alien: Romulus, a paranoid android. He’s now starring as heroin addict Taylor in the ultraviolent British prison drama Wasteman and, for the first time, the 32-year-old actor claims he is playing something close to himself. “This is the most personal role I’ve done,” he says. “It’s so messed up because it’s a dark story about rehabilitation and addiction, but I know these men really well. Especially when you’re growing up somewhere like where I did.”

We meet on a Friday afternoon at a photo studio in Islington, closer to where Jonsson lives now in north London than to Custom House in the East End, where he grew up. He arrives wearing a beanie pulled tight over his cornrows and a windbreaker. He looks stylish but carries a delicate shyness that mirrors his character’s air of desperation. Wasteman, which opens this month after a critically acclaimed festival run that netted five British Independent Film awards (Bifa) nominations including best lead performance for Jonsson, tells the story of Taylor, a young father who has spent 13 years in prison for a crime he committed as a teenager. In the film’s unflinching depiction of the British prison system, he’s referred to as a “nitty” – UK slang for a desperate, pathetic drug addict. Jonsson lost 1.8 stone to embody Taylor’s “wasted” physique. “I was mawga, properly skinny,” he says, slipping into patois.

Monogamy may be held up as an ideal, but evolution has other ideas

Most of us know people in committed relationships, even lifelong marriages. And we also know stories about relationship transgressions, of partnerships tested or broken by infidelity.

As an evolutionary biologist who studies sex and relationships, I’m fascinated by these two truths. We humans make romantic commitments to each other – and some also break those commitments by cheating.

The Beloved author’s refusal to conform made her a hero to many – and the only black female writer to have won a Nobel prize in literature

There are many ways to be difficult in this world. You can be demanding, inconvenient, stubborn, complicated, troublesome, baffling, illegible. Black womanhood is one place where all these forms of difficulty overlap. I feel like I have always known this; I have been called difficult more times in my life than I can count. But I only began to understand – to discover the meanings and uses of – my own difficulty because of Toni Morrison.

Morrison has shaped the way we think about everything from literature to politics, criticism to ethics, to the responsibilities of making art. In 1993 she became the only black woman ever to win the Nobel prize in literature. But the facts remain: she is difficult to read. She is difficult to teach. Notwithstanding the voluminous train of profiles, reviews and scholarly analysis that she drags behind her, she is difficult to write about. More to the point, she is our only truly canonical black female writer – and her work is highly complex.

Foreign secretary says Reform not taking Russian threat seriously while Green leader leaves open possibility of leaving alliance

The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has accused Reform UK and the Green party of undermining Britain’s commitment to Nato.

Cooper was speaking at the Munich Security Conference, where Keir Starmer used a speech at the weekend to claim that Labour’s populist rivals, Reform and the Greens, were “soft on Russia and weak on Nato”.

Exclusive: Delay at Glascoed is latest setback for armed forces and for UK’s capacity to supply shells to Ukraine

A new factory in Wales seen as crucial to boosting UK munitions production remains unopened more than six months after its planned launch, adding to a string of delays dogging the armed forces.

The explosives facility at Glascoed, south Wales, was expected to bring a 16-fold increase in Britain’s capacity to make artillery shells, replenishing dwindling stock and increasing supplies for Ukraine.

Hilary Cass, who led youth gender identity services review, warns of ‘unrealistic images and expectations’

The expert who led the review into youth gender identity services has said young people are being misinformed by “unrealistic” portrayals of transitioning on social media.

Hilary Cass, the British paediatrician whose review of NHS gender care led to a significant shift including a ban on puberty blockers, warned of “unrealistic images and expectations on social media” when it came to “what transition would really mean and how hard it would be”, including “quite intensive medical treatments” and “sometimes quite brutal surgeries”.

Intelligence agencies say deadly toxin in skin of Ecuador dart frogs found in Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death

• What is dart frog toxin, which is said to have been used to kill Alexei Navalny?

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was killed by dart frog poison administered by the Russian state two years ago, a multi-intelligence agency inquiry has found, according to a statement released by five countries, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The US was not one of the intelligence agencies making the claim.