Energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey says in the Guardian that Britain’s energy markets were a mess in 2010. And Labour’s populist plans just aren’t tough enough to challenge the big six it created. The evidence is mounting that the coalition’s reforms are. The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh thinks the only way Mr Miliband will walk into Downing Street after one term in Opposition is with Nick Clegg on his right arm. Such a prospect strikes terror into the hearts of the Tories – and indeed millions of voters who have had enough of flabby coalition. Boris Johnson in The Daily Telegraph says our friends and partners in Brussels need to understand that they are not just negotiating with the namby-pamby elites of this country. In offering new terms of membership, they must understand that they are dealing with the people – the British electorate, cussed
and suspicious, who will pronounce in a referendum. In the Daily Express, Leo McKinstry says the reason that effective democracies work is because politicians can be held to account. But none of that happens in the Brussels empire, which has rightly become a byword for excessive bureaucracy, fraud and waste. In the Daily Mirror Kevin Maguire says the inspirational Chartists who demanded democracy in Victorian Britain wanted annual Parliaments, but four strikes me as about right. This May’s council and European elections are no substitute for the General Election we need and deserve.

In the Guardian, Avi Shlaim, emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford, thinks Sharon’s enduring legacy has been to empower and embolden some of the most racist, xenophobic, expansionist and intransigent elements in Israel’s dysfunctional political system. But in The Daily Telegraph, Con Coughlin believes that for all the controversy surrounding Sharon’s military exploits, it is the lessons of his political legacy that arguably have the most relevance for today, particularly his ability to make peace with the country’s Arab foes. Ronen Bergman, senior political and military analyst for Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot says in the International New York Times that if Mr Sharon had not had the stroke which led ultimately to his death he would most likely have reached a peace agreement with the Palestinians. And he would have used his powerful
personality and irresistible drive, as well as the widespread affection he had acquired among his people, to force the right-wing settler movement to accept it. In the Independent, Ian Birrell says Sharon showed what happens when self-preservation sours into something more poisonous, when noble dreams calcify into nightmarish oppression. Ultimately, he diminished his nation. In the Wall Street Journal, Mitch Ginsburg said many eulogies have recalled Sharon as the man who could have delivered a final peace with the Palestinians. That may or may not be true. But many of Sharon’s countrymen feel his passing most keenly because as centrifuges spin at Iranian nuclear sites and the Jewish state’s neighbours are increasingly mired in violence, Israeli’s long for Arik the warrior.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown says in the Independent that she personally owes the police her life several times over. But I still say the service is not what it should be, what it must be. It is mistrusted by too many Britons. After last week, that trust, low as it was, has diminished further. In the Daily Mail, Dominic Lawson says the common characteristic is that when blunders have been committed there has been a co-ordinated cover-up to protect the reputation of the police, involving lies if necessary. For all our sakes, the police must regain trust – or be made to do so.

The Guardian says sensible politicians of all colours know that the more migration is debated as if it were beyond control, the more they undermine their capacity to carry conviction on it. Voters were never entirely persuaded that David Cameron would be able to deliver on his promise to reduce net immigration from the hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. Three years on, even though the government can point to evidence that net immigration is falling, fewer than a fifth believe it.

The Daily Telegraph says what people want from their health service is, above all, good care. But they also want transparency and openness, to know which surgeons, wards and hospitals are world-class, and which should be avoided. Breaking down the barriers between patients and medical staff – whether cultural, legal, administrative or technological – is the only way to produce better and more caring care.

The Independent says that if Britain supports the aims and actions of the International Criminal Court, to exculpate British officials in advance would be deeply hypocritical. The Iraq war was a shameful and unjustified episode. If the ICC finds there is enough evidence to launch a prosecution for war crimes against senior former British officials, those officials must face the music. Any other course would further damage the court’s prestige.

Tory MP David Davis says in The Times that if we do not act to make our intelligence-gathering systems as focused and accountable as the Americans have, the shadow of distrust could shift from them to us. That means fewer IT-based companies will come here, and some will migrate abroad. British industry and the British economy have benefitted hugely from our country’s reputation for trust and integrity. It would be a terrible paradox if our intelligence communities’ well-intentioned efforts to protect our physical security ended up undermining our economic security

Jonathan D Pollack says in the International New York Times that the failures of policy on the Korean peninsula are not those of China alone, but Beijing’s risk aversion bespeaks a larger absence of will and imagination on China’s part. Without a more candid conversation among Beijing, Seoul and Washington, the latent risk of an acute threat on the peninsula remains uncomfortably high.

In the Financial Times, Edward Luce says libertarianism is an attitude, rather than an organisation. It is also potentially fickle. Young Americans disdain foreign entanglements. That could change overnight with a big terrorist attack on the homeland. They feel let down by Democrats and hostile to mainstream Republicans. Yet they could flock to an exciting new figure in either party. Theirs is a restless generation that disdains authority. Establishment figures should take note. Tomorrow belongs to them.

@DrEvanHarris