This is the week the government “finally lost its soul”, says Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. Michael Gove’s levelling up blueprint is a “grotesque disappointment”, filled with targets, subsidies and bureaucracies, which merely recycles the failed ideas of New Labour. A proper conservative approach would seek to improve schools, create dozens of pro-business areas “with almost no taxes”, and “liberate” an extra 1% of Britain’s landmass for house building. Energy policy is another case study in “extreme failure”: a sensible administration would accelerate its nuclear plans by creating a powerful agency modelled on the vaccine taskforce. Instead, a government “that no longer believes in markets” will simply pretend that prices are lower than they are, by lending billions to energy companies to allow them to moderate price rises.

Vladimir Putin’s main goal isn’t war with Ukraine, says Pierre Lellouche in Marianne. It’s an entire “reconfiguration of the European order”, with an alliance between Germany and Russia at its heart. Germany has always been an “essential pivot” in European security, and during the Cold War, the Soviet Union tried (unsuccessfully) to prise West Germany out of Nato by deploying medium-range missiles in Europe. Today, Putin has managed to sow deep division in German politics about how to tackle Russia – Germany’s naval chief had to resign recently after saying that his country owed “respect” to Putin. Practically the only military support Berlin has offered Ukraine is 5,000 helmets for soldiers.