The collapse of Greensill Capital has shone an unflattering light into the “murky corridors of Whitehall”, says the Financial Times. Not that former PM David Cameron broke any strict rules when he lobbied senior ministers on behalf of his new employer. Nor did top civil servant Bill Crothers, who took a job at Greensill while still in charge of handing out government contracts worth £40bn to similar firms. No, what’s “shocking” is that within Whitehall this stuff is “neither contentious nor uncommon”. It would be naive to expect youngish retirees like Cameron, with time left for a second career, to pass up the chance to make some real money. And there is an “unspoken bargain” that underpaid ministers will be compensated later by parlaying their influence into lucrative jobs. But Cameron was right a decade ago when he said the revolving door between politics and business would be the next big scandal. “That moment has arrived.”

The end of America’s “forever war” is finally in sight, says David Ignatius in The Washington Post. President Biden announced this week that all of the 2,500 or so US troops still in Afghanistan will be withdrawn by 11 September – the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks that precipitated the original invasion. “It’s a gutsy move.” US intelligence analysts have warned that civil war could “quickly erupt”, enabling the Taliban to overthrow the government in Kabul and al-Qaeda to re-establish a safe haven. If that happens, US troops may have to go back in to sort things out – just as they did with Isis in Iraq. Biden’s decision has the support of the American public, but he’s “rolling the dice”.

The Prime Minister’s barber, whoever he or she is. “Can anyone explain the baffling mystery of Boris Johnson’s haircut?” asks Carol Midgley in The Times. “It’s quite astonishing that he waited three months for that dog’s dinner.” The Downing Street janitor “could have put a pudding bowl on his head” and seemed like Vidal Sassoon by comparison.

Finnish entrepreneur Peter Vesterbacka made his name a decade ago with the hit video game Angry Birds. Now he’s getting more ambitious, says Peter Conradi in The Sunday Times. His dream is a €15bn underwater rail tunnel from his homeland to Estonia.

The Queen could well be the most successful British politician of the past century, says Stephen Bush in the New Statesman. The modern Crown enjoys “a combination of unrestrained pomp and public popularity that no other European monarchy can match”. And since she married Prince Philip in 1947, Labour’s republicans have declined in number and confidence. Even Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong anti-monarchist, “felt obliged” as Labour leader to say he had watched the Queen’s Christmas speech. In British politics, it’s far safer to be overly deferential to the monarchy than the reverse – the greatest tributes to Philip are not media panegyrics, but “the bitten tongues and buttoned-up lips” of republicans.

Anyone booking a theatre trip this summer should think twice. The stage has become a “pleasure-free zone in which snarling dramatists fight over their pet political causes”, says Lloyd Evans in The Spectator. The theatre’s current obsessions with “race hate, climate panic and psychological meltdown” are not remotely conducive to a fun post-lockdown night out. “Log on to the National Theatre and you’ll find a website that looks like a news channel.”