My life is split in two: half as a stateless Somali refugee and half a British citizen. But Kakuma is crucial to everything that came after it. It is the foundation of who I am

The earliest memories of my life are from the Kakuma refugee camp. I remember walking through a marketplace, staying close to my mother’s side. It is hot, the Kenyan sun’s rays so fierce I can’t stop squinting. At one point I turn to my left and see an incredibly thin man sitting on the floor. I stop and stare at him until my mum tells me off. I’m too scared to look back at him as we walk farther ahead, but I feel both drawn to him and terrified by his suffering.

I have another memory of asking my mum if we could get a drink, either a Fanta or a juice shake, during a warm evening. The heat doesn’t feel unpleasant. There are others in the living room of our shanty accommodation. My mum is in a deep conversation, but it goes over my head. She agrees, but I am not sure if she takes me herself or someone else does.

The government’s safety of Rwanda bill finally passed into law in April. But, with the announcement last week of a general election, the Conservative ‘dream’ of deportation flights taking off might never happen. So what has the bill achieved? And what does it mean for those it has targeted? The Guardian’s John Harris hears what life is really like for migrants in the UK

Ahmed Herzallah, his wife and three children have been catapulted into the unknown after fleeing their destroyed home

In the darkened backroom of an Istanbul hotel packed with refugees from Gaza, the light from Ahmed Herzallah’s phone screen illuminates a picture of his destroyed home in Gaza City. The building, with its curved black-and-white striped exterior that wrapped around a street corner, used to be a place for celebration, where the family gathered together for birthday parties, graduation ceremonies or when his sisters visited home at the beginning of each summer.

The apartment building where Ahmed lived with his wife, children, parents, two brothers and their families was often filled with members of their extended family, the sound of singing, and the smell of homemade pastries and maftoul, a stew made of chicken and couscous. But the picture that he displayed on his phone was spliced with another, showing the entire block reduced to rubble. His extended family is now scattered around Gaza or exiled across the globe.

The way to ‘stop the boats’ is to create safe routes of travel. Instead, the Labour leader is obsessed with trying to appear tough

Keir Starmer isn’t interested in “gimmicks”, “talking tough” or, God forbid, protesting. He wants to roll up his sleeves and get things done – on this much he has been clear. Except, that is, for the times when it suits him to indulge in some “gesture politics”. This is especially true for asylum: Labour is headed into the snap July election promising to be tough on the “small boats crisis” and, if Starmer’s speech in Dover earlier this month is anything to go by, its plans are not good.

Gimmicks – the policies behind which could do untold damage – seem to be all Labour has. Starmer swapped Rishi Sunak’s “stop the boats” slogan for “border security”. He invoked the widely peddled myth that the UK, which has an incredibly strict asylum system, is a “soft touch” – suggesting deporting people more quickly would serve as a deterrent. And he promised a new border security command, which seems strangely similar to the small boats operational command. Granted, Labour does not look set to be quite as harsh as the Tories in every respect; Starmer committed to scrapping the Rwanda scheme. But that is the very least it could do, given how unpopular the policy is with the broader public. Look beyond the headline announcements and you find more of what we’ve had for decades – more borders, more brutality, more suffering.

Maya Goodfellow is an academic at City, University of London, and the author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats.

Provisional official figures deal blow to Rishi Sunak’s claim that threat of Rwanda deportation is a deterrent

A record 10,170 people have arrived in the UK so far this year after crossing the Channel in small boats, according to government data.

The provisional figure beats the previous record of 9,326 who crossed to the UK by this time in 2017. The comparable figure for last year was 7,326.

Bills, including smoking ban for people born after 2009, unlikely to become law before 4 July vote

• Why is Rishi Sunak calling an election now?
• Questioners at Sunak warehouse speech turn out to be Tory councillors

Rishi Sunak is now speaking at an event in Ilkeston in Derbyshire. It is in the Erewash constituency, where the Tory MP Maggie Throup had a majority of 10,606 at the last election.

He repeats the claim that a Labour government would cost every family £2,000.

Labour’s spending promises cost £16 billion per year in 2028-29, or £58.9 billion over the next four years.

But their revenue raisers would only collect £6.2 billion per year in 2028-29, or £20.4 billion over the next four years.

I don’t really think the arrangements in Scotland for the school holidays have really been anywhere near the calculations made by the prime minister …

I think it would be respectful if that was the case but it’s pretty typical of the lack of respect shown to Scotland that we’re an afterthought from the Westminster establishment and particularly the Conservative establishment.

Greek court says it has no jurisdiction to hear case as disaster happened in international waters

Charges have been dropped against nine Egyptian men accused of causing one of the Mediterranean’s deadliest shipwrecks off Greece last year, after a Greek court said it had no jurisdiction to hear the case because the disaster occurred in international waters.

Up to 700 people from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt boarded a fishing trawler in Libya that was bound for Italy before sinking off the coast of Pylos, in south-western Greece, on 14 June. A hundred and four survivors were rescued and only 82 bodies were recovered.

Survivors of shipwreck that killed 600 people not ‘real smugglers’, say defenders, with inquiry into coastguard’s role also incomplete

Nine men accused of causing one of the deadliest shipwrecks to have taken place in the Mediterranean are “scapegoats” who should never have been prosecuted, defence lawyers have said, before their long-awaited trial in Greece.

The Egyptian suspects, who have been held in pre-trial detention since the 14 June disaster last year, will appear in court in the southern city of Kalamata on Tuesday.

The Spark, a song created by a group of nine-to-12-year-olds including refugees, has amassed 8.6m views

It is called The Spark and has been declared the song of the summer – a viral sensation from a group of children in Ireland who filmed the video in a day.

Since launching on 15 May, the song has amassed 8.6m views and been hailed as a drum’n’bass-beat masterpiece with infectious energy.

In 1586, Jacques Bellot published one of the earliest printed phrasebooks for refugees, the Familiar Dialogues: For the Instruction of The[m], That Be Desirous to Learne to Speake English, and Perfectlye to Pronou[n]ce the Same. [...] The book, in 16mo, is laid out in three parallel columns: English, French, and a quasi-phonetic transcription of the sounds of the English text. [...] Bellot says "I have written the English not onely so as the inhibaters of the country do write it: But also, as it is, and must be pronoun[n]ced". [...] While men had contact with the local community through their work and would have developed enough spoken English to get by, their wives and other family members who were mostly at home had limited opportunities to learn the local language. At this time, there was significant local hostility to foreigners in England, and [...] "a knowledge of everyday English was some protection against mindless scare-mongering" [...] The content of the Familiar Dialogues belies its audience in that it caters to the immediate language needs of refugees and deals with everyday interactions. These include going to school, shopping and eating a meal [...] Indeed , this little book, with its focus on domestic situations rather than travel/touristic situations, anticipates the refugee phrasebooks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.