Eddie Redmayne’s transgender confusion

Eddie Redmayne is clearly still troubled by his portrayal of the transsexual Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl. Eight years after Redmayne’s acclaimed performance, it is the one film the actor seems nervous talking about. Now, Redmayne has distanced himself again from that role – and suggested he will no longer take parts that could go to trans actors.

‘No one wants to be limited by their gender or sexuality but, historically, these communities haven’t had a seat at the table. Until there’s a levelling, there are certain parts I wouldn’t play,’ he said in an interview with the Guardian.

This isn’t the first time Redmayne has put on sack cloth. Back in 2021, he conceded that his decision to play a trans person was a ‘mistake’. Of course, Redmayne has never expressed any trouble with taking the role of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, and Redmayne is no physicist. More recently, in a Netflix drama released last year, he portrayed Charlie Cullen – a serial killing nurse who murdered possibly hundreds of patients. And – guess what? – Redmayne is neither a nurse nor a killer.

An actor is there to play a part that is cast by a director and created by a writer, end of. In other contexts that is well understood. Jim Parsons, a gay man, played the iconic – and straight – Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. Neither Parsons, the director nor the screenwriters were PhD theoretical physicists, but who cares about that? The character they created brought physics to life – and that’s what mattered.

However, when it comes to trans characters, different rules apply – at least in Redmayne’s mind. It seems that trans people are seen as some sort of priestly class who cannot be played by mere muggles. Redmayne now says he won’t take parts that should go to trans actors. Perhaps he could refer such roles to Eddie Izzard? Izzard certainly ticks the trans box, but might be too busy in ‘boy mode’ playing any male lead that comes Izzard’s way? Trans actors would hardly want to be restricted to playing trans characters, so why should the reverse not be countenanced?

This logic makes no sense and it does not help trans people. Trans people are human beings just like everyone else – and trans characters should be played by the best actor available. In The Danish Girl that meant a man – Redmayne – played the lead role. Meanwhile Hayley Cropper, Coronation Street’s resident transsexual was played by a woman: Julie Hesmondhalgh. The sex of the actor mattered far less than their skill in helping to bring a character to life.

But this seems to pass Redmayne by. ‘The thing I find most complex is truth,’ he says, but then adds, ‘The film (The Danish Girl) feels like a fictionalised version. It doesn’t feel like Lili’s story.’ Why not? Does Eddie think that trans people have some special essence that sets us apart from the rest of humanity? If so, he should be reassured: it’s not true. We may have one of possibly several psychological conditions that sometimes require medical attention, but we are otherwise just like everyone else.

One thing is for sure, if my notability – or notoriety – ever meant that my character was cast in a movie, I would not want the role to be played by someone else who happened to be trans; I’d want the best man for the job. Redmayne needs to man up and accept that.

Who thought the Prince Andrew sex bath picture was a good idea?

How big does a bath need to be for ‘sex frolicking’ to be a possibility? That’s not, if you’d asked anyone six months ago, the question on which the reputational future of the monarchy might be in part held to depend – and yet here we are. A bizarre photograph has been released by the brother of Ghislaine Maxwell in an attempt to discredit Virgina Roberts Guiffre’s claims of abuse.

The photograph made the front page of the Daily Telegraph, no less. It showed two people, described in the accompanying story as ‘acquaintances’ of Ghislaine Maxwell, sitting facing each-other, fully clothed, in the bathtub of Maxwell’s old home. Each of these people had their faces obscured by a sheet of A4 paper tied round their heads with a bit of string, one of them bearing an image of Prince Andrew’s face; the other of a teenage Virginia Roberts Guiffre.

An accidental David Lynch vibe, there, and one nobody’s nightmares will thank them for. The headline read: ‘The photo that ‘clears Duke’ over bath sex.’ Ghislaine Maxwell’s older brother Ian explained to the newspaper: ‘I am releasing my photographs now because the truth needs to come out. They show conclusively that the bath is too small for any sort of sex frolicking…’

One of the many reasons that this story was at once funny, poignant and extremely insane is that the bathtub in the picture really did look like rather a big one. The idea, clearly, was that everyone who saw the picture would chorus as one: ‘OBVIOUSLY there’s no chance of nookie in a tub that size. The story simply doesn’t hold up.’ Instead, most of us will, I think, have seen the man in the Prince Andrew mask comfortably recumbent and his opposite number, at the tap end, sitting up straighter but with a fair bit of room for manoeuvre, and thought: ‘Yup, you totally could.’

And at once, we will have started speculating on the different forms of frolicking that might be possible if you don’t mind the odd bumped elbow and a soggy bathmat. Anyone who happened to have a couple of lay figures to hand, a smutty imagination and an idle ten minutes will have been able to compile a pretty creditable list.  

Even from my limited, now rather long-ago experience in the field of ‘sex frolicking’, I know that you can absolutely pursue the hobby in an ordinary sized bathtub. People, with enough determination, have sex-frolicked in all sorts of confined spaces. Boris Becker managed it in a broom cupboard in Nobu. James Bond once did it in a space capsule. There was sex-frolicking, if his songs to be trusted as documentary evidence, in the cramped front seat of every car Meat Loaf ever owned.  

So, it seems to me that, this photograph doesn’t disprove anything like what it is intended to disprove. But it is probative in an entirely different way. It suggests, I’m afraid, that those involved in this debacle are near to going clean off their rocker. Ian Maxwell has confirmed he had no interaction with Prince Andrew or his team around the release of the photograph; nevertheless this is one of many sorry incidents over a number of years which seem intended to discredit Ms Guiffre with limited effect. 

Even if, let us say for the sake of argument, Miss Roberts Guiffre made the whole thing up, the response to her accusations has been such as would incline most onlookers to end up believing her rather than otherwise. Prince Andrew claimed never to have met her. An anonymous friend of the Duke claimed that a photograph showing him with his arm around her was photoshopped because he has fatter fingers than that. There was all that mad nonsense about a medical condition making it impossible to sweat and the Woking branch of Pizza Express. There were the tawdry briefings from his legal team that she was a slutty gold-digger. There was the Keystone-Cops-style dodging of process servers and haggling over jurisdictions. And finally, though strenuously denying wrongdoing, he agreed to pay her a large sum in a confidential settlement, made with no admission of liability.  

He would have to be stark mad to imagine that, at this stage, there’s even the faintest hope she’ll turn round and say: ‘You know what, fair play to you – I got the wrong man. I withdraw the whole thing. Here’s your money back with interest and a full public apology.’ It appears nevertheless, that he clings to such a hope; that perhaps it has been nourished by Ms Roberts-Guiffre withdrawing her similar accusations against the lawyer Alan Dershowitz with the admission that she may have identified him wrongly. The idea of ‘overturning the settlement’ still dances ahead of him like an ignis fatuus – and we know where they lead travellers in folklore.  

What’s to be gained? Nothing, surely, for the disgraced Duke. Even if the settlement is somehow overturned on a technicality – they’re still wibbling on about jurisdictions – there’s not a hope in hell that will translate to the return to public life and royal privilege he craves. His older brother, like his late mother, has so far stopped short of cutting him off altogether. The King is reported privately to have given Andrew financial support, and he has not banned him altogether from family events. In doing so, he has put fraternal solidarity ahead of reputational contagion. Quite how long his patience will last if more of the splashes ahead of his coronation are from ‘sex frolicking’ in Ghislaine Maxwell’s bathtub is anyone’s guess.  

Cycle wars: why 20mph is plenty for motorists

I live in Hammersmith, in west London, which is an area where people seem particularly fond of just running out into the street without looking – which is their prerogative because they are people not machines. 20mph is plenty fast enough and 30mph does feel too fast. And, to be honest, if you could go around somewhere like London, or Manchester, or Birmingham, at a constant 20mph, you’d be absolutely delighted.

I do a lot of cycling around London and we can become over obsessed with things like rules, street furniture, signage, traffic lights and so on. They’ve been doing this with a bike lane near me; it’s not particularly well thought out, because you have a two-way road running alongside a two-way bicycle lane, with lots of junctions off it.

The attempts to control it – with lights and signs and warnings – they’ve proliferated to the point where it’s becoming baffling. All these things ultimately are cured by a change in attitude, not a change in signage or infrastructure or colours, or anything like that. That might be a stepping stone to ending road sectarianism and making towns and cities nicer places for everyone to travel around in. But I think ultimately it is about it, well: a mindful attitude. I hate to sound very right-on, but it is.

This is an edited transcript of James May’s comments on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme

The naked truth about sex on TV

What a year it’s been for sex on TV. As we emerge blinking from the annual glut of televisual entertainment, I can’t get over how far we’ve come. Bridgerton, Babylon Berlin, Lady Chatterley… everybody’s at it, with no period in history so tragic that a few cheap thrills can’t be extracted from it. If you’d have told the teenage me that in my lifetime I’d see a comedian with breasts playing a piano with a penis on television, I’d have very much approved; having seen Jordan Gray do so on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live last year, I wish I hadn’t.

Sex on TV has been such a long, strange ride. There were always ‘blue movies’ for those who didn’t mind taking a walk on the seedy side, but most channels were well aware than TV was akin to a guest in the home – and no one wanted to be accused of being the dirty beast who didn’t flush, polluting the pristine hearth. With the sexual revolution of the 1960s, newspapers would often warn of ‘full frontal’ nudity approaching – but there would always be a carefully-placed vase or poncho.

Frank Finlay in 1971’s Casanova and Prunella Gee in 1973’s Shabby Tiger were the Adam and Eve of primetime full-frontal and from then on, the small screen was Liberty Hall. Even mums became sophisticates: ‘We were watching Rock Follies, not nudity but it was “out there”, and I remember my mother remarking on a Julie Covington bed scene “Why doesn’t she just take it all off?”’, says a friend.

By the time we got to the 1980s, we were up to our ears in breasts; we’d seen serious ones (Play for Today), posh ones (The Camomile Lawn) and even vampire ones (Hammer House of Horror – fangs for the mammaries). This was the beginning of the flasher’s friend Channel 4 – or ‘Channel SWORE’ as a tabloid childishly called them – and sometimes a little red triangle appeared on a top corner of the screen to denote risqué content, leading teenage boys to stay up watching some art film until dawn only to discover two donkeys cracking on. But never mind – soon the internet came along and people, even children barely old enough to lace their tiny shoes, could see whatever sort of sex they wanted, whenever they wanted. We’d got what we’d wished for, us dirty-minded 20th century teenagers, and we hadn’t been careful.

Now you can’t get away from well-bred thespians shedding their clothes all over primetime TV. But there’s something so solemn and po-faced about it that I long for the often painful double entendres of self-consciously saucy sitcoms. The rise of the ‘intimacy co-ordinator’ may be a clue as to why; paradoxically, the kind of woke fools those who believe in ‘intimacy co-ordinators’ are the kind of people who believe that sex work is ordinary work – but how does that add up with the violence and pain so many sex workers experience? There’s no kind person standing by co-ordinating what’s being done to them – but maybe as they’re working-class and mere ‘civilians’ (Elizabeth Hurley’s weird word for non-actors) their rights to bodily integrity don’t matter as much.

Game of Thrones was a milestone in the shady story of sex on TV. Set conveniently both in the past and in fantasy, it succeeded in making millennials feel morally superior (‘They were beasts in the Olden Dayes!’) while reducing rape to a recreational spectator sport perfectly accompanied by a craft beer from an ethical micro-brewery. The fact that GoT featured six ‘adult’ actresses muddied the moral waters even further. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which performers are in the skin trade and which ones aren’t; when Halle Berry demanded an extra £300,000 for flashing her breasts for five seconds in a film (on top of her £1.7 million pay packet) she was clearly monetising her sex appeal – and her secondary sex organs – just as glamour models do. In fact, couldn’t an OnlyFans model claim that she was less of a sex worker than a respected actress who gets it on on camera?

Are we happier now we can see as much sex on TV as we want? The rise of murderously involuntary celibate young men would suggest otherwise, as would youngsters hanging on to their virginity far longer than my mucky lot did, and the rise of impotence among men in their twenties suffering from sexual sensory overload brought on by gawping at onscreen porn.

And for that finishing touch, here comes the re-evaluation of that pantomime villain of the sex on TV debate, Mrs Mary Whitehouse, courtesy of the brilliant young feminist writer Louise Perry. She reminds us of the contemptuous attitude to this uppity woman who was such an enemy of sex on TV that a porn star mockingly changed her name to ‘Mary Whitehouse’ by deed poll (this fake Mary Whitehouse committed suicide while young, unlike the original, who lived to a happy old age), while Sir Hugh Greene, director-general of the BBC between 1960 and 1969, purchased a grotesque naked portrait of Mrs Whitehouse to hang in his office. Knowing what we now know about ‘Auntie’ and her nasty habit of protecting sexual predators from Savile to Westwood (how interesting that, like many a modern sex criminal, Auntie identifies as female) Mrs Whitehouse now seems a far better moral bet than Greene.

A trans comic with breasts playing a piano with a penis shows a society not at ease with sex, as we were promised – but one in which sex has become a grotesque sideshow, rendering viewers into punters, leaving us all the poorer.

In defence of Brussels, Europe’s most underrated city break

Strolling around the Belgian Comic Strip Center, admiring the elegant artwork of Hergé (creator of Tintin), I wonder for the umpteenth time why so many of my British friends are so disparaging about Brussels.

It’s one of my favourite cities, but most Britons I know wouldn’t dream of planning a break here. They don’t know what they’re missing. I’ve been here countless times, yet on each visit I discover something new. It’s full of quirky shops and exquisite restaurants, and there are some excellent museums too. If your idea of fun (like mine) is nosing around art galleries and antique shops, with plenty of pitstops en route, you’ll have a terrific time. I’ve never eaten better than in Brussels – and the beer (and the coffee) is superb.

So why does this place have such a bad reputation back in Blighty? Mainly because it’s become a byword for Britain’s endless squabbles with the EU. However, for much of its history Brussels has been resolutely Anglophile. The UK had a big hand in the creation of Belgium, and during the 19th century Brussels forged close commercial links with London. There are ornate relics of this special relationship in those lovely Art Nouveau landmarks, the Old England department store and the Gresham Life Assurance building. And now, thanks to Eurostar, these kindred cities are only two hours apart.

I’ve been travelling from London to Brussels by train for more than 20 years, and it’s a journey I never tire of: no need to trek out to the airport; no need to cram all your luggage into one tiny carry-on case. On board, there’s plenty of room to stretch your legs. Yet this new proximity has been a mixed blessing. For British business travellers, Brussels has become a day-trip destination: the first train out, a slew of boring business meetings and the last train home again. It’s a city of nooks and crannies, rather than arresting vistas. You need to spend a few days here to allow the place to open up.

Even as an ardent Belgophile, I can understand why many Britons don’t warm to Brussels. A lot of the public spaces are pretty scruffy: traffic, litter, graffiti – all the familiar detritus of a big city – and its first impressions don’t flatter. Brussels Midi, where the Eurostar arrives, is a soulless place, and the area around the station is seedy. Your best bet is to hail a cab and head straight for the Grand Place.

The Grand Place is a tourist trap but there’s a reason why it’s so popular – it’s one of the most stunning baroque squares in Europe. The surrounding side streets are crowded with tacky souvenir shops, but if you venture a few blocks beyond here you’ll soon escape the coach parties. Outside the city centre, there aren’t so many sightseers, which is why the grub is so good. 

Brussels is full of first-class restaurants, but there are three I’d really recommend. Comme chez Soi (two Michelin stars) has been here since the 1920s – Churchill and Roosevelt both ate here. The Art Nouveau décor is almost as enticing as the food. Villa Emily (one Michelin star) is smart but intimate, and though the menu is haute cuisine (I feasted on prawns, scallops, turbot and white chocolate – all divine), the ambience in this little hideaway is refreshingly relaxed. 

For somewhere more informal, head for Lola, which serves classic Belgian dishes in a convivial setting on the Place du Grand Sablon. On the corner of this lively cobbled square is the flagship store of Pierre Marcolini, Brussels’s most stylish modern chocolatier. Wittamer, across the road, does wonderful pralines and macarons. For more traditional chocolates, visit Mary (founded in 1919). There are several outlets – my favourite is on the Rue Royale.

Apart from stuffing my face, the other thing I like doing in Brussels is trawling its gorgeous galleries. The Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique isn’t as spectacular as the Louvre but nor is it so busy. You can savour its treasures without elbowing your way through camera-clicking crowds. There are some delightful Bruegels here, and a wealth of haunting paintings by the Anglo-Belgian artist James Ensor. Around the corner is the Magritte Museum, devoted to Belgium’s most famous surrealist. Cloaked in darkness like a cinema, this atmospheric gallery presents his strange, seductive images in suitably dreamlike surroundings.

Alongside its municipal museums, Brussels has an abundance of commercial galleries, and at this time every year these galleries (and many more from further afield) come together at BRAFA, Brussels’s international art fair. I’ve gone along several times before and it’s always lots of fun. There are various events and talks, but the biggest treat is meandering through the huge exhibition hall, crammed with every kind of art, from cartoons to antiquities.

If I’m here on business, I usually stay at the Amigo, a Rocco Forte hotel in an ideal location just behind the Grand Place. Subdued and understated (I adore Olga Polizzi’s muted, restful colour schemes), it’s less grandiose than most grand hotels, but supremely comfy all the same. The bar serves Belgian staples such as grey shrimp croquettes and Belgian frites, double-fried in beef tallow. Sadly my pockets aren’t deep enough to pay my own way at the Amigo (rooms start from around £300), so if I’m here purely for pleasure I like to stay at Le Dixseptieme, a sedate townhouse a short walk from the Central Station which has doubles from £200.

Every time I come here, my diary is full of things to see and do, but I always enjoy Brussels best when I simply wander around. From Art Nouveau to Art Deco, from Brutalism to Belle Epoque, this mongrel city is a bizarre hotchpotch of building styles, and amid the high-rise eyesores are numerous architectural marvels. That’s the thing about Brussels – no one in their right mind would call it beautiful (indeed, large tracts of it are spectacularly ugly), but it’s never, ever dull. Don’t miss Bozar, Victor Horta’s modernist masterpiece (a thriving arts centre), and the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, one of the world’s oldest and loveliest covered arcades.

I finished my latest trip at the Musée Art & Histoire, where Hergé went to find inspiration for his Tintin stories. Although Tintin travelled all around the world, his creator rarely left Brussels. Instead of following in his hero’s footsteps, he came here to sketch the ethnological exhibits that feature in his globetrotting adventures. To me, it feels like a fitting metaphor for what I love about Brussels – so humdrum on the surface, so absurd and fantastical beneath.

BRAFA runs from 29 January to 5 February. Trains from London to Brussels via Eurostar from £78 return. Doubles at the Amigo from £385 per night. For more information about Brussels, see Visit Brussels.

Hot property: 10 buildings to look forward to in 2023

Every year produces a number of ‘firsts’ and ‘mosts’ in architecture – and 2022 was no different. Most obviously, at least for residents of New York, the world’s skinniest skyscraper, with sixty storeys of single apartments stacked to a height of 435 metres, was completed on ‘billionaire’s row’ in Manhattan, perhaps becoming the ultimate example of ‘form following finance’ in the construction annals.

But while that was dispiriting for so many reasons, there was much to celebrate too – not least the pleasing restorations of Marcel Breuer’s Armstrong Rubber Company headquarters in Connecticut, which has become a hotel, and the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin, an old department store that has become a photography museum – the environmental gods doth smile on refurb and reuse. Going one better was the transformation of Sydney’s AMP Centre, a 1970s skyscraper and the city’s tallest building, by stripping it to its concrete bones and wrapping it in something altogether more modern while saving the carbon cost of building afresh. Billed as the first ‘upcycling’, it may soon be the first of many. 

As 2023 gets under way the green agenda shows few signs of fading to pistachio, so the use of wood and other bio-materials is set to grow, as is the requirement for locally sourced ones. One technology that might help fill the gap is 3D printing, and the trend for 3D printing homes in particular looks set to pick up pace after several years of heavy publicity but little action. There were some surprisingly attractive examples produced last year, again mostly in the States, although the tendency of the walls to look like plasticine has not been entirely resolved.  

One thing that won’t change, however, is that the big money and the big names will gravitate towards prestigious cultural edifices, where the language of architecture becomes a firm statement. This happened last year – producing the bang-average Taipei Cultural Centre in Taiwan, a distant cousin of 1997’s Fuji Broadcasting Centre, and the very last century Sydney Modern Project – but there is good reason to think that 2023 will harvest a better crop. So here, in no particular order, are ten architectural highlights to look forward to:

Factory International, Manchester – OMA

In a nutshell: The north remembers

It seems a long time since ‘Madchester’ was the centre of the cultural universe, but this double-the-initial-pricetag and much-delayed arts palace is intended to put it back on the map by creating a permanent home for the Manchester International Festival and a rolling programme of ‘dance, theatre, popular culture and contemporary work’ – words which would normally be enough to put most people off. While its promise to turn up to 10,000 unemployed locals into opera singers, portrait artists, ballerinas and the like sounds a little ambitious, this is a serious and uncompromising piece of architecture that screams energy and desire. 

Maggie’s Royal Free, Hampstead, London – Studio Libeskind

In a nutshell: Good work 

Carefully wrapped in folds of timber, Maggie’s Royal Free, part of a network of spaces that support those affected by cancer, is intended to provide a maximum contrast with its clinical and concrete surroundings at the Royal Free Hospital in Belsize Park and create a welcoming sanctuary for patients. The wooden louvres and the 97 windows they frame provide plenty of cool natural light, while the rooftop garden will be a sanctuary for patients facing the most difficult times of their lives and the family members and expert staff that will support them. One of the smaller projects by the renowned Polish-American deconstructivist Daniel Libeskind, now 76, and one of his most restrained.         

Chappe Art Museum, Tammisaari, Finland – JKMM

In a nutshell: Say timber

Sticking with the subject of wooden wonders, this small pine and spruce museum proves that new buildings can be good neighbours and reflects the traditional forms and materials of the period townhouses in this small seaside town around two hours from Helsinki. At the same time, the cavernous interior, illuminated by huge picture windows, provides wonderful Tardis-like exhibition spaces for the remarkable private collection of Albert de la Chapelle, the world-renowned geneticist and cancer researcher who died in 2020.     

Nordo, Copenhagen, Denmark – Henning Larson

In a nutshell: Tall drink of water

Staying with Scandinavia, this much larger scheme on the waterfront in the eastern part of the Danish capital shows what can be done to transform an inauspicious brownfield site into a thriving new district. Containing 115 spacious new homes – plus gardens, a shared gym and laundry service – the stepped red-brick structure nods to the area’s industrial past while embracing views of the harbour (and indeed all the way to Sweden) with big windows and high ceilings. For once the promise of an ‘urban oasis’ isn’t mere estate agent’s waffle.  

Richard Gilder Center, American Museum of Natural History, New York – Studio Gang

In a nutshell: Rock star

Boasting one of the most unusual interiors in recent memory in its four-storey, cavern-like interior – and with an exterior that most resembles a glass and granite cliff-face – this geological addition to the staid American Museum of Natural History is shocking in its audacity and yet feels like the perfect response to the constrained site. The organic sweeps of the atrium opens on to 23,000 sq m of new space and connects existing galleries in a way that is sure to elicit wows from kids and adults alike.  

Bezalel Academy of Arts, Jerusalem – SANAA

In a nutshell: Holy moley

Some sites are constrained by more than surface area, however, and what is built in the world’s holiest city is bound to attract a fiercer level of scrutiny than usual. This was what confronted the Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa as they sought to accommodate 2,500 students and 500 faculty members in the Russian Compound while, naturally, revitalising the city centre and connecting up the urban fabric of a city sacred to all three Abrahamic religions – in short, an easy brief. That they have managed to incorporate a library, galleries, classrooms, studios, offices, auditoriums, a cafeteria and a shop into a graceful 37,000 sq m glass and concrete carpet that hugs the natural gradient – minus howls of anguish – is a significant achievement.  

National Library of Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel – Herzog & de Meuron

In brief: Cracking the books

Israel’s getting not one but two great new buildings this year, thanks to the Swiss architects behind Tate Modern. A sculptural if somewhat brutalist perforated concrete shell conceals a beautiful reading room with curving bookcases and a circular light well in the centre of its scooped roof. Perfect for the location and climate.  

Sub-centre library, Beijing, China – Snohetta

In a nutshell: A new leaf 

Arguably less dramatic than the underwater restaurant they opened three years ago, and which has already become an artificial reef, the pioneering Norwegian studio has nonetheless stayed true to their roots (sorry) with another biomorphic take on a library. With a roof that references a native ginko forest’s canopy, held aloft by 16m tall slender metal trunks, and an undulating floor resembling small stepped hills, this is sure to be one of the most spectacular reading rooms anywhere in the world. As an added bonus, the canopy/roof contains photovoltaic cells to generate energy (sort of like trees do).  

Zhuhai Jinwan Civic Art Centre, China – Zaha Hadid 

In a nutshell: Flight of fantasy 

There’s a lot to be said for going back to nature, clearly, and this geometric riff on the patterns of migratory birds – an obvious place to start, I’m sure you’ll agree – proves that simple is so last decade. Making the most of a spectacular setting in the middle of an artificial lake, the folded roof of perforated steel shelters a theatre, multifunctional hall, science centre and art museum around a central plaza. Murmurations of appreciation are sure to follow. 

A district Tower, Tokyo, Japan – Pelli Clarke & Partners

In a nutshell: Height of sophistication 

There’s always room on the list for a crisply beautiful skyscraper, despite the dubious politics that usually accompany tall buildings, and this 330m tall sculpture is one of the most elegant to be constructed in recent years. Now Japan’s tallest building, if not structure (that honour goes to the 634m Tokyo Skytree, a broadcasting tower nearby) the snappily-named A district Tower contains office space, luxury residences, a medical research centre and a university campus, all while shrugging off the earthquakes that plague this part of the Pacific Rim. An engineering masterpiece, certainly.  

Something missing from the list? Let us know below.

Six questions for Sunak over Zahawi’s firing

Rishi Sunak intended the firing of Nadhim Zahawi to draw a line under the affair. Yet there are already questions being asked in Tory circles about whether the report rushed out this morning exaggerated the case against him.

In his resignation letter, Mr S notices that Zahawi makes no confession of guilt. It suggests that Zahawi could yet comment on its findings.

So, why the silence over its contents? Perhaps Zahawi thinks he did notify the right people in the right way at the right time – and cannot see how this constitutes what the PM calls a ‘very serious breach’ of the ministerial code. Perhaps things are precisely as the report by Laurie Magnus, the PM’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests, says.

But still, Mr S can see six questions that remain outstanding: 

1.  Did Nadhim Zahawi notify Tom Scholar, the then permanent secretary, in August 2022 about having paid a penalty to HMRC the month before, after being notified of an investigation?

2. Did Zahawi update his register of ministerial interests to that effect in September?

3. Did members of Liz Truss’s team ask him about this when he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and were they given straight answer?

4. If the above are true, why omit these facts from the report? Are they not relevant to Zahawi’s defence? 

5. Was Nadhim Zahawi given the time to put forward his full version of events? 

6. Why the speed? These investigations tend to take weeks, if not months, to conclude. 

Of course, the biggest question of all is why Sunak didn’t just call Zahawi and ask. As grumbles grow from Zahawi supporters about a weekend hit-job that refused the accused the right to a defence, these are questions No. 10 might have to answer sooner rather than later 

Do we really have the full story about the Zahawi affair?

Why was Nadhim Zahawi fired? Today’s report by Laurie Magnus, the PM’s adviser on ministerial interests, says it’s a question of honesty and disclosure. HMRC started talking to Zahawi about his tax affairs in April 2021 but this became a formal investigation shortly after he became Chancellor on 5 July last year. By this time, he had been knocked out of the Tory leadership race. He had agreed to pay a penalty and the matter was closed. But he’s accused of keeping this hidden and has, it seems, been fired for the secrecy.

The Magnus report goes into detail about the offense. A minister facing an HMRC investigation would have been expected ‘to inform their permanent secretary and seek advice’, it says (paragraph 9) and then ‘update their declaration of interests form’. We’re left to believe that Zahawi did neither, thereby committing a career-ending breach of the ministerial code.

But is it really so? Allies of Zahawi say he did tell Tom Scholar, the then Treasury Permanent Secretary, about both the HMRC investigation and the penalty paid. And that his ministerial register of interests was up to date in September, when Liz Truss appointed him Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. So it’s a puzzle. Zahawi believes the Cabinet office authorities were fully in the picture when Zahawi was made Tory Chairman a month afterwards.

Zahawi, I understand, had hoped to go through all of this in a second meeting with Magnus next week. But he was told last night that their brief 30-minute meeting last week would be the end of it – and the final report would come out today. If so, this would also be odd: why such a short meeting? Why condemn him – fire him – without properly hearing him out? And if it was just a 30-minute meeting with the later session abandoned, why not say so?

Zahawi has said little in public, save for stressing that Sunak has his support. But if he did inform Tom Scholar – and if his register of ministerial interests was updated – then how does the Magnus report make sense? Are there parts of this story we’re still not being told?

This ought not to be too hard to check. Either Scholar was properly informed or he wasn’t. Either the Cabinet Office was briefed about this when Zahawi became Tory Chairman, or it wasn’t. Either his register of ministerial interests was updated last September (these things have to be signed and dated) or it wasn’t. It’s strange for there to be any debate about these basics.

Like everyone else, I have no idea who said what to whom: that’s what the Magnus report was supposed to settle beyond doubt. If there are still important facts omitted from the Magnus report, then this story may have a bit longer left to run.

Next Tory chairman: runners and riders

One man’s loss is another man’s gain and few know that maxim better than Conservative MPs. Members of the parliamentary party have already quietly begun discussing who will replace Nadhim Zahawi as their Tory chairman. And while no appointment is expected today, some names are already doing the rounds as to which MP is likely to get an overdue promotion or a recall from the wilderness. Below is a list of Steerpike’s runners and riders, from old warriors and young pretenders to the dispossessed and the never-possessed…

Greg Hands – A Sunak ally well-liked among London Tories. Has served four of the last five Prime Ministers and is never afraid to take the fight to Sadiq Khan’s Labour. If he can be persuaded to part his familiar berth at Trade, where he has served on and off for six years.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan – Served in cabinet for Trade and Transport under Johnson and Truss before being demoted to Minister of State at the Foreign Office under Sunak. Has kept her head down for the past three months and would signal Sunak’s determination to put old loyalties aside.

Andrew Bowie – A junior Trade minister and Sunak ally who backed him in both leadership campaigns last year. The West Aberdeenshire MP would be the first Scottish Tory to serve as party chair since 2005. But with a majority of just 843, could he really focus on campaigns elsewhere?

Matt Vickers – He served as Rishi Sunak’s election agent for the 2015 and 2017 campaigns and has sat for the decidedly Red Wall seat of Stockton South since 2019. Vickers was named Deputy Chairman of the party in July and would offer some much-need continuity for the CCHQ machine.

Stuart Andrew – A Welshman who sits for a West Yorkshire seat. Backed Sunak both times last year and spent two-and-a-half years in the Whips’ Office under Johnson. Thought to have a good knowledge of the parliamentary party and has a respectable ministerial record too.

Brandon Lewis – The archetypal ‘safe pair of hands.’ Lewis has held nine posts over the past eleven years, including the party chairmanship from January 2018 until July 2019. He was axed by Sunak last October though and may have been too disparaging about the current PM in last summer’s leadership race…

Damian Hinds – A former Cabinet minister now serving as Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice. Would be the kind of quiet, uncontroversial appointment that No. 10 might feel it needs after weeks of damaging headlines.

Paul Scully – Tory vice chairman under Theresa May, he was promoted to deputy chairman under Boris Johnson and has been mentioned as a possible candidate for London Mayor in 2024.

Craig Williams – Sunak’s eyes and ears as his long-serving Parliamentary Private Secretary. Respected as a good campaigner and savvy operator. Sits for Montgomeryshire, where the main threat is from the Lib Dems.

Lucy Frazer – The kind of ‘Blue Wall’ Tory who form the bedrock of Sunak’s support in the party. Has sat for South East Cambridgeshire since 2015 and is one of several ministers of state with a decent claim for promotion to the top table. A former President of the Cambridge Union, she was a QC at 40.

Priti Patel – One of the more unlikely but high-profile names doing the rounds. A former Home Secretary, she would certainly be more of a ‘big hitter’ than some recent appointments to the job. Has backed the Conservative Democratic Organisation, which has been campaigning for party members to get more of a say in future leadership contests. The CDO in turn is expected to shortly put out a petition calling for party members to have the right to choose the next party chairman. Which is somewhat awkward given the likely winner would probably be…

Boris Johnson – Jacob Rees-Mogg has backed him for the post already. What about it, eh Rishi?

Sunday shows round-up: Zahawi’s sacking ‘sad’, says Gove

The dismissal of embattled Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi is dominating the news this morning. Zahawi was sacked after an investigation by the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus found that he had breached the Ministerial Code in relation to his tax affairs. Laura Kuenssberg asked the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove about the affair – and how it reflected on Rishi Sunak and the government as a whole:

Gove – Developers ‘should pay up’ for building safety:

Sophy Ridge interviewed Gove before the big news broke about Zahawi. She asked him about what the government was doing to promote safety in new housing development, more than five years after the Grenfell Tower disaster:

Gove pledges leasing shake-up:

Gove also pledged to make extensive changes to the leasehold system before the end of the parliament:

Bridget Phillipson – Zahawi sacking ‘should have happened weeks ago’:

Laura Kuenssberg spoke to shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson, who argued that Rishi Sunak was a weak leader for not sacking his party chairman well before today:

Mary Bousted – Teaching strikes will go ahead:

The head of the National Education Union told Kuenssberg she didn’t think there was anything that could now put a stop to next Wednesday’s teacher strike:

Michel Barnier – ‘I don’t think we should speak about mistakes’:

And finally, Kuenssberg asked the former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier if he thought he had made any mistakes regarding the UK’s final Brexit deal:

Nadhim turns on the media

So. Farewell then. Nadhim Zahawi. It’s been quite the six months for the onetime favourite to succeed Boris Johnson. He accepted the Chancellorship in July, before turning on Johnson 36 hours later. He crashed out of the leadership race to replace Johnson within days, before being demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster after just two months at the Treasury. He then backed Johnson to be PM again in October, moments before the latter pulled out of the leadership race. Zahawi was subsequently demoted again by Rishi Sunak to the role of party chairman two days after that. And today he has now lost that post too after less than 100 days at CCHQ.

Zahawi’s inglorious tenure as party chair will be remembered mostly for the dogged focus of the press on his finances, following the revelation in July that he was being investigated for tax avoidance by HMRC while serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Clearly, the Stratford upon Avon MP hasn’t taken kindly to these journalistic endeavours. For the former vaccines minister has today quit with one last jab at his detractors in the press, in a somewhat graceless resignation letter that makes no reference to his breach of the ministerial code. After listing his various achievements, Zahawi ends by taking a pop at the Independent over one of its recent headlines:

I am concerned, however, about the conduct from some of the fourth estate in recent weeks. In a week when a Member of Parliament was physically assaulted, I fail to see how one headline on this issue ‘The Noose tightens’ reflects legitimate scrutiny of public officials. I am sorry to my family for the toll this has taken on them.

The Independent of course was the first outlet to report last July that Zahawi’s finances had been investigated by both the National Crime Agency and HMRC. Zahawi ends his letter to Sunak by declaring that ‘your five priorities are the right priorities and I will do whatever I can to help you deliver them.’

Given his recent efforts to help, Mr S suspects that’s an offer No. 10 won’t be rushing to take him up on…

Zahawi’s sacking could be Sunak’s ‘John Major moment’

It is a very dangerous time to be a Conservative MP and not just because the party is trailing by 20 points in the opinion polls with a general election looming.

The sacking of Tory chairman Nadhim Zahawi after an investigation found he seriously breached the ministerial code means that, soon enough, we will no longer be seeing his gleaming pate and tight suit on the front pages for day after day.

Rishi Sunak can – and no doubt will – claim to have handled the affair with principle and professionalism. The PM will insist that due process was applied, rather than the kind of kangaroo court resorted to by some previous premiers.

But that will not be the end of things as far as the press and our increasingly tabloid-style and sensation-seeking political broadcasters are concerned. They will now have blood in their nostrils and already be casting around for the next high-ranking Conservative to pursue over his (and it normally is a he) financial or personal affairs or any predilection for ‘bullying’ staff via such unthinkable behaviour traits as brusqueness or a tendency to shout.

The justification will be the public interest, especially given that Sunak promised on assuming office to make improving standards in public life a priority of his administration. But a more important factor is that the public are interested, or at least enough of them are to make ministerial headhunting a worthwhile pursuit for journalists and opposition politicians.

Given the horrid prevailing political cocktail of falling living standards and failing public services, enough voters are in a sufficiently scratchy mood to enjoy a series of sacrificial offerings.

It is unlikely the media will run out of material either. Whenever a governing party is fatigued in office and in a fatalistic mood, there is a tendency for its MPs to become more focused on pursuing gold than glory. The canniest will do so in a low-profile manner. But some will just fill their boots like Matt Hancock has done with his celebrity side hustle, despite it bringing to an end any hope he had of a return to high office. 

So, having claimed the head of Zahawi – and Gavin Williamson before him – the baleful eye of Sauron will be casting around for new victims. Keir Starmer and Labour will know that a rejuvenation of the idea of ‘Tory sleaze‘ is useful to them; it is a worthwhile attack, even though that will give those pursuing sleazy politicians a fresh precedent to turn on them pretty swiftly should they reach power. In PMQs last week it was telling that Starmer sought to link Zahawi’s controversies to a previous row over Sunak’s own financial circumstances including his wife’s former non-dom status.

As in the second half of John Major’s administration, so Rishi Sunak’s remaining time in Downing Street will be plagued by stories alleging impropriety or downright greed among his MPs. And Sunak’s promise on the steps of No. 10 as he took office to lead a government with ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level’ will be cited almost as frequently as was Major’s ill-fated 1993 ‘back to basics’ conference speech.

If there is a consolation in all this for the PM, it is that many voters are so cynical about politics that they simply assume Westminster will always be a hotbed of mutual backscratching and self-enrichment. They are unlikely to think a Labour-led alternative would do much better in this regard. Voters are unlikely to make sleaze levels a central factor in deciding who to vote for next time.

All Sunak can do is to stay calm, keep focused on delivering his big five early pledges and hope the electorate comes to appreciate having an unflappable captain steering the ship of state. As Enoch Powell once noted, a politician complaining about the media is like a sailor complaining about the sea. Sunak must resolve not to be that sailor, but the chances of further crew members being lost overboard or made to walk the plank are much higher after his party chairman’s spectacular downfall.

A chav’s guide to chavs

People who aren’t chavs think that chavs are offended by the word. I’m a chav and I can tell you with authority that we’re not. Trust me, I have a ghastly Welsh accent, filler in my lips and a penchant for Burberry nova check. Until recently I never even thought calling someone a chav was an insult. I use the term all the time as a compliment, of sorts.  

A clip of Kim Kardashian wearing the chav make-up look of yesteryear went viral on social media this month. Taking part in the ‘M to the B challenge’, a TikTok craze that has been going since 2020, Kardashian threw on an orange foundation shade, plus clumpy mascara and ‘concealer lips’ in homage to the British chav. 

What is usually a staple of a young girl readying herself for a night on the town in Liverpool was adopted by a reality TV star and business mogul worth £1.5billion. A chav win, surely, though various commentators used Kardashian’s stunt to argue that the word was outdated and patronising.

‘The word chav – though, being American, Kardashian is unlikely to know – is just not a word we use any more,’ wrote the Evening Standard’s Abha Shah. ‘It’s embarrassing and classist.’

Who is the royal ‘we’ there? It certainly isn’t chavs, who have always leaned into chaviness as the opinion-forming classes withdraw in disgust. Shah wouldn’t know a chav if she got slapped by one outside a nightclub.

The official definition of a chav is a young person characterised by coarse and brash behaviour. That doesn’t really come close to explaining the subtleties and widespread cultural essence of the British chav. If you are outside right now, on the Tube or in the coffee shop, you probably have one next to you. Don’t stare. 

There is confusion over the etymology of the word. It could be from the Romany word chavi – meaning child – which was recorded in the 19th century. Others say ‘chav’ derives from ‘Chatham average,’ a reference to the inhabitants of Kent town. There are different words for chav in different parts of the country; knackers, skangers, spides, charvers, scallies, neds. None of those words has quite the same power.   

The word as we know it sank into public consciousness in the early noughties – think Shameless, The Catherine Tate Show, and it was soon scooped up by the press. 

The Guardian — which still regards itself as a protector of the working class even though its readership is exclusively middle-class — once defined chav as ‘the noun which describes young men who wear cheap gold jewellery and baseball caps and hang around in shopping centers all over Britain.’ But that was only ever a small sub-section. Chavs have evolved and smartened up. The Slazenger trainers, baseball caps, and CP company coats have gone. Now it’s all Gucci and Balenciaga. 

The Chav aesthetic has always been about deception, which is something snooty people never understand. The 90s chav look evolved from male football fashion in the late 70s and 80s — the casuals. Football skinheads had started to attract the unwanted attention of security guards and police officers around the grounds. In an attempt to curb bad behaviour, bobbies would order the boys to take off their Doc Martens and leave them outside the stadium. Nothing if not savvy, the hooligans adopted a new look. When following England teams across Europe, the boys picked up French and Italian sportswear items from brands such as Lacoste, Sergio Tachini, Ellesse and Fila, allowing them to slip into the stadiums unnoticed. 

Genius, no? What kind of policeman would think badly of anybody dressed like a suave tennis star? 

This started a pattern which still keeps elite fashion buyers up at night: the chavification of glamorous brands. Look at what happened to Burberry – a company that received the prestigious Royal Warrant in 1955 – after casuals adopted the Burberry cap as part of their uniform. 

In 2004, after a heavy period of football rioting by the self-labeled ‘Burberry Boys’, the brand finally ordered manufacturers to discontinue their checked-caps range and clear shelves. The association would forever be etched in people’s brains. In the words of Peter York, author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, ‘Quite a lot of people thought that Burberry would be worn by the person who mugged them.’

But chavs have a canny ability to adapt to (or steal) whatever new luxury item they can spoil for the rich people who despise them. This, especially in women’s fashion, has led to a certain symbiosis of glamour and chavvy chic. 

The high-point of that process was the WAG Class of the 2006 World Cup. With their Louboutins and oversized sunglasses, the wives and girlfriends of England’s football team showed the world that a certain chaviness could be desirable. 

Of course, the middle-classes still looked down their noses at Victoria Beckham, Coleen Rooney, Cheryl Cole, Abbey Clancy et al. But these women, in their defiance, gave every young woman from a provincial town the nod to dig out their darkest shade of foundation and backcomb their hair until it fell out in clumps. Never really out of fashion, Chavvy Chic suddenly found itself at the forefront. 

It wasn’t just fashion. The WAGs were chavettes in every glorious sense of the word. They danced drunk on tables, blew tens of thousands of their husbands’ dosh in shopping sprees and happily let the tabloids see them topless. Abbey Clancy’s World Cup adventure ended early after she was shipped back when pictures came out of her sniffing cocaine. Being a chav is all about the highs and lows.  

There will inevitably be people who disagree with the pride I take in chavs. It is widely thought to be a despicable term used to shame the council housed and the violent. Yet it tends to be the most patronising, public-schooled professors — the people who least understand the way the underprivileged think — who want to prove they are chav-allies. What they don’t realise is that chavs don’t care. Being a chav is a lifestyle choice just like anything else – like being a goth or an emo or a mod. I’ve met more rich chavs than poor ones. Have you been to Ascot? 

In Owen Jones’s terrible book, Chavs, he claimed that chav-bashing is the ‘bastard child of a very British class war.’ What Jones failed to recognise is that chav transcends class. Call it the tinker horse shoe theory: working-class chavs have more in common with the upper-class than goths do with emos. They marry their cousins, drive old banger cars, eat pigeon, do drugs. Like chavs, upper-class families have no respect for bourgeois conventions. Many chavs liked Boris Johnson because his shambolic love life resembled their own.

Owen Jones is a class warrior, which means he has to keep things simple. Rich and poor; right and wrong. He presents the working class as a caricature, a single bloc. But what really drives the hatred of the word chav is not a love of the Burberry People. It is a contempt for the chavvy desire to ape the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. 

Jones’s thesis has a fatal flaw. He mistakenly thinks that ‘chavs’ and ‘the working class’ are synonymous and shows no attempt to distinguish between the two. To him, there are the chavs and chav-nots. The chavs are the ones that go on The Jeremy Kyle Show, and anybody else is a nasty, Tory-voting capitalist. 

Speaking of Kyle, left-wing commentators have long misunderstood the entertainment aspect of chav world. They think that lowbrow reality TV is created to patronise and embarrass those who take part, particularly chavs. Programmes such as Benefits Street or Can’t Pay? We’ll Take it Away are called ‘poverty porn’, and (usually privately educated) opinion-formers express their disgust for the ‘victims’ — as if they relate or care. 

When you understand the chav, however, you realise that chavvy reality TV contestants aren’t being taken advantage of. After all, they sign up to be a part of these shows, and usually receive some kind of financial reward.

Is it better to pretend these people don’t exist in the hope they’ll go away? After all, people really do illegally claim benefits. Some are very proud of their status. I once asked someone in high school what she planned to do when she finished her GCSEs. ‘Claim benefits, like my mam,’ she said. Good for her. 

Look past the shiny tracksuits, the gloss and the trainers, and you see that the chav is a cosmopolitan development. The chav is the result of an increasingly mobile and international upper-working class who aren’t rich but are able to jet around Europe on Easyjet. They can live in newly built Barratt homes with kids in matching pyjamas for Instagram. They have plastic lawns and eat cheeky Nando’s. It is Molly Mae and Tommy Fury. It is fat removal and ‘working in finance.’ Chav is money, now. Chavs are defiant. Chavs are winning. 

Whatever you think of them, whether you zip your handbag sitting next to one on the bus, or laugh at their arses hanging out of low-rise jeans, one thing is sure: the chavs shall inherit the Earth. 

Why Nadhim Zahawi was sacked

Nadhim Zahawi has this morning been sacked as Conservative party chairman. The Prime Minister made the decision to remove Zahawi from his government after an investigation by the Prime Minister’s independent ethics adviser found he had breached the ministerial code over his tax affairs. On receiving the report earlier today, Sunak decided that Zahawi could not remain in post now ‘it is clear that there has been a serious breach of the Ministerial Code’: ‘As a result,’ the PM wrote, ‘I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty’s Government’.

The row over Zahawi’s tax affairs has been going on for weeks, with Sunak even defending him earlier this month at Prime Minister’s Questions, suggesting the matter had been resolved. However, further reports – and Zahawi’s admission that his settlement with HMRC had included a penalty reported to be in the region of a million pounds – led to Sunak changing tack. The PM announced earlier this week that his independent adviser on minister’s interests, Sir Laurie Magnus, would look into the matter.

In his report – sent to the Prime Minister this morning – Magnus finds multiple breaches of the Ministerial Code. Magnus says that after Zahawi’s appointment as Chancellor in July, Zahawi completed a declaration of interests form which initially contained no reference to the HMRC investigation. While Zahawi later went on to reference it, Magnus says that ‘by failing to declare HMRC’s ongoing investigation before July 2022’ Zahawi failed to meet the requirement in the ministerial code ‘to declare any interests which might be thought to give rise to a conflict’.

Furthermore, the report finds a second failure of the Code on the issue of the tax settlement and penalty agreed with HMRC. Magnus says Zahawi ‘failed to update his declaration of interest form appropriately after this settlement was agreed in principle in August 2022’. He says Zahawi’s failure to disclose this information to the Cabinet Office meant there was no-one in the system to inform the Prime Minister when appointing him to government of the potential issue. In conclusion, Magnus, says ‘these omissions constitute a serious failure to meet the standards set out in the Ministerial Code’.

Should Sunak have acted sooner? That’s the charge from the opposition. No. 10 say that he made the decision that Zahawi must go as soon as he had read the report. In truth, the writing has been on the wall for some days now. No. 10 changed the language around Zahawi’s position in recent days – and ministers have been openly discussing potential successors. It was hard to find a figure in government who thought Zahawi would cling on.

It’s telling that Sunak has chosen to remove Zahawi rather than push him to resign. Some in government had hoped Zahawi would resign days ago so as to bring the matter to a close sooner. In his letter to Zahawi, Sunak points to the words in his first speech in Downing Street after becoming Prime Minister:

‘I pledged that the Government I lead would have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level’.

Sunak says this has been his guiding principle in handling the whole affair.

But as the PM continues to face questions on whether he was warned about the risks of appointing Zahawi (allegations No. 10 robustly denies) and with another investigation due back in the coming weeks regarding bullying allegations against Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, the row is not yet over (as I write in this week’s cover piece). The hope in No. 10 will be that by moving quickly on receiving the report and sacking Zahawi, Sunak is showing that he can make difficult decisions when needed. That’s just as well, given there are plenty more coming up the track.

Why I sacked Nadhim Zahawi

When I became Prime Minister last year, I pledged that the Government I lead would have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.

That is why, following new information which came to light in recent days regarding your personal financial arrangements and declarations, I asked Sir Laurie Magnus, the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests, to fully investigate this matter. You agreed and undertook to cooperate fully with the inquiry.

Following the completion of the Independent Adviser’s investigation – the findings of which he has shared with us both – it is clear that there has been a serious breach of the Ministerial Code. As a result, I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty’s Government.

As you leave, you should be extremely proud of your wide-ranging achievements in government over the last five years. In particular, your successful oversight of the COVID-19 vaccine procurement and deployment programme which ensured the United Kingdom was at the forefront of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. Your role was critical to ensuring our country came through this crisis and saved many lives. And as the Conservative party Chairman, you have undertaken significant restructuring to Conservative Campaign Headquarters and readied us for important work in the coming months.

It is also with pride that I, and previous Prime Ministers, have been able to draw upon the services of a Kurdish-born Iraqi refugee at the highest levels of the U.K. Government. That is something which people up and down this country have rightly valued.

I know I will be able to count on your support from the backbenches as you continue to passionately and determinedly serve your constituents of Stratford-on-Avon and represent the many issues and campaigns you are dedicated to. Thank you for your service to this and previous governments.

This letter from the Prime Minister to Nadhim Zahawi originally appeared on the No. 10 website.

Revealed: The damning probe into Zahawi’s tax affairs that led to his departure

Rishi Sunak has sacked Nadhim Zahawi over his tax affairs and a ‘serious breach’ of the ministerial code. The PM had asked Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, to probe the Tory chairman. Here is his conclusion which was released this morning and led to Sunak’s decision to fire Zahawi:

Dear Prime Minister,

1. You have asked me to review the circumstances and facts concerning certain tax affairs of the Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi, Minister without Portfolio, and that I assess these circumstances in the context of Mr Zahawi’s obligations under the Ministerial Code.
2. This report sets out relevant facts that I have established whilst respecting Mr Zahawi’s right to taxpayer confidentiality. It provides my assessment of the Minister’s conduct under the Ministerial Code, both in terms of its specific provisions and its overriding principles.
3. I should acknowledge that the Minister without Portfolio has provided his full and open cooperation in assisting with my inquiries. I am also grateful for the assistance I have received from officials at HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Cabinet Office.

Scope of work and areas of inquiry

4. The matter under review concerns the fact that Mr Zahawi was the subject of an HMRC investigation that resulted in a determination that tax was owed and that a penalty should be applied, falling into the HMRC category of “lack of reasonable care”. Mr Zahawi and HMRC have confirmed to me that this matter was resolved in principle in August 2022 with a settlement agreement signed in September 2022.
5. The technical detail of HMRC’s investigation and their determination is outside my scope. I have focused on Mr Zahawi’s handling of the matter in light of his responsibilities as a Minister who is subject to the provisions of the Ministerial Code. The Ministerial Code makes clear that Ministers are expected to “maintain high standards of behaviour and to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety”, observing the Seven Principles of Public Life and having an “overarching duty … to comply with the law and to protect the integrity of public life”.
6. As well as considering the above overarching obligations, I have considered three specific areas under the Code:
   1. i)  How the existence of an ongoing HMRC investigation was declared by Mr Zahawi with reference to his obligations under Chapter 7 of the Ministerial Code (up to August 2022).
   2. ii)  How the settlement of the HMRC investigation was declared by Mr Zahawi (from August 2022), and in particular in relation to his current role as Minister without Portfolio.
   3. iii)  The accuracy of public statements made by Mr Zahawi in relation to the matter, in view of his obligations under the Ministerial Code to be open and honest.

Findings
Declarations of ministerial interests

7. The Ministerial Code sets out that “Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or appears to arise, between their public duties and their private interests”. All Ministers are subject to an extensive and rigorous framework, designed to provide clear guidance on how interests are declared and handled. This includes a requirement that Ministers complete declaration of interests forms (which include questions about the status of their tax affairs), ensuring these are kept up to date at all times, and also discuss potential conflicts and other relevant matters on an ongoing basis with their Permanent Secretary. Ministers are also expected to disclose any relevant issues, including those which might give rise to possible conflicts, during the process of their appointment to any ministerial role. As a Minister of long standing, Mr Zahawi has operated within this framework over a significant period and should be familiar with its requirements.

Declaration of interests – HMRC investigation

8. With Mr Zahawi’s agreement, I have met with HMRC and received some details, including the timing, of his interaction with them. This commenced in April 2021 and included a meeting which he and his advisers attended with them in June 2021. Mr Zahawi has told me that he had formed the impression that he and his advisers were merely being asked certain queries by HMRC concerning his tax affairs, and that this impression persisted until he received a letter from HMRC on 15th July 2022 (dated 13th July). The principle of taxpayer confidentiality continues to apply. However, on the basis of the confidential information to which I have had access, including correspondence between HMRC and Mr Zahawi personally, I consider that an individual subject to the HMRC process faced by Mr Zahawi should have understood at the outset that they were under investigation by HMRC and that this was a serious matter.
9. I consider that an HMRC investigation of the nature faced by Mr Zahawi would be a relevant matter for a Minister to discuss and declare as part of their declaration of interests. I would expect a Minister to inform their Permanent Secretary and to seek their advice on any implications for the management of their responsibilities. I would likewise expect a Minister proactively to update their declaration of interests form to include details of such an HMRC process.
10. After his appointment as Chancellor on 5th July 2022, Mr Zahawi completed a declaration of interests form which contained no reference to the HMRC investigation. A later form acknowledged (by way of an attachment) that Mr Zahawi was in discussion with HMRC to clarify a number of queries. Only following receipt of HMRC’s letter received on 15th July 2022 (dated 13th July), did Mr Zahawi update his declaration of interests form to acknowledge that his tax affairs were under investigation, but he provided no further details other than the statement made previously that he was clarifying queries.
11. Given the nature of the investigation by HMRC, which started prior to his appointment as Secretary of State for Education on 15th September, 2021, I consider that by failing to declare HMRC’s ongoing investigation before July 2022 – despite the ministerial declaration of interests form including specific prompts on tax affairs and HMRC investigations and disputes – Mr Zahawi failed to meet the requirement (at paragraph 7.3 of the Ministerial Code) to declare any interests which might be thought to give rise to a conflict.

Declaration of interests – settlement of tax matter and penalty

12. Following an in-principle agreement in August 2022, in September 2022 Mr Zahawi and HMRC reached a final settlement of his tax investigation. As Mr Zahawi has intimated in his public statement of 21st January 2023, the settlement included a penalty applied on the basis of “carelessness” which, in this context, according to the HMRC Compliance Handbook, indicates an individual’s failure to take “reasonable care” in relation to their tax affairs.1
13. As set out at paragraph 11, I consider that Mr Zahawi should previously have declared the fact of the investigation. The subsequent fact that the investigation concluded with a penalty in relation to the tax affairs of a Minister also requires declaration and discussion. It is a relevant interest which could give rise to a conflict, and particularly so in the case of HM Treasury Ministers and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has responsibility for the UK tax system. As a result of my inquiries, I conclude that Mr Zahawi failed to update his declaration of interest form appropriately after this settlement was agreed in principle in August 2022. It was not until mid-January 2023 (see paragraph 16) that details of the earlier HMRC investigation and its outcome were declared.
14. I also conclude that, in the appointments process for the governments formed in September 2022 and October 2022, Mr Zahawi failed to disclose relevant information – in this case the nature of the investigation and its outcome in a penalty – at the time of his appointment, including to Cabinet Office officials who support that process. Without knowledge of that information, the Cabinet Office was not in a position to inform the appointing Prime Minister.
15. Taken together, I consider that these omissions constitute a serious failure to meet the standards set out in the Ministerial Code.
16. Mr Zahawi informed me that on 16th January 2023 he submitted, to his Permanent Secretary, his declaration of interests form in relation to his current role as Minister without Portfolio, to which he was appointed on 25th October 2022, and that in that form he included detail of the outcome of the HMRC investigation. At the time of my investigation this declaration was under consideration by the Permanent Secretary and had yet to be submitted onward to me for consideration. Given the seriousness of this matter, I would have expected Mr Zahawi to attend to his submission much more rapidly and, as stated in paragraph 14 above, to have notified Cabinet Office officials at the time of his appointment.

Public statements

17. On 10th July 2022, following media speculation, Mr Zahawi made a public statement. He said:

“There have been news stories over the last few days which are inaccurate, unfair and are clearly smears. It’s very sad that such smears should be circulated and sadder still that they have been published.

“These smears have falsely claimed that the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency, and HMRC are looking into me. Let me be absolutely clear. I am not aware of this. I have not been told that this is the case.

“I’ve always declared my financial interests and paid my taxes in the UK. If there are questions, of course, I will answer any questions HMRC has of me.”

1 HMRC internal manual Compliance Handbook: https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/compliance-handbook/ch81140

18. Mr Zahawi has told me that at the time of this statement, he was under the impression that he was answering HMRC’s queries, but that he was not under investigation. As set out in paragraph 8, I consider that an individual subject to the HMRC process faced by Mr Zahawi should have understood that they were under investigation by HMRC and that this was a serious matter.
19. Under section 1.3(d) of the Ministerial Code, Ministers have a duty to “be as open as possible with Parliament and the public”. Whilst this duty clearly does not extend to disclosing personal tax information, it does include a general duty to be accurate in statements to ensure a false impression is not given or maintained.
20. Mr Zahawi did not correct the record until 21st January 2023, when Mr Zahawi’s public statement indicated that he had reached a settlement with HMRC following an investigation. I consider that this delay in correcting an untrue public statement is inconsistent with the requirement for openness.

Conclusion

21. The General Principles of the Ministerial Code are very clear. Paragraph 1.1 states, “Ministers of the Crown are expected to maintain high standards of behaviour and to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety”. Paragraph 1.3 states, “The Ministerial Code should be read against the background of the overarching duty of Ministers to comply with the law and to protect the integrity of public life. They are expected to observe the Seven Principles of Public Life”. One of the Seven Principles of Public Life is Leadership, which requires that holders of public office should not only exhibit the principles in their own behaviour but also actively promote and robustly support the principles.
22. A Minister of the Crown has a responsibility to lead by example, demonstrating not just compliance with the Ministerial Code, but being an exemplar for integrity in public life. This means upholding high standards of propriety in their conduct as citizens and being actively conscious of possible conflicts between their private interests (financial or otherwise) and their ministerial responsibilities. Paragraph 7.2 of the Ministerial Code states that, “It is the personal responsibility of each Minister to decide whether and what action is needed to avoid a conflict or the perception of conflict”.
23. I consider that Mr Zahawi, in holding the high privilege of being a Minister of the Crown, has shown insufficient regard for the General Principles of the Ministerial Code and the requirements in particular, under the seven Principles of Public Life, to be honest, open and an exemplary leader through his own behaviour. I want to commend Mr Zahawi for his willingness to assist with my inquiry. I also fully appreciate the pressures faced by Ministers as they address the complex issues of government and the difficulties they encounter in balancing the demands of their personal lives and their ministerial responsibilities. These factors, however, cannot mitigate my overall judgement that Mr Zahawi’s conduct as a Minister has fallen below the high standards that, as Prime Minister, you rightly expect from those who serve in your government.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Laurie Magnus CBE

Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests

Dresden’s Rumpelstiltskin and the strange tale of European porcelain

Strolling along Dresden’s Brühlsche Terrasse, an elegant promenade above the River Elbe known as ‘the balcony of Europe’, the wartime destruction of Germany’s most beautiful city seems like the echo of a bygone age. Since reunification, the reconstruction of its baroque Altstadt has been meticulous – the panorama Canaletto painted has been painstakingly restored. Reduced to ruins in February 1945, Dresden can once more be called ‘the Florence on the Elbe.’

Much ink has been spilt over the rights or wrongs of the Allied bombardment of my father’s birthplace (he was born here in 1942 and survived the bombing as a small boy), obscuring the far more interesting story of what made Dresden so attractive in the first place. The reason the Saxon capital is so beautiful is largely due to a decidedly unenlightened despot called August der Starke (Augustus the Strong) and as you stroll along the Brühlsche Terrasse the roots of his finest legacy – the creation of European porcelain – lie right beneath your feet.

When August der Starke was born, in 1670, Dresden was a relative backwater, and it might have remained so if his elder brother, the Protestant Elector of Saxony, hadn’t died of smallpox in 1694. Augustus (the spare rather than the heir) had never expected to rule over Saxony, so he’d spent his pampered youth galivanting around Italy, Spain and France, where he acquired a taste for the finer things in life, and a Catholic, rococo sensibility. He met Louis XIV and was much impressed by the bombastic grandeur of Versailles. In 1697, he converted to Catholicism in order to win the crown of Poland and subsequently set about transforming Dresden into a city fit for a Teutonic Sun King.

Dresden became a boom town, full of grandiose new buildings – and like all boom towns, then and now, it attracted all sorts of adventurers, eager for a slice of the action. One of these chancers was a young chemist from Berlin called Johann Friedrich Böttger, who claimed to know the magical solution to the quest of alchemists throughout the ages – how to turn base metal into gold.

Böttger probably thought he could wangle a nice fat hand-out from August, a man who was lavishing money on all sorts of vanity projects (Pillnitz and Moritzburg castles are among the many flamboyant follies that have survived).

However, König August wasn’t nicknamed August the Strong for nothing. Reputedly weaned on lion’s milk, he’d sired several hundred bastard offspring. His favourite party trick was bending horseshoes with his bare hands. His aesthetic tastes were progressive, but his management style was medieval. Rather than giving Böttger a generous research grant and leaving him to his own devices, August imprisoned him in Dresden’s catacombs, and told him he’d only be released when he made good his promise.

Was August familiar with the German fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin, about the miller who brags that his daughter can weave straw into gold, and the king who imprisons her until she does so? Did he believe Böttger’s rash boast?  Or was incarcerating him merely a particularly malevolent practical joke?

Naturally, Böttger’s proposition turned out to be total BS, and so for several years he languished in Dresden’s catacombs, tinkering away to no avail. He might have remained there forever if August hadn’t recruited another German chemist called Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus, and commanded the two of them to work together on this futile scheme.

Von Tschirnhaus was equally incapable of turning base metal into gold, but he was a lot smarter than Böttger – an eminent mathematician and scientist, rather than an alchemist of dubious repute – and in 1707 he came up with something almost as valuable: a formula for creating fine porcelain, aka ‘white gold.’

For centuries, ever since the first porcelain arrived in Europe from China, Europeans had been trying to find a way of making fine porcelain of their own. Chinese porcelain was much coveted – European pottery was crude and heavy by comparison. Finding out how to make it was a tremendous breakthrough, giving Saxony an enormous advantage over every other European state.

August was delighted. He commissioned von Tschirnhaus to draw up plans for a new factory, devoted to the manufacture of Saxon porcelain. Since the process must remain top secret, a secure and relatively secluded location was selected – Albrechtsburg, a castle in Meissen, a hilltop town on the River Elbe.

By finding the formula for fine porcelain, von Tschirnhaus secured Böttger’s freedom. In 1708, he did Böttger an even bigger favour by conveniently dropping dead. As the only other person with a working knowledge of this new process, Böttger was the natural choice to head up this new factory instead.

August’s pioneering factory opened in Albrechtsburg in 1710, and though Böttger died in 1719, the factory remained in the same location, churning out Meissen china, until 1863, when it moved down the hill to Triebischtal, a nearby suburb where it remains today. Over 300 years on, the term Meissen remains synonymous with top-quality, highly collectable porcelain.

You can visit the factory and watch the craftsmen (and craftswomen) at work, and buy crockery and figurines, but the biggest treat is hunting for imperfect seconds in the old curiosity shops around Meissen, a medieval citadel which came through the second world war virtually unscathed.

August died in Warsaw in 1733, and was buried in Krakow, but his heart was brought back to Dresden and laid to rest in his Catholic cathedral, the Hofkirche. You can see the Hofkirche under construction, still under scaffolding, in a Canaletto painting in August’s Zwinger palatial complex.

The Zwinger also contains August’s priceless stash of porcelain: 2,000 pieces on show, out of a collection of 20,000. As well as an unrivalled display of Meissen, there are some precious Oriental pieces, most notably the Dragoon Vases, which August obtained from Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia in exchange for an entire regiment of dragoons. Mercifully, his hoard survived the Allied bombing, the Russian invasion, and 40 years behind the Iron Curtain. Now it’s open to the world again.

The first time I went to Dresden, in 1995, the only other foreigners on my internal flight were an intrepid Japanese couple. They spoke no German and scarcely any English, but they weren’t deterred. They’d come to see the porcelain. I saw them at the Zwinger. Next day, in Meissen, I bumped into them once more.

Back then August’s finest church, the Frauenkirche, was a pile of rubble – left there as a memorial by German communists after the war. When I returned to Dresden, a few years later, German capitalists were rebuilding it. Now it’s complete, a jumble of original and modern masonry, a mottled mix of old and new. Up close it’s spectacular, towering over the replica buildings that surround it. From a distance it looks like a patched-up Meissen ornament, shattered into a hundred pieces and patiently stuck back together.

My grandmother caught the last train out of Dresden before the Red Army arrived, taking my father back to her hometown, Hamburg. They’d been staying with my great aunt, whose husband was in the Luftwaffe (until 1945, Dresden was, quite rightly, regarded as the safest city in the Reich).

The house was by the airfield (a Soviet airbase during the Cold War) so it should have been a prime target, but the RAF and USAAF decided to bomb the historic city centre rather than the strategic targets on the outskirts, and so my relatives survived. Whenever I return to Dresden and wander round its rebuilt Altstadt, I’m struck that I must be one of the few living beneficiaries of that decision.

What the Census reveals about trans people in Britain

‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’. Brits were asked that question for the first time in the 2021 Census: 93.5 per cent said ‘yes’, 0.5 per cent said ‘no’ and the remaining six per cent did not respond. This means that, of those who answered, 0.58 per cent said their gender identity did not match their natal sex. In a debate where tensions are running high on both sides of the Scots border, this data is sorely needed – and is worth digging into.

The gender identity question confirms the rise in trans identities among youth. Among 16-24 year olds, one per cent said their gender identity was different from their sex. Among this age group, females were more likely than males to identify outside of their natal sex; the reverse was the case among older age groups. This attests to the growing popularity of trans identities among girls.

That we can examine this breakdown of trans identities by sex at all comes thanks to the efforts of campaigners, who sought to retain a distinct question on sex in the Census. These efforts succeeded in England and Wales and Northern Ireland (sadly, Scotland has gone its own sex-denialist way, with implications for data comparability).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), on the advice of lobby groups such as Stonewall, had originally planned to advise trans respondents to answer the sex question in terms of their gender identity if this differed from their sex. This would have made it impossible to identity the increase in girls with trans identities in the younger age groups.

It is hard to overstate the importance of Census data: it provides a snapshot of the entire population; it furnishes the benchmark against which we judge whether other data sources are representative. And it is vital for equalities monitoring. If an organisation wants to know whether its workforce represents the wider community that it serves, in terms of characteristics like ethnic group or sexuality, they can compare their organisational data to Census data. We can compare, for example, the proportion of people who say they are LGB at the BBC (8 per cent) to the proportion in the 2021 Census (3 per cent). This suggests that there is little need for diversity efforts at the BBC to focus on trying to increase the number of gay staff. Similarly, 2 per cent of BBC staff are trans, around four times higher than the proportion in the general population.

It’s particularly valuable to have Census data on the trans population, because it allows us to empirically assess some of the emotive claims that are made about this group of people. This includes claims that trans people are at high risk of violence, murder, and even genocide.

International Trans Day of Remembrance, on 20 November, is marked each year by organisations from the UN to the Information Commissioner’s Office taking to social media to commemorate trans people who have been murdered. The Trans Murder Monitoring project is an annual exercise carried out by Transgender Europe, which is funded by the European Union, according to its website. It records the numbers of ‘trans and gender diverse’ people who have been murdered internationally.

Every murder is devastating for those who know the victim. But during the ten-year period between 2013-2022 only four homicides of trans people were recorded in the UK, once reporting errors were corrected. During the same period, 7,118 homicides were recorded in the UK, combining data for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This suggests that murders of trans people were a tiny fraction of all murders, 0.056 per cent. This is around an order of magnitude lower than the Census estimate of the proportion of trans people in the population at 0.58 per cent. In other words, trans people were greatly underrepresented among homicide victims. Thanks to the Census, trans people can have confidence that they may safely ignore alarmist rhetoric encouraging them to fear for their lives.

While it is good news that we have data on both trans identities and sex, the data are not problem-free. According to the ONS, a majority of those categorised in the data as ‘trans woman’ said they were registered female at birth; a majority of those who were classified as ‘trans man’ said they were registered as male at birth.

This seems strange, as, by definition, a female can never become a transwoman, and a male can never become a transman. It may be that some trans-identified people gave false information about their sex, despite the fact that giving false information or failing to complete the compulsory questions in the Census is an offence. It would be unfortunate if messaging from the ONS and trans lobby groups opposing the collection of data on sex has undermined the quality of data on the sex of trans people. They should instead focus on educating people on why accurate data on both sex and gender identity are important for research and policy.

There are other possible sources of error. It may be that some people were confused by the gender identity question, and ticked the wrong box. This might be particularly likely for people whose first language isn’t English or who aren’t familiar with the concept of gender identity. The responses to the gender identity question were open-text rather than multiple-choice, and the ONS so far have not provided any information on how they categorised them. For example, does the ‘trans woman’ category include people who ticked ‘no’ on the question about their gender identity and then wrote in ‘woman’? It is hard to imagine someone writing ‘trans woman’ by mistake if they are not trans, but writing ‘woman’ (because you are one) could just be an error by people who are not fully au fait with gender theory. The ONS will need to provide more information on their working in order to allow us to interpret the data reliably. If less energy had been wasted undermining the sex question and more on constructing and testing a sound gender identity question, these problems may have been avoided.

Nevertheless, the 2021 data reaffirms that the decennial Census is an irreplaceable resource. Without it, we would know far less about what our society looks like, leaving policymakers and campaigners stabbing in the dark and operating under false assumptions. Politicians often call for ‘more light and less heat’ on the trans debate. The Census confirms that accurate data on both sex and gender identity are what we need to provide illumination on this topic.

Nadhim Zahawi and the end of honour

Nadhim Zahawi, who has been sacked by Rishi Sunak after days of headlines over his tax affairs, could learn a lot from the example of one of his predecessors as chancellor.

Labour chancellor Hugh Dalton entered the House of Commons to deliver his autumn Budget on 10 November 1947. On his way in, he was accosted by a journalist who jocularly asked him what he was about to say. Equally jovially, Dalton confided a couple of sentences on the changes in taxation he would announce within minutes.

Before he finished his speech, the tidbits he had disclosed to the nosy hack were in the evening papers and the London stock market was reacting.

Dalton’s indiscretion – it was hardly an offence – cost him his front bench career. Within hours he had offered his resignation to prime minister Clement Attlee and the offer had been accepted. Though he returned to office as a minister without portfolio the following year, Dalton‘s political career was effectively over.

Comparing Dalton’s honourable and swift exit to the stonewalling stance of Nadhim Zahawi over his dealings with the tax authorities – and Zahawi’s refusal to jump before he was pushed – gives us an insight into how standards in public life have slipped in the decades since Dalton’s day.

Time was when the merest hint of a ministerial mistake or slip, whether accidental or deliberate, spelled the swift end to political ambitions. No longer.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of Zahawi’s actions, whether they were within the rules or questionable, there is one key fact the Tory party chairman cannot escape from: he committed an oversight, involving millions of pounds, that he himself has described as ‘careless’.

Politically, Zahawi’s conduct has become a never ending story that has damaged the government and revived accusations of ‘Tory sleaze’ from the Boris Johnson era. This story has gone so far and shows no sign of going away; it is a fatal distraction from Rishi Sunak’s attempts to change this narrative and govern with integrity. While the PM has finally wielded the axe, the damage is done.

Such affairs always end the same way: once the media hounds are on the scent of a wounded minister they never let go until they have secured a scalp.

As a man of honour, whatever the rights and wrongs of Zahawi’s tax affairs, for the good of the party he chairs, Zahawi should have emulated Hugh Dalton – and stepped down before he was forced out.

Morris Chang: the microchip mogul caught between Biden and Xi

At the centre of the world’s tech sector sits a Taiwanese chip tycoon most people have never heard of. Morris Chang is the founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest chipmaker. He became rich and powerful by making chips the rest of the world can’t live without. And as the world’s semiconductor industry is being reshaped by Chinese and US efforts to control the future of chip technology, Chang finds himself courted by the world’s most powerful governments but also under pressure amid an escalating geopolitical clash.

Though TSMC is far from a household name, almost everyone uses its chips each day. It is hard to find a smartphone, data centre, or cell-phone tower without at least one TSMC-manufactured chip inside. The ubiquity of TSMC’s products have made it one of the world’s most valuable companies, overtaking the market capitalisation of older US tech firms like Intel or Chinese giants like Alibaba. In total, the company manufactures 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced processor chips.

This has made Chang one of the world’s most important tech tycoons. Yet he is also the most underestimated. The 91-year-old pipe smoker doesn’t fit the image of a hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley tech bro. Yet his company has sold more products than Steve Jobs’s Apple, and its reach is far more global than Jack Ma’s Alibaba. But, until recently, Chang’s name was scarcely known.

The tale of Morris Chang is not only a story of visionary entrepreneurialism and technical brilliance. Chang’s unique life, spanning China, the US and Taiwan, also illustrates the complexities caused by the widening chasms in the world’s tech ecosystem, as Washington tries to halt the flow of its most advanced technologies to the Chinese military, and Beijing spends billions in a desperate effort to catch up.

Born in 1931 in the coastal city of Ningbo, just south of Shanghai, Chang spent his childhood fleeing the conflicts that wracked China during the middle of the twentieth century. Invading Japanese armies forced his family to flee, first to Hong Kong, then to China’s wartime headquarters in Chongqing. As world war two ended, Chang moved to Shanghai, where he spent his late teenage years playing cards and tennis. When Mao Zedong’s communists seized power, Chang fled again, staying briefly in Hong Kong before winning admission to Harvard.

Upon arriving in the US in 1949, Chang discovered he was the only Chinese student in his class. He spent his first year at Harvard indulging his passion for English literature, but his family advised him to study something useful. ‘The only really serious… middle-class profession that a Chinese-American could pursue in the early Fifties was technical,’ he remembers. So he transferred to MIT and enrolled in an engineering programme.

At the time, the computer industry was in its earliest stages and Boston — where Chang was studying — was a major centre. After finishing his degree, Chang was hired by a company called Sylvania Electric to work on a new product called a transistor, which turned on and off to produce either a single 1 or a 0 in the new digital computers that took up cavernous rooms in the basements of large corporations and university research labs. The most advanced computers of the mid-Fifties might have hundreds or thousands of transistors. At Sylvania, Chang was tasked with honing the company’s manufacturing process to bring down the defect rate on transistors, which then as now were devilishly hard to make.

After a couple years at Sylvania, Chang received an offer to move to Dallas and work at Texas Instruments, a company on the brink of inventing a new product — an integrated circuit, or ‘chip’ of silicon with multiple transistors built into it, dramatically reducing the defect rate and allowing the transistors to be made much smaller. The first chips had just a handful of transistors embedded in them. Today, TSMC’s most advanced chips have billions.

At Texas Instruments, Chang developed a reputation for a nearly magical ability to hone manufacturing processes, a unique sort of intuition that led coworkers to compare him to Buddha. Yet he was not nearly so serene. He was known for relentlessly demanding manufacturing improvements by squeezing his colleagues to work more efficiently. ‘If you hadn’t ever been chewed out by Morris,’ one coworker remembered, ‘you hadn’t been at TI.’

This combination of technical brilliance and managerial tenacity helped Chang rise rapidly at TI. When the company was exploring opening an offshore assembly facility, Chang was asked to help. Though he’d never been to Taiwan, several former classmates recommended the island, so Chang visited in 1968, getting to know Taiwan’s powerful economic officials. TI opened a plant in Taiwan the next year, and Chang stayed in touch with the Taiwanese leaders, who — because they claimed sovereignty over all China — considered Chang one of their citizens. Chang, meanwhile, was focused on rising in the ranks at TI. He was in the running to become the firm’s CEO but was passed over in the early 1980s, and eventually decided to leave.

The mythology of every tech visionary involves several years in the wilderness developing ideas that society isn’t yet ready for. In Chang’s case, this idea was the ‘foundry’ model of chipmaking. At the time, almost all chips were designed and manufactured by the same firms, but Chang believed the future would see increasing division between these two functions. He was mulling over the implications when he received an unexpected offer to move to Taiwan and help build the country’s semiconductor industry.

Given a blank cheque by the Taiwanese government, he decided to create the world’s first chip foundry, not to design chips, but to manufacture them to the specifications of any customer. TSMC opened its doors in 1987. The ‘foundry’ business model worked better than even Chang expected, providing economies of scale that hardly any competitors can match. Today, thanks to TSMC’s success, Chang is a billionaire and an elder statesman in Taiwan and the world’s tech industry. Yet he finds himself and his company under pressure from the new politicisation of the tech sector, an accelerating arms race between China and the United States, and the growing risk of war over Taiwan, the country he now calls home.

More than any other company, TSMC stands at the centre of US-China tech tension. Neither country can replicate its unique manufacturing capabilities nor its vast production capacity. And both are hugely reliant on TSMC’s chips. China spends as much money importing chips as it does on oil. Chip sales constitute 40 per cent of Taiwan’s exports. The biggest US firms — Apple, Google, Amazon and others — would face vast disruption if TSMC’s production were knocked offline.

Yet TSMC’s production isn’t only about smartphones or consumer goods. In an age of pervasive surveillance and precision missile strikes, militaries are also reliant on TSMC’s production. Most chips are dual-use goods, equally capable of ending up in civilian or military equipment. So the world’s militaries, no less than the world’s tech companies, need access to Taiwan.

As the US has ramped up prohibitions on the transfer of tech to China, TSMC has been caught in the middle. Until 2020, its two biggest customers were Apple and Huawei, before the US blacklisting forced it to slash sales to the Chinese telecom giant. More recently, it has halted manufacturing for Chinese AI chip start-ups that faced US sanctions. Chinese government researchers have even publicly speculated about the need to ‘seize TSMC’ if US restrictions escalate.

Washington, meanwhile, is offering new subsidies while pressuring the Taiwanese government to help convince TSMC to build a cutting-edge facility in Arizona. However, this plant will still be slightly behind TSMC’s most advanced Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities when it comes online in 2024. The CHIPS Act legislation that will provide TSMC with subsidies also places limits on the company’s ability to invest in China. Other governments are pushing for TSMC investments in their countries; the company has already started construction of a new plant in Japan and is in talks with Germany and Singapore about facilities there, too.

All this makes Chang more influential than ever. In the past three months alone, he’s met with President Joe Biden, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and even — at the sidelines of a recent diplomatic meeting in Thailand — Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Yet his apparent increased influence comes as his company’s business of supplying both the US and Chinese tech sectors from Taiwan faces unprecedented pressure. With a life and career spanning China, the US and Taiwan, no one has benefited more than the globalisation of American tech firms or the integration of the US and Chinese economies. Yet Chang’s influence is peaking at the very moment these trends are beginning to rapidly reverse.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s World edition.