When will the DUP realise the truth about the Tory Brexit strategy?

Are the Tories serious about getting rid of the troublesome Northern Ireland Protocol? The latest extension to the so-called grace period – the third in recent months – means that plans for post-Brexit checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland have been suspended again. But this isn’t the good news you might think it is for unionists in Northern Ireland.

In the short term, of course, it avoids a repeat of ‘sausage wars’ and megaphone diplomacy around the Protocol’s Article 16 (which allows Britain or the EU to take unilateral action in certain circumstances). This can only be good news. Yet for nervous unionists there is a disturbing lack of security about what might happen when this grace period does eventually come to an end. What’s more, this limbo period does nothing to help those politicians like DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson who desperately need to reassure voters of what the future holds for Northern Ireland in this post-Brexit era. 

But rather than give the DUP security and reassurances they can sell to voters, David Frost and Boris Johnson appear to be condemning unionists and loyalists to the constitutional equivalent of the Hotel California.

Before the summer, the DUP’s former leader and sometime Northern Ireland agriculture minister Edwin Poots spoke of ‘significant movement’ on the Protocol on the part of the Government; instead, as the TUV leader Jim Allister said, this ‘merely delays implementation of further excesses and does not address the fundamental constitutional issue of placing Northern Ireland under foreign jurisdiction, laws and courts’.

So what will Donaldson and the DUP do now? It has been a low-key end to the summer for the party after the trauma of the coups to oust Arlene Foster and Edwin Poots. With the most recent polling suggesting a profound collapse in DUP support ahead of the 2022 Stormont Assembly Elections, some are likely to be keen on the party finally adopting a more robust course of action, such as crashing the Assembly and Executive.

Donaldson seems unlikely to do that, yet the Government’s current approach to the Protocol is leaving him with little room for manoeuvre. The fear among a certain section of unionism is that this endless series of extensions are part of a strategy to browbeat them into submission.

If so, is it working? Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie, who is enjoying a surge in the polls, has suggested a series of measures to mitigate the trade pressures facing the Province; these include a specific labelling system for British products entering Northern Ireland, designating its ports as free ports and a ‘cross-border compliance body’.

Published a day after Beattie met with Donaldson and Jim Allister of Traditional Unionist Voice to discuss a unified response to the Protocol, the reaction, predictably, has been one of derision and cries of treachery. The proposed cross-border element, in particular, has sparked anger, with the DUP’s Sammy Wilson stating Beattie’s proposals are ‘more focused on getting a solution which suits Dublin rather than suits the Union’.

Wilson has a point. But perhaps he is missing what the UUP has picked up on: it seems highly unlikely that the Protocol will be gone before the Assembly elections next year. The DUP’s failure to realise this means, for now, that the UUP are reaping the benefits: the party is seemingly taking support off the Alliance party, Ulster’s purported political middle ground. Based on their moves of recent days, the UUP have reached the conclusion that pragmatism rather than protest may pay off in the long run.

After a summer which some predicted would be wrecked by disturbances passed off comparatively peacefully, political unionism enters autumn evidently divided on where to go next and how to do it. This set of circumstances may suit some in Westminster and Whitehall, content in the knowledge that, once again, after a lot of thunder and noise, yet another unionist campaign is starting to run out of steam. But in the long term, the Tories are still doing little to help out their old allies, the DUP.

Even Tories should be wary of Gove’s election stitch-up

Conservative politicians appear willing to revolt on every issue: tax rises, China, lockdowns. But on the accumulation of power by their party they remain silent. The system is being rigged to their advantage, and on that shady objective they are happy to give the Johnson administration a free pass.

Imagine a football club giving itself the right to decide when the referee can grant a penalty – or a gang of potential criminals having a veto over police investigations – and you will understand the impact of the government’s latest proposals perfectly.

Its Elections Bill places the referee under the control of the ruling party and the cops in the usual suspects’ pockets. Ministers want to set the ‘strategic and policy priorities’ of the Electoral Commission. It will no longer be an independent organisation, that investigates without fear or favour, but the creature of the politicians it is meant to protect us against.

In authoritarian states, the ability to nobble the ref is the first step on the road to one-party rule. David Howarth, a former Electoral Commissioner, told Open Democracy that policy control up to and including control of individual cases gives ministers the ability to interpret the Electoral Commission’s powers to favour the ruling party.

The government must be counting on no one caring. Most people have no idea of the existence of the Electoral Commission. We live in a country that has become used to free and fair elections. We take them as a part of the natural order, rather than seeing them as public goods that have to be fought for and defended.

The attack by the Tories has been planned for years. After the 2019 election, Labour politicians were surprised to see the Conservatives placing Michael Gove on the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. What, they wondered, was a senior minister doing on an obscure technical committee? They soon found out. 

Although Johnson is a slapdash dilettante, Gove is methodical. The man who in his neo-con days in the noughties wrote movingly of the need to defend liberal societies against radical Islam appears not to be the pro-democracy enthusiast he once was.

The Conservative party built its majority on the committee by appointing MPs with a grudge against the Electoral Commission. Craig Mackinlay has a place. After being cleared of knowingly falsifying election expenses in 2019 – and as his campaign manager received a suspended sentence for dishonestly preparing election returns – he cried: 

‘I can’t even begin to relate, in words, the indignity of being in the dock, behind glass in court 7 of Southwark crown court’. 

So, too, does Karl McCartney, the Conservative MP for Lincoln, who complained he was the victim of an Electoral Commission ‘witch hunt’ after the Crown Prosecution Service cleared him of electoral impropriety in 2017.

Some conservative-minded Spectator readers may not care. The whole point of culture war is to subvert respect for the integrity of the democratic system. The right (or left) makes their opponents appear so diabolical that any swindle is justified if it serves the end of keeping the enemy from power.

In the US, contempt for democratic propriety has reached the stage where large sections of the Republican party reject the results of free and fair elections. The silence of otherwise rebellious Conservatives in the UK on the attacks on judicial review and the human rights act, on the BBC and the integrity of public-sector broadcasting regulation suggest that Manichean propaganda has done its work here as well. Whatever their doubts about Boris Johnson, they agree that the system must be warped to ensure the Conservative party remains in power. If Gove is willing to twist it out of shape, you won’t hear them complain.

Is it worth reminding you that the interests of Conservatives and interests of the Conservative party are not identical? The Tory party is now the Property Developer party. The Financial Times calculated that a quarter of total donations made to the Tory party since July 2019 came from individuals and companies in the sector. 

If you live in a city, where the old buildings are being cleared or blocked out from the light by sky-scrappers – or near a section of the green belt disappearing under concrete – you must feel that Johnson wants to rig the planning system as surely as you may now feel the electoral system is under threat. It is not in your interests for the investigator of the influence of money on elections to be neutered.

Nor is it in the interest of any Conservative with an eye to the future. In years from now, somehow, left-wingers will be in power again, and all the jobbery and jiggery-pokery the Tories have used to maintain their rule will be the left’s to dispense with. 

It is not just the Electoral Commission. Campaign group Best for Britain highlights Gove’s attempt to give ministers a new power to place restrictions on groups’ – including charities and civil society organisations – spending on political campaigning in the year before an election. 

As Johnson is repealing the Fixed Term Parliament Act, no one knows when the next election will be. Trade unions, charities and individuals could face the prospect of punishment when they had no grounds to know that they were breaking the law. Perhaps the government wants them to shut up permanently. It certainly gives that impression.

If the same rules applied to everyone, there would at least be consistency. But the government has inserted a clause into the bill that the Secretary of State (Gove for now) can add or remove the names of organisations and individuals from the list of regulated bodies. You can see him and his successors adding the names of trade unions and removing the names of the Countryside Alliance and property developers.

This sinister measure seems designed to keep the Conservative party in power indefinitely, and it feels futile to warn Conservatives that the weapons they have forged will be turned on them. 

Nevertheless, if Conservatives do not believe in democratic propriety they should at least consider self-interest. However hard it is to imagine it, they will be gone one day. Nothing lasts forever. Not even Tory governments.

The best and worst of ministerial reshuffles

Westminster is ablaze with rumours about a long-awaited government reshuffle. Half the lobby think it’s happening; half of them insist it’s not. Scraps of information are compared and scrutinised in pubs and bars across Whitehall; Whatsapps blaze with talk of three line whips and special advisers cancelling leave. One thing’s for certain: tomorrow will be an excellent time for making phone calls to ambitious Tory MPs from withheld numbers…

A good reshuffle can re-energise a flagging regime; a bad one risks causing confusion and discontent. Examples of the former include Churchill bolstering his ranks in 1942 or Thatcher’s purging the wets in 1981. Cases of the latter are (sadly) more frequent and can be said to include Thatcher mishandling Howe in 1989 and Blair appointing his fourth Home Secretary in five years in 2006. 

All too often, forgetful Prime Ministers are distracted by placating the big beasts to notice the fate of minnows in the junior ministerial ranks. Back in 2012 David Cameron was reported to be so ‘distracted’ at the end of a busy day of chopping and changing that he ‘failed to catch what Lord Hill was saying to him when they met.’  Warned he was late for a photocall, the Prime Minister left the room telling the education minister to ‘carry on the good work,’ leaving him with little choice but to remain in office.

Tony Blair meanwhile interrupted the birthday party of Liam Byrne’s son in 2005 to offer him a job at the department of trade and industry, only for his chief of staff to call ten minutes later and redirect him to health instead. Then again Blair had form in this department – in May 2003 he inadvertently appointed Chris Mullin to replace a minister who resigned over Iraq after Blair forgot that Mullin had also voted against the war. 

A year earlier he had, in the words of Damian McBride: ‘forgot Home Office minister Angela Eagle existed, gave someone else her job and effectively sacked her from the Government by mistake – and without informing her.’ German-born Gisela Stuart later recalled that the only time Blair ever managed to pronounce her name properly was when he sacked her.

His successor was, sadly, little better. Poor Malcolm Wicks was meant to join Gordon Brown’s Cabinet in 2007 but during the excitement the post-it note bearing his name fell on the floor and was trampled by a special adviser. By the time anyone noticed, the reshuffle was finished and he was out. In the same reshuffle, Brown made Meg Munn Minister for Women and Equalities – before realising he had already appointed his full allowance of ministers and couldn’t put any more on the pay role. Munn kept her post but was informed she was not to be paid – a move that did not go down well with female MPs or journalists the next day.

Civil servants will no doubt be glad that they no longer play a role in such shenanigans. Winston Churchill’s former aide Jock Colville, then just a 25 year-old assistant private secretary, recalled in his diaries that: ‘It was my difficult job to explain on the telephone to Kenneth Lindsay, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Denham and Captain McEwen that their services were no long required.’ 

Churchill’s successor Clement Attlee preferred to deliver the news to underlings in person. When John Parker, MP for Dagenham, became the first member of his administration to be sacked, Parker had the temerity to ask Attlee why. Attlee, notably taciturn, replied bluntly ‘Not up to the job.’ 

Harold Macmillan seemed to almost revel in the bloodshed in 1962 when he oversaw the so-called ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in which Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet. An indignant Lord Kilmuir complained to Supermac that his his cook would have more notice; Macmillan replied that good cooks were harder to find than good Lord Chancellors. Enoch Powell remained unconvinced about his premier’s professions of sorrow, noting drily: ‘I dare say Henry VIII might have told you afterwards how much he regretted sending people to the block.’

It was Gladstone who claimed a Prime Minister must be a ‘good butcher.’ Tomorrow we could find out if Boris has learned to carve the joint.

The West’s Islamist capitulation

On Monday, Tony Blair addressed a military think tank in London and stated that the West should continue to intervene in countries under threat from Islamist extremism. According to the former PM, who led Britain as it joined the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, an isolationist policy would serve no purpose because: 

Islamism, both the ideology and the violence, is a first-order security threat and, unchecked, it will come to us even if centred far from us… Its defeat will come ultimately through confronting both the violence and the ideology, by a combination of hard and soft power.

His declaration was along the lines of the one he made in October 2015 at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. Then Blair said that the West would be unable to vanquish Islamist terrorism if it doesn’t first intervene to eradicate the ideology. ‘The reality is that in parts of the Muslim community a discourse has grown up which is profoundly hostile to peaceful co-existence,’ he warned. ‘Countering this is an essential part of fighting extremism.’

They were bold words, not too dissimilar from Emmanuel Macron’s statement last year after the brutal killing of the French schoolteacher Samuel Paty. But on that occasion, there was fury across the Muslim world, with threats made against Macron and his people. None of France’s allies in Europe and North America rallied to Macron’s side, evidence that the West has neither confronted nor countered Islamist extremism in the years since Blair gave his address in the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

On the contrary, the West is withdrawing from the ideological fray. Witness the way a Yorkshire schoolteacher was abandoned by politicians and teaching unions earlier this year after he dared show a picture of the Prophet Mohammed during a discussion about freedom of expression. Theresa May’s promise to have some ’embarrassing conversations’ after the London Bridge terror attack in 2017 is just one of many empty pledges made by western leaders in the last decade.

This insidious capitulation to Islamist ideology is attributable largely to the spread throughout western society of another strain of extremism: one that promotes diversity above all else and sees any criticism of non-western thinking as racist by definition. This ideology, as intolerant and vengeful as Islamism, also seeks to bring down western civilisation. Consequently, many of its adherents appease and excuse the West’s enemies.

Who could have imagined just a few years ago that in 2021 the Canadian minister for women and gender equality would call the Taliban her ‘brothers’? A curious choice of word to describe men who execute pregnant Afghan policewomen in front of their families.

Unequivocally condemning Islamist extremism is, to use the mot du jour, ‘problematic’ for some western politicians. Perish the thought they might be told to check their white privilege.

Where once the West had values that it was prepared to defend to the hilt, now there is only cowardice. So when a by-election is held in the town from which that Yorkshire schoolteacher was hounded, the candidates avoid discussing his plight; when a teenage girl in France was forced into hiding for criticising Islam, the justice minister scolded her for using words that were ‘clearly an infringement on freedom of conscience’. And when a teacher was decapitated outside a French school for showing his pupils a picture of the Prophet, the Prime Minister of Canada lamented his death but in the same breath declared that ‘freedom of expression is not unlimited… in a respectful society such as ours, everyone must be aware of the impact of our words’.

The bitter truth is that while western nations were busy intervening in Afghanistan they were indifferent to the spread of Islamism within their own countries. An alarming number of intellects have been atrophied by this new ideology of authoritarian diversity — to the point where they are unable to distinguish between unacceptable anti-Muslim sentiment and legitimate criticism of Islamist ideology. As a result, extremism flourishes. It should not be a surprise when a British survey finds that half of Muslims polled thought homosexuality should be illegal and a French survey reports that 57 per cent of young Muslims consider the laws of Sharia more important than those of the Republic.

A few months after the invasion of Afghanistan a book was published in France called The Lost Territories of the Republic. Its editor was ostracised by the intelligentsia for his grim depiction of the parallel society that was growing within France. But from these closed-off communities emerged Islamist extremists such as Mohammed Merah, the Kouachi brothers and the Bataclan killers.

In the wake of the London bombings of 2005, an angry Tony Blair promised the nation that ‘the rules of the game are changing’. No longer would he allow the country’s reputation for tolerance to be ‘abused by a small fanatical minority’. But the rules of the game didn’t change and, as I wrote last week, in recent years Islamists have exploited the complacency of the British state to commit a series of bloody attacks in London and Manchester. Nearly all the perpetrators, like those involved in the 2005 atrocity, didn’t, in the words of Blair, ‘come to us’. They were already here. They were born and bred Britons, just as most of France’s Islamist extremists are homegrown.

If the West is serious about defeating Islamist extremism, the focus should not be overseas but at home, intervening in the suburbs of Brussels, Barcelona, Paris and London. That’s where the terrorists come from, as does their ideology, propagated in mosques and coffee shops and on social media.

This war will be won only if the West rediscovers its moral courage and its faith in its inherent goodness. But don’t hold your breath. Our politicians are weak and feeble and the greatest fear of most presidents and prime ministers isn’t the threat of Islamist extremism but the thought someone might call them Islamophobic.

Did Chinese fentanyl kill Michael K. Williams?

Did Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, kill Michael Kenneth Williams, the man who played ‘Omar’ in The Wire? Within minutes of his death being announced yesterday, speculation was circulating on Twitter. New York Police Department sources have told the Daily Mail they suspect fentanyl was involved.

The world only seems to notice when a celebrity overdoses. In 2016, Prince’s death from a cocktail of fentanyl and other substances was an important milestone in awakening America to the horrific opioid drug epidemic that had crept up on the country since the 1990s.

But lots of non-famous people are dying all the time because of fentanyl from China, which has flooded the US criminal scene in recent years.

There is more than a little irony in the fact that the US is now on the receiving end of Chinese exports of synthetic opioids. In the first half of the 19th century, America sat on Great Britain’s coattails to become a major participant in the export of drugs to China. Whereas British opium was grown in Bengal and exported from Calcutta, America smuggled its opium to China from Turkey where US traders commanded a virtual monopoly.

Perhaps the greater irony is that it is Wuhan, the city whose name is synonymous with the origins of Covid-19, that is one of the major manufacturers of the opioids feeding the drug-death crisis that has ravaged the US for the last two decades.

Since 1999, the US Centre for National Health Statistics has calculated that opioid deaths in America have risen from 8,000 per annum in 1999 to 49,860 in 2019; in aggregate, over this period the opioid pandemic in the US alone has cost more than 500,000 lives. This compares with 630,000 deaths from Covid over the last 18 months. The average age of opioid deaths is about 40, however, compared to over 80 for Covid.

America’s opioid addiction costs over $1 trillion per annum, not including the cost of ‘long’ opioid addiction. Added to the drug deaths are the millions who continue to suffer from the effects of opioid addiction including the families of addicts. Opioids have caused social devastation in America particularly in the Trumpian ‘fly-over’ states of middle America.

The rise of fentanyl can in part be explained by the ease of transport and distribution compared to the import of cocaine from South America. Until recently, online sales and the US Postal Service have done the job. The economics of fentanyl are compelling. According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency, in 2017 a kilo of fentanyl could be bought for $5,000 ($1,000 less than a kilo of heroin) and, after being cut with agents such as talcum and caffeine, could be stretched to between 16 and 24 kilos; the profits can amount to some 20 times more than a kilo of heroin. Just two milligrams of fentanyl can produce a fatal overdose.

Like methamphetamine (better known as crystal meth), fentanyl can be cooked up in labs in poorly policed areas and transported anywhere. Although deaths from crystal meth took off at the same time as fentanyl in 2014, it registers just one-third of the deaths by comparison. Meanwhile, deaths for heroin and cocaine have flatlined.

Not surprisingly, opioid manufacture in China is an embarrassment to Xi Jinping. There is nothing Xi likes more than lambasting foreigners for the 19th-century flood of opium and China’s subsequent ‘100 years of humiliation’ in the Opium Wars. Thus, when Trump requested that Xi shut down the Chinese manufacturers of Fentanyl, the President seemingly scored a rare victory against his opposite number. Xi jumped to it, or perhaps just appeared to. He realised that criticisms of the West would fall on stony ground if, at the same time, China was pumping America full opioids.

Nevertheless, despite Xi’s crackdown, US drug deaths led by fentanyl hit a record 93,000 in 2020. Chinese manufacturers have become slier in their operations. In some cases, labs have been moved to remote locations or even overseas. Companies have started to supply fentanyl precursor chemicals or have developed unregulated derivative opioids. In 2017 only 19 of the 30 known analogues of fentanyl were designated as controlled substances under US Federal legislation.

The Centre for Advanced Defence Studies found 31 vendors were still selling precursor chemicals on Alibaba’s trading platform in 2019. A disgruntled Trump tweeted: ‘President Xi said this [the export of fentanyl] would stop — it didn’t’. In addition, new distribution channels have been developed, notably via the dark web.

In Europe, opioids have yet to reach pandemic levels. However, there are hot spots, which include the Netherlands and Estonia. To the embarrassment of first minister Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland has an opioid death rate almost 13 times higher than the European average.

Neither is England likely to escape the opioid pandemic. There is alarm that traces of carfentanyl, an opiate 100 times more powerful than fentanyl that is used to tranquilise elephants, have been found in the north of England’s drug chain.

In Asia, as in America, the social consequences of the opioid pandemic are catastrophic. In the Philippines, where President Duterte came to office on a populist pledge to deal with the exponential growth of drugs and the crime gangs that peddle them, dealers have faced widespread extrajudicial murder by death squads. By some tallies, as many as 20,000 Filipinos have been killed for their drug links.

When asked by Trump about the drug problem in China, Xi replied, ‘We give the death penalty to people who sell drugs. End of problem.’ Except it’s not. Since 1999, the official number of drug addicts in China has risen from 150,000 to 2.5 million while independent experts suggest that the real number is at least five times higher. Statistics on the level of opioid death in China are not readily available but it seems unlikely that the country has escaped the opioid blight.

Does the opioid pandemic have an impact on the Covid epidemic? Early studies suggest it does. Last October an article in Molecular Psychiatry reported that an analysis of 73 million patients at 360 hospitals in the US showed that drug users were not only at higher risk of contracting Covid but were suffering worse consequences as well. Opioid users are ten times more likely to have had Covid than other types of drug users.

While vaccines may one day eradicate Covid, the prospect of ending the opioid pandemic seems far less likely. It is a sobering thought that over the long-term the Wuhan derived opioid pandemic may well prove a greater killer than Covid-19.

Why I’m boycotting a festival of ideas

What’s the one idea that can’t be debated at a festival of ideas? The answer, it turns out, is the Covid Pass.

I was delighted to be asked to give a book talk and join a debate at How The Light Gets In, the world’s largest festival of philosophy and music. I checked the website to ensure there were no discriminatory Covid Pass policies and agreed. So, I was surprised when someone who had bought tickets told me that they had cancelled their tickets because the festival had imposed the policy.
I have withdrawn from the event. I would like to attend (I’ve enjoyed it before) and debate the ideas of our time, but Covid passports are discriminatory and illiberal, There is no strong scientific case for their use and I don’t wish to participate in an event that endorses them.
I would have made these points in ‘Playing With Fire’, the debate about safety and risk at which I was supposed to speak. Sociologist and author, Frank Furedi, has withdrawn from the same debate. Meanwhile, Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, has withdrawn from a debate about big tech and democracy for the same reason. I know other high-profile speakers are following suit. What could be more typical of the age of Covid: event organisers are trying to put on lively discussions about freedom vs safety, but their own restrictive Covid policies mean they can’t get decent voices on the side of liberty.
One of the organisers of How The Light Gets In told me they had introduced the policy to make the audience ‘feel safe’. Although I respect that they wanted to reassure ticket buyers, I find it difficult to respect the voluntary adoption of a controversial and unjustified policy that will exclude both audiences and speakers.
To be fair, How The Light Gets In has tried to adopt a broader approach, by allowing a negative test result or proof of prior infection. There are still issues with this approach — which I can’t trouble this article with — but, regardless, the organisers promote and favour the Covid Pass, describing it as ‘the easiest way to identify your Covid status is with a Covid Pass’.
As data from the UK and other highly vaccinated countries now shows, the vaccine does not necessarily stop you transmitting the virus, which undermines the idea that Covid passports are an effective way to prevent the spread of Covid.
Vaccines protect the vaccinated from serious disease. Once someone is vaccinated they can enjoy the protection that the vaccine confers, then it should make no difference to them if others are vaccinated or not. If people choose not to get vaccinated, they bear the risk, not those around them.
The government has failed to make a convincing scientific case for Covid passports to Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC). Since then, it appears that the UK government is not even pretending to ‘follow the science’ anymore. The Covid Pass may end up registering vaccine status alone, not natural immunity from prior infection. The largest real-world observational study (in pre-print) comparing natural and vaccine-induced immunity to SARS-CoV-2 concludes: ‘Natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.’
PACAC also urged the government to produce a cost-benefit analysis, full financial costings and detailed modelling of the potential impacts. The government has failed to do so. The report also found the Covid passports to be discriminatory on the basis of race, religion and socio-economic background and expressed concerns over data protection and privacy.
If there is no scientific justification for Covid Passes, are we left with a behavioural science motivation? Is the Covid Pass simply designed to force uptake? Aside from how that affects informed consent, it’s a strategy that may miscarry. Countries that have introduced Covid passes show an immediate gain in compliance with vaccination, yet a cohort of people are deterred by the coercion. ‘A Cross-Sectional Study in the UK and Israel on Willingness to Get Vaccinated against COVID-19’ found that vaccine passports are backfiring because, unsurprisingly, people want autonomy over their bodies. Not only will the bullying and resultant mistrust impact Covid-19 vaccine uptake, but the boosters and, possibly, other public health initiatives.
If we don’t want a ‘medical papers, please’ checkpoint society, then we have to refuse to comply where we can, despite the cost to ourselves. I don’t want to self-aggrandise my part in the pushback. The cost to me is an enjoyable event, delivering a book talk and the resultant book sales. But in Victoria, Australia it might be ‘participating in the vaccinated economy’ or accessing healthcare. In France, it’s simply sitting at a pavement cafe. Where might it end? This will not go away unless we stand against the unjustified erosion of our freedoms and stand with the excluded. I can’t in all conscience participate in a festival of ideas that rejects ideas at the turnstile.

Life on campus is so much worse than The Chair

For those disappointed by the humorless and deeply earnest treatment of the contemporary campus experience in the 2020 TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the new Netflix series The Chair will be a welcome tonic. Over its punchy six half-hour episodes, the show, co-created by the actress Amanda Peet and produced by her husband David Benioff, deals with the iniquities of contemporary university life.

Its setting is Pembroke, a fictitious minor Ivy League campus somewhere in New England. The action is mainly seen from the perspective of the English department chair Ji-Yoon Kim, a Korean-American academic who fears that her promotion has been brought about through ‘diversity issues’, rather than merit. Yet whatever she goes through is not as grim as the fate of her friend, the brilliant academic and author Bill Dobson, who finds himself the target of outrage and protests after a poorly timed mock-Nazi salute during a lecture goes viral.

A conservatively inclined friend told me about The Chair, and said, wryly, ‘it’s surprisingly balanced.’ The great joy of Peet and her co-creator Annie Julie Wyman’s show is that it takes aim at several sacred cows of the contemporary American university experience and serves them up medium-rare. These include ancient, past-it academics dribbling on because tenure has rendered them unsackable; populist multiethnic lecturers with their eye on career ambitions; money-obsessed deans who seek to bring in wildly unsuitably celebrity guest dons to secure much needed donations from impressed alumni (a game David Duchovny, playing himself, deserves particular credit); and, of course, the bovine mob of students, easily whipped up into outraged protest because someone has told them that they should be triggered.

The program is a combination of liberal wish-fulfillment and bracing political incorrectness. (When Dobson is being disciplined by the faculty for his apparently outrageous behavior, his blithe response is to sing ‘Springtime For Hitler’.) While the show’s ultimate message may be one of tolerance and inclusion, there is little doubt that the student body, as presented here, are a deeply unsettling bunch, only too ready to stand on their metaphorical soapboxes and start shouting about white privilege and safe spaces. Apart, that is, from that mainstay of these narratives, the beautiful student with the hots for her lecturer. She attempts to seduce Dobson with a cake and allusions to Prufrock; he does not, in the end, dare to eat a peach.

This would all be fun and games were it not for the fact that the reality is around 10 times worse than The Chair can suggest. A few years ago, the height of campus stupidity seemed to be that teaching Ovid necessitated trigger warnings, yet a recent piece in Forbes suggested that academics have been fired or suspended for everything for using a word that sounded like (but wasn’t) the ‘N’ word to daring to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement. The same students who noisily demand their rights to free speech and free expression equally loudly turn on their instructors if they, too, dare to exercise such a privilege. And in these febrile, angry times, matters seem to be worsening exponentially, even before we factor in the shootings.

The Chair is an excellent show. I would recommend it to anyone. But after the laughs stop, it is worth remembering that its relatively benign presentation of campus totalitarianism is very much the Netflix version. Real life, alas, is far less funny, and getting grimmer all the time.

Sturgeon pushes for independence (again)

It’s Groundhog Day in Holyrood. Amid criticisms about her administration’s underwhelming ‘Programme for Government,’ Nicola Sturgeon has returned to her favourite hobby house: Scottish independence. Much like ABBA’s reunion, the First Minister combined some new tunes with her greatest hits, declaring that May’s election was an ‘undeniable’ mandate for such a plebiscite by the end of 2023 ‘once the Covid-19 crisis is passed’.

Steerpike is not surprised at Sturgeon’s choice of priorities, preferring to have her civil servants devote their energies to indyref2 rather than letting Scots take their masks off when sat on a train. The SNP and its acolytes have had no compunction in undermining the Union at every opportunity throughout the pandemic; a strategy that has been great for poll numbers but has led to almost half of Europe’s top 20 Covid-19 hotspots being located in Scotland.

Much more noteworthy is the lack of interest in Sturgeon’s announcement. Westminster was admittedly distracted with Boris Johnson’s tax shenanigans but even north of the border there was a far more muted reaction to the First Minister’s pronouncements then her previous statements. The Scottish editions of both the Times and Daily Telegraph for instance relegated the news on their front to a nib; BBC Scotland similarly buried the announcement on its homepage.

The reasons for such a muted public reaction are twofold. First is simple credibility: few outside the SNP diehards seriously believe that Sturgeon will be able to deliver a plebiscite by the end of 2023. Back in 2014 there were nine months of negotiations between Holyrood and Westminster on the referendum logistics before two years of frenzied campaigning ended in a verdict on an 84.6 per cent turnout. Given Covid’s nasty habit of developing infectious strains like the Delta variant and suggestions of another lockdown or restrictions into 2022, how could the same kind of campaign with doorknocking and debate be fought with a similar turnout to ensure legitimacy?

The second reason is even more simple: we’ve heard it all before. Even before the 2016 Scottish elections the SNP were hinting at another vote, just 18 months after the first. In October 2016 Sturgeon opened a consultation on an Independence Referendum Bill; in May 2017 the Parliament voted for it. Legislation was then (unsurprisingly) postponed until 2018, nominally on the grounds of the Brexit negotiations but conveniently after the SNP experienced a reversal at the 2017 general election. In April 2019, Sturgeon proposed another referendum before the 2021 elections; in January 2020 she argued for legal recourse to force another poll.

Throughout all this we’ve been treated to a blizzard of words and an avalanche of promises, hailing the inevitability of Scexit and the necessity of separation. Sturgeon yesterday told MSPs there will be a ‘detailed prospectus’ for her tartan utopia; in the seven years since the last vote little has been done to advance this. The 650-page White Paper on which Alex Salmond’s government fought their 2014 campaign contains key sections which have since been rendered out of date. 

That prospectus was based on a model of ‘soft’ independence with Scotland continuing to have an open border with England and unrestricted access to the UK internal market, something Brexit no longer makes possible. Could the lack of any such plans in the years since be an indication that questions on issues like the border, currency and EU membership just cannot and will not be addressed?

It’s fine of course for well-remunerated government ministers to enjoy the trappings of office today while promising independence tomorrow. But Steerpike wonders: how much longer are the poor bloody infantry of the SNP movement going to tolerate being marched up and down that particular hill?

Lindsay Hoyle is right to give scruffy MPs a dressing down

MPs are making their way back to Parliament with an order from Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle ringing in their ears. In the post-Zoom world, they must smarten up their appearance. ‘Members are expected to wear business attire in and around the Chamber,’ Hoyle reminded them. 

‘Jeans, chinos, sportswear or any other casual trousers are not appropriate. T-shirts and sleeveless tops are not business attire,’ continued his memo. ‘Men are encouraged to wear a tie, and jackets must be worn.’

Good for you, Mr Speaker! Perhaps you could send a similar directive to the rest of the country too. After 18 months of working from home, it’s not just MPs who have forgotten how to dress. Jeans and hoodies, track suits and athleisure have replaced formal business wear. It was reported last week that Marks & Spencer, purveyor of men’s suits since 1939, no longer stocks this traditional business attire in over half of its stores. Demand for the matching two-piece was just too small to justify the rack space.

Both men and women have clearly used lockdown as an opportunity to ditch stuffy workwear associated with the office. Trousers or skirts with actual buttons, buckles and zips, have, it seems, been too much for many of us. But the end of business attire should trouble us and Sir Lindsay nails why.

His dress code memo prompts MPs to remember: ‘The way in which you dress should demonstrate respect for your constituents, for the House and for the institution of Parliament in the life of the nation.’ How we look reflects our attitude to the job we do. Looking smart says we not only take ourselves seriously, but our work and our colleagues too.

Dressing up for work marks a distinction between our public and private lives. It’s the sartorial demarcation between weekends and weekdays. Putting on a suit signifies leaving the intimacy of the domestic sphere and entering society where we will be in the company of other people. Dressing smartly demonstrates our respect for these people.

Lindsay Hoyle’s instruction to MPs differs from that of his predecessor. When he was in the Speaker’s chair, John Bercow, declared that there was, ‘no exact dress code’. His final memo on the matter said business clothing was ‘merely a suggestion’.

This differing advice hints at a new class divide. A decade and more ago, wearing a suit to work was what distinguished the middle class from the working class, white collar workers from blue collar toilers. For socially mobile working class youngsters, a job that required a suit was something to aspire towards. Heading to Marks & Spencer to make that purchase was a sign that you were on the up. Now, all this has changed. A new, more subtle, reverse snobbery has crept into the way we dress.

When I landed a job in academia, I couldn’t believe my luck. Growing up, it seemed unimaginable to me that I would ever be a university lecturer. To mark the occasion, I went out and bought myself a smart navy blue skirt suit from Next. I wanted to look the part. One week in, my head of department ran into me in the staff kitchen. ‘Oh! You look just like a secretary!’ was her throwaway greeting. But she was right – I did.

My embarrassment brought home to me the sartorial reality of the campus. Lowly paid admin staff almost all dressed smartly, with shirts and jackets and even the occasional tie. Meanwhile, well paid academics swanned around in jeans and jumpers.

Today, the requirement to wear a suit to work is more often than not reserved for those employed in junior positions, perhaps a call centre, or a customer facing role. The luxury of looking scruffy at work is one that only middle class professionals enjoy. They are far too important for dress codes – and they want the world to know it.

But the studied informality of the middle classes comes with its own subtle demarcations. And despite the Speaker’s edicts, this finely tuned sartorial distinction has made its way to the heart of government. In November last year, photographs of Chancellor Rishi Sunak, hard at work but wearing a hoodie, were beamed around the world. The not so subtle message was that Sunak may be one of the most important people in the country but he’s really just like the rest of us. Only, he’s not. Sunak, as we know, is fabulously wealthy. His hoodie was no Sports Direct ‘2 for £20’ job – it was rumoured to be from Everlane: ‘an American brand which prides itself on ethical factories and total transparency in the supply chain and pricing.’ This signals status to others in the know.

So three cheers for Lindsay Hoyle. I for one am glad he is rebuking the slobby-but-snobby middle classes. They need to pull their socks up and show some respect to everyone else.

When will the real Keir Starmer stand up?

Who is Keir Starmer, and what does ‘Starmerism’ stand for? Well into his second year as Labour leader and most Britons remain unsure. It’s not as if Starmer hasn’t spent a lot of time and effort – and so many words – in trying to define himself: he was even interviewed by Piers Morgan for an hour on ITV to highlight his human side. 

But something has gone wrong. Is it the message or the messenger? Or is the difficult Covid-dominated times in which he became leader that is to blame? Whatever the reason for Starmer’s curiously forgettable leadership, it is now imperative that Starmer starts to make a clear and positive impression on voters: he needs to be more than ‘Not Jeremy Corbyn’.

If he is to do this, Starmer has to transcend a factionalised party and a divided country, something which he has so far failed to do with sufficient vigour: too often, instead of imposing himself on events, events have appeared to impose themselves on him.

Starmer was elected Labour leader promising to unite a factionalised party. On that basis he won the support of all of Corbyn’s most implacable opponents as well as a significant number of those who still regarded the outgoing Labour leader positively. 

Since then, Corbynite irredentists have forced his hand to take action against them. Often this has been over their refusal to take seriously the need to adhere to the stipulations of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s investigation into anti-Semitism. But while there are Labour members who believe Starmer is a ‘Tory Lite’, and Corbyn’s own future as Labour MP hangs in the balance, the party is the least of his problems. An opinion poll lead such as the one Starmer enjoyed during 2020 would silence most critics.

When he was campaigning to become leader, Starmer promised to make Labour more electable: it was this that drew former Corbyn supporters into the Starmer camp. But since the roll out of the Johnson government’s vaccination programme the Conservative party has enjoyed a consistent and at times huge poll lead. The Tories even managed to take the Hartlepool constituency from Labour in the May by-election. And despite the uproar about the Tory tax hike to pay for social care, this is unlikely to be enough on its own to woo those who backed Johnson at the last election to vote for Starmer.

So what’s going wrong? For one thing, Starmer has not yet solved the electoral problem which also foxed his two immediate predecessors. If he wants to be prime minister, Starmer has to win back Leave-supporting red wall seats that have been drifting away from the party across the last three general elections. But even should he do that, it would still be insufficient. 

Why? Because Starmer also has to hold on to those younger and university educated metropolitan voters increasingly drawn to the party since 2015 and very much in favour of Remain. An electorate divided along these generational and educational lines has been very much in the Conservative interest: pitching these two groups against each other helped Johnson win his 80-seat majority in 2019. But Starmer has to find ways of appealing to them both.

Such long-standing electoral shifts are the result of deep-set demographic trends. But the right vision, the correct policies and an effective leader who can persuasively articulate a shared, common interest, one embodied by himself and his party can still help Labour back into power. But, clearly, Starmer has yet to find the right approach; and the question that increasingly hangs over him is: will he ever?

The good news for Starmer is that at the end of September his set-piece speech to the Labour party annual conference gives him an invaluable chance to address this question. Unlike last year, when he spoke to a camera in an empty room, the conference hall in Brighton will be full of (hopefully) cheering members. In preparing for this critical moment, he will know that there are basically two models of conference speech available to a Labour leader: helpfully, both have been suggested to Starmer by supporters and critics in recent weeks.

There is the ‘leader vs party’ speech designed to highlight the leader’s principles and willingness to apply them even if it means taking on their own members. The first of the two most famous examples of this kind of address came in 1960 when Hugh Gaitskell rejected a conference vote in support of unilateral nuclear disarmament, declaring that he and his supporters would ‘fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love’ from extremists. Twenty-five years later Neil Kinnock used his conference speech to attack the Trotskyite group Militant Tendency which had taken over the Labour-run Liverpool Council with disastrous results for the city.

In contrast there is the ‘Leader as Visionary’ speech. The most well-known instance of this kind of oration was given by Harold Wilson in 1963 when he declared he wanted to build a ‘new Britain’ through unleashing the ‘white heat’ of the ‘scientific revolution’, something only his party had the capacity to accomplish. Similarly, Tony Blair in 1994 outlined the need not just for a New Labour but for a New Britain, both of which could be achieved under his leadership.

One speech looks inwards and the other outwards; one highlights internal division, while the other associates the party with a shared vision of a nation in desperate need of change. Although there are some in the party who believe the menace of Corbynism remains and needs to be completely purged from its ranks, it is more than likely that Starmer will opt for the latter speech. Indeed, he has tried such a speech on various occasions this year – if to little effect. Hopefully, for him, practice makes perfect, for he will get few more chances in the future.

But a speech is just a speech. Wilson and Blair each spoke after over a decade of Conservative governments, both of which were seemingly drawing to a whimpering, contemptible end. The Conservatives today have now been in office for a similar period but have somehow managed to renew themselves such that Johnson’s government still feels new. But perhaps as ministers struggle to agree how to Build Back Better after Covid, and try to manage their own problem of keeping their red and blue wall seats happy, they will give Starmer his opportunity to outline his version of a unified and reformed New Britain? 

To do that, however, he has to be more than ‘Not Boris Johnson’: he has to show us who is Keir Starmer.

The rebellion of wearing a suit

During my first job at an advertising firm, there was a palpable disdain for suits amongst my colleagues. For a newly appointed copywriter, fresh out of university and hooked on Mad Men, wearing a suit seemed like the sensible thing to do in the office. But to the Generation-X creative director I was now working for – perhaps having been forced to wear a suit for most of his earlier career – it was an unwelcome relic of the past.

He set me straight in my first client meeting. I bought a cheap two-piece from the high street, hoping to make a good impression. Ten minutes before we sat down, he pulled me to the side, wanting to know if I could find anything more ‘relaxed’ for next time: ‘the suit is a bit… pompous,’ he added. So, at the next meeting, I took his advice. I showed up in the same jumper and chinos I wore clubbing the previous Saturday in the West End. But I felt shabby. ‘I look underdressed,’ I recall telling him, as the client strolled out in his immaculate navy jacket. And yet that was the point. As a representative of the advertising agency, I was told we couldn’t be seen as old-fashioned.

With the news that Marks and Spencer have stopped stocking suits in some of their shops, it seems the post-pandemic world agrees. The brand is adapting their offering to ‘be more relevant to customers’ rapidly changing needs.’  Which translates to: ‘get with the program, aspiring Don Drapers’, the suit is no longer useful.’ The tastemakers at M&S HQ have instead unveiled their new Smartwear range for the office; a sleek and unimaginative line of neutrals, seemingly inspired by the sartorial tastes of Jeff Bezos.

The rejection of the suit is so widespread that it’s almost a form of rebellion to don one. In an era where you can wear practically anything and no one blinks an eye, it’s not hard to see why some men are reaching for the strict, sartorial rules that govern tailoring. It helps them stand out.

The late Charlie Watts must have known this. Even as the drummer for the biggest rock band on earth, The Rolling Stones, he chose to dress like a St James gentleman, while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards swanned about in leather vests and pink ruffs. For a lot of Stones fans, his passion for tailoring seemed both ironic and defiant, tearing up the rules for what a real rockstar wears.

Charlie Watts was also the only Rolling Stone to look stylish all his life. While fashions come and go, a good selection of suits can carry you through any situation. And I do still believe, even after my creative director’s advice, that wearing one is a great sign of respect. Depending on the accessories, shirts, patterns and the cut you want, you can play as conservative or eccentric as you like. The same suit can be worn a hundred different ways, with t-shirts, with trainers, or waistcoats, and with enough experimentation, you come to learn what works best for you. My favourite thing to do was to pair gorgeous vintage ties I found on eBay. I would mix-and-match them with a glen-check three-piece from Suitsupply (a high street store whose success relies on the suit being relevant) and a navy Hardy Amies two-piece, bought on sale at Moss Bros (which, if you’re looking for affordable tailoring is still quite good.) Whether I looked for them or not, the compliments would roll in. And while my colleagues spent their wages on fast-fashion and expensive trainers, I built the foundations of my wardrobe on a few simple pieces. Each month, they faced the uncertainty of saving up for, or trying to pull off, what was then in vogue. When you wear suits, it is much easier to be creative without trying nearly as hard.

A lot of men are attracted to the idea of great tailoring. They’re just unsure about how to make it work for them. Friends and colleagues frequently ask about waist sizes; jacket lengths; or where the trouser is meant to break above the shoe, despite not donning a suit themselves. Until the suit became associated with drab office armour, their queries would have been common knowledge. But the first experience most men have of suits now is shopping for an oversized cookie-cutter version.

There’s still time for the suit to stage a comeback. Instagram is now full of young influencers who are clued up on the difference between Parisian and Milanese styles, who can flout their knowledge of Neapolitan jackets. In England alone, there is a generation of young tailors challenging the suit’s stiff image. Dobrik & Lawton, The Deck, or Anglo-Italian, to name just a few, are revealing contemporary ways the suit can appeal to more people, and at different price-points. And twice a year, thousands of people gather at the Pitti Uomo event in Florence, simply to be among other lapel-minded individuals. The suit may no longer be the corporate uniform of choice but, freed from these shackles, who knows what it will become next?

10 films about September 11th

It will soon be 20 years since the horrific events of September 11th, 2001. Most who are old enough will recall the attacks, witnessing them in real time as they unfolded live on TV.

The notion that American Airlines Flight 11’s collision into the World Trade Center’s North Tower was some sort of tragic accident was rapidly disabused when the South tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 175 shortly afterwards. A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon; the fourth strike, which probably targeted the U.S. Capitol Building, only averted by the heroic action of the passengers.

The attacks have naturally prompted movies and TV series dealing with events leading to 9/11, the day itself and its continuing aftermath.

The towers themselves also featured as a foreshadowing coda to Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) and Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005).

On TV, Hulu’s miniseries The Looming Tower (2018) is generally felt to be the best accounting of the US intelligence failures and agency rivalries that contributed to the calamity.

Prior to 9/11, terrorist attacks on the USS Cole (2000) and the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 were the subject of the TV movies The Cole Conspiracy (2005) and Path to Paradise (1997).

Here are ten pictures that touch on the tragedy in vastly different ways:

The Mauritanian (2021) Amazon Prime

This is the harrowing true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahir Rahim), a Mauritanian national suspected of terrorism, held for fourteen years (2002 to 2016) without charge in Guantanamo military prison.

Based in part on Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary (2015), the movie details the long years of enhanced interrogation he endured before falsely confessing when his mother was threatened. Not an easy watch, but one buoyed by some fine acting, particularly from Rahim, who was nominated in the Best Actor category by BAFTA and The Golden Globes.

If you enjoyed (possibly the wrong word) The Mauritanian, you may want to check out 2007’s Rendition, based on the case of Khalid El-Masri, who was detained and ill-treated when mistaken for Khalid al-Masri, suspected as one of the 9/11 organisers.

The Report (2019) Amazon Prime

Another legal exposé of US covert behaviour post 9/11, The Report follows the quest by Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver) to lead Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (Annette Bening) investigation into the 2005 destruction of CIA tapes depicting enhanced interrogation sessions with al-Qaeda suspects and others.

As you have probably gathered, The Report is hardly breezy entertainment, demanding the viewer’s attention as it delves into the murky intersection between Washington politics, CIA machinations and freelancing ‘intelligence psychologists’.

In addition to Driver and Bening, an exceptional cast includes Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney, Douglas Hodge, Matthew Rhys and Jon Hamm.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) ICON, Amazon Rent/Buy

Another case of guilt by association in Mira Nair’s earnest adaptation of Moshin Hamed’s novel. Riz Ahmed plays Changez, a Pakistani academic and would-be Wall Street player whose love of the US is shaken by his treatment post 9/11.

Airport strip searches, arrests and career failure appear to be pushing him in the direction of radical Islam, at least in the eyes of CIA field officer Bobby Lincoln (the always intimidating Liev Schreiber).

When an American professor at Lahore University is kidnapped, Lincoln is sure that Changez is involved…

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) Netflix, Amazon Rent/Buy

Kathryn Bigelow’s (The Hurt Locker) follows the protracted hunt for Osama Bin Laden after 9/11.

The director brings her usual kinetic touch to the proceedings, with Jessica Chastain heading a stellar company as a fictionalised CIA analyst who puts the clues together to locate the al-Qaeda leader’s Abbottabad (Pakistan) compound.

Zero Dark Thirty’s presumed ambivalence about ‘approved’ torture interrogation techniques caused some controversy on the picture’s release, although Bigelow denied that it was her intent to portray the practice in a positive light.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011) Amazon Rent/Buy

The viewer exhausted by incessant torture scenes may heave a sigh of relief at my next entry, Stephen Daldry’s (Billy Elliott) version of Jonathan Safran Foer’s popular magical realism novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Unfortunately, this manipulative tale of a boy’s search for meaning after his father (Tom Hanks) is killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11 is not a suitable palate cleanser.

By turns mawkish and exploitative, the picture earned some crushing reviews; one for fans of the book only, I suspect, but Extremely Loud does possess the virtue of presenting a non-adult perspective on the trauma induced by the attack.

Max von Sydow, John Goodman and Jeffrey Wright doubtless received generous pay checks justifying their participation in EL&IC.

Remember Me (2010) Amazon Rent/Buy

An early attempt by R-Patz to escape the straitjacket of his then Twilight thraldom, Remember Me is a strained drama about conflicted arty (and non-arty) Manhattanites, which has the gall to use the 9/11 attack as a punchline to the onscreen histrionics.

Pattinson fortunately succeeded in branching out from the YA world with the well-received art house movies Cosmopolis (2012), The Road (2014) and The Lost City of Z (2016).

United 93 (2006) Amazon Rent/Buy

Paul Greengrass’s jumpy Bourne directorial style is well-suited to this emotionally draining recounting of the doomed flight where passengers overcame the plane’s terrorist hijackers, forcing it to crash in an empty Pennsylvanian field. None survived.

A non-starry cast lent veracity to the picture, which is never going to be the kind of movie you wind down with after a long day at work.

The depiction of German passenger Christian Adam as a pacifist favouring reasoning with the hijackers was problematic, not least to his widow, Silk.  Writing in the Sunday Times, Cosmo Landesman mused: ‘Surely one of the passengers didn’t phone home to point out that there was a cowardly German on board who wanted to give in?’

DC 9/11: Time of Crisis (2003) – full movie available free on YouTube

A quick turnaround TV movie, DC 9/11: Time of Crisis sought to see the events of 9/11 sympathetically from the viewpoint of President George W. Bush.

Not unexpectedly, non-Bush supporters regarded the picture as a whitewash which credited #43 with a capacity for strategic and tactical analysis which probably was not his strong suit.

Veteran actor Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show, The Paper Chase) played Bush – his third time in the role after the sitcom That’s My Bush! (2001) and comedy movie The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course (2002).

Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story (2003) full movie available free on YouTube

File under ‘hasn’t aged well’; this USA Network semi-hagiography of Rudy Giuliani (once known as ‘America’s Mayor’) has been tainted in some eyes by his antics over recent years.

Ukrainian ‘investigations’, ‘trial by combat’ on 6^th January, The Big Lie, melting hair dye, Borat-related trouser mishaps and the Four Seasons Landscaping fiasco have all made the former NY mayor a tarnished figure, at least to the non-MAGA crowd.

But…there was a brief time on 9/11 and the following weeks that Rudy was an inspiring figure to the US, even though he reportedly located the city’s emergency command HQ in the World Trade Center itself.

James Woods, nowadays a figure more known for his intemperate tweets than his acting, plays Giuliani.

25th Hour (2002) Disney+, Amazon Rent/Buy

Released a little over a year after 9/11, Spike Lee’s drama earned the filmmaker some of the best reviews of his career. Which might be a surprise, as the source material was the debut novel of the same name by David Benioff, chiefly known as one half of the showrunning duo (along with DB Weiss) who penned the disastrous final season of Game of Thrones.

Post 9/11 New York is the setting for convicted drug dealer Monty Brogan’s final day of freedom before serving seven years in the NY state Otisville Federal Correctional Institution.

At the time of the picture’s release, Lee spoke of making the first post-September 11 NY movie: ‘We weren’t in a race to be the first. We just wanted to do what we could do — not wave the flag, but at the same time not run away from the opportunity. The combative attitude of New Yorkers hasn’t gone. That’s always going to be the spirit of New York.’

Ed Norton plays Monty, and as with Lee, proved a critical success; his anti-everyone ‘Five Boroughs’ rant is now part of cinematic lore.

As ever, this is a personal selection of motion pictures that use 9/11 as a theme/backdrop; you may also want to take in the likes of Vice (2018), Reign Over Me (2007), Brick Lane (2007), World Trade Center (2006), and The Hamburg Cell (2004).

The red herring at the heart of Boris’s tax hike

One of the most dubious and meaningless parts of today’s health and social care plan is the pledge that the new tax will be a ‘legally hypothecated levy’ – ring-fenced so that the money raised can only go to health and social care services. 

It’s dubious in the same way that the Tory manifesto pledge not to raise taxes turned out not to be worth the paper it was printed on. And it’s meaningless because a government that wants to unlink the tax could just pass a law doing that – and no legal ring-fence can stop it. It’s also worth remembering that the ring-fence around health and social care is a red herring. What is really necessary is a barrier between the two.

The plan for the money raised by the tax is that initially the bulk of it will go the NHS to help clear the backlog in cases. For the first three years after the extra money starts flowing in, £5.4 billion a year will be for social care. The rest of the £12 billion Boris Johnson says his tax will raise goes to the health service. After that, once the backlog is allegedly cleared, the money for social care will increase.

The obvious problem with this is that the backlog might not be cleared quite so easily. For one thing, no-one knows how big it actually is, as patients are still coming forward for treatment. That’s why Sajid Javid and NHS chief Amanda Pritchard keep warning that waiting lists are going to go up before matters improve. 

Secondly, there isn’t as yet a plan for tackling the backlog. Staffing was a problem before the pandemic, and has only got worse now that healthcare workers are utterly exhausted and in some cases planning to leave the NHS or significantly scale back their hours.

Tory backbencher Damian Green, who has himself spent some years working on social care reform plans, both in and out of government, put his finger on the real question that ministers just aren’t able to answer when he responded to Johnson’s statement in the Commons this afternoon. He asked:

‘There has been much debate about how the money is being raised, but of more concern is how the money is going to be spent. My fear is that, once you start spending on perfectly proper things like the NHS backlog, there will never come a point where there is enough money in the new fund to transfer to social care, which needs it now. You cannot spend the same pound twice. So can my right hon. friend guarantee that the social care sector will itself see a significant uplift in its support in the immediate future?’

The Prime Minister responded:

‘My right honourable friend has done great work on this subject and I am indebted to him for some of the advice that he has given to me personally about how to proceed in this. He is right in what he says. The issues is making sure that the funding goes where it is needed and that it is specifically ring-fenced. The investments in social care will be protected by the Government and by the Treasury.’

Talking today to figures in the care and NHS worlds, it’s difficult to find anyone who thinks there is a point at which the NHS won’t need more money in the coming years. Health service bosses have become far more attuned to the importance of investing in social care and saving their own services money. But that doesn’t extend to saying they don’t need the money and handing it to social care: they’d rather there just be extra money all round. They also know which service remains the most salient in voters’ minds. As do politicians.

Boris dodges a tax hike Tory rebellion – for now

After emerging relatively unscathed from his appearance in front of MPs, Boris Johnson addressed the public in a bid to sell his plan to raise taxes as part of a a new health and social care levy. Given that polling suggests broad support for the proposals, the press conference was – at least on paper – the easier outing of the two. Appearing alongside Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister tried to justify his decision to break a manifesto pledge and raise national insurance in order to clear the NHS backlog and fund social care. 

Johnson said he was fully aware it meant reneging on an election promise – but said ‘a global pandemic wasn’t in our manifesto either’. All three politicians were keen to emphasise that this had been a difficult decision – and suggested they ought to be credited for coming up with a solution to a complex problem. He also argued against the idea that his taxation plans will hurt working people and help the rich – saying the most wealthy 14 per cent of the population will fund half of this tax yield. But Johnson was clear that stopping people from having to sell their homes to pay for care was something he was proud of.

Sunak pointed to how the social care settlement meant a ‘permanent new role for the government’ which thereby requires a new permanent funding source. Johnson leant more heavily on the Covid recovery as justification for the manifesto breach. He said the recovery could not be delivered by ‘cheese-pairing budgets’ and said it would be irresponsible to fund it through higher day-to-day borrowing. He also flicked to how the government is trying to put the NHS front and centre, insisting the announcement meant it is ‘there for all of us when we need it’.

Following reports of unrest between No. 10 and No. 11 and the Department of Health over the announcement, the group appearance showed how all are at pains to put on a united front. Johnson also claimed that the trio still remained keen advocates of lower taxes – it’s just that the current circumstances didn’t allow it. 

But as much as Johnson insists he remains keen on lowering taxes, when pressed he would not rule out future tax rises in this parliament. All he would offer was an ’emotional commitment’ that he would like to avoid them. Meanwhile, Javid struggled to say what money would really be left for care given there is uncertainty over how much will be needed to clear the backlog. 

In his last batch of questions at the press conference, the Prime Minister refused to be drawn on whether a cabinet reshuffle is on the cards. Given that the rumours of a reshuffle could be an attempt to get MPs and ministers to toe the line in tomorrow’s vote, it’s hard to reach much from this either way. However, Johnson ends the day in a better place than how it began. 

Despite a series of hostile briefings, there is so far little sign of a mass revolt – instead the bigger risk lies in the longer term effects of the policy if it fails to achieve the desired aims or – as critics have warned – serves to exacerbate intergenerational unfairness.

War of words engulfs Chinese ambassador’s visit

Boris Johnson may be focusing on the NHS backlog but for some of his parliamentary colleagues there’s another logjam to be addressed: an excess of invites to belated summer shindigs. Among the various soirees flying around, one caught Steerpike’s eye: the All Party Parliamentary Group on China’s reception next Wednesday on the Commons terrace pavilion.

The guest of honour at the wine-fuelled bash will be none other than the Chinese ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang, Beijing’s man in London. The APPG on China is chaired by Tory Richard Graham but understandably the invitation sent by his group has naturally not gone down well with those Conservative colleagues sanctioned by the regime earlier this year. One parliamentary source confided to Mr S there was ‘disquiet’ at such a high profile figure being entertained on the estate.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who was one of the aforementioned Tory trio, told Steerpike he was ‘horrified’ by the invitation and intends to raise the issue in a Point of Order later tonight in the House of Commons chamber. The former Conservative leader is part of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, whose co-ordinator Luke de Poulford said: ‘Will anything prick the consciences of Xi’s fans in Westminster? Uyghur genocide? Nope. Destroyed treaty with Hong Kong? Nope. Covid cover up? Nope. No shame is too great – not even the ludicrous sanctioning of their own parliamentary colleagues.’

Let’s hope the ambassador doesn’t take a wrong turn at the reception and run into certain disgruntled Tory backbenchers.

Johnson’s tax hike won’t fix social care

Another day, another tax hike. This is presumably not how Boris Johnson saw his first term in office going; he’s reneged on manifesto promises left and right, including one that defines modern Conservatism: a healthy scepticism of tax rises. The new health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent for employers and employees (so, really, a 2.5 per cent levy) is now part of an emerging trend. This is not a one-off tax, but the follow-on from a March Budget that included £25 billion worth of tax hikes.

In fact, it’s record-breaking. The levy is estimated to raise an additional £12 billion a year extra for the Treasury’s coffers. Combine that with March’s personal allowance tax freeze and corporation tax hike, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that Boris Johnson’s government has raised the tax burden to its ‘highest ever sustained level’ – that is, record levels of peacetime spending.

A bigger state is here to stay, and Johnson isn’t shying away from it. The Prime Minister opted not only to raise NI, but to increase the dividend rate by 1.25 per cent too. The bulk of the money is going to address the NHS backlog over the next few years, and with it, a promise to increase NHS capacity to 110 per cent, and deliver 30 per cent more elective procedures by 2024/25 than were taking place before the pandemic hit.

The NI increase is not the only manifesto promise scrapped today. It was also announced that the triple-lock on pensions is being suspended from 2022-2023. The move comes as statistical anomalies created by the pandemic would have led to an 8 per cent increase in the state pension, as a result of lots of young people losing their jobs due to lockdown. This payout was becoming increasingly untenable, especially with plans to ask younger, working-age people to pay more tax to cover elderly care. Under different circumstances, there might be more pushback from the Tories to sell the suspension as just that: a pause on the triple-lock, not a manifesto U-turn. But in today’s context, that would be a tough sell indeed.

The question now is what the public gets for all this? Tax rises, the triple-lock freeze: what will these billions of pounds deliver for the public in the coming years? On social care, there’s good reason to think today’s changes will deliver little-to-nothing in the way of better care. Keir Starmer accused the government of pushing a policy under which ‘quality of care will not improve. There’s no plan for that’. He’s completely right. The Dilnot proposals being implemented turn the taxpayer into an insurer, transferring the funding burden to make sure no one has to sell their home to pay for their care. Those are funding reforms, not care reforms, and do little to inspire the idea that the quality of care for the elderly will improve.

On the NHS, we wait and see. The NHS was an international laggard amongst developed countries long before the pandemic hit. Waiting lists have always been a problem for the NHS, as trusts often tried and failed to reach formal waiting times that were already too long, keeping people in pain waiting for serious care.

The government has set itself clear targets on what the levy will deliver, in terms of capacity and access to treatment. This makes it easier to judge if government makes good on its word. But there is no guarantee these targets will be met. And what then? Money is supposed to be reallocated towards social care in a few years time. Can anyone realistically imagine a scenario — in which the NHS has succeeded or failed — in which health chiefs (or government ministers) make the case that the NHS needs less money? 

Unless decades of politicalisation and idolisation of the health service are undone overnight, and it becomes politically possible to critique the health service, this seems like a near-impossible situation. The only guarantee, then, is a new, higher tax burden. The levy (which is better read as an extension of income tax) continues to provide more money for the NHS, and perhaps we’re asked to pay even more to top up social care too.

This is one of the many problems with hypothecated taxes: they aren’t so much a specific funding stream, but a stealth way of bloating the state. Just as no one really thinks the NHS will lose funding in three years’ time, no one seriously thinks if levy receipts come in lower one year, that will mean less funding for health and social care. Already these funds are being touted to boost nurses pay, hinted at in July and reiterated today. For all the PM’s talk of this money ‘not (paying) for middle management’ and going ‘straight to the front lines’, the demarcation of what will be spent and where has become blurry, long before the tax hike even kicks in.

As I say in today’s Daily Telegraph, the Conservatives’ claims over being the party of business, and the party of taxpayers, is losing hold fast. It now needs to sell itself as the party of delivery. It’s not at all obvious yet they will successfully make this switch.

Boris Johnson is the ‘Queen of Mean’

Leona Helmsley died 14 years ago so it is surprising to find her setting fiscal policy for the UK Government. When the New York real estate billionaire, dubbed the ‘Queen of Mean’, was on trial for tax evasion in 1989, her housekeeper testified that Helmsley had told her ‘only the little people pay taxes’. 

This government, lacking any discernible philosophy of its own, appears to have adopted Helmsleyism, for it too believes it is the little people who should bear the tax burden. Indeed Helmsley, who commissioned upgrades to her $11m mansion then tried to leave the contractors with the bill, would probably admire the sheer chutzpah of what No. 10 is proposing. 

Putting up National Insurance, a tax paid by younger people, to meet the care of retirees represents a redistribution of wealth from the asset-poor to the asset-rich. In order to ensure that home-owning baby boomers do not have to sell their property to finance their care, millennials and zoomers – who may never be home-owners – will instead be taxed more heavily on their earnings. The Prime Minister is the reverse Robin Hood of the gerontocracy, robbing from the poor to give to the Golden Girls.

Typically, this conversation goes round in circles. Boomers, while scolding millennials as entitled, see nothing entitled in having acquired property at rock-bottom prices, organised politically to protect the value of that property, inflated that value by resisting housing development, refused to pay even modestly higher taxes, and now expect the generations who have not enjoyed the same advantages — in some cases because boomers actively dismantled them — to foot the bill for their old age. 

If that sounds harsh, the statistics are harsher. The average first-home price paid by boomers was between £115,000 and £144,000, while the equivalent output for millennials was between £237,000 and £248,000. Millennials are 50 per cent less likely than boomer to be owners by the time they reach 30 and while in the 1980s it took three years to accumulate enough for a deposit, it now takes 19.

This kind of analysis usually provokes the cry from boomers that they have ‘worked all their lives’ and ‘paid into the system’, as though government finances were a Christmas club where you get out what you put in. Talk of paying into the system is a welfarist fallacy comparable to Thatcher-era monetarist rhetoric which described Treasury revenues and expenditure in terms of household budgeting. 

There is a doctoral dissertation to be written on the damage done by political metaphors. There is also the objection that not all retirees are home-owners with private pensions and savings. That is true. In fact, that is the point. The issue is not with young, modestly-paid people being asked to finance the care of the elderly poor but with them being forced to lay out for the care of those with wealth and assets.

That covers the boomers’ portion of the blame but my generation has its own share of soul-searching to do. One of the reasons boomers could afford to buy young was the pooling of income through marriage. Whereas in 1978 the average marriage age for men was 29 and for women 27, by 2018 that had risen to 38 and 36 respectively. 

We have also put too much stock in university education and degraded the value of degrees along the way. While it was boomer Tony Blair who introduced the 50 per cent target for young people going to university, too many millennials and zoomers have used higher education as an expensive finishing school in their journey to adulthood, with degrees sought in disciplines that provide minimal marketable skills. 

Moreover, young workers can’t rebuke boomers for being entitled then neglect the fact that the very National Insurance payers being asked to stump up to pay for NHS pandemic spending were the ones who benefited from the job retention scheme.

But the crux of the problem is the entrenched wealth and political power of a particular generational class, the impact that has on public policy and how we confront the social care crisis in light of that. As the Prime Minister made clear in his Commons statement, he thinks the little people should pay more in tax. 

The truth is that if we want a care system that addresses older people’s needs while ensuring they have a quality service and personal dignity, everyone will have to pay more in tax. There is no magic money tree, as the right is fond of reminding us, and if the idea of those with assets having to use them to fund their own care fundamentally offends us, then the cash will have to come out of general taxation. However, making National Insurance the vehicle for generating this revenue is socially regressive and morally iniquitous. It afflicts the afflicted and comforts the comfortable.

There is not only a policy failing but a moral failing in proceeding with a measure so manifestly unjust it could only come from a government with perfect contempt for millions of people across this country. Admittedly, these are people who generally don’t vote Conservative or don’t vote at all so any immediate consequences will be limited. 

But what the Prime Minister has done is take a generation that is worse off than its parents and shake it down to pay for the retirement of its grandparents. Those are hardly the circumstances in which new Tory voters are created, though he will be long gone by the time his party faces a reckoning for the choice he has made. 

While sound-biting endlessly about building back and levelling up, Boris Johnson has shown his priority is keeping people in their place. Leona Helmsley is dead and working in Downing Street.

Emma Raducanu can save tennis

Something perfect at the death of summer: Emma Raducanu in full flight, smoking winners up the lines and progressing without dropping a set into the last eight of the US Open at the improbable age of 18. The very best, in tennis as in all sports, almost without exception, make it look beautiful – it’s why we can’t take our eyes off them (because beauty is an element-bending superpower).

Raducanu makes playing tennis look beautiful. As she waits to receive serve, poised and utterly focused, it can appear as if she has arrived on court straight from the pages of a fashion magazine. There is an unmistakeable Hollywood quality, too, to the manner in which she is now realising her potential at Flushing Meadows, having flashed into the sport-watching world’s consciousness at Wimbledon.

The way Raducanu moves is breathtaking – her athleticism and coordination, apparent in everything she does — is mesmerising and flawless. To put it bluntly, so far she has made the young women on the other side of the net – elite athletes positioned high up their sport’s vertiginous ranking pyramid – look lumbering and slow-witted. Her last two opponents, in fact, simply imploded when they realised the elemental force they were up against. Both were ranked in the top 50. Raducanu demolished them.

Tennis is crying out for new stars. The men’s game has become stultifying as a result of the strange and seemingly never-ending longevity of its dominant three greats. Roger Federer (40) has been going for more than two decades, and Rafa Nadal (35) and Novak Djokovic (34) not much less. They made many tournaments thrilling, but in recent years their hold seems to have throttled the development of the elite men’s game.

In previous eras, the game would be kept fresh by higher turnover at the top – Andre Agassi, for example, won his last Grand Slam at 32, Pete Sampras at 31, Ivan Lendl at 29 and John McEnroe at 25.

The problem is worse in the women’s game, which has had all life squeezed from it by the near-total dominance of the Williams sisters. Serena (39) was most dominant of all, the most successful player in the Open era. Over the course of a professional career that began in 1995, she has amassed 39 Grand Slam singles and doubles titles (her sister Venus (41) has 23). But she has not enjoyed a great rivalry on a par with Federer vs Nadal.

Enter Raducanu. Perhaps the most thrilling aspect of watching her play is the realisation that nobody yet knows of what she is capable or where her limits lie, including her. At Wimbledon she was only beaten by herself – she withdrew from her fourth round match against Ajla Tomljanovic because she couldn’t control her breathing and felt dizzy, not because she was being outplayed. For my money, she looked the better player that day. Only two months on, she seems much better equipped to handle the inevitable big-game nerves.

On Wednesday, Raducanu, who speaks Mandarin, will face Olympic gold medallist Belinda Bencic, priced at five to one for the tournament. Losing against such a strong opponent would certainly hold no shame, but should she win, and by doing so book a place in the semi finals, her star would rise meteorically, and globally. She would be on course to become one of the biggest sports stars in the world. She’s exactly what tennis, and even British sport, needs.

Go on, Emma. To the semis, and beyond. 

Five more lowlights from Australia’s Covid fight

It was less than a fortnight ago that Steerpike wrote of Australia’s various missteps in its long fight with Covid. Since then, the (not so) Lucky Country has introduced a smorgasbord of extra restrictions to add to its various rules and regulations already in place, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison himself admitting that ‘this is not a sustainable way to live in this country.’ Below Mr S presents his list of some of the more egregious of these…

Tracking

Few Covid innovations have generated as many headlines as that of South Australia’s home-based quarantine. The state has developed and is now testing an app to enforce its quarantine rules which – in the words of the Atlantic – is as ‘Orwellian as any in the free world’. Those travellers returning and quarantining at home have to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. 

The state will then text them at random intervals, with the quarantining Aussie being given just 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. State Premier Steven Marshall appeared untroubled by this overreach, breezily claiming: ‘I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.’

Thousand dollar fines

Much like certain politicians here in the UK, some Aussie lawmakers have positively revelled in the chance to implement four figure fines. In New South Wales, groups of more than two people were not allowed to meet outside, prompting stories such as the two young pram-punishing mothers who were last month slapped with $1,000 fines for daring to stop and talk to one another in Bronte park in Sydney’s lockdown. A day later fine rates were hiked to $5,000 or £2,683.

Mask madness

Steerpike has already pointed out the case of Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, who went viral online after suggesting you could not remove a mask to drink outside. Victoria was not alone in its misguided approach to transmission; Queenland’s health minister Yvette D’Ath ordered citizens in the Greater Brisbane area to wear a mask whenever they left their home including when walking, cycling or even driving alone in a car. At the beginning of August, a video of an elderly man being arrested for not wearing a mask in Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens went viral after he appeared to have a seizure while being led away by police.

Still, it could be worse. In South Australia the chief health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier warned attendees of an Aussie rules football game: ‘If you are at Adelaide Oval and the ball comes towards you, my advice to you is to duck and do not touch that ball.’

Curfews

A day after Steerpike’s article, New South Wales introduced a curfew for two million residents of Sydney until the end of September. Australians here had already been under stay-at-home orders since June but now those unlucky enough to live in the city’s worst-hit suburbs have to endure an eight hour curfew between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. The state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it is primarily a way of ‘reducing the movement of young people’ and is just the latest in a long of curbs on travel. Citizens are already banned from leaving the country without permission, in violation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights

Parliament suspended

While New South Wales deployed the military to enforce lockdowns, Victoria went even further with its curfew and suspension of Parliament at various points of the pandemic. Eschewing technical solutions, like Westminster’s own virtual sittings, the aforementioned Premier Daniel Andrews declared ‘it is not about human rights. It is about human life.’ 

This is despite both federal and state parliaments sitting continually during both world wars and the pandemic of 1918-19. As one dissenting lawmaker noted: ‘This is a very powerful government using every armoured force that they can to actually control the message, control the state, control the community.’

Are we trapped in an inflationary spiral?

Are we heading for a 1970s-style inflationary spiral? Not according to Catherine Mann, former chief economist at Citigroup, who argues that we are now less exposed to fluctuations in oil prices than we were then. She also makes the case that businesses are more reluctant to put up prices and that the link between inflation and wages is weaker than it was in the years of high inflation when wages often rose three or four times a year and prices in the shops were jacked up more frequently than now. Her opinion matters because she is the latest recruit to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, which is charged with setting interest rates to try to keep inflation within set limits.

But is the UK economy really less susceptible to inflationary pressures than it was in the years that followed the 1973 oil crisis? While our dependency on oil and other fossil fuels may have fallen in some respects — renewables have large displaced coal in electricity generation and our homes, cars and factories are all more energy-efficient than they were then — we remain heavily dependent on oil and gas. Moreover, we still rely heavily on imported energy: in 2019, 35 per cent of our energy needs were met by imports. That was higher than at the time of the 1975 energy spike when we imported around half of our energy needs. By 1980, however, when Britain suffered a second inflationary spike, we were exporting more energy than we imported — thanks to North Sea oil.

The argument that companies are reluctant to put up their prices is also unconvincing. Some companies — notably those involved in building supplies — have been very enthusiastic in raising their prices in recent months and would have struggled to survive if they hadn’t. True, industry has been absorbing some price rises — in May, for example, input prices were up 10.4 per cent over the year but output prices just 4.4 per cent. But they can’t go on doing that forever. Moreover, annual growth in average pay was running at 8.8 per cent in August — an astonishing rise even if it is partly accounted for by a rebound from falling wages during the early months of the pandemic.

The trouble with inflation is that it is like one of Chris Whitty’s graphs of Covid infections. The early stages of an inflationary surge can be barely perceptible yet as pay demands and rising prices create an inflationary spiral it can quickly escalate.

What we don’t yet really know is how effective the Bank of England’s base rate is anymore as a lever to control inflation. Back in the 2000s, the Bank of England used its base rate quite well to fine-tune the economy, raising rates to cool down demand and lowering them to stimulate it. But after years of disinflation and record low-interest rates, no one really knows what would happen if the Committee, faced with serious inflationary pressures, were to raise rates. Would the economy respond, or has the Bank’s influence diminished now that fixed-rate mortgages are the norm? Compared with the 1970s, we have relatively few young first-time buyers and more homes are owned outright, but those who have taken a dip in the property market tend to be more highly leveraged.

Another factor is that we now import more of our food than we did in the 1980s, when inflation was a problem. That makes us more susceptible to international crises and currency movements. How it will all play out over the next few months if inflationary pressures continue to build is anyone’s guess.