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Donald Trump and Keir Starmer make a very strange pair
There is just something innately funny about seeing Keir Starmer and Donald Trump together. Two men so obviously different; in character, interests, ability and shape, forced together by circumstance. Watching them at the press conference today was no exception. They put me in mind of Bialystock and Bloom from The Producers: the bombastic Broadway shyster and his hapless sinusitis-suffering goon.
First, for their ‘business roundtable’, they sat together behind a comically small table inside a marquee, which made them look like an unlikely scoring partnership at a village cricket match or as if they were signing the registers at a low-budget gay wedding. Alternatively, they looked a bit like they were appearing on a Radio 4 panel show. I can think of a title: Don’t mention Mandy! Two statesmen have to get through an Anglo-American bilateral summit without mentioning the sacking of a certain ambassador just last week for high-profile nonce-adjacency!
Sir Keir spoke first, about the substance of the deal that they were about to sign, but also gave himself a series of pats on the back for having achieved it. ‘It comes down to leaders who respect each other, to leaders who genuinely like each other.’ At this point the Prime Minister gave the President a weird sort of tap on his shoulder which I think was meant to be affectionate. Donald smiled a smile which might have been a Cheshire Cat grin or could have been the sort of smile a Mafia boss gives when he makes a note to have someone killed for a minor slight.
When it came to his turn, Trump repeated that it was the first time there had been a second state visit, three times, which was numerically quite confusing. Then again, so much of how the President operates comes down to his truly bizarre use of the English language. It’s almost hypnotic. Again the contrast with Sir Keir couldn’t be clearer. Starmer speaks in robotic, staccato sentences. Everything. Is. Designed. To. Sound. Like. A. Safety. Briefing. In contrast Mr Trump embarks on long sweeping sentences, beautiful sentences, often with an aside about something that a lot of people don’t realise, which is OK, before ending up on a subject completely different from where he started.
Certain words were used by Trump again and again – ‘beautiful’, in particular. Things the President believed were beautiful varied from Her Majesty Queen Camilla, Sir Keir Starmer’s renovation of Chequers and the British aerospace industry. He did speak briefly about the deal before going into one of his meandering concertos of consciousness about the things that made America the ‘hottest country in the world’. Awkwardly for Sir Keir, one of these was getting the border under control. As he did so, the PM sat there, going both pink and grey at once, like a condemned tin of luncheon meat. Still, Donald eventually came into land with a final nod to Britain and, as if by magic, folders appeared for the men to sign, the Prime Minister with the Parker pen which he doubtless got for free for just enquiring and the President with a massive Sharpie.
After lunch, the unlikely duo hosted a press conference in front of a Jacobean fireplace and enough national flags to make Emily Thornberry squirm. The President thanked British subjects for their condolences following Charlie Kirk’s murder, and spoke of Vladimir Putin as if he were a philandering ex: ‘He’s let me down. He’s really let me down.’
Finally a reporter invoked the Mandy-shaped elephant
Bev Turner of GB News asked the Prime Minister a question about Christianity – which in fairness is one of the few beliefs Sir Keir has never professed to hold. But perhaps not for much longer; the avowed atheist spoke of being christened and the importance of the Church of England throughout his life. Given how desperate his domestic situation is, perhaps a conversion is on the cards. To paraphrase Voltaire on his deathbed when asked to denounce the devil: ‘Now is not the time to be making enemies’.
Turner also asked a question about the free speech situation in Britain – a subject which triggers palpable discomfort in the PM, who always reaches for the same identically-worded answer. ‘We have had free speech in Britain for a long time,’ he droned, inevitably, through his nose. For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is quite the defence Sir Keir perceives it to be, especially coming from him. After all, we’ve had agriculture since probably the Bronze age and he seems pretty determined to destroy that.
Finally a reporter invoked the Mandy-shaped elephant in the room. President Trump having denied ever knowing his former ambassador, the question passed to Sir Keir, who shuffled his notes and gave another answer that sounded like it had been dictated by a solicitor or crisis-comms team. ‘New information came to light,’ he snapped. ‘It’s very straightforward!’ Luckily for him, there were no supplementary questions.
It was all smiles, but I suspect the Donald knows that next time he comes to visit his favourite foreign country, it might well be someone else meeting him off the plane.
Starmer survives another Trump encounter
Every time Keir Starmer meets with Donald Trump, journalists ask each other the same question. ‘Will today be the day it all blows up?’ Ahead of this week’s state visit, the odds were not in Starmer’s favour. Whether it was Peter Mandelson’s departure, Britain’s looming recognition of Palestine or even Starmer’s plummeting poll ratings, today’s press conference was fraught with potential difficulties. But, once again, the Prime Minister survived the encounter relatively unscathed, with the President declining multiple chances to take a swing at his beleaguered counterpart.
In the splendour of the Great Hall at Chequers, the two men began the encounter by hailing the military and scientific bonds between their nations. A new agreement was trumpeted by Starmer. ‘This Tech Partnership has the power to change lives’, he crowed, following yesterday’s announcement of Microsoft’s £22 billion UK spending package. ‘It’s our chance to ensure that technologies like AI, quantum and others amplify human potential.’ But it was Trump who raised eyebrows by his withering remarks on Ukraine, declaring that Putin had ‘let me down. He really let me down.’
Then it was on to the questions. Among Starmer’s No. 10 colleagues, there will be relief at how smoothly this proved to be. There were obvious differences between the two on subjects like Gaza, immigration and renewable energy. ‘You have a great asset here’, Trump told Starmer. It’s called the North Sea.’ Yet no new flanks opened up between the two men. Some in government feared that the defenestrated Lord Mandelson would prove to be the Banquo of this visit. But when asked by Sky about the departure of their ex-ambassador, Trump brazenly declared ‘I don’t know him’. He then threw the question over to Starmer who dead-batted it in his trademark style.
This being a Trump press conference, there was the usual mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. The cancellation of the late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel was raised by one American journalist. ‘He should have been fired a long time ago,’ proclaimed Trump. ‘He was fired for a lack of talent.’ Starmer, unsurprisingly, had nothing to add here. Other lines of inquiry were fraught with greater danger. ‘Why are you waiting for President Trump to leave the country before recognising Palestine?’ asked one. Starmer, sensibly, responded with a lengthy criticism of Hamas and insisted the recognition date had ‘nothing to do with the timing of this visit.’ He was also asked if the UK would follow the US in proscribing ‘Antifa’ as a terrorist organisation. ‘We take those decisions ourselves’, he said, diplomatically.
The top lines from the 40-minute encounter will likely be Trump’s criticism of Putin and his advice to Starmer on the small boats crisis. Regaling the Prime Minister with his handling of the Mexico border, the visiting President said: ‘It doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what means you use. But it destroys countries from within and we’re now actually removing the people that came into the country.’ Yet it was a light skirmish compared to the fatal blow which Trump dealt Theresa May here at Chequers seven years ago.
The most intriguing answer in today’s encounter was when both men were asked by GB News about whether Britain ‘is still a Christian country’. Trump ducked the chance to copy JD Vance and attack the UK record on matters such as abortion clinic buffer zones. Instead, he handed the question to Starmer, who chose to reference his christening, despite his longtime atheism. For those in the Prime Minister’s team who are religious, they might wish to say a silent prayer of thanks tonight at how easily today’s encounter went.
The final act of Israel’s war in Gaza is under way
Israel’s operation to conquer Gaza city is now entering its third day. Two IDF divisions are engaged on the ground. These are Division 98, which is the IDF’s airborne formation, and Division 162, a mechanised unit. An additional division, the 36th, is set to join the fighting in the coming days. As of now, Israeli forces are advancing from the Shejaya, Sheikh Radwan and Tal al Hawa neighbourhoods.
Israel has established two exit routes for civilians wishing to leave the area. The first main route is the coastal road leading down to the designated safe zone in al-Mawasi. The IDF has temporarily also established a second route on the central Salah al Din road. Around 650,000 civilians are thought to remain in Gaza City, along with an estimated 3,000 Hamas fighters.
Two years of war and the Iran-led regional alliance is largely in ruins
While all Israeli military moves are now accompanied by a cacophony of hostile propaganda, against which Israel seems to employ little effort to defend itself, the political and military logic behind the current move is fairly clear and unremarkable. This is the final act in an until-now successful defensive war that Israel has been conducting over the last two years against the regional alliance of which Hamas is a part. This war was not Israel’s choice. The Hamas assault and massacre of 7 October precipitated it. But the events of the last two years have effected a profound shift in the geopolitics of the region, largely in Israel’s favour. The final stage of conventional operations in Gaza is intended to form the endgame of this achievement.
Hamas is part of a regional alliance led by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the last three decades, this alliance has been following a doctrine of unconventional warfare, intended to surround the Jewish state with hostile Islamist militias. The goal was to use these political-military organisations to subject Israel to a long siege, intended to result in its eventual collapse and disappearance.
By 2023, thanks to a combination of Iranian skill and regional circumstance, this goal had advanced considerably. Iranian proxies, allies or clients were in power in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and a large swathe of Yemen. Currently available evidence suggests that the 7 October massacres were not an agreed-upon starting gun by this alliance for a general assault on Israel. Rather, Hamas appears not to have informed its allies and patrons in advance of the precise planning and timing for the attacks.
The result was that the response of Iran and its various proxies was partial and piecemeal. This has enabled Israel to deal with the various elements of the Iran-led bloc in succession, rather than simultaneously.
The results are unambiguous and profoundly significant. Lebanese Hezbollah, first to enter the fray on 8 October, was broken by an Israeli counter-assault beginning in September 2024 after months of missile exchanges. The Assad regime in Syria, without its vital Lebanese ally available to defend it, was destroyed by its domestic opponents in December 2024.
The Iranian regime itself entered the arena in April 2024 and then again in October of that year. Its air defences were destroyed at that time by Israel. This paved the way for Israel and US action to cripple the Iranian nuclear programme in June of this year. The Yemeni Ansar Allah movement began attacks on Israel in November 2023. These have, with a couple of exceptions, failed to penetrate Israeli airspace. Israel’s recent response was to kill the Houthi prime minister, Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi, and a number of his colleagues.
The Houthis, perhaps alone in the Iranian alliance, can nevertheless claim a considerable strategic achievement from the events of the last two years. This success was not registered against Israel, however, but against the international order. The organisation’s attacks on shipping on the Gulf of Aden-Red Sea route have resulted in a reduction of traffic of 85 per cent on that vital maritime trade artery.
Two years of war, then, and the Iran-led regional alliance is largely in ruins. Yet of all its component parts, one remains in the field. Hamas, which started the war, is as yet undefeated in its Gaza fiefdom. The Gaza Islamists are still in control of around 25 per cent of the Strip. What explains their durability? How is it that the IDF, which crippled the more powerful Lebanese Hezbollah, which established the freedom of the skies over Iran for itself, which found and killed the Houthis’ governing cabinet, has not yet finished the small jihadi militia which set the whole thing in motion?
The answer is not so mysterious. For much of the last two years, Israel has not been solely engaged in an attempt to destroy the Hamas authority in Gaza. Rather, it has been balancing two contradictory goals: namely seeking to weaken and diminish Hamas while at the same time engaging in negotiations with the rulers of Gaza for the freeing of the Israeli hostages taken on 7 October. Electing not to choose between these options, but rather to pursue both of them, has inevitably slowed the progress of both. The IDF has, to a considerable extent in Gaza, been engaged in raids intended to soften Hamas’s negotiating position over the last two years, rather than the permanent seizure of territory. As an example, I accompanied the 36th Division into Shejaiya in December of 2023. The IDF is now once more engaged in this area.
The results of this combined strategy are not unimpressive. After two years, Hamas is massively weakened. The great majority of the hostages have been freed. However, the duality cannot be maintained indefinitely.
Israel has determined that the authority that carried out the massacres of 7 October must cease to exist. This can either be achieved or not achieved. For it to happen, the IDF must conquer the totality of the area of that authority’s rule. This means taking the remaining 25 per cent of Gaza. Should this not take place, then despite Israel’s other achievements, the dangerous message will be conveyed to the many enemies of the Jewish state that you can carry out a massacre of Israelis and survive, on condition that you take Israeli civilian hostages. Should it be achieved, then Israel will place the seal on a remarkable two-year campaign in which a region-wide alliance committed to its destruction will itself have been defeated and severely damaged.
Why didn’t TfL publish the truth about LTNs?
Policymakers must, of course, stick to the evidence and base their decisions around proper, peer-reviewed research. Until, that is, the evidence starts to tell you what you don’t want to hear. The Mayor of London’s office appears to have been caught red-handed in refusing to publish a study it had itself commissioned into the behaviour of residents following the imposition of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). The study, by the University of Westminster, found that the presence of an LTN resulted in more people cycling, but it did not decrease car use and had no discernible effect on walking. It reached this conclusion by quizzing more than 4,500 London residents, some of whom lived in LTNs and some who did not.
Shouldn’t we be allowed to know this? It seems that City Hall would rather we didn’t. In spite of agreeing to pay £82,000 for the study, officials cancelled it before it had even concluded, declining to publish it on the grounds that it did not ‘offer sufficient new insights to justify further investment in continuing the survey’. They say they are ‘committed to supporting high-quality research that helps us understand how our policies and programmes are working’ and ‘remain confident that LTNs can reduce traffic levels in the area, making streets safer and enabling more walking and cycling’.
Except this study clearly has provided a new insight. Until now, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has always made out that LTNs would make us less car-dependent. The evidence now suggests they haven’t. In fact, given that LTNs have increased the length of some car journeys, they may well have helped to increase the amount of traffic overall.
What TfL really wanted was a study that reaffirmed Khan’s existing beliefs
What TfL really wanted was a study that reaffirmed Khan’s existing beliefs – provided confirmation of old insights, in other words. They must have thought that they had gone to the right place: the academic commissioned to undertake the study, Professor Rachel Aldred, director of Westminster University’s Active Travel Academy, has produced several previous studies whose findings City Hall did take a liking to. Her personal views on the subject are not in doubt: she has previously been a trustee for the London Cycling Campaign. But evidently she was not prepared to twist evidence in order to help justify the creation of LTNs – and quite rightly not.
Why couldn’t TfL have published the research and said ‘it is good that LTNs are encouraging cycling. It is disappointing, nonetheless, that they do not appear to have persuaded motorists to leave their cars at home and walk – and we are going to be taking another look at these schemes to see what more we can do to cut congestion and pollution and make them work for everyone’?
Instead, TfL have undermined the whole exercise by being selective in what evidence they see fit to present to the public. From now on, research pumped out by City Hall is going to have to have a big asterisk placed next to it with the warning: beware that studies published by the Mayor of London may have been subject to a policy of selective publication.
I am not personally against LTNs – at least not when they are enforced by physical barriers rather than these wretched cameras which seem designed to catch people out in order to raise revenue through fines. If I lived in London, I would want to live plumb in the middle of an LTN – although I might take a different view of them if I found myself living on the edge of one, to where the traffic had been diverted. But LTNs are only going to work if they persuade people to make short journeys on foot rather than by car. By seemingly suppressing evidence that they are not currently doing this, TfL is undermining the whole case for them and quite possibly hastening their demise.
Douglas Ross gets in a flap at FMQs
The otherwise run-of-the-mill First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament came to a dramatic conclusion this afternoon. Before the Presiding Officer moved onto the next item of business, former Conservative leader Douglas Ross made a point of order alleging that he had been assaulted by an SNP government minister. Crikey!
He told SNP First Minister John Swinney: ‘As I left the chamber yesterday, I was physically assaulted and verbally abused by your minister for parliamentary business, Jamie Hepburn.’ Ross went on to urge Swinney to confirm he takes ‘a zero-tolerance approach to threatening and intimidating behaviour by his ministers’. Talk about the bare minimum, eh?
The incident followed a clash in parliament yesterday over, er, seagulls. The scavenger birds have been wreaking havoc in Ross’s Highlands and Islands area, and the Scottish government reportedly wants to hold a summit about the issue in private.
Ross alleges that, as he was walking out following heated exchanges between the pair, Hepburn grabbed him by the shoulder, began swearing at him and continued to tighten his grip. Swinney has said he will consider the claim, which he was previously unaware of. There has been no response from Hepburn so far.
Given the current focus on political violence, Mr Steerpike suspects Swinney will come under pressure to get to the bottom of Ross’s accusations. The former Scots Tory leader has certainly ruffled feathers at Holyrood today…
Rachel Reeves doesn’t get the interest rate cut she was hoping for
The Bank of England has held interest rates at 4 per cent. Threadneedle Street’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted seven to two to keep rates where they are. The fact inflation now sits at almost double the Bank’s 2 per cent target outweighed concerns about the slackening jobs market and what its impact on Britain’s lacklustre growth.
Two members voted to cut rates to 3.75 per cent, but the overall decision is no surprise. There’s a growing sense that the bulk of committee members feel they perhaps made a mistake in cutting rates last month with inflation still climbing. Markets don’t expect another cut this side of Christmas and the implied chance of a cut at the Bank’s November meeting has fallen to 20 per cent. That said, some in the City still believe a worsening picture on jobs could mean those chances are under priced.
The argument goes that wage-price pressures in the services sector are easing and measures of money growth suggest a roof on where inflation will go (the Bank reckons it’ll peak at 4 per cent this month). But that’s set against the fact food inflation is still climbing and this week passed 5 per cent. Groceries getting more expensive is perhaps the most visible part of inflation and so the MPC worries about it a lot because of its potential to spur on wage demands.
Far more interesting, and consequential, today was the MPC’s decision on Quantitative Tightening (QT) – the process of burning the money the bank printed to fund the countries’ Covid policies. The Bank’s policy of selling certain gilts back into the market to achieve QT has coincided with a time when pension funds stopped buying them and has contributed to soaring yields and increased borrowing costs for the Chancellor.
Today, the MPC decided to slow the pace of QT from £100 billion a year of active sales to £70 billion. The Bank also said they will sell fewer longer term gilts in an effort to bring 30-year yields back down and 'flatten the curve'. That should help ease some of the upward pressure on yields and provide a bit of breathing room for the Chancellor.
Elsewhere though the Bank recommitted to its forecast that inflation is not yet done with us and that it will peak at 4 per cent this month before falling back over the next 18 months.
Rachel Reeves will be desperate for a rate cut in time for her November Budget and will be jealous of President Trump who got his own cut from the Federal Reserve yesterday, but the Bank of England is not going to support her in the same way.
Even if they did though, the fundamental problems she faces in this Budget remain: sluggish growth, ballooning spending pressures and a party unwilling to let her administer the medicine needed to properly close the fiscal blackhole.
First illegal migrant deported under ‘one in, one out’ deal
Well, well, well. At long last, two months after it was agreed, the first illegal migrant has been deported from Britain to France under Keir Starmer’s ‘one in, one out’ deal with Emmanuel Macron. The news comes after this week saw a number of delays thanks to lawyers submitting eleventh-hour legal challenges – putting a spanner in the works of Starmer’s deportation plans. But while today is a breakthrough for the PM, it’s going to take some amount of work to make a dent in Britain’s migrant crisis – given more than 30,000 have crossed the Channel illegally this year…
After the scheme faced delays earlier in the week, the new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood launched an urgent review of Britain’s modern slavery law to prevent it being used by migrants to block their deportation – which, the cabinet minister fumed, made a ‘mockery of our laws’. Not that this has gone down well with everyone, with the independent anti-slavery commissioner Eleanor Lyons insisting that Mahmood remarks could dissuade real victims of modern slavery from coming forward.
Today the Home Office will appeal Tuesday’s High Court ruling that temporarily blocked the removal of an Eritrean man, who was supposed to one of the first migrants to be deported to France under the scheme agreed with Macron. Mahmood raged about the matter:
Migrants suddenly deciding that they are a modern slave on the eve of their removal, having never made such a claim before, make a mockery of our laws and this country’s generosity. I will fight to end vexatious, last-minute claims.
Strong stuff – but will the Home Secretary be able to see it through? Stay tuned…
Led By Donkeys’s Trump stunt is their lamest yet
Has there ever been a lamer protest group than Led By Donkeys? I’m old enough to remember when protest was raucous, occasionally even sexy. The young and the angry rising up in fury against their irritant rulers. Now it’s four craft-beer bros from Stoke Newington whose idea of ‘rebellion’ is to titillate the middle classes with a naff projection about how awful Brexit is.
Led By Donkeys have never exactly been daring
The chattering class’s favourite faux troublemakers are back with another cunning stunt. This time they’re giving Brexit, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss a break and are aiming their macchiato-fuelled spleen at Donald Trump. I bet you’re shocked that this agitprop group that is basically a Guardian leader made flesh also suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
On Tuesday, as the president landed for his second state visit, they hauled their projectors down to Windsor and shone onto the castle old photos of Trump cosying up to his late pal Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the political equivalent of saying ‘ner ner’. It’s the square kids shouting ‘You’re a meanie’. It heaps shame on Britain’s fine and long tradition of protest that such a juvenile display of turbo-smug Trump-phobia now counts as ‘edgy’.
But then, Led By Donkeys have never exactly been daring. Their stunts are best understood as a yelp of bourgeois rage. They’re the militant wing of the leafy suburbs’ loathing for Brexit, Trump, populism and anything else that feels a tad too oik-ish. They’re not really protesters at all – they’re jesters to the court of received opinion whose chief role is the colonisation of public space with middle-class moaning.
Most protest groups are founded in response to some grave wrong by the state. Led By Donkeys was set up to rage against the wrongness of the people. The Guardian published a gushing profile of the group a few years back. It revealed that the founders are four men in sensible jumpers called Ben, James, Oliver and Will who came up with the idea for Led By Donkeys in their cosy alcove in the Birdcage pub in Stoke Newington. Right out of central casting. ‘[This] seems an unlikely birthplace for a rebellion’, fawned the Guardian journo, making me cringe so hard my sciatica almost came back.
It was their ‘collective despair’ over the ‘lies, lunacy and hypocrisy’ of Brexit that inspired them to act, they said. Isn’t that extraordinary? A protest movement founded not to expand democracy but to bitch about it. A ‘progressive’ outfit whose foundational belief is that democracy is a pain in the arse. The Chartists and Suffragettes spin in their graves when these gastro-pub agitators with their luxuriant despair over the largest vote in British history are hailed as the new rebels.
Sometimes the latent snobbery of Led By Donkeys leaks out. That Guardian profile from 2019 recounts their ‘venture’ to Dover, that ‘Farage stronghold’ and ‘frontline of Brexit’, where in the dead of night they cheekily put up some Brexit-bashing posters. We were ‘pretty nervous’, they said. Well, it is Dover – a frightful place, what? It has the feel of a civilising mission, doesn’t it? Four well-read men from gentrified London ‘venturing’ to the dark heart of Kent to try to prise open the eyes of that strange tribe of Faragists.
Led By Donkeys are a curious new beast: regime protesters. They don’t speak truth to power – they give voice to the haughty angst of the privileged. This is why they seem to have adopted a Hands Off policy with regards to the Labour government and are still wanging on about the Tories – even Liz Truss! – rather than Sir Keir and his myriad scandals and failures. Because their aim is less to improve the lot of the British people than to vent the snooty obsessions of a tiny section of it.
Protest has come to be colonised by the comfortable. Once a tool for the hard-up to put pressure on the establishment, now it’s little more than a noisy manifestation of establishment opinion. Trans women are women, Israel is bad, Trump is an oaf – not one of these opinions would be out of place at a literary soirée. That’s why it felt so refreshing to see the Unite the Kingdom march: ordinary people saying things the establishment doesn’t want to hear. Oiks on the streets? Bet Led By Donkeys were sobbing into their Camden Hells.
Tulip Siddiq under scrutiny over citizenship claims
Oh dear. Former government minister Tulip Siddiq has come under scrutiny over former claims she made about holding a Bangladesh national identity card. The Labour MP is on trial in abstentia in Bangladesh after being accused of influencing her aunt, the deposed authoritarian ruler Sheikh Hasina, to buy plots of land for her family. She has denied any wrongdoing – and last month, Siddiq denied further claims made by prosecutors that she has been issued with a national identity card and passport. However, as reported by the Times, files have emerged that appear to show the Labour MP was indeed issued with these documents. How very curious…
Officials in Dhaka have come across passport records that seem to prove Siddiq was issued with one in London in 2001 – when the politician was 19 – and given a national identity card in 2011. Meanwhile entries in Bangladesh’s passport database appear to show Siddiq had applied to renew her Bangladeshi passport in 2011. Both records see her permanent addresss as listed as a house in Dhaka that her aunt owned. Electoral Commission database entries also seem to show she has a voter registration number.
In April, Siddiq had an arrest warrant issued against her in Bangladesh over alleged corruption charges. In one of at least three investigations against the Hampstead and Highgate MP, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has accused Siddiq of putting pressure on her aunt to give plots of land in a Dhaka residential development to three of the parliamentarian’s family members. The MP has also been accused of helping Hasina siphon off large sums of money intended for eight infrastructure projects.
In January, Siddiq was outed for owning a £700,000 London flat, given to her for free by a political ally of her aunt. A subsequent probe by Sir Laurie Magnus found Siddiq ‘misled’ the public over her flat and the politician was forced to resign from her government job in January after an official probe found her family’s links to the ousted Bangladeshi regime exposed the government to ‘reputational risks’. The warrant was issued by a judge in Dhaka after the ACC submitted a criminal charge sheet against the politician – who was formerly, um, Labour’s anti-corruption minister. The jokes write themselves…
The ACC, which has been probing Siddiq and members of her family, has since said that she is being tried as a Bangladeshi citizen after her passport, national identity card and tax identity number were found. A spokesperson for her lawyers told the Financial Times last month that ‘Tulip has never had a Bangladesh national identity card or voter ID and has not held a passport since she was a child.’ When presented with the newly uncovered records, Siddiq’s spokesperson claimed they were ‘fabricated’ as part of a ‘politically motivated smear campaign’ by Bangladeshi authorities.
The Labour MP’s spokesperson added:
For nearly a year, the Bangladeshi authorities have pursued a politically motivated smear campaign against Ms Siddiq without producing a shred of credible evidence. They are now circulating fabricated documents in a desperate attempt to justify their so-called trial. Ms Siddiq has never held a Bangladeshi national identity card or voter ID, and has not held a passport since childhood. This is a deliberate and desperate attempt to undermine her credibility and reputation.
Sir Laurie Magnus CBE, the prime minister’s adviser on ministerial standards, has already cleared Ms Siddiq of any wrongdoing following a thorough investigation. Now almost 12 months since these allegations were first made, Ms Siddiq is still yet to receive any communication from the Bangladeshi authorities. Ms Siddiq has been clear that she has done nothing wrong and will respond to any credible evidence that is presented directly to her or her legal team.
The plot thickens…
The problem with ABC’s Matt Gutman
Matt Gutman has the hairstyle of Anderson Cooper and the literary style of Danielle Steel.
In a special report on the Charlie Kirk assassination, ABC News’s chief national correspondent wistfully described text messages between the suspect, Tyler Robinson, and his roommate and alleged boyfriend. The exchanges were, Gutman gushed, ‘very touching in a way that I think many of us didn’t expect’ and ‘a very intimate portrait into this relationship’. Gutman quoted Robinson’s sweet nothings (‘my love’ and ‘I want to protect you, my love’) and mused on a ‘duality’ between the aggravated murder charge and ‘on the other hand, he was, you know, speaking so lovingly about his partner’.
Gutman wasn’t done, and the longer he spoke, the purpler the prose became. Robinson’s messages were ‘so fulsome, so robust, so apparently, allegedly self-incriminating and yet, on the hand, so touching’. Returning to Robinson’s reported intentions towards his roommate, Gutman reminded us that ‘he was trying to protect him’. Thus there was ‘this heartbreaking duality that we’re seeing very tragically playing out here’.
Most network correspondents dream of winning a Polk or a Peabody. Gutman is going for a Romance Writers of America award.
Two points before we go any further. One: Robinson is innocent until proved guilty. Two: Reporting live on camera under pressure is a feat and neither experience nor ability a safeguard against poor word choice, so Gutman deserves some slack. Even so, it is bracing to hear a leading journalist speak about a murder suspect in such terms. Shading in the initial sketch of the accused is part of the job, getting misty-eyed about his dedication to his reported boyfriend is very much not.
Might I hazard a guess at what is going on here? After initial efforts to frame Kirk’s murder as the action of a far-right 4chan edgelord, mainstream media journalists now must contend with the grave possibility that the conservative activist’s alleged killer grew up in a Republican family, was radicalised to the left at college, where he met and seemingly fell in love with his trans roommate, then gunned down a critic of leftism and gender ideology. I don’t know whether this is any closer to the truth than the groyper-gunman theory, but it is a much more difficult frame for network reporters to process. After years of neglecting, downplaying and even excusing leftist violence, all the while echoing progressive hysteria about even the most mainstream Republicans, the mainstream media now must explain how Charlie Kirk became the only recorded victim of Trump’s trans genocide.
Yet the trans angle is also the most fruitful for journalists and progressives. If the story becomes one of tragic love and desperation and the fears of an oppressed minority, no one will be talking about politics anymore. Is political violence in the United States really the preserve of the right, or does the left have a problem with it, too? Did allowing activism and catastrophism too large a role in news reporting and analysis create an atmosphere of existential alarm among some already troubled people? In characterising political speech to the right of David French as fascism, racism, transphobia, and the rest, did Democrats and mainstream reporters place a target on conservative public figures like Kirk?
If this is the thought process, it says nothing good about the condition of American civic life. It says there are Americans who can more readily empathise with an alleged murderer because of his minority status than with the married father of two he allegedly murdered. I would say this is the inevitable end point of progressive identity politics but I suspect the road to hell has more stopovers yet to go.
What might cause a person to respond this way? Fanatical partisanship? Perhaps. Suicidal empathy? The right would certainly say so. My ‘law of displaced culpability’ (the more acutely an event exposes the shortcomings of liberalism, the more zealously elite institutions will strive to reassign blame)? Could be. Or perhaps it is a rejection of moral responsibility, of the very notion that there is right and wrong and those who freely do wrong should account for it.
There is a famous precedent here. When John Hinckley Jr, Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin, was found not guilty by reason of insanity at his 1982 trial, the fiercest and most eloquent protest came not from the right but from Dan Rather, paladin of crusading liberal journalism, on his CBS Radio broadcast. Hinckley had wounded not only the president but Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, police officer Thomas Delahanty, and White House press secretary James Brady, who was paralysed and died from his injuries three decades later.
The attack was planned and motivated, it was said, by the gunman’s desire to impress Jodie Foster, having become fixated on her performance in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). Hinckley acquired the slickest of trial attorneys – his father was an energy tycoon – and a succession of defence psychiatrists assured the court that Hinckley was unable to distinguish between the movie and real life and was therefore legally insane. The jury bought it.
The next day Rather got behind his microphone, from which had come so much to consternate conservatives, and offered a verse that rhymed with the thoughts of many Americans. ‘The insane are among us, it is true,’ he said. ‘But so are the calculating.’ It was well-known that money talked, but ‘in the Hinckley case money yelled and banged on the table and won the day’. The poor, whites and blacks alike, went to prison for ‘the usual assortment of human transgressions’ but this lost little rich boy could shoot the president, establish a disorder, and become a tormented victim, absolved of legal culpability.
Rather’s ire was not directed only to social injustice but to moral decadence. The verdict sent the message that ‘the more heinous the crime the crazier you must be’ and thus ‘you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault. ‘Something is wrong here,’ he concluded. ‘Wrong about this age of millionaire assassins and high-powered lawyers and cool talk about the secrets of the mind — and no talk about old abstractions like responsibility and punishment and sin.’
It’s hard to imagine a liberal talking like this today, not even and perhaps especially not of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. Moral judgement is determined by identity, not behaviour, and victim status cannot be revoked – provided any harm done is done against those with victimiser status. The accused is gay and supposedly dating a trans-identifying guy. Kirk was a white, reactionary, Christian, Zionist, gender-disbeliever. The moral die was cast long before ballistics had their say.
In his short story The Generous Gambler, Charles Pierre Baudelaire has the Devil offer the narrator, as a consolation for the loss of his soul, ‘the possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life, this bizarre affection of ennui, which is the source of all your maladies and of all your miseries’. Aversion to the mundane, to the ennui of the ordered life, can leave us longing for transgression and its alluring excitements. Kirk espoused the ordered life. Those who cannot find solace in that life hope to conquer it by romanticising destruction physical and moral. Worship of disorder is worship of the generous gambler.
Labour will regret repealing the Troubles amnesty law
Fresh from agreeing to surrender the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the government may be about to reach an equally damaging agreement with the Republic of Ireland in relation to legacy cases in Northern Ireland. Recent statements by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, suggest that the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 is to be repealed. That Act’s emphasis on truth and reconciliation, paired with conditional immunity for those who participate, looks set to be replaced by a renewed emphasis on investigations and prosecutions.
On past form, this approach to legacy cases – which centres on inquests, criminal investigations, prosecutions and trials – is likely to prove divisive. It will yield few successful prosecutions, result in an asymmetry in the investigation of paramilitaries and security personnel, and be of limited use in establishing the truth of what has happened for the majority of Troubles-era victims. In other words, it risks solving nothing – while at the same time raising new barriers to reconciliation.
The Irish government’s support should not be secured at any cost
Why then is the government apparently so determined to proceed in this way? The answer would seem to lie in the combination of the Westminster government’s desire to secure the support of the Irish government and its assumption that the Legacy Act 2023, or any other conditional amnesty, would be incompatible with the ECHR. In a new paper for Policy Exchange, my colleagues and I argue that these factors are likely to have distorted the government’s policy-making in this tricky domain and that parliament and the public should closely question this apparent new approach.
The support of the Irish government would, of course, be helpful in addressing the legacy of the Troubles. The Belfast Agreement provides a structure for ongoing dialogue between the British and Irish governments – a structure that the government in Dublin has bypassed by initiating an inter-state case against the UK before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But the Irish government’s support should not be secured at any cost and the UK government should not agree to a return to prosecutions and investigations in order to shut down the Strasbourg litigation.
Unfortunately, Hilary Benn and his colleagues seem to be proceeding on the assumption that defeat before the Strasbourg court would be inevitable – as if the court is bound to rule that the UK has breached Article 2 of the ECHR by enacting the Legacy Act 2023. But the Strasbourg court might find otherwise, not least since the 2023 Act was enacted in order to help secure peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. The government seems to be resting its legal analysis on a single Northern Ireland High Court judgment that declared various provisions in the Legacy Act incompatible with Convention rights. This judgment was eminently contestable and it was foolish of the government to choose to abandon an appeal against it in July 2024.
The current government’s assumption that the conditional amnesty established by the previous government’s Legacy Act is indefensible is doubly surprising in view of the relevant history. Not only did the Labour government that agreed to the Belfast Agreement enact several conditional amnesties between 1997 and 1999, but in 2005 the Labour government proposed a categorical amnesty. Introduced at Sinn Fein’s request, the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill at first addressed only the so-called ‘on-the-runs’ (persons suspected of terrorism but never charged as well as persons charged or convicted who had escaped), but was later widened to include security force personnel (at which point Sinn Fein ceased to support it). Parliament did not enact this proposal, with the government instead sending out hundreds of ‘comfort letters’ to the on-the-runs, a practice that only came to light in 2014 with the collapse of the trial of John Downey for the 1982 Hyde Park bombing.
Parliament should ask the present Labour government whether, and if so why, it now thinks that the Blair-era 2005 legislative proposal was legally and morally indefensible. Parliament should also ask Benn whether he has challenged the Irish government to defend its own approach to legacy cases. Why since 1998 has there been no sustained attempt on the part of the Irish state to investigate and prosecute legacy cases? What is one to make of former Irish Tánaiste, justice minister and attorney general Michael McDowell’s references to the Irish government’s informal decision not to investigate Troubles-related cases? How is the Irish government’s approach to legacy compatible with its commitment under the Belfast Agreement to bring forward measures that ‘would ensure at least an equivalent level of protection of human rights as will pertain in Northern Ireland’?
If the Irish government has chosen not to investigate and prosecute Troubles-related cases, this may well be the right policy, although one might have expected it to be sanctioned by law. What seems extraordinary is for the Republic of Ireland to insist that the UK apply a standard that it does not itself meet. What would be even more extraordinary is if this UK government now agrees.
Full text: King Charles’s speech at the state banquet
Mr President, Mrs Trump, it is with great pleasure that my wife and I welcome you to Windsor Castle on this, your second state visit to the United Kingdom.
This unique and important occasion reflects the enduring bond between our two great nations. Anchored by the deep friendship between our people, this relationship, which, with good reason, we and our predecessors have long called ‘special’, has made us safer and stronger through the generations.
Our people have fought and died together for the values we hold dear. We have innovated, traded and created together, fuelling our economies and cultures through myriad forms of exchange. We have celebrated together, mourned together and stood together in the best and worst of times.
Mr President, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, it is remarkable to think just how far we have come. I cannot help but wonder what our forebears from 1776 would make of this friendship today.
The rebel commander and pioneering first president, George Washington, famously vowed never to set foot on British soil. And my five times great grandfather, King George III, for his part, did not spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders.
Today, however, we celebrate a relationship between our two countries that surely neither Washington nor King George III could possibly have imagined. The ocean may still divide us, but in so many other ways we are now the closest of kin. Mr President, you have spoken of your pride in your British roots. In fact, not only have you set foot on British soil twice in the last two months alone, but I understand that British soil makes for rather splendid golf courses!
For my part, I have always admired the ingenuity of the American people and the principles of freedom which your great democracy has represented since its inception. Throughout my life, from my very first visit to the United States in 1970 and over twenty visits since that time, I have cherished the close ties between the British and American people. In fact, had the media succeeded in the 1970s in their own attempt at deepening the special relationship, I myself might have been married off within the Nixon family!
Mr President, from York to New York, from Birmingham, England, to Birmingham, Alabama, we are united by a common language and shared heritage. The many thousands of people from each of our countries who have made the other their home have enriched our societies immeasurably – a fact that gives me the greatest pride. Our cultural connections, too, continue to flourish, with our actors, musicians, writers and television presenters prospering in the hearts of transatlantic audiences.
Today, our alliance spans every field of endeavour and shows vast potential for growth. The United Kingdom was your partner in the first trade deal of your administration, Mr President, bringing jobs and growth to both our countries. And no doubt we can go even further as we build this new era of our partnership.
Our two nations have an exceptional legacy of shared discovery. Together, we laid the foundations of nuclear science, mapped the human genome and built the internet, upon which all contemporary commerce, communication and defence is based. Together, our scientists and engineers are shaping the world of tomorrow, not least with new partnership agreements on technology, and the prosperity that stands to bring.
Our countries have the closest defence, security and intelligence relationship ever known. In two world wars, we fought together to defeat the forces of tyranny. Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace. And our AUKUS submarine partnership with Australia sets the benchmark for innovative and vital collaboration.
The successors of the British Redcoats and of George Washington’s Continental Army today stand shoulder-to-shoulder, brothers and sisters in arms, protecting the freedoms we both cherish. Our countries are working together in support of crucial diplomatic efforts, not least of which, Mr President, is your own personal commitment to finding solutions to some of the world’s most intractable conflicts in order to secure peace.
In striving together for a better world, we also have a precious opportunity to safeguard and to restore the wonders and beauty of nature for the generations who follow us. We share the ambition and determination to preserve our majestic lands and waters; above all, to ensure that we have clean water, clean air and clean food. Our legacy for the next 250 years and beyond is to ensure that our children, grandchildren, and those who come after them can experience the awe and magnificence of the natural treasures found in the countryside, on the coasts, in the seas and in the national parks established by your predecessors and mine.
Mr President, Mrs Trump – the bond between our two nations is indeed a remarkable one. Forged in the fire of conflict, it has been fortified through our shared endeavours and burnished by the deep affection between our people. Tested time and again, it has borne the weight of our common purpose and raised our ambition for a better world. So, in renewing our bond tonight, we do so with unshakeable trust in our friendship and in our shared commitment to independence and liberty.
Therefore, as we celebrate this unparalleled partnership, allow me to propose a toast – to President Trump and the First Lady, and to the health, prosperity and happiness of the people of the United States of America.
Donald Trump is in Britain this week for his second state visit. Yesterday, King Charles hosted the American President at Windsor Castle for a state banquet. This is the speech His Majesty the King gave.
Full text: Donald Trump’s state banquet speech
It’s a singular privilege to be the first American president welcomed here. And if you think about it, it’s a lot of presidents, and this was the second state visit – and that’s a first and maybe that’s going to be the last time. I hope it is actually.
But this is truly one of the highest honours of my life. Such respect for you and such respect for your country. For many decades, His Majesty the King has epitomised the fortitude, nobility, and the spirit of the British monarchy and the British people. He’s dedicated himself to preserving the glory and unique character of this kingdom, restoring life to the rivers and streams, supporting the works of its artists and composers, planting trees and gardens in its countryside. And I just visited one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen that you just completed, and protecting the architectural integrity of cities, villages and towns.
He has uplifted the poor, cared for rural farmers and tended to wounded veterans like nobody else. I’ll tell you that I just stood in line and shook about 150 hands, and the King knew every single person and every single company, and some of them had bad names like ‘x, y, z, q, three’ – and he knew every one of them, or at least I think he did, because nobody was complaining. I was very impressed with that.
But I just want to say that His Majesty has also raised a remarkable son in His Royal Highness, Prince of Wales. Really amazing. We’ve gotten to know you, and I think you’re going to have an unbelievable success in future. Melania and I are delighted to visit again with Prince William and to see Her Royal Highness Princess Catherine so radiant and so healthy and so beautiful. It’s really a great honor. Thank you.
Many years ago, His Majesty opened his archives to a biographer. Among the documents was a letter from 1993, in which he described the patriotism that guided his many projects. He wrote that he was, quote, ‘entirely motivated by a desperate desire to put the great back into Great Britain’. In the finest tradition of British sovereigns, he has given his whole heart, everything he has got to those parts of Britain that are beyond the realm of mere legislation.
It’s not easy, but which defines its essence and its virtue, its harmony and its soul. It’s an amazing calling, and there’s nobody that’s answered that calling like you have. A fifth of all of humanity speaks, writes, thinks and prays in the language born on these isles and perfected in the pages of Shakespeare and Dickens and Tolkien and Lewis, Orwell and Kipling. Incredible people. Unbelievable people like we have rarely seen before – probably won’t see again.
The lion-hearted people of this kingdom defeated Napoleon, unleashed the Industrial Revolution, destroyed slavery, and defended civilisation in the darkest days of fascism and communism, the British gave the world the Magna Carta, the modern parliament, and Francis Bacon’s scientific method. They gave us the works of Locke and Hobbes, Smith and Burke, Newton and Blackstone.
The legal, intellectual, cultural and political traditions of this kingdom have been among the highest achievements of mankind; there has really never been anything like it. The British Empire laid the foundations of law, liberty, free speech and individual rights virtually everywhere the Union Jack has ever flown, including a place called America. You know that place very well, don’t you?
His Majesty spoke eloquently about the bond which inspired Sir Winston Churchill – and the bust is in the Oval Office right now, the beautiful bust of Winston Churchill – to coin the phrase ‘special relationship’. But seen from American eyes, the word ‘special’ does not begin to do it justice. We’re joined by history and fate, by love and language and by transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry and destiny. We’re like two notes in one chord or two verses of the same poem, each beautiful on its own, but really meant to be played together.
The bond of kinship and identity between America and the United Kingdom is priceless and eternal. It’s irreplaceable and unbreakable. And we are, as a country, as you know, doing unbelievably well. We had a very sick country one year ago, and today I believe we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. In fact, nobody’s even questioning it. But we owe so much of that to you and the footing that you gave us when we started.
Together, we’ve done more good for humanity than any two countries in all of history. Together, we must defend the exceptional heritage that makes us who we are. And we must continue to stand for the values and the people of the English-speaking world. And we do indeed stand for that.
On behalf of all Americans, I offer a toast to one of the great friendships, to two great countries, and to His Majesty King Charles the Third. A very, very special man. And also a very, very special queen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s a great honour to be with you.
Donald Trump is in Britain this week for his second state visit. Yesterday, King Charles hosted the American President at Windsor Castle for a state banquet. This is the speech Trump gave.
Healey’s Palantir deal is a major boost for Britain’s army
President Donald Trump’s unprecedented (depending on your benchmark) state visit to the United Kingdom is underway and the deals are flowing. Sir Keir Starmer’s government desperately needs good news, not only economically but also to distract from the chaos everywhere else. He and his ministers will be hoping that a contract between the Ministry of Defence and Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies will be one of many positive outcomes.
Palantir’s software essentially integrates the customer’s data with a large language model and allows ultra-fast decision-making drawing on huge amounts of information. The Ministry of Defence’s £750 million deal will enable commanders across the three armed services to have a comprehensive view of the battlefield, tracking the location of tanks, aircraft and warships on both sides. This will assist planning and deployment as well as targeting of enemy assets based on a level of data impossible to manage without artificial intelligence.
Accurate, timely information is one of the most valuable weapons any military leader can have
The system will also perform more mundane but equally critical tasks in terms of monitoring the capability, maintenance and readiness of UK military assets, including equipment and personnel. It can keep track of when parts will need to be replaced and when planned maintenance periods will fall, and it is also expected to collate data from medical records, payroll and training documentation to provide an accurate and up-to-date assessment of the fitness and availability of personnel.
The Royal Navy is already working with Palantir. Since the early 2020s, as part of the wider Defence Data Strategy, Project Kraken has provided this kind of ‘stock-taking’ function – or ‘situational awareness platform’ – and has led to major advances in efficiency and effectiveness. The deal announced this week is ten times the size of existing contracts, however, and will be much broader in scope.
This is reportedly Palantir’s first billion-dollar (£730 million) deal outside the United States. It is also reported that, in recognition of the major expenditure by the Ministry of Defence, Palantir will invest heavily in the UK over the next five years, promising to spend £1.5 billion; what form this investment will take is not yet clear, but it is a substantial figure.
Accurate, timely information is one of the most valuable weapons any military leader can have. During Operation Banner, the British Army’s deployment to Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007, it developed a joint intelligence database, MACER (originally CAISTER), with the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its successor, the Police Service of Northern Ireland. This was designed to integrate information from as many sources as possible about terrorist and paramilitary activities. When Operation Banner came to an end, MACER was handed over as a closed archive to PSNI.
There has not been a comparable integrated database in the armed forces more generally, and operations have undoubtedly suffered for its lack. The available technology is now unfathomably more powerful, and the potential benefits are accordingly greater. Colonel Philip Ingram, a former Intelligence Corps officer who served in Northern Ireland and commanded 1 Military Intelligence Battalion in Iraq, summed up the Palantir deal to me: ‘This capability is long overdue and badly needed now.’
There will undoubtedly be unease, even opposition. Peter Thiel, the chairman and co-founder of Palantir, describes himself as a ‘conservative libertarian’ and has criticised DEI programmes, affirmative action, elements of welfare benefits and ‘capitalist democracy’. On the other hand, he has in the past supported the presidential bids of the late John McCain, Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina, as well as Donald Trump.
In truth, Palantir’s broad client base cannot be dismissed as ideological fellow-travellers. As well as many US federal organisations, it includes the NHS, Europol, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the police forces of three German states. The relevant questions are, do the UK armed forces need this kind of software and will it work? The answer to the first question is emphatically yes, and the evidence points towards a positive response to the second.
The Strategic Defence Review published in June emphasised the need to create an ‘integrated force’ to perform all the tasks required of the armed forces. This, it went on, ‘must be underpinned by the common digital foundation and shared data that are central to today’s software‑defined warfare’. This is a long-term transformation, but the capabilities provided by Palantir will be a vital part of it. As Margaret Thatcher once said, just rejoice at that news.
Trump’s state visit could not be going better
So, the Donald was on his best behavior after all. There had been rumours flying around that President Trump would use his speech at the formal banquet that has been thrown in his honour by King Charles to make some pointed reference to free speech and its perceived absence thereof in Britain today. In the event, there was nothing but a series of emollient statements of praise for his hosts, their family and the country he was visiting, as well as, of course, himself.
This threw up some incongruities – who would ever have imagined hearing Trump allude to Locke and Orwell? But his sentiments were warm (only partially reduced by his less-than-fluent delivery, reading at times haltingly off what looked like a giant prompt book). As such, they would have gone down well with those in St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle and far beyond.
In truth, Trump’s state banquet was never expected to be a controversial or difficult event
In truth, Trump’s state banquet was never expected to be a controversial or difficult event. Whether the King had wanted to host this second, unprecedented state visit for the American president or not, he was never going to make any public protestation, and so the speech of welcome that he gave his guest was typically warm and eloquent. He talked of the ‘enduring bond’ between the two countries, in language soon echoed by Trump, and made a good joke, saying, in an allusion to George III and the War of Independence: ‘It is remarkable to think just how far we have come. My five times great-grandfather did not spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders.’
Still, both men had their own agendas in mind, too, and they were expressed in polite yet pointed ways. The King talked with vigour of the enduring special relationship, but also – in lines presumably suggested by the government – he observed that ‘Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.’ Was there the slightest hint of irony when he praised Trump – a man obviously angling for the Nobel Peace Prize – and his ‘personal commitment to finding solutions to some of the world’s most intractable conflicts’? There almost certainly was.
And even in his peroration, when Charles spoke of how ‘in renewing our bond tonight, we do so with unshakeable trust in our friendship and in our shared commitment to independence and liberty’, there was the hint of a suggestion that this commitment might present itself in rather different ways. Talk of Trump’s attempts to protect the environment may have been more wishful thinking on Charles’s part than demonstrable fact.
The President, meanwhile, has had a splendidly indulgent day of watching military displays in his honour, all of which have taken place out of public view in the grounds of Windsor Castle, so as to avoid the embarrassment of any protests marring his fun. Therefore, when he delivered his remarks, they came from a place of apparent contentment – hence the sincerity of his warm words about the royals. Nevertheless, he was still unable to resist a spot of self-praise as he announced that America has gone from being ‘a very sick country’ to the ‘hottest anywhere in the world’. The King, to his immense credit, kept his best poker face throughout.
Still, everyone involved in organising this state visit will, rightly, congratulate themselves on how well the day went. Even the grey, overcast weather did not turn into the downpour that occasionally threatened to materialise, and the pageantry and glitz on display (at a rumoured cost of £15 million for the entire event) show that, when Britain attempts to put on a performance like this, it usually succeeds.
The political aspects of Trump’s visit come today, and they will be harder-won than this largely decorative display of soft power. But this coming together of two very different men, with very different values, over watercress panna cotta and ballotine of Norfolk chicken could hardly have gone better, either for them or their respective countries. And Charles will also know that the occasion will not – cannot – occur again, either, which may have made the whole thing easier to bear with suitably well-bred equanimity.
The cultification of science
My, how we all laughed. Thirty years ago the physicist Alan Sokal hoaxed a social science journal into publishing a paper ‘liberally salted with nonsense’ (in his own words) that ‘flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions’. Its title alone gave away the joke: ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.’
Little did we in the truth-seeking enterprise which is real science realise that verbose and vapid social deconstruction was coming for us too. In a new book, The War on Science, edited by the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, 31 scientists and scholars lament the corruption of their field by left-wing ideological nonsense. Whereas once a book with this title would have raged at the conservative right pushing creationism and sexism in the teeth of truth, now it is exposing the woke left pushing identity ideology and intersectionality at the expense of reason.
In 2022, Nature, at the pinnacle of the scientific establishment, published an editorial stating that it would refuse or retract papers that ‘could reasonably be perceived to undermine the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings’. The editors went on to reassure readers that they would consult ‘advocacy groups’ before doing this, just as they once had to consult popes before denying that the Earth circles the sun. This was an open invitation to activists to censor science they did not like. Sure, scientists always had their prejudices, ideological biases and blind spots, but almost by definition regarded those as bad things to be minimised. Here now was a manifesto for deliberately injecting bias into science.
As I said, back in the 1990s we laughed off this threat. The structure of DNA, the charge of an electron, the distance to Andromeda – these were neutral facts, not social constructs, and always would be. Foucauldian gobbledygook could be ignored as a disorder of the humanities and sociology.
Then the ramparts of anthropology were overrun by those who insisted that science must come second to cultural hypersensitivity when discussing indigenous peoples. Then much of psychology went the same way, the sensible compromises between nature and nurture that every sane person had accepted thrown out in favour of the outdated fable of blank-slate social construction.
But surely biology was safe, let alone chemistry and physics? How naive we were! Gender became the new front line. Journals were falling over themselves to declare sex a spectrum, despite the fact that all animals divide neatly into a sex with large, immobile gametes and a sex with small, mobile gametes – and there are no other sexes, just some rare developmental anomalies. Deviate from this new Lysenkoism by saying there are two sexes and you will be excommunicated.
Richard Dawkins once pointed out in a tweet that a mostly white woman had been pilloried for ‘identifying as black’, which seemed puzzling given that race is a spectrum in a way that sex is not. Why is it all right for a man to identify as a woman but not for a white person to identify as black? Just for raising the issue, he was retrospectively stripped of his humanist of the year award by the American Humanist Association. They accused him of implying ‘that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while simultaneously attacking black identity’.
So biology fell, but physics, and maths? Incredibly, yes, they too are battlefields. In 2023, a physics journal published an article on ‘observing whiteness in introductory physics, a case study’ and a maths conference heard a talk on ‘undergraduate mathematics education as a white cisheteropatriarchal space and opportunities for structural disruptions to advance queer of colour justice’.
Papers are being retracted, scientists sanctioned, hiring practices altered and peer reviews corrupted
Hilariously, the ideologues have painted themselves into an awkward corner in their attempts to decolonise mathematics. They demand non-western slants on algebra and algorithms, which are words of Arabic origin, while rewriting exam problems to replace adding up grocery bills (which ‘carry the ideological message that paying for food is natural’) with calculating how many aboriginal people can fit in a tipi, which is patronising to the point of racism. One right-on mathematician admitted this change was insulting, but only ‘because indigenous people would not divide themselves in the way stated in the word problem. Relational and spiritual factors would dominate’. Meanwhile, New Zealand now requires schools to teach indigenous Maori ‘ways of knowing’ as equivalent to scientific ones. So creationism is fine if brown people do it?
Many scientists continue to do good work unperturbed by this revolt against critical thinking. But the sheer volume of funding, publishing and attention that is being siphoned off into this pathology represents a massive opportunity cost. Grants are being spent, papers retracted, scientists sanctioned, hiring practices altered and peer reviews corrupted, while scientists are self-censoring to prevent their cancellation. Four-fifths of students say they self-censor, many more than at the height of McCarthyism.
It is now clear that embracing ideology over truth directly led to scientists misleading us during the pandemic. ‘I hate when politics is injected into science, but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance,’ wrote Kristian Andersen, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, to a colleague in March 2020, justifying his premature and wrong conclusion that a lab leak could be ruled out as the origin of Covid.
In an open letter in 2020 more than 1,200 academics argued that mass-protesting George Floyd’s death during lockdown was safe, while visiting a dying relative in hospital was not. This helped torpedo the reputation of science. A prominent left-leaning scientist told me recently: ‘The pandemic has destroyed my trust in scientific experts.’
Science has always behaved like a cult to some extent, enforcing dogma and persecuting heretics, but it has grown far worse with wokery. Science as a philosophy is still great, but science as an institution is about as true to its philosophy as the church was under the Borgias, and as ripe for reformation.
MDMA should be licensed for veterans with PTSD
‘Stuff starts to get real, real quick,’ recalls former US Marine, Tyler Flanigan. An Iraqi sniper had just shot out the tyres of his truck and a key member of his team had been killed. ‘We were sitting ducks.’ ‘I couldn’t easily name a single day in Iraq that I wasn’t shot at or didn’t have something explode next to me,’ says his fellow US Marine veteran, Nigel McCourry.
Combat experience is hard to forget. Civilian life offers daily triggers that throw you back down ‘IED alley’, reliving the flailing feeling of being blown up and the horror of gathering friends’ body parts in bags.
These former US Marines discussed their trauma in the documentary Dead Dog on the Left. It chronicles their journey through the no-man’s land of complex PTSD, which in turn triggered alcoholism and suicidal thoughts, to an eventual recovery, aided by MDMA-led psychotherapy.
Their stories are not unusual. For the past eight years I have been the patron of a charity called Supporting Wounded Veterans, which helps veterans who have suffered life-changing injuries. Increasingly, our work is less to do with physical injury and more to do with mental injury, as complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD, does not necessarily arise until some time after the trauma. We are the only British charity conducting medical research with trials using MDMA-led therapy, first at King’s College London and now at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge.
When I was chief of the general staff, the professional head of the British Army, eight years ago, we recognised that while we had an excellent focus on physical health, we were not doing enough for mental health. So we introduced training for commanders at all levels and developed a mental first aid assessment. But, most importantly, we worked to change the culture. We wanted to make it acceptable for soldiers to talk about mental health and to ask for help.
Recently, I took three weeks out and travelled to a retreat to try to understand the effect that multiple year-long combat tours in Afghanistan have had on my own mental wellbeing. It was an extraordinary experience to bring one’s real feelings out of a sealed box. I am fortunate – my issues are entirely manageable. But imagine what it is like for those with complex PTSD.
The guilt of surviving when others have died. Living in a society that does not want to know what you saw and seems not to care. Losing your sense of purpose and belonging. And the desperation that comes from finding no treatment that works. Suicide rates in young veterans are two to four times higher than the same age group in the general population. Hence my purpose in writing this article – for there is a treatment that may work, if only government would get behind it.
At the risk of sounding ‘woo woo’, I am talking about psychedelic therapy. It is not new. Between the 1950s and 1970s, LSD, MDMA and psilocybin were used in psychiatric clinics across Europe and North America to treat alcoholism, trauma and end-of-life anxiety. Tens of thousands received care before prohibition abruptly ended the work.
The methods were sub-par by modern standards, but one insight endured: these compounds seemed to activate the mind, not just medicate it. Patients described experiences that were vivid, challenging, often profound, and outcomes improved when those experiences were supported before and after by specialised care.
We have MDMA-led therapy, the most rigorously studied psychedelic intervention for PTSD. MDMA doesn’t produce hallucinations. Instead, it reduces activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain where fear-based emotions are processed, allowing patients to revisit trauma without being overwhelmed.
Psychedelic therapy doesn’t simply suppress symptoms. It may help reshape the system generating them. Neuroscientists speak of a ‘window of plasticity’ – a brief period in which the brain becomes more responsive and open to learning. It’s not alchemy. It’s structured, supervised psychological work.
Psychedelic therapy doesn’t simply suppress symptoms. It may help reshape the system generating them
Phase three trials in the US and earlier studies in Australia, Canada and Israel have shown sustained reductions in symptoms. But sadly, despite the US Food and Drug Administration designating MDMA-assisted treatment as a ‘breakthrough therapy’, there is still no formal approval. Even so, momentum continues. In March, the US Department of Defense awarded $9.8 million for MDMA research, including studies with active-duty troops. Regrettably, Britain is not keeping up: we are losing research talent, innovation and the chance to shape the field. Our infrastructure remains underpowered. Though MDMA and psilocybin show promise in trials, both remain Schedule 1 substances here, labelled as having ‘no medical use’. That legal status triggers licensing hurdles, a regulatory burden and huge additional costs.
Government research shows that a single gram of research-grade MDMA can cost as much as £10,000, compared with a street price of maybe £30 to £50. Trials involving controlled substances incur higher insurance and oversight costs. Anyone who handles the drug must be trained, vetted and approved. Thus a small clinical trial involving MDMA can cost millions of pounds.
America is investing in healing her warriors while the UK hesitates. Ministers cite regulation, but the deeper issue is a lack of commitment to collaborative research, to therapeutic innovation and to serious investment in mental health care. The US president Calvin Coolidge had it right when he observed: ‘The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten.’ A century later, that warning feels painfully relevant.
Britain has world-class clinicians, leading neuroscientists and veterans who are more than ready to take part in trials. What it lacks is the infrastructure and the political will to act. This isn’t just a military concern. Police, paramedics and NHS staff absorb trauma in silence, often with little support.
Psychedelic therapy is no miracle. But it may offer something other options rarely do – and that is depth, meaning and a way to engage with suffering rather than sideline it.
So my message to our government is that the UK doesn’t need to wait for the US to license this treatment. It should recategorise MDMA for research purposes to enable trials to happen faster and at vastly reduced cost. If the trials are as successful as the ones we have seen so far, then the government and the Medicine and Healthcare products -Regulatory Agency needs to allow full licensing – and at pace. This is a moral obligation to those who serve our country.
Event
Americano Live: Is America Great Again?
A new wunderkind
Halfway through the Fide Grand Swiss, held in Samarkand earlier in September, Magnus Carlsen picked out 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus as the player who had impressed him the most. The Turkish teenager, a grandmaster since last year and already established in the world’s top 100, looked utterly undaunted by the elite opposition he faced there.
In the second round, under pressure against the world champion, Dommaraju Gukesh, he came under pressure in the endgame but stirred up enough complications to save the game. The diagram shows the critical moment, after 39…Kd7-c6.
Dommaraju Gukesh-Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus
Fide Grand Swiss, Samarkand, 2025
1 d4 d5 2 c3 Nf6 3 Bg5 c6 4 Qc2 Ne4 5 Bf4 Bf5 6 Qb3 Qb6 7 f3 Nd6 8 Nd2 Nd7 9 g4 Bg6 10 h4 h6 11 Bg2 e6 12 h5 Bh7 13 e4 a5 14 Qxb6 Nxb6 15 a4 Nbc4 16 Nxc4 Nxc4 17 b3 Nd6 18 e5 Nc8 19 Bf1 Kd7 20 Be3 Kc7 21 Kd2 Nb6 22 f4 Nd7 23 Bd3 Bxd3 24 Kxd3 b5 25 f5 bxa4 26 Rxa4 c5 27 Ne2 c4+ 28 bxc4 Nb6 29 Ra2 Nxc4 30 fxe6 fxe6 31 Nf4 Re8 32 Bc1 Kc6 33 Rf1 Rg8 34 Kc2 Be7 35 Nxe6 g6 36 g5 Kd7 37 Nf4 Rgf8 38 Rg1 Bxg5 39 Nxd5 Kc6
40 Bxg5 Throwing away the win. The strongest move was 40 Nf6!, with the point that 40…Bxf6 41 Bxh6! soon recovers the material. For example, after 41…Bh8 42 Bxf8 Rxf8 43 Rxg6+ Kd5 44 Kb3 White retains a large advantage, although the game is not over. Alternatively, 41…Bg7 42 Bxg7 Rf2+ 43 Kb3 Rb8+ 44 Kxc4 Rxa2 45 hxg6 and the pile of pawns should win the game. Kxd5 41 Bf6 gxh5 42 Rg7 Gukesh had perhaps hoped that his bishop on f6 would put a lid on the counterplay, but Erdogmus finds a neat way to secure the draw. Rxf6! 43 exf6 Re2+ 44 Kb1 44 Kb3 a4+! and the Ra2 drops off, or else 45 Rxa4 Rb2 is mate. Re1+ 45 Kc2 Re2+ 46 Kb1 Re1+ Draw agreed
Impressive as it was to draw with the world champion at such a young age, the greatest show of resilience was yet to come. In the fifth round, his defence against Nodirbek Abdusattorov held the draw after 190 moves and 8.5 hours of play. The day before that, he found a dazzling finish in a wild game where White has just promoted a pawn on d8.
Aditya Mittal-Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus
Fide Grand Swiss, Samarkand, 2025
White has just promoted a pawn on d8, which Erdogmus meets with a glorious combination. 37…Qxf2+!! 38 Rxf2 Re1+ 39 Kh2 Rxf2+ 40 Kxh3 Rh1+ 41 Kg4 f5+ 42 Kh5 g6 checkmate
No. 868
Black to play. Szymon Gumularz-Nihal Sarin, Fide Grand Swiss, 2025. Sarin found a tactic which decided the game in his favour immediately. Which move did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 22 September. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.
Last week’s solution 1 f6! Then 1…Kxf6 2 Nd7# or 1…Kd4 2 Nc6# or 1…Kxd6 2 Bf4#
Last week’s winner David Marsh, Gurnard, Hampshire
Spectator Competition: Forget me not
Comp. 3417 invited you to write an elegy to a piece of obsolete technology. This prompted a deluge of very good entries – too many to name all the runners up, though here are some of the lamented objects: mangles, steam engines, oil lamps, floppy discs, the trebuchet, cash registers, radiograms, gramophones, tape recorders, Ceefax, Betamax, proper cameras, the fish slice, the pipe knife and – most of all – the VHS and the typewriter. A special mention to Tom Adam’s relatable paean to the Nokia:
I mourn that lump of plastic and its tiny little screen,
With only ‘Snake’ to offer up a hit of dopamine.
And Simon Godziek’s to the dial phone:
Yes, you could receive and, yes, you could call
But when all’s said and done, that’s about all.
Thanks for all your entries, and the winners of the £25 vouchers are below.
Millions on millions of primitive fax machines
Nestle in landfills that widen and wax.
Modems outmoded, with twentieth-century
Landlines, they lie in the land and relax,
No longer prompted to intercommunicate,
Severed forever from telephone jacks,
Nevermore straining with antediluvian
Screeches and buzzes and clickety-clacks.
Yesteryear’s masters of bitmap-transmittable
Missives have bitten the dustheap. Let cracks
Form on their carcasses post-existentially;
Placidly rusting, they’re resting in pax.
Telefacsimile documentarians
One day will dutifully dig up the facts;
Unmetaphorically, archaeological
Fieldworkers might even dig up the fax.
Alex Steelsmith
Nay, do not say you flattered to deceive,
Fulfilment of a long-awaited dream,
Impossible, at first sight, to believe,
The realisation of a love supreme.
You turned a home into a cinema
And me into a couch-potato fan
Who needn’t leave the house to go as far
As the fleapit or the Everyman.
But sadly, though you bested Betamax,
You had your flaws: the awkwardness of tapes
And all that fiddling with a ballpoint pen.
I loved you then, but love must face the facts
Technology, like feelings, takes new shapes.
I never said I’d never love again.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Yet once more, O ye writers, and once more
pray weep with me, your tears and sorrow lend,
for we’ve been robbed of that we knew before,
the tuneful typewriter, the scribe’s best friend.
The rattle of the cartridge’s return,
harmonious clicking of the keys when pressed
created melodies – and now I yearn
to hear those sounds that linger in my breast.
Those inadvertent errors that we shared:
an ‘o’, ink-flooding, formed a solid sphere,
an ‘i’ might lack a dot, perchance – who cared?
A minor fault was neither here nor there.
Yet now a silent keyboard is the norm,
correcting on-screen grammar, spelling too.
Ah me! I mourn what’s lost, I’ll not conform,
I’ve no desire to visit pastures new.
Sylvia Fairley
Who recalls the humble pager
whose ambition was to hide –
pocket, backpack, desktop, handbag –
anywhere but at your side?
Sometimes dubbed a beeper/bleeper
after its annoying noise.
All it did was squawk, its few words
never one of life’s great joys.
No one loved this little workhorse
with its unromantic ways,
just designed for interrupting
private plans for lazy days.
Mobile phones brought colour, glamour;
pagers were plain black and white.
Rest in peace now, little warrior,
in the has-been’s long goodnight.
D.A. Prince
You played us in at different speeds –
Sixteen, ponderous, all spoken,
Testaments, perhaps, or creeds:
Black, shellac, and quickly broken.
Ditto for the seventy-eight,
The stylus racing to your spindle.
How fragile, though your weight was great!
Memories of you that never dwindle –
Elizabethan! Bush! Dansette!
You made us shimmy, come alive,
Lifting your lids, red leatherette.
Thirty-three and forty-five –
Cilla, Dusty; Beatles, Stones:
We loaded up your auto-changer
And stirred up all our pheromones.
Be vintage. Don’t become a stranger!
Bill Greenwell
White noise and a dementing dance of dots,
That’s all there’s left of analogue TV.
I’ve still a set and switch her on and off,
Not out of hope but just, you know, to see.
Her many programmes used to keep me glued,
Now digitised, they’re all gone from the screen.
I’ve kept her licence here, though unrenewed,
In daft salute to what it used to mean.
Blank ‘snow’ fills every channel, every day,
My mind, too, has grown blizzardy with age,
Conflating low-watt stars her cathode ray
Made household Gods with every new catchphrase.
Hard to switch off while there’s still something on.
Her screen aglow, can she be obsolete?
It makes no odds vertical hold has gone,
And horizontal; life’s chaos on repeat.
Adrian Fry
No. 3420: Virtue signalling
‘The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.’ You are invited to submit a poem or short story incorporating this sentence (150 words/16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 1 October.