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Pope Leo’s papal economics
The Catholic Church now has its first American pope, but Robert Francis Prevost’s papal name of Leo XIV is perhaps far more significant than his national origins.
The name gives a heavy hint about how the new pontiff might address our contemporary economic and social ills. The use of Leo points back to the reforming 19th-century Pope Leo XIII who, like Prevost, was faced with steering the Church through a world in ideological flux.
That the new pope has chosen to emphasise the legacy of Leo XII suggests he is aware of the revolutionary nature of the current economic age
Leo XIII was pontiff from 1878 to 1903. He is best known for his great 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which tackled the challenges of capital and labour at a time of rapid industrial change and revolutionary politics. There are parallels with our own age, as unchecked AI barons transform the world and political extremes fester.
Rerum Novarum provided the foundation for what is known as Catholic Social Teaching, which contains the Church’s tenets on modern economic and social systems. This navigates a pragmatic course through the ideas of left and right toward the common good, via the key concept of subsidiarity which supports decision-making at the local and individual level and opposes centralisation where possible. The Church rejects the misguided view of human nature expressed in both totalitarian left-wing ideologies and unfettered free market capitalism.
On the one hand, Leo XIII’s encyclical condemned socialism, confirmed the rights of private property and supported trade unions. On the other, it attacked ‘the greed of unchecked competition’ and complained that ‘a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.’
That the new pope has chosen to emphasise this legacy suggests he is aware of the revolutionary nature of the current economic age. This is the context in which his comments, currently being pored over by the world’s media, should be viewed.
His reference to confronting the domination of ‘technology, money, success [and] power’ in a sermon during his first mass as pope in the Sistine Chapel should not be surprising. Nor should his retweet more than a decade ago of a cartoon in which Pope Francis tells three figures characterised as Wall Street, banks, and big business to avoid being ‘seduced by money’. Nor should his recent disagreement with US vice president J.D. Vance’s take on how Christian love properly relates to US immigration policy.
Of course, the Church has much more than material conditions in mind. Leo XIII: ‘if human society is to be healed now, in no other way can it be healed save by a return to Christian life’. Leo XIV: Christ has been ‘reduced only to a kind of charismatic leader or superman’, and Christians now risk living in ‘de facto atheism’.
Misunderstandings about the Catholic approach to economics and markets have led to some absurd comments after Prevost was confirmed as the new pope. Sometime Trump advisor Laura Loomer announced that a ‘WOKE MARXIST POPE’ had been raised to the throne of St Peter.
Such pronouncements were unfortunately common during the Francis pontificate. There was much erroneous analysis of the late pope’s comments on social issues, but also of his teachings on economics and modern markets. Francis was cast in some quarters as some sort of left-wing Vatican infiltrator when he made statements like the environment being ‘defenceless before the interests of a deified market’.
It was somehow ignored that Benedict XVI, dubbed as an arch-traditionalist by the liberal media, was spoken of as ‘the Green Pope’. Then there is the continuity with the teaching of John Paul II, that great Polish opponent of communism, when he got to the heart of the matter 100 years after Rerum Novarum in his encyclical Centesimus Annus.
That encyclical spoke positively of the central role of business, the market and private property in modern economics as well as the connected freedom of human creativity in the economic sphere. But it confirmed that what we know as modern capitalism must be ‘circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious.’
The fact is that the early comments of Leo XIV highlight consistency with his immediate predecessors rather than discord and are squarely in the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.
With his choice of name, Pope Leo XIV connects the upheavals of 19th-century society with our own challenges. As the new pope’s words on economic-related questions – from the environment and AI to stark wealth disparities and unions – emerge in the months and years ahead, the wider context and long history of the Church’s teaching should be kept in mind.
Why Britain must expand its nuclear arsenal
About once a month, the Royal Air Force scrambles Typhoon fighters for something called a Quick Reaction Alert (QRA). Typically, two Russian nuclear-capable bombers approach Scotland, the RAF aircraft shadow them closely and, at a suitably theatrical moment, the Russians turn away. The episode merits a tiny press release from the Ministry of Defence.
Russia is continuously demonstrating its preparedness to cause mass death on the British mainland
What most people don’t realise is that the Russian aircraft often open their bomb doors, revealing missiles which may, or may not, contain nuclear warheads; and that they line up on specific targets: city centres, nuclear power stations, airports, or other strategic places.
Russia is continuously demonstrating its preparedness to cause mass death on the British mainland. And, unlike the British, who douse all utterances about nuclear matters in copious sangfroid, the Russian state media revels in atomic gruesomeness.
“The explosion of this thermonuclear torpedo by Britain’s coastline,” threatened one Russian TV host in 2022, “will cause a gigantic tsunami wave. Having passed over the British Isles, it will turn whatever might be left of them into a radioactive wasteland”. The broadcast included a computer simulation of a 500-foot wave engulfing Dublin, Belfast, Manchester and Glasgow.
The threat is real. That is why the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), whose publication is imminent, must take seriously the evidence of those who have argued that Britain’s nuclear deterrent may be inadequate for the challenge ahead.
The deterrent consists of nearly 260 warheads, which can be loaded onto Trident missiles fired only from Vanguard class submarines, one of which is kept continuously at sea, its location rigorously concealed. The deterrent is strategic in nature, which cutting through the euphemisms means it could obliterate much of Russia on its own.
The problem we now face, however, is twofold. Both Russia and China have proliferated “sub-strategic” nuclear weapons: torpedoes, missiles, glide bombs and artillery shells which could deliver a low-yield weapon – either to win a land battle, sink an aircraft carrier or “make a point”, by causing a small-scale nuclear explosion somewhere it is unlikely to cause mass casualties.
This gives Vladimir Putin an “escalation ladder” with many rungs, while leaving Britain only with an on-off switch. The UK is, in fact, the only one of the nine nuclear powers (five “official” and four unrecognised within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty framework) that is limited to a single delivery mechanism.
That would not be a problem if the Unites States, which has also developed sub-strategic nukes, were a 100 per cent reliable ally. But the US is, like it or not, walking away from European collective defence, leaving key Nato allies calling for the creation of a ‘Euro-nuke’, and front-line states such as Poland and even Ukraine rationally weighing the option to develop independent nuclear weapons themselves.
Given the weight of expert evidence submitted to the SDR, we believe it is likely that the report will acknowledge this problem. But the debate about how to respond will only begin on publication, not end.
In response to the Russian threat, and to European demands for credible nuclear umbrella, France has offered to extend its own deterrent to European allies, while Germany has called for the creation of a European-level nuclear capability.
It is not in the UK’s interest to see nuclear weapons proliferate across Europe. Britain could, starting today if it wished to, make a formal commitment to use the Trident missiles for collective defence of our European partners, beyond the pledge offered through Nato.
But to make such a commitment credible, the technical form of the deterrent may have to change. The Vanguard submarines are, of course, capable of firing a single missile with a small warhead in response to a “tactical” strike by Russia. But there are two risks associated with such a move: first, that Russia interprets the launch as a strategic strike and responds accordingly; second, that it gives away the position of the submarine firing it – requiring us to keep two submarines at sea, not one.
Logic, therefore, points to the UK acquiring more diverse ways of delivering a nuclear strike, and altering its doctrine to allow for the use of what the French call “theatre-level” nukes.
In our discussions with France and other European allies about this prospect, it is clear that a bird in the hand is worth many more in the bush: committing to “thinking about” giving the Royal Navy or the RAF smaller, less lethal nuclear weapons is not the same as actually doing it.
So the SDR, together with the forthcoming National Security Strategy, need to take the British electorate on a journey few might have imagined before the twin shocks of the Ukraine war and Trump 2.0.
Our options are limited but real. We could equip the British-French StormShadow missile with a low-yield warhead; we could remanufacture the nuclear bombs and depth charges the RAF and Royal Navy used to carry during the Cold War; or we could join in whatever new solutions the Europeans propose to develop.
But time is tight. If the SDR’s authors conclude the UK needs more options to maintain the credibility of its response to nuclear threats, that will have fiscal implications – because all nuclear weaponry is expensive – and should rightly be the subject of a public debate.
The most common objection to tactical nukes is that, if Russia used one, the UK would most likely respond with overwhelming conventional force – using deep strikes or cyber-attacks to achieve similar results. But it is doubtful that conventional force, particularly by the UK acting alone, can deter Russia from using tactical nuclear weapons. The greater problem is that our allies do not buy that it can.
If you are sitting in Warsaw, Chisinau or Kyiv, nothing reassures you better than the idea that, in a clearly designated European military base, sit aircraft with a nearby store of nuclear bombs or missiles, capable of striking back. Right now, only France can provide those aircraft. And though there are not many of them, this fact alone is likely to give France an outsized influence in the security arrangements of Europe in future, should the UK stay out of the game of “extended deterrence”.
The challenges for a country of France’s size to extend its nuclear umbrella are such that its leaders may sensibly backtrack from modifying their doctrine to cover allies unless Britain assists them. This would confront our Central and Eastern European with no choice but to build nuclear weapons of their own – meaning nuclear proliferation – or else fall victim to Russian nuclear blackmail.
Few of us would willingly add to the world’s arsenal of mass destruction. But the asymmetry between the threat and our defences against it are so strong that urgent action is needed. That is why, once the SDR comes out, the government should seek immediate cross-party agreement – including from minority parties – for the in-principle development of theatre-level nuclear weapons.
Football’s beer ban makes no sense
Should football fans be allowed to have a pint in the stands during a game? Luke Charters, the Labour MP for York Outer, certainly thinks so, and is calling for trials to see what impact lifting the ban on booze in the stands might have. ‘The days of hooliganism are gone’, he said. ‘Fans of other sports can drink in the stands but football fans cannot.’
The booze ban, in its present incarnation encourages fans to drink more ahead of the match
The Labour backbencher raised the issue in the House of Commons during a debate on the Football Governance Bill, proposing designated drinking zones in view of the pitch as a potential way forward. He says it is all about allowing fans who want to drink the ‘chance to do so responsibly’ and that it is an opportunity to give back to fans who support their teams loyally. The Football Supporters’ Association has given its backing to allocated drinking zone trials, pointing out: ‘In the past, this is actually something many clubs have called for too.’
Charters is no revolutionary – just someone who wants to prompt a wider debate. He accepts that a relaxing of the rules would not work on every occasion and that any changes should not apply to family zones in the stadium: ‘As a dad, I think it’s right that some parts of the ground should probably stay booze-free such as family areas.’
Why was any of this ever controversial? Legislation has been in place since 1985 banning fans from consuming alcohol in view of the pitch in the top five tiers of the men’s game in England. It came into effect as part of attempts to tackle hooliganism. There are oddities aplenty. Fans can booze happily enough in stadium bars – but if they take their drinks back to their seat, they risk arrest and a fine. Just as bizarre is that other sports are not affected in the same way. Fans watching professional rugby matches, for example, can generally drink a pint or two while sitting in the stands. It’s the same for spectators at cricket matches. Why should rugby and cricket fans be allowed to enjoy a drink while watching their chosen sport, but not football fans?
Meanwhile, the women’s game – bizarrely – is not covered by the ban and trials involving alcohol consumption in view of the pitch have been taking place. Four clubs – Bristol City, Southampton, Birmingham City and Newcastle – have taken part in a trial for certain games in the latter part of the season. The chief executive of Women’s Professional Leagues Limited, Nikki Doucet, said it was about giving fans choices. Why should fans who pay good money to watch the men’s game not be allowed the same choices?
Charters deserves credit for raising the issue and highlighting how rules devised decades ago are outdated. The world of football has largely moved on from the hooligan problems of yesteryear. The drunken yobs are few and far between at matches, and the police are present in large numbers to deal with potential problems.
Yes, there will always be a few morons in the fan fraternity who behave badly – and worse – after a few drinks. But should their idiocy be allowed to ruin match day for everyone else? The booze ban, in its present incarnation, also encourages some fans to drink much more ahead of the match. How daft is that? All Charters is proposing is a few limited trials and a wider national conversation. Bring it on.
The perennial appeal of Made in Chelsea
The modern world of dating is ripe for disappointment, and recent dating app convert Sophie is certainly not immune. ‘I went on a date with an actor – not doing too bad – we go to Zuma. I ordered everything; Henry VIII in there, got it all. Then the bill came and he says, how should we do this? Ugh! Ejector seat. Meep! Bye bye. No, I couldn’t. I paid the whole bill and left. Auf wiedersehen.’
Luckily, pal Olivia has a solution, and advises her to ditch the apps and instead sign up to a millionaires’ dating agency run by her friend. Good advice for all of us, perhaps, although I’m not sure I would make the criteria for the dating agency. But this is Made in Chelsea, where finding a millionaire to date is a completely reasonable expectation.
Sophie is Sophie Hermann and Olivia is Olivia Bentley, both glamorous, wealthy and long-time MiC cast members. The show, which first aired 14 years ago this week, is now in its 29th season – making it one of the UK’s longest running reality TV programmes. For the uninitiated, the E4 series follows the love lives, partying and extravagant shopping habits of glossy twenty- and thirtysomethings in London’s most exclusive borough. In this gilded world, no woman sets foot in a gym without perfectly blow-dried hair, champagne is cracked open daily and the word ‘work’ is only very occasionally mentioned accompanied by vague hand gestures and absolutely no details whatsoever. Original cast members include Jamie Laing, great-great-grandson of a baronet and an heir to the McVitie’s biscuit fortune. It is an entirely unrelatable world for most of us, and yet its popularity endures – but why?
Well, as a loyal fan for going on ten years, let me explain. First of all, the drama quotient is high. No one can spin a ‘he said, she said’ rumour into a 45-minute fallout like an MiC producer. This week’s episode was a prime example, with a group trip to Dorset providing the backdrop for the lies of various characters to be revealed to their new love interests and friends in a dinner party denouement (dinner party revelations are a regular feature on MiC).
MiC is what’s known as ‘structured reality’, so while it is not scripted, the scenes and situations are set up by producers. But the relationships are real and the reactions of cast members certainly appear to be genuine, as the open-mouthed gasps around the dinner table in this week’s episode can attest.
The extravagant lifestyle of this privileged set lends itself to the ridiculous, and as a result it is funny. The low bar for what constitutes a reason to get dressed up in black tie gets more absurd with each season – a favourite of mine was the ‘pangolin awareness’ black-tie event in season 12.
On the rare occasions my French husband watches with me, we have to switch on the subtitles because, as he bemoans, ‘Why don’t they open their mouths when they speak?’
Equally, the cast seem self-aware enough about their privileged existence to not take themselves too seriously and there is always at least one zinger in every episode: ‘I would literally trade my inheritance for a date with you’ (Angus) was one recently classic.
It is also a masterclass in how to talk ‘posh’. On the rare occasions that my French husband watches an episode with me, we have had to switch on the subtitles because, as he bemoans, ‘Why don’t they open their mouths when they speak?’. No, posh people don’t need to fully enunciate; too much effort. A regular MiC scenario will have two female cast members (who viewers know hate one another) ‘bump into each other’, passive-aggressively air-kiss and through tightly clenched smiles proffer the standard posh greeting ‘Haaarahhhyoooo?’ (translation: How are you?).
For the most part, the romantic relationships on view end up the way you would expect of couples made up of posh young kids with too much money and too much time on their hands – i.e. dead in the water. But as cast members grow up, serious relationships do develop. Laing met his now wife, Sophie Habboo, on the show.
Meanwhile, Maeva D’Ascanio and James Taylor got together after starting out as a tumultuous love triangle between Taylor, fiery Parisian D’Ascanio and her former boyfriend and James’s then best friend, Miles Nazaire. D’Ascanio and Taylor are now married with a young son, and have remained on the show. D’Ascanio’s tearful revelation on this week’s episode that they love each other but just ‘can’t stand each other any more’ will strike a chord with many parents of young children, no doubt.
Ultimately, MiC’s best gift is light entertainment. The cast are glossy and good-looking, they create scandals and then gossip about them, and they give us a glimpse into the world of the wealthy where parties are frequent and responsibilities are low. Later on in this week’s episode, Hermann meets the woman from the millionaire dating agency and is asked what is her one ‘deal breaker’ in dating. In response, Hermann pulls out a notebook and reels off a long list, which includes: ‘No matching socks, no printed socks. No piercings. No one from Leeds,’ and finally, ‘No boat fashion if you don’t own a boat’. Good luck to her.
Victory Day has been a triumph for Vladimir Putin
It was almost like old times, but also a sign of the new. Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day parade passed off without a hitch, rumbling and squeaking with armour, untroubled by Ukrainian drones, and watched over by foreign leaders there in a sign of support. Yet the efforts made to ensure the parade ran smoothly, the nature of the guest list, and Putin’s rhetoric all highlighted the new times.
The most recent iterations of the parade had been distinctly reduced affairs, a single Second World War vintage T-34 tank substituting for the usual phalanx of tanks, and the guests largely confined to Putin’s clients. For the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe – the Great Patriotic War in Russian parlance – and symbolically to signal Russia’s resurgence, Putin was determined to replay the old hits. After the T-34s came almost 200 other vehicles, from T-90M tanks to relatively new systems such as the TOS-2 Tosochka incendiary rocket launcher, Titan high-mobility vehicle, and Malva self-propelled guns, and also some of the drones being used in the war, from Orlan reconnaissance platforms, to Geran-2 strike models.
Volodymyr Zelensky wasn’t so foolish as to pick a fight with Beijing
Along with more than 11,000 troops were contingents from other countries, the largest of which was Chinese, parading under the gaze of Xi Jinping. Other foreign guests, including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, underlined Moscow’s continued standing in the Global South. The presence of the leaders of one EU member state and one wannabe – Slovakia’s Robert Fico and Serbia’s Alexander Vučić, respectively – also highlighted the divisions of the West. The roundabout route Fico had had to take when Poland, the Balts and the Finns barred their airspace to him, in what may prove a counterproductive act of pettiness, only highlighted his determination not to be browbeaten into line by Brussels and his neighbours, something the Russian media gladly reported.
After days of unprecedented Ukrainian drone attacks, which caused disruption but largely demonstrated the scale of the air defence network around Moscow, there was no direct attack on the parade. Volodymyr Zelensky wasn’t so foolish as to pick a fight with Beijing. Nonetheless, security was even tighter than usual, with phone and internet signals jammed and city centre restaurants closed.
This spectacle did, after all, require rather more effort than usual. Air defence systems were pulled in from across the country, including the war zone. Russia’s diplomats had been labouring all year to secure their foreign guests and even so, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Laos pulled out at the last minute (and India’s Narendra Modi, although in fairness he does have a potential war to occupy him). Hopes that maybe even Donald Trump might attend had long since been squashed.
Indeed, after Trump memorably (and inaccurately) claimed that ‘We won both [World] Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance,’ it may have been an implicit riposte that – unusually for one of these speeches – Putin did not specifically namecheck the US, British and other Allied contribution. Instead, while noting that ‘the Soviet Union took upon itself the most ferocious, merciless blows of the enemy,’ he confined himself to expressing how ‘we highly value the contribution to our common struggle of the soldiers of the Allied armies, the participants of the Resistance, the courageous people of China.’ The last was an unsubtle genuflection to Xi, who was clearly the guest of honour, joining the dignitaries on the reviewing stand alongside Putin, rather than having to sit awaiting the main event, like the other foreign leaders.
Of course, Putin used this as an opportunity to equate the Great Patriotic War with his imperial war in Ukraine, claiming that ‘the entire country, society, and people support the participants of the special military operation. We are proud of their courage and determination, that strength of spirit that has always brought us only victory.’ Well, maybe. Certainly, this was a day of not just officially-choreographed patriotism, but genuine national pride. During rehearsals this week, soldiers have been greeted with applause and when Putin was leaving the event, he was greeted with what seem to have been genuinely spontaneous chants of ‘Russia’.
However, this is still regarded primarily as a celebration of 1945 rather than, as the Kremlin would prefer, an affirmation of modern national power and manifest destiny. A majority of Russians want peace negotiations with Ukraine, and as one commentator on social media put it, ‘we should remember the heroism of our grandfathers’ but ‘those tanks on Red Square are being paid for by my kids’ futures’.
In fairness, the Russians do know how to put on a good show. Tomorrow, the economy will continue overheating, soldiers will be fighting and dying on the front, and Putin will still be guessing whether Donald Trump will be walking away from or maintaining support for Kyiv. But today, Putin is probably happy.
What’s taking Britain so long to build new nuclear power plants?
When Putin attacked Ukraine and sent global gas prices soaring, Boris Johnson set out a plan to make Britain energy secure. It included a target to quadruple the amount of power Britain gets from nuclear. Instead of one plant every decade (if you’re lucky), Britain would start building a new plant every year just as we did in the 50s and 60s.
This plan relied not only on building ‘giga-scale’ plants like Hinkley Point C (at £42 billion now the most expensive plant in the history of the world), but also new small modular reactors (SMRs) built off-site in factories and deployed in fleets. This should, at least in theory, be something Britain excels at. Our fleet of nuclear submarines are propelled by small nuclear reactors built in the Midlands by Rolls-Royce. And Rolls-Royce also happened to have developed a small modular reactor design for civil use too.
The idea that SMRs could contribute towards Ed Miliband’s 2030 clean power target appears fanciful
What has traditionally put governments (and private utilities) off nuclear is the cost. Nuclear was once cost-competitive with coal, but the cost of building a new plant has risen across the world. Part of this is down to regulation – we use more concrete and steel than necessary because regulators insist on expensive (and crucially, disproportionate) safety measures based on misconceptions of the dangers posed by low doses of radiation. But a big factor in the rising costs is what’s known as the First-Of-A-Kind (FOAK) problem.
Whenever you build something as complicated as a nuclear power plant, there will inevitably be hiccups going from paper to concrete. Expect lots to go wrong (and go wrong in a very expensive way). Mistakes will be made, but lessons too will be learnt. At Hinkley Point C, welding on the second reactor is proceeding at four times the pace of the first.
South Korea builds the cheapest plants in the developed world by building fleets of six or more reactors in sequence. Could Britain do the same?
Great British Nuclear was set up to do just this for SMRs. The aim was to run a competition to pick the best design, then make an order not for a single reactor but a fleet. Energy Secretary Grant Shapps said the aim was for it to be ‘the fastest competition of its kind in the world’ when it launched in 2023.
Did they succeed? No. The final submissions went in last month, but we are yet to find a winner and a number of companies have dropped out in the meantime. As part of the process, vendors had to get regulatory approval for their design and fill out a mammoth application form. Part of this involved carrying out detailed design work beyond what the regulator required to be ‘construction ready’. Estimates I’ve seen suggest that private companies are paying between £75 million and £150 million to be part of this process.
Here’s the crazy thing. All of that money is being spent without the guarantee of a single order. We are years off a final investment decision being reached. And that’s conditional on Rachel Reeves (or whoever may be in post by then) signing off on it in 2029. The idea that SMRs could contribute towards Ed Miliband’s 2030 clean power target appears fanciful.
Yet, SMRs will be built before 2030. Ontario’s publicly-owned utility has put in an order for four SMRs built by GE Hitachi – enough to power 1.2 million homes. Unlike Great British Nuclear, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has experience in delivering projects (including major refurbishments of CANDU reactors) and crucially, the balance sheet to fund the project. By contrast, Great British Nuclear is reliant on a mix of private capital and ministerial discretion to advance projects. One industry expert told me that OPG is between four and seven years ahead of Britain.
Instead of running a competition, OPG made a call on the basis of their expertise and judgement. This was quicker and may pay off, but let’s be clear, the project isn’t cheap. OPG is committing £11 billion and the FOAK reactor is expected to cost around £6 billion on par with Hinkley Point C on a pound per megawatt basis.
Don’t count Britain out yet though. We have two big advantages over Canada. Our own domestic forging at Sheffield Forgemasters and our own fuel refining at Springfields. Simply put, we are better set up to have a domestic SMR supply chain, though sky-high industrial electricity costs remain a problem.
There’s still hope beyond the Great British Nuclear competition. Last Energy are attempting to get a licence to build a 20MWh plant in South Wales on the site of an old coal power station. Locals seem supportive, but it’s early days. Last are taking a different approach by going direct to industry. They’re betting that it’s easier to get money out of Microsoft and Google than Rachel Reeves’ Treasury. They may be right.
Is support for Scotland’s euthanasia bill dying?
While Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill makes its way through the UK parliament, in Scotland a separate assisted dying bill will be voted on next week. Scottish Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur has put forward legislation that would allow those deemed terminally ill north of the border to take their own lives, with MSPs allowed a free vote on the issue on 13 May. The decision to back the bill is a matter of conscience for parliamentarians. But now, less than a week before decision day, both First Minister John Swinney and his predecessor Humza Yousaf have announced that they will vote against it.
First Minister John Swinney and his predecessor Humza Yousaf have announced that they will not back the assisted dying bill
The First Minister – whose wife has multiple sclerosis – told reporters that he ‘agonised’ over his decision, but ultimately felt he had to vote against the euthanasia bill, as he has done in the past when similar legislation was brought to Holyrood.
‘I have thought about the issue in principle: do I think it is appropriate for us to have provision in law for assisted dying? I have come to the conclusion that, in principle, I don’t think we should have that. That is my individual view,’ he added. ‘I am a man of faith and I can’t separate myself from that. It’s an incredibly personal decision. I’m conscious of the fact that I have thought about my wife, about the fact she has a terminal condition, I just couldn’t bring myself to think about this provision being any part of what lies ahead.’
Among Swinney’s concerns are fears that people may feel they are ‘a burden’ on their families and so prematurely end their lives, with any law having the potential to have a detrimental impact on the doctor-patient relationship. Swinney’s predecessor Humza Yousaf has cited similar concerns. While adamant that he ‘did not legislate on the basis of faith’, the former first minister told the BBC that, following discussions with disabled people’s organisations, he was not convinced there would be ‘strong enough safeguards’ to protect vulnerable people, insisting the bill would ‘open a door that cannot be closed’.
The statements from the two senior SNP politicians come as other groups are more reluctant to take a stance on the matter. While the Catholic Church remains – unsurprisingly – opposed to the legislation, alongside the Scottish Association of Mosques, the Holyrood Committee responsible for offering recommendations on the bill has declined to speak out. Will the First Minister’s intervention persuade others to follow suit? ‘Since John Swinney came out against the bill, we’ve had four previously undecided MSPs confirm to us they will vote for the bill at stage one,’ a Lib Dem source told me. ‘We haven’t had any new ones declare they are against.’
The Health, Social Care and Sports Committee has decided to make no overall judgement on the legislation, pointing out it is a matter of conscience for Scottish parliamentarians. Even the Church of Scotland is expected to shift from previously opposing this kind of legislation to a more neutral stance on assisted dying. Just days after the assisted dying vote is due to take place, the Kirk’s annual general assembly is expected to discuss whether it should view arguments in favour of euthanasia to be as valid as religious objections.
The divisive bill was proposed by McArthur in 2021, with the MSP pointing to similar laws in Australia and New Zealand as examples of how euthanasia can be introduced successfully. ‘The proposed law will work alongside palliative care and apply only to terminally ill, mentally competent adults,’ he insisted at the time. ‘It features strong safeguards that put transparency, protection and compassion at the core of a prospective new law.’
But after a backlash that the legislation might allow 16-year-olds to end their own lives – one of the stand-out differences between the Scottish and UK bills – McArthur has accepted he needs to change what was initially on offer, with the Lib Dem promising last week he would raise the minimum age to 18.
The wording of the Scottish legislation has ruffled feathers, too. While Leadbeater’s bill references euthanasia being made available for people with ‘untreatable’ conditions, McArthur’s instead nods to those with ‘unrecoverable’ illness – with concerns that patients who refuse medical care for otherwise treatable conditions could be eligible for assisted dying.
South of the border, Leadbeater’s controversial legislation is sparking fears about safeguarding, medical practice and patient autonomy. In Holyrood, MSPs may back the Scottish bill next week in order to further the discussion and, as in Westminster, pick apart the current detail to propose more specific amendments. But the interventions made this week by Swinney and Yousaf point to the significant concerns that remain about opening this particular door.
The narcissism of Kanye West
We live in an age of liberation, in which we are told endlessly by some that freedom of speech, taken to its furthest boundaries, is the crowning achievement of democratic culture. And freedom of speech, alongside freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of (or from) religion, freedom of the press, of movement, of assembly and to legal equality, all safeguard human dignity, personal autonomy, and the ability to participate meaningfully in civic life. But what if one of the clearest signs of civilisational decay is precisely that the right to say anything is now used most energetically by people with nothing worthwhile to say?
‘Ye’, formerly known as Kanye West, a man I am told was once a cultural innovator of some sort, now presents himself as one such cautionary tale. This is a man who has mistaken notoriety for relevance and offence for originality; a man so intoxicated by grievance and notoriety that he has now released a track titled Heil Hitler, a crude, adolescent chant of racial slurs and fascist glorification masquerading as music. One listens – or rather, endures – the song, not out of interest but out of a kind of civic obligation, the same way one scans the damage after a vandal has defaced a war memorial. It isn’t the aesthetic quality of the work that demands attention. It’s the defilement.
The temperature of public decency is dropping fast
There will, of course, be those who raise the now-tired defence of his much-reported mental illness. As if that excuses the gleeful desecration of the memory of six million Jews murdered. As if mental illness, however real or severe, automatically confers moral impunity. If Kanye West cares not whom he offends, why should I have sympathy for his paranoia and limited intelligence? He has made his calculations clear: pain sells, and taboo is currency. His artistic vision has now descended to the level of tantrum performance – a fusion of juvenile provocation and grotesque authoritarian fetishism.
His defenders, if any still exist outside the deepest corners of online nihilism, may argue that the song is a form of radical expression – an effort to ‘confront’ taboo or ‘reclaim’ pain. But there is no confrontation here, only the shallow defilement of something far beyond the show-off’s grasp. There is nothing radical about repetition either; the lyrics are a crude litany of racial epithets, Nazi slogans, and sexual bragging, repeated ad nauseam as if sheer audacity might substitute for lyrical invention. It is a display of arrested emotional development, not artistic depth. He is at once a petty attention-seeker and an unserious historical vandal.
Freud, writing on narcissism, observed that the narcissist is never interested in others for their own sake; he sees only his own wounded ego, reflected and refracted through every perceived slight. Ye has clearly become the textbook embodiment of this pathology: his songs obsessively circle his legal troubles, his grievances with ex-partners, his custody arrangements – all while indulging in the fantasy that he is a misunderstood revolutionary. Yet nowhere in this song does he mention the feelings or needs of his children, who are reduced to symbols in a petty war against imagined enemies. The pathological ego is not sustained by love for others, but by their usefulness as mirrors. The narcissist is never truly in dialogue, only in search of reflection.
It is not fatherhood Ye explores, but ownership and acquisition. Not reflection, but retaliation. Not self-improvement but revenge.
There is no profundity here. This is not a philosophical meditation on alienation, fame, or the African-American (or even Jewish) experience. It is simply a chronicle of a very rich, very vain man trying to turn personal bitterness into cultural capital at the emotional, historical and societal expense of Jewish people. The invocation of Nazism is not an artistic provocation – it is a marketing ploy, one calibrated for outrage in a world where the attention economy rewards the grotesque. It is obscene not just because of what it says, but because of how transparently it exploits one of the greatest crimes in human history to attempt sustained relevance.
And yet, the deeper concern is not Ye himself, but the cultural atmosphere that has incubated this kind of obscenity at all. There was a time, not long ago, when public Holocaust denial or glorification of Hitler would render a person permanently exiled from public life. Now it earns press, plays, tweets, and – ironically – think pieces like this one. But what else can I do? The boundaries of acceptable discourse have shifted, not just downward but inward, toward a moral void.
This is the true climate emergency: not global warming, but moral cooling. The temperature of public decency is dropping fast. Holocaust mockery results in viral buzz. Nazi references are no longer the desperate howls of internet fringe figures; they now come from Grammy award winners, still inexplicably respected by some.
We are witnessing not just the degradation of one man, but the corrosion of cultural norms that once seemed immovable. Deliberate, gleeful provocation of Jews and trivialisation of the Holocaust have been normalised – not in fringe chat rooms, but in mainstream platforms with millions of viewers, and also in school playgrounds or on our streets during protests. This is not free speech, it is civilisational erosion.
Ye is not interesting. He is not radical. He is not important. But what he represents is. He is the avatar of a deeper corrosion: a world where fame shields malice, and where the Holocaust can be reduced to a marketing gimmick for the lonely and foolish. We are watching the collapse of cultural seriousness, the triumph of provocation over principle, and the ascendance of a cult that trades in attention as currency, heedless of the cost to our collective dignity.
It shouldn’t be illegal to burn a Quran
We now live in a country where, once more, it appears to be a crime to commit blasphemy. This is the inevitable and justifiable conclusion many have made following the news yesterday that a man who burnt a copy of the Koran was charged with ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ against ‘the religious institution of Islam’.
The National Secular Society has been volubly alarmed at the case
The charge made against Hamit Coskun, who allegedly performed the act outside the Turkish Consulate in London in February, is thought to be the first time anybody has been prosecuted for harassing an ‘institution’, in the form of Islam, under the Public Order Act. Following a backlash to the news, the Crown Prosecution Service has since sought to clarify that the wording of the charge was ‘incorrectly applied’. It has now ‘substituted a new charge.’
The National Secular Society has been volubly alarmed at the case, suggesting it could presage ‘the reinstatement of an offence of blasphemy in English law by the back door’. Others have raised concerns to the same effect. Akua Reindorf KC said that the original charge was ‘tantamount’ to blasphemy, an act abolished as a common law offence in England and Wales in 2008. Comedian and GB News presenter Leo Kearse articulated a vein of popular disquiet more tersely: ‘Is Britain now an Islamic theocracy?’
While overstating the case, Kearse’s sentiments do reflect a widespread worry in this country, one evident ever since the Satanic Versus affair of 1989, that Islam in Britain is afforded undue and disproportionate protection, because successive governments and the legal system have been fearful of aggravating race relations. The kid-gloves approach to this religion, and some of its more belligerent followers and preachers, has been seen by many as a form of appeasement by the ruling classes, conspicuously the naïve liberals who still cling to the belief that multiculturalism is an inherently worthwhile ideal. A perceived ‘two-tier’ approach to justice embodied in this Labour government, in which white people often seem to get a inordinately raw deal across the board, has only heightened the suspicion that duplicity and cowardice remain the order of the day.
While ‘two-tier’ Britain may be a specific, timely political concern for many, others are foremost worried about the incursion and re-introduction of religious belief and its attendant strictures into the arena of justice, a place where impartiality and a level playing field ought to hold sway. Hence interventions from the National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union. The latter has written to the CPS arguing that the burning of the Koran in this instance was an act of political protest.
People of various hues are right to be alarmed. Whether you are a progressive, liberal secularist, or a conservative anxious about this country’s historic, indigenous, Christian culture, many correctly fear that this signifies the incursion or return of religious dogma into that public domain – abetted by bien pensants who would appease a faith which is not always over-keen in reciprocating respect and tolerance.
But to protest that this prosecution represents simply an atavistic regression to the bad old days of pre-Enlightenment religious intolerance and medieval theocracy is to understand only half the story. This is a very modern episode, epitomising an all-too-modern malaise, as the words of shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick intimate:
‘Burning the Koran, like any religious text, is something that some people find very offensive and few people would condone, but that’s not the point. There are many things in our society that people find offensive, but that doesn’t make them criminal.’
Cosku’s alleged transgression was not just insulting a religion which many ethnic minority people and voters take very seriously; he crossed the line by potentially offending and hurting the feelings of others. Causing offence is the principle secular taboo of our times, one we witness in myriad forms, whether it be embodied in the thousands of non-crime hate incidents recorded yearly in regards to people who have broken no law but have said horrid things; woke codes of etiquette that proliferate on campus and throughout the public sector warning us to be careful with the ‘inappropriate’ language we might use; to the current Employments Rights Bill, which could force British businesses to monitor the potentially distressing conversations of their customers or risk being sued for ‘third-party harassment’.
The prospect of a person in Britain being criminalised for burning the Koran represents unreasonable prejudices that are both ancient and modern. It signifies a throwback to irrationality and the unwarranted deference afforded to religion, while also betraying our undue preoccupation with hurting people’s feelings and of being oversensitive to matters pertaining to race.
Whether this case represents ancient or modern forms of intolerance and unreason, this charge is an affront to principles we should hold eternal and inviolable: that of freedom of expression and freedom to dissent.
King Charles did Britain proud this VE Day
The two years since the coronation of King Charles have been largely disappointing ones for the royal family. A great deal of this was due to factors that none of its senior members could have had any control over – Harry; the Duke of York; cancer. But, in these pages, I have also expressed doubts that the King has been fully in control of the public aspects of the role. Compared to his mother, he has often seemed a tentative, slightly querulous presence on the throne: a figure who had longed to rise to the highest level of responsibility for all his adult life, and was found wanting when he finally became attained it.
But in a week in which the King has been very much on display during the country’s VE Day celebrations, he has been magnificent in two separate regards. He has coped manfully with the often onerous workload that he has inevitably faced – the sheer number of events, addresses and greetings that he has had to contend with would be tiring for anyone, let alone a 76-year old man who is still undergoing treatment for cancer. Not only this, but he has channelled an awareness of his family’s history into a moving response to the national events of the week.
When George VI took to the Buckingham Palace balcony on VE Day in 1945, to take in the rapturous applause of the grateful nation alongside his wife, daughters and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, it was the climax of a dual struggle, of which the cheering crowds knew a great deal about one. He had successfully transformed himself from a shy, stammering also-ran into an assured and inspiring leader of men during the course of the second world war. But the King had also faced off with and defeated his elder brother, the former Edward VIII, whose own political sympathies were more closely aligned with those of Hitler and the Nazis than they were the country he had once ruled. To see George responding to the love of his people, then, was not just moving, but deeply powerful; it was a personal and national triumph.
His grandson, the present king, acknowledged this last night in an affecting address he made at Horse Guards Parade at 9 p.m., eighty years to the minute that George VI had delivered his own speech. Charles said that ‘As my grandfather put it, “We shall have failed, and the blood of our dearest will have flowed in vain, if the victory which they died to win does not lead to a lasting peace, founded on justice and established in good will”.’
As ever with the King, there was a not-so-veiled political subtext, as he spoke of how:
The Allied victory being celebrated then, as now, was a result of unity between nations, races, religions and ideologies, fighting back against an existential threat to humanity. Their collective endeavour remains a powerful reminder of what can be achieved when countries stand together in the face of tyranny.
His speech brought to mind how he was very swift to seek a private audience with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently, and although his thoughts on Vladimir Putin (and other similar figures) have not been made public, it is not too big a stretch to imagine them.
There was a lighter note in his speech, too. Referring to the famous story of how his mother and Princess Margaret escaped from the Palace to mingle incognito with revellers, the King ended his speech by saying, ‘I do hope your celebrations tonight are almost as joyful, although I rather doubt I shall have the energy to sing until 2 a.m., let alone lead you all in a giant conga from here back to Buckingham Palace.’ It is a testament to his commitment and vitality that, for a moment, it was almost possible to imagine the King doing so.
Conga Charlie? Stranger things have happened.
Starmer could face biggest rebellion yet over benefits cuts
Sir Keir Starmer’s jubilation over sealing the UK-US trade deal with President Donald Trump may be short-lived as problems loom closer to home. It now transpires that the Labour Prime Minister could be facing his biggest rebellion yet – as up to a quarter of the parliamentary Labour party flag their frustrations about proposed cuts to disability benefits. Dear oh dear…
As reported by the Times, more than 80 Labour MPs have signed a letter – to be sent to the chief whip at the start of next week – setting out their concerns about welfare cuts, while many more have relayed their worries to government ministers. Next month, politicians will vote on plans to make it more difficult for people to claim personal independent payments (PIP), and the big sticking point for lefty politicians is the fact that MPs will not get to see the full impact of the reforms until after the vote.
More than 80 Labour MPs have signed a letter – to be sent to the chief whip at the start of next week – setting out their concerns about welfare cuts.
In the same vein, 42 MPs have also signed a separate statement in which they conclude that unless there is a ‘change in direction’, the reforms will be ‘impossible to support’. This memo states that while the government ‘may have correctly diagnosed the problem of a broken benefits system’, it has ‘come up with the wrong medicine’. Going on, it reads:
The government’s Green Paper on welfare reform has caused a huge amount of anxiety and concern among disabled people and their families. The planned cuts of more than £7 billion represent the biggest attack on the welfare state since George Osborne ushered in the years of austerity and over three million of our poorest and most disadvantaged will be affected.
Ministers therefore need to delay any decisions until all the assessments have been published into the impact the cuts will have on employment, health and increased demand for health and social care. This is likely to be in the autumn and only then will MPs be able to vote knowing all the facts.
Without a change in direction, the Green Paper will be impossible to support.
Crikey. Yet despite growing tensions in the Labour party over the bill, Starmer’s whopping majority – and the possibility of support from other parties – means the legislation remains likely to pass. And after seven rebels who voted against the party on the two-child benefit cap were suspended last year, there is a feeling in the party that, despite uneasiness about the cuts, Labour MPs won’t want to risk losing the whip. Will this rebellion cause more problems for Starmer’s army or will Labour whips manage to temper backbench grievances in time? Stay tuned…
Why this centrist dad is (probably) voting Reform
I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Reform’s success in last week’s elections was no fluke: the latest YouGov survey puts the party on 29 per cent
That I’m flirting with voting Reform might surprise you, but I’m not alone. Reform’s success in last week’s elections was no fluke: the latest YouGov survey puts the party on 29 per cent. The reason why is simple: the other parties are offering more of the same when Britain is badly in need of change.
Let’s start with Labour. Despite being a Remainer, I am basically centre-right in political outlook. I support capitalism, free markets and free trade (which is why I don’t like Brexit, but I digress). I really don’t like wokeness at all (having experienced the worst of it firsthand in my professional life). Given that, I feel preternaturally tilted against Labour. I don’t mind Keir Starmer, but I still don’t like Labour. They are the party of unions and big government and have demonstrated that repeatedly already in government. Their ridiculous decision to impose a National Insurance tax hike on employers exemplifies what I don’t like about them.
Still, I like them more than the Lib Dems. I should feel more of a kinship with Ed Davey’s party given they are the most obviously Remainery of the lot. But their actual proposals on Europe would spell disaster. They want to rejoin a customs union with the EU, which strikes me as the worst of all possible worlds. It’s a remake of Theresa May’s Brexit, and look where that got us. But certain Remainers cling to this as the only port in a storm. No thanks. Plus, the Lib Dems are woke as hell and seem to get away with that with voters who don’t realise.
Then we come to the Conservative party. Oh dear. They are easily the least appealing of the parties. Their strategy at present under Kemi Badenoch could be summed up as: “Let’s be a really, really boring, unappealing to anyone imaginable version of what we think is the Reform party, even though we’re way off on even that”. Why would anyone in their right mind vote for that?
This brings me to the specific appeal of Reform. You might not like them, but it’s clear what they stand for. Their pitch is essentially that The Tories and Labour have both screwed up repeatedly, so why trust them again? It’s a convincing message. I have spent a reasonable amount of time with Reform activists and organisers over the last month, and can I let you in on a little secret? They aren’t fascists or, in most instances, even particularly right-wing. They are mostly just people who are sick of how politics works and are looking for something different to get behind. They feel ignored and discarded – which you can’t blame them for because, for the most part, they are ignored and discarded.
Reform seem serious about curbing the worst elements of wokeness, which the Tories resolutely failed to do while in government. They appear to actually believe in Brexit, which I’d prefer to what we’ve had before and what we have now: an awkward in between. I’m a rejoiner, but I’m firmly of the opinion that we either rejoin full stop, or genuinely try and make the most of Brexit. Farage seems to be the only leading politician who genuinely wants to attempt the latter in any meaningful sense. Let’s either give Brexit one more go or abandon it. I’d prefer we abandoned it, but given no party is proposing that, why not give Nigel a go?
I’ve come to this position out of exhaustion. I so thoroughly dislike the offer from Labour and the Lib Dems (and the Tories don’t, in fact, have an offer) that Reform looks good, just by dint of having a clear direction of travel. Every other party seems to be saying to me, “Look, Nigel Farage was right, Brexit was always inevitable, we just need to go with it. Trust us over him.” If that’s the case, why not put Farage in charge? If he was right about Brexit, what else might he be right about?
Six things to watch out for in Starmer’s US deal
The world of trade is usually reserved for the wonkiest of policy wonks. But after Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ a month ago, this week the UK announced trade deals with India and the US. Against a woeful economic backdrop, this is a serious boon to the Prime Minister. Becoming the first country in the world to agree a deal with the US President is an achievement not to be shirked at. A UK-US deal could chart a path for other agreements with other countries.
Starmer claimed this deal is the national interest. But is it really?
But is this deal as good as Number 10 is claiming? As a former special adviser in the Department for International Trade during the Trump’s first presidency and the Brexit negotiations, here are my top six things to watch out for.
This isn’t the deal that was on the table in previous years
The UK and US have been ‘negotiating’ a trade agreement for a lot longer than since February. Although Keir Starmer and Trump have patted themselves on the back for being the pair to getting an agreement over the line, this is not the deal that was on the table during Trump’s first term in office.
This is not a ‘full and comprehensive’ trade agreement. Its focus is very narrow: removing some of the damage imposed by Trump last month rather than advancing the UK-US interests long term. The UK is still in a worse position than it was before ‘Liberation Day’.
Crucially, it leaves Trump’s 10 per cent tariff in place – aside from on steel, aluminium and Rolls Royce engines. The economic impact of this ‘historic deal’ is likely to be small.
The missing billions
Starmer claimed this deal is the national interest. But is it really? Details are too scant at this stage to be sure, as the announcement came before the text is complete.
What we do know is that White House has announced $5 billion (£3.8 billion) in benefits to the US for exporters under this new deal. The tariffs have been reduced to zero on bioethanol and beef (not the hormone injected variety). The tariff applied to US ethanol imports in the UK varied between 10 per cent and 50 per cent, depending on what is being used for – a considerable saving for some US exporters.
If, as the White House also claimed, the savings on bioethanal and beef exports add up to $1 billion (£750 million), where’s the missing $4 billion (£3 billion)? Something doesn’t add up.
The agriculture wars aren’t over
Agriculture is one of the key sticking points in any trade agreement. The inclusion of beef is symbolic. The US isn’t a big market for UK beef and a reciprocal deal for 13,000 tonnes means both sides can claim a win. But this is a signal that the UK can do a deal with the US that doesn’t lower the UK’s high food standards and force us to stock our supermarket shelves with chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef – currently illegal in the UK.
Starmer wants us to trust him, allay the concerns of the huge and vocal food and farming lobby and show his backbenches that he can do deals that don’t lower standards. But this move is just the beginning. The US has seen an opening and won’t let this go. If we think the UK’s agricultural lobby is loud, it is nothing compared to that in the US. Standards on SPS (sanitary and phytosantical standards) have been written into this agreement, according to Starmer, but Trump’s ailing polls need to go further for his base of rural voters.
The diplomatic tightrope walk
Starmer will be thanking his lucky stars that he managed to pull some sort of a deal out of the bag before the upcoming UK-EU summit. The PM has invited the great and the good to London to negotiate a ‘better’ deal with the EU than Boris Johnson managed. The UK-US deal proves that we have the international clout to do a deal where others have failed, and one that doesn’t, from what we know at the moment, make too many unpopular concessions.
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, had recently suggested relations with the EU were a greater priority than a deal with the US. Expectations now will be high; the pressure will be on. Aligning with US trade practices while maintaining compatibility with EU standards presents a complex challenge. Starmer must carefully manage these relationships to avoid regulatory conflicts that could impede trade flows with either partner.
The plight of UK manufactures
Trump hailed a great deal for the US ethanol producers. From a UK perspective, we don’t yet know what impact this will have on our own bioethanol manufacturers. Whilst there is a win for the UK car industry with tariffs falling to 10 per cent, this is still far above the 2.5 per cent that existed pre ‘Liberation Day’.
More than that, the overall trade landscape eclipses any upside from this deal as tariffs imposed on European nations and China will have knock-on effects in the UK: rising prices and the potential dumping of low-cost products in the UK as cheaper goods locked out of the US try to find a home elsewhere. We are yet to see what continuing high tariffs elsewhere will do to the UK economy longer term and what the impacts might be on product costs, inflation and jobs across our manufacturing sector.
The digital divide
The government says the Digital Services Tax ‘remains unchanged’ as part of this deal. The 2 per cent duty charged on big tech giants at the UK border remains. Yet, with a new, sleeker digital trade deal promised, the danger is not over yet.
The US has been promised a deal that reduces red tape and provides more access to the UK market. Starmer must maintain his red lines on online safety rules and ensure that they are safeguarded in any future deal. That’s too much of a political hot potato. Given the fractious air among Labour MPs, that is one concession the Prime Minister knows he just can’t give up.
The tax only raises around £800 million – predicted to rise to £1.2 billion by the end of the decade – but with the fiscal environment so tight the Chancellor needs every penny she can get. Politically, she also would struggle to sell a £1.2 billion tax cut for big tech alongside the cuts to Winter Fuel Payments that save £1.4 billion.
Starmer said yesterday that he would go ‘further, faster’ in the national interest. But moving any faster on trade deals could be impossible. We’re yet to see what further really means. We should all be concerned about how this framework evolves, if it does, into an actual trade agreement.
Do high taxes make you less generous?
Here’s a question: do you think that Bill Gates would have started and built up his Microsoft empire had the top rate of US income tax been 99 per cent? I don’t know Gates but I think the answer is obvious. Why would he have put in all those hours and taken all those risks if the state was going to snatch away virtually all the rewards? Either he wouldn’t have bothered or – my guess – he would have jumped on a plane and founded his business somewhere else, even renouncing his US citizenship in the process in order to avoid the taxman coming after him.
I pose the question because 99 per cent is the proportion of his worldly wealth that Gates announced this week he intends to give away over the next 20 years. That is a pretty useful sum of money: £150 billion is nearly enough to fund the entire NHS for a year. This is on top of the £75 billion he has already donated to humanitarian projects through the Bill Gates Foundation.
Cynics might say that Gates is only making such a magnanimous gesture because he knows he is approaching the final phase of his life – in 20 years he will be 89 and may not be in much of a position to spend any money at all. And if the US federal government taxed his personal income more during his career it would have got its claws on his money at an earlier date, helping to fund schools and hospitals back in the 1980s. But that misses the point. Society has ended up getting far, far more out of Gates than it would have done through punitive tax rates. In fact, it has almost certainly been getting more directly out of Gates than it would have done had the US government been too greedy. With punitive taxation there might not even have been a Microsoft to pay corporate taxes, let alone a high-earning Bill Gates to pay personal taxes. Gates’s philanthropy should really be thought of as a bonus, which comes on top of his large contributions to the US Treasury over the decades.
It isn’t just Gates. Whole ranks of US institutions rely on the generosity of individuals. Why are US universities so rich, and so able to fund places for poor kids? Because they are swimming in donations from alumni rather than sourly begging the government for money.
Ask why the US has so much more of a developed culture of philanthropy than Britain and there is an obvious answer: with lower tax rates wealthy Americans feel more able, and more inclined, to distribute their wealth to social causes. When you are paying a top rate of tax of 37 per cent rather than 47 per cent (the effective upper rate of tax in Britain) you have significantly more to give away. But it isn’t just that: the more of your wealth you are forced to hand over to the state, the more you might be inclined to think: the government sees to social stuff, so I don’t need to bother.
Do you really think that Bill Gates would have started and built up his Microsoft empire had the top rate of US income tax been 99 per cent?
Just look at the World Giving Index, compiled by the Charities Aid Foundation. The countries at the top of the pile all have relatively low upper rates of income tax: Indonesia (35 per cent), Kenya (35 per cent), Singapore (24 per cent), Nigeria (24 per cent) and the US (37 per cent). The UK sits at position 22 when it comes to giving.
Now look at the countries which have an effective top rate of income tax of over 50 per cent: Finland (51.4 per cent top rate, 70th on the World Giving Index), Denmark (55.9 per cent and 39th) and Japan (55 per cent and 139th).
Not everyone will agree, of course, with all the causes which Gates has supported. But then it is his money; it is not coming out of your pocket. I challenge anyone to say that they think their own government – which very much is spending their money – spends it more wisely than the Bill Gates Foundation does. No one is saying that philanthropy is a complete substitute for public spending, but it is something which deserves to be encouraged – and punitive rates of taxation levied by many countries are doing the opposite.
Putin’s ‘biggest ever’ Victory Day goes off without a hitch
Not to be outdone by the celebration of VE Day across Western Europe yesterday, Vladimir Putin this morning staged his own ‘biggest ever’ Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. Over the course of Putin’s rule, the annual celebration of 9 May has gradually morphed from a solemn commemoration of the victory over Nazi Germany to being a key ideological cornerstone of his regime. Never one to miss a chance to send a message to Russia’s foreign adversaries, today’s 80th anniversary parade across Red Square – Putin’s 25th – was more a neat showcase of the President’s own militaristic and jingoistic ambitions than a tribute to the country’s past sacrifices.
Everything associated with the preparations for today’s event was a degree of magnitude bigger than in previous years. A three-day ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, announced by Putin last month to honour the occasion, began yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the Russian army is already reported to have broken it, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The Kremlin was clearly nervous about the potential havoc Ukrainian saboteurs could cause
In the centre of Red Square, a huge viewing platform had been erected next to, and over the top of Lenin’s tomb – quite the statement given the macabre reverence in which the site is usually held by the Kremlin. Joining Putin on the stand were the leaders of more than 20 foreign countries, notably including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, the only EU leader to have dared to make the trip.
Today’s parade also marked the first for Minister of Defence Andrei Belousov, who replaced the jaded Sergei Shoigu shortly after last year’s commemorations. More than 11,500 servicemen took part, as did parade units from 13 countries, including Belarus, Vietnam, Egypt and most strikingly China. The presence of Beijing’s leader and troops marks Xi’s most overt endorsement of Putin’s military aggression – an ominous, although not altogether unsurprising, collaboration.
Now in the fourth year of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s armed forces made substantial efforts today to quite literally bring out the big guns, after heavy losses sustained in previous years at the front meant that weapons and machinery available for traipsing across Moscow’s Red Square were noticeably lacking. In a jarring reminder of just how superficially 9 May has become a celebration of the USSR’s victory over Hitler, a stream of modern military equipment being used in Ukraine joined the parade, including BRM-1K combat reconnaissance vehicles, Giatsint-K and Malva 152-mm artillery systems and a number of drone models.
Intriguingly, for the ‘bigger and better’ mantra that clearly encapsulated the Kremlin’s planning of today’s parade, this didn’t seem to apply to Putin’s speech. The Russian President gave an uncharacteristically snappy address – one of his shortest in recent years. Paying tribute to the Soviet veterans of the second world war, he said ‘Our duty is to defend the honour of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army’. Linking his own invasion of Ukraine to Hitler’s march on Moscow, he added, ‘fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers saved the Fatherland and have bequeathed to us the defence of the Motherland.’
In a not-so-subtle reference to Ukraine – or the ‘special military operation’ to ‘denazify’ the country, as the Kremlin has frequently described it – Putin continued: ‘Russia has been and will be an indestructible barrier to Nazism, Russophobia, anti-Semitism, and will fight the atrocities committed by the proponents of these aggressive, destructive ideas.’ The ‘entire country, society, and people’ support those fighting in Ukraine, he claimed. A poll published by the Levada Centre earlier this week would, however, beg to differ: just 30 per cent of respondents still supported the war in Ukraine – the lowest number since the invasion began in 2022. A 18-gun salute a stone’s throw away at the foot of the Kremlin marked the end of the minute’s silence that followed Putin’s speech.
Following the end of the parade, Putin descended from the stands to inspect the nervous, sweating generals of the units – including the foreign ones – represented on Red Square. One chief, starstruck or perhaps terrified, froze up, lost for words, palm stuck to his temple in salute, leading to several seconds of painful silence in front of the President and Russian state media. Putin actually reached up to the poor man’s head to prize his hand away – not without visible force – into a handshake before moving swiftly onwards.
Despite all the pomp and ceremony, the Kremlin was clearly nervous about the potential havoc Ukrainian saboteurs could cause. In a shockingly casual breach of civil liberties, Russian media began reporting yesterday that the capital’s authorities would be imposing an internet and mobile signal blackout across Moscow. This followed swarms of Ukrainian drone attacks on the capital this week, and while the communications – and even online banking – of ordinary Muscovites were apparently affected for a number of hours this morning, the parade on Red Square did seemingly go off without a hitch.
The Resistance will be woke
After surviving an assassination attempt and winning reelection with a clear lead in the popular vote, Donald Trump was – briefly, and for the first time in his political career – seen by many pundits as incarnating the future rather than the past. In his first months back in the White House, the radicalism and vindictiveness of the administration have given jitters to a lot of independents who were key in helping him win and hardened opposition among his longtime critics. Any fleeting sense that the MAGA movement was culturally ascendent appears, at least for now, to be gone.
And yet, the conventional wisdom holds that a broader ‘vibe shift’ is here to stay. Starting in 2013 or 2014, mainstream culture was for a decade dominated by the rise of wokeness, which can perhaps best be understood as a combination of a new left-identitarian ideology and a determination to expel anybody who violates its moral norms from the community of the righteous. But that culture has now supposedly foundered on its deep unpopularity. Opponents of wokeness have become much more willing to speak out about it in forceful terms. Cancellations have become much rarer. Wokeness, so the story goes, is on the way out.
I’m not so sure. The extremism of the Trump administration is now in danger of making left-leaning institutions and organisations as reactive as they were during his first term in office. While Joe Biden was in office, it was possible, with care and circumspection, to criticise wokeness, DEI or the more extreme forms of trans ideology from a left-of-centre perspective. Now, any such dissent is once again starting to be perceived as ‘running interference for Trump’. The reversion to the culture which prevailed from 2016 through 2020 is only in its beginning stages, and it may never be fully consummated – but once you become attuned to its possibility, the signs are everywhere.
Here, in no particular order, are some recent news stories and personal experiences which suggest that reports of the death of wokeness are greatly exaggerated:
At a recent townhall, Tim Walz explained how Kamala Harris, his running mate, had lost to Donald Trump: ‘We let them define the issue on immigration. We let them define the issue on DEI. And we let them define what woke is.’ The remedy Walz, a potential 2028 hopeful, prescribed for Democrats was a whole-hearted embrace of identity politics: ‘We got ourselves in this mess because we weren’t bold enough to stand up and say: “You’re damn right we’re proud of these policies. We’re gonna put them in. And we’re gonna execute them”.’
Arbitrary firings and cancellations are making a comeback. Sewell Chan is a distinguished journalist who has had stints as a senior editor at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as well as the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune. Less than a year ago, he was hired to rescue the ailing Columbia Journalism Review, and quickly scored some big journalistic hits. Then he was abruptly let go for reasons that resemble the witch hunts of a supposedly bygone era. The ‘misdeeds’ which apparently led to his unceremonious firing include requiring a staff member to come into the office rather than letting her work from home and chastising another for a conflict of interest after repeatedly publishing in a radical publication shortly after writing a glowing profile of it. A hit piece also accused Chan of such heinous crimes as growing agitated while trying to get a major scoop online and standing too close to an employee in the process.
A faction of left-of-centre liberals has for the past years been pushing a major American university to make some key reforms: they wanted to abolish mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring; to make sure that orientations for incoming students emphasised the importance of open dialogue; and to push back against the friend-and-enemy thinking that suffused its DEI office. Until recently, a friend of mine who teaches at the university told me, numerous colleagues of hers were sympathetic to such common sense concerns. But that all changed once Donald Trump took office for the second time. In the latest faculty meetings, even comparatively moderate faculty members whom she had previously seen as allies were deeply hostile to the proposed changes. They now opposed any ‘concession’ as ‘capitulating to Trump’.
When celebrity pollster Nate Silver recently sat down with Galen Druke, a former colleague of his at 538, to predict who might lead the Democratic Party into the 2028 presidential elections, they both agreed on the most likely candidate: ‘My first pick of the first-round draft is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’, Druke ventured. ‘Fuck you! That was going to be my fucking first pick!’, Silver replied. Though AOC, perhaps the most famous national representative of ‘woke’ politics, has poor approval ratings in the electorate as a whole, Silver emphasised how formidable she would be in a primary contest: she is very popular among Democratic voters, dominates the progressive lane, and is capable of commanding tremendous media attention.
Over the last months, I have attended a number of gatherings and conferences and dinners at which the leaders of some of America’s biggest foundations sought to figure out a strategy for how to defend American democracy. Few of them were as openly devoted to the most extreme forms of identitarian ideology as they might have been a few years ago; Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi largely went unmentioned. But the reigning worldview at the top of the philanthropic world has changed little since the summer of 2020. The general consensus holds that voters turned to Trump because American democracy did not deliver for the ‘historically marginalised’. The solution supposedly revolves around ‘mobilising underrepresented communities’. The most urgent imperative of the moment is to ‘fight for equity’ and ‘listen to the global majority’.
In February, Laurel Libby, a Republican state representative in Maine, posted a montage of two photos from award ceremonies for the state high school high vault competition on Facebook, showing the same student athlete before and after their transition. ‘Two years ago, John tied for 5th place in boys’ pole vault,’ she wrote. ‘Tonight, “Katie” won first place.’ Democrats in Maine didn’t just publicly disagree with Libby’s stance on the participation of trans girls in female sporting competitions or criticise her decision to publish the photograph of this particular athlete on social media; 75 out of 76 Democratic legislators in the state voted to censor Libby, depriving her of the capacity to do her job as an elected representative. Until she agrees to delete the post, she is barred from speaking on the floor of the House or from voting on legislation.
Some senior Democratic strategists, the New York Times recently reported, have coalesced around a new strategy modelled on the Dark Brandon meme, a Biden-era attempt to give an air of cultural cool to their octogenarian president. This approach involves defending old progressive positions in a more provocative, supposedly social media-friendly manner. Its main practitioners include legislators like Jasmine Crockett, who has insisted that only ‘mediocre white boys’ have reason to be worried about DEI and referred to Greg Abbott, who sits in a wheelchair, as ‘Governor Hot Wheels’. The name of the strategy which will supposedly save Democrats? ‘Dark Woke’.
History rhymes, as the famous saying goes, but it does not repeat. So make no mistake: the new era of woke is in important respects going to be different from the old.
The silence about the immorality and the incoherence of key woke positions, which was maintained in polite society for the better part of a decade, has been breached. The ideology no longer enjoys the complete dominance it maintained for a few years. The crazy-making period in which you could only confess certain forms of ‘wrongthink’ to your closest friends, with the decibel level of your conversation notably dropping if you happened to find yourself in a public place, has already come to feel like a surreal nightmare. The most extreme forms of identitarian ideology, which were so manifestly absurd that they could only be maintained amidst this atmosphere of omertà, are probably gone for good.
But this doesn’t mean that either the fundamental assumptions of identitarian ideology or the tendency to cancel people for violating them have disappeared from the left-leaning institutions and milieus in which they have long been dominant. A big part of the faculty at Ivy League universities, the leaders of many major foundations, even the managers of some massive corporations continue to view the world through the lens of equity, social justice and intersectionality. And while we may be unlikely to go back to the times when professors at famous universities were suspended for using common Chinese words in the classroom or electricians lost their job because somebody hallucinated that a hand dangling outside a truck was making a secret white supremacist symbols, breaches of consensus positions remain heavily penalised.
Those who are convinced that a vibe shift has taken place are sure to claim that my evidence for the resurgence of wokeness is anecdotal; for now, it assuredly is. But as it happens, the supposed evidence for a systematic shift away from these practices is just as anecdotal – and far more sparse.
When I ask friends and acquaintances for concrete examples of the supposed vibe shift, they virtually always cite Seth Moulton and Gavin Newsom expressing mild reservations about letting athletes who have gone through male puberty participate in competitive female sporting competitions. But Moulton’s statements came in the immediate aftermath of the election and attracted fierce pushback. Even Newsom has not in any meaningful manner acted on his supposed views in his day job as Governor of California; indeed, Democrats in the state just voted down a proposed bill that would have stopped trans girls from participating in female sports. For now, the evidence that Democrats are willing to course-correct on their most unpopular positions regarding cultural issues remains strikingly sparse.
In the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, probably the most influential book about the history of science written over the course of the last hundred years, Thomas Kuhn tried to understand a strange paradox. Again and again, scientific ‘paradigms’ failed to explain the world to the extent they promised. While Newtonian mechanics could describe certain natural phenomena, such as the speed with which an apple fell from a tree, it could not describe other phenomena, such as Mercury’s orbit around the sun. And yet, many senior scientists who were well aware of the paradigm’s failure to explain such ‘anomalies’ would persistently refuse to abandon it. Why?
Kuhn’s explanation had to do with the need for all of us humans to see the world through some kind of coherent lens. Newtonian physicists who tried to explain how the world works may, over time, have come to be painfully aware of the ‘anomalies’ which demonstrated the imperfections of their model. But so long as Newtonian physics worked better than the alternatives, they were unwilling to give up on it. Only when Albert Einstein published the theory of relativity, offering an alternative paradigm through which to see the world, did some of them start to abandon the old model. ‘The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another,’ Kuhn concluded.
The supposed evidence for a systematic shift away from wokeness is anecdotal
Kuhn’s insight, originally developed in the context of science, helps to explain why it is difficult to overturn the conventional wisdom in all kinds of other contexts as well – including the hold which a somewhat softened form of wokeness now retains over the imagination of the American left.
Many of its most influential exponents are starting to recognise that the woke ‘paradigm’ leads to a lot of ‘anomalies’. With varying degrees of clarity and honesty, they grasp that Latinos and other minority groups helped to put Trump back in the White House even though ‘people of colour’ were supposed to be the salvation of the Democratic Party. They recognise that the extreme cultural positions that their coalition has taken ended up alienating a majority of Americans when it was meant to represent the end point of history’s arc. Perhaps they have even experienced in their own organisations and social circles that an ideology which had promised an inclusive America turned into a weapon which victimised many of their own friends and family members.
But, as Kuhn predicted, the ability to notice anomalies in the reigning paradigm is not a sufficient condition for abandoning it. The triumph of wokeness has been so fast and so complete that it has effectively turned older forms of leftism, from economic radicalism to liberal progressivism, into relics. As a result, the elite communities which hold power in left-of-centre America today lack a viable alternative to the reigning ideology; For anybody who is committed to remaining on the left, there simply isn’t an alternative paradigm.
Kuhn made another observation which is relevant the the topic at hand: Even once an alternative paradigm was available, the scientific consensus shifted much more slowly than the evidence would have warranted. This led Kuhn to another key insight about how groups of humans change their minds. Because senior scientists have invested their entire careers in developing the old model, they have too much riding on it to give it up. Usually, it is younger scientists who have yet to make their name who end up embracing a new set of ideas. This is why paradigm shifts, according to Kuhn, tend to happen one funeral at a time: ‘Rather than engage in debate, [older scientists] may simply ignore the new views, or dismiss them as unscientific. A generation must pass before the new paradigm becomes the norm.’
The fact that many leaders of the American left were personally and institutionally complicit in the rise of wokeness create a parallel resistance to change. Like aging scientists who have staked their career on scientific discoveries which take the validity of some defunct paradigm for granted, everybody from the prospective contestants in the 2028 Democratic primaries to the presidents of America’s most wealthy foundations has spent the defining years of their career talking about equity and pledging themselves to anti-racist action plans. While many might be nimble enough to drop their references to the most embarrassing exponents of that ideology, such as Kendi or DiAngelo, few will be sufficiently intellectually curious or strategically astute to become fluent in a new paradigm which would allow them to abandon the old one.
The Trump administration is using the mighty power of the American state to root out any practice and punish any institution he suspects of being woke. This can (seemingly) make it hard for those of us committed to philosophically liberal principles like free speech and individual rights to know how to fight against identitarian ideology without throwing the liberal baby out with the woke bathwater.
Some Trump administration attacks on wokeness turn out to be well-founded. But other supposed attacks on wokeness are designed to punish disfavoured political speech or undermine rival power centres. When it comes to the country’s leading universities, for example, the Trump administration had two options. It could fight against genuine forms of ethnic discrimination and ideological coercion. Or it could decide that universities will always have a strong progressive lean, and try to weaken them as much as possible. The administration has clearly taken the latter path.
But as so often in politics, what seems like a dilemma when you look at it in terms of whose side to take turns out to be rather more simple when you analyse it in terms of principles. Both the identitarian philosophy of the left and the practices of cancellation it has inspired over the last years are fundamentally illiberal; those of us who are committed to principles like free speech should have no hesitation in fighting against the power they have long held in some of America’s most important institutions. But the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech, academic freedom, and the rule of law are just as illiberal – and all the more dangerous for directly enlisting in their cause the mighty power of the federal state. Philosophical liberals must not allow well-founded concerns about wokeness to tempt them into making excuses for blatant violations of their fundamental principles.
As I have written many times before, it is a profound mistake to think that left-wing identitarianism and right-wing reaction are implacable enemies. In reality, every victory for one side immediately strengthens those who fight for the other side. The way out of this dangerous spiral is not to pick one side as the lesser evil and shut up about its dangers; it is, calmly and consistently, to resist both.
What has Ofcom got against the Carry On films?
Why must we all be such killjoys? Why so prudish? Why so terrified of history? In the dock this week, accused of crimes against common sense, are the bods at Ofcom, whose ‘guidance’, say broadcasters, means that Carry On films are now under threat.
It appears the Carry On films have made the unpardonable error of reflecting the social and cultural norms of their time rather than having the foresight to mirror those of half a century later
In fact, niche broadcasters of older films – and where else can you watch a Carry On film these days? – are so terrified of earning Ofcom’s wrath that they feel obliged to butcher the films by removing language and scenes that were once just jolly good seaside fun. It’s like taking the cheese and pickle out of a cheese and pickle sarnie.
We might ask what Carry On films have ever done to hurt anyone, and what crime they might have committed. Well, it appears they made the unpardonable error of reflecting the social and cultural norms of their time rather than having the foresight to mirror those of half a century later.
Ofcom’s response, therefore, is to punish history for not being current enough. So, it takes it upon itself, based on public research, to decide which words are so offensive to modern tastes that they require a ‘clear and strong contextual justification for broadcast’. This means that, as the years go by, and as social norms and attitudes inevitably change, more and more of the Carry On output is deemed unacceptable. There will soon be a naughty black market in old DVDs, I suppose.
And what exactly is Ofcom worried about? Well, in a recent report it describes how Carry on Cleo (1964) includes a scene with ‘a White actor plays an Egyptian guard. His skin is darkened with very dark make-up. He is unable to speak, using sign language to communicate instead.’ Ofcom moderators then encourage research participants to focus on this piece of offence by asking: ‘Did you notice that one of the actors is wearing dark make-up? What do you think about this? Are there any situations where it is acceptable for a television programme to show someone in blackface? Would a warning make it more acceptable?’
With questions as leading as that, it’s hardly surprising that the Carry On films are now in trouble. And of course, it’s not just Carry On. While Little Britain wasn’t offensive in 2010, it was by 2020. Fawlty Towers, with its 1970s racist Major and nasty hotel manager who bullies elderly deaf women, has no chance today. Even Friends, apparently, is too ‘cisgendered’ and ‘heteronormative’ for modern tastes. The goalposts are constantly moving.
We can’t blame Ofcom for all of that, of course. Yet in its keenness to protect sensitive viewers from offensive material, it is in danger of denying today’s generations not just the entertainment value of Carry On films, which is considerable, but an education into what post-war Britain was actually like.
You can learn more about 1960s Britain from a Carry On than from any number of academic tomes. Amid all the bottom pinching, leering and outrageous double entendres is a window into a country I was just too young for, but still recognised – of seaside holiday camps, loosening sexual norms, cultural homogeneity and a desperation to move on from wartime deprivation without the resources to quite manage it.
Must it all be lost? Well, broadcasters report their hope that a happy medium can be agreed whereby a ‘trigger warning’ at the start of older films will satisfy the censors. Fine, but I don’t see why history needs such a thing. After all, and to slightly misquote L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between, of course history is different. That’s the point. That’s what makes it so interesting. So, let’s not deny ourselves the ability to travel there and enjoy it.
Sadly, we’ve become so dismissive of individual responsibility, that we actually need a taxpayer-funded quango to police our taste in films. Well, we shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, given that the big state already sends people to prison for offensive social-media posts and takes it upon itself to teach children how to clean their teeth.
But there is one inconsistency I’d like ironed out. If history is a matter for policing, why not geography? If the racism in Carry On films is enough to warrant a warning, why isn’t the racism in, say, Japan (which, according to research, is one of the three most racist countries on earth) not mentioned in the travel advice issued by the Foreign Office? Perhaps it’s just racist to accuse another country of being, well, racist.
None of that helps the Carry On films, of course. And Ofcom won’t change tack any time soon. So, get yourself the box set while you still can.
Why is Macron courting the Freemasons?
Emmanuel Macron turned this week to France’s shadowy Freemasons for support. In a speech delivered to the secretive Grande Loge de France, he asked for their help to defend the Republic’s core values, and urged them to stand up to extremes, by which he means Le Pen’s National Rally. Macron needs to stabilise the political centre, which he once comfortably occupied, but which is shrinking fast under pressure from the right.
That a sitting French president would attempt to enlist the Freemasons is astonishing
That a sitting French president would attempt to enlist the Freemasons is astonishing. Normally shrouded in discretion, the group has never been publicly courted by any president. There have been numerous political scandals over the years linked to Freemasons, who have a history of manoeuvring behind the scenes.
Macron directly appealed to the Freemasons and asked them to serve as ‘ambassadors of fraternity’ and to actively promote secularism. The latter underpins Macron’s immigration policies, which seek to integrate newcomers by requiring adherence to secular and republican values through measures such as language training, civic education, and controversial restrictions on religious symbols in public institutions. Secularism is often held up by French policymakers as the key to ensuring that immigration does not undermine the unity or neutrality of the state, by framing it as a question of civic integration rather than cultural conflict. As such, Macron’s speech was a shot across the bow of his opponents, most notably Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s National Rally and the harder line now being pushed by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau. The latter has called for stricter secular and immigration policies that blur the line between Macron’s centrism and the discourse of the right.
Freemasonry is not just a gentleman’s club or philanthropic society, it is a parallel power structure, with its own internal codes, rituals, and ranking systems. Members, often senior figures in politics, the judiciary, the police and the civil service, swear loyalty to their lodges, meet behind closed doors, and never speak publicly about their affiliations. The inner workings of the society remain secret.
Initiates help one another in professional circles, promote preferred candidates in institutions, and quietly shape public debate through dense, informal networks. The secrecy isn’t accidental, discretion is a key part of Masonic culture, from coded handshakes to secret meetings. In the 1990s, French media linked Freemasons to several high-profile scandals. The Affaire des HLM de Paris involved allegations of fraud in public housing contracts, with rumours of Masonic ties among the officials who were implicated. Two military procurement scandals also raised questions about lodge connections protecting insiders. The Affaire des Frégates saw unconfirmed reports of alleged Freemason judges shielding lodge members. These scandals stirred public suspicion of elite networks operating behind closed doors.
The most prominent scandal potentially linked to Freemasonry was the Elf affair, a corruption case in the late 1990s and early 2000s involving France’s oil giant, Elf Aquitaine. Hundreds of millions in misappropriated funds fuelled political slush funds and international deals, implicating figures like Roland Dumas, then Foreign Minister. While Dumas was not confirmed as a Freemason, speculation surrounded several people involved.
Macron’s appeal to the Freemasons carries real risk. For a President already viewed as aloof and technocratic, openly courting a fraternity with a reputation for backroom influence and elitism further erodes public trust in him. His appeal for help to the Freemasons reveals just how precarious his position has become. The broad centre-ground on which he was elected is disappearing, squeezed on both flanks.
Macron sees his legacy at risk if the right takes power and is searching for allies wherever they can be found. But openly courting an organisation as secretive and elitist as the Freemasons is risky. His move might strengthen his hand in Parisian salons, but for ordinary voters, it simply confirms the impression that the President is grasping for influence in all the wrong places.
Bets for Chester and Ascot
Today’s Ladbrokes Chester Cup (3.05 p.m.), run over a distance of more than two miles and two furlongs, is an intriguing affair with 15 runners competing for a first prize of more than £86,000.
The best handicapped horse on the basis of his hurdles form is the likely favourite East India Dock, who was third in the Grade 1 JCB Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March and can run off a lenient official flat mark of 89 today.
The slight downsides to his chances are that he is untried at such a marathon trip as this on the flat and he has no experience of the unique twists and turns of Chester. East India Dock is the most likely winner of the race but at odds of 7-2 I am happy to look elsewhere.
Hot Fuss, the selection of two top tipsters in Tom Segal (Pricewise in the Racing Post) and Matt Brocklebank (sportinglife.com), also ran a cracker at the Cheltenham Festival when fourth, despite being too close to a red-hot pace, in the Fred Winter juvenile handicap hurdle. He, too, has a winning chance but he is not as well handicapped on the flat as he is over hurdles and he would definitely prefer softer ground.
I put up Zoffee each way for this race seven days ago at 20-1 and he has all but halved in price. He has drawn stall four today which is pretty much perfect and he goes well fresh too. Furthermore, his trainer Hugo Palmer had a double at the course yesterday so Zoffee clearly has a big chance of landing this race for the second year in succession.
The likes of Irish-trained Leinster and the Andrew Balding-trained Who’s Glen have big shouts but for my second selection in the race I will back CABALLO DE MAR for the in-form George Scott/Callum Shepherd trainer/jockey combination.
The four-year-old gelding is on a six-timer after five wins on the all-weather and he is 5 lbs well in because the handicapper would put him up to a mark of 93 if he was allowed to evaluate his most recent form. Instead, in the early-closing handicap, the horse can run off a mark of 88 today. His draw in stall eight is acceptable too.
Will he be as good on turf as he is on the all-weather? I don’t know but his handler tells the Racing Post today: ‘Going back to turf isn’t a concern and he clearly enjoys going left-handed.’ Back Caballo De Mar 1 point each way at 6-1 with Paddy Power paying five places.
There is a quality card at Ascot tomorrow when the Schweppes Victoria Cup (2.40 p.m.) is another fascinating contest with 19 runners competing for a first prize of more than £51,000.
Course and distance form is a big plus on Ascot’s seven-furlong straight course and so my suggestion is to back METAL MERCHANT trained by Jack Channon and ridden by David Probert.
The five-year-old gelding likes these big field handicaps having won the 21-runner Newbury Spring Cup in April last year off an official mark of 91.
Apart from his course and distance win at Ascot in October 2023, Metal Merchant ran a big race when fourth in the Moet & Chandon International Stakes here in July last year, a race where the form could hardly have worked out better.
His official mark of 96 gives him a winning chance tomorrow. Back Metal Merchant 1 point each way at 11-1 with SkyBet offering a generous seven places, rather than backing him a point bigger with other bookmakers but with less places.
There are dangers aplenty including Gleneagle Bay, a horse with top form in big handicaps in Ireland last season and who will be ridden by Hollie Doyle tomorrow. However, he does not have form at Ascot and he might prefer softer ground too so, on balance, I will stay with just the one selection in the race.
Pending:
1 point each way Zoffee at 20-1 for the Chester Cup, paying ¼ odds, 4 places.
1 point each way Caballo de Mar at 6-1 for the Chester Cup, paying 1/5th odds, 5 places.
1 point each way Metal Merchant at 11-1 for the Victoria Cup, paying 1/5th odds, 7 places.
Last weekend: – 4 points.
1 point each way Obelix at 11/2 for the Thirsk Hunt Cup, paying 1/5th odds, 5 places. Unplaced.
1 point each way Green Impact at 12-1 for 2000 Guineas, paying 1/5th odds, 4 places. Unplaced.
2025 flat season running total – 4 points.
2024-5 jump season: – 47.61 points.
2024 flat season: + 41.4 points on all tips.
2023-4 jump season: + 42.01 points on all tips.
2023 flat season: – 48.22 points on all tips.
2022-3 jump season: + 54.3 points on all tips.
Bonnie Blue deserves to be cancelled
Dr Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and women’s studies, defines the ‘pornification of society’ as a culture where explicit content isn’t just tolerated, but actively celebrated: the hardcore becomes mainstream, the shocking becomes desensitising, the transgressive becomes ever-more competitive.
Leading this race to the bottom is OnlyFans ‘model’ Bonnie Blue. Blue, ever-the-expert in attention-grabbing stunts, has hit headlines again after she revealed her plans for a ‘dogging tour’ of the UK, announcing this jaunt as casually as if it were just a couple of stand-up gigs.
We blame Andrew Tate, rightly, for teaching men to disrespect women, but where is the blame on Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips?
This is the same ‘mattress actress’ who slept with over 1,000 men in a day, went to a university freshers’ week with a sign saying ‘bonk me and let me film it’, recently claimed to be pregnant, and, in a teaser for a video, said she would be ‘leaving here in a wheelchair’.
In our era of cancel culture and perpetual outrage, you would assume that Bonnie Blue – who has boasted about using ‘barely legal’ girls and boys in her videos and helping men cheat on their wives for a living – would be a demonised pariah. Far from it. She is a regular on podcasts and radio, and was even interviewed on ITV’s This Morning (which is ironic given how recently they sacked their main presenter for inappropriate relations with a younger man).
The same is true for Lily Phillips, subject of the documentary I Slept With 100 Men in One Day, who was interviewed on Newsnight last month about her experiences in the sex industry. Rather than being thoroughly challenged on the negative impact she might be having on younger audiences, Phillips was instead treated as an authority on sex and spokesperson for her generation, when the reality is she is clearly a deeply disturbed young woman.
Given the devastating damage pornography is inflicting on both men and women, why are Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips not subject to more scrutiny? Why are they platformed and promoted and treated as if they are just regular, normal businesswomen?
It may be partly out of pity; there are plenty who see the girls as infantilised ‘victims’, exploited by the big bad patriarchy, and unfairly targeted compared to the men who appear in their videos. It may be because #girlboss feminism means that others have drunk the Kool-Aid that prostitution is empowering, and if objectification is inevitable, then you may as well make money out of it. It may be because we live in a world where content is everything and everything is content, and we accept that all content creators go to increasingly extreme lengths for views (remember when YouTuber Logan Paul uploaded footage of a hanging body in Japan’s suicide forest in 2018).
When campaigners warn about the dangers of pornography, the response – especially from government – is usually apathetic shoulder-shrugging. Compare this to the high-pitch hysteria around the manosphere and misogyny: schools being explicitly told to talk to their pupils about Andrew Tate, to show the Netflix series Adolescence as if it were a documentary, to educate pupils about consent, and yet not care that porn is literally the monetised violation of it.
We blame Andrew Tate, rightly, for teaching men to disrespect women, but where is the blame on Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips? Blue and Phillips are not just porn stars: they are influencers. Every interview they give, every stunt they pull, every teaser they post on Instagram (yet another failure of moderation) normalises the degradation of women. They – and the porn industry as a whole – are far more responsible for perverting young people’s perceptions around sexual intimacy and relationships than incel Reddit forums or right-wing podcasts. After all, Andrew Tate could only dream of having the reach Pornhub does (42 billion visits in 2019).
Blue and Phillips may be exonerated because what they are doing is technically ‘legal’, but it doesn’t make it any more ethical. The fact that they have to find ever-more creative ways to demean themselves reminds us that porn is not so much about selling sex as selling transgression: as Mary Harrington writes, porn is about the ‘monetisation of taboo’. The boundaries have been pushed so far they are no longer there at all: the easy accessibility of extreme content explains why we have a generation who have been exposed to scenes of sexual choking online long before they even have their first kiss.
In their quest for viewers and subscribers, Blue and Phillips have turned pornography into an extreme sport: pushing their bodies to the limits, taking on increasingly humiliating challenges, and asking how far we are willing to go for a dopamine rush. It’s high time we stopped cheering them on.