-
AAPL
213.43 (+0.29%)
-
BARC-LN
1205.7 (-1.46%)
-
NKE
94.05 (+0.39%)
-
CVX
152.67 (-1.00%)
-
CRM
230.27 (-2.34%)
-
INTC
30.5 (-0.87%)
-
DIS
100.16 (-0.67%)
-
DOW
55.79 (-0.82%)
Radio 3 Unwind is music for the morgue
Soon after the launch of Classic FM in 1992, the then controller of Radio 3, Nicholas Kenyon, asserted that his high-minded station was not in any competition with its commercial rival and certainly not lurching into ‘some ghastly descent into populism’, even as he hired Classic FM’s presenters and fiddled with the programming to create ‘access points’ for novice listeners.
Classical music once had a higher calling than to be this subdued
That argument is now over, the pretence dropped. The current controller of Radio 3, Sam Jackson – appointed last year – was previously the actual boss of Classic FM, as well as Smooth and Gold. Earlier this year, he radically rejigged Radio 3’s schedules, shifting Record Review, introducing Jools Holland, bringing over Friday Night is Music Night from Radio 2 and so forth, upsetting many listeners.
But the results are in. Radio 3’s audience is up 11.2 per cent to 2.04 million, while Classic FM’s is down to 4.42 million – still more than double Radio 3’s, but a fall of 19.5 per cent from its high point of 5.48 million in 2020. And Jackson has just created an offshoot channel, Radio 3 Unwind, launched on 4 November. For now, it’s effectively a streaming service available through BBC Sounds and smart speakers, but he hopes it will soon become a digital channel in its own right.
Unwind is an artful name. It implies that the listener is already wound up, tense and stressed, in need, above all, of calming down. Classical music here is frankly conceived of as a tranquilliser, a paregoric, a soporific, a narcotic, even an outright anaesthetic. The whole history of art music has been repackaged as background sound, although that term seems to have been carefully excluded from the schedules so as not to give the game away. Radio 3 Unwind is not just an intensification of the doziness of Classic FM, all calm classics and relaxing evenings, one adagio after another, it marks the triumph of Brian Eno’s 1970s invention: ambient music.
Recovering from a collapsed lung after being knocked down by a taxi, Eno was at home listening to some 18th-century harp music on a hifi, with only one speaker working at a low volume, almost inaudible against the rain pattering outside, when he realised such dimness had potential. His pioneering effort, Discreet Music, was released in 1975; Ambient 1: Music for Airports soon followed. In the sleeve notes, Eno cleverly observed: ‘Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.’
Radio 3 Unwind fondly embraces an even more intense form of stupefaction. This is not so much music for airports as for the intensive care ward, if not the morgue. The day starts with Classical Unwind, three hours cosily presented by Dr Sian Williams (always called so, to emphasise that it is as good as medicine). Then there’s a podcast brought over from BBC Sounds, Piano Focus (lollipops), followed by the Mindful Mix (‘mellow classical music to create moments of calm’).
In the evening there’s another three-hour segment, Classical Wind Down, with the rich Irish brogue of Niall Breslin, his approach shaped by his studies in sociology and mindfulness, we are assured. All the pieces on Radio 3 Unwind are short and soft and include many little-known young, contemporary composers. There’s an emphasis on diversity: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price and Zenobia Powell Perry regularly feature, as well as sweet familiar melodies by Liszt, Chopin, Grieg, Brahms and Bach. No distraction is created by giving any details or saying who is playing.
Then comes another podcast transfer, Ultimate Calm, with Icelandic pianist and composer Olafur Arnalds, who speaks like a well-trained medic trying to reassure somebody fatally injured. Each show is themed: flowers, rivers, mountains, the stars and so forth. It was the many trailers for this on Radio 4 promising complete peace of mind that first attracted me to the strand.
The presenter speaks like a well-trained medic trying to reassure somebody fatally injured
It is in the night, as consciousness fades, that Unwind comes into its own. In The Sleeping Forecast, also formerly a podcast, Neil Nunes slowly intones the shipping forecast over trickling tunes for an hour. If that fails to sedate you enough, there is then a show running from 12.30 a.m. to 6.30 a.m., Sleep Tracks, in which harmless music is heavily interspersed and overlaid with natural sounds, different each night: birdsong, rain, forest life, waves, wind, crickets, underwater gloopings and whale song and the like. Not quite up to the standard of Max Richter’s dozy masterpiece Sleep, eight hours long, first broadcast in 2015, but never mind.
Classical music once had a higher calling than to be thus subdued. These are, after all, the sounds also on offer from sundry white-noise sleep machines, for babies and adults alike.
But then again we are all mad in the night and need all the help we can get. Xanax, Temazepam and Zolpidem might work better, but in their absence Radio 3 Unwind is worth a try. It’s just to be hoped that its creation alleviates, rather than exacerbates, the pressure on Radio 3 proper and that it stops it from further degrading its musical offering.
Who can afford to send Christmas cards any more?
At this time of year I’d usually be writing dozens of Christmas cards, with a Snowball to hand, heavy on the Advocaat. Many would be to people with whom I have no contact at any other time of year. It can be quietly meditative to write a note with an actual fountain pen to an old school friend or neighbour.
But this time, in an abrupt break with tradition, I’ve bought just a couple of packets of cards. My list has been strimmed to include family, godchildren, a few very old people who’d miss receiving something in the post – and those to whom I can hand-deliver. The tradition of sending Christmas cards is under threat, not from e-cards or from Gen Z-ers who wouldn’t recognise an envelope if it gave them a paper cut – but from the price of a stamp.
In my mind, a stamp is still about 27p. I physically staggered at the Post Office counter on being told the cost of a book of 50 second-class stamps (£42.50). Even if I were to get all my cards written in a timely fashion, I’d be spending almost £150 on postage alone. For late cards, a book of 50 first-class stamps will set you back £82.50.
It’s particularly ironic given that the very first Christmas card was commissioned and sent in 1843 by Henry Cole, founding director of the V&A, who’d been instrumental in setting up the Uniform Penny Post, which encouraged the sending of seasonal greetings.
‘We’re very concerned about the cost,’ says Amanda Fergusson, CEO of the Greetings Card Association, who’s on a train to London to lobby MPs about this very issue when I call her. ‘Christmas cards decorate our homes. Sending and receiving cards means a huge amount to people – it’s a tangible connection with loved ones.’ Fergusson wants MPs to have oversight of the pricing of first-class stamps – which went up by 30p to £1.65 each in October – and scrutiny of the Ofcom and Royal Mail proposals to water down the Universal Service Obligation. According to Ofcom, 42 per cent of the population now use Royal Mail only to send greetings cards.
Her data also shows that people are sending fewer cards but spending more on individual Christmas cards for close friends and family – £177.5 million last year. This is a worry for the many charities who rely on sales of boxes of Christmas cards for a significant chunk of their income.
Christine Ansell, CEO of fundraising charity Cards for Good Causes, says postage costs will have a ‘direct impact’ on the revenue of more than 70 charities supported by her organisation, including Cancer Research UK and the Army Benevolent Fund. ‘Customers are sharing with us that they’re not sending as many cards as they normally do. There’s a lot of mistrust of the second-class service as well; Royal Mail say they’re delivering every other day, but from a recipient’s point of view, that’s not happening.’
Cards for Good Causes has raised £22.5 million for charities over the past ten years. Ansell’s fears are not just for its revenue, but the ‘onward impact’ on the recipients of Christmas cards, many of whom are elderly and socially isolated.
‘We’re definitely getting fewer,’ says my friend Belinda, who’s in her seventies and designs her own card each year. Belinda is one of those great stalwarts of village life, but even she is trying to cut her Christmas card list down from 400 to 100. She’ll share her card design on Facebook, but it’s hardly the same. E-cards, often accompanied by their virtue-signalling message that ‘we’re giving the money to charity this year’, have never captured the imagination. They feel rather late 1990s.
Some think we should bin the tradition of sending cards altogether – it is a fairly recent one, after all, brought in by the Victorians along with crackers and Christmas trees. Seventy years ago, Sir John Betjeman skewered the absurdity of sending out ‘twenty yards/ Laid end to end, of Christmas cards/ To people that I scarcely know’ in his poem ‘Advent 1955’. A straw poll of friends reveals most aren’t bothering with cards this year, apart from to elderly relatives and the hand-delivered (teachers, neighbours, binmen).
Much of the fun of opening a Christmas card used to be finding one of those frightfully smug ‘round robin’ letters inside (‘My fifth novel was well-reviewed, Goneril has joined her sister Clytemnestra at Oxford, a “K” for Tristan in the King’s Birthday Honours List’, etc). But social media has also removed the need for these annual circulars when those so inclined can drip-feed their boasting throughout the year.
Of the people I speak to, just one respondent tells me she will be sending close to her usual quota, but only because the envelope will also include a proper ‘stiffy’ invitation to her big birthday party next summer – to save on postage.
Anger management, ancient Greek-style
A professor of neurophysiology has announced that anger is a good thing with a ‘very useful purpose’, unless it turns to aggression. Top thinking, prof!
The first word of western literature is the ‘rage’ of Achilles, which Homer tells us was ‘murderous’ and brought endless grief to the Greeks. What? Come again, Homer old boy, surely you meant ‘the Trojans’? Alas, no. This led directly to the death of Achilles’s dear friend Patroclus and the early death of Achilles. When Achilles realises what he has done, he admits there may be pleasure in anger ‘sweeter than the dripping of honey’ but wishes it would disappear from the face of the Earth.
So did many ancient moralists. Seneca wrote a treatise on the subject, describing what an angry person looked like: eyes blaze and flash, face crimson with blood, lips quiver, teeth clench, hair bristles and stands on end, etc. But then he was a stoic, who believed man must live by reason alone. The Greek essayist Plutarch took the view of an earnest schoolmaster: get a grip; you’re the only one who can deal with it; no one else can do it for you; look at the effects it can have; understand what a fool you look; it is a mental disease which will destroy you and everyone else.
Aristotle, with his passion for the ‘mean’, admired the ‘angerless’ man (a word he invented: we might translate it ‘even-tempered’ or ‘equable’). While the ‘irascible’ man would typically fly off the handle but immediately fly back on again, or do nothing but fly off the handle, or (even worse) nurse his wrath to keep it warm, the ‘angerless’ man would ‘feel anger for the right reasons, against the right people, at the right moment, for the right length of time’.
No doubt the prof. would agree. He certainly suggests anger is good for scientists, in moderation (did the great Archimedes, killed by a Roman soldier whom he told to get lost for messing up his experiment, overreact?). But whatever its human consequences, the emotion can surely boast a rich cultural heritage, from the God of the Old Testament and the minor prophets through Greek tragedy to the Roman satirist Juvenal and beyond.
Russia’s sabotage campaign against the West
Mark Galeotti has narrated this article for you to listen to.
When a DHL cargo plane crashed while approaching Vilnius airport on Monday, killing one of the crew, it looked like technical failure, but given that Russia was believed to be behind a series of incendiary devices which ignited on DHL flights and in warehouses this summer, inevitably many feared Moscow’s hand. The suspicion is likely to be the point. In the past year, the Russians have stepped up their disruptive activities in Europe, from cyber-attacks to assassinations, with the apparent aim of generating chaos and a climate of fear as much as anything else.
Russia has outsourced its activity to a motley array of ‘patriotic hackers’ and outright cyber-criminals
In February, a Russian defector was gunned down in Spain, in what seems to have been a hit commissioned by Moscow but carried out by gangsters. In March, petty criminals hired by the GU, Russia’s military intelligence, torched Ukrainian-owned warehouses in Leyton, east London. Moscow was also blamed for a subsequent series of arson attacks across Europe on everything from Polish shopping malls to a German factory. In July, US and German authorities announced that they had foiled a Russian plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, CEO of the Rheinmetall armaments conglomerate, an outspoken supporter of Ukraine. Although the circumstances are still unclear, two telecommunications cables across the Baltic have just been severed in what could easily be sabotage.
Meanwhile, as the cabinet minister Pat McFadden warned the Nato Cyber Defence Conference in London this week, Russia has expanded its campaign of cyber-attacks. Some are essentially intelligence-gathering operations, but an increasing proportion seek to disrupt, such as the attacks on the Czech railways this year or the regular spates of fake bomb scares generating the kind of hypervigilance behind recent controlled explosions in Glasgow, Euston station and near the US embassy, and a major security alert at Gatwick airport.
How do the Russians manage to maintain such a tempo of attacks? In part, by outsourcing to a motley array of ‘patriotic hackers’ and outright cyber-criminals. This is not just confined to the online realm: as the MI5 director-general Ken McCallum warned last month, this year has seen ‘Russian state actors turning to proxies for their dirty work, including private intelligence operatives and criminals from both the UK and third countries’.
This is especially evident in the online world, with Russian ransomware gangs and other criminal hackers essentially being given a free pass so long as they are targeting the West. Yet it is also clear that criminals are being used more broadly, in everything from carrying out surveillance on behalf of Moscow’s intelligence agencies to covering walls across Europe with divisive and anti-Semitic graffiti, from planting firebombs to smuggling in sanctioned microchips.
It should not be a surprise that the Russians are turning to criminals and private investigators. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some 750 Russian diplomats were expelled across the West. Since most spies work under diplomatic cover, this delivered a serious blow to Russia’s espionage networks. Yet we could hardly imagine that this would stop the Kremlin from trying to find new ways to operate. Many proxies are hired anonymously online, so that they may not even know they are doing Vladimir Putin’s dirty work. Some have been carrying out surveillance under the belief that their clients are convinced their spouses are cheating on them or their employees are stealing.
The real question is why Moscow has stepped up its campaign this year, and what it could possibly hope to achieve. Does it honestly believe that burning down a shopping centre or daubing some graffiti will really make any kind of meaningful difference?
The answer lies in Putin’s perception of the situation. He appears genuinely to believe that an implacably ‘Russophobic’ West is committed to confining or dismembering Russia, and that Ukraine is essentially little more than a weapon aimed at the Mother-land. Kyiv’s intelligence services have been conducting a series of attacks on Russian military targets, officers and outspoken cheerleaders for the war; this month, for example, a naval officer was killed when a bomb exploded under his car in Crimea. To Putin – a man who believes Ukraine is an artificial construct created by Lenin after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution out of ‘what is historically Russian land’ – these attacks could only be happening at our behest, or at least with our approval.
The question is why Moscow has stepped up its campaign, and what it hopes to achieve
A hawkish Russian thinktanker close to the presidential administration spelled it out to me: ‘You think you can get Ukrainian terrorists to do your dirty work and that we’ll politely pretend you’re not behind it? It’s time you got to know what it feels like to be at war.’ Besides, he added: ‘What else are sanctions but economic and political warfare? You try to crash our economy and then whine if you get hacked?’
It seems that at some point in the middle of last year, a decision was made by the Kremlin to allow its intelligence agencies to go ‘a bit feral’, in the words of the MI6 director Sir Richard Moore. In part, this is simply revenge against Ukraine’s allies; but it is also something more strategic, what one could call the weaponisation of inconvenience. There is a sense in Moscow that the West has become too comfortable with the war, that we regularly write off a certain amount of money and part of our military arsenal to keep the Ukrainians fighting, without really feeling the costs. One could argue against this conclusion – ‘Ukraine fatigue’ is a growing challenge, likely to be magnified if Donald Trump unloads a greater share of the war’s costs on to Europe – but it seems to be a belief held in hawkish circles around Putin.
The campaign of cyber and proxy attacks is intended not only to further Moscow’s usual goals of spreading division and demoralisation, but also to convey to Europeans a sense that their countries’ continued support for Ukraine is affecting their lives negatively.
A massive cyber-attack of the sort that McFadden described, bringing down the national power grid, is unlikely because it falls squarely within the terms of Nato’s Article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance. It also invites retaliation in kind, and it would be naive to presume that the West is not also seeking back doors into Russia’s critical national infrastructure.
But what about a criminal ransomware attack on an NHS pathology provider that forces more than 10,000 acute outpatient appointments to be postponed, as happened in June? Explosive packages on DHL flights that create delays for all deliveries? Cyber-attacks on railway signalling and ticketing systems that could impose commuting misery on hundreds of thousands of people and large business losses? None of these comes anywhere near the threshold for direct retaliation, but they certainly make an impact, especially if we become so frightened of Putin’s shadow that we ascribe every upset and accident to his machinations.
This strategy helps to explain why Americans have so far avoided the worst of the attacks. In the run-up to the presidential elections, Moscow had no desire for the limelight, and now it doesn’t want to risk forcing Trump to take a firmer line. Europe has no such immunity. So how should it respond? This month, my report ‘Gangsters at War: Russia’s use of organised crime as an instrument of statecraft’ was published by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, and I embarked on the usual round of briefings. After one, at Nato headquarters, I was approached by two national representatives: one from a southern European country, the other from one of the Baltic states. The former was worried: ‘What can we do against such a campaign? We can hardly fight back in kind.’ His more seasoned Baltic counterpart’s reply was blunt: ‘We know the Russians. They will keep up the pressure so long as they think it’s working. You just have to refuse to let it work, to double down, not give up.’ Keep calm and carry on, in other words.
The glamour of the scallop
There is a gentle irony to the dish coquilles St Jacques: a decadent, rich preparation of one of our most luxurious seafoods takes its name from a saint who has inspired centuries of pilgrimage, and whose emblem came to symbolise modesty.
The eponymous St Jacques is St James the apostle, or James the Great. The scallop shell has long been associated with him, one legend being that St James once rescued a knight covered in scallops; another that when the remains of the saint were retrieved from a shipwreck, the ship – or perhaps even the body itself – was covered in the shells.
A whole scallop is one of the finest things you can possibly eat
The scallop shell has come to represent the pilgrimage to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, where the saint’s relics are said to be entombed. Scallop shells appear along the pilgrimage route on the Camino de Santiago, marking the way. In earlier times, the scallop shell would be used as a meagre measure at food kitchens along the path. Pilgrims themselves now wear the scallops as a badge of honour, real ones collected hung from backpacks, or sewn-on scallop patches, identifying the wearer as a Camino walker.
The term ‘coquille St Jacques’ really refers to the king scallop itself, as opposed to a specific preparation, but it has also come to mean the serving of the scallop on the half- shell, coated with a white sauce and grilled. Given that the name of the dish is more of a genre than a definitive treatment, it’s not surprising that there are many different ways to prepare coquilles St Jacques.
Unusually for me, flicking through classic cookbooks in pursuit of the perfect grilled scallops is slightly traumatic: many of our finest cookery writers seem to have lost their minds when it comes to the scallop. Julia Child, Elizabeth David, Simon Hopkinson – all excellent food writers, with good sense and a respect for fine ingredients – are willing to commit the same crime of chopping up the scallop meat and scattering it through the sauce. Normally I wouldn’t dream of questioning these giants, but here I can’t help myself. A whole scallop is one of the finest things you can possibly eat: seared in butter until golden and caramelised on the outside, with pale white flesh inside. It is creamy and sweet and briny, meaty and delicate all at once. And it’s beautiful too, plump and round. The thought of chopping them up makes me wince.
We will be searing and serving them whole. In fact, I go a step further, and serve them with their orange-pink roe. This is often removed, but is just as delicious as the scallop, though slightly more savoury and with a closer texture, and softer when cooked. It seems a shame to waste something so lovely.
During the heyday of this dish, it became de rigueur to edge it with mashed potato, piped on in froofy little swirls or stars, a Tudor ruff of mash. Felicity Cloake cynically suggests that the potato is a cost-saving move by chefs to pad out the dish, making it appear more generous than it actually is. That may be true, but I also feel that it detracts from the scallop and sauce. This isn’t an individual fish pie. I want to celebrate the scallop, not disguise it.
Here, the scallops rest on a blanket of winey, creamy, shallot-strewn sauce that bubbles up when it is grilled, and are topped with toasted, buttery breadcrumbs. I like finely chopped tarragon through mine; it brings a little colour to the dish, and an anisey hum that pairs well with the sweet scallop.
There’s something Christmassy about coquilles St Jacques – maybe it’s the luxury of it, or the richness of the dish itself. Or perhaps it’s just the showmanship, the flair – serving it on its own half-shell. Whatever the reason, they make a grand start to any festive dinner. I also rather like them as the star of a wintery lunch, served alongside a French stick and lots of soft green lettuce with a sit-up-and-pay-attention mustardy dressing. Scallops unfailingly bring a little glamour to even the greyest of days.
Serves 4
Takes 10 mins
Cooks 10 mins
For the sauce
- 50g of butter
- 2 large shallots, peeled and finely chopped
- 100ml white wine
- 100ml double cream
For the scallops
- 30g butter
- 4 scallops, on the half-shell (roe intact, if you wish)
For the topping
- 100g dried breadcrumbs
- 50g butter
- 2 tbsp fresh tarragon, finely chopped
- First, make the sauce. Melt 50g butter over a low heat and sweat the shallots until they are soft and translucent but haven’t taken on any colour. Add the wine and increase the heat, cooking the wine down until it has decreased in volume by about two thirds. Add the double cream and allow to bubble for a couple of minutes more; season to taste, and set to one side.
- Over a medium-high heat, melt 30g butter until foaming, then add the scallops, and the roe too if you wish. Cook for two minutes, then turn the scallops over and cook for another minute, before also removing them from the pan and setting them to one side.
- Add the final 50g butter to the pan and, once melted, stir through the breadcrumbs and the tarragon.
- Heat the grill to medium-high. Divide the cream between the four scallops shells, and place one scallop with its roe on top of the cream. Scatter the scallops with breadcrumbs, and place under the grill. Watch them like a hawk: once the breadcrumbs are golden, the scallops are ready – this will take about three minutes, but be led by the colour. Eat immediately.
The World Championship
The World Championship match between Ding Liren and Dommaraju Gukesh is now underway in Singapore. The $2.5 million prize fund will be decided over 14 games of classical chess, and in the event of a 7-7 tie, there will be rapid tiebreaks on 13 December.
Pre-match consensus had Ding, the reigning champion from China, as a heavy underdog, with only around a 20 per cent chance of victory. He has appeared afflicted by a psychological crisis since winning the title last year, and his recent form has been dismal. His challenger, 18-year-old Gukesh from India, has had a splendid run, climbing well above Ding in the world rankings.
The former world champion Vishy Anand tried to dial down the hype with a pithy warning: ‘[Gukesh] is smart enough to know that World Championships are won, not elected’. Indeed, by winning with black in the first game of the match, Ding proved that he remains a worthy contender for the title. As we go to press, a draw in the second game leaves him 1.5-0.5 ahead.
Magnus Carlsen, still rated the world no. 1 player by a healthy margin, rarely plays classical events these days, preferring rapid and blitz time controls. But he has become a strong advocate for ‘Freestyle Chess’, in which pieces on the back row are shuffled in one of 960 configurations at the start of the game. To promote a forthcoming series of elite Freestyle events, Carlsen faced the world no. 2 Fabiano Caruana in a two-game Freestyle match in Singapore, just days before the start of the real World Championship.
The game below had as its start position: Na1, Nb1, Bc1, Rd1, Ke1, Rf1, Qg1, Bh1. Black’s setup mirrors that: Na8, Nb8, Bc8, etc.
Magnus Carlsen-Fabiano Caruana
Freestyle Chess Match, Singapore, Nov 2024
1 f4 Nb6 2 Nc3 f5 3 Nb3 Na6 Caruana would have preferred to play 3…Nc6, but then 4 Nb5!, hits c7, whereupon 4…Nd5 5 c4 is awkward or 4…Na8 5 Nxa7 snags a pawn. In the opening of a Freestyle game, players learn to be wary of quirky tactical shots. 4 d3 c6 5 Be3 g5 6 fxg5 e5 7 g4 f4 8 Bxb6 axb6 9 Qxb6 Qxg5 Caruana’s pawn sacrifice has netted him the bishop pair and hopes for central expansion with d7-d5. Carlsen will soon anticipate that with Bh1-e4-f5, so that his bishop doesn’t get stuck on h1. 10 Na5 O-O Freestyle castling rules are peculiar. Here, the Black king moves from e8 to g8 and the rook remains on f8. 11 Be4 Qh4+ 12 Kd2 Qe7 13 Bf5 Nc5 14 Ne4 Ne6 15 Bxe6+ Qxe6 (see diagram) 16 Nxb7! This pawn grab looks risky, due to the imminent Rd8-b8xb2, but Carlsen correctly judged that he has little to fear. Either the queens will be exchanged, or he will capture the d7-pawn, which secures the Ne4 and consigns the Bh8 to passivity. Bxb7 17 Qxb7 Rb8 18 Qc7 Rxb2 18…d5 19 Qxh7+ Kxh7 20 Ng5+ Kg6 21 Nxe6 favours White. But 18…Bf6 was worth considering. For example, 19 b3 Be7! prepares counterplay with d7-d5 or Rfc8/Rb8-a8 19 Rb1 Qxa2 20 Rxb2 Qxb2 21 Qxd7 With an extra pawn and a glorious central knight, Carlsen is firmly in control. Qb4+ 22 c3 Qb2+ 23 Ke1 Bg7 24 Qe6+ Kh8 25 Rf3 Allowing the queen intrusion looks scary, but it leads to nothing. Qc1+ 26 Kf2 Qh1 27 Rh3 f3 28 exf3 Rb8 29 g5 Rb2+ 30 Kg3 Qg1+ 31 Kh4 An unusual but effective bolthole for the king. Rb8 32 Nd6 Black resigns In the second game, Caruana came close to equalling the score, but Carlsen saved a difficult rook endgame to secure victory by 1.5-0.5.
No. 829
Black to play. Gretarsson-Fressinet, European Individual Championship, November 2024. In this position, both players overlooked a decisive tactical idea. Which move should Black play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 2 December. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.
Last week’s solution 1…Rxe2+! 2 Qxe2 Qh5+ 3 Kg2 Rxg3+ wins. But not 1…Qh5+ 2 Kg1 Rxe2 3 Qf8+!
Last week’s winner Guy Herbert, London NW1
Spectator Competition: Whose legs?
In Comp. 3377 you were invited to write a version of ‘Ozymandias’ for the future. (The original, which obviously is for all time, arose from a contest between Shelley and Horace Smith to write a poem with that title.) The idea was to elicit responses to the US election, and the President-elect does feature heavily, but a desert of oblivion interrupted only by stone Trumps seemed too unremitting. The mood could be downbeat, so for some light relief here’s a snatch of Janine Beacham’s entry:
‘My name is Kardashian, Queen of Bling:
Look on my bod, yearn for my derriere!’
No followers remain. No downloads play,
Despite research, high tech, we’ve not one prayer
Of knowing what this colossus had to say.
Also deserving of a mention, among others: Alex Steelsmith, Sylvia Fairley, Mark Brown, Bob Newman, Mike Morrison, Hamish Wilson, D.A. Prince. The winners receive £25.
On a virtual tour of the dead zone
I connected with a user who said
He’d seen the ancient carved artefact known
As The Orange Face, portal that once led
To a primitive database, here weathered away.
A pedestal stood nearby, an antique glyph
Engraved thereon, in order to convey
Perhaps what the sculptor had not made clear,
The authenticity of that famed quiff –
‘Look here you jerks, it really was my hair.’
But that bouffant that has passed into myth
Had eroded away, not a strand there,
Just an empty mask on a monolith.Sue Pickard
I met a reveller from an eastern land
Who said – ‘A really very swollen head
Rests on the shifting underwater sand,
Through the lips of which, upon the ocean bed,
Irradiated fishlings pass. Unmanned,
The plastic hair yet shaved upon each side,
The parting fixed, the eyeballs both obese,
He seems to greet the sea with useless pride:
I signed the pact that kept the world at peace.|
These words, unheard, are carved upon a void.
Respected Comrade! Leader still Supreme!
Your dumpy body’s blown to smithereens,
Washed by a blowsy tide in constant gloom –
Who knows what KIM is, what it really means?’Bill Greenwell
I met a traveller from a western land
Which now lies waste and barren, and he said:
‘Nothing remains there, just a torn red cap
Blown by the winds. The letters on it read:
“MAGA”. The word is sadly meaningless.’
He told me he had met the self-same scene
When in the east. Just desert, dust and waste,
And rubble, where great cities once had been.
‘A scrap of poster found I, blowing free.
It seemed to bear an image and a name.
Cyrillic. First a P, then U, and T…
A small fragment of newsprint fluttered there
With words about a rapid peace treaty
Drifting upon the radioactive air.’Brian Murdoch
I met an alien from a distant star
who said: Upon a planet, rusty-red,
stood two great X’s, once seen from afar,
now toppled and to wind erosion fed.
Between them, on a platform sits a car,
its storm-scoured carcass pitted, dull and grey,
while looming high above this desolate scene,
carved on a rockface, watching day-on-day,
a countenance stares down, its smug veneer
surveying not what is, but what has been.
Its holographic rendering you’ll hear
and see, dad-dancing, speaking to a crowd
long absent, boasting: ‘Mars holds naught to fear.
It’s mine! It’s ours! Mankind cannot be cowed!’Paul A. Freeman
Report received from Cyborg XM2
On reconnaissance in decontaminated zone:
‘Located long, large channel, unsure what to do;
Took decision to send in surveillance drone.
Channel proceeds from south sector through
To middle zone (still contaminated) then
Ends in ruin and rubble, greatly overgrown.
The drone recorded a rusted metal sign. When
Analysed its words were in archaic Anglish
Saying: “Here lies the foundation stone
For this mighty undertaking to vanquish
All inequality and imbalance in our nation,
And level up those (north of Birmingham) who languish
By bringing all to their proper station.”
The sign ends with the indecipherable phrase “HS2”.
Charges have been laid and primed for detonation.’Joseph Houlihan
I once adventured to a No-Man’s-Land,
Of shuttered shops (except for Betfred), ill-built flats,
Addicts in doorways, skips alive with rats.
One building there I couldn’t understand,
It had the tall remains of dignity,
But Time had left it crumbling, overgrown.
I made out letters on the pockmarked stone
They spelt out NEGIE LIBRA, bafflingly.
Why build so grand a building here,
Among this hopelessness and grime and sleaze,
Where truants do the drug deliveries?
I asked a wild-eyed man who waved his beer
At a passing squad-car, shouting; he said: ‘I hear
It was for books. But who needs books round here?’George Simmers
I met a wanderer by a ruined wall
Who said: ‘A sandstone bust now blanched and bleached,
Detached from one who once stood proud and tall
Lies in the debris where this wall is breached,
A bust whose scowl and pouting lips revealed
The arrogance of someone born to lead,
To be his country’s saviour and its shield
And etched upon his brow these words you’ll read:
“My name is Donald Trump, oh yes my friends,
Look on my face and be inspired with awe!
I did no wrong and hence made no amends,
But rightly spurned the venal rule of law!”
There, in the dust, this crumbling bust now lies
Where once, it seems, there lived more fools than wise.’Alan Millard
No. 3380: we go again
You are invited to submit predictions for the year 2025 in verse (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 26 December. (NB: no. 3379 should have asked for the usual 16 lines/150 words.)
2682: Exchanges
The unclued lights (including a pair, one word of which has to be read in reverse) are each somehow related to one other. Two grid entries are of two words and one (jocular) entry has four words and includes an apostrophe.
Across
10 Where lines meet new lines (4)
12 Payment to landlord as the Earth moved? (6,4)
14 Regular replay for City (3)
17 Awfully eager to acquiesce (5)
18 Aussie fish for swell at 40 (3,4)
19 Former EU President, 27, sadly lost sou (6)
22 The lad’s steed regularly expressed disapproval (6)
24 It’s criminal that the clergyman’s lost his head (5)
27 Not to be sniffed at? (9)
29 Baseless Japanese martial arts instructor’s opinion (5)
36 Wrong about three Rs and one I (2,5)
38 Cox for Hereford, perhaps? (5)
40 Badger and horse (3)
41 Moles get over these borders (10)
42 With which to catch more than one perch (4)
43 So there. Asked about Australian bush (6,3-3)
Down
2 Rambling around down and dingle (4-6)
3 Sign occupying river swimmer (7)
4 Emerge as a problem among the Pharisees (5)
5 Atoll cultivated for cereal (5,4)
6 Targets for hockey players (6)
7 Heath in Spain on one of the Costas (5)
8 Some exonerated for big lie (4)
9 Proceed falteringly and work in partnership on set up (4,3,5)
19 Wishes one to leave sought-after home (3,3)
21 Fluffed a recording: edits needed (10)
23 Missing can inside, but not drinking (9)
28 It has replaced the acre (7)
30 Hard work during middle of week for principal dancer (6)
32 Supporting member? (3)
33 Somerset town where silver is removed from French cheese (5)
35 Some Chilean desolation found here? (5)
37 Bread accepted for older relation (4)
Download a printable version here.
A first prize of £30 and two runners-up prizes of £20 for the first correct solutions opened on 27 December. Please scan or photograph entries and email them (including the crossword number in the subject field) to crosswords@spectator.co.uk, or post to: Crossword 2682, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP. Please allow six weeks for prize delivery. The dictionary prize is not available at present.
2679: Choc-a-block – solution
The unclued lights are brands of CHOCOLATE.
First prize T. Darch, London NW8
Runners-up Nicole O’Keeffe, London W11; Andrew Durham, Cooroy, Queensland, Australia
Who chooses assisted suicide in Canada?
Sign of the times
A petition for an immediate general election gathered 2.7 million signatures in five days. What are the other most popular petitions on the UK parliament website this week?
— Introduce 16 as the minimum age to have social media (112,500 signed).
— Don’t change inheritance tax relief for working farms (85,600).
— Limit sale and use of fireworks to licence holders only (68,000).
— Introduce a compensation scheme for Waspi women (56,600).
— Apply for the UK to join the EU as a full member as soon as possible (50,100).
Die is cast
Who chooses assisted suicide in Canada? — In 2022, 13,241 people ended their lives in this way, 4.1% of all deaths. This is more than in any other country where the practice is allowed (the Netherlands is next, with 9,068 deaths last year).
— The average age was 73.6. 1.3% were 18-45, 3.2% 46-55 and 10.5% 56-64.
— 56% were male and 44% female.
— In 463 cases the natural death of the individual was not ‘reasonably foreseeable’. — 560 applicants were ruled ineligible.
The main conditions suffered were:
Cancer 63%
Cardiovascular conditions 19%
Respiratory conditions 13%
Neurological conditions 13%
Source: Health Canada
Out of proportion
More than 100 MPs, including 43 newly elected Labour members, have backed a campaign to replace the first-past-the-post system with proportional representation. How different would the Commons look had PR been in place on 4 July?
PR / Actual
Labour 219 / 411
Conservative 154 / 121
Reform UK 93 / 5
Liberal Democrat 79 / 72
Green 42 / 4
SNP 16 / 9
Working knowledge
What percentage of national income has gone to the workers (as opposed to investors/speculators) by year? (According to the ONS’s preferred measure.)
1953 71%
1963 70%
1973 65%
1983 59%
1993 56%
2003 59%
2013 60%
2023 60%
I hope you didn’t sign that petition
Did you sign it, then? And if so, what were your expectations? That Sir Keir Starmer would look at the figures and say – perhaps with a tinge of remorse – ‘Yup, that’s it, I’m bang to rights, we’ll have an election?’. Or were you simply hoping to annoy him? If so, I assume you are disappointed, because Sir Keir doesn’t look very annoyed to me.
It turns out we are no better than those liberal lefties who can’t believe that other people have different views
The petition to demand a general election on the grounds that the people who didn’t vote Labour on 4 July are upset at the result so far has almost 2.7 million signatures. There are many depressing things about this country, including Sir Keir and his inept, flailing, mindless administration and the worst front bench in living memory, but the petition depresses me more than most of them. I had thought we were a little better than that. I had thought that was one of the things – one of the important things – that distinguished us from those insufferable middle-class liberal lefties who cannot believe that other people have views which differ from their own. And if they do have those views then they are not merely wrong, but loathsome. And perhaps reprehensible. And that those views shouldn’t count because they should be illegal. A kind of totalitarian mindset, as well as being the solipsistic disposition of a not terribly bright 13-year-old.
Surely it could not be further from our own state of mind, which allows for the possibility of difference, for a multiplicity of opinion, and does not go off the rails, doolally and shrieking, crying and tearing its hair out, when there is an outcome with which we might disagree. I suppose those rednecks storming the White House on 6 January 2021 should have disabused me of that notion – but I kinda made allowances for them because they were American and, as Tom Petty put it, raised on promises (which can only rarely be kept). That sort of thing couldn’t happen here, could it?
Oh yes it could. I am beginning to think that The Spectator should offer mental health counselling to readers who are still sobbing because a democratic election turned up a result they did not like, just like the editor of the Guardian offered to her staffers who were distraught at Donald Trump’s victory. I had thought that beyond hilarious. Rather less so right now. Mental health counselling, maybe some yoga and a spot of street drumming. That should ease the anguish. Or you could start a petition…
I voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, but it was a close call. Indeed one of the aspects which finally tipped me into voting ‘out’ was the odious hauteur and snobbery of the Remain campaign. But in truth, I was always a little short of being gung-ho on the actual issue – several pints short of the full Farage, so to speak. But when they tried to nullify that vote, using the apparatus of the state, using the usual gallimaufry of whoreish lawyers, using EU legislation, using anything which came to hand, just because their side lost – that’s when I was really gripped by fury, and wrote a short book about it.
The presumption of those smug but gainsaid people made me incandescent, and all the more so because I kind of expected it from them. And then the inevitable petition, with all those scumbags behind it – Alastair Campbell, David ‘Plank’ Lammy, that ghastly Gina Miller. A petition demanding we have another referendum because they didn’t like the result.
The very same arguments for reversing the Brexit result are now being advanced to rerun 4 July 2024. The people I have spoken to insist that while Labour’s majority was large, its vote is quite shallow and in any case represented a minority of people in the country overall. Back to that petition in 2019 and – check! Exactly the same argument: too slim a majority to count and a minority of people in the country.
So it is with the facile insistence that Sir Keir and co ‘lied’ to us before the election about what they planned to do. Goodness – as if they were the first party in the history of our democracy to have done such a thing. The ‘lying’ trope was central to the Remainer cause, if you remember – the complainants conveniently forgetting the mountains of disinformation laid before the electorate by, among others, George Osborne, the then chancellor.
Then there’s the argument that the disastrous consequences of a Labour victory could not have been foreseen and that therefore we need another election – check! Exactly what the Remainers said about our referendum. How could they have known, those ferret-bothering Untermensch in Hartlepool, what would transpire?
Let them have another go at voting and persuade them that this time they should get it right. In every case the arguments are identical. I suppose it’s worth pointing out that the petition to rerun the Brexit referendum secured more than six million signatures, while the one to rerun 4 July has managed less than half of that so far. This suggests to me quite strongly that anti-democratic left-wing morons are, sadly, better at organising than anti-democratic right-wing morons.
Oh – and then there are the signatories who insist it is all just a joke intended to get up Labour’s nose. Lighten up a bit, we’re just having a LAFF. It’s a joke, innit?
No, sorry. It is not a joke. It isn’t funny, unless you’re an idiot. Instead it is a betrayal – firstly and most importantly of democracy. A betrayal which is becoming more and more common, as if we were tiring of the concept of democracy itself. But then it is also a betrayal of a political disposition which respects the opposing point of view and will take defeat in its stride, rather than mewling like a spoilt three-year-old who has just had its idiotic aspirations denied. Ah, blame me for my naivety. I had thought we were not like that.
Can Ukraine’s army survive its deserter crisis?
Not since the summer of the 2022 invasion have Russian troops been making more progress in Ukraine. Last month alone, they took almost 200 square miles in the Donetsk region. Just 15 miles now separate the Russian forces from entering the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. If Russia succeeds, a sixth region will be swallowed by hostilities.
What’s changed? Russia’s ranks are swelling with highly paid contractors and fresh North Korean reinforcements, while Ukraine’s forces are thinning fast. Desertions are adding to crippling manpower shortages. Officially, some 90,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted (almost half of them this year), but the unofficial number is much higher. Desertion is becoming a crisis. Unless it’s addressed, no ‘victory plan’ will halt the Russian advances.
The number of deserters has become so unmanageable that in August Ukraine passed a law forgiving soldiers who went AWOL for the first time as long as they agreed to come back. This has had a calamitous effect on discipline, essentially giving men permission to flee. Soldiers who have been fighting Russia for years without relief or rotation, often in positions that seem hopeless, saw it as their chance for immediate leave and a transfer to a more desirable brigade.
The law was intended to rescue the army’s plummeting numbers. Desertion is punishable by up to 12 years in prison, and to lock up thousands of men when they are badly needed on the front line would be a mistake. But the lawmakers ignored the warnings from military commanders that such a law – unprecedented for a country at war – would thin the fighting lines where the battle was most intense. ‘It is not a step towards illusory democracy. It is a step towards defeat,’ said Dmytro Kukharchuk, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Assault Brigade. ‘Any violation of the laws of war must have consequences. Any precedent of no punishment encourages the wider public to do the same.’
As soon as the new law was passed, an eight-strong unit fighting in the Donetsk region decided to leave. One of the soldiers – let’s call him Ihor – tells me his story. ‘When we heard about the law, we called the lawyers,’ he says. ‘They told us to wait a little while the first deserters were forgiven. When we understood how this mechanism works, we left. I was feeling sick, went to the hospital and never came back.’
Ihor says the deserters are not, by and large, men who think the war is futile – they just think that staying in their own position would be suicide. Every war has battles in which the men being sent over the top know their chances of survival are slim. Ukraine is the first country to give them the option of leaving and then volunteering elsewhere. In Ihor’s case, he had come to believe his life – and that of his comrades – was about to be sacrificed for no purpose other than to satisfy the sadism of a bad commander.
‘This person, using family connections, came and almost destroyed our combat unit with incompetent decisions,’ Ihor says. ‘We completed his task, but when the Russians returned fire, he wanted to punish us for what he saw as failure by sending us to the trenches to die. For us, this was the last straw.’ Until last week, soldiers in Ukraine couldn’t transfer brigades without their commander’s approval and the bureaucratic procedure could take up to a year. This calamity had become one of the main reasons for desertions, and it took Kyiv almost three years to address it.
Under the new law, soldiers who voluntarily return can select a new brigade – as Ihor did. Now he serves under a new commander in Russia’s Kursk region while waiting for an official transfer. ‘We are in this war until the end,’ he says. But even he disagrees with the new desertions policy, thinking it saved his life but could lose the war. ‘The front line is collapsing and one of the main reasons is desertion,’ he tells me.
Only reforms inside the army will stop the military from fleeing, he says. He wants to make the transfers easier and introduce a rating system for commanders, where soldiers would anonymously assess their competence so as to root out bad leadership. ‘The butchers-commanders must be held accountable, not promoted,’ Ihor says.
Plummeting morale among the troops is also taking its toll. Thousands of soldiers have been on the front line for almost three years, while others have been fighting since Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas ten years ago. Kyiv has so far failed to conscript enough people for the understaffed brigades, let alone provide troop rotations or retirement. Most ‘rotations’ are just transfers from one hotspot to another, from Pokrovsk to Chasiv Yar and back.
At first, deserters and draft-dodgers were seen as deeply unpatriotic. Now, feelings are mixed. Some deserters position themselves as patriots who are pushing for reform. One was Serhii Hnezdilov, 24, who left the army last month after five years of service and announced his decision on social media. He demanded reforms to service terms and a fairer mobilisation process. ‘Five million draft-eligible men tell us this is not their war and that we, the military, must be there until victory,’ he said. ‘The authorities remain unable to have a serious dialogue with… citizens who do not fulfil their civic duties.’ He is now in custody and is likely to be given the full 12-year sentence: public desertion poses a far greater threat to the state than thousands that go unnoticed. Some have condemned him, while others argue that when the only paths to demobilisation are desertion, injury or death, the choice is clear.
‘The soldiers hoped that soon they’d be relieved by replacements ready to step in,’ says Artem Chekh, a Ukrainian writer and soldier. ‘Meanwhile, civilians expected the soldiers to keep wading through that mess, ensuring a comfortable life in the rear for everyone not in service. The dominoes could fall very soon. It could start next March… Because many people have set themselves specific terms of service: three years.’ He thinks more will be leaving after three years, with or without permission. ‘[We are] hostages of war and of the system – a system content to let things slide until they explode. And soon they will.’
The recruitment crisis led the Ukrainian parliament to lower the draft age from 27 to 25 in April. Politicians planned to offer a clear route out of the military: permission to leave after 36 months’ service. But this clause was removed at the request of army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. Such promises cannot be made before the war ends, he argued, as Russia has the larger army and Vladimir Putin has nearly four times Ukraine’s population to draw from for conscription. Lowering the draft age seemed to treble the number of soldiers-in-training to 35,000 a month. But numbers have since fallen back to about 20,000. In the summer, all Ukrainian men aged between 25 and 60 were obliged to visit enlistment offices and update their military registration documents. Those who didn’t were placed on a wanted list.
There are still many ways to dodge the draft
Men who fear the draft rarely walk on the streets. They leave home only for special occasions and when they do they take taxis. When I was in my home village in the summer, I saw a man using a bicycle to weave between houses when the authorities gave chase. There has been anger from many rural parts of the country that men in towns and villages are being singled out while men in cities roam free. ‘War for poor,’ people call it. In response to the outrage, last month the authorities kicked off a nationwide hunt for draft-evaders. Police raided restaurants, bars, comedy shows and concert venues across the country. One such occasion was a concert in Kyiv by Okean Elzy, Ukraine’s most popular rock band. On 11 October, thousands of fans leaving the concert venue were met by enlistment officers, police and secret service agents. They were asked to produce their military registration documents. Those who resisted were arrested. Many started running away and the crowd sided with those targeted, shouting ‘Shame!’ when police dragged them towards the car.
Viktoria Beha was one of the concert attendees who witnessed the detentions. ‘Shouting “shame” at any detention has become an automatic reflex for Ukrainians,’ she tells me. ‘No one seems to care if the men detained are lawbreakers or if they are innocent.’ The men were playing up for the cameras, she says. ‘One man threw himself on his knees and screamed on video, pretending to be illegally detained. As it turned out, he had not updated his data in the military centre.’
There are still many ways to dodge the draft. Exemptions can be booked due to health or critical employment – or, in extreme cases, by buying fake disability certificates (up to £20,000). A cash pile worth £5 million was recently found in the home of a medical authority leader in the Khmelnytskyi region. Other tricks include marrying disabled women or divorcing to pose as the single father of a child. Volodymyr Zelensky, reportedly outraged by the spike in exemptions, has ordered an audit. Kyiv plans to conscript 160,000 in the coming months, but even this will raise the manning of units only to 85 per cent.
Zelensky’s adviser said that Ukraine’s allies have been pressuring him to lower the draft age further still to 18. The President has refused, explaining this is a war for Ukraine’s future and there are only so many young men it can afford to lose. Ukraine has already lost a quarter of its 40 million population either through deaths or people fleeing abroad. The UN predicts that Ukraine’s population may halve again to just 15 million within 75 years. Most men under 25 don’t have children yet and the war has meant three deaths for every birth.
Time for changes is running out. Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor, says Ukraine needs to do more ‘to firm up its lines in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines’. Ukraine requires not only weapons but more troops to stabilise the frontline and halt the Russian offensive. Russian forces are just four miles from Pokrovsk, a rail and road hub – the key to seizing the Donetsk region. Once home to 60,000 people, the city braces for battle. The 11,000 who remain have been urged to flee. Outnumbered and outgunned, Ukrainian soldiers are fortifying the streets, but without fresh reinforcements they won’t hold out for long. This will soon become an acute dilemma for Zelensky. He can’t afford to lose more of Ukraine’s land – but who will stop Putin if more soldiers decide to walk away?
Svitlana joined The Spectator’s Edition podcast to discuss the latest challenges facing Ukraine:
Why is a Labour MP calling for a blasphemy law?
Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labour MP Tahir Ali asked: ‘Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?’
Does Mr Ali think this is the most important issue currently facing the UK? Or, even more disturbingly, is this something that his constituents are calling for?
The fact that we have an MP from the governing party calling for blasphemy laws to be reinstated is part of a terrifying development in politics. It comes alongside a rise in sectarian voting, which has seen minority groups pitted against each other and a splintering of modern society.
Why, for example, did Mr Ali choose only to cite the Abrahamic religions? Would I still be free to say awful things about Ganesh or Vishnu in Mr Ali’s dream society as long as I didn’t criticise the Quran? If I were a British Hindu listening, I would start to feel increasingly concerned about Ali’s intentions.
Perhaps most concerning of all was the Prime Minister’s response to Ali’s question. Keir Starmer uttered a bland, robotic reply that, ‘Desecration is awful, and we are committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division, including Islamophobia.’
Desecration is, of course, a powerful emotion. It is a deeply engrained transgression that is a common feature of multiple times and cultures. Indeed, such is the visceral reaction to desecration that for many centuries there were laws on the British statute book banning people from denying the truth of Christianity.
Over time though, the idea that the criminal law should punish those who desecrate religion was swept away. Gradually the value of freedom of speech was recognised and then embraced as vital to all other freedoms.
Western societies came to accept the idea that while we should endeavour to be polite and genial where possible, we should also be free to offend and be offensive in an open society. This development – leading all the way up to the repeal of the UK’s blasphemy laws – has been crucial for scientific endeavour as well as political debate.
We shouldn’t take these ideas for granted. In the West recently there has been the attempt to create modern blasphemy codes, by attacking anyone who does not adhere to progressive dogmas.
And in many countries around the world, desecration is still punishable by death.
Pakistan, that oasis of good governance, has more prisoners on death row or in life imprisonment for blasphemy than anywhere else on Earth. A new law was passed there just last year further broadening these laws to include criticism of the Prophet Muhammad’s family, his wives and companions.
Extra-judicial enthusiasm for punishing blasphemers is rife in Pakistan: in February, dozens of men stormed a police station in Punjab to kidnap and lynch a man accused of desecrating the Quran. In August, a mob of hundreds attacked the Christian community of Jaranwala, after two Christians were accused of blasphemy.
Britain, unfortunately, has not been immune to blasphemy extremism. There is still a school teacher in hiding and fearing from his life from a baying mob and death threats because he showed an image of the prophet Mohammad in a class. Last year, a 14-year-old autistic boy received death threats after reportedly dropping a Quran in a corridor. This was followed by a Labour councillor stoking tensions by claiming that the book had been desecrated. But at least we do not yet have laws forbidding us from criticising religion – something that would undoubtedly change if Tahir Ali had his way.
Fifteen years ago, before his untimely death, Christopher Hitchens warned us about this. ‘Resist it while you still can,’ he said: ‘and before the right to complain is taken away from you which will be the next thing you will be told you can’t complain because you’re Islamophobic.’
Hitchens was right. Resist it while you can.
Badenoch admits Tory migration failures
Of all the issues which did it for the Conservatives in July 2024, no issue deterred life-long Tories more than the failure to control migration. So it was appropriate then that this subject formed the basis of Kemi Badenoch’s first major policy speech since her election as leader. Ahead of tomorrow’s release of migration statistics, she chose to deliver a mea culpa on behalf of her party, admitting at a hastily-assembled press conference that the Conservatives had previously got this issue wrong. The last administration ‘promised to bring numbers down,’ she said. ‘We did not deliver that promise’:
As the new party leader I want to acknowledge that we made mistakes. Yes, some of these problems are long standing – this is a collective failure of political leaders from all parties over decades – but on behalf of the Conservative party it is right that I as the new leader accept responsibility, and say truthfully we got this wrong.
Flanked by Chris Philp, the new shadow home secretary, Badenoch told journalists that she has instructed her team to develop new policies, including a strict numerical cap on net migration. ‘We will review every policy, treaty and part of our legal framework’, she pledged. ‘Including the ECHR and the Human Rights Act.’ She suggested in the Q&A that migrants could have their access to benefits limited and that some Home Office staff would be better suited to the charity sector. It had the Tories in the front row all nodding their heads along in agreement.
Winning over a wider audience will certainly take much more time. Having made her quasi-apology, the most interesting thing in Badenoch’s speech is what she did not say. There were frequent swipes at Labour throughout: unsurprising perhaps, given the Tory leader’s natural preference for being on the attack, rather than the defence. But there was not a single word about Reform or the four million voters who backed their cause. Badenoch’s framing of migration in binary terms is likely to be something we see more of in future, as she seeks to present her party as the only realistic alternative to Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper.
The pessimist’s view of today’s event was put simply by one Reform source: ‘It was an announcement about an announcement.’ But an optimist might point to the auspices of the Centre for Policy Studies under which the event was held. Fifty years ago, it took time for Margaret Thatcher to formulate Stepping Stones and a workable agenda for supply-side reform. Badenoch has only been leader of the opposition for a matter of weeks; there are more than four years to go until the election. Her supporters will argue that today we saw the first steps on the long road back to Tory credibility on migration control.
Listen to more on Coffee House Shots:
Kemi Badenoch must get better at PMQs
Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated.
‘I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes,’ said Rachel Reeves on Monday. Kemi asked Starmer to repeat that pledge in the house. Not a bad question. Starmer said he couldn’t write ‘five years of future budgets’ at the despatch box. Not a bad answer. Kemi’s team should have seen it coming.
She boasted that Starmer had made an embarrassing admission by failing to endorse Reeves’s pledge. Well, sort of. She then quoted the PMI index and asked why business confidence is crashing. Sir Keir ignored this and brought up to Kemi’s loose remark two weeks ago when she endorsed Labour’s investment pledges.
Other backbenchers did her job far better
‘They haven’t got a clue what they’re doing,’ said Sir Keir.
Kemi should have anticipated that rebuttal as well. Then she came to the farming crisis, an astonishing own-goal by Labour, but she only mentioned it in passing before moving to the issue of biscuits. Yes, biscuits. The boss of McVitie’s recently criticised Labour’s financial strategy and Kemi joked that business people are struggling to ‘digest the budget.’ No one laughed.
Continuing this bizarre routine, she described the deputy prime minister as a Ginger Nut which is probably the nicest thing Angela Rayner has ever been called. Is Kemi being paid to find cuddly nicknames for the cabinet? Finally, leaving it very late, she moved to the day’s big crisis, the threatened loss of 1,100 jobs at the Luton van works. Knowing this was a hopeless mission she walked straight into the trap she’d laid for herself. Starmer demolished her with facts.
‘The EV mandates at issue in this case were introduced by the last government,’ he said. ‘She was the business secretary who introduced them.’
Gales of laughter greeted this unremarkable comment. Kemi has achieved the impossible: she makes Starmer look like a cross between James bond and Noel Coward.
Other backbenchers did her job far better. The member for Gordon and Buchan, Harriet Cross, named a recently bereaved farmer, Sarah, whose holding is threatened by the chancellor’s tax-raid. Starmer lifeless eyes swivelled towards her.
‘I’m grateful to her for raising the case’, he said in his thin, anxious voice. ‘Send me the details and I’ll certainly have a look at it.’
Sure he will. Another file for the shredder. Stephen Flynn of the SNP suggested that Starmer might feature in ‘scam awareness’ week on the BBC. He declared that Labour ‘claims to protect pensioners only to pick their pockets.’
Well said. Why didn’t Kemi point that out? It’s not hard to sum up Labour’s objectives.
Send Granny to Narnia.
Put Farmer Giles on suicide watch.
Dump everyone else on benefits.
Labour’s Matt Western accidentally revealed why Starmer wants to freeze pensioners to death this winter. The cash is being sent to Ukraine to fix their energy infrastructure. Western lamented that the war with Russia has left 80 per cent of Ukraine’s grid ‘damaged and destroyed.’ (If Ed Miliband was in charge, the figure would be much higher). Western told us that ‘this important ally’ needs more power generators. OK. And what sort? He didn’t specify but diesel is the fuel of choice for portable generators. Sir Keir duly pledged £370 million ‘to support the energy sector in Ukraine.’ Which is astonishing. Our taxes are being used to heat homes in Ukraine while our pensioners endure hypothermia in their icy bungalows. And Ukrainians get toasty-warm fossil fuels but our citizens have to pay sky high bills for non-twirling windmills and feeble winter sunshine. The message is clear. Britons must emigrate to enjoy the benefits of their own taxes.
Daisy Cooper begged Sir Keir not to renovate any NHS buildings on her patch. She boasted that her local hospital has ‘eliminated 65-week waits’ and ‘met all three cancer standards’ despite the ‘terrible buildings’ which are ‘life expired.’ There is a plan to replace the old hospital but Cooper’s own statistics argue against it. A spanking new building is a distraction, clearly, and our NHS heroes can work miracles irrespective of their physical surroundings. The spirit of the Blitz will save the NHS. Thank you, Ms Cooper.
Flashback: Rachel Reeves’ battle for winter fuel allowance
It’s fuel poverty awareness day today. So what better time to reflect on Labour decision to pull payments for pensioners, just weeks after taking office? Ahead of the release of pension credit statistics tomorrow, Mr S has been doing some digging into the Chancellor’s past. And it seems that ‘Rachel Thieves’ – as her critics like to jibe – has not always been such an enemy of universal hand-outs for the elderly….
A recently-unearthed leaflet from the University of Bristol archives reveals that Rachel Reeves made winter fuel payments central to her very first election campaign. Reeves stood for Bromley and Chislehurst in 2005 and made ‘More Help for Pensioners’ one of her key priorities to voters in the Tory safe seat. It quoted one local resident claiming how ‘extra help with winter fuel payments and council tax bills makes a big difference to me.’
Having lost in 2005 – and then again in the 2006 by-election – Reeves then moved up to Leeds West, where she was elected at her third attempt in 2010. Amusingly, she again made winter fuel central to her campaign here, writing on leaflets about her promise to ensure ‘security in retirement’ by ‘protecting the winter fuel allowance.’ Richard Holden, Shadow Paymaster General told Mr S:
Even Saul on the road to Damascus didn’t see a conversion this dramatic. What would a young Rachel Reeves think of her own decisions as Chancellor?
Well, quite…
William Hague is the new Chancellor of Oxford
Congratulations to William Hague, who has today triumphed in the race to succeed Chris Patten and become the 168th Chancellor of Oxford. Hague, who topped the ballot at every stage, won the final run-off against Elish Angiolini by a margin of 1,600 votes. Former cabinet ministers Peter Mandelson and Dominic Grieve were both eliminated in the earlier rounds of voting. Jan Royall, the outgoing principal of Somerville College, finished third.
The result represents a belated victory for the ex-Tory leader over New Labour, 23 years after his landslide defeat at the hands of Tony Blair. Some commentators viewed the race as a straight party political fight between Mandelson and Hague. Yet even left-leaning dons confess to preferring a former foreign secretary to a Labour peer who twice had to resign from government.
In spite of the efforts of the university Labour club and Mandelson’s own impressive media game, he appears to boast more fans in Westminster than Oxford. He finished a distant fourth on 3,344 votes, with his Labour colleague Royall managing 4,662 in third. Perhaps he will be consoled by reports that he will shortly be named as the next Ambassador to Washington. His poor showing will at least please the outgoing Chancellor: Mandelson has called for Starmer to develop closer ties with China while Patten, Hong Kong’s former Governor, has repeatedly attacked Beijing.
Hague will now become a leading voice in debates on the future of British universities. In a statement he pledged that ‘I will dedicate myself in the coming years to serving the university I love’, adding ‘what happens at Oxford in the next decade is critical to the success of the UK’. As a member of the House of the Lords, he was the only candidate to vote in favour of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which Labour ministers have now chosen to pause.
Today’s result brings an end to a mammoth ten-month contest which has been dogged with controversy. Early plans for a candidate committee had to be binned after cries of a ‘stitch-up’. The resulting compromise produced 38 candidates, some of whom were palpably unsuited to the role. Turnout figures showed that only 24,000 – some 7 per cent – of Oxford’s estimated 350,000 graduates and staff members voted last week, despite the innovation of online ballots.
Similar rows will likely happen again the next time this contest is held, when Hague’s tenure ends in ten years’ time.
Private Eye’s shameful attack on Allison Pearson
What is the purpose of Private Eye? I know it’s supposed to be some kind of anti-establishment satirical magazine, boldly holding power to account and standing up for the little guy. But I must say I’m finding its response to the extraordinary police doorstepping of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson rather puzzling.
You would think that this supposed thorn in the side of the powerful would sally out in defence of a fellow journalist being visited by the police because of something she posted online – not out of love for the journo in particular, but for the vital principle of free speech.
Should Pearson have had a notepad stashed in her dressing gown pocket just in case the cops came calling?
Sadly, however, it seems any such principles have fallen by the wayside. Private Eye’s fortnightly print schedule has finally got round to covering the Allison Pearson case and far from taking aim at the extraordinary overreach of Essex Police – say, by highlighting its woeful record of solving actual crimes – it has run a personal attack on Pearson herself. Pearson finds herself in the ‘Street of Shame’ column for allegedly ‘misreporting’ her encounter with police at her Essex home.
After plod came knocking earlier this month, Pearson and the Telegraph had reported that she stood accused of a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI), for a tweet the previous year. However, it later transpired she was under investigation for inciting racial hatred under the Public Order Act (a charge which has now been dropped entirely).
Private Eye‘s piece takes great issue with this discrepancy, essentially suggesting Pearson deliberately misled people. It sneers at her explanation: ‘Pearson, a journalist with 40 years’ experience, declared that she might have misheard the officers because she was “pretty shocked”.’ Instead, it insists this reflects her ‘characteristic grasp on factual accuracy’, as if she were just waiting for the police to visit so she could misrepresent the force.
It’s an extensive charge sheet against the conservative journalist, which Private Eye uses to write off the entire episode – yet its arguments scarcely stack up. For one thing, wouldn’t anyone, journalist or otherwise, be pretty shocked to have police turn up at their door on a Sunday morning? Should Pearson have had a notepad stashed in her dressing gown pocket just in case the cops came calling? It seems that in its dislike of Pearson, the magazine has forgotten the human element in all this. In any case, what is Pearson supposed to have gained by wrongly claiming she’d been accused of something else?
Private Eye gives much weight to a transcript released by Essex Police to dispute Pearson’s claims, which it says provides a ‘pretty comprehensive rebuttal’. The ‘transcript’ comprises just three lines spoken by an officer. Along with the force’s dubious assertion that ‘Essex Police supports free speech’, it clearly aims to present the police in a favourable light. An inquiring investigative magazine might be minded to ask why we haven’t been given the full transcript. Indeed, if the dispute is so cut and dry, why not release the bodycam footage, too?
In any case, whether or not Pearson reported what happened accurately, by using this minor factual discrepancy to rubbish the entire issue, Private Eye seems to be wilfully missing the wood for the trees. Whether it was an NCHI or anything else really shouldn’t matter – no one should be visited by the police over tweets, least of all Pearson. Numerous legal professionals have said her tweet came nowhere near the threshold for criminality, as proven by Essex police dropping the case. It’s nonsense to say that Pearson’s backers should have stopped defending her when it became clear she had been investigated for the far more serious offence of inciting racial hatred, for which the maximum penalty is seven years behind bars. Indeed, this fact makes her case more chilling, not less.
The Street of Shame continues to say that ‘there remains an important issue at the heart of all this’. Readers can probably think of some. Free speech, perhaps? The egregious waste of police time? The chilling effect on journalism? The fact that Essex Police upgraded Pearson’s case to a Gold Unit usually reserved for terror cases?
But none of those quite makes the cut. Instead, at last noting the outsize police resources devoted to this case, Private Eye asks: ‘Why, as with the shocking overreaction to the vigils for Sarah Everard in 2021, do the police appear to reserve their most heavy-handed action for cases in which they themselves are the ones being criticised?’ This may well be an issue. But it’s notable that Private Eye chooses an apparent instance of two-tier policing that’s three years old here. It’s almost as if it can’t bring itself to notice the more glaring recent examples of varying police priorities because it’s politically incorrect to do so.
In case you thought this anti-free speech line was an isolated incident, the same edition also carries a spoof piece justifying the police’s decision to knock on Pearson’s door:
We have woken up to an Orwellian, Kafka-esque nightmare dystopia where the police can just turn up, knock on your door in the middle of the day, and subject you to a polite request for a quiet word! And all because someone, somewhere, has taken offence at your tweet to your 189,000 followers – which was so innocent that you deleted it immediately, and then told the police you couldn’t remember what it was!
In its desire to make light of Pearson’s ordeal, Private Eye manages to turn her doorstepping by the police into ‘a request for a quiet word’. It then implies, contrary to mountains of evidence, that the only people who need fear a knock on the door by the police are those who have tweeted ‘libellous drivel and lazy misinformation online’ – in other words, people who probably deserved it. It also attempts to suggest the right is only concerned about Pearson’s case for cynical reasons. In fact, Pearson’s treatment has been labelled ‘Stasi-like’ by a Labour MP, criticised by old-school lefty Suzanne Moore, and even called out by Sir Keir Starmer himself.
In the end, it seems like only the ‘liberal’ left have been unable to see the Pearson case as a disturbing case of police overreach. Other to have taken aim at Pearson include ex-BBC hacks at The News Agents podcast, who have accused Pearson of a ‘persecution complex’, and the production company behind Have I Got News For You in a now-deleted tweet. A writer in the Guardian has called it a ‘non-scandal’ and cries that ‘“free speech” has been weaponised’.
These establishment figures may delude themselves that they’re speaking truth to power, but they share, as Niall Gooch noted earlier this year of Ian Hislop, a ‘concept of the Establishment [that] seems to be stuck in about 1952’. And that explains a lot. Only someone so out of touch with the reality of social power today could call themselves a liberal, yet see the police being sent to a journalist’s door and cheer it on.
Kemi Badenoch calls on Keir Starmer to resign at PMQs
Unconventional as ever, Kemi Badenoch used her third ever Prime Minister’s Questions as Conservative leader to call on Keir Starmer to resign. The Tory leader was half speaking in jest, telling the Prime Minister that ‘if he wants to know what Conservatives would do, he should resign and find out’. It was her latest riposte to Starmer claiming that Badenoch’s party didn’t have a ‘clue’ what to do and kept jumping on bandwagons. That was precisely the charge being levelled at Starmer just a few months ago, while he was busy accusing the then prime minister Rishi Sunak of not answering any of his questions. Once again today, Starmer didn’t answer many questions either.
🚨 NEW: Kemi Badenoch says Keir Starmer should resign and brings up the general election petition that has received 2.5 milion signatures
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) November 27, 2024
Starmer: "She talks about a petition, there was a massive petition on 4 July" #PMQs pic.twitter.com/oePvyPqIxR
The PM refused to repeat Rachel Reeves’ pledge to the CBI on Monday that she was ‘not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes’. Badenoch said rather pointedly that ‘I knowing that telling the truth to this House is important to the Prime Minister’, and demanded he repeat that pledge now to MPs.
Starmer did not. He replied:
‘We set out our position at the Budget, that was just set out, we’re fixing the foundations, we’re dealing with the £22 billion black hole that they left. I’m not going to write the next five years of budgets here at this dispatch box. We said we wouldn’t hit the pay slips of working people, we’ve passed the Budget, invested in the future and we’ve kept that promise.’
Even in dodging the question, Starmer said something that is at best highly disputed: the Office for Budget Responsibility has said that three quarters of the National Insurance hike for employers will be passed onto their staff in the form of lower real wages. That sounds quite a lot like hitting a pay slip.
Anyway, Badenoch retorted that Starmer was ‘not fixing the foundations: he’s making everything worse’. She pointed out that Starmer had refused to repeat Reeves’ pledge and then asked about falling business confidence.
Once again today, Starmer didn’t answer many questions at PMQs
The Prime Minister repeated, slightly robotically, that ‘we’re fixing the foundations’, and then deflected to talking about what Badenoch would or wouldn’t be doing on the NI rises, prompting her suggestion that he resign.
She then listed ways in which the government was contradicting itself on supporting business, and mentioned the petition calling for a general election. Starmer carried on complaining that the Conservatives ‘couldn’t decide what their position was’, and added ‘we had a massive petition on 4 July in this country’.
The pair carried on sparring like this, with Badenoch pointing out that the Tory Budget earlier this year had not led to tractors blockading the streets of Whitehall. If Starmer had been a little more fleet of foot, he might have started talking about another Budget that had far worse effects than a march of farmers: Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, which he normally quite happily dines out on. He did, though, try to blame the closure of the Vauxhall plant in Luton on the last Conservative government, which introduced the electric vehicle mandates that the van manufacturers are blaming for their woes.
When Ed Davey asked his questions, Starmer avoided giving another important answer, which was on the National Insurance hike and hospices. The Lib Dem leader pegged this to Friday’s assisted dying vote, which he is against, and argued that whatever happened, the government needed to improve palliative care in this country. His question was a bit long and garbled, though, and allowed Starmer to avoid the point about whether hospices would be exempt from that tax rise. Unusually for this government, the rest of the session was not dominated by totally pointless questions from Labour backbenchers dressing up their desire for a promotion in some convoluted and wordy way of praising the Prime Minister. But it also didn’t give Starmer a huge amount of difficulty, other than when he stumbled over his words when defending the government’s reforms to inheritance tax for agricultural property. He said:
‘Obviously it’s important to bear in mind, in a typical case, which is parents passing to a child, the threshold is £3 million – er billion – er million, and that is why, as she knows, the vast majority of farms will be totally unaffected.’
Starmer, like most of us, often tellingly trips over his words on subjects he’s not fully comfortable with, whether it be the ‘return of the sausages – hostages’ or the threshold for inheritance tax, which presumably he fluffed because he wasn’t sure if it could be that low. Still, at least he tried to answer that question, unlike many that had come before.