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How Ed Miliband plans to conjure electricity out of nothing
Electricity is magical stuff. From a couple of tiny holes in a wall comes an apparently endless supply of invisible, weightless, silent ether that turns instantly into light, heat, motion or information at your command. It is a metaphor for the modern economy: we use pure energy to create useful outcomes in the real world.
We found out last week that Britain has now for the first time achieved top spot, among 25 nations, in terms of the price we pay for this supernatural ichor, for both domestic and industrial use.
This is a disaster. Electricity prices have doubled in Britain since 2019. They are 46 per cent above the International Energy Agency’s median for industrial and 80 per cent above the median for domestic electricity. As the independent energy analyst David Turver points out, British business pays almost four times as much as American business for each unit of power and British consumers pay almost three times as much as Americans. And that is last year’s data, before Ed Miliband has even started on his policies to accelerate decarbonisation: all the technologies he champions are more expensive than gas.
It’s a system of beauty as faras producers are concerned, but a thing of horror for consumers
High electricity prices make companies based here less competitive, so some will leave or die; and consumers less well off, so some will freeze and all will buy less of other things: a drag on both production and consumption. Consumers pay for high electricity prices both when we use it and again when we buy things that have been manufactured or refrigerated with it. Given that the plan is for us all to use a lot more electricity in the future, for cars and home heating, this is alarming news.
How was the double triumph of chart-topping electricity prices for both business and homes achieved? Green lobbyists say that it is because we have not built enough wind farms and are too reliant on gas. But this is belied by the facts. Last month, the results of an auction of contract bids for generating electricity were announced. You will recall that because of inflation, the subsidy junkies in the ‘unreliables’ industry boycotted the previous auction for offshore wind, demanding and getting more generous terms.
Sure enough, last month’s bids by onshore wind, offshore wind and solar power are at average ‘strike prices’ higher than the recent going rate, which is set by the price of gas. The way contracts for difference work, the suppliers pay us if market prices are higher than the strike price; we pay them if they are lower. Only very briefly, when gas prices spiked during the early phase of the Ukraine war, did we get a little money back under the scheme.
In August, contract-for-difference subsidies were £237 million, the third highest ever and a record for August. That includes a £72 million rise in offshore wind subsidies, caused by a windy month, new wind farms coming online and falling gas prices. The more the wind blows and the lower the gas prices fall, the bigger the subsidies we pay wind farms. It’s a system of beauty as far as producers are concerned, but a thing of horror for consumers. ‘For the generators it’s heads they win, tails the consumer loses,’ says Turver.
Yet the strike price is only a small part of the cost of relying on unreliable wind and solar. National Grid plans to spend around £11 billion a year upgrading the transmission grid by 2035 to connect distant wind farms to where people actually live.
Add the extra cost of balancing the grid when supply varies, and backing it up with just-in-time gas power when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. And the cost of storing electricity in batteries, for which Mr Miliband just announced new subsidies: forecast by Edinburgh University’s Professor Gordon Hughes to hit £5 billion a year by 2030.
Had we stuck with coal, like China and Germany have partly done, storing energy in heaps would be all but free and our electricity would be far cheaper (I can say this now I no longer have an interest in coal). We closed the last coal-fired power station this week. Had we gone for shale gas, like America did, it would also have been much cheaper: imported gas is always much more expensive than home-grown (unlike coal and oil, where there are world market prices). Mr Miliband is intent on shutting down the North Sea gas industry, ensuring we pay more still. The slogan that unreliables are now cheap remains a lie however often the subsidy junkies repeat it.
When things cost more, people buy less. Because of these high prices Britain is using less electricity every year. Final electricity consumption is down by about 23 per cent since 2005 – in spite of a rising population. Dr John Constable, of the Renewable Energy Foundation, adds: ‘And no, it’s not efficiency. This is price rationing pure and simple.’ We are de-industrialising.
It is not just old industries like steel that are driven away by high electricity prices. Data storage and bitcoin mining are getting more energy hungry. A query with ChatGPT costs ten times as much as a Google search.
Despair not. Ed ‘Baldrick’ Miliband has a cunning plan. As a tweet from his department revealed last week, the government plans to repeal a couple of laws, making electricity cheaper at a stroke. Which laws? Why, the first and second laws of thermodynamics of course. The tweet read: ‘Did you know a heat pump is 3x more efficient than a gas boiler? Meaning it generates 3 times more energy than it consumes.’
Apart from the fact that the second sentence definitely does not mean the same as the first, it implies that you can conjure energy out of nothing, breaking the first law of thermodynamics, and that entropy-eating perpetual-motion machines are possible, breaking the second. Hooray!
Watch more on SpectatorTV:
‘No win, no fee’ has no place in war zones
The guilty plea of the former human rights lawyer Phil Shiner this week to charges of fraud is a story that deserves considerable attention. Shiner had tried to claim £200,000 in legal aid without disclosing that – in the breach of the rules – he had employed an agent to cold-call potential ‘victims’ of mistreatment at the hands of British service personnel in Iraq.
An inquiry held by the UK government in 2014 found that the allegations of abuse or violence which Shiner brought forward had little basis in fact: one fighter who was said to have been killed in custody by a British soldier was established to have died in battle, never captured alive. Yet the conclusion of the long case against Shiner – who was struck off as a solicitor seven years ago after his actions came to light – does little to solve an underlying problem: that laws established for civilian life are being inappropriately applied in war zones.
When the bullets are flying in a war zone, concepts of civilian law are suspended
Soldiers should not, of course, murder captives in cold blood, nor torture or mistreat them. Where these crimes are committed, the perpetrators deserve to be punished. At the same time, armed forces operating in a war zone cannot be expected to observe the niceties afforded to citizens in peacetime.
For many years, enemy combatants were considered to be protected by international humanitarian law, derived from the Geneva Convention, which sought to minimise human suffering without compromising the ability of a nation to use lethal force to defend itself and others against aggression.
International humanitarian law demands, for example, that captives are fed, clothed and protected against acts of vengeance. Yet it also accepts that war involves violence and killing. In such an environment, the right to life – not to mention the right to a fair trial, to work, freedom of association and collective bargaining and so on – has little relevance.
But in recent years there have been growing attempts to apply full human rights law to wartime situations. Following the Iraq war, lawyers such as Shiner saw the opportunities presented by an unpopular conflict and seized their moment. Warfare has in effect been opened up to the no win, no fee culture which had already taken hold in civilian life. UK soldiers facing daily snipers, booby traps and suicide bombs in what had become a vipers’ nest of guerilla warfare suddenly found themselves treated as if they were police officers handling suspects in a London police station.
The role of legal aid in this shift was instrumental. UK citizens even of modest means find it hard to obtain legal aid, since the rules demand that they dip into their savings before calling on the taxpayer. Yet when it came to Iraq, copious sums of legal aid were offered to foreign nationals to take cases out against British service personnel.
Those claiming to have been maltreated risked almost nothing: win, and they would earn a large payout from the UK taxpayer; lose, and their legal bills would also be met by British taxpayers. This produced a fundamental asymmetry, since British soldiers had little or no recourse to claim compensation from the guerillas and militias who had attacked them in combat.
The Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has touched on the issue of human rights in wartime. He claims that British special forces are killing terrorists rather than taking them captive, for fear they would end up having to be released under human rights laws. This, in Jenrick’s eyes, adds to the argument that Britain should leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.
Jenrick has been criticised for his comments by, among others, his leadership rival Tom Tugendhat, and has so far been unable to present evidence for his claims. But if former ministers are arguing over such a point, it rather shows up the legal muddle when it comes to war zones. To fight effectively, our armed forces deserve to know the rules under which they are operating. There should be no doubt, either, as to which authority they are answerable if they should break those rules.
We have court martials for a reason: to separate military justice from civilian courts, in recognition that different rules ought to apply. Such a distinction is absolutely necessary for the functioning of military forces – we can’t have soldiers having to assert their right to self-defence every time they shoot an enemy combatant when they are just doing their job. That is not to say that an off-duty soldier who starts a fight in a pub should be excused from civilian justice, but it does mean that when the bullets are flying in a war zone, concepts of civilian law are suspended. There should be no legal aid, and no human rights lawyers touting for business.
The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law has introduced all kinds of grey areas, as its critics warned it would. We no longer have clearly written laws so much as general principles that must be balanced against each other. The uncertainties have helped to transfer power from our elected politicians to judges. That is a serious enough problem in everyday civilian matters. But when it comes to the people defending our country’s interests with their lives, it is vital that they know where they stand – and that the real army is not undermined by a metaphorical army of ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Did Michael Gove mean what he said?
Toby Young has narrated this article for you to listen to.
I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t a dinner where the Ming vase would be passed from one custodian to another, witnessed by the magazine’s general staff. Rather, this was a dinner to celebrate Michael’s legacy as education secretary organised weeks earlier by Rachel Wolf, founder of the New Schools Network, and which Fraser had kindly agreed to host. But – talk about bad timing! – at 1.30 p.m. on the day it was due to take place it was announced that Michael would be succeeding Fraser as editor. That was a bit like Theresa May having agreed to host a dinner for Boris in Downing Street to celebrate his legacy as Spectator editor, only to discover that in the interim he’d ousted her as prime minister. Would it go ahead?
Of course the Pinteresque subtext of the evening was the editorial succession
The answer is yes, obviously. As Fraser said, he could have asked Rachel to hold the dinner at a nearby restaurant, claiming he was exhausted after a difficult day. But that would have made it look like he was unhappy about the appointment, which he wasn’t. So the dinner went ahead.
Apart from Fraser, I was the only journalist, having played a part in making the free schools policy a reality. Every-one else was an ex-minister, a former civil servant or a retired policy wonk: essentially, the brains trust behind Michael’s education reforms.
So that was supposed to be the topic for the evening. But, of course, the Pinteresque subtext was the editorial succession. Could Fraser resist bringing up his and Michael’s disagreement over lockdown? Would the new broom reassure him that Ross Clark wouldn’t be fired, given that Michael is completely captured when it comes to the ‘climate emergency’? Bear in mind that the two hadn’t met since Sir Paul Marshall’s £100 million bid for the magazine. This was their first opportunity to talk – and they’d have to do it in front of an audience!
I arrived early and Fraser showed me into his office – or, as he put it, ‘Michael’s office’. He confessed to having at the last minute ordered some vintage Margaux, knowing that Michael would be presented with the bill at the end of the month. I had thought that we were about to learn Sir Paul had acquired the Telegraph Media Group along with The Spectator and Fraser was to be appointed editor of the Telegraph. Indeed, I had a pitch prepared about making me the movie critic. But Fraser’s body language suggested otherwise. He had the air of a man contemplating a future in which 14-hour days would not be the norm.
After we were seated, Fraser stood up and took the bull by the horns. He welcomed Michael, repeating what he’d been telling his staff all day: the great thing about Gove as an editor is that he knows where all the bodies are buried because he buried half of them himself. Michael, he said, had shown government at its best (free schools) and worst (lockdown), but either way was always inspiring Spectator covers. He also said he was reassured by Michael’s reputation as a boss, inspiring loyalty and affection among those who’d worked for him in different government departments, as was apparent from the presence of so many former colleagues in the room.
Michael then reciprocated, telling Fraser he felt a bit like David Moyes succeeding Alex Ferguson. During his predecessor’s 15 years at the helm, the magazine had put on readers, enhanced its reputation and increased in value from £20 million to £100 million. How could he follow that?
The conversation moved on to school reform, with the general theme being that trying to get anything done in government is incredibly hard. The reason Michael had succeeded is because he and the people in the room spent two years planning everything beforehand; the Lib Dem education minister, David Laws, was surprisingly sensible; and the policy was supported by ‘the Centre’, i.e. Downing Street. I asked how people like me, still involved with schools we’d set up 14 years ago, could protect them from an interfering Labour government and they told me not to worry. ‘This lot are so incompetent they won’t be able to do any serious damage,’ said one former No. 10 policy chief.
Towards the end of the evening, Michael told the assembled company they could ask him anything – he was no longer in politics so he could answer truthfully. When it was my turn, I said the best thing about working for Fraser from a columnist’s point of view is that he never told me what to write or censored anything I’d written. Would Michael be equally hands-off? ‘Write about anything you like,’ he assured me. ‘You have a free hand.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I’ll write about this dinner.’
I hope he’s as good as his word.
The Battle for Britain | 5 October 2024
Sorry, but you’ve got to love the Springboks
There may still be some poor benighted souls who regard the Springboks as the bane of rugby union. If you meet one, get ready to dispense a proper mauling. South Africa, for so long the Millwall of rugby, are playing an all-round game that is so breathtakingly attractive you have to love them. It may be hard for you, but tough.
It would take a brave man to bet against them for the 2027 World Cup in Australia
The scrum has always been irresistible, of course; relays of vast men who can shred opponents to bits: here’s hooker Malcolm Marx, accumulator of tries and the size of a terraced house but with added mobility; there’s Ox Nché, all 19.5st of him and the best prop in the world right now. On the flank is Pieter-Steph du Toit, relentlessly fast and on track to be world player of the year again; at lock the extraordinary Eben Etzebeth, as imposing as the Statue of Liberty, who has just become the most capped Bok of all time. At the weekend, after pulverising Argentina 48-7 in Nelspruit, a weeping Etzebeth talked about rugby being a religion in his country. Maybe that’s it. South African rugby and the country itself were reborn at the same time, in the World Cup final of 1995 when Nelson Mandela wore skipper Francois Pienaar’s shirt. The Boks beat the All Blacks 15-12 in that match and have since won the World Cup three more times. It would take a brave man to bet against them for the next World Cup in Australia in 2027.
On top of their crushing forward power, coach Rassie Erasmus has added some of the best backs in the world: Cheslin Kolbe on the wing, whose mesmerising footwork for his try against the Pumas was almost impossible to follow with the naked eye; the outstanding Aphelele Fassi at fullback; and at fly-half the dazzling 22-year-old Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu. In just the past few years these Boks have become double World Cup winners, beaten the Lions and are now winners of the Rugby Championship. It is deeply impressive. Many of the players – the captain Siya Kolisi for instance – have powerful life stories about overcoming adversity. For anyone who cares about the rainbow nation, we should wish the best for these Springboks.
Cricket’s next Test series (please don’t yawn at the back) starts next week in Pakistan. The game has become an endless cycle in which players have little time to prepare and the whole thing gets increasingly meaningless. What was the most memorable moment of the cricketing summer? Probably Somerset beating Surrey (for whom their England stars Ollie Pope, Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson hardly ever play). Not everything was better way back when, but cricket arguably was. Counties mattered, one-day finals were must-watch TV (rather than a 20-over thrash in the drizzle as this year), and not every Test match was to prepare for the Ashes, which is pretty insulting to anyone who’s not Australian.
Meanwhile, Hampshire have been taken over by the people who own the Indian Premier League franchise, the Delhi Capitals, though largely it seems so they can use the county’s superb Southampton venue as a multi-purpose entertainment centre. And Lord’s have put their prices up, so only those who can attend the Royal Opera House or Glyndebourne can afford to see Test cricket in NW8.
That great polymath Kris Kristofferson has bowed out at 88. Decades ago I was at my parents’ house in Oxford with my latest Kristofferson album. He was then one of the best-known artists on the planet. My father, a cricket-loving don closely involved with the Rhodes Scholarship committee, took one look at the cover and said with great warmth: ‘Ah, Kristofferson, a very fine left-arm bowler as I recall.’ Who knew? He won a boxing blue as well, by the way.
Dear Mary: How can I handle boredom during a play?
Q. I am at a dinner and the man on my right won’t turn and I am staring ahead feeling ultra self-conscious and victimy. The table is too wide for the people opposite to help out. What to do?
– L.P., London W11
A. Twenty years ago the answer to this question would have been: ‘Place your hand on to the offender’s thigh.’ Today you will need to get the attention of your host at the head of the table and give a subtle signal that a disruption is called for. An experienced host will break the spell by clinking a glass and making a pleasant announcement of some kind and adding that he/she hopes everyone has turned.
Q. What is the etiquette when sitting next to someone on a plane? It seems odd to sit closer than you would to your own partner without some sort of acknowledgment. Recently I turned to my fellow passenger and said ‘Hello, I’m John’ brightly. He gave me a look of alarm. Is it more polite to simply ignore one’s neighbour?
– J.W., Frome, Somerset
A. Many seasoned air travellers are cautious about being friendly to their adjacent fellow passenger for fear of unleashing a flight-long monologue from a potential bore who has spotted a captive audience. The correct etiquette is to indicate goodwill as you first take your seat, by making eye contact and smiling broadly, before then inserting AirPods, whether or not they are turned on. While you are unlikely to meet a soulmate on a flight from Luton to Las Palmas, it may be a different matter on a flight between Luton and Sibiu if, for example, you are heading for the Transylvania book festival. If you sense compatibility (judging by the neighbour’s reading matter or general demeanour during the flight), wait until about 25 minutes before landing to make your friendly overture.
Q. A dear elderly friend is a keen theatre-goer who kindly invites me to accompany him on a regular basis. He takes me to dinner afterwards and I love talking to him but my problem is that I often find myself bored beyond measure during the play and don’t know how to put up with this ordeal, which often lasts for as long as two hours. Any suggestions, Mary?
– Name and address withheld
A. You might take a tip from ex-Queen Margrethe of Denmark. Gyles Brandreth reveals in his recent book Seven Secrets of Happiness how she coped with the tedium of public life. ‘If you listen carefully the speech is very rarely as boring as you thought it was going to be. Don’t switch off. Somehow listen. It is much better that way.’
An inedible catastrophe: Julie’s Restaurant reviewed
At Julie’s at the fag end of Saturday lunchtime, Notting Hill beauties are defiantly not eating, and the table is covered with crumbs. Restaurant Ozymandias, I think to myself. This is no longer a district for the perennially wracked, or unrich. The Black Cross – Martin Amis’s ideal pub in London Fields – is now a sushi joint. Of course it is.
The omelette is bright yellow and tough, like a hi-viz croissant
Julie’s, which is named for its first owner, the interior designer Julie Hodgess, mattered in the 1980s. I don’t trust restaurant myth-making – let longevity be the judge, and this is the third Julie’s on the site – but it was for a while the sort of place that glossy magazine people wrote about when glossy magazines mattered: like Langan’s, the Grill Room at the Connaught and Le Caprice. Julie’s was an idea really: that by occupying a space Mick Jagger had occupied, you were somehow, if not Mick Jagger himself, then close enough.
This third Julie’s has been kindly reviewed. Possibly it is nostalgia – the first Julie’s was good, it sold sausages and mash – but, as you know, the nostalgic is not yearning for place but for himself when he was there. He is reviewing himself, when young. Because this is ashes: the worst meal I’ve had since Langan’s, and it is no coincidence. You can’t eat myths, and left to themselves myths get lazy.
The interior is flouncy florals – pretty enough, like Notting Hill is pretty enough: with its own distinctive culture, invented by Richard Curtis in his film Notting Hill, it is now less place than aesthetic. When Americans who watch European rom-coms think of London, they think of Notting Hill and Mary Poppins and Paddington. Unreal places don’t need real people or real food. All this, though subconsciously, Julie’s manifests. I should have taken a marmalade sandwich and hidden it in my hair. They treat me like I have.
My companion orders duck liver schnitzel with shallot marmalade, and I choose a mushroom omelette. Perhaps I shouldn’t have: chefs say that brunch is cursed. But it is Saturday afternoon in autumn, so why not? The duck liver schnitzel is small, and it sits in a reservoir of fat like a thing, and my companion cannot eat it. If schnitzels could cower, this would. The mushroom omelette is bright yellow and tough, like a hi-viz croissant. Inside, too-large girolles sit in a havoc of unmelted Gruyère. It looks and tastes vile, it is £19, and I can’t eat it.
We can’t eat this, we tell the waiter when he comes, gesturing at the plates. This is how we always cook it, he replies of the catastrophe omelette: do I want another one? I think the insinuation is: I am insane, and he will humour me to a point. I don’t, I say. We don’t discuss the schnitzel, and its testimony floats away. I think of this duck, which deserved better.
We go to the front desk for the bill. Our food was inedible, I say, we couldn’t eat it. The woman hands me the bill with angry eyes, as if I have failed Julie’s because I do not understand it, and, in doing so, am unworthy of it.
This is restaurant as cult, and cults can’t hear. When I booked, I gave my credit card details – I understand why restaurants insist on it, because people are selfish and cruel – and then I moved my booking because I had Covid. If I moved the booking again, I was told, I would be charged. There’s a carelessness here, as if Julie’s exists for a fictional Mick Jagger, and everyone else is dust. Does he know?
What does Yvette Cooper mean by ‘hubs’?
‘Did she mean youth clubs?’ asked my husband when I said how annoying I found the promise made by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, to provide ‘new youth hubs to steer young people away from violence’.
No, she definitely said ‘hubs’. Everyone has to have a hub now. Sophy Ridge has one on television at seven o’clock every evening. A hub was an almost magical thing when Gordon Brown as prime minister introduced one to Downing Street. It was credited with being inspired by one at the Daily Telegraph.
‘Mr Brown has decided to spend some of his time working in Downing Street surrounded by his closest aides,’ reported Rosa Prince in 2008. ‘The Telegraph operates a unique “hub-and-spoke” office at its headquarters. The key section heads meet centrally and their team each have a spoke stretching away from the “hub”’.
But the next year, she wrote that ‘the very openness which the layout was intended to foster now threatens to widen the fallout from the emails scandal’. Damian McBride had sent emails to Derek Draper proposing the posting of rumours about the private lives of prominent Conservatives.
When Gordon Brown dropped in to the hub he would find Liam Byrne, Tom Watson, Sue Nye (now a peeress; in 2010 the diary secretary blamed accidentally on air by Brown for getting him to meet Gillian Duffy in Rochdale), along with Jeremy Heywood, his principal private secretary. On a spoke clung Damian McBride weaving webs.
Such dangerous hubcraft sounded new, but the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood got there first. From 2006, viewers learnt of a Hub occupied by the mysterious Torchwood Institute, situated below ground in Cardiff Bay. In 2009, the Torchwood Hub was destroyed. Now, through what the Doctor would call a ‘controlled temporal implosion’, Yvette Cooper wants hubs brought back.
Imminent disaster
Mistakes in chess come in pairs. Last month, and not for the first time, that nugget of wisdom thumped me on the nose. Representing England at the Olympiad in Budapest, my game against Luca Moroni was proceeding rather pleasantly. It was clear the Italian grandmaster had underestimated my sacrifice of rook for bishop in the middlegame, and I was about to recover my material investment with interest. Alas, my return was diminished by an elementary tactical oversight, missing the move 25 Na4xb6 (see first diagram). No matter – I was still a pawn to the good. I moved my rook which was under attack, and he responded in the obvious way. One minor hiccup need not derail an otherwise agreeable game. Oblivious to any danger, my crude blunder on the very next move allowed 27 Nb3xa5. Another pawn gone, and what was worse, the frenzied cavalry were about to sack the remains of my position.
Sensing imminent disaster, I abandoned any ideas about winning the game smoothly. After long thought, I ditched my remaining rook to tame the horses and regain the initiative. My opponent, perhaps perplexed by the juddering tempo of the game, misplayed his advantage and went down in the time scramble.
Luca Moroni–Luke McShane
Fide Olympiad, Budapest 2024
1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 Nf3 b6 5 e3 Bb7 6 Bd3 O-O 7 O-O c5 8 Na4 cxd4 9 exd4 Re8 10 a3 Bf8 11 b4 a5 12 b5 d6 13 Be3 Nbd7 14 Nd2 e5 15 dxe5 Rxe5 16 Nb3 g6 17 Rc1 Rxe3! A strong exchange sacrifice. The black minor pieces are perfectly poised to exploit the weaknesses in White’s kingside. 18 fxe3 Bh6 19 Kh1 The e3 pawn is not worth defending, e.g. 19 Qe2 Ne5 20 Nd4 Nfg4 21 Nc2 Qh4 22 h3 Qg3 is crushing Ne5 20 Be2 Ne4 21 Bf3 21 Qd4 Qg5! prepares Ne4-d2, with a discovered attack against g2. Bxe3 22 Bxe4 Bxe4 23 Qe2 Bxc1? Based on a dreadful oversight. 23…Qg5! was far stronger. After 24 Rc3 Ng4 25 h3 f5! the Ng4 cannot be captured on due to mate on the h-file, so White is almost paralysed. 24 Qxe4 Bxa3 When I grabbed the Rc1, I counted two extra pawns here and naively thought ‘what’s not to like?’ 25 Nxb6! Simple and good. Capturing the knight leaves the Ra8 hanging. Rb8 26 Nd5 Rc8? Hoping to provoke a retreat Nb3-d2, but inviting the opposite. 27 Nxa5! Qxa5 My instinct was to cut my losses with 27…Kg7, but 28 Nc6! Nxc6 29 bxc6 Rxc6 30 Qd4+ is catastrophic. Murky complications offer better chances. 28 Ne7+ Kg7 29 Nxc8 Qc7 30 Ra1 The knight is saved, but remains in a clumsy position. Instead, 30 b6! Qxc8 31 b7 would retain better chances to win. Bc5 31 Ra8 Qd8 32 h3 Qf6 33 Qe2 Ng4 A neat shot, e.g. 34 Qxg4 Qf1+ 35 Kh2 Bg1+ 36 Kh1 Bf2+ 37 Kh1 Qg1# 34 Ne7 Nf2+ 35 Kh2 Qf4+ 36 g3 Qc1 37 Qf3 Nd3 38 Qg2 Ne1 39 Qe2 The final error. 39 Rg8+ Kh6 40 Qe4! leads to a draw by repetition, e.g. Nf3+ 41 Kg2 Qg1+ 42 Kxf3 Qf1+ 43 Kg4 Qd1+ 44 Kf4 Qf1+ etc. Nf3+ 40 Kg2 Ne1+ 41 Kh2 Nf3+ 42 Kg2 Ng5 White resigns After 43 Rg8+ Kh6 there is nothing to be done about Qc1-g1 mate.
This turbulent win helped us to a 3-1 victory against Italy. We were later knocked back by narrow losses against close rivals Armenia and France, though our 20th place in the final table remained respectable. The women’s team finished in 27th place, with an outstanding individual performance from Jovanka Houska who scored 8/10.
No. 821
White to play. Ciolacu-Khotenashvili, Fide Women’s Olympiad, Budapest, September 2024. How did White crown her kingside attack? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 7 October. 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 Rxe7! Rxe7 2 Qd5+! Qxd5 3 Nxe7+ Kf7 4 Nxd5 wins
Last week’s winner Chris McSheehy, Mattingley, Hampshire
Spectator Competition: Smalls miracle
In Comp 3369 you were invited to write about the recent underwear storm of Chongqing, or some other freak event, as if it had happened centuries ago and become legend. The entries were wonderfully imaginative, though they dangled some grim visions of the future. It pains me not to squeeze in David Silverman’s poem, so here is his second verse:
Sing of that legendary dawn:
Of Chongqing’s briefs and panties, borne
Aloft o’er realms of Genghis Khan;
Of knickers measureless to man,
Of boxer, Y-front, bra and thong,
Dry clean and machine washable.
Recall the words of Mao Zedong:
That miracles are possible!
The winners below receive £25.
In days long since, an ancient man came to Chongqing. He knocked on the first house, saying: ‘I am old, hungry and thirsty. Spare me some bread and water.’ He was chased away. It was the same at the next house and the one after. In time he had called at every house with the same result. He hobbled away to a nearby hill and sat on a rock. With a wave of his hand the man transformed himself back into Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. He looked down at Chongqing, saying: ‘You would not support an old man in his need, so you shall have no support where you need it most.’ He waved his hand again and a great whirlwind sprang up. It raced through the town ripping undergarments from lines and sucking them into the sky. Wails rose up from the folk of Chongqing. Sun Wukong laughed.
Joseph Houlihan
Time back, beyond the recall even of granite, China’s Emperor Xi determined all: his eyes were in every room, his Thought in every mind. All went smoothly and to his monomaniacal purpose until, one day, amongst the drying underthings of his unfortunate underlings, a freakish tornado suddenly blew up. Bras entwined themselves about the Emperor’s surveillant eyes, flying underpants diverted into helpless hilarity minds hitherto preoccupied adhering to his edicts, suddenly animate nighties enjoyed freedoms of movement unknown to their owners. The Emperor, chillingly furious, ordered the underthings apprehended, the wind extinguished, the underlings into permanent forgetting. But some of the underthings could not be found, having flown into the ocean. The wind could not be identified from census or intelligence file, having never been named or registered. And though the underlings said they had forgotten, every household in China, famished another joyous ascent, hung its washing high.
Adrian Fry
Many aeons ago, the people of Chongqing worshipped the Laundry Gods. They hung their most intimate, freshly washed clothing on balcony altars as tributes, hoping to be honoured on the Great Day of Drying. The high priests of Laundry even sent messages into the clouds, begging the gods to accept their sacrifice. At last, the gods sent a windstorm that blew the underwear skywards on a spin cycle of epic proportions, into the great Tumble Drier of the Heavens. However, the Laundry Gods preferred natural fibres, and rejected certain tired nylons, saggy elastic, torn lace, snapped underwires and faded polyester-cotton blend. And so the people were showered with inferior bras, knickers, slips and jockey shorts. All unworthy lingerie, whether cheap, loose or saggy, was collected at the Temple of Brief Adoration, as a hallowed reminder of what was sacred to the laundry gods, and what was holey.
Janine Beacham
Many centuries ago, an election in Chongqing was won by the Integrity and Decency Party. But when its smartly dressed and moralistic leader came out to address the jubilant crowd, a rude heckler interrupted him, asking why he and his friends had accepted bribes of beautiful gowns from a dubious grandee. The leader beamed gently at him through expensive spectacles, and explained patiently: ‘We are a mighty province, and our leaders must look elegant when representing us to the world. And fine robes do not fall from the skies, you know.’ At which point a large pair of ladies’ bloomers descended from above, covering his head entirely with gusseted pink cotton. Other items of intimate wear fell upon his colleagues. The crowd, previously so admiring, became loud in their mockery, and the next election was won as usual by the Chumocracy and Sleaze Party. You knew where you were with them.
George Simmers
Long ago in a land far to the east it is said that there was once a great underwear storm. End user and storage devices known at that time as bras and pants, now made redundant by advanced cybernetics, were plucked into the air by mighty winds. Some of these devices fell to earth in relentless downpours and Greta, the self-styled climate maven of that time, a humanoid with the tendency of those life forms to exhibit irrational emotional responses, predicted prolonged and catastrophic pants precipitation. The phenomenon was short-lived but legend has it that one item of underwear was swept up into the Xosphere, named for a guru of that age, and travelled beyond into space where it remains to this day, lending its title to what we now know as star base Venus Blue Origin but which is still referred to by its old designation, the Evening Bra.
Sue Pickard
In the second Thrumpian dynasty, under Vancisco, the suzerain of Hiyo, it happened that all the dogs and cats of Springsteen, in that territory, were put to the sword by marauders who sacked the city. Hard men wept and harder women wailed. But the outlaws, who were from Voodoo, did not stop with the execution of the many family pets. Their culture demanded maximum indignity, and, setting a fire in the central piazza, they grilled, broiled, roasted and ate the corpses before the horrified eyes of their owners. The process took weeks. And when the Voodoo barbecues ran out of animal, the invaders seized all local children who had just been born, who were a day old only, and made fresh feasts. At this point Vancisco, known as Hillbilly, enlisted the Down Bad Cat Ladies from the Taylors Wiff-T international army, and she ruled over them all a thousand years.
Bill Greenwell
No. 3372: super duper
It’s Jilly Cooper season. You are invited to submit a mash-up of her writing style with another famous novelist’s (150 words maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 16 October.
2674: New crop
7D (two words), performed by 40A (two words), suggests the other unclued lights, which are all similarly amended forms of words of a kind. A final ‘7D’, itself a thematically appropriate word, must be highlighted in the final grid.
Across
1 Actor, you said, departed with a hook (8)
8 Young bird from e.g. Spain returning (4)
11 Pet perhaps I put on rocky shingle (7,6)
15 Son, rugged and skinny (7)
16 Mythic work almost included from the east (4)
23 Cricket side permits decorative items (7)
25 Parisian to go with soldier caught reacting badly? (8)
26 Deviation from course, meaning to get on (8)
27 What crooks do with wrong conclusion (6)
29 Make good choice between relaxation and drug (7)
33 Tiny organisms in northern station (7)
34 Asian plant in undergrowth I risked turning (5)
35 Old uncles seem dubious (4)
38 Leave one’s home, wanting good ruler’s territory (7)
39 Figure husband’s boarded plane? (5)
41 Sporting champ remains, having energy (4)
42 New map with facts for health facilities (3,5)
Down
1 Idiot cycling around getting skittle (7)
2 Article by doctor for massage (2,2)
3 Neural changes in part of arm (6)
4 A school’s maintaining soft features (7)
5 Loud noise, day after day (4)
6 Suited worker, say, crossing river (6)
8 Electronic record in storehouse (5)
10 Needle compilers following fashion, mostly (6)
13 Pick current film for positive person (8)
14 Gradually stop holding a tart out (5,2,1,4)
20 Old actor close to Nathan Lane at first (6)
21 Father in empty garage with superior clothing (8)
22 Members warning politicians about money (9)
27 Working with earl, attempt’s not repeated (3-4)
28 Dull covers European put on special boats (7)
29 Green nuts seared (6)
30 Tip-top spree around Roman province (6)
31 Is American protecting life-force and bones? (6)
32 The Spanish guy, about to carouse (5)
36 Measure heap in disarray (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 21 October. 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 2674, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.
2671: Canned madras – solution
Nine unclued lights have been seen on STAGE (35): THE RIVALS (4A), ELECTRA (27), THE BIRDS (29), ALL MY SONS (39), LYSISTRATA (1D), BECKET (3), NO MAN’S LAND (19), ORESTES (26) and ST JOAN (30) (‘Saint Joan’ in short form). RHINO (33) (‘Rhinoceros’ in short form) is to be shaded.
First prize Mydrim Jones, London WC1
Runners-up Trevor Evans, Drulingen, France; Gail Petrie, Brean, Somerset
Portrait of the week: Iran fires missiles into Israel, Rosie Duffield resigns and Mount Everest gets taller
Home
The Conservatives at their party conference examined the four surviving candidates for leader – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – with the prospect of two being thrown out of the ballot by MPs next week and the other two being put to the party membership on 2 November. Rishi Sunak, the last Conservative prime minister, urged the conference optimistically: ‘We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling.’ Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, said: ‘One of the biggest lies we’ve had since Labour came to office is this nonsense about having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war.’ Treasury officials said that Labour plans to abolish two concessions made by the previous government to non-doms might not raise the forecast £1 billion, or any money at all. Michael Ancram, the Conservative politician who became the Marquess of Lothian, died aged 79. Dame Maggie Smith, the actress, died aged 89.
Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, resigned the Labour whip, saying in a letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, that since the election ‘the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous’, citing his ‘inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts’ while holding down social benefits. A household in England, Wales or Scotland would see its annual energy bill rise from this month by about £149. The last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire, stopped generating electricity. Simon Case, aged 45, is to resign as cabinet secretary by the end of the year, a decision ‘solely to do with health and nothing to do with anything else’.
Baroness Warsi announced she was leaving the Conservative party; she had posted a photograph of herself drinking from a coconut to celebrate the acquittal of Marieha Hussain, a pro-Palestinian protestor, of a racially aggravated public order offence by holding a placard depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts. Lord Khan, the faith minister, said that the definition of Islamophobia by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (‘a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’) ‘is not in line with the Equality Act 2010, which defines race in terms of colour, nationality and national or ethnic origins’. Iustin Dobre, 37, and Mark Mitchell, 34, were jailed for six years and Milan Zamostny, 30, for five years and four months for setting fire to a double-decker bus at Harehills, Leeds, in July. In the week to 1 October, only 79 migrants arrived in England in small boats, due to bad weather.
Abroad
Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, which the Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, said had displaced a million people. Iran then launched about 180 missiles at Israel, of which the United States had issued a warning and helped to intercept. British forces supported Israel. A Palestinian in the West Bank was killed in the missile attack. Israel’s incursion came three days after an Israeli air strike on the Beirut suburb of Dahieh killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader since 1992 of Hezbollah, the Shia armed movement (regarded as terrorists by Britain, America and other countries). The Israeli strike took place just after Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, declaring that Israel would be ‘degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met’. America had pushed for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Also killed, along with perhaps 20 Hezbollah commanders, was Abbas Nilforushan, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hezbollah fired more rockets into northern Israel. Israel also carried out air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement in Yemen.
Tens of thousands of dockworkers went on strike at American ports. Hurricane Helene left 150 dead in the American South. At least nine died and 48 were missing after a vessel carrying 87 migrants sank off the island of El Hierro in the Canaries. Sir Keir Starmer met Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, to talk about fish and allied issues. A SpaceX capsule docked at the International Space Station ready to return two stranded astronauts to Earth.
Austria’s far-right Freedom party won the highest percentage of votes, at 29.2 per cent, against 26.5 per cent for the conservative People’s party. Three days after becoming Japan’s Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba announced a snap election for 27 October. Mount Everest is getting a twelfth of an inch higher each year, according to researchers at UCL. CSH
The magic of The Spectator
Not since South Park Elementary’s election campaign between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich has an election bedevilled me as much as this one. On the one hand, the choice is disarmingly simple. One of the candidates is obviously mentally unhinged, delusional, malignant and contemptuous of the rule of law. One of the candidates hasn’t just broken norms. He has broken the norm, the indispensable norm for the continuation of the republic: accepting the results of an election. This is the third time Donald Trump has told us in advance he won’t do that if he doesn’t win. And the second time, he incited a mob to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. One of the candidates is also pledging a wave of protectionism not seen since the 1930s, the mass deportation of more than 11 million people, the judicial persecution of his political enemies and an enthusiasm for the latest expansion of the Russian empire. The other is merely old-school Democratic cringe.
So why on earth is it so nail-bitingly close? And why did I find myself writing an endorsement of Kamala Harris last week only to be immediately beset by a case of sudden-onset nausea? Yes, it’s the platitudes, the elite-speak, the fawning crowds and the irritating eruptions of fake ‘joy’ that put me off. But is there a clear reason to vote for Harris – or does this feel like Hillary Clinton in 2016 all over again? She was never supposed to be the candidate, of course, and if Joe Biden’s vanity hadn’t got in the way, she would have been winnowed out in a primary long ago. Her weaknesses are hard to hide. She has never campaigned by herself against a serious Republican opponent. Despite a good acceptance speech and decent debate, she hasn’t obviously seized a lead. She’s ahead but it feels extremely flimsy.
Yes, Harris has made herself plausible as a possible president, but that’s about it. Abortion – her strongest issue by far – has not dominated the campaign, while immigration – her weakest – is everywhere. Almost all the very little news in the campaign has been driven by Trump, and almost nothing has changed in over a month. Should we assume the polls underestimate Trump as in 2020? Or are they missing the Democrats’ hidden strength, as in 2022? One party seems to have been swallowed by its candidate; the other candidate appears to have been swallowed by her party. It seems to me, as we stagger grimly on, that Trump cannot win but that Harris hasn’t come close to clinching it. And that Americans, by and large, want to keep it that way. Until, of course, they can’t.
What would American politics be like without Trump? On Tuesday, we found out. It would be an elevated, tough and sometimes supple conversation between a conservative who has learned some things in this century and a liberal who may be a bit wonky, but whose heart is in the right place. The Vance-Walz debate will lead to a big jump in approval for J.D. Vance; and it’s a useful reminder that, beneath the noise and chaos, a saner, calmer America still hangs in there. It may even have a future beyond the orange glow.
Editing a weekly magazine of opinion has always been a bit tricky. I had my shot at the New Republic in its glory days, and lasted the usual amount of time – around five years. For me and other editors, the job of making a magazine fun for its readers eventually meant becoming unpopular with its writers. That the editor of this storied journal is beloved by both after all these years is striking enough. But that The Spectator exists at all as a magazine is the real achievement in the online era. There are almost none left that work as a magazine should: a gathering of familiar voices and moods, distinct in its identity and confident enough to play with it. A magazine’s writers were once easily joined by staples and paper. The web scatters everything. To sustain that distinctness and character in this fast-evaporating media blizzard is remarkable.
Add to that the punishingly brutal economics of online journalism and The Spectator’s resilience is near-unique. My old mag has faded. So have most others. The places where heterodoxy thrives, wit happens and an alchemy somehow emerges as something coherent are rarer than ever. I’m sure many are responsible but I’d be remiss in not tipping the hat to Fraser Nelson in this, his last issue. He made it look easy. And I for one know how profoundly it isn’t.
Israel is reshaping the Middle East in its favour
Iran has fallen into the trap set by Israel. It has taken the bait after months of failing to respond to a series of devastating – and humiliating – attacks, which decapitated its Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, and killed the leader of Hamas in Tehran. But the regime may have self-immolated by firing missiles at Israel on Tuesday night, an attack meant to inflict real harm – which inevitably means an Israeli response. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may now get the war that some have accused him of wanting all along: a war to destroy the regime in Tehran, fought with American help. The hardliners on both sides are running things. The past week has shown there is no such thing as ‘escalating to de-escalate’ – only escalation. The window for diplomacy is closing and what happens next depends on an American president in the dying days of his administration.
Tuesday night’s attack was only the second time that Tehran has targeted Israel directly. The first was in April, when it fired about 300 missiles and drones. Those were not Iran’s most effective weapons and Israel’s Iron Dome air defences had little trouble intercepting them. It was performative and many saw through the performance. This time was different. There were fewer missiles, about 180 according to the Israelis, but they were among the most advanced that Iran has, the Fattah-1 hypersonic missile that travels at five times the speed of sound. Phone video showed them streaking through the sky, impossibly fast. They are still quite inaccurate and those that weren’t blown up in the air fell on open ground. The only casualty was a Palestinian worker from Gaza, killed by the tail section of a rocket that dropped from the sky as he was crossing a deserted road in the West Bank.
Netanyahu may now get the war some have accused him of wanting all along
Shortly after the attack, Netanyahu said in a video released by his office: ‘Iran made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it.’ For all the tough talk – and no doubt Netanyahu means it – there was a moment of indecision, or at least of hesitancy. As the first wave of ballistic missiles made its way towards Israel, the Israeli cabinet was meeting in a bunker near Jerusalem. The discussion was reported to have ended without deciding what shape Israeli retaliation would take. The Israeli media was briefed that a final plan wasn’t agreed because Netanyahu and other officials wanted to consult the Biden administration first. Israel will need to make sure the US has its back if the conflict with Iran becomes an all-out war – a steady supply of bombs and even what Israeli officials call ‘operational support’.
The US Navy has two aircraft carriers in the Middle East and half a dozen warships that can fire guided missiles. There are US fighter bombers based in Jordan. No doubt Joe Biden doesn’t want a regional war to erupt in the Middle East during his last days in office – but if that war is inevitable, he may feel he must ensure Israel wins it. Israel is reshaping the Middle East in its favour. The US, too, would be happy to see Iran – and Hezbollah – weakened. Netanyahu may succeed in dragging the US along in its wake. His long career at the top has been defined by defying US presidents. After Bill Clinton met Bibi for the first time, he exploded: ‘Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?’
So if Israel does go ahead with the attack that Netanyahu promised after the cabinet meeting, it could – finally – target Iran’s nuclear weapons program. One of his predecessors in office, Naftali Bennett, tweeted that Israel had to act ‘now’ to destroy Iran’s nuclear program ‘to fatally cripple this terrorist regime’. Bennett may be trying to appear tough – he wants to be prime minister again – and Iran’s nuclear facilities are buried deep underground. The Israeli pilot who led the Osirak raid in 1981, on an Iraqi nuclear plant, told me once that only ground troops could finish the job in Iran. Still, Netanyahu has wanted to attack Iran on as many as four separate occasions during his premiership, only to be stopped by previous American presidents. He may feel, as Bennett put it, that ‘this opportunity must not be missed’.
An alternative target could be Iran’s oil facilities. The terminal at Kharg island exports more than 90 per cent of Iranian oil and is just a short flight by fighter bomber from Israel. There are other, relatively easy targets: a second terminal at Jask on the other side of Iran is served by a long and vulnerable pipeline. And most of Iran’s oil production is concentrated in just four main fields. The price of oil would jump – surely something Biden is desperate to avoid with the US election just a month away. But a few dozen American-made 2,000lb bombs could devastate the Iranian economy at a stroke. The money that pays the wages of Hamas and Hezbollah fighters would be cut off. And if the Iranian economy collapses, the regime would be in real trouble.
Iran’s President, Masoud Pezeshkian, seems all too well aware that his country is walking into Israel’s trap. He told reporters at the UN General Assembly: ‘They are dragging us to a point where we do not wish to go.’ Tehran is almost bankrupt and can’t afford an all-out war with Israel, backed by the US. It is unpopular at home: mass demonstrations have erupted regularly over the past few years – and are always brutally suppressed. The unrest is driven, in part, by poverty and falling incomes. This is one reason why Pezeshkian spent days at the UN trying to revive the nuclear deal, which would ease sanctions and release billions of dollars to the regime. The Iranian President is a relative moderate who talks of reconciliation at home and abroad. All that is in tatters now.
The events of the past few weeks have confirmed Israel’s strategic daring, or Netanyahu’s recklessness, depending on your point of view. Either way, Hezbollah’s and Iran’s assumptions about the rules of the conflict with Israel have been exposed as wildly optimistic. They thought that Israel could not wage a war on two fronts, Lebanon in the north and Gaza in the south; they were wrong. They thought that Israel could not fight such a long war in Gaza: it would get exhausted and Hezbollah’s rocket fire into Israel would be needed only briefly; they were wrong. They thought international pressure would halt the fighting in Gaza, as in so many of Israel’s previous campaigns; they were wrong about that, too.
The price of this miscalculation is that Israeli airstrikes have destroyed what Netanyahu called ‘large percentages’ of Hezbollah’s rockets, an arsenal Iran worked for decades to build up. It was always thought that Israel could not attack Iran because of the thousands of missiles Hezbollah would unleash. But Israel has shown itself unafraid of Hezbollah’s strikes, and has – for the time being – neutralised Iran’s ‘strategic deterrent’. Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ appears broken. Israel’s overwhelming military superiority was confirmed again this week when tanks and troops crossed the Lebanese border unopposed by Hezbollah (or by the Lebanese army, which hastily pulled back).
Hezbollah’s and Iran’s assumptions about the rules of conflict with Israel were wildly optimistic
Before that, Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, called it ‘one of the most important assassinations in the history of the State of Israel’. It was also just one of many ‘targeted killings’ that eliminated almost the entire top tier of Hezbollah’s command. Nasrallah often used to speak about how the prophet’s grandson, Hussein, had faced a choice between martyrdom or surrender at the 7th-century battle of Karbala, the founding event of Shia Islam. Hussein had as few as 72 men against an army of thousands but declared, so the story goes, that he could either draw his sword or suffer humiliation – and ‘we reject humiliation!’.
Israel’s relentless destruction of Hezbollah confronted the Iranian leadership with that same choice: martyrdom or surrender. They were goaded into ‘rejecting humiliation’. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted on Twitter in (broken) Hebrew: ‘With God’s help, the blows of the resistance front will grow stronger and more painful against the worn and decaying body of the Zionist regime.’ After Israel retaliates, does that mean he will order Hezbollah to fire everything they’ve got? At one of Israel’s crisis cabinets, Netanyahu spoke of ‘days of historic achievements’ but also said Israel was ‘in a war for our very existence’.
The next day he made a direct appeal to the people of Iran, releasing a videotaped message in English. He seemed to call on them to overthrow the regime, which he said was wasting billions of dollars on ‘futile’ wars. ‘When Iran is finally free – and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think – everything will be different.’ As the Israeli journalist Aluf Benn put it, the Iranian regime is threatened with destruction from without and an uprising from within, and ‘the decision is now in Khamenei’s hands’. Khamenei would agree with Netanyahu about one thing: the struggle is existential.
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Reflections on 15 years in the editor’s chair
Fraser Nelson has narrated this article for you to listen to.
In the late summer of 2009, Andrew Neil invited me to his villa in the Côte d’Azur but didn’t say why. I was mystified. I was then political editor of The Spectator and in eight years of working closely with Andrew, the then chairman, he’d never hinted that he saw me as an editor. I certainly didn’t see myself as one. I was just a writer who knew nothing about how magazines were made. I’d never written a headline and didn’t even have a desk in the office. I wouldn’t know where to start.
We put a notice on our fridge asking staff to make sure that two bottles of Pol Roger were chilling at all times
But when Andrew offered me the job, I heard myself saying yes. Did I think I was good enough? Not even close. But I felt that if I said no, I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I’d had the courage to give it a go. Worthy or not, I was being offered what Boris Johnson had rightly described as the best job in London. Andrew saw in me something that I didn’t see in myself – and I thought I’d find out if he was right.
Fifteen years and 786 editions later, I like to think it worked out OK. The magazine, then valued at £20 million, has just sold for £100 million. Our subscriptions have more than doubled. But in a very real sense, I know this was not my achievement. When making handover notes for my successor, Michael Gove, I’ve tried to explain how we got here and the system we created. In the past 20 years the job of editor has changed, utterly.
No editor of The Spectator needs to worry about political direction. The magazine knows its own mind and always has done. Our boardroom in 22 Old Queen Street has back issues going back to 1828. You can take any issue out at random and see the radical-liberal principles at work in the battles we fought: for political reform, free speech and free trade. We backed decriminalisation of homosexuality a decade before it happened. Our allegiance is not to any political tribe but to elegance of expression, independence of opinion and originality of thought.
And to art and humour. I suspect I’ll look back on my editorship as the period that overlapped with the work of Morten Morland, our cover artist and – for my money – the greatest illustrator this country has seen since Gillray. His cover illustrations literally paper the walls of our main editorial office, giving a more eloquent account of our times than any history book could. Cabinet members would beg me to commission a ‘good’ Morland of them (we never did). He saw through them and they knew it.
When The Spectator succumbs to tribalist temptation, it is most at risk. We were the only weekly to back Brexit (as it wasn’t then called) in the 1975 referendum. At the time, the magazine never shut up about that and it fell into the snare of trying to give ‘thought leadership to the right’. Alexander Chancellor saved the magazine by almost entirely reconstructing it. My first act as editor was to have lunch with him and ask him how he did it. He told me that he saw it as a restoration, not a reinvention, and pointed me to the original Spectator of 1711.
I immersed myself in the Addison and Steele project, to try to understand why reprints of these essays were read in every educated home for generations, doing so much to shape English language and culture. Chancellor’s advice was to make sure the DNA of the 1711 Spectator was applied to everything new we engaged in, and that everyone who joined The Spectator understood what the magazine is and isn’t about.
Curating this culture is the editor’s job. Charles Moore worked under Chancellor and puts much of his success down to making the office ‘an extraordinarily happy atmosphere in which to work and – so – a paper that people enjoyed writing for’; the result was that ‘people enjoyed reading it’. It would have been fatal to move us to a soulless office block. Having a Spectator home – whether in Gower Street, Doughty Street or Old Queen Street – has been fundamental to our success.
As has our possession of a large wine fridge. While some newspapers put a zero-alcohol policy in place, we put a notice on our fridge asking staff to make sure that two bottles of Pol Roger were chilling at all times. My office has a well-stocked whisky cabinet and I judged our general success by the speed with which that whisky mysteriously evaporated. An article about us in the New York Times had a quote that summed things up well: ‘It’s a very serious professional operation pretending to be a bunch of champagne dilettantes.’
In adapting to changing technology, The Spectator, a 196-year-old magazine, developed the culture of a start-up. With the introduction of blogs, podcasts, videos, newsletters, events and all else, we were able to bring The Spectator to people not in the habit of reading magazines.
The editor is responsible and accountable for every word, dot and comma that is published under The Spectator’s masthead – rightly so. I’ve been interviewed by the police and even ended up in a courtroom over Rod Liddle’s magnificent column. And I noticed that the truer his articles are, the more trouble they cause. Also: only real villains sue. I once published an article that confused a blameless accountant with a jihadi of the same name, accusing him of leading a double life. The gentleman in question settled for a simple apology and didn’t demand a penny of damages. This episode is included in ‘Fraser’s Greatest Mistakes’, a training manual for new staff.
Every editor has a different style. I loathe working from home, hate bank holidays and think the tangential conversations are the most important. Boris Johnson was less guilty of presenteeism. He embodied the magazine’s Merrie England vibe, and was a huge success.
But editors need to be ready for tussles and know why they’re worth fighting. Readers will have, in Michael Gove, an editor who fundamentally understands and loves The Spectator’s character and is ready to fight for it. In this strangely censorious age, the magazine needs that perhaps most of all.
Keir Starmer’s dysfunctional Downing Street
By rights, the Conservative party conference in Birmingham ought to have been a funereal affair. It was the first time the party had gathered after its worst-ever election defeat and the number of former MPs rivalled the number of current ones. And yet the mood was surprisingly upbeat. ‘Opposition is so freeing,’ said one MP at the bar in the early hours. ‘It’s like being drunk at the wake after the funeral,’ remarked one Tory strategist.
It’s not that the party conference revealed a breakout star in the leadership contest (‘We’ll be doing this again in two years,’ predicts one unimpressed MP). Instead, Tories are looking at Labour’s misfortunes. Three months ago, they expected to be out of power for at least ten years; now they think the Keir Starmer project is imploding upon launch. This partly explains why there were so many former Tory MPs at conference – some expect that there will be lots of winnable by-elections over the next few years and are already preening themselves.
The Tories recognise the signs of political death, and they believe it’s already started to hang over Labour
The new Prime Minister has not yet reached 100 days, but his problems are piling up. He’s had to face a revolt from the left over his cut to the winter fuel payment, Rosie Duffield quitting the party over his ‘staggering hypocrisy’ regarding freebies and reports of infighting in Downing Street between his chief of staff Sue Gray and senior Labour figures. As the former MP Penny Mordaunt put it in Birmingham: ‘In a mere 12 weeks he has brought doubt to our economy, fear to our elderly, a touch of the Imelda Marcos to the office of prime minister and sausage memes to our timelines.’
Voters do not seem particularly impressed. Starmer’s approval ratings have plunged at a speed that would have alarmed Liz Truss. A poll this week found voters are now more likely to say they preferred the previous government led by Rishi Sunak to the current one led by Starmer. While the Downing Street and Treasury line is that it’s good to make tough decisions early on, others in government are starting to worry that unpopularity cannot be shrugged off as a strategic decision.
The Tories look at all this with a feeling of familiarity. Over the past few years, there has been plenty of psychodrama in government. They know how the story usually ends. Aides who become the news story, as Gray has done, tend not to last very long – look at Dominic Cummings under Boris Johnson or Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill under Theresa May. All were booted out of Downing Street long before their bosses were. The Tories recognise the signs of political death, and they believe it has already started to hang over Labour benches.
They also know dysfunction in No. 10 is contagious across Whitehall, which is a growing concern of ministers and aides. ‘No one thinks it is working,’ says a Labour figure of the set-up of Starmer’s team. ‘There is a total lack of direction.’ Before the election there were reports of a rift between Gray and Starmer’s lead strategist Morgan McSweeney, but now the problems are believed to be more widespread.
Hostile briefings about Gray, including the unauthorised disclosure that she earns more money than Starmer, make it harder for her to operate effectively. She was notably absent from Labour conference (officially she was focusing on preparations for the UN summit). There are repeated rumours she could eventually end up being shuffled off into the Lords, but the general line is Starmer will stick by her even if some in the party think the situation is unsustainable. ‘Sue does need to go,’ says a government aide.
While Gray has got on the wrong side of many special advisers – many of whom are in an ongoing dispute over their proposed pay – she still has supporters. The Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham attempted to organise a letter signed by various metro mayors asking Starmer to get behind her and put an end to the hostile briefings. But few of his fellow mayors were interested. ‘I didn’t think it was our business – it would mean taking sides,’ says one.
The idea was that Gray would be in charge of the running of government and McSweeney would lead the political direction. Now the concern is that the operation is not sufficiently joined up and that there is very little clear political direction. ‘There is no narrative,’ complains a party figure. ‘It’s all quite disjointed.’ There are already calls for more staff to join the building.
A key appointment will be cabinet secretary, the head of the civil service. Simon Case confirmed this week that he will leave by the end of the year after treatment for a ‘neurological condition’. This offers Starmer a chance to look again at his set-up. Some in Labour have accused Case’s allies of being behind recent negative briefings.
A new cabinet secretary, starting in January, may arrive with a new national security adviser. The feeling in Downing Street is that at least one of the roles must go to a woman. Olly Robbins – who negotiated May’s Brexit deal – was initially considered the frontrunner for cabinet secretary. However, he is seen as an ally of Gray which worries those in the building who already think she holds too much sway. But Robbins could also be considered for the security brief. His current role is at Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence group.
Two civil servants running Whitehall departments are also being discussed for the top job: Tamara Finkelstein of Defra and Antonia Romeo in Justice. ‘Tamara is great, but this lot are tribal and I can’t see it going to a Finkelstein,’ says one recent departee of Downing Street. (Her brother Daniel is a Tory peer and Times columnist.) The other name to watch is Minouche Shafik, the former president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics.
It’s striking to see even civil service appointments being discussed on grounds of suspected political allegiance rather than competence. Who Starmer picks will reveal which side of No. 10 has his ear. It will also show whether he can move on from his difficult start or whether the current malaise will become a long-term dysfunction in Downing Street.
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Bring back the stiffy!
The other day, clearing out boxes, I stumbled on a sheaf of invitations from childhood. Decorated with trains and fairies, they are very similar to those my children still (just about) receive today, except there’s usually a Thelwell pony instead of Elsa from Frozen. The handwritten addresses, the names of the houses and streets (Bluebell Cottage, Leeward Road) plunged me back to 1980s Sussex, sunlit gardens and pass the parcel (where only the winner got a prize, unlike now, when a Haribo lurks in every layer).
It was a ritual. There was the pleasure of choosing the invitations (‘Darling, we had spaceships last year’), the thrill of doling them out and the tension of waiting for the RSVPs. It was also, though I knew it not at the time, social preparation. In my final year at prep school, the headmaster issued us with a formal invitation to drinks. We had to respond properly, or we could not attend. Cue little boys scribbling variations on ‘I delightedly accept your wondrous invitation’. We were demurred. The answer, of course, was to use the third person. ‘Philip Womack thanks…’ We were allowed to go to the party anyway. We also learned our lesson. A creamy, thick, engraved and gilded card: who would go to the trouble now? On my mantelpiece sit a brace: to dinner at a livery company, and to a wedding. They are lonely. I wonder if I will have to leave them there, after the dates have passed. A faux pas, I know, but what can you do? An invitation to a garden party at Buckingham Palace stood in situ for several years, until eventually even I had to agree it was time to put it away. Perhaps we can extend the rule to a month afterwards, given their scarcity.
Some may balk at using the word ‘invite’, though Bishop Cranmer would disagree. I admit to printing out an evite (etymologically, the ‘e’ points to the opposite of ‘invite’: an ‘outvite’) from the Archbishop of Canterbury, so I could rest it casually against the photographs. What else are mantelpieces for? You can chart lives by invitations. At university they requested us to twenty-firsts, to drinks parties, to balls, with that wonderful injunction: carriages at midnight. One dining club sent cards in the shape of a skull. It’s hard now to remember why we all yearned for one, a memento mori if ever there was; but yearn we did.
The physical invitations fluttered in throughout my twenties: book launches, At Homes, engagements, weddings, each offering anticipation (who’ll be there?) and anxiety (will I embarrass myself?), delights and, more often than not, hungover drives down the M4, not, usually, in a carriage.
Your standard invitation now creeps in, harum-scarum among your emails, between an offer for discounted earplugs on Amazon and a Substack you’ve forgotten you’d subscribed to. What’s more, they have a habit of diminishing into the ether. You try searching for one on your way to a party. The saddest thing about this electronic trend is that communal activities become surreptitious. Children’s parties are organised by WhatsApp, which excludes the child. And so, to hosts everywhere (and no sniggering please): Philip Womack requests – no, demands – the pleasure. Bring back the stiffy!
The joy of tarte Tatin
When it comes to traditional recipes, there are few things we love more than an unlikely origin story, ideally one born out of clumsiness or forgetfulness. The bigger the kitchen pratfall, the more delicious the product. Setting pancakes on fire? Accidental crêpe Suzette! Nothing in the restaurant apart from lettuce and some pantry ingredients? The Caesar salad is born! Muck up a cake you’ve made hundreds of times and end up with a squidgy mess? The St Louis gooey butter cake is even more popular than the original recipe!
There are few bungling origin stories neater than that of the tarte Tatin
But there are few bungling origin stories neater than that of tarte Tatin, the upside-down caramelised apple tart. In the 1880s the Tatin sisters – Caroline and Stéphanie – ran the Hôtel Tatin in the Loire Valley. The story goes that while preparing a classic apple pie, Stéphanie got distracted and left the apples cooking in the butter and sugar. By the time she realised, the apples were irreparably caramelised, so in a moment of panic she threw some pastry on top of them, put the whole thing in the oven and then served the result to the unsuspecting guests – who loved it.
While there may be some truth (and an enormous amount of good luck) in the Tatin tale, it doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Larousse Gastronomique, the culinary encyclopaedia, is clear: upside-down tarts made with apples or pears are an ancient speciality of the central Loire region, and Antonin Carême, celebrity chef of his time, references ‘gâteaux renversés’ with glazed apples in his 1841 cookbook.
It’s not really surprising that the tarte Tatin, or something very like it, existed long before the Tatin sisters lent it their name. Apples, caramel and a crisp pastry blanket is a combination so simple and so far beyond its individual parts that it is hard to imagine a time before it existed.
The apples themselves need to be eating apples, as opposed to Bramley or ‘cooking’ apples which will quickly break down into an apple sauce when heated. A good Braeburn or Cox, on the other hand, will absorb the caramel and become bronzed and tender but, crucially, retain its shape. When you make tarte Tatin you need to nestle the apple halves as close to one another as possible, so that as they cook they soften into an even layer.
There is among the French a surprisingly laissez-faire approach to the pastry – a Gallic shrug when confronted over whether it should be shortcrust or puff. Both are good, but they create distinctly different tarts. For tarte Tatin I prefer puff pastry – the all-butter stuff if I can find it – as the crisp layers are the ideal contrast to the cooked apples, and I find it’s a little less likely to fall apart when laid on top of the fruit.
Here’s how I do it: I make a wet caramel by heating together sugar and water until they turn a dark amber. Into that I whisk in lots of salted butter and just a little bit of vanilla, before tightly placing halved, peeled apples into the caramel and cooking them for half an hour, which gives them a chance to soften slowly and soak up the smoky, bittersweet flavours of the caramel. Then I lay a disc of freezer-cold puff pastry on top, and let it relax on to the apples, before tucking the edges around them, and cook the tart for 45 minutes. Finally, I let it sit for an hour (Raymond Blanc suggests you place the tart near an open window, but I’ve watched enough cartoons to know that this is a surefire way to entice animal characters with little self-control) before turning it out from the pan. This is just enough time for the caramel to cool and thicken, but not long enough for it to harden and glue the tart to the pan.
A person’s preference of cream, custard or ice cream is a sacred thing and should never be infringed upon – especially if, like my grandfather, you favour a combination of all three, whatever the pudding. But I do think that a ball of really great vanilla ice cream is the ideal companion to a slice of tarte Tatin, pale and cool against the glossy, plump fruit and hot caramel.
Serves 6
Takes 20 mins
Cooks 1.5 hours
- 300g puff pastry
- 100g sugar
- 50ml water
- 60g salted butter, cubed
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 6 eating apples (Braeburn or Cox), peeled, cored and halved
- 25g butter, melted
- 2 tbsp sugar
- First, roll out the pastry to the thickness of a pound coin on a lightly floured surface. Cut it into a circle the size of a dinner plate, place on a baking sheet, prick all over with a fork and freeze while you continue with the rest of the recipe.
- Place the sugar and water in a 20cm pan that can be used both on the hob and in the oven. Cook over a medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture darkens; resist the urge to stir. Take the liquid caramel to a dark amber; remove from the heat just as it begins to smoke, and whisk in the butter and vanilla paste.
- Heat the oven to 160°C (fan). Place the apples in the caramel with the flat side facing up, arranging them snugly so there are as few gaps as possible; I cut my final apple into quarters or even eighths, and squeeze it in between the other halves. Brush the top of the apples with the melted butter and two tablespoons of sugar. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven.
- Take the pastry out of the freezer and place it on top of the pan of fruit. It will defrost and wilt quickly, allowing you to tuck the edges inside the pan. Prick five holes in the pastry, then return the pan to the oven for 45 minutes, until the pastry is golden.
- Leave to cool for an hour before running a knife around the edge of the pan, then placing a dinner plate over it and inverting confidently. The tarte should drop on to the plate.