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Has the cruise industry recovered from the pandemic?
1968 again
An incumbent who drops out of the race for re-election and a candidate who gets shot; this year’s US presidential election bears similarities to that of 1968. Lyndon Johnson had won the 1964 election by a landslide and was expected to win another term. But in April 1968 he withdrew from the race, under pressure over the Vietnam war and his own failing health. Vice president Hubert Humphrey was immediately touted as Johnson’s successor, although Robert Kennedy put up a strong showing in the primaries before being shot soon after winning the nomination for California. He died a day later. Less remembered about the 1968 election is how close Ronald Reagan came to being the Republican nominee – 12 years before he eventually succeeded.
Bruising for cruising
There were protests in Majorca and Alaska against cruise ships. Has the cruise industry recovered from the pandemic? Number of passengers originating on each continent:
2019 / 2023
North America 15.4m / 18.1m
Europe 7.7m / 8.2m
Asia 3.7m / 2.3m
Australia 1.3m / 1.3m
South America 935,000 / 996,000
Global 29.7m / 31.7m
Source: Cruise Lines International Association
Crops up
Is climate change damaging global crop yields? Average yields of staple crops in tons per hectare:
1992 / 2022
Corn (maize) 3.91 / 5.72
Potato 14.98 / 21.07
Rice 3.59 / 4.70
Rye 2.01 / 3.27
Sorghum 1.53 / 1.41
Soy bean 2.03 / 2.61
Wheat 2.53 / 3.69
Source: Food and Agriculture Organisation
Excluded club
Where in England are pupils most or least likely to get excluded from school? Suspension rate per 100 pupils in 2022/23:
Most
Redcar and Cleveland 32.79
Middlesbrough 28.18
Doncaster 24.21
Stoke on Trent 21.40
Barnsley 20.85
Least
City of London 0.37
Isles of Scilly 0.38
Kingston-upon-Thames 1.73
Barking and Dagenham 2.67
Tower Hamlets 2.71
Source: Department for Education
A visit to the world’s worst capital city
Nouakchott in Mauritania is often referred to as the ‘worst capital city in the world’. That may be a little harsh, but it is difficult to recommend it to Spectator readers as a must-visit destination. The heat is savage, the poverty endemic, corruption is off the scale and this west African country is one of the last on Earth where you can still find hereditary slavery. Which is why I’m here. Troubles begin on arrival. A succession of three police officers grill me in the airport. Why have I come to Nouakchott, who am I working for, who am I planning to meet, why, what are their telephone numbers, what am I going to talk to them about, where am I staying? They are flummoxed by the word ‘historian’. It’s best not to say I’ve come to research a final chapter for a history of slavery in the Islamic world. Governments here routinely deny slavery still exists and persecute and imprison those who take a stand against it.
One of those regularly harassed is Biram Dah Abeid, a charismatic anti-slavery campaigner who for several years has been a thorn in the government’s side. ‘I’ve been imprisoned five times,’ he tells me – once for protesting against a court’s decision to drop charges against a man who had raped his 15-year-old slave girl. In an illustration of justice à la Mauritanienne, the pregnant girl was later charged with having sex outside marriage, a crime under the prevailing sharia law.
Habi Rabah is waiting for us in her tiny breeze-block and corrugated metal home on the city’s margins. Here, in a sweltering no man’s land of plastic rubbish and the odd stinking donkey carcass, the drifts of sand are so deep you can’t even get a four-wheel-drive through. Enslaved as a child, Habi was raped and regularly beaten by her master and owner from the age of nine. Looking after the goats in the desert all day, she returned home exhausted to take care of the family’s children. In 2008, she was liberated by Biram Dah Abeid’s anti-slavery organisation and has never looked back. She has even run for parliament twice, so far unsuccessfully. ‘I came to realise I hadn’t been living before,’ she says. ‘For the first time I started to taste life. Before that I was just an object. I didn’t exist as a human being. Now, praise God, I am free.’
Next up, a quick stop off in Kyiv to launch Sirens of Hope, a book which pays tribute to the Ukrainian medics of MOAS, a remarkable charity which has saved 45,000 lives and counting on the medical front line. Last summer,
Lieutenant Oleksandr ‘Biker’ Voznyi was commanding a platoon during an attack near Zaporizhzhia. A shell exploded two metres away from him, shredding his lungs, spine and limbs. After he lost large quantities of blood and suffered seven cardiac arrests, his comrades were sure he wasn’t going to make it. But Stanislav and Volodymyr, the MOAS medics, reckoned he had a chance. They performed desperate CPR on him for 25 miles. Today he’s on the mend, undergoing intensive rehabilitation therapy and determined to rejoin his unit on the front line. When he is introduced on stage for the first time to the men who saved his life, he is in tears, his wife is in tears, we are all in tears. ‘Every life saved keeps Ukraine in the fight,’ he says. Readers who wish to support this extraordinary, life-saving charity can find out more at moas.eu.
I’m in love with my Italian publishers. After toiling away in Nouakchott and Kyiv, an invitation to speak about Herodotus in Rome, Sienna and Calabria is a no-brainer. Edizioni Settecolori usually publish dead writers in translation: Ernst Jünger, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Wilfred Thesiger and many more. I’m the first warm body. Within a couple of days, Manuel Grillo, my recklessly generous publisher, has already spent more on entertaining my wife and me than on purchasing the book. Six days pass in a whirlwind of heavily lubricated lunches and dinners, a high point of which is ’U Morzeddhu Catanzarisa, a mind-blowing veal offal speciality of Catanzaro. Manuel and his colleague Stenio Solinas, a man of letters with a natty line in tailored linen shirts with collars in a 1930s Italian Riviera style, even drive us halfway across Calabria to visit the spectacular Riace bronzes, full-size statues of naked bearded warriors from around 450 bc. These embarrassing levels of Italian hospitality remind me of a line from Thesiger’s Arabian Sands: ‘I have wondered sadly what Arabs brought up in this tradition have thought when they visited England and I have hoped that they realised that we are as unfriendly to each other as we must appear to be to them.’
Many years ago, while writing a book about Herodotus, I imagined the Persian king Darius the Great’s wife Atossa giving her husband oral sex. The suggestion, hinted at by the Greek historian, was that she was stiffening her husband’s resolve to invade Greece. The highlight of the evening in Certosa di Maggiano, a 14th-century Carthusian monastery turned hotel just outside Sienna’s city walls, is a riotous encounter with Professor Duccio Balestracci, an irrepressible historian who spends several minutes retelling the oral sex story. Wherever we go, national and local media feature the book events in a way difficult to imagine in Britain unless, perhaps, you’re J.K. Rowling. The joke goes down well. The headline in Corriere di Sienna: ‘Marozzi, Balestracci and Solinas enchanted the audience.’ I suddenly feel very Italian. Questa è la mia gente, these are my people!
Does Donald fear Kamala?
On Monday, Donald J. Trump sent out an urgent campaign memo. ‘Joe Biden just dropped out of the race, and now, his replacement has just been announced,’ it said. ‘It’s me!’
How typically Donald. If Trump were worried about the sudden replacement of Biden with Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, he’d never show it. He’s already busy pointing towards polls that suggest ‘Lyin’ Kamala’ is the least popular vice president in history. He’s calling her ‘Dumb as a rock’ and emphasising her abysmal performance as Biden’s ‘border tsar’. Trump’s campaign staff, meanwhile, are insisting that they knew all along Harris would at some point be the Democratic nominee and their attack lines are well-rehearsed.
Behind closed doors, Team Trump will not be quite so sanguine. Biden’s withdrawal has stripped the Republican party of its most powerful argument: that the Democratic Commander-in-Chief is far too decrepit to be given another four years in office. Harris is 19 years younger than Trump and we now see Democrats portraying Trump as the feeble old codger in the race.
The truth is, for three weeks after that now infamous debate which proved just how weak Biden had become, almost nothing went right for the Democrats. The unstoppable force of the Justice Department’s legal campaign against Trump ran into the immovable object of the Supreme Court. Trump was already ahead in the polls in all battleground states when an assassin’s bullet burst through his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. His defiant reaction to being shot made him look heroic. Then came a triumphant Republican Convention in Milwaukee and serious analysts started talking about a possible Trump landslide. Republicans boasted that their man could win in normally unassailable states such as Minnesota and Virginia.
Suddenly, however, Harris is the presumptive nominee and riding high on an avalanche of positive publicity. The latest polls already suggest she’s nudging ahead.
Susie Wiles, one of the Trump campaign’s most senior advisers, was recently asked what she feared most about the Biden campaign. ‘Institutional Democrats,’ she replied. What she meant is that, though the Democratic leadership is hugely flawed, the party is still a formidable machine.
Everyone knows that Harris is a long way from being the ideal candidate, but she has shaken up the contest and the speed with which congressional Democrats lined up behind her suggests the party is not as divided as the experts thought. The mega-donors, who had been abandoning Biden, are swarming back with their billions.
As next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago approaches, we’ll see a very well-funded operation go into overdrive. Democratic spokesmen will keep trotting out the already familiar talking points: Trump is a sexist; he can’t handle a smart female opponent. Trump is a criminal; he can’t handle Harris’s legal brain.
But Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and anyone who has seen Harris speak knows that her abilities are limited and any criticism isn’t necessarily racist or sexist. Trump still has a slight advantage over Harris among white women, according to polls.
Another Democratic argument is that Harris’s elevation has undermined Trump’s newly appointed vice-presidential nominee: J.D. Vance, the very conservative senator from Ohio. Harris is now widely expected to offset Vance’s ‘rust-belt’ appeal by picking a white governor from a swing state.
Overall, however, Republicans remain confident. They know that Harris’s record of playing identity politics doesn’t go down well with blue-collar voters. The Trump campaign will respond to the Democratic attacks by casting Harris as a darling of the ultra-rich ‘oligarchy’ against Trump, the people’s champion.
As Trump said, sitting in a golf cart the week before he was shot, Harris would be ‘better’ for his chances. ‘She’s so bad,’ he said. ‘She’s so pathetic.’ The Democrats hope that such arrogance will lead to his undoing. That could be their own hubris, however.
Lammy under fire for flight ‘hypocrisy’
Another day under a Labour government and – you guessed it – another U-turn. Now ministers are in the spotlight after it emerged that David Lammy used the government’s private plane to jet off to India today for international trade talks. The same private jet, Mr S would remind readers, that Sir Keir’s lefty lot bashed the Tories for using when they were in government. Rules for thee, but not for me…
When ex-prime minister Liz Truss dared to use the Airbus A321 plane to fly to Australia on official business, deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner could hardly contain her disdain. Slamming the then-Tory MP, Rayner remarked at the time: ‘Liz Truss shows the public exactly quite how little respect this Conservative government has for taxpayers’ money with her ridiculous waste of half a million pounds on a private jet trip. This government is brazen in its disregard for upholding decency.’ Crikey.
Truss wasn’t the only Tory to receive a telling off from the then-opposition over private planes. Former home secretaries James Cleverly, Suella Braverman and Priti Patel were criticised for their use of chartered flights – with Rachel Reeves even promising last year’s Labour conference that she would crack down on private jet use by ministers if her party got into government: ‘I will treat taxpayers’ money with the same respect that people treat their own money.’ That’s rather hard to believe when Lammy’s flight is expected to cost the taxpayer approximately £110,000 in fuel costs alone. And the Foreign Secretary isn’t the only guilty culprit, as Mr S pointed out last week. In fact, Starmer himself appears to have a penchant for private planes, despite his party’s supposed stance on the matter. They do say power corrupts…
Cleverly took to Twitter this afternoon to make a point about Lammy’s jet-setting, writing: ‘I’m not going to criticise David Lammy for using the government plane. The Foreign Secretary must be able to travel directly, flexibly and at short notice. But,’ he added, ‘the criticism of me from Labour when I flew on government business now reeks of hypocrisy.’ Indeed.
Keir Starmer will never have it so good at PMQs
Are we going to war? The first PMQs since the election was like a military briefing between the Tory chief and the new prime minister. Rishi Sunak, now opposition leader, began with a few standard noises about Ukraine’s need for more weapons. He urged Sir Keir Starmer to ask the Germans to send ‘long-range missiles’ in addition to those already pledged by the Americans and by us. To strike where, exactly?
The rest of the session was a doddle for Sir Keir
Sunak then mentioned a fancy new jet-fighter and parroted a phrase from the armourer’s brochure. ‘A crucial sovereign jet capability,’ he called it. He added that Saudi Arabia ‘has a desire to join the programme.’ Labour politicians are usually shy of arming the Saudis but Sir Keir showed no signs of bashfulness. His chops were positively dripping at the prospect of pushing a few shiny new jet-fighters on the Saudi government.
‘This is a really important programme,’ he enthused, and he sounded upbeat about ‘initial discussions, not least at Farnborough where I was a few days ago.’
The briefing ended with references to an immediate attack. Sunak mentioned that the government has a right to ‘respond militarily’ without holding a vote in parliament. Strike first, discuss it later. That’s the policy. ‘The use of prerogative power is sometimes controversial but essential to ensure the safety and the security of the British people,’ said Sunak, and he pledged his full support, at any time. Sir Keir thanked him for this unconditional offer to help in some ill-defined future conflict. It was all very odd.
The rest of the session was a doddle for Sir Keir. ‘There’s a crisis everywhere,’ he said in response to MPs who begged for money or asked to be given the captaincy of an ‘emergency task-force’.
It got nasty between Labour and the SNP when Stephen Flynn brought up child benefits. Flynn urged Sir Keir to end the two-child cap which ‘forces children into poverty.’ Sir Keir snapped back that Flynn’s SNP has created an extra 30,000 child paupers in Scotland. Flynn was angrily seconded by Pete Wishart, an irascible ex-pop star who tried to topple the Labour government live on television. ‘The headlines are awful,’ he yelled, ‘the poverty campaigners are furious.’ He claimed that Labour’s honeymoon was ‘over before it’s begun.’
The Commons was full of backbenchers asking for the impossible. Mohammad Yasin, like a lot of Labour MPs, seems to have fallen victim to Pax Britannica syndrome. Does he think that Britain has the power to end any war, anywhere, at any time, by sending in a gunboat or two? Yasin effectively instructed Sir Keir to impose peace on the Middle East. And the PM agreed with this idea. He almost said ‘yes’ but not quite. His actual words were: ‘Under Labour this will be discussed.’
The same fudge was served to Bill Esterson who claims to have solved Britain’s energy crisis. His breakthrough, known as the Mersey Tidal Project, will create lots of fantastic jobs and provide limitless electricity at virtually no cost. Or so you might think from what was said in the Commons. Sir Keir said the tides of Liverpool might add a few volts of power to the grid. ‘We’ll look at them carefully,’ he equivocated.
A new Green MP, Adrian Ramsay, rhapsodised about the glories of nature and referred admiringly to the ‘16th Biodiversity COP’ in Cali, Colombia. (Easy to reach by bicycle or private jet). This gathering of long-haul aircraft in south America isn’t enough for the Green party which, according to Ramsay, wants Britain to host a ‘UN nature summit’ as well. Sir Keir slapped him down for opposing green projects in his own constituency. Poor chap. He looked outraged by this public rebuke.
Never again will Sir Keir will have it so easy.
The West must prepare for world war three
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating in no uncertain terms that world war three is possible. Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, who is also his country’s former top commander, has suggested that other countries can prepare by learning from what is happening in Ukraine. They certainly can. Better yet, by swiftly preparing their societies for a war like the one now raging in Ukraine, western countries can help prevent another world war.
Had institutions, companies and citizens not been so agile, Ukraine would be facing not just a brutal Russian invader but a collapsing society too
‘Is humanity ready to calmly accept the next war in terms of the scale of suffering? This time the Third World War? Free and democratic countries and their governments need to wake up and think about how to protect your citizens and their countries. We are ready to share all our knowledge’, Valery Zaluzhny told the Land Warfare Conference, held by the think tank, Rusi, earlier this week. Zaluzhny is, of course, not just Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK but also its former top commander: the general who led Ukraine’s efforts to push back the Russian invaders until he was dismissed in a power struggle earlier this year.
Until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western militaries had been training their Ukrainian counterparts to help Ukraine better repel Russia. When the invasion did came, Zaluzhny and his troops put this knowledge to good use – so good that Russia’s planned days-long ‘special military operation’ is still ongoing.
On the basis of logic, having launched one calamitous war of aggression should convince President Vladimir Putin that invasions are a bad idea. But Putin doesn’t operate on the basis of what we’d consider logic. Indeed, he may decide that invading another country serves his and Russia’s interests. World war three is no longer the impossibility it seemed even a few years ago. Britain must be ready for war in three years, General Sir Roly Walker, the UK’s new Chief of the General Staff, told the Land Warfare Conference: ‘It doesn’t matter how [the war in Ukraine] ends. I think Russia will emerge from it probably weaker objectively – or absolutely – but still very, very dangerous and wanting some form of retribution for what we have done to help Ukraine.’
The brutal invasion has given Ukrainian soldiers unparalleled battle expertise, not to mention experience in military logistics, the crucial art of getting soldiers and equipment to the right place at the right time. As Zaluzhny observed, today western armed forces can learn important lessons and insights from the very soldiers they themselves have been training.
Equally importantly, Ukraine has built extraordinary expertise in societal resilience. While countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland have well-functioning civil contingency agencies with broad mandates for emergency planning, two and a half years ago Ukraine found itself the victim of an invasion without a proper plan to keep civil society going. With Russia bombing their cities and marching into their towns, Ukrainians – institutions, companies, ordinary citizens – had to devise methods to make sure daily life didn’t collapse.
Since the invasion, Ukrainian Railways has performed miracles, keeping trains on the rails (and on time, too) and thus ensuring people and goods can be transported across the country. Schools have continued teaching children, including online and in makeshift locations like subway stations. In Kharkiv alone, local authorities have set up schools in five subway stations. Ordinary citizens have teamed up to look after vulnerable neighbours, care for animals left behind by fleeing compatriots and much else besides. (They even organise folk-dancing, theatre performances and ballet in bomb shelters.)
Ukraine’s private sector, for its part, has been tested in ways unimaginable even during Covid: ‘As the conflict escalated, two fundamental war challenges became clear: how to operate production or office facilities to ensure physical security of both people and equipment (cars, computers, and networks); and also how to reassure stakeholders, and particularly international suppliers, distributors and buyers, that the firms were still in existence and in operation,’ experts explain in a report published last September. The experts found that companies swiftly adapted to war. They introduced constant management update meetings, shifted production to safer countries and allowed remote work whenever possible. As a result, the Ukrainian economy has kept functioning.
Had institutions, companies and citizens not been so agile, Ukraine would be facing not just a brutal Russian invader but a collapsing society too, and that would have made the Russians’ task far easier. General Zaluzhny is right: Ukraine has invaluable defence lessons to share with the rest of us. Having strong military and civilian defence will not just be indispensable should world war three come: it could deter our adversaries too.
Why is theft so high?
Figures out today show a country with levels of surveyed crime still at historic lows (just a quarter of the 1995 peak) but with two big exceptions. Personal theft rose by 40 per cent compared with the year before, and shoplifting is at its highest level since records began in 2003. What’s going on?
‘These figures show the disgraceful dereliction of the last Tory government on law and order,’ said Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary. Is this fair?
Today’s figures show total crime at roughly half the level the Conservatives inherited from Labour in 2010. Incidents of theft from the person peaked at 708,000 in 2009 – and hit a low of 248,000 last year, according to today’s official survey. They rebounded to 347,000 last year, lower than any year that Cooper was in power. There’s the 40 per cent rise. The story is that crime has stayed near its historic low, with a significant blip. But let’s focus on one of the blips: street thefts of expensive personal items (watches, jewellery, phones).
I wrote about this for The Spectator last month. Watches seem to be one of the prize targets for Britain’s criminals, with tens of millions of pounds’ worth already stolen every year in the UK. In Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery district, dealers complain that police no longer pursue thieves and shoplifters. Today’s figures come from asking people if they have been victims of crime rather than looking at recorded crime – so it captures offences police don’t track down.
There is little to deter shoplifters today. Just 16 per cent are charged, around half the percentage charged in 2016. Meanwhile, jails are full and thieves either being released early or not sent to prison at all. The police are trying to switch tactics. They managed to end moped crime by letting officers ram those being driven by offenders, even if the driver wasn’t wearing a helmet (taking a helmet off had previously been a way of escaping). This year, undercover police with specialist knowledge of luxury watches have been used to bait thieves in central London.
Rising crime is a concern. But crime levels remain at generally historic lows, an achievement for which the Tories seem to have been able to take no credit at all.
There’s nothing ‘offensive’ about Prince Albert’s Memorial
The Prince Albert Memorial is the latest target of activists seeking to denigrate our past. The Memorial has stood in London’s Kensington Gardens for over 150 years as a moving tribute to Queen Victoria’s love for her husband. But now it has been branded ‘offensive’. Apparently, the sculptures at its base draw on ‘racial stereotypes’. Visitors were warned in a post – which has since been taken down – on the Royal Parks’ website that the memorial represents a ‘Victorian view of European supremacy’ which many today consider ‘problematic’. Really?
Royal Parks have chosen to hunt for remnants of Empire in order to condemn them
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced on her first days in office that the ‘era of culture wars is over’. Yet the divisive and politicised critique of our national history continues, led by a minority of activists with little regard for the views of the public. If Nandy really wishes to end the era of polarisation, she should step in to stop the long march of ideology through the institutions.
The Albert Memorial, like many of London’s historic monuments, is managed by the Royal Parks charity. They are tasked with conserving London’s eight Royal Parks, which remain the inheritance of the Crown, a job for which they are given around £10 million by the government. Royal Parks, which was formerly an agency of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), was reconstituted as a charity in 2017. In a curious arrangement, they act as a public corporation of DCMS with oversight and management of their appointments from the Culture Secretary. The Royal Parks Charity is expected to manage, protect and improve the parks in an exemplary and sustainable manner so that everyone, now and in the future, has the opportunity to enjoy their natural and historic environments. Yet it seems that, in this case, they have used the freedom their charitable status affords them to pursue a radical and contested approach to history.
In describing the Albert Memorial as an example of ‘British supremacy’, Royal Parks have chosen to hunt for remnants of Empire in order to condemn them, rather than focusing on their role as protectors of the parks of which they are stewards.
Since the summer protests of 2020, the custodians of British heritage have been repeatedly pressured to bend to the will of a small group of campaigners with no regard for the views of the public.
Responding to this corrosive pressure, last year the government published their ‘retain and explain’ guidance, informed by Policy Exchange’s paper, History Matters: Principles for Change, for custodians facing calls to remove, or otherwise denigrate, heritage assets.
The carefully developed ‘Retain and Explain’ government guidance sets clear standards for custodians who feel the need to remove or otherwise ‘explain’ the presence of a statue. Those wishing to make public comment on a statue are expected to present ‘a full and rigorous review of the historical evidence available’, including ‘peer assessment of the evidence and conclusions’. Did Royal Parks undertake any historical analysis before damning Albert? There certainly appears to be no reference to ‘peer assessment’ on the offending article about the memorial. Indeed, the comments on their website are given no specific attribution.
Rather than consider the Memorial as a product of the time which created it, they are condemning it precisely because it reflects a ‘Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today’. But why won’t Royal Parks laud the depiction of broken chains on the Memorial, an allusion to Albert’s role in abolishing slavery across the world?
What this story shows is that it is not enough for ministers to simply publish non-legally binding advice. Nandy should take direct action to hold Royal Parks accountable for their refusal to adhere to the government’s published instructions for managing contested artefacts.
If Royal Parks continue to disparage the historical assets in their care, then action must be taken. A new chair of the charity, Dame Mary Archer, takes office today. Nandy should make clear to Archer that the divisive and politicised curation of monuments will not be tolerated.
Even Royal Parks seem to recognise their mistake. The page on the website discussing ‘Albert in the Age of Empire’ has been removed, replaced by a link which states ‘you are not authorised to access this page’. A Royal Parks’ spokesperson told the BBC: ‘In light of recent feedback, we will review the online information we have provided to tell the story of the Albert Memorial.’
Nandy is not powerless. She can hold Royal Parks accountable. If the trustees of the charity refuse to preserve that which they’re tasked with protecting, then they can no longer be allowed to maintain such a precious piece of our national inheritance.
When activists seize control of history, the Culture Secretary represents our last line of defence. It is government inaction that has allowed our nation’s heritage assets to become so vulnerable to repeated denigration.
James Cleverly rules out Reform merger
James Cleverly, the first official Tory leadership contender, has today ruled out a merger with Reform if he becomes Tory leader in November. After announcing his candidacy in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, the shadow home secretary was quick to get across the airwaves today. Cleverly secured a prime slot on the Beeb’s Today programme, and it wasn’t long before the former cabinet minister was interrogated on the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
‘What do you do about Reform as a party, not just Nigel Farage, but Reform? You’re quite split, aren’t you?’ Justin Webb quizzed the former home secretary. Cleverly was having none of it. ‘The Conservative Party doesn’t do mergers,’ he replied robustly:
The simple truth is that we have got a series of principles. We believe in civil liberty, we believe in free enterprise, we believe in efficient but modest size of the state, lower taxes. Those are our principles. And what we need to do is we need to expand our base of support.
How interesting. Cleverly believes the Conservative party has to ‘present an offer of unity, security and prosperity’ if it wants to pull back disillusioned voters – but what does his party membership think? In a recent YouGov poll, Tory members were rather closely tied on the issue of a Reform merger. 47 per cent are in favour of joining with the Farage-founded right-wing group, with their opposition just outnumbering them by 1 per cent. Mr S wonders how many of Cleverly’s potential rivals agree with him on the matter – not least Suella Braverman who has found herself at the centre of rumours that she might even defect to Reform…
Listen to the clip here:
Sunak gives Starmer an easy ride at first PMQs
Another week, another Prime Minister’s Questions featuring Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak arguing across the Commons. Except, of course, the men had swapped sides, with Starmer taking his first session as prime minister, and they were – possibly for the first time ever – quite nice to each other. All the old grudge match lines had gone. There were plenty of references to how civil they were being to each other, plenty of ‘I’m glad to hear the prime minister’ and ‘I will reach out across this House’.
Sunak focused all his questions on Ukraine and international affairs, which made it much easier for the two men to be pleasant. The Leader of the Opposition had an opening joke about Team GB at the Olympics, saying: ‘I’m probably not the first person they want to hear advice from on how to win’. He then asked about the government’s support for Ukraine, and whether he would ‘continue to be responsive to Ukraine’s requests’. His second question elaborated on this, pressing Starmer on the use of long-range missiles against Russia. He slowly widened his points out to the Tempest fighter jet programme, asking ‘could the Prime Minister confirm that he will continue those initial positive conversations with Saudi Arabia, and he can be assured he will have our full support in doing so’.
His final question was the most interesting. It was about the importance of a prime minister using their prerogative power to take military action, sometimes without asking the Commons. He asked Starmer to agree with that: ‘I agree it’s essential and our security is the first duty of government.‘ He added: ‘As I mentioned to him last week, I will endeavour to ensure that we will proceed in the same way.’ The reason Sunak was asking this was that at one point Starmer had proposed enshrining in law the requirement for the Commons to approve military action. The Prime Minister didn’t go into enough detail on that in his answer, but it will be a flashpoint with his own party when one of these moments arises, which they always do during a premiership.
The session then became mildly more political. When Ed Davey asked his questions as leader of the third largest party, Starmer attracted some jeers and cheers when he claimed that the financial situation had turned out to be worse than expected when Labour came into government. When Davey asked about social care, Starmer replied that this is ‘not the only crisis’, and repeated his spiel about Tory failure. He then offered the kind of cross-party unity that MPs should run a million miles from, by hinting that he will indeed be setting up cross-party talks on social care reform, something that sounds lovely but which has repeatedly failed to deliver actual reform over the past few decades because the parties all have different first principles and will never really agree.
Stephen Flynn has been demoted from the leader of the third largest party, and had a self-deprecatory chuckle about the impact of the Labour victory on SNP numbers when he asked his question. He wanted to know about the two-child benefit cap, and Starmer offered a list of all the things the government was doing to drive down child poverty. Flynn’s colleague Pete Wishart followed this up a couple of minutes later, saying ‘the headlines are awful’, and asking whether ‘his honeymoon is over before it had even begun’. Starmer ridiculed him for losing so many colleagues in the election, and elicited a cheer when he said he was proud of the Scottish Labour MPs on the benches around him.
Starmer will be content with today’s PMQs, probably the easiest one he will ever have to face
There were a few questions from the Labour backbenches laying down a marker about key policies, but none of them were actively hostile. Nadia Whittome, one of the MPs who has expressed concerns about the cap but who did not rebel last night, asked about the government’s approach to transgender teenagers. Starmer said he would be proceeding sensitively, and would not be creating ideological dividing lines. Another Labour backbencher, Mohammad Yasin, pressed him on a ceasefire in Gaza, to which he replied that he and the Foreign Secretary had been clear that they wanted an immediate end to the fighting.
The Prime Minister continued to talk about Tory chaos, mentioning the problems in prisons, and telling newly-elected Reform MP Rupert Lowe that the Conservatives had ‘lost control of our borders’. Until the Conservatives have a swinging new leader, this session on a Wednesday lunchtime will be one of Starmer’s key opportunities for baking in the narrative that the Tories broke Britain.
Starmer will be content with today’s PMQs, probably the easiest one he will ever have to face. His party was enjoying the moment of cheering on a Labour prime minister, rather than sitting on the opposition benches. Anything else would have been extremely weird given the size of the majority Labour has won and given the number of Labour MPs who are delighted to be at PMQs for the first time. But questions will become more hostile soon. Given how much longer Sunak has left to slog away at his opposition job before the Conservatives pick a new leader, the chances are that the first hostility will come from behind Starmer, rather than opposite him.
The Charlotte Dujardin whipping video is a disaster for equestrian sports
With just three days to go until the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, the equestrian world went into meltdown last night. The first sign of any upset was a statement issued by Team GB equestrian star Charlotte Dujardin: ‘A video has emerged from four years ago which shows me making an error of judgement during a coaching session’, she wrote. As a result, Dujardin – who has won six Olympic medals – has withdrawn from all competitions, including the Paris games, until the FEI (International Federation for Equestrian Sports) complete their investigation.
The video shows Dujardin during a coaching session for a horse and rider, in which she repeatedly hits the animal on the back of the legs with a lunging whip. Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Dutch lawyer Stephan Wensing, who is acting for the whistleblower who shared the video, said the footage has been made public after the unnamed rider looked back on the incident and thought: ‘This is not OK, this is animal abuse.’
To call Charlotte Dujardin the ‘golden girl’ of dressage is a cliché, but an honest one. She has not just won Olympic medals, but, until last night, was in the running to become Britain’s most decorated female Olympian; any medal at all would have gained her that accolade. Coming from an ‘ordinary’ background and working her way through the levels with dressage trainer Carl Hester MBE (who is also on the Team GB Olympic squad for Paris) she was painted as the hugely talented face of British dressage: rising to the top through sheer hard work. Now what?
There is no denying that it is odd timing for this video to emerge just days before the Olympics. But bad timing or not, the video will do nothing for Charlotte Dujardin’s reputation, or for the equestrian community more widely. It is a disaster for Team GB, for Dujardin – and for all equestrian sports.
The video has been broadcast at a time when the use of animals, and horses specifically, is being increasingly questioned, both by protest groups like Animal Rising and, as a result, the general public. Horse racing has already been targeted by protestors, as seen at major events like the Grand National and the Epsom Derby. When horses bolt through central London, the question is now asked as to whether horses should be there at all – a question that has rarely been asked before. The importance of a ‘social licence’ to ride is now the buzzword; that is, ensuring that horse riding and equestrian sports are acceptable to society in general.
It is right that Dujardin should not compete at Paris while the investigation is ongoing, but, on the face of it, there is no reason why she could not return in a few years and still become Britain’s most decorated female Olympian. However, while this video is damaging for her reputation, it is just as bad news, not only for dressage but for all equestrian sports. People who want to question the ethics of using horses for sport will always be asking: what really goes on behind closed doors?
Why Xi is anxious about Biden stepping down
The Chinese Communist party is rarely shy about highlighting America’s chaotic politics. State media and the CCP’s growing army of bots enthusiastically prowl around western social media, inserting themselves in the most difficult of debates, seeking to sow distrust. So why the relative caution about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race?
In the run-up to Biden’s decision, Chinese media was full of reports on the near-assassination of Donald Trump and on Biden’s mounting political troubles, but less happy about calls for the President to withdraw. According to the China Digital Times, which monitors Chinese media, censors stepped in and removed a widely shared essay titled ‘Switch Candidates. Biden Cannot Beat Trump’, possibly because it was a veiled message to Xi Jinping. ‘The greatest contribution some men can make to their party, country, and people is to surrender power, exit the political stage, and head home to hug their grandchildren’, the essay began.
Last week, overseas Chinese dissident websites were spreading rumours that Xi had suffered a heart attack
It could well be that the CCP is still trying to calibrate its response to Biden’s withdrawal, but it does appear to have hit a raw nerve with China’s leaders. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that the ‘presidential election is an internal affair of the United States’. While the story has trended on Chinese social media, censors have been highly sensitive to terms such as ‘step down’ and ‘changing of the guard’ and any suggestion that they could apply to China’s supreme leader, who has effectively given himself a job for life.
In 2018, Xi altered the Chinese constitution, removing term limits to allow himself a third stint as leader. After the tyranny of Mao Zedong’s rule, Deng Xiaoping adopted a norm of 10 years (two five-year terms) for China’s top leader and a more collective form of leadership. Xi swept these aside. He is now 71 years old, ten years younger than Biden, but there is now no mechanism for a peaceful succession in China. Those who had been regarded as possible successors have been removed, usually under the guise of fighting corruption. Xi is now surrounded by yes-men.
Last week, overseas Chinese dissident websites were spreading rumours that Xi had suffered a heart attack or another serious health issue on account of his lack of visibility during a key five-yearly party meeting. There is no evidence for this, but it is testament to a febrile atmosphere and also helps explain the party’s tetchiness about discussions of the health of Joe Biden.
The timing is also awkward for Xi, as last week’s key meeting to inject new life into the ailing economy – the third plenum in party-speak – turned into something of a damp squib. The plenum was heavy on platitudes, but with few details of how the party plans to change an economic model that is no longer sustainable. The economic mood has become so dismal that the Ministry of State Security has declared that gloom is a foreign smear and that ‘false theories about “China’s deterioration” are being circulated to attack China’s unique socialist system’. The meeting committed itself to ‘high quality development’ and ‘innovation vitality’ to ‘comprehensibly deepen reform’ and achieve ‘national rejuvenation on all fronts’.
In reality, the Chinese economy is rudderless and unreformable – and Xi is the biggest obstacle to change. It is a CCP sacrament these days that China has nothing to learn from the West, but if Xi fails to re-boot the economy, expect to see more veiling references to the selflessness of one Joe Biden.
Liz Truss: Kamala Harris is not up to the job
She’s back! It was less than three weeks ago that Liz Truss lost her seat after suffering the biggest ever swing from Tory to Labour in a general election. But in true Truss style, she’s picked herself up and soldiered on, visiting the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin last week and doing the rounds with U.S broadcasters. In an interview with Fox which has now gone viral she was asked to comment on Kamala Harri’s merits – or lack thereof.
‘I think there have been some brilliant American women in politics but I don’t think Kamala Harris is one of them,’ Truss began, noting how failing to control immigration and inflation resulted in a major backlash against her own party. ‘Kamala Harris is going to change none of that,’ Truss said. ‘She’s been there the last four years. She’s responsible for those policies.’ The former Prime Minister, who left No. 10 after seven weeks in office, then turned her guns on the Democrats’ obsession with ‘identity politics’ for obscuring the selection process to replace Joe Biden:
What I hate is identity politics, We shouldn’t care if someone is an ethnic minority. We shouldn’t care if they are a woman.We should be caring about – can they do the job? And she has not proven she can do the job.
Come election day, Truss predicts the result will be ‘a landslide against the incumbent party because they have not delivered for the American people.’ Well, if anyone is an expert in landslides…
Has Keir Starmer just empowered the Labour rebels?
Keir Starmer has laid down a marker by suspending seven Labour MPs from the whip. The question is: What sort of marker? Will it benefit the Prime Minister in the long run? It is not normal to suspend the whip from an MP for rebelling on a non-confidence matter. The two-child benefit cap is also being retained out of fiscal necessity rather than because it is a key part of Starmer’s vision for the country. So it is an unusual matter to take such a hard line on.
The ones who were suspended were what most people would regard as the usual suspects
It used to be the case that removing the whip from an MP was the nuclear option, but this has changed in recent years. It has become an administrative measure when a member is under investigation, which brings parties more into line with companies and other organisations that suspend staff when allegations are made against them. When Boris Johnson stripped the whip from anti-Brexit Tory rebels in 2019, it was shock. Now, it has become more of a run-of-the-mill punishment.
Normally rebels end up getting parked on delegated legislation committees that start at 8.15 a.m. and refused requests for overseas travel that means they’ll miss votes: that’s the level of punishment MPs are used to for this kind of infraction. Still, it was made clear to the rebels ahead of the vote that they would lose the whip, so they knew what was coming. The threats were enough to stop a number of other rebels: it is hard to gauge what is an abstention and what is an absence due to other reasons (including illness), but not all Labour MPs voted last night. A number of those who didn’t have been sounding off today. Nadia Whittome has criticised the decision, while other less-obviously hard left MPs have said privately they think Starmer is storing up trouble.
The ones who were suspended were what most people would regard as the usual suspects. John McDonnell, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Apsana Begum, Imran Hussein, Zarah Sultana, Ian Byrne and Richard Burgon were never going to have a frontbench career under Starmer. They are all members of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. They are close to Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer is clearly sending a message to the left of his party that he’s not going to let them use even a big majority as an excuse to indulge in their own pet projects. That was a mistake made by the Labour whips back in 1997, where they largely let the hard left do as they pleased, merely calling them up to check that they’d be rebelling once again. The party ended up with a large rump of perma-rebels.
There will be other issues where it is harder to contain the rebellion to the obvious awkward squad. If the Tories were any good, they would be forcing these votes repeatedly. As it was, the official opposition merely tabled a plaintive amendment complaining that no one was acknowledging that the economy was improving when Labour took over, which will forever be remembered as the ‘shouldn’t have gone for an early election’ Rishi Sunak memorial motion.
At some point, Starmer will announce that he is scrapping the two-child cap. He has hinted that the child poverty taskforce chaired by Bridget Phillipson and Liz Kendall will examine this as an option. Even if the cap remains for that full period, when the reversal comes, those rebels will make the most of their martyr status and will claim that they were a part of the pressure that forced Starmer to change course. His disagreement with his party has always been about when, not if, he would drop the cap, and the stand-off with the rebels was about them trusting in his timings, or pushing for their own.
The left is not a diminished force in this Parliament, despite Starmer’s huge majority. The independent MPs and Greens add to their weight across the house. Shockat Adam, who unseated Jon Ashworth, gave his maiden speech yesterday and it was engaging and thoughtful: these new MPs are not daft and they are going to cause trouble for those sitting on the benches opposite. Many of those who did beat independent candidates know that they have a fight on their hands against the left in their constituencies, and will be as attuned to that as they are to goings on in the Commons. They don’t want to indulge the hard left. The question is whether the whipping decision last night has inadvertently done that anyway.
Hear Isabel’s analysis on today’s Coffee House Shots podcast:
Nandy changes her tune on the culture wars
Labour won the election on a campaign of change and its politicians certainly have a knack for, um, changing their minds. Sir Keir has made some fascinating U-turns over the years, and it now appears that Lisa Nandy has a taken a leaf out of his book – rather publicly changing her tune on the culture wars.
‘The era of culture wars is over,’ Nandy proclaimed in her first speech as Culture Secretary earlier this month. ‘For too long, for too many people, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves as a nation has not reflected them, their communities or their lives. This is how polarisation, division and isolation thrives.’ Wise words – but has the Culture Secretary heeded them herself?
Apparently not. It transpires that Nandy has, er, rather forcefully waded into the very same ‘culture wars’ she denounced only a fortnight ago. The last Conservative government supported a complete ban on trans people taking party in elite women’s sporting events – but Labour’s new Culture Secretary disagrees. Taking a rather controversial view, Nandy has now said that trans athletes should be allowed to take part in women’s sports. Talk about jumping in at the deep end…
Speaking to The House magazine, Nandy defended her stance – saying that individual sports should be allowed to decide whether to allow trans people to take part:
I think that is the right approach. And I think we ought to respect the fact that they’re far more expert in making those judgments and decisions than we are.
Rather contradictorily, she went on:
But I think most have come to the conclusion that, although they want to be as inclusive as possible, biology does matter when it comes to sport, and that it’s impossible to balance the requirement of fairness without ensuring that they take biology into account.
Er, right. Not like the Labour party to be vague on specifics…
Starmer himself has been criticised for flip-flopping over the trans debate. One of his own MPs – women’s rights campaigner Rosie Duffield – was left rather unimpressed with Sir Keir’s election debate admission that his current position reflects ‘what Tony Blair said the other day, that a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina’, after he previously slammed Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix. ‘From now on, I shall be submitting my every comment and thought (particularly those mainstream views which most people agree with) to the former Labour Prime Minister so that it may officially be de-toxified,’ Duffield tweeted drily. Expect Nandy’s latest intervention to cause more trouble in paradise…
Starmer’s plan to deal with Labour’s hard left
There was a ripple of shock across the House of Commons on Tuesday night after Keir Starmer withdrew the whip from seven Labour MPs for backing an amendment on lifting the two-child benefit cap. Parliament’s new awkward squad includes some familiar faces of the Labour left, such as John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana. The cast list is such that it’s unlikely Keir Starmer’s inner circle will lose much sleep about these MPs being without the whip for six months. The bigger question is whether they will actually get it back.
The first rebellion of the Labour government was always seen as a key test
But while it’s the hard left who rebelled, concern over their treatment is more widespread. Labour MPs in the centre question the optics of punishing MPs over such an emotive issue as child poverty. There’s also simply the technical point that this was an amendment rather than a confidence vote – which usually such discipline would be reserved for. So, why did Starmer take such stern action over a relatively small rebellion?
As I reported last week in my politics column, the first rebellion of the Labour government was always seen as a key test – a message to the party on how Starmer would govern. As a senior Labour politician put it: ‘The number one aim for the first two years is to give nothing away to the left as it would be symbolic and we can’t afford it.’ That means Starmer’s team felt that letting even minor rebellious behaviour pass would encourage others to do the same. What’s more, the message on the two-child benefit cap had been clear in the election campaign – so MPs can’t say they weren’t warned.
The hope is that this sends a clear message to newbie MPs on how to behave, after several voiced unhappiness privately over the issue. Even before the punishment, most MPs chose not to rebel on the grounds that they expect Rachel Reeves to lift the cap in the autumn. There is a question as to how they respond if she doesn’t. But either way, the risk of the current whipping strategy is that it’s fine when only a tiny number of MPs rebel, and they are seen as the troublemakers. If a larger number of Labour MPs decide to make a point on an issue later down the line, it will be much harder for Starmer to apply this approach. Withdrawing the whip from 60 MPs is a lot trickier than seven.
Hear Katy’s analysis on today’s Coffee House Shots podcast:
A football chant is causing problems for Javier Milei
When the final whistle blew and Argentina’s players celebrated another Copa America triumph – the icing on the cake of a three-year spell of dominance in international football – few would have predicted that it would cause a rift to appear in government. But, just days and a racism scandal later, that is what appears to have happened.
Javier Milei is no stranger to diplomatic incidents. The libertarian ‘anarcho-capitalist’ has called Pope Francis an imbecile and Brazil’s president Lula a communist – but his vice president’s defence of (some) of the Argentina’s players’ use of a racist and homophobic football chant has proven to be beyond the pale.
Villarruel was also conspicuously absent from the signing of the ‘May pact’ earlier this month
The scandal began when Enzo Fernández, who also plays for Chelsea, posted a video on social media showing some of his teammates singing a song targeting the French team, which Argentina defeated in the 2022 World Cup final. The song includes racist comments relating to the African ancestry of some of the French players.
Condemnation ensued, including from some of Fernandez’s Chelsea teammates and the club itself which promised to discipline him. One person who did not join the condemnation, however, was Argentina’s Vice President Victoria Villarruel.
Argentina wouldn’t be threatened by a ‘colonialist country’, she posted; not least over a football chant which says ‘truths they don’t want to admit’. ‘Argentina, always hold your head high,’ she added.
Such combative comments have perhaps been a feature of Milei’s style of governance, but his spokesman has distanced the President from Villarruel’s statement, saying they are ‘unfortunate’. In a bid to heal a potential diplomatic maelstrom with France, his enforcer (and sister) Karina has been dispatched to salve any potential wounds of the French ambassador.
The incident has shone a light on the differences between Milei and his running mate, who was seen as crucial to building the voter base that led to his largely unexpected electoral success last November.
Villarruel is the daughter of a high-ranking member of the Argentine Army and commands the support of members of the conservative intelligentsia. She made her name as a lawyer running the Centre for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims, an NGO which fought for the rights of those allegedly killed by left-wing guerrillas during the country’s years of military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.
This period has become a political hot potato in the past 18 months. Previous governments and international human rights organisations have condemned the junta – which collapsed in 1983 – for its brutal killings of an estimated 30,000 people, hundreds of whom were reportedly thrown to their deaths from aeroplanes in notorious ‘death flight’.
Villarruel is part of a section of society, though, who describes the period as a justified ‘internal armed conflict’ against people she describes as ‘terrorists’. Both she and Milei were criticised during the campaign for casting doubt on the figure of 30,000 deaths, and during the election campaign she was criticised for holding a memorial for the ‘victims of terrorism’.
This latest disagreement could be seen as evidence of cracks beginning to form in the pair’s relationship. In March, Villarruel, in her official role, signed off on a 30 per cent pay rise for Argentine lawmakers as a response to the country’s rampant inflation. Milei, who campaigned on a promise to take on the political elite and tackle corruption, responded in a television interview that he disagreed with the increase given the levels of poverty in the country.
Villarruel was also conspicuously absent from the signing of the ‘May pact’ earlier this month, a significant victory for Milei in which regional leaders pledged to introduce his reforms. According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the reason given was flu, but she was attending a public event in support of the military only 12 hours later.
Milei only entered the political fray in 2021, having previously garnered followers with his outspoken economic views as a television pundit. His Liberty Advances party is new, and boasts just a handful of senators. While he holds a large mandate with the public given his comfortable victory in last year’s poll, his position in the legislature is relatively weak.
Given his ambitious plans to smash apart the country’s economic orthodoxy and drag it out of decades of inflation-induced malaise, he will need all the support he can get. Fights with his closest allies are something he needs to avoid.
Here’s how Israel can win
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was photographed on his flight to the US earlier this week next to a hat bearing the slogan ‘total victory.’ Those two words somewhat obscure reality: Israel is yet to fully outline what would constitute victory in the currently three-front war (against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen).
Netanyahu is hardly alone among politicians and statesmen in his preferring vagueness over specificity. Vagueness provides flexibility, and enables a variety of possible end states to be presented as an achievement. You do not have to subscribe to the view held by Netanyahu’s opponents, that the Prime Minister cares only about his own narrow political interest, to suspect that his lack of clarity is not accidental.
The combination of these three elements would together end the de facto Islamist sovereign area in Gaza
Nevertheless, an absence of clarity was one of the main factors which led to the disaster of 7 October. The failure to properly consider the nature and goals of the Islamist Hamas movement began the slide toward the complacency and over-confidence which left the border inadequately defended on that day. So here are some goals which together might constitute a clear strategy for Israel.
The objective of Israel’s war should be the eradication of Islamist rule in the Levant. As a result of decades of complacency, incuriosity and illusion, for which both the country’s political and the security leadership must share blame, Israel permitted the emergence and strengthening of two areas of Iran-supported de facto Islamist sovereignty on its borders: Hamas in Gaza to the south-west, and Lebanese Hezbollah to the north.
Iran, patron of both these zones of de facto Islamist rule, is currently a year or so away from the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. The regional contest with Tehran has a long way to run, and is set to form the Middle East component of a broader global contest. Iran’s success in assembling two Islamist armies on Israel’s borders represents a key strategic achievement for the mullahs, achieved by steady and patient work over the last three decades. The intention is to use these armies to slowly bleed Israel to death. If Iran goes nuclear, uprooting these entities will become impossible, without triggering a nuclear crisis. That’s why they must be uprooted now.
What does this mean in practice? In Gaza, an outcome to the present war which would include three elements would constitute victory: the destruction of the Hamas governing authority in the Gaza Strip (the movement is likely to remain, as in the West Bank, as a clandestine armed force, capable of occasional acts of terror), freedom of action for Israeli forces throughout the Strip, the establishment of a non-Israeli ruling authority holding civil control of the area.
The combination of these three elements would together end the de facto Islamist sovereign area in Gaza, which has constituted a launchpad for Iranian ambitions against Israel. Logically speaking, a war ending in anything less than the achievement of these three objectives should be judged a failure for Israel.
Should these goals be achieved in Gaza, focus would then turn to the second goal. In the extremely likely situation in which US and French diplomatic efforts to induce Hezbollah to withdraw from the border area fail, the choice available to Israel will be to acquiesce to Hezbollah (let it terrorise residents of Israel’s northern border communities at will), or to force the Shia Islamist group from the border.
Israeli action against Hezbollah will not necessarily swiftly follow the achievement of Israel’s aims in the south. Time will be needed for forces to rest and re-supply. Israel’s ability to respond to Hezbollah’s very-well-developed rocket and missile array will need to be developed. But the goal of Israel must be to remove the Iranian capacity to pressure Israel from the north, by the physical distancing of Hezbollah’s fighters from the border. This will probably include the establishment of a buffer zone north of the border. Further Hezbollah attempts to strike at Israel would then be deterred. The prospect of a repeat of 7 October on a larger scale from the north would disappear.
The achievement of Israel’s objectives to the south and north will not of course constitute victory over Iran in the regional struggle now under way. Indeed, the final decision in this regard is likely to come only with the downfall of the Tehran regime itself. Ending the threats from the immediate south and north, however, would constitute a vital step in ending Tehran’s forward march, which has been unimpeded over the last decade, and would begin the process of rolling back Iranian power. Clarity of vision on this subject is vital, and overdue.
What Elon Musk gets right about the plight of trans kids
Elon Musk is the richest person in the world but it’s clear that money can’t always buy happiness. The X/ Twitter owner spoke movingly of his family, in particular his eldest surviving child, during an emotional interview with Jordan Peterson. ‘My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus’, the father-of-12 lamented.
‘The people who have been promoting this should go to prison,’ said Musk
Musk claimed that he had been ‘tricked’ into allowing one of his children who transitioned from male to female to take puberty blockers after hearing that the child might otherwise be at risk from suicide.
The billionaire now appears to regret that decision bitterly and has vowed to ‘destroy the woke mind virus’. Whatever it’s called, the fantasy that human beings can be detached from the harsh reality of biological sex has taken root, especially among the liberal elites of California and elsewhere. Gender identity might be an unprovable and unfalsifiable idea, but it has been lapped up by politicians and policy makers who should have asked more questions and been far more sceptical.
After California became the first US state to bar schools from having to tell parents when children change their gender, Musk pledged to move the headquarters of both SpaceX and X from California to Texas. This is a man on a mission. But for Musk, and countless other families, the transgender phenomenon has been so much more than a curiosity on social media.
Gender identity ideology has the potential to tear countries apart; the impact on families, though, perhaps matters even more in some ways. Xavier is now know as ‘Vivian Jenna Wilson (the maternal surname) and, according to reports, no longer wishes to be related to Musk ‘in any way’.
“I was tricked into doing this… the people promoting this should go to prison.” @ElonMusk opens up to @JordanBPeterson about gender ideology’s impact on his son, Xavier. pic.twitter.com/1bdILGNdJE
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 22, 2024
Other parents might have taken a different approach to children who expressed a wish to change gender. Some will have said ‘no’ from the outset; some will have gone along with it somewhere on a spectrum between reluctance and enthusiasm. Most worryingly of all, a few might have made the decision for their child, perhaps to deal with their own distaste of gender non-conforming behaviour.
But whatever path parents and children go down. evidence is mounting that some young people have been the victims of a medical and social scandal facilitated by doctors and promoted by politicians.
In her review of paediatric gender identity services, Dr Hilary Cass was scathing of the approach taken by the Tavistock clinic, which was also known as the Gender and Identity Development Service (Gids):
‘The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown. … Clinicians are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity.’
Last week, Professor Louis Appleby – chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group – rejected the suicide myth, the idea that there had been a rise in suicide rates since puberty-blocking drugs were restricted at the Tavistock in 2020. Appleby concluded that the data does not support such claims and found that ‘the way this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide’.
My own experience as a transsexual who decided to make the change as an adult, has shown me that transition might be an answer to some issues – at least for those with the maturity to consent to the consequences. However, it is certainly not an elixir for every problem, and it leads to new challenges and difficulties in life. Unfortunately this has not always been made clear to children, and their parents, who were sold a dream that can never be realised, however much it was packaged up with rainbows and sparkles.
But for the parents who signed up to gender identity ideology, unfulfilled fantasy worlds will not end with a change of mind. The consequences of those decisions – halted development puberty, changed bodes and poor mental health – will be ongoing. For some it might be easier to maintain the fantasy than live with the knowledge of just what they did to their children. Like those Japanese soldiers who held out in the jungle long after 1945, their battle with the truth will not finish any time soon.
Ultimately, however, these parents were mere customers – and perhaps shouldn’t be blamed. For those who peddled the product, Musk was in no doubt, ‘the people who have been promoting this should go to prison’. When the lives of children are involved, that is what it might take to finally bring this scandal to an end.
Letting the worst universities collapse would be an act of kindness
Nobody said much about it before the election, but the new government inherits a ghastly financial problem with the higher education system. Rising costs, stagnant tuition fees, and a big drop in foreign student enrolments have left several universities tottering like ivory Jenga towers.
We probably have too many universities
This week we got an inkling of what education secretary Bridget Phillipson and higher education minister Jacqui Smith are thinking of doing about this mess. Not surprisingly, big money bail-outs are out (chancellor Rachel Reeves won’t allow them), as are increases in student fees (which backbenchers wouldn’t stand for). Instead, apart from telling the institutions in trouble to tighten their belts, the government seems rather short on solutions. One idea being mooted apparently envisages hinting that foreign students are more welcome than they were under the Tories, changing the rules to allow more courses to be given online, and leaning on some top institutions which are in less trouble to take over those on the brink. Unfortunately, none of these is likely to do much good.
Large-scale online teaching during covid quickly led to UK colleges being wryly dubbed the most expensive streaming services in the world. If institutions already in trouble try to repeat this without even the justificatory fig-leaf of a pandemic, not only will their teaching suffer badly, but their already dodgy reputation and marketability will dive further.
Any online shift would also sit rather ill with the government’s aim of attracting more foreign students to Britain. If such students are told that their already eye-watering foreign fees will now not even buy in-person teaching, who can blame them – or at least those who are any good – for looking elsewhere? It’s not as if there was a lack of competitors able to provide a good-quality English language education.
The idea of shotgun mergers between the prosperous and the troubled hardly bodes much better. It is not clear how well the management of a muscular research-led Russell Group institution would take to the incorporation of a division with large student numbers, much lower entry requirements and a preponderance of subjects like media or fashion studies. If that university was seriously loss-making, the betting is that funds would have to be diverted from the successful to the unsuccessful part of the business, something which is never a good sign.
There would be a distinct danger of inadvertently downgrading what was once a good university into a kind of second-rate academic British Leyland: too unwieldy to excel and, at the same time, too big to be allowed to fail.
The difficulty is this: the government dare not admit that Rishi Sunak was right when he said in May, one suspects with the quiet agreement of many Labour MPs, that we had too many graduates, and not enough apprentices or others with skills actually in demand. Yet if this assessment is correct – and it certainly seems so – the corollary is yet more uncomfortable: we probably also have too many universities.
In short, it would be no bad thing if some of the institutions at the bottom which cannot make ends meet were allowed to fold. By all means provide them with some short-term funding to allow existing students to finish their courses; but beyond that, Labour ministers must make it clear that after that the taps will be turned off, and they will be wound up unless they can find some other way of balancing the books.
This would undoubtedly raise howls of anguish, especially from those who cite the ever-increasing working-class desire for university study. But the arguments aren’t as strong as they look.
True, in a literal sense demand remains for places at all the 160-odd UK universities; even ex-polytechnics at the bottom of every academic league, with rock-bottom entry requirements, can end up over-subscribed. However, there must be doubt whether most of their students are fitted for, or even want, the kind of self-motivated study we associate with a college education.
We should also question whether the state should continue to subsidise those who go to university, not from any particular interest, but rather because they or their parents feel they must have a degree of some sort. Far better to spend the same money equipping them with more readily usable skills.
Vivienne Stern from Universities UK has pointed out that, in certain places, the local university is a sizeable employer whose demise would leave a big hole in the local economy. She’s right. However, there must be limits to preserving unprofitable and often second-rate institutions simply in order to palliate the employment figures and artificially support the local economy.
An innovative and far-sighted measure would be to accept a certain amount of creative destruction, even in higher education, and defund the institutions at the bottom. Unfortunately, that will not happen any time soon. However radical Labour might wish to be on matters like climate change, when it comes to higher education it is rather less confrontational. Labour, supported as it is by all too many university staff, is as much a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary as any retired brigadier. For the moment at least, we are therefore left with an administration that will neither finance its universities nor let them collapse, condemning them to getting ever shabbier, poorer and worse. Looking forward to Freshers’ Week, anyone?