Biden withdraws from the 2024 race

After weeks of pressure from Democratic party insiders, Joe Biden has finally said he won’t seek re-election. ‘I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term,’ he said in a one-page letter, offering his ‘full support and endorsement for Kamala [Harris] to be the nominee of our party this year’. So Biden and the Democratic establishment want quick coronation of the Vice President, not any serious contest at the Democrat convention in Chicago. ‘Democrats – it’s time to come together and beat Trump,’ Biden wrote at the end of his letter. ‘Let’s do this.’

Bill Clinton has endorsed Harris. Barack Obama has called for ‘an outstanding nominee to emerge’ and it’s said that Nancy Pelosi wants a mini-primary – but they’re also both understood to back Harris. Any contest, therefore, would likely be a tame one, designed to strengthen her position. Only one sitting vice president has been elected president since 1836. But that does not deter Harris, who has declared her intention to seek the nomination and – like Biden, emphasising the need for unity amongst Democrats. Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker, is pushing for Harris to take charge now. ‘If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately..’

It has been 56 years since Americans saw their presidential candidates change at such a late stage. But theThe only surprise, in the end, was that Biden’s decision took so long. Biden has become a shell of the man he once was. Voters knew it, and polls showed that they were not going to re-elect him. They also knew they had been lied to by the White House and by Biden’s political allies. The cumulative result was almost certain to cost Democrats not only the White House, but the House and Senate as well. Biden’s exit evoked the fate of that great cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote. His futile pursuit of the Road Runner usually ended with Wile E. running off a cliff but remaining suspended in mid-air until he looked down. When he finally looked, he began plummeting to the canyon floor, far below.

That is Joe Biden’s fate, ran off the cliff after his catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump. For weeks, Biden refused to look down. He wouldn’t look when his wife helped him walk down a few stairs after the debate. He wouldn’t look when Barack Obama had to guide him off the stage at George Clooney’s star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles. He wouldn’t look when major donors reported their shock at his frail appearance and began closing their cheque books. He wouldn’t look as he stumbled through recent interviews. He wouldn’t look as more elected officials began calling for him to end the race for reelection. The canyon was too far below. Better to try and stay suspended in mid-air.

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He had a little help, at least for a while. The major media was slow to abandon the candidate they had backed for so long. The day after the Clooney fundraiser, the Washington Post ran a rainbows-and-unicorns article about fine it all was. Nothing to see here; please move along. A month later, the same paper reported on the same event, saying, in effect, their earlier article didn’t give the full picture and that Biden was in bad shape. Of course, they never admitted their own shameful role in misleading their readers.

After the debate fiasco, the only way for Biden to get back on solid ground was to give extemporaneous interviews and avoid major mistakes. If he were successfully, he would prove he could still do the job.

Unfortunately, those interviews did not go well. He waited too long after the debate to begin them and then did too little to assuage voters’ concerns. He made grotesque errors (for instance, saying he was the first black vice president), and his team was caught handing softball questions to some radio stations. The best one could say about these interviews was ‘some weren’t so bad’.

Biden gave himself much higher grades and kept saying (to paraphrase), ‘I’m staying in this race, and I’m not changing my mind. My health is fine, the polls show a close race, and I’ve always been “the comeback kid”.’

Biden may have truly believed that, but party bigwigs did not. Not any longer. Their sober reassessment posed a terrible dilemma for them and their party because Biden alone controlled the decision whether to stay or go. He had won all the Democratic primaries because he was the incumbent and insiders had been too timid to endorse a serious challenger when it really mattered. The result was that Biden had more than enough convention delegates to win the nomination. He controlled the decision whether to stay in the race.

He clearly wanted to stay and said it time and time again, publicly and privately. Since Biden held all the cards, what pushed him out? A succession of grim, private conversations with the party’s leaders from the House and Senate and major Democratic fundraisers. Their voices carried weight because they had all supported him. Until now.

No more. They had read the polling results with a cold eye and listened to their beleaguered members, who feared Biden’s name at the top of the ticket would cost them their jobs. All of them concluded the presidential race was hopeless, even before Donald Trump emerged triumphant from an assassination attempt. The insiders’ verdict, echoed by their major donors and the media, was that Biden would cost Democrats the House and Senate. Staying in, they told him privately, would seal his historic image as the architect of disaster.

This message from elected leaders was reinforced by his most loyal fundraisers, who told him the money had dried up. Some was going to down-ballot races to avert disaster there. Some had dried up for those candidate, too. Every Democratic running in a purple district was petrified, and they were saying so to party leaders. It was those vulnerable who led the public calls for Biden to withdraw.

Yet these public calls were not Biden’s biggest problem. The numbers were growing, but they were still relatively small. The problem was the private calls. Those were harsh, and they could easily go public if Biden refused to budge. Their message was loud and clear: ‘Get out. Now.’

The same message was echoed in critical reports from the legacy media, long an integral part of the Democratic coalition. They had covered up for him for years. For the last two, at least, they had failed to meet their fundamental duty to tell the public about Biden’s cognitive and physical decline. Why did they fail? Because their partisan commitment to Democratic victory overrode their journalistic responsibility to tell the truth.

They couldn’t continue the cover-up after the debate. The voting public could finally see Biden’s decline for themselves. They could also see that the mainstream media had not been telling them the truth.

Now that the mainstream media had been caught out, they turned from lap dogs to attack dogs. They weren’t just trying to salvage their reputations. They were also trying to get Biden out of the race, just as other Democratic party insiders were.

Put another way, the media is part of the party machine. That was true when they were covering for Biden, and it was equally true after they turned on him. Their positions track those of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, both before and after the debate. They shouldn’t get credit for following like lemmings.

Once the media turned, the White House briefing room became a war zone. Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, deserved combat pay for conducting those briefings. The once-suppliant media no longer bought her basic message, ‘all is well’. How could they after the public had seen what Biden’s condition really was? KJP’s denials began to sound like those of Baghdad Bob.

The final blows came in a public-private combo attack by Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. Schiff, who is running for Senate in deep blue California, privately told donors Biden should get out. He knew that message would leak, and it did. Schiff then followed up by saying the same thing publicly. Informed observers knew he would never do that without backing from the most important Democrat in California, former speaker Nancy Pelosi. That connection and Schiff’s public statement sent a powerful message to Biden. So did reports that Pelosi had been working the phones trying to remove the president.

Pelosi followed up by saying the same thing privately to Biden. Her message: there’s no way you can win, and you will cost us the House and Senate. You will damage your own legacy.

The clearest signal that these calls were having an impact came when the Democratic party refused to hold an early, virtual meeting to hand Biden the nomination before the Chicago convention.

That refusal was stunning. A sitting president should be able to control his convention. When he could not, the message was blunt. ‘You don’t control the party any longer. True, you can decide to stay in the race, but you won’t have the party behind you. You won’t get any more money. No embattled candidates will stand beside you in public. You’re on your own.’ Biden could see that for himself when he held a (small) rally in Michigan, a crucial battleground state. He stood there alone. All the state’s top elected officials were too busy having their hair washed. None was willing to stand in the same crowd with Biden. Another message sent.

That Biden received this grim news was clear when he finally opened the door publicly to leaving the race. He made that concession when he said he would leave the race if his doctor told him ‘I had some medical condition that emerged.’ That’s not a high bar to clear. He already has those medical conditions.

With that concession, Joe Biden walked slowly, gingerly, stiffly off the same cliff as Wile E. Coyote. Worse, his erstwhile political allies kept yelling: ‘Please look down. Look down. Look down.’

When he finally did, he began plummeting toward the inevitable splat. His fall proves the deep truth of Enoch Powell’s observation that: ‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.’

That is how Joe Biden’s political life ends. In failure.

The scope of that failure is not confined to Biden. It envelopes his party for three reasons: they made the switch so late; Harris, is unpopular and perceived as incompetent, but it is nearly impossible to bypass her without destroying the Democratic coalition; and the party’s problems were never limited to Biden’s poor health. His policies were unpopular and unsuccessful, and those are true-blue Democratic policies.

These failing policies branded Joe and Kamala with a Scarlet A (for ‘Abysmal Failure’). But others were branded, too. Their policies are those of today’s Democratic party, and they will take the fall for them. The whole party backed an open border. They loved the huge spending programs that flooded the country with federal money after the covid crisis had passed, fuelling inflation.

Those failed policies are the anvil attached to all Democratic candidates as they follow Joe Biden and Wile E. Coyote off the cliff. They have looked down and know a huge splat is coming.

Labour won’t spend outside fiscal rules, says Reeves

Chancellor Reeves adamant she will ‘make sure the sums add up’

Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning in which she emphasised the ‘mess’ she says the Conservatives have left behind, and restated that Labour would not spend outside of its fiscal rules. Kuenssberg asked the Chancellor whether she would be prepared to ignore the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies, which have called for a public sector pay rise of 5.5 per cent. Reeves would not confirm the government’s position, but accepted that ‘there is a cost to not settling’ public sector pay disputes, implying she might be open to above-inflation pay increases.

What is Labour doing for the poorest in the country?

Kuenssberg reminded Reeves that she had often spoken about those who were ‘genuinely struggling to put food on the table’ in the election campaign, and pointed out that Labour isn’t yet doing anything to immediately help those people. Reeves claimed that the creation of GB Energy would bring energy bills down and that the new Employment Rights Bill would turn the minimum wage into a ‘real living wage’, and ban exploitative zero-hours contracts. Kuenssberg argued that those were long-term reforms and said that removing the two-child benefit cap would lift half a million children out of poverty. Reeves said doing so would cost £3 billion a year and that Labour would not commit to anything unless it knew where the money was coming from.

Hunt accuses Reeves of spin to lay the ground for tax rises

Shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt described Reeves’s depiction of Labour’s dire economic inheritance as ‘absolute nonsense’. He claimed that the situation the Conservatives faced after taking power in 2010 was worse, with inflation and unemployment almost double what it is now, as well as ‘markets collapsing’. He said Reeves should ‘be honest’ that she is setting the public up for tax rises. Kuenssberg pointed out that government debt is the highest it has been since 1962, unemployment has started to rise again and people have been feeling ‘terribly hard up’. Hunt referred again to the three massive economic shocks the Conservatives have had to contend with in recent years, and said that ‘despite those pressures, we grew faster than… many other similar countries’.

Ben Houchen: ‘really positive thing that (Labour) is doubling down on devolution’

On Sky News, Trevor Phillips spoke to Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, who is the only Conservative mayor in the country. Houchen spoke positively about Starmer’s decision to invite all the mayors to Downing Street in a show of support for devolution. Houchen said Starmer recognises that ‘mayors across the country are absolutely essential if he wants to achieve his growth goals’. He also mentioned that Starmer had invited him for a personal meeting – and said he had appreciated ‘that olive branch’.

Violinist Nicola Benedetti argues that creativity is vital for education

Kuenssberg also spoke to violinist and Edinburgh International Festival director Nicola Benedetti, who argued that music and expressive arts should be ‘part of a first-class education for everyone’. Benedetti said that we, as a society, should ask whether art is an important ‘civic pillar’ that needs to ‘prosper and grow’, and that she was excited to talk to ‘new characters’ in the changed political landscape. Benedetti argued that the imagination of young people was needed to overcome the problems of today. When Kuenssberg asked if that meant more money for education, Benedetti responded: ‘Absolutely.’

Will Labour give in to Sinn Féin’s demands?

It’s not often that Irish republican party Sinn Féin hosts events in London, but the group included the UK capital in its post-election victory lap this week. Five of its seven MPs gathered in a dimly-lit hall in Hammersmith’s Irish Cultural Centre on Tuesday as the room filled with jubilant supporters, with many a Guinness in hand. There is certainly cause for celebration in the party: Sinn Féin has achieved a ‘perfect hat-trick’, as Belfast West MP Paul Maskey described it, becoming the largest group in local government, the Stormont Assembly and now Northern Irish party in Westminster. Retaining all seven of its seats, Sinn Féin increased its vote share in the general election by four points to 27 per cent.

‘We really had a tremendous result and we’re really, really proud of that,’ Mid Ulster MP Cathal Mallaghan told the crowd, grinning: ‘There may have been a few people in here who could possibly have voted in the election through postal or proxy, but we’ll say nothing about that.’ It’s not just their own fortunes that Sinn Féin politicians lauded – despite Labour being a unionist party, there was a tangible excitement in the air that the Tories are out. South Down’s Chris Hazzard suggested that there is now ‘an opportunity with the new Labour administration’. New MP Pat Cullen was more scathing: ‘Nothing could be worse than what we had with the Tories.’ Indeed Sinn Féin’s leader Mary Lou McDonald and First Minister Michelle O’Neill met Sir Keir Starmer and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn just three days after the election. There, the case was made for more money for public services, the repealing of the Legacy Act – laid out in the King’s Speech on Wednesday – and ‘the need for immediate funding to be released’ for potential Euros 2028 site, Casement Park.

The project is a source of contention – and came under scrutiny this week when Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray was accused of ‘subverting’ cabinet in a bid to direct more funding towards it. Currently the Sinn Féin government, Ireland and the GAA have pledged less than a fifth of the projected £310 million needed. Sinn Féin hopes that the UK government will make a significant contribution. One Stormont insider divulged to the Times that Gray is ‘very close’ to the party’s finance minister Conor Murphy, while Maskey insisted on Tuesday that Benn ‘has promised that it is top of his to-do list at this particular stage’.

Despite hopes it would be mentioned in the King’s Speech, it wasn’t to be. Instead, negative briefings about Gray have not only brought her own connections to Ireland into the spotlight – the daughter of Irish parents, she ran a pub in County Down during the Troubles – but to the politics at play in the Casement Park project. Unionist groups are opposed to the revamp because they believe it will only be used for Gaelic football and hurling post-Euros while others are concerned about it being located in a republican area. That’s if it’s used at all for football – Sinn Féin politicians themselves are reticent to commit to a firm timeline, with Maskey admitting: ‘I have no doubt [it will be delivered]. Whether it’s done in time for the Euros, that’s a different question.’

While the party seems more upbeat about a Labour government there are challenges on the horizon. Namely, the issue of a referendum on the future of Ireland – which is at the top of Sinn Féin’s agenda. ‘We’re using the next five years to put as much pressure on the British government to call a border poll,’ Maskey insisted, as his new colleague Dáire Hughes made clear the importance of the Irish diaspora. ‘United Irish indy is an idea whose time has come,’ Hughes proclaimed. ‘All we have to do this time is convince people. You have to use every site of struggle available to you. Every staff canteen, every community centre, every pub, every restaurant.’ 

The Good Friday Agreement states that the Secretary of State should allow a border poll if there is majority support for a united Ireland. But what exactly a ‘majority’ is taken to mean isn’t quite clear – and there is frustration among London’s Irish community that Benn (whose name was consistently met with groans) hasn’t yet stated what Britain’s criteria for such a poll would look like. There’s time yet: Sinn Féin’s timeline is less immediate than that of the Scottish nationalists and instead has set 2030 as its target.

But issues in the Republic of Ireland complicate matters somewhat. Criticism of the South’s fee-paying health service cropped up, while one audience member pointed to an increasingly ‘anti-EU movement’ developing across the 26 counties. Certainly, the rise of the far right in Ireland is something the party has growing concerns about. Just last Monday, 15 people were charged after violence broke out during an anti-immigration protest in Dublin – with missiles lobbed at police and deliberate firemaking taking place in the village of Coolock. Sinn Féin sees itself as a progressive group but there are tensions within the party over its immigration stance – with grassroots activists leaning rightwards on the issue – and it has been suggested that the party could lose supporters to right-wing rivals. McDonald’s solution has been to explain away anti-migrant feeling as a symptom of failing public services, and her new MPs remained on message.

The republicans are determined to get down to delivery – and remain convinced that abstention will not hold them back. Facing down one sceptical audience member, Hazzard was clear: ‘We have a mandate not to take our seats, and that’s a mandate that’s been overwhelmingly endorsed in the last election. During the past 14 years of Tory misrule, it would have been personally very satisfying to stand up and roar. But you wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.’

Yet the party’s MPs insist Sinn Féin is fostering good cross-party relations, not just with Starmer but the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the SNP. While Labour harps on about its change agenda, the Irish group is determined to convince people it, too, has evolved. Hazzard insisted the popularity of First Minister O’Neill outweighed that of ex-SF president Gerry Adams – who ended up developing a close relationship with Labour’s Tony Blair – remarking: ‘It shows you the great positivity that there is around the Sinn Féin project.’ Using a softer rhetoric than past iterations of the party, Sinn Féin is beginning to offer a little more clarity on its vision for the future both within and outside of the United Kingdom. But with the Troubles a not-so-distant memory for many, the party has a long road ahead if it is to convince a UK government to help it radically overhaul the constitution.

Starmer facing rebellion over two-child benefit cap

Uh oh. While Sir Keir Starmer’s popularity has had a post-election bounce (with an approval rating now at 19 per cent compared to -1 before the Labour win) not everything is looking rosy for the new Prime Minister. Splits over certain policy stances are beginning to emerge and the two-child benefit cap is taking centre stage.

Rosie Duffield is one of the latest Labour MPs to hit out at the scheme – blasting it as ‘social cleansing’ and an ‘unequal piece of legislation’. Calling on Starmer’s army to scrap the rule, Duffield writes in the Sunday Times today that:

It is a heinous piece of legislation and the reason above all others that I was driven to stand as a member of parliament… When proclamations on benefits are handed down by the great and the good in Westminster, the stark divide between the wealthy and those struggling is never more visible… The cruelty of the two-child limit is Gilead-level. Like in The Handmaid’s Tale women are subjugated according to their social class. It legislates against women’s autonomy over their own bodies, the exact opposite of anything that could possible be described as a Labour party value.

Strong stuff. The Canterbury politician joins over a dozen of her colleagues in signing an amendment to the King’s Speech on the matter, while Zarah Sultana said on Laura Kuenssberg’s show today that scrapping the cap is ‘a matter of political will’ and that Labour ‘can fund this commitment if we want to’. Oo er.

In fact, the government saw a total of four amendments tabled on the cap, with the SNP having been particularly vocal on the issue over the past 12 months and receiving backing from Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn. And Duffield herself has found some rather unlikely allies in former home secretary Suella Braverman and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who have also attacked the policy. It’s certainly an interesting display of cross-party support.

Starmer looks set to face the first rebellion of his premiership next week, with amendments due to be debated on Monday. As the Scottish party is also making noises against the policy, the pressure for the Labour lot to drop the cap is only continuing to grow. Talk about trouble in paradise…

Will Reeves boost public sector pay?

As the dust around the election settles, a question Tory MPs and supporters still grapple with is why Rishi Sunak called the election when he did – not least because economic indicators point to improvements over the summer and autumn, as inflation returns to target and growth starts to pick up. But Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor, is having none of this narrative. ‘I really don’t buy this idea that somehow we’ve been handed a golden inheritance,’ she told Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC this morning, in her first sit-down interview since she entered No. 11. ‘If the former prime minister and chancellor had thought things were so good, they would have allowed the election to take place in the autumn. They called an election because they weren’t willing to make tough decisions, and they just ran away.’

It’s a point former chancellor Jeremy Hunt disputed when he sat down with Kuenssberg afterwards: Reeves ‘wants to lay the ground for tax rises’ he said. Will tax hikes be the kind of ‘tough decisions’ she says are coming?

They could well be, though this morning’s interview with the Chancellor focused more on the spending side of the ledger – and the things she won’t give way on without finding the cash first. While Reeves would not commit this morning on the independent recommendations for a pay rise of 5.5 per cent for NHS staff and teachers, her language suggested that being able to approve light a public sector pay boost was a priority. Not only did she take the pay bodies’ recommendations seriously, she stressed the cost of not granting the pay rises – which would probably include another round of strikes, at a time when negotiations over pay for junior doctors are still outstanding.

“There is a cost to not settling [public sector pay disputes]”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has hinted that she may give public sector workers above-inflation pay rises this summer and says the government will “make sure the sums add up”#BBCLauraK https://t.co/YAP4umHeFS pic.twitter.com/MoMHusBJev

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 21, 2024

If pay hikes for teachers and health staff are the priority, it will mean finding around £3.5 billion to cover the costs, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That might be possible: with recent growth figures slightly better than expected, and a relatively loose fiscal rule for getting debt falling as a percentage of GDP (one that allowed the Tories to suggest tough decisions were coming at the end of every five-year rolling forecast), Reeves can probably scrape together the money. But it will be hard to do this and also to lift the two-child benefit cap – a growing source of tension within the Labour party, despite the government insisting during the campaign that it would not be immediately scrapped.

Reeves suggested that we’ll know more at the end of the month, when the date for the Autumn Statement is revealed and when she gives a ‘full analysis of the state of the public finances, of the public spending pressures that we’re under’ to parliament. As Kuenssberg pointed out during the interview, most of that information is already in the public domain. Reeves pivoted to prisons as an example of how she doesn’t think ‘anyone realised quite how bad things were’. This is the next battle, at least on narrative, to come: Labour will want whatever it does next (including possible tax rises, and certainly rejections of extra spending) to be framed as necessary to fix the financial mess the previous government left behind.

The opposition will highlight that the state of the finances is largely a result of Covid policy (which was backed by both parties) – and that any tax hikes are Labour’s to own. (‘Every Labour government in history has done that,’ Hunt said this morning about the likelihood of tax hikes, ‘but [Reeves] should have been honest about that before the election.’)

But for now, Labour has the advantage: the Tory party has no real leader and no immediate plans to get one, while Labour is using its first weeks in power to make smart moves on supply-side reforms. ‘We’ve got to break out of this doom loop of low growth, of high taxes and deteriorating public services,’ Reeves said this morning. She added: ‘We’ve got to grow the economy,’ pointing to the beginnings of a planning overhaul announced in the King’s Speech last week.

It may be early days, but the party is showing signs that it will stick to its game plan to get Britain building. When pressed this morning on local pushback for new energy infrastructure, Reeves didn’t budge. ‘We can’t carry on like we are. We can’t carry on not building energy infrastructure and not building housing. Because if we carry on like we are, energy bills are going to go through the roof.’ It’s the kind of stance that wins Labour a lot of credit with groups that aren’t traditionally in the party’s camp: including Hunt, now the shadow chancellor, who used his first comments on the programme this morning to give his support to her planning agenda.

That goodwill is likely to last for a few more months. But it’s after the Autumn Statement that we will see the real dividing lines emerge. 

Israel hits back at Houthi drone attack

Operation Long Arm, the code name for Israel’s counter-terror strikes in Yemen, sends a message almost as forceful as the payload of its F-15s. Iran may have an extensive network of proxies through which to attack Israel but the IDF will go whatever distance necessary to defend itself. In this instance 1,200 miles to Al Hudaydah, a port city controlled by Ansar Allah, more commonly known as the Houthis, where a fuel depot was turned into a fireball on Saturday.

It marks the first time Israel has hit Yemeni territory and comes one day after the Houthis assaulted Tel Aviv with an Iranian-manufactured drone, killing one and injuring ten. The terror group has been bombarding Israel with drones for the past nine months but until yesterday all were intercepted without Israeli casualties. Defence minister Yoav Gallant explained the rationale behind Saturday’s strike: ‘The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them. We will do this in any place where it may be required.’

Since the Houthis began their attacks on shipping through the Red Sea in November there has been a 40 per cent drop in the number of commercial vessels passing through Bab el Mandeb, an 18-mile wide strait stretching from Yemen to the Horn of Africa. Bab el Mandeb is a strategic conduit for the transportation of fuel from the Persian Gulf to Europe and the United States: in 2018, 6.2 million barrels of crude passed through the strait every day. The disruption to trade and energy security prompted the US to launch Operation Prosperity Guardian in December but Houthi strikes against commercial transits continue.

If Operation Long Arm disrupts the Houthis’ activities significantly, the world will owe a debt to Israel, not that it is likely to be acknowledged. It will also sound a warning to other proxies of Tehran: do Iran’s dirty work and you’ll take Iran’s punishment.

The Soviet Union’s gerontocracy should serve as a warning to the US

One waspish – but not entirely inaccurate – Russian media assessment of the first US presidential debate was that it was ‘a reality show about the lives of pensioners.’ They ought to know, as Russia’s own history has highlighted the dangers of gerontocracy.

When the Bolshevik revolutionaries who had just seized power formed their ruling Politburo in 1917, the only member who was more than 40 years old was their leader, Lenin, at 47. By 1981, the average age was 69. As for the actual leaders, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev died at the age of 75 in 1982. His successor, Yuri Andropov, was a relative stripling, dying in 1984 at 69, to be followed by Konstantin Chernenko, who died in 1985 at 73.

In part this was because in the Soviet Union – as in Vladimir Putin’s Russia – power is all. An individual’s security, status and prosperity are all products of their position, and to retire was to risk being marginalised and even persecuted, so successive General Secretaries clung to it until it fell from their dead fingers. In this respect, as in so many other, Mikhail Gorbachev was the honourable exception.

The implications of gerontocracy were serious. Ageing rulers were typically out of touch with their own country, let alone developments in the world around them. In his final years, Brezhnev was notoriously unmoored, so much so that he became a figure of fun. One joke went that he began his speech opening the 1980 Moscow Olympics with ‘O. O. O. O. O. O.’ until one of his aides quietly told him that the six Os at the top of the page were actually the rings of the Olympic logo, not part of his address.

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More seriously, he and his fellow septuagenarians had trouble often responding to fast-moving crises, repeatedly trying to force them into the patterns of past events (while discussing the proposed invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Brezhnev apparently several times referred to it as ‘Czechoslovakia’ – which he had invaded in 1968). Alternatively, they lacked the stamina such a demanding job required. Andropov, for example, held his mental acuity to the end, but spent most of his brief tenure ruling from a hospital bed, hooked up to dialysis.

Ageing leaders are not only often hard-pressed to adapt to new ideas and introduce necessary changes, they are also vulnerable precisely to being manipulated by their allies, advisers and aides. Perhaps without the energy or ability to go outside these circles, they are also presented with bewildering new ideas and potential threats they rely on others to interpret. Today it may be the technobabble of AI and nanotechnology, but to the Soviet gerontocrats it was the information revolution and Ronald Reagan’s ultimately-impracticable but dramatic-sounding ‘Star Wars’ antimissile project.

Arguably, they also have rather different political horizons, too. Why think about the next twenty years if you suspect you’ll be hard pressed to live another five? Many of the systemic problems that brought down the USSR – a sclerotic planned economy, excessive defence spending, endemic corruption, ideological calcification – became quite so intractable because they had been put off so long.

Vladimir Putin is ‘just’ 71, and while his government looks very different from its Soviet predecessors – prime minister Mikhail Mishustin is 58 – there is more than a touch of gerontocracy where it counts. The cabinet is, after all, not the dominant body in his increasingly monarchical system, but rather largely the technocrats whose role is to execute instead of formulate policy. If one looks at the people who really count in Putin’s court or in presenting it to the outside world, a different picture emerges.

The man who has done the most to shape Putin’s paranoid view of the outside world, former Security Council secretary and now presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev, is 73. Although he has very little role in shaping foreign policy, its face is the 74-year-old Sergei Lavrov. Security chief Alexander Bortnikov is 72, National Guard head Viktor Zolotov is 70 and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov is 69.

Already, there have been indications that this is affecting policy. These figures are all examples of ‘homo sovieticus’, whose ideas – including their implacable suspicion of the West and imperial assumptions – were shaped by a system long since dead. Their horizons are also closer than the rest of the elites’. Whereas Putin seems willing to make whatever concessions are necessary to Beijing in order to retain its support in his war in Ukraine, for example, this is disturbing many of the 50- and 60-year olds within the government, who, when they finally get their chance for power, do not want to find themselves ruling a Russia that has become a Chinese vassal state.

History thus reminds us of some of the dangers of gerontocracy. Still, at least Putin is only 71, not 78 – or 81.

The dark side of Strictly Come Dancing

Wallowing in the cosy entertainment of Strictly Come Dancing has been a staple Saturday evening ritual for millions during the autumn months of the past 20 years. For the BBC, it’s a prized cash cow, having been exported (under the Dancing with the Stars brand) to around 60 other countries.

It’s a show built on schmaltz and competition as celebrities (mostly with no dance experience) are paired with professional dancers in a weekly gladiatorial contest where one couple is routinely eliminated by a mix of public vote and the imperial thumbs-down from the judges.

Preparing for the twentieth anniversary (although this autumn will see the 22^nd series), the BBC’s flagship show has become mired in a controversy of its own making. Two Italian male professionals – Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima – have been dropped following allegations about their training methods.

In October 2023, Pernice’s celebrity partner, Amanda Abbington, pulled out of the show, citing personal reasons. Seven months’ later, the law firm, Carter Ruck, announced that it had contacted the BBC regarding ‘numerous serious complaints’ about Pernice’s alleged behaviour while performing Strictly. Adding fuel to this fire, another former partner of Pernice, the ex-Love Island host Laura Whitmore said that the experience made her ‘…really broken, both mentally and physically…’. Pernice has rejected ‘any suggestion of abusive or threatening behaviour’.

On 16 July 2024, the programme’s cosy image was further tarnished when TV presenter Zara McDermott posted a statement that she had found aspects of her time with Di Prima on the 2023 season to have been ‘incredibly distressing to watch’ and that she had delayed going public with allegations about his training methods because she was ‘scared of victim shaming’. In response, Di Prima acknowledged that his ‘intense passion and determination to win might have affected my training regime’.

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And therein lies the rub. Largely amateur dancers are pressed into an intensely competitive environment where, week-by-week, they have to learn increasingly complex techniques that seasoned professionals will have taken thousands of hours to master. Each Saturday they are thrust in front of a TV audience to succeed or humiliate themselves: if the latter, the fault will be seen to lie with their professional partner. Adding to this intensity, the professional’s fee will increase as the show moves on (reportedly from an initial £25,000 up to four times as much if their partner wins). It’s a self-inflicted recipe for tough love in the rehearsal room.

This controversy is nothing new for dance. Ironically, the BBC ran a Panorama investigation, last September, about the toxic culture of body-shaming and bullying in UK ballet schools. But they couldn’t see the same methods allegedly taking place for their own programme in pursuit of creating work worthy of the judges’ ‘10’ paddle.

It’s also a problem that has been around for years. Rehearsal footage of former Strictly professional, James Jordan (who left the show in 2013) has emerged from 2006, in which he humorously body-shames his partner, Georgina Bouzová. In a sign of how the times have changed, this footage wasn’t even secret. It was aired on the spin-off programme It Takes Two. Bouzová laughingly refers to Jordan calling her ‘chubby’. Elsewhere he is filmed referring to her ‘fat belly’. Eighteen years later, the edited footage seems inappropriate, but at the time Jordan’s ‘antics’ merited only a mild rebuke by the presenter Claudia Winkelman. After the pair were voted off, Jordan was robustly defended by Bouzová who said: ‘He is lovely and we’ve had such a laugh, we really have’.

No similar allegations have been levelled against any female professional. They have won the glitter ball trophy twelve times against nine successes by their male counterparts, which suggests that it’s possible to guide celebrity dancers to success without the need for rancour. It’s also important to note that there were no such allegations after Pernice won the show in 2021 with Rose Ayling-Ellis (perhaps winning is the key?). 

Many of the relationships between male professionals and their female celebrities are enduring, none more so than that of Countdown‘s Rachel Riley and her partner Pasha Kovalev who danced together in 2013. Eleven years and two children later, they remain happily married.

Dance training is under the microscope all over the western hemisphere (body shaming is still rife in Eastern Europe). The cult-like culture of Strictly has been drawn into that controversy and the BBC has responded by announcing that chaperones will be present in all future rehearsals although former professional, Kristina Rhianoff, has said that members of production staff were always there for ‘every single second of rehearsals’ so it seems a redundant gesture.

Strictly’s enduring popularity will ensure that it wobbles through this crisis and a few million people will sit by their firesides to enjoy the upcoming season. In recent years, the show has replicated the excessive sentimentality of other reality TV series and it could even be that tough treatment in the rehearsal room will become yet another ingredient of that schmaltz – I can easily imagine a judge saying, ‘look at what she had to endure in rehearsals and what a performance she delivered’! Anything for ratings.

China’s Arctic ambitions should trouble the West

Four Chinese warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska last weekend. According to the US coast guard, the ships were in the Bering Sea around 124 miles from the Aleutian Islands. They were inside America’s exclusive economic zone, which extends to 200 miles, but within international waters. ‘We met presence with presence to ensure there were no disruptions to US interests,’ said a coastguard commander, as he monitored their progress. The Chinese were within their rights to be there, but the uneasy standoff was another example of Beijing boosting its presence around the Arctic.

This time they were alone, but the Chinese navy has been increasingly coordinating their activities in the region with Russia as the two countries develop a new front in their ‘no limits’ partnership – one that is rattling Western military planners. There are fears that Moscow and Beijing are intent on carving up the riches of the Arctic and controlling new transport routes emerging as a result of global warming. This is ‘changing the security landscape’, according to Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg.

Last month, Moscow and Beijing reiterated their plans to ‘coordinate and jointly work on developing the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a new major transport corridor between Asia and Europe,’ as Aleksey Chekunkov, Russia’s minister for the development of the Russian Far East and Arctic, put it during a conference in St Petersburg. ‘We are strong in the Arctic. We will always keep the Arctic safe. We will not let any opposing or unlawful forces militarise the Arctic or jeopardise its security,’ he added in comments carried approvingly by China’s state media.

It is easy to see the economic attraction to China of the NSR across the Arctic, which could cut travel time between Asia and Europe to around 23 days, compared to 40 or so for goods sent via the Suez Canal. Then there are the immense resources believed to lie beneath the ice, ranging from oil and gas to critical minerals, which would serve Beijing’s purpose of diversifying its energy supplies. For Russia, the principal attraction of the China partnership lies in Beijing’s cash to help extract this wealth and develop the route.

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On top of this economic cooperation lie tighter security ties, which are seeing a sharply stepped up military presence in the region. Last August, during joint exercises, 11 Chinese and Russian warships sailed from the Sea of Japan through the Bering Strait into the Pacific Ocean. They passed the Aleutian Islands, conducting what the Russian news agency Interfax called ‘joint anti-submarine and anti-aircraft exercises.’

While the US is spending heavily to upgrade military facilities in Alaska, where many aging bases date back to World War II, Russia has more military bases in the Arctic Circle than all of Nato combined. In spite of the war in Ukraine, Moscow has continued to boost its presence – enhancing the Murmansk-based Northern Fleet, nuclear submarines, radar stations, airfields, and missile facilities along the Kola Peninsula, close to Nato allies Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

China does not have territory in the Arctic but has declared itself a ‘near-Arctic state’, with an interest in developing shipping in the region, carrying out scientific research and exploiting the region’s oil, gas, minerals, fisheries and other natural resources. It describes the Northern Sea Route as a ‘Polar Silk Road’, placing its Arctic ambitions under the umbrella of its Belt and Road Initiative, which has grown into an amorphous catch-all for the Communist Party’s global ambitions – an effort to remake the world order through the aggressive use of economic power. However, Arctic countries other than Russia has become increasingly wary of entering into large-scale projects with Beijing.

While the Arctic demonstrates the growing ambitions of the Russia-China partnership, it also points to its strains, with Russia determined to maintain control. The NSR tracks close to the Russian coastline for most of its route, and at present vessels can only navigate it when accompanied by a Russian icebreaker, which comes at a high price. The Arctic Council, comprising the eight Arctic-rim states of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US, only granted China observer status in 2013 – and back then Russia was reluctant to have Beijing on board.

Four years ago, Valery Mitko, one of Russia’s leading Arctic scientists, was arrested and charged with treason for handing to Beijing information on Arctic research and submarine sensor technology. Neither side commented on the arrest at the time – and have continued to maintain that silence. Soon after, Moscow abruptly abandoned plans to jointly develop with Beijing a new generation of nuclear-powered icebreakers (the technology of which is similar in many respects to nuclear powered icebreakers). Beijing is now rumoured to be close to unveiling its own indigenous version – which no doubt will be closely scrutinised for evidence of plundered tech.

The balance and dynamic of the Russia-China relationship has changed markedly since then, thanks largely to the Ukraine War and Moscow’s heavy dependence on Beijing to underwrite its economy and war machine. The relationship is one of convenience, driven by self-interest, a mutual loathing of the West, and with China now as the dominant partner, but that makes it no less dangerous.

At a Nato summit in Washington DC earlier this month, alliance leaders accused Beijing of being a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war against Ukraine. ‘Large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base…increases the threat Russia poses to its neighbours and to Euro-Atlantic security’, they said in a joint statement. Their alarm was further raised by Beijing choosing this month to send troops to Russian ally Belarus to take part in what was described as 11-days of ‘anti-terror training’ close to the Polish border. Their concerns will only have been raised further by the troubling developments around the Arctic’s icy waters.

Germany will regret cutting Ukraine aid

It wasn’t so long ago that the German chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to convince fellow European leaders to do more to help Ukraine. Wherever he travelled in the spring, the message was the same: Vladimir Putin will only withdraw Russian troops ‘if he realises that he cannot win the war on the battlefield,’ Scholz told European social democrats at a meeting in April.

Now his coalition has decided to cut German military aid to Ukraine by half, Reuters reported, based on a draft of the 2025 budget. Next year, Europe’s largest economy intends to spend just €4 billion on supporting Kyiv against Russian aggression.

Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner suggested at a press conference that this drastic cut will be compensated by other sources, arguing that ‘the financing of Ukraine is secured for the foreseeable future thanks to European instruments and G7 credits.’

The hope is that interest from frozen Russian assets could make up some of the shortfall. Currently, around €260 million are on ice in the EU, which reportedly generated €4.4 billion in interest last year – a windfall Brussels has agreed to use to aid Ukraine. The G7 has also agreed to raise a $50 billion loan for Kyiv backed by Russian assets. 

In addition, the EU Commission has signalled this week that it is satisfied Ukraine has met the conditions for the first of regular quarterly payments from its Ukraine Facility plan, which intends to provide up to €50 billion in grants and loans for the period 2024-2027 to aid the country build resilient administration. The first instalment of nearly €4.2 billion should soon be released.

Whether or not this funding reshuffle will provide enough support for Ukraine to avoid defeat on the battlefield remains to be seen. But what it has already achieved is a further chipping away at deterrence. By reducing the pushback against military aggression in Europe to spreadsheet politics, Scholz’s coalition is sending a clear signal to Moscow and the world: namely that his government is struggling to afford military intervention both financially and politically.

It is telling that the announcement of the cuts and their justification were presented by the finance minister. There was no real backup from the chancellor or the Ministry of Defence to attempt to frame it convincingly as a restructuring of funding to ensure predictability of cash flow in Kyiv. 

The issue highlights once again that Germany is struggling to follow its words with action. Financially, this is tricky because the country has a self-imposed ‘debt-brake’ which limits the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP. This means borrowing is difficult and Lindner has to balance the books. This task hasn’t been helped by the fact that the government blew a €60 billion hole into federal finances by reusing unused pandemic emergency funds for climate projects, which the country’s top court ruled unconstitutional at the end of last year. 

With little financial wiggle room, the only way out would be to classify the war in Ukraine as an emergency and that is politically fraught given that nearly two-thirds of Germans think their own country is on a downward trajectory, according to a recent survey, and would want to see money spent on their own country first.

In general, the war in Ukraine is a much more contentious issue in Germany than it is in the UK. When Britain and the US declared in the spring that it would send new long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, Scholz refused to follow suit, knowing he had the majority of the German public behind him. One survey at the time showed that less than a third wanted him to give in on this matter. Scholz felt encouraged to present himself as a peace chancellor to boost his party’s chances at the European elections in June. 

But the survey also showed that three-quarters of Germans want defence spending increased, even if that means shortages elsewhere or a suspension of the debt break. What neither they nor the rest of the democratic world need is for the third-largest economy in the world to signal to aggressors that they can act with impunity. Deterrence isn’t just about money for Ukraine but also about Germany’s own war-readiness.

Thanks to a €100 billion special fund introduced after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Germany will meet its NATO target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence next year. But the regular defence budget has only been increased by €1.3 billion rather than the €6.7 billion defence minister Boris Pistorius said he needed to bring the country’s depleted stock up to speed. 

The special fund will be exhausted in 2027, so if regular spending isn’t increased, Germany’s armed forces will fall off a financial cliff edge then. They know that and find it difficult to plan ahead. Reportedly, important projects that were supposed to be launched next year have been put on hold such as the procurement of four new submarines, new Taurus cruise missiles and the development of new long-range missile systems. 

To secure its own security and that of Europe, Germany needs to convey that it is willing and able to step up when needed. This is especially true now that a Donald Trump victory in the US seems increasingly likely and his running mate J.D. Vance has already singled out America’s  ‘German friends’ for an attack on allies that he claims receive US subsidies ‘to do nothing.’ Should Trump and Vance come to power, the deterrence value of having American might behind European security will drop immediately. Saving €3.5 billion on aid to Ukraine would seem a sorry gain for the loss of much-needed German credibility.

Germany is not alone in struggling to find money in depleted public pockets. But with its huge economy and central geopolitical position in Europe, it does have a special responsibility for the continent’s security. Peace can only be secured if Germany looks like it means business in defending it. Ultimately, European security is about more than balancing the books. 

Joe Biden and the truth about old age

Observing the tremulous travails of Joe Biden, I reflected that we’re in two minds about old age. On one hand we pay stiff-upper-lip-service to the stoicism of old people; on the other they’re a warning about what awaits us. (I say ‘us’ out of habit; I got used to always being the youngest person in the room having won my dream job when I was just 17, but I turned 65 this month so I’m officially old.)

Not wanting to see the gory details of what we can expect, we (understandably) stash them away – like out-of-date CDs we’re too emotionally attached to to actually bin – in storage centres called ‘care homes’. The pandemic highlighted this sad situation; in her brilliant Janet-and-John-style book We Do Lockdown the artist Miriam Elia has the following exchange: ‘We can’t see Grandma in person for at least another three months – I’m heartbroken!’ says Mummy. ‘But we haven’t seen her since Christmas last year,’ says Susan.

Perhaps to assuage our guilt, we like occasional stories which show senior citizens breaking the rules and going rogue; think of the 89-year-old D-Day veteran Bernard ‘Great Escaper’ Jordan, who scarpered from a nursing home just a few streets from me in Hove, wearing his medals under his mac, determined to pay his respects to the fallen on the 70th anniversary of the Normandy Landings. Brittany Ferries, his chosen mode of transport, subsequently offered him free crossings; upon his death the following year, the Royal British Legion said that his excursion to France highlighted ‘the spirit that epitomises the Second World War generation’.

We’re also keen on ancient love, be it between ‘childhood sweethearts’ who finally re-find each other while adjacent bed-blocking at the local hospital or who share a lifelong devotion – as was the case with Mr Jordan and his wife Irene, who died within a week of each other a year after his outing. True, we might not like to linger too long on what these couples get up to after lights out; the coy phrase ‘a kiss and a cuddle’ will generally suffice.

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But when a senior manages to evade capture completely and struts about on the world stage for a sustained period, there’s something both comic and vaguely indecent about it. It’s both personal and political; we fear being laughed at by countries with more virile leaders (sometimes Donald Trump and Joe Biden seem not like two bald men fighting over a comb, as was said of the battle for the Falklands, but like two impotent men fighting over a condom) but we also fear the spectacle of disinhibited masculinity in the raw. Think of Biden sniffing and stroking women’s hair (contrary to his trans-pandering, he certainly seems to know what a female is at such times, as he doesn’t do it to boys) or Trump saying that he would date his own daughter if they weren’t related. We call them Dirty Old Men for a reason.

Rogue oldsters – what I once called the YOLOAPS – are having a (senior) moment right now. The ageing population and the decline in births means that the spectre of a senile population haunts us; a nightmare vision of millions of bottoms needing wiping and no one to do it.

There is no group in society whom we demonise as much as the old, sitting pretty on their triple-locks and luxury pensions in houses they bought for a fiver back in the 20th century while their grandchildren can barely afford to rent a shoe-box in Shoeburyness. During the election campaign, Labour vowed to retire inmates of the House of Lords at 80 even though this would hit them hardest; meanwhile, the Big Issue fretted recently that ‘The UK’s Ageing Population Is A Crisis Keir Starmer Can’t Ignore’:

‘The UK had 9.3 million people aged over 65 in 2000, today the number is 12.5 million – the UN predicts this number will reach 18.7 million by 2050. The relative share of old people as a part of the UK’s total population will also leap from 16% in 2000 to over 26% by 2050. This trend is even more dramatic for those aged over 80, who over the same period are predicted to increase from 4% to 10% of the total population.These changes will place a huge strain on our already creaking welfare and healthcare system. The elderly generally require substantially more healthcare expenditure than the young, with the Nuffield Trust calculating that the average 85-year-old costs the NHS roughly eight times more than the average 25 to 30-year-old. On top of that, more retired people means more state pension costs for the government to fund. In 2023 the government spent £141bn on state pensions, substantially more than all government spending on defence, transport and overseas aid for that year combined.’

Ooo, naughty old us! But I’ve never taken a state benefit of any kind, so when I do finally fill my boots with that state’s largesse, I’ll see it as justified returns for the vast amount of tax I’ve paid since I started my working life at the tender age of 17. Though I became famous – in a very small way, in the media world – when I was a teenager, I’m coping well with being old; perhaps because I so thoroughly got what I wanted, I’m not sad to see the back of youth.

I met a woman recently who literally wouldn’t tell me her age whereas I mention mine a lot and say ‘An old lady like me’ frequently. I’m not fussed by losing my teeth or feeling achy in the mornings, as I see putting up with wear-and-tear as another kind of toughness; as Bette Davis said ‘Old age is no place for sissies.’

Perhaps because I often showed up on celebrity death-bet lists in my 40s, it’s been both enjoyable and odd to grow old. Now I have my own stories of vanished delights; I used to roll my eyes when my gran eulogised outside toilets (‘It’s dirty to ‘ave it in the ‘ouse!’) but I now come over dewy-eyed when recalling the day in the 1970s when a telegram came from the New Musical Express telling me I had won my first writing job. I can see in my mind’s eye the boy on his motorbike pulling up outside my parents house and my mother’s anguished cry; we’d never had a telegram before, but in films they always meant bad news. In the 1980s, my typed columns would be picked up by another boy on a motorbike from the Mail On Sunday; when I bought a fax machine in the 1990s, my friends came round to stare at it. The release of Sergeant Pepper, on the sleeve of which the Beatles wore costumes inspired by the military bands of World War One, is now closer to World War One than it is to the present day, as is my birth. I am one of the past people, now.

But then, my days are private ones, composed of writing, volunteering and lunching – OK, with the occasional bar-crawl and card-game – in the soft haze of a seaside town. I’m not strutting on a world stage – or rather, trying to find my way off of it. I can’t imagine that a woman of Biden’s age who behaved as he does would have been allowed to do so for more than five minutes before she was shuffled off to Buffalo; remember the snide claims that Mrs Thatcher was doolally when she was simply a bit miserable about her husband Denis dying? There’s no chance that a doddering old lady would be still tottering around like this; those wet liberal women who still support Biden reveal not just their stupidity on this matter bur also their sexism. Once more, one is forced to face the fact that all the Handmaids are to be found on the Left these days.

How distant the sun-kissed Obama years seem now; ‘Yes We Can’ has become ‘No We Can’t, The POTUS Is Napping.’ As Biden is shunted between his power-loving wife and his ambitious deputy, he increasingly resembles a confused care-home inmate being handed from one brisk nurse to another. With Trump ascendant after his Iwo Jima moment – and Biden now being hauled over the coals for his ‘bullseye’ remark – the fear is that the president may be tempted to make ever more hawk-like gestures to prove his virility. But would you trust a hand on the nuclear button which had trouble raising a cup of Complan without spilling it? For those remaining strange Democrats who believe that they can strap their candidate to his horse one more time to lead them into battle – in the manner of Charlton Heston at the end of El Cid, a reference which very much shows my age – they might consider that all they will really be doing is delivering a victory directly to The Donald.

Catch up on the latest Coffee House Shots:

Will the Paris Olympics be the final nail in Macron’s coffin?

The mayor of Paris went for a swim in the Seine on Wednesday and emerged invigorated. The water, said Anne Hidalgo, was ‘soft and wonderful’. Hidalgo had initially scheduled a date last month for her dip but the quality of the water didn’t pass muster so she was forced to postpone her PR stunt – until nine days before Paris welcomes the XXXIII Olympiad.

There are no reports that Hidalgo is now laid up in bed with a nasty bacterial infection, so one must presume the Seine will be able to host several swimming events in the coming weeks. That was the good news for the mayor.

The bad news is the violence that has rocked Paris this week. On Monday a soldier on patrol at the Gare de l’Est was wounded in a knife attack; on Wednesday a diner was killed when a man deliberately drove his car into a restaurant’s terrace; and on Thursday police shot dead a knifeman after he had stabbed an officer near the Champs-Elysées.

In addition, police have also this week detained an 18-year-old neo-Nazi on suspicion of plotting a terrorist act during the Games. Earlier in the month the authorities arrested several people they described as Islamist extremists who were said to be planning a suicide bomb attack during the Games.

How long ago it seems – ten months in fact – since the biggest concern of the Games organisers were bed-bugs; this particular story was subsequently blamed on a campaign of Russian misinformation.

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Perhaps, but the quality of the water in the Seine – which has forced several trial events to be cancelled – can’t be blamed on Moscow, nor the recent violent incidents, and certainly not the bureaucratic nightmare that only a French technocrat could dream up.

As of 18 July, the city has been split into four zones, some of which require a QR code to access and others that are subjected to traffic restrictions. A website has been launched to explain the complicated system to locals and tourists, but vast numbers of the latter have decided to give the city a miss this summer.

At the start of July, Air France-KLM issued a statement in which it spoke of ‘significant avoidance’ of Paris this summer by international customers. As a result, said the airline, it has forecast ‘a negative impact on its unit revenues of between €160 and €180 million (£135 million to £150 million)’.

Delta Air Lines has said it expects to lose approximately $100 million (£85 million) as a result of Americans giving Paris a wide berth this summer. ‘Unless you’re going to the Olympics, people aren’t going to Paris…very few are,’ said Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian. This diminution in visitor numbers is having a disastrous effect on shops, restaurants and bar. According to a press release issued on Friday by a collective of retailers and restaurants, there has been ‘an unprecedented drop in business and footfall’ in the last few weeks; in many cases, business is down by 30 per cent on the previous year.

There are other deterrents at play: the presence of an estimated 35,000 police personnel to guard against terrorist attacks, turning the city into a ring of steel, and the exorbitant cost of accommodation.

Last autumn it was reported that hotels in the French capital had upped their rates for this summer by as much as 300 per cent. But their greed got the better of their business sense and now many hotels are now struggling for guests. This has had a knock-on effect for sports travel companies.

One American firm told Bloomberg this week that sales are 80 per cent short of expectations based on previous Olympics. ‘This is the first time in 25 years that we will accept less money than we paid for hotel rooms that we contracted 30 months ago,’ said Alan Bachand.

One broadcaster, France24, recently tried to raise morale by pointing to the fact that the London Games of 2012 were also plagued by complaints and controversies in the preceding weeks. Just days before the Olympics the British government had to draft in more than 1,000 soldiers after a private security contractor failed to provided enough staff. And yet the London Olympics were a rip-roaring success.

There is a crucial distinction between the two Olympics. In 2012 Britain wasn’t in the grip of a major political crisis; France is, a result of the recent parliamentary election that was the bright idea of Emmanuel Macron. The president wanted ‘clarification’ but he got confusion, an election in which the right won the most votes but the left won the most seats.

On Thursday, the unions organised a series of demonstrations across France, the aim of which was to warn Macron not to attempt to subvert the result of the elections by cobbling together a centrist alliance.

One union leader, Pascal Lagrue, declared: ‘There is no Olympic truce! If there are demands that need to be expressed, they will be expressed’.

Another union has threatened to call a strike of security staff during the Games if their grievances are not allayed in the coming days. The contempt in which Macron is held by millions of his people is another difference between the Paris and the London Games.

Queen Elizabeth II was a hugely respected head of state, a figure around whom the country could unify. When she joined in the joke at the opening ceremony and pretended to parachute out of a helicopter into the Olympic Stadium even anti-monarchists admired her elan. Macron is incapable of bringing his people together, even for a fortnight of sport. He is the most despised and divisive president of the Fifth Republic, so unloved that most French would like to see him jump out of a helicopter in next Friday’s opening ceremony. Minus the parachute.

When will Scotland’s ferries start to work?

It appears Scotland’s troubled Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow shipyard will be kept afloat. A further £14 million of public money has been injected into it, according to announcements this week. At the same time, the Scottish government also took the opportunity to confirm the nationalised yard will not be directly awarded a contract to replace state-owned ferry operator CalMac’s ageing fleet of small vessels. Instead, the contract will be put out to tender.

This is the latest in what has become known as Scotland’s ferries fiasco. It started with an SNP government wanting to be seen to be rescuing commercial ship building on the Clyde just before the 2014 independence referendum. Then there were allegations of a rigged contract for two new ferries to serve Scotland’s west coast. Now it has ended up with a white elephant of a business – continuously sucking in taxpayer money while failing to get new boats into service.

The Scottish government said the additional investment will be used to ‘improve productivity and build a sustainable future’. The money will be invested over two years ‘subject to the plan passing detailed legal analysis and independent financial and commercial assessments, which should be complete by the Autumn’.

And Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has waded in too, saying:

Extensive analysis and legal advice confirm that a direct award of the small vessels phase one contract to FMPG introduces substantial risks and uncertainties for the shipyard and the communities which rely on the lifeline vessels, due to the strict conditions imposed by the UK Subsidy Control Act. Instead, we will do everything which is legally possible to support the yard and the workforce to secure a long-term future, which is why we have come to an agreement on initiatives and funding to improve productivity.

Encouragingly, Forbes says the Scottish government is in talks with BAE Systems to secure further sub-contract work from the defence manufacturer. Indeed, a spokesperson for BAE said:

We are in advanced negotiations with the company regarding further strengthening our partnership, the placement of additional work subject to agreement of terms and its continued involvement in the programme.

This is important. Ferguson’s former boss David Tydeman secured a pilot project for the yard to produce three units for BAE’s Type 26 frigate program me. Tydeman – who was unexpectedly sacked by the Ferguson Marine board in March – had produced a five-year turnaround plan that needed £25 million of investment in a new steel plating production line, as well as other upgrades to put the yard in a strong position to build CalMac’s new smaller ferries as well as ongoing work for Britain’s navy. There were fears BAE’s enthusiasm was dissipating when, last year, the Scottish government refused to sign off on cash to upgrade the site.

Speaking with me earlier this week – just after the latest announcement – Tydeman said the £14 million investment is the ‘mid-level’ capital expenditure request set out in the business plan he put together before his departure. Going on, he added:

That should deliver productivity improvements from enhanced facilities, as set out in recommendations by consultants to the Scottish government in autumn 2022. The difference between this level and the £20-25 million requested in early 2023 is that the higher level also increased through–put capacity and positioned the yard to be more able to do BAE work alongside building ferries – without capacity constraints potentially leading to bottlenecks or choices in priorities.

The question is whether this is sufficient to make the yard commercially sustainable without ongoing government financial support. Going by the previous business plans, it seems unlikely. True sustainability would require greater investment and a combination of defence work – alongside commercial shipbuilding contracts.

It seems the Scottish government has taken the decision to spend just enough to keep the yard afloat to take it beyond the May 2026 Holyrood election, with the business’s long-term future crystalising at that point. That long term future probably won’t take the form of the yard becoming a sustainable commercial builder of ferries. A more likely outcome is for its capacity to be fully absorbed in some form into UK defence manufacturing, be that a takeover of the site or workers being absorbed into BAE’s Govan yard along the river.

And the result is much uncertainty. There is still no guarantee Scotland’s islanders will see better ferry services anytime soon. What is clear, however, is that a UK defence contract work will be crucial to the sustainability of work at the Ferguson Marine site. What was meant to be a totemic example of a new nationalist Scotland has instead become a symbol of the strength of a unified Britain.

Watch: Badenoch tears into Rayner

Back to the Commons, where Kemi Badenoch has been making waves. The shadow housing secretary has been ruffling feathers in her own party as its attention turns to a looming leadership contest and Badenoch has not been making life easy for opposition politicians either – and this time it’s Angela Rayner in the firing line.

In just 13 minutes, Badenoch managed to tear apart the new Deputy Prime Minister, her politics and her party. First congratulating her rival on being appointed to such an esteemed position, Badenoch was quick to point out to how Rayner had grown up with a Conservative government, telling the Commons that the Tories will indeed take some of the credit for her success. Then the shadow housing secretary turned to Rayner’s role in the Labour party – and served up some rather unpleasant home truths…

All the stuff the Secretary of State worked on in opposition, like the New Deal for Workers, has been taken off her and given to the Business Secretary. I’m sorry to tell the right honourable lady that her colleagues – the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and their many advisers – have written a manifesto and made promises that are not deliverable, and they’ve hung it around her neck and said ‘Angela, you go out there and you sell it’. I’m sad to see many of her shadow team not sitting beside her as ministers. They worked for free, grinding in opposition for years, only to watch the children of the Chosen Ones to get the ministerial cars and salaries before their maiden speeches are written.

Ouch. And she didn’t stop there. As the shadow minister’s argument blossomed, the Deputy PM looked increasingly uncomfortable – and not least because Badenoch’s words reinforced what her own allies briefed last weekend: that Sir Keir Starmer’s top team are trying to freeze Ange out. Get the popcorn at the ready…

Watch the full clip here:

Starmer’s army in private plane hypocrisy

Well, well, well. Off the back of his thumping majority, Sir Keir Starmer has been making good use of the perks of being premier. Given Labour’s long history of bashing Rishi Sunak for flying private, one might have thought that the fleet of government jets at their disposal would be stowed away in a hanger. That’s not quite the case…

The Starmer army attitude towards private planes has changed quite significantly over the past year. At Labour’s party conference in October, Rachel Reeves criticised Sunak for his ‘private jet habit’, pledging to enforce tighter rules on ministerial use of private jets under a Labour government. In January, Angela Rayner accused Sunak of ‘jetting around the country on taxpayers’ money like an A-list celeb’ after he took a 36 minute flight from London to Middlesborough and a 45-minute flight from London to Blackpool. Sir Keir slammed Sunak for the trips, adding that ‘the view on the ground is very different to that from his private jet’.  The Labour party were so keen to pursue this line of attack that it even posted this jibe on Twitter:

But less than a year ago, according to Flight Radar, Sir Keir was lucky to bag the window seat on his Ryanair flight to Estonia with then-shadow minister John Healey. Fast forward less than seven months, and Sir Keir has ascended from budget airline to joyriding a Dassault Falcon 900LX around the four nations on his victory parade. In May, just a few days after barbing Sunak at PMQs – remarking about the ex-PM ‘I’ve prosecuted more people smugglers than he’s had helicopter rides’ – Sir Keir took a private flight from Wales to Scotland.

‘We have to use the most efficient form of transport in the middle of a very busy general election campaign,’ said Starmer on the defensive. But even post-campaign, after the Labour leader had whipped round the UK to thank his supporters, the Falcon flew from RAF Northolt to RAF Brize Norton on 9 July, airborne for just 21 minutes. It then whizzed now-defence secretary John Healey to and from Washington while Starmer made the transatlantic trip, er, separately on the Airbus A321 later that day. Couldn’t have shared could you, chaps?

And last Sunday both the Falcon and Airbus flew to and from the Euros final in Berlin. Using a private jet for a football match would have been an open goal for Starmer to have taken a shot at Sunak just a few months ago. How the tables turn. And Mr S has calculated that in total, there have been over 25 private flights taken by Starmer’s army already. During his first seven months as PM, Sunak took a government jet once every eight days. At this rate, Sir Keir’s lefty lot look set to cruise past that number. Rules for thee but not for me…

Will Trump defend Taiwan?

The prospect of a second Donald Trump administration has put the fear of God into America’s allies around the world. The biggest question being raised is: would the United States heave up the drawbridge and let others do the dirty work to keep the planet safe from global war?

Comments made by Trump seem to suggest he still has no love for Nato, that Taiwan should fend for itself if attacked by mainland China, and that Ukraine should give up the territory it has lost to the Russian invaders in return for a ceasefire and forgo any ambition to join the western alliance.

On the face of it, even if elements of this Trumpian foreign policy vision were to be implemented, it would represent one of the starkest changes in America’s relations with allies and partners in modern times.

The reality is probably not quite so bleak. Trump may have a history of unpredictability and unexpected surprises. One has only to remember his extraordinary, albeit abortive, charm offensive with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. 

However, the one topic where he demonstrated implacable consistency was his demand that allies ‘play fair’ and spend significantly more money on defence. Although during his term in office between 2017 and 2021 he was thinking principally about Nato, he is now expanding his mantra to embrace Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and anywhere else where American taxpayer dollars are being spent to deter aggression by regional adversaries.

Taiwan is a case in point. In an interview with Bloomberg, Trump said it was time Taiwan spent more on defending itself from the rising threat posed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and that Taipei should reimburse the US for the huge cost of maintaining a deterrent presence in the region. 

When he pointed out that Taiwan was 6,500 miles away from the US and only 68 miles from China, some observers interpreted this as a sign that under a Trump administration, the US would not necessarily jump to the island’s defence if the PLA launched an invasion.

Under President Biden, the long-held policy of strategic ambiguity on what the US might do if China tried to occupy Taiwan has become more strategic and less ambiguous. Biden has stated on several occasions when asked that he would go to Taiwan’s aid under such circumstances, presumably with aircraft carriers, anti-ship missiles and the US Marine Corps in mind.

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Trump has promised no such intervention. But judging by his past hawkish approach to China on trade and the PLA’s expansionist endeavours in the South China Sea, it would seem unlikely that a Trump administration would allow Beijing to get away with seizing, or trying to seize, Taiwan. It would also upset the Republican party whose hierarchy has always been staunch supporters of Taiwan and critical of Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions in the region. 

Senator Marco Rubio who was on the short list to be Trump’s running-mate and has considerable experience as a senior member of the Senate foreign relations committee, advised reporters on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that Trump would continue to back Taiwan, as he did during his time in office. 

So, it’s down to money, not whether Trump would send for the Marines. If he were to authorise military action to defend Taiwan against the PLA, he would presumably expect Taiwan to pay for or contribute towards the cost.

Trump has sent out the same message to South Korea and Japan, where the US currently has a combined total of around 82,000 troops stationed. Trump wants more money for the burden of protecting these allies from aggression by China and North Korea. 

This argument of greater burden-sharing comes at an even greater price for Europe, where, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US has increased its troop presence to more than 100,000, and is planning to deploy land-based Tomahawk and hypersonic missiles to Germany to defend Nato allies and deter further Russian aggression. 

Much was made of Trump’s threat to pull the US out of Nato when he became president in January 2021. But the alarm was short-lived. He banged on about the Nato members who had failed to spend the required 2 per cent on defence and said it was unfair that America, a military superpower, should have to spend so much more than anyone else in the alliance – in fact, a lot more than the rest of the alliance put together.

There are still eight Nato countries who have failed to reach the 2 per cent target, including Canada, Italy and Spain. They must expect a hard time from a second Trump administration. What’s more, a re-elected Trump might well use the first Nato summit under his leadership to push for 3.5 per cent of GDP across the board. 

This is what the US spends and a significant proportion of it is devoted to defending Europe. If Trump’s pledge to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office failed to materialise, no doubt he would demand Europe pay out a much larger slice of the burden to stop Russia from seizing more of its neighbour’s sovereign territory.

Good luck fixing the CrowdStrike glitch

Worldwide, computers are saying no. GPs can’t access appointments and medical records, banking apps have been knocked offline, flights are grounded, laptops won’t work. Technology across Europe and America has been toppled by what appears to be a glitch in a software update for some popular anti-virus software from a company called CrowdStrike. ‘Biggest IT fail ever,’ tweeted Elon Musk.

‘CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,’ George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s CEO, said in a statement this morning. ‘Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.’

The trouble is that the damage is already done. In the US, Delta Airlines has paused all of its flights. The Royal Surrey NHS Foundation has cancelled cancer treatments. Morrisons and Waitrose are having payment problems. Belfast airport is using whiteboards to display departure times. Schoolcomms, a logistics app used by 3,000 schools, is reporting issues. We could go on. In CrowdStrike’s most recent accounts, the company reported having 24,000 commercial customers. Each is an organisation. The scale of the failure is huge.

Government minister Pat McFadden has said that Britain is coordinating its response through the ‘COBR response system’, usually reserved for dealing with terror attacks and natural disasters. While some systems are slowly coming back online – good news, the Washington, D.C. metro is reportedly running smoothly again – it will take time to fix individual laptops and computers. CrowdStrike’s ‘fix’ seems to require the manual attention of a technician on every affected device, of which there will be many, many thousands.

CrowdStrike has also lost 21 per cent of its stock value in pre-market trading – a fall of $16 billion. It will take some time to find a fix for that, too.

Just Stop Oil fanatics deserve their lengthy jail terms

The prison sentences passed on the Just Stop Oil protesters who immobilised the M25 – five years for Roger Hallam and four for the others – were certainly stiff. With prisons overflowing and some violent offenders receiving less harsh sentences, a small reduction in the jail terms might have been justified. But despite the backlash from environmentalists, justice has been served. Those who say that the protesters are merely conscientious practitioners of civil disobedience – and that the punishments imposed amount to a stamping on the right of peaceful protest – are wrong. 

Roger Hallam’s casting of himself in the role of a civil disobedience advocate is both disingenuous and incorrect. Civil disobedience involves a willingness not only to disobey, but take the punishment: witness Mahatma Gandhi’s frequent and provocative demands to be sentenced to the maximum possible penalty after his acts defying British rule in India. Hallam, by contrast, is seeking the advantage of being a civil disobedience martyr coupled with the avoidance of any substantial penalty. He cannot have it both ways, and should not be allowed to do so.

References to peaceful protest, which JSO types like to mention, are a red herring. It’s true that no blood was shed. But there’s more to peaceful protest than refraining from punching people on the nose. The reason we say it ought to be allowed is the fact that it relies on persuasion rather than coercion.

That is not so here. In this case, coercion was used – and in spades. Admittedly the JSO activists did not exert it themselves; instead they climbed up motorway gantries in November 2022 with the quite deliberate aim of harnessing the power of the state, through the police, to stop drivers using the road for safety reasons. But by doing this, they were still seeking to foist their views forcibly and willy-nilly on large numbers of ordinary people, most of whom did not wish to be troubled with them. The fact that they got someone else to do the physical dirty work is beside the point.

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And impose their point of view they did. The gridlock that resulted was intentional and spectacular: some 700,0000 vehicles were immobilised. Flights, funerals, exams and hospital cancer appointments were missed. This is not peaceful protest.

Equally specious was the suggestion that because Hallam had not climbed a gantry himself, but simply engaged in a Zoom call about co-ordinating the protest, his only crime – in his words – had been ‘giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.’ Er, no. That Zoom call was deliberately aimed at creating gridlock, as Hallam himself admitted. His excuse is no more convincing than a drug lord’s plea that by taking part in a phone call arranging a drop by someone else, he is doing nothing more than extolling the pleasures of recreational drugs.

It remains to be seen what will happen now. One thing is concerning: throughout this case there have been attempts not only to condone JSO’s actions but quietly to influence what should be an impartial judicial process.

Before the hearing, for instance, Michel Forst, a UN apparatchik and so-called ‘Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders’, made a highly questionable intervention calling on the government to ensure a light sentence for Daniel Shaw (who was jailed for four years this week). During the trial, there was a chorus of misguided criticism when the judge refused to allow the defendants to try to sway the verdict by addressing the court at length on their no doubt sincere, but legally irrelevant, views on climate change.

After the sentencing at Southwark Crown Court, the pressure remains. Dale Vince, one of the biggest Labour donors, has called for intervention ‘because it is an injustice to give four or five years to people who simply protest’; Chris Packham, meanwhile, not to be outdone, has alleged a ‘grotesque miscarriage of justice’ and demanded action by the Attorney-General.

For the moment, the Labour government has stood commendably firm; it has said it cannot intervene, and that it has no plans to change the legislation under which the JSO activists were convicted. But its line might well subtly soften later. It remains to be seen whether the Crown Prosecution Service will, in future, be as assiduous in pursuing protests of this kind.

We must hope the government holds its nerve, since a lot rides on this. JSO is no doubt sure of its cause, but its position is frightening. It claims, in effect, the right to immobilise the country and decide who is allowed to go where (for example, by its ‘blue light policy’ it arrogated itself the power to say that the police would be allowed to use the M25 but no-one else would). No state can allow such a corrosive policy: any private group that tries to say that citizens can only go about their lawful business with their say-so needs to be suppressed, and hard. A firm deterrent to such pretensions was necessary last week. It remains so today.

Trump might be bad news for Israel

If Donald Trump becomes president again – which seems likely – American policy towards Israel could see a dramatic shift. Since the war between Israel and Hamas started last October, Trump has repeatedly expressed his support for Israel. The head of the Republican Jewish Coalition claimed that Trump would grant Israel ‘a blank cheque’ to finish off Hamas. Trump also warned that if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages, they’ll ‘pay a big price’ if he becomes president.

Many Israelis, including those in government, assume that a Trump/Vance win would be beneficial for Israel. A closer look shows that it may not necessarily be so.

When the war against Hamas started, president Joe Biden sent considerable American forces to the region. When Iran struck in April, by firing hundreds of missiles and drones against Israel, American forces played a pivotal role in protecting Israel. American forces routinely intercept missiles launched by the Houthis too. Biden also oversaw the supply of massive, continuous shipments of weapons and vital equipment to Israel during the war, as well as a very generous aid package.

Would Trump have acted similarly? Perhaps. But Trump’s approach has had a tendency for isolation. His chaotic – often impulsive – foreign policy legacy includes withdrawing from international agreements and forcing worse terms on smaller member states. 

Trump may choose to avoid making long-term strategic commitments, and instead push Israel to rely on building partnerships with regional countries for running and rebuilding Gaza after the war and dealing with the Iranian threat. If Israel does collaborate with Middle Eastern partners, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, American involvement will still needed to bring together old enemies in a successful collaboration. Stopping Qatari and Iranian funding of terrorism in the Middle East and beyond, as well as preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, would also be much more effective with American involvement. 

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However, Trump isn’t a traditional isolationist. He’ll keep pursuing international involvement if he believes that it serves American interests, as well as his own. He would love to be hailed as the person who not only ended the war in Gaza but who also brokered a peace deal between Israel and a Palestinian leadership. 

Although Netanyahu and Trump enjoyed a good relationship in the past, relations have soured after Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his win in 2020. Trump referred to Netanyahu as a ‘loser’, accused him of ‘betrayal’ and criticised his handling of the war. Trump has openly said that others within Israeli politics are better suited to lead the country. He also argued that Netanyahu has no intention of making peace with the Palestinians. Netanyahu is currently trying to repair relations with Trump, but a deep lack of trust and respect will make this difficult.

Trump doesn’t have Biden’s long term commitment to the Jewish State. His is a far more utilitarian stance. Therefore, in trying to force a (so far) defiant Netanyahu into a ceasefire deal with Hamas, Trump may place greater pressure on Netanyahu than Biden has – and will be more likely to act on his threats. 

Israelis who support Trump should also remember that although the former president was quick to point the finger at Biden’s Iran policy as the reason behind Hamas’s 7 October attack, it was his own withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement (pushed by Netanyahu’s short-sighted advice) that has resulted in Iran getting much closer to having the bomb. Although it was a bad deal to begin with, withdrawing from it has made matters worse.

Trump’s choice for vice president, JD Vance, should particularly worry Israel. Although the devout Christian has much sympathy for Israel, Vance is a true ‘America First’ isolationist. His approach means that any American intervention must be done only to the extent that it serves narrow American interests. He would be reluctant to risk involving American forces in wars in the Middle East.

Vance has also objected to the American aid package to Israel and Ukraine that included $4 billion (£3 billion) to replenish Israel’s depleted missile defence systems. Although his main objection was aid to Ukraine, he was willing to sacrifice critical aid to Israel to get his way.

Trump and Vance’s help to Israel may therefore be more limited. Hallowed threats will not help Israel fight enemies that seek to destroy it. Withdrawal of forces and a lack to true commitment to defend Israel could embolden its rivals. A new American leadership will require new strategic thinking from Israel.

Israelis are rightfully worried that Joe Biden isn’t fit to be president – and he may indeed choose to step aside. But Trump isn’t the better option.

SNP government didn’t prepare well for pandemic, report says

Uh oh. The Covid inquiry has been ticking along in the background for the last two years, and finally its first report has been published. A shock to no one, it transpires that neither the UK nor Scottish governments come out of it particularly well. It appears both were rather unprepared for a pandemic – and the damning review suggests they proceeded to respond to the ‘wrong’ one. How very interesting…

The findings reveal that former Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon’s government ‘did not act with sufficient urgency’ – and when it did, it seems it responded ineffectually. The report noted that the officials tasked with planning for a pandemic did not meet for seven months in the year before to the outbreak. And furthermore, ‘there was no separate analysis for Scotland that adequately took into account specific factors that might particularly affect the population of Scotland.’ Good heavens.

The report also added that both the Scottish and UK governments had ‘prepared for the wrong pandemic’ – in treating it like a flu outbreak rather than the disease it was. It went on:

The significant risk of an influenza pandemic had long been considered, written about and planned for. However, that preparedness was inadequate for a global pandemic of the kind that struck. 

Assigning blame has been complicated, not least because for all the Scottish government’s egregious errors (alongside those of its Westminster counterpart) pushed lockdown as the only viable response to Covid – rather than reserving it as an option of ‘last resort’, which the report says it always should have been.

It’s more bad news for Scotland’s failing nationalist government. John Swinney, whose notable contribution to the inquiry was revealing he had deleted his WhatsApp messages with Sturgeon, has vowed to ‘carefully consider’ the recommendations set out in the report. Mr S remembers Sturgeon’s lot being rather on their high horse about their handling of Covid. They can’t claim the high ground anymore…