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Why am I popular on TikTok?
The American essayist Fredric Jameson died recently. One of his most famous quips (sometimes wrongly attributed to me) holds today more than ever: it is easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. What if we apply the same logic to Jameson himself? His entire way of life was much closer to what the French call les palissades, the stating of the obvious attributed to the mythical figure of Monsieur la Palice, like: ‘One hour before his death, Monsieur la Palice was still fully alive.’ For Jameson, death didn’t exist as long as he was still alive. I learned from Jameson’s family that he continued reading and writing until his last moments: a day or two before his death, he asked them to bring him a couple of books and a notebook to his hospital bed. So it was not Jameson who died, death just happened to him.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis has deservedly flopped. This obscenely expensive project provides the best argument for studios having tight control over productions: if a director is given too much freedom, this is the result. The only thing I liked about the film, a retelling of Catiline’s rebellion crushed by Cicero set in a near-future New York, is that it sides with Catiline. I think she was an advocate for the poor and dispossessed, fighting for a more fair distribution of wealth and land. However, for this reason I find the film’s ending repellent: we get the worst imaginable version, a big reconciliation between Catiline and Cicero (a corrupted mayor). Instead of being a social revolutionary, Catiline is an architect with a big project of how to rebuild New York. If I were to hold political power, I would turn into Joseph Goebbels in this case: Megalopolis would be publicly burned.
At the beginning of the first world war, when Germany invaded Belgium, one Belgian minister said: ‘Whatever historians will say later about this war, nobody will be able to say that Belgium attacked Germany.’ Respect for obvious facts no longer holds today: Russia has claimed that Ukraine was the antagonist ever since the 2022 full-scale invasion. Some weeks ago, Vladimir Putin’s government released a list of 48 foreign states and territories accused of implementing policies that impose destructive neoliberal ideology, and which contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. Countries on this list are officially designated as ‘enemy states’ – there is no talk here about a multipolar world; you’re the enemy of Russia if you don’t hold the same values. These values, though, are somehow shared by North Korea and Afghanistan. But Russia isn’t cheating: they are bonded together in their rejection of the European Enlightenment, viewing it as history’s ultimate evil.
Lately, I have been exchanging messages again with Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founding member of the group Pussy Riot. Back in 2012, these Russian dissidents caused a scandal by staging a protest in a St Petersburg church. Their performance was against Russian orthodoxy being exploited by Putin’s regime. They were right: recall that Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called Putin ‘a fighter against the Antichrist’ and ‘chief exorcist’. Despite never meeting, we corresponded throughout her imprisonment. Her letters, written in secret, were smuggled out of the prison by her lawyers and published in Comradely Greetings. She criticises the regime from a radical leftist standpoint, and I admire her courage and ethical integrity. We are meeting for the first time in person next month at a round table in Vienna. I’m not afraid that the real person will disappoint me, as usually happens when I meet ‘famous’ people.
Charles Dickens always made sure his bed was facing north
Microsoft recently claimed that AI assistants are coming soon. But there’s surely a limit to what they can do. How, for instance, can small daily rituals be programmed? Take a few well-known examples. When Maya Angelou arrives at a hotel room, she always asks for the pictures to be removed from the walls. After finishing her writing in the early evening, Agatha Christie took a bath and ate an apple there. Charles Dickens always made sure his bed was facing north. Serena Williams bounced the ball five times before her first serve… We all have our own habits that make life meaningful yet have no pragmatic function. Their meaning is purely self-referential, residing in the effect of meaning. It’ll be a long time before AI will be able to assist humans with finding order among the chaos.
Friends tell me that I am popular on TikTok. I don’t know why, because I have never been on it or any of the other digital platforms. The way they function is totally strange to me. I hate quick repartee and need time to reflect. But at various times I’ve been alerted by friends to the fact that there are a couple of accounts pretending to be me. The funny part is that although they try to imitate my thinking, they usually always attribute me with wrong political or philosophical positions. I don’t have the time to protest about these misappropriations, though a couple of times I’ve been tempted to reply under
a pseudonym, attacking myself.
I recently participated in a debate in London about quantum mechanics, with Roger Penrose and Sabine Hossenfelder, and I must confess it was a very depressing event. The three of us simply talked past each other. There was not even a clear conflict – just total miscommunication. Sadly, the debate was a missed opportunity, I largely blame myself for this failure, because I too abruptly focused on basic philosophical questions, not for the first – nor probably the last – time.
The trouble with protest mask chic
We in Britain have become used to the hallmarks of anti-Israeli protests. There are the slogans decrying ‘genocide’. There are chants in sympathy of terrorist organisations. There’s the explicit or insinuated anti-semitism. But one sinister feature making its transition across the Atlantic is the appearance of the face mask.
Wearing a mask at a demo is the perfect expression of radical chic
Footage widely circulated online this week showed an Israeli supporter in New York being attacked by a pro-Palestine activist, who proceeded to stamp and spit on the Israeli flag while shouting profanities. Nothing new here, you might say. It’s all part of the vitriol we expect these days, even on the first anniversary of that terrible massacre in Israel. Video footage of pro-Palestinian campaigners shoving phones in the face of another Israeli supporter in New York and shouting abuse at him are also unlikely to surprise many. Sadly, these scenes from the United States are routinely repeated throughout the West.
What is disquieting in its apparent novelty, however, is that many of these assailants had their faces covered. Troublingly, the spectacle in New York of masked agitators threatening or performing violent acts, has been repeated across North America.
The trend among far-left radicals for sporting face masks is well-established in the US, the disguise being a must-have accessory for Antifa campaigners with a penchant for creating mayhem. So it’s only logical that face covering is becoming common in anti-Israeli protests that are growing in similar vehemence and fury. Logical, too, that they are starting to crop up over here.
In anti-Western protests this year, masks have started to be seen in Britain. Jewish News reporter Lee Harpin saw several on display at a demonstration in London’s Russell Square last Saturday. They may not yet be as common as they are stateside, but knowing our proclivity to import the worst aspects of US radical politics, it would only seem a matter of time before they are.
Wearing a face mask in public became normalised, of course, during the pandemic and lockdown years of 2020-21, years that also saw the swell of radical agitation and Black Lives Matter protests. The two phenomena taken together, it no longer became deemed strange to go on large demonstrations, chant divisive and inflammatory slogans, all the while having one’s face covered. A dangerous bar had been lowered.
For anti-Israeli activists and anti-Western poseurs, it’s also convenient that today’s radical chic accessory, the keffiyeh, can be employed to conceal one’s face and therefore one’s identity. Among demonstrators, there’s not just the logistical imperative behind hiding one’s face, the fear of facing prosecution from the law, of landing oneself in trouble at work should one’s behaviour be caught on camera, or even having your parents catch you in the act. There is the aura of danger, the frisson of excitement, that comes with donning a face mask.
It is the perfect expression of radical chic, performative politics as fashion. If in the form of banners proclaiming ‘I Love Hezbollah’ – as seen again in London the other day – we have the articulation of terrorist chic, then in the face mask we have the embodiment of bandit chic.
The fashion for posturing against the West as an extended form of teenage rebellion is nothing new. Jane Fonda did so famously during the Vietnam War; and it was Tom Wolfe who, in turn, coined the phrase ‘radical chic’ in 1970. Dressing up in foreign garb, embracing the exotic ‘other’, is also a long-established weakness of indulged Westerners who seek to turn their back on their own culture (how ironic that many pro-Palestinian sympathisers are now indulging in their own brand of ‘Orientalism’).
Most of today’s belligerent anti-Western agitators are young. And while youthful politics have forever been prone to performative, radical chic, now they are reaching their apex in an era of shallow, shouty online self-regard.
Online discourse, which determines so much of the nature of politics in the real world, is given to exaggeration and hyperbole. This is the nature of a medium in which each participant clamours for ever-more hits and ‘likes’, and does so through upping the ante, by making increasingly outrageous and outlandish claims. This is why youthful politics today is both so vociferous and vacuous. It’s about posing and seeking attention. It’s what happens when the political is reduced to the personal.
The face mask as a political accessory is a threat to law and order. Those who wear it want to be seen as dangerous, radical and interesting. They are none of those things. Protest mask chic on the streets of London is one US import we could all do without.
Starmer needs to get serious about China
In the coming days, Foreign Secretary David Lammy will visit China and Chancellor Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a visit early next year for economic and financial dialogue. Whilst engagement is important, it’s not unreasonable to expect an understanding of the government’s strategic position on such a defining relationship before ministers board their flights. Does the government believe in deepening and expanding cooperation with China, or does it believe – as it appeared to in opposition – that China is a threat and must be dealt with as such? We are simply left guessing.
As Starmer marks his first 100 days in office, the fact that there is little-to-no clarity on the government’s approach to the defining geopolitical challenge of our time raises eyebrows. Yet in opposition, Labour made the right noises on China. Shadow ministers and backbench MPs would robustly take the Conservative government to task along with a host of Tory backbenchers from all wings of the party. Whether it was on critical national infrastructure, defending the rights of Uighurs and Hong Kong citizens, or protecting our democratic norms from malign CCP influence, Labour said all the right things, but the party could never be accused of having a strategy.
This week, The Spectator’s Katy Balls wrote an excellent piece analysing the new Labour ministry’s approach to the China challenge. She adumbrated the tale of a government that is labouring under the illusion that it can play it cute in China. This won’t end well. The government’s starting point must be to deal with China as it is today – the single biggest threat to our economic security and societal resilience – not as we hoped it would be ten or fifteen years ago. There is no third way.
Look north of the border, for example. China is still set to build its largest non-domestic turbine manufacturing facility right here in Scotland. While the project is a legacy of the last government, it’s astonishing that it hasn’t been submitted to fresh examination. Labour can’t surely think it is in our strategic interest to hand over such important capability to an entity from a hostile state, thus creating a new threat surface and dependency on China. If the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery isn’t forewarning enough – the refinery is a joint venture between Ineos and Chinese state backed PetroChina – then I don’t know what is.
As democratic allies increasingly wake-up to the multifaceted threat from China and pursue strategies to de-risk their economies and societies, it’s time the UK started to do the same.
Caught between the US and Europe, and facing the necessity to attract investment into a weak domestic economy, ministers certainly appear to be cooling their pre-election stance on China in the hope that cheap Chinese money can help them out of the economic hole that Britain finds itself in. Ministers should know that there’s no such thing as no-strings with the CCP, as any nation that is part of the Belt and Road Initiative will testify. And if we’ve learned anything from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the magnitude of the threat from China far outstrips that of Russia – it’s that the flow of cheap and immediate money from authoritarian states is always a greater risk than reward.
On matters of war and peace, President Zelensky’s government recently announced that 60 per cent of foreign components in Russian weapons being used in Ukraine come from China. China has been, since day one, helping Russia slaughter Ukrainians. Can we expect David Lammy to raise this when he visits Beijing next week?
Then there’s CCP aggression towards Taiwan. Analysis by Bloomberg tells us that an invasion or blockade of Taiwan would hit the global economy far worse than the 2008 financial crash or the COVID pandemic. Has the government started work on mapping out what this would mean for the British economy? Is it working with allies to find ways of deterring such action? As western and democratic allies increasingly wake-up to the multifaceted threat from China and pursue strategies to de-risk their economies and societies, it’s time the UK started to do the same.
This stuff isn’t easy. The threat is a complex one, and manifests itself economically, politically, militarily and technologically. Any China strategy must consider all parts of our economy and society, starting with the areas of highest risk such as our critical national infrastructure, energy market and universities. It should also be central to the ongoing strategic defence review. Such a whole-of-society approach should involve industry, all levels of government, public institutions and civil society. This is critical to fostering a new consensus on China – finally burying the false prophecy of the ‘golden era’ – and navigating today’s turbulent zeitgeist.
Perhaps one of the clearest markers of this turbulence has been the renaissance enjoyed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and his century-old observation that ‘the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’. Gramsci’s words ring truer today as we navigate this period of messy transition.
The war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East and the rising threat from Beijing serves as a sharp reminder that the future is not fixed. There is a new world incubating amidst the tumult, and how these problems are resolved will shape the world for generations to come.
Starmer investment summit thrown into disarray
This weekend, Sir Keir Starmer marks his first 100 days in 10 Downing Street – with the hope of better days to come. The Prime Minister is trying to put a rough first three months behind him with a shake-up of his Downing Street team and a series of events aimed at showing the government is focussed on its mission. One such event is the government’s investment summit which is due to take place on Monday. Labour promised to hold an investment summit in their first 100 days during the election campaign. The idea was that they could pitch the UK as a port of stability for investment, riding on a post-election high.
However, the mood music is rather more downbeat than they had hoped. This evening, Sky News reports that the event has been dealt a major blow after DP World, the ports and logistics giant, pulled a scheduled announcement of a £1 billion investment which was meant to be the centrepiece of the event. The reason? That investment in its London Gateway container is now reported to be under review following criticism of its subsidiary company P&O Ferries by two senior members of the government. On Wednesday, the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh announced new legislation to protect seafarers following P&O’s controversial decision to sack 800 British seafarers in 2022. In a joint press release with Angela Rayner, the pair described P&O’s actions as ‘outrageous’ and a ‘national scandal’. In an interview, Haigh went further and suggested the public boycott the company.
‘They didn’t BCC anyone, it’s amateur hour,’ says a recipient.
After initial doubts over his attendance, DP World’s chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem will still travel to London for the summit. It comes amid wider complaints about the summit. As I reported in the magazine this week, worries about the Budget mean that the event is proving rather tricky. ‘It doesn’t make sense to do it before the Budget,’ says one attendee. Business will want answers to questions on tax that the government will not be able to give. The mood among attendees has not been helped by the fact that an email was sent to them with their contact details in full view. ‘They didn’t BCC anyone, it’s amateur hour,’ says a recipient.
There is a sense now in government that it could have been better to delay the event until after Reeves’s big fiscal event. The Financial Times has reported that some CEOs have doubts about whether the summit is worth the trip. It comes after there were complaints from attendees at Labour party conference over the party’s business day. It may well be that Starmer and Rachel Reeves find a way to put the summit on a better note between now and Monday, with an equally good investment announcement to boot. But the complaints so far point to the hard task Starmer faces putting his government on a smoother footing after months of difficulty. Government figures are already worried that the rhetoric of recent weeks is hurting investor confidence. They can’t afford for the problem to get any worse.
Transport Secretary caught in £1bn ferries row
Back to Labourland, where there’s more trouble afoot. It emerged today that some rather careless comments made by a Cabinet Minister have cost the government an, er, one billion-pound investment deal. Ouch.
Transport Secretary Louise Haigh delivered some stinging remarks this week about P&O Ferries, after it emerged that the company had let go hundreds of agency staff it hired in a cost-cutting bid following mass lay-offs two years ago. But Haigh’s ill-advised commentary has sparked tensions between the government and DP World, of which P&O Ferries is a subsidiary – with the organisation now planning to boycott an investment summit next week. More than that, DP World chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem was due to announce a £1bn investment plan for the London Gateway container port – which now, thanks to the row, will not take place. What a mess.
It is thought that Haigh’s ITV interview earlier in the week enraged business bosses, after the Transport Secretary blasted P&O Ferries as being a ‘rogue operator’ – and even urged viewers to boycott the company. Crikey. Meanwhile Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner did her government no favours either, after she described the initial 2022 sackings as ‘an outrageous example of manipulation by an employer’. Don’t hold back, Ange!
The offence taken by DP World led to the company’s subsequent decision to pull out of Sir Keir Starmer’s investment summit next week – delivering yet another blow to the beleaguered Prime Minister. What with the ongoing freebie fiasco, frockgate and cronyism rows, falling out with an international investor is hardly what Starmer needs right now. Indeed, No. 10 has tried to cosy up to DP World since, with a spokesperson remarking on the matter that: ‘Louise Haigh’s comments were her own personal view and don’t represent the view of the government.’ They went on, gushing:
We welcome P&O Ferries commitment to comply with our new seafarer’s legislation. We continue to work closely with DP World which has already delivered significant investment in the London Gateway and Southampton ports, to help deliver for the UK economy. Next week’s International Investment Summit will bring together hundreds of global firms to show Britain is open for business.
Not if Haigh has anything to do with it, eh?
The summit was seen by Downing Street as a reset for Sir Keir’s scandal-ridden start to his premiership – but Haigh’s comments have threatened to make the big meet, like much of the rest of Starmer’s reign thus far, fall flat. Oh dear…
Labour’s worker’s rights bill is more of a slow burner
Labour’s long-promised Employment Rights Bill may not be quite as immediately game-changing as the trade unions hoped or the business lobby feared. There will be implementation delays, with most elements not operative until 2026 – unsurprising given the expected complexity of the legislation. Further consultation will be needed before more detailed regulations are tabled. But that’s not to say that, when Angela Rayner’s new workers’ legislation does kick in, all will be business as usual.
The likely creation of a nine-month probationary period for new employees – which would mitigate the effects of scrapping the two-year wait for unfair dismissal law to kick in – may assuage some of the fears of businesses. But let’s see how this shapes up in practice. The government claims that sacking someone during probation will be a simpler process than normal firing procedure, but the new day one unfair dismissal rights for new employees they are bringing in seems to clash with this.
Employees may come to realise that free lunches disappeared with Covid
The government’s plans to enhance eligibility for sick pay means workers will be able to claim it from their first day of illness. This will result in some extra costs to both the taxpayer and employers, but the amounts involved are fairly small. Further adjustments to parental leave are unlikely to affect large firms or to the rapidly-expanding public sector very much, but could hit some small businesses badly.
Employers will be relieved that there is as yet no planned compulsory ‘right to disconnect’, though this remains on the horizon and is something to which Labour is probably going to return. It does appear that there will be restrictions on ‘exploitative’ zero hours contracts and a supposed end to ‘fire and rehire’. However, in both these areas quite what is planned remains unclear and may be watered down as further consultation proceeds.
The headline issue around Rayner’s new bill, however, has been Labour’s plan to extend of flexible working rights. The right to request your ideal pattern of work from day one, and the tightening of grounds for refusal, will land employers with significant extra costs – which for many businesses will come as a shock. What will businesses do about doubling payroll and HR costs for a job share, or the need for extra staff to cover for term time-only workers and people who won’t work Fridays? It is fairyland thinking to believe that these costs will be offset in some magical fashion by gains in productivity.
Over time, businesses will inevitably attempt to reduce these costs in various ways. They may well choose to invest in automation and AI, take on fewer workers, be much more selective in recruitment, use temporary contracts rather than permanent staff or freelancers rather than in-house people. They may also decide to pass the costs on to employees through smaller pay increases or detriments to other parts of their employment package. Employees – and those looking for work – may come to realise that free lunches disappeared with Covid.
Those benefiting from flexible employment will begin to find that market forces compensate for this. Perpetual workers-from-home may find that their pay gradually slips relative to those who have to go out to jobs – transport employees, people in factories, construction workers and medical staff among them.
The much less discussed element of Labour’s workers’ rights bill is the enhanced powers it plans to give to trade unions in the bill. Again, some of this is pretty trivial stuff. The scrapping of the never-used Tory minimum service level legislation will be lamented by precisely nobody. Obliging employers to tell their staff they’re entitled to join a union will simply add a few more barely-read paragraphs to employment contracts. And, although we must wait to see the small print, the right for union recruiters to enter workplaces is hardly the stuff of revolution.
The details are sketchy here too, but substantially lowering the barriers to union recognition may have some impact on reversing the long decline of union membership in the private sector. Union membership currently runs at just 13 per cent, and is far lower outside ex-public sector fields such as the utilities and Royal Mail. However, the great concentrations of private sector employees in manufacturing and the docks which were associated with trade union power in the 1970s are gone. Smaller-scale businesses, with very diverse workforces and different career patterns are unlikely to be fertile ground for union recruitment.
It is a concern, though, that Labour are planning to dismantle most of the barriers to strike action. It seems that, in future, a simple majority of those voting will be enough to trigger a strike. Organising a vote will be simpler and cheaper as electronic balloting increasingly becomes the norm.
While these measures will not necessarily lead to more strikes, they will increase union bargaining power where it already exists – primarily in government employment. With more powerful unions pressing employers for the most member-favourable interpretation of flexible working, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for governments to implement reforms. Overnight, boosting the appalling productivity record of large chunks of the civil service, tackling the problems of the NHS, the railways and other concentrations of old-fashioned trade unionism will be that much harder.
One less obvious beneficiary from the bill will be the Labour party, supported for decades by the unions’ political levy. Members will now once again have to opt out of the levy, rather than opt in. Unless behavioural economists and ‘nudge’ theorists have got it wrong, this should mean more money raised to support Labour. Don’t Angela Rayner to blush when this aspect of the bill is debated.
Should the MoD be using AI for our defence strategy?
Eyebrows have been raised, to put it mildly, at the news that the Ministry of Defence is using an artificial intelligence programme to assess submissions to the current review of Britain’s armed forces. The Strategic Defence Review was launched in July, and the following month a call for evidence was issued, inviting ‘serving military, veterans, MPs of all parties, industry, and academia’ to submit responses to a series of propositions through an online portal. The closing date was 30 September, and the responses would ‘help’ the review team led by former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson of Port Ellen.
Defence is a policy area rich in verbiage and jargon, and both military and civilian experts are adept at shrouding even simple meaning in the most impenetrable of language
It transpires that the government agreed a contract over the summer with US data analytics software company Palantir Technologies to design a programme which will analyse the thousands of submissions received, looking for key words and themes. It will then produce a summary of the data to inform the review secretariat as it begins to draft the report.
Unease at this innovation has been expressed on two principal counts: content and security. Each is important, and each requires at least reassurance and perhaps mitigation from the government, although it would seem unlikely that the process will be altered significantly at this stage. The review is expected to be drafted and finalised over the next few months and delivered to the Ministry of Defence around March next year. It is anticipated that the government will then respond in the summer.
In terms of content, there is anxiety about the level of sophistication the software will bring to its analytical work. Defence is a policy area rich in verbiage and jargon, and both military and civilian experts are adept at shrouding even simple meaning in the most impenetrable of language. How has the software been developed and tested? How rigorously has it been screened for hidden bias? How deeply will it be able to interrogate what is really being said? One industry figure fretted that it would produce a ‘glorified word cloud’, while others have suggested that some contributors have attempted to game the system by emphasising words and phrases which they think will attract the attention of the AI filters.
The government’s response to this criticism is that civil servants will exercise oversight of the AI process, but this is scant reassurance. If the task is so huge that it must be performed by software, then a handful of officials will hardly be able to provide significant safeguards. Alternatively, if the oversight process is sufficiently thorough and detailed to guard against any major problems, why bother automating the analysis at all?
The second area of concern is security. Anyone who has dealt with the Ministry of Defence will know that it is a department unusually obsessed with secrecy and protection of information, and the motivation is understandable. It deals with some of the British state’s most sensitive issues like the Trident nuclear deterrent, and is always a prime target for penetration and espionage by our adversaries.
It is reasonable to ask, therefore, how secure the AI process is and what measures have been taken to protect the enormous amount of data it must be collecting and collating. AI systems are relatively fragile and easily hacked, and it is a sufficiently common occurrence that Google created its own dedicated ‘red team’ for anticipating, deterring and resisting hackers. Has the MoD effectively created an enormous Trojan horse to allow sophisticated actors access to an invaluable cache of classified and confidential information?
It is important not to throw up our hands in despair at the use of new and emerging technology. Even the most hardened cynic will grudgingly allow that the potential benefits of artificial intelligence and large language models are vast and could be transformative for the pace and scale of policy-making. The Ministry of Defence has not asked the Microsoft Paperclip to help it write a defence review, and the department should be at the forefront of technological change.
But if the potential benefits are vast, so too are the potential pitfalls. The Strategic Defence Review is intended to ‘determine the roles, capabilities and reforms required by UK Defence to meet the challenges, threats and opportunities of the twenty-first century.’ It should be a once-in-a-generation assessment and reorientation of our defence and security posture, looking decades into the future. The government likes to be seen as making rational and evidence-based policy, which would be fatally undermined if that evidence base was itself flawed.
The Ministry of Defence has much more to do in reassuring interested parties that its AI process is secure and reliable. There will come a day, probably soon, when this kind of approach is standard. But at the moment it is fair to ask if this was the right project to conduct this kind of experiment on. Simply put, the MoD cannot afford to get this wrong.
How will Israel retaliate against Iran?
When Iran attacked Israel last week with a barrage of missiles, one thing was certain: Israel would hit back hard. Ten days on, that response has still not come. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has warned that the retaliatory strike on Iran will have an element of surprise. Israel’s attack, he said, ‘will be deadly, precise and above all surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results.’
A wounded Iran with the IRGC still in charge could prove more dangerous
Gallant knows that this element of surprise is critical; without it, Israel may have insufficient conventional capability to land a decisive first-blow strike.
This weakness became apparent following Iran’s missile attack on 1 October, in which dozens of Iranian missiles penetrated Israel’s sophisticated anti-missile defences. The Iranians could substantially increase the number of missiles fired in a subsequent attack, which, if aimed at a built-up area against which precision targeting was unimportant, would cause huge damage and lead to substantial casualties.
An Israeli attack must then factor in how Iran would respond. Tehran’s main counter-strike force, born out of its missile war with Iraq in the 1980s, is a network of underground sites housing an estimated 3,000 missiles and many more drones. Some of these sites are thought to have multiple missile silos, equipped with carousel reloaders. All are likely to have deep underground garaging, in which both missiles and drones are parked up on mobile launchers, ready to fire from prepared positions nearby. The depth of these facilities underground presents major difficulties for Israel, but so does the number of targets which must be hit to prevent Iran being able to launch a major retaliation attack. Targeting factories where missiles and drones are built would be an attractive and easier option, but would not forestall a counter-strike.
Israel is also likely to ensure that its response targets Iran’s nuclear programme. It is unlikely, after all, to forego a unique opportunity to cripple what it sees as the gravest danger to its existence; it knows where the critical nodes of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme are, and how to attack them. It will not want to miss this chance.
So what capability does Israel have to attack these priority targets? In 2020, Israel set up the joint Third-Circle Directorate to plan operations against Iran. Third Circle has led the equipment acquisition, tactical planning and training needed to conduct long-range operations. Operational plans developed were tested during Exercise Chariots of Fire in June 2022, when Israeli aircraft flew the length of the Mediterranean and back before attacking notional enemy targets in Cyprus
Third Circle could call upon some of the 100 Jericho-2 missiles that are thought to be housed at Sdot Micha, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) missile base. The Jericho is highly accurate, difficult to intercept and can carry a 1000kg conventional warhead. Ironically, it is rumoured to have been developed jointly in its early stages with the Shah’s Iran before the Revolution. Israel also has its own long-range standoff cruise missile, the Popeye Turbo, which can be fired from one of its Dolphin submarines; these have the range to hit any target in Iran if launched from the Gulf of Oman. A Popeye Turbo variant, already tested extensively over Syria, can also be air-launched at targets 350kms (150 miles) away.
To launch the Popeye Turbos, Israel has the largest fleet of fighters in the Middle East, including 39 F-35s and 175 F-16s modified to carry out ultra long-range missions. These are supported by tanker and electronic warfare aircraft to aid attack approaches over neighbouring countries. No country will admit to providing Israel with fly-over rights or refuelling. But Iran has complained in the past where it believes such agreements are in place; last week, it again threatened Gulf countries tempted to permit Israel use of their airspace.
Israel also has another weapon it might use in its response against Iran. For years, Iran has been subject to large-scale cyber-attacks, both disruptive but also kinetic. The Stuxnet attack virus destroyed most of Iran’s underground uranium enrichment centrifuges. Steel production at Khuzestan Steel in Ahvaz and petrol pumps across Iran have also been targeted. Anti-regime memes have replaced train arrival information at stations, with train information enquiries diverted to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s mobile phone. Israel will have kept some powerful cyber tools in reserve for use in a major attack on Iran.
Israel also appears to be behind a string of assassinations carried out in Iran, including that of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July, chief Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020 and other key IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) officers. Mossad is believed to have stolen Iran’s nuclear weapons development archive from a warehouse in Tehran, with the files smuggled out to Israel. These activities show that Israel is able to operate covertly and at scale within Iran, in all likelihood working closely with Iranian opposition networks.
Planned over many years by Israel, all these capabilities for attacking Iran would be supported by Israel’s powerful multi-source intelligence collection resources which gives Israel a comprehensive understanding of Iranian capabilities and intentions.
The challenges of mounting a long-range attack on Iran – in sufficient numbers and with approaches over neutral countries – are formidable. There is plenty of scope for things to go wrong. But Israel appears to have insufficient conventional resources, if it acts alone, to have a decisive effect in a single-phase attack. That then leaves open the possibility that Iran could mount a devastating response.
A wounded Iran with the IRGC still in charge could prove more dangerous than an Iran already on the back foot after the destruction meted out to its Axis of Resistance allies. Unfortunately, the ideal scenario, where power slips from the IRGC hardliners to reformists led by president Masoud Pezeshkian – a regime change in effect without the revolution – is but a distant dream. Unless, of course, Israel has that surprise in store.
Jonathan Campbell-James served for 32 years in the Intelligence Corps, in a career focused primarily on the Middle East
There’ll never be another tennis hunk like Rafael Nadal
In the pantheon of all-time tennis hunks, Rafael Nadal sits at the apex. The hunkiest ever to do it. In his prime, which remarkably lasted close to two decades, he seemed to conceal within the archetypal Mediterranean love god physique a kind of tennis supercomputer, capable almost always of finding impossible-seeming angles from which to smash winners. Adonis with a magic racket, in other words. He was thrilling to watch.
Do we all die a little when sport stars retire?
This status, hunkmeister-in-chief, was apparently not lost on the Spaniard. In 2018, he shut down a journalist’s whining about the gender pay gap in tennis with the same disdain he might block an attempted winner at the net. ‘Female models earn more than male models, and nobody says anything. Why? Because they have a larger following. In tennis, too, who gathers the larger audience earns more.’ Quite. It was about the only controversial thing he ever said publicly.
That Nadal, who turned 38 this year, has announced his imminent retirement is news that will understandably be taken very hard, not just by tennis’ legions of middle-aged female fans, ultra-like in their devotion – for some reason, I picture them kneading dough on a suburban kitchen counter as they watch his televised exertions, mouths agape – but also by all of us who, over the years, have admired the manner in which he has conducted himself: an unyielding champion on court and an unassuming gentleman off it.
Yes, there have been longstanding suspicions about the astonishing physique and its ability, despite the improbable musculature, to again and again prevail over unbearably arduous-seeming five-set marathons, and even to carry him to a final Grand Slam title at the ripe old age of 36 (for comparison, Andre Agassi won his last Grand Slam at 32, Pete Sampras at 31 and Jimmy Connors at 31). But despite the speculation, none of it has ever been proved to be anything more than baseless conjecture.
Mil gracias a todos
— Rafa Nadal (@RafaelNadal) October 10, 2024
Many thanks to all
Merci beaucoup à tous
Grazie mille à tutti
谢谢大家
شكرا لكم جميعا
תודה לכולכם
Obrigado a todos
Vielen Dank euch allen
Tack alla
Хвала свима
Gràcies a tots pic.twitter.com/7yPRs7QrOi
Indeed, in 2017 Nadal successfully sued French Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot over a false doping allegation. Nadal was awarded twelve thousand euros (£10,000). He donated the sum to charity. The payout was small beer compared to the $135 million (£100 million) he pocketed over the course of his career in prize money alone.
A friend of mine has only ever watched one live tennis match, the result of a corporate hospitality seat going begging for the 2008 Wimbledon final. He was first to respond to a last-minute invitation. After seeing Nadal eventually prevail over Roger Federer in a match now widely acknowledged as the greatest in the sport’s history, he smugly claims to have ‘completed tennis’. He reckoned, as he watched Nadal lying on his back on Centre Court and screaming ecstatically into the gathering summer gloaming, he’d witnessed the very best the sport has to offer. It’s hard to argue he’s wrong.
Do we all die a little when sport stars retire? One minute we’re noticing their emergence – Wayne Rooney, say, smashing in a wondergoal off the crossbar for Everton over Arsenal’s vaunted defence, or Usain Bolt destroying world records for fun at the Beijing Olympics – the next it’s all over. Certainly, these thrilling mini careers that fizzle out like shooting stars make us feel old.
But the retirement of the tennis greats, whose presence year after year, decade after decade, at the four annual Grand Slams – events that themselves are kinds of metronomic devices against which we can measure progress or its lack in our own lives – leaves a gaping void. Nadal has been seeming to curl first his bicep and then his entire being around tennis balls, all the better to impart prodigious quantities of topspin onto them, pretty much my entire adult life. What are we meant to do now, Rafa? We will miss – terribly! – you obsessively aligning your water bottles between games and picking your jockstrap out of your buttocks before serves. We’ll also, naturally, miss the do-or-die manner in which you played the game.
Nadal’s announcement of his retirement, like Federer’s, was made in a sentimental short film released over social media, purpose-designed to break the news softly. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened, seemed to be the theme. Perhaps, also like Federer, he will soon release a streamable documentary about the reaction to the announcement. Whatever, he’s trying to let us down gently, and for that many thanks.
The longevity of modern tennis’ greatest luminaries seems to me undeniably weird, particularly when you consider the physical demands of the sport and the relative youth of most of their opponents, but that is a subject for another day. Now is the time to salute the astonishing achievement of a winner of 22 Grand Slams – the most behind Novak Djokovic in the men’s game – and a man who, crucially, never let his mega hunk status define him.
Bravo, Rafa. Vamos!
Half of Labour voters disappointed by Starmer
All is not well with the Labour lot just now – and the party’s supporters are rather unimpressed. Polling from YouGov conducted between 4-6 October has found that almost half of those who backed Sir Keir Starmer’s crowd at the July election had been disappointed by the performance of the party. Oo er. It’s hardly the best start to the job, eh?
Some 47 per cent of 2024 Labour voters had expected the party to do well but have felt let down so far. On the other hand, less than a third of Labour voters thought Sir Keir’s party had performed well so far. Four per cent said they had thought the party would do poorly and believe that has been the case, while six per cent admitted they thought Labour would do badly, but that things had been better than they’d expected. Crikey. Just how badly did they envisage things going?
Just weeks ago, polling by Opinium revealed that the Prime Minister’s approval rating dropped down to -26 since Sir Keir became the country’s leader. It made him – by a point – less popular than former PM Rishi Sunak which, er, after his party’s electoral defeat just three months ago says quite something.
This latest survey comes ahead of the Starmer's 100 days in power, which will be marked this weekend, and after a number of scandals that have rocked his premiership. From the freebie fiasco to cronyism rows to frockgate and even the Sue Gray-Morgan McSweeney palaver, the PM has hardly had an easy time of it. And if this is what three months brings, Mr S dreads to think how the next five years will go...
France is finally opting for austerity
After the binge, the bill? The new French government of Michel Barnier presented the main lines of its proposed 2025 budget on Thursday evening, promising to cut public spending by £50 billion while raising taxes across the board. It’s belated austerity for a state with a fiscal policy that has previously resembled dine and dash.
The intention is to reduce the deficit to 5 per cent of GDP next year, before trying to go below 3 per cent in 2029. Meanwhile, France’s debt of 3.3 trillion Euros will increase.
This is a punishment beating for the most successful and productive companies and individuals in France
Like one of those mille feuille pastries, there are layers of irony to this. The centrists now trying to cure the financial crisis are largely the exact same people who created it. These are the myrmidons of President Macron, the ‘Mozart of finance,’ who presided over a trillion Euro increase in the country’s debt since he was first elected in 2017. And the only likely way they might be able to even start addressing the problem is with the consent of Marine Le Pen, his long-standing enemy, and her decisive block of 126 deputies in the fractured National Assembly.
Barnier has claimed his ‘exceptional measures’ will revive the economy by controlling public spending and raising taxes, which are already the highest in the OECD. It is ‘a necessary, shared and targeted effort,’ according to government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon. And incidentally a punishment beating for the most successful and productive companies and individuals in France. Reviving the economy by punishing its most productive companies is going to be quite tricky.
We’ll see how this lands. Barnier doesn’t have a parliamentary majority. It’s not impossible that he’ll have to force it past the National Assembly by decree, defying deputies to bring down the government and provoke new chaos. The left is not happy. Barnier admits that many details are open to negotiation. The Assembly will debate the budget until Christmas and it’s likely to be explosive.
Some of the measures seem farcical. The pledge to eliminate 2,201 civil servants seems a suspiciously precise number. With 5.5 million functionaries in France, that’s only 0.04 per cent of the civil service headcount. Mort de rire, dying of laughter, as they say here.
France has a fabulous health service, but patients are going to have to pay higher contributions to access it. That’s supposed to raise €4 billion.
A cut of €500 million to the budget of the Ministry of Justice is unlikely to reassure voters infuriated by a breakdown in law and order. Parents will not be pleased by 4,000 fewer teachers. The 450 largest local authorities are being told to cut €5 billion.
And to cap it all, tax increases for everyone, not just the rich. The 65,000 wealthiest households will have to pay an exceptional contribution for three years. Goldman Sachs bankers lured to Paris by Macron will be having second thoughts. Electricity tax will be drastically raised, taxes on almost all new gasoline and diesel vehicles will be raised and airplane ticket tax will be doubled with a special levy on private jets. There’s even to be an increase in VAT on gas boilers – a nod to the cult of net zero.
The 400 companies with a turnover exceeding €1 billion will be subject to a profit tax surcharge, which will apply in 2024 and 2025. The finance ministry claims, improbably, this should bring in €8 billion per year.
Invest in France? All companies will pay more payroll taxes, which already amount to more than 50 per cent of the wage bill. That’s unlikely to stimulate employment or inward investment. This measure, it is claimed, will bring in about €5 billion. Aid for the hiring of apprentices is to be reduced by €1.2 billion, with a possible decrease in the hiring bonus, which could go from the current €6,000 to €4,500.
France’s 17 million retirees will have to tighten their belts due to the shift in the revaluation of retirement pensions. Expected savings: €3.6 billion.
Notably not to be cut are subsidies to the media, and the tax privileges of journalists. This morning the media was relatively polite.
Note also that entirely exempted from austerity are the Elysée, the National Assembly and the Senate – which will see their appropriations continue to rise for 2025. This was identified in the budget annexes, before their disappearance from the government website.
The presidential palace is asking for a boost of €3.1 million. And a little more than €10 million will be granted to the National Assembly and €6.3 million to the Senate.
Like the dog that didn’t bark, Marine Le Pen has been rather quiet in recent hours. It seems likely that the only way anything resembling this budget could pass would be with her consent, but she will demand a price. The odds that she will succeed Macron can only have shortened.
Scotland’s doctors ‘half way’ to full pay restoration
Junior doctors in Scotland – now called ‘resident’ doctors following a recent name change agreed by the British Medical Association and the UK government – have received more good news this morning. Humza Yousaf pushed by the prospect of strike action last year by offering medics a 12.4 per cent pay rise and Scotland’s doctor have today been offered another increase of 11 per cent over 2024/25. The doctors’ union is recommending that staff vote for the rise, and now it’s up to medics to accept the latest pay uplift presented to them.
The cumulative rise would see an uplift of 8.5 per cent backdated to April this year, with a further 2.3 per cent boost implemented from 1 October. According to the BMA, in combination with Yousaf’s deal last year, the offer would take medics ‘virtually halfway to pay restoration’ – with two more years to go in which negotiations can be carried out under the former First Minister’s initial agreement. Those benefitting from the offer, if BMA members vote in favour of it in November, include NHS Scotland resident doctors, dentists in training and some clinical academics as the Scottish government looks to invest over £64 million in pay for trainees.
News of the deal has been received well by most, with medics seeing this morning’s offer as yet another step closer to full pay restoration. ‘We’re two years into a four-year process, so nicely on track,’ one Scottish doctor noted, while another added: ‘We’re now back to circa 2016 [pay] levels, so about half way back to the 2008 point.’ The Scottish resident doctors committee insists:
There is still significant work to be done. SRDC is committed as ever to the work of achieving full pay restoration… We also believe that maintaining our trajectory is currently an acceptable step to getting resident doctors’ salaries back to where we need them to be, in a timescale that is tolerable. Achieving full pay restoration remains our unwavering commitment and we are clear that this is the fair, just and only acceptable outcome for the next two years of pay negotiations. The commitment made by the Scottish government in 2023 – ‘to reach a mutually agreeable path to achieve pay restoration and prevent erosion occurring in the future’ – is one which we are continuing to hold them to account.
The offer from the SNP government mirrors the recent rise dished out to medics across England and Wales by Labour’s Wes Streeting. The Health Secretary negotiated a 22 per cent consolidated pay increase with the doctors’ union just weeks after his party came to power, and was backed by BMA co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi. In a similar vein to the Scottish union, the BMA chairs noted that ‘this offer does not go all the way to restoring the pay lost over the last decade and a half’, and have pledged to restore medic salaries to 2008 levels. Whether pay progress will continue at this pace over the next few years – particularly in light of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending constraints and the Scottish government’s regular grumbles over money – is quite another matter.
Britain could pay a heavy price if it fails to crackdown on Chinese EVs
The European Union has joined the United States and Canada in slapping tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles (EVs). It’s a rare moment of transatlantic unity – but where does it leave Britain? For now, the UK remains the awkward man in the room. It is the only G7 country not to have imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs (or, in the case of Japan, which already has arduous non-tariff barriers to deter foreign automotive companies from entering its markets.)
The European Commission has made it plain that they see Chinese EVs as an economic threat
Many will rightly question the silence from Whitehall. The UK’s omission from a coordinated attempt to stem China’s excess manufacturing capacity and stop cheap Chinese EVs flooding Western markets will only make our country a greater target.
Britain’s misguided approach appears to be driven in part by a desire to prioritise economic growth, ambitious net-zero targets, and optimistic outcomes of two planned bilateral trips to Beijing for the Foreign Secretary and Chancellor over the next few months. But Beijing will ensure that Britain pays the price for this approach.
The UK looks an increasingly easy and attractive country to gain market share for Chinese manufacturers, not least because of the previous government’s ambitious Zero-Vehicle Mandate and its requirements for domestic producers to ensure 22 per cent of sales this year are EVs. A failure to do so risks penalties for producers of £15,000 per car, unless producers buy green credits from the few EV producers who meet the mandate (many of whom are Chinese).
Both Ford and Stellantis have already decried the scheme as unworkable and the industry is actively lobbying the government to review its targets at the Budget this month. Meanwhile, Chinese EV producers are fast gaining EV market share in the UK; the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders reported that their market share grew from 2 per cent in 2019 to 33.4 per cent in the first half of 2023.
At the same time, little thought appears to have been given by the government to the ever-present data-security risks Chinese EVs present. Some estimates put each EV as producing up to 32 terabytes of data per day, which is the equivalent of the storage of the data storage of 128 iPhones. Is this data safe? There are certainly question marks over what happens to that information, and whether China’s EV manufacturers can keep it out of the hands of the government in Beijing.
Aware of such risks, the Biden Administration in the United States introduced an Executive Order last month that would ban EVs and connected vehicles that use Chinese software or hardware from being imported or sold in the US. This ban could theoretically include US military bases in the UK, and may well lead to more transatlantic pressure on the UK government to introduce a crackdown.
Of course, the US is not alone in its hardline approach. The European Commission has made it plain that they see Chinese EVs as an economic threat comparable to Chinese solar panels flooding Europe’s markets a decade ago. This influx, of course, helped lead to the demise of the European solar industry. This is a fate which the Commission is keen to save the European automotive sector from. But Britain seems to be taking a more passive approach to this threat.
There is another problem for a UK government seeking a ‘reset’ with European institutions. The UK automotive sector continues to have tariff-free access to the European Single Market for EV exports. Could its stance on Chinese EVs put this access in danger? For the 160,000 automotive jobs in the UK, it cannot be overstated how much tariff-free access to the European Single Market matters as it transitions to EVs. The European Union is the largest foreign customer for UK automotives, accounting for at least 60 per cent of UK automotive exports.
Yet a divergence between the UK and the EU when it comes to measures to protect their respective automotive sectors from Chinese EVs, could lead to tariff-free access for UK EVs being revoked. Even open speculation, or the threat from Brussels that it might pull the plug on this arrangement, would depress investment into the UK automotive sector and encourage foreign-owned brands to consider moving their operations elsewhere.
It makes it all the more baffling then that the government sits on its hands and fails to join with its closest partners in Europe and the G7 in protecting domestic industry by increasing tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Much has been made of the government’s desire for a ‘China reset’. But the ‘reset’ with our closest neighbours at home may well depend on joining forces against Chinese EVs. The alternative, will be a rupture it can ill-afford.
The likelihood of a Boris Johnson comeback
There’s been plenty of drama in Westminster this week with Keir Starmer reshuffling his No. 10 team and the Tories’ game-playing in the party’s leadership contest. But away from parliament, the other big story in domestic politics has been the return of Boris Johnson.
The former prime minister has been on a publicity trail to promote his memoir Unleashed (as reviewed by Michael Gove in this week’s magazine). Johnson has given multiple interviews in his quest for book sales. The top lines so far include his regret that he apologised over partygate and his defence of his decision to give his aide Charlotte Owen a peerage (thereby making her the youngest member of the House of Lords). Johnson has also gone on the attack over Keir Starmer and his penchant for freebies, accusing him of ‘looking greedy’.
There is a hypothetical path to a return should he want it
But the big question being asked among Tory MPs is whether Johnson is simply interested in getting his version of history out there (and making some money in the process) or if this is part of a wider effort to return to the political fold. In his departure speech on resigning as prime minister, Johnson compared himself to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman, who ‘returned to his plough’ only to be later called on to return and lead once again. Since then, Johnson has suggested his chances of becoming Conservative leader again are ‘about as good as being blinded by a champagne cork or decapitated by a frisbee’. Asked on Times Radio whether he had ambitions to return to frontline politics, Johnson replied: ‘The real answer is what Her Maj the Queen said, and I can say that without breaching any confidence: you should only do things if you think you can be useful.’
That isn’t a straight no. Instead, it raises the question of when it might be ‘useful’ for Johnson to come back. Right now, there is little appetite in the Tory party for a Johnson return. The party is in the second half of its leadership contest to replace Sunak and attention is there rather than on Johnson coming back. As one MP told me earlier this month: ‘The book was designed to coincide with the general election. You can see how it would have had his arguments just as Rishi was in trouble. But it’s been diminished by the leadership election – he’s having to compete with the leadership contenders for press.’ When The Spectator hosted a fringe event at Tory party conference, Fraser Nelson, now associate editor, asked attendees to raise their hand if they wanted Johnson back in parliament: only a small proportion of the room did.
But things can change and there is a hypothetical path to a return should he want it. All the candidates in the leadership contest have suggested local associations should have more control and a say in picking candidates. It means Johnson could find a route to re-enter parliament in a by-election. On current polling, Labour could find by-elections tricky even in their first year. Then, if Johnson were in the House of Commons, it would be a waiting game.
Now the leadership contest has been reduced to two MPs – Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick – the next few years are seen as rather high risk for the party. Both candidates are to the right with strong views that could divide it.
Ultimately, MPs have decided their best bet is to change and to have a clear message – rather than opt for one of the other candidates who were more associated with the status quo. However, it’s also a gamble, and already some in the party are asking whether they will end up changing leader again before the general election. It’s one of the reasons a change in no confidence rules is being discussed: to make it harder for MPs to depose their leader. Should Badenoch or Jenrick struggle to cut through or win back the Reform vote, that could be the moment Johnson, and his party, decide his return might be ‘useful’. It’s a long shot – but it’s not impossible.
Nick Clegg embraces Brexit benefits
Well, well, well. In his new job as president of global affairs at Meta, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and staunch Remainer Nick Clegg has announced a widespread roll-out of Meta AI across countries including Brazil and the UK. Yet, rather interestingly, the Brexit-opposed businessman noted that the software was unable to be rolled out in the EU ‘because of the regulatory uncertainty we face there’.
Taking to Twitter, the Remoaner noted:
We’re expanding Meta AI to more countries, including Brazil and the UK. Unfortunately, we still can’t roll it out in the EU because of the regulatory uncertainty we face there. I hope the new Commission looks afresh at these issues, consistent with President Von Der Leyen’s aim of completing the EU’s digital Single Market, so Europeans can benefit from this new wave of technologies.
How curious. The former deputy prime minister spent much of him time in and out of office lamenting the fact of the UK leaving the European Union, warning of a ‘disorderly and chaotic’ exit and even publishing a guide entitled ‘How to Stop Brexit’. Yet despite spending years lecturing the British public on why membership of the EU was crucial to keep Britain competitive, in his new role at Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – Clegg has been forced to face reality. In his new line of work, the ex-Lib Dem leader is seeing firsthand how, out of the EU, the UK can access new technological innovations which the European Union can’t.
Perhaps Clegg is finally coming to realise the advantages of stepping away from the over-regulation of Brussels after all. Better late than never…
Labour must tread carefully to avoid killing off Britain’s growth
Happy Friday: the economy is growing. After two consecutive months of no growth, GDP picked up in August, rising by 0.2 per cent. Production and construction output finally turned around, growing 0.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively, after contracting in July by 0.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent. Services output grew by 0.1 per cent, with the biggest contributions in the three months to August coming from professional, scientific and technical activities and from information and communication sectors.
Despite growth forecasts being revised upwards throughout the year, the news today is welcome relief for those who started to fear that growth in the UK had flatlined. Still, markets are predicting a slower growth rate in the second half of 2024. But as Capital Economics reports this morning, a ‘mild slowdown in GDP growth in the second half of this year is more likely than another recession’. That’s something, at least.
Today’s figures are mixed news for the government – especially the Treasury – that will have more fiscal headroom in the Budget depending on how optimistic the Office for Budget Responsibility is with its own forecasts for economic growth. It’s very positive that growth figures are on the up again; but if the mood music is drifting towards more stagnant times that will give the Chancellor Rachel Reeves less room to manoeuvre in her Budget, where she is already estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies to have to find £25billion in tax rises just to fund day-to-day spending alone.
‘Growing the economy is the number one priority of this Government so we can fix the NHS, rebuild Britain, and make working people better off,’ the Chancellor said responding to this morning’s growth update. ‘While change will not happen overnight, we are not wasting any time on delivering on the promise of change.’ Yet despite Reeves's comments, all talk in the upcoming Budget seems to centre around plans to borrow more and tax more. This is not necessarily the recipe for whipping up spectacular growth figures.
Indeed, plenty of those details might deter investment: a challenge Reeves and Keir Starmer will face at next week’s investment summit, which Katy Balls reports is off to a shaky start. If the logistics are tricky, it’s only going to get harder facing a myriad of questions from potential investors about Labour’s plan for capital gains tax. Reeves is reported to be deliberating over this tax, looking at a range of hikes to between 33 per cent and 39 per cent. Notably, the Guardian reports that the modelling showing the highest revenue raised – an option in the middle of that range – is still only set to raise £1billion: a lot of money, but a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of total receipts.
Will this £1billion be worth the potential damage done to relationships with the very investors Starmer and Reeves are inviting to take a punt on the UK? When the economy is growing, yes; but when it is doing so at a fairly slow pace, the stakes are far higher – especially when it comes to deterring capital investment.
France is losing the fight to keep its teachers safe
It is a year almost to the day since a French schoolteacher was killed by a young Islamist. Dominque Bernard, a high school teacher in Arras, died almost exactly three years after another teacher, Samuel Paty, was slain in similar circumstances and by the same ideology. A memorial service this week will remember Bernard; on Monday, schools across France will observe a minute’s silence in honour of the two teachers. The silence is unlikely to be universally respected. It wasn’t last year, when a minute’s silence for Bernard was interrupted by 357 ‘incidents’ in the schools and colleges of France.
A teenage girl struck a teacher who asked her to remove her headscarf
In the immediate aftermath of Bernard’s murder, the then prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, declared: ‘We will not give in to violence, we will confront it and we will fight it.’
France is losing this fight. Each year, thousands of teachers are threatened or assaulted. Most cases don’t make the news, but one did make the headlines this week when a teenage girl struck a teacher who asked her to remove her headscarf. Headscarves, along with the Jewish kippah and crucifix pendants, are not allowed in French schools – a result of a 2004 laïcité law banning the wearing of all religious symbols in the classroom.
What was remarkable about the incident this week, in a school in Tourcoing, north-east of Lille, was the reaction of the teacher’s colleagues: several members of staff took the side of the girl in the cause of ‘the fight against discrimination’.
This doesn’t surprise my wife, who teaches in the state sector in France. She has noticed in recent years that a growing number of young teachers are reluctant to defend laïcité. Some are frightened to do so. It was claimed in a book published last year by Pierre Obin, the former General Inspector of France’s National Education, that 80 per cent of French teachers are scared of being attacked.
Such fear is understandable, given the murder of two teachers this decade – and the resignation this year of a headmaster who was threatened with death after asking a pupil to remove her headscarf.
But some young teachers are ideologically opposed to laïcité; they regard it as oppressive and ‘Islamophobic’. The fact that those in positions of authority hold this view is an indication that universities in France have been indoctrinated by the same radical progressive dogma as many of their Anglophone counterparts.
My wife has on numerous occasions asked her pupils to remove their headscarves. She has never encountered any problems, although more and more girls refuse to appear in the class photo because they don’t want to be captured for posterity without their headscarf.
Since October 2023, however, she has noticed that some pupils have started challenging what they hear in the classroom. This is borne out by official statistics; in September 2022, there were 313 incidents categorised as anti-laïcité in French schools, of which 7 per cent were contesting class content and 7 per cent were refusing to participate in a school activity. In March 2024, there were 525 incidents: 14 per cent for contestation and a fifth for refusing to participate in a particular activity. PE and music lessons are the activities most often avoided.
In effect, a separation is underway, what Francois Hollande, during his presidency a decade ago, described in private remarks as a ‘partition’. Who is behind it? The Muslim Brotherhood, according to the academic Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who has been researching and writing about the secretive Islamic organisation for three decades.
In an article written shortly after the murder of Samuel Paty, Bergeaud-Blackler said that: ‘For the Muslim Brotherhood, secularism is an obstacle to the development of the Muslim child, who is inculcated with “Western values”’. To counter this ‘Westernisation’, explained Bergeaud-Blackler, the Muslim Brotherhood has for many years been pursuing a strategy of ‘sustainable cultural development of Islamic societies in non-Muslim countries…the aim is to protect the Muslim personality from local values’.
This strategy has been very effective. A report in 2021 stated that 65 per cent of Muslim secondary school pupils in France placed more importance on Islamic laws than Republican ones. Life can be grim for the minority that don’t. Earlier this year in Montpellier, a 13-year-old Muslim girl was beaten unconscious by some of her peers; her mother said it was because ‘my daughter dresses in European style’.
One consequence of the hostile environment in many French schools is growing support among teachers for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. In the 2012 legislative elections, just 4 per cent of the profession voted for her party, a figure that had climbed to 20 per cent in July’s election.
The survey was conducted by Luc Rouban of the National Centre for Scientific Research, who said: ‘In the past, teachers were not particularly well paid, but what counted for them was their moral authority, the feeling of being a pillar of society,’ he said. ‘But the feeling of social usefulness has waned.’
So, too, has the feeling they have the unconditional support of the government. There have been six ministers of education in the last two-and-a-half years. The latest, Anne Genetet, proclaimed in the wake of the incident in Tourcoing: ‘To insult a teacher is to insult the Republic and all its children. To attack a teacher is to attack the Republic and all its children’.
Fine words, but unfortunately in France in 2024 many children scorn the Republic as they do its teachers.
How postal votes could deliver Donald Trump the White House
Watch or attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, and you may well see something surprising: an electronic billboard encouraging people to vote by post. It’s a big u-turn for Trump, who has spent years maintaining that postal votes are manipulated.
Ahead of the 2020 election – which took place in the pre-vaccine era of the pandemic – Trump’s White House even blocked additional funding for the Postal Service, fearing that Democratic voters were more likely to avoid going to a polling station. Following the election, one of his many claims of voter fraud was predicated on supposedly corrupted postal ballots.
‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,’ Trump said
So why the sudden endorsement of postal voting? The answer is simple: although Trump remains personally sceptical, his campaign have realised that, far from favouring Democrats, postal votes are essential to helping him win.
It comes down to demographics. As Trump’s campaign knows, many of his most important potential voters are white Americans without college degrees. The Republicans’ support for postal voting targets the working-class white people who, although amenable to Trump, are not MAGA (Make America Great Again) loyalists.
The policy makes a lot of sense. White Americans without college degrees are among the least likely to go to a polling station. In many cases, their preference for Trump might not translate into casting a ballot. However, send them a form in the post, and give them weeks to fill it in, and they’re much more likely to vote.
There’s also a subtler way that postal voting is in the Republicans’ interest. Families that vote by post are more likely to discuss their choice together, and therefore choose the same candidate. Again, demographics – in particular gender roles in a household – help Trump. Research by public opinion analysts Lake Research Partners suggests that American men are much more likely than women to persuade their partners or family to vote the same way.
In many elections this might be a minor detail. However, this year’s race has a stark split along male-female lines, which polls estimate at a 30-point gap. Given that the male vote is seen as crucial to a Trump victory, postal votes could lead women who would have cast for Harris were they to have voted in a booth, to instead vote Republican.
But there remains a barrier preventing the GOP from taking advantage of this opportunity: their candidate. As was the case in 2020, Trump has repeatedly denied the reliability of postal votes. ‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,’ he said in February. ‘Get that through your head.’ And in September, just before postal voting opened in many states, he tweeted that the US Postal Service (USPS) could not be trusted.
Pushed by aides, Trump has occasionally promoted postal votes, but one wonders whether his history of fierce attacks against USPS will drown out his campaign’s new tactic. Either way, the Democrats are trying to profit from Trump’s fuzzy messaging.
Aware that Republicans would benefit from more voting by post, an underhand advert in the key swing state of Pennsylvania is using Trump’s previous statements against him. It begins with a banner reading ‘MAGA Patriots, listen to our president,’ then cuts to footage of Trump saying ‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt. Get that through your head.’
This year, about half of American voters are set to cast their ballots in the post. One-and-a-half-million already have. With the election too close to call, and with his personal stakes so high, Trump would do well to toe the party line. It shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, Trump is no stranger to voting by post himself.
Does the Guardian need reminding that Hamas are the bad guys?
The Guardian has found a new minority it wants to shield from offence. A new oppressed group it might shed some virtuous tears over. A put-upon section of society that urgently requires the warm, loving hug of Guardianista pity. And you won’t believe who it is. It’s the mad militants who invaded Israel on 7 October last year.
I probably shouldn’t call Hamas gunmen ‘mad’ – the Guardian might accuse me of ‘demonising’ them. In possibly the most crackpot piece it has published this year – and that’s saying something – the Guardian has slammed a new documentary about the 7 October attacks for ‘demonis[ing] Gazans as either killers or looters’. That the Gazans who crossed into Israel were killers and looters is immaterial, apparently.
It’s possibly the most crackpot piece the paper has published this year – and that’s saying something
It is written by Stuart Jeffries. It’s a review of One Day in October, a hard-hitting film in which survivors of Hamas’s rampage tell us what they saw. Jeffries admits it’s a tough, moving watch that captures the ‘bloodthirsty’ nature of Hamas’s attack. But then he goes off the rails. It’s too reductive towards Hamas, he suggests, lazily depicting them as a ‘generalised menace’. Fancy portraying a tooled-up army of anti-Semites as a menace.
‘If you want to understand why Hamas murdered civilians… One Day in October won’t help’, Jeffries writes. One envisions Guardian scribes scratching their chins as they try to figure out why a terrorist group founded to kill Jews killed Jews. Next they’ll be wondering why the KKK lynched black people. It’s all so perplexing.
The film ‘does a good job of demonising Gazans’, Jeffries blubs, ‘first as testosterone-crazed Hamas killers, later as shameless civilian looters, asset-stripping the kibbutz while bodies lay in the street’. Does Jeffries know this is a documentary? Meaning it documents things that actually happened? There were testosterone-crazed Hamas killers. Kibbutzim were looted. Is truth bigotry now?
Jeffries concedes the ‘evident evil’ of what Hamas did, but he nonetheless frets over the film’s possibly racist undertones. He is reminded of Zulu, the infamous Michael Caine movie, in which ‘nameless hordes of African warriors [are] pitted against British protagonists with whom we are encouraged to identify’. One Day in October does similar, he says – it ‘others’ one side in the events of 7 October.
I should think so too! I’m sorry, but if we cannot even ‘other’ racists with guns who raped women and murdered children, then we are lost. Truly lost. Imagine how knee-deep in the weeds of moral relativism you would need to be to haughtily tut-tut over the ‘othering’ of terrorists who phoned home to boast to their parents about how many Jews they had killed.
‘Othering’ Gazans as a whole is obviously not on. Branding all Arabs as ‘testosterone-crazed killers’ would clearly be racist. But the men who raped, pillaged and slaughtered their way through southern Israel on 7 October 2023? Yeah, they are ‘the other’. I am happy to call them enemies of civilisation. Sorry if that is a tad too judgemental for Guardian tastes.
Then comes Jeffries’ craziest cry. The problem with this film, he says, is that it goads us into giving ‘all our sympathies’ to ‘relatable Israelis’ and none to Hamas. So the Israelis we see include ‘a girl sending cute pictures of her playing with friends to her mum, who is cowering in a toilet cubicle, hoping the terrorists she can hear breathing outside can’t hear her’. Meanwhile, ‘Hamas terrorists’ – poor Hamas terrorists – are shown as a ‘generalised menace on CCTV, their motives beyond [the film’s] remit’.
This is where bleeding-heart liberalism crosses over into amoral lunacy. I can’t believe I have to explain to a well-educated man of letters that, yes, your sympathies should lie with the girl texting her mum who’s hiding in a toilet to avoid being murdered on account of Jewishness. Have we abandoned morality so completely that we now struggle to say that the mass-murdering terrorist is ‘bad’ and the mum trying to survive for the sake of the daughter she adores is ‘good’? God help us.
Look, I like nuance. I welcome complexity. Things are rarely black and white. But 7 October – that was black and white. There were no shades of grey in those kibbutzim stained red with blood. One side was evil, the other decent. The End.
How long before we find ourselves accused of ‘Hamasphobia’ if we criticise those murderous loons too harshly? I don’t want to single out Jeffries. I’m sure his heart is in the right place. But his bonkers piece – which has now been taken down – speaks to a moral chaos at large in a chattering class that has swapped critical thinking for a non-judgementalism that sometimes borders on nihilism. I’m just going to say it, brace yourselves: Hamas are the bad guys.
Brendan O’Neill’s new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now
Admit it, roast dinners are bad
Sunday lunch is a bit like the Edinburgh festival. People make a big thing of it, it’s considered a British treasure, and I am meant to book it, go to it, and like it. But I don’t. If Edinburgh is forever associated in my mind with glowering edifices of grim dark stone, hostile chilly sun between spells of overcast cold skies, the worst comedy and theatre I have ever seen, and paying a king’s ransom for a nasty little room a 20-minute taxi ride out of town, then Sunday lunch is, for me, forever intertwined with desperately wishing to be somewhere, anywhere else. Maybe even the Edinburgh festival.
Sunday lunch is what people traditionally do when they don’t much like each other, or at least don’t know how to talk to each other. That’s why it’s such a stalwart of the British family. It’s also the lynchpin of British friendships, where everyone schleps out to the pub to see their ‘mates’ but, once the buzz of the first glass or two wears off, wishes they were on the sofa with Netflix instead – toddlers included.
At home, it’s a more intense misery. The focus is on timing the potatoes for perfect crispiness, considered of vital importance when all naturalness of intimacy is out of the question. Nothing could be more depressing than the sheer dedication to ensuring that a meat slab, unappetising greens, soft carrots, gravy, and Yorkshires are always present and correct. Sunday dinner takes five times as long to prepare as most families like to spend eating it.
If this sounds too harsh, let’s back up and look at the food itself – the dreaded roast dinner. The roast is the last close relation to the school dinner left in British cuisine. School dinners might be avoidable, but why do we still court the Sunday roast? Despite decades of high-voltage celebrity chef culture, only a few have dared to break from the mould. Yotam Ottolenghi and Claudia Roden helped light the way for Middle Eastern flavours, and now chefs like Sabrina Ghayour, Selin Kiazim, and Yossi Elad bring Persian, Turkish, and Israeli influences. But the big names – Nigel, Ainsley, Jamie, Gordon, Nigella, Delia, Rick, and co. – still peddle English cooking that boils down, come Sunday, into the dreariest of national meals.
There are more reasons to throw Sunday lunch in the bin. Its timing – on Sundays – is a big one. Anyone who’s been to school will feel in their bones the inherent dreariness of Sundays. The evenings are terrible, but the moment the winter sun draws in might be the worst. Sundays are, of course, far heavier with dread in winter because that’s when school drags on and on. Even as a grown-up, there’s little pleasure in sitting down to a heavy load of fat, salt, and meat, drinking red wine you don’t want, eating roast potatoes you don’t want, while the fat of the gravy congeals on the plates and afternoon fades into evening – and the next day is Monday.
Then there’s how you feel before: hungover and heavy, or light and hungry, depending on the kind of night (and breakfast) you’ve had. And how you feel after: even fatter, with indigestion. Either way, you end up feeling worse, physically and mentally, due to the cloying social nature of the event.
Sunday lunch squats on the face of your day. You enter it when you’d be most productive and emerge from it with the same pile of bills and admin tasks hanging over you – except now you feel like you’ve been attacked by a social and gastronomical sledgehammer.
Ultimately, if the Sunday lunch is carved from the same depressing stuff as Sundays, the Christian Sabbath of old, then they’re also bound to the heavy block of the family itself. Families can be wonderful, but many are dreadful. Read any number of memoirs or talk to people about their childhoods, and you’ll hear memories of family that are truly grim – where that vaunted unit is little more than a framework for physical abuse, emotional violence, conflict, blame, and fear. Tales of families from the rough 19th or early 20th centuries paint a picture so oppressive, you wonder how anyone survived it – let alone went on to have families of their own.
In 2024, most Sunday lunches aren’t marked by the barely suppressed violence of the old-school patriarchal family. But they remain a terrible tradition – depressing in taste, heft, and colour. A quick fix might be moving them to Saturdays, but even that, I fear, wouldn’t be enough.