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Donald Trump’s tariff talk is just bluster
Donald Trump is campaigning hard on protectionism, promising to bring skilled manual jobs back onshore. What will that look like? Huge tariffs on imports, foreign companies unable to ‘steal’ American jobs, a re-industrialisation of the heartlands of the United States. But here’s the catch: a trade war on the scale that Trump is promising is simply not feasible. He is bluffing.
There is no question that Trump is ramping up protectionist rhetoric. ‘American workers will no longer be worried about losing their jobs to foreign nations,’ he told a rally yesterday. ‘Vote for Trump, and you will see a mass exodus of manufacturing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to North Carolina, from Germany to right here in Georgia.’ Cars manufactured in Mexico could face tariffs of 100 per cent or more, while companies such as the agricultural machinery maker John Deere could face levies of 200 per cent or more if they shift factories to lower-cost countries. It would be the toughest trade policy of the post-war era, and go far beyond even the steep tariffs President Biden has imposed on China.
But this just isn’t credible. First, tariffs on that scale would plunge the global economy into a deep recession. The US is the world’s largest importer of goods, accounting for around 15 per cent of the worldwide total. If tariffs wiped out most of that trade, which would be the purpose of them, it would destroy demand across the world. It would be a return to the trade wars of the 1930s, but amplified two or three times over. A depression on that scale would hit the US as badly as every other major economy. Next, American supply chains are simply too integrated into the rest of the global trading systems to be shut off overnight. It would cause chaos. Factories would close down because they didn’t have the parts, and shops would close because they won’t have any stock to sell. Far from reviving the American economy, it would be the start of a long recession.
In reality, the more interesting part of the Trump plan involves the more boring-sounding stuff: lower taxes and deregulation in investment zones. In contrast to the expensive subsidies and industrial plans that are the core of ‘Bidenomics’, Trump is planning a far more radical, free-market approach that would involve slashing red tape and ending government interference in designated areas. As it happens, that might well stimulate a boom in manufacturing, and, even better, would not involve starting a trade war. In reality, the tariffs are very similar to the wall that was going to be built along the Mexican border during his first term in the White House. It generated headlines and created a clear dividing line with the Democrats, but never actually happened. Neither will the tariffs
Labour conference votes to reverse Starmer’s winter fuel cuts
Keir Starmer’s first Labour conference as Prime Minister has ended in humiliation after delegates backed a motion condemning cuts to winter fuel payments. The Prime Minister has faced a backlash over his plan to scrap universal payments to help elderly people with their fuel bills. Starmer’s changes mean that only those who get pension credit will continue to receive the payments. Now Labour delegates have voted against the plan to means test the handout. What a fitting way to conclude a conference mired in endless scandal, eh?
Unions teamed up in Liverpool to put forward a motion against cuts to the winter fuel allowance, with the Communication Workers Union joining forces with Unite to push back against the PM’s plans. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham received a standing ovation after she took to the stage to protest the cuts. ‘This is not what people voted for,’ she cried to the crowd. ‘It’s the wrong decision and it needs to be reversed.’
Proclaiming that the 1945 Labour manifesto had ‘no mention of cuts’, Graham raged:
People certainly do not understand and I do not understand how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched… Labour is now in government, and we can’t keep making everyday people pay.
Oh dear. While the vote is non-binding, the result is a blow for Sir Keir Starmer who has come under criticism from those on the left of his party for the ongoing freebie fiasco. Outspoken Labour veteran Diane Abbott has already accused the Prime Minister’s top team of being ‘in the pocket of millionaires’ – and today’s vote against cuts to winter payments demonstrates the souring of the party’s mood towards the Labour leader. Will Starmer now row back on his plans for pensioners in next month’s budget?
Liz Kendall’s difficult task of defending the winter fuel cut
Arguably the most difficult speech of the whole of Labour conference came from Liz Kendall. The Work and Pensions secretary not only had the winter fuel payment cut to deal with, she is also responsible for welfare reform to get people off sickness benefits – one of the most fraught areas of policymaking – and will oversee what are likely to be cuts to benefits enforced by the Treasury in the next few months. Kendall’s aim was to argue to Labour members that the party is still staying true to its principles while doing all of this.
Kendall’s aim was to argue to Labour members that the party is still staying true to its principles
She did not get a joyful cheer when she promised ‘the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation.’ Nor was there an outpouring of delight in the hall when she went on to promise ‘new plans to join up support for work, health and skills so we tackle the root causes of worklessness.’ Kendall kept going, flattering the party’s directly elected mayors as ‘brilliant’ and the right people to tackle the root causes of worklessness.
Then she addressed the winter fuel payment directly, saying ‘focusing winter fuel payments on the poorest pensioners wasn’t a decision we wanted or expected to make.’ She argued that it was necessary due to the Tory black hole and that ‘we know what happened when Liz Truss played fast and loose with the public finances: it was working people and pensioners on fixed incomes who paid the highest price.’
She insisted that this government had done more to help pensioners than the Tories ever did, then moved to a peroration on the ‘difference a Labour government makes’. This was all very well and good. But with nothing more to announce yet, it has been difficult for the party to move on from the winter fuel payment argument.
Britain is growing. Can Rachel Reeves start spending?
The OECD’s interim Economic Outlook report has landed this morning and its forecast for the UK has been revised significantly upwards. Having predicted in May that the economy would grow by 0.4 per cent this year, the policy organisation now expects the economy to grow by 1.1 per cent. This lifts the UK from the bottom of the pack of advanced economies and ties it in second place – alongside France and Canada – for the fastest growth in the G7.
The news comes as the OECD declares that the global economy is ‘turning a corner’ (the name of today’s report), as global GDP looks set to ‘stabilise’ at 3.2 per cent in 2024 and 2025, while the majority of the 38 countries represented by the OECD have managed to get a grip on inflation, returning their rates to – or near to – target.
This is all good news for Britain – although that might depend on who you ask, and when. Labour spent the summer struggling to balance its doom-and-gloom narrative for the economy with the fairly decent economic updates that kept rolling in, as inflation returned to target and yearly growth revisions kept improving. It’s stories like this OECD report that challenge the claim that the economy is on the brink and that painful decisions are needed in October’s Budget to keep the UK clear of another mini-Budget fiasco.
That said, Labour party conference showed signs this week that ministers were looking to take a slightly more optimistic approach (or that they felt the negative narrative has simply gone too far), especially after consumer confidence plummeted to its lowest levels since March. Both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves laid out a far more positive picture of the future, but that future is still expected to include tax hikes and spending cuts, both in next month’s Budget and in the Spending Review next spring.
‘Faster economic growth figures are welcomed,’ the Chancellor said of the news this morning, ‘but I know there is more to do and that is why economic growth is the number one mission of this government.’ Growth remains the government’s favourite buzzword, but the details of how exactly that is delivered remain vague. The party seemed to clock a long time ago that more private investment would be needed to get the country building – a lesson learned the hard way when it had to roll back its pledge of £28 billion worth of green investment spending, because the funds were obviously not there to make good on it.
But might the Chancellor try to figure out other ways of finding some money for capital spending? Following on from the report this morning, the OECD’s chief economist Alvaro Pereira speaks to the Financial Times, encouraging the Chancellor shake up the fiscal rules that rein in the Treasury’s spending, warning that the current rules ‘may tend to short-termism and the potential deterioration of the public finances in the long run.’
No doubt the rules are flawed and short-termist. But Reeves has two problems: first, Labour committed, roughly, to keeping Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal rules in their manifesto. As IFS director Paul Johnson noted in The Spectator the weekend before the election, any changes to this (even if they had merit) would be a ‘very clear manifesto breach’.
But the second issue will be one of confidence. The fiscal rules as they exist now are already very loose. That debt is required to fall as a percentage of GDP on a five-year, rolling basis means that a chancellor only has to promise to cut spending in the next parliament to increase borrowing (and pile on to the national debt) in the years leading up to this hypothetical reckoning which (unsurprisingly) never comes. Rishi Sunak and Hunt managed to get away with a relatively loose rule, partially because they were seen as restoring stability to the public finances after such a chaotic time. But to tamper with, and loosen it, further would no doubt grab market attention.
Starmer uses son’s exams as excuse for freebies
Labour’s freebie fiasco isn’t going away. Sir Keir Starmer has prompted more headlines by suggesting he took thousands of pounds of donations from millionaire donor Lord Alli because of, um, his son. Excuses, excuses…
The Prime Minister was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about the ongoing frockgate scandal when he claimed that he had accepted £20,000 in donations for accommodation – including a the use of an £18 million Covent Garden penthouse – from the Labour peer to avoid disrupting his son’s study sessions. In an emotive plea to the broadcaster about the matter, the Labour leader insisted:
My boy – 16 – was in the middle of his GCSEs. I made him a promise, a promise that he would be able to get to his school, do his exams, without being disturbed. We have lots of journalists outside our house where we live and I’m not complaining about that, that’s fine. But if you’re a 16-year-old trying to do your GCSEs and it’s your one chance in life…
Going on, the PM added:
I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying. Somebody then offered me accommodation where we could do that. I took that up and it was the right thing to do.
Good heavens. Talk about grasping at straws, eh?
The Prime Minister has been unable to shake scrutiny over the donation row – despite the first Labour conference in 15 years that has taken place while the party is in government. On Tuesday, top Starmerite Pat McFadden told a crowd that Sir Keir had ‘declared everything’ – although he failed to mention the PM had not initially disclosed donations in line with parliamentary rules. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster then tried to explain away the party leader’s £16,000 worth of workwear gifts because Starmer was ‘in the public eye’ for the six weeks leading to the snap election. Er, right.
Labour MPs have been rather scathing behind the scenes over the party’s inability to squash the story – and the PM’s warning to conference that the country faces ‘tough’ economic decisions ahead has not, amid the freebie fiasco, done much to foster goodwill. Now Sir Keir’s latest excuse simply drags the story on for yet another day…
How Wagner mercenaries abused HSBC and JP Morgan
Whatever happened to the Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin’s shadowy army of prisoners and mercenaries? In the wake of Wagner’s abortive mutiny in June 2023 – and of Prigozhin’s own not-so-mysterious death two months later in a plane crash near Moscow – most of the Russia-based units of the group were rolled into the Kremlin’s official armed forces. In Africa, however, where Wagner built an empire not only of guns-for-hire but also of murky mining and oil concessions, Prigozhin’s former henchmen continue their bloody and lucrative business. And according to a new report by the US-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) part of that business relied on the unwitting assistance of international banks such as JP Morgan Chase and HSBC Group’s Hang Seng Bank, as well as international shipping companies such as Maersk, the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), and Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement et de la Compagnie Générale Maritime (CMA CGM).
Western sanctions have so far proved unable to stop determined would-be sanctions busters
The transactions and shipments detailed in the C4ADS report date to 2017 when Prigozhin had already been personally sanctioned by the US for a year, but his companies – including Wagner’s Sudanese mining firm, Meroe Gold – still operated legally. There is no suggestion that any of these international institutions knew that their accounts and vessels were being used by front companies owned by Wagner (JPMorgan told the Financial Times that could not locate details matching the transactions in question, while HSBC expressed a ‘deep commitment’ to fighting financial crime). But the picture that emerges is of an opaque and complex network of front companies and correspondent accounts that allow the group and its heirs to move money and goods around the world in defiance of sanctions – a system, says Jack Margolin, author of The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army, which is ongoing to this day.
Wagner was formed by former Russian Special Forces lieutenant-colonel Dmitry Uktin in 2014 as a private military company modelled on the US’s Blackwater and staffed largely by Russian military veterans. Wagner troops first saw combat that year in eastern Ukraine, acting as a deniable arm of the Russian state – a role they reprised in Syria in 2016, and later in Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso. Part proxy for the Kremlin, part private army, Wagner picked up part-payment for its services to unstable regimes in the form of lucrative mining concessions and other businesses.
According to Margolin, who has used open-source material such as flight and vessel tracking, customs declarations and leaked financial documents to establish a detailed picture of the group’s business activities since 2016, Wagner is ‘a very flexible network that comprises military-operational, political, strategic and commercial elements that all operate in parallel, oftentimes with a large amount of overlap.’ As of May year, the group is believed to have around 5,000 mercenaries stationed in Africa – many of whom are former Russian soldiers and convicts. Since Prigozhin’s death some of the military elements have been rolled into a unit called the Africa Corps, controlled by the Russian state. But other parts of Wagner – notably in the CAR and Mali – continue to operate independently, according to C4ADS. Today ‘so many people use [Wagner] signifiers and symbols there is no very clear delineation in the network,’ says Margolin. Even less clear is the separation between the remaining commercial and military components of the group. Indeed some top Wagner officers have become official government advisers to local African governments – for instance Dmitry Syty, who is an aide to the CAR’s president Faustin-Archange Touadéra.
What is clear, as far as the US government is concerned, is that the Africa Corps and Wagner Group continue to commit atrocities in Africa, including mass executions, rape and child abductions – most recently in Mali. In January 2023, the US designated Wagner as a transnational criminal organisation, and the Treasury department sanctioned a swathe of connected individuals and companies. But that has not stopped some countries – including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – from continuing to do business with them. As Margolin details in his book, the UAE ‘coordinated on the ground with the Wagner group in places particularly like Libya where not only were they providing the Russian-made, Emirati-owned air defence systems that Wagner helped them to operate but they also… collaborated on strikes, sharing information on specific targets.’
Over the last year US Vice President Kamala Harris has led efforts to try to compel the UAE – a major US and UK ally – to halt its support for Sudanese insurgents with arms and money, as well as to stop channelling money for sanctions-defying players. But Dubai and Abu Dhabi remain major conduits for ‘a lot of the world’s illicit finance’ – including ongoing Wagner-related financial transactions, says Margulin. However, ‘there are only certain parts of this network we’re going to be able to touch in a meaningful way,’ he admits. The West will ‘have to make some really difficult political decisions about where we want to apply pressure if we want these sanctions to have a real effect… it will mean spending political capital to pressure allies in places like the UAE and so far I haven’t seen a willingness to really go the extra mile there and to push those partners to pay their way in terms of international enforcement.’
Western sanctions have so far proved unable to stop determined would-be sanctions busters – whether it’s importers of dual-use technology to Russia or mercenaries in Africa – from continuing to use the global financial system at their convenience.
Wes Streeting is convincing, but where’s his plan?
This Labour conference has largely been about Keir Starmer and his ministers making the argument for what they are doing, rather than giving any details of how they plan to achieve it. Wes Streeting’s speech to the hall in Liverpool this morning fitted that pattern. He didn’t announce anything new. Instead, he set out quite how big the challenge was, and made the argument for what Labour planned to do. He told members:
We can only deliver recovery through reform. Without action on prevention, the NHS will be overwhelmed. Without reform to services, we’ll end up putting in more cash for poorer results. That’s the choice. Reform or die. We choose reform.
As with Starmer’s speech yesterday, there were passages in the Health Secretary’s address which were designed to push Labour members out of their comfort zone. Streeting insisted that there would be no change to the founding principles of the NHS, but took on those who argue Labour is just going for ‘privatisation by the back door’. He said:
Now I know there are some on the left who cringe at this. Who view choice as somehow akin to marketisation. But our party has always believed that power should be in the hands of the many, not the few. That public services exist to serve the interests of the pupil, the passenger, the patient above all else. That world class services shouldn’t just be the preserve of the wealthy.
There was one new detail in the speech – probably not worthy of being called an ‘announcement’ – but new all the same. Streeting said the teams of clinicians going into hospitals to cut waiting lists will first focus on the areas with the highest numbers of people off work sick. One of the big missions of this new government is to get people back into work, and there is no point tinkering with welfare reform if the people who do want to work are waiting for treatment. But there is no point talking about NHS reform if you don’t reform social care, and Streeting did acknowledge that, too, promising that the government would starting taking steps ‘towards building a National Care Service’. But we are leaving Labour conference with no more idea about how any of this will happen than we did when we arrived.
Is this the end for Hezbollah?
The recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is a war that’s not yet officially a war, initiated by a political party without a mandate that takes its orders from Tehran, in support of a Palestinian party that few Lebanese care about.
Hezbollah was the jewel in the Mullah’s turban
It is a decades-old conflict, an exhausting, deadly stalemate, but this recent escalation could prove to be decisive. There’s a chance Israel could finally deliver a dagger blow to Hezbollah. This would be a staggering achievement because the Iranian-backed Shia militant group controls many, if not all, of the levers of power in Lebanon, and has been a constant irritant to Israel for nearly 40 years.
The optics don’t look good for either side. On Monday, nearly 600 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were slaughtered and over 1,000 injured in ‘precision’ Israeli air strikes, allegedly given the green light by the Americans. Over 10,000 residents of southern Lebanon fled north to Beirut, just like they did in 2006, the last time Hezbollah and the Israeli armed forces went toe-to-toe. This time though, the residents of south Lebanese have had enough.
On Tuesday morning, I called my colleague Zeinab who lives in the town of Shemlan, a town perched on the hills south of Beirut. When she answered the phone she could hardly speak for exhaustion and anxiety. Her brother was trying to get out of the southern city of Tyre and she hadn’t heard from him in hours. ‘We are tired,’ she told me. ‘We can’t take it anymore. I might need to leave the country.’
She is not alone. The Lebanese have been through the wringer in the past 14 years.
The influx of two million Syrian refugees since 2010 has created social tensions and over-burdened an already creaky infrastructure. The collapse of the banking system in 2019 saw savings and pensions wiped out amid hyperinflation. Then the Beirut port explosion (ignited, allegedly by Hezbollah) on August 4, 2020 decimated a significant tranche of east Beirut.
Meanwhile, those few still drinking the Hezbollah Kool-Aid have been nonplussed, even angry about the lack of a robust response – and by ‘robust’ they mean firing ballistic missiles in civilian areas of Israel. The murderous pager and walkie talkie explosions spread fear and confusion among the party’s ranks and seemed to demand a like for like response.
Hezbollah’s supporters still look to their enigmatic leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, for salvation, but the view among many analysts and Middle East watchers is that Iran doesn’t want to waste its much vaunted arsenal of missiles on Gaza, which it already sees as a lost cause. Add to this the continuous and unhindered assassinations of key Hezbollah party officials and Beirut is beginning to wonder if this isn’t finally at least the beginning of the end for Hezbollah? Is the party reaching the end of what Nicholas Blanford, one of the world’s foremost experts on military capability, calls ‘its ever narrowing corridor of hubris’?
The mask really began to slip on February 14, 2005
Hezbollah’s origins can be traced back to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, an operation designed to neutralise the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which had been using south Lebanon to conduct raids against Israel and had created what was seen by Israel and many Lebanese Christians, as a state within a state. Sound familiar? Israel’s mistake was to overstay its welcome and it soon found it had another armed group to deal with.
Indeed, Hezbollah started-off with a promising business model. At grass roots level it appealed to Lebanon’s Shia, bolstering self-esteem by positioning itself as defender of Lebanese sovereignty against Zionist occupation, while at the same time providing much needed health and educational services to grateful constituents.
But on a geopolitical level, it was a muscular adjunct of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, its militia-on-the-Med, ready to execute Tehran’s regional ambitions. Dedicated, disciplined, admired, of all Tehran’s assets in Gaza, Iraq and Yemen, Hezbollah was the jewel in the Mullah’s turban. Everyone knew this, which is why Iran’s conspicuous lack of support now is so significant.
Only the naïve truly believed what Hezbollah said about defending Lebanese sovereignty. In 2000, after Israel withdrew from the self-declared security zone it had occupied in south Lebanon since 1982, instead of laying down its weapons and entering mainstream politics, Hezbollah said it still needed a military force to liberate the Shebaa farms. The Shebaa farms was an obscure and unheard of patch of land on the Israeli side of the border, but which was once in Lebanon, or was it Syria, no one really knew for sure. It was clearly just an excuse designed to extend Hezbollah’s armed mandate but enough people bought into it.
The mask really began to slip on February 14, 2005 when party members were accused of killing former prime minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others in a massive car bomb in Beirut on the orders of Damascus. Then came the calamitous 2006 war with Israel, started after a botched raid by Hezbollah to kidnap Israeli soldiers went wrong. The outcome, after one month of heavy fighting, was declared a ‘divine victory’, by Nasrallah, even though 900 Lebanese civilians died; one million were displaced, and $3.5 billion (£2.6 billion) in material damages were incurred.
It was actually this conflict which should have militarily been the end for Hezbollah. But Israel try to do it on the cheap and was fought to a standstill. But Hezbollah couldn’t help but show its true loyalties. In 2008, emboldened by its newfound martial fame, it staged an attempted coup on the streets of Beirut, the first time the party had turned its vaunted weapons on its own people.
Then Hezbollah joined the Syrian civil war on the side of the Assad regime and became fully engaged in the business of killing fellow Muslims. This was the final proof that it was more regional enforcer than resistance movement.
If it is the end, Hezbollah will have followed a proud tradition. Michael Young, the Lebanese political analyst, told me over 24 years ago as we drove through south Lebanon in the wake of the Israeli army retreat, ‘The very nature of Lebanon and the Lebanese makes it difficult for any one sect to dominate. The Christians and Sunnis have discovered this and eventually Shia will do the same if Hezbollah seeks power by the use of its weapons.’
Spectator Competition: Chapter and verse
In Comp 3368 you were invited to update a well-known story from the Bible to make it ‘speak to’ life in 2024. There were a few Good Samaritans, Prodigal Sons and Cana weddings, and a splendid trio of Noahs. A special mention goes to David Silverman’s version of Psalm 23, which didn’t fit the remit but offers alternative comfort in these troubled times:
The Lord is my life coach – I shall not stress.
He empowereth me with positive affirmations
And leadeth me to wellness strategies,
Building my emotional resilience.
He teacheth me mindfulness techniques,
Emotional regulation and cognitive reappraisal.
Praise be to the multitudes of runners-up (too many to name) and the winners receive £25.
Genesis unfolds in a world obsessed with instant gratification. God, after days of generating, steps back to admire His Universe, but instead of ‘Awesome, dude!’, He’s met with endless notifications about eco crises, trigger warnings, Facebook rants. ‘Let there be light,’ He declares, only for Amazon/Paramount/Disney+ (‘I didn’t want these!’) to interrupt, ‘New series just dropped!’ Nature grows, and plants are tagged in endless selfies as ‘#NatureGoals’. When God creates humans, they’re given smartphones instead of free will. ‘You may enjoy anything,’ He says, ‘but DON’T eat the fruit of misinformation.’ Naturally they click – chaos. As Mankind plummets into distraction, God sighs, ‘I shoulda stuck to making cats!’ Ironically, in a world flooded with information, oceans are evaporating, and Truth, Peace, Joy, Duty are deluged in updates, doom-scrolling and likes.
Mark Brown
Captain Noah reported that loading was well advanced, with 1,000 breeding pairs now on board. Mx Hardblow considered this heteronormative selection process to fly directly in the face of diversity and inclusion. Capt Noah said he had included beasts from all parts of the globe, but that he needed them to be able to raise young.
Mx Hardblow cited the case of two male penguins raising an egg with just as much care as any heterosexual penguin couple, and said most animals were probably non-binary. Captain Noah responded that the penguins would have had trouble laying the original egg. Mx Hardblow said the obvious solution was to pair a natal female penguin whose behaviour showed that they identified as male with a cis male bird, thus overcoming the egg problem and demonstrating inclusion in action.
Capt Noah unexpectedly left the meeting. This will be recorded as a micro-aggression.
Helen George
So Jairus comes to Jesus, he says, My daughter, she in bed, she dying, man, she good as dead. And the crowd says, Jairus, nothing to do with ‘good as’, she dead 100 per cent. And Jesus says, Jairus? And he says, Yes. And Jesus says, I got this, you better believe me. And he goes to the home, he says, this girl not dead, only sleeping, leave me please. And he says to Jairus’ daughter, it’s a school day, right? And she says, Maybe, but don’t tell my Dad, right? And Jesus says, wait, you been excluded? And she says, yeah but how you know that, and Jesus says, DO NOT ASK ME HOW I KNOW WHAT I KNOW, RIGHT. And she says, Game over, but I ain’t done my homework. And Jesus says, here’s a note, Talitha. She says, new name? Cool. And the crowd says, This is so sick!
Bill Greenwell
When Jesus had but five loaves of bread and two fish to feed the multitude, he said, who wants battered and who wants crumbed? And 200 did reply, but we are gluten-free, Lord. And some did cry, is this organic and hormone-free? We only eat keto. Then a man did ask, Lord, have these been sustainably fished? Thou had better not have used electric pulse trawls. Do not overfish thy quota. And a family did say, our kids only eat fish fingers, Lord, thou could have fried a few. Where are the chips? Then a woman did sigh, this had better not be bloody sourdough, I am off carbs. Another man said, I prefer the manna diet myself. Then one teenager did say, could you turn the water into coffee, Lord, and maketh frappuccinos? The disciples did take selfies with the hashtag #lunchwithMessiah. And Jesus did call Uber Eats.
Janine Beacham
Jesus told them the parable of the online influencer. ‘An online influencer cast upon the internet videos showing her unboxing ludicrous shoes, overpraising Taylor Swift and emoting cutely over a thousand puppy videos. Some of her posts – usually those in which she aired even the mildest of social or even dietary preferences – attracted only trolls. Other content she released on platforms so unfashionable – one can’t name them for commercial reasons, but think Vine or Friendster – no one so much as saw. Others of her creations fell among a multiplicity of identically unique artistic responses to the latest movie, hairspray, pizza topping or prom dress that they failed to differentiate themselves from the crowd. But some of her content earned likes which increased thirty-, sixty- or a hundredfold when retweeted by a weathergirl of promise or in receipt of approving emojis from Joey Essex. He who has fingers, let him click.’
Adrian Fry
Yea verily, a dude(lette) was making his-her-their-anybody’s way from the vape shop to the half-fade tattooist’s when suddenly, disaster struck: battery warning lights started flashing on their phone!
‘Stone the crows!’ they said, though not in a way that might cause distress to any birdies present. ‘I’m facing minutes, possibly hours, without my beloved mobile: it’s life or death!’ They began to ask passers-by for help in finding the vital charger. First, someone with immaculate stubble and a copy of the Guardian said, ‘Sorry, pal, I’m off to a charity meeting,’ and crossed the road. Next, a student covered in red dye apologised and said she had to go and glue herself to a painting. Finally, in despair, they asked a gammon in red corduroys. ‘Have my phone,’ he said. ‘I’m all for community action!’
The Good Gammonian: you never know who your friends are till the lights are flashing.
Nicholas Lee
No. 3371: Potato, potahto
You are invited to rewrite the lyrics to ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’ to be sung not by Fred and Ginger but by another mismatched couple (16 lines max). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 9 October.
No. 820
White to play. Kulaots-Kadric, Budapest Olympiad, September 2024. The Estonian grandmaster spotted a neat sequence to gain a decisive material advantage. What was his first move here? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 30 September. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.
Last week’s solution 1 Nef5+ gxf5 2 Rg3+ Kh6 (else Rg3-g8#) 3 Nxf5+ Kh5 4 Bf7# or 1…Kf8 2 Ne6+ Kf7 3 Nh6#
Last week’s winner Alex Everingham Newton Mearns, Glasgow
Double gold for India
The Gaprindashvili Cup, named after the Georgian former women’s world champion Nona Gaprindashvili, is awarded at the biennial Chess Olympiad to the country with the highest total standings between the open and women’s events. In Chennai in 2022, that honour went to India, who won the bronze medals in both sections.
The 45th Chess Olympiad, which concluded last weekend in Budapest, saw Indian teams surpass themselves, winning gold in both events. Their victory in the open section was all but secured with one round to spare, and featured stratospheric individual performances from Dommaraju Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi (aged 18 and 21 respectively).
Gukesh’s 9/10 score ranks as the second highest tournament performance of all time (behind Caruana’s Sinquefield Cup victory in 2014), while Erigaisi’s 10/11 score (in a slightly weaker field) propels him to third place in the world rankings. Both earned individual gold medals, while in the women’s event Divya Deshmukh (9.5/11) and Vantika Agrawal (7.5/9) earned gold medals as well. Perhaps it was fortunate that India retained the cup, since they made one blunder away from the chessboard; officials at the All India Chess Federation were forced to admit that the trophy has gone missing. Perhaps it will show up before the next event in Tashkent, 2026, though judging by the blossoming of talent in Indian chess, they have every chance of retaining the title once more.
In Budapest, India’s toughest competition came from the USA, which took silver in the open section and bronze in the women’s event. Russia was notable by their absence, since their teams (along with Belarus) were excluded from international chess events following the invasion of Ukraine, as recommended by the International Olympic Committee. A vote at the International Chess Federation (Fide) congress in Budapest firmly rejected a motion to lift those restrictions.
Gukesh’s magnificent performance stood in sharp contrast to that of world champion Ding Liren, whom he will challenge for the title in Singapore in a match starting in late November. Ding appears to be having a psychological crisis since he won the world title in a match against Ian Nepomniachtchi last year, and his dismal performance in Budapest (seven draws and one loss) means that Gukesh is a heavy favourite. Wei Yi substitued for Ding in the China-India match in Budapest, but was ground down by Gukesh in a fiendishly complex endgame.
Knights struggle to restrain rook’s pawns, so Gukesh has staked his hopes on supporting his own passer on the f-file.
Dommaraju Gukesh–Wei Yi
Fide Olympiad, Budapest 2024
71… h3 Missing a narrow path to a draw, but it was unfeasibly complex given that both players were down to a minute or two on the clock. 71…Rd1+! Then 72 Ke2 Rd5! draws, or 72 Kc2 Rf1! (but not 72…Rd5 73 Ng5!). So White’s most dangerous try is 72 Kc4 h3 73 f7 and now Black draws with 73…Rc1+! 74 Kd4 Rf1 75 Ng5 h2 76 Ngf3 Ke7 77 Nxh2 Rf4+ The a4 pawn is lost and the game is drawn, which shows why it was so important to nudge White’s king to d4 earlier in the sequence. 72 f7 Rf1 73 Ng5 h2 74 Ngf3 Ke7 74…Rd1+ was the last chance. After 75 Kc4 h1=Q 76 f8=Q+ there is no forced mate, but White’s winning chances remain excellent. 75 Nxh2 Ra1 76 Nhg4 Ra3+ 77 Kd2! The unique winning move, e.g. 77 Kc2 Rxa4 78 Nh6 Ra2+ and Ra2-f2 draws. Rxa4 78 Nh6 Ra2+ 79 Ke3 Ra3+ 80 Ke4 Black resigns since 80…Ra4+ 81 Kf5 and Ne5-g6+ follows.
Evacuating Lebanon would test Starmer’s mettle
As the security situation in Lebanon deteriorates, the British government is accelerating plans to evacuate its civilians. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has advised British nationals in the country to leave while commercial flights were still operating. It also said that British nationals should have an evacuation plan, and warned that they should ‘not rely on FCDO being able to evacuate you in an emergency’. It is believed there may still be 10,000 British nationals in Lebanon.
As things stand, most major airlines have now cancelled or suspended services to Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, and many of the remaining flights have sold out. Sir Keir Starmer has said bluntly: ‘Now is the time to leave… leave immediately’.
But the shadow of Operation Pitting, the evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021, hangs over everything
The Defence Secretary John Healey left the Labour party conference in Liverpool early to chair a crisis meeting at the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (a so-called ‘Cobra meeting’) to coordinate the government’s response. Ministers, officials, diplomats and senior intelligence personnel were in attendance. The United Kingdom is, in one grim sense, lucky that the crisis is in Lebanon, as it has extensive military and logistical facilities in Cyprus only 150 miles away.
The Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia comprise a British Overseas Territory, and are home to an airbase (at RAF Akrotiri) with the three detachments of the Joint Services Health Unit and British Forces Cyprus under Air Vice-Marshal Peter Squires. There are two resident infantry battalions of around 700 soldiers each, 1st Battalion, The Rifles at Dhekelia and 1st Battalion, Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment at Episkopi.
An additional 700 troops are being sent to Cyprus along with personnel from the Home Office’s Border Force and the FCDO, and there are also two British vessels in the eastern Mediterranean: Type 45 destroyer HMS Duncan and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s landing ship dock RFA Mounts Bay.
We have been here before. In July 2006, Operation Highbrow saw the evacuation of 4,000 British nationals from Lebanon to Cyprus during a previous conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. To circumvent an Israel naval blockade, RAF and Royal Navy helicopters formed an ‘air bridge’ to transport civilians from Beirut to Cyprus, and later, when numbers increased, from Beirut to Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships in the Mediterranean.
At that point, there were more British nationals in Lebanon than there are now; equally, however, the Ministry of Defence was able to deploy six vessels to the region, which it cannot do this time. It has also been suggested that an air bridge would be too vulnerable to Hezbollah’s surface-to-air missiles.
Healey has said that the government is ‘ensuring all preparations are in place to support British Nationals should the situation deteriorate’. The armed forces are practised in this kind of operation: as well as Op Highbrow in 2006, there have been evacuations from Libya (2011), Tunisia (2015), Sudan (2023) and Gaza (2023).
But the shadow of Operation Pitting, the evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021, hangs over everything. In the end, an astonishing 5,000 British nationals and up to 10,000 eligible Afghans were airlifted out of Kabul, but around 1,000 Afghans and 100-150 British nationals were left behind. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs published a damning report on the operation, called it a ‘disaster’ and lambasted ‘a fundamental lack of seriousness, grip or leadership at a time of national emergency’.
Lebanon in 2024 is not Afghanistan in 2021, and the United Kingdom is not an active combatant in the current conflict. But we should be under no illusions: the extraction of thousands of civilians from a war zone is a complex and hazardous proposition. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary is under acute pressure, with officers having just ended a three-day strike over pay; the RAF’s 22 Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft severely stretched; and one of two Albion-class landing ships in maintenance.
It is reassuring that the government has been developing evacuation plans for some weeks, but this will be a stern test for ministers still finding their feet. There must be no hint of inadequate leadership or confusion at the political level, or any suggestion that available resources have been inadequate. This is not a party political issue, but a measure of whether Whitehall can currently respond to crises. We cannot get this wrong.
While Xi reigns, China’s economy is unreformable
It was presented as a bold stimulus to boost China’s ailing economy – but while it excited stock markets in Asia, Western economists were underwhelmed. At a rare press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, the usually gnomic governor of the People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, unveiled a range of measures designed to ‘support the stable growth of China’s economy’ and see that it hits this year’s target of five per cent growth.
There was a time when such measures, which included an interest rate cut and more funds to support the stock and property markets, would have quickened the pulse of investors. But this is unlikely to reverse their exodus. It merely confirms fears about China’s deep-seated problems and casts doubt over whether the Chinese communist party (CCP) is capable of meaningfully reforming an economic model that is no longer sustainable.
With the CCP increasingly in every lab and boardroom, the country’s start-up scene is on its knees
The measures ‘indicated policymakers’ growing concerns over growth headwinds,’ said Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. Liu Chang, macro economist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, meanwhile, said that though positive, ‘we think there is still a worrying lack of urgency behind their words around stimulus’.
The problem for Pan is that not only do few economists believe that five per cent growth can be achieved, but China is widely believed to be cooking the books. Analysts have long used alternative gauges for measuring China’s economic activity, such as electricity consumption or energy imports, but their scepticism has increased as the country’s economic problems have mounted. Growth in 2013 may have been as low as 1.5 per cent, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research organisation, as supposed to the 5.2 per claimed. This year has probably been tougher.
While president Xi Jinping has portrayed himself as China’s ‘supreme reformer’, the heir to Deng Xiaoping, his principal achievement since coming to power in 2012 is to put Deng’s reforms sharply into reverse. A property bubble continues to burst with slumping sales and prices, youth unemployment is soaring, and inward investment is plunging amid growing signs of social stress, including a spike in protests.
Beijing has reacted by restricting data about the economy and criminalising pessimism. The Ministry of State Security, China’s main spy agency, has declared that gloom about the economy is a foreign smear and that ‘false theories about “China’s deterioration” are being circulated to attack China’s unique socialist system’.
The announcement of these stimulus measures coincided with reports that Zhu Hengpeng, a prominent economist at one of China’s top think tanks has disappeared after criticizing Xi’s management of the economy in a private chat group. Zhu, who for the past decade has been deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has been placed under investigation, detained and removed after making comments about the flagging economy and referring to Xi’s mortality, according to the Wall Street Journal.
An economic model that for four decades relied on cheap exports and massive, wasteful state-led investment in property and infrastructure is no longer sustainable. It produced dizzying rates of growth but has also led to soaring debt and diminishing returns, with China littered with ghost cities, containing 60 to 100 million empty or incomplete homes, while companies accounting for 40 per cent of China’s home sales have defaulted.
It is widely agreed that China needs to rebalance its economy and that consumers need to spend more, since private consumption accounts for just 39 per cent of the economy – extremely low by world standards (the figure in the US is 68 per cent). But there is no consumer confidence, with 80 per cent of family wealth tied up in property and no meaningful social safety net.
Xi hopes renewable energy technology can replace property as a new motor of growth, and mouth-watering subsidies have been thrown at industries ranging from solar panels to electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries. This has lead to massive over-capacity and vicious price wars. Yet the benign global environment that accompanied China’s earlier export splurges has gone: the world is much more wary.
Xi’s longer term goal is to build a world-beating ‘innovation’ economy driven by domestic tech, but the most effective way of achieving this – giving more sway to the market and to private companies – runs counter to everything he stands for. Xi has prioritised security and CCP control, even over the economy. He has hobbled China’s most innovative technology companies, which have faced tightening restrictions. With the CCP increasingly in every lab and boardroom, the country’s start-up scene is on its knees, with one executive recently telling the Financial Times, ‘The whole industry has just died before our eyes … The entrepreneurial spirit is dead’. Last year, China led the world in the number of millionaires leaving the country, according to the Henley Wealth Management Report.
This is the background against which Pan wheeled out his stimulus, hinting that further measures might be in the pipeline. It had more than a hint of desperation about it and came days after Beijing announced it was raising the retirement age – a measure that was also widely criticised as inadequate to fend off a fast-approaching demographic crisis.
The CCP has long cultivated the myth of the technocrat, claiming that its officials have risen through a meritocratic system and are superior to those in the West because they can plan rationally for the long term. That was always a highly tenuous claim and ignores the reality that even the most gifted technocrat can make little real difference in an autocratic system where ultimately the only thing that matters is the opinion of the leader. Indeed, such a system encourages fraud as underlings clammer to tell the emperor what he wants to hear or face the consequences of voicing unwelcome opinions – as the economist Zhu did.
Pan is perhaps the embodiment of that hapless technocrat. He is no doubt aware that China’s troubled economy has peaked and may go sharply into reverse, but unable to mutter the unspeakable – that it is unreformable as long as Xi Jinping remains in charge.
Spain makes for an awful holiday
Spain is busy with an image update. Thanks to a host of savvy media stories, we’re now supposed to think of Spain not just in terms of package holidays, sangria, and Catholicism but also as chic, romantic, stylishly left-wing – the macho anti-fascism of Hemingway’s Spain updated for the #MeToo age – and devastatingly cutesy.
Take the recent viral trend among Spain’s youth: a supermarket pineapple gimmick that’s gone global. A TikTok video has Gen Z storming the Mercadona chain between 7 and 8 p.m., under the notion that placing an upside-down pineapple in their shopping trolley signals romantic availability. ‘Spanish singles found a new dating strategy. It’s in the fruit aisle,’ crooned the Washington Post. How utterly adorable.
Barcelona, twice intended by me as a romantic break, is a bewildering tundra of tat and dive bars
Well, I’m not buying it. Of my medium-number of brushes with Spain, none have been great – and certainly not cutesy – most were downright dreadful. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that Spain is the worst country, admittedly not in the world, but certainly in western Europe.
The cities are dire – some of the least appealing on the continent, and not just Magaluf, Marbella, or Alicante. The classy ones are also weird and sad – the much-lauded Ronda depresses me, recalling the end of the world with its perilous chasm; my trips to Seville, Granada and Córdoba as a kid were marred by the stink of drains in every room we slept in. The baked, dull avenues of Madrid, the endless and fruitless quest for the best place for cured meat, the corporate flourishes. Barcelona, twice intended by me as a romantic break, is a bewildering tundra of tat and dive bars, dotted with the ugliest architecture on earth – that of Gaudi. It’s got a bang average beach, bang average buildings and overpriced food. Now it’s an anti-tourism war zone and you’ll get pickpocketed as a bonus.
Politically, Spain is nasty. It’s got a loony left and right with far too much power. I’d give special mention to its knee-jerk hatred of Israel. Right after 7 October, when there was an EU motion to halt aid to Palestinian territories as it was demonstrably funnelled to Hamas, Spain and Ireland refused. In December, a Spanish politician raised a stuffed dead baby in a shroud in parliament to represent Israeli bloodlust in Gaza. It was ghoulish.
Meanwhile, the country’s rambunctious anti-tourism and anti-Airbnb demonstrations have provided a titillating vision for the anti-profit crowd across the West. ‘Down with tourists, down with gentrification, down with rents, and down with growth, wealth, and money!’ they chant. This is Spanish protest culture bravely ‘fighting back’ – as the BBC puts it – against the influx of vulgar people who dare to spend their money in Spain’s roasting cities. ‘Your luxury, our misery!’ they declare. Isn’t it the other way round?
Then there is the economy, which is all but moribund, with seismic, Europe-leading joblessness. Spanish history is also horrid if one begins with the Inquisition, the bloodiest, most sadistic, most pathological manifestation of Catholic dogma in Europe, and moves through to Franco and the long love affair with fascism.
I can’t think of anywhere in Europe – even eastern Europe or the Balkans – where the food is so bad and yet so hyped. Am I really to travel a thousand miles for poisonous mounds of oily carbs, those childish vats of paella, the greasy tapas that hide their unwholesomeness in the romance of the little beakers of wine and the buzzing terraces, the ungodly mounds of cured pig, and my ongoing gastronomical nightmare: fried calamari in butter-soaked baguette?
And what of a great Spanish literature – is there one? I mean other than Cervantes? If there is, and probably there is, it’s never appealed to this devourer of Mann, Flaubert, Stendhal, Hugo, Gissing, and Dickens. Even Hemingway’s Spanish novels, while good, are oddly two-dimensional and brutish.
Bringing it all together is the bullfighting; slowly and cruelly torturing animals for sport in view of tens of thousands of baying onlookers. This is not a tradition fit for the modern era, let alone western Europe. So no, you can take your tapas and your pineapple dating and your progressive rage – I won’t be troubling Spain with my tourism any time soon.
Would scrapping the monarchy really save us money?
Britain’s republicans won’t give up. In spite of trying to use the coronation of Charles III as an opportunity to push their campaign to abolish the monarchy, support for the institution has remained stubbornly high. It is our elected politicians – on both sides of the political divide – who seem to have lost support rather than the new King.
Not to be put off, however, the campaign group Republic has this week published its latest Royal Finances Report, claiming that the royal family is really costing us £510 million a year, nearly five times as much as the sovereign grant.
How does it arrive at such a figure? It claims the costs of the monarchy break down as follows:
Sovereign grant – £ 108.9 million
Income foregone from royal palaces and other buildings – £ 96.3 million
Income from Duchy of Cornwall which could go to taxpayer – £ 65.3 million
Income from Duchy of Lancaster which could go to taxpayer – £ 33.8 million
Royal Collection surplus – £ 11.8 million
Cost of local councils of royal events – £31.9 million
Security – £150 million
Other – £ 12.4 million
And if we didn’t have a monarchy? An elected head of state could cost us just £5 to £10 million a year, the group claims.
Sorry, but it doesn’t pass the smell test. Its £150 million estimate of the cost of royal security is put down to ‘various press reports over the years citing the Metropolitan police’. The Metropolitan Police’s budget for this year is £3.3 billion – so Republic is implying that £1 in every £22 is spent protecting the royal family – which seems improbable when the force has a city of 10 million inhabitants to police. Actually, while annual costs of £100 million have been reported for the branch of the Met known as the Royalty and Specialist Protection, that doesn’t just cover the royal family – it covers protection government ministers, politicians and other VIPs too. Even if we did away with the royal family we would still have a government to protect – as well as an elected head of state – so we could hardly eliminate these costs.
The idea that we could have an elected head of state for under £10 million a year is preposterous. It would cover the costs of a few staff and an office – although evidently not in Buckingham Palace, which Republic wants to let out for a net £70 million a year.
Good luck with that – even with 240 bedrooms, 19 state rooms and 92 offices in London’s inflated property market. You could sell it to developers for an impressive lump sum, I guess – as you could Hyde Park – but I doubt that flogging off London’s landmarks would endear you to the British public. Moreover, wouldn’t Britain need state rooms, even if it didn’t have a monarch? To run a head of state’s office for £10 million a year seems to assume that Britain would no longer entertain world leaders on state visits, nor that our head of state would ever travel abroad on official trips.
Nor is Republic prepared to conceded that the monarchy earns Britain a single penny in tourism revenues – merely saying that such claims have been ‘debunked’. The crowds who gather for royal events and who are to be found standing outside Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard every day would appear to question this – unless you think that those same crowds would be interested in gathering for a peek at Tony Blair, David Cameron or whoever else became our head of state.
If you want to try to save the taxpayer half a billion pounds there are perhaps better alternatives than trying to asset-strip the monarchy.
Snus is gross. But it’s still better than vaping
Snus is a smokeless nicotine product that you insert between your gum and your upper lip. Your saliva soaks into the pouch which in turn releases nicotine, entering the bloodstream without a million tiny pesky tar particulates. In the UK, it is illegal to sell tobacco-based snus, though the non-tobacco variant, also known as nicotine pouches, is legal and widely accessible. The industry is worth something like £250 million and is growing rapidly. It’s a discreet way for smokers to opt for a safer hit of nicotine – so, inevitably, Labour is looking to ban it.
I think part of the charm of snus is its subtlety. A vape can be garish and obnoxious
Labour’s authoritarian approach to nicotine products is a confusing one. How are we supposed to wean ourselves off cigarettes if the tobacco-less alternatives are also banned? Am I expected to wait in a piss-soaked alleyway for some racketeer wearing sunglasses and a trench coat lined with vapes? Am I expected to scour the dark web for illicit supplies of nicotine pouches and end up mistakenly buying a packet of anthrax instead? I’m not convinced that Labour even knows what snus is or, indeed, what it does. I’ll help them out. Snus is moist. Snus is small. Snus (the non-tobacco kind) is sold in almost every corner shop in England. Snus doesn’t blow up in your mouth and leave your jaw dangling loosely from a few muscle fibres because snus doesn’t contain a lithium polymer battery with a 250mAh capacity.
It was the French diplomat and scholar Jean Nicot who kickstarted the trend for ingesting nicotine (rather than smoking it) by giving Queen Catherine de’ Medici some snuff in an attempt to cure her headaches. This practice of sniffing tobacco made its way to Sweden in the early 17th century and became increasingly popular; so popular that in 1724 King Fredrik I issued a decree calling for tobacco to be cultivated across the nation.
But snorting snuff isn’t convenient when you’re a Swedish peasant toiling the land. You need something that gives you a nicotine high and stays in your mouth while you work. Enter snus. In 1822, Jacob Fredrik Ljunglöf founded the world’s first snus brand, Ettan, which is still around today and accounts for one-fifth of all snus sales in Sweden. You can thank Mr Ljunglöf for those cockroach-sized teabag-looking pouches of nicotine you see mashed into the corners of ashtrays or littered around the smoking area of a pub. You can also thank Ljunglöf for your favourite footballer having a severe nicotine addiction – around one in five professional footballers use snus.
The advent of smoking bans, health warnings and high taxation is largely what brought snus to the forefront of smoking alternatives in recent years. And whether you’re a snuser or not, these little pouches have taken the smoking (or non-smoking) world by storm.
Zyn – the ‘No.1 nicotine pouch brand in the world’ according to their website – is leading the charge. Zyn is owned by Philip Morris International (PMI). PMI also owns Marlboro, Chesterfield and Iqos: a heated tobacco brand that claims to be less harmful than regular cigarettes but smells like farts and spit. Zyn comes in a variety of flavours: cool mint, icy blackcurrant, chili guava, espresso, citrus. The flavours are designed to sound as harmless as possible. No one is going to buy a pouch called ‘wet fizz gum recession and impotence’. I can only assume they’ve taken inspiration from vaping brands like Lost Mary, whose names are a real pick & mix treat: blueberry sour raspberry, juicy peach, pink lemonade, blue razz cherry, triple mango.
Zyn taken on a political edge in United States. The rise of Zynfluencers – a subculture of Gen Z snus fanatics – has given the brand immense media attention in recent months. There are thousands of videos on TikTok and Instagram of Zyn cakes, Zyn dog toys and Zyn memes with typical Gen Z hashtags to match: #lipcushies, #upperdeckers, #lippillows, #lipgummies, #ZynnstonChurchills, #ThomasJefferzyns, #MonicaLezynskis, #ZynniethePoohs, #ZynShapiros. While some see this trend as a subculture of right-wing ‘Mascuzynity’, others aren’t convinced. Just last week, it was announced that Tucker Carlson – or ‘Tucker CarlZyn’ for the Zynfluencers reading this – was starting his own rival brand of snus called Alp. Carlson, a previous advocate of Zyn, argued that the brand had ties with Kamala Harris and was run by ‘left-wing drones’, though a company spokesperson at PMI denied Mr Carlson’s claims.
Politics aside, I think part of Zyn’s charm is its subtlety. A vape can be garish and obnoxious. My late father switched to vaping after 30 years of smoking tobacco; I grew to loathe his obsession. We’d sit in his Lexus as he’d chuff away on a cigar-sized rod of metal, lecturing me about the risks of mad cow disease and blowing clouds of popcorn-flavoured vapour all over my 12-year-old face. This doesn’t happen with snus. Instead, you slip a small, potent pouch of nicotine into your upper gums and leave it there for anywhere between 30 and 120 minutes. When you’re done, you take it out, chuck it in the bin and go again.
The health risks surrounding snus are slightly opaque. Where tobacco is involved, cancer is always lurking. But when it comes to the tobacco-free products in the UK, the jury is still out. A 2022 study found that 44 tobacco-free nicotine pouch products and two nicotine-free variants contained cancer-causing chemicals. WebMD says the side effects can range from hiccups and gum irritation to a sore mouth and a nicotine addiction. WebMD also stresses that one should ‘never share a nicotine pouch with someone else’. I’m glad they cleared that up because I really fancied going two’s on a Zyn with my friend tonight and catching oral thrush.
I’m not a snus convert. Not yet. Regrettably, I still smoke real cigarettes. I tried vaping once because I was getting tired of my clothes smelling like Serge Gainsbourg had worn them to an orgy. But vaping wasn’t for me. I didn’t like how I’d wake up in the morning and taste the apple or ice dragon fruit flavour on my tongue. I also didn’t like how it made me look like a barista in Dalston. Maybe it’s time to give snus another go. So what if it might cause gum recession? So what if my nicotine addiction will triple in intensity and I’ll never be able to wean myself off it without going goo goo ga ga? So what if I have to finger around in my mouth every half an hour to remove a very smelly spit pouch? It’s still got to look better than vaping, and that’s a start.
The politics of the hospital ward
Before the op, I was going to write a jaunty piece about how getting yourself ready to go into hospital is like getting ready to go to a wedding. Both require new clothes – that is unless you feel confident that your jimjams – dressing gown, slippers and, for goodness’ sake, knickers – are all presentable.
Now, back home after quite a major op for bowel cancer, I’m not feeling quite so jaunty. At a time when the NHS is described as broken and in need of reform, I know I’ve been lucky. I was diagnosed early, had a brilliant consultant surgeon whose communication skills were equal to his surgical skills, and a specialist nurse who was able to talk me through my many anxieties. If I’m less jaunty and find it hard to talk about my time in Ward 23 of Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital, it’s partly because recovery is slow and partly because, for a dozen days, Ward 23 became my home and the other patients became – well, my clan. There’s a kind of unique and slightly strange intimacy about sharing a ward.
There are those in a worse state than you. You are very, very sorry while also being glad that your own situation is not as bad
I think that maybe the world is divided into those who, given a choice, would prefer to be in a ward and those who want a room to themselves. I’m a ward woman myself. If I’m going to be ill, I like company. Also, drama. There are five of us in Ward 23 – five women with bowel problems in a ward with one toilet. Four of us are over 70 (the eldest being 87), and one is in her fifties.
My bed in Ward 23 is by the window. I feel I have been gifted with sky. Beyond the sky is a view of the Pentlands (Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘hills of home’), and on a sunny day, looking down on the roof of the Hospital Research Office, I sometimes see a russet fox settling down for a snooze. As do I.
A ward is a new country which you need to navigate. Hell, it is a new country. Firstly, you need to suss out the hierarchy of nurses, nurse assistants, visiting doctors, and top-of-the-grade consultants. Green scrubs seem to equal doctors. Green scrubs travel the wards in packs, hats still worn as if they’ve just this minute come from an operating theatre. Some are maybe students. Consultants are known by their lack of any uniform. If a man appears in jeans and a T-shirt, he’s probably a top consultant, surgeon or professor.
Lower down the order are the cleaners, who arrive early, avoid eye contact, and need to be tall to reach up and clean the tops of things. They possess an impressive range of mops and cloths. Last, but far from least, is volunteer Bob, who comes with a trolley of tea, coffee, soft drinks, biscuits, jokes and music. He’s reliably regular and always welcome.
But mostly your life depends on the nurses. There aren’t enough of them, and they work incredibly hard. To thrive in Ward 23, you need to become aware of change-over times, because it’s no good pressing your buzzer – and we all have a buzzer, even if at times one or other of us can’t find it, someone else will buzz for you – during change-over times. You can hear them in the distance chatting and laughing and hopefully exchanging information about their patients, not just ignoring our buzzers.
Catching the eye of a nurse has something in common with catching the eye of a waiter in a busy restaurant. In the ward, it requires tact and courtesy. The nurse may be attending someone in a worse state than you, or, irritatingly, she or he might be just chatting about grandchildren while you’re clenched in pain and desperate for help. It’s a case of choosing your moment, recognising when another patient is more needy than you.
Some nurses you take to, some you don’t. You become aware that the amount of compassion required of a nurse is beyond what most of us can manage. Then, just when you feel you’ve accomplished some kind of a relationship with one nurse, she’s off for the next three days. A new one appears, and you have to start your trying-to-be-a-good-patient routine all over again.
But the patients! The patients. My compañeros! What a conflicting relationship this is. There are those in a worse state than you. You are very, very sorry while also being glad that your own situation is not as bad.
In Ward 23, Babs, whose bed is across the way from mine, is the most ill and, from time to time, has to drag herself to the toilet, clutching her nightdress about her. Her tall, well-bred husband visits and eats her grapes. One Sunday, when Bob’s trolley is off duty, Babs’s husband brings us all coffee and takes orders for newspapers. Babs is in considerable pain. The green scrubs pull her curtains and gaggle round her like hens. We can’t help but hear that her cancer has come back. She’s also grieving because her son is moving to Dubai and taking the grandchildren with him. She won’t tell him. One morning, he brings them to visit – a trio of beautiful, blonde children. The nurses make a fuss of them. We all love and enjoy meeting them, are heartened by their youth, and hate their Dubai-deserting parents.
At the far end of the ward is Tessa (84). Tessa is getting ready to go home. Of the five of us, she seems the most quietly stoical. She has cheery pink hair, nails to match and likes cruising. She’s probably Catholic because, on Sunday, the chaplain comes, draws the curtains round her and performs some kind of mass. We all listen in. Tessa has other visitors. She tells us that they are Sisters of Mercy. Tessa has chummed up with Carol (87). The nurses love Carol because she’s a very well-behaved granny who does what she’s told. She shares her chocolate buttons. When Tessa goes home, Carol curls up on her bed and wilts.
Now there’s an empty bed in Ward 23 and Jean arrives. She’s much younger than the rest of us – probably in her early forties. Whatever’s wrong with her is very wrong and looks like the consequence of an accident. Jean can’t get out of bed on her own and has limited mobility. She has hordes of rather glamorous young visitors and loves glossy magazines. She tells me it’s going to be weeks before she can walk again. By her third day in Ward 23, she’s beginning to look a little optimistic. Perhaps it’s just her age, but she seems to be in a different order of illness to the rest of us. She’s here for the long haul.
Every day, one of the assistant nurses hands out menu sheets for breakfast, lunch and supper, and we tick our choices. Sometimes, by the time you reach supper, you can’t remember if this is what you asked for or not. And does it matter? Perhaps life itself is like a menu sheet, and we all tick our choices, though sometimes life does it for us.
Reform exodus continues in professionalisation drive
The ravens really are leaving the tower. In recent months, Reform has been turbo-charging its professionalisation drive, working to set up branches across the country as part of their efforts to elect enough MPs to form the next government. There’s been a big back office clear-out and tonight it sounds like there has been another casualty: this time one of the fledgling party’s best-known faces.
Gawain Towler – the last great amateur in British politics – has been fired from Reform after two decades spinning for its previous iterations Ukip and the Brexit party. Towler is a long-standing veteran of the Eurosceptic movement and is a familiar face to anyone who has attended one of Nigel Farage’s colourful press conferences over the years. Good luck to the lucky person who has to fill his shoes…
The reforms come as new chairman Zia Yusuf seeks to ‘professionalise’ an operation perhaps best known for its somewhat-less-than professional past. It’s a long road to 2029: how many other faces will be out by then?
Joe Biden’s dishonest farewell tour
‘Some things are more important than staying in power,’ Joe Biden just told the United Nations, and the General Assembly broke into sustained applause. Biden left the stage clasping his hand to his chest, so touched that he had so touched the crowd.
‘It’s your people that matter the most,’ said Biden. ‘Never forget we are here to serve the people. Not the other way around.’ It says quite a lot about the state of modern political leadership that such remarks are construed as moving insight.
Let’s try to put aside how bogus Biden’s departing shtick is. The truth, which we all know, is that he spent the best part of four years refusing to admit that he was too old to serve effectively as America’s Commander-in-Chief. He did not finally accept that his time was up, at least not through his own volition. His peers in the Democratic party pushed him off his re-election campaign only after it became too painfully obvious that he was going to lose.
Biden did not finally accept that his time was up
That’s all by-the-by now. What was more irksome about Biden’s sentimental farewell today is that, for the UN elite, the spectacle of a president professing that he ought not to cling on to power for power’s sake can be taken as an expression of heroic virtue. It ought to be glaringly obvious that leaders should serve their people, not themselves. Yet Biden is now heralded for saying so — as if he were a benign dictator who chose to stand down because of his deep love of country. The actual autocrats in attendance must have enjoyed that.
The rest of Biden’s speech was more familiar fudge. It’s evident that the world has become more dangerous and war-torn since Biden took over the White House in January 2021. The extent to which that is his fault is a matter of debate. But his last address to the UN showed his distinct lack of clarity on foreign affairs, something that has in many ways defined his presidency. On Gaza, he hedged his support for Israel by expressing his concern for the Palestinian people and his wish for a ceasefire. On China, he appealed for co-operation tackling the scourge of fentanyl without offering any clear line as to America’s position on the possible invasion of Taiwan. He called for Ukraine to stay the course until a ‘just and durable peace’ can be achieved, but did not explain how such an outcome might be brought about. On Sudan, he called for nations to stop arming the warring sides, but didn’t name the guilty parties.
Yes, he pledged $500 million (£375 million) to help tackle the growing ‘mpox’ outbreak in Africa and issued some important-sounding platitudes about artificial intelligence. But he only briefly mentioned Iran, saying that he would never allow Tehran to develop nuclear weapons without addressing its role in the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
He took credit for Afghanistan: ‘I was determined to end it and I did’. But he didn’t acknowledge America’s multi-trillion and bloody failure to turn that country into a functional state, let alone the disastrous evacuation of US forces from that conflict. For presidents such as Joe Biden, some things are more important than the truth.
Trump could teach Starmer a thing or two about speeches
The standout line from Sir Keir Starmer’s first speech to conference as prime minister – the one that will be quoted far and wide – will not have been what he planned. With his most serious, most pained expression, Sir Keir called for ‘an immediate ceasefire in Gaza’ and… ‘the return of the sausages’. He corrected himself immediately, of course – he meant to say hostages – but at that point he was (forgive me) cooked.
While the faces of his front bench colleagues were effortfully composed in the hopes of pretending that their leader hadn’t just said what he just said, you know that their minds were feverishly imagining what the photoshop guys and pun technicians were going to do with that for tomorrow morning’s red-tops. Anyone can make a slip of the tongue. But this one hit particularly hard because its absurdity contrasted so strongly with the earnestness with which it was delivered.
At times, Sir Keir sounded like a quiz show contestant racing the countdown clock
Sir Keir’s speech, apart from that, was super boring. I’m trying to work out quite why. You expect conference speeches to be boring, but this one really excelled in that department. My best guess is that it’s to do with Sir Keir’s unvarying cadences. Everything was serious, over-emphasised, and a little adenoidal (when he first took to the stage to congratulate the young man who introduced him – ‘thad was reely fadtadstig’ – it sounded like he had a blocked nose).
He didn’t speed up or slow down. There was no light and shade. With rare exceptions – he managed a bit of fire when condemning the ‘minority of violent racist thugs’ in the recent rioting, and earned a standing ovation for it – the bits where he tried to sound passionate recalled nothing so much as Iain Duncan-Smith’s wooden declaration all those years ago that ‘the quiet man is turning up the volume’.
The very occasional attempts at humour – a likely pre-planned riposte to the inevitable protester (‘This guy’s obviously got a pass to the 2019 conference! We’ve changed the party!’); an underpowered anecdote about a visit to the Lake District – didn’t land, and were mechanically followed by a phrase guaranteed to kill a laugh: ‘But seriously…’
Nor did the speech have any obvious narrative shape or rhetorical structure. He used the figures of rhetoric, right enough – but he overused them. Normally you want to save the showier techniques to make your peroration stand out, and use some more discursive material in the body of the speech. Take anaphora, where you repeat a phrase at the beginning of successive sentences to emphasise it. If you do that constantly, it’s subject to a law of diminishing returns. Everything sounds rote.
This speech was a stack of anaphora sandwiches. ‘People said… People said… People said…’; ‘Take pride… take pride… take pride…’; ‘A law… a law… a law…’; ‘Politics can… politics can…’; ‘A country that… a country that…’; ‘Change isn’t… change isn’t…’. On, and on, it went. And the fish paste in this stack of sandwiches was the verbless list.
At times, Sir Keir sounded like a quiz show contestant racing the countdown clock. ‘A crackdown on knife crime,’ he would say, portentously:
A real living wage. A modern industrial strategy. A 10-year plan for our NHS. Devolution to our nations, regions and cities. The biggest levelling-up of workers’ rights in a generation. More teachers. More neighbourhood police. More operations.
‘Technology,’ he would say, portentously. ‘Climate change. The ageing population. The movement of people.’ ‘Our rivers polluted,’ he would say, portentously. ‘Borders insecure. School roofs crumbling. Child poverty rampant. Nothing seems to work. Our public finances broken.’ ‘An NHS facing the future,’ he would say, portentously:
More security and dignity at work. Town centres – thriving. Streets – safe. Borders – controlled at last. Clean energy – harnessed for national renewal. New homes, new towns, new hospitals, roads and schools. A new future for our children.
So it went on. Run of anaphora… verbless list… run of anaphora… verbless list. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Was he hoping to harness the national enthusiasm for Oasis reforming by modelling his speech on their relentless midtempo rock chug?
Sprinkled amid this were a set of repeated epithets that never quite coalesced into a theme: ‘respect’, ‘service’, ‘renewal’, ‘working people’, ‘a Britain that belongs to you’. Sir Keir has a gift for the unmemorable phrase. Intellectually, saying that ‘taking back control is a Labour argument’ might make sense (he was being admirably candid about reining in the free market), but rhetorically it put him on the back foot.
At another point he said, ‘You may call it populism. But I prefer to call it “the politics of easy answers”.’ You may cheer the sentiment to the echo, and still find that a hopeless piece of oratory. It turns one word into five – and a pallid, unmemorable five words at that. Here you want a zinging soundbite expressing rage at the laziness and cynicism of the populists presenting easy answers to complex questions. Instead you get a phrase that you don’t for a second believe Sir Keir or anyone else applies in private to the populist right.
Perhaps he could learn something about oratory from the populist right. Donald Trump may not be admirable in every respect, but when he tries to stick an unkind nickname on his enemies it’s almost always a banger.