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Watchdog: most aid now spent on migrant hotels
Immigration is never off the news agenda these days, as Brits remain concerned about the influx of people to the country while the cost of living crisis and housing pressures only seem to worsen. Last week Sir Keir Starmer sealed a ‘one in, one out’ migrant returns deal with France’s President Emmanuel Macron which some number-crunching suggested is a little more akin to an, er, 17 in, one out set-up. The Labour lot have other borders-related problems on their plates too, however, as an independent watchdog has warned that the cost of supporting asylum seekers is set to absorb a whooping one-fifth of the gutted aid budget. Crikey!
The surging cost of asylum provision combined with Labour’s aid cuts will leave the lowest amount of cash available for overseas poverty reduction for 50 years.
After Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in last month’s spending review that the aid budget would be slashed – from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent by 2027 – the Independent Commission for Aid Impact has today raised concerns about ballooning refugee costs. Under international aid rules, a portion of the costs of an asylum seeker’s first year in the UK qualifies as official development assistance and therefore comes out of the aid budget. As such, the watchdog has also warned about soaring costs of housing asylum seekers in the UK – with the price tag rising from £628 million in 2020 to a staggering £4.3bn in 2023. The surging cost of asylum provision leaves a fraction (0.24 per cent) gross national income for overseas development, the lowest amount of cash available for poverty reduction and humanitarian assistance for 50 years. Another Live Aid, anyone..?
By the watchdog’s figures, the UK spent three times as much aid per refugee compared to other major European countries in 2023. Perhaps, the report suggests, it’s got something to do with 32,000 asylum seekers living in expensive, taxpayer-funded hotels. Well, Reeves has more on this, too. In her spending review, the Chancellor promised to stop using hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029 – claiming the move would save £1bn. The Home Office will instead look to increase the capacity of sites like the Wethersfield RAF base in Essex.
Problem solved? Mr S isn’t so sure. Quizzed by a House of Lords Committee last month whether he believed the government would succeed in their intention to stop using hotels, independent chief inspector of borders and immigration David Bolt replied:
Frankly, I do not think that it will be achieved… There is simply not sufficient housing stock to be able to deal with the sorts of numbers that are in the system… It is really challenging.
Oh dear. It would be putting it mildly to say that the slashing of the UK’s aid budget has not gone smoothly. Reeves’s announcement prompted the immediate resignation of Anneliese Dodds, the minister who was actually responsible for international aid – and former PM Gordon Brown unleashed a scathing tirade about the move during a recent speech in London. Will this latest watchdog warning persuade the government to better tackle the holes in the asylum system? Watch this space…
What liberalism’s critics get wrong
Perhaps we are living in the early sixteenth century. Think of the ideology of the West as a sort of religion. It needs a reformation, a purging, a back to basics movement. In a sense this is well underway: for many years now, countless thinkers have attacked the flaws and complacency of the dominant Western ideology. Yet a positive vision has not really been articulated. We need something resembling the Protestant reformation. It did not chuck out the dominant religious tradition, it came up with a new account of its inner logic.
To many thinkers, liberalism is a flawed ideology that must be comprehensively ditched
To many thinkers, liberalism is a flawed ideology that must be comprehensively ditched. More careful thinkers admit to ambivalence. Despite its capacity for error, this is our tradition: we cannot disown it, rise above it. The absolutists see liberalism as akin to communism or fascism: a system that is wrong at its core. But on closer inspection there is an element of posturing in most of these thinkers; they cannot quite deny their affinity with this tradition.
Nick Timothy has just provided an example of this. His call on Coffee House for a new conservatism at first seems to be yet another advocacy of ‘postliberalism’. He emphasises that a crude free-market triumphalism on the right has been accompanied by a brittle insistence on individual rights from the left: a double-whammy erosion of common values.
‘Conservatives need to reject liberalism and rediscover true, philosophical conservatism’. So: liberalism bad. Or is it? He then calls for a reassertion of ‘the essential liberalism that stands for pluralism and our democratic way of life’. The average postliberal does not make this latter move, for fear of seeming lukewarm.
But Timothy seems unsure how to expand on the goodness of ‘essential liberalism’. Instead he echoes some conventional postliberal story-telling: ‘Right from the beginning, liberal thought was built on the false premise that there are not only universal values but also natural and universal rights.’ As a consequence, ‘liberals ignore the relational essence of humanity: our dependence on others and our reliance on the institutions and norms of community life.’
The claim to be defending ‘essential liberalism’ is elbowed aside by this attack on liberal thought as wrong to the core.
I know that ‘liberalism’ is a complicated term, but it seems to me that few if any thinkers are really trying to grapple with the complexity.
As I see it, Timothy is on the right track: there is an ‘essential liberalism’ that must be distilled from the confusing excesses of liberalism in our day. It is our political tradition, of liberal democracy, or the liberal state. It is a historical reality, not a theoretical thing: we should not over-value the importance of Hobbes or Locke or any other theorist. Instead we should look at what actually happened: England rejected absolutism of throne and altar in favour of a new political narrative, in which liberty was gradually protected and expanded. And the original ideology behind this was not ‘universal human rights’ – the creed of eighteenth-century Frenchmen, but ‘liberty of conscience’ – the creed of seventeenth-century English liberal Protestants.
We need to re-tell our national story of ‘essential liberalism’, and revive pride in the tradition of the liberal state. Only so can we hope to reform liberalism in the wider sense, the baggy flawed creed that we inhabit.
The BBC Gaza documentary report is a cover-up
The BBC’s long-awaited editorial review of its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was published today. It reads not like a rigorous investigation into serious journalistic failures, but like a desperate institutional whitewash. The report bends over backwards to defend the indefensible, trying to sanitise a catastrophic editorial misjudgment as little more than ‘a significant oversight by the Production Company.’
At the heart of the scandal lies the BBC’s failure to disclose that the documentary’s narrator, a Palestinian boy named Abdullah Al-Yazouri, is the son of Ayman Al-Yazouri, a senior official in the Hamas-run government in Gaza. This, the report acknowledges, was ‘wrong’ and constituted a breach of guideline 3.3.17 on accuracy, specifically the obligation to avoid ‘misleading audiences by failing to provide important context.’ Yet this is the only breach the report concedes, despite a litany of other egregious failures.
According to the BBC, the production company hired to make the film was ‘consistently transparent’ in believing that the narrator’s father held ‘a civilian or technocratic position’ and ‘made a mistake’ by not informing the BBC. This is absurd. The director, co-director, and one Gaza-based crew member were all aware of the father’s identity. In my opinion, the notion that anyone could mistake a deputy minister in the Hamas government for a non-political figure is either wilful blindness or calculated deceit.
Even more damning is the revelation that the production company met directly with both the narrator and his father in August 2024. And yet, the report states with astonishing credulity: ‘I have been told by the Production Company that there was no discussion of the father’s position at this meeting.’ Somehow, though, the report’s author considers this not to be evidence of concealment, but merely an unfortunate omission. The BBC claimed contributors’ social media had been checked, yet it took just one independent journalist a single evening after broadcast to uncover everything they missed, and they still aired it again two days later.
The narrator’s family was paid around £1,817 in goods and cash. The report assures us that sanctions checks were performed and ‘no positive results returned’. One wonders how the family of a senior Hamas official could possibly escape UK sanctions, given that Hamas is a fully proscribed terrorist organisation under British law, but then again the money was paid to the narrator’s sister, intended for his mother. Even more startling is the admission that the BBC ‘was only made aware of the disturbance fee paid for the Narrator after the broadcast of the Programme.’
Aside from the Hamas minister’s son, perhaps the most brazen deception in the film was also swept under the rug in just two short paragraphs of the BBC’s report; its use of non-sequential editing in a sequence portraying a supposed mass-casualty incident. The programme presents us with a child volunteer paramedic (an entirely unbelievable notion anyway) responding to an Israeli airstrike. It opens with a graphic reading ‘245 days of war’ signalling to viewers that the events depicted occurred on a single, specific date. The narration references a particular airstrike and location, accompanied by a map pinpointing the area, further reinforcing the impression that this is a chronological slice of a real event.
And yet, the child appears in multiple shots wearing different shoes and with visibly different hair lengths. He looks freshly shorn in one scene and noticeably untrimmed in another. The only constant is a T-shirt, which the BBC admits created an illusion of continuity. The report concedes the sequence ‘included scenes shot on different days’, and that the impression of a continuous event was ‘reinforced by the fact that the child was wearing the same clothes throughout’. Despite this orchestrated consistency, the report ludicrously claims: ‘[The sequence] did not make any assertions as to how what was shown fitted into the broader chronology of the Israel-Gaza war.’
This seems to me to be indefensible. The film used date-stamped graphics, mapped coordinates, location-specific narration, and a carefully coordinated wardrobe, all designed to give the appearance of a single, continuous event. Yet the BBC insists that audiences were not materially misled, and that no editorial breach occurred. It is a blatant exercise in gaslighting, and an affront to even the most basic principles of journalistic integrity.
The BBC had ample opportunity to catch these failures
The mistranslation of the Arabic word Yahud, ‘Jew’, as ‘Israelis’ is another glaring deception. The report flatly states: ‘I do not find there to have been any editorial breaches in respect of the Programme’s translation.’ Instead, it claims: ‘The translations in this Programme did not risk misleading audiences on what the people speaking meant.’ This is not merely wrong, it is a conscious sanitisation of genocidal anti-Semitic rhetoric. The fact that Palestinians might use the word ‘Jew’ and ‘Israeli’ interchangeably is rather the point. The reason for their animosity towards Israel is precisely because it is the Jewish homeland and the world’s only Jewish state. Why else would they use that word? The refusal to translate the word accurately distorts the ideological nature of the conflict.
The BBC had ample opportunity to catch these failures. According to the BBC’s own investigation, the narrator was identified in the early development stage having previously featured on Channel 4 News. Internal emails from December and January show that multiple BBC staff raised concerns about social media vetting, Hamas affiliations, and whether narration was being scripted for propaganda purposes. Yet these warnings were ignored or brushed aside.
Incredibly, a mere footnote reveals: ‘There was a reference in the Programme’s Commissioning Specification to the Production Company understanding their obligations under the Terrorism Act, which it was stated they would get briefed on. I understand that they were not in fact briefed on these obligations.’ Another footnote discussing the Hamas affiliation of the narrator’s father mentions a post-broadcast phone call in which the production team allegedly said they ‘had not told [the BBC] earlier because they did not want to scare [them].’ The production company denies this, but the report admits ‘the balance of evidence… supports the conclusion that a comment of this nature was made’, but still insists it cannot be read as intentional deception.
Despite all this, the BBC concludes smugly: ‘I find that the correct formal mechanisms for an independent commission were followed’. This is an insult to the intelligence of every viewer, every Briton and every Jew. If this is what editorial compliance looks like, then those mechanisms are unfit for purpose, and the BBC is a sham organisation.
This travesty is not an isolated error. It follows years of documented bias, mistranslation, double standards, and selective outrage. What the BBC has now produced is not an act of accountability, it is an act of institutional self-preservation. A cover-up of a cover-up. A report written not to confront failure, but to excuse it. And in doing so, the BBC has confirmed precisely what so many critics already feared: that when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the BBC is no longer a broadcaster, it is a partisan actor.
Meghan Markle’s rosé-tinted reality
Rosé, like a lot of wine, is not much good. And yet people love it, for the simple fact that it is pink. This reminds them of all nice things – and especially of warm summer evenings somewhere non-grotty. Like the south of France. Or… the Napa Valley. That is where the new branded rosé of Meghan Markle comes from – the latest in a carousel of celebrity rosés. The output of ‘As Ever’, her lifestyle brand, the wine is a ‘thoughtfully curated’ vintage. The former Suits star is pleased to offer ‘a roundness and depth of flavour’ that ‘invites you to celebrate warm summer moments with the ones you love’. It sold out immediately – something that usually happens to a new iPhone or sports bra, not bottles of probably quite plonky plonk. (Most rosé is plonk and we all know it.)
The magnetism of rosé for business-curious celebs bears examining. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt started the trend by buying the vineyard Château Miraval in Provence in 2006 (and fighting like cats over it long after their divorce). Miraval felt on-brand for them at the time. But then came Snoop Dogg, Cameron Diaz (‘all about clean ingredients’), Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Drew Barrymore, Graham Norton, Gordon Ramsay and, of course, Kylie Minogue – who has nine types, including an alcohol-free variety. Kylie Rosé, simply called Kylie, is the UK’s best-selling rosé. Its label looks like a pre-teen has been let loose in a Claire’s Accessories. And yet off the shelves it flies – perhaps justifiably, given its sub-£10 price tag.
Rosé is cheap, but I can’t say that I find it all that cheerful. Still, it must be the pinkness and indeterminateness of the wine that makes dollar signs flash in the eyes of all those celebrity vendors. Nobody seems much bothered by what rosé actually is: not-quite-red wine served at white-wine temperatures. It is made from red grapes and tinged by contact with the grape skins. We all think that dark red rosés – a suspect, magenta-adjacent lipstick hue – are inherently worse than the famous straw-tinted paler pinks. But the colour just comes down to maceration time, which is always short in rosé-world.
That’s rosé for you: skin-deep. This tart of wines barely macerates, and spends next to no time crouching boringly in cellars, which costs producers in space and time but gives wine depth and structure. Out it pops – cheap as chips – and we all love it. Rosé sales are soaring around the world. It’s not just Provence or Napa that is wanted: English and Welsh rosés is up 200 per cent at Majestic Wines, and 160 per cent at Aldi.
But the romance of wine – and especially rosé – is basically France. In France, people sit in heat and eat duck confit and baguette and get in the mood for love. The imagery is as far removed from the neon lights of mass production as possible. Meghan wants a world where everything is hand-picked and bespoke, and who has publicised her own detailed involvement in tasting and testing, using her own handwriting on the label. Yet even she is hawking a rosé made from Fairwinds Estate grapes, which is anything but a romantic producer. Devastated by wildfires, Meghan chose them as a show of support – but they are huge and dreary. They make wine for Barry Manilow, the TV show Yellowstone, and sports teams – and their website has a section devoted to work specifically with college fraternities.
Kylie Rosé, simply called Kylie, is the UK’s best-selling rosé. Its label looks like a pre-teen has been let loose in a Claire’s Accessories
I get it. When you substitute out red or white and replace it with the colour pink and the promise of sunsets in the south of France, of course it’ll be popular – even though it’s more likely to be drunk at a barbecue in Greater Manchester or suburban New Jersey. What I will never cease to find surprising is that the girly scrawl of Kylie or Meghan turns people on, not off.
Still, there is nothing wrong with this utter vulgarisation of a dubious-at-worst, sphinx-like-at-best type of wine. Good business is good business. And if celebrity rosés entrench the escapist appeal of rosé to a nation that goes mad when the temperature gets to what retailers now call the ‘rosé tipping point’ (20 degrees, when sales jump by 150 per cent), then fine by me.
But a word about rosés that aren’t stamped with Meghan’s macabre, perpetual invitation to take flight into love and light through her products. I’ve tried only a few rosés that ask for the glass to be finished. One was from Chêne Bleu – the winery run by Nicole Rolet, wife of Xavier Rolet, former head of the London Stock Exchange – and the other, oddly, is Whispering Angel, the (vulgar-looking) £25 stuff available at Waitrose from Château d’Esclans, which is now owned by LVMH, who is credited with reviving interest in rosé at a luxury level. Both are not only that straw-salmon colour; they also hold back their strawberry notes, while the mouth fills with something more tart and buttery. Still, if both of these were on offer, I’d go for a good fizz – boring old white, boring old bubbles, but genuinely effervescent. Not just pretty.
Jannik Sinner is a son of lost Europe
The clue is in his appearance. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed, 6ft 2in star Jannik Sinner is the world’s No. 1 tennis champion and has just clinched his – and Italy’s – first win in the world-famous Wimbledon tournament. Sinner, the new hero of tennis after his victory over the previous reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, may hold an Italian passport, but he doesn’t look or sound like a typical Italian. In fact, Sinner is a member of one of the many ethnic and linguistic minorities who populate the supposedly united countries of the European Union.
The 24-year-old was born and brought up in the Alpine province of South Tyrol – known to Italian Italians as the Alto Adige – 70 per cent of whose inhabitants are, like Sinner, German-speaking ethnic Austrians. He grew up speaking German and only became fluent in Italian when he moved further south to practice his tennis. That said, he recently told Vanity Fair that he feels ‘100 per cent Italian’. Not every South Tyrolean feels the same way. The region is divided by the Alps. The northern part of the province is in Austria, but the south has been part of Italy since it was awarded to the country after Austria’s defeat in the first world war. Though it is peaceful today, this has not always been the case.
In the 1930s and 1940s, when Hitler ruled Germany and absorbed his native Austria into the Third Reich, many German-speaking inhabitants of South Tyrol preferred life with their racial and linguistic brothers – even under the Nazis – to the oppressive rule of Mussolini’s fascist Italy. Some trekked over the mountains to join the Reich. They only returned to their homeland after the second world war ended in the Nazis’ defeat.
But they were still unhappy with Rome’s rule, and during the 1950s and 1960s, German-speaking separatists sought independence from Italy, mounted a bombing campaign which, although aimed at Italian infrastructure, also cost several lives. Modern Italy has blunted such terrorism by granting a large degree of autonomy to South Tyrol, where public signs and even rail tickets are printed in both languages – Italian and German. Although Sinner is claimed as an Italian hero by Rome and has even hugged Italy’s diminutive Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in public, many Italians regard him as not really one of their own.
Italy only became a united nation in the 1870s, and even today regional loyalties are stronger than national bonds. Romans are Romans, Sicilians Sicilians, and Venetians are Venetians before they are Italians. The same rule applies with even greater force when you don’t speak the same language as your compatriots.
Italy is not alone in containing restive ethnic and linguistic minorities. France has its Celtic Brittany, and nationalist Bretons have also occasionally launched bombing campaigns, while Spain – the country of Sinner’s defeated rival Alcaraz – has the Basques and the Catalans.
Although Sinner is claimed as an Italian hero by Rome, many Italians regard him as not really one of their own
The Basques, who speak an ancient and difficult language, have inhabited their corner of north-west Spain since before the Spanish-speaking Iberians got there. Proud of their distinct heritage, they spearheaded violent opposition to the Franco dictatorship after their former capital Guernica was destroyed by German bombers in the Spanish civil war. Terrorism continued even after democracy returned to Spain following Franco’s death in 1975. The current Spanish socialist government owes its very survival to a controversial deal with the Catalan separatists of north-eastern Spain, who have long mounted their own campaign for independence.
These minorities, in the major countries of western Europe, have often asserted their claims to autonomy or outright independence by force of arms. By doing so, that have given the lie to the EU’s bland claim that Europeans are one happy united family in a single continent where such differences are an unfortunate relic of a forgotten and discredited past.
As a former resident of Austria with a Viennese son, I am vividly aware of how deeply Europe’s varied peoples value their rich and profoundly different identities. Jannik Sinner is a supremely talented sportsman first and foremost, but his very existence gives a face to his own beautiful and neglected part of the world – and may also draw attention to Europe’s other forgotten minorities.
I’ve come to love the nudist beach
Homer is much praised, but I find him unreliable. The Mediterranean cove in which we were swimming, for example, was not in the least wine-dark. We were turning around and swimming back, the sights on display at the nudist end of the beach having startled the spluttering elegance of my head-above-water breast-stroke.
‘I wouldn’t mind if it was only young women,’ I said to my wife, as we swam back. Rather than accepting my dispassionate nod toward prevailing cultural aesthetics, she replied she didn’t mind in the slightest, and couldn’t see the harm. An unspoken charge of puritanism hung in the air. ‘It was just a bit too much like an outpatient clinic,’ I said, and good-humoured sympathy swung back in my favour. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, also a veteran of long hours spent examining the exposed bodies of the ageing, the infirm and the worried well, ‘too much human.’
Henry James, after meeting George Eliot, wrote to his father that she was ‘magnificently ugly – deliciously hideous. She has a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth, full of uneven teeth and a chin and jaw-bone qui n’en finissent pas.’ Yet James had an eye for character, and Eliot’s was immense. ‘So that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her,’ he continued, ‘a delightful expression, a voice soft and rich as that of a counselling angel – a mingled sagacity and sweetness – a broad hint of a great underlying world of reserve, knowledge, pride and power – a great feminine dignity and character in these massively plain features.’
Love makes us beautiful in each other’s eyes – or perhaps seeing the beauty in each other prompts us to love. But for strangers, who have flashed not their character but only their unexpected genitals, I feel no immediate fondness. And among the variety of human forms, many are unknown to the more sought-after branches of aesthetics. There is ugliness that only Goya can make beautiful.
Letting it all hang out has never seemed an attractive rule for life. Discretion seems a better ambition. Pettiness, irritations and ill-considered prejudices are best kept hidden. Even hopes and loves and dreams are best exposed judiciously, and the same is true of flesh. Manners and thoughtfulness are as essential as clothes. Private life requires privacy and nudity should rarely arrive in one’s life unrequested.
Decades ago, a friend held his stag weekend in Madrid. He had some excuse for this, beyond the attractions of the city, since his fiancée was Spanish. He explained to her some of the traditions of British stag weekends, and that he felt a moral obligation to provide the sight of female flesh to his friends. She suggested we all went swimming one afternoon in an outdoor pool, where the normal Spanish presence of topless sunbathers would tick the box. They ignored us as much as we did them, and the debt to vulgar tradition was paid. Without a grim late-night visit to a strip club – an experience high on my list of those I plan to die without – I rose the next morning sufficiently fresh to visit the Prado. The Goyas were marvellous.
Letting it all hang out has never seemed an attractive rule for life
I cannot find it in my heart to be glad that strip clubs exist – some things cross the line from bad taste to irretrievably mistaken – but that nude beaches continue to thrive gladdens my sour heart. De gustibus non est disputandum, goes the proverb; there’s no arguing about taste. Yet was it Nietzsche – not a known authority on public nudity – who responded that life is nothing but an endlessly fascinating argument about taste? Something to it, I suspect.
It is a cliché to say that life would be dull if we were all the same; a truism that the danger of this coming to pass is reassuringly low. Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘Pied Beauty’ praised variety:
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Like Nietzsche, possibly Hopkins wasn’t thinking of nudist beaches specifically. But variety in our tastes and our choices is the stuff of life. ‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours,’ says Jane Austen’s Mr Bennet, ‘and laugh at them in our turn?’ That there exist people whose idea of a good time is taking off their clothes to get sun on their genitals and sand in their crevices is worth celebrating. Ideally, from a distance.
Layla Moran’s nimbyism backfires
Oh dear. It seems that Layla Moran – the oracle of Oxfordshire – has been left with egg on her face once again. Since her election in 2017, the pansexual pioneer has distinguished herself in two ways. First, her consistent embrace of every passing progressive cause. And second, her determined commitment to oppose any new development in her constituency. No wonder Robert Jenrick has dubbed her ‘the greatest Nimby in the House of Commons’…
Whether it is new homes or solar panels, Moran is always there to block anything which might offer a boost to Britain’s anaemic economy. One notable crusade was her 2022 attack on a new reservoir in Abingdon, to cope with consumers’ increasing demands. On X, the Lib Dem MP railed against the proposal by Thames Water, writing that:
The need for the proposed Abingdon mega-reservoir is far from proven, and the environmental impacts of such a project don’t seem to have been accounted for. This project must be halted, immediately.
Fast forward three years and Thames Water has today announced that a hosepipe ban will begin next Tuesday for customers in Oxfordshire – where Moran’s own constituency is based. Nice one Layla. Perhaps Britain’s ongoing water problems will convince her to back the Abingdon project when Thames Water submits its revised plans next year. We can but hope…
Trump is turning ‘Biden’s war’ into his own
It’s official: President Trump is tired of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody shenanigans. While he won’t admit it, it’s likely Trump feels strung along and publicly humiliated. Every time he ends a conversation with Putin that he’s relatively pleased with, he learns a few hours later that another batch of Russian drones and missiles have slammed into Kyiv and killed more civilians.
Today’s meeting at the White House with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, during which Trump said yet again that he was ‘very unhappy’ with Russia over the war in Ukraine, came after weeks in which the US president was increasingly expressing his frustration, even anger, with how Putin was behaving. The President didn’t mince any words during his comments to reporters, threatening 100 per cent secondary tariffs on Russia if Putin doesn’t sign a peace deal in the next 50 days that would end the 40-month long conflict. All types of US-manufactured missiles, including the Patriot systems and interceptors that were already in short supply, will now be transmitted to the Ukrainian army. This last item is particularly notable given the fact that the Pentagon paused weapons shipments earlier in the month as part of a department-wide review of US munitions stockpiles.
With these latest changes, Trump’s Ukraine policy is moving closer to Joe Biden’s, an ironic development when one considers how many times Trump-the-candidate bashed Biden’s stewardship of the war during the 2024 presidential campaign. Apparently Trump-the-president has come to an altogether different conclusion than his previous self: the only way this war will end in a deal is by throwing more pressure, not less, at the Russians. The carrots Trump dangled in front of Putin’s face are now being replaced with pointy sticks – not to mention icier language. ‘My conversations with him are very pleasant, and then the missiles go off at night,’ Trump said, referencing his conversations with Putin so far. ‘He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden – he didn’t fool me.’
Will any of this make a difference to the war, though? Amid everything that has been written over the last few weeks about Trump’s supposed 180-degree turn on Putin, there is a surprisingly little attention to this big question.
In the short-term, the answer is yes. More air defence interceptors in Ukrainian hands will obviously provide Kyiv with a stronger ability to shoot down the ballistic and cruise missiles the Russians are lobbing into the country. Depending on the scale of the weapons packages and whether the Trump administration will request another supplemental from Congress like Biden did (twice), the Russian army will have a tougher job moving the massive frontline further west.
Yet these would all be tactical changes, not strategic ones. The issue isn’t whether more American weapons and American sanctions will complicate things for Putin, but whether the combination convinces him that Russia’s interests are better served negotiating with the Ukrainians rather than fighting them.
We’ve stress tested this theory before, and it failed. Biden, after all, sent more than $60 billion in arms to Ukraine, organised a Western-led global sanctions apparatus against some of Moscow’s most profitable industries (such as crude oil and natural gas) and essentially outsourced US foreign policy on the war to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a bid to increase the amount of chips Ukraine could bring to the table once negotiations commenced. However, all of this assistance merely cemented the preconceived notion in Putin’s mind that the collective West was out to constrain, if not diminish, Russian power globally. Putin responded by doubling down on his policy, not aligning it with the West’s preferences.
Every time Putin’s back has been against the wall, his instinct was to bash through it rather than capitulate. We saw this most dramatically during the opening months of the war, when the Russian army’s clumsy, abysmal offensive in Kyiv was beaten back by Ukrainian forces. Putin responded not by cutting his losses and ending his war of choice, but instead re-focusing his efforts on eastern Ukraine and re-aligning his resources. In the fall of 2022, when the Ukrainian army captured wide swaths of Kharkiv and the city centre in Kherson, Putin acted by kicking away the negotiating table as if it was a dusty piece of old furniture. He ordered a partial mobilisation of 300,000 men to plug holes at the front and organise a counter-offensive that killed off whatever momentum the Ukrainians had at the time.
Are we to believe more US weapons and sanctions will coerce Putin into behaving any differently than he did during those two prior occasions? Anything is possible, and with his announcement today, Trump is certainly hoping history won’t repeat itself. Yet given everything we know about the Russian leader and his conduct over the last three years, it’s likely Trump is setting himself up for disappointment – all the while turning what he often calls ‘Biden’s war’ into his own.
Trump has given Ukraine a chance to stop Putin in his tracks
It took Donald Trump six months, at least six useless phone calls with Vladimir Putin and more than a thousand Ukrainian civilians killed since the start of his second term for the realisation to finally hit: Russia has no intention of ending the war. Today, the American President took a U-turn from praising Putin and unveiled a new plan to arm Ukraine. Nato allies will purchase ‘billions of dollars’ worth of US military equipment to send to Ukraine, with 17 Patriot air defence systems already being prepared for delivery. Trump will also impose 100 per cent tariffs on Russia and its trade partners if Putin doesn’t make a deal to end the war in 50 days.
Ukraine’s best chance is to use this time – and America’s weapons – to stabilise the front line
With Mark Rutte, Nato Secretary General, seated beside him in the Oval Office, Trump said he was ‘very unhappy’ that his conversations about the peace deal with Putin were followed by Russian bombings in Ukraine:
I speak to Putin a lot about getting this done, and I always hang up and say, ‘That was a nice phone call.’ I go home and tell the First Lady, ‘I spoke with Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation.’ She says, ‘Oh, really? Another city was just bombed … I don’t wanna say he is an assassin, but he is a tough guy. It’s been proven over the years. He fooled a lot of people. He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, but he didn’t fool me.’
Ukrainians will greet this news with great relief: their country’s survival has relied on the erratic moods within Trump’s administration that have led to three halts in military aid since January. Now, Ukraine can expect a continuous flow of weapons to the front line. The 17 Patriots interceptors will protect civilians as well as soldiers from Russian missile attacks. But this new deal doesn’t mean that Trump has taken Ukraine’s side – rather, he is frustrated with Putin’s unwillingness to stop.
When Trump failed to quickly deliver any kind of a ceasefire, he had two options to choose from: either to abandon Ukraine and risk its collapse during his term or continue Joe Biden’s policy of aiding its resistance. Both options must have been hard to swallow, given that Trump repeatedly lashed out at Biden for the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan and for pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky handed Trump a way out at the Nato summit two weeks ago, offering a scheme under which the EU pays for American-made weapons and gifts them to Ukraine. It was a dream business offer Trump couldn’t resist.
As for Putin, Trump has given him a 50 day deadline to finish the summer offensive. The Russian troops seized about 215 sq miles of territory last month, a record this year. They are yet to make a breakthrough but much can change before September.
Putin’s plan to crush Ukraine when American aid dries up may have failed, but he still has an overwhelming advantage in manpower and weapon quantities. According to Ukrainian intelligence, some 30,000 North Koreans will soon join the fight. Konstantin Kosachev, vice speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, wrote on his Telegram that Trump’s announcement won’t affect Russia’s stance:
And in 50 days, oh how much can change – both on the battlefield and in the mood of those in power in the US and Nato.
When summer, the best season for the ground offensive, ends, Trump believes Putin will come to the negotiating table. He is even concerned that, with all the weapons received, Ukraine may feel ‘emboldened’ to continue the fight and refuse the peace deal. Rutte was right to dismiss his doubts. ‘Ukraine wants a peace deal and they will stay committed to that, there is no doubt’, he said. ‘You and I will make sure of it.’ Ukraine’s best chance is to use this time – and America’s weapons – to stabilise the front line and stop the Russian advances once and for all.
This report confirms what we knew: the BBC has an Israel problem
The BBC has not had a ‘good war’ since 7 October. Whether it is the smug anti-Israel tone of its reporters, or its use of casualty numbers and narratives dished out by a terror group, it has been pretty shameful stuff. And I say that as someone who generally has a lot of time for the corporation.
After this latest fiasco, the BBC needs to take a good hard look at itself
Today, things reached a new low. We finally got the full report into the documentary ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’. The show was broadcast on BBC Two and iPlayer in February before being pulled. It emerged that the 13-year-old narrator just happened to be the son of the deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas government, something the audience were never told. The investigation, carried out by Peter Johnston, Director of Editorial Complaints and Reviews, found that ‘regardless of how the significance or otherwise of the narrator’s father’s position was judged, the audience should have been informed about this’.
You reckon?
The BBC insists that it was not told who the narrator’s father was, although three people at HOYO Films, the independent production company who made the documentary, knew. Worse, it seems that nobody at the Beeb was that interested in finding out. As the report puts it, the BBC team was not ‘sufficiently proactive’.
That is pathetic, at best, and deliberately negligent at worse. Given we know that Hamas, a proscribed terror organisation, runs all aspects of the Gaza Strip, why did nobody think to check what connections this child had?
The answer is obvious. Why question anything too much if it makes Israel look bad?
While the BBC insists that nobody subject to financial sanctions received money as part of the production process, the narrator was paid £795 for his time. So, money did go to a Hamas minister’s family and it’s hard to believe it stayed in this child’s piggy bank. I wonder how much concrete for a terror tunnel you can get for £795 these days. Maybe you can get it cheap via the UN.
The report also found no evidence ‘to support a suggestion that the narrator’s father or family influenced the content of the programme in any way’. Terrorist organisations are, of course, well known for their lack of influence on family members and so even in something scripted, as this narrator’s contribution was, this seems a nonsensical argument. It seems to me that terrorists don’t need to be explicit to influence someone’s behaviour, especially if it is a close family member.
Commenting on the latest scandal engulfing his ex-employer, former director of BBC Television Danny Cohen said:
The serious journalistic failings of this documentary have severely damaged public trust in the BBC. This is not an isolated incident but part of a pattern of systemic bias in the BBC’s coverage of the war.
Cohen is right. This is far from the only such incident during this terrible war. Remember when correspondent Jon Donnison announced live on air that it was “hard to see” that anyone but the IDF could have bombed a hospital in Gaza? It subsequently emerged that that the missile had been fired from inside Gaza i.e. it had been fired by Hamas or another terror group in the territory. That was 10 days after Hamas conducted its massacre.
We’ve also had Jeremy Bowen suggest that a hoard of weapons found by the IDF in a hospital might have simply been the armoury of the site’s security team, not terrorists using civilian infrastructure to hide their arms. It’s all so ridiculous that it would be laughable if it were not so dangerous.
Cohen believes that ‘the BBC’s failure to recognise this [pattern] and take real action is a serious leadership failure,” adding that ‘statements from the BBC that it takes antisemitism seriously have become utterly meaningless’. It is hard to disagree.
The BBC leadership will no doubt continue to highlight that the only breach of its editorial guidelines found was not declaring who the narrator was, as if that is not serious enough. The fact that this report found no impartiality issues will be of no comfort to most of the UK’s Jewish population, who have felt let down by the national broadcaster for almost two years – including during its nonsensical coverage of Glastonbury recently.
In its response to today’s report, the BBC also flags that it and other journalistic organisations are not allowed into Gaza. That’s a serious issue, one worthy of separate discussion and that I have mixed feelings about. However, in this instance it is a deflection that has nothing to do with the sheer incompetence by the corporation in this and other instances. Just because you cannot go into a complex, dangerous warzone, it doesn’t mean you need to regurgitate propaganda put out by terrorists or hide key facts from your viewers.
After this latest fiasco, the BBC needs to take a good hard look at itself. But it probably won’t.
The Ministry of Defence has dropped the ball on fighter jets
If Defence Secretary John Healey didn’t have an anxious and unsettled weekend, he should have done. The Ministry of Defence once again has serious questions to answer over equipment, this time the F-35 strike aircraft programme, the cutting edge of the Royal Air Force’s offensive capabilities.
It is a political commonplace that our executive faces inadequate parliamentary scrutiny, but there is one institution which can still cause ministerial pulses to quicken in panic: the National Audit Office (NAO). Established just over 40 years ago, the NAO carries out financial audits and value-for-money surveys on government departments. Essentially, it is the independent watchdog of public expenditure, and its head, the comptroller and auditor general, is an officer of the House of Commons, not a civil servant.
This blind refusal to accept that anything is amiss is insulting and deeply worrying
On Friday last week, the NAO published a report on ‘the UK’s F-35 capability’, examining the procurement, operation and maintenance of the jointly operated RAF/Royal Navy fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning multi-role strike fighters. Its conclusions, by any reasonable reading, were delivered with asperity; at worst, they were damning.
The UK first became a partner in the United States-based design of the F-35m in 1995, and the programme has been beset by a range of problems over the intervening decades. Successive governments have exacerbated the situation: in 2010, the Ministry of Defence decided to switch from the F-35B variant to the F-35C, then reversed the decision two years later. Typically of the MoD, financial decisions have repeatedly been deferred in vain and usually counter-productive attempts to save money.
The headlines from the NAO’s report are plain. Of the 138 F-35s the UK has ordered, 37 are in service, but there is no schedule for the remaining aircraft. The programme has already cost £11 billion, and the MoD estimates the whole-life cost, keeping the aircraft flying until 2069, will cost £57 billion; until recently it insisted it would be £19 billion. The NAO estimates it will be £71 billion.
The programme is at least two years behind schedule, and the ability of the aircraft to fire long-range ‘stand-off’ missiles will not be achieved until the 2030s. In 2024, the F-35 fleet was only available to carry out all seven missions required of it by the MoD a third of the time; one time in two, it was available to perform at least one of those seven missions. Shortages of engineers and spare parts have meant that pilots have not been able to log enough flying time for training and development.
Bluntly, the MoD is paying vastly more than it expected over a longer time period for aircraft that are not currently able to perform all the functions for which they are required. Some of these problems are being addressed, but on others there is silence. This is not just the fault of the current government, of course. The dysfunctional roots of the programme go back decades. But John Healey happens to be holding the baby at the moment.
The appropriate response from the MoD would have been acknowledgement of responsibility, a degree of contrition and a clear, straightforward plan explaining what would be done to address or at least mitigate the myriad problems the NAO identified. That was not how the MoD reacted:
The National Audit Office’s report rightly recognises the world-class capabilities of the F-35 fighter jet, as well as its significant economic benefits – including £22 billion of work for UK companies, creating thousands of jobs. The programme continues to operate within its approved budget, and the UK will have two full squadrons of F-35 fighter jets ready for deployment by the end of this year.
It is true the NAO noted the advanced capabilities of the F-35, but the MoD addresses none of the failings, claims that it ‘continues’ to operate within budget (which the NAO contests) and points to the economic benefits, as if the F-35 was a job creation scheme.
I don’t expect the programme’s senior responsible officer to commit seppuku on the steps of the MoD. But this blind refusal, which senior civil servants and military officers have displayed repeatedly, to accept that anything is amiss is insulting and deeply worrying. If they won’t admit what has gone wrong, do they know? If they don’t know, how will they stop it happening again?
Healey’s Defence Reform programme has created a new National Armaments Directorate to manage procurement, though the director is yet to be appointed. But it is hard to see what he or she will be able to do unless there is a dramatic change of culture at the MoD. Only ministers can achieve that change. I hope John Healey did a lot of thinking over the weekend.
King Charles and Harry won’t be reconciling any time soon
The news that appeared in the Sunday newspapers was intriguing, to say the least. A meeting has taken place at (appropriately enough) the Royal Over-Seas League club between Meredith Maines, the latest in Prince Harry’s apparently endless line of California-based press officers, Liam Maguire, who has that similarly thankless task in this country, and Tobyn Andrae, who acts as the King’s communications secretary.
Few will be convinced that this is the beginning of a renewed bond between father and son
A well-briefed source told the Mail on Sunday, not sparing the clichés, that ‘there’s a long road ahead, but a channel of communication is now open for the first time in years’. Stressing that ‘there was no formal agenda, just casual drinks’, the clubland equivalent of Deep Throat reflected that ‘there were things both sides wanted to talk about’.
Suspicion immediately arose that the news of this encounter had been deliberately leaked by Camp Sussex in an attempt to suggest that Harry wanted to build bridges with his father, and that this was a first tentative step in such an initiative. This would hardly have been surprising. The Sussex PR operation is hardly known for its Garbo-like recalcitrance. Its willingness to brief newspapers on often sensitive, even embarrassing, topics has meant that Buckingham Palace is often driven to distraction.
Such remarks as how the meeting was only the ‘first step towards reconciliation between Harry and his father, but at least it is a step in the right direction’, and that ‘everyone just wants to move on and move forward now. It was finally the right time for the two sides to talk’ appeared to suggest that there was an element of blame on both sides. Many would disagree with this, but still, if the Gallagher brothers could overcome their differences in pursuit of their mutual goals, surely the King and his younger son might find their own accord for rather more principled and less mercenary reasons.
However, any positive effects that came out of last week’s meeting have been almost immediately jeopardised by the leak, which Team Sussex has loudly insisted that it is not behind. They are claiming that it was not in their, or anyone else’s interests, to have such a delicate negotiation splashed over the newspaper front pages.
For once, something coming out of Montecito seems possible; it does, indeed, make no sense to have thrust something like this into the public domain. Yet many other antics of Harry and Meghan’s have also been similarly nonsensical, and so there will be many who will think that this has been a piece of duplicity, firstly dangling a story like this in front of hungry newspaper editors, and then snatching it back with feigned outrage that anyone could ever have been prepared to print such a thing.
Few will be convinced that this is the beginning of a renewed bond between father and son, given everything that has happened. (Tellingly, neither the Prince of Wales’s private secretary nor press officer were present, suggesting that fraternal reconciliation has not even been discussed as an idea.) The current hope is that the King will be invited to the Invictus games in Birmingham in 2027 and that this will be an opportunity for him publicly to reconcile with Harry, whom he has not seen since February last year.
Theoretically, this makes a good deal of sense – on all parts – and there will be many at Buckingham Palace, and beyond, who would like to see such a harmonious meeting take place, with a view to putting this prolonged squabble to bed. Yet as we have all seen, an awful, awful lot can happen over the next two years. Even those who are hoping that last weekend’s story does herald a renewed bond between father and son may have to be prepared to be grievously disappointed all over again.
Gaza documentary report finds BBC misled viewers
Back to the BBC, which is better at making the news than breaking it these days. This afternoon a report has found that the Beeb’s Gaza documentary that was narrated by the son of a Hamas official breached editorial guidelines and misled audiences. The review adds that viewers ‘should have been informed’ about the identity of the film’s narrator – which was known by three people at the production company but, however, not by anyone at the BBC ahead of the documentary’s release. The head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, apologised today over the BBC’s lack of oversight and admitted this afternoon that: ‘At BBC News, we are fully accountable. And we didn’t run those questions to ground.’ Oo er.
Turness’s apology comes after a rather controversial Gaza documentary – titled ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’ – was first released by the corporation and then pulled from streaming services after it emerged the narrator was not only the son of a Hamas minister but was paid for his part in the film. At the time, Turness sent an email around her staff taking aim at the production company Hoyo Films before confessing that the institution was partly responsible for the problems with the documentary. ‘Nothing is more important than the trust that audiences have in our journalism,’ she wrote. ‘This incident has damaged that trust. While the intent of the documentary was aligned with our purpose – to tell the story of what is happening around the world, even in the most difficult and dangerous places – the processes and execution of this programme fell short of our expectations.’
Today’s report slammed the Beeb for not being ‘sufficiently proactive’, noting that there was a ‘lack of critical oversight’ of unanswered questions over the identity of the film’s narrator. However the probe concluded that payments to the boy and his family of £1,817 were in fact ‘reasonable’. When quizzed today on the BBC’s own World At One show, Turness admits that staff at the BBC ‘should have known’. She added that ‘their questions should have been answered at the many times of asking’ by the production company and says that the Beeb ‘should have investigated more’. You can say that again!
And even Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy waded in, pressing the Beeb on why no one has been fired yet. When quizzed on this today, Turness responded cagily: ‘I just think it’s not right and not appropriate for me to pre-judge and pre-determine a process that needs to have its time.’ Could heads roll over the whole debacle? Watch this space…
Will the new anti-Semitism report change anything?
For any Jew – or anyone who is alive to Jew hate – a report from the commission on anti-Semitism to be published tomorrow will make for uneventful reading. That is no slur on the report or its authors. The Board of Deputies of British Jews asked Lord Mann, the Labour peer who is the government’s anti-Semitism adviser (incongruously often described as the ‘anti-Semitism Tsar’) and Penny Mordaunt, the former Conservative cabinet minister, to look at the state of anti-Semitism in the UK today.
John Mann and Penny Mordaunt have done Jews and those who care about Jew hate a great service
Their findings have already made front page news, even before the report has been officially published. But there is not a word or a finding in it that will not be entirely familiar to any Jew. Britain’s Jewish population of 287,000 see daily – indeed, on social media it is hourly – reports of anti-Semitism in the professions, on the streets, online and elsewhere, and then we wonder why so few people seem to care about the re-emergence into supposedly polite society of the world’s oldest hatred. It always surprises me, for example, how few people are aware of the intense security around Jewish schools and communal buildings – and how pupils at Jewish schools undergo regular training in how to respond to a terror attack.
But for all the familiarity of its findings, the report – which essentially concludes that anti-Semitism has been normalised in middle-class Britain – is nonetheless a vital piece of work. This is precisely because it brings home in unrelenting, unsparing detail the extent of anti-Semitism in Britain in 2025.
Mann and Mordaunt find anti-Semitism to be pervasive in the NHS, on campus and in the arts and it highlights the appalling policing of the ‘Free Palestine’ hate marches. As they wrote yesterday:
We heard about the noisy demonstrations and how intimidating people find the current environment, but as we dug deeper, what really scared us was the increasing normalisation of far more extreme, personalised and sometimes life-changing impact directed at individuals purely and simply because they are Jewish.
They had, they said, been ‘stunned into silence’ by the evidence gathered during six months of research for the report.
So what is going on? The story underlying the ever-widening and growing incidence of contemporary anti-Semitism in Britain is how it has changed. The late Lord Sacks described Jew hate as a mutating virus and Britain is now demonstrating this.
Anti-Semitism was essentially dormant in the decades after the Holocaust, for obvious reasons. Where it did emerge, it was what one might call ‘skinhead’ anti-Semitism, and was from the far right. Such people still exist, but their role in today’s anti-Semitism is so minuscule as to be almost entirely irrelevant. Today’s anti-Semites are from the so-called Red-Green alliance: self-declared progressives and Islamists.
Islamist Jew hate is so prevalent as to be one of its defining features. Spend ten minutes on social media and you will be shocked at the range and ubiquity of sermons in which the evil Jew is the target. (I recommend following @habibi_uk on X). Yet nothing is done. Literally, nothing. These imams are left free to spout their hate in sermons which regularly do not merely incite violence against Jews but urge it as part of being a good Muslim.
When politicians come out with their usual blather of there being no place for anti-Semitism in Britain, they are speaking utter drivel. Anti-Semitism is not merely tolerated; many of the mosques which host these sermons are lauded as beacons of inclusivity. (It is of a piece with the police standing and watching as crowds on the hate marches shout chants calling for the murder of Jews, such as ‘globalise the intifada’.)
The other arm of this alliance is progressives. The incidence of anti-Semitism has increased sharply since the Hamas massacre of 7 October 2023 – in the year to 30 September 2024 official figures show a rise of 204 per cent to the highest level ever recorded. (Let that thought sink in – the response to the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust has been a rise in Jew hate). But it did not arise out of the blue.
Much of it can be traced back to the advent of Corbynism, which gave license to the left’s Jew hate to escape from the shadows. But many Jews – I include myself – mistakenly thought that the return of the former Labour leader and his followers to the political fringes would mark a better period. We were ahistorical to think that. History shows that the quiet years after 1945 were the aberration, not the Corbyn years.
We have now reverted to the norm, which is open Jew hate, with the difference that the main purveyors are progressives. In the professions, in the arts and on campus, as well as in other spheres, those who consider themselves to be part of the community of the good direct their ire at the familiar target of history – the all-purpose villain, whether it’s the Jew as coloniser, the Jew as baby-killer, the Jew as media manipulator, the Jew as financial domineer, the Jew as…the list is endless. To cite Lord Sacks again:
Anti-Semitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today.
John Mann and Penny Mordaunt have done Jews and those who care about Jew hate a great service. Their findings matter to everyone, because rampant anti-Semitism is a symptom of a diseased society, and its impact always moves beyond Jews. But count me a sceptic as to whether their report will make the least difference to anything.
Will Ed Miliband’s climate change speech be a ‘radical truth’?
For once, Ed Miliband is right about something: the British way of life is under threat. But it is not for the reasons he claims. Our way of life is under threat because high energy prices are leading to Britain’s rapid deindustrialisation. Once a proud and wealthy industrial nation, we are becoming an impoverished country ever more reliant on importing stuff that we used to make ourselves.
Miliband, by contrast, claims that our way of life is being ruined by a changing climate. Today he will make a statement to the House of Commons revealing the contents of the latest annual ‘State of the Climate’ report by the Met Office and Royal Meteorological Society – a statement he describes as an ‘exercise in radical truth-telling’.
Sea level rise remains the most serious problem, climate-wise, for Britain
To save you the bother of having to listen to Miliband, I have read the report for you. There is something a little unsatisfactory about the report this year, as in every year, because it compares data from the past decade with data from the reference period 1961-1990. To compare a ten-year period with a 30 year period should set alarm bells ringing, especially when climate is generally defined as what happens over a 30 year period. Data from a ten-year period is inevitably going to be more volatile than from a 30 year one, as it is going to be more affected by extreme, singular events.
But with that in mind, the report states the following. The average temperature across Britain was 1.24 Celsius higher during the decade between 2015 and 2024 than it was between 1961 and 1990. The number of days with temperatures exceeding 10 Celsius over the 1961-90 average has quadrupled. There has been a corresponding fall in the number of cold days, with the coldest day of the year on average now 1.9 Celsius higher than during 1961-90.
Interestingly, however, the authors of the report do not flag this up in the Executive Summary (i.e. the bit which most people will limit themselves to reading). Given, however, that cold weather is associated with around ten times as many excess deaths as hot weather, this is a very big deal which deserves greater attention than it tends to get. The Met Office might also like to explain why this report is published in July, with an unnerving tendency for its release to coincide with hot weather.
As for rainfall, in 2015-24 we received, on average, 10 per cent more of it per year than we did in 1961-90, with almost all that rise in the winter half of the year. There has been a ‘slight increase’ in heavy rainfall in recent decades (in contrast to those who assert that every flood is caused or has been made worse by climate change). Again in contrast to popular imagination, Britain is becoming less stormy, with a downward trend in average wind speeds and extreme wind speeds. This is good news from the point of view of avoided wind damage, but it is somewhat inconvenient for Miliband’s strategy of trying to power Britain’s electricity grid with very high levels of wind energy.
Also of interest, Britain is becoming a little sunnier – which may well bed down to less air pollution. Sea levels have risen by 19.5 cm since 1901, with two-thirds of that occurring in the past three decades. However, the report does question the measured 13.5 cm increase over the past 32 years, as it is larger than the global trend. It describes the data as ‘uncertain’.
Sea level rise remains the most serious problem, climate-wise, for Britain. But it does also pose the question: why isn’t the government doing more about it? Rather than beef up our coastal defences, we have developed a defeatist approach over the past three decades in which a policy of ‘managed retreat’ is favoured over the construction of new sea defences. It has meant communities atop crumbling cliffs in the East of England being allowed to fall into the sea rather than be defended by sea walls as they would have in the past. If the Netherlands adopted the same attitude towards coastal defence as Britain, they would have to abandon large swathes of their country, a quarter of which lies below sea level.
But don’t expect Miliband to dwell on this today in his ‘radical truth telling’. Instead, he will tell us that it is imperative we build even more wind turbines – to splutter in Britain’s increasingly calm air.
The populist case for fixing the pension system
Pensions rarely top the Westminster agenda or get politicians excited. Too boring, too distant. But maybe, just maybe, pensions will soon become political.
There is a growing consensus among pensions policymakers and industry insiders: if we want future generations to retire with a bit of security and comfort, contributions into defined contribution (DC) pensions must rise. That means workers will need to put in more – and so will their employers.
So soon the government will take the next sensible steps on this sensible journey, with its ongoing Pensions Review starting to focus on ‘adequacy’, technocrat-speak for saving enough to retire on.
The world of pensions policy is a small, pleasant one. Experts, executive and officials tend to meet and talk amicably, away from the passion and poison of politics, about doing sensible, technical things in the best interests of the public. I’m lucky enough to visit pensions world sometimes and it’s a treat for a centrist technocrat like me – smart, decent people trying to do smart, decent things.
But there is a huge risk in clever people making clever policy away from the public.
So in parts of pensions world, away from the consensual panel sessions and policy papers, there’s political fear, which shapes the thinking of ministers and mandarins alike. What if Nigel Farage decides to attack all this?
Farage is a force in the land. Anyone who’s watched him work an audience or studio knows how easily he could turn ‘increased pension contributions’ into a populist talking point about taxing working people to prop up a system run by out-of-touch elites.
I understand that fear. I’ve spent enough time in and around pensions policy to know that these are not the sexiest or easiest issues to sell to voters. And the fear that rising contributions could be turned into a political attack line has already delayed reform. The government had planned to announce a new Pensions Commission to look at contributions last autumn, but delayed the move in the wake of the autumn budget.
When that commission does finally launch, fear of attack by Farage (or a Convervative party aping his approach) will loom, large but unspoken, in the background.
I think the fear is misplaced. In fact, it’s back to front. The right response to Farage on pensions isn’t to hide from him – it’s to try and enlist him and his politics.
Because there is a genuinely populist case for pensions – and for better pensions policy. Not in spite of Nigel Farage, but very much in line with his values, his instincts, and those of his supporters. He’s popular for a reason, after all. If pension policymakers want their reform agenda to survive contact with the public, they should start thinking – and talking – more like Farage.
Start with the most obvious theme: control. What was Brexit if not a demand for ordinary people to take more control over their lives – to repatriate decisions from remote, unaccountable authorities? Pensions are part of the same story. When you don’t save enough, when your pension pot is too small, you lose agency. You end up relying on the state – or your children, or the housing market, or the shifting preferences of future chancellors. That’s not security. It’s thraldom.
If you really want to Take Back Control, put more in your pension.
A decent pension is the very essence of self-reliance and pride. It says: I worked, I saved, I did the right thing – and now I can stand on my own two feet. If the populist right believes in anything, it’s that.
Then take the role of employers. This is where some policymakers get really twitchy. They worry that asking businesses to pay more into pensions will be seen as anti-growth, anti-business – and therefore toxic to a pro-enterprise agenda. But again, that’s the wrong political lens. The right one is this: what happened to the deal?
Here, the pension-populist argument goes like this. There was a time when British businesses saw pensions as part of their basic duty to employees. You worked hard, stayed loyal, and got something back at the end. That social contract has been quietly shredded. Today’s multinationals boast about their values and their people while cutting pension contributions to the legal minimum.
Populist pension politics would demand better. It would ask: If you want to do business here, what are you doing for your workers? It would make a moral and national case for stronger employer pension contributions, not as a handout but as a marker of decency. It would say: pensions are part of the price of a functioning society – not an optional extra. For those employers – and there are a lot of them – who do go the extra mile to support workers’ pensions, there should visibility and recognition. (I recently wrote an SMF paper on this, if you’re really keen.)
Pension officials worrying about Farage and the Daily Mail should see that their case can be made in right-wing language. This isn’t redistribution. It’s contribution. It’s firms putting something back into a system that allows them to operate and profit. It’s responsibility, not regulation.
Which brings us to the real problem: language. How do we talk about pensions in a way that ordinary people understand and connect with? Too often, we don’t. Policymakers and pension lobbyists should not shrink from populism — we should channel it. Farage or one of his tribute acts will fill the silence if others stay quiet. That would be a disaster: a populist vacuum filled with simplistic outrage. Instead, pension reformers should speak the language of pride, family, and common decency.
Stop talking about ‘replacement rates’ and ‘opt-out inertia’. Start talking about security, personal stake, a fair deal. Remind people that pensions are not optional luxury – they are rights earned through decades of work. And remind firms: this is not a cost – it is an investment in your people and a proof-point of your commitment to them.
How do we talk about pensions in a way that ordinary people understand and connect with?
The policy details are not trivial. Auto-enrolment defaults, smart decumulation pathways and the rest all have a role. But none of that will matter unless the political story is won first.
Right now, the pensions policy establishment is nervous. Nervous that Farage or someone like him will come along and blow the whole thing up with a single line about new burdens and working families. But avoiding the issue won’t work. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does politics.
The better strategy – the smarter politics – is to tell a better story first. Don’t fear Farage. Speak to the same instincts that make him successful. And perhaps even challenge him to back a policy agenda that’s actually on the side of the very people he claims to speak for.
There is a compelling, patriotic, populist case for fixing our pension system – for higher contributions, fairer treatment of workers, and a culture that values self-reliance. The question is whether policymakers are ready to make it.
Like it or not, populist arguments have power. Use that power to build up the pension system, before someone uses it to break things.
Who are working people? All Labour’s definitions
The Labour party has long been dubbed the party of working people – but despite the term being integral to the group’s existence, Sir Keir Starmer’s army have so far demonstrated an extraordinary degree of ineptness when pushed on its definition. After new transport minister Heidi Alexander caused a flurry of excitement at the weekend when she gave her own description of ‘working people’ – only those on ‘modest incomes’, apparently – Mr S decided to compile a list of all the, er, contradictory accounts of how exactly the phrase has been interpreted by the Labour lot.
18 June 2024: Sir Keir Starmer suggested ahead of the 2024 general election that working people are those ‘who earn their living, rely on our services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque they get into trouble’. So not those with savings, then?
19 June 2024: Well, er, hold on. Then-shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves was quick to query her boss, telling Sky News that: ‘Working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes.’ She added: ‘There are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up and those are working people as well.’ Talk about a turnaround, eh!
23 October 2024: Tory MP Oliver Dowden was onto something when he quizzed Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in PMQs about her definition of working people. Yet twice Rayner refused to answer the question – even when Dowden specifically pressed her on whether the ‘five million small business owners in this country’ are working people.
24 October 2024: Never mind having a bit of spare change left over, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced ahead of Reeves’s autumn budget that someone on a six-figure salary who goes to work also counts as a ‘working person’. ‘I mean, if they go to work obviously they will be working,’ was her inspiring take.
25 October 2024: But – wait a second. Starmer wasn’t on the same page as his Cabinet Secretary it seems, and the Prime Minister hurriedly clarified that landlords and shareholders would not ‘come within my definition’ of working people. He added sniffily: ‘I think people watching this will know whether they’re in that group or not.’ Fat chance when the government can’t even work it out!
27 October 2024: While those raking in more than £100,000 a year may be classed as ‘working people’, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson wasn’t quite sure if the definition could be extended to small business owners on £13,000 per annum. In her rather confused response to questions from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, she stated a working person was someone ‘whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day’ such as, for example, Cabinet ministers like herself. How convenient! Yet when Phillipson was asked on whether small business owners who earn their income from profits, she dismissed the scenario as ‘hypothetical’. How reassuring…
30 October 2024: Employers are not working people, but employees are, the Chancellor says via her autumn budget which saw employer’s national insurance contributions rise. But with concerns that bosses will try to offset the extra cost by, um, firing staff, the degree to which ‘working people’ will be harmed by the move is certainly debatable.
13 July 2025: New Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander claimed at the weekend that the government had pledged not to raise taxes for ‘people on modest incomes, working people’. So what does this mean? That a six-figure salary is a modest income? That those earning more than £100,000 are no longer included in this category? That small business owners are? Steerpike welcomes any suggestions…
14 July 2025: Darren Jones insists that ‘anyone who gets a payslip’ is a working person.
14 July 2025: Rachel Reeves is asked to define ‘working people’ and replies by suggesting that income tax, VAT and National Insurance are the ‘key taxes that working people pay’ before adding ‘I don’t think we need to define more than that, really.’
Wallace’s BBC return ‘untenable’ after complaints upheld
Another week, another bit of bad news for ex-Beeb star Gregg Wallace. A report into the former MasterChef presenter has substantiated a whopping 45 complaints against the TV personality – making any return to the public service broadcaster ‘untenable’. A seven-month inquiry by legal firm Lewis Silkin was carried out on behalf of the programme’s production company. Speaking to 78 witnesses, it probed a staggering 83 complaints against the star – and upheld more than half. Crikey.
The ex-MasterChef presenter faced more than 14 hours of interviews with the investigating team. Almost all of the allegations related to incidents occurring between 2005 and 2018, with most of these concerning inappropriate sexual language and humour. Of the incidents that have been substantiated, just one took place after 2018 – which is when Wallace was spoken to about his behaviour by BBC chiefs. Other complaints that were upheld included allegations of inappropriate language and one reported instance of unwanted physical contact. Good heavens!
Wallace received more media attention last week after he claimed that his neurodiversity diagnosis of autism meant he is unable to wear underwear. He took to Instagram last Tuesday to insist:
My neurodiversity, now formally diagnosed as autism, was suspected and discussed by colleagues across countless seasons of MasterChef. Yet nothing was done to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment for over 20 years.
More than that, as reported by the Telegraph last week, the former foodie even plans to sue the Beeb and the creators of MasterChef for discrimination on the grounds of his autism, after the Corporation sacked him from his role as host of the cooking competition. While charities and disabled peoples’ groups hit back at Wallace over his claim – with Neurodiversity in Business boss Dan Harris fuming ‘autism is not a free pass for bad behaviour’ – the Lewis Silkin report found the diagnosis to be ‘highly relevant’ in the context of its findings. How very interesting…
And Wallace wasn’t the only BBC staffer in the firing line – two allegations made about other MasterChef workers were also substantiated. The show’s production company was slammed for not providing enough training or escalation procedures to manage complaints before 2016, with incidents often handled informally, while it was noted that the BBC had not been in possession of centrally-held information. The chief of production company Banijay UK, Patrick Holland, apologised to anyone who had been affected by Wallace’s actions – which, he added, ‘make Gregg Wallace’s return to MasterChef untenable’ – while the Beeb insists it has told Wallace he cannot return to the company. As ever, the Beeb appears more adept at making news headlines than breaking them…
Who exactly is a working person?
Tomorrow is Rachel Reeves’s big speech in the City. The annual Mansion House address is a chance for the chancellor to set out their big vision for the British economy. But amid a gloomy set of economic indicators – including two monthly GDP contractions in a row – it is difficult to see what good news message she can deliver. Initially, there was talk about reforms to cash ISAs, with Reeves planning to cut the £20,000 annual tax-free allowance. However, following a backlash, the Financial Times reports those plans have now been dropped. There is talk instead of Reeves promising a ‘new Big Bang’ by slashing regulation on financial services. That will undoubtedly find favour in some corners of the City. Yet it is difficult to immediately see what low hanging fruit is available to Reeves, given how much work her predecessor Jeremy Hunt did on financial services regulation via his ‘Edinburgh Reforms.’
The run-up to Reeves’ speech is being overshadowed by a fresh row too. The Labour government has pledged not to raise taxes on ‘working people.’ So what exactly does this mean? It seems that the cabinet themselves are not entirely sure. Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, yesterday suggested that the definition referred to ‘people on modest incomes.’ But today, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, argued that the term refers to ‘anyone that gets a payslip, basically.’ That is a significantly broader definition – one which would cover virtually all taxpayers. Jones did not rule out other tax rises either. He said Labour’s tax pledge on income tax and national insurance referred to the ‘headline rate’, leaving the door open to extending the freeze on thresholds. Jones also failed to rule out a wealth tax, merely saying the tax ‘commitment in the manifesto was very specific and very clear.’
None of this is particularly conducive to unleashing the ‘animal spirits’ necessary to generate economic growth. Reeves will be out on the airwaves later today and will inevitably be asked for her own definition of a ‘working person.’ The Chancellor will want to point to a series of feel-good measures like today’s announcement of a £500 million Better Futures Fund for youth services. But for the hard-faced men and women of the City, talk about how the Chancellor is spending their money is unlikely to win many converts. The danger for Reeves is that tomorrow night she receives a similar reception to the stony reply she got at the CBI conference in November. Back then, her promise of ‘not coming back for more’ in tax was greeted in silence – despite the Chancellor’s apparent expectation of applause.
Banning disposable vapes was a waste of time
When we’re debating the introduction of a new law – ban this, ban that, crack down on the other – most of the energy in the public conversation goes into the question of whether this, that, or the other is something that deserves to be cracked down on. It seems to be after the event, usually, and with the sound and fury at last subsided, that we discover whether the law in question will achieve its stated purpose.
A corker of a recent example, I think, was the Blair government’s foxhunting ban. It sucked in hundreds of hours of parliamentary time. It generated thousands of headlines. It brought hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets. And finally, this totemic piece of legislation passed – which according to your way of looking at things either sought to bring a barbaric and trivial era of our national history to a close, or sought to destroy part of the English way of life out of class-based spite. The main result was a giant uptick in the number of people in fancy dress taking their dogs for a walk on horseback.
Another, I suspect, may turn out to be Sir Keir Starmer’s one-in-one-out ‘crackdown’ on small boat migrants. It seems very odd that – by insisting that every new migrant we kick out will be replaced by another we consider more deserving – we essentially tether our migration statistics fastidiously and by law to the success of the smuggling gangs who run the small boats. There may be a shuffle of personnel, but in bums-on-seats terms, we’re accepting exactly as many people as make landfall in a dinghy in any given year.
But the one I zero in on here seems to me a wonderful little parable of the time and energy wasted when a law hasn’t been properly thought through. Disposable vapes. Remember them? There was a moment when we could talk of little else. We all agreed, apparently, that they were a Bad Thing, on the grounds that a) it wasn’t exactly environmentally friendly to have zillions of these plastic things chucked into landfill every year, along with all the nasty chemicals in their batteries and b) they were considered to be a big contributor to the rise in vaping among young people.
The most prominent of all these vapes were probably Elf Bars, a marketing success story like no other. Their manufacturers indignantly deny the suggestion that they deliberately marketed their products to kiddies, but we can say with some confidence that kiddies liked them. Could it be the cheerful, CBeebies style colour schemes? Or is it the Haribo-adjacent flavours – things like Blueberry Sour Raspberry, Kiwi Passionfruit Guava and Blue Razz Lemonade? Either way, they became a rising star of the random-bag-search confiscation scene in secondary schools up and down the country.
And so, duly, Rishi Sunak set in motion a ban that came into force a month or two ago. How’s it working out? I only ask because though Elf Bars and their like may be popular with the kids, decrepit late-middle-agers like me have also been known to pick them up when they are caught short by the battery on their reusables giving up the ghost. (The cost of this is indignity: I have not seldom – being too short-sighted to read the flavours on the display behind the newsagent’s counter – plumped for a pretty yellow one, imagining it would be lemony and refreshing, only to find myself choffing away on a vile synthetic banana confection.)
Had reusable vapes doubled or tripled in price, consumer behaviour might have changed
Your basic disposable vape, in case any readers are unfamiliar with them, is an all-in-one plastic doohickey with an integral one-use battery, and a tank of some fruity-flavoured and wickedly nicotinous juice inside which the battery vapourises for your pretend-smoking pleasure. They cost five or six quid a pop – or anything up to a tenner if you buy one from the robdogs in those central London kiosks.
Now, though, they are 100 per cent illegal. So the other day, caught vapeless as described above, I tried to buy one in the offy. Elf Bar, despite the mighty smiting of Sunak and the combined will of both Houses, has very much not gone out of business. Instead, they are now selling reusable vapes. These new, absolutely-definitely-not-disposable vapes are exactly the same flavour, colour, shape and size of the wicked, needing-to-be-banned old sort. They are sold in the same packaging. They cost the same.
The difference is that they’ve bunged in a USB port so you can now, at least in theory, recharge their crappy little batteries. And if you tug at the mouthpiece, you can lift the tank of fluid out and, at least in theory, replace it with spares that are available separately. Their many competitors – Lost Mary, Blu and all the rest – have done exactly the same thing. A tiny tweak to the production line (insert charging port; solder a couple of contacts onto the juice tank so it’s removable) has made no significant difference to the product.
No doubt the manufacturers will have pretty good statistics on how many of their customers now reuse their products rather than, say, tossing them in the bin when they’re done just like they did with their predecessors. I can’t claim to know, but I have a hunch. Had these reusable vapes, with their new specs, doubled or tripled in price, we might have been more confident in their effect on consumer behaviour – but, oddly, they didn’t.
And, for what it’s worth, if the main desideratum was to reduce youth vaping, the current status quo probably does the opposite. It makes it just a bit cheaper for the thrifty teenage vape-fiend. If you can be bothered to recharge the battery with a USB cable (not included) you get two replacement juice-tanks for the same price as the original vape; which may be marginally better for the environment but it’s also marginally easier on the old pocket money.
And for this – at very best a no-score-draw in overall terms – we spent parliamentary time, political will, and acres of anguished, well-meaning news stories. Not to mention creating a logistical pain in the behind for newsagents and supermarkets up and down the country and inconveniencing to no especially obvious end the businesses that manufacture these things.
Was this in any way foreseeable? As long ago as January 2024, the then health secretary Victoria Atkins promised: ‘we will listen very carefully to suggestions that big tobacco and other vaping companies will somehow find a way around this’. To the suggestion that vaping companies might simply bung a USB port into an essentially disposable product, she said: ‘That’s incredibly cynical and it shows, if you like, the battle that the government is prepared to take on.’ And yet, astoundingly, here we are. Mine’s a Banana Ice.