Has Starmer told the truth about Diane Abbott?

Sir Keir Starmer has made personal integrity front and centre of his election campaign. When asked about his multiple broken pledges two days ago, the Labour leader declared that ‘I think it’s more important to stand in front of the electorate and say, “I’m sorry, I can’t now afford what I said before”… I’m not going to tell you you can have everything and then break a promise’… I think that is basic honesty with the electorate.’ But has Starmer given that ‘basic honesty’ when it comes to the matter of one of his own party’s MPs?

On Friday, Sir Keir was asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari about his party’s ongoing investigation into Diane Abbott, following her suspension in April 2023 over her letter to the Observer. Ferrari said:

NF: ‘Some Labour supporters have been speaking to me. They’re puzzled about the direction of the party. There seems to be room for Natalie Elphicke down in Dover, but not Diane Abbott up here in London. Can you welcome Diane Abbott back to your happy fold?’

KS: Well, look, Diane is, going through a process, Nick, because, you know, in relation to the, investigation of an issue relating to her that’s not finally resolved, yet, but, you know, this Labour Party is a changed Labour party.

However, it has since been confirmed that the Labour investigation into Diane Abbott actually concluded five months ago. The BBC reported that Abbott was given a formal warning back in December 2023 but was not told that the outcome meant she would be barred as an election candidate. In the meantime, Starmer and his Labour colleagues continued to insist that the investigation was ongoing – despite it having been wrapped up months ago.

In the words of Richard Holden, the Tory party chairman: ‘It’s inconceivable that Starmer wasn’t told the process had finished and a warning issued.’ Did Keir know and try to mislead the public? Or did he not know and allow himself to be kept in the dark? At best it was ignorant; at worst duplicitous. One thing’s for sure: it’s hardly forensic.

Shakespeare wasn’t a woman

The American novelist Jodi Picoult has revealed that she thinks that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a woman, telling the Hay Literary Festival, ‘I think that, back then, people in theatre knew that William Shakespeare was a catch-all name for a lot of different types of authors. I think they expected it to be a joke that everyone would get. And we’ve all lost the punchline over 400 years.’

Apparently, a male writer couldn’t have written the ‘proto-feminist’ characters in some of the plays, which is a bit like saying that they must have been written by cruel, old-fashioned dukes because they sometimes have cruel, old-fashioned dukes in them. Picoult’s chosen candidate for the true author is poet Emilia Lanier (née Bassano), because, er… Desdemona’s maid is called Emilia, and other equally shaky reasons. (Lanier has been posited in the past as the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets, slightly more credibly.) 

By Any Other Name, Picoult’s new book (tagline: ‘What if the greatest works of literature were a fraud?) uses this conceit to explore the general phenomenon of women writing under male names over the centuries.

That’s a great device, yes. And it’s certainly a potent attention-grabber. Virginia Woolf did almost the same thing 95 years ago. But does Picoult actually believe it? I hope not, because it’s quite, quite loopy. 

Why do people – still – come out with this rubbish about Shakespeare? The obvious first answer is because Shakespeare remains a famous figure. He is a brand that everybody knows, at least by name. Nobody is claiming that the plays of Thomas Dekker were written by somebody other than Thomas Dekker.

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There is also the nebulousness of Shakespeare the man as a personality. Unlike several of his contemporary writers, he didn’t write anything but plays and poetry, and nothing in the first person. The personality of Ben Jonson, for example, oozes out of everything he wrote. You can tell where Jonson stood on the characters and issues of the day. 

But Shakespeare takes everybody’s side. He writes all characters and all viewpoints – high, low, male, female – with equal felicity and compassionate understanding. You cannot pin him down.

People tend therefore to see themselves – or an idealised vision of themselves – in Shakespeare. A one-eyed Armenian dairy farmer might imagine that Shakespeare was a one eyed Armenian dairy farmer, and assemble plentiful ‘evidence’ for it. So Picoult reads Shakespeare and sees a feminist author. 

The accusation, frequently made, that questioning Shakespeare’s authorship is pure snobbery – because how could a rural lad who didn’t attend university be so clever – also holds true. And it’s odd how nobody ever suggests that because of the plays’ intimate familiarity with low life slang then they must’ve been written by a pub landlord or a stable lad. Nobody ever wants to claim those bits of Shakespeare, the stuff that is pure Carry On.

It is inevitable that in our culture – in which worth is bestowed to art from its origins in a ‘marginalised identity’ or its espousal of intersectionality – these crazy assertions would now come with 21st century protected characteristics attached. We can’t be far from Shakespeare was actually a Muslim/neurodiverse/non-binary.

But the daftest thing about all these claims – which go back centuries – is that, unlike Jack the Ripper or the Mary Celeste, they are attempts to create a historical mystery where there just isn’t one. There is a ton of documentary evidence that William Shakespeare wrote the works of William Shakespeare. His peers knew he was the best of the bunch, and they certainly knew who he was. They took steps to preserve his works in the First Folio, years after his death, which has a drawing of him that matches other portraits, refers in passing to his lack of formal education, and confirms his origins in Stratford. Most plays printed at the time didn’t have a name on them – Shakespeare’s did, as a selling point. 

If this was all the jolly wheeze that Picoult suggests, it was a hell of an elaborate and time-consuming one. It also relies heavily on the ability of actors and writers to refrain from spilling the juiciest of gossip. Now a lot may have changed between the days of the doublet and Dua Lipa, but anybody who thinks members of these professions could keep a lid on the true identity of the hottest talent in town is either mad, or dissembling. 

And yet writers like Picoult and actors like Mark Rylance or Derek Jacobi continue to lend credence to this cherry-picking, tenuous guff. 

Is the West being hypocritical about Georgia’s foreign agents law?

The Georgian parliament has rammed through its new foreign agents law amid massive protests, overriding the veto of pro-western and pro-EU president Salome Zourabichvili. The new law essentially will require all non-commercial organisations operating in Georgia to register as foreign agents and publicise themselves as such if they receive over 20 per cent of their funding from abroad. Its aim is to counter the influence of pro-western NGOs in the country.

The proposal has already caused serious unrest, and this will undoubtedly now balloon. You can see why. The government led by ruling party Georgian Dream is not a pleasant grouping. It is far from libertarian and apt to suppressing dissent with some force. Also, even if not officially pro-Kremlin, it is certainly in favour of appeasing Moscow over Ukraine. Georgian Dream’s chairman and founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, an apparently paranoid billionaire with many Russian connections, alleges that there is a shadowy ‘global war party’ conspiring to force Georgia into war with Russia through influencing NGOs and other organisations within the country, and that something needs to be done.

Opposition to the law, and to the government as a whole, comes overwhelmingly from highly educated young people in Georgia who with good reason see the future of their country as European and west-facing rather than grimly and at times despotically Asiatic. The government also faces determined pressure from the EU, which has said it will endanger Georgia’s candidate status, and the US, which has gone as far as to impose personal sanctions on Georgian Dream leaders. And this is not to mention our own Foreign Office, where a couple of weeks ago the Minister of State Nusrat Ghani said the new law was ‘not in line with the democratic values of a Nato aspirant country.’

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Before you join this chorus, you should nevertheless take a moment to think. You don’t have to like the Georgian regime to see that the arguments are by no means all one way.

To begin with, although the law is largely copied from a Russian template (it is nicknamed the ‘Russian law’ by opponents), and emanates from an authoritarian regime, it is difficult to see much wrong with the principle of it. To require pressure-groups and think-tanks operating in a state with substantial foreign funding to register and publicise their sources of support is not the same as preventing them operating. Nor is it particularly undemocratic to require such transparency: if anything, indeed, the reverse. True, the law is cack-handedly drafted, and strictly speaking would cover not only campaigning groups but artistic or scientific associations. But this is a relatively minor matter. The Georgian government has a point when it defends the requirement of registration as a transparency measure. 

More to the point, demands from foreign governments and western commentators to scrap the new law leave the critics themselves worryingly open to charges of hypocrisy. This is for two reasons. One is that the objections are pretty obviously selective, and based on the fact that the NGOs and other organisations affected by the new legislation are all pro-European and pro-western. It is a racing certainty that none of this pressure would have been exerted had Russia, or China, set up front organisations in Tbilisi to call for alignment and co-operation with other authoritarian regimes in central and east Asia, and had then faced legislation from Tbilisi to curb those organisations’ activities.

Second, many of the western nations now seeking to tell Georgia how to run its affairs themselves have their own agent registration laws. The US, for example, passed its Foreign Agents Registration Act in 1938 to deal with Nazi and fascist propaganda, and it is still in force. Admittedly narrower than the Georgian one (for example, it excludes news organisations and a number of other bodies) its principle is similar. A number of European states such as Germany also have such provisions. Last year the UK introduced one fairly similar to the US model in Part 4 of the National Security Act 2023. And six months ago the EU, one of the most vociferous critics of the Georgian legislation, itself unveiled a wide-raging proposal for a directive, which if anything would be wider than the US provision (it would, for example, it seems include even foreign media organisations seeking to influence policy). 

This is not to defend the Georgian government. Georgia is currently balanced on a knife-edge between western-style liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Indeed, the threat of the latter is strong, if only because Russian troops continue to occupy swathes of northern Georgia. This matters: it remains vital for the UK, the EU and the US to continue to put maximum pressure on the regime in Tbilisi and make it clear that they support those in Georgia who prefer a liberal western path to that chosen by Georgian Dream. 

But the West needs to be honest about what it wants. There is no clear case against the foreign agents law: there is a very clear case indeed against the government that passed it. Continuing with an insistence that this law, approved by a government with at least some claim to democratic legitimacy, should be dumped, western governments are pressing a weak case instead of a strong one. By doing this they are not only being unwise: they are also arguably making a rod for their own backs in future, and inadvertently strengthening the hand of the would-be autocrats in Tbilisi.

The weird world of regional auction houses

Michael Prowse, proprietor and auctioneer at Pilton Auctions, is rummaging through boxes at the back of his office – which is in a warehouse, up a wooden ladder and underneath corrugated metal and plastic roofing. ‘I’ve got something horrendous here,’ Michael says, ‘but its on it’s way to the bin.’ I’ve asked him what the strangest item he’s sold at auction is. He’s not sure, but he’s on a mission to find the strangest item he won’t sell. It appeared during one of Pilton Auctions routine house clearances. 

‘What is it?’ I ask, not sure I want to know the answer.
‘It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Michael replies. 
A glimpse of blonde hair is now visible behind the boxes he’s moving. 
‘Oh no,’ I say, morbid curiosity rousing me to get a closer look. ‘It’s not a… sex doll?’
‘Yeah,’ he says opening the box. ‘Look at its face. How could you?’

Its face is the least disturbing thing about it. The sex doll has evidently been stored somewhere very warm, and it has melted. Strange, shiny, tan-coloured latex has pooled at the bottom of the box, leaving the doll itself somewhat lacking. ‘You can see why I’ve not put that in an auction,’ Michael says, closing the box.

The kind of things Michael does put in his auctions varies wildly, from a job lot of 24 rolls of invisible tape, washing machines, wheelbarrows and graphite portraits of Jean Sibelius to collector items such as Omega wristwatches, antique candlesticks, and original Mini Coopers. His is what is known as a ‘provincial’ auction house – a comparatively small, independent, rural auction house. 

Provincial auctions have changed a lot since the cold rooms I’d occasionally visit with my mother to watch a bidding war over a half-drunk bottle of Famous Grouse. Today, the rooms are still cold, but there are fewer people in them. Yet the growth in online bidding portals means the auction business is booming, with the Antiques Trade Gazette reporting record sales. During the pandemic, there was a surge of interest in art as people sat around at home, staring at empty wall space. ‘Without these auction websites this business would hardly be profitable,’ Michael says. ‘As it is, we turn over three quarters of a million a year – plus.’ As it is, I’ve seen Michael driving a yellow Lamborghini past the local cattle market. It would appear he’s doing all right. 

I became an online bidding fanatic when my husband and I moved into our unfurnished home three years ago. From local auction houses such as Michael’s I’ve bought antique paintings, mirrors, tables, two Ercol chairs for £38, a lawn mower, a fridge, pots for the garden. I’ve even bought what we jokingly call ‘The Picasso’.

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It hangs in my office as an exemplary piece of online buying. I was still something of a novice, flicking through the online catalogue, when I spotted a still life. In the right hand corner was a signature. I zoomed in: undulations of oil paint and the hand of the artist evident. Even if it were a fake, I thought, it was a good one and worth a punt. I was victorious, at £35. On collection, £35 was significantly more than I would have otherwise wished to pay. It was indeed a Picassso – a high-quality scan of a Picasso, impasto and all. It was also 20 times the size I had envisaged. 

This is a common mistake with items bought online: if you don’t ask questions, things can prove larger or smaller than they might appear in the photos. But the bargains I’ve obtained from cursory looks through online catalogues far outweigh the occasional enormous wooden trout, Picasso, or model sailboat.

The two main players in the world of online bidding are The Saleroom and EasyLive Auctions. The Saleroom typically aggregates sales of fine art, antiques and collectables. This left a gap in the market for more retail orientated businesses, selling miscellany, which is why Paul Achilleous and Jonathan Burnside founded Easylive Auctions. ‘EasyLive Auctions opened the internet to smaller auctioneers,’ Achilleous says. 

‘The exciting thing for an auction house like Pilton is that they can now compete on a more level playing field,’ Richard Lewis, COO of The Saleroom says. The playing field being what it was before the internet, one of Michael’s biggest sales, a 17th century Chinese vase, might have been bought cheap and sold at vast profit at one of the London auction houses, or it might’ve been bought and used as a doorstop. 

‘We were doing a house clearance in a council estate in Barnstaple,’ Michael remembers, ‘where you don’t expect to find anything very good.’ But up in the loft was a vase he estimated might be 19th century and hoped would sell for around £1,000. So, it was something of a surprise when it was sold online to a man in China for £14,280. ‘If people actually came here they would go, “Oh, I would never buy anything from this dump!” But they are,’ Michael says. ‘For antique sales, I need to put them on The Saleroom, because their clients have bought into the brand.’

The industry was already moving online prior to Covid, but the pandemic was a galvanising factor. ‘Prior to Covid, auction houses were selling 20 to 25 per cent online,’ Achilleous says, ‘now auction houses are selling 80 to 90 per cent online, some up to 100 per cent.’ Both The Saleroom and Easylive Auctions are quick to highlight the industry’s green credentials, citing the trend towards sustainable furnishings and low carbon footprint as a factor in the industry’s continued growth. But, as Lewis, highlights, ‘People are also interested in items with a story.’ 

Recently, I decided it was time to leave my computer and attend an auction at Pilton Auctions. There were only about 15 people in attendance, but there were more than a thousand people registered to bid online across The Salroom and EastLive Auctions.

If you bid live online you can listen to the auction from home, holiday, or at work. But in-house, I got to know the people bidding. Two brothers only bid for pocket watches; one woman bids only for cheap silver; a man in a flat clap bought about five gold sovereigns. I watched a man in his fifties arrive to collect half a dozen world war two German photo albums, which he put into a Finding Nemo bag. I noted that he chose not to bid for those in person. Then there was a young man, Harrison, who kept bidding against me for old paintings. He won what looked like an over-glazed Joseph Wright of Derby (after my success with ‘The Picasso’, I kept this optimism to myself).

At 22, Harrison was by far the youngest in the room. He doesn’t bid online because he wants to learn by speaking to people who have been in the industry for years. ‘It’s like a collective in there,’ Harrison says. There is also the extra cost for buyers online, which he thinks is ‘ridiculous’ depending on how much you’re buying. (The Saleroom charge bidders 4.95 per cent. EasyLive Auctions charge 3.6 per cent including VAT or a flat fee of £3). 

There is something special about bidding in person, especially if you can save money. But online there is convenience. And, although I do not love it, ‘The Picasso’ hangs behind my desk as a reminder to check dimensions, and as a totem to my at times delusional optimism.

Sick of Cornwall? Visit Cornouaille

I am Cornish. Indeed I am so Cornish my sister lives about three miles from where my echt Cornish ancestors lived in the 13th century (near Falmouth), and my mum makes working-class Cornish recipes so obscurely Cornish most of the Cornish have barely heard of them (‘date and lemon pie’). As such, I am pretty fond of the place, and I like to go back as much as I can. Except in summer, when it’s crowded. And increasingly May. Or September. Or October. Or the rest of autumn. And Christmas, And Easter. And New Year. And any weekend at any time, ever.

Let’s face it, Cornwall is too popular for its own good, and often too pricey, and that’s why I’ve come here, to the French version, a green and coastal chunk of Brittany literally called Cornwall but in French: Cornouaille (for the jolly good reason that it was settled by Cornish people around the 5th century). I want to see how the French Cornwall compares to the British original – maybe it is even nicer? Better value? I also want to see if I can escape the crowds.

And… I’m not off to a great start. I’m in Pont Aven, which, if it has a Cornish equivalent, is surely St Ives – because Pont Aven is delicate, pretty, arty, stone built, with burbling and twining rivers rushing past sweetly renovated watermills-cum-art galleries. The town is also full of quaint, handsome villas, built for rich Parisians in the 19th century; it is likewise replete with artistic history – you can visit the room where Paul Gauguin painted famous still lifes and portraits (and see the mantel in the room in the paintings). However, picturesque little Pont Aven is also absolutely rammed with tourists, apparently year-round – exactly like St Ives.  

My next stop, if it was in Cornwall, would be Truro, the county town. In Cornouaille the county town is Quimper – and they both sit on winsome rivers and boast twin-spired cathedrals – and that is where the comparisons stop. Because whereas Truro is pleasant and dainty, Quimper is one of the finest small cities in Europe, full of Tudor-gabled streets and handsome riverside boulevards and castellated towers overlooking trilling rills and leats, and its cathedral is a neglected masterpiece of 13th century rayonnant Breton Gothic, shining white and resplendent. It is probably lovelier than any single town in the Americas. 

How come I’ve never heard of it?! I dunno, but Quimper is also where I have the third most French conversation of my life. I am keen to try Brittany’s revered crepes and ciders, and I am doing it in Quimper’s exquisite 16th century ‘Butter Square’, which is surrounded by renowned creperies that apparently also sell cider. My conversation with the creperie dude goes like this:

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Me: ‘Do you sell cider, as well as crepes?’
Creperie waiter, with towel draped over arm, ‘Yes…. But only one.’
Me: ‘Only one kind of cider?’
Crepe dude: ‘Yes.’ Offers a huge Gallic shrug, ‘It is the best.’

And so I sit down and I eat my crepe with blackberry jam (nice) and then I sip from my ceramic bowl of cider (I’ve no idea why they serve it like this, but it’s fun) and my eyes widen in appreciation. I generally dislike cider – yet this is delicious. And, oui, it is the best cider I’ve ever had. 

Fuelled with the jouissance and cidres of Quimper, I race on in my little rented Peugeot. I pull over at Locronon, because it is one of the plus belleux villages de France. That is to say, it is one of those zealously primped, manicured, stone-hewn, flower-decked, delicately toothsome French villages, restored within an inch of its life. On a sunny day, Locronon can hit twee factor ten, as all the many tourists wander between the seven creperies, the three artisanal biscotteries, the bijou shops dedicated to the ‘Celtic Arts of Wellness’, and the impressively craggy Breton church which is weirdly boring inside – like all French churches. 

So my advice is: don’t linger too long, instead head down the hills to nearby, gritty, super Breton-Gallic Douarnenez, an old sardine fishing port with an old sardine fishing factory and lots of old sardine fishermen eating sardines in old sardine wharves turned into sardine restaurants. Try the sardines.

And if you want to know how the sardines are caught then you must go to Haliotika, down the mildly dramatic coast (Cornwall wins this one), which is a genuinely busy fishing port turned into a superb interactive museum: where you can stand on a windy terrace and watch the daily return of the local fishing fleet (around 4-5 p.m.), laden with langoustine, squid, gurnards. You can also watch the hauls being unloaded, then follow the fish inside to see it being auctioned, packed, and iced, and sent to Paris, London, Singapore. When all that is done you can lark about in an entire fake trawler upstairs, pretending to drive the ship – and then have a spiffing langoustine dinner. This is a great place for families. They make sure the adults have a nice choice of booze.

Where next? Well, just down the road there’s the brilliantly steampunk lighthouse of Phare d’Eckmuhl (16th highest lighthouse in the world). Or maybe head around the bay to the beautiful peninsula of Crozon, with its noble megalithic alignments, eerie ruins of surrealist mansions, superb beaches with greeny-blue waters, and excellent oysters at alluringly remote Camaret-sur-Mer (neatly twinned with St Ives). Note that you can easily get oysters for €2 a pop. Brittany is not ‘cheap’, but it is sometimes much better value than its British cousin.

Me, I spend my final night by the lapping waters of ‘France’s prettiest river’ – the languid and cressy Odet – in the lovely Pension du Bac in tiny, cute Sainte Marine. This is very Cornish, like somewhere on the Helford, only slightly warmer, slightly sunnier, not quite as magical. 

After that I head as far west as I can. This takes me to right down to Pointe du Raz, a kind of spectacular Breton Land’s End, where the lighthouses march one by one, deeper into the sea, like soldiers under orders to drown; beyond them, the glimmering, druidic island of Le Sein lies temptingly on the hazy horizon. Here you must simply stand. Breathe in that lovely ozone, listen to the skylarks above the seapinks.

So what’s my verdict on the Cornwall of France? If you aim to escape the Cornish crowds, you might be out of luck: Cornouaille is almost as popular with French and foreign visitors as Cornwall is with Brits. But that is for a reason: it’s often gorgeous. And whereas the French Cornwall sometimes lacks the mystical vibe of the British Cornwall – those Celtic wells, pagan shrines and tortured Satanic minescapes, which give Cornwall its truly unique numinosity – the French job makes up for that with towns and villages as dazzling as anywhere in Europe. In short, Cornouaille is completely itself, and vive la difference. And the cider really is fantastique. 

What drives the Shakespeare conspiracy theories?

As predictably as the tides, as welcome as a pebble in your shoe, the bogus question of ‘who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays?’ is in the news again. Jodi Picoult, the writer, thinks that Emilia Bassano (aka Aemilia Lanier), the daughter of a musician, must have had a hand in them, because, she says, Juliet is 13 in Romeo and Juliet, and Bassano was forced to become a mistress at that exact age. This despite the fact that in the play Juliet isn’t forced to love Romeo, and that Bassano was in her late teens when she became Lord Hunsdon’s mistress. Not convinced? In Othello, Desdemona’s servant is called  – wait for it – Emilia! I don’t know about you, but that clinches it for me. At least Picoult hasn’t found the word for bacon written backwards in Latin, which is what usually points the way to conspiracy theory.

It’s strange, this obsession with Shakespeare being a fake. The anti-Stratfordians point to the fact that his father was a glove-maker, as if this were relevant to his dramaturgic prowess.‘But Shakespeare didn’t go to university,’ keen the antis. He most probably went to grammar school (odd if his upwardly mobile father John Shakespeare, who married into a gentry family, had not sent him there), and his work is learned, but not as self-consciously so as the university-bred Christopher Marlowe’s. Shakespeare is similarly queried for having been a man, and having never been abroad (as far as we know); so how, therefore, could he have written about women and foreign countries with such aplomb? It never seems to occur to proponents of this line that imagination, experience, and research are all methods used by writers. Want to know something about Italy? Go to the wharves, ask Giovanni, and fill in the rest yourself.

Other playwrights are exempt from suspicion. Nobody suggests that John Webster, a cart-maker’s son who never went to Italy and certainly wasn’t an aristocratic woman, couldn’t have written The Duchess of Malfi. Nor that Marlowe, a shoemaker’s son, was not behind Tamburlaine, a play about a central Asian emperor. And I don’t think John Ford ever slept with his sister before skewering her heart on his dagger. So why the dear old Bard? I’ve never had a satisfactory answer to this question.

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Shakespeare’s contemporaries had no problem with his authorship, because they were there with him in the theatre. Ask yourself: what’s more likely? That Will Shakespeare, an actor-manager with well-recognised talent, extensive knowledge and an inquiring mind, wrote the plays which appeared under his name? Or that he was a stooge, pretending for his entire life, and nobody ever noticed? Picture the scene: ‘Where’s that draft, Will?’ ‘Er, hang on a minute, I’m just going to see Emilia. I mean, E-man about a dog.’

Emilia Bassano is a recent addition to the roster of candidates, despite there being as much evidence that she met Shakespeare as there is that the world is flat. The idea that she was the ‘Dark Lady’ of the sonnets is based on a misreading of an astrologer’s notebook. She did compose a poem called Salve Deus Rex Iudaeorum, and here’s a stanza from the beginning:

That very Night our Saviour was betrayd,
Oh night! exceeding all the nights of sorrow,
When our most blessed Lord, although dismayd,
Yet would not he one Minutes respite borrow,
But to Mount Oliues went, though sore afraid,
To welcome Night, and entertaine the Morrow;
And as he oft vnto that place did goe,
So did he now, to meet his long nurst woe.

The rhymes ‘sorrow/borrow/morrow’ are of the ‘moon/June/spoon’ kind, while the final couplet is almost empty of meaning. Compare it to even a few lines of Shakespeare, and you’ll feel the difference.

I wonder whether all this is a symptom of cultural malaise, linked to modernism and the need to question everything. Give it a decade or so, and someone’s going to claim that Shakespeare must have been a time traveller, because of Merlin’s prophecy in King Lear: ‘I live before his time.’ After all, how else could he have written so convincingly about pre-historic England? 

Did Bassano pen her dull poem as her legacy, while having in reality written Shakespeare’s plays, as a double blind? There are some questions to which there is only one answer. And this is one: BassaNo.

Diane Abbott banned from standing for Labour

The drama in Westminster never seems to end – and tonight is certainly no exception to that rule. In one of the biggest developments of the week, it transpires that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party will not allow veteran MP Diane Abbott to represent the party at the upcoming general election. However, Abbott has reportedly been given the Labour whip back as a middle way.

The Hackney North & Stoke Newington MP was the first black woman elected to parliament, serving continually since 1987 and achieving a majority of over 33,000 in 2019 – but Labour’s decision this evening is likely to bring her 37-year political career to end.

The BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire reported this morning that the internal party investigation into Abbott had wrapped up a whole, er, six months ago. Despite this being the case, however, the Hackney North MP – who was suspended in April 2023 for writing a letter that compared the discrimination suffered by Jewish people and the Traveller community to the taunting of redheads – was not told of what the outcome meant for her candidate status. In the meantime, Abbott received a formal warning and completed an ‘antisemitism awareness course’ in February after publicly apologising for her comments. 

The move will likely ignite tensions in Starmer’s Labour party – which has little over a month to go before it finds out how the electorate really feel about it. Abbott’s allies certainly haven’t been shy about their anger about the MP’s treatment in the past, while left-wing Corbynite group Momentum has said today that the delay in resolving her candidate status ‘confirms that the Starmer leadership is trying to force Britain’s first black woman MP out of parliament’. Oh dear. And once Starmer’s army makes the official announcement, there will be more where that came from. Sir Keir shouldn’t expect to see the last of this issue quite yet…

Poll slashes Labour lead to just 12 points

They think it’s all over – but is that actually the case? After a difficult start to the campaign for the Conservatives, many of their own MPs had privately written off their chances at this election. However a new poll out tonight could force the skeptics to think again, with Labour’s lead down to just 12 points. The survey for JL Partners revealed that the Starmer army still retain some 40 per cent of the vote but suggested Sunak and the Tories are coming up on the rails with 28 per cent.

The fieldwork for this poll was done on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 May, shortly after the Prime Minister’s announcement of a general election. The last poll done before this by JLP was on 5 May and had Labour enjoying a comfortable 15-point lead, with 41 points compared to 26 for Sunak. The principal reason for this is a shift amongst over-65s, with the Conservatives going from a 10-point lead over Labour to a 20-point lead with this age group. With the red wall now abandoning the Tories, at least the grey wall is holding true.

There are also fewer Conservative voters (23 per cent) now saying they would consider voting Reform UK, a 10 point drop on early May when the number stood at 33 per cent. It's early days of course and Mr S has his doubts. The shifts in the polls could just be noise, with the Keirleaders on Twitter likely to dismiss it as a rogue study. A 12-point lead would also still mean a categorical Labour win, with six in ten voters (60 per cent) convinced that it is time for a change of government.

Still, if anyone can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it’s the Labour party, eh?

BBC presenter grovels after Farage jibe

It seems these days that the BBC is doing a better job of creating the news than presenting it. Today’s row is about one of the broadcaster’s stars entering into a spat with Reform’s Nigel Farage — and losing rather spectacularly…

The I’m a Celeb finalist was out today helping promote Richard Tice’s party in Dover as he made his first big speech of the election campaign. At a gathering of party supporters and journalists, Farage spoke of immigration problems seen in Europe. Quoting remarks made by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the Reform founder pointed to ‘the wave of — and I’m using his words not mine — “aggressive, young males” that are coming into Poland’ adding: ‘He has said that this is now a matter of national security’. 

While Farage’s words went down well with Reform loyalists, BBC presenter Geeta Guru-Murthy couldn’t quite manage to hide her disdain for the former Ukip leader. ‘Nigel Farage with his, um… customary inflammatory language there at a Reform UK press conference,’ she announced dispassionately to the public broadcaster’s viewership. So much for political neutrality.

Guru-Murthy, the sister of Channel 4’s more famous Krishnan, immediately sparked something of a storm online. Beeb bosses duly forced the star into making an apology, with the presenter issuing a grovelling statement less than two hours after her improvised remarks:

Earlier today we heard live from Nigel Farage, speaking at that election event we just saw. When we came away from his live speech, I used language to describe it which didn’t meet the BBC’s editorial standards on impartiality. I’d like to apologise to Mr Farage and viewers for this.

The public service broadcaster has already lost a number of its presenters — including Emily Maitlis, who admitted she was ‘frustrated’ at being ‘ticked off’ by BBC bosses over impartiality complaints. Might Guru-Murthy be next? Watch this space…

Police drop investigation into Rayner housing claims

Labour’s election campaign continues to get off to a good start. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has today confirmed that it will take no further action against Angela Rayner after accusations surrounding her living arrangements. Officers from the force launched an investigation into the party’s deputy leader in April after Tory MP James Daly registered a complaint. It followed reports in the Mail which suggested that Rayner might have lived primarily at her then-husband’s address in Stockport, despite registering to vote under her own – a potential breach of electoral rules.

But this afternoon GMP released a 121-word statement which says that after ‘a thorough, carefully considered and proportionate investigation’ they have concluded that ‘no further police action will be taken’. It confirmed that ‘The investigation originated from complaints made by Mr James Daly MP directly to GMP’ and that ‘subsequent further contact with GMP by members of the public, and claims made by individuals featured in media reporting, indicated a strong public interest in the need for allegations to be investigated.’ The subtext is clear: public pressure drove this probe.

The Labour deputy leader also faced further allegations about the aforementioned house in Stockport, with claims that she avoided paying capital gains tax when she sold the ex-council house. GMP’s statement today confirmed that ‘matters involving council tax and personal tax do not fall into the jurisdiction of policing’. The information from their investigation was therefore been shared with both Stockport Council and HMRC. It is understood that HMRC looked into the matter at Rayner’s request and concluded there was no capital gains tax liability, with Stockport Council also concluding ‘that no further action will be taken on behalf of the council.’

For the Labour deputy leader and her team, there will be relief tonight that none of the three investigations will go any further. Since this story broke three months ago, Rayner has cut a slightly more muted figure than the Rottweiler of old. Liberated from the police probe, her fans within the Labour party will be hoping to see the punchy pugilist emerge once more. Starmer will just be glad that this matter is now resolved, with Labour only five weeks away from potentially entering government.

Reeves reprises her Wikipedia tribute act

Once we had New Labour: now we have Changed Labour. As part of Sir Keir Starmer’s bid to prove that his party is different (honest!) since the far-off Corbyn days of, er, April 2020, Labour has been out today banging the drum for business. The Opposition is terribly proud of itself for stitching together a letter of support for its economic policies, signed, no less, by some of the country’s leading business experts. What a coup!

But Mr S could not help but wonder about some of the names signing the letter that Rachel Reeves touted today in her big speech in Derby. For one thing, there were no FTSE 100 company chief executives putting their pen to paper – perhaps out of fear of Angela Rayner’s trade union package. Yet Steerpike was struck by one of the names who actually did back Reeves: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and husband of former Blair aide Kate Garvey.

His website of course is not actually a business but rather a charitable foundation, run by the Wikimedia Foundation out of San Francisco and which operates as a ‘non-commercial website.’ Still, perhaps it is no surprise that Reeves chose to tout the endorsement for a site which demands its readers stump up donations. After all, she did choose to borrow a decent chunk of her book from the site, with examples easily available here. As the Financial Times noted back in October:

Most of the instances of copied phrasing contain biographical information. For example, “Lawrencina was the daughter of a Liverpool merchant, Lawrence Heyworth, whose own family had been weavers in Bacup in Lancashire” is written both on Wikipedia and in Reeves’s book. The two versions differ only in their spelling of Lawrencina.

Ouch. Talk about what goes around, comes around eh?

Israel may have to stop its offensive in Rafah

The devastating fire that, according to Hamas, killed dozens of displaced civilians in Rafah and that reportedly started because of an Israeli attack on Hamas terrorists, has come at the worse possible time for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Four days ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must immediately halt activities in Rafah. Although the language used by the court could imply that Israel may carry out some activities in the city as long as it conforms to its obligations under the Genocide Convention, there were international calls on Israel to cease all activities, and warnings of a disaster have sadly come true.

Rafah is the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza. It’s also where many of the Israeli hostages are likely to be held according to information obtained by the Israel defence Forces (IDF). As such, it’s an important strategic asset for Israel in its war to eliminate Hamas. However, dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza – in large part owing to Hamas having embedded themselves within civilian population and with the terrorists allegedly disrupting delivery of aid – have made the Rafah offensive highly contentious, even before it began. 

Britain, the US and other allies, have warned Israel against an offensive in the city where over 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge. After much dithering by Netanyahu, Israel pushed ahead. However, considering American threats of withholding weapons shipments, Netanyahu ordered a use of force that’s more limited than used in northern Gaza earlier in the war.

Following the ICJ’s ruling, Israel quickly withdrew some of its forces from Rafah. This immediately led to a barrage of rockets being launched by Hamas, from Rafah, into central Israel for the first time in months, demonstrating Hamas’s dangerous offensive capabilities in the city.

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Contrary to allegations by Hamas following yesterday’s fire, the IDF claims that it has used precision weapons to attack a target outside the secure area where civilians were taking shelter. The strike killed two senior terrorists who were involved in multiple attacks against Israelis. It seems that the compound used by the terrorists was, typically, located in proximity to an area where civilians sheltered in highly flammable tents. The US received an early indication from Israel the fire may have been caused by a shrapnel, or something else from the strike, hitting a nearby fuel tank that ignited the fire, which Netanyahu has referred to as a ‘tragic mishap.’

Although many of the details of yesterday’s events are still unknown, the international community has already given its verdict. France, Germany and Canada have criticised Israel and called for IDF troops to be withdrawn from Rafah. Some have even called for a ceasefire. Spain’s Foreign Minister, whose government’s recognition of a Palestinian state comes into effect today, threatened that his country will take steps to enforce the ICJ’s ruling. American response was more reserved and called on Israel to ‘take every precaution possible to protect civilians.’

The UN Security Council meets today to discuss events in Rafah. Although criticism of actions that have allegedly led to such a tragic loss of innocent life is understandable, undoubtedly, there will be little or no blame cast on Hamas for hiding in close proximity to civilians and storing weapons among them, thereby intentionally placing them at risk. Hamas’s refusal to obey the ICJ, which called on the terror organisation to release the hostages, may also not be mentioned. The loudest voices will see Israel as solely responsible, before a full investigation has been completed, and, unless the US intervenes, there could also be calls for sanctions against Israel if doesn’t stop the fighting in Rafah.

Notwithstanding Netanyahu’s claim today that the offensive will go on, Israel’s ability to carry on may now be in doubt. Backlash to yesterday’s tragedy is based on emotions rather than on facts, as well as on a one-sided view that has consistently blamed Israel and absolved Hamas from responsibility. Nevertheless, imposing a unilateral ceasefire will undermine Israel’s war against Hamas, place Israeli civilians at risk, and empower Hamas, leading to long-term instability and continuation of violence.

The EU wants to make travelling to France a misery

Exciting developments may be in store for everyone travelling to Europe from this autumn onwards. That’s to say riots, gnashing of teeth and screaming infants at border control, as stressed travellers and immigration officers go mad trying to navigate a new and apparently dysfunctional European frontier system. This latest gift from our EU overseers looks like it will make life hell for legitimate travellers, while of course doing nothing to stop the surge of unpapered migrants crossing into Europe across the Mediterranean.

‘I’m worried, I’m afraid of problems,’ admits Patrice Vergriete, the French Minister of Transport. The Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the House of Lords has called on the government to ‘use all diplomatic efforts’ to persuade Brussels to defer the introduction of the new system, which it warns will cause chaos at Saint Pancras and Dover. That’s gone nowhere.

A smartphone application that’s supposed to lubricate this process is, predictably, not ready. It’s anyone’s guess how non-phlegmatic British tourists are going to respond to this. Maybe Skegness will appeal instead.

Implementation of the new EU Entry/Exit System (EES) has already been delayed at the request of the French, to avoid disruption to this summer’s Olympic games. The French request for a further delay has so far been ignored. Pity the French police who are going to have to confront the wrath of travellers and the screams of children as this hare-brained scheme takes effect.

Irony is not a feature of European public administration. The main advantage of the new system coming into effect in October is ‘saving time’, declares the European Commission, ‘replacing passport stamping and automating border control procedures to make travelling to the EU more efficient for the traveller.’ Is this delusional incompetence or merely grotesquely dishonest? In practical terms it doesn’t matter.

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It’s probably exaggerated that there will be 14 hour waits at Dover next time you pop over here to stock up on Claret. Or that it will take longer to get through Saint Pancras than it takes the Eurostar to get to Paris. But the notion that this will save time is a fantasy. A similar photo/fingerprint system is in use at US airports and the last time I transited immigration at Washington Dulles airport I flew through border control in a mere three hours. A border process that has taken a few seconds per traveller is likely to take up to seven minutes.

More than a year ago, Rishi Sunak asked the EU to allow British passport holders to use electronic E-gates at European ports and airports but with dismal predictability this has not been achieved. Instead, every British traveller (indeed everyone not in possession of an EU passport) will be obliged to have their fingerprints taken and be photographed before being allowed to enter the European milieu.

Or perhaps not be allowed. The EES will also make it easier to identify travellers who have stayed in Europe longer than 90 days in the preceding 180 days because – well, the because isn’t really specified. Any masochist who wants the details of this is welcome to consult the EU website here where everything is clarified in a turgidly-written regulation roughly the length of a mass-market paperback.

Awareness that the EES is a disaster waiting to happen appears to have dawned slowly on the dense Eurocrats responsible. Only tomorrow, 29 May, a mere seven years after passing the EES rules, will Frontex, the European border agency, get around to holding an ‘industry day’ to hear of possible integrated solutions for EES-compliant facial imaging capture and fingerprint acquisition.

The extent of the unpreparedness is staggering, even by the standards of the EU. Frontex admits it needs solutions for: reading and scanning documents; queue management software; mobile solutions capable of reading visa/residence documents to confirm validity; biometric data capture and verification solutions for mobile devices; integrated advance passenger information collection and/or ticketing solutions; mobile solutions for collecting/storing personal data on board ships/trains; travel authorisation web solutions; and additional self-service or mobile solutions/apps relevant for the entry/exit System.

As if EES is not enough, the EU has a further treat in store for visitors with the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) that will likely be implemented next year. This will require visitors from outside the EU to apply and pay for a visa waiver before entering a country in the Schengen zone.

Non-EU nationals will have to pay €7 per person to visit most European countries and complete an online application. The visa will not be required for the Republic of Ireland as it is in the Common Travel Area with the UK.

Although the exact launch date is unclear, the EU has previously indicated that it will be introduced five to six months after EES. This looks like becoming an even bigger cock-up than the EES since millions of people in the EU have residency permits despite not being EU citizens, and there appears to be no centralised database of who these people are.

Cue the Ode to Joy. Bienvenue en Europe! 

Farage speaks of ‘six-year plan’ as he launches campaign

The Royal Cinque Ports Yachts Club was an appropriate place for Nigel Farage to make his first big speech of the election campaign today. Set on the Dover seafront, it offered the perfect setting for Farage – Reform’s honorary president and spiritual figurehead – to lambast the Tory record on small boats. The Conservatives, he said, had betrayed their 2019 voters by allowing an ‘invasion’ of migrants: ‘If 3,800 boats and 125,000 people isn’t a sort of slow motion D-Day in reverse, I don’t know what is.’ It was the kind of stump speech that we have seen honed in endless GB News monologues, with the familiar cast of villains: Strasbourg jurists, French naval officers, continental people-smugglers and above all, the spineless British political class. ‘We have a liberal establishment who are terrified of debate’ claimed Farage, challenging Sunak to a head-to-head on immigration: ‘He wants six debates with Keir Starmer but none with me!’

‘In this election, the leaders are making long speeches and taking few questions’ he told me beforehand: ‘I’m going to be make a short speech and taking lots of questions.’ It was meat and drink to the assembled press pack, weary after six days of endless platitudes and stage-managed press conferences in what Farage called the ‘dullest start’ to an election campaign he could recall. Questions came thick and fast to the former MEP, who handled them with a mix of quick wits and controlled exasperation. The Express asked whether Reform would not merely allow even more mass migration under Labour? ‘How much worse could it be?’ Farage cried in reply. Why would he get a better deal with Emmanuel Macron, questioned the Telegraph? ‘One thing the French will respect is firmness – and I don’t think we’ve had very much of that.’ Sky enquired why he thinks some Muslims don’t share ‘British values.’ ‘Well you’re here’, he told the female journalist. ‘I doubt you’d be welcome at that Angela Rayner meeting.’ There was plenty of teasing too about his future plans in light of America’s presidential election. ‘I wouldn’t become an official Trump adviser if he was elected’ he said with a smile. ‘Unofficially? Look, he’s a friend of mine.’ 

Perhaps Farage’s most intriguing comments though were not about this election but rather what comes next. He repeatedly referred to Reform’s six-year plan, aimed at the next election in 2029. ‘This is not about a quick hit in a few weeks’ time,’ he said. ‘This is all about building a base from which we go on and launch a serious assault’. It was a marked contrast with Richard Tice’s promise last Friday that ‘Reform will win seats’ in July – a line that Farage notably did not repeat himself. ‘How can you tell? It’s all about momentum, can the Reform campaign get momentum? If it does then who knows?’ was all he would say when asked to give a prediction about whether the party would win seats or not. 

Speaking in the bar afterwards, I asked him about reports that he had facilitated a meeting between Trump’s team and David Lammy. Farage smiled and demurred to shoot them down. ‘Oh I can’t remember that,’ was all he would say. As his entourage sipped pints around him, Farage told me that he would spend the bulk of the campaign here but will make at least one trip to America. ‘I’ve got one event that I can’t really get out of. There’s one event in Detroit where I said I will go and I will go.’

Reform may struggle to win seats but if today’s event is anything to go by, they certainly won’t have difficulty getting coverage. Farage is due to give his next big speech on Thursday on the subject of legal migration – a blow to Tory strategists who hoped that he would remain a peripheral figure in this campaign. One thing is clear: with interventions planned on the economy, tax and energy, Nigel ain’t going anywhere.

Watch: Ed Davey struggles to stay afloat during campaign tour

It’s a gaffe a day in British politics, as poorly-planned campaign visits are fast turning party leaders into laughing stocks. The latest victim is none other than Sir Ed Davey, who is currently on a UK tour to spread the word that the Liberal Democrats are putting the issue of sewage dumping at the top of their manifesto.

This morning, Davey joined local MP Tim Farron on a constituency visit to Windermere in the Lake District to campaign on water cleanliness. For that reason alone — never mind the fact that the Lib Dem leader is not exactly an, um, experienced paddleboarder — it’s certainly rather brave of Sir Ed to take to the lake. But the trip hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts. While taking a paddleboard out on the water on live television might have seemed like a fun idea initially, Mr S is rather confused (and not for the first time this election season) precisely what his comms team was thinking. The watersport novice’s ropey attempts meant that rather than focusing exclusively on the content of his campaign, the BBC reported, mid-fall, that Davey has so far managed to capsize his paddleboard a grand total of, er, five times. Goodness…

It’s not quite the take home message the Liberal Democrats would have hoped to have come from today’s visit. Davey remained in good spirits however, tweeting: ‘Still not as wet as Rishi Sunak.’ Ouch.

Watch the clip here:

Did Rachel Reeves just rule out more tax hikes?

Speaking to business leaders in the East Midlands this morning, Rachel Reeves delivered a fairly uncontroversial speech. In her first major address since the election was called last week, the shadow chancellor insisted that Labour is the ‘natural party of British business’ (a point bolstered by today’s letter signed by over 100 business chiefs endorsing Labour). She said she wanted ‘to lead the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury our country has ever seen’ – who could argue with that? She then went on to restate her commitment to fiscal discipline and a promise to make the numbers add up.

While the dig at free markets won’t have been everyone’s cup of tea, it was an inoffensive speech, largely because it lacked any details about these ‘pro-growth, pro-business’ policies which might lead to some debate on their merits. But the Q&A was much more enlightening.

While we didn’t get many specifics about Labour’s business plans, we did get another update about Labour’s tax plans. When asked about what other tax rises might be needed to fund Labour’s spending and investment pledges, Reeves stated that ‘there are no additional tax rises needed beyond the ones that I’ve set out’.

Reeves went on to name that list: a bigger windfall tax, charging VAT on private school fees, changes to the non-dom tax code and private equity bonuses – all of which have already been announced. ‘Those are the sum of the tax changes that we are bringing in,’ Reeves concluded. It was the closest the shadow chancellor has come so far to directly ruling out more taxes: not just ‘rises’ but ‘changes’, too, which could be interpreted to include new taxes as well.

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Today’s comments were far more inclusive and clear than the shadow chancellor’s answer on BBC One this Sunday. Reeves confidently ruled out increases to income tax or National Insurance (again, pledges already made) but was far more hesitant to say where the money would come from to make good on the party’s pledges – apart from repeated promises to grow the economy. 

Meanwhile Keir Stamer has also been suggesting that Labour is done with announcing tax rises, while still trying to avoid a firm ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. When pressed on his tax plans yesterday, Starmer insisted, ‘We've drawn up our plans. They'll be in our manifesto and you will soon see them..I can tell you this in advance, that none of the plans that we've drawn up, nothing in our manifesto, is going to require us to raise taxes.’ 

It’s a bold game for Labour to play: implying the tax-hiking part of their agenda is set and settled, while clearly trying to keep some flexibility to raise revenue. Starmer’s comments leave plenty of outstanding questions – what about changes to tax relief, or perhaps the implementation of a new tax? – but they come across as a pledge not to go any further than what’s already been announced. It’s not just the one-off comments, but repeated suggestions of a tax cap from senior figures in the party that are creating the sense of a more concrete answer.

This was always going to be one of the toughest questions put to Labour. Categorically ruling out more tax hikes forces the party to say what they will opt for instead (spending, borrowing?) to find the cash. Keep it all vague risks public concern that a cash grab is coming.

It seems Labour is moving in the direction of the former, knowing full well that once they commit to capping tax, it will be political mayhem trying to revert back. Either way, we may not know the full details of how Reeves really will make the sums add up for some time. Asked this morning about the possibility of her own mini-Budget soon after the election, Reeves noted that she has ‘been really clear, I would not deliver a fiscal event without an OBR forecast’ – a process which takes about ten weeks. This suggests Reeves will follow the more traditional schedule and wait to announce her big changes in an Autumn Statement.

The SNP has finally given up on Greta Thunberg

It is less than three years since Nicola Sturgeon was taking selfies with Greta Thunberg at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. Now in this election the climate, if you’ll excuse the pun, has changed beyond all recognition. Gone is the moral posturing and climate alarmism of recent years as the Scottish parties desperately roll back on their climate rhetoric in the face of huge job losses in Scotland’s energy sector. Black is the new green.

It was of course Nicola Sturgeon back in 2021 who made Scotland the first country in the world  to declare a ‘climate emergency’. We cannot continue to extract another drop of oil from the North Sea, she said, if we want to avoid global catastrophe. There’s not a moment to lose.

Lonely voices in the SNP pointed out that her party’s independence strategy was built on revenues from Scotland’s oil and had been for decades. No matter. Drilling in the Cambo oil field must be prevented, Sturgeon demanded, as she negotiated a climate coalition with the Scottish Green party whose slogan is ‘keep it in the ground’. 

This blanket opposition to oil and gas made no sense since, even in what politicians call ‘the just transition to net zero’, fossil fuels are going to be needed for decades to come. Three quarters of the energy used by the UK comes from oil and gas – increasingly Liquified Natural Gas derived from fracking in America. Those of us who pointed out that if you stop extracting Scotland’s oil and gas you’ll end up having to import more of Putin’s oil or the Sultanate of Oman’s were called ‘climate change deniers’ – a weasel phrase that implies moral equivalence with Holocaust denial.

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Well times change. This general election has drawn a line under the Greta Thunberg inspired climate fundamentalism, which affected all the political parties in various ways. Boris Johnson was almost as bullish on green energy as Nicola Sturgeon. He was responsible for unrealistic climate policies like banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030, which Rishi Sunak abandoned last year.

But no one has been going down the path of climate revisionism faster than the SNP since they turfed the Greens out of the coalition last month. The Scottish government had already abandoned Sturgeon’s reckless policy of cutting carbon emissions by 75 per cent by 2030. Now, they not only want drilling to continue, they also oppose taxes on the fossil fuel companies they used to portray as planet-killers. No longer will there be a ‘presumption against oil and gas exploration’ in the Scottish government’s much-delayed energy transition plan expected sometime after the general election. Oil and gas companies are no longer climate pariahs.

Again, those of us who pointed out that it is these same energy companies who are expected to invest and engineer the transition to renewable energy were regarded as shills for capitalist ‘extinctionism’. But the chickens have now come home to roost. The Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce has announced that 100,000 jobs will go in the north-east of Scotland by 2030 if the current punitive tax regime on oil companies continues, along with the ban on exploration. 

Labour are desperately backtracking on Sir Keir Starmer’s ban on future oil drilling. There are to be various concessions to encourage investment according to the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. 

Tell that to the Unite union, which is warning about job losses. North Sea workers are ‘the coal miners of our generation’ says Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, condemning the Labour leader’s ban on new oil licences. Where are all the green jobs we were promised? They haven’t materialised. 

Actually, as politicians in all parties have suddenly realised, many of the ‘green’ jobs are actually oil and gas jobs. Many of the same engineering skills used in erecting oil and gas platforms are required for constructing offshore wind farms. It is often the same energy companies, like Norway’s state-owned Equinor (formerly Statoil), building the wind farms that are drilling in Rosebank off Shetland. The canny Norwegians never bought the nonsense about keeping it in the ground. 

This belated realisation that the oil and gas industry is essential to the transition to renewables has turned the energy equation upside down. Politicians are beginning to realise how irresponsible it was, not least for the sake of net zero, to parrot the slogans of Extinction Rebellion. Energy realism is back and oil is good again. Just don’t expect any apologies.

The truth about pensioners and tax

The Tories’ ‘Triple Lock Plus’ is a pretty blatant attempt to secure the votes of a demographic group which is more inclined to vote Conservative than any other. That much is clear. The party’s proposal would give pensioners a high personal tax allowance to spare them from having to pay income tax as the state pension rises faster than either inflation or average earnings. If the government wants to spare pensioners from having to pay income tax it could, of course, raise the income tax threshold for everyone. But instead, while pensioners are spared tax, the personal tax allowance for working-age people is due to be frozen for another four years.

But is it necessarily true that pensioners get the best of everything while the young get screwed over again and again? That is the narrative which many have sought to advance and there is, to be fair, some evidence to support it. While many elderly people enjoy living off the tax-free capital gains they have made on the back of a soaring property market over the past few decades, many young people find it impossible to clamber onto the lowest rung of the property ladder. While many older people enjoyed a university education at public expense, younger graduates are saddled with huge debts which they are paying off courtesy of an extra, marginal rate of 9 per cent on their earnings.

But there is also a case against the narrative that the old are doing well on the backs of the young. The idea of intergenerational inequality is seen far too much through middle class eyes. Not all elderly people own a home: 20 per cent are renting. As for university education, that was a privilege available to only a few when today’s 70 year olds left school. There is, therefore, a large cohort of the elderly who have benefitted neither from a rising housing market nor from subsidised further education. It is these people, at the poorer end of the wealth and income spectrum, who stand most to benefit from the Triple Lock Plus.

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Moreover, it is a group which suffered grievously over the decade and a bit following the 2008/09 financial crisis thanks to ultra low interest rates. While those with property and stock market investments did well, and public sector pensioners with inflation-and salary-linked pensions have blithely lived through it all without a care, people trying to live on fixed incomes from cash savings have been the real losers as inflation slowly ate away the real value of their savings. Only in recent months has it been possible to obtain a real return on a savings account – something savers used to take for granted. The savings of many pensioners have effectively been stolen in order to bail out borrowers, who tend to be much younger.

True, the triple lock has provided some consolation. But the presumption that all pensioners have been doing well at the expense of the young shows just how much political debate has fallen under the control of the relatively well-off. If the Conservatives have identified a group of poor pensioners who could do with a bit of extra help, that suggests they are a little more in touch with the realities of life for many people than is the opposition.

Labour takes down Tory attack TikTok video

Another day, another gaffe. Only this time it’s the Labour party in the firing line, not so long after the launch of its brand new TikTok account. It has been live for all of four days and Starmer’s army has been busy getting to work on their latest form of social media self-promotion — posting 30 videos, gathering 75,900 followers and amassing 1.5 million likes.

But it’s not all been plain sailing for the Sir Keir’s lefty lot. Labour’s comms team seems to have gotten a little ahead of itself in its rush to take the platform by storm and there are concerns the party may have, er, broken some rather important rules in the process. Quick to mock Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s national service plans — in which Britain’s 18-year-olds would have to either carry out a year’s work of full-time placement in the armed forces, or one weekend per month for a year volunteering in their community — the opposition party has had fun invoking a cast of characters from Cilla Black to Shrek to help batter their opponents. Keir’s Starmtroopers may have crossed a line, however, when they posted a clip of the infamous letter scene from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The clip, which shows hundreds of letters exploding out of the Dursley’s chimney after Harry’s intolerable relatives try to prevent him attending Hogwarts, is captioned: ‘Point of view: You didn’t respond to your National Service letter on your 18th birthday.’ Ho ho ho.

While the clip went down a treat on social media, with users reposting across Twitter and Instagram, Labour may have fallen foul of the movie’s production company. The party has now taken the viral clip down — but not before several thousands of its TikTok followers saw it first. Could it be down to copyright concerns? Mr S has reached out to Warner Bros to see if they have any advice for Labour’s rather excitable social media team, while the party has not yet responded to Steerpike. It’s all rather awkward for a party whose leader, just yesterday, couldn’t resist laughing at Sunak’s own campaign slip-ups. Don’t get too cocky now, Keir…

Why the Tories’ national service idea is unworkable

When the Tories start talking about national service they really are grasping at straws. The concept might possibly appeal to some older voters nostalgic for an earlier time, but Rishi Sunak’s ideas are quite different from the military conscription of young men that lasted from 1949 to 1963.

Let’s put aside the 30,000 or so ‘selective’ military placements for the ‘brightest and the best’. Yes, young people can offer much to the nation’s approach to cyber security and the defence of our IT infrastructure against external threats. Fresh minds see solutions that others may not. But if that isn’t happening already, what has the government been doing for the past 14 years? It would be a double tragedy if our sharpest youngsters have been frittering their time away playing computer games when they could have been doing something vital to help defend the nation.

The national service diet proposed for the other 96 per cent of the cohort is somewhat different: ‘community volunteering’ for one weekend a month apparently, except that it will not be voluntary. Perhaps ‘community service’ would be closer to the mark? But only when they have broken the law are older adults compelled to do up to 300 hours of unpaid work. 18-year-olds will be saddled with different rules – don’t expect them to be impressed.

As a teacher, I know how keen many youngsters are to contribute to their local communities. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award recognises the contribution of thousands of them every year. My students have volunteered in hospices and with homeless charities; they have read to small children in primary schools and assisted with the cubs and brownies. They serve willingly and enthusiastically because they are volunteers doing something they perceive to be valuable.

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Conscription is a different matter. Tell an 18-year-old that they must report at 0830h on a Saturday morning for an activity they have not chosen to do, and the response is more likely to reluctant and apathetic. If, indeed, they turn up at all. Good luck to the army of adults who will need to plan around three quarters of a million placements, supervise the conscripts, file reports and chase absences. 

Convicted criminals sentenced to community service have the prospect of prison time if they fail to co-operate but, according to James Cleverly, there will be ‘no criminal sanctions’ for youngsters. The scope for civil disobedience on an industrial scale must be obvious even to the Home Secretary.

Maybe the government is happy to present an unworkable idea – plan is too strong a word for it – because they have no expectation of ever being required to implement it. But the bluster has deflected attention from a report by the House of Commons Education Committee that dropped over the weekend. The committee found that:

Research suggests a 52 per cent increase in children’s screen time between 2020 and 2022, and that nearly 25 per cent of children and young people use their smartphones in a way that is consistent with a behavioural addiction.

That huge increase just happened to coincide with the period when the government closed schools for the best part of two complete terms and shifted teaching and learning to online platforms. Schools are still grappling with the thorny issue of how to help children use technology without being distracted by it. Evidence from the teachers’ union NASUWT argued that ‘it could take up to 20 minutes for pupils to refocus on what they were learning after engaging in a non-academic activity such as browsing the internet or noticing a notification on their phone.’

Even 1950s style military service might not cut through that. I spoke to one former soldier who was conscripted from May 1960 to May 1962. ‘It put me back two years behind in time and money’, he lamented. He did see the world – well, the British Cameroons where he served as part of a peacekeeping force during a plebiscite for independence. Much of his time was spent in the barracks playing endless rounds of cribbage. I suspect today’s generation might simply be glued to their phones.

This is a real and pressing issue that can have a devastating impact on the development of young people. If the government really cared about the young, they would put rather more emphasis on workable schemes to get children off their phones and into the fresh air, than attempt to pander to the nostalgia of the older generation.