How much trouble is Angela Rayner in?

Another week, another development in the row over Angela Rayner’s tax affairs. The deputy Labour leader is facing questions over whether she broke electoral and tax law regarding a former council property she owned in Stockport. The allegations – which Rayner denies – stem from Lord Ashcroft’s biography (titled Red Queen) of the woman in line to be deputy prime minister if Labour triumphs as expected in this year’s general election.

The row has been rumbling along for weeks now but is gaining momentum as the Tories ramp up their attacks. It goes back to the properties she and her then husband Mark Rayner owned in Stockport. When the couple married, Mark Rayner owned 126 Lowndes Lane while Rayner owned 80 Vicarage Road – purchasing it in 2007 under the right to buy scheme. Rayner sold the Vicarage Road property in 2015 for £127,500 shortly after she became an MP.

The question is whether Vicarage Road was her main residence or whether her main residence was her husband’s property on Lowndes Lane. Rayner says Vicarage Road was her primary residence despite claims from neighbours that she lived at Lowndes Lane from 2010 to 2016. If her main address was Lowndes Lane then she should have paid capital gains tax on the profit she made on the property. She also could be in breach of electoral law if her main residence was Lowndes Lane when she was registered to vote at Vicarage Road. Under Section 13D of the Representation of the People Act 1983: ‘A person who for any purpose connected with the registration of electors provides to a registration officer any false information is guilty of an offence’.

Rayner is under fresh pressure over these allegations after the Mail on Sunday published a series of photos appearing to suggest Lowndes Lane was her home. Rayner’s response to all this is that hers is a blended family (she had a son from a previous relationship) so it was normal to split her time between the two properties. The deputy leader has also said she has been given legal advice that no rules were broken. She said she would be happy to present this to the police or HMRC but will not publish it for the general public.

So, how serious is this for Rayner? The row has attracted enough attention so far that shadow ministers are being routinely asked about it when doing media. On Sunday, David Lammy suggested that opposition parties should be held to different standards to those in government. He also suggested that this was a witch hunt, arguing that Rayner was a ‘northern woman’ and suggesting the attacks were unfair.

The difficulty for Rayner is that she has often been the one leading attacks on Tory politicians for police investigations and questions on tax. In many of these cases, her first response is to call for them to resign. The police have already said they are reviewing a decision not to investigate the claims about whether Rayner broke the rules. The Tories plan to keep pushing this with hopes that HMRC could open its own investigation. They believe at that point her position would be untenable.

For now, most in the Labour party believe the row will blow over – with some likening it to ‘Beergate’ when Starmer was accused of a Covid rule breach but it came to nothing. Yet Lammy’s own defence raises questions about whether Rayner would need to publish the tax guidance if in government. What’s more, there are rumours of shadow ministers telling hacks they are ready to step in to take on parts of Rayner’s brief should she need to let go of it.

The problem Starmer has is if Rayner was found to be in an untenable position, she is close to unsackable. As deputy leader of the Labour party, Rayner is elected – like Starmer – by the membership. It means while shadow cabinet briefs are in his gift to give and take away, her position is as deputy is not. She is also viewed by many in the Leader’s Office as one of their better media performers yet has recently limited her appearances. It means at the very least, this row is succeeding in putting one of Labour’s key players on the defensive.

Listen to Coffee House Shots with Natasha Feroze, Katy Balls and James Heale:

Now Humza Yousaf’s brother-in-law is arrested

Oh dear. It seems things can only get worse for hapless Humza Yousaf. With his independence strategy dead in the water, he now has to contend with troubles at home too. Police Scotland has today confirmed that they have arrested Yousaf’s brother-in-law and charged him with abduction and extortion. It follows the death of a man who fell from a block of flats in Dundee in January.

Ramsay El-Nakla, 36, is the brother of Yousaf’s wife, Nadia El-Nakla and is due to appear in court later today. In a statement, Police Scotland said that:

A 36-year-old man has been arrested and charged with abduction and extortion following an incident where a man fell from a block of flats on Morgan Street, Dundee on Wednesday, 10 January. He died a week later in hospital. Three others were previously arrested and charged following the same incident. The 36-year-old man is due to appear in Dundee Sheriff Court today, Tuesday, 9 April, 2024. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.

It comes three months after El-Nakla first appeared in court on charges of supplying heroin and being in possession of cocaine and cannabis. Back then Yousaf said ‘It would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage’ adding ‘I’m very keen not be seen to interfere with any court case, let alone one involving my brother-in-law.’

What will his line be now…?

Will the Seine be safe for the summer Olympics?

Emmanuel Macron’s promise to strip off to his Speedos and swim in the Seine to prove it is safe for athletes has yet to be delivered. The Olympic Games commence in July and the river remains essentially a sewer. Although the water quality is supposedly getting better as the rains are relenting, Macron is wise not to hurry.

In addition to fears that the Paris games will attract terrorist attacks, there is the now the unpleasant prospect of athletes being infected with norovirus and other unfortunate ailments of the intestinal tract. Not that London can offer any lessons after the Boat Race in which crews were required to compete in filthy water with predictable consequences.

The Surfrider Foundation, a water-focused NGO, has been testing the Seine since last September and has so far completed 14 samplings of water quality under the Alexandre III and Alma Bridges, where Olympic open-water swimming events are planned.

In February, levels of E. coli in the Seine were multiple times the limit set by World Triathlon, the international governing body for the Olympic sport. ‘I wouldn’t recommend swimming in the Seine river right now under any circumstances,’ said Dan Angelescu, chief executive of Fluidion, a water-monitoring company working with the city.

Although there is a great deal of ambivalence and even hostility to the games amongst Parisians, many await with keen anticipation the president’s diving into the Seine, not least because of the obvious scope for comparison with Chairman Mao Zedong’s 1966 plunge in the Yangtze. 

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Mao’s immersion near Wuhan launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, much as Macron wishes to launch his own vision of the rebirth of Europe. Mao was demonstrating physical prowess, for the battle ahead. Athleticism has also been a preoccupation of President Macron, seeking to re-establish his authority following the loss of his majority in the National Assembly and anticipated terrible results in forthcoming European elections. Macron the policy nerd is relaunching, in Rocky Balboa mode, biceps bulging.

Will Macron go through with it? He’s not the first politician to make such a promise nor would he be the first to break it. Paris mayor (subsequently president) Jacques Chirac said in 1990 that he would turn the Seine from a sewer into a river clean enough to swim in, and prove it himself. His swimming suit never got wet.

The Olympics are an event of overarching significance for President Macron, offering a global stage for him and France and Paris to produce a bold, original and thrilling event, and a splendid distraction from all that has ailed his presidency. If nothing else, it makes him a centre of attention this summer. But the risks are immense and following the attack in Moscow some might say reckless.

On July 26, the Seine will be the focal point for an opening ceremony that has the security services seized with anxiety. Athletes on boats will float past hundreds of thousands of spectators. A gigantic security operation has been planned. Police leave has been cancelled. But the area that has to be secured is immense, with the risk of attacks also outside the security perimeter. It’s going to be a big test, in a city with a long tradition of terror.

Diarrhoea in the Olympic Village may be the least of the problems, even if the athletes complain. ‘We need a plan B,’ Brazilian swimmer Ana Marcela Cunha, the reigning Olympic open water champion pleads. ‘The Seine is not made for swimming.’ So far, there is no sign of any such plan. A huge new sewage holding tank is to be opened in May, which the environmental engineers think will make a huge impact. French authorities are confident they will deliver a clean river after more than 100 years in which swimming has been forbidden. Perhaps they will. Marc Guillaume, prefect of the Île de France, Macron’s personal representative in the capital, promised again this week, ‘Olympic athletes and Parisians will be swimming in the Seine this Summer. I will.’

Time will tell.

Where will the Westminster honeytrap scandal go next?

Will Wragg has now resigned as both vice-chairman of the 1922 committee and chairman of the public administration select committee. It follows last week’s revelation that he was the source responsible for passing on phone numbers to a source who subsequently tried to ‘honey trap’ them over text messages. The circle of those caught up in the Westminster honeytrap scandal has continued to expand in recent days, with at least 15 figures now believed to be involved.

These people were sent messages from an unknown sender identifying themselves either as ‘Abi’ or ‘Charlie’. Three Tory MPs – Wragg, Andrea Jenkyns and Luke Evans – have already said that they were targeted in a ‘spear-phishing’ attack. BBC correspondent Henry Zeffman yesterday revealed that he too was targeted, as were attendees at last year’s Liberal Democrat conference, according to Politico . One of those believed to have been targeted told The Spectator that the account in question messaged him on Grindr and claimed to work for a Tory MP in parliament.

Both the Lincolnshire and Metropolitan police forces have now launched investigations into these allegations. There is considerable debate in parliament as to whether a hostile state actor was involved in the targeting of MPs. But the operation appears to have clearly been more widespread than first thought, given attendees at both the Liberal Democrat and Labour party conferences in Bournemouth and Liverpool report being targeted too. A former special adviser has also told the Guardian that they received their first message by a WhatsApp user calling themselves ‘Abigail’ or ‘Abi’ in January 2023, suggesting the phishing operation has been under way for at least 14 months.

Downing Street has publicly urged MPs to be cautious when responding to unsolicited messages. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said yesterday afternoon that ‘Anybody who has been targeted illegally should approach relevant authorities. It’s clearly important for anyone in public life to be sceptical of unsolicited communications.’ Yet while No. 10 are refusing to comment on claims of foreign interference, senior government officials are playing down such claims. The Sun believes that the current reports are more a matter for the police than one for the security services.

The nature of this scandal and the fact that it involves the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats mean it is unlikely to become a party-political issue. The Opposition have noticeably been reluctant to criticise Wragg for dispensing phone numbers, conscious, perhaps, that Labour figures are among those targeted. But while some Tories have been publicly supportive of Wragg – with Jeremy Hunt calling his statement ‘courageous’ – others are privately less so. Many are on the fence and uncertain what to make of the whole row. ‘I just don’t know what to make of it’ says one.

David Cameron meets Trump at Mar-a-Lago

David Cameron is overseas on a foreign office trip to the US, but it transpired yesterday evening that Washington DC wasn’t to be his only destination. Last night, the Foreign Secretary made a quick pit stop at Mar-a-Lago to speak to former president Donald Trump. Lord Cameron is making the case for continued support for Ukraine – and wants to ensure the US will, if Trump becomes President, continue to provide aid to the country.

Republicans have spent months trying to block a proposed $60 billion military aid payment to Ukraine, and Trump has been pretty clear in previous statements that he opposes the support package. Not only that, the Washington Post recently revealed that part of Trump’s proposal to bring an end to the Russian war in Ukraine involves pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia. Lord Cameron, for his part, has been trying to convince Republican lawmakers to approve the funding – receiving a rather direct rebuttal from one congressman Mike Waltz who said that the ‘era of Ukraine’s blank cheque from Congress is over’, while congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, rather more forthrightly, told Cameron to ‘kiss my ass’. Charming…

The Foreign Office has insisted that ‘it is standard practice for ministers to meet with opposition candidates as part of their routine international engagement’ – downplaying the significance of the event. Cameron will also meet with top Biden officials during his trip, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other key figures in Congress, in a bid to urge them to ‘change the narrative on Ukraine this year’, and is also expected to bring up the Israel-Gaza conflict.

But Lord Cameron has his work cut out if he’s hoping to get Trump on side. The Foreign Secretary is not exactly an avid Trump superfan himself, saying when he was Prime Minister — and before the former president was even elected — that ‘if he came to visit our country I think it’d unite us all against him’. Mr S hopes that this meeting was a little more civil…

We’re all paying the price for our rotten prisons

What happens when government policy meets an entirely unfit system? Today’s report on HMP Peterborough by HM Inspector of Prisons reveals a jail unable to handle the government’s early release scheme. Last October, in an effort to stop our prisons running out of room, Alex Chalk announced the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, under which prisoners would be released 18 days early. Last month, with the prisons almost full again, he amended the policy so that prisoners can now be released 60 days early. 

Today HM Inspector has revealed what this means in practice. HMP Peterborough is a large, Category B ‘Reception’ prison; this means it receives men directly from the courts and releases many into the local community. Although it is a private prison, managed by Sodexo, it’s similar to many public ‘B Cat’ jails across the country; it has a large, transient population, many of whom serve short sentences there.

When they inspected Peterborough, in mid-January this year, inspectors found 30 per cent of prisoners were being released homeless. No wonder; the ‘commissioned rehabilitative services’(CRS) provider, Interventions Alliance, was receiving 40 referrals every month, and despite being budgeted to have someone working 4 days a week, in fact ‘there had been no regular staff on site for over a year’. The prison holds no data on whether former prisoners are homeless three months after release. When prison management introduced a ‘strategic housing specialist’ to address these problems, she found that no one from Interventions Alliance or the relevant prison departments attended the meetings, which ‘left her unable to make improvements’. Meanwhile prison managers at Peterborough have been obliged to release some men 18 days early under the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, even when they have no address to go to; often with just the £89.52 ‘discharge grant’ in their pocket.

There is a clear link between housing and reoffending; when people are released from prison with a stable home to go to, and a job, they are much more likely to be law-abiding. Homeless and desperate people are much more likely to make the practical choice to commit crime, if that’s how they’re used to surviving. If we want to facilitate better moral choices we need to create opportunities for former prisoners to change paths.

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Reoffending costs a great deal. The bill is estimated at over £18 billion a year, and it does harm to victims, communities and the mutual trust which should weave society together. Reoffending also piles yet more pressure on the prison system. Peterborough receives about 700 men each year who have been ‘recalled’ to prison after release, either for breaching their licence conditions, or because they’ve committed another crime. This churn of prisoners is familiar to me from my time as a prisoner at HMP Wandsworth; many prisoners were released and swiftly recalled. I even knew one man who was released and recalled twice during the 11 months I spent there. 

Every recalled prisoner costs money to return to prison, takes up cell space, and if their recall is only for a short period, as most are, all it achieves is to disrupt their lives even further, while providing no opportunity for training, education or work (‘purposeful activity’) which make them less likely to commit crime in the future. At Peterborough, inspectors found that some prisoners were released 18 days early, only to be recalled before even reaching their original release date. 

There are other problems with the jail, of course. Only ‘44 per cent of prisoners were engaged in purposeful activity’ while 42 per cent are ‘locked up during the working day’. Days spent lying on a bunk bed, staring at daytime TV do not benefit prisoners or our society. A lack of purposeful activity is known to lead to more drug taking and sure enough, at Peterborough drug testing indicates that ‘well over a quarter of the population were active drug users… at the time of the inspection’. 

Peterborough is the first big, reception prison to be inspected since Alex Chalk’s early release scheme was introduced. These patterns are likely to be repeated across public sector prisons too. Throughout the justice system more widely, we are all being failed. Instead of tinkering with policy, the government needs to reform and fund the system properly. Otherwise we’ll continue to waste an estimated £50,000 a year doing little to reduce reoffending, and much to increase it. 

The Tories deserve our contempt

The Telegraph reported at the weekend that the Conservative party appears to be attempting, in its selection process for parliamentary candidates, to weed out anybody who might just possibly be a conservative. This strategy – with all its ineptitude and wilful blindness – is a perfect capsule of the parliamentary party and its upper echelons.

It’s hard to find the right word to describe what the Tories have done since their incredible election win in 2019. ‘Disappointment’ is polite, but too mild. ‘Rage’ is too hyperbolic. I think ‘contempt’ hits the mark best. And this is significant I think. A party can leap over disappointment and rage; contempt is a much higher hurdle to clear.

It’s sobering to reflect on the relief of election night 2019. At last the threat of Corbyn was over and done with. The ancient electoral system had worked, responding to the realignment of the country. After years of inertia and tiny majority fug, it felt like there might now be a chance of a fresh start. And the Tories threw it all away.

This won’t be an encomium for Boris Johnson, who was one of the principal architects of the betrayal. He has the remarkable quality of being a totemic figure, a focus for other people’s dreams and nightmares. He was viewed as either a jovial Old King Cole or a callous idiot. But neither of these characterisations are remotely accurate. Take away the trappings and it turned out he was just another mediocre Blairite. Still, to have people wanting to believe in you is the greatest advantage a politician can have. They’ll overlook your obvious failings, for a while anyway.

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Covid trashed all of the early glow, within weeks. The grand schemes of the 2019 Tory campaign were crushed by it. Worse, it exposed the ineptitude and the limitations of our state machinery before anything could be done about it. (Not that anything has been done about it since – the Tories managed to frame the terms of the resultant inquiry so narrowly and so badly that it will only rebound in their own faces.)

It soon became apparent that, Brexit aside, the big problem remained. The Tory cabinet and parliamentary party was still stuffed with supposedly ‘sensible’ people who are, in fact, like their Labour and Lib Dem counterparts, the true extremists. But these are extremists with nice ties, shiny shoes and acceptably mad opinions.

Because it is extremist to derail the already moribund economy even further for the bizarre goal of net zero. It is extremist to have millions of people out of work and continue to import hundreds of thousands of extra people every year. It is extremist to tax and spend and quantitively ease like there’s no tomorrow. So yes, the Tories deserve very much to be punished.

After nearly 30 years of Blairite drift, the country’s problems are huge, possibly insurmountable. A flagging economy, a fragmented and fractious society, appalling imported anti-Semitism, unaccountable state bodies riddled with insane Californian ideologies, everything hobbled by Blair ‘reforms’.

Fighting back effectively against this decline would require intelligence, adaptability, strategy, unity, courage and iron nerve (not a Truss-style berserker spree). An appalling silly broadcast media and every other establishment institution and corporate would oppose it at every turn. It would make delivering Brexit or Mrs Thatcher’s early 80s reforms (which, tellingly, were resisted by many in her own party at the time) look like a stroll in the park. The Tories, with a few exceptions, are as much a facilitator of this degringolade as anybody else. They are part of it.

The threat of Labour doesn’t seem so bad after 14 years of a Tory government that has governed almost indistinguishably – barring a few blips – from the Blair and Brown administrations. And I have to confess to a perhaps ghoulish fascination to see what the Starmer government will bring. Because a lot of things are going to smack Labour square in the face, and quickly. Very soon David Lammy, who can’t hold a coherent thought in his head for longer than five seconds, will be Foreign Secretary. There’s an imp of the perverse that makes you really want to see that.

I’ve heard some people say we’ll have to wait for a total shuddering collapse before anything is done, but that may not happen. A country can decline for centuries. My hope would be that following the destruction of the Tories in 2024, Labour will be similarly destroyed in 2029. Meanwhile we can laugh at Starmer – who is even more comically ill-equipped than the Tories to deal with, or even notice, the rottenness that pervades the nation.

My loveless nights in post-Soviet hostels

I suppose there are people who stay in four or five-star hotels all their lives and become a kind of expert in them, turning their noses up at rooms I would regard as the acme of comfort, but since my parents stopped paying, I never have. In adulthood my standards have plummeted and, as a traveller, I’ve stayed in any number of grotty places. I’m not complaining either – you have much more fun in life when there’s nothing to protect you from what Maxim Gorky, in a lyrical moment, called the ‘lower depths.’ 

My real travels started when I moved to Estonia at 26. Eastern Europe was definably post-communist then, and the places you stayed at, in countries like Latvia and Lithuania, had a spartan Soviet charm with the odd kitsch flourish. For a few quid you got the standard room with a painted wooden floor, a black and white television and some flimsy, salmon pink curtains. Here, if you had a kettle, a cup and some sachets of three-in-one coffee, you were in business. You also had to bring your own drinking water, and woe betide you if you forgot. What came out of the taps was often the colour of mud and, if you were drunk or fool enough to drink it on a clear day, tasted like it had a snot stock cube crumbled into it. Vodka, whatever the brand, was usually a safer bet. 

In 1990s Russia, where I worked as a travelling literature lecturer, another issue was cockroaches. In the student halls of residences they stuck me in, the underside of nearly every warm pipe was coated with a jostling, biblical crowd of them. Cockroaches (baby ones at any rate) got into your bed at night and crawled up the shower hose when you were washing. Like all things you got used to them, and even gave the regulars Christian names like ‘Oleg’ or ‘Fyodor.’ 

There were other living creatures to worry about. At my Volgograd hostel a middle-aged gang of ex-basketball players were taking a holiday together. The parties, full of thuds, shouts and unexplained laughter would pound on until dawn, leaving me bleary-eyed and crotchety in the lecture-hall the next day.  One night, pushing the boat out, they hired in a local prostitute for a gangbang, and my sleep was wrecked once again. Russians, despite recent Soviet shortages, weren’t especially good queuers, and through the wall I could hear her shrieking at them, with mounting vexation, to get into a proper, orderly line. She sounded like a harried supply teacher. 

Sex was big in Russia post-communist Russia. In Rostov-on-Don, I stayed in a dirt-cheap hotel staffed by a group of motherly middle-aged ladies who seemed to double up as virtual brothel madams. My room was reserved for three or four-week periods, but locals would rent by the hour, and my nights there were often disturbed by nearby orgasms in a huge variety of pitches, volumes and styles. If there was one non-variable that came through the plasterboard, it was the single, jaunty slap to the buttocks (the girl’s, I assume) at the precise moment of climax – a kind of Tchaikovsky cymbal-clash which sealed off the chirruping nightly concerto. None of this was erotic in any way but had a kind of anthropological edge to it.

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Hotel rooms, pre-internet, could be quite lonely, and back then I stayed in youth hostels if I could (this cut off abruptly at the age of 40, after which there was a danger of other guests calling me ‘old timer’ or asking if I was picking up my child). Youth hostels were fun, an almost endless party with bunkbeds, lockers and shared kitchens. They were flirtatious places but almost completely celibate (‘Does anyone get laid in places like this?’ asked one bit of graffiti on the wall. ‘I thought not…’). To this, there were occasionally exceptions. In a Madrid mixed dormitory an older fellow, hairy and malodorous, stretched a sheet across the front of his lower bunk and imported a nearby hooker from Democratic Republic of the Congo. After much slap and tickle, the pair took the sheet down and sat primly on the edge of his bed, drinking Lipton’s tea and trying to make polite conversation with the rest of us – the man, spent and euphoric, baffled as to why we weren’t all sharing in the post-coital afterglow.  

Sometimes there were conversations you’d never forget. In the same Spanish hostel I met Spad, a young white rapper whose songs, often incel-ish in tone, were unbelievably confessional. ‘People will want to get away from me when they hear the lyrics,’ he said, ‘but they’ll also know they’re not alone and their sufferings aren’t unusual.’ It was Spad who told me – a useful tip – that a way of getting through life was to tell yourself, as a matter of ritual, ‘The future will be difficult’. There was a weird, Old Testament quality to Spad, and it seemed right when later I heard he’d moved to the Middle East. In my memory now he wears robes and carries a knotty staff, neither of which was actually the case. 

Then there was Christoph, a German hippie sleeping in the bunk below me in Budapest. He was baby-faced and guileless in a newly-hatched sort of way, his sweet nature making him the most unthreatening of companions. Not so his girlfriend Elke, a fledgling actress with a Nietzschean will-to-power, who roared up a couple of days later and made the mistake of letting Christoph read her diary. A throwaway sentence about fancying the leading man in her current play sent Christoph into a tailspin, and he retreated to a teepee in the hostel garden. For hours he refused to come out or speak to anyone, while Elke kept us entertained in the kitchen by hissing out the fruitier extracts from Bertolt Brecht’s Baal. Christoph described Elke as the woman he would one day marry but I don’t suppose they lasted – he was a VW Camper Van, she was an Audi, already revving to overtake. With these two I broke the cardinal rule of hostelling – that however well you get on, however sad you are to say goodbye, it’s unforgivable etiquette and a force of death to try to prolong the contact. When, passing through Berlin a year later, I contacted Christoph and Elke on the off-chance, Christoph was away cloud-dwelling in Goa or one of those places, and Elke was having none of it. She dispatched me, I remember, with a wonderfully fey efficiency, somehow getting across it was a matter of near Buddhist Enlightenment we should never clap eyes on each other again. On this though, Buddha clearly had other ideas. I still see Elke onscreen sometimes – she’s quite famous now.

My strange and wonderful tenants

You might find it a bit rum to open your front door to a stranger and hand over your door keys and alarm code as they head for an upper bedroom. Around a third of erstwhile landlords would now agree with you and have ceased renting, while the call for such affordable room at the inn continues to grow.

Half a century ago, we answered a tap at the door to a beautiful woman, standing in the snow in kitten heels. She was a Maori, a chieftaness no less, having slaughtered her first sheep on the family North Island farm at the age of eight. She lingered, getting married two years later in our back garden, and even produced what became a second-generation lodger.

Emboldened, we put a further ad in a South London rag in response to which a professor answered the call, an academic from Los Alamos nuclear centre, teaching our boys martial arts, though without the nuclear option. 

In some ways I feel disappointed not to experience the frisson of evil that a lodger can bring. The closest we came was the destruction of our washing machine by two Sicilian waiters from the volcanic island of Stromboli, whose passata-stained uniforms proved too fierce a match for Miele. The other catastrophe was brought on by some well-born Italian girls whose consumption of cotton buds and wet wipes brought about a geyser-like eruption of the lavatory in the wee hours. We awoke to the implosion of the bathroom ceiling.

We once took in a couple of German exchange students from the Berlin Gymnasium. I had to answer increasingly desperate telephone calls for Frau Schmitt, telling her that, no, her teenage daughter had not returned from the Trocadero and was indeed unreachable.

The closest we got to an Isis sleeper agent was the morose young man who lay in his darkened room, photographing the dust under his bed and sending it to the language school with threats of reprisals. 

Then there was the young Russian boy, a physics prizewinner, who trekked over the Urals from Ekaterinberg (site of the Romanov murders) bringing with him a giant sack of his own porridge. While going upstairs to take a shower, he set the porridge on a lively broil on our stove, to which we were alerted only by plumes of smoke wafting through the upper floors.

From Brazil, a doctor and her young daughter, living in a gated community in Brasilia under security, were captivated by the ease of the short stroll to our tempting gelateria. The child had never been able to leave her flat without security detail. There was also a huge Brazilian called Mr Nice, loaded with degrees, who ended up marshalling pizzas at a flagship outlet in Chelsea. Our eldest son had to serially pull the lavatory chain for yet another young Brazilian to whom such Edwardian sanitary ware was a closed area.

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France produced a lanky funambulist whose day job was measuring the inside legs of policemen for their uniforms. When asked what English culture he might like covered by our nubile university daughter, this lascivious Gaston elected, ‘ze parts of ze boday’.

A highly-educated Kazakh appeared in a three-piece suit, bringing with him as offering a felt model of a typical Kazakh rural home, a curious tepee-like structure with an open fireplace. Ah, the presents from foreign lands! I could go on. Among these, a virgin copy of a DVD from an Ankaran medical student, going by the name of Dogdu, charting the life and times of Ataturk.

An agonisingly shy South Korean girl, dubbed Too Soon given the strictures of her given name, came from the Women’s University of Seoul, her mother sending us hand-made pink satin cushion covers in gratitude. Too Soon, an accomplished architect, set fire to her foot having put the kettle on the floor. She never steeled herself to speak, despite voluminous notebooks of English vocabulary, and moved to the hub of South Korea in New Malden, to a house, as she said, ‘with three looms’.  

Enthusiasm waned somewhat with the arrival of an Uzbekh lawyer, who showed me a photo of his young son. ‘His name means war’, he explained. Struck down with a misdiagnosed agony in his fundament, the poor fellow was scrambled in torment to a North London hospital which specialised in ‘disorders of the rectum’. Months later, I was still receiving the hospital invoices, despite his perfectly honourable efforts to give the mutton-brained NHS accounts department his credit card as he was rushed into theatre.

Now we and our crumbling pile are getting increasingly ancient, and the bathrooms more Jurassic. A Health and Safety inspector has told us we must extirpate our drawing room fire, a blameless source of comfort, to comply with the new Landlord’s Safety Certificate. It’s been a riot, but it might just be time to change the locks.

Euro 2024: a guide to Germany’s cities

Here’s a question for Spectator football fans: what’s the most memorable match you’ve ever seen? I don’t mean on television. I mean in an actual stadium, the way football should be seen. For me it was in 1996, seeing England play Germany at Wembley, in the semi-finals of the Euros. England were the better team over 90 minutes, and also during extra time, but with the game tied at 1-1 it came down to penalties. The first five players on both sides all scored. Then Andreas Köpke saved from Gareth Southgate (I wonder what became of him?) and Andreas Möller stepped up and scored the winner. England were out. A few days later the Germans returned to Wembley where they beat the Czechs in the final, and English hearts were broken – yet again.

A generation later, the boot is on the other foot. This year’s tournament is in Germany and, with a stronger team than the Germans (at least on paper), England have a great chance to avenge that bitter defeat and win their first European trophy – in Berlin. Scotland will be there too, just as they were at Euro 96. Might they cause a massive upset by beating Germany in the opening game in Munich? I’ll be there, watching football the only way that really counts – up close and personal, in the flesh.

If you’re fed up with the commercialisation of the Premier League, a visit to Germany will revive your love of football. As in Britain, it’s central to the national culture, but in Germany it’s not so corporate. Tickets are cheaper, fans have a bigger say, and a lot of big clubs still have terracing. Going to see teams like Werder Bremen or Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga, I’m reminded of my first taste of football in my early teens, standing on the Kop, watching the great Liverpool side of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The last time Germany hosted a major tournament was the 2006 World Cup, a nationwide street party widely credited with transforming the country’s dour reputation. For visiting Brits, even the hot and sunny weather was a revelation. I was there for some of it, and in the outdoor ‘fan zones’ where people watched the games on giant screens, it felt like a rave. Today these fan zones are a familiar feature of every tournament, but back then it was something new. By catering for fans without tickets who wanted to be part of the action, Germany took tournament football to a new level.

This summer’s tournament is spread across ten cities, and even if you’ve got a ticket for a game, rather than simply going along to soak up the atmosphere, you’ll spend far more time on the streets than in the stadium. So, for anyone travelling to Germany this summer, here’s my guide to all ten host cities – all great football cities, where I’ve had the best and worst of times.

Berlin

Berlin’s Olympiastadion, built in 1936 for Hitler’s infamous Olympic Games, stages the final of the tournament on 14 July. If it’s your first time here, the best introduction to this Faustian Metropolis is to walk along the Berlin Wall. Starting at the Brandenburg Gate you can walk north, past the Reichstag, or south, towards Potsdamerplatz. Along the way you’ll pass many of the major landmarks in Germany’s wonderful, awful capital, including the Holocaust Memorial and Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum. Avoid Checkpoint Charlie – it’s a tourist trap. For more authentic Cold War history head out to Potsdam, and Glienicker Brücke, the Bridge of Spies in the Tom Hanks movie.

Cologne

Cologne’s compact RheinEnergieStadion hosts Scotland vs Switzerland on 19 June and England vs Slovenia on 25 June. In a dramatic location on the River Rhine, Cologne is one of Germany’s oldest and biggest cities, but it was badly bombed in the second world war and rebuilt in a hurry. Its gigantic gothic cathedral survived, but beyond the patched-up Altstadt (Old Town), not much of the past remains. The cosy bars along the riverfront are convivial places to hang out. The local beer is Kölsch, served in elegant little glasses. The Ludwig Museum houses one of Europe’s best collections of modern art.

Dortmund

Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion, which hosts the second semi-final, on 10 June, is one of Europe’s most atmospheric football grounds, famous for its Gelbe Wand (Yellow Wall) of hardcore fans at Borussia Dortmund home games. Beyond the stadium, sites of interest are fairly few and far between. A large industrial city, now fallen on hard times, it’s never been a natural tourist destination, yet there are some recent innovations. The Dortmunder U, an iconic old brewery, now houses a smart new arts centre. Fans will love the Deutsches Fussball Museum, devoted to Deutschland’s national game.

Düsseldorf

England or Scotland could end up at the Düsseldorf Arena (home of Fortuna Düsseldorf) in the quarter finals on 6 July. If they do, then Scots or English fans are in for a nice surprise. Düsseldorf isn’t on the international tourist trail, but it’s a popular weekend destination for Germans, who come here for culture and nightlife. Commercial and industrial, it isn’t a pretty city, but it’s prosperous and dynamic. Visit the Kunstpalast, K20 and K21, three of Germany’s top galleries, then check out the buzzy riverside bars, where Altbier is the local brew.

Frankfurt

Germany’s financial capital is often dismissed as boring, mainly by boring businessmen who fly in for boring business meetings and then fly straight out again. Yes, the modern downtown is rather dull, but there’s more to Frankfurt than shiny skyscrapers. The reconstructed Altstadt is lively and attractive, and the Museum Mile, on the south bank of the River Main, has some of Germany’s best galleries. Venture out to Sachsenhausen, a leafy suburb south of the river, and go to Wagner for a few glasses of Apfelwein, the local tipple. England play Denmark at Frankfurt’s Waldstadion on 20 June.

Gelsenkirchen

Gelsenkirchen’s Arena AufSchalke (home of FC Schalke 04) hosts England’s opening game, against Serbia, on 16 June. Like Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen lies in the heart of the Ruhrgebiet, that vast, sprawling rustbelt which used to be the powerhouse of German industry. Now its old industries are dying, it’s struggling to find a new role. However, like Scousers or Geordies, people here in the Ruhrpott are renowned for their humour, warmth and candour. If you prefer drinking to sightseeing, you can have a good time here.

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Hamburg

‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he replied. ‘I grew up in Hamburg.’ Germany’s second city was where The Beatles became a band and in St Pauli, the dockland district where they learnt their licks, some of that grungy energy remains. The city centre is much smarter, crisscrossed by canals which run from the Alster, Hamburg’s vast and lovely lake, to the River Elbe, Germany’s rugged gateway to the North Sea. Don’t miss the Elbphilharmonie, a spectacular new concert hall designed by Swiss starchitects Herzog & De Meuron, the hub of the regenerated waterfront. England or Scotland could end up here, in the quarter final at the Volkparkstadion on 5 July.

Leipzig

When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, Leipzig’s key role in the collapse of communism was largely overlooked. However, this gritty Saxon city was where Germany’s peaceful revolution began, and there are numerous memorials and museums around town (including the spooky former Stasi HQ) commemorating the brave revolt of ordinary Saxons against the tyrannical East German regime. Under the communists, Leipzig was grey and grimy, but since reunification it’s enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, mirrored by the rise of RB Leipzig, the local football team (powered by Austrian soft drink behemoth Red Bull). Like other cities in the former East, Leipzig is still very rough around the edges, but it’s vibrant and invigorating. Neither Scotland nor England will play at Leipzig’s Red Bull Arena, but for neutrals France vs the Netherlands on 21 June looks like the pick of the group games.

Munich

With an abundance of antique architecture and plenty of green spaces too, Bavaria’s stately capital is full of things to see and do. Art lovers will adore the Alte, Neue and Moderne Pinakothek, three of Europe’s leading galleries. If you’re here for the beer, avoid city centre bierkellers like the Hofbräuhaus, which are invariably full of sightseers. Go to the biergarten in the Englischer Garten, Munich’s huge public park, instead. Munich’s Allianz Arena, which hosts the opening game on 14 June, between Germany and Scotland, is an attraction in its own right. Built by Herzog & De Meuron, it looks like an alien spaceship. Inside, the sight lines are perfect and the atmosphere is intense. England or Scotland could end up here in the first semi-final, on 9 July.

Stuttgart

Scotland play Hungary in Stuttgart’s magnificent Mercedes-Benz-Arena on 23 June, in a city famous for automobiles – not just the massive Mercedes works, but the smaller Porsche factory too. You can visit both factories, and the tranquil summer house where Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the first motor car. An affluent and sedate city, surrounded by a ring of wooded hills, Stuttgart is a pleasant place, albeit somewhat underwhelming. The most remarkable modern building is the Staatsgalerie, the superb city art gallery, designed by the late great British architect Sir James Stirling.

Watch: Pro-Palestine protestors vandalise Labour HQ

Uh oh. Labour is once again facing dissent from its own supporters over the Israel-Gaza conflict. Things came to a head this afternoon when a group of renegades targeted Labour HQ in London by — you guessed it — dousing the building in spray paint.

While other protestors held a march in central London, the vandals stormed the building that houses Labour HQ, covering both outside and inside walls with red paint. The lefty activist group Youth Demand has claimed responsibility for the vandalism, posting a video of the graffiti artists up close and in action on Twitter. In its tweet, the group fumed: ‘Labour has blood on their hands. They are complicit in the murder of Palestinians, and millions of people around the world, as they continue to drive genocide.’ Good heavens.

Youth Demand is calling for both Sir Keir Starmer’s party and the Tories to impose a ‘two-way arms embargo’ on Israel. More than that, the activists used today’s demonstration to push for an end to all new oil and gas licenses — and Mr S doubts readers will be shocked to learn the new group also has links to Just Stop Oil. Quelle surprise…

The protest didn’t impress many on social media — not least because the video showed the vandals wrecking, er, the wrong building floor. An online furore broke out under Youth Demand’s post on Twitter while Baroness Claire Fox summed up the reaction, writing: ‘So smugly proud of themselves… Just make them wash away every last drop of paint and put them on cleaning duty of building for a year or so.’ Quite.

Meanwhile GB News’s Patrick Christys criticised the police for failing to respond to warnings that a spectacle like this was on the horizon. It is now believed that 11 people have been arrested in connection with the incident. Better late than never…

Watch the clip here:

Reform: scrap net zero to fund the NHS

Richard Tice spent this morning fulfilling a role well-known to leaders of smaller parties: defending their vetting procedures amid criticism of unsuitable candidates. The Reform leader was grilled by journalists at a Westminster briefing over the suspension or ditching of at least a dozen election candidates over their social media posts. ‘If you’re going to have a glass on a Friday night, don’t use Twitter,’ Tice told his party’s electoral hopefuls.

The main topic of the briefing was about health and Reform’s plans to redirect net zero funds to improve the NHS. Tice said that his party aims to get the waiting lists down to zero in two years, insisting that ‘it is going to take a bit of extra money but we are not going to give it to bungling NHS bureaucrats’. Reform’s plans will instead require an additional £17 billion in NHS funding annually, with the party estimating that the cost of net zero is about £30 billion a year. That spending will be used to fund a huge expansion of private healthcare provision, with 20 per cent tax breaks for people who take out private healthcare and who ‘self-pay’.

Tice’s pitch was almost entirely concentrated on Labour, following Wes Streeting’s earlier criticism of ‘middle-class lefties’ opposed to his party’s plans for the NHS. Tice dismissed the shadow health secretary’s comments, suggesting that the ‘clear choice’ was between Reform’s policy of ‘zero waiting lists in two years’ or Labour’s goal of ‘net zero CO2 emissions in 25 years’. Reform’s goal of putting more money into the NHS will undoubtedly find favour with the four in five voters who believe it is underfunded. But Tice’s plans to expand private healthcare capacity could spark the old fears of privatisation among their key target audience. Polls suggest there is a bigger constituency for a big-spending, left-leaning approach on the economy and public services, twinned with migration scepticism. Voters want more NHS funding; they just don’t want to fund private tax breaks to do this.

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A decade ago, Nigel Farage and Ukip worked this out. Both shed their libertarian image and dropped talk of replacing the NHS with an ‘insurance-based model’. The result was a series of impressive 20-point finishes in Labour’s northern heartlands such as South Shields and Heywood and Middleton. Richard Tice is a proud capitalist and unabashed free-marketeer. But if he wants his party to match Ukip’s success, he will likely have to choose between his head and his heart.

Why are Foreign Office mandarins so ashamed of their own country?

The Foreign Office has been criticised as ‘elitist and rooted in the past’ in a scathing report by some of the UK’s most senior former senior diplomats and officials. The report, entitled ‘The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s approach to International Affairs’, has been penned by the former cabinet secretary Lord Sedwill; a former director general at the Foreign Office, Moazzam Malik; and the former Number 10 foreign policy adviser Tom Fletcher, among others. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches.

The department is ‘struggling to deliver a clear mandate, prioritisation and resource allocation.’ This is mandarin-speak for saying the Foreign Office is simply not fit for purpose. The authors criticise the merger of the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development to create the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) as largely a failure. The criticisms don’t end there: ‘The Foreign Office all too often operates like a giant private office for the foreign secretary of the day, responding to the minister’s immediate concerns and ever-changing in-tray.’ Hallelujah to that: this tendency has, if anything, become even more obvious following David Cameron’s return to office as Foreign Secretary.

These criticisms are all well and good but what of the remedies on offer from this distinguished group of experts? Unfortunately, there is very little of substance, beyond the usual jamboree of well-meaning piffle about Britain’s place in the world, and the need for ‘humility’ in a changing world. The authors suggest the Foreign Office should be abolished and replaced by a new Department for International Affairs with ‘fewer colonial era pictures on the wall’. Really? A name-change and a spot of interior decoration? That doesn’t really cut it as a way forward.

The report recommends that this new department, under its new name, should be given a broader remit that promotes Britain’s prosperity and security by better coordinating strategy on trade and aid, development and climate change – as well as foreign policy. The authors say this would make the department better able to deliver on Britain’s long-term international objectives. It is a far from convincing argument to suggest that a failing department is given even more responsibilities in other key policy areas such as trade. Why would this lead to better outcomes? Equally absurd is the call for a new commitment by the government to spend 1 per cent of national income on the department’s international priorities, to help match the 2 per cent of national wealth currently committed to defence. It is hard to see this proposal flying at a time of squeezed national budgets. There is a much stronger case to be made for any available extra funds to be spent on defence.

The report predictably – and disappointingly – calls for the UK to exercise greater realism as the middle-rank nation it now is. According to the report, ‘The UK has often sought to project an image of “greatness” to the world that today seems anachronistic.’

This is wretched stuff. Why is Britain’s mandarin class so ashamed of their own country? There is no embarrassment – nor should there be – in Britain exercising leadership on the world stage. This is no time for humility or taking a back seat.

One final question must be posed to those behind this report and its trenchant criticisms of the Foreign Office. Lord Sedwill is a former cabinet secretary, the most senior civil servant in Whitehall. Would it not have been better to have voiced such criticisms when he was in office and in a position to do something about the issues involved? Why do we have to be told about the problems and potential solutions long after he and the other experts involved have departed the scene? The Foreign Office’s failings are obvious enough but so too are those of this country’s mandarin class who only seem to find their voice once they’ve left the corridors of power.

Did David Lammy break broadcasting rules?

Uh oh. David Lammy is back in the spotlight again after Ofcom’s announcement today that it is investigating the shadow foreign secretary for breaching rules on his LBC show. The broadcasting regulator took to Twitter with the update, writing:

We’ve launched an investigation into David Lammy on LBC, broadcast on 29 March. We’re investigating whether this programme broke our rules on politicians acting as news presenters.

The indiscretion in question relates to the news that DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson was stepping down from the top job. Lammy announced it on his programme, telling listeners ‘we’ve got breaking news’ before informing the audience of Donaldson’s resignation. 51 people submitted complaints about the comments, only weeks after Ofcom had reprimanded Jacob Rees-Mogg for making similarly newsy remarks on his GB News show. In fact, five episodes of GB News shows hosted by Conservative MPs have been found to have broken Ofcom rules and the regulator has warned the channel that another breach could result in ‘the imposition of a statutory sanction’. Oh dear…

Is LBC at risk of facing similar warnings? Now that Lammy’s comments are under investigation, GB News’s Alex Armstrong took to Twitter to goad the regulator. ‘Let’s see if the same people who lost their minds over it happening on GB News will say the same thing about LBC,’ he remarked. ‘I highly suspect they won’t though.’

Time will tell…

Honeytrap scandal: Jenkyns says Wragg must face disciplinary action

Back to the Westminster honeytrap, and now Dame Andrea Jenkyns has revealed that she was also targeted by the parliamentary phishing operation. Jenkyns is the third MP to go public, following her Conservative colleagues William Wragg and Luke Evans who admitted last week that they had been sent suspicious and rather salacious messages. 

But the Morley MP isn’t entirely sympathetic to her colleagues. In fact, she is positively furious with Wragg, who admitted that he had responded to the sexting scammers with an explicit picture of his own — before giving in to their blackmail demands and supplying more numbers to the phishers.  

Wragg has apologised for ‘being weak’ and his defence is that he was ‘scared’ of the scammers sharing ‘compromising things’ on him if he refused to co-operate with their demands — but Jenkyns is hardly impressed. She has slammed her colleague for his ‘unforgivable’ behaviour, adding:

Unlike some MPs, I am not happy with Wragg, as a mother with a young child who only recently had threats. It’s unforgivable of him to compromise the security of fellow MPs. Action is needed!

As of yet, Wragg hasn’t faced any disciplinary action from the Tory party. He’s even received the backing of senior Conservatives including deputy PM Oliver Dowden, who on Sunday said he didn’t think Wragg should step down from his post as vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee. But will Jenkyns’ comments push her colleagues to see things in a different light? Watch this space…

Listen: Tice calls the Tories ‘sexual weirdos’

Another day, another drama. This morning it was the turn of Reform party leader Richard Tice to be interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme. Tice’s party recently gained its first MP after former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson defected in March, telling a press conference that he wanted ‘his country back’ and hitting out at the Conservatives over immigration and free speech. The animosity between the parties continues, and Reform’s leader wasn’t pulling any punches today.

When asked about Reform’s parliamentary candidates, nine of whom have been dropped since revelations about past comments they’d made have come to light, Tice told the BBC that he welcomes the ‘extra scrutiny’, adding:

I’m not taking lessons from the Tory party that’s got a bunch of sexual weirdos permeating, defending the indefensible, which is absolutely inexcusable.

Ouch…

Reform says it will be standing candidates in all of the UK’s main seats, competing directly with the Conservatives. When asked why Tice wasn’t content with just standing candidates against Labour, he replied: 

There’s no difference between the two main parties. They’re both forms of socialism: high taxes, high regulation and high wasteful government spending, zero growth, mass immigration and pro-net zero. You cannot grow an economy usefully and sensibly…with those burdens.

Strong stuff. Perhaps Tice is feeling emboldened by polling today that shows more Brexit voters are likely to vote for Reform than the Tories, by 35 per cent to 33 per cent. And Sir Keir Starmer’s party isn’t getting off scot-free either. Tice’s party is holding a press conference this morning attacking Labour’s ‘betrayal of the working class’, going hard on the NHS. Reform certainly isn’t here to make friends…

Listen to the clip here:

Why Justin Trudeau is turning against immigration

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in a state of desperation. His minority Liberal government has been polling behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives for the better part of two years. They’re down in most opinion polls by 15 to 18 points, and only have the support of 23 to 26 per cent of the Canadian electorate. His left-leaning policies have turned off many Canadians, including fellow Liberals. His standing in the international community barely has a pulse. His personal popularity numbers continue to plummet.

How is Trudeau still in power? Because he signed a three-year work-and-supply agreement with Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats – who are also struggling mightily in the polls – that doesn’t expire until June 2025. Without this, his goose would have been cooked.

The PM obviously wants to remain in power, as most political leaders do. He and his senior advisors have been throwing imaginary darts in every conceivable direction to gain an advantage. Nothing has worked to date.

Trudeau and the Liberals, who realise the clock is ticking rapidly, are now taking the most desperate step of them all: abandoning long-held political narratives with a flick of the wrist.

Here’s a recent example. Trudeau told reporters at an April housing announcement in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia that Canada’s level of temporary immigration needs to be controlled. 

‘Whether it’s temporary foreign workers or whether it’s international students in particular,’ he said, these groups ‘have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb…To give an example, in 2017, 2 per cent of Canada’s population was made up of temporary immigrants. Now we’re at 7.5 per cent of our population comprised of temporary immigrants. That’s something we need to get back under control.’

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There’s nothing illogical with this assessment. Except for one critical point – the reason why temporary immigration has turned into a significant economic problem in Canada is specifically because of the policies of Trudeau and the Liberals. 

The ex-drama teacher seemingly forgot that little nugget of information during his announcement. Perhaps he was caught up in the moment. But let’s provide him with a few gentle reminders. 

The Trudeau Liberals took power in 2015. In 2017, they announced that Canada would take in one million immigrants over a three-year period. In 2018, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced a further hike of 40,000 immigrants for 2021, bringing the yearly total to 350,000, or roughly 1 per cent of Canada’s population.   

No one denies that hard-working immigrants, who arrive by legal means, have played a vital role in building and shaping Canada and other western democracies. Generosity of spirit is a good thing, too.

Nevertheless, how did Trudeau plan to pay for this massive wave of immigration? How would he deal with issues related to housing, jobs, taxes and ensuring Canada’s economic engine could handle this influx of new immigrants? 

Sunshine and lollipops, it seems.

Trudeau’s Canada also let in refugees at a fairly rapid pace compared to the country’s total population. This included 25,000 Syrian refugees in a short two-month window in 2015, a time frame which was correctly described as ‘problematic’ by the president of the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance. There were also issues with Haitians coming illegally across the US-Canada border in 2017. It turned into a huge political controversy. The right-leaning Conservatives and left-leaning NDP both questioned this surge, albeit for different reasons. 

As for temporary foreign workers, Trudeau’s narrative has been all over the map. The Hub noted in a January piece that Trudeau criticised then-prime minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives for growing the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP). As Trudeau wrote in a 2014 op-ed for the Toronto Star, ‘by 2015, temporary worker entries will outnumber permanent resident entries. This has all happened under the Conservatives’ watch, despite repeated warnings from the Liberal Party and from Canadians across the country about its impact on middle-class Canadians: it drives down wages and displaces Canadian workers.’ In his view, the Conservatives needed to ‘scale it back dramatically.’

What did Trudeau do to correct this as Prime Minister? The exact opposite. Temporary work permits increased from slightly over 310,000 in 2015 to almost 800,000 in 2022. Both of Canada’s temporary labour migration streams, the TFWP and International Mobility Program, have gone up since 2017 – with an enormous spike in 2022. Early data for 2023 shows another increase is forthcoming.    

Trudeau could have prevented all of this from happening if he had actually paid attention to Canada’s rising immigration levels and refugee claims. He didn’t. And this has been a defining feature of his mediocre and ineffective leadership. 

Ian Hislop’s elite blindspot

A common argument against populist politicians such as Nigel Farage or Donald Trump is that their attacks on elites are in some sense inauthentic because they themselves are members of those same elites. Trump is, after all, a billionaire who has been prominent in New York corporate circles for almost half a century. His social milieu has included Wall Street titans, very senior politicians, and key figures in the world of entertainment.

Our Nige, meanwhile, may not be a billionaire, but he attended Dulwich College, a prominent public school, and made a good living as a commodities trader in the City. He has wealthy allies, such as the pro-Brexit businessman Arron Banks. His recent sixtieth birthday party was held at an upscale restaurant in Canary Wharf.

How then, goes the argument, can we regard either of these men as genuinely opposed to the establishment? They are mere cynics, exploiting the gullible and resentful masses for their own nefarious purposes. One prominent proponent of this point of view is Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye. Last week he was rehashing it yet again on the News Agents podcast, a bastion of the kind of weedy, complacent Sensibleism of which Mr Hislop is such an enthusiastic advocate. Hislop stated that Farage’s self-presentation was ‘bogus’ because he acts like a ‘working-class hero’, despite his educational and career background. But this is nonsense.

For one thing Farage, as far as I am aware, has never claimed to be working-class. What he does claim – like the Donald – is that he is a voice for the unfashionable and neglected parts of British society: those who have experienced what one writer has called ‘existential defeat’, i.e. seeing their values, lifestyle and aspirations derided and marginalised by Official Britain.  

“Nigel Farage – a prep school boy who went into The City – is a working class hero? Come on.”

Why do we allow the political elite to pose as “outsiders”?

👉 https://t.co/SdyBDl7Yow@lewis_goodall | Ian Hislop | @GlobalPlayer pic.twitter.com/14v4LHQdtj

— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) April 5, 2024

For another, Hislop is totally failing to understand where power lies in Britain today. His concept of the Establishment seems to be stuck in about 1952, with landowners and bishops and retired generals conspiring on the hunting field, or reactionary judges and captains of industry whispering behind the Daily Telegraph in gentlemen’s clubs. Farage might have fitted in quite nicely in some parts of this establishment, although many of its members would have taken a dim view of his occupation. But that it just not what British public life is like in 2024. Real administrative and cultural power is held by a class of obsessive egalitarians: activist lawyers and judges, civil servants, academics, quangocrats, arts administrators, teachers, and broadcast media executives. Only a few weeks back the head of MI6 was forced to resign from his club because it does not admit women. The courts take an enthusiastically political role in reviewing government legislation. Ofcom has the power to punish GB News for the most preposterous of offences against ‘impartiality’, while the BBC pushes social and cultural liberalism incessantly. Schools enable ‘social gender transition’ of confused kids in defiance of government instruction. The equality and diversity agenda is enforced across the entire public sector, including the armed forces, and increasingly in the private sector too. It is this new establishment, much more ruthless and unyielding than the old one, to which Nigel Farage is undeniably and eternally an outsider and an enemy. He was instrumental in Britain leaving the EU. He did not attend university; he likes beer and smokes cigarettes. Everything about him, from his accent to his manner to his preferred style of dress, sets him apart.  

Ian Hislop, by contrast, is very comfortable with this world. He is nearing the end of the his fourth decade in the editor’s chair at Private Eye, a post he assumed when I was three years old and no one had heard of the internet. He produces mildly whimsical documentaries for the BBC, and churns out two series per year of Have I Got News For You, a programme that started when the Soviet Union still existed, and was past its best 15 years ago. He is sympathetically profiled in the press. You will search his public pronouncements in vain for any meaningful dissent from modern pieties about net zero, immigration, drugs, race relations, the EU, abortion, and transgenderism. The Eye grumbles quietly about corruption in Brussels and the vacuity of contemporary architecture, but Hislop has been loudly anti-Brexit and would no doubt enjoy sniping from the sidelines in the unlikely event that a politician tried to insist on more traditional architecture in public buildings.

Fundamentally, he is far more entangled with, and sympathetic to, our true elites than Nigel Farage. This means that on his own terms, he is very ill-suited to editing a satirical magazine or being a team captain on an allegedly satirical TV show. Hislop claims that populists who are themselves quasi-establishment figures are ipso facto untrustworthy and cynical, and that their antagonism to the governing classes is all for show. But this is surely also true of the satirist who has cosied up to the status quo in so many areas. 

Hislop would doubtless defend himself by saying that he should be judged on his work and his arguments rather than anything else. And this defence is correct – but also completely contradicted by those dismissive insinuations about Farage’s alleged closeness to the establishment. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Is Whitehall ready for war?

James Heappey, who will soon step down as Conservative MP for Wells after nearly a decade, may have won more column inches in the last fortnight than the rest of his career combined. In March, he resigned as minister for the armed forces, a post he had held since 2020, and now that he is liberated from government, he has a few things he needs to get off his chest.

Heappey, who served in the British Army for eight years, rising to the rank of major and serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, has penned a heartfelt plea for the Daily Telegraph, in which he warns that the United Kingdom is unprepared for war as a ‘whole nation endeavour’. Carefully (but too generously) excepting his old department, he argues that too many parts of Whitehall are simply hoping that a major confrontation, implicitly with Russia, in the immediate future will not happen. Moreover, ministers and civil servants alike are unwilling to face the sort of measures needed to prepare for such a crisis.

‘To be frank, in the UK we’re a very long way behind,’ he admits. His comparison is with the detailed and comprehensive planning of the Cold War era, which was set out in the Government War Book. This three-part manual, maintained by the Cabinet Office, dealt exhaustively with what an administration would have to do before and during a so-called ‘Precautionary Stage’ and then during actual wartime. Working on the assumption of the government publishing an Emergency Powers (Defence) Bill, the War Book considered in detail how the nation’s resources would be marshalled and directed towards surviving and winning a full-scale conflict.

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It is almost certainly true that Whitehall is underprepared. After all, when the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee concluded last month that the Ministry of Defence’s Equipment Plan contained a £17 billion shortfall between expected capabilities and resources, the department’s response was virtually to pretend the problem was not there. Instead, an MoD spokesman noted, ‘We are delivering the capabilities our forces need – significantly increasing spending on defence equipment’. The distinction between ‘more funding’ and ‘enough funding’ was seemingly lost on our top brass.

But some things do make the reader pause. It is good that Heappey is arguing for more defence spending and better preparedness, but on his last full day as a minister, on 25 March, he told the House of Commons that ‘the Government have increased the defence budget to more than £50 billion a year for the first time’. He boasted that ‘all three services are getting back into the business of being ready for warfighting’. That was less than three weeks ago.

Heappey’s sudden conversion to Cassandra-like brutal honesty is also uncomfortably nostalgic in its recollection of Cold War preparedness. The kind of conflict for which the UK was steeling itself in the 1970s and 1980s is different in almost every likely respect from a confrontation in the near future. The Government Resilience Framework, initiated when current leader of the House Penny Mordaunt was a Cabinet Office minister in 2021, does indeed talk about resilience as a ‘whole of society endeavour’. But furrowed brows over sequestering land for growing food, or commandeering consumer electronics for weapons, feel like an exercise in retrofitting today’s technological preoccupations on to a Britain-can-make-it stoicism Heappey remembers from his childhood in the 1980s.

Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, of course, and Heappey’s warnings should be heard and absorbed. I have no doubt that parts of the civil service do need a thorough shake to force them to confront potential challenges in military and civilian resilience terms. But to be thinking about a virtual nationalisation of industry directed towards ‘the war effort’, or introducing some form of conscription, is a waste of time unless we address the most pressing problem of defence spending.

Armed forces are expensive. But the House of Commons Defence Committee expressed the challenge simply and brutally two months ago.

‘The Ministry of Defence must be fully funded to engage in operations whilst also developing warfighting readiness; or the Government must reduce the operational burden on the Armed Forces.’

This is the choice which cannot be fudged or finessed. The government may aspire to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent, or even 3 per cent, of GDP, but that is irrelevant until the money is actually collected and spent. We have chronically underspent on defence for far too long. The best response to the fears that James Heappey and others have rightly expressed is to have the military capabilities to forestall and prevent the conflict we are all so frightened of facing. As Tom Cruise’s sports agent Jerry Maguire eventually bellows: show me the money.

There’s no Roald Dahl without his cruelty

Roald Dahl Goes Woke: Part Two in what promises to be a very long and funny and ignominious series. Not three days after Puffin Books announced that they were to publish a series of specially commissioned new stories set in Roald Dahl’s fictional universes, a lead author of the continuation editions has had to issue a grovelling public apology.

In a video message accompanying the announcement, the Radio One DJ Greg James, co-author of a Twits sequel to be called The Twits Next Door, had said that giving Mrs Twit a glass eye was a good way to help make the character more ‘disgusting’. Following complaints from the Royal National Institute of Blind People pointing out the value of ‘positive representation of disabilities in children’s books’ he took to social media to say: ‘we apologise unreservedly. It’s now gone. We understand that words matter and we pride ourselves on championing and welcoming everyone into the magical world of children’s books.’

The row causes further problems for a publishing project that was already meeting with a distinctly mixed reception. With a DJ and a newsreader as co-writers of the new Twits, and a celebrity-heavy roster contributing to a seasonal story anthology called Charlie and the Christmas Factory, not a few flinty-hearted onlookers were concluding that the magic of storytelling is taking a back seat to the magic of marketing.

That said, it’s not to be dismissed out of hand, this idea that children’s writers of today should be encouraged to take on the characters and stories of the children’s writers of the past and extend those stories or play riffs on them. Yes, this particular instance looks less like artistic communion and more like a crass corporate money-grab from a Netflix-owned company for whom stories are ‘content’ and characters are ‘IP’ and the former is to be ‘provided’ and the latter ‘leveraged’. 

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But taking old stories and extending or reimagining them is what literature in general has always done, and children’s literature in particular. In our own age, the great Jacqueline Wilson has extended the work of E. Nesbit and Enid Blyton, and I for one am dying to read the Narnia sequel that Francis Spufford has written but not published. 

Children’s stories remain close in their bones to the myths and folktales which are the original forms of storytelling; and the defining characteristic of those forms is how available they are to retelling. The best and most enduring children’s stories are often those whose characters burst free of the stories in which they appear and seem to belong to the universe. Peter Pan, Mr Toad, the Mad Hatter, Mowgli, Aslan, Mary Poppins, William Brown: they are (as was said of Peter Pan) ‘immortal by election’. You could say the same of many of Roald Dahl’s characters: Willy Wonka, Matilda, the BFG, the Twits, Mr Fox… 

So there’s no reason, at least on artistic principle, that these new stories set in the Dahlverse should not be given a fair hearing. It does not necessarily profane the existing stories to have new ones set alongside them, any more than Disney’s enjoyable but very different Jungle Book does harm to Kipling’s original. As James Joyce with Homer, Jean Rhys with Charlotte Bronte, and Salman Rushdie with Cervantes, so it may plausibly be with Konnie Huq and Roald Dahl.

The Roald Dahl Story Company’s Director of Publishing Harriet Murphy certainly seems to think so. She told the Bookseller: ‘We have been so impressed by the authors’ brilliant ability to capture the unique spirit of a Roald Dahl story and bring us some wonderfully funny tales of their own imagination.’

But there, you see, is the rub. The ‘spirit’ of Roald Dahl is the one thing that 21^st century publishing will struggle to accommodate. His books are, as the recent controversy over revised editions highlighted, stuffed with ageism, sexism, fat-shaming, lookism and pogonophobia. These aren’t incidental features, easily detached. They go through his work like jam through semolina. Dahl’s special genius was to tap into the cruelty, as well as the wonder, of childhood. There’s a lot of sadism in those books: Dahl licenses it by supplying baddies (ugly, fat, weird baddies) for the sadism to be righteously directed towards.

The late Ursula K. Le Guin had his number. She complained that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had made her daughter ‘quite nasty’. You could make the case that the nastiness of her daughter will have been cause rather than effect of her enjoyment of Dahl, but potayto potahto: the connection is there.

You can be fairly sure, anyway, that when Roald Dahl gave Mrs Twit a glass eye, and had her prank her husband by taking it out and putting it in the bottom of his tankard of breakfast beer, he was not intending to celebrate her diversity. Dahl’s view of the world is one in which disgust has the status of something like a moral intuition.

So that the presumptive heirs to Dahl are apologising fervently for suggesting that a glass eye might be one of the things that make Mrs Twit disgusting is funny. They are apologising for something that is, for better or worse, quintessentially in the spirit of Dahl.

These new productions may capture something of Dahl, and it’s the something Netflix is after: the brand recognition and the capacity to earn royalties. But the spirit? No. The spirit of Roald Dahl has, like Elvis, left the building. Might not be the worst thing in the world, either.