Why do football managers like Thomas Tuchel always get the blame?

Bayern Munich’s decision to part ways with their coach Thomas Tuchel is a rather bizarre form of managerial sacking. Tuchel is leaving the job but will be allowed to stay in charge until the end of the season. This can only make a team that is in free fall more unstable.

In a statement on the club’s website, Jan-Christian Dreesen, the Bayern chief executive, said:

‘In an open, good conversation we came to the decision to mutually end our collaboration in the summer.’

This is the same Dreesen who told reporters hours earlier that Tuchel would not be dismissed anytime soon. Tuchel was singing the same tune about an end to collaboration, but promising to do everything he can ‘to ensure maximum success’.

It’s difficult to see how this can work. The players know Tuchel is leaving at the end of the season. It’s hardly an incentive to perform.

Bayern are the latest elite club to be infected with a form of managerial madness. Coaches must succeed immediately and keep on doing so forever. Any dip in form is lethal, meaning that a manager is just a few bad games away from the chop.

Tuchel, the former Chelsea boss, only joined Bayern in March last year and led them to the Bundesliga title. You would be wrong to think that counts for anything. All that matters is the here and now, and the writing has been on the wall for Tuchel for some time. It was always a question of when, not if, he would be removed from the top job. Bayern have struggled for form all season and are currently on a three-game winless streak. They recently lost 3-0 to league leaders Bayer Leverkusen – the hurt of defeat was made worse by the fact that Leverkusen are managed by a potential contender for the Bayern job, Xabi Alonso. The team then lost 1-0 to Lazio in the round of 16 of the Champions League. Bayern currently sit eight points behind Leverkusen and could end the season without a trophy for the first time since 2011-12 season.

What’s gone wrong then, and who is to blame? Is Tuchel at fault or is it the elite players? There are rumours that the dressing room is divided over the manager. The German newspaper Bild claims that that the team are split down the middle. Six players, including Bayern talisman Thomas Muller, fall into the anti-Tuchel camp. A number of others, including the England captain Harry Kane, are reportedly more in sympathy with Tuchel. More claims and counterclaims are bound to emerge in the coming days. It is hard not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for Kane though, who left Spurs to win trophies. Bayern, who routinely win the German league, were deemed a sure bet. Yet Kane could once again end the season without a medal or trophy. Tuchel was one of those who pushed for Bayern to sign Kane, and there must now be a question mark over his long-term future in Germany. A potential return to the Premier League cannot be ruled out.

Who gets the Bayern job when Tuchel does finally depart in the summer? Xabi Alonso is apparently the favourite. Leverkusen remain unbeaten in the German top-flight this season. Alonso also has history with Bayern, having played for the club between 2014-2017, winning three league titles. Alonso is football’s hottest managerial property right now and every elite club seems to want him as manager. He is reportedly in the sights of Liverpool, who lose manager Jurgen Klopp at the end of the season. Perhaps Alonso will opt for Liverpool in the end? Another rumour is that Klopp might be targeted for the Bayern job. 

The problem is that Bayern are developing a bit of a reputation as a hire-and-fire outfit. Tuchel is their sixth manager since 2016. His immediate predecessor Julian Nagelsmann was sacked while he was on a skiing holiday. Bayern are not alone when it comes to being quick to dispense with their managers at the first sign of difficulties. Chelsea sacked Tuchel in September 2022, deciding to replace him with Graham Potter of Brighton. That didn’t go too well and Potter was eventually sacked after a string of poor results. Chelsea’s current manager, Mauricio Pochettino, is struggling to get a consistent tune out of the team and rumours continue to circulate that his job might well be on the line. It is hard to see how Chelsea’s decision to dispense with Tuchel has done them much good in the long run.

The same managerial panic is evident at West Ham, where David Moyes is under growing pressure after an eight-match winless run. Yet only last season Moyes won the Europa Conference League with West Ham, and it hardly seems fair to question him so soon. Why would anyone else necessarily do any better than Moyes? The Tuchel sacking is just the latest example of an elite club panicking rather than sticking by the manager and thinking of the long-term. It leaves Bayern Munich looking like a club in disarray and without a real plan. Any manager would surely think twice before signing on the dotted line. 

The trouble with defining genocide

Like a number of ‘anti-colonialists’, William Dalrymple lives in colonial splendour on the outskirts of Delhi. The writer often opens the doors of his estate to slavering architectural magazines. A few years ago, one described his pool, pool house, vast family rooms, animals, cockatoo ‘and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city’.

I only mention Dalrymple because he is one of a large number of people who have lost their senses by going rampaging online about the alleged genocide in Gaza. He recently tweeted at a young Jewish woman who said she was afraid to travel into London during the Palestinian protests: ‘Forget 30,000 dead in Gaza, tens of thousands more in prison without charge, five MILLION in stateless serfdom, forget 75 years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU.’ It is one thing when a street rabble loses their minds. But when people who had minds start to lose them, that is another thing altogether.

I find it curious. By every measure, what is happening in Gaza is not genocide. More than that – it’s not even regionally remarkable.

Hamas’s own figures – not to be relied upon – suggest that around 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October. Most of the international media likes to claim these people are all innocent civilians. In fact, many of the dead will have been killed by the quarter or so Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that fall short and land inside Gaza.

Then there are the more than 9,000 Hamas terrorists who have been killed by the Israel Defence Forces. As Lord Roberts of Belgravia recently pointed out, that means there is fewer than a two to one ratio of civilians to terrorists killed: ‘An astonishingly low ratio for modern urban warfare where the terrorists routinely use civilians as human shields.’ Most western armies would dream of such a low civilian casualty count. But because Israel is involved (‘Jews are news’) the libellous hyperbole is everywhere.

For almost 20 years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, we have heard the same allegations. Israel has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza during exchanges with Hamas in 2009, 2012 and 2014. As a claim it is demonstrably, obviously false. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the population of the Strip was around 1.3 million. Today it is more than two million, with a male life expectancy higher than in parts of Scotland. During the same period, the Palestinian population in the West Bank grew by a million. Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are uniquely bad at it. Which is it? Well, when it comes to Israel it seems people don’t have to choose. Everything and anything can be true at once.

Here is a figure I’ve never seen anyone raise. It’s an ugly little bit of maths, but stay with me. If you wish, you might add together all the people killed in every conflict involving Israel since its foundation.

In 1948, after the UN announced the state, all of Israel’s Arab neighbours invaded to try to wipe it out. They failed. But the upper estimate of the casualties on all sides came to some 20,000 people. The upper estimates of the wars of 1967 and 1973, when Israel’s neighbours once again attempted to annihilate it, are very similar (some 20,000 and 15,000 respectively). Subsequent wars in Lebanon and Gaza add several thousands more to that figure. It means that up to the present war, some 60,000 people had died on every side in all wars involving Israel.

Over the past decade of civil war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad has managed to kill more than ten times that number. Although precise figures are hard to come by, Assad is reckoned to have murdered some 600,000 Arab Muslims in his country. Meaning that every six to 12 months he manages to kill the same number as died in every war involving Israel ever.

There are lots of reasons you might give to explain this: that people don’t care when Muslims kill Muslims; that people don’t care when Arabs kill Arabs; that they only care if Israel is involved. Allow me to give another example that is suggestive.

No one knows how many people have been killed in the war in Yemen in recent years. From 2015-2021 the UN estimated perhaps 377,000 – ten times the highest estimate of the recent death toll in Gaza. The only time I’ve heard people scream on British streets about Yemen has been after the Houthis started attacking British and American ships in the Red Sea and the deadbeat idiots on the streets of London started chanting: ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.’ Because like all leftists and Islamists there is no terrorist group these people can’t get a pash on, so long as that terrorist group is against us.

I often wonder why this obsession arises when the war involves Israel. Why don’t people trawl along our streets and scream by their thousands about Syria, Yemen, China’s Uighurs or a hundred other terrible things? There are only two possible conclusions.

The first is a journalistic one. Ever since Marie Colvin was killed it became plain that western journalists were a target in Syria. Not eager to be the target, most journalists hotfooted it out of the country. Some who didn’t fell into the hands of Isis. Israel-Gaza wars by contrast do not have the same dynamic and on a technical level the media can applaud itself for reporting from a warzone where they are not the target.

But I suspect it is a moral explanation which explains the situation so many people find themselves in. They simply enjoy being able to accuse the world’s only Jewish state of ‘genocide’ and ‘Nazi-like behaviour’. They enjoy the opportunity to wound Jews as deeply as possible. Many find it satisfies the intense fury they feel when Israel is winning.

Like being fanned on your veranda while lambasting the evils of Empire, it is a paradox, to be sure. But it is also a perversity. And it doesn’t come from nowhere.

Does any country allow children to vote? 

Baby voters

The Lib Dem Polly Mackenzie proposed giving people the right to vote from birth, with a proxy vote going to the under-tens. Does any country allow children to vote?

– No country has a voting age lower than 16, although Iran allowed 15-year-olds to vote until 2007. Those countries that do allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote are not all necessarily the most democratic.

16 Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Isle of Man, Jersey, Malta, Nicaragua, Scotland (not UK general elections), Wales (not UK general elections)

17 East Timor, Greece, North Korea  

Holiday homes

Which areas of England and Wales have the highest proportion of properties used as second homes/holiday lets? Figures expressed as number of people using holiday homes per 1,000 normal residents:

Gwynedd 79

Anglesey 63

North Norfolk 60

South Lakeland 58.4

Isle of Scilly 58.3

East Lindsey 54.4

South Hams 51.1

Scarborough 47.1

Pembrokeshire 45.2

Source: Office for National Statistics

Particle science

How were total emissions of common air pollutants in 2022 compared with 2012? Expressed as a percentage of the 2012 level:

Ammonia 99.5

Nitrogen oxides 54.4

Non-methane volatile organic compounds 84.5

PM10 (particles less than 10 microns in diameter) 92.6

PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter) 81.8

Sulphur dioxide 25.2

Source: Defra

Let them eat gold

Nusr-et, a Mayfair restaurant, has cut the £1,450 Golden Tomahawk steak (wrapped in 24ct gold leaf) from its menu and turned down the heating in response to the cost of living. Other pointlessly expensive dishes:

€5,000 Golden Boy Burger, De Daltons, Netherlands (Wagyu beef patty, beluga caviar, king crab, Iberico ham, white truffle).

$777 777 Burger, Le Burger Brasseries, Las Vegas (Kobe beef and Maine lobster).

$25,000 Grand Velas Taco, Grand Velas, Los Cabos, Mexico (Kobe beef, beluga caviar, black truffle brie, gold flake taco shell, with a salsa made from dried morita chilli peppers, tequila and civet coffee beans).

DNA profiling is a great British success story

Hardly a week goes by without a mention of DNA’s contribution to criminal justice. Last week Sandip Patel was convicted of killing a prostitute near Baker Street 30 years ago: DNA belatedly proved that his hairs were caught in her ring. A few days before, a double murderer, Colin Pitchfork, was controversially granted a parole hearing 36 years after being the defendant in ‘the first case of its kind in Britain to use DNA profiling’, as the Times put it.

Only that’s wrong. Colin Pitchfork was not the first person in Britain to be convicted with DNA; he was the first person in the world. The story of how DNA profiling was invented and then applied to solving crimes is a truly remarkable, entirely British success story. We seem to have forgotten this, perhaps because of the modesty of the inventor, Sir Alec Jeffreys.

Without Jeffreys’s insight, it might not have happened until years later. What’s more, almost nothing but good has come from it. DNA is even better at exonerating the innocent than convicting the guilty. In tracing lost relatives and sorting out paternity it usually – not always – brings joy as well as justice.

I first met Jeffreys at a British Association meeting in Brighton in 1983, in my very first week as a science reporter for the Economist. As a young geneticist he electrified the audience with a magical talk about the emerging glimpses of the structure of genes. He described a world of coded messages, repetitive deserts of so-called ‘junk DNA’ and ‘rusting hulks’ of disused pseudogenes. Over the next year I called him regularly as a source for new stories. Then one day he very politely brushed me off: ‘I’m too busy to talk.’ I later found out why.

At 9.05 a.m. on 10 September 1984, Jeffreys had a genuine eureka moment in his laboratory at Leicester University. He fished an X-ray film out of the developing tank in his dark room, turned on the light and saw something striking. His technician’s DNA had a pattern of repeats of a particular sequence that was similar to both her parents’ patterns but not the same. Suddenly he realised that every individual must have a unique profile in the repetitive DNA sequences between the genes.

Over the next two days he cut himself on purpose to leave spots of blood around the laboratory, returning to them later to see if the DNA was intact enough to be tested. Nobody expected that DNA could be used to identify people even decades after being deposited in tiny amounts. It’s remarkably fortunate: an organic molecule that in the dry, crystalline state resists decomposition. I also still find it baffling that in a sample replete with lots of copies of a book 800 times as long as the Bible (i.e., the full genome that is in every cell), you can pull out a handful of particular sentences with speed and certainty. But you can.

Jeffreys first applied the technique to help a Ghanaian immigrant prove to the Home Office that her son was her son. The mother’s delight fired him on. Then out of the blue in 1986 he had a call from the local police. They were investigating the rape and murder of Dawn Ashworth near the Leicestershire village of Narborough. They had their man: Richard Buckland, who had learning difficulties, had confessed to the crime under interrogation. But a very similar rape and murder, of Lynda Mann, had happened nearby three years before and Buckland denied committing that crime. Since sperm samples were available from both victims, could Jeffreys prove the two schoolgirls were raped by the same man?

He agreed to try, while being privately unsure that his technique would work for such samples. To his surprise, he got a clear result: the same man had committed both crimes. But it was not Buckland. The police unleashed some Anglo-Saxon down the phone and sought a second opinion from another lab, which agreed with Jeffreys. Reluctantly, they dropped the case against Buckland. Thus DNA exonerated an innocent man before it ever convicted a guilty one.

The police then asked more than 5,000 men aged between 17 and 34 in the surrounding area to give blood for Jeffreys to test. None matched the samples on the victims. A dead end. Then one day somebody told the police they had overheard a man in a pub saying he had been persuaded to give blood in the place of a work colleague, because the colleague did not trust the police. They tracked down Colin Pitchfork, tested his DNA and found a perfect match. He confessed to both crimes.

Without DNA, Buckland would have gone to jail and Pitchfork would have been free to kill again, leaving more families destroyed by grief. In the years that followed, DNA profiling solved many new cases as well as old and cold ones. Hundreds of people lived because murderers were convicted by DNA evidence before they could kill again. Used properly, DNA profiling became highly reliable, rendering the mythical Holmes-Poirot genius less necessary. 

Better still, the technique allowed the Innocence Project in the US to exonerate 202 innocent people (and counting) who were on death row or serving long prison sentences for crimes they did not commit. Many are black. It was started by O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, Barry Scheck, who had successfully cast doubt on the accuracy of DNA profiling in that case, but then championed it.

To everybody’s surprise, therefore, the biggest use of the new knowledge of the coded messages in DNA was not in medicine but in forensic science – thanks to Alec Jeffreys. DNA became famous for the first time. As James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, joked to me at the turn of the century, the two people who truly made DNA a household name were not himself and Francis Crick, but O.J. Simpson and Monica Lewinsky.

Putin’s British prisoner: Vladimir Kara-Murza is languishing in a Siberian jail

00:00 06:32

Lisa Haseldine has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Opposing Vladimir Putin is a lethal business. The world was reminded of this last week after the sudden death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Russian authorities are blaming Navalny’s demise on ‘sudden death syndrome’, but whether it was outright murder or simply the result of three years spent in Russia’s penal system, the responsibility lies squarely with Putin.

The danger of standing up to Putin is something the Russian-British journalist and author Vladimir Kara-Murza knows only too well. An active campaigner for Russian democracy, Kara-Murza was an ally of Navalny. He is responsible for convincing the West to sanction Putin-friendly oligarchs. In the early 2010s he worked with Boris Nemtsov to introduce the Magnitsky Act in the US and similar legislation across the West. In the past decade, he has survived two suspected poisonings. Last April he was given a 25-year jail term for speaking out against the Ukraine war, the longest sentence handed down to a political prisoner since the collapse of the Soviet Union. With Navalny gone, he has become the Kremlin’s most high-profile detainee.

Kara-Murza was first jailed for criticising the war in 2022, then, at his trial a year later, he was found guilty of spreading ‘false information’ about Russia’s army, participating in an ‘undesirable’ organisation and treason. Russia has since kept him in isolation at a Siberian prison colony in Omsk, and at the end of last month he was secretly moved, resurfacing a day later in a harsher colony close by. It was an alarming 24 hours during which his family and legal team were unable to contact him. He told his lawyer the move was his punishment for refusing to ‘rise’ when asked to by a guard.

This didn’t come as a surprise to his wife, Evgenia, 43. ‘The regime is afraid of anyone who dares speak their mind, even from behind bars,’ she says on the phone from the family home in Virginia, in the US, where she is based with the couple’s three children. ‘The authorities are doing everything they can to isolate these people… This is why many anti-war activists and political prisoners have been put behind bars for speaking out against the war and the regime.’

What distinguishes Kara-Murza from other political prisoners in Russia is that he is a British citizen. He moved to Harrow, Greater London, at the age of 14 when his mother married an Englishman. He went to a local school, then read history at Cambridge. Since his imprisonment, Evgenia has been lobbying the British government to help. A date has been set for her to meet Lord Cameron soon (which makes her ‘very happy’). After news broke about Kara-Murza’s disappearance last month, the Foreign Secretary said he was ‘deeply concerned’ for him.

British embassy representatives in Moscow were banned from the courtroom during Kara-Murza’s trial. His appeal failed, prompting Rishi Sunak to speak out on Twitter. ‘This is desperate and unfounded,’ the Prime Minister wrote. ‘Rejecting Kara-Murza’s appeal is unjustifiable. He should be released immediately. The United Kingdom stands with him and his family.’

Evgenia says: ‘I was a bit surprised that it took Sunak over a year [after becoming Prime Minister] to make a statement about an unlawfully detained British citizen. But at least he made it in the end.’ She thinks the British government could be doing more to get her husband released. Has the government’s response been lacklustre because it views Kara-Murza as a Russian activist, not a British citizen? ‘I hope this is not the case,’ Evgenia says. She believes Britain should establish an office to deal exclusively with British citizens wrongfully detained abroad. It’s a proposal that is supported by the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Alicia Kearns.

‘They need to try and find ways to prevent this from happening in the first place,’ Evgenia says. ‘They need to find ways to prevent people being used as bargaining chips in these political games.’ And if she can’t make them listen? ‘There is always a hunger strike, right?’ She appears to be only half-joking.

Evgenia is deeply concerned about the conditions her husband is being held in. At the first prison, she says he was living in ‘constant torture’. Similar to Navalny, Kara-Murza was kept in a cell measuring approximately three by two metres, with a bed he was only allowed to pull down at night; the only furniture was a backless stool. He wasn’t allowed to rest during the day and was given just 90 minutes daily to exercise in a small courtyard. Guards barked orders at him through a tannoy in his cell.

‘He does not have any rights to phone calls or visits,’ Evgenia says. Before Christmas, he hadn’t talked to his kids ‘in months’. Over the holiday period he was granted a 15-minute phone call with them: five minutes with each child. Evgenia timed each call with a stopwatch so as not to deprive any of them of time with their father. The only visitor Kara-Murza is allowed is his lawyer, who comes for an hour a week. Before his recent prison move, Evgenia could only communicate through letters: he was given 90 minutes a day to read and reply to as many letters as he could.

After the two suspected attempts on his life (when doctors found traces of heavy metals in his system), Kara-Murza developed polyneuropathy, a degenerative illness that causes a loss of sensation in the limbs. His treatment in prison, Evgenia says, is exacerbating his symptoms. ‘According to his lawyer, he has lost at least 25kg,’ she says.

Both attacks on him occurred in Moscow. A Bellingcat investigation has claimed the same assassination squad was behind them as tried to kill Navalny in 2020. The first time, in 2015, Kara-Murza fell ill after eating at a restaurant in the city centre. His heart, lungs, kidneys and liver failed and he was placed on life support in an induced coma. Eventually he was transferred to the US for treatment, after which he needed to walk with a cane for a period. Two years later he was treated in the same Moscow hospital, where he was admitted to intensive care before leaving Russia for further rehabilitation.

Although he regularly travelled for work, Kara-Murza had been based with his family in the US before returning to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Why did he choose to go back at such a dangerous moment, particularly considering the previous attempts on his life? ‘He believes he has to share those risks and challenges faced by people back home to have the moral right to speak on their behalf and to call on them to continue resisting this atrocity,’ Evgenia says.

Navalny’s death has shone a new light on the sacrifices he, Kara-Murza and other Russian democracy campaigners have made for the cause. Many regard them as heroes and martyrs. As more details of Navalny’s prison experience and death emerge, it is a reminder that Kara-Murza and other political prisoners like him are also extremely vulnerable.

As long as Putin remains in the Kremlin, Kara-Murza will remain behind bars. For Evgenia, there is no choice but to carry on campaigning for her husband. ‘You fight for that person, and you fight for your family, and you fight for your kids, and you make sure that you do everything possible to make sure that the person you love survives,’ she says. ‘It was not a choice that I was making. Considering the different alternatives, it was a given.’

Ukraine is in dire need – and the West must respond quickly

As the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, the fall of the key eastern city of Avdiivka is one more sign that Vladimir Putin holds the initiative. Ukrainian troops resisted the Russian forces for months, but the threat of encirclement forced Ukraine’s new army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, to retreat. The Russians were firing 10,000 artillery shells a day; the Ukrainians had been able to reply with about 1,500. Such an imbalance made defeat inevitable.

There are risks in reading too much into a single military setback, especially in light of Russia’s extraordinary losses (more than 300,000 dead and wounded, elite special forces decimated, more than 2,000 tanks destroyed and 24 Russian warships sunk). But Putin is waging total warfare, using nuclear blackmail, terror and a vast increase in defence spending this year by turning Russia into a war economy. His military now absorbs 40 per cent of Russian GDP.

The fall of Avdiivka came with a fresh Russian nuclear threat. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and one of Putin’s closest allies, warned that Ukraine regaining its 1991 borders would mean the ‘collapse’ of present Russia, whose constitution was recently amended to include captured territories. The Kremlin won’t let that happen, he said. A Ukrainian victory would trigger ‘a global war with western countries using the entire strategic arsenal of our state: on Kyiv, Berlin, London, Washington. All beautiful historical places, long ago included in the flight targets of our nuclear triad.’

Volodymyr Zelensky was abroad at the time, asking for more munitions to keep up the fight. Given the persistent failure of America and Europe to live up to their promises to Ukraine – the latest being desperately needed ammunition supplies – Zelensky wouldn’t be human if he didn’t fear a sell-out.

Criticism of Zelensky’s leadership misses the point. The West should be in the dock. Its whole approach to Russia’s invasion has been timid and reactive, compounded by strategic errors regarding Russian capabilities and intentions. Washington’s base assumption in the run-up to Putin’s invasion on 24 February 2022 was that Russian forces would overwhelm Kyiv in a week. The Biden administration was painfully slow to recalibrate. The subsequent debate over military aid has always been about how Putin would respond, rather than what Ukraine actually needed. ‘The West self-deterred,’ I’m told by a US intelligence veteran.

Time and again, weapons which appeared off limits – tanks (Abrams and Leopards), long-range missiles and launchers (HIMARS and ATACMS) and fighter planes (F-16s) – were later judged safe to deploy, six months to a year too late. Some allies – Britain, Poland and the Baltic states and latterly France – have pushed the US to be bolder. Under Joe Biden and his process-obsessed aides, US policy has been determined by the slowest ship in the convoy (usually Germany, which is temperamentally pacifist).

Western governments also allowed expectations to run wild ahead of the Ukrainian counter-offensive last summer. Ukraine’s forces advanced without air cover from fighter planes or attack helicopters into the teeth of entrenched Russian forces with far more lives lost than would have been the case had the West provided the equipment needed. No British or American infantry force has exposed itself to that level of risk since 1945.

In hindsight, the West also fell victim to Russia’s nuclear blackmail. Such threats need to be taken seriously but Putin is no madman. He is a cynical KGB-trained spy, skilled in the art of destabilisation. He was under heavy pressure from China not to press the nuclear button. If he had let off a tactical nuclear weapon, he risked a devastating military response from the US. Were these considerations given sufficient weight?

The final western mistake was to stiff Zelensky at last year’s Nato summit by adopting a wishy-washy commitment on future membership. This sent a signal of irresolution to Moscow. Yet the summit took place when Putin had suffered humiliation at the hands of the renegade warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenaries and ex-convicts had marched within 120 miles of Moscow.

At that moment of maximum vulnerability, Putin was exposed for what he is: a weak strongman. Any doubt on that score evaporated when he was filmed laughing and joking on the very same day that Alexei Navalny was declared dead in his prison north of the Arctic Circle. The fact that Putin felt it necessary to snuff out his last serious political opponent underlined his vulnerability.

Putin’s forces are now advancing again, with about 40,000 Russian troops near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region preparing to attack. Some 20,000 Ukrainian troops are defending and we can expect the battle to play out as it did in Bakhmut and Avdiivka: to be decided by the depth of ammunition reserves. Sensing this, Denmark donated its remaining artillery store. If other countries were as generous, there would be fewer Russian victories.

Ukraine’s battlefield is a bloodbath. Russians are on the offensive along the entire front line, pushing back exhausted and desperate Ukrainian soldiers who are running out of weapons to fight with. The West needs to respond, fast. The €50 billion EU aid package was a start, but it will be delivered in increments over four years: short-term relief is needed. The stalled US contribution, held up by Trumpist Republicans in Congress, is a body blow to Ukraine morale and military capabilities. Both Europe and the US need to be far more ambitious in advanced weapons deliveries. The G7 should pursue the transfer of frozen Russian assets, as proposed by the former World Bank president Bob Zoellick.

Zoellick calls the move ‘elegant justice’ – once again, he says, western governments are overstating the risks and failing to recognise the benefits. Apart from the much-needed psychological boost to Ukraine, it would force Putin himself to recalculate. For the past six months, it’s all been one-way traffic.

The fight to save an ancient City synagogue from developers

00:00 11:26

Christopher Howse has narrated this article for you to listen to.

There was a little number, 223, pasted onto the back of one of the centuries-old wooden seats in Bevis Marks synagogue in the City of London. ‘What are these?’ I asked Rabbi Shalom Morris, who was showing me round.

‘They’re called gavetas,’ he replied, opening the lid of a compartment in the bench. ‘It’s a Portuguese word. They’re for people to leave their personal property here – prayer shawls and things – as we don’t carry anything on Shabbat.’

It was a detail that impressed on me the long history of the Sephardi tradition here, the oldest continuously functioning synagogue in Europe today. And now, Bevis Marks synagogue is under threat. There’s a proposal for a 43-storey tower block a few yards away at 31 Bury Street, which would literally overshadow the synagogue in its quiet paved courtyard.

Rabbi Morris, with a habitual smile and a New York accent from his upbringing, sounded the most unhappy when trying to convey his relations with the City of London authorities. He is fighting their planning decisions and simultaneously ‘pleading’ with them – an uncomfortable position. In the face of what Rabbi Morris calls ‘an abuse of power and a breach of our community’s trust’, the defence of Bevis Marks has attracted some eminent people. Nine professors of history, a former Lord Mayor, a former Master of the Rolls and well-known names like the historian Simon Schama and the novelist Howard Jacobson were among the 27 signatories of a letter in the Daily Telegraph declaring that ‘the City’s failure to consider the religious and cultural dimensions of the synagogue will cause outrage’.

To me, any very tall building in the City plonked next to an ancient place of worship is bullying bad manners. In the street called Bevis Marks (a name deriving from the property of the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds), a block built in 2019 bulges out over it, earning itself the nickname the Can of Ham.

I realise that some people like tall glass-clad buildings. Just let them not build them in front of St Paul’s or the remaining old buildings of the City of London which give us reason to love it as a tight urban development on a human scale. The reductio ad absurdum of recent London development has been the proposal to build a 20-storey block actually above the listed Liverpool Street station and the hotel next door.

The case of Bevis Marks synagogue is particularly painful because it is unique of its kind, as historically emblematic to Jewry as St Paul’s Cathedral is to Christianity. What is so frustrating for defenders of the synagogue is that only in June 2022 the City denied planning permission for a development at 31 Bury Street because it ‘would adversely affect the setting of the Grade I-listed Bevis Marks synagogue’.

But since then, the City authorities have decided not to include 31 Bury Street in considering the ‘immediate setting’ of the synagogue. And although 31 Bury Street is now part of a conservation area, a prohibition of very tall buildings has been dropped.

In response to a City report on the synagogue, Abigail Green, professor of modern European History at the University of Oxford, made a point that struck a chord. ‘The heritage value of Bevis Marks synagogue is not purely architectural,’ she said. There is all the difference between a place of worship of historic beauty being conserved in use, and one kept open only as a museum. The latter can have the tragic air of a house abandoned in wartime.

Bevis Marks is a living community, not a museum. It holds Friday night and Saturday morning services and is popular for weddings. Its architecture also reflects the fortunes of the Jewish community since their implied ‘readmission’ to England under Oliver Cromwell several centuries after the expulsion of Jews in 1290.

The synagogue from the outside looks like a plain brick preaching-box of the period. It is not showy, less so even than the contemporary St Benet Paul’s Wharf, one of Wren’s essays in red brick. The flat east end of the synagogue forms part of the continuous building-line along Heneage Lane, a quiet York-stone pedestrian thoroughfare with lampposts down the middle.

It remains the only non-Christian place of worship in the City. The builders of the synagogue were trying not to ask for trouble, just as the 18th-century Catholic church in Warwick Street, built in the era before Catholic Emancipation, also kept to unadorned red brick with round-headed windows. Hence, at Bevis Marks, the discreet entrance is from a courtyard.

Today a stone is set over the iron gates from the street. (A security man let me in, since I had an appointment. That is the way things are today.) It bears an inscription repeated over the doorway within: ‘A.M. 5461.’ A.M. stands for Anno Mundi. Above the date is an inscription in Hebrew: Shaar Asamaim – the Gate of Heaven.

The reference is to Jacob, awaking after his vision of the ladder to heaven and exclaiming: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ It is a reference also taken up by Christian churches.

Entering the synagogue from the courtyard at its western end, the visitor faces the Ark at the far end, which contains the Torah scrolls in a cabinet behind doors. Two panels above are inscribed with the Ten Commandments. There is a direct parallel here with the Commandment boards directed to be set up in Church of England parishes under Elizabeth I. Indeed the Ark at Bevis Marks bears a striking resemblance to a Wren altarpiece.

The architect was a master builder called Joseph Avis, who had worked for Wren, as had his craftsmen. The architectural historian Sharman Kadish notes other similarities to Wren churches and to contemporary Nonconformist churches, such as the large round-headed windows in all four walls filled with clear glass and the galleries on each side, which here accommodated women worshippers. Bevis Marks, says Dr Kadish, ‘is rooted in English soil, built by an English architect using English materials and influenced by contemporary English styles. On the other hand, it cannot be fully understood without reference to the architectural tradition of the western Sephardim, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, that began in Amsterdam.’

Inside, it is a quiet symphony of woodwork: the old floorboards, the high-seated benches facing the centre (as in Oxbridge colleges), the reading platform like a little stern-deck of a ship, the Tuscan pillars supporting the galleries, conventionally painted to resemble marble. From the plain ceiling seven big brass chandeliers hang low, to shed the light of hundreds of candles on service books. The biggest chandelier, in the centre, was a gift from the Portuguese Great Synagogue of Amsterdam. But they weren’t intended for use instead of daylight.

Visually, the marvellous thing is that the interior hasn’t obviously been messed about. The synagogue escaped many mortal dangers. A hundred yards away, the Great Synagogue, from the Ashkenazi tradition, was destroyed in the Blitz. Few now seem aware of its existence. The IRA bombings of the Baltic Exchange in 1992 and of Bishopsgate in 1993 left only superficial damage.

A more insidious danger loomed in the 1880s. A dependent Sephardic synagogue had been built in 1866 at Bryanston Street near Marble Arch. It would make perfect sense to sell the land at Bevis Marks to fund the synagogue in the West End. This disastrous error of judgment was headed off by the gloriously named Bevis Marks Anti-Demolition League.

Rabbi Morris, who has been here nine years, lives over the shop, or at least next to the synagogue. He took me out into the courtyard to the northern corner of the building. There we could see the sky on two sides, towards the south. In Jewish practice, the sabbath ends when three stars are visible, and a month begins when the moon is seen in the sky. The proposed tower-block would obliterate that sky.

‘It survived the Blitz, two subsequent bomb attacks and Victorian attempts at demolition,’ William Whyte, professor of architectural history at the University of Oxford told me. ‘It would be a tragedy for our generation to be the ones who disregarded its significance as both an architectural gem and a precious piece of religious heritage.’

The Romans did politics properly

After 14 years in power, the Tory party still does not seem to know how to serve everyone’s interests, even its own. After 14 years out of power, the Labour party’s one consolation is that, for all Angela Rayner’s best efforts, it could hardly do worse. Might a new model for selecting MPs help? After Brexit, ancient Greek democracy is a dead duck; but the Romans invented the republican system and that might have something to be said for it.

To reach the top job as consul, one had to begin at the bottom, the posts lasting one year (there had to be a gap of a fixed number of years between posts). Aged 30, one could bid to become a quaestor (20 posts), with financial and legal responsibilities; if elected, one also joined the Senate for life (which proposed all legislation, enacted only by the vote of a People’s assembly).

At 36 one could move up to aedile (four posts), when one became responsible for the running of Rome: its streets, markets, sewers, aqueducts, weights and measures, grain supply, public games and much else. At 40 one could stand as praetor (eight posts) and run the Roman civil and criminal courts. Only at 42 could one have a shot at consul (two posts: this number was fixed, the others varied). The consulship gave one supreme power over the army and, effectively, everything else.

The result was that anyone aiming to become consul had gathered behind him enormous experience and wide connections in every post essential for the running of a large and complicated city. Even after the collapse of the republic, the system largely survived, though controlled by the emperor’s inner ring.

To provide experienced MPs, one might wonder whether the parties should draw on those who had been in local government (there were only 16 such in 2015) or even the civil service. Some would say: we do not want professional career politicians. Do we then want amateur ones? Perhaps we would rather prefer expert ones. But how do they learn political expertise? Some master classes from Sir Ed Davey, perhaps?

Cricket is one of the best anti-depressants

I love it when the England cricket team flies east in the winter. It means they’re playing in the early morning, UK time, and that’s just when I need them the most. Because cricket is a powerful antidepressant.

The fireworks of Bazball have been lighting up the sky for nearly two years now, and as that period has coincided with war and economic doom, the on-field heroics of Ben Stokes and the gang have been particularly welcome. But, thrilling as last year’s Ashes undoubtedly were, they still took place in the summer, the time of year when depression is at its least potent. Come the dark days – in every sense – of January and February, and that’s when the beast really lurks. Especially pre-dawn. An early 4 a.m. start in India is just what the doctor ordered.

Without the sound or sight of bat on ball, early mornings at the moment would hold their usual threat, should you be of the type. Deprived of sunlight and vitamin D, you would be waking early, sick of the darkness, devoid of hope. Yes, you’d know that in a couple of hours there will be things you can do: get up, walk the dog, force the physical to rally the emotional. But for now, it would be low time.

With England in India, however, salvation is just a switch-flick away. Reach for the remote, or the radio, and there it is: your favourite sport. Test cricket is made for getting lost in – its ebbs and flows, its rhythms and subtleties take five whole days to play out. George Bernard Shaw was trying to sneer when he said his thing about the English, being not very spiritual, having invented cricket to give themselves some idea of eternity. But that, dear George, is what many of us love about it. Eternity offers all the time you need to forget about being depressed. This is a force so powerful that it applies even when TalkSport have got the rights, rather than Test Match Special.

It’s not so much the on-field action itself (good job, given England’s performance last weekend). It’s more the fact that cricket exists at all, and the associations that go with it. This match in the heat of the subcontinent is a reminder that summer will, eventually, return to Britain. And then there will be Lord’s, and a seat in the Mound Stand.

Just as important as the actual cricket will be the peripheral joys, like your stroll around the back of the pavilion to marvel at just how red an MCC member’s trousers can be. And perhaps, while you’re there, the arrival of the players. You will experience that schoolboy thrill at being just feet from the England captain. Even though he was born after you left school.

I suppose it’s only fair that cricket combats depression: it causes enough of the stuff in the first place. The suicide rate among players is famously much higher than average. One of those who took his own life was David Bairstow, which is why his son Jonny looks to the heavens whenever he makes a century. The link is probably due to cricketers being more intelligent than other sportsmen, making them more vulnerable to the ‘intelligent person’s curse’, as depression has been labelled. To quote Jeffrey Bernard in this magazine: ‘I have yet to see or meet an unhappy village idiot.’ It was a cruel irony that Marcus Trescothick’s depression forced him to fly home from England tours of both India and Australia. They’re the tours that help many of us cope.

Cricket was never more crucial for me than during England’s tour to India in early 2021. The world was at the height of its Covid madness, and those who struggle with winter in the best of years were being pushed towards the edge. Some went over. But with days to go, Channel 4 secured the rights. Test cricket was available on terrestrial TV for the first time since 2005. I’m sure it saved lives.

An England tour to Australia or New Zealand means the antidepressant is available throughout the night. Play lasts from (roughly) midnight to midday, meaning you can go to sleep listening to it, certain in the knowledge that it will be there however often, and for however long, when you wake up. It’s the ultimate lullaby, albeit one you don’t actually want to nod off to, because that means missing the play.

Indeed, following a Test match is in many ways more rewarding during the night than during the day – you can concentrate properly, free from the distractions of phone calls and Amazon deliveries. In the prison of a February morning, Test cricket reminds us that (to quote George Harrison rather than Bernard Shaw) all things must pass. It won’t be dark for ever.

Ban smartphones for kids!

I understand the allure of smartphones, if you’re the parent of an adolescent (or younger) moron – which I believe many of you are.

You have booked a nice table for Sunday lunch and would appreciate not having to engage your offspring in a dialogue of inanities regarding the things which most concern them at the present time: the wickedness of Great Britain, historically and indeed today; the wickedness of the generation which brought them into the world; their debilitating and unsightly skin issues; their plans for transitioning; their fear that by the time they are 20 they will not be able to afford to buy a flat in Belgravia solely because of aforesaid wickedness; the fascinating evidence they saw on YouTube about Israel, global warming and the Freemasons; why it’s right to cancel people who disagree with them about stuff; why their stipend is laughably insufficient; why working for a living serves only to hasten the death of the polar bears; why Hamas has a bloody good point and so on, and so on, interminably and yet also incredibly briefly on each issue because they have entirely lost the power of concentration and can recall only 7.6 seconds of any salient argument, as a consequence of their 24-hour phone usage.

Far easier and more convivial simply to nod in assent when they take out their devices and thoroughly enjoy your lunch while they loll, slack-jawed, eyes glazed, posting insulting imbecilities on Snapchat. Or whatevs.

The smartphone debate throws up interesting allegiances and enmities which are, to my mind, more reflective of the political divide in this country than almost any other issue. In short, if you are a libertarian you are against anything which would restrict an individual’s freedom to access whatever the hell he, or she, wishes to access – always bearing in mind the maxim caveat emptor, especially when, later, they kill themselves.

I get that argument, it has some force – but I do not agree with it. I have never signed up to the libertarian agenda, instead believing that governments have a duty to protect those who have little or no power and that huge multi-billion-dollar high-tech corporations may not always have, as their first priority, the wellbeing of the human race. For some time I’ve been a member of a cross-party group of MPs, parents, scribblers etc, which was set up to agitate for greater controls on smartphone use by children (by which I mean people under 16 years of age), beginning with a total ban in schools but by no means ending there.

Some have come to this view as a consequence of the mental-health implications for so many of the children concerned, some justifiably worried about the access to odious pornography afforded to people too young to assimilate it. Others on the left worry about the baleful influence of the Silicon Valley companies, while many on the right are aghast at the increasing inability of children to concentrate, to think for themselves, engendered by the fleeting cornucopia of the internet – a place where nothing has any depth, only an infinity of width.

As a Social Democrat I am lucky that I am able to concur with pretty much all of these objections to smartphones for kids, which is why the SDP has been heavily involved right from the start. I had thought that this would be a long fight – and yet I find that we are pushing at a door which is already blowing wide open. The evidence is all there – the problem is getting the two main parties to adopt policies which might address that evidence but annoy ‘time-poor’ and weary parents, and those who think that we are either Luddites or saddoes who yearn for the 1970s.

My opening paragraph was a little tongue in cheek, but only a little – and it gets to what is the nub of the issue for me. We give smartphones to our kids for our benefit, not for theirs. It is the post-toddler equivalent of a dummy. It occupies them, often for entire days at a time, and we are thus relieved of the task of either engaging with them or actually, y’know, parenting them. That £1,000-plus smartphone, then, is a gift of neglect masquerading as benevolence. Even if the kids navigate their way through the cyber-hell of bullying, spite, vituperation and explicit porn, they will still cop it because their abilities to concentrate on any issue at hand reduce with every hour that they spend online.

But then so many of the developments we have seen over the past 40 or 50 years have been to the detriment of the children. The divorce laws, for example, which ensured that there would be a huge increase in the number of children raised in one-parent families (the worst of all outcomes for the children). Families in which both parents work and have little time left over for their children. The increase in paid-for childcare, enabling parents to park their brats while they go off to work: the longer a kid spends in childcare, the less fortuitous his or her later development, according to the stats.

Many of these developments are considered ‘progressive’, of course – and in some ways they are. I am not arguing that women shouldn’t go out to work, or that we should have no free childcare. But we blithely ignore the unintended consequences, all of which devolve down to the children. They have not been made better off, this past half a century or so. They are simultaneously indulged financially by parents and the state – and neglected. Meanwhile we worry endlessly about their safety and yet are resistant to measures which might give them greater security because that would impinge on our freedoms. With kids, we kid ourselves that they are happy. The evidence suggests overwhelmingly that they are not.

The NHS says trans women should breastfeed babies. This is unforgivable

There are a fair few trans women – men who want to be seen as ladies – who long to breastfeed real babies, and some who actually give it a good go. A few years ago this would have seemed unthinkably surreal, but I’m afraid this is the new reality and you’ll just have to get used to it.

A man who wants to breastfeed first takes hormones to grow breast tissue. Then he uses a technique adapted from something called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol, which was designed to help adoptive mothers breastfeed: he takes hormones and a hefty dose of an anti-nausea medication called domperidone and then begins an intense breast-pumping routine after which, if he’s lucky, he produces something a bit like milk.

After more time than I care to admit in forums for trans women online, I have a weary half-understanding of why a trans woman might want to try to breastfeed a baby. Many trans women (these are men, remember) have been in the grip of their obsession for decades. They’ve spent furtive years fossicking about in their wives’ knicker drawers and a small fortune on hormones and often unspeakable surgery. From what I can gather, they fancy breastfeeding because they crave ever more definitive female experiences, chasing a feeling of final validation which recedes, like a mirage, as they approach.

I have some sympathy for these poor men. They’re driven mad by hormones and the mental strain of trying to believe they’re female. The people I have no sympathy for – only cold, vengeful loathing – are the activist medics of the NHS: doctors who have sworn to do no harm and should care for babies before all others, but who instead choose to prioritise the feelings of cross-dressing men.

Over the weekend a letter came to light written recently by a Dr Rachael James in her role as medical director of Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. In this letter, Dr James insisted that the milk a man can sometimes induce is just as good for babies as their biological mother’s breast milk. They’re both ‘human milk’, says Dr James, and therefore ‘ideal food for infants’. She includes in her letter, by way of proof, a link to the WHO page on the subject of breastfeeding.

Dr James is engaging here in a truly ballsy bit of subterfuge. Yes, the WHO says that breast milk is best, but it’s referring only to ordinary breast milk produced by actual women. It makes no mention of man milk. But Dr James knows that. She’s a senior consultant in the NHS and there’s not a chance she doesn’t also know that the milk produced by a baby’s biological mother is by far its best bet. Unlike man milk, a mother’s milk at first contains colostrum, which has all the antibodies, antioxidants and nutrients a newborn needs and it changes magically, in response to the needs of a child. No man has ever produced colostrum, hard as he pumps, nor anything like enough milk to feed a baby.

But Dr James’s really unforgivable omission is not to mention that domperidone, the drug used to induce lactation, might well be unsafe for a child. Domperidone has not been licensed for use in America because of concerns that it causes heart problems. Trans activists can insist till they’re blue in the hair that the small amounts of domperidone in chest milk are unlikely to harm a baby, but they just don’t know. Dr James hasn’t a scooby doo whether the milk she advocates is safe for babies. So what in God’s name does she mean when she calls it ‘ideal’?

In all studies cited, much is made of the ‘affirmation’ a trans woman (man) feels when he’s allowed to breastfeed. It helps with his dysphoria, we’re told. There must be some official NHS document that shows how to weigh the brief satisfaction of a trans woman against the possibility of lifelong harm to an infant. I’d love to see it.

I’ve been studying the board of the Sussex Trust, and in particular its chairman, Alan McCarthy MBE, so that I know who to come after should the babies fed with trans milk suffer heart problems. McCarthy has dimples, implausible teeth and the sort of tan you get from weekends sailing in the Solent. He’s due to retire in June and I’m betting he just wants a quiet life now, no fuss before he goes.

If I had Mr McCarthy’s ear, I might have recommended that, in the interests of minimising later fuss, he distanced himself a little from Dr James when he was asked about her this week. He could have apologised for her comments – or at least made it clear that any risk to a child outweighs the momentary satisfaction of a man in the grip of a fetish. Instead, the Trust doubled down and, with the air of the righteous sticking it to nasty bigots, said: ‘We stand by the facts of the letter and the cited evidence supporting them.’

Well of course they do. University Hospitals Sussex Trust is a member of Stonewall’s ‘Diversity Champions’ programme and it has admitted that it took advice from ‘external organisations’ when it cooked up its breastfeeding policy. It’s like listening to hostage victims read from statements prepared for them by their kidnappers. Say just what we’ve practised, Mr McCarthy, or your diversity score gets it.

On Monday night, the BBC chose to discuss the man-milk affair with a young woman called Kate Luxion, an unqualified ‘trainee lactation consultant’ and a researcher at UCL. With a composed and serious expression, Luxion insisted that not only was man milk safe, but ‘studies’ had actually found that a trans woman’s milk contained more nutrients than the milk of a baby’s mother. The presenter nodded happily along. Nod, nod, smile, smile. Yep, sounded right to her. 

The BBC didn’t think it necessary to quiz the trainee consultant, to examine the study she cited or to ask how it could possibly be true that trans milk is actually suddenly more nutritious than the milk from a biological mother. Neither the babies nor the truth matter any more.

My war reporter friend Sean should win a Bafta

My oldest friend, Sean Langan, was back in the news this week. He’s carved out a niche for himself as a maker of low-budget documentaries in conflict zones and his most recent film was shown on ITV on Monday night. He keeps costs down by shooting them himself on a hand-held camera, which isn’t easy given that he also stars in them. This involves holding a camcorder at arm’s length and pointing it at himself as he wanders through some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots, often in the midst of explosions and gunfire.

The fact that he’s a one-man band means he’s able to make films in places few other documentary–makers can reach. It sounds amateurish and in a way it is, but the unvarnished nature of the footage makes for a raw, immersive experience. His 2001 BBC2 series Langan Behind the Lines was nominated for a Bafta and last year he won the James W. Foley World Press Freedom award.

This latest venture is called Ukraine’s War: The Other Side and it finds him on the Russian-occupied eastern front, the first time a British or American professional journalist has gained such access. In one scene, he stumbles across a cache of captured Nato weapons in a barn, only to be surprised by a group of masked Spetsnaz operatives who have come to help themselves to the contraband. ‘Who let this foreigner in?’ asks one. ‘All hell is going to break loose now. I’m going to eat his liver.’ Sean, who doesn’t speak Russian, turns to Sasha, his fixer, to translate. After he’s done this, Sasha adds: ‘Try not to irritate these guys.’

Most journalists would think ‘time for a sharp exit’, but not Sean. He starts asking them questions, particularly after he discovers they’ve just been kicked out of Kherson, a city occupied by Russian forces between March and November 2022. Do they know anything about the torture chambers discovered by the Ukrainians? Instead of getting more and more irate, the Russian commandos warm to him and start trotting out bizarre justifications for the ‘special military operation’. ‘Study the Russian history carefully and you will understand that the Russians never wanted war,’ says the leader of the group. ‘The Russians don’t attack. The Russians end wars.’

Footage like this has attracted criticism from some pro-Ukrainian British politicians, who claim it’s irresponsible of ITV to broadcast it, particularly in the wake of Alexei Navalny’s murder. ‘I don’t think this documentary should be shown,’ Lee Anderson told the Mail. ‘At a time when the whole world is trying to help Ukraine in this difficult time, we need the support of the British public.’

But as someone who’s fanatically pro-Ukraine, I don’t think this film will jeopardise public support. On the contrary, the Russian apologists for Vladimir Putin in the documentary sound as deluded as the Spetsnaz commander banging on about the need to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from ‘Nazis’ and ‘perverts’. In addition, Sean makes no bones about which side he’s on – although, understandably, he’s done that in a voiceover recorded back in London.

Sean’s journalistic technique is to draw out his subjects by posing as utterly guileless – almost as if Mr Magoo had stumbled into a war zone. As an interviewer, he’s the opposite of Jeremy Paxman, lulling people into a false sense of security by smiling and making self-deprecating jokes. Sometimes he asks sworn enemies of the West if they can help him shoot some B-roll and we watch as hardened terrorists become amateur cameramen. This routine doesn’t always guarantee his safety – he was kidnapped by a Taliban warlord in Pakistan – but mostly it does. The propagandists for authoritarian regimes mistake him for a useful idiot and let their guard down. Only later do they discover that he’s actually a very dangerous idiot.

I helped Sean get his first job in journalism, having become friends at school, and to begin with he ploughed the same furrow as me. But in 1989 he headed to eastern Europe to cover the collapse of the Soviet Union and our paths diverged. Since then he’s paid a heavy price for being a war correspondent, with his marriage ending, his finances suffering, and even losing several teeth as a result of being held hostage in a windowless cell for several months. But even though I’m happily married and have all my teeth, I will never win any glittering prizes, whereas Sean already has. Ukraine’s War: The Other Side is his finest work and I’ll be astonished if it doesn’t win a Bafta. Chapeau, old friend.

The Battle for Britain | 24 February 2024

Can England rain on Scotland’s Six Nations parade? 

Watching England play Wales in the Six Nations the other day, a lacklustre match between two middling sides and distinguished only by lashings of Welsh hwyl as the visitors outperformed their role as underdogs, I remarked to the Irish friend who was with me: ‘The Welsh don’t like the English, do they?’ ‘Get in line,’ my friend replied. Fair point, and the Scots, proud members in the queue and a better team than Wales, will sorely test the idea on Saturday that Steve Borthwick’s newish-look side are any better than their predecessors.

For some time it felt as if England didn’t have to do much more than turn up to the Calcutta Cup to get the win. Scottish victories seemed so rare they even had documentaries made about them, e.g. the magnificent film The Grudge about the famous 1990 Scottish victory, with David Sole’s spine-tingling slow march as he led his team on to the field. The result, which denied England a Grand Slam, was about much more than rugby though, notably Scotland’s detestation of England in general and Margaret Thatcher in particular. 

Now things have changed, not least after that fabulous 38-38 draw at Twickenham when Scotland came back from 31-0 down. England have won only once in their past six meetings. Scotland’s only weakness is they might be too pumped up, as coach Gregor Townsend admits. Still that’s what lone pipers on the Murrayfield roof and ‘Flower of Scotland’ being belted out by a packed stadium after a refreshing lunch can do to you.

Only after the final whistle will we know what strides Borthwick has made with England. Scotland are scarily good, prevented from beating France only by a blade of grass. This was how Grégory Alldritt, the outstanding French No. 8, described the game: ‘One of the best wins of my time with France.’ That is how good Scotland are.

Mike Procter, the great South African who has died at 77, was a reminder of the peak of county cricket, well-thumbed copies of Wisden, games of Owzthat and a time when all the counties had superstar overseas players. Procter was as Gloucestershire as Asif Iqbal was Kent, Javed Miandad was Glamorgan, Imran Khan was Sussex and Clive Lloyd was Lancashire. Procter, with his mane of golden hair, curious wrong-footed bowling action and a ferocious capacity to smash a cricket ball into the next town, would probably have been an effective T20 player too.

His passing reminds us that those days are gone. If Procter were 28 now he would be wondering how to spend his IPL millions, whether to commit to the Quetta Gladiators for another season, and was Test cricket really worth it. I doubt he’d be often seen at Bristol.

Meanwhile, over in India, forget the bellyaching about the rights and wrongs of Bazball. The big question is, have we got a new Bradman on our hands in Yashasvi Jaiswal? The young Indian opener seems to have an inexhaustible appetite for ginormous centuries, though we like to point out that nearly all his scores have come in Indian conditions and he has yet to face Jimmy Anderson on an Old Trafford greentop in April. That’ll show him. England’s own newish golden boy Ben Duckett has (curiously) argued that England should take some of the credit for Jaiswal’s scoring. Eh?

They are an interesting pair: as a teenager Jaiswal lived in a tent in Mumbai and sold street food to make ends meet. Duckett enjoyed the splendours of Stowe School, where he totted up 15 centuries playing for the first Xl. I have never been to Stowe but its main cricket ground looks like an Elysian Field, with a perfect batting pitch. If only all our promising young batsmen had the chance to play on it.

Dear Mary: how can my daughter defy her friends and stay tattoo-less?

Q. My husband had my portrait painted for my 40th birthday and everyone says it is an amazing likeness. Now his business partner wants the same artist to capture his wife on canvas. We are anxious because, as my husband says, the wife is ‘no looker’ and the artist is not one to give a rose-tinted view of one of her sitters. Should we tactfully discourage this commission?

– J.S., Northants

A. Consider these words from one leading portraitist: ‘You want to reproduce the humanity, the character, rather than the appearance. Glamorous people are a nightmare to paint. As an artist I far prefer the “non-glamorous”. You can manipulate the situation – on the pose, don’t show too much of the face – have them looking slightly away. Make the most of the background, hats, scarves, furniture… Non-glamorous sitters are often pleasantly surprised – their modesty is rather moving.’ Therefore, J.S., it is not up to you to queer this artist’s pitch. Let the commission go ahead.

Q. A number of my daughter’s slightly older friends have had tattoos. When she is 18, the peer pressure to follow suit will become irresistible. She can’t think of a good reason not to have one without offending the already tattooed. Her friendship group means the world to her. What should she do?

– A.P., Cheltenham

A. Your daughter can retain her place in the friendship group by playing the blood donor card. This will excuse her from the disfigurement as she can gush that she would love a tattoo but that ‘You can’t give blood for four months after you’ve had a tattoo’. It would be good if she followed through and donated.

Q. My wife and I are having two friends, both of whom have taken religious vows, to stay for the occasion of a third friend’s ordination into the diaconate. I want to make sure they’re comfortable and well hosted. With this in mind, do I offer them a drink? My wife and I have decided to go off the sauce for Lent, and it seems rude to offer any without partaking. Furthermore, we’d rather not have any booze around the house, especially of a good quality that might lead us into temptation during this time of fasting (we’re far too young, poor and frivolous to deck out a quality cellar). I think that if our guests weren’t taking holy orders, I wouldn’t feel so hot and bothered about what is surely a simple problem.

– W.H., York

A. You seem more interested in yourself than in whether your guests are comfortable and well hosted. Of course you should get some wine.

‘You can stare at a cow you will soon eat’: The Newt, Hadspen, reviewed

The Newt is an idealised country house in Somerset which won the World’s Best Boutique Hotel award last year. It is small, beautiful and mind-meltingly expensive, even for the Bruton Triangle and its mooing art galleries. Poor Somerset! It never wanted to be monied enough to have a triangle, but the rich make their own mythology. Since they paint every-thing grey – and now green, I learn at the Newt – they need it. A triangle fills the day. The Newt is for people who think that Babington House is stupid (it is) and though the Newt has its own issues – like the King, its taste is almost too immaculate – you never feel that the chief executive of a media conglomerate will bounce past you on a space hopper eating a fishfinger sandwich and shouting into an iPhone.

The Newt was Hadspen House until 2013, when it was bought by a family of South African billionaires. Before that it was one of those lost manor houses owned by Enlightenment–era lawyers who used sheep to cut the grass and shouted: ‘Dash, me wig!’ I would have preferred Hadspen then – as I prefer Haddon Hall and its dust to Chatsworth and its bling – but we would not have got in then.

The billionaires are called the Bekkers: they spread money on Hadspen like jam. Either they are lonely – I would keep Hadspen for myself – or they want to provide a wacky public service for people able to spend £1,000 on bed and breakfast. The house has only 23 rooms and is as close to the experience of pretending you are a South African billionaire living in a small country estate in Somerset as you will find.

Ah, stuff! They have a druid tree, a spa with indoor and outdoor pools, a chicken playground – the publicity material has a photograph of a chicken sitting in a suspended chair looking sullen, a cider press and a full-size reproduction of a Roman villa. There is a lit fire in a walled garden: is it for chickens? The ducks have a RIBA-inspired waterside residence to quack in. The bees are no less spoilt: they live in a series of hillside hives called Beezantium, and you can visit them as you might visit celebrities: on your knees. And the newts, you may ask? They named the company after them.

I can’t tell you about human guests because I don’t see any. I imagine they are frolicking in four-poster beds and reading design magazines. I only see green public rooms with smouldering fires and conventional art, labouring under the smooth application of money. I am told local tradesmen adore the Bekkers. They spend their days making dry-stone walls and bee Center Parcs. The gardeners may be less ecstatic. I don’t see a leaf on the ground in two days.

There are three restaurants: the Farmyard Kitchen and the Garden Café, which cater to day-trippers who must pay an entry fee, and the Botanical Rooms in Hadspen House, which was once the billiard room. It has stripped panelling – there is nothing Blackadder-ish here – green sofas and a light fitting of golden balloons.

The food is grown, foraged, or coddled in the estate: you can stare out a cow you will eat. I order a glorious piece of once-sullen chicken with girolle mushrooms, barbecued corn, and tarragon from the kitchen garden; a good cut of British White beef with beef-fat potato and oyster mushroom; a tidy plate of Somerset cheeses. It is pleasing but numbing, with the quality of an anaesthetic. Beyond that there is nothing to feel: just envy.

How do you say Southwell?

They were talking about the origins of the Bramley apple on The Kitchen Cabinet on the wireless last week, and naturally they spoke of Southwell, that agreeable minster town in Nottinghamshire. I was surprised, almost let down, when a local man pronounced the place-name to rhyme with mouthw’ll. I had long been careful to pronounce the –outh– like the –oth– in mother.

I needn’t have been so shocked. The careful work of Klaus Forster published in 1981, A Pronouncing Dictionary of English Place-Names, includes a version of Southwell rhyming South– with mouth. Indeed it was the version, he tells us, listed in Broadcast English: Recommendations to announcers regarding the pronunciation of same English place-names (1936). But he does give three sources for the mother version being the local choice.

You can’t win. There was a flurry of complaints earlier this month in Cumberland (which has been divided off from Westmorland once again) where railway announcers were pronouncing the second syllable of Aspatria pat, whereas local people preferred pate. It’s a funny place-name, which many visitors assume to have an element from the Latin patria. The real origin is as the ash (tree) of Patrick. Northern Rail is in a difficult position, because, as the mayor of Aspatria rightly points out, the traditional local pronunciation of the town’s name is Spee-atree.If they announced that at Carlisle station, half the travellers wouldn’t know where they meant.

The railway company re-recorded 34 station names last year, including Redcar. That was one of the names triumphantly read out by Boris Johnson after the general election in 2019. He was criticised by some for pronouncing the second syllable like a motor car. I heard on the train recently a pronunciation making it more like cur.  Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, is now announced as slough-wait. There is no doubt Langwathby is to be pronounced lan-ganby and if Northern Rail announcers persevere with that, they deserve a year’s supply of Cumberland sausages.

Portrait of the week: Labour wins by-elections, Navalny dies and Eiffel Tower closes

Home

Labour called for an ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ in Gaza for the first time since the attack by Hamas in October. Earlier, at a Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow, Sir Keir Starmer said that a ‘ceasefire that lasts’ must ‘happen now’. The Prince of Wales called for an end to the fighting and the release of hostages, saying that ‘too many have been killed’. The ‘very small recession’ may already be over amid ‘distinct signs of an upturn’, Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, told a Commons committee. Provisional figures for the last quarter of 2023 had shown a 0.3 per cent fall in GDP, following a 0.1 per cent fall in the quarter before. The government sent ‘guidance’ to schools saying: ‘We are determined that all schools should prohibit the use of mobile phones throughout the school day.’

In two by-elections, the Conservatives took another turn in their spiral down the plughole. At Kingswood, Labour’s Damien Egan, the former mayor of Lewisham, won 11,176 votes to the 8,675 for the Conservative candidate. The gap between them was smaller than the 2,578 votes for the Reform candidate. At Wellingborough, Labour’s Gen Kitchen won 13,844 votes to the 7,408 for the Conservative candidate, Helen Harrison, the partner of Peter Bone, the former member for the constituency against whom a recall petition precipitated the by-election. Scott Benton MP faced a 35-day suspension from parliament, so another by-election is expected.

Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, contradicted Henry Staunton, whom she had sacked as chairman of the Post Office. He had said in a Sunday Times interview that he was told to delay payouts to Post Office scandal victims: ‘I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spend on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon and to “limp”, in quotation marks – I did a file note on it – “limp” into the election.’ She responded on X (Twitter): ‘He has given an interview full of lies,’ and then said in a statement in the Commons: ‘He’s chosen to spread a series of falsehoods.’ Staunton then found his written note which used the word ‘hobble’. The test firing of a Trident missile from a Royal Navy submarine in the Atlantic failed, for the second time in a row. Police searching the Thames for Abdul Ezedi, the suspect in the Clapham chemical attack, recovered a body. The Body Shop is to shut half its 198 UK stores. The Chinese e-commerce group JD.com said that it was considering a takeover bid for Currys.

Abroad

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader jailed in 2021, died aged 47 in a penal colony inside the Arctic Circle. In 2020 he had been poisoned with Novichok. ‘Make no mistake,’ commented President Joe Biden of the United States. ‘Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.’ His widow said the same. The US and British ambassadors paid their respects at a memorial to repression, the Solovetsky Stone, in Lubyanka Square; hundreds of Russians were arrested for doing the same. Ukrainian forces withdrew from the ruined town of Avdiivka near Donetsk. President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Germany and appealed for more weapons. Denmark had decided to deliver to Ukraine all the artillery rounds from its stockpiles, its Prime Minister said. Witchcraft charges brought last October against the Seychelles opposition leader Patrick Herminie were dropped. The Greek parliament voted to legalise same-sex marriage.

Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, warned that unless Hamas freed all hostages held in Gaza by 10 March (the beginning of Ramadan) an offensive would be launched in Rafah, where more than a million Palestinian refugees are sheltering. The World Health Organisation said that the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, had ceased to function following an Israeli raid. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil likened ‘what is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people’ to ‘when Hitler decided to kill the Jews’. The crew of the Rubymar, a British-registered cargo vessel, abandoned ship after it was hit by missiles fired by Houthis in the Gulf of Aden.

Donald Trump was ordered by a New York judge to pay the state $355 million for lying about the values of his properties; he was also banned from serving as a company director or taking out loans from banks in the state for three years. Tourists in Paris made do with photographing a sign that said: ‘Due to a national strike, the Eiffel Tower closed. We apoligize (sic).’                   CSH                   

My Keir Starmer fantasy

A work outing to Venice. Sweetpea (yes, her real name) has captained my ship, run my life, steered me from countless disasters for 15 years and she deserved a decent break. Luckily two of my oldest friends have an apartment in the city. Our first supper at Corte Sconta in the authentic Castello district was sensational. Mixed grilled fish of the day, gleaming artichokes. No showiness, just exquisite food. We scored again for lunch next day outside in the sunshine on Campo Santo Stefano. Trust me to break the magic by booking us a Saturday night table at Harry’s Bar. We had to settle for 7 p.m. and then in an inner room, no view. It went from bad to worse. The bread was stale; the waiter, irritated each time we questioned the menu, unashamedly hostile. He and another waiter were looking at us and openly laughing. We began to feel like a quartet from Wisconsin on our first trip to Europe. The main course – we all had fish – was overcooked and swimming in a tasteless sauce, and on my plate was a single frizzled artichoke. Dishes of disintegrating vegetables followed. Enough! I called for the bill. The maître d’ came to check on us. ‘It’s been shockingly disappointing,’ I said. He removed the tab and apologised. Maybe it was a bad night in the kitchen. We left a little nonplussed and opted for Caffè Florian for pudding, where there’s a choice of nearly a hundred patisseries. I grabbed the bill. It was less than €50: a bargain. But not as cheap as Harry’s Bar.

It’s nearly 70 years since The Spectator lost a libel action after describing three prominent Labour politicians as having shocked the Italians with their consumption of alcohol during a socialist conference in Venice. Nye Bevan, Dick Crossman and Morgan Phillips sued and picked up nearly £10,000. A fortune for the time. My first trip to the city was with my wonderful Hampstead neighbours Jill and Michael Foot in the early 1980s. No guidebooks required. One morning in St Mark’s Square, Michael waved his stick towards the corner café where he said Nye and the others had enjoyed themselves ‘rather too much’. Were they drunk, I asked? Very, was his response.

After the arctic weather, I could hardly believe I could hear the buzz of a wasp as I put my head on my pillow. But no mistake, the sharp sting on the fourth finger of my left hand confirmed it. I did as instructed, bathed my hand in ice, took an antihistamine and a paracetamol tablet. What I didn’t do was remove my Russian ring – in effect three rings – of gold and diamonds. The next day a lump nearly the size of a golf ball had blown up on the knuckle of my finger, which was clearly blocked from swelling upwards towards my hand. God bless Cirencester hospital, somehow saved from countless attempts to close it and now a daytime minor injury unit. The nurse didn’t blink, just ushered me into a cubicle and said she would get the glass cutter. Alas, 80 minutes later and two glass cutters broken, my ring remained in place. I thought the fire brigade might help. But the nurse called the local jeweller, who shut up his shop and came with a variety of terrifying instruments. Ten minutes later the ring was shattered into six pieces. He said his wife was a GP and endlessly pleaded with A&E departments to have a ring cutter. I have ordered one for Cirencester.

I have a recurring fantasy that Sir Keir Starmer has won me in a raffle for a morning. First, we will shampoo his hair and remove what I presume is the gel that forms that quiff. Next, I will devise a way to convince him never, ever again during a 20-second televised soundbite to utter the words ‘moving forward’. The only time I’ve heard this phrase used is in scripts at call centres as a means of shutting up whingeing complainants. In the time left, I will serve him several large gins and suggest that, when faced with an awkward question, he tries replying: ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea.’

You need the patience of a robot to serve in a shop in my local town of Burford. I’ve yet to witness a tourist doing anything but browse – they never purchase. Dashing into our wonderful cheese shop, my way was blocked by three very large Germans. I got past one daughter and the mother, while the other daughter was leaning over the glass in front of the cheese display, taking photos. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you bought some cheese instead of just photographing it,’ I demanded. ‘I already buyed it,’ she said. ‘Bought, bought,’ I retorted. ‘Are you a teacher?’ whispered the teenager behind the counter.

‘They’ve killed Blackpool’

00:00 04:53

Max Jeffery has narrated this article for you to listen to.

It’s mid-afternoon in the Royal Oak pub in Blackpool and Liv has arrived to sell a bag full of stuff she’s stolen from the supermarket. She’s got fabric conditioner, soap, Creme Eggs and a large bar of Dairy Milk. She pulls in a few pounds and then leaves to score some crack. ‘Everyone struggles,’ says a man watching her sell. Lots of people here don’t work. People earn money however they can.

In Blackpool, you see the worst of Britain’s welfare crisis. More than a quarter of the city’s working-age residents are on out-of-work benefits, the highest proportion in the UK and twice the national average. In parts of South Shore – right near the promenade, and home to a once-strong tourism industry – it’s closer to 60 per cent. There used to be circuses and casinos, and Peter Kay once filmed here. That’s all gone. Most locals feel as if there’s no hope of a better life. Universal credit reform was supposed to come with ‘universal support’; the ‘levelling-up’ agenda was supposed to sort out the area. But the promised help never arrived.

Next to the Royal Oak, there was once a bingo hall called the Apollo. It was plush and grand with Art Deco furnishings. It closed in 2009 – the same year the regional office of the Department for Work and Pensions was shuttered. There used to be a market near the pub, too. ‘You could buy anything you wanted,’ Geoff, 67, tells me. He fondly remembers buying cheap knock-off alcohol near Lytham Road. Now there are only takeaway shops, off-licences and hardware stores – and many of these are also closing down. No one seems to care about Blackpool any more.

Geoff once worked in a car factory, making exhaust pipes that got sent on to Sunderland or Liverpool. After a day’s work, he’d go down to the job centre and say he was unemployed to give his salary a bump. He’d turn up in a high-vis jacket, coated in dust from the factory. They’d ask if he’d worked in the past few weeks. Not a minute, he’d reply. The official figures didn’t pick up people like Geoff: considered workless by the state but doing undeclared work to get by. They still don’t. High penalties, such as tax or the cost of coming off welfare, force people into an informal economy with low pay and little protection. 

‘You have to live off your wits in this town,’ says Geoff. There’s a ‘grey market’ for work in Blackpool, as in many other places in Britain. When a big show comes here, a Mercedes van parks up behind the promenade, opens its back door and drops people off to beg. At the end of the night, they return to the van and hand the cash to the driver. It sounds more like slavery than freelance earning. Locals say the off-licences are just fronts for drug money, too. Lots of work is cash-in-hand.

Many people in Blackpool are really too ill to work. The health service is in a bad way. Opposite the pub, a man called Pete, 55, says that he’s on disability benefits for a fractured lower spine, osteoarthritis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He can feel the bones in his back clatter when he walks. He worked at the Apollo for 17 years but says he hasn’t had a proper job since it closed. ‘All the government wants to do is get you into work,’ he says. The DWP website lists 178 ‘disability confident’ jobs open in Blackpool, but that’s not enough for everyone here. The department’s own numbers show 7 per cent of the town to be on incapacity benefit.

South Shore is the sort of place that Boris Johnson promised to improve. There are job vacancies in Blackpool – 7,000 listed on one jobs website – but everyone says there’s no work. It can be hard to square. Online, there are vacancies as a hotel night receptionist for £10.50 an hour, or a £30,000-a-year bar manager, but people in South Shore say it’s not real work – most of the jobs dry up after the summer, when the tourists leave. No one comes here in February. Some people save enough money in the summer to get them through the winter months; others end up homeless or in temporary accommodation.

Back in the Royal Oak, a homeless man called Stephen says he came here from Mansfield in search of a better life. ‘Everyone thinks Blackpool’s streets are paved with gold,’ says a man by the bar. It was in Blackpool, in 2005, that David Cameron launched his bid for the leadership of the Tory party with a no-notes conference speech that turned him from nobody to favourite. Four years later, in Blackpool again, Cameron attacked a welfare system that he said meant some kept just 4p in every extra pound they earned. People had been sent an unhelpful message by a broken system, he said: ‘From every extra pound you earn we’ll take back 96p. Yes, 96p. Let me say that again, slowly.’

Cameron didn’t do enough to fix the old system. Last year, when the Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton published his review into the UK welfare system, he found that it is still ‘not uncommon for lone parents to face a marginal effective tax of 96 per cent’. In places such as Blackpool, the welfare trap is at its worst and creates a sense that the system is rigged against the poorest people.

Neither Labour nor the Conservatives come to Blackpool for their conferences any more. Both parties prefer big cities with nicer hotels and restaurants, better suited to party donors and corporate sponsors. Perhaps they’re just too embarrassed. Politicians made promises here but never delivered. Even the Royal Oak is set to close next month. ‘I’m leaving. I’m done with it,’ says one shop owner, who sells food and hardware. ‘They’ve killed Blackpool.’