Have I cursed myself by drinking holy water?

The mountain spring that feeds our house froze during the first ground frost, and we had no water.

The builder boyfriend filled a bucket from the fountain in the garden so we could flush the loo. This really is living in faded grandeur.

We are waiting on various tradesmen to turn up and do things to the plumbing in our run-down Georgian pile. We know we might have to drop a bore hole. But until then the water coming out of our taps is from a ‘holy well’.

The stream pools into a grotto on the lane, a shrine with rocks around it that occasionally attracts a pilgrim who comes with a bottle and fills it from the waters.

Some of these grottos dotted around Cork and Kerry have statues of Mary, but this one doesn’t. We do have a statue of Mary the builder boyfriend rescued from a skip in south London. She was in our garden in Surrey until we moved and is resting in his builders’ yard because we had to leave all the garden ornaments behind when the removal lorry was full.

We intend to bring Mary here as soon as we can, to put her in the grotto where homage is paid to this spring water, because when we looked it up, we found some astonishing information.

This water is legally ours to use, by the way. We have it in the deeds of the house, a historic right to draw water from the source on the land above us, which is owned by a neighbouring farmer who, happily enough, is very much our sort of person and has quickly become one of our best friends.

There is a thin black water pipe plumbed into the land, which lies about at various points of the lane in the gutter. There is no mains water or gas up here. We are almost entirely off grid.

And now three months into our new life, we discover that the water freezes as soon as there is a ground frost.

We were most worried for the horses when the yard tap seized up. We found ourselves that frosty morning kneeling beside the stream at a lower point to the grotto to see if we could capture water where it was still running.

The builder b took a can and some pipe from an old vacuum cleaner and after fiddling awhile he got the stream flowing into the can.

We topped the horses’ water buckets but he was almost panicking about what the freezing of our water supply in relatively mild temperatures meant.

I have never seen the BB almost panic before so when he did it was not something I wanted to acknowledge. I tried to ignore it but all day he went back and forth to the grotto faffing and fulminating. He lagged the water tank on the upstairs outside wall of the house. Then he started banging on about how we needed a massive water storage tank in the yard for emergencies.

Then he spent hours poking about on his phone and by the time the taps were running again he had discovered the following article on the internet entitled ‘The holy wells of Cork and Kerry’. And this really put shivers up my spine. Our well is called the Eye Well. Legend has it that believers came from far and wide to bathe their faces in it because it was thought it cured the blind.

‘Water from a holy well should only ever be used for healing purposes,’ said the article, ‘and if attempting to use it for domestic activities – washing your petticoats, making a cup of tea – things could go horribly wrong.’

I spent the evening worrying about how we had cursed ourselves by drinking and bathing in holy water. I saw myself splashing this precious water gratuitously on my face morning and night…

And then I remembered.

A few weeks ago, I started having headaches. I went to the optician in our nearest town, a harbour on the wild Atlantic coast.

In this windswept frontier of a place, I was delighted to find a very knowledgeable optician in a small shop who tested my eyes and told me that the reason I could not see through my contact lenses any more was that my eyesight had got better.

‘What about the astigmatism in my right eye?’ I asked, because I had been to the optician in the UK only a few months earlier, and she had said that, as always, my right eye was particularly problematic, and the astigmatism in it was getting worse.

‘Astigmatism?’ he said. ‘You don’t have astigmatism. Your right eye is better than your left eye.’

All ye of little faith can blame one optician or the other. I’m putting Mary in the grotto.

Bridge | 27 January 2024

The London Teams of Four was the first bridge tournament of the new year and was a very close affair. Kevin Castner finally prevailed against the opposition with his team of (partner) Phil King and teammates Sebastian Atisen and Stefano Tommasini – the last newly selected, with his regular partner Ben Norton, to represent England in the Open Teams in the European Championships later this year.

Today’s hand features fierce bidding and even fiercer declarer play by Capt Kevin, who pulled off the hand of the day. Take a look at this beauty.

Phil King’s 6♦️ may seem a bit of a stretch, but when 1♦️ was known to show at least 5 cards, it makes more sense.

West started with the Ace of Clubs – an unfortunate choice – ruffed in dummy. Kevin then played the ♦️A and finessed the Jack, bringing the well known ‘good-and-bad news’. What next? Kevin did very well in working out he had to play Spades at this point. East took the second and played back a Club but It’s still not over. South went to dummy with a Heart, pitched his losing Club on a top Spade, and ruffed a Spade (East getting rid of a Heart). Dummy could be re-entered with a small Heart to the Queen, and on the fifth Spade East had no answer; he can discard his last Club, but South will just discard his ♥️A and still be in dummy for the trump coup.

A hand like that deserves to win any event!

The Candidates line up

Lobbing brickbats at Fide, the International Chess Federation, is always in fashion. The organisation celebrates its centenary this year, but Russia’s top player Nepomniachtchi tweeted a bitter New Year greeting: ‘Let 2024 bring Fide everything that it lacks: transparency, integrity, clear rules, unified standards, wise judges, attentive organisers, recognisable sponsors!’

To that litany of gripes, one could add that a democratic deficit is woven into the fabric of the organisation. Member countries, no matter how few constituent players they have, each get one vote, which inevitably distorts the incentives at election time. Fide’s current president, Arkady Dvorkovich, is a former deputy prime minister of Russia, which is ‘problematic’, as the modern euphemism goes. But he is broadly respected as an administrator, and there was no serious opposition to his re-election in 2022, despite it taking place just a few months after the invasion of Ukraine.

In December, Vladimir Putin announced that he will run for a fifth term as Russian president in 2024. In the same month, Fide voted to scrap the limit on presidential term limits, leaving Dvorkovich free to run for a third term in 2026 – a particularly brazen move considering that the two-term limit was one of Dvorkovich’s own campaign promises back in 2018.

But on other matters, Fide is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In the past, one place in the Candidates tournament – which selects a challenger for the world championship – was awarded by wildcard. One point in favour was that prospective sponsors might be enticed by the perk of selecting their local champion to participate, but it drew justified criticism when the wildcard entry excluded other more eligible candidates. So the rule was scrapped, and for next year’s event in Toronto, seven out of eight spots were awarded based on high finishes in elite events, while the last spot was to be allocated to the next player with the highest published international rating in January 2024. What could be more meritocratic?

In fact, the rating spot turned into a circus. It’s as well to remember Goodhart’s Law: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ In December, Wesley So was the favourite to secure the rating spot. But Alireza Firouzja would need just a little rating boost to overtake him, and who can blame him for trying to catch up? Just a few wins would do it, and so a tournament was organised for that very purpose, in which he faced three grandmasters, each twice over. That raised a few eyebrows, since they were nowhere close to Firouzja’s elite level and in any case well below their peak.

Fide warned that the circumstances were so unusual that they might not permit the event for rating purposes. But even if one game was resigned prematurely in comical circumstances (see below), winning six consecutive games against grandmasters is a stretch even for an elite player. A draw in the final game meant Firouzja narrowly missed his target, but he was back the next week at an open tournament in Rouen, where he won seven games in a row, thereby overtaking So and grabbing the spot.

Firouzja has just played 28 Na5-c6. There was nothing wrong with 28…Rb8-c8, but his grandmaster opponent Shchekachev simply resigned, almost certainly foreseeing 29 f5 Bxf5 30 Qxf5, when 30…gxf5 31 Rg8 is mate, or 30…Rxc6 31 Qxd7 wins a knight. In fact 30…Re1+! would turn the tables, as Black wins after 31 Rxe1 gxf5.

No. 785

White to play. Blübaum-Pavlidis, Bundesliga 2024. Which move won the game for Blübaum? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 29 January. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postaladdress and allow six weeks for prize delivery.

Last week’s solution 1 Re8! Rxe8 (or 1…Nxe8 2 f8=Q+) 2 Qxf6+!! Black resigned since Rxf6 3 fxe8=N+! Kg6 4 Nxc7 wins

Last week’s winner Martin Dlouhý, Meziboří, Czech Republic

Spectator competition winners: Liz Truss follows the Yellow Brick Road

In Competition No. 3333 you were invited to submit a short story that features Donald Trump or another politician of your choice in a well-known fictional landscape.

Joan Didion once observed that Ronald Reagan was the American politician to most fully embrace his own fictionality, making up stories in which he played the starring role. Didion put this down to ‘his tendency to see the presidency as a script waiting to be solved’. Needless to say, Reagan didn’t play a starring role in the entry; a medium-sized but impressive postbag was dominated by Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.

Competitors who shone included Sue Pickard, Nicholas Hodgson and Nigel Bennetton. The prize winners, printed below, earn £30.

As Christian plodded through the Slough of Despond he came upon a great multitude, all wearing red caps bearing the legend MAGA, so that he took them to be mages or wise men. ‘Witch-hunt’ they chanted, and ‘stop the steal’, which seemed admirable, especially the invocation of the seventh commandment. In discourse with two of them, whose names were Redneck and Thick-as-mince, he enquired why they chanted not against adultery or covetousness? They told him that these were not at all discouraged by their leader, who stood upon a platform, his face shining orange as the flames of hell, talking very loudly about himself. Christian learned that his name was Trump, and so he was greatly afraid that we were approaching the Last Trump and that he was insufficiently prepared. When they declared that Trump would soon be victorious, Christian turned sadly, and departed to seek again the Giant Despair.

Brian Murdoch

The Donald lay in the shadow, almost in darkness. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he in some kind of dream? That was it, he was in a dream. He and his loins, they were sleeping, they were in a kind of nothingness. It was magnificent, was it not? She saw the moon, sharp and hard, through the roof of the golf-kart. In the distance she could hear the colliery, the industrial Midlands at work. And he was here, so still, so very still, beside her, his golden hair almost luminous, a great, somehow instinctive quiff. ‘Big tech,’ murmured the Donald. ‘Big tech, Lady C. They want to totally, totally destroy us. Take Sir Clifford. He wants to indoctrinate us, so stupid, what a stiff.’

How queer it was, her obedience to him. How queer! And was he not exquisite? Yes, she would be First Lady! Yes!

Bill Greenwell

Tiring of his diet of cockroaches and millipedes, Nigel noticed a small, white rabbit. ‘Will I be eating that next?’ he wondered.

But the rabbit hurried past and disappeared down a hole.

Nigel followed. ‘At least the rabbit’s white,’ he thought, reassuringly.

Down, down he went, falling even further than he had in the polls.

‘Who are you?’ asked the caterpillar.

‘I’m a celebrity…’

‘How do you know?’

Nigel found, for some reason, he’d shrunk to three inches. ‘I’m not sure anymore. I just want someone to get me out of here!’

‘You’re looking for the exit?’

‘Brexit? Let’s dance to that!’

‘The Lobster Quadrille,’ cried the Mock Turtle, singing between sobs:

‘Will you walk a little faster? the lobster-catcher cried,

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side,

The farther off from England, the nearer is to  France

Will you, won’t you… come and join the dance…?’

Sylvia Fairley

One winter’s evening, I returned from my rounds to discover a striking, brown-haired woman sitting opposite Holmes.

‘Join us,’ said Sherlock. ‘Melania has just arrived. From her sharp facial features and heavily accented English, I deduce she’s central European, probably Slovenian, and has spent time in America.’

‘Indeed,’ said Melania. ‘And my husband, Donald, is a wealthy, older gentleman, a politician. I come about his lost election.’

‘Pray elucidate,’ said Holmes.

‘In Georgia and Arizona, his poll was weak.’

‘And how did this weakness affect him?’

Blushing, Melania continued: ‘In Georgia he attempted, unsuccessfully, to massage the poll.’

‘Madam,’ said Holmes. ‘I’m a detective, not a magician. I cannot overturn lost elections.’

Confused, Melania said: ‘But I’m here to consult Dr Watson.’

The penny dropped, and much to Melania’s chagrin, I and Holmes guffawed.

From my gladstone bag, I withdrew a bottle of blue pills. ‘For Donald’s lost election,’ I said.

Paul A. Freeman

Nearing the end of the Yellow Brick Road, Liz Truss remembered the friends she had lost on her journey. There was Kwasi Kwar-Tin, an animatron she abandoned when he got rusty; Suella BraverLion, who roared at migrant Munchkins but fled when they fought back; and Rishi Scarecrow, who blew away in the wind, as he was only made of straw.

Liz had even battled flying monkeys sent by the Wicked Witch of Debt, to thwart Liz’s quest to reform the market.

Finally, she reached the Economy Wizard’s lair and peeked behind the curtain, to find Andrew Bailey behind the controls. Liz was horrified – the market was all smoke and mirrors! Yet Andrew was cunning and promised she could still reform if she clicked her heels thrice and said: ‘There’s no tax at home.’ Liz obeyed and was magicked back to Norfolk, her premiership of Emerald City over like a dream.

Lauren Mappledoram

No. 3336: Genesis

You are invited to supply the story behind the composition of a famous poem. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 7 February.

2638: Capital fellow

Unclued lights (including one pair giving a name, and one of three words from a quotation) form three groups; the word that links them all must be highlighted in the grid.

        Across

   1    Make bourgeois rogue grin, yet to embrace female (8)

   8    Small cover for head or neck (4)

11    A sailor pockets peso with original value (2,3)

14    Old Yemeni’s brief month in Israel (5)

15    Some poetry’s mood extremely humane (7)

17    Expert delaying old emperor (4)

18    Politician blocks great excuse (5)

19    A relative pens book having no life (7)

23    Fish in benign border of greenery (4,4)

24    Shearwater bird eats silver penny (6)

25    Arbiters’ dispute with soldiers (7)

27    Film writer welcomes current work (6)

29    Ma working with needle American decorated (8)

34    Speaking about pounds, making killing (7)

35    Edna, untroubled, hosts relative (5)

36    Thus touring occasionally posh bit of London (4)

38    Record almost everything concerning innards (7)

39    Benefit, isolating small particle (5)

41    Time in new home for Aussie addict (5)

42    Endlessly long period (4)

43    Huge ruler put on weight, mostly (8)

         Down

   1    Chatterbox like bishop cracking joke (6)

   2    Poet’s easily cut old number (4)

   4    Admired Conservative plugs kind of bonding (6)

   5    Bed rest for invalid from wood (6-4)

   6    Fitting clothing for earl – it can’t be declined (6)

   7    Soldier claimed drunk’s helping doctors (11)

   8    Critic’s special complaint (5)

10    One’s splitting common rock (7)

12    Boats from Riga with sea up high (9)

16    Poor sides in ideal soccer tie with equal potential (11)

21    Most spotted means to stop heartless poet (9)

22    Party can be darn merry (4,5)

30    French article by wise French writer (6)

31    Smashed British house (6)

32    Drink for one award that’s lifted (6)

33    Prophet adopts new taunt (5)

Download a printable version here.

A first prize of £30 and two runners-up prizes of £20 for the first correct solutions opened on 12 February. Please scan or photograph entries and email them (including the crossword number in the subject field) to crosswords@spectator.co.uk, or post to: Crossword 2638, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP. Please allow six weeks for prize delivery.

2635: Brilliant – solution

GREAT can, and often must, precede all the unclued entries.

First prize Roslyn Shapland, Ilkeston, Derbys

Runners-up Roger Cairns, Chalfont Heights, Bucks; Trevor Burford-Reade, Harrow

Starmer has got the culture war all wrong

I’ve decided that I would like President Trump to win the next American presidential election, solely because it will disappoint Hugo Rifkind. I realise that such a statement could only possibly come from a shallow, petty-minded individual and that what should concern all of us is the, uh, stewardship of the free world. But there will be plenty of columnists suffused with gravitas and import to argue those odds one way or the other, leaving me to plough my own rancorous and spiteful furrow. Hugo wrote a very Rifkindy piece for the Times about whether it was necessary, or otherwise, to report the US elections in an honest, truthful and unbiased manner, seeing as Donald Trump was ghastly. He spent 950 or so words justifying not doing so and then, in the final ten, sort of changed his mind. This is one of the good things about Trump: he unhinges liberals and reveals them as being very illiberal indeed. Hugo and the rest of them will seethe and throw their toys out of the pram if Trump wins and for someone who, like me, holds within himself a reservoir of nastiness more voluminous than the Hoover dam, that’s reason enough to be delighted.

These are the people who will be similarly distressed if Labour does not win the next general election, but I think any prospect of gloating is receding quicker than the hairline of a midget with alopecia. Still, I cannot quite join in the confected loathing of Sir Keir Starmer, which is the default position of those who are anti-Labour. Starmer strikes me as being a man who was dealt a very bad hand indeed but played it rather well. It is true that one cannot believe what he says from one day to the next, but he is scarcely the only politician at which such a charge could be levelled. He has reformed the Labour party, or given the illusion of having done so (which is what counts) in a remarkably short space of time, and he has been winningly ruthless with the Momentum maniacs. I regret a little his jettisoning of John McDonnell’s economic radicalism, but I understand that his concern is not to frighten the horses as we approach an election and, for the most part, his policy-hopping has been adroit. Until this week, perhaps.

Starmer waded into the ‘culture war’ on Monday in an address to the Civil Society Summit, where he suggested the Tories had manufactured the whole thing to distract attention from their manifest incompetence at running the country. Given Sir Keir’s apparent confusion and embarrassment over the issue as to whether or not women have penises, it felt like an obvious misstep to broach the culture war agenda at all. Starmer, I suspect, has been influenced by a number of polls on the issue, which were best collated in the Substack blog The Week in Polls back in November.

For the most part these polls seem to suggest that Starmer has got it right. Roughly the same percentage of people consider themselves ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ – around 15 per cent – with the vast majority insisting that neither label applies to them. Some 61 per cent of voters believe that – just as Starmer averred – politicians exaggerate the supposed culture wars to advance their own political agendas. Virtually nobody in the country thinks that these fabricated wars are electorally important or of any great consequence to themselves: cancel culture and the rise of the woke simply don’t figure in the ishoos lists. Further, when the public does express an opinion on such stuff as gender reassignment, the views which emerge are conciliatory and kindly disposed. So one is tempted to believe that Starmer may have got it right again, especially as standard of living issues and the general weariness with the Tories are by far the most decisive criteria for who one will vote for this year.

The trouble for Sir Keir is that I think this is a very superficial reading of the public mindset, for a number of reasons. First, the term ‘culture war’ is a creation of the press: ordinary people do not use such terminology. Moreover, I do not think that people conceive of the thing as a generality: it is the specifics of the issues which grate, and especially when they intersect with those subjects which are a matter of concern to voters.

When you get into the specifics, it is very clear what the public thinks. Let’s go back to the business of trans women for a second. The public holds no animus against those who have transitioned and are split pretty evenly over whether or not they should be allowed, legally, to change their gender. This fact allowed the Guardian to headline a piece on such findings with the conclusion that Brits were not bitterly divided over the issue. However, once you dig down into the detail, you discover that a huge majority of the public are opposed to trans women competing against women in sporting contests and an only slightly smaller proportion were opposed to trans women who have not had surgery using women’s lavatories and so on. It is true, however, that compared with the cost of the weekly shopping, this issue pales into insignificance.

But let’s focus on the mechanism by which people change their genders. Six in ten Britons believe transitioning should not be made any easier and should require a doctor’s approval, according to a survey from YouGov in 2022. In other words, while people are relaxed about what constitutes this ‘culture war’, on the specifics they are anything but. They know where they stand. It is much the same when Brits are asked about colonialism – a YouGov poll in 2019 showed that only 19 per cent of voters thought our imperial past was something to be ashamed of, half those who thought it something to be unequivocably proud of. I suspect Starmer has got this issue badly wrong.

How can Germany deploy a tank battalion without any tanks?

00:00 06:48

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

Last year, Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, made a pledge that would have been unthinkable not long ago: to send a combat brigade to be permanently deployed in Lithuania. The plan was to station almost 5,000 troops an hour away from the Suwalki Corridor, the 40-mile-long border between Poland and Lithuania, flanked by Belarus to the east and the Russian exclave Kaliningrad to the west. Scholz, and his new defence minister, Boris Pistorius, wanted to transform Germany’s military from a medium-sized operational force to one which can be Europe’s first line of defence if Vladimir Putin ever attacks a Nato territory.

If Scholz’s announcement seemed too good to be true that’s because it was. So far just 30 German soldiers have been sent to Lithuania. The pledge also came as a surprise to the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, who were not consulted beforehand. Pistorius (whose only military experience is his year in national service more than 40 years ago) believes in the politics of big targets: if you announce the plan, others have to find a way of making it work. ‘The speed of the project clearly shows that Germany understands the new security reality,’ he said. ‘We have to take into account that Putin will one day attack a Nato country.’ According to a classified document leaked to the tabloid Bild, the Bundeswehr is wargaming scenarios of a possible Russian attack on the Suwalki Corridor by May next year.

But if Scholz and Pistorius had consulted the military, they might have been warned against wishful thinking and told that re-galvanising the Bundeswehr is a far harder job than their rhetoric suggests. ‘The army that I am allowed to lead is more or less empty,’ admitted Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, the head of the Bundeswehr, in 2022. ‘The options that we can offer politicians to support the alliance are extremely limited.’ Mais worried that the politicians in Berlin would react to Putin’s invasion by sending arms to Ukraine, running down the troops even more. His fears were justified. It wasn’t long before the few functioning Leopard tanks Germany had were sent to Ukraine.

In an internal memo from November last year, leaked to Der Spiegel, Mais said that across the board the army had only about 60 per cent of the equipment it needs, ‘from A for artillery pieces to Z for tent tarpaulin (Zeltbahn)’. Across a spreadsheet, he listed nearly 2,000 crucial items missing from Germany’s arsenal, from piping and fireproof gloves to, rather pointedly, a new fleet of Leopard tanks. This shortage list, Mais dryly concluded, ‘makes clear the diversity and small-scale nature of the challenges’. All this is before the financial costs of the huge Lithuanian deployment, he said, which had not yet been budgeted.

It’s hard for Pistorius to hide the army’s deficiencies. One of the two tank brigades he has promised to Lithuania, the Panzerbataillon 203 from Augustdorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, has no tanks. All the ones it had have been sent to Ukraine. Pistorius says replacements will be delivered directly to Lithuania in 2026 (assuming the contractors deliver on time) but until then the soldiers will have to practise on simulators. ‘Pistorius wants to send a tank battalion without tanks to Lithuania,’ says Ingo Gädechens, who sits on the Bundestag’s defence committee. ‘What kind of signal is this to our Lithuanian allies?’

Perhaps Lithuania will give up on Scholz’s promises and instead cut a deal with Poland, which is building up its military with gusto. Poland may soon become the biggest contributor to Europe’s security. Its military has been designed to deter Russia for decades, while Germany has been half-hearted about defence ever since its reunification.

Back then, the German military was capped at 370,000 soldiers and funds previously earmarked for defence forces were instead channelled into economic relief for former East Germany. Investment in the Bundeswehr never picked up. One audit commissioned when Ursula von der Leyen was defence secretary showed that of the Luftwaffe’s 388 aircraft, 121 were ready for immediate deployment. Only one of its four submarines was seaworthy. Of its 180 Boxer armoured combat vehicles, 70 were deemed unfit for deployment.

The nadir came in 2015 when German troops taking part in Nato exercises in Norway had to make do with broom handles painted black to simulate Boxer tank guns because they couldn’t get hold of the real thing. In 2019, a few months before Von der Leyen quit the government to become president of the European Commission, German forces were using mobile phones during a Nato exercise instead of encrypted radio equipment. As recently as December 2022, in an exercise preparing troops for the Nato ‘high readiness response force’, all 18 Puma infantry fighting vehicles being used that day broke down. One spontaneously caught fire.

The depressing thing is that very little has changed, as Ukrainians using German kit have found out. Just before Christmas, Pistorius visited a workshop in Lithuania that was fixing Leopard 2s sent back from Donetsk. He brought an entourage with him, including journalists, who were expecting to see war-damaged vehicles, but most had just broken down and were being fixed. ‘Unfortunately, only a very small number of the battle tanks delivered can still be used by Ukraine,’ admitted Sebastian Schäfer, a Green member of the Bundestag, who was on the trip.

German army numbers, which fell to an all-time low of 177,000 eight years ago, are supposed to be at 183,000, but the military is struggling to find enough recruits to serve even at this strength. Scholz’s goal of 203,000 troops by the end of the decade seems fanciful.

Pistorius is now talking about bringing back conscription. But where would these conscripts sleep? ‘We don’t have any barracks for this,’ said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the Bundestag’s defence select committee. ‘We don’t have sufficient staffing levels for training and we have long since reduced further resources for conscription.’

As a last resort Pistorius recently admitted that he’d consider allowing foreigners into the army to boost its numbers. He’s not the first German defence minister to play with this idea – Von der Leyen considered it in 2018, but the scheme never got off the ground as it was met with a lukewarm response from Germany’s neighbours who were concerned the Bundeswehr could poach their best recruits.

Scholz, working with a €100 billion defence budget, is scrambling to restock the Bundeswehr’s depleted kit. He has agreed to spend €3.3 billion on an Israeli missile defence system, the largest export deal in Israel’s history. A €10 billion order for F-35 jets from the USA will be delivered by 2029. Last week, a deal worth €50 million was announced for the procurement of nearly half a million protective decoy flares. A reported €1.5 billion was spent up-dating the Bundeswehr’s communications technology at the beginning of last year, buying enough new radios for 34,000 military vehicles. But there have been reports of breakdowns, weak radio batteries and trouble with installation.

Many of his orders will not arrive until the end of the decade at the earliest, and already there have been delays: an order for 367 military trucks has been held up by rows about whether funds were indeed available for the second instalment.

There’s an old joke in Yes Minister that the role of a defence ministry is not really to defend the country but to make people feel as if they are safe. Pistorius and Scholz are failing on both counts.  

Beware the ‘K Hole’

Go to any nightclub and, if you know what to look for, you will see people on ketamine. You can spot them because, unlike those who have taken ecstasy or cocaine, they stand nearly motionless, struggling to move. They appear lost in a self-inflicted paralysis. This is called a ‘K-hole’– a state induced when ketamine is taken in large doses, causing a person to slip into a dissociative state. It can be terrifying: they are temporarily unable to interact, and even move. Users feel separated from their body and reality. Time is grossly distorted: hours passing can feel like a few minutes. Anyone who works in A&E will see people in K-holes regularly.

A few months ago, I was at a relatively sedate and middle-class house party. When I went to leave the host asked me to help with two guests who weren’t moving. In a bedroom two people in their mid-twenties were lying on the bed motionless, awake but un-able to communicate. One was on his back and choking on his tongue. They’d both fallen into K-holes.

Despite the pitfalls of the K-hole, the drug (which is snorted) has become wildly popular, particularly among middle-class Gen Zers. The number of 16- to 24-year-olds who have tried ketamine has hit 6 per cent, treble the rate 15 years ago. Ketamine, K, ket, special K, donkey dust, whatever you call it, this horse tranquilliser has become the go-to party drug. It’s half the price of cocaine; a bag is cheaper than a round of drinks. It accounts for a quarter of all drug seizures at music festivals in the UK. But if dosed right, it can bring on euphoria and states of extreme relaxation.

The downsides are grim. A single dose can kill, especially if mixed with other drugs or alcohol. Matthew Perry died in October from the ‘acute effects of ketamine’ and drowning – he was found in his hot tub. He had been prescribed therapeutic ketamine infusions for depression, but the ketamine found in his system could not have been from this, as it was last given more than a week before he died. The lethal effects of the high levels found in his blood would, according to the post-mortem report, be from cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression. Even for a self-confessed seasoned drug user like Perry, taking ketamine is walking a tightrope: one slip can be fatal. Some 41 students in the UK died last year with ketamine in their systems, according to the Times.

As with many drugs, the problems are exacerbated by users building up a tolerance, meaning they need ever-larger quantities to get the same effect. This makes it easier for them to misjudge and overdose. Then there’s the danger that drug dealers have cut it with other substances; users never quite know what they’re taking.

Ketamine can cause severe, sometimes catastrophic, bladder problems. It’s estimated that around one in five users experience some kind of troublesome urinary symptoms. Some studies say the numbers are even higher: one Spanish study found it was nearly half of all users; another in Hong Kong found it was nine in ten. These bladder problems include ulcerative cystitis and contracted bladder. Open sores inside the bladder cause severe abdominal pain, blood in the urine and frequent, desperate trips to the toilet.

Ketamine can make bladders permanently shrink in size to that of a toddler. The damage can be agonising and catastrophic. I’ve seen two patients who have attempted suicide because of it. Tragically many users resort to using ketamine more to cope with the pain, creating a vicious cycle. The NHS body for urology surgeons is so alarmed by the rising cases of ‘ketamine bladder’ appearing that it is preparing nationwide advice (a ‘consensus document’) for doctors on how to identify and treat the condition.

Then there’s the damage that it does to brains. Ketamine abuse has profound and long-term effects on memory and cognition. One three-year longitudinal study found that, while some aspects of memory impairment improved when users stopped taking the drug, other aspects of memory remained impaired, as did attention. Schizotypal symptoms (peculiar thoughts, paranoia and perceptual disturbances and distortion) persisted. The study concluded users should be aware of the enduring effects of ketamine on memory and subjective experience.

These dangers have had very little cut-through. Everyone knows cocaine is bad for your heart; that alcohol damages the liver. But when I mention to friends or patients the need to be careful about ketamine, they are sceptic. Younger patients will often look at you in horror if you ask about ‘hard’ drugs like cocaine or heroin. ‘Oh no,’ they reply, ‘I’d never do anything like that, just a bit of ket on the weekends.’ Even when someone is in a K-hole, the general attitude from other users is: ‘Oh don’t worry, they’ll come out of it soon.’ In reality they are dangerously close to death.

Ketamine has managed to escape without many of the scare stories that are attached to other drugs. The laissez-faire attitude to it is, in part, because its ubiquity is relatively new so it has avoided the headlines other drugs have attracted. While it’s been around for more than 50 years, it has only been used recreationally since the 1980s. Even then, it was a niche, underground drug mainly used by hardcore clubbers. It’s only in the past decade or so that it has gone mainstream. When I was at university 25 years ago, I never even heard of anyone taking ketamine; now it’s the drug of choice on campuses.

There’s increasing interest in its use as an antidepressant and as an aid for wellness and mental health. This latter use has been excellent PR for ketamine: it has made it socially acceptable, a sort of alternative to Big Pharma antidepressants. It’s very much ‘on brand’ for Gen Z. Its use in depression is still very much in its infancy, though, and is a world away from drunkenly snorting it off a key in a nightclub toilet. In any case, the use of ketamine – which was first given to humans for medicinal purposes during the Vietnam war – to treat depression is strictly controlled and carefully monitored. (Curiously, Ukraine – where ketamine has been legal to treat mental health issues for seven years – is currently pioneering ketamine psychotherapy for its soldiers.)

The fact that it is only a class B drug has contributed to its popularity boom. Other drugs such as cocaine, heroin and ecstasy are class A. This helps give legitimacy to the idea that it isn’t really that dangerous. It also means that it has become the drug dealer’s drug of choice, because selling it carries less harsh sentences than other drugs.

Ten years ago ketamine was reclassified as class B from class C. There are now hints it could be upgraded again. Late last year, the Home Office minister Chris Philp suggested that the government is open to reclassifying the drug. In a letter sent to the Tory MP Craig Tracey, who had written to Philp after he had a constituent who died from ketamine abuse, Philp replied that the Home Office is open to changing its status. ‘If you have evidence that there are systemic harms caused by ketamine on a widespread scale, which may mean reconsideration of the classification from class B to class A is merited, then please do share this with the Home Office,’ he wrote, ‘and I will make sure that it is considered very carefully.’

There is of course a bigger issue about whether the war on drugs can be won, or indeed if a war was ever really started, given the lenient sentences that are dished out and the turning of a blind eye by police towards some drug use. But that’s a piece for another day. The reality in the here and now is that ketamine usage is rising to dangerous levels and Britain is woefully behind in addressing the issue. For as long as it remains a class B drug, ketamine will continue to destroy lives. Let’s hope Mr Philp really does consider its dangers ‘very carefully’.

What’s wrong with populism?

As elections approach and arguments become more strident, the term ‘populism’ becomes more and more thrown about, as if it is a bad thing, a form of demagoguery. But what populists do is to represent themselves as champions of ‘real’ people whose interests are completely ignored by the elite. What can be wrong with that? Let the ancient Greeks help out.

In Greek, dêmagôgos was a neutral term meaning ‘leader of the people’, and in this sense was used of Pericles (d. 429 bc). But it could be used to describe a rabble rouser. The most famous example was Cleon (d. 422 bc), described by the historian Thucydides (who hated him) as ‘very violent’ and, as a dêmagôgos, ‘very influential’, in a detrimental sense. But detrimental to whom? The point is that in classical Athens all decisions were taken by the citizen assembly, at which anyone was allowed to speak. Whatever was agreed was, by definition, the will of the people. So every speaker had to be a populist: there was no political elite, let alone huge bureaucracy, to assuage.

Whatever other advantages one may have had (wealth, family connections, etc), persuasive abilities were all that counted in the assembly. And that was how Pericles exerted a powerful influence over it for some 20 years. Thucydides judged Athens at that time as ‘in name a democracy, but in fact rule by the first man’. Well, yes, but only because the assembly was inclined to be persuaded by him. He knew how to handle its moods. 

Cleon’s tactics were twofold: to end his rivals’ careers via the courts (sounds familiar? On one occasion he had Pericles briefly removed from office); and in assembly to launch vicious attacks on the motives and integrity of anyone not prioritising the interests of the people (he himself, for example, persuaded the assembly to raise the pay for jury service). Populist and demagogue, then, both claimed to have the interests of the people at heart; the means by which they achieved that end was the difference. Is that the case today?

Next week: Cleon’s incongruous moment of glory.

Princess Anne and Kate Moss: the best of British style

At first I didn’t realise it was Fashion Week. In Paris, there are always androgynous men in kilts stalking the boulevards and straggle-haired waifs who’ve forgotten their skirts rushing from one shoot to another, but there did seem to be more men with nose rings and Louis Vuitton city-shorts prancing about than usual. We passed a crowd of black-clad votaries standing in the icy lemon sunshine on the Avenue George V. I asked a photographer what they were waiting for. ‘Le défilé de Givenchy,’ he snapped, as if only a fool could be unaware it was the third day of Menswear Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024-25. At least he did me the honour of replying in French.

Speaking of straggle-haired waifs, Kate Moss celebrated her 50th here and threw a party at the Ritz. Trooper that she is, she arrived in a sketchy lace dress from New York Vintage and strappy sandals, her only concession to the big freeze being a slippery cape with champagne lining (as the required thermals plus duvet coat would have made for somewhat less wriggly and sparkly paparazzi pics). Kate Moss and Princess Anne (who Fendi has just declared is the inspiration for its menswear fashion range) represent the very best of British and the height of style. If Princess Anne has been called the most elegant woman in the world in her ancient beater’s tweeds and Kate Moss is all about vintage, then what is the actual point of the throwaway fashion industry?

My secret fantasy is to live in Paris – Brexit permitting – so the purpose of my visit was a recce as well as the blockbusting de Staël and Van Gogh shows. I blame Laure de Gramont. For several years she’s been sending me her Paris Diary, which begins charmingly: ‘Here is my morning call to my best friends.’ Thousands have asked to be subscribed as it’s an invaluable insider’s guide to everything from galleries to golf and Laure’s impeccable eye and pen travels way beyond Paris. When I went to have tea with her, she insisted I had to be in the 1er or 2ème arrondissements so I could walk my dog in the Tuileries. Well, if anyone reading this wants to do a house swap, I can offer a peasant farmhouse on Exmoor two miles from Tarmac or a shabby Notting Hill residence. If your Parisian apartment is truly out of this world – and you also have a villa in the south or a chalet in the mountains – I am prepared to make a grand exception. You can have the run of both my properties.

The museum city is polishing itself up in time for the Olympics. The padlocks have been cut off the bridges, the homeless have been removed from doorways, and it’s a race against time to reopen a restored Notre-Dame five years after the fire for the Games. We were in a taxi wheeling around the Place de la Concorde admiring the scenery when my brother-in-law James said: ‘Paris – the city that kept its monuments but lost its soul.’ We hung left over the bridge, skimmed the Musée d’Orsay, the art shop Sennelier with its edibly fat and oily pastels, the boutiques selling man-bags, and then plunged into the Latin Quarter. ‘Paris is a girl sitting in a café,’ said my husband, Ivo, as we crawled down the Rue de Seine to our hotel, La Louisiane. ‘And London is a man in a pub with a pint of beer,’ James added.

We were stunned by the beauty but winded by the prices. I almost wished at Lapérouse that the waiters did that thing of handing the priced menu to the chaps, so I couldn’t see that seasonal vegetables cost €38 and a mesclun salad €28. The most expensive bottle of wine was €27,000, a reminder that the rich are always with us. Over pre-dinner cocktails my friend Fabrice Gaignault, the writer, revealed that there were private rooms at the fabled establishment (where Edward VII, Proust and Colette all dined, if not together). These snuggeries each have tables for two and a chaise longue. ‘And there are still the scratches on the ceiling,’ Fabrice continued over his Moscow Mule in a bronze beaker, ‘where the… women who had just been given diamonds by their admirers were testing the hardness of the stones.’ When I asked him to take me to one of these bordels – to examine the ceiling! – all the private rooms were occupied. Well, they do call Paris the City of Love.

Is it wrong to track my child?

00:00 05:45

Mary Wakefield has narrated this article for you to listen to.

One evening a few weeks ago, I was pottering about alone when I became aware of a feeling of great relief, of joy almost, without quite knowing why. When you spend every waking moment with a seven-year-old, it often feels euphoric to be alone, but that wasn’t it. By mistake, I’d left my phone behind, but that wasn’t quite it either.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t be contacted, I realised, so much as that I couldn’t be tracked. My iPhone, with its inbuilt GPS, was at home logging only its own dismal existence. The ‘Find My Friends’ function, which, at my family’s request I keep switched on, was defunct. I was unfindable. It was joyous.

I’m aware that I’m making this sound dramatic – as if I’ve narrowly escaped a hostage situation. And I see that for most rational people there’s nothing to object to about an app like ‘Find My Friends’. All it does is to allow a group of pals to share their locations with each other and – as my husband and nieces patiently point out – it saves a lot of angst and effort. Just by opening the app and looking at its map, you can see if your friend or family member is stuck in traffic or held up. No need to call, no fumbling to answer in the fast lane. We all find each other in shopping centres with ease. And if I dawdle on the way home from work, or divert into Waitrose to fondle the £3 avocados, my husband, spotting my location, can (and often does) text: ‘How come you left work so late? Can you pick up some wine while you’re in there?’ The horror.

It’s interesting how completely divided the different generations are on the subject of being tracked. Most men and women over 40 understand my unease, but for twentysomethings, it’s incomprehensible. They grew up inside the Snapchat app which has a ‘map my friends’ feature called Snap Maps, and so it’s not just a few family members who can constantly see where they are but often almost everyone they know. In Snap Maps they can watch little cartoon avatars of all their pals wandering about in real time. It’s handy, they say, and fun. If, for instance, you are in the London Library and you see that a friend is there too, you can meet up for a matcha latte.

But what if you don’t want to meet up? Well, I’m afraid you have no choice. The friend can see exactly where you are and they know that you know that they know. If you tried to walk away it would look like Snap Maps Pac-Man, one ominous cartoon figure slowly gaining on the other. I think about my student flat and how back in the day if a passing friend rang the doorbell, I’d often lie flat on the floor, head below window height, making no noise until they’d given up and gone away. In the Snap Map era, the friend would think I’d had a heart attack and call 999. So what? It keeps people honest, says a Gen X pal.

Even the young admit that the live tracking can lead to difficulties. Because it’s considered rude to remove a person from your network, couples who split up still seem to share their location with one another. So you watch as the little cartoon avatar of the guy who broke your heart travels over to your friend’s house at midnight and you watch when he leaves in the morning. It’s a wonder any of them are still sane. You’d have thought any decent teen would baulk at being followed by their parents – tracked from pub to club via GPS, yet if I suggest to a twentysomething that they might want to go dark, I’m met with blinking non-comprehension. It feels reassuring, they say, for people they love to know where they are.

But why? Surely Snap Maps only makes life more dangerous. You’re infinitely more likely to be pounced on in a dark alley if you’ve broadcast the fact that you’re walking alone in a dark alley to everyone you’ve ever met. And how does it help that your parents know where you are? Is it reassuring to think that they will at least know where to locate your geotagged corpse?

One of the reasons my moment of untracked euphoria felt significant was that it felt familiar, and it occurred to me then that I’d felt just the same way sometimes as a child. And these moments, when I was not just unobserved but unfindable, were some of the most important of my childhood. The world comes into focus when you’re unseen. What does it mean about the internet generations that they’re uncomfortable when not observed?

Just in the last few years it’s become normal for people of all types and all ages to be tracked wherever they go, via iPhone or Fitbit or smart watch. A constant stream of data flows from them out into servers worldwide. It’s quite normal now for parents to track their young children without telling them, and hypocrite that I am, I’ve done it myself quite often. There is many a Mums-net thread devoted to where best to hide an Apple AirTag in your child’s clothes – avoid the school bag, as it’s easily left on a bus and you’ll give yourself a heart attack. I have in the past cut a slit in the hem of my son’s school jumper and sewn a tag in. Just to be safe. What’s the harm?

But there is harm. I’m sure of it. Once you’ve started to track, there’s no going back. The more you track, the more dangerous it feels not to. Why risk now what you didn’t risk a few days ago? It feels like tempting fate. And if your child did go astray, and you had chosen not to track them, how much more culpable would you be?

I think now about my son and about how I’d feel if I discovered that I’d been tracked without knowing it through my childhood: all those moments when I thought myself undiscoverable a lie. I’m not sure we have any idea what we’ve lost.

Ukraine’s new strategy hits Russia where it hurts

Ukraine is fighting not one but two hot wars against Russia. The first, a conventional, bloody land war along an 810-mile front line, has descended into stalemate. But the second – drone and missile strikes and sabotage raids deep into enemy territory – may prove to be a game-changing strategy for hitting Russia where it hurts.

Last week, two Ukrainian kamikaze drones scored a spectacular hit on an oil and gas refinery and an oil export terminal in Ust-Luga near St Petersburg. At a range of 775 miles from Ukraine, the strike has severely dented Russian ability to produce and export naphtha, jet fuel and gasoil, and export liquefied natural gas (LNG). It might take weeks or months before the refinery returns to significant capacity. Effectively, those Ukrainian-made drones have proved more successful at enforcing their own violent brand of sanctions on Russia’s hydrocarbon trade than all the West’s failed efforts to cap prices and embargo Russian exports.

Preserving Russia’s capabilities to export oil and LNG has been the core of Vladimir Putin’s sanctions-busting strategy, and it has so far protected his economy from the worst effects of western economic warfare. Though the war now consumes close to 40 per cent of the Kremlin’s state spending, oil and gas receipts are actually higher than before the war thanks to tensions in the Middle East and Houthi attacks on tankers in the Red Sea. China and India, backed by a cynical inter-national network of tanker fleets, many of them Greek-owned, have kept Russian oil flowing out and the petrodollars flowing in. Russia’s hydrocarbon infrastructure is the economic lifeblood of Putin’s war machine.

That infrastructure is the ultimate target-rich environment. Pumping stations, LNG terminals and refineries are huge, sprawling industrial facilities conveniently filled with highly combustible product. Just two rail lines, the Trans-Siberian and the Baikal–Amur Trunk Line, are the only land link for carrying thousands of tons of crude across Siberia to China. The Black Sea oil terminal at Novorossiysk, Russia’s biggest export hub, is 125 miles as the crow (or missile) flies from Ukrainian–held territory. 

Ukraine’s strike on Ust-Luga is by no means the first time its forces have hit critical Russian infrastructure, although it has proved the most economically devastating strike to date. Indeed, in the past two weeks, Ukraine destroyed two expensive surveillance aircraft in Smolensk and Oryol, blew up an explosive propellant plant at Tambov, hit a military plant that manufactured Pantsir missiles in Tula and caused a massive fire at an oil reservoir in Bryansk region that reportedly destroyed more than 3,100 tonnes of oil. Just after Christmas, Ukrainian aircraft, probably firing British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, destroyed the large Russian landing ship Novocherkassk at her berth in Crimea. At the same time, Russia continued to bombard apparently random targets in central Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa with massed Iranian-made Shahed suicide drones and cruise missiles.

Drone and missile warfare is a whack-a-mole game of competing electronic warfare and air defence systems. The moment one side develops a new technology or tactic, the other scrambles to block it or knock it out. Despite sanctions restricting the import of high technology components – above all processor chips – Russia still has a large and sophisticated military electronics industry. Indeed, on 18 January, ships and planes around the southern Baltic sea lost their GPS satellite navigation for up to six hours as Russia tested a powerful new signal-jamming apparatus located in the exclave of Kaliningrad with a range of more than 60 miles. But Russia has one structural vulnerability that Ukraine does not: its vastness and dispersed infrastructure makes it impossible to defend every pipeline, factory and bridge.

Ukraine has another advantage: a sophisticated drone industry organised by private companies and fuelled by a highly efficient system of state funding. ‘The development of drones is proceeding fast,’ said Hanna Hvozdiar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of strategic industries, last month. ‘Ukrainian drones are at the moment the best in the world… There is a big difference between the budgets the Russians and Ukrainians have, so to succeed we need innovations and technology. That’s where we are really strong.’

So far, the main impact of drones has been on the battlefield, taking out tanks and personnel. But the Ust-Luga attack marks a major escalation in the field of strategic drone warfare against Russia. Wherever the line of control may lie when the guns eventually go silent, Ukraine’s long-term security will depend on its ability to respond rapidly to any future Russian aggression. And that means developing cruise missiles and effective long-range drones, according to Colonel Roman Kostenko, head of the Defence and Security Committee of the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.

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‘Long-range missiles which can act effectively against Russian defence industry facilities and economic infrastructure are crucial,’ says Kostenko. ‘We need a weapon of deterrence against Russia. They need to know that we will be able to respond devastatingly… That will be Ukraine’s answer to their nuclear weapons.’ An independent long-range missile and drone capacity will also, crucially, allow Ukraine to break free of its current near-complete dependence on western-supplied weapons – especially as there remains a clear taboo against using western-supplied weapons inside Russian territory to assuage allies’ fears of escalation. ‘Ultimately only such an independent strategic deterrence capacity can make us safe,’ says Kostenko. There is no reason why Ukraine, with investment and technical support, can’t create just such a deterrent. It was a pair of Ukrainian-made R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles (likely augmented with US-supplied avionics) which destroyed the Russian cruiser Moskva in April 2022.

It is deep attacks on vital infrastructure that will really hurt Russia, not the endless meat grinder on the line of control which merely kills Russians whom Putin and most of his people regard as cannon fodder. The Ust-Luga attack is exactly the kind of asymmetric warfare that Ukraine excels at. It may also be the key to making the war too expensive and painful for Putin to continue.

The Trump circus is back in town

00:00 07:27

Douglas Murray has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Well that’s that. It now looks certain that Donald J. Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president this year. At the time of writing, Nikki Haley is still hanging on in the primaries, but the contest is essentially over. Even if Haley stayed around and hoovered up the votes of every other Republican candidate who has dropped out, she still wouldn’t arrive at the dominant position Trump has occupied since the start of the race.

This will be a cause for either alarm or rejoicing. What nobody should be is surprised. Ever since the race for the 2024 nomination started, it has all been about the man who wasn’t there. Trump chose not to turn up to any of the primary debates, sitting them out like a lion allowing the minions to pick away at a carcass he had already feasted on. What would it have availed him to mix with the single-digit scavengers?

He needn’t have worried anyway. The only candidate who ever actually pointed themselves straight at Trump was Chris Christie, who is a superb debater but never managed to break through. Except for Vivek Ramaswamy, who paid frequent and loud homage to the Don, the rest tried to duck the question of the absentee leader.

In retrospect, that may not have been the best move. During the campaign I asked one Republican whether anyone else might join Christie in actually running at Trump and was told it would only really make sense for Ron DeSantis. Why? ‘Because nothing else is working for him,’ was the reply.

When he started off, DeSantis seemed like he had a genuine chance of breaking through. He has a background in the military. As governor of Florida, he took a number of high-wire stances, from opposing Covid lockdowns to running straight at the Disney corporation (which is actually scarier than it sounds). For a moment it seemed like a path forward could be his. But as a candidate he was oddly muted, and he didn’t seem to be able to explain why he wasn’t just a less experienced, more palatable Trump.

Whether or not a full-on attack on Trump would have worked, he didn’t take it. So earlier this week he dropped out of the race and joined most of the other candidates in swearing his fealty to the boss.

That Nikki Haley is now desperate can be seen from the fact that this experienced former governor and ambassador to the UN complained in an interview this week about how hard it has been to be a woman and ‘brown’. Haley has never previously been a whiner – nor noticeably brown – and the Republican base watched this with a cocked eyebrow. They don’t like a whiner.

So Trump will be the Republican nominee, and the circus can recommence. I say ‘circus’, because how else to describe the endless spectacle and speculation which surrounds everything to do with Trump on and off the campaign trail? He is excellent at belittling people until they kiss his ring – at which point, generally speaking, you can set your watch and wait for him to trash them.

Trump is a man about whom almost nothing new can be said. But there is a challenge for all the Republicans who are going to have to stand behind him in case he turfs Joe Biden out of office. His detractors hope that he can still be taken out by some non-political means: one state court has already ruled that Trump’s name cannot be on the ballot at the presidential election in November. His lawyers are challenging that ruling, and in truth Trump had no chance of winning in Colorado anyway. But there is a justified fear among his team that one ban could lead to another.

Other opponents hope that the growing list of indictments and legal cases against him could mean that Trump is prosecuted before the November election. They dream of him being deemed inadmissible or having to campaign from prison – without taking into account that such a fantasy scenario (like every other scenario) might actually help him. In any case, all such ideas seem to rely on increasingly forlorn hopes.

It is going to be Trump, and people are going to have to get used to that. And therefore two spectacles will start to play themselves out.

The first is the Democrats. As the months go by (see Freddy Gray’s article), it is inevitable that there are going to be increased rumblings in the Democrat party. Can they really afford to run Biden again? A man who is always one stumble – metaphorical or actual – away from disaster. And if not him, then who? Trump may be the only person who could actually help Biden get re-elected. That’s how many Democrats console themselves. But if the American economy goes into recession this year or there is any other kind of financial downturn, the odds of Trump beating Biden increase significantly.

And then there is the Republican party, where there is a deeper moral crisis. The oddity of Trump is that everybody in the party who is loyal to him – or is going to have to become loyal – knows more about him than they can ever admit.

January 6th was not a serious attempt to overthrow the US government. It was not an ‘insurrection’, as the left-wing media have insisted for three years. But it was a disgrace, and it was egged on by Trump, who marched his supporters to the Capitol and let them rampage there for a considerable time before he called them off. That should make him unfit for office, but it clearly hasn’t. It is the same with everything to do with his character and governing style. And yet a Trump presidency would offer conservatives in America (and the rest of the world) an opportunity to reverse four years of Biden’s policies and solve a number of major problems on the home and foreign stage.

Is Trump the ideal tool to use against the Democrats? Almost certainly not. But he’s the tool the base has chosen. The world will now get to see whether that was wise.

Anti-vaxxers aren’t to blame for rising measles cases

The UK Health Security Agency is sufficiently concerned about the growing number of measles cases in the West Midlands that it declared a ‘national incident’ last week. According to official figures, there have been 216 confirmed and 103 probable measles cases in the region since last October. The cause? The uptake of the MMR vaccine is at its lowest level in more than a decade, according to Dame Jenny Harries, CEO of the UKHSA.

For some, this is proof of the ‘harm’ that anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists can do if greater efforts aren’t made to silence them. A leading article in the Times blamed the outbreak on ‘disease disinformation’, accusing activists of waging ‘irresponsible and immoral campaigns’. That echoed the findings of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which published a report in 2021 urging social media organisations to deplatform the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ – 12 individuals and their organisations responsible for 65 per cent of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter. The centre cited ‘researchers’ who ‘are increasingly connecting misinformation disseminated via social media to increased vaccine hesitancy’.

As a free speech advocate, I’m sceptical about this diagnosis. The main spreaders of health-related ‘misinformation’ over the past four years or so have not been vaccine sceptics, but official organisations like the World Health Organisation which, in the early phase of the pandemic, exaggerated the risk of Covid-19, particularly to children, leading to unnecessary school closures. We now know that the two-metre social distancing rule had no scientific basis, and the evidence underlying mask mandates is threadbare at best. We also have good reason to believe the cost of lockdown far outweighed the benefit. The example of Sweden, which never imposed a national lockdown, suggests there were very few benefits at all.

Surely it is this catalogue of errors, which caused incalculable social and economic harm, that has eroded people’s trust in the public health establishment, not the anti-vaxxers? Is it any wonder some parents are reluctant for their children to have the MMR, given how often they’ve been lied to about the benefits of this or that health measure over the past four years? I daresay a few of them can recall the government applying pressure on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to change its mind about recommending in December 2021 that five- to 11-year-olds shouldn’t be given the Covid jab.

I’m not suggesting that any of this is a good reason for not vaccinating your child against measles, mumps and rubella. Just because public health panjandrums like Jenny Harries dished out some poor advice about masks during the pandemic doesn’t mean she’s wrong about the MMR: Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 article in the Lancet linking it to autism has been thoroughly debunked. I’m just pointing out that the current measles outbreak isn’t a knockdown argument for censoring vaccine sceptics.

A report by the Royal Society in 2022 entitled ‘The Online Information Environment: Understanding how the internet shapes people’s engagement with scientific information’ recommended against ‘content removal’ as a strategy for combating misinformation. The authors made five arguments: first, there’s no evidence that removing scientific misinformation from platforms like Facebook and Twitter is an effective way of discrediting it; second, establishing a causal link between online misinformation and offline harm is extremely difficult; third, censoring health-related misinformation could drive that content into hidden corners of the internet where it’s less likely to be challenged; fourth, deciding what is and is not scientific misinformation is not always possible, particularly where there’s no scientific consensus; and fifth, removing content rather than rebutting it may exacerbate mistrust and be exploited to promote false narratives.

As if to prove the point, there was a crackdown on the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ by the big social media platforms in 2022, yet vaccine hesitancy has grown. According to the WHO, there was a 30-fold increase in measles cases across Europe last year. In truth, the ebb and flow of vaccine scepticism on the internet over the past few years probably hasn’t been a major factor in the measles outbreak. A more probable cause is the conversion of the NHS into a Covid-only service from March 2020 to July 2021, meaning lots of parents failed to get their kids jabbed. As with other recent health crises, the ‘national incident’ is a consequence of the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic.

The Battle for Britain | 27 January 2024

Football needs its own Mr Bates

Did football officials watch Mr Bates vs The Post Office? They should have – and learned from it. Otherwise they could be next in the crosshairs of a TV dramatist. Just as the Post Office failed to act as they should have done to protect sub-postmasters, football – and rugby for that matter – is showing no noticeable signs of urgency to look after its players despite growing evidence that both sports are contributing to long-term brain damage.

A debate in parliament on the issue last September which referred to one report that the dementia risk to footballers was ‘phenomenal’ seems to have caused as much of a stir as a WI knitting competition. And yet day after day we see young men heading the ball with an indifference that gives you a headache just to watch.

We were reminded of the damage that heading a ball can cause by the death last October of Bobby Charlton, who had been diagnosed with dementia in 2020. Maybe that was Sir Bobby’s fate anyway; but what surely can’t be dismissed as fate is that seven members of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team suffered from some form of brain disease, including Bobby’s brother Jack.

While officials dither, footballers themselves are taking strong action. More than 50 former professional players, including Paul Scholes, Dom Matteo and Jill Scott, have signed up to join a 175-mile walk in March in support of two colleagues, former Liverpool player Stephen Darby, 35, and Marcus Stewart, 51, who have both been diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND). This will add to the pressure for action already simmering away thanks to the efforts of rugby players Kevin Sinfield, Rob Burrow and the late Doddie Weir.

In the High Court, the wheels of justice are beginning to grind in a landmark legal battle in which a group of 19 footballers are suing the FA for compensation over brain injuries. They are mainly in their sixties and seventies but some are thought to be in their thirties. Most want to stay anonymous but the former Manchester United full back Colin Gibson and John Stiles, son of World Cup winner Nobby Stiles, who died in 2020, suffering from dementia, have both gone public. The number of claimants could rise by hundreds.

‘Even now,’ John Stiles has said, ‘three years after Dad’s death, virtually nobody is aware of it. But this disease is everywhere where there are head impacts.’ If nobody is aware of it, it’s about time they were made aware. There must be an enterprising screenwriter out there to create a drama that would have the same effect as the brilliant ITV series about the shocking failings of the Post Office.

What English rugby needs now is a disruptor: someone who can shake things up and for whom money is no object. CVC, the private equity firm which runs the sport here, has just reinforced the status quo of the Six Nations and the autumn internationals. But a real visionary might choose a different path. The ten-team Premiership is looking a bit threadbare. If a club outside the top table became too big to ignore, if it could fill a geographical hole on the Premiership map, and if it could attract star players who would sell out their current ground and make the case for a proper stadium then where is Jeff Bezos when you need him?

Meanwhile, outside the rugby establishment Georgia is cementing its emergence as a proper power. The country’s Black Lion side – mentored by the former England player and Georgia national team coach Richard Cockerill – pulled in the season’s biggest Challenge Cup crowd for their match against Clermont in Tbilisi. They still got hammered 36-3, but things are stirring, and the status quo cannot hold for ever.

Dear Mary: how do I check my friends have bought my book? 

Q. I am executor of a deceased bachelor whose will is clear that I should distribute his estate to his long-standing friends. There is no mention of what to do with family photos and heirlooms, which have little market value, but he hung on to them for sentimental reasons. I had thought to offer them to his two surviving blood relatives who are second cousins (and siblings to one another) and who, apart from a small pecuniary legacy, get nothing. Unfortunately, these relatives don’t talk to each other and cannot agree to fair shares each. What should I do?

– D.L., Newcastle-under-Lyme

A. Issue a photographic inventory of the sentimental items. Send a copy to each sibling and ask them to put their preferences in a long league table. Allocate accordingly. Where there is an obvious clash because both sibling A and sibling B crave the same first item, then the elder wins the first time, the younger the second time, and so on.

Q. My publisher has given me 12 free copies of my own first book. I would like to send a few personally inscribed copies out to close friends but I’m worried these loyal supporters may have already bought a copy from a bookshop, in which case I should inscribe those copies rather than lumbering them with a second one. But how can I tactfully find out? – Name and address withheld

A. Send the books out anyway, with your inscription on a separate sheet of good-quality writing paper, clipped to the jacket front. If the recipient has already bought a copy, they can glue the inscribed sheet into that, and give away your pristine extra copy as a present.

Q. I have just read the letter (30 November 2023) regarding the father who now wafts in the aroma of fabric conditioner because his new wife is ‘common’ and has married into a world where fabric conditioner is not used. I was shocked at such vulgar snobbery. Please let me enlighten. The reason why the disdained echelons utilise such a product is not for the aroma. Anyone who wears ‘sexy lingerie’ but who cannot afford silk and so has items such as peephole bras and babydoll nighties in manmade fabrics will tell you that the conditioner prevents static building up. Clearly what the man is up to with his new wife is much more exciting than the boring world his daughter and other snobs live in. The stepmother could merely be being thoughtful in protecting her husband from static while they engage in matters d’amour.

– Dr L.R., by email

A. Thank you for shedding more light on this mystery.

‘I pity MPs more than ever’: the Cinnamon Club, reviewed

The Cinnamon Club appears on lists of MPs favourite restaurants: if they can still eat this late into a parliament. It lives in the old Westminster Library on Great Smith Street, a curiously bloodless part of London, and an irresistible metaphor wherever you are. When once you ate knowledge, you now eat flesh, but only if you can afford it. Now there is the Charing Cross Library, which lives next to the Garrick Theatre, and looks curiously oppressed. Perhaps soon it will be a falafel shack and knows it. There is also the Central Reference Library, which could be a KFC, and soon will be. Public spaces are shrinking. They will all be online soon, and we will see how that goes. (It will be bad.)

It is smooth, to be sure: that is the point of it. The exterior is red brick with pinnacles: a late Victorian stage set for a light opera about imperial power. It still says ‘Westminster Public Library’ in stone: it is grave and grave-stone. The interior is municipal plus money, lots of it: the Cinnamon Club is, among other things, a perfect paradigm of Blairite dreams – it arrived in 2001, as if in homage to that ideal. There is a lobby with a shop selling mortars and pestles for £30 and tea towels at three for £20 (slightly more than Sainsbury’s). The dining room has bright white plasterwork, high ceilings, eerie lamps like glowing planets, pale parquet floors and blue banquettes with grey chairs. That is, it looks like the Conran Shop. It is filled with books at least: above my head I find James Herriot’s Yorkshire, Sons and Lovers, and The Comedies of Plautus. Their cataloguing system is a mess. But if you wish to eat self-conscious and expensive Indian food while reading The Comedies of Plautus near parliament, this is close to an ideal.

I like my Indian food fierce and gaudy but, like Gymkhana in Mayfair, this restaurant, which identifies as ‘fine dining’ and specialises in game and fish, seeks finesse. What, and who, for? We have clove-smoked saddle of Romney Marsh lamb with corn and yoghurt sauce and keema saag for £32, though chargrilled Balmoral estate venison is an amazing £40. Perhaps the venison got a taxi from Heathrow. The lamb is overwrought: it looks better than it tastes. Chicken Rezala – tandoori chicken breast, poppy and screw-pine sauce, with pilau rice (£24) – feels equally punishing. Simply put, there isn’t enough heat or cream here. Pudding – black cardamom brûlée, mango sorbet – is better, but it still feels like self-denial, and who goes to an Indian restaurant in London for that?

MPs are the answer, and I pity them more than ever: first 24-hour news, now this. But after a chilly, tasteful meal, I think I understand why they come here. I have reviewed parliamentary food. I did the Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin Greasy Spoon (it isn’t called that) where you can eat Crunchy Nut Cornflakes under Pugin tiles. I have been to the ‘contemporary casual’ Adjournment in Portcullis House, which is like a John Lewis café with power, and the Peers’ Dining Room, which is a themed restaurant in which someone screamed ‘Mouse!’ into the abyss as I ate smoked salmon. They are heavily subsidised by you, but they are not restful: they are as melodramatic as Alton Towers. The food in the Cinnamon Club is no better, but the air is muted, and it’s a good five minutes from hell. Perhaps that is what they need after all that shouting, but many of them will be free quite soon.