Would I die for Britain? No thanks

The West’s military posture has moved from ‘thick’ to ‘suicidal’. The recent speech of General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the British Army, in which he suggested that Britain needs a ‘citizens army’ to see off Russia, has forced the Government to deny that it wishes to introduce conscription – in advance of a great power conflict that Grant Shapps says is perhaps five years away.

The media is casually debating ‘would Britons refuse to serve?’, on the basis that Gen Z is too neurotic to fight. The better question is ‘should we serve?’, on the grounds that our generation of leadership is so staggeringly dumb. What did Phil Ochs sing? ‘It’s always the old to lead us to the wars/ Always the young to fall…’

This crisis is on the little Brezhnevs who run the West, who failed to invest in the regular defence forces and baited Putin into invading Ukraine. Yes, primary responsibility for the war lies with that fascist thug in the Kremlin. But we also flirted with Kiev for years, dangling over it the baubles of EU and Nato membership, inviting a reaction from Russia. When it came, with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, we did nothing – almost encouraging Putin to finish the job in 2022.

(The one man who did hold the line was that notorious isolationist, Donald Trump. Putin attacked under Obama, went silent under Trump, then had another go under Joe Biden. But, of course, voting Republican is a reckless act, yada yada.)

Having decided that Ukraine’s war is our war, the West has urged the fledgling nation to spill vast amounts of blood in its self-defence without providing it with the necessary arms to win, because we are unwilling to run a war economy. One vignette: the expansion of an arms factory in Troisdorf, Germany was blocked last year by the local authority because it wanted to build homes and offices instead (Nimbies Rule, Ok?) By contrast, Russian arms factories work triple shifts, six days a week, and the Asiatic empire was always likely to beat Ukraine because it is many, many times bigger. The longer we delay negotiations, the worse the peace settlement is likely to be.

Despite its obvious disadvantage, the West seems determined to compound its former errors by bringing Ukraine into Nato at the earliest opportunity. It is starting to sound suspiciously as if policymakers want a wider war – hyping up a wild scenario in which Putin, having wrecked his economy and risked a coup over invading Ukraine, will double-down and try to conquer the whole of East Europe as well (‘In for a kopek, in for a ruble’). Should this happen, and if Nato then declares war on Russia, the very notion of a citizens army will become swiftly irrelevant. Fighting would end within five minutes. No one would win except the cockroach kings of the fallout zone.

But if we must contemplate this perverse fantasy – the war game rattling around the heads of the MoD – one must ask precisely what we would be fighting for? I’m not against national service in principle; the defence of the community is an honourable cause and it can teach us life skills. And I would happily sign up should my country be directly attacked, to defend Britain’s territory, history and people. Soldiers rarely fight for abstractions; they do it for ‘home’.

But the 21st century elite is sold on an ideological project – hyper liberalism – of which many of us feel absolutely no part and would not be inclined to spill a single drop of blood. How should we define this war against Russia, China, Iran, Equatorial Guinea and any other government who wants a piece?

A war for freedom? I’m not sure we’re into that anymore: Britain is a country of bureaucracy gone mad, where speech is policed and small businessmen are sent to jail by the post office.

A last stand for Western civilisation? What civilisation? Do you think the average conscript would have a clue who Plato was? Could name that Beethoven tune, recite the Lord’s Prayer or distinguish between a Michelangelo and a Monet? Our culture has degraded into American pap, and even our curators and professors tell us it is morally rotten – built on the backs of slaves, intrinsically racist, probably homophobic.

Meanwhile, politicians pull off one blunder after another, from Iraq to the Credit Crunch to the hysteria of lockdown, and then ask for our trust in the most deadly endeavour imaginable; a gamble with life and limb that is plainly above their pay grade. Put bluntly, would you allow your conscripted sons and daughters to be sent into the trenches on the orders of Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer? The elite has wrecked the future of the young and now asks them to consider sacrificing their lives to defend the ruin. No thank you.

Brighton shows why you shouldn’t vote Labour

I surely wasn’t the only citizen of Brighton and Hove who breathed a sigh of relief when the Green council was turfed out by Labour last May after years of misrule. To be fair, it had been a bit of a semi-farcical pass-the-parcel situation for quite some time. Labour caved to the Greens in the summer of 2020 after the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Nancy Platts, wrote to her team to tell them they were handing over power ‘in the interests of democracy and the city’. Regrettably, there was also the taint of allegations of anti-Semitism that had come to surround the Labour council, though she obviously wasn’t about to dob her lot in for that one.

Sadly such noble sword-falling came with a side order of showing off. Councillor Platts boasted that her administration ‘should be proud of our achievements since 2015′. She wrote, ‘We have helped steer the city through an unprecedented public health crisis and focused our efforts on economic recovery; backing our local businesses and supporting our most vulnerable residents…and set up a climate assembly to achieve our goal of becoming a carbon neutral city by 2030.’

When Labour took over eight months ago, many Green-loathers like myself were pleasantly surprised by the new leader, Bella Sankey. An attractive, well-dressed young woman of dual heritage, she seemed a world away from the standard knit-your-own-yurt B&H councillor.

In her acceptance speech, Sankey paid tribute to her Nigerian-Irish father, who worked as a builder – hooray! – on the maternity wing of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, where Bella was born in the 1980s during the rule of – boo! – Mrs Thatcher:

‘My mixed heritage family found a safe and welcoming home here in this city where you can dare to be different.’ Then it got a bit word-soupy: ‘As a mixed heritage woman, I know that diversity is strength. So I’m proud to be elected as part of the most diverse set of councillors that our city has ever known.’

She continued with a bit of grandiose grandstanding: does Brighton really have a ‘global reputation for creativity, excellence, compassion, fairness and fun’? I thought that was New York and Narnia! When she paid tribute to the former Labour councillor Brian Fitch, an ex-mayor, who recently died, it got decidedly gloopy:

‘I’m aware that I stand here on the shoulders of many giants, who over centuries, both inside and outside of this chamber, have known this city, loved this city and transformed this city and who will continue to inspire us all as we take this city forward.’

I’m sure Brian Fitch was a lovely fellow, but a giant? Still, Sankey displayed an admirable anger at the outgoing Greens, hitting back at the party’s Brighton MP Caroline Lucas, ‘Thanks for the congratulations. But your party has been an unmitigated disaster for our city. And they needed to be kindly shown the door.’

The next thing we knew, Labour were making pleasingly cross noises about the ‘re-wilding’ which made our fair city such an eyesore under the Greens, with cascades of weeds bothering pets, the elderly and the disabled. The issue apparently gave our leader sleepless nights, until this week when she announced that the weeds are to go under the chemical cosh.

But however much sense Sankey has shown when attempting to keep the streets free of pests, that seems to be just about the only beneficial thing her council has planned for B&H. The pleas of many local parents to rid our schools of pesty wokeness have fallen on deaf ears. Classrooms have become petri dishes for social experiments in defiance of parental wishes. Is it really possible that, a few years ago, one school in Brighton, labelled as ‘the coolest state secondary in town’, once had as many as 40 children who did not identify with their sex at birth with another 36 saying they were ‘gender fluid’? Or is this social contagion, as eating disorders are now often understood to be, among sad teenagers desperate to identify as something or anything, rather than feel lonely? Whatever it is, the council are hindering rather than helping these confused adolescents. Sometimes it seems as though there is an almost sadistic element to the way right-on teachers torment distraught parents.

And another thing, after boasting that ‘diversity is strength’, isn’t it odd to send people who think diversely off for re-education, or re-‘training’? This is what the Sainted Bella did after Councillor Alison Thomson retweeted posts supporting JK Rowling and the feminist Germaine Greer. Even though the culprit apologised unreservedly, Chairman Sankey frowned, ‘I have also taken the decision to remove Councillor Thomson from her lead role on city centre renewal while further investigation is carried out and subject to her completing training.’ Because nothing says not being qualified to work on renewing city centres like believing in women’s rights.

But not even the re-training of the hapless Thomson was enough for one Green councillor, Chloe Goldsmith. She asked how Labour would ‘meaningfully demonstrate’ to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning/queer, asexual plus (LGBTIQA+) people that the party would stand up for them. This brought another avalanche of woo-woo affirmation from Labour, with the situation continuing ad infinitum.

Purity spirals are never pretty, even in times of plenty. With local councils going bust all over the country, they seem positively surreal. Though less visceral than the battle for the bodies of children between parents and teachers, Labour also seems to have inherited the Green suspicion that the original sin might well have been the invention of the wheel. The extortionate cost of parking here has driven businesses to distraction for a long time. The number of empty shopfronts in once-bustling Brighton city centre is shocking to see, though their deserted doorways do provide welcome shelter for our armies of homeless people: the third largest number in England after London and Manchester, despite our far smaller population.

You’d have thought that we’d learned about the perils of throwing public money away at a time when services are being slashed with the vigour of Edward Scissorhands attempting to escape from a burning sheet factory. The council is still owed a whopping £47 million by the clowns who own the pathetic and pointless Brighton i360 tower. Opened in 2016, it looms over the seafront like a monument to municipal stupidity.

For some reason, though, the council seem keen to blow yet more public money in order to facilitate the ‘Valley Gardens’ folly which will cause mayhem on the seafront for years to come. A revamp of the area has been in the works for years, with roads redesigned and bus shelters converted into cafes and art spaces. As the formidable independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh put it:

‘This is exactly the same scenario as the i360 – residents pointed out the multiple flaws but the council pushed on regardless. We have been told repeatedly by this council that the coffers are empty and a huge budget shortfall is expected this year – so why is Labour getting the city into even deeper debt with an ill-conceived traffic scheme that will create even more congestion and pollution, rather than focusing on their stated remit of supporting the most vulnerable in our society?’

Gary Farmer of the Old Steine Community Association representing a district which will be blighted by this flight of fancy said, ‘It is as if the Greens have not left office…[the scheme] will further damage the city’s economy and reputation.’

Bella Sankey says ‘I love Brighton and Hove. And this city runs through me like a stick of rock’. But a stick of rock would show more sensitivity than she has through her pandering to the city’s relatively small cross-dressing community compared to the 50 per cent of the population who are women.

Next week, Sankey will host another of her patronising ‘Reimagine Brighton’ events, where the public show up believing that they can have their say. This time the idea is to ‘brainstorm’ on the theme of ‘safety in the city – how can we ensure women and girls feel safe?’ Well, ensuring only women – rather than men who think they are women – can access Brighton’s rape crisis centre might be a good start.

And so, since the brave new dawn when we saw the Greens off last spring, it’s been something of a case of out-of-the-Aga-and-into-the-hot-air-fryer. Sankey appears to be taking the two dumbest Green hobby-horses – the twin terrors of gender-woo tyranny and a phobia of cars – and running with them. It’s like there’s an ongoing competition between the Greens and Labour to see who can finish off B&H in the shortest time. Labour stand a good chance of winning the award if their majority collapses this year – or if they simply go bankrupt, as some fear they might.

This isn’t just a bit of local bother. With Labour on course to win a national landslide this year, the Brighton experience is a lesson for the country as to what happens when the carrot of apparent common sense is dominated by the big stick of woke silliness. The Conservatives are useless and need to pull themselves together (preferably under the stewardship of the splendid Kemi Badenoch). But when I think of the coming election, a twist on the old Belloc rhyme comes to my mind: ‘Always keep a-hold of nurse/For fear of finding something non-binary, net-zero worse…’

Tickets for Making Marilyn, Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven’s new play, are now on sale

Why is the UN sticking up for Just Stop Oil protestors?

Do you remember when you couldn’t get your child to school on time because of a Just Stop Oil slow march? Or when you got gridlocked on the M25 because someone had draped themselves over one of the gantries? There’s a man from the United Nations who, it seems, rather likes the idea of us going back to those times.

Michel Forst, a French UN functionary with the grand title of ‘special rapporteur on environmental defenders (Aarhus convention)’, published a two-page report this week following a brief visit to London. In it, he referred to ‘extremely worrying information’ about Britain’s ‘increasingly severe crackdowns on environmental defenders’, by which he meant Just Stop Oil and those like them.

It was unacceptable, he suggested, to punish such ‘peaceful protesters’ for public nuisance, or to crack down on them for conducting slow marches deliberately designed to make roads unusable. Forst said it was wrong to prevent environmentalists accused of criminal offences telling juries all about climate change so as to enable the latter to make an ‘informed decision’. He was also ‘troubled’ that the courts had issued injunctions preventing criminal acts, with people being imprisoned for breaking them. The Frenchman found it equally distressing that environmental protesters should be ‘derided by some of the mainstream UK media and in the political sphere’ so as to subject them to threats and abuse from ‘unscrupulous persons’.

This whole paper is consistently wrong-headed. Only someone from the rather unreal surroundings of the UN could write such a document.

For one thing, the reason why most people are happy to accept peaceful protest is that it is, well, peaceful. It aims to persuade, not to impose views willy-nilly. Does Forst think that peaceful protest should include forcibly stopping other people from going about their business to make sure your view prevails? If so, he’s wrong: it doesn’t.

As for the suggestion that something must be done about the ‘deriding’ of environmental protesters, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a naked call for more governmental restrictions on free discussion.

Forst’s overall suggestion sails close to suggesting that minority pressure groups should be treated differently. Such an idea is not so much humanitarian as unhinged.

Coming from someone working for an international organisation, this report is a worrying attack on democracy. By and large, we in Britain are pretty tolerant of the odd boisterous demonstration. Most of us feel that you shouldn’t stop protesters speaking their mind in an attempt to persuade the rest of us to agree with them, and many perhaps even vote accordingly.

Whether the UN likes it or not, the reason the government took the measures it did last year against bodies such as Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion was precisely that they had gone way beyond this. Their tactics involved not so much seeking to get their view across, as to coerce an elected government into adopting measures that nobody apart from a tiny minority wanted implemented.

Their demands would have made the entire nation that elected that government miserable. People were rightly exasperated with that. That is democracy in action. Forst would do well to bear that in mind.

It’s also worth a slightly closer look at how this report appeared at all. Forst’s title refers to the Aarhus convention. This fairly benign 1998 treaty, ratified by over 40 states including the UK, requires governments to give people access to environmental information and a say on decisions made about environmental matters affecting them. Forst’s mandate relates to the observance of Article 3(8) of that convention, requiring states to ‘ensure that persons exercising their rights in conformity with the provisions of this convention shall not be penalised, persecuted or harassed’.

The difficulty here should be obvious. The convention gives environmentalists the right to say what they think, but nowhere does it mention a right to engage in obstructive protest, or deliberately and criminally disrupt other people’s lives in order to force compliance with their environmental message. The notion that Just Stop Oil or their friends are somehow being punished for exercising their Aarhus rights is preposterous.

The conclusion is pretty inescapable: the worthy special rapporteur appears to be using his mandate, not to ensure that the UK keeps its treaty commitments, but as a means to demand that our government leave Just Stop Oil and the like alone, with the effect they would be free to impose their will on the British people. 

Where we go from here is unclear. The instrument appointing Forst technically gives him the power to issue ‘protection measures’, that is orders directing states (yes, you read that right: directing them) to refrain from penalising environmental defenders. We may yet see such a measure land on Rishi Sunak’s desk. If it does, Sunak must politely, but forcefully, tell Forst that Britain observes the Aarhus convention, that the threat to environmental defenders exists only in his fevered imagination, and that how we enforce our criminal law is frankly none of his business.

The danger of returning the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’

I put the case in last week’s Spectator that museums in this country have been gripped by a sort of infectious madness. Since I wrote that article the number of cases of museumitis has piled up further, and there are worrying signs that the infection is spreading into Europe. It has been announced that 32 of the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’ are to be sent from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the current king of the Asante, to be exhibited in the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi. The idea is to put them on exhibition there for three years, after which they will be returned (as things stand). But the V&A has indicated that the loan may be renewable, with no end date. These are beautiful objects made, mainly in the nineteenth century, out of the famous gold of Ghana which first attracted Portuguese explorers to that part of West Africa in the late fifteenth century. They include a beautifully crafted bird, a golden peace pipe and a golden lyre.

No one seems to be denying that the loans are a trial run for a much bigger and more controversial loan that might very well also become permanent i.e. the Elgin Marbles. The intention is to evade the terms of the act of parliament that prevents the British Museum and some other major museums from alienating their property. It is quite possible that this not so little difficulty will be removed by law if a Labour government decides to give the Marbles to Greece. Part of the argument (which many of us dispute) for returning Elgin’s purchases is that the Turkish rulers of Greece had no moral or legal authority to sell them. But the way these African treasures arrived is much more complex. Some were obtained as compensation for a British raid on the Asante capital. Some of the objects seem to have found their way on to the antiques market and were obtained through sale or auction. Some were passed on by the last British colonial administrators of what was then known as the Gold Coast.

Before people jump to the conclusion that this case is very similar to that of the much-publicised Benin Bronzes, several distinctions must be made. The Bronzes were seized at the end of the nineteenth century following an attack on the Oba’s palace in what is now Nigeria, and were used in bloody rituals that according to contemporary reports included the sacrifice of large numbers of slaves (one British aim was to put to an end the slave trade in that region). In any case there are thousands of the Bronzes, enough to fill the store-rooms of any number of museums. But the golden lyre was a gift from the Asante ruler to a British diplomat. It is not totally idiotic to suggest that returning diplomatic gifts is a breach of protocol, even after two centuries.

The same reservations apply to the news that the Spanish Culture Minister, Ernest Urtasun, has invoked Spain’s ‘colonial framework’, and intends to launch a programme for the restitution of objects in the country’s museums. The Prado, surely Spain’s most spectacular museum, has already questioned its ‘ethnocentric vision’ in an exhibition with the troubling title ‘Return Journey: Art of the Americas in Spain’. High on the list of objects for return is certain to be the pre-Colombian Quimbaya Treasure preserved in the Museum of America in Madrid. It contains 122 gold and copper figures. Colombia is known to want these artefacts to be sent back, even though they were a gift to the Spanish royal family way back in the nineteenth century. Once again it seems entirely graceless to demand the restitution of freely-donated objects where the legal title of Spain is not in doubt. No one, though, cares very much about the route by which returned objects arrived. Archbishop Welby sent back to Nigeria two modern busts given to one of his less blinkered predecessors, Dr Runcie, which were nothing to do with the Benin Bronzes, as Lambeth palace had to admit. Frankly, that verges on rudeness. On the Antiques Roadshow Ronnie Archer-Morgan prompted the possessors of a magnificent cloak given by the Emperor of Ethiopia to their grandfather, the British governor of Somaliland, to say they would gladly send it back to Ethiopia. Well, if people don’t want such treasures I suppose they don’t deserve to have them.

So let’s all give back every present of any significance to a museum and show how little esteem we have for those who gratefully accepted these gifts, and in many cases passed them on to a museum rather than simply taking them to the auction house. Let’s make it as difficult as possible for people from across the world to see Asante gold, the Benin Bronzes or the Rosetta Stone. That means pulling down the shutters on large parts of the history of humanity, just when the valid argument is being presented that large parts of great continents such as Africa and South America have a long history that is well worth studying – and therefore worth seeing on display in the great world museums. It also means requiring the British Museum and the V&A to make rock-solid arrangements concerning the return to Britain of any and every object sent out of the United Kingdom for display. Otherwise the proposals from the British Museum and the V&A are what a colleague of mine used to call the thin end of the avalanche.

The SNP’s Covid reckoning

We now know from evidence to the Covid Inquiry that Scottish government ministers were as prone to offensive language as Dominic Cummings. Nicola Sturgeon called Boris Johnson a ‘f***ing clown’, and Humza Yousaf called a Labour MSP a ‘twat’. If the government’s mass deletion of WhatsApp messages was designed to insulate it from embarrassment, it clearly hasn’t worked. 

The SNP-supporting legions on social media are of course outraged that anyone should be upset at the language politicians use in private. Everyone thought Boris was a clown, so what’s the issue here? It’s not as if they were having parties in Bute House, is it? And these revelations might seem trivial compared to the other fatal mistakes made by the Scottish government in handling the pandemic – like decanting the untested elderly into care homes for example. But they do matter, if only because of the way the Scottish government revelled in the embarrassment of UK ministers last autumn when sleek Hugo Keith KC was relishing the opportunity to refer to ‘f***pigs’ and suchlike on live TV. 

The SNP affected shock and horror at the nastiness, arrogance and misogyny revealled in the UK government’s WhatsApps. The SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, when asked about Scottish ministerial WhatsApp rashly said: ‘I’d be quite confident, that the content of those messages will be starkly different than what we’ve seen from Westminster politicians.’ Talk about hostages to fortune.

And sweary language aside, we don’t know what breaches of Covid rules might have been revealed in the tens of thousands of deleted WhatsApps. We do now know that Humza Yousaf was given guidance on how to get round mandatory mask-wearing at gatherings by holding a drink in his hand. How many other work-arounds were being provided by the National Clinical Director, Jason Leitch? We’ll never know because they were erased by his ‘pre-bed ritual’ as he described his daily deletion habit. 

Nicola Sturgeon was famously caught breaching her own Covid rules by not wearing a mask in a pub after a funeral.The First Minister was not fined, even though mask-wearing was an offence in Scotland at the time under the SNP’s more-draconian-than-thou approach to social distancing. 

Well, anyone could have made the same mistake. ‘She’s only human’, chorused the SNP leader’s cheerleaders. Of course she was. But at the same time, Police Scotland were arresting and fining 82-year old grannnies for attending birthday parties even after they’d been double vaccinated. No work around for them. 

As the testimony from the epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse pointed ou, the damage done by absurdist lockdown rules is incalculable. The closure of schools, the outlawing of beaches, exercising for an hour only. Draconian social distancing rules applied south of the border too of course. But there was a performative aspect in Scotland as Professor Woolhouse observed. The Scottish government’s regime always had ‘to be more cautious than the one in England’.

This culminated in the ‘elimination strategy’ inspired by the First Minister’s telegenic adviser Professor Devi Sridhar. The idea that Scotland could have achieved ‘zero Covid’ was absurd, as anyone in possession of a UK map would see. But it promoted the subliminal message that in some way Scotland’s connection to the rest of the UK was toxic.

We know from cabinet minutes in August 2020 that the SNP government actively considered how best to politicise the pandemic. What we don’t know is how they planned to do it, because of course that has all been carefully deleted. All credit however to the UK Covid Inquiry and Jamie Dawson KC, for making the best of the limited material they were given. 

Humza Yousaf has been like a rabbit in headlights all week, unable to rebut oppositon claims of blatant cover up and illegal destruction of official records. He is no longer even trying to defend Sturgeon’s and other SNP ministers’ deletion policy. Instead he’s promised the inevitable inquiry into what happened. But we don’t need an inquiry to tell us that that the integrity of the SNP government has been deleted. 

What would Alasdair Gray think of Poor Things?

It’s awards season in the movie industry and the film Poor Things, based on the novel by the late Scottish writer and painter Alasdair Gray, is flying high. To date, it has received more than 180 nominations in various award categories, including 11 Oscars and 11 BAFTAs, and has chalked up 51 wins.

What Alasdair would have made of the film version of Poor Things, I don’t know. He could be a hard man to please. It has certainly brought his extraordinary imagination to an entirely new audience. I imagine Alasdair would have disapproved of the film leaving its Scottish roots behind (although Willem Dafoe has an odd stab at a Scottish accent). But the film does full justice to Alasdair’s dazzling vision and I can only think he would have thoroughly approved of Emma Stone’s gleefully fearless portrayal of Bella Baxter.

I met Alasdair Gray when I was a student at Glasgow University, around 1969, when I rang the doorbell of his West End flat to ask him to come and read some of his work for our literary society. He invited me in for tea but was stammering so badly that I began to think a reading was a terrible mistake. Then suddenly, he adopted a performance persona and started quoting the opening lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost (‘Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree…’) and he did so fluently and without the slightest hesitation.   

Years later, when I was a radio drama producer at Radio Scotland, Alasdair came in to record a tribute to his playwright friend, Joan Ure, shortly after she died. When the recording engineer heard him stammering away, he went white with fear. I said to him: ‘Just wait!’ Sure enough, when the cue light came on, Alasdair read the entirety of his script without the slightest stumble. At the end, when the red light went off, he said anxiously: ‘W-w-was tha- that that all right?’

There are endless Alasdair Gray stories. In the 1980s I encountered him in the Ubiquitous Chip, the fashionable restaurant in the West End of Glasgow. He was painting murals there in exchange for generous payment in meals. (Being Alasdair, he spent the money lavishly, inviting his many friends to join him for suppers.) On this occasion he was painting his distinctive images on the wall behind an ornamental pond and had laid a plank across the pond to enable him to reach the wall. We chatted briefly and I went to join my dining companion. A few minutes later, there was a loud splash and a startled cry. Alasdair had stepped back to admire his work.

When we started work on the BBC film The Story of a Recluse early in 1987, I met him again at the Ubiquitous Chip. The script was based on an unfinished Robert Louis Stevenson story, which Alasdair had completed in a speculative manner. Bill Bryden, then head of drama at BBC Scotland, thought the script wasn’t working and I was asked to take over the production because I knew Alasdair well and it was felt I could negotiate script changes with him. I had been told that Alasdair had point-blank refused to rewrite it and I anticipated a difficult lunch. 

However, as we sat down, the first thing he said was ‘If you give me £1,750, I’ll write anything you like.’ It turned out he had put on an exhibition of the paintings of himself and four friends, spent £1,750 on the catalogue and failed to make any money. Now the printer wanted to be paid and Alasdair needed the money. Job done.

I hired the brilliant Scottish director Alastair Reid and we met up with Alasdair at Hawthornden Castle, outside Edinburgh, where he had gone to write. The castle had been purchased by a member of the Heinz family and turned into a writers’ retreat. The warden was a young man busy writing his own first novel – Ian Rankin, working on the first Rebus. The retreat was magnificent, but poised on the edge of a precipitous cliff, with low balustrades on the balconies. When I saw the amount of alcohol that was provided in the evenings, I feared we might lose our author before he completed his mission. Alasdair was certainly a prodigious drinker, but somehow survived. 

For the film, he now wrote himself and his producer and director into the decidedly postmodern script. Actor David Hayman played Alastair Reid as a completely manic director, arguing with his writer; Bill Paterson played me as (of course) a measured and sensible producer; we had a negotiation with the actors’ union, Equity, in which we agreed that only Alasdair Gray could play Alasdair Gray. He was literally uncastable. Alasdair duly came to Edinburgh to film with us, including a scene where he narrates the story while the Forth Rail Bridge is noisily being constructed behind him.

The evening after his location filming, Alasdair got very drunk, lost his hotel room key and lay down to sleep in the corridor outside his room. A kindly night porter found him and let him in. Next day, as he came to check out, Alasdair realised he didn’t have enough money to pay his bill, and he had, of course, no credit card. Without telling anyone, he abandoned his luggage in the foyer and left the hotel to find a bank. His disappearance caused a mild panic and I received messages on location that he had gone missing.

Meantime, Alasdair had signed a cheque in the bank and watched the money being counted out on the counter in front of him. The teller asked him for his bank card. He didn’t have it. He was then asked for any proof of identity. He had none. Instead, he left the bank, found a book shop, bought a copy of his book Lean Tales, returned to the bank and showed the teller the self-portrait that adorns that book. They gave him the money.

The Story of A Recluse starred Stewart Granger, a post-war Hollywood heartthrob, in one of his final roles. It also featured Scottish stalwarts Gordon Jackson and Andrew Keir, but these days is probably of most interest for its fledgling star: Peter Capaldi. Peter had graced Bill Forsyth’s film Local Hero a few years earlier but had actually begun his career, like me, at BBC Scotland, where he worked in the graphics department and designed the original T-shirts when I started a radio comedy show in 1981, called Naked Radio.  

Rodge Glass, Alasdair’s biographer, tells me that Alasdair was unhappy with the final outcome of Story of a Recluse but does not know why.  Certainly, Alasdair never complained to me. The broadcast itself was on BBC2 on Christmas night 1987 and was very successful, despite a bizarre incident. A few minutes into the transmission, there is a fake breakdown in the film, when the action stops and Alasdair himself appears on screen to explain why he wants the story to go in another direction. This ‘breakdown’ was very clearly signposted to the transmission engineers but, obviously, not clearly enough. The duty engineer in Television Centre leapt to his control and stabbed up the BBC test card for a few seconds, until he realised his error and the transmission resumed. He was most apologetic when I rang up to scream at him, so much so that I ended by wishing him ‘Merry Christmas’.  In any case, the viewers seemed to think it was a deliberate device, enabling Alasdair to interrupt the action. If Alasdair had thought of it, it might well have been deliberate.

Rodge Glass points out that Alasdair was often an unreliable witness. In his book Of Me and Others, he mentions me as a BBC producer, but actually confuses me with a colleague, Norman McCandlish, whom he felt was letting him down over a different project. This was unfair on Norman, but I’ve always felt it motivated Alasdair when he came to name his main character in Poor Things: McCandless.

I have on my wall a portrait, given to me by Alasdair, of his first wife, Inge. They had a fraught relationship (in fact, at one point Alasdair rented my flat for a few weeks while they were separated) but it is a striking image which I have cherished for forty years. Alasdair Gray was, unquestionably, one of Scotland’s most talented and original artists. With Poor Things his work is finally reaching a genuinely global audience.

What the UN court’s genocide verdict means for Israel

The International Court of Justice has handed down a preliminary ruling instructing Israel to prevent a genocide from happening in Gaza. Judge Donoghue, speaking at the court in The Hague, said the country must take ‘all measures within its power’ to prevent acts that breach the genocide convention and must ensure ‘with immediate effect’ that none of its soldiers are involved in any acts which contravene it.

Israel was also ordered to take immediate action to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The convention defines genocide as acts committed ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. The ICJ ruling is legally binding, however there is no vehicle to ensure that Israel implements its orders; the country could simply ignore it. 

This ruling comes after a South African legal team presented the court with a dossier of evidence that the country’s military campaign in Gaza showed clear ‘intent’ to commit a genocide. The court has, so far, only been asked to decide whether there is plausible evidence to suggest that Israel has committed a genocide in its war with Hamas. As a result of today’s ruling, Israel must provide a report to South Africa within a month on what action it is taking to uphold the order. 

South Africa, in a 84-page pre-trial dossier, accused Israel of committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by creating conditions of life ‘calculated to bring about their physical destruction’. The filing also said it was looking at the military action ‘in the broader context of Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians during its 75-year-long apartheid, its 56-year-long belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory and its 16-year-long blockade of Gaza’.

However, the court has stopped short of agreeing to South Africa’s demand for an immediate ceasefire. The measures announced today have been implemented to help provide some relief for Palestinians in Gaza – but the ICJ will take years before it reaches a definitive ruling on whether or not Israel’s military campaign constitutes a genocide.

Watch: Angela Rayner heckled by Palestine activists

It looks like the ructions over Labour’s Palestine position aren’t ending anytime soon. Since the horrifying Hamas massacre on October 7^th last year, Labour leader Keir Starmer has refused to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, instead making the case for a ‘sustainable ceasefire’ – which would involve Hamas handing over the remaining Israeli hostages and stopping its rocket fire into Israel.

That position has been met with predictable outrage from the left, which has accused the Labour leadership of colluding in a genocide.

Now it looks like the row is spilling over into MPs’ constituencies. According to a video posted by Manchester Palestine Action, activists interrupted a Labour fundraising event in Stockport this week. As Shadow Deputy Prime MinisterAngela Rayner spoke at the event, a man began shouting, and saying that his family had been killed in Gaza. After he was escorted out by security, another woman sitting at the back of the hall began to heckle Rayner too, asking how the deputy leader could call herself a feminist. She was then joined by several shouting activists.

Watch here:  

"I LOST MY FAMILY IN GAZA!" A Palestinian who lost his mother, brother & nieces to Israel's bombing in Gaza confronts Angela Raynor & the Labour Party at a Stockport fundraiser.
How can the Labour Party & any party not call for a ceasefire when Israel's genocide has killed 25000… pic.twitter.com/LvEbVIyw5x

— MANPalestine Action (@ManPalestine) January 25, 2024

Alabama’s nitrogen gas execution is indefensible

Let’s park for a moment the morality of the death penalty. You know what you think. It’s one of those issues that is as divisive as it gets, and along all the predictable lines. It’s the method that exercises me.

Last night, Alabama executed Kenneth Smith by the administration of nitrogen gas. Smith, who murdered a pastor’s wife in 1988, was strapped down as officials put a tight fitting, commercial industrial-safety respirator mask on his face. A canister of pure nitrogen was attached to the mask and set flowing. One local journalist who witnessed the execution said Smith struggled and thrashed about – well as much as the restraints on him made possible – for four or five minutes. Indeed, his struggle for life may have lasted some 20 minutes. Five minutes may not seem a long time, but you just try going without breathing for that long. He eventually suffocated; it is plain that he struggled desperately for air, as we all would have done.  

Is that a surprise? Vets in Europe say that nitrogen should not be used to kill large mammals unless they are first sedated; the American Veterinary Medical Association says that rats show signs of panic and distress when given nitrogen. If this is, as the state of Alabama says, ‘the most humane method of execution known to man’, I should hesitate to witness the alternatives. Actually, we know that the electric chair – another bid to use the latest technology in its day – often didn’t work as intended. Don’t look it up. 

Smith had already survived one execution in November 2022, when those attempting to administer a lethal injection couldn’t find a suitable vein, so that was that. Even in Britain when public executions were popular entertainment there was a principle that the same man could not be hanged twice; if it didn’t work first time, off you went, thanking God for your survival. But Alabama doesn’t even have the tough love of eighteenth century England. 

Let’s stick to the question of what method of execution is the least bad. The guillotine has a good deal going for it. Remember, it was devised by one Joseph-Ignace Guillotin as the most humane method of execution available to the Revolution, and from 1789 to the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1977 this was the standard method. And it was quick. The weighted oblique blade came down on the neck of the victim, who was secured to ensure that it would land in the right place. Death was as instantaneous as possible. Granted, it looks a little theatrical, but if I were Kenneth Smith, I shouldn’t have hesitated a second before choosing the preferred method of the Terror to the exciting experimental approach with nitrogen. 

Some way behind is hanging. That, too, is quick when it is carried out properly. But to be blunt, it takes skill to do it well, skills absent now: a precise calibration of the weight and height of the prisoner with the drop. Albert Pierrepoint, one of the last executioners in England, had to go through a long apprenticeship before he could do his job properly. And he executed any number of people, from Lord Haw Haw to the Blackout Ripper. But he had professional pride. As he wrote in 1977: 

‘He is a man, she is a woman, who, the church says, still merits some mercy. The supreme mercy I can extend to them is to give them and sustain in them their dignity in dying and death. The gentleness must remain.’

It is that respect even to condemned prisoners which was lacking for Kenneth Smith. The point of the death penalty is to kill the prisoner, no? It’s not to torture him. And it doesn’t take a liberal wuss to look at death by nitrogen and see that it is torture. 

The reason Alabama deployed this innovative method of execution was because of the difficulty of obtaining the substance of lethal injections (which in any event didn’t work for Smith, not having an obvious vein). But we have quite a range of substances which might have done the job better. Ask Dignitas.

There are any number of methods which any of us would prefer to being gassed. Death by firing squad would be less bad. Or how about a bullet in the back of the neck, the Soviet method? Or simply giving the man a bottle of whiskey and a gun and letting him put the weapon to his mouth? If you are going to kill your convicts, couldn’t you involve them in the decision about the method? 

As I say, there are mixed views on the death penalty. I can’t, however, see any scope for debate about this gruesome execution. It is an embarrassment to advocates of the death penalty and a disgrace to Alabama. 

Jurgen Klopp’s departure is a disaster for Liverpool

The news that the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is to quit his job at the end of the season is a bombshell. No one expected it, not right now, nor anytime soon. The questions will come thick and fast, with all kinds of daft conspiracy theories about what is really behind his departure not too far behind. Football is like that. 

Klopp’s decision to go comes shortly after Liverpool qualified for the final of the Carabao Cup. It is all the more unexpected because he completed a major rebuild of the playing squad last summer (usually something that suggests the coach has the long-term in mind), and Liverpool are currently sitting top of the Premier League, and still in the FA Cup as well as the Europa League. That’s a potential quadruple right there. So, why go now?

This is the version of events from the man himself. ‘I can understand that it’s a shock for a lot of people in this moment, when you hear it for the first time, but obviously I can explain it – or at least try to explain it,’ he said in a statement on the club’s website this morning. 

‘I love absolutely everything about this club, I love everything about the city, I love everything about our supporters, I love the team, I love the staff. I love everything. But that I still take this decision shows you that I am convinced it is the one I have to take. It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy…I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again.’

So, it’s exhaustion then that’s prompted Klopp’s decision to call it quits. It’s a rare admission from an elite manager, but then Klopp has always spoken his mind. The demands of football management are relentless, and managers are not machines.

Klopp has had the wisdom and self-awareness to pick his moment, for reasons that make sense to him. Few managers get to pick their time of departure: a sacking is usually what brings a manager’s tenure to a close. Only the few giants of the game are in ultimate control of their managerial destiny. Pep Guardiola of Manchester City is arguably the only other elite manager who gets to choose when he leaves his job. His rivalry with Klopp during recent seasons has brought added excitement to football in this country. It is a shame that it is to end sooner than any football fan would have wanted. How long before the great Guardiola calls time at Manchester City? 

It is hard to convey just how much Klopp has achieved, on and off the field at Liverpool. He arrived at Anfield in 2015, and in the nine years since, he has taken Liverpool back to where they belong as a domestic and European football force. Most importantly of all, he led the club to the Premier League title in 2020, ending a wait of more than three decades to return to the summit. He also won the Champions League, as well as reaching the final of the competition three times. The trophy haul also includes the FA Cup, League Cup and Club World Cup.

It is a staggering transformation in the club’s fortunes. Liverpool looked lost until he came on to the scene. Klopp might have won even more on the domestic front, if it wasn’t for Manchester City’s impossibly high standards and consistency under Guardiola. The Spaniard has won more than the German but it is Klopp who sets the hearts of football neutrals racing. He has an infectious personality, brimming with enthusiasm and comes across as wearing his heart on his sleeve. His warm embrace of his players, and the ritual chest-pumping in front of the Anfield faithful after yet another victory, speaks of a mutual love and respect that few others in the game command. 

Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, put a brave face on the shock news, insisting it will be ‘business as usual’ until the end of the season. They can only hope: a manager announcing his departure mid-season always hits the players in unexpected ways, sometimes leading to a drop in performance levels. Only time will tell. One thing is guaranteed: Klopp is an almost impossible act to follow.

Five bets on Cheltenham Trials Day

If a glittering eight-race card at Cheltenham tomorrow doesn’t whet the appetite for the Festival in less than two months’ time, then nothing will. Plenty of reputations will go on the line at Festival Trials Day and there will be an abundance of clues to which horses might be winning huge prizes between 12 March and 15 March inclusive.

Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of Cheltenham regulars in the Paddy Power Cheltenham Countdown Podcast Handicap Chase (Cheltenham 1.15 p.m.) headed by Il Ridoto. Paul Nicholls’s seven-year-old gelding has run no less than six of his seven most recent races at the course, including winning this race last year.

However, that was off an official mark of 138 and he will race tomorrow off a mark of 148. He deserves plenty of respect and probably deserves to be favourite for the race too but, at double figures prices, I would rather be on two other horses.

My first tip is GRANDEUR D’AME. This eight-year-old gelding was well beaten into fourth over this course and distance last time out behind course specialist Fugitif and the aforementioned Il Ridoto but he has an 8 lbs pull at the weights with the latter this time. Before that Alan King’s charge dotted up at Warwick on heavy ground in what the Racing Post race reporter described as a ‘canter’. However, he won two races last season on ‘good to soft’ so he does not need a bog to be competitive. Back him each way at 11-1 with William Hill, BetVictor, Coral and Ladbrokes, all paying four places.

My other fancy in the race is GA LAW, a horse I have long had a soft spot for since, when my money was down big time, he landed the Paddy Power Gold Cup Handicap Chase at Cheltenham in November 2022. He hasn’t won, or even been placed, since then in five starts when, I am pleased to say, my money wasn’t down.

But I thought he ran a really big race last time out in the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury in November despite being beaten almost 20 lengths by the winner, Datsalrightgino. He clearly didn’t stay the three miles two furlong trip that day and back to two miles four furlongs at Cheltenham could be just what the doctor ordered.

He should relish being back on better ground too, while his trainer (Jamie Snowden) and jockey (Gavin Sheehan) are in good form, and so back him each way at 11-1 with Coral, paying four places.

I think both Tightenourbelts and Es Perfecto will prove better than their current handicap marks given time but I am not going to tip either of them at their current prices for the Timeform Novices± Handicap Chase (Cheltenham 12.40 p.m.). Their prices of 7-1 or shorter look on the skinny side in this highly-competitive 12-runner contest.

Instead, at long odds, I am going to take a chance on a horse that was pulled up last time out: BOWTOGREATNESS. Ben Pauling’s eight-year-old gelding is not one for the mortgage because he runs as many bad races as good ones and he no wins from seven runs over fences.

However, Pauling has always rated this horse highly and if he can repeat the quality of his final start last season – when second to Midnight River in a decent handicap at Aintree – he has ever chance tomorrow.

Bowtogreatness would ideally want it softer than the expected ‘good to soft’ ground but that was the going description for his Aintree race. With the in-form Ben Jones (six wins from his last 25 rides) in the saddle, I am hoping the partnership can cause an upset. He’s 33-1 three places with Ladbrokes and Coral and 20-1 five places with SkyBet. But, on balance, back him each way at 25-1 with bet365, William Hill, Betfred or Unibet all paying four places.

I will leave the quality Grade 1 and 2 chases – 1.50 p.m. and 2.25 p.m. – alone from a betting point of view with the two races attracting a total of only 11 runners. The McCoy Contractors Cleeve Hurdle (3.35 p.m.) is an intriguing affair and I was tempted to put up Noble Yeats, back over hurdles and getting weight from some of his main rivals. However, he has been backed all week in from double figure prices and, at odds of 4-1 or shorter, I will certainly be leaving him alone.

My fourth and fifth bets on Trials Day come away from Cheltenham and are both in the big handicap at Doncaster, the SBK Great Yorkshire Handicap Chase (3.15 p.m.).

Early yesterday morning, I had expected to put up Forward Plan for this race because, just before the 48-hour declarations, he was still 12-1 with some bookies. Those prices vanished quickly and odds his current odds of 8-1 or less seem too short in a fiercely-competitive 18-runner race.

Instead, I am going to put up the only two horses that are out of the handicap but, fortunately, only by 1 lb each. County Durham trainer Rebecca Menzies thinks TWOSHOTSOFTEQUILA is probably the best nag in her 80-horse yard and his last three runs have all been lifetime bests.

Last time Twoshotsoftequila was a running on third at this track behind Forward Plan in the Bet365 Handicap Chase over this course and distance, while going back to last season he was a course and distance winner at Doncaster. As the (joint) youngest horse in the race aged seven, he has room for more improvement. Back him each way at 16-1, five places, with BetVictor, Betfred, Coral or Ladbrokes.

However, I am also going to put up the oldest horse in the race CAP DU NORD, although he is another not to put the mortgage on. Indeed, his recent form is distinctly uninspiring and he is, at 11, the oldest horse in the race.

However, he usually comes good at least once a season, he will welcome the quicker ground and he has dropped to a lovely handicap mark of just 121 (in fact, 122 tomorrow with his 1 lb extra for being out of the handicap proper).

Cap Du Nord has failed to take up several entries so far this month but I suspect trainer Christian Williams has been waiting to have the services of Jack Tudor in the saddle – David Pipe now has first claim on Tudor since making him stable jockey to succeed the retired Tom Scudamore.

Cap Du Nord is 8-1 with most bookies and the suggestion is two points win, not the usual one point each way. The logic behind the win-only is that, if he is back on anything like his best form, he will win this race but, if he has fallen out of love with this sport, he will not be in the frame.

Yes, I know that means, just to frustrate the logic, Cap Du Nord will be placed and not win but, hey-ho, that the joy – or otherwise – of being a tipster.

2023-4 jumps season

Pending:

1 point each way Bowtogreatness at 25-1 in the Timeform Novices’ Handicap, paying 1/5^th odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Grandeur D’Ame at 11-1 in the Countdown Podcast Handicap, paying 1/5^th odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Ga Law at 11-1 in the Countdown Podcast Handicap, paying 1/5^th odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Twoshotsoftequila at 16-1 in the Great Yorkshire Handicap, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

2 points win Cap Du Nord at 8-1 in the Great Yorkshire Handicap.

1 point each way Jetara at 10-1 for Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Brentford Hope at 14-1 in the Betfair Hurdle, paying ¼ odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Stumptown at 12-1 NRNB for the Ultima Handicap Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

1 point each way Jetara at 14-1 NRNB for Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Giovinco at 20-1 for the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Djelo at 20-1 NRNB for the Turners Novices’ Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Home By The Lee at 28-1 for the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Mahler Mission at 20-1 for the Randox Grand National, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

1 point each way Vanillier at 16-1 for the Randox Grand National, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

There were no settled bets from last weekend.

2023-4 jump seasons to date: + 0.75 points.

2023 flat season: – 48.22 points on all tips.

2022-3 jumps season: + 54.3 points on all tips.

My gambling record for the past eight years: I have made a profit in 14 of the past 16 seasons to recommended bets. To a 1 point level stake over

Why is Britain acting like a mini-EU?

The collapse of talks to renew a trade deal between Britain and Canada is a reminder that there is nothing automatic about Brexit. If we want to benefit from it we will have to make an effort, and approach matters like trade from a very different angle to the EU. At the moment, there is scant sign of that. Rather, Britain seems to be merely reinventing itself as a mini-EU: a European-style social democracy which is high on regulation and protectionist by instinct.

Following Brexit, Britain’s trading arrangements with Canada remained, temporarily, as they were under the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement signed between the EU and Canada in 2016. However, the terms expired on the last day of December and talks as to what should replace them have broken down. The sticking point seems to be demands from Canadian food producers for more access to UK markets, and a lifting of the ban on beef from cattle which had been treated with hormones – the latter a classic EU trade barrier disguised as a health and safety measure.

But it seems that Britain was not prepared to budge, instead wanting to carry on restricting imports of Canadian beef on the basis that liberalisation of trade might make life more difficult for UK farmers. If that is the attitude with which we are going to approach global trade we are not going to get anywhere; the most we can hope for is the same terms of trade that we enjoyed under EU membership.

If we want to enjoy the full, wealth-creating forces of free trade then we are going to have to be prepared to make concessions – and that means opening up our food markets. True, that might make life more difficult for UK farmers because they will have to compete with imports, but on the other hand it would mean more choice and cheaper food for UK consumers. If UK farmers struggle to compete with Canadian producers – who obviously have to bear the additional cost of shipping their product across the Atlantic – then it is time to look at some of the other cost pressures on UK farmers, not least through regulation.

This week, a French environmental journalist wrote of the astonishing bureaucracy which is imposed on farmers in that country as local, regional, national and EU agencies each impose their own, often conflicting rules. What a farmer has to do to please one agency might well earn him a fine from another agency. The rules for egg producers, he said, ran to 167 pages, and laid down the exact width of every door in a hen cage. There are 14 sets of regulations which govern hedge-cutting. This is the mentality which Brexit gave us the opportunity to escape, but as yet there is scant sign that the present government is intending to take advantage. On the contrary, we’ve hit farmers with some environmental and animal welfare regulations of our own.

If that is how we intend to continue there really wasn’t any point in leaving the EU. We will be doomed to live on as an EU clone, but without the benefits of belonging to the real thing.

Putin’s Kaliningrad visit wasn’t a threat to Nato

President visits part of his own country. Shock. Vladimir Putin’s visit yesterday to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, perched precariously on the other side of the Baltic states, was not, as some overheated commentary has claimed, a threat to Nato. Rather, it was a sign of his renewed need to campaign domestically.

Kaliningrad, once East Prussian Königsberg, is a territory a little larger than Northern Ireland that was annexed by the Soviets at the end of the second world war and subject to an intensive period of industrialisation, militarisation and colonisation. More than three quarters of the population are now ethnic Russians, and although a handful of activists claim there is strong support for independence (last year, the self-proclaimed Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum held a methodologically-dubious internet poll which they claimed showed 72 per cent in favour), there is no sign of any particular disaffection.

Yesterday, Putin flew to Kaliningrad for a brief working visit, which in the current environment has been characterised as a taunt, warning or threat for the West. After all, many of the scenarios for some kind of future war with Russia revolve around the Suwałki Gap, a 40-mile long corridor between Belarus and Kaliningrad. The fear is that a lightning strike through Belarus could then cut the Baltic States off from the rest of Nato. Beyond that, Kaliningrad itself is often presented as a Russian bastion in the Baltic region, a hub for what are known as A2AD or ‘Anti-Access and Area Denial’ capabilities, whose missiles could block the region’s seas and airspace to the West.

The threat from Kaliningrad and to the Suwałki Gap is, though, heavily mythologised. The demands of the Ukraine war have left Kaliningrad’s garrison cannibalised, and Russia’s notionally unbeatable air and sea defences have proven all too porous. More to the point, what to nervous Nato planners may look like an advance Russian base deep in their territory looks to their equally uncomfortable counterparts in Moscow like a pretty indefensible hostage to fortune, which could easily be isolated and bombarded in time of war.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, batted away the claims, saying that ‘when the president visits the regions of the Russian Federation, it is not a message to Nato countries,’ but simply a case of his ‘doing what he has been doing for many years – working on the development of our country and our regions.’ Of course, any time a head of state does anything, there are going to be a multitude of political calculations at work. However, a meeting with students at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, a sit-down with governor Anton Alikhanov to discuss the region’s economy and some public grumbles about the delayed construction of the Planet Ocean marine exhibition centre hardly constitute a full-throated threat to Nato.

Perversely, it may be the last of those that give the best clue to Putin’s visit. Planet Ocean, a spherical building attached to the Museum of the World Ocean, was initially meant to be ready in time for the Fifa World Cup in Russia in 2018. Time and again there have been delays and although it was eventually promised that it would be ready for this summer, even this deadline has slipped. This gives Putin a chance to play one of his favourite roles, the good tsar foiled at every turn by corrupt or incompetent boyars – aristocrats – who rolls into town to upbraid them and force them to do their duty by their long-suffering citizens.

In Kaliningrad, then, when a student raised the Planet Ocean issue, Putin was able to put in a pantomime turn as if he didn’t know exactly what had been going on (and that the question may well have been planted): ‘What problems are there, I don’t understand? We allocated all the money. Where’s the museum?’ Alikhanov was forced to promise to move heaven and earth and essentially stake his reputation on it: ‘we are finishing it this year, it will be put into operation.’

This is a seemingly-trivial reminder not only that the Russian regime does still depend on ‘manual control,’ but also that Putin’s dwindling legitimacy depends not just on things getting done, but maintaining the narrative that what isn’t done is because others let him down, and what is accomplished is thanks to him. Personalised authoritarianisms depend on this kind of myth-making, and the constant re-assertion of the narrative.

Of course, Kaliningrad is often used for messaging to the West, not least by moving nuclear-capable – even if probably not actually nuclear-armed – Iskander missiles to and from the exclave whenever Putin wants to get our attention. But we shouldn’t succumb to solipsism and assume every statement and action is meant for us. March’s presidential elections in Russia may not be in doubt, but Putin is under pressure, facing a restive public and a disaffected elite. Ever since the mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in June of last year, he has been back on the road, visiting regions across the country, trying to recapture his old status of the good tsar. In other words, after so long being able to take power for granted, Putin is again having to work for it.

Israel shows why conscription works

Take a step back and it’s a no-brainer: If you want a healthy society, you need a spirit of unity. As we saw in London during the Blitz – often romanticised for its fabled ability to ‘pull together’ – if citizens feel they are part of a national family, they can maintain their morale even in the face of great adversity.

The same is true in modern times. It must surely be the case that, the more people feel a meaningful part of a nation, the less alienation, disenfranchisement, discrimination and resentment there will be. Deaths of despair from drug abuse or suicide will reduce, as will poverty, depression and family breakdown. Productivity, optimism and wellbeing will increase. 

Different countries have different historical and demographic challenges, but from South Korea – where researchers found that ‘national pride is positively associated with happiness’ – to our own shores, where the Office for National Statistics concluded that ‘perceptions of unity within Britain are associated with higher average life satisfaction, happiness and feelings that things done in life are worthwhile’, strong social bonds are essential to the health of the body politic.

Let’s talk, then, about national service. When the idea was floated during a speech by the head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, on Wednesday, amid looming threats from Russia, China and elsewhere, it was immediately subjected to widespread mockery. Never had the suggestion of serving your country been so derided. Twitter was awash with jokes and memes poking fun at the values for which our grandparents gave their lives, and coming up with inventive ways to avoid any potential draft. I don’t want to be accused of a sense of humour failure, but you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to understand that jokes tell you something about the unconscious of a nation. In short, at the merest whiff of sacrifice for one’s country, Britain laid bare the depth of her neuroses.

Across the democratic world, societies are in a state of slow-motion collapse. Birth rates are below replacement level. Aside from those – like our own – that rely upon mass immigration to balance the books, populations are, in many cases, becoming smaller and older. In Japan, it’s been reported that more nappies are sold for old people than babies. Happiness levels are plummeting; national pride is diminishing; deaths from suicide, alcohol and substance abuse are worryingly high. Loneliness and teen suicide have reached epidemic levels. It seems that, as we get richer, we get older, more divided and more miserable. Only one country dramatically bucks this trend. Despite growing very wealthy, it has retained a powerful sense of national pride and togetherness, with a strong ethos of sacrifice for the good of the nation. It may come as no surprise that conscription is a fundamental part of its national identity. 

In their excellent new book The Genius of Israel, the former White House and Pentagon adviser Dan Senor and his co-author Saul Singer lay out the argument vividly. Despite its conflicts and stresses, Israel is the fourth-happiest country in the world, behind only three Scandinavian states. Israel’s average age is more than a decade lower than Europe. Its population is not just young, it is growing, with women commonly having three or four children. Its levels of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and loneliness are negligible; the ultra-orthodox, among the poorest in society, suffer from almost no crime, substance addiction, broken families or unhappiness, which accompanies poverty in every other country on Earth. Notwithstanding the tension between its Arab, ultra-orthodox, secular and national-religious citizens, Israel’s social cohesion is deep and very powerful.

This has been especially vivid since October 7. The chess icon Garry Kasparov recently joked on X: ‘What does mobilisation have in common in Russia and Israel? Long lines for flights to Tel Aviv.’ But he was making a serious point. Since Hamas’s depraved rampage, the Israeli diaspora has returned home en masse to join the war effort. There has been no large exodus from the country. If you can find me another example of this in modern history, I’d be surprised. Moreover, polling has shown that since October 7, levels of optimism in Israel have increased. Israeli Arabs, some of whom rioted during the conflict of 2021, have largely pulled behind the country, saving the lives of their Jewish compatriots on October 7 and fighting for the IDF in Gaza. Which brings me to conscription. 

Senor and Singer argue convincingly that it is Israel’s profound social coherence and solidarity that lies at the core of its miraculous social success. The willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good of the country is instilled in Israelis from a young age, and reaches its most vivid expression in military service. It is this sense of social responsibility that enables young fathers to say goodbye to their little children and head off to war, from which they may never return. They do not act in this way to kill civilians. They do so to protect their families, their country and their people. 

This is a national spirit that used to be familiar to us in Britain and across the West. In recent decades, however, as memories of wartime fade and we grow fat on the spoils of the free market, we have been engaged on a project of self-sabotage. We are now more divided and less self-confident than ever before. Levels of national pride have plummeted. In the United States, fewer than half of adults now describe themselves as ‘extremely’ proud of their country, according to Gallup polling, a measure that has been declining sharply over the last ten years. The problem worsens among young people; in Britain, just fifteen per cent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 now describe themselves as ‘very’ patriotic, according to a government survey, while more than half failed the ‘Life in the UK’ examination, designed to test a newcomer’s knowledge of British values, traditions, culture, politics, history and laws before they immigrate to the country. 

Research into ‘common ground and division’ by the More In Common think tank concluded that we face a choice. ‘One path leads to the deepening polarisation that is being experienced in other countries, where ‘us-versus-them’ dynamics shape national debates, causing distrust and even hate between people on either side of the divide,’ it says. ‘The other path leads to a more cohesive society where we build on common ground and focus on the issues that we agree are more important than anything else.’

Our national response to the suggestion of sacrifice for our country exposes the alacrity with which we are sauntering down the path to destruction. A miserable, aging and divided country will lack the ability to defend itself. Our enemies know this. War may be coming.

European voters are rebelling against the elites

A friend of mine intends to vote for the National Rally in June’s European Elections. That in itself is nothing unusual – 13.2 million people voted for Marine Le Pen in the 2022 presidential election and 88 of her MPs were then elected to parliament in the legislative elections. 

What’s more unusual about my friend is that she is a French Algerian.  

She tells me that she is not an exception among her milieu. It’s the lawlessness, she explains, and the indifference of Emmanuel Macron and his government to thugs, extremists and drug dealers, who make life so miserable for the hard-working and law-abiding in the less fashionable districts of French cities. 

There is a caveat to her support for the National Rally; she and her Muslim friends would never vote for Marine Le Pen. It’s the family name more than the woman herself. The legacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Rally (or National Front as it originally was), is still toxic.

But Jordan Bardella is different. The 28-year-old president of the National Rally is the party’s candidate in the European elections, and it’s he who attracts my friend. Like her, Bardella comes from Seine-Saint-Denis, the impoverished Departement just north of Paris.  

It is one of several weapons in Bardella’s armoury. When he talks of the hardship faced by disadvantaged members of society, he has an authenticity that none of his rivals can match. Bardella was raised on a housing estate by a single mum, an immigrant, incidentally, from Italy.  

Another pull for voters is Bardella’s youth. In a recent phone-in a young man from the south of France urged Bardella to run for the presidency in 2027 because he would have his vote, and that of his friends, all of whom believe he can reinvigorate France. However, added the caller, somewhat to Bardella’s embarrassment: ‘We vote for you, not your party, because you speak to the youth.’

In the annual list of most popular French personalities, only one politician made the top 50 in 2023: Bardella at number 30.  His appeal cuts across class, sex, age and ethnicity. The middle-aged builder working on my house in Burgundy is also a fan. 

The Bardella phenomenon is a problem for the French elite. The nomination of the 34-year-old Gabriel Attal as Prime Minister was regarded by some commentators as Macron’s ‘anti-Bardella’ strategy. But so what if they’re both Millennials? Ideologically they are poles apart, one a bourgeois progressive and the other a working-class ‘populist’, the term applied to anyone who challenges the progressive dogma.  

The arrival of Attal as PM has done nothing to change the intention of voters ahead of the European elections; a poll this week reported that the National Rally’s lead over Macron’s Renaissance party is now 12 per cent, up 1.5 per cent on a similar poll at the start of the month. 

What is a problem for the French elite is also a conundrum for Europe’s centrists, whether they’re politicians or journalists. The German newspaper Die Zeit recently published an article warning that Europe was at ‘risk of a shift to the right in the European elections’, something it attributed to ‘xenophobia, Euroscepticism and the exploitation of resentment.’ 

There was no evidence to back up this sweeping statement, and polls tell a different story. In France, they place purchasing power and rising costs as the principal preoccupations of National Rally voters, as in Germany. 

These are not issues for Europe’s elite, who don’t have to worry whether they’ve got enough money to make it to the end of the month. There are myriad reasons why the continent’s farmers are on the warpath but a common thread is their diminishing income this century. Nearly one in five farmers in France lives below the poverty line.  

In 2008 the Eurozone and the US had comparable gross domestic products (GDP) of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion in today’s prices; in 2023 the eurozone’s GDP had edged up to just over $15 trillion, while America’s stood at $26.9 trillion. If France was a US State its GDP per capita would rank it between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively 48th and 49th. Germany be the 39th most prosperous, just behind Oklahoma. 

These are statistics never mentioned by Europe’s elite. Instead, the likes of Stéphane Séjourné, the newly appointed French Foreign Minister, resort to scare-mongering, warning that a vote for the right in Europe’s elections will make Europe ‘ungovernable’ 

But the EU is barely governing under its present centrist coalition. It is economically inept and it is institutionally incapable of stemming immigration. Last week Frontex, the EU border agency, disclosed that there were 380,000 irregular entries into Europe in 2023, a 17 per cent increase on the previous year and the highest number since 2016.  

In an interview this week with a German newspaper, the head of Frontex, Dutchman Hans Leijtens, admitted that Europe has lost the battle to defend its borders, and people must accept the fact. ‘This talk of “stopping people” and “closing borders” cannot be our narrative all the time,’ he said. ‘Nothing can stop people from crossing a border, not a wall, not a fence, not a sea, not a river.’ 

With the battle lost, Leijtens explained that his job now was to ‘strike a balance between effective border management and respect for fundamental rights’.  

It was a remarkably candid admission by the man charged with protecting Europe’s borders, but from the EU’s point of view perhaps not the wisest thing to say five months from elections.  

What about the fundamental rights of Europeans, the majority of whom – as polls regularly find – are opposed to mass and uncontrolled immigration: doesn’t their voice count? 

Maybe Europe will become ‘ungovernable’ if voting goes the way of the right in June. But tens of millions of Europeans would prefer an ungovernable EU to one that governs them with arrogant indifference and leaves them impoverished and insecure. 

Andrew Neil: it would be absurd for the UAE to own The Spectator

Last night The Spectator’s chairman, Andrew Neil, spoke for the first time about the sale of this magazine and the Telegraph newspaper to Redbird IMI, an entity run by the former head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and backed financially by the United Arab Emirates. In November last year, the government issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice, halting the sale process until Ofcom, the media regulator, and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigate. They are due to report back to the government today, which could then decide to block the sale entirely.

You can watch the full video here – a transcript is below:

Speaking on Newsnight ahead of the government’s response, Andrew Neil branded the idea of a foreign government, and particularly a dictatorship, owning the publications as ‘absurd’, pointing out that: 

‘The UAE is a terribly successful place. I’ve done business there, but it’s not a democratic government. We’re a democracy. Our publications are part of the democratic process. How could we be owned by an undemocratic government? … The Spectator was founded 200 years ago, to fight for the extension of the franchise to give more people the vote. Are we seriously going to contemplate that in 2024? We’re going to be owned by people who run a government where nobody has the vote.’

Asked whether the safeguards put forward by RedBird IMI to protect the publications – such as legal promises to the government to set up an editorial charter – would be enough to guarantee The Spectator’s editorial independence, he responded that:

‘Well, he who pays the piper gets to choose the tune and the people paying the piper here is the UAE. They’ve supplied 75 per cent of the funds for this deal to go ahead. So the idea that they are just going to shell out hundreds of millions of pounds and then just disappear, I think is for the birds, that’s not going to happen.’

He also said that he would quit if the sale was allowed to go ahead, saying: 

‘Yes, because I don’t believe that our editorial independence could be guaranteed. Look, I was a Rupert Murdoch editor. I had independent trustee editors that were meant to protect my independence. The only time they ever intervened was when they tried to fire me. The trustees, not Rupert Murdoch, the trustees. These are Potemkin village things of doing it. I mean, he’s [Jeff Zucker] asked me to be a trustee. I’ve turned it down because he appoints them. He can fire them. He could be fired by the UAE at any moment. They’re the guys with the money. So the idea that there’s any kind of protection in this fake trusteeship: it doesn’t work.’

The full transcript is below: 

Victoria Derbyshire: Who should be allowed to own newspapers in this country? In the last 24 hours, the Culture Secretary has asked regulators to consider launching a second investigation into the bid by a UAE-US consortium, which is attempting to take over the Daily Telegraph and its sister title, The Spectator magazine, the oldest magazine in the world, steeped in the history of British conservatism. The chairman of The Spectator, Andrew Neil, will give his first interview on the bid in a moment. Spoiler: he wants the government to block it first. 

The story so far? The billionaire who bought Manchester City in 2008, Sheikh Mansour, deputy prime minister of the UAE, now wants to buy the Daily Telegraph and Spectator magazine in a joint venture with a US investment partner under the name RedBird IMI. The publications, both founded nearly 200 years ago, are among Britain’s most influential, especially on the right of politics. Critics fear if the pair are owned by a nation where the government tightly controls the media, editorial freedom will be severely limited.

The battle for the title started last year, when RedBird IMI paid off the £1 billion debt of outgoing owners, the Barclay brothers, in exchange for the publications. But before the deal was completed, the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lucy Frazer issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice, pausing the deal citing the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion. The notice means regulators, Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority are preparing reports on the risks posed by the takeover reports, which are due on Fraser’s desk tomorrow. She can then decide whether or not to block the bid. Then yesterday, Miss Frazer announced that she was minded to issue a second Public Interest Intervention Notice following concerns over a corporate restructure at RedBird IMI. But that isn’t necessarily bad news for the takeover bid.

The public face of the RedBird IMI bid is ex-CNN journalist Jeff Zucker. He has asserted that if he took over the titles, they would be given complete editorial independence, with an editorial charter guaranteeing this. And we did ask Jeff Zucker from RedBird for an interview, but he was not available. In a statement, the organisation said ‘IMI is a passive investor in the company that will own the telegraph and as such, will have no involvement in the management or operations of the newspaper. Redbird IMI has made legal commitments to the government that it will set up an editorial charter and trust to protect the editorial independence of the Telegraph and presumably the spectator as well. And they have plans to make significant investments in the business.’ Let’s talk to the Chairman of The Spectator, Andrew Neil, who hasn’t spoken about the bid until now. You want the government to block this bid, bearing in mind that statement we’ve just had from them. What are your concerns?

Andrew Neil: Well, my main concern is that the people bankrolling this are the UAE, United Arab Emirates. They’re a government. And the idea that government should own newspapers and magazines in Britain, I think, is absurd. They’re not just a government, they’re an undemocratic government. They’re a dictatorship. The UAE is a terribly successful place. I’ve done business there, but it’s not a democratic government. We’re a democracy. Our publications are part of the democratic process. How could we be owned by an undemocratic government? And it’s particularly important for The Spectator. The Spectator was founded 200 years ago, to fight for the extension of the franchise to give more people the vote. Are we seriously going to contemplate that in 2024? We’re going to be owned by people who run a government where nobody has the vote.

So why don’t you believe Jeff Zucker’s statement when he says the UAE will be a passive investor and there will be no involvement in the management or operations? RedBird IMI has made legal legal commitments to the government that it will set up an editorial charter and trust to protect the editorial independence.

Well, he who pays the piper gets to choose the tune and the people paying the piper here is the UAE. They’ve supplied 75 per cent of the funds for this deal to go ahead. So the idea that they are just going to shell out hundreds of millions of pounds and then just disappear, I think is for the birds, that’s not going to happen. But nor does it give us any great comfort that Jeff Zucker would be running it. Now I’ve met him. He’s a genial chap. He’s a very impressive broadcasting executive. That’s his background. He ran NBC, a big American network. He knows nothing about Britain. He knows nothing about print. He knows nothing about newspapers, and he knows nothing about magazines. And yet he’s-

He’s been a journalist for, what, 35 years? 30 years?

He’s been a business executive. That’s a different matter. He’s never worked in newspapers and he doesn’t know about magazines and he doesn’t know about the particular history of The Spectator. I don’t think he’d ever heard of The Spectator until they bid for it, which makes it what it’s been and why it’s lasted for 200 years. So the idea that these two vital vehicles of mainstream centre-right thought should be owned by Arab money and controlled out of New York by a left-wing Democrat, beggars belief.

How do you know he’s a Democrat?

Did you see CNN when he ran it during the Trump years?

How do you know he’s a Democrat?

Because he is. There’s no doubt about that. He’s a Democrat.

He’s never told anyone how he votes.

I mean, there’s no question he’s a Democrat. He turned CNN from a mainstream BBC type broadcaster into a rabid anti-Trump anti-Republican vehicle. Everybody knows that that’s coming, he boasted this.

This is what he said in an interview in November about it. He said, ‘we always believed that our most important job was to report the news and stand up for the truth. Some people wanted to paint that as anti-Trump. We never, ever set out to do that or saw that as a strategy. We saw it as pro-truth.’

Oh, he saw it that way. Look, covering Trump is not easy. I’ve done it myself.

Should the government be stepping in because you don’t want to be owned by a left-wing Democrat?

No, the government should be stepping in because we shouldn’t be owned by a foreign government, any kind of government, particularly a dictatorship. I mean, what would you think? What would people think if the British government said, ‘oh, I think we’ll own the Telegraph, I think we’ll own The Spectator.’ The very concept is ridiculous.

On the point of who should run us and how we should be run, I’m not speaking as a regulator. I’m not speaking as the government. I’m speaking as someone who for 20 years has been the custodian of The Spectator. I’ve looked after its editorial independence, to make sure the editor is independent and that we’re faithful to what has made us what we are over 200 years. I do not believe that he is a fit and proper person to do that. He’s just not equipped. He’s not qualified. But he could run the BBC! But he couldn’t run The Spectator.

Are you saying there are things that you would not be able to write about? That your editors, your journalists on The Spectator would not be able to write about under the ownership of RedBird IMI.

Well, I don’t know because I won’t be there. You know, if RedBird takes it over, I’ll be gone. And it could be that Fraser Nelson will be gone, too. He can speak for himself.

But you will quit if they succeed in this takeover bid?

Yes, because I don’t believe that our editorial independence could be guaranteed. Look, I was a Rupert Murdoch editor. I had independent trustee editors that were meant to protect my independence. The only time they ever intervened was when they tried to fire me. The trustees, not Rupert Murdoch, the trustees. These are Potemkin village things of doing it. I mean, he’s [Zucker] asked me to be a trustee. I’ve turned it down because he appoints them. He can fire them. He could be fired by the UAE at any moment. They’re the guys with the money. So the idea that there’s any kind of protection in this fake trusteeship: it doesn’t work.

How do you think the government have handled this thus far?

I think the government have been all over the place. I mean, at one stage the government thought we were part of the Telegraph Group, and we’re not: we’re a separate company. At one stage we thought we were part of this protective order. It turns out we have no protections at all. The Spectator has been hung out to dry. You said in the introduction that we would also have an editorial independence committee. No we won’t. That’s only for the Telegraph.

Who’s hung you out to dry?

Well, we’ve been hung out to dry by everybody, by the Barclay brothers who didn’t pay their debts, by the bank that didn’t care what happened to us as long as they got their money back. And by the government, which has left us in a state of limbo and hasn’t even managed to regulate things properly.

Which you’ve been in now for seven months. What’s that been like?

It’s been terrible. It’s been purgatory because it’s been very difficult to run the business and deal with all the advisers that have been crawling over us for the sales process. At one stage we had more advisers than we had employees. We’re only now beginning to turn the ship around again.

But isn’t this capitalism? This is free trade: you support that, your magazine supports that. This is Global Britain, isn’t it?

The Spectator believes in the market economy. And as someone who studied economics at the university of Adam Smith, I can tell you that all market economies have to be regulated and there are regulations in place. And in other countries there are regulations in place in France, for example, that would stop foreign governments from owning major media assets.

Well, there are regulators looking at it now.

Which is why I’m arguing, although The Spectator is not covered by that. But if they stop the Telegraph deal, The Spectator deal won’t go ahead either. Let me just ask you this: if this was allowed to go ahead and the UAE is allowed to own the Telegraph and The Spectator, how long before some Chinese billionaire, acting on behalf of President Xi, tries to buy the Times when Rupert Murdoch goes to the great newsroom in the sky? Or the Daily Mirror? President Putin, his people might try to buy it. You want the British media to be owned by foreign dictators?

If the RedBird IMI deal is blocked, the beneficiary could be the bid led by Paul Marshall, early investor in GB News, which you famously left after three months. Are you saying you’d rather have him?

I wouldn’t be keen on Paul Marshall either, but that’s my personal view. I’m not enforcing that. Paul Marshall is a British citizen who lives in Britain. I don’t think he would know how to run The Spectator, or the Telegraph, but that’s just a personal view. There are plenty of other people who could come forward in on it too, and I would rather take my chances in a sales process than see this be handed over to Americans who know nothing about us, bankrolled by Arabs, by the UAE, who come from a non-democratic regime.

Thank you very much for talking to our audience.

The great shame of Australia Day

Captain James Cook has fallen. Not on the shore of Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay on Valentine’s Day 1779, but in the Melbourne bohemian bayside suburb of St Kilda. His statue was sawn off at the ankles in the dead of night with an angle grinder; his plinth daubed in a blood-red, anti-colonial slogan.

The culprits haven’t been caught yet. Their act of vandalism happened on the eve of Australia Day, celebrated on 26 January as the anniversary of the day in 1788 when a British penal settlement was established by a motley crew of seamen, marines and convicts, which ultimately became the great city of Sydney and the birthplace of modern Australia.

If polls are right, 26 January is still the day the majority of Australians prefer for celebrating Australia Day. But there is a growing vocal, noisy and militant minority demanding Australia change the date. They argue that the arrival of the British almost 250 years ago marked the start of dispossession – and worse – for the indigenous peoples who had occupied the continent for tens of thousands of years. They like to frame 26 January as ‘invasion day’.

Worse, those people – who include a cross-section of Australia’s activist and political Left – use every publicity and media platform available to them (in the case of Cook’s statue, literally de-platforming him) to strong arm the majority to bear the shame of what they define as Australia’s original sin. Former prime minister John Howard called such unrelentingly dark views of Australia’s national story ‘black armband’ history. He argued this grossly distorts the truth that, while Australia’s colonial past was far from unblemished in its treatment of the country’s prior inhabitants, the overall story is a positive one of national success against the odds. His view of Australia is a place where Aborigines and, post-1788, settlers from Britain and around the world tamed a hostile land to live together in relative peace and harmony under a stable, constitutional democracy.

But each year the black armband voices grow louder and shriller. This year, Cricket Australia joined its tennis counterpart in all but ignoring Australia Day, even though a Test match is being played on the day itself. Australia’s Test captain and the holder of sport-mad Australia’s second most important office, Pat Cummins, has joined the Change the Date brigade. ‘Once you start realising 26 January and why it is chosen, Australia Day is meant to be a celebration of everything Australia and our history. [So] we could choose a better date’, Cummins said last week.

But change the date to what? There are no obvious alternative candidates, and the shame merchants have never proposed one.

Meanwhile, major companies such as the supermarket giant Woolworths (no relation to the now-defunct UK namesake) have paraded their public virtue signalling. ‘Woolies’ announced earlier this month they would no longer sell Australia Day merchandise – harmless ephemera – in their stores. ‘There has been a gradual decline in demand for Australia Day merchandise from our stores over recent years,’ a spokesperson asserted, before saying, ‘At the same time there’s been broader discussion about 26 January and what it means to different parts of the community.’

It seems to have been lost on Cummins and corporate virtue signallers like Woolworths that six out of every ten Australians last October voted down the referendum for a separate Aboriginal ‘Voice’ to Australia’s parliament. They now simply want to enjoy Australia Day as a family day that just as much, if not more, marks the end of languid summer holidays Down Under. One suspects that Woolworths, which would have had to place orders with suppliers many months ago, made the decision then and banked on the Voice being adopted overwhelmingly. They, Cummins, and the Change the Date activists have failed to read the mood of the whole of the Australian population – not just the 3 per cent identifying as Aboriginal. They don’t understand the backlash against their comments.

Activists simply don’t get that most Australians prefer to focus on the positives about being Australian. Aussies don’t want to be browbeaten to carry guilt and seek absolution for some of the acts and attitudes of long-ago generations of settlers. Aboriginal Australian senator, Jacinta Nampijimpa Price, spoke for many when, at the height of the Voice campaign last year, she said of British settlement:

[It had] a positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food, everything that my grandfather had when he was going up, when he first [met] white fellas in his adolescence, we now have. Otherwise he would have had to live off the land, provide for his family and all of those measures which Aboriginal Australians, many of us, have the same opportunities as all other Australians in this country and recently have probably one of the greatest systems around the world in terms of a democratic structure in comparison to other countries.

Australia is a strange place these days, more consumed by propagating national shame than being even willing to fostering national pride. But the real shame of Australia Day is that so many of our political, corporate and cultural leaders are deeply complicit in the national guilt industry, seemingly hell-bent on turning what, for many decades, has been a day of great pride for Australians into a day of national self-flagellation.

James Cook, whose original orders directed him to ‘show every kind of civility and regard to the natives’, did everything he could to do just that on his two Australian landings in 1770. That some descendants of those natives, and their activist allies, do everything they can to not just desecrate his statue, but his immortal memory and world-changing achievements, is perhaps the greatest shame of Australia Day 2024.

In praise of the big, fat Range Rover

Cars mirror humans: that is what they are for. (If they didn’t, everyone would drive a 2012 Ford Fiesta). And so, cars are obese too now. They are growing 1cm wider every two years, and only half of new cars now fit into on-street parking spaces, though car parks – presumably elitist! – fare better. Hellish, isn’t it?

I could fill this page with the horrors the Sports Utility Vehicle inflicts, particularly in cities. It’s a trope but in my experience it’s young men in hot hatches who reverse round corners at 30mph and, as such, exist in a state of pre-manslaughter, who are the danger. It’s true that the SUV driver who used to reverse into our drive in Hampstead each morning at 8 a.m. irritated me, but that is because she beeped the horn, presumably because she was too short to see out of the back window. (Note to driving test examiners: all women are pretending to see out the back window). The typical Hampstead SUV driver – it’s usually a Range Rover – is a careful driver. She doesn’t want to scratch the paintwork. She is probably unconscious of what SUV means. There isn’t much sport to city driving unless wealth signalling is a sport. Or parking. The acronym is performative.

Nor is it the SUV’s fault that British train travel is among the most expensive in Europe, that rural buses are a ruinous myth and increasingly know it: our local Mousehole to Penzance hopper has been replaced by what looks like an ice-cream van. Much of the hatred directed at the SUV – OK, the Range Rover – could be solved by a rational transport plan for Britain. But that’s less fun than hatred.

I drive a VW Fox, which I’d be amazed if you heard of. It’s popular in urban South America and the most valuable thing in my model is the petrol, even if the tank isn’t full. But if I could choose a car to drive – Aston Martin aside – it would be a Range Rover, and a real one: the top-of-the-line fiend, now gifted a luxe interior because this is for princesses now. (Formerly it was for dukes. Google Prince Philip and collision. Also Prince Philip and hearse). I wonder if everyone feels the same way: you sense it in the quality of the rage. Envy. I once walked out of Hartlepool train station and watched Boris Johnson’s Range Rover motorcade process through the town. It looked bizarre. A car designed for a near metre of Scottish river and the mountain beyond travelling through a post-industrial landscape for a photo opportunity after which he would run away – in the same Range Rover? What for? Because I can, damn you, is the answer. Throw down the theoretical mountain, I’ll climb it for you.

The Rolls Royce and the Bentley aside – and the supercars, which come with a peculiar psychosis all their own – the Range Rover is the king of the British road. Rival SUVs from BMW and Audi and whatnot live in its shadow, though I am fond of the Toyota Landcruiser, an SUV so devil-may-care it feels like it is on a suicide mission for pleasure.

I borrowed a Range Rover last year and drove it to the Cotswolds. Can cars preen? This one did. The Range Rover’s only natural predator is the Bentley Bentayga and the Rolls Royce Cullinan, as I said, but I think you need to be a bit mad to choose a Bentayga over a GT and a Cullinan over a Ghost, unless you really are going to drive to the Burning Man festival in Nevada. That’s not to say I’d turn either down, just for the possibilities of the river and the mountain: like a novel, these cars can give you a theoretical life.

Among Range Rovers, it’s only natural predator is a newer Range Rover, and this one was very new: Charente grey, with a 3.0 litre engine and all the glorious engineering I just don’t care about, because I only care how it makes me feel. There is a sliding panoramic roof, cameras – what is their status in driving tests? – leather seats, carpet mats, and a cabin air purification system. It’s fifth generation – they were invented in 1970, but they’ve come on, like greed has – sinuous, like an idealised old-style London taxi and vast: five metres long, and two metres wide. It was a blessed weekend. Everything gave way, except the sheep, but they would have done if I’d pushed it.

The Range Rover speaks to the narcissism of the age: to the will to power, and space. Its popularity is a sign that the social contract is splintering, sure – like people who watch TV on trains without headphones or those who film people having heart attacks for TikTok – but such is the quality of the splintering the critic can only say: what an evil. Now get me one.

Can Javier Milei win his fight against Argentina’s strikers?

An alliance with the trade union movements helped catapult Juan Peron, the icon of Argentine politics, to the presidency in the 1940s, and the Peronist political movement he created has had a close relationship with the unions ever since. It’s little surprise that they have opposed Argentina’s new president Javier Milei – very much not a Peronist – almost from the moment of his election victory in November. They have already organised street protests against his sweeping economic reforms, and forced him to temporarily shelve some of his plans with well-directed court challenges.

The latest of their efforts came when the powerful CGT union – which has an estimated seven million members – called the first general strike of Milei’s administration. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Buenos Aires this week to oppose the president and his proposed reforms. There have been 42 general strikes since the return of democracy in Argentina in 1983, but this latest walkout has come notably early in Milei’s term. According to the Economist, the average Argentine president has around two years before the unions strike. Milei has been in office just 45 days.

A self-proclaimed libertarian and anarcho-capitalist, Milei came to power in a country facing one of the world’s worst economic crises, with both unemployment and inflation rising. He has promised a radical shakeup of Argentina’s economic orthodoxy, even if some of his headline proposals – ‘dollarising’ the economy and shuttering the central bank – appear to have taken a backseat for now. In December, Milei unveiled his ‘omnibus’ bill, which has hundreds of reforms and regulations aimed at cutting regulations and encouraging economic growth.

The omnibus bill is currently being debated in congress, and it is these discussions that the ongoing weekly protests, and the strike, are attempting to influence. Thousands of public sector workers have already been laid off, and workers’ rights have been diluted, as part of Milei’s other reforms. Paola Vecchio, a 46-year-old teacher, was protesting in the capital.

‘This law that the president wants to put in place is against workers and against our rights. It is only good for wealthy people,’ she said. ‘The economy needs to be fixed, but not like this.’ 

The CGT says it will ‘not yield an inch’ on workers’ rights. The unions, however, might be overplaying their hand. Although the groups benefit from being wealthy, powerful, and well organised, many ordinary Argentinians – Milei’s base – see union members as rich and privileged. 

‘Milei could flip this to be a part of him taking on the “caste”’, says Chatham House’s Christopher Sabatini. The president can present the unions’ protestations as the dying gasps of a political machine that has ruined Argentina. With the exception of a four-year gap from 2015 to 2019, the Peronist political machine has governed for the past two decades. And of the 42 strikes called in the last 40 years, more than half have taken place during a non-Peronist government, even though the Peronists have ruled for roughly three quarters of that time. No strikes were called during the presidency of Alberto Ferndández, whom Milei replaced, even as the economic crisis grew. 

The CGT and the other unions are trying to get used to their ideology being out of fashion, and out of power. ‘The opposition doesn’t know how to be an opposition’, says analyst Nicolas Saldias. Unlike the Peronists, Milei loses nothing from standing against them, and he has little need to win them over. Worst still for them, Milei’s major reforms haven’t even been enacted yet. He can say the unions are protesting over nothing. Do they want inflation to stay at 200 per cent? Do they want unemployment to remain high? They’re getting in the way of progress, and making ordinary Argentinians poorer, Milei will say. If the unions want to stop to his radical plans, they will have to come up with a better plan. Quickly.

What the French get right about healthcare

Senior management was recently walking down the street and took a funny turn. With her habitual stoicism she ignored the swelling in her foot for two weeks until I finally persuaded her to go to the urgences (emergency room) at the local Polyclinique Pasteur, a mini-hospital in Pézenas, the town four miles from our village. 

There wasn’t much they could do about the annoying bone in her foot, that was shown to be broken after a wait-free visit to the on-site radiology suite. But the diagnosis was rapid. The advice on what to do and not to do is proving effective. As encounters with the medical milieu go, I’d give it five stars. It took one hour from arrival to discharge and the co-pay bill (for Ibuprofen and paracetamol) was €2. 

In London, going private, this would have cost at least £1,000. One shudders to imagine how the NHS would have handled this. Not everyone will be as lucky as I have been as an occasional user of medical services in France (my previous experience is here). French health care is not without problems, including a shortage of practitioners, acutely so in the medical desserts of some sparsely-populated French heartlands. There can be long waits sometimes at urgences, especially in big cities.  An aging population means demand for health services is always growing. 

But for all that some of my French medical friends cry doom and gloom, the country is also innovating with the model of private polyclinics and small hospitals covering basic procedures, solutions to the seemingly intractable difficulties of health care delivery. The established university and public hospitals are thus in competition with agile newcomers. Privatisation?  Absolutely. Why wouldn’t this work in Britain?

The Labour shadow health minister Wes Streeting, who is promising to fix the NHS, and will likely get the chance, should come take a look. The Polyclinique Pasteur was founded by disruptive healthcare entrepreneur Lamine Gharbi, a Pézenas native with Tunisian roots. His company, Cap Santé, treated 120,000 patients last year in 18 clinics, including 70,000 patients in its four private emergency rooms. Perhaps some Cap Santés in the UK could help. There are some one-stop or multispecialty clinics in the UK operated by Bupa and Nuffield Health but they are entirely private and not integrated into the public medicine system as here.

Gharbi is neither a doctor nor even a venture capitalist but a pharmacist who has become dispenser of an entirely new and ultra-accessible health model, offering privatised services from emergency rooms to radiology to elderly care. Unfortunately he’s not planning to open a UK filial. His activities are all in the Occitantie region of southern France. Patients pay through the carte vitale social security system. The money follows the patient.

The secret sauce of the Pézenas polyclinic, and the others spreading through France, is that it’s a community not a referral hospital and is vastly smaller than the public and university hospitals which undertake the most difficult procedures. The polyclinic is not the place for open-heart surgery or oncology, but it does have everything most punters need, most of the time, under one roof. The building is clean. The admin is slick and computerised. The medical team of contracted doctors and nurses offers surgery, general medicine, an emergency suite and a 150-bed hospitalisation at home service with a team of itinerant infirmières who drive around visiting patients best not in hospital. 

Our problem was minor so a good outcome wasn’t hard. A neighbour was in a horrible car accident and needed compex care for months. He also pronounced himself satisfied, but not everyone loves Cap Santé. And it’s true it’s a machine, trading access for angelic charm. A bit like Ryanair. Reviews on Google are mixed. Many agree with me, some do not. I imagine it’s hard to please everyone. But if nothing else, the Pézenas polyclinic, and others like it, prove that private provision can deliver services to tens of thousands of patients without being part of that Heath Robinson-like British contraption, the so-called National Health Service.

The group’s largest hospital is in a Montpellier suburb. It’s on a larger scale than the Pézenas mother ship and has 200 doctors and 200 paramédicaux including nurses and caregivers. A hotel team of 50 keeps everything clean, and there’s a ten-person restauration team keeping patients fed. Telemedicine consultations are available. Sharp not sloppy management is evident. Cap Santé employs no diversity, equity or inclusion officers.

Cap Santé must surely be a model for the future of health care. That private clinics like this are not allowed to provide health care to NHS patients has left Britain’s health service immune from real competition, with consequences that are obvious. Nobody here seems to be waiting 84 hours in an emergency room, as one NHS patient recently did in Scotland. You have a choice of where to be treated. And the doctors are not on strike.

France is doing other clever things, such as the Doctolib smart phone app allowing patients to book consultations online, without choosing their gender. More and more clinics have airport style check in. Insert the carte vitale and c’est parti. Meanwhile in England, striking junior doctors say they’re ‘defending’ the NHS.