Andy Murray and the unstoppable rise of the sporting bores

When I was a girl, sportsmen were amiable dolts. If they were old-school, they liked blokes and beer; if switched-on, they liked boogieing with blondes at Tramp and dreamt of opening boutiques. But with both, you could rely on them never to let you know what they were thinking about the three-day week or the situation in Cyprus. 

When Andy Murray declared his support for Just Stop Oil this week, he joined that ever-burgeoning brigade of what I think of as the Schlock Jocks, or perhaps the Poppycock Jocks. Their leader is Saint Gary Lineker, the most expensive dominatrix around, taking the pound of the people and in return scolding the people who pay him. Gary, patron saint of refugees, whose virtue is so magical and identification with the under-privileged so great that he once spoke about receiving racist abuse, despite being born in Leicester to Margaret and Barry. Like all plonkers, Lineker has claimed that the language used about stopping economic migration to this country is in some way equivalent to ‘Germany in the 30s’ and is also a veteran Israel-basher, tweeting about arrests in the West Bank and lamenting the killing of a Palestinian man who was later revealed to be a member of Hamas, those lovely people responsible for multiple deadly bombings in Israel.

Then there’s Saint Lewis Hamilton, who memorably twittered in 2020: ‘I had time to reflect on where we are in the world today, every day I see something upsetting happening, people being abused, people suffering, volcanoes erupting, explosions, oceans and forest’s [sic] being destroyed. 2020 is such a heavy year. But it gives me hope seeing people come together, fighting for justice and doing more for our planet and the people in it.’ 

And of course Saint Gareth Southgate, who led a veritable squad of saints to Qatar last year; there’s nothing like the sight of men earning £100,000 a week for doing the thing they love lecturing us about colonialism to remind us of our privilege. In contrast, the brave men of the Iranian football team refused to sing their national anthem in solidarity with the protesters at home. It’s ironic that men raised in Iran care more about women’s rights than footballers raised in the liberal West, most of whom probably believe that ‘feminism’ is a brand of tampon and who can’t seem to go a week without giving us yet anther sexual-assault or domestic-violence headline.  

Gandhi Lineker trotted off happily to Qatar with ‘socialist’ Gary Neville plodding after him and – in the manner of a particularly thick pantomime horse – was Southgate himself, making a questionable claim about how keen the wretched migrant workers were to see the World Cup come to Qatar. The cherry on the top of this sumptuous sundae of hypocrisy were the players who planned to flaunt their support for LGBT by wearing ‘OneLove’ rainbow armbands – but who swiftly removed them when threatened with yellow cards. 

And now Andy Murray is the latest ball-botherer to tell us his thoughts on something completely unconnected with what he’s good at. Like the other Shlock Jocks, one gets the impression that Murray thinks talking about politics is just about the bravest thing in the world, while holding exactly the same anodyne, fashionable, corporation-endorsed, non-bank-cancelling opinions as the rest of his kind. After a Just Stop Oil nutter said it would ‘very inspiring’ for JSO to create ‘an image of someone’s hand glued to something on Centre Court…there’s a lot of people up for that’ Murray commented: ‘I would imagine probably something would happen here. I mean, I agree with the cause – just not always how they go about expressing it. Rather than running on the court, maybe they could do it a different way.’ 

Tell us, oh oracle! While you’re at it, perhaps clarify – as you ‘agree with the cause’ these Malthusian muppets propagate – how many planes you take a year, why you have four children under the age of seven and how you can support Scottish independence while being against oil? But of course, Andy’s habits – from flying to breeding – will be essential, and nobody else’s business; it’s us plebs who need to stay at home and worry about over-population. 

Being such a liberal conformist, it’s predictable that Murray simpers of Jonny Bairstow’s hands-on attitude to climate protestors ‘I didn’t see what Jonny Bairstow did, but it could be dangerous.’ Organisers at Wimbledon have, pathetically, told players and staff not to take matters into their own hands if protesters get onto the court. But how refreshing it was to see Bairstow carrying away a JSO toff as though he was a useless surfboard being stashed away for winter. 

Sportsmen are singularly ill-suited to pontificating about politics because sport is as cut-throat and greedy an industry as entertainment; it’s a cross between mediocre showbiz and bad religion. When we’re young, we all make a decision about how we’d prefer to make a living. Unequal opportunity will hinder us; in my own case, I had to overcome the fact that more than half this nation’s journalists were educated in private schools. Of those who went to state schools and still succeeded, most went to university. The percentage of working-class women who left education as teenagers and still succeeded in journalism is so low it’s unrecordable – basically, myself and Caitlin Moran (and she had too many books in her house as a kiddy for my liking). It’s getting worse – last year’s Diversity In Journalism report found that ‘Working class representation in UK journalism hits record low’ as the Press Gazette headline put it. 

Taking this into consideration, we still have a choice whether we want to do socially useful jobs, which often pay badly, or socially useless jobs, which often pay well. Actors, musicians and sportsmen all had the chance to become carers, teachers, firefighters – instead they chose to indulge their passion and keep their eyes on the prize rather than work selflessly for the social good. We respond to nurses strikes viscerally, even if logically we believe they are wrong, because we acknowledge they have chosen to do work which we wouldn’t have the patience for. During lockdown, our appreciation of refuse-collectors and shelf-stackers rightly rocketed. But this good sense seems to have fallen by the wayside and we again accept it as perfectly normal that we pay the least useful members of society – such as Gary Lineker and his band of brothers – the most money. 

These Empathletes are not only paid for what they do but haul in huge amounts from advertising; Lineker in particular has pocketed millions of pounds over the past 25 years urging the nation to neck as many units of salt, fat and sugar that we can manage to consume in the shape of Walkers crisps.  

If in the future those who have grown filthy rich from sport could only put their money where their mouths are, the air-polluting, hot-air carbon dioxide levels which worry the likes of Andy Murray so much would surely fall. 

We’re finding out the price of net zero

Now that the cost of net zero has become a pressing political matter, I have been re-reading the prescient words of Matt Ridley in the House of Lords when, in 2019, he was one of very few who opposed the government’s ‘net zero by 2050’ pledge. ‘I was genuinely shocked,’ he said, ‘by the casual way in which the other place [the Commons] nodded through this statutory instrument, committing future generations to vast expenditure to achieve a goal that we have no idea how to reach technologically without ruining the British economy and the British landscape. We are assured without any evidence that this measure will have, “no significant… impact on business” – but where is the cost-benefit analysis on which this claim is based? Where is the impact assessment?…We are told that the Treasury will run exercises in costing the proposals after we have agreed them, but that is irrational. Who in our private lives says “Yes, we’ll sign a contract to buy a house, and only after the ink on the purchase is dry will we try to find out its price”?’ Now we are finding out the price. We cannot afford it, yet we have been knocking bits of our previous house down. We might become homeless.

Last week, the official Buckingham Palace Instagram account @theroyalfamily promoted a film by RE:TV, an organisation which the King, as Prince of Wales, founded at Davos in 2020. It is headed ‘50 years of speeches’ and consists of famous personages – Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, Idris Elba, Woody Harrelson – reciting passages from the half-century of princely words about the perils of climate change. These are accompanied by film of giant waves, parched earth, teeming cities etc. It was released, says the Instagram post, ‘on the day that the King witnessed a “Climate Clock” begin counting down the six years which remain to act to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees during his visit to the Climate Innovation Forum at the Guildhall in London’. Is this wise? The message is, in effect, ‘I was right’, at a time when growing numbers resist the net-zero timetable. The Climate Clock link commits the King to a forecast which he will, one hopes and expects, live to see proved wrong. There are hostages to fortune here, and to politics. 

The Queen’s English Society was formed in 1972 ‘to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language as used both in speech and in writing; to educate the public in its correct and elegant usage; and to discourage the intrusion of anything detrimental to clarity or euphony’. Since September, however, the society has had a quandary. Should it become the King’s English Society? Yes, says at least one member, N.M. Gwynne, author of the bestselling Gwynne’s Grammar, because ‘Since the “departure” of the late Queen Elizabeth II, there has not been in existence a language suitably termed and described as “Queen’s English”. The language known as Queen’s English has simply ceased to exist, other than historically…’. Since the society is one ‘brought into being and functioning for the very purpose of defending truth in matters of language’, he goes on, ‘it is clearly inappropriate to compromise on something so fundamental’. The society’s committee, however, has decided otherwise. One reply to Mr Gwynne says: ‘The name was retained… in memory of one whose English was impeccable and in whose reign we were formed.’ A nice tribute to the late Queen, but even the society’s own website seems to confirm the Gwynne point. It states that ‘The phrase “the queen’s (or king’s) English” has been used for centuries simply to imply spoken or written English which is characterised by grammatical correctness and proper usage of words and expressions’. Quite so, and therefore it becomes rather pointed to uphold ‘the Queen’s English’ in the reign of a King who has excellent English himself. Anyway, the important thing is the most sacred right of those of us who fuss over grammar to argue about it for ever. Time for a civil (in both senses) war between the Queen’s party and the King’s?

When Glenda Jackson died last month, obituarists saluted her courage in not conforming to the stereotype of the famous actress. She was ‘obdurately unglamorous’, one said, and took ‘an unconventional view of the great dramatic heroines’. She deserved this praise. More’s the pity then, that Ms Jackson, as a politician, did not recognise the talents of a great fellow actress. When Margaret Thatcher died, the Commons gathered to pay tributes. Ms Jackson’s remarks were the most ungenerous of the day, speaking of the ‘extraordinary human damage’ Mrs T had done. ‘To pay tribute to the first prime minister denoted by female gender, OK,’ she said, ‘but a woman? Not on my terms.’ Don’t the careers of both women prove that women can be women on their own terms, not on terms others force upon them?

We have just been in Évora, a lovely, small and complete old city in the middle of Portugal. The place is at a curious stage of development. On the one hand, many derelict buildings. On the other, a plethora of ‘boutique’ hotels. I have never been sure of the meaning of the word ‘boutique’ in this context, but certainly there is a style common to boutiquery. Everything is spare and modern while trying to suggest context and historicity. The collective effect of lots of such places is deadening, as if one is among well-cleaned skeletons (which, in the Capela dos Ossos attached to the church of São Francisco, one actually is). I noticed that several boutique hotels in Évora already have a neglected air. Why so many? It may be an attempt to cash in on the fact that it has been chosen as a European City of Culture for 2027. Such designations, rather like being a Unesco world heritage site, are well meant, but they have a way of turning a living community into a mausoleum.

The fine art of French rioting

One of the benefits of holidaying during a riot is you feel remarkably safe. Ruffians have no interest in you while they can be having fun at the expense of a much more exciting foe, the police. And besides, there are Lacoste stores to be raided: they have no time for your wallet.

The other major benefit is you can get a table anywhere. We had the best seat in France last week: the first-floor balcony of La Caravelle, an old-school bar overlooking Marseille’s historic port and the perfect vantage point for taking in the fine art of French rioting.

The choreography unfolded in fits and starts. The police vans snaked around the water’s edge in military formation. Out filed the riot cops, their tessellated body armour making them look like mutant woodlice. We spotted a group of skinny masked boys. A wash of smoke. A flash of red. A scurrying of woodlice. Then silence. We returned to our pastis. Twenty minutes later, another gust of boys, smoke and cops.

The next day, Chez Etienne, one of the great pizza restaurants and usually crammed, seated us within seconds. Post-coffee, we decided to track down the rioters. From the British newspapers you’d have thought the Marseille disturbances were impossible to avoid. In fact, they were hard to spot. We did eventually find a thicket of riot cops gathering in the alleyways. For the first time I sensed unease. The lovely old gun shop opposite Maison Empereur that we’d been admiring earlier in the day had been broken into. A few antique rifles had been pinched, it transpired, but were quickly recovered.

Afterwards, I headed back into the centre of town. There was a festive spirit in the air. Sweet old ladies in hijabs handed out masks. Girls lurked excitedly in doorways. And then through a thin haze of gas, there was a sudden eruption. A hoodied huddle had blowtorched open the metal grille of another store. With a crack, a cheer and a smash, the bodies surged in. Then suddenly a cry went up. The crowd jolted. A scramble began. Everyone ran.

The following morning, the rocky beaches were a little emptier, especially of the usual posse of teenage boys who, day in, day out, throw themselves into the sea. But the town was abuzz with carpenters, glazers and welders, patching up the commercial zone. I thought about Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (1714). The philosophical satire argued that we have vice, not virtue, to thank for making the economy whir. Might there even be a spike in France’s GDP in the coming months?

Most bars had shut up shop by the evening, as the police and kids played hide and seek around the Cours Julien. But we found one open in Noailles with revellers spilling out on to the street. A small army of masked protestors, possibly regrouping, walked through the drunk crowds to a hero’s welcome. Everyone clapped, whistled and cheered – though no one had the faintest idea who they were, what they had done or what they were about to do.

To come to France and be annoyed at the presence of riots would be like visiting Italy and being furious at the amount of pasta on the menus. That said, even within the rebellious traditions of the French, Marseille and its people are startlingly animated. Eruptions are as authentic a part of the city’s soul as the bouillabaisse. The Parisians I met were petrified by the riots. But Parisians have always treated Marseille as a terrifying, alien civilisation.

Last week’s commotion wasn’t even close to the most spirited eruption I’ve encountered in my many years of visiting Marseille. That prize goes to the evening Algeria won the Africa Cup against Senegal in 2019, when the night thundered down on us. The city’s population moved as one through the streets, boys dangling off every lamppost and street sign. As a fellow Marseille devotee texted me the other day: ‘They riot in celebration and celebrate in riot.’

Why Europe riots

A spectre is haunting Europe. In France, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and even Switzerland, the rule of law is being challenged by the rule of gangs. Disaffected young people cut off from society feel nothing but nihilistic contempt for it. Higher temperatures and social media are creating a heated summer. Judging from recent events in Paris and Stockholm, this year could be the worst so far.

The rise of gang violence is associated with immigration. Europe has shown itself incapable or unwilling to control the influx of migrants, some of them genuine asylum seekers, others simply opportunists. Nor have European politicians succeeded in dealing with the problems created by immigration, despite spending billions on social projects. A European summit on immigration in Brussels last week ended without even a joint declaration. Emmanuel Macron was unable to attend. He was preoccupied with riots across France, following the fatal police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy, in suburban Paris.

The European Commission, deaf to the concerns of voters, has responded to the de facto collapse of the EU’s frontiers by demanding that countries such as Poland, which has largely closed its borders to refugees and is not troubled by the problem of migrant gangs, be fined €20,000 for each person refused.

France gets plenty of attention, but its street violence is hardly singular. Sweden, once a quintessential example of an open-minded society that welcomed immigrants, has become one of the most violent countries in Europe, as measured by gangland shootings. It’s a rare night in Stockholm that passes without some violent event. Police estimate that there are now more than 50 gangs, many in heavily immigrant communities. The Swedish newspapers read more like film scripts, with feuding gangs loyal to ‘the Kurdish Fox’ and ‘the Greek’ and violence connected to vendettas.

Police have identified 31,000 people in Sweden who have some connection to gangs. ‘We have never faced such ruthless criminality,’ said Anders Thornberg, national police chief, in a recent interview. Sweden’s laws go easy on the under-21s: a model, he says, that is an open invitation to gangland violence. ‘The model of organisation for the entire Swedish justice system is not rigged to face such extensive criminality.’

Take one court case this year: a teenage asylum seeker found work as a hitman, killed the wrong person, then went on the run. This being Sweden, his citizenship application was approved as he dodged the authorities. He was caught but sentenced to just four years in a prison – or something that passes for prison. As a teenager, he qualified for internet access, a single room, and security so lax that inmates can arrange external dental appointments. He used one to break free within a few weeks of his sentencing.

In the most recent waves of immigration, Sweden has let in more refugees and people claiming to be refugees, as a share of population, than any other European country. It is coping with the consequences. Last year Norway had four fatal shootings, compared with 63 in Sweden. In Botkyrka, south-west of Stockholm, a generation has been lost to gangs, says Paulina Neuding, a journalist who is writing a book on Sweden’s descent. Many of Botkyrka’s children, who are disproportionately from immigrant backgrounds, are easy pickings for gangs.

But Sweden is not alone. In Brussels last week, police and angry immigrants clashed. Belgian police said they arrested 64 people. Perhaps more surprising is the experience of Switzerland, not a country associated with rioting. In Lausanne, there were clashes last week between police and youths. Young people threw paving stones and at least one Molotov cocktail at officers. Swiss police detained Portuguese, Somali, Bosnian, Swiss, Georgian and Serbian citizens.

In Germany, where Angela Merkel opened the doors to refugees from the Middle East, the number of criminal offences across that country’s 16 federal states has skyrocketed, up by 12 per cent last year, with authorities recording some 5.6 million crimes. Incidents of rapes, sexual offences and fatal assaults all rose by more than 20 per cent last year. Robberies jumped 27 per cent.

In France, things are so bad that a night with no riots now makes the news. When the violence dies down, the aftermath looks ugly: this time we saw the looting of Jewish-owned businesses and the defacement of a Holocaust memorial. Plus ça change. Cars are burned, police assaulted and shops pillaged every day in France. In January, an Algerian man stabbed six people at the Gare du Nord, and last month a Syrian asylum seeker ran amok with a knife in an Annecy playground, wounding four babies and two adults. Macron has promised ‘no taboo’ when it comes to restoring order and has told social networks to censor content. Censorship is a weapon normally employed by totalitarian regimes, but Macron has a point.

So far, no politician in Sweden or France has offered a plausible solution to this problem, certainly not Marine Le Pen, the right-wing nationalist who is favourite to win the 2027 presidential election. Anger with the situation in Sweden saw the populist Sweden Democrats made part of a governing coalition, but they seem just as bereft of ideas.

Little wonder that anti-migration parties are doing well across Europe. The nationalist Freedom party in Austria, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, which last month won a district election for the first time, are all advancing. The Spanish Partido Popular is currently eight points ahead of the ruling socialists in the run-up to next month’s general election.

Common to all European countries where gangs are seizing control is the near collapse of the education system in immigrant areas. A British friend who teaches English in an inner-city high school in the southern city of Béziers tells me that one of her students, a gang member, was recently arrested for a serious assault. Her principal has advised her not to discipline her students lest she be assaulted herself. Some Swedish teachers report being told by pupils ‘Jag kan brösta en fyra’ or ‘I can take four’. The reference is to the number of years in prison that a Swedish teenager can expect for killing a teacher.

It’s the European way to see crime as an expression of social injustice. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist politician, has refused to condemn the rioters and instead attacked the police, describing recent events as an insurrection against inequality and racism. Nonsense, says a French journalist friend who has been covering the riots. ‘They couldn’t care less about the death of Nahel. This is nihilism. Nahel is just their excuse.’

It would be easy to put all the blame on  Europe’s current leaders. But it’s not entirely their fault that so many unemployable young people, many born to immigrant parents, have lost loyalty to their countries. Sweden’s gang warfare may have worsened since the 2016 wave of migration, but many of those now arrested are Swedish born and bred (the ‘Kurdish Fox’, for example, is from Uppsala, born to Kurdish parents).

Integration failures are coming to a head. The crisis across Europe is the result of decades of wishful thinking about how migration-related problems will resolve themselves. But Britain would be unwise to revel in the misery of Sweden and France: social disorder is contagious. The recent French riots seamlessly crossed the border to Brussels, with its own population of angry young men. It might only take only a spark to plunge Britain into an inferno of its own.

In defence of Australia

What a week it has been for cricket. It began with that scalding ICEC report on the ‘racist, sexist and elitist’ state of the game in England. This report was commissioned by Ian Watmore, briefly the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, as a kneejerk reaction to Azeem Rafiq’s accusation of institutional racism. The report was presided over by Cindy Butts, who has been an activist for Black Lives Matter and perhaps has an axe to grind. As it stands, the report is devastating for English cricket, but much more needs to be known about the way in which it was put together and about the credentials of those who did so. I have spoken since its publication to a number of people who have played and been involved with the game for many years. They have all said that this report does not begin to represent the game which they played. I am sure there are problems within English cricket which need urgently to be put right, but I find it hard to believe that the game is in quite the cesspit state that Ms Butts has made out.

The Lord’s Test Match started the next day and was surrounded by an astonishing buzz of anticipation. On the first day England’s bowlers wasted a good opportunity; on the second, it was the batsmen who kicked a colossal own goal. In the final equation, England had a day and one session to score 371 to level the series. The extraordinary Ben Stokes played one of cricket’s great innings. It deserved to win the match, but 155 was not enough and Australia move on to Headingley for the third Test, two matches up. But before the final ball had been bowled at Lord’s, the foundations of civilisation had begun to crumble. The ground, and especially the members in the pavilion, were consumed by apoplexy at the fall of England’s sixth wicket. Jonny Bairstow allowed the last ball of an over to go through to the wicket keeper and set off up the pitch. Alex Carey, the wicket keeper, then underarmed the ball into the stumps. All Australia appealed and after due consideration Bairstow was rightly given out. As it was the end of the over, Bairstow thought, if he thought at all, there was no problem, but the umpires had not called ‘over’. It is no good being squeamish about these things. The days when ‘it isn’t cricket’ held sway are disappearing. The swelling cry now is ‘let’s get real’. According to the laws of cricket, Bairstow was out. At this point Australia will rest their case.

Before the apoplexy rises to another level, it is worth remembering that although two wrongs seldom make a right, England and Douglas Jardine took the unsporting bowling tactic of Bodyline to Australia in 1932-33. There have been a number of other occasions too when the spirit of cricket has been dented. It is worth asking ourselves if England and the wicket keeper Bairstow, on a similarly frenzied occasion, might have reacted in the same way as Carey. These moments are driven by instant and instinctive reaction fuelled by an acute desire to win. In such a pressurised situation, is it wise for batsmen to be mindful that these things may happen and act accordingly? The hostile reactions of some members of the MCC when the Australians left the field was disgraceful and another instance of two wrongs not making a right.

I spent the Saturday evening of this second Test staying with friends in Hungerford and happily I bumped into Pete Burrell, Frankie Dettori’s masterful agent. He told me a lovely story of the 21-year-old jockey meeting the great England batsman Colin Cowdrey. It happened at Angmering Park, which was the home of Cowdrey’s second wife, Lady Anne Herries, the eldest of the Duke of Norfolk’s daughters. She was herself a trainer and Dettori had come down to work out on one of her horses. He and Cowdrey met at breakfast. Cowdrey asked the young Italian if he liked cricket. ‘I would rather watch paint dry,’ he replied. Cowdrey chuckled and said: ‘Come on Frankie, after breakfast I’ll teach you how to bowl.’ Dettori liked Cowdrey on sight and was keen to learn. Cowdrey taught him to bowl an impressive googly. Burrell saw all this happen and thought for a time about letting them know at Lord’s that he had found a potential match winner. As we know, Dettori stuck to racing, but any jockey who knows how to bowl a googly should surely be up for an immediate Stewards Enquiry. You never know what he might get up to in a mêlée around Tattenham Corner.

What’s there to celebrate about the NHS?

It’s a rare occasion that sees politicians put aside their feuds and rivalries to gather together at Westminster Abbey. These moments are limited to weddings, coronations, funerals – and the National Health Service’s birthday. This week the Prime Minister, the opposition leader and a sprinkling of royals joined together to mark the NHS’s 75th anniversary, singing hymns and giving thanks for a system that, according to the latest report, delivers some of the worst outcomes for patients in Europe.

The George Cross, presented to the NHS by Queen Elizabeth last year, was brought to the High Altar at the start of the service. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer gave readings, while Amanda Pritchard briefly traded her title of NHS England’s chief executive for honorary vicar as she delivered an address. The Dean’s sermon spoke of hope: not a hope in God, but rather ‘the hope that is the NHS’. But these public benedictions are increasingly clashing with private despair, as politicians come to terms with the many failures of the NHS model. The public policy area in most need of reform is also the one they know they cannot touch.

‘No one will have enjoyed that,’ says one former health official, familiar with preparing ministers for the big birthday celebrations. ‘The praise for “our NHS” has always looked a little odd. Now it looks delusional.’ With the NHS England waiting list at a staggering 7.4 million, and another round of strikes about to take place, MPs have been hesitant about spouting the usual platitudes about the health service. Still, they went to worship at the Abbey.

Who was the service for? It won’t do anything for the poor souls waiting for referral appointments or suffering after avoidably late cancer diagnoses, nor will it help the doctors and nurses subject to the daily strains of an understaffed, bureaucratised system. According to a report published by the Nuffield Trust last week, staff took an accumulated six million days off last year for ‘anxiety, stress, depression and other psychiatric illnesses [which] increased by 26 per cent between 2019 and 2022’.

Once, underperformance was blamed on underfunding. But the Tories have made so many cash offerings to the health service gods that NHS funding now stands at record levels – ranking sixth in the OECD’s recently published list for healthcare spending across countries. Yet the system’s track record for results remains dire.

The latest offering is £2.4 billion, pledged to increase the NHS workforce over the next 15 years. It may be better targeted than other cash injections in recent memory, but it’s not likely to make meaningful inroads into the current crisis. ‘We didn’t do things when we had the chance,’ laments a Tory MP. ‘Not that we’ve ever dared to ask for a mandate to make changes.’

International comparisons show patient outcomes to be mediocre at best. Even the Commonwealth Fund – the outlier study which tends to give the UK a shot at top billing – dropped the NHS from first to fourth in its ranking of 11 countries in 2021. As always, in its health outcomes category, the NHS was at the bottom of the pack. There’s a growing sense that something has to give.

There are a few brave souls willing to speak up to defy the consensus. This week former health secretary Sajid Javid called for a royal commission to look at other models of healthcare, as he not only calls the current system ‘unsustainable’, but blames it for poor patient outcomes. Meanwhile, the shadow health secretary Wes Streeting continues to make a name for himself by taking on the ‘vested interests’ he spies in the British Medical Association trade union and by condemning the NHS’s deity status, insisting it is ‘a service, not a shrine’.

Some Tories are happy for Streeting and his party to dominate the narrative – for now. ‘We don’t want a bunch of Tories out there making this case,’ says a minister who was pleased to see Tony Blair come out this week to make the case for more private provisions in the health sector. ‘We want to let Labour do it, and then we can row in behind.’ But others see the danger in allowing Labour to dominate the NHS narrative ahead of the next election, especially as the government looks set to miss its target of cutting the NHS waiting list by the end of the year.

Of Sunak’s five priorities, tackling inflation and reducing small boat crossings have received the most attention so far. But there is a gnawing feeling that focus will shift to the NHS, and that could be easily exploited by Labour during an election. ‘If I’m Labour, I’ve got my poster,’ says another MP. ‘A sick person on a sofa and a headline that reads: “One person in every family on the waiting list – that’s the Tory party’s NHS.” Statistically,’ they note, ‘that’s not far off the truth’.

Since the NHS’s last landmark birthday – celebrated five years ago under Theresa May – the Tory tactic has been to funnel more money into the system. But the cash seems to have failed to make its way to staff pay packages or patient care on the front lines. And even if ministers wanted to continue with the splash-the-cash model, they will find it increasingly hard to do so, as the government’s list of non-negotiable spending pledges has been racked up significantly in recent years. There’s the support for Ukraine, new childcare subsidies, and even the simple act of servicing the debt which adds billions of pounds to the Treasury’s bill, thanks to rising interest rates.

Already almost 45 per cent of day-to-day public service spending goes on a model of healthcare that is failing both its staff and its patients. ‘Labour knows the problem as well,’ says a former minister. ‘We all get that the model is broken and has to change. It’s just that no one is willing to say it out loud.’

This won’t be solved with worship services for the NHS. But spare a prayer for the patients and staff who will have to keep enduring this until someone speaks up.

Where’s Sunak? Dowden steps in at PMQs

Where’s Rishi Sunak? That’s the latest attack line from Labour politicians after the Prime Minister missed this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions to attend a service for the NHS at Westminster Abbey. He will also miss next week’s affair to attend a Nato summit. In Sunak’s place, his deputy Oliver Dowden stood at the despatch box where he faced Keir Starmer’s deputy Angela Rayner. She quickly brought up Sunak’s absence, suggesting it showed that the Tories had given up. Dowden – who has several years’ experience writing jokes for Tory leaders for PMQs – snapped back that ‘some leaders trust their deputies’.

When pressed, there is no Labour frontbench politician who seems to directly be saying that Sunak should have missed the NHS service (which Keir Starmer also attended) or that Sunak should give Nato a miss next week. Speaking on the BBC’s Politics Live today, shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth suggested that Sunak’s sin was to not suggest that the service started at a different time when his team will have first got wind of it.

Although Sunak and Starmer were both absent, the general debate was pretty familiar. Rayner went on the attack over Tory failures on housebuilding and the mortgage time-bomb. Dowden responded by arguing Labour would be worse for the economy as the party’s spending plans – such as borrowing for green investment – would push up inflation. One area Rayner pushed particularly hard on was the plight of renters, stating that no-fault evictions are up by 116 per cent this year. Dowden said his party is backing renters, having introduced legislation to strengthen their rights. However, the risk for the government is that rising interest rates lead to a situation where neither homeowners or renters feel the Conservatives have their back.

French racism is not the problem

Last week we learned that a woman in a park in Skegness was dragged into the bushes and raped by a 33-year-old male. The man had arrived in the UK illegally on a small boat just 40 days earlier.

Strangely, I can find little anger about this. The story was reported in a couple of papers but there were no fulminating editorials or emergency questions in the House. Jess Phillips hasn’t found room to grandstand about it. Nor have Yvette Cooper, Stella Creasy or any of those other Labour MPs who like to shake their heads in disgust as the Home Secretary explains that the British taxpayers can’t forever foot the hotel bills of illegal migrants.

The Conservative MP for Skegness, Matt Warman, described the rape as ‘hugely shocking’. Which it both is and isn’t. Every-one should by now be well aware that if you allow very large numbers of young men to break into your country illegally, this sort of thing will happen (as Germany, Sweden and France can all attest). What are you gonna do about it?

Personally, I would tear up the earth to find which officials in the Home Office, UK Border Force, NGOs and others encouraged, helped or permitted the suspect to come to this country, let him stay and later let him loose. And I don’t just want them to lose their jobs. I want them to serve prison time for aiding and abetting people smuggling. After all, someone let the attacker into this country, didn’t they? And then couldn’t be bothered to deport him.

Naturally, at this stage we have to say that not all migrants are rapists or terrorists. But if you have open borders and no checks on who is arriving, a certain uptick in rape and other crimes will inevitably occur. We all know this, but because politicians from every main party have presided over or actively encouraged it, the whole business becomes just one of those unacknowledged downsides of diversity.

In France in October the body of girl called Lola Daviet, aged 12, was found in a travel trunk in Paris. She had been sexually assaulted, asphyxiated, stabbed and mutilated. The person arrested for her killing was a woman of 24 from Algiers who was in France illegally and living with an expulsion order. And while there was political anger around the killing, nothing happened.

As with the UK, by now everybody knows the score. There are benefits to allowing ongoing illegal mass migration – like getting to feel all warm and good about yourself. And then there are the negatives – such as the occasional raped and mutilated 12-year-old.

Now a different killing in France actually has provoked reactions. This is the death in Nanterre of Nahel Merzouk, 17 and of Algerian descent. Merzouk was too young to have a licence to drive, but was careering around in a Mercedes when the police tried to stop him. He resisted arrest and was shot. In the days afterwards there were riots, lootings, assaults and burnings across France. From Paris and Strasbourg to Marseilles, much of urban France resembled a warzone.

Of course the media – in the Anglophone world in particular – has been keen to talk about the ‘victim’, his family and the horrors of police violence (especially ‘racism’). All of which explains next to nothing.

It does not explain, for instance, why these millions of North African migrants and others are in France in the first place. Why would they be if it is such a terrible country? There have been large population transfers between North Africa and France before. If the situation is so bad, why not move again?

The answer is that France is not the problem. A significant chunk of the non-integrated immigrant population is. They use the country without belonging to it. Moreover, many of them clearly know that as long as they say ‘racism’, France will be in fear of them. All the while, the chances of them leaving the hellhole of France and returning to the garden of Algeria are near zero.

France – like Britain – is one of those countries that we are always told people ‘risk their lives’ in order to get to. Once they arrive, we are then told how little we do for them, how terrible our housing and integration systems are. We hear only what evil, racist countries we are.

None of this – like the other responses to the killing – makes any sense. Let us say for a moment that you do think the police were heavy-handed, and that when they encountered a teenager tearing around a neighbourhood at the start of the school day they ought to have let him drive on, or at least approached him in a more kindly manner. But even if you do think that, why, when they failed to behave as you wished, should you set fire to libraries or other municipal buildings or smash your way into the local luxury-goods stores? Does the society that sheltered and paid you owe you a spate of shopping with violence? One business paper this week led with ‘Irate rioters in France looted high-end stores such as Louis Vuitton, Zara and Nike amid violent protests over the death of a 17-year-old boy’. Ah yes, those ‘irate’ people who head straight to the handbag section when they want to protest against police racism.

The truth is that France has allowed the law-breaking, just as Britain has. And we allow it still. We permit people to break into our countries, we put them up in hotels, let them disappear, and blame ourselves if their lives don’t go right.

‘What is your solution?’ I hear you say. Well, we could start by sending away anyone who is here illegally. But no politician in either country will do that. So we just have to keep taking the very rough with the not so smooth.

Portrait of the week: Teachers strike, French riot and dire news for Diet Coke

Home

The Financial Conduct Authority questioned banks about savings rates lagging behind the rising cost of mortgages. Andrew Griffith, the City Minister, was also asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look into cases of bank customers who reported their accounts being closed because of their opinions on such things as LGBTQ+ policies. Petrol retailers were blamed by Harriett Baldwin, the chair of the Treasury Select Committee, for not passing on the benefit of a 5p cut in fuel duty. A group of 25 MPs, calling themselves the New Conservatives, published a plan to cut net migration from 606,000, last year’s figure, to 226,000, the figure for 2019. In June, 3,824 people crossed the Channel in small boats, the highest figure so far for the month. Orkney considered becoming an overseas territory, like the Falkland Islands, or a self-governing territory of Norway, like the Faroe Islands are of Denmark.

Australia won the second Ashes Test at Lord’s by 43 runs after Jonny Bairstow, wandering out of his crease when he thought the over had finished, had been stumped by the Australia wicketkeeper. The England captain Ben Stokes said: ‘Would I want to win a game in that manner? The answer for me is no.’ Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said he agreed with Stokes. Three members of the MCC were suspended after angry exchanges in the Long Room with Australia players. Teachers went on strike. The government contemplated having to take over Thames Water, with £14 billion of debts; the company was fined £3.3 million for discharging sewage into the Gatwick stream and the river Mole in Surrey in 2017. June was the hottest on record.

Rishi Sunak promised to ‘train, retain and reform’ the NHS workforce under a long-term plan. Railway companies planned a mass closure of ticket offices in England. A Cabinet Office inquiry found that Sue Gray, who is to be chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, broke the civil service code by ‘undeclared contact’ with the Labour party last year; she has been cleared to start in September by Acoba, the appointments watchdog. Lord Kerslake, head of the civil service 2012-14, died aged 68. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the new head of the RAF, said he ‘apologised unreservedly’ for a recruitment drive under his predecessor that discriminated against white men. Matthew Scott, the police and crime commissioner for Kent, gave his verdict on e-scooters: ‘Seize them and crush them, because they are not legal on any public land in Kent.’

Abroad

Israel carried out a two-day military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, established in 1953; 12 Palestinians and an Israeli were reported to have been killed. Aspartame, one of the world’s most common artificial sweeteners, used in Diet Coke, was declared a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organisation’s cancer research arm. The International Atomic Energy Agency approved a plan for Japan to empty waste water containing tritium and carbon 14 from the ruined Fukushima nuclear power station into the Pacific. A US court ordered two companies owned by Robert Higgins to make restitution of $112.7 million and pay a penalty of $33 million because 500,000 American Silver Eagle coins looked after for customers were nowhere to be found. Meta, the owners of Facebook, launched a rival to Twitter called Thread, linked to Instagram.

After five nights, riots subsided in France, with only 297 cars set on fire on Sunday, compared with 1,900 three days earlier. About 45,000 police were deployed each night when protests turned violent in response to the shooting dead by police of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk in Nanterre. At L’Haÿ-les-Roses in the southern suburbs of Paris, a mob tried to set the house of the mayor on fire by ramming it with a car while his wife and two children, aged five and seven, were sleeping there; as they fled, firework rockets were fired at them and the wife broke a leg. A fireman died trying to douse a fire in an underground car park in Seine-Saint-Denis. China offered a bounty of £100,000 for the capture of eight exiles from Hong Kong living in Britain, America and Australia. Russia said it had intercepted five Ukrainian drones near Moscow. The US Supreme Court ruled that race could no longer be a factor in university admissions; President Joe Biden said he ‘strongly’ disagreed. Omdurman, on the opposite side of the Nile from Khartoum, saw increased violence in Sudan’s factional war. King Misuzulu kaZwelithini of the Zukus said that he had not been poisoned, as suggested by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Biden shouldn’t turn his back on Britain

You can tell a lot about a president’s politics by his foreign visits. Joe Biden’s decision to skip King Charles’s coronation in favour of a fly-by visit to Belfast and three days in the Republic of Ireland gave an indication of his priorities. Biden presents himself at home as an Irish-American with a charmingly unserious hostility towards Britain: ‘The BBC?’ he told a reporter after his election victory in 2020. ‘I’m Irish!’ But it’s not all lighthearted. As President, Biden’s reflexive anti-Britishness seems to have coloured his foreign policy. He’s shown a striking reluctance to reciprocate Rishi Sunak’s attempts to refresh Britain’s credentials as America’s great ally.

Part of this may be down to Biden’s own fuzziness. When he posed with Gerry Adams for a photo, what message did he think this would send to those people who lived for so many years under the threat of IRA violence? He may just have not been thinking. When he mispronounced the Prime Minister’s name as ‘Rashid Sanook’, it may have been put down to an understandable confusion, given the revolving door at No. 10. The occasional anti-British briefing by his advisers might also be attributed to the fact that he has so many of them, quick to see the world as good liberals vs bad conservatives, with Brexit and Trump in the latter camp.

Nevertheless, over the coming week Biden, who is in fact as English as he is Irish by descent, will be travelling to Britain. He will meet both the King and the Prime Minister. The visit represents another opportunity to put the US’s relationship with Britain on a more friendly footing. For all Biden’s schtick, Britain remains America’s most durable and reliable ally. It is Britain, once again, which is playing the major role in a US-led military campaign – in this case providing weapons and other support for Ukraine to resist Putin’s invasion.

Yet Biden did not back Ben Wallace, the UK Defence Secretary, for his Nato candidacy, in spite of his record of getting every strategic decision on Russian aggression right. Word is that Biden’s wife has persuaded him to back Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union president, who was famously a disastrous German defence minister. The Bidens espouse identity politics and so are eager to see a woman in such a role, even if supporting such a poor candidate shows more contempt for Nato than Trump ever did.

It is in Britain that Biden will find his most supportive trading partner in Europe, too. The EU is forever dreaming up ways to frustrate US tech giants; Britain has generally been far more accommodating. Unlike the EU, Britain has not sought to retaliate against Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act – a blatant piece of borrow-and-spend (and inflationary) protectionism dressed up as environmental policy.

Sunak has said that Americans are free to subsidise whoever they like: Britain prefers to compete on smarter regulation and a better business environment. But there is no denying that Britain and America are on slightly different paths. Biden has more in common with Trump than he likes to think.

Britain is seeking to build free-trade alliances. American politics is going through a drawbridge-up phase: a Brexit free-trade deal will not be forthcoming because neither Republicans nor Democrats are in the mood to strike trade deals. Both parties prefer tariffs and subsidies, building walls around the US economy. The world and America will be poorer as a result.

Since Brexit, the UK has successfully applied to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade organisation with Canada and Japan. We have set up deals with 65 low- and middle-income countries, through the establishment of Developing Countries Trading Scheme. In a time of populism, parochialism and protectionism, Britain stands as a country that wants to strike new global alliances and lower barriers to trade and co-operation. Biden, alas, is less interested.

In time, it will dawn on Biden and his Democrats that protectionism is no route to riches. The lesson has been learned many times before. During George W. Bush’s time in office, for instance, a government-backed analysis of steel tariffs found that they had caused a net loss of US jobs because manufacturers had to bear higher raw material costs. At a time of global downturn and high inflation in commodity prices, a new round of protectionism is the last thing that America or the world needs.

Next week the outward-reaching Rishi Sunak will try once again to do business with the inward-looking Joe Biden. The hope is that President Biden will be wise enough to seize the moment. In the past, meetings between prime ministers and presidents have focused too much on ‘the special relationship’, an abstract term that conceals as much as it reveals.

What’s more important is that he shows a true willingness to put aside his prejudices and do business with Britain. When Sunak turned up in Belfast to welcome the President to UK soil, Biden virtually ignored him, choosing instead to hug a random stranger on the tarmac. Again, that may have been an innocent mistake, but it looked rude. Manners matter in diplomacy. Next week, Sunak will once more extend the hand of British friendship to America. This time, the President should accept it.

Dear Mary: What’s the cure for writer’s block?

Q. Do you have a solution for writer’s block, Mary? A friend is the best company in the world, but I haven’t been able to speak to her for months. I know she reads her emails but they bounce back with the generic reply that she cannot respond until she has completed an urgent piece of writing work. I suspect she is blocked because this piece of writing is important to her on an emotional level but she is also the authority on the subject and only 5,000 words are required.

— W.M., London W3

A. In writing it is often much easier to correct something bad than to begin something good. Why not ask ChatGPT to write 5,000 words and email the result? The clunky style and inaccuracies within the robot-written take on the topic should flood her with competitive self-confidence as she makes her way swiftly to the keyboard.

Q. We have no off-street parking where we live in south London so my husband installed a CCTV camera to monitor our car, which we usually park just outside our house. However a retired neighbour opposite has cottoned on that this is a break-in free zone that he can take advantage of. He seems to spend much of the day sitting at his window doing the crossword, which means that as soon as one of us goes out, he immediately reparks his own car in our spot. How could we tackle him while still remaining on good terms?

— Name and address withheld

A. Take advantage of his likely technological illiteracy. Next time a friend comes over, stand outside theatrically waving them into the space as your husband drives out of it. Next go over and ask the neighbour would he mind keeping an eye on this car for a moment. Explain: ‘Our camera is car-sensitive and it only monitors our car.’ Then offer to help him set up his own camera.

Q. I took a girl I like to a Mayfair hotel for drinks. Two American men were ordering interesting-looking cocktails at the bar and my date asked what they were drinking. They told her ‘White Russians – they’re made with vodka and double cream’. She gushed a bit. Then we both moved to tables and the next thing was that two White Russians were brought to ours. The waiter indicated that they were courtesy of the Americans. We waved an acknowledgement to them but did not enter further conversation. When our bill came, I had been charged £40 for the two drinks. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself so I settled it but it has rankled with me. What should I have done?

— H.R., London SW7

A. Before paying you should have gone to the loo and from there made a telephone call to the bar explaining the misunderstanding and asking that the (clearly inexperienced) waiter correct your bill.

2609: Hard work – solution

The literary scholar F.S. Boas used the term Problem Plays (9D) to refer to a group of Shakespearean plays which seem to contain both comic and tragic elements: Measure for Measure (12/36), All’s Well That Ends Well (39/1) and Troilus and Cressida (21/22).

First prize J. Bielawski, Southport

Runners-up Alastair Aberdare, London SW13; Jeffrey Frankland, Storth, Milnthorpe, Cumbria

2612: Grounded

The eight unclued lights are, or were, of a kind.

        Across

   1    Daily column about introduction of alternative fuel (8)

   5    Cold, and damned unpleasant (6)

   9    Tumbledown hut in barbarous realm (10)

16    Drink is finally within reach (6)

17    Joins female on Med, perhaps (5)

18    Unclothed Yanks fled joint (5)

20    Shamefaced bishop found in boozers west of Slough (7)

22    Harry in pursuit of tripe, symbol of Britain (7)

24    Capone perhaps poised to import hard liquor (7)

25    Confirmed last of resources exhausted (5)

26    Run over someone stepping back (5)

28    Married friends cycling round old country (7)

33    Endless niceness aroused anger (7)

37    Spirit of low-down gutless ingrate (5)

38    Regularly moan and cry like a crow or parrot (5)

39    Monkey is in danger, he suspects (6)

41    Showman from India shocked Paris and Rome (10)

42    Concealed overdue books (6)

43    Extravagant faults we condemned (8)

         Down

   1    Spooner’s assured transport firms help with road safety (5,8)

   2    Slam German, half-cut in capital (5)

   3    Sought selenium in African country (6)

   4    Scoring hole in one, Gascoigne oddly dismissed golf (5)

   6    Tries again to practise, falling short (7)

   7    Some heart-rending hymns in small open boat (6)

12    Committed model who only dieted (4-2-3-4)

13    Extremely capable prop supporting rugby blue (8)

15    Virginia deer make tracks (7)

19    Awkward kid following every setter on the rise (3,2,4)

21    Rambling raconteur losing new suit in Brussels (8)

23    Way to stop rude Republican boasting (7)

29    Penpusher denying she scuppered union agreement (3-3)

30    Emphasise chance to banish primitive instincts (6)

32    Most biddable, try boxing in the morning (6)

34    See you in the north holding current Triple Crown (5)

35    Head of seedy scoundrel with fine dandruff (5)

Download a printable version here.

A first prize of £30 and two runners-up prizes of £20 for the first correct solutions opened on 24 July. Please scan or photograph entries and email them (including the crossword number in the subject field) to crosswords@spectator.co.uk, or post to: Crossword 2612, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.

Spectator competition winners: poems about procrastination

In Competition No. 3306, you were invited to submit a poem about procrastination.

Procrastination looms large in Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer’s hilarious account of his attempt to write a study of D.H. Lawrence, and it struck me as an excellent topic for a competition. As Samuel Johnson wrote, the tendency to put things off is ‘one of the general weaknesses’ that ‘prevail to a greater or lesser degree in every mind’. The assignment did indeed strike a chord, attracting a large entry that was witty and technically adroit. Commiserations to Alex Steelsmith, C. Paul Evans, David Silverman and Frank McDonald who missed out on a spot in the winning line-up by a whisker. The winners, which include Gail White’s nod to Robert Herrick, are printed below and earn their authors £25 apiece.

You say hither, I say thither,
Time will tell, and wait a while:
It’s in my blood, delay and dither,
Yet I’ll get there, tortoise-style.

No use jumping at each hurdle
While there’s time to shoot the breeze:
Allow the freshest milk to curdle,
Or wait for yoghurt, butter, cheese,

Besides, the thing may never happen,
And surely there is space to chill:
No need to copy Max Verstappen –
Energy is overkill.

Here’s a tangent, bright and glossy;
Move tomorrow down the queue –
Leave the gang and drop the posse –
Bother not with ballyhoo.

Bill Greenwell

When we find we’re in range of an unwelcome change

And decide that it’s wise to procrastinate,

We at once hatch a scheme and assemble a team

To examine the matter, then vacillate.

There’s a Chair, half asleep, and a flock of old sheep

Whose sole job is to wax hypothetical

Forging theories which say that it’s right to delay

While ignoring all truths antithetical.

Our resultant report bleats a reasoned retort

To all clamour for change from the polity,

While the drear status quo it cites perfect to show

Its eternal, conservative quality.

Please do bicker and prate, cry reform, get irate

At our complacent tone in authority,

For it helps us opine that our system is fine

When postponement is our sole priority.

Russell Chamberlain

We hit it off quickly, like Adam and Eve,
With a speed of attraction you wouldn’t believe,
And our first night together took us to the stars
Via numerous cocktails in various bars.

‘Amour!’ went my heartbeat, the call of a bird
Who has found his life partner, but sageness demurred.
A man doesn’t truckle. He plays the long game.
A distant demeanour sets women aflame.
Deferring proposals of marriage and such,
I ran the affair with a studious touch.
I blew hot and cold, turning fond then austere,
A lengthy postponement my central idea.

Alas, some flash Harry came into her life
Before I could make my beloved my wife.
He wined her and dined her and bore her away,
And that’s why I’m single and bitter today.

Basil Ransome-Davies

Up, my love, the lark is saying,
see the sun’s bright golden head!
But Corinna won’t go Maying –
she’d much rather lie in bed.

Many a maiden keeps her virtue
when the male goes off her scent.
Many a hero has no spur to
prick the sides of his intent.

Hamlet finds existence chilling,
hesitates to go or stay,
and decides to put off killing
Claudius for one more day.

There’s a tide in the affairs of
men that we must catch or fail…
but the shallows are the lairs of
many a happy stranded whale.

Gail White

The poem I write will blow them all away.
Perhaps, though, I won’t start on it today.
I’ll write exquisitely of joy and sorrow
As soon as I get down to work tomorrow.
My verses, which the world will not forget,
Will live forever, though they’re not born yet.
My lines will vibrate with life’s why and how.
When does their music strike up? Not right now.

Enlightenment will chime in every rhyme,
But at some other, more convenient time.
There is in all the canon nothing greater
Than this new classic I will turn out later.
My words will flow intoxicating, heady.
The tap will open soon; I’m not quite ready.
My poem will ring across the land and sea.
I’ll be inspired to write it presently.

Chris O’Carroll

I can’t think why I find it such a pain
to apply myself to every simple task
that comes my way; there isn’t much to gain,
so why delay my actions, you may ask.
My tax returns, again, are overdue
and car insurance, marked ‘to do’ forever,
subscriptions I’m intending to renew
this week, next week, next month – or maybe never.

I need some help to cope with my complaint:

I missed my wedding, couldn’t make the date;
If someone has a birthday, then I mayn’t
remember it this week, next month – but wait!
I have a competition on my list,
the theme’s ‘procrastination’: write a rhyme –
perhaps, for once, the deadline won’t be missed,
I’ll kick the habit, send it off on time.

Sylvia Fairley

No. 3309: Verse in reverse

You are invited to compose a poem starting with the last line of any well-known poem and finishing with its first line, the new poem being on a different subject from the original. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 19 July.

No. 759

White to play. Petursson-Damljanovic, New York Open, 1988. Which move decided this battle of passed pawns in White’s favour? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 10 July. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.

Last week’s solution 1 Bf5! gxf5 2.Kc5 soon leads to mate or a decisive skewer, e.g. 2…f6 3 Kd6 Rg8 4 Ke6 Kf8 5 Kxf6 Ke8 6 Ra8+ wins.

Last week’s winner Eric Lander, Bradworthy, Devon

Mhairi Black burns Oliver Dowden at PMQs

With Rishi and Keir giving thanks for ‘our’ NHS, that meant it was time for the deputies to come out to play. So at PMQs it was Oliver Dowden tasked with facing Labour’s Angela Rayner on renting reform. But the real highlight of the session came from the SNP’s Mhairi Black, who announced yesterday that she was standing down at the next election.

After Oliver Dowden spoke warmly of Black, a fellow member of the 2015 intake of MPs, the SNP deputy leader retorted: ‘We did join this place at the same time — I’m pretty sure we’ll be leaving at the same time.’ The whole House enjoyed a joke at Dowden’s expense, given the gains that the Lib Dems made in his Hertsmere seat barely two months ago.

You can watch the full exchange below:

Sorcery

Magnus Carlsen broke into a smile while pondering his 64th move. Vishy Anand grinned back at him, both players revelling in the tension and complexity of their game from the Global Chess League, held in Dubai last month. They were down to less than a minute each, and India’s five-time world champion had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat, with a sacrificial promotion which seemed to ensure a draw by stalemate. Carlsen paused before summoning some even more powerful sorcery, which left Anand only the narrowest chance of escape.

In the first diagram below, 59…b4 looks promising, but 60 Nf1+! wobbles the Black king off its ideal spot, and 60…Kd3 61 cxb4 c3+ 62 Kc1! is a dead end. Carlsen plays a tricky waiting move, eyeing up a role for the bishop in the complications which follow.

Viswanathan Anand-Magnus Carlsen

Global Chess League, Dubai 2023

Black to play, position after 59 a6-a7 (see left diagram). 59…Bd5 60 Nxf5 An attractive idea, which Anand probably expected to lead to a draw. In fact, passive defence was called for: 60 Nf1+ Kd3 61 Ng3! Kd2 with a draw by repetition. If the king chases after the knight, it can be sacrificed on f5 in more favourable circumstances. exf5 61 e6 b4 Obligatory, since the bishop cannot restrain both pawns at once. 62 e7 bxc3+ 63 Ka2 c2 64 a8=Q Deflecting the bishop, thereby avoiding 64 e8=Q c3+ 65 Ka3 c1=Q+ which is hopeless. The deeper purpose is to prepare a beautiful saving resource. Bxa8 65 e8=Q Now if 65…c1=Q 66 Qe3+ secures a draw by stalemate, whether the queen is captured here or on the next move. Undeterred, Carlsen nails down the bishop, hoping to promote later once the stalemate is lifted. Be4 An excellent winning try, though I strongly suspect it was anticipated by Anand. It is astonishing that 65…c3! was the only way to win. 66 Qxa8 c1=Q wins for Black, or after 66 Qd7+ the checks soon run out, e.g. 66 Qd7+ Ke1! 67 Qe7+ Be4 68 Qh4+ Kd1 and Black wins. 66 Qd8+ Bd3 White to play, position after 66…Be4-d3 (see right diagram). The pawn promotion cannot be stopped, but the stalemate idea remains valid, so Anand’s next move prepares for that. 67 Qd4 Now if 67…c1=Q 68 Qe3+ Kc2 69 Qxd3+ cxd3 draws by stalemate once again. But Carlsen has yet another ace up his sleeve – a knight! The Black king will be shielded from checks, and the second passed c-pawn decides the game. For that reason, 67 Qb6! was the only saving move, eyeing up the h6-pawn. If play continues as in the game with 67…c1=N+ 68 Ka3 c3 69 Qxh6 Ne2 70 Qc6 c2 71 h6! White has at least a draw. c1=N+ 68 Ka3 c3 69 Qb6 Ne2 70 Qxh6 c2 White resigns, as the h-pawn is too slow: 71 Qc6 c1=Q+ 72 Qxc1+ Kxc1 73 h6 Nxf4 74 h7 Ng6! wins.

Curiouser and curiouser: what does it mean to go ‘down the rabbit hole’?

Radio 4 has just run a series of programmes called Marianna in Conspiracyland made by its disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring. Prefatory remarks for one episode asked: ‘Do you know someone who’s fallen down the rabbit hole?’ I think this phrase has changed its connotations recently. The reference to Alice in Wonderland is evident. The podcast reinforced it by quoting a phrase from the book, ‘curiouser and curiouser’. In Wonderland, Alice had mixed feelings: ‘I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit hole – and yet – and yet – it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!’ The OED, finding a first usage for it from 1938, defines a figurative rabbit hole as a ‘passage into a strange, surreal, or nonsensical situation or environment’. One illustrative quotation it gives from a newspaper in 1997 says: ‘Down the rabbit hole again, and into the surreal world of City politics.’

This sense is supported by that quite annoying but culturally influential film The Matrix (1999). In it, the character Morpheus is ready to expose the Potemkin nature of all visible things: ‘You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.’ But this connotation of an alternative world has been weakened by popular use of down the rabbit hole as shorthand for the phenomenon of exploring an interesting lead so one hardly notices how time has flown. Someone in the Sunday Times said recently that he ‘once spent a week down a K-pop rabbit hole’. This relatively benign meaning is reflected in the name of a podcast called The Rabbit Hole Detectives, with the Revd Richard Coles, Dr Cat Jarman and Charles, Earl Spencer, who ‘chase the provenance of historical objects both real and metaphorical’. Examples are a cheese designed to host maggots or scapulimancy – divining the future from charred shoulder blades. They are scraps in the dustbin of history. Such a pursuit of the curiouser and curiouser is free from the inability to escape the tangle of tunnels experienced by conspiracy theorists connecting chem trails and adrenochrome.            

The Battle for Britain | 8 July 2023

How do you solve a problem like debanking?

As I sat down to write this column, an old friend let me know he’d just been ‘debanked’. That is, he’d received a letter from his high-street bank notifying him it was closing his accounts. ‘Following a review, we’ve made the decision that you will not be able to bank with us any longer,’ it said, not even bothering to put the word ‘difficult’ before ‘decision’. It contained no detail about this ‘review’ or why, on completing it, the bank had decided to close his accounts. The only thing he can think of is that he used to be a high-ranking member of the Brexit party. He was told he had until 27 August to make alternative arrangements.

My friend is a member of one of Britain’s fastest-growing minorities: people losing access to financial services because their bank or payment provider disapproves of their political views. The most high-profile figure debanked so far is Nigel Farage (I don’t believe the BBC’s report that he had insufficient funds in the account), but there are plenty of others: Claire Fox, life peer and former Brexit MEP; Konstantin Kisin and Frances Foster’s Triggernometry podcast; Richard Tice’s Reform party; Stuart Campbell, an SNP blogger with gender-critical views; and yours truly – defenestrated by PayPal in September.

Banks and payment processors are supposed to give 60 days’ notice when they close your account, but one chap I know of discovered he’d been debanked only when he tried to pay for his groceries and his card was declined. In our increasingly cashless society, this is a brutally effective way of cancelling someone and is bound to have a chilling effect on free speech. Like many of the most fiendish forms of censorship, it was invented by the Chinese Communist party.

The Free Speech Union has been lobbying the Treasury to stamp out this sinister trend and it looks as though Jeremy Hunt will do something. But will it be enough? As I understand it, the plan is to amend the Payment Services Regulations, prohibiting firms from closing the accounts of customers who are exercising their right to lawful free speech and requiring such firms to set out their reasons in more detail if they do decide to close an account. The hope is that these changes will enable anyone who is debanked to lodge a complaint with the Financial Conduct Authority or take legal action.

But banks and other payment services providers may simply ignore the new rules, just as they’ve been ignoring the 60 days’ notice rule. (PayPal gave me no notice.) At present, they almost never admit they’re closing an account for political reasons and instead cite nebulous ‘policies’ that often contain hundreds of clauses without being any more specific. I fear that even if the Treasury does change the regulations, companies will continue to debank, quibble over how much the ‘more detail’ rule requires them to disclose, and accept the occasional fine or compensation payment as the price of doing business.

The fundamental problem is that these firms have too many incentives to continue cancelling awkward customers. Becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion, celebrating Pride and adopting a ‘trans inclusive’ employment policy are inexpensive ways of getting good PR – much needed when you’re offering savers an interest rate of 0.85 per cent and charging mortgage customers 6.5 per cent. But you can’t very well endorse the ‘LGBTQIA’ agenda and not debank people who express their disapproval of it. What if Stop Funding Hate finds out? You’ll be accused of ‘woke-washing’ and lined up for a boycott campaign.

Getting a gold star from groups claiming to represent oppressed minorities also ratchets up your Environmental, Social and Governance score, one reason ExxonMobil has more ESG points than Tesla. And it appeals to the moral vanity of executives and board members, enabling them to tell their Guardian-reading wives they’re doing their bit to help the disadvantaged. Needless to say, these paragons don’t include in that category their office cleaners, who are probably earning less a year than their bosses pay in school fees.

Given that we can’t rely on politicians, the answer must be to adopt the other side’s tactics. That means pro-free-speech shareholder activism and organising boycotts of our own. By God, it’s been effective in the case of Bud Light. Since the beer in question announced a sponsorship arrangement with a trans activist on 1 April, its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has lost $27 billion of value. The only way to solve this problem is to make the cost of debanking higher than the cost of ignoring left-wing political activists.