Jacinda Ardern was the queen of coercive kindness

Jacinda Ardern has resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand. After a period of reflection over the summer break, she concluded that she no longer had ‘enough left in the tank’ to do the job justice.

Cynics claim she is jumping ship before the electoral defeat that opinion polls suggest she and her Labour party will suffer in October’s general election. That’s an unkind thing to say. It must disappoint Ardern that, after almost six years at the helm, New Zealand still contains such unpleasant people. If there is one thing that Ardern is all about, and to which she has dedicated herself as Prime Minister, it’s kindness.

As she put it in her resignation announcement, ‘I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused’.

Not everyone who indulges in moral self-congratulation is insincere. I suspect Ardern means what she says. During my brief and unsuccessful stint as leader of the ACT Party of New Zealand in 2014, I met her a few times. She was likable. Five years later, she responded to the massacre at two Christchurch mosques with great empathy and warmth.

Fakery wasn’t the problem with Ardern. Sincerity was. Politicians who genuinely believe themselves to be guided by superior moral vision are naturally inclined to authoritarianism.

One reason is that even the richest politicians, the likes of Trump and Sunak, have not nearly enough money to dispense their own kindness. They must force others to. Politicians have nothing to give but the gift of coercion. And the kinder they are, the more they coerce.

Government spending under Ardern rose from 36 per cent of GDP to 43 per cent. Those on the receiving end of the spending, such as the 55,000 new government employees, are surely happy about that. But those from whom the money is extracted are surely not. Being kind to government employees requires Ardern to be unkind to taxpayers.

Or consider criminals, to whom Ardern has been kind. Her government has a target for reducing the prison population by 30 per cent, regardless of the crime rate (which is rising sharply after a long-term decline). That’s nice for criminals. But not so nice for their victims.

When you have nothing of your own to give, it’s harder to be kind than politicians such as Ardern would have us believe. And in the attempt, they mess up incentives. Why study, work or invest when kind politicians will imprison you if you do not hand over your gains to those who have not? When resigning, Ardern said she was proud of reducing the number of children in poverty. That’s nice. But the welfarism that achieves this result also makes children conclude that they have little to gain by studying. Forty per cent of children, mainly from poor families, no longer attend school regularly.

The other reason the self-assumed morally superior are inclined to authoritarianism is their unavoidably dim view of those who disagree with them. If Ardern is kind, those who disagree with her are unkind. Why should the unkind be allowed to peddle their hateful ideas?

Ardern responded to the Covid pandemic by closing the country’s borders and confining New Zealanders to their homes. Some people did not take her view of the threat posed by the virus and the best way of dealing with it. This was frustrating for a wise leader doing no more than being kind. At one of her weekly press conferences in March 2020, she told the population that they should believe nothing about Covid unless they heard it from her or her officials, that they were ‘the single source of truth’.

This recommendation was not backed by legal force. But Ardern did seek to legally limit what New Zealanders may say. Her government has introduced a Bill to parliament that will extend the scope of hate speech laws, potentially making it illegal to say nasty things about religious people. And Ardern campaigns internationally to encourage governments to control social media companies’ content moderation policies.

‘How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists?’ Ardern asked the UN General Assembly in September 2022. ‘How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?’ All these dreadful people saying dreadful things that get in the way of Ardern and her ilk spreading their kindness.

With the exception of liberalising New Zealand’s restrictive home-building regulations, Ardern’s government has only damaged New Zealand. Perhaps the most profound mistake has been adopting the view that the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which recognised Maori ownership of their land and granted them ‘all the rights and privileges of British subjects’, made the governance of New Zealand a partnership between Maori and the Crown. Not only is this interpretation contrary to the text of the treaty but it violates the principle that all citizens have the same legal rights and eligibility for political participation, regardless of their parentage.

My only hope is that Ardern will have taught New Zealanders an important lesson. Beware politicians peddling their virtue, especially when they have big smiles.

Germany is paralysed by pacifism

Germany’s marked reluctance to supply Leopard 2 tanks to help Ukraine repel the brutal Russian invasion has very little to do with the feeble evasions and excuses offered by Berlin, and everything to do with the long shadows cast by German history.

January 30 sees the 90th anniversary of Adolf Hitler becoming Germany’s Chancellor, yet the 12 brief years of Nazi rule inflicted such deep wounds on the country and the wider world that they have dictated German policy ever since.

Another imminent anniversary – next Friday’s International Holocaust Day – commemorates the ultimate crime of Hitler’s regime, a crime that was facilitated by Germany’s invasion and conquest of European countries. This is exactly the same illegal act now being attempted by Vladimir Putin’s armies in Ukraine.

So it is extraordinary that the current German government does not see the exact parallel between Putin’s aggression and Hitler’s attempt to subjugate the continent, which triggered the second world war – and act accordingly in conjunction with its allies to release the Leopard tanks.

Instead, the coalition led by Olaf Scholz is dragging its feet and offering up a series of transparently flimsy reasons why even the tanks it has already sold to states like Poland under export licence cannot be offered to Ukraine to defend the freedom and independence of a sovereign European nation.

Forgetting the supine policy of craven submission to Russia and its dependence on Putin’s energy pursued by his predecessor Angela Merkel, Scholz is said to fear that the tanks will provoke Putin into ramping up his attacks in response – possibly even launching a nuclear response.

The sad truth is that the crimes of the Third Reich were so horrendous that they have long inoculated Germany against any form of military action. Even the possibility of taking part in UN peacekeeping missions in trouble spots like Lebanon and divided Cyprus caused agonised debate in a Germany still guilt-stricken by its own dark history.

As a result, the country that once terrified Europe with its nationalism and military prowess and launched two world wars has become the paralysed pacifist giant among western nations. Its power was so neglected that under former defence minister Ursula von der Leyen  – now the unelected President of the European Commission – its aircraft could not fly, its U-boats could not sail, and its troops went on an exercise toting broomsticks rather than rifles.

Whole generations have grown up in Germany since 1945 who despise and distrust armies and the concept of military force. They spent years labouring under the cosy illusion that war was an outmoded way of projecting power, impossible to imagine in modern Europe,  and that the country could hold itself aloof from playing a full part in preserving peace alongside her Nato allies.

Putin shattered that illusion a year ago with his savage attack on Ukraine and Germany has been lamely playing catch up with this uncomfortable reality ever since. The best way for Berlin to shed the shadows of its past is to stand full square behind a country desperately fighting to save itself from invasion and – without further equivocation or delay – give it the military means to do so.

Winston Churchill isn’t to blame for the Bengal famine

Sir Winston Churchill arguably saved civilisation as we know it. Had Britain capitulated to Germany after the fall of France, the Nazis would have been able to dedicate their entire force to the invasion of the Soviet Union, probably taking the entire Eurasian front. North Africa would have become fascist Italy’s playhouse, with the United States isolated. So it is perhaps no surprise that those who despise Great Britain, its institutions and values, have done their utmost to attack the greatest Briton in history.  

In the course of these attacks, Churchill has been painted as a racist and a genocidal tyrant who deliberately starved millions of Indians in the Bengal famine. Nothing could be further from the truth.  

When facing the serious allegation that Churchill deliberately worsened the Bengal famine, it is essential to look at the primary sources: what was actually said at the time, and what the actual policies were. All of this is available at the Churchill Archives in Cambridge. And the truth is very different to what is frequently peddled by outlets like the Guardian and the BBC. 

In October 1942, a cyclone struck Bengal and Orissa in British India, wiping out much of the rice crop in the region. Transportation of food and other resources were hindered as southern railways were washed away. The cyclone threw part of the subcontinent’s weather system out of sync, ruining the normal winter harvest in Northern India.  

Previously, this could have been alleviated by the authorities purchasing grain in the surrounding territories of Burma, Malaya, Thailand and the Philippines. But these territories were all under Japanese occupation. Constitutionally, the famine was a matter reserved to local provincial governments run by Indians. However, once the news of the severity of the situation reached Westminster, the Churchill administration did all it could to alleviate the famine. Churchill summoned the war cabinet on many occasions to discuss aid. Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain were shipped to India to try to make up the shortfall. The minutes of a 1944 January War Cabinet meeting show that from mid-October 1943, about 80,000 tons of wheat were shipped from Australia to India, with 130,000 tons of barley sent from Iraq. In the same memo, another 100,000 tons of wheat from Canada were ordered to be shipped during the first two months of 1944.  

Generally though, Churchill was struck with two fundamental problems: the shipping crisis and the Japanese fleet. Allied shipping was severely overstretched, and there were not enough ships for its current missions. Not only would these key ships have to be diverted from their objectives to send grain to India, but from April 1942 onwards, the Japanese maintained a powerful fleet of submarines and battlecruisers in the Bay of Bengal. These were a great threat to merchant shipping and were posted there throughout the famine period.  

A government paper for the Chiefs of Staff Committee of the War Cabinet, of which Churchill had a copy, demonstrated the grave Japanese threat in the region. Marked ‘Strategy for the War against Japan’ on the 1 March, 1944, it showed that the ‘estimated area into which a Japanese Battleship/Carrier raiding force might penetrate’ was devastatingly far inside the Bay of Bengal.  

From near the coast of the Maldives to South Burma, Japanese submarines and battlecruisers wreaked havoc on the East Indian shipping routes. Nevertheless, the British administration still managed to send about a million tons of grain to India between August 1943 and December 1944. Many of Churchill’s detractors point to declining grain being sent from Canada as evidence of him deliberately refusing aid for India. What it actually demonstrates is that Churchill was strategic – and sent grain from closer places to reduce any logistical issues and allow food to reach starving Bengalis quicker. If you read the full November 1943 telegrams between Churchill and Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, Churchill is clearly exonerated from the charge that he starved Indians in Bengal. 

In these telegrams Canada offered India 100,000 tons of wheat. Shipping wheat from the Canada’s West coast was impractical, given that Canada was already inadequately trying to transport timber goods for aeroplane manufacturing and Chilean nitrate to Egypt. And, as Churchill noted, it was a nightmare shipping from eastern Canada given that the journey would take at least two months. He instead had the wheat ordered from Australia where it would take three to four weeks to arrive. Winston, and the war cabinet, chose the most practical and quick option. Those who refuse to accept this and pretend that Churchill simply refused to aid India are completely wrong.   

Later in April 1944, a rather distraught Churchill telegrammed President Roosevelt, pleading for American aid. He wrote that:  

‘I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India’ and ‘by cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first none months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.’ 

In the same message he asked the United States for a ‘special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia.’ Roosevelt’s response was depressing – America could not divert any ships without hindering its military operations. There was to be no American aid.  

Of course, we must remember that throughout all of this, not only was Japan attempting to invade India but it was bombing coastal cities. This damage worsened the crisis. In December 1943, a bombing raid over the Calcutta docks caused major port backlogs. Accidents didn’t help either, such as when a ship caught fire and blew up in April 1944 at the Bombay docks. Not only was the port not fully functional for six months but that one explosion destroyed over 36,000 tons of food.  

So where do the false accusations of Churchill engineering or prolonging the famine come from? Partly from conspiratorial works which neglect many of the facts referenced above. But the primary reasoning is based on alleged quotes Churchill made in private, that Indians were ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion’. This quote though is actually taken from Amery’s diaries (the secretary of state of India). If one looks at the full context, Churchill was at the time under immense pressure, with the Quit India Movement refusing to compromise with the British government over independence. In doing this, they were helping the Japanese, as the independence movement encouraged mass disobedience at a time when Japan was invading the country. Can we not forgive Churchill, a man bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, whilst being ill for much of the war (he had a heart attack in December 1941, multiple bouts of pneumonia and more)?  

If Churchill’s detractors actually bothered reading Amery’s diaries, they would see that Churchill often had quick bursts of rage to blow off steam. Yes, these comments were awful and racist, but to pretend that this represented his view on Indians is dishonest. Winston was a paternalistic imperialist. He was condescending, yes. But he was not genocidal. His opposition to Indian self-government in the 1930s was out of fear of the Brahmins abusing the Untouchables. He was extremely concerned that premature independence would cause the subcontinent to partition, but Churchill on many occasions professed concern for the wellbeing and protection of Indians. He once said, ‘I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada or a great Australia.’ And recounted that, ‘The unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war…The response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.’ To paint Churchill as an unapologetic racist, responsible for the Bengal famine is a gross distortion of history. 

The insipid cult of saint Jacinda Ardern

Watching Jacinda Ardern’s departure speech, I reflected that even though I invented the word cry-bully – ‘a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper, duplicit Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political’ – in this very magazine way back in 2015, it’s never had so many adherents as in the past couple of years, especially in the political arena. From Trump refusing to accept he’d lost an election to Matt Hancock ‘looking for a bit of forgiveness’ from his jungle camp-mates, the age of the over-emotional politician is upon us.

And now here was Ardern – the Adele of Antipodean politics, every trespass against her public judged more in sorrow than in anger because she really did mean well– quitting her role as prime minister of New Zealand after five years and fighting back tears as she delivered her dying swan-song. ‘I am not leaving because I believe we can’t win the election but because I believe we can and will, and we need a fresh set of shoulders for that challenge… I no longer have enough left in the tank to do this job justice.’ I almost expected her to apologise for flunking out of her Vegas gig while recommending her disappointed fans snap up packets of ‘Cry Your Heart Out’ tissues amongst other hot merch.

So much for the crying bit – but what about the bullying? Ardern’s velvet glove concealed a pretty heavy iron fist. She promised to reduce migration, with disabled migrants getting particularly short shrift. Her Covid policy was draconian, preventing New Zealanders abroad from returning and punishing unvaccinated citizens. In a speech at the UN she stressed the importance of not letting climate-change sceptics have freedom of speech on social media. Her hijab-cosplay in the wake of an attack on a mosque was yet another grim example of a privileged western woman showing off by wearing what is for millions of non-western women a living shroud worn under threat of death, as we see most recently in Iran.

But none of this stopped her from dazzling the useful idiots of the liberal press after she became the youngest head of government in the world when elected at the age of 37. With her lovely shiny hair and a baby daughter born while Ardern was in office, coming out of the maternity hospital she and her partner appeared to be living the Kiwi equivalent of the Boden Dream. She was that slightly pretty, rather swotty girl in class who just might let you copy her homework so long as you promised to think seriously about becoming a vegetarian. If it was any other politician, her desire to escape a spotlight she seemed to find quite enjoyable as she posed for selfies in shopping malls might cause cynics to speculate that there was a dirty great scandal on the way and that this was just a politician looking to get the hell of out Dodge before the storm broke. But this is the hallowed Jacinda, who must not be confused with your average nasty politico when her public image seemed more in line with that of a religious leader; as the usually tough Beth Rigby tweeted ‘I’ve only ever seen political leaders forced out or voted out… but in Ardern we find a rare exception, who again shows us how to lead differently’.

But impersonating the Dalai Lama butters no parsnips with an electorate who are wondering whether they can afford the price of a pat of Anchor. In 2020 Ardern’s Labour party took more than 50 per cent of the vote – the first time a single party has achieved this since 1951 – but it’s likely that it would now poll less than 25 per cent. And it might be the ladling on of the virtue-signalling which has made former admirers of Ardern even more disillusioned than they would be with regular politicians. In an unprecedented act, she insisted on also becoming minister for vulnerable children when she became PM, stating that child poverty was the most important issue facing her new government. Five years later, family poverty is in a terrible state. In opposition Ardern was rightly appalled about the number of children living in cars; after five years of her government, that number has quadrupled.

Ardern – Big Sister with a side-order of saint – has been used frequently as a weapon with which to beat other unashamedly tough female politicians by Woke Bros who believe that females should happily surrender everything, from toilets to trophies in the name of #BeKind. As Ardern wrote herself: ‘I think one of the sad things that I’ve seen in political leadership is – because we’ve placed over time so much emphasis on notions of assertiveness and strength – that we probably have assumed that it means you can’t have those other qualities of kindness and empathy. And yet, when you think about all the big challenges that we face in the world, that’s probably the quality we need the most.’

Once more, the demise of a female political leader has made me feel something I’m sure I’m not meant to feel – and that’s nostalgia for the sheer inappropriateness of Margaret Thatcher, barging her way into the twentieth century global village and behaving as no female politician ever behaved before or since. Though I was fascinated by Mrs T, I never once voted for her – I pretended I did, but the tribal pull of my Communist upbringing was still too strong. But watching Ardern shuffle moistly off of the world stage, I do wish that Attila the Hen was still here; how no-nonsense she was compared to the trans-maids of Labour and the Tory dullards May and Truss who sought to imitate her style. I’d love to see her reaction when faced with the idea that women can have penises or that policemen can work from home. Or indeed, the equally outrageous idea that a woman who reaches the top of the political greasy pole at the age of 37 can be some kind of secular saint ­– rather than just a fresh take on a carpet-bagger, whose shtick is now revealed as wearing perilously thin.

Sunak fined by police for a second time

In the past few minutes, Lancashire Police has confirmed that Rishi Sunak has received a fixed penalty notice for sitting in a moving car without wearing a seatbelt. The Prime Minister filmed a video while touring the north west on Thursday which showed he had taken his seatbelt off, and a statement from the constabulary this evening said:

You will be aware that a video has been circulating on social media showing an individual failing to wear a seatbelt while a passenger in a moving car in Lancashire.

After looking into this matter, we have today (Friday, January 20th) issued a 42-year-old man from London with a conditional offer of fixed penalty.

This means Sunak has now received two police fines while in office, but thanks to his former boss Boris Johnson, who was fined for the same lockdown-busting birthday celebration as Sunak, he won’t be the first Prime Minister to be penalised for lawbreaking while in office. The public reaction to the lockdown breaches was much more visceral than it will be for a seatbelt offence, given the sacrifices people made in the early days of the pandemic. Both Sunak and Johnson were lucky at the time that the fine they were issued with was for a breach in which they were, as one of Johnson’s allies put it, ‘ambushed by cake’ rather than a debauched party. Mind you, Sunak was lucky in many ways that he was fined back then, as it might have been tempting otherwise for him to call for Johnson to resign over his FPN – and then today’s fine would have been rather more consequential. 

Sunak comes across as warm and spontaneous and interesting when he’s in groups of people or at the ‘PM connect’ sessions he has started doing recently. But in his slick videos, he doesn’t appear fully real, as though another way of saving time along with getting jets around the north of England is to deploy an AI Prime Minister to do the recordings instead. 

Tory MPs were pretty miffed by his relaxed approach to the ‘PM connect’ forum, given it led to him suggesting that people who want tax cuts now are ‘idiots’. Appearing dismissive of a wing of the Conservative party, always a sensitive beast, will probably be more damaging than being fined for a motoring offence. 

A No. 10 spokesman said that Sunak accepts his mistake and has apologised, and that he will comply with the fixed penalty.

Assisted dying is a slippery slope

What are your thoughts on assisted dying and assisted suicide? That’s the question asked by a Health and Social Care Committee consultation, closing today, that could shape changes to the law on euthanasia. Having had intimate experience of what can happen when a vulnerable person feels themselves to be a burden, I’m against.

My mother had Parkinson’s, and once she burst out to me that: ‘You’d have so much more time and money if it weren’t for me’. It would be the easiest thing in the world to push someone in that condition towards feeling that it would be better for everyone if she were given a dignified death. Actually my mother did have a dignified death, at home, even though, by then, she had to have everything done for her.

The notion that families must always have the best interests of their vulnerable relatives at heart is risible. Doubtless most do, but a friend who works as a health care assistant and does end of life plans with elderly patients in London tells me about cases where children want what’s best for them, not their relations: viz, the parental property; one lady begged him not to let her daughter know if she were dying because she was scared of her.

The other reason to avoid assisted suicide is that we’ve already seen how it turns out. There would be umpteen safeguards around any euthanasia legislation, but what has happened in other civilised jurisdictions is that the slippery slope has become a black run: within a decade or so, groups that were unlikely to have been envisaged as candidates for assisted dying are included on humanitarian grounds.

The Dutch government approved extending euthanasia for terminally ill children between the ages of one and 12 if the parents wanted it. No scope for autonomy there. People with psychiatric disorders are also eligible, as in the case of the 29-year-old Aurelia Brouwers who was euthanised in 2018 at her own request because of her chronic depression.

The euthanasia law in the Netherlands, introduced in 2002, doesn’t require that a patient be close to death. An applicant’s request must be ‘informed’ and ‘voluntary and well considered’; the doctor must be satisfied that the patients has ‘unbearable suffering without prospect of improvement’ and there is ‘no reasonable alternative’ to address it.

In both the Netherlands and Belgium, patients with dementia can be euthanised. Again, where’s the autonomy there? These are respectable, humane and civilised countries. But once the principle that doctors may wilfully kill their patients was established, the demand for extending the legislation has grown.

One outspoken proponent of the benefits of assisted dying in the Netherlands is Dr Bert Keizer, who worked for what used to be called the End of Life clinic. Writing in the Dutch Medical Association Journal, he compared the euthanasia laws with those around abortion, which were initially tightly drawn and later relaxed:

‘And so it was with euthanasia. Every time a line was drawn, it was also pushed back. We started with the terminally ill, but also among the chronically ill it turned out to be hopeless and unbearable suffering. Subsequently, people with incipient dementia, psychiatric patients, people with advanced dementia, (high) elderly who struggled with an accumulation of old-age complaints and finally (high) elderly who, although not suffering from a disabling or limiting disease, still find that their life no longer has content.

‘Looking ahead, there is no reason to believe that this process will stop in case of incapacitated dementia. What about the prisoner who has a life sentence and desperately longs for death? Or doubly disabled children who, although institutionalised, suffer unbearably and hopelessly according to their parents as a result of self-harm? I don’t believe we are on a slippery slope, in the sense of heading for disaster. Rather, it is a shift that is not catastrophic, but it does require that we continue to get involved as a community.’

That’s what happens. I’d say it’s preferable to have the law that holds in Britain: that where patients are in great pain they may be given pain-relief like morphine which may have the effect of ending their life, but that’s not the purpose of administering it; what old fashioned moral philosophers call the principle of double effect. I’d say one reason the UK doesn’t have assisted dying is that there is already assisted dying in the excellent hospice system which this country pioneered under the leadership of Dame Cecily Saunders and others: they assist you to die in your own time and more often than not in your own home, and they don’t kill you.

Do take part in the consultation. One of the things about public consultations like this one is that quite often they’re not quite public enough and it’s just lobby groups who pass round the details. So, when the outcome of the consultation is announced, the outcome can be skewed.

But bear in mind, when you fill out your response, that euthanasia has been tried elsewhere – and the results are very troubling.

Davos man is back in charge of the global economy

Davos was back with a bang this week for the first full-scale winter conference since the pandemic. And yet, the occasion marked something more significant than just a week of power breakfasts and champagne receptions. ‘Davos Man’ is back in charge of the global economy – and for better or worse everyone better get used to it.

Sir Keir Starmer flew in to pitch his pro-business plans for the government everyone expects him to lead in a couple of years. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was there to explain how his country was finally helping Ukraine, the president of the EU Ursula von der Leyen showed up to criticise the US and the Chinese vice-premier Liu He pitched up to signal a rapprochement with the West. The leaders of the International Monetary Fund were all there, and so were the bosses of the major central banks, just about every CEO and banker of any consequence, along with a sprinkling of celebrities to say something platitudinous about climate change and inequality.

The term ‘Davos Man’ was coined by the political scientist Samuel Huntingdon to describe a certain kind of international global elite who, as he put it, ‘have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations’. Its power hit its peak in the early part of the century, when the phrase was coined. It was a time when globalisation, and the rise of multinational corporations made borders and boundaries seem as outmoded as typewriters and land-lines.

The last few years, however, have been rough for the men and women of the World Economic Forum, as it is officially known. The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 was hardly a great advert for the freedom of capital, and, in the years since then, the rise of populist politicians meant its special brand of international rules-based governance was under constant threat. Even worse, the UK’s decision to leave the EU was a challenge to it. A technocratic confederation of nations run by a permanent civil service made up of people who go to Davos without too much need to pay any more than cursory attention to the views of the voters has always been the summit of the EU’s ambitions, and Brexit appeared to undermine that.

But this year the Davos men are back in charge. Brexit has largely stopped bothering anyone; the crisis-prone UK is hardly a great advert for it. The Biden administration is championing its favourite policies, from climate change to diversity, while state-led crony capitalism is in vogue everywhere.

The EU is strengthening its powers, and China is returning to the fold of connected, globalised nations, while the world’s biggest corporations and banks are as powerful as ever, if not more so. Whether that is a good or bad thing remains to be seen. The Davos consensus is typically smug, self-satisfied and complacent as its many critics never tire of pointing out. But in truth, the alternative was not a whole lot better. From the snowy Swiss slopes, it was clear this week that the Davos crowd is back at the helm of the global economy – and for now we will have to get used to it.

Inflation is coming down – but when will we start to feel better off?

Despite this week’s inflation update, broad consensus remains that the headline rate is going to fall – significantly – this year. One of those people is the governor of the Bank of England. Andrew Bailey has told Media Wales that ‘a corner has been turned’ on those price hikes, as it appears the consumer prices index (CPI) has peaked and is now on a downwards trajectory.

Bailey, ever the optimist, has a bad track record on these kinds of predictions. Having insisted for the better part of 2021 that inflation would simply be ‘transitory’, he and the Bank underestimated price hikes at almost turn, always playing catch-up with interest rate hikes. But while the double-digit inflation rate is, in part, Bailey’s responsibility, his predictions for inflation are now backed up by other major institutions. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the CBI, and indeed the government are saying the same – the latter is so confident about inflation coming down that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are actually trying to take credit for it, despite the headline rate so largely out of their control.

So the question now is just how quickly that headline figure falls, and how much more pain is experienced along the way. While prices may be falling, other data suggests that the financial impact of both inflation and stagnant growth is catching up with consumers. Today’s retail update from the Office for National Statistics shows sales falling 1 per cent on the month in December, as the cost-of-living crunch takes its toll. Sale volumes were down for both food stores and non-food stores, suggesting more prudent spending habits across the board (and no doubt impacted by the further rise in food prices, up a staggering 16.8 per cent on the year in December).

This sales dip may well worsen as interest rates continue to rise. Market expectation remains for rates to peak around 4.5 per cent, up from 3.5 per cent currently – Bailey said nothing to Media Wales to suggest another rise to the base rate wasn’t coming next month. With inflation still in double digits, the Bank remains under pressure to signal it is serious about tackling this, especially having failed to get a grip on the situation for so long. But this also means that the knock-on effects of high prices and rising interest rates are going to be with us for a while longer. In short: even if the headline stats move in the right direction, there is no guarantee people will feel better off.

Why an £800 horse can win the Cheltenham Gold Cup

Irish trainer John ‘Shark’ Hanlon recently asked whether he was mad to think his horse Hewick could win the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup. Since the colourful Irishman has never had a runner in the Gold Cup and since the horse in question cost around £800, there was almost certainly a resounding reply from both sides of the Irish Sea: ‘Yes, you are totally bonkers.’

I would be very surprised if the likes of Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead and Paul Nicholls are quaking in their boots at the prospect of taking on Hanlon’s improving handicapper on St Patrick’s Day (17 March). But I am not so sure that the affable Irish handler is at all crazy to think that Hewick does have a real chance of lifting this season’s premier title at the Festival.

In an interview with the Racing Post this month, Hanlon reported that Hewick had come back from a break at his owner’s stables looking stronger and ‘a million dollars’. He added: ‘Am I mad to think he has got a massive chance of winning a Gold Cup? If he gets good ground, I think he’s got every chance. We will give him a couple of bits of work from now until March, but I’m not going to run him beforehand. I want to go straight there and hopefully the ground will have dried out nicely by the Friday.’

I must confess I have a slight bias towards the horse because, when writing my previous tipping column, I put him up as a great bet at 33-1 to win last year’s bet365 Gold Cup (that’s the Whitbread in old money). Hewick duly romped home by eight lengths under a lovely ride from claimer Jordan Gainford off a rating of 149. Today, after some more top runs in Ireland and the US, the official handicapper has Hewick on a mark of 167, within touching distance of the very best chasers in Ireland and Britain.

Hanlon bought Hewick as a three-year-old at a sale in Ireland for 850 euros (less than £800). The gelding, who is now reaching his prime at eight years old, has never stopped improving in the trainer’s care. It means that he could provide this year’s Cheltenham Festival with the greatest fairytale story since Norton’s Coin lifted the 1990 Gold Cup at odds of 100-1 for little-known Welsh dairy farmer Sirrell Griffiths.

HEWICK is very much a good ground performer so, if the going came up very soft in March, Hanlon might not run him. He also has an entry in the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle, which it is not impossible he might switch to if the race cuts up. With this in mind, back him each way at 20-1 Non Runner No Bet with bet365 for the Gold Cup rather than the 25-1 on offer with other bookies without the NRNB concession.

At the prices, I can’t resist also backing ROYALE PAGAILLE for the Gold Cup. Venetia Williams will surely train him for this race now that her number one contender L’Homme Presse is injured and will miss it.

Royale Pagaille is no mug himself, particularly when the ground is ‘soft’ or ‘heavy’. He would have been third in the Gold Cup last year had he not made a bad mistake four out. However, he is a slightly fragile horse and he might miss the race if the ground is riding very fast. So back him each way NRNB too with bet365, at 50-1 rather than at odds of up at 66-1 with bookies without the NRNB concession.

With Ascot’s card already off tomorrow and Haydock’s meeting in doubt, I am not going to put up any bets this weekend. Indeed, for the next two months this column will often be looking ahead to the Festival, with more plenty more antepost bets guaranteed at tasty prices.

Pending bets:

1 point each way Hewick at 20-1 NRNB for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, paying 1/5 odds, three places.

1 point each way Royale Pagaille at 50-1 NRNB for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, paying 1/5 odds, three places.

1 point each way Corach Rambler at 20-1 in the Aintree Grand National, paying 1/4 odds, four places.

1 point each way Lifetime Ambition at 33-1in the Aintree Grand National, paying 1/5 odds, five places.

Settled:

1 point each way Hill Sixteen in the Becher Chase at 11-1, paying 1/5 odds, six places. Unplaced (7th). – 2 points.

2 points win Annsam at 8-1 for the Howden Silver Cup. Cancelled meeting. Stake returned.

1 point each way Eldorado Allen at 20-1 in the King George VI Chase, paying 1/5 odds, 3 places. Unplaced (4th).  – 2 points.

1 point each way The Big Breakaway in 20-1 for the Welsh Grand National at 20-1, paying 1/5 odds, five places. 2nd. + 3 points.

1 point each way The Big Dog at 12-1 in the Welsh Grand National, paying 1/4 odds, four places. 3rd. + 2 points.

1 point each way Grumpy Charley at 12-1 in the Newbury 2.25 p.m. paying 1/5 odds, five places. 1st. + 16.4 points.

2 points win Midnight River at 5-1 for the Cheltenham 1.55 p.m., with Skybet. 1st. + 10 points.

1 point each way Coconut Splash at 12-1 in the Cheltenham 1.55 p.m., with William Hill, paying 1/5 odds, six places. Unplaced (P). – 2 points.

1 point each way Sir Ivan at 20-1 in the Sandown 3 p.m. rce, paying 1/5 odds, 5 places. Unplaced. – 2 points.

1 point each way Lord du Mesnil at 8-1 in the Warwick 3 p.m. race, paying 1/5 odds, 5 places. Unplaced. – 2 points.

1 point each way Dubrovnik Harry at 8-1 in the Kempton 2.40 p.m. race, paying 1/5 odds, 7 places. Unplaced. – 2 points.

2022-3 jumps season, running total + 21.4 points.

My gambling record for the seven years: I have made a profit in 13 of the past 14 seasons to recommended bets. To a one-point level stake over this period, the profit of has been just over 469 points. All bets are either one-point each way or two-points win (a ‘point’ is your chosen regular stake).

The Sunak seatbelt row is a pathetic ‘scandal’

Remember when Britain knew how to do a good political scandal? Secretaries of State sharing showgirls with Soviet attachés. A member of parliament faking his own death. The Tories launching a ‘Back to Basics’ moral crusade even though half the party seemed to be getting their leg over someone who wasn’t their wife. Those were the days. You were guaranteed a good kick out of a scandal back then.

Fast forward to 2023 and what is scandalising politics now? The fact that the PM didn’t wear a seatbelt in the back seat of his car. The fact that Rishi Sunak was not strapped in while he was filming a little video about levelling up for his Instagram page. ‘Beltgate’, some people are calling it. Shoot me now. This has got to be the lamest, daftest ‘gate’ of modern times.

When it was first reported that Rishi had been captured not wearing a belt, I thought to myself there’s no way this will become a thing. There’s no way people will give a toss. Even the Tory-bashing left is surely not so desperate for that fleeting frisson of political rectitude that they’ll make a big deal out of seatbelt-free Sunak. How wrong I was.

The media are treating the seatbelt scandal seriously. Labour is milking it, naturally. ‘Rishi Sunak doesn’t know how to manage a seatbelt, his debit card, a train service, the economy, this country’, a spokesman said. The terminally online are calling for Sunak to get another fixed penalty notice, to go with the one he got for eating birthday cake in Downing Street during lockdown. Eating cake and briefly taking off his seatbelt? Typical Tory scum.

Now even the police are sticking their beaks in. Lancashire Constabulary – for it was in their jurisdiction that the unspeakable offence occurred – are ‘making enquiries’ into the seatbelt affair. This is beyond stupid. What a waste of police resources. Aren’t there burglaries and assaults for you guys to solve? To my mind, a police force ‘looking into’ a video showing the PM not wearing a seatbelt is far more scandalous than the PM not wearing a seatbelt. Can we get policegate going instead?

This probably isn’t the best time to admit that I didn’t even know it was an offence not to wear a seatbelt in the back of a car. Cripes. Sunak did know, though, and he has apologised for his gaffe. It was a brief error of judgement, he says. You’re not allowed those anymore, I’m afraid Rishi. No politician’s slip-up is too small or fleeting not to be turned into scandal fodder for bored social-media Twits and cops who want to hit the headlines.

It is all further tragic proof of British decline. We used to be world-beaters in industry, pop and scandal. Now we can’t even open a coalmine without the middle classes going into meltdown, we have to suffer the TV ad music of bland bands like The 1975, and where we once gave the world John Profumo and the glorious Christine Keeler we now give it shock headlines about the PM sitting in the back of his car. Get it together, Britain. We need a proper political scandal, pronto.

Has Starmer’s Davos gambit backfired?

Ah, the World Economic Forum: that annual jamboree for plutocratic banksters, avaricious industrialists and superannuated spongers to come together in an orgiastic eulogy to global capital. Sir Keir Starmer is among those in Davos this week as part of the party’s latest enterprise initiative. For where better place for a Labour leader to demonstrate his progressive credentials?

The purpose of such schmoozing is two-fold. It is intended to show Labour as a pro-business party, which has put the bad old days of Comrade Corbyn well behind them and make Starmer seem ‘Prime Ministerial’ by having him endure the tedium of meeting various satraps, flunkeys and apparatchiks which comprise the Davos elite.

But has this initiative backfired? Mr S can’t help but notice that Sir Keir seems a little too comfortable in the warm embrace of the global elite. First, there was the glutinous praise for the London lawyer from a succession of EU panjandrums over Starmer’s plans to develop closer ties with Brussels. Arch-Eurocrat Guy Verhofstadt said that ‘the West needs to come together around the areas Starmer mentions’; fellow federalist Andreas Schieder gushed ‘I’ve met Starmer and I can see he would be much – he would be reliable.’

It culminated in today’s i front page splash which roars: ‘EU wants Starmer to become British PM’ replete with a fawning quote from a Dutch MEP who declares ‘I cannot wait for Starmer. Everyone in Brussels is aching for a new relationship and he quietly is building trust.’ All this at a time when Sadiq Khan, Stella Creasy and others within the party are urging a return to the single market.

And now the Labour leader has also given an interview to the News Agents podcast in which he told Emily Maitlis – a woman never known for her Brexit credentials – that he preferred Davos to Westminster, on the grounds that:

Westminster is too constrained… Once you get out of Westminster, whether it’s Davos or anywhere else, you actually engage with people that you can see working with in the future. Westminster is just a tribal shouting place.

Westminster-bashing may be all the rage at present but is Sir Keir really saying he prefers the company of Jared Kushner, Klaus Schwab and will.i.am to his own party’s MPs?

So much for take back control and restoring sovereignty to parliament…

Sorry, folks, Donald Trump isn’t going away

Almost all of us can recite the reasons why Donald Trump’s political career should be over. We hear them again and again. He lost the presidency in 2020 after four exhausting years. His angry fans stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a now infamous day in American history. He lost his media clout after being banned from Facebook and (until recently) Twitter. He has clung to his ‘election denial’, as Democrats like to call it, and that makes all his political antics now seem petulant and tired. In the mid-terms in November, a fair number of the candidates he backed lost crucial senate and gubernatorial races which his party should have won. Even his supporters – not to mention some rich donors – seem to be losing faith. Right-wingers are turning more and more to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as their new hope.

Often dubbed the first reality TV president, Trump no longer seems able to command the one thing he prizes above all else – ratings. Reports from his nascent 2024 campaign suggest it is already a vanity car-crash. He looks a spent force.

The logic seems impeccable. The only problem is that it just isn’t true. People forget that Donald Trump’s life has been a long series of vanity car-crashes. He’s always been petulant and exhausting. Yet he pranged his way into the White House and, in doing so, created arguably the most powerful political movement of the 21st century. Trumpism with Trump is still the dominant force in Republican politics. And Trumpism with Trump isn’t going away — no matter how hard people wish it would.

The latest Morning Consult poll of potential Republican primary voters shows that Trump commands 48 per cent support. DeSantis is a distant second on 31, and Mike Pence, the former vice president who is regarded as a Judas figure in Trumpworld because he refused to ‘STOP THE STEAL’ in 2020, comes in a distant third on 8. 

Other polls have shown DeSantis gaining more ground on Trump and, yes, we have a long way to go until the first primaries of 2024. The overall picture is clear, however. Trump is the favourite to win the Republican nomination. He has been running for president, pretty much non-stop, since 2015. DeSantis’s name may now be widely recognised, but Trump is arguably the most famous human being in the world. In elections that are often decided by people who take almost no interest in politics, that counts. 

Trump has won the nomination twice — and he received almost 75 million votes in 2020, more than any presidential candidate ever apart from Joe Biden. He controls the MAGA movement. He has campaign architecture and grassroots fund-raising capabilities which any putative rival candidate would kill for.

Trump fatigue may be real but, in their desperation to see off Trump, most anti-MAGA pundits have been too eager to overlook DeSantis’s considerable flaws. A Floridian career politician, and a former military lawyer, he has none of Trump’s New York unpredictable charisma. DeSantis may have said and done bold things as governor, but he gives off an air of calculation. He’s much more serious than Trump, which may be to his advantage in these grave post-Covid times. But he is a party machine Republican in a way Donald Trump never could be even if he tried. That does not endear him to American conservatives who despise the Republican party machine. 

American politics is now a sub-division of the entertainment industry and, on that front, Trump still wins hands down. ‘Who would people rather watch?’ Trump’s friend Michael Caputo asked Alexander Cockburn of Harper’s magazine. ‘A wild, bucking bronco or something tamer and well-behaved.’ 

Yes, Trump’s 2024 campaign is already riddled with problems. Having declared so early, he has given himself more time to fail. His candidacy announcement disappointed his more hardcore admirers, who wanted more railing against the satanic paedophilic corporate elite. Trump even admitted to being – gasp – ‘a politician’.  

But then, far more clearly, so is DeSantis. Trump knows that, as the richest Republicans turn against him, he can do what he did in 2016 – pitch himself as people’s hero against the establishment choice. He will take pleasure ripping into ‘DeSanctimonious’ – just as he delighted in insulting ‘Crazy Hillary‘ Clinton, Little Marco’ Rubio, ‘Lying Ted’ Cruz, and ‘Low Energy Jeb’ Bush. His routine may be a little old, but people will always tune in to watch people in suits abusing each other. The word this week is that @realDonaldTrump is expected to start tweeting again.  

For establishment Republicans who want to move on from the fractious age of the Donald, the 2024 presidential election could then start to look like a horror sequel. Lots of Democrats are just as disenchanted with 80-year-old Joe Biden, but at present they have no DeSantis equivalent. If Joe chooses to run and his health holds, it’s difficult to see how anybody can stop him. 

A lot can change and will. But a lot can stay the same – so don’t be surprised if the 2024 presidential shapes up to the same as 2020. Trump vs Biden: the return of the Great Undead. You won’t want to watch it, but you will. 

How Marine Le Pen became the voice of France’s red wall

It sums ups the sorry state of the Socialist party in France that they can’t even elect a new leader. After yesterday’s vote by members, the two contenders are this morning both claiming victory. 

To be frank, whether it is the pretender Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, or the incumbent Olivier Faure, who emerges victorious is immaterial; the decline of the Socialists will continue, as I’ve been documenting on Coffee House for a number of years.  

In 2006 the Socialists boasted a membership of 280,000, a figure that today stands at 41,000. Last week the party’s activists spurned the opportunity to initiate real change by eliminating Hélène Geoffroy in the first round of voting.

A former teacher who was brought up in Guadeloupe, Geoffroy is a rarity among Socialist politicians in that she recognises why the party has been in freefall for the last decade. ‘We only talk to the most affluent, but little to the working classes and rural areas,’ she said recently. Her strategy if elected leader was to reconnect the party with its traditional base by addressing the issues that matter to them, namely ‘security, immigration, Europe, but also the question of work and the ecological transition.’

Clearly, this was too much to stomach for the party’s middle-class members and instead it will be Faure or Mayer-Rossignol leading the party, two grey technocrats who are committed Europhiles and don’t see much wrong with mass immigration.

And the Socialist party wonders why its candidate at last year’s presidential election – Anne Hidalgo – won a grand total of 616,478 votes nationwide. 

Marine Le Pen received 8.1 million in the first round, a figure she increased to 13.2 million in the second round. There was no great secret to her success: the leader of the National Rally focused on the issues that mattered to the working class: security, immigration and above all, the cost-of-living crisis. That explains why in the first round she came out top among blue-collar workers aged 25 to 49. 

Emmanuel Macron polled best among the affluent and the ageing, and the far-left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon – like Jeremy Corbyn in his day – had most success among the 18-24 generation, particularly the middle-classes in further education.

Put simply, Le Pen won the vote of men and women for whom identity still matters, the ‘Somewheres’, and she has become their voice, if not that of the unions.  

Earlier in the week Philippe Martinez, the leader of the far-left CGT Union, declared that none of the National Rally’s 89 MPs would not be welcome in their ranks as they marched on Thursday against Macron’s pension reforms. This was because of their opposition to illegal immigration. ‘We stand with the so-called undocumented workers,’ said Martinez. He wasn’t forthcoming on whether the National Rally’s 13 million voters should also stay at home.  

Not that Le Pen had any intention of marching shoulder to shoulder with Martinez or Melenchon. She’s in Senegal this week, ‘visiting our friends’, and none of her MPs were out and about on Thursday. 

Le Pen has said her party will vigorously oppose the pension reform bill when it is presented to parliament next month, but she knows she must tread carefully when it comes to street protests. She has styled the National Rally as the party of law and order, in contrast to Melenchon’s virulent anti-police rhetoric and the government’s apparent indifference to spiralling crime.This has not gone unnoticed; in last year’s presidential run-off 72 per cent of gendarmes voted for Le Pen.

Le Pen’s strategy during the strikes is to support them while staying above the fray, though this might become more of a challenge if, as some fear, the protestors start blocking oil refineries. 

She wants her party to embody the respectable opposition to the reforms, and let the left speak for the extremists. In recent days trade unionists have called for the homes of Macron’s MPs to be cut off from the grid, and Martinez suggested it might be an idea to pay a visit to the homes of the rich.  

On Wednesday one left-wing MP, François Ruffin, was asked in a radio interview if he condemned extremist rhetoric; he sidestepped the question. Normally Ruffin is more candid, one of the very few of his ilk who recognises that the left no longer speaks to the working-class, whom he calls the ‘lost electorate’.

Ruffin is an MP in the Somme department, once a left-wing heartland, but where now eight of the 17 constituencies have National Rally MPs. 

Fabien Roussel, the leader of the Communist party, also recognises the crisis at the heart of the left. Last year he acknowledged that much of their ideology has been captured by the ‘gauche caviar’, middle-class progressives who look down on the proletariat. 

‘The challenge is to go out and conquer the popular electorate that we have lost,’ he said. ‘I want to work at breaking the wall of abstention, along with that of the far right.’

Yesterday’s protests against Macron’s pension reforms brought over one million people onto the streets, and there will be a second day of strike action on January 31. Some believe that the opposition to the reforms will reinvigorate the left, but they are mistaken. A great many of the men and women who marched yesterday in towns and cities across France loathe what the left has become as much as they loathe Macron.  

Joe Biden’s failure of leadership

Leadership, real leadership, requires setting an example. As far as security is concerned, the leader of the federal government, Joe Biden, has earned an F- for security. His setting of a double standard for the handling and storage of classified materials drives home once again (Hillary, Trump, you out there?) that there’s one set of rules for those on top and another for those underneath.

I am a retired State Department official who held a Top Secret clearance without incident for some 23 years. Not once did I break the rules by violating my promise in return for access to the classified material I was privileged to see. I never left anything out on my desk, never took home a piece of paper, never brought a classified cable on the train to read during my commute. Even when I wrote my whistleblowing book, We Mean Well, about Iraq’s reconstruction, I was meticulous in not including anything remotely classified, even insisting the publisher hire an ex-CIA lawyer to vet the manuscript. Most everyone around me took the promise as seriously as well. It was our job, in the extreme, to keep boxes of classified documents out of our garages.

I still remember day one of my service at State, when some very serious people told us we had two jobs: protect classified materials and all our other tasks (economic reporting, passports issuance, run the motor pool, whatever). Notice the order: a mess-up on the job is usually correctable locally. A failure to protect classified material can have global implications.

To understand why this was far from dramatic, you have to understand how intelligence operations work. Intelligence gathering is waiting. It means collecting pieces and waiting, sometimes for years, for the picture to expose itself. No detail is too small if handled properly, and things of no use to a host country can be horse-traded to another intel service elsewhere. So we were taught to push aside the oft-cited excuse that something was over-classified or would not matter. It mattered.

The other thing is that intel services know people are creatures of habit. If they leave classified documents in accessible places once, they are likely to do it again. They and the places their Corvette travel are worthy of additional attention.

Every instance of a security breach, however minor, is followed upon within agencies who work with the data. At an embassy, for example, at the end of the day, one is responsible for clearing away classified materials and securing them properly. Later in the evening, but before the cleaning crews start in, a Marine or someone designated by the security officer walks through the entire building desk by desk, looking for stray documents. If one is found, it is seized and secured, replaced with a note saying what happened and requiring the owner to report first thing to the security office.

What happens next depends on a variety of factors. Minor first offenses get off with a stern warning. More serious missteps — multiple documents, higher level stuff, repeated offenses — are met with a range of possible punishments, including a three-day suspension. People who still don’t get the message are subject to the loss of their security clearance and sometimes job termination. It’s not so much that people are fired all the time (they’re not). It’s that in sitting there getting your butt chewed out by the security officer, you understand that what happens next is on a continuum of punishment. It focuses the mind wonderfully.

The element emphasised in these discussions is responsibility, one’s personal responsibility to secure all classified information. Your desk, your responsibility. Biden’s excuse — that he did not know there was classified material at his old office, in his home, his library, or his garage — reeks of a fourth grader trying to claim the dog ate his homework. The ‘I didn’t know’ line is the antithesis of leadership and the opposite of the call to personal responsibility every other federal employee is supposed to heed.

For those who insist there is a space between a low-level fed like me worried about securing a piece of paper and the president literally drowning in the stuff, one must remember that Biden is supposed to be a leader. The correct answer would be: ‘As vice president I had a lot of help packing out of the White House, and it looks like someone inadvertently put classified materials in a box that ended up in my new unsecured office. Nonetheless, I am responsible for what happened and take full responsibility.’

We’ll pause for a moment while you catch your breath from laughing. Of course, neither Biden nor any other important person in government would ever say such a thing, actually taking non-wishy-washy personal responsibility for some wrongdoing. Biden instead has listened to his lawyers and won’t even ask what documents were found. That’s not what leaders do, and that, above all, is the double standard at play here. This is not a document scandal; it is a leadership one.

This article first appeared in The Spectator’s World Edition.

Putin is running out of options – and shopping for more

As Vladimir Putin geared up to commemorate the 80^th anniversary of the end of the Siege of Leningrad, all the chatter pointed to a second wave of mobilisation to prop up Russian troops struggling to hold on to occupied Ukrainian territories.

But the Russian president announced no such thing. Instead, addressing veterans and workers at a weapons factory in St Petersburg on Wednesday, he rallied Russians with promises of an ‘assured victory’ and pledged that he was trying to end the war. It was, in the end, a rather anticlimactic message. Vladimir Rogov, the Kremlin appointed head of Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia had promised ‘a very important statement,’ before the speech while western and Ukrainian intelligence officials predicted another mobilisation drive. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov even had to weigh in to curb the enthusiasm, denying plans to call up more troops.

Of course, Kremlin denials will not prevent Putin from announcing a further mobilisation if he so chooses. It certainly didn’t stop him in September, when a ‘partial’ drive was announced calling up 300,000 people. But right now, Putin’s roller-coaster of drummed-up drama followed by fiery but ultimately insubstantial rhetoric is a symptom of a leader running out of options, while shopping for more.

With the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaching, the Kremlin is digging in for the long-haul, and Putin has been preparing the population for a long-term war. The president is focusing on reframing the message away from a short and tactical ‘military operation’ to a war of survival – indeed, he used the word ‘war’ for the first time in a statement on 22 December. To that end, in December he ordered the Culture Ministry to prepare a series of documentaries on the operation in Ukraine and the fight against ‘neo-Nazism’.

But this pivot to propaganda indicates a growing recognition in the Kremlin that the aims of the military operation are not likely to be achieved. Nor is the much-touted mobilisation really on the cards either. Last month, Putin announced that of the 300,000 mobilised in the previous wave, 150,000 had been sent to Ukraine. That means that 150,000 are still undergoing training. And even pro-Kremlin pundits are quick to point out the obvious: the government is struggling to prepare and, most importantly, arm them with modern kit. Its military structure doesn’t currently have the capacity to absorb more recruits, and sanctions are going to make it harder to arm the ones it has.

This may explain the prominence of businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner private military company, which recently took the credit for the capture of Soledar. But it also places the Kremlin in a precarious position: amplifying its message of ‘assured victory’ amid a growing awareness of the country’s lack of resources.

Are Putin’s comments about trying to end the war genuine? On one level, it’s a signal that the Russian leader has to send, to make the ‘existential’ struggle he is forcing on average Russians just a little more palatable. In December, Putin already raised eyebrows when he claimed Russia’s goal was ‘not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war.’ But on another level, Putin is sending a different type of signal entirely, one directed at the West, and one characteristic of a leader who likes to shop around for options. This signals says that this is a long-haul war for Russia’s survival, we have nothing to lose, but offer us an appealing exit strategy, and we’ll think about it.

The Kremlin doesn’t look anywhere close to being ready to negotiate with Ukraine, given their rejection of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposed peace plan. But the costs of the war are mounting for Russia, and as they continue to rise so the possibility of talks with the Kremlin should not be discounted.

After all, at the heart of Putin’s rhetoric is a reckoning with a reality that not only are Russia’s capabilities for mobilisation limited, but that the population may not accept another recruitment campaign. The previous one cost the country hundreds of thousands of people who fled abroad, and increasingly the wives and mothers of those sent to fight are starting to protest against the war. And while Putin may claim that victory is assured, he is also saying that Russia is fighting for its survival. That may be because Putin doesn’t have any idea what, exactly, a victory would look like.

Gina Lollobrigida and the changing face of fame

Gina Lollobrigida, who died this week at the age of 95, was known in the 1950s and thereafter for the kind of beauty which drove Italian men to self-destruction; and for performances in films which seemed to define a scrappy, energetic, self-possessed Italian womanhood.  

During her career, ‘La Lollo’ sculpted, took photographs, did a little journalism and maintained a chaotic personal and political life, in which both her husbands and her male executive assistants always seemed to be in their late twenties.

But she ought to also be famous for something else: being the subject of one of the most exciting and vital early experiments in television, a great short film by Orson Welles. That film, Viva Italia, or Portrait of Gina, has never received a formal release, though. It was censored by Lollobrigida herself, who didn’t like it. She thought it made her seem a little vulgar, a little too ambitious. 

Made in the late 1950s as one of Welles’s two great experimental pilots for television – the other being The Fountain of Youth – Viva Italia was a real step forward in technique. It was a protype ‘video essay’ in the choppy, amusing style Welles later used in the feature F for Fake. It is a collage, featuring newsprint, newsreel footage, clips from films and archive footage of people in the Italian film world – and an interview with Lollobrigida and Welles that was stitched together from separate sources. Welles never interviewed Lollobrigida directly, even though he seems to be talking to her quite affably in the film. 

The picture might not be to everyone’s taste. Its rapid cutting and strange uses of music might seem a little disorientating or smug. Certainly, Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that the would-be distributors absolutely ‘hated it’. But they were wrong to take against it – it is an important episode in television history. And Welles has been consistently popular, even revered, since his death in 1985. 

The film was lost for decades before being discovered again in 1986 and screened at the Venice Film Festival. Lollobrigida saw it for the first time, hated it and had it banned. She never changed her mind. But it’s remarkable that we have never had a formal release of the film purely on account of her dislike for it.

That’s not to say the film vanished without a trace. You can track it down on YouTube, in somewhat inferior quality. That’s where I saw it (and was impressed by it) a year or so ago. There were digital limits to Lollobrigida’s increasingly protracted bid to censor the ghost of Welles. 

There’s an interesting final coda to this story, which is brought into sharp relief with Lollobrigida’s death. After more than 60 years, the film might finally see formal release, maybe on one of the prestige TV channels or film-snob streaming services which like to parade artsy fare like this as if it were a grand rediscovery. 

And this is also a chance to reflect on an entirely lost world. Even if Welles’s film never does make it to release, the age of the super-secretive star, capable of blocking even favourable documentaries about them from distribution if they do not fit the approved mould, has long passed. The fact that these things persist in digital space and that one can bootleg this stuff in the YouTube era really does mean the time of big movie stars being both willing and able to shield their image is long over. 

Ours is a new age of celebrity – an ‘attention economy’ where social media fame is as much a money-spinner as hit singles and high-grossing films or roles in prestigious TV dramas. Attention is the thing that matters most, not selectivity. TikTok stars such as Bella Poarch go from obscurity to instant-superstardom on the basis of moving their heads a little in time with songs – and travel from that to a manufactured career as a pop star almost as quickly. 

Even for established names, it seems the new celebrity path is one of lugubrious oversharing, press junkets and constant posting online. Will Smith tried to become the face of YouTube (before he slapped a comedian at the Oscars), while his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, hosted a confessional video series on Facebook offering the kind of self-exposure that would make Prince Harry blush. No wonder that when Smith released an all-too-revealing autobiography a while ago, even celebrity-obsessed websites such as BuzzFeed said (in a headline since changed): ‘We know too much about Will Smith now.’

Lollobrigida relished attention, but it had to be the right kind of attention. It had to reflect her image as vital and fiery, beautiful and clever, but also modest. The fact that this was impossible to square with her lifestyle didn’t matter to her. Those simply were her conditions.  

Egomania has not disappeared among celebrities. But as in so many areas, attention is now a volume business, not a quality one. Exposure is money, and essential for survival. There’s no room to worry all that much about what it means. 

London’s best bakeries

If anyone knows how to do winter, it’s the Scandinavians. The concept of snuggling up with a steaming mug of something caffeinated and a buttery pastry is at the heart of their culture, from the Danish concept of hygge (cosiness – often involving sugar and carbs) to the Swedish ritual of fika (taking time for coffee and cake). Take a leaf out of their book and make a beeline for these five bakeries, which are sure to put a smile on your face this January. 

Pophams Bakery, London Fields 

Every Saturday, rain or shine, a jolly queue wiggles around the al fresco tables outside Pophams and into the street. London Fields is not short of places for coffee and pastries, but Pophams is a cut above the rest – and the queue shows it. 

The bakery was founded by Ollie Gold, whose previous career catering for Formula 1 teams is reflected in the meticulous attention to detail in the food. The day starts with perfectly laminated pastries, their folds as crisp as laundry in a five-star hotel. The bacon swirl drips in maple syrup and biting into the plaited cardamom bun releases intoxicating wafts like an exotic spice bazaar. 

For something savoury, you’re better off arriving from 11:30 a.m., when oozy toasties and steamy soups with piles of sourdough appear. Flavours vary but if the jalapeño-cream cheese melt is on the menu, count your lucky stars.  

Indoors tables are limited, and although the local clientele is friendly, the atmosphere takes on a hint of The Hunger Games when people are prowling for a seat. Coffees cost about £3 and pastries range from £2.50-£6 (some are enormous, so consider sharing). Pophams also has outposts in Islington and Victoria Park.

Karma Bread, Hampstead 

Hampstead is right in London’s Jewish heartlands, so it should come as little surprise that Tami Isaacs Pearce, who runs Karma Bread, is known as the Challah Queen. Pearce started baking nine years ago and quickly began honing her skills in braiding and coiling this spongy brioche-like loaf as so many Jewish customers were asking for it. She and her team now make more than 800 challah breads on Fridays alone (in time for the Sabbath) and have supplied everyone from La Fromagerie to Selfridges. 

The bakery also offers rye and sourdough loaves as well as sweet treats from brownies to babka, and a banging brunch. The three-cheese toastie (around £7.50) is an addictive molten mess made using Pearce’s dad’s secret recipe. 

The cosy Hampstead bakery has just six or so tables, so arrive early or be prepared to take away. Pearce plans to open another bakery within the next six months – watch this space. 

Miel Bakery, Fitzrovia 

Miel is the French patisserie of fairytales. A demure teal shop front hidden away by Warren Street station reveals a cornucopia where Paris-Brests burst at the proverbial seams with praline cream, chocolate tarts shine like Lake Superior in the sunshine and petite madeleines smile sweetly at you. It is all très, très chic. Expect no less from the well-heeled Fitzrovia clientele. 

And as with any self-respecting French patisserie, quality is everything. The butter is shipped in from Poitou-Charentes (where France’s top pastry chefs get theirs from); the flour comes straight from the mills of Normandy; and the chocolate is Valrhona – a French brand making cocoa-based magic in the village of Tain-l’Hermitage since 1922. 

Miel was founded by Shaheen Peerbhai – a pastry chef who trained in France at institutions including Le Cordon Bleu and Alain Ducasse. A true taste of France in London.  

Dusty Knuckle, Dalston 

One word: sandwiches. For a place that prides itself on its sourdough bread, it might surprise you that Dusty Knuckle’s famous sandwiches are more filling than bread. But, my, what fillings. Last month’s Christmas special – sweet roasted carrots dripping in tahini with a bright sumac-cranberry sauce, charred sprouts and more – was the perfect mix of pure comfort and refreshing zing. It’s been reinvented for January with beetroots and green sauce stepping in for cranberries and sprouts. 

The sweet pastries are similarly inventive. Think pickled blackberry compote mixed with almond crème pâtissière exploding out of a croissant dough shell.  

Dusty Knuckle has outposts in Dalston and Harringay, with the latter also open for wood-fired pizza nights from Thursday to Saturday. You can pre-order sandwiches to pick up from Tuesday to Friday, too, so no stressing that your favourite filling will be sold out. 

Willy’s Pies, Hackney 

To say Willy’s Pies has a cult following would be an understatement. Its delivery service (which has almost 30,000 Instagram followers) was set up by the eponymous Will Lewis during lockdown as a love letter to the pie – an English art form he felt was dying out in the South. Pretty quickly the pies were selling out within a couple of hours – and the success has continued to grow. Every pie is still made by Will, who has worked in top London restaurants from Brat to St John.

Fillings come in refreshingly generous portions. A celeriac, parsnip and raclette number oozes with cheese while the current special – slow-cooked beef in spiced black lentils and burnt olive oil – seems to melt away into pure flavour when you bite in.  

Pies cost around £13 and feed two. You can also order them frozen and buy in bulk, with free delivery for orders over £50. Alternatively you can order to pick up from Willy’s shed at Netil Market in London Fields, or visit one of various stockists around London. 

What are your favourite bakeries? Share your recommendations below.

Lumberjacks know the secret of happiness

The results are in and nature (i.e. God) wins again. A Bureau of Labour Statistics survey in the US has found that lumberjacks and farmers are the happiest, least stressed and most fulfilled workers, further proving that everything we need to be joyful and satisfied in this life is not man-made. Nor does it have much, if anything, in common with the prevailing culture.

A Washington Post analysis of the survey noted that ‘The most meaningful and happiness-inducing activities were religious and spiritual, followed by ‘the second-happiest activity – sports, exercise and recreation’.

I am fond of harping about how a godless society is a miserable one. Ericka Andersen noted in USA Today last year how ‘broad-based evidence demonstrates that attendance at worship services is indispensable to a happy, generous, and flourishing society’. Yet despite resounding proof of religion’s benefits, American church attendance fell below 50 per cent for the first time last year, according to Gallup.

The health benefits of time spent outdoors are also well known (as is the zest for life inherent in the life of a lumberjack, as elucidated by Monty Python). As our attention spans continue to shrink, research shows that ‘going outdoors and spending time in nature can help to improve attention span in as little as 20 minutes’. Nature also reduces stress, boosts mood and engages all the senses at once (I’m pretty sure sawdust is the best smell in the world). In my limited experience with virtual reality, the only senses that were engaged were my eyes and the part of my brain that induces motion sickness.

It’s the same with sports, exercise and recreation. For 12 or more of our formative years, we had it drilled into us to ‘eat healthily and exercise’. Physical education was mandatory in school. We know what to do to be our healthiest, happiest selves. But we’re ‘lookin’ for [joy] in all the wrong places’, ignoring the obvious needs of our species as they are no longer in front of our eyes.

As society becomes softer and more entitled and as we slog further from our ancestral roots, we’re more inclined to dismiss the simple, unchanging truths about mankind: that the earth was made for us, and we were made to be in and of the earth.

Technology isn’t all bad (though I lean more toward Luddism with each passing day), but it’s meant to enhance our existence, not consume it. What I find most intriguing about the Post’s reporting on the Labour Statistics study is that lumberjacks and those working in agriculture also reported the highest levels of pain on the job.

In a day and age in which much of life’s pursuits are aimed at keeping suffering to a minimum – you needn’t ever risk hunger pangs again with Deliveroo, or endure a dull moment with social media – we are also more depressed, anxious and unhappy than we’ve been in decades. Our life expectancy has dropped, too.

The thing is, you can’t improve on God’s design. The answers to all our human problems have existed for eternity, and no number of apps, weight loss pills, Netflix binges or instant gratification ‘likes’ will ever replace the simple reality that the lumberjacks and farmers know better than anyone: that pain and suffering, hard work and sacrifice are necessary and fruitful when applied to a noble end.

And now to sound like an old grandpa: nothing beats fresh air and good old-fashioned manual labour. Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) might view trade jobs as icky (NPR reports that in the US, the application rate for young people seeking technical jobs – such as plumbing, building and electrical work – dropped by 49 per cent in 2022 compared to 2020), but the benefits of this type of work abound. Besides paying well generally, job satisfaction among tradespeople is extremely high (83 per cent, per SCI Texas). There are obviously downsides to a physically demanding job, but to be so disconnected from the straightforward, hard outdoor work inherent in our heritage for too long has devastating effects, which are easy to see.

Of course, this is not to say that everyone needs to toss their keyboards out of the window and go all George Washington on their nearest forest. But we ought to be incorporating much more outdoor manual labour into our daily lives. Walking in the woods – what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku, or ‘forest bathing’ — mowing your lawn, splitting some firewood, hunting, fishing, camping, growing vegetables in a garden, any sort of pioneer work that produces callouses does wonders for the mind, body and soul. Mastering a task like one of these, particularly one that could further one’s survival, is the best feeling in the world. As the Center for Growth points out, physical labour provides an extra shot of endorphins that ‘feels like a natural high’.

Speaking of saving society, Piedmont Healthcare tells us that it also just so happens that lifting heavy things is ‘the best exercise to boost testosterone’. And who wouldn’t argue we need a little more of that?

A version of this article was originally published in The Spectator’s World edition.

Jacinda Ardern over-promised and under-delivered

And just like that, she’s gone. In one of the biggest shocks to hit New Zealand politics since that late night in 1984 when a clearly inebriated Robert Muldoon called a doomed snap election, Jacinda Ardern has announced her resignation as New Zealand prime minister after five years in power. 

Some may argue that she is ‘getting out at the top’. But anyone with serious knowledge of New Zealand politics can recognise the sight of a prime minister getting out before an election they feel they are unable to win. Kiwi political leaders (as with our cousins in Australia) have a proud tradition of leaving office (either voluntarily or not) if defeat appears to be on the horizon. 

And there are certainly clouds on the horizon for the Kiwi Labour party. After sky high approval ratings for much of Ardern’s premiership, the last 12 months have seen the party’s popularity crash. Even her own personal brand has taken a major knock, with her personal popularity slipping from 46 per cent at the last general election into negative territory for the first time this month. 

This fall in support has also been reflected in party polling and by-election results. In 2020 Ardern led the centre-left Labour party to more than 50 per cent of the vote, the first time a single party has achieved this since 1951. Since then, the decline has been impressive, even compared with the British Conservative party’s recent efforts to turn off the electorate. Polling support for Labour has now shrunk as low as 25 per cent. You don’t need to be a political analyst to see the impact of this drop.

If you had any doubts then the Hamilton West by-election should put them to bed. The bellwether seat saw the Labour vote fall by 22 per cent and the centre-right National party make its first gain in a by-election since 1985 – only its second since 1946. 

The assumption by many outside New Zealand is that this reflects growing opposition to the government’s Covid policy. New Zealand was held up, for much of the pandemic, as a success story. By shutting the borders and implementing far more draconian policies than Britain (and for far longer), Covid-19 was stopped in its tracks on multiple occasions. New Zealand saw a comparatively low rate of Covid deaths (469 per million people), less than a fifth of the rate of British deaths, although at significant economic, educational and personal cost. 

Yet, even in November 2022 public support for New Zealand’s Covid response was 57 per cent, still more than double the percentage who disapproved. Instead, the failure to deliver both Covid and non-Covid policies has been the catalyst for Jacinda’s waning support. On issue after issue the Labour government showed itself unable to provide effective policy solutions to the major problems facing the country. 

When Ardern was elected in 2017, she not only took on the role of prime minister, but also minister for vulnerable children. She claimed at the time that child poverty was the number one issue facing her government. Yet today, according to the head of KidsCan (one of the biggest child poverty charities in New Zealand), ‘poverty is the worst it’s [ever] been for families’. 

Much like in parts of the UK, this is being driven by skyrocketing housing costs. The average cost of a home in Auckland – New Zealand’s biggest city and economic capital – is now the equivalent of £700,000. In London, a home costs something like 15 times the average salary. In Auckland that ratio is 35 times. 

The government response to high housing prices was Kiwibuild, a (planned) massive new house building project that would build 100,000 homes over ten years. According to the latest released figures, around 1,500 have been built. Last year, Megan Woods, the housing minister, promised a supercharged effort to build 1,000 houses a month. Three months after the announcement, eight were completed or under construction.

This failure has had real, and painful consequences for those areas the prime minister claimed to care about the most. When in opposition, Jacinda Ardern said that ‘kids living in cars…is not a sign of care’. The number of people living in their cars has quadrupled during the past five years. 

The list goes on. On climate change, transport infrastructure, and even tree planting, the Ardern Government over-promised and under-delivered. 

Many who know Jacinda consider her a genuinely nice person who means well. In government she has had a child and had her wedding plans turned into a political football. There is likely a lot of truth in the fact she says that she wants to step away to regain a family life. But as she leaves the political stage, history will remember her time in office as evidence that one cannot govern with good intentions alone. 

The unhinged environmentalism of Al Gore

Lucky old Americans. They only had to put up with one fruitcake as president, in Donald Trump. It could have been worse. But for a few hanging chads in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, they could have ended up with Al Gore. 

It isn’t just the hanging chads, though, that have become unhinged, but Gore himself. In an extraordinary speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, an increasingly crimson Gore angrily berated the rest of the world – Greta Thunberg and other youthful activists excepted – for failing to realise just how close we are to climate apocalypse. ‘People are familiar with the thin blue line which astronauts bring back in their pictures from space,’ he began. ‘That’s the part of the atmosphere which has the oxygen and it’s only 5 to 7 km thick. That’s what we are using as an open sewer.’   

Actually, the troposphere is twice that thick, and there is plenty of oxygen in the much-thicker stratosphere which lies above it. If there wasn’t, Gore would never have made it to Davos – his jet would have plunged to the ground as its engines spluttered and died. But let’s leave that aside.

Gore went on to claim that the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere was trapping as much heat ‘as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima bombs released on Earth every day. That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts and melting the ice’. His Hiroshima comparison seems to have come from a calculation made by the Guardian, and others, of the warming of the oceans in a single year.

But the problem with Hiroshima, needless to say, wasn’t so much the amount of energy as its concentration. If you want to compare the amount of solar energy which is received by the Earth every day with the Hiroshima bomb it is something like 500 trillion times as much. Concentrate that energy in one place and you could certainly boil Al Gore’s head, but boiling oceans? Observational data has yet to produce an example of oceans being brought to boiling point by the heat from the sun.      

But Gore wasn’t finished there. He claimed climate change was going to generate a billion refugees and result in us ‘losing our capacity for self-government’. How he came by this figure, he didn’t quite say. He went on to claim that the World Bank is ‘led by a climate denier’. Actually, David Malpass, who holds that position, told CNN in 2019: ‘It’s clear that greenhouse gas emissions are coming from manmade sources, including fossil fuels, methane, agricultural uses and industrial uses, and so we’re working hard to change that’.

Gore seems to have settled on his view of Malpass thanks to the latter replying ‘I’m not a climate scientist’ when Gore personally tried to get him to agree to statements on the climate. I know from personal experience Al Gore’s tendency to call you a denier if you dare challenge anything says – he used the same ruse with me when I interviewed him in 2017.

The trouble is, Gore’s own grip on science doesn’t seem all that great. His previous apocalyptic visions have proved somewhat wide of the mark, such as predicting in 2006 that the snows of Kilimanjaro would be gone by 2020 – they are still there, with climbers reporting glaciers ‘the size of a house’. Nor, indeed, does Gore’s personal commitment to reducing carbon emissions seem to match his apocalyptic language. At least his hero, Greta Thunberg, whom he name-checked several times at Davos, practices what he preaches. As well as Gore’s frequent flying, his Tennessee house was revealed in 2007 to be consuming 20 times as much as the average US home. If he wants to berate the world over climate change, he ought to get out a large whip and start with himself.