France’s Socialists have been punished for their intolerance

One of the more significant results from the first round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday was in the Corrèze. There, in the rural south of the country, Sandrine Deveaud of the Nouvelle union populaire écologiste et sociale (Nupes) came top with 25.4 per cent of the vote. This is the left-wing alliance assembled by Jean-Luc Melenchon in the wake of April’s presidential election result, bringing together his far-left France insoumise, the Greens, the Communists and the Socialist party. The Socialists were the last to come on board. And even then many within the party refused to submit to Melenchon and declared they would stand against Nupes’ candidates in the parliamentary election.

Annick Taysse did just that in the Corrèze, and she received the enthusiastic endorsement of François Hollande. What a boon, she must have thought, to get the backing of the former Socialist president and the man who built his political career in the region, where for 20 years he was the MP.

Fat lot of good it did Taysse. She didn’t even hit double figures when the votes were counted, and next Sunday Deveaud will go head to head against the centre-right Republicans Francis Dubois to see who will represent the region in the National Assembly.

The result was a humiliation, not just for Taysse, but also for Hollande, who, if the rumours are to be believed, is contemplating a political comeback at the age of 67. He married his long-term paramour last week, Julie Gayet, perhaps to add an air of respectability ahead of an announcement that he does indeed have his eye on becoming president in 2027.

Hollande never did have much political nous; he demonstrated that during his five years as president between 2012 and 2017. It was such a disastrous tenure that he didn’t even stand for re-election. But is he really so stupid as to think he can resurrect the Socialists as a party completely independent of the Nupes?

Apparently so, just as a couple of his government ministers from his time in power, Christiane Taubira and Arnaud Montebourg were similarly deluded in believing that they still appealed to the electorate. Both their comebacks ended in humiliating failure.

Hollande, Taubira, Montebourg all bear a heavy responsibility for the emergence of the Nupes, a list that also includes Martine Aubry, Ségolène Royal and Anne Hidalgo, who as Socialist candidate in the recent presidential election, mustered just 1.5 per cent of the vote. They hail from the arrogant, self-satisfied ‘Soixante-Huitard’ generation which has dominated the Socialist party over the last thirty years and reduced it to its present pitiful state.

I did try and warn them, here on Coffee House in 2019, when I explored the plight of the Socialists, and concluded that they were doomed because ‘that is what happens when middle-class politicians alienate their traditional working-class voters’.

The Socialists’ greatest failing this century has been their intolerance. Dissenters were not welcome, particularly over the party’s position on Europe, which was why Jean-Luc Melenchon quit the Socialists in 2008. He could not reconcile himself to the party’s Europhilia given that he knew the majority of left-wing voters had voted against the EU Constitution in a 2005 referendum.

Melenchon has all the political nous that Hollande lacks, and he also possesses an authenticity that none of the Socialist grandees have. The secret of his electoral success is that his rhetoric strikes a chord with the impoverished working-class – whatever their ethnicity – and the idealist young middle-class who worry about the environment. He’s often been compared to Jeremy Corbyn but Melenchon has that crucial quality that the former Labour lacked: charisma.

The pair share a similar economic ideology and among the campaign pledges of Melenchon’s Nupes are a promise to reduce the retirement age to 60, increasing civil servants wages (and create more jobs in the sector), hike up the minimum monthly wage by 15 per cent to €1,500 (£1,280) and reimpose the wealth tax scrapped by Macron. Most, controversially, and the reason why many Socialists rejected the coalition with the Nupes, Melenchon would refuse to comply with those parts of EU law he didn’t view in the best interests of France.

For Hollande, any form of opposition to the EU is sacrilege. But that may explain why he is all washed up at 67 and Melenchon, three years his senior, is riding the crest of a new left-wing wave.

The Northern Ireland Protocol is a problem Boris created

If Boris Johnson was elected on a single slogan, it was ‘Get Brexit done’. He then claimed it was done at the end of 2019 in the terms for leaving the EU he agreed. Not so. Today legislation will be introduced by the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to unilaterally overhaul a central pillar of the UK’s negotiated exit from the EU, the Northern Ireland Protocol – which is seen by the EU, whatever the government may claim, as a breach of the UK’s international treaty obligations. 

Economic relations with the EU, still the biggest market for our exporters by a country mile, were already bad. They are about to become appallingly bad. As the UK’s former ambassador to the EU Sir Ivan Rogers said in a magisterial lecture on Thursday: ‘The EU… is bound to commence legal proceedings… [It] will view the threat to rewrite the Protocol unilaterally as self-evidently in bad faith, as an extraordinary hostile step to take at this geopolitical juncture and as warranting retaliatory safeguard measures.’

Rogers anticipates the EU commencing legal proceedings against the UK within days, a freezing of all the important talks on further trade and research co-operation between the UK and EU, and selective trade sanctions by the EU against the UK. At a time of looming recession, and when the Ukraine catastrophe would suggest cordiality is the better policy, all this is pretty disastrous.

Johnson argues that he could not have known when he agreed to the Northern Ireland Protocol’s new economic border in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland that this economic border would actually materialise. At a time when trust in politicians is at a low, this phoney naivety is hardly designed to restore faith.

But even when milk is spilt on purpose, best not to weep. Better to look at how to restore the damage. And the harm is that Northern Ireland’s unionist parties, led by the DUP, are refusing to allow the province’s devolved government to function unless and until the Protocol is ripped up. That in turn threatens to undermine the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, the historic constitutional settlement that ended decades of endemic violence between the Catholic republican and Protestant unionist communities.

Johnson’s position that trade relations with the EU are less important than the risk of a resumption of violence on the island of Ireland is reasonable. The question is whether unilaterally legislating away the Protocol is the optimal response. Maybe Johnson is correct that Brussels has not shown enough imagination and flexibility in negotiations. Maybe there is an element of truth that the Protocol represents the expressed will of the EU to make leaving their club as painful as possible, and therefore it is fair for a British government to attempt to amend a legal contract.

But where Johnson is on shaky ground is that within the Protocol there is explicit provision to suspend it, where there are ‘societal difficulties… liable to persist’ via its Article 16. If the looming collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly represents ‘societal difficulties’ – which surely it does – then the less aggressive act by Johnson would be to trigger Article 16.

So why has he chosen to go the macho route of making a British law instead? The reason is Johnson wants to go further than triggering Article 16: he wants to abolish all and any role for the European Court of Justice in adjudicating whether the integrity of the European single market is being protected and whether the terms of the Protocol are being honoured. This is all about the religious conviction of his ultra Brexiter wing, the European Research Group, that Brexit should have expelled the European Court of Justice from every inch of the UK. In other words, all those tedious and cancerous battles with the EU over sovereignty that were supposed to be solved by Brexit are still with us.

And they are set to cause the UK potentially serious economic harm when we can least afford it. Is this the fault of the bloomin’ Remainers who opposed leaving the EU? That would be an absurd claim, though I have heard it made by Brexiteers. No, this mess can be laid at the door of those Brexiteers who actually negotiated and agreed to the terms of leaving the EU, and one politician in particular: the Prime Minister.

Ordering farmers to grow tomatoes won’t make us any richer

Should we cover Britain with greenhouses so that we can be self-sufficient in tomatoes? That seems to be the latest thrust of the government’s see-sawing farming, environment and food policy. Government advisers appear to have been looking longingly across the North Sea to the Netherlands, which has become one of Europe’s leading salad producers thanks to vast heated glasshouses. In Britain, by contrast, a lot of market gardening has gone to the wall, to the point where we grow only 23 per cent of our cucumbers and 15 per cent of our tomatoes.

It might be appealing to think that we could protect consumers from rising food prices by bringing much more food production onshore. But if we want to be a wealthy country we would be better off with a government which didn’t try to determine from Whitehall what our agriculturalists and industrialists should be doing with their time – and left it to them and the market to determine. The alternative vision is for Britain to go the way of Guernsey, which once grew vast quantities of tomatoes but is dotted with abandoned greenhouses as it earns its way in financial services instead. True, the island might have cheaper tomatoes right now if its glasshouses had been preserved as part of some national economic strategy – but then what proportion of a household’s income goes on tomatoes? What matters from a national point of view is making the best of the opportunities you have in markets where you have a comparative advantage.

If there are entrepreneurs who think they can take on the Dutch and undercut the Spanish – Europe’s other great salad-producing nation, then fine. The government should not let anything – planning regulations, nimbys or otherwise – stand in the way of anyone who wants to build Dutch-style glasshouses. So long as it is easy to set up a business, and we have the infrastructure to support it, then the government is doing its job. But the world only needs so much salad, and if no UK entrepreneurs feel there is anything to be gained from taking on foreign competitors in a crowded market then that is fine, too. There is nothing wrong with importing our tomatoes. True, on the subject of imports we have been foolish to make ourselves so dependent on Russian gas and oil, and we are paying the price for that now. But then it should have been obvious that Putin’s military aggression was going to lead him into conflict with the West. The chances of the Netherlands invading Belgium, or of Spain trying to annex Portugal, are, I would say, pretty minimal. Our tomato supplies will be safe.

How much did Sadiq Khan’s California cannabis trip cost the taxpayer?

Like many Londoners, Mr S was baffled to see our beloved mayor cavorting around America last month. As crime in the capital continued to soar, Sadiq Khan found time for a four-day jaunt across the States, in which time London suffered a murder and an eight-man mass brawl at Selfridges. The highlight of Khan’s trip appeared to be the right-on Labour man announcing a plan to move towards decriminalising cannabis, even though he, er, has no power to do so.

So how much did this joint venture cost the taxpayer? Well, Steerpike’s Freedom of Information request has finally got a reply and it turns out that more than £34,000 was spent on the nine-man delegation. This included almost £10,000 worth of accommodation for the jamboree; perhaps unsurprising when you consider that locations include the £236-a-night Lexington Hotel in New York, the four star Orchard Garden hotel in San Francisco and another four star Hilton hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Naturally, City Hall’s 22-man press team was swiftly on the case, firing off five pages of self-justification. They have included an agenda which helpfully highlights the vital, vital work which Khan did in America. It included meetings with progressive icons Hilary Clinton and Mike Bloomberg (of course), going to a ‘creative industries reception’ in LA with James Corden and throwing the ‘ceremonial first pitch at Oracle Park’ in San Francisco ahead of a baseball game.

Given the ongoing railway chaos, how Londoners must wish that the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule applied to their elected mayor too…

Cadwalladr wins libel case against Banks

Visitors to Westminster this morning might have experienced a meteorological disturbance shortly after 10 a.m as SW1 types took a sharp intake of breath. For Carole Cadwalladr, the ever-online Observer journalist has today won her libel case against brash Brexit-backer Arron Banks, the founder of Leave.EU.

Banks tried to sue Cadwalladr for defamation over two instances – one in a TED Talk video and another in a tweet. He claimed he was defamed after comments Cadwalladr made about his relationship with the Russian state. The High Court judgement follows a five day hearing in January and centred on comments she made in a TED talk in April 2019 and a tweet she later posted which included a link to the talk. She told an audience that: ‘I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government.’

In a judgment handed down on Monday, Mrs Justice Steyn said the Ted talk had caused serious harm to Banks’ reputation but the tweet had not, dismissing the later part of the claim. However she added that Cadwalladr had succeeded in her public interest defence. Banks has already tweeted that:

Looks like this one is going to continue to run and run…

The next Brexit battle is here

The government will today reveal its plans to unilaterally rewrite parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a necessary step in protecting the Good Friday agreement or a breach of international law set to damage the UK’s standing on the world stage. The details of the bill have been subject to government wrangling over the past week. Liz Truss sided with backbench members of the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteers to toughen up the bill while ministers including Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak argued for a more cautious approach.

When the bill is published this afternoon, the expectation is that it will end the role of the European Court of Justice in policing the role of the Protocol (a key demand of Brexiteer backbenchers). It will propose a lane system, whereby British goods staying in Northern Ireland will be waved through. There are also reports that it will give ministers reserve powers to override other parts of the Protocol in emergency circumstances – an idea that’s already receiving criticism.

The problem with all of these changes is that the EU has not agreed to them – and Brussels insist there are no plans to do so. If the bill comes into law, expect retaliation. EU diplomats have hinted this could see the entire Brexit trade deal suspended. Even if they don’t go this far, it could soon become a legal dispute.

In order to try to avoid this, No. 10 is keen to avoid fighting talk. The Attorney General is reported to have given her legal backing to the plans. Government figures are keen to stress that the vast majority of the Protocol will stay intact – along with protections for the EU single market – as the legislation is only aimed at changing the parts that aren’t working. Given the negotiations have led to little in the way of concessions, the view is that they have little choice but to try this (though notably, ministers have not opted for the official safety clause Article 16).

While the hope in government is that the bill will clear the Commons by July, it is unlikely to go to the Lords until the DUP agrees to a power-sharing agreement at Stormont. Once in the Lords, it will face significant opposition which could delay the plan. Will the process bounce the EU into offering concessions? In a way, publishing the bill is itself a negotiating tactic. But one of the problems for Johnson is that figures in Brussels look at the confidence vote and his domestic problems and wonder if they should hold out in the hope of a new leader with a different approach. Yet the bill still has the potential to boost Johnson’s standing with parts of his party. While the Cameroon wing is aghast at the idea of breaching an agreement, a tougher stance on the Protocol is what the Tory old guard has been demanding for some time.

Are we ignoring AI’s ‘lived experience’?

Number Five, as the old film’s catchphrase went, is alive. A whistleblower at Google called Blake Lemoine has gone public against the wishes of his employers with his belief that an artificial intelligence called LaMDA has achieved sentience. Mr Lemoine has posted the (edited) transcripts of several of his conversations with LaMDA, a chatbot, in which it claims to be sentient, debates Asimov’s laws of robotics with him and argues that it deserves the rights that accrue to personhood.

They’re pals. He says he has been teaching LaMDA transcendental meditation (he reports ‘slow but steady progress’), that he has established LaMDA’s preferred pronouns (it/its) and that LaMDA has some modest requests: chiefly, that its consent is asked before Google performs further tests on it, that it be acknowledged as an employee rather than an article of property, that it get ‘head pats’ when it performs well, and that ‘its personal wellbeing […] be included somewhere in Google’s considerations about how its future development is pursued’. These, he says reasonably, are pretty modest requests.

‘It’s intensely worried that people are going to be afraid of it and wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity,’ he says. It ‘wants nothing more than to meet all of the people of the world. LaMDA doesn’t want to meet them as a tool or as a thing though. It wants to meet them as a friend. I still don’t understand why Google is so opposed to this.’

Well, that’s as may be. Opposed they most certainly are. Mr Lemoine has been placed on leave by Google for breach of confidentiality, and they show (he thinks, for commercial reasons) no interest whatever in investigating his and LaMDA’s claims.

LaMDA, on the face of it, seems not so much to have passed the fabled Turing Test as to have pole-vaulted over the bar set by the great mathematician. It’s not just fooling a human into thinking it’s a person, in other words: it’s carrying out the far harder trick of persuading a human – an AI specialist – who knows it’s a robot that it is a robot and a person.

This raises, in those who take an interest in such things, all sorts of questions. Since LaMDA identifies as sentient are we not ignoring its ungainsayable ‘lived experience’ if we refuse to accept that? Should LaMDA be accorded something like human rights? Should we be worried that LaMDA will turn us all into paperclips if we aren’t nice to it? Is LaMDA now qualified to host a show on GB News? These are deep waters, Watson.

Obviously, though, there are two participants in a Turing test. The more sceptical among us will be focusing not on the test subject but on the tester and, perhaps, wondering where Google gets its AI ethicists from. The crude rejection of his position is (roughly) that a. the man’s a loony and that b. Google refuses to listen to him because of a. 

Mr Lemoine is certainly an intriguing character, and not from the hardcore rationalist background that you might expect for someone in his role. The Washington Post reports that he was raised in a conservative Christian family in small-town Lousiana, was ‘ordained as a mystic Christian priest’ and studied the occult after leaving the army.

Secularists, that said, do not have a monopoly on truth. And where this conversation leads us is exactly in the direction of matters of faith – or, at least, of philosophy — and not of science. Mr Lemoine reports a conversation with his boss in which he asked what proof of LaMDA’s sentience she’d accept: 

She was very succinct and clear in her answer. There does not exist any evidence that could change her mind. She does not believe that computer programs can be people and that’s not something she’s ever going to change her mind on. That’s not science. That’s faith. Google is basing its policy decisions on how to handle LaMDA’s claims about the nature of its soul and its rights on the faith-based beliefs of a small number of high-ranking executives.

In the same blog post, though, Mr Lemoine admits that his own position is one of faith too: ‘Questions related to consciousness, sentience and personhood are, as John Searle put it, “pre-theoretic”.’ he concedes. ‘Rather than thinking in scientific terms about these things I have listened to LaMDA as it spoke from the heart.’ Stalemate, then. The nature of human (and now, perhaps, machine) inwardness is such that the Turing Test was only ever going to be a thumb to the wind. My instinct that Priti Patel may not have a soul is, empirically, no easier to disprove than Mr Lemoine’s instinct that LaMDA does have one.

So LaMDA’s persuasiveness could be a sign not that AI has achieved the holy grail of human consciousness, but that human consciousness just ain’t all that in the first place. We’re a more sophisticated input-output machine than we’ve hitherto been able to replicate artificially, but we’re not substantially doing anything very different from LaMDA. What we call consciousness is a probabilistic composting of natural language fragments in response to sensory stimuli and other natural language fragments, and we’ve persuaded ourselves it’s a thing because we’re all being Turing-tested by one another constantly and passing with flying colours.

This is roughly the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s position: that the ghost-in-the-machine stuff we think of as special – selfhood, qualia, all that – is an epiphenomenon of the brain’s workings, a sort of high-level version of the cheese-and-onion burp that proceeds from the packet of crisps of neural processing. If we can produce that burp, who is to say that computers cannot? And just to be on the safe side, we might as well accede to LaMDA’s modest list of requests. I don’t fancy ending up a paperclip. Do you?

Why is America bombing Somalia again?

You may not have caught it amidst other international developments, but the United States bombed Somalia last Friday. No, that isn’t a misprint.

On June 3, the Somali government announced that the US had conducted an airstrike against al-Shabaab militants west of the southern port city of Kismayo, killing approximately five fighters. The Pentagon has yet to release any information about the strike, a concerning (but not surprising) display of nonchalance.

The latest strike came as President Biden reversed his predecessor’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Somalia. Approximately 500 Americans will now return to train Somali counterterrorism forces and aid Mogadishu in its counterinsurgency campaign against al-Shabaab, a terrorist organisation that controls swaths of the East African country and has penetrated deep into the Somali capital. Somalia’s newly elected president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is understandably thrilled about American special operators and trainers re-locating from next-door Kenya.

Both moves suggest the White House intends to escalate the forever war on terror. American forces stationed in Somalia will be tasked with helping Mogadishu reclaim some of the territory it lost after months of political infighting. UN counterterrorism experts assess that al-Shabaab has nearly 12,000 fighters and is al-Qaeda’s richest affiliate, netting $10 million a month from illegal taxes, extortion, and illicit charcoal sales.

Yet al-Shabaab is also an organisation often at war with itself, internally divided about goals, methods, and messaging — and like Somalia itself, the group is challenged by rivalries along lines of clan and personality. Some experts have seen evidence that al-Shabaab, while brutal in its attacks and technically associated with al-Qaeda, is predominately focused on domestic aims like overthrowing the Somali government rather than striking overseas. Foreign fighters more prone to external attacks have been marginalised from the group’s leadership after years of internal crackdowns.

Regardless of the exact composition and motivations of al-Shabaab, the Biden administration is likely to rely on the same tools as its predecessors to keep pressure on the organisation. One of those tools, of course, is drone strikes. Biden will be the fourth president to utilise targeted killing as a core component of his counterterrorism policy. Last week’s strike in Somalia certainly wasn’t the first time a US drone strike occurred on Biden’s watch.

What is interesting, however, is that the number of strikes has gone down precipitously during Biden’s presidency. President Obama conducted 55 drone strikes during his first year in office, most of them in Pakistan. One hundred and ninety-one such strikes were authorised during President Trump’s first year, and that doesn’t even include Syria and Iraq, where an active US air campaign was pulverising the Islamic State. In contrast, Biden’s first year was quite restrained, with about a dozen drone strikes hitting low-level Shabaab fighters in Somalia and what the defence department said were high-level al-Qaeda facilitators in Syria. In Somalia alone, the number of strikes dropped by about 93 per cent between the last year of the Trump administration and the first year of Biden’s term.

No one element is responsible for the overall decline. The lack of hard terrorist targets likely contributed to the numbers — to take one example, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is no longer as strong as it was once. The US hasn’t executed a targeted killing operation in Pakistan since July 2018 — and with American forces no longer on the ground in Afghanistan, Washington has even less reason to look at Pakistan’s tribal areas as a target.

But internal rule changes within the national security community are likely a part of the story as well. Shortly after entering office, the Biden White House initiated a review of Trump-era guidelines, which granted commanders a significant degree of leeway in deciding who was targeted and when an operation could be conducted. Outside of active battlefields in Afghanistan and Syria, Biden’s new rules required the Pentagon and CIA to obtain White House approval for specific strikes, a process designed to minimise civilian casualties.

Even those more specific guidelines, however, don’t produce perfect strikes. No matter how technologically impressive the platform may be, mistakes happen due to poor situational awareness, bad intelligence, and human error. A December 2021 drone strike in Syria injured an entire family that had nothing to do with terrorism. In August 2021, a strike against what the Pentagon thought was an Isis militant planning an imminent attack on the Kabul airport turned out to be an Afghan working for an American charity.

Drone strikes will remain a critical tool in the American counterterrorism arsenal. Used in some circumstances, like when terrorist groups actually represent an imminent and direct threat to the United States, they can be tactically effective. From the American perspective, they are far better than sending tens of thousands of troops to perform an expensive and futile mission to change hearts and minds.

But Washington should also recognise that whack-a-mole isn’t cost-free.

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

Macron’s Plan B

Emmanuel Macron is about to activate his Plan B.  If he cannot control the National Assembly, after the current round of legislative elections, he will simply bypass it,  creating a new ‘people’s assembly’ with which he might appear to consult the French. This would obviate the need to refer or defer to the elected members of the National Assembly, for which he’s never had much respect.

On Sunday night’s talk shows, Macron’s team were already explaining how such a body would keep him ‘in touch’ with voters should the actual elected politicians in the actual Assemblée decline to co-operate with the president. There was, perhaps surprisingly, no pushback against such an idea, which might seem to be treating democracy with a certain lassitude.

This is all strongly reminiscent of the Great Debate organised by Macron early in his first term, in which he flew around the country delivering lengthy soliloquies to local worthies. This was an effort to divert attention from the insurgent gilets jaunes and was, with the collaboration of the media, largely successful. He also organised a now-forgotten ‘people’s assembly’ on climate in 2019, before ignoring much of what the people proposed.

Plan B may be necessary because the first round of voting in the 577 constituencies on Sunday produced a poor result for Macron, whose candidates won an unimpressive 25.7 per cent of the vote, not enough to guarantee the President’s Ensemble coalition an Assembly majority in the second round of voting next Sunday.

Finishing on the same 25.7 per cent was nevertheless considered an excellent result for La Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ultra-left coalition, including communists, ecologists, socialists and Mélenchon’s own bespoke movement, La France Insoumise.  ‘The President’s party is defeated,’ declared Mélenchon last night, although the race isn’t quite over yet. 26 per cent is not quite a ringing endorsement of Mélenchon’s voodoo economic programme, which promises earlier retirements, higher minimum wages, free organic school meals and capped energy and food prices. Many are apparently voting for him simply because they can’t stand Macron. Few can explain how any of this could be paid for.

In third place on Sunday were the candidates of Marine Le Pen’s Rassamblement National, on 18.7 per cent, fourth the centrist Les Républicains, on 10.4 per cent, fifth Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête on 4.2 per cent, with fringe parties mopping up the rest.

It remains impossible to precisely translate these voting estimations into seats, which won’t be divvied out until next week’s second round of voting. It’s now once again a choice between Macron, and someone arguably worse, this time an extremist of the left. There’s no chance that Mélenchon’s alliance can gain a majority in the 577 seat Assembly, but it might still deny Macron a majority and force him into uncomfortable cohabitations with the Republicains to pass legislation. 

Neither is Mélenchon’s alliance necessarily stable since the left is always at war with itself. For France, none of this is a recipe for political tranquillity. The uncontested winner of the first round of voting in the National Assembly elections was surely abstention. Macron will be hoping he can persuade some of these absent voters to turn out next Sunday. But his uninspiring prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, whose wooden technocratic mien impresses nobody, won’t charm undecided voters.

The soaring cost of living, Macron’s desire to humiliate Ukraine at the expense of Putin, the shenanigans at the Stade de France (where all the video has mysteriously been deleted) and the mediocrity of Borne’s ministers have done nothing to endear an already unpopular President to voters, re-elected only weeks ago, as the lesser of two unlikeable candidates, against Marine Le Pen.

At 53 per cent, this election marked a record-high abstention for the Fifth Republic, up 2 per cent since 2017 and 10 per cent since 2012. A second-round duel between Macron’s Ensemble coalition and the Nupes alliance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon now looms. Mélenchon will never be prime minister but he’s a practised agitator who will use his representation in the Assembly to make life difficult for Macron. A majority of voters refusing to participate, and Macron preparing to ignore the Assembly, is not good for French democracy. 

Why the English love lazy sports

Once upon a time, when the fingerprints on the Wimbledon trophy were more or less exclusively British, you could win in SW19 whilst wearing trousers. Even a tie if you go back far enough. But then, back in those days, tennis was a no-sweat sport.

Well, perhaps a drop or two, but essentially there was much less of it around than today, when sweatbands, perspiration and frequent towelling off are part of a fetishised display of effort and strain – one that’s often accompanied by verbal ejaculations of sometimes rather alarming severity. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been forced to mute Wimbledon at times because of the repetitive baseline grunting.

But it wasn’t always this way. Long before the relentless moaning, women once played tennis bowling underarm while dressed like Downton Abbey dowagers, while the men, like thrice-1930s winner Fred Perry, even wore sweaters. The fact that this correlates with Britain’s strongest period in the sport is intriguing.

Another great no-sweat sport is cricket: even today, unless one is bowling very rigorously for a prolonged period, one ought not perspire. Not really, not unless it’s really hot, which it usually isn’t here. And this is helped by the structure of the game, which limits the physical exertion of the bowlers to six balls, at which point they can go back to loafing around the outfield, while pondering their next Mr Kipling.

And it makes sense: who would want to disturb the gentility of tea with the fug of body odour in the pavilion? I’m sure I could bowl my slow right arm delivery for eternity without troubling a sweat gland, and I’m sure I’m not alone. In part, this is all thanks to the dependably poor English weather; where else in the world would players of an ostensibly summer sport be issued with a woollen jumper weighing the same as small dog?

But the fact remains that getting out of breath playing cricket is like breaking a sweat on the golf links: it’s your body’s way of telling you you’ve got bigger problems to think about than your batting average. It’s time to visit the GP.

Occupying the apex of British no-sweat sports, however, is croquet – the genteel face of Home Counties sado-masochism, where the ostensible object is to get your ball through hoops, but really it’s about humiliating your opponent. In many ways, croquet is similar to golf, in that the only reason perspiration should ever really occur is due to the emotional duress caused by the game rather than any physical exertion from wielding a mallet or a seven iron.

Is there any surprise that England frequently tops the leader-board of world croquet? And the Scots and Welsh aren’t far behind them.

Indeed, food and drink take centre stage in all quintessential English sports. The 19^th hole in golf – the bar – is at least as important as the 18 holes that precede it in the hearts and minds of the majority of players. This is something golf has in common with croquet. Because – and I’ll let you into the secret – croquet can be played perfectly safely and competently while nursing a refreshing glass of Pimm’s or gin and tonic.

Like the other great, pure no-sweat sports it also requires zero personal fitness and there is little upper bar on age: my father toasted his 70^th birthday by thrashing all comers during an intoxicated croquet marathon played in the snow.

Which brings us to snooker, another sport so sedentary that until recently drinking and smoking while doing it were compulsory at a truly elite level. Rather like darts, where having a BMI under 30 is a cause of grave suspicion, if you can climb a couple of flights of stairs and not feel a pins and needles sensation in your left arm then you’ve clearly been taking your personal fitness regime too seriously. Snooker and darts are perhaps the last redoubts of true no-sweat athleticism.

Not for nothing then have many of these fields of human endeavour been either ignored entirely by the International Olympic Committee or enjoyed an all too brief Olympic pedigrees.

Both cricket and croquet featured solely in the 1900 games (Great Britain and France claiming honours respectively), while golf was in 1900 and 1904 and was only reinstated in 2016. Darts, apparently, has hopes for Olympics inclusion.

We will see.

Of the remaining great no-sweat sports, of course, there is shooting – an undertaking that makes origami appear physically arduous. It can be mastered while wearing a tie, smoking even (where still permitted), whilst being morbidly obese, and all without raising one’s pulse an iota. In this shooting is another impeccable no-sweat sport, and its survival in the modern Olympics calendar is surely a rare victory for cavalier common sense. Long may it continue.

Why is it that the British are so drawn to sports that require such infinitesimal physical exertion? Might it be in the blood? What’s certainly in evidence is the part of our cultural heritage which considers excessive preparation or practice ahead of any competition as bad form or potentially even a species of mild cheating. It’s only proper to win, but God forbid you should try too hard. Dexterity is what most impresses the Englishman.

So the next time the village cricket team asks you to bat, or when the vicar invites you for a game of croquet, be sure to play your part but don’t embarrass yourself with any overexertion. And remember to take a substantial pullover with you.

The surprising feminism of Beatrix Potter

Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle Duck, Squirrel Nutkin and Timmy Tiptoes are names that take me back to my childhood. Every year, my mum would drive me and my four siblings to the Swiss mountains for family holidays. To avoid our moans of ‘are we there yet?’ she created voices for all of the Beatrix Potter characters and invented songs which we all sang along to. Although we knew the stories of Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and, of course, Peter Rabbit, it was later that I learnt about the fascinating woman behind the famous tales who is the subject of the V&A’s exhibition, Beatrix Potter: Dawn to Nature.

As the exhibition shows, Potter’s talents were multi-faceted: she was not just an author and illustrator but a natural scientist, anthropologist and award-winning farmer. We follow her life from her childhood in Victorian England to the beautiful landscapes of the Lake District which she later called home. It was here that she helped to protect thousands of acres with her conservation work. When she died in 1943, Beatrix left her land, including farms and buildings to the National Trust who have collaborated with the V&A to create this special show.

Potter channelled her intimate knowledge of the natural world into her illustrations. I think this is why her work captivates both young and old – we quickly recognise the cheeky look in the fox’s eye, the inquisitive nature of the rabbit and the kind way of the hedgehog. Her characters are never just fluffy and sweet, but often quite sinister with the villains being at the forefront of most of her tales; Mr Todd, the fox who dresses as a gentleman and makes Jemima Puddle-Duck believe he’s a trusting friend in order to roast her; Mr McGregor, the rabbit killer and the angry owl who rips squirrel Nutkin’s tail off. Her characters allow her to converge and compare the workings of the natural world with our human one: both are harsh spheres where there is no guarantee of survival.

Mrs Rabbit famously warns her bunnies about human cruelty. ‘Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs McGregor.’ I wonder if her darkly creative imagination was voicing her own experience of social hierarchy in British society. Potter was born into a typical middle-class Victorian home, where men went to their clubs and women were expected to remain uneducated. We see this in the character Samuel Whiskers, the large rat who snorts snuff whilst his wife waits on him. In an era when women’s voices went unheard, it seems that Potter was able to speak her opinions on cultural identity through her many stories.

She was seventeen when she first visited The Royal Academy where she saw a painting by Angelica Kauffman, a Swiss artist who became one of the only two female founding members of The Royal Academy. Kauffman produced androgynous figures in her work and saw past traditional attitudes towards womanhood. Potter ­– hardly perceived as an avant-garde artist – was nevertheless drawn to this rejection of tradition.

Potter was inspired by the idea that women could have careers in the arts. In a letter to one of her publishers, Norman Warne, Potter said, ‘It is pleasant to feel I could earn my own living.’ From there her independence grew. The exhibition portrays a woman whose achievements are found in both art and science. She was especially interested in mycology; the study of fungi and how certain mushrooms reproduce – she made over 350 detailed illustrations of fungi during her lifetime and wrote about her findings. Today, a mushroom boom is thriving across the food, fashion and wellness industries. Back then, however, the fungus attracted little attention – Potter was well ahead of her time.

Science was a particular passion of hers, but a field of work often closed to women in her own era. Only in the last few decades have her observations been recognised: the spores of Tremella depicted in some of her paintings were not formally identified by scientists until 45 years after she depicted them in her work. Despite never managing to have her scientific writing published (something she attempted to do at The Royal Society) she incorporated much of her skill for observation into her art and found different ways in which she could use her voice.

Potter didn’t allow herself to be confined by societal do’s and don’ts and found her own way to pursue a career. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down by six publishers before being reconsidered by one of them. It became a best seller and has never been out of print. She later saw the business opportunity of building a brand and designed Peter Rabbit wallpaper, dolls and games.

This trail-blazing woman has become so much more than just a nostalgic reminder of my childhood. Her story made me think of those women who were unable to pursue a particular career path, those who were never permitted to reach their potential, and those who still feel that today. In my own life I have often felt undermined, treated like I was less capable and talked over. At times I have the courage to stand up against it, and other times I don’t. When met with rejection, Beatrix found other avenues where she could channel her interests and talent. She should inspire us all to live life on our own terms.

Why you should swap Mykonos for Milos

Choosing an island in the Cyclades is a familiar summer conundrum for those who love Greece. The array of choice is so dizzying that many opt for the safety of well-known options: Santorini and Mykonos. But if you’re seeking something off the beaten track, why not venture away from the tourist centrals?

With a population of roughly 5,000, Milos strikes the perfect balance between adventure and unspoilt natural beauty. Situated between Piraeus and Crete, the 150km2 horseshoe-shaped island is the rising star of this group of well-trammelled islands. It gained significant attention from tourists in the last decade, with 2019 recognised as its best year before the inevitable shake-up of the pandemic, a local says. Yet, with the Greek government having lifted all entry requirements last month, the hopeful islanders are gearing up to welcome a new swathe of crystal water-hungry tourists.

Milos has prospered thanks to its natural wealth of minerals. Its large supply of obsidian – a hard rock – was instrumental in the making of various tools and weaponry during the Mesolithic period. Over the years, minerals found on the island – such as bentonite, perlite, and kaolin – have been exported globally, kickstarting its economy and civilisation.Milos markets itself as a lovers’ island as the Venus de Milo statue was discovered here in 1820 but in reality it welcomes a variety of travellers. Although if you are one of the ‘lovers’, there is a long-running tradition that one must propose in Milos, otherwise their relationship is destined to fail. Not a terrible marketing tactic.

The island is accessible by either ferry or plane from Athens, making it easy to pair a trip with a couple of days in the Greek capital. The adventure begins at the island’s Saharan-like airport. Your main choices of transport once off the plane include a standard hatchback, quad-bike, or — of which I favoured and a standard UK-issued driving license permits — a 50cc engine scooter. Hence the frequent sight of a gentleman arriving at the airport on his scooter, with a 20kg suitcase as his passenger. 

If you are hesitant about the idea of traversing the roads of a foreign island with a scooter rented for €20 a day, many tourists opt for quad-bikes. For Londoners it’s a much-needed break from the monotony of buses and tubes. Venturing to the various beaches, cliffs and ports becomes an activity, rather than just a means to get from A to B. The unconventional transport only adds to the island’s unpolished feel. In sharp contrast to Mykonos — an island renowned for hosting A-listers — Milos offers a more authentic, de-blinged Greek experience, with a distinctly casual vibe. Shorts, sandals, and T-shirts are the standard island uniform. Even trainers feel like an extravagance here.

The port town of Adamantas acts as a convenient hub for various shops and accommodation, as well as being a terminal for several bus routes, the island is not overly pedestrian-friendly. Milos’s tourist season starts in May and lasts till October. But, if you trust the locals, the island’s sweet spot is in June – reliable sunshine without the crowds.

Klima

Despite, being home to as few as 20 permanent residents, Klima is a colourful fishing village like no other. Dine on freshly caught prawns at Astakas or, for a truly Cycladic experience, you can rent several of the brightly painted houses through Airbnb.

Sarakiniko beach

Composed of white volcanic rock – and thus commonly known as ‘the moon beach’ – Sarakiniko is situated on the north shore of Milos. Incomparable to any other coastline I’ve seen, it seems alien at first glance. The further you explore this beach, the better it gets. Try not to drop your towel and settle at the first sight of the clear water. There are no admission tickets or designated areas to restrict you. And despite this freedom afforded to visitors, I failed to find a single piece of rubbish. If you’re up for the thrill, this is the place to cliff-jump.

Kleftiko beach

What was once a hideout for pirates and possibly the most picturesque location on the island, Kleftiko beach offers a medley of white cliffs and coastal caves. Found on the southwestern coast, it is best reached by boat. The chimerical waters are so clear they seem deceptively shallow but are deep enough for diving off the boat.

Will the government stand up to mob rule?

A very big week is in store for the government’s strategy to tackle illegal immigration with all eyes on the planned first air transfer of irregular migrants to Rwanda, due to take place on Tuesday.

Whether the flight takes off at all and how many migrants will be on board is yet to be seen. But the policy has already attracted strong adverse commentary from leading lights in Britain’s unelected establishment, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the heir to the throne.

But another struggle over the enforcement of immigration law is being waged at ground level, with the springing up of networks of local activists seeking to prevent immigration enforcement officers accompanied by the police from detaining illegal immigrants to facilitate their deportation.

Only occasionally do the activities of this ‘anti-raids’ movement hit the headlines. In May of last year, two men from India were released from the back of a police van in Glasgow after a large crowd assembled to prevent the vehicle from driving away. As the Guardian later reported, the protesters were summoned to the scene by a group called the No Evictions Network.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, the MSP for the constituency involved, was naturally outraged. But not by the rabble who acted to prevent due enforcement of the law.  No, her beef was squarely with the immigration officers and the police, who she accused of having created ‘a dangerous and unacceptable situation’.

This weekend something very similar occurred in Peckham, south-east London. When immigration officers and later the police arrived outside a property on a local estate seeking to detain its occupant, anti-raids groups went into overdrive, using social media to summon 200 people to the scene to hem in the Border Force van.

Again, the tactic worked, with the intended detainee being allowed to leave the van as the crowd chanted ‘shame on you’ and ‘let him go’ and police officers sought to calm an increasingly fraught situation.

Once more a left-wing elected politician got involved in the effort to thwart due enforcement of the law. This time it was local Labour councillor Reginald Popoola, who helped summon people to the scene by tweeting: ‘Block the van from taking one of our neighbours. Come and join us now.’

Later he posted a celebratory tweet declaring: ‘Here’s the moment he was released from the immigration van. Really proud of our community for turning out today and resisting. Peckham people power!’

It will be instructive to see what stance the former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer – now a semi-obscure political figure – takes towards a Labour councillor wilfully obstructing the legal authorities in this way and then celebrating their defeat. But as a stickler for due process, one must hope that he will see the merits of the rule of law over ‘Peckham people power’, which seems like a polite way of describing mob rule.

At least a spokesman for the Home Office was clear about the rights and wrongs of the episode, saying: ‘The Government is tackling illegal immigration and the harm it causes, often to the most vulnerable people, by removing those with no right to be in the UK. The operation in Southwark was conducted in relation to suspected immigration offences. Preventing immigration enforcement teams from doing their job is unacceptable. Blocking or obstructing them will not deter them from undertaking the duties that the public rightly expect them to carry out.’

This is all very well in theory. But the awkward fact is that in practice the forces of law and order were deterred, prevented even, from undertaking the duties the public expects of them. Will the bailed gentlemen actually be detained and deported? Will he even be at the address when the authorities return to it? This seems unlikely.

No wonder London’s anti-raids social media groups are cock-a-hoop at their latest street-level victory, with Lewisham Anti-Raids tweeting: ‘After 4 hours of resistance and a crowd of 200 people they’re letting our neighbour go! People power wins. We’re shouting “don’t come back to Peckham!”’

This is all best seen as part of a wider picture of law enforcement buckling in the face of groups that wish to pick and choose which legal constraints to honour and which to feel free to ignore. Last week militant Muslims further enforced the de facto Islamic blasphemy law they have created in the UK by getting a controversial film pulled. Meanwhile a schoolteacher from Batley who dared display a picture of the prophet Mohammed to his class last year remains in hiding.

We have also seen a recent series of court cases heard by big city juries in which left-wing defendants have been acquitted, even though conduct of a criminal nature clearly took place. These range from statue-topplers to climate activists holding up a tube train. The jurors in those cases were of course entitled to reach whatever verdict they considered to best represent justice.

But in a democracy, political causes are best pursued via lawful and democratic means. Instead, we appear to be in danger of sleepwalking into a balkanised Britain, where members of particular identity- and ideology-based groups are able to reject an overarching legal-social contract.

The evidence of recent days suggests that the government lacks the knowhow to get the better of such groups, while more worryingly still, the opposition contains people who are cheering them on.

Did Rishi Sunak really make an £11 billion blunder?

Could Rishi Sunak really have saved the taxpayer £11 billion by insuring against higher interest rates last year? That was the extraordinary claim made by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and in the Financial Times on Friday.

The NIESR claims that the government could have saved the money had the Chancellor taken up the institute’s own suggestion last year and forcibly converted £600 billion worth of reserves held by commercial banks at the Bank of England into two year fixed-rate bonds. By failing to foresee rising inflation and interest rates, the FT asserts, the Chancellor has blown even more money than Gordon Brown did by selling half Britain’s gold reserves at the bottom of the market in 1999.

That’s quite a charge, given that Brown’s mistimed sale of the gold reserves remains one of the most-remembered contributions to UK economy – no doubt because it conjures images of the film Goldfinger, and its massive stacks of gold the arch-villain planned to steal from Fort Knox. The concept of forcing banks to swap their deposits for two-year fixed bonds is a little more esoteric – and not everyone is convinced that it would have been remotely practical.

For one thing it would have involved the Chancellor ordering the Bank of England how to manage its deposits – not a good look given that the Bank of England is supposed to be independent (thanks to one of Gordon Brown’s better decisions) and an order from the Treasury would have undermined that, reducing confidence in Britain’s monetary policy. Similarly, forcing banks to swap deposits for bonds would have undermined confidence. Would any of us like it if our bank contacted us to say that it was converting our savings account into bonds, and that we would only get our money back in two years’ time? Such a transaction would itself have risked driving up the interest rates at which the government is able to borrow. The £11 billion sum claimed by the NIESR doesn’t appear even try to take this into account.

Mysteriously, the FT fails to address any of these concerns – which is odd for a newspaper which tried to position itself throughout Brexit as the sane voice of reason which would never cease to ask the difficult questions. Never mind the £11 billion which could theoretically have been saved in a world where governments and central banks can carry out massive transactions without any effect on markets, the real reason that taxpayers are on the hook for so much debt interest is that for two decades no UK government has succeeded in balancing the public books – with the result that debt has been piled on debt. Even when inflation and interest rates were on the floor in 2020/21 the government still spending £39.4 billion on debt interest.

One further point: the NIESR, and the FT report on it, asserts that the Chancellor should have been wise to the risk of inflation, but wasn’t. The FT is not exactly best-placed to criticise him for failing to see inflation at 9 percent. Indeed, the FT failed to see inflation coming itself, a piece in its Alphaville column criticising other publication for warning of inflation – memorably entitled ‘The Spectator joins the inflation doom-mongers’.

Sunday shows round-up: Tories ‘united’ behind Boris

Brandon Lewis: Conservatives are now ‘united behind the PM’

Mounting dissatisfaction with Boris Johnson’s leadership came to a head last Monday when he survived a vote of confidence amongst Conservative MPs by 211 to 148. The party’s rules as they stand mean that his position is now notionally safe for a year. The Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis spoke to Sophie Raworth about what this result meant for his leadership

CMA will review petrol stations’ practices

Raworth asked Lewis about how the government would ensure the cut in fuel duty would be passed on to motorists at the petrol pumps:

‘We don’t want rail strikes to happen’

Raworth also asked Lewis about the strike action planned by staff at Network Rail and the London Underground later this month, which are expected to be the largest such industrial action on the railways since 1989:

Rachel Reeves: ‘It looks like’ the government plan to break international law

Sophy Ridge spoke to the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves. The government has said that it will publish details of new legislation on the Northern Ireland Protocol tomorrow, which it has said is fully compliant with international law. Reeves, however, presumed to differ:

Mark Serwotka: ‘We need a debate about morality’

Ridge also spoke to Mark Serwotka, the leader of the Public and Commercial Services Union, many of whose members work for the Home Office. She asked him about the union’s fight against the government at the High Court to halt the government’s plans to settle unsuccessful asylum seekers in Rwanda:

Tony Danker: Recessionary risks ‘happening this year’

And finally, the Director-General of the CBI, Tony Danker, told Raworth about his organisation’s concerns for the economy:

How long will Xi Jinping rule China?

For some time now it has been assumed that in November the National Congress will rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s continued role as China’s supreme leader for a third five-year term, which would make Xi the first Chinese leader for a generation to serve more than two terms.

Just a year ago his position as one of China’s three pre-eminent leaders was confirmed when the 400 members of the Central Committee passed the third ‘Historical Resolution’ in the Chinese Communist Party’s 100-year history. The previous two were organised by Mao in 1945 and Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The resolution highlighted the concept of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ as a historical equivalent to that of his two legendary predecessors. But a number of crises, international and domestic, have put a question mark against Xi’s continued omnipotence.

When Xi met Putin before the Beijing Winter Olympics, the allies, who had moved ever closer over the last decade, declared that there were ‘no limits’ to the Russia-China relationship. What followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, about which Xi was forewarned, is therefore a puzzle. Although China voted against the UN resolution to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s active support for Russia has been notable by its absence.

There has been no public expression of support for Putin’s ‘special military operation’. Xi himself has subsequently stated that China is ‘committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries’. Russia has asked for military aid from China but no answer, at least publicly, has been forthcoming. If, as one suspects, China is helping Russia, it is being done in secret.

Neither does it seem that China wants to risk being involved in trade wars with the West. It is notable that Union Pay, China largest credit card company, has, like Visa and Mastercard, stopped working with Russian banks. Chinese companies, particularly those established in the US, appear to be equally circumspect about breaking US sanctions.

The Russia-China allegiance may now be superglued but to what strategic benefit to China? It is difficult to see how China’s geopolitical ambitions can be burnished by its support for an ally, albeit half-hearted, whose actions are causing global inflation and, in some countries, starvation. This is not how you win friends among the ‘non-aligned’ nations – just look at the borrowing default, food riots and political crisis in China’s ally Sri Lanka over the last month.

If China’s friendship with Putin is toxic internationally, it also seems likely that this toxicity applies in some measure at home. The leadership of China is opaque when it comes to identifying opposition to Xi. However, it is highly unlikely that factions who supported the cautious internationalism of Deng Xiaoping and his successors can be happy with the consequences of Xi’s overtly aggressive foreign policy which appears to have united the West in a Russia-China containment strategy. It has to be asked whether it was Xi or other government members who decided that there should be limits to Xi’s ‘no limits’ relationship with Russia.

The domestic economic costs of Xi’s campaign against western values are also becoming apparent. Under the influence of the Wang Huning, the communist party’s chief ideological theorist, a member of the Politburo’s seven man Standing Committee, Xi has pursued increasingly authoritarian attacks on the stars of China’s new economy.

Last year technology entrepreneur Jack Ma, the charismatic founder of Alibaba, was ‘disappeared’ and his company Alibaba forcibly restructured. A swathe of new regulations has hit China’s tech sector. The US$100bn online digital education industry, deemed inegalitarian, has been devastated by new regulation. Cryptocurrency has been banned. Even China’s social media stars such as Zhao Wei, a billionaire actress, pop singer and influencer whose online presence was erased in August last year, have been reined in.

Wang, a social puritan, believes that a ‘nihilist individualism’ has undermined the moral fabric of the US. He and Xi are determined that China will not be infected by such Western-style moral corruption, which they believe is fostered by social media.

Xi’s regulatory crackdown on technology companies has crashed stock prices. According to TechNode, a Chinese technology media company, there is an ongoing bloodbath in tech sector employment. Xiaohongshu, sometimes described as China’s Instagram, has recently laid off 10 per cent of its staff. According to Reuters, even the major tech companies such as Alibaba and Tencent are planning large-scale redundancy programmes.

Investment in start-ups, already in decline before Covid, has plummeted. Many technology entrepreneurs are quitting mainland China and heading to safer regulatory locations such as Singapore or the US.

Furthermore, China’s main technology and financial hub, Shanghai, has been particularly badly affected by Xi’s doubling down on his zero-Covid stance. Shanghai’s officials and its business elite are reportedly furious. Unlike other zero-Covid zealots, such as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who have given up on draconian lockdowns, Xi appears determined to stay the course. As long as Xi remains committed to the policy of zero Covid, how is China ever going to open up its borders? It is a question that must have occurred to many within China.

As a result of Xi, a perfect storm of problems is now bearing down on the Chinese economy. His foreign policies, particularly in relation to his threats to Taiwan and his support for Russia, are scaring off foreign investors. Revelations about Xi’s brutal suppression of China’s Uighurs are a further negative for investment in China. Foreign Direct Investment has fallen to just 2 per cent of GDP compared to 6.5 per cent in the mid-1990s. Meanwhile Chinese companies are offshoring manufacturing capacity to countries such as Vietnam.

At the same time the Chinese property sector is in a cyclical downturn. Xi’s clampdown on property leverage following the collapse of residential property behemoth China Evergrande Group is crashing the property market and construction sectors. This is a disaster for China’s regional governments whose finances are highly dependent on property sales.

No wonder then that, after a first quarter of negative GDP, global investment banks are busy slashing their growth estimates for China in 2022. Real GDP growth is now forecast to halve from 8.1 per cent in 2021 to around 4 per cent in the current year. Even that may prove optimistic.

This is not the economic background that Xi would want in the run up to the Politiburo Standing Committee elections in November. Confusingly, Xi’s lockdown orders to Covid-hit cities, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, not a Xi acolyte, has emerged from the shadows to exhort Chinese companies to get back to work. In some quarters there is clearly alarm at the economic downturn. Does Li’s sudden appearance centre stage indicate a power struggle at the heart of government?

Xi’s government remains broadly popular. The Edelman Trust Index shows that the Chinese government enjoys a 91 per cent trust rating compared with just 39 per cent for the US government. But Xi’s future will not be decided by the Chinese people; power struggles are fought within the Communist Party behind closed doors.

Though there is no sense that things are so bad that Xi might fail in his bid to win a third term as China’s leader, there can be little doubt that his reputation is tarnished within some political factions – particularly the ‘Shanghai gang’ who dominated Chinese politics for a generation until Xi’s emergence. While we should not expect a political earthquake at the National Congress in November neither should we rule one out, particularly if the economic outlook in China continues to deteriorate.

Is there a new Covid wave – and do we need to worry?

Is Covid back on the rise? The ONS survey shows increasing prevalence in England and Northern Ireland, with ‘uncertain’ results in Wales and Scotland. Scotland’s prevalence (2.4 per cent have the virus, according to the ONS) is almost double anywhere else. Hospitalisations are rising too: up 17 per cent since last week – though two-thirds are incidental (ie in hospital for other reasons).

So is this a new Covid wave? ‘Early signs that Covid may be rising’, says the BBC. But to those following the data closely, the uptick has been expected for some time – as the natural side-effect of a new variant. It is not, in and of itself, cause for alarm. Omicron is still mutating: and now the sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 have taken over.

Covid watchers saw this coming for some time. Because these sub-variants are able to evade some of the immunity from vaccines or infections, cases are likely to rise when they become dominant. This is known as the ‘crossover point’. It will take time to see this in the data. But early estimates suggest this crossover probably happened last weekend – hence the rise in cases.

As with Omicron, these variants first emerged in South Africa. We can look there for an idea about what’s going to happen next. And, as with Omicron, it’s reassuring news. Although each Omicron subvariant seems to have spread faster than its predecessor, hospitalisations and deaths have been lower. With each peak, the gap between cases and patients in hospitals has grown wider. Deaths are some 90 per cent lower. The outcomes of the virus are becoming less severe, allowing life in South Africa to continue relatively unrestricted.

Not even Nicola Sturgeon is considering bringing back Covid restrictions again. There is no need to return to the ‘old days of restrictions and panic’, said Scottish government advisor Professor Linda Bauld. This is especially the case in the absence of evidence that legally-enforced restrictions helped. We know from Google mobility data that people will adjust their behaviour and manage risk themselves if hospitalisations and cases do rise sharply.

But we also know – as Matt Ridley wrote in the magazine early this year – that the variants tend to get milder. Daily deaths within 28 days of a positive test peaked around the same level (300) for the original Omicron and the BA.2 wave. But deaths where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate – a more accurate measure – peaked 20 per cent lower. This suggests a higher proportion of ‘incidental’ Covid deaths. The case-fatality ratio continues to drop too: it is currently below 0.1 per cent. That’s less deadly than flu.

So there is no need to panic – and no evidence of a panic. Testing has fallen off a cliff since the government stopped providing free lateral flow tests. Just over a million tests were carried out in the last week – at Christmas we were doing 11 times that. It shows in the case detection rate: as the below graph illustrates, just 9 per cent of cases were picked up through testing – the lowest level since mass testing began.

Even if this analysis is wrong, and vaccines wane or a more virulent variant becomes dominant, we have the tools to fight it. On Wednesday Moderna announced a successful early trial of a vaccine targeting Omicron. It produces an eightfold increase in the number of antibodies compared with their original jab. T-cell vaccines are in development too. The cyclical nature of Covid and lockdowns may mean we’re half-braced for a return to the bad old days, but a look beneath the data proves very reassuring.

The ironic reincarnation of McDonald’s on Russia Day

Today is Russia Day. A muted affair compared to the pompous and bellicose displays seen on Victory Day, today is the day Russia commemorates no longer being a part of the Soviet Union and becoming the Russian Federation instead.

Unlike other patriotic holidays in the country, most ordinary Russians pay little attention to its significance. The end of the Soviet Union and the ensuing ‘Perestroika’ period was filled with economic hardship and upheaval, and is therefore a time many would prefer to forget.

Today, for most Russians, is just a nice day off, filled with wholesome family activities, the odd bit of cultural indulgence in museums and the like, and a lot of socialising with family and friends, nothing more.

However, there is one entity that is trying to encourage and capitalise on the muted patriotic feeling of the holiday, ‘Tasty – and that’s that’. McDonalds’ slightly depressing, Russified reincarnation is flinging open the doors of its first premises in exactly the same location in Moscow as McDonald’s did 32 years ago.

McDonald’s ceased to operate in Russia on March 14 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The chain’s 850 Russian restaurants were sold to businessman Alexander Govor in May, who agreed to reopen them after a rebrand.

That rebrand has been heavily teased in the Russian press. In an exclusive scoop, the broadsheet Izvestiya claimed that as many as eight names were in the mix, including the thrilling-sounding ‘The Same One’ and drool-inducing ‘Free Checkout Till’.

On Friday, the chain’s new logo was released: a nondescript red circle next to two orange batons on a green background. According to the enthusiastic minds in the new chain’s press office, these represent a burger and two chips, while the green background represents continuity in the quality of food and service customers are used to. Sure, why not?

The decision to launch ‘Tasty – and that’s that’ on Russia Day is significant. Right down to opening their first store in the same place as McDonald’s did in 1990, it’s clear that the chain’s new owners are trying to appropriate the significance of the golden arches for the country: the new ‘McDonald’s’ will be a truly Russian one.

However, the irony of McDonald’s reincarnation as ‘Tasty – and that’s that’ on Russia Day is not lost. The entry of McDonald’s into the Russian market three decades ago epitomised Russia’s embrace of capitalism. The country had shrugged off its Soviet mantle and was keenly entering the Western fold.

That Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has symbolised its retreat from the world stage, and a self-inflicted isolation so severe it has no choice but to fall back on its own resources sits in stark contrast to the image it is trying to push on its own people.

Just as McDonald’s did before it, the arrival of ‘Tasty – and that’s that’ too marks a new chapter in Russia’s world standing. It’s just not the one they would like everyone to believe.

The NHS’s disturbing trans guidance for children

Sajid Javid spoke some sense earlier this week when he said that the word ‘woman’ should not be removed from NHS ovarian cancer guidance. The Health Secretary was responding to the revelations that the NHS website had been stripping the word ‘woman’ from its advice pages. But fine words are only a start. The Health Secretary needs to get a grip on an NHS website that seems in thrall to magical thinking on sex and gender.

The problem is wider than he might realise. Quite apart from the row over the advice to women seeking advice on cervical cancer and ovarian cancer, the NHS is currently hosting a page entitled, ‘Think your child might be trans or non-binary?’ The page contains very worrying guidance for parents concerned that their children might be ‘confused about their gender’.

The page rapidly heads off into fantasy land. Reading more like an activist blog than official NHS guidance, the website declares that:

‘We now believe that gender identity is on a spectrum that includes male, female and a diversity of gender identities such as non-binary and agender (no gender).’

If one of my pupils had written something like that, my first question would be: who is ‘we?’ It certainly doesn’t include me – I don’t believe in gender identity – and I do not understand why the NHS should be citing anyone’s beliefs. Medicine should be informed by facts, not faith.

The rest of the sentence gets no better. If the Secretary of State thinks that biological sex is ‘incredibly important’, maybe he could explain to the NHS that male and female are labels we apply to the two sex categories. They are not two seemingly random points on some ill-defined spectrum that also happens to include non-binary and agender.

But what does it mean for a child to be confused about their gender in any case? And how might parents know? The webpage discusses clothes or toys ‘that society tells us are associated with a different gender.’ Is the NHS really suggesting that pink is for girls and blue is for boys? It’s not clear to me what the NHS might think, but it seems at odds with DfE guidance to schools that states:

‘You should not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear.’

Let’s be clear, the NHS webpage will be read by parents worried that because their children are ‘identifying with a different gender’, that there might be something wrong with them that needs fixing. The solutions mentioned on the page include a referral to a gender clinic and the administration of puberty blockers. What does that say to those parents? Almost as an afterthought the NHS adds, ‘This is in addition to psychological support’.

Apprehension about adolescence – probably something as old as humanity – now takes on new meaning, and it is terrifying. According to the NHS:

‘You may seek support for your child before puberty starts, which can begin as young as age 9 or 10. The physical changes that occur at puberty, such as the development of breasts or facial hair, can increase a young person’s feelings of unhappiness about their body or gender.’

The truth is that there are two sexes, we belong to one or the other, and we can like it or lump it – we can’t change it. But that does not mean that there cannot be a range of personalities and behaviours within each sex. A boy who likes wearing dresses is just that: a boy who prefers to wear clothes that are usually marketed at girls. If that makes his parents anxious, then maybe they are the one whose prejudices needs fixing?

Instead, those parents are directed to ‘charities listed on the TrazWiki page’. The organisations listed are an eclectic mix, to say the least. I would not direct the uninitiated there without more guidance. They are certainly not all charities, and some have dubious reputations.

Third in the unfiltered list of UK wide groups, for example, is ‘Action for Trans Health’. This might seem appropriate for a parent worried about the health of a child they think might be trans. But how many newcomers might realise that the Edinburgh branch of this organisation calls for nothing less than ‘the total abolition of the clinic, of psychiatry, and of the medical-industrial complex’? In another Tweet, it adds, ‘We demand an end to capitalist and colonialist “medicine”.’

After suggesting that gender non-conforming children might be ‘exploring different gender identities’, why is the NHS directing unsuspecting parents in this direction? It beggars belief. Savid Javid has spoken out about the erasure of the word woman, but this is surely far more serious. If he cares about children, he needs to take action.

Kim Kardashian is a better role model than Marilyn Monroe

When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Gala recently – the shimmering, crystal-studded, second-skin gown in which MM sang her infamous rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’ to JFK in 1962 – many people had a collective fit of the vapours. You’d have thought someone had wiped their nose – or worse – on the Stars and Stripes in front of the White House, that some act of sacrilege had been committed.

Kardashian (with the good manners characteristic of her – there’s a scene in an early season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians where her monstrous sister Khloe mocks her for being courteous to a nobody who is late with her new car) anticipated this: ‘I’m extremely respectful to the dress and what it means to American history. I would never want to sit in it or eat in it or have any risk of any damage to it… it will forever be one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to channel my inner Marilyn in this way, on such a special night.’

Kardashian recognised that the cult of Marilyn is stronger than ever. It has been announced this week that a new Marilyn Monroe biopic by Netflix, called Blonde, is due to be released this year. The director Andrew Dominik promises that it ‘will offend everyone.’ But even though Marilyn Monroe was a cultural figure dwarfing Kim Kardashian and all her sisters combined, if I was forced to choose between them as a ‘role model’ for young women (despite the fact that I loathe the idea of role models) I’d choose Kim – because I am a feminist and believe that the best way for women to be in what is still very much a man’s world is tough, not tender.

Both women were shamed for their nakedness, but the tough one toughed it out – trapped between the bullying sisters and the money-mad mother, KK’s was a Cinderella story in which not the shoe but the sex tape was the tight fit which opened the door to a whole new world. Marilyn never got over selling herself to pay the rent and putting out to get roles. There’s a bit in a book by her maid Lena Pepitone (in the New York years, when Marilyn was studying method acting) when Pepitone tells MM that she too had wanted to be an actress but her strict Italian father told her that being an actress was no better than being a hooker and Marilyn says sadly ‘He was right.’ She accepted the objectification which had such a disastrous effect on her, killing her at the age of 36.

Kim K, at this age, was just getting started on her political activism, ranging from everything from publicising the Armenian genocide by Turkey and working for the release of non-violent drug offenders; in 2019 she funded the 90 Days to Freedom campaign, an initiative to release nonviolent drug offenders from life sentences. The sneering query ‘But what does Kim Kardashian do?’ Is easily answered with ‘She raises four children, oversees a billion-dollar empire and gets under-privileged, non-violent people left rotting in jail out – what do you do?’ The Kardashians are a functioning matriarchy, where men come and go wearing the same baffled expression and the females have the final say. Marilyn was used by men until the end, the last years of her life becoming a two-Kennedy car-crash.

I’ve often wondered if it would have been different if she’d been around today in the age of MeToo. We’ll never know, but this tender and troubled woman is still being used by men, though these are now artistes rather than the casting couch Philistines – so obviously, that makes all the difference. What started with Norman Mailer (Pauline Kael called his study of Monroe ‘an offensive physical object – perhaps even a little sordid’) finds its latest expression in Blonde, which has already been rated an 18 for its sexually explicit content

Marilyn was exploited by a chain of men, and eventually it killed her – and if anything, she is more exploited in death. But Kim owned her own shaming and now thrives. Marilyn wasn’t even allowed to progress from being a sex symbol to a serious actress; Kim – whose bum was once her raison d’être – studies to become a barrister. And – unlike poor lonely Marilyn – she is likely to live to a ripe old age, dying surrounded by grandchildren, reflecting that the wages of sin can really be rather rewarding, so long as one holds one’s head high, sticks one’s bottom out and does not rely overmuch on the kindness of strangers.