Growing up The anti-vaxxer Madonna:

with Nina running for still filling

Simone president stadiums at 65
PEOPLE P10 BEST AMERICAN TALKING POINTS
COLUMNISTS P15 P21

21 OCTOBER 2023 | ISSUE 1458 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Gaza under siege

Will Israel’s retaliation backfire?
Page 4

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS theweek.co.uk

4 NEWS The main stories…
The siege of Gaza: can Israel defeat Hamas?
President Biden took “a bold gamble”
by heading to Israel this week, said
Donald Macintyre in The Independent.
Even before hundreds of Palestinians
were killed by a massive explosion at a
Gaza hospital on the eve of his arrival,
it was set to be a fraught diplomatic
mission. It risked associating him with
Israel’s expected ground invasion of
Gaza, and making the US look one-
sided. And that risk was magnified by
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas
pulling out of his meeting with Biden
in protest at the hospital blast, which
Israeli forces and Palestinian militants
blamed on each other. But the White
House clearly decided that the mission
was nevertheless worth pursuing. The
visit was an opportunity for Biden to
show solidarity with Israel over the
Hamas atrocities of a fortnight ago; The aftermath of an air strike in Rafah on Tuesday for every defending fighter to achieve
to discuss the plight of the 200 or so
hostages held by Hamas, several of whom are American;
and to air US concerns about “the mounting humanitarian
catastrophe” inside Gaza.
“Israel is in no mood for restraint,” said The Economist.
In the past, it has engaged in periodic, limited operations
to cut Hamas down to size –
“mowing the grass”, as some “Israel can’t eradicate Hamas but it can
used to call it. But this time,
in response to the massacre isolate, diminish and delegitimise it”
of more than 1,400 of its
people, it’s out to eradicate the group completely. “I don’t care
what happens next,” as Eitan Shamir, director of an Israeli
think-tank, puts it. “Whatever it is, it starts with destroying
Hamas.” Israel has blocked supplies of food, water and fuel
to Gaza, and last week warned all non-combatants to evacuate
the northern half of the territory, in anticipation of a ground
invasion. Removing Hamas won’t be easy, said Con Coughlin
in The Daily Telegraph, but it’s not impossible. After all, the
West did ultimately succeed in destroying through force the
threat posed by al-Qa’eda and Islamic State.
Israel’s anger and desire for vengeance are understandable,
said Ian Birrell in The i Paper, and it, of course, has a right to
defend itself. It should be wary, though, of lashing out in an
indiscriminate way that only fuels a cycle of violence. Gaza is
a densely inhabited sliver of land the size of the Isle of Wight.
Two-thirds of its 2.3 million impoverished inhabitants are
under the age of 24. Aerial bombardments of such a territory
will inevitably claim many innocent lives: health authorities
in Gaza say 3,000 people have already
been killed. The bombing and siege
amount to “collective punishment”,
which is against the laws of war, said
The Guardian. As for giving northern
Gaza’s 1.1 million people 24-hours’
notice to move south, that, too, shows
a contempt for civilian lives, given
that most of Gaza’s hospitals are in
the north. This is about more than just
revenge, said Emad Moussa in The New
Arab. It reflects Israel’s long-harboured
ambition “to empty Gaza and make
Palestinian Gazans Egypt’s problem”.
A full ground invasion of Gaza, as Israel
appears to be planning, would be a very
risky proposition, said Colonel Tim
Collins in the Daily Mail. The standard
military ratio says you need ten soldiers
superiority. So Israel would need a
force of around 400,000 to take on Hamas’s 40,000 estimated
operatives. But this war would be fought in narrow streets
unsuited to tanks, against an enemy moving through a “hidden
labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers underneath the city”. Such a
campaign could descend into a “bloody quagmire”, inflaming
the Arab world. “Even if Israel wipes out the top ranks of
Hamas – many of whom are
safely abroad in sympathetic
Middle Eastern countries –
and occupies the Gaza Strip,
what then?” It’s hard to see
what victory would look like for Israel in a military campaign,
agreed Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian. As the former MI6
chief Alex Younger put it last week: “You cannot kill all the
terrorists without creating more terrorists.”
The reality is that there are no good options for Israel, said
The Economist. An occupation of Gaza is “unsustainable” and
continuing Hamas rule in the territory is “unacceptable”. As
for handing over control of Gaza to Hamas’s Palestinian rival,
the weak and corrupt Fatah, that’s “untenable”. Perhaps the
best that can be hoped for is a “short period of martial law”
in Gaza while Arab intermediaries help find new Palestinian
leaders acceptable to both sides. Israel can’t eradicate Hamas
but it can isolate, diminish and delegitimise it, said Thomas
L. Friedman in The New York Times. That’s how the US
neutralised Isis and al-Qa’eda. But this course requires
“patience, precision”, and willing allies. Sending thousands
of Israeli reservists into “an urban war in one of the most
densely populated places in the world” is no solution.

It wasn’t all bad Scottish wildcats that

The oldest student newspaper
in Europe has been saved from
closure thanks to a crowd-
funding campaign that raised
£5,700. Edinburgh University’s
The Student was started by the
novelist and poet Robert Louis
Stevenson in 1887. It now
were released in the
Hull is set to become the
first city in Britain to give its
Cairngorms in a bid to residents a “right to grow” on
stop the species from unused council land. As a result
becoming extinct appear of a newly passed motion, the
to be thriving in their council will produce a map of
new home. The cats, suitable land, and help those
which were reared at who want to grow food on it
the Highland Wildlife Park by, for instance, facilitating
near Kingussie, were fitted the supply of water to the site.
© HIGHLAND WILDLIFE PARK/FACEBOOK

publishes a print edition once a
fortnight, and online every day.
“The donations have come in
from all kinds of people, but
the most heartening to see
has been people in the student
community,” said its editor-in-
chief. “We are so overjoyed.”
THE WEEK 21 October 2023
with GPS tags, so that “It will benefit Hull in many
their movements and ways,” local councillor Gill
behaviour could be Kennett told The Guardian.
tracked. This reveals that “We are a deprived city and we
they are learning to catch do need cheap food.” Possible
their own prey, and venturing beyond the release site, in an planting sites are expected to
undisclosed location. Only one of the 19 has died, of an infection. include former car parks and
There will be two more releases in 2024 and 2025, at different sites. neglected green spaces.
COVER IMAGE: MOHAMMED ABED/AFP
 …and how they were covered
Blinken’s tour
The “most important plane in the air over
the Middle East” in the past week hasn’t
been an Israeli war plane, said Ben Judah
in The Daily Telegraph: it has been the
Boeing C-32 that has transported US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken across
the region on a diplomatic tour, taking in
Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates, Israel (twice), Jordan and Saudi
Arabia. Blinken’s mission – “as tough as
any of Henry Kissinger’s” – is clear. First,
he must “pull together” the Arab states that
the US either subsidises or defends at vast
expense behind “some kind of strategy” to Secretary of State Blinken: tough mission said Nicholas Blanford on Politico. Having
de-escalate the conflict. More importantly,
he must deter Iran and Hezbollah, the heavily armed Iranian
proxy group that controls much of Lebanon, from entering
the war. It’s a tall order. Israel and Hezbollah have already
exchanged missile fire over the Lebanese border, and Tehran
has warned Israel that it may “join the fray” if the latter
doesn’t halt its campaign in Gaza.
It’s hard to believe that Blinken will be as effective as Kissinger On the one hand, they have an interest in distracting Israel
was in 1973, when his role in ending the Yom Kippur War
won him plaudits across the Middle East, said Niall Ferguson
in The Sunday Times. By deploying two aircraft carriers, as
well as supporting ships, to the eastern Mediterranean, the US
sent a firm warning to Hezbollah and Iran to back off. “But it
is not clear that American deterrence will succeed, any more
than it succeeded against Russia in February 2022.” The risk
NEWS 5
is that Iran views that naval deployment as
an “escalation”, said Simon Tisdall in The
Observer – and “escalation begets escalation”.
Tehran – which is anxious to slow the tide
of Arab nations normalising ties with Israel,
and which has noted the US’s desire to shift
its focus from the Middle East to China and
Russia – may not be deterred by the US show
of force, and will instead “recklessly up the
ante”. It has considerable influence not only
over Hezbollah, but also Palestinian Islamic
Jihad in Gaza, and other groups in Syria and
Yemen, and it appears to have put them on
notice that new fronts “may soon open up”.
The major threat comes from Hezbollah,
received hundreds of millions of dollars from
Iran since its last big clash with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah now
boasts a “full-scale army” of up to 100,000 fighters. Its arsenal
includes up to 150,000 missiles, including some with a 186-
mile range; and it is capable of firing thousands of rockets
a day, meaning it could conceivably overwhelm Israel’s Iron
Dome defence system. Hezbollah’s leaders are currently
walking a tightrope, said Hanin Ghaddar in Foreign Policy.
with a “limited escalation” along Israel’s northern border
with Lebanon. On the other, they know a “full-scale war”
could devastate Lebanon itself, undermining their legitimacy
there. They may be looking for a middle path, but one small
misjudgement, or just a slight change in Iran’s assessments,
and this “calculated engagement” could snowball into an all-
out war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Spotlight on Netanyahu to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs

Hamas’s “murderous incursion” into Israel has
plunged the country into a “political crisis as
well as a military one”, said Mark Almond in
the Daily Mail. PM Benjamin Netanyahu was
once hailed as “Mr Security”, the man who
could be counted on to keep Israel’s borders
secure. Yet he is now facing criticism from all
sides, for the intelligence failures in the run-up
to the invasion, and the “unpardonable delays
in sending troops” to help the kibbutzim under
deadly assault. With his standing in polls The Israeli PM near the Gaza border Anshel Pfeffer in The Sunday Times. He’d gone
“plummeting”, he was very slow to meet any
families of the hostages taken by Hamas; and he received
a “distinctly lukewarm” reception from troops at the scene
of the killings. His authority now lies in tatters.
Netanyahu’s biggest problem is that this crisis is in large
part the result of his own flawed defence strategy, said Limor
Simhony Philpott in The Spectator. He hoped to maintain a state
of relative calm on the Gaza border, while allowing Hamas to
receive millions from Qatar, and so build up its strength relative
the West Bank. The PA was thought to be more
likely to agree to a political solution involving
the creation of an independent Palestinian
state. By making sure Hamas kept control
of Gaza, Netanyahu hoped to further divide
Palestinians, and eliminate the possibility of a
Palestinian state. Instead, his approach simply
gave Hamas the opportunity to plan its most
lethal attack on Israel to date.
Netanyahu was unpopular in Israel even
before the invasion, said Louise Callaghan and
into coalition with “far-right” extremists, and
launched a controversial attempt to reform the supreme court.
Now, in an effort to shore up his position, he has paused his
judicial reforms and established an “emergency coalition” with
some of his former rivals. Netanyahu is a “world-class political
survivor”, said Donald Macintyre in The Independent. But with
reports that he “ignored a warning” from Egypt that something
terrible was in the offing ten days before Hamas’s attack, even
he may struggle to bounce back from this horrific situation.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
One of the horrifying things about violence is that people find it so Editor: Theo Tait
Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
energising – so “inspiring”, to quote one moronic student, speaking City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editors: Robin de Peyer,
Leaf Arbuthnot Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
soon after Hamas’s attacks on 7 October (see page 6). Surveying the Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
global headlines, Simon Schama noted in the FT, ”it is obvious that the spectacle of dead Jews can Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Billie Gay Jackson,
Amelia Butler-Gallie Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
still excite, rather than restrain, antisemitism”. This may be particularly true of antisemitic violence, Art director: Katrina Ffiske Senior sub-editor: Simmy
Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connell
but it’s true of other kinds, too. There have already been alleged terrorist attacks in Brussels and Arras Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
in the days since. The whole cycle of Islamist attacks across the West after 9/11 was, in a sense, a
Production Manager: Maaya Mistry
series of copycat killings. As happened after the Columbine high school massacre, other budding Account Directors: Aimee Farrow, Steven Tapp,
Amy McBride
psychopaths looked at the news reports of such atrocities and thought: what a great idea. Classified Sales Executive: Nubla Rehman
Advertising Director – The Week, Wealth
One of the blessings of British history is that such horrors are rare (at home, anyway: clearly, it & Finance: Peter Cammidge
was different abroad). About the same number of people died in the entire Troubles as have died Managing Director, The Week: Richard Campbell
SVP Lifestyle, Knowledge and News: Sophie Wybrew-Bond
in Gaza since 7 October. After Peterloo in 1815, which left 18 or so Chartists dead, a French diplomat
sneeringly remarked: “Only in England do they call that a massacre.” So it seems particularly absurd Future PLC, 121-
141 Westbourne
and obscene when, from the safety of this island, left-wing British academics approve Hamas’s Terrace, London
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actions, or right-wing British journalists call for all of Gaza to be cleared by force. Such events seem Editorial office:
to demand moral clarity and strong views, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. But sometimes, he 020-3890 3787 Future plc is a public
company quoted on the
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system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 21 October 2023 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Council tax freeze

Antisemitism in the UK Council tax rates are to be

frozen in Scotland next year,
Humza Yousaf announced
“With its vibrant gay scene, vegan restaurants and Green MP, at the SNP’s conference
Brighton is one of the most liberal towns in Britain,” said Jake this week. Making his first
Wallis Simons in The Daily Telegraph. It is also, apparently, a speech as party leader,
repository of support for Hamas. At a gathering just 24 hours Yousaf also pledged to
after the 7 October attacks, one speaker, a Sussex University invest £100m in each of the
next three years to cut NHS
student union officer, declared: “Yesterday was a victory.” She
waiting lists, and to look
went on to describe the butchery as “so beautiful and inspiring into launching government
to see”. This wasn’t an isolated incident, said Stephen Glover bonds on the international
in the Daily Mail. At a pro-Palestinian protest in London last market, to raise revenue for
Saturday, the chorus “From the river to the sea, Palestine will infrastructure projects. Local
be free” – widely seen as a call for an end to the Israeli state – authority groups and the
was heard. Two protesters had pictures of paragliders stuck Scottish Greens criticised
to their backs, an apparent celebration of Hamas’s airborne the tax freeze, saying it had
terrorists. At a protest in Glasgow, one woman shouted: “Free been announced without
consultation and could force
Palestine! Don’t forget where the Jews were in 1940.” All this, The march for Palestine in Whitehall further cuts in services.
lest we forget, after at least 260 young people were killed at the
Supernova music festival, after whole families, including babies, were slaughtered and mutilated on
MP faces suspension
Israeli kibbutzim. The “evil of Hamas” has seeped “onto British streets, into British universities”. The Conservative MP Peter
Bone should be suspended
What happened on 7 October was appalling, said Aasmah Mir in The Times. If people have glorified from the Commons for six
such acts of terrorism, that is wrong, and illegal. But a humanitarian catastrophe is now under way weeks for bullying and
in Gaza. It ought to be possible to condemn both. We need to be careful not to stigmatise “any sexual misconduct,
expression of concern or sympathy for a population of 2.3 million people having bombs dropped Parliament’s behaviour
on them”. There has been an assault on freedom of speech, said Benny Hunter on Open Democracy. watchdog recommended
The protest in London was a march for Palestine, not for Hamas. Yet Foreign Secretary James this week. It found that five
allegations made against the
Cleverly advised protesters to stay at home. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman has written to
MP by a male former staffer,
police chiefs warning that the waving of Palestinian flags could, in some circumstances, be regarded relating to events in 2012 and
as an attempt to “glorify acts of terrorism”. This is absurd and illiberal. The purpose is “to intimidate 2013, were “proved”. These
would-be protesters and delegitimise criticism of Israel by aligning it with criminality”. included verbally abusing
and ridiculing the man,
This went far beyond legitimate criticism, said Juliet Samuel in The Times. Two days after the physically striking him, and
massacres, a mob occupied the whole road outside the Israeli embassy, setting off fireworks and exposing his genitals “close
chasing a Jewish man who was filming them. A sneering woman with a Palestinian flag on her cheek to the complainant’s face”.
mocked him: “Are your people dead? Yes? Awww. Good.” Left-wing journalists and academics at If MPs vote to uphold the
sanction, a by-election
respectable universities endorsed the attacks as a form of resistance to colonialism. Antisemitic hate
could be triggered in
incidents spiked across Britain’s big cities. A Jewish school in north London was vandalised with red Bone’s Northamptonshire
paint. Synagogues and schools were forced to lay on extra security. Imagine how different the official constituency. Bone, 71, has
response would have been with any other form of racism. It’s the same old story: “Jews don’t count.” denied the accusations.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
Brighton’s Morris dancers
have dropped the word
“men” from their name to
become more inclusive. The
troupe, formerly Brighton
Morris Men, has become
just Brighton Morris. It’s
still a male group, but
according to a spokesman,
it now “welcomes those
who feel they fit into a
largely male-presenting
space, whether cis male,
trans men, non-binary or
gender non-conforming”.
A boarding school in West
Sussex has a new “principal
headteacher”: an AI chatbot
called Abigail Bailey.
Cottesmore School will still
be run by its human head,
Tom Rogerson, but he will
be supported by Abigail,
who has been trained in
educational management.
Her duties will include
supporting staff and helping
to write school policies.
Michael Caine, who announced that he is retiring – on a high. Poll watch
Referring to his latest film, The Great Escaper, the 90-year-old Only 20% of voters believe
actor explained that he had got “wonderful reviews” in a lead that Rishi Sunak would
role, and had thought: “What am I going to do to beat this?” make the best prime
King Charles, with the unveiling of a new set of coins, designed to minister, down five points
in a week, and a record low.
reflect his passion for the natural world. Featuring images of a red
32% believe the same of
squirrel and a hazel dormouse, among other things, the coins are Keir Starmer, down two
expected to enter circulation by the end of the year (see page 45). points. 43% of voters say
they are not sure who would
Bad week for: make the best leader. Asked
whether they think Starmer
Stella McCartney, after her plans to build an “unashamedly
has a clear plan for the
contemporary” holiday home on a remote stretch of Scotland’s country, 28% say he does,
west coast received dozens of objections. Among other things, up six points in a week. 19%
objectors complained about the need to cut down five mature say that Sunak does, down
Scots pine trees to make way for the large, low-lying, glass-fronted two points. Just under a
house, and the possibility that the public would be denied access third of all voters say they’d
to the beach it overlooks at Roshven Bay, south of Arisaig. vote Labour in an election
Royal Mail, with reports that, in some areas, households have held tomorrow; 16% would
vote Conservative.
been having their post delivered less than once a week. Postal
YouGov/The Times
workers say that rounds have been cut, and staff at sorting offices
have been told to prioritise more lucrative tracked deliveries. 52% of people say they
Hannah Ingram-Moore, who came under fire after revealing are not confident that they
that her family had kept £800,000 from the sale of Captain Tom would receive timely
Moore’s books. She said her father had wanted the family to take treatment on the NHS if
the profits. Days later, the family’s lawyers said that the Captain they were diagnosed with
cancer. 40% are confident.
Tom Foundation – established to carry on his charitable work –
Savanta/Liberal Democrats
was likely to be closed, following a series of controversies.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 Europe at a glance
Brussels
Football terror: After 13 hours on the run,
the lone gunman who killed two Swedish
football fans in a terror attack in Brussels
this week was shot by police, outside a café
in an outlying suburb. He died soon after.
Abdesalem Lassoued, 45, a failed asylum
seeker living in the capital, opened fire in
a street near the city centre and then fled
on a scooter. In a video posted earlier,
Lassoued, who is said to have faced terror
charges back home in Tunisia, claimed
to be inspired by Islamic State. Following
the attack, more than 35,000 football fans
attending a Euro 2024 qualifying match
between Belgium and Sweden were locked
down in the stadium for 2.5 hours; and
Belgium was then put on the highest-level
terror alert. In August, Sweden had raised
its own terror alert, after various Islamist
militant groups had threatened to avenge
a series of public burnings that had
occurred in Stockholm. There are fears
this attack might be linked to those events.
Arras, France
School attack: France raised its terrorism
threat alert to the highest level last week,
after a radical Islamist shouting “Allahu
akbar” walked into the grounds of the
Lycée Gambetta-Carnot, a secondary
school in Arras, stabbed to death a French-
literature teacher, Dominique Bernard, and
wounded three other staff members. Police
arrived quickly to arrest Mohammed
Mogouchkov, a former pupil of Chechen
origin. The 20-year-old had been placed
on the terror watchlist 11 days before the
attack, which echoed the killing of history
teacher Samuel Paty by a Chechen refugee
in Paris three years ago. Seven other
people, including his younger brother, were
later detained. The interior minister, Gérald
Darmanin, said the Hamas attack on Israel,
which had unleashed “an atmosphere of
jihadism” in France, may well have played
a part in triggering the attack. France has
increased security around schools and
Jewish sites, with 7,000 troops on patrol.
Paris
Notre-Dame
safeguards: The
finishing touches
were being put to
a new €2m fire-
fighting system at
Notre-Dame this
week, ahead of
its scheduled
reopening next
year. The
cathedral suffered
terrible damage in the 2019 blaze that
took firefighters hours to subdue. Dousing
any subsequent fire with water from
aircraft is not an option, as the building
is too old to withstand the impact, so the
new system will include hydrants, water
mist and spray units, and a tank containing
the equivalent of a quarter of the water in
an Olympic swimming pool. Firebreaks are
also being fitted to the upper structures.
Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk
Rome
Author fined: The
Italian anti-Mafia
writer Roberto
Saviano, author
of Gomorrah, has
been found guilty
of libel under
Italy’s draconian
defamation laws
and fined €1,000.
His crime was to
have called the
current PM, Giorgia Meloni, a “bastard”
three years ago. He made the remark in
a TV interview when asked to comment on
the death of a baby in a migrant shipwreck
in the Mediterranean. Meloni, opposition
leader at the time, took a hard line on
charity rescue vessels and said that they
should be sunk. The verdict has renewed
calls for reform of the law, which makes
defamation punishable by fines and
prison terms of up to three years.
Vienna
Corruption trial: In the most high-profile
case arising from the political corruption
investigation that has rocked Austria in
recent years, former chancellor Sebastian
Kurz, once hailed as a conservative
wunderkind, has gone on trial for
giving false testimony to a parliamentary
committee. Kurz was the world’s youngest
national leader when he came to power in
2017, aged 31. His troubles began in 2019
with the “Ibizagate” scandal that engulfed
his coalition partner, the far-right Freedom
Party: this triggered the launch of a
wider investigation. Kurz is accused of
misleading the committee over the extent
of his influence in the appointment of
a close associate, Thomas Schmid, to run
a state-owned company. The charge carries
a penalty of up to three years in jail. Kurz
is also accused of rigging opinion polls to
boost his Austrian People’s Party, but this
charge may never come to court.
NEWS 7
Stockholm
Car ban: Stockholm has announced that it
will ban petrol as well as diesel cars from
its city centre from 2025. Introduced by
the Swedish capital’s city council, which
is controlled by a coalition of left-wing
and green parties, the ban will cover an
area of 180,000sq metres, which includes
shopping streets as well as residential
areas. Emergency vehicles and those with
disabled permits will be exempt. Paris,
Madrid and other European cities have
also put bans for diesel cars in place,
but the inclusion of petrol vehicles makes
Stockholm’s plan “the most ambitious low-
emission zone to date”, says the vice-mayor
for transport, Lars Strömgren. Critics say
emissions are already falling, and that
officials are in “far too much of a hurry”.
Berdyansk, Ukraine
Missile strike: For the first time in its
war with Russia, Kyiv has employed
US-supplied long-range missiles to strike
targets in occupied Ukraine. The strikes on
two Russian airbases – one near the port
city of Berdyansk, the other at Luhansk, a
Russian stronghold in the east of Ukraine
– are thought to have inflicted on Russian
forces some of their biggest losses of the
war, destroying runways, nine helicopters
and an ammunition dump. President
Zelensky made a point of thanking Joe
Biden for supplying the ATACMS missiles,
which Ukraine had been requesting for a
year or more. The strikes overshadowed
the massive offensive that Russia launched
earlier this week on the Ukrainian-held
town of Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk
region. Kyiv claims to have inflicted severe
losses on the encircling forces, destroying
about 30 to 40 of Moscow’s tanks and
90 to 100 of its armoured vehicles.
21 October 2023 THE WEEK
8 NEWS The world at a glance
Plainfield, Illinois
Boy killed: A six-year-old boy was
stabbed to death in Illinois this week,
an attack that police have linked to the
Israel-Hamas war. The child and his
mother, Palestinian-born Hanaan Shahin,
32, were at their home in the town of
Plainfield, near Chicago, when their 71-
year-old landlord turned up and started
to remonstrate with Shahin about the
situation in the Middle East. Allegedly,
the landlord, Joseph Czuba, then pulled
out a military-style knife and stabbed
them both, injuring her and killing her son, Wadea Al-Fayoume.
Czuba has been charged with first-degree murder and hate crimes.
New York
Remains removed: The American Museum of Natural History
in New York is to remove all human remains from its displays,
owing to the “deeply flawed” practices that had led to them being
held in its collections. The museum’s head told staff that “extreme
imbalances of power” had enabled it to acquire the remains of
around 12,000 people, mostly without their consent. They include
victims of Germany’s genocide in what is now Namibia in the
1900s; five adults whose skeletons were exhumed from a cemetery
for enslaved people during building works in Manhattan in 1903;
and some 400 New Yorkers whose unclaimed bodies were given
to medical science in the 1940s. The museum also holds the
remains of around 2,200 Native Americans, despite a 1990 law
obliging Indigenous remains to be returned, because, it says, it
has not been able to establish where they should be returned to.

Los Angeles, California

Speed cameras: Los Angeles and San Francisco are among
six cities in California that are getting speed cameras for
the first time. Despite a sharp rise in pedestrian deaths
in recent years, speed cameras are only found in 18
US states and Americans remain broadly opposed to
them, arguing that they are an infringement of civil liberties and
that fines penalise poorer drivers disproportionately. California’s
legislature has thrown out speed-camera bills three times in six
years, but it agreed to the latest one after it was amended to allow
people on low incomes to do community service instead of paying
fines. The cameras will be installed in “high accident” corridors,
near schools and in areas popular with street racers.

Washington DC
Speaker chaos: The US House of Representatives was due to vote
once again for a new speaker this week, following the ousting of
Kevin McCarthy, and several rounds of failed negotiation to find
a replacement since then. It has meant that for over two weeks,
the Republican-controlled House has been unable to pass
legislation, including on pressing issues such as aid for Israel.
On Tuesday, the Republicans’ latest candidate, Trump ally Jim
Jordan, failed to secure a majority in a floor vote after 20
Republicans voted against him. Another vote was scheduled for
Wednesday. With Democrats sure to keep supporting their own
candidate, he can only afford to lose four Republican votes.

Washington DC
Trump gagged: Donald Trump has been slapped with a partial
gagging order, in an effort to stop him publicly abusing the
prosecutors and court staff involved in his criminal case in
Washington DC. Since being charged over his alleged attempt to
subvert the 2020 elections, Trump has taken to describing special
counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and a “mad dog”; he has also
referred to the lawyers who work for Smith as “thugs”, and
attacked several likely witnesses in the case, including former
attorney general Bill Barr. Issuing the order, Tanya Chutkan, the
district judge overseeing the case, acknowledged Trump’s right to
speak out on public-policy issues and criticise the government, as
he seeks a second term, but said that he could not run a “pre-trial
smear campaign” against those who might testify against him.

Quito Buenos Aires

Youngest president: The 35-year-old son
of Ecuador’s richest man has been elected
as the country’s youngest-ever president.
Daniel Noboa (pictured), who is heir to a
banana fortune, won 52% of the vote in a
run-off on Sunday, beating left-wing rival
Luisa González. The businessman has
vowed to cut taxes and tackle gang-
related violence – a problem highlighted
by the murder in August of one of his
rivals for the presidency. Noboa will
serve a “caretaker” term of 18 months,
necessitated by former president Guillermo Lasso dissolving the
opposition-led National Assembly in May to avoid impeachment.
Priest extradited: An 86-year-old
priest suspected of involvement
in torture and murder during
Argentina’s military dictatorship is to
be extradited from Italy. Franco Reverberi – who was born in
Italy, but emigrated to Argentina as a child – served as a military
chaplain in Mendoza province during the period of the junta,
between 1976 and 1983, when 30,000 people were killed or
“disappeared”. In 2010, proceedings against him for crimes
against humanity started in Mendoza, and witnesses testified that
a priest had been present at the torture sessions that took place
at a detention centre in the area. Soon after, Reverberi fled to
Italy, the country of his birth. He launched an appeal against his
extradition, but it was rejected by Italy’s supreme court last week.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 The world at a glance
Mbandaka, DRC
Boat tragedy: As many as 200 people
are feared to have drowned when a boat
carrying pedestrians and cargo capsized
last week on the Congo River, in
northwestern Democratic Republic of
Congo. The boat had left Mbandaka on
Friday night with more than 300 people
on board, and began to sink soon after.
The bodies of more than 50 passengers
and crew had been recovered by the start
of the week; the fate of up to 167 more
was still unknown. Officials said that the
open-topped whaleboat was overloaded
and should not have been navigating in the
dark; the transport minister, Marc Ekila,
has since promised to better enforce safety
rules on the country’s waterways. With few
surfaced roads in the DRC, travel by river
is common in the country, and boats are
often overloaded and in poor repair.
Nairobi
Loan request:
He came to
power last year
pledging to cool
Kenya’s relations
with China, but this
week President William Ruto revealed that
he had asked Beijing for a $1bn loan, to
enable Kenya to complete infrastructure
projects that stalled when earlier loans ran
out. Ruto’s predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta,
borrowed some $8bn from China to
build roads, railways and ports, as part
of President Xi’s Belt and Road global
infrastructure initiative. But many of the
projects the money paid for have failed
to generate the expected income; others
have had to be suspended for lack of
funds. Meanwhile, China has dropped
its lending to Africa to its lowest level for
two decades. Ruto has also asked for more
time to settle the existing debts.
NEWS 9
Canberra
Referendum defeat: In a major blow to Australia’s Labour
PM Anthony Albanese, voters have rejected a proposal
to create an Aboriginal advisory body to the government
that would be enshrined in the constitution. The Voice to
Parliament concept was developed by Indigenous leaders in
2017 as a means of addressing the persistent disadvantages
suffered by Australia’s Indigenous people, and Albanese
came to power last year promising a referendum on it.
Polls showed that support for the idea was initially strong,
but it has steadily declined during fraught and often bitter
campaigning. In the end, No won by 60% to 40%. The
campaigners for No argued that the Voice would be divisive, privileging one group
over others, and would slow down decision making; they were accused of swaying
undecided voters by wrongly implying that the Voice plan would confer additional
rights on Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Following the result, Indigenous leaders called for a “week of silence”, with their
flags flown at half-mast in mourning. Opposition leader Peter Dutton said that
Albanese should apologise for holding such a divisive referendum.
Tokyo
Forests to fall: Japan is to
fell many of its vast cedar
and cypress forests in an
effort to alleviate a hay
fever epidemic that now
affects two in five of its
people. Planted after the
Second World War to
meet domestic demand
for timber, the coniferous
trees release huge
quantities of very light
pollen that can travel for
hundreds of miles on the
wind. The plan to cut
down 70,000 hectares
of these per year over a
decade, and replace them
with lower-pollen
alternatives, has
been met
with broad
approval.
New Delhi
Gay marriage
rejected: India’s
supreme court has
declined to grant
legal recognition
to same-sex
marriage, saying
the issue must Wellington
be decided by Labour out: Voters in New Zealand
parliament. The resoundingly rejected their Labour
chief justice, D.Y. government in last weekend’s general
Chandrachud, election. Initial results suggested that
revealed that he and one of the other five the party – led by Jacinda Ardern until
judges on the bench had been in favour of she handed the reins to Chris Hipkins in
legalising same-sex civil unions; he also January – took just 27% of the vote and
said the government had a duty to protect 34 seats; by contrast, the conservative
same-sex couples, and instructed it to National Party, led by former businessman
establish a committee to examine their Christopher Luxon, won 39% and 50
rights. However, the Hindu nationalist seats. Luxon had focused his campaign on
government is firmly opposed to the idea, NZ’s faltering economic growth, crumbling
and LGBTQ+ campaigners (above) said infrastructure and rising crime. The exact
the court had been their only hope. make-up of his government is not yet clear.
21 October 2023 THE WEEK
10 NEWS
The Terminator’s tough love
Arnold Schwarzenegger grew
up in a small town in Austria
in a flat without running water,
says Jane Mulkerrins in The
Times. He endured what he
says “would be called child
abuse now” at the hands of
his strict father, but believes it
was his tough upbringing that
forged his drive and resilience.
Of course, his own children
had a far easier ride; but he
insists he was quite strict. On
skiing holidays, for instance,
when his daughters asked for
a hot chocolate as soon as
they arrived on the slopes,
he recalls that he’d snap into
the character he played in
Kindergarten Cop. “THERE
IS NO HOT CHOCOLATE,”
he’d boom. “YOU WILL GO
UP FOUR MORE TIMES
AND THEN YOU CAN HAVE
HOT CHOCOLATE.” The
girls would cry, he admits, but
they’re grateful now. “They go
to Aspen and they ski better
than all their friends. And they
always come to me and say,
‘Thank you so much, Daddy,
for making us ski!’”
The bane of Downing Street
Steve Back spends his days
waiting outside Downing Street
with his camera, taking photos
of politicians and officials,
says Alexandra Topping in
The Guardian. He’s broken
plenty of stories over the years.
His biggest recent coup was
snapping the secret document
(carried by an aide) suggesting
that Rishi Sunak was planning
to scrap phase 2 of HS2.
“There’s no money in it,” he
says – he was paid £50 for the
People
HS2 photo; but he’s been a
photojournalist for more than
50 years and he loves it. The
secret is patience and nous.
“If you see a piece of paper
flapping around in the wind
being carried with someone
who’s the head civil servant at
the Treasury, you know it’s not
the time to buy a cup of tea.
Especially if the document
says ‘Confidential’. That
always gets me going.” It’s just
old-fashioned journalism, he
adds. “I’ve told them umpteen
times to tell people to cover up
documents. But no one seems
to take any notice.”
A teenage wasteland
It’s gone down in legend as one
of the great rock festivals, but
The Who’s Pete Townshend
didn’t enjoy Woodstock.
His coffee was spiked with
LSD, and there were endless
logistical problems. Still, he
could see why fans had flocked
there. “They were trying to Lisa Simone does not sugarcoat her relationship with her mother,
rise up, both politically and says Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian. On her 16th birthday, she
spiritually,” he told Kevin E.G. recalls receiving a card from the legendary singer and civil rights
Perry in The Independent. Soon activist Nina Simone. “It said: ‘I curse the day you were born.’ I
after, he sensed a similar thirst was with my aunt at the time. I didn’t react. It was my aunt that got
at the Isle of Wight Festival. angry. I was like: ‘Why are you angry? This is normal.’” Lisa – also
But if it was ever there, it didn’t a singer-songwriter, and a star on Broadway – has spent most of
last. “By the time I left there her life trying to make sense of her mother, who died in 2003. Lisa’s
was a sea of garbage,” he early childhood was happy: Nina was fun and loving, and they
laments. “A photographer said: would often sit at the piano and sing and play together. But when
‘F**king hell, it’s a teenage Lisa was eight, her parents separated. As a black woman, Nina had
wasteland!’ so I wrote that come up against appalling prejudice; she had to fight for everything
down for a song.” He was, he she’d achieved. And when she lost her husband, her life was in chaos
says, “deeply disturbed by it – and she took it out on her only child. She became unpredictable
all. Here we are, with an and violent. Finally, aged 14, Lisa fled, and for years after that,
audience looking for uplift she hardly saw Nina. Then, in her 30s, she re-established regular
and inspiration and solace, contact, and embarked on “a training programme” to turn Nina into
because the world was not a loving parent. It transformed their relationship, and finally she is
a particularly pretty place at peace with her mother. “She paid a huge price to be the woman
then either, and then they we revere,” she says. “I’m the only person on this entire planet who
behave like scumbags!” calls Nina Simone ‘Mommy’. And I do so with joy and with pride.”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint:

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the
Farewell
chair of NBC Universal Studio Group, Dame Donna Langley Generation Viagra Louise Glück, Nobel
“Viagra is making Britain a country Prize-winning poet, died
1 Thank You for the Music by Benny Andersson and of dirty old men. A record number of 13 October, aged 80.
Björn Ulvaeus, performed by Abba elderly males are popping the little blue Fanny Hugill, Wren
2 Zorba’s Dance from Zorba the Greek, written and pills. Last year, the over-70s received officer who worked on
performed by Mikis Theodorakis 282,000 prescriptions, including 7,000 the plans for D-Day, died
3 Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from La Wally by Alfredo Catalani for nonagenarians, the eldest patient 28 September, aged 100.
and Luigi Illica, performed by Wilhelmenia Fernandez being 99. Contemporary culture sends Rudolph Isley, singer-
4 This is the Day by Matt Johnson, performed by The The out the signal that sex is for life. But songwriter for The
5 It Was a Good Day by O’Shea Jackson, performed by it shouldn’t be. Think what Viagra Isley Brothers, died
Ice Cube did for Hugh Hefner. According to 11 October, aged 84.
6 Never Is a Promise, written and performed by Fiona Apple his widow, Crystal, he took so much Phyllis “Pippa” Latour,
7* All My Friends by Pat Mahoney, James Murphy and Tyler it made him deaf in one ear, and their Special Operations
Pope, performed by LCD Soundsystem relationship a misery. I cannot help Executive agent in the
8 Come Home (feat. André 3000) by André Benjamin, Brandon but think that Rishi Sunak missed a Second World War, died
Anderson and Jairus Mozee, performed by Anderson Paak trick here. Age restrictions on the sale 7 October, aged 102.
of Viagra, not cigarettes, would have Piper Laurie, actress
Book: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez held surprising allure for countless best known for The
women up and down the country.” Hustler and Carrie, died
Luxury: tarot cards * Choice if allowed only one record
Petronella Wyatt in The Daily Telegraph 14 October, aged 91.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 Briefing NEWS 13

Hamas: a short history

Where did the armed Palestinian group that rules Gaza come from, and what are its aims?

What are Hamas’s origins? Palestinian National Authority, run by

It grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, the PLO’s political wing, Fatah, was
a Sunni Islamist movement. The and still is widely seen as powerless and
Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing, founded corrupt. The West Bank has remained
in the 1940s, was initially not involved under Israeli military control (although
in the armed struggle against Israel – arguably Hamas’s militancy made further
which was led by the secular Palestine steps towards a two-state solution
Liberation Organisation (PLO) – and impossible). Hamas is still seen by many
instead devoted itself to charitable and Palestinians as the last defender of their
religious work. But during the first cause; a recent poll suggested that a third
Intifada, a violent uprising against the of them would vote for its political wing.
Israeli occupation of the Palestinian
territories that began in 1987, it turned How did it win power in Gaza?
to militancy, as the PLO started to In 2005, Israel withdrew unilaterally
negotiate with Israel. It was in that year from Gaza (which doesn’t have the
that Hamas was officially co-founded by same strategic value to it as the West
the Gaza-based quadriplegic cleric Sheikh Bank). In 2006, in the second Palestinian
Ahmed Yassin. Hamas is an acronym for parliamentary elections, Hamas
Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya A Hamas military demonstration in 2019 unexpectedly won. Fatah refused to
(“Islamic Resistance Movement”). The accept the result. A brief, brutal civil war
word also means “zeal” in Arabic (and “violence” in Hebrew). between the two factions followed, which left Fatah in control in
the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas, blockaded in Gaza
What does Hamas want? by Israel since, has used it as a launchpad for a series of raids and
Hamas’s charter, published in 1988, calls for the destruction rocket attacks on Israel, resulting in many conflicts and two full-
of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic blown wars, in 2008-2009 and 2014, before the present one.
Palestine. Article 11 asserts a God-given right to “every inch of
Palestine”. The charter is explicitly genocidal: it imagines a day of How is Hamas organised?
judgment, when Jews try to hide but are slaughtered by Muslims. Hamas’s political leadership operates in exile in Doha, Qatar, led
It also blames Jewish “scheming” for many tumultuous events in by Ismail Haniyeh, who was elected in 2006 (Hamas has held no
world history, from the French Revolution to the First World War. elections since then). Day-to-day affairs in Gaza are overseen by
In 2017, Hamas published a new policy document that avoided Yahya Sinwar, who served 22 years in an Israeli prison for the
the aggressive antisemitism of the charter, and proposed a long- killing of two Israeli soldiers. Its military wing – the Al-Qassam
term ceasefire with Israel, a hudna. But it has never recognised Brigades – is led by Mohammed Deif. Deif, a nom de guerre,
the Israeli state, and recent actions suggest its ideology has not means “the guest”, a reference to his habit of staying with
softened. “This land is ours, Al-Quds [Jerusalem] is ours, different sympathisers each night to avoid detection; a 2014
everything is ours,” its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, told Israeli air strike killed his wife and two children. Many Hamas
Israelis after the 7 October attacks. “You are strangers in this leaders, from Sheikh Yassin on, have been assassinated by Israel.
pure and blessed land. There is no place or safety for you.”
How is it funded?
What did it do in its early years? Gaza relies on aid, largely from Qatar and the UN, to feed and
Initially, Hamas abducted and killed Israeli soldiers. It tried care for its poor. (Before the war, unemployment was at 45%.)
to undermine any political settlement, first employing suicide Hamas makes money by taxing goods brought in through its
bombers in April 1993, five months before the PLO leader Yasser network of tunnels from Egypt. Historically, it has been funded by
Arafat and Israeli prime minister the Palestinian diaspora, donors in the
Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Gaza and the Nakba Persian Gulf, and sympathetic states
Accords. For its first seven years, For Israelis, the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, such as Turkey. Its biggest current
Hamas only attacked what it called in the wake of the Holocaust, was a miraculous event. donor is Iran; the US says Tehran
legitimate military targets; but it For Palestinians, it was the Nakba: the catastrophe. The provides up to $100m per year to
began to target Israeli civilians after UN’s partition of the British-run mandate of Palestine Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
the killing of 29 Palestinians in a gave 55% of the land to the Jewish minority. During
mosque in Hebron in the West Bank this period of civil strife between Jews and Arabs, and How does it justify its atrocities?
the war that followed – when the new Israeli state was
by an Israeli settler, Baruch Goldstein, invaded by forces from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq –
To some extent, it doesn’t: a senior
in 1994. If the Israelis did not about 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their land. Hamas member, Moussa Abu
distinguish between “fighters and The two largest chunks of Palestinian territory, the West Marzouk, denies that civilians were
civilians” then it would be “forced Bank and the Gaza Strip, were occupied, respectively, targeted. Despite the clear evidence,
to treat the Zionists in the same by Jordan and Egypt. Many of the Arab occupants of he claims that all those attacked were
manner”, it stated at the time. A southern Israel were driven into Gaza, a strip of land either soldiers or armed “settlers”;
series of horrific bus suicide bombings by the Mediterranean on the border with Egypt, about and that those killed at the Supernova
followed. These attacks bolstered 25 miles long by seven miles wide. In 1967 , Israel’s rave could have been mistaken for
its status among Palestinians. Arab neighbours attacked again, and again Israel “resting” soldiers. In defence of
prevailed, occupying the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas’s violence, Abu Marzouk
Why did this make it popular? Israel administered both territories until 2003 when, claims that Palestinians have no
Hamas’s brand – indeed, its name – is under the Oslo Accords, partial control was handed alternative: “Nothing has been
over to the Palestinian National Authority. In 2005,
resistance. Many Palestinians believed, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza (but not from
achieved towards the idea of two
and still believe, that the PLO struck the West Bank). With a population of 2.3 million, Gaza states, from 1948 until today. We are
a poor peace deal with Israel in 1993, is one of the most densely populated areas in the a people under occupation.” What
which was never honoured. They world, and one of the poorest. would you do, he asked one journalist,
never got their own state. The if you were “forced to live in a cage”?

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

14 NEWS Best articles: Britain
Thank heavens, says James Marriott, that the party conferences
are over. It was the voices – Keir Starmer’s “reproachful adenoidal IT MUST BE TRUE…
Why I can’t bleat”; Rishi Sunak’s “nasal and pleading” tones – I couldn’t bear
them any longer. Politicians of yesteryear (think Churchill’s
I read it in the tabloids

stand the voice “patrician’s growl” or Thatcher’s “commanding purr”) sounded

far more interesting, regardless of what they actually had to say.
A “fake” lawyer, who had
been practising under the
name “Brian Mwenda”, has
of authority Even Geoffrey Howe, in his time considered a hopelessly dreary
speaker, was “a latter-day Demosthenes” compared with this lot.
been arrested in Kenya. His
case has divided public
James Marriott Wary of sounding privileged – there are very few working-class opinion – because he had
MPs with regional accents these days – they’ve converged on a won all 26 of his cases,
The Times bland oratorical speaking style “purposely stripped of everything despite having no legal
that makes a voice magnetic”. It’s not just wearisome to listen to; training. The Law Society
it means that the few distinctive speakers – Nigel Farage, say, or of Kenya has condemned
the “masquerader”, but
Boris Johnson – get more attention than they deserve. By failing others have praised him,
to see the importance of vocal charisma, of honing the oratorical including Kenya’s Central
skills of tone and modulation, politicians such as Starmer and Organisation of Trade
Sunak are inadvertently ensuring “the devil has all the best tunes”. Unions, which said he was
a “brilliant young mind”
Africa is the “greenest” continent, says Thomas Fazi. Its average who had made it “without
citizen consumes less electricity than a fridge; 600 million Africans traditional qualifications”.
A green burden have no access to electricity at all. It’s not for want of resources
– Africa has 13% of the world’s gas reserves, just slightly less than
Africa should Iran: Africa simply lacks the means to exploit them. And Western
climate activists want it to stay that way. In fact, the US has called
not shoulder a halt to the funding of fossil fuel-based energy projects globally.
Yet to assume Africa can industrialise and achieve net zero at the
Thomas Fazi same time is “delusional”. Even advanced economies struggle
to do without fossil fuels: and since history shows they are “the
UnHerd quickest and cheapest way to kickstart economic growth”, it’s
absurd to expect Africa to do without. By tripling its electricity
consumption using natural gas, sub-Saharan Africa (excluding
South Africa) would prevent many deaths from poverty and indoor
pollution, yet add only 0.6% to global carbon emissions by doing
so. Defying the net-zero agenda, Uganda, Nigeria and Senegal are
now pursuing their own fossil-fuel projects. Who can blame them? An Australian man has
filmed a video of a muscular
Amazing what you find when you look into what goes into the kangaroo apparently trying
making of a car, says Ed Conway. I was astonished to discover, for to drown his dog. Mick
We embraced example, that more than half the cars sold worldwide today rely
on a single factory in the Midlands for the tiny electrodes that
Moloney was walking his
dogs by the Murray River in
China, now we enable your rear-view mirror to dim automatically when there’s
a sudden glare. It’s just one of the myriad hidden components that
Victoria when he saw that
a big kangaroo had his akita,
can’t escape form the fantastically complex supply chains of car manufacture.
About three-quarters of your average car – and almost every other
Hatchi, in a “headlock” in
the water. Moloney went to
Ed Conway complex product for that matter – is made by companies other rescue Hatchi, despite his
than the one whose badge is found on the front of it: in fact, a fears. “The muscles on this
The Sunday Times company such as Apple doesn’t itself make a single item it sells. thing,” he said. “I was like,
And most of the companies in question are to be found in China. ‘this thing’s just got out of
In 1995, China was the main supplier of products for about 6% jail’ or something.” After
of US manufacturers; by 2018 that share had risen to 65%, and “a tussle”, the creature
that’s before you count raw materials such as steel and rubber. On released his dog. Moloney
that measure, a “whopping” 95% of US manufacturing sectors will continue to walk by the
rely on China as their main source of “intermediate inputs”. river. “I don’t want the roos
To untangle this world of complex supply chains would be thinking that we’re scared.”
prohibitively expensive. Remember that the next time a politician
tries to persuade you that we can cut ourselves loose from Beijing. The fire service in Malvern,
Worcestershire, has been
called out to deal with
A “Blair clone”. That’s how people often describe Keir Starmer. a shopping
They’re quite wrong, says George Eaton. He may appear trolley that
Last week, conservative in relation to Jeremy Corbyn, but the agenda he’s
pursuing is far more radical than New Labour’s ever was. Tony
had been left
dangling from
New Labour Blair boasted his government would “leave British law the most
restrictive on trade unions in the Western world”. By contrast, at
the top of a
32ft lamppost.
got buried last week’s conference Starmer rejected the idea of trickle-down
economics and championed workers’ rights. He said he wants to
A special
team from
Hereford &
George Eaton expand collective bargaining, abolish zero-hours contracts, end
Worcester Fire
“fire and rehire”, and grant workers parental leave and sick pay and Rescue
The New Statesman from day one. His shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, though Service freed
committed to fiscal prudence, is no less interventionist: she wants the trolley.
to reduce inequality by securing higher wages, stricter corporate How it got
governance and borrowing for investment. Quite a bold, social there remains
democratic agenda, in fact. “Globalisation, as we once knew it, is a mystery.
© SWNS

dead,” she declared. So too, she might have added, is New Labour.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 Best of the American columnists NEWS 15

Robert Kennedy: the wild card in the 2024 election

Robert F. Kennedy Jr may be about
to “rewrite the history of American
politics”, said Douglas MacKinnon in
The Hill. The anti-vaxxer and former
environmental lawyer announced last
week that he was dropping out of the
Democratic primary contest, in order
to make an independent bid for the
White House. Given how dissatisfied
people are with both the likely major
party nominees, Kennedy could win
a vote share “well above” that of Ross
Perot’s 19% in 1992. The latest Gallup
poll shows support for a third-party
option is at an all-time high of 63%. Kennedy: moving the needle
Three-quarters of independents want
one, as – for the first time in polling history – do a majority
of Republicans. “The needle is moving away from the
establishment elites, and Kennedy may be the main beneficiary.”
Kennedy is “a true 2024 wild card”, said Zeeshan Aleem on
MSNBC. On the one hand, he has the “most iconic surname in
Democratic politics” and takes a progressive line on issues such
as the minimum wage, union rights and student debt. On the
other hand, he opposes universal healthcare, wants strong
borders and peddles crazy conspiracy theories. He has claimed
that Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain”, and suggested that
Covid-19 might be a bioweapon
designed to target people by race,
sparing Jews and Chinese people.
Kennedy’s name and eclectic views
could prove a potent combination.
Or he may crash and burn. It’s
anybody’s guess at this stage.
The Biden campaign should be
nervous, said Byron York in the
Washington Examiner. Kennedy
“remains, in essence, a late-1960s
Democratic Party liberal”, and it’s easy
to imagine him replicating the strong
showing of Bernie Sanders in the 2016
Democratic primary, thereby drawing
votes away from Biden. On the contrary, said Amanda Marcotte
on Salon, it’s Donald Trump who has most to lose. The more
Democratic voters learn about Kennedy and his “unhinged”
views, the more likely they are to reject him. By contrast, his
conspiracy theories will go down well with a lot of Republican
voters, “especially the 25% who are QAnoners”. One of the
wacky theories circulated by QAnon types is that JFK Jr is still
alive and about to make a comeback as Trump’s running mate.
Now these people will have “a chance to vote for an actual
Kennedy”. Trump has long taken “the crank vote” for granted.
In RFK, he faces a new, and potentially trickier, opponent.

So much for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise that not “another foot” of border wall would be
built if he were elected president, says Andrew C. McCarthy. With his administration feeling the heat
So, Joe Biden, from a continuing record influx of illegal aliens, Biden has just announced a $190m plan to add 20
miles of fencing in Texas. The Left responded angrily to this U-turn, but Biden tried to placate liberal
who’s building critics by claiming he had no choice. The wall-construction money had already been “appropriated”,
he told them; he’d like to have spent it elsewhere, but his hands were tied. This is disingenuous
the wall now nonsense. His administration is not legally obliged to spend this money on a wall if it has a better
border-security plan. The funding is discretionary – unlike, say, the requirement to detain all illegal
Andrew C. McCarthy aliens pending a final determination of their case, an obligation the Biden administration has happily
ignored. Thanks to Biden’s lax border policies, more than four million people have illegally entered
National Review the US on his watch – roughly equivalent to the population of Panama. Now that the costs of dealing
with this influx are becoming painfully clear, Biden poses “as a born-again border cop” for right-
wing voters, and for left-wingers “as a victim whose heart is still in the right place”. What a phoney.

America’s obesity crisis is escalating, says Leana S. Wen. Eleven years ago, not one state had an adult-
obesity rate of 35% or above. Now, 22 states do. It’s a formidable problem, but one simple way to
Stop providing ameliorate it would be to stop people buying fattening products under the welfare scheme that used
to be known as food stamps, but is now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme
junk food (Snap). An official study found that 20 cents of every dollar spent under the scheme, which benefits
more than 41 million people, was used to buy sugary drinks and junk food. Taxpayers are thus paying
to the poor twice over: first to help people buy unhealthy food, and then to tackle the medical problems to which
this contributes. The food industry, unsurprisingly, opposes any reforms to Snap, saying a block on
Leana S. Wen unhealthy food would be too hard to police. But Snap already prohibits purchases of tobacco, pet
food and personal hygiene products, so how hard would it be to rule junk food off-limits as well?
The Washington Post Others say such limits would infringe on the “autonomy and dignity” of low-income individuals.
This is a stronger argument, but still not convincing. Claimants, after all, would still be free to buy
junk food with their own cash, just not with government dollars intended to provide nutrition.

Americans as a whole are still holding firm in their support for Ukraine, says Tom Nichols, but
Republican dissent is growing, both in congress and among the party’s voters. A majority of GOP
Why the Right backers now want to cut aid to the country. Whence this hostility? It’s partly down to the fact that
“foreign aid is always an easy hot button for the know-nothing Right to push”. Some two-thirds of
doesn’t like Americans still have no idea where Ukraine is, and the public tends to “grossly overestimate” how
much the US spends on foreign aid. Polls suggest that most Americans think it accounts for about
Ukraine a quarter of the US budget and want it reduced to about 10%; in reality, it accounts for about 1%.
It’s also the case that some GOP extremists “genuinely admire” Vladimir Putin, having bought the
Tom Nichols line that he’s “a godly defender of white Christian Europe against the decadent West and its legions
of militant drag queens”. In many cases, though, the opposition to Ukraine seems to stem simply
The Atlantic from a knee-jerk contrarianism – a desire to reject anything that liberal America supports. If the
Democrats opposed aiding Ukraine’s war effort, Republicans in congress would no doubt be
fighting tooth and nail for it. “You’d see Ukrainian flags waving on the back of pick-ups.”

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: International
The rise of the far-right: Germany’s dreaded alternative
Eighteen months ago, the far-right it’s increasingly attracting left-
Alternative for Germany (AfD) wingers and the under-30s. Indeed,
party looked destined to fade into the results of these elections
political “insignificance” in west suggest something profound has
Germany, said Maria Fiedler in Der changed in Germany, said Mark
Spiegel (Hamburg). Rocked by an Schieritz in Die Zeit (Hamburg).
acrimonious power struggle, it then Owing to its troubled history,
suffered losses in regional elections Germany’s postwar politicians
in the western states of Schleswig- have been at pains to avoid
Holstein and North Rhine- scapegoating migrants, and its
Westphalia. Many concluded it voters have mainly rejected the
was “turning into a purely eastern far-right. But the AfD’s success
German party”, destined never to in the west suggests that this
make gains outside its heartlands in “postwar consensus” has been
the de-industrialised former eastern shattered: Germany is entering
bloc. How wrong they’ve turned AfD leader Alice Weidel: “dreaming of government” a new political “epoch”.
out to be. The party has surged up
the rankings in national opinion polls and last week secured In the short term, Scholz’s coalition may benefit from the AfD’s
“record-breaking” results in two key state elections. In Hesse, surge in popularity, said The Economist. Its members quarrel
home to the financial hub of Frankfurt, it won 18.4% of the incessantly; but as all three parties are getting “pasted at the
vote, second only to the conservative Christian Democratic polls”, none will now risk collapsing the coalition. Even so, the
Union (CDU); and in Bavaria, it took third place with 14.6%. AfD’s onward march looks set to continue, said the FT. With its
The results didn’t just confirm the AfD as a mainstream national national polling average close to 22%, it will probably “trounce
party in Germany; they left its co-leader Alice Weidel “dreaming the opposition” next year in regional elections in three eastern
of participating in the federal government in 2025”. German states – Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. Other
parties now face the dilemma of whether or not to work with
As well she might, said Alexander Marguier in Cicero (Berlin). the AfD at the local level, in the hope of stripping the party of
These elections were a referendum on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s its outsider status and exposing its empty promises. That would
governing coalition, made up of his centre-left Social Democrats be a mistake. There’s no way to “normalise” these “slavishly
(SPD), the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP). The pro-Kremlin” hardliners who pedal antisemitic, xenophobic
cost-of-living crisis and the proposed ban on new gas boilers tropes. The SPD and its allies should focus on addressing the
have provoked huge discontent: the results were a resounding problems that are attracting voters to the AfD in the first place.
“vote of no confidence”. The big question is why voters have
turned to the hardline AfD instead of the centre-right CDU, said Which is just what they’re trying to do, said Nicolas Richter
Jim-Bob Nickschas in Tagesschau (Berlin), and the main reason in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich): last week, for instance, the
is the immigration crisis. Germany has received 244,000 asylum interior minister, Nancy Faeser, presented a draft bill aimed at
applications already this year, and that’s not counting the million making deportations of irregular migrants easier and faster. But
or so refugees it has taken in from Ukraine. The AfD’s hard line that’s just it, said Mark Schieritz: everyone agrees those refused
on immigration and its opposition to arming Ukraine has been asylum should be deported. But where? You can’t just take
the key to its success. Mainstream politicians are still dismissing people back on a plane; a plane needs permission to land and
the AfD as an undemocratic “protest” party, said Alexander countries of origin often don’t want to give it. The awful truth is
Kissler in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich). But the truth is that that solving problems is no longer so important in politics: too
voters are starting to see it as a viable alternative. Look how many people just want to make political capital out of them.

At long last Japan’s government is taking on the “Moonies”, says The Asahi Shimbun. The
JAPAN controversial Unification Church, set up in South Korea in 1954 by the self-proclaimed messiah Sun
Myung Moon, now claims to have three million followers, many of whom live in Japan. For years
Is the sun now the church has been implicated in “dubious activities”, not least its “spiritual sales” scam, which
about to set on induces devotees to buy cheap items at high prices in exchange for “good fortune”. Incredibly, such
practices have long been tolerated in Japan, where the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has historically
the Moonies? had close ties to the church: former PM Shinzo Abe openly promoted it. He was assassinated last year
by a gunman with a grievance against it. However, the government has now asked a court to strip
The Asahi Shimbun the church of its status as a religious corporation, thus denying it tax breaks. Not before time. How
(Tokyo) far our new PM, Fumio Kishida, goes in pursuing the church will be a key test of his “seriousness
and leadership”. If the church is allowed to escape punishment, he will have much to answer for.

We still don’t know for sure who blew up two Nordstream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year,
SWEDEN says Dagens Nyheter. Now it has happened again, and it isn’t a “wild guess” that Russia is behind
the latest apparent sabotage. Last week, pressure suddenly dropped in the Baltic-connector pipeline
Joining Nato that, since 2020, has linked Finland with the European network. There’s a hole in the pipeline
which has caused gas flows to “stop completely”; and it could take months to fix. Investigations
must now be are ongoing, but the similarities to last year’s blasts are striking, and Russia clearly has a motive
top priority for sabotage: it always said that if Helsinki joined Nato, which it has done, Russia would retaliate.
Fortunately, this isn’t a knockout blow: gas only makes up about 5% of the Finns’ energy needs, and
Dagens Nyheter they now import enough liquefied gas to cover the shortfall. But now that Russia has been effectively
(Stockholm) cut off by “massive” sanctions, Vladimir Putin seems to have concluded he has little to lose by
attacking Western strategic infrastructure. He’s “very clearly testing Nato’s limits”. It’s another
reminder to Sweden of the need to join Nato as soon as possible. With Putin’s behaviour increasingly
“erratic”, we urgently need protection against a regime that “no one in their right mind” would trust.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

18 NEWS
What the scientists are saying…
Why some vegetarians struggle
Some vegetarians are steadfast in their
resolve; others can’t resist the occasional
bacon sandwich. Now, scientists think
they know why: some of us may have
genes that make it easier to stick to a
meat-free diet. Researchers in the UK and
US compared genetic data on 5,234 strict
vegetarians with that of almost 330,000
people who eat meat at least sometimes.
In this way, they were able to identify
three genes that were more common in
vegetarians, two of which play key roles
in the metabolism of fatty compounds
called lipids and brain function. It isn’t
clear how the genes might make it easier
to be vegetarian; however, the researchers
speculate that there are components of
lipids that are present only in meat,
and that some people are able to produce
these nutrients naturally – making them
less liable to meat cravings. There are
more people who say they want to be
vegetarian than who are vegetarian; this
could help explain that discrepancy, notes
the report in the journal PLOS One.
Human voices create panic
The lion has long been considered the
most fearsome predator on the African
plains; but it seems there is one beast that
other mammals find yet more terrifying –
Homo sapiens. A new study has shown
that elephants, giraffes and other wild
animals are more alarmed by the sound
of the human voice than by the lion’s
roar. Scientists from Western University in
Ontario placed motion-sensitive speakers
and cameras around waterholes in South
Africa’s Kruger National Park. When
triggered by a passing animal, the speaker
broadcast a recording of either a lion
snarling, guns being fired or people talking,
while the camera filmed the animal’s
Health & Science
Not as terrifying as a conversation?
reaction. When the researchers analysed
the videos, they found that giraffes,
leopards, hyenas, zebras, kudus, warthogs,
impalas, elephants and rhinoceroses were
all twice as likely to run away from the
sound of people speaking than from
sounds of guns or lions. They also fled
more quickly: in their hurry to escape,
some even abandoned prey they’d caught,
says the report in the journal Current
Biology. That the mere presence of humans
is enough to evoke such a level of fear is
“amazing, but depressing”, said lead
researcher Prof Liana Zanette. It also raises
questions about the safari industry, and
poses a challenge for conservation projects
that are partly funded by tourism.
Is ultra-processed food addictive?
There has been a lot of debate about
ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and to what
extent they are harmful. Now scientists
have suggested that what makes UPFs
particularly problematic is that some of
them are addictive; and they argue that
they should be labelled as such. The
researchers, from the US, Brazil and Spain,
note that refined carbohydrates and fats
(both found in high levels in many UPFs)
have been shown to have similar effects on
dopamine levels in the brain to addictive
substances such as alcohol. And people’s
behaviour in relation to UPFs is indicative
of addiction: cravings, excess consumption
and continued consumption, even when
there is clear damage to health. A recent
analysis of existing studies estimated that
14% of adults and 12% of children are
addicted to UPFs. A number of factors,
including the use of additives and efforts
to enhance “mouth feel”, may contribute
to the addictiveness, say the researchers,
in the BMJ, but it is probably mainly to
do with levels of carbohydrates and fats.
Edited chickens are flu-resistant
Scientists have managed to tweak the genes
of chickens to make them resistant to bird
flu. Avian flu poses a major threat to both
wild and farmed birds; the H5N1 strain
currently in circulation has killed millions
of wild birds around the world and cost
the UK poultry industry more than £100m.
Vaccinating flocks is expensive and labour-
intensive, and keeping chickens indoors
affects their welfare, so scientists have
been looking at other ways of stemming
the disease’s spread. Using Crispr editing
to make small changes to a gene that the
virus hijacks in order to replicate, the team
– from the University of Edinburgh and
Imperial College London – were able to
produce birds that were highly resistant
to infection, says the report in the journal
Nature Communications. And they hope
that by editing two more genes, they may
be able to achieve full immunity.

Stone Age people ate their dead Obesity and cancer

Around 15,000 years ago, Stone Age Long-term public health measures to
humans living in Britain and across tackle smoking are paying dividends
northern Europe didn’t bury their in terms of cancer rates – but the
dead – they ate them. This theory was Government’s failure to tackle the
mooted back in the 1980s, when bones obesity crisis represents a wasted
unearthed at Gough’s Cave, at Cheddar opportunity, which may cost thousands
of lives, a new Cancer Research UK
Gorge in Somerset, showed clear signs of report has warned. Excess weight has
teeth marks. Ribs had been cracked open been linked to a higher risk of 13 types
for their marrow, and skulls fashioned of cancer, including breast and bowel
into drinking cups. The possibility that cancers, which are two of the most
the dead had been eaten out of necessity common, as well as such hard-to-treat
could not be excluded, but evidence that tumours as pancreatic cancer. This
© TRUSTEES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

other sources of food were plentiful, year, 2,613 women under 60 were
Shaped skulls: indicative of funerary rituals diagnosed with cancers caused by
combined with the care that had gone
into preparing the skulls (these had been cleaned of tissue, before being shaped), was smoking, while 2,589 cases in that
age group were caused by obesity.
indicative of a funerary ritual. But in 2030, researchers project that
Now, a team from the Natural History Museum has reviewed evidence from 2,722 cases of cancer in women
59 late Paleolithic sites around Europe, and found evidence of ritual cannibalism at under 60 will be caused by obesity,
13 sites, burial at ten, and of both at two. Genetic analysis has also revealed that the and 2,228 by smoking. A similar
cannibalised individuals were all of the Magdalenian culture (one of two dominant switchover is expected among
in that period), suggesting that eating the dead was a shared behaviour at that time. younger men later in the 2030s.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

20 NEWS
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
Kenneth Tynan is often cited
as the first person to have
said “f**k” on British TV,
during a live broadcast
in 1965; but in fact, says
Patrick Kidd in The Times,
the F-bomb was dropped
six years earlier on the TV
channel Ulster Television.
A man whose job was
to paint the many railings
beside the River Lagan in
Belfast was asked how he
found the work. “F**king
boring,” he said. No
complaints were received.
Jada Pinkett Smith made
headlines last week when
she revealed that she and
husband Will Smith have
been secretly separated
since 2016 (though she
still hopes they’ll get back
together). She also let slip
details of their unusual
sleeping arrangements.
Until their two children
were six and four, they
shared a bed with them.
Did this impact the couple’s
love life? “We had a love
nest in our closet,” she told
The Sunday Times. “This
beautiful blue dome with
twinkle lights in the ceiling
with a circular mattress
bed. We built that house, so
I created that nest knowing
[we’d need it], and we
would sneak into the love
nest at nighttime. So trust
me, I had that handled.”
The Labour front bencher
Steve Reed is reported to
be obsessed with roast
potatoes. The Sunday
Telegraph claims that he
once took a week off work
and spent it experimenting
to find the ideal spud (Maris
Pipers came out top). It has
been said that the best way
to get him combat-ready
before a big interview is to
whisper in his ear: “Your
roast potatoes are shit.”
THE WEEK 21 October 2023
Talking points
Poland’s election: a victory for democracy?
Back in 2018, as Poland’s
ruling Law and Justice (PiS)
party reached the end of its
first term, its leader declared
that his right-wing nationalist
project had only just got
started. “We are preparing
[for] a long march,” said
Jarosław Kaczynski. But in
Sunday’s elections, Poles came
out in droves in a bid to stop
that illiberal, “authoritarian”
journey, said The Guardian.
And they seem to have done
so. On a turnout of 74% (11
points higher than in 1989’s
historic elections), PiS won the
largest share of the vote (35%) Tusk: an acrimonious campaign
but it lost its majority, and has
no obvious route to a new one. Former PM
Donald Tusk (and ex-head of the European
Council), may now be able to forge a coalition
around his Civic Platform party. For Poland and
the EU, this is a “hugely consequential result. For demanding Second World War reparations
progressives, it is one to celebrate.”
“In its eight years in power, PiS has packed
the country’s courts, turned its state media into
propaganda organs” and captured its state-
owned companies, said The Economist. And in
this election, it fought dirty to retain its grip: the
state media was “absurdly one-sided”; handouts
were promised for areas where the PiS vote was
concentrated; Tusk was smeared as a German
agent. Kaczynski warned this week that he won’t transfer of power, that could be a welcome sign
give up, and Tusk, his long-time political foe,
The prison system: at full stretch
It has finally happened, said David Shipley in
The Spectator. Our prisons are full. This week,
the Justice Secretary Alex Chalk announced that
some “less serious offenders” in England and
Wales would be released early – because there is
nowhere to imprison them. It was also reported
that judges were being instructed to delay
sentencing of convicted criminals. This crisis
was entirely predictable, and years in the
making. In 2019, the Tories promised to increase
police numbers by 20,000. They then promised
to create 20,000 new prison places to cover the
inevitable rise in arrests and convictions. The
Government achieved the first but not the second.
Over the past year, it has created 90 new prison
places per week, by making prisoners share cells,
deploying temporary cells, and so on; but each
week, as many as 200 new prisoners enter the
system. Now it has run out of room; our justice
system is “crumbling figuratively and literally”.
As with rail and power infrastructure, it seems
we can no longer build prisons properly. It all
feels “emblematic of a Government and state
that has lost its ability to plan or function”.
This does seem like a “particularly dystopian
new low”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.
Chalk is now seriously considering “surreal-
sounding plans” to rent cells for British criminals
in prisons overseas. Yet ministers are still “falling
may face obstacles to forming
a government. But if Tusk
manages it, he can then “try
to undo PiS’s efforts to turn
Poland into a copy of Viktor
Orbán’s Hungary” and, in
the process, unlock €35bn in
Covid recovery aid that has
been withheld by the EU,
owing to concerns about the
state of Poland’s democracy.
It’s not yet clear what policy
agenda Tusk’s likely coalition
would agree on, said Dalibor
Rohac in The Spectator, but it
is expected to retain Poland’s
pro-Ukraine stance (and patch
up the recent row over grain
shipments) and its “impressive re-armament”
plans. There is also hope that it will mend ties
with Brussels in general, and Berlin in particular,
instead of picking “needless fights”, such as by
from Germany. Poland, the bloc’s sixth-largest
economy, might not, however, align itself directly
with Berlin or Paris; it could instead seek to act
as the voice of “new Europe” on issues that are
pressing in that region, such as immigration,
energy security and national sovereignty.
At home, its challenge will be to address the
concerns of socially conservative rural voters,
while rejecting PiS’s “petty nationalism”, said the
FT. It may not succeed, but if there is a smooth
in itself that Polish democracy still has life in it.
over themselves” to promise ever harsher, longer
sentences, to look tough on crime in the run-up
to an election. Politicians must “acknowledge
the possibility that Britain overuses its prisons”,
said The Times. At 159 per 100,000, the UK’s
incarceration rate is the highest in western
Europe – and the prisons are understaffed,
unsanitary and overcrowded. Most prisoners
are serving sentences for non-violent crimes:
too short to properly rehabilitate them, but
disruptive enough to ruin their lives. A system
that houses prisoners in “inhumane” conditions,
without reintegrating them into society, is
“failing to perform its most basic functions”.
Actually, the “most basic of duties” for any
government is to keep people safe, said the
Daily Mirror, and the Tories are failing there as
well. Too few crimes are investigated by police,
prosecution rates have fallen, and the backlog in
the courts means victims wait longer for justice.
There’s a simple solution to the space problem,
said Ian Acheson in The Daily Telegraph, though
it may be “unpalatable”. Nearly 70% of women
in prison are guilty of a non-violent offence.
Releasing them on licence could free up whole
wings for violent male offenders. The big debates
– why we imprison so many and have some of
the worst rehabilitation rates in western Europe
– can wait. We need practical action, now.
 Talking points NEWS 21

Keir Starmer: digging for victory Wit &

“There is a political party
in town that finally seems to
understand the magnitude of
is badly affected by sky-high
property prices and rising
rents. Labour’s ambitions
Wisdom
the UK’s housing crisis and include building several new “You’re nobody until
wants to do something about towns on land acquired by somebody hates you.”
it,” said Kate Andrews in The state-backed companies. Tom Wolfe, quoted in
Daily Telegraph. “And it’s Bulldozing the planning rules City Journal
not the Conservatives” – it’s is good economics, said Emma “Fundamentalists lack that
Labour. At last week’s Party Duncan in The Times – a most civilising of human
Conference in Liverpool, Keir classic “supply-side” reform, virtues: doubt.”
Starmer boldly addressed which should deliver growth Matthew Syed in The
one of Britain’s main policy without costing the Treasury Sunday Times
challenges, promising to a penny. “Rather as Margaret
reinstate the recently scrapped Thatcher freed the economy “People in those old times
Tory target of building from the unions in the 1980s, had convictions; we
300,000 homes a year. He so Starmer intends to liberate moderns only have opinions.
pledged to “bulldoze” his way it from the Nimbys” and right And it needs more than
to a housing revolution by a “generational wrong”. a mere opinion to erect
Starmer the builder: can he fix it?
sidelining “Nimbys” and a gothic cathedral.”
taking central control of the planning process. Starmer’s policy is dishonest, said Stephen Heinrich Heine, quoted
He also made the argument “people serious Glover in the Daily Mail. He talks about the in Yale’s Paprika!
about building have been making for years”: housing crisis without ever alluding to its “major “The biggest contributor
that we must build on the many “not-so-green” contributory cause”: immigration. Last year net to happiness is not having
bits of the too-zealously-protected green belt. migration exceeded 600,000 – a city nearly the tons of stuff, but knowing
Disused car parks and dreary wastelands are size of Glasgow. Even if it generally runs at half your address in the universe
“not a green belt”, argued Starmer; they’re a that rate, Sir Keir’s shovels and cranes will have of meaning.”
“grey belt” ripe for development. He’s quite to be working fast just to keep up. Starmer Chris Arnade on UnHerd
right. The Tories “should be afraid”. is aiming for a million-and-a-half homes over
the next Parliament, said Simon Jenkins in The “If my devils are to leave me,
“Traditionally, Tories were the developers’ Guardian. He wants to build the equivalent of I’m afraid my angels will
friends,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. five Milton Keynes in the South and along the take flight as well.”
But much of their support is in areas beset by M1 corridor. That sounds “ominously like the Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted
new housing developments, where schools and HS2 of housing”. We’d be far better off spending in The Guardian
other infrastructure are already under pressure. money on regenerating and levelling up cities in “There are two ways
For Starmer, though, this policy could be a the North – rather than on costly, carbon-guzzling of spreading light: to
big vote-winner: most of the adult population developments in what is left of the rural South. be the candle or the
mirror that reflects it.”
Edith Wharton, quoted
Madonna at 65: still the Queen of Pop? in Forbes
Last week was a big one in the conical bras. The audience loved “In politics, you may have
pop world, said Neil McCormick the songs and the costumes and to be slippery, but it’s always
in The Daily Telegraph. On the nostalgia, but there was foolish to sound slippery.”
13 October, a concert film of the something “slightly embarrassing” Matthew Parris in The Times
most popular female artist of her about the “onstage smut and “Firm rule: any big story
generation, Taylor Swift, opened snogging”. Does Madonna really running for more than
in cinemas around the world (see need to keep trying to prove how a few days in Britain
page 27). Only a day later, the “edgy” she is, by writhing about will eventually become
best-selling female recording artist on beds and cavorting with about the BBC.”
of all time, Madonna, launched oiled-up and topless dancers? Sathnam Sanghera on
her postponed Celebration tour in Now that she’s a grown woman X/Twitter
London, “kicking off a 78-date and a “global icon”, rather than
global trot that will see her a boundary-breaking young artist, “Art washes away from
perform to over a million fans”. can’t she move on and start acting the soul the dust of
At 33, Swift is almost half more her own age? everyday life.”
Madonna’s age, yet like Lady Gaga Not acting her age?
Picasso, quoted on Bdaily
and almost every other modern Madonna could have taken “the
female artist, she owes a huge debt to the older Barbra Streisand route and headed towards
Statistics of the week
singer. Madonna was “really the first female intimate cabaret performances for her loyal
English schools are
global superstar”. With her catalogue of monster fans”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Sunday experiencing an unauthorised
hits, her influence on dance and fashion, her Times. Instead, she’s sticking unashamedly to absence rate of 2.1% – up
constant image reinventions and defiance of her formula. And since she can still carry it off, from 1.8% last year and 1.3%
norms, the “Queen of Pop” paved the way for vocally and physically, why not? Quite, said in 2019, before the pandemic.
a host of others to follow. Eleanor Mills in The Independent. The Rolling Separate DfE figures show
Stones are still prancing about in tight leather that 68% of primary school
I was among the faithful at London’s O2 Arena trousers in their 80s and nobody is telling them pupils met the expected
for Madonna’s concert, said Sarah Vine in the to “grow up”. Madonna has always loved standard in reading at the
Daily Mail – and great fun it was. The place outraging people. If she’s “still got the chutzpah end of Year 2 this year, down
from 75% in 2019.
was a “sea of lace fingerless gloves and giant and the stamina to raise the roof” at the The Daily Telegraph
crucifixes”, leather jackets, white tulle and relatively tender age of 65, good luck to her.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

22 NEWS Sport
Rugby World Cup: Ireland’s “quarter-final curse” strikes again
Ireland went into this 2023 World Cup with
the unenviable record of seven defeats in seven
quarter-final appearances, said Michael Aylwin
in The Observer. This time, however, all the
signs suggested they would finally break their
“quarter-final curse”. Top of the world
rankings for the past 15 months, Andy
Farrell’s side arrived in France on a 13-Test
winning streak, and duly won all four of their
pool games to set up a quarter-final against
New Zealand. And on paper, the All Blacks
seemed eminently beatable, having recently
slipped “from their perch as the perennial
champions of all things rugby union”. Yet on
a dramatic night in the Stade de France,
Farrell’s men failed to get the job done, said
David Walsh in The Times. New Zealand Owen Farrell: calmly sealing victory Wales felt it was a clear red card, yet the
prevailed 28-24, after heroically resisting a
37-phase Irish attack in the closing stages. In truth, the All Blacks Tompkins had to leave the pitch for a head assessment, during
deserved the victory – they took more of their chances. But that
won’t console Ireland one bit. For this wasn’t just a quarter-final
loss: “something more precious had slipped from Ireland’s grasp”.
What a truly riveting contest this was, said Gavin Mairs in The
Daily Telegraph. “Arguably the best quarter-final in World Cup
history”, it probably deserved to be the final. And what a “cruel
end” to the glittering career of Ireland’s 38-year-old captain Johnny
Sexton, who could only “stare into the distance in disbelief” once
the referee had blown his whistle. For the team as a whole, this
defeat will have felt like the end of an era, said Charles Richardson
in the same paper. Most of Ireland’s “golden generation” are in
their 30s, and many won’t play in another World Cup – and that
includes “abrasive flanker” Peter O’Mahony, 34, and 33-year-old
centre Bundee Aki. But as Farrell contemplates a rebuild, he can
take heart from the overall healthiness of Irish rugby: the
country’s “academies thrive, and their under-20s are currently
Grand Slam champions”. Despite the lingering “World Cup
hoodoo”, this could still be “just the beginning for Ireland”.
Cricket: England suffer shock loss to Afghanistan
On paper, England vs. Afghanistan looked to be
a glaring mismatch, said Mike Atherton in The
Times. England are a “powerhouse one-day
outfit”, and four years ago were World Cup
champions. Afghanistan are a “nomadic team”
who are unable to play international matches
at home. Prior to facing England, they’d only
ever won a single match in the competition –
against Scotland in 2015. Yet on a warm
evening in Delhi, Afghanistan pulled off not
only their greatest-ever victory, but “one of the
biggest shocks in World Cup history”. They
won by a “convincing” 69-run margin, having
set England a target of 285. As a result of this
loss, England’s chances of reaching the semi-finals
are in serious jeopardy: having won just one of The President: inflicting damage hardship, and which is in “mourning for the
their first three games (against Bangladesh), they
have “very little room for manoeuvre”.
From the first ball of this match – a leg-side wide from Chris
Woakes that was missed by wicket-keeper Jos Buttler and went
to the boundary – England were “profoundly outplayed”, said
Simon Burnton in The Guardian. Afghanistan largely had
Rahmanullah Gurbaz to thank for their total of 284 all out. The
21-year-old opener struck a “brilliant, 57-ball 80” before being
run out by his captain, Hashmatullah Shahidi. Yet it was with the
ball that the Afghans “truly shone”: after their pace bowlers had
made England’s top order look “distinctly third-rate”, their
impressive trio of spinners – Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman
and Mohammad Nabi (aka “The President”) – inflicted the real
THE WEEK 21 October 2023
Ireland aren’t the only home nation who will
have left France ruing missed opportunities,
said Robert Kitson in The Observer. Wales
really should have beaten Argentina in their
quarter-final in Marseille. They were 10-0 up
after half-an-hour, and led 17-12 with 15
minutes to go. The Pumas, however, had other
ideas: two tries in the final 12 minutes earned
them a 29-17 victory. It wasn’t just dejection
Warren Gatland’s men felt at the end of the
match: it was real “fury” at a pivotal
refereeing decision in the second half, said
Elgan Alderman in The Sunday Times. With
Wales clinging on to their lead, Argentina’s
Guido Petti struck the head of Nick Tompkins
with his shoulder in a clear-out from a ruck.
referee decided it wasn’t even a foul, and
which the Pumas scored a crucial try. But in truth, the Welsh can’t
feel too aggrieved: though they “stretched Argentina’s defence
time and again”, they repeatedly failed to take their chances.
And so that leaves “written-off” England as the “last home nation
standing”, said Chris Foy in the Daily Mail. Steve Borthwick’s
team made it into the semi-finals with a dramatic 30-24 victory
over Fiji. Large stretches of the match looked like a “procession”
for England, who played their best rugby of the tournament to
subdue their unpredictable but sometimes “brilliant” opponents.
Near its end, however, the game turned into a “survival exercise”,
as Fiji scored two quick tries to level the scores. As the tide turned
against them, England kept their heads and “battered forward” –
and captain Owen Farrell calmly completed victory with a drop
goal followed by a penalty. England will have a far tougher test on
Saturday, when they face the conquerors of France, South Africa,
said Matt Dawson on BBC Sport. The Springboks will be heavy
favourites – but at least England have “momentum and lots of
belief”, and are “trending in the right direction”.
damage, taking eight wickets between them. Of
England’s “vaunted batting line-up”, only Harry
Brook showed any resilience: he played fluently
for his 66, but when he edged Mujeeb in the 35th
over, an Afghan victory “became inevitable”.
It was the sort of situation that cried out for Ben
Stokes, said Tim Wigmore in The Daily Telegraph.
Unfortunately, England’s Test captain was in his
team’s dugout in a “yellow bib, wearing a pained
expression”. A hip injury has kept him out of the
tournament so far, but he is likely to return for
Saturday’s match against South Africa. By any
measure, this was a night of “rare joy” for
a country that has been scarred by war and
victims of a recent earthquake”, said Matt Roller
on ESPNcricinfo. For so long a side of unfulfilled promise,
Afghanistan have now turned that into “something concrete”.
Sporting headlines
Football England confirmed qualification for Euro 2024 after
coming from behind to beat Italy 3-1 at Wembley. Scotland have
also qualified for the finals, despite losing 2-0 to Spain.
Tennis Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz won the Shanghai Masters,
beating the Russian Andrey Rublev in the final 6-3, 3-6, 7-6.
Cricket World Cup hosts India beat Pakistan by seven wickets.
Australia beat Sri Lanka by five wickets.

Pick of the week’s correspondence
Could Labour solve the housing crisis?
To The Daily Telegraph
I write as a town planner with 50 years’
experience. Keir Starmer says he will
take decision making away from local
councils to encourage housebuilding.
That will involve a total revamp of
local government, which will take years.
He could ask the Planning Inspectorate
to make decisions based on national
rather than local policies. That might help
with small-scale permissions. To have
an immediate effect, he should promise
to neuter Natural England, whose
opposition to housebuilding is denying
homes to thousands of people. When
we left the EU, we effectively retained
its environmental legislation. This is
obstructing new developments. Water
authorities are polluting rivers and lakes.
Natural England, whose duty it is to
protect these, has failed – yet it is normal
people who are being denied homes.
As a lawyer, Starmer is well placed to
make another overdue change: he should
address judicial reviews of planning
permission – one of the most effective
ways well-heeled objectors have of
stopping development. By the time
reviews have made their way through the
courts, the rationale and financing for a
development may have changed, and the
scheme gets abandoned at great expense.
Robert Britnell, Canterbury, Kent
LETTERS
Exchange of the week
To The Times
Last month Labour voted against a
relaxation of the “nutrient neutrality”
regulations that would have allowed
up to 100,000 new homes to be built.
So how does it intend to clear this
hurdle? Nimbys will have a field day.
Arwel Jones, Conwy
To The Guardian
In the past decade 1.4 million homes have
been built, yet the housing crisis worsens.
Why? The problem isn’t planning:
1.1 million homes granted planning
permission in England in the past decade
are yet to be built. Meanwhile, two
million council homes have been sold
off and housing grants have been slashed.
Keir Starmer’s proposals will solve
nothing. The problem is inflated land
values, making homes too expensive.
New housing is marketed off-plan to
investors across the world, leaving many
new homes empty as safety deposit
boxes. And property is taxed on the
basis of 30-year-old land values.
The majority of us live in towns
and cities where most new housing is
proposed. Ignoring people’s objections to
the lack of schools and loss of open space
will achieve nothing but create bleak
slums and disenfranchised communities.
We need a new deal that radically
23
expands public housing, reduces land
values through a wealth tax, is framed by
strategic planning for need, and codesigns
housing with local communities.
Michael Ball, London
To The Times
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor,
says, “If we build in your area, you
deserve a sweetener.” Well, I don’t want
your money (or, rather, money from
taxpayers, of which I am one). I live in
the countryside because I love the peace
and quiet, the dark nights, the wildlife,
the fact we have small, local schools,
the open spaces as far as the eye can see.
You could not pay me enough to
have to live with another ruddy great
estate on my doorstep. We already have
one, and that is populated by Londoners
who moved here, not locals. Just tell
developers to build on brownfield sites.
Linda Hill, Herne Bay, Kent
To The Times
The UK gives residents ample rights
to block development. The result is that
we don’t build nearly enough houses
where they are needed. I’m sure country
residents enjoy life as hobbits, but it
would be nice if just occasionally they
gave a thought to those living in Mordor.
Paul Champagne, London

Prisons are broken...
To The Guardian
We should not be surprised
by the president of the Prison
Governors Association’s view
that politicians have reduced
the prison service to “lunacy”
(“Prison places in England
and Wales are ‘bust’,” says
governors’ union chief).
The roll call of shame is long:
first, England and Wales have
159 per hundred thousand
of the population in prison,
which is high. Second, the age
of criminal responsibility in
England and Wales is ten. In
many European countries it
is 14. Third, the demands on
probation services to return
people on probation to court
and people on licence back
to prison for an appointment
breach takes no account of the
fact that such people are on
probation or licence because
they broke the rules – indeed,
they have spent a lot of their
lives breaking rules.
And lastly, remands in
custody pre-sentence are
dispensed far too readily and
sentences have got longer over
the past decade or so. Is it any
wonder that the prison system,
like the criminal justice system,
is not merely broken but
smashed to smithereens?
Andy Stelman, assistant chief
probation officer (ret’d)
...and so are the courts
To The Guardian
Although there is no doubt
that sentencing policy has
caused the prison population
to inexorably rise, in other
ways the Government is
compensating by slowing down
the rate of convictions for even
the most serious crimes.
At the Old Bailey, the private
company that is responsible for
fulfilling the contract to supply
security staff in the courts fails
to do so. The consequence is
that although everyone else
– lawyers, judges, juries,
witnesses and defendants – is
there at considerable expense,
the courts sit idle and trials are
delayed. It seems an odd way
to run a criminal justice system,
causing significant hardship
and injustice, and is obviously
a colossal waste of time and
money. Perhaps the Minister of these shoes be banned, as some
Justice could explain why they are demanding, I shall eagerly
have adopted this strategy? anticipate the return of wooden
Paul Keleher KC, London skis, footballers being knocked
unconscious by sodden leather
EVs: a burning issue footballs, and – perhaps most
To The Daily Telegraph of all – stern-looking climbers
The fire at Luton airport gives astride mountain peaks kitted
a stark warning. The push for out in nothing more than stout
electric-car ownership over the brogues and tweed jackets.
coming years has no element As long as the new gear is
of amelioration in building accessible to all, better stuff is
regulations, to cope with the generally considered progress.
fact that the country will be Michael Oak, Stirling
littered with potential high-
grade explosives – for that
is what lithium ion batteries
can become when they are
unstable or mishandled.
Had the incident been
underground in a tower
block in a city area, the
outcome might have
been tragic.
Dr Michael A. Fopp,
Soulbury, Buckinghamshire
If the shoe fits...
To The Daily Telegraph “Waiter – there’s an essence of
I am intrigued by the fly in my foam of foraged
furore over the new vegetable soup.”
running shoes that help
runners go faster. Should © THE SPECTATOR

• Letters have been edited

21 October 2023 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Ian Fleming: The
Complete Man
by Nicholas Shakespeare
Harvill Secker 864pp £30
The Week Bookshop £23.99 (incl. p&p)
The James Bond novels are often depicted
as “implausible fantasies”, cooked up by
an author who knew little of espionage,
said Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph.
Yet in this impeccably researched biography,
Nicholas Shakespeare argues that their
creator had a surprising amount in common
with Bond. While working for Naval
Intelligence during the Second World War,
Ian Fleming frequently “hurled himself into danger’s path” – and
Shakespeare claims he drew on those experiences when he came
to create his famous spy. Goldfinger, he suggests, was inspired
by Fleming’s role in the exfiltration of millions of pounds of gold
bullion from Bordeaux in 1940. I had always thought the premise
of Casino Royale was “preposterous”, said Philip Hensher in The
Spectator: a corrupt Soviet agent tries to recoup his loss of state
funds at the roulette table. But that too was actually “grounded in
reality”. There have been many Fleming biographies: his was a life
of “extraordinary fullness and excitement”. But Shakespeare’s –
clever, “worldly” and thorough – is “wonderfully adept”.
25
Fleming was born, in 1908, to a Tory MP,
Valentine, and his socialite wife Eve, said
D.J. Taylor in Literary Review. Although
the family was wealthy (Ian’s Scottish
grandfather had founded Flemings bank),
Ian’s childhood wasn’t easy. His father
was killed in the First World War, and
for decades he was overshadowed by
his brother Peter, an Eton scholar, the
“possessor of an Oxford first”, and later
a feted travel writer. Ian, by contrast, was
“thrown out of Sandhurst for contracting
a venereal disease”, failed to get a job
at the Foreign Office, and became an
undistinguished stockbroker. He finally
“struck gold”, however, in 1939, when
he secured a job at the Admiralty Office,
which placed him “at the very centre of
the British intelligence machine”.
Fleming, always a “whizz with women”, eventually married
his “grotesquely extravagant” mistress Ann Charteris, said Max
Hastings in The Sunday Times. Shortly before, he had written his
first Bond novel. Another 13 books followed, always written at
his Jamaican home, Goldeneye. But while they eventually earned
him a fortune, he couldn’t enjoy their success: by the early 1960s
he was a “ruin of a man”, destroyed by drink and a “70-a-day
cigarette habit”. He died of a heart attack in 1964, aged 56.
Shakespeare’s “monumental” biography does justice to a
“melancholy” man who, through a blend of luck and skill, became
the “most globally influential British writer of the 20th century”.

Eve
by Cat Bohannon
Hutchinson Heinemann 624pp £25
The Week Bookshop £19.99
Women have more sensitive noses, finer hearing at
high frequencies and more extended colour vision
than men, said Kate Womersley in The Guardian.
And their life expectancy exceeds men’s by half
a decade. This new book by the American poet
and essayist Cat Bohannon explores how our
understanding of women’s bodies has been limited
by “a society calibrated for men”. Instead of
studying women as “different subjects”, scientists,
Bohannon claims, have tended to see them as male
bodies with “extra stuff”, said Laura Hackett in The
Sunday Times. And this has had serious implications. “We know very little about
how women’s bodies have evolved”, and women have often received poorer
medical care. Even today, heart disease is more often misdiagnosed in women
than in men, and it was only in 1999 that scientists realised that women need
different levels of general anaesthetic, because they “wake up faster than men”.
This book provides a valuable corrective to “the tendency of evolutionary
thought to place men, and their furry mancestors, at the centre of the action”,
said Cindi Leive in The New York Times. Bohannon challenges the idea that
bipedalism developed because males needed their hands to secure food. It’s
more likely, she says, that a female human ancestor responsible for childcare
was “motivated to venture out for food herself”. And she argues that language
developed not from hunters shouting at one another, but from mothers talking
to their babies. There’s lots of “dinner-party trivia” in this book – did you know
that only humans and killer whales go through the menopause? – and some of
its claims feel speculative. But overall, it “makes a powerful argument for the
pivotal role female Homo sapiens have played in making us ‘human’”.
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm
Novel of the week
The Glutton
by A.K. Blakemore
Granta 336pp £14.99
The Week Bookshop £11.99
The “Great Tarare” was a French peasant who
achieved notoriety in the revolutionary period
for his “prodigious ability to devour things”,
said Sandra Newman in The Guardian. By his
teens, he was eating his own weight in meat
each day – and later, as a street performer, he
would consume household objects and even
“live animals”. Such a life clearly “begs to
be fictionalised”, and it’s hard to think of
anyone better equipped for the task than the
“remarkable” A.K. Blakemore, whose previous
novel, The Manningtree Witches, deservedly
won the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her account
of Tarare’s short life (he died aged 25) is a work
of intoxicating language and “great intelligence”.
Moving between its subject’s final days in the
care of a nun and his impoverished childhood,
The Glutton is a work of great “assurance and
verve”, said Stephanie Merritt in The Observer.
Blakemore is equally at home evoking natural
beauty or the “stench of rotting wounds”. Few
writers can be “truly likened to Hilary Mantel”,
but Blakemore’s “rare ability to reanimate the
past” means that she is one of them.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

26 ARTS Drama & Podcasts
Musical: Sunset Boulevard
Savoy Theatre, London WC2 (thesavoytheatre.com). Until 6 January
Sunset Boulevard is about a
former screen star’s descent
into madness. So it seems
appropriate, said Matt Wolf
in The New York Times, that
this “bravura new West End
revival” of Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s 1993 musical
“should, in creative terms,
itself be a bit mad: reckless
and daring, stretching its
source material to the limit
and beyond”. Director Jamie
Lloyd employs a stripped-back
aesthetic and monochrome
palette, and uses hand-held
cameras to spotlight characters
by projecting their faces “on
a huge screen that broadcasts Ready for her close-up: Scherzinger in a “career-defining” performance
every emotion (and facial
pore)”. And whereas past productions have seen Norma
Desmond, the screen star in question, preening in a turban and
flowing garments, here Nicole Scherzinger “prowls the stage,
barefoot and feline in a black slip”. It’s a “career-defining”
performance – both “captivating and chilling”.
Scherzinger “absolutely bloody smashes it” in a production that
sees Sunset Boulevard “dazzlingly reborn”, said Nick Curtis in the
Evening Standard. She brings “not only an operatically powerful
voice but shrewd comedy, harrowing pathos and a dancer’s
physical precision to the washed-up silent star”. The combination
of technical wizardry and thrillingly full-blooded acting adds up
to a “truly awesome” evening – and a “landmark” triumph for
Podcasts... a former Beatle, therapy and George the Poet
A remarkable new podcast, McCartney:
A Life in Lyrics, consists of conversations
between Paul McCartney and the Irish poet
Paul Muldoon that were not originally
intended for public consumption, said
Fiona Sturges in the FT. The former Beatle
granted Muldoon the interviews for their
book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,
which came out two years ago. While
“reflecting on his inspiration and artistic
processes, McCartney ended up recalling
snapshots from his life, making the book
the closest to an autobiography he is likely
to get” (he has always rejected the idea
of writing one). Muldoon describes this
podcast as “a masterclass, a memoir and
an improvised journey” – a billing that
“sounds a lot like hyperbole but turns
out to be entirely accurate”. McCartney
is on charming, insightful and warmly
enthusiastic form, and the series is rare
among music podcasts in including lengthy
excerpts of the songs under discussion – McCartney: “a masterclass, a memoir”
such are “the perks of interviewing a
copyright-owning Beatle”. All in all, it is a “triumph”.
Since 2016, the US podcast series Heavyweight has won a loyal
fanbase and has regularly featured on best-of lists, said Anna
Leszkiewicz in The New Statesman. The set-up is that friends,
acquaintances and listeners come to its host, the writer Jonathan
Goldstein, with questions, “existential and eccentric”, relating to
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)
THE WEEK 21 October 2023
Running time: 2hrs 20mins ++++
Jamie Lloyd, said Andrzej
Lukowski on Time Out. “The
pictures may have got small,
but theatre has rarely felt so
alive with possibility.”
I loved the energy of the
ensemble and the lushness of
the orchestra, but the radical
staging didn’t work for me,
said Clive Davis in The
Times. The camera trickery
becomes “overbearing” –
and a sequence that takes
us backstage is clever, but
its in-jokes (including a
cardboard cut-out of Lloyd
Webber) undercut the show’s
tragic aura. It is a production
full of “riches” that
nevertheless left me feeling “removed and restless”, said Arifa
Akbar in The Guardian – yet I can see that others will love it.
What it undeniably has is a “stupendous sense of reinvention”,
which means few will “walk out indifferent”.
The week’s other opening
Death of England: Closing Time Dorfman, National Theatre,
London SE1 (020-3989 5455). Until 11 November
The fourth in Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s state-of-the-nation
play series is about a black woman and her relationship with
her white daughter-in-law. It is “precise, fierce and moving”
and the two leads both excel (The Observer).
feuds, regrets, estrangements, bereavements
and so on. In response he offers emotional
support and advice, interspersed with
“comic personal tangents”. The latest
series kicks off with an episode in which
Goldstein’s own life takes centre stage:
it focuses on his decision to contact his
childhood best friend, Lenny, who he
has heard is terminally ill. The show
is compelling, funny and moving, its
therapeutic qualities and heavy themes
“tempered by Goldstein’s wry cynicism”.
George Mpanga’s “beautiful, hard-hitting,
wildly soundscaped” podcast – a thrilling
blend of poetry, documentary, music and
history – has been going for about five
years now; yet Have You Heard George’s
Podcast? still has no imitators, said
Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. In his new
series, the Cambridge University-educated
poet and rapper (aka George the Poet) looks
at modern African history, with a specific
focus on the independence movements of
the 1960s and their legacies. “It’s all immensely detailed, layered,
subtle stuff, a little like Adam Curtis, though less conspiratorial.”
Mpanga, who was born in northwest London to Ugandan
parents, makes these stories sing – to the “accompaniment
© MARC BRENNER
of the BBC Concert Orchestra playing the compositions of his
collaborator-in-sound, Benbrick”. The series is “unmissable, as
ever”; and perfectly timed for Black History Month.
 Film ARTS 27
“Set in an impoverished Dublin suburb in 1967, where the men are either dolts or drunks or both”,
and only the women get things done, The Miracle Club seems to be trying to be “The Sort of Film
they Just Don’t Make Any More”, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. Sadly, somewhere along
its “cliché-strewn way”, this comedy-drama becomes “the sort of film they really shouldn’t make any
more”. Laura Linney plays a woman returning to Ireland for her mother’s funeral, having emigrated
to America 40 years earlier under unexplained circumstances. Her arrival ruffles the feathers of her
mother’s old friends (Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates); but each has problems, and soon they’ve all
piled into a charabanc for a trip to Lourdes in search of miracles. “Secrets eventually tumble out”,
and they’re “pretty much exactly what you expect them to be”, in a film that is underwritten and
The Miracle Club irritatingly full of lingering shots of characters “staring wistfully into the middle distance”.
1hr 30mins (12A) “We’ve had blackface, Jewface and gayface controversies”, said Kevin Maher in The Times;
now it seems reasonable to accuse some of this “painfully hackneyed” film’s stars – Smith and
Predictable comedy-drama Bates in particular – of “indulging in Paddyface”. The “cringeworthy caricatures” they serve up
are not helped by a screenplay that feels as if it has been “spewed out by a malfunctioning AI”
starring Maggie Smith and programmed with the terms “Oireland”, “unwanted pregnancy”, “church” and “the craic”. The
Kathy Bates film is, admittedly, “predictable” and “sentimental”, and the accents do “veer back and forth across
++ both the Atlantic and the Irish Sea”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. But it’s a “gentle enough”
ride, and “we should all enjoy the great Dame Maggie while we can”.

The last time we saw Taylor Swift on the big screen, she was being “unceremoniously pushed under
a moving vehicle” in Amsterdam, said Ian Freer in Empire. “The time before that was the actual
car crash that is Cats.” Now, the singer is back on screen, but this time on “home turf” – in “an
extravagant big-ass concert flick spanning her entire career”. In Swift’s words, her (ongoing) Eras
tour distils “17 years of music, one era at a time”. The film, by director Sam Wrench, was shot
over three nights at a stadium in LA, and it captures the tour’s impressive stagecraft “slickly, if
impersonally”; there are also “endless cutaways to fans mouthing lyrics”. But really, “the best reason
to see The Eras Tour is to marvel at Swift” herself. This film is both a “showcase and celebration”
of her “smart songwriting”, her “boundless creativity” and her willingness to go “the extra mile”
Taylor Swift: for her audience. Best of all, “you don’t have to wait hours to get out of the car park” afterwards.
The Eras Tour To get the most out of this film, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post, “it’s best simply to
surrender to the whole thing”: the sparkly cowboy hats, the friendship bracelets, “the screaming”.
2hrs 48mins (U) True, Swift’s dance moves are limited mostly to posing, strutting and pointing, and after nearly three
hours, the uninitiated “might be struck by the repetitiveness of her music” – but the cumulative effect
The singer’s tour gets the is “nothing short of astonishing”. I took my 13-year-old daughter along, having failed to get her
big-screen treatment tickets to Swift’s tour, said Serena Davies in The Daily Telegraph. In the end, it was me, not her,
++++ who cried in my cinema seat, overwhelmed by the spectacle. Yet as I put her to bed, I asked if the
film had been as good as she’d hoped. “‘Oh even better,’ came the breathless reply into her pillow.”

“How do you create a revealing and intimate portrait of someone who is forever playing a self-
created role?” That is the problem that writer-director Mary Harron wrestles with, not entirely
successfully, in this film about Salvador Dalí, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. It argues that the
surrealist’s persona was “as much an artistic creation as any of his paintings”, which is all very well,
but it doesn’t give Ben Kingsley, in the central role, “much to get his teeth into”. Our guide in the
film is a fictional gallery assistant, James (Christopher Briney), who “experiences” Dalí “as one might
a piece of interactive theatre”; and who is told about him by members of his inner circle. But Harron
wrongly assumes James is an interesting character in his own right, and spends too much time on him.
The film has some merits: Barbara Sukowa is “excellent” as Dalí’s “berating, goading” wife Gala,
Dalíland and the cinematography is undoubtedly handsome, but overall, it feels like a “missed opportunity”.
1hr 37mins (15) The film doesn’t contain any of Dalí’s work (presumably for copyright reasons), but it “paints an
evocative portrait of the cult of celebrity”, and benefits from some good soundtrack choices, said
Underwhelming portrait Terry Staunton in Radio Times. Dalíland’s portrait of the circus that surrounded the artist in the
1970s is a bit “predictable”, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times: there are ostrich boas,
of the surrealist painter “writhing bodies” and “a great deal of tawdry art-world shenanigans”. But it is interesting on the
+++ subject of Dalí’s marriage to the domineering, money-grubbing Gala. Their relationship mystified
people at the time, and here, their scenes together are both entertaining and rather fascinating.

Frasier: a “gentle” reboot of the beloved 1990s sitcom

Running for 11 years from 1993, Frasier “was one
of the funniest, cleverest, most perfectly drawn
and hilariously scripted television shows of all
time”, said Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Now, it’s
been rebooted on Paramount+ – and the results
are... so-so. The new series finds the titular
psychiatrist – played, of course, by Kelsey
Grammer – back in Boston (where he originally
appeared as a character in Cheers), and teaching
at Harvard. Grammer is, alas, the only original cast
member to return, and we do feel the absence of
David Hyde Pierce (as Frasier’s brother Niles) and
the late John Mahoney (as their father). The young
actors in the reboot “just aren’t funny”, which
leaves Grammer having to be the star turn, rather
than what he was: “part of a terrific ensemble”.
Kelsey Grammer: the star turn
The first two episodes are bogged down by
“ungainly exposition and numerous, desperate-
seeming references to old characters”, said
Barbara Ellen in The Observer. But after a few
episodes, a miracle happens: “characters sync,
jokes zing, storylines flow”. And, surprisingly,
Nicholas Lyndhurst (yes, Rodney from Only Fools
and Horses), who appears as Frasier’s old college
buddy, emerges as a “crucial waspish intellectual
foil” for the vainglorious Frasier. I didn’t have high
hopes for this reboot, what with no Niles at all,
and Roz (Peri Gilpin) only slated for a guest
appearance, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times. But
it turns out to be “rather lovely. Not fresh or new,
and certainly not essential viewing” – but gentle
and rejuvenating, “in the manner of a warm bath”.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

28 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week Philip Guston
Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, tate.org.uk). Until 24 February
In 1970, Philip Guston, “the de Chirico, show that “talent was
most quietly painterly” of in his fingers”. In the 1930s, he
the great American abstract moved into “socially progressive
expressionists, held a new public art”: he painted an
exhibition at Marlborough “explosive tondo recording
Gallery in New York, said the bombing of Guernica”, and
Adrian Searle in The Guardian. a “rousing” antifascist mural in
Instead of the clumpy brushwork Mexico. Later in the decade, he
and “atmospheric jumbles” of went to New York, where he
the works that had made his moved in circles that included
name, here – “suddenly – were Jackson Pollock, an old friend
cartoonish depictions of pointy- from high school. The abstract
hatted Ku Klux Klansmen going expressionist work he created
about their business of idiot there is “the equal, I would
evil”: they sit in their rooms, argue, of Mark Rothko and
drive around looking for Pollock”. But by the late 1950s,
trouble, they eat, they smoke. Guston was “restless” once
All Guston’s skills – he was then again. “Political dismay was still
in his 60s – were pressed into gnawing at him. Abstraction
“a new and parodic purpose”. could not convey it.” Hence his
His “late style shocked the art final “transformation” to the
world and alienated the artist “remarkable, fearless, crazily
from many of his friends”. But inventive, light-touched,
today, these images are regarded sarcastic, slobbish art” he began
as some of the most powerful Riding Around (1969): the Klan gave Guston “parodic purpose” churning out in the Nixon years.
created in postwar America.
Tate Modern’s new retrospective, tracing “Guston’s progress” The work that he made in the “final, astonishing decade” before his
over a long, varied career, is “a five-star show”. death in 1980 is deeply “unsettling”, said Alastair Sooke in The
Daily Telegraph. There are “piled-up body parts, charged with
For Guston, the Klan was a “deeply personal” subject, said knowledge of the Holocaust; spiders scuttling across scrofulous,
Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Born Phillip Goldstein bulbous heads; cigarette butts, empty bottles, and lukewarm,
in Montreal in 1913, to a Russian-Jewish family, he was brought congealing chips”. The pictures of Klansmen are the reason why
up in Los Angeles, where the “anti-black, anti-Jewish rantings of this touring exhibition, originally scheduled to open several years
the KKK were an insistent feature” of his childhood. In 1923, his ago, was postponed following the Black Lives Matter protests –
father, unable to get work because of antisemitic feeling, hanged which is absurd, given the artist’s lifelong antifascism. It’s good to
himself in the garage. Guston was an “immediately adept” artist: see Guston at Tate Modern at last, said Jackie Wullschläger in the
his earliest works, influenced by Picasso and the surrealist Giorgio Financial Times – “rampant and magnificent in a thrilling show”.

Where to buy… The van Gogh Pokémon frenzy

The Week reviews an It seemed like
exhibition in a private gallery an unlikely
collaboration,
Nick Goss says Ed
Halford in
at Ingleby The Times:
Vincent van
Gogh and
The Anglo-Dutch artist Nick Goss Pokémon. But
(b.1981) is among the most interesting an exhibition
painters of his generation. His latest of artworks
exhibition, Smickel Inn, Balcony of reimagining
the artist’s most famous paintings to feature
Europe, is named after a tatty snack characters from the Japanese animated
bar situated at the end of a spit jutting franchise opened last month at Amsterdam’s
into the North Sea from Rotterdam, Van Gogh Museum. His ground-breaking Self-
and much of this geographic specificity Portrait with Grey Felt Hat (1887) has been
can be read into the works here. reworked to include Pikachu (above), while
Interior views have the look of ship another character, Snorlax, has been inserted
© ESTATE OF PHILIP GUSTON, COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH

Frikandel (2023), detail: 213cm x 143cm

cabins; water and dry land are
frequently indistinguishable. In the
distance, we sometimes get glimpses
of gargantuan industrial port facilities.
Goss can be impressionistic or, in some
passages, almost photographic, each
detail alternately clashing with or
fading into another.
Meanwhile, screen prints
appropriated from 17th century
engravings infiltrate themselves into
a distinctly modern context of brand
logos and plastic furniture, giving the
sense that the past and present are
playing out simultaneously. The feeling
you might somehow have wandered
into someone else’s hazy recollections
is hard to shake. Prices on request.
33 Barony Street, Edinburgh
(0131-556 4441). Until 16 December
into van Gogh’s 1888 The Bedroom. The show
was designed to inspire children and get them
interested in the artist. Yet there has been “a
sinister twist” in this story: a “thriving black
market” in Pokémon cards. Pokémon trading
cards – aimed at children – have become
“valuable objects of financial speculation”; the
rarest command high prices. And the gift shop
at the museum has been besieged by people
wanting to buy van Gogh Pokémon cards. Staff
have restricted purchases to one per person.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 The List ARTS 29
Best books… Sir Richard Eyre Television
The celebrated director picks his favourite books. He will be at the Programmes
Stratford Literary Festival on Saturday 28 October, reading from Dark Hearts Gritty drama
Place to Place, his “autobiography in verse”; see stratlitfest.co.uk about a French commando
unit in Iraq that must rescue
Our Mutual Friend by Charles The Faber Book of Modern Hope Against Hope by the daughter of an Isis leader
to win his cooperation. Sat
Dickens, 1865 (Penguin £9.99). Verse edited by Michael Nadezhda Mandelstam, 21 Oct, BBC4 21:00 and 22:05
Through it runs the Thames, Roberts, 1936 (Faber £16). 1970 (Vintage £16.99). (65mins; 50mins).
on which corpses float and This anthology includes Owen, A heartbreaking memoir of
from which bodies emerge Lawrence, Eliot, Yeats, Auden Soviet communism and the Planet Earth III The latest
reborn. Fortunes are made and many others. I read it appalling reality of living instalment of the natural
from rubbish and ashes, 20 years after it was first under tyranny. Mandelstam’s history series, hosted by David
while money and class divide published and it introduced husband, Osip, was one of Attenborough: episode one
families, corrupt love and me not just to 20th century the great Russian poets of visits coastlines from Namibia
erode marriages. poetry, but to poetry itself. the 1930s, murdered by Stalin to the Arctic. Sun 22 Oct, BBC1
18:15 (60mins).
for a poem that included the
The People’s War by Angus At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann line, “He rolls the executions Three Little Birds Drama
Calder, 1969 (Vintage £20). O’Brien, 1939 (Penguin £9.99) on his tongue like berries...” written by Lenny Henry,
This book describes the This is brilliantly inventive, inspired by his family’s history.
endurance of the British in the innovative and very funny. The Best of Wodehouse: In 1957, two Jamaican sisters
Second World War, as well as Its self-contained universe is An Anthology by P.G. start a new life in Britain. Sun
their whinges and selfishness. peopled by students, cowboys Wodehouse, 2007 (Everyman 22 Oct, ITV1 20:00 (60mins).
It’s an exemplary excavation and characters from other £18). A fictional universe as
of a society, all the more novels, who murder their original, funny and hermetic The Devil’s Confession:
The Lost Eichmann Tapes
potent for being for ever a lost fictional creator and then as those of Damon Runyon Two-part docuseries about an
domain: for me, nostalgia and write their own novel in and Lewis Carroll. To read his Israeli lawyer’s hunt for tapes,
pain for the unfulfilled promise which he is brought back perfect comic prose is to find a made by a Nazi sympathiser in
of the world I was born into. to life and put on trial. constant reason to be cheerful. 1957, in which Adolf Eichmann
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk discussed his role in Hitler’s
Final Solution. Sun 22 Oct,
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing BBC2 21:00 (60mins).

Showing now Films

There may be time to get a ticket for Lyonesse, Dream Horse (2020) Feel-
good comedy-drama based
Penelope Skinner’s play about a reclusive actress on a true story about residents
(Kristin Scott Thomas) and the young film of a Welsh village clubbing
executive (Lily James) helping to plot her come- together to buy a racehorse;
back. Until 23 December, Harold Pinter Theatre, Toni Collette and Damian
London SW1 (haroldpintertheatre.co.uk). Lewis star. Sat 21 Oct, C4
21:25 (135mins).
Real Families: Stories of Change, created
in collaboration with Cambridge’s Centre for Testament of Youth (2014)
Lushly shot drama based
Family Research, explores evolving concepts
on Vera Brittain’s wartime
of family over centuries and through the eyes of memoir. In 1915, a young
artists ranging from Joshua Reynolds to Tracey woman abandons her
Emin. Until 7 January, The Fitzwilliam Museum, studies at Oxford to become
Cambridge (fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk). Aliza Nisenbaum’s contribution to Real Families
a nurse. Sun 22 Oct, BBC1
Project – a collaboration between the Royal 23:55 (120mins).
Book now Ballet’s Wayne McGregor, composer Thomas
Richard Wilson co-directs To Have and Adès and artist Tacita Dean – returns to Covent The House of Mirth (2000)
To Hold, a new comedy by Richard Bean Garden (Guardian). 18 November-2 December, The late Terence Davies’s
acclaimed adaptation of Edith
(One Man, Two Guvnors) about an ageing Royal Opera House, London WC2 (roh.org.uk). Wharton’s novel about fin-de-
couple and their grown-up children. siècle Manhattan society. Thur
26 October-25 November, Hampstead Theatre, The Hay Festival Winter Weekend has four 26 Oct, Film4 01:10 (170mins).
London NW3 (hampsteadtheatre.com). days of talks and workshops, with Stephen Fry,
Afua Hirsch and Labour’s Rachel Reeves among
Hailed as “bold, beautiful, emotional and utterly the speakers. 23-26 November, various venues, New to streaming
engaging” on its 2021 debut, The Dante Hay-on-Wye, Powys (hayfestival.com).
Lessons in Chemistry
Eight-part adaptation of
The Archers: what happened last week Bonnie Garmus’s 1950s-set
Usha and Alan argue bitterly over Rob, as Alan insists he can’t abandon a dying man; Usha bestseller about a female
© NORWICH CASTLE MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

predicts trouble. Kenton’s annoyed that the Grey Gables’ fireworks will take away The Bull’s Bonfire chemist turned TV cook.
Night customers. Lynda finds a solution, but not before Adil attacks her for overstepping her duties; On Apple TV+.
he later apologises. Neil goes all out for Susan’s 60th birthday. There’s anger among the villagers
as Rob sends out invitations to his baptism, thanking Alan and Usha. Furious Pat arrives at the Bodies Mind-bending crime
vicarage to confront Alan; Helen is more sanguine, but Pat can’t forgive him. Ian says the new Grey thriller based on a graphic
Gables kitchen isn’t fit for purpose and, against Adil’s orders, talks to the builders who walk off the
novel about four detectives in
site; Oliver declares it a disaster. Helen builds bridges with Emma, and invites George back to work
at the dairy; he apologises for his video. On Lynda’s advice, a stressed Adil leaves for a short break. different eras investigating the
No one turns up for the church’s refugee discussion group. As they leave, Alan and Neil are same murder. Stephen
horrified to find graffiti about Rob on the church door – who would do such a thing? Graham stars. On Netflix.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

30 Best properties
Village houses for less than £800,000

Suffolk: Tyes Cottage, Brandeston, Woodbridge. Fife: Seton House, Falkland. Historic townhouse
A delightful Grade II thatched cottage dating back to the (2nd from the right) in the heart of the village. Main
1500s. 3 beds (1 en suite), family bath, kitchen/breakfast suite, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps,
room, 2 receps, garden. £525,000; Savills (01473-234800). garden. OIEO £335,000; Galbraith (01334-659980).

Kent: Eyhorne Street, Hollingbourne. This well-maintained, Grade II former post office sits on
the high street and dates back to the early 1700s. Main suite, 3 further beds, study, shower, kitchen/
breakfast room, 2 receps, south-facing garden. £600,000; Inigo (020-3687 3071).

Vale of Glamorgan: Little Hall Cottage, St Outer Hebrides: The Old Manse, Scalpay.
Hilary, Cowbridge. An 18th century cottage. Main Overlooking the harbour, this 19th century house
suite, 2 further beds, kitchen, 3 receps, garden. has 3 suites, 2 further beds, kitchen, 2 receps.
£799,950; Watts & Morgan (01446-773500). OIEO £370,000; Galbraith (01463-224343).

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

on the market 31

Kent: Brenchley Road, Matfield. Handsome 19th century timber-

clad cottage with adjacent unconverted chapel. 2 beds, family bath,
kitchen, recep, garden. £625,000; Inigo (020-3687 3071).

Berkshire: Waterloo Cottage, Eastbury, Hungerford. This

charming brick and flint property retains plenty of period features.
3 beds, family bath, kitchen, open-plan living/dining room, garden.
£475,000; Savills (01635-277700).

Suffolk: Bear Street, Nayland. Located in the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,
this 18th century cottage is listed Grade II. 2 beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, garden office/
summer house, garden. £375,000; Inigo (020-3687 3071).

Cambridgeshire: West View, Swaffham Prior. An 18th century house in the centre of this
picturesque East Cambridgeshire village. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, study,
garden. £735,000; Cheffins (01638-663228).

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

The Finest
Weekday Dining
Elevating everyday home cooking is made
wonderfully simple with Tesco Finest

Photography by Sean Calitz


any of us simply
want to enjoy
something quick
and delicious
when it comes to
cooking during
the week. And
thankfully, with
Tesco Finest ingredients and a little
ingenuity, it takes next to no effort to
elevate even the most routine meals.
Since weeknight meals are all about
convenience, you’re not going to be using
elaborate techniques or standing for ages
over a simmering pan. And this means
that it’s even more important than
usual to start with ingredients that
are packed with flavour.
Only the finest experts, techniques and
ingredients are used to create the Tesco
Finest range – ensuring it has the flavour
to take everyday cooking to the next level.
In this recipe – created with a little
help and culinary magic from top chefs
Jean-Christophe Novelli and Shelina
Permalloo – chicken breasts are pan-fried
till they’re golden, then simmered in
a sauce created from the chicken pan
juices, wine or stock, and sweet, intense
Tesco Finest Piccobella Tomatoes. The
final touch is Tesco Finest Burrata – made
by a family-owned producer in Puglia,
the abundant heel of Italy, from 100%
Italian cow’s milk – which is melted
into the sauce, along with basil and
toasted pine nuts.
It’s a great dish to have in your
weekday arsenal, since it comes together
in less than half an hour, yet feels like
an indulgence to be had on a regular
basis. Its beauty lies in that effortless pan
sauce – so flavourful in itself – into which
you melt the oozing burrata. And don’t
forget the Tesco Finest Garlic & Extra Virgin
Olive Oil Flatbread, baked to soft perfection
with extra-fine 00 grade flour: it’s ideal
for mopping up the tasty juices.
Offering maximum taste with
minimal effort, this dish showcases how
the Tesco Finest range can introduce a
touch of pure pleasure into your week.
With its balance of zingy flavours and
creamy texture, it is a dish that you’ll
want to revisit again and again — your
new firm favourite.
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
To be able to enjoy the
finest food, you don’t
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We can all enhance our
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Jean-Christophe Novelli
Creamy burrata
chicken with cherry
tomatoes and basil
Elevate this simple chicken dish with
creamy Italian burrata and fresh basil
Serves 2
Prep 5 mins
Cook 25 mins
1 pack Tesco Finest 2 Corn-fed Free-
Range Chicken Fillets
3tbsp olive oil
Zest and juice 1 lemon
2 fat garlic cloves, sliced
½ 30g pack Tesco Finest Basil, stalks
finely chopped, leaves reserved
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
220g pack Tesco Finest Piccobella
Tomatoes
Splash white wine or stock
250g pack Tesco Finest Burrata, drained
2tbsp toasted pine nuts, lightly crushed
200g pack Tesco Finest Garlic & Extra
Virgin Olive Oil Flatbread, warmed
to serve
Put the chicken in a glass/ceramic bowl
with the oil, lemon zest and juice, garlic
and finely chopped basil stalks.
Heat a non-stick frying pan over a
medium heat and fry the chicken with
the marinade and rosemary for 10 mins,
turning halfway, until golden brown.
Add the tomatoes and a splash of white
wine/stock, then simmer for 5-8 mins
until the tomatoes burst and the chicken
is cooked through.
Take the pan off the heat. Tear the
burrata over the chicken, then top with
the basil leaves, pine nuts and a few
grinds of black pepper. Serve with the
warmed flatbread.
Make your everyday taste
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Discover the range in-store and online

Snails come out of their shells
For many decades, there has been little
appetite in Britain for eating snails, says
Sue Quinn in The Daily Telegraph. While
the gastropods may have been holiday
treats for some, most people have regarded
them as little more than “garden pests”.
Yet now, many restaurants are serving
them – and in “inventive but properly
delicious” ways, instead of just smothering
them in garlic butter. At Maison François,
in central London, snails come piled onto
flatbreads with lardons; Estelle Manor, in
Oxfordshire, “anoints them with butter
infused with shiso”. Snails are also newly
popular with home cooks – a trend that
began in lockdown, when people had time
to experiment in the kitchen. Two other
things have helped their resurgence: the
fact that snails are more sustainable
than “our usual meats”, as raising them
requires little land and resources; and
the emergence in the UK of a number
of “top-quality” producers. One of these
is Dorset Snails, which sells 12,000 snails
a week to restaurants and consumers.
Its snails, which are “painstakingly”
raised on an indoor farm in the
countryside, bear no resemblance to
the “tiny, wrinkled things you may have
tried across the Channel”; they’re “plump,
flavoursome” and “incredibly tender”.
How to dress up the humble crumble
Crumbles are one of the best-loved puds,
in part because they’re so gloriously
“simple to rustle up”, says Anna Berrill
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Dorset Snails are “painstakingly” raised
in The Guardian. Some people see no need
to deviate from the standard version, but
for those keen to try something new, “there
are all manner of ways to up your crumble
game”. One of the easiest, according to
Bake It Better author Matt Adlard, is
to give the topping added texture: he
recommends including roasted hazelnuts
for a “really toasty, nutty flavour”.
Other chefs like to play about with the
standard topping ingredients. Yotam
Ottolenghi says substituting palm sugar
for caster sugar will result in a crumble
top that’s “gooey in places and crisp in
others” (he also adds desiccated coconut,
cacao nibs and coffee grounds). Anna
Higham, the owner of Quince Bakery in
London, recommends trying different
flours. Wholemeal, she says, is an ideal
35
match for rhubarb and ginger, while
buckwheat is “really delicious” with
apples. Higham further refines her
apple crumble by grating half a quince
into the base – it makes it “floral and
multidimensional”, she says – and, when
she’s “feeling fancy”, she adds a “bit of
booze, such as brandy or whisky”.
A more relaxed approach to recipes
It’s easy to find yourself regarding recipes
as “commandments” that seek “to dictate
how you live”, says Bee Wilson in The
Wall Street Journal. But as I’ve come to
realise, they’re “really just suggestions”,
and they absolutely don’t have to be
followed to a tee. Cooking becomes more
relaxing and rewarding when you learn to
adapt recipes “to suit your own cupboard
and tastes”. Other than salt, and perhaps
oil, no single ingredient is indispensable.
“Any tender green herb can be substituted
for any other tender herb”. If you run out
of lemons, there are “half a dozen other
things” that can replace them: another
citrus fruit, vinegar, tamarind, or a “few
pieces of pickle or preserved lemon”.
Even onions aren’t as crucial as one might
assume: during lockdown, when I couldn’t
find any, I achieved the “multi-layered
onion experience” by starting recipes off
with sweating spring onions and later
adding crispy shallots from a Chinese
supermarket. Learn to substitute, and
you’ll seldom have to rummage around
the back of the fridge, or make “panicky
trips to the supermarket”.

Prawns in rich coconut sauce (sambal goreng udang)

Prawns in coconut sauce are popular all over Indonesia and Malaysia, says Sri Owen. Like beef rendang, it is one of those
fundamental Southeast Asian dishes whose flavours, textures and colours all complement each other precisely.
Naturally, the dish should be served with rice, and perhaps stir-fried vegetables or a salad.

For 6-8 people

5cm lemongrass 2 lime leaves 425ml hot water 2 ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped 115g creamed coconut, chopped
1kg frozen king prawns, completely thawed
For the paste: 3 shallots or 1 small onion, chopped 1 garlic clove 5cm ginger, peeled and sliced 3 large red chillies, deseeded
and chopped 1 tsp crumbled shrimp paste (optional) 2 candlenuts (or macadamia nuts or blanched almonds), chopped (optional)

• Tip: in London, I make this with frozen water, then bring back to the boil and simmer
king prawns from the supermarket that come gently for 20 minutes. Now, add the tomatoes
peeled, de-veined and partly pre-cooked. and creamed coconut, stirring to dissolve the
This cuts out a lot of preparation, and the coconut. Simmer and stir for 2 minutes, then
prawns are excellent provided they are taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning. (This
thoroughly thawed before being quickly sauce can be made up to 24 hours in advance.
cooked, and not reheated thereafter. It can be kept in the fridge, but can’t be frozen.)
• Blend all the ingredients for the paste • When you are ready to cook the prawns,
with 2 tablespoons of water until smooth. bring the sauce to a rolling boil, give it all
• Scrape the paste into a saucepan, a good stir and put in the prawns. Simmer
bring to the boil and cook for 2 minutes, the prawns for 4 minutes only – any longer
stirring continuously. and they will become tough and tasteless.
Discard the lemongrass and lime leaves,
• Add the lemongrass, lime leaves and hot then serve immediately.

Taken from The Rice Book: History, Culture, Recipes by Sri Owen, published by Bloomsbury at £30. Photography by Yuki Sugiura.
To buy from The Week Bookshop for £23.99 (incl. p&p), call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

 Consumer LEISURE 37

New cars: what the critics say

Top Gear Magazine
A cross between a small
crossover and a supermini,
the Fiat 600e is a big
sibling to the Fiat 500
electric, though it takes its
platform, 51kWh battery,
156bhp motor and interior
tech from the Jeep Avenger.
On offer are just two trim
Fiat 600e levels: Red, with 16-inch
Price: from £32,995 wheels and quite a lot of
standard kit; and La Prima,
which gets 18-inch alloys
and extras such as heated
seats; both get a heat pump
to increase winter range.
Car Magazine
While the 500e is a joy
to drive, the 600e is
pretty “uninspiring”.
Soft suspension means
it absorbs bumps in the
road but suffers body roll
in corners. The steering is
overly assisted and offers
little feedback. It supports
100kW DC rapid charging
and Fiat claims it can do
0-62mph in 9 secs, reach
a top speed of 93mph and
has a WLTP range of up
to 254 miles. A cheaper
hybrid is due next year.
Autocar
It may not be a sports
hatch, but the “cool” 600e
is a practical family car
with just enough room in
the back. Fiat has bucked
the trend for grey cars, and
offers the 600e in a range
of cheery colours. Inside,
the focus is on comfort and
style. Some lower plastics
feel cheap, but key touch
points are “pleasantly
tactile”. The touchscreen
is clear and easy to use,
and thankfully there are
physical air-con controls.

SOURCE: DAILY TELEGRAPH

The best… steam mops and steam cleaners
Steam mops and cleaners aren’t suitable on unsealed wooden or parquet floors, as the moisture can cause the boards to
swell and warp. For other types of flooring, it would be wise to check before buying.

Shark Steam Vax Steam Thane H20 Bissell Vac & Kärcher SC 5 EasyFix
& Scrub Fresh Combi HD 5-in-1 Steam Steam A vacuum Steam Cleaner This
Automatic This converts to Cleaner System and steam mop multifunction steam mop
Steam Mop a handheld steam This compact 3kg in one, this can has a range of attachments
Easy to cleaner with a machine packs in vacuum and to tackle everything from
assemble, brush and precision a lot, including steam for 15 mins dirty hard floors, greasy
this has two tool, which is good an attachment for before you need ovens, upholstery
settings and for grout. The window cleaning to refill the 0.4- and carpet stains,
weighs 3.1kg. angled head makes and a carpet litre tank with limescale and mould,
The 0.35-litre corners a cinch and cleaner. It’s tricky a little jug. all without
water tank has the ball-jointed to put together, Designed for chemicals. It
to be filled with handle makes but converts hard floors, it weighs 6kg and
a fiddly jug, it easier to get to a handheld takes 30 secs the huge 1.5-litre
but it heats under furniture. and has three to heat up, water tank can
up quickly. Its It heats up fast, settings, plus weighs 4.8kg be detached
spinning pads weighs 3.7kg, a jet nozzle for and tilts to near for easy
mean you has a 0.3-litre bathrooms and horizontal to filling (£415;
don’t need to water tank and a removable get right under kaercher.
scrub (£140; carpet glider 0.45-litre water things (£180; com).
sharkclean. (£100; vax.co.uk). tank (£130; bisselldirect.
co.uk). lakeland.co.uk). co.uk).

Tips... how to get the
better of bedbugs
OBedbugs are small, wingless, dark yellow,
red or brown insects with oval flat bodies.
They typically bite at night, leaving a zigzag
pattern of raised itchy red welts.
OCheck hotel rooms on arrival. Leave your
suitcase in the bathroom; turn lights off and
use your phone torch to search for signs in
the crevices and seams of mattresses.
OLook for rust-coloured dots, exoskeletons,
tiny black excrement, specks of blood, or
oval yellow eggs the size of an apple seed.
Bedbugs emit a sweet, musty odour.
OBites usually clear up on their own in a
week or so. Use a cool damp cloth to relieve
itching; where suitable, antihistamines and
steroid creams can help too.
OBedbugs can cling to suitcases, so unpack
on a hard kitchen floor. Wash affected
clothes or bedding at 60°C and tumble dry
on a hot setting. Or put them in a plastic
bag in the freezer for three or four days.
OIf you get an infestation at home, contact
your local council or pest control.
SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT
And for those who
have everything…
The Sit2Go 2-in-1 Fitness Chair combines
an old-school exercise bike with an office
chair. It saves space, and allows you to
exercise while working, or during short
breaks. It has a built-in calorie tracker,
various resistance levels and an adjustable
seat to suit different heights.
from £200; flexispot.co.uk
SOURCE: T3
Where to find... the UK’s
best craft breweries
Hawkshead Brewery in Staveley, Cumbria,
has a glass-fronted beer hall with 14 hand
pumps, including the 3.5% Windermere
Pale, which won silver at this year’s World
Beer Awards (hawksheadbrewery.co.uk).
Fierce – Scottish Brewery of the Year 2021
– opened a bar in Aberdeen in 2018, with
20 taps from vegan Fierce Rhubarb pale
ale to Berry Big Moose stout with raspberry
and toasted coconut (fiercebeer.com).
Lewes in East Sussex is home to several
breweries including the Beak, with its fire
pits and vegan street food. It has 15 keg
lines as well as a guest beer fridge
(beakbrewery.com).
Verdant has a cute taproom on Quay Street
in Falmouth, Cornwall, serving eight fresh
beers, alongside seafood. Try the First Note
pale ale (verdantbrewing.co).
Independent brewer Boundary opened
Northern Ireland’s first taproom in Belfast
last year, with 20 notable taps like the zesty
Tropical Pale Ale (boundarybrewing.coop).
SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

 Travel
This week’s dream: the primordial wilds of La Gomera
Approached on the ferry from Tenerife,
La Gomera – the second smallest of
the Canaries – looks like “the island
of King Kong”, with its lush green
mountainsides and “chimneys of
volcanic lava” encircled by “doughnuts
of mist”. Close up, it is yet more awe-
inspiring, says Mark Stratton in
The Sunday Times. Its vegetation is
amazingly varied (some claim it was
Herodotus’s Garden of Hesperides);
its peaks are studded with strange rock
formations, and their “dark volcanic
flanks” are scored with yawning ravines.
No less “fierce” are the island’s beaches,
their black pebbles raked by the tide “as
noisily as shaken ball bearings”. Their The picturesque mountain town of Vallehermoso
harshness has protected the island from
mass tourism: people don’t come here to sunbathe, but to walk,
especially off season, when the landscape is at its greenest.
The ferry docks at the capital, San Sebastián, which Columbus
visited in 1492. On a week-long trip with On Foot Holidays,
you’re driven from there to the village of Hermigua, where
LEISURE 39
the hiking begins, with nights at a series
of hotels around the island and luggage
transfers booked in advance. One
of the loveliest stops is the mountain
town of Vallehermoso. There’s a good
hotel, the Añaterve, in a “cubist-looking
mansion” overlooking the plaza,
where you can sit in the evenings
with a glass of gomerón (a “honeyed”
aperitif) and watch local life go by.
The landscape is ever-changing.
One hour you are crossing a ravine
“rampant” with fruit trees (bananas,
papayas, dates, figs, avocados); the
next, “toiling through desert in dry
gullies of prickly pear”. Vines flourish
on lava terraces piled up like ancient
ziggurats, and high in the misty
mountains grow La Gomera’s laurel forests – the island’s
most distinctive ecosystem, where the ancient trees, with their
“trailing beards of lichen and mossy trunks” might remind you
of the “wildwood fragments” of Britain’s own Atlantic shores.
A seven-night trip costs from £980pp (onfootholidays.co.uk).

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of…

Cowley Manor Experimental
Gloucestershire
The Experimental Group is known
for its “scene-stealing” hotel
designs, and its recent revamp
of this “beloved” country-house
retreat in the Cotswolds doesn’t
disappoint, says Rick Jordan in
Condé Nast Traveller. The interiors
feature nods to Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll is
said to have found inspiration
here), including rabbit-head door
knockers; and in the bathrooms,
“lacquered lava stone” flows
over tables, basins and baths. The
spa has not changed, however;
nor have the two pools or the
“glorious” grounds. And Chef
Jackson Boxer “showcases”
vegetables in the dining room.
Doubles from £250;
cowleymanorexperimental.com.
A quiet island in New England
It’s smaller and less well known than
Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, to its
east, but Block Island is an equally charming
corner of maritime New England, says
Karen Angel in The New York Times – and
it’s wilder and less touristy too. “A haven for
numerous endangered animals, and anyone
else seeking a little solitude”, it can be
reached by ferry from ports in New York,
Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, the state to which it belongs. Its only
town, New Shoreham, is tiny, and beyond it
lie nine square miles of rolling countryside,
much of which is bisected by beautiful
walking trails. There are ticks here, so take
precautions – but also look out for rare
birds (some 300 avian species can be seen
here each year); and be sure to visit the
spectacular sea cliffs at Mohegan Bluffs
and the “secluded” beach below.
Sea and surf in North Devon
The seaside village of Croyde made headlines
earlier this year when it became part of the
UK’s first world surfing reserve – 19 miles
of North Devon shoreline deemed especially
worthy of protection by the surfing
organisation Save the Waves. But you don’t
need to be a surfer to love this “glorious”
corner of the West Country, says Annabelle
Thorpe in The Observer. Croyde itself is
wonderfully unspoiled, thanks in part to
the dunes (a site of special scientific interest,
or SSSI) that lie between the village and its
beach, and there are other “stunning”
beaches, such as Woolacombe and
Saunton Sands, nearby. There’s fabulous
hiking to be had on this coast in both
directions from Croyde. If you are going
en famille, stay at the Old Cider Barn,
a spacious holiday let in the village.
A beautiful Bohemian spa town
From Mozart and Goethe to Peter the
Great and Queen Victoria, “everyone who
was anyone” flocked to take the waters
in Karlovy Vary, then widely known as
Karlsbad, in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Some people still do today, says Jane Knight
in The Daily Telegraph – but this Czech spa
town is worth a visit for its beauty alone.
“Strung scenically” along the River Teplá
amid the forested hills two hours west of
Prague, it is well preserved, with a historic
centre that is a veritable feast of “wedding-
cake architecture”. There are some
“exquisite” restaurants to be found, and the
walking trails that wend their way through
the surrounding woods offer fine views
across town. You might stay in the “neo-
Renaissance” Grandhotel Pupp (which hosts
“Hollywood royalty” during the July film
festival), but be sure to visit the “brutalist”
Thermal Hotel too, for a dip in the “balmy”
waters of its “superb” rooftop pool.

Last-minute offers from top travel companies

Canada’s prairies & peaks
Enjoy this 11-night motorhome
Alberta holiday, with 2 nights
in a Calgary hotel and a visit to
the Dinosaur Provincial Park.
From £1,099pp (incl. flights).
020-7084 6500, trailfinders.
com. November departure.
Seven nights in Malta
Stay at the Maritim Antonine
Hotel and discover a magical
blend of culture, cuisine and
landscape. From £799pp half-
board (incl. flights). 020-3966
5882, traveldepartment.co.uk.
Depart 7 March. Code TW50.
Exotic winter cruise
Spend Christmas in the
Caribbean on a 15-night cruise
from Barbados, incl. a stop in
Antigua. From £1,891pp all-
inclusive (incl. flights). 020-
3848 3797, iglucruise.com.
Depart 14 December.
Island-hopping in Thailand
Five-star tropical indulgence
and tranquillity, from Phuket
to Khao Lak and Krabi, for 14
nights. From £1,619pp b&b
(incl. flights and transfers).
020-3608 0135, secretescapes.
com. Depart 6 May.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

40 Obituaries
The acclaimed director of Distant Voices, Still Lives
The screenwriter and director
Terence
Terence Davies, who has
Davies
died aged 77, was never a
1945-2023
household name, said The
Scotsman, yet he commanded enough respect
in the industry to be able to persuade Gillian
Anderson, at the height of her X-Files fame,
to leave Hollywood and travel to Scotland to
appear in his adaptation of Edith Wharton’s
The House of Mirth (in which Glasgow stood
in for 19th century New York). Davies hadn’t
approached her because she was a big name:
he had not heard of The X-Files. He had
simply seen her photograph and felt she
had the “luminosity” he was looking for; she
reminded him of a John Singer Sargent portrait.
Anderson, however, knew exactly who he was,
having long been an admirer of his work. He
made ten films in all, many of them inspired by
his own childhood in working-class Liverpool.
Davies: films of “affecting humanity”
His family were poor, and his early life was
often brutal, said The Guardian; yet in his films, “moments of
transcendent beauty nestle alongside instances of lacerating pain”;
and “there was a similar division in Davies himself”. He was a
man “given to brooding, despair and self-loathing”, but moments
of “exuberance or glimmers of camp, waspish wit” would
occasionally break through. He started his film career with a trio
of short films, which followed one character from cradle to grave;
the first part cleaved closely, and bleakly, to his own experience
of growing up gay in a Catholic family. His debut feature,
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), dwelt on the impact of a violent
patriarch, played by Pete Postlethwaite – and based on Davies’s
own father. Davies found it so distressing to make that he was
often seen sitting on Postlethwaite’s lap, being comforted by his
on-screen father. Fragmentary and poetic, the film was beloved
by the critics (one predicted that it would be remembered as the
“greatest of all English films”), but proved a tough sell at the box
office, said The Daily Telegraph. In its follow-up, The Long Day
American billionaire who quietly gave his fortune away
Chuck Feeney was an American
Chuck
businessman who built up an
Feeney
empire of duty-free shopping
1931-2023
outlets. With its income largely
tax-free, he became a billionaire, and acquired
many of the trappings of one, including
apartments in New York, Paris and London, a ski
lodge in Aspen and a shooting estate in Yorkshire.
But he started to feel uneasy about having so
much for himself; and in the late 1980s, he
decided to spend the rest of his life giving his
fortune away. By the time he completed that
mission in 2020, he’d distributed more than $8bn.
He sought no glory. For decades he refused to
allow the source of his donations to be disclosed;
and none of the 1,000 or so buildings he paid for
bear his name (he hoped another philanthropist “The James Bond of philanthropy” $2m for his retirement). He funded projects on
might donate more, to get the “naming rights”).
He said he’d be the “last guy” to tell other rich people what
to do, but he did have this advice: “It’s a lot more fun to
give while you live than to give while you are dead.” For the
stealth with which he distributed his fortune, he was referred
to as “the James Bond of philanthropy”.
Charles Feeney, who has died aged 92, was born in New
Jersey, where his Irish-American parents had moved to from
Philadelphia. His father worked in insurance; his mother was a
THE WEEK 21 October 2023
Closes, a lonely 11-year-old, based on Davies,
finds food for his imagination at the local
picture palace. There were hopes that The
House of Mirth (2000) would be his
commercial breakthrough. But while the
critics received it warmly, audiences were
indifferent. With no funding forthcoming,
Davies was plunged into despair. “Work is
my raison d’être and if that’s taken away, you
become a non-person,” he said. “You’re just
filling in time till you die.” Then, in 2008,
he bounced back with Of Time and the
City, a highly evocative and deeply personal
documentary about Liverpool, said The Times.
It heralded a “late renaissance”, in which he
made four acclaimed films over a decade,
including an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s
The Deep Blue Sea (2011), and Benediction
(2021), about the poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Terence Davies was born in 1945, one of ten
children, three of whom died in childhood.
He described his father, a chimney sweep who died when he was
seven, as “rough, alcoholic and utterly callous”. By contrast, he
adored his devoutly Catholic mother; he lived in dread of her
death, and was distraught when she did die, aged 90. He was
bullied at school, left at 16, then worked as an accounts clerk.
Finding the job unbearably dull, he started acting – which
eventually led him to send a script about his childhood to the
British Film Institute. To his amazement, he was offered funding
to turn it into a film, which was the first part of what became
known as The Terence Davies Trilogy, an anthology so gritty,
one critic remarked that it made Ingmar Bergman look like Jerry
Lewis. Yet Davies’s work was shot through with “warm humour
and affecting humanity”; and others have likened it, rather more
favourably, to that of Samuel Beckett. A complicated person,
Davies seemed to dislike being gay. For most of his life, he had
been celibate, he said. “When you’re not good-looking, it’s that
much easier to say, ‘Fine, I’ll take up embroidery.’”
nurse. Aged ten, he made money selling Christmas
cards door to door; later on, he sold umbrellas on
rainy days and rented out deckchairs on sunny
ones. After military service in Korea, he used the
G.I. Bill to study at Cornell University’s hotel
school; then in 1956, he joined forces with his
Cornell classmate Robert Warren Miller to sell
duty-free alcohol to US troops abroad; it evolved
into the Duty Free Shoppers group (DFS), which
became the world’s largest travel retailer.
It was in about 1980 that he formed his “giving
while living” plan, inspired by Andrew Carnegie.
Having bestowed a large sum on his former wife,
he quietly gave his stake in DFS to a foundation,
The Atlantic Philanthropies (keeping back just
five continents, from Aids clinics in South Africa
to earthquake relief in Haiti; but Cornell was his largest single
beneficiary. With a particular interest in Irish affairs, Feeney gave
almost £500m to causes in Northern Ireland, including Queen’s
University Belfast, and used his money and influence to direct
© JIM WILSON/NYT/EYEVINE
both sides towards peace in the years before the Good Friday
Agreement. Famously frugal, he wore a $15 watch, flew economy,
and spent his final years living with his second wife in a modest,
two-bed rented flat in San Francisco. Chuck Feeney is “my hero”,
said Warren Buffett in 2014. “He should be everyone’s hero.”
 CITY 41
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Carillion/KPMG: banged to rights?
When the construction and outsourcing giant
Carillion collapsed in 2018, it was “one of the
biggest corporate casualties in British history”, said
Sam Nagarajan on Bloomberg. It left a trail of chaos.
Around 30,000 suppliers and subcontractors lost a Seven days in the
combined £2bn in unpaid bills. Now there has been
a reckoning, of sorts. The Financial Reporting
Square Mile
Council has fined Carillion’s auditor, KPMG, a UK headline inflation remained steady at
record £21m for its failure to spot and stop the rot. 6.7% in September, ending a run of three
The fine “broke the previous record of £13m held by consecutive falls. Although food prices
KPMG (for Silentnight), which broke the previous saw their first monthly fall in two years,
record of £6m, also paid by KPMG”, said Robert higher global oil and gas prices helped
Lea in The Times. In total, the Big Four bean-counter sustain pressures. Most economists
has paid over £62m in fines in the past five years for expect interest rates – left on hold at
5.25% last month – to remain unchanged
“its (lack of) auditing”. Still, at least there’s been when the Bank of England’s monetary
some accountability; not so at Carillion itself. The Insolvency Service this week dropped policy committee meets in November.
its proposed prosecution of five directors, including “the well-remunerated chairman”, Governor Andrew Bailey has
claiming that the case “was not worth the public expense”. We are, thus, left “with acknowledged that further decisions
closure of a very English kind”. Was the Carillion story one of “multiple incompetence might be tight – particularly given
or reckless malpractice, or something darker”? Good luck finding out. resurgent oil prices following the crisis
in Gaza. But economists were heartened
Hipgnosis: facing the music by the slowing rate of average wage
The mood music at Hipgnosis Songs Fund – the beleaguered music rights business growth, which fell to 7.8% between
June and August.
founded by Merck Mercuriadis and Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers – is becoming more
cacophonous by the day. Shares in the fund, which owns the rights to artists including The price of gold rose to a four-week
high of $1,943/oz ahead of President
Shakira, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay, plunged this week on news that the dividend is to be
Biden’s visit to Israel this week, as
axed owing to “lower-than-expected streaming royalties”, said Daniel O’Boyle in the investors continued to seek out safe
Evening Standard. The value of the fund has more than halved since its peak. The big havens. Shares in Nvidia and other US
concern now, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail, is breaching loan agreements. But chip stocks fell after the US announced
a controversial proposition to reduce debt – by selling around a fifth of Hipgnosis’s new restrictions on the exports of
portfolio (including works by the Kaiser Chiefs and Barry Manilow) to a Blackstone “advanced” semiconductors to China.
fund for around $440m – has got shareholders fuming, not least because there’s “a clear China’s biggest private property
conflict of interest”: the Blackstone fund is also managed by Mercuriadis. Next week’s developer, Country Garden, was
vote on this “stinker” of a deal could well result in a demand “to wind up the fund”, said reported to have defaulted – or to be
Nils Pratley in The Guardian. A pity. “Despite the current mess, a quoted royalty fund close to default – on its overseas debt
for music remains a viable long-term idea” – but, to work, it needs strong independent payments. Binance, the crypto exchange,
governance. The exit of chairman Andrew Sutch “creates a vacancy at a good moment”. stopped accepting new users in the UK,
in compliance with new regulations
restricting promotions from overseas
Barclays/Staley: Epstein curse digital asset firms. The Restaurant
The former chief executive of Barclays, Jes Staley, has been fined £1.8m, and banned Group, owner of Wagamama, will be
from working in the UK financial sector, for “recklessly” misleading regulators about taken private after accepting a £506m
his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said Patrick Hosking and offer from the US buyout group Apollo.
Ben Martin in The Times. Minutes after the Financial Conduct Authority announced EasyJet reported a record fourth quarter
the decision, Staley, 66, was also dealt a blow by Barclays. In one of the biggest-ever cases after a buoyant summer and outlined
of rewards being clawed back, the American banker will “forfeit” some £17.8m in share a £1bn profits target.
awards and other bonuses. The FCA’s findings centre on a letter sent by the Barclays
board – and approved by Staley – claiming that he did not have a close relationship with
Epstein, a former client, and had ceased contact with the financier “well before” joining
Barclays from JPMorgan in 2015. In fact, the pair remained close, said Stephen Morris Sandwich sacking
in the Financial Times. In emails reading something like “love letters”, Staley described In 2020, Citigroup suspended a London
Epstein as his “most cherished friend”, confiding that he’d been approached for the bond trader for allegedly stealing food
Barclays job: “Cross your toes!!!” Staley rejected the findings and plans to appeal in the from the canteen, said The Daily
Upper Tribunal – a process that “could take years”, said The Times. That’s the last thing Telegraph. Now, the issue is sandwiches.
Citi has won a lawsuit against a banker
that the bank needs. “The curse of Epstein still stalks Barclays.”
who expensed his partner’s lunch on a
trip to Amsterdam – and then lied about
Rolls-Royce: jobs bonfire it. Szabolcs Fekete claimed he’d ordered
Shares in Rolls-Royce “have staged a remarkable comeback” in the past year, trebling two sandwiches because he’d “skipped
on the back of a post-pandemic resurgence in aviation demand, and the early results of breakfast”, but was eventually “cracked”
CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç’s “transformation plan”, said Mark Kleinman on Sky News. The by Citi’s ethics department and fired.
transformation’s not over yet. The engine manufacturer has just announced it will cut A judge has now ruled that the bank had
2,500 more jobs across its global operations. Hundreds of UK workers are likely to be every right, said Robert Armstrong on
affected. Erginbilgiç hinted at big changes when he arrived at Rolls in January, describing FT.com. But surely this “dystopian
corporate farce” could have been
the group as “a burning platform”. The drastic tactics seem to have paid off, said Chris
avoided. “If you find yourself elevating
Bryant on Bloomberg. Now he must tread carefully. The better the venerable engineering a dispute about a sandwich to the ethics
firm does financially, “the harder it will be to justify job cuts”. Erginbilgiç has identified department, consider a different career.”
what ails Rolls-Royce. The challenge now is to bring its remaining staff with him.

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

42 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: the end of the Roaring Twenties?
Sales and valuations in the luxury sector are wobbling. Blip or rout?
Will last week’s Birkenstock float mark
the last hurrah for the post-pandemic
boom in luxury goods? Quite possibly,
said The Economist. LVMH, a major
investor in Birkenstock, has just reported
“a sharp slowdown in quarterly sales”,
prompting analysts at Berenberg bank
to declare “an end to the Roaring
Twenties”. It’s a warning worth listening
to, said Lara Wildenberg in The Times.
The French luxe conglomerate – whose
75 brands range from Dior, Tiffany and
Louis Vuitton to Moët & Chandon – is
seen as “a bellwether” for the sector. Its
9% increase in sales (to €20bn in Q3)
is hardly the sign of a business in peril.
But it’s a substantial markdown from the Luxury brands in China: “a psychological purchase” to enjoy life, rather than die rich”.
17% increase the previous quarter, and
investors are running scared. LVMH shares are down 20% this
year, said Markets Insider – knocking founder Bernard Arnault
off his newly won perch as the world’s richest man.
“After years of spending like there’s no tomorrow, why are the
1% cutting back,” asked William Turvill in The Sunday Times. Is
it plummeting asset values? Or soaring interest rates? Harrods’s
boss, Michael Ward, reckons even the super-rich have been turned
off by years of aggressive price rises in the sector, observing that automation set to continue swelling the membership of a dollar
“solid growth” will return when those hikes stop. But there may
be more to the rout than that. LVMH’s former chair, Pauline
Brown, reckons geopolitical instability
is a big factor, said Tom Ambrose in
The Guardian. Luxury goods are “a
psychological purchase”, she reasons. To
buy, “you really have to be in the right
mood state”, and “when we see atrocities
happening, the appetite to spend on
what might be perceived as frivolous
goes way down”. Call it a “vibe shift”,
said John Gapper in the FT. Auction
houses report the same muted mood in
the contemporary art market. Perhaps
luxury consumers are “simply sobering
up” from a consumption binge, during
which they decided, as Bernstein analyst
Luca Solca puts it, that it was “better
The apparent downturn is disproving the industry’s boast that
“our customers are too rich to notice downturns”, said Lex in the
FT. But we shouldn’t be surprised by it. “Park Avenue and Beverly
Hills boulevardiers are beset by bank runs and gyrating Treasury
yields”, and their Beijing equivalents “are coping with a property
crash”. Still, this looks cyclical. LVMH shares have risen by more
than 18 times since the financial crisis, and “the central case”
for buying luxury stocks remains. With industrialisation and
millionaire class that has quadrupled in size globally since 2020,
demand for “the trappings of wealth” is likely to remain “brisk”.

Sustainable investing: what the experts think School run

O Political dilemma from renewables under The shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves
“Net zero by 2050” new CEO Wael Sawan has reiterated Labour’s commitment to
was always going to has been welcomed in introduce 20% VAT on private-school
be an almighty stretch, the City, but castigated fees if the party wins power, and to
charge full business rates on fee-paying
said Jeremy Warner in by some employees, said
schools in England and Wales, as
The Daily Telegraph. Oliver Shah in The already happens in Scotland. Parents
But rising debt and Sunday Times. “Expect are already making rapid calculations,
surging interest rates more of these tensions.” said Alexandra Goss in the Financial
have transformed the Times. Here’s the lowdown...
global green transition O Investor dismay
into “a “ruinously Investors are dismayed, OSchool fees have been rising sharply
expensive endeavour” Wael Sawan: tilting away from renewables said Alice Ross in the for years. The IFS think-tank calculates
– leaving politicians FT. “Many think net that, in real terms, they’ve increased by
20% since 2010 – and 55% in the past
“caught between a rock and hard place”. zero targets for different industries are vital
20 years. The average yearly fee for a
The IMF calculates that if governments are to plan an orderly transition to net zero day school is now £16,656. Weatherbys
to scale up their green investment spending in their own portfolios.” As for broader Private Bank forecasts that fees could
and subsidies to the level needed to reach funds, they may ignore green investments double again under Labour, said Simon
emission goals, it would increase already altogether if the political risk is too high, Foy in The Daily Telegraph, “with the
bloated debt-to-GDP ratios by a whopping said Mike Fox of Royal London. Specialist average cost of a boarding school
45% by 2050. No wonder Rishi Sunak’s investors are worried too. “Targets and education rising to £688,000 by 2036”.
government has “shifted its stance” on goals stimulate new projects,” said
the issue. Even Labour has progressively Sustainable Development Capital’s OPlaces at the UK’s 163 government-
funded selective schools are ever more
watered down its promise to spend £28bn Jonathan Maxwell. “Rolling them back
sought-after – putting further strain on
a year on green energy investment. reduces the attractiveness of projects and “already pressurised property markets”
can even kill them.” Some specialists, such near them, and fuelling a boom for
O Industry backlash as Impax founder Ian Simm, shrug off tuition companies. According to the
Sunak’s retreat has already triggered the political noise, arguing that while Sutton Trust, 30% of young people
a backlash, led by the renewables manufacturers are “rightly irritated” about have had some kind of private tuition.
industry and carmakers heavily invested goalposts being moved, the longer term
in electrification. Last week, the boss of direction of travel is more important. But OPrivate schools are plotting survival.
Bentley, Adrian Hallmark, joined in the others find the mood music unnerving. Prepare for a “wave of mergers” and
financial partnerships, said Foy. The
griping, telling The Telegraph that pushing “Politicians shouldn’t assume that capital
independent prep school Thomas’s
back the ban on diesel and petrol car sales is committed in the UK,” said Ricardo Battersea has just struck a financing
to 2035 would “destabilise” the market. Piñeiro of battery-storage investor deal with private equity firm Oakley
There have even been complaints from Foresight Group – a warning shot, for Capital. It’s the shape of things to come.
within the oil giant Shell, whose tilt away now, but one that ministers should heed.

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 Commentators CITY 45
The gathering of US warships in the eastern Mediterranean – and
Britain’s decision to dispatch surveillance aircraft to the region – City profiles
War and the reflects fears of a broader conflagration in the Middle East,
says Alex Brummer. “The timing for most Western governments
David Solomon
The “music has stopped” for
British tax could not be more difficult.” Pressure to step up defence spending
coincides with huge fiscal stress: the impact of the 2008-09
Wall Street’s hottest record-
spinner, DJ D-Sol, said Julia
burden financial crisis, Covid, and Russia’s war on Ukraine have “sent G7
government borrowing and debt into the stratosphere”. Both the
Kollewe in The Guardian.
Goldman Sachs’ boss,
Alex Brummer US and Britain now have levels of debt close to 100% of GDP, David Solomon, 61 – who
and debt interest payments are surging. Given the likelihood of has previously performed in
Daily Mail higher defence spending, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt may deem it clubs, tiki bars and festivals
essential “to hold out” against Tory demands for tax cuts in next – has formally “hung up
his headphones”, owing to
month’s Autumn Statement. But he should guard against “bracket boardroom concerns about
creep”, which is projected to take the number of Britons paying media “distraction”. The
higher-rate taxes to 8.9 million by 2027-28 – double the 2020 worries are understandable.
figure. Big tax bills are an enormous disincentive to work and can Solomon took a near-30%
only worsen the UK’s lagging productivity. Freezing tax thresholds pay cut in 2022, after “a
would be “an act of self-harm”. turbulent year” resulted in
“one of the largest rounds
“In modern Britain, the garden variety of shed is revered as an of job cuts in Goldman’s
icon of national identity,” says Helen Thomas. A pity we can’t history”. The latest quarterly
results, showing another
Time to take summon the same enthusiasm for the “commercial variety”. The
shed – or industrial and logistics market, to give it its proper title –
decline in net earnings, have
not improved confidence.
our sheds is badly neglected by “a planning system that doesn’t deliver very
much very well”. About 1.6 billion tonnes of goods are hauled
Solomon’s biggest hit is
his electronic remix of
more seriously into and around Britain each year, and jobs in the sector have
increased by 25% since 2010; yet the UK suffers from what the
Whitney Houston’s I Wanna
Dance With Somebody (Who
Helen Thomas National Infrastructure Commission calls “freight blindness”. Loves Me). But for now, the
Neither local nor national government is keeping pace with its dancing’s over.
Financial Times changing needs. Not only do we not have enough logistics space,
but the system hasn’t been adapted to cope with the rethink of Bernie Ecclestone
shopping habits and supply chains since the pandemic and Brexit.
The big goods sheds are mostly clustered in the Midlands’ “golden
triangle”, and there isn’t nearly enough urban or “last-mile” space
for rapid deliveries. Freight is suffering the same old planning
story. Without a more “joined-up approach”, our fragmented
and dysfunctional system will continue failing us.

Claudia Goldin, the Harvard academic who has won the Nobel
Prize in Economics, is the third woman to have won the prize, says
A Nobel The Economist, and the first since 1993 to be honoured for work
in economic history. A great trawler of archives, she has written a
laureate who comprehensive history of “gender labour-market inequality” over
the past 200 years – overturning many assumptions and informing
minds the gap the quest for greater equality today. Goldin suggests that action
tends to come in bursts. Women’s wages rose relative to men’s in “After a cat-and-mouse game
Editorial 1820-50, and again in 1890-1930, before shooting up in 1980- lasting more than 20 years”,
2005. Since then it has hardly budged. The first two bursts were the taxman has finally
The Economist due to labour-market changes caused by the Industrial Revolution caught up with Bernie
Ecclestone, said the FT. The
and surging white-collar employment; the last was fuelled by the former Formula 1 mogul,
equal-pay movement and rising female “expectations”. Goldin’s 92, has pleaded guilty to
take on the current stasis is that women are being held back by tax fraud and will pay HMRC
the growth of “greedy jobs” (offering big returns for long and £652m in back taxes, interest
uncertain hours) and a continued “parenthood penalty” after and penalties. It is “the
childbirth. Finding ways to combat these should be “her next act”. largest ever settlement of
its kind”. It could have been
The new coins produced by the Royal Mint, the first with Charles worse. Ecclestone, who
III’s head on them, are quietly revolutionary by the standards of had siphoned £400m into a
Singapore trust, escaped jail
Who gives such things, says Michael Hogan. The coins, from 1p to £2, which
will enter circulation by the end of the year, have been radically
with a 17-month suspended
sentence. The son of a
a flip about redesigned, with motifs of British flora and fauna, and outsize
numbering “to help children identify figures and learn to count”.
Suffolk fisherman, he left
school at 16 and became
the coinage? A laudable aim. But what century are these dinosaurs living in?
Cash use, especially in small denominations, has long been in
“a successful used car
salesman” before teaming
Michael Hogan decline, and it’s our “contactless” kids who are at the vanguard up with F1, which he is
of the cashless society. “If a grandparent or godparent gives my credited with transforming
The Observer children old-fashioned money – very generous of them, of course into a multimillion-dollar
enterprise. Following the
– my little darlings look at it slightly baffled. You might as well hearing, the tycoon was
hand them a postal order or luncheon vouchers.” Coins with spotted in London’s
whopping numbers on them are more use to tourists or the sight- Borough Market buying
challenged older generations. For the youth of today, “there’s doughnuts. “Bloody
no loving care for tender. Mintage is strictly vintage. Pardon the lawyers,” he said.
puns, but coins have no currency nowadays.”

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 47

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares
Cranswick
The Daily Telegraph
The food producer has
countered inflation via price
rises, cost control and increased
automation. Meanwhile, its
growing farming capability
has boosted self-sufficiency
and growth prospects. Gaining
market share. Buy. £35.28.
Directors’ dealings
Roche Vertu Motors Watches of Switzerland
The Daily Telegraph The Sunday Times
The Swiss pharma group, Shares in the motor retailer, 800 4 directors
which majors on cancer drugs, which has 190 well-managed buy 151,995
750
neuroscience, immunology and forecourts, are “too cheap for
haemophilia treatments, has a business with an excellent 700
upped R&D spend to boost its growth record and a strong
650
pipeline and offset losses from balance sheet”, says Liberum
copycats. Backed by top fund Capital. Profiting from growing 600
managers. Buy. CHF 255.05. scale. Buy. 77.1p.
550

Redde Northgate SSE YouGov 500

The Mail on Sunday The Times The Times May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
The motoring firm provides The energy firm’s long-term, Revenues and profits are up

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

accident services – from
recovery to repairs – and has
a fleet of 130,000 vehicles.
Customers are insurers, leasing
firms and businesses. Resilient
and growing, with profits up
10%. Yields 7%. Buy. 317p.
government-backed growth
prospects outweigh short-term
headwinds. Aiming to invest
in low-carbon infrastructure:
upgrading electricity networks,
new wind farms and a hydro
storage site. Buy. £15.75.
at the market research firm,
despite the hit to data services
sales from slashed tech sector
budgets. More than 40% of
revenue is recurring, and it
is pushing into the US via
acquisitions. Buy. 848p.
Rolex’s acquisition of rival
retailer Bucherer fuelled fears
that WoS could be cut out of
the retail chain. Four directors
bought in to signal confidence,
with CFO Anders Romberg and
chair Ian Carter spending
£585,000 and £206,000 – so
far, to little avail.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Birkenstock EnSilica MaxCyte Shares tipped 12 weeks ago

The Times The Mail on Sunday The Daily Telegraph Best tip
The German brand’s shares EnSilica designs chips for Shares in MaxCyte, whose DX Group
fell 12.6% on its first day of the automotive and satellite machines enable pharmas The Mail on Sunday
trading. Making shoes inhouse industries – and for smart to make gene-editing up 35.15% to 43.25p
gives it a margin advantage rings, which are all the rage for treatments, have slumped
over Nike and Puma; and making payments and health in a tough operating Worst tip
Bloomsbury Publishing
demand still exceeds supply. monitoring. Nervous investors environment. Highly
The Times
But shares are too pricey given may want to take profits on volatile, but growth potential down 10.34% to 394.5p
the economy. Avoid. $40.20. a 40% gain. Hold. 69p. remains. Hold. 245p.

Croda International JD Wetherspoon Worldwide Healthcare Trust

The Times
The chemicals group has cut
profit guidance again, citing
customers – from cosmetics
groups to agricultural suppliers
– running down stocks. Poor
order visibility doesn’t help.
Vulnerable to another
warning. Avoid. £44.44.
Investors’ Chronicle
The pub chain’s sales are
up 7.4%, edging ahead of
pre-Covid levels, with food
now outstripping drink.
Management has cleared the
decks of underperforming
assets to cut debt, and cashflow
has improved. Hold. 666p.
The Daily Telegraph Market view
This trust has a “relatively “This may be the most
diverse” portfolio of global dangerous time the world
pharma and biotech firms, has seen in decades.”
JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie
including Roche and Sanofi,
Dimon issues a stark
majoring on cancer, diabetes warning to investors as
and heart disease. Set to benefit geopolitical tensions rise.
from a growing and ageing Quoted on Yahoo Finance
population. Hold. 306p.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for
for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
17 Oct 2023 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS
7,900
FTSE 100 7675.21 7628.21 0.62% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 4137.26 4124.72 0.30% Endeavour Mining 1678.00 +7.40
United Utilities 1029.50 +7.20 7,800
Dow Jones 34088.24 33869.57 0.65%
Severn Trent 2537.00 +6.10
NASDAQ 13568.26 13652.18 −0.61%
BP 555.00 +5.70 7,700
Nikkei 225 32040.29 31746.53 0.93%
Hang Seng 17773.34 17664.73 0.61% Shell 2771.50 +4.10
Gold 1918.05 1845.50 3.93% 7,600
Brent Crude Oil 89.45 87.55 2.17% FALLS
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.75% 3.76% St James’s Place 668.60 –18.60 7,500
UK 10-year gilts yield 4.65 4.58 Ocado Group 505.80 –15.70
US 10-year Treasuries 4.81 4.62 Howden Joinery 661.80 –6.70
7,400
UK ECONOMIC DATA Convatec 201.00 –6.30
Latest CPI (yoy) 6.7% (Sep) 6.7% (Aug) Croda International 4303.00 –6.30
7,300
Latest RPI (yoy) 8.9% (Sep) 9.1% (Aug)
Halifax house price (yoy) –4.7% (Sep) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
−4.6% (Aug) Moneysupermarket.com 268.20 +9.00 May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct

£1 STERLING: $1.220 s1.153 ¥182.649 Bitcoin $28,533.79 Mobico 62.30 –27.60 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
Source: FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 17 Oct (pm)

21 October 2023 THE WEEK

48 The last word

Italy’s “demographic winter”:

a country growing old
Massiola, a mountain village in northern Italy, is slowly dying, and there are many like it. Tobias Jones reports
on how Italy’s falling birthrate is reshaping its politics – and what could be done to reverse the trend

The black letters painted on Demographers consider 2.1

the walls – announcing the a golden number. That’s the
“hostelry” and the “bar” – fertility rate, the average
are fading to nothing. Both number of children born to
have been closed for decades. every woman, that allows
There’s no building work a country’s population to
going on either: in one garden remain stable. Italy’s fertility
a cement mixer has been rate is now 1.24. In certain
rotated upwards, painted regions, it’s even lower: in
yellow and turned into a plant Sardinia, it’s 0.95. Every year,
pot. Many of the houses have Italy’s average age creeps up.
hand-written “for sale” signs It now stands at 46.4, and
on their front doors. This is almost a quarter of Italians
Massiola, a mountain village are 65 and over. The
772 metres above sea level, traditional population
west of Lake Maggiore in pyramid – with a wide base of
the northern Italian region youngsters thinning to a point
of Piedmont. It’s a beautiful of a few elders – now looks
place. Alleyways snake more like an urn. Projections
between houses with terraced suggest Italy’s population will
gardens. The air smells of fall from 59 million now to
manure and woodsmoke. But 48 million by 2070. Given
apart from the crash of the that national pension systems
river in the valley below and are like a Ponzi scheme,
the clang of distant cowbells, requiring new contributors to
it’s eerily silent. “There’s no finance those who take money
one here any more,” says one Italy’s average age stands at 46.4, and almost a quarter are 65 or older out, this imbalance will
old man. No babies have been become an acute economic
born since 2015; 23 residents have died. Since the turn of the problem, requiring either huge tax hikes or drastic pension cuts.
century, the population has dropped from 173 to just 117.
Demographers and sociologists have long been aware of the
Massiola is slowly dying and it’s easy to see why. It seems suited problem of Italy’s birthrate, but it has suddenly become a hot
to a simpler age: the central road political topic. The prime
is so narrow, you have to park minister, Giorgia Meloni, sees in
your car at one end. Phone “The traditional population pyramid – with it an issue that speaks to the gut
reception is iffy. In 2020 a a wide base of youngsters thinning to a point values of the far-right because it
landslide crashed through the appears to confirm a conspiracy
middle of the village and its last of a few elders – now looks more like an urn” theory that Meloni, and her
remaining shop. It was different party, repeatedly refer to: “ethnic
in the first couple of decades after the Second World War. With a substitution” or “the great replacement”. In 2017 she said there
population of about 350, the village had a sawmill and specialised had been “a planned and desired invasion” of immigrants, and
in making wooden spoons and pins for wine barrels. There was a year later repeated the antisemitic trope that George Soros
a nearby marble mine. “It was so different back then,” says Renzo finances “ethnic substitution”. Such ideas are widely held
Albertini, 74, the mayor of the village. “In the mid-1960s there among politicians in Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. Even the
were two food shops, three bars, the hostelry, 200 sheep. Every mainstream media stoke this paranoia: Panorama, a current
family had a cow, most had a pig…” But the marble quarry closed affairs and lifestyle magazine, recently put on its cover various
and demand for wooden pins and spoons declined. The village black and brown faces under the title “Italy without Italians”.
school closed in the early 2000s as families migrated down the
valley into the towns and cities. “No one works the woodlands So far there have been few concrete pro-family policies: only
now,” Albertini says wistfully. “There’s no life here any more.” the halving of VAT to 5% on nappies, milk powder and child car
Without the young, an elderly woman adds, “there’s no future”. seats. But every month the births rhetoric is ramped up. Meloni
frequently opens political speeches by saying “I am a mother”
Massiola is a prism through which to see a slow-motion crisis that and uses Mussolini’s old slogan of “Dio, patria, famiglia” (“God,
is affecting the whole of Italy: its “demographic winter”. Figures fatherland, family”). In May, Meloni and Pope Francis shared a
from Istat, the national statistics agency, revealed in April that stage (both dressed in white) at an annual gathering of pro-family
the population had fallen by 179,000 in 2022, a 0.3% decline. organisations, whose slogan – “Quota 500,000” – is the target
© STEFANO TORRIONE/4CORNERS

Deaths now far outstrip births, which last year, for the first time,
fell below 400,000 a year. According to the educational news
site Tuttoscuola, 2,600 Italian primary and infant schools have
closed since the 2014-15 academic year. The number of students
is constantly falling: it’s predicted in this academic year there
will be 127,000 fewer schoolchildren nationally than last year.
number for annual births by 2033. The event was organised by
Gigi De Palo, a sandal-wearing Catholic and father of five, who
tells me about the “traumatic consequences” of falling birthrates.
“Our GDP puts us at ninth place in the world, but in 20 years’
time, we’ll be 25th,” he says. “The pensions system will collapse,
the health system will collapse…”

THE WEEK 21 October 2023

 The last word
Fears that Meloni’s government is
attempting to return women to child-
rearing roles have convinced many
feminists to protest vocally. In its first year,
her coalition has drafted four anti-
abortion bills, including one recognising
the legal rights of the foetus that, if passed
into law, would in effect end abortion.
Surrogate births are already outlawed in
Italy, but Meloni’s government has drawn
up legislation to make it illegal to seek
surrogate mothers abroad, too. The
government has been candid about its
disdain for all forms of family outside
traditional norms. Eugenia Roccella,
the minister for family, births and equal
opportunities, opposes the “marketisation
of gametes” and “transhumanism” (the Meloni: added an “ideological charge” to the issue Those financial headwinds are even
use of technology to enhance humanity).
So the births debate sits on the faultline of the culture wars.
Downhill from Massiola is Verbania, a sedate town nestling on
a triangle of land pointing into Lake Maggiore that recorded a
12.8% drop in births in 2022. “It makes me gloomy,” says Magda
Verazzi, a right-wing councillor. “There’s this egotism in which a
child is seen as a limitation. We’re fixated on physical appearance,
social position, the car we have, our career.” She is childless and it
sounds almost like self-criticism. But she laughs and points at all
the dogs in the piazza: “We’ve replaced love of children with love
of animals.” The businesslike, left-wing mayor of the city, Silvia
Marchionini – also childless – believes the lack of births reflects
a profound malaise in Italy: “There’s a distrust of the future...
This is a country in distress.”
Quite apart from cashflow
problems, many young women “‘There’s this egotism in which a child is seen on free buses for pupils, free
just don’t want the hassle. as a limitation,’ says one councillor. ‘We’ve
Alessia, 32, works in a car rental
firm and lives with her boyfriend.
replaced love of children with love of animals’” The
She earns €1,300 (£1,100) after
tax and pays €300 towards rent. “I don’t want to have children,”
she says. “It doesn’t interest me. But even if I did, I wouldn’t be
able to. I struggle to get to the end of the month with just a dog.”
Of six close female friends in their early 30s, only one has a child.
“Relationships are more unstable than they were in the old days,”
she says. “And we’re not like our mothers – we want a partner by
our side, not a husband you have to cook for every night.”
There’s a consensus among demographers about what needs to
be done to reverse Italy’s sinking birthrate. And it’s the opposite
of a reversion to the traditional family. Birthrates rise where there
are progressive social policies: in Sweden, with its ample maternity ever-greater percentage of the Italian population is bound to be
and paternity leave and social welfare provision, the fertility rate
is 1.84. Germany, which in the mid-1990s had a similar fertility
rate (1.3) to Italy’s current figure, now has a rate of about 1.6.
“In addition to the strengthening of allowances and tax rebates,”
says Francesco Billari, professor of demography at Milan’s
Bocconi University, “Germany has pushed access to nurseries
and extended school hours and parental leave. In short, it has
significantly improved the work-family balance, especially for
women previously forced to choose between having children and
working.” That progressive policies encourage births is confirmed
by differences within Italy itself. In the autonomous province of
Bolzano, near the border with Austria, €200 is given as childcare
benefit for children under three, there’s help for first-time
homebuyers and good education and health services. The fertility
rate is 1.65, a figure closer to Denmark (1.72) than most of Italy.
Research repeatedly shows Italian women express the desire to
have the same number of children as northern Europeans (the
average is just over two), so demographers conclude that there
are obstacles to fulfilling their wishes. The most obvious is that
Italians stay in the parental home well into adulthood: males on
49
average don’t leave until 31 and women at
29 (the figure for Sweden, for both sexes,
is 19). As the former UK minister David
Willetts once quipped, “Living at home
with your parents is a very powerful
contraception.” Italy holds the European
record for the highest age of first-time
mothers (31.4) – and if you start late,
you’re unlikely to have many children.
Most young Italians don’t leave home
because they simply can’t afford to.
The median net monthly wage in Italy
is €1,501 and starting salaries are even
lower. Rents continue to rise, in the
past year by 12% across the country.
According to Istat, 5.6 million people
in Italy suffer from “absolute poverty”.
stronger for those in the “fertility range”.
Italy has the highest proportion of Neets (not in employment,
education or training) aged 15-29 in the EU: 23.1%, as against
13.1%. There has been a brain drain, too: the number of Italians
living abroad has doubled to almost six million since 2006.
A short drive from Maggiore is a smaller lake, Orta, with an
island monastery. Opposite that island is Orta San Giulio, a
stunning town with a medieval feel. Orta made headlines in 2019
when, despite a population of 1,322, it registered no new births,
and 29 deaths. Since then, the population has fallen by 160.
The independent mayor, Giorgio Angeleri, is a jovial man who
is proud of his town. But he’s aware that tourism is a mixed
blessing, pushing up prices and pushing out cash-strapped youth.
“Our challenge is to avoid Orta becoming a theme park,” he says.
Keeping schools open is a big
part of that strategy: “We lay
pre- and post-school activities.”
town council pays for a
proportion of school meals and
finances 60% of the cost of
summer camps. There’s also a €500 bond given to all newborns.
Despite that, Angeleri (“unfortunately childless”) is aware he’s
fighting a rearguard action. “There’s an egotism to people now
– they think primarily about themselves. They want to work,
grow, travel, study, and the idea of getting married, let alone
starting a family, doesn’t come naturally.” Unlike those who think
poverty is the main factor that inhibits the birthrate, Angeleri
believes affluence does, too: “The people here are very well-off.
They haven’t got economic problems and they don’t want to
complicate their lives by having a child.” Angeleri believes an
made up of foreigners. “It’s inevitable. When I’ve run council
tenders for cleaning contracts, all the companies employed only
foreigners – South Americans, Albanians, Ukrainians. All the
care workers looking after our elderly, everyone who works in
agriculture... They’re all outsiders.”
Demographers are concerned that the sudden popularity of
their subject may impede sensible, bipartisan policies. By turning
the birthrate dilemma into a right-wing war cry, the sociologist
Chiara Saraceno says, the Meloni government “introduces an
ideological charge to the issue”. “It almost makes me not want
to have another child,” says Silvana, a window-shopping mother
whose one child is asleep in her pram. Describing herself as
“left-wing”, she says anyone with more than two children is seen
now as ultra-Catholic or far-right. The challenge for Roccella
and Meloni is to persuade Italians that the births emergency is
a political issue that affects the entire country. Perhaps only then
will Italy’s demographic winter turn into spring.
A longer version of this article appeared in The Guardian
© Guardian News & Media Limited
21 October 2023 THE WEEK
 Crossword 51
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1385 This week’s winner will receive an
An Ettinger pass holder and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass
correct solution to the crossword a nd the clue of the week opened on Monday 30 October. holder in assorted colours, which
Send it to The Week Crossword 1385, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email retails at £115, and two Connell Guides
the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

ACROSS
8 Repeatedly wherein oil’s found?
What a surprise (4,4)
9 One hour in London venue gets
an enthusiastic reception (3-3)
10 Tons in kiss and cuddle is
precisely what is needed (4,2)
11 English town where nobody had
food reportedly (8)
12 Ripe bananas in Indian
restaurant (8)
13 Phone book put down (6)
14 Game on board eastern auditors
mentioned (7,8)
18 Word repeated in Oman
traditionally (6)
20 Leaves large beast in vessel (8)
23 Read about engaging fair
insurance valuer (8)
24 English eleven negative all
round? Not the way to go (2,4)
25 TV presenter at sea? (6)
26 Understood the grade to be
changed (8)
DOWN
1 Eye old record held by Lord (6)
2 Even slow bowling leads to some
confusion (4,4)
3 Heard singer’s making a little
money (6)
4 Extensive advertising that’s put
on a couple of sheets? (7,8)
5 Fancy long beer in French city (8)
6 Firm about old car – it won’t cost
much (6)
7 Boat sure to be wrecked – by
me? (8)
15 Bill may be seen here? Former
US president admits nothing! (8)
16 Leading act is surprise on
vessel (4,4)
17 Exploding meteor due shortly?
Fish might have rejected it! (8)
19 Instructed and not relaxed, we
hear (6)
21 Mum keeping home that’s
tiny (6)
22 Balls more than once keeping IT
checked (6)

Name
Address
Clue of the week: Wrong kind of surgeon for person – confused Tel no
vein with artery (10, first letter V) The Times
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1383

ACROSS: 6 Painter 7 Heron 9 Boss 10 Profligate 11 Top brass 14 Auntie
15 Mixed blessing 17 In turn 18 Sentence 21 Stablemate 23 Scam
24 Rarer 25 Cologne
DOWN: 1 Digs 2 Utopia 3 Trio 4 Chileans 5 Brigantine 6 Promo 8 Nothing
Restore your
12 Box numbers 13 Solos 15 Minster 16 Danseurs 19 Needle 20 Crave
22 Arch 23 Saga
Clue of the week: Time with current bedside companion (5, first letter T)
news-life balance
Solution: TEDDY (t + eddy = current)
The winner of 1383 is Elizabeth Elliott from Chichester

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