Trump drains Foggy Bottom

In the pantheon of American bureaucracies, none have guarded their prerogatives more jealously – or become more allergic to reform – than the State Department. And so, predictably, when the Trump administration moved in recent weeks to cut the agency’s workforce by 15 percent, Washington’s political and media class protested in unison. But strip away the histrionics, and something else emerges: a much-needed effort to realign the State Department with the America it’s supposed to represent.

No one celebrates the pain of sudden job loss. Many of the terminated employees were sincere public servants (some of whom I count as personal acquaintances). Nonetheless, we cannot afford a foreign policy establishment that views itself as a separate priesthood, insulated from democratic accountability.  

For decades, careerism and ideology have fused at the State Department in ways that alienate it from the instincts of ordinary Americans. Foreign policy, particularly under recent Democratic administrations, has often exceeded its core diplomatic mandate to serve as a conduit for expansive ideological agendas – establishing offices devoted to gender equity in Central Asia and proliferating “democracy promotion” programs frequently disconnected from strategic imperatives.  

Rejecting these programs is not a rejection of diplomacy itself – in fact, it is a call to restore its true purpose. Our Founders did envision a diplomacy as a specialized, elite craft to be conducted by individuals who were intelligent and cultured. But they never intended for it to serve ideological goals at the expense of the nation’s interests. Diplomats were meant to embody the nation’s collective priorities, not to diverge from them.  

It is striking – though perhaps no longer surprising – that while employees from agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense significantly contributed to Donald Trump’s 2024 race, State Department employees once again overwhelmingly backed the Democratic ticket: 94 percent of donations went to Kamala Harris. Federal Election Commission data reveals that 61 percent of Trump’s federal-employee donations came from DHS and DoD employees – a pattern that reveals more than mere partisanship. It reflects class, culture and worldview. DHS and DoD are populated heavily by employees – Border Patrol agents, enlisted personnel, civil servants in logistics and security – whose life experiences place them far closer to the working class.  

The average person in these two departments is not attending Aspen panels or shaping narratives from think-tank cubicles; they are on the ground, managing real risks and seeing the world in terms of threats, borders and mission. State, by contrast, has drawn disproportionately from a self-reinforcing diplomatic class.  

All too often, this cohort prizes cultural fluency and demographic diversity – but often at the expense of the blunt, essential principle that American diplomacy exists to advance American interests. One might expect the State Department and DHS to be aligned in spirit. But in practice, since personnel is indeed policy, they diverge dramatically.  

This is not an accident. It’s the result of decades in which Foggy Bottom evolved into a cosmopolitan enclave – brilliant, no doubt, but increasingly estranged from the impulses and priorities of the country it represents. A foreign-policy apparatus so ideologically insulated and self-selecting risks shutting out the very world it’s meant to navigate. Diplomacy requires a deep tether to the nation it serves.

Opponents of Trump’s restructuring – such as the Washington Post and Representative Greg Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee – have bemoaned that State Department employees are being selected for their “fidelity” to the executive branch. This is, frankly, rich. Fidelity to the president isn’t some MAGA scheme – it’s a constitutional principle. As Philip Linderman, chairman of the Ben Franklin Fellowship, tells me: “The executive branch is meant to set foreign policy; the bureaucracy is meant to execute it. Per Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the State Department and all foreign affairs agencies have no policy interest – indeed, no interest at all – outside of what the president wants to accomplish.”  

Caring about fidelity to the president is not the process of some shadowy, authoritarian cabal. In fact, it represents the opposite: accountability to a legitimately elected authority. The self-replicating class within the State Department, ironically, has been the body guilty of fostering a behind-the-scenes subversive movement. It has enforced its own version of fidelity: not to the sitting president, but to a foreign-policy establishment – one that often outlasts and undermines elected administrations.  

To pretend that fidelity only becomes dangerous when it dares to think beyond liberal orthodoxy is to miss – or willfully obscure – the deeper truth: the State Department has long been politicized, just not in ways that, say, the Washington Post’s editors find objectionable. The real scandal isn’t that fidelity is being demanded. It’s that, for the first time in a generation, it’s not being demanded in a particular ideological direction. The outrage we’re seeing says less about concern for democratic norms than it does about a loss of influence among the usual gatekeepers.  

Bold reform naturally produces friction. When President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, laying the foundation for a unified Department of Defense, the transition was anything but seamless. Massive interservice rivalries erupted immediately, with the established Army, for example, clashing with the newly autonomous Air Force.  

The reform disrupted entrenched power centers and long-standing institutional habits. Implementation took years and required multiple revisions before the Defense Department could function as a unified body. Yet looking back, few would argue the reform wasn’t necessary. The fragmented military structure of World War II had exposed dangerous inefficiencies, with rival services duplicating efforts and competing for resources. A more integrated defense apparatus – enabling faster decision-making and coordination – was better suited to meet the complexity of America’s changing global role.  

The same clarity of purpose is needed now. Reforming the State Department is not about ideology – it’s about fitness serving a nation that no longer tolerates bureaucratic drift. We are entering an era of great-power confrontation, asymmetric threats and diplomatic competition at an unprecedented scale. America cannot afford a foreign-policy apparatus that speaks in polished platitudes while drifting further from the instincts of its own citizenry. A foreign policy that speaks for the people must first learn to listen to them.

Why Zelensky reversed his anti-corruption overhaul

On Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved a law to gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies. On Thursday he backtracked, and said he would put forward new legislation to restore their independence. The original legislation would have stripped both the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo) of their independence, bringing them under direct executive control.

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The official reason for the legislation was to cleanse Ukraine’s investigative bodies of Russian influence. A spy, apparently, was suspected in their ranks. But treason has become the calling card for the consolidation of power in Ukraine. Earlier this year, Petro Poroshenko – President Zelensky’s main declared challenger in the next election – was sanctioned for high treason, effectively barring him from running for high office.

Ukrainians have had enough. With Donald Trump warming to his Ukrainian counterpart after their bust-up in the Oval Office, the ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effect that recently buoyed Zelensky – after months of sagging poll numbers – has now dissipated. The legislative coup provoked the largest demonstration since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Many read it as creeping authoritarianism, marked by increasingly staccato punctuation. Even in international media that reliably lionises Zelensky, stories are beginning to percolate about the monopolisation of power, the use of lawfare to sideline political opponents, the harassment of civil society and a growing crackdown on dissent.

Yet Tuesday’s institutional hijacking was an escalation, considering what is at stake. Nabu and Sapo were originally established as a condition for western support after Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Donors needed assurances that funds would not be siphoned off, viewing accountability as essential for maintaining domestic backing for their aid packages. The IMF predicated its bailout programmes on Ukraine’s anti-corruption commitments, and western capitals have repeatedly linked continued support to efforts to root out graft. At a time when European governments are struggling to cover the shortfall left by President Trump’s withdrawal of US aid, the implications for international support could be severe.

Before this week’s legislation, Ukraine’s anti-corruption community was under pressure. Earlier in July, Ukrainian authorities raidedthe home of the country’s leading anti-corruption campaigner without a warrant, accusing him of draft evasion and fraud. Then, on the eve of the vote, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – long seen as a tool for political enforcement – carried out 70 raids on Nabu and Sapo staff. They ransacked their offices and arrested a lead investigator.

But as Ukrainians know – and western diplomats will privately concede – the problems within Nabu run deeper. The agency has long been accused of operating under the influence of the presidential administration and Zelensky’s éminence grise, chief of staff Andriy Yermak. Nabu has been variously criticised for ineffectiveness, for steering clear of presidential allies, or conversely, for being used as a tool of political persecution. It begs the question what changed. 

The threads lead back to the case of Oleksiy Chernyshov, a former deputy prime minister, a close ally of the president, who was charged with corruption last month. Nabu had long been accused of toothlessness when it came to investigating those close to power. But the consequence of baring its teeth has been its defanging.

For some time, Chernyshov’s case was rumoured to have been quietly manoeuvred out of investigation by the pliant head of Nabu, Semen Kryvonos. Last year, a court issued a warrant to search Chernyshov’s residence in connection with alleged corruption in ‘Big Construction’ – Zelensky’s flagship infrastructure programme, known locally as the ‘Great Theft’. But the search was never executed, reportedly at Kryvonos’ request. Kryvonos himself owed his previous post to the backing of both Chernyshov and Yermak. The inner circle, it seemed, would remain safe under his tenure at the agency – a role he was appointed to despite having no background in anti-corruption.

It was only after internal pressure within Nabu eventually forced Kryvonos to act on Chernyshov. It confirmed what many had long suspected – that the President’s office exercised quiet control over the institution. The moment that control looked in doubt, its independence was shut down.

For western partners, the balancing act of funding Ukraine while withholding public criticism has collapsed. The G7 ambassadors have released a statement confirming they had met with Nabu and now ‘have serious concerns and intend to discuss these developments with government leaders’.

Corruption has long stymied Ukraine. It was the thrust behind the Maidan protests: the call to expel the oligarchs that controlled the country without accountability. It made Ukraine vulnerable to invasion in 2014 in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. It propelled Zelensky himself to political power as an outsider who could sweep away graft.  

Still, more Ukrainians now see corruption as a greater threat to the country’s development than Russian aggression. Many of Ukraine’s western partners have justified their support as a defence of democracy against corrupt autocracy. Even with Zelensky’s backtracking, with the dismemberment of Ukraine’s independent institutions, many will now legitimately ask: whom, and what, are they funding?

Is Angela Davis’s keffiyeh appropriate for a Cambridge University ceremony?

Cambridge University’s decision to honour the rap artist Stormzy with an honorary doctorate seemed odd. New universities, rather than our ancient ones, like to parade icons of popular culture.

When the decision was announced a few months ago, I was asked by a national newspaper to write a piece questioning his nomination. I demurred, because Stormzy was being rewarded for generous benefactions that aimed to bring disadvantaged black schoolchildren to Cambridge University – despite my doubts about reserving scholarships for particular ethnic groups. Stormzy’s honorary doctorate dominated the headlines – and so, none of us really noticed who else was on the list. Looking back, it is almost as if a smokescreen was being created to let through someone far more controversial than the two-times winner of the Best Grime Act.

An official photo of the awardees, enrobed in doctoral scarlet, has just been released. Vice-Chancellor Deborah ‘call me Debbie’ Prentice is seated next to Stormzy. Behind her, adorned with a keffiyeh, stands the American radical Angela Davis.

One can pass over Ms, or should one say Dr, Davis’s predictable loyalties in the Middle East, while still asking whether it is appropriate for her or anyone else to wear a political badge in an official photo of this sort, and, more importantly, whether Cambridge acted responsibly in releasing it across the globe. More to the point is the simple question why Angela Davis is thought to be a suitable recipient of such an honour in the first place. It cannot be because she is descended from the Cambridge graduate William Brewster, who centuries ago sailed to North America on the Mayflower.

If there is an answer, it may lie in the encomium written by the University Orator. It is a toe-curling document, particularly in the translation from Latin, which is all most people will be able to read. Understandably it lays stress on the appalling treatment of black people that she witnessed as a child in America; but it then turns to the occasions when she has suffered persecution because of her staunch adherence to communist beliefs.

If we believe in freedom of speech we do have to tolerate those who express such beliefs. But to hold her up as a model of free speech taunts the rest of us: she was long a stalwart of a party that failed to speak out against the often violent repression of political opponents in the Soviet Union (from which she obtained the so-called Lenin Peace Prize); and she received a degree in the (so-called) German Democratic Republic. Davis studied there during the years when its government was second within eastern Europe only to Albania in the strictness of its repression. Indeed, the Lenin Peace Prize is even mentioned in her Cambridge citation – a slap in the face to all my colleagues who have experienced the regime in the Soviet Union and its satellites. Some years ago, King’s College, Cambridge showed great insensitivity by hanging a painting of the Soviet flag in its bar. Davis’s citation puts that painting in the shade.

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So here are some excerpts from a document that quite simply brings shame on Cambridge University:

‘IT IS WITH joy and reverence that your Orator presents to you this woman of erudition and eloquence, whose very name is synonymous with the long and bitter struggle for all people to enjoy without fear equality of rights and freedoms, regardless of class, of colour and of gender… How worthy they are, who defend freedom of speech only as long as they agree with what is said!… Taught, then, by her own experience, on behalf of those the world over who lack their own voice and defence, she resolutely defends justice, she tirelessly opposes slavery, with almost divine strength she fights on behalf of liberty… In this present age, when we see civic virtues and the very foundations of civil society faltering under the attacks of billionaires, when the foul stench of fascism rises again across the globe, who could blame even the staunchest lover of liberty for feeling despondent?… She shows us that it is possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar and a revolutionary.‘

Davis may, nonetheless, be offended. She is described as ‘eloquent’. I have been warned by the equally radical Professor Priyamvada Gopal (the one with views about Winston Churchill) that I was wrong to praise David Olusoga on one occasion as ‘eloquent’, as the word is apparently seen by ethnic minorities as condescending.

That apart, we have to ask whether she has ever criticised the appalling abuse of human rights and the suppression of free speech in the Soviet Union. One of her critics who attended school in the Soviet Union has described her as a ‘Soviet propaganda icon’ in those days. And although she studied Kant under the philosophers Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno she is clearly not being awarded her honorary degree on the grounds of scholarly attainment comparable to those figures.

I have served on the Honorary Degree Committee in the past and have been impressed by the care and thoughtfulness given to each nomination, and by the sheer amount of detail about the nominees. Alas, the online page listing current members of this committee has been taken down for ‘maintenance’, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that places on the committee have been hi-jacked by those who prefer activists to real academics. As for the Orator, he really should know that his task is to address the whole University and the world beyond, and not just like-minded folk. Perhaps, though, he was acting under orders and does not believe anything that he said. He is the author of a learned article entitled ‘Bulls’ testicles and Mycenaean onomastics’, and conceivably his encomium is, if not bull’s testicles, deliberate bullsh*t.

How middle-class shoplifting swept Britain

Middle-class shoplifting is pushing up high street prices, according to Dame Diana Johnson, the policing and crime minister. Can she be right? If my own middle-class acquaintances are anything to go on, the answer is clear: yes.

OK, we know shop theft is on a steep upward trajectory. There are nearly 17,000 incidents every day in corner shops alone, costing £316 million each year. Shoplifting across the whole retail sector costs billions. The reality is that many of those pilfering from our shops look just like you and me.

My own experience is that many reasonably well-off people will indeed shoplift, or, if you will, ‘restaurant-lift’, when the opportunity presents itself. Maybe they don’t go in intending to steal, though some do, but the effect is the same. And, remarkably, it doesn’t trouble their consciences at all, because they invent such great excuses.

Here’s an example. I was recently chatting to some friends about whether you should tell supermarket staff if you’ve been under-charged, perhaps as a result of the scanner failing to register something. I’m not a saint, but for me there’s no moral dilemma. You go to someone in uniform, explain and get your credit card out.

But a few of our number would do no such thing. Their reason? Tesco (or whoever) makes billions, and if they can’t get their technology to work, that’s their problem, and it’s not like they’re going to miss a few quid.

Hmm. OK. So, what about failing to inform an owner-run restaurant that they’ve under-charged? That too is, in effect, shoplifting, right? Well, apparently, there’s a sound reason for keeping shtum: restaurants often overcharge customers, even if only by accident, so saying nothing is just the customer getting their own back. What goes around, comes around. See?

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If that doesn’t make you see red, how about the disgraceful people who buy an outfit with no intention of keeping it, wear it just once at a party, then take it back for a refund? This kind of fraud is so common there’s a name for it: wardrobing. It costs UK retailers up to £1.5 billion each year, all recouped from us mugs who actually pay for stuff. Yet the perpetrators convince themselves that it’s somehow a victimless crime, or even no crime at all.

And what about train fare dodging, a close relation of shoplifting? Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has caused a stir recently, shaming the dodgers and showing how it costs Transport for London £130 million a year, for which the honest punter pays in higher fares.

But are the criminals always scallywags jumping barriers? Not necessarily. A few years ago, a well-paid computer programmer explained to me how he travelled on the Tube for free. He would start in zone two, displaying his travelcard to staff on the gates, then exit in central London by waving an old zone-one ticket and claiming that the barrier didn’t work. Did he need the cash? No. But he reckoned that if the system had such holes in it, TfL was asking for trouble.

If you think he’s a one-off, how about those people who won’t tap in and out late in the evening when the barriers are down? Their excuse? The rail companies provide an overpriced service, and it’s only reasonable to get some money back when nobody’s looking. Two wrongs make a right.

Depressingly, this attitude is becoming increasingly common in Britain. One explanation is that as the country has become more diverse, we’ve lost ‘social capital’ and a sense of communal obligation. Values we once associated with ‘respectable people’ aren’t fashionable. Instead, we admire non-conformists and transgressors.

But even that doesn’t account for the surge in criminality just recently. Lockdown fostered a get-something-for nothing culture. When millions of folk are paid to stay at home, it’s not surprising that some start to think they’re owed not just a living but a few freebies. Especially when they hear that stealing stuff worth less than £200 is a ‘summary-only’ offence – meaning the most likely outcome, even if you’re caught, is a slap on the wrist.

Too many well-off criminals, with names like Rupert and Olivia, get treated like heroes. They throw paint over priceless paintings, and block the M25, causing untold damage. Yet they are regarded, not as criminals but ‘campaigners’. How many well-off offenders, as a result, start to believe that their motives for crime must always be pure?

‘Ethics are what you do when nobody else is looking’ is a saying worth living by. It’s a great way of keeping yourself on the straight and narrow. But it doesn’t work with folk who intellectualise their crimes and convince themselves that their behaviour is justifiable. This attitude is one of the reasons, frankly, why our society is going down the pan.

Is this CS Lewis’ most prescient work?

It’s been 80 years since CS Lewis’ remarkably prescient, That Hideous Strength, was published. The final book in a sci-fi trilogy, the novel recounts the battle for the soul of humanity in the heart of England. Even in 1945, George Orwell saw that: ‘Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr Lewis attributes to his characters [the NICE scientists], and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable.’ Little did he realise how soon his fears would play out.

That Hideous Strength focuses around the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (NICE), which aims to bring Britain under the rule of Science, beginning the process of transforming the human race into an inorganic species governed by a single, immortal leader.

‘The human race is to become all Technocracy,’ NICE high-up Professor Augustus Frost explains to recruit Mark Studdock. The plans include the sterilisation and selective breeding of the population, with indoctrination achieved through biochemical conditioning and the ‘direct manipulation of the brain’. Ultimately, organic life is to be abolished: the new humans will be formed of chemicals and live on a ‘clean’ planet divested of vegetation. Crucially, without sex, man ‘will finally become governable’.

Eighty years on, the story reads like a fictional exploration of transhumanism and current technologies, from chips in the brain to global digital systems for identification and travel. A mysterious figure – part Arthurian, part Christ-like – leads the fight for an alternative future rooted in spiritual enlightenment and a wholesome kind of Englishness. Like The Chronicles of Narnia, That Hideous Strength is a classic tale of Good vs Evil but, as its subtitle A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups suggests, it’s also a sober exploration of the direction ‘scientific progress’ is taking us.

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NICE leaders choose Edgestow as the place to begin the takeover, where the ‘progressive element’ of the nearby university makes for easy pickings. The fellows nod through the sale of some college land while the faculty serves as a ‘recruiting office’ for the institute.

Their prize recruit is Mark, a ‘sociologist who can write’, to produce newspaper articles to persuade the British public that change is necessary. ‘It’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled,’ explains Lord Feverstone, a figure working with both government and NICE. ‘When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles…But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.’

Deception will only be needed in the early stages: ‘Once the thing gets going we shan’t have to bother about the great heart of the British public’. And sure enough, NICE’s private police force are soon terrorising the people of Edgestow.

The signs the takeover is well underway have a curiously contemporary ring. Edgestow is home to a new population of imported workmen, prices have risen and the hotels have somehow passed into hands of NICE. A dense fog blankets the heart of England. Riots are engineered to get the powers justified by a state of emergency. The propaganda aimed at the working man is successful: in the pubs the locals blame the Welsh and Irish for the state of things.

Lured into NICE by the prospect of higher salary and status, corrupted by the need to please and belong, it takes the befuddled Mark a long time to understand what he’s dealing with. Just as he finally realises his life is in danger, it emerges that NICE’s aspirations are global. There is no point in attempting to flee to America, as the ‘claws’ of the institute are ’embedded in every country’.

By this point, some readers will be nodding in wonderment at how Lewis, writing during the Second World War, could have foreseen our present situation with such accuracy. Others will see familiar plot elements as stemming from dystopian fiction’s classic device of warning by way of exaggeration. Either way, the heart of the novel concerns choice. In the spiritual war playing out, a side must be taken and the last battle fought. There is no way to avoid confronting the ‘hideous strength’.

In this, the final book of the trilogy, it is ordinary English people who must make that choice. In the second, entitled Perelandra, Ransom, a venturesome Cambridge don who has travelled to Venus, is confronted with Unman, a kind of automated psychopath. Ransom attempts some typically English tactics: first talking his enemy, then ignoring him and finally running away. When Unman reappears, Ransom realises the only resolution is to kill him. But as a creature of dark, transhumanist forces, Unman cannot be destroyed by ordinary means. Ransom has to dig deep and it takes two goes, the first requiring physical courage and the second the psychological ability to face and overcome inner fears.

On earth, the encounter with the hideous strengthpresents just two paths: follow the transhumanists or join The Resistance. Mark’s wife Jane takes the latter path only after much hesitation and resisting the messages of her clairvoyant dreams. Lewis presents his heroine as a stereotypical woman of her times: hankering after independence while constrained by the conventional values of her society. Two moments of truth push Jane to join the community of the good based at a nearby manor house: her direct experience of evil when she is captured and tortured by NICE and her subsequent meeting with the community Director – a ‘bright solar blend of king and lover and magician’ – when she finds her world ‘unmade’.

Mark’s moral journey is messier and more human. Even when confronted with the truth about NICE and offered sanctuary with The Resistance, he still can’t quite make the right decision. Lewis captures the moral confusion of a weak character perfectly: ‘he wanted to be perfectly safe and yet also very nonchalant and daring’ while his mind was ‘one fluid confusion of wounded vanity and jostling fears and shames’.

All the while, Lewis studs the novel with details that convey the everyday quality of life on earth and the potential for goodness even in in times of evil. The horror of what is happening in Edgestow is counter-balanced with elements of English cosiness – just as in the depths of the Narnian winter, you can still have a good tea with Mr and Mrs Beaver.

I won’t ruin things with a spoiler – better to read the entire trilogy yourself. The reception of the book in 1945 may have been mixed, but this belated reviewer finds it brilliantly illuminating. That Hideous Strength has come into its time.

Lawfare is the SAS’s most dangerous enemy

It might at first glance appear odd that this deeply unpopular government is determined to repeal the Northern Ireland Legacy and Reconciliation Act. Britain’s armed forces are one of the last institutions of which the nation is overwhelmingly proud. Why pursue its veterans at the risk of making itself even more unpopular? ‘We want to be recruiting into the Armed Forces and we have a government who are about to reopen lawfare against our veterans,’ remarked shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge. ‘It is crazy.’

The government say that they will repeal the Act, which was passed by the Tories in 2023, because it is incompatible with human rights legislation. Their other reasoning is that it is opposed by some of Northern Ireland’s political parties as well as relatives of IRA terrorists.

One of those relatives is the sister of an IRA terrorist who was killed by the SAS at Loughgall in 1987 along with seven other members of a cell that was en route to attack a remote police station. She and other relatives of the dead terrorists met Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn earlier this year and received a ‘reassurance’ that a legacy inquest will proceed.

The Loughgall ambush was referenced by David Davis during last week’s parliamentary debate about the intention to repeal the Legacy Act. The Conservative MP (a former SAS reservist) said that Sinn Féin were trying to portray themselves as victims and the British army as villains. ‘That is why battles such as Coagh, Clonoe and, very likely soon, Loughgall feature so large in the demands for inquiries and the prosecution of long-retired, innocent British soldiers,’ said David. ‘All three of those actions were humiliating defeats for the IRA.’

All three battles involved the SAS and, according to another Tory, Mark Francois, the possibility of future prosecutions is ‘having an adverse effect on morale in the special forces community’.

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It is unlikely that will much bother the left. In May this year, Richard Williams, who commanded 22 SAS from 2005 to 2008, wrote a piece for this magazine entitled ‘The BBC’s War on the SAS’. It was a defence of the regiment against allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan. But the ‘war’ on the SAS isn’t just being waged by elements within the BBC; it is part of a wider attack from a British left that has long loathed the regiment. This animosity stretches back to July 1945.

Winston Churchill could in many ways be regarded as the founding father of Britain’s special forces. It was his idea to raise the commandos in 1940, and he was an enthusiastic supporter of the SAS when they were formed the following year. His son, Randolph, served for a brief spell in the SAS in 1942 and was a friend of David Stirling, the founder of the regiment.

When Churchill lost the 1945 general election, the SAS lost their principal backer. Within weeks they were disbanded, despite the best efforts of Stirling and other senior officers to persuade Clement Attlee’s government that the SAS had a role to play in the post-war period.

There were several reasons for the regiment’s abolition: Attlee’s naive belief that the future would be largely peaceful, the government’s disapproval of the SAS’s irregular nature and the fact that many of its senior officers were upper-class conservatives. Three of them, Lord George Jellicoe, Carol Mather and Stephen Hastings, would have distinguished post-war careers in the Tory party.

Although the SAS were reformed as a regular regiment in 1952 – the year after Churchill had returned to power – David Stirling never forgave the Labour government for what he regarded as an act of betrayal. His grievance returned when Harold Wilson was elected PM in 1964, and by the time of his second administration in 1974 Stirling was convinced that Socialism was a clear and present danger to Britain. That year he formed an organisation called GB75, what he told the Times was a core of ‘apprehensive patriots’ ready to defend Britain against the ‘chaos’ of hard-left trade unionists and other activists.

There was uproar among the Labour party and its media supporters. Stirling was accused of raising a ‘private army’, described by Defence Secretary Roy Mason as ‘near-fascist’. Stirling retorted:

Our motivation is to reinforce parliamentary authority in the country whereas Mr Mason is associated with a political party, the left-wing of which can be genuinely stated to be thoroughly undemocratic.

GB75 was disbanded but the left-wing press had Stirling and the SAS in their sights. The smear campaign against them reached its height in 1978 and 1979, a time when the regiment was fighting a bloody war with the IRA. Time Out magazine, then a radical left publication, described the SAS as ‘Pedigree Dogs of War’ and accused them of being guns for hire.

In March 1979 Major General Peter de la Billiere, Director of the SAS, took the unprecedented step of writing to the Daily Telegraph to defend the regiment. He was ‘disturbed’ at their media portrayal, ‘as if it were some secret undercover organisation’.

This is how the SAS is still regarded by some on the British left, whether politicians, journalists or lawyers. As Richard Williams wrote in these pages, ‘the SAS is under fire’ but not from terrorists or insurgents. Their adversary is ‘lawfare’ and it might be their most dangerous enemy yet.

Veganism is becoming an extremist lifestyle

This week Billie Eilish served up a reminder of the irritations of veganism. She forced the O2 to go fully plant-based during her six-night run of shows – and the Daily Mail reported that fans, who’d paid £70+ for a ticket to see her, were not happy about the food on offer at the arena. One said: ‘Punters were less than impressed with the vegan options – a mixture of pizzas, cauliflower bits and loaded fries – with more than one asking “Did they run out of meat or something?”.’

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But I expect their real irritation had little to do with the food itself – and everything to do with having vegan-only options shoved down their throats. So, what exactly is it that’s so annoying about veganism?

In part, perhaps it’s how fashionable it’s become. It’s evolved since it was dominated by Corbyn-a-likes in Jesus sandals on allotments or Neil in the The Young Ones espousing ‘vegetable rights’; now it’s people in pleather trousers with asymmetric pink hair drinking plant-based cocktails. People appear to identify as vegan as if it were a sexuality – pulse-sexual, anyone?

Or perhaps it’s that the advantages of veganism are debatable. Although vegans claim it’s healthier, anyone who has actually seen what vegans eat knows the staple of their diet is chips. A study this year by New Zealand’s Massey University found half of vegans were deprived of two specific amino acids, leaving them at risk of muscle wastage. Another report by UK experts last week found that no plant-based milk is ‘nutritionally equivalent’ to cow’s milk, and that there is ‘potential toxicological concern’ for under-fives who follow a vegan diet and consume soya milk.

The promise that going vegan is automatically healthier is absurd when even Häagen-Dazs has a vegan range. In the growing UK vegan food market, estimated to be worth over £1 billion, companies competing to pump out vegan products are often more interested in marketing than nutritional value, with much of it highly processed and full of salt, sweetener, saturated fat or refined sugar. A study in China found vegetarians aged less healthily than omnivores, not because their diet lacked animal products, but because the food they did eat was generally lower quality.

Maybe consumers are starting to cotton on, with sales of chilled and frozen meat alternatives dropping 21 per cent in the year to June 2024 compared with two years earlier. Heinz ditched its vegan salad cream, Greggs dropped its vegan ‘steak’ bake and even Quorn abandoned its veggie ‘bacon’. Innocent scrapped its dairy-free milk range, joking that only five people bought it.

The claim that veganism is more environmentally friendly has also always seemed dubious. My angry lentil of a former lodger and I used to argue about how his international vegan diet could possibly be more carbon-conscious than my local, seasonal, meat-based one – as we sat down to breakfast with my milk from the cows grazing up the road delivered by the milkman on his electric float, and his almond milk flown in from California where its production causes droughts. It takes 130 pints of water to produce a single glass of almond milk. Not to mention the billions of bees, essential to pollinating almonds, who die in the process.

The vast demand for quinoa is a scourge on Peru where overproduction has caused soil degradation and made a local staple unaffordable to indigenous people. Farming avocados has caused water shortages in Chile, and producing lab-grown meat has been shown to create emissions as high as producing hamburgers.

Like many people, I support the moral case for veganism. Who condones animals suffering? But surely it’s better to advocate for better farming practices than to call for an end to the meat industry? After all, what will we do with the animals? Are we just going to let the cows run free? Or have one last massive barbecue to celebrate? Will farmers have their livestock forcibly taken away? What about horses? What about pets? I’m not sure my chocolate labrador Bear will be able to fend for himself.

Still, the fact the moral argument for veganism is so compelling makes the fall of the vegan diet more confusing. As sales of plant-based products decline and the fake meat project is fading away, it reveals the true problem with veganism: not that people don’t like animals, or vegetables, but that they can’t stand vegans. Tofu-munchers are more irritating than cyclists, wild swimmers, electric car-owners and Greta Thunberg combined. They are too often humourless and militant. No one was surprised when a study released last month showed that, despite the stereotype of being peace-loving sandal-wearing hippies, in reality vegans showed a greater desire for power and social status than meat-eaters.

Vegans revel in being sanctimonious. Poor Eilish’s fans didn’t just have their concert-night menu controlled, but were subjected pre-show to a self-aggrandising film about the singer’s diet. But as far as the vegans are concerned, even she can’t get it right either. Despite making her whole tour meat-free, she has still had strips torn off her online by pugnacious turnips complaining she wears leather, eats honey and rides horses, which seem to me minor infringements.

Still, I have seen this kind of swede-induced madness among my own vegan friends, who get angry if I drink non-vegan wine (something to do with fish skins), wear silk (a nice problem to have) or put on shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons (an animal product!). It all serves to highlight what a bourgeois endeavour veganism has become.

Now, between the outrageous Peta campaigns and Gary Yourofsky’s preaching, veganism is becoming an extremist lifestyle. With judgmental meat-shaming, vegans have alienated others from joining their cause. It is a sad case of the left eating its plant-based self.

Hulk Hogan, my hero

To many people mourning him this week, Hulk Hogan was a larger-than-life super being, an outsized professional wrestling character with a singularly American persona. “I watched him lift 350-pound men over his head and throw them out of the ring,” President Trump said on Friday. 

I appreciate a good show as much as anyone, and have seen Rocky III many times. But I was never really a pro-wrestling guy. For me, Hulk Hogan is an important figure because he helped bring about the defeat of one of my life’s great villains: Gawker Media. 

Since only a couple of dozen people remember my personal drama with Gawker, I’ll provide a brief summary. In the 2000s, I was a semi-well-known writer, pivoting from doing satirical literature and journalism to goofy non-fiction about being a Gen X “hipster parent.” I published a light comic memoir called Alternadad, now out of print, and spent a lot of time and sweat unsuccessfully trying to turn it into a movie or TV series. 

I kept the Alternadad brand alive through blog posts or articles wherever I could get them published, and I wrote a piece for Epicurious, the food website, about taking my toddler son Elijah cheese shopping at a Whole Foods in Los Angeles. There’s nothing “alternative” about cheese shopping at Whole Foods, but I like cheese! A Gawker writer named Joshua David Stein latched onto this post, wrote something for the site that said my toddler son was going to be a “horror,” and then also created a fake commenter avatar for my son, who fakely claimed that I was emotionally abusing him. The readers piled on, there were mean follow-up posts, it got a ton of traffic. Frankly, it kind of broke my spirit, and the “Alternadad” brand never really recovered. 

I was a public figure, I deserved to take my lumps. But the attacks on my son were pointless and cruel. It took me years to claw out of the void that Gawker forced me to face. But I was powerless. They had been vile, but hadn’t done anything illegal. 

Enter Hulk Hogan. Terry Bollea’s shame was far worse than mine. He didn’t take his son cheese shopping. Gawker published a video of him having sex with the wife of his friend “Bubba the Love Sponge,” a radio shock-jock. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, whom Gawker had outed as gay in 2007, orchestrated a lawsuit, the story of which doesn’t need repeating here. 

A Florida court found Gawker Media guilty of crimes against journalism, Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan and humanity. The financial penalties from that verdict destroyed the millennial generation’s evilest media empire, scattering its scabrous minions to the darker corners of the internet. Some of the more talented and ambitious former Gawkerites have landed softly, while others flail about, trying to find a new home for their unrefined scurrilousness. 

The part that vindicated me the most came from this disgusting moment of the trial, an interview with  A.J. Daulerio, Gawker’s editor when they published the Hogan tape: 

Lawyer: Well, can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?

Daulerio: If they were a child.

Lawyer: Under what age?

Daulerio: Four.

That transcript caused the world to gasp. But I just nodded in recognition. It was definitely the Gawker I knew. 

A.J. Daulerio didn’t have anything to do with the attacks on me, as far as I remember, but my son was four and five years old when Gawker went after him, and me. Daulerio dedicated his life and work in the last decade to helping people recover from addiction, which I, as someone who struggles with addiction issues myself, can appreciate. But I don’t want amends from Gawker or anyone who was ever involved. Hulk Hogan suffered massive public humiliation, far beyond what Gawker ever did to me, but in the process he took a 350-pound media organization, which did great damage to my personal life and career, and threw it out of the ring. For as long as I live, which hopefully will be longer than any of my former Gawker enemies, real or imagined, the late Hulk Hogan will be my hero, and my son will never be a horror. 

The problems with a state of Palestine

France intends to recognise a state of Palestine at the United Nations, which I’m sure will be followed by UK recognition of the same. We can be sure of this because the UK does not have an independent foreign policy when it comes to the Middle East. Inside or outside of the European Union, London’s stance on Israel and the Palestinians has become indistinguishable from the position of the European Commission. The European Commission simps for the Palestinians and Britain simps for the European Commission.

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I take the somewhat contentious view that Britain should simp for itself, which is why in my occasional (read: incessant) Coffee House posts recommending, beseeching, UK recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel I have made a case based on the British national interest. Israel’s medical innovations, advanced technology, and unparalleled intelligence on Islamist extremism makes it an invaluable ally for the UK. Israel is a country that acts out of self-interest and respects other countries that do the same. National self-interest is a concept not only alien to Britain’s governing class but something they consider dirty and shameful.

The flaws inherent in France’s decision will apply also to Britain’s eventual announcement. If there is a state of Palestine, where is it? Applying the 1949 armistice lines, Palestine would consist of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, but the Palestinians exercise de facto sovereignty over only parts of these territories. Jerusalem is controlled entirely by Israel, Gaza’s land and sea boundaries by Israel and Egypt, and Judea and Samaria by a combination of the Israeli military and, in a handful of cities, the Palestinian Authority. Palestine is a state without effective authority over its claimed territory and unable to enforce its borders.

If there is a state of Palestine, what kind of state is it? Mahmoud Abbas is in the 20th year of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority, fresh elections having been postponed indefinitely on the quite reasonable grounds that he would have lost. The state of Palestine, if it exists, is not a democracy.

That covers where and what Palestine is, but who exercises sovereignty in this supposedly sovereign state? Under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, but the Palestinians’ claimed territory has been effectively split for two decades now. After Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, breaking Fatah’s long-running stranglehold on Palestinian politics, the two parties proved incapable of cooperating.

A brief civil war the following year saw Gaza severed from Palestinian Authority control and run autonomously by Hamas, which has served as its de facto government ever since. If there is a state of Palestine, which is its legitimate government? Hamas won the last election, but is not to the tastes of western leaders. The Fatah-leaning Palestinian Authority is favoured in European capitals, but has refused to allow elections.

These are not mere theoretical questions. If a state of Palestine exists and includes Gaza, it is a state in which citizens of a neighbouring state are being held against their will. States have an obligation to prevent the taking or holding of foreign hostages on their territory. This convention will be weakened if the international community recognises Palestine without pressing that state to uphold its duties, putting nationals of all countries at greater risk of being taken captive.

Similarly, Gaza has been used by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups to launch rockets into Israel while Palestinians have regularly travelled from Judea and Samaria, as well as eastern Jerusalem, to carry out terror attacks against Israelis. States have a duty to prevent and suppress terrorism, including that carried out from their territory against another state. Since the last serious challenge to its authority saw the Palestinian Authority lose part of its claimed territory to a terrorist group, it is not at all clear that Palestine could fulfil this obligation.

Recognition of Palestine also raises the question of human rights and discrimination. Under Palestinian law it is a capital crime to sell property to an Israeli. Will Palestine recognisers be pushing for this legislation to be repealed? Then there is the matter of the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, third holiest in Islam and a significant place for Christians too. The complex is run by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf and all but one of its functioning gates is for the use of Muslims only, with non-Muslims forced to enter and exit via a single gate for the kafir.

Israel cooperates with this arrangement in order to keep the peace in a territory where the international community says it is not the lawful sovereign anyway. If this part of Jerusalem is now to be considered the sovereign territory of a state, that state will have to decide whether to permit segregation on the basis of faith to continue under its laws. It would be unfortunate if it does, but at least we’d get to savour the spectacle of NGOs, human rights activists and international law professors flushing everything they’ve previously said about ‘apartheid states’ down the memory hole. 

What of the fate of the Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem? Even if we accept that settlements are illegal – which I don’t – their residents are civilians who have lived in these areas for a considerable time. Some were born there to parents who were also born there. There are vanishingly few examples in modern times of civilian settler populations being transferred peacefully. The Palestinian Authority has previously said it would not permit a single Israeli to remain in a Palestinian state. By what means does it intend to achieve this population transfer? How will it enforce the removal of Israeli civilians who attempt to remain in their homes? And, just so we can keep track of these things, would the transfer of 750,000 Jews out of the State of Palestine be the good kind of ethnic cleansing or the bad kind?

These are just a few of the many practical problems with recognising a Palestinian state, although none are as prohibitive as the unhappy truth that every time the Palestinians have been offered a state they have rejected it, more often than not followed by violence. Their representatives have in the past made formal statements recognising Israel, but in practice Palestinian leadership and civic society has dug itself deeper into a trench of anti-Semitism and extremism. Until earlier this year they routinely paid stipends to the families of terrorists killed or imprisoned in the course of attacking and murdering Israelis. There continue to be Palestinian schools and summer camps where children dress up as terrorists and play-act mock attacks on Israel. It remains socially acceptable to give sweets to children to celebrate the slaying of Israelis.

No amount of recognitions or declarations, not by the French or the British or anyone else, can will into existence a Palestinian state or the leadership, civil society, or norms required to build and sustain one. For decades European and at times even American policy has proceeded from the certainty that the absence of a Palestinian state was the result of Israeli opposition to the idea, and so they have concentrated pressure on Jerusalem in the mistaken belief that a Palestinian state is something Israel can give the Palestinians. Israel can give territory, the world can give recognition, but the only people who can give the Palestinians a state are themselves. 

The BMA should be careful what it wishes for

Just a few weeks ago the trade union movement seemed to be on a high. It has got rid of its hated Tory government. Legislation which made it harder to call strikes had been hastily abolished by the incoming Starmer government. There were generous public sector pay rises all around. If you were a trade union leader, you had every right to feel pleased with yourself.

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How things can change. As a trade union leader, you really don’t want a Labour health secretary calling your actions ‘unconscionable’, and suggesting that your members must ‘feel pain’ in order to discourage other unions from striking too. A Conservative health secretary, sure, but a Labour government is supposed to be on your side. Declare war on Labour and the result, as in 1979, is likely to be a government which is rather less to your taste.

Surely it must have dawned on the BMA’s trots that a Starmer government is as amenable an administration they’re likely to get. They might, at a scrape, get Angela Rayner as PM who could, perhaps, loosen the purse strings on public sector pay just a little bit more. But they are not going to get a red-blooded socialist government which seizes the means of production and turns it over to the workers.

Far more likely after Starmer is a right-leaning government which will want to clip the unions’ wings. What was the unions’ prize for helping to bring down the Callaghan government? Thatcher and the 1980 Employment Act which banned secondary picketing, brought the end of the closed shop, and imposed secret ballots on strike votes. It has taken 40 years for the unions to re-acquire anything like the power they had in 1979.

The unions have had an incredible deal out of the first year of Starmer’s Labour – far better than anything they got out of Blair. Its early public sector pay deals totally ignored the grim fiscal situation – even while Rachel Reeves was bleating about a £22 billion black hole and chopping back the winter fuel payment. Streeting followed up last year’s 22 per cent pay rise for resident doctors with an inflation-busting 5.4 per cent this year, which was about as far as he could possibly go without being totally fiscally irresponsible. On top of that, he offered to look at wiping some medical graduates’ student debt, providing they continued to work in the NHS. Yet still the BMA has gone ahead with a strike which is as long as any it held under the Conservatives.

If the BMA’s current behaviour is its way of showing gratitude, it is weird way of going about it. Its strategy looks like a death wish.

Will Starmer recognise a Palestinian state?

Keir Starmer is facing mounting international and domestic pressure to formally recognise a Palestinian state. Dozens of MPs are expected to publish a cross-party letter this afternoon, urging Starmer to follow the lead of Emmanuel Macron. The French president last night declared that his country will formally recognise a Palestinian state when the UN General Assembly meets in New York this September. A report this morning by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has also called for immediate recognition, a position that would put the UK at odds with the US.

Labour’s manifesto contains a commitment to recognise a Palestinian sovereignty. But the lack of a timeline has irritated parts of Starmer’s party, including cabinet ministers, who are becoming increasingly vocal in calling for clarity.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said at a constituency event this week that recognising a Palestinian state would be an important ‘step towards justice and peace’. He added that Palestinians ‘have waited too long for the dignity and rights that come with statehood’. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy have also reportedly recently urged Starmer and David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, to move more quickly.

Peter Kyle, the new Secretary of State for Education, told BBC Breakfast today that the government is committed to recognition – but insisted this must be done in a way that ensures Palestinian sovereignty can be ‘exercised at the moment of attaining statehood’.

Lammy made similar remarks on Tuesday, telling the BBC: ‘We don’t just want to recognise symbolically, we want to recognise as a way of getting to the two states that sadly many are trying to thwart at this point in time.’

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called on Wednesday for the government to move forward with statehood recognition.

On the international front, the French president, who will co-host with Saudi Arabia a conference in New York on the two-state solution this month, has been pressing Starmer to make the same move. The Prime Minister is due to hold an ‘emergency call’ later today with his French counterpart, as well as with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, about the situation in Gaza. While the focus might be on the immediate humanitarian issue, Starmer can’t avoid the mounting pressure to recognise Palestinian statehood from his allies abroad and those in his party.

The truth about the Trump ‘trade deals’

They say three times makes a pattern. So what should we make of the President’s trade agreements, three of which he confirmed this week, as the August 1 deadline for “reciprocal tariffs” looms? 

If there remained any confusion about his agenda, he helpfully laid it out in all caps. “I WILL ONLY LOWER TARIFFS IF A COUNTRY AGREES TO OPEN ITS MARKET. IF NOT, MUCH HIGHER TARIFFS!” he wrote on Truth Social. “USA BUSINESSES WILL BOOM!”

Given the size of the lettering, and the similarities to the deals secured with Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan this week, we should take Donald Trump at his word on this one. Put simply: so long as other countries cut taxes for their businesses, he will hike taxes on American businesses ever so slightly less. It doesn’t feel so triumphant when spelled out – yet that is exactly what the Trump administration is in the process of signing into law.

The President will never frame it this way. He promised the electorate countless times on the campaign trail that every other country would pay for higher import taxes. That’s still his message: “The Philippines will pay a 19% Tariff,” he insisted yesterday, as will Indonesia when the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed. And “Japan will pay Reciprocal Tariffs to the United States of 15%.” What a bargain. 

The trouble for Trump is that while he can make good on his promise to hike tariffs, he cannot make good on the economic fantasy he sold alongside them: that other countries would shoulder the tax bill. The Philippines won’t be paying a 19 percent tariff; American importers will be picking up that tab. Japan will not be shoving out for a 15 percent tax on its exports. American business owners will be paying that tax on the goods and materials they import. It’s estimated these tariffs will amount to the largest tax rise in decades. 

The evidence is already in. The 10 percent tariff baseline Trump brought in for every trading partner worldwide has sent revenue from import taxes skyward. Revenue rose to nearly $70 billion in the first five months of 2025, a 78 percent increase on the year before, thanks to American businesses paying those higher duties. Moody’s Analytics estimates that at the current revenue-raising rate, the total income of tariffs could rise to a staggering $300 billion by the end of the year. It’s a monumental transfer of income, not from other countries to the United States, but from American businesses and their workers to the US federal government. 

Meanwhile, America’s trading partners are slashing taxes on their businesses, as per the terms and conditions of Trump’s trade deals. Lucky them. Life just got cheaper, and consumer choice just improved for Filipinos, Indonesians and the Japanese. It’s a big service Trump has done for the people in those countries, who are about to reap the benefits of “OPEN” markets which the President has demanded they enjoy. It’s a generous, even magnanimous side of Trump we don’t always get to see. It is not, however, in line with the “America First” agenda he claims to be pushing, nor does it suit the low-tax narrative the President burned bridges and bromances to deliver.

Proponents of Trump’s trade agenda – who are willing to stomach Americans paying to rebalance trade deficits with the rest of the world – insist the benefits will reveal themselves in due course, in the form of higher wages for blue-collar American workers. This assumes wage increases will offset the estimated $1,296 that the Tax Foundations expects the current tariff regime to cost the average household. But advocates should be far more worried about the billion-dollar profit loss reported by General Motors this week. The automaker employs roughly 100,000 workers who are supposedly set to benefit from Trump’s tariff regime. What happens to them as the tariffs eat away at their employer’s profits?

If there is one achievement to be noted from this past week, it is not the “art of the deal” the President has delivered for the American people. Rather, it’s how successfully he has managed to move the goal posts around what constitutes “free trade” in recent months. With the memory of spiraling stock markets still largely at the forefront of investors’ minds, markets have been jubilantly celebrating the news that America’s tariff on Japanese imports has dropped by ten percentage points from Trump’s proposed 25 percent levy. 

That is a remarkable feat for the President, who loves nothing more than to boast of a soaring stock market, a booming economy and a country that is always “winning.” But if he continues to sign away America’s ability to be competitive in a world that, under his command, will be trading more freely, expect the good news to be short-lived.

Has Trump met his match in South Park?

In the surest sign of the permanent decay of Cockburn’s mind and soul, he spent all yesterday waiting for the President to post about the size of his appendage. The fact that Donald Trump has yet to do so fills Cockburn with sadness and ennui. This weekend doesn’t offer much promise either, as Trump is in the air on his way to Scotland. Maybe he’ll take some time to ponder his nether regions on Air Force One.

The impetus for Cockburn’s hope comes from the season premiere of South Park, which portrays Trump as a selfish, horny imbecile, as it used to portray Saddam Hussein more than 20 years ago. Also like South Park’s Saddam, Trump has a homosexual love affair with Satan, who notices the resemblance. The episode ends with a deepfaked AI Trump wandering naked around the desert. He collapses from exhaustion and his tiny phallus talks to him.

Trump has yet to say anything about this outrageous obscenity on Truth Social, instead paying tribute to Hulk Hogan, endorsing Michael Whatley for the open North Carolina Senate seat and announcing a deal for Australia to start importing US beef, among a half dozen other rambling topics. The White House did officially respond, though, with spokesperson Taylor Rogers saying, of South Park, “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

But South Park isn’t The Late Show. Rather than a cancellation, Paramount just handed Trey Parker and Matt Stone more than a billion dollars to continue the franchise, with six more seasons of the show and 14 standalone movies. In a statement, Parker said, “We’re focused on building something special and doing whatever it takes to bring championships to this city.”

Unlike Stephen Colbert, there was no “go f**k yourself.” Parker and Stone don’t care and have lost nothing off their fastball – just ask Meghan Markle. They got their bag and they can do whatever they want. They don’t have to talk trash when President Trump’s deepfaked dong will do it for them.

On our radar

MAXED OUT Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Ghislaine Maxwell for five hours yesterday. They are meeting again today.

FRENCH PRESS President Emmanuel Macron said France will recognize Palestine as a state starting in September. France joins 146 other UN member states that have recognized Palestine’s statehood in the past year.

DON’T TEXAS MY LONDON The United Kingdom is requiring age verification in order to access adult websites starting today – in a move that echoes similar policies in 24 US states, among them Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

Scot free

With Marine One roaring behind him, President Trump answered some questions this morning on the White House lawn before departing for a glamorous golf weekend in Scotland.

One reporter asked if he’d consider a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s number-one pal. “It’s something I haven’t thought about,” he said. “It’s something I’m allowed to do, but it’s something I’ve not thought about.” Yet Cockburn suspects Trump has thought a lot about what he called, on Truth Social last night, the “Jeffrey Epstein SCAM.”

When asked if Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche can trust Maxwell in his interview with her, Trump said, “he’s a professional lawyer, he’s been through things like this before.” Then he pivoted, using his masterful powers of deflection: “You should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge-fund guys, I’ll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein! I sure as hell didn’t.”

Trump has a list! Is he on it?

Hulkamania in Heaven

Cockburn laments the untimely passing of wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, who died of cardiac arrest Thursday at the age of 71.

As well as being the face of American wrestling entertainment for his entire life – not to mention an MTV reality star like Ozzy Osbourne, who also left us this week – Hogan provided one of the defining moments of the 2024 Republican National Convention a year and a week ago, when he tore his shirt open to reveal a red “Trump-Vance 2024” tank top beneath. Cockburn was honored to witness this in the Fiserv Forum – it was the most American thing he’s ever seen, and marked the first time he thought, “Trump is going to win again.”

Hogan’s impact on online media by way of his Peter Thiel-funded privacy suit against Gawker, which was settled with the snarky blog awarding him $31 million, is also not to be sniffed at. Rest assured, Hulkamania is running wild in the beyond.

Sign up here to get Cockburn’s Diary in your inboxes on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The BBC has finally done something right

This isn’t a sentiment you’ll have read much in recent weeks, given the BBC’s series of appalling misjudgements and editorial disasters. But here goes: Three cheers for the BBC. Its critics are completely wrong and its decision making is spot on.

To be clear, I’m not referring to its coverage of Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, the Gaza documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas minister or the BBC’s sacking of the two Masterchef presenters. I’m talking about something it has actually got right – but for which it is nonetheless being lambasted: the decision not to decamp its entire political team, and all its political programmes, to this year’s party conferences.

Previously the lunchtime Politics Live programme has been broadcast from what we used to call the two main party conferences – Labour and the Conservatives – along with Newsnight and much of the news channel’s output. To do that, the BBC has taken around 80 journalists and technicians. That compares with three for ITV and eight for Channel 4. Bloated, you say?

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In years gone by, it was possible to see the validity of such largesse in staffing and coverage. The party conferences used to matter. For hacks, they provided an invaluable opportunity to take ‘the feel’ of party members and to speak to politicians in a less guarded environment – especially in the bars late at night. For Labour, the proceedings in the hall also mattered, with its jargon of composites, motions and references back all feeding into an atmosphere where votes counted for something.

I spent too many years having to attend them, first as a policy wonk and later as a hack. You really did have to be there. There was the Bennite wars of the 1980s, the Militant years and John Smith’s 1993 OMOV (one member, one vote) fight. There was Tony Blair’s first conference speech in 1994, when he argued for the abolition of Clause IV (Labour’s constitutional commitment to ‘the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’) and almost no one in the hall realised what he was saying. Labour conference was the arena in which the party’s future was played out, with fringe meeting battles and – literally – smoke-filled rooms.

Although the conferences mattered, I hated them. All the people I wanted to spend time with I could do so in London. I never got to grips with being forced to spend time with people I had no wish to spend time with, but in a secure area. Add to that the permanent stench of stale air and the annual conference cold, and I was thrilled when I no longer had to go.

Party conferences now are just stage shows, like the US conventions, which exist solely to provide fodder for social media clips of Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch’s speeches and to give the mainstream news broadcasters something to talk about. 

For the party faithful they’re a fun – each to their own – few days of political self-indulgence and a chance to get drunk with people you’ve seen on telly. For everyone else, they are meaningless for anything other than the set piece speeches – which could equally be broadcast, like Keir Starmer’s first as Labour leader during covid in 2020, online from an empty room.

The BBC is quite right to call out the emperor’s new clothes. The conferences don’t need – and don’t deserve – the broadcast army of hacks they’ve always had. Not least because now they’re not even necessarily the most relevant gatherings, with Reform increasingly solid ahead in the polls.

Caroline Dinenage, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, told PoliticsHome, which broke the story: ‘It’s a surprising move by the BBC, who took over 500 of their staff to Glastonbury.’ She has a point – but the point isn’t that the BBC should take its usual army to the conferences, it’s that it took an absurd number to Glastonbury.

PoliticsHome also quotes a BBC source: ‘We’re really upset about it.’ Chacun à son goût.

The Tories face trouble in London

Friday morning brings with it the usual raft of council by-election results. It has been another good night for Reform UK, who polled a very strong second in the centre of Cardiff, despite only running a limited campaign. But the most striking result was in Bromley, where Nigel Farage’s party won their first London ward with 34 per cent of the vote. That is despite the Tories fielding a strong candidate and canvassing the area hard, with Kemi Badenoch out door-knocking on polling day.

Reform ran a good campaign here, with their candidate Alan Cook, well-versed on the issues and the party’s messaging. But the party believe that something more fundamental is going on than simply the electorate’s disdain for the Tories. Reform’s proven ability to win wards, and not merely serve as a protest vote, is encouraging switchers who might have stayed with the Conservatives when they were seen as the most viable option. ‘Vote Reform, get Reform’ is the message now.

That bodes well for Reform in next year’s London council elections. Farage’s team is targeting the so-called ‘doughnut’ of outer boroughs on the capital’s fringe. These have traditionally been areas of strong Conservative support and were the basis for Boris Johnson’s mayoral victories in 2008 and 2012. Kemi Badenoch’s party currently control five boroughs here – Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Harrow and Hillingdon – compared to just one – Kensington and Chelsea – in inner London.

Farage-led parties have always struggled to do well in London. But within Milbank Tower, staff are currently working out which subjects play well in the ‘doughnut’. Just as how Johnson ran against the expansion of the congestion charge in 2008, they are looking for a single issues which they can on next May. The ongoing six-week campaign on crime plays nicely into that. As I wrote about on Tuesday, Farage is going after the ‘Mums’ vote’ of middle-aged women concerned about community safety and their family’s life chances.

For the Tories, this could well spell trouble. Around half of the party’s 120,000 members are believed to be based in the capital. But the campaign infrastructure looks to be rusting around them. Less than a decade ago, CCHQ boasted a campaign manager in all 32 London boroughs; now this number has fallen by around 75 per cent. For the past decade, the national party has embraced a strategy which lent into the post-Brexit ‘realignment.’ This paid dividends in 2019, when the Conservatives could afford to lose Richmond and Putney as they were winning Wakefield and Workington. But now the red wall has gone – and there are few signs that wealthy metropolitans are flocking back now either.

Next May, the main focus of election night will be Scotland and Wales. But the story in London could make for grim reading for the Conservatives too.

Why are the Macrons suing Candace Owens?

As bizarre conspiracy theories go, the rumours about France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron take some beating. The stories that have been circulating about her in the murkier corners of the internet generally suggest that she was born a man under the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux, that she and the French President Emmanuel Macron are related in some way, that Brigitte’s first marriage (to André-Louis Auzière) was non-existent and, for good measure, that Macron is a CIA plant who was installed into the Élysée Palace through nefarious means.

Up until now, the rumours have largely remained both shadowy and obscure, with few other than the most credulous basement-dwellers attaching either veracity or importance to them. However, the Macrons have now decided to sue the popular and influential podcaster and influencer Candace Owens for defamation in an American court, calling her repetition of the claims ‘outlandish, defamatory and far-fetched’, and saying that ‘Ms Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety.’ For good measure, it says that Owens ‘disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favour of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers’.

Unsurprisingly, Owens is – no pun intended – cock-a-hoop at the idea of an embarrassing public trial involving her new nemeses.  Owens is yet to file a formal defence to the claim but she commented on her Candace podcast last night that ‘I find this to be irresistible and delicious’ and then began to hint at some of the names of people who might be involved, including none other than the Prince and Princess of Wales and Donald Trump. Owens made yet another potentially defamatory remark about France’s first lady – ‘You are officially a very goofy man, Brigitte…You definitely have balls’ – and then defiantly said: ‘On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court.’

As Owens knows – and as the Macrons should have been made aware – suing for defamation in the United States is fraught with difficulty. The verdict of proof is on the plaintiff, not the defendant, meaning that Brigitte Macron will be faced with the embarrassing and unprecedented situation of having to prove her femininity. Even then, the case could still collapse unless it can be proved beyond a measure of doubt that Owens knew her claims to be false and therefore hurtful. A similar libel case has been overturned in France, with the Paris appeals court dismissing convictions against two women for making similar statements, which has emboldened those who believe (or claim to believe) that they are speaking truth, rather than a conspiracy theory.

It is likely, given the consistency of her arguments, that the podcaster will suggest that she believed Brigitte’s allegedly masculine birth to be true, and it will be phenomenally hard for any lawyer to disprove this. No wonder that Owens described this as a ‘catastrophic PR strategy’, and suggested: ‘fire everyone around you who said this was a very good idea for you to be the first sitting first lady of a country to file a lawsuit against a journalist in another country’. She is not wrong. As Macron, knowing that his reputation in France lies somewhere in le caniveau, attempts to spend the final years of his presidency styling himself as an international statesman – hence his high-profile address to [arliament during his recent state visit to Britain, and his bromance with the king – and therefore would like to be seen as an impressive, noteworthy figure.

This story, in all its tawdry and embarrassing details, represents the very opposite of what Macron is trying to achieve. He and his wife are right to be offended by it, and a degree of understandable anger at the outrageous claims is a very human response. However, when the president had his audience with the king, he might have been advised to take on the royal adage of ‘never complain, never explain’. Unfortunately, what is now going to take place in a Delaware courtroom is an awful lot of complaining and explaining. Even if the Macrons do emerge triumphant, the reputational damage and resulting humiliation is likely to be so horrendous that it will be hard to see what led them to bother. Whatever happens, Owens has already won.

Four bets for Ascot and York tomorrow

Ascot racecourse missed most of the rain that fell this week and, as a result, the ground will now almost certainly be on the fast side of good for tomorrow’s big race, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (4.10 p.m.). Despite a first prize of more than £850,000 for winning connections, just five runners will line up for this prestigious Group 1 contest.

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Calandagan and Jan Brueghel are vying for favouritism in a re-run of their duel in the Betfred Coronation Stakes at Epsom early last month when the latter prevailed by half a length. However, I see this as very much a four-horse contest with Kalpana and Rebel’s Romance both having live chances. Continuous is the only runner that I would rule out because he will probably act as a pacemaker for Jan Brueghel.

On balance, though, the bookmakers have priced this one up accurately and so it is a watch-and-enjoy race, rather than a betting one, for me – especially as there are bigger odds and better wagers in other races on tomorrow’s Ascot card.

In the seven-furlongs Moet & Chandon International Handicap (3 p.m.), I have already put up Northern Express each way at 40-1. He is currently trading at 10-1 with most bookies so that bet looks promising. Now that the ground is quick, Aalto remains the horse most likely to win this race but, with a possibly unfavourable draw in stall 3, odds of 6-1 or less are on the skinny side.

Instead, I will stay loyal to YORKSHIRE who was sixth at Royal Ascot in the Buckingham Palace Stakes when put up at 40-1, six places, in this blog, thereby showing a nice profit on the each-way bet.

Strictly, on only 4lb better term, he will struggle to finish ahead of Akkadian Thunder, who was second in that race at Royal Ascot, just over four lengths ahead of Yorkshire. However, Yorkshire had to be switched in running that day and should have finished closer than he did. So back him 1 point each way at 14-1 with bet365, Sky Bet and Paddy Power, all paying six places.

Dance To The Music is favourite for the Group 3 Sodexo Live! Princess Margaret Stakes (1.40 p.m.) for two-year-old fillies over six furlongs, and she comes here with a big reputation having won her only start at Newmarket in May.

She will, however, have plenty of competition from the likes of Flowerhead, Staya, Midnight Tango and FITZELLA. At the odds, I am going to put up the last named for the Hugo Palmer/Oisin Murphy trainer/jockey combination.

I always look twice when Palmer books Murphy for one of his string because they have a good record when teaming up and Fitzella has impressed both in the paddock and on the racetrack in her three starts to date. Back her 1 point each way at 8-1 with bet365, Paddy Power and Sky Bet, all paying four places.

In the Group 3 Longines Valiant Stakes (2.20 p.m.), GLITTERING SURF has it all to do racing against several rivals with a much higher official rating. However, this three-year-old filly has shown plenty of promise in her three runs to date, winning two of them.

Her trainer, Owen Burrows, is in top form too with five wins from his last ten runners giving him a superb strike rate over the past fortnight of 50 per cent. Back Glittering Surf 1 point each way at 12-1 with bet365, Paddy Power, Betfair or Sky Bet, all paying four places.

At York, I was hoping there would be eight runners or more in the Sky Bet York Stakes (2.40 p.m.) so that I could have a hefty each way bet, three places, at around 5-1 on Stanhope Gardens. However, there are only seven runners and Ralph Beckett’s three-year-old colt – who was fifth in the Betfred Derby after a badly interrupted preparation – is only 4-1 with just two places on offer.

Stanhope Gardens also looks to be facing a mighty opponent in Ed Walker’s highly-rated Almaqam, who is odds on and will surely be either first or second. On balance, this is now another no-bet race for me.

Instead, I really like the price on Walker’s runner in the Sky Bet Dash Handicap (2 p.m.), ARCTIC THUNDER. This four-year-old gelding ran well when second in a 16-runner handicap at Haydock in May before getting no sort of luck in running when down the field at Newcastle last month. Put a line through that run.

Tomorrow’s six furlongs on likely drying ground, no worse than good to soft, should be ideal so back Arctic Thunder 1 point each way at 12-1 with bet365, paying six places.

I will be back this time next week when I will be having a close look at the last two days of the Glorious Goodwood meeting.

Pending:

1 point each way Fitzella at 8-1 in the Princess Margaret Stakes, paying 1/5 odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Arctic Thunder at 12-1 in the Sky Bet Dash, paying 1/5 odds, 6 places.

1 point each way Glittering Surf at 12-1 in the Longines Valiant Stakes, paying 1/5 odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Northern Express at 40-1 for the International, paying 1/4 odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Yorkshire at 14-1 for the International, paying 1/5 odds, 6 places.

1 point each way Witness Stand at 33-1 for the Lennox, paying 1/5 odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Ebt’s Guard at 25-1 for the Golden Mile, paying 1/4 odds, 4 places.

Last weekend: no bets.

2025 flat season running total: + 54.86 points.

2024-5 jump season: – 47.61 points on all tips.

2024 flat season: + 41.4 points on all tips.

2023-4 jump season: + 42.01 points on all tips.

2023 flat season: – 48.22 points on all tips.

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

Scotland’s ‘Stop Trump’ movement is not what it was

Donald Trump touches down in Scotland today on what is ostensibly a private visit to open an 18-hole golf course dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born on the Isle of Lewis. The State Visit isn’t until September. But Police Scotland aren’t taking any chances.

Around six thousand officers, including many drafted in from across the UK, will be on duty as the US president perambulates around his golf courses at Turnberry in Ayrshire and the Menie Estate near Aberdeen, pursued by a ragged coalition of Scottish Green Party activists, Pro-Palestinian groups and trades unionists who have pledged to ‘Stop Trump’ before he meets the prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Monday.

But is all this police firepower really necessary? These are changed days since Trump’s last visit to Scotland as president in 2018. Back then, demonstrators like the late comedian, Janey Godley, with her infamous ‘Trump is a C*nt’ placard, seemed to capture the popular mood, as thousands took part in a ‘Festival of Resistance’. Her close friend, the former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, pointedly avoided meeting Trump on the grounds that he was a ‘pussy grabbing misogynist’ and other bad things.

This time around, her successor, John Swinney, is making every effort to schmooze the US leader – not least to promote trade with Scotland’s biggest trading partner, worth nearly £4 billion a year. More than 100,000 Scots are employed by US firms, mainly in pharmaceuticals, technology and energy. The Scottish government is more interested in winning back US tourist dollars that fell away after Covid than accusing their elected leader of being a fascist.

Trump is also being promised a ‘warm welcome’ by the Labour Scottish Secretary, Ian Murray – and no, that isn’t irony. The Edinburgh MP told BBC Scotland that he regards it as his ‘duty’ to maintain good relations with Trump in the ‘national interest’. Yet in 2019 Murray voted in favour of a Commons motion condemning Trump’s ‘misogyny, racism, and xenophobia’. Perhaps Scotland has grown up a little since those days of gesture politics.

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The SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, still playing to the nationalist gallery, says he’ll be ‘washing his hair’ for the duration of the visit. And it seems most Scots will be staying away too; at least from the demonstrations. There is less enthusiasm these days for pointless expressions of impotent rage.

The Scottish Green party, which is leading the attempt to block the ‘climate change denying convicted felon’ from Scotland’s green and pleasant land has itself fallen from grace. It is no longer in government, having been expelled from the SNP-led coalition following policy disasters over gender reform, rent freezes and plans to scrap millions of gas boilers.

Instead, Scotland now has its own emerging MAGA-style movement in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which is expected to elect a bloc of up to 14 MSPs in the Scottish parliament next year. That would have been unthinkable in 2018. Then Farage was a pariah, famously driven to seek refuge in a pub during a visit to Edinburgh’s Royal Mile a few years earlier.

Immigration is not the driving force behind the rise of national populism in Scotland. The major issues here are ever-rising NHS waiting lists, ever-increasing income taxes, and the excesses of gender ideology, currently dominating headlines from the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal in Dundee, where the NHS is accused of victimising a gender-critical nurse after she objected to undressing before a trans doctor.

Reform is also exploiting disquiet over the hectic decline of the North Sea oil and gas industry, which employs around 100,000 workers. The GMB union, along with Aberdeen and Grampian Chambers of Commerce, will be echoing Trump’s call for the UK government to lift its ban on North Sea oil exploration and scrap punitive windfall taxes on energy profits.

Trump will no doubt give Keir Starmer an ear-bashing about ‘windmills’ when he meets the PM on Monday. Starmer is hoping to seal the deal on the much-vaunted trade deal and end punitive tariffs on cars, pharmaceuticals and, yes, Scots whisky. Like Swinney he will express ‘concern’ about suffering in Gaza without echoing the cries of ‘genocide’ from activists outside.

This weekend’s ‘Stop Trump’ demos will be significant mainly for demonstrating the political irrelevance of the nationalist left after nearly two decades of in which it wielded considerable influence in Scotland. The times, they are a-changing.

Of course, Trump will not be met by cheering crowds; the popular response will be studied indifference. Scottish voters have too much on their minds right now to indulge in petty and undemocratic jeering at a man who has been elected, not once, but twice, by American voters. And who has seen the downfall of his bête noire, Nicola Sturgeon.

France’s decision to recognise Palestine is a mistake

Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will recognise Palestinian statehood. The French president will make his historic proclamation, the first among G7 countries, at the UN General Assembly in September. In a statement on X, Macron said that ‘there is no alternative’, adding that ‘the French people want peace in the Middle East’.

Many French people, however, do not want their country to recognise Palestine in the manner Macron intends. A poll last month found that only 22 per cent were in favour of immediate and unconditional recognition; 31 per cent were opposed and 47 per cent would accept recognition once Hamas had laid down its arms and released all the Israeli hostages.

Not for the first time, Macron is swimming against the tide of public opinion in France. Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, condemned what he called a ‘hasty decision’. Even some of Macron’s centrists MPs disapproved. Caroline Yadan, said it was a ‘political, moral and historical mistake’.

The left, however, from the Greens to the Communists to the radical la France Insoumise, are delighted. Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the latter, described the decision as a ‘moral victory’. As usual, Macron has sided with the progressive left, as he does on all the major issues of the day: Palestine, mass immigration, assisted dying, law and order and Net Zero.

This should surprise no one. ‘I am left-wing,’ he proclaimed in 2016. ‘That is my history.’ It also explains why he and Keir Starmer are ‘firm friends’.

As a consequence, there is growing discontent within Macron’s coalition government from those ministers who hail from the right. In May, Macron scolded three of them, Bruno Retailleau, Gerald Darmanin and Sophie Primas, for their failure to toe the party line and for being too ‘ambitious’.

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How ironic. When Macron declared his allegiance to the left in 2016, it was as a justification for launching his own party, En Marche. At the time he was serving as the minister of the economy in Francois Hollande’s Socialist government. The left, said Macron, was ‘my family’ but ‘part of my family is afraid of a changing world’.

The Socialist party wasn’t progressive enough for Macron. So he quit and ran for president, winning the election after the favourite, the conservative Francois Fillon, was brought down by a financial scandal – a scandal many on the right believe was engineered by the deep state.

One of Fillon’s closest advisors during his ill-fated campaign was Bruno Retailleau, who since September has served in Macron’s coalition government as his Minister of the Interior. The pair can’t stand the sight of each other.

The depth of their mutual disdain was laid bare on Wednesday in an interview with Valeurs actuelles, a conservative magazine not a million miles ideologically from The Spectator, to whom Retailleau also spoke this week.

Retailleau was withering in his summation of ‘Macronism’, saying it will die as soon as the president leaves office in 2027 ‘because Macronism is neither a political movement nor an ideology: it is essentially based on one man’.

It is a cult, in other words, with a leader who demands devotion from his followers. Woe betide those whose faith wavers. Macron has worked his way through 158 ministers since 2017, more than any other president of the Fifth Republic.

But will he dare dispense with Retailleau, his most defiant minister to date, the man who declared this week that he doesn’t believe in Macronism because it ‘fuels powerlessness’? Sack Retailleau and the fragile government would likely come crashing down.

The pair were scheduled to have a one-to-one meeting at the Elysee on Thursday morning, but Macron cancelled at the 11th hour and, according to the French media, instructed his prime minister ‘to restore discipline among his troops’.

A dressing down from Francois Bayrou is unlikely to have much effect on Retailleau. If he has lost respect for the president, why should he retain it for his prime minister, a long-time political ally?
The French people appear to have given up on the pair; an opinion poll this week revealed that Bayrou’s approval rating is at 18 per cent, one point behind the president’s, which is a record low in his eight years in office.

Retailleau’s dilemma is whether to stay in his post, or to leave and focus on his presidential campaign. He said this week that he wants to achieve a ‘union of right-wing voters…in order to win in 2027’ because of the very real possibility that a divided right could result in a victory for the left.

The left encompasses not just Mélenchon, the Socialists and the Greens but also the progressivism practised by Macron’s party. ‘Everyone should agree on the failure of progressivism,’ explained Retailleau. ‘Progressivism has detached the individual from society…it is up to the right to propose a social project that breaks with the principles laid down by the left.’

Remaining in government gives Retailleau a platform to address the public, which he did on Thursday. On a visit to a Paris police station, Retailleau pledged his unflinching support to officers across the country who have come under attack from mobs of youths this month. ‘On one side, there is the France of heroes, and on the other, the France of bastards, who shoot at our police officers, our gendarmes and our firefighters,’ he said.

The rhetoric is inflammatory, and honest, but it’s not what Emmanuel Macron wants to hear. He is in denial about the disintegration of France, preferring to focus his energy on bringing peace to Gaza and Ukraine.

Retailleau’s priority is France. He remains in government, he says, because he is ‘motivated by a deep conviction: only France’s interests matter.’

Macron’s deep conviction is the EU. That is the fundamental difference between him and Retailleau; one puts France first and other believes Brussels is paramount.

Elites keep making education about themselves

This month, Congress put school-choice funding on offer to the states as part of the Big Beautiful Bill. Progressives have bashed the provision for the harm they claim school choice will do to under-resourced school districts. But the program saps not a dollar from public schools, which shows the protest for what it is: elitist bluster. The same progressives who fumbled their schools’ Covid responses, instituted woke curriculum and pushed adolescent gender transitioning should not decree to parents which school is best for their children. Public schools have not earned Americans’ trust over these past few years; many private schools have.

Under the new measure, families can receive a tax credit for donations to an approved scholarship-granting nonprofit organization. While their own child may not benefit, their donation funds private-school tuition for low-income or special-needs students. The tax break is capped at $1,700 and is not offered to families with an income of more than three times the local median. 

The state governor or legislature, however, must opt in to the program. For blue states, this would require a measure of humility, to try something new; a bit of boldness, to stand up to teachers’ unions; and a paradigm shift that recenters education around what is best for students, not school districts. Will they give low-income families the agency over their children’s education that, until now, has been the prerogative of the elites?

Opponents of school choice argue that a voucher system would drain underperforming districts of students. That is true. Vouchers would not, however, leave an educational desert in low-income areas. I personally know three people who would start inner-city private schools if funding were available. Dale Scott, a black father in a low-income neighborhood near Denver, believes that, with competition, public schools in his district “would start to ask questions, like, what do we need to do in order to be able to keep our performing students in our school? What do we need to do about this exodus to certain types of schools? And so I think it would create a better overall school system.”

Some opponents question private schools’ educational outcomes. Private schools lack accountability, they argue, and school-choice studies reach varying conclusions as to whether students become more academically successful when they move to a private school. Some studies find that private-school students are more likely to finish high school, enroll in college and graduate with a degree. Others suggest that in the short term, at least, public-school students outperform their private-school peers on standardized tests. Public schools teach toward these assessments, of course. While private-school students may not perform as well on multiple-choice tests, the metric may not reflect how well schools are training their students to think.

But let’s put aside surveys, studies and study methodologies – if parents send their student to a private school and find it lacking in academic rigor, they will pull their student after a year, and public-school districts have nothing to fear. Parents such as Dale Scott dismiss those who consider private schools an inferior education. “When you’re in the inner city of Denver, and I would even say parts of Aurora, where we live now” – a district with a chronic absenteeism rate of 40 percent – “there’s a different quality of education” in private schools. Colorado lacks a government-funded voucher system, but the Scotts work with a nonprofit scholarship organization to send their four children to a private school.

To Scott and parents like him, such a school means more than improved test scores. His family has found the community, shared vision and accountability that their local public school lacked. “Having my kids in a private-school environment that aligns with both my academic hopes [and] my moral and religious convictions, I’ve just watched my kids prosper. I’ve watched them be really well educated. I’ve watched them thrive and I watched them become really productive… [they’re] finding opportunities to be servants of their community, not causing problems, not committing crimes, etc.” 

Aren’t those stories worth any restructuring of our educational funding system? Don’t parents know best what kind of school their children need? If underperforming schools do close and teachers’ unions feel the heat, so be it. It is not about them. It is not about the adults, and it is not about a system. This is a matter of children prospering.