Why Westminster is wrong about gilt yields

It’s gilts season at Westminster. This is one of those unpredictable events, like the passing of a comet, that sees the residents of the political village staring at the skies and imputing all sorts of divine causes to the curious flashing lights they see there.  

Because of the ongoing excitement in the markets, a lot of political folk have, in the last few days, become authoritative commentators on yield curves.

Welcome to the party, guys. A very long time ago, I covered bond markets for a City newswire, and hated pretty much every minute of it. I claim no particular expertise as a result, but I am still confident in saying two things about Westminster’s current excitement over gilt yields.

First, almost no one involved in or commenting on British politics (I include myself) knows enough about bonds to offer a wholly credible analysis of any particular market movement.

Second, and consequently, anyone who asserts that rising gilt yields are entirely caused of Rachel Reeves and her Budget should be ignored because they a) don’t know what they’re talking about b) are pushing a political agenda c) both of the above.

This is especially true of anyone who argues that current bond market movements are similar to those following Liz Truss’s mini-Budget debacle.

The central flaw of much Westminster bond market analysis (and much else besides) is to explain everything by reference to short-term UK politics, and overlook bigger things happening elsewhere.

So anyone who wants to argue that Reeves’ tax-raising Budget spooked the bond markets should be asked: why have UK gilt yields have moved pretty much exactly in line with US Treasury yields?  In other words, the same investors who are selling gilts are also selling US bonds – and selling US bonds is clearly not a comment on British fiscal policies or Britain’s Chancellor.

As the chart below shows, the spread (gap) between US and UK bond yields is at its long-term average.  Investors are buying and selling UK and US bonds in broadly similar ways and for fairly similar reasons, in other words – not because of some unique British conditions.

This was not the case in autumn 2022, when the Trust administration created some unique (and uniquely bad) British conditions, by attacking the independent institutions that help reassure investors, committing truckloads of money to tax cuts, and generally lacking political stability. See the 2022/23 spikes above the line on the chart.

So why are UK borrowing costs rising now? Back in my unhappy City days, I learned one useful, universal explanation for any market movement:  it’s complicated, there probably isn’t a single cause, and anyone who tells you there is one is selling something – or trying to explain to their boss why they just lost money on a trade.

That said, here’s one factor to consider in rising yields: investors think big Western economies are in long-term trouble because their politicians aren’t dealing with their underlying problems.  

Here I recommend Westminster bond sages start using the phrase ‘bear steepening’ to add cod-credibility to their commentary. This means that the yields on longer-dated bonds are rising faster than the yields on shorter-term ones, because investors think that longer-term loans are a worse bet.  

That’s because they think that in the long run (20+ years), the UK and US governments will have to do even more borrowing to fund themselves, flooding the market with bonds and pushing down prices. (More supply means lower prices.  And lower bond prices mean higher yields.)

The future implied by bear steepening is one where the UK economy grows very slowly, delivering weak tax revenues, forcing governments to run eternal deficits to fund unreformed public services.  And rising bond yields mean the costs of those deficits go up and up, potentially pushing those economies into a ‘doom loop’ of high borrowing and low growth. 

Mike Riddell, a bond investor at Fidelity International,  is among the market participants who argue that current bond movements are about something much bigger and badder than any one finance minister’s plans:

It’s not about inflation concerns, where the market’s medium-term inflation expectations are little changed since the beginning of November. Investors are instead demanding a higher-risk premia or ‘term premia’ to compensate them for owning longer-dated government bonds.

The obvious implication of this is that it’s just got a lot more expensive for everyone to refinance their debt. If this selloff continues, it’s going to push deficits wider over the long, which then risks a doom loop since deficits need to be funded by ever more sovereign issuance.

When we return to a UK political perspective, we see that this isn’t particularly positive for Rachel Reeves. It suggests that the markets don’t believe that she is going to resolve the structural economic problems that she inherited: weak productivity and growth; ever-more costly public services.  

That is a grim verdict for the markets to pass, but it’s not, ultimately, a comment on Reeves or the Starmer government, since those structural problems have been decades in the making, as a succession of chancellors ducked the challenge of trying to match tax revenues to public expenditure. 

Indeed, Reeves’s tax-raising Budget was arguably the most significant step towards fiscal consolidation the UK has seen for more than a decade; it will very likely be followed by some squeezing of public spending. That squeeze would be politically painful but might well offer some confidence to bears in the bond market. Ministers must also turbocharge their plans to strip out planning regulations and other red tape that makes it too hard to invest in Britain’s productive capacity. Bond markets hate bat tunnels, Chancellor.

Because markets are moving, there is some chatter at Westminster about Reeves’s Budget and her future, but the whisperers should bone up on how bond markets actually work – then accept that there was no real alternative to that Budget, and there is no serious alternative to Reeves and the things that she will do next.  

My advice, for what it’s worth: don’t blame the Chancellor for rising gilt yields – and don’t bet against her either. 

Putin is engineering a humanitarian crisis in Transnistria

Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny republic of Moldova has been easy prey for Russia in the past. Its 2.5 million people are among the poorest in Europe and the Kremlin has been able to exploit the country’s dependence on cheap Russian gas to keep it as an ally.

But Moldovans, like Ukrainians, have begun to choose another path. In 2022, they applied to join the European Union to be part of the democratic world, and then elected a pro-western president last year. Vladimir Putin’s response has been to engineer a humanitarian crisis in the region, which is now underway.

The pawns on Putin’s chessboard are the 350,000 mainly Russian-speaking residents of Transnistria – a breakaway Soviet-style state which declared independence from Moldova shortly after the collapse of Communism. 

For three decades, Russia has kept hundreds of troops in Transnistria to support the separatists and keep an eye on Moldova. Russia has also fed the region with free gas supplied via a pipeline that runs through Ukraine. On New Year’s Day, the pipeline, which has helped fund Putin’s war machine by supplying gas to Europe, was closed by Kyiv.

Strategically, the closure of the pipeline was a major blow to the Kremlin. The White House has called it one of Moscow’s ‘most costly defeats’, with Russia now facing losing £6 billion in annual revenue from gas sales to Europe. 

But it has also left its ally Transnistria without energy. Putin could have kept Transnistria warm by sending gas via Turkey and the Trans-Balkan corridor, but that would be more expensive, and Putin has chosen not to do so. 

Putin instead has decided to let the people of Transnistria freeze so he can pin the blame on Moldova’s pro-EU government ahead of the parliamentary elections taking place there this year. So now, the residents of Transnistria are being forced to cut down trees to stay warm and cook their food. The temperature in houses and hospitals has dropped to just 13°C. Factories and schools have shut down, leaving hundreds without a job. Electricity is expected to run out by February. Several people have suffocated in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to heat their homes. 

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Moldova has also been affected by the crisis. Many villages and towns near Transnistria have suffered gas shortages, blackouts and have had to ration hot water. Moldova relies on Transnistria for about two-thirds of its electricity, as the country’s primary power station is located there. For years, this arrangement benefited both sides: Transnistria generated electricity with free Russian gas and sold it to Moldova at low prices. Now they are being forced to import power from Romania, Moldova’s citizens are seeing their electricity bills skyrocket.

Maia Sandu, the recently re-elected president of Moldova, has said that the pipeline closure is a necessary step towards independence. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine is working overtime to tell Moldovans that they voted the wrong way last November. Russia has argued that ‘the decisions of Ukraine and the Moldovan authorities’ have ‘condemned the population of Transnistria to suffering’. 

‘There is an alternative pipeline, the Turkish Stream. So it’s not a problem that gas cannot pass through Ukraine’, Sandu points out. Kyiv, she says, offered to send coal to get the power supply started again.

Sandu is in a delicate position. She almost lost last November’s presidential election to a pro-Kremlin candidate and is facing parliamentary elections this summer. Putin’s strategy now is to cause maximum misery in Moldova in the hope that it will lead to a pro-Moscow majority in parliament, making the pro-EU president powerless. Rising utility bills and the energy crisis are obvious weapons in turning public opinion against Sandu, but they are not the only ones. The longer Transnistria is without gas and electricity, the more its residents – with Moldovan passports and voting rights – will flee to Moldova. Transnistria’s pro-Russian voters could change the composition of the country, turning Moldova towards Moscow for years to come. 

Vadim Krasnoselsky, the leader of Transnistria who works closely with Moscow, has rejected Sandu’s offers of gas and humanitarian aid. He has urged Moldova to pay the £600 million that Gazprom has demanded for what it claims are unpaid debts for the ‘free’ gas piped to Transnistria (Moldova’s government has never recognised this debt as legitimate). 

Pro-Russian politicians in Moldova may well travel to Moscow to crawl in front of Putin, asking him to forgive the alleged debt and supply Russian gas to Transnistria through Turkey. If this leads to Transnistria receiving gas again, it could help them in the parliamentary elections, as they would be able to say they achieved what Sandu couldn’t.

Now is the moment when Ukraine and the EU must step in. Brussels could cover some of the costs of gas and electricity it is exporting to Moldova or help Kyiv send its own gas. Ukraine is ready to help, fearing it could end up encircled by pro-Kremlin counties, making its chances for EU membership even more remote. But Brussels isn’t showing much interest. Last year, the EU lost Georgia to the Kremlin when Moscow helped pro-Russian parties gain a foothold in its parliament. If it doesn’t act soon, it may well lose Moldova as well. 

Meanwhile, Moscow is working on its allies in the EU, encouraging them to point the finger at Zelensky, pressuring him to reopen the pipeline. Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, has accused Zelensky of being a ‘beggar and blackmailer’, costing Slovakia £400 million in transit fees by closing down Russia’s pipeline to Europe. 

Fico has threatened to veto EU military aid for Ukraine and halt crucial electricity supplies to the country after Russian air attacks. He has even threatened to abolish benefits for 130,000 Ukrainian refugees living in Slovakia. Hungary has vowed to block Ukraine’s EU membership if Zelensky does not change his mind about the pipeline.

For Ukraine, the pipeline closure is a rare geopolitical victory, one that Zelensky won’t, and can’t, step back from – at least not until peace talks with Russia begin. Kyiv’s strategy is to offer its own aid to Moldova and help it avoid a political crisis. Ukraine’s best chance of getting fast-track EU membership is to join forces with Moldova, presenting the two countries as a package deal. For now though, the road ahead has never looked more dangerous for both.

Scotland’s safe consumption room won’t solve the drugs crisis

Quarterly reports from the office of National Records of Scotland confirm time and again the existence of an ongoing drug deaths crisis north of the border. And, time and again, the Scottish government reveals itself to be devoid of ideas for how to tackle it. Now, however, there has been a flicker of progress with the opening of the UK’s first safe drug consumption room in Glasgow this week. But will it make any real difference to the national drugs death crisis? I have my doubts.

Scotland has the highest rate of drug-related fatalities anywhere in Europe. And, despite repeated assurances from ministers that they recognise the problem, there is no sign of the situation getting any better. Recently published National Records of Scotland stats shows 1,172 Scots died due to drug misuse in 2023, with drugs deaths occurring in Scotland at almost three times the rate they do in England and Wales.

For a long time, part of the SNP government’s defence of its failure to tackle this national crisis has been that membership of the United Kingdom means ministers are restricted in what they can do. It’s been common to hear campaigners – and SNP MSPs – complain that the refusal of the Home Office to permit the opening of so-called safe consumption rooms, places where addicts can take drugs under supervision, has severely hampered efforts to tackle the shocking overdose death rate. Of course they said that. Independence is, after all, the solution to every problem.

But the creation of the Thistle Centre turns out that big bad Westminster does not represent a serious threat to the establishment of such facilities, after all. Scotland’s Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, recently announced that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute for possession anyone using a safe consumption room and, on Monday, the new Glasgow facility opened its doors to Scotland's drug users. Those who wish to do so are invited to take their heroin or methadone in the presence of what a Scottish government press release says are 'trained health and social care professionals' working 'in a clean, hygienic environment'.

Sure, the safe consumption room may appeal to the well-organised addict who takes time to structure his day. But the likelihood is that it will be ignored by the common-or-garden chaotic user, more usually found on the greasy pavements of Scotland’s largest city. The offer of clean needles for drug users may entice some off the streets, while those making serious attempts to address their addiction may, I suppose, also attend. If there is any immediate benefit from the opening room it will, I think, be to local residents. Any reduction in the number of addicts injecting in tenement closes and discarding needles in play parks will be most welcome to the good people of the Calton district.

But Scotland’s drug death rate is not about clean needles or a lack of consumption rooms. What’s less clear is what it actually is about. Why should Scots drug addicts, more than others in the UK or across continental Europe, turn to debilitating opioids? What is is about Scottish despair that sends the hopeless to heroin?

First Minister John Swinney and Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray visited the Thistle last Friday, in advance of it opening its doors to local addicts. The facility represented a 'significant step forward' in efforts to tackle Scotland’s drug problem, Swinney remarked. Conceding that the Thistle was not a 'silver bullet', the First Minister spoke of the Scottish government’s serious investment in the project, which would be backed to the tune of £2 million a year. That’s certainly a substantial sum for a single facility but it’s pocket change when compared to the many millions cut from the budgets of addiction support services by the SNP during its time in office.

Figures for 2022/23 show drug and alcohol addiction groups had their funding slashed by almost £19 million on the previous year alone. Social work departments and NHS addiction support facilities are stretched to breaking point. Behind the photographs of Swinney and Gray looking earnest at the Thistle centre is the truth that their party has decimated services for addicts while diverting funds to policies aimed at the privileged such as the abolition of university tuition fees and the extension of the provision of free prescriptions to include the wealthy.

Scotland’s drug deaths crisis deepened over years while the SNP ignored it. The idea that giving a few Glaswegian users a room to take drugs marks a 'significant step forward' in addressing the problem is fanciful.

Can Trump claim the credit for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire?

Donald Trump has made a long list of promises for what will be done on ‘day one’ of his second term in the White House. Peace in the Middle East was not one of them. Yet it looks increasingly likely that the President-elect will be sworn in having just helped to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, to (at least temporarily) end the war in Gaza. 

Trump has made his feelings clear about the war for some time: in line with his broader views about foreign conflict, he wanted the war brought to an end. While positioning himself as a strong ally of Israel, the President-elect was also calling for swift action in the lead-up to last year’s election, saying in April: ‘What I said very plainly is get it over with, and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people. And that’s a very simple statement. Get it over with.’

Since his landslide win in November, it seems everyone has been taking his instructions more seriously. A final draft of a ceasefire deal has been circulated by mediators, which is expected to include a return of up to 33 Israeli hostages and a massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Both Joe Biden’s Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff are working together in Doha this morning to see that the deal gets over the line.

Is this Trump’s 1981 moment, when incoming President Ronald Reagan saw 52 Americans being held in the US embassy in Tehran released by Iran the day he was sworn in? There are certain similarities, not least the pressure imposed by both President-elects to have the conflict resolved by the time they enter office. But perhaps the better comparison is the use of the transition period: the two-plus months between election day and the inauguration, when handovers between administrations take place.

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While some doubt the use of this fairly lengthy period, the best-case scenarios can see genuine bipartisan efforts which lead to good outcomes. Although it took the weight of Reagan’s words to get Iran to free the hostages – and the threat of action, which had not been convincing under President Jimmy Carter – it was the negotiations and legal work done by Carter’s administration that also proved vital for getting them home. As Reagan started his first day in the White House, an ousted Carter went to greet the Americans in West Germany, celebrating their release after 444 days in captivity. A similar scene could play out now, as both Biden and Trump’s teams work together to secure more hostage releases (seven American citizens are still being held in the tunnels).

It’s unlikely any celebrations of bipartisan effort will last long. It’s impossible to separate the decision to come to an agreement now and the change in American leadership next week: the calculation being that it is impossible to be sure how President Trump would handle the war. It’s a point Trump will want to make loudly and repeatedly, as such a big part of his third campaign has been a more isolationist-leaning version of ‘peace through strength’. 

The President-elect will be hoping that this foreign-policy victory will boost other parts of his agenda: primarily his pledge to bring Russia’s war to an end, too. The ceasefire also creates an opportunity to get the relationships created through one of Trump’s biggest foreign policy initiatives in his first term – the Abraham Accords – back on track.

Nothing is likely to tie up that neatly. Even if a ceasefire is agreed, it is difficult to see how Israel brings its military operations to an end if not every hostage has been released. And while the Kremlin has signalled ‘political will’ to speak to Trump about the war, there is no indication – as there has been in the Middle East – that this conflict will end simply due to the President-elect’s rival.

Still, if the ceasefire is indeed agreed, it will bolster Trump’s established playbook for negotiating foreign affairs: create an air of uncertainty to make agreeing a deal the better option. It’s a risky model. But it’s one that Americans increasingly think works.

Fact check: The Rest Is Politics’ grooming gang claims

For a little while now there have been questions as to whether the commentary of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart on their podcast The Rest Is Politics is in tune with reality. Ahead of the US election, Stewart – the former Tory politician – claimed with certainty that Kamala Harris would win only to be left with egg on his face when instead Donald Trump romped home. Meanwhile Campbell was slammed by renowned writer and women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling after he appeared to belatedly discover the degree to which gender ideology concerns voters. Now Stewart and Campbell have turned their attention to Britain’s grooming gang scandal – brought back to the top of the news agenda thanks to Elon Musk. Only how helpful or, er, accurate, their comments on the issue are is another matter…

In a recent episode, the dynamic duo frame the re-emergence of reports on the sexual abuse of young women and children by Asian gangs as a PR battle between Sir Keir Starmer and Musk. So, how do their claims stack up?

1. Claim one: The attacks took place in only two cities – Rotherham and Rochdale.
   Fact check: False. As Robert Jenrick noted on Twitter, GB News’s Charlie Peters has pointed out that similar grooming gangs have operated in at least 50 towns and cities across the country. A little research goes a long way…
2. Claim two: Men abusing young girls aged between 13 and 17 were ‘paying them for sex’
   Fact check: False. Most of the victims were not paid. This strange claim by Stewart is certainly one way of glossing over horrific attacks on children.
3. Claim three: The abuse being discussed only took place between 1997 and 2013, with Stewart adding: ‘We’re talking about going back 10, 20 years, is what’s being focused on here.’
   Fact check: False. Victims claim the abuse scandal has not ended and remains ongoing, after many perpetrators and enablers evaded justice and walk free today. 
4. Claim four: On those calling for further scrutiny of the grooming gangs, the pair are more than a little scathing. Campbell turns to calls from Musk, alongside Conservative and Reform politicians, for a national inquiry into the scandal. The former Labour spinner opines to Stewart: ‘What [Kemi] Badenoch and [Robert] Jenrick have done is repeated this call for a national inquiry… They’re jumping on the Elon Musk bandwagon and they’re being driven by the Elon Musk bandwagon… I hope this is just the start in terms of actually beginning to tackle the poison of the far right as it is amplified through what has become a very personal megaphone for a megalomaniac.’ Fact check: False. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has blasted the podcasters for appearing ‘convinced that anyone calling for an inquiry is far-right’ – as it is not simply the viewpoint of ‘the far right’ that Musk is amplifying. More than three-quarters of the public back calls made by Jenrick and Badenoch, amongst others, in favour of a national probe into the grooming gangs – including a growing crowd of Labour politicians.

And speaking of the Labour lot, the pod – co-hosted by Tony Blair’s former comms boss – managed to omit the fact that one of the main reasons the scandal began to dominate news sites in the first place was due to the refusal of Home Office minister Jess Phillips to support calls for a government-led inquiry. Talk about being selective with the facts, eh?

It’s a little embarrassing for the pair who have become increasingly prone to slip-ups of late. Perhaps a rebrand to The Rest is Spin would be more fitting…

The awful calamity of Stalin being a music lover

At around 9 p.m. on 5 March 1953 Sergei Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage on the sofa of his Moscow flat. He was 61, and had struggled for years with ill health. He had long complained of pain in his soul. Less than an hour later, the source of that pain, Joseph Stalin, died of a heart attack in his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow.

Prokofiev’s death wasn’t so much forgotten as ignored. The leading music magazine Sovetskaya muzyka devoted the first 115 pages of its new issue to Stalin; only then did it mention Prokofiev. A million people thronged the streets to see Stalin lie in state; only 15 attended Prokofiev’s funeral. A string quartet played beside Stalin’s bier. Its violinist, Veronika Rostropovich, cried inconsolably. ‘Leave me in peace,’ she told her colleagues. ‘I’m not crying for Stalin but for Prokofiev.’

Stalin’s shadow also looms over The Sound of Utopia, Michel Krielaars’s vivid, thoughtful exploration of the plight of composers, musicians and performers under his rule. Stalin was a music lover. He listened to every new classical recording, writing one of three verdicts on the sleeve: ‘good’, ‘average’ or ‘rubbish’. When the singer Vadim Kozin performed at the Kremlin, Stalin joined him on stage for folk songs. But such favour meant nothing: Kozin was arrested in 1944 for homosexuality and became one of the two million prisoners sent to the Kolyma labour camps in the Russian far east.

Krielaars, a Russophile Dutch journalist, has profiled ten artists to illustrate the challenges they faced in their fight for professional and physical survival. Alongside big names such as Prokofiev we also get Kozin, little known in the West, and Klavdiya Shulzenko, ‘the Russian Vera Lynn’, whose ‘The Blue Scarf’ was the defining patriotic song of the Red Army in the second world war. It was blacklisted in 1946, along with hundreds of other ‘doctrineless’ songs.

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The most surprising subject is Tikhon Khrennikov. Personally appointed by Stalin to lead the Union of Composers in 1948 at the age of 34, and widely regarded, in Dmitri Shostakovich’s phrase, as one of ‘Stalin’s wolfhounds’, Khrennikov haunts these pages. Put simply, he controlled whose music was played. As late as the 1970s he was blacklisting young composers, making it impossible for them even to give small private recitals.

But Krielaars is sympathetic. Khrennikov later said of his promotion: ‘When I came home with the news, my wife and I cried about it all night. I had no choice. You just didn’t defy an order from Stalin.’ He suffered from sleeplessness and hallucinations. Once, when Stalin gave him a dressing down, Khrennikov was so terrified he wet himself. ‘He stuck up for his members as much as he could,’ Krielaars writes, ‘even though he was forced to stab them in the back now and again to maintain credibility.’

There is a story here about hope and resilience. The composer Vsevolod Zaderatsky, who served two sentences in the gulags, wrote music there on a stack of blank telegram forms. ‘My father was cheerful by nature,’ Zaderatsky’s son says. ‘Even in the camp, he couldn’t stop himself.’ Moisei Weinberg was so broken by his time in Moscow’s Butyrka prison that, when he was freed after Stalin’s death, he didn’t dare leave his cell. But he kept writing, albeit for films or for the circus. ‘Remember that all his compositions end in a major key,’ a musician explains. ‘He was an optimist at heart.’

But it is the cold, sour fog of fear that predominates. ‘I was constantly being watched and the secret police would just show up at my door,’ Weinberg said. ‘When they finally did lock me up, it came as a relief.’ And with fear came coercion and self-loathing. ‘I am scared to death,’ Shostakovich said. ‘From childhood I have been doing things that I wanted not to do… I am and always will be a whore.’

The threat was capricious. In February 1948 Prokofiev was honoured in a ceremony at the Kremlin. Days later many of his works were banned. It was also indiscriminate. Zaderatsky was a tsarist White Army officer who fought the Bolsheviks. Alexander Mosolov volunteered for the Red Army after the revolution and wrote an opera extolling enforced collectivisation. Both went to the gulags as counter-revolutionaries.

The Sound of Utopia is engagingly written. Krielaars has interviewed friends and family of his subjects, as well as musicians and academics. Those conversations and Krielaars’s own experiences breathe life into his account. In some ways this is apt: Stalin’s tyranny fed on talk, whether careless words or calculated denunciations. Lives were destroyed by it; but here they are remade.

Krielaars ends with the fear that Putin’s Russia is fast retreating to Soviet-era norms of secrecy, denunciation and terror. He quotes an old Russian proverb: nadezhda umirayet posledney, hope dies last. It’s cold comfort indeed.

The next best thing to visiting a really clever friend in New York

I was on the phone to a friend recently, who asked me what I was reviewing. ‘It’s a book by a lady intellectual,’ I began. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘I hope you don’t put that in your review.’ ‘I’m not that stupid,’ I replied, ‘but it is very important that she’s a woman.’

A self-described radical feminist in the 1960s and 1970s, Vivian Gornick says that that flame has died down a bit now (she was 79 when this book was first published ten years ago). Her perspective in this meandering, delightful memoir-cum-essay is still, obviously, feminine – yet there is a kind of detachment; and from what she says about her past life, and her experiences with men, and with love, there always was, in a way. Hence the ‘odd’ in the title.

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For all the ways in which Gornick is an unconventional human being, this book contains some of the best, most keen-sighted writing on love I have ever read – although, to be strictly accurate, she is writing more about what love isn’t, or how it isn’t what you want it to be. For example:

Sometimes I’d feel puzzled about how I would manage life both as an agent of revolution and as a devotee of love. Inevitably, then, a picture formed itself of me on the stage, my face glowing with purpose, and an adoring man in the audience waiting for me to come down into his arms. That seemed to cover all the bases.

Things didn’t pan out like this, but she can see the drily funny side a half a century on. Sometimes it takes that long.

Here she is about her mother:

I learned early that life was either Chekhovian or Shakespearean. In our house there was no contest. My mother lay on a couch in a half-darkened room, one arm flung across her forehead, the other pressed against her breast. ‘I’m lonely!’ she cried…

What I really want to do is quote large chunks like these, since they are self-explanatory and need no further comment. If I lived with someone, I’d be reading bits out to them until they left the room for some peace and quiet. ‘Listen to this, it’s amazing,’ I’d call to their retreating back.

The book is rich in anecdote, and dialogues with waspish friends, neighbours and people on the street. (Not the subway – you don’t do that in New York.) At one point, Gornick sits down in the queue at a drugstore next to a neighbour – ‘Vera, a Trotskyist from way back, who lives in a fourth-floor walk-up… and whose voice is always pitched at the level of soapbox urgency.’ (You picture her already.) They talk about Vera’s late husband: ‘ “One thing I gotta say,” says Vera, “he was a no-good husband but a great lover.”’ Gornick remarks: ‘I can feel a slight jolt in the body of the man sitting beside me.’ In that slight jolt, and her perception of it, is great comedy, and the book is full of it – of how a keen intelligence and situational awareness can only lead to laughter. Gornick is – as she puts it when talking about the conversations she had with a friend until they started irritating each other – ‘fed by the excitement of abstract thought joined to the concreteness of daily life’.

And that daily life has to be New York, for everything one needs is in it. Her view of the world is as confined as Saul Steinberg’s map of America: anything outside NYC might as well not be. This, in the end, is the most important thing about Gornick: that she’s a New Yorker. She’s so much of one that she barely considers the Bronx, where she grew up, to be part of the city. This is really a love letter to a place that saved her. She says of Samuel Johnson:

He hated and feared village life. The closed, silent streets threw him into despair. In the village his reflected presence was missing. Loneliness became unbearable. The meaning of the city is that it made the loneliness bearable.

That reflected presence means, I think, even the quick glances pedestrians give each other; or the fact that you can look out of the window and see hundreds and hundreds of lighted windows across the street.

Very rarely, the abstract thought becomes a little clotted. ‘New York friendships are an education between devotion to the melancholy and attraction to the expressive.’ That’s a lot of words ending in ‘-tion’ for a short sentence, but is it true, and true only for New York? After reflecting – that word again – I think it is. Read this book. It’s the next best thing to actually going to New York to visit a really clever friend.

Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI

00:00 06:48

Mitchell Reiss has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Is this what it felt like in the months before August 1914? Or during the years leading up to September 1939? The discussion around artificial intelligence produces a deep foreboding that we are in the grip of forces largely beyond our control. Are we sleepwalking towards disaster?

That is the feeling I have after reading Genesis, a collaboration by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, and Henry Kissinger, who died, aged 100, soon after completing this book. They have crafted a holistic analysis of the social, political, psychological and even spiritual impacts that a superior machine intelligence would have for humanity. 

We are broadly familiar with AI’s current and future benefits. These machine tools can process massive amounts of data at unnerving speeds. They can select their own goals, learn from their errors, upgrade their algorithms and design things that no human has ever previously imagined. Some experts predict the machines may soon achieve sentience, demonstrating the elements of human consciousness: memory, imagination and self-awareness. 

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We already see AI’s impact across business and in medicine, especially with cancer screenings, drug development and clinical trials. AI is performing human tasks, such as booking holidays, deciding mortgage eligibility and helping determine criminal justice decisions. Enthusiastic techno-optimists gush that it may even help find solutions for intractable global problems such as climate change, the transition to clean energy, global poverty and conflict between nations. 

While the three authors celebrate these developments, they emphasise that there is no instruction manual telling us how to develop AI safely – one that ensures that it serves humanity and does not subordinate it. Many downsides are already evident. AI will disrupt job markets, causing unemployment especially among less skilled white- collar workers. It is also turbo-charging the spread of disinformation, with more than 70 countries already using this technology to undermine democratic institutions and civic cohesion. 

But, Genesis argues, we are running far larger risks that speak to who we are as a species and what it means to be human. If we are approaching the biological limit of our intelligence and are about to be outpaced by AI, what will it mean to share the planet with more intelligent beings? Would we forfeit control over economic decision making?  Over the exercise of the political process? Over the choice to wage war or negotiate peace? And would AI even give us the options? 

The authors realistically accept that research on AI will not stop, given the outsized financial rewards, ego and power at stake. Speed and secrecy are being privileged over safety. There is no consensus on what constitutes unacceptable risk. Laws and regulations cannot keep up with technological advances. Accidents, errors and unintended consequences in developing and applying the technology seem inevitable. There is currently no way to ensure that AI, especially when married to advances in quantum computing and synthetic biology, will not be developed for malevolent ends such as cyber attacks, automated war or engineered pandemics. Further, the competitive nature of the international system means that states will speed ahead as fast as possible, driven by the fear that second place could mean perpetual servitude. 

Genesis is at its most interesting when it imagines how states might overcome their mutual hostility and suspicion and co-operate to control this new force. One proposal is to create a supranational entity that could license AI production facilities, refine datasets and regulate operations. But even if this organisation could somehow be created, would members automatically receive the benefits of AI if they wanted to use the technology to suppress dissent and deny human rights? How would the organisation ensure compliance and punish violators? 

A second proposal is for the United States and China to collaborate in forging a protocol for jointly managing AI’s perils. The two sides held AI meetings this past year, all unproductive. In November, President Biden and President Xi Jinping agreed that there must always be a human in the nuclear chain of command, meaning that decision-making should not be delegated to an AI machine. 

These efforts fall miles short of what is needed to address the catastrophic risks AI poses; yet it is difficult to envision much more progress in the coming years. The US and China are locked in strategic competition across multiple domains, including AI; indeed, the US is trying to slow China’s development by denying it the most advanced AI chips. And even if a bilateral condominium could miraculously be achieved, would other states agree to accept a subordinate position in perpetuity? 

The authors see humanity being at a ‘hinge point of history’, hence the title Genesis, but they don’t seem optimistic. They warn that we have a decade ‘at most’ to get things right and concede that creating a balance and equilibrium among competing states would require ‘a Herculean effort’. 

An abiding focus of Kissinger’s life’s work was the intersection between technology and public policy, starting with his writings in the 1950s on nuclear weapons. He knew that technology alone could not overcome mistrust among states, curb human ambition or eliminate bad actors. Yet, through a combination of thoughtful action and luck, a nuclear holocaust was averted.  Kissinger devoted the final years of his life to bringing China and America together to negotiate a pathway forward on AI. His last book stands as both an impassioned warning and an urgent challenge.

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The golden days of Greenwich Village

This multitudinous chronicle is not the story of the folk music revival. Rather, it’s not only the story of the folk scene in Greenwich Village from the late 1950s through the early 1980s. Ambitiously, sometimes overwhelmingly, but always fascinatingly, David Browne – a senior editor at Rolling Stone – composes his book of interconnected stories stemming from jazz, blues, folk, folk-rock and all the complementing, competing musical genres that could define what’s been played in the basement nightclubs and coffee houses in this small area of New York City since the early 20th century.

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He takes his title from the talkin’ blues, the direct ancestor of rap, and he is, like the writers of those blues, a born storyteller. Gliding from the founding of the Village itself (Greenwich means ‘green village’, so the Village is redundant), through the opening of Max Gordon’s Village Vanguard in February 1935, up to the somewhat idiosyncratic choice of Suzanne Vega on Cornelia Street in the mid-1980s, Browne leaves out very little. He memorialises the venues themselves like a Victorian writer turning a debtors’ prison or house on the high moors into a character, brings into focus musicians only slightly regarded or near-forgotten who deserve every bit of credit he gives them, and celebrates both the living and the dead.

There must be some organising figure for a book this detailed and vast, and, rightly, it is Dave Van Ronk. The Brooklyn-born Van Ronk was a singer, multi-instrumentalist, music historian and scholar, and he knew it all: Robert Johnson’s blues, Scott Joplin’s ragtime, jazz, gospel, ancient ballads, sea shanties, and what had just been written in a cellar or garret by a friend that very week. Toweringly tall, black-haired and bearded, he both generated and dominated the Village’s burgeoning folk scene from the appearance of his first Folkways album, Dave Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues and a Spiritual (1959), when he was 23. Browne ends his book with Van Ronk’s death in 2002 – by which time both folk music and Greenwich Village were already changed utterly.

The Village was so full of activity and vitality, and there are so many names and performances to remember and to celebrate, that the cheek-by-jowliness staggers. Clubs were subterranean crucibles where jazz, folk, blues, crooning, instrumentals, poetry readings and other spoken-word raps swirled in a potent brew of possibilities. Some of the old places are long gone, some have moved to other locations, and some still have live music most nights. Their very names are incantations: Kettle of Fish, Café Figaro, Gerdes (or Gerde’s) Folk City, Bon Soir, the Bitter End, Fat Black Pussycat, the Gaslight, Café Bizarre.

Izzy Young, thank heavens, didn’t take over his family’s bakery in the Bronx, or remain a pre-med student and spend his life as a Brooklyn doctor. Instead, he founded the Folklore Center on MacDougal Street in 1957 and arranged for Bob Dylan to perform uptown at Carnegie Hall (in the Chapter Hall) in 1961. But another early champion of Dylan’s, Pete Seeger, is eerily absent. Without Seeger, there would have been no Greenwich Village folk revival. As a child in the 1960s, I knew Seeger’s voice as well as I knew that of family members, and could sing along with everything from bloody ballads to workers’ anthems. That he lived to be 94, and performed live to sold-out audiences until two months before his death in 2014, does not fit the rise-and-fall theme of Talkin’ Greenwich Village, but it is true, and matters. Happy Traum once told me that without having heard Seeger at the Brooklyn Academy of Music when he was a teenager, he might not have become a folk singer. He’d have stuck with the blues he was already learning from Brownie McGee.

Similarly missing in the action is Paul Clayton, folk superstar, who was, as Dylan recalled of his friend in Chronicles, Vol. 1 (2004), ‘unique – elegiac, very princely – part Yankee gentleman and part Southern rakish dandy. He dressed in black from head to foot and would quote Shakespeare’. Clayton travelled the hills and hollers of the Blue Ridge Mountains singing songs he knew would induce ancient performers to share with him their versions of ballads and original compositions. He recorded hundreds of them for Folkways, but gets just two mentions in this book.

However, Browne’s showcasing of Danny Kalb and the Roches and his superb biographical sketches of many lesser known musicians are commendable. Stepping from these pages, for example, are Sheila Jordan and her friend Herbert Khaury, ‘a stringy-haired, one-man freak show from the Bronx, who played a ukulele, sang in an eerie quaver and had a deep reservoir of knowledge of pre-rock-and-roll history and songs’. Khaury was a performer who first called himself Larry Love, before settling on the alias of Tiny Tim. Richie Havens, Odetta, Len Chandler and other black musicians who experienced both the relative colour-blindness of other Village folksingers and the prejudice of the outside world, the police and locals living near Washington Square, are given credit for both their musicianship and their importance to the civil rights movement.

The ‘beatnik riot’ of 9 April 1961, when the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation rejected musicians’ application for a renewal of the then-required permit to play music in Washington Square, unfolds like a movie. Izzy Young conducted the folkies in ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, but they were rounded up and arrested anyway. The newly arrived Dylan wrote an unpublished, full-on protest song about the riot.

Peter Stampfel (of the joyously named Holy Modal Rounders) recalls his first sight of Dylan in the Village, wearing motorcycle boots and carrying his guitar. ‘I thought, “He’s from New Jersey,” because you only carry your guitar case to get laid.’ Then he heard Dylan sing: ‘His phrasing was rock and roll. I realised a merger [of folk and rock] was absolutely on the table.’ Soon Dylan was being managed by Albert Grossman, a Chicago-born economist who had co-founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. When Dylan ‘went electric’ at that festival in 1965, rock showed its swift, hard upper hand. Fare thee well, folk.

It’s a stretch to conclude Talkin’ Greenwich Village in 2002, perhaps, but the reach of folk music and what Greenwich Village means in popular culture is long indeed. Together with Terri Thal’s memoir My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me (2023), Talkin’ Greenwich Village provides a vivid picture of the folk times of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the long shadows that trail into subsequent decades across the wickerwork of streets and alleys near Washington Square. Feel the power of those singalong-in-the-sun days and smoky club nights every time you pick up a Folkways album – or when you listen to records of ‘folklore’ from Nelly Furtado, Taylor Swift and a legion of musicians unborn in those times but steeped in the old stories.

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The horror of Hungary in the second world war

I suspect Adam LeBor and his publishers must have struggled to come up with the title The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940-1945. The book certainly does what it says on the cover, but its pages contain other Magyar-themed subjects. We are offered a wide-ranging reflection on Hungary in the first half of the 20th century, from the harsh measures of the 1920 Trianon treaty to the devastating arrival of the Soviet army in Budapest in 1944.

LeBor switches between an Olympian view of European geopolitics, trawling diplomatic archives and political memoirs and focusing on individuals – Hungarian aristocrats, Zionists and nightclub singers – to show how history felt on the ground. He is particularly concerned with the fate of Hungarian Jewry.

The central figure in this period of Hungarian history is Admiral Miklos Horthy, the regent. Those who know little about Hungarian history tend to lump him in with the fascist dictators of the era; but Horthy wasn’t a fascist (he banned the Nazis) and he wasn’t a dictator. He was a figure who seemed to have wandered out of an operetta, an admiral without a navy, a regent without a king, who exercised undemocratic power but who presided over a parliamentary democracy.

LeBor, a longtime Budapest resident, is too knowledgeable to make that mistake; and there’s no doubt that the report card standard ‘could have done better’ applies to Horthy, like most leaders. But even historians who give Horthy a break on the fascism front tend to focus on the poverty and racism of Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s (as if those phenomena were unknown in the US, Britain or elsewhere in Europe at the time). Hungary’s anti-Jewish law of 1920, the Numerus Clausus, which limited the intake of Jewish university students is often cited, although this percentage-of-the-population representation is exactly the sort of policy that current DEI zealots are espousing.

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Horthy was a reactionary, who thought the British Empire was rather well run, and an anti-Semite in that he wouldn’t have liked his children to marry anyone Jewish (although it should be remembered that there were Jewish families who wouldn’t have wanted their children to marry Horthys) but who had Jewish friends. He was also, in the best sense of the term, an officer and a gentleman.

His coming to power, after Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic, was followed by the White Terror, in which many Jews, who often had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks, were tortured and killed by Horthy’s supporters, despite his efforts to rein them in. The White Terror’s body count was indeed higher than Bela Kun’s – but then Kun only had 133 days to get liquidating.

Keeping the pro-Nazi nutters in check was one of Horthy’s main concerns, but he had limited success. The prime minister Gyula Gombos, who coined the term ‘Axis’ powers, died in 1936; but there were many others in ministries and the army who felt that Hitler, or at least Germany, was the way to go.

Hungary was in a difficult position when the second world war broke out. Traditionally friendly with Poland, Hungarians helped fleeing Poles, despite German outrage. Later, Allied POWs enjoyed unusual freedom, some French prisoners even working as waiters. LeBor skilfully depicts the war years in Budapest when politicians, diplomats and spies were all playing a role, bluffing. The Germans knew what the Hungarians were doing, and the Hungarians knew they knew. (Spies seem to love spying on other spies more than anything else.)

The war years also exemplified the human fondness for wishful thinking. Horthy hoped he could somehow extricate his country from the conflict, or at least curtail German excesses. The Germans hoped they could get the Hungarians to do their bidding without a messy invasion. The Jews hoped things wouldn’t get worse. Everyone ended up bitterly disappointed – even Adolf Eichmann. Some of the SOE operations that LeBor has investigated would make a good comedy; others not. Overall, they scored nul points in Hungary because they too succumbed to wishful thinking.

The final chapters dealing with the Holocaust, the trains to Auschwitz, the Arrow Cross massacres – when Jews were shot on the banks of the Danube by teenage fascists – and the wholesale carnage of the siege of Budapest as Germans, Hungarians and Soviets battled it out, are inevitably chilling. It was total anarchy, total brutality: murder, rape and starvation. You didn’t want to be there. The story of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews, is well covered; but Wallenberg had some protection as a diplomat, although that status didn’t save him in the end. More amazing was how ordinary Hungarians risked their lives by hiding Jews in their pantries and cellars.

If you have the stomach to read yet more about the war years, Bela Zsolt’s memoir on the Hungarian Holocaust, Nine Suitcases, is the bleakest book I’ve ever read and really should come with a health warning. On the fiction side, there is Sandor Marai’s Liberation, by far his darkest work, soon to be available in English. Written just after the war, it was only published in Hungary in 2000, long after the author’s death, presumably because no one wanted to be reminded about 1944.

A mole in the CIA: The Seventh Floor, by David McCloskey, reviewed

David McCloskey, whose Damascus Station was a brilliant debut, has followed it in quick succession with a Russian-based story, Moscow X, and now The Seventh Floor. The pace of all three books is matched by the speed with which they have been produced; and for all The Seventh Floor’s strengths,the haste is beginning to show.

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Like the earlier two thrillers, it starts with a bang – or rather a crunch, when a Russian spy, called home peremptorily from Greece by his superiors, bites into a disguised cyanide capsule before the State security apparatus can question him. Almost simultaneously, another Russian spook, named Golikov, has a clandestine meeting in Singapore with Sam Joseph, a CIA officer known to us from Moscow X. Golikov tersely warns the American that there is a mole working at the highest level of the Agency; but he is then promptly murdered and Joseph is abducted by the Russians. Despite grotesque, prolonged bouts of interrogation, Joseph manages to persuade the Russians he has been told nothing of importance by Golikov, and is eventually released as part of a spy swap.

Enter Artemis Procter, the aggressive, entirely fearless CIA operative who also figures in the earlier books. Out of the blue, she finds herself cashiered for the failure of an earlier mission; a senior colleague, convinced the Agency has been penetrated, is also axed. But when Procter learns of Golikov’s warning from Joseph, she sets off on an unauthorised hunt for the mole, and soon has a list of four suspects, all with Russian experience and known informally by their peers as the Russia Mafia.

What follows is well written and tautly paced, with many touches that show off McCloskey’s much-vaunted insider knowledge. New characters emerge, including a couple of Russian illegals operating as assassins in the United States, and this nicely leavens the unrelenting hunt for the mole that Procter conducts. The complicated story is deftly handled, though McCloskey might note that Charles McCarry’s The Tears of Autumn, one of the few espionage novels that can be called a masterpiece, has an essentially simple plot.

McCloskey is at pains to acknowledge a debt to John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but certain similarities are so marked that homage tips perilously close to pastiche. As in Tinker Tailor, there is a shortlist of suspects, each of whom are visited and questioned in turn by the investigating Procter; and as in the earlier novel, at Procter’s behest, a co-operating colleague (Joseph), who still has access to headquarters, combs through historical files he has no authorisation to consult.

Sadly, what McCloskey doesn’t take from Le Carré is a flair for brief, brilliantly distinctive characterisation. Metonymy is a minefield for most novelists, but it was mastered by Le Carré, who could create vivid personalities without actually providing very much information. What do we know about George Smiley’s parents or his upbringing? Nothing. Nonetheless, we feel we know Smiley intimately from a few telling details: his tic-like polishing of his spectacles with his necktie, for example, perfectly captures the man’s mix of fastidiousness and mild abstraction.

The Seventh Floor never matches this expert handling of characters, and the suspects themselves are flat and unmemorable, for the most part submerged by the accelerating actions of the plot. The eventual unmasking of the mole (again in a scene reminiscent of Tinker Tailor’s denouement) is anticlimactic, since we don’t have a deep enough connection with the suspects to be surprised.

In three novels and just three years, McCloskey has already reached a high rung on the publishing ladder of spy fiction. A writer of his manifest talent would do well to stop climbing for a time, or at least do so more slowly.

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What price will Israel pay for a ceasefire with Hamas?

As reports swirl of an imminent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Israel stands at a crossroads, grappling with the profound dilemmas that such a deal entails. While the full details of the agreement remain unknown until officially announced, the fragments emerging suggest a complex and controversial arrangement that raises difficult questions: How much is Israel willing to concede for the return of hostages? And what price, in lives and security, will the nation pay in the future?

According to reports, the deal is expected to include the release of 33 hostages defined as “humanitarian cases,” a 42-day ceasefire, and the phased release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Israel will reportedly retain military positions in Gaza during the ceasefire but may face demands for withdrawal from certain strategic areas over time. Critically, Hamas is said to have demanded the body of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the October 7th attack, a demand Israel has reportedly refused outright.

Hamas, for its part, has signaled readiness to proceed with the agreement after securing concessions from Israel. These include the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, a move fraught with emotional and security implications given Israel’s painful history with such deals.

The emerging agreement reportedly includes the establishment of buffer zones within Gaza, designed to enhance security for Israeli communities near the border. These zones would create a physical separation between Hamas-controlled areas and Israel, preventing militants from easily launching attacks or infiltrating Israeli territory. Reports suggest that the buffer zone will extend along the western Negev and southern areas of Gaza, with Israel retaining military presence in these zones throughout the ceasefire period. Additionally, security arrangements will allow the passage of Gazan civilians from northern to southern areas via designated corridors. 

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Israel’s experience with previous prisoner exchanges looms large in the public consciousness. The 2011 deal to release Gilad Shalit – a single soldier abducted by Hamas – came at the cost of freeing 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Among them was Yahya Sinwar, who went on to become one of Hamas’ most powerful leaders and the architect of the October 7th atrocities that killed over 1,200 Israelis and led to the current war.

This historical context sharpens the dilemmas surrounding the current negotiations. While the desire to bring hostages home is deeply ingrained in Israeli society and policy, the long-term consequences of releasing dangerous individuals remain a source of anguish. As one official put it, deals of this nature invariably carry a “human price” that is paid in the years to come, often in blood.

Within Israel’s government, opposition to the deal is mounting, exposing deep fractures in the ruling coalition. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has labeled the deal a “surrender to Hamas,” calling for his right wing Otzma Yehudit party to join forces with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to block the agreement. Smotrich, for his part, has decried the deal as “a catastrophe for Israel’s national security” but has yet to clarify whether he would withdraw from the coalition in protest. While these two men are often dismissed in the Western media as far-right villains, their concerns are shared by many in society, despite the desperate wish for the hostages to be saved from Palestinian imprisonment and torture. 

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, appears confident he can weather the storm. The deal does not require Knesset approval, and Netanyahu has long proven adept at navigating political crises within his government. He likely believes that Smotrich will voice opposition but ultimately remain in the coalition, particularly given the broader geopolitical opportunities Netanyahu has championed under the incoming Trump administration.

Yet Netanyahu’s confidence is not without risk. If Smotrich and his allies were to quit the coalition, it could trigger the government’s collapse, potentially paving the way for new elections at a time of national crisis. Balancing these internal pressures against the moral imperative to secure the hostages’ release is a delicate and unenviable task.

The dilemmas extend far beyond politics. On the one hand, the government faces immense pressure from the families of the hostages, as well as a weary public desperate for resolution after months of devastating conflict. Every additional day the hostages remain in captivity deepens the collective trauma of a nation already reeling from loss.

On the other hand, the security risks are staggering. The release of Palestinian prisoners – many of whom were involved in acts of terrorism – raises fears of future attacks, particularly if they return to Gaza or the West Bank with renewed resolve. Critics argue that a deal of this magnitude could embolden Hamas, undermining Israel’s military achievements in the war and complicating its broader goal of neutralising the group’s threat.

The ceasefire itself presents further challenges. A 42-day halt in hostilities may provide much-needed relief for civilians on both sides but could also allow Hamas to regroup, rearm, and consolidate its hold over Gaza. Israel’s military leadership has warned against prematurely halting the offensive, arguing that Hamas must be decisively weakened before any lasting peace can be achieved.

As Israel teeters on the brink of this monumental decision, the stakes could not be higher. The hostages’ return would undoubtedly bring joy and relief to their families, yet the long-term costs –both in security and political stability – remain uncertain.

Israel must grapple with sadly all too familiar question of priorities: Is the immediate moral imperative to save lives worth the potential risks to national security and future stability? And does agreeing to such terms signal strength in its humanity or weakness in its resolve?

Whatever the outcome, the implications of this deal will reverberate for years to come. Israel is no stranger to difficult decisions, but this one – like so many before it – forces the nation to confront the very core of its identity, its values, and its survival. And that respect for humanity is seen by many of Israel’s enemies as its kryptonite – a weakness which will only make future hostage taking more likely and more extreme. Only time will tell whether this gamble will lead to resolution or regret.

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The plot to ban X in France

Clara Chappaz is the minister delegate for Artificial Intelligence and the digital economy in the government of Emmanuel Macron. At the weekend she appeared on a television discussion entitled ‘Trump-Musk: Are we ready?’

Chappaz, 35, is very much a Macronist, an entrepreneur who did her MBA at Harvard Business School before launching a successful start-up.

She expressed her growing concern about the direction certain social media platforms were headed, and the consequences for millions of French people who use them. ‘We have to make sure that wrong opinions are taken off the platforms,’ she declared.

The programme’s moderator interrupted and wondered what constituted a ‘wrong opinion’. A look of embarrassment swept the face of Chappaz. She had, of course, meant to say ‘wrong information’.

Chappaz’s faux pas occurred just days after Macron had warned France’s ambassadors about Elon Musk, declaring in an address: ‘Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement.’

As I wrote for Coffee House, Musk is not the leader of an international reactionary movement, he is simply challenging the progressive orthodoxy that has prevailed in the West for much of this century. Their standard bearers despise him for it, and in France this hatred reveals how much Macron’s centrists have in common with the radical left.

They may differ economically – an entrepreneur like Chappaz isn’t going to have much in common with the communists in Jean-Luc Melenchon’s New Popular Front coalition – but socially there is little to separate them. They champion identity politics, they are in favour of free movement and they see no harm in censorship if it silences those opposed to progressivism.

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It explains why Macron’s Renaissance party sided with Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise in last year’s parliamentary elections. They were willing to overlook the party’s growing anti-Semitism, which included praising Hamas as a resistance movement. These flaws were insignificant compared to those of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; they are ‘far-right’, which really means they are opposed to progressive dogma.

A judge will decide in March whether to disqualify Le Pen from political life for up to five years. Her alleged crime is to have misused EU funds. She claims it is a political witch-hunt, which is an apt description for the manner in which Paris’s progressive elite are going after Musk.

Marine Tondelier, the leader of the Green party, has demanded that X/Twitter be ‘banned in Europe’ as it was a destabilising influence under Elon Musk. ‘We must act strongly to protect information on our territory,’ she said.

Her call-to-arms came a few days after she and her party had vowed – on a post on X – that they would ‘always be Charlie’, a reference to the staff of the satirical magazine who were murdered by Islamists ten years ago.

French progressives are flexible in their approach to free speech. They’re all for it, as long as they agree with it.

There have been other calls to quit or censor Musk’s platform from centrist and left-wing politicians. The leader of the Socialist party, Olivier Faure, said it should be a collective decision; ‘We should all leave X together, and not one after the other’.

Yaël Braun-Pivet, one of Macron’s most loyal lieutenants, and the president of the National Assembly, said in an interview that Europe should develop its own ‘sovereign social networks… governed by our rules and which we would control for our public debates.’

‘Control’ is the key word. Europe’s elite have lost control of the political narrative. In the first decade of this century there was no X, no podcasts and no ‘rogue’ television stations. It was easier for governments to control the discourse. This didn’t stop the emergence of anti-progressive (or ‘populist’) politicians but it was possible to starve them of oxygen.

When Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the French presidential election in 2002, for example, his opponent, the incumbent president Jacques Chirac, refused to appear in the traditional televised debate. ‘Faced with intolerance and hatred, no debate is possible,’ said Chirac.

Chirac was the president who in 2005 – supported by most of parliament – ignored the result of the referendum on the EU Constitution. So what if it had been rejected by 55 per cent of the population?

Two decades on and a large swathe of the Paris elite is as contemptuous of the proles as ever. They must be controlled, and corrected, so that in future they hold only the right opinions.

Tulip Siddiq named in second corruption probe

When it rains for the Labour lot, it pours. Pressure is piling on Labour minister Tulip Siddiq to resign from her anti-corruption role as it now transpires the City minister has been named in a second Bangladesh corruption inquiry linked to her aunt’s corrupt regime. The UK Anti-Corruption Coalition has slammed Siddiq for remaining in post, insisting that the Labour MP ‘currently has a serious conflict of interests’. Oh dear.

As reported by the Times, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission has claimed that Siddiq ‘reportedly used her influence and special powers’ to influence her aunt and former authoritarian premier of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina to allocate land to family members. Deputy director of the commission Muhammad Salahuddin claimed that the Labour anti-corruption minister found out that her aunt was using her power to allocate land plots – and intervened ‘to arrange similar allocations of plots in the same project’ in the names of family members.

This development is the latest in a series of negative news stories about the City minister. It comes after reports in December that Siddiq is also being investigated in an embezzlement probe, with the Labour MP alleged to have helped her aunt broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a nuclear power plant. Then in January, multiple reports about London properties gifted to Siddiq and her family by figures with links to her aunt’s regime raised eyebrows – prompting the Labour minister to refer herself to the government’s adviser on ministerial standards.

For her part, Siddiq has denied the claims made against her in both of the ACC’s probes, while her spokesperson insisted:

Tulip has self-reported to the independent adviser on ministerial standards to independently establish the facts on these matters. She is clear that she has done nothing wrong. It would be inappropriate to comment further while that process is ongoing.

Last month, Downing Street was adamant that the Prime Minister had confidence in his anti-corruption minister. Will this confidence will be shaken by yet another bout of bad press for Siddiq? Stay tuned…

Europe’s car industry is under attack on all fronts

It is half a century since Britain’s native car industry embarked on its long, painful decline, precipitated by Austin Allegros with rear windows falling off, endless strikes over the length of tea breaks and terrible commercial decisions such as to cede the hatchback market to overseas competition. But where Britain led, Germany and France now seem to be following. How much longer before names like Peugeot, Renault, and even Volkswagen, either disappear or become reduced to mere badges affixed to Chinese-designed and produced vehicles?

The retreat of the European car industry has cropped up from time to time in recent months. In October, Volkswagen announced, for the first time, its intention to close three plants in Germany. Although they were later reprieved, it will be at reduced production levels – and with the unions agreeing to 35,000 job losses by 2030. 

There is no hiding from the scale of problems being faced by Europe’s car industry. In France, where it is extremely difficult to close factories because employers are forced to negotiate with workers’ councils before any kind of restructuring, 170 factories nevertheless shut down, taking with them 24,000 jobs. Many of the closed plants were owned by companies which supply the car industry, like Bosch and Michelin. Stellantis, which before Christmas announced the closure of Vauxhall’s plant in Luton, has shrunk plants across France and Italy. Since 2021, it has shed thousands of other jobs.

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Europe’s car industry is under attack on three fronts. On the home front, mandatory electric car sales targets are running well ahead of interest from buyers. The German car industry, in particular, has been caught napping. Hybrid technology was developed in Germany, yet the lead was surrendered in the 2000s as German car makers concentrated on diesels instead – a market which was undermined when Volkswagen was caught out cheating on emissions tests. The irony is that even with mandatory targets staring them in the face, the European car industry has been unable to develop electric vehicles which buyers find attractive; meanwhile in China, where car-makers are not burdened with such targets, manufacturers have succeeded in coming up with affordable electric cars. There, pure electric vehicles took a 25 per cent share of the market last year – a percentage which European carmakers would love to achieve.

On the Chinese front, buyers have turned away from luxury European cars, with a serious impact on overall exports. Between 2016 and 2023, German car exports fell by a quarter, taking them back to 1990s levels. Proposals by the EU to protect European producers by imposing higher tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars have been opposed by the German car industry because they realise it would kill off exports to China for good.

Then, on the US front, Donald Trump’s threat of higher tariffs is in danger of delivering another knock. European carmakers are already suffering from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which offers bungs to US buyers of US-made cars.

Europe’s car industry might seem impregnable. For the moment, European streets are still full of European-made cars. But then the same was true in Britain in the early 1970s: that didn’t stop the industry falling on its knees a decade later. The signs are there that French and German carmakers are heading for a similar fall.

Spain will regret its 100 per cent expat property tax

They drive up prices. Rents go through the roof. And the locals can no longer afford a home. The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is so fed up with wealthy expats inflating the property market he is planning a 100 per cent tax on anyone from outside the EU buying a home in Spain. Of course, that might prove popular in the short term – but Spain will pay a high price for slamming the door shut on well-off foreigners. 

Any who dreamt of buying a small place on the Costa del Sol or in the hills of Catalonia can probably forget about it. Very soon they will face a 100 per cent additional tax, a rate of effective stamp duty that even Rachel Reeves might consider a bit steep. Since it can’t be recouped when you sell the property, it will effectively close the Spanish market to foreigners. You either rent or go elsewhere.

Of course, with soaring property prices, and a shortage of places to live, it is easy to see what Sanchez is getting at. People can’t afford housing and rich foreigners are an easy target just as they are in the UK. Even so, it is still a big mistake. 

First, the numbers are tiny. An estimated 27,000 Spanish properties were bought by non-EU residents last year, with the British retirement crowd only a small proportion of that. For a country with a total population of 48 million that is a tiny percentage. Most of them are located in a handful of cities. To pretend driving them out will make any difference to the average Spaniard is just ridiculous. 

Next, the expats bring investment and jobs. Spain has managed to expand significantly faster than the rest of Europe over the last few years, with a 2.7 per cent growth rate last year. The money the expats bring into the country has not been the sole explanation for that. But it has certainly helped Spain modernise and internationalise its economy, especially given that it is globetrotting investors who have been moving to Spain in recent years, and not just retirees looking for some sunshine. Like much of Europe, including the UK, the real housing problem in Spain is that it does not build enough, and it has too many low-skilled immigrants. Closing the country to wealthy expats might win a few votes – but it is not going to address the real problem. 

Will the AfD’s deportation pledge win over German voters?

Next month’s German federal election on 23 February revolves around the disputed meaning of a single toxic word: ‘remigration’. Until the current fiercely fought campaign began, the word was an unmentionable taboo in German politics for obvious historical reasons, since, according to left-wing linguists, it suggested comparison between the deadly forced deportation of Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust with the way that unwelcome immigrants are treated in today’s Germany.

But at the weekend that taboo was shattered by Alice Weidel, co-leader of the hard right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, when she used the ‘verboten’ word while launching the insurgent party’s election campaign in its East German heartland. Weidel – who is on the moderate wing of her party and lives in Switzerland herself with her Sri Lankan woman partner – promised that if the AfD won a share of power, their government would close Germany’s borders and begin mass deportations within 100 days. ‘If that means “remigration” then call it “remigration”,’ she added to applause. 

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Weidel was threatening to deport migrants who have been convicted of crimes, or referring to wider categories of ethnically foreign people – even those born in Germany. The vagueness may be deliberate: Weidel’s way of avoiding details when telling her supporters what they want to hear – that a government with the AfD in it will take tough action against immigrants. 

Weidel has been successfully wooing the support of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, in long trans-Atlantic phone calls. As a result, Musk tweeted on X that the AfD represents Germany’s ‘last hope’. The high-tech billionaire, who will be President Trump’s efficiency tsar, also wrote an op-ed article in Die Welt newspaper over the festive period endorsing the insurgents.

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But although the AfD is running second in the election race on around 22 per cent to the centre right CDU/CSU on 30 per cent, it has next to no chance of joining a government, however well it performs at the polls. This is because all the mainstream German parties have built a ‘Brandmauer’ (firewall) against the party, refusing to work with the newcomers at all levels of government, local and national.

The AfD’s growth since it’s foundation in 2013 has been so spectacular, and so worried are voters about immigration, that the man who is almost certain to actually become Chancellor next month, Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right CDU, has also played with the ‘remigration’ concept – albeit in a different way to Weidel. In an interview with the Welt am Sonntag newspaper at the weekend, Merz said that a CDU-led government would ‘at the very least’ consider revoking the German citizenship of naturalised migrants convicted of crimes, though he stopped short of threatening to deport them.

Merz, a 69-year old businessman and wealthy commercial lawyer, has shifted his party to the right of the former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, who admitted more than a million Syrian refugees to the country in 2014. The AfD are snapping at the heels of the CDU after topping the polls last year in local state elections in eastern Germany, but so far Merz has refused to crack the anti-AfD firewall, and has vowed to act against any CDU branch that considers cooperating with them.

If he maintains that stance after the election he will be forced into a coalition with either the Left-wing Social Democrats of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or the Greens, both polling around 15 per cent, as his only other potential partner, the pro business Liberal FDP, looks unlikely to win enough votes to make it back into the Bundestag Parliament at all. 

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Austria, a similar firewall erected against the hard right Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ) has collapsed. Herbert Kickl, the party’s controversial leader, looks likely to become the first FPÖ Chancellor in the Austrian republic’s history.

The FPÖ won last autumn’s election on a platform of curbing immigration and cracking down on immigrant rights and benefits. Kickl’s rhetoric on the subject was deemed so inflammatory by the other parties that after he won the election they tried to form a government without him. However, after their efforts collapsed last week, the centre right Chancellor Karl Nehammer resigned, and President Van Der Bellen ordered Nehammer’s successor as interim Chancellor, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, to begin negotiating with the FPÖ to invite it into the government as senior partner with Schallenberg’s centre-right People’s party (ÖVP).

Although the Austrian situation mirrors that in Germany – with immigration topping the political agenda of voters’ angst in both – in Germany, the hard right AfD is still not yet seen as ‘salonfähig’ (respectable in polite society). It is being firmly held at bay, and is even being investigated by Germany’s internal intelligence agency for suspected banned neo-Nazi attitudes and ties and using their slogans. But in a democracy, if the AfD as expected increases its support on a national level next month, it may not be possible to keep it out in the cold for much longer.

Labour MPs turn on Starmer over grooming gangs

Will Keir Starmer have to change his tune on a public inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal? Just last week, the Prime Minister appeared to suggest those calling for a new inquiry into grooming gangs were jumping on a ‘far-Right bandwagon’. However, since then – and following a backlash over the comment – Starmer appears to be slowly changing his position. At Prime Minister’s Questions, Starmer suggested everyone was entitled to their own opinion on whether there should be an inquiry into the scandal between 1997 and 2013, which saw children as young as 11 raped and trafficked by gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani descent.

Now Starmer’s position appears to be softening further as his own MPs start to break rank on the issue. On Monday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said that while Starmer’s opposition remained, the government ‘will be guided and led by the victims and survivors on this’. The comments came after Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham, became the latest Labour politician to back calls for an inquiry. Champion, who faced a backlash in her party when she previously spoke out about grooming gangs, said ‘nothing less than a national inquiry into the failings of those in authority to prevent and be accountable for their failings’ would restore faith in the police and local councils.

Meanwhile, Paul Waugh, the MP for Rochdale, has said would back an inquiry if supported by the victims. Both Waugh and Champion represent areas that were grooming hotspots. Champion had appeared to back Starmer’s position that there would be no inquiry. Other Labour politicians to call for an inquiry include Dan Carden and the Manchester metro mayor Andy Burnham. It comes as both Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch keep the pressure up: on Saturday, Farage welcomed grooming gangs survivor Elizabeth Harper to the stage at the Reform North West Conference. On Monday, Badenoch met with Harper along with survivors from Oldham.

If Starmer does not change tack, the issue is likely to become a running sore. Farage has said his Reform party will fund their own inquiry if the government fails to act. The fact that Labour politicians are changing their positions on this issue after a weekend in their constituencies suggests that voter pressure could also be a factor here when it come to what the Labour leadership does next.

Reform neck and neck with Labour, poll reveals

Uh oh. 2025 hasn’t gotten off to the best start for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot and YouGov’s first Westminster voting intention poll since the July election is unlikely to brighten the mood in No. 10.

The new poll reveals that support for Starmer’s army has plummeted nine points in the survey with just over a quarter of Brits backing the government lot – while Nigel Farage’s Reform party has seen its support soar by ten points to leave it almost neck and neck with Labour. Kemi Badenoch’s Tories have lost two points, while the canvassing of 2,279 adults – carried out between 12-13 January – shows the Lib Dems and the Greens both gained one. How very interesting.

In a further blow for Sir Keir’s Starmtroopers, YouGov found that only half of those who backed Labour in the 2024 election would stick with the reds next time, with the Lib Dems, Tories and Reform looking to gain from disillusioned Labour voters. While five per cent of 2024 Labour voters would go with Reform next time, YouGov’s polling suggests Farage’s group could see as many as 15 per cent of Tory voters jump ship. Watch out Kemi…

And among the over 50s, it’s clear Sir Keir is struggling. Reform leads Labour by five points in the 50-64 age group, while Nige’s lot enjoy a whopping 16 point lead among those aged 65 years old and above. Labour certainly has its work cut out winning back that silver vote, eh?

While the survey won't make for pleasant reading in Downing Street, Mr S imagines the mood in Reform HQ will be rather more jubilant. With local elections are just around the corner, the surge in support for Farage's party bodes well – and is another confidence boost for Nige, who revealed this year he has prime ministerial ambitions for 2029. Will Reform continue to entice supporters away from its establishment rivals? Watch this space…

The ‘grooming gangs’ delusion is finally being shattered

The re-eruption of the rape gangs scandal has shone a dazzlingly bright light on the language that makes us flinch and fluster, and clutch at euphemistic straws. For years, the mass sexual abuse of thousands of vulnerable girls in towns across England has been blamed on ‘grooming gangs’. But this euphemism hardly does justice to this appalling scandal.

In the last fortnight, there has been a shift to a different, more accurate term – ‘rape gangs’ – that better describes who was responsible. This change in terminology is long overdue. And while it offers few crumbs of comfort to the victims, it is good that people are – finally – beginning to face up to the facts of a story that shames modern Britain.

The grooming aspect of the crimes is, no doubt, an important factor. But ‘grooming’ is too soft and obscuring and polite a term that allows us to bury our heads in the sand of what happened in living memory in our country. Grooming is something that happens to poodles in parlours. It does not confront the full horror of the crimes involved. It allows our eyes and ears to slide away. It’s a deceit that the polite middle classes have willingly participated in.

The description of the racial identity of the perpetrators – who have for years been described as ‘Asian’ – is another example of the way we’ve allowed language to fail to fully describe this scandal. ‘Asian grooming gangs’ is a mealy-mouthed phrase; it’s fooled nobody with its attempt at nicety and avoidance. We all know what that word means in that context, to the extent that it’s been part of the frantic looking away and covering up the hard and very unpleasant and difficult truth. 

Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who has eschewed the normal use of words of avoidance, labelling the perpetrators ‘Pakistani gangs’, has caused several other MPs and commentators to have conniptions, rolling their eyes and almost literally clutching at their pearls.

This reluctance of using the word Pakistani in this context is something that has evolved gradually over recent years in modern Britain. Our fear of offending others has left us terrified of using terms to identify a person, or group’s, background, even when this is an accurate way of describing them. The taboo about the simple descriptor ‘Pakistani’ has snowballed since my childhood. Hearing it used – in any context – still makes me feel like I’m in a plummeting lift, containing as it does its diminutive form, the use of which correlates with violence and racism. When I was a child, older people often casually spoke of ‘Paki shops’ with no trace of opprobrium. It was an appalling term that we now rightly see as unacceptable. But there’s no doubt that this realisation has made people in Britain squeamish about even using the word ‘Pakistani’.

It’s precisely this kind of nicety and squeamishness – when applied to simple descriptors, in fact – that is a part of what has enabled the rape gang scandal to fester so dangerously.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently had an attack of the vapours, telling the Guardian that ‘irresponsible and coarse public discourse’ might incite mass violence. Hang on. ‘Don’t say anything or the proles will kick off’ is surely a big reason why the rape gangs got away with it for so long in the first place. Mass violence – the rapes and any number of terrorist outrages – has already occurred in Britain. And while Streeting condemns what happened as ‘sickening’, why does he seem so concerned, in Minority Report-style, about future crimes that might happen – maybe, possibly – rather than crimes that actually have been or are actually being committed?

This fear ties in with another factor: the class-ridden supposition that the British white working class has little self-control, and could go on a rampage at the drop of an ill-chosen sentence. My own connection to that background is – like Streeting’s – much eroded by years and custom, but that implication still makes me furious. The British white working class have, in fact, behaved pretty impeccably considering the provocations, the constant goading from their supposed betters over the years.

The last couple of weeks have been very strange; it’s as if everybody has woken up from a dream. The nonsense and self-delusion and moral cowardice over the rape gangs has been swept away, and it’s hard to pinpoint why. What we need now is hard, factual honesty, and if that means looking things square in the face and addressing problems by name, so be it. We can take it. And the survivors deserve it, at long last.