How Macron’s ‘macho’ act fell apart

On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron was urging his fellow Europeans to use a ‘bazooka’ against Donald Trump in response to his tariff threat. Within 24 hours the President of France was alone in the trenches with his bazooka as Keir Starmer, Giorgia Meloni and Friedrich Merz all opted for jaw jaw and not war war.

Macron’s macho response to Trump’s tariffs was in keeping with the portrait of the president of France detailed in a new book. Nero at the Élysée is a damning account of a young man who came to office in 2017 with so much hope but who will leave as the most hated president of the Fifth Republic. The book is written by two respected journalists, both of whom believed that Macron was the man to reinvigorate France in 2017. Nearly a decade later they are as disenchanted with the rest of the country with a president who, in their words, has ‘plunged the country into a nosedive’.

No one doubts that Macron is a highly intelligent man but he was a political novice when he was elected to office, and he made the mistake of surrounding himself not with wise and experienced advisors but with weak yes-men of his own generation.

And they are all men. According to the book, Macron has formed a ‘masculinist circle made up of men he gets on with. It’s not homosexual, but guys who enjoy each other’s company and drink red wine together’.

Women have featured in Macron’s various governments but they been rather token appointments, such as Elisabeth Borne, who served as PM between 2022 and 2024, the only female among his seven premiers. Macron’s five home secretaries have been men, as have his four finance ministers and just one of his four foreign affairs ministers was a woman, for a brief 18 month period.

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Installed in the Élysée Palace, Macron sought to cultivate a machismo air, in marked contrast to his hapless predecessor, Francois Hollande, who was nicknamed ‘Flamby’ on account of his resemblance to a popular wobbly blancmange.

From the outset Macron displayed a penchant for dressing up in military uniform when he visited his armed forces. Once he appeared as a Gallic ‘Top Gun’ during a tour of an air base and on another occasion he did a turn as a submarine commander.

The French rolled their eyes but they tolerated the fancy dress whims of their president in the early days; they still had faith that he was the right man to fix their country.

That faith has evaporated. Macron’s approval rating is down to 12 per cent and the vast majority have long since tired of his machismo. This is the president who talks tough against Putin and Trump, but is terrified of upsetting the Algerian government. The French agree with the Chinese regime’s nickname for their president: Macaroon – hard on the outside but soft in the centre.

No one appears to enjoy mocking the preposterousness of Macron more than Donald Trump. On Tuesday the American president released the contents of a private text message he had recently received from Macron about Greenland; then he threatened to hit France with a 200 per cent tariff on wines and champagne if Macron doesn’t join his Board of Peace.

Bullying? Yes, but Trump is also calling Macron’s tough guy bluff. In the past Trump has poked fun at Macron’s English accent and last year he humiliated him during the Gaza peace conference in Egypt. As world leaders smirked on stage, Trump wondered aloud why Macron was sitting in the audience keeping a ‘low-key’ profile. Everyone knew the answer: the political chaos in France, the collapse of another Macron government, all the result of his reckless decision to call a snap election in the summer of 2024.

The day after Macron dissolved parliament and sent the French to the polls, he was heard to boast to an  acquaintance: ‘I’ve pulled the pin and lobbed my grenade right in the middle of them. Now let’s see how they cope.’ France hasn’t coped well. Now he is urging Europe to fire a bazooka at Donald Trump. Macron the macho never learns.  

Trump slams Starmer’s Chagos deal

Oh dear. Less than 24 hours after Keir Starmer did his big Hugh Grant act over Greenland, Donald Trump has decided to make the Prime Minister’s life eve worse. The US President has overnight turned his guns on the Chagos deal, which is currently in the final stages of parliamentary scrutiny. Trump wrote on Truth Social that:

Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness. These are International Powers who only recognize STRENGTH, which is why the United States of America, under my leadership, is now, after only one year, respected like never before. The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired. Denmark and its European Allies have to DO THE RIGHT THING. Thank you for your attention to this matter. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

Truly Bismarckian in its appreciation of great power politics. Trump’s U-turn is one in the eye for Jonathan Powell and all those Labour backbenchers who have spent months going out there and citing US support as a reason for this deal to go through. Will Trump’s change of heart convince them to change their minds? Don’t count on it…

What does Bridget Phillipson have against free speech?

It is easy to forget that, under a quirk of the UK legal system, if you want to get the law changed it is often not enough simply to get legislation passed. Most Acts of Parliament state that their provisions come into force not immediately, or even on a given date, but when a ministerial order is issued. Supposedly aimed at flexibility and the ability to squish boring bureaucratic bugs before they bite, it also gives governments an effort-free way to annul legislation they don’t like. No need to repeal it: just don’t activate it. It will remain in limbo: law, yes, but still legal dead wood.

This technique has just been used against academics and students complaining at efforts to limit what they can say on campus. An embarrassing open letter from 350 senior academics pointing this out (full disclosure: I was one) has just landed on the desk of Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. 

For years, despite the existence of a few technical legal protections for academic freedom, there hasn’t in practice been much a student, teacher or speaker can do when told to shut up by a screaming mob, a complaisant administrator or a hectoring HR department murmuring the words, ‘our duty of care.’ The Conservatives’ Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, would have been a remedy. It was passed in mid-2023 in the face of virulent opposition from a higher education establishment which loved its existing licence to do (or not do) very much as it pleased. Not only would it have let those denied free speech sue, it would have required the OfS (Office for Students) to investigate free speech complaints and recommend action.

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Unfortunately the Tories then fatally dragged their feet. The ministerial order activating these vital protections took effect from August 1, 2024. Following the election in July a delighted Bridget Phillipson unceremoniously signed a paper revoking it, bringing the whole thing to a crashing halt and leaving free speech victims back where they were.

An exercise in political payback and opportunism? Of course. Despite Bridget Phillipson’s fatuous official excuse for the screeching stop, that the free speech protections were a ‘hate speech charter,’ the real object was beyond doubt. Vice-chancellors and university bigwigs, rarely if ever Tory adherents, had been quietly bending Labour MPs’ ears for months urging the stymying of the legislation. And that’s before you factor in that much of Labour’s intellectual support comes from precisely those academics in the forefront of the movement to constrain academic speech. It also allowed the government to stand back from what it saw as demeaning – and potentially embarrassing – culture wars.

Nevertheless it was a miscalculation. In response to the halting of the legislation over 600 highly-placed professors publicly stated that the extra free speech protections weren’t culture war flummery and actually mattered. Phillipson partly climbed down. The ability to sue had to go, she said. But there would be a complaints scheme after all. There just had to be a few changes. The OfS should have no duty, only a discretion, to handle complaints, and then not from students. Unfortunately, she added, this would require further legislation, which would have to wait its turn.

That last point lets the cat out of the bag. It’s now clear that Bridget Phillipson has actually decided to double down on preserving the comfortable university status quo. That she will expend much energy on pushing for legislation seems unlikely: sorry, but parliamentary time is precious, don’t you know. And even the scheme does materialise, one suspects there will be little threat to the status quo. Students will still in practice be expected to knuckle under and obey orders to shut up when they raise awkward questions about gender theory and someone else shouts the magic word ‘I feel unsafe’.

What now? The open letter may help, particularly as the 350 signatories included three Nobel prize-winners: it also shows that the sensible academic community is very suspicious of letting universities mark their own homework. But this is also an open goal for the Tories and Reform. Voters, especially the just-about-managing, have little time for woke causes and, crucially, even less for the idea that if their child goes to college he will be prevented from saying what he thinks (and possibly what they think too). Keep pushing, and you never know: there might even be another U-turn by a government desperate to avoid further unpopularity. Stranger things have happened.

Keir Starmer will regret approving China’s mega-embassy

Keir Starmer is poised to give the go-ahead for China’s new mega-embassy near the Tower of London – the biggest diplomatic mission in Europe and a ‘nest of spies’ in the eyes of its opponents. But this will not be the end of the story. A legal challenge seems certain to follow, and the decision will be seen by critics as further evidence of Starmer trying to cosy up to Beijing at the expense of national security. In addition, the timing could not be worse, given the turbulence in geopolitics and strained relations with Trump’s America.

The decision is expected as early as today, with Starmer claiming Britain’s intelligence agencies have raised no formal objections. This is in spite of the embassy’s proximity to sensitive fibre optic cables servicing the City of London and the reported existence of dozens of secret rooms, including an underground chamber in close proximity to the cables.

Starmer’s decision to give permission for the build was supported at the weekend by Ciaran Martin, the respected former head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre. He argued that MI5 and GCHQ would have been asked to make highly classified assessments of the risks and would not allow the project to go ahead if the risks were unmanageable. He also played down revelations about the secret rooms, saying all embassies had secure areas for conducting sensitive business.

This may be the case, but this is also an increasingly hostile China, with a proven track record of rampant cyber (and other) espionage and intimidation of overseas opponents. Hong Kong exiles, who were out in force on Saturday at a protest outside Royal Mint Court, where the embassy will be built, are especially concerned that they might be targeted and that secret detention facilities are being prepared in the bowels of the building.

The geopolitical sensitivities surrounding the embassy were underlined at the weekend when Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, told the Sunday Times that the security threats ‘seem real’. In saying so, he was reiterating warnings from the White House last year. Starmer has reportedly also had to reassure other anxious allies about the security risks. Given that President Trump’s designs on Greenland are justified by the threat of increased Chinese and Russian activity, handing Beijing an enhanced espionage base in London will hardly be well received.

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The embassy decision will reinforce the impression that Britain’s China policy (as far as one is identified) is spineless and adrift, motivated solely by the forlorn hope of economic returns. Last year, government advisers were accused of torpedoing a high-profile spy trial to avoid embarrassing China – an accusation they denied. The government has also been accused of fudging a much-hyped ‘audit’ of China policy that was supposed to provide some clarity but instead was largely classified. Ministers also refused to place China in the top tier of a new foreign influence registration scheme, which would have required greater scrutiny of those acting on Beijing’s behalf.

Ministers have tied themselves in knots over describing China as a threat – even though it self-evidently is – and have instead stressed economic engagement. ‘The scale of the opportunity in China is immense,’ Starmer told the Lady Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall in December, suggesting that not to engage was a ‘dereliction of duty’ – a highly debatable assertion, given China’s fragile domestic economy and mercantilist trade policies.

Whatever their stance on the embassy, Britain’s intelligence agencies have become increasingly alarmed at the scale of Chinese espionage and influence operations in the country. Shortly before Christmas, MI5 issued an alarm over spying at Westminster, warning MPs, peers and parliamentary staff that they were being targeted. Ministers also confirmed that Foreign Office computers had been hacked. While analysts privately accused China, the government did not do so publicly.

Approval of the embassy this week will be only the latest chapter in a long and sorry saga that began in 2018 with the £255 million purchase by China of the former royal mint site, where coins were minted from 1809 to 1967. Edward Lister (since ennobled as Lord Udny-Lister), a close aide to Boris Johnson, helped broker the deal and was paid both by the property firm representing Beijing and by the developer that sold the site. The British government insisted Johnson’s trusted adviser had declared his interests as required and there were no conflicts of interest. The then Chinese ambassador to London personally thanked Lister and ‘spoke highly’ of his ‘effort’ in securing the ‘diplomatic premises’, according to a news release from the embassy.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told protesters outside Royal Mint Court on Saturday that Starmer ‘needs to stop being naive; he needs to stop being complacent and quite frankly, he needs to grow a backbone’. But it should be remembered that as business secretary in the government of Rishi Sunak, she too reportedly argued for caution in dealing with China, urging that ‘business and trade implications’ be taken into account in drawing up the foreign influence registration scheme.

The battle over the embassy will now almost certainly move to the courts, with the government facing a lengthy and potentially embarrassing judicial review over its actions. Opponents argue that the embassy was a ‘done deal’, undermining the planning process. Last September, campaigners commissioned a legal opinion from Lord Banner, a leading planning lawyer, which said that green-lighting the embassy could be unlawful if ministers gave assurances to Beijing in advance. This, they said, would constitute ‘actual or apparent predetermination’ of the planning application.

There are multiple instances where this would appear to be the case. In a letter written in 2018 when he was foreign secretary, Boris Johnson told his Chinese counterpart that the project had ‘political commitment at the highest levels’. He also said he would grant Beijing consent for Royal Mint Court to be ‘designated as diplomatic premises’.

The government took the planning application out of the hands of the Tower Hamlets local authority, which had initially rejected it. The Metropolitan Police also initially opposed the embassy on public safety grounds, arguing that because of its location on a major arterial route into London, any demonstration would have a ‘serious and significant effect to not only the local area, but also wider London’. However, the Met later reversed its position.

Last November, when Starmer met Chinese president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, he told Xi, ‘You raised the Chinese embassy building in London when we spoke on the telephone,’ and assured him, ‘we have since taken action by calling in that application. Now we have to follow the legal process and timeline.’ China has also warned of ‘consequences’ if the embassy is not approved, with the foreign affairs ministry in Beijing at one point declaring that the constant delays went ‘entirely against the UK’s commitments and previous remarks about improving China-UK relations’.

Starmer aims to visit Beijing at the end of the month with a posse of business people, the first visit by a British prime minister since Theresa May in 2018. However, China is reportedly refusing to confirm the visit until the embassy is approved. The Chinese government is also refusing to give the go-ahead to much needed refurbishment work at the British embassy in Beijing. Some would call that blackmail – but don’t expect a word of criticism from Starmer or his ministers this week, for whom appeasement appears to have become policy.

There’s trouble at the top in the Taliban

Taliban rule of Afghanistan becomes madder by the day. The only thing they reliably do is find new ways of making life impossible for women. They recently jailed the senior government advisor, Dr Farouq Azam, for more than a month after he made the subversive suggestion that women medical professionals should be sent to assist with earthquake relief. But while the Taliban attempt to portray a united front against the outside world, there is mounting evidence of division at the top of the movement.

Interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani has weirdly become the unlikely champion of what passes for ‘reform,’ if such a word can be used for a man who leads the fundamentalist Haqqani faction in the Taliban, and once had a multi-million dollar bounty on his head for terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Afghan citizens.

Haqqani publicly split with the Supreme leader Hibatullah Akhunzada last year, and left the country for several months after a senior member of his family was killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul. He was persuaded to return to government, but has found his authority and that of other ‘reformist’ figures in formal government posts constantly undermined by the supreme leader. Akhunzada has attempted to circumvent the formal system of government based in Kabul by ruling through Islamic orders issued by the Chief Justice in Kandahar, spread through mosques and madrasas.

The Kabul politicians, including the son of the founder, Mullah Yaqoob, have retaliated and attempted to wrest back some control. It has emerged that they were behind the decision to restore some internet access only two days after a total shutdown in October. The shutdown was ordered on moral grounds by the Kandahar fundamentalists, but the Kabul ‘reformists’ went to the prime minister, Mullah Hasan Akhund, who is an Akhunzada loyalist, and insisted that the decision be reversed.

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It was not a total climbdown. Access is now possible only on 2G, and many sites, including Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, were not restored. But it was a small victory for the Kabul ‘reformists,’ who are also believed to want an easing of the restrictions on girls’ education, if only in a cynical ploy to secure international recognition of the regime.

The ‘reformists’ know that without some changes, including education for girls and better access for women to jobs, there is no chance of Taliban securing recognition. A number of countries –including China, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and some Central Asian states – have exchanged what look like ambassadors in an attempt to normalise relations, and of them only Russia has broken ranks against the international isolation of the Taliban by formally recognising the administration.

But there are signs of division in what has been a united line by western countries against recognition. Germany has shamefully given access to two Taliban diplomats in order to return migrants and other European countries are keen to follow. The idea that the Taliban, even the Kabul ‘reformers,’ can be dealt with in any normal way is wishful thinking. Sirajuddin Haqqani is as closely linked to Al Qaeda as the rest of the regime, a connection starkly revealed when the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by an American missile staying in a guest house owned by Haqqani in 2022. Afghanistan is now the global headquarters of Al Qaeda and its South Asian offshoot, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. Allowing Taliban diplomats into western embassies would provide outposts for a global terrorist organisation.

The Pakistani Taliban, the TTP, also have bases deep inside Afghanistan, which was the main cause of fighting with Pakistan last year. The border with Pakistan remains closed since the cross-border clashes, described by a UN report as the ‘greatest threat’ to the stability of the country, and the end of trade has further wrecked a stagnant economy. The forced return of 4.5 million refugees from Pakistan and Iran has had the double impact of ending the money they sent back to their families from outside, while putting new pressure on frail public services. Growth fell by 6.5 per cent in the first half of 2025, and 90 per cent of the population are dependent on food aid which has been reduced because of huge cuts in international aid. Mismanagement of scarce water resources has led to fears that Kabul could become the first capital city in the modern age to run out of water.

The economic crisis is having an impact on the Taliban’s ability to project force to control the population. With the government budget under strain, thousands of troops, including senior commanders, have lost their jobs; most of those thrown out are from non-Pashtun tribes, further marginalising these minorities, and emphasising the dominance of Pashtuns in Taliban ranks. This presents an opportunity for recruitment for opposition groups among disaffected former Taliban fighters, particularly non-Pashtuns. Since the Taliban took over in 2021 armed opposition has been limited to small scale hit-and-run attacks – killing a police officer in one place, seizing vehicles or a few weapons in another. But this could change in 2026.

The increasing isolation of the Taliban leadership, out of touch with the wider nation, isolated from most of the world, and facing internal divisions, with a collapsing economy and weaker armed forces, provides an opportunity for the opposition. The Taliban have refused all attempts to negotiate for a more inclusive government, and it has become clear that positive change will come only through force, providing that use of force is allied with a coherent political alternative.

In the thirty years since the Taliban first emerged like a whirlwind from Kandahar to seize Kabul they have successfully retained remarkable cohesion under whoever was the supreme leader at the time: the Amir ul-Muminin, ‘commander of the faithful.’ But as fractures increase there could now be a window of opportunity for real change.

We’re trapped in 2016

With all the talk of Brexit, do you ever get the sense that social media is stuck in 2016? Well, now it really is. A trend has taken off online involving people posting throwback pictures from a decade ago. A Tumblr video captioned ‘Welcome back #2016’ kicked off the nostalgia. It has resulted in a 450 per cent surge in ‘2016’ searches across platforms, as those born between 1997-2002 share photos, songs like Drake’s ‘Views’ and Pokemon Go memories.

The year 2016 is being described as one in which pop culture peaked. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about those 12 months is how little has changed in the decade since. While younger folk wish they were back in that simpler, pre-pandemic era, here’s the truth: they never really left.

To anybody now over, say, 45 years old, 2016 surely feels like last week. It’s a cliché that time passes very differently for the individual as he ages, speeding up as the years clock up. But it’s one of those clichés that we don’t think about enough. This 2016 nostalgia trend pulls it into the sharpest relief.

Because one is young for what feels like geological ages, and then – particularly after one whizzes like a non-stopping express train past what might (fingers crossed) be classed as the halfway mark – everything starts to fly by like the figures in a cartoon flick-book. For me, at 57, the last ten years feel like a few months by the experiential metric of my youth, which lasted about a century.

But despite the passage of time, the culture and aesthetic of 2016 looks and feels exactly the same as the culture and aesthetic of today.

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I thought I ought to check with some young people to determine whether I was deluding myself. I pause here to acknowledge that this tic among the old to consult the young is itself incredibly irritating – indeed, I found it annoying when I was a kid. ‘Haven’t you a mind of your own?’ I wanted to snap at those elderly folk who questioned me. Well, now I’ve become one myself.

We see an example of this questioning the young in its most tedious form in Fearne Cotton’s recent podcast interview with Dawn French, 68, as French says she has to ‘catch up’ and get told what to think about political hot potatoes by children. This inane impulse is one of the reasons we’ve got in such a cultural mess.

But my youthful informants were equally nonplussed by the 2016 trend. ‘It’s odd,’ one told me, ‘because I was 19/20 in 2016, so in any other era you’d expect me to be nostalgic for it. But I checked my photos from the time, and though I look ten years younger, everything around me looks exactly the same’.

Another chum, who was 14 ten years ago, chipped in: ‘The trend made me scoff at first, but it made me realise there has been a fashion shift among young people; the mullets and moustaches on blokes, and women wearing vintage charity shop stuff and spot stickers as fashion items. Undercut hairstyles have totally disappeared since then; they used to be big!’ But, he concludes, ‘I think the trend is just ‘look at this picture of me taken ten years ago’ vanity, though’.

The 2016 trend reminded me of the ‘school disco’ craze of the noughties, where people in their twenties pretended they were teenagers. I found this bemusing too, until I remembered the uproarious reaction in pubs and clubs in 1988 when a record from 1982 was played. To an 18-year-old, the seconds of their internal clock dragging along slowly, six years ago might as well be the Pleistocene epoch. I think also of the biography of novelist Barbara Pym, who spent the rest of her life replaying her university days in her books, toying with fictional versions and permutations of its characters and events.

So the empirical side of it I can understand. But the nostalgia for the pop culture? No. It was notable when watching 2020s TV shows like Disclaimer and Quiz, set in the early noughties, that everything about the aesthetic bar the phones looked pretty much identical to the year they were made.

As my first young informer told me, ‘Think about how totally different Life On Mars (set in 1973) and its sequel Ashes To Ashes (set in 1981) are. But a time travel show going back to 2013 and 2021 would be the same show twice’.

The speed at which fashion and aesthetics in general moved in the old century was dizzying. I vividly recall how Mod revival Harrington jackets went out of fashion around Christmas 1979, to be replaced by the Dexys Midnight Runners donkey jacket look. There was no social media, no explicit signal, barely any television coverage of youth culture – and yet everybody at my school year (of 11 and 12-year-olds!) – somehow flipped like a cascading line of dominoes to fall in line with the new trend.

Looking back, the post-war West was a historical outlier in the way in which fashions changed so quickly. For whatever reason, there were frequent dynamic shifts that pulsed through pop culture, fashion and design. The new century has seen us go back to normal pace.

What a remarkable time it was. And I thought that was just how things were. I wish I’d appreciated it more – in fact, I could even get (slightly) nostalgic. But not for 2016, at least.

In defence of Robbie Williams

I write this piece while listening to an album that I suspect will be widely regarded as one of the best of the year. That it is by Robbie Williams may come as a surprise to many. After all, Williams has often been mocked as a cruise ship entertainer who got lucky, a Butlins redcoat who has somehow become Britain’s most successful solo pop star. If his new album, Britpop, goes to number one in the charts – and he deliberately delayed its release from last autumn so that it could avoid being trampled by Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl – it will be his sixteenth chart-topper, thereby setting a record that even the Beatles were unable to equal.

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The reason for Williams’s continued glory, however, is not some sort of national delusion that has lasted for the best part of three decades. It is because he is one of the finest musicians that this country has ever produced. Finally, he is starting to be recognised as such. While early albums of his such as Life Through a Lens, Let Me Entertain You and Sing When You’re Winning sold millions and millions of copies, they were looked down on as somehow being ephemeral and even naff.

‘Angels’, a ballad that has taken a place in our collective consciousness, has often been sneered at for being obvious, saccharine and basic. To which the only comment is, ‘yes, but it works’. Williams has never been someone who has tried to be at the cutting edge of fashion. (The one time that he attempted this, 2006’s baffling Rudebox, was his first artistic flop.) He is, instead, the anti-David Bowie, someone who is content to offer a single, consistent image throughout his career.

And what an image that is; the cheeky chappie beset by self-doubt, that same Butlins redcoat but playing Hamlet. This allows him to take audacious risks which, more often than not, land. The recent biopic made about the star, Better Man, made the extraordinary decision to depict him as a CGI monkey. It perplexed many, who stayed away from cinemas, and it was a commercial flop in consequence. Those who saw it, however, were struck with admiration for the film’s daring and boldness. Compared to any number of identikit music biopics, it sang with energy, vitality and wit, all of which remained true to its subject.

The wonderful thing about Robbie Williams is that he has long since ascended to true heights of ‘don’t-give-a-fuckdom’, in a way that his peers could never manage. So, for instance, his new album includes a song about Morrissey, co-written with his one-time frenemy and Take That bandmate Gary Barlow, told from the perspective of an obsessed stalker. That the song is a perfectly crafted slice of electro-pop that would make the Pet Shop Boys weep with envy is a reflection of Williams’s often-overlooked skill as a great songwriter. That it is hilariously funny (the chorus contains the line ‘Morrissey is talking to me in code’) is a testament to his status as a true original: an oddball in an industry long since homogenised into focus-grouped blandness.

It has long since become de rigueur for stars to talk about their mental health issues, their anxieties and depression. Williams, of course, got in ahead of the curve by writing a top five single about his own self-loathing as far back as 2003 – ‘Come Undone’ – which remains probably the only stirring, anthemic ballad to contain the lyrics ‘I am scum/And I’m your son’. But that is the joy of Robbie, who once declared to his listeners that he was ‘the only man who made you come’. A combination of the wholly unexpected and the hilariously inappropriate has seen him retain a place in the pop firmament for far longer than any of his peers, and long may it last. He once suggested on a pensive B-side that he would be ‘nobody someday’. On current evidence, that day looks as if it will never come.

Why are sports trophies so ugly?

There is a short video on the internet in which the late football commentator Hugh Johns reminisces about what the game had in the 1970s that made it great. He starts making a list – ‘skill, entertainment, cut-throat football’ – and then pauses for a disparaging comment about what came after. The disparagement is mild, though; this is a genial, nostalgic soliloquy, not a rant. Then the list, delivered in a soft Welsh accent, restarts: ‘There were characters, there were elegant players, and there was fun.’ Everything you could want, as far as Hugh Johns was concerned.

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Johns died in 2007, but I can’t imagine there have been any developments in football since then that would have caused him to knock the Seventies off the perch he built for them. That said, I’m not here to adjudicate the great and never-ending debate about football’s true golden age. I do, however, want to point out something else that Hugh Johns might have added to his list when building his case for the glorious Seventies. Trophies. My word, they were beautiful in those days.

To illustrate what I mean, I invite you, readers, to recall the cup that the champions of England – the winners of the old First Division – used to hold aloft, up until the advent of the Premier League in 1992. It looks like something from an Arthur Rackham illustration of a fairy tale, the precious vessel in which an elfin king might have jealously guarded an elixir of youth or a lock of hair from his one true love. Yet there it was in the hands of gnarled greats like Tommy Smith or Kenny Burns.

Or try the extraordinary original trophy for the European Super Cup, which used to be contested by the winners of the European Cup (now the Champions League) and the late, lamented Cup Winners’ Cup. It is an enormous medieval-looking goblet that the design team for Game of Thrones might have come up with but then discarded as too ridiculous. It never looked better than in the straining arms of the Ajax team, winners on a squally night in Milan, in 1973 (with every sideburned one of them wearing, for some reason, what look like bathrobes from the team hotel).

And what of the Inter-City Fairs Cup? This appears in a beautiful photograph being gazed at by Billy Bremner, who is waiting for customs clearance at Manchester Airport after Leeds had beaten Ferencváros in the second leg of the 1968 final. Its exact dimensions are hard to grasp – is it small or far away? – and the handles at the side look like angel wings. The website Game of the People deems it a trophy that ‘looked like it could easily have hosted a bunch of silk roses. It had the grace of the inter-war years, the simplicity of austere post-war Europe.’ It was also called the Noel Beard Cup, named not after a roadie with Hawkwind but after the cutler who made it. It couldn’t happen now.

Ah, yes. Now. I don’t wish to carp, but the newer trophies cannot compare. The prize for winning the Premier League leaves me cold, with its golden crown that manages somehow to be both plain and gaudy. The newest version of the European Super Cup is bland. The cup you get for winning the Championship play-offs final is no better. And the latest addition to the roster, the Tiffany-crafted Club World Cup – presented last year, you may remember, by Donald Trump to Donald Trump (oh, and to Chelsea also) – is eye-catching and ostentatious, certainly, but too bombastic for its own good. It looks like something a Master of the Universe-style Wall Street stockbroker might have on his desk, just for sliding his finger along while he’s making phone calls that will destroy the economy of an entire town in the Midwest.

And it’s not as if football can look to cousin sports for inspiration. The trophy on offer for winning the Prem in rugby is minimalist and forgettable. South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina compete each year for what looks like one of those ashtrays on string legs that were so common in – oh, the irony – the Seventies. Only the Webb Ellis Trophy, the Rugby World Cup, holds out some hope: a dainty, golden confection that reaches new heights of idiosyncrasy when lifted to the skies by a second-row forward whose hands are bigger than the trophy itself.

I grew up in Ireland in the 1970s, where we also had the exquisite Liam MacCarthy Cup for hurling and the Sam Maguire, based on the eighth-century masterpiece, the Ardagh Chalice, for Gaelic football. The FA Cup, the League Cup, the European Cup – all still with us, thank goodness – and those other departed trophies formed a kind of glittering beauty parade through our lives. This parade was made all the more enchanting because the trophies were the weird rewards for winning contests that involved enormous skill, yes, but were practised at the cost of a lot of pain, sweat and effort. Triumphs splattered with blood and mud. Hugh Johns was onto something. Seventies football can get a bad rap, but it did get some things gloriously right.

Tories purge the Jenrickites

It seems that Kemi Badenoch isn’t done with Robert Jenrick just yet. Tonight she is set to meet Tory MPs from both the 92 Group and the Common Sense Group. But before that, Tory apparatchiks have sought to finish what she started on Thursday when she sacked Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, expelled him from the party and removed the party whip. Talk about no nonsense…

At least five allies of Jenrick have had their membership of the Conservative party cancelled, following the defection of the onetime Shadow Justice Secretary. An email seen by Mr S shows the Chairman’s Office telling the alleged wrong-doers that:

Your membership of the Conservative Party has been suspended pending investigation as a result of your close affiliation and support of the Reform Party which contradicts your membership of the Conservative Party (perceived or otherwise). This investigation will only progress if you provide confirmation in response to this email that you wish to maintain your Party Membership. If you do so, the Member Governance Team will write to you with the evidence and allegations and you will be able to provide a full response. If you do not, your membership will remain suspended indefinitely. You are reminded that suspension from membership means that you may not participate in any Party event or meetings, including Party Conference.

Given that Tory membership numbers are nearing 100,000, Steerpike wonders how many left are waiting to be expelled or have simply quit already…

Starmer’s war on pubs shows he was never serious about growth

To a landlord in a draughty Victorian boozer staring at his latest business rates bill, it will read more like a ransom note from the mafia than a letter from HMRC. In 2026, under Keir Starmer’s ‘growth-first’ regime, this chap’s rates have rocketed.

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While Starmer is strutting the stage at Davos or waxing lyrical or at some CBI luncheon about ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’ and ‘building a brighter future’, delivering drivel so vacuous that it would make even Tony Blair blush, his government is unleashing policies that are throttling the engines of economic growth.

The changes to business rates are exhibit A, a perfect storm of outdated valuations, inflationary hikes and half-hearted reform. Britain was promised a ‘fundamental review’ and got superficial tinkering: new rateable values kicking in from April 2026, leading to an average 76 per cent climb for pubs over three years and an extra £12,900 per establishment, according to UKHospitality. More than 5,000 pubs have seen their valuations double. Transitional relief is capped at the higher rate of £800, or a percentage that barely scratches the surface.

For the uninitiated – or those mercifully distant from the coalface – business rates are a tax on property value. They’re calculated by the Valuation Office Agency with all the precision of a blindfolded darts player. Pubs, already hammered by post-Covid slumps and energy crises, now face bills based on pre-pandemic ‘rateable values’ that bear no relation to reality. In Bristol or Birmingham, a modest local might cough up £50,000 a year. This is more than its takings on a good month.

While the January U-turn promises some relief – a partial concession to avert a full pub landlord revolt – in classic Starmer fashion it’s handled so clumsily that it exacerbates uncertainty rather than resolving it. Meanwhile, big chains have lobbied for loopholes. A government obsessed with ‘levelling up’ is levelling down the high street instead.

In my previous Spectator pieces on the great pub cull, I’ve seen it firsthand. Landlords in Yorkshire or Kent, once proud stewards, now flogging off fixtures on eBay to pay the taxman. One told me, with bitter irony, ‘Starmer wants growth? He could try growing a spine and perhaps spending a whole week in England instead of worrying about Greenland. He might worry about something he could actually fix, but then he would have to make a decision – something clearly beyond him.’

Another, from a Devon village pub hit with a staggering 2,000 per cent valuation surge, as reported in the Express, lamented: ‘We’re being hammered into financial ruin – how are we supposed to survive this?’ Across the sector, landlords are warning of dire consequences. The British Beer and Pub Association has said that six venues could close daily from April.

The government is talking of turbocharged growth while slamming on the brakes. It’s self-sabotaging and daft. Of course they’ll blame Brexit, or the Tories or the weather gods. But the truth stares them in the face: a rates system unchanged since the 1990s, creaking under modern pressures. Reform it properly – digitise valuations, cap hikes, exempt small firms. Watch growth sprout like hops in spring.

Far from all Americans support Trump’s advance on Greenland

President Trump isn’t ushering in a golden age but rather an age of gold. The precious metal has hit an all-time high of $4,650 (£3,466) an ounce following his latest threats to levy tariffs against Europe over Greenland. By contrast, the geopolitical ructions over Greenland mean that the once-proud dollar has continued to tumble against foreign currencies, jeopardising its status as the world’s reserve currency.

A number of Congressional Republicans, including Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, are voicing their doubts about the wisdom of Trump’s eagerness to cosplay Russian president Vladimir Putin seizing Crimea. Kennedy referred to the notion of invading Greenland as ‘weapons-grade stupid’. The latest conservative figure to join the chorus of doubters is Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence.

On Sunday, Pence conceded that it was a neat idea for America to own the Danish territory but uttered a Jeeves-like cough of disapproval about Trump’s brusque methods:

I have concerns about using what I think is a questionable constitutional authority, imposing unilateral tariffs on Nato allies to achieve this objective, as much as I had concerns about the threat of a military invasion, which apparently is no longer being talked about.

Just how aligned are the Nato allies with America? European Council president Antonio Costa has called a special meeting to discuss retaliation against Trump’s tariffs. What Trump will make of a former prime minister of Portugal plotting to upend his plans is not difficult to imagine. Perhaps he will take more seriously French president Emmanuel Macron’s lobbying to aim the so-called European ‘trade bazooka’ against Washington. Firing it would cripple some $2 trillion (£1.5 trillion) in annual trade between America and Europe, not to mention spell an end to the entity known as Nato.

Germany, on the other hand, has hastily withdrawn the paltry 15 troops that it sent on a putative reconnaissance mission to Greenland a few days ago. It may not be as eager as France to confront Trump. For now, the European Union is considering imposing $108 billion (£80 billion) in retaliatory tariffs.

Trump has further raised eyebrows with a letter to Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Store stating, among other things, that the failure of the Nobel committee to award him the peace prize relieves him of the obligation ‘to think purely of peace’. Trump’s missive seemed so fantastic that doubts circulated about its authenticity until Store confirmed that he had indeed received it and sought to remind Trump, for the umpteenth time, that he does not dispose of the Nobel awards. At the same time, Trump apparently is intent on conducting a signing ceremony at Davos for his new ‘Board of Peace’, complete with a $1 billion (£745 billion) joining fee. Trump has invited none other than Russian president Vladimir Putin to join it, but the entire project is in a state of disarray as Israel and other countries baulk at the terms. 

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For Trump, who has long viewed the Europeans as mendacious mendicants, the Greenland issue might prove providential. Seizing the self-governing island would not only allow him to expand America’s landmass by some 860,000 square miles but would also provide a nifty pretext for splitting up Nato itself. Writing in the New York Times, former German ambassador to the US Wolfgang Ischinger warned:

If allies begin to doubt that their sovereignty will be respected by their partners, why should adversaries believe that the alliance would defend our sovereignty against external threats? What is at stake here is not Greenland itself, but the future of the transatlantic relationship.

That prospect could prove to be an incentive rather than a deterrent to Trump. Indeed, given the censorious tone of his National Security Strategy document about the cultural flaccidity of Europe, the President might well join up with Putin, handing over Ukraine and performing a kind of pincer movement on the rest of Europe.

Whether such moves would boost Trump’s popularity is another matter. A spate of recent opinion polls suggest that his impulsivity abroad is damaging his standing at home. Voters are complaining that he isn’t focusing on the issue that propelled him to a second term, namely, the economy. A CBS News poll from the weekend indicated that 74 percent of voters complain that their wages are not keeping up with costs. A Wall Street Journal poll found that nearly 6 in 10 voters believe that the economy is ‘not so good’ or in ‘poor’ shape.

Occupying Greenland might provide Trump with a quick sugar high, much as kidnapping Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro did. But most Americans have already put the Venezuelan expedition in the rearview mirror. It seems safe to say that a fresh, excellent adventure to plunder Greenland isn’t likely to supply Trump with much political sustenance. He would do well to remember that all that glitters isn’t gold.

Watch the latest of Jacob Heilbrunn with Freddy Gray on Americano:

Poll: public back Badenoch’s sacking of Jenrick

So, who’s gonna be the next to go? The rate of Reform switchers has stepped out in recent days with both Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell taking the plunge. But while elements of the Conservative parliamentary party seems to enjoy staging a performance of And Then There Were None, Kemi Badenoch is happier acting as the Poirot-esque sleuth, identifying defectors and kicking them out before they can quit on their own terms.

It all makes for rather good sport and the public seem to like it too. For a new Opinium poll for The Spectator found that six in ten voters (59 per cent) think Badenoch was right to sack Jenrick, with only one in ten (11 per cent) arguing that she was wrong to do so. This is even more true among 2024 Conservative voters (79 per cent right to do) and even 61 per cent of 2024 Reformers too. Some rare Tory-Reform cross-party harmony there…

After the events of the past week, the public feel more somewhat positively towards Kemi Badenoch (32 per cent more positive vs 13 per cent more negative) and, to a lesser extent, the Conservative Party (24 per cent more positive vs 16 per cent more negative). On the other side, they now feel more negatively towards Robert Jenrick (16 per cent more positive vs 29 per cent more negative). Penny for Bobby J’s thoughts eh?

The poll of 2,047 adults was conducted between 15 and 19 January and found that Badenoch’s approval rating is up to its highest level since November 2024. She now has net positive scores on being ‘decisive’ and ‘sticking to her principles rather than just saying what people want to hear’, with a rise of 18 points since August on being a ‘strong leader.’

But before the overworked and under-appreciated team in LOTO break out the champagne, it is worth noting that half the public think the Conservative Party is disunited, with the the Tories’ net score for unity dropping from net-16 in December 2025 to -32 now. James Crouch of Opinium told Mr S that:

Kemi Badenoch has turned something that could have derailed her leadership of the Conservative Party into a personal PR victory. But it has also turned the slow and steady defections to Reform from something only SW1 really noticed into a very public fault line on the right of British politics.”

Let’s see how that changes in the run up to Nigel Farage’s May 7 ‘transfer day deadline’….

Is Prince Harry ready for his privacy trial showdown?

When Prince Harry makes one of his comparatively rare returns to Britain, he tends to exhibit one of two personae. The first is the old Harry, the popular, light-hearted figure who possesses a common touch that most of his family sorely lack and who is consequently much sought-after for charitable functions and flesh-pressing. This side of him was on display when he last visited the country in September. The second, however, is the stern, grim-faced figure who is always on the hunt for some institution to rail against. His targets are numerous and include the government, newspaper publishers and, of course, his own family, who get it in the neck on a regular basis in the most public and embarrassing of fashions. 

It is the latter Harry who has returned to the country of his birth this week, and this time even those not especially well disposed towards him might believe that he has a reasonable quest. A trial is beginning at the High Court today that sees various high-profile claimants, including the Duke of Sussex, Sir Elton John and Sadie Frost, take action in a so-called ‘super claim’ against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail. They believe unscrupulous reporters and editors were responsible for a series of phone hacking incidents and used them to gather personal information for various stories. 

Similar cases against the Sun’s publishers, News UK and the Mirror Group Newspapers have been settled expensively out of court. Yet Associated deny all responsibility and have called the claims of wrongdoing ‘lurid’ and ‘simply preposterous’, a description that might equally be applied to some of the litigants in this case, not least Harry’s never-knowingly-underpublicised barrister David Sherborne. The scene is therefore set for an expensive (the rumoured cost is £40 million) and high-profile showdown that will undoubtedly dominate media coverage for the nine-week duration of the trial. The outcome will be hugely consequential for whichever side loses. 

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Harry is already in the country and is expected to show his face at the High Court today in solidarity with his fellow claimants – including his good friend Sir Elton and his husband, David Furnish – as well as giving evidence in court 76 this week. A ‘friend’ of Harry informed the Daily Telegraph that ‘confident and ready are the words I’d use to describe his current state of mind’. They added that the Duke was ‘fortunate’ to have the means to pursue such a case; the millions Harry has earnt from Netflix may have been useful in that regard. 

After being frustrated from having his day in court on previous occasions, the time has now come for Harry to wield the simple sword of truth. This will be a test for him and his fellow litigators to see whether their claim is successful or not. That the private investigator Gavin Burrows – a vital part of the claimants’ case – has now publicly claimed that he never acted on behalf of the Mail group to conduct unlawful information gathering, despite an apparently forged statement suggesting that he did, has muddied the waters intriguingly. This suggests that the result of this case is by no means certain. 

The rest of the royal family are giving the Duke a wide berth. The King has found himself with some official duties to occupy him in Scotland – even if he wanted to see his son, he is very conscious of justice being blind and of not wishing to show any partisan affiliation in the case. Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales has also headed north of the border this week so as to avoid any accidental encounter with his estranged brother.

Even as Harry awaits the government’s decision on whether to allow him taxpayer-funded police protection or not when he is in Britain – presumably he’ll be footing the bill for private security this week – he must be considering whether the levels of estrangement and angst are really all worth it. Drama surely awaits: Harry undoubtedly lives in interesting times, for him and for the rest of us. 

Is the western alliance dead?

European politicians had little rest this weekend after Donald Trump’s announcement on Saturday that he would be imposing punitive tariffs on the eight countries that had sent troops to Greenland last week. From February 1, 10 percent tariffs will be slapped on goods entering the United States from Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. They had, Trump said, “journeyed to Greenland for purposes unknown” and he accused them of playing a “very dangerous game.”

By sending troops to Greenland on Thursday, those eight countries had only done what Trump implied he had expected of them. Since before his return to the White House last year, the American president has lamented the neglected state of Greenlandic security. In recent weeks, Trump has claimed that the island’s defenses amount to “two dogsleds as protection, one added recently.”

Since Christmas, Trump has become more vocal about his desire to annex Greenland to the US, claiming it forms a crucial component of his “Golden Dome” satellite defense system. He has repeatedly said that China and Russia also have their sights set on the island and that ships and submarines belonging to both countries are “swarming” off Greenland’s coasts – something experts have found little evidence of. Only America, Trump has claimed, is capable of defending the island. As such, if by June 1, a deal is not reached “for the complete and total purchase of Greenland” between Denmark and the US, the tariffs imposed on the eight nations who sent troops to the island will increase to 25 percent.

This deterioration in the relationship between Europe and America follows an unsuccessful summit on the subject in Washington last Wednesday between Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark. Emerging from the meeting, Denmark’s Lars Løkke Rasmussen declared that it had ended in “fundamental disagreement.” “We didn’t manage to change the American position. It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering Greenland,” he added.

The following day, Denmark said it would be boosting its military presence on the island. Seven European allies also sent a cohort of troops, whose mission was to scope out ways to bolster Greenland’s security “in light of Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic.” Their findings would form the basis for a series of NATO exercises conducted later this year.

In a sign of just how serious the crisis has become, Trump’s tariff announcement provoked an unexpectedly strong reaction from the countries affected. After crisis talks on Saturday, they issued a joint statement on Sunday afternoon, warning America that the president’s threats threatened a “dangerous downward spiral” – language that would be repeated in statements by other European officials, including Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish president Alexander Stubb. Keir Starmer declared that “applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong,” reportedly reiterating this on the phone to Trump later on Sunday evening.

What Trump said in response has not yet been reported. Nevertheless, Starmer’s words drew mocking from Kirill Dmitriev, one of Putin’s key negotiators with the US over Ukraine, who tweeted, “Panicking Starmer calls Daddy’s tariffs ‘completely wrong’.” Dmitriev spent Sunday afternoon posting gleefully about Europe’s response – using a VPN to circumnavigate Russia’s ban on X in the process.

Much remains unclear about how Trump’s threatened tariffs would affect Europe. The EU operates a so-called “common external tariff,” meaning that any product leaving the bloc is tariffed at the same rate, regardless of which country it has left. It is possible for America to impose country-specific tariffs on EU members, although this would require it to enforce strict “rules of origin” checks that would be logistically taxing. What is clear, however, is that, if they come into force, these tariffs will essentially rip up the EU-US trade deal agreed – but crucially not yet ratified – between America and the bloc last year.

Yesterday evening, ambassadors from all 27 EU member states met in Brussels to discuss how to respond to Trump’s threats. Several members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have said they will be calling for the bloc to scrap the trade deal with America. French president Emmanuel Macron has said he will ask the EU to implement its “anti-coercion instrument.” Dubbed the bloc’s trade “bazooka,” this measure was specifically designed to push back against third countries trying to exert economic blackmail over member states by curbing the import of goods and services.

There are other measures Europe, together with Britain, could enforce, depending on how much they are willing to ratchet up the tension. This includes cutting America out of European defense procurement, banning or hiking taxes on American tech firms such as X and Meta, introducing targeted tariffs on products from politically important states (e.g. bourbon from Kentucky) or even booting American troops out of military bases across the continent.

Similarly, Britain could scrap its trade deal with America, also hashed out last year but not yet completed. In a more drastic measure, King Charles’s state visit to the US – expected in the Spring – could be scrapped. For Trump, a notoriously die-hard fan of the royal family, this would be an effective, if enraging, method of communicating just how damaging his tariffs are for the transatlantic relationship. It appears that any option Britain and the EU go for will involve some degree of self-inflicted pain. Nevertheless, it appears Trump has pushed Europe too far: doing nothing, so far, is not on the table.

In the wake of Venezuela, when Trump authorized a military operation at the start of the month to abduct president Nicolas Maduro to face justice in America, Europeans are wary. Just last week, the US president refused to rule out taking military action against Greenland – a move which would essentially see NATO’s strongest member attacking a smaller, weaker one.

For now, Starmer and his European allies will do their best to engage with Trump through diplomatic channels. NATO chief Mark Rutte also spoke to the president over the phone yesterday, as anxieties mount over the degree to which Trump’s actions signal an irreparable breakdown in the alliance. Denmark has stated that Greenland is not for sale; Trump is unlikely to back down. With less than two weeks to go before his new tariffs kick in, Europe will spend this time hashing out a plan they hope will avert certain economic damage – and wondering if they still have an ally in America.

Davos’s Iran invite is a new low

It’s the fag end of January, so that means it’s time for Davos – the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering in the Swiss mountains, when the world’s smuggest men and the occasional woman come together to play dinner companion one-upmanship. Davos has always enraged a certain type of equally smug leftist – and now the MAGA crowd and their allies elsewhere – for whom the words ‘globalisation’ and ‘globalist’ respectively are rant catnip. I have always just found the whole thing more amusing than worrying or even important. Not this year, however: Davos 2026 is a shameful event, and those organising it deserve not just to be pilloried but to be covered in verbal red paint.

Red paint, that is, to represent the blood of the thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime in Tehran. In autumn, the WEF thought it appropriate to invite Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, to this year’s event. Aragachi is not just the regime’s main foreign spokesman. He is also a member of its Supreme National Security Council, which in recent days is understood to have ordered the use of live ammunition on protestors. The theme of this year’s Davos event is ‘A Spirit of Dialogue’; some dialogue, when one side is seeking basic freedoms and the other is using machine guns to slaughter them.

After it emerged that Araghchi was due to give his thoughts on the question of ‘How can we cooperate in a more contested world?’ in an event moderated by Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf, Davos has seen sense. In a hastily-written statement published on X this morning, the WEF said: ‘The Iranian foreign minister will not be attending Davos. Although he was invited last fall, the tragic loss of lives of civilians in Iran over the past few weeks means that it is not right for the Iranian government to be represented at Davos this year.’

Good. But the damage is done. We know exactly the mindset – indeed, the amorality – of those behind the WEF. That cannot be undone. As the great and the good hobnob in Davos, innocent Iranians are dying in the streets and hospitals as they fight for their freedom from a cruel Islamist regime.

Do the assorted world leaders attending this year’s shindig in the mountains know the identity of one of their fellow invitees? They would, I’m sure, not have imagined a man like Araghchi would have been offered a platform to defend the bloodthirsty regime of which he is a part, so they cannot be blamed for their presence in Davos. But now they do know – and if they do not endorse Aragachi’s invitation, and do not wish to be seen as metaphorically spitting on the graves of the murdered Iranian protestors, they should leave immediately.

Keir Starmer chooses jaw jaw over trade war with Trump

There used to be a sign up in No. 10 which quoted Gilbert and Sullivan. ‘Quiet calm deliberation disentangles every knot,’ read the plaque, installed by Harold Macmillan. It is advice that Keir Starmer has taken to heart, as Donald Trump seemingly tries to tie Nato in as many twists and bows as possible. The Prime Minister had an unenviable task in his press conference this morning. He sought to both firmly resist Trump’s demands to annex Greenland – while desperately trying not to escalate the issue further. His approach might be summed up by another Macmillan quote: that ‘jaw, jaw is better than war war.’

At his presser, Starmer’s tone was grave, noting how the world has become ‘markedly more turbulent in recent weeks’. He began by restating HMG’s long-standing position. The Prime Minister said that Trump’s plan to punish the UK with tariffs was ‘completely wrong’. Any decision about Greenland’s future ‘belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone’. He spoke to the value of alliances: a pillar of America’s strength since 1945. ‘Alliances endure,’ he said, ‘because they’re built on respect and partnership, not pressure, that is why I said the use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong.’ 

The Prime Minister, though, continues to insist that a ‘tariff war is in no one’s interests’. ‘We have not got to that stage,’ he told reporters. ‘My focus is making sure we don’t get to that stage.’ He implied that, while the EU is pressing ahead with a £78 billion retaliation package, the British response will be private, not public action. He ducked the chance to back cancelling the King’s forthcoming state visit – and bravely said, a fortnight after the Caracas raid, that Trump will not turn to military action. ‘Calm discussion’ was, in Starmer’s view, the best way forward – with the Prime Minister patiently detailing US-UK cooperation on defence, intelligence and security. ‘That requires us to have a good relationship with the United States,’ he argued. There was a pointed jibe too at politicians using the crisis to sound off on social media: a rejection of the ‘performance politics’ approach that Starmer professes to disdain.

Ed Balls, the former shadow chancellor and a keen drummer, used to use a musical analogy to reflect two types of people in politics. There were ‘amplifiers’ and ‘dampers’ – those who, respectively, turned up the volume and those who sought to damp it down. Today’s press conference showed again that Keir Starmer is a resolute member of the latter camp, refusing to attack the President by name and restating his belief in diplomatic means. Amid the crash and noise of Trump’s second term, Starmer just has to hope that speaking softly in private will mean more than sounding off in public

The West will regret not intervening in Iran

The longest war of the twentieth century was between Iran and Iraq and lasted for eight years. Yet during those eight years, Iraq killed fewer Iranian civilians than the Islamic Republic has reportedly killed in the past two weeks. The regime’s security forces enter hospitals, not merely to arrest protesters, but to shoot them in the head. In the piles of bodies visible in the tragic videos circulating online, some corpses, with bullets in their heads, still have hospital monitors attached. This is a government at war with its own people. It is an occupying force that does not see Iranians as citizens, but as expendable sacrifices for the larger goal of spreading Islamic revolution across the world.

Which legitimate government would charge some families between $5,000 (£4,000) and $7,000 (£5,000) simply to return the bodies of relatives it has killed? One of the Islamic regime’s most brutal forms of torture is forcing families searching for their daughter, brother, sister, or mother to visit warehouses stacked with bodies, where they must look through corpses to find their loved one. Under the Islamic Republic, an Iranian does not even have the right to retrieve the body of a family member murdered by the state.

It is therefore no surprise that Iranians inside Iran are calling for help from Donald Trump. The fact is that many Iranians trust American or Israeli bombs more than Islamic Republic guns. Western strikes – such as those Israel has conducted on Iran – are targeted not merely at buildings, but sometimes at the very bedrooms in which IRGC commanders are sleeping. During the twelve-day war, according to the Islamic Republic’s own judiciary, fewer than a thousand people were killed, more than 70 per cent of whom were military officials, members of the IRGC, or the Basij.

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Where in the Middle East, except Iran, do protesters chant, ‘America is not the enemy – the enemy is within’? In which Middle Eastern country do protesters rename streets after the president of the United States? In which country do people chant, ‘No to Gaza, no to Lebanon – I will give my life for Iran’? Nowhere. Nowhere else in the Middle East do millions take to the streets against political Islam; usually, it is precisely the opposite. This is the fundamental difference Iran represents – and failing to understand it would be a catastrophic foreign-policy mistake. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran has a population that is sympathetic to western values governed by a regime that does not represent who the people are.

What exists is the tyranny of a violent, intolerant minority – armed, organised, and dangerous. Iran today resembles the final days of the Soviet Union, except without a Gorbachev. Even Mohammad Khatami – the regime’s ‘moderate’ figure – has dismissed the protests as a ‘planned conspiracy’. His words prove that no genuine reformer will emerge from within the Islamic Republic. This is what makes the regime uniquely dangerous.

That is why, if the United States does not act, it will regret missing this opportunity to remove the head of the snake in the Middle East. In every case where foreign intervention failed, one never encountered the three elements that exist simultaneously in Iran. The first is a pro-Western population. The second is a clear and recognised alternative. Across Iran, there is only one name being chanted as a leader: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. He has articulated a plan and has become a unifying figure for the Iranian opposition. This means there is a clear replacement for the tyranny of the mullahs.

Tony Blair has said that his greatest mistake in Iraq was underestimating the power of political Islam after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Iran presents the opposite case. Without the Islamic Republic, political Islam could collapse entirely. There are no significant Islamist political opposition groups waiting in the wings, nor is there any desire among the Iranian people to return to an Islamic government.

As part of his anti–old neoconservative establishment rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly emphasised a ‘no boots on the ground’ strategy. In Iran’s case, this approach could nonetheless result in regime change because of the unique structure of the IRGC. The IRGC is not a modern national military but a terrorist organisation wholly dependent on one individual: Ali Khamenei. Remove him, and the structure collapses. Following Trump’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani during his first term, and Israel’s recent elimination of senior IRGC and military leaders, there is no remaining figure capable of unifying the forces or launching a coup. Targeted attacks – against senior leadership or strategic bases, including those that have shut down Iran’s internet for over a week – could be highly effective.

The real tragedy would be Western inaction. Iranians who still trust the West would see indecision as effectively backing a regime whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel and the United States. It would repeat Barack Obama’s historic mistake after the 2009 Iranian Green Movement: drawing no red lines, only to find the regime not moderated by diplomacy, but emboldened and more aggressive.

This is a historic opportunity. Millions have risen up in Iran. Tens of thousands have given their lives. If the West does not act now, it will signal to China, Russia, and every authoritarian regime in the world that, as Dostoevsky warned in Notes from Underground, ‘everything is permitted’.

We’re in danger of forgetting the Holocaust

On October 7, 2023, more Jewish people were murdered in a single day than at any time since the Holocaust. It’s a grotesque irony then that the war in Gaza – triggered by the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people in Israel – should be the catalyst for a sharp fall in the number of schools taking part in Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD).

Yet the figures are unambiguous. In 2023, more than 2,000 secondary schools signed up for HMD events, according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. By 2024, around 800 fewer schools took part and another 350 dropped out in 2025. The decline is brutal and unequivocal.

The irony is compounded by the theme of HMD 2026 – ‘Bridging Generations’ – a call to pass remembrance and the lessons of the Holocaust to future generations.

That school educators would deny their pupils the chance to participate in a collective act of remembrance for one of the bleakest moments in human history is not only incongruous; it is morally indefensible. Reframing HMD as a political hot potato to justify its removal from the school calendar not only deprives young people of vital lessons about antisemitism, it sets a dangerous precedent. Treating the memorialising of suffering – in this case, specifically Jewish suffering – as selective or negotiable undermines the very purpose of education and memory.

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Clearly those schools who have decided to abdicate from HMD are either choosing, what Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis describes, as the path of least resistance. (The playbook of the West Midlands Police). Or something more sinister is going on. Jewish MP Damien Egan’s visit to a Bristol school in September was cancelled after protests were planned and teachers threatened to wear keffiyehs to school.

In a survey last year by the NASUWT union found that 90 per cent of Jewish teachers believe their employers need more training to recognise and challenge antisemitism, and 51 per cent reported experiencing it personally over the past year.

Some will wonder what the fuss is about since Holocaust education is already a mandatory part of the curriculum. But if textbooks were sufficient, we might also wonder about the need to mark, say Armistice Day in school assemblies. Active participation in a collective act of memory – not for exams – achieves what lessons alone cannot.

There is something deeper at stake too. The Holocaust, even for those committed to its memory for religious, personal, or humanitarian reasons, demands grappling with the incomprehensible: the industrialised, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews, alongside millions of other victims, including those who were Roma or were gay.

Living in Manchester and witnessing firsthand how an act of Jew-hatred can escalate to murder – as in the attack on my family’s synagogue in Heaton Park – still cannot help illuminate the horror of the Holocaust. Germany was not an extreme culture where acts of barbarism were accepted. This was a sophisticated, Western nation. Many of those who planned the ‘Final Solution’ at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 were highly educated – seven held advanced degrees in fields such as law, philosophy, and medicine.

As such Holocaust Memorial Day stretches young minds to confront impossible questions: How could a nation, even while fighting a massive military campaign, still devote immense resources to running death camps? Could propaganda, ideology, economic hardship, and the humiliation of post-World War I defeat really be enough to compel ordinary people to herd men, women, and even babies into gas chambers?

Even those caught in the midst of the horror had no answers. As a journalist and former volunteer at a Holocaust charity for ten years, I have had the privilege of meeting and interviewing many survivors. Reflecting on their barbarous experiences, their pain was always suffused with incredulity – even decades later.

One gentleman, recalling how his nine-year-old brother was marched to the gas chambers, bitterly lamented: ‘What did this little boy ever do?’ His tears, decades later, were as raw and unbearable as the moment he first learned the truth. On the podcast I co-present,, Jewish Mother Me, another survivor described his mother – vividly, lovingly – being torn from him with the casual flick of a hand. How? Why?

These are the questions that schools must compel their pupils to confront – not deny them for a partisan political agenda.

As survivors grow older and primary witnesses to these atrocities pass away, the need to remember becomes ever more urgent. Schools should be places where history is taught honestly and courageously – not spaces where fear of political backlash determines which victims are remembered and which are quietly forgotten.

Cowering in fear of controversy, backlash and protest. cannot be allowed to stand. This has to be the greatest lesson of all.

Is the western alliance dead?

European politicians had little rest this weekend after Donald Trump’s announcement on Saturday that he would be imposing punitive tariffs on the eight countries that had sent troops to Greenland last week. From February 1, 10 percent tariffs will be slapped on goods entering the United States from Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. They had, Trump said, “journeyed to Greenland for purposes unknown” and he accused them of playing a “very dangerous game.”

By sending troops to Greenland on Thursday, those eight countries had only done what Trump implied he had expected of them. Since before his return to the White House last year, the American president has lamented the neglected state of Greenlandic security. In recent weeks, Trump has claimed that the island’s defenses amount to “two dogsleds as protection, one added recently.”

Since Christmas, Trump has become more vocal about his desire to annex Greenland to the US, claiming it forms a crucial component of his “Golden Dome” satellite defense system. He has repeatedly said that China and Russia also have their sights set on the island and that ships and submarines belonging to both countries are “swarming” off Greenland’s coasts – something experts have found little evidence of. Only America, Trump has claimed, is capable of defending the island. As such, if by June 1, a deal is not reached “for the complete and total purchase of Greenland” between Denmark and the US, the tariffs imposed on the eight nations who sent troops to the island will increase to 25 percent.

This deterioration in the relationship between Europe and America follows an unsuccessful summit on the subject in Washington last Wednesday between Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark. Emerging from the meeting, Denmark’s Lars Løkke Rasmussen declared that it had ended in “fundamental disagreement.” “We didn’t manage to change the American position. It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering Greenland,” he added.

The following day, Denmark said it would be boosting its military presence on the island. Seven European allies also sent a cohort of troops, whose mission was to scope out ways to bolster Greenland’s security “in light of Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic.” Their findings would form the basis for a series of NATO exercises conducted later this year.

In a sign of just how serious the crisis has become, Trump’s tariff announcement provoked an unexpectedly strong reaction from the countries affected. After crisis talks on Saturday, they issued a joint statement on Sunday afternoon, warning America that the president’s threats threatened a “dangerous downward spiral” – language that would be repeated in statements by other European officials, including Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish president Alexander Stubb. Keir Starmer declared that “applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong,” reportedly reiterating this on the phone to Trump later on Sunday evening.

What Trump said in response has not yet been reported. Nevertheless, Starmer’s words drew mocking from Kirill Dmitriev, one of Putin’s key negotiators with the US over Ukraine, who tweeted, “Panicking Starmer calls Daddy’s tariffs ‘completely wrong’.” Dmitriev spent Sunday afternoon posting gleefully about Europe’s response – using a VPN to circumnavigate Russia’s ban on X in the process.

Much remains unclear about how Trump’s threatened tariffs would affect Europe. The EU operates a so-called “common external tariff,” meaning that any product leaving the bloc is tariffed at the same rate, regardless of which country it has left. It is possible for America to impose country-specific tariffs on EU members, although this would require it to enforce strict “rules of origin” checks that would be logistically taxing. What is clear, however, is that, if they come into force, these tariffs will essentially rip up the EU-US trade deal agreed – but crucially not yet ratified – between America and the bloc last year.

Yesterday evening, ambassadors from all 27 EU member states met in Brussels to discuss how to respond to Trump’s threats. Several members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have said they will be calling for the bloc to scrap the trade deal with America. French president Emmanuel Macron has said he will ask the EU to implement its “anti-coercion instrument.” Dubbed the bloc’s trade “bazooka,” this measure was specifically designed to push back against third countries trying to exert economic blackmail over member states by curbing the import of goods and services.

There are other measures Europe, together with Britain, could enforce, depending on how much they are willing to ratchet up the tension. This includes cutting America out of European defense procurement, banning or hiking taxes on American tech firms such as X and Meta, introducing targeted tariffs on products from politically important states (e.g. bourbon from Kentucky) or even booting American troops out of military bases across the continent.

Similarly, Britain could scrap its trade deal with America, also hashed out last year but not yet completed. In a more drastic measure, King Charles’s state visit to the US – expected in the Spring – could be scrapped. For Trump, a notoriously die-hard fan of the royal family, this would be an effective, if enraging, method of communicating just how damaging his tariffs are for the transatlantic relationship. It appears that any option Britain and the EU go for will involve some degree of self-inflicted pain. Nevertheless, it appears Trump has pushed Europe too far: doing nothing, so far, is not on the table.

In the wake of Venezuela, when Trump authorized a military operation at the start of the month to abduct president Nicolas Maduro to face justice in America, Europeans are wary. Just last week, the US president refused to rule out taking military action against Greenland – a move which would essentially see NATO’s strongest member attacking a smaller, weaker one.

For now, Starmer and his European allies will do their best to engage with Trump through diplomatic channels. NATO chief Mark Rutte also spoke to the president over the phone yesterday, as anxieties mount over the degree to which Trump’s actions signal an irreparable breakdown in the alliance. Denmark has stated that Greenland is not for sale; Trump is unlikely to back down. With less than two weeks to go before his new tariffs kick in, Europe will spend this time hashing out a plan they hope will avert certain economic damage – and wondering if they still have an ally in America.

The secret costs of net zero

Last week, a new report by the Institute for Economic Affairs argued that the cost of transitioning to net zero could be billions – even trillions – more than some government  forecasts. That may sounds worrying, yet in many ways it still understates the problem. Net zero isn’t just hurting our energy sector, it has a complete stranglehold over the entire British economy – and it is making us all poorer.

No large company in Britain can escape its grasp. Our regulators, in league with asset managers, are constantly pressuring companies into pursuing costly and fruitless green goals that make them less profitable. As a result  FTSE 100 companies now routinely have formal net zero targets. Their decarbonisation is largely measured using the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol, which splits emissions into three categories: scope one, two and three. Companies are not considered properly net zero unless they meet their targets in every category.

Scope one emissions are those directly produced by a company’s operations, and are arguably the most intuitive and acceptable category for companies to tackle.

Scope two refers to the emissions that a company allegedly produces via its energy usage. This means companies are responsible for their energy supplier. Scope two obligations encourage companies to sign ‘Purchase Power Agreements,’ with specific renewable developers. These agreements make the company in question the sole customer of specific wind farms, purchasing their entire output at a predetermined price. Sainsbury’s now funds eight wind farms, peppered across the Scottish countryside, via such agreements. These allow Sainsbury’s to claim that they have reduced their Scope two emissions, as technically they are purchasing their power from a renewable source.

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In reality, Sainsbury’s, and other companies with PPAs in place do not actually consume the electricity produced by the renewables they fund. Rather, it all goes into Britain’s electricity market blender. The latest wind farm backed by Sainsbury’s is only expected to produce electricity at the equivalent of full capacity approximately a third of the time, meaning that gas turbines must be constantly cranked on and off to plug the gaps.

This intermittency – the yoyoing of energy supply across the grid – impacts everyone’s bills. It is unavoidable when you make electricity generation dependant on the wind and sun. Roughly a quarter of a household electricity bill funds electricity network costs, which have exploded in recent years for this very reason. In many cases wind farms are paid to switch off when the wind blows too harshly and the grid can’t handle the upsurge in power. These payments are fast approaching £2 billion. This is all accelerated by corporations funding wind farms to meet their Scope two emission targets.

Things only get worse with Scope three, which requires companies to pursue net zero across their ‘value chain’, meaning all indirect sources of emissions. This includes suppliers, transportation providers, customers and employees. If a worker chooses to commute in a petrol-guzzling 4×4, as is their right, they are contributing to their company’s Scope three emissions and must be managed. This explains why many firms now offer employee electric vehicle leasing schemes. It is not a philanthropic endeavour, but an offering to their ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) overlords.

Scope three means every facet must be scrutinised for its environmental impact. This certainly causes headaches and costs for business themselves as they bend over backward to conform, for fear of being penalised or losing access to capital.  Yet it is often the smaller companies in the ‘value chains’ who bear the biggest brunt. Consider another supermarket, Tesco. They have committed themselves to net zero by 2050 and claim that 98 per cent of their emissions are in the Scope three category. Therefore, to reduce their emissions in any significant way they must deal with their suppliers.

Many of their suppliers are farmers, already buckling under rising costs and the government’s inheritance tax raid on family farms. Now they must contend with Tesco pressuring them to reduce their emissions.

One way Tesco applies such pressure is by partnering with NatWest to arrange for farmers to access loans to fund ‘renewable energy sources… and fossil free heating or cooling systems.’ Translation: Tesco is pushing farmers into debt. Not to buy more cattle or fertiliser, but to fund green technologies selected by environmental apparatchiks. Tesco celebrated that 1,500 farmers would partake in this scheme. We cannot know the exact amount each has borrowed but presuming it is in line with NatWest’s normal green finance terms we can assume a minimum of £50,000 per farmer. The average farm receives an annual government subsidy of £13,500. If each farmer paid back their loan in the minimum time frame, at the minimum interest rate (base rate), they would spend £6,000 on interest alone. That is almost six months’ worth of subsidy spent servicing green debt. It is a dizzying, state-induced financial circle.

This is the ugly reality of net zero. It is not all Teslas and reusable water bottles; it is farmers forced into debt to pay penance for their cows’ flatulence.

We must reject the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Although the public support green policies in the abstract, the costly realities for their energy bills and supermarket shop are hidden from them and lack democratic consent. If net zero is to be enforced across the economy, it should make its case at the ballot box, not be socially engineered via bad regulations zealously applied by corporations.