My life as a trainee civil servant

In 1987, when I was 19, I started at my first ‘proper’ adult job. This was as a lowly civil service clerk, or administrative officer – filing, basically. It was a post within the Lord Chancellor’s Department – as it was known then – but which today is called the Ministry of Justice, which doesn’t sound totalitarian or sinister at all. It was an epochal life stage, and a winter that was full of scents and sensations, the way winters are in the summer of one’s years.

Part of the process of this new job was an order to attend, along with other similar junior newcomers across the civil service, an induction day at a central London office. This meaningless day has remained with me ever since, jammed into my brain – from which actually important or significant life events have melted like infusoria in the eye. The vividness of the day’s recall is doubly odd, as it was about the last time I defied decay and ventured outside without either glasses or contact lenses. Anybody further than four feet away was a blur (nowadays it’s more like six inches).

To begin, we had to pair off with the person next to us, find out everything about them in five minutes and then introduce them to the room. ‘This is Janet,’ I found myself saying. ‘She lives in Pinner, likes Simple Minds and dislikes cruelty to animals’. I can’t remember what I said about myself. I dread to think. Janet was a very ordinary person, at least on the surface. There used to be scores of young people like Janet. Maybe there still are but we never, ever see them or hear from them.

We moved on to the basics of office life, and a lesson on the sending of what was known, in these pre-internet days, as a ‘transit envelope’. This involved slipping a piece of paper into the said envelope, adding the recipient’s department to a fresh dotted line on the back, and popping it in your Out Tray. You’d think this would be a simple enough procedure but we spent a good hour on it, with reminders about addressing the envelope clearly, not pouring coffee over it, and refraining from any ‘quirky’ additions in our written instructions.

At lunch we were free to do as we wish. In that way of young chaps who will never meet again, I repaired with the closest bloke to the nearest pub, which was down a narrow alley. With its Christmas twinkles and diffused warm light, this 45-minute interlude has become a Leaky Cauldron-style site of magic in my memory. This was December 1987, so Kenneth Williams or Emeric Pressburger might’ve walked in.

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For decades I wondered idly where it had been, what it was called, it seemed so otherworldly. I was content to nurture this unanswerable little puzzle. Then somebody on Twitter posted a photo of the Red Lion in Crown Passage, St James, and bang, there it was, another mystery shattered, thanks to the internet.

I returned, just a pint and a half down, the world’s edges slightly softened. We had a long talk about fire safety, bomb threats, evacuating buildings etc. I squinted at the white board and asked my neighbour for clarification on something written there. She looked me and my lunchtime pal up and down and said, ‘I’m surprised you two can see at all!’ This is the kind of person I thought was extinguished. In fact, they were reincarnated in the 2010s with blue hair and pronouns and a whole new, much worse, set of gripes and snipes.

There followed a workplace role-play exercise. How would we deal with a hypothetical situation where somebody – identity unknown – had dry-boiled the office kettle? By coincidence, somebody actually did dry-boil the kettle in my office a few months later. During the many months of unspoken aggression, dagger glares of suspicion and hints of accusation that followed, the role-play turned out to have been no bloody use whatsoever.

I still dream about that office regularly. It was a place of magnificent misfits who – decades before it was a thing – certainly did bring their ‘whole selves’ to work. There was the immaculately coiffured lady who did the job for something to do, who pleaded poverty one moment and the next spoke of leaving a taxi running in Hans Crescent while she popped into Harrods for a couple of hours; a small coterie of contemporaries who were, at the height of acid house and hip hop, fully committed to another 1960s Mod revival; a man who dressed like the Penguin from Batman, waddling about the building, who everybody assumed was an eccentric barrister – but who turned out to be an administrator at an even humbler level than mine.

I like to think that such flotsam and jetsam are still there in our flattened, modern world. Nowadays an induction day like this one would doubtless involve unconscious bias testing, LGBTQ+ compliance, Progress Pride lanyards, etc. It is probably done online. My training day was the nearest I came to a rite of passage, an entry into the adult world. I think that’s the reason it stuck in my brain, and why I have never dry-boiled a kettle.

The importance of the Great British curry house

Back in 1979, I took my grandmother and her friend Frances to Monty’s in Ealing. Monty’s was one of the early Indian restaurants in London. My nan was in her 90s, and it was her first curry. We ordered the usual array of dishes – the sizzling tandoori, the Bombay aloo, the dal. My nan and her friend, both Eastenders, tucked in. They wondered why it had taken so long to go for an Indian.

Midway through the meal, a door at the side of the restaurant opened and in came Old Mr Monty, the patriarch of this establishment, about the same age as the people at our table. One of the waiters had told him that this was my grandmother’s first curry and that she was very old. Mr Monty didn’t speak much English, but he sat with us and ordered some extra dishes and refused to let us pay at the end. As we left, he gave a small bow. You wouldn’t get that in a Pizza Express.

As many as a third of the old traditional curry houses in the UK have closed. Difficulties in finding staff, rising prices and competition have eaten into the success story. The glory days, when every town had its own curry restaurant or two, seem over. There has been a lot of chatter about the need for the curry house model to evolve, to be more funky, more street food, more, God forbid, hip. But of course, that way lies oblivion because the traditional curry house has something that modernity can’t offer, and it’s more than nostalgia.

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Growing up in Northolt in the 1970s, the local curry restaurant was truly exotic and even a bit daring. It gave us a taste for food with a bit of heat and spice. Then there was the heavy red velvety flock wallpaper, the wobbly wooden partitions and the Indian prints. It was incredibly cheap too. What I liked then, and what I like now, wasn’t really the food, it was the sense of being in a bubble, a world that seemed almost hermetic. In the curry house, we are somewhere different, somewhere with a bit of glamour even. In the same way, the working classes flocked to the old gin palaces of the 19th century, places where you could forget yourself and your circumstances.

Today, in this rough old world, when you find a classic time-warp curry house, it really is time to celebrate and lap up that opportunity to time travel. It is a total experience, not a confected one. I was in East Yorkshire lately and came across a classic Indian. And boy, it was packed. Packed with families and with people ordering chicken tikka masala, and poppadoms and washing it down with a few lagers. Really, who cares if the calorie count is on the high side. If the food bears scant resemblance to what you’d find in India or Bangladesh. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t push culinary boundaries.

None of that matters; in fact, it makes it better. Because what is the alternative if you live in Northolt or Nuneaton or Northampton? There are chains; they are everywhere. There might be the odd high-end place. Perhaps the pub has gone all gastro, rather than gastroenteritis. But none of these feel like ‘our’ restaurant. The traditional curry house is something that belongs to us all.

Japan’s weird celebrity culture is coming to Britain

The Japanese singer, actor and heartthrob Matsumoto Jun, who I’ve always thought of as an Oriental David Cassidy (thus showing my age), will make his UK acting debut later this year when he appears in acclaimed playwright Hideki Noda’s very loose adaptation of the Brothers Karamazof at Sadler’s Wells. Jun is, not to sell him short, a superstar in Japan. It should be quite an event.

If you can’t get your head round the David Cassidy analogy, perhaps Harry Styles would be more meaningful, though even the former One Direction star would struggle to attract the kind of devotion inspired by Jun (it really is more like Cassidy – look him up). In fact, it is entirely possible that the tickets for the London shows will sell out in hours or even minutes, with many snapped up by his legions of scarily fervent fans in Japan (Jun has 1.2 million Instagram followers) who would be quite willing to break the bank to visit England for a couple of days just to see him live.

It is rare to see this sort of celebrity adoration in the West these days. Jun and his band Arashi (he is probably equally well known as a singer and an actor) recall the days of Beatlemania, days that have never really gone away in Japan. Tickets for the Tokyo run of Noda’s play have been rumoured to have changed hands for up to £5,000; and with respect to Hideki Noda, a serious playwright, that is purely down to Jun’s presence. Stars like Jun are called ‘idols’, and for a reason.

What makes ‘MatsuJun’ (he’s so big he is known by this one-word nickname) so special? He is a decent enough actor and a pretty good singer, but the truth of his success is probably down mainly to aesthetics and especially facial geometry. There can be few more beauty-obsessed entertainment cultures than that of Japan, and Jun, with his handsome but sensitive features and fulsome head of immaculately coiffured, heavily invested-in hair, has a multi-generational appeal.

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He is a fantasy boyfriend/husband/best friend for the youngsters. There is not a hint of danger about him. In his TV appearances and umpteen adverts, he generally plays wholesome types, an immaculately groomed if casually attired modern man who will don a pinny and take his turn with the housework. One even has him just dandling a baby. For older women, he’s either evocative of the love they never quite realised or the perfect son-in-law. He screams eligibility.

Is there something a little unhealthy about this? The Jonny Kitagawa scandal – involving decades of sexual abuse allegations against the late founder of Tokyo’s most powerful talent agency – is still fresh in the minds of Japan watchers, even if little discussed in the country itself. Jun seems in control of his career now, but he did start very young, with a personal interview with the notorious Kitagawa, of BBC documentary infamy, himself. And while Jun has been canny enough to diversify and survive, and not get fat or go bald, for every entertainer who survives, there are many shooting stars who fade quickly. Some are mocked as no more than good-looking clowns, obaka aidoru – dumb idols.

It’s a rough old world with an ugly underside. In many ways, Japan (and South Korea’s) talent factory is like a throwback to the Hollywood star system of the 1920s to 1960s, where the talent was almost literally owned by the studios, who crafted personas and backstories on to their charges, occasionally even arranging marriages where appropriate (Rock Hudson, Judy Garland). There is no suggestion that Matsumoto Jun’s career has been micromanaged to quite that extent – though next to nothing is known about him. He is probably not a cipher, but many in the business clearly are. It was almost admitted once when the singer and idol Ayumi Hamasaki, known as much for her outrageous make-up as her musicianship, declared that she opposed her recording company’s decision to market her as a ‘product’ and not as a ‘person’.

There is another issue: some disquiet in the theatrical community about the quasi-religious devotion to ‘talents’ (as the Japanese call them) parachuted into serious theatrical productions. Hideki Noda has loyal fans, many of whom will struggle to get tickets for the new show thanks to the mania surrounding Jun. Imagine if Taylor Swift were suddenly cast in Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic and how the regular audience might be pushed to one side.

Live theatre in Japan is marketed through big star name recognition, and you achieve that recognition not by graduating from the Japanese Rada or treading the boards, but by either fighting for a space in the inane cavalcade of variety shows and soppy dramas or forcing yourself to the front in one of the boy or girl bands – which can be enormous (two of the most famous have 48 members). And always, looks are paramount. The aesthetically challenged, however gifted, need not apply. It’s not exactly in the finest traditions of the West End. With no offence to Jun, John Gielgud might be turning in his grave at these priorities. But it should be an interesting spectacle for British theatre-goers, and I am greatly looking forward to Lloyd Evans’ review.

JD Vance is a loyal Maga man

The most surprising aspect of Donald Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate is how unsurprising it is, following months of debate as to the best choice for the GOP. 

The number of candidates considered seriously by Trump was a much shorter list than the wide swathe initially announced as being asked for background materials, and Vance was always at or near the top. He has an exterior of political celebrity that Trump found appealing, a compelling life story retold across platforms – the combination of a blue-chip pedigree and military experience and a sense of humour that bound him closely with Donald Trump Jr. 

The positives for Vance are that he represents a loyal soldier for the Trump movement and agenda. His instinct to punch back is Trumpian – and his views on foreign policy and the nationalist economic agenda are thoroughly consistent with Trump. Sometimes they go even further. While more socially conservative than the former president, he’s also shown his pragmatism in navigating the current cultural environment. Vance’s youth renders him unattached from any of the biases of those with close ties to any past Republican administrations, and his geographic background is meant to appeal to voters in the Midwest.

The negatives for Vance are also well apparent. He’s inexperienced, having run and won just one election, which ended up being more costly than expected and in which he ran far behind other successful Republican candidates. He’s been in the Senate barely long enough to do anything of note, but with a victory in November, he’ll effectively be viewed as the presidential favourite for 2028. He comes across as extremely ambitious, doubling down on the most aggressive aspects of the Trump Republican agenda, as opposed to an approach designed to appeal directly to independent voters or make peace with the Nikki Haley faction. It also remains to be seen if Vance’s presence on the national ticket hurts or helps the hopes of incumbent Ohio Democrat senator Sherrod Brown, currently running several points ahead of his Republican challenger.

What the Vance selection indicates more than anything is Trumpian confidence: he believes he is ahead, that he doesn’t need to go outside his lane to make a choice, and that he has the latitude to choose whoever he likes. There’s an inherent risk to such belief. For an election where Democrats will once again put abortion front and centre, Vance has not shown grace in navigating the issue. And for an election which could hang on Trump’s appeal to black and Hispanic men, it’s hard to see how Vance is an asset – though it’s not like other potential choices such as Doug Burgum or Glenn Youngkin would’ve helped there, either.

So after promising us a vice presidential Apprentice selection process – even with the collapse of Joe Biden in a debate, and the attempted assassination this weekend – victory went to the favourite all along. The adage is that veep choices rarely help, but sometimes hurt, the nominee. Trump thinks he’s headed for victory, so he can pick whoever he likes most. In this case, a combative loyal warrior.

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What does JD Vance want?

With his selection of JD Vance as his running mate, Donald Trump has signaled that he doesn’t simply want to defeat Joe Biden. He also wants to crush the last vestiges of the Republican establishment. No other politician can help him carry out a Maga revolution in Washington more ruthlessly and effectively than Vance. Forget the pundits who predicted that Trump would take a more emollient approach. Forget the talk about trying to be a unifier. Forget the speculation about the assassination attempt changing him.

Instead of doing what many conservatives have done in the past — waver, flinch, compromise — Trump is going all-in. There will be no Treaty of Fifth Avenue (the pact that Richard Nixon reached in 1960 with Nelson Rockefeller to water down the GOP program) that so incensed yesteryear’s conservatives. No George H. W. Bush running alongside Ronald Reagan. Say goodbye to all that.

Had Trump selected Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley, he would have been catering to the party establishment. Instead, Trump is intent on creating a new American republic in his own image. With Vance as his running mate, Trump has set a lasting impress upon the GOP, ensuring that there will be no illusions about his intentions. His ambition is to create an authoritarian, Orban-style takeover of America, from the judiciary to the media, from the Congress to the military, that will endure for decades to come.

Like Trump, Vance is a fighter. He has steadily transformed himself from someone who once speculated that Trump might be ‘America’s Hitler’ into a slavish Maga pursuivant. The author of the national bestseller Hillbilly Elegy will deliver no elegies during the presidential race, no pious declarations about the need for national unity, other than to line up obediently behind Trump. After the attempted assassination of Trump, Vance immediately asserted: 

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Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.

Vance is a Maga Ultramontanist in both foreign and domestic policy. Those intent on remaking American foreign policy adulate Vance. William Ruger, who Trump nominated as his ambassador to Afghanistan late in his presidency, noted: ‘This is a big win for Realism and Restraint in American foreign policy. Senator Vance has been a strong voice for more prudentialism in our approach to the world.’

With Vance at his side, Trump will immediately sever all aid to Ukraine and seek to force it to the negotiating table with Russia. Vance has made his disdain for Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky palpably clear, writing in a New York Times op-ed:

White House has said time and again that it can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.

Vance will not seek to attenuate Trump’s antipathy toward Nato either. Instead, he will bolster it. Should Trump become president, Article 5 will be null and void.

In the domestic arena, Vance has called for carrying out a purge of the civil service and stuffing it with Trump loyalists. In a September 2021 interview with podcast host Jack Murphy, Vance said: 

I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people, and when the courts, because you will get taken to court, and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.

Whether Vance will help Trump win the battleground states is an open question. His choice is an inflammatory one, putting the liberal left on further notice, if it’s needed, that Trump is its mortal enemy. But perhaps Trump is so confident in victory that he’s already thinking beyond it, beyond them.

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Trump picks JD Vance as running mate

After all the speculation, it’s now official: JD Vance will be Donald Trump’s running mate in November. The subject has been the obsession of delegates here in Milwaukee on day one of the Republican National Convention. In typical Apprentice style, Trump has allowed speculation to build for weeks, as the media picked over various candidates, before picking his favourite as it reached a climax. 

As one of two Senators from Ohio, Vance will be entrusted to carry the swing state’s crucial 17 electoral college votes in four months’ time. He will have been picked for his potential appeal to working-class voters in the critical battleground states of the wider Midwest. If Trump is elected, Vance, who turns 40 in August, would be one of the youngest vice presidents in history and one with just two years of elected experience.

It is the first time that a vice presidential candidate for a major political party has been named at a convention since Dan Quayle in 1989 and is another indication of Trump’s enhanced standing since his last pick in 2016. Back then, Trump was a political novice, who plumped for an establishment choice in Governor Mike Pence. Eight years on, his position is untouchable.

His pick for vice president – and a potential future successor – is a standard-bearer of the populist right. Elected to the Senate just two years ago, Vance has positioned himself as a leading figure on the ‘MAGA right’, lambasting aid to Ukraine and America’s overseas commitments. His pick is therefore being interpreted as a blow to the establishment, neoconservative wing of the GOP and further proof that Trump doesn’t want to hand the party back to them when he’s done. Announcing his choice, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account:

J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond…

If Trumpism is to outlast the man then it needs to mature as a philosophy and build sustainable Republican majorities in the future. Few might be better placed to help in that endeavour than Vance, whose memoir Hillbilly Elegy has become a set text on the Republican right. Intelligent, industrious and shrewd, he will relish taking the fight to Biden, whose campaign rhetoric he held responsible for the assassination attempt on Saturday.

An America First conservative, Vance has frequently called for Europe to spend more on defence. He is, however, well-known to at least one senior figure in the British government. David Lammy, the new foreign secretary, has worked to court the senator, praising his memoir and meeting him on several recent trips to the States. Lammy and Starmer will hope to have a route to Trump’s ear via his vice president, should the Republican duo capture the White House in November.

What change will Labour’s Justice Secretary bring?

There has been much attention over the past week over how new MPs have chosen to be sworn in. This new parliament is the most openly non-religious in history. Around 40 per cent of MPs, including the Prime Minister, chose to take the secular affirmation rather than a religious oath. Half the new Labour cabinet followed Sir Keir Starmer in doing so. But this afternoon one of his cabinet has made history doing the opposite. Shabana Mahmood has been sworn in as Justice Secretary. She is the second woman to take the role (Liz Truss was the first), and she is the first Muslim – taking her oath on the Quran. This is the first time this has happened.

In her speech Mahmood said:

In Chapter 3 Verse 135 of the Quran it says: ‘O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah. Even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin. And whether it be (against) rich or poor: For Allah can best protect both.’

This is the fundamental articulation of how we, as Muslims, view justice in how we deal with the world. It places justice above all else. Upholding justice is the ideal that has guided my life. It ties together both where my family came from, and the great nation we chose to call home. And so I will fight for it, every day.

With the fierceness of many generations of small but mighty Kashmiri women. Inherited from my mother. And I will pursue the hard work of rebuilding our justice system. With the dogged determination I inherited from my dad. Who came to this country to make a new life for his family – and never took ‘no’ for an answer.

To swear this oath today is the greatest honour of my life. But, more even than that, it is the greatest of responsibilities. I will work tirelessly to discharge its duties and defend justice. Thank you.

Mahmood also referenced her upbringing as different to those who have come before here: ‘My parents weren’t steeped in Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights – as I would one day be’. Instead her parents who arrived from ‘rural Kashmir’ found that they felt the country they arrived in was different – ‘queues must be observed, near religiously… but more seriously, there are institutions, like our courts, that are incorruptible.’

So, will Mahmood’s arrival and her background mean a material difference when it comes to the Ministry of Justice? Mahmood, like many of her predecessors, is an Oxbridge-educated lawyer so there are still plenty of similarities between her and those that came before. She has already risked a backlash in the media and among voters with her decision to allow early release of prisoners over fears on overcrowding.

When I interviewed her for my Women with Balls podcast, it was clear that her faith provides her with a moral compass and framework of values. She described it as ‘the absolute centre point of who I am… It’s the thing from which I draw my purpose in life and also my sense of identity.’ She criticised those who had attacked the SNP’s Kate Forbes for her religious views, suggesting her treatment had been ‘disgraceful’.

Mahmood suggested she was more socially conservative than many of her colleagues. She notably has differing views on conscience issues to many of the cabinet on the importance of biological sex and assisted dying. She told me: ‘I know some of the MPs who vocally support this issue think, “For God’s sake, we’re not a nation of granny killers, what’s wrong with you”… I feel that once you cross that line, you’ve crossed it forever. If it just becomes the norm that at a certain age or with certain diseases, you are now a bit of a burden… that’s a really dangerous position to be in.’ It means she is likely to be one of the strongest voices around the cabinet table on these issues in the coming years.

Yes, David Lammy’s old tweets are a problem

David Lammy was always a somewhat implausible choice as foreign secretary. His historical reputation for mouthing off on social media on a range of topics – not least Donald Trump’s fitness for office – seemed a blatant hostage to fortune.  His ill-judged tweeting has come back to haunt him this weekend.

A 2019 tweet from Lammy is what’s caused new embarrassment. Trump said there had been no president who had been ‘treated so badly’ as he had. In response, Lammy said: ‘4 US Presidents  have been assassinated snowflake.’ That’s not the kind of language to be expected of someone who will end up as foreign secretary.

In 2018, Lammy called then-President Trump a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’ in an opinion piece for Time magazine. The article was published ahead of Trump’s first visit to the UK, and Lammy publicly committed to be one of ‘tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee’. For added measure he called Trump a ‘dangerous clown’ and ‘a profound threat to the international order’. No room for doubt there.

Yesterday, Lammy did condemn the assassination attempt, and he condemned it quickly. No doubt mindful of his earlier rhetorical excesses, he has been busy backtracking in recent weeks and months on his criticisms of Trump. In May, as shadow foreign secretary, he met in Washington with JD Vance, a close Trump ally and potential vice presidential pick. ‘It doesn’t matter who is in No. 10 –you work with the United States’, Lammy said in a television interview in January. Lammy added that the job of the foreign secretary is ‘also to try and persuade and use your influence’. 

Can Lammy really so easily disown his past public statements? His recent change of attitude is hard to take at face value. Why would Trump go out of his way to work with Lammy? Is he really that dim? It also raises a broader question about Lammy’s actual beliefs: did he really not mean the things he said about Trump just a few years ago? And if so, why would anyone choose to believe anything he says now? This goes go the very heart of his credibility as foreign secretary. Aside from possible dishonesty, there’s two possibilities here. The first is that, six years ago, David Lammy was not diplomatically mature enough to be foreign secretary. Either that, or Labour are taking Republicans for fools.

If Trump does win the presidency in November, Lammy will be in an awkward situation. 

Enes Kanter Freedom exploring run for office

2024’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee is hoping to showcase the GOP’s present and future, with the vice presidential selection of Senator J.D. Vance indicating a push by Donald Trump to cement his legacy.

While the convention center is filled with current candidates for offices of every kind, one attendee just told Cockburn that he’s looking at joining the GOP’s ranks in a cycle or two: former NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, whose towering figure has already been dominant at the Fiserv Forum.

Freedom told Cockburn that, while he currently lives in Washington, DC, he wants to run for office in the near future, while acknowledging that he’ll probably have to relocate somewhere in order to make that happen.

Over the course of his career in the NBA, Freedom played several times against the Milwaukee Bucks, who call the Fiserv Forum home. He’s scored hundreds of points against the Bucks during his career playing in the NBA on the Utah Jazz, Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks, Portland Trail Blazers, and Boston Celtics. 

While it’s been a rough few cycles for professional athletes who’ve attempted to run for federal office, Freedom would likely start off with the backing of a lot of top Republicans.

The National U-turns over Anglo-bashing splash

Oh dear. The National is renowned for neither grace nor charm and Saturday’s front page was no exception. Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper sparked outrage this weekend after it splashed a rather, er, creative cartoon across its cover a day ahead of the Euros final. When the Jocks failed to progress through the tournament – instead claiming the record for the most consecutive eliminations from the group stage – the august journal that is the National turned its attention to anglo-baiting instead. Quelle surprise…

The day before England played Spain in the finals, the Nat-obsessed journal decided to depict a rather large red-faced, bare-chested, tattooed England fan as a football being launched into the air by Spanish midfielder Rodri. ‘Time for revenge!’ the cover screamed, ‘Our message to Spain: Save us from an England win (or we’ll never hear the end of it!)’. Crikey. Talk about fun and games…

Weirdly, there was no article or spread in the paper that the cover linked to. But in smaller text at the top right, there was a rather insidious message that ruffled feathers both north and south of the border. ‘Every summer, they fill up your beaches,’ it warned, continuing:

They drink all your beer. They make a mess of your plaza. They eat fried breakfasts all day instead of your wonderful food. They retire in your towns, and sponge off your public services. ¡Ni siquiera se molestan en aprender el idioma! [They don’t even bother to learn the language.]

Far from appealing to Scotland’s nationalists, the paper appears to have put many of them off – including its own columnists. ‘No. I really don’t like this at all,’ wrote ex-SNP MP Joanna Cherry about the cover, while her former colleague Stewart McDonald nodded towards the paper’s ‘bad day’ and Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn tweeted: ‘Lazy stereotypes, xenophobia and a dose of snobbery is not what rivalry, nor football, should be about.’ Scottish lawyer Aamer Anwar and Humza Yousaf ally blasted the front page as ‘gutter xenophobic jingoism’ while journalists from the Courier and Daily Record slammed the splash as ‘tedious‘ and ‘embarrassing‘ respectively, as the editor of the Sunday Mail questioned: ‘Where the bloody hell are the grown ups at this paper?’ Ouch.

The backlash seems to have got to the top dogs. Now the National‘s editor has taken to Twitter to apologise for the mess, in a statement that claims the cringe-making comic only wanted to make a ‘light-hearted joke’. In a rare bout of self-awareness, the pro-indy paper admitted that ‘the front page didn’t deliver what we set out to do’, adding: ‘We leaned into lazy stereotypes and we shouldn’t have.’ Talk about a volte face…

Some would argue that a public U-turn is hardly the best way of burying the issue – but when your circulation sits at 3,000 and your columnists are threatening to desert you, desperate times call for desperate measures…

Washington Post imitates the Babylon Bee

If you want to see a devastating snapshot of the partisan reports that now pass for journalism, just juxtapose two articles in the Washington Post. Published a month apart, they report on the same event: the Hollywood fundraiser for President Joe Biden, hosted by George Clooney and Julia Roberts and featuring former president Barack Obama.

The first article, published immediately after the event, stressed the glitz and glamour. The headline captured the tone, “Biden, Obama warn of Trump dangers in star-studded LA fundraiser.” It was all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, marred only by a few sentences about pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the event. The reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, didn’t say one word about Biden’s frail condition or, indeed, any of the problems the public now sees. Not one word.

A month later, WaPo effectively said it was all a cover-up, without mentioning the inconvenient fact that they were a big part of it.  In a huge article in the Friday paper, the Post noted that, although the fundraiser brought in lots of campaign cash, it actually undermined Biden’s backing among the glam, progressive crowd, who saw the president’s physical and cognitive decline up-close and personal. They were shocked. The article was entitled, “Inside the glitzy fundraiser where Biden lost George Clooney.”

The subtitle is even harsher. “Some donors who attended the June 15 event at LA’s Peacock Theater said this week that they noticed Biden seemed slow. He seemed frail. As he greeted donors lined up for photos, he trailed off or spoke too quietly to be heard.” The rest of the article, reported by Dan Diamond, Samuel Oakford and Carol D. Leonnig, was filled with damning but anonymous quotes about Biden’s declining health, which deeply disturbed major donors who hadn’t seen the president in several months.

Besides the three principal reporters, the article lists four more who contributed to the report. Ace reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, the one on the scene at the event, was nowhere to be found.

The money quote in the latest article, “Many attendees — led by Clooney — now say they watched a dud and a preview screening of what the nation saw two weeks later in Biden’s prime-time debate against Trump.”

The press, including the Post, failed in its core duty when it failed to report that salient health issue. They played the same role as partisan donors, who now tell the Post they deliberately lied to avoid hurting Biden’s reelection campaign.

“Several reporters were present for the president’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel at the LA fundraiser,” Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “None of them reported out anything like this at the time.”

The donor [who remains anonymous] said she and her husband were asked by friends after the event about Biden’s condition and “struggled to answer them honestly,” fearful of eroding Biden’s support.

“We were worried that if we told the truth — that President Biden was stiff, slow and dare we say it, fragile — that we risked losing their support for the president,” said the donor. “It was painful to be deceptive. Now, we realize we were not alone in withholding what we experienced.”

Why did the Post report it now? For the same partisan reasons they failed to report it earlier. They are part of the Democratic elite that now grasp what the party’s voters have been telling pollsters for months, what the public could see as Obama guided Biden off-stage in Los Angeles, what the nation saw in the catastrophic debate against Trump.

What the insiders now realize is that Biden could not only lose the White House, he could cost the Democrats the House and Senate and any chance to make Supreme Court appointments for another four years.

Those Democratic insiders include the legacy media, led by the New York Times, Washington Post and three major networks. They are an integral part of that Democratic Party’s institutional base. Faced with Biden’s electoral troubles, they have turned on him and keep turning up the volume to force him out. That’s why the latest Washington Post report looks so different from the one a month ago.

Two things had changed over that month. First, the debate and Biden’s subsequent stumbles made it impossible to persuade the public that their own eyes were fooling them. Second, the polls show that the Democrats face a hard, uphill battle in November with Biden at the top of the ticket. A partisan media fears that defeat.

Who captured the media’s shame? It was the true newspaper of record, the Babylon Bee. Their deliciously ironic headline, “Media Who Refused To Report On Biden’s Decline Furious That Nobody Reported On Biden’s Decline.” The Bee’s parody reporting is pitch perfect.

“Whose job was it to report about this?!” demanded CNN correspondent Jim Acosta…  “The fact that there weren’t reliable people on hand to witness President Biden’s decline and make sure everyone was made aware of it is unacceptable. We deserve answers.”

Yes, we do. But don’t expect to hear any from the feckless folks who spent the last year sweeping mounds of dirt under the rug.

Britain has entered a birth rate crisis

Few will notice, yet this year England and Wales are almost certainly going to cross a remarkable threshold: the number of deaths will exceed the number of births. In the year to mid 2023 – figures for which have been published today by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) – there were 598,400 births and 598,000 deaths. Given the long-term downward trends in births, and the lag in the figures being published, we have almost certainly arrived at the point of negative natural population growth – a condition which has not properly afflicted Britain since the Industrial Revolution. Across the whole of the UK, deaths did narrowly outnumber births in the pandemic year of 2020, but other than that the only period over the past century in which that happened was between 1976 and 1978, after the end of the post-war baby boom. The world wars themselves did not reverse the natural growth of the population.

The end of natural growth in the population has been masked, however, thanks to high levels of migration. Indeed, the ONS itself chose to lead its press release with the figure that the population of England and Wales grew by a net 610,000 in the year to mid-2023. That growth is almost entirely down to net migration. If we were to eliminate net migration – which was Reform UK policy in the election – we would be on the verge of a falling population.

High levels of migration also mask our lousy economic performance. With net migration of 610,000 we would need GDP growth of nearly 1 per cent just to stand still. Yet in the year to the first quarter of 2024 the economy of the UK (the ONS net migration figures are for England and Wales rather than the whole of the UK) economic growth was just 0.3 per cent. In terms of GDP per head, in other words, economic growth is negative. Per capita we are in recession. So much for the argument that migration boosts the economy; it isn’t obviously doing much for our economic performance at the moment.

Negative per capita growth in the economy should come as no surprise if you look at another set of statistics released by the ONS today, which show that productivity in the public services fell by 0.6 per cent in the 12 months to the first quarter of this year. Not only has productivity in the public services failed to recover from the pandemic, it remains lower than it was when Tony Blair came to power 27 years ago. This is all the more astonishing when you consider the opportunities which the public sector has had to improve productivity in that time, through the internet, AI and so on. 

It is a reminder of the stupor into which the UK economy has fallen, and just how far we have to go before Keir Starmer’s government can claim to have realised its ambition of growing the economy. Without per-capita economic growth we cannot have any sustained rise in real earnings. That was a point which Jim Callaghan repeatedly made when he was prime minister in the 1970s, telling workers that pay rises would have to be paid for by productivity growth. Whether Starmer will be brave enough to tell that to public sector unions is another matter.

Nato has fudged support for Ukraine, again

On his flight back to London from Washington DC, Keir Starmer will have been satisfied with the outcomes of his first Nato summit. He will be concerned about the vigour of President Biden and the rhetoric of his presidential challenger. He and his European colleagues can do more to help assure the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The summit in Washington marked the 75th anniversary of the most durable and successful defensive alliance in history. The decade since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea has seen remarkable transformation in Nato, including the agreement of a new Strategic Concept at Madrid in 2022, which reaffirmed the purpose of the alliance, and the implementation of revised defence plans at Vilnius last year, which detailed exactly how Nato forces would respond to a Russian attack.

In Washington, Nato retained its commendable focus on Russia and built on these achievements. It confirmed there are now 300,000 troops at high readiness to deter and defend Europe against any Russian military aggression, even if this remains unlikely at present. Leaders agreed to accelerate defence production, ramp up military training and cyber defences, and enhance air defences. In the wake of extensive Russian use of missiles against Ukraine, not least last week’s shocking strike on a children’s hospital in the centre of Kyiv, a US and German bilateral agreement to station new long-range missiles in Germany to bolster conventional deterrence will not have gone unnoticed in the Kremlin. Nato also called out Russia’s partners, in particular its ‘decisive enabler’ China, for supporting Putin’s wicked war in Ukraine.

Despite Putin’s ongoing efforts to divide the alliance, and dissuade it from continuing to support Ukraine, members in Washington decided to send more weapons and air defences to Kyiv, and pledged long-term security assistance. This pledge included a further €40 billion of political, economic, military, financial, and humanitarian support over the next year. Allies will contribute in proportion to their GDP. A Nato organisation will now coordinate provision of military equipment and training to Ukraine.

These are all welcome, vital, if overdue steps. But the summit also missed some important opportunities. First, Ukrainian membership of the alliance was again fudged. Although the summit communique promised that ‘Ukraine’s future is in NATO’, there remains no clear political pathway to achieve this. While leaders agreed that Ukraine’s ‘independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally-recognised borders directly contributes to Euro-Atlantic security’, they continue to haver on starting the membership process. In the meantime, Ukraine remains without security guarantees, despite 20 countries signing bilateral security agreements with it, and the US continues to place restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against relentless Russian air attacks. Ukrainians seeking sanctuary in their bomb shelters again this weekend will gain little comfort that Nato has solemnly declared Ukraine’s membership as ‘irreversible’.

Secondly, the outgoing secretary general’s attempts to secure multi-year financial settlement for Ukrainian support were unsuccessful. Instead, allied contributions will be assessed annually, starting at the next summit in the Netherlands next year. This reduces Ukraine’s ability to plan and equip itself, and leaves it vulnerable to the whims of nations, as seen in the six-month US congressional delay in military support earlier this year. In any event, as the President of Romania noted wryly, some Nato allies have provided Ukraine with only about half of the promised aid.

Third, although the summit congratulated itself that ‘two-thirds of allies have fulfilled their commitment of at least 2 per cent of GDP annual defence spending’, this leaves one-third that still haven’t. The Canadian Prime Minister laughably declared that his country will meet the 2 per cent target by 2032, 26 years after it was first established and 10 years after he first promised to do so. With leaders agreeing that expenditure will be needed to meet new defence promises and plug existing gaps, the existing low 2 per cent bar should have been raised to 2.5 per cent at this summit.

Finally, as Rusi, the think tank, noted before the summit: ‘NATO’s transformation… has been reactive to Russian aggression, rather than proactive’. The communique of the previous Vilnius summit promised only to ‘respond to Russian threats and hostile actions in a united and responsible way’.  (My italics.) Agreement of a new strategic approach to Russia, similar to the 1984 Washington Statement on East-West relations published when the alliance turned 35, is well overdue. Amid disagreement, the Washington summit pushed work on a new strategy off till another year. Without political agreement on the way ahead, the Kremlin will continue to set the pace of Euro-Atlantic security. Coming as news broke of a foiled Russian assassination plot against a German defence industrialist, there was little concrete action to deal with Russian unconventional activities, although in a welcome change Nato’s adversaries were reminded that these could trigger the key Article 5 (collective defence) of the Nato treaty.

Yet, sober analysis of the Washington summit’s positives and shortcomings was overshadowed by feverish discussion on whether Biden is mentally fit to stand for re-election. The return of Donald Trump is no longer unimaginable. Although the summit took steps to try to mollify Trump by spelling out European budget contributions, burden-sharing arrangements for Ukraine, and appointing a new secretary general with solid personal relations with the former president, Trump’s campaign rhetoric has made clear that he still sees Nato as a financial burden on the US rather than a net positive for US national security. 

In 1948, Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin set out his vision for a new trans-Atlantic alliance to protect against the Russian threat and bind the US to the defence of Europe. It has been assumed ever since that the United States will always ensure that Europe remains whole and free. The rise of China, a steady US drift away from Europe over the last 30 years, and Americans questioning why 750 million Europeans rely so heavily on a country of 330 million for their protection all challenge this assumption. Trump exemplifies this drift but is not its progenitor; President Obama also spoke of freeloaders and led the US pivot to Asia. Biden’s Atlanticism is out of sync with mainstream political thought in Washington.

Although Trump is unlikely to leave Nato, those around him have been sketching out a ‘radical reorientation’ in which Washington takes a back seat to Europe – and cuts a deal with Putin over Ukraine, severely weakening European security. At this time of potential turbulence, European leaders must ‘stop moaning and whining and nagging about Trump’ as the new Secretary General Mark Rutte put it in February, and get cracking. First, all should ensure national defence spending meets at least 2 per cent of GDP to meet their Nato obligation. Sweden has shown what is possible when there is political will, moving from 1.3 per cent to 2 per cent in two years. Work to strengthen the European pillar of Nato should also be defined and accelerated. This was encouraged at Washington but words must be turned into action. Labour’s proposed but still vague UK-EU defence and security pact can be a crucial part of this.

Lastly, in the face of the Russian threat and possible return of Trump, Starmer should show the same strategic grip as Bevin and set out a clear timeline for the UK spending 2.5 per cent of our GDP on defence now, and not meekly hide behind the bureaucratic process of his Strategic Defence Review, which will come at some stage next year. This increase in defence spending will demonstrate UK leadership within Europe, encourage European laggards to display similar political solidarity, and address US rancour about freeloaders. It remains to be seen whether Starmer has the political courage to take up this opportunity.

Classified documents case comes crashing down

To call Jack Smith an aggressive prosecutor is an understatement.

Smith’s crusade against former president Donald Trump has been nothing less than scorched earth, with a shamelessly transparent goal of doing all he can to stop Trump’s re-election in November. By dismissing Smith’s classified documents prosecution in Florida, District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling has not so much clipped Smith’s wings as it has tossed him from the nest altogether. And her decision throws both prosecutions into a tailspin from which they may never recover.

For two years Attorney General Merrick Garland has been insisting that Smith is operating with complete freedom and discretion, walled off from Justice Department oversight and political pressure from the White House. The problem is that, under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, such an independent “officer of the United States” must be either appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate or acting pursuant to a specific statute passed by Congress. Smith fails under either standard.

So, while Garland is free to name any lawyer with a valid bar license to be a federal prosecutor, that prosecutor must report to someone properly installed by law. David Weiss, the US attorney in Delaware who is prosecuting Hunter Biden, passes this test. Jack Smith does not.

At this point none of Smith’s options are good ones. He can appeal Judge Cannon’s ruling to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which will blow through any hope of bringing the case to trial any time soon. And, based on Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling, it’s a safe bet that the high court will affirm Cannon’s decision.

The Justice Department can transition the case to a duly appointed United States an attorney and re-file the charges. But that will also take time and leave Smith limping away from two years of spinning his wheels. And good luck finding a Senate-confirmed prosecutor willing to pick up this old dog and brush off its fleas. Cases do not get better with age, and if Trump wins in November both of Smith’s case are dead in their tracks regardless.

The left will no doubt scream about Cannon being a right-wing judge intent on delaying and dismissing the case to protect Trump. But the fact is Smith is the victim of his own ambition. He could have brought a simple obstruction of justice case in Florida which could have been wrapped up in two weeks. Instead he insisted on charging thrity-one counts under the Espionage Act. Not only did this prolong the case as does any matter involving national defense litigation, it screamed of hypocrisy in the face of President Biden’s own mishandling of classified document.

So where do things go from here? Judge Tonya Chutkan who presides over Smith’s January 6 case has been hostile to Trump from the get-go. She could ignore Cannon’s ruling and press on, but that runs the risk of the case getting to the Supreme Court with the same result. And with the Court’s recent ruling on immunity that case is stuck in its tracks anyway for the foreseeable future.

If President Biden is serious about lowering the national temperature, he would order Smith to stand down in Florida and dismiss the case in Washington, DC. The president could project the image of a magnanimous elder statement, while still leaving Trump with state court exposure in New York and Fulton County. Judge Cannon has provided Biden with an off-ramp to end Smith’s two-year lawfare campaign against Trump. Now let’s see if he’s smart enough to take it.

Trump picks J.D. Vance as VP

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Spectator is on the ground in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the 2024 Republican National Convention, where the big story of the day is Donald Trump’s pick for vice president: Ohio senator J.D. Vance. 

Trump told Fox News’s Bret Baier this morning that he would be making the announcement at the convention Monday. Later reports indicated that it would take place around 4:35 p.m. Eastern Time. Trump then blasted out the news on his site Truth Social minutes ago.

Of no surprise to anyone is that Trump treated the spectacle like an episode of The Apprentice. A couple of days ago he listed out four finalists for the VP nod: GOP senators Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and Tim Scott and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum. Sources of mine also identified Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin as a sleeper pick. Others are keen on former HUD secretary Ben Carson.

Fox News’s Martha McCallum reported, “Burgham/Vance/Rubio/Youngkin are ALL in Milwaukee, and we are hearing that all are still awaiting President Trump’s tap on the shoulder. Apprentice vibes anyone?” Rubio and Burgum were told earlier today that they were not getting the nod.

The buzz around Vance seemed confirmed when a rather large and secure motorcade picked him up from his house today. Now that is being explained away as a precaution ordered by Ohio governor Mike DeWine in the aftermath of Saturday night’s assassination attempt.

It is impressive though, that he managed to keep the pick so close to his chest and that his team did not leak.

Convention security is predictably tight, with multiple checkpoints managed by the Secret Service, a huge local police presence and a quite large security perimeter. National guardsmen were spotted watching over critical infrastructure. One RNC staffer described the convention as a “total shitshow,” but isn’t that any political conference?

-Amber Duke

On our radar

TRUMP TAKES EMPIRE STATE? There is a steady erosion of Joe Biden’s support in New York, a state Biden won by twenty-three points four years ago, according to Politico. Two private polls in September and March found former President Donald Trump leading Biden in New York by one point, a “virtual tie.”

CEASEFIRE ON THIN ICE Hamas accused Israel of trying to undermine ceasefire talks, as attacks on Gaza intensified in the middle of mediators seeking agreement to a hostage deal. Officials differed over whether Hamas had officially withdrawn from the negotiations. The Israel Defense Forces was creating “all the pressure” needed for an agreement apparently in response to charges from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the military’s effort “was not strong enough.”

A CALL TO ACTION In a phone call on Sunday, representative Mark Green pressed Secret Service director Cimpberly Cheatle for answers about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Not much is known about the phone call, other than that Green asked Cheatle a series of questions “about what led to yesterday’s historic failures.”

MUST ELON MUSK? Billionaire Elon Musk endorsed former President Trump’s campaign after the assassination attempt on Saturday. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote in a post on X.

Trump’s classified documents case is dismissed

Florida district Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of mishandling classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago residence Monday morning. This marks a momentous legal victory for the former president, who is set to take the stage for the first time since his attempted assassination at the Milwaukee GOP convention this week.

Judge Cannon ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith, the leading prosecutor, was unlawfully appointed to his role. In effect, the ruling suggests that due to Smith’s lack of authority, proceeding with the case would be unconstitutional. Smith’s office was not created by Congress, nor was he confirmed by the Senate.

The legal triumph follows a July 1 Supreme Court ruling on executive immunity, which has also been widely regarded as a win for the Republican presidential candidate.

While the ruling comes at a politically convenient time, it is likely not completely over. Prosecutors are expected to appeal the ruling, alluding to the fact that other courts have upheld the Department of Justice’s use of special counsels. Still, Cannon’s ruling is definitely a hard pill to swallow for Team Biden, putting another nail in the “Jail Trump” coffin.

–Juan P. Villasmil

Reporters shy away from covering the assassination attempt of Donald Trump

MSNBC did not air Morning Joe today — a roundtable show hosted by progressives Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski — and instead opted for coverage of breaking news. A person “familiar with the matter” told CNN the decision was made to “avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole,” implying that the inappropriate comment would have something to do with the assassination attempt. A spokesperson for MSNBC denied CNN’s reporting.

“Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” the network said in a statement.

The Daily Show has also suspiciously canceled coverage. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show team planned to cover the RNC on the ground but canceled their plans on Sunday. Monday’s broadcast of the show, typically hosted by Stewart, did not air. According to Variety, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump seems to be the issue. The Daily Show tweeted that the inconvenience was due to “logistical issues and the evolving situation in Milwaukee.”

Some have critiqued the media’s coverage of the assassination attempt. The Washington Post, ABC News, NBC News and CNN reported “loud noises” or “popping noises” going off in the crowd in Pennsylvania at the Trump rally Saturday night, and “MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania Rally” is one headline from Newsweek.

-Ella Johnson

The two-child benefit cap row is Starmer’s first big test

Can Keir Starmer hold the line on backing the two-child benefit cap? The row about the policy, introduced by the Conservatives and vociferously opposed by most people in the Labour party, is going to be a significant problem for the Prime Minister, even in his honeymoon period. The King’s Speech this week is unlikely to contain a surprise commitment to scrapping the policy, with Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves still saying that it is not yet affordable. Both say they want to get rid of it when the public finances allow, but that is not good enough for many of their MPs. 

There has already been pressure on Labour backbenchers from the SNP, which had been threatening an amendment to the King’s Speech calling for the cap to be scrapped. But now Labour backbencher Kim Johnson says she is planning to table her own amendment, and has also circulated an early-day motion around colleagues asking for their support. Neither can be tabled until parliament is sitting again, which will be once the King has delivered the speech on Wednesday.

A number of Labour MPs are also planning to speak on the cap in the debate following the Speech, which goes on for several days. Johnson wants the call for the cap to go to come from within the Labour party, rather than from opposition parties. It is also a smart bit of politics from the Labour backbencher. It will be much easier for Labour MPs, especially those in Scotland, to dismiss the SNP’s amendment as a ‘stunt’, but they will find it harder to argue against a motion from one of their own colleagues.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has also said that in his renewed calls for the cap to go, ‘I honestly believe we are pushing at an open door’. Gordon Brown has also been arguing against it, though he has previously said that he was focusing on the Autumn Statement as the most likely vehicle for scrapping the limit. With the Greens and Liberal Democrats also pushing on this issue, it is going to be an extremely uncomfortable argument for the government to sustain for a long time: it may well be that figures including Sarwar and would-be rebel MPs are given an indication of how open the door is and how soon the cap might go, just to try to quell the revolt.

Trump selects J.D. Vance for vice president

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president in 2024, announced Monday on Truth Social that his vice presidential candidate will be Ohio senator J.D. Vance. Vance represents the new populist bent of the Republican Party championed by Trump’s “America First” movement and is thus a natural successor to the 45th president.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of the Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country. J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….” Trump wrote.

Vance was elected as Ohio’s junior senator in the 2022 midterm elections and before that was a well-known author with the bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy about his humble upbringing in rural Appalachia. The book was adapted into a Netflix movie. Vance wrote about the desperation of these underserved areas, which have been wracked by job loss and drug addiction.

Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 and would be only the second Catholic in American history to serve as vice president. His selection as VP is a blow to the establishment, neoconservative wing of the GOP and proof that Trump doesn’t want to hand the party back to them when he’s done.

A well-placed source tells The Spectator that Ohio governor Mike DeWine would replace Vance with State Senator Matt Dolan.

Speculation swirled around Vance, particularly earlier in the day when he was seen being picked up by a large motorcade at his home in Ohio. Trump previously narrowed his finalists down to Vance, Florida senator Marco Rubio and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum. Reports then surfaced that Rubio and Burgum had been told they were not selected. The former president teased that he would announce his vice presidential pick during the party’s annual convention early Monday evening at 3:36 p.m. Central Time but got ahead of schedule by making a surprise announcement on his own social media platform.

Vance’s name started to come up on the convention floor as the GOP went through the official nominating process. As state delegates announced giving their votes to Trump, some also cheered the former president’s new running mate.

The Trump family, including Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump, arrived to give Trump the final numbers needed from Florida to make him the official party nominee.

Vance is expected to speak at the convention on Wednesday and Trump on Thursday.

London’s nightlife is getting even more embarrassing

In the end, there was little reason why England fans might have wanted to hang around after yesterday’s Euros final, except to bum an Estrella off a celebrating Spaniard. But in the unlikely event that football had come home, those of us watching in London would have been left high, if not necessarily dry, by London’s ‘world-leading’ police force and public transport network.

Yesterday afternoon, at the helpfully late time of 3.51 p.m, the Met warned football fans travelling into central London to avoid street drinking. Having issued an antisocial dispersal order, those congregating in the street with a beer could be made to move on. It also suggested pubs were full, so it might be an idea to watch at home. 

This pressing need to avoid drinking or congregating in Westminster streets will come as news to the sodden staffers who crowd around Whitehall on weekdays and the legions of angry young men whose marches were a weekly misery after 7 October. But it was compounded by Sadiq Khan warning that fans needed to plan ahead, since TfL weren’t changing their usual Sunday services for the match. 

If the match had gone to penalties – not an unreasonable assumption for England – the game could have gone past 11 p.m. For fans who has travelled into the capital to cheer on Gareth Southgate’s unlikely lads, this might have raised the choice between getting home in one piece, and missing England finally end 58 years of hurt – all while getting hassled for sneaking a pint outside. 

The usual excuses were hidden behind. TfL claimed that timetable changes and planned engineering works ‘need to planned several weeks in advance due to the detail required…meaning any changes would had to have been made before the tournament started’. Union members are not required to give notice they won’t work on a rest day until a few days in advance. 

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This does not cut the (English) mustard. The date and time of the Euros final was confirmed more than two years ago. It wouldn’t have been a radical over-estimation of England’s chances to suggest a team that reached the final in the last Euros might do so again, and that fans might choose to watch, celebrate, or commiserate this event in the centre of our capital city, and that they might want a jar whilst doing so.

Yet those hoping to squeeze fun out of our metropolis are used to being gaslit by Sadiq Khan’s London: a capital that claims to be a 24-hour city despite all the evidence against. Where a ‘Night Czar’ receives a pay rise for presiding over a dramatic decline in the city’s nightclubs, and where Greggs goes to court to keep a store open until 5 a.m., after the Met declares it a hub for ‘crime and disorder’. 

Those running this global mega-city lacked the foresight to stage an outdoor screening in the capital’s centre. They didn’t think it wise to ply the mouths of TfL’s staff with enough gold to get them to work for a few more hours. They treated those wanting to celebrate in London as another nuisance to be managed, not visitors to be welcomed. 

From Berlin to Benidorm, evidence that our capital is in an international embarrassment for late-night living abounds. Fans in Germany could ride on a Night Tube – why not us? For those of us mad enough to live in London, it’s a mark of shame that the face it projects is one of puritanical incompetence. We exist at the convenience of London’s czars, not the other way around. 

We have two more years before England have another shot at winning a major tournament. Kicking out Khan will take a little longer. 

Israel shows that proportional representation is an awful idea

After the general election produced the most disproportionate result in history, there have been fresh calls to replace the first-past-the-post system with a fairer, more proportional system. 

Usually, these arguments are heard mostly from the left, especially from the Lib Dems and the Greens. This time around it is supporters of Reform, who hold 0.8 per cent of the seats in the Commons despite winning 14.3 per cent of the vote, making the loudest calls for proportional representation (PR). 

On the face it, they have a strong case. Under the current system millions of votes are wasted, and the seat share of most parties usually bears no resemblance to their share of the vote. Even though the Greens had their best ever result, capturing four seats, this is only one-tenth of the number that they would have won under PR. Meanwhile, Reform’s meagre haul was still better than Ukip’s result in 2015, when 3.8 million votes translated into just one seat – Farage’s current constituency of Clacton, where Douglas Carswell rejoined the Tories two years later anyway.

But the experience of Israel, where they have a pure PR system (there are no constituencies, electors vote for a party, and the share of the seats perfectly reflects the share of the vote) suggests that both left and right should be careful what they wish for, and that proportional systems produce awkward and sometimes disastrous results. 

The absence of constituencies mean that Knesset members never conduct constituency surgeries, nor can they be lobbied by their constituents. This means that national-level politicians are often out of step with the views of their own party’s voters.

In Israel, PR also allows a small number of religious fundamentalists who represent no more than 10 per cent of the population to act as kingmakers and exert a political influence vastly disproportionate to their numbers.

If such a system was adopted in the UK it would presumably lead to the disintegration and replacement of the main parties, with the Labour left and the Greens forming a new ‘trans and Palestine’ party, centrist Tories and Labourites forming a British version of Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble, and the emergence of a socially-conservative, social democratic party, based on the support of Blue Labour and Red Tory voters. 

The experience of Israel and other countries such as the Netherlands shows it wouldn’t stop there: there is a distinct possibility of a ‘religious rights’ party, opposed to abortion and LGBT rights winning a few seats – and potentially forcing concessions from the mainstream right-wing parties in exchange for their support. 

The demographics of the support base for such a party might make many on the left uncomfortable, whilst creating the kind of communal politics many on the right have long feared.

The success of the five pro-Palestine independents and the near misses for Wes Streeting and Jess Philips came despite first past the post; and with a PR system, single-issue parties and those based on ethnic or religious groups would fare much better.

There’s a strong argument that the failure of ethnic or religious based parties to gain electoral success in mainland Britain thus far is due to FPTP. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, partly as a result of the hostility that many immigrants received from both the Conservative and Labour parties, there were attempts to set up ethnic or religious based parties back then, with the Pakistan People’s party establishing branches in the UK. But when it became apparent that, under FPTP, such parties would only dilute the electoral influence of different groups, they failed to gain support. 

Proportional representation splits societies even more along demographic lines. Israel’s experience shows it’s a terrible idea. 

David Lammy calls for Gaza ceasefire

David Lammy is visiting Israel and the Palestinian Territories – his first trip to the Middle East as Foreign Secretary. On his meeting list so far are Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Mustafa and relatives of the hostages taken on 7 October. The Foreign Secretary met Israeli President Isaac Herzog this morning.

Of all the foreign policy challenges facing Keir Starmer’s government, Israel/Palestine is the most contentious internally. Since 7 October, the question of how much support to show either side has divided the Labour party. Unhappiness over Starmer’s initial delay to back calls for a ceasefire as well as comments about Israel’s right to self defence saw the Labour leader suffer several frontbench resignations. In the general election, there were signs of a voter backlash: a number of pro-Gaza independents ousted Labour incumbents.

Lammy’s message for this trip is simple: it’s time for an immediate ceasefire. It echoes calls Keir Starmer made to both Netanyahu and Mustafa on entering 10 Downing Street. Speaking today, Lammy said: ‘I’m here to push for a ceasefire. The loss of life over the last few months… is horrendous. It has to stop.’ He has also announced further humanitarian funding and stressed the importance of international law.

Calling for a ceasefire is one thing, achieving it is another. Starmer and Lammy have both talked of the need for a two-state solution – but that currently seems some way away. Instead, the more immediate challenge for Lammy is likely to be on the thorny question of whether to limit or stop weapons sales to Israel over the loss of civilian life. There are plenty in the Labour party who want to see this happen – but it would cause ructions for the UK’s relationship with Israel.