Features

Wednesday

Ben Gartside

Welcome to XL bully death row

‘There’s no way of finding out what’s really happening in there,’ says Aaron Rainey, an XL bully expert who advises police forces and dog owners across the UK. ‘Nobody knows where the kennels are – the police keep the information under wraps in case people turn up and try to break out their XL bullies.’ Rainey was preparing to make a trip to assess an XL bully in Leicester, three hours from the dog’s previous home. He is concerned about the number of volunteers working in kennels housing XL bullies: many of them are college students trying to bolster their CV ahead of applying for veterinary studies at university. They are serving as prison guards to the UK’s most dangerous dogs. Welcome to XL bully death row.

Wednesday

Tim Shipman and James Heale

Robert Jenrick: Why I defected to Reform

Those pondering why Robert Jenrick defected to Reform UK have focused on the political momentum of Nigel Farage or the performance of Kemi Badenoch, but the key conversation was the one he had with his father on Boxing Day. ‘He’s a very straight talker,’ Jenrick explains when we meet at Reform’s headquarters on Tuesday afternoon. ‘He said, “If you weren’t in politics and there was a general election to-morrow, which party would you vote for?” I said, “Reform.” He said, “If you weren’t in politics, weren’t a candidate, had no particular loyalty, who would you want to be prime minister if the choice was Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage?” I said, “Nigel Farage.” He said, “Well, be honest with yourself and become a Reform MP.

Paul Wood

Arctic role: what does Trump really want from Greenland?

Donald Trump has probably not read Machiavelli, even the short one, The Prince. Machiavelli’s most famous advice was that it’s better for a prince to be feared than loved. But above all, he said, a ruler should strive not to be hated. Nobody likes a bully. The US President, however, clearly doesn’t care about any of this in his attempt to intimidate Denmark into handing over Greenland.  Why does Trump want Greenland? A clue lay in his meeting at the White House last week with the Florida Panthers ice hockey team. The team lined up for a photo: red ties and muscle-bound torsos bursting out of suit jackets, Trump in front of them at a lectern. ‘Good-looking people, young, beautiful people, I hate them. You hate standing here with all this power behind you.

Lara Brown

The Chinese takeover of Britain’s public schools

Roedean is now known as ‘Beijing High’. Cheltenham Ladies’ College is ‘Hong Kong College’. In the country’s most elite boarding schools, pupils say that they are one of just a handful of English children. Others note that Chinese has become the dominant language in hallways and dormitories. Many English parents can no longer afford a boarding school education for their children. And the pressure of recently introduced VAT on fees, as well as above-inflation rises year on year, means the number able to cough up will dwindle further. By contrast, China and Hong Kong’s growing economy and cultural obsession with education provides a surfeit of parents with the cash needed to secure the educational prospects of their children.

Gavin Mortimer

The EU vs the farmers

It was a weekend of mixed emotions for the European Union. There was the news from Donald Trump that he will impose a 10 per cent tariff on eight European countries in retaliation for their opposition to his plans to take control of Greenland. But on a brighter note, the EU finally signed the Mercosur trade agreement with several South American countries. The European Commission hailed it as the creation of ‘a free-trade zone of roughly 700 million people’, one which they promise will save EU companies more than €4 billion a year in customs duties. Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission president, said: ‘We choose fair trade over tariffs, we chose a productive long-term partnership over isolation.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

‘Pray your boilers don’t fail’: the Church of England is in the grip of eco-zealots

It came to pass in 2020 that a decree went out from the General Synod that all the Church of England must be carbon net-zero by 2030. And this ruling was first made when Justin Welby was Archbishop of Canterbury. And all went to have a good hard look at their church heating systems, every one into his own vestry cupboard… How easy it is to issue a decree from on high; and how hard it is for the people on the ground to have to deal with its consequences.

John Campbell

The five Haldanean principles that could reshape Britain

If Reform get into government, there is one man they seem likely to turn to for guidance. He is an obscure figure, unknown to many, yet has acolytes across the political spectrum – from Dominic Cummings to Gordon Brown. His name is Richard Burdon Haldane and he died almost a century ago. It was recently reported in this magazine that Danny Kruger had been seen carrying ‘a well-thumbed copy’ of the most recent biography of Haldane. I wrote that book. In it, I describe how Haldane reshaped Britain in the early 20th century – and how, should others choose to follow his example, he might help to transform it again today.

Andrew Gimson

A fogey’s guide to cryptocurrency

All innovations seem unseemly to fogeys. When bitcoin, the first of the cryptocurrencies, was launched in 2009, we dismissed it as a deplorable and transient phenomenon. Its inventor, who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto, would not reveal his real name. Perhaps he did not exist and whoever hid behind the pseudonym was having a joke at our expense. When Satoshi created the first bitcoin on 9 January 2009, he embedded within its code a headline from a recent Times: ‘Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.’ Crypto appeals to people who distrust banks, as well one may. ‘Never trust the bankers,’ Winston Churchill warned in old age. History suggests one can trust neither governments nor central banks to maintain the value of money.

John Power

No, the internet is not bad for your child

The forces arranged in favour of banning social media for under-16s are powerful and wide-ranging. The unlikely alliance includes the leader of the Tory party, more than 60 Labour MPs, Big Suze from Peep Show and the patron saint of all bad ideas – His Majesty King Charles III. It seems probable that when amendment 94A of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is voted on, it will receive support from all these quarters, as well as from Sir Keir Starmer, who has, true to form, launched a consultation on the issue. A handful of mental health charities will tell him that he must really get on with banning social media for teenagers, which he will then promptly and politely do.

Michael Simmons

Under 50? You’re never getting a state pension

Last week the Bank of England was warned to prepare for a financial crisis triggered by the discovery of extraterrestrial life. But the really worrying scenario isn’t aliens. It’s us. A century ago the state pension as we know it was introduced. Taxes from employers and their staff were used to pay out benefits to the elderly once they hit retirement age. There was no means-testing, and this benefit for all removed the stigma associated with claiming welfare. It was a roaring success. But it won’t see another 100 years. It’s always been wrong to call it a pension. It’s a benefit paid out of current taxation like any other. There’s never been an investment pot built up or paid into. The state pension runs more like a Ponzi scheme.

John Oxley

Want to get rich? Invest like an American

Ramit Sethi wants to make you rich. He is not a household name in Britain, but the Stanford psychology graduate is one of the biggest personal finance influencers in the US. He hosts a successful podcast, Money for Couples, has written bestselling books and even has a Netflix show, How to Get Rich. All his projects share the same message: by changing your mindset and taking a few practical steps, you can power yourself toward prosperity. To British ears, his style might seem brash. It is financial advice with a substantial side of life coaching. But beyond the difference in tone, Sethi spreads a simple message rarely heard in finance columns or consumer advice TV slots in this country: that the best thing you can do for your money is to rapidly increase your income.

Matthew Lynn

Is any other investment as good as gold?

Last year might have proved a good time to own shares in the chip-maker Nvidia, along with the booming American tech giants. Or a piece of the defence manufacturers as the world re-arms. Or to hold a position in some of the rapidly growing economies of South America or Asia, or even one of the hyped-up crypto currencies. There were plenty of places investors expected to make money over the past year. As it turned out, however, there was one asset that outpaced them all, even though it generates no income: gold, and to an even greater extent, its junior sibling silver. With government debt soaring out of control, the precious metals are more valuable than ever – and so long as that is true, they will keep on climbing. There is no question it was the stand-out asset of last year.

Wednesday

William Atkinson

Iran’s cheerleaders are on borrowed time

Predictions ageing poorly is an occupational hazard for journalists and commentators. But few have gone as sour as those made by Roger Cooper in this magazine, in February 1979, days after the last Shah of Iran had fled. In a piece titled ‘Is Khomeini the leader for Iran?’, Cooper speculated that ‘the prospect… of an Iranian Islamic republic… must surely be more alluring to all but the most stubborn defenders of an ancient regime’. The Ayatollah, he suggested, offered Iranians ‘the chance to resume their true national and cultural identity’. No suggestion was made of imminent death squads, mass imprisonments or looming theocratic repression and economic hardship.  Cooper can be forgiven for failing to realise just how miserable the Islamic Republic would be.

Charlie Gammell

The rule of the Ayatollahs is broken. What happens now?

‘Help is on the way,’ promised Donald Trump to the people of Iran defying the Islamic Republic. In the same social media post, the US President, characteristically light on detail, also urged Iranian protestors to take over the institutions of the Islamic Republic (presumably by force) and to keep a note of the names and numbers of their oppressors for retribution’s sake. Whatever these words presage – be it air strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij facilities, or cyberattacks on Iran’s intelligence agencies, to blind the regime as the regime has blinded protestors by shutting down the internet – it remains to be seen if such an intervention will tip the balance in favour of the regime, the protestors, or simply chaos.

John Jenkins

Iran’s useful idiots: British complicity in Tehran’s terror

It is still unclear what will happen next in Iran. I fervently hope the current protests will cause the tyrants of Tehran to fall. It would be ideal if they were replaced by an order that allowed the population of 90 million to choose who governs them and build a country that reflects joy, hope and modernity rather than Ali Khamenei’s brutal Islamist fever dream. I also know how unlikely that is. Revolutions tend to produce disorder and repression, not order and freedom. After the failure of the Constitutional Revolution in 1911, there was a decade of chaos, fragmentation and insurgency in Iran until Reza Khan seized power and founded the Pahlavi dynasty.

Owen Matthews

The Kremlin’s plan to create a new wave of Ukrainian refugees

What is the limit of Ukrainian civilians’ endurance? In nearly four years of relentless war, Ukraine’s people have faced summary executions, ‘drone safaris’ where unmanned aerial vehicles hunt people down city streets and constant bombardment of cities by swarms of drones and missiles. This winter their remarkable resilience faces its severest test yet as Russian forces reach a tipping point in their systematic attempt to knock out the country’s energy infrastructure. In each of the past three winters, Vladimir Putin has attempted to render Ukraine’s cities uninhabitable by plunging them into darkness and cold, without success. But this time it looks like the Kremlin’s campaign to weaponise winter may be succeeding.

Sean Thomas

An elegy for my libido

I’m not sure when my libido first began to decline. It was probably during the pandemic, so it went unnoticed – like much else. Given that I was stuck indoors, newly divorced, in a one-bed flat, with no garden, and only allowed out to walk for one hour a day in the driving sleet, I didn’t really clock that I wasn’t getting a lot of action. My main concern was not committing suicide through love-grief and loneliness. Also, I cooked several new turbot recipes. Then the tides of plague retreated and that is when I realised. Something in me had changed: and it was the ‘dogs of lust’, as John Betjeman called them in ‘Senex’, his fine poem about age and desire. The dogs no longer barked, loudly, 24/7, driving me to distraction. Sometimes they went entirely quiet.

Max Jeffery

Criminal candidates, grooming gangs and petrol bombings – welcome to Oldham

Everyone who’s anyone in Oldham knows Irish Imy. Born Mohammed Imran Ali in Dublin in 1980 and raised in Werneth in south-west Oldham, Imy is the borough’s recurring bad guy. He’s done time for assault, trafficking heroin and being the getaway driver for the murderer Dale Cregan, who shot three people and blew up their bodies with grenades in 2012. Naturally, Imy now wants to be a politician. He’s standing in this year’s local elections as an independent, promising to ‘Make Werneth Great Again’. His campaign is not regarded as insane. He may win. Imy is capitalising on the sense that this Greater Manchester borough is corrupt. People in Oldham say the local elections are rigged and believe that council seats are handed out through the South Asian biradari clan system.

Andrew Graystone

Is Sarah Mullally really a fresh start for the Church of England?

Between 1999 and 2004, Sarah Mullally, the current Bishop of London, was director of patient experience for NHS England. One complaint dominated the feedback she received from inpatients: everyone hated the undignified hospital gowns that gaped open at the back. Mullally identified this as an issue that could be addressed easily and cheaply. Later on, the designer Ben de Lisi even worked with the Design Council to develop a better gown with side fastenings. Yet if you are unfortunate enough to have to stay in hospital today, you will almost certainly find that you are offered the old draughty gown.

Andrew Watts

The joyless reading app being forced on my son

It was only recently that I fully appreciated how the books I read as a child formed me. A pregnant friend asked me about my parenting philosophy and I realised it amounted to ensuring my son would survive a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I never had the money of Veruca Salt’s daddy to indulge his every desire, but I came down hard on chewing gum, gorging on chocolate and, above all, staring at a screen.  Despite my son’s complaints that I was acting like a father from Victorian times, it seemed to have worked, and, as the Oompa--Loompas predicted, not being glued to a screen encouraged him to become a reader, out of boredom if nothing else. If the house was quiet, too quiet, I would usually find him reading a book in a corner.