Features

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Could Dean Phillips be President?

New Hampshire Joe Biden likes to say that ‘democracy is on the ballot’ in 2024. Yet Joe Biden was not on the ballot on Tuesday in New Hampshire. In his absence, a 55-year-old former congressman called Dean Phillips, who started his campaign just ten weeks ago, won 20 per cent of the vote. Biden still won easily as more than 65 per cent of Democratic voters wrote his name in. But the President’s ducking of New Hampshire, and Phillips’s sudden emergence, says a lot about the sorry state of Democratic politics and the gnawing fear that Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump in November. Dean Phillips’s hair is coiffed, his suits shine and he talks as if he’s the sweetest man in America The re-nomination of a commander-in-chief is usually little more than a formality.

Fraser Nelson

McMafia: inside the SNP’s secret state

After years of scandal and intrigue, the Scottish National party has not lost its ability to shock. The UK Covid Inquiry has moved to Edinburgh for three weeks and in the process has exposed Nicola Sturgeon’s government to some robust scrutiny. The verbose, preening Hugo Keith has been replaced with Jamie Dawson, a more incisive KC. What he has uncovered has been a revelation. That Sturgeon deleted her WhatsApp messages is bad enough. The ability to learn from the decision-making process is vital, so for a senior minister to wipe records like these can be seen as a conspiracy against the public. But as we have learned this week, the civil service in Scotland was also deeply complicit.

Thursday

Nigel Biggar

Palestinians in Gaza are suffering. That doesn’t mean it’s genocide

Last week Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, expressed his concern that Israel ‘may have breached international law’ in its three-month bombardment of Gaza. Two days later, at the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s lawyers presented their case accusing Israel of genocide.  The number of civilian casualties is indeed horrifically high. According to the ministry of health in Gaza on 9 January, more than 23,000 Palestinians had been reported killed since the start of the conflict. However, since the ministry is run by Hamas, that figure can’t be taken at face value. Indeed, it’s a practical certainty that it contains Hamas combatants – according to one reckoning, as many as 8,500.

Carson Becker

Donald Tusk sends police after journalists

Donald Tusk’s return to power in Poland’s autumn election was interpreted by many as the victory of centrism over populism. The rogue right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) had been cast out and decency prevailed once more: this was, at least, the narrative presented to the world’s media. In Warsaw, things looked very different. On the campaign trail Tusk repeatedly promised to ‘depoliticise’ the state-owned media and restore the rule of law. Once he was sworn in as Prime Minister last month, it didn’t take him long to resort to authoritarian methods that would have led to an international outcry if a supposed moderate had not been behind them.

Robert Hardman

The day the King could have killed Rishi

We are familiar with the perfectly sensible convention that monarchs should not fly with their heirs. But should they also be discouraged from foraging for their prime ministers? While researching my new book and film on the King, I was at Balmoral to see the visit of the Sunaks. At one point, the King vanished into the grounds of Birkhall to pick mushrooms for his guests, who also included Sir Nicholas and Lady Coleridge. It’s a favourite form of royal relaxation (the King was picking Birkhall mushrooms on the day the Queen died). When I mentioned this to a privy counsellor last week, he was troubled.

James Bartholomew

Why isn’t Lenin as reviled as Hitler?

Around the corner from me is a barber’s shop decorated with black-and-white photographs of icons of the 20th century. James Dean is there with the usual cigarette hanging out of his mouth; Marilyn Monroe is perching on the edge of a pool table. A poster for the film Taxi Driver is alongside a photo of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack – and also a photo of Lenin. I guess the aim is to appear edgy, alternative and rebellious. But obviously there is no image of Hitler. That would be unacceptable: Hitler was a fascist who invaded countries and killed millions of people. It would be tasteless to display an image of him. But Lenin is apparently OK.

Aidan Hartley

Mongolia’s increasing dependency on the West

Ulaanbaatar The collapse in Mongolia’s exports of cashmere legwarmers to Russia serves as a bellwether of East-West superpower rivalry. For decades, Mongolia enjoyed a lucrative trade selling cashmere clothes to Russian customers, knitted underwear and leggings being the fastest-selling items. At the outset of the Ukraine invasion, cashmere sales went through the roof as mothers across Russia bought their sons underwear to keep them cosy in their tanks and trenches. Even as the war’s first winter set in, however, sales plummeted, as sanctions started to bite and fewer mamushkas could afford natural-fibre undies.

David Abulafia

How the National Maritime Museum is trying to decolonise Lord Nelson

I spent Christmas in Turin, with its superb and often neglected museums that are a particular delight because they are uncontaminated by preaching about the evils of European colonialism. It is not that I have no moral perspective on how the creators of empire across four millennia have acted towards their subjects. But the use of objects in museums to tell a distorted picture in the interests of supposed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, infused with Critical Race Theory, is a betrayal of what museums are supposed to do. Museums are not political tools, as the Museums Association, with its rants against racism and colonialism, seems to think. Racism is indeed a great evil.

Henry Jeffreys

How Britain sobered up

The people of these islands have long been famous for their drinking. A Frenchman writing in the 12th century described the various races of Europe: ‘The French were proud and womanish; the Germans furious and obscene; the Lombards greedy, malicious, and cowardly; and the English were drunkards and had tails.’ By 1751, at the height of the gin craze that William Hogarth immortalised in ‘Gin Lane’, the English were drinking on average the equivalent of 20 bottles of gin per person per year. But Britain is losing its taste for alcohol. Around a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds don’t drink at all. Gen Z said they associate alcohol with ‘vulnerability’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘loss of control’ It’s a far cry from when I was a teenager in the 1980s.

Michael Simmons

Sobriety isn’t worth it

Absolutely nobody feels better at the end of Dry January. Mornings are still a struggle, you’re as tired as ever, and if anything the neurotic voice in your head is even louder. Yes, you may have gone to the gym every Sunday, but how has your life improved? It hasn’t. My own Dry January was forced on me by antibiotics. Though the NHS guidelines said the pills are alcohol compatible, my doctor (who has a record of my alcohol intake) took the liberty of writing ‘NO alcohol’ followed by five exclamation marks. This has allowed me to experience sobriety firsthand.

Thursday

Christopher Caldwell

In Europe, the centre will not hold 

For about five years, those longing for a centrist restoration have been declaring that the madness is on its way out and the sensibles are back. Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen: all of them were just temporary horrors. In Poland’s recent election, Donald Tusk was returned to power, with his whole entourage of Europhiles and progressive foundations. Europe can breathe once more. Or so the argument goes. But it’s becoming harder to make the case. Look around and we see Trump not only the runaway favourite for the Republican nomination but also on short odds for the presidency itself. Polls for the European parliament elections in June show Le Pen comfortably ahead in France. Giorgia Meloni is consolidating power in Italy.

Alison Kervin

Why I self-publish my books

Trying to publish a book used to be straightforward. You came up with an idea, spent months, if not years, writing it, then sent it off to an agent or publisher who rejected it by return. Life was simpler back then. We all knew where we were. Rejection wasn’t necessarily based on the quality of the work. Literature is a subjective business. Lord of the Flies earned William Golding 20 rejections. James Joyce, Jack Kerouac and Joseph Heller suffered similar fates. Marcel Proust was rejected so many times that he decided to pay for publication himself. The much-repeated industry statistic is between 1 and 2 per cent of manuscripts are published. Those aren’t great odds. What do you do? I’ll tell you exactly what: publish it yourself.

Cindy Yu

Taiwan can’t escape China’s shadow

The Taiwanese rock band Mayday – ‘the Beatles of the Chinese-speaking world’ – are being investigated by the Chinese Communist party for the crime of lip syncing. Local authorities are combing through recordings of Mayday’s Shanghai concerts from November looking for evidence of ‘deceptive fake-singing’, as the CCP calls it, which has been illegal in China since 2009 (although the law is rarely enforced). Last month, an anonymous Taiwan-ese government source told Reuters that the investigation had been cooked up because the pop stars refused a request from Beijing to say something nice about China in the run-up to Taiwan’s election this Saturday. The band found itself at the centre of a row between the presidential hopefuls about Chinese interference.

Natasha Feroze

Would you sign a relationship contract?

What makes a relationship work? I look at the happiest, most stable couples I know and wonder what the trick is. Did they spot problems early on and talk them through? Do they simply accept each other’s flaws? We all have foibles; a relationship is simply a matter of deciding which ones we can live with. I came across a couple recently who had their own approach: a relationship contract. Americans Simone and Malcolm Collins are big names in the pro-natalist movement. They have made it their mission to convince people to take relationships more seriously, ideally with a view to having children. They are now married, but prior to doing so, they had in place their own contract.

Peter Frankopan

Why the West is worried about the Red Sea

Last night, the United States and United Kingdom launched a series of missile strikes on Houthi targets in the Yemen. The dramatic strikes are a response to the rise of piratical attacks by Houthis on ships going through the Red Sea. The west’s move risks further regional escalation, as the war in Gaza goes on and hostilities bubble all over Middle East, especially with Iran. But the West is particularly concerned about the Red Sea because it is that most thorny of geopolitical problems – a chokepoint. A chokepoint is a narrow stretch that connects two larger bodies of water.

James Heale

At-risk Tories are looking to board the green gravy train

Tory MPs are already war-gaming what follows the election. Defeat seems certain, but then what? There will be an almighty tussle in which up to 200 colleagues scramble for a handful of the same sort of jobs: consultancies, directorships and advisory gigs. In these Tory Hunger Games, the clever thing to do is to start taking the best jobs now. Chris Skidmore, for example, is not hanging about. His 14 years in parliament involved a three-month stint as interim energy minister, after which he wrote a book about net zero. The green job offers came thick and fast. He was made a professor of practice in net zero policy at Bath University and bagged two £80,000-a-year advisory gigs, all while collecting his full-time MP’s salary representing constituents in Kingswood.

Freddy Gray

Why Trump can’t be stopped

Donald Trump has dominated Republican politics for so long that it can be hard to remember the time when he did not. It’s easy to forget that at the beginning of 2016 he started the Republican primary process by losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz, his more conservative rival. ‘He stole it,’ Trump tweeted afterwards, graceful as ever in defeat. ‘The State of Iowa should disqualify Ted Cruz from the most recent election on the basis that he cheated – a total fraud!’ Trump went on to stun the world, of course, by winning the Republican nomination, then the White House. American politics would never be the same again. Skip forward to 2024 and Trump is still grumbling about stolen elections. But he’s no longer the maverick Republican insurgent.

Amber Duke

Meet the women vying to be Trump’s running mate

‘Ibelieve President Trump will have a female vice-president,’ said Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon in a recent interview. He was echoing the thoughts of many of those close to the probable 2024 Republican nominee. Mr Trump himself has said that he likes ‘the concept’ of choosing a female VP. Happily for him, there is no shortage of Republican women auditioning for the role of best supporting actress. The second season of The Golden Bachelor is coming sooner than anticipated. Kari Lake, the former TV newscaster turned politician, won the Conservative Political Action Committee’s (CPAC) straw poll for the VP slot last spring. Lake demurred at the time, as she was in the midst of a legal challenge against her defeat in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race.

Thursday

Theo Hobson

The joy of middle-aged football

I can tell when my life’s going OK. My stray thoughts are not about what a loser I am but about what a terrible footballer I am. Why didn’t I shoot when I had that chance? Why did I pass to the opposition? And, oh dear, I wonder how Diego’s knee is? For almost a decade I’ve been playing football on Saturday mornings in a local park in London. For the first few years I was a fair-weather visitor, shy about it. I’m not much of a joiner and I don’t have much chat about the transfer window, so I felt awkward and almost stopped going. A couple of others were middle-aged and rusty like me, so they probably didn’t really want another old guy getting in the way. But I gradually felt that they didn’t mind me being there, that I was a valid part of the mix.

Wednesday

Svitlana Morenets

Ukrainians can’t trust Putin’s hollow promises

Ukraine’s parliament will soon vote on much-needed conscription regulations which would draft an extra half a million recruits into the army. The categories of eligible men will be expanded, the draft age will be lowered from 27 to 25, and any man caught attempting to evade it will face harsh sanctions or imprisonment. Volodymyr Zelensky has stopped talking about victory coming any time soon. His New Year’s message was grim: everyone must either fight or help through work. Ukrainians are braced for another year of war. But talk of ‘peace’ or ‘compromise’ is still seen as code for a surrender which would reward rather than punish Vladimir Putin’s atrocities, cede ground and give him the opportunity to come back for the rest later.