Wine Club

Patience. Pragmatism. Perseverance. Nationalist leaders do not, as a general rule, use such terms to inspire their troops. Not, at any rate, if they think the day of national emancipation is imminent. Yet these were precisely the terms in which Nicola Sturgeon spoke to her party’s conference in Glasgow this week. That reflects one of the paradoxes of our time. Politically-speaking it is possible to march closer to independence without actually getting closer to it. Or, to put it another way, the road to independence is shorter now but also littered with more, and larger, obstacles than was the case as recently as 2014. This is the conundrum in which Sturgeon finds herself: the route is simple but the road is not open.

A confession: when I set off on my journey down the rabbit hole of gender issues, I was a bit sceptical and possibly even dismissive of some of the fears raised by some of the more animated feminist participants in the debate. When I heard women talking about “erasure” and the removal of women as a distinct category of people from public conversation and policy, I had my doubts. I mean, the concept of “woman” is pretty robust, isn’t it? Just because a number of male-born people start describing themselves as “women”, the fundamental concept of “woman” will surely remain as the vast majority of people understand it to mean: “adult human female,” in the phrase of the Oxford English Dictionary.

For those wondering why exactly Labour vetoed plans for a new female deputy leader this morning over fears the role could undermine Jeremy Corbyn, look no further than Emily Thornberry's conference speech. This afternoon, the shadow foreign secretary offered a pretty good explanation as to why Corbyn's allies had become nervous about the idea of promoting a woman to second in command. Fresh from talking movingly about her backstory in a fringe event (Isabel reports on part 1 of Thornberry's leadership launch here), Thornberry gave her boss a run for his money with a crowd-pleasing – at times barnstorming – speech which neatly set out the clear blue water between herself and the current Labour leader.

What’s the antidote to Corbyn? Thatcher, according to Priti Patel. Britain’s former PM might be public enemy number one in the eyes of the Corbynistas, but it’s vital the Tories return to Thatcher’s ideas and her way of doing things. That, at least, is the verdict of Patel, the Brexit-backing former international development secretary. Patel said that Britain is now at a crossroads: a similar juncture to the one it faced when Thatcher came to power in the seventies. Back then, she said, regressive socialism was in danger of taking control. The same is happening now, according to the Tory MP, and it’s vital that the Conservatives and the government learns from a prime minister that ‘fought the left very successfully’.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the interesting question of whether or not the former chief strategist to the President of the United States is too fringe a figure to be allowed to speak in public. A lot of very prominent people seem to think that Steve Bannon shouldn’t be given a platform. And among two venues to have recently invited him, the New Yorker promptly disinvited him from their festival under fire from political heavyweights including former ‘funny man’ Jim Carrey. By contrast, the Economist managed to hold firm, surviving the withdrawal of a British blogger and going ahead as planned with their live interview. The video of the resulting event is well worth watching.

President Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he wants to increase trade. Under his wise rule, he assures us, American trade will thrive. It will be Yuge! Why would anyone doubt that desire? He’s a businessman and businessmen want to do more business not less. In pursuit of this, Trump has also said that that he favours a low or no tariff world, but that it must be based on reciprocity – an easily understandable form of fairness but one which has earned Trump scorn from right, left, and centre. The subject came up at a dinner I attended recently. It was mostly populated by right of centre journalists and intellectuals, but there were a few people from the business world there too.